by Beverley Lee
Finding Noah in the vault had proved to be very fortuitous. Aka Maga had watched from its perch on a rafter as the priest had entered. It had smelt his fear and fed on it, hungrily. This man had spoilt the taking of the child all those years ago and Aka Maga held onto grudges. It loathed the men who stood for religion.
Discovering Gabriel in the kitchen surpassed even the twisted joy it felt about Beth. The scent of the boy drifted through the airbricks, sleep dusty and pungent in its teenage state. This was the perfect point at which to claim him, just before he passed across into adulthood and so became forbidden. But Aka Maga wanted them all to suffer, so it swallowed its own greed and desires and stole out of the main cellar. It would terrorise them to the point where they would give the boy to it willingly, just to make it stop.
An open window gave it entry to the boot room where it slid its plan into action. It could still taste Gabriel’s blood on its tongue even now.
The aftermath of the boy’s fall brought a wonderful chaos to the house. Aka Maga fluttered into Beth’s room and woke her by preening the soft strands of white hair across her face. It had whispered in her ear about what it needed her to do and she had gone about it willingly. It wondered if she might have flashes of recollection, but her memory had erased the trauma of it entirely. Aka Maga appreciated the twisted irony behind that.
Getting Beth to climb out of the window had been as easy as gaining her trust. It had asked her and she had agreed, running to the window in her haste to please her bird, her Secret. She had laughed as she sat astride the ledge, one leg dangling barefoot against the sun-warmed bricks, and she had negotiated the tangle of climbing honeysuckle with the grace of a ten-year-old child. No fear, only the joy of accomplishment.
Aka Maga pondered as to her state of dress as the storm approached. With no shoes and only a thin, white dress and fringed shawl she could fall foul of the elements. It would be unfortunate if she perished, but given the plan it had, her survival seemed impossible.
The blame would fall entirely on the vampire, a fact that brought a sense of satisfaction. The blood drinker would rue the night it had decided to interfere. Aka Maga understood that a very fine line divided it from the vampire. The species was strong and this one was old, it had survived for centuries too. It was not to be taken lightly. If it attacked, Aka Maga would simply leave its host. But the vampire could choose to take what belonged to Aka Maga and Aka Maga alone, and it was not about to lose the boy again.
Everything had a weakness. It had discovered that centuries ago. So it had followed the vampire as he had made his way back to his lair, when the first rays of sun had lightened the sky.
In its disguise, it had easily flitted from branch to branch as he had passed through the copse of trees adjoining the field, which ran down to the dry stone wall at the back of the house. The land here still belonged to The Manor, but Carver leased it to the local farmer. The field lay on an incline and the tree-studded rise led to a deeper pocket of silver birches. It was in here, with a full view of the back of the house, that the vampire crept.
The stone crypt was once used by the original family who had built the house, and the dusty bones of its ancestors lay entombed in its inner walls. Weather and neglect had dressed the once-white stone with a film of green-grey algae and tiny dents, like the pock marks of a natural plague.
It was into this cold and unloved place the vampire went, greeted by two others. Aka Maga watched from the leafy branches of a slender birch. He saw the need of the vampire’s children as his arm slid around them both. Aka Maga saw the tiny fangs nipping at his flesh. It could hear the desperate, hungry mewling from one. He would feed them, and they would sleep the sleep of the undead.
But Aka Maga did not need to sleep when the sun rose high in the sky, and that would be his advantage.
Now, he led Beth along the same path that the vampire had followed that morning. She was delighted to be outside, running across the summer grass, occasionally stopping to stoop and stare at a meadow flower. She didn’t seem to mind that the soles of her feet were dirty, or the fact that the wind forced the flimsy material of her dress against her pale skin, outlining her thin frame.
The vampire was already prowling around the outskirts of the house. It could feel his presence. Aka Maga hesitated. The blood drinker would be free to do whatever he wished, but its plan was not yet fully in action. Beth stopped and looked back at the house as though she read its thoughts. Her lower lip trembled.
