Heart of the Vampire: Episode 2 Read online

  But whoever had photographed it clearly hadn’t.

  The first page was just as it had been when Dru last saw it, with each word carefully deciphered above the original word in her handwriting. But now, the later pages had been decoded as well.

  And those deciphered words stood out in blue ink against the black and white image of the journal. Whoever had taken these photos had put in the time to translate the rest of the coded entries.

  She paged through, stopping at random entries.

  The sunset last night was especially beautiful. Both Miss Van Burens were playing chess in the solarium and I wished I was a painter instead of a writer. There was something about the pink light moving through the greenery on their dark hair, their colorful dresses and the black and white of the chess board.

  Dru smiled. How funny that she had skipped right to a section with familiar faces.

  The new guest is very charming. He stood at the counter and asked me all about the hotel and about my life here - so many questions. I wondered why he arrived so late at night, but I didn’t ask. It’s one thing for a guest to ask me questions, but I’m sure I should allow the guests their privacy. He is very handsome. His name is Michael.

  Dru smiled. It was strange to think of someone flirting with her Nana, especially someone who wasn’t Grandpa Frank. But she had been young once, and apparently looked enough like Dru that the Van Buren sisters noticed it.

  I have made a new friend in Michael, and it seems that he never sleeps. When the rest of the hotel is resting, he keeps me company on my long night shifts and asks me about my writing and my family.

  It’s good not to be alone all the time, but I have to remember that Frank is at home, getting ready to go serve our nation at war.

  If it weren’t for Frank, I’m sure I would have a terrible crush on Michael. But thankfully I keep my wits about myself, and Michael is a very proper person. When I told him about Frank, I could see the sadness in his eyes, but he was respectful.

  So it seemed Grandpa Frank was already in the picture. That made sense - she knew they had married young.

  The more interesting part was that Michael was beginning to sound familiar.

  A shiver went down her spine as she thought of Viktor keeping her company on her own night shifts.

  I got a paper cut today and Michael was so distraught about it. He ran out of the lobby and found me a bandage. His face was pinched like he was disgusted. He must be afraid of the sight of blood.

  Dru shuddered and paged forward a bit.

  He’s so gorgeous with those bright blue eyes and his long dark hair. I have to remind myself I’m only here to write, and that I love Frank.

  Of course Michael is too much the gentleman to ever initiate anything now that he knows I’m spoken for. But in another life… who knows? It’s so exiting to imagine all the possibilities.

  Beside her, the raven cawed anxiously.

  Dru realized at that moment that someone was opening the door to her room. She was so engrossed in the journal she had missed the footsteps. And she must have been too curious about the pages to remember to lock it.

  She had just enough time to shove the papers down behind her before Viktor appeared in the doorway, his smile barely visible in the flickering light of the candle on her desk. He didn’t carry his own light, but she suspected he was much better at finding his way in the dark than she was.

  “Look at that, you already made him a house,” he said approvingly, looking at the bird in the drawer. “But this one will be more snug for the little guy. And I snagged some towels from my room.”

  The raven was hardly a little guy, but Dru was too taken with Viktor’s concern for the creature to care about that detail.

  He strode over, and she scooted to the side.

  “What’s all that?” he asked, indicating the stack of papers behind her, mercifully face-down.

  “Oh, just some scratch paper,” she lied. “I thought we could line the box with it.”

  She wasn’t exactly sure why she lied. But she wasn’t ready to talk to Viktor about the contents of the journal just yet.

  Don’t trust him. He’s been lying to you about everything.

  Were they talking about Viktor? Did someone else at Hemlock House know his secret?

  “Great thinking, Drucilla,” he said, giving her a warm smile.

  He took the pages and placed them at the bottom of a large shoe box, then placed a small hand towel on top.

  Dru tried not to sigh with relief.

  “He seems very comfortable with you,” Viktor said. “Do you think you could hold him while I tape his wing?”

  She nodded and eased the raven into her arms once more.

  The large bird submitted patiently, for which she was grateful. He had a long, dangerous looking beak. If he had wanted to hurt her, he could have done so, and easily.

  There was a stretching sound as Viktor ripped off a section of black electrical tape.

  He could hurt her too, effortlessly.

  Why must I love everything that is dangerous?

  He stuck the tape on his thigh and reached out very slowly for the bird.

  The raven ruffled its feathers but remained still otherwise, allowing Viktor to manipulate the injured wing.

  Dru watched as he folded the wing gently against the raven’s body and wrapped a bit of cloth around it to hold it in place.

  “Now I can tape it over the cloth,” Victor explained. “So we won’t pull off his feathers when the tape comes off.

  Dru watched in silence as Viktor performed the operation so swiftly his hands seemed to blur.

  “Speed is an advantage of my, er, condition,” he said, quirking a brow at her.

  Dru had noticed that earlier.

  She felt the blood heating her cheeks as she remembered how he had used his speed to send her into a frenzy of lust.

  “Should we put him in his new box?” she suggested.

  “Of course,” Viktor said, looking a little disappointed.

