The Cat Burglar - 14. To Catch a Thief

Traveling as a vampire was different from traveling as a human; being a newbie vamp, I had to avoid any kind of sunlight. Throw in a jet plane that could be delayed for various reasons, and it gets even more interesting. Fortunately, Caspian knew someone who knew someone who owns a plane with a neat light-tight compartment where I could sleep and wait until sunset with my day guard watching the door.

Emil had everything perfectly organized for our onward journey. A car with black-tinted windows and a cooler with bags of my favorite blood type was waiting for us at the airport’s parking garage. As soon as we settled in, I contacted Van. “Hey, we’re here. Do you still have your eyes on the hare?”

“The hare? Isn’t that a—”

“Jackrabbit, yes. Fast runners with long, powerful hind legs. A.k.a. the elusive Mr. Gideon.”

She snorted. “Your hare just broke into a fishing hut. You might better call him a raccoon.”

“He did what? Where is this hut?”

“At the moment, we’re in Wachtendonk*¹.”

I laughed. “You’re where?”

“Wachtendonk. It’s a small village around eighty kilometers away from the airport. I already booked you a room at the only hotel.”

“Sounds, erm...super exciting?”

“Very. You can easily make the drive during the night. There’s only one tiny problem.”

“Hit me.”

“As check-in is between nine am and eight pm, you’ll have to sleep in the trunk.”

“Oh, goodie!”

Fortunately, the trunk was very generous. Aykut registered us first thing in the morning. After that he met with a representative of the local wolf pack to announce our presence in their territory. We didn’t want to step on any toes unnecessarily.

As soon as the sun had set, he got me out of the trunk, and we went directly to our room. It was comfortable but small, with a very nice bathroom, a kitchenette, and most importantly, thick black velvet curtains.

I threw myself on the queen-sized bed. “I’m hungry. Can we hunt later?”

Aykut placed the cooler with the blood on the counter beside a hot plate. “Maybe not tonight.”

“I really hate yucky, cold blood.”

“We don’t know where Legate Gideon is right now. And we have a microwave.”

I sighed. “You’re right. We don’t want to accidentally run into him. Microwaved blood it is.”

Aykut perused the room service menu. “If you want, you can feed from me.”

“Really? I don’t want to um... inconvenience you. We can always warm some of the blood from the cooler. I was just being a whiny shit.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “It’s okay. I offer it to you freely. It’s not part of the job.”

“If you’re sure. I’d really like some fresh blood.”

“Of course.” He sat down beside me and offered me his wrist. “Just don’t give me any weird sensations.”

“Quick and painful, okey dokey.” I sank my teeth into his flesh and groaned. Heavenly. Not as good as Konstantin’s but very exotic.

I had just closed the bite wound when someone knocked on the door.

Aykut lifted his nose. “Vampire.”

I stretched my senses and sniffed the air. “It’s Van!” Before I could let her in, Aykut grabbed my arm and pushed me aside “Stay back.” He opened the door, standing protectively in front of me.

Van leaned against the doorframe. “Hey, guys. Travel okay?”

“We didn’t run into any major problems.” Aykut looked at both sides of the corridor before he reluctantly stepped aside. “Come in.”

“Lucky you. Our rabbit-raccoon-hare is a very, very difficult mark to follow.” She sat down beside me on the bed and folded her legs under her, eyeing the cooler. “Do you have any blood left?” She turned to me. “I’m sorry for being this blunt, but hunting is tricky while following a mark.”

I grabbed a pillow and wrapped my arms around it. For whatever reason, I was feeling cold since I left the trunk even though we normally don’t. “Difficult is this man’s middle name. You’ve tracked him since right after he left the Silver Spire?”

“Yes,” Van confirmed. “It was right after the whole pit incident. I was on guard duty at Master Caspian’s apartment when Legate Gideon visited with him. Gideon was furious. As soon as he was inside, they argued. The legate was outright disrespectful. It became so bad, I sent the soldier who was with me away to get Amir. No one outside the master’s inner circle should hear something like this. We heard Gideon loudly resign from his position as first legate and as a member of the clan. After that, he stormed out, slamming the door close. Seconds later, the Master called me inside. Instead of,” Van flapped her hand around, trying to find the right words, “telling me to rescind any of Gideon’s access codes or something, he calmly ordered me to follow him discreetly.”

“Where did he go?”

“First, he went back to his condo, where he smashed something for several minutes.”

“He destroyed all of his glass cabinets.” I shook my head. “He left a huge mess. I saw it because Caspian made me practice in one of the condo’s rooms.”

