The Caretaker of Showman's Hill (Vampire Romance) (15 page)

He knew morning would be here soon and he had to get her to safety so he could tell the others what had happened and let them know there was no way in hell she was allowed to leave. They'd all have to keep a close eye on her now. With what she knew, she could expose them all. With her confession to the authorities, she could make a huge mess of the whole situation by sunrise.

Chapter 18

Cassie faked sleep until Basil had left the mausoleum. She lay in his casket bed trying to block all thoughts from her mind until he'd gone. She knew he'd try the old 'put her to sleep' routine on her again. Basil was too predictable and she was beginning to think all her years in the school plays lent a hand in her acting abilities.

She heard the door slam and his footsteps trod down the stone stairs. Then nothing. She knew he was probably moving at breakneck speed and already back at the Bat House acting as if nothing had happened. She waited an extra minute or two for precaution, and then she couldn't help herself and burst out into tears.

Didi was gone. Dead. Killed by a vampire whom Cassie had trusted and fallen in love with. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have let her guard down and believed Basil could be anything other than what he was? A stone cold murderer, only enticing her to get her blood the way he probably did to her sister.

She cried for her sister’s sake and cried for the death of her mother. She cried for herself, and buried her head in Basil's pillow. Then she wished she hadn't. Basil's scent filled her nostrils and all she could think about was him sleeping there night after night. Or in his case, day after day.

She thought of the way he had kissed her at the cabin, and the tenderness, gentleness, and caring, that for a moment she'd thought she'd felt. She knew now he'd only been acting to get what he wanted. Who knows what would have happened if she'd actually gone through with the act.

She looked down to her hand that had started to bleed again, and put it to her mouth to keep it from dripping. Basil had done the same thing, and at the time it had excited her. Now she knew he was only sampling the dinner he'd hoped to have later on that night.

She pushed herself from the bed and tried to see in the darkness. It was eerie being in the mausoleum alone and at night. She felt sudden pity for Basil thinking he'd spent nearly the last two hundred years in this cold stone tomb. Then she shivered and wondered what he'd done with Didi. She glanced up at the three unmarked drawers across from the ones that held the inscriptions.

What if she was buried there? She shook her head and tried not to think about it. Then she remembered that Basil had thumped on the lower vault and produced a bar. She took a deep breath of relief. He had also reached into the top one for a change of clothes, she remembered. That left the middle one. The one she had never seen him go into at all.

Her body shook and her stomach tightened as she made her way over to it. It was the last thing she wanted to do - find Didi’s body in the drawer, but she had to do it for her sister's sake. She had to know if she was in there even though her mind warned her not to look.

Her hand trembled as she brought it to the place where she'd seen Basil thump on all the others. Lightning split the sky simultaneously, shining through the small stained glass window. She pulled her hand back, and stared at the scarab and pyramids that were made of pieces of colored shards of glass. She remembered Basil's story of Egypt, the circus, and the old witch, and Madra. She hoped to hell their ghosts wouldn't show up now.

She boldly thumped the drawer before she had a chance to talk herself out of it. The vault slid open, the sound of stone over stone just above her head. It smelled musty inside, but thankfully not like decaying flesh. That was a good sign, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Stepping back to Basil's bed, she stood atop it so she could peer into the open vaulted drawer across from her. It was dark and she couldn't see a thing until lightning flashed again accompanied by a loud crash of thunder. She couldn't believe her eyes at what she saw. Books. Maybe a hundred of them stacked side by side inside the drawer.

She hopped from his bed and reached up over her head and pulled a book from the drawer. Remembering she still had her mini flashlight in the pocket of her jeans, she pulled it out and shined it on the book.

"Romance!" She couldn't believe it. She pulled out one after another, and each one was a romance with many of them having vampire heroes.

She couldn't believe Basil liked to read romance. She'd never pegged him for a sensitive kind of guy. Maybe he wasn't so predictable as she thought, and maybe she was reading him all wrong.

"No," she spoke aloud and threw the books back into the vault and slammed it shut. Her flashlight sputtered on and off several times, and she threw it to the ground in disgust. "He killed Didi, and I'll never forgive him even if he is a damned vampire and couldn't help himself."

She'd never thought a man who liked romance would be a murderer, but then again she'd never known a man who'd read the books before either.

