I was alone when I opened my eyes. There wasn’t anything to indicate what time it was, or even what day it was, and Dragomir left no notes or instructions or food. Nothing. Just me and the white room. I took the private time as an opportunity to examine what remained of my wounds on my stomach and sides and thighs. Despite the damage I knew had been there, no major scars marked my skin. Even some of my old scars had faded. It would have been worse without whatever miracle healing Dragomir had managed, whether by virtue of his vampire blood or not, but I had a few serious badges of honor all over me.
It would be okay. I knew it would be okay. I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, just like after Jamie disappeared. Just like after Mom left. Just like after Dad died. One foot in front of the other and eventually the road would smooth out. Eventually I’d get to the top of the hill or to the other side of the crater, and something would work out.
I’d never been one for prayer, but I crossed my fingers and knocked on wood when I thought about the future. Some superstitions just made me feel better, even knowing they were nothing more than fables invented long enough ago no one remembered why they were supposed to work.
Which reminded me of another superstition. Vampires couldn’t face the cross or holy water. I managed to swing my legs over the side of the bed and limp around the room, searching for something I could make into a stake or a cross, since I was reasonably sure an atheist blessing water wouldn’t make it holy enough to do any damage to someone who thought he was a vampire. There wasn’t much in the room that could have done any damage to the living or undead, so that was a bust. From very far away, I got the sense Dragomir was entertained by my reasoning and searching.
I gritted my teeth against irritation. I still had to get out of there. It didn’t really matter if he was some kind of super-evolved predator or just the average, run-of-the-mill delusional psych patient with enough money to indulge his every fantasy. I was better off far, far away from him. I’d leave him to his mountains, and if he let me go without too much of an issue, I wouldn’t even tell the rangers he was out there.
Darkness closed around me in a dire warning. I wavered at the edge of a cliff and stared into an abyss, and behind me, something loomed. A bloody death awaited me on the sharp rocks below if I ever breathed a word of Dragomir’s existence to anyone. I knew it as an immutable law, as certain as gravity.
The cool breeze brushed my cheeks and tangled with my hair as vertigo slid around me and made me sway. Even though I knew I lay in a bed inside a clean room, everywhere I looked showed me a crumbling cliff-face under my feet. My stomach clenched and I squeezed my eyes shut even though the images stayed inside my head. He pushed them, over and over, flicking through a scrapbook of misery to warn me of the consequences.
That fate would meet anyone who stumbled into his little slice of heaven, whether they knew it was his or not. He didn’t tolerate outsiders. When I remembered what we’d argued about – whether predators were capable of not leaving traces behind – I wondered whether the hikers and migrant workers who disappeared hadn’t run into mountain lions but a vampire instead.
I massaged my temples, my head aching already with the echoes of his thoughts or whatever the hell was going on, and dragged myself over to the door. I held my breath as I touched the handle, waiting for some kind of electric shock or telepathic taser, but when nothing happened, I pushed it down and pulled the door open. At least he’d stopped locking it.
I stuck my head out into the large living area with the slate floors, peering around, and found no signs of life. Which was only to be expected in an undead vampire’s lair, I guessed.
Maybe I was going a little crazy, too. Stockholm syndrome or something, sympathizing with the very detailed, rationally explained delusions of a raving lunatic. Perfect. Exactly what I needed. I’d spent most of my adult life on the fringes of society, trying to prove some creatures existed beyond the borders of established science, while everyone thought I was certifiably insane. I’d potentially found one of those creatures, but no one would ever believe me if I told them and it would get me killed if I even tried.
Great.
And that assumed Dragomir actually was a vampire. If he was instead the garden-variety paranoid delusional, there was no telling what he would do if I challenged or disproved his chosen belief structure. Challenging his beliefs – and demonstrating how shaky his foundational logic was – could send him into a rage or a full-on break, which would be deadly so long as I was trapped in a small room in his lair.
Maybe if I left a note for Betsy on my phone before I tried to escape or pushed Dragomir over the edge, that could be my epitaph: She found what she was looking for, and it ended her.
