9. Rose #2
He gives his head a shake, making a low sound of disappointment.
“Solon explained to you how Valtu is now, did he not? He doesn’t remember you.
He purposefully drank the formula to rid you from his mind, from his heart.
The man you love, the relationship you had, that doesn’t exist anymore. Not to him.”
I can’t help but flinch as if Abe just slapped me across the face.
“Sorry,” he quickly says, licking his lips. “That wasn’t very kind of me. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. You’ve come such a long way and I’m afraid you’re not going to get what you’ve come here for.”
He looks around the airport, as if suddenly remembering where we are, and puts his hand at my back. “Come on, I parked in the short-term lot and I don’t want to get towed. We’ll get you into Germany, if this is still what you want to do.”
I give him a steady look. “You know I do.” Like hell I’m turning back now. “You think any of this is scaring me off?”
He gives me a sheepish smile, awe momentarily flitting across his face. “And there you have it. There’s the girl I know. Coming through after all this time.”
We start walking toward the exit. “Or maybe it’s just me, Rose Harper, and I’ve always been like this,” I point out. “You don’t know.” I may have lived many lives before, but the life I’m currently living is still my own, and still valid.
“Mmm. Very true. You know, one day, if you’re ever up to it, I would love to have you at the lab in Oxford.”
I stop dead in my tracks and give him an incredulous look. “You want to study me in a lab!?” My heart skips a beat. I’m remembering why Bellamy wanted Lenore, my mother, Dylan, and Leif. All for tests. Why not me next? I have the same genes that they do.
Good lord, is Van Helsing in on it?
His brows furrow at my reaction. “What’s wrong? I would just love to explore your past lives, your reincarnation. Why you and no one else.”
“How do you know there isn’t anyone else who has been reincarnated in the same body?” I say, folding my arms, still feeling cagey about all of this. “And what do you think science can do? You can’t measure God that way.”
He chuckles. “That I know, but it doesn’t stop us from trying.”
“You know, there are other reasons why scientists want to study me,” I say, keeping my voice down, though the passengers milling about aren’t paying us any attention.
He frowns for a moment then his eyes widen. “Ah. Yes. Of course. I take it you know what happened to your brother, Leif,” he says solemnly. “Another regret of mine was being unable to convince Valtu to help. So strange how your lives are so intertwined, even moments after your death.”
I don’t want to think about Valtu somehow turning his back on my family.
I ignore it. “Do you know where Leif is now? Do you know if I’m in any danger, if my brother Dylan is? My mom?”
His head shakes and we walk through the doors to the outside, the frigid winter mountain blasting my face.
Even though the cold doesn’t hurt me as a vampire, it’s still a shock to my senses and I’m finally registering that I’m in another continent entirely, in the Alps.
I blink at the cloudy yet harsh light and take out my sunglasses, slipping them on.
“Bellamy’s trail went cold not long after the abduction,” Abe says.
“But how can that be? How can he have been gone for over twenty-one years without a trace?”
“I wish I knew,” he says, guiding me toward the neatly plowed parking lot across the road. “The way I see it is it’s not necessarily a bad thing. He’s leaving us alone. If he had tried to come after any vampire again, we would know about it.”
“Only because he got what he wanted,” I say bitterly. “My brother. Dylan’s twin that neither of us ever got to know.”
He shoots me a thoughtful glance. “Careful there, Rose,” he says. “Vengeance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes it’s better to harbor justice in your heart than attempt to inflict it and fail.”
I ignore that too. “Well, what about the book? The one that Valtu has. Aren’t Bellamy and the covens trying to get it back? Or Saara and that other vampire? Solon said she’s still alive, doing bad shit with someone called Enoch.”
Van Helsing shrugs. “They’re all probably trying to get it back. Or at least they were. But Valtu has it under lock and key. He himself is under lock and key. It’s why I’m not taking you directly to him, but instead right into Mittenwald.”
“You haven’t been to his place?”
“I have,” he says, flashing me a grin as he presses the key fob on his phone app and a car beeps its location across the lot. “I just couldn’t tell you how to get there.”
“Well, where does he live?”
“Let’s just say Dracula finally found his castle.”
A castle? I almost laugh. “A little on the nose, don’t you think?”
“You know how he can get,” he says. “Such a flair for the dramatic. Here we are.” We stop by a flashy Mercedes.
“This yours?”
