The Quill Pen Killer (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 1) Read online

  "I don't think so," she concedes.

  "I can see why you're skeptical. He's got the wrong idea. Anyway, I gotta get going. Don't work too hard."

  "I won't," she smiles and continues looking through files. He exits the office and closes the door quietly behind him. Date begins to whistle.

  "Here's something, " She says and pulls out an article. She scans it quickly and then pulls out a whole file.

  "Good," she exclaims thumbing through the file. She takes the file to her desk. Date, sitting at a desk in the back of the messy, creative, office room, looks through photos of statues and arranges clipped articles from the file now on her desk. She picks up one of the photos and examines it closely. A wind mysteriously blows through a cracked open window above the radiator, picks up one of the clippings off the top of her desk and floats it into her lap. She picks it up and reads it. It is an article called, The Bleeding Saint of Nostradamadaeus. The photo shows a woman who has just touched the statue with a drop of blood on her hands, crying. Date skims the article.

  She reads out loud, "The bleeding saint statue drips tears of blood and drops from her finger supposedly each time the famous vampire of Nostradamadeus feeds. Well, this is the one," she exclaims. She pulls out a highlighter from the top drawer of her desk. And then shivers from a sudden cold that runs down her back.

  The next night, Date, Jessica and Jessica's father sit at the dining room table of the DeAngeliuson's dining room. The antique candelabra, a vampire family antique of significance, is lit in the center of the table.

  "Please pass the salt, Jessica," her father says. Jessica passes it. He hesitates, looking at her fingernails.

  "You had those done?" he asks.

  Jessica pulls them back quickly, "Well, um, not exactly. Date!" she changes the subject, "how's work? How's writing?" Date, who formerly had a name, not simply a title, responds, having accepted Raven and Jessica's explanation that it's easier not to learn the names of Jessica's fathers’ girlfriends (since they change so rapidly), and knowing that they wanted to call her something - anything at all, really - (Raven told her) was a compliment. The fact is, they liked her, and decided to call her Date.

  Jessica's father thinks it's horrible, but she answers to it, smiling happy to know they like her. Being a reporter, she too forms bonds quickly, in and out of people’s lives, so she understands this nickname is Jessica’s way of accepting that she might not become her second mom; and, Raven’s way of helping his friend accept the unusual lifestyle she has with her father.

  "It's too hard for me to keep a full time job... and work on my book, so I've taken a leave of absence. The book's taken a break too... actually... you know, Jessica, what I've been doing? I've been looking into that story of Ickabod's, the one he told us the night of the party."

  "O yes, the statue...." Jessica remarks. "Did father tell you he's an ancestor? Of the one who had the statue made."

  Date instinctually places a hand near her throat, "What?! No!" Jessica's father looks at her and sighs. He rolls his eyes.

  Jessica smiles at him and continues the discussion, "I've got a wicked photo, you're going to love!" Date pulls her wrap up a bit closer around her shoulders.

  "Cold?" Jessica's father asks her.

  "No, not too bad," she says to him. Then, with all the courage of the Associated Press, she looks right into the eyes of a vampire and says, "Tell it." Jessica smiles with glee and nearly claps her hands, but Jessica's father interrupts.

  "Jessica, how about you get us some more water and wine, hmmm?" Jessica pauses a moment while he stares at her, one eye's gaze stronger than the other.

  "Perhaps," she says and gives him a sly devil look as she swivels out of her chair and into the kitchen swinger, allowing it to flap behind her as she leaves the room. Jessica's father, always the enticing vampire of legends, especially to a guest in his house, turns to his date who has become more reporter than victim and tries to regain control of this night.

  "Ickabod's quite consumed with this statue nonsense, darling... how about we keep that talk to a minimum for the night. I've had about all the talk of that legend as I can stomach." And then with a sweet touch of enchantment he strokes her hand, looks into her eyes, bends to whisper in her ear... all at once, Jessica swings back in with a boisterous interruption and Date perks up from the swoon she is about to experience awakening back to her reporter instincts like a slap on the back or a strong cup of coffee.

