Strictly gothic midnight.., p.11
Strictly Gothic (Midnight Rose Book 1), page 11
Eleven
It took the headlights of an oncoming truck in the lane opposite to shake Serena out of her intoxicated stupor. She was driving on route 49 and had no memory of even getting into her car or turning the key. How long had she been driving in this fugue state?
She pulled over and sat gripping the wheel for what seemed an eternity. Her mind had turned to Jell-O. No, make that pudding.
Simon’s kiss had been magical. His touch, his look, everything about him was oddly compelling. Simon Delacroix was unlike any man she’d encountered. His sensual voice lingered in her mind like a sensual caress. It made her feel silly, giddy, almost like she was high.
High on what? Pheromones?
What was it about Simon that had seized her with the power of a Sci-Fi tractor beam and drew her into his power?
Another truck passed, rocking her car slightly, reminding Serena that she was sitting on the side of the road in the dark with her flashers blinking.
She brushed her palm over her brow to smooth back the annoying wisps of auburn hair that always seemed to hang in her eyes. Had that coffee been laced with something weird?
This powerful stirring of emotions troubled her. She didn’t let herself get emotionally involved with guys. If you got burned enough times, you learned not to touch the stove, to not even turn it on. You ordered take out. When it came to sex, Serena ordered take out. At least in the years since Michael left. After four years of living together, he woke up one morning told her he didn’t love her anymore and that was it. He left that very morning, left her in the kitchen of their apartment clutching the jagged pieces of her heart.
The strands of her Dark Shadows ringtone brought her back from that painful precipice. Serena pulled her cell from her pocket and looked at the screen before opening it. Damien. Again. “Yeah?” she answered as the blue light illuminated the front seat.
“You okay? Where’s the food? Where are you?”
“I’m on my way back,” she replied. “Why, where are you?”
“The Bates Motel.” His acerbic tone reminded her of their tense encounter.
She ignored his creepy movie themed answer. As she pulled onto the main street of Harmony Corners a red Crispy Fried Chicken to Go sign flashing in the window of the gas station caught her attention. “How does a basket of chicken sound?”
“Heavenly.”
Serena assured him she’d be there as soon as their order was ready and ended the call. She went inside to order dinner. As she waited at the old-fashioned soda counter, she scanned the local newspaper to see if they mentioned the cause of death for Creepy Eddy. The article was more about his life than his death, but it did give the cause of death. Eddie had been stabbed in throat by what the authorities believed to be a broken bottle and had died from a rapid loss of blood. The crime took place at approximately 3 in the morning, just after closing. Poor Eddie, she amended, trying to be more respectful of the deceased.
When Serena drove into the motel parking lot, Damien was sitting on the plastic chair outside their room door. Seeing him hunched over, arms crossed on his knees and his black hoodie pulled over his head put Serena’s teeth on edge.
Here we go, confrontation time.
She exited the jeep on high alert, her gut churning with demented butterflies. “Get the camera gear from the back,” she directed and marched past him to the door. It was unlocked. The fragrant scent of southern fried chicken wafting about her nostrils gave her spirits a lift. Fried chicken and cottage fries went a long way to smooth a tense situation.
Damien came shuffling in with her camera gear. He set the two bags on her bed and slumped down on his bed in one fluid movement. He crossed his arms over his knees and hunkered down.
Oh, great, he’s pouting.
“Dinner’s served,” she said too loudly. “It’s not drive-thru chicken, its fresh made while you wait. I had to wait 20 minutes for them to prep our order.” She removed the Styrofoam containers from the brown bag and set them out on the console. “Smells great, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Damien’s flat voice was barely audible. “I’m sorry about last night.”
“You should be,” she said coldly and busied herself by loading her plate with food. After a few moments of deathly quiet, she turned to Damien. Serena gasped. The container of coleslaw in her hand dropped on the bureau on its side, spilling a little on the wood surface.
Damien’s right eye was swollen, his lip broken and puffy. “What happened?” His hands were jammed in his sweatshirt pockets. His head was down, eyes on the carpet.
