Vampire Sunrise

Chalk Lines

It was hard to leave Katie, but her death would be for nothing if we didn't find Dominus. We moved into our rhythm and headed over to the French Quarter Mansion trap area. I knew none of the vampires got past us to step in the trap across from the blood bank.

It didn't take long for us to arrive at the spelled area. The trap was laid across the entrance to the French Quarter Mansion Hotel. The witches weren't lying; the magical footprints were impossible to miss. The impressions were almost identical to what it would look like if someone walked through wet paint, then started running. I counted nine sets of prints going through the trap leading into the hotel.

The door of the French Quarter Mansion was not in its normal pristine condition. The glass on the front door was cracked, and the oversized door hardware was bent and loose.

We opened the door and walked into the lobby area. The French Quarter Mansion typically had a stark white rug in the lobby, but today the carpet was a rusty brown color. A mixture of blood and mud from the recently escaping vampires had discolored it.

We followed their magical tracks past the front counter, and just as I expected, the tracks led into the bar that I pulled John Maddox out of to start this war. I opened the blood-crusted bar door and walked in, following the vamp tracks.

The bar was deserted, no music played, no Roxanne or bartenders. Just a dark room with magical footprints leading toward the door marked private. We walked down to the half-open door and pushed it open.

I heard a faint noise—a whimpering from down the left corridor. No footprints were going in that direction, so whoever was there didn't come from the fight. We walked down the hall past the first set of rooms and found a sitting area complete with a sofa and a dusty out-of-order vending machine.

Sitting on the sofa with his face in his hands was a vampire I recognized. I didn't need to see his face to know who he was.

"Anton, so good to see you; how have you been," I said.

He looked up and said, "Alice, I swear I didn't fight against you; I swear it."

"Anton, I'm not concerned with what you've done tonight. I am concerned with knowing if Dominus Strum came through here, did he?"

"Yes, Alice, he and four of his guards and a couple of others."

"Do you know where he's going, Anton?"

"No, he ran through here very quickly. All I know is that he went down the elevator to the tunnels."

Angel and I left Anton and went back the way we came. If we're going to catch up to Dominus, the chit-chat had to be minimal. We went right at the split and headed for the elevator. The elevator was still on the lower level and had to be called. We pressed the button, and the ancient motor started recalling it. We needed to hurry.

Once the elevator clanged into place, I grabbed the metal accordion screen that protected the shaft and slid it open. The floor of the elevator was bright from all the magical footprints crisscrossing over each other. We had no way to tell whose prints were whose.

Once we arrived at the vamp tunnels, footprints exited the elevator in both directions going right and left. If Dominus had his guards with him, they would leave the most footprints, so we decided on heading left.

Dominus would run from a fight, so he wasn't going to do something sneaky like have his guards go one way and him another to throw us off. No, he undoubtedly was going to have as many guards surrounding him as possible. We moved into our rhythm and, in seconds, passed the stairs that led to the sauna and ball court.