by Lily Luchesi
Not even a sarcastic note, as Vincent was wont to leave for her. Just abandoned, as if they had never been there. And if it wasn’t for the bloodstains on the floor, it looked just as she had left it the other night.
It was then she remembered the elevator she had hidden from this room to the largest training room, put there just in case she ever needed to make a quick getaway from an enemy. That was the only place they could’ve gone.
She paused, debating on whether or not she should go look for Danny and Sean first. To say she was worried about them was the understatement of the century, but she didn’t have the luxury to indulge in and assuage her anxiety. For all she knew, Vincent and Daniel had left this office to go and find them.
Okay, Angelica, she thought to herself. You’re a damned good detective. You follow the clues and the trails left by suspects. Get in the elevator and pray.
The elevator had to be sent up when she pressed the button, which meant she was right, they had escaped through there. She just hoped they were still on the premises. If they escaped completely, she could take another century finding them.
No way, I can’t let that happen, she thought as she got into the elevator and rode down. Her nerves began to sing and she was so antsy she marched in place like a little kid who had to go potty. Her fangs itched in her gums, wanting to tear and mutilate but had no targets just then.
Finally the elevator completed its descent, and the door opened slowly to reveal a bloody body at her feet: Sean. His skull had been caved in and she nearly screamed before she saw that he was breathing. This couldn’t kill him, and he needed to be unconscious to heal from a wound like that.
She closed her eyes and thanked God, not even sure if He could hear her. She cautiously stepped over Sean’s sleeping form and looked around. There were vampire corpses everywhere, bearing the marks of having been killed by Danny and Sean.
Her cautious moves ensured that she wouldn’t be startled by Vincent or Daniel, but when her eyes caught the corpse laying against the grey workout mats, she felt every muscle in her body turn to jelly.
The body was decayed to the point of being unrecognizable, but she didn’t need to see hair or a face to recognize that sleek Armani suit, or the wedding ring on his left hand. She’d recognize the man she loved no matter what, and in death was no exception.
For what it’s worth, Angelica had never botched a mission, never gave away her endgame, never got out of character when she was on a hunt. She was a professional until the perp was confirmed dead at her feet. For the first time in nearly three hundred years, she forgot she was even on a hunt as she let out a wail so mournful, so desperate, so lost, it echoed in the large room.
On stumbling legs like a newborn doe she made her way to the corpse, trying to pretend that she was wrong, that it couldn’t be him. They always won together, he had said so himself. What they shared was unbreakable. He couldn’t be dead.
She fell on her knees next to the body and saw the blessed blade laying next to his right hand and she knew it could be no one but him, fighting until the very bitter end.
Danny was dead.
Another scream erupted from her throat, and she didn’t give a damn who heard her and came for her. She called his name, hand reaching out but stopping just short of touching the body. The last time she’d touched him, his hand had been warm with fresh blood and connecting them mentally in a way no one could understand or emulate. She couldn’t touch him now, like this.
Angelica was numb and shaky at the same time, unable to properly breathe. Beneath the numbness was an ache that was so deep, so encompassing, she knew it would never go away as long as she lived, which probably wasn’t long now.
Danny’s vision made sense now, seeing her weeping over a decayed body. He had seen his own death, and if his vision was correct, hers was coming momentarily. And she’d probably welcome it. Anything was better than living with this pain, this memory. This sight in the back of her mind for centuries to come.
She was still half sobbing, half screaming, unable to stop the blood-tears from falling. She felt so weak, she just wanted to lay down beside him and die, and hope that God was benevolent enough to let her see him in the afterlife.
Danny had been the only thing anchoring her to the Earth, keeping her on the right path, keeping her sane. She had always said she didn’t need him and she knew now that that was just a lie she told herself and anyone who would listen.
She did need him. She needed his love in her life: his smile, his laughter, his strength. She needed him, and now when she needed him most, he had been taken; ripped away in a most violent and brutal manner.
And I didn’t even get to say goodbye, she thought, and that brought a fresh flood of tears to her eyes.
What had happened? How had it all gone awry so quickly? Had it hurt? Did he die in pain? These questions she hoped to never know the answer to.
“I can’t…” she whispered, not sure who she was talking to. She leaned her head back and cried, “Damn it, Father, you took everything from me, piece by piece! You took my mother, my life, and my company from me! You couldn’t have left me the fuck alone? You had to take the last good thing I had in my life? You fucking monster. I hate you. I hate you!”
There was a slow, deliberate clapping sound and she jumped to her feet, startled. She turned to find the source of the noise and saw Daniel standing there. His eyes were glowing red, and his fangs gleamed in the fluorescent lighting.
“Wow, Angelica. I am impressed. You certainly earned an Oscar nomination tonight,” he said sarcastically.
“You little monster,” she hissed. “I knew, I knew the moment you came into my office you were trouble and I told myself I was just jealous. I knew I never should’ve underestimated my instincts.”
He cocked his head and said, “You’re not so wrong. I did think about killing you early on, before Vincent ever contacted me. I should have. And don’t be too hard on your dear old dad: he didn’t deliver the killing blow to Pops on his own. Much to his chagrin, I was the one who held the syringe that did it. He couldn’t kill him back then, and he still couldn’t now. He needed me.”
