Christmas in Transylvania

  “Uh, I’ll go get your suitcase, and you can change your clothes if you want,” he said though he didn’t give a rat’s ass about dirt on the damn quilt, “then we’ll see what we can do about those bruises on your face . . . and, uh, anywhere else.”

  She nodded, then started to yawn widely but stopped when her split lip began to bleed again.

  He handed her a tissue from the box on his desk, and she dabbed at the moisture.

  “I still think you should go to the ER.”

  “No! I just need to rest, then I’ll get out of your way.” Under her breath, she added, “Somehow.”

  “You’re not in my way,” he said, which was an out-­and-­out lie, which they both recognized.

  She arched her brows at him in teasing disbelief, then had to hold the tissue against her mouth when another yawn reflex hit her.

  Karl was beginning to be concerned about her need to sleep. She’d already slept almost an hour in the pickup truck on the way here; he had to wonder if she was in shock or something.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Not really. I’m more tired at the moment.”

  He got the message and left, closing the door behind him.

  After parking his truck in the underground garage, he snuck Faith’s suitcase upstairs. When he got there, she was already in his bed, the quilt pulled up to her neck. On a nearby chair, she’d folded her jeans and T-­shirt, along with the pink hat and scarf. Her jacket hung in the open closet.

  He set the suitcase down and, without hesitation, lifted the quilt. Her skinny body was covered only with a plain white bra and panties and the pink socks. Everywhere he looked, he saw new and old bruises, including her ribs. And then there were the two old scars of raised flesh on her thigh, the letters L and B that Jeanette had told Karl were carved there by the abuser.

  The fact that her eyelids did not even flutter as he looked at her near-­nude body alarmed him as much as her injuries.

  Leroy Brown was going to pay for this, sure as Karl was a vampire angel, but for now his biggest concern was Faith. Karl was no fool. He knew when he needed help.

  He found Alex down in the main salon, or what they called the front living room, directing the moving of furniture to accommodate the big-­ass tree that six vangels were hauling in.

  Tapping her on the shoulder, Karl said, “Alex, I need a favor.”

  She had been laughing at something one of the children said and turned to him with a smile, which immediately disappeared on seeing the expression on his face. “What?”

  “I need you to come upstairs with me.”

  “What is it, Karl?”

  “Um, something personal.”

  “Can it wait ’til later?”

  “No, it can’t wait.”

  “Perhaps Svein or Jogeir could help you.”

  “I have a problem that requires a woman’s hand,” he said with exasperation.

  “Okaaay,” she said, calling out to Armod to keep an eye on the twins.

  As they went side by side up the wide, front stairway, he tried to prepare her. “There’s someone in my bedroom. She’s in pretty bad shape.”

  “She? What have you done, Karl?” She stopped at the first landing, hands on hips, and scowled at him.

  “It’s not what I’ve done. Well, it is what I’ve done since I brought her here, but her condition was caused by her boyfriend. Who is no longer her boyfriend if I have any say in the matter.”

  “She who?”

  “Faith Larson.”

  “Do you have a relationship with this woman?”

  “Hell, no! I mean, I hardly know her. She’s a waitress at the diner out on Route 322.”

  “Let me see if I understand. There’s a woman you ran into in a diner who was being abused in some way in a public place. So, instead of calling the police, you brought her here.”

  “No!” He combed his hands in frustration through the short bristles of his hair. “I went to her trailer. Leroy wasn’t there until we were leaving.”

  “Leroy?”

  “Leroy Brown, the douche-­bag boyfriend. And, yes, Leroy Brown, like the junkyard-­dog song.”

  A sudden thought seemed to occur to Alex. “Is he a Lucie?”

  “No, but he could be. He reeked of lemony evil.” To vangels, humans who were evil or about to commit some great evil exuded the citrusy scent of lemons.

  “Did you kill him? You know how Vikar feels about calling attention to us here at the castle.”

  “No, but I temporarily incapacitated him.”

  “How did—­”

  “Never mind all that. I’ll explain later.” They continued up the next flight of stairs. “One more thing, Alex, please don’t tell Vikar about Faith’s being here.”

