Blood Sisters (The Olivia Chronicles) Read online

  The conversation, despite its content and the bizarre story, was becoming comfortable, and he felt no fear. “You certainly are beautiful and would never be suspected of being a monster.” Van Helsing felt himself blushing again.

  Olivia smiled. “Oh, you have no idea of how monstrous I can be. I have advantages my father wishes he had. I also have you and Harker to thank for removing him from the estate. His going to London was the start of my liberation. His distraction with you and the travel have allowed me to make some arrangements for myself that were not possible when he was so close.”

  “So, tell me how you became a Vampire, Olivia. Did your father kill your mother and turn you into what I see before me?”

  “No. My father is truly my father. As I said, I am his sole true heir. My father eventually learned all he wished to know and developed his own abilities to a point where he grew bored. He was in Bucharest when he saw my mother. As a man of wealth, he was able to persuade her father to allow him to court her. She was beautiful, or at least he tells me she was. He says he sometimes has a hard time looking at me because I favor her so.”

  “It was not long before he managed to arrange a marriage and they wed. After an acceptable amount of time, he convinced her that the city was too much for a family, which is what he wanted, and they moved to his old home of Tirgoviste.”

  Van Helsing interjected again. “I have always heard and read that Vampires are not born. Are you certain that the story of your birth is true? Perhaps you were turned and given these memories?”

  His words were not completely out of his mouth before she was laughing. “Oh, if that were true. I was the grand experiment. My father still had enough human in himself that he wished to sire more children. My brother, Mihnea, had denied his existence when he was still alive. He knew that to confess to helping father fake his own death would have been the end of him. My father’s secret went to the grave with Mihnea. All of the monks who knew of his past identity and of his true nature upon his transformation were compelled by the Devil himself to never reveal that the one from prophecy had arrived. He treated them well, and they were well provided for at the monastery after he left. He made sure of that.”

  “With his other family dead to him, my father wanted a child who was alive. He hoped for another son, but he got me. I only know that it took much ritual and ceremony, and months of preparation to make my mother the altar upon which he offered himself. When I was born, I tore my way out, killing her in the process. In order to have the one thing he wanted, he had to lose the one thing he loved more than anything else.” Olivia smiled. “So, as you can see, we’ve always had a bit of a complicated relationship. I have never, however, been his concubine.”

  Van Helsing’s head was reeling. “How are you different? I would assume you are weaker, as you are more human.”

  “I have none of the restrictions so common of those who are turned through infection or willingly becoming supplicants to master Vampires. My father made himself a god for a whole race of people, as did those of our kind before him. Those who fall prey to us in that way are always underlings in a way. I never asked for this, nor did my mother. She was human. He never turned her; he merely loved and impregnated her to have a lasting reminder of that love. He and I are not underlings, Van Helsing. And, unlike him, I am not bound to the Devil under the familial agreement. I can live in the light as easily as in the dark, you see?” As she said this she walked to the door of the chamber and threw it open. Sunlight filtered in, and she stood in the light, her face upturned toward the sun that was only partially obscured by the clouds. He expected her to burst into flames, screaming and curdling in front of him, but nothing happened. She stood that way for a few moments before turning back to him.

  “You see, I’m different. Now that the bonds of my father have been broken because of you, I answer to no one but myself. He realized that to leave me under his bondage would mean that you would kill me—the last member of his true family. Have no doubts, he is here with us now; the very rats in this place are bound to him, and he can use them as his eyes and ears. Think about Renfield, that wreck of a man. He’s never going to be given full power; he’s a prop, a walking crystal ball of sorts for my father to scry through. I not only have the powers my father has; I have powers you can’t even imagine. While I have the appearance of a human, my immortality is bound in the blood rites, at least as far as I know. I learned how to feed on my own, and I turned Daniela without being taught. Instinct has made me what I am, rather than true teaching.”

  From where he was sitting, Van Helsing could see Mina beyond the now open door. She was still in her protective circle where he’d left her. She was facing Olivia, her eyes locked on her. His eyes shifted toward the ground, and he realized she was floating above it. She had been asleep when he entered the lair of the Vampires. He now understood that she was a mere puppet of her Mistress, Olivia. He now understood how and why the three temptresses had called her sister and called on her to join them and why she feared them not. She was one of them.

  Olivia laughed low and she turned back toward him. “Do not harm her. She is turned but not completely. She does not wish to join me and I’ll not make her do so unwillingly. If you try to harm her, however, she will use the means she has to protect herself.” She turned back to Mina and even though she whispered, Van Helsing could hear her voice clearly as if she were standing at his ear. “Rest, little sister. Sleep again. There’s nothing to worry over here.” As she spoke, Mina slid silently to the ground, back to her deep sleep state.

  Van Helsing felt helpless. “Why are you keeping me here, and why have you turned these women? Why Mina?”