“A rental. I landed only a few hours ago, straight from Oxford. Just enough time to get my favorite schnitzel in Innsbruck, then rent the car and come pick you up.”
The doors unlock and I throw my bag in the back before sliding into the passenger seat. “It was really kind of you to pick me like this. I know you’re busy, it couldn’t have been easy to just drop everything and head over here.”
“Not a problem,” he says, turning on the car. It hums to life, electric. “As if I would pass up an opportunity to come see Mina Lucy Dahlia’s latest reincarnation.”
“Hope I haven’t disappointed you.”
“Not a chance.” He gives me a kind smile as we drive out of the lot. “But I am afraid it’s you that’s going to be disappointed.”
“We’ll just have to see,” I say, refusing to let him talk me out of this. “Did you tell him it was me that was coming?”
“Oh, no .” He shakes his head adamantly. “That wouldn’t have been wise. I didn’t say much at all, except that I had someone he had to…meet.” He pauses and squints at me. “You know how to block your thoughts from other vampires, don’t you? Valtu can be very intrusive when he wants to be.”
I laugh. “I’ve been doing that since I was eight years old and accidentally shattered my mother’s favorite crystal. Didn’t want her to know I did it. My brother got blamed instead.”
“Good to know.” He clears his throat. “Because I offered you up as a whore.”
My eyes nearly fall out. “You what?” I exclaim.
Abe looks chagrined, but not enough. He raises one shoulder. “It was the only way I could deliver you to him.”
“Do you often offer him whores?” I ask, though the second I say it, I don’t want to know the answer. The jealousy inside me is acidic.
He bites his lip for a moment and gives me an uneasy look. “In some ways he’s the same vampire you know. Well, perhaps closest to the Venice edition than anything else. He doesn’t have a Red Room to run—Bitrus does that for him back in Italy—but his, uh, appetites haven’t changed too much.”
“So why are you his pimp?” I grumble.
He bristles at that. “I’m not his pimp .
But he never leaves Mittenwald. Ever. And there are only so many people—and vampires—in this town.
Even with the book and spells at his summoning, he doesn’t get close to anyone without them being vetted beforehand.
” He clears his throat. “He’s paranoid. Not just anyone is granted entry to his home. ”
“And I guess you can’t just say, hey it’s Mina Lucy Dahlia Rose coming to pay you a visit?”
He gives me a steady look. “If you had purposely erased Valtu from your memory and he showed up at your house, do you think you’d want him to stay? The minute he knows who you are, you’ll be seeing the back of him.” A dark cloud comes over his blue eyes. “Or worse. Possibly much worse.”
“Don’t tell me he’d try and kill me again.”
I was joking when I said that but from the way Abe winces, I realize how serious it is.
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” he says, and I can’t help but feel a little sick to my stomach.
“Don’t forget that you don’t exist to him.
He knows that there was a lover, that he erased that lover because he killed her, and because all her previous versions had died, but it’s like being told a story to him.
He doesn’t remember it, so it doesn’t seem real.
Like you were something that happened to somebody else. Someone else’s tragedy.”
Someone else’s tragedy. What a way to be thought of, to be reduced to.
I’m someone else’s tragedy.
He goes on, voice firmer now. “I have no doubt he wouldn’t hesitate to kill you, Rose.
Valtu never let go of that monster. When he lost Lucy, he lost his humanity, became a dark and depraved killing machine, but after time, he found himself again, after the grief had loosened its hold.
This time though…he never fully went back.
Never returned to base-level Valtu. He’s remained in this… other state.”
“But he’s not grieving. He can’t be if he doesn’t remember me.”
“He’s not grieving as far as he knows it,” he says.
“That doesn’t mean he’s not holding onto pain deep inside his heart, deep inside his psyche.
The subconscious confounds most scientists, let alone me.
When you add magic to the equation, something that has never been studied except attempts by rogue vampire outlier scientists and doctors like myself, then things get even murkier.
I believe trauma is embedded in a way that our working mind can’t easily access.
In Valtu’s case, it’s locked in. How can you exorcise grief if you don’t acknowledge it? ”
I swallow uneasily at the thought of Valtu locked in deep grief and feel a sharp pinch in my chest. “So he’s tormented.”
“He’s a lot of things,” Abe says quietly. “But most of all, he is still Valtu. One version of him, anyway. I guess you’d know all about different versions of yourself.”