The Last Vampire

by Tanja Neise

  “And you, Mr Tensington? What dream in life do you still have that you want to fulfil?” She looked at me curiously, and took a sip of the Chardonnay. It was the first time she had drunk wine, she had confessed to me. Wine had become a pure luxury, only the rich could still afford the drink, so it didn't surprise me when she told me.

  We were sitting in the small, private room in one of my favourite restaurants. I had noticed that Olivia thought she wasn't dressed properly. Even if she’d been wearing a sack, she would’ve been the most beautiful woman in the city. Nevertheless, I had given in, and whispered the request into the waiter's ear, who had led us into the exclusive VIP area. The restaurant was open the whole night and granted the well-paying guests quite a number of their wishes. The place belonged to my company, but nobody here suspected it. This city, like many other cities, was mine. Nobody knew where exactly I had my hands, except Dark. He was the only one who had access to all my company’s internal affairs, since we had both survived an utterly dicey situation together. Otherwise, I spread information very discreetly and got on very well that way.

  “Perhaps we can be less formal with each other now. I’m Robert”. I looked deeply into the green eyes, submerged in them. When I thought I was going to drown in them, I sat up regretfully and held my glass against hers. After some short hesitation, she toasted with me. If I hadn’t believed I knew better, I would’ve almost thought that there was magic involved – her closeness was like an elixir of life. But my existence wasn't a fairy tale, and even this woman wasn't a gift of fate, as fate had never meant well for me. Why should it change now? Of course, outsiders would disagree because they’d be blinded by my wealth and power. But I – Robert Tensington – had to painfully realise that life, which was only based on material things, was not fulfilling.

  “Olivia – you can call me Liv,” she said, bringing me back to reality.

  “Liv.” I let her name bubble over my lips, almost as if it were a forbidden sweetness.

  “Robert,” she replied, and gave me a smile that immediately shot me in the guts. How could she achieve, with this simple gesture, what other women could not even achieve with the use of all their existing charms?

  “So?”

  Irritated, I asked: “Yes?”

  “What are your goals?”

  The goal I had set myself for the next two days looked at me openly. She seemed so relaxed. She had no idea who she was sitting opposite.

  “At the moment, my only goal is getting to know you better.” I tried to package my plan nicely.

  Her warm laughter made me hope, and for the first time in ages, I knew what it felt like to have hope.

  “And you think there’s so much to discover? I'm not one of the exciting women you usually meet.” I could literally feel her self-doubt. She was making fun of herself.

  “You underestimate yourself enormously.”

  Carefully, I grabbed her hand. The places where my skin met hers began to quiver and her hazy look demanded the same thing as me. Slowly, to give her the opportunity to retreat, I leant over towards her; Olivia's pupils were dilated, but she remained silent and waited. Just before my lips could conquer hers, there was a knock at the door to the private room.

  I couldn’t believe it! At first, I wanted to ignore it, but she had noticed it just as I had, and withdrew. Her gaze was lowered and I would have loved to grab her chin and finish what I had planned, but the magic was gone. Unfortunately.

  Disappointed, I sat back. “Yes?” I shouted, with a loud, rough voice. Spencer came in as I was clearing my throat to get rid of the lump in it. I knew immediately that it had to be something urgent because I had made it clear to my chauffeur that I only wanted to be disturbed in an absolute emergency.

  “Sir? Mr. Dark is on the phone.” Spencer handed me the phone. His face showed no emotion.

  Tense, I listened to Dark, who provided me with the necessary information. My body froze and coldness spread through me.

  “All right! Yes, we’ll do it like that. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Liv didn't let me out of her sight. “I'm sorry, Liv, I have to go back to the company. Someone has broken in there and tried to undermine our security system. We don't have any further details yet.”

  “What?” Liv sat up in shock. At first I didn't understand her reaction, but she immediately enlightened me with the next sentence. “Has anything happened to Sally?”

  “No, nobody’s been hurt. But I have to go. Would you like to accompany me? If you like, you can wait in my office. As soon as I find Sally, I’ll send her to you. Then I'll drive you home, of course.” Provided she wanted me to. Otherwise, I had something completely different in mind for her.

  She hadn't yet completely put aside her fear for this older woman, and just nodded as she automatically grabbed her bag and followed me. When my hand touched her back, it took my breath away – I wanted this woman so much.

  Anne Rumsfield

  What kind of sophisticated system was this? Why had the owner of this company not made his security measures available to the government? Something was not quite right! There had to be more hidden in this dive than I had first thought. Vampire or no vampire, it seemed to me as if I would uncover something much bigger, if that was at all possible. In any case, all my internal sensors sounded the alarm. Thus far, I had been able to be extremely proud of my intuition, which is why I was taking it very seriously this time.

  The hologram on my wrist computer only showed me the old image – the superficial security features, but by now I knew, one hundred percent, that a much more sophisticated computer program was being used in this dump. Where were the other systems installed? I hacked into the subsystem at a rapid speed, recognising the complexity and beauty of the programming. I held my breath in awe. Only a true master of his trade could have created this. Never before had I found something so perfect and I ought to know, after all, because I had access to all the security systems in America. I cursed my negligence; I would’ve liked to see this programming on my laptop. This was unbelievable. Incredibly ingenious. I tried to memorise everything exactly.

