For the first time in a long time, I felt embarrassed, although my face didn’t burn with embarrassment. To do so would have implied that I radiated some degree of heat, which I didn’t. Not like the creature next to me.
Confused, I shut my mouth and might have rocked a little. We lapsed into silence, although the thoughts in my head weren’t so silent. And the demon bitch inside me wasn’t helping either. She was clamoring to get out. It was all I could do to stamp her back down and throw up a mental wall, which was harder to do than it sounds, especially when you’ve got something living in you...and that something desperately wants out. Months ago, I had learned that I didn’t like communicating with her directly. Despite what the Librarian had told me last year, love didn’t seem to be working. She only seemed to be getting angrier or more desperate. Then again, maybe she was getting angrier and more desperate because of love. Either way, she had made my life a living nightmare.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“You want to take boxing lessons?”
He laughed again, the sound coming from him surprisingly easily. I would never have guessed that Dracula had such a good sense of humor, other than, say, laughing maniacally as he watched those being impaled before him: men, women and children. Indeed, Dracula had been a monster before he became a monster.
“Not quite, Samantha, although I see your friend Jacky is quite gifted.”
I was disturbed by his knowledge of my name and Jacky’s. He undoubtedly knew my son’s name, too. He’d been following me, for how long, I didn’t know.
“So, why are you here?”
“I thought it was time to make my presence known.”
“And I care, why?”
He didn’t laugh at my abruptness this time. Instead, his eyes narrowed and I caught a brief glimpse of the monster he was. Something flashed behind his eyes, something that did not approve of being talked to in such a way. I could give a fuck about what he approved and didn’t approve, Dracula or not.
“Because we are connected, Samantha Moon.”
“I beg to differ.”
“You can feel her reaching out to me, can’t you?”
“Not you,” I said. “The thing within you.”
“Myself and the thing within me...are very much the same, Samantha, as we have been for many centuries. Call it an equal partnership.”
“I call it creepy as hell.”
“Perhapsss...”
I shivered at that. Indeed, I was sensing that Dracula and the demon within were interchangeable, coming and going at will, one rising to the surface, while the other stepped back, almost instantly. Perhaps they existed side-by-side, if that was possible.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“You know what we want, Sssamantha.”
“Yeah, well, you ain’t getting her. So, you can both go to hell.”
The man, known as Vlad Tepes, who had killed tens of thousands of the innocent back in the day, whose name was synonymous with evil, smiled at me slowly. “Do not be so quick to dismiss us, Sssamantha. We can offer you much.”
“You have nothing I want—”
His movement was instant, certainly faster than I could react. One moment his hands were folded in his lap, and the next, he was holding my own hand, gripping it tightly. I tried to rise, but he held me in place.
“Do you feel that, Sam?”
“Let go, asshole, or this is going to get ugly.”
“Do you feel my warmth, Sam? Do you? This could be yours again. This, and so much more.”
“Let me fucking go.”
“No one can see me, Sam. They think you are talking to yourself.”
I stopped struggling and looked around. Indeed, others in the gym were staring at me, including my son and Jacky, who had stopped their recent round of workouts.
“I don’t understand,” I said under my breath.
“I will explain everything to you, Samantha. This and so much more. Every secret. Everything.”
“Let go,” I said, “or I will tear your fucking throat out.”
Vlad Tepes held my gaze, and released my hand. “Consider my words.”
“Go to hell.”
“I’ll be back,” he said.
He smiled, stood, and walked away, exiting the gym and heading out into the night.
Chapter Seventeen
“It looks closed, Ma,” said Anthony.
He was right, of course. In fact, the whole damn campus looked closed. No surprise there, since it was Friday night, the only night the school’s epic library closed early.
I might have growled under my breath. The Librarian and his damn inconvenient hours. Where he went when the library was closed, I hadn’t a clue. But I was going to find him and talk to him, dammit.
A handful of students milled about, some alone, some walking with friends, others standing around and making plans for the weekend. Some lights were on in some of the buildings, but for the most part, the place was closed for business.
Anthony and I stood at the library’s front entrance, whose automatic doors normally whispered open. There was no whispering now. Inside, through the smoke glass, the place was dark and empty, save for a dim light hanging over the help desk inside.
“So, Jacky thinks I’ll be ready soon...” continued Anthony. My boy had been talking non-stop since we’d left his practice session with Jacky.
“Uh-huh,” I said and led him around to the side of the massive structure. Anthony trotted along, pretty much oblivious to his surroundings, so wrapped up was he in his story.
“But he says I gotta keep practicing my footwork.”
And to show me what he meant—or just to get some extra reps in—he did just that. His sneakered feet moved rapidly over the wet grass, crossing and scissoring. As they moved, my son moved his shoulders, too, dodging an invisible assailant, moving faster than he had any right to move.
No, I thought, he has every right.
He was, after all, now acting as his own guardian angel.
Craziness, I thought. All of this.
We were now standing under a floodlight next to the library, where no mom and son belong. So, before anyone spotted us, I grabbed hold of his juking and jiving shoulders—which was no easy feat—and led my son out of the light and over into the shadows.
“Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee!” he said, still moving his feet this way and that.
“I’m going to sting your butt like a bee if you don’t keep it down,” I said, whispering.