“You can disable the alarm?”
“Yep.”
“Then you can get me in there, right?”
“Yep.”
“And you never thought to mention this to me until now?”
“You never asked.”
“You knew I’ve wanted in there since I first got here,” she told him. “You could have let me know a long time ago.”
“Not if I wanted to be able to sleep at night.”
She smiled. “You’re a night owl. You don’t sleep at night half of the time, anyway.”
“Figure of speech.”
“I get it. Simon, you’re a sweetheart,” Raina said, leaning her face in towards his. Simon tensed up as though he expected her to bite off his nose, when instead she quite innocently gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Relax. I told you I wasn’t going to bite you.”
“Sorry. Old habit.”
“Why? Did she bite you on a regular basis?”
He looked aside again. “Well, there was a time or two…”
“Wait … forget that I asked. C’mon.” She took hold of his black silk tie and gave it a tug, using it as though it was a leash. Surprisingly – or perhaps not so surprising, after all – it popped off. Raina held up the clip-on tie with a raised eyebrow. “Jeez, did she choke you, too?”
“Actually, no,” he answered as she handed it back to him. He unbuttoned his collar and grinned. “I’m just too lazy to tie a real one.”
* * * *
Chapter Two
There was a small study in the lower level of the mansion that Raina had preferred for her “alone time,” which was usually spent either reading Duvessa’s journal entries, writing her own, or studying various writings and articles regarding the history of the Fallamhain bloodline and other prominent members of the High Court. It was more or less a miniature library with many shelves full of various old leather-bound books and photo albums, a small but well-crafted mahogany desk with a matching (but uncomfortable) chair, and a very cozy lounge chair bound in black leather. After descending the stairs leading down into this small but well-finished room, the door leading into the main chamber of the cellar was to the immediate left.
The level of Duvessa’s concern for protecting the contents of that cellar chamber was quite obvious. The door was a heavy-gauge steel unit painted flat black with stainless steel fixtures, kept shut by a lock that could only be accessed by a numeric keypad directly above the lock. The hinges to the door were concealed within the equally heavy steel frame of the door, so Raina had never been sure if the door opened inward or outward. The wall surrounding it was solid concrete covered by decorative wood paneling that matched the rest of the study. A video camera watched over the entrance from an opposing corner of the study, which Raina had often regarded with a subtle feeling of paranoia, herself, until she had finally covered the camera with a cloth one day so that she could read and write in peace and confidentiality.
“I’ve always wondered,” she mentioned to Simon, halting him by merely touching his shoulder as they reached the bottom of the stairs, “who’s watching that camera, anyway?”
“Oh, nobody,” he replied quite calmly. “It’s automated and only set to record when the main door is opened. I was told she asked for it because she wanted to know who else was going in and out of here.”
“Where does it go?”
Simon turned and blinked at her. “I’m sorry?”
“The video feed from that camera,” she elaborated. “It has to go to some kind of a video recorder somewhere, or at least to a monitor. Right?”
“Oh … yes, of course. That would be in the cabinet next to the desk,” he replied, gesturing to the wall beside the desk.
This was certainly news to her, as she had never seen anything next to the desk, other than a simple wall upon which several framed documents and photographs had been hung.
“What cabinet?”
“Oh, sorry. I just assumed that you’d already seen it by now. Here, let me show you,” he said, hurrying over to the desk with obvious excitement. He knelt down for a moment, reaching underneath for something. “There’s a key hanging from a hook under here.”
He stood up once more, holding up the key with a smirk, and then turned to face the wall. Raina had noticed that the wall did seem to have a gap between the wall, itself, and the left edge of the inset bookshelf in the center section of the wall, but she had never thought much of it. Simon tilted one of the photos, an old black-and-white group photo of the members of the House of Fallamhain taken sometime during or just after the World War II era, revealing a round brass keyhole set into the wood. He poked the small matching brass key into it, gave it a half-turn, and stepped back as that four foot section of the wall beside the bookcase opened up to reveal a bank of small television monitors and related security video equipment, as well as a row of numbered and coded switches.
“She was just as worried about someone physically getting into the cellar as she was about someone taking a peek at it with the cameras in there,” he explained as Raina drew closer with wide eyes of amazement.
“People such as yourself, apparently,” Raina said with a smile.
Simon shrugged. “I set up most of these things myself. So, of course, I had to know how to get access to everything. I was the only person she would allow to service any of it in the event that something should stop working.”
“So, she knew the whole time that you could peek in there whenever you wanted?”
“Well … not exactly,” Simon reluctantly admitted. “I set up the system and set the codes, but I don’t think she entirely trusted me not to be tempted to check things out later. Hence, she had this secret locking door installed to cover up the whole thing. She figured that one little lock would be enough to keep me out of the system, but … well, obviously she didn’t do a very good job of hiding the key.”
Raina watched as Simon poked the power button of monitor after monitor, switching them all on. Nothing was being displayed on any of them at the moment except a blank, dark gray screen.
