A Vision of Vampires Box Set

by Laura Legend

  Gary was having a hard time focusing. He pulled a random box out of the middle of a stack and this sent two more tumbling into him.

  Cass almost laughed, but swallowed the giggle that threatened to sneak out. “You sure I can’t help you, Dad?” she asked.

  “No, no. Go on, sweetie. You were remembering something?” He pulled his leg free from the box that had pinned him.

  “We were in Japan, I think. I was maybe seven years old. You and me and Mom. We were at a cherry blossom festival. The whole grove of trees had exploded in white and pink flowers. It was a beautiful day. And we were all just . . . happy.”

  Cass scuffed the toe of her sneaker against the cement floor of the garage, staring at the ground. Her father had gone very still. He was looking right at her. She met his eyes.

  “Is that a real memory, Dad? Do you remember this?”

  He held her eyes.

  “Yes, Cassandra. That is a true memory. We traveled to Japan to visit family, as we often did in those days.”

  He paused, revisiting the scene in his own mind’s eye. “And you’re right. We were . . . very happy.”

  He broke eye contact and went back to his boxes, shifting one out of the way and stumbling over another.

  “I also remembered something else about that trip,” Cass said. “It wasn’t just the three of us. There was someone else there.”

  Cass saw him stiffen for a moment, then continue with the boxes.

  “There was an older woman. Tiny. White hair in a bun. Dressed in something like a kimono.”

  Gary stopped what he was doing. He stood up straight and stretched, his hands in the small of his aching back. He sighed deeply and looked back in Cass’s direction, a hint of fear in his eyes.

  “Cassandra,” he said slowly and sternly, “listen carefully. You are wrong about that part. No one else was there. There was no tiny woman with white hair. You are, I’m afraid, remembering wrong.”

  Cass felt hurt. And she knew he was lying.

  Her weak, wandering eye twitched into focus, a soft burn igniting at the base of the socket, and she felt like she could see right through him. He was afraid. He was trying to protect her. But he was wrong. She didn’t need to be protected right now. She needed the truth.

  She was the Seer and she needed to see.

  She felt both angry and sad at the same time. She swallowed hard. “Okay, Dad,” she said coldly and shivered again. “I’d better be getting home. Good to see you though.”

  Her father didn’t immediately respond. Cass turned to go. She started down the driveway. She could hear her father tearing tape from the top of a box, rummaging through its contents, and then adding a quiet, “Ah ha.”

  He called after her. “Cassandra, wait. Wait just a moment please.”

  He jogged down the driveway to catch her. He had an old book in hand. It had a pink cover with a small combination lock and faded, handwritten pages.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, pegging the apology to nothing in particular. “This, though, is for you.”

  He handed her the book. CASSANDRA JONES was written on the front in a seven year-old’s handwriting.

  “I’ve been thinking, all day,” he confessed, “about that same trip to Japan. About that same visit to the cherry blossom festival. When I woke up this morning, it was the first idea in my head. I lay in bed for a long time thinking about it.”

  Cass waited for him to continue.

  “What are the odds,” he said, “that you’d suddenly remember the same thing? Then I was getting ready for bed tonight, but couldn’t stop thinking about your journal from that same trip. So I came out to the garage to look for it.”

  Cass still remembered the combination. She popped the lock and cracked the diary. The book naturally fell open to a spray of cherry blossoms, pressed for decades between the pages. Next to the blossoms, she found a single Japanese kanji written three times: kibo.

  Cass felt the void inside of her contract as tears snuck into the corners of her eyes. She pulled her father into a reluctant hug. He hesitated, then gave her a brief, fierce squeeze in return.

  Their hug was interrupted by a voice from behind them.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Miranda said. “I really am. But something has come up. And I need Cass.”

  7

  Miranda tore around a street corner in her Audi, fishtailing for a moment onto the far side of the road. Cass braced herself, holding on to the door handle with both hands and wedging her feet into opposite corners under the dash. As a reward for her efforts, she only slid a couple of inches across her leather seat.

