Vampire High Sophomore Year

21



I woke up the next morning, but I didn’t want to.

My eyes fluttered open, then closed, then open again. I raised my head, looked around, but nothing made sense. I didn’t know where I was.

Turk cursed. Her voice was rough, as if she’d been screaming. A lot.

Mom came over and took my hand.

“Cody,” she said, and started to cry.

“Where are we?” I asked.

It really hurt to talk.

“Oh, thank God,” Dad said.

“Hospital, Cuz,” Turk said. “They let us go when they were done with you.”

“Turk drove you here,” Mom said.

“I called the cops as soon as I was away from that place,” Turk said. “But they haven’t found anybody, of course.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“There were six of them, not counting that little bastard who let us in,” Turk said. “One of them picked me up like I was nothing. Put some kind of a sack over my head and held me while they did you. I screamed, for all the good that did. Then they threw you out, shoved me in the car, and drove off. I called your dad and asked where to take you.”

Turk’s face was like a map of the world, all different colors. They’d knocked her around, too. I couldn’t guess how I must look.

I hurt everywhere, and I was afraid to try to move.

“How bad am I?” I asked.

“The doctor says they were very careful with you,” Dad said. “Nothing broken. Nothing permanent.”

Then he sobbed, and stopped himself.

Mom cursed. An amazing curse. A jenti couldn’t have done it better.

“Cody,” Dad said, trying to keep from crying, “what are you involved with? What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

There was a sound in the hallway, and we all looked toward the door.

“May I come in?” Gregor asked.

“Yeah,” Turk said.

But he didn’t move until I croaked, “Okay.”

Then he walked over to us stiffly.

“Mom, Dad, this is Gregor Dimitru. Gregor, these are my folks, Jack and Beth Elliot.”

Gregor bowed to my mother. Then he took Dad’s hand.

“Rest beneath the shadow of my wings,” he said.

His accent was thick the way it was when he was angry.

“You are all right?” he asked Turk. “No one told me you were hurt. No one—”

“What do you want?” Turk asked.

“This morning I received a phone call,” Gregor said. “It was in class, so I did not answer it. But I do not get phone calls, so I listen when class is over. Someone I do not know tells me you are here, and I come.”

“And why would someone tell you?” Dad asked in his lawyer voice.

“Because I help with the center of arts,” Gregor said. “And because of what I am.”

“And what exactly would that be?” Dad asked.

“I am a noble of Burgundy,” Gregor said. “Of the Dimitru-Dracul line. Do you know what that means, sir?”

“Not yet. But you’re going to tell me,” Dad said.

Gregor wasn’t intimidated.

“It means that I have power among the jenti. This attack on these two was a warning to them, and an insult to me. A very great insult.”

“Back up,” Dad said. “Why would anyone do this? What’s really going on?”

But just then Ileana and Justin came in.

Ileana looked like a queen. A very serious queen. She looked around the room, took us all in, then came over to my bed and said, “Dear Cody, I am so—”

But Gregor had leapt on Justin and was holding him against the wall.

“I am going to buy myself a dog, Warrener. A large dog. Then I am going to tear out your throat and feed it to him. The rest of you, I will send to your friends. That will be my answer to the Mercians.”

“Let go of him, Gregor,” Ileana said.

Justin didn’t even try to fight back.

“Go ahead,” he said. “I deserve it.”

“What?” I croaked.

A couple of nurses came in to tell us to shut up.

Dad went over and closed the door to the room.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m a lawyer, and that’s my son in that bed. And I want answers now.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the door. “Cody, Turk, I’ll start with you. What’s going on in Crossfield?”

Neither of us could talk for long. We took turns filling Dad in on the mill, the break-in, the scratches over the storeroom. I told him about the Dumpsters. Turk covered the help from Ms. Vukovitch.

“Thank you,” Dad said. “Now, which of the three of you can explain most quickly why my son and my niece have been beaten?”

“He can,” Gregor said, looking at Justin. “Ask him now, while he still has his throat.”

“Mr. Elliot, I’ll tell you everything I can,” Justin said. “But I don’t know all of it. I’m new in the Mercians. All I know for sure is they don’t want the arts center to open. Partly it’s because it’s in Crossfield. But I’m pretty sure there’s more to it than that. There has to be. Otherwise, this would never have happened.”

“And what exactly is a Mercian, Mr. Warrener?” Dad said.

“A kind of organization some of the old English jenti families belong to,” Justin said. “You have to be invited to join. They asked me just a couple of months ago.”

“Congratulations,” Dad said. “Now, apart from beating teenaged children into unconsciousness, what are the activities of this group?”

“It’s just supposed to keep an eye on things,” Justin said. “Make sure nothing bad happens in New Sodom. Back in the old days, they were the jenti militia. Now it’s more of a social group. Like the Masons.”

