CHAPTER TWO

For the information of the lovable grammar freaks reading this little memoir of mine, I will now be using the past tense instead of the present tense, which I used in chapter one. Of course, if you’ve put the book down at this point, you wouldn’t care about little details such as that. But, being the obnoxious little vampire man that I am, I’m going to keep writing anyways.

Where did I leave off? Um…rioting…conversation… Aha. Eleven o’clock. Right-o.

So, I’m not going to bother writing about the next day. I just slept it away. See, I would normally sleep during the day, but since there was no sunlight in the asylum, I could sleep whenever I wanted, because nobody could treat a vampire for insanity. But this little siesta was planned according to the clock, and I awakened at around ten at night. Which meant I had an hour until I was busted out, and therefore an hour to get ready.

Of course, I was in a straitjacket. So not much preparation was needed. I won’t go on about that. You’re probably just dying to know what happens at eleven. I’ll skip to that for you.

As I mentioned, I was still in my cell when the clock struck eleven. My cell door opened, and in walked Abel and possibly the most gorgeous girl I had ever seen.

Which was unfortunate, for her, because…well… Look. I hadn’t divulged this sort of information to anyone, so I’m counting on you to keep it a secret. Can you do that? Of course you can. I have faith in you. The truth is…I’m not the cliché vampire in other books. My story is not the kind where vampiric boy meets human girl and they fall in love, because…the truth is I’m…I’m gay.

Sorry, this is hard for me… Please, give me a moment to compose myself… Okay. Back to the escape.

“Toby, this is Tessa Darkholm,” said Abel, as he helped me out of my restraints. “She’s gonna help us find you a place to live until we can make the necessary arrangements.”

I looked her over from head to toe. She had raven black hair and piercing blue eyes. She was a bit shorter than I, and she wore a leather jacket and a knife on her belt. I knew that kind of get-up anywhere.

“Hunter?” I asked.

“Hunter,” she replied.

How boring. I had expected someone who knew the lay of the land, like a cartographer, or a thief. If we were looking for a place to hide me, a hunter would only pick a place where a vampire was most likely to be found. After all, when hunters go to college to become hunters, hunting vampires naturally becomes their specialty.

This operation of ours was perhaps the one time that the words “two heads are better than one” mean “might as well have no head at all.”

“So…what’s the plan?” I asked.

“Get out the way we got in,” replied Tessa.

“And how did you get in?”

Abel smiled.

“I think you’ll enjoy it, Toby.”

Have I mentioned that whenever he said that growing up, it usually wound up being the other way around? No? Well, now you know.

*****

Charles had not ventured onto his family’s land since Hitler’s bombing of Great Britain, not because he had never wanted to, but because he could not. His family had been human, first of all, hateful of vampires. Second, the Love Estate in Canterbury was a place where an archbishop had died of cancer, collapsing on the street, and blessing the family home with his last breaths. It was painful to tread this land, but it was here that Charles had to come.

Daniel Love, Charles’ father, had always been a bit strange. Charles had scorned him and his love of arcane legend, dismissing this interest as insanity. But now, with doom so close he could almost touch it, Charles recalled one of the few Daniel Love legends that had caught his attention: Osiris’ Sarcophagus.

And here, on this abandoned land, in Daniel Love’s probably locked study, were the first clues to its existence. If, of course, it had not merely been imagined.

Charles did not need an invitation to enter the home, as vampires do. This place was forsaken when the last of the human Love family died without an heir. Therefore, if he was going to bend the human rules just a little bit, this place was his. All of it.

And in his home, he could plan his next course of action.

*****

I had wondered how Abel and this Tessa girl had gotten in, because at this hour, no one just walks in the happy house’s front door, and all the windows are barred with reinforced steel. Laced with silver if you’re a vampire like me. Entering as an uninvited guest is kind of difficult to do.

But I have to admit, as much as I don’t like my cousin, he never ceases to impress me.

You see, at this hour, all of the elevators in the facility are shut down as well, probably to lessen the risk of an escape. So, Abel and Tessa had rappelled down the elevator shaft from a nicely cut hole in the roof. And it was in this way that we got out undetected, thankfully. They used their ropes; I climbed the wall of the shaft. Because I’m a vampire, and I can pull off Spider-Man better than any human. Except Spider-Man, if you want to get technical.

And to get off the roof, they used hang gliders. I flew. As I descended, I saw the lights of the city, stretching away to freedom.

We landed on the street below gracefully and, with Tessa leading the way, we disappeared into the shadows of the night.

Catch me if you can, suckers.

Ha, I find that funny, considering I’m the bloodsucker.