by Graham Brown
Evelyn slumped to the floor, covering her face. Christian picked her back up and knocked her arms aside.
Where? Where did you take him?
He saw an airport. A private jet. It took off into the night.
Where?!
He looked deeper, focused harder. And then he realized the awful truth: she didn’t know.
Now!
Not his thought, but hers. He broke free of the connection and spun around just in time to see another figure charging with a blade in its hand. Not a Drone, but a human servant. One whose presence Christian couldn’t sense.
The man hit him and swung his knife with an uppercut. Christian caught the man’s wrist and stopped the blade an inch from his heart, but now the rest of the army was coming. Evelyn pulled her own knife and plunged it downward towards him; it sliced across his shoulder.
He threw the human off and was tackled by a charging Drone.
The two of them went crashing backward, out through the blackened window and into the burgeoning sunlight of a new day which stung as it tried to etch lines in their skin. They tumbled, dropping toward the dark waters of the harbor five stories below.
The last thing Christian saw was Evelyn in the broken window frame, stealing a glance and then peeling back from the glare of the day and vanishing in the shadows. An instant later, he and the Drone hit the surface and the world suddenly went dark.
Chapter 7
Brief seconds in the sunlight were like fire and noise to both Christian and the Drone. The cold waters of the bay quenched that fire and silenced the noise, but the battle continued. The impact had jarred both bodies and the two of them grappled, sinking to the muddy bottom. There, Christian wrestled with the creature until he pinned it up against the algae covered wall of the concrete pier.
Despite his own pain, he held the Drone tight, giving it no ability to move. It struggled, but it was no match for Christian’s strength.
Staring up at the surface Christian he fought the urge to swim upward. Even the Fallen could drown. Fire, stabbing weapons, drowning: all of these could end a so-called immortal’s life.
Christian had no intention of letting that happen. At least not to him. He turned back to the struggling beast in front of him. He released its arms, grabbed its head and twisted quickly, breaking its neck. The fourth way he knew to kill a member of the undead.
The Drone went limp. Air bubbles flowed from its mouth and nose. Christian pushed off the wall and began to swim away as fast as his wounded body could move, while remaining submerged.
The heat of the Drone’s immolation could be felt. The sizzling sound it made was sickening to hear, but the light allowed Christian to see where he was going. He swam to a huge wooden pylon, like an oversized algae covered telephone pole. That put him beneath the overhanging dock, swimming upwards he surfaced in the darkest recess he could find.
He sucked at the air like any other man would, thankful for its life giving properties. But now what? He was trapped. Even the reflected light was enough to sting and weaken him.
He looked around. Across the channel, he saw a small inlet and a sewer grate. It had been a long time since he’d made his home in a sewer, but it would feel like heaven on Earth if he could get there.
He took a deep breath, dove under and began to swim. The light from the Drone’s destruction began to fade. Christian felt as if he was going off course. He pressed on, continuing to kick even though every extension of his wounded leg was like being struck with a blacksmith’s hammer.
By the time he could see the outline of the sewer tunnel, he was beginning to black out. Only fifty feet away, but it might as well have been fifty miles.
His legs became too weak to move; only his arms were working. He sank. He hit the bottom and pulled himself forward. Though he’d stayed underwater, the sunlight still reached him. He remembered how Drake looked on the oil platform: a helpless old man.
Without warning he banged his head into the concrete wall around the sewer tunnel. He surfaced in the shade beside the grate, caught his breath, and with one great pull yanked it open, breaking the old rusted lock. Quickly, silently, he climbed inside like a river rat coming home.
Fortunately, it was only a storm drain. Sewage was no longer allowed to run into the river untreated, but it was still filled with filth and sludge and the smell of decay and gasoline that had come from the streets with the runoff from the storm.
He crawled through a foot of water that ran on top of six inches of sludge. When he was deep enough into the tunnel that it was almost dark, he paused and pulled himself onto a narrow ledge.
He collapsed there as the dirty water flowed by him. He noticed that his legs had been charred by the Drone’s fire. The lower half of his slacks had been burned off. His skin blackened and peeling.
It was the closest he had ever been to the Ignatorum. The closest he had ever been to his own death, he thought. A little higher and the knife would have hit his abdomen. Had he been more wounded, the Drone might have snapped his neck instead. Even if it hadn’t been instant, he might have floated down with the current. Eventually the sun would have finished him, burning him to ashes and nothing else. No trace of his body would have remained. No sign that he’d ever graced this earth.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Even for an immortal.
With his strength slowly returning, Christian stared into the abyss surrounding him. Trash floated by; discarded things no longer wanted, needed or even thought about. He felt a strange kinship with the refuse. He wondered if his existence and struggle even mattered. Maybe the world would have been better off had he never been born. Or maybe it would have been exactly the same. Depression enveloped him in the cold dark thoughts of the Nosferatu, the inner place where the curse settled deepest.
“No,” he said aloud. He would not let his mind go there.
