When the doors opened, she was surprised to see that it was more like a very large residential suite and not an austere office-like environment she expected. It was lavish, with hardwood floors, red and black carpets, patent black and red velvet chaises, and a makeshift coffee table made from a black wooden coffin. This decoration was her vampire’s idea. There were also two electric guitars and one bass sitting neatly in their guitar stands in the corner next to an entertainment center, with their amplifiers neatly stacked in a column of three. Centered directly above the middle of three rectangular positioned chaises, hung a large and elegant chandelier made of pure Austrian crystal. The dining room had two bookshelves in the back, though the kitchen area was a bit austere compared to how extravagant and gothic everything else was.
In two of the three chaises sat two different men, one older but still handsome, with dark curly gelled hair, a beard, and emerald green eyes. The other man looked still like a boy, but he wasn’t ugly. He had large blue eyes, short brown hair the he combed back stylishly, and had a line for lips, and perfectly sculpted eyebrows. The two men were happy to be graced by the presence of their blonde undead friend and hopped up to hug him as if they hadn’t seen him for ages. Regina stood graciously beside him, exuding confidence and gothic allure. She sensed no negative nor sketchy energy from either of the men. She felt safe and welcome and greeted them both with a fang-revealing smile.
“Pleased to meet you. My name is Regina Brighton. I’m an electrician,” she said while extending out her hand to Vittorio.
“I know you. You’re that girl from the concert a while ago, aren’t you? You do stand out. I can see why Stefan over here is smitten by you. I haven’t seen this man this happy in years,”
Enttu scoffed through a half-smile and rolled his eyes at Vittorio’s genuine joy for him.
“Regina, these are my detective partners, but you may better recognize them as my band mates from Cold Iron. Vittorio Celentano and Marc Mocanu,”
The latter name resonated within her, as it was the same last name as Radu, her former colleague who was assassinated brutally and torn to shreds. The grizzly images of the carnage in the power plant replayed in her mind, and she shuddered internally. That is his brother. Oh my god, should I tell him? No wonder he’s all sad on the couch over there, he’s in such anguish, and I can feel it now.
Subtly, Enttu nudged her with his elbow on her arm, and shook his head in a no motion. He could read her mind, and those piercing blue eyes drove into hers like daggers, eyebrows arched downwards. Vittorio too, stared at her with a grave expression that lasted a few seconds, as he picked up right away too, that she was the sole survivor of the power plant fire. One of his family members co-owned the power plant, which was designed to put fires out on its own, so he knew that the incident was no accident. His earlier rendezvous with his undead detective confirmed that.
“Miss, you work at the power plant, don’t you?” Marc asked Regina, from the chaise. She inhaled deeply, not sure about what to say. Her heart was on her sleeve in full exposure.
“You know a man named Radu?” he predictably asked her next.
“No, I’m, I’m just an electrician,” she lied, stammering on her words.
Graveness fell upon the shadows the dhampir’s face before he bluntly divulged the shocking news to an anxious Marc. Enttu struggled to formulate the words, but he delivered them solemnly after pondering on how to say them for a minute or so. To Regina’s shock, he too, told a half-concealed white lie through a poker face.
“I hope you feel better soon, Marc.”
Marc broke down into loud sobs, and fell to his knees, crying in grief for his brother. Vittorio knelt beside him to comfort him, but he was shooed away. It was difficult for Regina to feel nothing else but numbness despite of the gravity of it all. In his hand, Vittorio held out what looked like four ticket stubs and he showed them to Marc, to try and invite him out to distract his state of grief. There was so much explaining to be done, and yet it was too soon for him to take it all in.
“I got four tickets to some show at the Odeon Theater. Why don’t we go, and you can ease a bit?” Vittorio tried to console him.
“I’m not going. You guys can go. I need space to think about all this. I know my brother is gone. You guys don’t have to hide it from me just because you don’t want to hurt me.”
