Drew D'Amato:Bloodlines:02

by Drew D'Amato

  Cordy and Lindell did not know how to respond. He had made a point, and now the two of them questioned their own instincts.

  “I know nothing about what happened to them, we have no enemies. That is the fact you must face. There is some force out there attacking random people. Do your job, and find them.”

  The cops looked at each other. They both sensed something, but they also knew they had nothing. This man was rich, and rich people had power. Breaking this guy’s balls could come back to bite them in the ass.

  “Thank you, Mr. Wellington, we will see ourselves out,” Detective Cordy said. He handed Vlad his card. “Please give us a call when you get back into town.”

  “Sure, I want to see if you find his killer.”

  Cordy and Lindell walked toward their unmarked car.

  “What do you think?” Lindell asked.

  “He’s not guilty of it. You could see the hurt in his eyes. But I still think he knows something.”

  “Yeah, he knows something. Do you think he will come back to town?”

  “Well if he doesn’t.” Cordy opened his car door. “I think we won’t have to worry anymore about these silver bullets. Part of me wants to get the bastards behind this. But part of me never wants to see a silver bullet again.”

  Detective Cordy would get his wish. He would never hear about another silver bullet shell found on a crime scene again.

  3

  It was six o’clock in the afternoon and Vlad had everything ready for his trip. The flight was at nine, non-stop, first class, and he expected to be at Heathrow by four in the afternoon the next day. He had talked to Warburton, and Warburton told him Henderson was in fact alive and well, and still running his shop. The plan was still on. Vlad had some loose ends to tie up before his trip. He had to swing by the crematory to get Jericho’s cremains, next over to the rectory to get Pacami and then they were off. Before he made his way to the crematory, he decided to tie up the hardest loose end—saying goodbye to Jasmine.

  He drove to her house to say good-bye. She offered to drive him to the airport, but she could’t know Pacami was leaving with him. That would not make any sense at all. He told her his taxi would soon be in his driveway and he had to get going. Jasmine couldn’t understand why he still didn’t want her to come. What kind of people where hunting his cousin? Were they that thorough that there really was a risk of catching Vlad if he was in Europe for just a few days? Jasmine figured there might be a threat of people hunting them, but she thought it was more that he was just not ready for her to meet his family. That was a big sign coming all the way to Europe with him. She also felt maybe he just wanted to be alone. It was a traumatic event, and who could really be judged when going through something like that. She was not mad at him, and didn’t give him any attitude for the way he appeared to be avoiding her, but she just wanted to be with him. He could have anything from her. But he wanted to be away from her. That hurt a little, but she understood. These feelings were selfish. She really should just be concerned with him getting through this, and what he needed. If he needed some time away, so be it.

  He told her he loved her, and that he would call when he landed. He placed a long kiss on her before he made his way back to his car. In that kiss, he felt his soul escape him and enter into her.

  As he got back into his Bentley Mulsanne, he took one long look at her standing on the steps of her house. Her printed shorts, pink tank top, and her hair pulled back—she had being doing errands all day—she didn’t look like she was trying to impress anyone; but she still looked beautiful to him. As he backed out he felt a pain like a punch to his gut. A sense of forboding came over him, telling him that after this, nothing will be the same. A crossroads has been reached, and it did not allow U-turns.

  When he had turned off her street he opened the glove box and took out her sunglasses. She had asked him again if he had found them, and again he lied to her. He was going to bring them with him on his trip. They still smelled of her.

  He put them back in the glove box and then his cell phone rang. Did she some how see me grab them out of the glove compartment? He checked the phone. It was from a 212 area code. It definitely wasn’t Jasmine, but who could it be?

  “Brother,” said the voice on the line.

  “You bastard, you have taken everything.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I can do a lot worse.” He could. “So I take it, you know what happened to Jericho and Malachi?”

  “Of course I do”

  “Oh, and I also know about your girl.”

  “How?”

  “How long do you think it took Michael after he learned of your new address to tell us? Why do you think he was late coming to your house that night? We debated going right over there and finishing you off. Michael cautioned against it. He argued the risk of not much nighttime left by the time we got there, and that it would blow his cover. I agreed and told him to scope it out for us. Then I heard nothing from him the next night. He was trying to delay it. You know he would have never sold you out if you let him stay a vampire? Shit, you could have at least lied to him.”

  Those words cut Vlad deep because he knew it was true. He could have told Michael what he wanted to hear, kill Radu, and then afterward destroy the blood. He trusted his men, he didn’t manipulate them—another mistake. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  “The next night I told Ash to scope it out. He caught wind of this Jasmine O’Reilly, as she left your place. She’s pretty hot, Ash said. Michael told us, this was the new woman in your life. I know you love beautiful things, women, homes, people being disemboweled. He wanted to take her out right there as she left. Lucky for her, moments before Gabriel informed me of your plan to go to Europe. I chose not to break our cover and left for Romania as soon as possible. We were there a full day before you. I told Ash to wait behind and keep an eye on her. Does this bother you? Knowing one of my men was so close to your woman while you were away thinking you killed me. How he asked to have his fun with her. To make her one of ours, but I had mercy Vlad. I told him no.”

