Stifling a yawn that revealed not a trace of fangs, the vampire Niles Gule trailed behind his partner, Mariella Cruz, up the steps towards the tiny bungalow. His mouth was devoid of fangs because in honor of his feisty Latina love interest, he had just that morning visited the only dentist in Baltimore willing to grind off the fangs of a vampire. His mouth still throbbed, but again, in Cruz’s honor, he’d forgone his after dentistry fifth of vodka. He suspected Cruz wouldn’t appreciate him arriving at her family home staggeringly drunk.
The Cruz bungalow stood out from every other on the street. Cruz’s baby brother, Manolo, had rigged up the small house with LED lights and a computer just as he did every year. The house blazed in multicolors that danced to Christmas tunes blaring over a set of loudspeakers hidden in the bushes. When the star at the top of the house flashed in brilliant white like a beacon, Niles lurched to stop and covered his eyes, blinded.
Cruz tugged on his arm. “Come on, Niles. We’re already late.”
Unable to see, Niles gripped her hand and stumbled on, hoping the splotches of chartreus and purple behind his eyelids would settle before he reached the door.
A wave of sound crashed over them as Cruz and Niles stepped inside. The stereo system blasted a selection Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass Christmas tunes in competition with a football game on the television and the bleed of synth music from outside. Over that cacophony rang numerous voices chattering in excited Spanish. At the sight of Niles and Cruz, Momma Cruz waddled at them, her red, green, and gold muumuu floating, Christmas lightbulb earrings and necklace blinking, as she enveloped them in her huge arms.
“Carina!” she crooned, giving her only daughter a kiss on the cheek. “And Senor Niles!” She tried to grab the vampire, but Niles danced out of reach.
“Good to see you again, Senora Cruz,” he murmured.
“Always so shy, your handsome gringo, eh?” Momma Cruz clucked at her daughter. “But we are all family here! Come in! Come in! Food is almost ready!”
Niles groaned. While the entire Cruz contingent including the five brothers, numerous aunts and uncles and a handful of cousins knew Niles was a vampire, they refused to treat him like one. Instead, they wallowed under the misconception he ate everything humans did. He also didn’t understand a word of Spanish. To add insult to injury, he stood almost a foot taller than everyone else in the room and was the only blond in a sea of dark heads.
Nope, I don’t stand out at all, Niles thought with a sigh.
After suffering through conversations with Tio Ignacio and Tia Juanita, being regaled by cousin Thiago about his new internet business, and brother German’s excruciatingly tedious tales of fishing trips gone awry, Niles wished for the gathering to end. Sitting together during a meal with one’s extended family did not exist in vampire culture. That, and pushing his food around with his fork to fool the Cruzes into thinking he was eating, grew tiresome quickly.
At one point, Mariella playfully snatched food from his plate and ate it. Her dark eyes twinkled with the realization her partner was in trouble. When she thought no one was looking, especially her Momma and Tia Juanita who’d cooked the feast, she scooped the bean and corn salad into her own bowl. During another upwelling of vociferous jammering, she shifted the green ancho chili burrito from his plate to hers. Eventually, through the miracle of offloading, Niles faced an empty plate and a glowing Momma Cruz.
“You cleaned your plate!” his hostess exclaimed, her face beaming with approval.
Tia Juanita poked Niles with her fork. “Bueno! You need more meat on your bones. You’re too thin.”
Niles lifted a brow. German, sitting across the table, laughed and shook his head. He knew how his sister had assisted the vampire through the meal. He chose not to say anything.
At last, long after the sun had set, the meal ended with churros and cigarillos, in neither of which did Niles indulge. Hunger roiled his stomach, forcing the vampire to clench his fist and his aching teeth to keep from biting one of these boisterous, happy people. Reading his drooping body language, Mariella thanked her family and excused them.
“It’s been fun,” Niles said, rising. “But we have another engagement tonight.”
Mariella gazed at him with a frown between her brows, but she didn’t argue. Another twenty minutes passed while all the relatives hugged and kissed the pair.
When Momma approached Niles, he submitted to a smothering hug and a kiss on his ashen cheek.
