Bloodline by Joel Abernathy

17

The soundof an explosion was not one easily forgotten. From seventeenth-century France to the date of my internment beneath the church, explosives had been the favorite method of humans looking to kill one another. They were so creative about it, like children with a new toy.

I opened my eyes, pulling myself from the dazed sleep to look around the space outside the cell. The glass room was in the center of a wider block with several other containment units, along with a panel of electronic equipment I couldn’t even comprehend. I just knew the high-pitched whining noise the machines emitted was worse than driving rusty nails through my temples.

Now there was one method of escape I hadn’t tried.

I walked over to the nearest wall and pressed my hands to the glass, trying to get a better look. The guard, who’d been asleep at his post, judging from the way he jolted at the sound of the second explosion, drew his weapon and looked at me, as if I was somehow responsible for it. When he realized otherwise, he disappeared around the corner.

I heard the beginnings of a scream that stopped abruptly, followed by the sickly sound of flesh tearing. I couldn’t smell the blood through the thick panes of glass, but I saw it spray the wall on the furthest visible reach of the hallway and froze.

Hunters? No... they wouldn’t kill a human guard if disabling him was an option. It had to be something else. A warring vampire coven, perhaps, or the resistance Daniel and the others mentioned from time to time.

Screams echoed through the halls, and the building shook as another, larger explosion rocked the towering structure. It sent vibrations through my body and down my spine, making me shiver.

I looked for any sign of an opening or lock on my prison for the first time, since escape had held no novelty to me before, but I found none. As far as I could tell, the room was solid from top to bottom. Even the floor was another pane of glass, slightly curved at the corners with no vulnerabilities I could spot.

They truly overestimated my capabilities, both to mount a suitable resistance on my own behalf and my ability to thwart their efforts to sire an army of superior vampires.

I had given some thought to the repeated failures as I lay awake, replaying the gruesome events of the last twelve hours. No matter how many theories my mind concocted, nothing came close to explaining it. I had turned Jonas and Enoch easily enough. They had both been the exemplary specimens Daniel was so eager to add to his army.

And yet, I had just watched eight men and women turn into raving animals before my eyes.

The only possible explanation I could come up with was that there was something different about humans from this era. Something that made them more susceptible to corruption.

Or maybe I was the one who had become corrupt after centuries spent underground. While my body remained untouched by the ravages of time, perhaps whatever sickness could be called my soul had decayed to the point where I could no longer transmit this curse.

Was such good fortune even possible?

I was the oldest vampire Daniel knew of, by his own admission. Maybe I wasn’t truly immortal, after all.

Those thoughts kept me from any restful state, and I was no closer to real answers now that this new world was also falling apart around me.

Footsteps filled the hallway, drawing closer, as soldiers wearing all-black leather from head to toe swept in. Some wielded the same glossy firearms Daniel’s men used, but the others were unarmed, save for the fangs obviously hiding behind their bloodstained lips. Only their mouths were visible behind the shields that covered the upper halves of their faces.

A leader emerged from their ranks, an imposing man with a black shield over his face. He gave several hand signals in rapid succession and the others, almost noiselessly, spread out across the room to various stations, retrieving whatever they had come for from the machines.

The leader, however, turned his focus on me. As he drew closer with several purposeful strides, I realized his eyes were partially visible behind the black screen, which reflected to me my own awful countenance. He didn’t react visibly, just studied the cube they had imprisoned me in and pulled something from his flak jacket. He placed the small tan square on a seemingly insignificant spot on the farthest wall and motioned for me to get down.

I barely had time to crouch and cover my head before another explosion went off with a brilliant blue burst of smoke. It wasn’t strong enough to shatter the glass, or whatever polymer they’d used to construct my confines, but there were several interwoven cracks spreading out from the giant chip the bomb had left in the top layer.

The leader—who I was all but certain was a vampire—raised an elbow, and I only noticed the sharp metal armor covering his leather at the joints when he jammed it into the splintered glass. A few more violent blows and my cage cracked open. At first, there was only space for a hand to reach through, but it proved to be enough.

I watched, mesmerized, as the man tore away huge chunks of the clear wall until he had made an opening sufficiently sized for a person to step through. He climbed in and I pressed my back to the wall behind me.

There was no longer any doubt in my mind that this was a vampire. A powerful one. There was little I could do to defend myself, and I wasn’t even sure why the impulse was still there. I wanted to die, and even if I didn’t, they couldn’t have any worse fate planned for me than the torment Daniel would continue to inflict if I remained in his captivity.

The vampire stopped a foot away from me, the blade clipped to his belt still dripping blood. “Are you Marcellus?”

“I am,” I said, straightening my spine. No sense in being a coward.

The second he moved, I flinched in spite of myself, but when he sank to one knee and removed his helmet, I found myself utterly at a loss. He was a dashing young man with light blond hair and the reddest eyes I had ever seen.

“Your majesty,” he said in a tone of great reverence, placing his right hand over his heart. “I’ve come to take you home.”