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  The following morning, as the sun rose to shine brightly upon the open ground of the catacombs below Xavier Castle, to the clergyman’s great disappointment, there was nothing to be found there except the bloodless bodies of the three missing men stuffed into an ancient sarcophagus.

  “And now our home has been compromised,” William Adelin summarized as he sat on a rock overlooking the plain and Xavier Castle.

  The fires which the priests had lit at midday to flush out anything that might still be inside the catacombs sent plumes of smoke up into the early night sky. The Watchers had no idea what to do next.

  “I wish I had something to say which would console you all,” Julia said regretfully. “All that can be said seems rather trite, but we must go now. Make our way to the border and perhaps to Aquitaine.”

  They had not been homeless for many centuries and had become well accustomed to the comfort of restful sleep below the castle. Three hundred years of calling one place home would turn any wanderer into a homebody. The truth of it was they had all become lazy as well as comfortable under the protection of the castle. Nevertheless, Petronilla, the vampire among them who was native to the area, guided them across the border into Aquitaine where they tried to stay a few steps ahead of the Catholic crusaders by hopping from one dungeon or cemetery to the next.

  Over the next twenty years, they slowly made their way across France with the help of Petronilla’s vast knowledge of the country’s stately homes and monuments and when they arrived in Calais, it was obvious that the more liberal rule of Henry the Eighth and his new Protestant England would be a more secure environment for them if they planned to save their lives.

  1538 A.D.

  On the shores of the Strait of Dover, it was William Adelin’s turn to be of use. His knowledge of the operations at the Port of Calais, even being as ancient as it was, would easily secure them suitable passage across the Channel.

  “Beautiful isn’t it, Petra?” he asked as they stood at the edge of the city looking out over the harbor. The night was clear and there was a large, full moon hanging low over the water. The moonbeams glittered on its surface and played hide and seek with the gentle waves.

  “It is Adelin, it is. Calais is one of the few places where I can remember what it looks like in the sunlight. I spent so many days here as a child waiting on these banks for either my father or my sister to return home, while I never once in my human life sailed across the Channel.” She smiled a mournful smile; one which spoke volumes to William Adelin.

  He watched her for a moment longer and then returned his gaze to the sea. A long sigh escaped his lips and Petra looked up at him surprised.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, brother!” she said, regret in her voice. “I was so caught up in my own memories that I forgot that this is where you died. Please accept my apology.”

  “It’s no matter, dear. I’ve been dead for so long, I’ve had more than enough time to come to peace with the misdeeds and misfortunes of a life so long passed away.” For a moment he was silent, looking out over the shimmering water. “In fact, since then I have thought of Calais as my birthplace more than anything else. Reginald pulled me from the wreckage of that ship and took me out of the city to Outreau. He made me immortal there when I would not improve from a cough I had developed from being in the cold water for so long.”

  The ancient vampire had rescued William from the wreckage of The White Ship in 1120 A.D. and made him immortal in the hope that he would still have been able to save the Angevin Empire from the succession wars that were certain to erupt following his father’s death. But William had refused to return home and live a life pretending to still be alive…and human. He’d wandered France for many years afterward before he’d found Petronilla. But when he did, she’d led him to Julia and William Wallace and the four of them had been inseparable thereafter. With the Watchers, William Adelin had found what he’d lacked throughout both his mortal and his immortal lives… a purpose to exist apart from that which had been forced upon him.

  “Is he still alive?” Petronilla asked abruptly, breaking into his thoughts. “Reginald, I mean.”

  “No, he walked into the sun in 1414. My blood brothers told me he had almost starved to death when a plague threatened to wipe out the entire parish. He went mad and gave up hope.”

  “But you still have friends here, don’t you? I mean that’s why you took Julia’s task to find us safe passage,” Petronilla pressed him.

  “Yes, sister, I do have many friends in Calais still. My brother has agreed to take us over himself as soon as the moon wanes.”

  At his last statement, Petra turned to look at the harbor again. “I wonder how he’s doing,” she mumbled, allowing her thoughts to wander and remain focused upon a particular member of their lot. Adelin knew who she was referring to.

  “William Wallace is fine. He’s gone as far as Scarpe-Escaut, I think, to hunt in the woods. He’ll be back in about three days, when the moon is no longer full, and then we will leave for England.”

  Five days after that conversation overlooking Calais, the four were crossing the Channel on a light, tight ship under the command of an immortal Captain. It wasn’t until they were well into the English countryside and on their way to his ancestral home in Berkshire, that Adelin confessed to Julia and Wallace that the ship’s captain was his blood brother. They’d both been made immortal by the same French mariner, Reginald, centuries before.

  The four found solace under the manor house at Sutton Courtenay and after a few years of living beneath the empty house it became evident to them that it had been abandoned or perhaps had fallen into a dispute over legal ownership. Whatever the case was, William Wallace was the first to decide they should solidify their claim to the property. The others agreed.

