Chapter Five

The bullet hadn’t gone deep but it hurt like a son of a bitch. Heaving Candice’s unconscious form to the floor; bracing his wounded arm in hand, Sangard ripped the white cotton of his shirt away to reveal the shallow hole.

“What happened?” Lamia demanded; her hands were on him and concern in her features.

“The Detective showed up just as I was about to leave. She was blocking the door, there was no way I could get past without killing her. I chose to move with the mist but she’d popped two and hit me with the first.” Sangard felt Lamia’s frustration and disapproval long before he heard the bitter edge of it in her voice when she spoke.

“She’s seen your face and now the mist. We walk a fine line here, between exposing our world and all in it. She’s a human and therefore will require some kind of logical explanation for what she’s witnessed. But I can see something in her that I’ve never seen in a human before. She won’t be an easy one to shake or scare off…not this one.” Sangard eased his arm from her hold.

“What would you have had me do?” It had been posed as a question, but there was a sharpness in the delivery of his words that forewarned Lamia of his temper.

“Perhaps you should have just killed her.” There was anger in Lamia’s dark eyes when they met his and while hers burned hot, Sangard’s turned ice cold.

“Since when did you become so ruthless?” He demanded. “Since when did you care to shed blood for the mere sake of doing so? Does human life hold so little value to you all of a sudden? Correct me if I’m mistaken but I thought that was something you were on a mission to preserve not destroy whenever things don’t go your way.” Lamia stepped back as if he’d struck her.

“I am thinking of the bigger picture here.” She exclaimed defensively.

“Really?” Sangard quipped; he brought himself before Lamia so that they were nose to nose, tempers flaring and voices reaching ear shattering volumes. “Because right now I think all you’re concerned with is yourself. Consumed by your quest for revenge and redemption. It’s made you no better then the monster Luther had trained you to be.” Her hand lashed out; nails wracked down his cheek and deep thick gashes welled with black blood.

“Damn you.” Lamia growled deep in the voice of her predator which was deep and menacing; eyes flaming red in her sockets. “Damn you for that.” By the time she’d stormed away from him the marks had begun to heal in Sangard’s flesh, but the sting remained in his heart and echoed in his soul.

Lamia suppressed the anger that Sangard had provoked in her earlier that morning. In all the centuries she’d known him; never once had he dared speak to her in such a way. In all the centuries she’d known him; never once had she struck him. She was not a monster. Sure she was able to remove emotions from the decisions she made on a day to day basis but so what? That didn’t make her a monster. Certainly nowhere in the vicinity of the creature Luther had unleashed on Libya.

Sangard had no right to say what he had. Perhaps he was getting soft in his older years, as the warrior she knew him to be would not have hesitated to kill if the situation called for it. How could he not understand that to allow a human to see what Faye had witnessed; it was dangerous for them all. Any mortal who’d ever come into contact with a vampire rarely lived to speak of it. If this cop drew any closer to unraveling the dark mysteries surrounding them, then perhaps Lamia would have to take it upon herself to finish the woman and make it appear like an accident. She made a mental note to do some research later on this Detective Faye Sunhill. Everyone had a story…a trail with secrets that no one wanted to have unearthed. Lamia would expose hers and decide how to handle things from there.

Feeling better from the idea she sought out Darius who had kept himself positioned close to the monitors both day and night. As it was, vampires needed very little sleep, sometimes going a full twenty four hours before being hit with fatigue, but she could tell by the look in his eyes that he was pushing himself far too hard.

Or perhaps she was…

“Why don’t you get some rest, I will take over the monitors for a time.” Lamia offered with a careful nudge of his shoulder, the gesture much like that of a concerned parent.

“No.” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes before blinking them clear of the exhaustion that had settled into his bones three hours ago. “No, she will awake soon. This is the final day for her confinement. The third has fed three times but has remained awake, alert and very frightened. I think all three are ready to be surfaced.” Lamia gazed down and examined the trio of live video feeds. There was a part of her that wanted to argue, keep them locked up for another week – just to be certain, and perhaps on an ordinary day she would have done just that.

But Sangard had called her a monster.

Monsters were heartless. Cold. Ruthless and mean.

Soulless…

“Very well. Tonight we’ll have them surfaced. I will go to Pale Moon and have her brought to the Manor. Have them cleaned and brought up before I return but tell them nothing until I arrive. Lock them in the conference room if necessary. I should be back before dusk.”

Lamia turned away and left Darius to man the surveillance and security controls. She needed air.

She was not a monster.

