“And this Damon person. Micah’s father…what’s his story?”
“In my father’s notes, he says that Damon Caspari was an orphan born in fifteenth century Hungary. He joined the military as a young man and from his exceptional ruthlessness on the battlefield quickly rose to power. During this rise, he served under one Vlad of Wallachia, aka Vlad the Impaler.”
Zara reeled. “Oh god. I’ve been reading about him.”
“Yeah,” Twig said with a sigh. “So anyway. During the war, the two men became friends and came to respect each other. It was then that my father thought that Vlad let Damon drink from his famous grail. A golden cup he used to leave unguarded in the center of the city to tempt any criminal stupid enough to touch it. And they became the first of their kind.”
“Let me guess, the Holy Grail?” Zara said sarcastically. The whole thing was too much to handle.
“Not quite. A different cup. Previously owned by a man known as Lazarus of Bethany. You know, the guy from the bible who rose from the dead?”
“Now you’re just messing with me,” Zara said, holding her head in her hands.
Twig continued undeterred by Zara’s disbelief. “And in time, with his newfound titles and lands, all Damon needed to complete his life was a family, and so he chose one. He chose a wife, a peasant girl named Vivian Zokos, who was pregnant with child. A boy who would be named Micah. The unborn child’s father was put on a pike like a kabob when he tried to protest. You see, Damon Caspari is every bit as vicious as his old friend Vlad.”
Zara got up and peered out the window now, feeling quite uneasy.
“Vivian is his mother.”
“Yes,” Twig said.
And Micah chose me,” she said flatly.
“He did. But we can stop it. My father speculated that if you could take out Damon, the blood bond would break.”
“Speculated,” Zara said sadly. “And even if it was all true: take out a warlord vampire? Just like that huh?”
“Yeah, well, there is something else in his notes. Something he was working on. A weapon against those with infected blood. Something called Liquida Solis. Liquid sunlight. One shot of it…and poof.”
“So…we somehow get this liquid stuff into Damon and I go back to normal, angels sing, and everyone rides off into the sunset? That’s our plan?”
“Well, you were never really normal,” he said, sitting back next to her. “But yes. I think it will undo this…curse or whatever it is.”
“You think,” Zara whispered. “You also think there is a secret military base under the airport run by the Freemasons.”
“That’s a fact. I had a friend who worked there. Said they had all kinds of secret tunnels under—”
Zara cut him off. “Alright, alright. Can we just maybe save that discussion for another time and get back to my dilemma? I mean…how do you know it will work? ”
Twig shrugged. “It’s a theory. Mostly I’m just going on what I found in my father’s notes, and the movie The Lost Boys.”
“Great. That’s very reassuring. My future hangs on some mad ramblings left in a notebook and a 80’s cult classic.” Zara was starting to look back at her worry over her late history class essay with fond memories. How small our problems become in the shadow of real dread.
“You want reassurance? Maybe you should come down to the Scout. There’s something I need to show you.” All the sarcasm in his voice was gone now. He was dead serious. Zara gulped.
13.
Outside Zara winced at the sunlight. Twig held his hand over the latch to the back door of the Scout. “A little warning. What you are about to see is a bit graphic.”
He flung open the door and Zara saw a white sheet, covering what was obviously a body. Something was protruding from the chest of the body, and making the sheet stand like a tent.
“Oh god…” Zara said, turning away.
Twig touched her elbow. “Zara…you have to be strong now.”
She wiped a tear from her eye. “I am. Show me.” She shook off her welling nausea and took a deep breath.
He nodded. He looked around, and, convinced there was nobody watching them, uncovered the body.
A young man, with an ivory complexion was looking upward with two lifeless eyes. A wooden stake was lodged deep into his chest. Zara knew those eyes—that same metallic blue color she had seen in both Micah’s and Vivian’s eyes. The young man had a grimace across his face—an expression of frozen agony and torment.
“Meet Jonas Caspari. Cousin to Micah Caspari. He was waiting for me in me in the back seat when I left the party. Damn near took my arm off.”
She touched the boy’s face. “He’s so young…”
“He’s older than you think,” Twig said. Covering the body back up and closing the door.
She looked at the dead boy’s face. “I met him,” she muttered.
Twig raised an eyebrow, “Oh yeah?”
“At the church, I remember now. I saw him biting a girl in one of the upstairs rooms. I thought they were just…I should of...”
Twig sighed. “Don’t blame yourself for that. He probably got in your head. They like to do that.”
Zara kept staring at the boy’s face. “You could have closed his eyes…isn’t that what people do when someone dies?” she said sadly, the gravity of the situation dawning on her. She sat down on the sidewalk curb. Her world felt suddenly very dark and angry. A simple, predictable life suddenly cluttered and messy. How had it come to this? Why her?
“I tried. They just open back up…” Twig said.
“What are you going to do with it…with him I mean.”
