You'll Be Surprised
Chapter Two
Midtown Manhattan – Present Day
In an immaculate windowless office across town, a stunning blonde sat surrounded by banks of TV screens showing various news channels around the world. The only human touch was a digital photo frame on her desk currently showing a smiling blonde girl about five years old.
The woman was wearing a beautifully tailored trouser suit over a polo necked blouse. A silver-coloured metal locket rested on the silk over her throat. White gloves completed the picture of fastidious elegance.
She was rewinding, fast-forwarding, pausing and generally scrutinising the film of Well Dressed Man. Unlike the public broadcast, she had access to uncut footage with full audio recording.
Sandra Edwards was the only creature on the face of the planet who would cheerfully have swapped places with Michael right then. She was desperate to know how Eichhorst had reacted to seeing his face all over the news. Had he got it? Understood the reference? Did he suspect her involvement? He would be bound to investigate, to follow up his suspicions, but she had taken precautions. Was he as conflicted as she was about a possible reconnection?
Nothing she'd experienced and no one she'd encountered in all the years since Eichhorst had ever matched up. Childbirth had hardly been as frightening or as painful and no love had ever had the depth or intensity of the hatred she felt for him.
God, how she'd missed him.
The truth was that Sandra embraced what Professor Setrakian could or would not accept. That when a monster had you at his mercy and showed you even a little kindness, you were his. Forever.
But she was a monster too, now. And she was going to be really kind to him. She was going to give Eichhorst the gift he would never admit to wanting.
She leant forward and focussed her attention on a surprisingly clear video recording of Eichhorst's interview with Setrakian in the police station. Sandra didn't see a face full of edges but one sculpted by a genius at the height of their powers. She smiled delightedly as Eichhorst contorted his perfect Aryan features into a Hogarthian image of evil.
'Thomas Eichhorst,' she purred, softening the sharp syllables into something like a poem… or a prayer. If there were any justice, someone who looked like her would have a voice like a cat fight. Instead, it was low and pleasant despite the clipped tones of a crisp English accent.
Setrakian's face, beard bristling with impotent fury, was plainly visible in this footage. There had been no need to obscure him in any way because it was edited out of the final broadcast. It hadn't fit with the narrative of a suited folk hero fighting crime on the mean streets of New York City.
'But you were not there to help her,' said Eichhorst silkily. 'Do you feel great regret?'
Sandra tilted her head back, thinking bitterly of the time when she was there to help Corey but didn't. Not that she could have done anything to protect him from Eichhorst and he had begged her to flee, to save herself and their unborn child. She closed her eyes and drifted into a trance of shame and resentment for a moment.
'You let me go,' she whispered reproachfully at the ceiling.
She shook her head and recovered her composure. She would not be a victim. Not ever. Not even in her own mind. He had enabled her escape and that was a good thing.
She flicked over to footage of the strigoi squad heading to Setrakian's pawnshop, and zoomed in on Eichhorst's face. He was smiling in anticipation of a triumph that had not come. She bit the end of a glove-finger and eased it off. It was an unnecessarily sensual movement for someone on her own.
Ignoring the unnatural faces of the undisguised vampires, she touched Eichhorst's image as if it were the original himself beneath her trembling fingers. 'Have you put weight on? Is the hunting good for you in the Master's city?' she breathed. 'It suits you. Makes you look younger.'
Next for her perusal was the scene beneath Stoneheart as he confronted Gus and Felix. This segment was prepared for transmission, so Gus' face was blurred throughout. Sandra paused and zoomed into a shot where a lock of silver hair had fallen over Eichhorst's forehead. She tenderly traced the outlines of his face, a strange wistful smile, almost of adoration, playing on her lips. She made a little movement across his forehead, as if trying to brush the dislodged strands of hair back into place and then fast-forwarded to a particular piece of dialogue that she viewed again and again.
'What I find fascinating,' mused the on-screen Eichhorst, 'is that love is considered a gift, a blessing, with no acceptance to the fact that it also binds, and chokes, and strangles.'
'Who was she, Eichhorst?' Sandra whispered eventually. 'Who damaged you so badly to make you choose this way?'
Perhaps it hadn't been the girl in the peasant dress. She knew it wasn't Helga or any of the others he'd dressed her up as - girls without names or stories. Perhaps it wasn't a "she" at all?
She switched to the video of the confrontation between Eichhorst and Professor Setrakian at Grand Central Station.
'You haven't stopped obsessing about him have you?' she muttered, with a sullen hint of jealousy.
How had she come to this? Jealous of a ninety-year-old man? Wanting someone she could not have? She'd wanted plenty of men she ought not to have and she tended to just bash on in and have them anyway. But Eichhorst…? She'd never wanted anyone before or since who didn't desire her in return and she knew that, as a vampire, he was biologically incapable of reciprocating.
Her tablet chirping derailed her thoughts and she swivelled round to pick it up. Eldritch Palmer had sent an email. He was such a sweetie. If she had even a fragment of humanity left, she should have been sorry to involve him. She smiled and dashed off a reply before returning to her Eichhorst-centric reverie.
At least she'd managed to work out his pattern and to manipulate it, to train him in a way…
A really grubby smile curled the corners of her mouth as her mind wandered back to Berlin.