Absolution, Page 2

  “Do you think I’m chasing you?” I asked, trying to be charming. It was working.

  “No,” she answered quietly, glancing at her feet. Heartbeat faster than when I’d miraculously appeared next to her, her body began emitting more heat. “I don’t think you’re chasing me.”

  Clearly, she was thinking about me chasing her, just as I couldn’t dislodge the chase scenes running through my head. In her case, it was all figurative. I, on the other hand, was picturing myself chasing her literally.

  And catching up with her easily.

  “What if I was to chase you?” I wondered aloud. Is there a chance that she would fare better than the rest of her friends? No, of course not. There was no way she would outrun me.

  Not on that day anyway.

  It was easy to follow up my question with another, more flirtatious one. From the redness in her face, the further increase in her body temperature, the ragged edge to her breathing, it seemed she had interpreted my first question as a flirty one anyway.

  This was going better than I planned.

  She was playing right into my hands.

  I could almost hear the answer before I asked, “Would you run or let me catch you?”

  Scrutinising my eyes as though she was contemplating the idea of letting me catch her, she said, “I have to go home.”

  Because I was expecting a different answer, waiting for it as though it was a given, I didn’t realise what she said until I saw her turn and walk away. I should have gone after her. In the blink of an eye, I could have taken a hold of her and ran us out of town.

  In all honesty, I could have abducted her the moment I approached her this afternoon.

  But I didn’t.

  Why?

  Later, I convinced myself that I didn’t want to come across too eager, too keen to follow her, just in case I failed to kidnap her. She might mention it to her friends and it would carry to her mother. It would have been a risk to shield her for too long, which in turn would have alerted the suspicions of her guardians.

  Of course, I know now why I hesitated.

  I wasn’t ready to kill her yet.

  Chapter 3: Premonition

  I had to kill her though. Ellie had to die. If she didn’t die, then I would die. My kind would die. A world without vampires is one I cannot imagine, even though a world with immortals is deemed pure fantasy by the entire human race.

  That’s the way we want to keep it.

  Humans can never know that vampires exist or that some of us have special gifts on top of our super strength, speed and intelligence. Like Lydia - she can see the future.

  And she is the reason Ellie came into our orbit.

  It’s not everyday that Lydia has premonitions. It definitely isn’t the norm for her to have one about an extremely powerful vampire-to-be, a gifted human who could potentially become a truly special immortal. Usually, it was just random visions of some vamp making a nuisance of himself, or a coven arousing the suspicions of the humans.

  So, naturally she became particularly excited when she saw Ellie.

  Lydia and I were in the Canary Wharf apartment we were renting at the time. She was opening the front door when she gasped out loud. Her eyes glazed over and she braced herself on the doorframe, breathing heavily. Her bright white curls swirled forward, obscuring her pale little face from my view. To a human, it would look like she was exhausted from a sprint and was leaning against the door to catch her breath.

  I knew she was having a premonition.

  Visions of the future sort of possess her. For the few seconds that she sees a likely future event, she almost becomes a part of that reality. Feels the feelings of the vampire she foresees, senses everything occurring in that moment.

  In the case of this particular vision, Lydia felt Ellie’s power.

  Greed glinted in her eyes as she finally turned to me, the flash of the future fading from her mind. “Christian,” she gasped.

  “What did you see?”

  Shaking her head, she exhaled deeply. “I saw…” her words were a faint whisper, distant. “Oh Christian,” she sighed, putting her hands on my chest, “she will be amazing.”

  I laughed. “So, a new recruit to head-hunt?” I grinned when she glared at me briefly. She didn’t like my HR, recruitment and head-hunting analogies. “Sorry,” I apologised, still smiling, “tell me all about it.”

  Instantly placated, she said, “I just felt her… her power. I’ve felt nothing like it. She will be the greatest weapon we’ll ever have.” With paper and pencil in her hand the next second, she dropped gracefully to the floor to begin sketching.

  I crouched down next to her. “Now, now Lydia, don’t get ahead of yourself. We have to give them the choice to join us or not. A bill was passed, remember?”

  “A damn ridiculous one at that!” she scoffed.

  I chuckled. Lydia wasn’t a fan of the recently adopted policy of letting vampires decide whether they wanted to work for the vampire government, a.k.a The System, the organisation me and Lydia work for. Those that do accept our job offer can also choose what kind of role they want within the company. Depending on their individual abilities, of course. Bottom line was, a choice had to be offered.

  Lydia and her team could no longer coerce any vampire to join the ranks.

  “Ridiculous or not, its still-” I halted because Lydia’s drawing was already near completion.

  A young girl’s face stared up at me from the canvas. She was very beautiful and I stopped myself from saying it out loud. The dark waves she had for her hair rippled on either side of her sweet, almost cherub-like face, more youthful-looking than the 17 or 18-year-old she must be. Though the sketch resembled a black-and-white photograph of a strikingly stunning teenager, I could almost see the girl’s sparkling ruby eyes.

  Lydia had such a way of getting the eyes right.