  It was a time of immense pettiness and favoritism in the English government. King Henry had become well known for taking away from his enemies mercilessly and bestowing onto his favorites lavishly and his favorite currency in these transactions were the noble titles of the peerage and the lands and property that went with them. He’d even invented one, the Marquessate of Pembroke for his controversial second wife, Anne Boleyn, in 1532. Houses, estates and castles changed hands daily in a flurry of paperwork and Wallace decided to take advantage of the legal uproar.

  “It will be as easy as eating pie,” Wallace said, excitedly as he chomped down on a piece of mutton.

  “I wouldn’t know anything about the pie you speak of,” Julia said with a teasing laugh. “But what I do know is that it sounds like a really good time to be had. England does not discredit its reputation for being wet, cold and terribly boring.”

  “It’s not as bad as all that,” Adelin piped up in defense of his homeland.

  “You’re right, it’s not.” Petronilla said quickly. “It’s just Berkshire that’s incredibly dull!”

  The three laughed heartily at Adelin’s expense until he finally gave in and joined in on the joke.

  “Alright then,” he finally conceded, “maybe a trip to London is horribly overdue.”

  The Watchers packed a few of the things they had acquired since they’d been at Calais, purchased a carriage for the ladies and a couple of horses for themselves and left Berkshire to spend a month enjoying the pageantry of the London social scene.

  They were very popular among the many French bourgeoisie’s that commandeered the trade of fine goods to members of the royal court. Parties at their townhouse were well attended and quite lavish. It wasn’t long before the solicitor on whom Wallace had his eyes to legitimize their claim to the manor in Sutton Courtenay managed to get himself invited to one of them as well. That was Wallace’s cue.

  “It’s obvious now that he’s very well connected,” Wallace told Julia as they glanced over the crowd of revelers gathered in their dining room.

  “I agree, Wolf. It seems you were right in your judgment. He knows enough of the wealthy and powerful of this town to get anything he wants done.”

 
Petra came to stand beside Julia. A feather fan was hiding more than half her face from view.

  “Then he’s the man to get us that house. Please don’t waste any time making his acquaintance, London has become quite a bore. The gentlemen here can be quite pressing; it’s rude and obnoxious, really.”

  Julia laughed and smiled as she nodded her approval of Petra’s request. The city had gone dim for her as well.

  Shortly after a scandalously dressed Julia and a dapper Wallace paid a visit to a well known, outrageously corrupt solicitor on Camden High Street in London, the title for the abandoned house was in their hands and arrangements were made for the house to be passed into the possession of a new fictitious name every generation or so.

  Immediately, they occupied the upstairs just as freely as they previously had the basements of their other homes. With a place that belonged to them outright and the peace of a new home, the Watchers agreed it was time to take up their responsibilities once more. They traveled the continent as a group or in pairs to observe the younger immortals they knew of and also to find any new ones which had been created. They eradicated rogue fledglings and adjudicated the actions of older vampires, ensuring that there was never too much attention being brought to the existence of the species.

  Chapter Three

  Sam sat in silence, reading through a section of Chanel Smith’s first installment of the Huntress Trilogy. There were a few pages that Max wanted her to go through carefully before they would continue their conversation. Meanwhile, he had disappeared into his little back office to do god knows what.

  The pages were riveting and even as she read through them, Sam found herself referencing the photograph from the untitled black book Max had first placed before her and the Wikipedia pages she pulled up on her Smart-phone.

  The Vampire with the Golden Gun by Chanel Smith pages 9-11. The book read:

  This was the second life of Julia Augusta Agrippina or Agrippina the Younger as she was often called. Julia had died her first death almost two thousand years ago. She was the oldest vampire known in the Western Hemisphere and possibly the oldest of all the known supernatural beings as well.

  She remembered the day she died like it was yesterday. Often when the thought of it came to her, she mused that it was perhaps because her memory was so good that she never took to the suicidal madness that she had seen claim so many vampires before her.

  In 59 A.D., her son Nero had the shipwrights of Rome design a ship for Julia’s birthday. A pleasure vessel that she and her court could take out and use to make crossings over to the Tyrrhenian Sea islands that she enjoyed so much. He made a lot of fuss over the consignment and spoke about the magnificent ship constantly. So it was not a surprise to anyone that it was completed and delivered ahead of schedule.

  But her son’s gesture was filled with tyranny and deceit fueled by the words and encouragement of his married lover, Poppaea, who had all but convinced him that his mother plotted against him and his throne. He had the ship built so that it would open up at the bottom while at sea. In hopes that she would drown, Agrippina was put aboard and after the bottom of the ship opened up. She fell into the water but Agrippina swam safely to the shore, so Nero sent an assassin to kill her. Nero then claimed Agrippina plotted to kill him and when her alleged plans failed, she had committed suicide.

  Her last words, which she felt she had spoken only yesterday, uttered as the assassin was about to strike, were “Smite my womb!” She had indicated to her killer that she wished to be destroyed first in that part of her body in order to rebuke the treacherous being she had given birth to.

  When the Vampire Quintus had found her, she had been bleeding to death on the floor of the villa where she had hidden herself in Misenum. Of course, he had instantly recognized her and saw a long-awaited opportunity to turn Roman politics over on its ear. That night, he made Julia Agrippina into a fledgling vampire and then he taught her to slake her thirst on the blood of only corrupt Roman officials, of which there was a staggering number.

