43. Ari
Ari
It feels like everything happens in slow motion.
The crescendo of voices continues to build. Every slur for humanity my kind has ever known thrown into the air – worm, bloodbag, underling, mortal – alongside their anger at his deception. At the deception I thought was so clever but yet so trivial. I had no idea they would act like this.
“Run,” I repeat, more urgency in my tone now.
Brody leaps from the stage and runs to the left hand door. It will take him to the library and I pray he remembers the secret door I showed him. If he can hide in the tunnels then perhaps I can beg Andrei for his life. Perhaps I can save him.
“Well, well, well,” Andrei says with that same self-satisfied smirk I recognise from Benedict. My ex-boyfriend has always looked up to the great Mr Hele and I’m not even slightly surprised he modelled his very expressions on him. Andrei turns to me. “Tsk-tsk.”
“I… I… I…” I stammer. But to be honest I have no idea what words I’m even trying to say.
“Brothers and sisters. I know you’ve all been hoping for an invitation to the next hunt. Well, perhaps tonight you will get a little taste.” He opens his mouth, tongue running over his fangs.
“No!” I scream.
“No?” He mocks me.
“You don’t believe in the hunt…” but I trail off. Because of course he does. How can I have been so naive? So stupid? So blind to the reality of the man standing in front of me?
Andrei turns to the crowd who vibrate with an energy I’ve never seen in my kind. There’s something primal in the air. A blood lust. He spreads his arms open wide. “Brothers and sisters. Who is the Master of the Hunt?”
“You are,” a hundred voices call back to him.
“Who provides the most delectable prey?”
“You do.”
“No. I won’t let you,” I say, pulling myself up to my full height. In my heels I’m almost as tall as he is, my eyes level with his. But my bravado is just that, an illusion.
“Little girl, do you really think you have any say in this at all?”
“I’m not a little girl,” I hiss, hands curling into fists by my sides.
“Yes, you are.” Andrei cocks his head a little and stares at me. “A little girl who has forgotten her place. Who has allowed herself to be poisoned by the humans, to be convinced they’re our equals.”
“They are—”
But he interrupts me. “I know your upbringing was a little less than traditional about these things. It took a lot of effort on my part to get you time here at Hele after your father decided to turn his back on his kind and run off with some human trollop, but—”
“My mother was not a trollop.” I hiss the words.
Andrei throws his head back and laughs as if this is one of the funniest jokes he has ever heard.
“Your mother,” he really accents the word, “was a vampire princess. You see what I mean about forgetting your heritage?” He cocks his head further.
“The human whore your father tricked into raising you was not your mother.”
“He loved her. I loved her.”
“Sentimental codswallop.” He steps towards me his face level with mine. “You have a destiny to fulfil.”
He claps his hands together as he turns back to the crowd below us.
“Now then. If everyone could take a break for a few moments. I need to take Arianna Grace Haywood, granddaughter of Carmilla…” He pauses for a few moments to make sure everyone in the room appreciates just who I’m descended from.
He nods a few times as recognition blooms across the faces of the crowd in front of him.
“… for a little private chat,” he finally finishes the sentence.
“Drinks will be circulated.” He clicks his fingers at one of the waiters standing to one side of the crowd and the man immediately jumps into action.
It’s the same waiter who realised Brody was human last night. Was he the one who outed Brody?
“Come with me,” Andrei tells me as he takes hold of my elbow.
For a split second I imagine fighting him, but I know it would be futile and so I allow him to steer me down the steps, through the crowd and out of the hall.
I feel numb. Hollowed out. Like none of this is real, like none of this is actually happening and I’ll wake up to find it was all just a dream, some kind of nightmare that will fade as the sun begins to rise over the horizon.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“My office.”
“Oh.”
He remains silent until we get to the large oak door, the one I remember from when Clara and I were little.
We had tried a million times to find the secret route through the castle to the inside of this room, but without success.
We did find a spot where you could listen to everything that was said inside, but I had never seen beyond the imposing door.
What this room looks like has been a mystery I’ve carried for almost two centuries.
I’m kind of disappointed, it just looks like an office.
Admittedly a large and well-appointed one, but it could belong to a wealthy lawyer or a gentleman author.
He motions for me to take a seat in the chair closest to the fire. I stay where I am. A small act of defiance but it gives me a sense that I’m still in control.
“You can’t kill him,” I say. But it’s a lie. We all know Andrei could kill him and without breaking a sweat.
He doesn’t even bother to reply. He moves behind the huge mahogany desk and sits down, his elbows resting on the leather inlay, his hands steepling in front of his face.
I hear the door to the office open and then the click of the lock as it closes again. Of course. I turn to discover Benedict has joined us.
“You told him,” I say, all the emotion stripped from my voice. Because of course it was Benedict. And all because I refuse to let him treat me like a toy. Fuck this shit. I feel the rage fill my cold dead heart.
