Chapter Eight
Chapter
Eight
“Have you found the library?” Penny asks as soon as she picks up the phone.
“Not yet. I’m still working on my map.” I look up at an overly ornate lamppost, possibly a few centuries old, painted black with golden embellishments.
I give her a rundown of everything that happened in Inverness.
“Five vampires did get away, but at least we now know Highland leeches like working together.”
“Could they have been students?” she asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say, looking around. The campus village is quiet, cobbled road blanketed with fallen leaves. “Though I’d like you to do some digging for me. Have you heard of the Red Ribbon Society? They’re Convert supremacists. Maybe they’re involved.”
“Red Ribbon,” Penny says slowly, drawing out each syllable. “It doesn’t ring any bells.”
“I can get some intel on them, too, if you’re interested.”
“No,” she says. “Stay out of their way and focus on your mission. We can’t have anyone finding out what you are.”
“All right,” I say, even though I know my curiosity won’t let me keep far from the Red Ribbons’ gallery for long.
“Have you met your roommate yet?”
I take a careful breath. “Yes,” I say. “She’s an Astra,” I say her surname, breathing it out, and hear Penny’s silence on the other end. She isn’t one to hesitate, so the fact that she doesn’t say anything strikes me as odd. “You there?” I ask.
“An Astra?” She whispers the name, as though it’s poisonous. “At Tynahine?”
“Aye,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. Penny says something, voice low, but I can’t make it out. “Do you still want me to stay in that room?”
“I should have known this would happen,” she says, and I swear I hear panic in her voice. “But yes. You have to stay there. Who is it, exactly? Is she from the main branch?”
“It’s Aliz Astra,” I say, lowering my voice, afraid she’s lurking in the shadows, eavesdropping. “The heir.”
Another long silence. I try to picture Penny. She’s probably pacing from one bookcase to another. The moon is most likely shining through the stained-glass window of her office in the abandoned convent.
“Has she done anything to you?” she finally asks.
“As if,” I say.
“You must be careful,” Penny says. “You have no idea how dangerous that family is, Rebecca. Especially the heir. Their powers go far beyond that of a regular vampire.”
I’m used to hearing Penny being in control. She sounds nothing like herself.
“Don’t underestimate me,” I say.
Aliz Astra may not be a regular vampire.
But I’m not a regular human, either.
Penny told me to not make myself known to the Red Ribbons.
But if there’s a chance they were involved with what happened in Inverness, I must do something.
So, I get up earlier than I should, just after I hear Astra lowering the lid of her coffin.
The narrow hallways of Tynarrich Hall are dark, lanterns low, chandeliers lacking their usual glow.
I know that if I go outside, all I’ll find is an overcast sky. Wind and rain.
And even though I’d like some fresh air, I go down to the tunnels.
This time I’m not looking for the secret library.
I head straight to the gallery, hoping once again that the Red Ribbons may have left something behind.
I take a meandering staircase, and just as I reach the hallway where the little gallery is hidden, I hear them.
Voices.
I stay back, waiting. They can’t belong to vampires.
Not this early. I peer out from the staircase; the hallway is empty, and the low drone of voices comes from behind the wooden door.
I keep my cheek pressed to the stone wall, slightly damp.
I can’t make out a word they’re saying. The staircase beneath me is still and silent.
Slowly, I step out into the hallway, keeping each step as light as I can.
The door to the gallery is shut. But I can finally make out what the voices inside are saying.
“This would mean breaking the treaties,” a husky baritone says. I glance through a thin slit in the side of the door.
The gallery inside is busy. Ten—maybe twelve—vampires, all in white shirts with red ribbons around their necks, leaning or sitting around the large table, drinking blood from ornamental glass goblets.
The liquid is half a shade lighter than the synthetic stuff the university provides them with.
I could recognise human blood anywhere. They all have those strange and frozen features of a Convert vampire.
The table has a dozen candles, wax dripping onto metal dishes, while they all pass around books and leaflets.
“The treaties get broken all the time,” a girl with short black hair, seated at the top of the table, says. She’s the one I saw in Gustavsson’s class. “I met an Avignon who kept a collection of vampire hunters in his dungeon just to drink fresh blood.”
