“The only way for you to help me is to get yourself safe. If I’m worrying about you, I risk ruining everything.”
Luckily Angela knew that I didn’t think she was a nuisance and that I just wanted to protect her life and her freedom. She sighed.
“Fine. But I won’t go to sleep until I hear from you. If I don’t have any news by the time the sun rises, I promise you that I’ll come back with the police, and we’ll put stakes through all their hearts as they sleep.”
“Later, then,” I said, getting out of the car without truly believing that I’d see her again.
I watched her leave before I walked the block to the house. I found a bush across the street where I could hide from the guard vampires, a security detail that seemed to have doubled for the occasion. Since this was a residential neighborhood and there had to have been hundreds of people in the area, I wasn’t afraid that my heartbeat would betray me. Forcing myself to calm down, I sat behind the bush and looked up at the sky, watching the moon and stars, to try to occupy myself during the most dreadful wait of my life.
I never read horoscopes, and I knew nothing about tides since I didn’t live near the ocean. Because of that, I was surprised to note that the moon was full. It was a bit of a cliché for the Elders, as though by coincidence, to have picked this particular and supernaturally reputed night for the execution. If they believed in some sort of lunar power, they should spare Ysis, who vacationed there in her head most of the time.
That was mean of me. I had to recognize that if she hadn’t anticipated Finn’s arrival, we wouldn’t be there trying to save all three of their lives. I didn’t know what we would have done . . . Drinking a glass of champagne or blood to pay our last respects would have been a bit uncalled for. Then . . . what would I have done after, if they’d allowed me to live?
I actually hadn’t thought about it. Would I stay in Scarborough with François, the two of us continuing the charade of old man Stratford and his granddaughter the nurse? Or start over in a new city? The second solution revolted me, and as for the first . . . I’d managed to put down roots in Scarborough and I felt at home there. But none of it made any sense without the man who had brought me there six months before. That seemed so long ago . . . and to think, I’d hated Phoenix at first whereas now . . .
I snapped out of my reverie when a dark shadow emerged from behind the clouds, bathed in that phantasmal lunar light. I looked at my watch; it was five minutes before midnight.
Without losing time, I ran to the tall iron gate that separated the estate from the street. I wasn’t at all concerned about the vampires aiming their machine guns at me.
I screamed skyward, “Finn!”
The flying silhouette turned for the ground and, faster than a falcon, charged the guards who hadn’t noticed his presence. Using the element of surprise and his incredible strength, Finn pushed aside the twenty vampires who were trying to keep him from entering. I was astounded. Even Phoenix, who was very powerful, couldn’t have grappled with this many vampires, and his master had literally crushed Talanus and Ysis’s entire guard.
Finn turned to me and approached the gate. His eyes were bright and his fangs so long and sharp that they gave me goose bumps. In one swift kick, the gate flew apart effortlessly, almost flattening me in passing. Finn seized me and lifted me into his arms before taking off again at full speed to the villa entryway.
The door, closed shut, seemed like an obstacle that my porter wouldn’t take the time midflight to open correctly, and I feared being used as a battering ram to force it down. In a fraction of a second, we’d covered the distance between the street and that wooden door; with full force, we pierced through the door, which splintered into a thousand pieces.
When we stood up, scattered all over the floor were debris and unconscious vampires who had come to witness the death of their angel and their sector leaders. Those who had been far enough away to be spared by the violence of the impact were staring at us, amazed, before recognizing the man who accompanied me. All of them had the same expression: unlimited, blissful admiration.
Far from relishing that attention, Finn grabbed me again and held me against him. I had just enough time to check that I still had my bag of weapons and all Stanson’s evidence before he raised us up a few inches from the ground, verifying the distance that separated him from the great hall entrance where the executioner’s silver ax would be doing its job in mere seconds.
