A Shade of Vampire 8: A Shade of Novak (10 page)

I
ended
up climbing out of bed in the early hours of the morning and, placing my blanket and pillows near the front door, lay there. I obviously wasn’t going to get a wink of sleep that night, so I figured that I might as well wait by the door in case someone came to give me breakfast in the morning. I needed to catch whoever it was.

I was right in my presumption. At about nine o’clock according to the old clock in my corridor, the door creaked open. I scrambled to my feet and stuck my foot in the gap, wedging it open. Gripping the door, I pried it open further.

Standing in the doorway was Frieda, another tray of what appeared to be more gruel and a jug of water in her hands. She almost dropped the tray from the surprise of seeing me.

I had to think fast. “Frieda,” I said, “I really can’t stand oatmeal. In fact, I’m allergic to oats. I didn’t eat the portion you gave me yesterday. Can I please have something else?”

She stared at me, as though not sure what to make of me.

“That’s just the standard fare we feed all humans here. Afraid we don’t have much else.”

“Can you please take me to the kitchens? I’m sure there must be something better…”

“Listen, I’m no cook. I’m just bringing you this up because Caleb specifically asked me to—I don’t know why he requested me.”

“Okay, well, just tell me which direction the kitchens are in and I’ll find it myself.”

She frowned at me. “Caleb didn’t tell me that you could be wandering about by yourself.”

“Well, your witch said I’m a guest here. Not a prisoner.”

When she continued to look hesitant, I said, “Look, I promise you that I’ll be back within half an hour. I’ve been locked up in this little room for ages. I need to stretch my legs.”

“All right,” she said, sighing. “But I’ll come with you. I’m sure Caleb wouldn’t object if I accompanied you.”

She put the tray down on the ground inside my apartment, then caught hold of my hand and led me away down the dark corridor.

As we descended down to the lower levels of the castle, I didn’t notice many other vampires roaming about. Perhaps because it was still early. “So do you steal away humans regularly then?” I asked, trying to sound casual, but failing miserably.

She stopped in her tracks and eyed me, as if wondering whether or not she should answer.

“Hm,” she said. “We go once every few months. It’s getting harder and harder.”

“What do you mean?”

She frowned at me again.

“Well, obviously after years of disappearances, we can only go to open areas where there aren’t CCTV cameras, or we’ll get caught on film. It will be much more difficult if our faces are publicized everywhere.”

Years of disappearances.

Why am I so ignorant of all this? Why didn’t our parents tell us?

“And all those humans you catch, you just use them for blood?”

“That’s not your business.”

“Okay,” I said quickly. “Well, can you tell me where all of you vampires came from? Because I’ve lived in The Shade all my life and I never knew there were any other covens left.”

“One thing you’d best learn sooner rather than later is that the less you know, the better.”

I refrained from asking more questions as we arrived in the kitchens—a chamber underground. There were shelves filled with bottles containing a red liquid that made me shudder. There were also bottles of liquor.

As it turned out, Frieda was right about not having much more than oatmeal. There were several sacks of oats in the corner of the room, and the only other thing I spotted was a bowl of apples and bananas. I grabbed two apples and a banana. If I had to eat oatmeal, at least these would make it a little more bearable.

We walked back up the staircases until we arrived again outside my room. She opened the door for me to step inside. Just as she was about to close the door, I held out my hand to stop her.

“What goes on up there at night?” I asked, pointing toward the ceiling.

Frieda glared at me.

“What goes on up there is between him and the witch, understood?”

With that, she stormed off.

S
he forgot
to lock the door.

I must have agitated her so much that she’d just walked off with the key still in her pocket. Dropping the fruit, I eased the door open and looked either way along the dark corridor. Seeing nobody there, I stepped out, careful to shut the door again behind me.

Barefoot, I made my way back toward the staircase I’d just come up with with Frieda. I crouched down by the banister and looked down to see if anybody was on the stairs below. Satisfied that there was nobody, I began my descent to the ground floor. My breath rasping, my heart hammering against my chest, I managed to make it to the bottom floor without anybody noticing. It appeared to be empty. I ran straight to the oak doors and tried to turn the heavy metal door handle. It wouldn’t budge, no matter how much I twisted it.