  Miranda was still wearing her sunglasses even though it was close to midnight now.

  Much as I love her, it’s a miracle she hasn’t killed anyone yet, Cass thought.

  It wasn’t clear why they were driving this way. They weren’t even in any real hurry. They had an appointment—maybe. But even that seemed loosely defined.

  Miranda had been hearing rumors for weeks now that the Lost had a new leader. The rumors referred to the new leader as “the Heretic.” Her sources couldn’t confirm who the Heretic was, but she had her own set of suspicions. Without more information, though, she was not yet willing to share those suspicions with her bosses. She would have to go it alone and do some digging first.

  Miranda explained that she’d had to do that more and more often recently. In fact, her entire escapade a few months back with Cass, Zach, and Richard was an off-the-books, unauthorized adventure. But once Judas was dead, she couldn’t avoid reporting the whole affair. And the powers-that-be were not pleased. They didn’t trust Richard York in the first place and they hated, above all, the change and instability that followed Judas’s death. She needed more information first. Then she could decide what to do, how much to share, and who to trust.

  For the moment, though, she only trusted Cass.

  “I’ve got a lead,” Miranda said, slamming on the brakes for a stop sign. Cass considered this a good sign—sometimes Miranda treated stop signs as optional. “I’ve got a lead on a source that might be able to tell us where the Lost are congregating now that Judas’s castle has been destroyed.”

  “Sounds solid,” Cass deadpanned. “A lead on a source who might meet us and who might have information about a location where we might be able to find people with more information that we could eventually use to figure out who is leading the Lost now.”

  “Exactly. You’ve got it. I’m glad you understand how this works. You’re really learning fast.” Miranda deadpanned in return, stepping on the gas and looking straight at Cass for a beat longer than felt safe given their rate of acceleration.

  They drove for another fifteen minutes, through an industrial park, past the outskirts of town, and pulled up quietly around the side of an abandoned warehouse just off a thickly wooded tree line. They parked in the shadows. If Cass had been assigned to scout a location for a movie where the hero had to meet an informant, this was exactly the kind of place she would have picked.

  “Okay,” Cass said, craning her neck and looking around the deserted lot, “where are we supposed to meet—”

  Miranda cut her off.

  “Shhhh,” Miranda whispered. “Be quiet. Just listen for a minute and tell me if you hear anything.”

  They sat in the car in silence, listening. The only sound was the car’s overworked engine cooling. Cass was beginning to get the feeling that their possible “source” might not be a friendly (or even willing) participant in tonight’s information exchange. Miranda looked steeled for . . . a variety of eventualities.

  The trees swayed in the cold wind. An owl hooted. The waning moon shone weakly in the clear night sky.

  “Oh, I also brought you something,” Miranda said, reaching into the backseat. She pulled out Cass’s sword, the one that her mother had left her and that now had a fragment of the One True Cross embedded in its hilt.

  Cass accepted the sword but gave Miranda a hard look in return.

 
“Just in case,” Miranda said, “things get a little off-script.”

  “Right. Just in case,” Cass replied, hefting the sword, wondering what she’d gotten herself into.

  They could see several pairs of headlights coming down the service road now. Two vans, a black SUV, and a black sedan. They stopped in front of the building. A handful of burly looking guys in leather jackets jumped out and stationed themselves in various, watchful positions near the entrance to the warehouse. One of them undid the heavy padlock, unthreaded chains that secured the main door, and rolled the door back. Both vans and the sedan pulled inside the warehouse.

  Cass could tell from their standard issue leather jackets that the crew were Lost.

  “I don’t like this, Miranda,” Cass said. “I don’t like the look of it one bit. And there are definitely more of them than there are of us. And why do they always wear those clichéd leather jackets? Is there a vampire dress code? School uniforms?”

  “We’re just going to take a quick look around,” Miranda said, ignoring her snark. “We just need a peek at who’s in the backseat of that black sedan.”

