Children of the Night

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven:

Italy

Long black hair swayed gently in the cool night breeze, dark, heavy-lidded eyes stared out across the canal that sparkled every now then under the lights from the paths alongside it. Delia wore a long silk gown, light purple with material gathered in the middle of the bosom and flowing in frilly waves of cloth down her front.

She had lived a long time in exile, known for her ruthless ways and dark powers learned from her mortal days before being turned into the beautiful Vampiress she was. She had given her blood to countless men and women, most of which were either dead or leading covens of their own in far off countries. She had only one fledgling remaining with her, Gordon. A man turned five centuries ago, who was as vicious as she, though quick-tempered and less thoughtful. Delia liked to assess things first before diving head-first into danger.

Gordon loved her, though she could see it for what it really was, blind obsession. No man had ever loved her, only lusted after her thinking it was love. Delia had no time for such men, and had only sought out Gordon in order to use him in her new plans for the destruction of the hunters. Gordon recruited covens for her, the one thing he was actually good at was deciding on who would be loyal and useful followers. As for the other member of her small coven, he was only around because he could run little errands she could not be bothered with. He was Gordon’s fledgling named Spider, a delicate young Vampire of only four centuries or so.

Delia turned away from the canal and walked slowly up the path to the roads above, crossing the quiet street and heading into the heart of the city where the mortals swarmed by the thousands.

It did not take long before she was able to lead a young man into a dark alleyway and drink a little of his blood before erasing his memory and licking the tiny little wounds on his neck closed. He stumbled away, dazed and confused, and she watched him from the shadows with a cold, emotionless stare. The man had been lucky, as those days she had to be very careful to not leave a trail of corpses behind her wherever she went, corpses that would be noticed by Vampires more powerful than her, not that there were many of those…but there were three that could squash her like a bug if they wished to do so.

The Carlos family, two brothers and a sister, the three eldest of their kind…Delia despised them all. They were more powerful in many ways, but their weakness was humanity. They craved peace and wanted nothing more than to live in secret and let the Humans continue on without knowing any different. Delia hunted the ones that did know, the ones that trained all their lives just to grow up and hunt them down, often dying young.

She returned to her lair, a small house on the outskirts of the city, away from prying eyes. A sign claiming the house was to let stood upright in the garden, the wood looking worn from the weather and suggesting it had been there a long time. The house was furnished with old-fashioned items but not much of them, and so they did their best to leave things where they should be as every now and then an estate agent would bring somebody round to view the house in the day time while the vampire coven slept in secret in the basement amongst the wine racks.

Every morning they wedged a crowbar against the door handle so it could not be opened by the estate agent, who would no doubt reassure the viewers that the problem would be sorted before they moved in. Delia hoped their good luck held out as long as possible with no one being interested in renting the place.

The house was down a dead-end street surrounded by miles of it’s own land as it was bordering the countryside, and therefore they had no worries of people noticing the lights on in the house at night. It was the perfect place to live in peace away from human society and their laws.