Part 5. The Vampire’s Maid

Here is the text with meaningless numbers and the recommendation section removed, preserving all the original novel’s text:

Obeying his orders to stay away from him, I scurried away from his room. His face when I’d mentioned him being a vampire still haunted my mind. He was a vampire, he was conceited and he was temperamental. So why did I feel sorry for him?

I headed down to the wide entrance hall. It looked much larger and brighter when lit by the morning sunlight rather than the eerie candle light. I contemplated just walking out of the open front doors and running away. The fact that the doors were open though made a feeling of depression sink inside me. If the security was so lax, did this mean that the house was in the middle of nowhere and therefore no point in putting locks on the door? Or did it mean that even if I did manage to escape the vampires would hunt me down until they found me? Neither prospect was inviting.

Footsteps on the stairs alerted me that I had a companion. I swivelled my head quickly in time to see Goliath gliding silently down the wooden staircase. Once again his aura hit me and a chill ran through my blood. His head was held high, his pale hand trailing after him and his eyes were focused straight ahead.

Hoping that he hadn’t seen me I dashed into the shadows behind the staircases and waited, staring at the paintings of Goliath’s ancestors to pass time. All along the mahogany panelled walls an endless run of hand painted faces hung in identical frames broken only by a rather noticeable gap just large enough to hold another painting. The paintings seemed to run in chronological order from ‘Helena Sancruor, 1309-1402’ all the way to ‘Dezabel. E. Sancruor, 1896-1989’, both of their eyes staring out of the frames forlornly. The gap was just before Dezabel’s portrait and I wondered who had disgraced the family enough to be removed from the wall.

I peered out of the shadows towards Goliath’s thin back. He appeared to be waiting for someone by the way he was peering out towards the driveway. Not wanting to risk sneaking past him I slipped through a small, dusty doorway which I hadn’t noticed before. A thin stone staircase led into the darkness and on instinct I followed it.

Reaching the shadowy bottom of the stairs I saw yellow light seeping under one of the two doorways at the bottom. A familiar voice was floating through it.

“Hey, don’t mind if I steal one of these do you?” Joe was asking someone.

“Stealing is bad. No?” The Italian, I think her name was Abriella, replied.

I pushed open the door and a comfortable, bright scene met my eyes. Old fashioned kitchen utensils were scattered on every one of the clean surfaces all clustered around a glowing fireplace. Joe was leaning against the oven with a chocolate brownie in his hand. A pretty, tanned girl was facing him with a disapproving look on her face.

“It’s a brownie, Abriella. Not exactly the biggest crime of the century.”

A red head, the girl with the confident voice, was attempting to explain that what Joe was doing wasn’t really worthy of a disapproving look.

“Hey there Lizzy. You don’t mind me calling you that do you? Actually, your answer’s not relevant as I’m going to call you that anyway.” Joe grinned.

“Hi.” I attempted to smile as the two girls looked towards me.

“Oh, so you’re Elizabeth.” The red head stated with obvious interest. “I’m June.”

“You like a brownie?” Abriella asked politely.

I took one, suddenly aware that I hadn’t eaten since yesterday. The gooey chocolate spread deliciously over my tongue and whilst I was occupied Joe began to talk.

“Oh, so you offer Lizzy a brownie but when I take one you act like I’m Jack the Ripper.”

“Yup.” Abriella smiled broadly.

“They have food here?” I asked curiously once I’d finished my brownie.

“Oh, yes. The vamps eat regular food as well as…blood. Abriella and I are in charge of cooking their more normal meals.” June informed me.

“Ashley told me that I didn’t even know what a vampire was… do I?” I asked curiously.

“Speaking of Ashley, why are you not serving him?” Joe asked and for some reason he seemed to be hiding a smile.

“Oh, I said something which seemed to upset him and he, erm, told me to get him some food and I mentioned something about blood.” I muttered embarrassed.

“On your first day?”

“Not working is good. No?”

“Sweet.”

Their various replies came at the same time to make a jumbled sound.