  "Lookey here!" Jessica swings the bottle left to right.

  "Shall I pour?" She leans over Date and fills her glass.

  She says quietly, looking defiantly at her father, "Come up to my room after dinner. I'll show the photo to you. You’re going to love it." She moves over to him and fills his glass.

  "I know when my attention is being 'diverted'."

  "Thank-you dear," says Jessica's father.

  "Can I have some?" she asks.

  "No," her father replies. Jessica flops down in her chair sending her yellow, cotton dress flouncing up.

  "Hummph!" she says. Thanks to Jessica's offering of information and the family photograph, Date manages to 'keep the date light', spending most of her time with Jessica dishing on the facts they both have found about the creepy, blood drip legend. Despite Jessica's father's first attempts at enchantment, he soon gives up and retires to the conservatory for a smoke of a good cigar. Consequently, in his mind, his preference to excuse himself and allow the girls to chat, is the only reason Date managed to leave the gothic vampire's house, that night, undrained.

  In Date's mind, being a stickler to the subject matter, mind on the business at hand, adherence to a strict code learned in journalism school, is how she got her facts, unharmed (and without a single pint drained - but she does not know that factoid just yet). In Jessica's mind, the night went so well. This is the only girlfriend of her father's to have passed her 'dinner party' test. O, Jimeny, she is excited about the articles on the statue Date has found.

  The next night, Date hums to herself over the sound of the old radiator, again in that creepy little office above the hum of Main Street, just around the corner from the coffee shop, and up the two flights of stairs. Date is on her cell phone, standing over a desk. She has photos out and a file under her arm. The number she has dialed picks up.

  Date talks into the phone, "Jessica... Hi... I didn't want to tell you this at your dad's, but I think I've discovered some evidence... I think the statue might be a fake." Jessica and Date agree to meet.

  "This is shaping up to be quite a case, potential art fraud, better to meet in person," Date says into the phone, with her voice one-half tone lower than usual.

  Jessica is not sure just what kind of mortal Date is, in that she'd want to keep on this statue business and even discuss it with vampires – as she must have realized, at least subconsciously, from clues like the photograph, just who she has fallen in with on this case – but she's glad that Date is more set on helping unravel this caper than Raven was, as he seems, lately, to have disappeared. Jessica grabs a sweater while across town Date grabs her file, and off they both go to meet at the Jessica's favorite coffee shop somewhere near 10 o'clock at night.

  Together at a table under warm lamp light, Date and Jessica sit looking at photographs.

  Date remarks, "See, here." She points at a blown up detail of the photo Jessica had given her the other night.

  “This part," she taps on the photo near the statue's hand.

  "It's in the photo you gave me, and the photo from the article... but in this photo, the photo I took at Ickabod's party... look here," she taps on the other photograph, "his statue doesn't appear to have that part on it." Jessica sees the name of the vampire in the article and hurriedly opens up her notebook to check the first page. Not wanting Date to see the type of 'ink' she quickly shuts the book as soon as she realizes it is the same name that she wrote in her notebook that night. The night of the feed.

  "Fascinating," Jessica exclaims and then adds, "I wo
ndered."

  "Wondered what?" Date asks, a woman who has probably never let a 'wonder' go in her life without

  inspecting it thoroughly first.

  "I wondered if Ickabod's statue weren't a fake," Jessica covers, realizing that she really had wondered why, that night, after her first bite as a vampire, she had written the name of an ancient as if that name or the statue had something to do with her blood thirst.

  "I wondered too," Date explained her skepticism. "I mean a statue that famous, not likely, right?"

  "Ah! and it would explain Ickabod's disappointment," Jessica defends him in his obvious error.

  "Is he disappointed?" Date asks.

  "Yes, quite. But I didn't tell you that. How close are you and my father, anyway? He hasn't, told you anything?" Jessica looks intently at Date until she responds.

  "O yes, he lies all the time," she laughs and nearly snorts, "he told me he was a vampire. Can you believe it? He's full of stories... I think he just wants to keep it light, easy, you know, not jump in to becoming too close."

