'lo all. Hope you're enjoying this sequel to Confessions Of A Vampire. There will be some twists and turns as the story goes along but they should all be pretty enjoyable. I hope you won't mind my linking an impressionable young American with an east European pornstar (gasp! Could I possibly be thinking of Johan Paulik? He nor Bel Ami/Bruno Gmuender Verlag will ever know).
Anyway, I would appreciate your comments (vichowel@aol.com). Sure, the story is written but that doesn't mean that it can't be made better. And, to the German-speakers out there, when you actually stop laughing at my destruction of your language, I'll gladly take pointers on correct German usage (I mean, it has been YEARS since I spoke it).
Enjoy.
CHAPTER THREE
I was in a frame of mind I had no name for as I sat before the piano shortly after midnight. Something unpleasant continued to grow just beyond my ability to sense it. I felt only Chaos' shadow lurking as it gained strength that it might threaten me directly. Just beyond my ability to reach it or see it. I felt nothing of its structure or of its entirety.
I had fed, but I was not sated. I was filled with warm bovine blood from our farm near Potsdam, southeast of Berlin - thanks to Tom MacPherson's continuing scruples about our kind's feeding habits.
The animals had lowed their fear but still lived when the three of us left the barn and returned the 60 kilometres back to the Grunewald in the northwest quarter of the capital city of Germany.
Hunger for real food - human blood - continued to gnaw at me even as I sat before the piano. Gently, like a mouse. An almost forgotten yearning. But there nonetheless - as constant as Chaos reminding me it had something in store for me.
I did not feel like visiting an airport again. That summer day a year ago when we left America was still far too fresh in my mind. We had shuttled from airport to airport - from America, to Canada, to Norway, to Petrograd. We sat huddled in fear of new people and new venues at the end of one runway after another and prayed for twilight and the possibility of escape if it were needed. We had been dependent on the mortals flying our airplane, men who proved themselves better friends than anyone - human or vampire - had the right to expect.
No, I did not wish to meet Lynda Renfroe's airplane at the airport in the northwest quadrant of Berlin. Emil and Tom could do that. They had fewer years and forgot past unpleasantries far more easily than I.
My fingers caressed the keyboard of the piano, giving vent to each new mood as it captured me. I played as the hours stretched toward the dawn when I could return to my bed and the safety behind my room's tight window louvers. I played as Nero had fiddled. His Rome was ablaze; the torch would be set to mine the moment Lynda Renfroe set foot in my house, bringing American insanity to my world.
From the march of Aida to Eva Peron's tearful farewell to Argentina, from the ride of the Walkyries to Chopin's Polonaise, to the soulful cry of Weber's "Memories". My moods swung through the entire arc of the pendulum.
America haunted me. It had been the autumn of 1998 when Emil and I followed Tom to Washington after he fled us. When he had fled me. The knowledge of him and his past that was me. But America had not remained a personal playing field on which I could win my lover the third time as I had his past two lives.
It had risen up and tried to consume me with its insanity. Joey McCarthy of the Christian Center with his insatiable libido and fascist program. Reverend Pat Koughlin who had been set to become the American Fuhrer.
The American insanity Licked at the three of us, tasted us - decided to consume us. Tom had nearly died twice before he joined Emil and myself on the far shore of the gulf that separated vampire from human. I had almost died once.
Because of the crazies in Lynda Renfroe's and Mr. Boyd's country. Because of the religious and cultural xenophobia that permeated it. Because even intelligent men pandered to the uneducated bigotry so rampant there.
Lynda Renfroe was bringing that insanity into my safe and sane Berlin. Into my very home on the Wansee, into the safest and sanest section of the capital city of a country that had legislated hate out of acceptability.
I had left America and its insanity. I did not want to return to it. I did not want it to come to me. I would not greet its arrival and personally bring it into my home as one would a stray dog.
I heard the car pull up before the house and shuddered. I heard voices and knew the reality there were more Americans to be under my roof than just Lynda Renfroe. My fingers began to coax the Slavic demons of Bald Mountain from the piano as they had last night when I still doubted the fidelity of my lovers. Chaos had pulled closer. He was at my shoulder, his bony fingers poised to grip my neck.
I cringed as demons rose from the floor and began to cavort in the music room around me, but I played on. Unable to stop myself or the monsters of the Russian soul still left in Germany and beginning to attach themselves to the Americans entering my world.
Neither Tom nor Emil offered me their thoughts that I might know the arrivals. Satchels were unloaded from the boot of the car and brought into the house. I heard footsteps on the stairs leading to the second floor and weary voices mumbling to each other.
Demons danced with abandon in the music room with me, inside my head and without. What had this Lynda Renfroe come to tell me? How did it even concern me? I was not American. That country's insanity had no bearing on me now I was more than 10,000 kilometres from its shores.
The American government could not ask me to help it solve its sanity problem. Yet, I suspected it was going to do exactly that.
Jimmy Boyd, Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and procurer of children for immoral - yet national - purposes, wanted something of me. He had sent Lynda Renfroe and others to convince me. To manipulate me.