Damn it.

Windows.

I left the front door and moved to my right, into the first room that was open. It appeared to be some sort of dining hall, with high towering ceilings, stained-glass windows and a long oak table in the center.

I threw myself beneath the table and crawled beneath it until I reached one of the windows. I grasped the handle and it pushed open easily. But again, I found myself staring down at a steep drop, hardly any less steep than outside my balcony. There was nothing to hold onto, no way to climb down.

There’s no way I’ll survive that. Even if I did by some miracle survive the drop, I’d freeze in the snow before I could even reach the woods.

The only escape seemed to be out the front door.

I made my way to the staircase and began climbing back up. I passed a couple of male vampires on my way up, but thankfully they didn’t pay much notice to me. They must have assumed that I had permission to walk around.

Instead of returning to my room, I climbed up one more flight of stairs until I reached Caleb’s floor. I inched toward his door and placed my ear against it. I couldn’t hear anything.

I gripped the handle and tried to open it, but it was locked. I knocked.

I heard a low groan and footsteps walking toward the door. The door unlatched to reveal a half-naked, bleary-eyed Caleb. His dark hair was ruffled and he wore a sheet wrapped low round his waist. My breath hitched at his bare torso.

“You… How did you—”

Before he could say another word, I pushed the door open wider and slipped inside.

“If you
accidentally
leave that main door open,” I said, forcing my eyes up to his face, “I’ll escape and the witch will never know.”

He walked into what was presumably his bedroom and returned wearing a black robe. “Who let you out?”

When I ignored his question, he reached to open the door but I slammed my back against it.

“I’m not going anywhere until you give me some answers.”

He rubbed his face with his hands and sighed heavily. “I don’t need this hassle. Get out.”

“Open the main door, and I’ll disappear into the night. Nobody will ever know you let me escape. It could have been anyone in this castle who left the door open.”

He shook his head and glared at me.

“You really think it’s that easy for a human to escape this place? There’s a spell around this island to keep it cold. Even if you made it down to the sea without getting caught or dying of hypothermia, and somehow broke into one of the submarines and figured out how to navigate it, there’s another spell preventing anyone getting out unless they have permission.”

“Then why don’t you just leave with me now?” I said, tugging on the sleeve of his robe. “Or when the witch is doing something else. She never has to know.”

It seemed that he’d had enough of the conversation. He marched me outside and dragged me down the stairs.

He stopped outside of my door and pushed it open.

“No!”

I clung onto the doorframe as he tried to bundle me inside.

“You’re not locking me up in here again.”

He grabbed both of my hands and pried them away from the door. I leaped at him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and my legs around his waist. My sudden motion made him lose his footing and he stumbled backward into the hallway, his back slamming against the wall.

He gripped my legs and pried them away from him. Then he did the same with my arms.

I stood in the hallway, glaring at him. He glared back at me.

“All right!” he shouted. “I won’t lock the door. But if you attempt to escape, you’ll end up getting yourself killed or worse. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.”

I didn’t nod, but I didn’t object either. He turned on his heel to leave. I was tempted to shout out after him why he couldn’t just escape with me and why he had to listen to what the witch said, but I figured that this was a good first step. I was no longer locked up in that little apartment like a prisoner.

Instead, I was locked up in the castle.

I can’t believe he couldn’t smuggle me out of this place if he really wanted to.

T
hat evening
as I was lying in bed, I heard the sounds again.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Against my ceiling. I threw the covers off me and stood up on my bed, trying to get closer to the noises.

“Say it,” the witch hissed.

I heard another groan. And the sound of a fireplace spitting.

“I’m losing patience with you.”

The smashing of glass. The screeching of heavy furniture against the floor.

Grabbing my dressing gown, I ran out my front door and crept up the stairs. I didn’t stop until I reached Caleb’s door. I pressed my ear against it, the voices now clearer.

“I need you to say it.”

“No,” Caleb grunted, low and deep. “Never.”

I pushed the door open, wincing as it clicked. I froze.

Oh, no.

There was a silence as the witch came into view at the other end of the corridor. She wore a long dark green dress, her loose hair running down her back. She sported a black eye and a deep bloody cut beneath her collarbone.

