Masquerade

Chapter Three

 
It's not like she hasn't had this dream before. Of being cold and wet, and of not being able to breathe. All the other dreams had been like this, except this one felt real. She was freezing, shivering, and as she opened her eyes to the murky darkness, she sensed another presence in the shadow. A hand, grasping her arm, lifting her up, up, up toward the light, and breaking the surface.
Splash!
Bliss took a ragged, coughing breath, and looked around wildly. It was no dream. This was real. She was submerged in the middle of a lake.
"Hold still, you're too weak. I'll swim us to shore." The low voice in her ear was soothing and calm. She tried to turn around to look at his face, but the voice interrupted. "Don't move, don't look back, just concentrate on the shore."
She nodded, rivulets of water dripping from her hair into her eyes. She was still coughing, and felt an enormous need to retch. Her arms and legs were weak, although there was no current. The lake was placid and still. It was hardly even a lake. When Bliss's eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw that she was in Central Park, in the middle of the man-made lake where, last summer, before she'd enrolled at Duchesne, her parents had taken her and her sister to the boathouse restaurant for dinner.
The boats were nowhere to be found this time. It was almost the end of November, and the lake was deserted. There was frost on the ground, and for the first time that evening, Bliss felt a cold seeping into her veins. She started to shake.
"It'll pass. Your blood will heat up, don't worry. Vampires don't get frostbite." That voice again.
Bliss Llewellyn was from Texas. That was the first thing Bliss said to new acquaintances. "I'm from Texas," as if identifying her home state went a long way to explaining everything about herself: the accent, the big curly hair, the five-carat diamond rocks on each ear. It was also a way for Bliss to hold on to her beloved hometown, and a life that seemed more and more remote from her current reality as just another pretty girl in New York.
In Texas, Bliss had stood out. She was five foot ten (with the hair height, she was easily six feet tall), fierce, and fearless-- the only cheerleader who could execute a tumbling leap off the top of a fifty-person pyramid and safely land feet first on the soft grass of the football field. Before she discovered she was a vampire and capable of such physical dexterity, Bliss had chalked up her coordination to luck and practice.
She had lived with her family in a sprawling, gated man- sion in an exclusive Houston suburb, and had driven to school in her grandfather's vintage Cadillac convertible--the one with real buffalo horns on the hood. But her father had grown up in Manhattan, and after a fruitful run as Houston's leading politician, had abruptly uprooted the family when he ran and won--New York's empty senate seat. Adjusting to the frenzy of the Big Apple after life in Houston was difficult for Bliss. She felt uneasy in all the glamorous nightclubs and exclusive parties Mimi Force, her self- appointed new best friend, dragged her to. Give Bliss a jug of Boone's, a few girlfriends, and a DVD of The Notebook, and she was happy. She didn't like hanging out at clubs, feeling like a wallflower while watching Mimi have all the fun.
But her life had suddenly picked up when she'd met Dylan Ward, the sad-faced, black-eyed boy with the sexy smolder who had walked, cigarette-first, into Bliss's life in a back alley on the Lower East Side just a few months ago. Dylan had been a misfit at Duchesne, too--a sullen, alienated rebel with a bunch of loser friends, including Oliver Hazard-Perry and Schuyler Van Alen, the two most unpopular kids in their year. Dylan had been more than a friend; he was an ally, not to mention a possible boyfriend. She blushed to remember his deep, penetrating kisses--oh, if only they had not been interrupted the night of the party. If only...
If only Dylan were still alive. But he had been taken by a Silver Blood, turned into one of them and then killed when he had come back to visit her--to warn her....Bliss blinked back tears, remembering how she had found his jacket crumpled on her bathroom floor and covered in blood.
Bliss had thought that that was the last time she would ever see Dylan again, and yet...this boy who had rescued her...his low voice in her ear--it had been so familiar. She didn't dare to hope; she didn't want to believe in something that couldn't be true, that couldn't possibly be real. She had clung to him as he pulled her steadily to the shore.
This wasn't the first time Bliss had woken up in an unex- pected place, only to find herself inches from danger. Just last week she had opened her eyes to find herself perched on the topmost ledge of the Cloisters Museum, high up in Fort Tryon Park. Her left foot had been dangling off the edge, and she had caught herself just in time to pull back and save herself from a dangerous fall. Bliss realized she probably would have survived the fall anyway, with only a few scratches, and wondered idly that if she did want to commit suicide, what options would be available to an immortal anyway?
And then today she had found herself in the middle of the lake.
