22Chapter Twenty-One – 'Crimson Stars' End?
Jeff woke up close to sunrise. Hazel had already left to spent the day in the basement of the video store. Joey had left as well, he wanted to nurse his injuries and his headache at home. Andrew had settled down in his room with some ice for his ankle and Abel was more or less keeping watch at Jeff's bed.
"Hey," Jeff murmured softly, looking around. "Why are we back?"
"It's over," Abel answered. "Morado is dead and the mansion is burning."
"Who killed him?" The young man felt himself blushing at that question. "You?" Jeff guessed, very surprised.
"It was pure chance."
Suddenly the drummer smiled. "You're stronger than you think, Hazel was right about that … Hazel … where is she? Is she…?"
"Dead? No. She's gone back to the basement for the day. Once I removed the stake, she woke up again."
"Good. What has happened to me?"
"You hit your head really hard."
"Hazel would say that's not tragic, because there's no brain to damage."
"Well, she would be right."
"Very funny, Abel. Now let me sleep, I've got a killer-headache."
"Joey has one, too. Andrew has a twisted ankle, but apart from that we were doing fine."
"Not bad for the first vampire hunt, huh?"
"As far as I'm concerned," Abel said, walking towards the door, "that could have been the last."
"We'll talk about that in a few days."
The next day the fire at the mansion was all over the news. Obviously the fire department had gotten a call rather late and most of the building had burned down before they arrived. After realizing that there was no way to save the house or to go inside, they had just made sure the fire didn't spread. But there was no word about corpses found inside. Maybe Morado had burned completely, he had been an old vampire after all. But there was no talk about Craven as well.
A few hours after the news were out, they got a call from one of the other 'Crimson Stars' bands. Their leader wanted to talk about the future of the label. They met with him and a few others to discuss it.
"We can't just let the label get destroyed," the lead singer of the 'Crows' said.
"How can you be sure Mr. Morado is dead?" the lead singer of the 'Sirens' countered. "He might turn up again."
"Come on, Morado doesn't leave his house, ever. It doesn't matter they did not find the body. He's dead."
"If he is," Jeff pointed out, "what can we do?"
"We can take the label over," the lead singer of the 'Crows' offered. "Most of us have done the whole planning stuff on their own in the past. We can hire a manager, if we really need him. Have you ever really read your contracts? We all own a part of the label actually, as long as we play for them. We still do, so it's ours now."
"If that's true," Jeff said, "we should do it. But I want a lawyer to look over the contracts."
"Granted."
While they went on discussing, Abel slipped out of the room and left the studio, in which they had met. He stood in front of the building and looked up into the blue sky. To him it didn't matter whether they could legally take over the label. It would be nice to still have a job, but he was just happy to be free of Morado and Craven now.
Andrew joined him outside. "What are you thinking of this idea?"
"Do you think we can keep the label going? That's a bit more difficult than just managing a band."
"Well, we can hire a manager. We would still be the owners."
"It's all the same to me at the moment," Abel admitted. "I'm just glad to be free of Morado."
"Yes, I can understand that," Andrew admitted. "You are a better fighter than you think. You just have to train a bit more."
"I don't want to fight again."
"But you do remember the list Joey found, don't you?"
"Why do we have to hunt them down?"
"Because no one else would believe they exist. Superstition isn't exactly mainstream these days."
Abel didn't answer. He realized that Andrew did have a point there. Only very few people did believe in vampires – while still being complete sane. And the vampires who had worked with Morado weren't the nice kind, unlike Hathor. They had wanted – and probably gotten – pets, enslaved humans.
"What do you think will happen to Jeff and Hazel?"
Andrew shrugged. "They'll have to work their relationship out for themselves. Maybe Hazel should change him, then they could be together for eternity."
"Maybe." Abel turned towards the studio again. "How long will that take?"
"Jeff will come out soon, they've already decided to let a lawyer check up on the contracts. If we really own shares of the company – and I'm not sure we do – we could have our own label soon. Otherwise we'll just have to hope that the person taking over the label will still want the old bands to stay."
Abel decided to meet with Joey in the evening while Jeff and Andrew were talking about the plan to take over 'Crimson Stars' and Hazel was chatting with Hathor. They walked to the cemetery where Hazel was going to stay from now on, she had finally managed to control the change last night and found it safer to sleep in one of the tombs.
"It's nice here," Joey said after a while, "if you're a vampire."
"At least it's very calm, even during the day."
"What do you think about hunting the other vampires on the list down?"
"I don't want to go on fighting," Abel admitted.
"I can't say, I'm looking forward to another headache either, but I think it's necessary. Vampires like Hathor are okay, but what if the other kind takes over the world one day."
"They could have taken over the world ages ago, Joey, they've always existed."
"Slavery is still wrong."
Abel had to admit that this was right. "But why us?"
"Fate?"
"Can you escape fate?"
"I don't think so, not in the long run."
Abel turned around. "I'm not ready for such a decision yet. I killed Morado because that was the only way to be free again. I'm not sure I could muster the same hate towards other vampires."
"You don't have to decide now," Joey pointed out. "Just think about it for a while, okay?"
"Okay."
And Abel thought about it. While the others were more concerned with the future of 'Crimson Stars', since they couldn't get together enough shares to take the label over, he thought about the possible future as a vampire hunter. For the moment he didn't think he could face other vampires, not even the nice kind. Hathor, who had offered a meeting to Hazel, surely wasn't a second Morado, but he didn't want to accompany the rest of the group to meet her. In the end it was Andrew who more or less forced him into coming with them.
Hathor turned out to be a rather young woman with a honeyed complexion, black hair and dark eyes. She surely looked like an Egyptian woman. They talked to her for quite a while, finally Abel just left the group behind and fled to be alone with his thoughts.
"You don't want to spent the rest of you life fighting, do you?" a soft voice behind him asked. Hathor had followed him. "No one can understand that better than me. I have spent the centuries of my life gathering knowledge. But you and your friends managed to bring down one of the most powerful and dangerous of my kind. And it was you, not one of them, who killed him. You are strong."
"I'm not strong, I was just lucky. And I saw them all going down. I don't want to go through that again."
"It is your decision, Abel. But sometimes fate forces us into certain roles. You are both brave and sensitive, a very rare combination. Together with your friends you could make the world a better place."
"Yes, maybe we could. But only after we know what the future holds for us."
"No one ever knows what the future holds for him or her, that much I've learned during my long lifetime."
The End?
A/N: Phew, finally. Abel and his friends haven't solved all their problems yet, that much is sure. I've left open whether they are going to start hunting vampires, because right at the moment I don't want to give you a sound 'No' or 'Yes'. I've also left open what happens to 'Crimson Stars'. I had to fight with the last three chapters and I probably won't think they're good in a couple of days or weeks. I'm not sure whether I'll come back to this storyline and write something more about Abel and his friends. It would be tempting, but right at the moment I can't think of a second story.