“Might as well make yourself comfortable,” Marko said as Detta turned the lock on the door and walked over the threshold.

She hung her keys on a hook next to the door and took off her jacket, tossing it onto a chair. For a quick second she flashed to the moment when David grabbed his own jacket from that same chair after her punishment. It had been hanging in nearly the same manner then as her jacket was now. If her heart could beat it would have been thumping a little faster until Marko’s voice pulled her out of her reverie.

“You want a drink?”

She blinked away her memories and looked up at Marko. He stood in her darkened kitchen illuminated by the refrigerator light, soaking up the moonlight filtering in through the small windows over the sink.

“Uh, a Coke is fine,” she stammered.

Marko often meandered about her home as if it were his own. In all truthfulness, it pretty much was. The black velvet drapes that he had originally hung to block out the light in her room were still there. Her closet contained not only her own clothes but his as well, not to mention a few of his varied keepsakes were littered about the house. There were times when he came over with bags of groceries and even mentioned the house as “home” on a few different occasions. Granted the cave was his permanent place of residence, Detta’s cliff top house ranked a close second. They were, in all pomp and circumstances, a normal couple save for the fact that they preferred a people buffet to McDonald’s. While the cave was his home with his brothers, Marko and Detta made it a point to make this house their home, a place to go to get away, to be alone. An eternity with your buddies may sound like a good idea but even the closest of friends needed some time apart, especially since their lives were eternal.

Detta still had yet to sit on her own couch, having gotten lost in the moonlight flickering off her dining room table. The slider curtain was drawn and the glaring orb of the moon shone brightly beyond her back yard cliff. She had gazed off thinking about everything, from the beginning to Marko’s nonchalance about rooting around in her fridge. It happened sometimes, especially after Max’s meetings but this one particularly because she had been excluded from so much information.

“You ok?”

Detta sucked herself out of her daze a second time as Marko stood before her, a condensing can of Coke in his hand.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just lost in thought.”

“Taking a trip down memory lane?” Marko asked, a small smile forming on his face.

Detta smiled back, an endearing and innocent smile that rarely made an appearance. “I guess you could say that.”

“Sit,” he said, motioning for her to sit at the far end of the couch while he sat in the middle, placing his own can of Sprite on the coffee table and throwing his arm atop the back of the couch.

Detta grabbed her can of soda and absentmindedly started to wipe away the cool moisture forming on the outside of the can. Marko sat, just watching her. The air in the room was still although not uncomfortable or awkward even though her silence was beginning to get unnerving.

“”You can talk, you know. I’m not really going to beat you every time you open your mouth.”

She looked up at him, that same simple smile on her face. “I know. I’m just lost in thought, I guess. It happens. Not about anything in particular. Just . . . thinking.”

“You had a lot of questions on your mind earlier. Are they still there?”

“From the way Max had grabbed you after the meeting, I doubt that matters.”

Marko looked up, pretending to contemplate her statement before looking back down at her. “You’re right, it doesn’t. Just thought I’d ask for the hell of it.” She laughed a low and soft laugh before he continued. “Max likes to do as little work as possible when it comes to us and especially in the upbringing of fledglings.”

“Really? Could have fooled me,” Detta broke in, her tone sardonic.

Marko smirked and continued on. “Therefore it’s my prerogative to keep you up to speed.”

“Yeah, that and the fact that he’s still pissed that you made me and wants to shoulder you with as much burden as possible to see how well you fare.”

“True. So I’m here to fill in some of the blanks from tonight. A few pieces tugged at you. What do you want to know first?”

Detta thought on the question for a moment before she spoke. “Needles. What happened there that had you guys acting all nasty when Max mentioned a girlfriend?”

Marko just shook his head, closing his eyes momentarily to throw away the memory. “I knew I should have picked the starting point. We refuse to talk about it. We almost got killed because of Max’s arrogance and his unwillingness to listen to us lesser vampires and that’s all I’m willing to say on that.”

“Will you ever tell me?”

“Maybe . . . maybe when there’s more time between me and Needles, I’ll tell you. It’s only been about ten years so it’s still fresh in our standards.”

She didn’t want to push the conversation even though she desperately wanted to know what had happened. The idea of Max taking a wife didn’t scare Marko; it pissed him off. From what she could guess, Max put his own wants ahead of his children, nearly sacrificing them to achieve his own ends and they were still harboring resentment about that and rightly so. She knew Max wasn’t a doting father. What was the group to him?