A woman?
Wahnsinn!
Such insanity made no sense.
More and more demons stomped inside my skull.
St. Thomas Aquinas should have concerned himself with the number of hellish monsters that could fit into a man's head - not how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. My fingers flew over the keyboard. I knew hell through Russian fear.
|Karl?| Tom's thought touched mine.
|What?| I demanded angrily, facing that which I feared now its first tendril raised the hair on the nape of my neck. My American lover was announcing its imminent arrival in my presence.
|She wants to talk to you,| he answered gently, his mental voice assuaging my anger and the fear that lay behind it. |We're on the stairs and should be there in moments.|
|The others are collapsed onto their beds-| Emil offered just as gently.
|Others?| I demanded, grabbing that to hold my anger to suppress the fears threatening to possess me. I'd heard the unfamiliar voices as they entered the house. I had been told there were others by the American police agent.
|Her son and her lover,| Tom explained and I felt him chuckling at me. |They're pretty nice people-| I had an image of his twisting non-existent moustaches and leering broadly. |The son's damned nice - blond, tall, and really slim. He looks a lot like you . . . If you ever decide to kick me out, I know who I'm looking up-|
"Ass!" I hissed. Tom MacPherson had this past year somehow become a composite of his own personality and those of his two previous incarnations. He was even more loveable because of it - most of the time. But he could infuriate me far greater than any one of those personalities had ever been able to do alone.
Emil, at least, loved him even more now he'd synthesised his individual souls into one. I, on the other hand, found there were times I could cheerfully kill him.
The doors pulled open just as I reached Mursorgsky's final crescendo.
I stood and turned to the door as the last of the Russian composer's night-ful of demonic fury reverberated through the room. "Lynda Renfroe," I said, "thank you for gracing our home."
"Prince Karl," she offered from the doorway and nodded her head to me - as a man of equal position would. "It was kind of you to put us up on such short notice."
"Us? Who did you bring with you?" I asked although I already knew the answer to my question.
"My son, Jody, and Barbara Nightwing - they were pretty well zonked out from the flight-"
"So they have retired for the night?" She nodded. "And you? Don't you suffer from jet lag as well?"
"Not when I've got a duty that overrides everything else-"
I didn't want to hear of her duty - or the information that duty had brought her from her country to give me. It smacked of the American insanity I sought to avoid with all my heart.
Her duty would bring Chaos into the open and I would then have to meet it.
I smiled at Tom. "Ms. Renfroe is the reporter who brought down that preacher, Pat Koughlin-"
"With those files you were able to pull out of his computers," she interjected quickly and grinned. "Nobody's figured out how you infiltrated that creep's organisation and got all that information, but America's a better place because you did."
I was becoming embarrassed and felt myself begin to blotch. I cringed. Even with the one taper I permitted my music room, there was enough light for a mortal with sharp eyes to see the motley of spots spreading across my face. No mortal's skin could duplicate a vampire's in embarrassment.
Fortunately, Lynda Renfroe wasn't observant. She was tired and she had been entrusted with a duty by her government. She was single-minded in its performance - operating, I suspected, on pure adrenaline.
"Sir," she said, attempting to focus on me even as I moved further into the darkness from her, "Jimmy Boyd of the FBI asked me to bring you a message. It involves you specifically and it's a matter of life and death - otherwise, I believe, he would have left you alone."
"You're tired," I mumbled, grasping at a straw to put off the inevitable. "Surely, it can wait until tomorrow?"
She shook her head. "No, it can't." She glanced at Emil and, then, at Tom. "Perhaps we should discuss this alone?" she suggested, looking directly at me.
"Just a fucking minute," Tom growled.
"My lovers stay," I told her before he could become what Americans call a loose cannon. "They are my life." I smiled. "And they're part of everything I may do."
She chuckled and nodded. "I'd be the same way about Barbara. Okay, I'm reporting to the three of you, then."
"Reporting what?" Emil asked quietly and moved to stand beside me. Tom, just as naturally, came to my other side.
"It seems we didn't clean out that nest of snakes as thoroughly as Jimmy Boyd would have liked - or thought we had. There's a new union of those creeps forming-"
"So?" I demanded. "That's in your country and doesn't mean anything to us."
"But it does." Lynda Renfroe sighed. "Their first order of business was to decide to make an example out of you, Prince Karl von Muribor."
"Me?" My brows attempted to hide in my hairline. My eyes rounded. I stared in shock at this woman.
"You're supposed to be dead by this coming Friday. They've got at least three different assassins closing in on you for the kill. The reason Boyd sent me over here was to warn you about their plans."
"Jesus H. Christ!" Tom growled. "Who are these nuts?"
She glanced at him but immediately returned her attention to me. "There's the Confederated Militias, the Blackest Brotherhood, and the Army of God. They've each committed a hitman to getting rid of you."
"The militias?" Tom mumbled. "They were the ones who wrote bad checks and bought guns to shoot it out with the government. Christ! They're the nuts who held up in some farmhouse in Montana back in '96 - they held the FBI off for weeks."