***********************************

Faye sat there in Commander Stykes’ office, head braced in her hands while his steely blue eyes pierced her with enough intensity to shatter a brick wall. At her side, Kyle cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in the awkward silence. This morning’s fiasco had resulted in a media circus, reporters swamping the hospital in a frenzy, snapping pictures and shoving their recording devices in her face, desperately trying to get an exclusive with the lead Homicide Detective in what was quickly becoming the cities most prolific and publicized investigation of the decade since the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka’s vicious rapes and murders in the mid 90’s.

And now, here she was, up to her neck in hot water and with no rational explanation to provide other then her assailant had ‘evaporated’ into a fog-like substance, carrying the body of Candice Faust with him. And so, upon arriving back at the precinct she’d been called immediately into Commander Stykes’ office to explain what exactly had transpired this morning in North Scarborough General.

So she did, as best as she could, not holding back on a single ridiculous and hair brained detail. In short, Faye was supremely fucked.

“Detective Sunhill,” The Commander bridged his fingers before him and rested his wide chin on the blunt tips of his thumbs as he spoke, “I, under ordinary circumstances, would have you immediately taken to be screened for any kind of illegal substances and then evaluated by a shrink for a month after hearing your report. However, since I know that this summation of events is entirely out of character; the only thing stopping me from calling the men in white coats is that I can only assume you are cracking under the stress and are therefore unable to handle the pressure of this case.” Faye’s head snapped up like a wolf scenting a lamb.

“Commander, you can’t be serious.” She balked. The glint in the Commanders eyes would have killed a lesser man on the spot.

“Oh I am Detective, deadly so. In fact, you’re lucky I am allowing you to keep your badge.” He bit back the bark in his tone when he saw the genuinely horrified look on her face. Somewhere inside him, the heart within his chest tightened. “Go home Faye. I am ordering you to take three weeks leave with pay. Get plenty of rest and when you come back – do so with a clear and level head. You’re of no use to me like this, Sunhill.”

Faye’s jaw dropped, nearly hitting the floor. His tone had been soft, no inflection of anger or hostility but Faye knew, as all in the precinct did, that once Commander Stykes had made up his mind there was no undoing it. He was perhaps the single most stubborn and resolute person she’d met – other then herself; once his mind was set there was no shaking him from that path.

For the very first time in her entire career, Faye Sunhill was being dismissed. The rest of the way down in the elevator, Kyle had tried to reassure Faye he’d keep her in the loop and provide her with any details about the case over the course of time. But nothing seemed able to penetrate through the cloud of depression congesting her thoughts.

She had actually been dismissed.

For what? Because she’d told the truth – however far fetched, it had been true. The man had vanished, ‘poof’ right before her eyes. There was no way he’d scaled out the window as they were layered with a thick steel wire between the panes of glass. She’d been covering the door; a man his size would have had to charge her like a line backer to get through. But no, instead he’d been swallowed up in a black fog.

“Hey!” Kyle braced her shoulders and gave Faye one hard shake to bring her back to reality. “Are you listening to me Detective? You may not be officially on the case, but that doesn’t’ mean you won’t be working it.”

“But…he…dismissed.” Faye sputtered, hating how weak and simpering she sounded but it was beyond her control.

“Fuck the dismissal. You’re my outsider source – my consultant. As your partner and still heading the case as Primary, I’m allowed to seek outside the precinct for information. I want you to pull what you know; I’ll drop off copies of the files and crime scene photos at your condo later tonight. Together we’ll break this case Faye.” Her eyes were soft and doe like, he’d never seen her so shattered. Hell, she might even cry. Faye never cried.

“You don’t—don’t think…I’m crazy?” Kyle’s smile was quick, broad and filled with adoration.

“Everything about this case is crazy. But not you Faye. Never you.”

**************************************

Curled up against the damp and filthy brick wall Laura wept bitter tears of defeat. After hours of screaming, fighting and desperately clawing at her confines she had finally given up all hope. She was going to die. There was no way for her to know for certain how long she’d been kept locked up in this dump, but Laura knew it must have been quite some time. She’d slipped in and out of consciousness and when she’d awake there were vague and mildly horrifying images that would circle in her mind again and again.

She would never see her parents. Her sisters. How precious everything now seemed upon realizing it was all going to be taken away from her.

<Already dead is.> A voice whispered in an eerie tone, both mocking and amused. < Already dead is, yous belong to us.> Laura continued to weep; convinced she was losing her mind and hearing things as a result of her distraught state. She was covered in blood, her clothes bathed in it. But from what she could tell she was not wounded.

What about my leg? Her thoughts immediately circled back to the attack in the ravine. Had that really happened? It was so hard to tell, it all felt like a distant dream, the details not entirely clear. She ran her hand along both legs as it was too dark to make out with any clear certainty. Both were intact. There was nothing. No healing cuts, no broken bones. No pain. She was whole and in one piece, at least for now.

