by Lucy Lyons
“I haven’t had time to call you about the last one. It’s hard to determine when the incident happened, but I think it lines up with Landon’s clan leaving the city. It took a while for the police to find out about this one because the woman lived alone. By the decay of the food left on the counter, they estimated she’d been gone a week before anyone noticed she was missing. There’s no sign of where she could have gone, but her house is only a couple of miles from the one being used by Landon’s clan.”
Peter felt sick thinking of all the victims. He wondered how many of them were still alive. He recalled the blood-draining setup he had found in Landon’s basement. Any one of those victims could have been Ashe. One could still be Ashe, if Peter wasn’t careful. A powerful rage burned beneath his skin. He needed to wipe out Landon’s clan.
“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” Peter asked.
Mark replied, “No, I was leading up to the most important part. Now that we know how many vampires there are, everything’s set for the extermination.”
“You’re going to strike tonight?” Peter asked.
“No, in a couple of hours. We want to catch the clan while most of them are still sleeping. The guys I called in to help us are all here, and with the blizzard coming, the clan will have nowhere to run.”
“You’re going to have to give me more time,” Peter said. He still had to walk Ashe home, and more importantly, hold her one more time before he went to battle. He was no stranger to fighting and he knew Mark and the others were good at their job, but there was always that slim chance of a slip-up. His last encounter with Landon had been close enough. If Ashe hadn’t been there...
“I’m in the city,” Peter said, snapping back to the present. “It will take me a couple of hours at least to get out there and that’s not accounting for the snow.”
“It’s now or never,” Mark warned.
Peter watched the clock out of the corner of his eye. Ashe was running late. “I’ll leave as soon as I can. Just hold on until I can get there.”
“Too late; I’m parked outside,” Mark said casually. “I can see you through the window.”
Peter turned slowly to the wall of wide windows across from the snack bar. He could barely make out the black car parked by the curb; it was the only car on the street without a thick covering of snow on its hood. Puffs of white were coming out of the exhaust pipe.
“I told you. I can’t go now.”
The car outside honked. Peter could hear it through the phone and its echo outside at the same time.
“We’re not going to get out of the city if you don’t get your ass out here,” Mark growled. “We’ve only got one chance at this. You want to keep your loved ones safe, don't you?”
Peter thought about Ashe and what was best for her. He had promised to walk her home, but what was a little snow compared to the larger threat of Landon looming over her head? If he insisted on waiting for Ashe, he might mess up his chance to get rid of Landon’s family.
She was almost twenty minutes late now. Peter couldn’t stall much longer. He had to make a decision. “Okay,” he said into the phone. “I’m coming out.”
He quickly hung up the phone and typed out a message to Ashe, telling her to go home without him. Before he could send it, the lights went out in the student center and his phone lost its signal. The bluish light from his cell phone became the only illumination in the entire room. Peter could almost hear Ashe’s voice in his head telling him to come get her, but he ignored it. He knew that constantly worrying about her like this was unhealthy for him, though the echo of her voice nagged him not to go. He hoped that Ashe wouldn’t waste time trying to find him; her house wasn’t far from campus. She would be okay.
CHAPTER 5
Ashe walked around the entire house trying all of the light switches though she knew they wouldn’t work. Peter’s house was drafty and old, but she needed to stay here in case he came back. She thought about waiting out the storm at her own house, but it was too far to go on foot in such weather. Her coat and scarf still hadn’t dried out from the afternoon and she didn’t want to catch pneumonia or lose her toes to frostbite. She contented herself with roaming the halls of the quiet house, peering into half-empty moving boxes and tracing her name in the dust on the banister.
When that lost its charm, Ashe dozed for a while in a leather armchair in the living room. She was exhausted from running and trekking through the snow. Her fragmented dreams brought back visions of Professor Sharp in his office, staring at her with gleaming eyes that told Ashe of a broken, desperate man who do anything to get his wife back. He lunged at her and Ashe jerked awake.
