Chapter Six
Seeing her face, he sucked in a loud breath, then let it out softly. "You came back," he breathed.
Dan stared first at his friend's head and then back up to Mirela with wide eyes. "Don't tell me you were here in my house before," he warned, even though he knew deep down that she HAD.
"You already know the answer, Daniel," Mirela answered with a slight smile, ignoring him and Celeste altogether and leaning down to kiss Herbert's bottom lip, paying no mind to the smell of the blood beneath as well as Dan's internal disgust at her kissing a severed head on the mouth. Herbert's moan was of pure pleasure at tasting her lips for the first time in forever.
"That's..." Dan was on the verge of saying disgusting, which made her nearly lose it. Was she imagining things, or was their friendship on the verge of changing just because they knew each other's secrets now? Mirela stood straight and turned around to give him the look, and he lowered his eyes to the ground right away. "Sorry."
"Of course you are. But I don't blame you. Would you soon as kiss one of us?" She smirked to one corner of her mouth when she motioned to Celeste behind her with the back of her head, sensing her roommate's discomfort. Dan didn't respond. "Well, should we get to business or what?"
Finally, he looked back at her. "You know everything about me." It wasn't a question, and she nodded. "Herbert, or did you find out yourself?"
Herbert made a slight gurgling sound, making all eyes turn onto him. "Excuse me, Daniel, but if you're going to talk about me, at least ask ME that question," he scolded with a twitch of a smile. "And in answer to your question, I shared my line of how my head was taken at the hands of Francesca."
Mirela looked him straight in the eyes. "After we arrived in Boston, I sensed something...off about you. Something about you so...isolated and private. You were hiding yourself from the rest of the world, but then it changed once we became friends after I helped you save the heart attack victim." Dan smiled at the memory; he had been appalled but ecstatic when she succeeded in massaging the heart to life with her own bare hands. "We found the news article on the massacre, the deaths...including that of..." She paused, knowing mentioning Megan Halsey's name would pain him utterly, but he knew what she was trying to say.
"Her death was the reason I stayed with Herbert. I was hoping she wouldn't have died in vain, and I actually believed we could defeat death...but then you," he said to Herbert, teeth clenched, "had to corrupt our reasearch and turn it into something charnel."
Herbert's eyes flared, and his lip curled. "So, you're bringing that up again? If not for me, not for us going to Peru, we wouldn't have made progress!"
"We couldn't bring Meg back no matter how hard we tried to, and Francesca died because we got her into this!" Dan argued. "I was afraid to get involved with another woman because I couldn't let her get killed again!" This bickering was getting them nowhere, but before she could speak up, Celeste was there.
"Gentlemen, enough. We have everything about this off our chests, but I think we can cut to the chase once Mirela reveals her plan." Thank you, Mirela sent through the air, getting a nod to the side.
"You want me to get Herbert a new body," she stated, excitement coursing through her body at once - and danger on the rise if the affair got out to the rest of the underworld. If the rest of humanity in Boston did not suspect her and Dan, then the rest in her home country would know. And that was the intended destination. "I know the perfect man, but Boston is not the best place if you're fearing discovery. The place to perform the operation is more secluded than anyone would imagine, and far from this town and prying eyes."
Dan raised an eyebrow. "Where is this...?"
"My old hideout near the river at the bottom of the mountains. I lived there for some time after my husband died. Today it is a rental place, but as far as I know, it is rarely put up for rent for unknown reasons. I believe we can manage," she said with a slight smile. "Because in two days I will book a flight to Transylvania, and we will take off the next day. No one will refuse the excuse of a family emergency because of the 'epidemic'."
Dan was still unsure about all of this, just shifting from foot to foot out of habit, but Mirela found it quite irritating. "You ought to stop worrying so much, Daniel. Because you have someone who has a less illegal way of finishing the job for you."
"Less illegal?" he repeated sarcastically. "How is it 'less illegal' when we are still going across the ocean to perform an act against -" He was struggling with accepting the fact that religion had nothing to do with any of this, and Mirela could smell it off Herbert that he was irritated as she was. Didn't experience taught him anything of this sort? Apparently not, or who knew with him.
"It won't be legal or illegal in any step of the way," she said strongly. "Because this one is a menace I could smell a mile a way. You know him, and I know him, too."
His eyes went wide to the realization. "Mirela, you - you mean to say that Jon Falcone -"
"- is the one," she finished calmly, looking from him to Celeste's equally calm but otherwise expressionless face, then down to Herbert's head, which looked distraught at being overlooked. "He's someone I saw as a menace the moment we met," she clarified. "He's the one we've been looking for, and we would be doing the world a favor."
