Burning (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #1) (16 page)

“
If the artificial sunlight didn’t kill you first.”

“
Yeah, the artificial sunlight. Are those tanning bed lights?”

“
Some are. We have light for most of the UV spectrum that is technically able to duplicate with current technology. In addition, in daytime, we have mirrors that bring in real sunlight around the corners of corridors, in case a vampire manages to hunker down in here and hide at night.”

“
What if a vampire crawled through this whole thing instead of standing up?” Sam asked.

“
We wouldn’t be able to get him with the silver darts then, only with the motion sensors that would turn on the lights.”

Sam nodded. “And hope he doesn’t have on a UV suit and helmet, all the stuff I have on.”

“Vampires aren’t known to go too high-tech, but I guess it is possible that a vampire could crawl through here in protective gear. We have encountered vampires in Kevlar vests.”

“
That’s crazy,” Sam said. “Tell me, is there a way into the occupied part of the castle from here?”

“
Let’s not go there.”

“
Are there more parts to this trap?”

“
There are other entrances to the castle that lead into this trap. What do you think of it, overall?”

“
It’ll be pretty deadly when armed with silver darts. Thanks for using the Nerf darts.”

“
There’s no way I would’ve let you get hurt.”

She smiled at that, and I added, “Why didn’t you touch the handhold ring on the way up the stone steps?”

Samantha shrugged. “I could hear your heartbeat increase as my hand approached it.”

“
I thought so. Let’s get you out of this hi-tech sunlight.”

“
Yeah, it’s hot in here!” She looked at my face and cocked an eyebrow.

“
Did
you
remember to use any sunscreen, Rand?”

“
Oops!”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Not knowing where my sweet little Kristen was tore a hole in my heart that ripped wider with each passing day that she was missing.

I thought of this as I waited outside of Sam’s room while she removed the spacesuit and sharksuit. Ambra brought up her clothes from the bathroom and left them on the bed. It was hard not to rejoice that our vampire trap was going to kill any vampire who dared try to enter the castle. Rejoicing would mean I was a monster. I wasn’t a monster, was I?

Samantha emerged ten minutes later. The suits were placed neatly on the bed, and she fluffed her long, black hair. She said, “I know it’s the right thing to do, to help you. I’m inclined to think that some of us become better versions of ourselves. I mean, I have my autonomy, and my personal power. I walk through life fairly unafraid. But I don’t kill people...unless they deserve it.”

Whoa.
I didn’t want to know who she’d killed. “You talk like there must be other vampires who aren’t sociopathic serial killers.”

“
There are.”

“
We will absolutely address that with everyone when the victory celebration dies down over the success of the vampire trap.”

“
I appreciate that.”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “Have you ever been in a war, Rand?”

Her question caught me off guard. No surprise that Samantha Moon, a highly trained private eye, had followed up on me. I said, “I served many tours in places I still can’t talk about, and then after a significant wound, I retired and got my optical engineering degree on the G.I. Bill. I tried to make a life with a wife and child, both of whom are now gone from my life. My heart tugs every hour that my child is lost. My dead wife? I still think of her every day.”

“
I can’t even imagine...To you, retired military guy, does war feel like equal parts elation and revulsion, even when you win a battle?”

“
That might be the most succinct description I have ever heard.”

“
This is going to be war now, vampires versus humans, and we are starting it. Me, too,” Sam acknowledged.

“
Sam, it’s either that or humans will continue to be slaughtered by vampires. Or transformed into them.”

“
I know. Believe me. I wasn’t born this way.”

“
Your contribution helps us so much. Hand-to-hand combat isn’t enough. We are often outmatched because of the superior strength of vampires and by our lack of experience. For some of us here, we began with a lack of history in actually killing anything more threatening than a spider in the bathtub, until we became vampire hunters to avenge the deaths of loved ones.” I gathered my thoughts. “Look at Lucas. He was a custom jeweler and now he heads up the whole shebang. He makes our silver weapons by hand. They are not only deadly, but they are works of art.”

“
Can I see?” Samantha said.

“
That’s
trust. It’s silver, so, you stay here. I’m going to step away while I draw it.”

I walked about five steps away and reached to un-sheath my silver blade from the hidden scabbard built into my right boot. The weapon came out without a metallic ring, a sound I’d come to love. Polished to a mirror-like finish, the blade glinted. I turned my hand slowly, so she could see how my fingers exactly fit the grip.

“It’s art that fits your hand,” she said, admiring it.

“
Yes. Lucas made a wax mold of my hand and then a plaster of Paris mold and then all kinds of technical stuff for making things of poured metal. And then, he did the tempering of the weapon, which is tricky because he works with pure silver. The dagger grip is custom for me.”

“
It’s beautiful. And deadly looking.”

“
It is. Even though it’s silver, the dagger feels light because it’s balanced to my physiology. Lucas measured and weighed my arms underwater, calculated my arm reach, measured the muscles in my legs, and he even balanced the sword, so that when I lunge, there is an inertia from the way my blade is balanced that enhances my strokes. Lucas has the disciplined precision of someone who makes the inner jewels of fine watches, and yet, his counter-vampire weapons are a blend of design and art, and technically perfect for each vampire hunter’s physiology.”