"Yeah," she answered him. "They're the real Nazis now they've joined forces with the Aryan Nation - them and some crazy church out of Idaho. From what I hear, I mean. They emphasise German blood-"
Emil snickered. "German blood? That's as diluted as American blood."
"When you're crazy as hell, you don't think clearly," Tom told him and quickly turned his attention back to the woman. "The Black Muslims are tied in with those white racists?"
"The Blackest Brotherhood. It's an off-shoot of the Muslims - just more racist. It's pretty crazy, all right. Boyd didn't have any thoughts on the whys and hows of this union-"
"It's downright impossible."
"I guess you don't read the latest science fiction," she shot back and Tom stared at her without comprehension. "There's a whole sub-genre that's set in an America that's broken down into little Indian, black, and white countries based on the idea the US breaks up."
"You're saying these groups would destroy the United States, splitting it up into small countries based on race and fear?" Emil asked slowly as he sought to assimilate the idea.
"It can't happen," she assured him. "The army would have tanks on them faster than flies can find shit to lay eggs on. Or the FBI. Look at the Davidians in Waco or those nuts that crop up throughout the west now and then and tell the government they're seceding. Crazy people aren't very logical - that's why they're crazy." She smiled coldly. "Each one of these groups is racist to its core. They want to purify their own race in their own little bailiwick and kick everybody else out-"
"Does Mr. Boyd want me to return to the United States and, somehow, help him ferret these animals out?" I asked suspiciously.
"He didn't say that. I think the primary concern he's got right now is that you've got three hitmen somewhere out there who're going to try to blow your head off sometime this week."
"Why would he even care?" Tom asked.
"I think he's appreciative the Prince was able to break through Koughlin's web for him - he's returning the favour."
|He knows what I am - what we are,| I told him, including Emil who had been there with me. |He was at Treman's house that night. He saw me change shape as I fed on that child molester from Maryland.|
|And you let him live?| I nodded and he snorted. |That sure makes more sense than some cop going marshmallows inside because you helped him solve a case. I bet he was shitting his pants before you let him go.| The widest possible grin swam across my mind as his thoughts touched mine.
"We're safe here," I told Lynda Renfroe.
She nodded. "Jimmy said you had a lot of resources going for you. That's why he let me bring Barbara and Jody along." She gave me a quick smile. "But I didn't see any of that as we drove up to your house."
I smiled back. "You and yours are safe in my house."
"How?" she demanded. "I sure didn't see any fences or gates when we drove up."
"This is Germany," I observed blithely before I could catch myself. "We don't have gangs of thieves, rapists, and murderers roaming our streets as you do in Washington. Ours is an orderly society - we learnt what that nonsense does to a country, to its society, sixty years ago. And we teach our young what we learnt so it won't happen again."
She studied me for a moment and I felt uncomfortably like a microbe under a microscope. "This is the first time since I met you I've heard you sound like a snooty asshole," she finally said.
An embarrassed silence grew up in the music room about us. At least, it was for me. I had badly over-stepped the boundaries of being a good host, regardless of what I might personally think. I only felt anger in Lynda Renfroe - and a combativeness waiting for me to be offended at her defence of her country.
"These groups sending the hitmen-?" Emil began, stepping into the silence. "They seem so distant from each other - what brought them together?"
Lynda relaxed as did I. She said: "Somebody - I suppose one of Koughlin's goosesteppers - has wormed their way into my brother's office-"
"Your brother?" Tom demanded.
She frowned. "He's the Speaker-"
"Speaker of what?" Emil asked.
"The Speaker of the House of Representatives - the Congress."
"That fat pig's your brother?" Tom stared at her in surprise.
She nodded and blushed. "My half-brother. Mom married again after he was born and Dad adopted him."
"You're Luke Renfroe's Lesbian sister?" Tom continued. He was slowly beginning to believe he was meeting a star of the American gay establishment.
She nodded.
"These groups, they're being directed from your brother's office in the American Congress?" Emil asked, doggedly pursuing the basis behind the threat to me and, through me, to him and Tom.
"The FBI thinks so."
"Is your-?" He paused, searching him memory for the English name for unblooded relatives. "Your step-brother involved then?"
"I don't think so." She chuckled embarrassedly. "I don't think the FBI thinks so, either. But Luke's something of a lightening rod - he draws a lot of crazies to him. And he was borderline with Koughlin."
"You do not agree with your brother and his politics?"
She chortled. "That frigging bastard would throw us back sixty years - more. He'd undo even what Roosevelt did to bring America together. No, I don't agree with him or his politics. I'd even love to find a connection between him and this right-wing plot against the Prince." She grinned broadly and said: "I'd dearly love to expose something like that."
She turned to face me, the anger of moments before now gone. "Prince Karl, you said you were safe here. I want to know how. Can you survive bullets - or even a bomb? Can these two?"
I thought quickly. I was not about to tell this American reporter we were vampires. I smiled as my thoughts found an answer in the technology that had flooded over the world even in her short life. "We have electronic sensors - and other mechanisms - that will alert us to intruders before they could reach the house. And we have Valentin-"
"Who's this Valentin?" she pressed.
