"Good evening," Bobby said, doing his best to sound cheery, as he squinted at her, since his eyes took longer to adjust the light than mine did.
"Good." She did a low bow again. "You are both here. Dinner is served in ten minutes."
"Dinner?"
"Ano. The chef has obtained local feast for you," she said in her broken English. Then her eyes darted from her me to Bobby, my human comrade. "Unless you want to, jak to rict, dine with your..." She motioned to him. "Food."
"What? Oh, no." I shook my head adamantly. "He's not... he's not for eating."
"I am a friend, not food," he reiterated.
"Ano, of course." Myska lowered her head, her cheeks flushing subtly with shame.
Once she'd given us unsteady directions to the dining hall, I got out of bed and dressed in a hurry. It sounded like it would take us almost ten minutes to get there, and I didn't want to keep them waiting.
"So I should come with?" Bobby asked as I pulled a gray tunic over my faux-leather leggings.
"Well, the alternative is you staying behind in these musty, empty rooms by yourself, and honestly that sounds worse to me." I draped a long chain necklace over my head and ran my fingers through my tangles of dark hair. "Do you think I look nice enough for this?"
"Do I?" He shrugged and motioned to himself. "How do you dress for dinner with a vampire?"
Thankfully, we'd left in a hurry, because it took us at least ten minutes to find the dining hall, in part due to the maid's less than impeccable grasp of the English language but also largely due to the massive size of the place.
When we reached the dining hall, pushing open two enormous wooden doors, I found three vampires seated around a baroque-styled room on a series of crimson velvet chaise lounges. I had naively excepted the dining hall to have a dining table, but considering vampires didn't use tables for eating, this made much more sense.
"Alice!" Olivia shouted in delight when I came in, as if she hadn't just seen me on Saturday. She was sprawled back on her sofa, which was her usual state of being, and she wore a gown of sheer black fabric, with her dark hair cascading around her.
On the chaise closest to here, beneath an enormous ornate mirror, sat Rebekah, looking exactly as she had the last time I saw her. She was like a strange facsimile of a child, with all the presence of a life size doll.
Her smooth skin, full cheeks, and her perfectly styled brown waves were all spot-on reproductions of an adorable little girl, but there was no life to her. The lavish gown she wore, replete with exquisite jewelry only added to her figurine-like appearance.
Rebekah was over a thousand years old, making her the oldest vampire I had ever met, and from what I gathered, she had lost her connection to true humanity a long time ago. She sat perfectly poised at the edge of sofa, unmoving, unflinching.
When she turned her head subtly to look at me, it was like watching a mannequin come to life. The illusion was so convincing that I heard Bobby's sharp intake of breath when she blinked at him - her lids moving slowly, almost robotically, over her startling blue eyes.
"It has been some time since I've last seen you, Alice," Rebekah said, her voice smooth and emotionless. "You are looking well."
Sitting on the chaise closest to Rebekah was a young vampire, appearing to be in her mid-twenties, though I couldn't guess how long she'd really been alive. She dressed similarly to Rebekah, so much so that they almost looked like matching mother-daughter outfits designed for a period piece.
She stood when Bobby and I entered the room, smiling in a way that reminded me of an overly excitable cocker spaniel, and she fidgeted with her elbow-length satin gloves as Rebekah and I spoke.
"Thank you," I replied to Rebekah's compliment, though I wasn't sure if she meant it or not. "You too." Then, since it felt overly silent and sufficiently awkward, I motioned to Bobby standing beside me. "You remember Bobby?"
"I do not. But I usually don't make a point of remembering humans." Rebekah smiled then, but it was totally devoid of any sense of happiness. "You won't either, if you ever get to live to be my age."
"I'll keep that in mind," I said, since I didn't know how else to respond.
Still toying with her gloves, the other vampire made a bold move and stepped toward us with her hand extended, like she meant to shake mine, and announced, "I am Anka Novak. I am Rebekah's adoptive mother."
"Anka!" Rebekah snapped just before she reached us. Anka dropped her hand immediately and lowered her gaze. "Not now. You can prattle on later." With her head still bowed, Anka retreated to her sofa.
