“One of Franklin’s many jobs is maintaining the household plumbing. Let’s just say, I keep him busy.”

  “Eww.”

  He laughed and pulled me into him. I don’t think I could have resisted him if I tried. Instead, I went willingly, and found my face buried somewhere between his shoulder and neck...a good place to be.

  “You are too much,” he said.

  “I’d like to think so.”

  We were quiet some more. I heard Kingsley’s late-night snack rumbling in his belly—his had been a roast beef sandwich, mine had been sherbet ice cream. After a moment, I said, “When you had sex with mortals in the past, did they, you know, fall under your spell, too?”

  “The way the boxer did with you?”

  “Yes, and he has a name.”

  “Any man who had sex with you ceases to have a name. They are no-names, at that point.”

  “Fine. Yes, the boxer.”

  “No. Not that I know of. That particular spell might be Samantha Moon-centric.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, it’s particular to the entity within you.”

  That gave me pause for thought. As I paused and as I thought, I discovered that I was making curlicues in Kingsley’s chest hair. He didn’t seem to mind. I said, “So you’re saying that not all vampires have the same powers?”

  He shook his granite-like head slowly. I think the whole damn bed shook with it. “Nor do all werewolves. We all have similar traits, true. All werewolves change at the full moon. But not all werewolves, for instance, can change at will.”

  “Like you can,” I said.

  He nodded. “But not all talents are gifts, Sam. The entity within me craves the dead.”

  “You mean corpses,” I said.

  “Yes, Sam. The fucking sick bastard literally gets off on it.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Jesus is right,” said Kingsley. “Which brings up a point. Some vampires can see themselves in mirrors, others can’t.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “I know. Some vampires can turn into mice, into fog, others can climb sheer walls.”

  “You know a lot about vampires for being a wolfie.”

  “We are not that dissimilar, Sam. We’re all possessed by the same dark forces.”

  “I love when you sweet talk me,” I said.

  “There’s more,” he said, taking in a lot of air and propping his free hand under his head. I almost felt sorry for his hand...and pillow. “Some vampires prefer living humans. Some prefer dead.”

  “Mine prefers the living,” I said. “Of course, she can prefer all she wants. She gets what she gets.”

  “And that brings up another point. In the end, we all have some semblance of free will. For instance, I can cage the creature within me, thus depriving him of fresh corpses. And quit shuddering every time I say that.”

  I shuddered again.

  “Jesus, Sam. We are grown adults here, dealing with the same shit.”

  “Sorry,” I said, patting his meaty chest. “I’ll do my best to get used to the thought of you chowing down on the dead.”

  He rolled his eyes, which I saw clearly enough in the dark.

  “None of us asked for this,” he said.

  “Some did,” I thought.

  “Fang?”

  “Right.”

  Kingsley nodded. “Someday, he will wish that he hadn’t. You still talk to him?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “How often?”

  “Regularly.”

  “How often is regularly?”

  “Almost every day,” I said.

  “Oh, brother. Should I be worried?”

  “No. We’re friends again.”

  “Like old times?”

  “Almost,” I said. Fang had sort of gone off the deep end in the months following his transformation. In fact, his hedonistic lifestyle could have been lifted from the pages of every Anne Rice novel ever, with a little Poppy Z. Brite added in for good measure. He had lovers coming and going. He feasted on whoever and whatever he wanted. He stole, he robbed, he worked with real criminals.

  It took him about a year to get it out of his system. And he had, thank God. He still ran a blood ring, but he’d ditched most of his loser business associates. Now, he mostly operated it alone and, as far as I could tell, he mostly didn’t kill anyone.

  The good news was, he was back to living alone, with only the occasional girlfriend showing up. What I didn’t tell Kingsley was, of course, that I suspected Fang had cleaned up his life...for me.

  Fang also understood that I was in a relationship with Kingsley, and had mostly kept his distance, only occasionally dropping hints that he might want more.

  “Well, that’s good,” said the werewolf in bed next to me. “Because I will rip his head off if he makes a move on you.”

  “You mean that metaphorically, right?”

  Kingsley grunted.

  I laughed nervously and patted his chest. The truth was, I wanted to be right here, in Kingsley’s arms—and nestled in that warm nook between his shoulder and jaw.

  Shortly, I was asleep...and I dreamed of nothing.

  Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was the strangest popping sound. Like hundreds of soap bubbles bursting at once. I was just turning to see what the hell it was when I heard, “Your son is very skilled.”

  I gasped, mostly because no one had been standing next to me just a few seconds ago. I was certain of it. Somehow, I managed to calmly turn and look at whoever was standing next to me, whoever had managed to sneak up on even me, which, I was certain, was virtually impossible to do.

  “It’s you,” I said.

  “It is me, yes,” said the man I instantly recognized. “Is this section of the mat taken?”

  “No,” I said before realizing that I probably should have said yes. Not that it mattered. Any man who could sneak up on me—and the Librarian, too, for that matter—was going to talk to me whether I wanted to or not.