Regina silently handed him a bottle of Pinot Noir that Enttu had originally gotten for her, as she would later want blood instead of wine. There was a symphony at the Odeon house that began in exactly half an hour at 10 PM. In his mind, Enttu felt that it was a bad idea to leave Marc by himself in this state, but Vittorio convinced everyone to leave him be. Solitude is the way Marc handled everything, from deep concentration to complete projects, to bouts of mild depression, to working out, and even grief. He was an extroverted introvert, just like all of them in the little group, except for Vittorio, who was a true extrovert.
The remaining trio took off in Enttu’s car, and headed downtown to the Odeon Theatre, where a valet driver in a white button down with a bowtie and black slacks gave the dhampir a ticket to place on his dashboard. The dapper-clad trio stepped out the WRX, and Regina was clasped delicately onto her lover’s arm. He was dressed in an all-black, vested Dior suit with combat boots just in case anything crazy went down, and he wore a duster overcoat with two concealed Sig-Sauer pistols in them. His platinum blonde hair was secured with a black ribbon. Vittorio was a little more casual, in lilac button-down shirt, black vest and slacks, but he too wore combat boots.
“Do these guys always plan to kill everyone they meet?” Regina thought to herself.
They handed their tickets to be scanned by a young woman in office attire at the front, and then they proceeded to a dimly lit but majestic opera house, aptly named Majestic Hall, where everyone here glimmered in luxury, looking like a million dollars. The pit itself, was beautifully decorated with monolithic sculptures of white marble carved with sculptures that depicted angelic men with swords on the backs of leaping horses. Rows and rows of red velvet seats lined the vast auditorium, with a second tier that wrapped around the building from the stage to the back. Crimson awnings lined the marble arches of the second tier, and the main stage concealed the performers behind its epically waving velvet curtain that swept the hardwood floor. Rows of seats began to team with audiences, dressed extemporaneously in their velvets, leathers, feathers, furs, silks, and laces. When she looked up and behind her, Regina noticed a hidden third tier in the back, where folks in black attire smoked through those comical, long black extenders.
She was gently pushed forward by Enttu who delicately wrapped his stony fingers around her waist, and he followed Vittorio to the very front row of the center pit, right in front of the stage.
“Vittorio, where did you get these tickets?” he asked after they took a seat.
“Oh, I got them in the mail about a week ago. It looks like the someone from this theatre themselves sent it,”
“Awkward,” the dhampir replied so dryly. He was always suspicious about all aspects of unknowns, it was what a lifetime of violence had turned him into, even in something so elegant and pleasant like an opera.
The murmuring of the audience quieted down when the velvet curtains swung open slowly, unveiling the musicians behind the widening sliver. There was an ensemble of about ten performers, three with cellos, two with violins, and four on percussion, with one female dressed in an extravagant cascading gown made of black sequins and blue velvet. Her face was hidden behind a metallic blue mask adorned with black plumage of a raven. She was starkly pale, and her blonde hair was secured into a high, tight bun with a strand of diamond encrusted ribbon. Her nails were manicured into stilettos lacquered with a cherry red enamel. Regina could tell that behind that mask, she was emanating angelic beauty, fitting for the occasion. The celloists begun on the first note, and the mysterious angelic beauty begun on the
microphone. They were the notes to “Ave Maria” and she executed each note, even the highest pitched ones flawlessly. The sweet voice from her throat echoed loudly throughout the symphony hall, and evoked a deep mystical odyssey in Regina, where she became one with the sound. Vittorio was listening with a smile on his face, but Enttu seemed rather unimpressed, crossing his arms, and his eyes glowed an electric blue. Was he sensing something?
He couldn’t decipher the energy he felt from the young woman onstage, but it was enough to make him go almost into a trance in which he was trying to remember or see something. There was a psychic frequency vibrating off this singer that he couldn’t ignore, and it tugged at his solar plexus the more he tried to shake it off. When her performance was over, and the crowd cheered her on, he heard a ringing in his ears that caused them to twitch. Whatever was bothering him suddenly made him turn back and look to the third tier, where men and women in black stood casually with their cigarette extenders. They wore sunglasses inside of a dimly lit building, and they knew he was staring in their direction.