  Jessica sighs, "Uh, yeah, that could be it. Do you think we should tell Ickabod, what we've discovered?"

  "Definitely." Date looks at her watch.

  "Do you think it's too late?"

  Jessica smiles, "For Ickabod? Definitely not."

  Date takes out her phone and starts to dial, "Tonight, then. Let's call first. Be sure he's home."

  Jessica starts gathering up photos and putting them back into the envelope. She picks up her notebook and sets it on top of the envelope. She licks her dry lips slightly, then picks up the water glass in front of her and gulps it all down in one drink. Increasingly over the hour long 'meeting' Jessica has become consumed with a thirst, not just for information, and not just for a desire to 'write' again. After confirming the drop in visit with Ickabod, Date hangs up the phone.

  "You ready?" she asks. Jessica shakes her head, looking around for more water to quench her increasing thirst.

  "Let's go," she says, instead, and leaves the building thirsty.

  That night, in Ickabod's mansion, Jessica caves in to an ancient command welling up from deep within: the call to nourish her vampire angel. The part of her that has lived forever, and yet, has not been known to Jessica, in full, until the appearance of this statue. A stirring of the ancient soul? A spell cast by an ancient of her own kind? Or did that ancient, although seeing girlish innocence in his artist victim feast upon a witch by chance giving sorcery to its statue evermore? Just a coincidence of time; youth and girlishness passing, this statue nonsense, her father thinks. And afterall, he is a vampire. Whichever the case, Jessica receives the call to feed as only a vampire, or a chupacabre does. So over-whelming to her is the call this time around, that although there is no break-in or intruder to provoke her attack, she lunges, from up in the tower - up in the room with the view from Jessica's previous visit with Raven – at her new friend, one of great help to her on the case of the statue by the way, draining the human of human blood through a two-fanged bite on the neck.

  "How dare she?" is what Date is thinking as she sinks into enchantment as so does not feel but the first prick of the bite on her neck. Vampires are really quite full of heart. If it weren't for the enchantment, they couldn't do it at all, really, this drain the blood thing - too painful – and they feel so bad about it, afterwards, anyway. Some actually cry.

  "But, how else would they survive?" they worry. And so, they practice the ancient art of enchantment; it alleviates the pain, and the guilt. And this one... O forbidden souls of the forgotten! Our Jessica! There really is no way to get around the guilt she will feel on this one. Concerto music, at crescendo as Jessica drains until nearly dry to quench a thirst too forbidden on earth that the immortal soul is grasped from within, no earthly science has explained it. Jessica pulls away from the human form. Her eyes wild with the life force she has just sucked away from her fellow sleuth, now allowed to slump in the corner while Jessica pulls her notebook from her pocket, sits down, next to the mortal she’d nicknamed – for chisels sake - Date, and dips her quill pen into the blood stain of the two bite marks, the holes like open ink wells, and begins to write, furiously, with the 'ink' of immortality. The concerto music that occupies her ears increases in volume as, once again, her pen darts across the parchment page.

  At the same moment, in some dark corner of a house, somewhere far away, the statue, not Ickabod's, but a similar, if not near exact replica, begins to bleed, several seconds, two, tiny drops given, spilling down the front of it.

  Back in the tower of Ickabod's mansion, Jessica writes and Date slumps in a corner, dazed, drained, and the usual zombied-out, but with this trusted one-of-night, downright deceived! Jessica, startles suddenly, at the sound of her father's 'vampire voice' booming up the tower stairs.

  "Uh-oh," one would think if they were watching this. Jessica looks up from her notebook, eyes wide and glowing - the look of full vampire state. She looks wild and gothic as the ancient call captivates her essence. He flies up the stairs, once again, instantaneous vampire flight. (Remember, I told you, not

  what you want to see coming down the hall. No time to react at all!) Her father stares at her, hands on his hips.

