Zamani (14 page)

She shook her head.
 
“I don’t know if she was an artist,
really.
 
She was quite lovely.
 
They both were.”

While she had told him
before of turning Daniela, she’d not revealed their true relationship. She told
him now that Daniela, originally meant to be her father’s new bride, truly
loved her.
 
Once their feelings were
realized, the two women were separated. Daniela was sent home in hopes that the
separation would weaken their affinity to the breaking point, but they had been
too late in their attempts.
 
Daniela
had been turned.
 
In the weeks that
she was at her father’s she turned a young cousin of hers, Sasha, who had come
to distract and entertain her.

“Daniela’s family was
understandably crushed by the whole affair.
 
The fact that Daniela turned Sasha made
it imperative that they contain the problem, and they arrived at my father’s
home with both girls in tow, begging him to solve the problem.
 
He took both girls in, and his solution
was to hide the three of us.” She gave out a small chuckle.
 
“To say he hid us is being
generous.
 
He imprisoned us.
 
But, at least we were together.”
 
She twirled the three bands on her hand,
and then slid them off, placing them on the table in front of her as she
continued.
 
“That is, we were
together until Van Helsing killed Daniela and Sasha.
 
That’s why I wear their rings along with
my own.”

Istvan poured more wine for
both of them.
 
“I can relate to the
loss; I’ve been careful to not turn any of my lovers for fear that eternity
with one might turn things to hatred and bitterness. I chose my lot, and I would
have to have a companion who likewise chose this path before I could consider
turning her.
 
Of course, it would be
nice to think I could meet some nice woman already turned by someone else,
wouldn’t it?”
 
They both smiled at
thought.

“I struggle with the
question of what there is after life, Olivia; I think everyone does. I did
before I was turned and being turned makes the question all the more
pressing.
 
If we can sidestep death
as we do, what does that mean?
 
Does
that mean death is not truly final?”

Olivia slid the rings back
on her finger. “I don’t know, Istvan.
 
I hope to find out.
 
When Van
Helsing took them from me, they both thanked him.
 
Daniela told him they would meet again,
that it was not the end.
 
I’ve
turned that over and over in my mind.
 
I’m haunted by it.
 
If she’s
right, then that has to mean she’s still out there somewhere.
 
There must be a way to come back. And
she helped him drive the stake.
 
She
welcomed death.”
 
She stopped, too
overcome by the memory to continue. They sat silent for the rest of the night,
drinking wine and waiting for dawn.

Chapter
Twenty

Istvan’s joke that it would
be wonderful to find someone already turned whispered itself over and over in Olivia’s
mind over the next few days.
 
She
was beginning to feel the need to move on, and she didn’t like the idea of
leaving him alone. She also felt the need to repay all of the kindnesses he’d
shown her.

They hunted separately. There was a quiet
agreement between them that they would not watch each other feed. It was too
intimate to share. Perhaps if they had hunted together, Olivia never would have
made the impulsive choice that ended their friendship.

She had seen the woman before at the market where
she sometimes did little errands for Istvan like buying flowers to decorate the
tables. She’d also seen her in Istvan’s dreams as he slept beside her. The
dreams were simple and sweet, but she could feel the desire he had for the
woman simmering under the surface, even in his dream state. Once she’d realized
that the woman in his dreams was living now and in the same village, she
decided to help him gain what he desired.

She approached the woman one morning at the
market, sliding up alongside her as she looked over some eggs a vendor was
selling. Olivia reached for an egg at the same time Zofia did, their hands
brushing.

“Oh, I’m sorry.
 
I didn’t see you there.”
 
Zofia apologized and looked up to meet
Olivia’s eyes with her own.
 
Olivia
watched a slight blush creep up Zofia’s neck.

“It was me, I’m afraid, who should
apologize.
 
I was in such a hurry
that I was careless.”
 
She moved her
hand away from Zofia’s to offer it again in a handshake. “I don’t believe we’ve
met, though I’ve seen you here before.
 
I am Olivia.”