  Thank you Radu. It pained him to think that. Vlad growled into the phone.

  “He actually left a gift for her one morning on her car’s door handle. She mistook it for bird shit.” Radu laughed maniacally.

  Vlad almost crashed into the car in front of him. He quickly pulled into a parking lot for an In-N-Out Burger Restaurant. He got out of the car, slammed his door, and screamed, “You fuck,” into the phone with no care about the family with small children walking out of their car and into the restaurant. They all stared at him after hearing his obscenity. There was something in his eyes though that told the father he was better off not saying anything to this stranger.

  “Oh don’t be mad. I was merciful, I told you. Well actually, I just told him not to do anything because I didn’t want to ruin my trap. Then after things happened the way they did, I wanted you to believe I was dead. But now I am being merciful again. I am offering you, brother, to live your human life out the way you want to with no hindrance. I am also offering you to have your woman, with not one hair on her body touched. You just have to stay out of my way.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No, it isn’t, let me explain to you why I want to do this. I want to see the misery in your eyes as you watch mankind go to shit. I want you to live to see your failure. Killing you now will take all the fun out of it for me. I’m thinking I have maybe thirty years of watching you suffer through this pain your arrogance has caused for mankind. I want you to live through my reign.”

  “So that is the reason for you keeping me alive, but why her? Why would you allow me any bit of happiness?”

  “Because she will no longer make you happy like she does now. Everytime you look at your love, you will not see her as you see her now. You will see her as the curse of man—Eve. The one who made you sloppy, naïve, proud, and then made you fall. My victory would not be possible without the blindness she caused you. This is my way of than
king her. So what do you say Vlad, is she worth the world to you?”

  Vlad stood in the parking lot. The parking lot was silent, no cars were moving in the driveway, and anyone within an ear shot could hear his conversation. He had to make it back to his car. Also the bright sun felt like it was suffocating him. The bright sun.

  Vlad got into his car. “Radu how are you awake during the day? I know you are in America, where are you?”

  “I think we know from our last encounter that I can be awake during the day.”

  “You had a reason for that. Why are you awake now, what do you have planned?”

  “I wanted to make sure you were awake. I wanted to ask you my question.”

  “Which question is that?”

  “Is she worth the world?”

  Once in the car Vlad was too focused on the conversation to notice what the rest of his body was doing. Unwittingly he had opened the glove box, and grabbed something out of it. Vlad looked down at his hand. He was holding Jasmine’s sunglasses.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “So you will not get in my way? Because if you try anything, I will still let you live. But you will see what I do to her. As a human and as a vampire. I will make her my whore for all of eternity.”

  “No, I will not risk that. But if you do anything to her, then I will have nothing holding me back from doing anything to stop you.”

  “Well you are welcome to try, but I’d rather not deal with it. In fact, I offer you an open invitation if you ever want to become one of my men.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Really, you might want to join the club once babies are rounded up for meals.”

  “You will never get that powerful. Someone will stop you.”

  “No, I’m going to start where I can touch as many different important people as possible. Then they will spread the disease. Quality, not quantity. By the time the world realizes there are vampires, there will be too many of us to do anything about it.”

  “How long do you think the humans will allow that until they rebel? They will succeed. Over time, man always triumphs over tyranny.”

  “How long do you think the humans will have? I will make vampires out of the astute scientists in the field of cloning, and we will eventually produce humans only for food. They will never get a chance to fight or revolt, because no one would grow to the age of walking. I no longer will need them to reproduce for themselves. The world will be nothing left but vampires and clones for blood. And if I die, everyone dies. I will be God. I am time eternal, no one lives past me.”

  Radu hung up with a frenzied laugh.

  Vlad sat in his car frozen. He hadn’t really grasped the reign Radu had planned had Vlad died. Radu had spent centuries planning this out. There was no idea of clones three hundred years ago. Vampires had a parasite-host relationship, and Radu would always have had to keep some humans alive to live. The humans kept alive could one day rise up, had Vlad died. But now if cloning was eventually perfected, this world Radu dreamed of was very possible—an Earth dedicated to Radu. Vlad was their last hope. There was no chance without him.

  SIX

  1

  Pacami relaxed in his first class seat in the 707. It was the best flight he had ever taken in his life. He put his feet up and opened up Face Lake, a novel he bought at the terminal bookstore. He was comfortable. For Vlad though, it was one of the worst flights he had ever been on. He didn’t have any problem bringing aboard Jericho’s cremains. It was not a liquid, and the plastic container did not set off the metal detector. He had the death certificate with him and that was all the paperwork that was necessary. However, the seat being comfortable still didn’t compare to a private jet, and Vlad found himself far more nervous than the last time he traveled to Europe.

