Kiss of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Realm Book 2) (19 page)

Feeling awkward, I went to pull away, but Dorian caught me by the arm. “You don’t really think you’re slipping off without me kissing you again. Do you?”

I felt myself blush. “No.”

It was a little challenging trying to fly after being so thoroughly kissed. I kept getting distracted. I found that if I started thinking about Dorian, then I ran the risk of nearly bumping into a chimney or getting tangled in some power lines. Sometimes flying was more dangerous than driving a car.

As I approached Sterngrove, I saw that my mom’s light was on again. I had thought that they usually gave the residence something to help them sleep. But knowing my mother, she had found a way to spit out the pill or avoid the shot. She could be crafty when she wanted to be.

I tapped at the window and a few moments later my mother opened it wide. “Oh,” she exclaimed, but in a whisper. She looked back into the room for a moment and then out at me again. “I wasn’t expecting you to visit again so soon,” she told me, still keeping her voice very quiet. “Are you sure you want to come in?”

“Um, yeah,” I told her. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Mom looked back into the room again. “Alright, I guess,” she said, pushing the window open a little wider.

It wasn’t like my mom not to be happy to see me. “What’s going on?” I asked as I sat down on the sill and entered the room.

“I think she’s worried about having too many guests,” a woman’s voice said from the far corner of the room. I whipped my head around to see Ilona lounging in a chair, looking malevolent.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “How did you get in?” I turned my eyes to my mother. “Did you actually invite her in here?” If Mom knew about vampires, then she should have known better than to invite one she didn’t know into her room.

“She didn’t have to,” Ilona informed me before my mother could reply. “I didn’t need an invitation,” she said, getting to her feet. She was dressed in more snug black leather, her outfit bordering on dominatrix.

“Why not?” I demanded.

The vampiress shrugged. “It turns out that no one thinks of this facility as home.”

Great
, I thought to myself. Ilona had access to terrorizing my mom on a technicality.

Releasing a droll little laugh, Ilona added, “It’s a sad commentary on the mental health care in this country. Don’t you think?”

“Why are you here?” I asked her. I wasn’t in the mood to put up with her stupid jokes.

She gave me a menacing smile. “The same reason you are,” she said. “I’m here to tell your mother that you’re about to run away with Dorian Vanderlind, the biggest womanizer in undead history.”

“He’s not like that anymore,” I said, sounding a bit defensive, even to my own ears.

“Why not?” she wanted to know. “Dorian has been a playboy for almost a hundred years. Why would he stop now?”

“He’s changed.”

“Oh, he’s changed,” Ilona said, forcing herself to laugh. “Isn’t that the mantra of all women in abusive relationships? He’s changed. He’s going to change. He’s promised he’s going to change.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve known Dorian for the last half a dozen decades and he’s never going to change. I just thought your mother should know the truth about your new love.”

“He has changed,” I insisted, directing my words toward my mom. “What we have is really special.”

“Oh, is it special?” Ilona said with a scathing laugh. “Does he feel connected to you in a way he’s never felt with any other female?”

My stomach dropped. How did this vampiress know what Dorian had said to me? “It’s true,” I insisted, although not with the same conviction I’d had a minute earlier.

“I’m sure it is,” Ilona said, her voice smug. “And it was true for me. And it’s been true for hundreds of women all over the world. And maybe he does truly feel that way. Maybe each time Dorian says it, he actually means it. At least for that moment, anyway.”

I felt a flash flood of insecurity. Maybe Ilona was right and Dorian was just using me. I felt tears welling my eyes, although I thought crying might be a very un-vampire thing to do.

“Is that why you’re here?” my mom asked Ilona. “You flew all the way down to Sterngrove and broke into a convalescent home to warn my daughter that the boy she loves is a scoundrel?”

“Well… yes.” Ilona stammered, caught off-guard.

“That’s very considerate of you,” Mom went on. “Is that what you do for a living? You fly around warning vulnerable young women about lascivious men?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Ilona nearly spat out the words.

“Oh.” Mom nodded. “So you’re making a special exception for my daughter?” She placed a hand on Ilona’s forearm. “Did this Dorian boy hurt you very badly? Is that why you’re doing this?”

Ilona lifted her chin. “He didn’t hurt me at all,” she informed us as she stepped away from my mother’s caress. “As a matter of fact, I am the one who ended our relationship.”

“I see,” Mom said, nodding. “And why did you end it? Was it because he was cheating on you?”

Ilona ran her hands over her ample curves. “Don’t be an idiot. No one cheats on me.”

“Well, was it because he told you he felt a deep connection with you and that frightened you?” Mom pressed.

“No,” Ilona told her. “Nothing frightens me.”

My mom folded her arms. “Then why exactly are you making a point of tormenting my daughter? She obviously feels some connection with this young man and you’re going out of your way to make her doubt that it’s real.”

“It isn’t real,” Ilona snarled.

Mom turned to me. “Do you think it’s real, honey?”

I fought down my panic and insecurities and everything else that was bubbling to the surface and thought about how I felt when I was with Dorian. When I was kissing him, it felt very real. But that wasn’t enough. Hormones could temporarily blind anyone and maybe that was all I was feeling. Dorian had been kind of a jerk when I first woke up in the ground and he’d told me he was my maker. I still had no idea why he’d expected me to believe him. But then I thought about the way Dorian treated me after that. I thought about how he always wanted to protect me. Even when I didn’t exactly need protecting. That felt real, too. Yes, he was arrogant and had an ego that was two sizes too large, but he had saved me from making a horrible mistake in the movie theater and at Winter Formal. Maybe he had told other girls before me that he felt connected to them. That could have been his standard line. But I also knew that when we kissed, it wasn’t just me who was trembling.