“It sounded bad, and I wanted to go in, but Master Caspian ordered me to stay away. Then Gelica came.”

I frowned. “Who’s Gelica?”

“Our barber.” Van laughed, exasperated. “After that he—”

“Went to my place to inform me he was leaving the clan.”

“When I told the master about the backpack, he ordered Emil to send a decoy after him.”

“A decoy? Why?”

“He was certain Gideon expected to be tracked. After talking to Emil, we decided to send an inexperienced soldier first, who would probably get caught immediately. With any luck, that would be all it took to convince him he got rid of any followers.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Nope. He stayed in the area so he could catch them if there’d be more. But Emil is clever. He sent Amir next, who is a very good tracker.”

I leaned forward and grinned. “But you’re better.”

“Exactly. Gideon eventually caught Amir and sent him home, then called the master and demanded to be left alone. Eventually, Caspian agreed he wouldn’t send any more trackers.”

I snorted. “But you had already been ordered to track him. No agreement has been broken. This is a clever move, worthy of a Fae.”

Van pointed a finger at me. “Your sire always said you were smart.” She winked at me. “I knew the area where Amir had been caught. I just had to wait a little for our esteemed legate to show up and I could follow him. Everything went well, but he must have still been suspicious. One day, he suddenly up and hopped on a plane. I couldn’t follow as quickly as I would’ve liked. We couldn’t organize a flight for me as the Master did for you. We had to get creative. Emil had an idea and sent me to an associated funeral home. Well, you can guess the rest, I came here in a casket.”

“Shit! What if customs would’ve opened the casket during the day?”

Van shrugged. “It was risky, but it was the only way for me to follow him without losing too much time.”

Aykut passed Van a cup with warmed blood. “Here you go. How did you find him again?”

“He was still watching the airport. I guess he wanted to make sure that the crazy stunt he pulled worked.” She folded her hands around the mug. “Yum, 0-negative.”

“Thereby making it easier for you to track him down again.” I grinned. “Where did he go then?”

“At first, everything seemed random. I had no idea what he was doing. He traveled the countryside and visited a few villages. What baffled me were the cemeteries.”

“Cemeteries?” I looked at Aykut to see if he had an idea, but he only shrugged.

“What did he do there?”

“He wandered along the graves and read the names on the headstones.” She scratched at the back of her neck. “In hindsight, I don’t think it was random at all. He was looking for something specific or someone specific. In the end, though, I’m sure he wanted to come to this very village.” She flipped her palms up. “And here we are.”

I shook my head. “Curious. Do you have any idea why?”

“I honestly don’t know. Since he came here, he walks around as if he wants to refamiliarize himself with the place. Maybe he was here in the past. The night before yesterday he stole a fucking fishing rod and for two nights now, he fishes for eels at the lake.”

I gaped at her. “He fishes for eels? Yuck! We don’t eat fish.”

“He always throws them back into the water. He just sits there, watches the lake, and waits until sunrise, then he hides in a small hut where he waits out the day.”

I looked out of the window. “Is he there right now? At the lake?”

“He was there when I left him.”

When I first decided to follow Gideon, I was furious. I was absolutely determined the second I saw him again to confront him for making lone decisions for matters that concerned the both of us, maybe tell him that he was an arrogant self-centered asshole on top of it all. I’d tell him to fuck off on my terms.

Then Caspian asked me to bring him home. One doesn’t tell their master vampire no. What should I do?

And I was curious. He’d come to this village for a reason. I wanted to know why. “Show me the way to the lake?”

Van brushed non-existent crumbs from her pants. “I can do that, but you have to be extremely careful. If he catches us, the deed is done.” She suggested Aykut accompany us in his wolf form. Gideon probably knew about the local pack, so it wouldn’t surprise him to sense the presence of a wolf. Van and I, however, had to stay invisible.

There he was, a black silhouette against the glittering surface of the lake. Some leaves rustled in the wind; the scratchy cry of a crow hidden somewhere in the trees almost became deafening.

His blond hair sometimes flashed silver, briefly illuminated by single beams of moonlight breaking through the clouds.

Gideon, former first legate of the probably most powerful vampire clan, was sitting on a wooden pier in bumfuck Germany and fishing. For a very brief moment, I felt the urge to go over to him to console him. What the fuck?

Van had directed us to stand behind some trees against the wind coming from the lake so he wouldn’t be able to scent us.

When he tilted his head, straightened, and turned his head slowly to look at a spot right across from us, I was instantly alarmed. Did he catch our scent? But he ignored us, buried a hand in his hair, and slumped. After a long minute, he sluggishly got up and headed slowly into the forest, following a barely visible path.