  She was being weird, and she knew it.

  But how was she supposed to act when it seemed that he had been lying to her. Or at least leaving out a very important truth.

  Have you been here before? Are you Michael?

  She gently wrapped a fresh towel around the raven, and then eased him into the new box on top of the deciphered journal entries.

  “I’ll just put him by the window where he can feel safe, and see outside,” Viktor suggested.

  “Sure,” she said, watching him place the box on the window seat.

  The raven settled in, its dark eyes on the woods outside.

  Dru hopped up before Viktor could return to the bed. She needed a moment to collect her thoughts.

  19

  Dru grabbed a dry pair of pants and rushed into the bathroom to change and wash her hands. She was sure that was the right thing to do after handling a wild animal.

  For about the hundredth time, she wished she had access to the internet to look it up. She was beginning to get a feel for what it must have been like for her Nana, when people actually had to just know stuff, and she wasn’t a fan.

  When she came out, Viktor went in to wash his.

  But of course he didn’t have to worry about avian flu or whatever it was she was hoping to avoid.

  He was invulnerable. He wasn’t going to die from some weird disease.

  As far as she knew, he wasn’t even alive.

  “Is everything okay, Drucilla?” Viktor asked as he came out of the bathroom.

  “You said you try to avoid people,” Dru said. “Why did you come here?”

  “I had business in Philadelphia,” he told her.

  “That’s almost two hours away,” she said.

  He walked over to the window and looked out over the trees.

  “I had a happy memory here, once upon a time. I couldn’t resist coming back.”

  He turned back to her and smiled, the light of the candle dancing in his blue eyes.
/>   “Something was calling me back here,” he said softly. “I didn’t know what it was, until I got here and realized it was you.”

  “Viktor,” she said. But she couldn’t bring herself to ask him.

  “I have waited generations to find you, Drucilla,” he said, kneeling at her feet.

  She waited for him to tell her about her Nana, to admit why he was drawn to her immediately.

  And maybe even to help her understand why he had seemed familiar to her from the moment she had spotted him in the lobby just a few days ago.

  But he only pressed his lips to her hand.

  She felt desire rising in her chest. It was as if now that he had touched her once, she was more sensitive to him.

  This was an addiction that would only grow until it destroyed them both.

  He turned her hand over and brushed the inside of her wrist with his lips.

  “There’s a bird cage in the abandoned wing,” she blurted out.

  He lifted his face, his eyes hazy with lust.

  “A bird cage?” he echoed.

  “For the raven,” she said. “We could get it cleaned up for him. So he doesn’t try to fly off before the wing heals.”

  “Of course,” he said, standing.

  His expression was hard to read.

  She grabbed her candle from the desk and headed for the door, but turned back when she didn’t hear his footsteps behind her.

  Viktor was gently picking up the box with the bird in it.

  “We shouldn’t leave him alone,” he said.

  She nodded and they headed out together and down to the second floor.

  “Are we going to my rooms?” he asked as they approached the door to one of his suites.

  “Not quite,” Dru explained. “There’s a sealed door just beyond your rooms. It’s pretty well-hidden behind the wallpaper. We’re less likely to be spotted entering there than if we went in from downstairs.”

  When they reached the end of the hall, she set the candle down and reached up to feel along the wall.

  At first glance, it appeared to be just that, a solid wall.

  But her fingers found the crevice and she was able to peel back the wallpaper enough to reveal the edge of a door.

  “Amazing,” he whispered.

  She picked up the candle again and used her key to unlock the entrance to the passage beyond.

  There was a blast of cold air as the door swung open.

  Dru stepped into the soft light of the abandoned wing with Viktor on her heels.

  It took her a moment to realize why it was brighter in the frigid space. The roof was rotted out on this wing to the point that the moonlight was pouring in through sections that acted as jagged skylights.

  Snow lay in uneven drifts on the floor, sparkling and obfuscating the topography of the hallway that felt like an upside-down version of the one they had just come from. Wallpaper peeled down the sides, curling like the wings of a gigantic bird.

  In the recesses the snow hadn’t reached, the wooden floor rippled and rolled, swollen from years of unchecked rain.

  “Drucilla, is this safe?” Viktor asked quietly.

  “Just watch where you step,” she suggested, moving forward.

  She had no idea where this vein of strength and bravery in her was coming from. If she was being honest with herself, she knew she was probably running, quite literally, from what she had just read in the journal.

  But the task at hand was too precarious to dwell on that. If she didn’t focus, she was going to end up getting hurt.

  She kicked some snow aside to clear a path to the staircase on the other side of the first two abandoned guest suites.

  Fortunately, there was no snow on the stairs, which meant that they weren’t as water-damaged as the floorboards in the hallway.

  Dru clung to the railing with one hand, though she recognized how silly that was. The railing was as likely to be rotted out as the stairs.

  Her other hand clutched the candle.

  She stepped gingerly down on the first tread.

  It held her weight easily, and her confidence rose swiftly as she made her way down.