I smiled more broadly as I remembered a line Joey McCarthy had used once to describe a man. "Someone you would not want to meet alone in a dark alley, Ms. Renfroe. He is our employee."
"One person?"
"Please." I held up my hand. "We are completely safe here in this house."
She appeared dubious but accepted the assurance in my voice. Forcing her thoughts under control, she looked about herself and actually saw my music room for the first time. Her eyes widened in surprise. "It sure is dark in here," she mumbled. "How can you see to play the piano?"
I smiled. "I play mostly from memory. And I like the gentle touch of candlelight - it softens everything it touches."
"Yeah-" She was still dubious. She was not mollified. I felt another rush of adrenaline forming.
Sleep, I told her mind. You are tired. You can only think of sleep.
Lynda Renfroe yawned. "Excuse me," she mumbled in embarrassment.
"It's the jet lag," I told her. "It's caught up to you-"
I turned to Emil and told him: "Escort her back to her room so she may rest."
"We shall have all evening tomorrow to talk," I told her.
I watched Emil throw the lock on our bedroom door on the third floor.
"Perhaps, we should consider those deadbolt things that are on every door of the houses in America?" he offered.
I had already extended my senses to the grounds and was trolling them back toward the house. I was, however, not touching thoughts as I searched for danger for the first time since taking this property in the Grunewald section of Berlin. I was reading instinct as it became ensnared in or escaped from the seine that was the net of my senses.
It was my right to do so. I was not intruding. I was not violating whatever protocols dictated conduct as an external morality. It was my duty as land owner and host to protect what was mine by right as well as what was given to me by responsibility.
There was nothing outside the house except animals scurrying about looking for dinner or searching for a hiding place that would protect them from becoming something else's dinner.
In the house, Valentin snored in his room off from the kitchen. Lynda Renfroe already embraced Morpheus as had her companion. A youth snored softly in the room across from the women. I smiled at Emil.
"You think a lock would keep the American gangsters from us?" I asked.
My smile turned immediately to a frown as I remembered the Czech. "Where is Johan?"
Tom chuckled from behind me. "He's on a date, Karl."
I glanced back at him and began to unbutton my shirt. "They call a sexual liaison a date in today's world?"
"What would you call it?" Emil asked quietly and pushed his trousers down over his legs.
"An assignation?" I grinned as I remembered the American idiom. "Or simply getting laid?"
"Karl, the boy enjoys sex - and it would seem he's pretty indiscriminate." Tom chuckled and came up behind me, his hands slipping between my arms and around my chest to hug me. "But he dreams of love as all mortals do."
"You don't love?" Emil shot at him.
The American looked around my shoulder to meet the Swiss' eyes. "I sure as shit do - you two."
"You swallowed my blood at the same time you did Karl's," Emil offered far too sweetly, continuing to set him up. "I doubt you can ever claim to be a mortal again, Tom MacPherson."
"Asshole," the American hissed and picked up a pillow. But Emil was already on him before he could turn.
We lay together, each of them nestled against a side of me. Beyond the louvers, the November sky was paling.
"What're we going to do about these gunmen coming for you?" Tom asked sleepily.
"I'll speak with Valentin this evening. He'll keep an eye out for anything strange. And each of us shall need to keep our senses more open than usual."
"Thank heavens it's so late in the autumn," Emil mumbled and snuggled closer.
"Do you think they can do anything to hurt us?"
"Not us," I answered. "But our guests could easily be killed."
CHAPTER FOUR
Jody Renfroe was on automatic pilot as he pushed the bed covers down to his knees and sat up. Scratching his stomach absently and liking the feel of the warm sun from the window, he opened his eyes slowly. Stretching, he yawned as his bare feet met the floor.
He jerked them back immediately the cold of the wood registered on him, pulling him completely awake to late German autumn.
"Shit!" he hissed softly and shivered as the chill of the room finished breaking through the warmth that had enshrouded his sleep and took over his body. Goose bumps spread up his arms to sneak under his T-shirt. Shivering, he reached quickly for his jeans at the foot of the bed where he'd left them after pulling them off the night before. Lying back on the bed and raising his legs into the air, he pulled the denim over his bare legs quickly.
"Fucking piss hard!" he hissed as he stood and roughly shoved his erection to one side that he could button the fly of the jeans. "The john's probably going to be so cold the piss freezes before it hits the bowl." He chuckled at the thought of a stream of piss ice stretching from the water in the toilet to his dick.
He started down the wide second floor hall toward the stairs from the WC. He was awake and was up, he had relieved himself and was beginning to adjust to the chill that seemed to be a permanent fixture to the house. He was finally comfortable enough to be curious.
He moved slowly, his fingertips riding the dark panelling of the walls at his waist and soaring when they moved along the upper jambs of doors to avoid the knobs. He studied the bearded faces frowning down at him from the portraits set above eye-level along the wall.