“I think Dorian’s feelings for me are very real,” I told my mom. And I meant it. Then turning to face Ilona, I added, “And I think that there’s more going on here than you’re willing to admit. Your behavior just doesn’t add up.”

The vampiress looked so furious I thought her head might start spinning around. “There’s nothing going on here,” she said, her voice sounding like that of a cornered cat. She stomped over to the window. “Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you,” she snarled and then she disappeared into the night.

“What a peculiar woman,” my mom said. “Beautiful figure, but horrible manners.”

That made me laugh. I found it interesting that my nutty mom could see that Ilona was up to something, but at first I couldn’t. That was probably because she wasn’t emotionally wrapped up with Dorian the way I was.

“What do you think of what she said?” I asked after shutting the window. “Do you think I’m just another notch on Dorian’s belt?”

Mom twitched her lips and then walked over to sit in the chair Ilona had recently vacated. “I can’t really give you an opinion because I’ve never met him,” she said. “But I think here’s a good rule of thumb: If one woman warns you about a man, use common sense caution. Maybe he was a jerk to her, but there could also be extenuating circumstances. But if more than one woman warns you about a man, then you have to take that to heart. People always say they’re going to change, but not many of them ever do.”

It was probably good advice, but it wasn’t really helping me. Dorian had admitted that he’d been with a lot of women. And I was sure more than one or two of them would tell me he was a jerk. But my maker also insisted that with me it was different. For me he had changed. Was Dorian just playing me for a sucker? My gut told me I could trust him with my heart, but the big bag of insecurities I always carried around with me told me there was no way Dorian Vanderlind could really love me.

“So now that my lovely guest is gone, you can tell me why you came to see me again so soon,” my mother said, interrupting my inner turmoil. “What’s going on?”

“I’m leaving Tiburon for awhile,” I told her. “Dorian is going to show me the world. Or at least the undead part of it. I guess it’s supposed to be pretty cool.” I looked down at my shoes. “And I was super excited about it before I got here, but now I’m feeling a little freaked out.”

“Sweetie,” she said stretching both hands out to me. “Just go and take what you can from it. You have an opportunity to see some of the most amazing things the world has to offer. Why wouldn’t you go for that?”

“I just don’t want to get my heart broken,” I said. I knew I was being a stupid coward, but Ilona had gotten under my skin.

“Hearts are meant to be broken,” Mom said. “You can try to protect yourself, you can always do the safe thing, but it sounds like a pretty boring way to spend eternity.”

She was right. My crazy nut-job of a mother was absolutely right. “I know,” I told her.

“And even if you do get your heart broken,” she said, “you’ll probably get over it in a couple of decades. That’s nothing to a vampire.” She snapped her figures in the air. “It’ll be over like that.”

“But what about you?” I asked, sitting on the floor and putting my head on her knee. She smelled so good. And not because I was hungry, but because she was my mom. “I won’t be here to visit you. You’ll be lonely.”

“You can write me long letters telling me all about the wonderful things that you’ve seen.” She kissed the top of my head. “And knowing that you’re out there seeing all the magic the world has to offer will be enough for me.”

“I love you Mom,” I told her. There have been so many times when I was angry with my mom. Or I’d hated her for abandoning me and being crazy. But deep down I really did love her. She was my mom and I would miss her for her lucid moments.

“I love you, too,” she said. “Now get out of here and go start your adventures.”

Wiping my nose, I got to my feet. “I’ll write you.”

“You’d better,” she told me, walking me over to the window.

I climbed up on the sill. “Goodbye Mom.”

“Goodbye sweetheart,” she said. “Oh, and if you see your father, please tell him I said hello.”

I had to laugh. It was just like my mom to throw a crazy-cherry on top of her sundae of good advice.

Feeling a little emotional as I took to the air, I was grateful for the cold wind in my face. It’s helped me fight back my tears.

“Going to miss your mommy?” a voice asked.

I twisted in the air to see Ilona flying quite close to me. “What the hell do you want?” I exclaimed.

Chapter 22

Dorian

“Hugo, I appreciate all this loyal-servant nonsense. Really, I do. But I need you to tell me where my family is.” I was using my sternest voice. “I need you to tell me right now.”

“I am afraid that is not my privilege, Mr. Wanderlind,” the giant informed me.

I hated to use my influence over him, but he left me with little choice. “Hugo,” I said, staring deeply into his eyes. “Where are my cousins and my aunt? Tell me immediately.”

The giant turned his head away. “Please do not try using your influence over me, Mr. Wanderlind. I do not appreciate it.”

“I apologize, Hugo,” I said quickly. It figured that Jessie would hire a manservant who was not sensitive to the influences of the undead. That was just the kind of nonsense my cousin would pull. “But you can see how I’m in a bit of a tight spot. I need to leave the castle and I want to find my family before I go. Isn’t there anything you can tell me?”

The giant made a small humphing noise and sucked in his lower lip. “You know those young people who kept disappearing before the holidays?” he asked. When I nodded, he continued with, “It is a wery bad thing when children disappear. A community becomes wery upset. There is attention from all over the vorld.”

I tried to puzzle out what Hugo was telling me. Was my family somehow involved with those children disappearing? I couldn’t imagine that they were. It made no sense to live in a town for eighty years and then suddenly go on a feeding frenzy.

“Are you saying that my family was involved with the teenagers’ disappearance?”

Hugo blinked at me several times, very slowly. It felt like he was doing it almost methodically. “I am not saying they vere not involved. But probably not in the vay that you think.”