We waited some time before we followed him, just to be sure he really didn’t notice us. We hit an overgrown road. Gideon was already crossing an area that could have been a field or pasture a long time ago.

Suddenly, he dropped the fishing rod, fell down to his knees, and ran his hands over and over a strange white stone lying beside a partially-collapsed structure that might have been a gate post once. He had to brace himself heavily against the remains of a brick wall to be able to get up before he stumbled towards a dilapidated building almost entirely overgrown by vines.

It seemed strange to me that Gideon entered it through the long-gone door instead of just going inside where the wall had been and the vines weren’t so thick. On the threshold, he squatted down, grabbed some of the dirt and let it run through his fingers, then touched his forehead. He repeated the same ritual in several places. I assumed they had been the rooms of the structure. Sometimes he even sat down, his lips moving the entire time. It looked as if he was talking to someone, but we didn’t hear a single sound. It was eerie to watch.

When he was done, he left as silently as he came, without looking back. Van caught my gaze, briefly dipped her head at us, and vanished in the shadows, almost as perfectly as a shadow melder.

Aykut and I stayed back; we didn’t want to overwear our luck.

“What is this place?” Aykut was in his human form again.

I passed him my backpack with his clothes before I turned around. ”It’s some kind of farm—” I extended my senses and pure devastation hit me —"and I think something terrible happened here.”

Aykut pointed at a relatively new sign close to the old road and went over to read it. “It says ‘Ghost Walk Station Two’.” He read some more. “It seems the historical society of Wachtendonk organizes some kind of guided tour of diverse haunted places in and around the village. They promise thrilling ghost and vampire stories and even suggest wearing a costume to get in the right mood. The meeting point is at the old church at midnight every Friday night.”

I looked at my phone. “Tomorrow is Friday. How do you feel about a ghost walk? As the farm seems to be the second stop, we might learn more about what happened here. What do you think?”

“Why not? Could be fun.” He let me see his golden wolf eyes briefly.

At the meeting point, an eclectic group of people were already waiting when we arrived - some ‘ghosts’, a ‘zombie’, and of course ‘vampires’.

“Good evening.” I nodded at them. Aykut was once again in his wolf form and sat down by my feet, wearing a collar, his idea. I held a rolled-up leash in my hand.

One of the ‘vampires’ turned around and let his gaze wander over us. “What are you? Food?” he guffawed.

I flashed my fangs. “I’m a vampire.” I pointed at Aykut. “He’s a werewolf.”

The guy lifted his eyebrows. “Vampires hate werewolves, moron.”

I snorted. “You read the wrong books, bud.”

His friend eyed my teeth. “Wow, they almost look real. Can I touch them?”

I growled.

He lifted his hands placatingly. “Nevermind.”

That moment a heavy-set man in a monk’s habit, carrying an old kerosene lantern, came over from the direction of the church. Our guide had arrived.

“Guten Abend, ich bin Bruder Bruno. Ihr seid alle hier für die Geister tour?“*² He fixed his gaze on me. “Does anyone need the English translation?”

I lifted my hand. “Me.”

“And the wolf.” Fake vampire elbowed his friend, snickering.

I rolled my eyes. “Exactly. What’s your blood type again? Maybe I feel like having a little snack later....” I winked at Aykut when vampboy quickly took a step away from me.

We learned from Friar Bruno that the church was actually our first stop on the ghost walk. It allegedly was haunted by Agnes, whose husband and three sons had been killed in the Thirty Years’ War. I swear I heard a female sobbing in the distance when he said her name.

Our second stop was at the farm where we saw Gideon the night before. Friar Bruno called it the Michel farm. According to him, almost the entire family and two farmhands had been killed in one night. Only the body of their adopted son, Gideon, was never found.

“Their throats were ripped out; there was blood everywhere, but not as much as one would expect after such a massacre.” He lowered his voice. “At that time two vampires and their offspring had been roaming the land,” he whispered. “Eduardo and Ettore.”

Fake vampire boy cackled and showed off his plastic fangs. “Das waren wir.”*³

Friar Bruno scoffed. “They were real vampires, not some humans with plastic teeth like you. They had real teeth and claws, like the demons of old.”

I frowned. “Demons of old?”

“Lamashtu’s children, an ancient she-devil who made the first vampires. Anyway, it was horrible what happened here. They found the youngest daughter by the gate, a fishing rod beside her, and a knocked-over bucket with eels.” He pointed at the white rock. I immediately saw Gideon kneeling down there running his hands over the white rock in my mind. He had been there; he had found his little sister slaughtered by vampires.