“How about we start, with Max’s demented family dynamics since I can see that tumbling around your head.”

“I have no privacy, do I?”

“If you’d utilize your blocking skills, you would.”

“Well aren’t you funny. I guess it’s just too much to ask to stay out of my head to begin with, huh?”

“Yeah, it is,” he replied jokingly. “I’m nosy and you’re stuck with me forever so the sooner you get used to my prying the better.”

“Cute.”

“Now, Max and his family. Vampires, under obligation, have to further the bloodline.”

“Obligation from who?” she asked, her brow furrowing. She placed her can down on the table and looked up at Marko.

“The Order. They’re a coven of elders. They hold council in Brasov—”

“Oh well that’s a bit cliché, isn’t it? Transylvania?”

“That’s what we’ve all said, even Max, but the elders live throughout Eastern Europe. Germany, Russia, Croatia, Bosnia, Czechoslovakia—”

“Romania isn’t even central!”

“What can I say? They like their homeland.”

“So . . .” Detta hesitated, almost unwilling to ask the obvious. “. . . Vlad Tempest, the castle, the island, the Order of the Dragon, that’s all real?”

“Sort of. Like all oral traditions, this one’s tale grew exceptionally tall.”

“But Vlad was a real man. He really impaled people on spikes. History has proven that.”

“And Pontius Pilate crucified thousands of people for the sheer hell of it. Didn’t make him a vampire.”

“The legend goes, though, that Vlad drank the blood of his victims.”

Marko shook his head. “He didn’t drink it. He harbored it for the vampires in the castle. The story begins before Vlad, in Egypt in the early dynasties. Don’t ask me which one, I don’t remember. History was never my subject. It’s a miracle I can remember any of this although it was all but pounded into us. Our species as we know it was borne of man, a mutation. The first vampire was nothing more than a hemophiliac; he wasn’t a pharaoh, or anyone of great importance. Wasn’t rich, wasn’t poor, was a family man, tradesman, that fell ill after he was wounded. No one could get him to stop bleeding and since this was a time before transfusions, they—”

“Made him drink the blood.”

Marko nodded at Detta’s interjection. “Animal blood and they prayed, sacrificed to their gods for this man’s well-being, his long, healthy life. You see where I’m going with this?” Detta nodded, enthralled with the tale. “I guess their gods heard their cries because they certainly answered it. It wasn’t long before his body started rejecting food, he started sleeping through the day—”

“Wait a minute,” Detta interrupted, a confused look on her face. “His body couldn’t take human food and here we are drinking soda and eating non-blood meals. How is that?”

Marko shrugged his shoulders although he knew the answer. “Just like there are different types of people, there are different types of vampires. Not all of us transform when we feed, some don’t have daylight sensitivity, some can only drink blood . . . it’s our evolution, I guess. We all adapted differently and it’s constantly changing from turn to turn. While our pack all carries similar powers, some are stronger than others and some have powers that no one else has.”

“Like what?”

Marko shook his head, closing his eyes and laughing lightly. “Let me finish the history lesson first. This man, the first, changed and since nothing in any life is free, in exchange for his health, the gods took some things back, like sunlight and food. He had three children and he had killed the youngest before he realized what was really happening. His wife feared for her life and those of her kids so he was cast out, damned by the gods, his family and his neighbors. They felt that he had taken advantage of the gods’ gift of health, had taken more than his share and as he’d become a beast of the night, he was cast into the expansive darkness of the desert. He panicked. He thought he wouldn’t make it to the next village before sunrise and knew the blisters the sun gave him would kill him if he was exposed for too long. But he discovered his speed quickly and made it to a harem village down river. At first it was sex that spread it—”

“Which explains why some are impotent. Don’t want them unwillingly spreading the disease.”

He nodded. “Sucks for them. It became a fetish, or sex game, for the harem he infected and it wasn’t long before it was an orgy of blood.”

“Well now that doesn’t sound that bad.”

“No but sucks for population control. He taught them what he knew, how to feed, what to avoid and they, in turn, would teach other men they infected. It was only a matter of time before the village became nocturnal and their food source depleted. When the supply ships and travelers became scarce, they attacked each other. One woman, the first harem, suggested they don’t keep all infected around since, obviously, it was causing some problems. The man, now her husband, agreed but even then, it didn’t create a constant food source and the need to forage arose. And the wanderers did, sending word to him of the best food sources and he implementing rules for them to abide by, to conceal themselves among humans.”

“So this man became mayor of Vampireville and everyone just accepted it?”

