Vincent could tell Angelique was still waiting for him to respond to her question. So he did.
“I don't know.”
“Then I’ll tell you why she did it. She was weak and she was a liar. She tells you to suppress what comes naturally to our kind. But the moment she can't live up to her own ideals, she chooses the quick way out. Dying is easy, living with what you've become... Now that’s hard.”
“Not for you. You've always enjoyed killing.”
“So did you. And not just once you became a vampire. How many outlaws did you string up during your illustrious law enforcement career?”
Vincent remained silent.
“I remember a time when we weren't so different.”
“That time has come and gone. Maybe I’m not the only one still living in the past.”
Angelique looked like she’d been slapped. Vincent pivoted and made his way toward the exit. But Angelique came after him. He wouldn’t be able to shake her off that easily.
“Don't just walk away from me, Vincent. If you can't accept your nature, it will destroy you. Just like it did with Sasha.”
“Why do you care?”
“Maybe I never stopped caring, Vincent.”
That was the problem. Angelique just couldn’t let go. It wasn’t so much that she still loved him, even though odds were good she had convinced herself of that. The truth was that Angelique couldn’t stand the fact that Vincent had been the one to end their relationship. Angelique broke hearts. She didn’t have her heart broken.
“You still matter to me, Vincent,” Angelique said.
Before Vincent could retort, Rafael’s death scream sliced through the chateau.
CHAPTER EIGHT
VINCENT AND ANGELIQUE burst into the hallway that held the chateau’s sleeping quarters. They had only taken a few steps when Zane emerged from one of the bedrooms. He faced them across the short width of the hallway, his face growing livid with jealousy. “Why the hell am I waking up next to an empty bed?” Zane interrogated Angelique as he shot a withering glare at Vincent.
“I couldn't sleep,” Angelique explained.
“Thoughts of your former boyfriend keeping you up?”
“Just give it a rest, will you?”
Zane glowered at Vincent and the former Texas Ranger almost felt sorry for the guy. The biker was smitten and he was going to be in for a world of hurt once Angelique discarded him. Her icy beauty could weave a spell that wasn’t easy to break, as Vincent knew all too well from personal experience.
The sound of approaching footsteps echoed through the chateau’s hallway - Julian and Sebastian had decided to join the party.
“What's going on?” Julian asked in a quavering voice.
“We know as much as you do,” Angelique said. “We all heard a scream. It came from the end of the corridor.”
“Dracula’s chambers,” Vincent said.
Sebastian’s eyes filled with an ominous realization.
“The room Rafael was staying in.”
They all traded glances.
Rafael was absent!
Vincent detected something he’d never witnessed before among the clan members.
Fear.
Confusion, the understated yet tangible sense of mounting panic, the searching glances and inability to act. They had ceased to behave like apex predators and were acting like prey. And this realization filled Vincent with a sense of dread.
“Let’s go take a look,” Vincent said and pressed on toward the master’s chamber. The others gradually fell in step behind him. Seconds later, the group arrived at the ornately carved wooden door that led into Dracula’s inner sanctum. It figured that Rafael would choose these quarters as his daytime resting place, declaring to the others that he was indeed the new head of the clan. Anyone who thought differently would be forced to challenge him.
Angelique slid past Vincent, their bodies touching for a brief moment, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Zane. Vincent pursed his lips. Angelique must’ve done it on purpose, sending a not-so-subtle signal to Zane, hoping to escalate the growing tension between the two of them. Angelique hadn’t changed one bit – she loved to play games and pit one male suitor against another. Vincent lost interest a long time ago, but Zane hadn’t gotten the memo.
Angelique banged on the door and the sound bounced through the hallway. “Rafael!? RAFAEL? Open up!”
“I don't think he's answering!”
With these words, Zane pushed past Vincent. His leather boot snapped out and kicked the door open. It was nearly torn off its hinges as it slammed against the bedroom wall. Before anyone could stop him, Zane barged into the chamber, a pitbull unleashed, and the others trailed behind. Zane found the light switch, electric torches drenching the chamber in a soft glow. His manic eyes combed the room – there was no sign of Rafael. The sole detail that jumped out at Zane was the ornate coffin that dominated the room. He rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Who the hell sleeps in a coffin nowadays?”
“The master believed in tradition,” Sebastian explained.
The statement earned him a long look from Zane.
“Tradition? Hello, it's the Twenty-first fucking Century, get with the program.”
Sebastian leveled a disapproving glare at the leather- clad vampire biker.
“Watch your tone and show some respect! The master belonged to a different time and age.”
“No fucking kidding.”
Vincent’s eyes roamed the chamber. The scream had emanated from this room, but there was no sign of Rafael. Scratch that – no visible sign. But there was one place they hadn’t looked yet. Vincent approached the closed coffin. Angelique, realizing his intention, joined him. The others watched in silence from afar.
Angelique angled her head toward the coffin.
“Rafael?”
Still no answer.
Vincent flipped the coffin open and their worst fears were confirmed. Rafael was indeed inside the coffin. At least what remained of the self-appointed clan leader.