It was hard to tell through the storm where the sun had gone, but Ashe’s phone told her it was nearing six. It also told her its battery was about to run out. She hadn’t meant to sleep nearly so long. As she slipped the phone back into her pocket, she noticed the bundle of herbs Professor Wheatley had given her. She brought it to her nose and could still smell, though faint, a mix of flowers and the piney scent of juniper. She smiled to herself, remembering the professor’s words of encouragement about her work in his class. She stretched her legs and got out of her chair. She walked over to the coat rack by the front door and carefully placed the bundle of herbs inside her coat pocket.
Though the house was still and blizzard had quieted back down into gentle snowfall, Ashe felt the urgency of her need to find Peter. Professor Sharp was still out there somewhere, and even if he couldn’t get to her in all this snow, he would be waiting for her. As Ashe was contemplating whether or not to brave the cold and head back to her home, she heard a door creak open somewhere inside the house. She stopped and turned slowly.
“Hello?” she called out quietly. There was no response. An image of Professor Sharp popped into her mind’s eye and she had to remind herself that the house wasn’t actually empty. Peter’s family were all sleeping downstairs. It must have been one of them.
She turned back around and took her coat from the rack. The wool was still slightly damp on the outside, but the inside was thankfully dry. She decided she would leave a note for Peter, telling him that she was back at her house, in case he came here looking for her.
As she scrawled her note, Ashe noticed the soft padding of footsteps behind her, but thought the sound was a figment of her frightened imagination. She only turned to look when she could no longer deny the feeling that there was someone in the room with her. Her pencil clattered to the floor.
“Penelope,” she said with a tone of surprise. Peter’s eldest sister was standing just inside the room, her dark hair pinned up in its usual manner, though looking messy from her recent slumber. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
Ashe started backing up towards the door, her hand feeling for the doorknob.
“You’re looking for him, aren’t you? He’s not here,” Penelope said, taking a step closer. Ashe’s hand closed around the doorknob.
“I was just leaving,” Ashe replied, trying not to sound nearly as scared as she was.
“No, you’re not,” Penelope replied.
Ashe tried turning the doorknob, but found it was stuck. It was like a sickening instance of déjà vu from Professor Sharp’s office, only this time the lock wasn’t the problem. The door was simply stuck.
Penelope took another quiet step closer, gracefully, as if she were gliding across the hardwood floor.
Ashe rattled the doorknob violently but it was like the door had been glued in place. Ashe realized with horror that Penelope must have telekinetic powers to some degree, similar to how Landon could see future events. Maybe even Peter had psychic powers of his own; Ashe had never thought to ask him. Ashe gave up her struggle and let go of the doorknob.
“Still wearing the treasures that don’t belong to you, I see,” Penelope said in her icy voice.
“If you want them so much, you can have them,” Ashe spat. She was sick of being a pawn, the weak human that vampires thought they could bully and use for their own pur
poses. She pulled the earrings from her ears and thrust them out to Penelope. “Here.”
Penelope smiled, but did not accept the earrings. “How cute; but they are not yours to give. I only take souvenirs from those I kill.”
Peter had to be somewhere close, Ashe thought. He would be here soon and he would protect her. Besides, the rest of the family was sleeping downstairs. Penelope couldn’t do anything to harm her.
Ashe opened her mouth to yell, but no sound came out; it felt as though her throat had closed. She choked and struggled for breath until tears streamed down her face. Finally, Penelope released whatever hold she had on Ashe and Ashe fell to the floor, gulping down huge breaths of air.
“You try that again and I won’t be so kind,” Penelope warned Ashe, who was having trouble finding the will to stand. “My family won’t wake for another several hours. The only reason I’m up is because of your blood. It roused me from my dreams like the lure of a siren drawing in a passing ship. Landon did more than hurt you when he offered me your blood. He knows what I am and he marked you as mine.”
Penelope grabbed Ashe by the hair, forcing her to stand. Ashe bit her lip to keep from crying out in pain as Penelope twisted a fistful of hair.
