Vampire Affliction (4 page)

Chapter Five: Second Drink

Gertie breathed in the fresh air of the cool night as she and Jeno flew toward Athens. The sea raged beneath them, as though it sympathized with the vampires. As sorry as Gertie felt for them for their losses, she didn’t share their desire to attack innocent mortals to draw the attention of the gods; however, she did share their desperate need for blood. Hers had become all-consuming.

The closer they got to the city, the more urgently she needed it.

As they neared Athens, her vampire eyes caught sight of the acropolis in ruins. All but the Parthenon had fallen into mounds of rock and rubble. The Erechttheion, the Propylaea, and the temple of Athena Nike were leveled to the ground. Gertie could only imagine how long it would take to attempt to rebuild replicas.

“It’s been done before,” Jeno said.

“The ruins have been demolished and rebuilt?”

“In ancient times.”

“But that’s different.”

“Not to the immortals.”

Gertie gave no reply but gnawed on her lower lip. Who could have caused such massive destruction to one of the world’s most important monuments?

“This way,” Jeno said. “Omonioa Square. It’s where we’ll find the willing.”

They soared down closer to the city and landed in an alleyway between two tall buildings. Gertie sensed every mortal within a mile. She could hear their hearts and smell their blood. She cringed at her own eagerness.

“Don’t worry,” Jeno said. “I have a few regular suppliers who can help us.”

She wondered how the other vampires did it. How did they feed from their fellow humans?

“Look, you can’t think this way,” Jeno said as he led her toward the square, which was really a semicircle. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I can’t help how I feel.”

“Most vampires begin to think of humans in the same way many humans think of animals—as nothing more than food.”

“I will never be that kind of vampire.”

He took her hand. “This way.”

She followed him into a bar.

The smell of alcohol burned Gertie’s nostrils, and the cigarette smoke bothered her eyes and lungs. As she and Jeno picked their way through the crowd toward the bartender, Gertie found it difficult to resist lunging for the necks and wrists of those they passed.

She was starving.

“Hey, Pablo,” Jeno said to the bartender. “Have you seen Old Man Mikos?”

“He’s gone. Already had his fill tonight.”

“What about Aggie?”

The bartender shrugged. “Haven’t seen her.”

Jeno thanked the bartender and glanced around the smoky room. Then he took Gertie’s hand and said, “Come on.”

She stopped him and, feeling desperate, whispered, “Can’t I use mind control?” She locked eyes on an old man she’d caught checking her out. He gave her the creeps and made her feel that, if she was going to have to stoop to treating humans like food, this would be the one to choose. “This one deserves to be taught a lesson.”

Follow me into the alley,
she said in the mind of the man, who stood up, mesmerized.

“Gertie, that’s not the way,” Jeno whispered in her ear. “Come with me.”

Gertie broke eye contact with the man and left with Jeno. When she glanced back from the doorway, she saw he was still watching her.

“He wants to come with us,” she said. “Why won’t you let him?”

Jeno put an arm around her waist. “He doesn’t know what you have in mind.”

“So? He’s a jerk.” She followed Jeno out onto the sidewalk.

“For admiring you? Listen to me. You can’t use your powers to punish human behavior.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not your place to judge and punish. You aren’t a god.”

“But…”

“Don’t let your powers go to your head. That happens to a lot of our kind.”

“Are you telling me I need to be a responsible vampire?” She laughed.

He looked hurt, and she was immediately sorry.

“Jeno, I…”

Before he could reply, he was thrown against the side of the building and held there at sword point by a tall dark figure in a hood.

Gertie rushed up behind the hooded man, attempting to pin his arms to his side, but his strength was equal to hers, even though she could smell his human blood. Without turning, he knocked the back of his head against her forehead. Gertie flinched and blinked and then lifted her feet from the ground and flew for his throat. Dodging the jab of his elbow with amazing dexterity and speed, she sank her fangs greedily into the side of his neck. The bite paralyzed him momentarily as she sucked and sucked the warm, sweet, and intoxicating liquid, making every cell in her body rejoice. After a half a dozen swallows, she knew she should probably stop, but it felt oh, so good.

“Enough,” Jeno said.
Gertie, stop! You’ll drain him!

She opened her eyes and lifted her face. The dark hood of her victim dropped back from a blond head, and she gasped, as did he.

It was Hector.

He dropped his hold of Jeno and blinked against the spinning effect of the vampire virus. Without meaning to read his mind, she could sense his disorientation, dizziness, and euphoria in conflict with his shock.

Jeno pinned Hector’s arms behind his back, and Hector didn’t resist. Instead, he stared at her with his mouth wide open.

