Vampire Emeritus (Vampirism Series #3)

TWO YEARS LATER

My black-leather Manolo boots clanked against the marble-covered lobby, the long-sleeved, tight black dress lifted up against my thighs, and my nostrils delicately flared upon smelling fresh blood coming from the living room.

Somebody died in this house again.

A grunt fell off my lips as I pushed the dark-wood sleek double door open and entered the large, modern area. June sun seeped through the large, wall-covering terrace door, illuminating the red, leather sofa and the fluffy white carpet, reflecting off the glass table and the freshly-spilled blood soaking into the parquet.

The blonde woman’s wide-open eyes stared into nothing; unrelenting fear still shining inside, her soul stuck in between two breaths, remaining caught in the moment of surprise and hopelessness.

Bobby Mason stood two feet away, drinking the life out of another blonde, whose lips quivered less by the minute, whose eyelids fluttered closed as I approached.

I put my hand on my hip, “There’s someone dead on my fluffy carpet.”

Bobby’s ravenous eyes found mine, his fangs tore off the woman’s neck, blood poured down her chest, staining her skimpy yellow dress, “Sorry, Chloe. I’ll buy you a new one.”

“She’s dead.” I took in a sharp breath. “Why is she dead?”

“She was too yummy to live.” Blood coated Bobby’s teeth as he grinned.

“I told you not to kill anyone.” Teeth ached in my mouth, probing against my lower lip. “Feeding isn’t about killing.”

“But it is, isn’t it?” Bobby pushed the woman off, her frail body stumbled on the carpet next to her friend’s body, staining the designer fabric even more. “Killing is like a special ingredient. It adds flavor.”

A small smile emerged on my lip. My heel probed the fluffy carpet as I walked to the woman and pulled her up. Despite being sluggish, there was more blood in her body. She could take more.

“Don’t let me stop you from enjoying your meal.” I pushed the woman back into the black-haired man’s arms.

He caught her readily and sunk his teeth back into her neck.

I circled him, “There truly is something fascinating in taking a human life, isn’t there?”

Bobby breathed in sharply, “Oh, yes. Energetic.”

The woman whimpered as he bit down hard.

I walked behind him. My hand snaked into my bag and I pulled out a wooden stake.

“Too bad it’s wrong.” I positioned the stake against Bobby’s back.

As he lifted his head, probably confused, I pushed.

The stake went through his spine, scratching against the bones, and pierced the soft flesh of his heart swiftly, almost elegantly. Bobby didn’t let out a sound. Life drained out of him before he could voice his protests. His gray body stumbled onto the floor, staining my fluffy carpet some more.

The woman, still alive, whimpered under his weight.

“What the fuck?” An exasperated sigh came from the door.

Thomas leaned against the frame; his white shirt wrinkling around his elbows as he crossed his hands on his chest, his piercing blue eyes scanning the room, a frown etched between his brows.

“She needs an ambulance.” I glanced at the woman. “And probably a therapist.”

Thomas grunted, “I leave you alone for two days and I come back home to two dead bodies and a half-drained woman?”

I put my hands on my hips, “Hey! It wasn’t my fault. This was all Bobby!”

Bobby was too dead to defend himself.

“I told you he was too impulsive to be a vampire!” Thomas approached, grabbed Bobby’s body and threw him entirely on the carpet.

“The carpet can be salvaged!” I winced.

“No, it can’t.” Thomas wrapped the carpet around the dead vampire and the dead woman. “Getting a white carpet was a bad idea, Chloe.”

“Yeah, well, if it were up to you, everything would be black.” I rolled my eyes. “That’s why I was in charge of decorating.”

“Will you call the ambulance?” Thomas looked up from the carpet. “I have to burn this.”

“Yay, another barbeque.” I sighed and fished the phone out of my bag, but halted. “Wait, give her your blood. Maybe she’ll make a good vampire.”

“Enough with the vampires!” Thomas dropped the carpet. “You don’t need more.”

