History of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Castle Series Book 4) (35 page)

It was a question I had asked myself many times. “I will spend eternity cherishing her memory.”

There was a long pause, and then I heard the sound of the combination lock being turned. Slowly, the door cracked open.

“I loved your grandfather like that,” Mrs. Denkler said, avoiding my eye as I stepped out of the vault. “I would have done anything for him. But he didn’t feel the same way about me. So I became this,” she said, raising her hands and then letting them fall to her side. “I became his servant.”

“But why?” I asked.

“At least it allowed me to be near him and see him every day. It allowed me to help raise his family, even if none of you are my own.”

“But he offered to turn you,” I said. “I heard him do it. More than once.”

The housekeeper shook her head. “He only did that once I was old and the bloom of my youth was gone. He only started making the offer when he knew I wouldn’t accept it.”

I stared at her, horrified. For Grandfather to torture her in that way was unforgivable. And yet she was still devoted to him. “I’m sorry,” I told her. It was the only thing I could think of to say.

Reaching forward, she pressed a hand to my forearms. “I’m sorry for what I did,” she went on. “I was so worried about protecting the Vanderlind name that I forgot to protect you.”

“It’s alright,” I said, patting her hand. “I understand. But now I have to go.”

“Go,” she told me. “You must hurry. I only hope it’s not too late.”

I was halfway down the hall before the real meaning of her words filter through to my brain. “Too late?” I paused to ask.

Mrs. Denkler gave me a strangled look. “I mean, I hope she isn’t mad at you for being late.”

I gave her a smile. “I just hope I can find a way to earn her forgiveness.”

Chapter 48

Colette

My lungs were burning and I had to stop for a moment to catch my breath. My hat was gone, my suitcase was gone, and I was terrified because I knew I was not alone. There was something out there, stalking me through the trees. I thought I’d heard it say my name, but that was impossible because whatever was chasing me wasn’t human.

The sound of some leaves rustling behind me gave me a start and I started running again. I knew I was headed deeper into the woods and away from the road. I knew the creature was flushing me away from my only chance to flag down a passing car or signal someone in a nearby house. Branches tore at my dress and ripped out my hair. One of my shoes got stuck in the mud and was pulled from my foot. A few steps after that and my other foot got tangled in a tree root and I fell to the ground with a sob.

I freed my leg, but did not immediately get to my feet again. I needed to calm down. I needed to catch my breath. There was a large log next to where I’d fallen and it afforded me some protection from the eyes of the predator that was pursuing me. I just needed to rest for a moment and come up with a plan. I wished I knew what was pursuing me so that I could better figure out how to defend myself. If it was a wolf or a bear, then I needed to climb a tree. If it was a man, then I needed to find a sharp stick and defend myself. But it seemed to be both human and beast. It seemed to have the senses of an animal. It could hear me from a distance and smell my scent in the air. But it could also speak. The creature had called my name. At least I thought it had called to me. But I knew that had to just be terror fueling my imagination. It was probably a stray dog that had gone feral and was hungry. I probably looked like an easy target. All I needed to do was climb a tree and bide my time. Once it was light out, I was sure I would be able to get back to the road and flag down a motorist.

Lying on the ground, not moving, made me realize how cold it was outside. There was frost on the leaves all around me. My breath started to slow. I knew I had to do something. The beast was probably still looking for me. None of the trees around me had branches low enough for me to climb. I wondered how close I was to the river. The oak tree which was to be my rendezvous point with Jessie would be easy to mount.

My heart throbbed at the thought of my love. Where was he? What had happened to him? If he was in the woods, then I needed to warn him about the creature. The idea of something horrible happening to Jessie frightened me as much as the beast in the woods. Getting to the oak tree was my best bet. Then I could climb to safety and warn Jessie if he was waiting there for me. I tried to think about the way I had run and the orientation of the river.

My breathing was becoming more regularly and I felt like it was time to make a move. The small creatures that provide the night with its music had taken up their melodies again. It probably meant that the beast, whatever it was, had moved on in pursuit of some other dinner. With great trepidation, I got to my feet.

And there he was. Jessie, my love, was standing no more than thirty yards away. I could see him silhouetted in the moonlight. “Jessie,” I called, my heart hammering loudly in my chest. “We have to get out of here. There’s something…” I started hurrying toward him. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s some creature in the woods.”

Jessie came bounding toward me, eager to be by my side. I held my arms out to him. “We have to go,” I said, fighting back a sob of relief as his arms encircled me. “There’s someone else in the woods with us.”

“I know,” he said.

Looking up, I saw that it wasn’t Jessie who was embracing me. It was his brother, Daniel. “Oh,” I stammered, trying to pull away from him, my mind racing. “Did Jessie send you? There’s something in the woods. Something evil.”

“I know,” he said again, a wolfish smile twisting his lips. “I think it might be me.”

And then I saw his teeth glinting in the moonlight. They were long white daggers of ivory. I tried to scream, but my voice caught in my throat.

“Please, by all means scream,” he told me. “It makes things so much better.”

I felt limp in his arms, like a rabbit paralyzed by fear as it stares into the eyes of a snake. I caught a glimpse of his eyes and suddenly I understood what Lilly had meant. Jessie’s eyes had always appeared warm and kind to me. But his brother’s eyes where that of the detached predator. He was a shark ready to strike.