  When he picked up Pacami he told him about the call from Radu. Pacami could not even imagine the fate Vlad had described to him. They could not lose. Pacami thought of one word—Antichrist. It wasn’t the way the scriptures had described it, but Radu would fit the role. Only this wasn’t prophecy and there would not be a battle of Armageddon where good conquered all.

  He had prayed throughout the day. He had always understood God couldn’t answer all the prayers, and sometimes he wondered if he could answer any, or would that contradict this idea of free will? But if there was any prayer to answer, he thought this one deserved it.

  Pacami had asked Vlad, what they would do if the Crusaders had given him the real Blood. If they had been confident that they would kill Vlad that night at the airport and then get the Blood back. Then what option did they have?

  “We have to lay all our cards on the table then,” Vlad told him. Vlad explained that he would tell the Crusaders everything; that he was Vlad the Implaer, exorcised back into a human, but he had made a mistake. Radu was still out there. He would tell them what his brother was planning, how to best attack it, and hopefully even get the chance to lead the attack. He would try to work with them. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  Vlad wasn’t that worried about that option. What are they going to do instead, kill me? I’m a human now, I’m on their team. Throughout the flight Vlad started to welcome that possibility. If they killed Radu, he would have no problem getting back with Jasmine.

  Throughout the flight Pacami had thought about another possibility. The luxury of first class had worn off. He started to feel anxious like on his first trip to Saigon. He was going to war—he might die and they might lose. His mind raced with all the contingencies. He put his paperback down. He couldn’t concentrate. There was one thought that came to him that he had to be sure of before they got any further. He had to ask Vlad.

  “Vlad, we have to defeat him right, no matter the cost?”

  Vlad turned away from the window. “Yes, but don’t tell me of some dramatic self-sacrifice you came up with. Don’t think like that.”

  “I’m sorry. It is a form of sacrifice, but not from me.”

  “Well don’t worry. If I have to, I will give my life to kill Radu. I have always fought that way, why change now?”

  “I’m thinking of another sacrifice you might have to make.”

  Vlad’s face got more focused. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we plan to get the Blood and bring it back to Malachi right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But we have no idea what the situation will be like when we get close to the Blood. We are both sure they probably won’t trade for it, but if we can get just an audience with it, close enough to it, we can take it from them. But we are both human. We might be in a situation where we can’t get out alive with it. Never mind bring it back to Los Angeles.”

  “Yes, I guess that is in the cards. Are you asking me if I would drink it and give up any chance to be a mortal again?”

  “Give up any chance to have Jasmine?”

  Vlad turned away from Pacami and looked out the window for a minute.

  “Maybe I can become human again. Maybe if you drink it for a good reason, God will forgive you.”

  “I can’t count on that, and neither can you. Even though you are doing it for the best reason imaginable, you are still turning to the Blood of the Betrayer for help and not the Lord. The Templars thought they were doing the Lord’s work, too. They did it for the sake of Christianity, for the Holy Land. They did not have evil intentions, yet they were not able to get the exorcism to work either.”

  “Maybe they did it wrong.” Vlad still stared out the window.

  “They did it the same way they did it with the peasants and slaves—the same way I did it with you. Vlad, I give you my word that if it comes down to you having to drink the blood, I will try the exorcism again once Radu is dead. But we can’t expect it to work. You have to make this decision believing you’ll never become human again. Would you do it?”

  Vlad turned back to Pacami. “The world can fight for itself. I covered its ass long enough.”

  Pacami sat there disappointed. Vlad took out an oversized pair of w
omen’s sunglasses from his jacket. He held them in his hands.

  “Are those hers?” Pacami asked, and Vlad just nodded his head. “You can’t give her up can you?”

  “She is the reason I am doing all of this.”

  “I know, but Vlad isn’t that selfish? This is the world we are talking about here. Besides you know what will happen.”

  “We don’t know that for sure. The humans can still defeat him, and I can still have her. He can’t survive a nuke.”

  “Even if humans do kill him. By the time it gets to that point—the world knows as a group that vampires exist, and they have used nuclear weapons—the Earth would have already paid such a cost.”

  “Just don’t ask that of me Pacami. Don’t ask me to give up on love, to ever love again. Because that’s what this sacrifice asks—eternity without love. I would rather be dead.”

  Vlad turned back toward the window.

  Pacami felt for Vlad, he really did. He saw how Vlad did everything he could to save the world and destroy Radu. He was not evil. Most people were not evil because they did not have the power to be evil, but they would if they could. Vlad had all the power in the world, and he gave it all up. He just wanted love.

  How could Pacami ask this man who had already given up so much, to give up more?

  “If someone has to drink the Blood, I’ll do it,” Pacami said.

  “What?” Vlad turned back to him shocked.

  “I’ll drink the Blood.”

  “Would Father Montes perform the exorcism to get you back?”

  “It wouldn’t work, I would have drank it willingly. Then I will make you a vampire, and when Radu is dead, you can kill me.”