The three of us strapped ourselves in Maggie’s Ford and prepared to set off to search the other locations that Robert had pinpointed on his map. My curiosity was getting the best of me by what Maggie had said about him having done this kind of thing before. There was a history that I wanted to know more about.
Perhaps I would have the chance to ask later.
Robert draped his arms over the headrest between Maggie and I and offered up his theory. “So, I know you two are working on the premise that the people in those photographs were responsible for changing you, but I have another theory. What if they are looking for the one who created you?” he asked with the look of someone who had just solved a giant mystery.
“What makes you think that?” Maggie asked as she peeked into the rearview mirror at him. I turned in my seat to look at him as he answered.
“Well, for one, why would they leave evidence unless they wanted to be found?”
“If they were our makers then maybe it was to lead us back to them,” I answered.
“Maybe, but what if your maker only changed you to serve a purpose of distraction?”
“Like we are nothing more than bastard vampires left in the wake of someone eluding some kind of authority figure?” Maggie asked.
“Essentially. It could account for your similar experiences waking up with memory loss.”
“I didn’t have memory loss,” Maggie interjected. “I just woke up unclear of what had happened since my abduction and my awakening. Noah, on the other hand, lost more than a century, I find it unlikely that he was asleep that entire time.”
“I have to agree with her on that. The experience she had waking up abandoned was entirely different than my experience waking up in a coffin, tucked away for safe keeping. There was something behind those events, something significant,” I said.
“It’s just a theory,” Robert said flatly, the air in his idea was a bit deflated.
We drove by each of the other locations, but each was more abandoned than the old law firm. “It looks like that is the place,” Maggie said as she pulled the truck into park across the street from it.
“Doesn’t look like there’s been any movement since we left,” I said. Maggie shook her head in agreement.
“So, you two just want to stake the place out?” Robert asked.
“May as well,” Maggie said.
“All right, well if you need me, I’ll be back here catching a cat nap,” he replied as he laid across the seat and stretched out.
Maggie cut a glimpse in my direction and smiled. She was excited by the action that she was anticipating, or the answers to questions that she had all but given up finding the answers to. I was excited, or anxious, I couldn’t decide which. I was afraid that my entire world would be turned upside down by what we found.
The truth had a way of doing that.
Chapter 41
Cerene noticed his hand on the blade as well and her face almost seemed to flush in nervousness. Her pale skin reflected the lighting and the look of slight fear widened her eyes a bit. I felt a calming effect befall the room and I recognized the sensation. It had been the effect that she used on me when she had taken my blood before my change. I knew that I was not the target for her gift, but it was her love in which she tried to quiet, the torrent of destruction that flowed through those veins.
“Easy, my love,” she whispered it so elegantly, the accent of her native language eased itself onto the air like a feather. I could see his grip loosen, my mind drifted to the possibility that all of the talk about Pietro had brought us to this point. Humanity was equipped with emotions that drove most things in their lives, Longinus was not so different, though Cerene and I were slightly more removed from the entanglements that they brought.
Love, on the other hand, proved to be more resilient to the evil that the darkness wrought.
“It’s been several days; do you know where he is?” Longinus asked us with only a small twinge of agitation in his voice. Cerene had done her job at calming him.
“He is closer than he was before, perhaps he is on his way back,” she said flatly.
I attempted to reach him with each of my senses. That ability to touch my maker from long distances was like a muscle that needed to be trained in order to be efficient. I likened it to the way that a person uses intuition to know if they are being lied to, the more you use it the better you are at detecting it.
After several quiet moments, I could feel him as well. The strides at which he moved through a large port city, possibly New Orleans, but I could not be for sure. I could almost see him as the sensation grew stronger, it felt like adrenaline, it felt like the hunger and thrill of the hunt. It felt like the pulsation of blood flowing into my throat as I realized that he was feeding at that very moment.
Cerene felt it too, I could see. It had been days since we had last fed, the cravings did not subside, but grew stronger with each moment.
We were alone with Longinus, two hungry vampires in close proximity to a beating human heart. I could see her facelift slightly as he fangs protruded to small white points that fell just above her bottom lip. I realized that mine were extended as well, and that the prey was ripe for the taking.
The hours passed as Robert slept in the backseat of the truck. The semi-silent drone of the radio accompanied the rhythmic structure of his soft snoring as Maggie and I stared silently out of the windshield waiting for the man we believed called himself Longinus. It happened as a most carried low over the ground of the evening sky. A mere hour or two before the sun would crest the eastern sky. Alan and a woman appeared to walk arm in arm down the street. I could recognize the man from the image that Robert had brought up on his computer, and of course from my visions.
I looked on and could hear the soft thudding heartbeat of the man which proved Roberts theory about him being human was true. The unknown woman, on the other hand, was stoically silent, a dark monster who captures the hearts of men and spayed them with her sinister kiss. I could feel her darkness held at bay from the human male's throat. I was surprised at her restraint.
