by Helen Allan
I narrow my eyes and look towards the corner from where the voice had come and see him sitting on a red, velvet settee which looks entirely out of place in this damp, dark room – it’s the man who taunted us in the forest.
“Come closer,” I mutter, “I’d like to see who it is exactly that I need to kill.”
He turns up an oil lamp resting on one of the torture tables, and the room is suddenly illuminated. I kind of wish it wasn’t, it was shit-yourself scary.
“Ahh,” I say in my best fake Russian accent, “Viktor you are such an unattractive man.”
He frowns, “my name is not Viktor, it is Henri.” He pronounces it Honoree, in a slightly breathy way.
“Ah well, I guessed,” I smirk, “anyway it’s just a line from an Australian comedy, I’ve always wanted to try it out on a creep.”
“I see,” he says, uncrossing his legs and recrossing them the opposite way, “that is, you know, by far the worst fake Russian accent I have ever heard.”
“Really?” I blow another strand of hair out of my face, “Damn. I practised that too.”
“You have a smart mouth,” he chuckles, standing and walking towards me, his eyes taking me in from the top of my head, lingering around my breasts, and down to my feet. “And attractive for a gypsy. Not all hard muscles and scars like some of them.”
I’d like to kick him in the nuts, but my feet are also shackled, my legs apart, and it’s fair to say I feel pretty vulnerable.
“Yeah well, I guess that takes time,” I mutter.
“Yes,” he sighs, “and sadly that is something you do not have. Still, we can get to know each other a little in the meantime.”
“Why am I still alive?” I ask, “do you plan to torture me for kicks?”
“No, not at all,” he drawls, smiling.
I reluctantly note he has a very handsome face, dark straight hair, greenish eyes, wide shoulders, his suit, up close, is well cut and expensive. I get the feeling I’ve seen him somewhere before.
“I am using you as bait.”
“Bait?”
“Yes you see, I have every hope, and belief, that your little prince will come looking to rescue you, and when he does I will drain him of every drop of his very precious blood.”
“Ahhh,” I laugh, “so you lost him then.” My heart swells with pride knowing Zan beat three vamps by himself and managed to avoid capture.
“Lost is such a subjective word,” Henri smiles and shrugs, “I prefer to say he is simply not where I would like him to be at this point in time.”
I snort. “You really ought to get some better vamp goons, Viktor, I mean, what was it? Five against two and we still took you out.”
“Oh, I wasn’t involved. I’m a lover, not a fighter,” he smiles as he walks over to the table, perusing some of the gruesome implements.
I watch him carefully and decide I had better cut the crap and figure out a way to get myself out of this mess before I become another blood stain on the wall.
“And yes, you are right, I need better goons. Please call me Henri.”
“Sure,” I say rudely as I watch him pick up a big pair of rusty pliers. “He won’t come for me you know. It’s the first rule he learned. Don’t risk yourself to save the gypsy. The prince bloodline is far too valuable for him to risk walking into a trap. He won’t do it.”
“Oh,” the man smiled, “I think he will. Because you see, not every prince is as, how shall I delicately put this, friendly, with his gypsy Freely. I think you have broken a few too many rules already, and one more little rule is sure to also go by the wayside.”
“How do you know my name,” I say, trying to change the subject.
“It was the name your little aristocrat was moaning over and over as he nuzzled those lovely pale breasts,” he smirks, “it would have been strange if he was saying another woman’s name, would it not?”
I blush and shake my head.
“Nah, it’s all one-sided,” I say light-heartedly. “I threw myself at him. He was trying to pull me off when you interrupted us.”
“Did you say, get you off?” he laughs, “I felt sure that is what you meant.”
I give him a hateful look, but under different circumstances I would have laughed, I enjoy puns. I try a different tack.
“Where are we exactly?”
“We are in my chateau,” he says, smiling and waving the pliers around the room.
“Right,” I drawl, “have you thought about redecorating, I mean, just a thought, but when I hear chateau, I think all rococo and gilt-edged paintings, you know, this whole grunge look you have going on just isn’t going to pull the chicks.”
