Vampire Innocent (Book 9): An Introduction To Paranormal Diplomacy

by Cox, Matthew S.

  Katy goes to shut the door, but pauses. She swipes my purse, then shuts the door, locks it, and drops the key into her little black handbag. My purse, she hangs on a stone column quite well out of my reach from the cage. “Relax, sweetie. We’re not going to steal from you, but I’m sure you’ve got a telephone in there.”

  Smiling, Jacob lowers the gun, tilts it sideways, and flicks the safety on.

  “Hey, what are you doing with a gun? This is England, right? Aren’t they illegal here?”

  “My dear…” He drops the small pistol in his jacket pocket. “We are mystics. We flagrantly disregard the laws of physics and reality. Why would you expect us to obey any laws?”

  Katy waves at me. “Make yourself comfortable, hon. I’ll bring you some food in a little while.”

  The pair walk off out of sight around the giant pile of old furniture, seeming pleased with themselves as if they’d already won whatever war they keep talking about. I assume they’re referring to a conflict between their sect and the Aurora Aurea.

  I grab the bars on the door and rattle it. They’re fairly beefy, three-quarters of an inch thick. Definitely not a dog kennel. I can mule-kick this off as soon as my powers come online. Hopefully, the angle of these basement windows will hurry it up and bring on the darkness.

  And dammit!

  Again, I try to sneak into a place during the day, and again I get locked up.

  I’m going to develop a complex.

  Grr. Thinking of Sophia locked in a cell alone gets me fuming mad. To blow off steam, I give escape by brute force my best shot. Yeah, doesn’t do much good at normal Sarah strength. Since I am apparently stuck, I sit cross-legged, elbows on my knees, chin in my hands, and fume.

  Jacob thought Klepto’s claws hurt.

  Wait until he sees mine.

  21

  The Basement of Happiness

  Locked in a cage in the basement of a big ol’ manor house in England isn’t the most uncomfortable thing.

  Could be worse. I could be stuck in a living room surrounded by elderly distant relatives we see once every five years or so having my cheeks pinched every ten minutes. Compared to visiting my Aunt Jody’s mother—and her side of the extended family—when I was like nine, give me the cage. At least it’s quiet down here. And no claw-like fingers are trying to sneak attack my face. Sierra was two then, probably doesn’t remember it well or know why the scent of ‘old person’ terrifies her at a subconscious level. Nothing against the elders, but bring an adorable toddler within arms’ reach of attention-deprived seniors and they wind up basically playing tackle football for cuddle time.

  One might think I should be having a freak out, but I’m too pissed.

  A big reason my predominant emotion is anger rather than fear is knowing Sophia’s not in any imminent danger. Gomez and Morticia want to keep her from helping Asher—exactly the same thing I tried to do, only for the opposite reason. I didn’t want Sophia to get hurt. These two want the Aurora Aurea to go extinct. Am I a dumbass for trying to prevent my kid sister from getting into a fight with a murderous ghost?

  I mean, what logical person would think sending a ten-year-old to stop a serial killer is a good idea, even if he is already dead?

  The bad part about having time and silence is, it makes me think about Martin Collier. Not like I knew the guy at all. But it’s surreal to be in the same room with someone, everything normal, then two days later, he’s dead. No guarantee allowing Sophia to help them would have saved his life, but guilt still gnaws on me in the silence. Not to mention Klepto. The little kitten tried her damndest to give me an opening to escape and possibly paid for it with her life.

  Who shoots a kitten? Seriously!

  I stare at my purse, dangling six feet off the ground near the opposite wall. Every time my phone beeps with an incoming text, it drives me a little further into a pit of fury. My parents are either going utterly batshit crazy at my lack of replying, or they’re assuming I had to shut the phone off for an airplane ride. No amount of sticking my arm past the bars and attempting to ‘Jedi’ my purse into my hand works.

  Hmm. Could Sophia do it?

  Probably with practice. After all, she rewound time to re-do a botched argument with Mom.

