Sophie Morgan (Book 2): Death in the Family

by Treharne, Helen

  Julie cradled her stomach with one hand and, distant with thought, reached for the tea with the other.

  "Have you decided on a name yet?" her mother asked. She appreciated what it was like be pregnant and hormonal, but she couldn’t imagine going through it at almost eighteen, a teenager, and unmarried and in school. It was best to stay on safe subject matter; better to stay practical and focused. She knew her daughter was sad, but she knew it was not her place to raise it. Nothing could be gained from dwelling on things you couldn't change.

  Julie had indeed thought of a name; she had been studying her book of baby names quite carefully over the previous few weeks. After much deliberation, the solution came to her with an air of amazement. It was there in the final pages of the 'S' section - a name meaning wisdom, something she hoped her daughter would have in abundance.

  Her lips curled up at the edges and her hair danced in the sunlight as the name kissed her lips. "Sophie,” she sighed. “Her name is Sophie."

  2

  I kicked back the duvet from my naked legs and dropped my wonderfully tired limbs on the previously crisp cover. They felt like I'd run a marathon, but I welcomed the dull ache that throbbed throughout each muscle. I wiggled my toes in delight before casting a sneaky peak at my bed partner.

  "Good morning," Mickey said rubbing his hands through his hair. He shuffled up the bed and reclined back on his elbows.

  "Morning yourself." I'd been awake for around twenty minutes already and although I hadn't moved from my pit, I was distinctly sprightlier than my companion. He smirked back at me, looking me up and down, reminding me of my nakedness. I pulled the corner of the duvet up over my breasts and sank back into the pillows. Mickey leaned over and kissed me softly on the mouth. When our lips parted, he smiled an awkward smile of coyness and delight. Something stirred beneath the duvet cover.

  "Some night, eh?" I said, beaming.

  "Yeah," he replied, his eyes sparkling with affection, despite the circles that lay beneath them. He kissed me again, stopping at the sound of Charlie, my cat, scratching at the door demanding to be let in. "I think the little fella wants his breakfast."

  I nodded in agreement, slipped out from under the bedclothes and quickly threw on my dressing gown.

  "I'll sort him out and put the kettle on while I'm at it," I told him. "Take your time, there's no rush. There's nowhere I need to be today." Working for yourself definitely had advantages. Besides, I'd waited months for Mickey; I could wait a little longer.

  Mickey and I had met six months earlier in Antwerp. I was on holiday with a friend from Coventry, where I was living at the time - I'd been at university and stayed on, you know how it is. Mickey was working in a bar, O'Malley's, with his younger brother Sean. They'd been travelling around Europe but hadn't got far, the need for money and accommodation prevailing over adventure.

  Nothing overtly romantic had happened between us back then, not in the conventional sense. We'd shared a fleeting, awkward kiss, but the chemistry was undeniable; even I could tell that.

  Of course, there was also a much deeper, darker connection between us, and a much greater motivation for him turning up on my doorstep out of the blue, for tracking me down to my South Wales home. The reason was vampires.

  The closest thing we'd come to a hot date in Antwerp was hunting down a vampire who had attacked me, not far from O'Malley's. Mickey had come to my rescue, saving me from a bloody and painful death, but we couldn't be certain if my attacker would come back. We went looking for him to see if he was dead and also to confirm whether our suspicions, that he was a vampire, were even right to begin with. But although injured, he was capable of completing the kill, especially with the assistance of two vampire companions. Thankfully, we managed to dispatch two of them and ran off the other, although this was in large part due to Mickey's boss, Maggie, who tracked us down at exactly the right moment with what I strongly suspect was an illegal shotgun. She was one gutsy woman.

  But these weren't the only vampires in Antwerp, not that I knew it at the time. Shortly after my return to the UK, the gang they were affiliated to had come looking for revenge, and specifically for me, for some inexplicable reason. Mickey and Sean had borne the brunt of their anger; they had killed Sean and left Mickey for dead with a wealth of broken bones and severe amnesia. It had taken months for Mickey to fully recall what had gone down, adding feelings of shame and confusion to the mounting wave of grief.

