Blood Ex Libris Page 28
“Bagamil and I split up to best deal with the situation. But now, maybe it is just the worry of a son for a father. Can the old man take care of himself? E ridicol! Bagamil outlived his enemies for many centuries before I was born as a kee. But still, I will be happier when we find him.”
“Or he finds us.” This, calmly, from Dragoș, who was around a corner from us.
We walked for what felt like miles. Bagamil’s headquarters were truly ancient, and there had been plenty of time to tunnel out in all directions. We explored rooms that were decorated in the most beautiful and exotic ways—or once had been, before fire and earthquake had destroyed them.
We didn’t just walk. We edged around huge piles of rubble or gaping pits. We climbed over piles of debris blocking passageways. We had to—well, Sandu and Dragoș had to—force open doors that were blocked on one side or both with the wreckage Mehmet had inflicted on what had obviously been an exquisitely ornamented place. It had been not just a citadel but a beloved home.
We found bodies along the way. Where they were of Team Mehmet, Sandu and Dragoș would take a moment to ensure they were permanently dead. Where they were Team Bagamil, they would take a moment as well and see if they might be brought back with some TLC and some blood. Obviously, piles of charcoal were not coming back, but three bodies could indeed change back into people. People with names: Răzvan, from the Romanian crew, Zopyros, beloved frithaputhra of Tryphena—and where was she? Dead? Trapped somewhere else?—and Llorenç the Catalan. They were noted but left to come back for. Bagamil was of primary importance.
There was one room Sandu did not let me into. He followed Dragoș into it and stopped, barring the way with his arms. He called Dragoș out and then turned to go, not letting me see in. “There is nothing there, micuţo.”
“Really?”
“Not what you are thinking. Not bodies. Well, not bodies of am’r. There were...books in there. Scrolls. Tablets. There might be some that are salvageable, but we do not have time for you to enter that room.”
He knew me too well. “Yes, my patar.” I sighed, trying to keep myself from ducking around him and rushing into the room. Not only could he very easily stop me, but finding Bagamil was a higher priority. Really.
As we went along, Sandu got more and more agitated. In that way of his where he didn’t express any emotion, of course, but both Dragoș and I could read him without anything so crude as a physical display, which meant we both were becoming equally distressed.
Finally, after what seemed an exceedingly long distance and time, Sandu visibly had a light-bulb moment. We turned around, came back down the stretch of passageway we’d been searching, and went down another, one I was pretty sure we’d not been down yet due to its being entirely blocked by debris. I helped them to clear it as best I could, but my “help” was mostly just keeping out of the way of two am’r gone into hyper-speed mode. By the time we could get through, even they looked a little ruffled.
We crawled through, and I slid down the debris pile on the other side. It was wrecked down this way. One of those rocket-things must have impacted right near here. The walls were cracked and burnt, and the hallway was more of a concept. The air was close and acrid. I was coughing and gasping as we went farther down the tunnel, but Sandu and Dragoș were too absorbed to notice. We stopped at a bit of wall, as charred and damaged as the rest of the hall but otherwise not noticeably a doorway or anything.
“I wonder...” Sandu started with words but continued with action, pulling larger bits of rubble out of the way. Dragoș and I helped him, although it was like he didn’t remember we were there. When the blank bit of wall was clear, Sandu felt around on it. If there was a hidden door there, I thought, there’s not much chance of getting it open. Just as that thought ran across my mind, Sandu pressed something, and there was a click, followed by the sounds of dust and small debris trickling down. Sandu pushed, and then he pushed harder.
The door reluctantly moved. Dragoș and I crowded in after him, and as Sandu rushed forward, we could see two bodies. One was clad in bright, friendly yellow, or what had once been bright, friendly yellow and was now sooty and burnt in parts. From what I could see, Mister Sunshine was not injured, but he was not moving.
Neither was the other body. It was one of the jinn, and he wasn’t looking all that well. Not horribly burned or anything, just not healthy. And unmoving.
I was unnerved to put it lightly. Seeing Bagamil, who had aspects of, if not total omnipotence, something kind of like it… Seeing him lying there so still, as still as death. Well, I was rattled.
Sandu, on the other hand, looked almost cheerful. “Dragoș, fiul meu, go now. Find our friends and have them take care of Răzvan, Llorenç, and Zopyros. And look for Tryphena. Send everyone else away, but tell them Bagamil has...has met his ending. Let them assume it from what you do not say, perhaps. But it is very important you do this perfectly. Send everyone away: those who are damaged to go heal, those who have am’r-nafsh to check on their safety. You know what you must do. Many of our vehicles will be damaged, but I imagine you will find more parked around various egresses. Then, I need you to find Apolinar and bring him here. Quietly, you understand, da?”
Dragoș paused, thinking it through. “Da, patar. This will take a while. You will stay...here? Do you need...anything?”
“When you return with Apolinar, bring transportation for us all. And kee sustenance for Noosh.”
“Da, domnul meu, inteleg şi ascult.” Dragoș bowed, face serious and humble, but a wicked twinkle in his eyes.
“Fir-ai al dracului!” Sandu replied, jokingly annoyed.
