Hunting My Vampire (Immortal Vampire #3)

Chapter 26

Jack

It was quiet on the castle grounds.

After I burned the body, I called Zoran and summoned my security detail to meet me at my car. I established who was inside. Ulrika along with two guests and three bodyguards. I told my guards to go inside and get rid of the guards as quietly as possible. Zoran and one of the others were to come with me.

I caught expressions of surprise on their faces.

They weren’t used to me as a man of action, of violence but I had been reasonable and sensible for long enough. The time had come for me to be ruthless and face my enemies. They were coming for Kaya and I was not going to sit back and let it all happen to us.

I entered the living room and as soon as Ulrika saw me she jumped up. The expression of shock on her face was unmistakable.

“Where is Simon?” she gasped.

“Good evening, Ulrika,” I said pleasantly enough. “I am fine, thank you. How are you?”

Next to her sat her brother, Thern Gustafson and another family member. I took out my weapon and killed Thern with a shot to the heart. The other one leapt into the air, but Zoran felled him quickly.

Ulrika stared around her in shock.

My guards came in to take the bodies out. “Burn them,” I said.

“Where is Simon?” she demanded to know.

I walked over to her and sat down.

“Please sit,” I invited her courteously.

“What is going on?!” she cried, a note of hysteria creeping into her voice.

“Simon is dead,” I said, in the same tone of voice.

Her eyes narrowed in hate. “You fucking bastard!” She sneered at me. “You killed him!”

“Well, it was me or him,” I said.

“But how did you… I mean…”

“No,” I said. “That is not what I want to talk about.”

She stared at me. “My father will…”

“I don’t care about your fucking father or his stupid, fucking family!”

That shut her up.

“All I want to know is what Da Salle promised you.”

A knowing look flashed through her eyes.

“It’s too late. Nobody can stop us now. It is our time again. Soon, we will have all the power!”

Ulrika couldn’t help herself. She started gloating about how the world was slowly being taken over by vampires, while the humans were busy worrying about climate change and carbon footprints. She said all the major organizations and institutes of power would be taken over by vampires, most of them hidden and, soon, laws would be changed to allow blood servitude again.

“Not here,” I said. “I’m going to stop Da Salle.”

“You can’t,” she gloated. “He’s already stronger than even the oldest of us. He has been taking a specially formulated protein steroid that has increased his intelligence and mind control. Nothing can stop him!” her eyes sparkled with glee.

“Perhaps occillite can?” I said, to see her reaction.

She blinked a few times. “You don’t… I mean you wouldn’t…” then realization dawned. “Ah, of course, that girlie of yours, that witch! She’s got her hands on some has she? It won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“She won’t get in the door. He’s had people watching her for years,” she smiled nastily at me. “She’s like a cockroach, hard to kill but not impossible. He’s come close, hasn’t he? The moment she enters New York, the monitors will pick her up and she will be neutralized.”

“You underestimate her. Like you’ve underestimated me, for years,” I said, taking out my gun, holding it casually.

“You’ve been trying to get rid of me for years,” I said.

“Please!” she spat out the word. “If we’d wanted that, we’d have done it. But we needed to keep you occupied here, so we could play in Europe. Simon was supposed to take over now but I could do it, I guess,” she said with a shrug. I saw that she hadn’t cared about him at all. It was all a game to her, a chess board of pawns and pieces. You lost the bishop, no bother, you simply employed the horse.

“I don’t think so,” I said, pointing the gun at her face and pulling the trigger. The bullet entered between her eyes and she collapsed in the chair.

I would deal with the Gustafson family later.

The Gustafson clan could be a problem, but I would take care of them. I told Zoran to get more men to protect the castle and to add additional cameras to the peripheral areas. I didn’t know what Da Salle was planning and if he was thinking about finding me here, I wanted to be prepared.

After the castle was clean and tidy again, the bodies removed, I had some blood to replenish my system. I actually asked for ethically sourced human blood this time, as I could feel my system lagging. I needed as much strength as possible. All of this was stressful.

I worried about Kaya and what she was walking into.

I had no idea where she was, but I could feel that she was far away. I had gotten her message and while it reassured me in terms of our feelings, I was by no means certain that she was up to this fight.

