Ofelia (The Book of Davoth 1)

by Martyn Stanley

  Without warning the lady pulled a key from the folds of her dress and unlocked the door. Ofelia backed away into the opposite corner, looking for a way to dart around her. When she saw her moment, she ran. But a slender hand whipped out and snatched her wrist from the air - holding it in an iron grip. She struggled, but the lady had inhuman strength. In seconds she was pinned down on the cold stone flags of the cell, both arms twisted behind her back and held fast. Then she felt a hand grip her hair hard and pull her head to one side. Finally, she sensed cold breath teasing her skin, on the side of her neck. Escape was impossible. It was like being held in a vice. As soon as fangs touched flesh - she woke.

  It was dark in her tiny attic room at Harper House. Rain was hammering against the window, rattling the pane in its frame. The vivid dream was still lingering in her mind. She knew the lady. The name came to her; Magdalena Florescu. The nightmare left her feeling disturbed, but she took solace in the fact that she’d slain the vampire Magdalena Florescu in the year 1526. She remembered this because it happened during the summer before the Battle of Mohács. A bloody battle fought with muskets and artillery. The Turks had well and truly routed the Hungarians. The Battle of Mohács had effectively left Hungary a diminished nation. A once powerful, independent state would spend the following centuries under the rule of one foreign power after another. Two rival groups selecting two kings, John Zápolya and Ferdinand of Austria, hadn’t helped matters. The only consolation for Ofelia had been that Hungary’s status as a battlefield for two hundred years had been useful. Hiding was always easier amidst chaos. Plus, stealing out on the night after a battle to drink the blood of the dead or dying, though not desirable - was at times safer and easier than feeding on the living. Feeding. She had a matter of days before she succumbed to the craving. Better to find a means of discreetly quenching her thirst in a controlled manner if it was possible.

  She pulled her covers up hard and nestled down into her pillow - willing herself to sleep and hoping that the rest of the night would be dreamless.

  Chapter 8 - Weston Bank Academy

  A new voice awoke Ofelia in the morning. A female voice - calling for her to get up and get ready. Not wanting to antagonize the lady, she doused herself in factor 50 and threw some clothes on. Today was a day she’d been dreading. It sickened her that she’d be forced to attend school again. Something she hadn’t done for centuries. It wasn’t that she objected to learning. Learning had been a keen pursuit of hers since she’d been taught to read in the fourteen-forties. She’d travelled around Europe, learned several languages and read extensively on every topic. It was doubtful she could actually learn anything new, or so she thought. Boredom was a definite concern, but the fear of boredom was overshadowed by the sheer terror of spending her days being treated like a child and forced to socialize with other children.

  Once she’d dressed, she reluctantly descended the two flights of stairs to the ground floor. An over-weight, red-faced woman with straw-like hair was simmering something on the hob in the steamy kitchen. Stoney, Lucy and Kerry were sat at the table. Stoney had his earphones in. Lucy was staring at her phone while swiping away on it with her finger. The lady turned as Ofelia entered. ‘Ah, you must be Ofelia. You’ve already met Gavin Brady - the Senior Manager here. I’m Molly Summers, one of the deputy managers. The other is Nina Brown - she’ll be in later this week. Boiled egg and toast?’

  Ofelia sat at the table next to Stoney, opposite Lucy. ‘Yes please.’

  The eggs boiled for a minute longer, then the toast popped and Molly plated up before sliding it in front of Ofelia. She poured a glass of orange juice for the new resident and pulled a chair up to sit on the end of the table, next to her. ‘Now, Gavin has explained your situation to me. You’ve been provisionally enrolled in Weston Bank Academy. I’ll take you to the office and sort out your paperwork, then I’ll take you to the uniform shop so we can get you kitted out. Don’t worry about the costs - uniform allowance is on top of your clothing allowance. Now, you grew up in Romania, so do I need to try and get the school to make a special language provision?’

  Ofelia had cracked the lid off her egg while Molly talked. Now she dipped a corner of her toast in the soft yolk and bit it off. ‘No. I am fluent in Romanian, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian and Russian.’

  Ofelia gulped. She’d said too much!

