Blood Haven Chapter 3

Housekeeping: The characters flit between past and present; 1st POV is used exclusively for flashbacks.

Happenstance

Darrin:

It stank down here, worse than any other place I’d ever been too and I have visited some pretty awful places. The ship aboard which I stowaway to get to France was one of those that transported rawhide to be cured and made into leather. It took me three days of washing to get the stink out of my hair. It was very quiet; I could hear the slow drip from the ceiling far across the dungeon and each time the rats skittered, the scrape of their claws against stone grated in my ear.

I strained at the shackles around my feet yet again, but it was useless. The bastards had done an effective job of pinning me. My arms were stretched backwards around a pillar, while a heavy rod was wedged at the back of my knees, keeping me in a permanent half crouch. There was also a chain collar around my neck and that prevented me from stretching more than a few inches. But I didn’t care about all that, my mind was on only one thing and that was Lili. She was in here, somewhere in this castle that bastard kept my little sister, and I was going to get her back.

The door clanged open and two shadows walked in, one of them was a guard. She didn’t need to come any closer before the warning bells began ringing loud in my head. She was dressed oriental style in a silk gown that matched the color of her hair, and it made a soft swish with every other step she took. No matter how hard they tried to mimic humanity, Vampires could never hide the emptiness in their core where a soul should be, or the perpetual gleam of hunger in their eyes. She was different, there was something about her aura that I had never felt before, and for an instant it made me forget.

I made the most stupid mistake in the book by looking up into her cool green eyes. Everything else faded to nothing, my aches and pain even. I was immediately trapped in blissful anticipation. All that mattered was her -- whatever she wanted, whatever she desired, I would gladly give my life to fulfill. A slow smile bloomed on her face when she spared me and lowered her gaze. What followed was the sensation of ice-water being rudely slapped across my whole body. Whatever notions I previously harbored disappeared as reason took over and I became wary. She was definitely old, old enough to be a master like the other bastard. And that made her doubly dangerous; because the older they get, the more believable their illusion of humanity, and the more vicious they truly are inside.

I kept my eyes firmly on the ground, but could feel hers seizing me up and spitting me down. I kept my breathing under control, no need for her to know that she had me completely psyched out. She spoke and her voice was seemed to echo inside my head. There was an accent to her words that I could not place; it was not the Parisian that I was now accustomed to.

“For someone so obviously knowledgeable about us, you are reckless to the point of absurdity.”

I looked up to her boots at that, surprised that she was actually talking to me. “Well let’s say I’ve got a nothing to gain by making elaborate plans.” My voice sounded like a hacksaw on dry wood. My throat was so sore and parched that even that sentence sent me into a hacking cough.

She stepped an inch closer, not seeming to register my predicament.

“Really? And what exactly is your motivation for this… suicide mission?”

My eyes moved up her gown, which was designed with gold trim and had little pimpernels embossed on it. “My motivation for this is my little sister, who Bacardi stole from me five months ago.”

Another inch closer and the hairs on the back of my neck were rising. I could feel the familiar knot of tension that always coiled in my stomach whenever her kind was near, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. “Adrian Bacardi kidnapped my sister and he has her somewhere in this castle. He knows I’m right and that’s the only reason why he’s still keeping me alive until he gets what he wants.”

She moved yet another inch closer, and by now my insides were positively writhing. Her boot began another step, but then stopped. My eyes moved up to her midriff, and I was surprised to see her chest rise and fall with rhythm. I stared, fascinated, for a full cycle.

“It is a force of habit.”

My eyes jerked up to meet hers but I caught myself just in time and stopped above her neck. It was the only part of her body visible, save her hands and face. Even in the sparse light of the hole, she was glowing with that luster that made them all so beautiful. We stayed in silence for a long while. I think she even forgot about me, when her dress moved and I looked down again. She took a step back and was gone, into the shadows. The faint clang of the door was the only thing that registered her departure.

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Allana:

I was sequestered in my bedroom, enduring yet another miserable afternoon the city had to offer. The rays of the sun constantly threatened to pierce through the heavy drapery laid many times over on the windows, now and then I’d look up from the bed to make sure the drapes were indeed fastened shut. They were, but this was not my home and I not lose my guard. The only thing keeping me company was the constant ticking of the clock and soon even that began to irritate me. I had enough of this city; the prospects of wading into the peasants' rebellion back home seemed a better alternative with every passing moment..

Yet I refused to capitulate and find Valla. If only Zeke could see me now. An arch smile hovered on my lips as I thought about my late, great Sire. He would exterminate her, and myself for that matter, for thinning the bloodline so uselessly. My hand went towards the cigar holder resting in a small brazier by my bed and the faint smell of ash reminded me of the prisoner I had visited the evening before.

