Page 2 of Vacation with the Vampire
A soft grinding noise echoed through the tunnel, vibrations trembling through the soles of my shoes. I scurried down the path and reached the stairs, as long and as winding as I recalled. My hand touched the stone pillar, then my eyes fell on the wall directly across.
The wall… it moved. A thin crack split between two sections of stone. Light shimmered inside it, wrong light, pale and silver instead of the bright industrial light coming from above. It pulsed faintly, like a breath. My pulse matched it.
I glanced toward the stairs, expecting to see the group, the guide, somebody. But the steps were empty. No voices. No footsteps. Just the quiet press of the earth and a darkness that felt encompassing, all-consuming. Those stairs were the way out, I knew that, but that cracked wall, that passage now forming ahead of me… it called.
I shouldn’t go in there. Every sensible cell in my body screamed it at me, but curiosity tugged harder. There was something else too: a pull. Gentle and magnetic, like gravity rearranging itself around my ribs.
My fingers reached out before I decided to move, and the cracked panel slid open even further. Cold air poured over me, carrying a scent unlike the rest of the catacombs, older, sharper, laced with something metallic and sweet. My skin prickled. “I’m officially the idiot in every horror movie,” I muttered, and then I stepped through.
The door, the entrance to this secret passage, slammed shut behind me. Darkness swallowed everything, including the silvery, ethereal light that had lured me in here. I screamed, and the sound ricocheted wildly, tearing out of me as panic finally found its voice. “This is the worst vacation ever!” I moaned as the scream faded into echoes in the darkness. I wassuchan idiot! Why had I done something as stupid as stepping deeper into an unknown passage inside an ossuary, of all places? Surrounded by death? It was the perfect setting for a monster to lurk, or spiders. Giant spiders.
Fumbling, I managed to free my phone from my pocket and turn on the flashlight. A tunnel, I breathed with relief. One that looked straight and precise, chiseled from ancient limestone. It stretched out in one direction, away from where the wall had closed behind me.
I did the sensible thing first, as far as one could be sensible after getting locked up in a hidden passage in the French Catacombs. My light danced over the wall that had been a doorway, a panel that had moved not that long ago. I searched for any hint of how I could open it back up again and found none. Not even a trace of hinges that had allowed the wall to move in the first place.
With a shudder, I aimed the light in the other direction, down the tunnel, which now seemed my only option. I dithered,unsure what to do. Stay here and hope someone would hear my screams if they passed by? Or follow that tunnel and hope there was another exit somewhere down the line? What had the tour guide said? Did people die in here or not? I should have paid better attention.
A hint of silver glimmering in the distance decided it for me. I hoped it was the light of an exit, and decided to follow it. The tunnel turned and twisted as I walked, narrow and tight in places and much wider and taller in others. It felt damp, and cold settled into my bones, but at least there didn’t appear to be any skeletons lying around in here. The glimmer also kept tricking me into thinking it was closer than it was, and when I realized I’d turned several corners, I halted and breathed deeply to ease the constricting panic in my chest.
That light was moving. How was it moving? Was it luring me deeper into this maze or guiding me out? I didn’t know, but when I looked behind me, I also wasn’t quite certain of the way back anymore. I couldn’t help but imagine all kinds of things moving in the dark around me: bugs, rats, and the souls of nearly six million dead. I recalledthatnumber from the tour.
Forcing my body to move forward might be foolhardy, but following that glimmer of silver felt like my only option. As if it was pleased with my decision, it seemed closer, and I thought I might actually reach it. That’s when my foot caught on absolutely nothing, and I fell. Stone rushed up, brutal and unforgiving. My knees struck first, skin tearing, heat bursting through the cold. I gasped, my breath knocked loose, hands scrambling over slick rock.
Tears burned instantly, from both pain and fear, as the dark pressed close, thick and endless. My heart thrashed like it wanted to leap out of my chest. My phone had clattered away, face down, plunging me into darkness. That sliver of silver was gone as if it had never existed at all.
