Chapter Fifteen
"Cally! Hurry up!" Sheila Monture shouted down the hall to her daughter. "Your date should be here any minute."
Cally emerged from the bathroom, blotting her lipstick on a folded piece of toilet paper. "Baron Metzger's not my date, Mom-he's supposed to be my father!"
"You know what I mean," Sheila replied. "Just hurry up and finish your makeup so I can take your picture in the living room."
"Mom!" Cally said, rolling her eyes in exasperation .
"What?" Sheila said as she loaded the film into her Polaroid camera. "A mother can't take a photo of her only daughter before she leaves for her debutante ball?"
"A vampire mother can't!"
"Well, for once I'm glad I'm not one of them," Sheila replied. "Although I do wish I could go with you."
Sheila glanced over at the framed picture of her late parents, which sat on a bookshelf in the living room.
"It's a shame your grandparents weren't here for this."
Cally wrinkled her nose and raised an eyebrow.
"Somehow I don't think Granny would have liked the idea of my being a debutante at the Rauhnacht Ball."
"Your grandfather certainly wouldn't have. But even though your grandmother tried to raise you outside vampire culture as much as possible, she knew there would come a time when you would have to choose. And she would have loved you no matter how you decided to live your life." She took a deep, hitching breath and looked into her daughter's eyes. "Cally, I know I've made a lot of mistakes . . . but you were never one of them. I realize I'm not the kind of mother a girl like you should be proud of, but a moment hasn't gone by since you were born that I haven't been proud of you."
Cally blinked rapidly. "Mom, you're going to make me ruin my makeup!" she said with a choked little half laugh as she fanned at her eyes.
"Oh! I'm sorry, sweetie," Sheila said apologetically. "I'll go fetch a tissue- put that back!" Sheila abruptly hurried across the living room and snatched a framed photograph out of Walther's hands and pressed it protectively against her breasts. "That does not get packed with the rest of the bric-a-brac!
It travels with me and no one else!"
The undead stared as if she was speaking Urdu and moved to reclaim the photograph.
"Cally!" Sheila yelled over her shoulder, a fearful look on her face. "Tell him to leave me alone."
"Walther!" Cally shouted at the undead as if he was a dog scooting on the rug. "My mother will take care of the photograph. Go help Sinclair prepare for the movers."
"As you wish, young mistress," Walther replied. Cally shook her head as she watched the undead servant walk out of the room. Although they gave her the creeps, she had to admit they had their uses. They had already managed to pack almost everything in the apartment. She stared at the cardboard boxes neatly lined against the wall: their life in Williamsburg, ready to be packed into a nondescript moving van and driven to the docks, where they would be loaded on a freighter headed for the Baltic Sea.
"Okay, say B negative!" Sheila said, pointing the Polaroid at her daughter.
Cally forced the corners of her mouth up in an approximation of a smile as her mother snapped her picture. Suddenly the door buzzer sounded.
"Oh! That's him!" Sheila said excitedly. She waved the still-developing Polaroid like a Southern belle having the vapors at her spring cotillion. "Quick! Get your wrap. And your purse. And don't forget your invitation!
You'll have to show that to the major domo once you arrive."
"Stop freaking out; I've got everything, Mom," Cally said, holding up her purse and invitation so Sheila could see them. "Please, you've got to go to your room now."
Sheila nodded her understanding and grudgingly headed down the hallway. She turned to give her daughter a sad little smile.
"You'll be careful, won't you, baby? Stay away from Lilith as much as you can, okay?"
"I intend to. Besides, she kept her distance the last few nights, so I'm not expecting a lot of trouble from her tonight," Cally assured her. Of course, she had made a point of not telling her mother that her escort was Lilith's boyfriend. She didn't view it as lying as much as keeping Sheila from freaking out. "I'll meet you at JFK
when it's over and tell you all about it."
"And don't leave out the juicy stuff!" Sheila laughed as she closed the door of her bedroom behind her. Satisfied her mother was safely out of sight, Cally hurried to answer the door as fast as her high heels permitted.
"Welcome to our home, Baron Metzger."
Standing six foot four, with shoulders as broad as those of a linebacker, Baron Karl Metzger looked every inch the European nobleman. Appearing to be in his early fifties, his chiseled features were accentuated by steel-gray hair that he wore brushed back from his broad forehead like a lion's mane.
"Good evening, Miss Monture," he said, his voice a velvety baritone. "Your father was right-you are a most striking young lady. That is a lovely gown you are wearing, my dear!" Baron Metzger eyed the black off-the-shoulder charmeuse gown with its A-line skirt, pleated bust, and ruby brooch. "Where did you get it?"
"I made it myself," Cally admitted with a shy smile.
