Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

  “Stop it,” I begged. “Leave him alone!”

  Lucius must have heard my voice, because he turned toward me, just for a second, and I saw surprise in his eyes. Surprise and resignation.

  “Lucius, no,” I begged, knowing what he was about to do.

  Get himself destroyed.

  But he made the fatal move, anyway. He turned back to the already furious boys and bared his fangs.

  Macho bravado was abandoned among the attackers.

  “Vampire!” Ethan cried, terror and shock mingling in his voice.

  “Son of a bitch . . .” Frank Dormand backed away, looking petrified, as if he’d suddenly realized that it wasn’t just a terrible game anymore. He’d unleashed a power he had never really expected to loose, for all his talk of vampires and websites and stakes.

  Ethan scrambled backward on the hay-covered floor, too, but he was reaching blindly behind him for something.

  I saw it before he located it. The stake. Homemade. Crude. But lethal. Half buried in the hay. I dove for it—but Jake saw it, too, and he was faster. He snatched it up and stalked toward Lucius, who was fighting his way to his feet, squaring off against the shorter but still powerful wrestler.

  “No, Jake!” I wailed, scrambling to my knees, scrambling to grab Jake’s legs, missing them as Jake gained speed. Lucius growled, advanced, too.

  And then, as if in slow motion, I saw my ex-boyfriend raise his arm, lunge forward, and plunge the stake into Lucius’s chest.

  “Jake—no!” I screamed the words. Or I thought I screamed the words. I don’t remember actually hearing them come out of my mouth.

  And in a split second, it was over.

  Jake—the nice boy—was standing over Lucius’s body. Lucius’s too-still body.

  “What have you done?” I cried into the sudden silence.

  Jake stepped back, the heavy, sharp, and bloody chunk of wood in his hand. “It had to be me,” he said, looking at me with miserable eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t care.

  “Lucius,” I moaned, stumbling through the hay. I collapsed at his side, feeling for his pulse. It was there, but fainter than usual. Blood seeped from a hole in his shirt. A gaping hole. I glanced up at the circle of faces. Familiar faces. Guys I knew from school. The anger was gone now, and the realization of what they’d actually done seemed to be settling in. How could they have done this? “Get help,” I begged them.

  “No, Antanasia,” Lucius said softly.

  I bent over him, gently pressing my hands over the hole in his chest, as if I could stop the blood. “Lucius . . .”

  “It is over, Jessica,” he managed to say, voice soft. “Just leave it be.”

  A commanding voice came from the darkest corner of the barn. “Get out. All of you. And never speak of this. Never. Nothing ever happened here.”

  Dorin. My uncle had shed his usual merry demeanor, and he spoke with an unfamiliar authority as he emerged from the shadows, striding in, taking control.

  Feet shuffled quickly in hay as the cluster of teenagers obeyed and dispersed, running as though the vampire’s words had been a slingshot releasing them into the night.

  Where had Dorin come from? Why hadn’t he been here in time? I rose and ran at him, pounding my stained fists against his chest. “You let this happen. You should have protected him!”

  “Leave, Jessica,” Dorin insisted, grabbing my fists. He was surprisingly strong. Sadness suffused his eyes. “This is Lucius’s destiny. It’s what he wishes.”

  No. That can’t be. We just kissed. . . . “What do you mean, ‘what he wishes’?” I wailed, running back to Lucius, falling to my knees. “Our destiny is together, right? Say it, Lucius.”

  “No, Antanasia,” he said, voice weak and fading. “You belong here. Live a happy life. A long life. A human life.”

  “No, Lucius.” I sobbed, begging him to live. He couldn’t just give up. “I want to live with you.”

  “It is not to be, Antanasia.”

  I swore I saw tears in his black eyes, just before he closed them, and I started screaming, and the next thing I remembered was my dad’s hands lifting me, pulling me away, carrying me, fighting against nothing and everything, to the van. I didn’t know when they had arrived or how they had found me.

  It didn’t matter.

  Lucius was gone.

  Destroyed.