“
Jesus.”

“
Well, we need that extra edge of technology to match you vampires in fights.”

She grinned. “And that sucker has been in your boot all this time?”

“My Brotherhood of the Blade dagger has become not only an extension of myself but is invisible until I want to uncloak it.”

“
Badass,” she said, grinning. “And what’s that engraved on the grip?”

“
I hope you don’t think it’s silly, but my blade has a name.”

“
What is it?”

“
Aurora.”

“
Spanish for
dawn
,” she said. “I get it.”

“
You
get
a lot.”

“
This is the right place for you, Rand. When I dropped you off on the cruise ship, I wasn’t sure if you would embrace this life, or not. If not for your brother, Rudolph, would you be who you are?”

“
No. But this is the life I was given. I’m not shadowing Rudolph’s life path anymore. I try to make it count for something, for myself, and to always be grateful for every day of it.”

“
Me, too. Being a vampire isn’t all bad. Once you get past the hard part of feeding yourself, you realize how much you are capable of.”

“
You’re so remarkable, Sam.”

“
I work with what I have been given. Dare I say, by God?”

“
I dunno. Better than giving the credit to the devil if you’re happy with yourself.”

She nodded.

I walked over to a window in the great hall. “Don’t touch the window, because it will set off alarms, but come and look here.”

We both looked. It was almost morning. It was also snowing and the sky was blue-white.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“
It’s the Alps. It’s winter. Therefore, snow and lots of it. Look further through the snow. What do you see?”

She peered carefully forward, smelling of gun oil, toothpaste and clean vampire skin—she was earthy and mushroomy, like an ancient deep forest.

“A chapel with a few wolves lying on the front steps, and a churchyard with graves, statues and mausoleums.”

“
That’s right. Nearly every person represented in that churchyard is a victim of a vampire, or they were vampires who were killed.”

“
I’m confused about the graves. When you kill a vampire, the bodies disappear.”

“
I know, but when possible, we bury some memento of them from their human life, so that they are not reviled in death and to symbolically reunite them with their loved ones. If we have no access to a memento, we put up a headstone anyway, if we have a name. In remembrance. Every life deserves acknowledgment and reverence, and even the slaying of a vampire will bring us to our knees. Even after the celebration of their destruction, there are always tears. Not right away, of course. We are not sociopaths.”

Samantha pressed her lips together as her eyes took in the many monuments, statues, and headstones. “Why do all this, even for the vampires who have slayed your families?”

“There’s this old saying, Sam:
There, but for the grace of God, go I.
”

“
Let’s hope your daughter is still human,” Sam said. “If she isn’t, things will be difficult for any relationship with her.”

I exhaled a deep breath. “I have hope, but not delusions. I draw a lot of strength from the group, and especially from Ambra. She’s my hunting partner.”

Sam stared at me. “You love her.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Finally, after collecting my thoughts, I said, “Why do you say that?”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

I thought about her words as we continued looking into the night—and as images of my dead wife filled my thoughts.

Chapter Twenty-eight

I got back to work.

After the de-briefing with the Brothers and Sisters and even Sam, who was a trooper to stay for that part, I got busy by arming the weapons of the vampire trap with silver darts in the powerful launchers I had designed, and replaced the optical mirrors that had gotten broken by Sam. I cleaned up, tested the holographic equipment and the lights and got everything squared away. After hours of work, I finally proclaimed that the vampire trap was now live and armed. I personally notified everyone that the entire network of the vampire trap was off limits.

I was more than exhausted by the night’s events. Even the red eyes of the rats in the garderobe tower haunted me, like some out-of-context scene from
Les Miserables
.

Sam and some of the others went to bed around noon, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep yet. Thoughts of my kidnapped daughter—and my dead wife, brother, and my parents—filled my head.

And so did thoughts of Ambra. Love?

I shook my head as I headed into the spa room for a long, hot soak in the wood-fired Jacuzzi tub that was shared by both male and female vampire hunters.

Mikhail, the ex-priest turned Brother of the Blade, was already there. As I joined him, sliding into the steamy Jacuzzi, I asked, “Do you ever worry about going to hell for killing vampires?”

“
Of course,” he said in his thick Bulgarian accent that rolled his letter R’s. “We make up our own rules about who lives and who dies and it worries me. More than theology, more than right and wrong, I can feel myself changing into someone else, and it scares me.”

I thought about his words, realizing they had succeeded, in fact, in making me feel worse.

He continued. “When the vampires came to my church parish and killed my wife and stole the children right out of the orphanage, I made up my own rules,” Mikhail said. “I killed some of them and then I wept. I used ‘an eye for an eye’ like it was permission from God himself.”

“
We’re a lot alike, Mikhail. We are not natural-born killers. This doesn’t come easy to us. No matter how much vengeance we get, and no matter how many of them we kill—”

“—
it doesn’t bring back the dead,” Mikhail finished for me.

I nodded. We sat in the roiling bubbles, cooking our muscles until the fire burned down to embers.

“I’m going to bed,” Mikhail said after a while.