by E. C. Hibbs
A hundred pennies to a pound; twenty five pennies to a pound; two fifty pennies to a pound; five twenty pennies to a pound; ten ten pennies to a pound...
The flat was small, with only three rooms, but large enough for one person on a budget. It was a little like my old house, with the open-plan living room and kitchen, and a large wood-burning fireplace. It wasn’t as big as the other hearth, but it had a true English design and was wonderfully cosy. My bedroom was spacious too, and even came furnished with a good-sized bookshelf.
Only a short ride on the Underground from Farringdon to Barbican lay between me and the Museum, and I started work not long after I arrived. Initially I was called Bianka, until I politely shook my head and said, “Bee.” It was amusing, how that simple nickname had fused to me. More than anything else – maybe even more than my surname – it was a way to keep me connected with my homeland.
And it’s much easier for the English to pronounce, I thought.
I didn’t experience much culture shock, although it did sound a little strange at first to hear my full name being spoken with a definite English lilt. Even though the Denboroughs had said it slightly differently, they could get closer to the Magyar pronunciation just because they lived in Hungary, too. Gradually, my own accent began to blend slightly, but I didn’t mind. It felt like a snake shedding an old skin.
To my surprise, I quickly became fond of tea. In Hungary, I was overwhelmed by its bitterness, but being in England, it tasted different in some way. Maybe it was because I was in England to begin with – or maybe it just tasted better on the whole because it seemed everybody had been raised knowing how to brew it. I thought to myself that it was almost like a major lesson every child soon became accustomed to: how to make a good cup of tea.
I soon couldn’t go through a day without someone offering me the chance to go and get some tea on our break. I didn’t know why I found such a taste for it, but I still had to put a lot of milk and some cold water in it. Unlike Lucy, I didn’t have the asbestos lips.
One day, I crossed the Millennium Bridge for the first time, and the face of Saint Paul’s Cathedral rose before me. The sun was shining down from a gap in the clouds, and I stopped, moving to one side of the bridge so I wouldn’t block the way. I stared at the spire, reminding myself of the panorama, which I’d brought with me and hung in the living room. The sky looked like a huge glass bubble surrounding the building: heavy and pearly from a previous rain. For one long moment, the Thames transformed into the Danube beneath my feet, and I could have sworn that it was the facade of Buda Castle I could see. It was a walk I would take whenever I wanted to recall my home: if I relaxed my eyes and let the world blur, it was almost as though I was back there. A silly little mind trick that brought an unbelievable comfort, whenever my new life seemed too much.
Around a fortnight after I began work, I was taking my afternoon break and enjoying a cup of tea, when one of my co-workers approached. I’d seen him around the Museum, but we hadn’t really talked that much, because there just hadn’t been time. He smiled at me. It was one of Lucy’s types of smile, glowing like a light.
He had a kindly face, which was a little tanned, and framed by wavy light brown hair that just reached into his ears. His eyes were deeply set, and a shining dark green in colour, with a separate individual grin all their own. On the underside of his wrist was a small dragonfly, tattooed in black ink.
He held out his hand for me to shake, and greeted me. “Jó napot.”
I was taken aback. He could speak Hungarian?
“Beszél Magyarul?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Only a few words. I was there for a week or so on my gap year.”
Perplexed, I clasped his hand warmly. “Örvendek.” Pleased to meet you.
He nodded, the smile slowly vanishing – but yet it remained in his eyes. He struck me as the type that didn’t smile often, but when they did, they really meant it. “You’re Bianka, aren’t you?”
“Call me Bee,” I replied.
“Bee. Okay. Pleased to meet you,” he said. “I’m Frank Anthony.”
The two of us sat down over a cup of tea in the staff cafeteria. I learned that he worked as a tour guide in the Museum, and he’d been there for two years after moving to London from his hometown of Devon. But he told me that he didn’t have many early memories of life there, because he’d spent the majority of his childhood growing up in the Black Forest region of Germany. I’d guessed he had something to do with that country: on the few occasions that I’d seen him before, he’d once conversed with visitors in German, and his accent was perfect.
