Chapter Six
The 101 temperature of the day had only cooled down to 89º that evening, while Lexy kept her head buried in her hands while hiding in a dark alleyway. With strands of hair stuck to her sweaty face, she tried to push the thought of vampires from her mind, but remembering her insatiable thirst for Jack’s blood wouldn’t allow the thought to disappear. Although she hadn’t heard anyone approach, she sensed a presence and lifted her head.
“Good evening my beauty.”
Anger flooded her body as she stood to face Victor. “Good evening my ass! Exactly what the hell were you thinking?”
“I know I said I wasn’t going out tonight, but I missed you and—”
“What? No! I mean what were you thinking when you bit me?”
“That you are magnificent.”
“Ugh!”
Victor put his arms around Lexy’s waist and pulled her close to him. It suddenly didn’t matter what he’d done, or that he looked silly still wearing his magician’s cape. She didn’t resist, she just couldn’t, no matter how she tried no matter how angry she got. She couldn’t. He had an unexplained power over her and she couldn’t say she didn’t enjoy it, because she did.
“Lexy, I was so lonely living—I mean dying—I mean existing for all these centuries without you. No one will ever understand the monotony of it all. But now I feel alive…well, maybe just not as jet-lagged after flying around dark city streets trying to find a bit of nourishment. Now that I’m with you my love, from now until eternity, whatever your heart desires will be yours.”
“Victor, you’re only a magician and not even a famous one. It’s not like you make enough money to keep me in designer clothing for the next few centuries. Besides, I wanted to get out of this town. I wanted to live in New York.”
Victor bust into hysterical laughter; tears filled his eyes. “Listen gorgeous, I was incognito. I’m really Count Victor Constantinescu - Bochinsky. They’d have never been able to fit that on a marquee. I have millions and my millions make millions and those millions…well, I think you get the picture.”
“It doesn’t matter. I like being an independent woman and making my own way in the world. I don’t want to give up my dream of writing for the New Yorker.”
“I see,” said Victor pulling at his chin. “Maybe I can introduce you to David Remnick.”
“Her eyes lit up. As in the editor of the New Yorker? You know him?”
“We’ll talk about it later. C’mon, let’s go home.” He pushed back a strand of hair that stuck to her face, lifted her into his arms, and carried her out of the alleyway. Her heart trembled as she wrapped her arms around his neck and their lips met. Not only was he beautiful, she thought, but he was romantic and caring. How could she resist falling in love with a man who had been pining for her for the past couple centuries?
She laid her weary head on his shoulder. True love and a lasting relationship…after all, it is what she had always wanted.
Back at his house, Victor laid Lexy on the turquoise leather sofa. “You’ve been through a lot,” he said, as he sat on the edge of the couch cushion looking down at her. His fingertips slid along the side of her face, sending shockwaves over her flesh. Then he came closer. Just below her ear, she felt his lips press against her neck, followed by another kiss just below it, then another, then another. . . His lips moved from her neck toward her cheek and then finally found her mouth. She ran her fingers through his beautiful long, black hair, then grabbed the back of it and pulled him even closer. Her blood burned within her, and she felt more alive in that moment than she ever had. She loved him, loved Victor so much that—
A loud commotion outside the house caused them to break abruptly from their kiss. “What was that?” she asked.
Victor went to look out the window. “I’m going outside to see what’s going on.”
“I’m coming!”
Lexy clung to Victor’s cape as they walked through the backyard, when someone stumbled out from behind the trash bins. “C’mon Lex, run over here by me, I’ll protect you!”
Dark as it was, Lexy’s night vision was quite sharp. She saw Jack holding a wooden stake with a sharpened edge.
“Jack, it’s okay. Victor and I are in love.”
“You’re not in love with him, Lex. He sired you so you’re under his compulsion. He can compel you into believing whatever he wants you to believe and feel whatever way he wants you to feel toward him. That’s what vampires do.”
Victor howled with laughter and in the next breath looked at Jack as if he were an evening takeout snack. “I sense your ambivalence in not wanting to be in a committed relationship, so why are you here?”
“Because I won’t let you have her! She’s the woman of my dreams, the only person I’ve ever loved. Yeah, I admit I screwed up, treated her with disrespect, but I’ve changed. I even went to therapy!”