Benedict smirks and takes a seat on one of the green leather sofas which sit perpendicular to the fireplace. “It didn’t have to be this way, Ari.”
“Do you really think we didn’t know right from the beginning?
” Andrei asks. “You’re the granddaughter of Carmilla.
” He shakes his head slightly, as if disappointed and then his gaze travels to the mantlepiece.
“That,” he says softly as he motions towards a glass case holding half a cross, “is what remains of the crucifix I used to craft a bullet to avenge your family.” He puts heavy emphasis on the “I”, as if he was the hero of the story and not just trying to protect his own position.
My birth mother and grandmother were killed by a jealous vampire determined to challenge how the old houses held on to power.
Andrei Hele knew he would be the next target and so he eliminated the threat before it came to his door.
“It is in their memory that I continue to look out for you. Someone is always watching you, keeping tabs on all your screwups.” He turns his attention to Benedict.
“Now, where were we? Oh yes, Arianna was just telling me why I can’t kill her disgusting human…
” he pauses for a moment. “Business partner.” He spits the words but I don’t think they are the insult he wants to hurl.
“People know he came here,” I say.
“And?”
“They’ll know he’s missing and they will come looking for him.” I try to sound confident in my assertion.
“And who is this they?” Andrei sneers slightly. Bastard.
“Brody has family. And friends. They’ll go to the police.” But even as I say the words I know how stupid I sound. How naive. Like the police would storm the castle to rescue him or bring his killer to justice.
“You should be a comedienne, Arianna.”
“But… I…” But what I can say. I have nothing I can bargain with. All I can hope is that Brody has found safety somewhere and I can find a way to smuggle him out of this nightmare.
The silence stretches between us as I try to think of something. Anything. What is it that Andrei wants? He wants Only Fangs. That much was clear tonight. He wants Only Fangs because it gets him one step closer to the perfect little vampire utopia he’s been trying to create for centuries.
“If you kill him I won’t give you Only Fangs.” I blurt out the words.
“Give me Only Fangs?” His tone is saccharine sweet. “Oh sweetheart. I don’t need you to give me Only Fangs.”
“Umm. Yes you do.” I try to sound confident.
“If you try to build it without me it’ll be shit.
No one will use it. And that’s the key. Volume.
These dating apps only work if enough people use them.
Otherwise it’s just one poor bastard searching a database with two potential matches. Hardly groundbreaking.”
“And you can do this?”
“With Brody, yes I can.”
He throws his head back and laughs. The deep, throaty laugh fills the room and makes me think I’ve grossly underestimated the whole scenario.
Eventually he stops and takes a moment to wipe a few tears of mirth from his eyes.
“Yes, you definitely should have been a comedienne. Your pet human will never touch this project with his sticky little mortal fingers.” The contempt in his tone is palpable.
“I’m not doing it without him.” I try to pull myself up taller, gritting my teeth against the pain in my feet from the ridiculous heels I’m wearing because I thought Brody might think I looked sexy.
“I think you are hugely overestimating your power here,” Andrei says with a smirk. “I don’t need you to make the app.”
I jut out my chin in an attempt at defiance, hoping it will give me a little more courage, or at least stop my voice from wobbling. “I won’t give you the copyright. You can’t call it Only Fangs.”
Andrei laughs. “I don’t want the name, you silly girl.” He pauses for a moment, allowing silence to settle in the room. “I want to call it Blood Match.”
“It sounds like a blood donation service.”
“This is serious. It’s not just a place for vampires to hook up. This is about finding a mate. It needs to portray the gravitas of the app as a method for finding a true match.”
“But you have no idea how to build a dating app.”
“Neither do you,” he counters. “I’ll find a vampire who can make it. It can’t be that difficult if your human can do it.”
“So why am I here?” I motion around the office. If he can take everything anyway then he doesn’t need me. So there must be a deal to be struck. I just have absolutely no idea what it is.
From the sofa, Benedict clears his throat. A grin spreads across Andrei’s face.
“This has nothing to do with Only Fangs, does it?” I ask, realisation beginning to dawn.
Andrei shakes his head and his grin broadens. “You’re starting to get it, Arianna.”
“No.” I’m adamant.
“The vampire princess and the future head of the High Council.” Andrei’s grin morphs into a smirk.
“I hate him.” I inject as much venom into my words as possible.
“Don’t act like a child. You have a duty to your species.”
“I have a duty to my own happiness.” I lift my chin slightly as I say the words I have repeated to myself like a mantra for almost fifty years.
“Stupid child. Luckily, I have another way to make you do what you were born to do.”
“Brody,” I whisper.
This is the deal.
Brody can live.
But we can never be together.
And I will spend eternity with Benedict Dalton.