The Vampire s Secret Read online

  Anyway, Werm had moved a coffin in there and was safe and secure in the bowels of the family homestead. He’d told them he was rooming with a friend in a section of town so bad that he knew his folks would never be caught dead there, so he didn’t have to worry about them dropping in and discovering the lie. All the while, Werm could have been caught undead right under their very noses. Or more precisely, under their kitchen.

  If they ever did decide to return to the wine cellar, they’d have two unpleasant surprises: their son white as a sheet in an ebony coffin and their most priceless bottles of vino gone, since Werm was in the process of selling them on eBay for pocket money. Werm remarked that he didn’t know which his parents would find more upsetting.

  After dropping him off to do whatever it was that he did alone in the cellar, I headed for William’s house to see how the vampirizing process was going with Eleanor. Not that I could help worth a damn. My one run at making a female vamp was a disaster. If William lost Eleanor, he’d be devastated. Way past needing any help from me.

  Winding my way through Orleans Square, I found myself in pitch-black darkness—like I’d been struck blind. That doesn’t work too well when you’re driving. I slammed on my brakes in the middle of the street. What the hell? A chill shrouded me and a prickle of fear touched my spine at the nape of my neck. Now, when a vampire feels fear, it’s a big deal. I mean, we’re the ones with the big, sharp teeth. We’re the ones who deal out the goosebumps. So whenever something spooks me, it gets my attention. I sat still, trying to think what to do, and just as suddenly as it had come, the darkness disappeared, followed by a jolt of evil I could almost taste. And for some stupid reason, I thought of Shari, my failure at making a female vamp. I put the car back in gear and sped to William’s mansion.

  I stepped into the kitchen and greeted Melaphia, William’s housekeeper and for all intents and purposes adoptive daughter. She’s five generations removed from the voodoo priestess Lalee. Melaphia usually doesn’t come on duty until she’s seen her daughter, Renee, off to school, but as William had told me at Eleanor’s, Mel had come over early today—or stayed late, depending on your point of view—in case William needed her. What was left unsaid, I knew, was that Melaphia wanted to be there for William, because if Eleanor died, he would need Melaphia’s strong, calm, and capable shoulder to lean on. Not to mention her voodoo chants and potions to help Eleanor’s lost soul the way she’d helped Shari’s.

  “How are things going downstairs?” I asked apprehensively. Mel was sitting at the kitchen table, surfing the Web on a notebook computer.

  “So far, so good,” she said. “All we can do is wait.”

  I heaved a sigh and Mel looked up from the screen. “What’s wrong with you? You look whiter than usual.”

  “I had a weird feeling coming over here. Are you sure everything’s all right?”

  She paused only an instant before closing the computer with a snap. “Let’s go downstairs and check.”

  The passage to William’s underground lair was lined with little recessed altars flickering with colored candles. Each color and each candle had its own meaning in Melaphia’s ancient religion, a religion that I didn’t understand but whose power I respected. A tuft of blond hair—Shari’s hair—was tucked into one of the recesses, reminding me that there were older and meaner things than me out in the wide world. And that some mistakes can last forever. That really gave me the creeps, but not as much as what I saw next.

  When Mel and I reached the chamber, William was lying on the floor, in front of Eleanor’s coffin, sightless eyes staring upward. Mel went to her knees on one side of William and I went to the other. She slapped his cheek sharply.

  “William! Come back!” she commanded. “Something has gone wrong.”

  William

  As she finished her chant, Shari’s gaze took on a feral gleam and the light around her flickered. “Don’t look!” she said under her breath.

  I turned away, taking Eleanor along with me. The murmuring heightened to a dull roar of protest, as if the beasts around us knew what was about to occur. Suddenly, a crack like the breaking of glass echoed through the place and then a brilliant flash of light—brighter than my own glowing self—turned the darkness to blinding white. The light ricocheted from wall to wall to cause small landslides that rushed downward on anyone standing below. Those unfortunate enough to be standing close to Shari were bowled backward into scorched, whimpering groups on the cold hard ground. The rest, rubbing their eyes, rushed away to the safety of the returning dark.

