If they don’t look like the classic Dracula or Nosferatu, they are supposed to be middle aged, though preferably on the younger end of the scale. This form of vampire can go out in the sun though with special makeups and modifications. Unlike their classical counterparts, however, these are supposed to sparkle.
Barf.
Not only is this last one way off base, it makes me sick to think about it.
In reality, vampires are naturally beautiful. I’m not sure if the transformation makes them more attractive or if they end up sending pheromones in the air that draw your attention. They are super fast, super strong, and usually super smart though to be fair, intelligence levels can vary. If a dumb ass is turned he generally continues to be a dumb ass. Any increase in intelligence in this case usually comes with age.
Finally, vampires tend to be rich. They usually aren’t part of the wealthy one percent, simply because that level of wealth comes with a lot of eyeballs following you. On the rare case one is, the businesses and such are in the name of a highly trusted familiar. To my knowledge only two of these familiars exist, just to give you an idea.
Like with intelligence, wealth is easier to accumulate when you have an unlimited lifespan to grow it. Humans have about fifty to seventy years to grow theirs, some vampires have amassed theirs over centuries.
The whole bite on the neck or wrist is true. That’s the one thing everyone gets right. But, unlike modern entertainment, the marks heal up rather quickly. If someone is marked, like the two in front of me, they’ve done it by other means as a way to tell other vampires this one is taken. Usually by a knife or other type of blade, but I’ve seen a few familiars who’ve shot themselves with nail guns or other stupid things just to make the mark.
Knowing vampires were involved truly terrified me. It wouldn’t have changed my willingness to help Aiden, but it definitely would’ve changed how I approached it. Killing another vampire, even in self defense, can cause major issues. Mainly because of a treaty the wizards and vampires made a while ago thanks to a vampire and wizard somewhere up north. It’s enough of a concern that deep down I wanted to turn and run before I did something I’d regret.
But I know if I did that the woman, and Aiden if he was anywhere close, would come to an end. I’m not sure I could live with myself if I ran from here now. So I sucked it up and stepped into the house, shocked as shit with what I saw.
- 27 -
The doorway opened into a large dining area, with a large wooden table surrounded by ten chairs. In each of the chairs there was a person bound and gagged, each facing the center of the table where there was the bloody, severed head of a woman.
Each of the people was letting out a muffled scream when they saw me enter the room like I was their savior. Out of all the people sitting at the table, two of them caught my eye. The first of the two was the woman who had taken the collar out of the trash, not knowing what it was. She looked at me with a look of familiarity though to be fair it could’ve almost been shock. Mainly from seeing me here now when the last thing she’d seen before this was me running to save her.
The other one was a cop, still wearing his uniform, badge, and amazingly his gun. Only in a world where you don’t fear death by bullets would that one ever float.
“I’m going to get you free, but you all need to do something for me.” I waited while most the group nodded in approval. “You need to be extremely quiet when you leave. If anyone else is here, making a ton of noise will wake them up.” They nodded again. “Go out the back door and run into the woods. Get as far as you can away from this place and don’t look back.” I didn’t bother telling them what I wanted to do to the house, because it was far more terrifying than anything they’d seen otherwise.
If it wasn’t for the head anyways.
I walked over to the cop and freed him first, hoping he had enough of a sense of service and duty to help me free the others. There was no way for me to know who else was here and what they were capable of, so I needed help if they were all going to survive.
“Thanks,” he said after I ripped the duct tape from his mouth. Thankfully his face was smooth, otherwise he might have said something else.
I nodded. “Help me with the others.”
I didn’t have to ask, he was already on in long before the words left my mouth. He worked on freeing the people to the right as I worked my way to the left. To save time, I only undid the ropes holding them in place, leaving gags and duct tape to them to remove.
Thankfully, other than a few moans of pain from ripping the tape free, everyone was quiet as they ran out the back door. After the others left, the cop pulled out his gun and moved towards the front room.
“Wait,” I said, grabbing his arm before he could leave. “There’s nothing you can do here. Going further just gets you killed.”
“I’m going to take those fuckers down for doing this to us.” He looked back at the head on the table. “Doing this to her.”
“You’ll die if you run into them. Trust me.”
“Then what should I do? Just let them go?”
“No.” I said, exhaling slowly. “There’s two guys out back. I took them down before coming in here. Handcuff them and make sure they don’t escape.”
“That flash was you?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t about to tell him how I did it. It would’ve resulted in a lot more explaining than I prepared to do.
“Fine,” he said. He took a few steps towards the back porch and stopped, a few feet past me. He turned around and pulled the wooden club off his utility belt and handed it to me.
“What’s this for?”
“I can handle two handcuffed assholes. You’ll need this more than me.” He then handed me his gun. “And this. You know how to shoot?”
I nodded. “It’s been a few years since I’ve shot one.”
“Just like riding a bike.” He smiled and took a few seconds to explain how to disengage the safety on the gun and how to chamber a bullet in case I had to use it.
“You sure you don’t need it?”
