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dominated the room, along with three padded leather high-back chairs. There was barely enough room to move around, but she figured that was as it should be. The office was meant to be a workspace, not a place to conduct meetings. There was a room next door for that.

  She sat in the chair, but as she reached for the telephone handset she caught sight of a framed photograph. She had seen it before, but never really looked at it. She picked it up to examine more closely. It showed her parents dressed in biker clothes, standing beside a couple of motorcycles.

  She didn't remember her mother. Her father had told her that she had died within a week of her birth, from a mysterious fever no one could diagnose, but she was pretty certain that Aunt Mandy had killed her. In any event, her father had been her whole life after that, with Mandy the only mother she had ever known, until he died four months previous, a victim of Mandy's attempted coup. She had killed her aunt a month later when she tried to first usurp and then assassinate her. That was also when she had freed Vlad from his imprisonment.

  She touched the glass covering the image. She sometimes wondered if she really was their child. Vlad assured her she had the Van Helsing Bloodline, but she didn't really look like either of them. For example, neither of them wore glasses, and her father had sandy-brown hair and cobalt-blue eyes while her mother's were rust-red and jade-hazel. The only one she seemed to resemble was her mother, in the facial architecture and the flat, stringy, lifeless hair. But for the life of her she had no idea where her myopia and gray locks and irises came from. Then, too, the stories people told her of their antics before they were married were completely at odds with her memory of what her father had been like. It seemed like they were describing two strangers. She couldn't imagine herself buying a motorcycle and touring the back roads of the countryside as they had.

  She scowled and put the picture back in its spot. This isn't the time for a stroll down memory lane.

  She picked up the handset and examined the phone's panel of buttons. It combined a regular telephone with an intercom base unit. She needed a secure line; she didn't want any chance of someone listening in. Aelfraed had showed her how to do that only a couple of days before. First, she selected one of the dozen secure landlines. They formed their own column on the far left. She pressed the topmost button and heard a dial tone. Next, she selected Penbryn's name. He had his own dedicated line, but the system was set up so that when she pressed his button the computer servers directly below in the basement would shunt the signal through the secure line instead. Nothing could be simpler; she just hoped it would work as advertised.

  She pressed his button and was rewarded with electronic tones as his number was dialed. The connection at the other end rang for what seemed like a long time, and she feared no one would pick up.

  "Penbryn residence; Stevens speaking."

  Differel grinned; he was the only aristocrat she knew who had a Negro woman for a butler.

  "It's Sir Differel. I need to speak with Sir Edward immediately. It's an emergency."

  "I'm sorry, Madam, but he's currently out for the evening. However, I can get a message to him."

  "Please, tell him the entire staff at Caerleon Hall has disappeared. I don't know how far it extends beyond the house. I'm the only one left. Ask him to send troops to secure the estate. It's very urgent."

  "Don't worry, I will contact him as soon as I hang up. And if I may be so bold, get your arse into the shelter now, young lady."

  She couldn't help giggling. "I will, Stevens; I'm halfway there." She listened for the connection to break, then set the handset back in the cradle and released the buttons. As she stood up, she reviewed her next steps: get a gun and ammunitions, then seal myself in the shelter to wait for the troops--

  She hesitated as she glanced out the back windows, which overlooked the rear garden.

  "That's odd." A very faint glow was visible off in the distance, beyond the security fence that surrounded the house grounds. She noticed it only because the slightly lighted sky made foreground objects stand out in sharp, pitch-black relief. There was nothing out there except the park and the lake, with the stables and the boathouse.

  Could that be the source of the disappearances? Could my people be there? I've got to check it out!

  She knew the sensible thing would have been to go down to the shelter and let the troops take care of it.

  But what if they arrive too late? What if they go in shooting? No, they're my people; if there's a chance they're still alive I owed it to them to try to rescue them. But first, I need a gun.

  She went back to the north stairwell and descended once more. Just as the house had three stories above ground, it had the same number of levels below. The topmost was the basement, which contained the infirmary and the security block. She turned left off the stairs and headed down the hall right up to the entrance to the security block, taking the passcard in her hand. However, she found the doors wide open, which puzzled her. Under normal circumstances they would be, but in an emergency they were supposed to be closed and locked. That made her wonder if whatever happened had occurred so fast it overwhelmed the entire house before anyone could react.

  But if so, why wasn't I affected? And wouldn't that have damaged the house in some way?

  She shook her head in angry frustration as she dropped the card. She was speculating in a vacuum. She needed information to come to any kind of usable conclusion.

  She passed by the lounge and peered in. There was food left out on the back table--half-eaten sandwiches, the remains of donuts, cups of tea and coffee--with discarded books and magazines, some on the floor, the rest casually strewn about tables, chairs, and sofas. The television was on; it was Benny Hill. She made a face of disgust; she hated Benny Hill. She went in to turn it off, and examined a mug of coffee. It was still warm, as were a nearby cup of tea and a bowl of soup.

  Whatever happened must have occurred only a short while ago.