“Just like any government, there’s going to be some wanting to cry mutiny but he was smart. He kept information from them so they had to keep coming back. In the end, though, he wasn’t a good leader. See, evolution happens much quicker in vampires than in humans and he couldn’t keep up with the questions. Some had fangs, others didn’t. One lover could get a tan, the other couldn’t. Needless to say he was overthrown.”

“Killed?”

“Yeah. It was hundreds of years later but the elders now are far older than he ever was.”

“So the elders on the council now are the ones that overthrew him?”

Marko shook his head. “I think just one is. It’s known amongst us who would make a good leader. The feeling is inherent and while David and Max lead, they would never make it to a seat on the council. The council doesn’t even choose its members. It’s like the next member gets a letter in the mail from some unknown presence and says ‘you’re it.’”

“Sort of like a calling.”

“You could say that. Only those chosen for the council know where it’s held.”

“But you just said Brasov.”

“Consider it a secret club. Anyone can travel there but only the elite know where to go for the real fun.”

“So what happens if you find the council but haven’t been chosen for it?”

“You won’t.”

“And that’s it?”

“And that’s it. The chosen just know where to go and once they get the calling, they answer it.”

“So back to Max. The Order says we must further the race and he interprets that as he will.”

Marko scrunched his face for a moment before saying, “Pretty much. There are standards for treatment of vampires but like the government doesn’t tell people how to parent, neither does the Order.”

“But what about, uh, child welfare? You guys almost lost your lives in Needles because of Max. Surely they’d have something to say about that.”

He shook his head. “They key word is ‘almost.’ Had we died, yeah, they would have stepped in. I think he was talked to for his lack of control there but that’s as much as I know about that.”

“So basically he’s Dad and whatever he says goes.”

“That pretty much sums it up. We do what we’re told, we stay out of his way and we’re all the merrier for it.”

“But,” Detta started, the confusion creeping back onto her face, “his thing with a wife. What’s that about?”

“It’s not enough for him, that he just furthers the line. The man wants a family, has it set in his head that this is how it’s supposed to be, like humans with fangs.”

“Think he’s just lonely?”

“I’m sure he is and I wouldn’t care if he could wrangle the chicks on his own but seeing as he wants it to be a family affair, it chaps our asses when he does it, especially since none of us have any problems finding a date.”

“Yeah, but you eat yours at the end of the night.”

“Regardless, it should be his problem, not ours but lucky for us we got saddled with the belt-wielding dad. They’re not all like him.”

“Ok, so what about disassociation? Sounds like a divorce. Does the Order step in for those?”

Marko shook his head. “That’s entirely up to the immediate leader. Disassociation is based on character, circumstance and wrongdoing. It’s petty to the Order and they don’t want to be bothered with such things.”

Detta emitted a half-hearted, breathy laugh. “The way David reacted to it, it seems that it’s more than Max turning his back on him.”

“It is,” he replied, his voice solemn. “You’re taken out to the middle of nowhere, usually after some kind of beating, something to weaken you. Then you’re drained, throat slit, whatever, and left on your own. Your connection with the pack dissolves and you’re left to make yourself survive. I’ve only heard of it happening once and the guy went feral because all he’d live on for weeks was animal blood. Once he got human he went ok again but even then he’s a lone soldier. We can always tell a disassociated vampire and they usually don’t last very long, get preyed on like an outcasted zebra or something.”

“So a vampire can never be alone?”

“Not like that, no. It’s too dangerous. Our connection to each other is what keeps us safe.” Marko saw the questioning look and raised eyebrow on Detta’s face and chuckled. “Even though it can be intrusive but you know what they say about blocking . . .”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Anyway, if you ever come across a loner, you’ll see what I mean. They’re edgier, always on alert, jumpy, skeptical. They’re never calm.”

“Kind of like Paul.”

“Yeah, if he were coming down from heroin or something. They’re just . . . wired. Don’t fit anywhere, know that they’re targeted. Paranoid.”

“Sounds like me before I turned.”

“Kind of is like that, isn’t it? I guess it is but no companionship.”

“Ok, so you’ve given me a history lesson,” she said, counting out on her fingers, “informed me that Max really is a demented dad and told me that being a hermit is bad. Are we missing something?”

Detta could see Marko ticking off the topics of conversation in his head until he came to that last empty box. “The man up in the mountains.”

“Right!” Detta exclaimed, remembering the vampire secret keeper. “So Max is able to break his own rules, huh?”