“But before I drain you, I need just one thing. Do you know what that is?”
Ashe waited for the answer but it didn’t come. “What is it?” she whimpered as Penelope pulled her hair harder.
“I need you to call my brother and tell him you don’t love him.”
“Why?” Ashe asked through tears.
Penelope scoffed, “Why? Does it matter? I want you to break his heart so that he will never be able to love a human woman again. Your kind and ours aren’t meant to fall in love. All you bring is trouble; you are all pigs. You exist to be eaten by us and nothing more.”
“The power’s out,” Ashe muttered, trying to ignore the words cutting through her like a knife.
Penelope released Ashe’s hair. A puzzled look crossed her face and Ashe wondered if her knowledge of technology was as behind as her sense of fashion.
“No power means no cell reception. The towers can’t send the signal.”
Penelope crossed her arms in front of her chest, looking like she was suspicious of Ashe, but too unsure about the subject to contradict her. Ashe felt a little of her fear go away. Maybe she could use Penelope’s ignorance to her advantage.
“No problem. There are plenty of things we can do in the meantime. It’s amazing how much blood a human can lose before they lose consciousness.” Penelope said, a fresh smile forming across her thin pale lips.
There were four of them, one for every victim they hoped to find still alive in the basement. Mark handed out stakes with a leather-clad hand. There were studs of pure silver on each of his knuckles.
“Now be careful with these,” he was saying to the group. “Don’t do something stupid like stick yourself with the pointy end. Also, you need to make them count. You’ve only got two each.”
The men nodded. Peter palmed the round end of the stake, feeling its weight in his hand. He hated killing his own kind. It made him feel like a traitor, even when the vampires he was after would have done the same to him in a heartbeat. He focused instead on Ashe, on her beautiful light eyes and the way her dimples showed with every smile. He thought about the feeling of her in his arms, soft and warm and full of the energy of life. He always felt more human when he was around her and he needed to remember his humanity if he was to get through the night.
Mark continued instructing the men: “You need to make sure your kills are silent. There are six in Landon’s group, more if he’s turned some of the humans. We have to get as many as we can while they’re sleeping. A well-placed stake will silence them before they can fully wake. But you all know that already.” He chuckled grimly.
“I’d prefer to use bullets,” one of the men replied. He had a neatly trimmed beard and piercing blue eyes. “I can shoot them faster than they can wake up from the sound.” He pulled aside his coat to reveal a holster at his hip. The pistol grip looked like something out of an old Western.
“No sound,” Mark grunted. “Silent as the graves we’re sending them to. We can’t afford any mistakes.”
Peter looked at men around him. They were vampires who had made a living from doing away with the members of their kind that posed problems for the greater community. At best they were crusaders working to protect humanity from the monsters lying in the shadows, but at their worst they were hired killers, skilled at exterminating their own kind. Though now Peter was working side-by-side with these men, there was a time not all that long ago when they would have been after Peter, just as they now hunted Landon’s clan. Peter’s past wasn’t free from sin; he was no stranger to the dark lust for blood and the desperate measures a vampire could take to get it. He only hoped that what he had done since then—getting his family onto donor blood and making sure they didn’t take any new victims—was enough to make up for his past transgressions.
“When we go down into the basement, don’t get distracted by the victims,” Mark was saying. “If they start to make a commotion, Bill, you know what to do.” The third vampire, a small man with sunken eyes, nodded in understanding at Mark. Bill had the same powers as Peter’s sister Penelope; he could manipulate the matter around him with his willpower alone. Of course there were limits to any vampire’s power and Peter hoped Bill was strong enough to silence a room full of desperate, suffering people. The success of the job may depend on it.
Landon’s house was a distant dark spot on the horizon, the details of its shape obscured by the falling snow. It didn’t look especially sinister from where Peter stood, but he knew that inside there would be horrors most people couldn’t imagine. He was glad Ashe wasn’t there, though he still worried whether she had gotten home okay in the snow. As Mark gave out more last-minute instructions, Peter pulled out his phone, as he had been doing periodically since leaving campus, to check if power had been restored to the signal towers. To his relief, there were two weak bars of reception, giving him the first hope he had felt in some time.