  The body disappeared, and Dorin disappeared, and, as per Dorin’s instruction, nobody ever spoke of it again. It was like the whole thing had been a dream. If not for the necklace around my throat, the way the clasp kind of burned where his fingers had sealed it, maybe I wouldn’t have believed it myself.

  Chapter 58

  “AND THE WOODROW WILSON School Spirit Award goes to . . . Faith Crosse.”

  My fingers clutched the chain-link fence as the girl responsible, in large part, for Lucius’s destruction strode to the temporary riser like some sort of hero, mounting the steps to a chorus of whistles and cheers from a sea of graduates in navy blue caps and gowns. Beneath her cap, Faith’s blond hair flapped like a flag in the brisk wind as she accepted her award and waved to the crowd.

  The numbness I’d carefully nurtured as a way of dealing with my pain and rage and loss nearly shattered to see Faith applauded, and I’m not sure how I kept from shrieking out loud.

  Why did I come to watch graduation? I had refused to participate in the ceremony, but something perverse in me had drawn me to the football field to witness my classmates, many of whom I’d known since kindergarten—and a few of whom had participated in the slaughter of the one person I’d loved most in this world—receive their diplomas. I suppose I wanted to see their faces. Was there any hint of the evil deed they’d committed in that barn? Or had they convinced themselves that nothing had ever happened, as Dorin had advised? Or—and this was the possibility that made me sickest—did one or two of them believe they had done something good? Did Jake feel that way? He’d said to me that night, “It had to be me.” What did that even mean?

  “Antanasia.” The voice was soft but clear. “It does no good to torture yourself. Although dreaming of revenge is a very typical vampire behavior.”

  Turning, I saw him.

  A slightly pudgy, balding vampire, just a few feet from me, leaning against the wall of the field’s concession stand under a sign urging us to contribute to the Woodrow Wilson Band Boosters. He wore a navy T-shirt with the Wilson mascot—a tough-looking, jowly dog dubbed “Woody”—embroidered on the chest.

  Catching my eye, Dorin waved.

  Just seeing him—someone connected to Lucius and that night—made me want to vomit, for just a second. When my stomach stopped lurching, I started walking like some sort of zombie.

  Behind me, I heard more cheers as Ethan Strausser won an award for outstanding achievement in athletics.

  The applause seemed to come from a million miles away as I made my way across the grass toward Dorin. Toward a brief but intense past that still consumed me.

  “Well, well, well. Don’t you look pale and serious.” Dorin clucked as I approached him. “Almost like a proper vampire.” He hugged me, but I stiffened in his embrace, still believing he’d failed to protect Lucius. “Why aren’t you graduating today with the rest of them?” he asked.

  “They don’t mean anything to me,” I said, stepping back from him.

  “And yet you’re here!”

  “Dorin—forget about me. What are you doing here?”

  “Hmm.” Dorin frowned. “It’s very complicated stuff. Very difficult to explain.”

  I really wasn’t up for anything challenging, but I asked anyway. “What kind of complicated stuff?”

  “It seems that there’s a bit of a dustup in Romania.” Dorin sighed, avoiding my eyes. “Something of a mess, really. You’re not supposed to know about it, of course. But I got to thinking . . . it’s not really fair to keep you in the dark. We’ve probably done so for too long. That was Lucius’s idea,
of course. Don’t blame me. If he knew I was here . . .”

  My knees nearly buckled, and Dorin lunged to catch my elbow. “Steady there!”

  “Did you just say . . . Lucius?” I demanded. “If Lucius knew you were here?” But that’s impossible. . . . Lucius had been destroyed. . . .

  Dorin cleared his throat, looking guilty and nervous. “He thought it was best to do it his way. But he’s just miserable, and things are falling apart back home.”

  I grabbed Dorin by the shoulders, shaking him harder than I’d ever shaken anything in my life. “IS. LUCIUS. ALIVE?”

  “Oh, yes, quite,” Dorin admitted, trying to wrench out of my grasp. “But at this rate . . .”

  It is weird how relief and joy—the most intense joy imaginable—and fury—the most intense fury imaginable—can get all mixed up, and the next thing you know, you are sobbing and laughing and pounding your fists against a vampire’s chest, driving him backward against a high school concession stand.