Was this the same woman that Robert saw four decades ago? If so it was astonishing to me that she could restrain herself that long.
"Robert," Maggie said softly, not wanting to draw the attention of the female vampire to our direction. The dark tint of the glass would do little to smother her keen senses of our presence.
He stirred lightly from his slumber, the grogginess of sleep fell from his eyes and he squinted to see what she pointed at.
"Well, I'll be damned. That's the two that I had seen at that antique roadshow," he said.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Could never forget a lady like that," he said with a cheesy grin on his elderly face. I doubted he knew his own age by how youthfully disregarding he was with fact.
There was a moment slightly less than the breadth of a heartbeat when I felt the woman's eyes upon me. It was not a pause, per SE, but there was a connection there. I liked over to see if Maggie felt it too.
Nothing.
We watched the pair duck away into the front door of the building and close tight the wood frames entry into their hideaway.
"What do you think?" I asked as I chanced a glance back towards Maggie, her eyes never moved from the door.
She blinked and then answered as she opened the door to her truck. "I think if I wait another second that I'm going to explode. Like Robbie said, they probably had less to do with creating us than we think," she said as she shut the door and walked across the street.
The sudden silence of the closed cabin was interrupted by Robert, "you just gonna let her go up there alone?"
His question pulled me from my daze and I looked back at him. "Climb into the driver seat just in case things go south," I said as I exited the passenger side of the truck. He nodded in agreement as the tinted windows closed with the door and separated us.
I jogged up next to Maggie when she was no more than ten steps from the
door. " I was wondering if you were coming," she said in a bidding manner.
I smiled at her smirk as we stood within arm’s reach from the door.
A sensation much like static clings clutched the air around us and I felt my hair stand on end. I could not place the danger that I suspect lurked just beyond the solid oak door, but I knew I was imminent.
The door slowly opened and cast a shadow of a womanly figure into the pale-lit sidewalk that led to the door. I would have held my breath had I needed the flow of oxygen that caused that involuntary motion, instead I just stare at the dark eyes that only glistened against the light reflected from them. Her dark hair was braided behind her head and a green shawl bordered her pale face. I could see that she was of European descent despite the loss of pigment over the centuries without oxygen and blood flow burnishing the skin. She caught my eyes in hers and opened her supple lips to speak.
"Hello, Noah, it's been so long. We've been expecting you."
Had my heart still beat, it would be no more, I was speechless as I beheld this woman who knew my name. She was a mystery to me, one that I craved to know the answer to, but fear tore that craving away as her smile revealed the elongate canines of a vampire full of lust for blood. The darkness seeking its release through the veins of our flesh. I knew that fate had brought us here, but I did not think it had brought us here to die.
Chapter 42
I moved to lunge at the older man, the immortal, the cursed. Every fiber of my body wanted his blood, the starvation that I endured at their hands had led me to this point. I could see both of their eyes widen, his in fear and hers in expectancy. I utterance like a growl escaped my mouth and I was up from my seated position and airborne, ready to bear down the full weight of my hunger into his neck and drain him dry.
My attempt was met with a cold hand gripping my throat in mid-air and it brought me crashing down onto the wooden chair that I had been sitting in. The wood broke from the force and splinters and chunks of wood flew about us and my back rested on the ground below me. It would have been enough to kill a mortal man with the force she used to subdue me, it only pissed me off more.
There was something about the environment between us that drew my attention from the fight. I wanted to kill her for refusing the blood that I needed. I wanted to destroy her for assaulting me, the caged animal in her captivity, but there was something else flitting at the edge of my mind. It was fear of what would come later, after taking the blood. The sanctity of my soul rested with them, whether I chose to believe in their God or not.
She held me captive by her grip on me, but the possibility of no longer being cursed held me captive in a way that mattered much more than mere death. I raised my hands in surrender and she eased up slightly. She did not speak, instead, it was him who broke the silent struggle.
“You have a lot of fight in you, and I like that,” he said as he stalked over to me and stood over Cerene and me, both caught in the act of defying our true nature. “But you need to know that your fight is not with us, it is with Pietro. Though if you choose to lash out at one of us again…” he pulled the silver blade from its sheath and held it above my eye, the blade pointing down, the tip burned like a thousand suns as it touched my cornea with a delicate grace. The holiness of Christ’s blood had affected it to be a weapon against our dark kind. “Well, I think you get the point,” he finished.
He pulled the blade back from my eye and I blinked the burning away as my tears welled in my eyes. Cerene allowed me to stand though she still kept her body between Longinus and I. I wasn’t sure that her protection was really necessary considering the power that he wielded. He sheathed the blade once again and cut a wink in my direction. Two thousand years had an effect on the man’s confidence. I wondered what it was like to still be human but to also be so much more. A person without the anchor of blood lust that pulled you into the depths of darkness. I hoped that someday I would know what that felt like.
