I ran through the night, branches and pine needles whipping at my face and arms, the sharp pain nothing compared to the crushing sorrow I felt inside. Tears streamed from my eyes and I kept repeating to myself that my mom was gone. I would never see her again. They had killed her.
The memory receded and the elevator door opened with a ding. I stepped out, realizing that I’d been crying, wiping the tears away with my sleeve. I had always believed that when my mom had been killed in a car crash, I’d been at my aunt’s house. I had a memory of an Oregon police officer coming to the house and telling my aunt that her sister had been killed on the highway.
But when I tried to recall details of that memory now, I couldn’t. It was being replaced with the memory of what really happened that night. My mother had been murdered. And I’d been in the car with her moments before.
Knowing the truth made me feel the loss of my mom all over again. I left the hospital and walked through the afternoon rain with a heavy heart. When I got into the Land Rover, I rested my head on the steering wheel and let the tears flow.
The words that my ten-year-old self kept repeating ran through my mind over and over. She’s gone. I’ll never see her again.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat in the hospital parking lot like that but when I was done and I had no more tears left, the sorrow that had overwhelmed me turned to rage. My mother had been murdered and I’d been in the car with her moments before. Someone had taken my memory of that night and locked it away in my mind.
They’d stolen the truth from me.
As I started the engine, I glanced at the hospital entrance and saw Jason Farmer, carrying a huge bouquet of flowers tied with a pink ribbon, heading inside. He’d gotten what he wanted. It seemed like the life he had planned for himself and Felicity was going to happen after all. And, knowing Felicity’s personality, I was sure that life wasn’t going to be kind to her.
I also understood the awful loss it meant for the Society, the world, and me.
I let out a slow breath and resisted the urge to corner Jason in the elevator and beat the shit out of him.
Instead, I drove out of the parking lot and onto the busy streets of London. The day was drawing to a close and I couldn’t say I was sorry to see it go. In a few hours, the night would fall and then I would be able to release the anger I felt building inside me.
Soon, it would be time to kill some vampires.
Chapter 15
My father called me at eleven and asked me to meet him in the hotel’s underground parking garage. I rode the elevator down, feeling anxious and fully alert. I’d spent the evening in my room, replaying the memory of my mother’s death over and over, trying to remember some detail that would give me a clue to her killers’ identities. I’d come up with nothing, so, after a meal of chicken and pasta in the hotel’s restaurant, I’d sat on the bed and watched TV. Eventually, I’d fallen asleep. Now, I was fully awake and full of nervous energy.
I got out of the elevator to find a black Bentley parked next to the Land Rover. As I approached, a driver, neatly dressed in a dark uniform and cap, got out of the Bentley and opened the rear door. My father got out.
He was dressed in a tweed jacket, green trousers and high boots. On his head, he wore a deerstalker hat, the kind that was worn by Sherlock Holmes. In fact, my father looked like he had stepped from the pages of a 1920s adventure novel and was ready to go plundering tombs in Egypt or search for lost treasure in the jungle.
“Ready for some vampire hunting, my lad?” he asked when he saw me.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Good. Get the Land Rover open and we’ll put the weapons inside.” He motioned to the driver who opened the Bentley’s trunk and took out a long, black canvas bag.
I opened the back of the Land Rover and the bag was placed inside.
“That will be all,” my dad told the driver. The driver nodded and got back into the Bentley. A few seconds later, he was driving away, leaving us with the smell of exhaust fumes. The smell reminded me of the crashed car I’d been inside with my mom during her final moments of life.
Shaking the thought away, I pointed at the canvas bag. “What have we got?”
He grinned and opened the bag. Reaching inside, he took out a pistol crossbow and handed it to me. “We’ve got these beauties. And plenty of wood-tipped bolts. Perfect for vampire slaying.”