“Uh, ten vampires are not nearly enough.” I tore at the skin on my wrist with my teeth, grabbed the alive woman and fed her my blood. “Hence Bobby, who, I’ll admit, was a mistake.”

“Bobby was a creep even before you turned him.” Thomas lifted the carpet with two dead bodies inside and flung them across the room, all the way to the glass terrace door. “You should have known better.”

The woman’s wounds healed and her eyelids fluttered open, “What... where am I? Amy? Where’s Amy!?”

“Don’t you stain my terrace.” I warned Thomas. “I cleaned yesterday!”

“Amy?!” The woman shouted, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Amy, please!”

“Yes, well, I cleaned after you turned that insane woman into a vampire a week ago. Gosh, what a fucking debacle.” Thomas opened the sliding door and pushed the bodies outside.

“What are you even doing here?” I pulled the woman up by her elbow and she desperately tried to get away from me, but I was way too strong. “I thought you’d be in New York for a week.”

“There were no bodies.” Thomas grunted while he kicked the bodies to the pyre in the backyard, circled by a stone fence.

I followed him outside, dragging the sobbing woman with me, “What do you mean there were no bodies? There was a fire and everything!”

“There was also a note on the wall, written in blood.” Thomas looked up in the sky. “Do you think it’s too early for a fire?”

“We bought a mansion in the middle of nowhere for this precise reason.” I put my hands on my hips, forgetting about the woman in my arms, who stumbled on the tiled terrace and tried to crawl away from me. “So no one would smell the burning bodies. So, there was a sign on the wall?”

“Please, let me go!” The woman whimpered, tears staining her cheeks. “I’m begging you!”

“Chloe.” Thomas glanced at the woman. “Fix your mess.”

“Are you sure she wouldn’t make a good vampire?” I pouted towards the woman. “She looks durable. And relatively sane.”

“Chloe.” Thomas used his stern, teacher voice.

I rolled my eyes and pulled the woman up, “Fine. Hey, hey, look at me.”

The woman’s eyes meet mine, hers full of tears, mine full of annoyance.

“Please, let me go.” She cried.

“Look at me. That’s right.” I held her eye-contact. “You won’t remember any of this. You have no idea what happened to Amy, she left with some guy.” I commanded.

The woman’s eyes turned empty and dark, her body turned sluggish and she relaxed in my arms completely.

“Where is Amy?” Her voice dropped to a whisper.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “And neither do you.”

The woman stumbled to the ground and hugged her knees.

“What do you mean there was a sign on the wall?” I turned to Thomas who lit the pyre on fire. It grew quickly, devouring the bodies wrapped in my fluffy, white carpet.

“Glory to Vilmus.” Thomas watched the fire reaching to the skies. “Written in blood. And they were caught on camera, the vampires killing the humans in the house. The same as usual.”

“So... it was the Sacred Order?” I asked. “All this blood is making me hungry. Do you want something to eat?”

“No.” He shook his head. “To the food. Yes, to whether it was the Sacred Order.”

“But there were no bodies?” I glanced at the woman still hugging her knees on the floor. “Do you want something to eat?”

“What happened to me?” She whispered. “Where am I?”

“Nope. No traces of them in the ashes, too.” Thomas shrugged. “It looks like someone cleaned up afterwards.”

The smell of burning flesh reached my nostrils and my nose wrinkled. Fresh blood was good, burning dead blood wasn’t.

“But they never clean up.” A crease formed between my brows. “That’s the point. They want everyone to see what they’re doing.”

“There’s more.” Thomas sighed. “I found a burner phone on the floor in the middle of the room.”

“That’s new.” I mumbled, grabbed the woman by her forearm and pulled her with me to the house. “What do you think it means?”

Thomas followed me and dropped on the red leather couch in the living room, “I think someone left it on purpose. I mean, who uses a burner phone?”