Zofia took Olivia’s hand in her own, and as their
palms touched, Olivia used the contact to reach out to Zofia’s mind.
 
She found that Zofia had no romantic
entanglements and no children.

“My name is Zofia.”

Olivia asked the vendor for a half dozen eggs.
“As a way of apology, let me invite you to join me for a late breakfast.”

The two finished their market shopping and Olivia
led her to the café.
 
She prepared a
light breakfast of eggs and bread for the three of them. Istvan nodded to Zofia
and gave her a little smile, and Olivia watched the two of them flirt across
the room at each other.
 
Even if she
hadn’t been able to see inside Zofia’s mind she would have known that the
attraction was mutual.
 

The two women chatted as they ate, and Olivia
watched Istvan. He sat several tables over, picking at his plate, and
pretending to ignore them, but she could tell he was paying attention in much
the same way he had watched her the first time she’d come into the café.

“Do you have family?” Olivia asked her, knowing
already what her answer would be.

Zofia nodded. “My father is still alive.
 
I help care for him. I am mainly company
for him.
 
My mother died several
years ago; she was never a strong woman.”

When the meal was over, she and Zofia made plans
to meet for a walk the next day.
 
Olivia turned her attention toward readying the café for anyone who
might stop in for lunch.
 
Istvan
brooded silently.
 
Neither of them
mentioned Zofia, and Olivia knew that he’d shut himself off to her.
 
He couldn’t shut her out completely,
though, when he was sleeping and the dreams of Zofia only intensified after her
visit to the café.

The grooming didn’t take long for Olivia; Zofia
trusted her new friend, and by the week’s end, she was turned.
 
Another week and she was in a desperate
state and needed to feed.
 
Olivia
took her to Istvan.

The café was closed. Istvan sat in his favorite
chair in his living quarters, drinking wine and reading a book. He’d fed
earlier in the evening and was surprised when Olivia entered with Zofia in
tow.
 
He hadn’t seen her since the
morning that Olivia brought her in for breakfast, and now he barely recognized
her as the same woman.
 
She was pale
and he could smell her starvation and desperation.
 
He also could sense her hatred for
Olivia.

“I’ve brought you a gift.”

As they stood before him, he watched Zofia’s
face.
 
Even through the haze of
hunger, she realized his true identity—that he was also turned.
 
She cried out in frustration and anger,
too dazed to speak in words.

“What have you done? Why do you bring her here?”
He walked up to Zofia and put his hand on her cheek, the coolness of her skin
repulsing him.
 
She met his gaze and
he could see she was in pain. She was weak, and he had no choice but to help
her feed. Her hunger was the only suffering he could help her with. He stormed
out in search of one of the nearby donors and brought them back to her.

Olivia merely waited until he was satisfied that
Zofia was taken care of.
 
Once she’d
fed, she was far more subdued; the hunger had been so great that it exhausted
her and made her docile.
 
Istvan
made sure she was comfortable in his bed before he returned to the main room
and confronted Olivia.

“Why, Olivia?”

“She’s yours. You wanted a wife, someone already
turned.
 
I merely did the dirty work
for you.”

“It was not your place.”

“Why not? She will serve as a companion to you;
I’m leaving soon, and the two of you obviously desired each other.
 
It seemed a perfect arrangement. It’s a
thank you gift, Istvan.”

He shook his head. “I should have known that you didn’t
understand. I desired her because she reminded me of someone I used to
know—a living woman, not one of us. Can’t you see that by turning her you
changed her?
 
What was desirable in
her is gone. Likewise, she despises you now, and she will fear me because I am
that part of herself she now hates.”

Olivia shrugged.
 
“She’ll come to see that things are what
they are.
 
Just as you grew to
accept your new life, so will she. Accept her as the gift she was meant to be.”
She walked past him to where she’d gathered her things before going to fetch
Zofia.
 
“It is time I left; I had no
intention of staying beyond tonight, as you can see from my preparations.”

And with that, she left Istvan to repair the
damage she’d left behind as best he could.