He pushed himself up against the old battered brickwork of the tunnel and readied himself for the next act. Taking a breath, he reached for the handle of the knife sticking out of his thigh. He gripped the blade’s handle tightly, took another deep breath and then, with a slight twist and a pull, drew the blade out of his leg. As the blade ripped free a primeval scream exploded from within him. It echoed over and over again, deep into the far reaches of the tunnel.
It came back to him weaker and cowed, much like he was.
He tumbled over onto his side and just laid there in the muck. The wound would close and scar but never heal.
“What was I thinking?” he muttered to himself.
He’d decided to come right after Drake. He hadn’t even found him and was now wounded just like Drake.
Maybe it was vanity to think he could destroy the King of the Fallen. Perhaps that’s what Elsa—or his unconscious mind—was trying to tell him in the vision. Who was he to think he would accomplish anything beyond burning in the fires of hell, like all of his kind did?
Not all.
The thought flickered at him from nowhere, but it was valid. Not all the Fallen burned. James Hecht, who had more reason to suffer than most for the evil he’d done, hadn’t caught fire and burned to ashes when Christian shot him in New Orleans.
Why didn’t he burn? Christian wondered. The answer was obvious. For the same reason that bullet snapped his head back and blew out half his skull. He was human when he died. He’d consumed enough of the woman’s blood to become human again.
As absurd as it sounded, Hecht had found the exception to the rule. If the church was right—and the flames of the Ignatorum were the beginning of hellfire and brimstone—then fate, it seemed, had something else in mind for Hecht.
He was dead as dead, but he hadn’t burned.
Delirious from the pain and filled with thoughts of failure, Christian pondered the idea. An escape clause, an exit ramp from all the madness. He considered the possibilities. Seventeen hundred years of torment was a long time. As for any evil deeds he’d committed against his fellow man, he figured he’d paid for them and more. For th
e murder of his commander almost two millennia ago, the act that brought Drake into his life, that debt was now settled. Paid. Finished.
He stared at the blade in his hand and felt a calmness come over him. Could he do it? Could he really do it?
Now that I know the secret, yes. I could do it.
And yet the thought disgusted him. He was a soldier, a captain in the 14th Legion, leader of a thousand men. For them, for him, quitting on the field of battle would be the worst sin of all. And there was no doubt in his mind, he was still at war.
“You’d need to steal the life of another to make it work.” These words floated towards him from somewhere in the darkness. “Isn’t that where your guilt came from in the first place?”
The voice seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere. It echoed around him and then faded. And then, in the distance, a pinpoint of light began to grow. Not harsh like the daylight, but soft and flickering like a candle.
“Elsa?”
The light took shape and he saw the perfect image of his lost love. She stood there in all her beauty. A young woman, like he’d known her centuries before, dressed in white and grey. She was healed of all her scars, unmarked by the burns of the inquisition. She was beautiful.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “For I’ve come to bring you care, love, and hope in this dark hour.”
“Twice you’ve visited me, now,” Christian said. “How can I know if you’re real?”
Like the other vision, she refused to answer this question.
“I know the thoughts of your troubled mind,” she said. “I always knew. I know of the great pain that you’re in. I know that you’ve glimpsed the secret. But you fail to grasp its importance. You wish the coldness of your life to be gone, you wish the anger and the pain and the regret to be sent beyond the void forever, but you have been chosen and you have a far greater purpose than your own comfort.”
He could not stop staring, afraid that she might disappear. “What did you mean about the secret?”
“I told you before; your death can accomplish nothing. Only your life can heal this broken part of the world.”
Christian stared as she floated in the air like mist. Light began to move around her. He thought of the prophecy. “Are you the Angel? Are you coming back?”
She remained silent as Christian crawled towards her.
“Please,” he said. “Please, answer me.”
“I’m not the angel,” she said.
“Then who is?”
“One you won’t meet until the end,” she said. “But it’s not for me to show you. What I must tell you is that time is running out. After all your lifetimes on this earth there is little sand left for you. Drake is healing and is searching for something of great power, something he cannot be allowed to possess. If he grasps this new weapon, his power will grow. His darkness will be stronger than the light.”
“Great,” Christian grunted sarcastically. “And I thought we were doing so well.”
The image did not respond to his dark humor.
“What is he’s looking for?”
“Do not give up,” the image of Elsa whispered. “Follow me. And when your time comes, I’ll be waiting for you on the other side.”
The image started to fade and Christian lunged forward. “No. Don’t go. Please! I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know where to start. I don’t even understand what you’re saying. You can’t keep giving me these riddles.”
He reached out for Elsa and his hand passed right through the fading image of her. He pulled back as the image vanished.
Trust and believe, for faith must be your only guide now.
The darkness of the underground world regained its foothold and the sound of the trickling water was all he heard. Darkness crept back into the brick and mortar and Christian could do nothing but stare into it.
He had no idea where to go next, but he knew more than anything that he needed help. He could think of only one place to get it.
Chapter 8
Washington D.C.