The first time I had come here, the walk had seemed very long. All those staring vampires had made me uncomfortable, and I preferred keeping my eyes on my boss’s back. Seeing it this time, I knew that I hadn’t been mistaken: the corridor was very long, not very wide, and crammed with curious vampires. How were we going to get through?
“What do we do?”
Finn crushed the jaw of a guard who, unnoticed by me, had come up behind us.
“We charge! I will take care of the Elders, and you go after the executioner! Hold on!”
Gulp.
If Finn had gone down in the history of his species as one of its heroes, it was definitely not this way. To clear a path in the crowd, there was only one thing to do: rush in.
Seeing all those men and women, usually so powerful and frightening, flying into the air like old trash, with expressions of fear or pure incomprehension, could have been funny in other circumstances. But this was completely out of control. Even if Finn had put his arms around me to lessen the impact, I still felt the other vampires, and it was true torture.
Finally my porter set me down abruptly, and he pushed aside the guards blocking our way. These guards seemed meaner and more dangerous than the ones outside; these guards were in the service of the Greats.
“Come on!” Finn yelled, showing me a little hole between our assailants, through which I could pass.
Without a second thought, I threw myself to the ground, crawling on my stomach to the small space, profiting from the shouts and ambient confusion to sneak in. Still crawling, I saw with horror that one of the Greats was signaling to the executioner to lift his ax, resuming the action that had been interrupted by our arrival—the decapitation of my boss, whose attention was turned toward his creator, an affectionate smile on his lips, and a good-bye in his eyes. Phoenix’s neck rested on a kind of golden pedestal, and his hands were tied behind his back by a silver chain. He was awaiting his death peacefully.
Tangled up in the legs of the remaining spectators too taken aback to react, I couldn’t close the distance of the last few inches separating me from the first row. Desperate, I ended up biting down with all my strength on the ankle of a fat vampire who was enjoying the show, a cup of blood in his hand. Even if he didn’t feel any pain, the surprise made him drop his cup, spattering blood all over me.
“Hey!”
Surely because he didn’t want to stain his nice suit, he finally moved over and gave me room to stand up, get out my gun, and feel my blood flow back into my face at the sight of the ax that, as though in bad slow motion, was unrelentingly falling toward my boss’s neck.
“Nooooo!” I shrieked, taking aim.
The bullet had barely been fired when I saw the executioner, who was staring at me, stunned, miss his original target by only a hair, driving his ax into the floor. I didn’t wait for anyone around me to react, much less the Greats, and I charged at the official murderer who was leaning down to collect his ax, planted in the floor, to finish the job. Phoenix hadn’t moved.
I’d put all my remaining strength that remained into that purposeful collision, and propelled by fury, I drove my first silver knife into the executioner’s stomach. My momentum and his sudden weakness made us both fly to the ground, and we landed at the feet of a man who looked about sixty but who must have been around two thousand years old or more—one of the Elders! With no time to think, I backed away, placing myself to the left of my boss, who had stood up, and aiming my weapon at the assembly, ready to shoot at anyone who dared approach. In the same instant, I was joined
by Finn, who had gotten rid of his attackers and came to stand on Phoenix’s right, taking away his chains with a single hand.
A deathly silence fell over the villa. Everything was going to happen—now.
Facing the most powerful and respected vampires in the world, I wasn’t overconfident about our prospects, but I still held my gun steadily and resolutely. Finn stepped in front of us, signaling me to lower my weapon; I complied, not wanting to provoke the whole audience, seemingly ready to jump on us.
On our right, I could see Talanus and Ysis, chained and flanked by two of the Elders’ bodyguards, as well as Ichimi and Kaiko, who already had replaced Talanus and Ysis in their duties and were expressing support and sympathy toward their former leaders. Once more, the murderous look on that Japanese female fury’s face made me shudder.
“We’re not here to fight you, my sister, my brothers.” Finn emphasized his last words, raising his arms wide to a sign of peace. The executioner and the white-haired man in front of whom I’d landed approached and faced Finn.
