Drew D'Amato:Bloodlines:02 (35 page)

He took a good look at the room and was shocked with what he found—sunlight. 

The
grenades had blown up parts of the west, south and north walls
. 
There were holes in the walls, small fires scattered around the floor, and rubble covered the doorway of the west stairwell.  The fire alarm was now going off.  The bullets the Radusons fired back at him put holes in the east wall. 
The bright
morning
sunlight
came in from the east wall,
enter
ing
the room like water consuming a beach house
.  The sunlight had killed
whomever the grenades didn’t. 
Malachi
dropped his jaw at the simplicity he had been blind to.

He walked
over
to
a piece of glass, careful to avoid the fire caused by the grenades
.  He
picked up the seven-cornered piece that looked like a star
.  All
the edges
were uneven, all sharp, and something covered
one side of it
. 
He studied it.  A piece of glass from the windows, and on one side of it was paint.  B
lack
,
dark
,
deep paint
,
like the kind used to paint on ships or tanks
,
covered
the inside half of the glass
. 
He held the glass up to the sun coming through a broken window.  It was so dark that no
light could pass through it, w
hich was what its purpose was.
 

He tried to communicate to Vlad telepathically.  He couldn’t do it in a room filled with sunlight.  He walked over to the west stairwell, but the rubble blocking the doorway was also on fire.  He couldn’t risk moving it.

He said in a resigned tone,
“Vlad, tell me you know about the fucking windows.”

5

V
lad lay there under the knight’s armor, wounded.  It had been quiet downstairs for a while.  He hoped Malachi was still alive, he hoped Malachi would be on his way back up here.  He hoped because now that was all he had left—hope. 

Radu sized him up with both hands on his sword.

“You know what’s coming next,” Radu said.

Vlad could not even
reply
.  He
was using whatever
energy
he had left to see.  He was too low on blood to get up, heal, and fight back.  Radu was
ready to
swing
the final blow. 
He looked like Babe Ruth coming to bat.  Vlad remembered the image of that personally.  His life was too long to flash before his eyes.  His mind flashed to an image of Jasmine’s face and then he thought:
This is how it ends. 
             

Radu
thrust the sword right into Vlad’s heart.  Vlad
waited for the end, but instead all he saw
was
a confused look on
Radu
’s
face
.  The sword had entered through the center of his chest.  He couldn’t have missed. 
There was only one explanation and
Vlad started laughing. 

“You cheating bastard.  No wonder I saw fear in your eyes when I pulled out my own sword.  The sword you intended for me to use was
not made of pure silver
, was it
?”

Radu’s face
changed from
confusion, to shock, to anger. 
When he lost both his swords he reached for the closest one to protect himself.  He had grabbed the useless one.  He left the
sword in Vlad’s chest and ran to the
pure silver
one in the middle of the room.

“It doesn’t matter, you have no more strength to heal, nevermind fight back,” Radu said as he picked up the pure silver sword thirty feet away from Vlad.  “Do you have any last words, brother?”

“These won’t be my last
,” Vlad said.

Radu was right he didn’t have the strength to heal, barely the strength to stand up.  But he did have the strength to grab the other gold Desert Eagle from its holster.  He shot at Radu before he could get within striking distance.

Radu ducked
out of the way of th
e shots. 
T
he bullets
instead
hit one of the windows
behind Radu
.  The window shattered and
sun
light came through.  Radu
,
without
delay, dashed to the dark, northwest
corner of the room where the oak desk stood.

Vlad
realized the true reason why Radu did not want t
o fight with guns.  The broken windows
were
walls of aci
d for Radu. 
Radu couldn’t afford to fight with guns.

The sunlight allowed Vlad not to spend any energy on his vampire sight.  Saving the energy he was able to get himself up and rip his body away from the suit of armor.  He took the non-silver sword out of his chest.  He took off his jacket and shirt.  Standing with no swords in his body, his wounds were allowed to heal.
  He
picked his sword up off the ground and sheathed it. 

He gave Radu too much of a fair fight.  He was no longer handicapping him.  He fired at Radu.  Radu dodged the bullets running around the west end of the room.  Vlad missed on all his shots but he wasn’t too concerned.  He had d
estroy
ed most of the windows
on
the
west and
north
walls
.
  Since it was the morning still, not much of the light entered the room from these sides of the building.

“So, I guess you know why we don’t fight like that up here,” Radu said still trying to
keep his dignity
.

“Because that’s the way I win.”

They stare
d
at each other.  Vlad stood there amazed
at
Radu’s confiden
ce.  Vlad squeezed his trigger—nothing, empty—
he pulled it a few more times out of disb
elief.  He had no idea he was that low on
bullets.  He had used everything to destroy the windows.  Radu smiled.  He reached and grabbed a gun in the desk
behind him
, which was why he originally went to this corner of the
room.  He swung the Colt .45
around and aimed it at Vlad.

“So there’s no reason for me not to use this now
,
I guess,” Radu said
. 

Then there was an explosion downstairs.  The shock disrupted Radu’s aim, and he hit the suit of armor instead.  The fire alarm started to go off.  Radu paid no attention to the chaos going on around him, and decided to move closer to make his shot strike true.  He had more to lose if he missed.  He picked up his true silver blade with his free hand as he got closer to Vlad.  Vlad did not run.  Vlad stood there with his empty gun, next to the suit of armor and in front of a painted window on the east wall. 

“Guess our children are still fighting,” Radu said.  “That’s okay, it will all be over soon.” Radu squeezed the trigger. 
Vl
ad
performed his only defense.  He
used whatever energy he had left and
transformed into mist
—
the trick that spent the most of the vampire’s energy.  He used everything he had left, which was just enough.  The bullets didn’t know this and they had to hit something, so they d
id.  They hit and broke a window
on the east wall behind where Vlad
had
stood and not too far
away
from Radu.  The sun flushed in.  The light only managed
to touch some of Radu’s leg
.  Smoke rose up from his
leg
like acid had just fallen on it.

