The Vampire and the Goth Ch. 13

When I finally regained consciousness, I was lying on the ground with my head in Elizabeth's lap. I opened my eyes and found myself looking directly into hers.

"You're back," she said gently and smiled down at me. I tried to stand up, and she put her hands on my shoulders.

"No, don't get up right away, you'll get dizzy and probably pass out again."

I groaned, partly because my head hurt but mostly because I didn't want anyone else to know that I passed out. Vampires don't faint.

Dmitri was standing next to me, growling at Jadwiga.

"Dima! Don't do that! It's rude!" Elizabeth said.

Jadwiga smiled. "It's okay, he's just worried about Stosh. Werewolves are very protective." She put her hand out for Dmitri to smell, treating him exactly the way humans do when they meet a dog for the first time. I knew Dmitri would find that gesture to be demeaning.

"He's not a dog," I said.

"I know he's not. But I'm not sure how else to treat him."

"Treat him like a man who looks different. That's what he is," David said, suddenly walking into the room with Angus beside him, also in wolf form.

"Elizabeth, are you okay?" David asked.

"Yes, I am," she smiled

"How about Stosh?"

I gave David a thumbs up. "Good," he said, nodding at me. Then he added, "What kind of vampire faints anyway?"

My thumbs up gesture turned into a raised middle finger. I heard the huffing and chortling of canine laughter and realized it was coming from Dmitri and Angus.

David turned toward Jadwiga with a threatening, almost predatory, smile. "And who might you be?"

"I'm Stosh's sister, Julia." Jadwiga put out a hand for David to shake, but he didn't take it. Instead, he looked at her with mistrustful eyes.

"Julia. Okay. What's your real name?"

"I'm Jadwiga Szymanski."

He looked at me and asked, "Can she be trusted?"

"She's really my sister. But I haven't seen her since the day I was sired," I said, not answering David's question at all.

David looked at me for a long time. Then he turned to Dmitri. "You're going to stay with Stosh, right?"

Dmitri looked at him and sat, with his ears alert. He wasn't going anywhere.

David nodded and turned to Elizabeth. "I'm going to call Alex so he can let Emily and Laura know that you're okay." Then he disappeared back into the shadows.

Angus shifted into human form but stayed in a defensive posture.

"Why does he need to let Emily and Laura know I'm okay?" Elizabeth asked.

"The bar burned down," Angus said. "We got Laura out, and then Alex, Stosh, David, and I got as many other humans out as we could, but it was a bad fire, and I think a lot of people died."

"Oh no," Elizabeth muttered, in a strangled voice. "Angus, is that what happened to your skin?"

Just then, I looked at Angus and noticed that his hands and arms looked red and blistered. "Aye. But it will heal."

Angus turned toward Jadwiga.

"Did you start the fire?" he asked pointedly, but Jadwiga didn't seem disturbed

"No, but I could smell some kind of electrical burning. That's why we left."

Angus scowled. "That's why you left. You took Elizabeth with you."

Elizabeth said, "You know, she probably saved my life."

Angus glared at her and said in an angry tone, "Shut it, lassie. She scared the life out of poor Stosh over there, not to mention the rest of us."

Elizabeth looked like she'd been slapped. Angus' face fell and he smacked his forehead while sighing deeply.

"I don't mean to be short with you. I'm glad you're okay, love, but I'm awful mad about how you got here," he said, in a thick accent.

Elizabeth shrugged. "Well, I can't argue with that," she said.

David, returning from his phone call, said, "I can't even understand it."

"And what do you mean by that?" Angus asked, glaring while David smiled.

"I'm just saying that you sound like Shrek."

Angus continued to glare, then his face slowly relaxed and he started to laugh.

David turned back to the rest of us. "I talked to Alex and let everyone know you're okay. But your sister has to go to the hospital."

"What's wrong with Laura?" Elizabeth asked with a note of panic in her voice.

David gave her a soft smile. "She'll be fine. She suffered smoke inhalation and she's being taken to the hospital to get checked out and treated. Alex and Emily are staying with her, and as soon as they can get some privacy, Alex will give her some of his blood and she'll be better, but she's probably going to be stuck there for the rest of the night before she gets cleared to go home."

Elizabeth sighed. "Okay. Do you know what hospital they're taking her to?"

"Not yet. I think she's kind of low priority considering how many other casualties they have."

"How many were there?" Dmitri asked, now in human form.

"A lot. But there would have been more if it weren't for us."

We were all quiet for a few moments. Finally, I said, "Elizabeth, you should be with your sister."