  I look around at my enclosure. It’s basically a tiny jail cell. A half-inch thick metal plate above and below me, and bars all around. Seems old. I kinda wonder if it might’ve been used to hold criminals in an era before organized police. Sitting fifteen feet away from a medieval torture rack is probably pushing my thoughts back in time. And yeah, it is kinda creepy down here. Basements tend to give off weird vibes. If not for a locked, barred door in my way, I’d totally get the hell out of here.

  But, I’m stuck being stared at by who knows how many ghosts who aren’t thrilled at my invasion of their territory. Yeah, same here. I’m not happy to invade it. Having dealt with a couple ghosts—and being a ‘creature of the night’ myself—it’s not too nerve wracking to be trapped in a haunted basement. I’m definitely getting the sense something is staring at me with malicious intent, but no ability to act on it.

  Kinda like the old woman who used to live across the street from my grade school. Far as I know, she hated the sound of children screaming at recess, and spent the whole time glaring at us from her porch.

  Anyway. I rattle the cage door again, sigh, and shoot an uneasy look at the rack.

  It’s dusty enough to support the claim they really don’t use it on people. If it works as a paranormal amplifier for their magic, it must mean it’s been exposed to suffering and/or death. And whoa, is that an iron maiden behind it? I didn’t think those things actually existed. It’s gotta be a prop. Half the metal implements hanging on the wall above me, I don’t want to know what they’re for. Hooks, clamps, giant shears… yeah.

  These people have serious issues.

  Grr. Seems I’ve really turned into the precocious orphan sent to live with rich relatives from one of those movies. Found a nefarious plot, got caught, and ended up kidnapped. I wonder if this is how Penny from Inspector Gadget feels. She gets kidnapped so damn much it’s gotta be merely as annoying as the bus being six minutes late for the fortieth time in a row. Then again, it’s a kid’s show, so they’re never going to let anything truly bad happen to her. I’m also a vampire, so it’s not like I can die again.

  Well, technically, I can. It’s merely a lot more difficult to kill me than most. Except during the day.

  Cheek mushed into my fist, I dwell on my theoretical mortality. Exactly how vulnerable is my body during the ‘offline’ time? Aurélie sounded pretty convinced any injury I suffer while exposed to the sunlight would become permanent, and if ordinarily fatal, would destroy me. Not saying I distrust her, but she’s also not an Innocent. And we are rare. I’d ask Charlotte, but she probably wouldn’t know and it would be as awkward as asking a little child to contemplate mortality.

  Faint jingling from behind the wall of furniture derails my train of thought.

  I stare at the spot, wondering what sort of phantasmal creep show is about to jump out and ambush me. Even though I’m a vampire and have ‘seen some shit,’ there’s something about being trapped in a cage unable to run away from creepy noises. It’s probably a rat dragging a bottle opener across the floor. It can’t be Katy coming downstairs to bring me a tray of food. Not unless she’s put on shoes with tiny bells. She totally doesn’t seem the type to wear those. Then again, Jacob did not strike me as the type of guy to go commando, so who knows?

  The noise tracks from the left, coming closer and closer to the end of the furniture wall.

  My mind races for a way out. If the thing coming for me is solid, the cage will protect me as much as trap me. But if it’s not…

  Anxiety builds to the point I almost scream.

  … and Klepto trots into view carrying a key.

  I gasp, grab the bars on the door, and try—unsuccessfully—to stick my head outside the cage. “You sneaky little…”

&
nbsp; She drops the key on the floor in front of me, sits back on her haunches, and mews.

  I scoop her up, pull her inside, and hug her. “You are awesome!”

  Tribble.

  “OMG, I thought you died.”

  The kitten gives me a look of ‘bitch, please.’

  I laugh, wipe away a few joy tears, and reach for the key. Considering she opens locks by staring at them and didn’t simply open this cage, my guess is it has some magic in it. Enchanted mini-prisons suggest these mystics expect to keep creatures or magical beings capable of opening locks by staring at them prisoner. Yeah, my life is weird.

  “Can you get the key to where Sophia is, too?”

  Tribble.

  Klepto disappears in a brief flash.

  Might as well wait for her to return. How sick is it this cage is the nicest thing they could’ve put me in down here? I could have been stuck standing, chained to the wall. Stuffed in an iron maiden, a steel bathtub thing with only a hole for my head to poke out, the rack… and I’m pretty sure one of those giant chairs in the pile has spikes all over it.