  When I regained the smallest measure of my composure, we went home to get my passport. I was going to Romania. I was going home to find Lucius.

  Chapter 59

  “SO JAKE ROSE to the occasion, so to speak. Agreed to be in on the whole stunt. Said he sort of admired Lucius, in spite of everything. Something about Lucius standing up for you against that bully Frank Dormand.”

  “And that was enough to convince him to thrust a stake into Lucius’s chest?” I was skeptical.

  “Well, I may have threatened him, too. Just a little,” Dorin confirmed. “But he’s a nice boy, that Jake. It’s a good thing Lucius had mentioned him in letters home.”

  “Lucius had mentioned him?”

  “Oh, of course,” Dorin said. “He was always complaining about the ‘squatty, nice’ boy who was messing up the whole courtship.”

  Nice. There was that word again. This time, it made me smile. “Yes, Jake is a nice guy.” If I ever made it back to Lebanon County, I would thank him.

  “Pretzel?”

  “No, thanks.” We were flying at about 35,000 feet, zooming toward Romania, back to the land of my birth, and Dorin was filling me in on the whole story. How he’d enlisted Jake in a last-minute scheme to stab Lucius, making sure Ethan Strausser or some other zealot didn’t get the chance to plunge the stake in too deeply.

  As it was, Jake had nearly gone too far. “The boy doesn’t know his own strength.” Dorin sighed, shaking pretzels into his hand. Somehow he’d gotten about a dozen packs from the flight attendant. “Young Mr. Zinn was rather concerned about the whole thing for quite a while. But it had to be realistic. I told him not to worry, not to worry. Everything went just fine.”

  “Why didn’t Lucius just run away?” As soon as I asked the question, I realized how absurd it was. A vampire prince turn tail? Not likely.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Dorin said, echoing my thoughts. “Lucius wouldn’t have even liked my enlisting Jacob. He really did want to be destroyed that night. He was quite surprised—and a little peeved—to wake up still alive. He got over it, though.”

  I stared out at the passing clouds. “But how could Lucius do that to me? Let me think he was gone? Why didn’t he contact me?”

  Dorin patted my arm. “He really thought it was best for you to believe he was gone. Lucius—he sees his dark side. Very clearly.”

  “Lucius can control that side of himself. He just won’t believe it.”

  “Yes,” Dorin agreed. “You and I are certain that Lucius is honorable. Anyone who knows him can see that. Indeed, Lucius’s endless struggle with his conscience is evidence of the strength of his good side. But Vasile tried to twist him, to make Lucius a pawn in his cruel schemes. And so Lucius never seems to know his true nature. Noble prince or vicious fiend? Both? He is a vampire at war with himself.”

  Dorin added, “Buying that horse, Hell’s Belle, didn’t help, either. Lucius got a bit obsessed with that animal. He felt a kinship with it, and started thinking maybe he was just too damaged to live, too. That eventually, he would harm . . .”

  “Me.”

  “Yes. He didn’t want you to suffer eternity with a monster—in the more technical sense of the term. You know, someone capable of terrible cruelty . . .” Dorin trailed off. “But now he suffers.”

  I looked at my traveling companion. “What do you mean?”

  “Lucius needs you. He mourns you. He loves you. It’s very unusual for a vampire to truly love. Some hold that real love between vampires is a myth. That we are too vicious by nature. But Lucius does. He loves you—as you love him.”

  I wanted, more than anything, for Lucius to love me. But I was still hurt. “Didn’t he realize that the cruelest thing he could do was leave me?”

  “He thought you would recover quickly, get on with your life. That’s what teenagers do, right? ‘Bounce back’?”

  “But I’m not a normal teenager.”

  “Of course not.” Dorin paused. “Lucius thought he did you a favor, though. At great cost to his own heart. Tremendous cost.”

  My eyes filled with tears, like they always did when I thought of Lucius. “I miss him so much.”

  “Of course. But you must be prepared when you see him. His dark side really does grow more powerful every day. He destroyed Vasile, you know.”

  “What?” I didn’t think I’d heard right.

