“How long do you want me to stay here, anyway?” Charlie asked. “I mean, even you have to admit, Roxy, it’s...kind of primitive.” And she was afraid she would lose her fantasy dream guy by moving away from Portland. Hell, she’d been half-convinced he was going to show up on her doorstep at any moment.
Crazy. It was crazy. But he just felt so real.
They had driven all over the state of Oregon, by her estimation, only to end up here, a couple of hours east of the city at just a little after sundown. The roundabout route, Roxy said, was to make sure they were not followed. She was beginning to think the lady was a little bit crazy.
They parked her grandmother’s aging gray pickup truck in an abandoned barn at least a mile away and then hiked through the forest to get to a small log cabin that blended into the surrounding trees so perfectly, you couldn’t see it until you were on top of it.
Charlie’s grandmother just kept unlocking the front door—which took some time because there were so many locks on the damn thing. She didn’t even respond to Charlie’s question. Her hair was the color of a blood orange, Charlie thought, and a riot of curls. She had a killer figure under that kaftan, and until she’d shown up at her mother’s apartment to take her away, Charlie hadn’t ever even heard of her before.
She’d never known her father. Trish said he’d died before she was born. Cancer, she’d said.
Now she wondered if it was something else. Maybe he’d had Belladonna, too.
Roxy turned while putting away one key and fishing out another. She didn’t smile, but she didn’t scowl either. “Over the years, I’ve found that the more remote a location, the less likely someone’s going to find me. But if you don’t like it, just say the word. I’ve got several other places. This is just the closest one.” She dropped the second key into her bag, then fished out a third.
“Hell, how many keys do you have for this place anyway?”
The ageless redhead leaned closer so Charlie could see the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and the stripes of blue and green in her irises. “I know you don’t want to be here, and you probably resent me for browbeating you into coming. But it’s for the best.”
She hadn’t browbeat her into coming. Mainly, Charlie had agreed because she wanted to know why her grandmother was alive, and how she could beat this death sentence she’d just been handed. Period. It was worth serving a little time in the wilderness if it would save her life. The only conclusion she had reached since learning that her condition was fatal was that she was going to do whatever it took to make it not be. But the older woman was still talking, and she thought the pc thing to do would be to pay attention.
“You have the antigen, Charlotte. We both have it, and that makes life a whole different hill of beans for us. This place is in the middle of nowhere because if it wasn’t, I’d be dead by now. Dead, Charlotte. As in rotting in the ground. And that’s where you’ll be before you can whistle Dixie, unless you do what I tell you.”
Charlie was stunned. She opened her mouth, closed it again, blinked at this woman who could’ve been an older, wilder-haired version of herself, and nodded.
“Good. Now let’s get our asses inside before we’re seen.” She pushed the wide wooden plank door open.
Charlie felt something–that unmistakable shiver-up-the-spine feeling you get when someone’s staring at you, and immediately thought of her fantasy lover. She turned around and squinted into the dark forest, but of course she didn’t see anything. Probably couldn’t have if there had been an army out there.
But she still felt it. Eyes on her. Watching her. Her stomach clenched up in that funny, turned on way it did whenever she dreamed of him. Or thought of him.
If only he was real.
She hefted her bag up onto her shoulder and followed her grandmother inside.
The living room was alive with plants and birds in cages. Not parrots or cockatiels but regular birds, like you’d see flitting around outside. Robins and sparrows and the like. And in a giant, man-sized cage in the corner, there was an owl who stood as tall as a toddler. It perched on a broken limb that had been wedged into its cage and stared at Charlie with huge golden eyes. As she stared back, the creature blinked sideways, making Charlie jump a little.
“Who?” asked the owl.
“Charlie, that’s who,” she told it, with a wry look at her grandmother.
Roxy did not appear to get the joke. “It’s all right, Olive, I’m back. And I’m sorry. I was as quick as I could be.” She looked back at Charlie, still standing just inside the door staring at the owl. The owl stared back.
“Well, go ahead and take a look around,” Roxy said. “My room’s at the end of the hall. Yours is the door on the right, just before it. The one on the left is the bathroom. The basement’s off limits until I say otherwise. Things down there require explaining. Got it?”
“Sure. Fine. Dare I ask if you even have internet out here?”
Her grandmother laughed softly, like some kind of rustic villain. “You’ll be surprised at what I have out here. Go on to your room and unpack or something. I’ve got to feed the birds and make us some dinner. And then...then we’ll talk.”