  “What the hell is wrong with these people?”

  Okay… collecting macabre stuff doesn’t necessarily mean someone is psychotic. They didn’t use anything torturous on me. I would’ve rather been locked in a bedroom, but this abduction is still more comfortable than my last one.

  Klepto reappears in a brief flicker, standing on top of an old-timey copper skeleton key big enough to legit beat someone to death with. She snorts and grunts, struggling to drag it toward me. Spinning gears in the handle end click on the concrete floor, and look equally as purposeless as the gears in the door.

  At least these mystics are consistent with a theme, right?

  Okay, screw it. Don’t care if the sun is still up. We’re not sitting here all day. Solitary confinement drives hardened criminals nuts. There’s no way in hell I’m letting Sophia sit in the vault a minute longer.

  I unlock the cage door and crawl out. Klepto, not noticing me since she’s still trying to drag the mammoth key, jump-squeaks when I pick her up and hold her nose to nose. “You are the best little fuzzball ever. Can you do me one more tiny favor?”

  Tribble.

  “Steal Jacob’s little gun and lose it somewhere outside in the back yard.”

  She tribbles again, and vanishes out of my hands.

  Sweet. Let no one ever claim a multipurpose Swiss Army kitten is ever silly.

  My skin tingles on contact with the giant key. It’s kinda like licking the contacts of a nine-volt battery, only my hand instead of my tongue. I’d call it weird, but it’s kinda ordinary compared to a teleporting cat. After recovering my purse and slinging it over my shoulder, I grab my phone. Hate to say it, but the parents have to wait.

  I dial Asher’s number, but it doesn’t even ring. The heck? No signal. But text messages had been dinging in for the maybe half hour I spent sitting in the cage. Only… no. Not text messages. The dings came from network drop warnings and reconnect notifications. Basements, even giant ones like this, shouldn’t cut off cell signal. Gotta be magic.

  Okay, whatever. Would have been nice to have some backup for our escape, but it’s not an option. Neither is staying here. As much as I really want to grab Katy and Jacob and smack their heads together, getting away is more important. Hey, if the ordinary non-vampire non-magic-using twelve-year-old from the Victorian books can bring down an international jewel-smuggling operation and two corrupt members of Parliament, I should be able to escape a manor house unnoticed with my sister while offline.

  Or so I hope.

  22

  The Difference of Night and Day

  Jacob and Katy certainly seemed like a pair of villains from a kid’s movie.

  Maybe a PG-13 one, but still. Hopefully, they’ll make the classic mistake of overconfidence, too. Sophia’s behind a giant, enchanted vault door and ‘the older kid sister’ is stuck in the basement. Here’s hoping they forgot about the kitten. Come to think of it, if the cage had an enchantment so Klepto couldn’t zap it open, might it be able to hold me, even when I’m online?

  Eek. Don’t want to think about it. The belief I could kick the door off as soon as it became dark kept me from panicking. A delay comparable to feeling like I’m stuck in traffic is a lot different from a true sense of being captive. Not sure I’d have been as calm without expecting to be able to break out as soon as the sun went down.

  More motivation not to get caught on the way out.

  As soon as the kitten returns from disposing of Jacob’s pistol, I sneak up to the top of the basement stairs and peek under the door. Two women, neither of whom are Katy, work in the kitchen, starting dinner preparations most likely. Klepto disappears off my shoulder. A moment later, a crash comes from the pantry—cans and boxes falling to the floor.

  “Blimey. Damn that old haunt,” mutters the older of the two women. “Makin’ a mess of it again.”

  The women hurry to the left, disappearing through a doorway. Both scold someone named ‘Murray’ for knocking things over, as if a poltergeist was as routine as a mischievous cat. Wow. This house…

  Anyway, opportunity has arrived.

  I slip out of the basement stairs and hurry to the hall. The layout is mildly confusing, but it hadn’t been too long ago they marched me downstairs at gunpoint. One small wrong turn later, I find the stairs and creep up to the second floor. Maybe it would be smarter of me to flee while I’m on the ground floor and near windows, but abandoning Sophia here is not happening. She might not be in imminent danger, but who knows what these kooky mystics would do if they discover me gone before I can get back here with Asher and the other mystics. So, yeah. I’m not leaving this house without my sister.