Angelica was flabbergasted and a little frightened. “How does so much evil reside in one person?”
“Not evil. Determined. I will finally have what is mine, what Pops tried to keep from me. I am going to have my Empire … with only one obstacle in my way.” He smiled at her, a dark, rotten parody of Danny’s smile.
“You are no Emperor. You’re just another monster that I have to slay.” She didn’t know where all this was coming from, but she did know that she was going to avenge her husband’s death. Again. She kept her sword sheathed, instead choosing to get her dagger. She wanted this kill to be up close and personal. She wanted Daniel to look in her eyes as he died.
Daniel came at her, grabbing her free wrist in one hand while trying to turn her around. It didn’t work, he didn’t have the skill, despite his strength having increased.
She broke his hold and kicked out at his ankles, causing him to fall to the floor. “You’re not good enough to clean the PID toilets, let alone take Danny’s place as the Emperor, you little fucking brat.”
He got up and faced her again, and she swung her blade, which he just managed to dodge, getting a deep cut in his face for his efforts. He reached out even as he was being injured and he grabbed her wrist, pressing it against the mats to keep the knife away as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe.
Dead man’s blood, Angelica thought. That was why Danny’s corpse was still intact. He’d raided the PID stores. She wasn’t sure if she could get the needle out of his hand without being injected, but she had to try. She had to go down fighting.
It turned out, she didn’t need to.
Faster than even she could move, a bullet was shot, hitting Daniel’s hand like a bull’s-eye. The needle went flying as the holy water soaked bullet tore through his left hand and embedded itself in the grey mats.
&nbs
p; Angelica turned, unable to believe that Sean had recovered so quickly, but the siren hadn’t come to her rescue.
Vincent was holding the gun, and in that brief moment, Angelica saw the man — the human — who had taught her just how to handle one of those things. The question was, why did he shoot Daniel?
“Don’t be so hasty, Daniel,” he said, his eyes dancing between the vampire and his daughter.
Daniel turned, completely forgetting that Angelica was still holding a knife near his throat and said, “What the… You shot me! This was your plan! I become the Emperor and to do that I needed —”
“You needed to kill Detective Mancini, and we did. Now would have been the time for negotiation with Angelica, but you pressed forward with murder like an uncouth animal instead of an intelligent being,” Vincent said, his acerbic tongue appearing to displease Daniel.
Angelica wasn’t sure what to do: let this play out and possibly escape, or intervene while Daniel looked to be distracted? But he still had another syringe, she could see it in his pocket, and she was afraid of getting a drop of that in her system.
Faster than the human eye could have perceived, Daniel reached into his pocket and took out a blessed knife, the one he’d gotten when he had signed his contract. He ran at Vincent with his vampire speed, knocking the Lieutenant into the far wall. Spidery cracks ran from the back of Vincent’s head all the way up the wall.
The knife was embedded into Vincent’s chest, but not with enough force to kill on the first try.
Vincent choked, blood spilling from his mouth and wisps of black smoke curling around the knife. His eyes weren’t red or black anymore, but the same ice blue they’d been when he had been human. They trained on Angelica for a split second, more emotion in them than she’d seen in centuries from him.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed, his throat too clogged with blood to actually speak aloud.
Daniel got a grip on the knife at that exact moment and plunged it all the way into Vincent’s heart, killing the demon he’d become.
Angelica wasn’t sure what to think or feel at that moment. Seeing that brief glimpse of humanity in him had been staggering, and she didn’t understand. Why had he saved her, when he’d told her straight out that he wanted to kill her to get what he wanted?
She remembered a conversation she’d had with Danny, while watching a movie where the bad guy turned out to have been heroic in the end.
“There are two sides to all people,” she’d told him. “The Darkness and the Light. And for some, the Darkness takes over because they’ve been hurt or they’re alone. But Light always remains, and it’s always there for everyone to choose. That’s why I do what I do, rid the world of people who choose Darkness over Light.”
Vincent’s Light had returned, in enough time to save her life at the cost of his own. She wasn’t sure if she was more touched or confused. She had always thought her father was beyond redemption, but knew now that that wasn’t for her to judge. In his last moments, Vincent had chosen Light, and there had to be some forgiveness there, but it didn’t erase what he’d already done.
Angelica shook her head to clear it, willing the tears that came to her eyes back. Sentimentality was for a time when she wasn’t facing down the new Emperor who seemed intent on killing her.
He had a syringe again, and Angelica needed to think quickly about what she was going to do. It was one of Vincent’s earliest lessons, thinking out every possible scenario and then going forth with the easiest one that would yield the results she desired.
So what did she desire? Daniel dead, that was obvious. That was all she cared about, but there was one problem: the best way to kill him could get her thirty CCs of dead man’s blood in her carotid.
Once Daniel was dead, she was going to have a difficult time reigning in the vampires again. There was a very good chance that they’d begin to terrorize humans again as they had in the early Victorian era, and she wasn’t sure that she and the PID had enough manpower to fight them the world over.
