by Tanja Neise
The next photo I got my hands on depicted a man who also resembled Robert like an identical twin. This supposed twin had a hairstyle from the fifties of the twentieth century, called a quiff. The small, square, black-and-white photograph from another time looked as if it would crumble right between my hands. Carefully, I put it back in the book.
And so it went on. There had to be over twenty photos, most of them showing Robert or one of his doppelgangers, and on each of them you could clearly see that it was a shot from another age. They had definitely not been photoshopped.
What did this mean? How could it be that all of Robert's ancestors looked exactly the same as him?
Robert Tensington
Sally's trail hadn't been hard to find. Dark had quickly found clues as to which direction the kidnapper had gone with his sister. There were a few myths that were told about vampires which had definitely sprung from erroneous belief; some others were true. One of them was that if a vampire had drunk the blood of a human being or a vampire, he or she could sense them better. Even from afar. Dark had fed on Sally, and accordingly, he was able to filter out her trail, her smell, among millions of others. The woman who had kidnapped Dark's sister couldn't theoretically know that, yet we had to be on our guard. Maybe she had insider knowledge from somewhere.
Nevertheless, she must definitely have a plan, because the trail in question led Dark and myself to the old industrial area of Seattle. Had I been interested in setting someone up, I would have lured them right here.
“What do you mean, Dark – are there any more life-wearies involved, or is she working alone?” My whispers were barely audible to human ears.
Dark's face showed the expression of highest concentration, then he shook his head. “I think she’s alone. I can't smell any other people. However, Sally and the woman's scents are very faint.”
We had discovered motion detectors and cameras everywhere. The woman was well equipped, considering the fact that she was apparently working alone. This was clearly typical military equipment. The highest quality and the newest the market had to offer. Something wasn't right here – it didn't quite add up. Maybe she would call for reinforcements as soon as she let her trap snap shut. And then the vampire held in the Centrodynamics building would be the least of my problems.
“What goddamn bullshit!” Dark was already running off when I only slowly came to understand why my head of security had got so upset. “She’s been given an advance warning. I missed one of the motion detectors. Sorry, Boss! We have to go in. Sally’s hidden somewhere at the end of the hall. Look for a room that's hermetically sealed in some way.” We must have triggered one of the sensors without noticing it. Dark's fine hearing had probably picked up on something that had remained hidden from me. On the way to the industrial area, we’d already agreed that the kidnapper should not be killed under any circumstances. Because we had to urgently find out who was behind it, and if she was working alone, how and why she had become aware of us.
We walked silently over the grounds and paid no attention to sensors and cameras. The woman had already been warned anyway. Now we had to be fast. We had to get Sally out of here before any reinforcement arrived.
I could only see Dark in front of me; I saw how he climbed up the roof like a cat and gave me a sign from there. I was supposed to go in and distract the enemy; Dark would then take care of her. I trusted Dark more than anyone else on the planet and so I opened the door, without knowing what to expect.
The hall lay sombre and silent in front of me. Once again I cursed my handicap and wished for my powers back. I missed them at moments like this, like a human missed a hand that had been cut off. I didn’t detect much. It smelled musty, like old oil and dust.
I hastily stepped into the room with the typical high ceilings of an industrial building and let the door quietly close and lock. I pushed myself, metre by metre, closer to the rear wall. Where was Dark? There was no sound at all. I was aware that I was sneaking around on display. With the equipment that the woman had, she certainly had heat sensors, infrared cameras and night vision devices with her. I consoled myself with the fact that she would’ve eliminated me long ago if she’d come after me. What did she want?
When I got to the back wall, I could detect Sally's smell as well. I was damn close to her and located a door in the darkness that my eyes were slowly getting used to, obviously leading to a cold storage facility. She had to be in there. A very well-chosen prison. I courageously reached for the metal lever and unlocked the hermetic seal; then I heard a soft click next to the hissing of the decades-old hydraulics and I recognised my own grave error. I was still trying to push the massive door back as hard as I could, when the night was lit up with a blazing flash of lightning and an enormous explosion went off around me. I flew through the air and landed hard, all the air pressed out of my lungs.
The smell of burnt flesh was then the only thing that still gripped my senses – the smell of my burnt flesh. Pain consumed me and lacerated my nerves in its merciless grasp. Shortly thereafter, unconsciousness wrapped me in a protective blanket and I gratefully sank into a deep darkness.
Anne Rumsfield
Everything was working exactly as I had planned. All I had to do was wait until the vampire finally showed up. Sometime, the hunger would drive him here; after all, I had interrupted him before during his feeding. But when I looked through the night-vision device, which was integrated in my small special glasses, I saw a completely different image than I had expected.
Centrodynamics’ top boss was sneaking into the building right at that moment and purposefully heading for the back wall. What was he doing here? Was he in cahoots with the vampire? He was definitely not one of them, because I’d found several photos of him on the Internet that had been taken during the day. Vampires didn't die when they were exposed to sunlight; instead, they suffered, as a human would if they were to hold their hand in very hot water. And he couldn't really be a sympathiser of these hideous creatures, otherwise he would never in his life have agreed to house the captured vampire in his company building. Or was this some kind of false trail? To the outside world, he appeared as the committed, honourable citizen. Was he, in reality, trying to undermine the human system in order to gain even more power himself? Did he perhaps want the prisoner to make him immortal? Such crazy people were supposed to have existed before. Unbelievable! He was up to something, otherwise he wouldn't be here.