“Gertie? Have you…”

He couldn’t bring himself to say it. The look of shock and revulsion on his face broke her heart. Suddenly she felt him in her mind, reading her thoughts.

She hadn’t learned how to block them yet.

With wide, moist eyes, he gawked at her until he noticed the tears on her cheeks.

My poor, sweet, Gertie.

Before she could utter a word, Jeno moved between them and said, full of anger, “Tell me who was responsible for the destruction of our caves.”

Hector had no ability to stop his thoughts.
Athena.

The demigod caught Jeno by the throat and forced him against the side of the building once more. “How could you let this happen to Gertie?”

Gertie read Jeno’s thoughts along with Hector.
It was never my intention. I only meant to save my father from the Angelis boy.

“Klaus?” Hector asked.

“He planned to destroy my father along with his brother,” Jeno said in a strangled voice.

“You know it’s true,” Gertie said. “Now please, let him go. He lost his sister today.”

Hector took a step back and freed Jeno. “I’m sorry, man.” Yet his thoughts revealed his true attitude:
But she was already dead.

“Is that how you feel about me?” Gertie asked.

“You can still be saved.”

“By killing my father,” Jeno said. “Is that your plan?”

“I’ll do whatever it takes to save her.”

Jeno hissed and charged at Hector, who drew his sword and swung, nearly decapitating the vampire.

Gertie flew between them and held them off of one another, a hand flat against each of their chests, her elbows locked. To Hector, she shouted, “What if I don’t want to be saved?” Yet, she couldn’t hide her thoughts. She would like to be human again. She longed to rejoin the Angelis family. She hoped one day to walk again in sunshine and to no longer crave human blood. And she missed Hector—she missed him so much.

“I love Jeno,” she insisted. And she could never hurt him. She could never take his father away from him, especially after what had happened to his sister.

Hector’s face paled. Gertie wanted to cry again, but she fought back tears.

Jeno glared past Gertie at Hector. “Why would Athena destroy her own monument?”

“Athena never wanted your kind living beneath her temple in the first place,” Hector said. “When she overheard your leaders making plans to attack her favorite city, what did you expect her to do? Sit back and watch? You tramps don’t know what you’re up against. You need to back off and be grateful for what you have.”

“
Grateful
?” Jeno sneered. “You think we ought to be
grateful
?”

“You live leisurely lives with plenty of willing humans,” Hector accused. “What more could you want? The gods don’t begrudge you anything.”

“How about status and respect?” Jeno practically spit. “You yourself refer to us as tramps. Others call us freaks and beggars. The gods should treat us equally with mortals, but they look at us with disdain. And we do nothing to deserve it.”

“That’s a lie,” Hector said. “I’ve seen plenty of vampires take humans against their will and sometimes leave them for dead. Have you forgotten Alexander?”

Gertie screamed, “Enough!” She just couldn’t take it anymore. “Go away, Hector! Leave us alone!”

“But Gertie, I…”

“Go away!” She narrowed her eyes at him viciously and wished him gone. She hated his attitude toward the vampires. It made her feel sick.

Hector just stood there, dumbfounded.

“Or better yet, we’ll go,” she said. “Come on, Jeno.”

She took her fellow vampire’s hand in hers and together they lifted up into the sky, leaving the heartbroken Hector behind.

Chapter Six: The Winter Solstice

The next several days were short, and the nights were long as the winter solstice approached. During the day, the vampires kept to the crowded caves and either slept, prayed, or talked about their eagerness for war. Sometimes Homer told stories of the epic wars of ancient times. They speculated about when their Lord Dionysus would finally answer their prayers and lead them into battle. Some felt it was time to take matters into their own hands.

During the nights, Jeno and Gertie flew to Athens to feed, and then they went to the acropolis to pick through the rubble in search of his family portraits and other remnants of his past. One night, they recovered three of his books, completely intact, whereas a dozen others right next to them had been incinerated. They also found the feather mattress Calandra had filled with her instruments, even though the instruments had been crushed to bits. On the third night, they found one of the paintings—the one of Calandra as a little girl. This made Jeno very happy—and very sad.

After leaving the acropolis, Gertie and Jeno would spend a few hours back on the island. Sometimes they prayed with the others, whose numbers had doubled, and sometimes they went off on their own to stroll along the beach and gaze at the stars. Gertie rarely thought about what had happened there weeks ago with Alexander. She was determined to forget about the past and accept her future. When thoughts of Hector and the Angelis family crept into her mind, she pushed them away, refusing to dwell on them.

She could sense Jeno undergoing his own struggle to forget the past. Everywhere he looked reminded him of his sister, his life-long companion. Some days, he seemed to cling to the past, like when he gazed at his sister’s portrait; and other days he blocked it out.

