Drew D'Amato:Bloodlines:02 (8 page)

Bandini saw the realization on James’s face. 

“Listen James, all we ask is that you let us know when they plan on departing, and let us on the plane before hand.  We will take care of the dirty work.  We will take care of them.  You will have nothing to worry about, and you will be paid handsomely for it of course.”

Betray Vlad. 
He couldn’t do that.  Vlad was his friend.  Vlad was great to him.  He had to admit to himself something was dirty about those strange names, but vampires?  This was just far too crazy.  Vlad was rich.  Rich people had enemies who wanted money from them.  That was who these creeps were, and maybe that was why Vlad had to use these aliases.  To avoid bastards like this.  James had to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Bandini asked and bent down next to James.

“Loyalty is a virtue of mine.  And if you think showing me a film with the true attacker on it deleted is going to get me to betray a friend…well, you underestimated the loyalty instilled in members of the United States Armed Forces.”

“Oh, I’m sorry James.  I hoped for your sake you wouldn’t say that.  You see, loyalty is also one of my virtues, and you underestimated
my
loyalty to
my
cause.”

Bandini stood up and nodded to Bodmer.  Bodmer aimed his silenced gun and shot James dead between his eyes.

EIGHT

1

T
he Carpathian Mountains ran through Romania like a reverse capital G.  In the middle of this letter lay the Transylvania Plateau.  Near the bottom of this plateau—the bottom of the reverse G—rested the city Sibiu and a few miles south of that was the commune Sadu, where Radu’s mansion was.  His house was against the base of the Southern Carpathians.  The mountains could be seen in the background from the front of his house.  His home was a
state of the art two-st
ory mansion
with
an interior surround sound system
,
high-end
entertainment centers
in a few of the rooms
,
expensive furniture
, and a basement like no other basement in the world.
 

The sun was potently bright.  It was a little after nine in the morning and the sun was working its power.  Radu and his men had to be asleep by now. 
Up in a tree above the
cement fence
for the house Malachi looked for any
sign
of movement.  He saw nothing and gave a signal.

Vlad climbed over th
e gold plated, spiked fence.
  He went to the controls of the gate and opened it.

Jericho, Andrew, and Deacon stood in a circle just ou
tside of the house next to the black Toyota Land Cruiser Malachi had rented that morning.  (There were no Cadillacs available.)  The three of them waited for Vlad to get
the gate open.  Michael stood a few feet
away
from the
rest of the group
.  With his hand in his pocket he sent a blank text to Gabriel.  He didn’t have to say anything.  Gabriel knew the text alone was a sign that the barbarians were at the gate.

“
Michael, get ready,”
Jericho told him
.

Michael screwed on the silencer for his gun.  It was not his .357 magnum.  He, Jericho, Malachi, and Vlad left their signature guns at home not wanting to have to dispose of if need be.  Instead they all had .9 mm Berettas with them.  They had the more powerful machine guns slung over their shoulders that they would just use in case any type of fight developed.

Malachi jumped down out of the tree.  The
vampires cocked their guns and got ready.  Vlad stood
on the other side of the opened
gates
with a welcoming
smile on his face.

“You men re
ady to fight?
” he
asked
as the f
ive
of them walked in.

The house was wide in the front, about sixty f
eet.
  A six-car garage made up half of the first floor
,
in the front of t
he house. 
The group walked to the base of the
front
stairs and looked up at the mansion.

The mansion
, an egg yolk color, had
white trim on the outside
.  The outside
had a Mexican style to it.

“
Are we sure t
his is Radu’s house?” Deacon asked.

“I’ve always known
about it
since he moved here
,” Vlad said.  “He tried to trap to me to come here once, knowing I would be human if I did
.  They will be sleeping,
but
be prepared.
Jericho, take care of the alarm.”

Jericho
walked to the right side of the house and sat down in front of the panel box on the outside.  From his back pocket he took out a hex
screwdriver
and used it to take off the four mounting bolts that held the cover to the blue metal box in place.  He took a second to examine
the bus bars of the panel, essenti
al to killing an alarm. 
The bars were metal striped
and
ran
down the panel
horizontally.

With new technology came new intelligence.  When house alarms came into existence Vlad and his men knew they had to figure out how to break them. 
Jericho
got his information from an old electrician who wired
their alarm in Santa Barbara.  Normally electricians did
n’t tell strangers how to break into a house and cut the alarm, but with a few tricks of
Jericho
’s mind he could have gotten the man to reveal that he had fantasies about his
cousin
.

Jericho
located bus bar number
1,
the bus bar for the door.  The bus bars we
re a series of gadgets that monitored
the different openings for a hous
e.  Bus bar 1 was almost always the front door.  He
then found
bus bar
2 which
probably
was
a window
somewhere.  Jericho
took out the te
rminal nuts for bars 1 and 2
.  With electrical spoon connectors he took out two pieces of jumper wire.  He connected
from bus bar 1
terminal to bus bar
2
with the jumper wires.  The connection ha
d
been made.  The pulse that went through
to let it know if there had
been a disturbance
in the front door
had
been rerouted.  The
signal from the front door w
ould
now go to t
he second bus bar, and the system would not notice when the opening for the first bus bar was disturbed. 
The circuit was sent somewhere else and
now they could enter the house
.

“It’s done,” Jericho
said a
s
he walked back to the group.

“Al
l
right, let
’
s go,” Vlad said as he walked up the stairs.

He grabbed the doorknob. 
He turned the knob expecting that to be enough to open it, but with the sun shining down on him he had no vampire strength.  It was humbling to realize how weak he would be without this vampire strength. 

