“What can I get you?” he asked.
She gave him her order, which he returned with sooner than she was expecting.
“That was quick,” she said as he handed her a Styrofoam cup.
“The woman at the counter likes Gabriel and thinks that I’ll put in a good word for her if she is nice to me. She’s always giving me free stuff and letting me jump the queue. I’ve told her I can’t help, but she won’t listen.”
Anna stared at him, unsure if he was being serious or not. Then he winked at her. “Actually I’m a regular here so I get preferential treatment.”
“So what can you tell me about your cousin?” she asked. “Why should I give him a chance instead of immediately firing him for the way he spoke to me?” She took a sip of her coffee, but it was too hot to drink yet.
“You need to understand Gabriel. He hates women coming on to him, but it happens all the time. When a new girl arrives, nine times out of ten she will make a beeline for him. Hence his reaction with you. He thought you were just another one.”
“That surprises me,” Anna said. “I was told he has a reputation of being a womaniser.”
Luke smiled at her. “He has. He loves to flirt with women. He enjoys the chase. But he has to be the one doing the chasing. While he is happy to look at women as prey, he doesn’t like it when they do the same to him.”
“So he is a male chauvinist pig then.”
Luke laughed. “Actually, no. He has no problem with women making the first move or sexually objectifying men, as long as they don’t do it to him.”
“Rumour has it that he has slept with half the women here already.”
“Not true,” Luke said. “I should know. He loves to tell me about his conquests. And believe me, they are conquests. Any woman that appears interested, he avoids. It’s those that don’t that he makes a play for. Most of the time he succeeds in winning them round, though he doesn’t go as far as actually sleeping with many. Most of the rumours were started by women who claim to have spent a night with him, though in fact they’re lying. He doesn’t bother to deny anything. He doesn’t care enough.”
“So he hasn’t broken up any marriages then?”
“Not intentionally. To the best of my knowledge, while he’s happy to flirt with a married woman, he will never take it any further. Unfortunately, there have been one or two occasions where a woman has become so obsessed with him that their marriage breaks down. Those aren’t his fault though. Well not entirely.”
“Why are you doing this?” Anna asked. “Why are you defending him?”
“Someone needs to. Now why don’t you tell me about yourself. What’s wrong with you? I could ask around, but I would rather hear it from you.”
Anna should have been offended, but for some reason she wasn’t. Instead she laughed, then told him all about her reason for going away for half a year.
“Do you remember the siege at the restaurant just over eight months ago, the one where nearly all of the hostages died?” Luke nodded. “I was one of the hostages. I got shot, but pulled through. My parents didn’t.”
Luke remained silent. Anything he said would have sounded callous. Anna continued. “I made a full physical recovery, but mentally I was a complete wreck. Being held captive by a madman was bad enough, but he shot my parents before me. I had to watch them die.”
Without thinking, Luke took hold of Anna’s hand and squeezed it comfortingly. She didn’t pull away.
She went on to tell him how she had trouble eating and sleeping and how badly it began to affect her work. She visited regularly with a trauma therapist, who eventually persuaded her that she needed to take a break, to get away for a while. Most of her friends thought going away on her own was a bad idea, but her younger brother believed it would be good for her, so she took six months off work to tour the country.
“And now I am back,” she said.
“And better?” Luke asked.
“Not completely, but I’m getting there.” She stopped talking and frowned. “Why am I telling you all this?”
“I have no idea,” Luke said. “Maybe you needed to talk about it and I have a friendly face.”
Anna knew that wasn’t the reason, but she had no idea what was, so she changed the subject. “What about you? What should I know, other than you have the misfortune of being related to Gabriel?”
Luke was usually a quiet person. He liked to keep his personal life private, so he was surprised when he found himself telling Anna almost everything about himself; how he lived in a large house with Gabriel and other family members, how he stayed at the company just so he could keep a close eye on his cousin, and apologise for him when the need arose, and how much he loved being a data analyst.
He talked about how he liked to spend his spare time, movies he enjoyed and the sort of music he liked to listen to. He told her everything except his one big secret.
Time passed and Anna swore when she eventually looked at her watch. They had been gone an hour.
“This has been fun,” she said as she stood up, “but I really need to go.”
Luke stayed seated and watched her leave, wondering why he had told her so much and why he wanted to know more about her.
“So why did you go to coffee with Anna?” Gabriel asked him as soon as he returned to his desk.
“To talk her into giving you a chance,” Luke snapped. He didn’t like it when Gabriel questioned him. He did it far too often.
“There was no need. I can easily persuade her she wants to keep me in her team.” He smiled smugly as he spoke.
“I’m not so sure,” Luke said. “I think this one is not going to be as easy to charm as you think.”
He then turned his back on his cousin and pretended to work. He stared at the screen and wondered, again, why he had been so open with Anna and why he couldn’t wait to see her again.
Get Doc here, now
“You’ll never believe who I saw today,” Sarah said to Craig when she saw him at dinner that night. “Anna.”
“Anna,” Craig said in surprise. “As in Anna Pearce?” Sarah nodded. “How is she and why is she back already?”
