After the Fall: A Vampire Chronicle (Book One)

by Mary Ellen Gorry

  “No,” Lorenzo answered, a smile in his voice. “Apparently, not all Hunters are as difficult as you are.” The joke drew a small smile from Christian.

  Christian took the book and sat in one of the pews, carefully turning the brittle pages. The chapel was silent until Christian finally spoke.

  “Do you think our Master Vampire is the one to contribute to the apocalypse?” he asked, and Lorenzo could hear the worry in his voice that Christian tried to hide.

  “He certainly is the most powerful yet,” Lorenzo said, “but let us worry about things at hand before we worry about things that for all we know may not happen.”

  “All right.” Christian did not sound convinced. Lorenzo leaned over from where he was sitting and laid his hand on Christian’s knee. Christian looked up.

  “Remember. We do only what we can.”

  Christian still didn’t look convinced – he never did - but at least he didn’t argue.

  Chapter Four

  To the casual observer, Angel Mollineaux was just your every day, Long Island high school dropout. She lived in a tiny, dingy apartment in a converted garage in Valley Stream, just over the border from Queens, and worked days as a bank teller, just barely scraping together enough of a salary to survive on. Seven months ago, on an impulse, she had dyed her shoulder-length mousy brown hair with red Kool-Aid, leaving it an unnatural cranberry color and not impressing her boss at the bank too much.

  Her parents had divorced when she was three, and she hadn’t seen her father since. She had no brothers or sisters, and her mother had suffered a nervous breakdown two years ago from working three jobs in order to support herself and her daughter, and was now on the West Coast someplace, recuperating. Angel hadn’t heard from her in nine months. Tony, her boyfriend of almost a year, had taken off almost two months ago on his Harley with a backpack full of clothes and a wallet full of all her money. He had left a note saying he was heading for California to try to make his way as a movie star. She hadn’t heard from him since, but she didn’t really care. She had only used him for sex, and he hadn’t been really good at that anyway.

  A close friend would have realized that Angel’s life was far from ordinary or typical. As it was, Angel had no close friends, and so everybody she encountered continued to believe she was simply the result of a dysfunctional childhood and still trying to “find herself.” They weren’t even in the ballpark.

  It was close to four in the morning when Angel was awakened by the pounding upon her front door. She had been drifting in and out of a troubled sleep, disturbed by dreams that were all tinged blood red. Glancing at the clock by her bedside, she silently cursed, dragging herself out of bed and the short distant across to the front of the apartment and the source of the banging, which was starting to give her a headache. She opened the door, frowning at the two figures who strode in without preamble.

  “Next time, knock a little louder. I don’t think they heard you upstate,” she grumbled sarcastically. She looked at the man and woman, now lounging on her couch.

  “Are you deliberately trying to get caught?” she asked, and they ignored her, as she knew they would.

  “Where’s the Master?” Anya asked, examining one of her long, scarlet-painted fingernails.

  “Downstairs,” Angel replied. Until recently, the house had belonged to Florence Falstaff, the woman Angel rented her apartment from. Florence had been an ancient, reclusive spinster, and when she just up and died, Angel hadn’t known for almost a week, until she had finally gone to deliver her rent check. Obviously, nobody missed the woman, and Angel saw no need to change that. She had buried the old lady in the backyard, with the help of Anya and Gideon. It appeared as though she had died of natural causes; after all, the woman had been over ninety. Still, Angel suspected the Master had helped nature along a bit.

  “He’s probably getting ready for bed,” Angel said as Gideon and Anya got up from the couch. She went and stood in front of the doorway, knowing it was futile to attempt to bar the exit.

  “I don’t think he’ll want to be disturbed at such a late hour.”

  Anya walked right up to Angel, so that their noses were almost touching. She curled her lips back, baring pearly white teeth, including a pair of oversized, over-sharp canines.