“Shit,” Vlad said.  Could this whole plan be ruined because they had no idea how to pick a lock?  None of the vampires had to learn this trick, their strength was enough to twist any lock.

“None of you know how to pick a lock do ya?” Vlad asked and they all answered with blank faces. 

“Even if we knew, none of us have the tools on us to do it,” Jericho said.

My kingdom for a lockpick.

“Fuck this,” Michael said.  He walked over and shot three shots around the knob of the door.  He kicked the door open.  “Who needs a lockpick when you have silenced guns.”

“Thank you Michael,” Vlad said as he entered the house.

He waited to hear any type of alarm.  Nothing.  

The inside of the house was more unique than the outside.
 
Wide stairs were opposite the front door that led to the second floor.  The floors were hard wood.  No painting or decoration hung anywhere.  But what was in the middle of the room had gotten the most of their attention.

A ten-foot gra
y stone gargoyle fountain
stood
in the middle
of
the first floor striking fear to those who v
iewed it fo
r first time.  The pool that the gargoyle stood in was
made of stone.  The location of the
fountain
wasn’t the only thing that made it strange
.  Instead of water, blood poured out of the gargoyle’s mouth, landing
in the pool at its feet, then
down the drain and of course
back up some tubing
and
out of the mouth
again
, like how most regular fountains worked.  The tubing system that held the blood kept the blood ice cold, so it would not clot.  The eyes on the gargoyle bulged at them, and each wing was the size of its body, erected up like it was about to attack. 

“Where should we go first?” Andrew asked.

“Don’t waste time upstairs.  They wouldn’t risk it with the sun.  Find the way downstairs.”

“Hold on a second,” Jericho said.  He walked over to the fountain and scooped a handful of blood into his mouth.

“Jericho, what are you doing?  We are humans now, that blood will just make you sick,” Vlad said.

“Actually it made me a little high,” he said wearing a curious look.  He took another handful.  “I don’t know Vlad, it feels like it’s working.”  Jericho looked around.  He was out of the light of the sun from the windows in the room.  Jericho thought about it, and next he lifted off the ground.  He was flying.  “Drink up boys, we are still vampires.”

Malachi, Deacon, and Andrew rushed over to the fountain, and scooped the blood into their mouths like athletes rushing to a water-fountain.  Only Vlad and Michael hesitated.  Jericho flew down to the two of them.

“Why are you guys not drinking it up?” he asked.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Vlad said.  “How can we be invited in?  I know this is not just a myth.  It has restricted me many times before over the years.”

“Yeah, it has happened to all of us, but it’s working now.  Maybe it only works on humans and not other vampires?  Maybe that’s the loophole to the rule.  I don’t know, but I do know that that blood energizes and I just flew.  So let’s drink up and get downstairs.”

Vlad and Michael both went to the blood.  Michael, unlike Vlad, wasn’t confused as to why their powers were working.  He hadn’t foreseen this, but he understood now why they were still vampires.  There wasn’t
a
loophole
to this rule.  Radu was setting a trap, and when you set a trap for someone you
wanted
them to walk into it.  They were not
uninvited.
 

Michael slurped up the blood and played along.  He just hoped Radu wouldn’t take Vlad’s forces for granted.  They would not just be humans.

2

T
here are
only
two places nocturnal vampires can sleep during the day. 
One is an isolated box like a coffin.  The other is in the dirt, feet first.  The dirt is safer than coffins, otherwise Vlad and his men could have just bombed the house from the outside and be done with the Radusons.  If the fire didn’t kill them, when they escaped outside the sun would. 

The door to the basement was a thick, heavy, strong door located on the front wall of the house.  Vlad was surprised to find this heavy door still pretty easy to open.  There was no lock on it of any kind. 
Maybe they weren’t home,
he wondered. 

The sta
irs
led down
along the east wall away from the house.  The stairs
started off as wooden stairs and then beca
me steps of strong stone for
the last four steps. 
The stairs ended at the southeast corner of the basement.  They made their way down, prepared for anything.   

“Master, we are no longer under the house, are we?” Deacon asked.

“No, we are under the front lawn now.  I expect this room to have a larger perimeter than the house itself.”  Vlad answered. 

They reached the bottom of the stairs.  Michael found the light for the room and turned it on.  They turned around and faced north and the basement/cave extended out in front of them.

The basement’s ceiling was about
fifteen
feet high
.  The room itself extended north, back toward under the house
.  Some tall blue rocks from seven to twelve feet high, shaped like teeth,
stood
up around the room.  All over the floor sat little dimples of land about two feet in diameter.
  The Radusons slept in these dimples.
 

“Underneath those dimples is where they are.  They’re sleeping,
” Vlad said
.

“Which one is Radu
?” Jericho asked.

“I have no idea, there’s no dignit
y to sleeping in dirt.  H
e could be
in
any of them, that’s why we have the silencers.  It’s time to try and try again.  Let’s get in
to
groups of twos.”

Deacon
went
with Jericho
, Malachi took
Andrew
under his wing, and Michael walked off
with Vlad. 

Vlad stopped at a random dimple.  He and Michael got on their knees.  Vlad reached his hand into the dirt and grabbed hold of something. 
Michael grabbed the handle of his gun.  He wasn’t sure exactly what Gabriel and Radu were waiting for. 
Were they just gonna sit here and watch some of Radu’s men
get
killed?
  Vlad
pull
ed his hand out.
F
irst to come were some strands of black hair and then a vampire, eyes closed
, and not a thought to the world
.