Page 14 of Desperately Seeking Vampire
“It can’t be him,” I told myself as I skirted the edge of the festival grounds, glancing up at the castle that loomed overhead, its tall towers aglow with warm, golden pools of light, the upper ramparts melting seamlessly into the darkness of the night sky. “That’s too much of a coincidence. Isn’t it?”
On the long walk back to my hotel, I pondered this and the question of why I had given Ivo an invitation to visit me. There was something about him, an intangible need that thrummed within him, almost immediately finding an answer in me that had led me to scribble out a line of his atrocious poetry.
“It’s called human kindness,” I told myself a half hour later, when I arrived at the hotel, avoiding the eyes of the night clerk as I slipped into my ground-floor room, giving the room number—six—a little nod. “Anything higher than room eight, and I would have been in trouble. Although I’m not sure if I could have stood more lines of his emo poetry. Eight was plenty.”
I wished I had something else to change into other than the dress I’d worn flying out from Prague, but there was little I could do about that. Instead of fretting, I pulled out my cards.
I shuffled the cards slowly, my fingers idly feeling all the bumps, tears, and thickened spots where I’d glued them back together, all the while wondering if I should ask the cards a specific question. “Would you tell me what I want to know this time?” I asked them as I spread them out face down in a fan. “Or would you pull your usual shenanigans and answer something that I didn’t ask you?”
My fingers drifted across the cards as I let my inner senses come to the fore, causing my hands to tingle as they passed over certain cards, which I flipped over until four lay before me.
I sighed, and tapped the cards one after the other as I summed them up. “Romance. Happiness in relationships. Love, commitment, and undying devotion. And peril. Great. I’m going to fall in love with someone, and face a dire situation because of it. Sounds like an abusive relationship to me. No, thank you, cards. I’d rather stay single forever than put up with that sort of crap.”
I gathered up the cards, shuffled them automatically, and glanced out the window, wondering if Ivo was going to stop by, or if he would wait until the following day.
“He’s a vampire. He doesn’t go out during the day; thus, he’s not going to be here until tomorrow night, if he bothers to see you at all,” I told myself after another half hour. I peeled off my dress, washed my underwear and bra, set them to dry on the radiator, and donned one of the festival T-shirts given to all the band members. I’d blatantly stolen the largest one I could find from the stack that the testy Tanya had handed out to the bands the day before, but I decided a little theft was allowed considering I needed something to sleep in.
I was just sitting on the bed, feeling very lonely, and on the verge of a bona fide pity party. “Why don’t I have someone?” I asked the top of my head, which was all I could see in the mirror above a small sink. “I’m a hundred and eighteen years old. Surely I should have someone in my life by now?”
My inner voice tsked at me. “Let’s not go down the maudlin path,” I told the tsker. “I look like a normal woman in her late thirties—not pretty, but not hideous. I’m not a horrible person. I deserve someone nice. Someone interesting. Someone ...” My mind faltered, unable to bring forward the words I wanted. I wasn’t even sure what they were, since I never had been able to describe a man who fit my idea as a perfect mate.
“Fine. Pity party it is,” I said on a sigh, shaking the duvet.
A knock sounded before I had one leg inserted beneath it.
My breath stopped in my throat for a second while I stared at the door. Then suddenly, I was there, opening it, happiness filling me at the thought that Ivo had decided to visit me after all. I spoke even before I had the door fully open. “I’m so glad you—holy shitsnacks!”
The man who stood there was, indeed, Ivo, but it was an Ivo who looked like he’d been pulled through a hedge backward. Twice. After which, he was run over by a lawn mower.
“Good evening, Minerva,” he said, making a little bow that turned into a wince halfway down. He held a ragged bouquet of flowers that was mostly leaves and stems to which a few chrysanthemum flower heads clung drunkenly. He thrust them at me. “I brought you flowers as a token of my esteem. I have also composed a few lines in your honor.”
“What the hell happened to you?” I asked, my gaze moving from his face—one side of which was streaked black with what appeared to be dirt, oil, and blood—on down to his shirt. His left sleeve was torn off, exposing the side of his forearm that oozed fresh blood, also speckled with dirt. His shirt had an artistic spray of blood across that side, and the left leg of his pants appeared to have been hacked off just below the knee with a dull instrument. His left shoe was missing completely. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” he said, entering the room when I backed up to let him in, my gaze moving from one injury to the next as I tried to understand what on earth could have happened in the space of an hour. He waggled a hand in a gesture of nonchalance.
His pinkie fingernail fell off.
“There was a slight contretemps with Christian’s motorcycle,” he said, trying to scoot the fingernail aside with the foot still clad in a shoe. “It does not run in the same manner as the ones I am familiar with.”
“Contretemps ... dude! It looks like the motorcycle ran over you a few times.”
“Well ...” He started to make another gesture, glanced at his hand, and stopped. “It did once or twice, but only because I was unfamiliar with its workings. And then my trousers were caught on some protuberance that emerged from the wheels, but later, after I extricated my left shoe from where it had become stuck, all ran well. For the most part. Until I hit a few patches of gravel. The gravel in this area is much different than French gravel I have traveled on.”
I stared at him for a few seconds, unsure if I should burst into laughter, or take care of his obvious wounds.
Years of medical training won out. “Sit down,” I told him, moving to the sparse bathroom to wet a towel and grab the bar of soap I’d used earlier to wash my clothes.
“I would like to recite the few lines I have dedicated in your honor,” he told me, frowning when I emerged from the bathroom. “And I cannot do so sitting. What do you think you are going to do with that?”
“Tend your wounds. Sit.”
He frowned at the soap.
“Please,” I added.
He sighed, and did as I requested. “Very well, but I can assure you that I have no need of medical care. I am fully qualified as a physician.”
“So am I,” I told him, and started at his face, carefully cleaning the road rash grime off his cheek.
