The Fall: Sanguine Series: Book One

by Chris Laughton

  As he neared the turn off to the cabin, he decided it would be safer to approach on foot. He would be free to choose his angle that way, instead of having to come from the trail. If that thing had freed itself, it may have healed from its wounds and Mason’s abilities would no longer surprise it, he couldn’t afford for it to see him coming. He pulled to the side of the road again and found a space between a few trees to pull the car out of sight. He got out and locked the car, before deciding he wanted to look around the trunk for something to use as a weapon. Under the false bottom of the trunk there was the spare tire, but there was also a tire iron. Perfect. He set out at a low run and trained his senses on the cabin.

  He moved through the forest faster and more effortlessly than any normal human could have dreamed and made it to the cabin in short order. He approached from an angle that let him see through the windows to where he’d wedged the metal bed frame between the cellar doors and the ceiling to brace them closed. It was still in place. Mason breathed a sigh of relief and slowed to a walk. It appeared the crisis had been averted.

  Mason climbed the stairs of the porch and opened the front door, pausing to listen and make sure he hadn’t misjudged the situation, but he heard nothing. He entered the cabin with a whole different outlook than when he’d left it half an hour earlier. He would wait until dawn, put the thing in the cellar down like an ailing pet, and get on with his life. Perhaps the meeting with The Project had simply been providence so he would be prepared when this vampire attacked him!

  He slumped against the wall near the cellar doors to wait for dawn, spinning the tire iron in his hand. At first, he heard nothing from the cellar. Had he killed it in their initial fight? He decided it was still safer to wait for dawn to investigate. After several minutes, he heard movement in the cellar and groaning. He must have injured the thing worse than he thought, but it also meant he’d missed a window he didn’t even know he’d had. He could’ve just entered the cellar and killed the thing before it awoke! He heard shuffling as the vampire got to its feet and then a few seconds of silence again.

  “I know you’re there,” it said, at room volume, “and I know you can hear me.”

  Mason sat still, then returned to spinning the tire iron. With a burst of sound, the thing charged up the stairs and slammed into the doors, startling Mason, but the bedframe held. Any fear he might have felt was allayed by the groan of pain that came from the cellar, and the apparent weakness that thing now had. When Mason had fought it, the strength he could tell it had wouldn’t have had a problem with an old bed frame. “I’d be careful if I were you. Sunrise is shining through the windows. Not sure you’d like it up here,” he bluffed.

  Mason could hear the thing laughing. It was rather disconcerting. “Oh my God, you don’t even know the first thing about us, do you? We can feel when the sun’s up, idiot, and I’ve got plenty of time before that.”

  Mason checked his watch. There was probably only forty minutes left until dawn. “Do you now?”

  Mason heard the thing move back down the stairs and take a seat. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Alexander is coming. He knows you’re here. He will find you.”

  That name. Alexander. The vampire. “What do you want with me, anyway?” Mason asked, but all he got was the same unnerving laugh as an answer. Well, that certainly eliminated the ‘random, hungry vampire’ theory. Whatever the reason this thing was here, it was here for him specifically.

  He was back to having no choice at all. He mentally asked forgiveness from the old couple for what he was about to do and headed back for his car, leaving the vampire alive, but trapped in the basement. Everything was happening too fast, but he decided he couldn’t waste time waiting for dawn to kill the vampire in the basement. His priority needed to be securing the files tying him to this place.

  32

  Alexander and Miranda passed Kai’s truck, barely off the trail to the cabin. It was not a good sign. Kai had texted them two nights ago to tell them the address of the cabin and that he’d found the man they were looking for. It had been too close to dawn for he and Miranda to do anything that night, but luckily, Alexander had chartered a plane for the two of them when he thought they’d be going to collect his prize. Though it had cost a small fortune to arrange on such short notice, it was a paltry sum compared to the tidal shift Alexander envisioned this bringing about. Alexander’s palpable glee had turned to apprehension when Kai failed to check in the rest of the night and couldn’t be reached. After the flight, and renting a car, it had been too late to make the trip all the way up here before dawn, so they had stayed at a motel again, and pressed on at dusk tonight. Alexander only hoped the extra day’s delay didn’t prove to be crucial. Now, Kai’s truck was direct evidence that he hadn’t left the cabin and Alexander struggled to imagine a scenario where that ended well for him.