  “Out of the way, human,” she hissed, and Angel complied. She may not have graduated from high school, but she wasn’t stupid. Gideon crossed the threshold and Anya followed, but turned back one last time before leaving.

  “He’s not yours, human. He is a Master Vampire. You may be giving him a place to hide, but you are nothing more than food for our kind.”

  With that, Anya and Gideon disappeared, the door slamming shut behind them. Angel watched through the window as they entered the house through the back door, watched the shadow in the kitchen window that she knew was the Master as he greeted his loyal minions.

  No, Angel was anything but your every-day Long Island, high school dropout. She was in love with a Master Vampire.

  In high school, Angel had been an outsider. That was also when she started really getting into the occult, reading up on spells and demonology and witchcraft, anything of that sort. She wasn’t sure which had happened first, whether she was an outsider because of her interest in the occult, or whether she became interested in the occult because of her status on the fringes of high school society.

  In any case, she became more interested in incantations and curses than in math and English, so she had dropped out of school, which had not pleased her mother. Angel had always enjoyed the irony of her obsession and her name: someone named Angel, obsessed with demons. Well, demons were fallen angels after all. Maybe that’s what she was, really. A fallen Angel.

  Vampires, in particular, began to become the focus of her obsession. Or the idea of them, anyway. She had had no idea of their very real existence until a little over six weeks ago when Gideon and Anya had appeared in her doorway one evening, baring their fangs and demanding help, a hiding place for their master, the Master. They had learned of her sympathetic view towards their kind. While they maintained a lair in Manhattan close to their feeding grounds – it was just so much easier to feed in a city full of heartless anonymity like New York – they needed a place outside of but close to the city where the Master could rest more safely. They were upping the ante against a local Hunter, whom the Master hoped to kill, and very soon. All the prophecies and signs were falling into place. The time was soon, and the place was near. Angel had agreed willingly, even before she had lain eyes on him, and after that, she couldn’t have refused if she wanted to.

  He was the most beautiful creature she had ever laid eyes on. Centuries old, most likely, yet in a perpetual state of youth and strength. His skin was not quite as pale as that of Anya and Gideon, and he was inhumanly dark. Not just his nature, but his features: raven black hair and brows, and black eyes, like twin black holes. He moved with fluid control and self-confidence, stealthily like a jungle cat. His stare was deep and penetrating, his voice soft and hypnotic, and his very being was inexplicably magnetic. Angel had never fallen in love before in her life, but she fell in love right then and there, the moment he appeared on her doorstep. That love was for certain the moment he smiled at her, as if she were special. Nobody had ever made her feel special before. And this man - this creature - needed her help. There was never any question of what she would do. Anything he needed, she would die trying to give him.

  In the house previously occupied by Florence Falstaff, three shadows stood in the kitchen, the shades on the windows drawn as the sun began to rise and the sky began to lighten.

  “It has been a while,” the largest and most imposing shadow spoke, invisible to the eye, a shadow among shadows. His voice was soft, but icy, biting cold, like the breath of Death itself. Anya cowered a bit, taking a step backwards, partially hiding behind Gideon. He stepped out of the shadows, the Master Vampire, his black hair gleaming, his pale skin ghastly white, like a ghost in the darkness. He smiled
, a cruel grin that bared his fangs, and Anya took another step behind Gideon.

  “Did you get lost?” The sarcasm dripped from his voice, like icicles on an Arctic wind.

  “The police arrived while we were still on the scene. We didn’t want them to accidentally catch on to us and follow us back to the lair, and so we decided to hide out until they left, which unfortunately, wasn’t until dawn.”

  “So you were trapped in the city that never sleeps. I trust you didn’t wreak too much havoc on the population.”

  “We had fun,” Anya purred, daring to stick her head out from behind Gideon’s back.

  “But not too much fun,” Gideon added hastily. “We were careful.”

  “Were you really?”

  Gideon hesitated for a minute, suddenly not so sure of his answer. He answered, though not as confidently as the first time.

