Almost at once, a bright light pressed against her closed eyes, and her mind snapped alert and sharp. She could hear everything more clearly than before—the gasp of Mr. Alexander’s surprise,Darian shifting his weight behind her. She knew, without knowing how, that on the desk, alongside the chest, lay a blotter with two sheets of typed paper, a fountain pen, a desk lamp, and a phone. A small scratch marred the wood near one corner, though careful buffing had dulled it.
Cally opened her eyes to see the obsidian not just glowing, but radiant—like there was a small star buried within.
“At last,” Mr. Alexander breathed, his eyes gleaming. “Dinner will be at seven, if that suits?”
Eight
“The history of the Order is showcased in the basement,” Darian said as he led them back through the house to a door with a security pad. He punched in a code, angling his body so that Cally and Eve couldn’t see. “We’ve turned it into a museum, of sorts.”
He opened the door to reveal a stone staircase lit with electric lights in the shape of flames.
Eve scrunched her nose. “Tacky.”
Darian ignored her and descended. “If you’ll follow me.”
They entered a large underground chamber. Glass cabinets lined the center, each displaying a set of armor or a collection of weapons. History wasn’t Cally’s forte, but they looked genuine—or old, at any rate.
“These represent the attempts of the Order to combat the evil that has pervaded for so long,” Darian said, his tone at odds with his words, as though he cared little for the contents of the room. He didn’t linger but headed deeper into the basement.
Primitive armor gave way to plate mail, antique swords to crossbows and muskets. Eve paused beside a set of Japanese samurai yoroi, glinting beneath the overhead lights. Another time, it might’ve been interesting, but Cally was still waiting for the Order to get to the point.
Beyond the display cases, the room became a library, the stone floor strewn with rugs and the walls lined with tall bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes. Several desks held computers, and one was occupied—a man in his thirties didn’t look up from his monitor.
“Here we research and collate data on vampires,” Darian said. “In recent years, with the advent of widespread video footage, ithas become even simpler.” He laid his hand on the shoulder of the man at the desk. “This is one of our custodians. Bring up the footage from July, New York City.”
“Yes, Sentinel.” The man cleared the screen of what he was working on and clicked through to the file he sought, and a grainy video played, showing an image of an alleyway at night. A lone man walked through, and an instant later someone appeared behind him, grabbed him by the throat, and buried his face in the man’s neck.
Eve pushed close to Cally, watching with her hand over her mouth.
The custodian paused the playback, the image filling the display.
The resolution was so poor that Cally couldn’t see fangs or a trickle of crimson, but she knew that both were there. The look of fear and pain on the man’s face, on the other hand, cut through the grainy footage.
“As you can see, the quality is dismal, but we were lucky to get even this. In most cases, vampires don’t leave a body, so even if they feed before a camera, there’s no reason to check footage.” Darian’s mouth twisted in distaste. “It is entirely possible that attack after attack goes unseen, merely because the recordings are never watched.”
“What makes you think that’s a vampire?” Cally asked, playing her skeptical role even as she thought how similar the alleyway looked to the one near her house.
“One moment he was there, the next he was not,” Darian said. He gestured at the screen. “He feeds; you can see from the expression on the victim’s face that he is unable to resist, despite the obvious agony he feels. Vampires feed on pain and suffering as much as they do on blood.”
Fortunately for me, Antoine does not.
“Still, it could be a prank, a spoof. The quality is—”
“Play on, Taras.”
“Yes, Sentinel.” The man clicked the button, and the video continued.
Cally watched as the vampire fed, then pulled away, licking his teeth. The video captured a brief mark on the man’s neck before they both vanished, leaving an empty alleyway.
“What happened to them?” Eve asked.
“Replay, frame by frame,” Darian directed. “This footage is only fifteen frames per second,” he added, as though it should be a crime for surveillance to be so inadequate.
The custodian repositioned the video to just before the vampire finished feeding. He clicked it on, a frame at a time, lingering on the moment the bite mark became visible. In the next frame, the vampire had taken a hold on the man, and by the next, they were a blur at the edge of the screen.
“Strong and fast,” Darian observed. “Taking his victim with him, to hide the body somewhere.”
“Do you have other such videos?” Cally asked, letting a tremor enter her voice, as if she were starting to be convinced.