  Snow had fallen during the day and was still coming down, leaving the area around the cabin pristine. There was no sign that anyone else was there and Alexander felt a rage begin to gnaw at his stomach. To have been so close to his prize and to have it slip through his fingers? The thought was unbearable, no matter the patience immortality should have afforded him. If he had lost Kai, one of his oldest fighters in the deal as well, this would have proven to be a crushing few weeks for his people, when added to Maya and Gabriel.

  Miranda pulled the car to a stop in front of the cabin. They exited, with the only sounds being the snow crunching under their feet, and their closing car doors. Alexander stretched his senses as far as he could, and heard only the assorted wildlife of the forest moving about pre-dawn. If Kai was in there, he was making no move to come greet them. He and Miranda exchanged a look. “This certainly is the right place,” Miranda remarked, looking around at the scene and comparing it to her memory of Maya’s vision.

  “It is. Recall the others,” Alexander commanded. Miranda dutifully took out her phone and began sending a text that likely wouldn’t go through until they got somewhere with better signal. “But send them to the Facility in Pennsylvania. Maya’s compound has been compromised,” Alexander amended. If anyone had been watching them as they ascended the steps to the porch, they would have looked sorely out of place. They had been in a hurry to get up here as soon as they could, so neither one of them had dressed for the weather. It’s not as if the cold would bother them, but it did mean that if they ran into anyone out here that they couldn’t just eat, it would be difficult to explain their warm weather attire. Both of them were dressed in short-sleeved shirts and jeans, with sneakers. It made for an interesting scene as snow fell softly behind them. Alexander took the lead, opening the cabin’s front door and immediately being assaulted by a familiar smell: blood. Old blood. Alexander gritted his teeth in frustration and let out a low growl.

  The place didn’t even look disturbed, and if it weren’t for his heightened sense of smell picking up the blood, there would seem to be nothing out of place. It was an easy scent to follow, through the cabin to a set of cellar doors, braced shut with a metal bed frame wedged between them and the ceiling. It was the first sign of anything amiss in the otherwise orderly cabin. Alexander shoved it out of the way, simultaneously furious at Kai for getting trapped, and relieved that Kai was alive; after all, there wasn’t much reason to trap a dead vampire. As the bedframe clattered to the ground, Alexander pulled the doors open, and the smell of blood grew much stronger. At the bottom of the stairs, huddled in a disheveled ball, was Kai. He turned to face them, a look of half fear, half excitement on his face, but no recognition in his eyes. He was in pretty rough shape. It was obvious he hadn’t eaten in days, maybe a week, because his injuries simply weren’t healing. They had ‘stabilized’ as only vampiric wounds could; open wounds that no longer bled, like the injuries to a cadaver. His face was gaunt and unrecognizable, his hair thinning as his body discarded it deemed non-vital. The mind was the last thing to go in a hungry vampire, but when Alexander placed a foot on the first step of the stairs, Kai slid back across the fl
oor, away from him. He needed to feed, and soon. Alexander had seen it before: when vampires didn’t feed for extended periods of time they went almost feral. They could actually survive for weeks after entering that state, but the problem was they lost their inhibitions. Feral vampires had no qualms about wandering out into the sun, or - more dangerous as far as Alexander was concerned – feeding in public and exposing their kind.

  Miranda stood at the top of the stairs with a look of disgust on her face. “Jesus, man. Get it together.”

  Alexander threw her a reproachful glare. “Consider yourself lucky to have never been so hungry.”

