Chapter 2: Rich Vampires

It was a royal emblem of the Eclipsis family, and it symbolized a solar eclipse and blood stars. A symbol that represented the family that ruled all vampire races: their monarch. This meant two things: either she was in trouble or she was not. Simple as that.

An ordinary vampire could have that tattoo because they liked it, or this vampiress could be distantly related to the family. Wait. Why should she care? No matter what, this was a serial killer. In her 23 years of life, she had never spared a monster just because of wealth or social status. 

After dinner, she headed home. Past the skyscrapers, the neighborhood she lived in was dominated by red brick buildings. Her apartment was rather a shoe box than a studio apartment. From head to toe, she was smelly and dirty; she took a long bath and washed her hair, which was as red as a blaze, the opposite hue to forest green eyes. 

After that, she spent three boring days. Not even a summon from the ORP. Apparently, she had been overthinking. Danica let go of her worries. On the fourth afternoon, a phone call from her closest acquaintance came in. What she heard was heavy breathing and mumbling words before the call ended.

A good hour later, she stood over a dead body in an unfamiliar apartment. Black liquid, blood, soaked the dirty carpet; some of them had splashed onto her face and her khaki coat. 

“He’s so hot, even in death,” Marc said from her side. His name was Marcus, but everyone called him Marc. 

“It’s an incubus. Of course, it’s good-looking. Stop talking like that about a dead body. Disgusting.” Danica shut him up. Her coat stripped off, she wiped the smelly blood off of her face with it. 

She was tall for a girl at 5 foot 7, while Marc was five foot eleven and full of muscles. He was gazing at the body of the evil creature, almost longingly, which had tried to suck his life force out just minutes earlier. The incubus was as handsome as they came. They were tricky businesses despite having no strength and speed like vampires. Otherwise, Marc could have handled him.

“Thank you, Dani. I thought I was a goner.” 

“You’re welcome. With this, I’ve saved your ass twice.”

“How about we go to Witch Bones? My treat.”

She accepted his offer. First, they needed to take care of the body. Sometimes it was unavoidable. 

“Where are we burning the body?” 

“Definitely not in this apartment?” 

“Oooh, I didn’t know that.”

“Haha, really funny. Who owns it, by the way? Did he?”

“No. The owner is probably somewhere, rotten already. I’ve been trailing him for weeks. I thought I could have resisted him. Apparently I was not. I’m not as cold-hearted as you are.”

Marc was referring to her refusal to date anyone, and also her resistance to seductive creatures, more than ordinary humans.

“Did you drive here?” he added.

“No. I came running, from five miles away from my place.”

Marc rolled his eyes, used to her usual bitchiness. As he had told her, he had chased the incubus here on foot from a cafe around the corner of this street, leaving his car behind.

In her mind, she calculated quickly what she had in the trunk. Nothing but a spare tire, a lug wrench, cables, and duct tapes. Nothing to cover a dead body as she had used up all the tarpaulin sheets.

She was not one of those hunters who carried loads of weapons around the town. Call her egoistic, but she was fully confident in herself; a couple of guns, a crossbow, and a dagger had always been more than enough for her, although she had more in her apartment, including a gorgeous katana which she was dying to use.

“Let’s find something to pack the body,” she suggested, putting her revolver back in the holster.

After rolling the body up with plastic sheets–which they had luckily found in the apartment–beneath bedsheets, they carried the body to her SUV. They could not take the elevator unless they wanted to get caught. Along the stairs and the corridors, they had to occasionally hide in corners, till the coast was clear.

“Did you hear anything new from vampires?” she asked, splashing gasoline into the grave they had dug.

“As in new ones visiting town?”

“No. As in something strange happening in their territory.”

“I don’t think so. I haven’t been keeping tabs for the last few days though.”

“Maybe there’s no news.” 

“Is there something specific you want to know?” Marc stroke a match and dropped it down. The flames roared. 

“Probably. It’s still too soon.” 

After filling the dirt over the ashes, they exited the Western Umbre Graveyard, which was occasionally filled with ghouls even though it was illegal to dig old graves and eat the bodies. 

