The Eternal Vampire

Estella/Isolde

We go to my car and she gets into the passenger seat. "Take me to the University District," she orders, she doesn't even bother to ask. I start the car and look at her, just to annoy her. "What?" she says.

"I thought you lived in Pioneer Square."

"I do, but I need to keep an eye on my kids. It's cold at night and I have to make sure they have a place to stay. We can get the young ones into a shelter, but it has to be soon. The rest of us will bed down in an abandoned building we know about. I don't want to leave them on the street."

I look at her, she's not what I expected. There's a kindness, almost a tenderness in the way she feels about the street kids—most humans don't even care.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she demanded.

"Well, you were such a bitch to me, I didn't think you'd care about those kids, guess you fooled me."

She doesn't answer, just tells me when she wants me to let her out. I half expect her to slam the door but she doesn't. I watch her walk down the half-lit street until she disappears.

I speed home in the little Boxster, driving too fast but I want nothing more than to as far away from the "U" District as I can. I have had enough of these strange vampires for the night.

At home I put on Mozart to try to calm my nerves, and pour myself some cognac. "Breathe Steven," I tell myself, inhaling the scent of the amber liquor. I tried to lose myself in the music, instead I listened for the rumbling sound of the Jag's big engine.

Mozart was not working, but to my relief Claude and Fabi arrive home shortly after me, Fabi bounding up the stairs as he always did, Claude following more slowly.

"What is this, little brother?" Fabi asked, "What was it that was so important that you pulled us from our night's recreation?"

I held out the photo of Isolde. Claude took it, then Fabi snatched it from his hand. "Dio," he breathed as he looked at the picture of a young Isolde, her Audrey Hepburn looks staring into the camera.

I looked at the image again. The resemblance to Audrey Hepburn was there, the delicate bone structure, the large expressive eyes and the quirky mouth. Tristan must have changed her looks for her safety, but he could not change the spirit of them. How in the world could someone have beaten her nearly to death?

"He says his name is Mark King and he's looking for his wife. He wrote his phone number on the back of her picture.

Fabi whipped his cell phone out of his pocket. "I need to tell Tristan about this. I'm going to have to try a few places. They may still be on Santorini, or they may be in Rome, or Paris, or Milan. It's early morning in Europe now, they've probably left the hotel and gone to breakfast. I hate to disturb them, but I have to talk to Tristan to let him know what's happened. From now on, Steven, you do not go anywhere alone."

Claude poured himself a glass of his Chateau Margaux, and added to my cognac. We sat and listened to Fabi as he spoke in his rapid-fire Italian, then on another call, switched to French. How many languages did the little Roman speak, I wondered? He seemed to move easily from Italian to French to Greek, then back to English.

He had success, at last, when he tried the hotel in Milan. When he reached Tristan, he put the cell on speaker so that we could hear, but he reverted from English to the archaic Latin that he and Tristan sometimes spoke.

When he hung up, his handsome face looked troubled. "Tristan is going to make reservations for the earliest flight they can get from Milan to New York. They'll spend the night so Isolde can rest, then they'll fly home the next day. Steven, I am sorry this happened to you, it should not have been you who had to speak to this person, but nothing can be done. You'll have to miss school, I want all of us here in case he shows up here again."