It was easiest to block the past while they were swimming. With their superhuman speed, they could move through the water faster than any other creature, and with their superhuman vision, they could see everything underwater for miles. Gertie used to be terrified to swim in the sea, but as a vampire, she had no fear of it. Jeno taught her how to swoop down deep near the ocean floor, build momentum, and then shoot yards into the air before looping back down again.

It still wasn’t as magical as the night she had leapt into the ocean after Hector only to be rescued by his father, Hephaestus, in the form of a giant white crane.

Ouch.

Oh, Jeno. It was the presence of a god that made that night magical.

Of course it was.

After that, he taught her how to block her thoughts from other vampires. It was too hurtful for him to be reminded of her feelings for Hector over and over again, and there was nothing she could say to defend or justify, because her mind was an open book.

Blocking the mind turned out to be a lot like making the body invisible. It was a defense mechanism, but instead of pulling all the energy inward, a vampire had to pull the energy toward the mind and erect it as a shield. Manipulating energy seemed to come naturally to Gertie, and Jeno made it easy for her to visualize it.

What didn’t come naturally to her was going without clothes. Her one set of clothing was quickly becoming ragged and worn. She used illusions to make herself look more respectable when they entered the city at night to feed, because otherwise her appearance would only further reinforce the stereotype that vamps were tramps. She washed in the sea every day in her clothes, but that didn’t stop them from becoming more and more threadbare as the days wore on. One night, out of desperation, she snuck into a department store and stole a fresh new set. Jeno was appalled but he soon forgave her.

Gertie also grew more independent over those next several days. Before, she’d been terrified to leave Jeno’s side, but eventually she was able to make trips into Athens on her own. As a new vampire, she needed to feed almost twice as often as Jeno. Since it was familiar to her, she always went to Omonoia Square.

Once she was walking near the square when she came across the older women who had tried to lure her with their mesmerizing eyes the night she had gotten lost and Jeno had saved her. At that time, she hadn’t the slightest idea that vampires were creatures of anything more than folklore and mythology. Tonight, the three older women were shocked to recognize her as a fellow vampire. A quick check of their minds revealed that they lived in slums in the city and were unaware of the uprising. Gertie wondered how many others existed in Athens who weren’t already part of the growing army. These women cared only about getting by from day to day and shared no aspirations of freedom. They looked at Gertie with disdain. This was their turf, and they didn’t like the idea of sharing the food supply with another.

Gertie hissed at them as she walked by, unwilling to take their brazen intimidation. She was as strong as they and had nothing to fear. They could kiss her you-know-what.

But before she had gone more than a few steps past the women, a group of six college kids—three girls and three boys—rounded the corner. Gertie knew they were students from the university by their school-themed shirts and by their thoughts. They stunk of alcohol and cigarettes, but the sweet smell of their blood was overpowering. One of them had skinned her knees, so that explained it. Gertie glanced back at the three vampires and was nearly overwhelmed by their bloodlust—both in their eyes and in the thoughts they didn’t bother to guard.

All three vampires stepped between Gertie and the group of students.

“Elate mazi moy,” the tallest and most beautiful of the three said eagerly. “Can I help you?”

“No, thank you,” one of the boys replied with a red face. He thought he was being propositioned by a hooker.

“But your friend is bleeding,” the tall vampire insisted.

“I’m fine,” the girl said casually but then, locking eyes with the tall vampire, added, “Unless you can help me.”

“We can help you.” The oldest of the three vampires stepped forward, mesmerizing one of the boys. “We have an elixir.”

“An elixir?” the boy repeated. He took a step toward the woman.

The first of the college boys to have spoken said, “Guys, she’s fine.”

The third vampire moved directly in front of that boy and said, “But what of your headache?” She locked eyes with him. “We can help you with that, too.”

“Okay,” the stupefied boy said.

An old man shouted a warning from the center of the square. “Don’t listen to them! Come here!”

“What we have is much stronger than alcohol,” the tallest said, maintaining her lock on two of the boys.

Gertie was impressed by the way the three were able to manipulate all six into following them around the corner and into an alleyway. Gertie followed, too, reminding the others telepathically that the humans must be willing.

Stay out of this
, the tallest said to Gertie.

Under the spell of the vampires, the six college students lined up side by side with their backs against a building in the shadows where even the moonlight did not reach. The three vampires caressed their cheeks and smoothed their hair and told the students they were about to receive unimaginable power. They were also told that they should return here, night after night, if they wished to continue to receive this magnificent gift.

Then the vampires sank their teeth into the necks and wrists of their victims. Gertie licked her lips. The college students fell back against the wall and gazed into the night sky with the illusion of drinking a purple liquid from crystal goblets. The vampire virus first paralyzed them and then made them dizzy with pleasure. In a few moments, the three vampires abandoned their victims after having taken a pint, or more, from each of them. They said nothing to Gertie as they left.