“Drug dealers.” I said and walked to the dark-wood kitchen adjacent to the living room. We had some leftover lasagne in the fridge. “Boomers? I don’t know.”

“It has nothing on it.” Thomas murmured and put his feet up on the glass table. The woman sat next to him and hugged her knees, silently crying. “No contacts.”

“Do you think... someone left it for us?” I swallowed the slight glimmer of hope quickly, aware there was no place for emotions in a situation like this.

“Maybe.” Thomas murmured. “Hey, get me some blood from the fridge.”

“Sure.” I grabbed the blood while I waited for the lasagne to heat up in the microwave. “Do you think it’s...?”

“I don’t know, Chloe.” Thomas sighed. “We’ve been chasing him for two years. Why would he contact us now?”

“Because we’re getting closer?” I offered.

“We’re getting nowhere.” Thomas said. “We know even less than we knew at the beginning.”

“Not true.” I took the plate and walked to the couch. “We know someone has been stopping the killings. Or, at least interrupting them.”

“Yes, but now the bodies are gone.” Thomas put his hands behind his head.

The woman hesitantly took the plate and ate my mother’s lasagne in silence.

“It could be him.” I whispered and my gaze dropped on the blood-stained parquet.

“Chloe...” Thomas’s sigh sounded exasperated.

“What?” I sat in the armchair. “It could be!”

“We’ve been looking for him for two years.” Thomas shook his head. “He hasn’t reached out once. There’s no way Vilmus is watching him all the damn time. I’m sure he’s had enough time to DM your fucking Instagram, but he hasn’t.”

“Maybe he can’t.” I murmured.

“Maybe he’s just not that into you.” Thomas said.

“Maybe it took two years to earn their trust!” I protested. “And now he’s finally free to reach out! And those savings, those interrupted murders, I’m sure that’s him!”

“And I’m sure you’re a little caught up in your fantasy.” Thomas said. “Ian joined them. The man you knew is gone. Two years with the Sacred Order is a long time, it changes people!”

I refused to believe that.

I knew Ian, no matter what everyone else claimed, and he would never go down without a fight. Someone has been saving the people Sacred Order intended to kill and I was certain it was him. Perhaps he hasn’t had enough freedom to do as he pleased before, but he’s probably earned their trust. And now, he was probably trying to reach out.

“Give me the burner phone.” I spread out my hand.

“Chloe...”

“Give it.”

Thomas grunted, took the phone out of his pocket, and handed it to me. I put it in my bag.

“Maybe you should consider giving up.” Thomas suggested. “I’m sure Ian would want you to live your life.”

“I’m living my life!” I protested. “I live in a mansion!”

“You dropped out of college to chase your vampire boyfriend across the world.” Thomas sighed. “And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to see you.”

“He was never my boyfriend.” I muttered.

“Even worse.”

“Well, this is depressing.” A deep, sultry female voice reached from the door. “Oh, hey, lunch!”

Tina, one of the Barbies, walked to the couch and sniffed the woman eating lasagne.

“Not lunch, Tina, a person.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “We’ve talked about this.”

Thomas said nothing, but I noticed his throat bobbing. Every time Tina walked in the room, he desperately tried to hide his blush, but it wasn’t working. The black-haired goddess was well aware of how she affected him.

Tina was the first Barbie I’ve turned into a vampire. Pamela was the second. And while Pamela had some trouble with her transition, Tina was a natural. Everything about her screamed ‘predatory and will bite.’

She flung her black hair over her shoulder, “There’s someone at the door.”

“What?” Thomas’s gaze escaped to her. “Who?”

“Says he’s your old friend.” Tina shrugged and looked at her nails. “Are you sure I can’t eat her?”

But I was already running to the front door, my heart hammering in my chest.

Through the stained glass, I noticed the tall figure, way too tall to be Ian.

I opened the door, my eyes wide, “William?”

Wearing glittery, flare jeans, a purple shirt two sizes too small, and a faint smile on his face, the vampire faced me, “Long time no see, Chloe.”