Dracula: Hearts of Fire (Dracula Heart's) Read online

  “I see.”

  “Shut up. She’s never going to forgive me. I’ll tell her that you wouldn’t let me tell her. Yes, that could work.”

  “That certainly wouldn’t work for me. Oh, I’m quite sure that she’ll forgive you in time, though I can imagine that she’ll play the Dracula card for the next few months. Perhaps years, who the hell knows? She’s a feisty little thing. I can’t wait to get to know her better.”

  “Why don’t you go with her to the next parent and teacher meeting?”

  They embraced as their eyes met. A passionate kiss and then he stopped and stared. “Oh how I’ve missed that.”

  Allison smiled as she started to melt. “You can stop showing me images of us making out. I’ll never forget so you don’t have to remind me.”

  “Shall we?”

  “Right now?”

  Dracula ran his fingers through her hair. “Better now than when Jenny comes back. She probably won’t be in a good mood for a few years. I know you want to.”

  “No. Oh I suppose.”

  Dracula picked up Allison and headed for the bedroom. “Don’t scream too loud.”

  “After all this time I make no promises.”

  “And I like it when you scratch my back.”

  “Oh, I’ll scratch you alright.”

  The Master blurred into the bedroom and the wind slammed the door shut behind them.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE NEW YORK SKYLINE had a thunderstorm that was approaching with the occasional flash of lightening in the distance, and as Lauren stared at it she hoped that it wasn’t the mood of things yet to come. Besides regretting the loss of Michael, she had a peculiar feeling going through her. Usually the feelings were a little clearer but this warning, if that’s what it was, remained murky. Unsettled and uncomfortable something was disturbing her comfort zone, but with missing Michael it was a conflict of feelings. This time she couldn’t tell if the warning was for her or not. Perhaps something big and nasty was getting ready to go down. She hoped it didn’t mean that Michael was in serious trouble.

  The day was fiery and humid. The skyscrapers stood seemingly in defiance of the approaching weather. A few faces looked out some of those windows with hopelessness, as if they wanted to leap. The state of New York City was scarier than it had ever been. Rush hour traffic was heavy and impatient, with two large men engaging in fisticuffs in the middle of the street, the battle evenly matched. One tripped and fell awkwardly, skinning both of his knees. A wife’s screams for her husband to return to his shiny silver Mercedes-Benz went unanswered. He quickly got up and then they went right back at it. Many people watched the battle for the entertainment value. A blond 7-year-old boy in the backseat of a red Toyota Yaris covered his eyes as it was a little too much for him.

  Lauren had settled into her apartment in New York but she couldn’t get Michael out of her head, and she had never felt so alone. The days were longer and the nights darker. The loft was large with shiny hardwood floors and her furniture didn’t appear to occupy enough space, like miniatures in a dollhouse, but there was a place in her heart that also felt empty. Michael’s face occupied most of her free time. That she missed him wasn’t a surprise, but the fact that she missed him to the extent she did certainly was. He had taken her heart without permission, ingratiated himself into her soul, absolutely nothing she could do about it. The damage was accomplished. Lauren couldn’t punch him for that. She went back to the day that he had hired that guy to throw the note in the bottle from his boat and it lifted her mood. It made her smile.

  The four rectangular windows were horizontal to the floor; they were huge and let in a lot of light. She had a large black sectional sofa with chaise, a black reclining love seat, and in between a square glass coffee table with her swords resting on top. There was a curio cabinet with photos and knickknacks and Michael’s note to her inside it still in the Coke bottle. The ceilings were the tallest that she had ever seen, but the whiteness of it all was not to her taste, it needed a splash of color. Some day she would take care of it but not today. Even her large Florida paintings of palm trees hanging over the water were dwarfed by the huge wall space.