“I’ll be fine.” Before I could walk away he grabbed my shoulder and held me back. “There’s a secret compartment to a cellar in the kitchen. They have a mini fridge covering it. The three head guys hang down there.”
“Any others?”
“If you took down two out back, there should be another three or four upstairs sleeping. During the day the other four watch the house, at night just those two though the three downstairs are usually around too.”
I had a good idea the three downstairs were all vampires. Julian and Lauden had to be two of them, but I guessed Will was the third. That or there was another player in the game I didn’t know about. In any case, taking on three vampires at once was definitely not the smartest idea, but then again neither is sleeping in the basement of a wooden house if you can die in direct sunlight.
“Is there a guy here, little taller than me, black hair, green eyes?”
“They took him downstairs earlier today. I’m not sure what they’re doing to him, but the guys who did it weren’t happy.”
Great.
With Aiden locked up in the basement, destroying the house in a few hours was out of the question. I couldn’t care less about the familiars upstairs or the vampires below, but I couldn’t do anything to them that could hurt, or more likely kill, Aiden.
“Thanks,” I said. “Lock those two up and get away from the house. Call someone for backup if you have to, but keep everyone away from the house until I come out.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Let’s just say, the ones who tied you up won’t be pleased. Keep watch on all sides of the house, tell them to shoot at anyone who comes out who isn’t me.”
“So only shoot guys,” he smiled. “Got it.”
He walked outside, and I heard him say something to the two thugs out back before the door shut behind him. My heart raced instantly as he left. What was I going to do now that I was here all a
lone, getting ready to walk into the sleeping quarters of three vampires whose ages I couldn’t even begin to guess?
With vampires, age often brings more power. Well, not so much that as refinement of the power they already have. There is an immediate spark the moment one is created followed by a rapid decrease after the first feeding. From there, age and power are usually synonymous. There are cases where a younger vampire was much more powerful than he should’ve been, but it was rare. I just hoped I wasn’t about to face one of the rarities down below.
Before going into the kitchen, I walked down the hallway looking for the stairs to the second floor. I found them about halfway down the main hallway, hidden by a wooden door. I didn’t want to go up there and to anything to them. Not that I wasn’t tempted to rip them apart, limb by limb. But as much as they were part of the problem, they weren’t my problem tonight. Not unless they got loose and found me downstairs.
To avoid any potential problems I shut the door quietly and said, “Decoco.” The gap between the frame and the door shut as I fused the wooden pieces together, creating a wall at the bottom of the stairs. The only problem I saw was that the wood would still be the same strength as it was before, which meant it was probably nothing more than two sheets of thin plywood with strips of balsa glued between them.
“Firmo,” I said to remedy this problem. The wooden frame hardened with my touch. Within seconds the once flimsy door was twice as hard as steel, and twice as heavy. Anyone upstairs wouldn’t be able to get out without breaking through the walls or jumping out the windows. There wasn’t anything I could do about the former, unless I was willing to exhaust myself reinforcing every piece of drywall and wood in the place. The later wouldn’t be a problem once more cops arrived to surround the house. Especially if they shoot anyone who tries to leave like I asked.
Once my spells were complete, I walked into the kitchen and carefully moved the mini fridge. Sure enough, moving it revealed a small panel of wood with a handle back against the wall. The floor was clean where the fridge was, making it clear this was the spot. I bent down and pulled the handle revealing a set of concrete stairs that led down into the darkness.
I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face what I was about to find, but I took the first few steps down the stairs anyway. Aiden’s life depended on it.
- 28 -
I pulled out my phone and turned on my light app so I could see where I was going. The basement of the house was dark and damp, like every basement wanted to be. I’d half expected to see the stairs dump me off in an open room roughly the same size as the house, but instead it lead to a smaller room about the size of the kitchen. Along three of the four walls shut doors blocked me from the paths beyond.
The concrete walls were bare and clean, except for a few scattered drawings, seemingly in blood though it could’ve easily have been red paint instead. There was a large rug on the floor that covered all the space, minus a foot or so from each door.
There wasn’t a clear cut path telling me which way was the popular one, so I stuck to the right. I pulled out the gun and held it close, wanting to be prepared just in case someone else came after me. While bullets are a finite resource, and worthless against vampires, magic is just as finite. Maybe even more so. Once I’ve exhausted my mental reserves it takes a nice long rest to use it again. At least with a gun you can load more bullets, not that I had any for this one.
The wooden door opened with a slight creak. Behind was an impressively long corridor that was dug into the dirt and rock underneath. As I stepped inside, I was glad I didn’t just blow the house. If I had, I might not have found this corridor, and possibly the others, saying those doors lead to tunnels like this too.
Wooden beams were set up every five feet to hold the earth in place. In the weaker spots, they had sheets of thick plywood nailed in place to keep the mud and dirt from collapsing inside. I wasn't sure how safe the whole thing was for me, but I knew a collapse wouldn’t be pleasant to a vampire either, but unless they were exposed to the sun, they could escape eventually.