  He'd returned to Ireland and slowly but surely started to remember the events of that night. He remembered the vampires stamping on his brother's head, the feeling of boots on his own rib cage, of teeth piercing his limbs. He remembered the sound of his brother's whimpers and groans as he lay dying on the blood-soaked cellar door. He also recalled the younger vampire, the one who just watched while the other vamps had a party on his body. He hadn't participated in the violence, but he was still terrifying in his own right. He’d wanted to know where I was, and Mickey was frightened that this onlooker had left him alive in the hope that Mickey might lead him to me.

  Of course, it was too late to tell the police, who by that point had dismissed it as a random gang attack; that's even if we knew we could trust the police anyway. But it wasn't too late to warn me. Despite his grief and his need to be with his family, Mickey still needed to come, to warn me. It had taken him a while to get everything clear in his head, but he had still come.

  While all that was going on, I was back in the UK and completely unaware of all the horror he was experiencing. Mickey and I had kept in touch for a while, emailing and texting regularly; we'd even spoken on the phone a few times. When he broke off contact I felt horribly rejected, and despite looking on the internet for news of him or vampires, I didn't see anything online or in the press.

  Besides, I had plenty of my own troubles to worry about back in Coventry. Up until all this had happened, I had been blissfully unaware that vampires existed and was merrily going around believing that (a) most bad things would be reported in the news, and (b) they were the result of your common and garden variety of criminals, or psychos, that I would most likely never have the misfortune to meet. But I was to get no more peace in England than I did in Belgium. I'd returned to the UK to find a vampire coven operating on my doorstep, my new neighbour signing up to join them and a dead body in my car park thanks to another overzealous vampire recruit. In the grand scheme of things, my heartache over Mickey paled in comparison. I needed some normality. I needed space. I quit my job, packed up my possessions and moved back to my little hometown in South Wales.

  Returning to Bethel, and specifically to the village of Bethesda on its outskirts, hadn't been such a bad idea on balance. I was withdrawing a sufficient income from the rental properties I owned with my mother, in return for undertaking their management. We both agreed it was better to pay me than an overpriced letting agent, plus I'd have the opportunity to consider ways of expanding the portfolio and help out in my mother's three shops if needed. Working an essentially part-time job was a wonderful change after years of hard study and two years working in a fiercely competitive recruitment job. If I got bored or found money was tight, there was nothing stopping me from taking a part-time job elsewhere.

  Of course, it wasn't all good. A few weeks earlier, I'd woken in the early hours to find a strange vampire in my kitchen, strung out on hunger and pretty determined to relieve it by chewing on me. Thankfully, I was much more emotionally and practically equipped to deal with the situation this time around, having come up against them a couple of times before. I'd bashed its head in with a baseball bat, bagged up the corpse and dumped it at the local tip. I had no idea where it came from, or if it belonged to a bigger vampire family, but I'd not seen hide or hare of once since and that suited me fine. Vampires were bound to be everywhere; why wouldn't they be? As long as I didn't have them living next door to me, attacking my loved ones or trying to kill me, I could cope. Although I didn't know how long it would last, I found that vigilance and a chef
's knife in your handbag was a wonderful leveller.

  Mickey's arrival on my doorstep the previous night was, therefore, a mixed blessing. After months of radio silence, I was consumed with relief and happiness at seeing him again and knowing that he was alive; but the fact that he had been left for dead by vampires and that Sean had been murdered, left a cloud of death over the new slate I had carefully constructed. I was tired of death, of confusion, of the complex. I yearned for the simplicity of denial. I should have known that I couldn't have it all, that seeing Mickey again would come at a price.

  I left Mickey in bed and went down to the kitchen to feed Charlie and start some breakfast. Charlie stared impatiently while I shook the kibble into his bowl. He wasn't used to a man being in the house. As far as I could recall, since our move to Wales, one man had entered our new domicile and that was our handyman, Tom; that is if you didn’t include the vampire whose bones I'd ground into the kitchen floor.

