Eternal (24 page)

She holds up one finger. “Freddy! No? Really. Oh, no. Not at all. If the master has other ideas . . .” The chef ends the call. “Change of menu. I’m supposed to just whip up —”

“Nora,” I whisper, urgent. “Radford is planning to serve up staffers to the partygoers tonight. He’s going to order the guests to drain their own PAs.”

She sets down the dicing knife. “What are you asking of me, hon?”

“Warn them, so they can run or fight or —”

“It wouldn’t help,” she says in a low voice. “They’re in love with their masters or with the idea of being turned. They’d never believe what’s coming, and they’d report us for treason. I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

I should’ve anticipated that. “If we can create a distraction, I’ll —”

“You’ll what?” she whispers, incredulous. “
Destroy
Dracula?”

“Yes,” I say, without hesitation, “and you and your son will finally be safe.”

I project confidence. I project competence. I wow my crowd.

I beat Father to the parlor just barely in time to set
Curse of the Cubs
on his end table, plop in a decorative way on the rug, and open my acting book.

“Evening, sugar,” Radford says, entering in a tux. “Why, what’s this?” He sets the kukri knife on the arm of his recliner and picks up the book.

By the standard that applies, it’s not much of a gift.

“Merely a token,” I assure him. “I thought . . .” I thought
what
? “Perhaps in celebration of your deathday we could” — I’ve got it! — “attend the Country Music Awards. I’ll arrange for front-row seats.”

At this, he begins to tear up, momentarily speechless.

As I leaf through my book, trying to strategize, Harrison escorts Zachary into the parlor. I make sure my glance seems unconcerned. I don’t detect any bruises, cuts, contusions, punctures, or broken bones.

I’m ashamed of the way I treated him at the Edison. I hope he doesn’t hate me, but I can’t apologize or explain, not now. I have to maintain my façade.

WHEN HARRISON AND I ARRIVE
, my gaze goes first to Miranda.

She’s studying
Wow the Crowd.
She’s dressed in a bridal, full-length, diamond-studded sky-blue gown. She’s wearing a thick black ribbon around her neck. Her dark hair is curled in ringlets. Black lipstick. Pale pink blush. Pale pink eye shadow. No jewelry. Her shoes look like ballet slippers. They peek out from the skirt. She sits with her legs tucked on the werebear rug in front of the fireplace.

“Miranda?” I say.

Ignoring me, she wets a dainty fingertip and turns a page.

Drac’s feet are up on the La-Z-Boy recliner. He’s sharpening the knife that was a gift from Sabine and Philippe.
Curse of the Cubs
is on the table beside him. His jacket is draped over the back of the Arts-and-Crafts sofa to his right.

If Michael hadn’t yanked my powers, I could use my radiance. Light up like a supernova and take Drac out.

Except that Miranda also would be directly exposed.

I can’t bring myself to give up on my girl. Not yet. Besides, if my theory holds, Harrison may be redeemable, too.

If only I had a sword of divine flame like Michael’s.

Harrison’s cell rings. He takes the call, excuses himself, and then reappears. “Presenting Sabine, Philippe, and Geoff.”

It’s Geoff Calvo, Miranda’s high-school crush. He’s dressed in formalwear. He’s showing off fangs. We’re talking date to the princess. Everything but the corsage.

For the kid to have already transformed, they must’ve fed him the blood and killed him not long after he left here.

I was jealous of Calvo. I admit it. But what a waste! He was so young.

Miranda smiles like the Mona Lisa, but I’d swear I catch a glimpse of horror in her eyes. I don’t trust it, though. My girl was never this good of an actress.

Sabine curtsies to Drac and then Miranda, gesturing to Calvo. “The master informed us that you would reconsider him as a consort.”

Miranda stands. She smoothes her skirt. She extends her hand for Calvo to kiss.

“Dear boy,” Drac begins, acknowledging Calvo’s bow, “we have a surprise for you tonight. This . . .” — he gestures my way — “is Her Highness’s former personal assistant. He has been discharged. In honor of your introduction to eternal society, I invite you to take the first bite.”

Had I felt badly for Calvo? He’s at my throat in an instant. I have no time to struggle. His teeth tear my skin, worm into my vein. Pain flashes. Invasive. Intoxicating.

Before I know it, I’m numb. Is this death? It must be. As if from a distance, I hear Drac’s voice again. I’m going to hell, I realize. And this is the welcoming committee.

IT HAPPENS IN A BLUR.
Geoff latches onto Zachary’s neck. Meanwhile, Radford is saying, “Never fear, sugar plum. You’re welcome to finish the traitor off.”

I’m ready to tear Zachary free when the neophyte vampire shoves him aside.

I’m not sure what’s wrong. Geoff’s lips are blistered. They’re swollen, burned, no, burning? As he raises his hands to his face, I realize his cheeks are on fire. He takes a drunken step. Flames spread to his throat, eating away the flesh.

How is this possible? I’m as repulsed as I am mesmerized.

The neck folds. The head separates. One knee cracks on the way down.

The fire consumes him. It feels like Texas in July.

All that’s left of Geoff are scorch marks on the rug.

The boy I spent so long pining for is completely gone.

