Afterglow (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #2) (2 page)

“
Was it as bad as you feared?” Daphne asked.

She shook her head. “It was
beautiful
. I never knew. All this time, I’ve been fighting it, enduring torture from Vlad to take my place as his evil vampire queen and feed, but I would not comply. But I still would never be his, because he is vile and evil. But the blood of Rand, it was beautiful. Forgive me, Rand, but drinking your blood was like experiencing sexual afterglow.”

Now
I
was the one blushing.

And then, Gabby sat up, breaking the restraints!

Everybody except me screamed: “Vampire!” It was in our training; it was just automatic that if a vampire was loose in the room, we immediately took defensive stances and pulled our weapons.

Mine was already out from cutting my palm and then cleaning the blade.

“
Mon Dieu
,” Gabby said at all of the silver blades and scythes pointed at her.

“
Stand down,” I said to Gabby. “It would be foolish to attack all of us.”

“
Relax. I’m fed. The gurney is cold, I have to use the restroom and then I just want to write my music,” she said. “Would you deny me access to a restroom?”

“
No,” I said slowly, but held my blade at the ready.

She slowly pulled off the busted leather straps, duct tape and nylon rope, like it was all tissue paper. She walked over to the bathroom and shut the door. In a few minutes, we heard the toilet flush and the sink run. Then, humming, she walked to her music keyboard and the mixing equipment of the recording studio. She sat down, elation on her face.

“What?” she asked casually.

“
You scared the crap out of us,” Lucas said.

“
I didn’t mean to scare all of you by breaking the restraints, but I need to write it all down before I forget my opera—the opera that I wrote in my head kept me sane when Vlad kept me prisoner and abused me. I now have this amazing power inside of me to create something beautiful from this ugly creature I have become.”

“
Don’t say that,” Ambra said. “You are not ugly.”

“
It’s true. I can’t see myself in the mirror, but I know what vampires look like. Please, just lock me in here so I don’t hurt anybody, and slide some blood under the door through a straw or something–I guess it’s okay if it’s pig’s blood—and just let me write and play my music. It’s probably the last thing I am going to do.”

“
What do you mean?” I asked.

She took a deep breath. “When the opera is complete and sent off to the duplicator and uploaded to YouTube and iTunes, I am going to ask all of you—my vampire hunter friends—to put me out of my misery with your scythes and your blades.”

“No!” I said.
“No!”

“
Yes,” Ambra said. “She’s right.”

I was shocked. It might have been the first time that Ambra and I had disagreed on a serious issue.

“Samantha Moon is a vampire and she’s normal. Except for the blood drinking,” Lucas explained.

“
But Sam’s not all spazzed out about being a vampire,” Daphne said. “She drank deer blood out of a coffee cup while she talked to us like nothing was out of the ordinary.”

“
Who is this Samantha Moon?” Gabrielle asked. “I have trouble remembering things because of what I have been through.”

“
Don’t you remember? She’s the vampire detective, and our first operative for the Brotherhood of the Blade and Sisterhood of the Scythe. She just left the castle before you arrived,” Lucas said.

“
We had a meeting with her here and she helped us contact Kristen.”

“
Your daughter’s alive?”

“
Yes!”

“
Oh, what wonderful news! Where is she?”

“
We don’t know yet.”

“
I hope you can find your daughter, Rand. It’s been so long since I’d been captured that I forgot all about Samantha Moon. She’s the one who brought Rand to the cruise ship for us, right?”

“
Yes,” I said. “I thought it was a random kidnapping but apparently, Lucas had arranged it all to recruit me.”

“
It’s all coming back to me now. Yes, she is the good vampire. I never heard her name spoken in Vlad’s circles, thank goodness. If they knew of her existence, they would kill her for helping us…you.” Gabrielle paused.

“
You can get used to being a vampire because Sam is used to it,” I said.

“
I am not like Samantha. I am emotionally corrupted by Vlad the Impaler, and by all of the things he did to me and made me watch him do to others. I know he tried to brainwash me. And it is not out of the realm of possibility that he let me escape in order to infiltrate the Brotherhood of the Blade and Sisterhood of the Scythe.”

“
You couldn’t,” Ambra said.

A look of love passed between Ambra and Gabrielle Dubois, one of the most famous and talented singers of our century before Vlad had kidnapped her and turned her.

“You understand me, Ambra,” Gabby said in a tremulous voice. “After I finish writing my opera, my magnum opus, you know what my fate must be. It is the only way to protect all of you from me. I am probably a time bomb, set to attack all of you when I am programmed to do so. Do you believe this?”

“
Yes, I do,” Ambra replied.

“
Lucas,” I said, “we have to help Gabrielle.”

He nodded. “We will.”

“There’s only one way,” she said. “Promise me. You have to end my life after I write my vampire opera.”

“
No,” I said, flat out.

Ambra looked at me. “You really don’t like this idea, Rand. Of ending Gabby’s undead life when she wishes it.”

“I made that clear,” I said, standing my ground. “I won’t change my mind. She can get used to being a vampire and somehow, we will remove the Vlad’s programming since you believe that he sent you here as a killing machine.”

“
Rand. The escape was too easy. A jailer unlocked my chains and walked away, leaving all of the many doors open. I just walked out of the castle and started hitchhiking and walking and when I could, I flew a little bit.”

“
Wait a minute. You flew?”

“
Yeah, vampires created from the ancient vampires can fly.”

“
Mon Dieu
,” Ambra said. “Vlad can fly?”

