"We will see when he wakes," Ontoniel said. He fell silent again, then said, "I do not like the idea of you going alone."
Johnnie made a face. "Neither do I, honestly, but she holds nearly all the cards right now. Until we hold the better hand, we must play the game her way. Grim said he would come for me. I can stall until he does."
"Grim is it?" Ontoniel asked, looking amused, but only said, "You are being overly confident, John."
"No, I am not," Johnnie said. "Ugliness in vampires is one of the main taboos, third only to the blood-craze, which is second only to taking up amorously with a human. She has worked hard to make herself beautiful, to give herself power and place. I suspect desperation and ambition alone made her a masterful necromancer. She tried to align with our family, but only as a stepping stone. All the real power, the old power, is back in Europe. I would imagine, as reluctant as she was to leave, she wants very badly to return. She is vain, cruel, ruthless, and under it all desperate not to lose all that she has gained—and to keep gaining. A magic mirror would be all she needs. Someone like that … it will not be much more complicated to keep her talking than it would be to get most any vampire to wax ad nauseum about himself. I only have to last an hour or so."
Ontoniel laughed, tired and sad, but with a thread of real amusement. "You have Tommy's sharp mind."
Johnnie hesitated, then said quietly, awkwardly. "But you were the one who taught me how to use it."
For a moment, there was only silence. Then Ontoniel said, "Go, John. I want this over with, and I want my sons back home, safe and sound. Do not be reckless."
"Yes, Father," Johnnie said. "I will see you in a couple of hours." He turned sharply around, pulled the door shut behind him, and left.
He would get Rostislav to get him close, and go the rest of the way by cab, and hopefully this entire mess really would be over in a couple of hours.
*~*~*
Johnnie thanked the taxi driver, and handed him cash through the window, telling the man to have a good night. He stood on the sidewalk and waited for the driver to vanish, then finally turned and looked at the house which had once been his home. He barely remembered it.
He had preferred to forget. It had hurt, it had felt like a betrayal, but he could not both cling to his dead life and live his new. It had been easier to throw himself into what had seemed a living nightmare at the time, than it had been to cling to a life that with every passing day seemed more and more like a dream.
It was, he thought, a sad looking house now. No one had taken care of it through the years, leaving it now to look sunken, dilapidated, and somehow forlorn. A worn out For Sale sign fought to be seen through the overgrown grass and weeds. At some point, someone—kids, probably—had thrown rocks through the front windows. Litter was strewn across the porch: bottles, cigarettes, snacks.
No one, Johnnie surmised, had wanted to live in a house where such a tragedy had occurred. He remembered his last birthday, the way a friend whose face he could now no longer recall had gone missing. Only a week after that, his parents had been murdered.
Johnnie strode up the cracked and broken cement path, footsteps loud in the utter silence of a dead world. Most of the houses on this street looked empty, deserted. Had the poison from his house spread out, spread so far?
He reached the porch, picking his way over the garbage, and opened a screen door that had practically no screen left. He knocked on the front door. When no reply came, he tested the knob and found it unlocked.
Having learned his lesson the first time, Johnnie glanced down, around, and cautiously sniffed the air, checking for any magical booby traps. But he could smell no magic, not near enough that he might be walking into a trap.
Moderately satisfied, reasonably certain that Ekaterina would not try anything until she had the mirror, Johnnie finally stepped inside. A single, small pool of light leaked from what he remembered being the living room. He did not remember the house well, but he thought that it had not looked then the way it did now, neglect notwithstanding. The walls were darker than he remembered, and there was carpet in places where he remembered bare wood. No doubt the realtors had tried to cover up whatever remained of the bloody mess left behind.
But Johnnie sensed no amount of effort would ever sell the house, and the realtor had obviously figured that out a long time ago and given up even pretending to maintain the house. Johnnie was surprised they had not simply torn it down and built a new house.