I inspected the pistol crossbow. It was a weapon I was familiar with, a self-cocking version that meant it could be reloaded quickly by pulling on a lever behind the handle. These would be useful against the vampires at the cemetery. That was, of course, assuming there were actual vampires there. We were only going on the prophecy of the Coven and that hadn’t exactly been clear in its meaning.
“Regular stakes,” my dad said, removing a half dozen carved lengths of wood from the bag and laying them next to each other in a neat line. “And to capture John DuMont, I have these.” He showed me a set of heavy iron shackles. I could see magical symbols carved into the metal cuffs and the chain. “Enchanted, of course. Once we get these on him, he won’t escape.”
“And how are we supposed to get them on him in the first place?” I asked.
“I admit, it will be tricky,” he said. “The Coven has informed me that DuMont may have aligned himself with a demon. That’s why I brought these.” He removed two sheathed swords from the bag and placed them next to the stakes. Like the shackles, the sword hilts were inscribed with magical symbols.
“A demon, huh? Do those witches know everything?”
“They seem able to find out most things,” he said. “But as you know, their method of relaying the information isn’t always concise. Some days are more informative than others when dealing with the Coven.”
“Did you ever ask them about mom’s death?”
He looked at me, shocked. “What? Why would I ask that? Your mother was killed in a car accident.”
“Was she? How can we be sure?”
My dad frowned. “Alec, the Oregon police found her body in her car by the side of the road. She crashed and didn’t get out in time before flames engulfed the car.”
I studied his face as he spoke. He seemed upset. So maybe he’d been told the same story I had and believed it without question. I felt guilty for suspecting that my own father might know more about my mom’s death than he’d told me, or even that he could be involved in removing my memory of that night on the highway, but I had to check.
“She was the wife of a high level Society member, Dad. Maybe she was killed because of that.”
A sadness crept into his eyes. “Alec, when your mother took you to America, she severed all ties with me and the Society. She didn’t want you to be involved in … all this.” He indicated to the weapons in the back of the Land Rover. “I respected her wishes and let her raise you however she saw fit. There was no foul play regarding her death. It’s just one of those unfortunate things that happen in life sometimes. It’s nobody’s fault. I know you want there to be a bad guy somewhere so you can hunt him down, but in this case, you just have to accept what happened.”
I shrugged and closed the trunk before getting into the driver’s seat. My dad obviously didn’t know that there was a bad guy somewhere. And I was going to hunt him down. Hunt him down and kill him for what he did to my mother.
Dad climbed into the passenger seat and looked at me closely. “Are you all right? You seem distracted tonight.”
“Yeah,” I said, starting the engine and backing out of the parking space. “I’m worried about having to protect your ass from vampires.”
“Well, there’s really no need. I was doing this kind of thing before you were born.”
“That’s what I mean, Dad. That was a long time ago.”
He went quiet until we were on the street. Then, he said, “What we’re doing tonight is very important, Alec. If we can capture DuMont and get him back to headquarters for questioning, we might be able to flush out all of the traitors in t
he organization. I’ve dedicated my life to the Society of Shadows, and I’ll do anything to help get rid of those who would betray its values. I won’t see it destroyed from within by people like DuMont.” He spat out the name as if it pained him to speak it.
“Okay, Dad, but if things get too dangerous and I tell you to get back to the Land Rover, you do it. You have to agree to that or I’m going to turn around right now and spend the rest of the night watching TV in my hotel room.”
He sighed in frustration. “Yes, I agree. Although I don’t know why I’m letting you dictate terms to me. I’m the superior officer on this mission.”
“And I’m a concerned son who doesn’t want to see his dad get killed by a creature of the night.”
“You know, it might be better if you had a little faith in your old man,” he said.
I didn’t say anything. I was worried about him being in the field and there was nothing he could say that would make me feel comfortable about going into a dangerous situation with him by my side.
We drove in silence for a while toward Highgate, a bright, waxing moon visible in the sky when the clouds weren’t obscuring it. At least it had stopped raining.