His laughter booms out across the room.
“Yes, you are right. But we are, of course, in one of my dungeons, I do not live like this normally. And yes, I have had 500 years or so to amass some beautiful art and furniture. That is what we French aristocracy tend to spend our riches on. That and,” he pauses, “beautiful women.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
“500 years? If you have lived that long you must be immortal already. Why do you need my prince’s blood?”
“Ah, astute,” he says, putting down the pliers and seating himself, to my relief, back down on his divan. “I am, as you say, already immortal, I drank my own lovely little prince a couple of centuries ago when they were, how shall I put this, thicker on the ground.”
“Then why?”
“Well, given that you are going to give your life for this, I suppose I owe you the truth,” he says, studying his perfectly manicured hands. “I have managed to get myself into a spot of bother with the queen, and it seems, she would like to drain me and give my blood to her new lover. So, alas, in order to avoid this, I must deliver her some princely blood, within a certain time-frame, or give my own life in order for her new favourite to gain eternity.”
I smile, a wide smile at him.
“How terrible,” I pause, “to be hunted for your blood.”
He raises one eyebrow.
“Oh for God’s sake,” I mutter, “Do you people practice that in the mirror?”
“What this?” he raises his eyebrow again.
I shake my head in disgust and roll my eyes, he’s actually quite cute, in a dead would-be-torturer kind of way.
“I don’t get it,” I frown, “if you are so old, and rich, why don’t you just hire a hitman and knock this queen bitch off.”
He stands and comes to look at me, turning his head to the side this way and that. I can almost see his mind whirring.
“What did you say your last name was?”
“I didn’t.”
“But if you did?”
“It’s Lille,” I mutter, “but I don’t see how that has anything to do with this discussion.”
“Lille,” he rolls the word around on his tongue, “that is French you know.”
“Yeah,” I sigh, “my dad always said we had French aristocracy somewhere in our line, but personally I think he is full of shit.”
“Yes,” Henri says, considering me again, his eyes narrowed. “I like the way you think little French gypsy. Would you like to dine with me?”
“You mean would I like to become your dinner? Thanks but no thanks.”
“Not at all, I mean, would you like to eat at a table with me as my guest.”
“Well, that’s going to be kinda hard when I can’t move my arms,” I say sarcastically.
“Yes,” he smiles, “I will send someone down to fetch you shortly. You can have the east wing. I’ll order a bath drawn for you and have a gown sent up.”
He turns, picks up his lantern, and leaves without a backward glance, not bothering to close the door behind him. The room is, once again, plunged into darkness.
“Haven’t you people heard of electric lights and plumbing?” I shout to his retreating back.
His chuckles continue as he makes his way upstairs.
Ok, the dress is great. Gorgeous even. It’s blood red satin ‘these
fucking vampires and their red’ and skin tight. So tight, I’ve had to take off my underwear to fit into it, and it sheathes my body like a second skin. Staring into the mirror, I twirl once, just for kicks and wrinkle my nose at my arse. I wish it didn’t stick out like it does, but, you have to work with what you’ve got. I notice I’m leaner now than I have ever been, fit, not an ounce of fat. I’ve dropped a bra size too in recent months, which is more concerning.
I wince as I study the cut on my arm. The time spent hanging on the dungeon wall, and the tearing of the stitches during my capture has not done anything to improve its ugly, red edges. I open a drawer and find a stack of white handkerchiefs; they are monogrammed HFL. As I tie three together to form a makeshift bandage a crazy escape plan slowly begins to formulate.
I have been in this bedroom, door locked, for hours, and looking out the window I can see I possibly have another three hours before the sun sets. If I know anything about vamps, I know they fall into a death-like slumber during the daylight hours, which means I am at a distinct advantage, if I could just work out how to get out of the chateau. I would have tried earlier, but I needed to wait until the blood flow returned to my arms, bathe and dress. It took longer than I imagined to be able to move my hands as I suffered the ‘pins and needles from hell’ resulting from so long being hung up like a carcass.