Darrin Hartford was no doubt a fascinating character. She marched into a vampire’s lair, knowing  well the impossibility of emerging alive. Even after whatever show of brute force Adrian’s minions must have put her through, I saw fire in her eyes when she talked about her mission. This made me wonder whether there was a grain of truth to her allegations after all, perhaps my host had in fact kidnapped a little girl. It struck me as incredulous, for I couldn’t think of a reason Adrian would want to steal a child. They make the worst kinds of pets; a Turned child was no better than a rabid beast, fit only to be put down. Although, there were some of my kind who hungered after the innocence of infants but I didn't think Bacardi was such. They were generally looked upon with disdain, and not even our fellow Masters would overlook such a vice.

I took in a slow pull on the cigar and it came back to life, releasing a curl of smoke up above my curtains. Granted, he was the Scion of Suzume the Madwoman. Born into one of the most hallowed Clans of the Shogunate Era, Suzume had imagined herself the reincarnation of the Goddess Amaterasu. She built a temple and a cult of worshipers; her Scions were made priests who had to outdo themselves in displays of devotion to maintain her favor. That rank bitch was deep in all sorts of twisted acts and the gift of immortality had only whetted her appetite for depravity.

Suzume came to her end at the hands of her own Scions, resulting in a very bloody power struggle, until Adrian emerged Master. I had my reservations about him, but was it even possible for him to be involved in something like this?

I stood and made my way to a small alcove across the room. The dark enclosure held a large selection of wines and fine spirits stocked in old casks. My favorite has always been the red wines from the Italian countryside and I savored the rich earthiness as it flowed down my throat. I could have drunk a whole casket and not felt the effects of inebriation, as it takes very much strong liquor taken over a very short time to get a vampire inebriated. I poured myself glassful after glassful, brooding over my coerced incarceration, and the human's words, when I made a decision.

I would find for myself if Darrin Hartford was indeed telling the truth. Such knowledge would only be a powerful weapon in my arsenal. Not that it would change her fate, she was a self appointed vampire hunter and I disliked her kind as much as any other vampire.

Whatever Adrian decided to do with her was none of my concern. Valla would eventually give up her game but since I was stuck for a while longer in Paris, this would be diversion enough. My mouth twisted in vengeful satisfaction as I thought of the many pleasurable ways I would make her pay for this little inconvenience.

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I was more than a little surprised when she returned; I didn’t think our little conversation had been that interesting. But there she was, dressed in a blue dress that wrapped around her shapely thighs. Her... thighs. Huh, it was odd that I would be thinking about her thighs, considering my situation. This time I didn’t even think of looking up into her eyes --  her boots were made of real Spanish leather and very intricately designed.

She spoke, and once again it took me another minute to realize she was referring to me. “It is a wonder that the rats have not devoured you yet.”

I smiled wryly at that, her concern was so touching. “It has been a battle but I think we’ve reached some sort of compromise. They can have my body after I’m gone.”

A long silence followed my words, as she began to slowly pace the room. I could hear her footsteps, but had no idea where she really was, and this set me on edge. Her voice continued suddenly from behind me, making me jump slightly

“You say Adrian kidnapped your little sister, how do you know?”

A surge of bile flooded through my system at the mention of that bastard’s name.“I know because I saw. I was there when the whole damn thing happened. We were walking home from her school when they ambushed us. They beat me unconscious and when I came to, she was long gone.”

She continued to walk, her boots reverberating along the walls. “Really? For some reason your story has more than a few holes in it. You say they appeared suddenly and yet you knew who sent them, you were unconscious the whole time and yet managed to track your sister down to Adrian.”

Her patronizing tone began irritating me. Vampires are predatory by instinct and even a simple conversation can quickly turn into a cat and mouse game. She was trying to catch me in a lie.

“I knew it was Adrian because that was not the first time he had tried to get my sister. For months before then we’ve been victims of freak accidents, burglaries and people trying to pick her up from school. I got my hands on one of them and by the time I was done with him, he gave me a name. That’s clue enough for me.”

She reemerged from my left and came back to stand in front of me. “Why would he cross the ocean just for one little girl? There are thousands of children milling the streets of Paris alone to satisfy whatever ...  needs he may have.”

I felt my face heat with anger at what she was inferring. It sickened me to even think of my sister with that bastard, and for a moment I forgot to keep control on my emotions.

I looked up, about to give her a sound retort and fell victim to her gaze again. One look was all it took her to know that I was hiding something. As her stare finally dropped, I expected her to probe deeper and was surprised again.

“This is beginning to bore me.”

She turned around and disappeared into the night as suddenly as she had come.

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