Free Vulgarian Vamp (A Wendy Darlin Comedy Mystery Book 5) by Barbara Silkstone Page B

taught me the cure.”
    She gazed up at Bram, love in her dark eyes. “Do you remember me? I was your nanny.”
    I watched as recognition lit Bram’s face. “My Mina!”
    He held her head to his cassock. I imagined his priestly self-control was being sorely tested as the little vampire pressed her face against his privates and sobbed with joy.
    “You saved me from the Lugosi Comet,” he said. “I remember the story if not the exact rescue.”
    “You were too young to remember. I carried you into the wine cellar just as the comet passed over.”
    Renfield shook his head. “Mina did not make it in time. She threw you to me as I stood in the cellar door, but she sadly fell under the Comet’s dribble.”
    The wizened old man looked at her with all the pride of a father. “She has not aged a day since that awful time when she became an undead being. And she has not tasted blood. She only sips the monks’ wine.”
    A Tell-Tale Heart thrummed, echoing off the dense stonewalls. It belonged to Roger. He stepped forward and spoke in halting words, “Was the baby in a stroller?”
    Hope mixed with fear for Roger. How many babies could have been out and about during the passing of the Lugosi Comet?
    I suddenly knew why Bram looked familiar. He was a Jolley by birth.
    With a nod of her head, Mina confirmed the wish that hung suspended on hope and prayers.
    “My brother!” Roger said reaching for the priest.
    Mina turned, facing Roger and protecting Bram with her back. “He’s mine. I saved him and raised him from a baby. I hid him from the monks for six years. I fed him leftovers from their cupboard and never once took his blood, but I could have.”
    “I thought the monks knew about you.” I said. I was looking for holes in her story.
    “Only Renfield knew at first. He helped us hide for a long time.”
    “I was the caretaker of the monastery,” Renfield said. “Only I knew of the tunnels between the abbey and the village and the junction at the Van Helsing. That was how I kept them both at play during the early days. Hide and seek.”
    “Hide and seek can get tiresome after a few years, even with the many tunnels under Loutish,” Mina said. “Bram was six when he grew bored with hiding in passageways and making pictures with glued noodles and corks. He wanted to run outside in the grass.”
    “I remember,” he said seeming surprised at the memory.
    Mina hugged him. “It was a pretty autumn evening. I’d forgotten about the clocks being set back. The monks should have been in the church for prayers, but they were in the graveyard. They discovered us playing tag.”
    “Why didn’t your parents find him?” I asked Roger.
    Bram and I looked to my poor fiancé, who was reeling, his eyes dewy. What must it be like to find the answer to your lifelong quest in a Vulgarian wine cellar?
    Roger cleared his throat. “They gave up the search after five years. My father tried many times to breach the monastery walls, both by petitioning the Vatican and using mercenaries. We could never get the monks to communicate. My dad died of a broken heart.”
    Roger studied Bram’s face, his own brilliant mind now shrapneled. “We had to assume the gypsies had taken him far away.”
    I turned on Mina. “Why didn’t you try to find his parents once the comet was gone?”
    She put her hands on her hips and flipped her bob at me. “I was a vampire! If I came forward they would have garlicked and beheaded me. Renfield was my only friend and my protector.”
    Mina reached up and wrapped her velvet-sleeved arm around Bram’s waist. “When the monks first found us, I told them he was my brother. Renfield helped me convince them. The monks sheltered us and schooled Bram. When they forced him to go to Rome to be educated as a priest I thought I would never see him again.”
    “It was safer for him in the Vatican,” Renfield said. The village has always harbored suspicions of the monks. It is only a matter of time before they