He was almost four years older than me, but he didn’t look it. At first glance, I would have said he was roughly my own age. But I supposed that in contrast, I might have appeared a little older than I was. My face was plain and I was reasonably tall, and I’d rarely seen anyone in their teens or early twenties sport a bob. I’d also had my ears pierced before leaving, but always wore the same small studs: embedded with tiger’s eye.
When he asked about my life, I didn’t say much. Only that I was from Budapest and wanted to eventually be an archaeologist. He was aware of my limp, obviously – but he was decent enough to not say anything, or even ask how it had happened. I immediately valued him for that, and just told him that it had happened in an accident when I was eighteen, which was more or less the truth. He nodded once and didn’t press matters, but when we went back to work afterwards, he walked slowly, to allow me to keep up. As I sat on the train that evening, watching the black outside of the Underground tunnels fly by, I felt I was on the way to forging a very good friendship.
CHAPTER VIII
Three months later – not long after my twenty-first birthday – I saw him again. It was in another dream – which on one hand was a relief, because it meant I was right in that he couldn’t have followed me to London – but on the other, it brought home to me that no matter where I went, he would stay. I couldn’t have escaped that even if I’d run to the other side of the world.
He stood as solid-looking and real as always. A fiery glare highlighted his pale, perfect face, and great wings were suspended above in the pulsing mist. We locked eyes. My mouth was set in a livid line; his in that sly smirk I’d come to know so well. Neither of us moved as we stood there, upon nothing and surrounded by nothing.
So nice to see you again, he said, shattering the deafening silence.
“I can’t say the same,” I snapped back.
He laughed. You have not changed in the slightest, Farkas.
“Alright, I can say the same there.” My voice stayed sharp. If it was a battle of wits he was after, then I was coming as armed as possible.
He lowered his head and stared at me intensely. I almost felt the darkness crack, like a fault running across a mirror. Three years and you remain a childish fool. You try to escape from me, but it is impossible. You know that. You cannot outrun me.
I tried to ignore his words, but deep down, they rang true. I’d left Hungary, and yet here he still was. Apa’s words echoed. “Once it’s targeted you, it will never stop, and it will always find you.”
My hand formed a fist behind my back. “What are you doing here?” I growled. Then I remembered, with a sinking feeling of dread, and raised a finger to my neck. I ran it along the faint line of the scar. “What did you do to me? I know you did something! Why didn’t you come back?”
He sniggered again. Feeling anger rising in my chest, I touched my amulet.
“Answer me!”
To my surprise, his eyes fluttered over the circular pendant and the sleek smirk dropped a little. If I hadn’t been watching him so fixedly, I probably wouldn’t have noticed so tiny a movement; but I did, and it was enough.
“What did you do?” I repeated; my voice a little quieter. “Did you make me like you?”
As I said it, I felt my pulse quicken. The notion of being like him made me sick to my stomach. But he was a vampire, and he had bitten me that night in th
e hospital. I finally believed it. And in any old vampire story or legend, that surely means that you’re due to follow in their footsteps, and become like them. I couldn’t even comprehend what that meant.
Nem. You are not like me. You cannot be like me. But you are mine because I am within you: my venom runs through your veins, and it will kill you, Farkas. You are dying. All that is left to you is a simple choice. You may return to me and die; or you can attempt to keep running and die. But you cannot escape me.
I felt my eyes widen at his answer, but before I could respond, there was a jolt that shook my whole body. I was behind the altar of an old church; the priest in front of me in traditional Hungarian garb. Within the pews, all the guests were on their feet, dressed in period clothing. A bride was walking down the aisle, her face obscured by a veil.