Dan stood up and walked to her near enough to make almost bodily contact. "He's an ass, but he's never really done anything to us," he argued. She stuck her chin out at him and put her hands on her hips, infuriated that they were even having this discussion.
"Daniel, now is not the time. Just stop voicing any protests you have and get on board," she seethed. "You asked for my help, and I'm granting it. Jon Falcone is a definite menace even if not right away, and at the same time, he's perfect for Herbert. We're going to have to work together on this, unless you've changed your mind and decided to leave your friend and partner without a body out of your own sense of cowardice."
He hadn't, but he was still unsure about this. "Okay, okay, fine." He held up both hands in total surrender. "I agree to this, but don't say I didn't warn you in case things go wrong. Nothing with this ever goes without trouble." He was looking down at Herbert's head when he said this; in response, Herbert bared his teeth and hissed a warning. Mirela chuckled and shook her head as she locked eyes with him, carefully probing his mind.
For Herbert, it was hard to believe that he would soon have a body again. To think of what he could do again: he would walk again, maybe run again, he would touch things with his hands again, he would go out and enjoy the sun, go about as he pleased. He would go back to work again, with Mirela by his side now that he knew Daniel was finished with having everything he loved taken and given nothing in return.
And Mirela...he would hold her close again, kiss her again as she kissed his still warm, still soft lips not too long ago, make love to her again and feel her body against his again. He felt like crying just thinking about it; it made her want to cry, too.
"But how exactly do you see Falcone...dangerous?" Dan asked hesitantly.
"The moment we met, I saw him watching me the same way that a...hunter would see. Because hunters know our kind when they see one." Silence was in the air when she paused, waiting for one of the men to respond, but neither man spoke. Dan was about to ask if those people hunted down and kill vampires - when he knew they did - before Celeste read it, too, and answered.
"Since long before Christianity, our race has been hunted down by another which called themselves hunters. We are called monsters in their eyes because of our ways of living, so none of us are safe unless we do our best to protect ourselves. We can't be killed unless by silver, and silver stakes and arrows - and all forms of weaponry - are common amongst their armory. Mirela's husband was murdered by a hunter back in 1896."
"His name was Vlad," Mirela said softly, lowering her eyes. "Vlad III - or as you know him, Dracula."
Dan sputtered and nearly fell off his feet; he was on the verge of laughing, too, disbelieving that Dracula, the vampire count everyone knew from the stories since less than a century, had been a real being after all, and none other than the historical Vlad the Impaler. She cleared her throat, getting his attention and serious attitude back before continuing. "Since I was a child and still a human in the 1830s, he masqueraded as the village physician, taking me under his wing when I was old enough to learn about medicine and healing; we married eventually when I was eighteen years old. I always knew he was more than human, and the truth came to light when our village broke out during the revolution of 1848. He had gone off to aid with the dead and dying, and my parents' lives were in danger that I left to go to them. However, little did I know that it was when I would meet my own end.
"My parents were killed by a woman in blue, red-haired and vicious. She turned on me then, but before I could flee, she attacked and bit me." She motioned her right breast; her right nipple had been long gone less than two centuries, but she would not show for Dan's sake of being spared of blindness and uncomfortable emotions. Herbert had been shocked the next morning after the first time they made love, placing his fingers over the small concave in her breast where a nipple should be, and asked her what happened. He'd flinched when she told him, but it wasn't like they would have a child she'd nurse that way. "Just as I fell and blacked out, perhaps on the verge of dying because of the burning pain I was feeling, Vlad saved me and took me to his castle in Transylvania. We lived happily for forty-eight years until Ioana sold us out."
"Ioana?" Dan repeated.
"The vampire who killed my parents and almost killed me, too. She and Vlad were..." She paused to swallow harshly, the memory of that she-demon with her husband long before it was her and Vlad still gut-wrenching to this day. "...together before we were married. But he ended it and came to my village, blending among the commonfolk and working for a cause instead of becoming a monster. He never wanted to be a monster to begin with, I don't believe, but I chose to survive off animals instead of human blood, which became one of our minor disagreements," she said with a little laugh. "However, Ioana returned, this time bringing the end of our life and marriage: hunters and the whole village, the latter being the backup for our killers. I escaped, but my husband stayed behind and sacrificed his life...for me."
