Crimson Death

Nathaniel was in the hallway outside the room they’d given us. Dev and Nicky were permanently attached to him by my orders. Ethan and Domino along with Donnie had gone to the hotel to pick up Fortune and Echo. Echo would go in and try to talk vampire to vampire with the male vamp Edward and Nolan were trying to question.

I was so ready to trade vampires with Edward. I was sympathetic, but I just simply didn’t know what to do with Edna Brady. I don’t know if she couldn’t hear us or if she just didn’t care. Damian had been gentle, patient, and charming, and nothing had stopped the awful screaming or taken one shade of panic out of her eyes. I was starting to get a headache just from the noise.

I finally screamed her name at her. At first I didn’t think she heard me, but her eyes started to focus as if she finally saw us and the room we were in rather than being trapped in that moment when she’d come to herself, cradling the unconscious body of her first victim.

“Edna! Edna! Edddnaaaa!” I screamed at her, and the wailing slowed. She blinked and looked at us again. She was in there; behind all the noise and terror, she was still in there. That was good, I thought.

“Edna, can you hear me?”

She blinked at me. She looked scared and confused, but at least she stopped wailing.

Damian tried. “Edna, can you hear us?”

“Nod if you can hear us?” I asked, and she nodded. Yay, progress! “Do you know where you are, Edna?”

“Hospital,” she said in a voice that sounded raw from screaming.

“That’s good, Edna,” Damian said. “Do you remember why you’re in the hospital?”

She seemed to think really seriously and finally said, “My granddaughter disappeared. . . . She came home. She wasn’t dead.”

I let the whole definition of life and death go for now. “Something like that, yes.”

“Voices, shining eyes, they promised me something. They promised me . . . I looked in the mirror and I looked the same. I thought I’d be young again, but I looked just the same. It didn’t work the way they said it would.”

“What was supposed to happen, Edna?” Damian asked.

“Vampires are young and beautiful. I thought I would be twenty again, or thirty, but there was a mirror in my room, and I looked as old as ever. I hadn’t changed, and then a doctor came in happy that I was awake, and . . .” Horror filled her eyes up one memory at a time. “Oh, my God, I tore open her arm. I drank her blood!” She started to retch as if she was going to throw up.

“It’s okay, Edna. It’s okay,” I said, though that was a lie, such a lie.

“Is the doctor all right?”

“She’s in surgery,” I said.

“Did I tear her arm almost off? I wouldn’t do that. I would never hurt someone like that, but I remember the blood and . . . and voices promising me . . . I’d be young again.”

“I’m sorry, Edna,” Damian said.

She stared at him. “You’re young and beautiful. You both are. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s why you give up everything, to be young forever.”

I started to explain to her that vampires are the age they die at forever. That they don’t grow older, but they don’t become younger either. But Damian stopped me from explaining it to her. He whispered, “Later. Give her some time.”

“Where’s Frankie?”

“Your son?”

“My husband. Where’s Frankie?”

I looked at Damian, because Frankie hadn’t made it. He’d had a bad heart for years, and the doctors theorized that the shock of being drained of blood, or maybe seeing his granddaughter as a vampire, had been too much for him. Who the hell knew? If you had a bad ticker, how the hell would you ever survive the horrorfest that had befallen this family?

The youngest daughter hadn’t made it either. Her throat had been so small that the fangs had pierced too much and collapsed her windpipe. She’d suffocated before she could bleed out, so no vampirism for her.

“Who did this to you, Edna?” I asked, and my voice was gentler than it had been. It was all just so awful.

“Who did the voices belong to,” Damian asked, “the ones that promised you eternal youth? Who told you that?”

“He did.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“He came with Katie. She brought him home. He found her when she was lost and he brought her back to us.”

“What was his name, this Good Samaritan?” I asked.

She smiled at me. “Yes, he was a Good Samaritan. He found Katie and brought her back to us. He told us that we could all be together forever and never grow old, never die. I remember his eyes . . .” She frowned. “Or I don’t remember his eyes. I don’t know if I remember what color his eyes were, but they were like stars.”

We questioned her for a while longer, but all we learned was that the man had short, dark hair, maybe black, maybe brown. He was Caucasian. He was young, but since she was in her early seventies, that could have meant anything from teens to fifties. His eyes had glowed like stars, which could have meant they were paler colored, gray, or pale blue, or it could just have meant that she remembered them glowing, but not the color.

Edna’s son, Katie’s father, remembered even less. His memory seemed to stop with Katie at the door. She’d come home. She wasn’t dead. That’s where he stopped. It was more merciful than what Edna remembered.