across the room and had his hand clamped over the other man’s mouth to prevent him screaming, or indeed making any kind of noise at all. He lowered his head to the neck he had exposed then, and sank his teeth into the pulsing jugular so he could begin drinking; he felt the man stiffen when his teeth punctured the neck, but as the life was drained out of it the body relaxed in his arms until finally he was as limp as a rag doll.
“I feel better now,” Julian remarked aloud, not that there was anyone around to hear him. The pain from his gunshot wounds was gone and he knew his body’s healing rate would be increasing, to the point where it would soon be difficult to tell that he had been shot. In a couple of days there would be no sign at all of the injuries he had received.
He looking down at the body he was still holding and was tempted to just drop it and leave it where it fell - he thought better of it, however. With ease he lifted it up so he could carry it over to the freezer compartment he had so recently escaped from, where he shoved it carelessly inside, though not before he had taken the car keys from the man’s pocket and emptied his wallet of cash.
The door wouldn’t stay shut, despite Julian’s efforts to bend it back into shape, so he gave up on it. The body would be found eventually, no matter what he did; since that was the case he decided there was no point in him worrying about it, not when he could feel that dawn was getting close, and he needed to find himself some cover, some protection from the rays of the sun.
Julian considered himself smarter than most other vampires – for that was what he was – not that he had met many, beyond the one who made him, which was why he had been working the night shift at the petrol station and he lived in a flat; doing so made him less conspicuous. He realised he could no longer go back to either, however - too many question would be asked, questions that he couldn’t answer without revealing his secret. Since he was smart, he was prepared for the possibility that something would happen that would make it necessary for him to leave the area in a hurry, though he hadn’t expected it to happen so soon - he had only been there for a year – and he had a few places where he could hide during the day. He also had money and other essentials stashed away to help him get set up in his next town.
Finding his way out of the morgue proved not to be difficult, for there were signs for him to follow, and he was soon out in the predawn darkness. He had neither seen nor heard any indication that there was anyone in the building other than the now dead morgue assistant, which meant it would be a while before anyone knew he had risen and was not as dead as he had been believed to be.
The exit he had taken was at the side of the building and it opened onto the car park, which was conveniently empty but for a single car. He guessed it belonged to the man he had killed, a guess he learned was right when he unlocked the car with the keys he had taken from his victim. Starting the engine, he shifted into gear and raced from the car park, keen to get under cover before dawn broke.
With every passing minute he became more concerned; the morgue was in a part of town he was unfamiliar with, and he wasn’t entirely certain how to get back to the petrol station he worked at – all of the bolt holes he had prepared were to be found in the area around it.
In the end he managed to find somewhere he recognised with only a couple of wrong turns, though by then he was more than a little worried by the proximity of dawn. He was so worried in fact that he went against his nature and put his foot down so that he was speeding through the streets, more concerned with getting caught by the sun that would soon be rising than by the police, who could not hurt him as much as the ball of fire in the sky could.
He continued on past the cemetery that was just down the road from the petrol station for a couple more streets, only then did he ditch the car in a street he knew was used as a short cut through the area. He returned to the cemetery as quickly as he could, taking a back route that would ensure he wasn’t seen by anyone in the petrol station, and once there he darted between the headstones until he reached the mausoleums in the oldest section.
The first rays of the sun were only a few minutes away – he was so attuned to the arrival and departure of the celestial orb that he could tell, with that level of accuracy, when it would broach the horizon – when he slipped inside the mausoleum he had broken open not long after he arrived in the area. He pulled the door closed behind him and then checked for any sign that light would penetrate his haven; he couldn’t be certain, but what he could be sure of was that any light that did get in would be no danger to him. That meant all he had to worry about was the possibility that someone might realise the mausoleum had been opened, a possibility he considered unlikely since no-one had realised during the eleven months that had passed since he first broke into it.
Satisfied that he was not going to be turned to ash while he slept the day away, or be found by some curious groundskeeper, Julian crossed to the oldest of the sarcophagi. With an ease that no mortal could have matched, he slid the lid to one side. Inside were the remains of what had once been a man - over the centuries the body had been reduced to nothing more than bones with fragments of clothing clinging to them, fragments that were barely recognisable as having once been clothing. Some people might have been disturbed by the sight, but he had seen worse and so ignored it and reached into the sarcophagus.
He didn’t think there was any need to check the contents of the small bag he took out, but he did so anyway, just in case someone had discovered it and taken what he had put in there. The first thing he took from the bag was a torch, his night vision was infinitely better than that of humans, but his eyes still worked in the same way and needed some light to see by, and there was little of that in the mausoleum. Switching the torch on, he shined its beam into the bag so he could check on the rest of the contents.
In addition to the torch he had one thousand pounds in cash - it was not a huge sum, but he didn’t earn a huge amount as a sales assistant in a petrol station– some spare clothes, and a false birth certificate, along with matching driver’s license and passport. The false documents had not been easy to arrange, even with him knowing a number of criminals through his job, and they had cost more than he really wanted to spend, but it was important to have them; he had two other sets of emergency supplies hidden away in the other bolt holes he had arranged, and he intended collecting them before he left town, which being shot by the trouble twins was forcing him to do.
Once he had reassured himself that his emergency stash was safe, Julian dropped the bag back into the sarcophagus, and then climbed in after it. It was not easy to manoeuvre the lid back into place from the inside but he managed it, though only after he succeeded in trapping his fingers briefly. He rescued his fingers and finished closing the lid, and promptly shut his eyes; the nearness of the sun’s rise, as always, made him drowsy and he was asleep almost straight away.
Julian knew the sun was down the instant he woke. He wasn’t sure of the time, but that didn’t matter; it made little difference to him what the time was, so long as it was after sunset, which meant it was safe for him to get up and leave the mausoleum. Safe in the sense that he wasn’t going to be turned to ash at least, there were still other dangers for him to be concerned about, even if they weren’t as potentially serious.
Carefully, he slid the lid of the sarcophagus to one side, pausing when he had moved it a couple of inches so he could listen for any indication that the noise of stone grating against stone had been heard. Given the mostly deserted nature of the cemetery, especially at night, he would have been surprised if he had detected any indication that there was someone nearby, so he didn’t listen for long before he opened the sarcophagus further and climbed out
Once he had the lid back in place, with him on the outside, Julian made his way over to the door; pushing it open he stepped out into the night. He felt much better out in the fresh air, after the mustiness that pervaded the mausoleum. He stayed in the shadows at the entrance to avoid being seen, should there actually be someone around to do so,
while he considered his next move.
He knew that after the events of the previous night there was no question of him staying in town – the disappearance of his body, and the murder of the mortuary assistant, would have any number of people wondering what had happened, and expending every effort to find out – it just remained for him to decide what he was going to do before he left, and he had already made up his mind about that, he was going to revenge himself on the two men who had put him in the position of having to leave so hurriedly.
The problem with his plan was that he didn’t know where to find Adam and Harry - the trouble twins, as they were known to most people. He knew a lot about them, yet at the same time he knew little, which made the task he had set himself that much more difficult; the most important gap in his knowledge was that he didn’t know where the twins lived, only that they lived in the area – fortunately he knew people who were likely to be able to tell him where he could find them.
When he finally left the shadow of the mausoleum he had a plan for his night’s activities; it wasn’t a very detailed plan, but he was confident that it would