Drew D'Amato:Bloodlines:02 (7 page)

“How about what he gave to you?  You would have been dead in some French fort over three hundred years ago if not for him.”

The two of them stared each other down.  Michael blinked first.  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.  “This place gives me the creeps.”

4

J
ericho followed his master.  He knew he wouldn’t want to be left alone.  Vlad walked up to the square tower—the original part of the castle before Vlad decided to build around it.  Vlad went to the balcony.  When he got there he wasn’t sure if he saw a ghost or a flashback, but he saw something. It was his first wife Elizabetta in an all-white dress looking at him.  She looked just like Jasmin.  The image was fluid, yet very vivid.  He saw in her eyes, her love for him.  He saw that in her.  He smelled her.  His heart stopped.  He broke into a sweat.  He tried to speak to her but then she turned away from him and moved toward the balcony.  She leapt from it.  Vlad stood there frozen, timid, cold.

Reality came back into focus.  Now he just saw the stone opening of the balcony with a metal rod across it to protect anyone from accidentally falling down to the Arges River. 

“This is where she died, Jericho.  This is where she fell to her death.  This is where Radu killed her.” 

“He didn’t actually kill her,” Jericho said, hoping that would some how make him feel better.

“She had no options, she couldn’t surrender, that would mean death
and
rape.  She leaped to avoid her fate at Radu’s hands,” Vlad continued.  Malachi had heard this story before, many times, but he never saw before what he saw next.

Vlad started to cry.  Vlad turned around and looked down at the Arges River before him.  He wiped away his tears.  He uttered words he had never said, but words he had thought for centuries.

“I killed her.”

“No you didn’t, Vlad.”  Jericho went and put his arm on his master’s shoulder.  Vlad was quiet for a moment. 

“I left her alone, I wasn’t here to protect her.”  He had blamed Radu over the years to rationalize it, but the hardest person to forgive is yourself.  “Jasmine,” Vlad said under his breath.  He looked up ahead of him.  “She has now come back to me in the form of Jasmine.”

“Vlad, you can’t be sure of that.”

“I am sure, it is fate.  In all the death I caused, I am not innocent, but I am not evil.  I did what I did for the greater good.  I’m a moral enigma, like Judas himself.  My young life as a tortured prisoner distorted my view, and made me feel what I did was just.  My time as a vampire has been to make up for these sins, my purgatory, and now it will all be over soon.  And I will be in Heaven at some point, with my love—Jasmine.  This is fate Jericho, and you cannot deter fate.”

“But what if she is not?  What if she is not Elizabetta reborn?  Will you still love her?”

“Yes.”

“And what if she doesn’t love you?  What if it all falls apart in a few weeks?  Then would you regret becoming a human again?”

“No, everything I did as a ruler, no matter how macabre it was, I did because I thought it was the right thing to do for the safety of my country.  I thought that it was in some way noble.  I can valiadate my existence as a vampire and living off the blood of humans, because I have to save the human race from the threat of Radu.  Once that threat is eliminated then what?  What am I a vampire for?  Jericho, you were a soldier.  You did not believe in murder, but on the battlefield you killed people.  It was war that allowed this action.  This is the same with living the life of a vampire.  In order to keep Radu in check we kill who we kill for the sake of the war, but once the war is over we are just…”

“Murderers.”

“Refusing temptation is one of the noblest things someone can do.  It’s probably one of the secrets to life.  We have a chance to become human again, what are we then if we do not take it?”

Jericho was closer now in understanding Vlad’s true motivations.  This wasn’t just about being a human so he could be in love.  Giving up this power was something more, something deeper, sacrifice—salvation.
             

Vlad had accepted his life as a vampire as punishment for the brutality he showed as a human.  He felt this was his last chance to get right in the eyes of God.  Fighting Radu and protecting humans was what made it right.  Staying a vampire or letting Michael and others stay vampires after the death of Radu, was not an option.  He had to end vampires.  That was his penance.  He believed he had to save the world from vampires to save his soul.

SEVEN

1

T
he men got back to the Hilton a little bit before sunset.  No one said much on the ride from the castle.  Everyone had their own thoughts to process as the sun started to set over the rolling Transylvanian countryside.  Once they got to the hotel though they got to work.  Michael checked them in under his fake ID.  Malachi oversaw Deacon and Andrew as they painted the special silver paint on the ammo and then lubed up the bullets.  They dried them on wax paper.  They would be ready in a few hours and then they would load them in their guns.

They had gotten two rooms—suites—each with two beds and a couch.  Jericho, Michael, and Vlad planned over the tactical side of the attack in the other room.  They would strike at nine in the morning, sure by then it would be daylight and the Radusons would be sleeping.  It was still a gamble, a big one, but after what they had been through at the airport, and the vision Vlad received at his old castle, he felt destined to come out on top.

“Should we go out and hunt tonight?” Jericho asked.

