Vampires 101 (Twilight Hunters Book 1) A Vampire Romance (12 page)

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Almost nothing is as creepy as walking through an old cemetery at night, except for walking through that cemetery with your flashlight turned off. We couldn’t take the chance of being seen by the police. They’d ticket us for sure. Probably make an example out of us and press charges for criminal trespass. Considering the recent murder, not to mention my own ordeal, the last thing they wanted was a couple of girls traipsing around the graveyard after dark.

How could I blame them? It was so completely reasonable to stay the hell away from the Pine View Cemetery after what had happened last time I was there. It just so happens that I am rarely a reasonable person.

The Pine View Cemetery is one of those graveyards you might see on some old gothic horror movie. It had it all, the large crumbling headstones, not to mention so many trees and bushes, an entire heard of zombies could be shuffling around in the dark, and you’d never even know it until it was too late.

“You don’t sense any bloodsuckers hanging around here do you?” I asked in a hushed voice, starting to get a little worried.

Shadow rolled her eyes. A habit she had when she found something I said to be totally ridiculous. “Think about it. Vampires need blood. As far as I know … I’m the only vampire stupid enough to hang out in a cemetery where there’s nothing but rotting corpses.”

“Well someone’s killing people in the cemetery,” I reminded her.

Always the voice of reason, Shadow gave me a somewhat logical explanation. “Most likely the victims are found somewhere else and brought here. I mean really Cassie … just because you were dumb enough to be in the cemetery at midnight, doesn’t mean that other people are.”

Ok. I really couldn’t argue with that. There couldn’t be an awful lot of victims to choose from in a cemetery.

It was then that I felt something wrap around my ankle. The seconds that followed seemed like an eternity, as I imagined a rotting zombie hand reaching out from the ground to clasp bony fingers around my leg. Biting my tongue to keep from screaming out and alerting other zombies to our presence, my eyes flew to my feet.

To say that I was immensely relieved to see it was only a stray vine, would be an understatement.

“What’s taking you so long?” Shadow was already several feet ahead of me.

Hurrying to catch up, I asked, “Do you think there’s any such thing as zombies? I mean if there are ghosts and vampires … maybe there could be zombies too.”

“You’re kidding right? Is that why you are afraid of cemeteries?”

“Maybe a little,” I admitted.

“No I don’t think there are zombies.” She had stopped in front of a large tomb with strange carvings of snake-like creatures.

“Who would put this kind of stuff on their tomb?” I asked, my fingers tracing the outline of a coiled snake with an almost humanlike head.

“I don’t know, but this is the tomb Taft has marked on the map.”

The wide - heavy door appeared as if it hadn’t been opened for over a hundred years, probably not since the tomb’s resident was laid to rest.

“Are you sure this is it?” I asked.  “That door doesn’t look like it’s ever been used.”

Shadow shrugged. “Well this is what he has marked on the map. Maybe he’s just full of crap. Have you thought of that?”

“Want me to go see what’s in there?” Chaz asked from somewhere behind me. I swung around, but couldn’t see him.

“Damn it Chaz! You scared the hell out of me.” I was never going to get used to his habit of popping in unexpectedly. “Don’t you have someway of warning me before you just show up?”

When he finally materialized, he was wearing a wide - amused grin. “I guess I could do some moaning and groaning, but that could be seriously misunderstood.”

The one thing I could be thankful for was that even though Chaz was a ghost, he wasn’t scary at all. That was a good thing, given that I was a big wimp when it came to things that go bump in the night.

“Is Casper here? Maybe we could send him in there,” Shadow suggested.

“We were just discussing that,” I told her.

Chaz disappeared through the solid white marble walls of the tomb. I couldn’t get over how cool it looked when he did that.

A few minutes later he returned, wearing a puzzled expression on his face. “There is a hidden staircase that leads to some tunnels.”

“Ok and?” I inquired.

“I just can’t believe I lived here my whole life and didn’t know these tunnels were here.”

“So what’s he saying?” Shadow was getting impatient.

I half wished there was a way she could hear Chaz too. Then I wouldn’t have to spend so much time relaying information. “He says the tunnels are there.”

Without waiting for Shadow to reply, I stepped over to the door and started pulling on it. It wouldn’t budge.

“Let me at it.” Shadow stepped in front of me.

Moving aside, I let Shadow give it a try. It appeared to take no effort at all for her to pull the door open. “Wow … you’re stronger than you look.”

“Vampire,” she reminded me. “Plus I think it has been used more recently that it looks.”

Once inside the tomb, we switched on our flashlights. I knew that I needed the light a lot more than Shadow did. She could see in the dark, almost as well as in the light, probably better.

In the middle of the tomb, there was a smaller tomb. I assumed it held the deceased and was so hoping that we were not going to have to mess with any corpses in order to get to the tunnel opening.

“So where’s the entrance to the tunnels?” I asked Chaz in a low whisper.

Chaz pointed to a large urn that must have been used to hold flowers at one time, though it appeared as if it hadn’t been used for several decades.

“It must slide or something. There’s a staircase beneath it,” he informed me.

“It’s under there,” I said, pointing to the urn. “It probably slides.”

Just like the door, Shadow pushed effortlessly on the urn and it slid out of the way.

Pointing the beam of my flashlight into the black - gaping hole, I saw that it went down about ten to fifteen feet. There was a stone staircase leading to the bottom.

Now that I was face to face with the dark passage beneath the cemetery, I was no longer so sure I was into solving mysteries. “Now what?”

“Follow me,” she said, with a scornful roll of her eyes.