Charlie sighed and walked through the living room-slash-aviary into a hallway filled with photographs of boys and men...and then she realized they were all the same person. A baby, a toddler, a little boy, a teenager, a young man. She knew him. He had brown hair and brown eyes with thick lashes that didn’t change, no matter how old he was in each shot.
She blinked at the photos and felt a lump in her throat.
Then she heard soft footsteps in the hall and turned to see her grandmother looking at her from the end of it. “Your father,” she said softly. “He had the antigen, too. Died young from it. Too young.”
“My father.” Charlie stared at the most recent looking shot of the beautiful man. She’d seen his face only in the very few photos her mother had of him, and they were all pretty much the same. She knew his name was Charles. She’d been named after him. Her mother didn’t like to talk about him.
“Are you okay, Charlotte?”
She turned her head, looked at the grandmother she’d never known about, and felt a little bad for being ungrateful and uncooperative. “I don’t know what’s going on. I’m an adult. I need to know why all this is happening. It’s my life, after all.”
The older redhead nodded slowly. “You’re right. It is your life, and you do need to know. A lot of things. We’ll have a long talk about it as soon as I’ve fed the birds and thrown some dinner on for us. You like steak?”
Her stomach rumbled. “I guess.”
“So unpack and we’ll eat. And talk.”
Charlie nodded. “Okay.” She started down the hall, then turned and said, “What should I call you?”
“Gram, or Roxy. I’m not particular, as long as you never call me old.” Then she turned in a flutter of her kaftan and a jingle of jewelry and headed back into the living room.
Charlie continued down the hall pausing in front of the doorway of her assigned room. Holding her breath in case it was horrible, she turned the knob and went inside.
But it wasn’t bad at all. The cream colored carpet was so thick her sock-feet left prints in it. There was a great big window on one end, covered by cheerful curtains the same color, and the walls were a soft green. Charlie slung her backpack onto the comfy looking bed and opened the closet door. Racks of jeans, blouses, sweaters, and jackets filled it, and there were a half dozen cubby holes on one side, every one of them holding a pair of shoes.
Frowning, she closed the closet and turned to check out the giant dresser, opening one drawer after another. Underwear, bras, socks, pajamas, workout clothes, sweats. You name it, her brand new grandmother had apparently thought of it. And she’d apparently had some time to plan for Charlie’s visit. She picked up one of the bras and looked at the tag. Her size. Exactly.
Okay, so her Grandmother had made an effort. But this was still going to be h
ell, and she just didn’t think it was necessary. The vampires were probably all dead. The government said so. And if she really needed some kind of protection, then weren’t they the best people to do it?
She went to the window and pushed open the curtains. Moonlight spilled through, but it was broken up...by the bars on the outside.
“What the hell...?”
And then she damn near jumped out of her skin, because there was someone out there. He ducked out of sight when she first glimpsed him, but she was sure he was there, just inside the edge of the woods, beyond the little clearing that passed for the cabin’s lawn. Could it be him? Could he be real, after all? And if he was, how had he found her way out here? And how was it possible to have a dream love affair with someone she’d never met?
She opened the window but couldn’t lean out. At least the fresh air could waft in. And it smelled heavenly. Breathing it in, she searched for him, her heart yearning to see him out there. And not just because that would mean she wasn’t going crazy. But because she wanted to see him. In person, not just in her dreams.
She saw no one.
And yet she felt someone–him, she thought–out there. And that sense of longing for him stirred to life again inside her, stronger than ever before. She strained her eyes to see him again. But nothing. Nothing. And still, she sat there, staring into the darkness, and kind of lost track of the time ticking by.
“Charlotte?”
She didn’t turn right away, didn’t answer, still enthralled, sort of. Then her grandmother was tapping on her bedroom door and calling her name again. Sighing, she closed the window and went to open it. “Why are there bars on my window?”
Her grandmother sighed. “There are bars on mine, too, and the bathroom. The ones on the front of the house haven’t been installed yet. They’re for protection, Charlotte. I need to keep us safe. Now come on and eat.”