She smiled sadly. "I know. But I also want to be here with you."

I stood up and pulled Elizabeth into an embrace. "I'll be fine. Your sister needs you right now. We can be together a little later, okay?"

She smiled up and kissed me. "Okay. Kocham cię po polsku."

I smiled back at her. "Kocham cię po angielsku."

"I love you in English?" Elizabeth said quietly.

"And in every other language," I smiled and kissed her.

Jadwiga looked confused. "Why did she say, 'I love you in Polish'?"

"It's a little joke between us," I said.

David asked, "Are you feeling better now?"

"I'm okay," I said.

David smiled sweetly. "All right. Come on, gentlemen, let's walk Elizabeth back to Laura and give Stosh and his sister some privacy."

After they left, I sat down and looked at Jadwiga, completely at a loss for words. What do you say to the baby sister you haven't seen in almost 600 years?

"I like Elizabeth. She's a good match for you, and she really loves you," Jadwiga said.

I smiled. "I feel the same way about her."

We sat in silence for a few moments, and finally, she spoke up again.

"I'm impressed by the life you've built for yourself here," she said. "You have friends and a girlfriend. You even have werewolf fanboys for some reason. It's extraordinary. Most vampires don't have anything like this."

"I suppose that's true," I said, feeling uncomfortable about where she was going with all of this.

We fell back into silence again, and she sighed, saying, "You know, you can talk, too."

"I don't know what to say."

Jadwiga nodded sadly and remained quiet. Finally, she said, in a small faint voice, "I was in the salt mines."

"What?"

"I was in the Wieliczka salt mines, near Krakow. Once Maria realized I wasn't going to help her rebuild our family, she trapped me in the salt mines."

"Oh," I said, once again at a loss for words.

"Yeah."

Jadwiga remained silent again, then she went on. "Maria collapsed a wall in front of me. She told me she was going to find you and you would make it all better, and then you would let me out."

I didn't want to ask, but I had to know. "How long were you down there? And how did you get out?"

She smiled. "I wasn't in there very long, just a little over 100 years. Everybody wants salt, so I was dug out sooner rather than later. Until then, I slept, and woke up famished... And I ate the four miners who accidentally dug me out."

"Oops!" I said with a smile, and she chuckled. Then she turned serious again.

"Whatever happened to Maria in Budapest drove her insane. She wasn't our sister anymore," Jadwiga said.

"No," I said, agreeing with her.

We fell back into silence.

"Don't you want to hear about Janek?" she asked, mentioning her twin brother.

I gritted my teeth. "No. I don't want to hear about Janek."

"Really?"

I found myself getting angry. "Really."

Jadwiga continued to look at me in silence, and finally, I broke.

"Look, the last time I saw you, you were six years old. I don't know what to say to you. I can't quite get my mind around the fact that you grew up and you're in front of me right now. You're a stranger to me even if you are my sister. And I don't want to talk about Janek. He killed the first woman I loved because she killed our sister to stop her from torturing me. So, you'll have to excuse me if I don't feel charitable towards him."

I realized I was ranting, and I wasn't making much sense. The way Jadwiga looked at me told me I had completely confused her.

I took a deep breath and tried to center myself before continuing.

"My sire, who was the first woman I loved, killed our sister, Maria, because she was torturing me. Janek killed my sire because she killed Maria before Maria told him where you were. Maria tortured me because she was insane and Janek didn't do anything stop her, I guess because he's a dick, I don't know."

There. That made sense. A fucked up, devastating, ruined family kind of sense, but at least it was clear.

Jadwiga looked at me for a long moment, without saying anything. Then she said, "Janek didn't say that Maria hurt you."

I stood up, angry. No, not angry. Furious.

"Tortured. Not hurt. She tortured me. Maria had her hands in my stomach up to her wrists and she started to pull my organs out. She told me she was going to cut my genitals off. She severed my windpipe. And the whole time, the entire time, she was talking about the awful things that were done to her and how it was my fault. My fault. And she was right. She shouldn't have killed those children, but it was me that made it possible."

I realized my voice was shaking and I sat down, putting my head in my hands, trying not to cry.

"She was right, Jadwiga. Or Julia. Or whatever the fuck you want to call yourself. Maria was right. If it wasn't for me, none of this would have happened. FUCK! If I hadn't gone home, I wouldn't have murdered our parents, Maria wouldn't have been turned into a vampire and Piotr and Magda wouldn't have been killed. Maria wouldn't have been sexually tortured and turned into some kind of psychopath with a taste for the blood of children. And it's my fault, all of it. I may not have personally killed all those people but they're all dead because of me. I'm a fucking monster."