  The man nodded and I almost—almost—sensed that he could read my mind. He was dressed a little too nicely for a boxing gym. Hell, a little too nice for Fullerton, in general. His black suit was immaculate, if not a little dated. His thick black hair was slicked back with some sort of oiled wax—Brylcreem maybe—and combed perfectly. Although his clothing and hairstyle seemed a little dated, there was nothing old-fashioned about the brightness in his eyes. They flashed over me quickly and appreciatively, and he made a show of sitting down by unbuttoning his jacket and flipping up the longish tails as he sat. I had a mental image of a maestro taking a lunch break.

  As he sat, I caught sight of his claw-like fingernails. I also sensed the impenetrable wall around his thoughts and a distinct lack of an aura.

  He was a vampire, and, I suspected, a very old one.

  He sat smoothly, in one fluid motion, his narrow limbs coming to sharp points. In fact, he didn’t use his hands at all. He dropped down, legs folding under him neatly, like a collapsible picnic table. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said he glided down.

  Meanwhile, in front of me, my son danced in the ring with Jacky. Granted, Jacky wasn’t doing much dancing these days, but he kept pace with my son, using the punching mitts, urging my son to keep his hands up. My son, for his part, seemed to revel in the workout. Heck, he even seemed to enjoy Jacky’s good-natured verbal abuse. Once, after a flurry of devastating punches, he reached over and ruffled the Irishman’s gray hair, to the old man’s surprise and, I believe, delight. This got a swift condemnation from Jacky, but they did pause, and I caught the two of them laughing in the corner of the ring a moment later.

  “Your son has phenomenal control and power,” said the man sitting next to me. He had an accent that I couldn’t quite place. Then again, I’d always been crappy with accents.

  “Long story,” I said.

  “I would like to hear it someday,” said the man.

  I shot him a look. And the more I looked, the more I could see the fire blazing just behind his pupil. It was, I was certain, the brightest fire I’d seen yet. What that meant, I didn’t know. But there it was, a single flame leaping and crackling and snapping. I should have found it distracting, except I found it to be the exact opposite.

  I found it hypnotic.

  So I shifted my gaze to his long, slender nose. I had to. I felt myself...slipping into his own flames. So strange. I said, “You assume I’ll see you again or that I’ll want to talk to you.”

  “Perhaps I was loose with my speech.”

  I forced myself to look at my son. My warning bells had been ringing steadily, although not very loudly. There was danger here...but not immediate. I said, without looking at him, “You also presume that I care about what you like.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “I could give a fuck about what you like.”

  He threw back his head and laughed loudly. Except...except no one looked at him. No one but me.

  “I can see why Elizabeth was keen on you, Samantha Moon. You remind me so much of her. In fact, you look quite a bit like her.”

  I glanced at him. “Elizabeth?”

  “Don’t you know?” he asked, raising a single narrow eyebrow. His sharp elbows rested lightly on his equally sharp knees.

  “Know what?”

  “Ah, I see her son hasn’t yet shared her name with you.”

  The flames inside his pupil danced and wavered and sputtered as if a wind were rattling around inside his skull.

  “That’s her name...”

  “Indeed,” said the man.

  “Her name is Elizabeth...” I heard myself say. Hearing her name had a strange effect on me. It...humanized her. I wasn’t sure I wanted her humanized. I preferred to think of her as a demon. It was bad enough that I thought her son was kind of cute.

  “And a fine name it is.”

  The entity within me responded to her name, and came rushing to the surface of my thoughts, but I shut a mental lid on her before she got too far, or could take too much control.

  “And who are you?” I asked.

  But the man next to me seemed to guess what I was about to ask, for he was already standing and giving me a small bow. He tipped a non-existent hat, and said, in a rolling, sing-song voice, “Wladislaus Dragwlya, at your service.”

  Coming from him, coupled with his strange accent, the “W” sounded like a “V” to my ears.

  In fact, I was certain he had said...Vladislaus Dracula.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I caught myself rocking a little and breathing hard, although there was no damn good reason why I was breathing hard. It was a reaction, I knew. A reaction to yet the further absurdness that was my life. That had been my life for the past nine years.

  While I breathed and rocked and tried to process, the man continued to watch me sideways, sitting completely still. The fire behind his pupils seemed almost palpable, to radiate real heat. But I knew that was not true. Vampires were cold, were they not?

  My son took a short breather, although he barely seemed to breathe hard. Jacky, however, staggered away from the heavy bag. The poor guy literally didn’t know what had hit him. First me, then my son. He must have thought we were the freakiest of freaks.

  Not the freakiest, I thought. In fact, the original freak was sitting next to me now.

  Dracula.

  I forcibly calmed myself. After all, had I not met other vampires? Hell, I had encountered werewolves, angels and body-hopping demons. Wasn’t he just another...

  No, he wasn’t.

  He was fucking Dracula and, according to the Librarian, the original vampire. The first vampire. The oldest vampire.

  Jesus...

  “You seem upset, Samantha Moon.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?” I said. “If, you know, you just met you. Okay, that sounded lame.”