"Indeed?" Baron Metzger's eyebrow came up even farther. "Your father said you were beautiful, but he said nothing of you being gifted as well. I know a thing or two about fashion. Once you are safely away from New York, I shall make a point of introducing you to my business partner, Nazaire."
Cally gasped in surprise. "You mean the designer, Nazaire d'Ombres? He's one of you-I mean, us?"
Baron Metzger nodded. "Indeed he is. He could definitely use input from someone like you right now!"
"That would be incredible!" Cally said , barely able to contain her excitement. "Thank you, Baron Metzger!
Oh, and thank you for pretending to be my dad, too."
Baron Metzger bowed his head, placing a hand over his heart. "As vassal to your father, I am his to command."
"You work for my dad?"
"In a way. I swore fealty to your grandfather, Adolphus Todesking, nearly four hundred years ago, after he defeated my father, Kurt, and usurped the Metzger bloodright. I am now eternally bound to his descendants."
"Oh," Cally said, her smile suddenly losing some of its previous sparkle. If there was anything more disconcerting than being waited on by the undead, who were humans her ancestors had more or less murdered, it was pretending a former enemy was her father.
"Come, my dear, it's time we go. We still have a lengthy drive out to Count Orlock's estate."
"Yes, Baron," Cally replied, gathering up her things.
"My, you are a polite child for this day and age,"
Baron Metzger said approvingly. "But from here on, perhaps it would be wiser if you called me Father."
When she heard the door shut behind Cally, Sheila Monture returned to the living room and sat on the chaise lounge while Walther and Sinclair disassembled her bedroom suite and prepared it for transatlantic shipping and storage. She reached underneath the chaise's red velvet skirting, pulled out a half-empty bottle of Ancient Age, and started drinking. The flat-screen TV
and home theater system were already wrapped in layers of bubble wrap, awaiting the arrival of the movers. Tonight she'd be content to look at the photo of her parents she had rescued from Walther.
"I'm sorry, Daddy," Sheila said. "I wish you knew that." The tears trickling down her face mingled with the bourbon, giving it a mildly salty taste.
As she raised the bottle again, Sheila heard a muffled ringing sound. It seemed to be coming from Cally's room.
A cell phone? Since when did Cally have a cell phone?
Sheila got to her feet and headed, somewhat unsteadily, for her daughter's bedroom, where she found a small silver phone lying forgotten, buried under the rumpled sheets of the canopy bed.
Sheila stared at the caller ID, trying to see who it was, but the incoming caller's identity was blocked. She flipped open the phone and put the receiver to her ear.
"Cally, thank God I reached you in time!" a young male voice said breathlessly. "You have to believe me-I never intended for it to end like this! Please forgive me. I was so afraid I was going to lose you forever! Don't hang up. Please . . . I know you don't want to talk to me, but you've got to listen!"
"Who is this?" Sheila scowled.
"Cally?" The timbre of the young man's voice suddenly changed from desperate to cautious.
"This is Cally's mother, and Cally isn't here," Sheila said in a stern voice. "She left to go to the Grand Ball with Baron Metz-I mean, her father."
"God, no-!" The young man gasped. "You've got to stop them, Ms. Monture! You've got to reach her and tell her not to go!"
"I know who you are!" Sheila said in sudden realization. "You're that no-good Maledetto boy. You've got some nerve calling here. Leave my daughter alone!
She doesn't need to get mixed up with a bunch of twobit killers."
"Sheila! Please, you don't understand-!" The young man's voice was close to panic. "You're both in danger!
You have to get out of the house!"
"How do you know my name?" Sheila frowned.
"Go away and leave my baby alone, you hear me? She doesn't need you complicating her life!" She snapped the cell phone shut and tossed it back onto the bed. As she stepped out of her daughter's room, there was a loud, booming knock on the front door, followed by a second, even louder one. No doubt it was the movers come to collect their things.
"Hold your horses, I'm coming!" Sheila yelled. Whoever was on the other side of the door sounded like they were using a battering ram instead of their fists.
"There's no need to knock the door off its hinges-!"
Although she had not been raised in vampire society, Cally knew that Rauhnacht was one of a handful of dates held sacred by her father's people. Throughout the world, Old Bloods and New Bloods alike were gathered that night to welcome the arrival of the Dark Season, where the nights are longer than the days, as they had done for thousands of years.
Scores of prominent Old Bloods had traveled from as far as half a world away to view the newest crop of young females at the palatial home of Count Boris Orlock.
Situated at the end of a two-mile-long driveway, King's Stone seemed to rise like some great leviathan from the nearby Atlantic Ocean. The four stone towers of the modern-day castle stood watch over the cardinal points of the compass. As Baron Metzger's vintage Duesenberg wended its way along the Orlocks' private drive, Cally spotted a topiary garden. At first she smiled at the sight of the shrubbery clipped to resemble animals and mythic beasts-then she realized that the topiary animals were divided into predator and prey. An arborvitae lion stalked a bay laurel gazelle, while a myrtle wolf hunted a sheep sculpted of yew, and a dragon made of holly brought down a boxwood pig. As Cally stared at the grim tableaux, something white flashed at the corner of her eye and she turned her head to see what it might be. A man was staggering through the hedges, his clothes badly disheveled. He was wildly waving a white cane with a red tip.