Vlad reappeared and swung his sword at Radu’s right hand.  The hit shattered the gun into pieces.  Radu lifted the sword in his left hand to block Vlad’s next strike and then threw the handle of his gun at Vlad’s face.  Vlad ducked the handle, and Radu used this chance to dash toward the cover of dark of the south wall, in front of the unbroken windows.

Vlad came at him with three massive strikes.  Radu blocked each one with his sword, but each strike moved him back a little more toward the windows.  Vlad came with a fourth swing from his right.  Radu blocked it and the two were locked in a bind.  With both swords pushing against each other, Radu with his strength started to get the upper-hand.  The two brothers locked eyes. 
 

“Good bye brother,” Vlad said.

Vlad
spun backwards, swinging the sword clockwise 360 degrees, bringing a long horizontal strike, hip high, to
Radu
’s right
.  In fear
Radu
jumpe
d back—a mistake.  In his jump, his body crashed through a
window
on the south wall
behind him.  His body starte
d to fall down to the earth.  His body burned as he fell, dissolving on its
way to the Earth like a small meteorite entering the atmosphere.
  By the time the glass hit Pearl Street below
Radu was no more. 

Vlad looked out the window.  There was not a cloud in the sky.  The brightness of the sun cut through the cold autumn air.  “What a beautiful day,” Vlad said and then he heard two sounds—the police sirens coming from the street below, and a banging on the emergency exit’s door.

Vlad walked over the door and pushed it open.  He wasn’t scared.  He knew whoever it was, it couldn’t be a Raduson.

“Vlad, the windows are—” Malachi walked in, and then evaluated the room.

“It’s over Malachi.  It’s finally over,” Vlad said with a smile.

“The police are coming.”

“Ah, no concern.” 

Vlad walked over to the suit of armor. 

“You know why Radu kept this suit of armor?”  Vlad turned the helmet to the left. 

The entire suit on its base moved over to the left.  The suit revealed a hole in the floor. 

“He couldn’t move it if he wanted to.  There is a secret passage here that leads all the way down to the sewer below.”

Malachi walked over and looked down the hole.  “Vlad, you never cease to amaze me.”
             
“This life never ceases to amaze me.”

“So what does a retired vampire do?”

“I don’t know, but we have an eternity to find out.”

Malachi smiled.  “See you at the bottom, master,” he said and jumped through the passageway.

Vlad
took a moment to take everything in.  He looked around the sunlit room.  Radu was dead, finally—no doubt about that—and the war was over.  He
looked down at his sword, reading again the inscription on it. 
He had
rid the world of the Lord’s true enemy,
pure evil.
 
He sheathed the sword and jumped after Malachi.

EPILO
G
U
E

A
lmost thirty years have passed since the death of Radu, and Vlad still replays the last moments of his brother’s life every so often in his mind.  At this moment though he wasn’t thinking about Radu, but about someone else who had a major impact in his life.  He was thinking about Jasmine.

Today w
as Jasmine’s funeral.  Vlad kept an eye on her throughout the rest of her life
.
  He and Malachi had moved back to Philadelphia, using the money they had left and some new identifications from Morris to rebuild their life in the city of brotherly love.  The full-circleness of it did not escape Vlad.  He dropped into LA from time to time to keep an eye on her, but for all the money and powers he had, there was nothing he could do to stop the breast cancer that had taken her life.

She had moved on after Vlad, and aside from her life cut short while still in her fifties she had lived a full life.  She had gotten married and had two children.  The husband—the lucky man he was—was someone Vlad took some comfort in that she ended up with.  She had married Pacami’s nephew, Justin.  They had two beautiful children.  The
daughter
looked like Jasmine when Vlad first saw her.  S
he had her father’s
crystal blue eyes
. 
She cried as they lowered her mother’s coffin into the ground.
Her father comforted his daughter.  These past few months had been hard on the whole family. 
The son
did not shed a tear though.  He was in his thirties and he was tough.  He looked strong, focused—the dark eyes of a warrior—as he watched the coffin lower into the ground. 

Vlad did not dress up for the funeral.  It was a dark, gre
y November morning.  The sun hid itself.
  Vlad came with
Malachi.  They had never made any more vampires, the
y never needed to.  To bring this
curse upon anyone else would be
wrong and cruel.  The two
got used to the thought of living an eternity with each other,
but a little bit of Vlad was
buried today.

Jasmine was buried at Calvary Cemetery. 
Vlad and Malachi
stood more than thirty yards back away from the rest of the family, trying to give the impression they were there paying their respects to another grave, but Vlad had a tough time taking his eyes off the service. 

In a few days it will be Vlad’s six-hundreth birthday.  There was going to be a big special about his life on TV, but Vlad could care less to watch it.  He did not need to see what scholars supposedly knew about him.  Maybe he would watch it for a laugh, but he knew the entire episode would be focused on his cruelty as a human.  No one in the world was aware of his mercy, and how he had saved the world.  That was fine with him—the most noble jobs were the thankless ones.  But still, history had never been more wrong about anyone who ever walked the earth. 

Six hundred years on this planet, but watching Jasmine getting buried was one of the hardest days of his life.  Even harder than the day he had to say good-bye to her.  This was too much for him.  Tears started to form under his eyes and Malachi motioned at him to leave.  Vlad nodded in agreement.

Vlad would never forget her and always th
ought
about her, just like he st
ill thought about Elizabetta
.  He
would always think about them
because he loved them.  Vlad and love have a lot in common.  Like Vlad, love never dies.