  When I looked back, Shari had fallen to her knees. Whatever power she had used was depleted for the moment.

  “That’ll keep them away for a while,” she said in answer to my unspoken question. “But they always come back…Now—” she yawned “—I have to rest.” She sank to the ground and closed her eyes. Eleanor sat down next to her.

  “I remember her,” Eleanor said. “She was one of your swans. You tried to make her a vampire?” she asked.

  “Not me. Jack. Reedrek killed her and we thought to save her. But there was a problem…” I couldn’t go into the rest of it just then. Leave it to my brilliant Eleanor to divine my thoughts.

  “So this is where I’ll stay if I don’t survive the process?”

  It was impossible to lie. “Yes. Your body will die. Your soul will be immortal but damned.”

  Eleanor stared down at Shari, and a surprising look of tenderness came on her face. “Well, at least I won’t be alone.” She yawned as though watching Shari’s slumber had drugged her. She who must be obeyed stretched out next to my forever lost swan and closed her eyes.

  With nothing else to do but guard them, I sat down, leaning my back against the closest lump of rock. I don’t know how long I sat, watching the dark. Time was out of reckoning in this place so far removed from the sunrise and sunset in the real world. The human world. Hours could be passing, or years. I had no way to judge, no signal to know if, in the world we’d left behind, Eleanor’s body had finished its transition or given up.

  “Captain! Wake up!” Melaphia’s voice invaded my head, tugged my attention back from the dark. The world I’d left behind was suddenly calling me back. In the same instant Shari stirred, sleepily sitting up to stare at me.

  “Melaphia said to wake you. She says you must come back.”

  “I can’t go back. I promised Eleanor.” But even as I spoke, Eleanor’s essence seemed to thin. In the next blink of my eye, she disappeared—on her way back to her body. In the distance a slow rattling drumbeat sounded, like an alarm proclaiming her escape.

  “She’s made it,” I said, relieved.

  Shari simply stared at me.

  “Captain, come back!” Melaphia said, louder this time.

  I pushed to my feet. I was thinking of home and sweet Eleanor, but I could not find the words to say good-bye to Shari.

  A look of profound sadness crossed her features as she stood and faced me. “Thank you for letting me rest.” She searched the darkness with her uncanny amber eyes. “I hardly ever get the chance to sleep.”

  The light around Shari began to dim, a warning that the shells were bringing me back to them. I fought the pull.

  “No. I won’t leave her here to suffer for eternity,” I said to the call. “Lalee, help me.”

  As I began to float above Shari, the memory of my first glimpse of Lalee filled my sight.

  The burial ground on one of the outer islands had no name back then. It was just a marshy field on the far side of the river, far enough away from the city to calm the fear of contagion. Flickering torches lit the fifty or so bodies that had been placed near the river in three long lines. The grave diggers, backs bent and voices low, worked day and night to shovel sand, clay, and shell and get the yellow fever victims in the ground. Clouds of burning sulfur hung in the air, and Lalee stood at the center, near the finished graves, holding her lantern and a branch from a weeping willow. A low keening wail disturbed the choking silence. I re
membered then that Lalee had interceded in the name of Maman Brigitte, Guardian of Graves, to sing the restless spirits from the ground and into the air, sending them on home. Although mortal, Lalee’s spirit was larger and more powerful than mine. Now I silently pleaded for her help.

  As she had two hundred years before, Lalee sensed my presence and raised her gaze to mine. I saw love and command in her eyes. You can save her. Call on Kalfu, the loa of the crossroads. Her chant rose in volume and suddenly she tossed the willow branch across the years to me. There was nothing to do but catch it. In my hand, in this dark place, the branch itself sparked and flared with blue static fire and instantly I knew what to do. I raised my voice and joined Lalee’s century-old chant as Shari sank to her knees before me.

  Jack

  “Help me get him up,” Melaphia ordered. “I tell you there’s something wrong!”