"Help me!" the blind man cried in terror. "For the love of all that's holy, somebody please help me!"
A gang of small children swarmed out from behind the topiary wolf, giggling and laughing as if on a McDonald's playground. As one, they surged forward and took the blind man to the ground. Cally quickly looked away as they snapped at their struggling prey with their razor-sharp baby fangs.
"Ahhh, blindman's bluff!" Baron Metzger said with a nostalgic smile. "To be young and innocent again!"
As the baron's car entered the cobblestone courtyard, an undead servant dressed in the livery of a footman hurried forward and opened the passenger door for Cally. Baron Metzger took her hand and wrapped it around his arm, and together they began to climb the entry stairs of King's Stone. Cally looked up and glimpsed what appeared to be a gargoyle perched high atop the conical roof of the north tower.
The Orlocks' major domo, a bald man with a
Prussian accent and a dueling scar, stood guard in the foyer, checking the credentials of all who entered his master's home. Cally handed him her invitation, which he took and added to a pile on the table beside him.
"Welcome to King's Stone," the head butler said.
"The guests are gathered in the Grand Hall."
As Cally and Baron Metzger walked forward, a pair of servants in Orlock livery opened the large double doors at the other end of the room. Cally gasped in awe at the sight of the Grand Hall spread before her. It was thirty-five feet wide and seventy feet long, with a vaulted ceiling that rose to the third floor. The walls of the great hall were lined with red damask and draped with tapestries dating back to the twelfth century. Gathered within its vast space were nearly three hundred vampires, chatting and laughing among themselves as they sampled the blood gushing from solid-gold heated beverage fountains, one for each blood type, arrayed along a medieval banquet table that stretched half the length of the room.
"Come, my dear," Baron Metzger said. "We must pay our respects to King's Stone's lord and lady. Ah! There they are!" He raised a hand in greeting. "Boris!"
On hearing his name, the master of King's Stone turned to greet his old friend.
Cally had heard of Orlocks since she was a kid-she had even met one, the count's own son, Xander-but nothing had prepared her for this.
Standing nearly seven feet tall despite the hump in his back, Count Boris Orlock-heir to the bloodright of Urlok the Terrible, greatest of all the Founders-looked like a ghastly amalgamation of skull, bat, and spider. He was cadaverously thin, with a completely hairless head and fanged front teeth that stuck out of his oddly sensuous mouth like tiny knitting needles. His ears were unnaturally large and pointed, like those of a bat, with clumps of wiry hair growing out of them like weeds. He held his long, spindly arms tucked in close to his body and compulsively dry-washed his hands, the fingers of which were as long and gnarled as the legs of a king crab. Yet despite his frightful appearance, the count possessed an oddly dignified hideousness that is only found in those as powerful as they are ugly. He commanded respect as well as repugnance from those around him.
"Karl! How good to see you, old friend!" Count Orlock smiled, looking like a hairless rat baring its fangs as he warmly clasped his guest's hand in his own.
"It is equally good to see you, dear Boris! And Countess-you are as lovely as ever."
Where her husband was the very definition of the word nightmare, Countess Juliana Orlock was a dream made flesh. With her perfect skin, sapphire-blue eyes, long platinum hair, and glamorous, shimmering sequined one-shoulder gown, she looked like she should be on her way to a Hollywood premiere, not a vampire ball.
"Ah, Baron-still the silver-tongued devil, I see,"
she said fondly.
"Come now, Juliana." Count Orlock smiled, gently stroking one of his outlandishly long fingers against his wife's flawless cheek. "You cannot fault a man for simply stating a fact."
"Dearest, you're making me blush," the countess said with a coy smile.
"Your Illustriousness, I would like to introduce you to my daughter, Miss Cally Monture."
Count Orlock smiled, taking Cally's hand in his monstrous one. To her surprise, his touch was incredibly delicate. "I was not aware you had a daughter, Karl."
"Her mother was one of my New Blood concubines,"
Baron Metzger explained. "I have chosen to acknowledge Cally now that my dear wife is no longer with us."
"Ah!" Count Orlock said with knowing nod. "She is exquisite, Karl."
"You're too kind, Count," Cally said. She curtsied.
"Enough chitchatting with old fossils such as myself!" Count Orlock laughed. "It's Rauhnacht!
Tonight is for the young! I'll have one of my pages take you upstairs to where the other debutantes are. It won't be long before the ceremony begins."