"I've got to get out of here."

She made her way in the dark to the door, and pulled on the handle. It was locked. Damn him. He didn't trust her. Well, what did she expect from a vampire? The padlock was bolted on the outside of the door and she could do nothing to let herself out.

She'd have to stay there and wait for Basil to return and suck her dry the way he'd done to Didi. The thought sickened her, and when she thought about it, all she could see in her mind was Basil's dark, lonely eyes staring into hers. He didn't have the eyes of a killer. Or at least she didn’t think so. He'd told her he and the others didn't take humans' lives anymore when they ate. If that was true, then what had happened to her sister?

She didn’t know what to think any more. She remembered the jars of blood in the refrigerator. So many of them. They had to come from somewhere - or someone. If they weren't killing people and draining their blood, where were they getting it from?

Tears welled in Cassie's eyes and she knew she had to get away and think about all this. It was cold and scary inside the mausoleum all by herself. Now, without her flashlight, it was going to be a long and very dark night.

She peered out the small window in the mausoleum door and saw the two sphinxes that lay on either side of the steps. Lightning split the sky and thunder boomed.

The sphinxes lit up momentarily, and Cassie swore she heard a lion's roar. Her eyes were playing tricks on her too, because she thought she saw two lions lying at the foot of the steps instead of the stone sphinxes they truly were. She rubbed her eyes and realized they were only stone carvings as before.

Suddenly an idea hit her. When she'd wanted to get into the building before, she'd petted the sphinxes and talked to them. So she talked to them again through the door, all the while thinking she was going crazy.

"Nice sphinxies. Now, you know I don't belong in here and want to get out. Just open the padlock and . . . what the hell am I doing?" She turned from the door and paced the room.

That's when she heard it. The sound of a padlock crashing to the stone steps outside the door. She ran to the door and peered out the window. Sure enough, the lock lay opened on the ground. She pulled the door and this time it opened. She pushed the iron grate to the side and let herself out.

This was too weird. This whole thing was just too crazy. She had to go somewhere and think about all of it. She had to get out of here and far away from Basil.

She remembered she’d left her car back at the Bat House. It was too risky to go back and get it. Instead, she ran to the edge of the cemetery and toward the small road that passed by Showman's Hill and the Bat House. She could see headlights coming down the road and hoped she could flag down a car and get a lift back to town.

* * *

Basil headed up the attic stairs with a bowl of blood in his hands. He'd already told the others that Cassie knew too much and that they'd better keep a close eye on her. It was up to La Roux to watch her during the day because that was the most likely time for her to try to escape.

He'd already figured he'd bring some food back for Cassie when he returned to the mausoleum and locked himself in for the day. He'd have to sleep with one eye and ear open in case Cassie decided to try to leave the small room. He hated having to keep her locked up like a prisoner, but he really had no choice until he'd had a chance to explain to her about Dee.

He had to tell her that he didn’t kill the girl, but he knew she wasn’t going to believe it. Now she knew too much, and he could never let her go unless he erased her memory. For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Maybe it was being selfish, but he didn’t want her to forget about him. If only he could just release her and let things be. No, he decided, he really couldn't take the risk that she'd be printing the whole damned story in that cheap tabloid magazine. He would have to keep her locked up for now.

He'd just give her time to calm down, and then he'd try to deal with this whole mess. He knew now he should have done something to keep her away the night he'd seen her in the cemetery with that damned camera around her neck. If only he wasn't so attracted to her and if only he hadn't been reading romance novels that filled his head with fantasies of things that could never be.

He put the bowl on the floor and the bats flew over to drink their supper. He noticed two or three of them were sluggish. Not good. He had a bigger problem at hand now than Cassie Briggs. He couldn’t let the bats die, for all their sakes. He would have killed every bat himself, just to save them all from this life of hell, if only he knew which bat was connected to whom. But he couldn’t. Because if he died before the rest, he was sure Antonio would convince the other vampires to start taking human lives by sucking their blood. Antonio was too unstable. Basil was sure he’d be a vampire who wanted to take over the world.

No, if Basil died first, there would be no one to watch over vampires like his cousin. The world wouldn’t be safe if he wasn’t there to keep order, the way Madra intended.