  She didn’t like that idea, at all, he could tell.

  “Maybe you could just not mention that I brought an outsider here unless he asks.”

  “I don’t know—­”

  “She’ll be gone before he even realizes she’s been here.”

  “I don’t like secrets.” Worry creased her brow, but she didn’t chastise him any longer or plague him with more questions as they walked down the long hall.

  All bets were off, though, when they entered the bedroom.

  Whether she slept soundly or was unconscious, Faith never awakened. Not even when Karl uncovered her again.

  Alex gasped as she viewed Faith’s injuries, as well as the carved initials on her thigh, but she made a sound of real distress when she put a hand to the young woman’s forehead and proclaimed, “Fever! Get cold washcloths right away, then we need to get her to a hospital.”

  “No! I promised her there would be no hospital.” When he returned with several cold cloths and watched as she placed a folded one over Faith’s forehead, he asked, “Can’t we take care of her ourselves?”

  “I don’t see how.” She paused, and said, “Get a glass of water and a ­couple of Tylenol. Then, you better go tell Vikar to call Sigurd.”

  Tell Vikar? Karl groaned, but he knew that Alex was right. This situation had escalated beyond his control. Still, he muttered, “Vikar is going to kill me. Or worse yet, he’ll tell Mike.”

  “No, he’s not, Karl. You probably saved this woman’s life by taking her away from that evil man.”

  Karl felt a little better.

  But not much.

  “You can also tell Vikar I said that he’s not allowed to yell at you,” she added.

  “Oh, that’ll help. He’ll just give me one of those black looks that are even worse than his roar.”

  “His roars are just loud meows. He’s a pussycat, at heart.”

  “Who’s a pussycat?” a loud male voice said with mock chagrin from the open doorway, immediately followed by, “What the hell?” as new eyes took in the scene in the bedroom.

  And, yes, it was a roar.

  Chapter Four

  And then the other shoe dropped . . .

  SIGURD ARRIVED WITH his leather doctor’s bag at about seven and went immediately upstairs to examine Faith. By then, via the vangel grapevine, which was more effective than a bullhorn, everyone in the castle knew what Karl had done.

  Not long after, Karl got himself booted out of his own bedroom by making a nuisance of himself with all his questions and second-­guessing and the occasional cussword. Instead, Alex offered to stay and help her brother-­in-­law physician, along with one of the female vangels who assisted Lizzie in the kitchen. It was just as well. Karl had trouble breathing when he heard Sigurd remark on the various injuries.

  “Looks like the bastard kicked her in the ribs with a steel-­toed shoe.”

  “The bum must wear a ring. When he slapped her, the metal scraped a gouge in her cheek.”

  “One of her teeth appears to be loose.”

  “Do you
see how crooked that little finger is?”

  It was enough to make a grown man weep!

  Vikar got the boot, too. He said, “Mike is going to have an angel fit,” way too many times. Alex ordered her grumbling husband to put their children to bed. If he knew the usual pattern, Karl guessed that Vikar would fall asleep, too. The two rascals had a way of wearing a person down. Which was just as well; Karl didn’t need to hear any more pronouncements of how much trouble he was in.

  Heading toward the electronics room, which had been set up by Harek, one of the seven brothers, who was a computer genius, Karl decided to put his free time to good use. Booting up one of the simplest of the PCs, he googled, “Women’s Shelters” within a fifty-­mile radius of the castle’s zip code. There were fifty. Pulling out his cell phone, he began to dial.

  After fifteen minutes, he hung up in the middle of yet another call. They wanted to know his name, telephone number, address, practically everything including his criminal record, as if he were the abuser.

  “All I want to know is what measures you take to protect a woman’s identity if she gets dropped off there,” he’d finally yelled at one young woman, who sounded bored as she asked questions from a crib sheet.

  “Dropped off?” she asked with sudden alertness. “You would need to bring the woman inside, sir.”

  Yeah, right. So the cops could arrest me.