As she thought back to those
weeks with Istvan and how kind he was to her, she realized that it was her turn
to teach Christophe; her plan had been to discard him if necessary, but she now
realized that if she didn’t teach him, he’d seek out someone who would.
 
Zofia was a formidable opponent and a
very good teacher; if Christophe sought her help, he might be lost to Olivia
forever.

And if she lost Christophe,
she’d lose the one lead she had on the secret of Marie Laveau.

Chapter
Twenty One

The conflict with Istvan
over Zofia was the push she needed to move on.
 
She’d made a plan to go first to England
to learn what she could of Mina and Jonathan Harker.
 
She’d not told Istvan much about them,
only that they had helped Van Helsing track her father down.
 
She had lots of miles to cover and much
to learn.
  
In the months that
she traveled before getting to Mina and releasing Renfield she met many
mystics, lunatics, and charlatans, all ready to tell her the secrets of the
afterlife.
 

Yet she felt the question
more complex with each attempt to answer it.
 
Perhaps that is why the story of Marie
Laveau’s passing called to her. She wondered what she would feel in the wake of
such a powerful figure being gone and released back into the ether.
 
What she’d found, though, was that for
Marie, it wasn’t death at all.
 
Marie found a way other than vampirism to sidestep death.
 
And Olivia wanted to learn from her.

The ritual at the lake
convinced Olivia Marie was no charlatan.
 
The crowd responded in a way that made it clear she was the Marie they
all knew; somehow she had defeated death.
 
Olivia was unable to approach her that night.
 
The ritual circle, invisible to the eye,
was too strong for any of the uninitiated or uninvited to cross.
 
She had wondered about the public nature
of the spectacle before they’d arrived at the site, halfway fearing she was
wasting her time.
 
When she arrived,
however, she could sense the power used to prepare the spot well before any of
the onlookers arrived.
 
Just as Mina
had been protected within the circle Van Helsing prepared for her, the dancers
and drummers were protected by an invisible wall. She’d watched in fascination
as observers had unconsciously avoided the edge of the circle. She wondered if
they felt the same physical resistance that she felt emanating from the
area.
 

In the days following the
ritual as she entertained herself with Lisette Olivia considered trying to
reach out to Marie. She felt unprepared and too unfamiliar with her
surroundings, though, to risk it. The city was still reeling from the supposed
death of their powerful queen. Too many on the inner circle would command
Marie’s attention as she sought to reinvent herself and retain her power.
 
Olivia knew that to approach her would
likely lead to more complications than either of them would welcome.
 
And, it was evident to her she needed to
learn a great deal about Voodoo and the source of Marie’s power before she
could attempt to bargain with her or seek teaching from her.
 
She decided to return to New York and
sort things out first. Lisette would be a good connection in New Orleans, she
decided.
 

And for 131 years, that’s
what she did; she waited and she learned all she could.
 
She returned to New Orleans and lived in
different areas of the city from time to time, but she never stayed long.
 

But the answers still eluded
her, and she knew that she had to go to the source if she was to make any
headway.
 
She’d started to dream of
New Orleans, of fancy carnival balls where she was dancing with Daniela.
 
She’d dreamt of the house on Thalia,
too, before she and Lisette looked at it together and made a handsome offer to
the realtor, meeting the asking price without haggling or hesitation.
 
She wasn’t sure what was different now,
but she knew that it was time for her to start looking for Daniela in
earnest.
 
She told Lisette that
night she showed up in New Orleans on Lisette’s front stoop that the dreams had
drawn her there. She didn’t care if the dreams really meant nothing. She had to
try.

Of course, she hadn’t
counted on Wren.

Olivia took to wandering the
Quarter at night after she finally settled there. She loved watching the city transform
from the bustling daytime city of normal business activities in corner cafes
and shops to the raucous nightlife that drew hoards of frat boys and their
older counterparts who were in town for the latest convention out to play.
 
The sense of lawlessness, though an
illusion, was not only a draw for the partygoers, but she also had to admit it
was a draw for her as well.
 