He'd been appointed the Caretaker by his mother for a reason. It was his responsibility to look after the others and keep them from killing humans and drinking their blood. But now that the bats were sick, he couldn't be sure of anything.

He threw open the shutters to the attic windows and felt the cool breeze on his face. The moon was almost full in the sky, and he knew All Hallow's Eve was only a few days away. That would be the night when the ghost of the old witch who cursed them, and his mother would come back to Showman's Hill. It was the night he would be tried for Dee's murder and probably have his Caretaker rights reneged. The old witch would be happy about the situation, but his mother would be truly disappointed. If his father had had the energy to materialize he knew he'd have his hide for what he was said to have done.

The bats finished drinking and flew out into the moonlight. Basil watched them go. He thought of Cassie and how the bats had frightened her so. He wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and protect her from everything that was going on, but knew he couldn't. She was in danger being so near him. With Basil’s unstable emotions lately, he didn't know just what he would do.

The fresh rainy breeze blew past his face and he smelled the distinctive scent of an innocent virgin - Cassie. It couldn't be so. She was locked securely inside his mausoleum and no one but he could unlock it. His keen hearing picked up twigs snapping, heavy breathing, and the sound of her running toward tires stopping on gravel.

He looked out the window toward the road. Across the cemetery he saw her, opening the door of a car and getting in. He was out the window before she slammed the door, but he was too late. By the time he made it to the road, the car had pulled away and was speeding toward town.

"Damn!" he spat. How the hell had she gotten out of the mausoleum? He lost her. An aching pinched his chest. He felt so empty inside. He knew she'd be running as fast as she could to the authorities to spill her tale now. Then she’d print it in the Strange Sightings Magazine. How had things gotten so out of hand?

He kicked at a rock and it bolted through the air, smashing into the side of a tree some two hundred feet away. He wanted to go after her, but the lightening sky on the horizon told him dawn would be here before he returned.

He couldn't do anything about it now without burning to a crisp in the morning sun. He'd have to go back to his vault and wait it out. Only when evening fell could he venture out and try to find her. He regretted now not explaining to her sooner that he didn’t kill her sister. He didn’t really care what happened to him, but he did care that Cassie thought him a murderer.

"Please, Cassie," he spoke aloud. "Please come back to me so I can talk to you."

He headed back to the mausoleum with only one thought in mind. He hoped she would report the murder to the police before she spilled her guts to the magazine. And he hoped to hell the sheriff was the one she went to. Now, Sheriff Jack Killian was his only saving grace.

Chapter 19

Basil hadn't slept well that day. Actually, he wasn't sure he'd even slept at all. All he could do was lie in his damned vault and wait for the sun to set. He felt so helpless, and cursed himself for being a vampire in the first place.

If he had been a normal man he'd have gone after Cassie and cleared things up as quickly as possible. He never would have let her go. But he wasn't normal. He was a freak. He was a bloodthirsty, devious, malicious, murdering creature of the night.

Or at least he was sure that was what Cassie thought of him. He couldn't wait a minute longer. He knew the sun hadn't set yet, but it was close enough and he had to take the chance and go after her.

He pulled on the inside lever of his vault and the drawer slid open. He blinked several times and held his hand up to shield his face from the last rays of sun that were still streaming through the stained glass window.

It was beautiful. Something he hadn't seen in a long time. The sun lit up the window in hues of gold, orange and red. The feeling warmed his soul as he ventured a peek at the etched mountain in the glass with a sunset behind it. No, not a sunset. Now that he took a good look at it, he realized it was a sunrise. Hopefully a good omen, but he wouldn't hold his breath. The stained glass scarab sat atop the mountain with his wings spread. An ugly bug, but his mother had always told him the Egyptians had considered the beetle to be good luck.

Good luck was something he could use right now. That, and anything else that would help him find Cassie and bring her back to his little abode.

He loaded up on the sunscreen and donned one of his heaviest long sleeved shirts. He reached for his sunglasses and once again remembered they were still sitting on the counter in the kitchen where he'd left them the first day he'd met Cassie.

"Damn!" His eyes had been burning bad enough from the last few instances. If it wasn't for that troublesome girl, he'd remember the sunglasses and his eyes wouldn't be as red as the sunrise on his stained glass window.

