SNAP: The World Unfolds (8 page)

I turned to say something to Jean-Louis and found only air. “Jean-Louis will be back to escort you downstairs,” Josef said and left.

I was pretty well freshened after my time in the plane’s bathroom. After Lisbet unpacked my bathroom things, I touched up my make-up, gave my hair a shake and headed down the corridor to find Jean-Louis just coming out of his rooms.

“Let’s go down and hear some stories.” His eyes were violet in the dim light and his skin glowed; it looked as though it had been brushed with something, almost stardust. He took my arm and we headed into the drawing room where the Baron and Pen were in conversation.

Once again, I didn’t recognize the Hungarian. When Pen saw us, she stopped. “There you are. Let’s speak English, now,” and she sat on one of the sofas facing the fireplace. She patted a spot next to her for me, the Baron and Jean-Louis took chairs across a table.

“Well, Jean-Louis tells me that you’ve been told the basics, Ms. Gwenoch. Or may I call you Maxie?” the Baron asked.

I looked at him. This was the first time I’d ever had a chance to examine him. Like everyone else on the planet, I’d seen hundreds of pictures and videos of the man who owned the reportedly largest communications conglomerate in the world. His face was as familiar as the U.S. president or the Queen of England, let alone most of the celebs we featured. Up close, he was amazing. His skin was unlined and had a similar glow to Jean-Louis, his hooded eyes were a piercing blue and his hair was a fine dark brown, worn down to his collar.

“Do I look healthy?” he asked as he watched me taking him in. “I’m so used to me after a few hundred years that I don’t notice any more. The only thing I change is my fashion.” The three of them smiled at their little joke.

“So it’s really true?” I asked. “You’re all vampires?” The word almost stuck in my throat.

“Yes, we’re vampires, but things may not be what you’ve always heard,” he said and Pen smiled again.

“This part of Europe has always been considered haunted. People saw lights at night, animals were found with their throats slashed, drained of blood, sometimes children would go missing. Witches were blamed. Peasants said Satan walked the woods at night. Unfortunately, even the Jews took blame. There are only a few of the original families left now, after some of the witch-hunts and exterminations over the years. We learned to stay low and keep to ourselves as much as possible and we also spread through, I guess you’d call them acolytes.”

Acolytes? Was he talking about people they’d killed for their blood?

“I see confusion,” he nodded. “I’m speaking of people who desire eternal life. You may know for a person to become one of us, they must have all of their blood drained, not an act we undertake lightly. There have been some dreadful mistakes over the years. One of them was Vlad the Impaler. He caused no end of trouble. Peasants were in an uproar and a great many people were put to death with stakes.” He smiled sardonically. “Most of them weren’t of us, they were regular people who’d incurred their neighbor’s hatred. I suspect that an awful lot of people who were owed money also got stakes through the heart. It was a way to wipe out debt for a few centuries.”

This was just too strange, but I couldn’t pull myself back. All three of them were like magnets. Their looks, their demeanors, their voices, were intoxicating. I’d felt this same pull slightly with Jean-Louis, but that was incidental. Now, all of them were turning up the charm and it was stunning. I felt as though I’d never seen so clearly before. They were beautiful. I had to fight against them. I stood up and walked over to the windows with my back to them, lessening the attraction.

I slid back one of the heavy curtains and looked into the velvet darkness. A half-moon shed a little light and I could see shadows of the forest just beyond the manicured lawn. In the near distance the mountains rose, covered with the forest that frightened centuries of peasants. Myths, fairytales, stories came out of these dense forests, and now I was learning that myths and stories were real.

“What would you like to know?” Pen’s voice cut through my thoughts.

I turned to her, astounded by her beauty. “I don’t know.” I was stymied. “I can’t even figure out questions. Who are the others?”

Pen and the Baron looked at one another. Something passed between them and he acknowledged, “There are only two of the original families left here. We have always been enemies and now there are just the Kandesky’s and our major competitors, the Huszars. I understand you met one of them recently.”

“But there are vampire colonies all over the world. What about the ones in the United States?” I asked.

“Yes, there are colonies, many, many colonies which have formed into families. But it all started here, with a handful of baronial families who fled into the forests centuries ago. From those few families, the way of the vampire spread. Many people want to be immortal, to have eternal life and there has never been a lack of volunteers. The problem has not been too few vampires but too many.”

As I turned away from the window, a black shadow flew past. Motion-sensing lights flicked on and four demons came out to the terrace at a run, guns drawn.

“Well, it looks like the Huszars know you’re here,” the Baron said. “They failed in L.A. and now they’re trying this. Very clumsy and stupid but the family’s never been known for brains. They even backed Hitler in the war. Thought they’d end up with unlimited supplies of blood.

“They’re not able to puncture our defenses here at the castle, it must have been just a reconnoiter, a little hit to let us know that they’re around.”

My throat still felt bruised from my encounter in the garage. “Why are they after me? I’m not a threat to them, am I?” The demon Carlos had saved me and stuck with me like paste until I climbed the steps to the plane. Safety was a comfortable feeling, like being wrapped in my grandmother’s arms. Here, even though there were more people—well, maybe vampires and demons—around, it was too open. I didn’t know this place, had no history here, no friends or family.