“Indeed, I have long since!” Dragoș replied, then turned to me and pulled me into an embrace. “I’ll be seeing you soon, sister-mine! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, eh?” With that, he am’r-sped from the room.
“I think I need to learn Romanian,” I said to Sandu, who was smirking after him.
“Da, draga mea. I will enjoy teaching you. I will enjoy teaching you many other things, too.”
“So, um, Sandu. Are we, um, staying in this place while everyone else goes away for a, um, reason?”
“Sufleţel, we are. Come here.”
I went to him. He put his arms around me, and we just stood there. He looked down at me. In this underground room, there was no light to catch in his eyes, but I could somehow see the gold-flecked green of them, and they had no less power than they ever did. I breathed in his scent and just melted into his eyes, then softened against his body. It was all better than I remembered; just standing here with him now was almost as good as the blood-fueled sex we’d had so many times. I did not want to be apart from him, and if that meant staying in a bombed-out cave in the middle of nowhere, well, okey-dokey.
“There are a few things to do, draga mea, and I hope you will help me. And then…” He paused. I waited.
“I know you feel I have been remiss in telling you the things you need to know in this new...life which you have begun with me. There may be...some...legitimacy to that point of view.
“Since we have been apart and the risks to you were all too immediate, I have realized how ill-prepared you were. It was my fault, my fault entirely. I was...too eager to bring you to me, to us. And I was...I was fearful that telling you things in the wrong order would make you reject us. Reject me.
“But my fears, my...flaws, endangered you beyond any other threat we have faced. So. Now, if you will stay with me here, I will begin to make up for the ways I have failed you. I will tell you long and tedious tales of Wladislaus Drăculea. I will tell you the secrets of the am’r. You may ask me all the questions your heart desires, and I will not fail to answer or attempt to entice you away to other matters.
“I will make it up to you. I will make you stronger with knowledge, the way I know my sweet librarian prefers above all.”
“Well, Sandu, maybe not above. Maybe equal to? Oh, my love! There are things I have to tell you now, too. I don’t know how. I don’t even k
now if what I did was OK, but I must tell you. Neplach and I…well, that is, Neplach said—”
“Hush, micuţo. Do you not think I can tell? Relax, dragă Noosh. All is well. You will tell me all about it. But I have been waiting so long to make things up to you. Let me tell you some things. Let me ease my soul as we work. And then we will have a long time, a good long time, to share...so much more.”
And so we turned to do the things that needed to be done, and I listened as the vampire Vlad Dracula began to tell me a story.
Epilogue
“Hewwwo? Wha’ timezit?”
“Oh shit, did I do the math wrong? I’m sorry, Zuzu!”
“Noosh? It’s you? How are you? Where are you? It’s been months! What the fuck? You’ve been AWOL way past the end of your vacation leave. I’ve had to do a whole song-and-dance for Herr Direktor. The Board wants to replace you, and it’s only because I’ve been willing to do your job without a pay raise that you have a job left!”
“Oh, God, I’m really sorry, Zuz! It’s just...well, um, it’s really a long story.”
“It had better be! You told me some drug-addled bullshit about princes and vampires and saving the world. And orgies. And you promised me some of those really good drugs, remember? So, when can I come over and get them? And the whole story!”
“Well, uh, you can’t, really. I’m not coming home.”
“What? No! Stop playing games, Noosh.”
“No, I mean, I’m not even in the country. And I’m not coming back to Centerville or the Haw-Fuck-My-Life. I’ll send a formal letter recommending that you be hired for my job. With a retroactive pay raise for all the time you’ve been unofficially doing it.”
“I don’t want your job! I want you to come back and tell me everything.”
“Maybe I’ll stop by and visit sometime, Zuzu. Just not for a while. Look, it’s super-trite and obvious: girl meets boy, girl falls in love with boy, girl and boy go on, um, a bit of an adventure. And then, um, after some exciting bits, they live happily ever after. Boring, really. It’s just the boy really is, well, rich and stuff. I wasn’t exaggerating about that. And he has his own personal library, as it were, and I’m in charge of that now. So, um, it was just a move to the private sphere, really.”
“With a random strange guy in a random strange country. Which you won’t even tell me about.”
“Well, we got, um, married. If that helps.”
“What? And you didn’t invite me?”
“It was a really small ceremony. Just, um, the paperwork. Sort of.”
“Noosh.”
“I am really, really sorry, Zuz. Please, just accept this for now.”
“Well, are you happy?”
“Really, really happy. I didn’t know I could be so happy. It’s… I’m... It’s just, well, indescribable.”
“I get that. Well, as long as you are happy, Noosh. But I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, Zuz! And someday, you’ll get the whole story.”
“There weren’t ever any drugs, were there?”
“No. Not, um, not in the way you’re thinking, anyway.”
“OK. That’s comforting. I think. When you are ready to come back and tell me the story. I’ll be here. Doing your job, getting your paycheck.”
“I’m glad. No one better!”
“I won’t tell Andre you said that. Hey, Dre will be my minion, now! I like that!”
“Poor Andre! Don’t be too cruel.”
