History of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Castle Series Book 4) (12 page)

“Why should we?” one of the men asked, his eye appearing crazed with bloodlust.

“He’s a human,” I pointed out. “Doesn’t he at least deserve a trial?”

“He’s not a human,” the man told me. “He’s a creature of the night. He gave up his right to a trial when he sold his soul to the devil.”

Another man began to view me with suspicion. “Why are you so eager to defend him?” he asked, poking me on the chest with a brawny finger. “What’s this creature to you?”

“Nothing,” I insisted. “I’m just studying the law.”

“The law is only for humans,” a woman’s voice called from the back of the throng. “I wouldn’t give that creature the same consideration I’d give a dog.” Most people in the crowd seemed to heartily agree with her.

I felt a hand close tightly around my ankle. Looking down, I made eye contact with my grandfather. “Save me,” he said in words so soft that no mortal ears could have heard them. “I am your maker. You owe me your immortal soul. You must save me.”

“How?” I asked, mostly with my eyes.

“I am your maker,” he whispered again. “You must save me, even if it means sacrificing yourself.”

I knew at that moment that I truly hated my grandfather. I hated him to the very core of my being. But he was also my maker. I had to obey him. I felt obliged to try to preserve his life.

Turning back to the crowd, I looked at all their mortal faces. I was just a fledgling vampire, but I knew that I had the ability to compel mortals to do my bidding. I didn’t have much experience using my influence over anyone and it seemed an insurmountable challenge to sway a rabid mob. But I felt Grandfather’s grip around my ankle. I could hear him whispering, “Save me. You must save me.” I had no choice. I had to either compel the crowd to leave him alone or fight them.

“Please, listen to me,” I said, raising my hands in the air again to gather their attention.

“No,” a woman shouted from the crowd. “Shove the boy out of the way and dispatch the beast.”

And then the mob closed in, poking at me with their makeshift stakes to get me out of the way. Each scratch of the wood was like someone had set my skin on fire. I wanted to shriek in pain, but I knew if anyone took notice of the agony a few slivers were causing me, then I would be in the same position as my grandfather.

“Come here, boy,” I heard a woman’s gruff voice command me. I was about to protest, but the lady got a firm hold of me and began dragging me away from Grandfather. “There’s no need for you to be caught up in this nonsense.” The woman was elderly and her voice was ragged, but she had a grip on me as strong as a vice. In a softer voice, she added, “We’re almost clear of him.”

I did a double take and realized that the elderly woman was my mother in disguise. “What are you doing?” I couldn’t help but exclaim.

“Saving what’s left of my family,” she said in a low voice.

“But Grandfather…” I stammered.

“You’re death isn’t going to save him,” she said.

I don’t know where Grandfather got the strength, but he’d climbed to his feet and started fighting the crowd. It seemed like some of the frenzy had left the mob. Instead of being swept up with outrage and moving with one mind and one will, they were all standing back, waiting for someone else to take the lead.

If he’d played things right, maybe Grandfather could have gained control of the mob. Or at least temporarily escaped the crowd and hidden somewhere on the ship while regaining his strength. Then he could have waited until we were closer to New York and escaped by air, flying the rest of the way. But Grandfather was angry and used to being obeyed by mortals. He grabbed one of the men that was taunting him, lifted him into the air, and then flung him over the side of the ship.

“Who wants to die next?” Grandfather shouted, glaring at the crowd.

The people moved in a giant mass, slashing and stabbing at Grandfather with their stakes. They had him pinned against the rail. “We have to do something,” I said, pulling against my mother’s tight embrace.

“No,” Mother said, shoving me back. “He’ll be gone in another moment. I think we’ve already done enough. We’re better off saving that poor soul who went over the side.” Then she released me and ran for a life preserver.

I knew she was right, but I still felt compelled by my maker. Grandfather had commanded me to save him. I had to do something to save the evil fiend. I had to try. Almost against my will, I found myself taking a few steps toward the crowd.

“Jessie!” Mother shouted, jolting my out of my trance. “Help me with the man overboard.”

“Yes,” I said to her. “Yes, you’re right.” I hurried to the railing, took the life preserver from her and flung it to the man bobbing up and down in the waves. I could see him just as easily as if it had been high noon. The preserver had a rope attached to it. Only a few moments later and we were hauling the man back onto the deck of the ship.

Grandfather was losing his battle. The best thing he could have done was take flight, but he was in such a weakened condition from all the stake wounds, that was no longer a possibility. Still, he wouldn’t give up the battle. He lunged for another man, but received a stake to the hand for his efforts. Jerking back in pain, he found himself pinned against the railing. Another moment of struggle and he was pushed over the side.

My impulse was to catch him as he fell. I didn’t have much experience flying, but I knew the basics.

Mother held me back, gripping my shirt with both her hands. “Let him go, Jessie,” she told me.

“But…” I struggled against her grasp.

“Jessie,” she said. “Look at me.” After I wrench my gaze away from where Grandfather had plunged in the water, she said, “I didn’t go through all this trouble to arrange your grandfather’s discovery, just to have you put yourself at risk to save him.”

I stared at her, too stunned to think for several seconds. “You?” I couldn’t help but ask. And then I added, “Why?”

Mother released me and then did her best to straighten out the wrinkles in my shirt. “That son-of-a-bitch already killed my sons,” she said. “I wasn’t going to let him get my daughter.”