  He threw back his head and laughed easily. “Yes,” he finally said when the laughter subsided. “I suppose I would be upset, too, if, you know, I had just met me.”

  For the first time in a long time, I felt embarrassed, although my face didn’t burn with embarrassment. To do so would have implied that I radiated some degree of heat, which I didn’t. Not like the creature next to me.

  Confused, I shut my mouth and might have rocked a little. We lapsed into silence, although the thoughts in my head weren’t so silent. And the demon bitch inside me wasn’t helping either. She was clamoring to get out. It was all I could do to stamp her back down and throw up a mental wall, which was harder to do than it sounds, especially when you’ve got something living in you...and that something desperately wants out. Months ago, I had learned that I didn’t like communicating with her directly. Despite what the Librarian had told me last year, love didn’t seem to be working. She only seemed to be getting angrier or more desperate. Then again, maybe she was getting angrier and more desperate because of love. Either way, she had made my life a living nightmare.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “You want to take boxing lessons?”

  He laughed again, the sound coming from him surprisingly easily. I would never have guessed that Dracula had such a good sense of humor, other than, say, laughing maniacally as he watched those being impaled before him: men, women and children. Indeed, Dracula had been a monster before he became a monster.

  “Not quite, Samantha, although I see your friend Jacky is quite gifted.”

  I was disturbed by his knowledge of my name and Jacky’s. He undoubtedly knew my son’s name, too. He’d been following me, for how long, I didn’t know.

  “So why are you here?”

  “I thought it was time to make my presence known.”

  “And I care, why?”

  He didn’t laugh at my abruptness this time. Instead, his eyes narrowed and I caught a brief glimpse of the monster he was. Something flashed behind his eyes, something that did not approve of being talked to in such a way. I could give a fuck about what he approved and didn’t approve, Dracula or not.

  “Because we are connected, Samantha Moon.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  “You can feel her reaching out to me, can’t you?”

  “Not you,” I said. “The thing within you.”

  “Myself and the thing within me...are very much the same, Samantha, as we have been for many centuries. Call it an equal partnership.”

  “I call it creepy as hell.”

  “Perhapsss...”

  I shivered at that. Indeed, I was sensing that Dracula and the demon within were interchangeable, coming and going at will, one rising to the surface, while the other stepped back, almost instantly. Perhaps they existed side-by-side, if that was possible.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  “You know what we want, Sssamantha.”

  “Yeah, well, you ain’t getting her. So you can both go to hell.”

  The man, known as Vlad Tepes, who had killed tens of thousands of the innocent back in the day, whose name was synonymous with evil, smiled at me slowly. “Do not be so quick to dismiss us, Sssamantha. We can offer you much.”

  “You have nothing I want—”

  His movement was instant, certainly faster than I could react. One moment his hands were folded in his lap, and the next, he was holding my own hand, gripping it tightly. I tried to rise, but he held me in place.

  “Do you feel that, Sam?”

  “Let go, asshole, or this is going to get ugly.”

  “Do you feel my warmth, Sam? Do you? This could be yours again. This, and so much more.”

  “Let me fucking go.”

  “No one can see me, Sam. They think you are talking to yourself.”

  I stopped struggling and looked around. Indeed, others in the gym were staring at me, including my son and Jacky, who had stopped their recent round of workouts.

  “I don’t understand,” I said under my breath.

  “I will explain everything to you, Samantha. This and so much more. Every secret. Everything.”

  “Let go,” I said, “or I will tear your fucking throat out.”

  Vlad Tepes held my gaze, and released my hand. “Consider my words.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  He smiled, stood, and walked away, exiting the gym and heading out into the night.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “It looks closed, Ma,” said Anthony.

  He was right, of course. In fact, the whole damn campus looked closed. No surprise there, since it was Friday night, the only night the school’s epic library closed early.

  I might have growled under my breath. The Librarian and his damn inconvenient hours. Where he went when the library was closed, I hadn’t a clue. But I was going to find him and talk to him, dammit.

  A handful of students milled about, some alone, some walking with friends, others standing around and making plans for the weekend. Some lights were on in some of the buildings, but for the most part, the place was closed for business.

  Anthony and I stood at the library’s front entrance, whose automatic doors normally whispered open. There was no whispering now. Inside, through the smoke glass, the place was dark and empty, save for a dim light hanging over the help desk inside.

  “So Jacky thinks I’ll be ready soon...” continued Anthony. My boy had been talking non-stop since we’d left his practice session with Jacky.

  “Uh-huh,” I said and led him around to the side of the massive structure. Anthony trotted along, pretty much oblivious to his surroundings, so wrapped up was he in his story.

  “But he says I gotta keep practicing my footwork.”

  And to show me what he meant—or just to get some extra reps in—he did just that. His sneakered feet moved rapidly over the wet grass, crossing and scissoring. As they moved, my son moved his shoulders, too, dodging an invisible assailant, moving faster than he had any right to move.

  No, I thought, he has every right.

  He was, after all, now acting as his own guardian angel.

  Craziness, I thought. All of this.