“I’m going to work for her. She’s setting up a new team. She looks good. She is now literally half the woman she used to be.”
“Who’s Anna?” JD asked.
“You met her last year at the Christmas party. She’s the one who got caught up in the restaurant siege.”
JD remembered meeting her. “The big girl with the massive boyfriend who is a lot older than her.”
Craig laughed. “Jeremy is not her boyfriend. They’re just good friends.”
“So were me and Katie,” Jonathon pointed out. “Yet we were sleeping together a long time before we made our relationship public.”
“Craig’s right on this one,” Sarah said. “They’re definitely just friends. Anna was dating someone when the incident happened. He wasn’t very supportive afterward though. He expected her to just get over it. He dumped her a few weeks later.”
“Jesus,” Jane said. “What an arsehole. How do you just ‘get over’ something like that? I’ve read the accounts of a couple of the survivors. What they went through must have been terrifying.”
“She seems to be recovering now,” Sarah continued. “Though she still has a way to go. She officially starts back in a few weeks.”
“You should invite her to join us for our regular lunches,” Craig said. Though he and Sarah now lived under the same roof, and had done for a while, they still met up once a week for lunch. It was a routine they had gotten into ever since her fiancé, and Craig’s best friend, had died and they saw no reason to stop.
Before Sarah could reply, the hunt alarm went off.
“Sit down,” JD said as Sarah started to rise. “You know you are not going.”
“I wasn’t even thinking about it.” She never lied to JD so he took her at her word. “I was just planning on helping you get changed.”
“Sweetheart, I can get
myself dressed. You need to stay here and finish eating. That’s an order from your trainer.”
She stuck her tongue out at him, but sat back down.
It didn’t take long for JD to get into his hunting suit. It would have taken longer had he let Sarah help him; she would have been too much of a distraction. Hunters always wore their suits when going on a hunt. They were made of a strong leather that offered them protection without inhibiting their movements. They also had scabbards on the back for their swords.
Craig, the last to arrive, was just walking down the stairs with Natalie when Doc handed the address they were to go to over to JD.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he said when he read it.
Doc shook his head. “That is where Sanctuary 7 said they picked up signs of vampires feeding.”
“What’s the problem?” Scott asked.
“No problem,” JD said. “We’re going to a graveyard.” He then gave them his usual pep talk about being careful and watching each other’s backs. He ended it with, “Make sure you have fun.”
JD picked up a set of keys from a bowl by the front door and headed to the garage. Scott grabbed the other set. They were for their two hunting cars; non-descript vehicles that were easily forgettable and couldn’t be traced to the Sanctuary or anyone who lived there. Fake driving licences were stored in the glove boxes so, should they ever be pulled over by the police, they wouldn’t have to provide their real details.
As expected that late in the evening, the graveyard was quiet when the hunters arrived. As Sanctuary 7 had only detected five vampires feeding, only hunters from Sanctuary 14 had been sent.
The six hunters took their swords from the cars and JD signalled that they should split up. Katie, Jonathon and Scott went in one direction while JD led Craig and Jane the other way.
There were no streetlights once they passed through the gate into the graveyard, but the moon was full so they had no trouble seeing.
A large stone mausoleum stood nearby and it was to this that JD headed. His enhanced hearing had picked up something from that direction, but he couldn’t make out what.
The three hunters moved quietly, checking all around them as they moved further into the graveyard. There was no sign of movement from any direction.
At the front, the gate of the mausoleum was standing open; the chain that used to hold it shut was in pieces on the ground.
“What happened here?’ Craig whispered to JD, who shrugged his shoulders. He had no idea why vampires would break into a crypt, if they had been the ones to do so.
Faint sounds were coming from inside, so Jane took a torch from her pocket and sent the beam into the darkness. It illuminated a set of stone stairs going downward. JD entered, indicating that the other two should follow him.
It was pitch black inside the stone structure, other than a faint glow coming from the bottom of the steps. JD made his way down them, taking one step at a time. He made sure that one foot was securely in place before lifting the next. He glanced behind, making sure the other two were doing the same thing, but he needn’t have bothered; he had trained them well.
As they descended, the light drew nearer and the sounds that only JD had been able to pick up became loud enough that both Craig and Jane could hear them, though they couldn’t make out what they were. Neither of them asked JD. Something was obviously down there and whatever it was, they wanted to take it by surprise. They wouldn’t risk alerting it to their presence by talking.
As JD got closer to the bottom, he could make out the entrance to a room in front of him. There were shelves along both sides and the back and most of the space was taken up by coffins. Candles were providing the light and enough had been lit for him to see vampires on the floor, feeding. He paused to count them, then held one hand up to those behind him, his fingers splayed. The signal meant that all five vampires were in the room ahead of him.
There was no need to wait for the other three to join them. They were professionals and three hunters could easily take on five vampires, especially when one of those hunters was JD.
The fight did not last long. JD ran forward, beheading one vampire before attacking another. Jane and Craig both stabbed vampires through the heart, temporarily killing them. Wounds which were mortal to humans would kill vampires, but they would not stay dead. Only by removing their head would they be prevented from rising again.
