Dark Hunt: Division 4: The Berkano Vampire Collection

by Nicole Zoltack

  For hours, the two talked. They traded stories about Liliane. The man, Marwin Kraus, offered to get her something to eat or drink while he went to fetch Liliane’s items.

  Some vampires required regular food in addition to blood. Seraphine was one of them.

  “Please. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “None at all. I wouldn’t have offered if it was.”

  He left and returned with some hard bread and a wheel of cheese as well as a chipped glass of wine.

  “Here you go. It isn’t much.”

  “It’s perfect,” she said.

  She ate. The wine was a perfect blush that went down smooth despite being more potent than anything The Mean Gladiator ever offered.

  Marwin returned with a small box. When he lifted the lid, the first item Seraphine saw was the hat she’d given to Liliane. Seraphine never confessed that she’d stolen it. It was bright yellow, Liliane’s favorite color. A few drawings of the two of them together were also in the box along with a folded parchment with Seraphine’s name written on it.

  “I can give you some privacy if you’d like,” Marwin offered.

  “You can stay.”

  Seraphine’s hand trembled as she opened the letter.

  Seraphine,

  You’re my only friend. Well, there is this man who wants to take me in, but he doesn’t count. He’s nice and all, but he has so many kids. I’ll get lost. You’re the only friend who counts.

  I feel like I’m already lost. Why can’t I make more friends? Humans? Witches? Or more vampires? I don’t understand why more people don’t give the other species a chance. You’re wonderful. Fun. Nice. And you don’t hurt me at all when you take some blood. You need to drink to live. Why shouldn’t I give you blood? You help me find the food I need.

  I hope one day you and I are still friends. That we have more friends than we can count. Humans, vampires, and witches alike. You’d like that too, wouldn’t you?

  I don’t really know why I’m writing this. I could just tell you the next time I see you. But sometimes, I get strange feelings. I think I need to write this down. Just in case. I don’t know. It’s weird. I’m weird. I’m glad you’re my friend even though I’m weird.

  Your friend,

  Liliane

  Seraphine couldn’t use the excuse of the rain this time as her vision blurred. Without a word, she passed the letter to Marwin.

  “Do you want me to read this?” he asked.

  “No. I want you to eat it.” She smiled through her grief.

  He read the letter and shook his head in sorrow. “That’s never going to happen. The world as it is now…”

  “What if our lives don’t always have to be like this? What if we can change what’s going on in the division?”

  “How?” he asked without a hint of doubt or skepticism.

  “We need to come up with a strategy. Find like-minded vampires and humans. I have a witch in mind, but I would rather not involve her. Still, maybe she can point us in the right direction.”

  “An army,” he said, pronouncing each syllable as if a separate word.

  “Eventually, yes.”

  He nodded. “I’m getting up there in age.” Marwin pointed to his graying hair. “I don’t have the strength and vigor I once had. I can’t foster young children anymore. The house is too empty. It doesn’t feel like my home. Since I moved here a few days ago, I feel like I’ve lost my way. As if I don’t have a purpose anymore. This, this might be exactly what I need.”

  “You do know it could mean…”

  “My death? I’ve lived a decent enough life. Not everyone reaches my age. Humans that is.” He chuckled. “Witches tend to live long, and vampires, you’d live forever if you weren’t killed, isn’t that right?”

  “Supposedly,” she muttered.

  “Don’t worry about me. You take care of yourself and let me know what you need. I’ll do what I can.”

  Impulsively, she gripped his arm in gratitude. Did he react with fear? Disgust? Did he cower?

  No. Instead, he embraced her.

  A human and a vampire.

  Friends.

  That impossible hope welled within Seraphine as she made her way back up to Marwin’s roof. The drawings and the too-small hat were tucked inside her clothing so the rain wouldn’t harm them. The sun hadn’t risen yet, not that it would cast much light on Ville de Liberté. Too many clouds blotted out any illumination, plunging the world into darkness. She had maybe two hours before dawn would arrive.

  Quick as she could, Seraphine raced back to the pub. She hardly heard any sounds and opted to not go back inside. Instead, she continued on the path to her dwelling.

  Along the way, she passed several other vampire dwellings. No one seemed to be home.

  Worry and maybe even fear seized her momentarily as she waited until the bulls cleared out. Then she jumped down to street level. Within a shed of garlic bulbs, only accessible from the street, was the entry point to the vampires’ underground world. The opening was in plain sight. The witches never thought to look for vampires near one of their known weaknesses.

  During the heat season, this was the vampire’s home.

  Only now, it seemed a lot of the vampires had chosen to live underground instead of above in the actual world.

  It made Seraphine sick to her stomach. One vampire and one witch weren’t enough.

  But if the vampires weren’t ready to stick up for themselves, why would anyone else want to put him or herself at risk?

  9

  The days and nights were beginning to blur together for Antoine. He and the other protectors were rounding up enough vampires that on some days, he had to execute two. Cleaning the blades and preparing the spell for the Inferno Fires twice a day was too tasking for him to keep up the hunt. The other protectors were charged with locating the bull killer.

  Antoine had asked the queen if he could execute multiples one right after the other. She refused.