Daniel wrenched my head to one side. “I’m going to enjoy this so much,” he whispered into my hair. And then he lowered his head and I felt a stinging at my neck. I realized with horror that Daniel had sunk his jagged teeth into my neck. He was drinking from me. He was drinking my blood.

I tried to struggle. I willed my arms and legs to move, but they were awkward and lifeless. Tears sprang to my eyes with the sure conviction that I was going to die. Daniel was some kind of demon and he was sucking the life out of me. I thought of the note that I had forgotten to leave for Mama and Papa. It was still in my suitcase, lost somewhere in the woods. I was going to die and my family would never know what had happened to me.

And what about Jessie? Did he know that his brother was Satan incarnate? Or was this the evil he always wanted to tell me about, but I refused to listen. I could no longer feel my legs and my hands were ice cold.

Daniel was a vampire. He was a member of the undead and he needed human blood to live. That explained Arthur and the sticky, red goblets in his room. And then I realized something else; Jessie and his mother were probably vampires, too. That explained why they could never be out in the daytime. It explained a lot of things.

Jessie had wanted to tell me. He’d tried to tell me his family’s secret many times. But I wouldn’t listen. I was too stupid to ever think that there was a problem our love couldn’t surmount. I was too naive to realize that such evil existed in the world.

My darling Jessie was a vampire. And yet he loved me. There was no doubt in my mind that he loved me. My vision started to blur and I closed my eyes.

The world only came into focus again when my body was jarred, quite painfully. I opened my eyes to see that I had been dropped into some kind of ditch. There was loose soil all around me. I tried to think of where I was. My brain felt fuzzy and slow. Town hall, I finally decided. A work crew was digging the foundation for town hall. Papa would find me. He would find my body in the morning and then my family would know I was dead. There was some comfort in that. I didn’t want them to spend the rest of their lives wondering.

I could barely move, but I turned my head to see the man who had killed me standing at the lip of the deep hole where I lay. Just then the clouds drifted away from the moon and I was able to see Daniel more clearly. At a distance he looked so much like Jessie. Tears sprang to my eyes. I would never see my love again.

Daniel started kicking dirt into the hole to cover my body. Small rocks and debris rained down on me. “Why?” bubbled to my lips. “Why are you doing this?”

The vampire paused for a moment, cocking his head to one side as he considered his actions. “I thought I was doing it to protect the family,” he said. “I wasn’t going to let the Vanderlind name be besmirched by some cheap, little mortal. But now that you ask me, I realize that I’m doing it to teach my brother a lesson. Maybe next time he won’t be so eager to fall in love.”

The world was growing dark again and it was a struggle for me to keep my eyes open. I had lost too much blood to do anything but die. Daniel started kicking more dirt on me and I curled into a ball and closed my eyes. “Good bye, Jessie,” I whispered, hoping the night breeze would carry my words to his ears. “Good bye, my love. I will miss you forever.”

Epilogue

Jessie

I raced to the oak tree, but Colette wasn’t there. I searched the woods, then the streets of Tiburon, and then tried peeking in the windows of her family’s home. Colette was gone. It was as if she’d simply been plucked from the earth. For the next two years I searched for her, all night, every night, but she was nowhere to be found. I found her shoe, and an old tramp found some of her clothes in a small suitcase, but those were all the clues that were ever uncovered. My darling girl had vanished without a trace.

Mrs. Denkler hung herself from the rafters in her private quarters two days after Colette disappeared. I think she blamed herself for delaying me. It wasn’t her fault, but part of me held her responsible. If only she hadn’t slammed shut the vault door. If only I’d insisted that I meet Colette under our apple tree instead of letting her walk alone at night. If only I’d left town like I’d intended, instead of wooing Colette and falling in love.

I spent the next several decades hating myself and longing for the life Colette and I would never share. She was gone and, although I had not harmed her, I knew I was responsible for her death. If I hadn’t loved her, she would still be among the living, the sun shining on her tempestuous hair, the birds singing their morning music just for her.

For many years I thought that maybe travel might help me forget the pain that was always present within me, but it did little to blunt the agony. And I found myself compelled to return home every fall. I knew I would never see my darling girl again, but I could not keep from searching for her. Year after year, I combed the woods in the fall, when the moon was full. I continued to do so decade after decade, even though it was obvious she was gone.

I also carried the misery of having caused Colette’s family pain. Not knowing what had happened to their daughter must have been the worst part. I know it was for me. Or maybe it was better that way. I couldn’t judge; I only knew that I was doomed to live for eternity without the woman I loved.

It was somewhere around the turn of the century that I began to feel a change. I hadn’t forgotten Colette, or stopped loving her, but the pain somehow shifted. It became a dull ache in the corners of my soul, rather than a tangible throb in my breast. I stopped going to Europe. Tiburon was my home. I even began to go out on occasion, strolling the town’s streets after sunset. Sometimes I would take in a film at the cinema, or drop by the library on Thursday nights, when it stayed open late. It felt good to traverse the streets where I knew Colette’s footsteps had fallen. Somehow it made me feel closer to her.

One evening in the early fall, I felt an urge to reread
The Great Gatsby
. The castle library had a signed, first-edition, of course, but I wanted to hold a book that had been caressed by many hands. I was seated in a quiet corner of the library, just starting to become engrossed in the plot, when I heard the sound of two young women hurrying into the room. Glancing up, I had the shock of my life. There, standing before me, was Colette Gibson, just as fresh and young as the first day I saw her. My darling girl had come back to me.