Wake of Darkness (14 page)

He shook his head slowly and turned
away from her.

She sighed. “Can we do this again
sometime?” she asked.

He turned and looked at her
skeptically.

“I mean, can we work on some
techniques? So I can actually use that anger for something other than trying to
kill you when you piss me off?”

“It was not anger,” he began.

Sophie looked around the room,
glancing at the destruction. “Um…” she snickered. “I’m pretty sure what I was
feeling was anger there.”

“No,” he replied simply. “What you
were feeling was pure instinct. We inherit it from our vampire parents.”

“Then…” she began, sorting through
everything. “Do they all react like that?”

He nodded, placing up-ended metal
shelves back in their spots with ease. “Most of them do.”

“Okay…so
instincts
,
whatever. Can we work on that again? I don’t like feeling vulnerable,” she
explained, still leaning against the wall, watching him as he moved around the
room tidying things.

“You’re not vulnerable.” His
eyebrows drew together for a moment as he thought about her request. “Of
course. It is what I would have you do.”

“Good,” she replied with a
satisfied nod and triumphant smile. “But can we wait until tomorrow? I didn’t
know when I signed on for this how tiring it would be,” she laughed weakly.

He chuckled under his breath. “Sure.”

“Thanks,” she replied quietly,
feeling awkward again.

She didn’t know what else to say,
so she turned to walk back up the hallway to the door.

“Uh, Sophie?” He called.

She spun around on a heel and
looked at him.

“Have you had any sort of combat
training or martial arts?” He asked carefully.

She dropped her eyes. “Self-defense
classes. When I was a teenager.”

“I thought as much,” he replied,
his eyes watched her carefully. “Why did you take them?”

 “I don’t want to talk about it,”
she answered briskly.

“That’s fine,” he replied.

She nodded at him and then she was
gone.

Chapter 13

“Hello,” called a quiet voice.

Her heart thumped against her
ribcage. She closed her eyes; she would know that voice in a sea of voices. She
turned away from the view of the sunset and looked up at him.

“Hi,” she replied.

Alexander draped his suit jacket
over the arm of the couch next to her and sank into it.

“How was work?” she asked.
Am I
really trying to make small talk?

He smiled. “It went well, thank
you.”

He unbuttoned one of the sleeves of
his Oxford shirt and began to roll it up. He didn’t look at her, but she
watched him as each fold of the fabric revealed more of his sinewy forearm. The
light of the setting sun caught the fine golden hairs that dusted his skin. The
tendons moved under his skin; his strength was overwhelmingly obvious. He
switched hands to roll the other sleeve up and she looked away.

“So, um, what’s up?” she asked
awkwardly, staring at her hands.

“It occurred to me today that we
have not discussed the nature of our enemy at length. I feel that I’m doing you
a disservice by not telling you everything we know about them,” he replied. Studying
her face, he added, “They seem to be inordinately preoccupied with you.”

She shivered at the thought.

“The most important thing to
remember, here at the house, is that you must never invite anyone inside the house
that one of us does not already know. A vampire cannot enter a home unless he
is invited, but that does not mean he will not try.”

She nodded again.

“Also, as you are well aware, they
can
come out during the day. They are not quite as powerful as at night, but the
sun does not keep them indoors. And it doesn’t burn them up, unfortunately. You’ve
been lucky so far, and we try to make sure that anyone new is inside before the
sun goes down…,” he hesitated and looked at her warily. “And, we also make sure
all of the females of our kind are accounted for before nightfall.”

Sophie opened her mouth, and was about
to object when he stopped her with a look.

“Wait. Before you say anything,
listen to what I am trying to tell you. It’s not sexism on our part,” he responded,
holding his hands up to show that he meant no harm. “The women of our kind tend
to be more psychically gifted than the men, making them—well,
you
—a much
larger threat to them than say, myself. Like many of our attributes, we don’t
know why this is; perhaps it is simply a fluke, perhaps it is part of some grander
design. Either way, a coven will attack the females of our kind first, to
eliminate the most gifted enemies at the start of a fight.”

She felt a shiver run up her spine
at the thought of something coming for her, just before her mind shifted to
Laney. The others seemed to be able to take care of themselves, but Sophie was
inexplicably worried for the younger girl. She swallowed her anxiety and
watched Alexander carefully.

            He was looking off into space, deep in thought.

            “What is it?” she asked, shifting closer to him.

“Actually, have you read
Dracula
?”
he asked suddenly, as if an idea had just dawned on him.

She eyed him incredulously and shook
her head no.

“Wait here.” He rose in one
graceful motion and vanished. Moments later, he was there again, handing a book
to her. “Take care of it for me,” he said.

She took the book from him. It was
a copy of
Dracula,
by Bram Stoker.
Are you kidding me?

“Bram actually had it right,” he
said as he sat beside her again, musing.

“
Bram
?”

“Stoker.”

“Yeah, I know who he is,” she
laughed through the words, “And you’re on a first name basis with him then,
huh?” she joked.

“I
was
.”

“What?”

He shrugged.

“You’re serious,” she deduced. “I
thought you said you were born at the turn of the century. Stoker wrote this
sometime in the mid-1800s, right?” She waved the book in the air between them.

“1897, actually,” he answered, “and
I
was
born at the turn of the century. You just guessed the wrong one,”
he replied with a mischievous smile.

She shook her head at him. “So, tell
me about ‘
Bram’
.”

“He exaggerated a few points, but
generally speaking, his vampires are fairly accurate,” he answered
matter-of-factly.