  A quartet of card hands was laid out at the far end of the table; one of the players had obtained gin. A chess board was set up on a small side table with two chairs; it looked like the black king was in check, but several pieces lay scattered on the floor. It looked as if everyone had simply gotten up and walked out, leaving whatever they were doing unfinished.

  Unnerved, she hurried on to the armoury. She pulled up short as she saw the vault-like door was closed.

  "Oh, bother." It suddenly dawned on her that she had no way to gain entry. She didn't know the security codes or combinations. She tried placing her hand against the palm-reader, but after the laser scanned it nothing happened. She didn't expect anything would, but she had to try. Most likely it was one part of a multistep delocking sequence, but there was the possibility that her palm print might have overriden the system, slim as it might have been.

  Now what? Where else can I get a weapon? One of the guard posts in the parlor area on the first floor? The security check room on the ground floor?

  Those would most likely be locked away as well, and she didn't have any keys, but there had to be a gun she could use somewhere.

  Maybe in Mr. Holt's room, or--of course, Vlad! Why hadn't I thought of that sooner?

  He kept his guns in the same chamber where he stored his coffin. They were all pretty big and heavy, but she figured she might be able to handle one of the Colt Pythons, despite its double action. The .357 magnum round wasn't the most powerful ammunition available, but it was better than nothing.

  She returned to the north stairwell and headed down one more floor, a dungeon that went back to Elizabethan times. It had been expanded in later generations, especially after her direct ancestor Abraham Van Helsing had converted the house to run the Order. Vlad's chamber was under the west wing, in one of the areas Old Abraham had had constructed. It was one of the most heavily fortified rooms in the house, second only to the armoury and the shelter. Vlad could come and go as he pleased, but everyone else had to use a vault door sealed with an electronic combination lock. Technically, onl
y Aelfraed knew the combination, but Vlad had given it to her as well. Though a numerical code, the tones the buttons produced mimicked the opening notes of J. S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which not only made it memorable, it seemed appropriate.

  As soon as she entered the code, the huge bolts retracted with a deafening clang and the door slowly swung open in a ponderous fashion, as if taking pride in its huge mass. She slipped through as soon as she had enough room. She had never been in Vlad's room before and she wasn't sure what to expect, perhaps cobwebs, torture devices, coffin candelabras, or other cliche items of a macabre or horror motif. She was in fact surprised at just how elegant and ornate the decor was. A gold and crystal chandelier switched on as soon as she stepped across the threshold, flooding the chamber with light. A coffin rested on a catafalque in the center of the room, but both were baroque instead of somber. The floor was covered with marble, the corners contained square wood pillars connected by wooden baseboards, the ceiling was coffered and bordered by cove molding with the pits filled with colorful tiles, and three of the walls were frescoed with scenes of battle, court life, urban and rural activity, and domestic bliss, dominated by a larger-than-life portrait of Vlad when he was voivode of Wallachia. The wall directly opposite the icon was draped in purple fabric while a gilded and ivory-inlaid throne-like wooden chair with purple velvet cushions sat in front of it, framed by a pleated baldachin. But what most surprised her was the blood-red upholstered chaise longue along one wall, with a wide screen TV and stereo unit at its foot, on a stand against the draped wall. She remembered Aelfraed telling her that Vlad had wanted to "upgrade" his room, but she never dreamed that meant installing a home entertainment system.

  There were no cabinets or storage lockers, but the catafalque contained drawers. She opened the nearest ones and found his older weapons, the ones he had used in past decades. He had shown them to her once. While adequate, they were not as powerful as his newer ones.

  She moved around to the other side, but before she opened those drawers she paused when she realized she was on the opposite side of the coffin lid hinges. There was a possibility he might be inside, perhaps even playing an ad hoc game of hide and seek. She and he had been doing that a lot lately, almost every day. She was sure he was trying to teach her something, but she hadn't figured out what yet, and he wouldn't tell her. If that was the case, she would crucify him, but she had to know for sure.

  Gripping the lid, she hesitated as she took a deep breath before throwing it open. She jumped back, startled, as her imagination convinced her it was filled with a bloody, mutilated corpse; that was just the thing he would show her to give her a good fright. But when she crept back and looked inside it was empty, except for a layer of dirt. That puzzled her, since contrary to legend Vampires didn't need to lie on their native soil.

  Maybe it has something to do with his dark powers.

  She would have to ask him about it, assuming he hadn't been destroyed.

  She lowered the lid and turned her attention to the drawers. The first two held additional older guns, while the third contained the two humongous LC465 machine pistols he currently used, based on the Browning Automatic Rifle. The fourth had his Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum and Colt Python .357 Magnum pistols that he used as backup weapons, but also a surprise: a Beretta 93R 9mm Parabellum machine pistol, with a 120-round drum magazine.

  "Sweet!" It had been Mandy's favorite weapon, but in that respect she agreed with her traitorous aunt, if in nothing else. Its muzzle velocity and effective range weren't any better