Weeks passed, and it was deep into summer, with fall looming ever nearer. Michael and I rode to work together to and from work like always, but instead of relaxing when we got home, all four of us had begun to research. We needed to know where Davor’s remaining brood had ended up.
The living room had transformed: Laptops sat open on the coffee table with notebooks stacked beside them. Walls that were once lined with art were now papered over with maps and photographs. The faint glow from laptop screens cast sharp blue light across the room.
Antun’s house was typically a well curated space, but the place now looked more like it belonged to a conspiracy theorist. All that was missing were the tin foil hats, though there was a chaotic practicality to it. The usual cedar and pine scent was overpowered with stale tea and printer toner, reminding me a little of the office. It wasn’t a home anymore – it was a headquarters disguised as one.
Syla sat cross-legged on the couch with a computer in her lap, surrounded by scattered papers. A couple of used mugs sat forgotten on the coffee table. A pencil stuck out from behind her ear.
She mumbled to herself, grabbing the pencil and marking something in the notebook beside her. A frustrated sigh left her nose and she set the pencil down to rub her eyes. I hadn’t noticed the dark circles under her eyes until then.
“You seem hard at work, Sy. Maybe you ought to take a break?” I suggested.
Her smile softened without reaching her eyes. “Darling, I’m fine.” She stretched her arms above her head. “I’ll take a break soon. Just… busy work keeps the nightmares quiet.”
Her answer stung my heart; I wanted to protect her but I didn’t know how. I ran my fingers across the map nearest to me, tracing the red thread that marked a vampire’s last known path. Each note was a tether to unfinished dread. The air hummed faintly with laptop fans – the house alive with purpose… or paranoia.
Both Michael and I already changed out of our work clothes so we could get down to business comfortably. My own exhaustion paired with the mechanical comfort of research. Michael toggled between spreadsheets and newspaper archives, muttering to himself.
Routine had dissolved into something mechanical: spreadsheets, archives, cross-references, keywords. He switched between tabs quickly, his hyperfocus locked onto something. Our lives had shrunk into two halves – daytime normalcy and nighttime vigilance.
Syla mouthed something to herself before picking up a pin and the string, walking over to a map and marking a spot. “Need to cross-check that with the Edinburgh case…” she mumbled under her breath as she returned to her nest of color-coded papers. Despite how tense her shoulders were, her hands remained steady, purpose replacing her fear.
Antun paced, phone to his ear, speaking in a language I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know how many phone calls he made, but it felt like he spoke a different language with every new call he made. His shoulders tensed, and while his voice wore a smile, his face did not. He seemed to be debating or negotiating, and it was not going well.
In any case, he was speaking to someone likely on the other side of the globe. He finished that call with a sigh, tapping his phone on his hand. After a moment of thought, he whispered to no one, “I’d bet he knows how to get in contact with them.” He called a number, a slightly seductive tone to his voice. “Thurston? I’m in need of your help… No, I won’t be bringing people to the vaults again, you don’t need to worry about that…”
He glanced at the rest of us as Mr. Bailey said something on the other end, a sly smile turning up the corner of Antun’s mouth. “Now, Thurston,” Antun coaxed, “you know I’m a man of my word. Whatever… arrangement we come up with will certainly be agreeable to you.”
I’d remembered Mr. Bailey’s hungry eyes at Antun that night he showed us the basement vaults of the museum. It sounded like Antun would soon be visiting “Thirsty Thurston” soon. If he wanted to flirt his way into information, that was his business. I wasn’t about to interfere.
Michael stepped back from the large corkboard map set above the fireplace. “We look more like a vampire travel agency than anything,” he joked – lightly enough to try easing tension, though the room only grew quieter.
Antun studied the map, regret softening his features. “If only that’s what it were.”
The work continued – not because we wanted to, but because stopping felt dangerous. The quiet rhythm of shuffling papers, clicking keys, and soft sips of tea filled the room. But underneath it: a steady hum of dread none of us acknowledged.
We took a break, Syla going to the kitchen to brew a fresh pot of tea. Antun seemed extra quiet now that he wasn’t on the phone, a contemplative look on his face as he lingered by the fireplace map. When she returned with the tray, he thanked her but didn’t refill his mug.
“I’m grateful you two found me,” he said quietly. “I haven’t had companions in a very long time. Davor didn’t make… family. He made subjects. If I’d been planned, I’m sure he would have seen me the exact same way.”
He looked between us. “Some worshiped him. Some hated him. But all of us were trying to survive something we didn’t choose. I didn’t stay through all the rest of the experiments, Probably part of why I didn’t know Nikola. But others left long before me, and long after. Scattered. Unrooted.”
Wait… “Did you know some of Davor’s subjects?” I asked. He’d never talked about it before, and didn’t really say much about Davor beyond Nikola’s similarities to him.
His eyes grew distant before he cleared his throat. “I knew Stojan and Argir. They were the ones turned just before and after I was. But five centuries is enough time to become someone else entirely. I know who they were, not who they are.”