  I picked William up and moved him to the overstuffed chair, then raised his feet to rest on the ottoman. He was deadweight in my arms. Like a real corpse. He looked even deader than he did on those few occasions when I’d seen him in daytime sleep. There was something permanent-looking about this…deadness. I fought to control the panic rising in my chest. I had to be strong for Melaphia, who stood beside me, clasping her hands together as if in prayer. Her dark eyes were large and luminous with terror.

  An awareness of Shari came over me suddenly, even stronger than the feeling I’d had earlier when I’d been struck blind in my car. “Shari? Are you there?”

  Melaphia looked around. She felt the presence, too. My gaze followed hers to the far corner of the room. What started out looking like no more than a wisp of smoke began to take shape as Shari materialized.

  I glanced at Mel. Her gaze was riveted to the spot where Shari…shimmered, for lack of a better word. So Melaphia saw her, too.

  Shari looked different, in a good way. Her skin wasn’t what you call rosy, but it glowed. Not with life, but with some force not of this world. What could that mean?

  “Where’s William?” Melaphia blurted. “Do you know where he is?”

  “He’s not here?” she asked. She looked around the room and when she turned her head, her hair moved in an unnatural way, like it was made of something alive. “He saved me,” she said. “He and the Lady.”

  Melaphia gasped. Her hand went to her throat. “He’s with Maman Lalee,” she whispered. She turned and kneeled at William’s side. He still looked more dead than I’d ever seen him. She took one of his hands in both of hers and began to chant in some ancient tongue. I returned my attention to Shari. If there was anything I could do for William, Melaphia would tell me, but I knew that there wasn’t. My throat felt like somebody had stuffed a welding torch into my mouth, but again I fought off the panic.

  Shari’s eyes glowed like crystal nuggets held up to the sun, and her gaze lit on me. “Jack,” she drawled, the corners of her sweet little mouth turning up in a smile that melted my heart. “It’s so good to see you.”

  It’s good to see the man that sent you to hell? I wanted to ask. Guilt flooded me again when I remembered how I held her in this room, naked and vulnerable, held her while her life slipped away and her soul descended into hell, or something close to it. All because I was deformed, different, poisoned. And ignorant.

  “It’s good to see you, too,” I said awkwardly, like a guy greeting an old, jilted girlfriend at a class reunion. “You look great.” How lame could I be? I bit my lip before I could ask her how she’d been.

  “I’m free,” Shari said simply. I glanced back at Melaphia. She’d squeezed her eyes shut to concentrate on her chant but opened them briefly to stare toward Shari. Her chanting did not stop.

  “Free? You mean you’re not just…visiting this time, like before? You don’t have to go back to that bad place?” I looked at her glowing, beaming face and she nodded.

  “Free,” she repeated. “I get to go to a better place now, a place where they’ll be kind to me and where I can rest.”

  That was it. That explained the difference in how she looked, how she glowed. She laughed and the sound was like music. “That’s right, Jack. You don’t have to worry anymore. I’m fine now. And I forgive you.”

  I felt my eyes go all swimmy. Had I heard her right?

  “You forgive me?” I asked dumbly.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you. You don’t know what it means for me to hear you say that.” Vampires have nightmares like everybody else. Shari and what she was going through were regular features during my dreams. NOW PLAYING, the marquee of my nightmare screamed, NO ONE TO WATCH OVER ME, STARRING SHARI, THE GIRL YOU SENT TO HELL. I shook my head to clear the thought.

  “Where you’re going—will you be able to visit from there, too?” The question just came out, I guess. Would a being made of goodness and light ever stoop to visit a vampire? As it was, Shari was just dropping by on her way out of town, you might say. Was there more to it than that? She seemed to ponder the question seriously.

  “I don’t know. I’ll try, though. I promise.”

  I don’t know why that should please me so, but it did. I felt myself wishing that she’d touch me. Not in a sexual way or anything. The cold, dead thing inside me was drawn to her warmth, her light, her love. That, I decided, was what she glowed with. I took a step toward her, but she began to fade.

  “I have to go now, Jack.”

  “Wait! Tell me how they saved you.” It was a stalling tactic and I expect she knew it.