And standing with his back to her, jet hair slicked back, was him: staring straight ahead with his hands clasped. I was shocked when I noticed that his nails were normal: rounded and human. There was a hint of pink in his cheeks, and his eyes were a vivid shade of ice blue.
I woke in a tangle of sheets and thrashed my way free, gasping for air. My hand flew to my bedside table to turn on the light, and I fell back against the bare mattress – the sheet having been wrenched back and pillows strewn across the floor. I clutched my amulet tightly as I glanced around at the birch twigs stuck to the skirting boards. The remnant of the day’s stick of sandalwood incense hung heavy in the air. I took deep breaths, trying to calm myself with the scent, and let my head roll to the side. Red numbers on the clock’s digital display told me that it was 5.20am.
I grabbed my cane and went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. I drank it out of one of the old green polka-dot mugs, which Anya had let me bring from Budapest. I settled down on the sofa – a huge, soft, squashy leather one – and pulled a fleece blanket across my legs. My mind ran back through the dream, and I was surprised at how composed I felt in the grip of the memory. The focus flitted to the wedding scene and I frowned, wondering what that could mean. I was vaguely reminded of the other dream I’d had a while back: of Lucy dressed in the hippie clothes, as though she’d fallen back three decades.
I told myself to keep calm, and another mouthful of tea went down. There was twice as much sugar in it than usual, but when I fleetingly thought about how quickly my teeth might fall out, I paused with the rim of the mug at my lips. I silently repeated what he had said, and felt the eyes burning into me.
Instantly, it all blew back, like a tornado spinning down, laden with the heavy debris of three years past. I realised that was what he had done; why he’d never come back. I thought he hadn’t killed me; that he’d given up – but all along, he had constantly had the upper hand. Like a game of cat and mouse, he was allowing me to believe I was in the lead, always a step ahead – but in reality, every step that I managed was in his shadow.
The mug was shaking violently and I put it down so I couldn’t spill the tea. I clasped my hands tightly and stared straight ahead, trying to get a perspective. My breath slowed down, in through my nose and out through my mouth.
Pretty impressive, Bee. You wouldn’t have been able to just sit here like this even one year ago. You would have reacted just like anybody else: running around like a headless chicken, and making such a racket that ships in the English Channel would have probably heard you.
I was terrified. Not of the fact that I was dying – after all, everyone’s dying all the time, no matter how old they are or how much time is still to pass before they actually draw their last breath. No; it was that I couldn’t grasp what exactly he had done, which would so certainly kill me. As far as I knew, the worst he had done physically was leave me crippled, and he had admitted himself that the stabbing wasn’t intended to be fatal.
I touched the scar on my neck. That was it: the place. I remembered the numbness spreading through me; the inky blackness under my skin. Was that what he had meant by venom?
He had mentioned I wasn’t like him. But could that mean that I just wasn’t a Lidérc? I shuddered at the thought, but pushed it away so the repulsiveness couldn’t distract me. He had said that I wasn’t like him, and his kind was specific. So did he mean that I might not be a Lidérc, but I was still some sort of vampire?
This is crazy, I told myself, as I brought my hand down and looked at it, gently turning it and making a loose fist. Then I reached over to the table and my fingers closed around the cool hilt of my pocketknife. I held it in front of me with the blade open, staring at the reflection of my eyes. The words stood out in the light overhead.
Isten, áld meg a Magyart.
When I first moved to London, I’d always kept the blade out as I slept, to offer some kind of comfort. There was something about its sense of patriotism, and how much it meant to me as something I’d owned for so long, that helped to make up for all it had done. I ran the pad of my thumb gently along the edge, right up to the fine point. It hadn’t been used in three years. I gazed at those gleaming three inches of metal, imagining them hidden within the muscles of my back.
“Crap!” I hissed as it sliced my finger. I quickly placed the knife on my knee and inspected the wound. It wasn’t deep, or even big, but I’d forgotten just how sharp I’d kept the blade; it was like a razor. Blood welled up and trickled down towards my palm, running into all the lines of my skin, and staining them a rich, shining red.
