Death of the Vampire

by Gayla Twist

  “But you wouldn’t?”

  “No.” Whitright’s eyes were blazing. “I was a fool and a coward.”

  Leaning forward, I placed my hand on his forearm. “Maybe you were just looking out for your friend.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” he said, leaping to his feet and spilling blood on the floor. “If I had been his maker, then he wouldn’t have been so foolish, turning all of his children when they were fifty-four.”

  I opened my mouth to correct him. The senior Vanderlind would turn his relatives at twenty-four, unless some crisis occurred that made him turn them earlier. But thirty years, give or take, probably meant nothing to a vampire.

  “So, you didn’t turn him,” I said, doing my best not to drop to my knees and lick every drop of red from the floor. “Who was his maker, then?”

  Whitright sniffed. “Just some random vampire that he met down a dark alley. As he grew older, he began skulking around Budapest, looking for a member of the undead night after night. The guy was just looking for a meal, but Albert paid him a million dollars, instead. And that was back when a million really meant something.”

  “I’m sorry you lost your friend,” I said. And to some extent, I was sorry. I didn’t feel bad that Jessie’s grandfather was dead, but I did feel bad for Whitright. Or, at least, I would have been if he wasn’t trying to force the love of my life to face the sun.

  “I didn’t lose him,” Whitright muttered. “Well… I guess I did, for a while. But then just when I find out that, despite all the odds, he’s alive and thriving, some little idiot snuffs him out for good.”

  “He was kidnapping teenagers and slowly draining them,” I blurted. “He was a mad dog. He would have announced to the whole mortal world that the undead exist.”

  “And that’s the way it should be!” he thundered, leaping to his feet. “Just like years ago, when a feudal lord did as he pleased, and the peasants didn’t have a say in anything.”

  “Until he killed too many of their daughters. Then they gathered their pitchforks and torches to storm the castle,” I countered.

  “Ha!” Whitright sneered at me. “You’ve read too many stories.”

  I gave him a flat look. “I’m not the only one.” Benjamin Whitright had obviously read a few historical romances of his own.

  “None of it matters, anyway,” he said, slumping back into his chair. “The Bishops prefer that we continue to live in the shadows. They don’t have the fangs to come out into the light.”

  I gave him a questioning look. As far as I knew, no vampire wanted to come out into the light.

  “Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

  “Why am I here?” I asked. I wasn’t going to just sit there while he raved. I had better things to do with my time, like rotting in my cell.

  Whitright crossed his legs and rested his folded hands on his knee. After he’d settled himself, he said, “I want you to tell me about the day that Albert died.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s a very good idea,” he told me. “Spare no detail. As a matter of fact, start from when the first teenager disappeared. Or, better yet, start from when you first decided to seduce Jessie Vanderlind.”

  I definitely remembered that Jessie had told me not to speak to anyone about anything. And I’d already been verbally sparing with Whitright for far too long. He was probably trying to trick me into saying something that would get the whole Vanderlind family roasting in the sun.

  I crossed my legs and folded my hands, imitating his pose. The slit in my dress fell open, exposing my legs, but I didn’t care. “I want a lawyer.”

  Benjamin began to chuckle. “How charming. You still have one foot in the mortal world. You’re just a fledgling caught up in a world you don’t understand. There are no lawyers. You have no legal mouthpiece to hide behind, here. It’s just your actions; your words.”

  I rose to my feet and walked to the door. “Then I will return to my cell.”

  “Sit down!” he thundered.

  But I had no reason to obey him. He wasn’t my father, or my maker, or anyone of influence in my life. “No, thank you,” I told him. “I’ll just be going.”

  “You impudent child!” he bellowed. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “Yes,” I said, simply. “I do.” Gripping the doorknob, I was surprised when it turned. It wasn’t even locked.

  I stepped out into the hall. There were no guards within sight. I could simply stroll away and there was no one there to stop me.