~o~
Mirela was right; he should stop denying the existence of vampires and other mythological creatures. It was fact, not fiction. They were right in front of him and Herbert's head, her and Celeste.
They had decided to stay around the house for a little while, and Mirela remained in the basement while Dan continued to fix himself some pasta, slightly feeling rude at there being guests in the house, but reminded himself they didn't eat like he did. After he finished, he decided to return to his room and change for the night - only to spot Celeste with her leather jacket discarded on the foot of the bed so she was in her white blouse and jeans, holding up the black box that was supposed to have been Meg's engagement ring. "You loved her enough to keep this," she noted, her soft French accent understanding. She'd told him once that her family had been French-born before relocating to New Orleans.
"I loved her very much," he admitted. "I met her when I was still a student at the medical school. She was the dean's daughter. I didn't care, and we were so in love that I knew she was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, even proposed to her when we were in our third year. I was going to be a doctor, and she was studying pathology. But we had to keep our relationship low-key because of her father's strict Puritanism."
He paused when she gave a little laugh and shake of the head. "Puritan, was it? Well, I'm happy hardly anyone is anymore. Too custom-ridden for my taste."
Dan laughed with her and nodded. "You read my mind. Yeah, we planned to get married and start a family after graduation." He reached and picked up the ring box from her hand - his fingers brushed against her briefly, and a cold shock coursed through his skin and nerves - and staring at the petite beauty for a long time. His voice sounded hollow to his own ears. "I wanted to officially propose to her on that day, in front of her father and the whole world, so I'd gotten this the summer before third year; I knew it was for her the moment I laid my eyes on it. And then West showed up and ruined it all." He gritted his teeth, sitting down on the bed. "I don't hate him anymore, but sometimes I wish I could."
Celeste sat down next to him and took the ring out of the box. "What -?" Dan started, stopping upon seeing the jewel glittering on the third finger of her left hand. He felt his jaw drop instantly.
Anybody who was single would ask, if they were superstitious, if it was bad luck to try on an engagement or wedding ring that belonged to another woman, but Daniel wasn't superstitious. He didn't consider it bad luck; a ring was a sign of love, but never let the person borrow it. It never hurt if the ring was an heirloom, but seeing what was supposed to have been Megan's ring on this woman who looked like her in some ways...it looked...breathtaking on her. Why hadn't he thought of it before to show Meg before and see how it looked on her?
He knew the answer: it was supposed to be a surprise on the day they were waiting for. He was mesmerized by it, speechless, until he heard her throat cleared. Shaking his head, he looked back up at her. He found himself wondering what her eye color used to be before they were that imprssive bronze like the tiger's eye gemstone...
"My eyes used to be blue."
He jerked, slipping backwards a distance from her. What was next? Was she going to read his mind for sexual thoughts or something? Invade his privacy any other way? "Do you always do that, read and invade privacy of the brain?"
She laughed. "No, I leave that their own business. But if they have any unanswered questions, then I answer for them."
Dan calmed and moved back. "If anyone ever wondered how you knew what they were thinking..." he started.
"I never tell someone else at random," Celeste interrupted, looking down at her hand. "Just with Mirela; we know each other too well."
He remembered from the stories he read that the transition from human to vampire was never pretty, yet each of them had a different side to every story. "What happened to you that...made you this way?" he asked hesitantly, motioning her glorious body...a body that resembled so much like Meg's...
"I'll warn you that it's not happy, but none of our transitions ever end so." Dan nodded, suddenly taken aback by the cut in her voice.
"The year was 1971. I was twenty-one years old. I was born in Paris, and my family moved to New Orleans since my mother was originally from there and wanted to relocate back. At the time I was known as Celeste Roux."
"Why did you change your name?"
"If my family knew I was alive, they'd have called me a freak. I've been Celeste Roberts for fifteen years; Mirela changed her last name, too, after she came to this country. You know how Romanian is often misunderstood." He nodded. "My mother was a stay at home housewife, both my grandparents died when I was barely into preschool, and my father was a company executive. I attended college, working as a secretary; it wasn't enough even though it was enough to get me through. I truly had no idea where my life would go then, but I had fun having friends and going to parties and the likes, meeting guys. That was a lifestyle my parents never approved of, but I was happy, and having so many friends, making my life as enjoyable as it could be so it wasn't so stressful all the time. At one club, I met the man of my dreams." She shook her head, her long liquid gold locks swishing over one shoulder.