Since Rebekah had the appearance of a child, she required vampires to act as parents for her, handling all the legalities that a child would be unable to do on their own and travel with her, as not to raise suspicion.
That's why she'd turned Olivia, and as Olivia had once explained, she had been more of a slave to her child master than a true mother-daughter relationship. I imagined that it wasn't much different for this Anka woman either.
"Now, we eat," Rebekah commanded.
Rebekah rang a bell, and seconds later, a tall man with a thick moustache entered the room, with a parade of four young ladies following behind him. None of them could be more than twenty-years-old, if that, but they were all well-dressed and healthy looking, with strong hearts pounding wildly in their chests.
"Olivia prefers young women, so that's what I put on the menu for tonight," Rebekah explained, sounding disinterested. "Guests may choose first."
"My favorite." Olivia was off the chaise in a flash, looking over the beautiful girls as they smiled demurely and let out a few flirtatious laughs.
She finally decided on a chubby blond one, directing her over to her couch. Then, assuming correctly that I would never pick one for myself, she took a tall brunette by the hand and led her over to me.
"Olivia, I don't -"
"Alice." Olivia's tone was friendly but her eyes were severe. "It's rude to turn down hospitality, and these girls know what they're doing. This is their job. So, eat. Please."
I could feel Rebekah's unmoving gaze and decided she was not a host that I would want to piss off. I took the girl's hand from Olivia, and she sat down on the couch beside me, putting herself between Bobby and me.
He scooted down some, and once everyone had chosen a "meal," Myska wheeled in a small gold cart with a heaping plate of mashed potatoes and a green bottle of Lobkowitz beer.
"We don't have many human guests," Rebekah said, with venom dripping on the word guests.
"This is, uh, this is perfect." Bobby smiled as he held up the beer. "Cheers."
"We shall dine now," Rebekah commanded, and immediately, everyone dove onto their meals, sinking their teeth into them.
Within seconds, the room was filled with the delicious scent of blood. I'd just eaten on Saturday, where I'd glutted myself on blood at the wedding, so I shouldn't have been that hungry.
But the scent of it did something to me. Causing a powerful hunger and longing to grow inside me, coming not from my stomach but the core of my very being, vibrating through my bones and muscles.
The girl looked at me, her dark eyes wide and hopeful, and the tentative smile on her lips looked almost as hungry as I felt. "My name is Tereza," she said, her words heavily accented. "I am ready for you to bite."
Tereza pulled her long dark hair to the side and tilted her head, exposing her neck. And then she closed her eyes, biting her lip seductively, as she waited. Since there was no point in delaying, I pulled her into my lap and sunk my teeth into her throat.
She tasted of hope and youth and ambition, and she moaned with pleasure as I felt her delicious blood course through me, filling me with the most wonderful ecstatic heat.
OLIVIA SPED THROUGH THE CROWDED streets of Prague in Rebekah's Rolls Royce, absently singing along to Rolling Stone's "Paint It Black" that blasted out of the stereo. She took a sharp turn, nearly hitting a pedestrian, but she paid no mind.
"Hey, maybe try not to kill any humans whil
e we're out and about," Bobby suggested from the backseat, as he once again went flying across the black leather seats as Oliva raced through the city.
"Put on your seatbelt," I told him, but without my usual force.
The blood from dinner had left me feeling a bit foggy. I so rarely drank fresh blood, preferring to drink from bags that didn't risk humans lives or nurture their dependency and eventual addiction to vampire bites. But it was impossible to deny the intense pleasure and residual high that came from drinking it fresh.
"Oh, I've never killed a human," Olivia replied flippantly, and when she caught me looking over at her. "On accident, I mean. I've only ever killed them on purpose, and I don't have plans to kill any tonight."
Bobby leaned forward between the seats. "You know, Olivia, you seem like a really cool girl."
She laughed. "Why, thank you. You seem swell for a human, and a man." She thought for a second. "I honestly haven't met that many human men I've liked at all. You might be the only one."