  Miranda cracked her knuckles and rolled her neck, loosening her shoulders. Her eyes glinted green in the moonlight.

  “Stay close,” Miranda cautioned. She was out her door before Cass knew it and Cass had to hurry to catch up.

  They circled around the back of the warehouse, moving silently and staying out of sight. Cass slung her sword across her back, leaving it in its sheath for now. A guard, already bored with guard duty, was positioned at the far corner. They watched him fidget for a moment, shifting from foot to foot, until he couldn’t resist the urge to pull out his phone.

  Miranda signaled for Cass to take him out. Then, for good measure, emphasized that this needed to be “quiet” by mouthing the word and putting her finger to Cass’s lips.

  Cass rolled her eyes and batted the finger away.

  She crept up behind the man in his tight vampire jeans and heavy vampire boots and leather vampire jacket with chains. She could see, over his shoulder, that he was scrolling through his Instagram feed. LittleBaker53. Cass couldn’t help but see what he was looking at. He paused to admire a mouth-watering image of a luscious piece of chocolate cake displayed on an antique yellow plate and beautifully framed by the setting sun.

  Cass wondered what filters the photographer had used to create that effect. Then she suddenly realized that she was very hungry again—dinner had never really happened—and her stomach growled with an easily audible rumble.

  The guard dropped his phone and reached for his weapon. But before he could reach it, Cass swept his leg, unsheathed her sword, and clocked him on the head with its hilt, all in one smooth motion.

  He dropped like a sack of potatoes.

  Miranda waved her hands in exasperation, as if to say: stop playing around up there. Cass just pointed to the guy on the ground, patted her belly, and shrugged.

  They found a side door and both peeked through its window to get a glance at how the warehouse was laid out on the inside. They couldn’t see much, though. Stacks of abandoned crates and boxes crowded near the door obstructed any clear view of the rest of the room.

  Miranda closed her eyes, focused her attention, and steepled her index fingers. A spark of green light flickered at their tips. She pinched the light between both thumbs and index fingers and slowly pulled them apart until, in the arc of light between them, a skeleton key materialized. Miranda slid the key into the door’s lock, turned the tumblers, and silently opened the door, holding it politely open for Cass.

  “Neat trick,” Cass couldn’t help but whisper even as she wondered why, if Miranda could do tricks like that on command, Cass was the one going through the door first.

  From their new vantage point behind the crates and boxes, they could safely take stock of the room. The two vans were parked in the center, flanked by the black sedan. Cass couldn’t quite tell what they had in hand, but they were transferring long, heavy bags from one van to the other. Then, with a jolt, she knew exactly what was in them: those long, black bags were body bags. A cold shiver ran down her spine and she gripped her sword more tightly. Miranda squeezed her shoulder reassuringly and moved closer for a better look.

  As Miranda moved closer, an enormous man heaved his bulk out of the backseat of the sedan. He made the sedan look like a clown car. When he stood up to his full height, his ponytail swaying, Cass wasn’t sure how he’d squeezed into that backseat in the first place. His movements, though, were compact and graceful. He radiated a kind of benevolent competence that seemed at odds with the kind of frantic, agitated hunger that, in Cass’s experience, always itched beneath the surface of the Lost.

  “Damn,” Miranda whispered when she saw him. Cass looked from Miranda back to this giant and felt her stomach clench into a tight little ball: he was looking right at them.

  “Hello, Miranda,” he said and, with a pair of curt signals, he sent men to flank them from both directions. They wore gas masks and were armed with rifles. At the same moment, the side door behind them banged open and someone tossed a canister of tear gas in their direction.

  The smoke spread quickly. Cass’s eyes blurred with tears and she doubled over, coughing.

  “Cass!” Miranda called.

  Cass couldn’t catch her breath enough to reply. She could hear that they were already on top of Miranda and that Miranda wasn’t going down without a fight. Crates and boxes flew as men in leather jackets and gas masks were tossed aside by an expanding burst of green light. Cass was also pushed back by the force of the blast. She was knocked off her feet and skidded across the warehouse’s rough cement floor. The good news, though, was that, for the price of a few bruises, Cass was largely pushed clear of the cloud of tear gas.