"Old place," he mumbled to himself, "and dark as shit." At the staircase, he looked up the flight that disappeared into sullen shadow on their way to the third floor and permitted himself to wonder what he'd find up there. Probably the master bedroom, he told himself. "Yeah. And I bet this old Count would ever more be pissed if I went nosing around and woke him up."
He smiled as he realised the sound of his voice in the silence of the house was comforting. "Next, I'm going to imagine I've got Count Dracula chewing on my neck." He looked around the second floor landing, his eyes narrowing, but he felt no evil in the house or its pervasive silence.
He snorted and mumbled sheepishly to himself as he started down the stairs: "So much for meeting Bella Lagosi."
He took the carpeted stairs slowly and smiled as he descended into sunlight streaming into the foyer from wide frosted windows on either side of the front door. He continued across the waxed floor of the entrance and put his nose against the pane of one window, trying to see out.
"So, this is Germany," he mumbled and, turning around in the centre of the foyer, looked up into more faces of one old, frowning man after another. "Cool."
The house felt big. Too damned big for those two guys from last night and the old Count - or whatever he was - they lived with. It hadn't taken much imagination to figure those two out - even half-dead like he was after flying half-way around the world. Of course, he'd had Lynda's word on them and the guy they got it on with.
Jody Renfroe had been prepared for some flaming old faggot - like those strange Italian clothes designers he saw twice a year on the television talk shows. Those old farts wore make-up and mascara to try to look young. He snorted as a new thought struck him: maybe they didn't know about face-lifts in Italy.
Those two - Tom and Emil - were anything but old and flaming, though. They were good-looking men with manners that were a far sight better than most guys he knew back home. He tried to imagine them chugging half a can of beer and trying to out-belch their friends but couldn't. He could, however, imagine them playing football with the guys at school - just regular joes who didn't get down and dumb with their friends.
He shook his head as he realised where he was. He probably needed to change that to soccer or something - though both of them spoke English real well. They might not be Americans but they were real regular guys - except their manners were better.
And they were queer. Lynda had sure made that clear before they were out of US airspace. Shit! They weren't much older than him. And he sure wouldn't have ever suspected them for faggots if he were just meeting them on the street.
Only, they lived in this house with Lynda's buddy, the old Count. If Lynda Renfroe knew a guy well enough to fly half-way around the world to visit and stay with, he was flaming, out-of-the-closet queer. And her age or older. Hell! Barbara would be playing Ma Bates in PSYCHO if she thought some guy and Lynda . . .
Half-way around the world and all three of them coming on this trip - that was enough to blow his ever-loving mind. Shit! Three days ago, Jody didn't even know Lynda knew anybody in Germany. Now, he was here. Him, Lynda, and Barbara. Staying in the old Count's Berlin home.
Well, the old man better not be interested in a third young dick in his bed. Jody Renfroe wasn't about to even come close to that kind of shit. He'd spent half his life in scraps because of Lynda and Barbara being lessies - he sure as hell wasn't about to get into some shit that would put him in the same boat with them at this late date.
He made a face as he imagined the kind of reception something like that would earn him with his buddies back home. No sir! He wasn't about to let anybody hang on his joint. Something like that could turn him into a male version of Lynda. Or worse if his buddies ever found out.
He was beginning his third revolution of the foyer when he realised he was being watched. His heart threatened to burst as adrenaline poured into it. He stopped in mid-turn and immediately found the muscle man standing beside the stairs and watching him.
He forced his heart to slow down and managed to paste a smile over his face. "Hi," he offered, "I'm Jody Renfroe, Lynda Renfroe's son. Are you the Count?"
The man simply stared at him for several moments and didn't move. Jody felt his shock slipping from him. The man pointed to himself and said: "Ich heiße Valentin."
Jody nodded and pointed to himself. "Jody."
"Haben Sie Hunger?" the man asked, his voice guttural.
He didn't understand a word the man had said but the last word sounded a little like "hunger". His stomach growled. "Yeah, I'm getting hungry," he answered and sighed, realising he was confronted with one of those language problems he'd heard about.
He figured it could become a real bitch if he wasn't careful. He mimed picking something up and putting it in his mouth with one hand while he rubbed his stomach with the other, hoping he was explaining things clearly to the man.
Valentin nodded and motioned Jody to follow him.
The kitchen was huge. Afternoon sun-light streamed in through a wall of windows over the sink counter and he headed toward them. He smiled as he looked out on a yard that slopped down toward a lake that looked to give the Georgetown Reservoir a run for its money it seemed to stretch forever away from the shore.
He turned back to the room as Valentin opened the refrigerator on the wall at the other end and motioned him closer.
"Schinken?" the man asked and pointed to a ham. "Und Brot?" He pointed at what looked like a loaf of pumpernickel.
"Yeah," Jody breathed and nodded. These Germans knew what a sandwich was. At least, he wasn't going to go hungry while he stomped around in Berlin behind his mother and Barbara and put up with doing whatever lesbians did here.
Valentin carried the bread and meat to the counter. He pulled a knife from one drawer and a fork from another. "Bleiben Sie hier," he mumbled, holding up his opened palm and Jody thought he looked like some cop stopping him. "Essen."