  “I would rather there be two events,” she had said. “Not all humans can come in the morning. At twilight, before I set the bulls free, is the perfect time for an encore.”

  She made the executions sound like a performance. Unbidden, it had called to mind Seraphine and her claim about a gladiator fight.

  It had been several weeks since he’d last seen the vampire. Still, he found himself thinking of her, wondering where she was. Each time a vampire was brought in to be tried, he held his breath, terrified he would see her light brown hair or her strange green eyes. When he realized the vampire was not her, he would breathe a sigh of relief.

  The whole situation was ridiculous. He should not concern himself with her fate. The dark hunt continued for the villainous traitors to the division, and Antoine was unable to avoid rejoining it.

  He knew full well he was the only protector to gauge and watch the actions of all three species and not just humans alone.

  One day while he sought out riffraff, he spotted something just ahead. Two humans, a male and female, were struggling. The female slapped the male. The male retaliated by spitting in her face and knocking her onto the ground.

  “Ho!” Antoine called. “What seems to be the trouble here?”

  The female cowered into herself as if she could hide.

  The man straightened and pointed a thick finger at her. “She claimed I cheated her.”

  “Cheated her with what?”

  “I run a shop back there.” The man jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “If her vicious lie spreads, no one will come around. She’s threatening my livelihood.”

  “Your scale,” she started, but she flinched when he cocked back his arm as if to punch her.

  Antoine muttered an incantation, and the man could no longer move that raised arm. He whistled to catch the attention of a passerby.

  “Do me a favor please and go to this man’s store. Do you know where it is?”

  The young man nodded.

  “Fetch me his scale if you would,” A
ntoine said.

  The young man brought it back a minute later.

  “Thank you.” Antoine sent him away and examined the scale carefully. “What do you sell?”

  “I sell herbs. Garlic and—”

  Antoine dropped the scale onto the ground. It did not smash.

  Someone had magically tampered with the scale. He felt the enchantment covering it the moment he’d touched it.

  A few words later, the scale burst into flames.

  “I don’t know who altered your scale for you, but you are a thief for using it.”

  Antoine eyed the woman. He winced inwardly. She was still cowering away from them both.

  He pulled her to her feet. “Go to the store and take what you need.”

  She nodded, grateful, and started to walk away.

  “What you need… not what you want,” he called after her.

  The woman turned around and gave a sloppy curtsy before continuing to the store.

  He refocused on the bandit. “As for you…”

  Antoine’s face had to be flushed concerning how hot it felt. Anger and frustration simmered inside of him.

  “I think your lust for your axe is overwhelming you,” the queen said.

  She pruned some of the wild garlic from the back of the courtyard. Grass did not grow well in the division, although some grain could handle the rain season. To supplement their diet, she would feed them garlic.

  “It has nothing to do with wanting to kill him,” Antoine said. “The man abused his fellow humans. He overcharged them for goods. This is a crime. It should not be punished by death, but it should still result in a sentence of some kind.”

  “Very well. I will personally scold him. You need not fear.”

  Antoine grimaced, but what more could he ask for?

  The queen clapped. A guard stepped forward from the shadows and handed her a stein. She sipped for a long while and turned her back to Antoine, effectively dismissing him.

  It was not until he ate lunch with two of the other protectors that he learned the queen had never addressed the thief after all. She had merely sent Cathrin to return him to his shop immediately.

  Cathrin shrugged. “What does it matter?”

  Perhaps they were right. Maybe he was overthinking things.

  Seraphine has me questioning everything, including shadows.

  After the meal, a bread bowl filled with more broth than vegetables and meat, Antoine needed a victory. He wanted to feel useful. The second execution for the day would not be for a few hours, and he had already wiped down his axe.

  With grim determination, he marched back into the division proper. The humans were going about their business, most of them working. Witches had their jobs too, the most common of which was to help grow the crops. If a harvest should ever fail, they would be in big trouble. Even magic could not grow crops by itself.

  More than anything, crops required magical light. Nature provided more than enough rain, too much rain, truth be told. The clouds blotted out the weak sun. Crops grown magically were bland, but food was food. Until and unless witches grew powerful enough to be able to affect the weather, they were stuck in this vicious, terrible cycle.

  One human caught Antoine’s eye. The man would go from establishment to establishment and speak a few words to a single person there. Sometimes, he sought out the vendor. Other times, it was another customer.

  Only he wasn’t a consumer. He bought nothing.

  Suspicious and wary, Antoine followed him. A few streets away, he recognized the man as one of the street cleaning crew who worked at dawn each morning.

  At this time of day, he would’ve thought the man should be sleeping already, which made Antoine even more confused and curious.

  For half an hour, Antoine followed the man deeper and deeper into human territory. Antoine was going to stick out like a sour thumb if he continued to magically prevent the rain from drenching him.

  So he called back his magic.

  The rain alternated between too hot and too cold. It was amazing that no one contracted an illness from exposure to the elements.

  Antoine lifted his hood up and dared to stalk closer to the man. He could not get close enough to overhear the short conversation before the man rushed away. Eventually, Antoine realized they were nearing the clearing.