“I guess she figured that nobody else would be looking for a key under there because nobody else knew this was all hidden behind the wall,” Raina suggested with a shrug. “I sure as hell never had a clue all of this was in here.”
Simon flipped a few simple black switches under the monitors, looking up curiously to see if anything changed. “These control the lights in the cellar, but … oh, wait.”
He entered a three-digit number into the keypad at the end of the row of switches, just above which was a red LED display showing the numbers “001.” The display of the monitors suddenly blinked to life, displaying nine different camera angles that all appeared to show different rooms.
“You have to activate the camera group with this,” he said, pointing to the keypad. “You can also access the other camera groups throughout the estate with this panel.”
“Wait, wait … what? Camera groups?” Raina sputtered, her mouth slightly agape. “I’ve never seen any cameras around this place, other than that one in the corner here…”
“She had the whole estate under surveillance at all times. All the entrances and exits, at least one camera per room in every room … even in the loo,” he replied, his nervous demeanor seeming to mostly vanish as he slid into his technophile mode. “The exterior cameras have a remote link to the security company she had working under contract for her, and you can access them from this panel, as well. But all of the interior cameras are closed-circuit and they only feed to this set of displays down here. She just had this upgraded about a year ago so that she could view the cameras from her laptop in the office upstairs or down here, as well.”
“Jesus,” Raina murmured, watching as Simon cycled through several sets of camera views. “I’ve seen movies about drug dealers with setups like this. Was she expecting a bunch of ninjas to come sneaking onto her property in the middle of the night?”
“Cat burglars, perhaps. There were a few incident
s with intruders in the past,” he answered, “but it always turned out to be either thieves looking to steal valuables or paparazzi trying to peek in the windows to snap photos. She was more concerned with keeping out humans rather than other members of the High Court.”
Raina nodded at that, as it made perfect sense. Given the way she ruled the High Court, Duvessa had everyone so terrified of her power and she had surrounded herself with so many capable men and women that a sneak attack upon her main residence would have surely seemed like a suicide mission. If a human was caught trespassing, they would have been prosecuted; if a vampire was caught, they probably would have been executed.
“The thing is,” Simon went on, “she made it sound like the idea behind all of this was to collect evidence against any trespassers we caught. But if you notice where some of the cameras are located…”
Simon switched to a set of interior views that included, as he’d mentioned, cameras positioned in discreet locations in bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as the main library, the dining hall, and the kitchen.
“Unless her guests were stealing bath towels and pillows,” Raina mused, “I’d say she was probably a hardcore peeping tom.”
“Not just that,” Simon said, poking a button on the front of one of the shelved devices under the row of switches. A small tray slid out of the device with a compact disc, or rather a DVD, sitting upon it. Holding up the disc, he told her, “She was an amateur pornographer, as well.”
Raina gaped at the disc he held up. “She … recorded…?”
“Herself, mostly, but probably whomever else was visiting at the time, as well. She liked to keep these mementos of her favorite nights for later on,” he replied with utmost seriousness, not even showing a hint of a smirk now. “The video and audio quality isn’t the best in the world, of course, but this system is set up to record video from all cameras simultaneously. Each of these four DVD-R units is set up for one camera group each. The recording could either be triggered manually or automatically for up to eight hours per disc. If recording is triggered by an alarm condition, such as if the cellar door was opened, it would record for up to five minutes after the alarm condition is cleared.”
Raina looked at the disc he held, seeing that it was only vaguely labeled with a “#4” handwritten with a felt-tip marker. “Is there anything on that disc?”
Simon shrugged, glancing at it briefly as he answered, “Well, I’ve seen worse things on the Internet…”
“Can I…?” Raina asked as she pointed to the disc and then to the recorder from whence it had come.
He hesitated, but then nodded almost begrudgingly. He knew what was on that disc. Raina had a strange feeling that he had almost been tempted to remove that disc and either stash it away or destroy it to keep her from seeing it. She could appreciate that he was a nice guy that was often going out of his way to be polite and kind to her – especially her, being his employer, the Grand Duchess, and all that – but she didn’t want to be coddled like a little girl. She had seen a lot of terrible, terrible things in her time. She had done some terrible things, too. She was sure that whatever was contained on a video disc would be nothing especially traumatic for her.
Simon reinserted the disc into the DVD-R deck and closed its tray, then used the buttons on the front of the deck to navigate through the in-disc menu that displayed on each of the nine monitors.
“It’s much easier to view on a laptop because you can do a lot more with it. But this works, too,” he explained as he brought up a scene of nine camera angles displaying from the same period of time.
The video was in color, although a bit grainy from its low resolution, and the sound was very tinny, making the audio seem as though one were hearing everything through a hollowed-out coffee can. There were several people visible in several rooms, and after a few seconds of study, Raina came to identify a few of them: Ladies Svetlana, Noriko, Mary, and Jen, Duke Sebastian, and of course Duvessa. The dining hall view showed a gathering of many people, none of whom Raina could readily identify, and she guessed it to be a night upon which Duvessa was hosting a party of some kind. Mary was, somehow not surprisingly, mixing drinks in the kitchen area, Jen was primping in front of a bathroom mirror, and Svetlana and Noriko were attending to the unidentified guests. Duvessa could be seen stepping away from her opened laptop computer in the study where Raina and Simon were now standing. She had apparently just then manually activated the cameras’ recording, as Duvessa quickly ascended the stairs and hurried up to the dining hall.