The blackouts--the nightmares of someone stalking her, and of being here but not here--were getting worse. They had begun the year before: excruciating, head-pounding migraines accompanied by terrifying visions of crimson eyes with silver pupils, and sharp, glittering teeth...and of running down endless corridors while the beast chased her, its foul breath sickening in its intensity...catching up to her, bringing her down to the ground, where it would devour her soul.
Stop it, she told herself. Why think of that now? The nightmare vision was gone. The beast--whatever it was resided in her imagination only. Wasn't that what her father had said? That the nightmares were simply part of the transformation? Bliss was fifteen, the age at which the vampire memories resurfaced, the age in which the Blue Bloods began to realize their true identities as immortal beings.
Bliss tried to recall everything that had happened earlier that day, if there was any clue as to how she could come to find herself half drowned in the Central Park lake. She had gone to school as usual, and afterward had attended another tedious Committee meeting. The Committee was supposed to teach her and all the new inductees how to control and use their vampire senses, but for the last two months the organization had been more invested in planning a fancy party than anything else. Her stepmother, BobiAnne, had attended the meeting, embarrassing Bliss with her screechy voice and her tacky outfit, a head-to-toe- logo'd Vuitton tracksuit. Bliss hadn't realized they made casual wear out of the same brown canvas as the luggage. She thought her stepmother looked like one big gold-and-brown train case.
Afterward, because her father was home for a change, the family had dined at the new Le Cirque that had recently relocated to sumptuous quarters at One Beacon Court. The famed New York dining hall catered to the powerful and wealthy, and Senator Llewellyn had spent the evening shaking hands with the other well- heeled patrons--the mayor, the broadcaster, the actress, the other senator from New York. Bliss had ordered her foie gras rare, and had enjoyed slathering gooseberry jam on the thick, rich, creamy goose liver on her plate.
When dinner was over, they had attended an opera, in the family's private box. A new Met production of Orfeo ed Euridice. Bliss had always loved the tragic story of how Orpheus descended into Hell to rescue Eurydice, only to lose her at the very end. But the stentorian rumbling and mournful singing had rocked Bliss to sleep, leading her to dream of the watery abyss of Hades.
That was where her memory ended. Was her family still in the theater? Her father seated like a stern, grave idol, his hands placed under his chin, watching the show intently while her stepmother grimaced and yawned, and her half sister, Jordan, silently mouthed all the words. Jordan was eleven years old and an opera freak--freak being the definitive word, in Bliss's estimation.
They were near the dock now, and the steady hand hoisted her up the ladder next to the pier. Bliss slid on the slippery ledge, but found she could walk. Whoever he was, he was right: her vampire blood was warming her up, and in a few minutes she wouldn't even notice that it was forty degrees outside. If she had been human, she would have been dead, drowned for certain.
She looked down at her damp clothing. She was still wearing the same clothes she had worn to dinner and the opera. An intricately embroidered black satin Temperley dress ruined now. So much for dry-clean only. Only one of her five-inch patent leather Balenciaga platforms remained. The other one was probably at the bottom of the lake. She looked askance at the opera program she was still holding tightly in her hand, and released it, letting it flutter to the ground.
"Thank you..." she said, looking behind her to finally see the face of her savior.
But there was nothing behind her but the calm blue waters of the man-made lake. The boy was gone.
New York Herald
Archives
OCTOBER 1, 1870
THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF MAGGIE STANFORD
Oil man's daughter disappears on night of society ball. Was she drugged?
THE NEW YORK POLICE ARE puzzled over the mysterious dis-appearance of sixteen-year-old Maggie Stanford, who walked out of the home of Admiral and Mrs. Thomas Vanderbilt three weeks ago during the annual Patrician Ball held in their home at 800 Fifth Avenue and has not been seen since by her family or relatives. Maggie Stanford is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Tiberius Stanford of Newport. The detectives have worked industriously on the strange case but have been unable to find any clews.
The disappearance of Miss Stanford was reported at the Tenth Precinct police station as having occurred on Friday, August 22. On that evening, according to her mother, Dorothea Stanford, who is known in society, Maggie was presented at the Patrician Ball and led the quadrille. Maggie is of a quiet and retiring disposition. She weighs ninety-five pounds, is fragile, pretty, and delicate, and her home relations are of a pleasant character. She has dark red hair, green eyes, and winning ways. Her engagement was announced to Alfred, Lord Burlington, Earl of Devonshire, on the evening of the ball.
Mrs. Stanford told the police she thought her daughter had been decoyed or abducted by some person of evil influence. The Stanford family has offered a substantial reward for any information leading to her return. Tiberius Stanford founded Stanford Oil, the most profitable organization in the United States.