"I take that as a high praise then," he said as Olivia continued her drive down the street alongside the Vltava river that ran through the heart of the city. "But what I meant is... well, Rebekah seems not cool at all. She actually seems kind of horrible and mean."
"She is both of those things," Olivia agreed without a hint of irony.
"Then why do you hang out with her? Why visit her at all?"
"Rebekah is my maker," she replied simply. "And the relationship between a vampire and their maker is a very complicated thing indeed."
Bobby seemed like he wanted to say more about it, but Olivia turned sharply, sending him once again flying across the seat, and the words died on his lips.
"Bobby! Put on your damn seatbelt!" I snapped, with more conviction this time.
"Oh, there's no need. We are almost..." She let the words trail off, then quickly jerked the wheel to the side, somehow parallel parking the Rolls Royce in a narrow spot on the street. "There."
She'd parked right in front of a building that looked more like an old pub from a medieval fantasy than a modern vampire club. The iron sign above the door proclaimed the name, Klub Nemrtvy. Two vampire bouncers stood on either of the open doors, made of wrought iron and stained glass, shooing away drunken riffraff.
What I'd learned from Olivia's club back in Minneapolis was that bouncers worked to keep out undesirable humans and rowdy vampires. Not every human that entered the club tonight would be bitten, but everyone had to be of a high enough caliber for the vampire clientele that it was an option.
"This place is a lot less subtle than your club," Bobby commented as we all got out of the car.
"This is Europe. Everything is a lot less subtle here," Olivia replied.
A cool summer breeze wafted off the nearby river, and I pulled on my oxblood leather jacket as we walked toward the door. Not because I was cold, but because I hoped to look cool enough to be let into a place like this.
When the bouncers saw Olivia, they just waved us on, though I noticed one of them give Bobby a once over. I grabbed his hand, since I wasn't exactly sure what kind of establishment this was yet, and I didn't want anyone coming up to snatch him. I needed to lay claim that he was my human and not for general consumption.
Inside, there were exposed brick walls and lots of architecture that lent itself to the historic neighborhood. The bar at the side of the club was ultramodern and slick, and the flashing colored lights - along with the thumping beats from the dubstep the DJ was playing - gave it a much more discotheque feel.
"Are you sure she's here?" I asked Olivia as we pushed our way through the crowded dance floor.
"No, of course I'm not sure," she said. "This is just where I saw her last night."
A vampire reached out, grabbing his long fingers onto Bobby's jacket, and the hunger was almost palpable in his dark eyes. He was handsome, in the way all vampires were, but also a little creepy and overly slender, like a model from the ill-conceived "heroin chic" trend of the 90s.
Bobby smiled at him, because all his experience with our kind didn't make him immune to being momentarily enamored by our supernatural attractiveness.
"My name's Cyrus," he purred as he leered towards Bobby. "What's your name?"
I moved quickly, putting myself between Bobby and the model vampire before things got more complicated. I bared my teeth - which weren't very long but were a sharper than humans - and let out a low growl.
It wasn't something I thought about doing. It was just a natural instinct when I saw someone touching something that belonged to me - to growl, to hiss, to attack if need be.
Cyrus backed down, looking pissy about it, but I didn't care if he was angry just as long as he backed off. I took Bobby's hand again and started leading him through the crowd, following Olivia.
"It's always so badass when you growl like that," Bobby said, nearly shouting to be heard over the music. "You should really do it more."
"I try to save it only for special occasions. Like when somebody tries to eat you."
Olivia suddenly grabbed my other hand, pulling me towards her. I let go of Bobby, but he stayed close to me.
"Dance with me, Alice!" Olivia commanded, putting her hands on my hips to pull me closer to her.
"I didn't really come here to dance," I protested as she swayed along to the music, pulling me along with her.
"Don't be so dull," she pouted. "You may have a long life, but you still only live once. You've got to make the most of it while you can."
I rolled my eyes, but I let her dance with me, though I was using the word "with" very loosely. It was much more of her dancing on me or near me, moving gracefully and seductive, like a cross between a backup dancer and a stripper.