  “Yes, we were careful.”

  The Master shook his head and clucked his tongue, taking two steps towards Gideon and Anya. With a whimper, Anya skittered to the opposite side of the kitchen. Gideon managed to just barely hold his ground, though he noticeably shrank in the shadow of his Master.

  “That’s not what I heard, Gideon. I heard there was a mistake.”

  “You mean the girl,” Anya admitted softly.

  “Yes, I mean the girl. The survivor.” His voice rose only a fraction in loudness, but a dangerous edge entered it.

  “That was sloppy, Gideon, Anya. Very sloppy. I don’t tolerate mistakes very well. I have very little patience for sloppiness.”

  Now Gideon was cowering where he stood, and that seemed to appease some of the Master’s anger.

  “What do you suggest we do about this little problem of ours?”

  “We could kill her,” Anya suggested meekly from her corner on the far side of the room. The Master turned his gaze to her and she jumped back into the shadows.

  “Oh, never fear, Anya. We will kill her. That was always part of the plan. But I think that before we kill her, we will use her.”

  “How?” Gideon asked, finally gathering enough courage to speak.

  “We will send Angel to her, to find out what this girl knows, how much she remembers, what she has told the police. Perhaps the Hunter has already made contact with her, in which case we can use her as a link to get to him. Wouldn’t that be marvelous? In any case, there is much we can learn from her before we silence her forever. Anya, go and bring Angel to me. Tell her I have a favor to ask of her. And hurry. There is much I need to fill her in on before the day is through.”

  Chapter Five

  “…ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” Caroline tuned out the old priest’s voice, unable to listen to the words he was speaking, unable to look at the four coffins that were lying in front of her, glossy white and new, designed to make her forget that her family lay inside them, dead, and that the massive hole in the ground that yawned before her was about to swallow them – her mother, her father, her sisters – forever.

  Except for the small funeral party, the cemetery was quiet. The Gallagher family plot was located towards the center of the cemetery, so that the busy traffic racing along the parkways that lined the perimeter of the place sounded appropriately far off and distant, as if coming from a dream. In the distance, on the other side of the river from where they were in Brooklyn, the mighty New York skyline rose into the sky.

  Father Reed droned on, but Caroline was thinking about how cruel it was that this day had dawned sunny and bright, and still showed no signs of changing for the worse. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The meteorologists on the morning news had called it the most beautiful day this month. It made Caroline want to scream. She felt like God was looking down at her and just laughing and laughing at his practical joke. She didn’t pretend that an overcast day, or rain, or even Armageddon would have made her feel any better about burying all her loved ones, but at least the weather would have been in accordance with how she was feeling.

  Finally, the service was over. The funeral party had been small - the people she was there to bury had been her only family, but a few of their friends from work and school had shown up to say their final good-byes. They all hugged Caroline, their eyes red and puffy from crying, and then went on their way, to continue their lives as normal. Caroline was the only one standing at the plot whose eyes were dry, and she was the only one whose existence had changed irrevocably forever. She thought maybe God was laughing about that as well.

  Father Reed came up to her as well to express his deepest sympathies. Her parents had been the ones to occasionally go to church, not her, so she didn’t know him well, and Caroline felt bad that she couldn’t fully appreciate his efforts to comfort her, but in light of the fact that she had just a few days before found her entire family murdered, she didn’t feel that bad.

  “If there’s anything I can do for you, Caroline, even if you just need someone to sit with, please call me,” he was saying.

  “Thank you,” she answered politely but noncommittally.

  Caroline watched him leave. Still unable to bring herself to look at the caskets, she began to walk away, focusing instead on the New York City skyline, clear and unobscured. Closing her eyes, she could still see it perfectly. She pictured Central Park, full of skaters and joggers and horse-drawn carriages. Every Christmas she and her family went to dinner at Tavern on the Green, the restaurant inside Central Park. This year, her parents had agreed to wait till after Christmas, so that Caroline would be home to go with them. She’d have to buy a new outfit to wear. Maybe she’d bring Katie and Lauren with her.

