Heart of the Vampire (Vanderlind Castle) (3 page)

Chapter 5

“Jessie,” I cried, having to restrain myself from tearing open the window and flinging myself into his arms.

“Vanderlind,” the vampiress snarled.

Jessie was as beautiful as I remembered—his dark wavy hair ruffled, his skin as pale and perfect as alabaster, his eyes as gray as the Atlantic during a storm. The tails of his long, dark coat settled around his calves. I didn’t see him appear on the roof, but I knew he had probably flown very quickly to get there.

“Have you two been formally introduced?” he asked. “Miss Aurora Keys, this is Miss Ilona Firenze. Ilona’s family is one of the oldest vampire lines,” he told me. Turning to the vampiress, he said, “Aurora and her family are humans and happen to be under my protection.”

Ilona’s lips turned down into a tight sneer. “I didn’t know she was under your protection.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Jessie said, his voice painfully polite. “But now you know. Please spread the word.”

The vampiress sniffed. “I do not understand why you treat your food better than a brother vampire.”

“Aurora is a human, not food,” he said in a stern voice.

“Have it your way.” Ilona gave a small shrug. Then without another word, she turned and, within the blink of an eye, disappeared into the night.

“Jessie,” I gasped, pressing the palms of my hands against the glass of the window. He mirrored me
, and we stood there, palm to palm, just looking at each other through the spider web of cracks that Ilona had created with her fist.

“I’m so sorry, Aurora,” he said, his beautiful gray eyes glued to my face.

“It’s not your fault,” I said automatically.

“Yes, it is,” he insisted. “We need to talk.”

Those four words started ricocheting around in my brain. That phrase alone let me know that Jessie had bad news to share, but it was compounded by the grave look on his gorgeous face. The conflict with Ilona and having the boy that I loved so close after so long started to catch up with me. My legs began to shake again, and I could feel water filling my eyes.

Jessie instantly understood that I was upset
, and his expression turned to that of compassion. “Oh, my darling,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to the glass. “Don’t cry. Please just open the window.”

His words were all it took for the tears to start cascading down my cheeks. I wrenched open the window, furiously wiping at my face. “You can come in, if you want,” I told him.

For a split second, Jessie moved forward to cross over the threshold into my home, but then his face tightened, and he pulled back. “You mustn’t say that,” he said through clenched lips. “You have to take it back. You have to rescind your invitation.”

“But I don’t want to,” I said.
“I just... I just want you to hold me.”

Closing his eyes, his brows drawn down in a severe V, Jessie said, “I know. I feel the same way, but you can’t invite me into your home. Please, just withdraw your invitation. Tell me I am not welcome. Please.”

He looked so genuinely tormented that I forced myself to control my own tears. “You’re not welcome in our house,” I said in a jagged whisper. “I take back my invitation.”

His body visibly relaxed, his shoulders drooping slightly. He opened his eyes. “Thank you,” he said in a voice no more steady than my own. He knelt down to sit on the roof of the porch, just like he used to do before he decided it was too dangerous for us to be together. “Please sit with me. There are things I have to tell you,” he said.

I knelt down, meaning to just lean on the window sill like I used to when we would rendezvous each night for conversations about his life being a vampire. I had every intention of being calm and listening to what he had to say.

Somehow
, I found myself lunging out the window, tears still streaking my face. Jessie grabbed me about the waist and pulled me into his lap, his lips finding mine, our embrace stealing my breath.

I don’t know how long we kissed. It could have been an hour or only a few seconds. I only know that all the noise that had been blaring in my head since the last time I saw him was suddenly silenced. The heavy weight that had been pressing down on my chest for weeks and weeks finally lifted.

Eventually, I needed to catch my breath and pulled back slightly. “Oh, my darling,” Jessie whispered, burying his face into the tempest of curls that was my hair and inhaling deeply. “I have missed you so much.”

My heart was about to burst with joy. For weeks
, I had tortured myself with thoughts that he didn’t really care about me. That he was only attracted to me because I reminded him of a girl he used to love decades before I was even born. “Are you hurt?” Jessie asked. “Did Ilona get to you?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m fine. But
I don’t understand what was going on with Ilona. It felt like she was trying to control me, like she was somehow mentally compelling me to open the window and invite her in.”

Jessie did not lift his head from where he had burrowed. “Some vampires have influence over humans. It very much plays upon
a human’s base need to please and fit in. It takes a strong will not to give in to their wishes.”

“Oh,” I said softly. That explained why it
felt so very much like peer pressure.

After several more minutes of the two of us just sitting there, our arms wrapped around each other, breathing in each other’s scent, Jessie stiffened a little and said, “I have things to tell you. I think it’s best if you go back into your house now.”

“But I don’t want to,” I said, sounding like a sullen child. “Why can’t we talk out here?”

“Because there are important things that I need to tell you
, and I need to be able to concentrate,” he said, his voice firm. “And besides,” he said, swallowing, “I haven’t eaten in a long time.”

I was in love with Jessie, but I wasn’t suicidal. When a vampire tells me that he is hungry, I listen. I quickly disengaged myself and shimmied back through the window.

Once I was situated safely inside the house, I turned back to Jessie and waited. I didn’t want to prompt him into action with any questions because that would mean our time together would end all the more quickly. It made me happy just to gaze at his beautiful face. I was almost disappointed when he began to speak.

“You remember who the Bishops are, don’t you?” he began.

I nodded. “Kind of,” I told him. “You said they were a vampire family that you guys use as kind of a governing body.”