I maneuvered the stairs, careful to avoid tumbling to the bottom and breaking my neck. It would just suck to get myself killed before I got the chance to see what was in the tunnels.

Once we reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw that the tunnel was constructed of concrete, which was good. I would hate it to cave in on us. Of course we were in an earthquake zone, and I wasn’t so sure how much good the concrete would do when the earth was shifting around us.

Trying to put the thought out of my mind, I studied the walls of the tunnel. They looked solid enough, though there was a lot of condensation on them. The passageway went in two different directions.

“Maybe we should split up?” I suggested, but not without hesitation. Though we could cover a lot more ground on our own, who knew what was down here. As much as I liked to think I was tough, it was just plain fact that Shadow was a hell of a lot tougher than I was.

“What do you know Cass? You actually came up with a good idea for a change,” Shadow tossed the words over her shoulder as she was walking away.

“You know … just because you’re a bloodsucker doesn’t mean you have to be so nasty all the time,” I called after her.

Shadow ignored me and kept walking.

Up to that point, Chaz had been observing the exchange in his silent - ghostlike way, but now he decided to speak up. “I’ll be sticking with you. She has a bad habit of ignoring me,” he added, pointing in the direction Shadow had taken.

Ok then.

Having a ghost with me was better than no one. I started walking in the opposite direction from Shadow. Now that we had separated, I wished we had thought to bring along walkie-talkies. At least then we’d have a way to communicate.

I’d only gone about a hundred yards before coming across my first and only grisly discovery of the night. Against the wall of the tunnel were at least a dozen animal corpses. They were bodies of dogs and cats mostly, but there was a raccoon, and though I couldn’t tell for sure, I thought there might also be a human body toward the bottom of the pile.

“Yuk,” I exclaimed.

So aside from the fact that having Chaz with me meant that no one could accuse me of talking to myself, I didn’t see how much help he would be if whatever had killed the animals, happened to return to the scene of the crime.

“What do you think did this?” I asked Chaz.

He shrugged. “Zombies maybe.” A wicked smile touched his lips.

Oh great! I really didn’t need to hear about zombies. As far as I was concerned, my exploration of the tunnels below the Pine View Cemetery was over. Without regret, I started walking back toward the stone staircase. I wanted to yell for Shadow, but knew that would be an extremely stupid thing to do.

As luck would have it, she was already on her way to find me, and a few minutes later we met up. “There are animal bodies back there,” I told her, motioning with my hand down the dark tunnel behind me.

“I found some too.”

“Could be there’s some kind of vampire nest down here.” It sounded as good as any other explanation I could think of.

Shadow shook her head. “Most vampires prefer humans, and these bodies were mutilated. Vampires don’t usually do that.”

“You mean like the cattle mutilations?” I wasn’t liking the sound of this at all, but I was glad that at least Shadow had taken the time to get a closer look at the bodies. Now I knew why I hadn’t followed my dad into police work. Dead things just really didn’t appeal to me.

“Yes. That’s what it looks like,” she told me. “But these people also had their necks broken.

“Well I’m out of here.” I started toward the stairs. “I need to tell my dad about this place. I think one of the bodies I found might be human.”

“Wait a minute!” The sharp tone of her voice brought me to a halt. “You can’t get the police down here yet. We need to see what’s here first.”

“But it’s a human body. Don’t you think we need to tell the police?”

“Yes, but not yet. It’s not like it’s going to make a lot of difference. Whoever it is … is already dead,” she added.

“I promise you. It isn’t going to matter to them if the police find them now … or in a few days,” Chaz put his two cents in.

I hated being outnumbered, especially considering the fact that I was probably the only one of the three of us that they’d be able to prosecute for hindering a homicide investigation.

“Well I know
I’m
not spending anymore time down here without some kind of weapon. Maybe we should get a whole arsenal, including some wooden stakes and silver bullets.”

“I don’t know about silver bullets, but the wooden stakes won’t do you any good. That’s just a bunch of misinformation,” Shadow informed me.

“Ok, but we at least need some guns,” I insisted. Without waiting for a reply, I continued toward the tunnel entrance, expecting her to follow. She didn’t.

“I want to look around some more before I go.”

“Do you think that’s such a good idea? I mean … you don’t know what killed those animals, and whoever else is down here.”

“I’ll be fine. It’s a lot harder to kill vampires in real life than it is the movies,” she bragged.

I wasn’t sure I liked that bit of information, given that most vampires would probably like to bleed me dry.

A few seconds later, I realized I was standing in that dark passageway alone. Shadow had disappeared down the tunnel, and Chaz had done another one of his vanishing acts. I would have to remember to ask him where he went when he did that. I mean really! Where did ghosts hang out when they weren’t busy haunting people?

Without wasting anymore time, I found the stairs. I couldn’t wait to breathe the fresh air outside the tomb. Maybe if I hadn’t been so anxious to get out of there, I would have been a little more cautious.

The lure of fresh air and safety beaconed me like a moth to a flame. I scrambled from the tunnel without bothering to take a quick peek to make sure there wasn’t someone waiting to rip my head off.

The fear I experienced the moment I realized I wasn’t alone was profound enough to teach me the value of being observant of my surroundings. This being the second such lesson in a short period of time, I had no choice but to admit to the agonizing truth. I was just a slow learner.

The shadow came at me so fast there wasn’t even time for my life to flash before my eyes. The way I saw it, I really only had two options. I could stand my ground and fight, or I could run like hell. In view of the fact that it was blocking the exit, I was left with no choice but to fight.

Panicked, my fists and feet went wild - punching and kicking blindly. I felt a few blows hit home, but it wasn’t enough. An instant later, he wrapped his arm around my neck and placed a hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming.