Dracula: Hearts of Fire (Dracula Heart's) (57 page)

    Lauren walked from street to street and alley to alley. She knew she was getting closer because the scent was getting stronger, but it wasn’t easy to follow. She passed a party high up in one of the apartments with the music blasting off into the darkness. A skunk slowly ambled through an alley that was particularly malodorous. The odor of the passage made it difficult to hold on t
o the scent but she managed. Her
cell vibra
ted and she sent Michael a text:
I’m getting close I’ll call you as soon as it’s over. XOX.

    As Lauren
approached yet another alley the scent was much stronger, so strong in fact that she was quite sure that the rapist was down there, hiding and waiting for his next victim.
Being in the vicinity of an ongoing party was probably a great idea for a rapist, people tended to go outside for a drink or drugs
or a cigarette
or simply some fresh air and quiet.

    There he was behind boxes in the alley. She decided to become
the
bait that he couldn’t resist
, starting to stagger
a little she
pretended
to be inebriated. Lauren could hear his heart beating faster as she mumbled to herself to add substance to her drunken character. She stood at the entrance to the alley as she fumbled with her purse. Running footsteps and he was suddenly on her; he covered her mouth with his hand so that she couldn’t scream.
Lauren was enjoying it and knew that soon he wouldn’t be.
Her smile was deliciously
mischievous.

    “You’re gonna like this bitch!”
Stanley
Dunn dragged
her deep into the alley
all the while groping at her. He attempted to punch her viciously in the face but she blocked it. When she blocked the second one he realized that he was in trouble. “Un oh.
Not a vampire?
”

    “That’s right
fella;
you picked on the wrong girl.” She slapped him so hard that she
knocked him down, cracking
his jaw.
“How do you like it?”

    Stanley
tried to run but she tripped him and he fell on his face. He tried again and she tripped him again. Lauren let him stand and
watched as he pulled a gun,
she kicked it out of his hand and it bounced and slid into the darkness. He then pulled a knife and tried to slice her and she showed him her fangs
; he tried to run again and again she tripped him.
The mouse had turned into the cat.  He screamed and again attacked her with the large
Bowie and she kicked him and he went flying into the boxes. Again he attempted to flee but this time when she tripped him he landed on the knife and the blade
went into his heart,
he died almost instantly.

    The destroyer of lives had been destroyed. She called the officer and told him where he could locate the body
.

    Lauren then
called Michael,
retrieved
the gun and blurred off into the New York night.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

   
  
I
N THE MIDDLE OF AN OLD FIELD
away from the rural highway several
chickadees
chased one another
around the
old abandoned
house
surrounded by tall grass
. The scent of wildflowers and sulfur w
as in the air as the wind moved
the branches of the nearby oak tree. The small rickety dwelling was no longer deserted as
the wizard Dorian s
at on its
beaten porch dejected.
The house was
several miles from the nearest neighbor off the rural highway, with its l
ong driveway overgrown and almost undetectable.

  
Dorian
was just over five and a half feet
tall with
deep set blue eyes. He looked young and quite handsome except that his hair was gray.
He
observed the hay swirl
with waves of
wind.
He’d been sitting there for just over two hours as he remembered his brother chasing him through the tall grass when they were kids
. Time had a way of meshing memories over a long period and even distorting them. The bad recollections had been minimized.

    “One day follows another until we can’t stand it anymore.”

    Dorian
had searched off and on for
over three
hundred years for his
identical twin
brother
Lemuel.
Together their wizardry fed off one another and magnified their abilities placing them at the top of the ladder of wizards, but
now
apart he figured that he had lost almost 40% of his energy.
They had boosted one another from birth.
Lemuel
had disappeared on a
foggy
Sunday night in the year 169
4
in the
vicinity of the
Upper New York Harbor
.
The fog that ni
ght had been
the result of a magical enchantment
, thicker than mud
.
They had lost one another in the fog and that was the last time he’d ever seen his sibling.
His shouts of
LEMEUL
went unanswered. They had
been t
here to meet another wizard,
to pay for a powerful spell but it had only been a trick.
There was no enc
hantment
, only deception.
Fog now brings
Dorian
a sense of dread with its murkiness and
keeps him from slumber.

  
Lemuel had been warned not to raise the dead that he would be dealt with harshly
, but he had been motivated to raise zombies to do his bidding
.
Even the threat of being buried alive hadn’t fazed him
because he was certain that it would never happen
.
He thought himself too smart to be caught off-guard.
There had been five powerful wizards
back in those days that had formed a union of sorts and had taken
it
upon themselves to
deal with the miscreant wizards by binding them and burying them alive for all eternity.
There was no fate worse than bei
ng buried because
a wizard could only sleep for so many hours a day
, life with absolutely nothing to accomplish was horrible indeed
.

    Doria
n stood and stared off into the puffy white clouds
.
Time was different for vampires but sometimes it could be worse than it was for
humans.
His journey through the streets of life had been fraught with head-on collisions and traffic jams.
Now his discontent was tantamount to the highest mountain; his dark soul devoid of meaningful life.
His thoughts always pulled
him
back to the same subject.

    A car went down the rural highway so fast that it was practically flying. When he heard it crash several miles down the road he had to smile. “Fool.”

   
Sometime
s in his dreams
he would go into the coffin
with Lemuel
, into the darkness
with his brother
which wasn’t completely dark for a vampire, but could take nothing from it.
No hint to its location.
No communication possible.
Whether it was real or simp
ly a nightmare he couldn’t say, e
xcept that even after three
centuries he would occasionall
y tap into his brother’s fear,
being buried alive was not something one could get accustomed to
, where time became ones worst enemy
.
The more he thought about it the m
ore it did seem to be too real for an ordinary
dream
,
to be trapped in such a way was unfathomable.
He thought his brother must be quite mad after all that time in a box.

    Do
rian and Lemuel had always been close, brothers in the flesh and spirit.
Although
Lemuel had always had a nas
tier side to him still
they
got along, the occasional fight never endured for more than a day or two.
Most of the awful deeds that they had accomplished or
iginated from Lemuel; however Do
rian was more than happy to go along with his brother’s ideas.
Kill and torture this one or that one.
Because Lemuel had been so good at being bad
Dorian
didn’t need any of his own ideas.
It hit him hard when he could no longer look into Lemuel’s eyes for comfort.
He fed off his brother like bedbugs feeding off humans.
He promised that he’d never give up the search and he never did.

    The wizards that
had
set upon his brother buried him som
e twelve feet into the earth; they
were smart enough not to place him into any cemetery where he could perhaps be located.
They had broken his physical connection with his brother but the emotional bond was stronger than any magic.
Doria
n had always
had a strong link
to his brother;
he could sense his location
anywhere, but not
once
since he disappeared all those years ago.
It continued to feel strange not being able to sense Lemuel.
Like a cell with no battery power there was no reception. He managed to kill two of the five
wizards
but it didn’t do him any good as they wouldn’t talk, even under horrible torture they wouldn’t reveal his location. The other three fled and
were
never heard from
again
, he had never been able to track them down
.