Despite his final heroic act, Vincent had set in motion a path of destruction for humanity as they knew it, and for the first time, Angelica wasn’t sure if she could contain this threat. She didn’t think anyone could.
All this ran through her mind in a second or less, along with how she could avoid being injected with the blood and still kill Daniel.
Under his arm, maneuvering to the right? He’d get it in her back then. Shoot his hand? Nope, she didn’t have enough time to get a loaded gun, and she was out of bullets.
She was the Empress, and it was her job as the Empress to act in the best interest of vampires. She needed to do what was best for them, as she always had. Everything was for the good of the vampires, but there was precious little good left in the species now.
Angelica glanced over at Danny’s body, her heart twisting. What would he have done in her place, if he’d been left here instead of her? Easy: he’d have done whatever it took to keep Daniel from being the leader of vampires. No matter what. It was what her mother would have done. It was what Vincent would have done, when he was human, to keep the world from being infested with evil.
Angelica unsheathed her sword, and Daniel smirked at her.
“Still willing to fight? Wouldn’t it be easier to just give up?” he asked. “Your husband, your company, your friend, and even your weak-willed father are all long gone. Are you really so stubborn that you would rather die than surrender to the new world order?”
“I will never surrender,” she replied. “Now come on. Let’s see how tough you really are.”
She didn’t move, she let him come to her. He had to if the momentum was going to be right. And lucky her, his stubborn Mancini genes made him react perfectly to her taunt. He ran toward her, syringe at the ready and fangs flashing.
Angelica moved to her left, just a little. Just enough to get the right angle to swing at him. She only had one shot; it had to be perfect. Or else everything she’d ever done in her life would have been in vain.
She raised her sword as he passed by her. The tip of the needle pierced her skin and she could feel the poison as it invaded her bloodstream. Holding back a scream of pain as her arm went numb, she swung her sword and forced Daniel to stop pushing the plunger on the syringe.
Numb arm and all, she made a perfect kill shot, and the boy whom she had come to treat as family’s head landed against the far wall while his corpse crumpled to the ground in front of her.
Her hand wouldn’t hold her falchion anymore and it clattered to the ground. With her left hand, she yanked the syringe out of her flesh and saw that about half had gone into her system. Not enough for death to be immediate, but it would come quick enough. And unlike with holy water or garlic, there was no cure for dead man’s blood.
She slumped to the floor, just inches away from where Danny’s body was propped up as her tears fell freely once more, for the last time. Her hand creeped over, numb as it was, and rested atop his.
Of all the ways she’d imagined she’d die, she had to admit that this wasn’t even in the top ten worst. She’d saved humanity, saved the PID, and would hopefully be reunited with the man she loved, be it in Heaven or Hell.
It could have been worse.
She felt her blood leaking from her eyes, and she coughed, sending more of it in a spray in front of her. She hadn’t been very devout, but she believed in God and hoped that Heaven would open up to receive her.
The pain was unbearable, feeling her body die from the inside out. Eventually, she fell into a faint as the dead man’s blood worked its evil will within her.
Angelica Cross Mancini died with a smile on her face, once more the hero who saved humanity.
Epilogue
Sean woke slowly, feeling the intense pain in his head. His back and neck didn’t feel much better. He sat up, feeling for his wounds that had now healed. The only sign that he had had his skull crushed in was the blood that had dried on his head and face.
How long was
I out? Sean wondered, gingerly sitting up straight and looking around. He had a bad vantage point from the floor in front of the hidden elevator, but the first thing he saw was the corpse of Vincent Cross and silently cheered.
The corpses he and Danny had left were still there, too. But it was too silent. Far too silent. If Danny and Angelica had defeated the enemy, why had they left him there? Why wasn’t there some sort of celebration?
He stood up, testing his legs. He checked his watch and saw that it had been an hour since he’d been hit. That had been some quick healing, even for him. Now standing, he saw Daniel’s severed head near Vincent’s body and more relief fell through him.
It’s over; they did it, he thought, smiling. So where are they?
He surveyed the room, going across the two bodies against the mats twice before he realized that none of their adversaries had been wearing a leather corset and silver-tipped leather boots.
“Oh no,” he whispered, feeling like everything had just fallen out of him. “No, no, I’ve got to be wrong. I had a head injury … I …” He took a few lumbering steps toward the bodies, trying to convince himself that he was wrong.
But there was no mistaking them. They had even been holding hands in death. No other vampires could have been so sappily romantic. Sean fell to his knees beside the withered corpse that had just recently been the woman he loved.
“That’s not what’s supposed to happen,” he said, crying openly now. “That’s not how this story ends!”
He had never been a big believer in happy endings, but just this once he had wanted one, had needed one. Because a world without Angelica wasn't a world he could comprehend living in.
“Why? Why did you have to be noble?” he cried. “Why couldn’t you have run away and lived to keep fighting?”
But the thought was laughable. Angelica, run away? Not her, not the hero he knew. And now he was alone, utterly and completely alone, with the burden of the PID on his head and the complete and total loss of the entire vampiric race.
And as much as he wanted to give up and die as well, he knew he’d get up and keep his promise to Angelica, to keep protecting humanity.