As we reached Swain’s Lane, where the cemetery was located, my father looked across at me with a wry smile. “Look at us, Alec. Father and son working together for the Society, ready to kill vampires and catch a villain. We make a good team, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah, sure.” I just hoped that both members of the team were going to go home alive tonight.
Highgate Cemetery was split into two section, the East and West. The older graves, including the Lebanon Circle, were located in the West Cemetery farther along the road on our left. On our right, beyond its low wall and iron railings, the East Cemetery was dark and quiet.
As we reached the tall building that marked the entrance to the West Cemetery, I parked the Land Rover and killed the engine.
The night was silent.
We got out and, without a word, went to the back of the Land Rover and distributed the weapons among ourselves. I fixed one of the sheathed swords to my belt, shoved a couple of stakes through my belt at the other hip, and placed the pistol crossbow bolts, which were in a small leather quiver, into my inside jacket pocket. I levered the loading mechanism on my crossbow and loaded a bolt but left the safety on for now.
While my dad armed himself in a similar manner, I picked up the heavy iron shackles and draped them around my neck. They were heavy and made moving more difficult, but at least they didn’t clank together as they would if they were hanging off my belt.
Ghostly moonlight broke through the clouds. I didn’t need my Maglite to see that the large iron gates beneath the building’s archway were open. I pointed the open gates out to my dad.
He nodded grimly. “The game is afoot.”
We made our way beneath the archway and peered through the open gates. The area beyond was an open space bordered by a long colonnade. To either side, paths led to the graves and mausoleums that had been here since Victorian times. There was a smell of wet grass and trees in the air from the earlier rainfall, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
I gestured for my dad to follow and crept along a path that I knew would lead us to the Egyptian Gate, a faux-ancient gate that led to Egyptian Avenue. Beyond the avenue, which was lined with tombs in the ancient Egyptian style, lay the Circle of Lebanon where the witches of the Coven had prophesied John DuMont would be tonight.
As we passed by various gravestones and mausoleums, I kept a tight grip on the pistol crossbow. If there were vampires here, they could be hiding anywhere.
“Stay close, Dad,” I whispered.
“I will, Son.” He was scanning the graves on his side of the path, occasionally turning to check behind us, both hands holding his pistol crossbow steady.
His earlier bravado had disappeared and he looked worried. I couldn’t blame him. Hell, I was scared. Vampires weren’t pushovers and who knew what powers John DuMont had, especially if he had sided with a demon?
We didn’t even know why he was in the cemetery in the first place. Whatever his reason for being here, it wasn’t to lay flowers on anyone’s grave, that was for sure. Magic and death only ever mixed together in ways that could be described as evil or wicked.
We reached the Egyptian Gate, an archway in a high stone wall flanked by faux pillars. The iron gates in the archway were open, just like the ones at the cemetery’s street entrance.
I stepped forward to pass through to Egyptian Avenue but stopped as the metallic smell of blood reached me. I wondered if I was actually smelling it or if my mind was fooling me again, recalling the tang of blood from one of my lost memories.
“Dad, do you smell that?”
He sniffed the air. “Blood.”
It wasn’t a buried memory resurfacing; it was here, now. A hissing sounded from the darkness and the first vampire dropped to the ground from where he must have been hiding in the roof of the archway. I heard a rustling behind us and turned to face two more vampires creeping out from behind a mausoleum.
My dad and I stood back to back, my pistol crossbow wavering between the two undead creatures coming from behind the mausoleum, his aimed at the one in the archway.
The three vampires rushed us and I shouted, “Fire!”
Chapter 16
I pulled the crossbow trigger and the wood-tipped bolt flew at the vampire closest to me. The bolt was fast but the undead creature was faster. He dodged the shot and the bolt shattered against the stone wall of the mausoleum.
Dropping the crossbow because there was no time to reload it, I reached my hands down to my hips in a cross draw motion, simultaneously unsheathing the sword with one hand and grabbing a stake with the other.
The vampire I hadn’t shot at was almost on me and I extended the drawing motion of the sword to slice the blade up along his body when he jumped at me.
