Ghost Castle (The Ghost Files Book 8)

by Chanel Smith

  Beautiful.

  Ryu handed her a delivery form and a pen and after a quick glance over it, Veronica signed it and handed it back to him.

  “Another ‘Bloody Scary’?” he asked, to which she nodded affirmatively before he turned and headed back inside the café.

  ‘Bloody Scary’! How amusing! It looks like a Bloody Mary, but it’s really just blood with a plastic stalk of celery in it! And it was served at an appetizing body temperature. Human body temperature, that is.

  It was a bestselling drink on the after-hours menu at the Beast café. The proprietors and the night staff at this particular restaurant were what she considered paranormally sympathetic. They were in the know about all kinds of beings of her particular condition – the undead condition – and provided a place where supernatural beings of all types could dine, imbibe and socialize under the guise of appearing quite ‘normal.’

  Don’t be so shocked… its Calabasas. You didn’t really think all these beautiful creatures that you worship as celebrities from the other side of the television were human. Did you? Come on, get real!

  She picked up the glass and drained it just as the waitress appeared and placed the fresh glass in front of her. It was still warm to the touch, a little bit of style that they had at the Beast which Veronica was ever thankful for. Other places served the hemoglobin chilled, just as it was best preserved. She had heard that some vampires even drank it that way. She, on the other hand, preferred it as close to coming from the vein as she could get it, and that meant it got a cursory zap in the microwave before making its way to the table. Before the new girl could offer her a menu for the umpteenth time, Veronica waved her away and turned her attention to the box on the table. She sliced the tape open with a razor sharp fingernail and pulled the flaps apart.

  Inside was a flat, black box which she pulled out and laid on the table. She pushed the two metal clasps open and lifted the lid, her curiosity getting the better of her. On a bed of black velvet, Veronica found a beautiful Beretta BU9. She had always wanted a compact pistol like that. It was the perfect conceal carry weapon; tiny but powerful and certainly deadly. But there was one strange thing about the firearm and she mulled it over in her head as she ran her long, cold fingers over it, lifting it from the case to feel the heft of it in her hand.

  The gun was coated in solid gold plating.

  As she sat there admiring the weapon, suddenly a soft voice seemed to whisper in her ear.

  “Welcome to the club,” it said.

  Veronica whipped around in her seat trying to see where the words came from but there was no one in sight. She sniffed the air tentatively, nothing out of the ordinary. Just humans, supes, weres, ghosts, vampires. The usual. She shook her head, raised her nose higher into the gentle breeze that was blowing and took a deep breath.

  Hmmm. There’s something else too. What is that? Talc?

  Quickly, she placed the Beretta back in the box and noticed a small, black, manila envelope. She took it out of the box and turned it over in her hand. The seal was wax and red. The insignia on it was of an open-mouthed gargoyle.

  Who seals envelopes with wax anymore?

  The note inside was written by hand in old-fashioned, cursive, calligraphic writing and all it said was:

  Welcome to the club.

  ***

  Across the street, on the roof of a luxury car dealership, a little boy and girl sat in the dark, holding hands as they watched Veronica Melbourne keenly in the light from the restaurant and the warm Calabasas street lights.

  “It is certain that she will find us now, Alexei. This Veronica Melbourne is an old soul and she is no fool either. She’s bound to figure things out very quickly,” the Grand Duchess said finally.

  “Indeed, Anastasia. She will be the first outsider in centuries to know of the Watchers. Perhaps she will be the first of the new breed.”

  “So many of us have become tired of this task, brother. I have heard of many of the ancients who rose one day and just walked into the sun to rid themselves of the responsibility and this wretched longevity of life.”

  Alexei scoffed.

  “It hasn’t even been a hundred years yet, Sister, and I am already tired of living. If we had survived the Bolsheviks, we would have most likely still have succumbed to the natural death many years ago. It has been long and it has been tiresome for me. You know how much I miss both our mother country and the way that beautiful land shimmered in the sunshine, even in the dead of winter.”

  Anastasia looked at him with sorrow in her eyes. She squeezed his hand tighter as she rose and pulled him to his feet. They walked like that to the end of the roof and stepped from the edge. As they floated softly to the ground at the rear of the building, she put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close to her.

  “Brother Alexei,” she began, her accent full and strong. “Perhaps if she comes to us, we can convince her to take us back to Mother Russia. Would you like that? Would you like to go back to Catherine Palace again?”

  The young Tsarevich sighed deeply.

  “It is all I can ever dream of, Ana. Ever since that night when Agrippina dug us up from beneath the pile of bodies in that cellar and gave us this life that we now possess. I remember fleeing Saint Petersburg and running for the Finnish border like a common criminal. The last thing I let emblazon itself on my already preternatural retinas was the image of Catherine Palace, our home.”

  Anastasia held him close to her again and hushed him like a child. Was he still just a child?

  “Perhaps, Sister. Perhaps she will come to us. Perhaps she will agree to take us back and perhaps Agrippina will finally let us go.”

  “Would that make you less tired, Alexei? Would you stay with me a little longer then, my brother? Is it possible that you could be happy even?”

  “I think that I could, Ana. But only if I did not have to come back here ever again.”