  But then I sniffed the air. I was wrong. There were mortal guards nearby. There was at least half a dozen of them hiding somewhere very close. That’s when I realized that the whole meeting was a trap. Whitright didn’t care what I was going to do or say; it was all a setup so that I would try to escape.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Whitright said in an overly loud voice. I knew in an instant that must have been their signal.

  “Nowhere,” I said coming back into the room and closing the door behind me. There was the sound of boot covered feet pounding across a stone floor. I tried to throw the lock, but there was none. Instead I leapt across the room and retook my seat.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Whitright asked, this time he sounded much more unscripted.

  “Sitting,” I said, as if it was the most obvious this in the world. “Didn’t you ask me to sit?”

  A moment later and the door burst open. Mortal guards shoved their masked faces through the opening. It was my friends from my escort to the meeting. I could tell by the captain’s chalky shoulder. “Where is she?” he bellowed.

  “I’m right here,” I said, raising my hand to draw their attention. “I’m just sitting here in this chair. Is it time to go back to my cell?”

  “She’s trying to escape!” Whitright shouted, leaping to his feet.

  “No, I’m not,” I insisted. “I’m just sitting here. I’m not running. I’m not fighting. I’m not escaping. I’m just being as calm and as cooperative, as anyone can be.”

  “She…” Whitright stammered, and then he hesitated.

  The guards all turned to look at him, unsure what to do next.

  “Get her!” Whitright ordered.

  “But she’s not trying to escape,” the captain pointed out.

  “Yes, she is.” Whitright eyes were practically building with anger. “She opened the door. She’s going to run. She’s trying to escape.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said in a clear, firm voice. “I opened the door momentarily, but then I closed it again and now I’m sitting down. There’s no reason for guards and there’s no reason to fight me. I am co-operating and I’m not running.”

  Everyone just stood there, unsure what to do next. The guards didn’t appear comfortable grabbing a vampiress who was simply sitting on a green leather chair, not bothering anyone.

  “If it’s time for me to go back to my cell, that’s fine,” I said. “But I am not trying to escape, and I am not trying to fight anyone. I am co-operating with everything being asked of me.”

  Whitright’s eyes were blazing with fury. He’d had such a simple plan and I’d refused to co-operate. I guessed he hadn’t thought through anything beyond me running and the guards killing me in a failed escape attempt. I had no doubt that the mortals would happily have staked me if I’d tried to fight them. But stabbing a completely passive girl seemed to rub the mortal morals the wrong way.

  The chalky captain turned to Whitright. “What are we supposed to do?”

  The vampire was livid. “Do as you’ve been told!”

  “Okay,” the guard said, but his voice was a little shaky.

  The captain stood there for a moment, looking in my direction. I could tell that he was reluctant. But I could also tell that Whitright wanted me dead, one way or another. And I wasn’t just going to sit there like a lamb to the slaughter.

  “Do it!” Whitright barked. “We’ll fix it later.�
�

  “Okay,” the captain said again, but this time it sounded like he was girding himself. He powered up his electric cattle prod and then took two steps toward me.

  I flew at him, bending his arm so that the cattle prod zapped another guard in the face. My hands were still shackled, so I elbowed my chalky friend in the jaw. Then, I don’t know what came over me, but in the instant that he was stunned by the blow, I picked him up and threw him at three of the other guards. He dropped the cattle prod while in mid-flight.

  Whitright and I both dove for the weapon. I got there half a second before him. He started backpedaling to get clear of the bolts of electricity shooting out of the thing, so I dove for the door. As soon as I was in the hallway, a bunch of masked guards appeared at the far end.

  “Hold it, right there!” one of them shouted, but I wasn’t listening. I began hurtling down the hallway in the opposite direction, my feet barely touching the ground.

  “Stop her!” I heard Whitright bellow as I crashed through a door.