“They’re more Order rules but there are exceptions and that man is one of them. He found out about Max because his sister was dating him. Then he was a banker up in San Francisco. She met him on a weekend trip up.”

“Wait, banker? They don’t call them bank hours for nothing.”

“His excuse was that he worked best after hours; less people that way. He proved it and was good enough at his job that they let him do it.”

“Convenient,” she said, cynicism in her voice.

“A lot of things end up being convenient for us. So one weekend his sister comes back and she’s acting all weird, sleeping a lot, not eating. She ended up getting fired from her job because she missed so much but she didn’t care because Max was supporting her. He goes to her the night he wants to change her, doesn’t think anyone is home. The man, he’s young, thirteen at most, hides because he wants to see what’s going on with his big sister.”

“But shouldn’t Max know he’s there? He can sense humans, right?

Marko rolled his eyes. “Max gets careless when he gets a girl, depends on others to pave a way for him. Only David was around for this one and he never says much about it. I guess the girl freaked when she realized what was happening. Max did the whole bottle thing with her.”

“He can’t find anyone that would go willingly?”

“Next to no vampire is as lucky as we are to find their twin soul. Humans rarely do that. They’ll settle for their version of love so they don’t die alone instead of continuing the search and risking that kind of loneliness. It’s something you have to want because if you’re forced into it, you’ll just harbor resentment for your maker.”

“But the blood makes you forget mortal life. Shouldn’t that override human memories?”

“Did you stop hating Ted after you turned?” Detta shook her head. “It’s because the resentment was too strong. That didn’t go away until you killed him.”

“You know, I told Star that ages ago but I was just being facetious. So it’s true? You really have to want it?”

He nodded slightly. “The only way to kill the resentment is to kill the source, big problem when you’re the source and your fledgling hates you.”

“So you’ve never seen something like that?”

“Just with you. None of David’s girls ever made it that far. Doesn’t look like Star’s going to break the mold either.”

“So this man’s sister flips . . .”

“Yeah. Turns out the whole vampire thing was a turn off for her. So Max snaps her neck, stages a suicide. Writes a note and everything. From what I’m told, it actually looked like she hanged herself too.”

“So what about the boy?”

“When Max leveled his head off again, he felt him. It was a railroad house and he was crouched behind the door. Saw everything. Max just . . . sensed it on him, his ability to keep his mouth closed. Secrecy like that is rare, like Max said. We can pick up on it too but only he can make that call. He told the boy he’d watch him, follow him for the rest of his life to make sure he kept his promise. I guess the old man decided to stay in his comfort zone instead of running because when we got here he had been up in that mountain for years. Max always kept a presence here to keep him on his toes even though he was traveling all over the place. The man still hasn’t talked but we’ll see how long that lasts now that Max is after his daughter.”

“This could get ugly, couldn’t it?” Detta asked, scrunching her face.

“Very. It could get worse than Needles if Max doesn’t change his act, unless his goal is to expose all of us to at least one relationship fuck-up before he really settles down.”

“And we just can’t leave, can we?”

“Terms and conditions, my dear Detta. The birds never stray too far from the nest.”

“Well, can these birds order some pizza or something? I’m starving,” Detta said as she looked at the wall clock. She brought the soda can up to her lips and drained the remaining drops before tossing it in the garbage.

“You want to hunt?”

“Pizza first, hunt after. I have a craving.”

“Well, get half pepperoni.”

Detta had ordered the pizza just like she had done so many nights prior but this time she wasn’t focused on size or toppings but on the onslaught of information she had just received. It had been the most Marko ever divulged to her in one sitting and she hoped that she would be able to remember it all. There was so much the history books had failed to capture in regards to vampire lore but she doubted it would make a difference. People had a tendency to distort reality to their liking since it had started from the supposed beginning, transferring Vlad’s harvesting to his own want to consume human life. The Order seemed to function more as a secret society than a governing body and for once she shared the slightest bit of sympathy for David now that she knew just how terrible disassociation was.

But now she would have to use this information, along with her knowledge gathered over the few short years she’d been a vampire, to get her through what she could only guess was going to be a tumultuous ride through someone else’s love life. Family matters are one thing but choosing a mate should be a singular event, not a bonding experience. A sense of foreboding crept into the pit of Detta’s stomach but it was quickly quelled when Marko pressed the arctic metal of a freshly retrieved can of soda against her neck. Leave it to Marko to send shivers down her spine.

<–4. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah + 6. Firsts–>