Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
“I was just leaving,” I tell her, turning around and she’s just inches away, smiling through red shiny lip gloss.
“Where are you going at two in the afternoon?” she asks, her blue eyes sharp. “To teach a class? When are you going to give up this charade, Professor Aminoff?”
“And what might this charade be, hmmm?” I ask, folding my arms across my chest. “I am a professor. Qualified by numerous universities. I get paid an acceptable wage. My students graduate and go on to do either wonderous or mundane things, but they do earn a degree that I, in part, taught them. There is no charade with me.”
She rolls her eyes and twists a long piece of amber hair between her fingers. “The charade that you’re a human.”
“No different than your charade,” I tell her.
The corner of her lip curls into a snarl, making her look most ugly. “It’s very different, Valtu. I don’t pretend to be anything I’m not. You’re getting paid to be a teacher when you don’t need the money. It’s gross.”
Saara knows that all the money I make from my job, even though it’s not much by old-money standards, is donated to various charities.
“Then perhaps I’m doing it for kicks,” I tell her. “Impressionable young men and women walking through my doors every day. Blood can’t get any fresher than that.”
She lets out an acidic laugh. “If I didn’t know you, I’d believe you. And to think they call you Dracula.”
I raise my hands in protest. “I didn’t ask for the title. I can’t help if Mr. Stoker was besotted with me.”
“You think the whole world is besotted with you, Valtu.”
I shrug. “And it’s not my fault if it’s true.” I flash her a mirthless smile. “Now, if you’re done badgering me, I need to be off.”
I move past her and she doesn’t move out of the way, causing my shoulder to brush against hers. For a moment I see her for who she really is. Not some leggy Slavic model, but something made of bones, crepey skin, and red eyes.
A monster.
All vampires are monsters, but some are…extra special. Some have been created by Skarde himself. Not through breeding with humans, which has resulted in ninety-nine percent of the current vampire population, but by the “old-fashioned” way—bringing them close to death, then bringing them back to life with vampire blood. The only problem with creating vampires that way is that they turn into raging monsters, debased to primal animals with insatiable bloodlust. It’s against vampiric code to create any this way, but that didn’t stop Skarde. He was above the law until the moment of his death.
Some, over the centuries, learned to control their hunger and rage, suppressing their monstrous forms until they were hidden under the human skin. But sometimes the creature is hard to hide.
I look back over my shoulder at Saara to see her baring her fangs at me before her teeth slide back to normal. “Have a good day, Professor,” she says to me, a sly gleam in her eyes.
She knows what I saw, what I felt back there.
And she likes that I saw it.
The truth.
That she’s a daughter of Skarde.
This is going to make things complicated for me, isn’t it? Considering most of the vampire world believes I played some role in his death.
I quickly leave the washroom, hurry through the club, and then out through the main door at the top of the spiral staircase until I’m stepping into a small, narrow hallway. There are no lights in here, on purpose, but I can see in the dark. Once the door to the Red Room shuts, I walk to the door in front of me and push it open.
I’m met with fluorescent lighting. One of the most impressive libraries in Italy, and the books are still treated with the horrid aesthetic of fluorescent light. Luckily the lights are dim where I am, but even so it’s enough to make me wince.
My eyes adjust and I make my way from the back of the library through the aisles, passing the section that is set aside as a museum, with rare books, music sheets, and musical artifacts under display, then past the stacks that have eager beaver students already flipping through books to study.
No matter what Saara says, or how it looks to the rest of the vampires, I really do love working here. I’ve always flitted from place to place throughout my life, and while I’m not setting down roots here in Venice, it does give me a sense of purpose to be a teacher, a way to pass on all that I have learned over the centuries. It makes me feel relatively normal, even though I’m not.
And most importantly, because the Red Room is accessed through the library, I’m in charge of it. It doesn’t matter what city I find myself settled in, I usually create a feeding club for vampires if there wasn’t one before. I like to be the one who unites the vampires together. The reason Saara thinks everyone is besotted with me is because they are—I provide them with fresh human blood to drink, and fresh human bodies to fuck. Every vampire knows who Valtu is, even without the Dracula notoriety, because they need me. That’s why I’m popular.