The ghost-like image of Duvessa, wearing one of her many elegant, flowing white formal dresses was, in itself, enough to give Raina a slight chill. She disliked having to see video clips of her predecessor being replayed all the time on television news reports and in documentaries, but she had seen most of those clips so many times that she had eventually grown fairly numb to them. To see this unfamiliar footage of Duvessa in this familiar setting, especially being reminded of the fact that she had once sat at the desk next to where they were presently standing, Raina could not help but to nervously glance over her shoulder as though she expected to catch a glimpse of the actual image of Duvessa ascending the stairs across the room from them. She was not an especially superstitious person, but she could not deny that on some level, so many things of the Fallamhain Estate seemed to give off such strange vibes that she felt it would have been easy to believe that it was haunted.
“The audio only plays from one camera source at a time, but you can select the audio track independently from the camera angle you’re watching,” Simon informed her as he cycled the audio from one camera to another and to yet another.
Raina watched silently, enthralled as she heard the voices of people that had been dead for months. The brief three seconds of audio she heard of Mary singing softly to herself in the kitchen as she prepared a tray of several drinks was especially creepy for some reason. The audio from the dining hall was too full of too many people talking at once to be intelligible, but she could see Duvessa entering the room and grabbing the attention of a male that was seated near the far end of the long table. She leaned over, said something briefly to him, and he nodded compliantly before getting up. As though on cue – actually, she saw Duvessa turn and give him a signaling nod – Duke Sebastian could be seen excusing himself from a conversation he was having with someone else at the table, following after Duvessa like a well-trained dog.
“Have you watched this video before?” Raina asked Simon.
“A few times, yes,” he admitted. He paused for a moment. “I, ah … honestly thought of turning it over to Scotland Yard awhile back.”
Raina cringed. “I’m about to see something bad, aren’t I?”
Grimacing sympathetically, Simon said, “You really can’t see anything graphic from these angles. The cameras inside the cellar are on a separate camera group, and the footage from those is on a separate disc, but I’ve never found any recordings of anything from inside there. She always kept them somewhere else.”
“Probably in the cellar, along with all of her other dirty laundry,” Raina suggested, watching the trio come into view on the camera view of the lower study.
Raina watched as Duvessa walked over to the desk in the study and, surprisingly, opened the door to the cabinet of video equipment that Simon and Raina were presently facing. Simon switched the audio over to the camera in the study so that the conversation could be heard. The sound of Duvessa’s voice in casual conversation, as opposed to the more haughty and formal tone she used in public, actually made Raina shudder.
“…just six months ago,” Duvessa explained to the unknown male. “From where we stand here, you can see everything in virtually every room of my entire estate.”
“That is very impressive,” said the man with an accent of some kind – Dutch, German, or something like that. “It is almost like being … what, ah … what is the word?”
“Omniscient,” Duvessa said for him as she turned to face him with a smile. Thei
r faces were much clearer in this view because they were much closer to the camera. Raina could now see that the man with whom Duvessa spoke was a High Court vampire. “This allows me to be able to see all and know all … to be the goddess of one’s domain … or at least within my own home.”
That was met with a warm chuckle from the other vampire. “Perhaps you could introduce me to someone, so that I may have something like this for my own home. I would like that feeling of, ah… security, I think is the word.”
“It certainly does give peace of mind,” she replied with a nod. “But of course, it is no substitute for the close company of good people … especially those that you can trust.”
“Yes, I agree—…”
The man’s sentence was cut abruptly short as he was grabbed from behind by Duke Sebastian. Giving Raina yet another chilling reminder of past events, she watched with horror as a cloth was placed over the unidentified High Court’s mouth and nose while Duke Sebastian simultaneously pinned his victim’s right arm behind his back. Duvessa sprang forth and seized his other arm as he attempted to reach for something from within his suit jacket’s inner pocket – a cell phone, a weapon of some kind, who knows – and she and her bloodspawn quickly subdued the male High Court. Within seconds, the blonde-haired male’s muffled and barely audible cries became silent and he sagged in their shared embrace. Duke Sebastian hooked his arms under the male’s shoulders and began to drag him backwards while Duvessa calmly stepped over to the cellar door. There were four beeps as she entered the pass code, followed by a loud bang before she pulled the door open. The room beyond the threshold of the door was pitch black from the perspective of the camera in the study, but neither Duvessa nor Sebastian showed any hesitation about dragging the unconscious male High Court in there and shutting the door behind them with a solid thump that was accompanied by the loud clack of the door’s heavy bolt latching shut.
“Okay,” Raina said with a sigh, “I’m pretty sure I witnessed a murder just now.”
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 3