Page 34 of The Vampire Always Rises
“I just named him, now that I know he’s not chipped. Here, give him my number, and tell them to call me if the dog’s owner comes looking for him.” I walked out without another word to Merrick.
You can’t keep a dog,he told me when I marched out to the car.
Why not?
Stranger in a strange place, remember?
Now I’m a stranger with a dog.
The next five hours aren’t worth recording, since they mostly consisted of me sleeping, with one break while Merrick got gas in the car, and I took the dog for a potty break before taking my own.
“Where are we going?” I asked at that point, rubbing my face as I blinked at the bright neon lights of the gas station. Merrick shoved a bottle of water and a bag of chips at me before squatting down and pouring some water in a bowl for Kelso.
“To a small town you have most likely never heard of.”
“Really? What’s there?” Absently, I opened the chips and started munching on them, smiling to myself when Merrick offered Kelso a sandwich, which he happily wolfed down.
“My villa.” Merrick returned to the car and waited for the dog and me to get settled before returning to the road.
“Why are we going to your house? And wait, aren’t you Irish? Why do you live in Italy?”
He gave a mock sigh.Do you always ask so many questions?
Only when I want answers.
I was born in Ireland, but moved to Italy a few centuries ago.
Oh. Why?
Because I liked it!
Sheesh, I just asked.Silence filled the car for about five minutes.Why are we going to your house?
It’s the only place where I can ensure your safety.
“My safety?” I shook my head, feeling like my brain wasn’t functioning so well after the nap I’d just taken. “Why on earth do you keep imagining that Cousin Carlo wants to hurt me? He knew who I was before you kidnapped me.”
“He didn’t know your connection to me,” he pointed out.
I rubbed my face again. I had a serious wrinkle from where my face had been pressed against the door. “That’s right. He did have that picture of us together frozen on the monitor. I don’t see that he’d want to hurt me, though. Not because I let myself be kidnapped.”
“If he is Victor, then he would not hesitate to destroy you in order to get to me.” There was something more to his sentence, but he must have been hiding his thoughts from me, because all I got was an echoing sensation in my head.
I went back to sleep not long after that conversation. By the time we reached Merrick’s villa, the sun was coming up, my back was cramping from being in the car for six hours, and I had to pee again.
“What are we doing here?” I asked when Merrick woke me up. We were stopped in a small square parking area, lined on either side by gray stone walls. Ahead of us was a silver metal doorway apparently cut into a vertical rock face.
“This is my home.” He got out of the car, and went to the trunk to get my luggage.
I got out slowly. “You live in a cave?”
“No, I live in a house eighty meters up. That’s an elevator.”
“Eighty meters ... that’s like two hundred and fifty feet. Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who had an elevator set into a cliff just to get to their house. Come on, Kelso. I bet you’re going to be happy to have a yard to run around in. Wait, you do have a yard? A fenced one?”
“There’s no fence, but there is no way in or out of the gardens from the outside.” Merrick cast a sour glance at the dog when we followed him into a small elevator. “Please confine him to the lowest garden. I don’t need him soiling the other areas.”
“Just how many gardens are there?” I asked, more impressed than I wanted to admit.