“Oh, he likes it. Maybe there will be a wedding to invite you to someday. If he behaves. And if you’ll come?”
“I’ll do my best! Look, I should let you get back to sleep.”
“Whatever. Like I’m going back to sleep now. Maybe I’ll call Dre and share the pain.”
“You do that. Love you, Zuzu.”
“Yeah, right. If you loved me, you’d have invited me to the wedding. But I love you, despite your running off and not telling me about your adventures. So, stay happily ever after, wherever you are.”
“I’ll do the best I can. I mean, you never know how the story ends. And you just can’t trust writers with your favorite characters, can you?”
“Well, besides me, you’re my favorite character in this story. And if the writer fucks with us, I think we can take ’em!”
“Oh, yes. I think we could deal with anything now. I have some resources, let’s just say. Anyway, since we have that settled, I’ll say bye for now, my dear Zuz.”
“Take care of yourself, Noosh. Seriously. Bye for now.”
THE END
Can Bagamil be saved? Can Sandu ever make up for all his mistakes? Will Noosh ever get to be a librarian again? Those answers and a whole bunch of unexpected and extreme adventures await you in Blood Sine Qua Non, coming soon to Amazon and to Kindle Unlimited.
Author Notes
April 17, 2020
Hello, dear Reader, and welcome to my very first novel!
It’s been a long time getting to this point, where I sit down and write the actual author’s note for my actual novel which is actually being published—so close I can taste it! Everything is rushing along now, so fast that I can almost forget how slow it all went for way too long.
The first draft of this novel you hold in your hands or see on your screen was finished in 2015. I actually started it in 2013, but when it was about half-done I had a situation with a hard drive and lost half of what I’d written, and I was so dispirited that I stopped writing for a while.
(Everything is now backed up after a day of writing or editing to a ruggedized hard drive AND the cloud. Never again!)
I remember when I typed “The End” and felt this amazing rush that I’d finished writing a novel. I had no idea what a long and painful road was ahead of me, trying to get my story into your hands. Self-publishing was an option, but I wanted to try regular publishing first. I cannot count how many query letters I’ve written, how many times I’ve reworked a summary of the book to jump through one or another publisher’s flaming hoops.
I never gave up because I’ve totally fallen in love with Noosh and Sandu and I want—I need—to tell their story to the conclusion. While I totally want to be an author, and have wanted that since I was a little kid, at times it has felt more like I was fighting even more for my characters to get a chance to live in the imaginations of other minds than just my own.
Amazingly, I now have the chance—indeed, I’ve committed to it via contract, which let me tell you is a bit scary!—to share their story over a trilogy. I cannot express how much this is a dream come true, and how dedicated I am to getting this right, and letting Noosh tell her story through me. At this moment, I’m not entirely sure how it all plays out, but neither Noosh nor Sandu have been at all shy about just doing exactly what they want—despite my plans—while I desperately try to keep up with speed typing!
Finally: I am a fangirl of other authors. I have been shy to talk to writers at conventions and blushed as I got books signed. If you’re like that, too, please don’t be shy with me. Contact me via social media or my website, and ask questions about the characters or other aspects of the books. I’ll be so happy to talk about this stuff with you—it’s one of my favorite things to think about and talk about, so you’ll be giving me a good excuse!
No, wait—really finally: This first book is being published during the COVID-19 lockdown. I never expected, when I first started writing this story, for the world to change as it has. It’s been very complicated for me emotionally, as the world suffers this pandemic, to have my dreams of publication finally coming true. But then I think that, beyond the amazing humans who risk their lives every day to serve or save others, what we have turned to for stress relief and distraction are shows, films, and books. So I hope that in this time of crisis that my little offering brings you a few hours of enjoyable escapism: some laughs, some surprises, some time not spent thinking about stuff, just enjoying yourself.
Raven Belasco, April 2020
Acknowledgments
I’ve always planned, since I was 17 and decided I’d be an author someday, to dedicate my first book to the two authors who first made me want to write novels: Robert A. Heinlein and Samuel R. Delaney. They are the best influences a writer could hope for.
Professor David Lenson: thank you for personally encouraging me to write about vampires back when I was supposed to be writing, you know, non-fiction papers for your class!
Steven Schwartz: thanks for telling me I could actually do this, “war-gaming” with me, and for reading the thing in its rawest first draft and giving me the courage to take it to the next level.
Riley Black: thank you for author-to-author support and constant enthusiastic encouragement through the depressing journey of attempting to get published for all those years.
Thomas Roche: thank you for encouragement from the start, and all the deeply helpful advice along the way. Actually, I still need to thank you for the wonderful review of my work all the way back in 1999!
Ayize Jama-Everett: thank you for being my cheerleader during the up times and for your always excellent counsel in the down times.
Lars Hedbor: You provided such sustaining support that I do not know how to thank you. Sometime we will wear tricorn hats together and share drinks and good food.
Chaz Brenchly: A better mentor a girl could not ask. Many hugs until I can be hanging out with you and Karen again in person.
Dr. Charles Moser: thanks for help with anatomy of the circulatory system and for the tip about Turkish tea. Dinners with you are missed.