“Was he a vampire?” Sophie figured
that anything was possible at this point.

“He was Van Helsing,” he replied
quickly. She would have laughed in disbelief, if he hadn’t been so solemn. “Read
it. It is really quite informative,” he added, pointing to it.

She nodded and set the book on the
cushion between them. He picked it back up and shoved it into her hands.

“Trust your instincts. If something
doesn’t feel right, then you’re probably right. Just
promise
me that you
will be careful.”

“I promise.”

He sighed and gazed into her eyes.
He leaned towards her and tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear.

“Please be safe,” he begged. The
sad look that came into his eyes occasionally when he looked at her was
suddenly there again.

“Alexander,” she gasped. “What is
it?”

He shook his head and touched her
cheek with the back of his hand. He stared into her eyes with a pained
expression that seemed to transfix her. He seemed so sad, so wistful. Her heart
pounded against her ribs.

“Tell me,” she begged in a whisper.
“What’s behind that look?”

“Ahem!” They heard from the doorway,
but ignored. “Hello?” 

Sophie forced her eyes away from
Alexander’s and turned to see Jim standing in the doorway.

 “What is it?” Alexander asked
briskly. He stood and turned his back to Sophie. The air suddenly cleared.

“Scouting time!” Jim replied,
grinning from ear to ear, rubbing his hands together.

Alexander looked down at Sophie. “We’ll
be back. Read while we are gone.”

“Will there be a test, professor?” She
asked sarcastically.

“Not a bad idea at all,” he replied,
shooting her a smile before starting for the door.

“So, when do I get to come along?”
Sophie called.

Alexander opened his mouth to
object, but Jim quickly assured her with, “Soon!” before heading out. Alexander
stared at Jim before following him out the front door; he looked like he was
going to argue but couldn’t find the reason to do so.

Sophie reclined back on the couch
and let out a long, slow breath. She opened the volume and started, glancing at
the portrait of Stoker on the inside cover.

“She’ll be fine, y’ know,” she
heard Jim say from the front porch.

“I know. She is stronger than
either of us; she just does not know it yet,” Alexander replied quietly.

“Just watch it when she figures
that one out. It’ll be all over but the shootin’.”

Alexander said something in return,
but she didn’t hear what he said. She turned their words over and over in her mind.
What did Jim mean about it being all over but the shooting? Could she really be
considered a threat to the vampire race? Could they actually be considered a
race, now that she thought about it? Maybe most importantly: would her
questions ever stop?

Again she looked to the book in her
hands. It was time to speed read, if she could concentrate well enough to get
anything from it.

“Here goes nothing,” she muttered
to herself before beginning.

*

It was well after midnight by the
time Alexander and Jim returned. Sophie used to wonder how she could run on
only a handful of hours of sleep each night, until she’d gotten her answer a
few weeks ago. Insomnia was just another “perk” of their state of being, she’d
recently found out. They didn’t need much sleep, which was convenient when it
came to fighting vampires in the dead of night.

She was sitting on the couch just
finishing
Dracula
when he sauntered into the room. She didn’t have to
look up to know it was him.

“I did not expect you to be awake
still,” he commented quietly. Everyone else was already in bed.

Jim waved at her, but kept walking
up stairs on his way to bed, no doubt. Sophie waved back at him, before she
replied to Alexander.

“I don’t sleep,” she confessed.

He grinned and sat beside her. “That
makes two of us.” He glanced at the book in her lap. “What have you been
doing?”

“Learning about the Undead,” she
answered, holding the book up as proof.

He glanced over at the notebook on
the couch beside her and chuckled under his breath. “Did you take notes?”

She scowled. “Are you laughing at
me?”

He shrugged and grasped the notebook,
on which she’d composed a lengthy list of vampire characteristics:

“Vampires can/do/are/have:
strength of 20 men; no reflection; immortal; survive on blood; appear as mist
or fog; appear as wolf or bat; cast no shadow; turn victims into vampires; have
hypnotic powers

“Vampires are limited by: garlic,
holy symbols; can’t enter house w/out invite; killed by stake thru heart and
decapitation; must sleep in homeland’s soil; no supernatural powers during day;
can’t cross water w/out the tide”

“Hmm. Nice work. Now,” he
continued, reaching for the pen that lay on the couch next to her leg and he
marked through some of her notes, “
that
is what you have to worry
about.”

She wondered if it felt like
electricity to him too, when his fingers grazed her thigh. If she hadn’t known
any better, she would have thought her skin was on fire under the denim of her
jeans.

He handed the notebook back to her.
In a quick glance, she saw that he had struck out a few things with a swift
move of his hand. She grimaced. He’d told her that Stoker embellished the
truth, but she hadn’t realized that he’d only exaggerated the lighter, less
terrifying stuff.

            “So they do cast a shadow and have a reflection.
They can’t shape-shift, but they have no limitations, as far as water and land
are concerned, right?” She looked over the list again. “And no go on the
garlic, huh?”

He shook his head. “Of course that
makes them more difficult for humans to spot. Only the younger ones fear holy
objects,” he replied, touching the cross at her throat as he spoke. Did he know
what it did to her when he touched her? He continued, “They are symbols of God.
Think of them as stop signs. Vampires truly fear God’s power, so they will
usually stay away from clergymen and churches, but these symbols do little in
the way of repelling any vampire more than a few months old. They
do
tend to find holy water uncomfortable.” He tugged on a light chain around his
own neck and showed her a hammered cross that hung there. “It doesn’t mean we
don’t rely on them as much as possible.”