“Hunters don’t count,” another voice says as I suppress a shiver.
Avignon. One of the Council’s board members.
The vampire speaking now seems to be a boy, no older than fifteen, though by the cut of his clothes, I can imagine he’s been around for at least a century.
“I say we send them a message. Drain a few humans, enough to spook them.” I swallow hard.
“No,” another voice interjects. “We should compel one of them to kill a vampire. Preferably someone with ties to the Council. They’ll put Faust Nocth in jail and keep our campus free of roaches.”
“Who, then?” the teenage boy asks.
“Aliz Astra,” a voice says, and gasps travel around the table.
“No,” the girl at the head of the table says, her voice tight.
“She fucked you once, three years ago,” another vampire drawls. “Get over her, Jannet.”
“If we get caught killing an Astra, the Council will make us sunbathe. Choose someone else.”
A pause. “How about Elia Tamarit?”
No one complains at this suggestion. Who’s Elia?
“And which human?” Jannet asks.
“Stephan Lazaar, the one with the vampire girlfriend.”
A gasp escapes me, and although a human would definitely not have heard it, the vampires beyond the old wooden door most certainly did; Jannet looks straight through the gap, meeting my eye.
I’m not sure if she sees me, but that doesn’t matter.
I run, and I’m only three steps away when I hear the door swing open, and a vampire shouts, “Get her!”
Vampires are fast. But I’m faster. I leap down the staircase.
They didn’t see my face. And I’m hopefully not the only human with red hair.
I can hear them behind me, swearing. I know I could take them out.
I feel for the stake in my satchel. But that would make a mess, wouldn’t it?
I take three tunnels, until I find one leading to the humanities building, still empty.
I don’t stop running until I find an exit.
Only when the rain hits my forehead, do I start to calm down, grasping my knees and getting my breath back.
My boots sink into the mud, and as much as I want to look back, I’m afraid they’re watching me. A part of me is disappointed. I shouldn’t have run away. I should have stayed and fought.
But at least I know what they’re planning.
The ice-cold drizzle starts to lighten by the time I reach campus security, located in a low building with a thatched roof, right next to the other hall of residence.
Taigh nan Iolairean, or Iolairean Hall, is the slightly more modern building that Stephan—and most of the other newly arrived human students—are residing in.
And had Penny not told me to remain in Astra’s room, I would be living there, too.
I stop next to a willow tree, not yet going inside, and press the dial button on Stephan’s contact. I don’t know what I’m going to say. The dial tone rings out five times before he finally picks up, voice croaking as he says: “Cassie?”
“Are you awake?”
“No, I’m sleep talking,” he grumbles. I hear a mattress creaking. “It’s nine o’clock.”
“I—” You’re being targeted by the vampire supremacist cult. I can’t seem to get the words out. “I need to talk to you. All three of you. Meet me in Tynarrich’s dining hall in half an hour.”
I hang up before he can protest.
I see a light switching on in one of the hall’s rooms and make my way into the headquarters of campus security.
A bell rings when I step in, and there’s only one person here.
It’s the man who picked me up from the train station.
The Familiar. He’s taking notes, phone attached to his ear as he listens to what the person on the other end of the line says.
He glances up at me, and then tells whoever he’s speaking to that he’ll call them back.
“Miss Smith,” he says, as I close the door behind me.
His office is quite bare. There are a dozen posters on the wall, most of them related to the dangers of spiked blood, but there is no sign of any weapons that would protect a human from a vampire, which is what I imagined the office existed for. “You’re up early.”
“Still working on changing my sleep schedule,” I say. If he’s a Familiar, why does he also work here? Does his master not pay him a living wage?
“How can I help you?”
He doesn’t offer me a seat, despite the cushioned chair at the other side of his desk. I swallow, the adrenaline from the chase down in the tunnels slowly leaving my system. “Have you heard of the Red Ribbon Society?” I ask. His phone rings again, and he declines the call.
“I have not.” A frown creases his brow as he stares at me. “You’re from Edinburgh, aren’t you?” he asks.
“Aye,” I say. “The Red Ribbons are—”
“I’m not really getting Edinburgh from your accent,” he says. A clock ticks from the wall, and for a moment it’s the only sound in the office, louder than the drizzle outside.
Shit.