  While Charlie chowed down on his breakfast, I sniffed a carton of milk, determined that it was still fresh and grabbed a box of cereal from the cupboard. I laid the items down on the table in the little nook off the kitchen which served as a breakfast room, along with the sugar pot, two bowls, mugs and spoons. I took my teapot from the cupboard above the sink, dropped in two tea bags from the tin and flicked the kettle on to boil.

  As I watched the water bubble to a halt, I felt a pleasant tightness across my chest and I glanced down to find Mickey's arms ensnaring me.

  "Hey," he said into my neck.

  "Hey you, " I replied, awkwardly filling the pot with boiling water. Mickey picked up the tea cosy lying on the worktop and slipped it over the teapot.

  I ushered Mickey into the breakfast nook where we'd spent several hours of the previous night catching up, talking over coffee and hot soup before we’d finally succumbed to the comfort of my bed and each other's arms.

  I sat in my robe and Mickey sat in his boxer shorts and faded band T-shirt. It was the same Led Zeppelin one he'd been wearing the night we met. It had been through the ringer since then, as had we. Mickey poured the tea from the pot which was endearing. Charlie jumped up on to my lap. I tried to appear composed as he pawed his claws into my thighs through the towelling robe.

  "So, what's on the cards for today?" I asked. We'd talked a lot the night before, but how long he would be staying wasn't a topic that had been covered.

  "That's up to you," he replied between sips of builder's tea. "I hadn't given much thought to what would happen once I got here."

  My lips curled up at the corners, but my smile didn't quite reach my eyes. Although I knew Mickey had wanted to see me again, he'd convinced me of that, I was painfully aware that desire wasn't his only motivation. He was also driven by the need to warn me, alert me to the fact that for some incomprehensible reason the vampires that had murdered his brother were looking for me. Whether their objective would result in them tracking me down, he couldn't be sure. They may easily have just given up; after all we didn't know what they wanted with me in the first place. Still, he had to warn me; he had to do something to prepare me, to protect me like he felt he'd failed to do with his own brother. My smile was a poor attempt at hiding my fear and my sadness over Mickey's burden. The euphoria of our love-making had passed and, although it simmered unspoken in the background, anxiety was still present on both our parts.

  "We could go for a walk or something. I don't have anything work-wise to do today; perhaps we could pop into town and get something to eat?"

  "Sounds good. I'd like to see some of the area while I'm here." I knew that despite the lusty feelings of the night before, he was still a broken man. I appreciated him trying to show an interest.

  "Uh huh, sounds like a plan, we'll do that then," I said.

  Mickey studied the contents of his mug as if the meaning of life was concealed in its contents. "I did miss you Soph, I truly did you know. It's just that after Sean..." His words trailed off into unspoken pain.

  "Shh,” I said. I hated to see him so small. He didn't need to explain. I understood what grief and fear felt like. I'd lost both my grandparents when I was at university, and next to my mother they were the two most important people in my life.

  Mickey reached across the table and wrapped his fingers around mine. "After Sean... died... everything was so messed up, I was so confused. I know I keep saying it, but I do mean it. I didn't mean to abandon you. I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you. It's just first there was the hospital and I couldn't remember anything. Then it was home and Mammy was just a mess, and what with that and everything else I just didn't even check my emails or anything like that. I blocked out the world. At first I didn't mean to, but then when I started to remember, I thought it may be best to just let you get on with your life. Then I remembered them being after you and I had to find you. I'm sorry it took me so long."

  Intentionally or not, Mickey had cut all ties with me Sean had been killed, leaving me rejected and isolated, one foot in the real world, the other foot in the supernatural one. Although my exposure to vampires back in Coventry had triggered anxiety, paranoia and finally cowardice in me, it had been Mickey's rejection of me that had inflicted the biggest wounds. Who else was I meant to talk about vampires? No wonder I'd spent my final few months in Coventry unhinged.

  But it was selfish to blame Mickey for his amnesia or for his grief. I told the voices at the back of my mind to stop being so unreasonable and to shut the hell up. I smiled reassuringly, and I hoped empathetically, and told him he didn't need to apologise. He thanked me, which made me feel guilty for ever doubting him and sanity reigned once more.