Apuseni Mountains, Transylvania
A few survivors of the Vampire Armageddon had taken up residence in a haven that had first been a castle and later a hotel. Abandoned and left to fall to ruin, it stood amid the black, craggy mountains overlooking a Transylvanian village so small and remote that Rhiannon didn’t know its name. She wasn’t sure it had one. The mountains did. They were the Apuseni to some. The Occidentali to others. In English, the Mountains of the Sunset. A fitting refuge for a group of night-dwellers. Fortunes had been spent hiring mortal workers to restore the place to its earlier splendor. The rumor they’d leaked to the locals was that it was owned by a wealthy family from the Middle East and perpetually filled with guests seeking seclusion. People left them alone. No one suspected the castle housed a horde of the Undead.
But now, some of the residents of what the fledglings jokingly called “The Real Hotel Transylvania” were becoming restless.
Rhiannon stroked Pandora’s soft fur, standing at the railing of the hotel’s second floor and looking down over it into the Great Room where a crowd had gathered. The chandelier in the center, higher, even than the railing where she stood, was both priceless and beautiful. A half ton of Austrian crystal teardrops glittered and threw rainbows everywhere.
Roland stood beside her, and while she tried to watch the goings on below, she had trouble keeping her gaze from him. She never tired of the sheer male beauty that was her beloved. His hair was raven’s wing dark and pulled back into what he still called a queue. He wore a suit, a formal one, and whenever he went about by night, one of his dramatic black cloaks embraced him and wafted out behind him like a dark comet’s tail. He bore the strong jaw and aristocratic nose of his forebears, nobility, all of them. Indeed, Roland looked noble. He looked like a prince with striking blue-black eyes that were almost electric and lashes so dark one could easily believe he wore liner and mascara. He wore neither.
And he was the only man Rhiannon had ever known who was worthy of her.
Reluctantly, she shifted her gaze again to the group in the former lobby below. They all stood around Devlin, a mere century old pup who thought himself a pit bull. “It’s enough, I tell you,” Devlin said to the crowd of relative fledglings gathered around him. “Enough of hiding out here in these barren mountains. Enough of letting the mortal bastards tell the world they’ve wiped us out entirely, then resurrect us in the minds of all just long enough to blame us for their crimes against their own kind!”
Around him, the other vampires murmured, nodding hard.
Devlin was a big man. His mortal ancestry had been Samoan, African American, and Polynesian, and the combination was, Rhiannon had to admit, sexy as hell. Of his immortal ancestry, she knew nothing. He wore his hair short, cropped close to his head, and his skin was coppery and taut. He could’ve been a body builder or a movie star. And he had the charisma to go with his looks. Not that he held a candle to her Roland.
“I say we fight back,” he went on. “I say we come out of hiding and retake our rightful place in the world of night. Let the mortals keep the day. The night is ours!”
The muttering around him grew louder.
“What makes you think it will be any different this time?” Roland asked the question in his usual strong, but utterly calm tone, drawing every eye upward to where he and Rhiannon stood. “As soon as the mortal world realizes we haven’t all been extinguished after all, they’ll put every resource they have into finishing the job.”
“Maybe not.” The voice was from one of the females. A mere fledgling, created in the days just prior to the war of 2011, in which most of her kind had been killed. She looked up at Rhiannon, her face lily white against her short, dark hair. “Even before I found you all, there were a lot of people questioning the morality of that war.”
“Only,” Rhiannon said, “because the idiots murdered so many of their own.” During the war, anyone with nocturnal tendencies was at risk of being burned alive while they slept. Many, many humans had been killed in that way.
“No, it’s more than that–” The girl, Rhiannon thought her name was Larissa, clapped a hand to her mouth and widened her eyes, shifting them between Rhiannon and the black panther at her side.
Rhiannon smiled inwardly, glad she hadn’t lost her touch. The youngsters were impulsive and naive. It was good they feared her a little. It kept them in line. And keeping them in line kept them alive. “Go on, fledgling. Complete your thought.”
The girl swallowed hard, nodded. “You were already here,” she said. “You couldn’t have known. But the media were lamenting that our entire race had been wiped out before mankind had a chance to know us, to talk to us, to study us.”
“Believe me, child, they’ve studied us quite thoroughly.” Rhiannon had been a DPI captive. She knew what they were capable of inflicting in the name of their science.
“I’m just saying that not all humans are out to annihilate us. We might have more allies among them than we think.”
Rhiannon looked at Roland. What do you think about that? Could the fledgling be right? She spoke mentally but kept her thoughts shielded from the others in the room.
He said, aloud, “That might be the case. But if it’s true, those humans are certainly in the minority. And the way for us to find them isn’t to reveal ourselves so their fellow humans can kill what’s left of us.”