I had learned to cope with unexpected situations, yet I was irritated about how I should proceed, in the face of this new development. Should I warn Tensington? Then I would risk being discovered if the guy was here with the vampire. But if I let him open the cold storage facility door, there probably wouldn't be much left of him. I was astonished to find that I still had a conscience, although I hadn't felt it for a long time.
I had made a mistake that I became aware of the moment someone tapped on my shoulder from behind. When I turned around and looked into an angry face, there was a deafening bang, and the next thing I knew, I was caught up in the middle of a combat situation.
I fought with everything at my disposal but I had no chance. Vampires were faster than I had ever thought possible, and with the element of surprise on the other side, it was quickly clear who would win this unequal fight. The guy must have been trained right down to the last detail, exactly like me; no, even better. Because with one grab he had checkmated me – a grab that I didn’t yet know and couldn’t have foreseen. He had quickly put the shackles on me. He knew that my feet were at least as dangerous as my hands, because he tied them together, too.
“So, Lady, now we’re going to another floor. If anything serious has happened to anyone down there, I'll make sure you get what you deserve.” Quickly, he grabbed my waist and jumped onto the ground with me as if it were only a few centimetres, not ten metres, we had to cross. The vampire threw me onto one of the heaps of fabric without giving me a second glance, and ran to the other end of the hall at a hell of a pace. What woul
d he do to me? I’d been vaccinated with the serum; he definitely couldn’t drink from me. But I knew that there were other things he could do to me. Things that made my blood freeze in my veins.
I could detect how he spoke quiet words into his boss’s ear, but he didn't move anymore. I couldn’t tell from my positioning whether he was still breathing. Collateral damage – that was all it was – I tried to convince myself. Nevertheless, it was not so easy to accept that I might have killed a man who was perhaps innocent. I had to consider the whole picture, and what was important was that there would be no more vampires on this planet. Not for experimental purposes, either. They were unpredictable and no one should be harmed by them anymore. I had learned from my father's fate. Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough and strong enough to defeat this giant.
With a terrible roar, the dark vampire tore the door to the cold storage facility off its hinges and disappeared into the darkness. Shortly thereafter, he came out of the room again, his face angrily distorted. The woman I had kidnapped was in his arms. Her limbs and head hung down, lifeless.
My guilty conscience swept over me without warning. If she died, it’d be my fault. Just like with Tensington, this had not been my intention. The detonation was intended only to take out the vampire, not the human; no one else should have been hurt. Had I calculated the thickness of the door incorrectly? Theoretically, nothing should have happened to Sally Michaels in the cold storage facility.
Olivia Morgan
I was still wondering whether the pictures didn't show Robert after all. Perhaps they were very good fakes? That was the simplest of all explanations and also the most sensible, at least that's how it seemed to me. They had to be forgeries or, rather, photos that had been taken in some kind of studio, perhaps a stunt. Something like that, and then they’d been trimmed and cropped to make them look old. Of course. Anything else wouldn’t make sense. Why did I let it fool me like that? Nevertheless, the smile I wanted to conjure up on my face in view of this interpretation did not appear. When I heard a rumble at the lift door at the same moment, I quickly packed the photographs back into the book, but the far-fetched explanation was causing butterflies in my stomach. Things somehow didn't quite fit together, but I didn't have time to get to the bottom of the mystery. This would have to wait for now.
I hastily put Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet back on the shelf and hurried to get out of the room before anyone noticed what I’d discovered here. I almost felt as if I’d been caught with something forbidden. This was all madness; after all, I hadn't been snooping around. But despite the explanations I gave myself, a dull feeling remained inside me.
I hurried out of the study and entered the hallway at the same time as Dark – he was holding Sally in his arms. She was dirty and smeared with blood; a soft groan could be heard from her. My heart stopped for a short beat.
“Oh my God, what happened to her?” I immediately ran as fast as I could to my friend and carefully put my hand on her sooty cheek. It was freezing cold. My stomach contracted.
“It’s all okay, Liv,” but the words only left Sally's mouth as a whisper.
I didn't believe a word she said. “Dark, we have to take her to one of the bedrooms. The boys are lying on the couch and it's probably better if they don't see their mum like that,” I said.
“You're right.” Dark went ahead and laid her on a bed covered in lemon yellow satin bed linen while I ran into the bathroom and fetched towels and a wet cloth.
“It looks worse than it is,” Sally tried to reassure me as I stepped towards the bed. I handed the utensils to Dark, who cleaned the wound and revealed a deep cut under all the blood. I felt sick. Not due to the sight, but rather the concern for my friend.
“It does look very bad, Sally!” I, who had no practical experience, could see that the wound had to be sutured, otherwise Sally would probably bleed to death. “We need to get you to a hospital – a doctor should definitely take a look at that, and they’ll definitely have to stitch you up. You might need a booster of your vaccinations, too. Who knows what bacteria you’ve come into contact with.”