While she held the vampire tight against her, she whispered in his ear. “I saw what you did with the food, mio carino. But I forgive you. When you make my Mari an honest girl? And when los bebes?”
Niles choked, his brilliant blue eyes wide. He gulped and stammered something, but he wasn’t sure exactly what he managed to say.
Finally, the pair staggered out the door, each clutching Tupperware© containers and Saran© wrapped leftovers.
“Do we really have somewhere else to be?” Cruz asked as they trotted down the walk past lighted gnomes and inflatable snow globes.
Niles tucked the containers into Fifi the Fiat’s back seat. “Indeed we do.”
Cruz hopped into the driver’s seat, revved engine to a high-pitched whine, and asked where to go.
Acting like a GPS unit, Niles gave her turn by turn instructions without explaining where they were headed.
Intrigued, Cruz didn’t question. She turned onto Rte 40 and headed west away from the city. On Niles’ command, she exited onto Uplands Parkway. She only scowled when his next direction was to turn left onto an unmarked and unpaved access road. Fifi jounced and protested navigating through an open field under a star strewn sky. Once they left Upland behind, the world grew dark. Only the light of the gibbous moon, the stars, and Fifi’s headlights kept the gloom at bay.
“Where are we going?” Cruz asked. Her gaze swept the surroundings. Only raw meadow, uncut in years, stretched out in either direction.
“We’re almost there,” Niles soothed.
“Where is there?” Cruz retorted. Fifi pitched through a deep wash and came up the other side.
“It’s just ahead.”
Cruz slowed when the road faded into grass. But this grass had been roughly mowed in a patch about twenty yards square.
Shutting off the engine, she twisted to gaze at her partner. “Did you bring me out here to kill me?” she jibed.
Niles grinned, revealing his butchered mouth. “If I were, do you think I would have done this travesty to my teeth?”
Keeping her brow lifted, Cruz nevertheless exited the car.
Dried grass crunched underfoot. The smell of rotting hay perfumed the crisp night air. Her breath puffed clouds before her.
Niles took her arm and led her unerringly through the little field, now his time to escort his blinded partner just as earlier she’d escorted him.
From out of the darkness a small building emerged. Cruz hesitated in surprise. The structure fashioned of marble blackened with age and algae stood only ten feet wide by about twenty feet long. A single, darkened window peered from one wall. The entrance, however, was grand indeed. A massive, iron door, bossed with Christian religious symbols stood graced by two marble columns, also black with age. A marble angel lifted wings to the sky on the right side of the door, although her face and those magnificent wings were slowly dissolving from acid rain.
“It’s a mausoleum,” she murmured in surprise.
It was not, however, one’s garden variety mausoleum. Firstly, it stood totally alone in that expansive, unkempt field. Secondly, it sported a cast iron fence in a square around it. But that wasn’t what truly surprised Cruz. It was the strands of Christmas lights looping and swagging the fence. They weren’t ordinarily lights. Nor were the icicle lights that dripped from the eave of the mausoleum. Instead of pretty multicolored or white lights, these brooded with a red glow. The icicle lights dripped as a series of LEDs inside fired off in succession, sending the red light falling in an unending cycle like blood dripping from the roof. The effect was chilling rather than cheering.
“Who puts red Christmas lights on a mausoleum in the middle of nowhere?” Cruz demanded. She gave her partner the stink eye.
“Not me, I assure you,” Niles responded.
Taking her elbow, he led her towards the entrance. He knocked twice with his pale, white hand. The door flew open. Cruz nearly screamed. The entrance beyond was utterly jet black. The figure who opened the door was tiny, sway backed and ghostly faced. Given it wore unremitting black, the figure’s face appeared to hover in midair, surrounded by a wreath of ghastly, drifting, white hair.
“Merry Christmas, Marrenstan,” Niles greeted the gaunt figure.
The tiny vampire, a mere five feet tall when age didn’t stoop his shoulders, ushered them inside.
“Come in! Come in! Dinner’s almost ready. So glad you could come.”