"His name was Roy Hayes. He had red hair and green eyes, and so unique. What made it better, he treated me like a human being, an independent woman and a princess all in one. I could see it all happen so soon, walking down the aisle surrounded by masses of white and pink flowers to him." She gave a smile, amused at her own imagination. "Silly, isn't it?"
Dan was shocked by the question. "No, of course not." He remembered the few times Meg would tell him the type of wedding she wanted for them, not too different than the mentions of overflows of flowers. "It reminds me of what she wanted," he admitted, knowing she'd read his mind. She nodded.
"We were together for about five months, always together and him bringing me white roses with this heavenly fragrance I could never describe. He even called me his French rose, called my eyes the heavenly skies. When he proposed to me in front of my parents that Christmas, the ring he gave me was truly enchanting: elegant and romantically designed yellow gold with an illustrious round diamond in the center of a mother-of-pearl flower." She sighed and swung her legs over the bed and laid down, her hands behind her head as an extra pillow, but she'd stopped her story, looking up at the ceiling with a definite scowl. Dan realized the terror was to come, because she was just like him when she got no happy ending after all that she desired.
"My parents were happy for me that I was finally settling down - and quitting the foolishness as they called it," she said, sarcastically and contemptuously, "that they decided to throw a party for us both at the house, however it wasn't anywhere near what Roy and I were used to, but we managed to sneak away to the woods out back for some more...fun," she said with a naughty glint in her eyes when she finally tore them from the ceiling to meet Dan, before it was gone, replaced by an immense sadness.
"But little did I know that would be the last night of my life."
~o~
"Roy, really we shouldn't!" she exclaimed as he dragged her by the wrist through the woods, even though she was laughing with excitement. She'd always been reckless and sneaking away from home to be with the girls, sometimes with him when they weren't on their "prim and proper" dates. The party going on inside the house was too classic and elegant for her taste; formality was sometimes too boring for some real fun.
"C'mon, Cel, we're getting married, and you don't have to answer to your parents anymore," he urged her, almsot stumbling over a thick root in the ground. The air was moist and humid, after the rainfall from an hour ago, and more was expected tonight. If they were lucky, they could sneak out again and go "dancing" in the woods. She felt like she always had been, a giddy schoolgirl ready for some action.
"You're right," she agreed, still laughing even when he paused at the tallest tree offering more shade than the others. "We're far enough now, so maybe we can..." She stopped her sentence right there, knowing he would finish for her.
"Been long enough, yeah. In three months we'll be husband and wife, and maybe we can try to make a baby before then, if we're lucky."
Celeste burst out howling with laughter again. He was too perfect; he just wanted to start a family as much as she did. He'd grown up in a household where he had to take care of three younger sisters, loving them unlike any brother would in general - or any man in life, period. He was someone you never found often in life. She couldn't have been happier in her life. Unlike how her mother called her, she was more responsible than anyone thought, and she would gladly lessen her hard partying for motherhood because she had the willpower.
Now she felt Roy's lips on hers, and that glorious bliss washed over her and everything that was holy which she'd been taught in church long ago. She had taken to saving herself for marriage so that losing your innocence would be special enough, but now she couldn't wait because they were now alone, distances away from the house where her parents and the other guests were probably looking for them, but she decided she didn't care. Roy had her in his arms, deepening the divine kiss and moving his hands to all parts of her body save for her most intimate places. "Roy, please!" she whimpered when she broke the kiss away.
"Up against the tree?" he purred. She nodded, and up against the tree was where she was, his hands exploring her again, feeling through the dusty rose pink dress with the crochet sleeves and crystal droplet necklace, finding she had no undergarments. "Oh, you naughty girl."
"I feel lighter. Free," she panted, the ache below her stomach worsening with each second that passed. He hitched her up then, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, her back rubbing against the tree as the passionate kiss deepened. Celeste wrapped her arms around him and moaned delightfully at this incredible feeling her body had begun to awaken to; she loved Roy with her heart and soul, but her body was arising to the heavens and begging for its savior...
Celeste shrieked when Roy's body jerked away from hers, allowing her to fall from the ground and get some traces of soil on her dress; her mother would be angry that the dress was ruined, but Mother's wrath was the least of her worries. Her fiancée was nowhere in sight. "Roy?" She stood up and looked around. What had happened? They were about to make love for the first time and now he'd vanished just like that. "Roy!"