But where had all the blood come from? She knew she had been wearing a beige sweater; it was now a dingy and rusted crimson color with the odd cream colored blotch peeking through. Her hands and arms, face neck and hair were covered with dried flakes and other gunk. She could even taste the bitter metallic and saltiness in her mouth.

While she knew she should be revolted it instead provoked feelings of hunger which were the first and only sharp pains she’d now begun to feel since she’d awoken. Just up ahead she could see a dense steel door with two sliding compartments, one at eye level and other near the cold concrete floor.

It was a cell. The thick chains kept her bound to the brick wall but they were long and afforded her the ability to move and explore her surroundings with some freedom. Above her were various pipes of inconsistent size and thickness, lights that had broken bulbs and were covered with a wire mesh. The far wall from her, she’d thought she’d caught a flash of red; upon closer inspection Laura realized that she had been right. There was a camera and it was pointed right at her.

The door to her left creaked and immediately her heart jumped into her throat. So this was it. Finally her abductor was going to be revealed. Perhaps she was going to raped, tortured, sold into prostitution or simply killed for some sick assholes twisted and morbid fantasies.

Like hell she was.

Reaching around near her feet she searched in the dark amongst the debris of small stones and broken bits of glass until she found a worn down brick. The son of a bitch would have to come close to get his hands on her, she just hope for her sake that she’d be able to hit him hard enough to knock him unconscious. Then she’d still have to figure out how to get out of her chains and pray that there weren’t any more surprises to contend with.

When the door opened, there was a flood of light and she cried out, the sharpness burned her eyes she wrapped her arms around her head to block it out while snarling filled her mind.

Darius eased towards her, from what he had seen on the monitors it had appeared that she had been stirring but was not yet awake. However when he reached down to unlock her chains she lunged at him, flailing madly, swinging a hand with a broken brick like how one would brandish a knife. She was fast for a fledgling vampire but he had centuries on her. Darius caught her wrist and squeezed hard enough to force the makeshift weapon from her hand. She cried out, her fangs lowered and red rimmed the irises of her eyes.

It was possible that she would need to feed before Lamia returned.

“I am here to help you.” In that moment Laura broke into tears, her body falling into him. She had been too distraught to take in what he had looked like, but his eyes had been vivid and intense amber color, they had been so convincing, even with her face buried in his chest she could still seem them in her mind. They had drawn her in like a moth to a flame. She heard his voice as he whispered something foreign but soothing in her ear, his hands wrapped around her back and drew her closer for comfort.

“Where am I?” She sobbed. “Why are you keeping me here?”

“It’s a safe place. You have to trust me.” He tipped her face up to his, her eyes had cleared and the red had turned to a faint pink which was a good sign. “For now just come with me. I promise everything will be explained. I will take you somewhere to get clean and freshened up. When the time is right, all of your questions will be answered.” He’d gone through the three cells separately, one by one ushering them upstairs and into separate bed chambers each equipped with working showers and with clothing and other items to see to their needs.

As with all rooms within the manor, they were under surveillance but he turned off all cameras and instead referred to infrared. They were shown on the screen in the cool colors of the dead except for Saadia who had been the most recent to feed.

Turning the cameras into idle mood, Darius lowered his head to the desk and allowed himself to sleep for the first time in three days.

Laura turned the shower on full and hard, purred against the water which was both hot and soothing. For some reason she felt incredibly cold and it was a sensation she seemed unable to shake. At least here in the shower, with the steamy water pouring over her in a heavy torrent she was flooded by its warmth. There was something vaguely familiar about the strangely alluring man who’d led her up here. He’d been so thoughtful and gracious, showing her parts of the home she had been confined within which was actually a mansion known as Hawthorne Manor. It had been built in the 18th century, recently bought and renovated by a woman whose name he’d neglected to mention.

Not like she cared to know anything about her captors.

Laura hadn’t been able to take in a lot of what she’d seen, but from what she could recall the furnishings were an eclectic mix of old world and modern. The bedroom she had been let into was almost as big as the apartment she lived in with her parents and two sisters. The bed, large and plush, the dressers were fashioned from a rich mahogany and were probably antiques. None of this was making any sense. It was like begin caught between a dream, a nightmare and reality. All the details were one big mish mash and somehow she was struggling to make it all fit. The clear and steamy water that streamed down her naked body, turned red and pooled at her feet before swirling down the drain. As she had thought, she was covered in dried blood; the realization both terrified and fascinated her. From Laura’s careful perusal there were no abrasions, marks or cuts anywhere on her person.

It was a mystery.