Dracula: Hearts of Fire (Dracula Heart's) (10 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

    M
ICHAEL ARRIVED IN NEW YORK
and commenced his searc
h for Lauren. He got a
comfortable room at the Fairfield Inn and Suites hotel, but the problem was that he didn’t know where to begin his search. He was an architect and had to finish a project and bow out of bids for two others as his mind had been
higgledy-piggledy since Lauren’s departure.
His attempts to snap out of it were overridden by his emotions. Michael dreamt about her
a lot and always awoke with such a forlorn feeling
.
He was lost with no GPS to guide him.

   
Law enforcement was refusing to give out her address, and wouldn’t even give her a message from Michael because in the past
similar schemes
had been used to lure at least two red sheriffs to their deaths.
So-called friends had used the ploy to entice red sheriffs into traps.
Any vampire that
could boast they
had eliminated a red sheriff;
had their status
instantaneously elevated. In the world of vampires
,
status was a
n important
achievement, impressing the other evil vampires and gaining much wanted respect.
Some biters wouldn’t kill another vampire that had killed a red sheriff.
It was a crazy
world
.

    Michael ended up having lunch at Delmonico’s steakhouse on Beaver Street, a place that Lauren told him
about that
h
ad great food, and he hoped
there was a chance that he would bump into her in there.
He thought the place had great atmosphere with their tiny lamps on the tables being a nice to
uch, but he couldn’t enjoy it
much without Lauren.
Only time or Lauren could take care of cupid and his sharp arrows.
One’s emotional state needed to be in balance or life
’s
ride wasn’t at all pleasant.

    Michael had even called a private eye, but with only her first name he had said it was doubtful that he could track her down, never mind the fact that tracking a sheriff was dangerous business. But
42-year-old
John Shaw took
the case
because the
mon
ey
was good
though he promised nothing
.
After less than a day of sea
rching for Lauren he was getting discouraged,
New York City was a huge place to search for someone with no clues to follow; he may as well have been searching for a particular grain of rice in a fifty pound bag. He kept his
charming hazel
eye
s on news stories in the chance
that he would see her fighting someone in a particular area, that way he could at
least zero in on that
location
.
Sheriffs almost always had
specific area
s
to watch over. But w
hat if weeks went by with no sign of her? Months? Michael felt like banging his head against the wall for letting her get away.

    Lauren arrived in Boston and soon discovered that Michael h
ad moved. She went to several
places that they had been together, including the Boston At
henaeum, but luck was not on her
side.
She did entertain the thought that Michael had headed to New
York to search for her, but
quickly dismissed it. It was a thought that
tickled her emotions but she knew he had commitments in Boston and that made it unlikely. She was starting to rue the day that vampires
had decided to drop their last names; it made it almost impossible to track them, and
of course
fo
r some that was probably
the point.

     Lauren hadn’t been with Michael long enough to have been introduced to his friends, at least she could have gotten some information that way.
She didn’t want to abandon the humans in the part of New York that she had been protecting, and
rumors had it that something big
was going to go down in the city;
she could feel it in her bones. She headed for Logan International Airport to wait for her flight back to the Big Apple.
She hoped that Michael hadn’t gotten himself into some sort of trouble that he couldn’t get out of.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    A
LLISON SCREAMED HER LOUDEST
as the blood flew from her only child
.
Jenny’s heart stopped beating
as she collapsed to the ground
.
The bullet from the high-powered
rifl
e went right through the child
’s
heart
and out the other side
;
it was as if someone had dropped a car on her chest.
Although he
r
heart ceased to pump her mind remained active. She went into a different state of consciousness, like taking the elevator to the top floor in a skyscraper, passing many levels of awareness.
Her soul left her body.

    She got out of the elevator which led to the roof of a huge building, so large in fact that the end couldn’t be observed. There were thousands of people on the roof, all white and translucent. A lot of them stared at her but said nothing. They whispered to one another but not to Jenny. One old woman wiggled her fingers at her and she returned the greeting, and then it all started to fade.
It was in fact her great grandmother although she didn’t know it, translucent beings were difficult to recognise.

    Jenny was transported
deep in
to
the forest near a wigwam
. She could smell a combination of black coffee and blood.
A crow in a maple tree to the left of her was shaking its head as it danced from branch to branch. Was she being warned away from the area? A low chanting had started from inside the round domed shelter.
Black smoke exited the dwelling as if it was on fire.
Suddenly, Achak blurred out of the wigwam and attacked her; he threw
some sort of
silver dust into her face and it burned as if it was acid
, partially blinding her
.
She reached into her purse and threw a tiny bag at him and it burst into flames, setting him on fire. Although she thought he was in distress he laughed even as the sound of the flames crackled on his bubbling skin.

    A short old man with white hair appeared and gestured for
her to follow him
. “Jenny, all this is a distraction. Achak is trying to distract long enough so
that you
will die here. You are a hybrid and you need to heal yourself. Ignore him and follow me. Concentrate on layers of healing light; do you feel its warmth?
Do you feel its caress?
”

  
Her heart only missed two beats when it kicked back to life.
The pressure and pain
on her chest
was incredible.
Her heart had palpitations
and then fluttered but within seconds it had
regulated itself.
The wound
healed as she sat up with a gasp
,
sucking in air deeper than she ever had,
and then she saw them. In a small patch of forest two streets over Bernard and Anthony were arguing.
They had inadvertently stepped out of their protective circle.
The enchantment
of concealment no longer offered its protection.
She saw and heard their nasty thoughts, the nasty things that they had done in the past.
She realized that they had shot her
and that they wanted her head in the bag
.

    “Jenny! Jenny!”

    “
Mom? It’s okay
. I’m okay.
It seems
that I’m more vampire than human.
”

    Jenny grabbed her sword and blurred so fas
t that she inadvertently knocked a tree down
to get at them.
Anthony and Bernard were
just about to come to blows when she approached the miscreants.
She cut Bernard’s head off and before his bones hit the ground she also decapitated Anthony as well.
She was so angry with him that she threw his bones high up into a tree and they lodged there.
She brought her hand to her chest and the thought that she should be dead was disturbing.
Jenny
looked down and saw the circle of glass and realized there was some sort of spell involved, but she had no idea of its origins or its nature. She heard her mother crying and rushed back to her.

    “Mom,
I’m okay.”

    “It’s not okay Jenny. They shot you. I should
have never let you get involved
in this stuff. It’ll be the death of you and it’ll be my fault.
How am I ever going to live with that?
”