Authors: Mary Hughes
This was going nowhere fast. While I didn’t have Ric’s ability to sell sand in the Sahara, I
had
learned how to coax patient details. “Mr. Elias, please. We don’t have your wealth of knowledge and experience. Can you tell us what Ric can do to protect his people? What would you do in his place?”
A pause. I held my breath. If Elias wanted to help, this would hopefully start him. If not, nothing would.
Finally the deep voice came again. “Very well. Mr. Holiday. You know about Nosferatu’s daughter? Eloise?”
I gasped. Big Bad had a daughter?
But Ric only nodded impatiently. “Yes.”
“What do you know about her mother?”
“She died soon after they came to Nosferatu’s compound to live with us.”
The air I’d sucked in exploded out of my lungs. Ric and Aiden had
lived
with the wicked old vampire?
“How old was she at the time?”
“Six. Look, what will going over ancient history do to protect my people?”
“Ancient doesn’t begin to apply until before the tenth century. Think. Where were Eloise and her mother before coming to Chicago?”
Ric stopped pacing. He exchanged a thunderstruck glance with Aiden. “I don’t know.”
“They lived with me. As did Nosferatu, for a time.”
“
What
?”
“He was my lieutenant. Until 1806, when he made a human member of my household, a young woman, pregnant. Rather than admitting his culpability in the matter, he silenced her through intimidation and pain. To make matters worse, when she began to show, he drove her out of my home. Do you know the fate of a young pregnant woman alone in the early 1800s? It wasn’t pretty.
“I found out and immediately returned her to my care. I would have ripped off Nosferatu’s head.”
I would have ripped off anything I could reach.
“But she begged me to spare the father of her child. Begged me so strenuously that she went into premature labor. She was having hysterics, endangering both the child’s life and her own. I had to agree. I couldn’t harm him, but I could and did expel him from my home, and my life.
“Nosferatu hated that I cast him out, and hated even more that I did so for the female he had discarded, a mere human. He was furious that I favored her over him.
“I believe he left the country for a time, fleeing to Europe. He met Dracula in London—this was before I had captured and interred the count permanently. Nosferatu became enamored of that one’s power—you may not know this, Dr. Byornsson, but Dracula is pure vampire. Nosferatu sought that purity himself, thinking it would give him power, and purged himself of all he could that made him human. By the time he returned, he was as you knew him, Mr. Holiday. Spindly and mean.”
“Smaller?” I said without thinking. “Like Nikos?”
“Not like Nikos. Nosferatu lost much of what made him human. Nikos lost much of what makes him vampire. Which reminds me. While Nikos will continue to need donations of human blood three times a month, more will not help him heal faster. Only vampire blood will restore his vampire nature. That, and time. Please tell Ms. Tafel that, would you, Dr. Byornsson?”
“Um…okay.”
“Good. Nosferatu settled in Chicago—near enough to me to test his new abilities, but far enough that he could hide if needed—and proved to himself he was the victor by seducing Eloise’s mother back to him. The rest is as you know.”
“So why didn’t you rip his head off when he returned?” Aiden spat. “Would have saved us a lot of grief.”
“Mr. Blackthorne. I gave my word to the mother.”
“Under duress,” Ric said. “That doesn’t count.”
“Perhaps not for you. Your mate might disagree.”
Ric jerked as if he’d been jabbed by a fat G needle. “I’m not mated.”
“Of course not,” the dark voice said smoothly. “Simply put, I do not break my word except
in extremis
.”
“Not even for a greater good?” Aiden asked.
“What is the greater good, Mr. Blackthorne? Tethering a scapegoat might save some, but it’s never good for the goat. Mr. Holiday. You have all the information you need to protect your humans, and I have talked long enough. Goodbye.”
Chapter Twenty-one
“Wait,” Ric said. “I—damn. The cocky bastard hung up.”
While he was still staring at the phone in his hand, I stuffed Twyla’s underwear into my cleavage to hide it. It was so fine it fit with room to spare. I set the tablet down.