  Olivia nodded. “First, Mina. She is in much the same state as Renfield. She not only afforded my father a clear view of what you were up to, but I can also obtain information from her. Don’t be so relieved, though; she will never fully return to her normal state. Renfield was unstable; she has a strong mind and pure heart, which so far has kept her from begging to be turned. Renfield was a grasping human being who was more than happy to give up his soul for a few assurances.”

  “The two women you killed were very special to me. They were my blood sisters. Daniela, the second one you killed, was the only one I ever fully turned. I loved her, Van Helsing, more than perhaps my father loved my mother. I could not bear to be away from her, even if death were to take her many years from now. To ensure that we would always be together, I turned her into one of us. She knew what turning would mean. She agreed to it freely. Young love makes us do some amazing things, don’t you think? We were to be bound for eternity. You were only able to kill her because of my father’s influence here. I’m strong, but I am still half human, after all, and no match for the Devil. Sasha, on the other hand, was turned by Daniela. While I was quite fond of her, she was weak. Daniela created her in a fit of rage and jealousy. Sasha did not choose it freely. That is why she thanked you.”

  “What did Daniela mean when she said it wasn’t over?” Van Helsing rose from the chair, sensing the interview was coming to a close.

  “Well, you are going to leave alive, but so am I. I’m not going to give all my secrets away so easily. Don’t be surprised to meet again, Van Helsing. We don’t always remain the same people. After all, my father reinvents himself all the time.” With that, the sound of fluttering wings started again and Van Helsing watched as Olivia’s form started to shimmer and eventually exploded, taking on the form of a multitude of bats. He watched as they all moved toward one of the side passages of the lair, the sound of their wings becoming faint and the sound of Mina’s crying taking their place.

  When he reached her, he found she was still in a sleep-like trance. As he touched her shoulder, she immediately stopped weeping and told him they should leave, as she sensed Jonathan Harker, her husband was coming toward them.

  Van Helsing died some ten years later, well after Mina and Jonathan had a son and moved on with their lives, both assuming that their time with Vam
pires had come to an end. The recordings of the events, as Harker called them “nothing but a mass of typewriting” which lacked any “one actual document” were placed in safe keeping for their son as part of his estate upon their deaths.

  At Van Helsing’s funeral, a lone woman dressed in black with a veil over her face is rumored to have spent much time at the coffin during visitation. The funeral director said that her beauty was evident even through the dark, fine black lace. She had taken off her gloves and stroked his face gently, three thin gold bands catching the light as she whispered her goodbye.

  Chapter One

  Olivia sat in front of St. Louis Cathedral, staring at the clock tower, waiting for the hands to point straight up to the violet sky.

  A bench in the square is no place for a woman alone at this time of night, but she’s is not your typical woman. Olivia can make herself invisible, completely unnoticeable to the drug dealers and drunken tourists, the Zendik tribe gutter punks and the street urchin-wannabes. She was perched here not for prey.

  She sought her lost sisters.

  She’d had her fun alone, and it was time to find companions again. She sat silently, listening to the noises around her. She could hear a tarot reader on the left side of the square shifting in her chair, then she smelled the newly lit stick of incense, heard the clinking of cheap bangles coming together and the crack of the cards as the bored card reader shuffled the deck for something to do. On the right, she could sense pedestrian traffic, first coming off of Decatur on the far side of the square and turning up St. Ann, drifting toward the heart of the French Quarter: Bourbon Street.

  She took her cigarette case out, lighting a Nat Sherman Black and Gold, knowing the black cigarette paper helped to keep her more cloaked in the shadows. As she sat smoking and watching the clock hands, she could hear an argument between two women on St Peter’s who were walking toward the church. She saw them as they made the short corner off St. Peter and ducked into Pirate’s Alley.

  “Why do we have to go to work, Wren?” The brunette whispered this into Wren’s ear as she pressed her back against the Cathedral wall. Olivia could hear each word clearly and could see Sienna’s lips moving as if in slow motion, and she took a hard drag off her cigarette as the brunette kissed the other girl hard on the mouth. Wren kissed her back, her hands in the masses of mahogany brown curls. She then pulled her head back, kissed her on the shoulder and slapped her on the thigh. “Come on, babe, we’re gonna be late. I’ll come by when my shift is over.” Wren wiggled out from between her companion and the Cathedral, and Olivia watched as her boot-clad legs ran toward Bourbon Street. The mahogany-haired one came back out onto Chartres, headed toward her job at the Indigo. She could hear the girl chuckle softly and begin to hum softly as she walked toward the bar.

  She knew these were not exactly the ones she was looking for, but they would do for now—she lit a new cigarette off the first and watched as the hands on the clock fell into place.

  She rose from the bench, realizing she’d be drawing a lot of attention if she desired it. She was impeccably dressed in clean, cuffed black pants and a white silk shirt. Despite the oppressive August humidity, her clothes were still crisp and unwrinkled. Looking so fresh, as if she’d just stepped out of a taxi from out of town, she would have been a prime target for a mugging if she were anyone else. She slowly walked down Pirate’s Alley, her shoes ringing on the slate.

