I could go out in sunlight, but not for any prolonged period of time—unless I had protection and shade. Like an umbrella. But walking around with an umbrella and my skin covered might attract unwanted attention. If any vampires happened to see me out in sunlight, they would instantly know I was beyond ancient. Or they might doubt I was a vampire—especially since I could hide my powers from my offspring. Unless they were powerful enough to break through that protection.
Since I wasn’t at full strength, I wasn’t sure how strong one needed to be to break my defenses. It was a big risk, and I chose not to share the details with Nosh. He had enough on his mind without worrying about me.
“Just lay low, Sorin. I mean it,” Nosh said. “I’ll call when I finish with the police. I’ll arrange a meeting with Stevie the werewolf for sundown. We can see about meeting with this Crescent.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like we’re drowning in options. Unless we want to go visit this Museum of Natural History,” I said, recalling Mina’s claim.
Nosh shook his head. “We have no idea how many vampires reside there. They have catacombs beneath the building that reportedly cover city blocks.”
I frowned thoughtfully. “Underground tunnels? Like this?” I asked.
Nosh shrugged. “New York has a vast underground world. I have no idea exactly how vast, but rumors make it sound like it covers a significant portion of the island of Manhattan. Where we stand right now,” he elaborated, noticing the confused look on my face. I nodded but found myself idly wondering how far I was from where I had lived with Deganawida. We hadn’t been on an island.
I turned to Nosh. “Werewolves might have answers about these tunnels. Or know a way inside this museum.”
Nosh nodded. “That is my hope. If Mina worked for this Necromancer, he must be in charge of the city. Like I already told you, the vampires are quiet about their control. They don’t brag, they just consistently spread their roots throughout the city. Which means innocent men and women will work for them and not even know it,” he said, eyeing the policeman. “We can’t kill them for ignorance.”
I grunted. “The world would be a desolate place if ignorance was a crime punishable by death.”
He glanced down at his burner phone. “I should be going. Can I trust that you’ve murdered enough people for one evening? Can’t you just kill the Necromancer with your mind from here? He is your offspring, after all.”
I shook my head. “I doubt he was bitten by me, and even if he is mine, I haven’t had anywhere near enough blood to attempt such a thing. I could barely handle Mina Harker.”
Nosh arched a stunned eyebrow. “Jesus. How many victims do you need on a regular basis?” he demanded fearfully.
I shrugged. “After Deganawida’s slumber, I have no idea. It’s never happened before. Remember that I spent hundreds of years without so much as a drop of blood. There is a lot to repair. A lot to wake back up. Like rebuilding atrophied muscles.”
Nosh grumbled unhappily but nodded. “Makes sense. I brought you some newspapers and a map so you can familiarize yourself a little, although I’m sure much of it will only give you more questions.”
I pointed at the backpack I had acquired. “One of the flour dealer’s men had some textbooks in his bag.” I’d always enjoyed reading. It had been my only method of escapism in my time, and I had learned to read quite rapidly. In several languages.
I had no idea if those languages were still in use, however.
Nosh nodded. “That’s great. Skim through and I can answer any questions you may have when I get back.” He glanced over at Johnathan. “It is not wise to kill a policeman. His absence could bring a world of pain down upon our shoulders. The police are a close brotherhood. If he doesn’t survive, you will have a hundred of them surrounding this area, canvasing the neighborhood in search of him.”
I nodded. “You may take him with you.” I turned to the policeman. “Johnathan.”
“Yes?” he asked groggily.
“My acquaintance will escort you from the hotel. Thank you for helping keep us safe, but I would prefer we remain anonymous. You will forget everything that happened from the time we met until…ten minutes from now,” I said, arching a questioning eyebrow at Nosh. He nodded.
Nosh looked decidedly uneasy to become an accomplice but leaving him down here with me was a good way for him to end up dead, no matter the consequences. I was hungry enough to drink a village.
“Just escort him back to the exit and tell him to keep walking. Once the ten-minute threshold is reached, he will snap out of it.”
Nosh nodded. “You didn’t say My Lord.”
I grinned wolfishly. “It was never a necessity.”
Nosh narrowed his eyes at me, clenching his fists. “Let’s go, Johnathan.” I waved at the pair, even though Johnathan couldn’t see me. Nosh ignored my friendly gesture.
Soon, I sat in relative silence. I absently took some pictures, wondering if I should try to rest or go read one of the books inside the backpack.
Instead, I changed into the clothes Nosh had bought—blue trousers that were both durable and comfortable—called jeans, based on the paper tag attached to them—a black sweatshirt with a hood, and some black, heavy boots.
They weren’t a close match to the coat, but I decided that it sufficed as an appropriate outfit—judging from the dozen pictures I’d taken with my new phone. My leather jacket was slick and shiny and would do well to repel rain if we had any more of it. A downside was that it drew the eye by catching reflections of distant light, which wasn’t suitable to stealth. I would just have to be exceedingly careful. On a positive note, it was thick and resilient—like some of the armor I had worn in my days, when I wasn’t wearing one of the dozen metallic armors that I owned, of course. Had owned, I thought to myself with a faint, territorial growl.