“That was
not
helpful.” Ric ran an agitated hand through his hair. “I don’t have any other ideas. Do you?”
“Kill the whole lot of them?” Aiden said. “Starting with Elias?”
“I’m considering it.” Ric slid his phone into his pants pocket.
I put a palm up. “Killing later, guys. Explanations now. First tell me about this painting.”
They stared at me. Finally Ric blew air and nodded at Aiden. “Show her. She deserves to know, since she’s the one who got Elias to open up for us.”
As Aiden extracted his phone I mused. “Eloise, Elias. Hey, you don’t suppose Eloise’s mother named her after Elias?”
Aiden gave a startled laugh. “Wouldn’t that chap Nosferatu’s ass?” He thumbed up a picture on the phone. “This is double-whammy blackmail.”
A portrait filled the small screen of a man standing outside a wooden two-story house wearing a brown cutaway coat with high collar, elaborate cravat and waistcoat, tight tan trousers and high black boots.
Aiden pointed at the man’s hand. “Note the gun.”
The man held a typical first-Thanksgiving turkey blaster braced against his foot. “Nice,” I said. “Is it extremely valuable? Or is there a problem with it?”
“There’s a problem, but not with the gun,” Ric said. “That’s a blunderbuss. Identified by the flared barrel.”
“They’re short,” Aiden said. “Especially compared to muskets. The barrel of a blunderbuss is usually under two feet long, the whole thing three feet or less.”
I stared closer. “Wouldn’t a three-foot gun hit mid-hip or thigh on a man? This one is chest high.”
“That’s the point,” Aiden said. “It’s not a long gun. It’s a stunted vampire.”
“Okay. So he’s stunted, so what? He’s still nasty, isn’t he? A menace?”
“Yes. But you have to consider vampire psychology.”
I slewed a glance at him. “Vampires have shrinks?”
“I mean we play a lot of mind games—and dominance games. This picture is evidence that Nosferatu is spindly. He might as well have saplings for legs and twigs for arms.”
“Pinched,” Ric said. “His body, his face, his guts, hell, his whole personality.”
“And that’s bad, why?” I asked.
“You know other vampires,” Ric said. “Me, Bo, Nikos. What’s the first thing you notice about us?”
“Well, I hate to be shallow, but you’re all tall.”
“Exactly. I’m the youngest at a couple hundred years and I’m six two. The Viking is taller than me and eight hundred years older; and the Spartan, who’s several millenniums old, is a mountain.” Ric frowned. “
Was
a mountain.”
I reeled at Nikos’s age. “Several…thousand…?”
“The point is,” Aiden said, “size means age, and age means power. If Nosferatu’s followers saw this, his size would make them question his power. His right to rule.”
I shook away the implications of
several thousand years
to concentrate. “Doesn’t everyone already know that?”
“No. He compels them to remember him as bigger than he is. Which is why the picture’s so important. It’s evidence, and away from his mental influence.”
“But this is the Pinterest and instant video age. Aren’t there other pictures?”
“He’s scrawny but he’s not dumb,” Aiden said. “He’s careful to stand against false measures—a couple steps up or in diffuse lighting.”
“Okay. But didn’t Elias say the reason Nosferatu is scrawny is because he’s more like Dracula? Purer vampire, which is actually scarier.”
“Won’t make a difference to his followers,” Ric said. “Like the Nixon/Kennedy televised debate, we’ve got some pretty serious caveman biases toward the taller, more relaxed guy as the better leader. Besides, there’s a second, more important feature on this particular painting. Show her his face.”
Aiden clicked zoom. A small black mark marred Nosferatu’s cheek, a double wave, like a line drawing of a bird or bat. “All the vampires I’ve seen have flawless skin. Is that what I think it is?”
“A birthmark, yes. Tattoos and scars disappear when we turn. But some birthmarks survive the change.”
My brain clicked. The body’s original DNA encoding…
“Nosferatu sees it as a sign of his destiny,” Aiden said, and my thought disappeared. He pointed to a small window in the house behind Nosferatu. “She has it too.”