As soon as our eyes locked, fury sparked in hers. She walked over to me.

“Well, look who’s here,” she whispered, her voice dangerously low.

Before I could stagger back, she reached out and clutched my throat. I tried to scream, but it came out as a garbled choke. She was crushing my windpipe.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s rude to eavesdrop?”

I gripped her hand, trying to pry her clammy fingers away from my throat, but it was useless.

“Leave her.”

The words came as a deep growl from across the corridor.

Caleb stood in the doorway, a gash beneath his lower eye, his shirt ripped and blood seeping through from several gashes on his chest.

The witch chuckled and continued to grip my throat, applying more pressure by the second.

Caleb launched himself at the witch. Gripping her neck, he held her in a choke until she released me.

I slid down the wall, gasping and rubbing my throat.

“Don’t take this out on her,” he snarled, hurling the witch against the marble floor. “And don’t drag her into your sick game.”

“You dare,” the witch hissed, her eyes dilating with fury, her cheeks crimson.

“Yes, I dare,” Caleb bellowed back down at her. “There’s nothing more of me you can break.”

The witch got to her feet, straightened out her dress, then after glaring daggers at me she stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

His eyes burning with fury and his whole body still heaving, Caleb turned around and walked further into his apartment. He disappeared into a room at the end of the corridor, but he didn’t shut his door. I got to my feet and approached the door. I pushed the door open and entered.

As I looked around, I was horrified by the state the place was in. His spacious apartment appeared to be open plan—his bedroom, kitchen and lounge all ran into each other. The wallpaper was torn, canvas paintings on the wall ripped. Bloodstained bedding was strewn all over the floor. The curtains were ripped almost to shreds. Caleb sat in the corner of the bedroom, his back turned to me, in a wooden armchair. A bottle of liquor by his side, he was pouring himself a shot. I watched as he downed it in one gulp.

I approached his chair tentatively.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, without turning around. But he made no motion to pick me up and throw me out the door as he had done the day before.

I walked around and stood so that I was facing him. I stared at the gash beneath his right eye that was beginning to heal slowly.

“What happened?” I breathed.

He shook his head and downed another shot.

“Why do you allow her to treat you this way? Are you ruler of this island or not?”

He got up and walked over to the open balcony door, where he stood, gazing out at the starry night sky. The full moon shone down on his chiseled form.

The living room and kitchen area were in a much less damaged state than the bedroom. My eyes fell upon a collection of classical instruments in the corner of the lounge.

Since he didn’t seem to be willing to answer my questions, I asked, “You play?”

He looked over his shoulder at me as I pointed toward the instruments in the corner.

A faint smile crossed his face.

“No,” he said quietly. “Not any more.”

I walked over to the instruments and was impressed by the quality of their build. They were covered in a thick coat of dust, as though they hadn’t been touched for months, maybe even years. Although I specialized in the piano and the harp, I could play most instruments I saw here. My father was a master of many and had given Ben and I lessons in most.

I absentmindedly ran my hand over the top of the grand piano. Lifting up its cover, I sat down and stretched out my fingers over the keys. I began to play a tune. Soft, haunting, melancholic. I smiled bitterly—my father had played this for my mother when they’d first met.

Caleb left the balcony and walked over to me, placing his glass on top of the piano, staring down at me as I played. It was unnerving at first, playing beneath the intensity of his gaze, but I didn’t let it distract me.

When I finished, I looked up at him. He hadn’t moved an inch the whole time. His eyes had glazed over, as if his mind had wandered somewhere else.

“I’d like you to play for me again… Rose,” he whispered finally.

The way he said my name was gentle, as though his tongue was caressing the word. The attention he was giving me was unnerving—I was used to him brushing me away whenever he could.
Perhaps it’s just because he’s drunk? I sure do strange things when I’m drunk.
I stared into his eyes, trying to read him. The way he was looking at me was confusing. It was as though he was conflicted as to whether he ought to be looking at me at all.

“O-okay,” I murmured.

Although I didn’t get any of the answers that I needed that night, one thing had become clearer than ever. If anyone had the power and ability to get me out of there and save my brother, it was Caleb. And at that moment, befriending him—or at least trying to—seemed to be the only available option.