  Robert Tensington – I definitely had to take a closer look at him, and then find out who was behind this software development. This could only be someone from the hacker scene; there was no other explanation for this degree of genius. If the programmer wasn't from the dark web, he would certainly be employed by the government. Never before had I not been able to crack a system.

  The boss, in any case, had a clean slate – one like from a picture book. I had been annoyingly struck by that from the beginning. After the wars he suddenly appeared and took over his family's business, but where had he been before? Where had he studied? The net hadn't coughed anything up, which wasn't unusual. A lot of information had been lost or, during a certain period of time, not even registered. Humanity had simply had more important things to do. Nevertheless, I jumped on it like a guard dog on an intruder, and I had learned to listen to my pronounced intuition. Something about the man wasn’t right.

  “Yes,” I muttered under my breath. I had managed to shut down the cameras in the basements and on the ground floor for exactly five minutes. Meanwhile, they already knew that someone had gained unauthorised access to the building, so it didn't matter that the action couldn’t be carried out invisibly. The only thing that mattered was that I got out of here. Who knew what these guys were capable of doing to protect their secret.

  Continuously looking for cover, I hurried from one alcove to another, paying very careful attention to see if anyone came out of any of the doors. It remained silent, though.

  When I got to the ground floor I heard voices. A man and a woman were talking quietly and intimately; a short time later I could see them both. They were leaning against the wall next to the lift, intertwined with each other. At first, I thought I had involuntarily become a spectator of some kind of flirtation, but then I realised that the guy had grabbed the woman by the neck and, slowly but surely, was squeezing the air
out of her. Since he was rendering her unable to move, with his body pressed tightly against her, she could not defend herself either.

  Deep hatred rose within me. Men who mistreated women were complete scum in my eyes – not worthy of living.

  Silently, I sneaked up on the man and shot the stun gun in one fluid motion into his kidney area. That’d send him to the happy hunting grounds, or at least make him an invalid for the rest of his life. You couldn’t live that well with one kidney and organ donors hadn’t been around for a long time. He got the full load, but he only started to stagger. The woman looked at me from horrified eyes, and instead of fleeing and being grateful that I had come to her aid, she grabbed the man's arms and held him tight.

  “Why did you do that?” She wanted to know from me, screaming. “You piece of shit!” Hatred spewed towards me. Slowly, the woman let the much younger man slide to the ground, held his head in her lap and lovingly stroked his face.

  I looked at the woman, baffled. What was wrong with her? After all, I had probably saved her life. This was a wrongly-placed accusation; on the contrary, I would’ve expected some gratitude. But I didn’t wait any longer for the insight of this confused soul; instead, I ran into the dark hallway to my right and disappeared from the brightly lit hall. The five minutes would be up very quickly. I had to get out of here as soon as possible.

  Nevertheless, I was utterly confused and didn’t understand the woman’s reaction. Unbelievable! Just what kind of a crazy world was this?

  Olivia Morgan

  The way he looked at me went through my entire being. It was good that I was sitting on the restaurant chair, because my knees were trembling quite violently. He would probably have had to support me if we’d been standing.

  The scent he emitted, his warmth, those dark brown eyes – everything was drawing me even closer to him. I was barely able to breathe; I held my breath tensely as he leaned closer to me. In a moment he would kiss me and I fervently hoped that my nightmare would not repeat itself. But just before his lips touched mine, there was a knock on the door. I breathed deeply, in shock, and didn’t know whether I should be disappointed or relieved.

  It was Spencer. The chauffeur seemed tense. It had to be something important; you could see that very clearly in his face. When Robert made the phone call with one of his employees, it was obvious how the gentle man who had just eaten with me and who had been so charming was transforming into the tough businessman.

  I learned that the company building had been broken into. An irrepressible fear for Sally seized me and the smell of the food that was still in front of us, at that moment, only caused me nausea. Robert had assured me that everyone was fine, but I wouldn’t be able to calm down until I’d seen Sally for myself and convinced myself that she was okay. Sally was the only person on this planet who represented anything like a family to me. For that reason, and because a selfish part of me didn't want to part with him so quickly, I immediately agreed to accompany Robert to the firm’s building.

  * * *

  On the way to the company building Robert seemed absent and hammered wildly on the keyboard of his computer that was built into the car. I held myself back and didn't bother him any further as I could well understand that he was worried about what had happened.

  I was worried about Sally and what had almost happened between me and Mr Tensington, whom I was now calling Robert. Just by thinking of his face so close to mine, my heart beat faster. I was clearly disappointed that the kiss had not come about.

  Robert looked up briefly and looked me in the eyes, as if he’d guessed what I’d been thinking. Our glances had firmly locked into one another’s and neither of us was able to detach ourselves from the other.

  His hand gently stroked my cheek. Then he moved his thumb tenderly over my lower lip. While he spoke to me, he wore a melancholic expression on his face.

