“By a fucking vamp.” Goth Girl sneers with disgust.
“Vampires can’t breed, Pricilla,” Scotsman says, his tone not changing one iota.
“Oh, and I decided he was selling a complete crock of shit which has no place in the modern world,” I add. “Monsters are not our enemies.”
“Bullshit.” Pricilla snorts. “Vamps are the enemy. They’re vicious bloodsuckers who prey on humans.”
I don’t argue with her. She’s been fully indoctrinated by my uncle. Only some form of deprogramming is going to change her mind, and I don’t have the time or the energy.
“So, if what you say is true, we don’t need to be killing them?” the Scotsman says. “Shame. I enjoy a good staking.”
It would appear the pair of them are lost causes. I sit back against the side of the van, put my hand over my bump, and close my eyes.
When I open them again, it’s because the van has come to a clumsy halt. The back door is opened, and outside there is a courtyard filled with black-clad humans, paramilitary style.
“Take her to the dungeon,” John says.
“Oh, John, you’re really spoiling me,” I say as I’m dragged past by the Scotsman.
“Vamp lover,” he hisses.
“At least I’m getting some,” I hear myself respond, when I shouldn’t have dignified him with a response.
“Oh, you’ve had far more than some.” He eyes my belly. “And if you think you’re keeping your baby, you’re very, very wrong.”
For the first time, a chill runs down my spine. I expected plenty of punishment from my uncle.
But he couldn’t possibly take my child from me, could he?
I reach down inside myself, grabbing the skein of steel I’ve held onto for years. This is not happening to me. I will not let my uncle draw me back into his delusional world. I am going to escape and expose the Van Helsing family for what it is. A cult. An organization which perpetrates horrors in the face of everything which is true.
I’m manhandled down several flights of stairs into a brightly lit room with a single plastic chair, which John dumps me into.
“He’ll be with you shortly,” John sneers.
“Be still my beating heart,” I respond, not even bothering to look at him.
He stomps out of the room, and I hear the lock click. Shortly after, the lights dim then flick off.
As if a vampire hunter is afraid of the dark…I roll my eyes to myself.
In front of me, there is a pin prick of light which grows larger and larger until it’s an image of an empty room in what looks like a castle. It’s lit in such a way it has to be an infrared camera. Dust motes float around in front of it like glitter.
It would appear I’m supposed to be bored to death here.
I shove my bound hands over the back of the chair in a bid to get comfortable, and by the time I look back up, there is some movement on the screen.
Or is there? Could this be a really bad remake of the Blair Witch Project where nothing happens at all, not even snot?
Then the movement happens again, and there is a flash of reflection, like the light in a cat’s eyes at night.
All at once, my uncle appears in the frame, firing a crossbow stake at nothing.
Only it doesn’t spin across the hall and impact in the wall. It stops dead, suspended in the air. At least until something materializes around it. Something human. Something which looks very much like…
“Dominik!” I jump out of the chair, turning it over in my haste.
He has hold of the stake, but my uncle’s aim was true. It is directly in his heart. Dominik drops to his knees, death making him visible because that’s the trick of the reaper. All souls are the same at the point of dying. All souls are one before the reaper.Dominik doesn’t get to keep his cloak of invisibility to mirrors or cameras.