  "Jess-ic-a!!" he bellows. Jessica flies to standing, instantaneous - her first time. If he wasn't so mad, he would probably coo at the cuteness, like a toddler's first steps or its first bits of cake. But he is. Mad. Real mad. Mad like a vampire gets mad. She makes a loud, yet empty, vampire cry, herself. He makes a don't-mess-with-me-daughter cry, back, that shakes the walls. She slams shut her notebook and flies, instantaneously again, away - out the coved, arched opening in the wall, down over the hedge till her feet reach the earth, and she runs away into the darkness avoiding the fury of her father and the shame of what she has done.

  "Bravo!" Ickabod would have said if he'd seen it.

  "Jessica's first flight! She's such a dear." And he probably would have clapped his hands and smiled at Jessica's father, calming him down quite a bit. Ickabod isn't here; however, and Jessica's father is not calm. He picks limp Date up in his arms. He makes a loud, vacant noise that bounces off the window and then directly into Jessica’s hearing distance on a sound wave of its own. She turns and looks toward the source of the enraged but familiar sound, glaring for a moment with the vampire glow to her eyes. Then, she runs out into the night, ashamed and admonished for having nearly killed the best person to be matched up with her father at she had ever known.

  Feeling less than good about herself the next day, Jessica asks Raven if he'll go with her to pay Ickabod a visit and tell him that she thinks the statue is a fake. Rationalizing somehow that if she finishes what her and Date had started that night, Date might not be so angry with her when she is back to a full cell count and ready to get back into working together, solving this case; and Ickabod's involvement, now, Jessica thinks, would really make Date proud when she 'wakes up' and revitalizes.

  What Jessica does not rationalize and truly is not able to realize at this time, is that she is being compelled, by this statue, by the ancient spirit aroused in her, and her very vampire essence, to lure mortal after mortal to that tower on the pretext of solving an art caper which is really an ancient, blood-thirsty vampire's graven image (or as it may be, energy, model, or bust) of his very meanest (really!) attack of the very artist who made it for him. So sad was it that statues cried blood. And so possessed with it is Jessica that she heads off, first thing that 'morning', for Ickabod's Mansion to engross herself, again, in this topic of the statue. This interest, this longing, this preoccupation she wears like a veil she can't take off. Because it is not a preoccupation, it is a need. A need to feed. She walks with Raven who is dragging his feet. And who wouldn't? This does not feel right to him and he is not about to pretend. Jessica notices his demeanor and asks him,

  "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing," he replies.

  Jessica digs a little deeper for an honest response, "You haven't bee
n yourself today."

  Raven shrugs his shoulders, "I'm not used to this. That's all."

  "What?" she asks, "Me being a vampire?"

  "I guess so."

  Jessica reminds him, "I've always been a vampire, you know."

  "Yeah, but now, it's different."

  "Well, how do you think I feel?" Jessica asks.

  "Like a wolf spending the day with a pork chop?"

  Jessica laughs, "You're stupid."

  "Am I?" he asks, noting that she avoided the question.

  "No!!" she insists. "Stop looking at me like that. You never used to look at me like that."

  "Just keeping my eyes open," he says. They approach the front door.

  Jessica steps to the side, "You knock." Raven lifts the heavy knocker and pounds on the door several times. A thin, man with an eye piece and a black and white suit with black buttons with diamonds in the middle answers the door. He has one hand behind his back and white boots with black toes.

  Ickabod's doorman says slowly, "Welcome."

  Jessica asks, "Ickabod home?"

  The doorman asks a question in response, "Who can I say is calling?"

  "He's a friend of my father," Jessica explains,

  "DeAngeliuson, Jessica DeAngeliuson. And Raven," she puts a hand out toward her friend. The doorman looks them both up and down during an awkward silence.

  Just before Jessica opens her mouth to explain again he says, "Please wait," and shuts the door.

  Raven turns to her and whispers, "I hope he's not here."

  "You really didn't want to do this, did you?" This time, Jessica gets slightly irritable at his less-than-enthusiastic attitude.

  "Why didn't you just tell me."

  Raven confronts her, "But I did! Do you know how hard it is to tell you when I don't want to do something with you? It's like you didn't even hear me."