  Miranda scoffed. “He deserves it! He got played by a human! The human you tasked him with finding, by the way. I would think you’d be a little angrier.”

  “I am,” he agreed. “But you’re assuming we’ve lost the man.”

  Miranda looked around theatrically. “I’m sorry, do you think he’s just in the bathroom?”

  Alexander ignored her and addressed his other protégé in as calm a voice as he could muster given that he was still furious with him. “Kai. You’re hungry, yes? Come with us. You need to feed. We will help you.”

  Kai inched forward, taking Alexander’s outstretched hand. The ends of his fingers were bloody, with several missing the nails, no doubt embedded in the inside of the cellar doors that Alexander had thrown open to free him. Alexander led him past Miranda, who still wore a look of extreme disappointment, and started towards the front door of the cabin.

  “Where the hell are we taking him?” she asked.

  Alexander picked up a piece of paper sitting on a table near the door and handed it to Miranda. It was a flier with the location of the rental office. “This seems like a good place to start.”

  “What makes you think they’ll still be at the office this late?” she replied.

  Alexander was leading Kai onto the porch as Miranda followed. Neither bothered to close the cabin door. “I looked up the place yesterday at the motel. The owners man the rental office and live on-site,” Alexander was getting Kai situated in the back of the car. He was like a small child being led around. Alexander could see the lost look in Kai’s eyes. There would be no permanent damage as long as he ate, it just needed to happen before he became uncontrollable. “And besides, two birds, one stone. They’ll have information on who rented this place. And even if they don’t, all we need is one of them alive. I’m sure they remember whoever rented the cabin, and we’re about to bring them a vampire who can read memories.”

  33

  Rebekah watched him sleeping. Well, not sleeping per say; it was more like meditation when he did it. Something was changed in him since he came back from the cabin yesterday. She could tell his mind was elsewhere. He would tell her about it when the time was right, she was sure of it. For now, she would pretend she didn’t notice, and make sure she was there when he was ready.

  He had stayed with her that first trip to the cabin for all the sweating, the vomiting, the swearing, the crying that came after they laughed together on the couch. Her body had not let go of heroin easily. But he had done his best to comfort her throughout and never once showed any frustration, just always having warm chicken broth for her to drink when she had a break from hugging the toilet. If there was something he wasn’t ready to tell her, the least she could do was be patient while he worked it out.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Mason was in the living room packing up some of the smaller things. The sliding glass door and floor-to ceiling windows that made up the far wall gave him an amazing view of the parched, cracked dirt that extended to the horizon, save for the occasional cactus or yucca plant to break the uniformity. The sun beat down mercilessly today, causing waves of heat to distort his view. From where he was, he could also see down the hall to their bedroom where Rebekah was packing more of their things. She had the door slightly closed though, so Mason couldn’t see her. He wished he could see her.

  He placed several more small items in the box in front of him, but the view of the expansive desert was too captivating to ignore. This time though, a figure was on the horizon, small as could be. Normally his vision would have allowed him to make out who it was, even at that great a distance, but the heat waves left the image too distorted. He stood up but made no move to the door, fascinated by who this person was. Why were they walking in the wasteland by themselves, and why during the day when it was so brutally hot? As the figure drew closer, Mason could see it was a woman, and she was in a formal black dress. As she drew closer still, Mason saw that it was Rebekah and she had no shoes on. How painful it must be to walk on the scorching earth, but still he made no move to the door. Her face was expressionless, but she stared at Mason, never breaking eye contact.

  After what felt like forever, she arrived on the back porch and opened the sliding glass door. She stepped through, closing it behind her, never facing away from Mason. She made the several steps to stand face to face and Mason was able to examine her more closely. She was immaculate, showing no signs of what must have been a brutal trek to get here. Her hair was pristine, the same gorgeous blonde, cleaner than he’d ever seen it; beautiful in its un-styled simplicity. She looked at him, her face an unreadable blank slate. Mason broke the silence.