  “It was a chant, and some kind of power from the Lady. I felt myself rise up. I felt myself fill with the spirit of goodness. And then I was here.”

  Lalee had found a way to save Shari. Like she’d found a way to save me and William from Reedrek. I glanced at William, still lifeless. Surely she would not let him die. He who she loved so well.

  I wondered at the strength of Lalee’s power, and why she loved William so much. She would cross time itself to help him in this world and the next. Could she bring a vampire back to life someday? Real life. Had William ever asked her to try? Would he admit it if he had? Could anything be done for us at the moment of our final permanent death? Could she marshal the forces of nature and the otherworldly realms she dwelt in to help a demon like me if the need arose? I was a child of her blood now, just like William. Would she pull out all the spiritual stops, so to speak, to pull me back from the brink of hell? Was that even possible?

  As immortals go, we vampires are obsessed with death. William once told me that the older the vampire, the more time he spent contemplating his eventual demise. It seemed ridiculous that creatures hundreds of years old should be so concerned about how and when they would return to dust. I guess a long existence must put you on edge, like an athlete on a long and unprecedented winning streak. When, where, why, and how would it all end?

  And then there was what might happen after that. Go to hell. Go straight to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. That’s what I had always been taught. We’re vampires, after all. Our soul, that all-important ticket to the afterworld, was long lost. It was lost the moment we said yes to those age-old questions posed by a sire.

  I remembered back to when William had asked me on the battlefield while my life’s blood flowed out of me, mixing with the red clay soil.

  Do you want to live? Will you serve me?

  “Yes,” I’d said. And the creature loomed over me, with the blood of the dying dripping from his fangs, and drained what was left of my life.

  I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. If I’d known, would I have said yes? Or would I have let the green-eyed stranger finish me off for good? I can’t say how many times I’ve asked myself that question. But in the end, what did it matter?

  Still, would the fact that I hadn’t known that I was choosing the path of the demon score me any points with the big guy in the sky when the time of reckoning came? Who knew? It’s not like there was a whole passel of people I could go and ask.

  Looking at Shari a
nd thinking about Lalee and her well-spring of power—well, I began to wonder about the possibilities. Maybe being a good little vampire would score me some points with the folks who dealt out the after-death dorm assignments. I tried to do good, after all. I only killed those who really, really deserved it. I tried to help Shari—never mind that I failed miserably. In fact, I tried to help people all I could. I picked them up from deserted highways when their cars broke down and delivered them to safety. That had to count for something, didn’t it? But still, I had no soul.

  As I pondered these things, I noticed that Shari was getting more transparent. I reached out to touch her and my hand went right through hers. “Thank you for forgiving me,” I said again. “I needed that.”

  “You’re welcome. Be good, Jack.”

  What was left of her moved closer to me and she reached out her arms. I couldn’t feel her body, but when she hugged me I was bathed in the warmth that I had been longing for. For just an instant I felt human again. Tears began to wet my dead-cold cheeks.

  And just like that, she was gone. I stood for a moment, still holding out my empty arms, and tried to memorize that warmth and light. Then I heard Melaphia’s voice, breaking with emotion.

  “Jack! He’s back!”

  William’s eyes swam into focus and he took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong, my girl.” He reached up to squeeze Melaphia’s hand, completely ignoring me.

  Relieved, I figured I should check on Eleanor. I got to my feet, went to her coffin, and opened it. I’d seen Eleanor naked when I helped put her into the coffin; I’d had a good long chance to check out her snake tattoo. But she was different now. She was practically glowing with pale luster and wild, fierce beauty. The colors of the snake running from her breast to belly had changed. The damn thing looked almost alive. I had a strong feeling that she was going to make it. Whatever crisis I had tapped into on the square was over.

  The word voluptuous didn’t begin to describe her. From her lovely face to her full breasts peaked with stiff, dusky nipples, down to her sex and womanly hips and thighs, this creature clearly fulfilled any man’s fantasy. She was surely in the right business—pleasure. I couldn’t help but stare. And stare.