It could not risk leaving the vampire alone.
Beth was happy with what it whispered against her ear. She loved games, just as much as she loved to be outside. Clapping her hands with joy, she raced towards the treeline, her thin shawl falling from her shoulders to the ground. The silver birches dazzled in the early evening light, welcoming her into their fold, and fate.
Chapter Forty-Five
Ollie Taverner was struggling.
He thrived on routine and, since coming to The Manor, he had slipped into one that nurtured him in a place deep inside. The endless foster families and social institutions had left him feeling like life was one endless swirl of doubt. Going into fits of rage was his sister’s domain, and he remembered cowering in a corner when she had had one spectacular episode just before Christmas—when the foster family who cared for them decided they weren’t ‘a fit’. He didn’t ever want to be that out of control, so he learned to hide his emotions. No one could react unfavourably if he was calm and sensible. But there was still something missing, a great void where his life wasn’t connecting, and he had found that connection here.
But since yesterday, everything he thought was solid and true had changed.
Both he and Olivia had been lied to so many times in their lives they assumed it was normal. Carver had drilled it into them that the one thing he couldn’t abide was a liar. If they made a mistake in their research, own up to it. If an upset was caused and they were the perpetrator, apologise. No secrets, no grudges. Four little words, which had opened Ollie’s mind in such a way, he had felt reborn.
He watched as Gabe picked up his iPad and saw the white mask of confused fear on his face. There was nothing out there and nothing in this room but Gabe’s imagination, and that could be a terrible thing.
Carver’s decision to keep the knowledge about the existence of the box away from Gabe grated away in Ollie’s mind like dry skin against silk. It battled with his respect and admiration for the curator.
He tried to keep Olivia from his mind, but the thought kept picking away that she might have been lying too, and if she had the box, she was in danger.
‘Ollie?’ Gabe’s concerned glance told him his face wasn’t hiding much.
He thought back to when he was fifteen and had first come here, how grown up he had felt—but really, he had known nothing.
He slipped his arm around the boy’s shoulders, and then ruffled his hair. Gabe ducked, laughed, and tagged his arm, a game from those years before. Then they stood and looked at each other, the smile fading from Gabe’s face.
‘Let’s go in the kitchen and see if there’s any pizza lurking in the freezer.’ He wasn’t hungry, but he needed to talk to Gabe alone.
Carver and Noah were deep in conversation. Their voices, sometimes heated, drifted down the hallway.
Gabe followed Ollie and slipped onto one of the high stools by the breakfast bar. He tucked his foot into the footrest and pulled himself in, an unconscious move Ollie had always found very endearing. Ollie rummaged around at the back of the freezer, past all the wholesome casseroles and crumbles meant for emergencies and found an ice-covered box with battered edges. Ella would never agree to have junk food in the house, but she looked past the odd pizza box as something necessary, like a rite of passage for all teenagers.
The wind howled against the windows, bringing lashings of heavy rain and Gabriel looked up. Ollie reached across for the cord on the blind.
‘No, leave it up. I’d rather see than be blind to what’s o
ut there.’ It was such a resigned and poignant sentence. As though he had already accepted his fate.
‘Gabe, when you said you wanted to see inside the vault, what did you expect to find there?’ He brushed the ice on the pizza into the sink but kept his eyes on Gabe’s face. Was he fishing for reasons? Or did he want Gabe to mention he did know about the box?
Gabe hesitated, his mouth twisting into a knot. ‘To be honest, I don’t know why I wanted to go in there. Because it’s banned?’ He laughed, but it was a cold, hard sound.
Ollie grabbed hold of the front of the Belfast sink, the pizza discarded on the counter. He wheeled around and strode across to where Gabe sat, planting his palms face down right in front of him. ‘Fuck it, Gabe!’ His voice was a measured hiss of frustration. ‘There are too many secrets. We’re all running around like we’re going to get burnt if we fess up, and that’s exactly what IT wants.’ He flung his hand dramatically towards the window.