I got the distinct feeling Dragomir thought I was being overdramatic. The lingering feeling of balancing on a cliff’s edge upended my stomach and reminded me of the consequences of talking about that particular set of delusions with anyone. I rubbed my temples and forced myself to keep walking and exploring the rooms outside the hospital room so I could test my aching body.
The tile felt cool under my aching feet, at least, so that was something. The large living room seemed to be the central hub for several other rooms, including the lab with the massive steel door. I didn’t get anywhere near it, and instead poked around in the other areas. One door was locked, but when I touched the handle, it felt like Dragomir’s place. So I steered clear of his lair.
The more I thought about it, though, excitement built in the back of my mind. Vampires. What if they actually existed? What if he was what he said he was? The scientific implications were unbelievable. Groundbreaking. It would rival Watson and Crick, maybe, with the potential. The characteristics of vampire blood, at least from the legends, could be used in any number of applications. Gene therapy, cancer treatment, the eradication of AIDS and Ebola and every other deadly disease plaguing humanity… My heart thrummed against my ribs despite his warning and the vertigo-inducing cliff.
I kept moving as nervous energy animated me and nearly drove me into the lab to start working. Maybe it didn’t matter if Dragomir was delusional. I could at least use his equipment. The samples I’d collected on the hike before being attacked could be processed quickly in his lab and at least I’d end up ahead in my little misadventure.
Another room off the main living area was a massive bathroom with a huge glass and tile shower, several showerheads in the walls and a rainfall one overhead, and a soaker tub big enough for half a dozen people. It took a good ten minutes to pick my jaw up off the floor. Apparently the vampire had a taste for the better things in life. I’d only seen bathrooms like that in magazines; even though that particular bathroom looked like it hadn’t ever been used, I sure as hell intended to break it in. I’d bet his water heater didn’t give out after fifteen seconds of lukewarm drizzle. And regaining control of my own hygiene definitely took precedence over many other tasks since I hadn’t showered since the injuries and I’d been pretty grimy already from the week-long hike.
As I pondered how long I could shower naked without risking Dragomir wandering in and catching an eyeful of my altogether, he mentally reminded me he’d already seen my altogether while saving my life and he was busy hunting. I shivered at how normal the mental messaging seemed; it didn’t surprise me when his thoughts slid against mine and left sensory details as well as words lingering in my mind.
Hunting. That probably meant it was nighttime, otherwise he would have been a smoking pile of ash.
Which brought my thoughts back to the enticing lab with the huge steel door.
Just as quickly, my focus whiplashed to a growling stomach and a more immediate need than a shower. I could tolerate my own stink for a little while longer, but my guts threatened to eat through my backbone and join Dragomir on his hunt if I didn’t put something in them. The thought of how he might be hunting, and what in particular he meant to eat, made my guts gurgle and reconsider trying to digest anything, but I knew I wouldn’t heal if I didn’t get some protein in me.
The only protein I’d had recently, from what Dragomir suggested, had been his blood. I gagged and pushed away the thought.
One of the remaining doors — really an open arch with a decorative gate — opened to a small kitchen. A half-size fridge contained a dozen bags of blood; I slammed it shut and turned away, concentrating on not barfing all over the butcherblock counters. Whether he was really a vampire or just nuts, Dragomir had committed to the role.
I avoided the fridge and found some oats in a cupboard, along with some beef jerky, and set a kettle to boil so I could make a hearty breakfast. By the time the water boiled and the oats were ready, I’d searched the rest of the kitchen and taken inventory of the supplies. There wasn’t much beyond the oats and some dry pasta, canned tomato sauce, dehydrated eggs, and some other odds and ends that were great for trail food but really sucked if you had to eat them for more than a day or two.
I hesitated next to the stove as I stared at the blank wall. Did I really expect to be there more than a day or two? Did it matter whether I ate crappy trail food for a while longer? It wasn’t like Dragomir ran a wilderness retreat and spa. And it wasn’t like he could nip to the grocery store whenever he wanted.
