Page 66 of Only Fangs

We stay towards the edge of the room, not wanting to mingle too closely with some of the other guests. But you can’t avoid everyone at an event like this and eventually we’re cornered by a couple who look to be in their mid-forties. Mid-forties in human years, I mean. In vampire years they’re well over three hundred years old. Despite this being the more informal of the days, he’s wearing the ubiquitous penguin suit and she’s trussed up in a corset and a full skirt to the floor in dark shades of velvet with plenty of ruffles. I’ve met the Gallaghers a few times but it isn’t me they’re interested in talking to.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” Lady Gallagher says with a purr as she extends her hand to Brody.

“I don’t believe we have,” he replies and there’s a smoothness I’ve not witnessed before. He goes to shake her hand and I almost pull him back, but then I notice she’s wearing a pair of silk gloves to the elbow.

“Lady Gallagher.”

“Brody. A pleasure to meet you.”

“And where are you from, Brody?” she asks. I stiffen slightly at the edge of something in her tone.

“I was born in Newton Abbot,” he replies.

“You’re from the Courteney line?”

Brody’s gaze flashes towards me. Fuck. We really should have worked on his back story a little more. But we were far too concerned with the whole business plan. Stupid. Stupid. If we fail to pass him off as vampire, the business plan won’t matter one tiny little bit.

But Brody smiles. “Only distantly related. My parents came from the old country.”

Lady Gallagher nods her head. “Welcome to Hele Hall.”

She moves away and I turn to face him. “How did you know to say that?” I ask, almost impressed at how quickly he turned the conversation around with the Gallaghers.

He shrugs. “It’s what Matt always says when people delve too far into his lineage. He doesn’t know his father.” He adds the last bit quickly.

“Oh.” Vampires are obsessed with family and origin and all that jazz. It’s a preoccupation that comes from having lived for far too many years without enough to keep them interested. The vampire world would be a much better place if everyone spent a little less time worrying about where people came from and maybe picked up a book or switched on the TV and revelled in the progress all around them.

But “the old country”? That’s basically code for those vampires who have been displaced, chased away from their homelands by overzealous humans who wish to control them. It’s the perfect answer to the question raised by someone like Lady Gallagher. Hopefully that titbit will spread around the other guests and avoid a few future awkward questions.

Chapter 34

Brody

Hele House isn’t really a house, not in any meaningful sense of the word. It’s more of a mansion. Actually, scratch that, it’s basically a castle. And it is totally and utterly insane.

The house has been added to over the years, resulting in a hodgepodge of different elements, even though everything is built from the same grey stone so common in this part of Devon. There’s even a tower, huge and circular and extending up towards the clouds, topped by turrets. It’s everything you would imagine if you thought of Vlad’s castle in Transylvania. A shiver runs up the back of my neck at the thought. Perhaps Andrei really is vampire zero – the “True Father” – and the inspiration behind the great Dracula myth.

Dust covers everything, tarnishing the opulence and giving the place a whole “glamour gone to seed” vibe. And it’s cold. So so so so cold. It takes all of my concentration not to shiver or lean too obviously towards the candelabra and the small bit of heat emanating from the flickering flames.

One thing I’m really struggling with – despite being freezing, of course – is getting my head around how old everyone here is. So I know the basic rule that after vampires hit about twenty their aging slows right down, so for every fifteen-ish years they will look as if they’ve aged by one human year. So, Ari is one hundred and seventy-two but she looks late-twenties and Matt is thirty but looks like he just turned twenty-one.

The couple in front of me looks like an eighteen year old dating a dude in his early forties which gives me an ick in human terms. But then I think about it in vampire years and she’s an actual teenager dating a dude who is probably over three hundred. Completely gross. I leave Ari chatting to them and excuse myself to find a bathroom. Not to vomit in, but you never know.

I walk down the corridor towards the toilets and feel the temperature drop even further. The cold envelopes me, drawing me down, deeper and deeper into the icy depths. I can feel the air being squeezed from my lungs.

I’m in one the cubicles – if I’m going to get spotted for being a normie, I don’t want it to happen with my literal dick in my hand, thank you very much – when I hear them. Two men talking to each other as they piss into the urinal.

They’re loud, like they haven’t a care in the world. Like it wouldn’t matter at all if someone overhead them.

“Are you going the hunt this year?” one of them says to the other.

“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Both men have plummy accents, the kind you normally only hear in BBC adaptations of Austen novels.

“I heard he’s going all out this year. That he’s been selecting a few elite targets to make things a tad more of a challenge.”

“Thank heavens. It’s always so boring if they’re weak.”

“Or stupid.”