He’d been decapitated and a silver stake protruded from his chest cavity. There was no sign of the head so there was still a remote possibility that this could be someone else besides Rafael, but Vincent doubted that.
“Dear God!” Julian exclaimed.
Zane added his own personalized interpretation of events.
“Fuck me!”
A new silence filled the chamber, different than the one that preceded it. Earlier there had been confusion and morbid curiosity, but it had now been replaced with a grim certainty…
The hunters had become the hunted.
“What's happening here?” Sebastian asked in a tremulous voice.
Angelique ventured a guess.
“It’s almost as if someone was hunting us, as if we were-”
“Humans,” Faust finished.
The group whirled toward Faust, who had materialized behind them.
Zane’s temper detonated.
“Fuck that shit! No one hunts vampires.”
“Tell that to Dracula and Rafael,” Angelique countered.
Zane sneered.
“Anyone can get lucky.”
“He got lucky twice so far,” Vincent pointed out.
Faust strode up to the coffin and took in Rafael's remains. The atmospheric flickering of the electric torches danced across the surface of the silver stake. It caught the German vampire’s reflection, a distorted funhouse image.
“My guess is this party is just getting started.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Zane asked.
“Isn't it obvious? The master’s murder, this little family reunion, all part of a clever ploy to gather us all in one place.” Faust paused and grew pensive before he added, “Vincent was right. This is just beginning.”
The words clawed their way into their hearts and minds, finding fertile ground in their budding panic. This wasn’t quite like anything Dracula’s clan had ever faced before.
“We must leave this place immediately,” Sebastian said.
“How do you intend to do that with the sun out?” Angelique asked. “We're trapped in here until nightfall-”
She was cut off by another scream and Vincent could’ve sworn that Sebastian flinched; this disturbed him most of all. Vampires didn’t flinch, they weren’t caught off guard and they sure as hell didn’t experience fear - they instilled it in others. Whoever was behind these two murders had planned this out down to the last detail. The killer had the skill, the knowledge and the courage to hunt and destroy monsters. More importantly, they knew all too well the power of psychological warfare. These were guerilla tactics with a twist, a war of attrition, both physical and mental.
The scream repeated itself. Distinctly female, too loud to be human. Vincent recognized the voice. It belonged to the one person who was missing from their group.
Coraline!
***
The flames were dying in the fireplace. Like the glass on the rooftop observation deck, the various windows were tinted and thus diffused the deadly effects of the sun. But to the group of vampires who filed into the dining room, this offered little reassurance. They remained ill at ease, stealing nervous glances at the surrounding windows, not used to being awake during the day with only panes of polarized glass and wooden shutters separating them from direct exposure to the sun. Zane shot nervous glances at the large, blacked-out windows.
“What's with all the fucking windows in this place?”
“Maybe the master liked to drain his victims in the moonlight,” Vincent said.
Zane snorted, not amused by the flippant comment.
One thing was for certain: the vampires were out of their element. Their state of mind didn’t improve the moment they laid eyes on Coraline. The statuesque vampiress was a frozen sculpture, eyes glued on an object that rested on the large dining table where they had all gathered the night before.
At least she is still alive, Vincent thought.
It was a small reassurance in light of the grisly object that commanded Coraline’s undivided attention. Revealed in the dying flames of the fireplace was Rafael’s skull, a wizened death mask. The grisly object had been placed near the head of the mahogany table, right in front of the chair Rafael had occupied mere hours earlier. Numbers were etched in the table’s surface: 1596. And splayed right next to the date was a dead bat.
“1596?” Angelique asked.
“The year Dracula turned Rafael into a vampire,” Faust explained to those who hadn’t figured it out already.
“What the hell are we dealing with here?” Zane asked.
“Someone who enjoys playing games,” Angelique replied.
It takes one to know one, Vincent thought.
Faust inspected the dead bat.
“Our killer seems to have a sense of humor.”
Coraline was still shaking, affected by the morbid discovery.
“What’s going on?”
“We have all left a trail of death over the years,” Julian said, as if judging the group himself. “Our evil was bound to catch up with us.”
Faust’s eyebrows arched.
“Save the sermon for someone who actually wants to go to heaven.”
Vincent trailed the etched date with his fingers.
“The killer not only knows our weaknesses but also our secrets.”
“And we all know what that means, don’t we?” Faust said. “The killer could be one of us.”
Sebastian shot Faust a questioning look.
“Think about it. How could someone catch Dracula off guard? Maybe the killer was someone he knew and trusted,” Faust elaborated. “Dracula was our father, and we were his children. Like any family, we had our differences. But it doesn't mean one of us would resort to murder,” Sebastian said.
“Nor does it rule out the possibility, does it now?”
Faust was playing devil’s advocate and Vincent could’ve sworn he was enjoying it. His words hit the group hard. The notion had been nibbling away in the back of their minds, but now it had become a tangible possibility. Vincent could feel the clan members probing each other with growing suspicion, seeing each member of the group in a new light. Could it be possible? Could another vampire be responsible for what was happening here?
