SNAP: The World Unfolds

Once again, I didn’t recognize the Hungarian.  When Pen saw us, she stopped. “There you are.  Let’s speak English, now,” and she sat on one of the sofas facing the fireplace.  She patted a spot next to her for me, the Baron and Jean-Louis took chairs across a table.

“Well, Jean-Louis tells me that you’ve been told the basics, Ms. Gwenoch.  Or may I call you Maxie?” the Baron asked.

I looked at him.  This was the first time I’d ever had a chance to examine him.  Like everyone else on the planet, I’d seen hundreds of pictures and videos of the man who owned the reportedly largest communications conglomerate in the world.  His face was as familiar as the U.S. president or the Queen of England, let alone most of the celebs we featured.  Up close, he was amazing.  His skin was unlined and had a similar glow to Jean-Louis, his hooded eyes were a piercing blue and his hair was a fine dark brown, worn down to his collar. 

“Do I look healthy?” he asked as he watched me taking him in.  “I’m so used to me after a few hundred years that I don’t notice any more.  The only thing I change is my fashion.”  The three of them smiled at their little joke.

“So it’s really true?” I asked.  “You’re all vampires?”  The word almost stuck in my throat.

“Yes, we’re vampires, but things may not be what you’ve always heard,” he said and Pen smiled again.

“This part of Europe has always been considered haunted.  People saw lights at night, animals were found with their throats slashed, drained of blood, sometimes children would go missing.  Witches were blamed.  Peasants said Satan walked the woods at night. Unfortunately, even the Jews took blame.  There are only a few of the original families left now, after some of the witch-hunts and exterminations over the years.  We learned to stay low and keep to ourselves as much as possible and we also spread through, I guess you’d call them acolytes.”

Acolytes?  Was he talking about people they’d killed for their blood?

“I see confusion,” he nodded.  “I’m speaking of people who desire eternal life.  You may know for a person to become one of us, they must have all of their blood drained, not an act we undertake lightly.  There have been some dreadful mistakes over the years.  One of them was Vlad the Impaler.  He caused no end of trouble.  Peasants were in an uproar and a great many people were put to death with stakes.”  He smiled sardonically.  “Most of them weren’t of us, they were regular people who’d incurred their neighbor’s hatred.  I suspect that an awful lot of people who were owed money also got stakes through the heart.  It was a way to wipe out debt for a few centuries.”

This was just too strange, but I couldn’t pull myself back.  All three of them were like magnets.  Their looks, their demeanors, their voices, were intoxicating.  I’d felt this same pull slightly with Jean-Louis, but that was incidental.  Now, all of them were turning up the charm and it was stunning.  I felt as though I’d never seen so clearly before.  They were beautiful.  I had to fight against them.  I stood up and walked over to the windows with my back to them, lessening the attraction.

I slid back one of the heavy curtains and looked into the velvet darkness.  A half-moon shed a little light and I could see shadows of the forest just beyond the manicured lawn.  In the near distance the mountains rose, covered with the forest that frightened centuries of peasants.  Myths, fairytales, stories came out of these dense forests, and now I was learning that myths and stories were real.

“What would you like to know?”  Pen’s voice cut through my thoughts.

I turned to her, astounded by her beauty.  “I don’t know.”  I was stymied.  “I can’t even figure out questions.  Who are the others?”

Pen and the Baron looked at one another. Something passed between them and he acknowledged, “There are only two of the original families left here.  We have always been enemies and now there are just the Kandesky’s and our major competitors, the Huszars.  I understand you met one of them recently.”

“But there are vampire colonies all over the world.  What about the ones in the United States?” I asked.

“Yes, there are colonies, many, many colonies which have formed into families.  But it all started here, with a handful of baronial families who fled into the forests centuries ago.  From those few families, the way of the vampire spread.  Many people want to be immortal, to have eternal life and there has never been a lack of volunteers.  The problem has not been too few vampires but too many.”

As I turned away from the window, a black shadow flew past.  Motion-sensing lights flicked on and four demons came out to the terrace at a run, guns drawn.

“Well, it looks like the Huszars know you’re here,” the Baron said.  “They failed in L.A. and now they’re trying this.  Very clumsy and stupid but the family’s never been known for brains.  They even backed Hitler in the war.  Thought they’d end up with unlimited supplies of blood.

“They’re not able to puncture our defenses here at the castle, it must have been just a reconnoiter, a little hit to let us know that they’re around.”

My throat still felt bruised from my encounter in the garage.   “Why are they after me?  I’m not a threat to them, am I?”  The demon Carlos had saved me and stuck with me like paste until I climbed the steps to the plane.  Safety was a comfortable feeling, like being wrapped in my grandmother’s arms.  Here, even though there were more people—well, maybe vampires and demons—around, it was too open.  I didn’t know this place, had no history here, no friends or family.

“They don’t know how much of a threat you are.  You’re an unknown, not a vampire.  You just showed up at SNAP at top management.  You get management perks and security.  They don’t know what I have in store for you.”

“Baron, I don’t know what you have in store for me,” I said.  Baron Kandesky smiled and Jean-Louis and Pen exchanged looks.  It seemed as though I might find out.