“I . . . ah, got rolled this afternoon.” He shrugged and tried to smile through his bruised lips.
“Where?” Serena pushed his hood down, the better to get a good look at his injuries.
He jerked his head back, wincing when she lifted her hand toward his mottled face. “At the park. I went for a walk while I was waiting for you to return.”
“Damien—your cheek needs stitches. We should call the police to report an assault.”
“No.” He palmed her hand to prevent it from touching his black eye. “I heal fast. It was just a couple of teenage skateboard punks. Actually, it was three of them.” He sat back on the bed and rumpled his jet-black hair with his hand. Silver bracelets jangled from the motion. “They didn’t like my Goth look. They were underage, so I didn’t hit back.”
“Bastards!” Serena spat. Kids were the same everywhere, it seemed. Big city or small town, teen boys could be bullies. At least Damien had enough maturity to not retaliate.
His smile was pleading, desperate. “Please, don’t make a big deal out of this. I’m fine. We don’t want to attract the attention of the local police, do we? Not with a murder investigation going on and we are the strange new Goth types visiting the town.”
He did have a point. Their attire tended to draw unwanted attention as it was. It was best not to start a turf war by reporting the local teens to the police and raising questions about their presence here. Should they check out of this place and go to a motel in another town?
Then again, doing that right after a murder had taken place might make them look guilty. Staying in town was the best way to prove their innocence regarding Eddie’s demise. Serena gave a reluctant nod and turned back to the food, busying herself with dishing him up a generous plate of fried chicken.
She handed him a plate of food and then sat opposite him on her bed, facing Damien.
They ate in a tense silence. Unable to bare the strain between them, she finally asked the question burning in her heart. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a gun? I need the truth, Damien. If we are to continue working together you owe me an explanation.”
He stared down at the skeletal remains of his chicken breast. “I thought that if you knew I had a gun all this time, you’d be freaked out, and I was right. It’s just for protection. Swear to God. It’s not wise to travel through backwater towns without some form of protection. My dad’s right in that.”
“Maybe.” She couldn’t argue. She kept a big knife in the shaft of her knee-high lace up boots, and a taser under the seat of her car. She didn’t advertise either weapon to the unaware. Having a gun for the same reason wasn’t much different. It was a guy thing. “Ok, I’ll let that pass, for now. But why did you suddenly go off on me last night? I’ve always called you Goth-Boy; it’s your nickname. I give all my interns nicknames. After two and a half months it suddenly bothers you?”
He shrugged. A sheepish look came over his bruised face. “I was out of line.” He licked his upper lip, and then winced as the crack must have stung at the action. “I guess it reminded me of my father’s heckling. He was always after me to prove myself, you know. Be a man, all that horse pucky.”
He set the plate aside and clasped his hands together between his splayed knees. “That’s all I heard growing up, be a man, make the family proud, carry on this great family legacy, blah, blah, blah. But Dad’s tone was what cut deep. It always implied I couldn’t measure up to his expectations. I was keyed up after that spooky business with the Corpse Bride, and then that dude showing up out of nowhere to lead us out of the haunted woods. It freaked me out. I’m sorry. For real. It won’t happen again, Serena, I promise.”
Serena studied him for a few moments, allowing the tension to linger so he knew the seriousness of the incident. “If it does, you are out on your ass. Got it?”
He nodded, and leaned forward, his arms braced on his thighs, and looked at the floor.
“I’ll try not to call you Goth-Boy anymore, and you’ll not be flaming out on me again, deal?”
He lifted his head to give her a sort of half grimace, half smile. “Deal. This murder business shook me up. We just met the dude that night. And boom, a few hours later, he’s dead. He was a creep, but still, it was a shock. It’s been a whacked couple of days.”
That was an understatement.
* * *
“What is your defense?” Simon scowled at Dr. Ruben Belladonna, and then at the man’s older looking half-vampire daughter, Antonia. “What reason can you give that would forestall my tearing your body limb from limb and tossing your undead remains to the alligators in the swamp? Admit it, Ruben. You directed your daughter to entice the visitors here.”