I sat down and put my head in my hands again.

"You saved my life," David said quietly.

Jadwiga and I turned, and David stepped out of the shadows.

"You're not a monster. You saved my life more than once. And you didn't have to. Nothing good happened to black people back when we met, especially not in the south. I would have been sent back to a plantation or lynched, or just left exposed to the sun. But you kept it from happening. And you don't even realize it. In fact, you always say I saved your life."

"You did save my life."

"Bullshit. I never saved your life, I just made things easier for you. But you literally saved mine, and you never bragged about it. Fuck, you don't even see it," he sighed, shrugging his shoulders.

Then Dmitri, in wolf form, stepped out of the shadows and shifted back into his human shape.

"If we're talking body count, you saved my life and you went against your own kind to do it. You also saved my parent's lives. We don't think you're a monster, we think you're a hero. Because of you, I have three sisters I wouldn't have had. I mean, they're all pains in the ass, but that's not your fault, really. Well, maybe a little bit..."

"Shut up, Dmitri," David said, not unkindly.

"You killed vampires to save a wolf family?" Jadwiga asked, with a look of awe on her face.

"He sure did," Dmitri said, and proceeded to tell the story of how I met his parents.

"And my dad STILL says he owes you a debt he can never repay," Dmitri said.

"I never heard the whole story before now, but Stosh, you're a badass!" David said, whistling appreciatively.

I blushed and dropped my head. "No, I'm not."

Jadwiga looked impressed. "Wow, brachu! No wonder the werewolves love you!"

"Yeah, okay, that's enough," I said, deeply embarrassed, wishing someone would change the subject.

David leaned against a brick column and cleared his throat. "Emily and Elizabeth rode in the ambulance with Laura. Angus put on the extra clothes he keeps in his backpack and he and Alex are going to meet them at the hospital. Dmitri and I were worried and came back here for you."

I nodded. "Thank you for making sure Elizabeth got back to her sister safely."

He smiled. "What are friends for?"

We were all silent for a moment, then Dmitri said, "So you're Stosh's sister?"

Jadwiga smiled. "Yes, I am. He left home when I was six and I haven't seen him since then."

"That must have been a long time ago."

Jadwiga laughed. "Well, yes, it's been a few hundred years now."

"Oh, okay. No wonder this is so awkward," Dmitri smiled.

Jadwiga and I both laughed uncomfortably, and David rolled his eyes.

"Dumb motherfucker speaks three languages and he still doesn't know when to shut up."

Dmitri turned and growled at David, and David bared his teeth back at him. Dmitri hung his head.

"Damn right, hang your head," David said, with a stern tone of voice.

I couldn't help smiling at their squabbling. Then, David's phone rang, and he stepped away to take the call. Dmitri was still looking at the ground, embarrassed.

"Come on, Dima, it's okay. I know you meant well, and you're right, it's weird to talk to someone 600 years and 4000 miles after you last saw them," I said with a smile.

Dmitri smiled back at me and nodded. "Okay." Then he looked at Jadwiga. "I didn't mean to give offense."

"I didn't take any. Stosh is right, it's weird. But good. At least, I think so. Don't you?" Jadwiga said, looking at me.

I smiled. "It's not awful."

David walked back to us. "Alex gave Laura his blood and she's doing much better, but the hospital won't let her out for a few more hours. They want to do more tests, and I think she's worried about her health insurance paying the bill so she can't leave without clearance. Since it's almost dawn, Alex and Emily have to leave and Angus is going to stay with her. We'll all meet back at your place."

"Okay."

"Dmitri, why don't you go meet them at Midtown Hospital and bring them back to Stosh's place? And, Jadwiga, why don't you come back with us? Then you'll have a safe place to stay and clean up a little," David said. He looked at me smiling. "You don't mind having so many people around, do you, Stosh?"

"Yay, more people," I said, rolling my eyes.

"I don't need to stay at your house, Stosh. I have a place to stay."

"Yeah?"

She laughed. "Yeah. But I wouldn't mind spending more time with you. Maybe we can meet tomorrow evening?"

I smiled as we exchanged phone numbers.

David and I walked back to the car in silence. "Blessed be the ties that bind and gag, right brother?"

I looked at him and rolled my eyes.

