The Vampire's Photograph by Kevin Emerson Read Free Book Online

recess play could get rough.
    Oliver took the spider and hurried from the kitchen. Since it was still faintly light outside, he headed back downstairs and exited through a heavy wooden door by the crypt. He entered a short earthen tunnel that led to a second metal door. It slid open, and Oliver entered the main sewer line beneath Twilight Lane.
    The sewer tunnels had all been built by humans. New World vampires believed that, whenever possible, there was no reason to expend the effort to build something, if there were these industrious humans around to do it for them. The same vampires at city hall who kept the houses on Twilight Lane safe from demolition also made sure that the major vampire tunnels were only worked on by night crews of city workers, and that these night crews were strictly undead.
    Oliver walked along the edge of a wide tunnel composed of thick stone blocks. A shallow channel of rainwater ran down the center of the floor. Ornate lanterns glowed with mellow, golden magmalight. Recesses had been chiseled at regular intervals into the crux of the wall and floor. Each held a wrought iron candelabra, ablaze with thirteen tallow candles. The light from these cast twisted, larger-than-life shadows of the passersby up onto the walls and ceiling. Vampires loved this kind of simple distortion of reality into something artful.
    This tunnel was a fairly major thoroughfare. And so, between the sconces, the dank walls were adorned with perfectly preserved ancient art work: portraits of vampires that spanned millennia and majestic depictions of epic human battles. Oliver passed a twenty-foot-long embroidered tapestry showing a legendary vampire, Klaus Virhaeten, whispering conspiratorially into the ear of the famous, and easily influenced, human general Alexander the Great. Alexander sat on a throne, in the shade of palm leaves, watching over a spectacular battle that flowed chaotically across the rest of the tapestry, displaying the grisly carnage of tens of thousands of men as no human artist would ever had dared to show it. There was no artful “glory” or “heroics” in this depiction of war, just chaos and terror—humans at their most entertaining.
    The sewer was fairly empty this early in the evening. A slow-walking old vampire woman was plodding along ahead of Oliver. A finely suited businessman huffed and flipped to the ceiling in order to pass her without having to put his brilliantly polished shoes in the water.
    Oliver walked up another block, then stopped beneath a manhole cover high in the ceiling. He pressed a button on the wall, and the manhole slid open. Oliver leaped upward, shooting out of the sewer and landing in a narrow alley between two streets of quiet houses, only a block from school. It was almost dark now and rain fell from a featureless ash-gray sky. The colors in the alley were draining away with the darkness.
    The last humans were still lingering outside of school: two kids shooting a basketball, a trio of girls sitting on the steps waiting for a ride home. As Oliver passed by, a silence fell over them. He headed quickly around back. Some classrooms were still lit, making skewed rectangles on the wet blacktop. Oliver reached the back door and knocked softly. There was a moment of silence, then the door opened and Rodrigo looked out, speaking in his ever-tired voice, “You’re a bit early, sir.”
    â€œSorry, Rodrigo,” Oliver said. “I…I need to do some extra work—can I come in?”
    Rodrigo backed out of the way. “Just be careful,” he warned. “There are still humans around.”
    â€œGot it,” said Oliver. He headed downstairs, staying close to the wall, ready to spectralize. He’d seen signs for the humans’ school newspaper in the basement art room and figured that was where Emalie and the other students met.
    The only light came from the art room door, at the far end of the hall. Oliver stayed against the