The fact that Da Salle was building himself up into some kind of super being was deeply worrying.

My phone rang.

It was Marcello. I had not spoken to him in some time, mindful of his compromised situation but it would be good to get a lay of the land.

“Ah, Jack, good to hear your voice. You had me worried!”

“Oh?”

“I spoke to Van Patten yesterday, he said you had some private issue that needed dealing with? Nothing serious, I hope?”

He was fishing, I thought, trying to find out what was going on.

“Some personal business, that’s all.”

“Of course, yes. I was wondering if you had a chance to look at that proposal that Martin had about the merger in South America?”

“Not yet, no. But I don’t think it’s the time to think about mergers. We need to calm the markets. I think we’ll be taking a hit in Europe due to the floods. I have asked for a report on cost estimates for rebuilding the hotels in the Mediterranean.”

“But the revenue coming in from the entertainment sector outside New York this quarter is significant. It does paint a different picture, don’t you think?”

I didn’t comment on that. I wasn’t going to be pulled in on the New York situation.

There was silence on the line.

“Are you quite all right?” Marcello suddenly asked.

“Of course, why do you ask?”

“You sound… a little different,” he said.

“Mmm…” I said, as if I found his comments interesting. “I have to go, is there anything else?”

“Eh… no… I suppose not.”

It occurred to me that he had not expected me to be alive.

He had called to check if everything had gone according to plan with their execution of me. My entire board had been turned against me.

I told the guards to search the rooms for anything suspicious, and to sweep for listening devices and anything out of the ordinary. Including the garages and cars.

I went into my father’s study and switched on the light.

I never came in here.

It was always the place where my father had worked. My office, on the other end of the castle in my own quarters, had been where I had worked ever since I needed a desk and my own computer.

My father’s study had huge bookshelves and deep carpets, leather sofas and a fireplace, that right now, was cold and dark. My father had liked a fire, even though he could not get physical comfort from it.

I could see him sitting in his chair now, playing with his favorite fountain pen. He’d not liked the computer age, the cellphones and the internet, preferring to go old school, as he put it.

But he had been on earth for three hundred years and he had seen a lot of change happening in his lifetime. Even though he’d agreed with the view that vampires were superior, he did think that human beings were more than food or a source of sustenance. “They are our former selves,” he had said, “ones we need to protect.”

He was old-fashioned but he believed that human beings, like children, were subjected to strong feelings and desires that clouded their minds and rendered them incapable of thinking clearly.

We were unencumbered by such weaknesses, our minds remained sharp and nimble. But we needed humans as much as they needed us, he always said. “They bring the joy,” he would say.

I had been influenced much by my father’s thinking but I had also had my own opinions. Before the War, life had been violent and tumultuous. The families had always been at each other’s throats, feuding across centuries. There was never any peace and no one could afford to lean back and rest for fear of a knife in the back. In addition, human beings were being sacrificed and treated inhumanely, causing an uprising by some of the stronger humans, which eventually escalated into full-scale war.

After the War, I enjoyed the peace that came to the world. I liked being able to run my business and build our empire, and I enjoyed the company of humans. Whenever I encountered the arrogant and haughty old families, like the Gustafson’s, I felt unease, knowing full well that they did not like the new order of things. I suspected they would break the law if no one was watching.

When my father told me that Simon was to marry into that family, I could see he did not approve but he said it would help us strengthen our family’s rise in the new world.

He’d also been more ruthless in his younger days.

As he’d grown older, he wanted to see us settled. He thought Simon’s match was a good one, strategically.

“But for you, my boy, I see a love match.”

It was unconventional talk for the times. He’d told me, though, that he’d made a love match and that he wouldn’t change a thing. Even though she had grown old and died, all in the wink of an eye.

“Wait for love,” he said. “Even if it takes a lifetime.”

It hadn’t taken quite that long but, now that I had found Kaya, I didn’t want to lose her. Especially not to a power hungry beast like Da Salle.

I needed to put some steps into place.

I called Van Patten and told him of my new idea.

“Oh, and Max?”

“Yes?”

“Get some more security for yourself and your family. You’ll need it.”