  Four steps from the bottom, there was a thunderous crack, and she felt her foot going through the wood before she had time to react.

  Viktor’s hand was under her ribcage instantly, holding her upright.

  She clung to the railing, which swayed, but didn’t give, and managed to pull her foot out of the rotted tread.

  “I’m okay,” she whispered.

  He let go of her, but stayed close.

  She stepped down into the main corridor.

  It was wider than the one above, and opened in an elegant archway into the former ballroom. The surrounding woodwork revealed a hint of its former glory.

  “This way,” she whispered, heading for the ballroom.

  Back in the early days of the hotel, this had likely been a popular spot for country dances and concerts. If Dru closed her eyes, she could almost picture the dancers whirling around the polished floor.

  But nowadays, people didn’t come to the mountains for dancing.

  She scanned the rest of the room.

  It was full of the cast-off junk that Hemlock house had accumulated over so many years. There were pieces of furniture in various states of disrepair, as well as several dusty paintings that had probably hung in the main rooms at one point, but had been replaced. In the far corner, under a small, stained glass window, Dru spotted an overturned bust of what she assumed was a female angel. The heavenly woman in the statue was completely naked, and very well-endowed. Dru wondered if the angel would even be able to get off the ground with that kind of baggage. It was pretty easy to see why it wasn’t on display somewhere more prominent. It wasn’t exactly what Howie would call family friendly.

  Dru kept searching until she found what she’d been looking for. On a collapsing table next to the doorway, sat an ancient metal birdcage, the bars formed of vines of metallic ivy, so that it looked less like a cage and more like a piece of decor.

  “That’s very nice, Drucilla,” Viktor whispered, clearly on edge. “Let’s get back now.”

  She felt it too, the same anxiety about this haunted space.

  But then she spotted the window seat on the other side of the room, flanked by built-in bookshelves.

  Her own room had a similar window seat, but this was a much more glamorous version. And there were still books on the shelves.

  “I just need to see what the books are,” she whispered to Viktor. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  “I’ll go with you then,” he said. “But let me hold your arm, I don’t trust these floors.”

  They walked across without incident.

  The books were leather bound showpieces - just reprints of the classics. Nothing interesting. Although she wasn’t really sure what she’d been hoping to find.

  Through the window, which had been boarded over, she could just see glimpses of the rear lawn and the groundskeeper’s cottage at the edge of the woods.

  “Ready to go?” Viktor asked.

  She nodded.

  Viktor handed her the raven wordlessly, and took the giant cage.

  They made their way gingerly back into the hall and up the stairs, careful to avoid the rotten fourth tread.

  Dru tried to keep her mind on the task at hand, and away from the thousand questions chasing each other around her mind.

  20

  Dru stepped back to admire their handiwork.

  They had put the birdcage into her bathtub when they returned, and then taken turns cleaning it and rubbing the metal dry with a towel.

  Now it sat on the window seat in the moonlight, looking good as new.

  “What do you think, Edgar?” Dru asked the raven.

  “You really can’t call him Edgar Allan Crow,” Viktor said, not for the first time. “He’s a raven.”

  “I’m sorry, but I said it and it stuck,” she teased. “We can just call him Edgar. No one needs to
know the rest of his secret name.”

  Edgar ruffled his feathers and settled into his shoe box, showing no interest in his new house.

  “We’ll only put him in there if we have to leave him alone,” Dru decided. “I hate to lock up a wild thing.”

  Viktor smiled down at her as if she had said something wonderful.

  His eyes were a sweet sky blue and she lost the thread of what she had been thinking about before.

  A loud knock on the door broke the spell.

  She blinked out of her semi-trance and headed over to open it.

  “Your friend, Hailey, has just made a discovery that blows the lid off of everything,” Channing said excitedly. “Come with me.”

  He headed out again, not even waiting to see if she would follow.

  She turned back to Viktor, who shrugged.

  She held Edgar’s box close to her chest as they followed Channing down the stairs to the second floor, and then through the corridor toward Brian Thompson’s room.

  “Is that a real bird?” Channing asked.

  “Yes, Viktor rescued it from the tree,” Dru said.

  “Be careful,” Channing said. “I hear they can carry diseases.”

  “Noted,” Dru said.

  “And look at that vicious beak,” Channing added, sounding a little apprehensive.

  “He’s fine,” Dru said, cradling the bird protectively. “He has a hurt wing.”

  There was no time to argue, because they had reached the Opal Room.

  Hailey was already inside, her eyes sparkling.

  “Hey,” Dru said.

  “Hey yourself,” Hailey replied, looking elated. “Whoa. Is that a bird?”

  “It’s a raven with a broken wing,” Dru explained.

  “Seriously?” Hailey asked. “We’re snowed in with no power and a murderer on the loose, and you decided it would be a good time to play nursemaid to a hurt bird?”

  “I can’t play around on the internet, so my social schedule’s wide open,” Dru teased.

  Hailey rolled her eyes.

  “Tell them what you discovered,” Channing said to Hailey, smiling with anticipation.