34. Brody
Brody
Hele House isn’t really a house, not in any meaningful sense of the word. It’s more of a mansion. Actually, scratch that, it’s basically a castle. And it is totally and utterly insane.
The house has been added to over the years, resulting in a hodgepodge of different elements, even though everything is built from the same grey stone so common in this part of Devon.
There’s even a tower, huge and circular and extending up towards the clouds, topped by turrets.
It’s everything you would imagine if you thought of Vlad’s castle in Transylvania.
A shiver runs up the back of my neck at the thought.
Perhaps Andrei really is vampire zero – the “True Father” – and the inspiration behind the great Dracula myth.
Dust covers everything, tarnishing the opulence and giving the place a whole “glamour gone to seed” vibe. And it’s cold. So so so so cold. It takes all of my concentration not to shiver or lean too obviously towards the candelabra and the small bit of heat emanating from the flickering flames.
One thing I’m really struggling with – despite being freezing, of course – is getting my head around how old everyone here is.
So I know the basic rule that after vampires hit about twenty their aging slows right down, so for every fifteen-ish years they will look as if they’ve aged by one human year.
So, Ari is one hundred and seventy-two but she looks late-twenties and Matt is thirty but looks like he just turned twenty-one.
The couple in front of me looks like an eighteen year old dating a dude in his early forties which gives me an ick in human terms. But then I think about it in vampire years and she’s an actual teenager dating a dude who is probably over three hundred.
Completely gross. I leave Ari chatting to them and excuse myself to find a bathroom. Not to vomit in, but you never know.
I walk down the corridor towards the toilets and feel the temperature drop even further. The cold envelopes me, drawing me down, deeper and deeper into the icy depths. I can feel the air being squeezed from my lungs.
I’m in one the cubicles – if I’m going to get spotted for being a normie, I don’t want it to happen with my literal dick in my hand, thank you very much – when I hear them. Two men talking to each other as they piss into the urinal.
They’re loud, like they haven’t a care in the world. Like it wouldn’t matter at all if someone overhead them.
“Are you going the hunt this year?” one of them says to the other.
“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Both men have plummy accents, the kind you normally only hear in BBC adaptations of Austen novels.
“I heard he’s going all out this year. That he’s been selecting a few elite targets to make things a tad more of a challenge.”
“Thank heavens. It’s always so boring if they’re weak.”
“Or stupid.”
“Remember that year they just stood there? Didn’t even try to run, dumb bastards.”
“So dull.”
“At least they’re all a little more clued up now though. Remember at the beginning when they didn’t even realise what we are?”
“I had one who kept asking what was going to happen. Like he could convince me not to chase him.”
Both men chuckle. My blood turns to ice.
They sound like they’re talking about a hunt.
A human hunt.
I wait inside the cubicle until I’m completely sure the two men have left. My heart is beating so fast I’m worried I might have a heart attack right here in the bathroom of Hele House. I take a few deep breaths in an effort to calm myself down but it doesn’t really work.
Eventually I make my way back to Ari, who has managed to extricate herself from the weird age-gap couple and is hanging around a table laden with sweet treats: cakes and tarts and little tiny pastries.
“Are you OK?” she asks when she sees me.
I shake my head, unable to form even the most basic of words.
“Here.” She shoves a slice of cake in my hand. “Get some sugar in you.”
I nibble the edges. It’s flavoured with cinnamon and topped with a creamy frosting. It’s delicious and even in my current state I can’t help myself but eat the rest of it. No wonder I’m getting the man boobs Matt pointed out to me yesterday.
“What happened?” she asks when I finish chewing.
“I overheard two guys in the bathroom. They were talking about…” I trail off and look around me, making sure no one can hear what I’m about to tell her, “a hunt.”
Ari looks at me for a few moments and then she smiles. “There isn’t a hunt.” She chuckles softly, like this is all a brilliant joke.
“That isn’t what I heard.” I’m steadfast.
“You’re sure?” Her smile drops.
“Yep.”
“But…” she starts and then trails off, a pensive look clouding her features.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She shakes her head as if trying to dislodge an image from her brain.
“You know something, don’t you?” I try not to sound accusatory, like she might be in on this. Involved somehow. She can’t be.
“There were rumours once,” she says eventually. “Well more than once if we’re being wholly honest about it. But it was years ago. Don’t look like that. I wasn’t part of it. Never have been and never will. You know me, Brody.”
I nod. I do know her and I know she wouldn’t. But it pains me that she’s maybe turned a blind eye over the years.
“You know I can tell what you’re thinking, right?” she asks. “They were just rumours. Nothing ever concrete enough to know what was happening or who was involved. You can’t stop something you don’t know about.”
I will concede she kind of has a point there.
“But if there is a hunt,” she adds. “Then I’ll try to find out more. Get enough information to stop it. OK?”
I nod. “Thank you.”
“Did they say when it was?”
“No. It sounded soon, but not immediate.”
“OK. I’ll do some digging.”
“Me too.” I echo her tone of conviction.
“You will do no such thing.” She reaches out a hand, curling it tightly around my forearm.
I almost step backwards at the force of her words. “Why not?”
“Because you are a human pretending to be a vampire and you will do nothing to draw attention to yourself. Nothing.” She spits a little on the final word. “Promise me.”
“I… I… promise,” I manage to stutter, my words catching in my throat partly from fear and partly from the fact that the fierce look in her eye is making me feel a little funny.
“Good.” She releases her grip on my arm and I rub it absentmindedly. “Did I hurt you?”
“Oh, no,” I reply. I don’t want to admit that I was just touching the spot where she’d touched me. Even in my own head that sounds like lunacy.
We decide to head back to the main room to hang around and see what people might say when they think they are among friends.
Half an hour later and I’m bored out of my mind, listening to ancient vampires bitching and moaning about the state of today’s youth. Some of these “youth” transpire to be over a century old, which I suppose is young if you’re immortal.
“What would you do?” I ask Ari. “If you had all this money?”
“And all this wisdom accumulated over the centuries,” she adds. “I’d at least try to do something good with it.”
“Me too. Just think of the problems these guys could solve. But instead they’re obsessed with marrying their children to their distant cousins and eating the same canapés while they sip the same wine with the same people they’ve socialised with since the dawn of time.”
“They do invest in companies though,” she adds. “I mean, I’m totally in agreement with the sentiment, but some of these guys are trying to do something.”
“Aren’t they just trying to make more money so they have something to gloat about with their stuffy friends?”
“I thought you were the relentlessly positive one,” she says with a wry smile. “What’s happened to golden retriever Brody?”
I shrug. It’s not easy to stay positive in the face of all this bullshit.