stood guard over her during the day and was always available during the nights.
‘ Yes, I will miss you, dear Karn. Not only for your loyalty and true love, but also your companionship and understanding. Thank you for taking on the task set before you on the ‘morrow. You are the only one I’ve trusted for over 350 years. When next we meet, you and I shall both be masters of our own destiny.
Karn bowed his head. Was he crying?
CHAPTER 6: the sweetness in loss
Karn stood at the entrance to the Scarlet Parlor. He looked on in disgust; one of the few times in his life he allowed himself visible emotion. There was no one there to see him anyway. The used up bodies of the five students from UHI lay in various awkward positions, their bodies thrown awry in twisted arrangements. They had been cast aside like unwanted, discarded toys. It was a grisly sight. The smell of fresh death co-mingled with the stale atmosphere of cum and sweat in the room. The bitterness of adrenalin and fear could be tasted in that foul air. Thank the Dark Rulers that he couldn't hear anything; his other senses being so shamelessly assaulted by the scene before him. The four vampires slept on in ignorance, in their coffins, lids closed against Sol.
Sol would rise and reign in the heavens in a few moments time, and Karn would rouse them from slumber before that happened. They slept. Knowing nothing of Rosa’s final solution to use an ancient tool of incipient destruction. Karn himself had not known until last night. Instinct told Karn he was running out of time…tick tock, tick tock…
He waited one more full minute, and then walked calmly alongside the row of coffins (and Donnie’s outsized cherry wood box) banging on the lids with his hands. He walked serenely back to the door and closed it as Ling practically shot out of her casket.
“What the hell is going on?” she shrieked in anger.
Ian was next. He merely sat up with a dumbfounded expression on his face. Donnie was the third to rouse.
“Geez! WTF!”
Theresa burst out of her coffin and asked what all the noise was about. “Did we leave one alive?” she shrieked in a sleep confused panic.
Ian was the first to notice the large black man, rivaling Donnie’s immense size, standing at the closed door.
“Who is that?” to the others, and, “Who are you, black monster? Another mind-fuck from Rosa?”
Karn did not answer. He never did. The shapeshifter wanted Ian to exit the coffin to assure the plan would unfold correctly. An alert vampire was a very dangerous vampire. Ian did not disappoint, and still groggy from sleep rose from the coffin that had been his bed for years now. He advanced on Karn but never got there. Karn flipped a lever hidden in the wall. At the snap of the switch, the walls flipped to reveal angled mirrors (the Egyptians used polished metals) that caught UV rays from the sun, funneled down by other mirrors, in four shafts commencing at the roof of Castle Vladimir. Excruciating sunlight would flood the chamber reducing the undead to a smoldering pile of ash. Rosa installed the system as a failsafe. Better to fry like a moth drawn to flame, than experience the indignities of human desecration.
The vampires turned as one when the angled floor to ceiling mirrors replaced the “stone” walls. All gaped as realization dawned. A second later, ultra violet light was flushing the chamber from every angle. Ian tried to rush Karn and throw the switch back but it was too late: he turned to ash in midair, his floating embers spiraling to the red carpet. Ling went for her coffin. She wasn’t even close and burst into flame, igniting an overstuffed sofa in the process. Theresa just stood in place quietly, and just as quietly disintegrated into a neat pile of carbonized aftermath. Donnie, who could not see his reflection in the mirrors (as with all vampires) lunged at the shiny surface nearest to him. In the space of three steps, his muscle bound, 300 pound, physique