by Deborah Noel
He grimaced. He fell backwards and landed on the floor. He laughed uncontrollably as his body began to smolder. He leaned forward, bending and twisting his leg up to his mouth. He sank his fangs into his calf, sucking more. Black tar oozed down his chin and skin began to melt along his jaw.
He struggled to get to his feet. Staggering and wobbling he took a step backwards, screamed a loud “fuck you”, and then hurled himself against the silver bars. The rest of his body exploded. Pieces flew everywhere. The liquid that had remained in his body gushed out, spewing all over, covering the walls, ceiling and floor. Since the floor sloped naturally toward the area we made into the examining room, the silvery, crimson, tar-like blood slowly made its way across the room in that direction.
“Good riddance,” Remmie said as he stood with his arms folded across his chest near his silver bars and watched the trail of liquid go by.
The screen went blank. Sam chuckled as he commented, “Guess the dead really can’t drink the blood of the dead, aye?”
I still had my gaze locked on the dark TV screen.
“Wow,” Declan said.
“I’ve seen it all now,” Brae added.
“Not quite, love,” Shane told her. “Remmie’s confession is quite interesting.”
I turned to look at Shane and Sam. Sam was nodding in agreement. Sam tossed me my notebook and a pen. “For your vampire facts you are collecting. Take notes. The reason vampires need fresh human blood is because after time, theirs turns into that black tar-like stuff you saw. That stuff gets hot and begins to melt things, as you just witnessed. Fresh human blood thins it out, keeps it from getting to that point. It must have something to do with the oxygen in live human blood--that’s the only conclusion I can think of. Anyway, obviously their hearts no longer work like ours do, but I haven’t figured out how their blood circulates through their bodies. That is why they are cold to the touch; that’s a no-brainer. I also can’t figure out how their organs remain in such pristine condition.”
“Looks like we have some experiments to do,” Declan seemed up for the challenge.
“Benipal,” I mumbled.
Declan turned to look at me.
“Benipal?” Sam asked.
“Great idea, Cianna,” Declan praised. He turned back to Sam, “Benipal works for Rogi. He’s basically his mad-scientist, as Rogi, himself, put it.”
“This guy was mentioned in Rogi’s letter to you,” Sam remembered out loud. “Said he wanted to meet with you.”
“We could pick his brain. Learn from him,” Shane said.
“One problem, boys,” I interrupted. “I don’t quite know how to get a hold of Rogi. He has only just shown up. I have no address.”
“Jondra can tell you,” Brae spoke up. “She will know how to put us in touch with him.”
I pulled out the phone she gave me and sent a text explaining I needed to get in touch with Rogi and asking her how to do so.
Brae stood up. “Hey everyone, I hate to be a party-pooper, but I’m exhausted.”
Sam smiled, “Let’s save Remmie’s tape for tomorrow. We should all get some sleep.”
Declan was already on his feet, “Sounds good. I’m going to play the piano before I turn in.” And he walked from the room and headed to his piano room.
Shane escorted Brae upstairs, but not before leaning over to give me a quick kiss on the top of my head. We exchanged good nights.
My uncle sat down next to me. I leaned over against him. “I’m glad you’re home.”
“Me, too.”
“But?”
I closed my eyes, “But I didn’t bring Mattie home with me.”
“We’ll get her back.”
“I liked the vampire film,” I said. “I think you’re right about the blood oxygen thing.”
He leaned over and kissed my cheek, “I knew you would. Go get some sleep.”
I got up and went into the piano room as Declan began to play. He played Mattie’s lullaby. When he was finished he shut the lid over the keys and we went upstairs to bed.
Chapter Thirty-five
A few hours later I was awakened by a buzzing on my nightstand. It was the phone Jondra gave me. I reached over to grab it. I flipped it open and tried to focus my eyes, wiping them a few times to clear the sleep out of them.
She sent me a message: A few things to tell you. First your home has been tapped, your phone lines and your computer. I’m sure someone is probably lurking around keeping an eye on things. Be careful. Second, Rogi is planning a trip to see you. He was upset to learn of your sudden departure. Expect him to show up anytime in the next day or so. Do all business with him face-to-face, and whatever you do, have someone with you for protection. Do not trust him. It would be best if you all leave in the early daylight hours after your visit with Rogi. Find somewhere safe to stay for a while. Oxmeade has lost touch with three of his employees. He sent a tracker, who caught scent of them near Mattie’s school. Oh, and Oxmeade has my Aunt Evelyn. I’m attempting to save her. Things are going to turn ugly. Just trust me. Your friend, Jondra.
I nudged Declan. He was motionless. I poked him just under the ribs a little harder. He sat straight up and reached under his pillow, producing a weapon. He turned quickly to check on me.
“What?” he barked.
I handed him the phone. He got out of bed and pulled on sweatpants. He tucked the gun into the back of his waistband. He sat on the foot of the bed and read Jondra’s message.
“Humph,” he grumbled. He walked to the window and peeked out of the curtains. “Well, we should prepare.”
I clinched my fists. “Declan, I just want to find our daughter. I didn’t sign up for all this extra crap.”