Gabe’s face lost every ounce of colour and his eyes widened, then narrowed as he dropped them to his lap. Ollie held his breath. Gabe could so easily clam up after his outburst. He probably thought Ollie was losing it altogether.
‘I thought I could fix everything.’ The boy’s voice was hardly more than a whisper. ‘I thought I could solve what had happened to my family if the answer lay behind the vault door. I mean, what the hell was I thinking?’ He raised his hands and Ollie grabbed hold of them and held tight. ‘If all the experts in this house couldn’t find an answer, why should I be able to? What if I started all of this, Ollie? What if what happened to Ella is my fault? What if....’ The boy’s lower lip trembled as he choked out the name of his mother.
Ollie pulled him close as racks of painful guilt shook Gabe’s body. He held on as the boy he thought of as a brother cried.
The older men were still cloistered in the parlour. Ella was lying in a hospital bed. And Beth and Olivia were God knows where. But right now, Gabe’s warmth was pressed tight against his chest...
Ollie froze in place as the thought hung over him like a water droplet, fat and moist and ready to burst.
Gabe buried his head further against Ollie’s shoulder. He could smell the heat rising from Gabe’s skin. Ollie shook his head from side to side as if he could dislodge the seed of desire that had suddenly germinated in his mind. Gabe looked up, his cheeks stained with tears, and Ollie had to fight the need to wipe them away with his fingers.
‘We need to get back to the parlour, before the search party comes in.’ He hoped his voice didn’t sound as shaky as it did in his own head.
Gabe glanced at him with a strange look in his eyes as he wiped his face on his arm. ‘What did you mean about secrets?’ A flush of embarrassment flared on Gabe’s cheeks.
‘Later, okay? When we’re alone again.’ But Ollie knew that, right now, he couldn’t trust himself enough to do that.
Chapter Forty-Six
It was full dark but the sky was alive with electric light. Nature’s fireworks against a backdrop of brilliant indigo, bruised and beaten. The wind tore through the tops of the silver birches, bending them to its will, lashing the hard rain against any surface it could find, angry and vicious and screaming its rage.
Beth stood shivering in a small glade. Her dress clung to the contours of her body and her feet were numb with cold. She was confused. Secret had said they were playing a game of hide and seek. But she had hid and counted and hid and counted again, all the while aware in some inner place that there was something not quite right. She crossed her arms across her chest and hugged her elbows. Across the fields stood The Manor, in darkness apart from a couple of pinpricks of warm light at ground level. How had she got here?
Weariness had crept into her bones; all she wanted to do was find a spot to curl up and sleep. Then Ella would come with her supper, on the rose-patterned white tray.
Another rumble rolled through the sky and Beth put her hands over her ears, stumbling in the undergrowth, crying out as the brambles tore at her exposed skin. She ran blindly, with no direction or purpose. In the tree line, a tawny owl hooted. She raised her head at its call, just in time to see it silently glide through the trees in front of her. Did it know her bird? Would it lead her to Secret?
Beth ran deeper into the glade as it sloped slightly uphill. A fallen log twisted across her path and she leapt over it, catching her ankle on a nub of rotten branch. She fell heavily, winding herself. The ground was carpeted in old pine needles. The smell was...Christmas. It would be so easy to simply close her eyes here.
The owl hooted again and Beth raised her head. A little way ahead, the trees thinned, opening onto clear ground. In the middle of this ground she could see an old stone building.
It was a small house.
***
The two young vampires heard her approaching, but that sense had not been their keenest. Her scent travelled before her, carried along by the buffeting wind and rain. They paced the confines of the crypt like lions in a cage as temptation came ever nearer. Their mentor had forbidden them to leave these four, grave-cold walls tonight. The memory of the fate of one of their brothers—when they were three—haunted them still.
One huddled in the far corner, amidst the dried leaves and dust, his arms wrapped around his knees, dirty blond hair matted with twigs and other debris. He rocked himself slowly, humming a tuneless song.