I massage my wrists where the manacles have left nasty black bruises and consider the view. I am up about four storeys in what can only be described as a fairy-tale type castle. It isn’t as big as Zan’s castle, which makes me smirk, but it is just as high. The drop from my window, although into a moat, would certainly kill me if I tried to jump, given the height. But the handkerchiefs have given me an idea.
I walk to the four-poster bed and strip its white cotton sheets and bedspread, for once thankful that they live in the dark ages here and the bed features blankets and not a doona. Laying the blankets and sheets down side by side I pace them out. In all, if I use the curtains too, I can tie together a rope of about 30m. I will still have a fair way to drop, but not a lethal way – providing I can link them well enough, and they don’t unravel when I am half way down. I set to work knotting the ends to form one long chain, but soon realise my knots are going to slip, and go back to double knot each one, causing my overall rope to extend possibly only about 27 metres, give or take a few. I stand on one end of each length and pull with all my might to double check the strength, and when I am finally satisfied, I tie an end of my sheet rope to the four-poster bed and throw the remainder out the window.
As I throw my leg over the sill, feeling like the scarlet pimpernel in an early black and white movie, the gorgeous dress splits to my thigh. I have a moment of regret before I began to grin determinedly and, I hate to admit it, slightly dementedly. ‘They seek her here, they seek her there, those Frenchies seek her everywhere,’ I smirk as I close my eyes and slip over the sill. ‘Fuck I hate heights, fuck, fuck, fuck,’ I shimmy down the rope, holding on for dear life as my hands began to slip on the shiny curtain fabric and I just catch myself mid-slip as I get back to the cotton. I’ve swapped and alternated cotton with the slippery fabric for just this eventuality, and it looks like it is working. I’m very aware, as I slide down the fabric, that I’m not wearing any knickers. Too soon I come to the end of the rope and, holding my breath, look down, far below at the flat mirror that is the moat. ‘I so hope that is deep enough. Fuuuuuck this is higher than I thought.’ I know I don’t have the strength in my arms to try and climb back, my injured arm is throbbing and the muscles in my, until recently manacled, arms, are screaming. Biting my lip to ensure I don’t scream, I let go and plummet into the icy depths.
It is deeper than I thought. My feet-first entry into the water ensures I make hardly any surface splash, but I sink fast and deep. My lungs are bursting by the time I claw my way to the surface and drag myself, like a creature from the lagoon, onto the edge of the moat. I lay for a second, gasping like a landed fish and catching my breath, before rolling onto my hands and knees and forcing myself to stand.
Looking up at the chateau I can see no one has called out in alarm, to all intents and purposes no one has noticed me leave. Looking to the tree line, about 200 metres away across a vast expanse of bare grass, I take a deep breath and run.
I run for most of the night before Zan finds me. He is, by my estimation, only a few kilometres away from the chateau and, on horseback, would have arrived there before midnight.
Hiding by the roadside, I watch him trot past before I scramble out and shout to him to stop. I am so puffed from my non-stop run, alternating between sprints and jogs through the dense forest, that my voice, at first, sounds small even to my ears. But he hears me.
Spinning the horse, he jumps off and runs towards me, wrapping me in a tight embrace and burying his head in my hair. He says nothing, but breathes heavily and squeezes me until I let out a little squeak; I’d love to be held in his embrace forever, but the pain in my injured arm has gone from a throb to a deep, painful burn during my escape, and I know I’m also running a fever.
“I need to get to a hospital,” I gasp, raising my bloodstained arm to him, the handkerchiefs now soaked in crimson, matching my torn and dirty dress. The run through the woodland saw me fall several times, much to my disgust. I’ve always wondered why women trip when running from monsters in films, now I know. We are so shit-scared at every noise, so often looking behind us instead of where we are going, that we fuck ourselves up. I’d like to have thought I was braver than that, but in truth, I’ve always been scared of the dark and my imagination, in cases like this, is my worst enemy.
