Pride and Fall
Page 3
as Angela finished counting, then heard her call out, "Ready or not, here I come!" She peered around the monument and spied Angela looking around, as she tried to guess where she went. She looked in her direction once, but didn't come towards her. She started to walk around aimlessly, as if uncertain where to look, and Connie had to bite her tongue to keep from giggling.
Then she just disappeared.
Startled, Connie search around the mausoleum, but couldn't see her. "Where'd she go?"
"Right here," Angela said behind her.
"AAAHH!" Connie jumped and turned around. Angela tapped her on the head.
"Touche."
"How'd you find me so fast?!"
"When you peaked around the cenotaph, I saw the heat aura from your blood. At night, it makes you stand out against the darkness like a candle flame."
Connie she stood up. "Hey, that's cheating!"
Angela shrugged. "I cannot help it. It is part of my nature."
"Huh, yeah, maybe we'd better find a different game, at least until after I've been turned."
Rosie appeared through the tombstones. "There you two are!" she said in a stern voice. "I have been looking all over for you."
"We were just playing," Connie said.
"Playing?" She looked and sounded surprised.
"Yes," Angela replied, "hide and seek."
"Well, I must say, that is good news. But come. It is getting late, and Connie needs to go home."
"But I thought she would be staying with us," Angela objected.
"She has not made her final decision yet. Giovanna wishes to give her time to consider it."
"Is this not what you want?" she asked Connie.
Connie hesitated. Earlier she would have said yes instantly, but now, having gotten to know the Vampires and finding out what their lives were like, she wasn't sure anymore. She didn't like the idea of forgetting about her family, or not having friends, or not being able to play games. Angela was a cool girl who could do all kinds of wicked things, but her life seemed so somber and serious. If that was what being a Vampire was like, she didn't want to be one. What was the sense of having all those powers if she couldn't have fun with them? And it dawned on her that she really had been behaving pretty badly, even if Liza did provoke her. But she couldn't be mad at her, she loved her, and Mom and Dad, and Kitty. She didn't want to leave; she just wanted to go home.
Even as she opened her mouth to tell them that, what looked like a large, heavy arrow shot out from Rosie's chest between her breasts. For a moment everyone froze. With a shocked, pained look on her face, Rosie looked down at the point dripping blood. Then her eyes rolled up as her lids closed, and she collapsed on the ground.
"Hunters!" Angela cried. "Connie, run!"
From "Gourmand Hag"
Sir Differel Van Helsing flattened her back against the oak tree and held her breath while willing herself to ignore the pounding of her pulse in her ears. The woods on her estate were darker than normal that night, because in addition to the moon being in the new phase there was heavy cloud cover, obscuring the stars.
Vlad was out there, somewhere, hunting her. She had to keep on the move if she didn't want to get caught, but she couldn't run blindly. She had to have some idea of his location, so she paused at regular intervals, to catch her breath, but also to try to detect him. She didn't rely on her eyes; it was far too dark to see more than a yard around her. Unless she spotted his glowing red pupils, but at that point he would be close enough to see her heat aura. She might catch a glimpse of his silhouette moving across a lighter background, but there would be few of those on a pitch-black night.
Instead, she listened for any unusual sound, no matter how quiet, like rustling grass, creaking branches, or the scrape of shoes on rocks or exposed roots, but if he was close enough to hear his breathing he would be practically on top of her. Releasing her breath, she inhaled deeply yet quietly several times. He had a distinctive odor, a combination of musty crypt, earthy loam, and the citric-rust of fresh blood, but she smelled nothing except the fragrant green and sour bark scents of the woods. Sometimes she wished Vampires gave off a foul stench like the legends claimed; that would make it easier to track them.
As she listened and sniffed, she also concentrated on her skin sense. It was hard for her to describe what that was like. She imagined it was similar to a cat using its whiskers to feel the movement of air around it, except she used the tiny hairs on her exposed arms, legs, and cheeks. The natural goosepimpling of her flesh due to her anxiety made it easier to perceive those weak currents, being as the hairs were extended erect above the skin. She sometimes wondered if that explained her growing ability to awaken, even out of a sound sleep, whenever a presence entered her room.
