The entrance to the dungeons was a trapdoor, in the back of the kitchen, leading to a subterranean level. A dank, dark, row of dungeons, each contained a prisoner. Dim, dangling electric bulbs lit the rough, granite walls. My chains rattled, as I shuffled past each cell. The prisoners all seemed to be human although it was hard to tell above the stench. The whole place stank worse than a music festival toilet. Old sweat, mingled with faeces, urine, blood, puke and fear. I tried to breathe through my mouth, barely able to believe that this is where I’d be imprisoned, from now on.
But then I reached one cell and immediately recognised the inhabitant. He was even dirtier and more ragged than when I’d last seen him but he was still unmistakeable. It was Derek, the vampire.
So this is where they’ve been keeping him.
Now his disgraceful appearance, when I’d first arrived at Beaufort Heights, made sense. He got up and rushed to the bars, his eyes wild. I staggered back stumbling slightly on the uneven ground.
“Get back.” The guard who was escorting me barked at him and Derek took a step back but clenched his jaw, glowering at the guard.
“See? I told you Beaufort was a double-crossing snake.” He shouted, as I was pushed forward by the guard.
I sighed, it hurt me so much to admit that Derek had been right. Now, compared to the monster that I knew Hugh Beaufort to be, Derek seemed like a cute little pussy cat.
Each cell was about two metres wide and three metres long, with a bucket at the back. The human prisoners either crouched or stood, some of them rocking and muttering, driven mad by the lack of daylight and the squalid conditions. I guessed it made no sense to kill them, when they were useful sources of fresh blood.
We reached an empty cell, a few cells down from Derek’s and the vampire guard drew a set of keys out of his pocket, opened the door and shoved me inside. I didn’t resist. If I did, Beaufort might kill Rainie. A small voice inside me said I shouldn’t give up, should still think about ways to escape but that voice was drowned out by a vast cavern of despair. I felt myself sinking into that cavern and there was very little I could do about it.
The vampire removed my obsidian chains but kept my collar on. Then he left the cell, locking it behind him and I listened, as his footsteps echoed into the distance.
Alone, in my cell, I sank down into a ball, in the corner and allowed tears to roll, silently down my cheeks. I hated myself. I didn’t even want to live anymore. Mitchell had been right, I was worthless. I’d been nothing before I arrived and I was even less now. How could I have been so arrogant as to believe that I would actually get out of here, with barely any planning, and not just me but all the other humans too? Now Darla was dead because of me. The accusing look, on Paulette’s face, as the vampire guard had led her and the others out of that room, had burned me worse than acid. She was right to look at me like that. It was my fault that we’d failed. I never should’ve given them false hope. I never should’ve attempted to break the spell, before I was certain I could do it. I should’ve planned better, I should’ve…
“Hey, cry baby!” Derek’s voice called out, pulling me from my dark thoughts.
“Leave me alone, Derek. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not in the mood for a fight.”
“Who said anything about fighting? I’m on your side. Now, are you going to sit there crying all day or are you going to start thinking up an escape plan with me?”
I put my head in my hands and exhaled, loudly. The last thing I needed was to have to deal with this dickhead on top of everything else. Slowing my voice down so an idiot like him could understand, I explained. “I can’t escape - if I do, Beaufort will kill everyone I’ve come to care about here.”
“And you let him know that you care about people? Well that was a schoolgirl error, if ever there was one.”
“Yeah, I know that now, bellend. And thank you for twisting the knife into what is a very fresh and very raw wound.”
He paused and for a few precious moments, I thought he’d decided to shut up and let me go back to my self-pitying wallowing. But I was wrong.
“That’s a setback, I must confess. But it’s not insurmountable, we can still find a way around it.”
Oh, no, no, no. This jerk had to be set straight. “We?! There is no ‘we’!”
His voice sounded hurt when he retorted. “Don’t be like that Bree. Look, I know we didn’t get off to the best start.”
This was unbelievable. “Didn’t get off to the best start? You tried to kill me. Then you glamoured my flatmates into thinking that I’d violently assaulted them. You know that I’m wanted by the police now, don’t you? My life is in tatters - it was even before I was kidnapped by Beaufort’s henchmen.”
This time I waited for his response. If he wanted to make friends and form an alliance, he better start explaining himself and fast.
“I’m not a Dracul vampire,” he began.
“Hmmph! You could’ve fooled me.”
“No really, I’m not. I’m a vampire assassin - a professional hitman. I’m not part of any gangs, I prefer to work alone. The Draculs hired me to do what I was told would be a simple job. Attack you, make you think I’d come to kill you, drain you to within an inch of your life, then glamour your flatmates into thinking you’d attacked them.”
My eyes widened. The entire thing had been a set up, right from the start. Hugh Beaufort was the most masterful strategist that I’d ever come across.
Derek continued. “It was good money and seemed simple enough so I took the job.” He paused, his tone of voice turning to deadly hate. “When I came to collect payment, they kidnapped me, bundled me into the back of a van and brought me here. Beaufort never had any intention of paying me for my work. I was just a pawn in his game.”
“The game to get me to agree to have his baby.” I whispered.
Derek’s vampire ears picked it out easily. “Agree to what?!”
I explained, a little louder. “He wanted me to have his baby. All of this has been for that purpose, all of it. Bringing you here was his first plan - he thought I might agree in exchange for killing you and ending the glamour on my flatmates. But when that didn’t work, he saw a better opportunity. He used my own compassion against me.”
“That sick bastard.” Derek breathed. “I kill people but I do it for money. It’s a clean and honest transaction.”
I raised an eyebrow at his interpretation of the word ‘honest’ but I let it slide and carried on listening.
“Beaufort is different, he enjoys manipulating people. He gets off on the power, enjoys the game. I despise him.”
“That makes two of us,” I replied.
“That’s why we can’t let him win. Between us, we have to think of a way to take him down.” His voice was laden with fervour.
“Do you think I would be here if there was any way we could take him down? I’m here because I’m all out of options.”
He fell silent for a few moments before speaking. “What made you think you could get out of here in the first place?”
“Someone else did it - another arcane witch by the name of Rosa Knight. The blood slaves told me she escaped. She promised to come back for them but she never did.”
“Then how do you know she escaped? Maybe she got killed trying.”
That was true and something I hadn’t even considered. I was feeling like more of an idiot by the second.
“But if she offered it, she must’ve thought she could do it?” I tried.
“Not necessarily - she might have been a chancer, like you. She might have thought she could just wing it and then died when she failed.”
I put my head back in my hands. “You’re not exactly helping here, Derek. I’m already at a low point and you’re just making it worse.”
Another voice rang out, an older-sounding man with a deep baritone and clear, upper-class accent. He sounded like a classically-trained actor. “The spell on the perimeter cannot be broken by an arcane witch.”
“What? Who is that? Repeat what you just said and add an explanation, please, mate.” Derek asked.
“My name is Oliver. I have been a prisoner here for twenty years - not always in the dungeon of course. During my time here, I have acquired a great deal of knowledge and one of them pertains to the maintenance of the perimeter spell. Beaufort has an alliance with the spirit witches - the mothers of all vampires, as you may be aware. Once a year a spirit witch comes to re-ward the perimeter with spirit magic. Breaking the spell requires a spirit witch, with the ability to control the spirits who ward it.”
“Are you sure about this?” I asked.
“Absolutely certain. There is no way off this estate without a spirit witch to remove that spell.”
My heart sank. I’d never had any chance of escaping and Beaufort had known that. It had all fed into his sick plan. It also meant that Rosa was probably dead, as Derek had suggested.
I dropped my head to my chest, letting myself drown, deep in the lake of my own despair.