Without saying anything, Zan hoists me up onto the horse, his hand on my bare arse, and jumps up behind me. “What no comment about my lack of knickers?” I laugh, relieved I am back with him, that we are safe.
Turning the beast back the way he has come he gives it a kick in the ribs. “Hang on,” he says, his voice deep and troubled, and we gallop towards the town lights, barely visible on the horizon.
I don’t remember getting from the horse into the one-room town hospital, but I recall Zan asking if he can borrow a phone, his muttered and angry voice, the bustle of a doctor, the sound of a siren. I guess I am sicker than I thought. I guess the shock has started to set in because I black out.
When I wake up again, the nurse tells me I have been unconscious for about 24 hours. I see I have a drip in my arm. Antibiotics, she explains, and that the visitor chair is empty.
Something about that fact that he isn’t here scares me, and I ask the nurse if my friend who brought me in is around.
“Yes, he was here, he left you a note for when you wake. Your aunt is also here, out getting coffee, we expect she will be able to take you home in a day or so.”
‘Aunt?’
“Ok,” I say, swallowing a feeling of rising panic as I reach for the letter. It has my name on the front of the envelope in his strong, sloping script, and my heart tightens. I almost don’t want to open it, I sense it contains something I don’t want to read, and as it turns out, I’m right. The first words bring tears to my eyes;
My beautiful gypsy,
I’m sorry to leave you like this; I know how you like to talk things through. But talking won’t help us anymore. What we had, what we did, it’s not right. It almost got us both killed. The whole time you were missing I was imagining the myriad of ways you were being tortured, of how I would feel if you died because of my lack of willpower. I let you down, hurt as you were, I feel sick just thinking about it, even now.
I can’t tell you how sorry I am for putting you in this position Freely. I was selfish. I now know that the only way we can both go forward, and live, is to live apart from one another. I have asked my father to arrange for me to have a new gypsy, and for you to be assigned to a new prince. Please don’t try and find me. I don’t want to be found.
Yours always,
Zan
I read the letter twice over, my sobs becoming lou
der as my heart rips apart. I feel disgusted with myself for throwing my body at him. He was right in a way, by doing what we almost did, we let our guard down. He could have been killed because of me. Clearly, he wasn’t wanting what I forced on him - I feel sick just thinking about it, even now - that was a pretty clear message.
I allow myself to cry for another few minutes, my sobs eventually changing to hiccups, and slowly I begin to take stock of my situation. I don’t want to be someone’s else’s gypsy; I want to go back to a normal life, continue my career, I’ll tell this so-called Aunt the moment she comes in.
But the best-laid plans.
She doesn’t come in alone; she brings in a prince. He’s young, about 15, he has the tall, gangly look that most teens have, but at the same time, his bearing is confident, regal almost. His blonde good looks and crystal blue eyes reveal his aristocratic heritage if nothing else does, and he approaches me tentatively.
“Hi,” I sniff, blowing my nose on the pale blue hospital blanket.
He doesn’t bat an eyelid, but the older woman behind him shakes her head in disgust.
“Your new prince,” she says, indicating the boy with a nod of her head.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want you,” I choke, reaching for a glass of water on the bedside table.
He reaches it first and hands it to me.
“I know,” he says smiling.
“No you don’t,” I say, draining the glass and handing it back to him. “You’re just a kid.”
“I watched my entire family get eaten last night,” he says, looking at me with soft, moist eyes, “I couldn’t save them. My gypsy managed to rescue me; she died in my arms. We had been together since we were 10.”
I look across to the old gypsy woman. Her face is a mask of grief. No prizes for guessing who the girl’s mum was.
I lean down and pull the tape off the drip, rip the needle out of my vein.
“C’mon then,” I say, throwing the blankets off my legs and swinging them over the side of the bed. “Let’s get out of here. And,” I add, looking down at the hospital gown, “I hope you’re rich, I need new clothes, and I have expensive taste – this,” I point to the gown, “is not a good look for your gypsy.”