  “Why did you go outside, silly?”

  From down the hall came his answer. “Did you say something, honey?”

  Mason turned to look down the hall and for the briefest of moments saw Rebekah’s silhouette as she passed by the sliver of open door. He stared down the hallway realizing that whatever was standing in front of him - and he could still feel its eyes on him - was not Rebekah. He didn’t want to turn back to it; perhaps if he didn’t acknowledge it, it wouldn’t be an issue. But that was a coward’s response, so he slowly turned to face it again. He looked back at this thing in front of him, this not-Rebekah. Her head was tilted down now, her eyes still locked on his. She wore the most sinister smile, and Mason felt a chill run down his spine.

  34

  Mason had found it far too easy. He had simply walked in, distracted the old man, taken the photocopies of his information, and left. Too easy to – in all likelihood – damn the man and his wife to death. He’d given them a story about how he planned to propose once he brought his girlfriend back up here and wondered if they had any sort of decorations he could borrow. The old lady had promised to have some of her trademark fresh cookies ready and in the cabin by Saturday afternoon. It was cruel to lie to them, but he couldn’t think of any other way to keep them distracted long enough. He hoped he’d made the right decision, but he was doing his best not to think about it. He had driven back to Seattle to ensure Rebekah was safe, while trying to process what was going on. If The Project had known Alexander was this close to finding him, surely they would have said something. The implied threat would’ve helped their recruitment pitch, so he assumed this would come as a surprise to them as well. His first concern was Rebekah’s safety, but now that he’d been back in Seattle for a few days without occurrence, he was starting to think about his next step.

  He hadn’t told Rebekah about the vampire at the cabin. He just claimed that he didn’t like something he saw about the cabin and that he wouldn’t be buying it. He could tell she knew something was wrong, but hadn’t pressed him on it. He had told her he needed to get some work done, but truth be told, he’d just needed time alone to think.

  The last couple days had calmed him down, but also revealed that he wasn’t comfortable knowing so little. He was essentially blind here. The vampires could be five minutes away, or they could have no idea where he was, but he wasn’t going to be able to relax until he knew for sure. He needed to find The Project and do… something. He wasn’t sure what his next move after that was. He supposed he had enough money to start a new life with Rebekah somewhere. The best part of this crumbling world is that it was rather easy to disappear. But whatever wild card had allowed that vampire to find him, might also be a liability even if he moved. Maybe The
Project could offer him some reassurance he wouldn’t be found. Or perhaps him being attacked could help them locate Alexander somehow. He didn’t know; he just knew his best play was to contact them.

  If he was as important as The Project had told him, then Alexander would have sent more than one vampire to capture him if they’d known his exact whereabouts. Since nobody had known he would be at the cabin this weekend, they couldn’t possibly have known his actual identity. That still didn’t explain how the thing had found him at the cabin. No scenario Mason could imagine explained that. If they’d known he’d visited the cabin recently, why not just steal the same records Mason just had to learn who he was? If they didn’t know, then that was one heck of a needle in a haystack find for them. If anything, Mason would’ve expected to encounter them here in Seattle, where the car crash might’ve drawn them. He was convinced his actual identity was safe and the papers he’d taken from the rental office (and burned once he got back to Seattle) removed the only link between him and the cabin, setting them back to square one, but he needed to be sure.

  Of course, how to find The Project was a tougher question. Mason kept coming back to when Trevor had tried to give him his number. Why the hell hadn’t he taken it? Normally, Mason was a real ‘cost/benefit’ kind of guy, especially given his line of work, and there had been no cost to taking Trevor’s number. It was pretty easy to see the damn benefit to having that number now! But he had been in denial, subconsciously thinking that taking Trevor’s number would provide a link to this world of vampires and vampire hunters, and that by not taking it, he could somehow insulate himself from what they had shown him.