He grabbed a baseball cap from the clothes vault and pulled the rim low over his eyes. He then headed out the door, feeling the tingling on his skin the moment he stepped out into the fading light. He paused at the doorway and bent down to pick up the padlock. It hadn't been cut, nor had it been tampered with. Just released, and he knew how.

He stomped down his front stairs and walked up to the stone sphinxes. It was the guardians who helped her. Without their consent she never would have gotten away.

"Why'd you let her go?" he asked them. Their stone eyes stared back at him with a dull sheen. "WHY?" he screamed and a branch fell from a tree, striking one of the sphinxes. Suddenly, the rock form softened and the creatures came to life. His pet lions lay on the steps before him almost as real as the days he cracked his whip and they jumped through hoops of fire.

He felt tears well up in his eyes and dismissed the fact, knowing the sun was affecting his eyes and burning them. He reached out one hand and touched the lion on the right. Umi, the Egyptian name that meant life. He stroked the animal's fur and it roared loudly. He then petted the other one in the same manner and scratched it behind the ears. This was the one he'd named Tumaini - hope, so many years ago.

So ironic that their names could have such strong meaning in his life so many years later. He'd seen his lions die in the train crash. They’d been burned to death before he could save them. He'd buried them himself at the foot of the mausoleum. Only by the spell of his dying mother had the lions become the guardians of this place.

Madra knew how much they meant to him, and wanted to leave behind something for him to cling to. A thread of hope and the promise of life. A life, that is, that wouldn't be eternal, only satisfying and happy. A life of a normal man.

"Umi and Tumaini like Cassie, Basil,” said a voice. “So do I."

It was his mother's voice, and it was coming from the top of the steps of his mausoleum. He wiped the wetness from his eyes and dared to look where he'd heard her. The sun was behind a cloud now, and in the shadows he saw her standing there looking just as beautiful as she had before she died.

"Madra." His voice was choked and he wanted nothing more than to run to her and fall into her embrace the way he did when he was a child. She had always been there for him when he had a problem, and had always leant him a shoulder to cry on.

But cry he wouldn't, because he no longer knew how. He was a vampire who had nothing to look forward to in his blasted eternal life.

"Basil," she said with a smile, and her image faded in and out.

Basil knew it took great energy for her to materialize, especially when it wasn't even dark yet. The sun had to be draining her twice as much as it was draining him.

"She's the one for you, Basil. Go to her and spend . . . "

"Spend what? The rest of my life with her? Or should we say her life, since mine will never end?"

"My son, things aren't as bad as they seem."

"They're worse, Mother. Cassie is going to turn me in as her sister's murderer."

"Dee is with us on the other side, Basil."

"I didn't kill her, Madra."

"She told us. None of us, not even the old witch Freya blames you for Dee's death."

"Then Dee told you who murdered her?"

"We won't be coming to hold trial on All Hallow's Eve. In fact, we won't be able to visit here ever again."

"Why not, Madra? What's wrong?"

"The guardians will come to our world now. We can't interfere with your life or the lives around you again. Our job here is finished. You're on your own now, Son."

She started to fade from his sight and he ran up a few of the steps and then she materialized once again.

"Don't leave me, Madra. What's to become of the others and me? Please, tell me what to do. Tell me also, who killed Dee so I can clear my name."

She just smiled and faded from sight. Though her image was gone, he could still hear her last words.

"Cassie is the key to your answers, Basil. Protect her well and she will always be a part of you. She'll help you find your way."

He heard the lions' loud roars and saw their supple bodies turn to stone before his very eyes. They were gone. The guardians would no longer be there to protect him or the bottle inside his house. Damn. He hadn't thought about asking his mother about the potion in the bottle. Now he'd never know if it would still work or even if it was worth guarding.

He felt so alone. Never in his entire life had he felt as miserable as he did at this very minute. His mother wouldn't be coming back, nor would the guardians or anyone else from the other side. He had to work this out on his own, although he no longer knew if he had the will to try. With Cassie gone from his life, things were going to be different. He let out a loud roar of his own, and the winds swirled around him. The trees swayed in the breeze and the sky darkened. He felt his strength weakening and knew he had to get to the Bat House and talk things over with someone. La Roux would be there for him. She always was. He'd talk to her and ask her what to do about Cassie.