  ‘How on earth do you-’ Molly began, but Ofelia interrupted her.

  ‘Joke. I can speak good English.’

  Molly stared for a split second, then forced a warm smile. ‘Well that’s good.’ Then she turned to the rest of the table. ‘Right, come on you lot! Get a move on, we need to be in the car in ten minutes.’

  This was met with a chorus of groans, except from Stoney who had his music up so loud he couldn’t hear a thing.

  Soon they were all running through the light drizzle across the car park to Molly’s diesel people-carrier; an ancient Citroen Picasso with bubbling rust around the doors and an interior scarred by fag burns and suspicious stains. Stoney rode shotgun in the front, with the girls taking the rear bench. It was a bit of a squeeze in the back, though it might only get worse in future. Currently Lucy and Kerry had their rucksacks on their knees, but soon all three of them would be carrying luggage to school. Molly dropped Lucy and Kerry off first, on a quiet street by the back gate of the primary school. She watched them go in, then slipped the car into gear again. When they got to Weston Bank, Molly parked on the school car park. A sign warned ‘Staff Only’ at the entrance to the small car park, but Molly ignored it. She either considered herself ‘staff by proxy’ seeing as she was a carer or just didn’t care. Ofelia wasn’t sure which. Stoney grabbed his bag and trudged through the rain to the main building, his shirt untucked and showing beneath his blazer. His shoelaces were untied and his bag was lung sloppily over his shoulder.

  This was it. There was no escaping her fate now. Molly turned to her from the driver’s seat. ‘You okay? You ready?’

  Ofelia sighed, ‘As I’ll ever be. I suppose we better get this over with.’

  Molly gave a sympathetic smile. ‘Gavin said he thought you were reluctant to go to school. It won’t be so bad - I promise. It’s the law, anyway. Now, you’re not thinking of absconding are you? If you are, just... At least wait. Give it a chance. Hopefully I’ll have some news on your hearing when I pick you up. I don’t know if anyone has asked you this, but I think it’s important we know: What would you like to happen? I’m told you have no family here or in Romania, and that technically you’re British, but it’s hard to prove either way. If you were given a choice, would you rather stay in the UK or be sent back to Romania?’

  This was refreshing; an adult actually asking her for her opinion. It felt like so far, a wave of authority had swept her up. Adults explaining the rules, telling her what was happening, telling her what would happen next. Here was an adult asking her what she wanted. She thought about the ritual for a moment. If she could somehow find the blood stone and her missing page... Well, maybe she could just grow up in England, and... It was a tantalising thought. That reality seemed a long way off, seeing as the Blood Stone was missing, Stefan had been killed and her ancient page, containing the ritual, appeared to have been stolen. It was too early to give up hope. However, the longer she went before recovering the page, the less likely she was to get it back. She smiled at Molly. ‘I want to stay in the UK. If they ask you what I want - that’s it. Also, if you get time could you phone police and ask about my bag? It had some important things in it, which I’d like to get back.’

  ‘Okay love. What sort of things?’

  ‘Oh, clothes, books, money...’ Ofelia muttered, mentally adding in Romanian. ‘And a page from an ancient spell book from another dimension, containing the details of how to perform a ritual to make me human again.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. Now, come on.’

  Ofelia followed Molly to the school building. The waddling carer didn’
t bother locking the car, though it probably didn’t matter. Most self-respecting would-be car thieves would likely rather walk than steal Molly’s knackered old shed, anyway.

  Form time had already started by the time they entered the building, so the corridors were eerily quiet. Only the hushed whisper of form tutors quietly addressing their classes behind closed doors could be heard.

  What followed was a visit to the school office, to wait around while Molly discussed Ofelia in private with the school secretary and filled in forms. Next it was a visit to the school uniform shop, in truth - a cabin behind the sports hall. At the end of the summer and at the start of term, it would have been manned more regularly, but the September term had begun three weeks ago. A member of staff from the office met them there with the key. After a short flurry of trying on and checking against a uniform list, Ofelia was fully kitted out. Now she stood staring at herself in a full-length mirror under the watchful eye of Molly and the member of staff - a teaching assistant called Shannon. The uniform comprised a kilt in a yellow and black tartan, a mustard blazer with black piping, a white shirt and a mustard and black clip-on tie.