“Nothing. The last one I got turned to dust a few hours after I staked it. Probably some vampire-evolutionary-thing. Destroys the evidence and whatnot. I’ll spread the ashes at the cemetery later.”
“The last one? How many have there been?”
“About five others. Both kids like this one. I think there is some kind of hit on me because of my father. Either that or I have the most delicious blood in all of Denver,” Twig said. “On the plus side though,” he chuckled, “they do seem to carry a lot of cash around with them…”
“So this is why you have been acting like James Bond. You were hunting vampires. I can’t believe I didn’t guess that,” Zara said sarcastically. Suddenly it all made sense: the mystery job, the you-can’t-come-over-because-my-place-is-a-wreck routine (as if guys cared about that).
“Yeah,” Twig said. “I had to get a new place and a couple fake ID’s too. My apartment is rented under the name Alex Murphy.”
“That sounds familiar…” Zara said, looking up at him with a puzzled expression.
“Robocop’s real name,” Twig said with a grin.
“You are such a nerd,” she said, pretending to be in awe of his nerdiness. But her mind was elsewhere.
“Yeah, yeah…” He sat down on the curb next to her and began looking over his hands. They were all cracked and blistered. He took off his aviators and clipped them to his shirt. He squinted, still studying his hands and turning them over in the sunlight like they had just been given to him. Zara saw sadness in his face, mostly in his soft hazel eyes. It was something she had never seen in him, but maybe she just hadn’t ever bothered to look, or had chosen to ignore it. Twig was the party guy everyone liked but nobody really knew. Zara felt a sudden regret that it took her life being thrown into such chaos for her to truly assess the value of her friendship with him.
“They were hunting me first,” he said. “I just recently decided to show them what it feels like. If I had told you about it before, I might be sitting next to my father in the loony bin right about now. I didn’t want you to get hurt…but I had to know he was there. You don’t know what hell those people brought on my family.”
“It’s my own fault,” Zara said. “Micah made me feel something…I had never felt before. Something powerful and raw. It was like…a high. This whole thing is just so surreal.” She rubbed her temples. The light was making her skin i
tch and the whispers had returned and had become agitated.
“Shut the hell up!” Zara yelled, and swatted at her head.
Twig gave her a worried look. “Who’s up there? Al Roker? Is he telling you the weather?”
“I wish. It’s just gibberish. At least the weather would make sense.”
They sat in silence for a minute.
“I saw him, you know.” Twig said finally. “The father. Their father, Damon. He is in a room on the second floor, at the end of the hallway. I had to pick the lock to get in. He seems to be in a coma of some kind. He was just lying there in bed, as frail as death itself.”
“So why didn’t you, um, you know,” Zara made a staking motion with her hand.
“The plaque. I took one step towards him and almost passed out. It protected him. And then I heard Drake and you arguing …I had to make sure you were okay. Drake figured out who I was, and I knew they would come after me the minute my guard was down.”
Zara looked up from the pavement at her friend. “I’m sorry…I should have listened to you,” she whispered. She took his hand in hers. His hand was very warm, or hers was quite cold, she couldn’t be sure.
Twig sniffed and put his aviators back on and then looked up towards the sky. “Let’s get you inside. We have to go over the plan.”
14.
Zara put on a pair of red leggings, a black leather skirt, and a black halter-top. Twig had suggested the outfit, saying: “He may be a vampire, but he’s still a guy.” She would have protested had she not thought she looked pretty good.
He also had her drink a concoction, something his father had invented before he was hauled away. Twig said he found it in the basement when he was clearing out the old house. A few old water bottles filled with the stuff in a dusty box. There was a cryptic note that accompanied the bottles indicating that it would slow the mutation. At the time Twig had just chalked it up to his father’s illness. Later, when he had his first encounter with an actual vampire, he learned how sane his father actually was.
It took a little coaxing but Zara drank it down. The potion would supposedly negate hypnosis, and slow her…transformation. Twig said it was how he resisted the many charms of the Casparis during the party. He said it would be harder for her though, since she was…infected.
They went over the plan together. Zara would keep Micah busy at the museum while Twig slipped into the Caspari mansion, where he would find and destroy Damon. Her part was easy enough, she thought. Twig told her he had to prepare and left her in her apartment to pace and worry. Night came quickly, and before she knew it, Micah was at her door.
Micah told Zara she looked stunning and then opened the passenger door for her. She slid herself into the passenger seat. “No Stella tonight?” She said, trying to hide her nervousness.
“Vivian advised I take the Porsche,” Micah said. “Said it was much more dignified.” He went around the car and got in the driver’s side and started the car.
Zara took out a compact and pretended to touch up her eyeliner. She wanted to avoid eye contact as much as she could. She was a horrible liar, and felt like Micah would see right through her. The inside of the car felt cold. Sterile. All cold black leather and glowing neon lights.
Micah picked up his IPod, ignoring the road. A minute later Arcade Fire’s ‘Wake Up’ started playing loudly over the speakers. He turned it down a bit so he didn’t have to talk over it.