“Maybe the missing brother came back from fishing and found his family massacred,” I whispered.

“Yes, and the vampires were still here,” the ‘zombie’ added.

“Und dann haben sie ihn zu einem Vampir gemacht,“ the’ghost‘ suggested enthusiastically.

“Speak English; he doesn’t understand you, idiot.” The ‘zombie’ turned to me. “She said, maybe the vampires were still here and they turned him, the missing son I mean. That’s why there was no body.”

Friar Bruno cleared his throat. “The villagers found the father on the threshold with his throat ripped out, a flail still in his hand. A brave man, who wanted to defend his family against a horde of vampires with only a flail. The mother was in the kitchen, and the younger brothers were found in the bed.”

And I understood. That was what he was doing there. He honored and mourned his family at the very spots he’d found their mutilated bodies. Being there again, I thought I could feel his grief—and fury. I would never forget his expression when he let the sand sift through his fingers, the ground that had soaked up the essence of their life. The very essence he now needed to live. Why had he come back? To grieve, because he hadn’t been able to do so the last time? But why now?

Friar Bruno pointed at a spot beside the house. “The farmhands were found in the barn, where they tried to hide.” He spread his arms. “This wasn’t the only vampire attack. The same thing happened in neighboring villages.”

I couldn’t help but think back of the graves Gideon had visited in the other villages. Maybe they had been the victims of Eduardo’s and Ettore’s group when he had been a part of them, and were people he killed as a young vampire.

Friar Bruno lifted his lantern. “Follow me. Now we’ll visit the graveyard, where I will show you their graves. Then we go to a pond where a water nymph lives.”

Aykut and I weren’t interested in nymphs or graves. We left the group; we learned what we needed.

Back in our room, we contacted Van. She told us that Gideon left the village after stopping by the graveyard. “He sat for hours by the graves of the Michel family, especially long in front of a little girl’s. It was heartbreaking to see.”

I swallowed. “We believe they are the graves of his family. They were killed by vampires.”

Van hissed. “Fuck!”

Then Aykut suggested that we call Konstantin and tell him what we knew so far. After he heard what we thought had happened, he told us he needed to talk to Caspian.

An hour after we’d reported to my sire, the phone rang; it was Master Caspian. “I enquired about the two vampires you told Konstantin about. There were actually two natural brothers, Eduardo and Ettore. They were the childre of Conte Ballarin’s first legate.”

I frowned at my phone. “Who’s Conte Ballarin?”

“The city master of Venice, Italy. He banned them for thirty years from the premises of Venice.”

“Not a long time for vampires.”

“I think he issued a warning.”

“Why?”

“For being wild and reckless, and attracting too much attention. It wasn’t only the numbers of humans they killed, but the brutality they killed them with. During their exile, they roamed Europe and were responsible for countless massacres among the rural population. They turned young humans to build a clan. Uneducated young vampires are savages. The masters of the surrounding bigger cities were eventually forced to send their soldiers to kill most of the childre so it didn’t get out of hand.”

“Holy shit. Then it’s all true.” I looked at Aykut.

“Ettore was still smarting from the shame of being an exile when they began to cull his childre, and he lost it and challenged one of the city masters-- and lost.

“Eduardo was devasted by the second death of his brother. Only through this tragedy was his sire able to convince the master of Venice to grant him pardon, albeit under one condition: Eduardo had to get rid of the rest of their childre. And suddenly he didn’t have a problem with their death anymore. Some he sold to pit masters, others he just killed in a fit of rage, then he returned to Venice.”

Aykut, who was listening in, growled. “Gideon was sold to Armin by Eduardo. Gideon is the lost Michel son, and the childe of one of the brothers.”

“It’s possible. What are you going to do with this knowledge?” Caspian asked carefully.

I clenched my hand around the phone. “It changes nothing.”

“Nothing? Why do you think he left?”

“Because he was furious you forced the bond and because he assumed I didn’t want to be his bloodsong.”

“Was he right?”

“Yes.” For a second I saw him sitting at the lake, his hands buried in his hair.

For a long minute Caspian remained silent. “Why did you follow him then?”

And there was my own fury, as if Caspian had turned a switch. “We don’t get to decide who our bloodsong is, right? It’s the fate’s decision. He is my bloodsong, period. We can refuse to bond, or in our case, to complete the bond. But it has to be our decision, not his. I’m fed up with people deciding shit for me. And that is exactly what I am going to tell him! Then he can fuck off.”