“I know, love, I hear ya, but we have to deal with this stuff. Believe your premonition, know she’s okay and we will be with her soon.” Declan said in an attempt to calm me down.
I began to cry. When I was finished, he got up and handed me my robe. “We need a game plan.” Then he left the room to get the others.
As I was coming out of my room, Shane and Brae were trying to get their feet underneath them as they staggered down the hallway.
Sam and Declan were already at the kitchen table talking out scenarios when the three of us arrived. A pot of coffee and the tea kettle were brewing on the stove. None of the lights was on. A three-wick, oversized candle was burning in the center of the table. The blinds were drawn shut on the windows and doors. Even Bullet was involved, sniffing away at the bottom of the doors leading out to the patio.
Groggy greetings were exchanged. Declan handed Shane the cell phone with Jondra’s message while Brae and I tended to the coffee and tea. Luckily, someone had thought to buy a dozen doughnuts while we were gone, so I arranged them on a plate and placed it on the table. It was close to 3:30 in the morning. Brae and I brought over the warm beverages, each of taking seats next to our partners.
“I can only surmise that Jondra has enlisted the help of a wizard who is using a looking glass in order to see what is going on around us,” Shane was telling Declan and Sam. “Her knowledge is too specific. It’s quite smart on her part. No one would think to look for a vampire hiding out with a wizard.”
“Can you give it a guess as to whom it might be?” Brae asked as she got up from the table. She walked over to the drawers within the center island and opened the third one down. She took out three white candles and lit them, placing each in a crystal candle holder. She put one on the stove, one on the island and another on the counter by the stove. “Sorry, these are for peace. I’m feeling a wee bit anxious.”
No one objected.
“I have lavender and other oils in the other room if you would like to burn some of that,” I offered.
She smiled at me. “Thanks. I think this will do for now.”
“I don’t want to know how you knew the candles were in that drawer, do I?”
Shane stepped up, “Sorry, Cianna, I put them there. It’s where we keep them at home.”
I laughed, “No worries.”
We refocused on more pressing issues at hand. We came to the conclusion that we would all stay around the house for the next day or so. We wouldn’t leave until the early morning hours, as Jondra suggested. We would split up and go to the office inside the mountain. We could do any work in the office and stay in the quarters Declan and I set up closer to the waterfall. Sam and Shane would get spyware and security software on the computers at the office. Brae would cast spells of protection, scent erasing and others she felt might be needed over the whole area.
“We need a name for the Castle, as it really isn’t one, and we are going to mostly be using it for our research,” Sam suggested. “It’s more like our headquarters.”
“There’s a 30-year detective talking for you,” Declan said being a smartass.
“A headquarters for what?” Brae asked. “Sounds like we are starting a business or something.”
“Well, we are investigators or detectives for the most part. I am trying to solve a number of murder cases that involve vampires. We are trying to figure out who sent Tomos, Remmie and Bernard after a target, and who that target is,” I started to say.
“I know who the target is and who sent them,” Brae interrupted. “They are after me and Oxmeade sent them.”
All eyes turned to Brae. “Remmie all but confessed to it during his conversation with Tomos,” she began. “I was the girl he stopped to look at by Mattie’s school.” She looked at Shane, “He spotted me while I was there to finish the protection spell around the school yard. When I heard you fighting I came to see if I could help. Remmie saw me.”
Shane argued, “But he said he caught a whiff of the target’s scent. Your scent is different now.”
“Alas my loving wizard, not so. It is true that most of my scent is gone. Even with those spells, there is an area though, where it can never be fully erased. One’s true scent will always surface after lovemaking. There’s no concealing it then. That single act is the purest form of an individual’s heart. A scent is like a snowflake. No two are alike. When a person gives her love and body to another, in its most intimate release, their scents unite. The union’s fragrance can be matched by none--thus, sharing with the world their love for each other on the breeze. That was a lesson taught to me by Sebastian. I had forgotten about that until I listened to Remmie. Oxmeade has always kept feelers out looking for me. He never truly believed I was dead. My capture and torture had been too easy for him. There was no victory or shame. He knew I wasn’t dead when they disposed of my body by the river. Do you remember his visit to me then, Shane?”
Shane eyes were filled with horror. He shook his head no.
“Just before you arrived, he came to me. He scented me, and then blew into a jar. He did it several times to capture my scent within the glass. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, ‘I shall hunt down you again. True victory will be mine. You WILL succumb to me. This will be my treasured hunt.’ He turned and walked away. Moments later you arrived, Shane. And Jondra’s message said Oxmeade lost touch with three of his employees. I count three: Tomos, Remmie and Bernard.” She counted them out on her fingers.
Continuing before any of us could speak, “Tomos spoke of hideous tortures, only Oxmeade is known for such things.”
I shuddered. The house was so silent you could hear the flames flickering.
After a few long minutes, Shane took Branwen by the hand, “My Gwenediere, Oxmeade will die before he can have the chance to take you from me.” He sealed his promise with a tender kiss on her lips.