“You’re right,” Devlin called. “The way to find out is to fight back. We strike those who were responsible for the war in the first place. Those who are now murdering The Chosen and blaming it on us.” He shook the newspaper that he held in his fist as he said it. The story of the Portland Seven had only just reached them there in the wilds of Transylvania.
“We must send a powerful message that we will not run and hide!” Devlin said. “If there are supporters among the mortals, we offer our protection. If there are detractors, we feed on them until there are no more.”
A shout went up from the crowd. Rhiannon’s blood stirred, and she had to clench her jaw to keep from joining in the rapidly growing bloodlust. Because for all her beloved’s confident c
aution, she felt, down deep, that Devlin was right.
Roland held up his hands until they quieted. “The elders will discuss your suggestions, Devlin,” Roland said. “We’re already considering every possible response to what’s happened, and we’re in the process of gathering intelligence now. We will let you know what is decided by this time tomorrow evening.”
“With all due respect, Roland, I don’t remember asking the elders to decide anything for me,” Devlin said. A few gasped. A few others nodded in agreement.
There was mutiny afoot, and that was dangerous to all of them.
“We hide here in this desolate place,” Devlin went on, “living on animal blood and growing weaker month after month, while you and your fellow elders rest in your penthouse suites and decide what’s best for us. We’re vampires, damn it. We have a right to decide for ourselves–”
“Enough!” Rhiannon moved her hand ever so slightly, and Pandora leapt the railing and hit the rebel like a wrecking ball, knocking him flat and holding him by the throat, growling softly.
To her shock and surprise, though, Devlin flung the cat off him, sprang to his feet, and stared into Pandora’s eyes until, after a long tense standoff, Pandora sat down. Rhiannon rolled her eyes. Even my cat thinks he’s right, she told Roland, carefully keeping her thoughts shielded from the others. And yet she could not tolerate rebellion.
Aloud, she said, “If you’d like to leave here, then leave. If you’d like to stay, then learn to respect your Elders.”
She snapped her fingers and Pandora got up, ran to the nearest of the two curving staircases and up them to retake her place at Rhiannon’s side.
Everyone was looking at Rhiannon as Devlin stared her down. “We’re still at war,” he said. “We can’t just let them murder The Chosen. We’re supposed to protect them.”
“And protect them we will,” Rhiannon said. “Acting as one. United. With a plan of action in place. Not by fighting among ourselves and going off half-cocked, without a clue as to the outcome.”
Roland placed a calming hand on her shoulder. “The elders will discuss your suggestions, Devlin,” Roland repeated. “We feel hasty action would be disastrous. We’re only delaying in order to gather as much information as we can to avoid doing something that could prove to be the end of us. That outcome would leave no one to protect The Chosen.” Then he turned, taking Rhiannon’s hand. She walked with him along the semi-circle hall that overlooked the great room. It had a door on either end that led to the guest rooms. Theirs was a corner suite.
“I should have let her kill him,” Rhiannon said.
“Except that you agree with him.”
“Not the point, my love,” she replied. “He’s stirring up revolt. He has no respect, no manners and a fiery temper. You’re right about him. He’s going to be trouble.”
“It’s a rare occasion when you tell me I am right about anything,” he said softly.
“Enjoy it, then,” she suggested with a kiss on his chin, which turned into a playful nip before she released him.
“The sooner we decide what to do about the humans’ latest offenses, the better.” Roland paced, deep in thought.
“I don’t think Devlin will wait for us to decide,” she said softly. “He fancies himself a leader, and he’s stirring up a hornet’s nest. I made matters worse, I suppose.”
He nodded. “Probably. But it’s good he knows he’s not the only one with a fiery temper. He’ll wait the night, I think. He’ll wait to see what we decide. And then if he doesn’t like it, he’ll make his move.”
Roland had an irritating habit of often being right about things, though he never insisted Rhiannon acknowledge that. Sighing, she said, “Have we heard back from any of our mortal contacts? Max and Lou Malone? Or Roxanne, by chance?”
“Not yet,” Roland said. But she knew he felt the emotions of the others within the castle walls, just the same as she did. And he added, softly, “I hope they get in touch soon.”
“I hope so too. And I hope Devlin doesn’t push me too far,” Rhiannon said softly. “There are too few of us left for me to relish having to kill one of our own.”
Chapter Three