The other stood at the glassless window, leaning against the stone pillar, at one with the fabric of the building. Occasionally, he tasted the air with his tongue, a rapid reptilian movement too quick for a human eye. This was Moth, so called for his non-descript, ashy hair and eyes—one, steel grey and one, the colour of a muddy puddle. Those eyes swept the forest, pin-pointing anything warm blooded with needle-sharp precision. Trails of saliva ran from the corners of his lips.
‘Stop it.’ He threw the words backwards. ‘She’ll hear you.’
The humming stopped and two bright, green-blue eyes appeared in the gloom. ‘I was humming. Human ears can’t hear that. Not with a storm.’
Moth raised his forefinger to his mouth as his brother appeared, silently, at his side.
The woman climbed to her feet, her eyes fixed right on them, or so it seemed, but they knew they were invisible. Her state of dress explained the strength of her scent. She might as well have been naked.
‘She must be from the house.’ Moth’s whisper was barely audible. His brother shuffled from foot to foot, a little groan of despair in his throat. If she was from the house, she was even more off-limits.
Her heartbeat fluttered, and with each flutter the blood in her veins rushed through her body. The vibration drummed into their ears, their senses attuned to each beat.
Moth felt his brother’s muscles tense. ‘Teal, no!’ He threw out his arm to block the leap he could nearly feel.
The woman pulled the soaking tangle of material from between her thighs as she paddled through the sea of mud in front of the crypt. ‘Hello...hello.’ Her voice was whipped away by the wind.
Moth’s hunger clawed at his throat. She could be theirs in the time it took for her eyes to widen in shock, before her throat was open, her scream torn from her. They could run, giddy with new blood and the thrill of the kill. They could make a new den for themselves somewhere far away. But he knew this was an idle wish; their mentor would find them and he would kill them. He would kill Teal first and make Moth watch—it wouldn’t be quick. Flashes of the night Sasha died swam before his eyes. Teal may have forgotten that lesson in this heated moment, but Moth was not prepared to lose another brother.
The woman crept up the stone steps leading to the slightly open heavy door.
If Teal pounced, Moth wasn’t sure he could resist any spatter of blood. Just as the woman raised her fist to the door, Moth caught Teal in the unbalanced moment of pounce, sending them both sprawling to the floor. Moth tore at the flesh of his arm with small fangs, ripping rather than slicing. He had never done this before and didn’t even know if he cou
ld. In a split second, Teal’s lips were sealed around the wound and the heady sense of being drawn into his brother’s body pulled at Moth’s veins.
A tentative knock sounded at the door, followed by another. Slowly, the door creaked open. Moth closed his eyes and pulled Teal closer.
Chapter Forty-Seven
For the first time in his adult life, Edward Carver felt out of his depth.
He had always prided himself on managing to walk the fine line between the safety of those under his roof and his ground-breaking research. He could have been a much richer man by taking up all the offers of lectures and book tours, but he preferred the thrill of delving into unexplained occurrences much more. And besides, he didn’t need any more money. He was the only son of parents who had inherited a sizeable fortune from a Scottish uncle, who had stumbled into the sugar-manufacturing business right at the point when the twentieth century had developed a sweet tooth.
Carver was what his great uncle called a ‘canny lad’. To his parents’ dismay, he had no desire to follow in his uncle’s footsteps, and when they died, both within a year of each other, he dumped a huge chunk of money down on a dilapidated old manor house in the middle of nowhere. He wanted space to pursue an interest that had become an obsession, but the feel of the house had also won him over as soon as he had ducked under the cobwebs by the weather-beaten front door.
Still, the last twenty-four hours made him question the decisions he had made fifteen years ago. There was no doubt in his mind the box was connected to all the mayhem that had happened. He had buried it in the vault because it was the one case he had never been able to fully solve. As he sat in the parlour with Noah at his side, he wondered if pride had decided to make him pay.
Neither of them could settle. Carver could tell from Noah’s straight back and drumming fingers that he was uneasy. The storm did nothing to help that, with the wind so loud it threatened to break every pane of glass in the house.