Devil Inside

Go To Him.

Marcus held the faded wartime photograph of Sebastian, looking on the face of the man his daughter loved for the first time and seeing just that, a man. No traces of the demon that lay inside him, the secret half of him that terrified Marcus. No sign that this young man could be a threat to Elsa in anyway. He sighed; he knew he couldn’t tell Elsa what to do or hope to stop her feeling the way she so clearly did. He just wished she could have fallen for just about anyone else.

Elsa was oblivious to her father’s thoughts, focussed as she was on Katherine, who was holding the fragile note in Sarah Bennett’s delicate handwriting declaring her son’s name and, for whatever reason she felt she needed to, his innocence. Katherine was sat in front of one of the large, glass computer monitors that Elsa had marvelled at the first time she had seen them. On the screen was a world map and Katherine seemed to be searching it, without actually touching anything. Her eyes were closed and she was muttering in a tongue Elsa did not understand as she held the note between the fingertips of both hands. The map began to move, slowly zooming in, landscape features gradually becoming clearer and larger, followed by cities and smaller towns. Areas were selected, then passed over in favour of others and gradually Elsa realised they were following a journey, the journey that must have been taken by Sebastian since his disappearance. Elsa watched intently, willing the map to stop, to show her that one place she wanted to know so desperately.

After what seemed like an age, the map stopped moving, the image settled and came into clearer focus. Katherine frowned and the muttering became faster, more urgent. The map did not move. Finally, Katherine opened her eyes and looked at the screen.

“It’s the best I can do over that distance,” she said, “Sebastian is within a twenty mile radius of this point as far as I can tell.” He finger rested on the screen and Elsa searched the map for features or names she recognised.

“He’s in North Africa?” she asked. Her keen mind and eyesight had been able to follow the quick movements of the map as Katherine had worked but she knew little of North Africa, “Where’s Toubkal?” This was the only named place she could see on screen.

“The Atlas Mountains,” Marcus said, “It’s a national park near Marrakech.”

“Morocco?”

Marcus nodded, “Toubkal is the highest peak in the Atlas range.”

“So we have a twenty mile radius of mountains to search?” Elsa was worried, that sounded like searching for a needle in a haystack.

“It is not as bad as it sounds,” Katherine spoke up, “It is not an area of high population which means if you can get me there I will be able to give you a much clearer location on Sebastian with very little interference. There are a series of mountain refuges dotted through the mountains; we may be looking at one of those?”

“Possibly,” Marcus agreed, “It wouldn’t be a problem for a group of vampires to discourage trekkers from using one particular refuge, we could get a good idea by talking to people who have trekked through the range in the last couple of days. Vincent will have picked the area for its remote location, it could be his undoing.”

“It will be,” said Elsa through gritted teeth, she could feel her fangs against her bottom lip and ran her tongue over them, they were a welcome reminder of her rage, a rage she would turn on Vincent at her earliest opportunity.