In the living room, Ekaterina sat on a couch that Johnnie knew was not the couch he had sat on so many times growing up. Not that he remembered his couch well, but he knew it from photos. "You are two minutes late," Ekaterina said.
"My driver got a bit lost," Johnnie said. "He is not familiar with the normal suburbs. There is nothing but normals for miles; not a good place to meet, but I guess you would not care if normals got hurt by something you might do."
Ekaterina laughed. "You're right, I don't care. Normals are food, nothing more." Her face was pretty and cold in the light of a single, small, magically-powered lamp. "But, we will not be bothered by any normals, if that is your concern. Should they prove to be a problem, they are easily dealt with." Her smile turned razor sharp. "Like your parents."
Johnnie held on to his temper—he needed to keep her busy, keep her talking, and if he had to take such barbs to do that, he would. "I do not understand why you had to kill them. Logically, it made more sense to keep my parents alive. If you had, it would not have taken you this long to get the mirror."
"They kept defying me," Ekaterina said with a shrug. "I thought to kill your mother, and force your father to cooperate, but Sariah was harder to control than I had anticipated. I only just barely kept you alive. Now, here we are, seventeen years later. That is not so long a wait for a vampire."
"I suppose not, considering you must have waited almost a century for medical science to be good enough to supplement magic to make you just pretty enough to pass for a proper vampire."
She moved faster than Johnnie could follow, slapping him so hard that Johnnie understood the phrase 'saw stars'. He could taste blood in his mouth.
"You have no place mocking me in regards to beauty," Ekaterina hissed. "Little Johnnie Goodnight, turned Johnnie Desrosiers; a stupid, worthless normal. No magic, just the ability to smell it. You're nothing but a dog, with a half-wit alchemist for a father and a dream-slut for a mother."
Johnnie said nothing.
"Nothing but a dog," Ekaterina repeated, "and yet all I ever hear is talk of your beauty, your so-called talents, how much Ontoniel adores his worthless human son. A stupid fucking normal, and the Dracula Desrosiers loves you like you really were his own son! You're not even a vampire!"
"What bothers you more," Johnnie asked her. "That my father accepts me more despite my being normal and adopted than yours ever did, or that it is only because of you that Ontoniel is my father at all?"
Ekaterina slapped him again.
Johnnie was really getting tired of people hitting him. It was no fun at all, not like his hitting Bergrin, who whined when they both knew he had barely felt Johnnie's smacks. He wiped the blood from his lips, and said, "So you would say you are bothered equally by both those facts?"
"In the fairytale she lives, and the Queen dies, but we both know that in reality you die, Snow White."
"I am not Snow White," Johnnie said, taken aback. The story of Snow White was so legendary, no one really knew the
true
story anymore. Snow White and the woman known now only as the 'Evil Queen' were two of the most famous tragic figures in abnormal history—or in what passed for history, amongst abnormals. As Ontoniel had said, few wanted to remember and record the long years they lived.
No one knew how Snow White and the Evil Queen had been related. The most common tales were the classic stepmother and stepdaughter, but they could have been real mother and daughter, or sisters, step-sisters. Like all major pieces of the tale, the truth was lost. What
was
known was that Snow White had been an exceptional witch, and the Evil Queen a great alchemist.
But Snow White had been the better of the two, and over time the Evil Queen grew jealous. Like all alchemists, the Queen had been obsessed with the impossible relics. But she had also been highly skilled at the 'crasser' art of mere poisons.
Finally the Queen's jealousy turned into hate, and she set out to kill her rival—the woman she had once loved, once admired, once worked happily alongside. Legend went she tried various ways and means to kill Snow White, but it was not until well after the last, successful attempt, that anyone realized previous incidents had been failed attempts.
History also disagreed on how the Evil Queen died—whether she had actually been caught and killed, or if she had killed herself.