  If she pretended long enough, maybe it would be true. It was better to see her family in her head, though, then next to her, lying in wooden boxes, being prepared to go in the ground.

  Lorenzo Catalano and Christian Dreiden watched the young woman from their rental car. They were parked on the service road ten rows over, far enough away to be inconspicuous but close enough to still be able to see what was going on. They had sat there the entire service, leaving the funeral early to get to the cemetery before everyone else arrived. They had watched as the wizen, ancient priest had led the funeral party to the plot, his arm looped through the arm of a pretty young woman for support, although it wasn’t quite apparent who was supporting whom.

  “That’s her,” Lorenzo had pointed to the young woman on the arm of the priest and Christian had asked, incredulously, “She’s the survivor?”

  “Yes,” Lorenzo had answered without turning to the young man sitting in the driver’s seat next to him.

  “Her name is Caroline Gallagher. She is eighteen years old and both her parents and both her sisters were killed in the attack.”

  When Christian hadn’t answered, Lorenzo had turned to face him - he appeared to be in shock.

  “You were expecting someone a bit different, maybe?” Lorenzo asked, trying to prompt Christian into voicing what he was thinking.

  “I don’t know. A young child, maybe, or someone older.” He frowned. “Much older. Or maybe an invalid of some sort. Someone a vampire wouldn’t be as interested in, someone they could let get away on a whim. But she’s just their type.”

  “Meaning?” Lorenzo asked, frowning, puzzled.

  “Meaning, look at her. She’s young, she’s beautiful. Full of life. Brimming with the life force. She should have been the first to go.”

  “You’re right,” Lorenzo mused, frowning even more. “She is in the prime of her life, which is the ideal victim. She’s a very lucky young woman.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly say that,” Christian had answered as the graveside service began, and Lorenzo had followed his gaze to Caroline Gallagher and the four caskets sitting on the ground in front of her.

  They watched as one by one those who had come to pay their final respects walked away, leaving Caroline Gallagher standing all alone, drowning in a sea of headstones.

  Christian had been quiet for the majority of the service, and now Lorenzo turned to him, to see him staring
intently, apparently at the girl, his hands tightly gripping the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. Lorenzo knew Christian well enough though, to know he was staring right through her, deep in his own thoughts.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked, and Christian jumped in his seat, obviously startled by Lorenzo’s voice. He quickly relaxed, though, and his grip on the steering wheel loosened.

  “I’m just thinking that I feel sorry for her.”

  “She doesn’t need your sympathy, you know, Christian.”

  “She’s all alone in the world now,” Christian continued, either ignoring Lorenzo or not hearing him.

  “Well, we can’t fix that, but we can help to right the wrong that has been done her.”

  “And what if she saw something, Lorenzo? What if she suspects or even knows about vampires? Because if she knows, she’s not safe. Even now, she’s probably not safe. If she saw them, they know about her. He knows about her, the Master Vampire.”

  “One step at a time, Christian. First, it’s very unlikely she knows anything. Vampires rarely leave survivors. But we must find out what she knows.”

  “Maybe you should be the one to do it. I mean, she’s already talked to you.”

  “No. You were right, Christian. She’s all alone right now in the world. What she needs is a friend to talk to, someone she can relate to. You’re only a few years older than she is. She will feel more comfortable talking to you. You have a much better chance than I of finding out what she knows.”

  “Now?”

  “No. Later. You can approach her later, but remember, Christian, to be-”

  “-discreet,” Christian finished Lorenzo’s thought. “I know.”

  They sat there a few minutes longer before Christian started the engine. Still, he didn’t put the car into drive right away.

  “I know it’s not my job to feel bad for her, Lorenzo,” he said without turning towards his mentor.