“My lord,” Ruben intoned in a soft voice as he stepped away from Antonia, “you gave me the honor, the privilege, of caring for Miz Arabella as I saw fit.” The slender, eternally young black physician pushed his round glasses up from their slump on his nose, a habit he had when deeply troubled. “You told me to make her well again, at whatever the cost.”
Ruben Belladonna did not need eyeglasses. As a vampire, he had perfect eyesight. He simply liked the affect they gave in making him look more mature and scholarly than the twenty years he was when he had been changed.
“Yes, I told you that, at least a century ago. Yet, she is still quite mad.”
The pair before him remained silent. Simon ground his teeth, pushed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, and fought the urge to strangle the good doctor.
The man had no idea the severity of his offense.
“The woman who came here is my inamorata,” Simon ground out with difficulty. The mere thought of what could have occurred was like glass shards being ground into his heart. Simon rushed to stand before the doctor, fury enhancing his rapid movement. He stood toe to toe with Ruben and felt his eyes take on that dangerous, electrified gleam as his fangs descended and his fists curled into iron clubs. “Arabella might have killed her. And then I would be truly damned, destined to become a demented fiend, and you would be obligated to kill me under vampire law.”
Ruben’s eyes widened at his words. “How could either of us have known your inamorata was the one coming to interview the caretaker of the cemetery? The possibility of this happening is approximately one hundred thousand to—“
“Spare me the statistics. You endangered the woman destined to be my bride.”
“Your petulance is tiring, brother,” Remy’s sarcastic tone echoed behind Simon.
Simon’s younger sibling waited a few seconds after speaking to take physical form. He made a face at Simon and then chuckled heartily as Antonia left her father’s side to launch herself into her ‘uncle’ Remy’s embrace. Antonia squealed with delight at the reunion, ruining Simon’s confrontation with her father for his latest infraction of the rules.
“You should have told me you were coming,” Antonia exclaimed, hugging Remy and then gliding back to take in his tall, lithe form. “Damn, after two hundred years the man can still melt hearts.”
“Are you finished?” Simon gave his sibling a feral snarl. “As always, your timing is unfortunate.”
“This lord of the manor bit went out ages ago,” Remy scoffed. “We’re not in pre-revolutionary Paris anymore, Simon. Get over yourself.”
“Remy,” Antonia chastened, “you mustn’t speak to Simon so. He is our liege lord.”
“Bitter thanks I get for trying to save your asses.” Remy released Antonia and approached Simon with a sober expression marring his GQ model appearance. “My lord, you required my presence?” Remy bowed to him in the courtly fashion of their mortal youth among the French aristocracy, giving Simon the honor due as the founder of their vampire line.
Simon waited for some sign of disrespect, a wisecrack or an irreverent hand gesture from his brother. Remy remained solemn. The imp’s purpose had been served. He’d interrupted Simon’s tirade against Ruben and Antonia, blunting Simon’s anger with his dramatic entrance.
After watching the proceedings with stoic silence, Destiny moved across the room to embrace Remy as well. They exchanged greetings and ignored Simon’s presence as they attempted to catch up on each other’s lives.
“I thought you were in Paris?” Remy said with surprise. “I had no idea you would be here. Such a pleasant surprise, babe.” He released her and looked her up and down. “You look a trifle pale, but hot and tempting, as usual.”
“I was tired of Paris,” Destiny replied in a wistful tone. “I was homesick. And Phillipe and I are over. He is too set in his ways. I hate the old-world lordly aristocratic crap.”
“I hear you, Babe,” Remy laughed, his face alive with amusement. He shot Simon a curt look before returning his fawning gaze to their latest addition to the vampire family. “As do I. So what if you lived in the eighteenth century, it’s the twenty-first, dude. Evolve already.”
“Exactly.” Destiny agreed, not catching on to Remy’s subtle barb sent Simon’s way. She was too focused on her former lover to realize Remy was baiting Simon with his jest. “He took his role as an enforcer way too seriously. He was fun to be with before they promoted him, then it all turned to bow and scrape, my lord this and his lordship that. You’d think they never had a revolution, the way he carried on.”