I scratched my jaw and moved a spoon through the oatmeal as I debated eating it. He wanted my help for his problem but I hadn’t really considered how long it would take or where exactly I’d be while doing the research. Did Dragomir intend to keep me prisoner until I found a cure? What if there wasn’t a reasonable solution? Did that mean dying there underground or wherever we were? I held my breath and eventually ate some of the oatmeal even though it had no seasoning and tasted like cardboard.
Maybe Dragomir could drag his ass to a grocery store or pick up a rabbit or two on his way back from hunting. I half-meant it, not wanting to establish a belief I communicated telepathically with someone who thought he was a vampire, but it would have been nice to eat some fresh meat. Not as fresh as the vampire apparently liked it, but fresher than beef jerky.
He hadn’t answered or made me feel his presence by the time I finished the oatmeal, or by the time I spent an obscene amount of time in the fancy shower, and I’d about given up on getting anything else to eat when the door painted blue, exactly opposite the steel door, opened and Dragomir descended half a dozen stairs into the living room.
He carried three rabbits, already skinned and gutted, and held them out to me with a sardonic look. “Take away.”
“Bloodless, I’m guessing?” I held back my gag reflex by the skin of my teeth, and forced myself to walk the few feet between us so I could take the warm meat. I lived in the woods and acted like a country girl, but I’d always been squeamish. Hunting season in Chilhowee meant great barbecues and get-togethers after braver people like Betsy supervised gutting and processing the deer.
“Of course.” Dragomir stood there, still impeccable in an unstained suit, not a hair out of place, and watched me carry the rabbits into the kitchen. It was like he’d planted his feet and grown roots, and it would take an army to move him. That kind of skill would have been very helpful when defending my PhD.
I put the rabbits on the cutting board and didn’t look back as he said, “It comes with age.”
Too bad he hadn’t gotten a six-pack of beer to go with the rabbit. I got out the cast iron skillet and focused only on what I was doing with the meat, not the implications of carrying on an absurd conversation with a man who thought he was a vampire. “What does?”
“The need to anchor, to plant oneself fully,” he said. “As you noticed. It can be difficult to remain fully cognizant of the time and place in which I find myself after so many years. Many of the old vampires have the same challenge, and so when we land somewhere, we tend to... psychologically root ourselves to that place.”
Old vampires? I tensed in anticipation of more crazy vampire talk. “How old is old, then? For your – kind.”
He smiled in a bemused kind of way, though the fangs remained hidden, and projected he knew I humored him. “A few hundred years, perhaps more.”
Sure. Right. A few hundred years. He’d been around since before Europeans showed up to displace the original inhabitants in the mountains; maybe he took a ship over from the old country after being chased by Abraham van Helsing.
Dragomir’s smile spread just a hair wider, although I couldn’t tell whether his amusement was because I’d guessed the truth or ended up wide of the mark.
“Do you have to be invited in?” I found a small paring knife in a drawer, since apparently the fancy vampire didn’t need any good knives. The man dropped serious coin on cufflinks and mass spectrometers but couldn’t be bothered with quality cutlery. “Or can you root yourself wherever you please?”
He stood in the arch between rooms, behind and to my left though I couldn’t see him. His voice dripped amusement. “No. That was a superstition from when peasants believed vampires would follow their friends and loved ones back to their village or town or wherever, so the peasants took a circuitous route to the burial spot to confuse the vampire. The idea that one couldn’t enter any place one wanted eventually developed. It is false.”
“That’s a bummer.” I tossed the rabbit chunks into the skillet and listened to the hiss of the hot metal. “For humans, anyway.”
He shrugged, moving into my field of vision with that oily unnerving glide that made it look like he didn’t have joints, and glanced into the fridge like any normal person would have. Catching sight of him in my peripheral vision made my nerves twitch. “There are few enough of us, Ada, that it seems we might need the advantage.”