After a few moments of disorientation, smiles unanimously spread across the faces of the students. They held hands and danced, sang some kind of European rap song, and then ran around the alley like children high on sugar. All six students believed they were hallucinating when one of them began to hover a few feet from the ground.

“What the?” her friend below squealed. “How are you doing that?”

“I dunno,” the boy said. “I just felt like I was flying, from the elixir, you know. Then suddenly….” He dropped off and laughed as he wobbled in the air.

Feeling responsible for them, and curious, too, Gertie followed the students as they ran screaming with glee like trains through the streets. As soon as they realized they really could fly, they took to the sky, gliding just above the buildings. They laughed with hysteria when one of them had the idea of making loop-de-loops and they all followed suit. Their laughter was contagious. Soon Gertie was overcome with the giggles.

The laughter ended when one of them crashed into the side of a building and broke her neck. It was the same girl who had skinned her knees. She slid down the side of the building and landed on the street in traffic. The screech of brakes from a yellow cab screamed along with Gertie and the students as the cab drove over the girl.

“Oh my effing God!” one of the girls cried as they clumsily landed on the sidewalk near their friend. “Oh my effing God!”

“Alyssa!” One of the boys charged into the street and knelt beside the body, afraid to touch it.

Gertie moved nearer, wondering if she should do something. Should she try to get help? The girl was dying. Her blood had pooled onto the street.

Gertie hated herself for thinking of the blood as wasted food, but there it was.

“Alyssa?”

The girl didn’t move.

The other two boys were each on a cell phone trying to get help. The two girls were crying. No other mortals dared leave the center of the square or the safety of the bars and cafes. They knew vampires were lurking.

And they were. Gertie sensed them moving in. They all wanted some of the luscious blood spilling from the girl’s neck and skull.

Making herself invisible, Gertie stripped from her new clothes, swooped in, and took four full drags from the dying girl’s neck before flying off in shame.

She was already dying,
she told herself all the way back to the island through her tears of shame.

All the next day, Jeno held her in his arms while she cried for the girl who had died.

A week later, after she and Jeno had returned from Athens and while they were walking hand in hand along the coast of the island she had come to call Alexander (so as to master the hurtful memory and not allow it to master her), Jeno whisked her up in his arms without warning and lifted her up into the night sky.

She couldn’t read his thoughts, which meant his mind was guarded, and yet he wore a smile on his face.

“I want to give you something,” he said.

“What is it?” She couldn’t imagine what he would have to give her. All of his possessions had been destroyed, except the very few they had salvaged.

He reached his hands behind his neck and removed his sister’s locket. He had worn it since the day she had died. “I want you to have it.”

“Jeno, I…”

He leaned over and put it on her. “I can appreciate it better by seeing it on you. Please wear it. For me.”

She clasped the locket to her throat and nodded. “Of course.”

“There’s an inscription inside.” He opened the locket and read, “
Happiness is a choice that requires effort
. Aeschylus said that.”

“I like it. It’s really deep.”

“And true. Calandra tried to live by that idea. She worked hard at finding happiness.”

“Thank you, Jeno. This is very sweet of you.” She kissed him.

Two weeks after the attack on the acropolis, Jeno took Gertie to a supplier in the Angelis neighborhood, and she couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to peek inside their living-room window. She was astonished by what she saw.

Mamá had strung popcorn into garland for their scraggily Christmas tree, and Klaus and Nikita were draping it over the branches while Phoebe added homemade ornaments. Babá topped the tree with a white, glittery star. As Gertie read their minds, she was overjoyed to learn that each of them was thinking of her and of how much they wished she was there with them. Nikita had even made her something and had wrapped it and put it under the tree. Tears blurred Gertie’s vampire vision as she fought the urge to burst in and say, “Here I am!”

She didn’t have to fight that urge long, because soon she heard a knock at their door and nearly fell out of the sky when the person who entered was her very own mother.

Sensing her shock and anxiety, Jeno put an arm around Gertie’s waist. “It’s going to be okay,” he whispered.

Together, they watched the scene unfold.

“What did they say?” Mamá asked, rushing to Gertie’s mother.

Gertie had forgotten how tall and curvy her mother was, and her hair, though dyed to cover the gray, was the same color blonde as Gertie’s. Her mother’s stylish cut, fashionable clothes, and stiletto heels made her look out of place in the tiny apartment.

“They promised to do what they can,” Gertie’s mother replied.

Gertie read their minds to learn that her mother had just returned from Hector’s house, where she had met with Hector, his mother, and a group of other demigods.