39. Ari
Ari
Ican tell that he’s starting to panic, the emotion welling up inside of him. We need to get out of here, away from the crowds and the people who might just figure out what he really is.
“Follow me,” I say and pull him towards a huge painting of a landscape.
It’s so large it reaches the floor and almost touches the ceiling, spreading an image of Dartmoor in all her rugged beauty across the wall.
I press a spot on the frame, just below shoulder height and there’s a barely audible click.
A gap opens behind the painting and I drag him through it into a corridor behind.
“What is this place?” he asks as the painting swings back into position. “It’s… warm.” He sounds utterly confused.
“That’ll be the sconces,” I tell him, motioning to the light rushes every few metres.
“But…” he trails off.
“It’s how the staff get around the house,” I tell him. “Like a series of back passages so they don’t disturb the guests. It’s warm and well-lit because… well, most of the staff are human.”
He nods. “OK. That makes sense. And these are all over the castle?”
“It isn’t a castle,” I remind him.
“A technicality.”
“But kind of. These lit staff corridors are mainly in the entertaining areas. But there are secret passages all over the place. A lot of them hidden, forgotten to history.”
“Sounds creepy.”
“Creepy, yes. But useful.”
We make our way down the corridor and then take a left at a T-junction. We pause for a moment and Brody puts his eye up against a hole in the wall.
“That should be the smoking room,” I tell him.
“You really know this place, huh?” He leans forward and squints a little. “I can see that Mr Gallagher dude.”
I grin a little. I don’t think Mr Gallagher has ever been called a “dude” before. “Anyone else you recognise?” I ask.
He steps back and shakes his head.
I take his place but I don’t recognise the two stuffy looking men he’s talking to either. “Not a clue,” I tell him with a shrug of my shoulders.
But as silence falls between us we hear a snippet of the conversation between the men.
“It isn’t just that we were here first, Georgie old boy.”
“Exactly. Even the youngest of us are superior.”
“They should serve us. It’s the natural order of things. Do you really think our forefathers made their sacrifice so we could live in the dark?”
“They’re vermin and need to be shown who their masters really are.”
I swallow. I know it’s just rhetoric, old vampires espousing bullshit so they feel big and clever and can whip themselves into a frenzy of righteous – to themselves at least – anger.
But here, with Brody next to me, it suddenly feels all the more real.
And all the more frightening. There are so many here this weekend that I’m starting to wonder if Andrei is really as pragmatic about the hunt as he makes out.
Or is that all an act and really he’s here at Hele House organising it all?
“I think we should go,” Brody says quietly. I can hear the panic in his voice.
“Yeah,” I agree and lead him down the corridor.
We get to a ninety-degree corner, but instead of turning I stop and face the exposed brick wall.
In the centre is a single brick that looks slightly out of place.
Not enough that you’d know it at casual glance, but just enough so if you’re looking for it you’ll find it eventually.
I press it and the whole wall moves forwards by a few inches.
“Another secret door?” Brody says, a sliver of the panic from before replaced with a modicum of childish delight.
“Let me show you the real hidden corridors of Hele House.”
There are no sconces already lit in this part of the house, but – because it’s actually 2026 and not the Middle Ages – there’s a battery powered torch hanging on a hook. I turn it on as the door closes behind us.
The secret corridors are barren of any comforts, just bare stone floors and walls. It’s like walking through an archaeological dig. Fun fact, I was there in the 1950s when there was a huge excavation effort at Pompeii and it always reminded me of the warren of tunnels here at Hele House.
We head up a staircase, the steps worn in the centre by centuries of foot traffic.
At one point in the house’s history these corridors were used frequently but no-one has been back here for years.
Even vampires forget things over time, there’s only so much knowledge you can hold in your brain, only so many memories.
I’ve often wondered if that’s why some vampires are so obsessed with lineage, like it’s their only real tether to this world as they forget more and more with each passing year.
“It’s freezing back here,” Brody says and I see the puff of his breath.
“Sorry. We’re nearly there,” I reassure him.
Another few twists and turns in the route and I begin to see the markings etched into the stone walls. I shine the torch on the outline of a heart, then a pair of stick figures in long skirts, a crude outline of a dog. I come to a stop in front of a sketch of a tree.
“This is it,” I tell him and then crouch down. “Shit,” I whisper under my breath as I try to push on the wall, it catches for a moment but then gives way and swings outwards to reveal a tiny door, just big enough for a person to crawl through.
“Ummm…. Where does that lead?” Brody asks.
“Have a little faith,” I reply as I slip though into the room on the other side.
He follows me and stands up, copying me as we brush dust from our clothes. “Holy shit,” he says, looking around.
It’s a bit of a mess, the kind of chaos I would expect from him, with the smart jeans he was wearing earlier strewn across the bed.
“How did you know this would get us directly to my room?” he asks.
“You impressed?”
“Kinda.”
“This is all Clara and I did when we were younger. Skulked around the house, hiding behind the tapestries and eavesdropping on everyone and anyone. Then when Ivan started coming here too, all three of us would go off and hunt down the secrets and lies that bind a place like this together. Ivan used to trade gossip for bottles of wine from the cellar master.”
“Cool” he replies. Then he pauses and looks around. Then at me.
I had to take him somewhere. He can’t be around the others, not in the state he was in before. He would have given himself away eventually, the stench of his fear would have drowned out the vampire scent of Ivan’s suit.
It was stupid to bring him to Hele House.
What the hell was I thinking? I mean, perhaps you could pass off a normie as a vampire to a room of other normies.
Or maybe even to a newbie who still hasn’t fully learned the depth of his vampire skills.
But Andrei and his friends are the most powerful vampires in the country.
And that power has been accumulated over centuries; these are some of the oldest vampires in existence.
How the hell did I think I could trick them?
“Hey,” he says and his finger tips graze my chin. “You look kind of worried.”
“Just…” I trail off and spread my arms out, fingers splayed. “I shouldn’t have bought you here this weekend. It was too much of a risk.”
“Are we safe in here?”
I nod and once again he reaches out to touch my face.
“Good,” he whispers.
“Your heart is still racing,” I say, placing my hand flat on his chest. It feels strong and powerful. And almost alien. Something delicious skitters up my spine.
He raises his eyes to meet mine and I feel myself become suspended, frozen in the moment, unable to move or breathe or speak.
I can feel the pull of him, the way he draws me closer and closer. Perhaps it’s just the left over Alba in his system, nothing more than a chemical reaction. Yes, that must be it.
He feels so good beneath my fingers. But it’s just physical. A little fun while we’re away from home. If I keep telling myself that then it must be true.
I tilt my face up to kiss him, praying he doesn’t reject me again.