  We agreed that after breakfast we'd get dressed and head out for some fresh air. Mickey suggested that while we were out we should try and find out a little more about the vampire who had broken into my house a short while before. We needed to establish whether my supernatural intruder was an isolated incident or the first of many.

  I was reasonably certain that if the Antwerp vampires were genuinely after me (and who the hell knew why they would be), they would have found me by now, or lost the scent with Mickey's long hospital stay and eventual return to Ireland. I couldn't imagine that they would be bothered to track me down all the way from Antwerp knowing nothing more than my name. There was always the possibility, of course, that they may know my Coventry vamps somehow, in which case it would be much easier to find me. As neither gang had, I decided I was going to try and not worry too much.

  My immediate concern was if there were vampires in my hometown, which weren't necessarily after me, but would be after people in general. Vampires don't have to kill to feed, their saliva is a wonderful healer and a hypnotic, but I didn't want them running around and biting me, my friends or my family.

  Judging by the feral state of the creature that had broken into my kitchen in the early hours looking for food, I guessed he was a fluke, a rogue. After all, surely bodies would start to show up if he were on a spree? He had none of the suave or organisation of the other vampires I'd encountered. But I still didn't know who he was or where he'd come from. Someone must have made him, but who?

  We needed to investigate and, fortunately for us, my improvised attempt at a body dump paid off in a somewhat perverse twist of fate. It had been an unequivocal failure. I'd chucked the leathery vampire corpse into a skip for general waste at the tip. I had assumed that it would be burned, but instead it must have gone to landfill. I guessed that scavengers, foxes most likely, had been at the remains, as, within a few days, sections of it had turned up on the muddy banks of the adjacent estuary.

  From what I could gather from the newspaper clippings, something vaguely resembling a foot was found by some council workers, followed by the head and torso a little further on the flats. It didn't much resemble a human body of course; you would have to squint, inspect it close up, but the nearest university had declared it as an important archaeological and anthropological find. They thought they'd discovered the mummified remains of
an Iron Age man.

  Although the remains had been taken to the archaeology department of the university in Cardiff, Bethel Council had set up an exhibition at the Guildhall to highlight their contribution to the discovery and its importance to the town. Although I hadn't been yet, I'd read about it in the Gazette. Mickey and I agreed we should check it out.

  Margeaux Renard lay supine in marabou fur and silk, enjoying the peace of her post-party home. Finger waves framed her delicate, porcelain features, red lipstick bringing out the red of her hair. She resembled a flame-haired Jean Harlow, a style that most considered fashionably retro, a bold statement of her femininity and glamour in a modern world. It had simply been her favourite era. The 1930s had seen her star rise, transforming her from a relatively unknown singer and dancer in the Moulin Rouge, to the social butterfly that had taken the Brussels social scene by storm. She had arrived on the arm of a visiting French diplomat and never left. One influential lover led to another. Within a few short years, she had proclaimed herself as the "Queen of Brussels,” taking over a number of bars, clubs and brothels, amassing a small fortune and a veneer of propriety and charm that resulted in few questioning her. She was courted by diplomats, senior officials and celebrities. Some knew that she was vampire, her staff mostly, the majority of whom were vampires too. Others bended to her will purely as a result of her charm and grace.

  She appeared tiny amidst the oversized satin pillows and huge bed. As a poor child, growing up in the slums of Paris, she had vowed that she would never go hungry, unloved or without power again. It was a promise that she had kept, earning a living via the adulation of men and gaining power through an iron fist around her business interests. Margeaux Renard may have been petite and pretty, but she was not to be crossed.

  At the same time, Margeaux knew her place. She was a proverbial big fish in the small pond of Brussels society. She liked it that way too. But she had been around long enough to know that you only win battles by picking them wisely and only cross swords against people you can beat. There were those in the supernatural underworld that you did not cross. They weren't criminals though; they were the faceless families behind their kind, the old ones, the most powerful and established vampire families responsible for crafting the way vampires moved in the world. They ran corporations. They had the ear of the powerful. They were in the highest echelons of cultural and religious institutions. They were legitimate.