  ***

  The trip from Old Town Calabasas to San Juan Capistrano would have taken a person an hour and a half by car, but the trip took Veronica five minutes. She just ‘zipped’ it. It sounds stupid, but she couldn’t come up with anything more appropriate to describe what exactly it was.

  Basically, when she wanted to go somewhere distant, she just pictured it in her mind. Then she would think of the route she would normally have taken there and it was as if as she thought of the route, her body travelled it… just like that. In the space of a thought, she could cover hundreds of miles of distance and arrive wherever she wanted.

  Her new lair was located in an old forgotten dungeon below an outbuilding at the Mission San Juan Capistrano ruins. Veronica thought the place suited her style to say the least. It was still ridiculously bare, but after what had happened at the last few places she had holed up in, she was not in any rush to settle in too far. If she had another home ransacked, she would probably lose her mind and go bat-shit crazy on innocent people in the streets around the neighborhood. Someone had found her last three dens and completely ransacked them. The thought of a stranger knowing where she slept helpless during the day was catastrophic, but what got to her the most was that person going through her personal belongings, her dirty clothes, her books and papers…

  …touching my weapons! Gaaaah!!!!

  Since then she had begun to religiously stash everything of interest in her safe. She used her mobile phone for the Internet and no longer had a refrigerator so she wouldn’t be tempted to keep any blood at home.

  Here’s to hoping that no one will be able to find me at this ruined old historic site.

  There were plenty of visitors to the place during the day, but the dungeon she occupied was so old and forgotten that it didn’t even appear on any of the floor plans of the mission as it was known to exist at the time. At night, the property was well secured. No one could get in or out without the knowledge of the security team posted there by the historic foundation that managed the place.

  Veronica sat on the tiny bed and put her fa
ce in her hands. The evening was just getting started and here she was without a case to solve, without an investigation to run, without a date to go out on, or even a lover to satiate her needs. Her mind wandered back to the golden gun and the cryptic message that had accompanied it.

  Welcome to what club? How were the members of said club so sure she even wanted to join? More seriously, had her acceptance of the gun compromised her individuality or secretly committed her to something she knew nothing about? She grimaced at the thought of being manipulated. The package had been delivered in advance. Who would have known that she would be at The Beast for supper that evening? Was her stalker at it again?

  If the person knew where she would be, then it wasn’t a stretch that they would know who or what she was and what she did for a living. A light gust of wind passed through the room, flickering the flames, scattering the light from the candles and sending strange shadows dancing all over the walls.

  Welcome to the club, the voice in her head said again.

  What club? Other hunters? Other vampires?

  Suddenly Veronica was overcome with a strong feeling of caginess. She got up from the edge of the bed and double checked the safe. The handle didn’t give when she tried to turn it. Of course, she knew very well that if a fellow vampire applied just a little pressure to the lock, it would spring open like a Jack-in-the-Box.

  She had to get out of there. The room seemed to want to close in on her and squeeze the very life from her body. She pulled on her black moto jacket and a pair of hiking boots, then set the strange note aside. Carefully, she emerged from beneath the huge stone that guarded the entrance to the dungeon. It was one of three that Veronica had located, and when she found two more exits from the underground chamber, but failed to locate where the caverns had emerged, she had discretely collapsed them. It felt like a night for flying so she stood still outside the entryway and looked to the sky, willing herself to rise into the air and be transported to her favorite perch for thinking: a dark, flat outcrop on Lobster Point that overlooked Lobster Bay on the back side of Santa Catalina Island.

  As she landed and took her seat to look out across the dark, brooding waters of the Pacific Ocean, Veronica immediately began to feel that all was going to be alright with the world. She was content for it to be one of those nights where she sat and looked at the black waters until dawn approached before heading back to the mainland to hunker down for a good day’s rest.

  What the fuck?

  The feeling of serenity had lasted for three hours before Veronica saw something moving across the sky that almost made her drop off the cliff. It was black and sort of glossy and huge… absolutely huge. It flew like a bird… No, like an eagle across the sky, but with much greater speed and agility. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she got a mental flash of the creature.

  It was ancient, primeval, powerful, dangerous, supernatural… and vampire, definitely vampire. The only comparison she could make of it was to a pterodactyl, the birdlike dinosaur she had seen in movies and books.

  It seemed to be headed out to sea toward a tiny sparkling group of lights which she knew, from her many nights of ocean watching, to be a cruise ship. It was probably headed for Hawaii or Alaska. Her preternatural eyesight allowed her to make these discernments easily, even from the great distance and as she watched more carefully, she saw that the creature carried something, perhaps in its talons.

  What is that?

  She leaned forward and concentrated harder before gasping and taking a step back. It was a man; a barely struggling being that was dangling helplessly below the creature. Veronica watched in further disbelief as the creature hovered over the brightly lit ship and dropped its cargo on an upper deck, turned around and flew back in the direction of the mainland.

  The Vampire With the Golden Gun

  is available at:

  Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK * Amazon AU

  About the Author:

  Chanel Smith was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She has since moved to Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband and two dogs. When not writing, she spends her time training dogs, hiking, biking and anything else that will get her outside in nature.

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  Please visit her at www.chanelsmithbooks.com.

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