“Jack, you said you’d never go to therapy.”
“Lex, I said a lot of things. I was stupid and wrong, but I worked through my insecurities. All I want to do now is prove to you that you mean everything to me. I want to spend my life with only you and make you the happiest woman that ever walked the face of the earth. I’ll do anything for you if you give me one more chance.”
Victor folded his arms across his chest and looked quite amused. “Listen bellboy, why don’t you go back to the hotel and move some luggage.”
Lexy’s brow furrowed as she stepped up to Victor. “Hey, his title is Food and Beverage Manager.”
“Whatever!” said Victor, as he waved his hand dismissively. “Besides, on your salary, you wouldn’t even get her through the first hundred years, not that you’ll live that long. And you certainly wouldn’t be able to afford a steep enough life insurance policy to take care of her for all eternity. With me, she’ll never want for anything.”
“Don’t listen to him, Lex,” Jack said, as he came out from the shadows and into the moonlight. “He’ll pimp you to do his dirty work. Probably have you stick-up the local hospitals and blood banks, demanding gallons of the stuff in unmarked bags.”
“That’s a bunch of BS; he’s just jealous, my darling.” Victor took two steps forward.
Jack quickly stepped back, gripped the wooden stake with both hands, and raised it above his head, the sharpened edge pointing forward. “I won’t let you have her, vampire!”
“Better think twice about trying to poke me with that toothpick you call a stake, busboy, unless you don’t mind spending eternity in hotel hell.”
“I’m not afraid of you! I come from the Van Helsings. You have heard of them, right?”
“Hmm, smart people those Van Helsings, however, I was smarter, that’s why I’m still here.”
“Yeah, well not for long!” Jack charged forward like an angered bull, aiming the stake at Victor’s heart. With the agility and precision of a matador, Victor fanned his cape and quickly stepped to the side, the stake narrowly missing him. As Jack spun around, the stake fell from his grip, Victor’s hand wrapped around Jack’s neck, lifting him inches off the ground.
“Victor, no!” Lexy pulled at Victor’s arm.
He growled and shook her from him. Her body lurched backward; the fall knocked the wind out of her.
Victor let out a low, maniacal laugh. “Killing a Van Helsing these days just isn’t the adrenaline rush it used to be,” he said, his fangs morphing into sabers, a sardonic grin on his angular face. “Hmm, about ninety or was it ninety-five years ago, I took the wooden stake from a hunter and speared his heart. It truly was a bloody mess. Maybe I should kill you the same way. I have so little fun these days.”
Lexy shook her head as if to get the cobwebs out of her brain. Did he say kill? Kill Jack? As though stepping out from a thick fog, she now saw Victor from a different perspective. No longer was he the romantic, gentle person she thought he was, but now saw the ugliness of the mons
ter within him. She sprung to her feet and pounded on Victor’s back.
“Put him down! I won’t let you kill my boyfriend!”
Victor released his grip. Jack coughed and gagged as his body crumpled to the ground. Victor whirled around and glared at Lexy. “Have you forgotten so soon darling, that you are mine?” The fires of hell seemed to flare in his eyes.
“I don’t date killers, and I’d rather die than date another control freak!”
“Seriously darling, technically speaking you are dead.”
“Vampire!” Jack shouted, as he picked himself up off the ground and staggered back a couple steps before catching his footing. Even in the moonlight, Lexy could see the paleness of Jack’s face as he tried to catch his breath.
Victor’s cape flared as he spun to face Jack. Anger licked at his body like hot flames, his posture rigid. “Okay Jack, you’re beginning to annoy me.”
As Victor lunged toward Jack, Lexy screamed. Suddenly, Victor howled in pain, stumbling backward away from Jack, while holding his face in his hands. Jack was holding a bag of verbena, a potent herb that if touched by a vampire, causes burns. And Jack had just rubbed it in Victor’s face.
“Come on, we have to get out of here!” Jack said, as he grabbed her hand. They took off running through the night, through backyards, dodging swimming pools and swing sets. Lexy was amazed at Jack’s heroic efforts to rescue her, a once self-absorbed man who now put his life on the line to save her. How ironic, she thought, that she saw the ugly part of Victor and at the same time, saw the beautiful part of Jack.