“They are the oldest vampire family in our recorded history,” Jessie explained. “That’s why they are frequently referred to as The First Family. And yes, they do govern us.”

Keeping a family going after one member was turned into a vampire, if he decided to convert the rest of the family, took a lot of planning. “How have they kept their line going for so long?” I had to wonder.

“It’s not easy. And there’s a lot of work to be done as far as governing, so the Bishops sometimes adopt vampires from other families to help ease the load.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this topic.

Jessie sighed and then ran his fingers through his hair several times. I had to assume
this habit was leftover from his human days. “Well, the Bishops are not pleased about Viktor’s death,” he finally said. “In fact, they are very displeased.”

“But...” I had thought Viktor was out of our lives, but staking him apparently wasn’t the end of it. “Can’t you just explain to them that he was trying to kill me and you were just defending me? He was the one that kept coming after you. It’s not like you were bothering him.”

“I know, and I’ve tried to explain that, but not all vampires value humans the way I do. That’s why Ilona was here.”

“She didn’t even like Viktor,” I grumbled.

“Yes, but she is very caught up in the honor of vampires,” Jessie told me. “Plus,” his voice audibly dropped in volume, “there might have been a little envy there. Her honor might not have been so offended if I hadn’t injured her pride.”

“What?” I asked, not sure that I’d heard him correctly.

If a vampire could blush, I’m sure Jessie would have been red. “She was interested in me romantically a couple of decades ago, and I didn’t feel the same,” he admitted.

“Romantically?” I was surprised. “She has to be in her thirties. Isn’t that a bit pervy?”

Jessie shrugged. “She was just turned later in her human life than I was.”

“But still.” I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

“In vampire years, I’m older than her.”

“You weren’t interested?” I asked. Ilona was beautiful, in a bloodthirsty sort of way.

“No.” He shook his head. “I’ve only ever loved two girls in my life, neither one of them being a vampire.”

I felt a wave of pleasure wash over me. Was that Jessie’s way of saying he loved me? Was it safe to assume I was the second girl?

When Jessie was first turned, about eighty years ago, he fell deeply in love with my great grandmother’s sister, Colette Gibson. He’d wanted to conjoin with her, which was vampire speak for when a vampire marries a human. If he’d done it, he would have never been able to be with another person—human or vampire. Colette would have been his only love, no matter how long he lived. But on the night they were to run away together, she disappeared, never to be heard from again. My great grandma Gibson was still alive, and she still mourned the loss of her sister. She was in her nineties, and her mind was starting to go, so she usually called me Lettie when I went to visit her at the old age home. I apparently had a passing resemblance to her sister, but Colette was supposed to have been the town beauty, so it couldn’t have been that close of a resemblance.

I used to find it disturbing when Grandma Gibson mistook me for a girl who more than likely
had been murdered. But after meeting Jessie and learning more about his relationship with Lettie, the dreams I’d had since childhood made a lot more sense. I wasn’t sure that I believed in reincarnation, but I knew that I was somehow connected to Jessie Vanderlind, and that was more than likely through my long lost ancestor.

“After Viktor died, I contacted the authorities and explained what happened,” Jessie went on. “I wanted them to hear it from me first and not through rumors. Viktor wasn’t very well liked in our community
, and I think most vampires just assumed it was only a matter of time before he pushed someone too far. But then word got to the Bishops about your involvement.” Jessie stared at his hands, knitting his fingers together. I longed to reach out and give them a reassuring squeeze. “I had tried to downplay your part in it, just focus on the conflict with Viktor and myself. And no one was at the pier when Viktor died besides us, so I wasn’t too worried. But I’m afraid there’s going to be an official inquest.”

“Okay,” I said. “What does that mean?”

He took a deep breath. “It means we have to go to Budapest.”

“Budapest?” I repeated, my brain not really taking it in.

“I’m afraid so,” Jessie replied.

“Budapest as in...” I tried hard to recall my lessons in geography. “Budapest as in Hungary?” I guessed.

“Precisely. That’s where most of the Bishops live. It’s our base of government.”

“Jessie, I can’t just drop everything and go to Hungary,” I told him. “I’m in high school. What would I tell my mom?”

His brows narrowed as if he’d never considered the logistics of getting a high school girl to Europe without alarming her parent. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But we have to figure something out.”

“Can’t we just
Skype or something?” I asked. “I mean, I really can’t just sneak off to Budapest. You need to explain to the Bishops that I can’t take the time off of school. If they really need to see me, we can maybe figure something out for Christmas break. Fake an exchange program or something.”

Shaking his head, Jessie said, “The Bishops won’t accept that.”

“I’m afraid they’re going to have to,” I insisted.

“Aurora, please listen.” He reached through the open window and took my hand, sending tingles up my spine. “You are in grave danger. The Bishops do not suffer excuses. We have to figure something out.”

The sternness of his voice, tinged with desperation, made me afraid. Not that he would harm me, but I knew he wouldn’t frighten me unnecessarily, so I had to take the situation seriously. I couldn’t begin to fathom a lie that would be believable enough to fool my mother. Plus what was I supposed to do about school? And paying for a ticket to Budapest? And, well... everything. “I don’t even have a passport,” I finally managed to squeak.

A small smile began to form on Jessie’s lips. I assumed it was more caused by relief than happiness. He realized that he had gotten through to me. “That’s okay,” he said. “We’ll need to get you a fake one, anyway.”

“What?” I stammered with the realization that, on top of everything else, forged government documents would be involved. “Why?”