Chapter 2: Corpse

Days turn into nights. Nights turn into days. Days turn into nights. And so on.

When you're undead, these seem to follow each other up in a rather rapid tempo. It feels like it was only yesterday when I got caught up in all of this. Like it was just yesterday that I was a nineteen-year-old, fucking around. I had just started at uni and I felt like I was at the top of the world. I deemed myself invincible, not even the devil could drag The Great Matthias down.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

'Close the door behind you, Matthias,' said that very devil. The light from the fireplace flickered on his face, making him look all the more ominous. The red and black interior didn't quite help either.

I obeyed, not wanting to be locked into a chamber for eternal starvation. I had been summoned to the House, the home of the Duke. The Duke was one of the oldest surviving vampires, the very devil that had gotten me into this mess. And you don't want to disobey the Duke, it might as well cost you your undead life.

But besides the fact that we got off on the wrong foot, I was now his go-to when something had to be done quietly and efficiently.

'What's wrong?' I say, taking off my jacket and sitting down in one of the red-velvet armchairs. I've always wondered why the House was so stereotypically designed. Everything's either red, black or gold, and every window has curtains that don't even let a glimmer of sunshine through. And that last bit isn't because we can't enter the sunlight, we sure can. The Duke probably just likes being a bit... flamboyant. Or he's gotten suicidal over the years and now wants the humans to discover him. Either way, he's doing a great job.

'I need you to do a job,' he said. The Duke was wearing his typical black, three-piece suit with his salt and pepper hair combed back. I half expected him to turn into a bat, there and then, just to finish his Dracula cosplay. But instead, he leaned forward to hand me a file and frowned, which meant business.

'Sure, what is it?' I ask, taking the folder. The first thing I see when I open it, is a photo of a young woman, around eighteen. Her brown hair is a curly mess. Her blue eyes seem to look right through me, even though it's a photo. The photo feels almost like a mugshot, with just the lines for the height and the little nameplate missing.

'That is Julia Apate, Miller's daughter, and we need her alive.'

I looked up, surprised. 'Miller? As in... Dr Miller?' I asked. I hoped that he would say something among the lines of: 'no, my sweet boy, you don't have to go and retrieve the daughter of a psychopath and serial killer that has made our lives difficult since we began walking on this earth.'.

But instead, he said, 'Yes, we have reason to believe she's his direct descendant.'

'Fuck,' I muttered.

The Duke chuckled, 'Yeah, that was about my reaction too when I heard.'

'How long have you known? 'Cause I haven't heard from this man since at least a couple of years.'

'I heard this morning, it was one of Yasmine's girls that discovered it. I didn't think that a book club for senior women would discover something like this, but here we are.'

'Well, they're not exactly your typical book club,' I note, browsing through the folder. Any information I can get, I gladly accept.

'They read actual books, you know. I believe last week it was a biography about Mata Hari, which is fitting, I guess,' he says, getting up to throw some more wood on the fire.

'This doesn't say anything about where I can find her.'

'Yeah, she's in a mental asylum at the moment,' the Duke replies. His back is turned towards me, so I can't tell if he's joking or not.

'You've got to be kidding.'

'I'm not,' he says, chuckling.

'You're not? I actually have to break into an asylum and kidnap a crazy person?'

He turns around, grinning. 'I thought you might react like this.'

'Well, of fucking course! I'm a hitman, not a babysitter! Why do you want her, anyways?'

'First, she's the daughter of our greatest enemy. Second, she could be a threat to society without the proper training.' He sits back down behind his mahogany desk.

'Third, it'd give you leverage,' I muttered under my breath.

'See! You understand after all!'

'I don't like this.'

'You don't have to. Close the door on the way out, will you?'