  The expression on the teenager’s face was a determined one, her great power evident in the set of her mouth, the way she held my gaze. Interestingly, I had a feeling that she was vulnerable too. Not weak, just that there was more to her than her immense strength and speed.

  She was more than just a vampire.

  Right now, she was more than a mere mortal.

  Without another thought, I pictured tasting her blood. I wanted it so bad. Flames scorched my throat as I imagined how she’d react to my teeth, what expression she’d wear on her youthful face as I drank her. Would Lydia let me have a little sip before she changed the girl, if we found her before her transformation?

  I really hoped we would.

  “Do you see it, Christian?” Lydia’s voice had a tint of awe to it, snapping me out of my delectable fantasy.

  “It’s clear she’s special,” I agreed. “What gift does she have?”

  She sighed despairingly. “I’m not sure yet.”

  This was unusual. “You didn’t see?”

  Clearly disappointed, she shook her head. In her visions, the vampire would be using his or her gift. If not, Lydia typically had a feel for it from being in that moment in the future.

  “How do you know she’ll be amazing?”

  “Because Christian, I saw her destroy an army of vampires, all by herself. Within minutes.”

  My eyes widened.

  “Exactly.” She smiled triumphantly. “I’m sure she’ll have a gift, but she wasn’t using it in my vision.” By the time she finished that sentence, Lydia had started another sketch, just the outline of the girl’s face, and I knew she would be painting this. It was superfluous because the human girl would be easily identifiable from the pencil drawing, but she liked to give The System’s agents a colour-copy for when they went hunting for the humans from her visions. “And if she didn’t need to use that gift at a time when an army was about to ambush her, then…”

  “She can handle herself without relying on that ability.”

  Humming with excitement, she flitted to her easel and started painting, beginning with the eyes. When she painted the indiv
iduals from her premonitions, she always made them as human as possible, far less beautiful than their immortal versions. And so in her paintings, she never gave them red eyes.

  This teen had brown eyes and unfathomably, they seemed familiar to. I couldn’t shrug the thought that I’d been close to those eyes before. Ridiculous!

  “What?” Lydia asked and I realised I’d shaken my head at the bizarre thought that had entered my mind.

  “Nothing, I was thinking that-” I don’t know what made me stop but I’m very relieved that I did. “That it’s strange you didn’t see her gift. Could it be that her superior strength and speed are her gifts?”

  She shrugged before resuming with the painting. She was nearly done. The cherub-like face materialising on the paper reminded me of a child. Not a child, a newborn. Coupled with those eyes… No! To rid my head of such absurd thoughts, I shook it.

  “What is it Christian?” Her work was done so she put down her paintbrush. “Are you okay? You look… anxious.”

  “I’m fine. Why would I be anxious?” I regarded her wearily. “What did you say her name was?” I gestured at the picture.

  “Ellie,” she replied. “Ellie… Ellie Dalton.” This side of her gift she adored; momentarily becoming a part of the future, she would come away with a lot more knowledge than if she simply saw the future. “She’s 17 and from… somewhere in Berkshire.”

  Once we got to The System’s European headquarters in Central London, a tall silver office block hidden (by me) amongst the City’s other modern skyscrapers, Lydia sent the painting of Ellie to our research team. They quickly located an address and other personal details relating to the girl.

  “Right, her name is Elisia Dalton, commonly known as Ellie,” Lydia told her four agents, headed up by Darryl. “This is her home and school address.” She slid a printout of the information gathered by the researchers. “And this is what she looks like.” She held up the painting. “I want her ASAP. She’s… very important. Is that understood?”

  They nodded and she smiled before dismissing them from her office. Turning to me, she put her arms around my neck and gave me a deep kiss. It wasn’t unusual for her to get romantic when she was about to make a great acquisition. I was too edgy to return the kiss with the same level of passion and she became aware of this very quickly.

  “Oh I wish I could see your future, Christian,” she sighed longingly as she pulled away. She hated the fact that I preferred to throw my ink on her foresight so she can’t have visions about my future. “What’s happened to you since you saw that drawing?”

  There was no use denying that the drawing had really affected me. But it didn’t mean I was going to disclose the reasons behind my anxiety. “Your vision,” I began, “a newborn vampire taking on an army sent to ambush her? You know what that sounds like, don’t you?”

  “You think she’ll refuse to join us and we’ll - I’ll - send an army after her?”

  “You’ve done that before,” I reminded her in a stern, professional tone. Though we ranked as equals in The System’s hierarchy, I was the sensible and rational one. Lydia could get very carried away. Not to say she wasn’t a great leader, a fierce senior agent, but sometimes she was blinded by her desires. “That’s a lot of our agents to sacrifice.” My warning was clear in my tone.

  “All the more reason for us to make her,” she insisted.

  Unfortunately, her premonitions never told her who created the vampire in question. Occasionally, Lydia would see them only moments before they were bitten. More often, she would see them once they’d been changed. Surprisingly, this premonition came to her weeks before the conversion, further reiterating how powerful this girl would be.

  The more powerful the vampire, the easier they are to sense.

  Power simply resonates off them in waves.