  She wiped the tears from her eyes, drew in a deep, lung-clearing breath, and tried to zero in on Miranda’s location. Through all the smoke, she couldn’t see clearly what was happening on the other side of the room. Still, despite the smoke, she didn’t have any trouble pinpointing where all the shouts and screams were coming from.

  Cass rolled to her feet and gathered herself to spring in Miranda’s direction. But when she took off running, she didn’t go anywhere. Like Wile E. Coyote off the edge of a cliff, her legs spun tractionless in midair. Surprised, she craned her neck to see what was happening and found that the monster of a man from the clown car had her hooked by the collar of her jacket. He held her suspended a few feet off the ground. He batted the sword from her hand and it went spinning across the room. He looked slightly amused by the surprised expression on her face and, generally, unconcerned.

  Cass tried to kick free, but her legs weren’t long enough. The man just extended his arm and held her clear of his torso.

  Cass was starting to get pissed. She could hear what a wild scrum Miranda was in. Cass twisted in his grasp, frantic to break free, but didn’t go anywhere.

  For his part, the man held her up to catch the light from the sedan’s headlights, like he was simply curious about something he’d found lying on the ground and was trying to figure out what it was.

  “You,” he said with a rumbling voice, “are Cassandra Jones?”

  Cass couldn’t tell from his tone of voice if he’d meant that as a statement or a question—though by the time he’d gotten to the end of the sentence he seemed puzzled enough by what he was seeing that it ended like a question.

  He hefted her once or twice, as if trying to find some additional substance to her small, slight frame.

  “Cassandra Jones?” he repeated when she didn’t reply.

  And then it hit Cass: Yes, damn it, I am Cassandra Jones! When she thought it, she felt the force of it. And, more, when she thought it, she felt the truth of it.

  Her weak eye burned in her skull. Wisps of white smoke trailed from the corner of her eye and time went slack. Where, a moment before, she’d felt cramped by the inexorable, inevitable crush of time, now it felt like there was room to move, l
ike time had opened out onto a third dimension where the normal rules didn’t apply. Here, she could act with a simplicity and clarity of intention that normally escaped her.

  “Yes,” she calmly said, “I’m Cassandra Jones. Nice to meet you . . . dickhead.” She kicked her legs up and locked them around his ham hock of an upper arm, slipped her arms free of the jacket he was holding, and swung to the floor where—mostly because it was the only part of him she could really reach—she used the whole of her momentum to punch him straight in the groin. He wobbled for a moment and then crumpled to his knees, his look of surprise now level with her own look of determination.

  Cass spit in his face, but didn’t wait around to see what was going to happen next. She didn’t think that would hold him long. She darted into the smoke after Miranda.

  But she was too late. Through the fog, Cass could make out how the Lost had corralled Miranda with four or five separate ropes and were working in concert now to pin her arms and wrap her up.

  “No!” Cass shouted. “Miranda!”

  Cass felt a surge of desperation battering the heavy doors in her heart, threatening to break free and sweep her away with them.

  Miranda looked up and locked eyes with Cass.

  “Cass,” she yelled, “these people are not—”

  But she was cut off as the men gagged her, bundled her into an open van, and slammed the door shut behind them.

  Cass caught the glint of her dropped sword in their headlights and dove for it. As the van sped by, tires smoking, she rammed her sword into the wall of the van and held on for dear life as it accelerated toward the door. The driver, surprised, spotted her in his side view mirror, hanging from the side of the van. At the last moment, as they cleared the door, he jerked the van toward the wall in an effort to scrape her off. The wall clipped Cass on the shoulder and side of her head.

  Cass rolled like a rag doll across the pavement, her sword clattering next to her. Her vision swam in and out of focus as the van’s taillights receded down the drive. But, despite her blurry vision, she didn’t have any trouble recognizing her old friend, the giant, when he stepped into view.