The
Quarter constantly renewed itself.
 
The owners or managers might be locals, but the fresh faces greeting
customers into clubs and bars were more often just moving through.
 

Olivia first caught sight of
Wren one evening as she sat in front of St. Louis Cathedral, enjoying a
smoke.
 
Jackson Square during the
day was too much for her. The crowds of people and the din of the street performers
and card readers were overwhelming.
 
When the sun went down, though, the Square smoldered with the leftover
energy of the day, and it was pleasant for her. As she sat looking up at the
cathedral, Wren and Sienna were on their way to work and stopped for a quick
kiss in the same narrow alleyway where Olivia had saved Lisette that
night.
 
The tenderness between them
caught her attention, and she decided to have a little fun by getting
acquainted with them.
 

Wren worked as a stripper.
Olivia always had a soft spot for women who were in distress.
 
After all, she’d come to Lisette’s aid,
and over the years she liked to think she had rescued many women from similar
fates. Olivia could sense Wren’s power; it was the raw and bold confidence that
drew her in and enthralled her as Wren worked her magic on stage.
 
Olivia had never before met a
non-vampire with her level of confidence and strength.
 
Olivia saw her as a challenge. She
wanted to see what it would take to break her.

Wren was fairly unbreakable.
Wren certainly made mistakes, but Olivia had only herself to blame for Wren’s
rash behavior.
 
At the same time she
pursued Wren, she also pursued Alex, Wren’s former girlfriend. Her goal was to get
closer to Liz.
 
She’d miscalculated
Wren’s residual feelings for Alex, and Wren assumed Alex was the true target.
Wren was so in love with Alex that she couldn’t see past her. Olivia also hadn’t
counted on Wren’s determination and desire to please her.
 
Had she trained Wren rather than merely
treating her as a plaything, perhaps she could have prevented Wren’s pursuit of
Alex and thus prevented her death. And Liz would still be in New Orleans where
she could get to her.

Olivia hadn’t seen Wren
since the night it happened.
 
She’d
found them in the corner of the bedroom Alex shared with Liz, blood smears all
over Wren’s face and hands. Wren was drunk on Alex’s blood, the blood of the one
girl she’d loved perhaps even more than she loved Olivia.
 

Even in the moment she left
Wren in the corner waiting for the flash of blue lights and the throng of
police officers and crime scene investigators, Olivia knew eventually she would
go to her and help her.
 
She could
hear Wren’s whisperings in the back of her brain in the quiet hours of the
early morning, calling to her, asking for help, much in the same way Renfield
had cried out in his mind to her father for release.
 
She resisted; she knew the time would
come when she would go to her, but she wanted Wren to suffer a little first. The
whole thing was a mess, she realized now.
 
She’d kept Wren from fully developing her
abilities, just as she kept Christophe from fully realizing his.
 
Both of them had progressed on their own
and now she would have to do some clean up from the fall out.
 
Her best option was to work through this
with Christophe before another tragedy occurred.

Olivia relied on information
about Wren from donors and vampires who worked in the prison system. For now,
her secrets were safe, as Wren was weak and too much in shock to do much other
than babble.
 
Olivia kept her that
way; donors were allowed to let Wren feed from them only enough to keep her
from being truly rash.
  
Wren
had only vague memories of these light feedings and in her fevered state
thought they were merely erotic dreams.

Olivia also had been busy
trying to establish some normalcy. In the days following the murder, Olivia
played the part of the concerned professor.
 
She’d canceled classes and encouraged
Alex’s classmates to check on Liz and to go to the memorial service for Alex.
 
She’d gone herself even though she’d
feared seeing Liz in mourning would be too much to bear.
 
She needed time to unravel the puzzle
Wren had set up for her, and she knew Liz needed time to process the loss.
After seeing Liz so deep in her grief at the service, Olivia was relieved when
Liz left the city to spend time with her father.
 