  He knew there were good ­people, volunteers mostly, at these shelters and that he was handling this all wrong, mainly because he was trying to be secretive when that raised red flags of suspicion. He needed to go about this in another way. Maybe if a woman made the calls . . .

  He went out into the hall and saw Regina approaching. Not his first choice under any circumstances. Regina had been a witch back in the 1200s, a real, cauldron-­brewing, broom-­riding practitioner of the black arts. Regina was always threatening to put curses on the male parts of the vangels who annoyed her. Karl had always wondered if she might have been a lesbian, not that the word was used then, but she was probably just an unpleasant, male-­hating female. She wasn’t that nice to her fellow females, either, come to think of it.

  “Hey, Regina,” he said with as much warmth as he could muster. “Would you mind doing me a favor?”

  “Drop dead, lackwit,” she said, swanning by. The black cat riding on her shoulder hissed at him, too.

  So much for that woman helping him.

  He walked down to the kitchen. Maybe Lizzie would be more amenable.

  The kitchen smelled wonderful. Lizzie and two of her vangel helpers, the sisters Esther and Hester, were baking cookies. Dozens and dozens of cookies.

  Lizzie wore her usual Victorian, upper-­class attire. White, high-­necked, lace-­trimmed blouse, tucked into a full-­length black skirt. Over that, a long white apron. Her gray-­threaded brown hair was tucked in a bun on top of her head. She was whacking walnuts on a cutting board with the flat side of her meat cleaver. Whack, whack, whack! Shells were flying everywhere. Every time she whacked, Esther and Hester jumped and scurried to pick up loose shells.

  “Um, what are you doing?” Karl asked.

  “Shelling walnuts.” Whack, whack, whack! “For the bloody damn fruitcakes I’m making.” Whack, whack, whack! “What does it look like I’m doing?” she sniped.

  Oh, Lord! Another sourpuss! “Wouldn’t it be easier to use a nutcracker?”

  “Hmpfh! This way I get to release my temper.” Whack, whack, whack! “On nuts, instead of someone’s head.” She looked pointedly at his head. Whack, whack, whack!

  Maybe Lizzie isn’t be the best person to make calls on Faith’s behalf. “Hey! I didn’t do anything.”

  “Yet.” She glared at him for a moment, then remarked, “You look paler than a ghost.” Whack, whack, whack!

  When vangels went too long without killing Lucies or saving sinners, their skin got paler and paler. He wasn’t sure if that was the reason for his pallor or the shock of the situation he found himself in. Either way, he went over to the commercial-­size fridge and took out a carton of Fake-­O, the synthetic blood that provided a temporary fix for vangels. He took a long swig and grimaced. Fake-­O tasted like curdled cat piss.

  In an emergency, vangels could also take small amounts of blood from ceorl vangels, like Esther and Hester, which was equally distasteful to Karl. He really felt like a vampire then, which he was, of course, but he liked to think he was more angel than vampire.

  What a crock! Karl thought at his mental rationalization. “What is this?” he asked then, grabbing a warm cookie out of one of the plastic storage bins lined up along the counter. “Wow! It’s really good.”

  “Snickerdoodles,” Lizzie grumbled. Whack, whack, whack! “And don’t you dare snicker. Look at this.” She shoved a piece of flour-­smudged notebook paper at Karl. “The Missus expects me to make ten dozen of each of these cookies for Christmas.”

  He did, in fact, have trouble stifling a snicker as he read the list. Fruitcake, snickerdoodles, gingerbread men (and women), chocolate chip cookies, decorated, cut-­out sugar cookies, snowballs, shortbread, rum balls, sand tarts, thumbprint cookies, and macaroons. “Um. That’s a lot of cookies.”

  “I told her to just buy out all the Keebler cookies in the supermarket, and she said it wouldn’t be the same thing. Hah! The vangels here could live on those stupid Oreos.” Whack, whack, whack!

  “I’m sure if you asked Alex for help, she would assign more vangels here.”

  Lizzie slammed her cleaver into the cutting board. Luckily, it was a really thick cutting board. Putting her floury hands on both hips, she gave him the evil eye, probably learned from Regina. “Are you insinuating that I can’t run my own kitchen?”