Jody nodded as the man started for the door and turned back to the ham and bread. His stomach growled again.
He went through every cabinet in the kitchen as well as the refrigerator twice looking for mustard and mayonnaise. Nothing. Absolutely nada.
He stared at the ham and bread still on their respective plates suspiciously as he picked up the knife. "Jesus!" he muttered, "these people don't even know how to make a real sandwich." He sawed off two slices of the bread and frowned at how uneven each of them was. He had to admit Barbara or even his mother would be making this sandwich better than he was - at least, the bread would've been sliced evenly instead of going every which way.
He searched the fridge again for something to drink. Wrinkling his nose in disgust, he shut the door empty-handed and returned to his dry ham sandwich. "Fuck!" he hissed, "the big boys at Coke and Pepsi need to get their asses in high gear and crash Germany."
Biting into his sandwich, Jody realised someone was watching him. Expecting Valentin, he turned slowly toward the door.
He faced a tall boy about his age. His eyes registered the other boy's slimness, tousled light brown hair - and the fact he was studying him. Jody took a breath and laid his sandwich on the counter. "Hi. Do you speak English, I hope?" He smiled and tried to look pitiful.
"A little-" The boy brought his thumb and finger almost together and smiled back at him. He pointed to himself. "Hans."
Jody nodded. This he could understand. Things were starting to look up. This Hans was young enough he could think. He poked a thumb at his chest and said: "Jody."
Hans chuckled. "Welcome, Jody, to Berlin."
The boy's "w" sounded like a "v", but Jody could understand him if he put his mind to it. It sure beat miming everything - or depending on Lynda and Barbara to do everything for him. He decided it wouldn't be hard at all to get to like this Hans guy. He just wished he could speak English better.
He grinned. "Thanks. I haven't seen any of it yet." He watched the other boy frown as he worked his way through his words.
"You would like to see all of Berlin?" Johan Kys asked carefully.
Jody laughed. "Maybe not all of it - just those places for guys our age-"
"Gais?" Hans was gazing at him when Jody glanced up.
Jody didn't like the way that word sounded - too much like a combination of "guy" and "gay". He shook his head. "Guys - you know, boys. Young men like you and me - like Tom and Emil."
Hans smiled and nodded.
"Do you work here?"
"No. I am not servant. I work for the Prince, however - Prince Karl and his companions, Emil and Tom."
"Then you don't know where the mustard and mayonnaise are?"
The confusion in Hans' face said it all. Jody lifted a slice of bread from his sandwich and pointed at the plain bread before making spreading motions over it.
"Butter?"
That one he understood. Butter and ham? It didn't sound like anything he'd ever eaten before. He'd better stick with just the ham and bread. He shook his head and shoved more of the sandwich into his mouth.
"You're from America?"
Jody nodded and tried to swallow the food in his mouth.
Hans studied him for a moment and nodded. "You want perhaps beer with this?"
Beer? Hey, this kid was definitely proving to be all right. "Yeah."
Lynda moved her buttocks against Barbara in her sleep and it was enough to wake the smaller woman. She smiled before she opened her eyes and Lynda pressed back against her. "Love you too, Doodles," she mumbled and slid across the sheets of the four poster.
She sat up when she reached the edge of the bed and stretched, enjoying the feel of the pull of muscles across her back. "So this is Germany," she told herself as her gaze started at the door and went around the room, taking it in. She accepted she'd seen the room last night but hadn't been paying attention. But then she'd been dead on her feet too.
"Nice," she mumbled. "Too masculine, but nice." She grinned at that. Here she was the guest of the man she and Lynda had come to save and she was complaining about his decor.
She stared at the sunlight that pooled at the foot of the French doors for a moment and grinned. "Might as well see what a German landscape looks like while I'm here," she mumbled and stood up to move to her valise. Pulling on a thick bathrobe that kept the chill of the room from her, she started for the wide doors.
She stepped through the doors and breathed deeply, smiling to herself at the clean scent of fir that was palatable in the air. She gripped the railing of the balcony and breathed deeply again, luxuriating in the sense of wood and earth and sky clean and invigorating about her. Shutting her eyes she imagined herself backpacking along the rolling hills that fronted the Potomac back home.
She heard Jody's voice beneath her and opened her eyes, pulling herself from the peace these woods and their scent had so swiftly given her.
He was walking along a gravel path through the already brown grass with another boy. She chuckled and corrected herself immediately. He was walking along that path with another man.
She couldn't hear their conversation but the two of them were gesturing and talking and laughing like boys who were already fast friends. She shook her head slowly as a bemused smile spread across her face. "Young people!" she muttered. "Everybody's a long-lost friend the moment you meet them when you're young."
The smile turned slowly into a frown. From what little Lynda had told her about Prince Karl, he was a cold fish. There weren't going to be immediate friendships there. Maybe the two boys who'd met them at the airport would prove to be warmer. They were nearly as open as Jody was.
But there was something weird about them too now she thought about it. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on. It wasn't that they were almost too good-looking. Gay boys the world over were notorious about taking care of themselves.