Liz would be on her own for awhile,
which was unfortunate as she was not yet aware that she, too, was turned, but
Olivia knew instinct would guide her.
 
After all, it wasn’t her first lifetime. She had some knowledge in the
deeper recesses of her brain of her time as Daniela.

Olivia knew this because
she’d been called back to New Orleans. She’d dreamt of Liz and Alex, seen them
in her mind before she ever arrived.
 
It was an experience unlike anything she’d had before.
 
She was familiar enough with the city
from her visits to Lisette that she’d recognized the place quickly enough.
 
In her dreams she’d first not clearly
seen either woman’s face, but she knew she had to go and find them.
 
She’d followed the dreams here, and it
was clear the first time she looked at Liz’s face over the bar at The Ruby that
she was Daniela.
 
Her face came into
focus and it was like stepping back in time.
 
Olivia had followed Alex and Mike
Courtland, a fellow faculty member from the department, to the bar in hopes of
seeing Liz.
 
She recognized Alex
immediately upon meeting her in her
Reading the Vampire
class; images
from her dreams flashed in her head, the face finally materializing as she
looked up and saw Alex enter her classroom the first night.
 
And as she searched Alex’s mind, she saw
Liz.

She’d been careful in
cultivating her connection with Liz over the weeks that followed.
 
She went to her in dreams, first simply
reaching out to her mind, alerting her that she was near, then calling for her
to come to her in the night.
 
Like
Olivia, Liz couldn’t see faces distinctly in her dreams at first.
 
She felt the presence of the woman,
though, and she always woke from those feverish dreams to rush to her sketchpad
in an attempt to remember the face and bring it into reality by drawing
it.
 

Liz was fiddling with her
sketchpad at work at The Ruby the day she and Olivia finally met in person. As
Olivia stepped in the door, Liz felt something different in the air. It was charged
to the point it almost crackled.
 
She walked up behind Alex slowly, and she looked Liz directly in the
eye. She saw Daniela’s face. Liz’s response made it clear that she felt
something, too.
 
She fainted upon
seeing Olivia, realizing that she was the one she’d seen in her dreams.

 
After their first meeting Olivia
increased her presence in Liz’s dreams.
 
Her first attempt to make full contact with her failed.
 
As Liz slept, Olivia reached out to her
with her mind, calling to her, leading her to Washington Square Park.
 
Olivia sat on one of the benches in the
shadows.
 
Liz entered the Park and
moved towards her. Olivia spread her arms wide, making the long cloak she wore
spread out like wings, welcoming Liz into her embrace.
 
She’d seen the glint of recognition in
Liz’s eyes and was near bending forward to kiss her. Sounds of a mugging taking
place on the other side of the fence broke the spell; Olivia’s desire to
protect Liz took over. She transformed into a Carpathian shepherd, removing the
threat and losing her chance to reclaim Daniela.
 
When Liz came around Olivia had
neutralized the danger.
 
Liz saw her
still in transformed, blood on her snout.
 
She could see Liz’s revulsion and fear, and she knew she would have to
wait.
 
Her chance for that night was
gone.

Luckily for Olivia, she’d
not had to wait long. As Wren pursued Alex, Liz worked on a mural for a friend
in the Garden District.
 
Lisa’s
house was not far from Olivia’s, and she’d gotten easy access. As Liz worked in
the upstairs room, Olivia called to her from the sidewalk begging to be let in
to the house.
 
Liz opened a window
in the room where she worked, and when she fell asleep, she was quick to let
Olivia enter.
 
Liz had, in those
dream states, become Daniela.
 
She
welcomed Olivia into the house and into her arms.
 
Olivia marveled at having found Daniela
and those stolen nights were bittersweet. At the same time she struggled with the
fact that Liz’s heart belonged to someone else.
 
Her desire won out over her conscience,
though, and she lost herself in the warm curves and long kisses. That first
night, she’d been tentative, letting Liz take the lead, fearing she was
projecting her own desire and was mistaken about her true identity. She soon
was relieved to find that Liz was her long lost Daniela.