Authors: C S Winchester
“
You're quitting drinking?” he asked.
“
No, but I am confining it to outside of working hours from now on.”
Will decided not to push it.
“
I hope things work out with your folks,” he said sincerely.
Frankie went back to her sketching while Will began cooking. They made small talk until Will served, when Frankie closed her notebook and they sat down to eat. It seemed that they had an unspoken agreement not to discuss the case for now, and only after the dishwasher had been loaded and the kitchen cleared did Will ask to see her sketch.
Frankie was a good artist and although some aspects of the drawing seemed hazy, Will was certain that if anyone knew this man, they would recognise him from the sketch. As it was her notebook, he slipped some gloves on and began flipping through the other pages.
“
What are these?” he asked.
“
The place I think Dante's being held in,” she explained. “Unfortunately there are no unique features on the buildings or a handy name over the front door.”
Will flipped from sketch to sketch. Some were external, of the building façade but a few were internal, of rooms. Some rooms looked more the size of something you might see in a hotel than a private house. He then came to a sketch of a corridor that seemed to be made of wood and glass, a little like an old greenhouse but long and thin.
“
What's this?” he asked, tuning the pad so that she could see the sketch he meant.
“
That's a corridor I saw but other than that...” she shrugged then a moment later registered his interest. “Why, do you recognise it?”
“
I think so,” he said. “I just can't remember where from.”
“
Take your gloves off,” Frankie ordered.
“
What?”
“
Take your gloves off and look at the picture. Maybe I can get some detail from your memory that you're missing.”
Will did as she had said and picked up the notebook. He examined the picture in detail, though sadly it was only a rough sketch and didn't have much detail drawn in yet. Still, there was something eerily familiar about it.
When he'd looked at as much as he could, he handed the notebook back to her. Frankie closed her eyes and concentrated as she took the book, immediately noticing something that Will hadn't.
“
You haven't been here,” she informed him. “The image has edges, as though you were looking at a photograph.”
Will frowned, unable to remember seeing 'edges' in his memory of the corridor.
A few moments later Frankie put the notebook down.
“
I can't see anything else about where or when you saw this corridor, sorry.”
“
Well at least that's something,” Will tried to reassure her. “Maybe I can do an image search or something. Or show it around at the station tomorrow.”
Frankie nodded but still looked disheartened.
“
Look, let's try to forget about the case for the rest of the night,” Will suggested. “Let's find a movie to watch then come at this again tomorrow when we're fresh.”
Frankie nodded, although she knew that she would be unable to concentrate on a movie at the moment. Dante was her only remaining connection to Josh and if anything happened to him...
She pushed that thought aside. She still didn't really understand how she felt about Josh, she didn't love him, but she had a feeling that she could have if they'd had more time. What she did know was that his passing had hurt a lot and that even though she didn't know him well, she still felt his loss keenly. Dante was all she had left of him and she was damn sure that she was going to get him back safely. She owed it to Josh. She owed it to Dante.
Still, she dutifully followed Will through to the living room and pretended to watch as the movie played. At some point though she must have fallen asleep, because when she awoke there was sunlight streaming in through the window and Will was nowhere to be seen.
She heard noises coming from the kitchen and made her way through to find Will brewing coffee.
“
How are you?” he asked.
“
Stiff,” she said as she tried to work the pain out of her knotted muscles.
“
You looked so peaceful, I didn't have the heart to disturb you.”
Frankie didn't mind, she was used to sleeping at odd times and in odd places. She accepted the coffee that he passed her and sipped it gratefully. Truth be told, she could have done with another few hours sleep, but she had work to do.
Dante watched as the beam of sunlight edged closer and closer to him. Pietro had found a new way to torture him, by throwing a rock through the black painted glass, he could now subject Dante to direct sunlight for as long as the sun was in the right position.
Dante gritted his teeth as the light hit his calf. He was wearing trousers but some light still made it through the material, although it was bearable. He watched as the beam travelled up his leg until it approached his belt, above which he had no shirt.
Pietro had removed the shirt so that he could attach IV's into both of Dante's elbows, through which he could draw the blood he needed. Now it served a second purpose as it allowed the sunlight to burn his flesh. He tried not to scream but eventually he had to. His tortured cries echoed throughout the building and grounds, since even Pietro's soundproofing wasn't up to the task of muffling this much noise.
Finally the sunlight reached his face and tortuously began to scorch the flesh there.
It felt like an eternity, but finally the beam of sunlight moved off him as the sun moved around a little further.
The TV at the end of his bed came on but Dante didn't open his eyes and look. In fact he wasn't certain that he could open one eye, even if he'd wanted to.
“
You look like shit,” Pietro said, laughing.
Dante didn't answer.
“
There's only one solution for your pain,” Pietro taunted and a second later Dante smelt the tang of blood. Again he turned his head away from where he knew the feeding tube to be and gritted his teeth against the ravenous hunger that he now felt.