  But no one was going to stop me. I crashed through another door, feeling like a blood-sucking superhero that had gone berserk. I had the strength of a hundred men and the cunning of a fox. I wasn’t going to let Whitright and the rest of those Bishop bastards kill me, and I wasn’t going to let them kill Jessie.

  I saw a window at the end of the hall and started hurtling toward it. Once I broke through it, I would be free to take shelter during the day while I formulated a rescue plan. I needed to find Alice.

  Twenty feet from the window and I had to slam on the brakes. Three guards rushed through a door at the end of the hall. As I scrambled to go in reverse, one of them sprayed something at me. It looked like he was squirting pepper spray, but it burned any part of my skin that wasn’t covered by my sequined dress.

  But I couldn’t let a little searing pain slow me down. I had to get away. Yanking a large gilt-framed painting off the way, I used it as a shield from the spray. One of the guards must have been preparing to hit me with something harder because I heard someone shout. “Don’t! That’ll kill her.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?” another guard replied.

  The opposite end of the hall led to a set of double doors. I burst through them, down a short flight of stairs and then I smashed through another set of doors.

  And then I stopped. I was in a large, circular room and it was filled with vampires. In the middle of the room was a large desk, like a judge uses during a trial. And there, in front of the desk, still in his suit from our wedding, was my love.

  “Jessie!”

  Chapter 13

  In an instant, I was in Jessie’s arms. It didn’t matter that we were both still handcuffed. He looped his arms over my head and I held my cuffed hands to one side so that they wouldn’t be between us. No one tried to stop us. The room was packed, from the main floor to the balcony, but for the first couple of moments, in my true love’s embrace, they all disappeared.

  “Aurora,” Jessie said, burying his face in my hair. “Oh, my darling. I thought I would never see you again.”

  Then his lips were pressing against mine. It was both thrilling and excruciating. I loved him so much that it felt like if he ever stopped holding me, I would shatter into a million pieces. But I knew that in a matter of seconds we would be torn apart from each other. My heart felt like it was being crushed in my chest.

  And then the room started applauding, rapturously applauding. It was so strange that it broke our embrace. It was as if the undead thought they were watching the final act of some romantic melodrama. Didn’t they realize that we weren’t there to entertain them? This was our lives. I wanted to yell at them. I wanted to scream in the face of every single person in the room.

  “Don’t,” Jessie whispered, guessing my intent. “We want them to like us. We want them to fulfill some kind of desired romantic fantasy by seeing us together.

  It was twisted, but he was right. I had to keep my mouth shut. I had to let them gawk at us like we were the hired entertainment. These were the people who were going to judge us. Their opinions meant the difference between an eternity together and an agonizing death. I had to make them like me, like us. They had to believe in our romance and want us to be together. They had to want us to be Buttercup and Wesley, not Romeo and Juliette. We needed them to root for our happy ending.

  I dropped my chin and lowered my eyes, trying my best to appear like a fragile flower too caught up in love to be held accountable for her own actions. I turned back to Jessie and ducked my head to his chest. He looped me in his arms, protectively. I could hear a few coos of approval. This was what they wanted. This was what I could do to save us. I had to play my part.

  Then a man dressed in a black velvet and white ruffled uniform banged a large staff repeatedly against the marble floor, causing a loud booming to echo around the chamber. He announced in a loud, clear voice, “Please stand for the honorable Judge Benjamin Whitright.”

  Whitright entered the room like a rock star strutting onto a stadium stage. His eyes were blazing and his black robe fluttered around his slim shoulders. The undead who had just been cooing over Jessie and my love felt the need to leap to their feet and ecstatically applaud. I realized that they really did believe they were attending a performance on some level. I felt my hopes being pulled out of me like water spiraling tightly as it drains out of a tub. I was sinking into the floor, even with Jessie’s arms still tightly wrapped around me.

  “Stay strong, my darling,” he whispered in my ear. “We have our day in court. That is better than we hoped for just a few hours ago.”