I snorted, shaking a finger at him, and flipped some of the smaller bits of rabbit when smoke rose from the pan. I’d have to save some for breakfast, since there was no telling the next time I would get fresh chow. “That doesn’t seem fair at all. And I would have thought there were tons of you, lurking about in the shadows, just waiting to pounce on unsuspecting cheerleaders.”
“Cheerleaders?” His head tilted, quizzical, as he studied me.
“Never mind, it’s from the movies. It’s a joke.” I held my breath and shook my head. Unbelievable. I couldn’t be joking with him about vampires and their stereotypical prey. I’d lost my mind. “Why haven’t you guys overrun us, then, if you can go wherever you want while we’re unconscious and just waiting to be eaten? Why are you searching for a cure for light sensitivity?”
“Because I don’t fancy dying if I need to flee a location after dawn,” he said. “And we have not overrun the humans because the natural order re-establishes itself. We must keep our numbers low, otherwise the food source cannot sustain us. I believe a few scientists have even published papers about what they deem ‘vampire math,’ examining the predation models of various vampire behaviors on the human population to predict how long it would take to drive the human race to extinction. None are close to right, of course, because it assumes a mindlessness among us that is… inaccurate at best.”
Vampire math. Predation models. Sure. “So there aren’t vampiric serial killers?”
“We all were at one point,” he said, tapping his chin as he gazed at the ceiling. “By the classic definition, I suppose. The models also do not assume that we are a self-policing population, and that the larger whole would eradicate those members who endanger the group. We are largely content with the relationship to our food source; there is no tolerance for behavior that might upset it.”
Food source. Right. We were just docile, tasty cows for him and his pals. I shivered.
“Gazelles,” he said gently. “More like gazelles. You are wild and uncontrolled, but still tasty. The lion chooses his prey wisely, as do we.”
Goosebumps stood up on my arms and an icy lick of fear slid up my spine. “Am I your prey, then?”
“Somewhat.” The light flickered and then Dragomir reappeared in the archway, blocking me into the kitchen but giving me space as my breathing hiccupped and grew uneven with fear, and I wondered if it was for his benefit or mine. He didn’t clue me in, and instead went on in that neutral, even tone that did more to set off my alarm bells than his scary predator voice. The neutral voice sounded eminently reasonable – rational and sane and capable of talking me into almost anything. “I need your assistance far more than your blood, Ada. I can feed from wild animals, lost hikers, the indigent... whoever I must. I seldom kill anymore. Even if I were to bite you, I would not drain you and I certainly would not turn you.”
I pressed my hands to my ears to block out his words, even though it was childish and I almost upended the skillet onto myself. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“And this is a scientific mind in action?” A shadow stretched and suddenly he disappeared from the arch and reappeared half-reclining in the chair at the head of the table. Dragomir stretched out his long legs and considered his shoes, one of which had a few specks of mud on it. “It is the circle of life, is it not? Just as you are eating those rabbits to strengthen your body, someday your body will nourish the earth or a creature upon it. What causes your last breath is just a matter of chance.”
“I know what death is, believe me,” I said, low and cold. I walled away the potential of his lab and research from the cold reality of death and dying and loss. “I know what it looks like from the other end. I’m fine with that. I’m not fine with being someone’s... food reserve.”
He made a thoughtful noise. “Ah yes. The untimely deaths of your brother and father.”
“My brother isn’t dead,” I said automatically. I just knew the one time I didn’t deny it, something might happen that would make it come true and then Jamie would be gone forever. Even if it was superstition, I wasn’t about to risk it. He was alive. Schroedinger’s Jamie.
Dragomir let the silence stretch as I fished the rabbit out of the skillet and dumped it into the mostly-clean bowl I’d used for the oatmeal. I refused to sit at the table with him, and instead leaned back against the sink to eat as I avoided looking at him. Putting the rest of the rabbit in the skillet to cook helped some as a distraction from the uncomfortable thoughts, but not enough.