I took the phone from him and stared. “I see a smudge.”
“It’s a face at the window. The resolution isn’t good enough to capture what the artist’s eye—and brush—did on the original portrait.”
I handed the phone back. “Nosferatu’s daughter?”
“He never claimed Eloise as his daughter,” Ric said. “But even before Elias’s story, we suspected. She has the same birthmark.”
“Which, once we pointed it out to her, very suspiciously started getting covered with dirt and paint,” Aiden said.
I said, “And you all lived together—at Nosferatu’s. What’s that all about?”
Ric and Aiden exchanged a glance. Aiden’s tiny shake of his head said
Don’t say anything.
It’s secret
. Ric’s eyes flicked to me and I could practically hear his
Tell her.
She’ll figure it out anyway
.
I added my own
Bet your sweet ass I will
.
Aiden sighed. “Are all immune females this irritating?”
“There are two more in this cabin,” I said. “Want to find out?”
“Nope. In the early 1800s, Nosferatu built an army of assassins loyal only to him. He did it by turning boys who had no parents, no homes, into vampires.”
“Us,” Ric said.
I filed that away. “So the wicked leader of bad-guy vamps raised a gang of assassins—and brought his sweet little daughter to live in their midst?”
“We weren’t assassins then,” Aiden said. “More like trainees.”
“He tried to keep her away from us,” Ric said. “But Aiden was sort of our resident adviser and he had special privileges and freedom of movement. We heard her sobs one day and followed them. We found her in a back room with a princess bed and silken clothes and royal food—and nothing else.”
“No toys?” I asked. “No teddy bears or books or anything for comfort?”
“Poor little kid,” Aiden said. “We broke in the first time but after that she welcomed us. We played with her when we could.”
“We tried to shield her,” Ric said. “But we weren’t that much older. And we tried to take her with us when we escaped. But we failed.”
“No. She refused to leave.” Aiden’s tone made it plain they’d been over this many times before. “She’d developed an attachment to him. She
wanted
to stay.”
“Stockholm Syndrome,” Ric snarled.
“Maybe. But I think he honestly loves her, in his own warped way.”
“Poor, sweet little thing, it’s impossible not to love her.”
Aiden shook his head. “She was a sweet child then, but we have no idea what she’s turned into by now.”
“Turned into
now
?” I asked.
“She’s still alive.” Aiden thumbed up another picture. “Or at least she was fifty years ago.”
A young woman, her ironed-straight hair flowing past her waist, marched amid a crowd outside the Chicago International Amphitheatre. The ‘68 Democratic Convention protest? She carried a poster decorated with flowers and peace signs. “How do you know that’s Eloise? Her cheeks are flawless—no birthmark.”
“I was there,” Aiden said flatly. “She covered the birthmark with makeup, but it was her.”
“So you talked with her?”
“No.” Aiden’s mouth thinned. “She was wearing pink.”
“Ah.” I nodded knowingly. “Such a fashion faux-pas. I wouldn’t be seen with her either.”
Ric said, “That was our signal to be left alone. Like a sock on the doorknob to roommates.”
I shook my head. “Even if it was Eloise, it was fifty years ago. You don’t know she’s alive now.”
“The fact that she was marching around a century and a half after she was born means she was turned. Chances are excellent she’s still alive.”
“Whatever alive means to a vampire,” I murmured. “What good does this do us? You have a picture that shows Nosy’s size, and his daughter. That doesn’t seem like enough to stop him if he’s really determined to hurt you.”
“He loves her,” Aiden said. “And my intel says that he still isn’t admitting she’s his daughter. That’s a secret he’s gone to a great deal of trouble to protect.”
“He’s kept her a secret because she’s helpless,” Ric said. “Innocent. Couldn’t save herself if you put an UZI in her hands. The only thing keeping her alive is that no one knows he has a daughter. Except us.”
“She
was
innocent,” Aiden repeated. “Either way, she’s his Achilles’ heel.”