  Lauren sat on the sofa, starting to read a new Dean Koontz novel almost a half dozen times but her mind was distant and she couldn’t get into it; it was difficult to concentrate on anything. She alternately paced and then stared out the window. New York’s pace was definitely hectic, even more so than Boston. There were a million things to do and see but she didn’t want to do or see any of them. The nasty vampires were thicker here; she had killed three of them in less than a week. One had had a spell on him, made his way surreptitiously behind her and almost took her head. If it hadn’t been for that 10-year-old girl that screamed at her she would probably be dead. If she ever discovered who the hell was providing the evil ones with magic she would take their heads as well.

  The pot that was New York was beginning to boil. People were even more irritated with the stifling heat, some felt like they were literally melting. People were losing weight and losing hope, and some moved out of the city even though they didn’t want to move. Add to that the daily slayings making the mood a mixture of anger and bleakness. A story on the hopelessness of it all had been posted in the New York Times, which made a lot of people want to track down the writer and pound the snot out of him. The reporter was given a two week vacation just in case the death threats had some validity. So many New Yorkers were at the breaking point these days.

  When Lauren was bored or bothered she liked to clean, however the place was already shiny clean and she was unable to find even a single dust bunny. Painting was too smelly. Perhaps her mind needed to be vacuumed out but that was one thing that she couldn’t accomplish. With the seriousness of her job it wasn’t good to be distracted. Distracted in battle was a good way to get killed. She desperately wanted to cut something or someone in two. On top of everything else Lauren was now beginning to suffer from lack of sleep.

  “I’m so bored and yet I don’t want to do anything, and here I am talking to myself!” Her lonely gray blue eyes examined the place and thought that the space was missing something important, and of course she knew that what it was wanting was Michael. She had to snap out of it soon. Her Nutrisse blue-black hair was short and sassy. Lauren turned away from the windows and sighed. How she missed those hazel eyes. He had stalked her for quite some time before she finally agreed to a single date, but it had turned into much more. Now she longed for him whenever she wasn’t battling evil vampires. She was starting to feel like a lovesick teenager and she didn’t like it one bit. Love could be amazing or devastating and on occasion it was both on the same day.

  Lauren stared at the poster of the Supernatural brothers on the wall, and then at the poster of Alexander and his female German shepherd vampire dog Tessy. She stood immobile for quite a while, staring past the dog with her thoughts returning to Michael. The sheriff missed him on multiple levels, and she also missed Samantha. Being a red sheriff it wasn’t easy to make new friends, especially those of the genuine variety. The excitement of dispatching nasty vampires had lost some of its satisfaction as well. Lauren knew that it wasn’t wise to put one’s happiness into the hands of another, but for the present it was easier said than accomplished. Michael was back in Boston and she regretted her decision even before she had arrived in the Big Apple. It was difficult to find someone special, and now she felt that she hadn’t fought hard enough for him. Those mixed feelings had turned into something solid. Life was tricky like that.

  “Maybe I should dirty the place just so I can clean it. Don’t even know why I took the damn day off.”

  She had tried to call him several times but the phone had been disconnected. Why he didn’t have a cell phone was beyond her, almost everyone else did. Those morons that strolled through the mall with their phones glued to their heads spewing personal information too loud were both humorous and pathetic. “Oh yeah, I got a lump on my left testicle. I said I go
t a lump on my left testicle!”

  Even Samantha back in New York had been unable to contact him. Michael’s absence made her days so much longer. On her next day off she had decided to fly back and see if they couldn’t make it work out, after all Boston wasn’t all that far away. It was the only thing that she now had to look forward to, getting Michael into her arms. All those years of being turned off emotionally now made it difficult to deal with. If necessary she could bring him back in a trunk at least that thought made her smile, the first in days.