He raised an eyebrow but didn’t otherwise react. “They never found him, then. There is always a chance he lives. After all, we believe in the possibility of many things beyond the limits of rationality, do we not?”
I briefly considered hurling the bowl and contents right at his head. Only the renewed growling in my stomach kept me from taking action — that, and the slight flash of fang that reminded me at least part of his story appeared believable. I chewed some of the gamy meat and shook my head. “Jamie being alive is a hell of a lot more likely than you actually being a vampire, so yeah.”
“Indeed. He went missing near here, did he not?”
My chewing slowed as I eyed him, suspicion rearing back up. He’d mentioned knowing everything that trespassed on the mountain around where he lived. What if Dragomir knew where Jamie had been? What if the crazy recluse could help me track down the Ozark Howler that my brother had been so certain he’d found? “Yes. He went for a hike and no one found anything except his truck at the fire road near the entrance to the park.”
The same fire road where they’d find my truck.
Dragomir nodded, the corners of his mouth turning up a touch. “I’ve been in and out of the area since before he disappeared, Ada. I could certainly search more methodically, across a greater distance, and much faster than any of those human search teams. They’ve given up as well, haven’t they? They do not even search for him anymore. Perhaps, if I were motivated enough, I might spend every night for the foreseeable future doing such a thing. If I were motivated enough.”
My throat closed and made it impossible to swallow, so I kept chewing the same mangy bit of rabbit. Too bad he didn’t have any spices. I should have asked to borrow some of the garlic essence. My thoughts spun and whirled as I tried to understand what he’d just said, and instead I pondered the utility of garlic essence. Absurdity piled upon absurdity. Perhaps it was something in the water around his lair that caused such mental frailty, or maybe it was just the aftereffects of the opioids.
But the more important topic… Dragomir offered to search for Jamie. With his super speed and reflexes that made him jump from spot to spot in the middle of a single blink, Dragomir stood a better chance of finding Jamie than anyone else. If he was really a vampire.
His assistance was better even than having hundreds of cryptid hunters crashing through the mountains, because Dragomir would actually focus on finding Jamie. It wouldn’t be happenstance when he found Jamie.
I struggled with it. The rational part of me shied away from acknowledging the absurdity of what he claimed about himself – being a vampire, some creature from myth and campfire stories. But if he could search for my brother… I wanted him to be a vampire. I wanted it with all my heart and soul, because it meant getting closer to finding Jamie.
It felt too good to be true. Too coincidental. And in science, there were no coincidences. “It’s been years. What could you possibly find around here? What if he left the area and you come up empty?”
“Then I search for evidence of where he disappeared and where you might start looking next. Any evidence of his whereabouts.” Dragomir didn’t blink and his chest didn’t move, which I supposed was all right if you didn’t need to breathe. It looked just wrong enough to draw my attention and set my skin crawling. “Or perhaps I could provide sufficient evidence for you to secure this dubious television show you seem to be pursuing, regardless of the deadline. There are many ways you could catch a glimpse of something that defies description, perhaps substantive evidence, and then spend a lifetime trying to find again. With a substantial research budget, academic notoriety, support from any number of scientific communities, of course.”
His eyes gleamed silver and I shivered deep inside. It felt like a devil’s bargain. Offering to find me what I wanted most in the world – Jamie – and, if that failed, showing me or mimicking my heart’s next desire – the cryptids and another way of finding my brother. At what price? If he was actually a vampire who fed from humans and animals alike, could I justify helping him in any way, no matter how small? Technically it meant aiding and abetting a serial killer. A murderer of unknown victims across, as he’d said, a couple of hundred years.
I finally managed to gulp down that chunk of rabbit and set aside the bowl to retrieve a glass of water from the sink. My words came slowly as I fumbled the tap. “And what do you want from me in exchange?”
“As I said, your assistance in creating a solution to that daylight problem of mine. Nothing more.”