The corridor veered off to the right a bit as I continued to follow it. It came to a stop at a steel door embedded in concrete. Either this was another house, or they’d built tunnels into the woods to allow an easy escape if someone came looking for blood. Other than their unnaturally long death span, this is why they stick around for hundreds of years. The smart ones build their living conditions to be just like this, allowing them multiple ways to escape. The only way to kill one is to face one head to head, and that is a death sentence to most. But, against a group of hunters or something just as formidable, running is often the best option, hence the tunnels.
I opened the steel door and stepped inside. This was a square chamber about fifteen feet in each direction in pure, polished, marble. In the center of the room there was a wooden coffin with the lid shut. Around it, on smaller tables were pictures and photos of people in famous places. Like a woman standing in front of Big Ben, a man in front of the Arch, and what could only be a drones-eye-view of a couple standing near the torch on the Statue of Liberty. The pictures were all taken during the day, under the bright blazing sun. Whoever these people were, they weren’t vampires. At least, they weren’t when the pictures were taken.
All around this room looked more like a tomb than anything else. Given the coffin in the middle I’d expected to see another escape path for what I expected to be a vampire inside. It didn’t make a lot of sense to have this room so far from the house without one.
I grabbed the wooden baton the officer gave me and held it above my head with one hand. With the other I grabbed the lid of the coffin and threw it open. Without a moment of hesitation I brought the baton down where I guessed the heart of the being inside would be. But the wooden club settled on the padded cloth at the bottom of the empty casket.
It was making sense. This wasn’t a main room or even escape chamber for one of the vampires, it was more like a spare place to go, just in case. That or it was the undead equivalent of a spare bedroom. In any case, I was relieved it was empty as well as a bit bummed. I’d hoped one of the three vampires was at least away from the others to make things a little more fair, not that a vampire/witch fight could be called fair by any means.
I closed the lid on the coffin then went out the same way I came in. During the walk I started to think about the pictures. They had to have been taken for a reason, but what it was I had no way of telling. Were they actually important, or simply random decorations? As desperate as I was to know, I didn’t believe I’d ever find out. Not unless I could trap one long enough to ask a few questions before I killed him. There was about a two percent chance of that happening, however.
I reached the main room and swung around to the center corridor. Like the other, this one led to a long hallway that was carved into the dirt. This one however, didn’t have the same plywood support sections like the other. Either this one was newer and hadn’t started to collapse, or it had been built properly from the start.
After a few hundred feet I came to another steel door attached to another stone or concrete room. With the gun back in my hand, I opened the door then aimed it inside, then shined the light of the phone inside. Blood splatters coated the wall unevenly, like those horrible paintings people love to spend thousands of dollars on. Brass candle holders were set into the wall every two or three feet with lit candles that threw a sickly orange glow through the room. In the center of the room on the cold concrete floor there was a pentagram, also drawn in blood. At its center, Aiden lied on the floor, legs and arms shackled with chains leading to each of the four corners.
“Aiden!” I said, placing the gun into my pants and running into the room.
“Ast?” His voice was rough, like he’d been screaming or at the least talking for a long period. Each of his wrists were raw and bloody where the steel shackles covered his wrists, like he’d been trying to escape for some time now. Out of everything, his face was in the worst shape. He almost loo
ked like he’d went ten rounds with Muhammad Ali and got his ass kicked in each one. Both of his eyes were black and swollen, cheeks were dark red and almost blistered, and his lips were cut and bleeding.
I didn’t envy him in the least.
“I’m going to get you out of here.” I turned off my phone and started working with the shackles. The black metal of them glistened in the candlelight as I looked for a way to remove them. I lifted his arms carefully, wanting to get a good look at the bottom, hoping to find a keyhole or some other way to take them off.
“There’s a trigger on the wall,” he said before settling into a nasty coughing fit. “Over by the door.”
To the side of the door I saw it. A small piece of metal just below one of the brass candle holders. I’m glad he knew where it was. It didn’t stick out enough for me to recognize it otherwise.
I walked over and pressed the piece of metal down and heard a sequence of four clicks behind me followed by the sound of the chains clanging on the floor.
Aiden sat up and rubbed his wrists and ankles for a moment before feeling his face. “It bad?” he asked.
“Better give it a month or two before you enter any beauty pageants.”
His swollen and cut lips gave off the faint hint of a smile. I was happy he was in good spirits, even after everything he’d been through. I could be brave and even defiant if the time calls for it, but I doubted I could handle being beat and tortured like that.
He stood up and searched the room. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but he seemed desperate to find it.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s another way out. I just can’t seem to find it.”
I walked over and examined the wall, looking for anything that was out of place. I didn’t get long to search before hearing the sound of footsteps behind us.
“Shit, move!” I said, pulling Aiden back in the corner by the door, putting us out of sight of anyone coming inside. He glanced down, noticed the gun, and reached for it. Before he could take it, I pushed his hand away and shook my head. Whoever was coming was most definitely alone. That or he brought someone along who could fly.
Far Too Young To Die: An Astraea Renata Novel Page 18