Their obviously being rich wasn't it, either. They were open and friendly, all right - but there was a stand-offishness there too. One that let you get only just so close and no closer.
Maybe it was just that Germans were strange about getting too close. That might explain the boys from last night. Only, she was pretty sure one of them was American. His English wasn't accented at all - and he sure sounded American.
She shivered as a breeze caressed her feet and slipped its icy fingers up her legs. Yeah. She could stand out here and catch a frigging cold and then she wouldn't have to worry about what made people friendly - because she'd be lying in bed running a damned fever.
She shivered again as she stepped back from the railing. "Get your ass inside, Barbara," she told herself.
The room felt warm as she shut the doors. "It must have been colder out there than I thought," she mumbled and crossed the room to the hall door. "A hot shower and some warm clothes are what I need."
She moved along the foyer, her fingers drifting across the top of an escritoire she knew was more than just expensive to a table holding vases she recognised as Chinese. As she moved past the stairway, she opened doors into rooms that made her think of museum exhibits. She heard Jody's voice ahead of her and moved in its direction.
He smiled at her as she entered the kitchen. "Hi, Barbara, come on in."
"Do these guys have coffee?" she asked, heading toward the small table in the centre of the kitchen and dropping into a chair.
Johan spoke rapidly to the burly man before facing her. "Valentin fixes it now. You would like-" He paused, and, frowning, glanced at Jody.
"They've got ham and bread, Barbara," Jody finished the other boy's thought. "No mayonnaise or mustard, though. Want what passes for a sandwich around here?"
She shrugged and watched the muscle man with the pasted-down hair grind coffee beans, falling into the stupor that descends on one when there is nothing to do. It took her several moments to realise the man was whipping cream while coffee dripped into the pot. "What's he doing?" she asked.
Jody's new friend glanced at Valentin and turned back to her. "He beats the milk for your coffee," he told her. She wanted to laugh at his choice of words but managed to hold it back.
"Hans here has offered to take me downtown this evening," Jody told her.
"The Ku-damm," the boy offered in explanation. "It is everything." His face lighted up. "So very much - unglaublich!" he mumbled.
Barbara smiled. This was what visiting other countries was all about - exploration. And Jody Renfroe was Lynda Renfroe's son. That meant exploring city lights for the boy. "You have money?" she asked.
His face reddened. "I've got maybe twenty dollars."
Hans glanced from one to the other of them as Valentin brought Barbara a cup of coffee. "Jody is my guest. He will not pay."
Valentin rattled something off and Hans nodded. "He would know what the Americans wish to eat this evening," the boy told Barbara. "Jody will eat with me at a kiosk along the Ku-damm but there is still you and his mother-?"
Barbara grinned as Lynda shuffled into the kitchen. Her lover's hair was a disaster that had already happened and her face without make-up left her looking her 38 years and then some. She loved her anyway.
"Where's the fucking coffee?" Lynda demanded as she neared the table. "I smelled it all the way upstairs."
"Over there," she nodded toward the coffee-maker and the red-head started in that direction. "Valentin'll get it for you if you wait a sec, Doodles."
"Who the-?" Lynda began but saw the muscle man stand and move back from the refrigerator. "Christ!" she yelped and stepped back.
"Valentin is the servant here," Barbara offered sweetly. "And I think he takes offence to having women doing anything in his kitchen other than sitting down and enjoying his coffee."
"Kaffe, gnadige Frau?" the burly man asked as if on cue.
"He wants to know if you want coffee, Doodles."
Lynda nodded and sat quietly at the table.
"Pretty expensive lay-out your boy has," Barbara opined as Lynda watched Valentin whisking cream. "But what sort of sticks in my craw is the fact there's only the one man there to keep it up." It did a lot more than stick in her craw. But she didn't want Lynda going ballistic - she wanted her thinking.
"Yeah."
Barbara studied her lover before she offered any more thoughts. She knew the red-head sitting beside her well and Lynda looked anything but alert. She forced her curiosity back. "Jody's made himself a friend of one of the locals and they went to some section of the city that caters to kids their age."
"That's nice."
Valentin mixed coffee and whipped cream together and poured a cup for Lynda.
"He's cooking up schnitzel for tonight."
Lynda smiled her thanks at the man as he handed her the cup of coffee.
I woke to a sense of well-being. Emil's cheek pressed lightly against my chest and his tousled, nearly blond hair tickled my nose. Tom's head had made its way under my other arm and was pressed against my ribs. Both of them had wrapped an arm around me in their sleep, holding me to him.
There was peace here with these two who knew me but still accepted me as I was. It was a peace, however, that was broken - the jagged edges of that break already threatening the well-being I and these two men had spent the past year building.
Why couldn't the Americans keep their insanity on their side of the ocean? Why had its lunatics brought their hate to the Grunewald and my home? Why was I condemned to face American insanity forever?
It was as if one of the gods I could not believe in had decided to have his sport with me.
I visualised myself before the bureau beside the bed and was there, leaving the two vampires who had lain beside me undisturbed.