“You promised to bring him home.”

Fuck! “I will try, but I can’t force him. Van texted us that he is on the way to Cologne. I think we’ll follow him there and see what he’s up to.”

Caspian hissed. “It was the city master of Cologne who killed Ettore.”

“Huh. What is he going to do? Congratulate him?”

“Rudolph met his second death ten years ago.”

“Oh. I think he has some kind of plan. We’ll continue to follow him for the time being.”

“Report to me or Konstantin if you learn something new,” with that he ended the call.

I threw the phone on the bed. “Well, that was abrupt.”

Aykut scoffed. ”You weren’t exactly diplomatic.”

“I’m not in a diplomatic mood. He’s the reason I’m in this mess.”

Aykut showed me a message. “Van told us to hurry and meet her in an alley close to the huge cathedral.”

An hour later we found her where she said. “He went in an hour ago, but hasn’t come out yet.” She pointed at the church.

“What do you mean ‘he went in’? Is he going to church, or does he plan to steal something? Is there something interesting here?”

“My contacts told me there’s a vampire cemetery in the cathedral. It’s rumored to be in the crypt.”

“A what? Since when do we have graveyards?”

“Usually we do not, but there’s a cult that believes we can be resurrected by a spell as long as the ash is mostly complete. They fill it into urns, seal them, and store them in secret places, often hidden in crypts of famous churches, and wait for a powerful witch who knows the spell and is able to wield it.”

“Ettore was killed in a fight with the city master of Cologne. Do you think Eduardo is a member of that cult and buried the ashes of his brother here?” I whispered.

At that moment, Gideon slipped out from a side entrance, an unfocused smile on his face. We followed him at a distance. After a while, he stopped by a bench, sat down, and fished a jar from his rucksack. He pried the lid from it with the help of a dagger, and dropped it. Then he poured something from the jar into the garbage can beside him. He got up, grabbed his backpack, and walked a few meters before he turned into a pedestrian zone.

When we reached the bench, I quickly picked up the cork lid. Remnants of a hard black substance still stuck to it. I showed it to Van. “Sealing wax.” She sniffed at it. “Vampire ash.”

It looked as if Gideon had opened a vampire’s urn. I peered around the corner of a house. He was meandering along the street pouring small portions of the urn’s contents into different garbage cans that were mounted to small posts close to the other benches.

I whispered to Aykut, “What the fuck is he doing?”

Suddenly, Van pulled us into the entrance of a shop.

Gideon lifted his nose. Shit! He turned and followed another road until he got to a bridge that crossed the river Rhine. He went on until he reached the highest point. With a triumphant call, he poured the rest out. For a while, a cloud of ash hovered over the water’s surface until the wind merged it with river water.

We watched him from the river bank, hidden in the shadows of some cars parked there. Van stood beside me, her eyes wide. “He made sure that whoever that was will never be resurrected.”

Gideon crossed the bridge and Van stated, “It’s too risky to have all three of us follow him, so I’ll go. I’m going to contact you later.”

I watched her vanish in the darkness and yawned. “Let’s go back to the car. We need to find a place for the night.”

“Van gave me an address.” Aykut scrolled through his phone. “You didn’t confront him as you planned.”

“I don’t think it was a spontaneous idea to come here. I want to know his next move.”

“Uh-huh, sure.”

“What?”

Aykut shook his head. “Nothing.” After walking a few more meters, he stopped. “I think you’re right. He planned this in advance.”

“The whole bloodsong thing gave him an opportunity to act out this plan.”

As soon as we’d reached the car, I called Konstantin and reported to him what we saw. He cursed. “I have to talk to Master Caspian immediately.”

An hour later, we arrived at the address Van had sent us and met Sanne, a generous vampire who let rooms in her house to stranded vampires. She even introduced me to her donor. Sated, I was just lying down in bed when my phone rang.

“Do you have his sword?” Caspian asked frantically. “He’s trying to kill himself. You have to go to—”

I knew exactly what he was going to say. “---Venice.”

Gideon was out for revenge.

*¹⁾There is a place called Wachtendonk. I used poetic license to describe it and the surrounding area.

*²⁾ “Good evening. Welcome. My name is friar Bruno, are you all here for the ghost walk?”

*³ That was us.

Thank you, for reading chapter fourteen. I'm sorry it took so long; the end of the year circus blended seamlessly into the beginning of the year circus.
We learned a little more about Gideon. What do you think will happen next?
 @Valkyrie for being patient and an awesome editor.