  “No, no, no! I just meant . . .” Oh, this was a losing battle. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Look at the time. I need to go . . . do something.”

  As he left the kitchen, he heard Lizzie telling Ester and Hester, “If any of them vangels refuse to eat my fruitcake after all this trouble, I’ll personally shove it down their barmy throats. With the wooden end of my axe. They think I got rid of my axe, but I save it for special occasions. Hee, hee, hee.” Whack, whack, whack!

  Karl escaped to the front living room, where he pulled a wingback chair up closer to the hearth fire so that he could prop his feet on the brass fender. Even though there were other vangels in the large room, which was now dominated by the enormous blue spruce tree, everyone was somewhat quiet, except for the occasional laugh, or grunt, or yawn. And the Christmas music, which had been playing nonstop ever since the word escaped that the castle would be getting in the holiday spirit. Luckily, someone had turned down the volume on the sound system so that Nat King Cole’s crooning about chestnuts on an open fire was only a minor distraction in the background. While the kids had been awake, the song du jour had been by Alvin and the Chipmunks. At one point, Vikar had threatened to wrap a hula hoop around Armod’s neck for introducing the little ones to what had to be the world’s most irritating singing group.

  He considered asking some of the vangels in the room for help, or at least advice, on getting rid of Faith . . . rather, finding a safe place for the poor woman, other than the castle. But then he decided to wait and discuss the situation with Alex.

  Jogeir and Svein were playing a game of chess before one of the wide bay windows. Even from here, Karl could see that snow continued to come down in flakes the size of golf balls. Twenty inches were expected to accumulate by morning.

  Tofa, a fine artist, was touching up one of her wall murals, which had been scratched when they brought in the tree. She was not a happy camper.

  Moddam, who had been one of the stoneworkers on the Roman Coliseum, was fast asleep in one of the more comfortable upholstered chairs, his arms folded over his burly chest, his booted feet resting on a hassock. The poor man did hard labor, day after day, trying to restore the stonework on this cru
mbling castle.

  Bodil, a former slave in the Byzantine emperor’s Imperial Gardens, knelt before a low coffee table, where she was arranging pine boughs with holly berries and a red bow into a massive wreath to be hung on the front door. She’d already made about fifty feet of garlands to be hung in swags, whatever the hell swags were, along the staircase.

  For more than an hour, Karl just sat. He’d never felt more like having a smoke, but he was determined to stay off the cigarettes. Not that he was concerned about dying from the nicotine, a morbid joke if there ever was one, but it was a filthy habit. Enough about his addiction!

  If it weren’t for his worry over Faith, Karl would have found the fresh pine scent, the warm fire, the soft music, and the unusual quiet . . . unusual for vangels, that is . . . to be soothing. As it was, he couldn’t relax with all the questions hammering in his head.

  Finally, Sigurd came up and dropped his bag to the floor with a long sigh of exhaustion. Tugging another wingback chair closer to the fire, Sigurd plopped down in it and leaned back, closing his eyes for a few moments. “That feels so good!”

  With his long blond ponytail and day-­old whiskers, he didn’t look like any doctors Karl had ever known, but word was that Sigurd had a great reputation at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he worked, when he was not off on vangel missions.

  Karl was almost afraid to ask about Faith’s condition. Instead, he said, “Thanks for coming tonight, Sig.”

  “No problem,” Sigurd replied, eyes still closed. When he opened them, he stared at Karl through eyes that were the same as all the vangels, clear blue, sometimes morphing to silver-­gray when in some high emotion. “Faith is going to be all right, Karl, provided she gets rest and food and a little TLC, none of which she appears to have had for some time now. And provided she doesn’t go back to her abuser, of course.”

  “I’ll make sure she doesn’t go back.” The anger that had been boiling in Karl all day simmered to the surface again.

  Sigurd shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time a victim returned to her partner. Codependency is a symptom of abused women. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist, or a physician, to see that this isn’t the first beating Faith has had.”