“Okay. Okay,” I whispered, shaking. “You’re fine. You’re fine.” But I wasn’t fine, not one bit. Even if I made it out of this place alive, I’d never feel safe in the dark again. Then things got worse: something shifted. A low, grinding sound, like ancient stone waking from a long sleep. Similar to the wall that had moved and trapped me in this maze, but not the same at all. This was more menacing, perhaps because I could see only darkness.
My breath hitched, then got stuck in my chest. Slowly, fumbling, I searched with numb fingers ahead of me, touching dusty stone, cold and ancient, possibly untouched for three centuries. I found the edge of the phone case, pulled it closer, and managed to flip the phone around.
White light cut through the dark. It revealed a chamber carved from bedrock, vast and solemn, its walls etched with age. That wasn’t what had appeared ahead of me when I first fell, but thatwaswhere I found myself now that the light was back. The space felt almost sacred, with a vaulted ceiling like a chapel, and at the center lay a raised slab of stone.
On it… Oh boy, he was already sitting up. I stared, blinked, struggled to breathe. I even reached for my arm and pinched my skin, but no, he was still there.
Silvery blonde hair fell around a pale, perfect face. His eyes gleamed like wet ink catching moonlight. Dust slid fromhis shoulders as if he’d been sculpted from the catacombs themselves. He looked at me. Ancient, awake, and very much alive. A man, but everything in me screamed that this was, in fact, not a man at all.
Chapter 2
Raoul
When you’ve been around as long as I have, you start to believe you’ve seen it all. Paris felt like it had been imploding, and I’d seen so much war and death and disease that I’d had enough. So I slept, with a little help from my Necromancer friend, letting time pass me by while I dreamed and forgot about boredom, about despair; ennui. It was not unusual for someone as long-lived as I was to do so, but it was my first time. I’d gone above and beyond to ensure my resting place would remain secure, undiscovered.
Whatshehad done was impossible; it shouldn’t have happened. The little human had tripped into my sanctuary, literally—sprawling into the dust with a scream that had roused me despite the cloak of a Necromancer spell keeping me under. Unless she was a powerful witch or sorceress, or perhaps a vampress with talent herself, this shouldn’t have been possible.
I had not expected to wake yet. How I knew that, I wasn’t sure; I just knew I’d woken far sooner than I’d planned. I gazed at the dust that covered much of my resting place, including my clothing despite the sealed “coffin” my friend had helped place me in. I wrinkled my nose in disgust but shrugged it off.
For two centuries, perhaps more, time had thinned into something irrelevant. Long before sleep claimed me, the world above had been of no consequence. That’s why I had chosen stillness. Chosen silence. Chosen to outwait the vulgar churn of history. And yet, something had intruded.
The woman was noisy: a stuttering rhythm of breath, too fast, too loud, echoing obscenely against stone and carved pillars. Her heart pounded in her chest as it pumped life through her veins. Then came the scent, as rich as I remembered, and just as alluring.
Blood.
It was just a faint trace, but it was fresh, and it was human. I saw her the moment I looked, my eyes drawn to her like she was a magnet. Yet I forced myself to look at the other details first. She was no threat, and she clearly wasn’t going anywhere fast.
The chamber remained as I had left it: my chapel alongside the dead, ribbed with femurs and skulls stacked in reverent geometry, a sanctuary untouched by time or trespass. Well, until now. My friend had done a very good job creating this place for me, hidden, warded, supposedly forever secret. Only he could come here and wake me; there were no exceptions to that spell, as far as I knew. Either three centuries had passed, or Louis was supposed to wake me. Not this...woman.
She stood at the threshold like an error in the world. Having finally allowed my eyes to look her way, I simply stared. It was unforgivably unmannered, but I could not help myself. The improbability of her presence was almost offensive. No one came here; no one could come here. Yet she’d done it somehow, she’d broken through magic created by one of the most powerful Necromancers who had ever walked the earth.
For such an amazing feat, she was… underwhelming. That was my first, rather uncharitable thought. Her hair was a simple, nondescript brown—what one might call mousy. It clung indamp strands around her face, curling in silky wisps across her forehead. Her clothing was absurdly informal, scandalously so, though I suspected, even as I judged her, that modesty itself had long since gone out of fashion. Her posture lacked grace; she favored one side, her weight uneven, and there...