“How about we attack Boris and his men?” Michael asked.  “I’m sure they were responsible in one way or another for a few deaths.”

“No, we are not going out to hunt,” Vlad said.  “This is his land.  There is too much of a chance we might run into some Radusons.”  Vlad looked out the screen door onto the balcony. 
He himself had been tempted to go out and fuel up on some blood before the big day, but he realized there wasn’t a point to it.

“Master, I understand the risk, but do you expect us to go to Radu’s house and kill him while low on blood?” Jericho asked.

“Radu’s
house
is the key word,” Vlad said.  “Blood won’t have any affect on us tomorrow.  We will be in his house uninvited.  We will be humans, remember.”

Jericho and Michael nodded, they understood.

“Now, being human means a lot of things, but one thing you cannot forget is that you will no longer have your vampire quickness.  You will not fire your guns as quickly, aim as quickly, or shoot as accurately.  More importantly, if they are up, and they are out of the sun, they will still have their abilities.”

“So if they wake up, we are pretty much destroyed,” Michael said.

“That’s why this is a very dangerous mission.  Suicidal, I think Malachi called it.”

Vlad walked off and made a whiskey neat from the minibar.  The rest of the night the men tried to avoid thinking about the mission, like it was some kind of bad luck.  Vlad recommended that they actually get to bed, since humans performed better if well-rested. 

As Michael tried to fall asleep on the couch of their room, with Vlad and Jericho in their beds, he contemplated just killing Vlad right then.  He had three reasons not to.  The first was Radu, who would be upset.  Killing him then would have been like killing him two weeks ago.  Radu would be upset and feel cheated of the chance of watching his brother die.  Then he wouldn’t keep up his end of the deal.  He would probably kill Michael, too.

The second reason was the actual process of doing it.  If he did it now he would have to worry if any of the others noticed him.  They would all be human, but so would he.  Five to one is not a good exit strategy. 

The third reason was that tomorrow really wasn’t much of a risk.  Vlad would be a human.  His sharp ears, his perfect vision, his quick hands—all of that no longer at his disposal.  And Michael would still have his powers.  Radu expected him,
invited
him.  It would be all too easy to sneak up and kill him from behind if he had to.  There wasn’t a risk, tomorrow was a definite.  Michael went to sleep after his heart stopped racing from his nerves.  Tomorrow was a big day.

2

J
ames wasn’t sure how long he would be in Europe for this trip.  Most times his employer gave him some idea, but this time they left him with a vague idea of about a week. 
There’s a lot you can do in Europe in a week. 
After they landed, Jericho called and said they wanted to depart from Munich in a few days.  There were some things for him to do, but he couldn’t get drunk, and he had to stay close to the plane.  He knew from past experiences, his employer could want to leave at a moment’s notice. 

James went back to the airport the day after the attacks.  The place was in chaos, they had no leads, and the story he heard was crazy.  Apparently the security video footage had been damaged, a circuit shorted in the security room.  It was unviewable and then destroyed.  He was interrogated by the Border Guards about his passengers.  He told them he had been working for them for five years.  He didn’t know too much about what they did for a living, but they did
have money.  He said they were good guys, never any problems up to this point, and also pointed out that he landed and they disembarked a few hours before the attacks.

They had started to allow planes to take off and land in the morning.  James had to wait.  The airport was backed up since it closed down for a few hours the night before, and there were much more important flights ahead of him.  He got clearance late in the afternoon and by night he was moderately drinking some beers at Unionsbrau Pub and Brewery in Munich. 

He had befriended three Germans—one guy and two girls—at the bar when two men in suits flashed him some badges.  The three Germans walked away when they saw the badges come out.  The men said their names were Clerc and Bodmer.  They worked for Fedpol and needed to show him the footage from the airport. 

“I thought that footage was lost?” James asked.

“That was just something we told the press so the attackers thought they got away,” Clerc said.

“Okay, but why do I need to see it?”

“We think the men behind the shootings might have been your passengers.”

James had a tough time swallowing that.  He started to get scared. 
Did this mean that
I could be held responsible too?

“Look, Mr. Whitmore, we know whatever these men were up to, you had no involvement in.  You are their personal pilot, nothing more.  That is the only way you are associated with them.  Don’t be nervous, all you can do is help.  You’re not in trouble.”

“Fine, how can I help?”

“Why don’t we go back to your hotel?  We have the footage set up over there.”

“My hotel?”

“Yeah, how do you think we found you?”

“Don’t you guys have like a headquarters we can go to?  Something more official than my hotel room?”

“Fedpol is the Federal Official of Police of Switzerland,” Bodmer said.  “We have no offices here in Germany.  The footage is on a zip drive, we just need a laptop to show it to you.  We can either go back to your hotel, or go all the way back to Switzerland if you’d feel more comfortable there.”

“No, no, we can go to my hotel.”