Lexy wondered how much longer she could keep running. Her lungs burned, her body felt weak, and she knew that any minute her legs would give out. As the distant barking from a dog echoed in the moonlit night, Jack helped Lexy over a tall wrought iron fence, right into someone’s vegetable garden. As she jumped to the ground, she slid on a pile of rotting tomatoes and twisted her ankle. Through her psychic connection with Victor, she knew it was only a matter of seconds before he’d catch up.
“Jack, just go! Hurry!”
“Lex, I’m not leaving you!”
“He’ll kill you Jack, please!”
“She’s right, Jack. Sorry, but time’s up.” The muscles jumped in Victor’s jaw as he lunged toward Jack. Jack pulled a wooden stake from the ground, swung it, and hit Victor, putting a slash across his face.
“Shouldn’t have done that, Jack.” Quick as lightning Victor leapt into the air and pounced on Jack, the two of them falling to the ground in a heap, wrestling. However, Jack’s fierce struggle was no match for a vampire with super strength, leaving Jack bloody and semi-conscious. Victor paused, then crouched down to gaze at Jack, when all at once, he reared his head back, his fangs morphing into deadly sabers, ready to plunge them into Jack’s neck. Instead Victor gasped, his body stiffened.
Lexy stood behind Victor, her face pale with disbelief at her own super strength. Quickly, she released her grip on the stake she drove into Victor’s back that pierced his heart.
Victor staggered to his feet, letting out a loud gurgling, as he gripped the three-inch piece of wood protruding from his chest. Weaving, he took one last gasp of air and toppled backward into Lexy causing her to lose her footing. The two of them plunged to the ground. Lexy cried out in agony, as the stake jutting out of Victor’s back, ripped through her chest.
Jack scrambled to get to Lexy. As he pulled Victor’s body off her, the vampire combusted into a heap of ashes, the wooden stake left in her chest. Jack dropped to his knees. Tears wet his face as he knelt beside Lexy and scooped her into his arms. Her body writhed in pain, her lips blue her skin ashen, as she lay on the blood-soaked ground.
“Lex, don’t worry, I’ll get you to a hospital.”
Lexy managed a weak smile. “There is no time…no time...” Her eyes rolled back into her head, as Jack cradled her limp body close to his. “Lexy, don’t die! Please don’t die!”
One Year Later
“I’m really going to miss our girly chats on trashing men,” Jenny said, sitting on the edge of the king-size canopy bed in Lexy’s bedroom.
“I know Jen, but who’d have thought I’d write a novel that would end up on the New York Times bestseller list? And now I’m moving to The Big Apple,” Lexy said, as she tucked her fingers into her long hair, loosening the ringlets which fell into soft waves.
“I know. All I hear around the office is—‘Have you read Lexy’s “A Date to Die For” novel? It’s so romantic.’”
“It is, isn’t it,” Lexy said, opening the heart-shaped locket around her neck to swoon over the tiny photo inside. “Jack looks so handsome in this photo. How could I not love this man who made the ultimate sacrifice for me? He gave me my life back.”
“Yeah, and who’d believe that my two best friends are vampires,” Jenny said, shaking her head.
“Yeah, well, it’s not like we planned for it. But good things have come our way, like what luck that Jack’s marketing talents, of which no one knew he had, would land him the job of Public Relations Director for the New York Blood Bank Society. The job certainly will have its perks, if you catch my drift.”
Just then, Jack walked into the bedroom as Lexy slipped on her new pair of snakeskin Prada’s. “Honey, you look absolutely gorgeous,” he said.
“You do, too, my darling,” she cooed, as she stood to adjust the collar on Jack’s blue pinstripe shirt. Tears welled in her eyes, as she thought about the night she almost died, not from the wooden stake that luckily missed her heart, but it was when her body began to convulse.
Jack instinctively knew what was vital to her existence. She was too sick; too delirious to remember that night that he let her feed on him, knowing that he, too, would become one of the living dead. It was the ultimate testament of his undying love for her.
“Come on, honey,” Jack said, brushing a tear from Lexy’s cheek. “Time to go, we have a long flight to New York.”
THE END
A STEP IN TIME
by Susan Hawthorne
https://storybookster.wordpress.com/