  Molly smiled at her encouragingly. ‘What do you think?’

  Ofelia scowled. ‘I look stupid. I look like a kid.’

  This caused a stifled smirk from both Molly and Shannon. They both seemed to find this rather amusing.

  Ofelia flicked up the hem of the skirt. ‘You realize this is the Clan McLachlan tartan, at least according to that con artist Tait and his stupid “Vestiarium Scoticum”.’

  Molly frowned. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘It was a book about tartans written in the early eighteen hundreds. It was fake, but most of the fakery went on to become the official tartans of some... It doesn’t matter, anyway.’

  She reached up and tried to adjust the tie. It didn’t sit well in the shirt collar.

  ‘And what’s with the fake tie? If we have to wear tie - why not a real one?’

  Shannon answered, ‘Oh, that’s health and safety. They’re much safer as clip-ons, especially if you’re doing technology and using machinery. To be fair, learning how to tie a tie properly is a bit of a pointless skill for girls. I can see it’s useful for the boys, but I don’t know of any women outside the catering industry who need to know how to do it. You can wear your pumps today, but you must get some school shoes. I can give you a carrier bag to keep your PE kit in, but we’ll have to get you a PE bag.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Molly now pulled a folded sheet of A4 from her bag and handed it to Ofelia. Here’s your timetable. Shannon offered to take you to your first lesson. I think you’ve missed form time and maths now, so that’ll be... history.’

  Ofelia took the sheet and studied it for a moment. It looked like the school had two alternating weeks. If it was history next, then that meant this must be week B. Ofelia followed Shannon through the deserted corridors, trying to create a mental map of the school as she went. She also paid particular attention to any exits, reasoning that absconding from school might be a lot easier than absconding from Harper House. Being on the streets during the day wearing school uniform might be a problem. The mustard blazer would raise suspicion immediately before anyone even considered her age. It was possible she could conceal a spare set of casual clothes in her PE bag once she had one. That didn’t mean escaping the school would be easy. Eventually Shannon knocked on a classroom door and pushed it open.

  A spectacled man in a brown tweed suit paused his lesson and turned to the door. ‘Ahh, is this the new arrival?’

  Shannon nodded, handed over a scrap of paper and backed out of the room, leaving Ofelia isolated. Thirty pairs of eyes were on her. She scanned the class, looking for the most discreet place to sit. There were twenty-nine in the class, just over half the class were girls. She locked eyes with a taller, stocky girl on the back row - with her hair tied back as tight as possible. She stood out partly because she appeared to be wearing make-up and earrings, partly because she looked like she was chewing gum and partly because she gave Ofelia the most hateful look in the room.

  The teacher gestured towards the sole spare seat in the room. ‘Please, take a seat. My name’s Mr. Shaw and we’ve just been talking about the Black Death.’

  The remaining seat was at the same desk as a freckled boy with short, dark hair. He looked like the smallest in the class by about a foot. When Ofelia took her seat, he shuffled away nervously; avoiding eye contact. She leaned over to him and whispered, ‘hey, I don’t bite. I’m Ofelia.’

  This didn’t have the desired effect and if anything made him even more nervous. He was trembling and still keeping as much distance as he could. ‘Oliver,’ he muttered, keeping his eyes forward.

  Mr. Shaw now looked at the scrap of paper Shannon had handed him and pointed his dry-wipe marker at Ofelia. ‘So… Ofelia. We were about to move onto the Great Plague of London. Team point if you can tell me the year it started.’

  Ofelia rolled her eyes at this and sighed exasperatedly before she answered, ‘The Great Plague of London was sixteen sixty-five to sixty-six. It was part of the second plague pandemic. There were no deaths after the Great Fire of London in sixteen sixty-six, so some think the fire burn all the rats. But the fire never spread beyond the walled city, so there must have been some other reason for the epidemic to end. Maybe some people develop immunity? Maybe sanitation get better? Maybe the dominant type of rat changed? Maybe the rats develop immunity so the flea never spread to people? I don’t know.’