“You say that you are not here to fight, yet you create chaos, all in the hopes of saving your progeny. Phoenix has been judged by our tribunal, a tribunal you have refused to join, I will remind you. You may well be the oldest vampire in the world, but you are still subject to our laws.”
I wasn’t expecting that! That was why everyone bowed at his feet and venerated him like a demigod. If he wasn’t the first vampire, he was at least the very oldest. That explained his powerful presence and his ageless appearance. Shocked at not being informed of this, I shot a dark look at Phoenix, who simply shrugged his shoulders.
“I know our laws. I helped write them, after all, if you remember, Egire.”
“And you are breaking them right now by coming here with a human woman and attacking your own kind!” thundered Egire.
What a strange name that was.
The other Elders nodded their approval. They all had to be more than a thousand years old . . . There were ten of them . . . these men (and one woman) ran the vampire world with an iron fist and were considered the protectors of their species. None of them looked like each other physically, but they shared an aura of incredible power. I didn’t dare imagine what secret powers they possessed or how they would use them to achieve their ends. It was better to be on their side, that was for sure. I stopped my reflections of the circle of Elders that faced me when I saw that I’d attracted the attention of the only woman among them. Well, that wasn’t quite the right word for her, for it would have been easy to mistake her for a seventeen-year-old girl. Her hair was bright red, and her youthful face would have given her a look of innocence if it weren’t for the flash of hardness in her magnificent green eyes, the result of a very long life marked by hardship and the lessons learned from it. Her curiosity made me immediately backpedal and turn my attention to the man who, out of a sense of independence, had refused to preside over this close-minded vampiric group of Ten.
Finn straightened and looked scornfully at his younger siblings.
“I am only here to stop you from making a mistake by executing the wrong people.”
Murmurs of indignation and admiration were creating a disagreeable din.
“Silence!” another Elder belted out, a grizzled and potbellied fifty-year-old with a cruel voice that contradicted the friendliness of his appearance.
Not a single person dared to make a single sound after that, which allowed Finn to continue, doing something that didn’t please me at all: he pointed at me.
“Along with the assistant chosen by my progeny, we continued the search for the real minds behind this blood trafficking, and we were able to get our hands on their lieutenant.”
More murmurs from the audience, but this time we could also make out voices shouting. You would have thought there was a fight breaking out behind us.
“Let me through, you congenital idiots!”
I didn’t know what surprised me more: seeing François show up with Karl in tow, bloody and incapable of the least movement under three layers of silver chains, or his insult, so shocking for someone so refined. Anyway, he’d come at exactly the right time. I even could have believed that his arrival had been planned that way, it was so timely. The guards moved aside so François could deposit his burden at the feet of the Elders, who were wondering what was going on.
“Who is this?” asked Egire.
Finn pointed at the wounded and doubled-over body.
“My adopted son, Karl Sarlsberg. Let’s say that he preferred to follow other teachings rather than my own, and here he is in front of you because he made bad choices. In short, he is an idiot, yes, but a fiendishly tough idiot. He has not said a word about the one who is protecting him. I think he found his creator again, who ordered Karl to stay silent even under torture. Karl was always stubborn, but he is a formidable enemy. Therefore between his impossible personality and the theory that he was never liberated from his creator, he managed to keep his creator’s identity secret.”
Egire considered the bloody mess on the ground, then returned his attention to Finn. “I know your methods, and even among us, no one holds a candle to you when it comes to getting information out of one of our own. If you failed, I do not see how we could get it out of him. We are at an impasse.”
Adopting the posture of a conquering hero ready for victory, our ally stuck out his chest again and pointed at me once more. How rude.
“This human is the key. Let her speak, and you will see that she has important things to say.”
What? Oh, no, not that. I had no desire whatsoever to prance around in front of an audience of vampires ready for a massacre. He only had to explain it to them!
Well, it was true that when I’d called him, he’d hung up without waiting to hear the names of the blood-trafficking bosses. Gulp. I couldn’t escape this.