Moving inside with hesitancy, Cruz gazed around at the interior of the mausoleum. The place was surprisingly spacious. An empty coffin standing open rested against one wall, but down the center of the room stood a series of folding tables draped with black cloth and bearing three lit candelabras. Their flames flickered in the breeze from the open door until Marrenstan clanged it shut.
“It’s like the Tardis,” she whispered. “Bigger on the inside than on the outside.”
Niles grinned but said nothing.
Cruz gulped at the sight of several vampires gathered at the table, none of whom she knew personally. They all solemnly nodded greetings to her.
Niles stood with his arm around her shoulder to either brace her up or to protect her, she couldn’t determine which.
“Thank you for arranging this dinner,” Niles said to Marrenstan.
The obsequious little vampire bobbed and rubbed his skeletal hands together. “So glad I could help.” He gestured to the only two empty seats. “Please be seated.”
“What is this?” Cruz murmured while Niles pulled out her chair for her then pushed it in like the gentleman he was. “I didn’t think vampires celebrated Christmas.”
“Normally we don’t.” Niles settled beside her and watched a bustling Marrenstan fetch bowls of blood and platters of meat to set on the table. “But I decided since my flight was half human half vampire, I should bring us all up to the modern age.”
Cruz watched Marrenstan in fascination. “He’s a lot like Cooksey, isn’t he?”
“Small, twitchy and determined to feed people?” Niles replied. “Yeah, I guess he is.”
She leaned close. “Do you know these other vampires?”
Niles dipped his head to whisper. “Not exactly. I know they are residents of Baltimore who have elected to stay under my rule. They have pledged not to kill humans. So that makes them members of my flight. They’re all friends of Marrenstan’s though.”
Marrenstan filled glass after glass with a deep, red wine.
“Did you invite Tyra?” Niles asked, naming the vampiress that infested the apartment next to Niles’
Marrenstan nodded vigorously. “But she refused. Says she won’t partake in human rituals.” His pale lips frowned. “So sorry.”
“No worries,” Niles soothed. “I would have been surprised to see her here.”
Having finished with serving, Marrenstan took his seat at the table. He lifted his glass in toast. “To friends, flights and fancies.” He grinned, revealing his fangs.
“Am I the fancy?” Cruz whispered.
Niles nodded. “Yup. And you don’t have to whisper. Vampires have incredible hearing.”
Cruz gulped.
With a wince, she accepted the plate of raw meat swimming in a sauce of raw, coagulating blood, not knowing how she could eat a bit of it.
Taking a cue from her partner’s behavior earlier, she pushed the meat around the plate with her fork. Every once in a while, when their host’s attention was elsewhere, Niles transferred a piece from her plate. Gradually, the plate emptied without her ever eating a morsel.
The conversation flowed, most of it in the screeching high tones of the Home Tongue of the Vanapir. Niles occasionally translated, but for the most part the discussion passed over her unheard. She drank the wine with the various toasts because that at least was something she could imbibe.
Finally, after several hours, the event was over. The vampires eased back from the table, huffed on cigarettes and popped pork rinds for dessert. Niles rose and thanked his host.
“Time for us to head out,” he said. “We work tomorrow night.”
Marrenstan rose, reaching only as high as Niles’ chest. His head bobbed in the near total darkness of the mausoleum. He offered his clawed hand to Cruz with a ghastly grin, fangs gleaming.
“Thank you for coming,” he said.
Cruz forced a smile. “Thank you for inviting me. I think.”
Marrenstan did not release his grip. Given his strength even for such an ancient vampire, Cruz stood immobile as he leaned close, the smell of rancid meat clinging to his hair and clothes.
“I saw what you did with the food, Miss Cruz. But I forgive you. When are you going to make my master an honest man?”
Cruz choked. Marrenstan nodded sagely and released her.
With as much dignity as she could gather, Cruz strode from the mausoleum with Niles at her side.
“My God!” she laughed when they reached the safety of Fifi. “Families really are all alike, aren’t they?”
Niles nodded, a fond smile curving his lips as he looked back at the ridiculous tomb and its blood red lights. “Yes, Mari. All families are indeed the same.”
© 2021 Newmin
Niles Gule: Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas