by Deborah Noel
I looked to Shane and Brae, “So what do we know about our friends downstairs?”
“That silver DOES render them not so powerful,” Brae offered.
I smiled at her. I had to apologize to her for my behavior earlier. My mind was preoccupied and I had been rude to her. She didn’t deserve that, she seemed like a nice girl.
“Well, they are trackers. They were hired by someone to find us, I would assume.” Shane stood up and began to walk around in tiny circles.
He winced a few times when he made a sudden movement with his arms, forgetting that he had a couple of cracked ribs. All-in-all, he had done well for himself against three thug vampires who should have been able to destroy him easily; after-all, he was only human.
The alarm on my cell phone went off. I turned it off and looked at Declan. “I have to pick Marcy up from her afterschool activities.”
“Can you call Jane and ask her to bring her home with her and see if she can stay at her house for a few hours?”
I nodded and excused myself to make the phone call.
I returned with news that Jane, one of my neighbors, could watch Marcy for us.
Shane was suggesting that though the vampires weren’t turning to ash in the sunlight, it did seem to affect their strength.
I decided I should be taking notes. We needed to have the facts about vampires so we could know how to deal with them without them destroying us in the process.
“I’m surprised that you weren’t bit once you stayed on the ground,” Declan said.
Shane turned to him, “I wasn’t, but Brae was back at the flat.”
We all turned to him. He had neglected to tell us this part during his story.
“He lunged at her to bite her neck, but she blocked with her arm. He did sink his fangs into her arm. That is when he had to be reminded of the no killing order.”
With that, Brae shyly rolled up her sleeve and exposed her arm. Shane had white gauze wrapped around her lower arm. She carefully unwrapped her wound and showed us the fang marks.
I had never seen a fang mark so up-close and personal before. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t what I thought it would be. The puncture wounds were relatively small in diameter. As I looked at them closely, I noticed a slight rigidness to one side of the wound, almost jagged. It looked like two tiny triangles jetting off one side of the hole, the rest of the skin was smooth were it had been opened. I held up my camera, “May I?”
Brae nodded.
I looked to Shane, “Which vampire attacked Brae?” I had to ask though I already knew the answer.
“The younger looking one, why?”
Of the two vampires, the younger looking one, although paler in his skin’s tone, had a green hue about his color, too. His eyes were more vivid. He had an edge to his whole demeanor. There was a testosterone, feather-ruffled type of kick-ass, know-it-all aura about him that an inexperienced 21-year-old has when he walks into a bar legally for the second time in his life after experiencing a can of whoop-ass the first time.
The older one was more established and subtle. His coloring seemed to be more normal, but I could still see a grayish hue shading the outline of his face. His eyes were more reserved. He carried himself with a certain confidence; he wasn’t going to pummel anyone without just cause. It took more to set him off, to show his true viciousness.
I smiled knowing I had deduced the answer correctly. Declan’s eyes narrowed towards me.
I explained to an intrigued audience my deductive reasoning. It only made sense by the fang marks that they were made by a young vampire. There was no real reason that I could attribute my calculation to other than the size and a gut feeling. I did point out the rugged tear on the one side of the flesh and wanted to do an experiment to see if the bite of all vampires left that type of mark or if it was an individual thing. My guess was that it would be an individual thing, like a fingerprint. Which lead my mind into a tizzy. I wanted to know if vampires had fingerprints.
“Vital information,” Declan and Sam jinxed themselves in my head. I smiled coyly at them.
I turned to Declan and Sam as Shane re-wrapped Brae’s arm. I asked them secretively, “Here’s the challenge I offer, how can we get the vampires downstairs to cooperate?” I winked at them both.
They began to discuss the best approaches among themselves as I walked away. I found myself walking down the corridor towards our “home” space within this mountain.
A million thoughts were jetting through my mind. I had to create a database of all the information we could gather. I needed to start files on the two individual vampires we had jailed behind silver bars in the lower level of our newly found office. We needed to find out who hired them for their tracking abilities and who gave the “no kill” order they had divulged to Shane and Brae.
I was so in a fog with new questions, ideas and thoughts that I hadn’t realized I was sitting on Mattie’s plush bed threading her throw pillow’s fringes through my fingers, silently shedding tears.
Brae quietly walked over and sat down beside me. She offered no words, but her shoulder instead. I took it.
I could only lean against this stranger beside me and sob.
Chapter Twenty-five
My cell phone rang and brought me out of the faraway place where I was asking and answering the questions buzzing in my head.
It was Marcy’s mother. She had heard about Mattie’s disappearance. I cut her off, inadvertently, to assure her of her own daughter’s safety. She shhh’d me and continued on with the purpose of her phone call. She and her husband didn’t want to add anymore stress to Declan and I and had sent their nephew up to pick up Marcy at Jane’s, who was now going to stay in Bucks County with family.
I understood what she was doing, and thanked her for her help. She said she saw the Amber Alert notification in her email and suggested that I send it to everyone in my email address book. I told her I hadn’t checked my own email to see if I had received it. Mrs. MacMartin promised to forward her copy to me.
Again I thanked her for everything before hanging up the phone.
Brae had left the room to give me some privacy when the phone rang. I found her sitting at Declan’s piano. When she realized I had finished and was coming from the bedroom, she gazed at me questioningly and looked from the piano then back to me.
I smiled. “I don’t know how he did it,” I answered before she even asked.
“Men.”
We shared a quick laugh.
I told her about the idea of forwarding the Amber Alert to everyone in my address book. Brae agreed and said she would do the same. She thought it would be a good idea to ask everyone to forward to everyone in their contacts as well.
We set out back to the office to start the technical mass-mailing.
Sam and Shane had left to get some more supplies, I didn’t ask what specifically. Declan was pacing. I left him to it. He was deep in thought, I knew by his posture.
Brae went into an office that was being set up by Shane while I went into mine. We each got busy sending emails when a strange notification appeared in my inbox.
The Amber Alert Notice I forwarded to Morticina was bounced back to me stating that there was no such address. I doubled checked that I had the correct spelling, a dot instead of a comma and that I had “net” not “com” at the end. All looked right to me.
I tried once more. Again it was returned as failed with no such address.
I decided to go to their webpage for their funeral parlor and contact her there.
Instead of the funeral parlors or celebration of eternal rest halls in Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Region website, an “oops … the link appears to be broken” appeared across my computer’s screen. I was informed that the site called Hellheim’s Eternal Hall had either been moved or deleted.
Standing behind me, Declan chimed in my head, “What’s the confusion on your face about my love?”
Quietly I explained that suddenly I wasn’t able to co
ntact the Dethstares over the Internet. They weren’t even available on the social networking sites. All of their accounts had been deleted. I looked at Declan. I thought of Rogi and his threat to them at dinner.
Declan pondered the same. He walked over to me and leaned over my shoulder, he typed in a search of funeral parlors in Black Forest, Germany. There were only a handful and luckily for us the Dethstares used a shortened version of the same name, Hellheim Hall, changing the suffix to reflect the location of Black Forest. Guiding the computer mouse over that option Declan double clicked it. The site came up.
Then with no apparent reason, it disappeared from the screen and once again, the broken link notification took the place of the site we were looking for.
“Unsettling,” Declan startled me in my head.
I blinked my eyes at him letting him know I agreed.
Declan looked over the computer, I knew he was having a conversation with Sam. I touched him and stared at him. I was able to hear Sam agree to swing by the funeral parlor to check it out. Declan scooted me over in my chair and planted a cheek next to me.
“We need to decide what to do with the trackers.”
“What are our options?”
“I want to interview them.”
I smiled, “Well, that’s nicer than interrogate. I have some questions for them myself, but who’s to say they will even talk to us, let alone be affable?”
“Aye, you have a point there. We need leverage.”
“Well, it’s not like they are going anywhere soon. We need to be smart about this. We need a solid game plan and a back-up plan too.”
“They should be relaxed by now. I turned all the lights out; minus one, and it’s cool down there. The beds may not be all the comfortable being stone, but vampires sleep in coffins, under the ground, or whatever, so they should feel at home, right?”
I shrugged my shoulders, “Dunno. I didn’t think vampires could be out in the sun. And they blow that theory out of the water, huh?”
For the first time that day we genuinely laughed together.
“How do we guarantee they won’t harm us? Do we let them go? There are so many questions, Declan.”
Brae cleared her throat to announce she was standing in the doorway.
“I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but I may be able to help here. Can you keep a secret?”
Declan and I looked at each other and extended our smiles. We had been keeping secrets all our lives. We nodded.
“I may be able to whip up a spell to cast on the vampires to help out. I will have to do some research, but I may be able to find a spell to alter their mind to keep you safe later, something maybe to erase you and your scent from their minds or block them from being able to even want to track you. I have heard of spells that have erased a vampire’s mind for the duration of the spell, but I think something more permanent is in order here.”
I know my jaw hit the floor and when I glanced over at Declan, his eyebrows were mixing with his receding hairline.
“Excuse us?”
Brae looked to me. “My secret is that I’m a witch. And don’t worry, Shane is well aware of my heritage.”
This day was getting weirder and weirder for me. Who would have thought when I woke up this morning I would have watched a duel in my backyard between werewolves and a killer vampire tracker, experience the heart wrenching disappearance of my only daughter, have my first premonition, imprison two vampires and meet a real-live witch? I wouldn’t have.
“Hmmm,” was all Declan could get to come from his throat.
Then the wheels in his mind started spinning. Declan started pacing again. He walked himself right out of the office with his hands clasped behind his back. He popped his head back in the doorway and said he would be right back.
Brae looked at me. I smiled, “He’s going to work out what’s in his mind by playing the piano.”
Brae squished her lips into a pucker and nodded her head. “Whew, I thought I freaked him out by telling him I am a witch.”
“Nah. Have you seen what we have been around lately?” I pointed down.