I woke the next evening refreshed, without thinking about how the previous night had ended. I wasn't alone in bed, which was nice, so I put my arm around Elizabeth, closed my eyes, and whispered, "Hi beautiful..." as I nibbled her neck, barely noticing that her hair seemed really short.

...

...

And then David rolled over and looked into my eyes with a big smile. "Hi, handsome!"

I jumped out of bed with a shout.

"OH MY GOD! WHAT THE FUCK DAVID? WHAT... THE... FUCKING... FUCK?"

David started laughing like a loon. Suddenly, Angus stuck his head up from the floor and glowered at me, saying in a thick accent that really DID sound like Shrek, "What kind of a shit wake-up call is this? Jesus, man, sort yourself out!" and dropped his head back down.

David had tears coming out of his eyes and it took him a full minute to stop laughing so he could tell me what was going on. "Elizabeth, Laura, and Angus came home about noon yesterday, and it wasn't right to have Laura sleep on the couch. So, we gave her our bed, and Elizabeth and Laura slept there."

I was annoyed. When did my apartment suddenly become home to everybody? And when did my guest room become David and Angus' bedroom? But I couldn't think about that at the moment, not when there was so much other bullshit happening.

"Okay. So why aren't you in the living room, Mr. Chivalry Isn't Dead?" I said angrily.

"Because your couch is lumpy."

I ground my teeth. "My couch is not lumpy. And why is Angus on my bedroom floor?"

"Angus is on the floor because that's where he wanted to sleep."

Angus sat up again. "You can't expect me to sleep without my mate. I have to be as close to him as I can, otherwise, I can't sleep at all. And David thought you might object to being asked to sleep on the floor."

"Being asked to sleep on my own floor? Damn right I would object to that!" I seethed.

David rubbed his neck and smiled at me. "You sure have some soft lips there, cowboy."

I threw my pillow at him. "Oh, go fuck yourself!" and I stalked out of my bedroom.

I was half-way down the hall when I realized two things -- one, I was only wearing boxer shorts, and two, Angus referred to David as his mate and David didn't object. The thought of David possibly finding a decent guy he couldn't turn into a vampire made me very happy. But I was still pissed about all of the people in my apartment. It was making my place seem really fucking small.

I walked into the living room which was blissfully empty. I took a deep breath and realized I smelled fresh coffee brewing. I turned around and saw Elizabeth behind me.

"Hi lovely," I said, leaning down and kissing her deeply.

"Hey handsome," she said back.

I took her hand and led her to the living room couch and sat down, pulling her into my side.

"My ASS this couch is lumpy," I grumbled.

"What?" Elizabeth asked.

"David is just so full of shit," I said, hugging her tightly.

We sat together in a comfortable silence, watching the city lights come up as the sun went down.

Elizabeth sighed. "It's so nice just sitting here quietly with you. I get why vampires don't like having too many people around for too long."

I smiled and kissed her.

Elizabeth gently reached into my shorts. "Oh, hello little fella! Nice to see you again!"

I scoffed. "Don't call him little fella."

Elizabeth leaned over and kissed me as I moved my hand under her t-shirt and over her breast.

"How about I call him 'lady killer'? Does that work for you?" she whispered, as she squeezed my cock. I felt myself twitch in her hand. "He likes it."

"You're not wearing a bra..." I said, gently tweaking her nipple.

She kissed me deeply, turning herself into my hand to make it easier for me to touch her. "I just took a shower. You wouldn't want to make me dirty all over again, would you, Mr. Szymanski?" she purred.

"Mmmm... mayyyyy - be," I said.

I heard Angus's voice behind us. "Wow, dinner AND a show!"

"Oh, goddamn it," I muttered.

Elizabeth sighed as she pulled her hand out of my shorts.

"Hey, don't give him any grief. He's just trying to recover from his Brokeback Mountain moment," David said.

Elizabeth looked at me strangely.

"I accidentally kissed David's neck before I got up," I said.

"Sure.... 'accidentally'," David said, using air quotes.

Elizabeth started to giggle.

"I thought he was you!"

Now she was openly laughing.

"You do know I'm white and he's black, right?" she said.

"She also has a better rack than David does," Angus joked.

"I didn't have my eyes open! Honestly, he's making it sound like more than it was. Tell her it was totally innocent!"

She raised an eyebrow at me, and David said, "Oh yeah... it was 'totally innocent'," he said in a sarcastic voice, using air quotes again.

Angus scoffed. "Lay off. Stosh wasn't awake when we got back. We gave Laura and Elizabeth our bed, and he didn't even wake up when you got into his bed."