I let this new information sink into my brain. My mother had set the whole thing up. She’d found the perfect cabin boy and probably even gotten him drunk in the hopes that his blood would intoxicate her father, slowing his reflexes.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to the rest of the family,” Mother said, scanning the people on the deck for any family members who might have come to see what all the noise was about.

“Of course,” I assured her. “But…” My thoughts were all a jumble. Grandfather was Mother’s maker, too. How had she acted against him? It seemed impossible. “How did you do it?” I was finally able to ask. “How could you betray your maker? Even if he was a man like Grandfather?”

“It wasn’t easy,” she told me, running her hands over her clothes to smooth nonexistent wrinkles in her dress. “But there’s one thing most makers don’t seem to understand.”

“What?” I couldn’t help but ask.

She turned to head back to her cabin, but then paused to look at me over her shoulder. “A mother’s love is stronger than any obligation she might feel toward her maker.”

Chapter 17

Colette

“You’re losing weight,” Mama observed, running an appraising eye over my figure.

“Do you think?” I brushed my hands over my hips. I’d never been heavy, but I was rather curvy, which I knew Papa disliked. I’d overheard him talking with Mama once and he’d said flat out that I was too young to have such a womanly figure.

“It must be all that bicycling you’ve been doing. It’s great exercise,” Mama said, turning back to the dishes. “I swear you must have ridden across half the state in the last month.”

“Probably,” I agreed with her, picking up a clean plate and starting to dry it with a towel. What my mother didn’t know was that, even though I had been riding my bicycle a lot lately, it was always to the same place. It felt almost as if I had a magnet inside my belly that was always pulling me toward the castle.

“It looks good on you,” Mama said as she drained the sink and started to wipe down the counter. “I think it’s healthy. You should keep it up.”

She wouldn’t have thought it was healthy if she’d known about my visit to the castle that afternoon. I’d ridden my bike over there after school. I wanted to speak with the Italian workers before they finished the floors and were sent back to Italy. After the rose garden was finished, the English workers disappeared like they had evaporated into the air. There was only one caretaker left to make sure the roses stayed beautiful. He looked about a million years old and lived in a tiny house that was tucked out of sight of the castle.

The problem was that the Italians were always working inside the castle and I wasn’t bold enough to stroll inside the building just to ask impertinent questions. Still, that afternoon, luck was on my side. As the wheels of my bicycle rolled to a halt just outside the castle, I noticed a young man with an immense crop of shiny black hair leaning against a tree. He was smoking a cigarette and had his eyes closed as he tilted his face toward the sun. The heavy layer of sawdust covering him from head to toe led me to believe that he might be one of the Italian workers.

I was trying to think of a possible reason to strike up a conversation with him, when he said, “I am glad for this day. I have missed the sunshine.”

He’d kept his eyes closed when speaking so I wasn’t quite sure he was addressing me, but there was nobody else around. “It another few months it will be quite warm,” I answered him, still staying astride my bicycle.

“Yes, but by then I will be gone.” He opened his eyes to look at me and I was surprised to realize that they were green when I had been expecting brown.

“You are from Italy?” I asked. I was feeling rather shy to be standing there by myself, speaking to a young man I didn’t know, but I forced myself to be bold.

“Si,” he said, closing his eyes again like a cat enjoying a nap in a sunbeam. He tilted his head back to rest it against the tree.

“You are one of the men laying the floors in the castle?”

“Si,” he said again.

Climbing off my bike, I put down the kickstand. Taking a deep breath, I blurted, “Have you ever met the family who will live here?”

My question caused the young man to lift his head and look directly at me. After staring at me for several seconds, he said, “No,” rather curtly. “I have never met the people who will live here. But I hear of them and it is never good things.”

“What have you heard about them?” I asked, fully realizing that I sounded like the town gossip.

The young man shifted his weight from one foot to the other. My question had made him uncomfortable. “It is stories that are not nice to hear,” he said. “They are not for the young girl like you.”

I felt the sting of disappointment. What was the age where people stopped saying things like, “You’re too young to hear things like that,” or, “I’ll tell you when you’re older,”? This young man couldn’t have been much older than me and he knew the stories.

I started getting back on my bicycle. There didn’t seem much point in haranguing him if he was reluctant to talk. But my leaving somehow loosened his tongue. “I will tell you this thing,” he said. “I would not like for such a family to move to my town.”

“Why not?” I ask, not bothering to climb off my bike.

His face darkened and I couldn’t tell if he was getting angry or just struggling for the right words. “They are not like the people,” he said. “They make the bite.”

“Oh.” I was beginning to understand him. “You mean their dogs?”

“No.” He shook his head adamantly. “They are not the mannaro.”

“Pardon?” I said, bending my ear toward him. His English was good, but I didn’t quite catch the last word. “They’re not the what?”

“Mannaro,” he said again, more slowly. “I do not know this word in English, but that is not the family.” He looked at the space between us for a couple of seconds, his lips moving slightly as he tried to work something out in his head. “They are not the lupo.” Then his eyes widened a little. “They are not the wolf, but they bite. They bite very badly. You must stay away.”

The Vanderlinds apparently had some kind of weird pets that were especially vicious, was all I could conclude. Some type of dog or wolf or something. Maybe these animals had a habit of escaping their kennels and attacking the locals. That was the only thing I could guess. But would the family really ship such beasts across an ocean? Especially after they’d already made such trouble?