He screamed in agony and dark blood stained his sweater, but I knew the sword couldn’t finish him like this. He would recover from such a cut in seconds. The only way to end him with the sword was to cut off his head. Still, the force of my attack kept him off me. He had meant to land on me and drive me to the ground, probably while ripping my throat out with his teeth, but I was spared that agonizing death for now.
While he writhed on the ground bleeding, his companion came in fast, his fangs bared. Either he’d been distracted by the bright blue glow of the enchanted sword or he simply hadn’t noticed the stake in my other hand. When he came forward, I lunged like a fencer, driving the wood through his skin and into his chest.
His eyes went wide and he fell to the ground, his body decomposing so fast that by the time he landed on path, he was nothing more than a skeleton and a few scraps of rotted flesh.
The stench of the sudden decomposition hit me and I wanted to vomit, but I didn’t have time for that. The vampire I’d cut with the sword was coming back for more.
I risked a quick glance at the archway where my dad was fighting in hand-to-hand combat with his vamp. I didn’t give much for his chances. I needed to get rid of my guy and help my dad as soon as I could. That was assuming I could actually get rid of my guy.
He didn’t leap at me, having learned his lesson from the last time he tried that move. Instead, he kept his distance, weighing me up, looking for a chance to get past my defenses. I held the sword in one hand, his blood still dripping from its blade, and the stake in the other, his companion’s blood staining the wood. He knew I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
“Human,” he said in a low tone, “I will drink of your blood until I am sated and then I shall leave your body for the crows.”
“Give it your best shot,” I said, looking him in the eye. I wasn’t worried about his glamor ability because to do that, to take control of a human’s mind, the vampire needed the mind in question to be in a receptive state. Facing him in a fight to the death hardly made me receptive to his commands.
; My words angered him. He hissed and moved forward, trying to come under my weapons, probably hoping to use his fangs to rip into my torso.
As he lowered his body and rushed me, I sliced down with the sword. Its enchanted blade sliced into the vampire’s shoulder and I put all of my weight behind the blow, forcing the creature to the ground. He lay on his stomach, fighting against the blade that pinned him, cursing me and clawing at the air.
I knelt down and drove the stake into his back. His cry pierced the night for a fraction of a second and then he was silent as the rapid decomposition process began. I got back to my feet and pulled the second stake from my belt, ready to help my father.
But when I looked over toward the archway, my dad was standing over a pile of rotted flesh and bones. The stake he had used to kill the vamp protruded from the gore at his feet, driven through the creature with such force that it stood upright in the dirt.
“I forgot how much these things stink,” Dad said, wrinkling his nose.
A wave of relief washed over me. Then I felt guilty for feeling so relieved. Maybe I should have had more faith in the old man after all.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“Yes, Alec, stop fussing over me. Now, let’s go.” He pointed at the archway that led to Egyptian Avenue.
I wiped the blade of my sword on the wet grass and slid it back into the sheath, then put the stakes back into my belt. Picking up the pistol crossbow and reloading it, I said, “Okay, let’s go.”
We passed beneath the Egyptian Gate and discovered where the smell of blood was coming from. It looked like the vampires had brought along a midnight snack. Two dead bodies, a man and a woman, lay in the darkness. It looked like they’d been feasted on by the vamps until they’d died of blood loss.
“Horrible way to go,” my father said as we stepped over the bodies.
The Egyptian Avenue, lined with tombs, stretched before us, leading to the Circle of Lebanon, a sunken ring of tombs built around an ancient cedar tree. Standing beneath the tree was a man dressed in a long black coat, white shirt with lace collar and cuffs that looked like they belonged in the early eighteenth century, and dark breeches over high black boots. His black hair was long and unruly, blowing in the night breeze. He was handsome and his features made him appear to be in his mid-thirties, but his dark eyes gave the impression of a man much older than the face suggested.
Buried Memory (Harbinger P.I. Book 2) Page 12