Showered and dressed - presentable - I descended the stairs toward the first floor and the kitchen where I sensed the mortals in my house were congregated.
"Lynda Renfroe," I said as I passed through the doorway and started toward the table. "And who is this lovely lady with you?"
The short raven-haired woman jerked at the sound of my voice, turning quickly to face me. I was surprised by the near snarl that seemed to want to warp her heart-shaped face.
Lynda smiled, her hand reaching across the table and taking the woman's. Reassuring her. "Prince Karl, this is Barbara Nightwing." She smiled without embarrassment. "She's my companion - my . . ." She smiled at the woman. "My lover."
I nodded and reached out for Barbara's hand. Suspiciously, she allowed me to take it and lift it to my lips. "I am enchanted, Ms. Nightwing," I offered and permitted her to retrieve her hand from mine.
I would have liked to have some concept of the confusion I saw in her face. Of why she distrusted me so. But she was a guest in my home. It was inconceivable I would touch her thoughts simply to relieve my curiosity. I was restricted to the nuances of spoken language.
"Have you both recovered from your flight?" I asked, reverting to being a proper host.
Lynda chuckled. "I still feel every ache. It was a real long flight. The coffee helps, though."
Valentin re-entered the kitchen and saw me. He clicked his heels and, his palms cupping, bowed slightly from the waist. "Guten Abend, Herr Furst."
Before I could turn back to him, I saw Barbara's eyes narrow at the man's greeting of me. I smiled a welcome at Valentin even as I wondered anew what this short, attractive guest in my home was thinking of me.
"You've got to tell your man how good his coffee is," Lynda told me.
I glanced back at her and said: "It would mean more coming from you than from me."
"I don't speak German."
"It's very easy," I assured her. "Say 'das Kaffe ist wunderbar'. Valentin shall appreciate your compliment." I listened as she stumbled through the four words I'd given her and observed the blank, watchful expression on Barbara's face as she studied me. Valentin smiled widely, clicked his heels, and bowed to Lynda Renfroe.
"Where is your son?" I asked.
"He went out with one of your retainers," Barbara answered immediately.
"My retainers?" I frowned. "There is only Valentin-"
"A really cute young guy with sandy hair - tall and lanky."
Valentin quickly told me in German that Johan had taken the American youth to explore the Oranienburger Quarter off the Ku-damm.
I smiled back at the two women. "You are about to lose the young man to the sights, sounds, pleasures, and food of Germany's capital city."
"That boy's all American," Barbara hissed defensively.
I had an enemy in my home. I knew it. But I did not understand why she had chosen to hate me.
I wished I could ignore her hate but she was making it too obvious to ignore. I still forced myself to ignore it for the time being. And resolved to secure an explanation from Lynda Renfroe the moment I could have her alone.
I smiled again at the two of them. "I have need to speak to Valentin. Will you excuse us for a few moments?"
Lynda pushed her chair from the table and began to stand. I raised my hand and smiled. "I didn't mean for you to leave. Please remain and finish your coffees. We'll simply take a short stroll on the grounds."
"Valentin, there are unpleasant developments following after the women inside," I told him as we stepped onto the bricked walk and began to stroll toward the lake.
"My Prince?" he asked calmly, staying in step with me as his eyes studied me.
"There are murderers - assassins - from America."
"Cowboys as in the old films I've seen of that country?"
I smiled. "I doubt any of them will wear cowboy boots - and they'll be carrying very good rifles."
"And these people would kill you, my Prince?"
My smile broadened. "They would if they could," I answered, forgetting for the moment to control my pride. "But there are you, Johan, the American boy, and these two women. Any of you can be hurt or, even, killed. I shall not have that happen on my estate - or in Berlin."
"I shall keep my eyes open, My Prince. Do they know how to find you here?"
"I must presume they do."
"It would then be best that all of you go to the farm in Flaming." He stopped and waited for me to do likewise and turn to face him. "I can protect you better there, my Prince - you and your guests."
I met his gaze. "How would you do that, Valentin?" I asked, giving vent to my curiosity.
"Flaming is in what once was the People's Republic, Sir - in my country when the Soviet Army still occupied a portion of the Fatherland. Those farmers understand how to flush out intruders-" He smiled. "And how to hide them so they shall not be found -ever."
"These are fascists from America, Valentin. They are unthinking-"
The muscle man chuckled. "Ah! Like the Vopos. Yes, my Prince, the farmers shall enjoy finding these little mice when they come scurrying into their fields." A thought struck him and his face turned sombre. "These Amis - they do not speak German?"
I snorted. "American education is twenty years behind Europe's, Valentin. These people are offal. They are the stench of the privy. They barely speak English."
"Any Americans could be so stupid, Sir?" he asked, a touch of suspicion in his voice. As with most men who grew to maturity in the backward, repressive communist countries of central Europe, Valentin both feared and lusted for things American -having an impossible view of that country.
"Some are. Others become that way every day - as the men who became Vopos did. They are selectively blind and that blindness slowly takes away all of their vision."
"Of course, my Prince," the muscle man mumbled. "I understand that kind of stupidity."