I’m not glad of that. Nothing here tonight makes me happy, but it’s a relief that he won’t be corrupted any further and that he won’t hurt anyone else.

Sabine and Philippe trade a look of alarm. Harrison pours a glass of blood wine from a crystal decanter and hands it to Radford. Then the eternal PA takes a shot straight from the mouth of the decanter himself.

It was the blood, I realize, Zachary’s blood. “What was that, a protection spell?” I ask him. “What are you? A sorcerer, warlock, Hogwarts grad?
What?
”

He says the most ludicrous thing. “I’m on a mission from God.”

Even stranger? The answer seems to make sense to Radford. He raises his glass in a toast to Zachary. “You,” he muses. “It was you. You know, I chose her because of you. I meant to adopt the other one. Then you appeared in the moonlight, and I took refuge in the deepest shadows, delighted by my good fortune. When you, of all beings, appeared to her, I knew that she must be special. I had to make her mine.”

I turn to Radford. “What is he, Father? What do you mean?”

He sighs. “They just don’t make angels of the Lord the way they used to.”

It’s like I’ve been punched in the heart. I remember Zachary asking me at the bookstore if I believed in angels. I remember the tattoo on his chest. I . . .

Oh, my God. It’s true.

I asked when we first met if he was a wereperson. I instinctively knew that he wasn’t human. No human could have such silken hair and flawless skin. No human could eat like a sumo wrestler, never work out, and look like that.

The love and lust of my life is as holy as I’m unholy. No wonder Zachary kept rejecting me! I’m positive that sucking face with a bloodsucker falls in the Thou Shalt Not category. Why is he here? Shouldn’t he be topping a Christmas tree or decorating an Italian fresco or singing in a choir or strumming a harp or, I don’t know, molting?

Where are his wings?

“An angel,” I breathe, finally able to form words again.

“A fallen one, apparently,” Radford observes. “Likely of the guardian variety.”

Sabine excuses herself to freshen up, and Philippe exits with her. They don’t ask or wait for permission. They just go.

“How do you know that he’s fallen?” Harrison asks.

Radford laughs. “Fully endowed angels don’t tend to spend quality time with eternals. Even daughter-seducing do-gooders like this one. Besides, if he weren’t fallen, he would’ve already vanished in a twinkling or used his radiance to vaporize us all.”

“He’s a guardian angel?” I ask, trying to make sense of it.

That’s when Zachary speaks. “Yeah. I am, or at least I was, yours.”

“REMOVE THIS
to the main courtyard,” Radford orders Harrison, slipping on his jacket. “He’ll make fine entertainment.”

“You can’t kill me,” Zachary says as blood wells at his neck wound.

Radford’s smile darkens the room. “I know. It makes you the perfect, perpetual victim. I can only imagine how publicly torturing you, night after night, year after year, over the centuries will enhance my reputation.”

It takes all of my will power not to visibly react to that.

As Harrison leads Zachary out of the parlor, Radford pulls a cigar from his inside breast pocket and calls after them. “Wait. I’ll go with you. I have the most jim-dandy idea.” He turns to me. “Sugar?”

“With your permission, Father, I’ll meet you at the gala.” I must act now, while he’s preoccupied. He may be able to travel as dust and mist, but he can’t be two places at once. It’s the most logical explanation for his not foiling the dungeon breakout. He was distracted either by observing me or by Harrison’s return. “I wish to speak to Sabine privately about . . .” I settle on the safest default I can muster, at least when addressing an undead southern gentleman. “Um, it’s girl talk.”

When I find Sabine standing alone in a third-floor hallway, she’s sipping blood from a monogrammed silver hip-flask and staring out the window overlooking the central courtyard. Apparently, I’m not the only one who likes to know where the vampire king is.

“You are dismayed, princess?” Sabine asks as I approach. “Please understand. You said one thing about Geoff, but then your Father called —”

“I know,” I reply. “You couldn’t defy the master. Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“I beg your pardon?” she asks, raising a curtain of mascara-laden eyelashes.

I can hardly believe her corseted mermaid dress. Sabine takes her fashion as seriously as her feminism, yet tonight she looks like a vapid doll because that’s the expectation. Radford’s expectation. She has to hate it.

“Sabine, may I have a word with you in confidence?”

She bows as well as she can with the sewn-in waist.

“I feel I should warn you.” It’s a baby step, nothing Radford wouldn’t excuse should he catch word of it. “Tonight the master will order his subjects to dine on their own personal assistants. It’s to send a message after some glitches in the management of the royal staff. Should you wish to protect your —”

“‘Glitches’ like employing and daring to torture an angel?
Mon Dieu!
”

Jackpot. I see no need to clarify that I’m the one who hired said angel in the first place. Sabine trembles, likely recalling the fallout of her handmaiden’s indiscretion, the indignity of having to eat the nun’s body herself, the fire that ripped away Philippe’s good looks and their longtime home. I bet she’s thinking that payback for angel abuse — that divine retribution — is far greater than she can endure.

“When we met, I was taken by his sophistication,” she says, referring to Radford, “his unusual respect for women, as an eternal male of his seniority. That he would name a young woman as his heir is significant. However, the master is no Old Blood.”