  Lauren picked up her Samurai swords and held them touching at ninety degrees with her knees bent; she remained motionless as she went into a meditative state, transfixed like a statue. She remained in that position for several minutes. Her level of concentration was at a higher intensity than most could obtain. The mind was wiped clean of all external distractions. She imagined several foes that approached. Awareness was heightened; all her senses were razor sharp. The mind was still as her muscles readied. The sheriff then went through a series of thrusts in a predetermined pattern, her swords cutting noisily through the air with the most impressive leaps. She parried, blocked and decapitated in a fluid motion as natural to the sheriff as water in a brook.

  Then she envisioned multiple attackers with swords as she went into kill mode; slice and dice. There were two males and a female, all with swords. Controlled fury combined with experience and style. It was art in motion as she tumbled through the air with her swords jutting out at deadly angles.

  Without warning her front door was kicked off its hinges and sent flying across the room. This was no dream as her new home had sustained damage. Lauren faced the two intruders and smiled; Milton and Clifford blurred into the living room area and were actually translucent. The spell that had allowed them entry without permission wasn’t exactly working the way it should have. That was the thing with spells, a person really had to know what they were doing otherwise the effects could be unhealthy, even deadly. They were tall, blonde and skinny. Clifford’s hair was touching his shoulders while Milton had a brush cut. They were after bragging rights for killing a red sheriff, and there was now a prestigious club for biters that had killed sheriffs.

  Lauren kicked Clifford with such fury that she drove him back out the door. Milton managed to deflect a single blow before she decapitated him as she was in no mood to play. Because of the spell he didn’t immediately turn to dust, sparkles of lights danced through his headless torso. Clifford rushed in screaming like an insane samurai warrior; she knocked the sword out of his hand and as he rushed to retrieve it she also took his head. Lauren let herself fall onto the sofa and stared for almost five minutes at the corpses that hadn’t yet turned to dust. Milton’s was the first to pop and turn to dust, then several seconds later the same thing happened to Clifford. It was time to get the vacuum cleaner. She had some cleaning to do after all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER TEN O’CLOCK in the evening when Jerome exited the forest and made his way to the Mill Road in Moncton; he was comfortable dragging his victims into the nearby woods and feasting on them in there, surrounded by the trees and animals that concealed themselves in the night. The waxing crescent moon peeked through an opening in the clouds and crickets chirped to give the night ambience. A few cars went by but not many. He knew there weren’t many sheriffs in Moncton, if any.

  Jerome was a bearded fellow that had watched for the last two nights the three women that resided in the century old white house with the peeling paint. He had set his attention on them like a trucker on a stake and he wasn’t about to let go. Jerome blurred across the road, then paced at the back of the house and became excited every time one of them passed by the windows, lit up by the interior glow against the darkness outside. He was motivated by the night’s hug and by its freshness. The women were all in their sixties, shared the cost of living which made life easier for all of them. They had become good friends and were like family. When one was sick they all felt ill.

  “You are bags of blood with legs. That’s exactly what you are ladies.” He looked like a mountain man that had just come out of the mountains and into civilization, with wild and crazy looking eyes. The more days that went by the hungrier Jerome had been getting for their blood, but he liked to be patient. He took pride in the fact that he was so patient. Now he was just hungry enough to eat their faces off and drink their blood. They would taste as good as a cold draft from a large mug. They would be such a thirst-quencher. Jerome considered that his hunger just might be making him a little emotional. Instead of low blood sugar, did he have low blood blood? That thought made him smile. It was satisfying when he cracked himself up.

  Mary-Lynn Baker was at the kitchen table reading the Times and Transcript newspaper as Betty-Ann Cormier and Margery Tailor were at the sink doing the supper dishes. Margery always hummed when she did the dishes, and she was so good at it that the other two appreciated it. Her humming could raise anyone’s mood as she had a talent for it. All three were unattached and had little family, although Margery did have two sisters in Abbotsford, British Columbia, and a brother in Detroit she hadn’t heard from them in years. They were all well-off and she wasn’t. She had been ostracized without a single word, pushed out of the family loop.

