Page 64 of Hunting My Vampire

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 thatclouded 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.”

Chapter 27

Kaya

Da Salle was almost impossible to get to.

Almost.

It took me a while to come up with a plan and it was by no means infallible. In fact, there was a big chance I wouldn’t succeed. I had only two days to execute the plan, if I wanted to act according to the Native American astrological chart.

And I did.

When I came down from the mountain, slightly light-headed from the lack of food and the vast amounts of coffee I’d been drinking, the only person I talked to was Josie.

She had to be my back-up on this.

“You’re right,” she told me as I drove away from the place I’d called home for the first fourteen years of my life, a landscape that had shaped me in more ways than I’d realized.

“If you’re going to do this, you’re going to need help.”

She had accessed Da Salle’s diary and was able to tell me when he was going where. Basically, he would only leave the building where he lived and worked, to go to the airport to fly to Washington on Friday. The two days before that would be the best to get hold of him.

But that meant breaching the Skyline, one of the city’s most impenetrable buildings.

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