  Mr. Shaw frowned. He hadn’t expected a correct answer, let alone a brief lecture on the topic. Ofelia felt a scrunched up piece of paper hit her on the back of the head now and heard a muffled girl’s voice say, ‘Smart arse!’

  She didn’t know who said it, but she turned to the back and smiled. ‘You got the first word right. Maybe the second word is for you?’

  This caused a round of chuckles, but Mr. Shaw interrupted now. ‘That’s enough! Open your books at chapter four and start reading. For homework I want you to write two sides on the Great Plague of London.’

  The classroom fell silent. The book was interesting as it went, there were some facts she hadn’t known - though she was sceptical of some of the information given. She’d actually been in England at the time and remembered it vividly. London had been hell on earth that year. Thankfully, for whatever reason, vampires appeared to be immune to the plague. She wondered; if that hadn’t been the case, would she have succumbed and died? Oliver leaned closer to her and whispered, ‘that girl at the back, that’s Imelda Fransen. You know how most schools have a head boy and head girl? Well year seven here has a head bully, and that’s Imelda. You shouldn’t antagonize her.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of her,’ Ofelia snorted. ‘Let her try to intimidate me, we see who comes off looking the fool.’

  As she spoke, the bell went. Sorting out her paperwork and uniform had taken longer than expected. According to her timetable she’d missed maths and most of history. Now it was break. As the class emptied, Ofelia stood and turned to Oliver. ‘Thanks for the heads up though, I take it you’ve been on the receiving end of this Imelda?’

  ‘Everyone has. Me more than most. It’s best to just stay out of her way.’

  ‘Okay, but if she tries to give me a hard time, I make sure she regrets it,’ Ofelia stated matter-of-factly. ‘Hey, where can I get something to eat? I’m hungry.’

  ‘The refectory is down the corridor, they don’t do any hot food at break but you can get crisps and snacks and stuff.’

  Ofelia headed for the door, then looked over her shoulder. ‘Coming?’

  Oliver looked shocked at this. He stared at her - stunned. ‘You want to hang out with me?’

  ‘Sure. Why not? Come on.’

  Looking relieved and rather pleased with himself, Oliver followed Ofelia into the corridor and directed her to the refectory. When they turned the corner though, Imelda and a gaggle of girls, plus a pair of scruffy looking boys, who loo
ked older, were blocking the corridor. When Imelda saw Oliver following Ofelia, she sniggered. ‘Who’s yer girlfriend Ol?’

  Oliver’s cheeks glowed scarlet at this, but Ofelia stepped in between him and Imelda. ‘Ofelia Arbore, pleased to meet you.’

  Imelda didn’t take the offered hand. ‘So, you’re the Romanian are yer? Why don’t you go back to where you came from?’

  Now seemed like a good time to stick to her invented origins story. ‘To Birmingham? Oh, maybe I will one day. Seeing as at the moment I don’t have any choice over where I stay, I guess you’re stuck with me.’

  ‘Arbore ain’t a brummie name. Why don’t you go back to Romania?’

  Ofelia smirked at this, ‘Fransen isn’t an English name. It’s Dutch, it’s likely one of your ancestor came over with Dutch Merchant Navy, so maybe you should go back to Holland?’

  Imelda opened her mouth to retort, but stammered. You could almost see the cogs whirring away in her head, looking for a witty retort, but failing to find one. In the end she resorted to childish insults. ‘Cheeky cow. You’d better shut up or-’

  ‘Or you’ll shut me up? I doubt it. Try it and I break your arm.’

  Without warning, Imelda’s hand darted up, and she made to slap Ofelia - hard on the cheek. Ofelia’s hand shot out in a flash. Suddenly Imelda felt her wrist being twisted in an iron grip as Ofelia forcing her into a crouched position. Imelda’s cronies were too in shock to intervene, they stood back, staring. At this point, Ofelia reached over and grabbed Imelda’s little finger on the gripped hand. In a short sharp motion, she pulled and twisted it to the side, causing Imelda to scream. Ofelia held her hand tight and smiled down at her. ‘I’ve dislocated your little finger. But I’ve done it carefully, no torn ligaments or lasting damage. I can put it back for you. Now are you going to leave me alone?’