Steam billowed from the cup of coffee in Agent Pfeiffer’s hand. She took a sip. Though it was piping hot she could barely feel heat on her tongue. She dumped ten sugar packs into it but couldn’t taste them. She walked from the metro with a pair of dark Ray Bans on, yet the morning light felt like needles in the eyes.
What the hell is happening to me?
She hustled into FBI headquarters and took the escalator down into the comforting darkness of the basement. She’d moved her office with permission of director Tan. She’d chosen the basement not just because there were no windows or natural light down there to burn her eyes, but because there were unsolved case files and a library of research materials that could be studied without anything showing up on a computer log. And because she was tired of the looks she got from other agents and staff as she walked the upper floors.
By now she was certain that Kim Tan and Serrano were watching her every move. But they were busy, and a computer-tracking bug was all she expected out of them.
Down in the dark, she drank the rest of the coffee and began pouring over files. She could hardly believe what she was finding. There were cases of humans drinking blood all over the place. Criminals believed to be on meth that attacked and chewed off flesh of their friends. Victims, human and animal, found drained of blood. There were cases in the United States, Europe, and South America.
Going back in time she found hundreds of similar stories. Some were obviously folklore. Others seemed to be legitimate reporting of strange facts. The case of Elizabeth Bathory shocked her beyond belief.
Bathory was a countess in Hungary who, between 1585 and 1610, tortured and murdered hundreds of young women. She was said to drink and even bathe in tubs filled with their blood, because she thought it made her more youthful and alive.
When she was finally arrested and imprisoned in a small room in her own castle, dozens of victims were freed from suffering a similar fate. A list with six hundred forty names was discovered, names of peasants and young nobles she’d tortured and killed.
“Madness,” Kate thought. But maybe not untrue.
“What are you doing down here?”
Kate looked up from the reports to see the face of Ashley Blackburn, her new partner assigned by Kim Tan, who was nothing more than a spy sent to watch over her shoulder. A look of frustration crossed Kate’s face. She quickly closed the database. God only knows what they’d think or do if they knew she was looking into accounts of vampirism.
“Just doing a little research.”
“On what?”
“It’s personal,” Kate said.
“In the FBI database?”
“An old case, you wouldn’t be interested.”
“Let me take a look. You know a fresh pair of eyes can never hurt.”
Kate shook her head. “That’s okay, Ashley. I’m sure you have your own cases to solve. Why don’t you let me help you with one of those?”
Ashley frowned. “We’re not getting off on the right foot, are we?”
Hell no, they weren’t.
“Ashley, I’ll let you in on a little secret,” she said. “I don’t trust you. I know who you are and why you’re suddenly assigned to me. Good for you, getting in with the brass as a snitch. But I’m not interested in helping you get a leg up on the FBI ladder.”
Kate stared at Ashley waiting for some type of response or reaction. None came. She was good, Kate thought. In another lifetime they could have been partners, but not now. Not in this situation. All that mattered now was survival, pure and simple. She needed answers. She didn’t need this woman getting in her way.
Finally the spy spoke up. “Look Kate, Director Tan gave me this position to help you. He knows you’re lying. We all do. We just can’t figure out why or about what. Let us help you. We know you’re in a terrible spot.”
Kate looked her new partner dead in the eyes trying to gauge her level of sincerity. Then, without warning, words came into K
ate’s mind. Whispers. You psychotic little freak, I can’t believe they’ve let you stay on active duty, let alone raise a child.
Kate couldn’t tell whether it was real or her imagination. Ashley’s body language certainly didn’t suggest she was thinking that.
“Excuse me,” Kate said, standing and brushing past Ashley.
Kate made her way to the bathroom overwhelmed by everything that was happening. Her mind flashed to the cases she’d been going over, even more to the ancient history of the Blood Countess. The woman drinking blood from Billy Ray’s neck popped into her mind: a thought she felt she’d purged from her memory. And then the image of her husband dead on the floor of their kitchen two years ago, blood all around him, but not enough to explain why he was so pale.
Somehow it was all connected. All of it. And the only person with answers was the blond man she’d seen in the swamps.
She needed to take a leave of absence. Needed to get away from all of this and find him if there was any hope to make sense of it.
“You alright in there?”
Oh my God, Ashley, leave me alone. Kate began splashing water on her face as Ashley came into the bathroom.
“Yes, I’m fine. Just a stomach bug, I think.”
Ashley came up, washing her hands and checking her makeup.
Kate tuned her out immediately. Her only thought now was on finding this man and where to start. She didn’t know who he was. Didn’t know where he came from and yet, for some reason, she felt he was near. For some reason, she felt he was north, possibly New York City. Why she would think this she had no idea, but the thought was strong, powerful, and it kept coming back. That’s where she’d start once this was over.
Kate grabbed a towel and dried her face. Then, staring into the mirror she was shocked. Her image was blurred. She reached out and wiped the mirror, but it was clean and dry.
Ashley turned to her. “You alright? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Kate turned quickly. “Just stressed. Shall we go?”
Ashley smiled falsely, turned back to the mirror and then froze. Kate’s image was blurred like a photo of a runner moving at high speed, but Ashley’s reflection was sharp and clear.