“So, what is a vampire?” I asked them all.

I’d thought that vampires were just mythical but from the moment Joe had told me otherwise, I’d thought of them as heartless, bloodsucking creatures.

“Well,” June said, settling herself on a stool, “We weren’t exactly sure until Joe found the Diary.”

“I work as an engineer here. I think that the reason they chose to save me was because I’m good with engines.” Joe began.

“Wait, so they killed your village as well?” I asked, horrified.

“No, I lived in a city- they’d never have been able to kill thousands of us. They came to my high school a year ago and murdered everyone. My best friends, my girlfriend, they were all killed. Goliath found me in the engineering block and decided to keep me.” His eyes went glassy as he talked about it.

“But your family are alive?” I asked.

“Yes, I think they are. That’s really the only reason I stay sane in this place.”

His voice was tainted with such sadness that I felt tears coming to my eyes. But at least his family were alive.

“So, back to the diary.” Joe changed the subject. “I was fixing one of the cars in the room across there.”

Joe pointed out of the open kitchen doorway to the other closed door at the bottom of the stairs.

“Normally I’m the only one in that room because nobody else really needs to go in. It’s a lonely life I lead,” Joe said in mock misery. “There’s loads of junk in there and I needed a new piece of rubber for the retractable roof. I was looking through one of the boxes when I found the diary.”

June had been rooting through one of the cupboards but now she stood up and brushed herself off, holding up a dusty black diary with the year 1322 written on the front.

“This belonged to a fourteen year old girl called Helena Sancre. She was human when she started to write the diary,” June’s voice was dark and dramatic. “By the end, however, she was a vampire. Helena tells of how her family were cast away from their home in the civil war. They fled to an island on a boat.”

“How does this explain vampires?” I asked confused.

“She’s getting there. Have patience young Lizzy.” Joe said, bowing to me like a yoga instructor.

I raised my eyebrows at him before turning back to June.

“The island they were on had no real food. There were a few birds but their meat wouldn’t last for long. So, she wasn’t clear on what they did exactly,” June frowned, leafing through the aged pages of the diary. “but her exact words were ‘we were running low on food. Father told me to intake some of the blood from the bird. I did what he asked, of course’. So Helena drank the blood instead of eating.”

“She actually drank it without throwing up?” I asked incredulously.

“It seems so. This went on from June to October. Each day she ate a little less food and drank a little more blood. She described the taste somewhere but I can’t find the exact entry. She seemed to dislike the taste a lot at the beginning but then she began to crave it. You’ll have to read the diary yourself for all of the details. After the entry on the 16th of October there are no more entries for a week.”

“On the 24th of October,” Joe butt in. “She explains what has happened in the last week.”

“Joe!” June yelled, exasperated. “I was telling the story!”

“Sorry, sorry. Continue.” He muttered quickly.

“Helena murdered her family. The food had nearly completely ran out, they were all weak. She murdered them and drank their blood. She had never drank human blood before but it gave her more energy than the blood of the birds. Her family lay in piles on the beach as she took their small rowing boat back to England. She wasn’t scared of the war because the blood had given her strength, you see.”

“She killed her own family when she was fourteen?” I asked, sickened.

“Can you blame her? If you read this diary you’d see what a bastard her dad was.” Joe said, snatching another chocolate brownie. “He made his only daughter drink blood so he could have more food!”

“I know. Fancy someone using people for food!” June said, looking from Joe to the plate of brownies.

“Can I read the diary?” I asked, wondering if it could give me a way to escape.

“Sure, but we keep it in the kitchen. None of the vamps come in here.”

“So, did Helena breed with a human?”

“Maybe,” Joe said mysteriously. “Or she could have forced a man to drink the blood like she did and then had children with him. I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of a vampire. If they kill their family then they wouldn’t hesitate to kill us.”

“I think I got on the wrong side of Ashley,” I admitted.

“Here Elizabeth.” Abriella approached me with a plate full of chocolate brownies. “They’re Ashley’s favourites.”