However, she also suffered from a serious handicap. She was in the midst of her period, and Vlad had previously told her he could smell her more easily during those days of the month. The onset of menarche had occurred six months before, so she figured it was something she would have to learn how to compensate for.
The hunt was part of the Master Vampire's training regimen, to teach her how to evade paranormal creatures. He had explained that when it came to hunting monsters, it was often easy to find the tables had been turned and the hunter had become the prey; besides, stalking was practically the same as evading. Those late night sessions were no different from the hide and seek games they had played together for four months after she had released him from the sarcophagus over a year ago.
Except those had seemed like light-hearted fun. It wasn't until he started the new phase that she discovered just serious they were actually meant to be. Once she had demonstrated she could successfully hide from him in the house, he had switched to the outdoors for the evasion lessons. He had also progressed from merely touching her to attacking her. He couldn't actually harm her, but he could scare her half to death, and despite the fact that she expected it, he always found some visage that, when combined with surprise, terrified her.
They had been at it for nine months, and she did show improvement. For the first four or five months he had caught her after only five minutes, sometimes sooner, and each time he had explained what she had done wrong. That it had been winter didn't help. At first she had been despondent, convinced she would never learn, while later she had become angry, suspecting he might have been cheating. Finally she had begun to comprehend what he was trying to tell her, and with that revelation she had started doing better. Her time before capture had increased, at first slowly, but then it seemed to grow exponentially. She was currently up to one hour; she hoped to increase it to two before the month was out.
She heard a twig snap off to her left. Is that him, she wondered? There were no animals on the estate large enough to break twigs that size, except the horses, and they should all be in the stables for the night. There shouldn't be any guards out either. She had instructed Giles Holt, her Master-at-Arms, to keep the woods clear during their exercises. Even so, her Vampire servant could be pretty light on his feet, even with his heavy shoes. She still wasn't particularly good at judging distances, but it had to be further away than three meters, though not more than ten; any closer and he would see her, while any further and she wouldn't have been able to hear it.
That was still too close, though. She edged around the trunk in a careful manner to be as silent as possible, putting the tree between her and the noise. She intended to use it as cover when she moved out. She paused for a moment to listen for any more sounds, before sighting her next landmark, another large oak perhaps a dozen meters away. She hurried towards it, trying to step lightly over the forest debris littering the ground. The soft-soled slippers she wore gave her an advantage there.
A gigantic form loomed up in front her, mutilated, bloody, and cadaverous, with taloned hands, glowing red eyes, and a wide-open mouth full of sharp fangs and a long dangling tongue. "BOOO!!"
Traumatized, she pulled up short and jumped back, giving a compulsive shriek. Then her temper flared as the fo
rm changed into that of her servant.
"You bloody wanker! You're going to give me a heart attack one night!" She switched on her torch and shined the light on him.
"You are too young for that, My Master." He was tall, taller than anyone she knew, but he had a thin frame and a block-shaped head, with a square jaw, blunt chin, thin Alexandrian nose, and domed forehead. His iron-gray moustache extended straight across his face from one prominent cheekbone to the other, and it matched his long, ropey, iron-gray hair. He wore his usual costume of black shirt, vest, and trousers under a black great coat with a black, low-crown, wide-brimmed hat, decorated with a blood-red headband, cravat, gloves, and rosebud in the coat's lapel.
Her anger evaporated as the adrenaline rush faded. "Hmph. I'll be sure to have that carved on my tombstone." She reached into a pocket of her shorts and pulled out a stopwatch. Shutting it off, she read the time.
"One hour, seven minutes. Getting better."
"Do not be complacent, Master, you still have much to learn."
She slipped the watch back into her pocket. "Such as?"
"This evening you fell for a simple misdirection trap."
"Did you cheat?"
He shook his head. "No, but I created a sound on one side, then moved to a perpendicular location to watch for your