But the blood from earlier left me feeling warm and loose. Even though the buzz had dispelled, the music still seemed to be flowing through me, and it was all too easy to close my eyes and let Olivia lead me around the dancefloor.
"Hey!" Bobby interrupted. He'd been busting out a few of his milder break dance moves, but he stopped and tapped me on the shoulder as Olivia was grinding up against me. "Alice, hey!"
"What?" I gently pushed Olivia off me, who proceeded to scowl as she swayed to the music.
"That girl over that keeps glaring over at us." He nodded toward a girl on the other side of the bar.
She sat at a booth on a raised platform that ran alongside the exposed brick wall, and it gave her the effect of looking down at us. Underneath a glowing blue light, her long black hair shimmered, and her low-cut dress could barely contain her ample chest.
"Oh, damn," Olivia said, noticing who Bobby was motioning toward. "That's her. That's Cate Brennan."
Just then, the girl raised her glass at me and smiled widely, enough to show the sharp tips of her incisors.
BOBBY LEANED IN CLOSE TO me, so close his lips nearly touched my ear, but he needed to speak softly if he didn't want the vampires around us to overhear.
"I have your tools if you need them," he whispered, subtly patting the side of his jacket.
Inside his much beloved Member's Only jacket, he had a secret pocket in the lining, where he always carried a few essentials of the trade - a titanium stake or two, zip ties made of a virtually unbreakable alloy blend, and a little black "badge" that certified that we were in fact working under the direction of the Agency.
"Are you going to go talk to her or just make eyes at her all night?" Olivia asked, standing at my other side.
There was no point in playing around, so I marched across the dancefloor and up the five steps to where Cate sat alone in a booth, sipping her blood cocktail. Bobby and Olivia followed, but both of them lingered behind me as I prepared to introduce myself to her.
"Buy me a drink," she demanded in a lyrical Irish accent, before I could get a word out.
I smirked. "That's presumptuous."
"Well, you want to talk, don't you?" she shot back.
"I do."
"Then buy me a drink, and we'll go somep
lace more quiet."
"Fair enough," I decided, reaching for my wallet in my jacket pocket. "How much does a drink cost?"
Cate wagged her eyebrows. "How much you got?"
I opened my wallet and realized dismally that I didn't have much cash on hand at all, and what little I did have was Euros, which didn't really fly in the Czech Republic.
"Here." Olivia reached from behind me, slapping a pair of vibrant purple koruna banknotes on the table, and when I glanced back at her, she shrugged. "I wanted to put an end to that stupid game."
Cate stood up, and as she did, she picked up the money and tucked it into her cleavage. She slid out of the booth, carrying her drink in her hand.
"Follow me." She took a step forward, then stopped and called over her shoulder, "Oh, and leave your entourage here. It's easier if it's just the two of us."
Then she started walking away again, without waiting for my response.
I turned back to Bobby and Olivia, quickly telling them, "Stay together. I'll find you when I'm done."
"Are you sure that's safe?" Bobby asked.
"I'm never sure anything is safe," I admitted as I went after Cate.
On the far end of the club was a metal spiral staircase, leading up to a balcony level, and Cate was heading right for it. As I followed her up, I looked back down at the crowd below, dancing along to the music the DJ was spinning out under a kaleidoscope of lights.
Or at least most of them were, except for Cyrus who stood motionless in the center of the room, staring up at me with strange dark eyes. That's when it occurred to me that he bore a stronger resemblance to Max Schreck's Nosferatu than he did a model, from any era.
The bouncer at the top of the steps waved Cate on, and he was about to stop me until she told him that I was with her. The second floor was quieter and emptier, with curtains of semi-sheer dark fabric separating different lounge areas.
As we walked by the other areas, I saw vampires feeding on humans, but I'd already smelled the blood on the stairs. Cate chose a spot in the farthest corner, away from all the noise and prying eyes of feeding vampires.
She slipped behind the curtains first, entering the cornered-off section that held four club chairs and a glass cocktail table in the center. Naturally, Cate took the chair with her back was to the wall, giving her the vantage of the entire upstairs. Her long legs stretched out below the hem of her dress, and she crossed one over the other.