“So this social group that seeks the betterment of New Sodom decided that an arts center represented a threat to the community, and that the way to prevent its opening was to put my son and my niece in fear for their lives, is that correct?” Dad said.

You could tell he was furious by how calm he was.

“It’s not really like that,” Justin said.

“Cody didn’t put himself in that bed,” Dad said. “And Turk did not do that to her own face. Which leads to the question, what did you do to help bring this about? Were you one of the ones who beat them up?”

“Of course not,” Justin said. “But what I did was just as bad.”

“So you knew it was going to happen,” Dad said.

“No,” Justin said. “But—somebody—asked me for Cody’s cell number, and I gave it to them. I didn’t know why they wanted it.”

“Still, you could probably guess it wasn’t to invite him to your next meeting,” Dad said. “Unless that was one of your meetings, of course.”

I didn’t feel sorry for Justin, but I could see he was practically falling apart.

“Tell him the rest, Warrener,” Gregor said. “You are leaving out the best part.”

“You tell him,” Justin said, and hung his head.

“I will explain it,” Ileana said. “I am the highest here.”

She was so tiny and so beautiful, and she was acting like I wasn’t even there.

“Mr. Elliot, you know that there are old hatreds between the jenti and the gadje of New Sodom,” Ileana said. “What you do not know about, because we do not speak of them to outsiders, is the hates between the jenti, and how old they are. Justin descends from a line that goes back to the Kingdom of Mercia, which was in England more than a thousand years ago before it disappeared. Gregor and I descend from the Burgundians, who disappeared on the Russian steppes five hundred years before the Mercians were lost to history.

“The last Burgundians made their way to Mercia, looking for refuge. It was refused them, and they were forced to leave, and take their chances among the gadje of Europe. No one knows why anymore, but this cruelty the Burgundians have never forgotten.

“Then, over a hundred years ago, the Burgundian jenti began to arrive in America, along with other central Europeans. We found New Sodom, a place where gadje and Mercians were living together in peace, if not in love, and we stayed. This time, the Mercians could not drive us out, because we came in such numbers. And we did not try to force them to leave, because we feared they and the gadje would combine against us.”

“Fascinating, Ileana,” Dad said. “But what does it have to do with anything?”

“It has this to do with anything, Mr. Elliot,” Gregor said. “I have put that mill in Crossfield under my protection. The Mercians know this, and they wish to prevent it.”

“Why?” Dad shouted. “What is so damned important that my son is lying beaten half to death? What matters that much?”

“That I do not know,” Gregor said. “But there is something more than an old grudge at work here. Some deeper thing.”

“Well?” Dad asked Justin.

“I don’t know what it is,” Justin said.

“Do you think you might be able to find out?” Dad said slowly, trying to hold his anger in.

“Nobody’s going to tell me if I just ask ’em,” Justin said.

“Let me tell you something without your asking,” Gregor said. “You Mercians crossed a line last night. You beat a marked gadje. That is an unforgivable insult to our princess. To all of us. If you want war, you shall have it.”

“No,” Ileana said. “I forbid that. It is true what the Mercians did was despicable. But we must not go to war over it.”

“What mark are you talking about?” Dad said.

“Ileana marked me the first day of school last year,” I said. “To protect me. It’s supposed to mean no jenti can touch me.”

“And now we see how much it means to the Mercians,” Gregor said. “That was your mark, my princess. If you think this is not worth fighting over, what do you propose to do instead?”

Ileana bit her lip. Then she said, “Justin, you must tell the Mercians that my mother, the Queen of the Burgundians, demands a meeting with them.”

“Ah, a meeting.” Gregor sneered. “That will solve everything.”

“I’ll tell them,” Justin said.

“Princess, my people will not be satisfied with a meeting,” Gregor said.

“Your people are my people, Gregor,” Ileana said. “We are all my mother’s subjects.”

“We will see whom they follow now,” Gregor said.

“Do nothing, Gregor,” Ileana commanded. “We will settle this.”

Gregor came over to my bed.

“I will avenge this crime,” he said. But he was looking at Turk when he said it.

She looked away, and Gregor left.

“Justin, we must go,” Ileana said.

“Right,” Justin said. “I’ll set things up.”

“So that’s it, then?” Dad said. “You kids just walk away and go on playing your jenti games?”

“Mr. Elliot, it is no game,” Ileana said. “There is great danger in New Sodom now. More than there has been in three hundred years. And we do not know why. We must find out before there is blood and fire.”

Then she looked at me. There were tears in her eyes. Her hand reached itself out, but she snatched it back.

“Come,” she said, and left, with Justin behind her.

“Cody, can you, for God’s sake, explain any of this?” Dad said.

I realized then how little my dad really knew about my life in New Sodom. About his own life here, really. I’d have to teach him fast.

“Let’s start with marking,” I said.