  “Oh, yes,” Dorin confirmed. “When Vasile found out Lucius was still with us, and in Romania, he ordered him destroyed for disobedience. For abandoning the pact he was sent to fulfill. Well, Lucius marched right into the castle and said, ‘Do it yourself, old man,’ or something to that effect. And Vasile said, ‘You impertinent chit,’ and set upon Lucius like a wolf on a hind—that’s a deer in your country.”

  Lucius fighting Vasile? It hardly seemed fair. Lucius was strong, but Vasile was beyond strong. He was like a force of nature. “What happened?”

  “Lucius won. And in a fight to the finish . . . well, someone gets ‘finished.’”

  “Oh.” Even though Vasile had been unspeakably cruel, it was hard to imagine Lucius plunging a stake into anyone’s chest. . . .

  Dorin correctly read my silence. “Lucius had no choice. But he was nearly shattered when it was all over. Wouldn’t eat for days. Still, what could he have done? Stand there and let Vasile destroy him? If you ask me, the boy had endured far too much already. The world’s a better place with Vasile out of the way.”

  “But Lucius can’t accept that, can he?”

  “No. Of course not. Lucius was raised—indoctrinated—to honor family above all else. He was taught since infancy to respect—and protect—Vasile as his mentor and superior. Of course Lucius sees disobeying and ultimately destroying Vasile as just more evidence that he is irredeemable. And so he acts irredeemably.”

  “What exactly is he doing?” I was truly scared to hear the answer.

  “He is precipitating a war; that is what he is doing.”

  “How?”

  “Our people, the Dragomirs, are furious about the pact. They think Lucius left you behind deliberately, for the express purpose of denying us our princess. Of denying us shared power. Lucius not only allows this misperception to fester, he fuels it. He taunts us toward war. Already, there are skirmishes between the Vladescus and the Dragomirs. Vampires have been destroyed in anger. Militias are being formed. Soon it will be all-out war.”

  “Vampires have been destroyed because I didn’t come back with Lucius? While I was wasting time mucking stalls, my relatives have been getting staked? Why didn’t you come get me?”

  Dorin fidgeted. “I am not strong, Antanasia, like you . . . I feared Lucius’s wrath . . . He told me that you were not to come to Romania, not to know that he lived. But the situation has gone too far. I cannot allow more Dragomirs to be lost, just because I am afraid to defy his decree. I had to come for you.”

  I squeezed my uncle’s hand, almost as though I was the older, more experienced vampire. “Well, at least you did the right t
hing in the end. I promise I’ll do my best to protect you from Lucius’s ‘wrath.’”

  “Indeed, I trust that you are the one force capable of bringing back the benevolent side of Lucius. I stake my existence on it—and the fate of our people. For in a war with the Vladescus . . . well, in the time of peace, which began with your betrothal ceremony, we Dragomirs have allowed ourselves to soften. If this war cannot be averted, I fear that the Dragomirs, for all our current outrage, will be no match for the Vladescus.”

  “How bad might it be for our family?”

  “Obliterated,” Dorin said glumly.

  “So if I can’t convince Lucius, in a last ditch effort, to admit that he loves me and honor the pact . . . ?”

  “The Dragomirs, I fear, will soon be no more. Lucius, as he is now, cannot be counted upon to show much mercy, I fear.”

  I leaned my head against the seat back, letting it all sink in. My new to-do list: Control angry Dragomir vampires. Win back no-longer-destroyed, reluctant, rampaging fiancé. Stop imminent war.

  I fingered the bloodstone at my throat. I was up for the challenge. I had no choice.

  The plane hit some turbulence, and we jolted sharply, several times. So sharply that several passengers yelped.

  Dorin grabbed my hand and smiled. “Welcome back to Romania, Princess Antanasia.”

  Chapter 60

  GIVEN ALL THAT Lucius had told me about living in castles and eating the finest foods and having his clothes tailor-made, I was a bit surprised to find myself bumping along the rutted roads of rural Romania in a battered Fiat “Panda,” which huffed and puffed along on only three of its four cylinders.

  “Um, Dorin,” I said, clutching the dashboard as my uncle once again ground the gears into submission. “I thought we were vampire royalty.”

  Dorin nodded to me. “Indeed. Excellent bloodline.”