“Onto the issues at hand,” he demanded. “Looks like we are starting a business together. We have a number of cases open. A bunch of unsolved murders, nine if my count is right, a brutal torturer who must be stopped, and a kidnapping. We all share this earth and must live in harmony. The supernatural world is creeping in bad form and must be put in check.”
“Here! Here!” We all saluted and clinked our glasses together.
We quickly moved on and put together a plan for the impending visit from Rogi. There was no doubt that if we stayed close to the house he would show up at the door. We decided to have a platter prepared and entertain him on the back patio, never inviting him to enter the house, just in case the myth about a vampire only being able to enter your house by an invitation was true. If things turned bad, we could enter the house for our safety. Brae was going to use her magic and powers to prevent any vampires making it past the kitchen, in case that myth proved false. She would also summon up the vapor warriors once again and have them waiting. Shane’s job was to conjure up some stronger black magic in case we had to fight dirty with Rogi and his crew.
With everything in place, we once again called it a night and retired to get some sleep.
Chapter Thirty-six
Sleep was something I couldn’t obtain. There wasn’t a sound in the house to indicate that anyone else was awake. I carefully rolled out of bed and jumped into the shower. Once dried and dressed, I grabbed my notebook before I headed downstairs. I went into the family room and replayed Tomos’s suicide. I kept the volume low. I analyzed the event slowly, pausing to look at details. I found the silver specs within the normal red color of the blood fascinating. The tar-like goo was something I was going to have to check out firsthand when we finally got back to our offices inside the mountain. I knew that Sam had gathered some off the floor and stored it in a glass jar for me to examine. He had said that he tried a plastic container but the stuff melted it.
Looking closer at the tape, something caught my eye. I played the tape in slow motion to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. As Tomos approached the bars, the silver specs within his body seemed to react to the silver of the bars, some “rushed” toward the bars as if they were attracted to it, while other pieces pushed away. It was like a magnet’s polar reaction. I found this interesting.
I made notes on other small issues, like how his fangs seemed to just appear, not always in a click or flash like I had seen in vampire movies. As he became more agitated, he became more hostile. I also noted that when his body exploded, not one piece remained recognizable, and it sizzled. I sat in front of the TV for a couple of hours. I filled up two notebook pages.
When I was pretty certain I hadn’t missed a detail, I shut the TV off and pulled the tape out of the video player. I took myself into the kitchen. I put on a pot of water for tea.
With a nice hot cup of spiced chai and vanilla tea snuggled in my hands, I sat at the kitchen table. My mind drifted to nothing in particular, but suddenly I found everything blaring inside my skull. I thought about the six murders I investigated nearly six years ago. I saw each case individually. Then I thought of how each person could be tied together. Nothing surfaced. I thought about Bolton and his family in hiding. How they took Crevan in and were themselves in jeopardy trying to protect him. Why? I thought of Rogi. His recount of his actions, his regret of his wrongdoings during his failed attempt at fatherhood, the way he blamed himself for the actions of his created son.
Rogi’s story of Benipal and Marscell followed. I did want to meet with Benipal. Pick his brain. Learn from him. I thought of Jondra and Ms. Evelyn. I shuddered at the picture of Oxmeade that entered my mind. I recalled Brae’s story of his torturous ways again, her confession of her background and Shane’s background. I pondered about the new vampire that Jondra spoke of. He had to be beyond wicked if he made Oxmeade look like an angel. And then there was Mattie and my premonition.
The location of my daughter was written on paper that I couldn’t see. Come hell or high water I was going to find my daughter.
My mind wandered back to everything else. I knew somewhere in these jumbled thoughts were the answers I was looking for, the link that would make sense of everything. The smoking gun or the bloody fang.
Without realizing that I had taken to pacing, I found myself leaning up against the glass doors staring out past the patio into the backyard. Low on the horizon, the sun was starting to send bright
light to the darkness. I knew if vampires were watching the house, they would be scurrying to their hiding places like mice to their den when a cat was on their trail. I searched the wood line for glowing eyes, but saw nothing staring back at me. I drifted back in my mind to the swarming questions left unanswered. The unsolved murder pictures danced across the canvas of my brain. The connections of the victims presented no clues. I saw the slash marks. Only one victim, the lone old man, was drained of his blood. The rest were just brutally murdered. I knew all had been killed by vampires, though only the old man’s murder looked more like a typical vampire killing, if there was such a thing: puncture wounds, pale skin, drained of blood. Had I not known better, I would have thought he bled out from the circular wounds that could have been mistaken for marks caused by an ice pick or Phillips-head screwdriver. Why was his life taken so differently than the others?
I knew I had to go over the crime scene photos, yet again. I needed to compare the slash marks once more, as well as the other details. I needed to go to the office in the mountain side.
“What are you plotting?” Brae asked me. I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of her voice. I was glad my tea had gone cold as it rained against the back of my hand.
“I’m sorry to have scared you,” she said quietly as she walked over to join me by the door.
“I need to go look over my pictures and notes again,” I confided in her. I glanced at the ceiling. “The boys are still asleep, if we leave now we can make it back before they wake up.”