  He was right. I had always been a fighter and I was going to fight. But there were a couple of things that Jessie didn’t know. First off, that our judge was his grandfather’s best friends. And secondly, that I would never let him die. Jessie was going to live, even if I had to end my life to do it.

  Whitright whispered something to the bailiff, who whispered something to a masked mortal guard. The guard approached us and unlocked our silver handcuffs. “No need to keep you in shackles with so many loyal servants to the Bishops in the room,” he said with an amused smirk for the crowd. “Not that I would put it past these two to try to escape,” he continued, addressing the audience directly. “But I think there’s a chance we could stop them.” The crowd twittered politely.

  The guard, with his face inscrutable by his black mask, unlocked us. “You can stop spooning now,” he said, once Jessie’s arms were free. “This is a courtroom, not the back row of a movie theater.” For a comment like that, I had to assume he was at least in his fifties.

  As he unlocked my cuffs, I noted that he had the faded markings of chalk on his shoulder. “Hello, again,” I said in a quiet voice. He jerked a little, looked up at me, and then continued with his task.

  Once Jessie and I were standing a little apart from each other, Whitright turned back to the man who I thought of as the bailiff. “Who stands accused and what are the charges?”

  “Jessie Vanderlind stands accused of knowingly and willfully killing three vampires for the sake of a mortal,” the man in ruffles stated.

  “And one of those was his own grandfather!” someone shouted from the crowd, causing gasps and chuckles.

  “If true, these are grievous charges, indeed,” Whitright commented, feigning a neutral position. “But we shall do our best to give Mr. Vanderlind a fair and just trial.” He addressed Jessie. “How do you plead?”

  Jessie parted his lips to speak. I knew he was probably about to say something noble that would protect me and leave him sizzling like bacon in the oven. But before he could utter a word, I called out in my clearest voice, “Not guilty!”

  The room fluttered with whispered conversation. Whitright did not look pleased. “Is Mr. Vanderlind so in love that he cannot speak for himself?”

  “No,” I said, “but he also doesn’t know what’s going on here. He believes that he has a chance at a fair trial. And I know that he does
n’t.”

  “Young lady,” Whitright said. “I’ve already had enough out of you. You were his mortal accomplice and he turned you in a pitiful attempt to save your life.”

  “That’s not true. And you just tried to have me murdered ten minutes ago because you want to see Jessie face the sun,” I fired back. “That’s something I feel he ought to know before you start this ‘fair’ trial,” Turning to the crowded room, I raised my voice to say, “Benjamin Whitright was Albert Vanderlind’s childhood best friend.” The crowd erupted into a frenzy of conversation and I wondered if any of them had actually been ignorant of the fact. I doubted it.

  A very wizened old vampiress sitting in a large chair in the corner, but positioned behind the judge’s bench lifted up her head. A moment earlier, she’d appeared like she’d been nodding off in a chair that was practically a bed for her. But she looked up and said in a faint, papery voice, “Is this true?”

  Whitright heard her clear as a bell because he immediately turned to address her, in the most obsequious manner possible. “Yes, Madame, it is true,” he said, half bowing in his seat, with his eyes downcast. “It is a well-known fact and I have done nothing to conceal my relationship with the elder Vanderlind.”

  “But still…” the lady went on, “it is very peculiar that you did not recuse yourself. Is it not?”

  “I assure you, Madame, that I can still judge over the trial, fairly and impartially.”

  “No, he can’t!”

  The elderly vampiress slowly turned her head and squinted in my direction. I’d never seen a member of the undead who so obviously could get an AARP card. She was so old that she looked practically mummified. I didn’t know if she’d been turned at the age of one hundred and four or if she’d simply been a vampire for so long that the aging process had finally caught up to her.

  “Young lady,” she said, not bothering to raise her voice; everyone one in the room could hear her perfectly well. “Are you prone to exaggeration or did Judge Benjamin Whitright really try to murder you before this trial?”

  “He did,” I said.