Avoiding Phoenix’s gaze, which would have distracted me somewhat, I stepped forward to Finn’s side and forced myself to look directly at Egire, the leader of the most powerful vampires in the world, who would listen to his advice if I didn’t manage to convince him of my theory.
“Today, as Finn and François tried in their own way to get information out of Karl, I returned to the villa where they captured him. I had a hunch that we should look there, and I wasn’t wrong. Searching the house from top to bottom, I came across a letter that allowed me to find the source of the trafficking.”
I deliberately omitted Angela’s participation in this excursion since I’d promised to keep her away from all this.
I resumed my tale after hearing the clamors of surprise from the audience finally fade.
“The truth surprised me, but upon reflection, it was logical. I will only ask you one question. Who had the most to gain from the fall of two of the most powerful and efficient sector leaders of your species?”
A deathly hush weighed heavy on the room. Since it didn’t look like anyone was going to answer, I continued. “The ones who would have gotten their positions, but who had been set aside due to Finn’s influence. Kaiko Ikeda and Ichimi Ritsuye.”
Immediately, shrieks of rage, surprise, indignation, and incredulity filled my ears. The great hall—so silent just a moment before—became a veritable chaos, where supporters of this party or that seemed on the verge of ripping out each other’s throats; the rest of the participants of this reunion were either loudly vocalizing their displeasure or silently watching the scene, utter disbelief in their eyes. I saw the Elders’ guards stop the accused from leaping to kill me, and Phoenix moved close to protect me. The spectators had reached a boiling point. Talanus was looking at Ichimi as if he’d never seen him before, and Ysis was looking at me with a smile of open satisfaction. It was her smile, I think, that encouraged me to continue.
“You realize that your accusations are extremely serious, and they must be proved,” Egire warned.
A terrible roar sounded out to my right: “We have known Talanus and Ysis since the Middle Ages when your ancestors
were still pushing their plows and squealing like pigs! No one is more loyal to them than us!” screamed Ichimi, who had lost all self-control, staring at me with a murderous glint in his eye even more frightening than Kaiko’s permanent furious glare.
Three guards were sitting on Kaiko to keep her from attacking; they were trying to silence her, horrified by the insults that were coming out of her cruel mouth in a furious torrent.
“Ichimi, for now, we have heard nothing that incriminates you, but continue acting like that, and you will raise suspicion. As for you Kaiko, it would be best to remain calm, or else I shall personally take care of ripping out your tongue and fangs to not hear you anymore,” Egire said.
Seeing the effect of his words on them, Egire turned to me again.
“We are listening, miss.”
I was overwhelmed by anger and the need to serve justice to this deceitful murderer. “If you’re as loyal as you say, how do you explain the fact that the man I saw organize the methodic and industrial assassination of dozens of people was found, by chance, hidden in a villa that belongs to you?”
“Lies!” Ichimi cried out.
Luckily for me, I’d kept in my shoulder bag all the papers I’d taken from Stanson’s office. I waved them in every direction, including almost under the nose of Egire, who took a step back as I began to shout, wild with rage about being called a liar.
“I have here a pile of documents that prove it. You sent all the money you earned from the blood trafficking through a shady lawyer to be laundered by investing in real estate, and all very discreetly. I met that man, and he described you so precisely that it’s impossible to be mistaken. He recognized you, you and Kaiko!”
I turned to address the Elders.
“If you question them, you’ll see I’m telling the truth. These documents are damning evidence. Their investments go well beyond the wealthy neighborhood of Drake Hill and even beyond the county of Kerington. They slowly wove their web for when they would become the most powerful vampires in the country, with Talanus and Ysis’s colossal fortune at their disposal. They took full advantage of the fact that their best friend trusted them enough to name them his successors.”
Samantha Watkins: Chronicles of an Extraordinary Ordinary Life (Samantha Watkins Series Book 1) Page 37
