Dracula: Hearts of Fire (Dracula Heart's) (12 page)

    Piers took the sword and was impressed by how it felt in his hands
; when he pulled
it from its scabbard
mouth
t
he weapon felt alive in his hands
. He had never experienced anything like it.
Dracula observed his expression, and of course knew what he was sensing.
The weapon fed off the good inside the author.

   
Dracula, Piers, Wei and Bao
blurred onto
the steps of the red bricked 1900 neoclassical house and almost immediately received permission to enter from 90-year-old Annie Baker
, who stood with her oxygen tank behind her.
Life was pretty much a living hell for Annie and she hoped to be killed
before it was all over.
Moon Diamond was on the Master’s left shoulder and raring to go. The old lady
stared through the window and recognised Dracula immediately; he went into her mind and told her why they had come and that was good enough for her. 

    The five
of them entered and were attacked by Archie, Uberto, Gage, Vaile, Snyder, Nash and Nate. Attacking Dracula was foolish, however he had placed into all of their minds that he was there to kill them and so they had not
hing to lose by their boldness of attack.
Dracula grabbed Archie by the head and with a mighty shake his head came off and he turned to bones.
Moon Diamond attached himself to Snyder’s face and his screams were quite satisfying to Annie because of the torture that they had put the seniors through.
Dracula took Snyder’s head even though the Siamese was still attached to his face.
The head bounced once on the floor as the cat fell off of it.

    The battle moved further back into the large living room as old Annie made her way to Archie’s bones and kicked them. “Take that you piece of vampire shit!
Looks good on you!
”

    Bao
blocked Nate’s attempt at decapitation, and with a reverse turning kick sent him cartwheeling across the room.
He blurred to him and their blades collided violently five times. Bao
stuck his sword through his heart
, pulled it out,
and
then with a swing of his blade
Nate’s head flew
off and he also turned to bones.
Annie slowly made her way through the carnage, pulling her oxygen behind her; she made her way to Nate’s skeletal remains and kicked those as well. Her bravado did not go unnoticed by the Master.

    Wei’s katana had no problem deflecting Uberto’s sword; he booted Uberto in the chest so hard that it sent him flying into the fireplace
dislodging
several bricks. Annie kicked him and was about to be decapitated when Wei’s sword took his head off
;
his skin turned
to dust and his bon
es fell to the floor.
Annie shook the dust out of her hair.
Annie also
kick
ed
Uberto’s bones as well.

    Piers Anthony split Nash into two equal parts and his skin turned to dust and littered the floor.  To the author it was a distasteful but necessary deed.
The battle raged on as Dracula observed how each vampire handled the fight of their lives.
He then had to block
Nate and prevent him from removing the author’s head.
The sounds of battle were loud and disturbing to the other seniors that hid, hoping that it would all be over soon.
Some plugged their ears as other turned off their hearing aids.

    Nash and Vaile attacked Dracula simultaneously.
Until that point in time he was enjoying the battle, especially fighting side by side with Zacharia. But unfortunately it had been
enough of a distraction for Gage to cut through Pier’s Anthony’s neck.

   Dracula turned. “No!”

CHAPTER TEN

        K
EITH STOOD AT THE EDGE
of the forest and watched the
postmodern colonial house at
the end of the dead end street; he stood as still as the maple trees beside him.
Watching, waiting and thinking nasty thoughts.
He was imagining scenes of blood and carnage.
It was a beautiful place with a granite kitchen, hardwood floors and a finished basement.
It had cost just over a million
.
The
Puerto Rican maid had let
him into the house two days earlier
as he had pretended he was a city worker check
ing the quality of their water;
he had explored the place
as the maid
looking on
had a confused look on her face
. Keith was now waiting
for the right time to go in and kill them all. It was the home of a police officer that had won the lottery and yet continued to work as an officer of the law
, even in this age of vampire lust
.
His father had been a police officer as well as his grandfather
, in was in his blood
.
The vampire got satisfaction out of the thought that the officer’s luck was about to change.

    “Too doodle do,” said the blue jay in a nearby tree. It flew into the backyard and return
ed with a peanut; it flew off into the gray
sky to
bring the gift to its mate.
The vampire would have liked to have smashed the bird but didn’t.

    Keith was a nasty biter with a short forehead and a face weathered by the sun. He was overweight and liked nothing better than to prey on weak humans; it was
both
fun and appetizing
.
He felt like a hero destroying the enemy.
After all anyone that wasn’t a vampire was the enemy. And food, of course they were food as well. Could there be a better combination?
The Beast as some sheriff’s called him was exceedingly fast, which was what
enabled him to elude them
.
Keith
also en
joyed seeing his
crime scene on the news. His beady brown eyes stared and stare
d, transfixed with emotions imagining the scenes of horror
of things to come. His victim’s screams were particularly satisfying. The family had twin 17-year-old boys, and the
y would make a nice light snack, but the parents were what he was looking forward to sinking his teeth into
, especially that police officer
.

    A strange smoke was on the air. Keith took the odor deep into his lungs but didn’t recognise it. It made him tingle inside and not in a good way. It made his sinuses burn and his eyes water but then as fast as it had commenced the symptoms departed.

    “What a pretty house, and such tasty humans I’ll bet, I’ll bet
.”

    The vampire had ideas of forming and commanding a battalion of biters. That many biters would be impossible to stop, but the problem was that he couldn’t get any biters to follow him. Vampires were a fickle
bunch;
a lot of them were out for themselves with no thoughts of the greater picture
. Still, the idea remained an egg in the henhouse that he hoped would hatch one day.
The simultaneous scream of hundreds was a dream that he often had, and always being disappointed when he opened his eyes to discover that it was only a dream.
Hundreds dying at the exact same moment was a delightful thought.

    A grey Cadillac CTS-V Sport Wagon
pulled into the driveway and
Staci Claymore got out
with her big red purse
and headed into the house
.
  She was an attractive blond that walked with confidence.
Keith knew they were
now
all in there and ready for the taking. He could hear
her husband
Paul asking her if she had bought the earrings that she had
gone out for and she said no.
Someone else had purchased the last pair.
Keith
remained as still as an immovable object.
Finally he moved a little, he tipped his head
up
and smelled the blood coursi
ng through their veins, listening
to the different rhythms of their hearts. It was time to drink them dry.
The excitement ran through every inch of his body. It was to be a day to remember.

    A black cat appeared from out of the forest carrying a dead mouse. It crossed his path and then ran across the road. The cat accidentally dropped the mouse, and as it picked it up
it looked directly at Keith
then continued on its way.
Bad luck for the biter.
What was the vampire to do?
Keith had been superstitious as a human and re
mained superstitious as a vampire
. His father had taught him that as long as the black cat didn’t make eye
contact
a person was safe
. But that black feline had indeed made eye contact with Keith.
There was absolutely no question about that.
What was the proper course of action?
He could almost taste them. He struggled with the idea of the black cat. He blurred several feet toward the house but then turned around and went back to the wooded area. Keith
took several minutes to think it over but the bad omen had revealed its ugly head and so he was forced to blur back into the forest.

    About a mile into the woods he considered going back. If he managed to kill the humans then that would be good luck wouldn’t it?
Another black cat appeared with a small white spot on its head, yet it was a black cat.
Then five more appeared and stared up at him. It was a clowder of cats!

    “Get away from me!”

    Keith blurred off deeper into the forest.