  Swear on my dead hamster Wilbur, if anyone sneaks up on me, they’re getting walloped over the head by a six-pound key.

  The path to the large sitting room containing the warded vault is eerily clear, no sign of Katy or Jacob anywhere. Feels too easy, but maybe they really are overconfident. They sure seemed to celebrate winning that mystic ‘war’ of theirs as soon as they locked me in the cage.

  Clinging to the huge key like a tiny club, I sneak along the corridor in a constant state of twisting side to side, watching for an ambush. The room is empty as well, so I slip in, shut the door, and run to the false window curtains, yanking them open.

  The door and all its moving, spinning, whirring parts is a mesmerizing nightmare of metal. I stand there clutching the key and staring at this mess of cogs and gears, unable to find a keyhole. The key is three times the size of the handle at the center of the door. Finally, one of the larger gears, half solid, half hollow, rotates enough for the solid part to stop blocking the keyhole. It’s high center on the door, right about where a peephole would normally be.

  I heft the key in both hands and stuff the end in before the gear can rotate back over it.

  Every mechanism in the door stops moving the instant the key hits the back end of the socket.

  “Eep!” yells Sophia.

  The damn key doesn’t want to turn in either direction. Crap! What am I doing wrong? Wait… this is magic. Maybe the key only needs to be in the socket? After all, the gears stopped moving and something must have happened inside the cell to make my sister yelp.

  I grasp the handle, and rotate it down a quarter turn.

  It works!

  Pulling the huge metal door open is a bit of a task. Okay, so I am on the smaller side of average—but still quite within a normal size range. No one calls me ‘the short girl.’ Having only my ordinary pre-vampire strength at the moment, I’m not budging this door one-armed. So, I grab the knob in both hands, brace a foot on the wall, and strain.

  The four-inch-thick copper-and-brass door eases out into the room, exposing a stone-walled chamber the size of a big closet. Weird hand-brushed writing in black ink covers the interior. Sophia, dressed except for her shoes, sits on a pile of blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals. Aww, they tri
ed to make solitary confinement in a nightmarish cell as sweet as possible.

  Her nightgown lay wadded up on top of her shoes near the door.

  She stares at me for two seconds, then leaps to her feet and runs into a hug. Sophia’s shaking, but surprisingly, doesn’t cry. She whimpers a little, but appears frightened of making too much noise.

  “Shh,” I whisper. “Stay quiet until we’re out of here.”

  “’Kay.”

  Sophia hurriedly slips her shoes on while I stuff her nightgown into my purse.

  “The words and stuff on the walls were glowing blue, but went dark.”

  I take her hand and lead the way to the only door. “Probably when I put the key in.”

  Hall’s still clear, so I hurry out, a little less concerned at being quiet. Jacob’s gun ought to be keeping the rose bushes out back company, so running away is now a viable option. I’m feeling pretty hopeful—until we reach the corner out in the hall.

  Katy and Jacob come around the other corner at the opposite side of the house roughly the same time we do. Crap! They must have sensed the ward on the cell shut down. Jacob’s a step behind Katy. She and I are equidistant from the stairs to the first floor in the middle of the house. Like a scene out of an Old West movie, we have a staredown. I could hear a pin drop on carpet. Or a tiny kitten’s hiss.

  Which Klepto obligingly provides.

  Jacob stuffs his hand in his suit jacket pocket and makes a constipated face.

  Hah. No gun for you. Step left.

  Confident I can outrun a woman in high heels, I sprint for the stairs. Sophia’s shorter stride isn’t a noticeable problem as fear has lit a bonfire under her butt. For a second, I appear to be winning the race against Katy.

  Then the bitch cheats.

  She jumps forward like a bad movie edit, instantaneously going from like fifty feet away to standing at the top of the stairs ready to jiu-jitsu me into another pretzel. Annoyed at the loss of his pistol, but undeterred, Jacob stomps toward us with intent to grab.