My throat flared, as though I hadn’t had a drink in days. I felt my eyes focusing in on the slice, but then I screwed them shut, swallowed hard and tucked my thumb against my palm. I snatched my cane and moved to the bathroom as quickly as I could; strapped an adhesive bandage over the cut, then gulped down three full glasses of water, one after the other. I grasped the edge of the sink tightly and bent over it, gasping for breath, shaking my head, willing my hammering heart to slow down.
When I stood up, a red-eyed reflection stared back at me. I took a good look for the first time, and my pulse beat so powerfully that I saw a vein throbbing in my neck. My irises were deep scarlet – as though all the blood vessels had burst – and the contrasting whiteness surrounding them made it stand out even more. I felt them tingling, like I somehow had pins and needles in my head. Then I opened my mouth, and glanced at my teeth, shocked to see that my canines were slightly longer.
So it’s true.
I quickly moved my cane to support myself, unable to tear myself away. The redness shone, like flickering lights at some kind of perverse Christmas party. I ground my teeth together, remembering how I’d cut my tongue on them countless times and ignored it; how I’d felt so thirsty, and how the sight of blood had shot it into overdrive. I noticed the tiny lines creasing my skin around my eyes, from continuous squinting in bright lights.
“Nem,” I whispered, but every time I repeated it, I felt it losing meaning: like diluting a concentrate until eventually all that’s left is water with only a vague hint of flavour. It was almost as though the word itself was laughing at me, for insisting on using it so sparingly, and in such a wrong context; like it was saying I had this all wrong. That I should be crying, igen, igen, igen, igen, igen...
I closed my eyes; and a tear ran down my cheek, leaving a hot streak over my skin. Then I listened, and muttered it. “Igen.”
That single word held all of the power I’d tried to force into every denial. My knees buckled and I fell into a heap on the floor. My hand slid loosely down the shaft of my cane until it clattered beside me. In the bathroom that I saw behind my eyelids, blood streamed down the white tiles, and I was certain I could hear his laugh echoing around the whole flat.
“You monster!” I bellowed, throwing my head back and screaming out all of my anger and horror. But then I had no more words, so I just buried my face in my hands, and wept.
CHAPTER IX
The hopelessness was beyond description as I lay there, unable to move for hours. I cried until it felt as though I’d broken my throat. And when I next looked up, the sun had risen; the sounds
of early-morning traffic were resonating from outside; and at quick glance, the redness of my eyes had thankfully gone. But the truth of the horrid shade remained close, and over the next few weeks, I became very quiet and reserved. I tried to keep it to myself – but I’d never been good at that – and it wasn’t long before my colleagues at the Museum started to notice. My work ethic remained strong and I was determined to not let the sudden revelation affect my job, but the days blurred together, because I was just trying to get through each one.
About two weeks later, Frank took me by surprise when he came to me at lunch, and slid a cup of tea and a blueberry muffin across the table.
“Someone looks like they need some sugar,” he said. “I would have brought caffeine as well, but then I thought you’d probably tear my head off if I tried coffee instead of tea.”
Despite myself, I couldn’t help but chuckle as he sat down opposite me. He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were.
“Thank you,” I said, cupping my hands around the tea to warm them. I was actually quite hot, because ever since the nightmares had started to come back, I’d taken to wearing a thin blue scarf around my neck, in some half-hearted attempt to hide my scar. Even though I’d tended to prefer collared or high-necked tops for the past few years, I’d been fine with allowing the wound to show on occasion. But I wasn’t sure where my mind went after my latest nightmare. If I’d feared a relapse before, then it had come now and smacked me full in the face.
Frank looked at me. “Bee?”
I took a bite of the muffin. “Yes?”
“What’s the matter? You’re awfully quiet lately.”
I glanced up; then shook my head. “It’s nothing. I’m just going through a bit of a rough time at the moment. Personal things.”