The sound of my name escaping this woman’s lips caused me to be still. It was a mixture of fear and comfort, I assumed the alluring sensation that had accompanied her voice was due to her gifts as a vampire. That preternatural ability to haunt the mind of our prey and void it of malicious thoughts, to lower the inhibitions and allow ourselves to be welcomed into their arms.
I had no recollection of using it, and Maggie had never used her abilities on me to this extent. I struggled behind the facade of my flesh and closed my mind to her tempting stare.
“How do you know my name?” I struggled to ask as the door stood open and the pale light shown more over the interior dwelling. Like Maggie’s cabin, this building was full of books and the wonderful smell that followed them. I could hear the footsteps of the man striking against the bared plywood floors that had once been carpeted long ago, the strands of fabric that had long since rotted out still held on for memories sake at certain points along the floor where the adhesive had been stronger.
She stared at me silently, studying me with her eyes, the cold gaze tightened with her narrowing pupils, centered in a paler brown set of irises.
The footsteps approached and the man turned the corner and filled the tight hallway with his bulking frame. The hard lines of his face filled my eyes with the man I knew from my visions and nowhere else. I stammered, mentally tracking any way that the truth could be any less evident.
There was no other way, this was him.
“Noah, why don’t you and your lady friend come on in and take a seat. We have a few things to discuss, you and I,” he said with a gentle nod of his head towards Maggie. A curl enveloped the corners of his mouth and his eyes looked gentle but wise.
I did not know if I could trust him. “How do you know me?” I asked, stalling the moment when I would have to step forward.
He rested his hands on his hip and the large forearms of a working-class man bulged as he spoke, “It’s not an easy story to tell, friend.”
Friend?
I didn’t know this man from Adam, how could I be his friend?
“I suggest you start telling it,” Maggie cut in, only slightly nervously.
The other woman stiffened at the tone of Maggie’s voice and the smirk left the man’s face. “All right. Well, the abridged version is that Noah aided Cerene and me against a common enemy. I owe him my life and therefore I consider him a friend.” He spoke straight at Maggie and avoided eye contact with me, though I could feel the woman’s eyes were all over me still.
“And the longer version would be?” I asked, setting Maggie at ease just a little.
He hesitated with a sigh and looked back at me. “The longer version of it is that since you’re awake, all hell just might break loose.”
“How’s that?” Maggie asked.
The woman named Cerene finally spoke, “Because it is not a coincidence that the two of you found one another, Maggie. That’s why.” He voice was slightly tainted with an accent, there was no way to misunderstand what she was insinuating.
“There’s a connection between us?” I asked.
“Yes, and it’s not exactly a good one,” Longinus said. “The cold, hard truth is that the vampire who made Maggie was the last vampire created by the one who made you. And let’s just say that relationship didn’t end on a good note.”
“Would you care to explain further?” Maggie asked, clearly uneasy with the way this conversation was going, and just how much they seemed to know about us.
“Certainly, but first, why don’t you come in and get comfortable. You two are letting the heat out,” he said as he turned on his heels and stepped back into the dwelling. I looked and Maggie and she nodded just before stepping across the thresh hold.
It was too late to turn back now.
Chapter 43
“So, you’re not going to chain him?” Cerene asked as I stood up, free from her clutched hand around my neck. Even after the ordeal, she looked like a model ready for the runway, not a single hair out of place. Longinus walked back to the table an
d chairs that were set up as his little office and sat down. His large frame swallowed the chair whole as he sat, a rock hard solid mass that had seen things that most people in the world could never imagine.
I tried to imagine them, but I doubted it was an accurate portrayal of his life.
“I feel that I should apologize,” I said autonomously. I wasn’t sorry, but I felt the inclination to say it despite that face. Longinus kept quiet and instead looked over at Cerene with a raised eyebrow and I suddenly felt that inclination wash away. Apparently, she could control moods from across the room.
She moved over and stood behind him, her arms draped over his shoulders and a pout of her lips indicated a bit of sorrow behind her face. “What it is that we must do, we should go ahead and get it over with. My heart grows tired of this game.” I didn’t know what thing it was that they must do, but I was sure that it involved me.
“We shall, Cerene. We just need to be patient, wait for him to come to us.”
“And what if he doesn’t?” she asked as she withdrew from him. Anger buried deep inside of her now revealed her frustration on pursed lips and her hands rested on her hips.
“He will, Dear. Just be patient,” he answered without even looking at her.
“He has been in the vicinity for a few days now, I can feel his presence though he comes no closer than a few miles away.”
Longinus exhaled roughly, obviously done with the argument and looked up at her, turning his large, muscular body in his chair. She was looking down at her feet until he lifted her chin gently with his hand, a tender touch for a killer, and spoke. “Cerene, if you want to do this tonight then I will concede to your desire.”
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