She laughed. She looked straight into my eyes, “I do want you to know that I released a spell of protection from harm for Mattie, as soon as Shane told me.”
“Thank you.”
I looked at Brae, for a long hard moment. She seemed to expect it and her face softened.
“So, are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
She expected that too. “I’m different from what you know as a witch. I see myself as a good person. I know light and dark witchcraft and, honestly, I have used both though my lifetime, depending on the circumstance I was in at the time. Actually, I am more than a witch. My great, great, great grandfather was a student of Merlin.
“Merlin was a great Druid high priest. A wizard. The title Merlin is more of a position than a particular person. "The" Merlin of fame was the last of them. The Merlin was chosen by the druid priests and was the only one who was able to touch any of the holy relics the druids held safely--including the Chalice of the Holy Grail.
“I, in turn, was taught by my great, great, great grandfather. I was his prize student. I am a descendant of the Druid main base, which goes back to Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece and Atlantian tales. My bloodline is vision or sight, but to 'be' who I am now, I had to practice, study, and learn. I wasn’t born a witch. That’s also what aids in my unusual strength. Witches, as they are known, characteristically deal with their magic using more natural herbs, natural magic, etc. They work more with nature elements like plants, powders, crystals and such. Merlin, on the other hand, dealt more in alchemy.”
Brae was amused by my face. “In a simplified nutshell, I am more powerful and knowledgeable than a regular ol’ witch.”
“Just wow,” was all I could say.
Shane and Sam came back with more supplies. The place was looking just like a mainstream office complex.
We each set up our own offices with specifics. Declan and I shared one, Sam got his own and Shane and Brae set up one together. We even set up one other office and a conference room. We made a comfortable waiting room. What was really cool was that along half of the far wall, there was a natural thin flow of water trickling down. On the floor it collected itself into a little basin. From the basin the water streamed itself out along the wall and disappeared somewhere under it.
Brae had unpacked a variety of candles, incense and crystals. She strategically placed them around the place. She lit all the candles after saying a chant over each one first.
She had brought a care-bag from her flat that contained quite a few essentials. She had also brought several small potted plants which she explained to me was this herb or that one and what each had properties they were known for. I surprised her by knowing about herbs and their medicinal and/or aromatherapy properties.
Down the stairs, we had the five silver-lined holding cells. We had the area that I called the morgue. The mechanical type that Sam was, within several days, he even created slabs made of silver that rolled back into the compartments. In the center of the room there was a drain table – like the table used for autopsies. There were cabinets against one wall with a countertop and drawers. Sam filled the cabinets with all the tools needed for sampling, cutting, drilling, and examining potential, let’s say, patients.
Once we each attended to the necessities of our office, we gathered in the conference room around the table. The police scanner on the corner table was turned to low, intermittently squawking out radio calls or instructions to squad cars.
Sam began by tossing a crumbled up piece of paper into the center of the table looking from me to Declan.
My heart seemed to stop. Brae looked to me with apprehension.
Declan hesitated before snatching it up and revealing its message.
He flattened and smoothed the paper on the table in front of me. It was a ripped piece of letterhead with Hellheim Hall’s insignia still visible.
In quick scribble was
“sie werden sie in Deutschland nicht suchen.”
German.
Declan looked at me. “Ci?”
For some reason, I noted that the hand-writing wasn’t familiar to me. It also looked like a male’s penmanship. My mouth was as dry as Death Valley’s desert. I looked across the table at Brae and Shane. Then over to Sam. I turned to look at Declan beside me. Tears fell from my eyes without hesitation.
“They wouldn't look for her in Germany," I read the words choking back the fear that boiled in the pit of my stomach.
Sam jumped in to explain he and Shane had found this in a waste basket at the Dethstare’s funeral parlor. He and Shane took turns describing the chaos left behind from a quick exit. The front door had been left unlocked. Computers were gone while wires remained. Answering machines were empty of their tapes and left smashed in pieces on the floor. File drawers were open and void of content. Coffins were left untouched in the showroom Shane had found a key hidden above the doorframe in the back of the building. They locked the doors as they were leaving.
Sam was going to arrange forensics to investigate the building to double check for any signs of foul play, based on the assumption that even the most careful of criminals leave behind a tell-all tale, especially in as a hurried state as the Hall had been left. But from his years of experience, nothing had stood out indicating that.
He suggested that I should file a “missing persons” report on Morticina to facilitate the whole thing for a legitimate angle of the investigation. It started with emails being returned, disconnected land and cell phones and so on.
I found myself tuning out Sam and planning my trip to Germany. Declan squeezed my shoulder to bring me back into the conversation.
“I suggest that Brae accompanies you two to Germany,” Sam was saying.
Shane put his hand around Brae’s on the table, “I agree that it would be best. Sam and I will stay here and keep our guests company and have a chat with them.”
Shane looked to me, “We promise to wait until you get to Germany, then we’ll have our webcams going so you can see it real-time and also ask or comment when you see fit. We will also videotape the entire thing so you can go over what happened to get the information you need from them.”
