Titus had been a construction worker, possibly an architect in his former life, which had run out about a hundred years ago from what Asteria knew. She saw him speaking to another wiry Vampire with short, curly black hair. As soon as Titus saw her coming, he turned, removed his hard hat, and held it in his work gloves in front of her. She’d thought it funny that he insisted on such protection when nothing could hurt him anymore but knew firsthand that old habits often die hard, miserable deaths.
“Your Majesties,” Titus said, dropping his head and bowing as they approached. “I hope our work is to your liking.”
Asteria looked around and then smiled at the stubby bald man who possibly came up to her chin in his usual form when he wasn’t stretching to become taller. “It’s lovely,” she assured him, though she had no idea what she was looking at. The rooms down here had been used to restrain new patients back in the day when this was the Larundel Asylum. It looked like they were undergoing extensive repairs right now, but she had no way of knowing if the work was good or not. She was quite pleased with the first projects Titus had completed, creating a labyrinth of fifteen-foot walls all around the front of the building that wound around such that it was nearly impossible to get inside by the normal method of walking through the gate and if one were to try leaping over the walls, the infiltrator would meet one of many painful ends, including moats filled with creatures born of nightmares, metal shrubbery with foot long daggers, and burning pits nearly impossible to escape from. These obstacles might not kill their enemies, but they would certainly do a bit of damage.
“What is it I can do for you, Madam?” Titus asked, still keeping his head low.
“How long until one of these rooms can be used as a prison?” she asked, bluntly. “It needs to be impossible to break out of, by even the strongest of Guardians.”
Titus looked up slightly, his eyebrows raised. “You want to restrain a Guardian here?” he asked. “Just one?”
“For now,” she nodded. “I want to do some… experiments,” she replied, not wanting to give away too much at once.
The foreman’s eyebrows raised, but he did not question her further. “I am sure that we can have something ready in a day or two if we put all of our effort into it,” he nodded. “It will take many layers of fortification….”
“Wonderful,” Asteria smiled. “Let me know as soon as it is finished.”
“Yes, my Lady,” Titus said, and he kept his head dipped as Asteria turned and headed back toward the stairs, Perses at her shoulder.
“You plan to bring a Guardian here?” he clarified. “And do what sort of experiments?”
“There must be something that can kill them,” she said, shaking her head. “Short of finding Hunters willing to end them on our behalf….”
“Not likely,” he reminded her.
“Not in the numbers we would need. Just as the Hunters discovered titanium was a better weapon, that it would allow Guardians to kill Hunters, and Hunters to kill other Hunters, so must we continue to search until we can find whatever it is that will allow a Vampire to kill a Guardian.”
“That will throw the entire Ternion out of balance,” Perses reminded her, a cruel smile on his handsome face.
“Precisely.” Asteria couldn’t help but giggle, thinking her plan had to work. “Now, where is that scientist?” she asked, “The creepy one we sung in from Europe?” It was amazing how her melody could beckon those of their kind over such great distances.
“I believe he’s… in his laboratory,” Perses replied.
Asteria headed in that direction. “We will need something strong enough to sedate a bull,” she said.
“More like a Kraken,” Perses offered.
She only turned her head and looked slightly at him as she tried to remember which of the finished rooms she’d arranged for the world-renowned scientist to occupy. The burn of smoke in her lungs had her walking in the right direction, and a few minutes later, she rapped sharply on his door two times.
Dr. Lester Hines had been a well-known physicist before he ran into a night stalker one evening in the late nineteenth century on his way home from a get-together at a friend’s house. Now, he was still brilliant, but Asteria was quite certain by the looks of him he’d gone a little mad when he’d undergone the Resurrection process.
When he first opened the door, his forehead was crinkled in irritation. His long black hair stuck up all over his head like a bush who’d escaped the gardener’s sheers for far too long. He had a bulbous nose which somehow still managed to fail his glasses as they continuously slipped down his face, and unlike most of their kind, he seemed to constantly have his fangs out. They were clamped across his bottom lip as his face morphed into recognition and then subservience. “Asteria, my Lady, what can I do for you this fine evening?” he asked, bustling backward and allowing them entrance.
His lab certainly did look like something out of a horror movie, though Asteria never took much interest in films. They’d come along late in her existence, and by then she had already learned to love music and dance, admiring paintings, and even reading a love story now and again, rather than sitting and staring at moving pictures for hours on end. Still, she’d seen enough to know that Frankenstein’s laboratory that brought forth the famous monster likely resembled the mixture of boiling beakers and smoking test tubes Hines had on exhibit here.
“Dr. Hines,” Asteria began, hoping this didn’t take long as she wasn’t suited to this cluttered, stench-filled environment. “We’ve come to speak to you about a sedative.”
The doctor’s eyes enlarged behind his thick glasses. “A sedative?” he repeated. “What sort of sedative?”
“One capable of knocking a Guardian unconscious and keeping him or her so under until they could be moved here and restrained,” she explained.
He studied her for a moment and then stroked his chin. “A Guardian?” he repeated. “I know that Giovani had a substance that allowed him to transport Cadence Findley by helicopter a number of miles and then take her underground through a lengthy tunnel. Perhaps we could use that formula as a basis.”
“Do you know it?” she asked.
The doctor gave a sharp nod. “I have access to it, yes.”
“And… you think it will be possible to turn it into something powerful enough to knock out a Guardian?”
“Temporarily,” he replied. “You will need hefty restraints, of course, and you wouldn’t be able to take him or her too awfully far.”
A wicked smile spread across Asteria’s beautiful face. “That’s good,” she said. “I think we can draw them out easily enough. And then… we’ll just have to take the pick of the litter.”
Perses chuckled along with her, and a few seconds later, Dr. Hines joined in, though of the three laughs, his was by far the most maniacal.