“What if nothing can be done to change your daylight problem?” I folded my arms over my chest, wanting to protect my heart from the hope that kindled at what he’d offered. My heart raced. Not just with the feasibility of finding Jamie, but the anticipation of solving an impossible, centuries-old problem. I counted the number of tiles in the kitchen so I wouldn’t stare at him in desperation. “What then? Are you going to wait to search for Jamie until you’re good to go or until I figure out it’s impossible?”
“I could begin the search now,” he said, gesturing around us as if he expected to find Jamie hiding under the kitchen sink. “And if we discover that I’m bound to the night, perhaps as nature intended, then we can find another way to resolve the debt.”
“What debt?” I shook my head, uneasiness growing. “I never agreed —”
“I saved your life,” he said quietly. “And I gave you my blood to heal your body, when you would have succumbed to your wounds several times over within just the first hour. The first minutes, really. That created a debt. It must be resolved before we can be free of each other.”
I rubbed my forehead. Great. A vampire who believed in karmic debts. Depending on how old he was, maybe he meant blood debts. Or did he mean a metaphysical link had been established in sharing blood? I shivered. “So I owe you my life and I’m supposed to find a cure for your daytime problem, but you’ll still search for Jamie? Doesn’t that just create another debt?”
“It’s not one-for-one,” Dragomir said. “I will owe you a great deal more if you can help me walk during the day, as that will... free me. That is a new life entirely.” He sounded wistful, staring without seeing at the ceiling of the kitchen and the recessed lights. I couldn’t imagine centuries of life without seeing the dawn or a sunrise or the play of light on clouds moving over the mountains. “A small miracle, as it were. So yes, I would owe you substantially more. I saved your life, but you would be giving me hundreds of lives in return.”
“And Jamie’s life will balance shit out?” I hated the transactional nature of it, the bartering and haggling over lives and value and debts. It was too macabre. How could I possibly boil down the value of my brother’s life, my father’s life, my life... to something for trade? How did we compare to the hundreds of lives – if not thousands – that would be affected if I helped Dragomir walk in the day? How frequently did he feed? How much blood did he need to ingest to survival or peak health? How big was the delta between the two states?
“If he is alive, yes. If he is not, then I assume the peace of mind that comes with knowing his final resting place will suffice.” And he raised an eyebrow in question.
“No,” I said. I ignored the rabbit in the skillet as it started to fry past crispy, not taking my eyes off the man who thought he was a vampire. “If he’s not — here, then I want you to take care of whoever killed him. Whoever put him in a position to die, they should die, too. That’s what I want.”
His head tilted once more and his voice dropped to a murmur I strained to hear over the hiss of the frying meat. “Have a care, Ada. What you ask for is crossing a Rubicon.”
“What, it’s more debt for you to kill someone you would have thought of as a gazelle anyway? How is that your Rubicon? Never wreaked vengeance on someone else’s behalf?” I slid the skillet off the burner, frowning as I scraped at the burned bits, and studiously ignored that I’d created my own devil’s bargain and hired an assassin to even a score.
“Not for me,” he said. Dragomir scared the bejesus out of me by popping up close enough to grip my shoulders without any indication he’d moved. His scary silver eyes caught and held mine, rendering me as paralyzed as the poor rabbit probably had been right before it died. “It is your Rubicon. Do you want to be responsible for the death of another creature? Potentially another human? Is that truly in your heart?”
“If they took Jamie from me and destroyed my family, killed my father with a broken heart, then yes. It is.” My throat burned and I stared back at him defiantly. I might have been nothing but a gazelle to him, but my family meant more than anything in the world to me and I wasn’t about to let the culprit who destroyed it off the hook.
Dragomir studied me for the longest thirty seconds of my life, then released me and zipped to the archway once more. “Very well. I will consider it.”
He gestured at one of the cupboards. “There are storage things in there for your meal. I will rest and when I wake, we will begin our work. I suggest you rest as well.”
I opened my mouth to ask what the hell that meant but the room was empty. I shuffled over to the door in time to hear the click as the door to his lair shut and locked, but no sign of the vampire remained.