Chapter 1
I laid on the stone bench inside the cemetery of Nombre de Dios. Clouds began to come in from the marshland and Matanzas River. There will be a great rainstorm tonight. The giant gray clouds forming a shadow that couldn’t seem to move fast enough. A gentle roaring of thunder loomed it’s way over the bridge to Vilano Beach in the distance. It was eager to lash itself upon the land, waiting to whip and flog its streaks of lightning over the tiny historic city. Yet here I was out in the open on a cold stone bench, listening for the rain and my prey.
I heard the wind rustling through the branches of the trees, swaying like the wood nymph Daphne who begs for the Gods to shade her from the lusting grasp of the sun God, Apollo. The wind begins to howl, like wolves lurking for prey, growing louder and louder through the trees as if the forest held the screams of the victims of many early colonial settlements inside the city. The only problem was I am the wolf. My prey is already inside the cemetery.
Nombre de Dios is one of the oldest churches established in Saint Augustine, my newfound home. After the excitement that happened in Targovsite Castle, I was sent home to the United States as a mercenary for hire with the Ancient Ones. The oldest group of vampires who ever walked the Earth. Their leader is my future brother-in-law, Alexandru. Alexandru is the last known lineage of the House of Tepes, or the House of Dragons if you want a rough translation. You may know their most famous family member, Vlad Tepes, the Impaler. But everyone seems to know him as Dracula. Ironically the original House name is Dracula, but everyone thinks that it means vampires when for those who know the history of Vlad Tepes, Dracula can also mean Devil. He was the man in many stories who sold his soul to the Devil to be offered immortality to destroy his enemy the Ottoman Empire, the price was often paid in blood. Hence the founding mistranslation of the origins of vampires.
There was a rustling of grass, the rush of footsteps and then large, broken bursts of stomps on the asphalt paved walkway inside the old cemetery grounds. I opened my eyes in time to find a young man making his way to the reconstructed altar. It’s wooden logs piled to form a table that held the sacred chalice and wine for the First Communion among the Spanish and the Timucua, the native tribe that lived in this area long before Europeans came to the land of Florida. I looked at him from my position on the bench. His eyes filled with horror and shock, his body shaking with fear. I could smell the wave of terror building in his body.
From a distance, the young man looked human, but his skin held more of a marble coloring than most humans could mimic if they tried to stay inside all their life. I could tell he was a vampire. In a rush of adrenaline fielding vampires often have a hard time hiding their fangs. This one was no exception. I read up on our prey in an email sent by a council member’s necromancer. The council member was Christina, former female King of Sweden. The man murdered his maker but began to go insane from the lack of control. He killed many animals to stay alive, but some tainted his body and drove his mind to insanity. The young man eventually went on to kill some of the elderly in a hospice that he worked as an orderly. He was fired for tampering with some of the vials inside a storage room that many nurses used to do routine tests to ensure quality care.
I looked down at the young vampire in front of me. His hands resting on the altar. I sat up slowly, looking at his back, watching his ribcage rise and fall, catching his breath so to speak. I placed my feet on the ground the soft crunch of the asphalt seemed loud in our part of the cemetery. He turned around and slammed his body onto the altar. I waved my hand in a non-threatening gesture before I stood up in full view of him.
Thunder and lightning danced in the background of the altar. The storm was brewing closer and closer. The sun’s rays effectively hidden from behind me as the buildings and treetops that encircled the old church seemed to grow taller with the darkness encroaching. Street lamps and other forms of light flickered around the church and San Marco Avenue. I let out a soft smile and offered my hand. A few rushes of steps later and I heard the panting of Tobias behind my back.
“You know you really shouldn’t smoke,” I said to Toby behind me. Tobias Malcolm was a vampire once like me. But since our life in Saint Augustine, our memories are more of just dreams that bathed our minds. He was the same age as me. But he remembers his more human memories, like the ones at Woodstock.
The vampire in front of me didn’t move. He just looked at us bickering. His hands shaking at his sides, fear for what would come next. I didn’t keep my eyes off him and walked a little further. He stepped back and held onto the altar behind him. I reached behind me and pulled out a silver stake, the tip filled with mercury. Mercury was fatal for vampires, they won’t be able to rise or come back after you take them. The stake was also silver and that meant the couldn’t close up and heal.
“Don’t hurt me,” the vampire said. His breath was shuddering with fear, his heart pacing like a madman.
“Think of it as going to sleep, but this is for eternity, not temporary,” I said. The tip pointing down on the ground. The silver liquid of mercury at the tip dancing inside the glass. The vampire in front of me could easily kill me, put up a fight, or run away. But he didn’t seem to do that. He just stared at me, shaking.
“You wouldn’t hurt me, you’re one of us,” he spat. I let out a soft smile at that time and gripped the stake tighter. I was closer to him now, unwavering or moving.