“No way,” resounded from Dark and Sally's mouths at the same time, as if the two had agreed on it beforehand.
“Alright – no doctor, no vaccination. Everything’s alright and you want to go through it alone. I get it. Do you at least want to tell me how this happened?”
“Later!” Dark's answer was more a growl than a word. His face was distorted. Was he in pain?
“Did something happen to you, too, Mister Higgs, or may I call you Dark?”
“As you’ve already said, everything is fine! Dark is perfectly sufficient. I'm okay.”
I was slowly losing my patience. “Fine, but Sally needs to be treated properly. That should be disinfected as soon as possible. Robert must have... Wait a minute, where's Robert?”
“Still in the car. Spencer’s taking care of him. I'll go and fetch him in a minute.” Dark looked at me as if I was an annoying insect, but I just ignored that. I wasn’t going to let this go that quickly. If I’d already been dragged into this, then I wanted to know what I was up against.
“What does you mean fetch him? Can't he come up on his own?” My voice was a whisper at the last syllables, when I realised that Sally was probably not the only one injured. What had happened there? Had there been a shooting? A car accident? Had the men killed someone?
Sally's hand lay on the man's arm to calm him down. “We can trust her Davy.”
He answered her with a snort and I wondered if I wanted to be trusted at all. As soon as I knew more, I made myself liable to prosecution if there were illegal things going on. The curiosity that was spreading its wings, however, was of a different opinion.
“I'm going to bring Robert up now, but please don't be scared, Liv.” He did seem to have some feelings, otherwise he wouldn't have said that, I thought. And, turning to Sally, he added: “If you’re wrong, you know what has to happen.”
Very quietly, so quietly that I wasn't sure I had understood the words correctly, Sally replied: “I know.”
After he had left the room, I restlessly paced back and forth in front of the bed. “Should I call a doctor?”
“No, Liv. We can take care of it even without a quack. We have to manage.”
“Why? Did one of them kill the kidnapper?”
“What?” She looked at me in disbelief.
“Well, you're making such a fuss that I’ve suspected something’s gone terribly wrong.”
“No, nobody’s been killed. To be honest, things have been well taken care of.” She laughed quietly, but you could sense a certain hardness to it.
This couldn't be happening! My friend must have been in shock, otherwise she wouldn't laugh about such a thing. A kidnapping would be enough reason to catapult all those involved into the labour camp for a long time or even worse – into a rehabilitation programme. Was I really serious about this? How well did I actually know Sally? “Please don't get upset, little one,” she tried to calm me down.
“I shouldn't get upset? When the police get wind of it, we’ll all be in deep trouble. We’ll end up in the rehabilitation programme.” Once I’d read a message about the programme. It was an anonymous report that had disappeared from the Internet two days later. The government had erased it, removed all traces and only in the memories of some who had read it did it still exist. It was undoubtedly cruel there. The prisoners were treated like animals and women were abused in every way imaginable. Whoever came out alive was no longer the person they had been before. Not rehabilitated, but mad, only an empty shell.
“Shh, don't say that. Neither Dark nor Mr Tensington will let that happen. Trust us.”
“You believe that!” She looked at me indignantly, but said nothing to that.
Us? Since when were the three of them a team? Okay, Dark was related to Sally, but was it less dangerous because of that? Was it for that reason not criminal? Not illegal? My head buzzed when I thought of Dark, his dark aura,
his unapproachability. He looked damn aggressive, just like I imagined someone who worked in criminal circles. He frightened me, especially in this situation. Nevertheless, my antenna remained calm and showed no present danger. Perhaps they no longer worked and my prayers had been answered. Finally free from those panic attacks. Today, though, I wanted to be sure that there was really no danger, but there was no green light coming on and signalling that to me.
“I’ll go to the front and open the door for them,” I explained to Sally, who was still looking at me as if she couldn't understand why I was acting like this. I had to get out of the room because I had the feeling that I was being drawn into something from which there was no escape, even without my antenna signal.
As soon as I arrived in the corridor, I could see the lift doors opening again. Spencer and Dark each had one of Robert’s legs and arms in their hands and they carried him into the apartment. They headed purposefully towards a locked door. I hurried to get there ahead of the other three and opened it. Robert's head hung down lifelessly and the need to support him made my movements look jerky. The lighting worked just as it did in the other rooms, with motion detectors, and when the light shone discreetly from the walls I could see the beauty of the room. However, my gaze did not linger on the antiquarian furniture, but flitted to the man I had kissed what felt like an eternity ago. Was that really just a few hours ago? Robert's scent hung everywhere in the air; it impregnated the room and not only took my breath away, but also affected my mind. When I saw that he was a chalky white colour, an iron fist wrapped itself around my heart. He must have lost a lot of blood, but I couldn't see a single wound at first glance. At least, nothing was visible on his head. The rest of his body was hidden under a blanket. As soon as he was put down on the bed, I lifted the large piece of cloth and saw the gaping wound below his shoulder. Around his thigh, his trousers were torn and showed, likewise, a dark, wet surface.