“They don’t know how much of a threat you are. You’re an unknown, not a vampire. You just showed up at SNAP at top management. You get management perks and security. They don’t know what I have in store for you.”

“Baron,
I
don’t know what you have in store for me,” I said. Baron Kandesky smiled and Jean-Louis and Pen exchanged looks. It seemed as though I might find out.

“About a hundred years ago I tired of our rivalry with the Huszar family. It had gone on for so long that it became what we did. We had the exquisite gift of immortality and we were wasting it squabbling. We’d kill of few of them, they’d incite the local peasantry to track some of us down and kill us.” He paused, his compelling eyes looking through me at some remembered time. “It wasn’t enough to find beautiful people and turn them into vampires so that a Huszar could start a hunt.”

“I thought about it and did strategic planning. What did we have that was different? We were beautiful. We attracted acolytes. We could live forever. Of course we had a little down side, too. Living off blood, preferably human, wasn’t a great marketing technique. Then I figured out that becoming a vampire was a desirable thing. Find a person as the crest of his or her beauty and give them a chance to stay there forever. In exchange, they agree to become a celebrity. Sounds easy, right?”

Again, the looks back and forth.

“It did sound easy,” Pen finally said. “And parts of it have been. I love the luxury. It’s wonderful to be taken care of. But it’s a lot or work, too. I have to be seen somewhere a few times a week, year-round. I have no privacy. And because I don’t age, Stefan must keep all of us on the move from place to place. We can only stay about 20 years before the rumors of face-lifts and plastic surgery begin popping up.”

“It’s like a giant chess game,” Kandesky chuckled. “It’s both harder and easier now with 24 hour global communications. A hundred or so years ago, we were vaudeville stars. We were models. We were the beautiful people seen at parties. We had our pictures painted and taken. Then, after several years, we’d just switch. Pen would go to Rio. Carola would move to Paris. Everyone would change names.”

“Mostly to keep things interesting,” he was amused. “And with the beginnings of the media, we began to make money. Lots of money.”

“I talked about the early screen magazines,” Jean-Louis spoke for the first time. “One of the earliest,
Picture This,
was the Baron’s and the start of his ‘empire.’ He realized he was giving us fun jobs to do and allowing us to have cushy lifestyles. It started getting trickier when we began to travel so much.”

“Speaking of travel,” I put in, “I’m a little jet-lagged and information over-loaded. I’d like to get outside for some fresh air and then go to my room. I’m not adjusted to your night-time schedule yet.”

“Certainly. One of the demons will go with you.”

Pen’s comment about privacy hit home and I started to say “No,” then touched my throat. This was going to get difficult. In LA, up until now no one had really known me. I could go home. Now that the Huszar family had found me, and wanted me as a way to compete with the Kandeskys, my privacy was gone.

Sandor met me at the French doors to the terrace. He was a Hungarian, wide and solid as the Danube, and just as chatty. He returned my smile then gestured down the steps into the garden. “We can walk as far as the edge of the woods,” he said in an almost accentless low voice.

weapons, tracking, hand-to-hand combat, driving skills. We guard the Baron’s properties, too. The estate is surrounded by watch posts and motion detectors.”

The edge of the forest was now a dark smear blocking out the stars. Sandor touched my arm as though to pull me back and I heard a soft rustle like a small breeze raising the leaves.

“Leave us,” Sandor commanded.

Faint mocking laughter answered him.

“Damn these Huszar people,” Sandor muttered and said something else in another language that I assumed was Hungarian. His tone made me glad I couldn’t understand. “They’re always pushing at our perimeter. We tried using dogs many years ago. The Huszars discovered that their blood could substitute for human in a pinch and we gave it up. It wasn’t sensible to pit poor dogs against enemies that they couldn’t fight.”

“How do you fight them?’

“We’re stronger and as fast on the ground. Usually we just break an arm, even a finger snapped backward will slow them down. Silver wire and knives take them out for a longer time. Killing them is a last resort., the rest get snitty and go on a rampage. That gets all the villages around here up in arms and leads to collateral damage Over the years we’ve both found that keeping our disagreements and skirmishes out of sight of humans serves all of us better.”

While we were talking we walked along the edge of the lawn not watching the boundary where it ran up and into the forest. A fast whirr and I found myself airborne, skimming between trees with strong arms binding the back of my ribs against some black fabric. The mocking laugh was back, this time next to my ear. My arms and legs were free, hanging down over the strong arms, but the speed and twists through the trees were jerking me sideways. The force of our flight made my hands ineffectual as I tried to pull myself away, screaming all the way, “Put me down! God damn you, you’re hurting me! Put me down!”

Suddenly, I was down. Down in a heap with the wind knocked out of me from the fall. I fought panic to try and breathe and made myself focus despite the roaring and screaming that was going on around me. After hours—maybe 20 seconds—I was able to suck enough air in that my lungs stopped seizing and took in clean air. The panic in my chest lessened and the noise around me separated into several individual bouts. Two of Sandor’s fellow guard-demons had two black shadows on the ground and were cheerfully snapping small bones to the shrieks of the vampires.