  The heat from the kiss lingered in the air; Wren left a tangible trail of lust as she walked toward the club. Olivia could feel a wanting under the heat. Yes, Wren was ready. She could see her ahead, making the turn on Bourbon Street.

  She saw Wren disappear into the club. Olivia decided to go in, too, and she slid through the throngs of people, miraculously avoiding the sloshing beer cups and going unnoticed as the crowd focused on the fraternity boys yelling to a young woman on the street to flash her tits. Dammit, Mardi Gras season has been over for months.

  Olivia paid the door girl $2 to get in, took her ticket for a discounted drink, and let the server take her to a table in the back, away from the stage. She quietly ordered a shot of bourbon and sat back, watching the woman gyrating on stage. She had no interest in her, no more than the dancer had in the man in the audience who was currently sliding his hand up her leg to place a dollar in the band of her g-string.

  Olivia’s drink arrived, and she lit another cigarette as she looked around the club. The décor left much to be desired. The chairs and tables were ancient—cheap, wobbly café tables and chairs. The whole place reeked of stale Bud and cigarettes combined with the perfumes and colognes of the dancers and patrons. To her, there was an extra layer of scents—greed, lust, disgust, and the sickly sweet odor of addiction and decay.

  She felt the dancer who had been on stage, Christy, walk up behind her, as she started making tip rounds in the audience. As Christy made her way closer, Olivia sensed she was the one addicted—the dancer smelled of decay—the smell of cocaine rot. She met her eyes and saw that she was merely a husk--a walking black hole. Instead of asking her for a tip, Christy drifted past quickly and moved on to the next table.

  Olivia watched her move away from the table, and she watched the audience’s reaction. They were too into the vibe of the Quarter to notice that the dancer was not really there; besides the husk was all they were interested in, anyway. The next dancer, Wren, stepped onto the stage.

  Olivia noticed the difference at once. When she saw Wren on the street moments ago, she looked like any number of women on the street. Now she was in fine form. Olivia watched as the stiletto-heeled boots stepped onto the stage, the cloak’s hem mere millimeters from the stage floor. Wren moved slowly toward the pole as the opening of the Cult’s “Fire Woman” played from the speakers. Slowly, Wren began to wind herself around the pole, letting her cloak flare out behind her.

  Silently, Olivia watched. She noticed that Wren had inserted all of her piercings, the studs and rings catching the stage lights. She had a silver stud in her right nostril, which caught the light as she slowly and languidly slipped around the pole. Her cloak slid slowly down her shoulders as she spun, revealing a tattoo on each shoulder blade. On her right, she had a black triskele, on the left, a pentacle. Olivia could see the muscles under the flesh, moving and twitching with each revolution.

  The cloak kept slowly sliding. On her fifth revolution, it slid to her hips, revealing the top of her leather hot pants. Imagining what the expanse of white thigh looked like under the cloak, Olivia watched the muscles in Wren’s back work, and she lit another cigarette. Wren pulled herself away from the pole as her cloak hit the floor. She walked to the edge of the stage opposite her, and she crouched down, whispering into the patron’s ear so he could slide a dollar into the waistband of her shorts.

  As Wren stood to full height and prepared to turn to another customer, she could see the woman in the white silk shirt exit the club.

  Chapter Two

  Sienna was having a fairly normal night at the Indigo--as normal as could be expected for a club that opened at midnight and advertised as Goth. The doormen/bouncers looked like ZZ Topp, and they did a good job of keeping the bad out and the good in.

  She had been on for a good hour, pouring novelty drinks to customers who read about the bar in the Gambit Weekly. Everyone was up for a “Witches Brew” since the article had raved about it. The owner was pleased by the turnover, as vodka and clove-infused grape juice were fairly cheap and easy, but Sienna was starting to get nauseated by the smell of cloves. It was bad enough that half the patrons smoked clove cigarettes; now the drinks reeked of them, too.

  She wiped down the bar as she watched the dancers on the lower floor. So much press had led tourists to her beloved bar that she felt jaded. The majority of people who came through the doors these days were younger college students who had read of how avant-garde the club was. Which meant that it really wasn’t avant-garde anymore; most of her clientele was straight and in the just-legal-white-boy age-group. Th
ere were still a few Goths that hung out here, but many of them had abandoned the bar for the Abbey, where they could hide in dark corners and avoid much of the Quarter traffic.

  That was why the woman in the white silk shirt stood out. A lone woman, probably in her late 30s or early 40s, bellied up to the bar. And, she ordered a Scotch, straight up. Not a foolish drink.

  Sienna stared at her for a minute, then said, “Well, we don’t stock Scotch. I can tell you what we have back here that might work, though. If you’d care to go with Irish whisky, we’ve also got a bottle of Jameson’s and a bottle of Bushmills under the counter.”

  Olivia agreed to a shot of Bushmills, neat. She watched the few people who were out on the dance floor as Sienna poured the shot. And, she watched Sienna move behind the bar, imagining what her hips would feel like under her hands. When the bartender turned to face her, the woman in the silk shirt made sure she was looking toward the dance floor.