Ekaterina laughed. "No? You live mere seconds from a beach, but your skin is fair. Hair as black as ebony, and even without all that lovely blood, your lips lean toward red. Perfect at everything, deserving nothing, uncaring of those around you. A mother who gave up her life for you, and your father a lonely man in his castle, too stupid and foolish to see what he let into his home."
"An evil witch who lost her magic mirror, and is jealous of poor Snow White?" Johnnie asked derisively.
"Give it to me," Ekaterina said. "I have had enough of this foolishness. You are no longer protected, Johnnie, by anyone or anything. I can kill you in many more ways than you could possibly imagine."
Johnnie shook his head. "I am not giving you anything until I know that my family and friends will be safe. I am not stupid, Evil Queen. You cannot simply leave us alive. Did you think I would believe that you would simply take the mirror, take your parents, and leave the rest of alive?"
Ekaterina laughed. "Whenever did I say I gave a damn about my parents? They did not give a damn about me until I made myself beautiful. If they are not dead yet, they will be dead soon; I've no further use for them. When I return to Italy, it will be alone. Give me the mirror, Johnnie, or I will start killing."
"You kill anyone," Johnnie said, slipping his hand into his pocket to wrap it around the mirror, "and I will destroy the mirror. It will not take much to destroy it, and I can do it before you can get it away from me. You get nothing until I know they will all be safe."
She glared at him. "I see there will be no peaceful resolution to this. Are you trying to stall until your little guard dog can get in here to kill me? I am surprised you did not bring him along, but actually listened to me and came alone. A fascinating specimen, your dog."
Johnnie did not reply, but the control over his temper started to fray. If she dared to even think of hurting Grim—
"I will make you a bargain, dear Johnnie," Ekaterina said. "Truly, I am going too far away to care what mess I leave behind here, and no one will come after me. There is too much I could do to them. So, give me the mirror, and give me your guard dog, and I will let the others go free."
"No," Johnnie said flatly. "Even if I believed you, I will not hand him over. He is not an object to be traded. Why do you even want him?"
"He intrigues me. Not much to look at, of course, but he has power the likes of which I have never seen. He would suit my experiments, I think. I would not mind knowing the weight and flavor of his blood, either."
Johnnie's hand tightened on his cane, as he fought against the urge to beat her with it. "You will never touch him."
"Mm, possessive," Ekaterina purred. "Is that ugly little thing the reason that your daddy's love spell finally broke? I could do to you what I did to your brother. How would you stop me? I could make you adore me, make you love me, make you forget all about—"
He swung, catching her across the side of her face with his cane. Pulling back, he stepped away as she recovered from the shock of his actually striking her.
Then she lunged, and Johnnie bolted to the side, barely avoiding her. He pressed the release on his cane and drew the blade, bring it up and assuming a defensive stance. "You will not get away with this, Ekaterina. You want the mirror, you will have to kill me to get to it. If you try to hurt my family, I will see you live to regret it for a very long time."
Ekaterina laughed, and then suddenly Johnnie's eyes were watering with the effort not to sneeze. "Do you honestly think, Snow White, that you can defeat me? That is only how the
story
ends, not the reality."
She lunged again, and Johnnie swung, connecting with her arm, blocking her briefly—but then she did something, and he sneezed, and Ekaterina took her opening.
Laughing again, Ekaterina shoved him into the wall and wrapped her hands around his throat, squeezing tightly. Whatever spell she had cast was keeping Johnnie from fighting her—from moving at all. He struggled to breathe, but the effort was futile.
"I am going to leave your corpse in the middle of the city for all to see, for your father to find, and I hope the pain of it kills him slowly. I will watch him bury you, bury Elam, bury all of them, and laugh. I'll string you up and leave you to bleed out slowly, leave you aware enough to wonder if the rest of your family is dead yet, to know that one by one, they will fall in dreams, until at last your father comes and finds your remains. Then I will find your guard dog, and ensnare him, and we will toast your name in Venice before I take him to my lab and make him scream in pain because he loves me."