“
Yes. But I can’t really control that part of my beast yet. I don’t know how to be the flying bat for very long. And I am creeped out by myself in that form, too.”

“
Gabrielle, you really want us to end your life after the opera is written?” Lucas asked.

“
Yes. You have to. I am very dangerous.
Tick-tock
.”

Ambra looked at Gabrielle again. “If it was me in your shoes, I would want to have closure with the people I loved, finish unfinished business, and then I would want my friends to take me away from this cruel existence, but to end my life with love and
dignity.
” Ambra looked at me. “I think this is a respectful exit request and we should honor Gabriel’s final request.”

My throat closed up with emotion. “No! Have you all even heard this woman sing? Because I have.”

Gabby nodded. “It wouldn’t be murder. It would be euthanasia. Believe me, it would be a kindness to me if you killed me. With all I have seen, and all I now know, I do not want to live much longer. I just want to exist long enough to write my opera.”

Rage rose up in me. “Nobody’s killing you, Gabby,” I said. “Mercy killing? I don’t care what you call it. It’s wrong. It goes a long way with me that you are still on
our
side. And that you have made this request shows to me your good faith in the continuing missions against evil vampires.”

“
I am on your side as much as I can be,” Gabby admitted. “But I’m a parasite on society, unwilling as I might be. The fact remains, I
am
a vampire. And a programmed killer. Believe it. I won’t even bother to deny it.”

“
Stop it, Gabby,” I said. “Are you even listening to yourself?” I was so angry. I had just fed a former Sister of the Scythe to save her life, but now, she was already planning her demise.

“
Rand, Vlad made her what she is,” Daphne argued. “She knows she’s extremely dangerous, far more dangerous than the usual vampire. She has not even come into her full power with that little drink you gave her.”

“
I don’t care,” I said. “We’ll find some way to work this out. Samantha Moon is a vampire and walks among humans without feeding on them. Maybe self-control can be taught through hypnosis or psychiatry. Right, Lucas?” I looked to him, our leader, for support.

“
We don’t know yet.” He looked at Griff, our doctor, who shrugged his shoulders.

“
I want to get to work on my music. Please?” the vampire asked.

“
All right. Everyone except Gabby out of this sound studio,” Lucas ordered. “Let’s let her be one with her music and have some peace and a sense of safety. We have much to reflect upon.”

When we got out in the corridor, and Lucas locked Gabby in the concrete sound studio, which had a bathroom and a little kitchen, but no windows, he said, “Rand, you and Mikhail guard the door. If she comes out, take her down with the least force possible. I’m going to rig up silver doorknobs or something.”

“Gotcha. Good idea,” I said.

We heard a tapping on the door.

“The door is locked!” Lucas shouted. “Stay put, Gabby.”

She said something that was muffled.

“We can’t hear you through the steel door!” Lucas shouted again.

In a few moments, a piece of paper was slid under the door to us. On it, Gabby had written:
I looked for Kristen there. Vlad doesn’t seem to have her. It’s good news, Rand.

I nearly lost it in front of everyone. I ran upstairs to my cold bedchamber and slammed the door. I got on my knees and wept. I thanked God that the perverse and cruel Vlad was not the vampire who had my daughter.

Later, as I shivered and turned on the heat and laid a good fire, I decided that we had to take down that monster, once and for all, and free his blood slaves.

And Vlad needed to vanish off the face of the earth.

I was just the one to send him to hell on the tip of my silver blade.

Chapter Two

For the next few months, as we trained harder and harder, in order to execute raids on suspected nests of vampires, Gabby lived in the concrete sound studio that became her bunker of sorts.

She worked diligently on creating her magnum opus,
Vampiress of the Opera.

At first, there was a 24-hour double-guard on the only door out of the sound studio…the door that was now silver-plated on her side, including the knob. We rotated guard duty in and out until it seemed like Gabby was not a threat to us, and then we used technology instead of live guards.

We told her not to try to escape because we had booby-trapped the corridor. We had done no such thing. She assured us that she felt safe from Vlad and productive, as well. She nested into the sound studio, which we had made homier by providing her with her own things, like quilts, books and artwork from her old room in the remodeled south tower. She was a prisoner, but in good spirits, from all that anyone could tell.

We rigged up a way to get daily blood to her in vials through a bank-like metal pass-thru drawer that we installed using a concrete saw to make the small hole in the wall—she insisted that she didn’t want to have any more human blood because she was afraid that she would develop a lust for it. She also didn’t want to compromise our strength as vampire hunters by consuming our blood.

She preferred to consume the less palatable pig blood, which, as we saw through the tiny glass window, she drank with her fingers pinching her nostrils together and often gagged after she sipped it. It was her only sustenance. She even refused water.

Gabby seemed serene though, after many long talks with Buck Griffin—Griff—our doctor.

She asked for her yoga videos and exercise clothing and seemed like she spent quite a lot of time meditating and writing music and then meditating again. Basically, she drank blood, wrote music, and meditated. She was a peaceful vampire, living among us, but in her own bunker of sorts.

We gave her a little notebook laptop on her own little secured network so she could Skype with any of us, as she often got lonely or bored. She also learned how to take her own blood samples, which she offered up so that Lucas could study vampire physiology.

She painlessly scraped cells from inside of her cheeks with cotton swabs for further study and culture growing. Lucas’s lab filled up with many experiments with her blood cells and cultures as he tried to find a cure for her strange blood condition as a vampire, the main feature of which was almost an absence of iron when she had not fed for 12 or more hours—red blood cells that were very tiny and unfed, contained almost no iron.