Witch Bones was decorated like a medieval cavern: gloomy atmosphere, wooden tables, and tall stools. On the walls were animal skulls and horns. Honestly, she often wondered how they had never been sued for that controversial name. Witches were very sensitive, for God’s sake.

“That guy over there is checking you out since we sat down here. And a few others,” Marc blurted out while she was getting into the third glass of Whiskey Sour.

“Really?” she responded uninterested, mainly because she was fed up with relationships. Currently, her eyes were on the bickering succubus and incubus couple a few tables away. These were ordinary law-abiding ones, different from the killer they had buried.

“Duh, you are so clueless about this. Do you realize how gorgeous you’re?”

Coming from Marc, this was not him hitting on her. He was not interested in women.

“I’m not clueless. I just don’t care,” she answered half-jokingly.

“So high and mighty. You’re gonna die a virgin.”

“I am not a virgin. I had a boyfriend, you know that.”

Marc laughed. “Where’s he now?”

“Who knows? I know what he could be doing though. Sleeping around,” she said it too bitterly that he stopped laughing. 

“He hurt you, huh?”

“Not anymore. Thank you for the drinks, Marc. You still owe me though,” she smiled wryly before getting up.

“Of course, honey. Anytime you need, call me.”

It was quite late. Danica passed a few faes and a couple of werewolves on the sidewalks. Like most of the other races, the difference in appearance between them and humans was slight, but it was obvious to observant eyes. For instance, faes were taller usually.

She drove into the parking lot in front of her apartment building. It was dark. The nearby lamp had worked fine just yesterday, but now it was broken. As she turned into the only empty spot, she saw a shadow run past in her peripheral vision. Immediately, she searched every single inch but found nothing. Mind you, she had keen eyes, and excellent observation, according to Marc, a few other hunters, and finally her late parents. 

After a quarter-hour, she decided to leave it at that. It could have been her imagination.

In her apartment, she picked up the remote control from the settee table and switched on the TV. She let a random channel play in the background while checking her armory—which was a closet beside her wardrobe—as she did twice a week or so. It took time and patience. While doing so, she caught bits and pieces of the running programs. 

“It’s Saturday 1:00 AM. My name is Sophie Alexander, and I will be presenting this early morning news. A breaking news just came in and I would like to...”

Breaking news? Normally, there was pretty much nothing.

The newscaster continued, “... start with the news of Reign Eclipsis, the crown prince of vampires, gone missing.”

What? 

“According to our source, who doesn’t want to be named, the enigmatic prince has been in his chambers till early this evening. Nobody knows how he might suddenly leave the palace or where he might go to.”

She had heard of him. Because who hadn’t? The prince no one knew what he looked like. Well, technically, not no one. No human would be more accurate, because it was not possible that his people had not seen his face, was it? They had their territories across the world, just like the rest of ‘the other-races’, where anyone except for a vampire needed a special passport to enter. 

And boy, vampires were loaded. They owned diamond mines alongside the soil where rare magical plants grow.  

The breaking news was over within seconds. There was no other information.

Still, that was interesting, she thought, checking the magazines filled with iron bullets. Maybe he had gone eloping with his secret lover or something. Danica laughed at her own joke. Perhaps there was some sense to that joke. The prince that had never gone out of the palace. His life must be very boring. 

She closed the door. Everything was in place. She yawned, stretching her limbs. A few steps taken to her bed, her phone vibrated. 

She went to check the caller and found it named to be ‘jerkass’. Unbelievable that he would still call her after everything he had done. He was her first love and her only ex-boyfriend. All because of him, she was fed up with relationships.

Danica ignored it and kept walking to the bed. The phone kept ringing. She stomped back in anger and turned it into the silent mode.

Dead tired after wrestling with an incubus and drunk, she fell fast asleep like a log as soon as her head touched the pillow. Her night, however, was long and still had a surprise for her. It might have been a minute or an hour when something woke her up. She jumped up from the bed and took the pistol beneath her pillow.