“I trust you are well, Remy?” Simon enquired, arching a brow in censure at their little ‘bitch-fest’, to use more modern terminology they seemed to prefer.
“Tres Bien, mon frère,” Remy’s blue eyes met his at last. “How is our dear Arabella?” He looked to Ruben. “Isn’t that why you summoned us to counsel, to discuss her condition?”
Ruben looked to Simon for permission to continue. Simon nodded.
“She recognized me, Remy. After a six months absence, Arabella knew me on sight. She was with me for half an hour. But then she retreated into her own world. She started talking to Edgar as if he were still alive. I continued to talk to her in the hope of bringing her around again, and she came out of it again. She returned to me.” Ruben sighed and rubbed the back of his neck with the palm of his hand. “It is a small thing, I grant you. Yet it gives me hope. She is not an actual revenant, I tell you. True revenants are not cajoled into lucidity by those they once knew. They exist on a pure instinctual, reactionary level. I believe she can be reclaimed.”
Simon groaned. Ruben had traveled halfway around the world to argue his case again for treating Arabella with the newest medical techniques. He was always bringing something new to Simon, a new cure, a new discovery, a new method of treating the mentally infirmed. There had been electric shock treatments in the 1960’s, regression therapy in the 1980’s, and then Ruben advocated trying the drugs that humans used to treat schizophrenia to cure Arabella. It had a minor success, but not enough to continue the treatment. Ruben had even tried magic spells. His enthusiastic treatments were based more upon hope and dreams than reality, in Simon’s opinion.
“She is a dangerous creature.” Remy argued on Simon’s behalf. “And we have broken the law by harboring her for over a century and a half.” Remy stepped forward to place his hand on Ruben’s shoulder. “I remind you, if the Vampire Council discovers we have been harboring a revenant we would all be punished severely. Do you relish the prospect of being locked in a coffin for half a century? That is the fate awaiting you and me if we are caught. But Simon could be put to death for allowing Arabella to continue to exist, as he is our liege lord.”
“I am aware,” Ruben replied softly. He touched his own throat gingerly, an unconscious reaction to the favored method of execution for a vampire; beheading. “I understand the risk you have taken, my lord. I would not put any of us in danger if I did not believe there is a cure for this mysterious mental degeneration that plagues our kind.”
“We already know the preventative cure,” Simon shot back with impatience, “finding an inamorata whose spiritual aura compliments our own and sharing our blood.”
What Simon didn’t need to say was that finding said inamorata was a haphazard twist of fate. Those who found their true mate before their third century as an immortal avoided becoming revenants. A few made it as far as four centuries without going mad.
Some vampires used witches and fortune tellers to aid them in their quest. Eugenia Belladonna, Ruben’s mother, had been Simon’s psychic guide in the quest to find Serena. So far, Eugenia’s predictions had been accurate. She predicted that Serena’s path would collide with his in the second half of the second decade of the twenty-first century. That was fairly accurate, considering it left a five-year span for Simon to find her.
And he found her, but Serena hadn’t responded to his presence with recognition, as was the norm when inamoratas met. Even as a human they could sense the strong, magnetic pull of being soul mates. They always sensed and reacted to their inamorata’s presence, or so the legends went. Serena didn’t respond to him last night when they met, nor on other occasions when he was nearby, watching over her in the cemeteries as she pursued her work.
Something blocked their natural attraction.
Was it a spell, a talisman or charm?
And then, today she had opened to him. He sensed an abrupt change in her aura after she returned from the restroom. There had been more of an openness to her mind and her spirit.
It must have been Jean-Luc’s herb infused brew that opened her mind and heart to him.
“And furthermore,” Dr. Ruben continued in an authoritative tone, “Arabella is a little over two hundred, too young to become a true revenant. She went mad at less than one hundred years of age, in vampire terms. She is not a true revenant, don’t you see? We cannot condemn her to death, not at so young an age, not without seeking every opportunity to . . .”