  He must want to watch the execution.

  Surprisingly, the man entered one of the houses and did not emerge.

  Maybe he lives there.

  Noting the house and vowing to keep an eye on him, Antoine proceeded to go about performing his duties. No longer did he feel a sense of pride when he swung the axe. He hated having to clean the vampire blood from the blade.

  Most of all, he loathed having to magically incinerate the bodies and heads until nothing remained, not even ash. No teeth. No bones.

  It served to wipe out the existence of the vampires as if their lives had been worthless, or worse, as if they had never existed.

  Granted, they were murderers, terrible people one and all… until the queen revealed to the crowd what crime this vampire had committed, that he had disrespected her.

  Unlike Alois Schmidt, Antoine did not always wait on the guillotine platform in his black hood for the vampire victim. At times, Antoine would stand near the queen throughout the sentencing. He would then march the vampire to the guillotine himself.

  Such was the case this time. He had one hand on the vampire’s elbow, tight and firm.

  The vampire shook his head the moment the queen uttered his crime.

  “Disrespected her?” he muttered, his words hardly audible. “All I did was look at her. Fine. So I sneered at her. Does that deserve death?”

  Antoine silenced him but could not conceal his doubts. The queen would condemn a vampire for disrespecting her but would ignore a human using magic to trick his customers. This bothered him more than it should. After all, she was his queen. Who was he to question her?

  But he did have questions.

  Once the queen had banished the vampire to serve his sentence by giving up his life, Antoine did his duty and brought the vampire over. When he had to grip his elbow, he hesitated to even touch it.

  The vampire glanced over and smirked. By now, Antoine had concealed his face in his hood, but he swore the vampire could see through it.

  “Go on. Give the crowd a good show,” the vampire said.

  “Do you want to die?” Antoine asked, shocked.

  The vampire shrugged. “There’s no saving me now. And what’s it to you if I live or die? Don’t you hate me?”

  “I’m sure you hate me,” Antoine muttered.

  “You’re just doing your job.” The vampire rolled his eyes. “The crowd’s getting restless. Your queen’s going to get angry. You don’t want to be the next one on the chopping block, do you?”

  “The queen would never harm a witch.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  The mob began to shout and jeer. The queen was glaring at Antoine. She was not pleased at all.

  He made a show of grabbing his axe and holding it high above his head.

  The crowd cheered. The queen nodded and visibly relaxed.

  But still, Antoine hesitated.

  “If it helps any, I do deserve to die,” the vampire said. Any hint of amusement had left his voice, replaced with sorrow and guilt. “I once killed a man. I drank too much. I also went feral trying to not drink afterward. I even thought about going out in the sun. Just trying to end it all. But I’m a coward. I only drink blood at The Mean Gladiator. Or from a glass. Not fresh. I… I won’t risk it. So you can go ahead and kill me. I earned it. Do your job. Don’t have any guilt. At least, not when you kill me.”

  Antoine swung the axe.

  The enjoyment from the throng of onlookers seemed greater than before. Afterward, the queen had a protector send Antoine a message that his drama at the guillotine had been inspiring.

  But Antoine could not forget that the vampire’s last words h
inted that some of the other vampires killed had been innocent.

  What choice did he have though? The vampires’ deaths were symptoms of the queen’s hatred.

  And Antoine was a victim, a servant to her and a slave to the axe he wielded.

  That night, Antoine woke from a terrible dream. He had been standing at the guillotine, holding his axe. The vampire he had to kill wore a hood over his face.

  His hood. He wasn’t wearing one.

  There was no crowd. No one else was there.

  No one but the queen.

  “Do not disappoint me,” the queen said.

  His body was not his own. He recognized this was a dream but was frozen in place. Was the queen using magic on him? He wasn’t sure.

  But then he was moving. Not of his own volition. His arms rose up, and he swung down. The axe cut the rope, and the guillotine executed.

  The head rolled free from the hood.

  He had killed Seraphine.

  Guilt swept in first. Then dismay. Then self-loathing. Then frustration, anger, fury, hatred, and more.

  Somehow in control of his body once more, he leaped over the severed head and stood before the queen. His arms rose. Once more, they came down.

  But the one to feel the blade was not the queen.

  Blood gushed from Antoine. He dropped to his knees and lay flat on the ground.

  A puddle formed beneath him.

  Rain beat down.

  His eyes closed.

  Antoine opened his eyes and jerked upright. That nightmare seemed so vivid that he touched his body, feeling for wounds.

  Unwilling to attempt more sleep, Antoine climbed out of bed. There weren’t many in the entire division, not with a mattress and a frame anyway. Most people slept on a pile of blankets. At least they had a large supply of those.

  Antoine headed to the streets, walking without purpose until he reached the clearing. Many bulls filled the space that earlier had housed thousands of onlookers for the executions.

  More and more come every day. The queen is forcing the witches and humans to share her hatred of the vampires.

  The bulls ignored him as he picked his way through them to the house of the man he’d trailed earlier in the day. He expected the man to be sleeping, so he was shocked when he overheard a slight rustling inside. A candle was lit. More rummaging sounded. The light extinguished, and the front door opened.