In the Company of Vampires (40 page)

Eeek!
Someone was touching me! The second my hands were touched . . .

My brain was flooded with images, like a slide show of strange, unconnected moments in time. There was a man in one of those long, ornately embroidered coats like Revolutionary guys wore. This guy was waving his arms around and looking really smug about something, but just as soon as I got a good look at him, he dissolved into mud and rain, and blood dripping from a dead guy in World War I clothes. He was sprawled backward in a ditch, his eyes open, unseeing as the rain ran down from his cheeks into his hair. It was night, and the air was full of the smell of sulfur and urine and other stuff that I didn’t want to identify. That dissolved, too (thank goodness), this time into a lady with a
huge—
and I mean huge, like a yard high—powdered white wig and a giganto-hipped dress with her boobs almost popping out of it. She was lifting up the bottom of her skirt, peeling it back slowly, exposing her leg as if it were something special (it wasn’t), saying something in French about pleasure.

I jerked my hand back from the man touching it at the same time I opened my eyes. Vampire. Moravian. Nosferatu. Dark One. Call him what you want; this man was a bloodsucker.

His eyes met mine and I sucked in my breath.

He was also the cutest guy I had ever seen in my whole entire life. We’re talking open-your-mouth-and-let-the-drool-flow-out cute. We’re talking hottie. Major hottie. The hottest of all hotties. He wasn’t just good-looking; he was fall-to-the-ground-dead gorgeous. He had brown-black hair pulled back into a ponytail, black eyes with lashes so long it made him look like he was wearing mascara, a fashionable amount of manly stubble, and he was young, or at least he looked young, maybe nineteen. Twenty at the most. Earrings in both ears. Black leather jacket. Black tee. Silver chain with an ornate Celtic cross hanging on his chest. Oh, yes, this was one droolworthy guy bending over me, and just my luck, he was one of the undead.

“Some days I just can’t win,” I said, pushing myself into a sitting position.

“Some days I don’t even try,” he answered, his voice the same as the one that had brushed my mind. It was faintly foreign, not German, like Soren’s and Peter’s, but something else, maybe Slavic? I haven’t been in Eastern Europe long enough to be able to tell accents very well, and since everyone in the Faire speaks English, I haven’t really had to learn much. “You are unhurt.”

“Was that a question or a comment?” I asked, ignoring his hand as I got to my feet, brushing off my jeans and testing my legs for any possible compound fractures or dismemberment or anything like that.

“Both.” He stood up and flicked the dirt and grass off my back.

“Oh, lucky me, I got to be run over by a comedian,” I growled. “Hey! Hands to yourself, buster!”

His hand, in the act of brushing grass off my legs, paused. Both of his eyebrows went up. “My apology.”

I tugged down my T-shirt and gave him a look to let him know that he might be a vamp, but I was on to him. That was when it struck me that I had to look up to glare at him. Up. As in . . . up. “You’re taller than me.”

“I’m glad to see that you aren’t suffering any brain damage. What is your name?”

“Fran. Uh . . . Francesca. My dad’s parents are Italian. I was named for my grandma. She’s in Italy.” God, could I sound any more stupid? Babbling, I was positively babbling like an idiot, to a man who at some point in his life had a big-haired French Revolution babe baring her legs at him.
Oh, brilliant, Fran. Make him think you’re a raving lunatic.

“That’s a very pretty name. I like it.” He smiled when he said that last bit, showing very white teeth. Nonpointy teeth. As in no fangs. I wanted to ask him what happened to his fangs, but Soren and some of the band guys had just noticed us standing with the cable spilled all over, and the motorcycle lying on its side.

“Fran, are you all right?” Soren asked, jumping off the truck and limping toward me. One leg is shorter than the other, but he’s really touchy about his limp, so we don’t say anything about it.

The vamp glanced at Soren, then back at me. “Boyfriend?”

I snorted, then wished I hadn’t. I mean, how uncool is snorting in front of a vamp? “Not! He’s younger than me.”

“Is something wrong, Fran?” Soren said, limping up really quickly, giving the dark-haired guy a look like he was trying to take a favorite toy away. To tell you the truth, I was kind of touched by the squinty-eyed, suspicious look Soren was giving the guy.

“It’s okay, I was just run over. The cable isn’t hurt, though.”

“Run over?” Two of the band guys hurried around Soren and grabbed the cable, examining the ends of it.

“Joke, Soren. I’m not hurt. This is Imogen’s brother.”

The dark-haired vamp gave me a curious look before holding out his hand to Soren. He didn’t deny it, so I gathered my guess was right. It was no surprise, though. I mean, how many authentic Dark Ones were going to be hanging around the Faire on the very same evening Imogen was expecting her brother? “Benedikt Czerny.”

“Chairnee?” I asked.

“It’s spelled C-Z-E-R-N-Y. It’s Czech.”

“Oh. That’s right. Imogen said she’s from the CR. How come her last name is Slovik?”

“Females in my family take their mother’s surname,” Benedikt said smoothly, then pulled his bike upright. He was talking about Moravians. I wondered if anyone else knew what he really was. Imogen said only Absinthe knew about her—I had discovered it by accident one night when we both reached for the same piece of berry cobbler and my hand brushed hers.

“I’m Soren Sauber. My father and aunt own the GothFaire.”

Soren had puffed himself up, his normally nice blue eyes all hard as he glared at Benedikt. I’d never seen him like that; usually he was all smiley and friendly, kind of like a giant blond puppy who wants to tag along.

“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Benedikt said politely. He turned to me and offered his hand.

I stuck mine behind my back. “Sorry, I have this thing about touching people. It’s . . . uh . . . a skin problem.” A skin problem.
A skin problem!
Great, now he’d think I had leprosy or something.

His left eyebrow bobbled for a moment before it settled down. He looked back at Soren. “Is there somewhere I can park . . . ? Yes, I see. Thank you.” His black eyes flickered over to me. I sucked in my cheeks and tried to look like I wasn’t the sort of leprosy-riddled babbling idiot who walks out in front of motorcycles. “I look forward to seeing you both again.”

“Wow,” I said as he walked his bike over to where a horse trailer was parked next to Peter and Soren’s bus. “Is he, like, major cool, or what?”

“Major cool?” Soren looked after Benedikt. The guy had a really nice walk. I mean,
niiiiiiice.
’Course, his skintight black jeans didn’t hurt any. “I suppose so.”

I hugged my arms around my ribs, vaguely surprised that they didn’t hurt despite my being slammed to the ground. Nothing on me hurt. To tell the truth, I felt kind of . . . tingly.

“You should stay away from him,” Soren said. I dug the latex gloves out of my pocket and put them on, then pulled the black lace gloves from my back pockets. I had bought them from one of the vendors because they looked suitably Goth. No one would look twice at someone wearing black lace gloves, but experience taught me that if you go around wearing latex doctor’s gloves, people start to give you strange looks. Soren watched me put on the gloves without saying anything. I told him I had hypersensitive skin (not terribly far from the truth) the first day we met, and he’s never said anything about my gloves since. I guess what with his limp, he figured it wasn’t kosher to comment on my gloves.

“Why? He seemed okay to me.”

“I don’t like him. You should stay away from him. He could be . . . dangerous.”

I grinned and socked him on the shoulder in a friendly buddy sort of way. “Yeah, right, I know the truth; you’re jealous.”

His eyes got all startled-looking. “What?”

“His bike. You’re jealous ’cause he came roaring up on a big Harley or whatever it is, and your dad won’t let you get a Vespa until you’re sixteen.”

He just stared at me for a second, then turned back to the truck. “Are you going to help unload or not?”