  “We’ll start back at the point where we were interrupted earlier. As soon as possible.” This was a promise that drove the heat up into my face. Robert stayed serious, and kept looking at me with this intensity that made me so nervous.

  And then I will slowly undress you.

  I opened my eyes wide in disbelief, and stared at him. What on Earth had that been? I’d heard his voice, but his lips hadn’t moved.

  He seemed irritated by my reaction, had a frown on his face. “What’s wrong, Liv?”

  “Nothing, everything is fine. I just thought for a moment I’d forgotten an important deadline for my essay. But I was just being silly.” My antennas remained calm – no danger – but everything in me screamed. Something was wrong here! How was it possible for me to have heard him? Was I already having hallucinations due to lack of sleep? No! I was absolutely sure. I’d heard it. You could not imagine something like that. Or could you?

  His sceptical facial expression clearly expressed that he didn't believe a word I was saying. What was I supposed to tell him? That I was hearing voices in my head? No, I definitely wouldn't tell him the truth. But he didn't probe any further, which made me even more insecure. With a frowning forehead, he turned towards the monitor again and remained silent. An insurmountable fight was raging inside me.

  Anne Rumsfield

  I had screwed up – damn it! Now they’d been given a heads up. Another plan had to be formulated. That had been so close just now. It was only by reprogramming the cameras that I had managed to leave the building complex at the last second. And then the thing with the couple – that had been completely insane and I still didn’t understand what had been happening there. Meanwhile, I was in one of the bushes that lined the company premises, hiding myself, when a car came closer.

  I’d never had to suffer such a defeat before; this frustrated me and challenged something in me. These people had something to hide and it was not just a vampire. There had to be something huge behind it. The security measures were those of a government building and I would have to be crazy if they weren’t. But these buildings didn’t need to be checked and connected to the system. All of the others were under the control of our unit. But why didn’t any of my people know about this one? I’d researched the internal network, of course, with the boss’s access number, as he was the only one who had permission to carry out such enquiries. The man seriously thought I’d be deterred by banalities like these. If there was one thing I enjoyed, it was cracking codes.

  Nothing, there was definitely nothing in the government network about the company being government property. And yet my intuition said that it was the case.

  For a moment I paused to think, and looked over at the car that had been parked in front of the main entrance. The dark guy, whom I had actually checkmated, ran towards the car and opened the back door. In such a way that it looked as if he hadn't got the full load of my SR5702. That was impossible!

  Joined by an inconspicuous redhead, the boss of the company got out – Robert Tensington. He was probably being informed right at that moment that I’d brought the massive guy down, albeit not as I’d hoped. He had to be tough. Never before had I heard that a person had withstood a load like that unscathed, let alone walked around again shortly afterwards as if nothing had happened. Most of them died at such high doses, or drooled and wet the bed for the rest of their lives. Sceptically, I screwed up my eyes; I had already heard of guys who were taking drugs and were invincible because of them. Still, he didn't give me the impression of being a junkie who was high. But what did I know? Perhaps there was something here in Seattle that was worth taking if you wanted to be stronger than the average person.

  I quickly took a photo of the man who, in normal cases, wouldn’t be able to run around anymore, as well as of the young woman, whose appearance, on closer inspection, could no longer be described as ordinary. She had a good camouflage, but she couldn't hide her beauty. The zoom of my camera was merciless.

  I would find out who they were, and perhaps it was precisely in them that I’d found a weakness in the Centrodynamics system. My eyes darted to the impressi
ve building into which the three had disappeared – perhaps I should start working on it right away, today. Weak spots were blocked far too quickly and those responsible were still busy with other things. After all, my mistake had to be good for something.

  The smile that was forming on my lips probably didn't reach my eyes, because in place of it, sheer hatred blazed within me and ate its way through my guts.

  Robert Tensington

  It wasn't easy for me to leave Olivia behind in my office. Especially not after I’d heard from Dark that there was a crazy woman running around the building, taking people out with a stun gun, which could’ve killed a human. Was she the one who had broken in? Was she working alone? What did she want? What was she looking for? And why had she attacked Dark? How had she even managed to get to my head of security unnoticed? I only knew him as highly focussed and untouchable. These questions were just whirling around in my head, though unfortunately, I couldn't find an adequate answer to any of them.

  To be sure that nothing would happen to Liv, I activated the additional security barrier. Nobody, except me, could enter the office unless Liv opened the door from the inside. Not even Dark. Although that was probably a misapprehension on my part. My security chief could probably get into any room, after all, he had written and installed the programmes himself. He would let nothing and nobody stop him in an emergency scenario. Nevertheless, it gave me some sort of peace of mind to know that this extraordinary woman – Olivia – was safe for the time being.

  And should Liv leave the office, I’d immediately receive a signal. All these precautions and the feeling of having to protect her irritated me enormously. Where had it come from so suddenly? Why was I reacting to her like this? Sure, Liv was a beautiful and charming woman with a captivating intellect and an engaging nature. Nevertheless, it was unusual for me, and Dark had also looked very surprised when he’d noticed how strongly his boss was attaching himself to Olivia Morgan. But I had to deal with that later; now I had to find the intruder and interrogate her.