“I need to make a call,” he said, stepping away from the group. He had heard most of what Mark was saying already on the drive over. Besides, he didn’t need any reminders of what had to be done. Landon was a threat to his and Ashe’s happiness, and as long as Landon existed, he and Ashe could never truly be together.
Peter couldn’t wait to hear Ashe’s voice. He paced anxiously by the hood of Mark’s car, waiting for her to pick up. Her phone rang six, seven, eight times. Mark was motioning him to rejoin the group. Peter let the phone ring longer, but Ashe still didn’t answer.
“Peter, we have to go.” Mark pointed towards the house where a small figure was just barely visible walking away from the house. The person appeared to be heading for a small copse of trees to the right of the property. “Someone’s on the move. That means one less of them to worry about. Now is our chance.”
Peter cursed under his breath as he hung up the phone. He promised himself he would call Ashe as soon as he was done with Landon.
The four men set off across the white expanse of fields between the road and the house in the distance. As they got closer to the house, Peter thought he recognized the figure disappearing into the trees. It was hard to mistake him even through the snow. His long, striding steps and the dark coat he always wore with the collar turned up were sure signs it was Landon.
“Where are you going?” Mark asked, as he noticed Peter heading off in the direction that Landon had gone.
“I’m going to do what I came here for,” Peter called back. The wind had picked up again and Peter had to raise his voice to be heard over it.
Peter thought that Mark was going to try and stop him, but Mark only nodded at him gravely. He must have understood Peter’s need to go after Landon on his own. Peter turned to go towards the dark figure.
“Wait.” It was the blue-eyed vampire; he was holding out his gun. “
I can’t use it anyway. The blizzard might hide the sound out there in the woods, but then again it might not. Only fire if it’s your last option. You can give it back when you’ve done what you need to.”
Peter ran back to take it. “Thanks,” he said, tucking the weapon into the back of his belt.
“Good luck,” the man called out as Peter disappeared through the veil of falling snow.
Peter couldn’t see anything beyond the trees ahead of him, but as soon as he stepped under the cover of their branches, the snow suddenly stopped and he found himself in a world cut off from the foul weather outside. Here and there a stray snowflake fell down through the thick tangle of tree branches above Peter’s head, but the wood was eerily silent all around him, as if even the wind was afraid to go where Peter had to. The ground was covered in a thick layer of fallen brown leaves that had been stopped in their decay by the freezing temperatures. Peter felt as if all time had stopped in these woods and they were just as they had been for centuries. He couldn’t see Landon anywhere around him, but knew the man had to be somewhere nearby. Peter set off to look for him.
As Peter walked through the wood, he started noticing what looked like small piles of rocks littering the mulch-covered ground. After a while he realized the piles were actually made by crumbling tombstones that had been broken to pieces by age. As he walked farther, the tombstones became more whole, until he could start to make out the inscriptions through the lichen growing on their faces. He stooped down to read one. “Mariana Alilovic,” it read, though the dates were unreadable.
Peter was confused. Could Landon have human relatives buried out here? That was highly unlikely. Peter bent down and put his hand on the ground in front of the tombstone. Though he had no particular skill for it, Peter felt he could sense something deep in the dirt, biding its time until it was time to wake. With a shiver Peter stood back up. The pieces were starting to fit together. Peter jogged ahead to look at a few more gravestones. “Eloise Alilovic, Joanna Alilovic,” Peter muttered to himself. Each grave gave Peter that same eerie feeling that it was occupied. Mark had said there had been no sign of Landon’s female relatives. Peter knew that vampires were sometimes forced into a state of hibernation when they did not receive enough blood for a long period of time. Aside from their brief use of David’s stolen blood, Landon’s clan had largely been relying on hunting to survive. Could the women of Landon’s family be buried in this wood, waiting until they could be resurrected with a fresh supply of blood?