“Not anymore.” The tip was plunged in his heart, between the ribcage. The vampire spat and coughed up blood. As he held onto the stake in his chest. Toby came from behind me and unsheathed his sword, given to him as a gift by Alexandru, and chopped the head clean off. The body fell with a thud and the rain began to pour.
Saint Augustine is a city paved with blood. But the basic instinct to survive lives on in the generations of people who inhabit its coastline to this day. Communities seeking freedom from religious persecution bathed the waterline with their ships, seeking a life to call their own.
I kicked the body and the arms flopped around like pieces of fabric. Toby grabbed the head and tossed it into the lake. We picked up the body by the arms and legs and tossed it into the marsh reeds closer to the altar. We made our way through the cemetery and headed into the chapel to wait for the rain to subside.
The small chapel was a restoration of a much later one. Restored and revived in 1885, the chapel was pink and the wood was dark. A single icon of Madonna and child nestled in the embedded arch. Her finger pointing to Heaven and the child looking to the West. The benches laid against the wall and in the middle of the room. The heat from the candles gave a nice warm sensation on my back.
It is June in Saint Augustine. June month brings a lot of rain and a lot of humidity. I never had a problem with my hair until we moved to Saint Augustine. The summer months wreak havoc and I have given up all styling options and brushing the knots embedded into my hair.
Toby sat on the bench in the middle of the small chapel. He stared at the Madonna icon. I sat in the back letting the heat warm my skin. Although June rain is not cold, sometimes it is not the best feeling to have a couple of drops of rain land on your skin as you walk Saint George Street.
“You didn’t need to be so soft,” Toby said. I looked over at him as he continued to stare at the Madonna. Lightning streaked the sky behind us, the thunder growling in the air.
“You scared him, I couldn’t just stake him,” I commented. I stood away from my source of warmth and sat down next to him looking at the Madonna sculpture.
“Well, we’re vampire hunters. It’s what we do.”
“It is temporary until new members of the Ancient Ones can be found.”
“You killed their newest members!”
“Benny and Osman have only been there for about a few years. But Osman was much older. I felt the weight of his age in the back of my skull.” Osman was a Moor vampire. He was there when Isabella kicked them out of Spain. He was present at the landing of the Vikings in Constantinople. Osman was hundreds of years old. Benny was short for Benjamin. Benny was just only a few years old. He was turned by an American vampire in New York City, doomed to be forever seventeen.
“Do you miss him?” Toby asked, breaking the silence among the three of us. I looked away from the Madonna and stared at his face. His eyes were sullen, lost in the wonder of the tiny image of baby Jesus.
“Benny?” I asked. Toby turned to me and looked at my face. He had the curly brown hair as he did back in the seventies, the same dimple smile, the same color eyes that captured the light of candle flames, he always looked the same. I often said he was the spitting image of Lindsay Buckingham, Fleetwood Mac’s biggest prick.
“I don’t miss him. Never liked him in the first place,” I replied. The shimmer of happiness swirled its way into Toby’s eyes. He let out a soft smile and we sat a little closer listening to the rain tumble and pour around us in the tiny room, the tiny pink chapel with ivy clinging to its skin, as the thunder roared like the Midgard serpent of the Eddas.
We headed out of the chapel once the rain stopped. Lightning still hounded the skyline but danced in the clouds.
“Who’s winning?” Toby asked behind me. I looked behind me and saw Toby stretch his arms above his head. He nodded his head towards the lightning dancing in the clouds over the bridge to Vilano Beach.
“What?” I asked. Toby rolled his eyes and pointed with his finger at the streaks in the sky.
“Who do you think is winning the wizarding battle?”
“Battle?” I looked over at the skyline and remembered we just finished reading the Harry Potter series. I turned back to him with a scowl on my face and flicked him the middle finger. Toby let
out a large snicker before he had to grab his stomach from laughing.
“You’re such an asshole!” I shouted at him. I headed out of the cemetery and walked towards the parking lot. Toby was running behind me. I heard his labored breathing as he caught up and reached for my hand.
“I’m sorry,” Toby said. He let out a smile and I caught the dimple on the left side of his face. It was sweet, but it was also a very annoying behavior he had.
“You owe me,” I commanded. Toby let out a groan and looked back at me, this time there was a smile on my face.
“What is it now?”
“Gee. All that racing and chasing made me hungry. I want food.”
“What else is new?”
“Excuse me?” I leaned on my right leg and crossed my arms. Toby gulped down a breath and twiddled his thumbs in his hands.
“What I mean is maybe we should grab something. Let’s get something reasonable,” he answered.
“Good. You’re paying,” I ordered. I ran to the car in the parking lot before he could answer. I got to the car before he showed up with the car ignition key. He clicked the unlock symbol and the car unlocked. I got into the passenger side and Toby made his way to the driver’s side.
I am still working on my driver’s license test. Toby was able to get his driver’s license by fudging the numbers to say he was eighteen. Technically, he was nineteen today. We went hunting for vampires as a nice birthday treat.