Swallowing and breathing out heavily through his nose, he went on. “Stojan believed that secrecy was sacred. He was meticulous, never fed to death, always making sure to never leave any trace.”
Pausing to take a sip of tea, he went on. “He didn’t hurt people when he could help it. But he erased… problems…” His voice dimmed, and he stared into his tea for a moment. Shaking his head suddenly, he sat up. “For all I know, he could’ve become a monk. Or a king. Or nothing at all.”
He shifted in his seat, “After I was turned, Davor turned Argir, and he was… well, he was brilliant. Too brilliant. He was constantly studying, always questioning the boundary between death and divinity. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t cruel, just… detached. The world was nothing but a specimen slide to him. I wouldn’t be surprised if we learned that he had become a scientist eventually. Or he could have abandoned all of it centuries ago. I don’t know.”
Antun finished the tea in his mug, setting it down on the table with a dull clink. “Neither of them parted on bad terms with Davor, they just simply… drifted apart from him. Stojan was trying to escape Davor’s influence I think. I believe Argir left to seek a new life…”
He seemed to curl into himself as he said, “I… feared staying near him, of embracing his philosophies and becoming like him. I was not always this man you see in front of you. There are… there’s things I’ve done, things I’m not proud of. And I’m never want to be that person again.”
Straightening his back and sitting up, he looked at each of us in turn. He cleared his throat as he said, “Immortality… encourages distance. You have to chose not to disappear.” If anyone had mastered that, it would be the Instagram man himself.
I sat there on the couch, absorbing the uncertainty – the idea that these vampires weren’t necessarily villains, just unknowable. For now. Michael sat beside me, contemplative, two lines creasing between his brows as he pondered. I wondered if he was thinking about our future encounters with them like I was. Syla watched Antun with a protective softness, as if she too sensed the guilt he hadn’t voiced.
Antun said, “When we meet them… remember they’ve had centuries to change. Approach them gently. They might be allies. Or they might see us as reminders of a past they’d rather leave buried.” Silence followed – not fear exactly, but a seemingly collective understanding of just how big the world had become.
❖ 🩸 ❖
Hours passed; the room was dim except for Edison bulbs and laptops glowing, the soft rasp of pages being turned and clicking keys filled the silence. The longer we researched, the more the world seemed not only wider, but darker, with each discovery made.
We came together to compile what all we knew onto a single map of the world. Syla held pages compiling the information we had gathered. Michael had a laptop ready to go just in case, and Antun and I tag-teamed to pin the locations and photos on the map, connecting each photo to their corresponding pin with the thread.
Stojan Goranov and Argir Vasilin shared a single pin in Switzerland – two strings, two faces, two mysteries. I pinned Stojan first; his stern eyes felt like they saw right through me. Argir smiled in his photo, but it never reached his eyes.
Syla scrolled on her tablet. “Sava Stojanov’s next.” I pinned his picture off to the left of the English coast – a man with a furrowed brow, a scholar hiding in archives.
“Dr. Zdravka Velinova in Poland is our next vampire,” Syla went on, pointing to a picture of a woman with sharp cheekbones and precision in her posture.
I pinned her picture then picked up the next as Syla said, “That’s Rastko Belov, U.A.E.” I didn’t trust this guy, right off the bat. Wealth tended to hide intent – there was equal chance of him being a patron of the future or a puppeteer funding something monstrous.
Radovan “Rad” Stojanovic followed – bright smile, millions of fans, persuasion as power. Pinning his photo to his location in New York, I tried not to fret about all the unknowns.
I picked up the next photo, my brows knitting. A woman with large burn scars over one half of her face and down her neck and chest, completely covering an entire arm. “That’s Zora Ognjenovic. According to Davor’s notes…” Syla didn’t finish. We all knew he’d done to her because we had his journal, all his data. “Surprisingly, she’s decided to be a fire investigator. Who’s to say whether that shows strength or insanity.” I pinned Detroit, where she lived and added her photo to the map.
The next photo was of a clean-shaven man with a knowing grin. “This one is in Astoria, very close by – Razvan Ilijev. He’s a criminal psychologist.”
Picking up the last one, I looked at the woman’s serene face. “Sofija Mireva, founder of a holistic meditation retreat.”
“Listen to this review.” Michael cleared his throat before reading out, “Sofija is freaking amazing. I swear she could read my mind, its like she knew everything I needed!” We exchanged looks, all of us knowing exactly how she’d done that. I pinned her picture to the map, the string connecting it to San Diego.
Looking at the completed map, we began to coordinate – flights, drives, border crossings. Every pin on the map felt like poking a sleeping dragon.
“We can’t possibly visit them all,” I moaned.
Antun said, “We don’t have to. Those still watching will notice someone’s asking questions.”
Silence thickened in the room. Even the ceiling fan sounded ominous. The papers fluttered in the draft. “Nine names,” I whispered. “And if even one of them is anything like Nikola…”
No one finished the thought.