As soon as he turned back to the stage, the young blonde opera singer had disappeared, leaving him to wonder who she was, and more importantly, how she disappeared so suddenly. The curtains began to close again, for the main act to come on, and Regina and Vittorio seemed to be in a state of bliss, enjoying the show. Enttu kept shifting in his seat, which made Regina ask him what was wrong. Her smooth, cold hand that grazed his neck brought him back out of his state of escalating paranoia. His widened blue eyes transmuted whatever he felt toward her, and then she too looked up to the third tier of the theatre. Not a soul was there, except for invisible ghosts up in the marble balcony.
“I know what I saw,” he said solemnly.
Vittorio caught his attention as the main act begun, and the crowd wildly clapped and applauded when the curtains swung open again. Majestic Hall was suddenly lit by red and white spotlights amongst a sea of hundreds of waving and whistling fans who cheered in cacophony. On the stage were long-haired men with black guitars, two female singers in Victorian gothic attire, and celloists and violinists in the group. The guitars strummed in unison to the beatdown of the drums in harmonic unison. The string troubadours began to strum their bows along the strings to the melody of “Symphony of the Dead.” It was a surprise performance by the Swedish symphonic metal band, Therion, displayed in the black banner waving above the ensemble.
“You didn’t tell me this was a heavy metal concert. I wouldn’t have worn this fancy garbage,” Enttu said to Vittorio.
“I didn’t know. The tickets just said ‘Therion’ on them, formal attire,”
The group played on a few more songs, and due to the proximity of the audience, everyone just swayed side to side, and sang along the lyrics to the songs they knew. It was probably the most sophisticated metal concert that Regina had ever before attended. Her lover pulled her and Vittorio outside to go smoke. The crowd was beginning to overwhelm him, and he needed to feed soon anyhow. It didn’t help his case much when he could pick up the scent of every individual’s blood among a sweaty sea of expensive mortals. He went to the valet to retrieve his car after paying him 50 euros. From the inside, the concert went on, and the rhythm of the bass and steady drums sounded like they were playing “Birth of Venus Illegitima.”
The racing sports car pulled up to the front of the theatre and idled by in front of the trio. Enttu got the car door for Regina and closed it after she sunk into the passenger seat, making his way around the car from the front. Vittorio sat in the back and lit up a menthol and opened the rear window to let the smoke out. As if some psychic force were toying with him again, the dhampir was compelled to look towards the front doors of the theatre that were situated above a tier of marble stairs. He saw the masked opera singer looking back at him, conversing flirtatiously and smiling devilishly to the men in sunglasses he’d seen before inside the theatre. A rude driver in a black Fiat behind him, honked impatiently. Enttu politely flipped him off and told him to go fuck himself. When he looked back toward the entrance, the singer and the men she was with had once more vanished. He drove off and headed back to the downtown building that was a makeshift stronghold for the three detectives.
Marc had directly dialed Vittorio to tell him that the power had suddenly gone out and that he didn’t even know the first place to look for a breaker box. He gave the young lad some unclear instructions on how to go down to the parking lot level and open the door to the small enclosure that separated the lot into two separate sides, but Marc didn’t understand. Other than that, it was way too dark for him to want to move out of his spot.
“Tell him to wait. I will reset it once I get there. We’re less than five minutes away,” Enttu told Vittorio, as he weaved in and out between lanes, and cut some angered drivers off.
Finally, the car had slipped into the sub lot, and it was no lie that it was impossible to see even one’s own hand directly in front of their face. The dhampir told Vittorio and Regina to meet him upstairs while he reset the breakers, and they used their cell phone flashlights to guide them up to the third floor.
In the electrical room, which was in the middle of the subterranean parking lot, behind a cement wall, a frustrated Enttu fumbled with tripped circuit breakers inside of a power panel to no avail. He reset the tripped breakers, using only the illumination provided from his cell phone, but no lights were coming back on, and just his luck, he didn’t get any signal here.
“Fuck, this has got to be a power plant issue,” he whispered out loud to himself.