  “That poor President Obama,” said Mary-Lynn. “Every time he tries to do something they stop him from doing it. They say it a terrible idea when it’s a great idea. A president should have more power than that, don’t you think? Otherwise, what’s the point of being president? I mean if they fight you on every little thing. Of course having too much power could be dangerous.”

  Betty-Anne was busy scrubbing spaghetti sauce off a white plate that had been left to set for too long. “It’s all about getting re-elected. They really don’t care if the country goes right down the toilet. They have lots of money and to them that’s all that matters, but boy do they like to pretend. They get in their limousines and go home to their mansions after telling poor folks to tighten their belts. I’d like to tighten a belt around their necks. ”

  “I think we watch too much CNN.” Mary-Lynn considered how they almost never watched the Canadian news, because it hit too close to home. They were all CNN junkies.

  The plate dropped and smashed on the floor, sending white pieces flying everywhere as Betty-Anne screamed the most horrible scream. Jerome was staring into the window over the kitchen sink with wild eyes; he liked to play with his food. They would have jumped out of their skin if they could have managed it. The vampire maneuvered himself so that he was upside down, appearing to be some sort of crazed maniac, but of course they knew he was a vampire. The biter repeatedly showed them his fangs and then retracted them. He made his way around the window twice as if defying gravity, peering in at them from different angles in order to terrorize. The sound of him doing so was awful. If anyone showed up to challenge him he would run off and return again tomorrow night.

  Margery ran and grabbed the phone off the wall but the line was cut. She grabbed her cell phone out of her purse but unfortunately discovered that the battery was dead. She felt like she was going to vomit. “My cell phone is dead! What in God’s name are we going to do?”

  Mary-Lynn closed the curtains and tried to remain calm but her shaking hands told a different story. She tried to take a deep breath to calm herself but it wasn’t working. “He can’t get in if we don’t invite him in. He’s trying to make us run for help. Nobody can outrun a blood sucking vampire.” She screamed toward the window. “Get out of here you bloodsucker!”

  Jerome went up the side of the house and onto the roof; it was the most horrible sound that they had ever heard. Thump, thump, thump, scrape clunk. What was he up to? They knew he couldn’t come in so what the hell was he up to? Once on the roof the thumps got louder but he was careful not to cause the roof to cave in as he had not been invited inside. The vampire paced back and forth up there considering his options. Tomorrow night they could possibly have a red sheriff waitin
g for him. What to do? He walked from one end of the roof to the other, then transformed into a bat and flew into the living room window where they had congregated. There he stuck to the window and flapped his bat wings to further terrorise them. It was a peculiar thing seeing the bat laugh.

  He turned back into his regular form and pressed his face hard against the glass. If Jerome could frighten them enough he thought that it was likely that their instincts would take over and they would make a run for it, or at least one of them would. His tongue started to lick the window as Margery screamed; his smile was disturbing and large. She thought he looked like a sick clown. When he pulled down his pants and stuck his hairy ass against the window they all ran back into the kitchen.

  “I can come in if I want to!” It was a lie but it certainly did frighten them.

  “I’m gonna run for help. If I scream loud enough someone will come.” Panic had pushed away common sense; crying she desperately wanted to run but they wouldn’t let her out of the house.

  Moon Diamond the lilac point Siamese was on the sofa pawing at the remote to turn on Dracula’s large flat screen television. Zacharia’s soul was trapped inside the Siamese cat and he was looking to watch the news. After several attempts he managed to find the station but soon became uninterested in all the political talk. He stretched long and hard, then threw himself down on the floor and flicked his tail back and forth. The cat inside his head showed Zacharia images of mice that he wanted to pursue and eat, the vampire told the cat to discontinue its pestering, but being a cat it was of course fixated on rodents, birds and balls of string for all he knew. Things that were important to the cat were not important to him. It was like living with a polar bear and trying to get along; they were simply too different to mesh. It was best that he didn’t think about being trapped forever inside the cat but that was just about impossible.