In response, something fell from above, snapping tree branches and hitting the ground with a squish. Celeste heard herself scream as she beheld the sight of the man she was going to marry dead at her feet, his throat gouged and ravaged, shirt torn open down the front and scratched with bared fingernails like an animal. Then she found herself shoved against the tree by some invisible force pinning her so that she found herself forced to stare into a pair of hellish black eyes set in a pale face, framed by wild fiery hair and leered at as her dress was torn from her body...
~o~
Celeste ceased her story right there, knowing the details were too grisly for him to hear, and he agreed. He could only imagine that she endured no different than Mirela had did. "Ioana loved playing with her food before she could finish it off. She loved tearing the covers off and listening to the cries and pleas, like we were playthings to her. She loved feeling all the most valuable places, sometimes putting her mouth to use on them, but it was more than 'foreplay'. You heard Mirela." Dan hissed angrily and shifted away from her, turning his back to her. He wasn't disgusted at her, but the fact that the vampire who ravaged Mirela and killed her family, then sold her husband to hunters, had done the same to this beautiful creature on his bed. This Ioana was all levels of crazy, beyond mere bloodlust.
Celeste heard his thoughts and sat up - the bed shifted beneath him - crawling over to his side. "I wanted to die at first because the pain was overwhelming, burning worse than an inferno. Ioana indulged the torture, until Mirela came to my rescue then. She saved my life," she finished with a smile. "She'd stopped Ioana just as she'd bitten into my..." She paused and looked down in shame. "Point is she could smell the blood from less than ten miles away, but her doctoral skills couldn't do it justice. That left the one option."
She'd been bitten, Dan thought. "What was it like, the bite?"
She pursed her lips - plump and rosy, plumper than Meg's had been, more kissable. "It was like...fire burning through my veins, throughout my whole body. It lasted what felt like an eternity, but in the end, I felt it cool down like refreshing water. That's pretty much the best way to describe it. I was angry for what I was now, because Mirela couldn't just leave me to die. When she offered to take me in with her, I hated her so much because I thought death was better than living condemned. So I escaped and swore to hunt down Ioana to the ends of the earth, swearing to kill her for taking my life from me."
The way she smiled scared him almost out of his wits. It reminded of him when Herbert killed Hill, but he'd tried to blackmail him to get the work, according to Herbert. And he had to say, as much as he never wanted to admit it, Hill did deserve it, mostly because of his sick obsession with Meg, and what he saw him try to do to her...so yeah, he could understand where Celeste was going with her brand of revenge against her fiancée's death and for her violation and death. "Did you ever find her?"
"Not for thirteen years, no," she answered. "I suppose she knew I would come after her and led me on a chase. I loathed her for taking my life from me; I would have been married with children by now if it wasn't for her." Her marble features had been hard as stone, now softening. "Then Mirela returned from Europe because I hadn't left my home, and she, too, knew that. By then I had forgiven her, became gracious for her saving my life. She was all I ever had left. I had adapted to my new lifestyle, changed my surname from Roux to Roberts and having the wild party of my life. Mirela and I balance, the free-spirit and the realist. But after we both lost the most important - and very first - men in our lives, we have never been with anyone else, and until Mirela had been with Herbert in Switzerland until the incident with Dr. Gruber, and Herbert was taken in to the asylum. She had become more alive than I remember her, but when she was forced to leave Herbert, it tore her up that I realized she had moved on from her husband," she stated with a small smile. "But even she couldn't have the man she loved, so it has been her and myself since then."
Dan gave an empty laugh and shook his head, moving closer to her, getting a light whiff of her scent - it was light and sensual, miscellaneous fruits and flowers he couldn't identify either, like her friend. He wondered if all vampires smelled so good like this. And she answered him. "Oui, we have a unique, exquisite smell that no natural human has."
"You said you wanted to get married someday and have kids," Dan stated. "Does this mean you can't...?"
She shook her head. "No, I can't conceive. And it's too painful to comprehend. But Mirela has no problem given her lifestyle. She long ago accepted that she never wanted to endure the pain of childbirth."
"I could see Meg and I gray-haired on a front porch, surrounded by our grandchildren someday..." Dan said hollowly. "...if only I hadn't lost her..." He looked down at her ring, still around Celeste's finger, realizing how strange it was yet also perfect. How this woman, who had so much in common with his long-gone beloved, brought lost beauty to life once more...
Before he realized it, and didn't fight it because his senses were too overwhelmed by feelings he hadn't felt for a long time, Celeste's lips were meeting his, and a heated wave of intense passion arose in his body.
Thanks to Rosalie Hale's background in Twilight: Eclipse, both book and movie, for inspiration. :)