“
Just think of how good it will taste,” Pietro taunted. “How much better it will make you feel. Go on, just take one sip.”
Though every movement hurt him, Dante parted his charred lips.
“
Go to hell,” his voice was hoarse.
He heard Pietro yelling in the background and things being dropped or thrown. Silently he prayed that his body would soon shut down in an attempt to conserve energy because right now, he wasn't sure for how much longer he could resist the blood.
Will went off to work and Frankie began a Google image search for a glass corridor that resembled the one she had drawn. She tried lots of search terms, but it seemed as if glass corridors were pretty popular things. She tried changing the search terms and adding new key words, but each search turned up no hopeful leads.
She stuck with it though and clicked through to pages that looked as if they might be similar, but two hours later she was no further forward and was beginning to run out of new ideas.
She jumped when she heard the front door burst open and heard Will calling for her.
“
Frankie, we've got to go,” he shouted. “Come on!”
Quick as a flash Frankie left the computer and ran into the hall.
“
What?”
“
I think I've found him,” Will answered simply.
Chapter Fourteen
“
Where?” she asked, pulling on her coat and following him out
“
Just south of Edinburgh,” he answered as they both took the stairs two at a time.
“
Is it just you and me?” she asked.
“
Yup.”
He bolted out onto the street and into his car, pulling away before Frankie had even fastened her seat belt. As they drove he explained what had happened.
“
I took your notebook into the office to copy your sketch of Pietro but D.C. Taylor noticed the same drawing that I did last night, of the corridor. He said what a beautiful place it was so I asked him if he knew where it was.”
“
And?”
“
Rosslynlee Hospital, south of Edinburgh.”
“
He's in a hospital?” she sounded incredulous.
“
A closed hospital,” he clarified. “It's an old mental asylum that they shut last year.”
Frankie mentally reviewed her possible plans of action when they got there but didn't come up with much. In his will, Josh had left her a set of silver jewellery that protected the wearer from magic and going up against someone this powerful (and probably juiced up on vampire blood by now) she thought that she could use that protection. Unfortunately they were on the other side of town, in the safe in her bedroom.
She decided that for now they'd just scope out the hospital and see the lay of the land. If necessary they could leave for supplies and return later. Sooner than she'd expected, Will began to slow down and he pulled in at the side of the road.
“
We're here?” Frankie asked.
“
The hospital is through those trees,” Will said. “I thought that pulling up to the main entrance wasn't too smart.”
Frankie nodded, agreeing with his logic. They got out of the car and began to make their way through the trees, until the buildings came into sight. They were still a fair distance from the hospital, a large lawn between them and the buildings.
“
I checked a satellite image before I left the office,” Will said. “If we follow the trees around, they come much closer to the outbuildings; that should give us some cover to search the place.”
Though interested in his plan, Frankie had better things to do right now and sat down on the earth, crossing her legs, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She had never searched for a vampire aura from this distance so she wanted to give it her full concentration.
“
Frankie?”
She didn't answer but instead tried to see the buildings in her mind's eye and search for any auras, human or vampire.
“
Frankie?”
“
In a minute,” she snapped. She could almost feel something but she was having trouble focusing on it.
With her eyes still closed, she lifted her head and pointed.
“
He's in there,” she said, opening her eyes to see where she was pointing, which was the north-west corner.
“
How can you tell?” Will asked.
“
Vampire auras are distinctive,” she explained, getting to her feet.
“
And Pietro?” Will asked as he helped her up.
Frankie had almost forgotten about him.
“
No,” she said. “Actually I didn't sense anyone else.”
“
Is that unusual?” Will asked.
Frankie let out a long sigh as she considered his question.
“
I'd expect this place to have security but maybe I'm just too far away to sense humans.”
“
But you can sense the vampire?”
“
Their auras are much stronger than ours, like a halogen lamp compared to a 60 watt bulb.”
“
So you think the place is empty?”
“
Only one way to find out,” she said, walking away.
Will had suggested following the trees east, but Frankie was heading north along the tree line, to where she thought Dante was. The trees didn't come as close to the hospital buildings in this direction but as they got closer, she paused and searched for human auras again,
“
If there is anyone here, they're on the other side of the site,” she said, though she believed the place to be empty. It was perhaps twenty feet from where they stood to the closest building.
“
Then let's go,” Will said, breaking cover of the trees and jogging towards the building.
Without warning he stopped and swayed slightly.
“
Will?”
“
I don't feel so good,” he said.
Frankie took his arm to urge him on towards the building. Knowing that they needed to get out of sight as soon as possible, he began to follow, only to double over in pain and drop to the ground.
“
Will!” Frankie dropped to her knees beside him. “What's is it?”
He looked deathly pale and his skin was clammy.
“
I...”
Frankie looked from Will to the building and made the connection that the closer he got, the worse he seemed.
Will began to throw up, huge heaves wracking his whole body. Frankie got behind him and, using all her strength, she put her arms around his chest and began to drag him back towards the trees.