It had been easier to perceive the killer as human. Crafty prey that aspired to climb the food chain but were doomed to lose their footing and come crashing down to their rightful place in the order of things. But if the dark engineer behind these murders turned out to be a fellow member of the clan, the others were in for the fight of their lives.
“Hate to interrupt this, but look!”
Sebastian pointed at a DVD on the chair from which Rafael led the meeting the night before. Its sleeve contained a message written with a black Sharpie: ENJOY.
Angelique cocked her head at Sebastian.
“Let's play along.”
Sebastian snatched the DVD, strode up to the 80-inch HD plasma that faced the dining table, and inserted the disc into the DVD player. The screen flickered to life and a close-up of an all-too-familiar face appeared: Dracula. But this figure shared only a faint resemblance to the darkly majestic, domineering likeness captured by the portrait inside the Count’s sleeping quarters. The master’s face was worn and haggard, his long mane of hair clung to his scalp in greasy strands, and his eyes were bereft of all magnetism. It was the face of defeat. The face of death.
Vincent could tell that the clan was deeply affected by the image onscreen. None of them had ever seen Dracula in such an abysmal, sorry state. It was an sight none of them would soon forget.
An electronically distorted voice grew audible and shredded the chamber: “Children of the night, who among you is worthy of continuing the bloodline? Can you solve your master's savage murder or will you perish one by one, begging for mercy?”
Dracula's eyes widened, fear making way for unbridled terror. As if wanting to provide an explanation for the sudden change, the camera whipped back and panned sideways, revealing the rising sun. The camera swung back to Dracula. The master’s mouth distorted into an animalistic scream as a furious explosion of light washed across the screen and the world went supernova. Flames engulfed Dracula and combusted the wooden cross.
The camera zoomed in on the master’s burning face, eyes melting in their sockets, skin flaking off until only blackened bone remained. There was no sound but strangely enough, this only heightened the horror, allowing the vampires in the dining hall to add their own personal soundtrack of pain.
Abruptly, the screen went black. “By nightfall, you'll all be dead. Fear the light!” The chilling message was followed by a new image. A weather report taken from the Internet. Temperature highs and lows for the day. At the bottom of the screen, it read: SUNRISE: 6:57 am. SUNSET: 6:22 pm. The screen went dark once again.
There was a moment of hushed stillness. No one seemed unaffected by what they just witnessed. Nevertheless, Vincent reminded himself that one of them could be behind all this. The shock on at least one of these seven faces could be nothing but a carefully constructed facade. Deception and camouflage were all part of a predator’s repertoire.
Sebastian’s voice seemed a bit shaky as he spoke. “He's trying to scare us. Make us panic.”
“He's succeeding,” Coraline said.
Vincent appraised the former starlet. Coraline didn’t care what the others thought of her and wasn’t going to hide her fear. But perhaps it was all a clever act. Maybe she was still going after that Oscar that had eluded her in life. The thought was deeply disturbing because if Coraline could be hiding her true intentions, then they all could. And that meant that each and every one of them was a potential suspect.
“How much time do we have before sunset?” Angelique asked.
“Eleven hours,” Vincent answered.
Faust’s features remained masklike as he spoke.
“Eleven hours during which our powers are diminished, our sens
es dulled, the odds in the enemy's favor. It should make for quite an interesting day.”
“What are we going to do?” Angelique asked.
For some strange reason, Faust’s response offered them hope, as it held the seeds of a possible explanation for what was happening here.
“I'd say it's time we checked on our two guests.”
***
Daylight burned bright outside the sprawling estate. The tranquil beauty of the surrounding landscape offered no indication of the dark drama that was unfolding within the walls of the chateau.
Inside the estate’s dining hall, Vincent waited with the others for Faust to return, wondering what the old Nazi was up to. He didn’t have to wait too long for the German to appear, two human prisoners in tow. Their hands were still tied, mouths taped, eyes squirming with terror. Last night’s feeding had taken its inevitable toll. The humans looked pale and worn, barely able to stay on their feet. Paul in particular looked like he’d been through the wringer. Vincent pitied them but there was nothing he could do for the hapless couple. Especially now.
“Who forgot to give these two an iron pill before bed?” Zane asked, grinning at his own lame joke.
“I guess we were a bit rough on them last night,” Coraline said.
The two human prisoners were unceremoniously dumped into two nearby chairs.
“So now what?” Coraline asked.
“We need to secure the castle,” Angelique said.
“Screw that! Let's just find this fucker and make him regret the day he crawled out of the sewer that was his mama’s twat.” Zane’s voice shook with raw anger.
Faust regarded them coolly.
“You're still assuming we're dealing with an outsider here. But the killer could be right here in this room with us.”
Once again, the group contemplated the possibility. Faust continued, “Crime is driven by motive. The question we need to ask ourselves is why would one of us turn against his own clan?”
For once Vincent was in agreement with Faust. Whoever was doing this had a reason. Figure out the motive and you’d find your killer.
Fear the Light Page 5
