Illuminated (Vampire Tales #1)

Chapter 1

I felt the cold fingers of the changing season reach across the café’s outdoor terrace and dance right up my spine. The warm fall day drew to a close with the trees all along the coast tinted vermilion and gold, and darkness rolled in with the tide, the sky above as pretty as pulped roses.

“Need another?” asked the very attentive server.

Her eyes were ocean blue, and her golden earrings caught the fading light slanting in from across the water.

She wore a surgical mask like most of the staff I’d come across in the region, even though they were no longer mandatory.

“You seem to inhale them. You know that might cost you sleep, right?”

I smiled back at her and finished the last of my latte. “I always inhale great coffee, but this will have to be my last. I like to work at night.”

True enough, even if I had captured mostly sunlight and shadows, leaves, and people today—not my normal fare. The touristy charm of the place had simply lured me in. That all the cafés I found here had great service, views, and coffee didn’t help me regain my work attitude.

She looked me up and down, no doubt taking in my hair, which was slightly past shoulder length and a caramel brown that had distinct red notes with a sepia filter, then the piercing blue eyes most people liked to comment on, and—last but not least—my pseudo-geeky Schrodinger’s cat tee.

“My mother would tell you that a good boy like yourself should be in bed at night. What do you do?”

I laughed and tucked a strand of my hair back behind my ear. “I’m a photographer, and I like editing when it’s dark out. Just a night owl thing. Could I get the check, please?”

I hadn’t planned on doing any editing tonight though. I wanted abandoned places for my next exhibition, and if you didn’t mind a bit of driving, this area had plenty. The most important thing was not to get sucked in by all the vacation vibes.

“Wow, an artist! You’re the first in Brightam this season, or at least my first. Be right back.” She winked at me.

My bag sat on the chair to my right, and I dug through it for my notebook and phone.

My slightly battered but trusty notebook contained the longhand list of places I wanted to go see.

I unwound the elastic that held it closed and checked the list I’d bookmarked with an old receipt for a bagel and coffee against a map on my phone to see if I could still get something done today.

If I didn’t, this really would be a vacation day, and I was definitely not on vacation.

Besides, I was sure some lowlight photos would add a creepy aspect to my work that people often told me was there to begin with, even if I never tried to put it there.

The seventh place on my list was a church that had been abandoned for decades, complete with a garden of headstones surrounding it, and it was only a thirty-minute detour on my way back to Cromere, where I had booked my hotel for the month.

I had my external flash in the car. Going to the church and getting photos of headstones with a dilapidated building in the background in the almost-dark would be perfect.

“Here you go.” The server put the check on the table. “I put my number on there in case you’re staying in town and want to do something later. Together.”

I’d seen that coming about two lattes ago, and I did consider it for a moment. The church actually sounded interesting though; more interesting than vacation sex when I wasn’t even on vacation, technically.

“I’m afraid I have to get some work done, actually.

” I indicated my notebook before putting my improvised bookmark back and packing everything into my bag again.

“But thanks for the offer. Maybe another time.” I tipped her generously then carefully folded the receipt with her contact info and tucked it into my wallet.

She shrugged. “Give me a call if you change your mind. Or come back tomorrow. I always have the late shift.”

“I just might.”

We smiled at each other as I left the café and stepped out into the silvering evening light.

Over the ocean, the pinks were surrendering to indigo and teal. Night’s breath was icy on the breeze. I shivered in the breeze as I headed toward my car.

I left the car at the mouth of the path that led to the church and pulled on my jacket as I walked. It was a short walk of not even ten minutes, and I was glad that I also kept a flashlight in the trunk. Even with an almost full moon above, it was dark out here.

The trees grew tall on all sides, branches eating at the dusky sky.

Insect noises and the sound of my footsteps were the only things I could hear, and there was something wonderfully peaceful about that.

I hadn’t lied to the server, I was a night owl and always had been, but I lived in the city, and night in the city was never really dark or silent.

Being out here was a different experience, and refreshing in its way.

The church stood ahead of me like a looming gargoyle.

It was slightly uphill, which helped with that perception, but there was something…

I had the overwhelming sense that the church had been waiting for me.

That was nonsense. Buildings didn’t wait or want, they just existed and aged and crumbled, but the fact that this place made me feel like the church was a living being boded well for the photos.

I snapped a couple where I stood, looking up toward the church.

I captured the path leading up to the church building, its edges eaten away by nature taking back what people had made.

The church itself was really just a small building that might have held a congregation of maybe two hundred.

From what I had read, there was an abandoned mining town nearby, and the church had been left behind when the ore ran out.

The bones already in the earth had been left as well—a strange sort of exchange for the ore, iron paid for with bone.

When I reached the cemetery grounds, the glow from my flashlight washed over dark headstones that had leaned this way and that with time’s pull.

With the dark church behind them, all this needed to be the perfect set for a horror movie was some fog and maybe a wolf howling. I chuckled. This was wonderful.

I decided I would just walk around a bit so I could get a feel for the place and take some shots as I did so to begin with. I turned the flashlight off and got started.

The strobing light of my camera flash cast odd shadows that lingered on my retinas.

I made my way toward the church doors in a slow half circle, not really planning anything, just going by instinct.

Then, in the light from a shot of a cracked church window, I saw that the door to the building was open, just enough to draw a hard shadow in the flash.

I stopped and turned my flashlight back on, aiming it at the door. I took another picture even though the flashlight would mess up the lighting. I wasn’t sure why; I was usually pretty good about not wasting shots. Some instinct maybe, or a random muscle jerk.

“Oh, opportunity, you call me,” I whispered, shining the flashlight up the door, which was indeed open.

I walked right up to the door, already planning to come back tomorrow to take another series of photos of the place in daylight.

Maybe I could overlay them. That might give me some interesting effects.

Or I’d just put them next to each other.

With the pandemic still going strong, I’d also started considering virtual exhibitions—virtual experiences, really—and this place seemed ideal.

To continue the theme of spookiness, the door creaked louder than the insects’ humming when I pushed it inward, but it gave readily enough, not at all like I would have expected from something that hadn’t been moved in decades.

I ran my flashlight beam up the wall on my right, but this church had been a simple one even when it was in use.

There were no carvings or other decorations, nothing of the ostentatious gold leaf and vain decorative elements a lot of churches seemed to go in for.

I skimmed fallen and rotting pews with my light, let it run ahead toward the altar, and all of a sudden, the peacefulness drained out of the night.

There, in the circle of light, was a person, or something that looked like a person.

They had been bound to a cross fastened to the altar.

They were dressed in all black, and long black hair fell over a head that hung limp, staring toward the floor.

In the light, I watched as a drop of blood glistened as it fell from a person’s chin.

There was a puddle there, bright still, and before I knew what I was doing, I was running toward the person.

“Hey!” There was no reaction. Someone had done this, had brought another human being here and hurt them. I wasn’t thinking rationally. If I had been, I would have reached for my phone to call the police. Instead, I did what anyone would do when they see another person hurt. I helped.

I let the camera drop on its strap around my neck and very carefully lifted the person’s head.

It was a man, although the long hair had initially made me think it was a woman.

His face had been savagely cut, the deep gashes making it painful to just look at him.

His eyes were barely open, but his lips sort of quivered.

“Oh, you’re not dead, you’re not dead,” I heard myself say. “Hang on, I’ll help you, just hang on.”