“This exhibit is supposed to be amazing. It’s all about the Spanish inquisition, lots of freaky torture stuff.” He smiled at her and she met his gaze. She was still entranced by him, by his manner and his…aura. Micah ran a red light, purposely, and chuckled. “Drake and his date will be there too. I know you guys didn’t really hit it off, but he’s really a great guy. I just want us all to get along. One big happy family.”
Zara was mortified, but put on a brave smile, “His date?”
“Your pal Abby. Guess they’re an item now.” Micah turned the music back up as he flew through another red light.
A pit formed in her stomach. She wondered if it was her nerves, or if she was just hungry.
15.
Twig stood at the big iron gate of the Caspari mansion. He had checked on Vivian—she was still at her ballroom dancing class downtown—and Micah and the rest of his coterie were with Zara at the museum. He tried not to think about the danger he had put Zara in. He’d let himself become obsessed with these creatures just as his father had. He would have to make risking Zara’s life worthwhile. He had to kill Damon, or it would have all been in vain. There would be no saving her if he failed. There would be no saving himself if he failed either.
He eased the gate open just enough to slide past, and crouched down, moving quickly to the door. He took out a small tube filled with liquid from his backpack. The tube had a makeshift trigger on it, and he squeezed it, spraying the plaque, which immediately began to bubble and foam from the chemical reaction. He couldn’t do what he needed to do so long as the house was protected by the plaque’s power.
He crept around the side of the house, stepping softly on the flagstone walkway. He knew everyone had gone out, but imagined the Caspari’s didn’t survive this long by letting people just walk through the front door and stake them while they were taking their power naps.
On his waist he wore a leather stake-holster belt that held three custom-made black walnut stakes that had been polished and sharpened for maximum penetration. During his first encounter with one of the creatures a stake had broken in half when he missed its chest and he’d driven it into the creature’s shoulder, and he’d had to get really creative to finish the thing off. Eventually he discovered that severing their heads worked just as well as staking them, but was much harder and much messier, so the stakes remained the weapon of choice.
Just the same, he wore a machete on his side as well. The belt was noisy though, and he made a mental note to modify it later so that it would be quieter.
The backdoor was locked, as he expected. He sprayed the door handle with the corrosive liquid and watched it bubble, then gave the door a light push and it opened. He readied a stake, gripped it tightly, and stepped into the dark house.
16.
Micah parked the Porsche in an empty parking lot. Zara looked up at the Denver Art Museum: a towering grey sharp-edged fortress rising into the night sky. Normally, Zara would consider it a work of post-modern brilliance. Tonight, though, she thought it very closely resembled a doomed prison filled with very clever torture devices. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Micah asked.
“Are you sure it’s open? There’s nobody else here…” Zara said, scanning the empty parking lot through her window.
“It is for me. I happen to know the curator, we’re like this,” Micah crossed his fingers. She wanted to ask why he lied about the “promotional event” but decided she had much bigger things to worry about. Clearly Micah just did whatever the hell he wanted and didn’t concern himself with the consequences.
“So, I wanted to tell you something.” Micah said, placing his hand gently over hers. She wanted to recoil, but didn’t. He still commanded a powerful influence over her, and she could feel Twig’s potion waning inside her.
“I wanted to say, that sometimes we push so hard against what we know is right, because we are really just used to life being…a disappointment, and we are afraid to be truly happy. I mean…are you really happy living in that little apartment, knowing such a hard life is waiting for you, so much meaningless toil to just get a few drops of happiness when it rains on other people?”
Zara blinked and looked sadly away. She wanted to slap him. Tell him he was just a monster who knew nothing of her life and only wanted to drag her down into his own darkness. But he was right. Her whole life she had worried about whatever new problem was lurking around the corner—always waiting to spring forth and knock her down from whatever precarious footing she’d managed to get. Everyday her father worked himself into an early grave just to keep the electr
icity on and help pay for her school. She wondered, deep down, if her community college art degree would grant her the life she constantly daydreamed of, or even one half as fulfilling.
She also pictured her mother, latching on to the first guy to come along who offered to deliver her from her life. She had left a hastily scribbled note for her sixteen-year-old daughter that read “I love you but I can’t stay,” before jumping on the back of the guy’s Harley and saying “Get me out of here!” The guy had waved with a smug look on his face. As if he took sadistic pleasure in knowing he had a hand in making Zara’s already tough life harder. She was no dope, though, even then.
Thinking about all this made her angry. She looked over at Micah, that sincere, boyish face with ancient eyes, flickering with mystery. He wasn’t like them. He didn’t look at her and see all the things she wasn’t. He looked at her and saw the things she could be, if only she could be lifted out of the quicksand. She suddenly felt empathy for her mother. She could see how easy it is to forget who you leave behind when something wonderful lies in front of you.
Zara's Curse (Empire of Fangs) Page 6