  The Vampire Quintus had been a Watcher for many years by then. He had been busy for centuries keeping a close watch on the members of each successive Roman Imperial family. He would seek out signs of madness, treachery, manipulation and any other forms of discord, and then he would do his best to weed it out. Sometimes that meant destroying a spouse or concubine and other times a General or adviser but, of course; there were times when the Emperor himself had to be eliminated. He never killed a ruler with his own hands. On such delicate occasions, Quintus would orchestrate coups in the Senate or ambushes by Barbarians, even deadly openings in the midst of a battle.

  Under Quintus’ wing, Julia rose through the ranks of the vampire hierarchy in Europe and by the time she was just over fourteen hundred years old, she decided to venture to the New World. With the Spanish Inquisition in full swing, Europe had fast become a place that was hardly safe for strange people, much less super-naturals, especially vampires. At that point, the over-zealousness of the Catholic church had been a major concern for them for years. When the sleeping place of the Watchers was razed by fire while the midday sun shone brightly above, it was clear that they had been discovered.

  Agrippina escaped in a crated coffin filled with soil along with three of the remaining elder vampires. William Adelin and Petronilla de Aquitaine had come to the Watchers from England and been offered protection from the Inquisition without hesitation. They had been public figures in their first lives, royalty in fact; and were well known which posed the risk of being recognized and captured. They were also much used to the tasks and tactics of ruling. William Wallace had been an oddball choice but Agrippina had felt the need to have some brutish protection for her group of adventurers. After all none of them knew what, or who, they would encounter in the New World.

  As it had turned out the foursome had quickly encountered the Others, as they had called themselves, after their ship had arrived near the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and, though naturally suspicious of them, the two groups had joined together and traveled the new continent far and wide. They acquired land and property, accumulated vast wealth and invested in business ventures over the next five hundred years. Though a few members had gone on to the final death, Agrippina had maintained the number of her council always at thirteen.

  Presently, in the year two thousand and fourteen, they were a unique gathering of the oldest vampire beings that walked the earth and Agrippina always found it ironic that they had all been notable people in their past; perhaps that strength of character or superior breeding and bloodline had played a role in their particularly long existence when others like them had run to meet the sun centuries before. Julia’s companions, and then house guests, included Petronilla de Aquitaine, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov and her brother Alexei, Bridget Bishop, witch of Massachusetts, Amelia Earhart, Marie de Guise, the bane of the English, Empress Dowager Tzu-Hsi and Saigo Takamori, William Adelin, William Wallace, Bjorn Ironside and Marcus Antonius, known to most of the world as Mark-Anthony of Rome.

  They were gathered in her mansion in the Hollywood Hills to discuss a disturbing matter. It was rare that a situation became so serious as to require the attention of the entire council. They had gathered from every corner of the earth in order to come to a decision about a killer. A supernatural being who had gone mad and had been abducting and murdering young women in alarmingly high numbers all across the United States.

  Samantha looked up at Maximus and even as the corny phrase from one of her son’s favorite Christmas commercials escaped her lips, she just couldn’t find the strength to stop the words. “They do exist.”

  Max smiled and nodded, before confirming it.

  “Yes, Samantha. They do exist.”

  Chapter Four

  Berkshire, England.

  1547 A.D.

  When the King died, Edward’s succession to the throne didn’t cause as much of an upheaval as the Watchers had expected it to. They had been in France the previous year ob
serving the events that had led up to the Massacre of Mérindol. Aggravated by the seditious behavior of the Waldensians and their continuous rousing of the Protestant movement in France, King Francois I ordered the Protestants of Vaudois to be killed by army troops he had stationed to intercept them and invade their villages.

  The Watchers had been there to ensure that no immortals in Provence would be tempted to raise an army of Waldensian fledglings from the battlefield. After all, as far as Julia and the others knew, there was no one of humanitarian, economic or political importance slated to die in the scuffle.

  They’d returned home to Berkshire later that year after the King’s flagship, the Mary Rose, sank near Plymouth killing 73 people. The King’s health deteriorated rapidly after the accident and the entire country had grown to fear what would happen when he died. Edward was only nine years old after all. As it had turned out, they’d worried in vain. The boy was crowned king and things went on as they had previously… of course, that was only until King Edward died.

  London, England.

  1555 A.D.

  The terrible five-year reign of Mary Tudor plunged the Watchers back into the middle of the Inquisition once again. Even though the religious turmoil in the country kept the English crusaders concentrated on religious heresy, there was just as much fear of persecution running through the immortal population as there had been during the Spanish witch hunts.

  Eager to make examples, Mary’s inquisition rooted out anyone who had or may have opposed the queen’s reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church. As a result, the Marian Persecutions, as they became known, saw the exile of about eight hundred affluent Protestants and the execution of over two hundred and eighty people; most were burnt at the stake. The burnings proved so unpopular that even Alfonso de Castro, one of King Philip’s own ecclesiastical staff, condemned them and another adviser, Simon Renard, warned him that such cruel enforcement could cause a revolt amongst the people of England.