I found a pallet of plastic water jugs lined against the wall, along with a collection of shelves holding all manner of electronic devices, batteries, medicines, and packaged food. Like some kind of storage room. Had Deganawida spent considerable time here?
I inspected the private area with the cot and nodded satisfactorily. The area had a small bookshelf, and an armchair pressed into the corner opposite the cot. A stack of books and an electronic lamp rested on top of a rickety table, apparently a chosen reading nook.
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, picking up traces of Deganawida’s repeated presence. He had spent a very long time down here, right outside my tomb. I frowned thoughtfully, uncertain how to feel about this revelation. Was it as my jailer or as a sorrowful friend?
I shook my head and went back to the main area.
I emptied the rest of the bag Nosh had brought me to find a hairbrush and a trio of plastic bottles labeled shampoo, body wash, and conditioner. I frowned, wondering what to do with each. The body wash was self-explanatory, and a quick study of the other two told me that the shampoo was for washing the hair while the conditioner was some kind of moisturizer for hair. I glanced about the room, not seeing any tub for bathing. I opened the various soaps, curious what Call of the Wild smelled like. I gasped in awe, shaking my head as the aromas assaulted my nostrils, making my eyes roll back in my head. How had they acquired such a fragrance?
“Old Spice,” I mused, recognizing the company logo as a ship. “They must have a secret trade route with some mysterious warlocks living beyond civilization,” I murmured out loud. As much as the world had changed without me, I felt that I was handling the numerous changes remarkably well—getting a firmer grasp on how the world currently worked.
I set the items on the shelf of medicines and nodded. I found myself eyeing the bookshelf Deganawida had left here but shook my head firmly. I felt too restless to sit down and read. I wanted to explore these underground tunnels. The policeman had told me a lot about them before Nosh arrived—not that he would recall any of our conversations, even to Nosh.
They were abandoned subway tunnels, or at least they connected to them
somewhere nearby. Johnathan often had to clear homeless men and women out of the upper reaches. But he had agreed that New York City’s underground world was thriving with disgruntled men and women.
The forgotten and downtrodden.
The Devil had neighbors to meet.
I pocketed my phone, scooped up the backpack, and decided to take a walk. I’d always preferred active learning to a book—no matter how intriguing and fascinating the story was. And although I didn’t have baked goods to share, I had flour that was worth a fortune.
And money and jewelry to buy information.
If there was one thing I had learned how to do from an early age, it was how to hustle and hawk my wares. I had learned those skills long before the fateful night I had become the world’s first vampire.
But thoughts of that night always made me morose, so I took a calming breath and shook my head, straightening my red hat. “Time to go make some friends,” I said out loud.
24
I had spent several hours exploring the underground, meeting new friends and removing some of the more troubling residents. The lack of light was no deterrent to me since my eyes naturally adjusted to the numerous shades of shadow.
It was my natural habitat.
The herds of prey were surprisingly plentiful in my new realm. And I learned quite a bit about the present state of affairs. Ironically, many of those I met were well acquainted with monsters like vampires and werewolves and something called aliens. I had been intrigued at first, until I’d learned they’d been referring to beings from the night sky who had somehow traveled down here in metal ships to sexually assault humans.
I very quickly dismissed these wild claims, hoping they were false.
As malnourished as I was, drinking too much blood too fast was dangerous. It would make me blood drunk. So, I toed the line, drinking as much as I thought I could manage without incapacitating myself, and I was careful to only choose victims who were enemies of the friends I had made—of which I’d made plenty. Many of the less useful individuals had become incredibly pliable to my requests once I began handing out jewelry and the baggies in my backpack.
I’d learned that the flour was in fact something called cocaine—a drug that made people remarkably excited and energetic. I’d watched them snort the fine powder, of all things. I hadn’t dared to take part in case it affected vampires differently than humans. Seeing how twitchy and neurotic many of my neighbors were, I feared myself entering such a state.
It closely resembled me when I’d once become blood drunk.
And it had taken a dozen of my strongest vampires to restrain me for long enough to return to my senses. Dracula had been one of them. Back when he had been a staunch supporter and, dare I say, friend. But that had been long before I decided to leave Europe. Before my motivations had changed.
They, led by Dracula, had continued to desire more blood. Power. Domination. I thought back on those old days, sighing sadly.
As powerful as I had been, I had been no match for literally hundreds of vampires, and I knew that a coup was being arranged behind my back. My only alternative to self-banishment would have been to start a civil war, which would have sent Europe back into the dark ages.
So, I’d chosen to explore the world, teaming up with my old friends Lucian and Nero—who had experienced similar power struggles in their own communities. Ultimately, we had chosen to adventure across the ocean upon hearing recent news from Spain about a New World. It had cost us a significant amount of money to fund the exploration, but money had never been a problem.
I’d made an arrangement with the King of Spain behind closed doors for passage, privacy, and food aplenty. I may or may not have enthralled him.