There was some scuffling on the wall that caught his attention and made him raise a brow. It sounded heavy, and it made a buzzing sound, like a large bug or a rodent. Though his vision was better than most humans even in total darkness, he couldn’t see it, but did hear its feet scuttle along the wall, and it sounded detestable. It started chirping and this sent a shiver of disgust down his spine, but his own curiosity couldn’t help itself. He shone the flashlight from his phone towards the wall and wished he didn’t immediately. He took a step back and shuddered when the he saw an overgrown, ink-black and glossy cockroach with six spiky and muscular legs, and flittering wings, just a foot away from his face. It chirped and flitted its wings in a threatening manner. There was no way the insect was real, it was a true abomination, and about half the length of the two-foot long breaker box. It was about the size of a football.
Enttu pulled out a handgun and shot the insect three times to make sure it was dead, and it splattered green goo all over the side of the breaker box and the wall next to it.
“What the fuck is that thing?” he muttered to himself.
He took a deep breath and let the adrenaline rush course through him. He abhorred cockroaches, as he could clearly smell the diseases they carried in the insides of their striated bellies. To his unpleasantry, he heard the scuttling again approaching him, but on the floor this time.
“Oh, fucking great,” he thought.
He shone the flashlight down, and two more of these creatures were inches away from the steel toe of his combat boots, and he unloaded an entire clip into them, ripping their black armored bodies into tiny fragments and splatters of goo. Without thought, he exited the basement and found himself in the pitch-black parking lot, where he shone the light and was able to see the three parked cars on his right. Out of his peripheral, he caught the shadow and felt the wind of something passing rapidly on his far left. With his heart beating loudly in paranoia that perhaps he wasn’t alone, he pulled out another handgun, and tread cautiously, with two guns held outright in front of him.
A wet noise slapped the pavement and trudged in his direction. His ears twitched when he heard the recognizable dry growling of the zombie-like creatures he’d encountered before. Sure enough, when he approached it carefully and shone his light at it, there was a rotted creature with skin dangling, and exposed bones coming for him. It snapped its teeth, trying to bite him,
and lunged forward to attack. Without second thought, the dhampir fired three rounds at the zombie, two of the rounds penetrating the front of its skull and into its frontal lobe. Brains and blood splattered the pavement, and then the zombie hit the floor dead, with a thud.
When Enttu went to investigate to make sure he had made a kill, he was mortified when he recognized the wrangled and badly decomposed face of Radu, Marc’s younger brother. He swallowed a lump of guilt and said a silent prayer out of respect for the dead. However, the silence didn’t last too long. An unseen force came from behind him and shoved the unsuspecting dhampir to the ground in the brief time that he let his guard down. He recovered quickly and looked around in bewilderment to see whatever else waited for him. His body had gone into fight mode, and he was seething with violent rage. The shadow from earlier zipped by him once again, and he soon got up on his feet to chase after it. It ran up the stairs that led to all the floors of the stronghold, and its speed was as fast as his. This wasn’t a zombie, it had to be another vampire.
Vittorio and Regina were both wandering in heavy, oppressive blackness, waiting for the dhampir to come back soon. It was tenebrous up here. They called upon Marc to let them know that they returned early from the theatre, but there was no answer.
“Marc, it’s Vittorio. We’re back! Where are you?”
Regina stood in awkward silence in the total darkness next to the breakfast bar, when a shuffling sound on the carpet startled her. A scuttling on the wall her suddenly shift and the chirping noise it made caused the hairs on her back to stand straight up. She then let out a blood curdling scream when a giant insect dropped onto her back. She flailed and jumped up and down, violently swatting to get the creature off him. She removed her duster in desperation when the spiny feet started digging in through the fabric and scratching her back. She flung the coat to the floor and stomped the pile of clothes violently until it stopped moving. Vittorio fired two rounds into the coat pile to make sure whatever it was, died. He’d seen the commotion and had come rushing over to help her. Her face was then overshadowed with paralyzing fear, looking beyond Vittorio’s shoulder as a headless silhouette was coming right for them.
The Dhampir Dimension Page 36