James went along with them.  It made some sense to him, but it still seemed way too casual for something this important.  He suspected something odd about these men with badges.

Clerc and Bodmer had both taken Bandini up on his invitation to join the Crusaders.  Bandini told them they would fake both their deaths and give them a new identity soon, but there was too much going on right now to start that train rolling just yet.

3

W
ithin a few minutes the three of them were back at James’ hotel room.  It was a typical hotel room: one bed, TV, desk, window, and a bathroom.  James put his keycard in the door, opened it, and found two new additions to his room.  A laptop hooked up to the flat screen TV in the room, and Bandini.

“James Whitmore, I am Alan Andolini.  These men work under me.”  Bandini stuck out his hand and James shook it.  James felt ambushed.

“Why are you in my room?” James asked.

“Well, we weren’t sure you were at Unionsbrau.  The consigliere recommended it to you, but you could have been anywhere.  So while my men looked for you, I stayed here in case you came back.”

James was uncomfortable.  Bandini noticed that.

“I understand you might have some doubts about accusing your employer of being a terrorist threat, but let’s watch this video first.  Come sit on the bed, I have the video hooked up to your TV.”

James sat on the bed.  A small part of him was scared at the unprofessionalness of this entire experience, but played along nonetheless.  Bandini queued up the video and it played on the flat screen.

James couldn’t believe what he was watching.  It was the Geneva Airport, it was the shootout, but it seemed as if half of the people firing their weapons were invisible men.  He saw objects move, knives thrown, but who ever was doing the attacking wasn’t there.  It’s as if a few men decided to have a battle against air.  After it finished Bandini shut it off.

“What do
you think?” Bandini asked.

“
That had to have been tampered with.  That’s impossible.  You could have just
deleted whoever was
really fighting and now you want to pin it on my boss.  This shit proves
nothing.”

“Or it may prove that your employers are in fact vampires.”

“What?”  The shock in James seeped through his face.  This was ridiculous. 

“Mr. Whitmore, you have already correctly assumed that this was not normal procedure for police authorities and you are right, because we are not them.  We are a group called the Crusaders, and we hunt vampires.”

Before James could get out a second
what,
he was lifted from the bed by both Clerc and Bodmer and thrown to the ground.  His hands were shoved behind his back and handcuffed.  Bodmer was twisting a silencer on his gun.

“Now, Mr. Whitmore,” Bandini said.  “We want your help.”

James had flown for the US Air F
orce and performed some mi
ssions in Afghanistan
and the
Middle East immediately after 9/11.  H
e was prepared for torture and questioning.  He was not prepared for the absurd.

“D
o you hear what you are saying, vampires?  You gu
ys have seen one too many movies.
I
f you want money from Vlad tell me, at least I could feel that I’m dealing with sane people and not you crazy sacks of shit.”

Bodmer cracked James in his jaw.  He felt a tooth come loose and blood filled up in his mouth.

“
I know th
is is a hard thing to swallow,
”
Bandini said.

So’s your own blood
,
James thought as
he spit out the thick red liquid in his mouth
.

“James, do you have any pictures of Vlad or his men?”

“No.”

“Did you ever hang out with them in all the time you have worked for them?”

“Never.”

“So you
can
’t
really
argue
our claim.”

“Of course I can.  There are no such things as vampires, you crazy fuck.”

“Mr. Whitmore,” Clerc started.  “When I was first presented with this information I believed just the same as you did.  And maybe I had the advantage of knowing for sure this film
had not been tempered with unlike you
,
but witnesses have also reported men disappearing after they were shot.  The evidence is there, they are vampires.”

“This is preposterous,” James said in defiance.  “I’ve seen Vlad all the time during the day.  When we landed in Geneva it was daylight.  The sun kills vampires.”

“Some vampires burn up in sunlight, others just lose their powers during the day.  Vlad and his men belong to this latter group.”

James stopped and thought to
himself.  He had n
ot once feared for his life when he was with
Vlad.  He also had never
seen Vlad involved in anything
bloody.
 
They never brought some dead bodies on the plane, he never saw any fangs, nothing, in all those years.  He was actually the best boss a private pilot could ask for.  He paid him more than handsomely for the few times he actually had to work.  He had wondered over the years where these men went to when they traveled.  What they did in their free time, how Vlad really had all this money, why all these men always were dressed mostly in black. 
They could be…

No, that was preposterous.  Vlad and his men have been great to him.  They were not vampires, they were not monsters. 
These men
were crazy, these men were sick, they were the monsters.

“James, this is a list of the people who passed through customs who came in on the flight you piloted.  Have you ever seen these names before?” Bandini put the list in front of James face.

He looked at the white printed paper.  His plane number 5632H he recognized, but the names next to it, he didn’t.  Paul Cryer, Vance Sheen, Carl Soddenburg, Tyler Murphy. 
Who the hell are these people? 
James also knew there were ten of them on the flight. 
Why were the
re only four names on this list?