Nevertheless, he’d been beyond agreeable to my terms—a ship, a crew, and his silence about our secret voyage in exchange for my gold and the fact that I would relieve him of all of his prisoners to take with me on my travels. I hadn’t elaborated why I wanted his criminals—for food, naturally—only promising him that they would never trouble him or his country again. He’d found us a drunken beast of a man who had spent thirty years braving the oceans, and we’d embarked on a long, tumultuous journey that had been both exciting and incredible for about one week. Then we’d grown restless and irritable.
Somehow, we’d made it—with the bare minimum of sailors, thanks to my appetite. Then we’d given the captain the boat and told him to forget we ever existed.
I sighed at the memory, recalling the adventures we’d experienced before running into Deganawida and his tribe.
I paced back and forth in my hideout, having spent an hour flipping through one of the textbooks I had acquired—History of the United States of America—as I sat in Deganawida’s old chair. I’d been pleased to learn that my journey had never been documented.
But the rest of what I’d read had been both insightful and troubling. Much of what I had personally lived through had been grossly misinterpreted. And that was before I came to learn what had ultimately happened to the Native Americans who I had grown to call family.
Wars had raged across the beautiful land I had come to call home. More and more settlers came from overseas, pushing the natives back through war and conquest, and ultimately staking claim to the lands they had stolen. After many years, battles, and threats back and forth between a few countries overseas, an independent country had ultimately formed—The United States of America.
Of course, there had been no mention of me, werewolves, vampires, or warlocks, but I had seen suspicious events dotting the pages. The Great Fires of New York, the Salem Witch Trials, and a place called Roanoke that practically screamed of magic.
Deganawida had earned his place in written history, having formed the Iroquois Confederacy—like the painting I had seen in Nosh’s parents’ home at the Aristocrat. Reading about that, I’d gone back down to my tomb to study the murals on the walls. They told both a similar and vastly different story.
I’d read about the rapid advancement of technology, the Industrial Revolution—which had to have been sparked by warlocks—and the invention of factories, electricity, and the combustible engine. I soon felt that I was beginning to get a healthy understanding of the world.
Until I read up on the World Wars. Then I began to wonder if the world could have used a few more vampires to keep the humans in line. Or if maybe vampires weren’t as terrible as everyone seemed to think.
I’d soon resorted to skimming the book, wanting to get only the highlights. Truthfully, I’d also read between the lines, searching for any clues about my own ordeal, Deganawida, Dracula, or my wife and son.
I hadn’t expected to find anything, so I wasn’t disappointed. But Deganawida’s comments about their uncertain demise was beyond unsettling. As was Dracula’s current obsession with my bloodline—finding a way to procreate.
I genuinely had no idea why he would care about such a thing. He’d always been the type of man who believed that the ends justified the means and had never been afraid of spilling blood to get what he wanted. So, if he wanted more vampires, all he had to do was turn more humans.
“Unless…he is looking to make heirs bound to him, heirs who couldn’t betray him like he betrayed me,” I mused. Finally, I shook my head. “But that would only matter if he was looking to pass off the crown—at which point he wouldn’t care.”
I was missing something. I glanced around the room, searching for a distraction to occupy my time. I spotted an umbrella hanging on the edge of the shelf and an idea began to form in my mind. It had been four hours since Nosh had left, which meant I likely had another six hours or so until dusk. I knew I stood no chance of falling asleep, so I stared at my phone, debating internally.
Because I still remembered the phone number that the werewolf, Stevie, had given Nosh.
Memory had been a valuable asset in my rise to power. Having grown up never able to afford pen and paper, I’d been forced to hone my memory to the sharpness of a razor, never knowing whe
n I might need to recall a particular detail.
And I’d once heard a traveling priest say, idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.
He’d told it to me and a dozen other young boys who lived on the streets while we were waiting for a baker to turn his back so we could steal some food.
The priest hadn’t elaborated on it, and I’d never even heard of Christianity at that point. It was only many years later that we crossed paths again—by pure happenstance—when I caught him molesting a woman in his own church.
I had reminded him of his message to a young group of boys, wanting to make sure it was the last thing he heard before I killed him. He had tasted particularly bitter and spoiled, much like his hypocrisy.
Too bad for him that all those years earlier, neither of us had known that the future Devil of Italy had been seated in his assembly, and that the Devil would one day return to hold him accountable to his own lessons.
I’d been known as the Devil of many countries, over the years. “The Devil of New York,” I mused out loud, considering some of the…negotiations I’d made on my travels through the underground earlier. I smiled, nodding. “I like the sound of that.”
I picked up the phone and called the werewolf.
“Who is this and how did you get this number?” a suspicious growl demanded by way of introduction.
“It’s the bloodsucking kin-killer,” I replied. “I have questions.”
“We’re not hiding you from the law. You stirred up a hornet’s nest at the Aristocrat,” he snapped.
“Believe me when I tell you that I recall and relish in almost every kill I’ve performed, Stevie. But I never met those people, let alone killed them. And the man you saw me with in the alley?” I asked, letting the silence stretch for a few seconds. “That was their son.”
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