The final two vampires were quickly terminated, then Craig and Jane worked together to remove their heads while JD examined their victims.
The bodies of half a dozen young men and women were on the floor. All had wounds to their necks and none were moving. They were all dressed in black cloaks and a pentagram had been drawn on the ground. JD had no idea what these people had been up to, but whatever it was, it had gotten them killed.
No sign of life could be found on any of the bodies. JD looked up when he heard movement, but it was only Jonathon entering the crypt.
“No sign of any vampires out there,” he said as he glanced at the dead bodies.
“All five were in here,” JD said.
“What was happening here?” Jane asked. “The victims look young enough to be uni students.”
“They probably were,” Craig said. “Maybe this was some sort of initiation ceremony and the vampires happened to stumble upon them.”
“Our job isn’t to work out what happened,” JD said. “We’ve done what we came here to do so let’s get out of here. Sanctuary 1 should be here soon.”
By the time they got to the entrance to the graveyard, where they had parked their cars, a van had arrived. It looked like it had come from a local morgue, but this was not the case. Sanctuary 1 turned up to every hunt, to collect the bodies of both the vampires and their victims and dispose of them. Nobody ever asked them how they did this; they did not want to know.
JD gave directions to the crypt and those from Sanctuary 1 headed off. The hunters cleaned their swords then drove back home.
Natalie greeted them as soon as she heard the front door opening, but did not approach Craig. She had learnt the hard way not to hug him after he had been on a hunt. She wouldn’t go near him until he got out of his blood stained suit.
“Where’s Sarah?” JD asked. Since being banned from hunting she had made a point of welcoming back the conquering heroes, as she put it, and JD was surprised that she was nowhere to be seen.
“No idea,” Natalie said. “I think she went to your room as soon as she finished eating, but I may be wrong.”
Usually the hunters discussed the hunt while drinking energy drinks, but this time JD left the others to it. He ran up the stairs and went straight to the room he shared with Sarah.
He paused before opening the door, listening to see if he could hear movement inside. If she was asleep, he didn’t want to wake her.
He eased open the door and looked inside, but there was no sign of her. All of the bedrooms were equipped with en-suite bathrooms and he walked over to his as he unzipped his jacket. He knocked on the bathroom door and, having received no response, opened it.
“Sarah,” he cried out. She was curled up on the bathroom floor, clutching her stomach. Tears were streaming down her face. She couldn’t hide her anguish as she looked up at him. Before she could try to say anything, another wave of agony flowed through her, taking her breath away.
“Get Doc here, now,” JD shouted loud enough for everyone in the house to hear him.
When he knelt down to take Sarah’s hand, he could not fail to notice the smell of blood, or that her trousers were stained red.
If I was human this wouldn’t have happened
“How is she?” JD asked when Doc entered the room. Everyone was in the lounge, waiting for news on Sarah. None of them had bothered to get changed.
“I’ve had to sedate her. She’s asleep now.” Doc looked worn out. There was nothing he could have done to save the baby.
“Will she be alright?” JD’s voice broke as he asked the question. He f
elt numb inside. He hadn’t felt like this since Sarah had been shot and he thought she was going to die.
“It was a normal miscarriage. I have no reason to believe that physically she will not fully recover.” He didn’t say that the emotional recovery would take a lot longer; he didn’t need to.
Sarah had been so excited when she found out she was pregnant. Nobody knew if JD would be able to father a child, being a vampire, and the whole of sanctuary 14 were looking forward to the birth. What would the child be? Human or vampire? Or some sort of cross breed? Now they would never know.
Without saying another word, JD stood up and left the room. Jonathon got up to follow him, but Doc grabbed his arm. “Leave him. He needs to be alone with Sarah right now.”
Jonathon nodded, took Katie’s hand and led her from the room. They went straight to their own room, showered then went to bed. Jonathon held her as she wept, for Sarah and JD as well as for the memory of her own child that she lost.
Craig and Natalie left the room and Doc went up to the suite he shared with his wife, leaving Jane alone with Scott.
“Stay with me tonight,” Jane said as Scott stood up. She was not coming on to him. He was seeing a girl on his medicine course at university and they were starting to get quite serious. They were almost at the stage where he would tell her the truth about himself.
Jane was looking for comfort, not sex; the sort of comfort only being in the arms of someone could give you. Scott knew this and, if he was honest with himself, he needed the same thing.
“I will. Just let me get showered first.”
Jane didn’t thank him. There was no need.
————————————-∞————————————-
JD quietly opened his bedroom door and peered in. Sarah was sound asleep. In the lamplight, he could see the tear streaks on her face. Tomorrow was going to be a very bad day for both of them.
He took off his hunting suit and dropped it in the wash basket, then stepped into the shower. He was in there a long time, letting the water hide the tears that flowed uncontrollably from his eyes. The numbness had been replaced by physical pain and it took all of his self-control not to cry out in despair.
Greater Vampires Page 3