  “If she doesn’t want to work for us she won’t, regardless of her creator,” I warned Lydia. “And if she doesn’t, we can’t lose our best agents over her.”

  “What’s to say the army is ours?” she countered. “I don’t know for sure if she was a newborn in that vision anyway. The way she was fighting, it made me think she was rather experienced. It could be years from now.”

  “You never see that far into the future, especially if the vampire hasn’t been made yet.”

  “I saw you,” she reminded me, “decades into the future.”

  “But that’s because I was-”

  “Going to become the most powerful vampire I’d ever seen.”

  Chapter 4: Mission

  My shield might render me invisible, but I never saw that as making me the most powerful vampire that ever existed. I was glad that Lydia would find in this Elisia a new toy to drool over.

  At the same time, I felt uneasy about the newcomer.

  Soon, Lydia was restless too. “What’s taking them so long?”

  I could hear her frustration from my office across the hall from hers. I darted to her side before she broke another wooden desk by banging her hands down on it. “Calm down Lydia,” I soothed. “They said they’re close.”

  “That was two days ago!” she snapped. “She’s just a little human teenager, how can they not get to her?”

  I wasn’t surprised to see her so stressed. She had talked up the potential recruit to Mac who heads up The System’s European operations, and wanted to deliver the new acquisition before he accused her of getting ahead of herself with every vision. I always said that I didn’t know why she wanted to impress him so much, but deep down, I was more than aware of her… crush on him.

  I stopped feeling jealous over this half a century ago.

  “Didn’t Darryl say something about the girl always being surrounded by others?” I recalled, massaging her shoulders to try and ease the tension. “They’re just taking precautions. If the girl is never alone-”

  “She has to be alone sometime!”

  “You’re right. I’ll talk to Darryl-”

  “No,” she cut me off angrily. “He’s my agent. I’ll talk to him.”

  I straightened up and let her make the call. It was no use trying to pacify her when she was this wound up.

  Unfortunately, Darryl said they had made very little progress on Mission: Ellie since the last time Lydia spoke to him. “I don’t know what to tell you,” I heard Darryl apologise through the phone connection. “It’s like… she’s being watched.”

  “Why would she be watched?” Her eyes narrowed, thinking.

  “I don’t know boss, and here’s the other thing: we can’t get anywhere near her house. We weren’t going to follow her home, but last night we thought we had no choice and… That’s when we noticed the car following her - it’s always driving around after her. When I thought about it, I realised that it’s almost always outside her college when she’s there.”

  “Are they vampires, the ones following her?” I asked.

  “No. All humans.” He was silent for a moment. “They take turns to watch her.”

  I asked another question because Lydia was deep in thought. “You say you can’t get near the house - what do you mean by that?”

  “You’ll laugh at this Christian but… it feels like magic.”

  “Magic?” both Lydia and I said together. After exchanging a concerned glance, we simultaneously said, “We’re coming to Reading.” Hanging up the phone, Lydia shook her head at me. “No. This is my mission, I’m going.”

  I frowned. She was almost pulling rank on me, even though she wasn’t my senior. Yes, she’d been working for The System longer than I had, but that didn’t mean she could boss me around.

  “Both of us can’t leave HQ, you know that,” she said more reasonably when she noticed my tensed frame.

  I run the place in her absence, and she in mine, so I let her go to Reading.

  I thought I’d hear from her immediately and not three days later. I expected her to call me and tell me what she learned and not wait until she was back in London.

  “Come with me,” was
all she said when I next saw her. She came straight to my office after returning from Reading, uttered those words and left the room. I flitted to her side.

  Following her to the sound-proof boardroom, the one where only Lydia, Mac and I had the authority to enter with whoever else we wished, I kept my curiosity to myself. Whenever we used this room, the discussions related to top-secret missions and anything we didn’t want the rest of the vampires in the office block to hear.

  Once safe inside the boardroom, Lydia pivoted to face me and waited for the metal door behind me to close. I was used to speaking in this room, but I was always aware that the air molecules held all our secrets.

  And they didn’t really feel all that trustworthy to me.

  “What’s going on Lydia?”

  While she was away, she hadn’t answered any of my calls or replied to my voicemails. Darryl had assured me that she was fine so I didn’t worry about her safety. My curiosity about the secrecy the two of them maintained over this task would have heightened to new levels had I not been afraid of what she might learn in Berkshire

  And now, as she opened her mouth to speak, my anxiety returned.

  “Everything Darryl said was true,” she began. “The girl is always watched. Always followed. Never alone. And her house is surrounded by a powerful magical barrier. She seemed pretty oblivious to all this. Nonetheless, her bodyguards were ever-present shadows forcing us to keep our distance.”

  “She’s under constant surveillance and she doesn’t know?”

  “There’s a whole… team of them. It would arouse suspicion if we only eliminate a few members… we’d have to take out the whole group.”

  “You’ve destroyed entire covens before-”

  “There’s too many of them,” she cut me off coldly. “There’s a whole organisation. One I would rather not alert about our interest in the girl. The organisation is very familiar to us, Christian. We probably know them better than any other.”