Sophie Morgan (Book 2): Death in the Family

by Treharne, Helen

  The house reeked of Kasper. A groundswell of his scent wafted up from the cellar and permeated the fabric of each room. Deep scratches gouged into leather. Whiskey left untouched in cut crystal. His blood on the Chinese rug, undetectable to all but the most familiar nose. It was like a fine wine tasted by a select handful of connoisseurs.

  Charles Ferrers sat in the torn up chair and inhaled Kasper in. He had waited a long time for this.

  The decor in the sitting room was not entirely to his taste but had a masculine elegance which he appreciated. The books, which lined the shelves, were of the greatest interest. Many were academic, philosophical and religious texts. They appealed to him. The anthropological studies were of less interest; he had lived for long enough to understand that all humans are essentially the same - attempting to detect and understand differences was an exercise in futility.

  It was as he studied the room that he noticed something odd. A number of books on the top shelf of the large case were sitting out farther than the others. Considering the impeccable condition in which the owner had kept them, ordering them not just by genre, but by author, the alignment was incongruous.

  His slender fingers carefully removed the dozen or so volumes and placed them reverently on the monks' bench next to the case. Behind the books, folded neatly, wrapped in cloth, lay a parchment, aged, and yellow, written with faded ink. His eyes widened. He had found his prize.

  The text was primarily written in Latin, with the inclusion of some symbols which he recognised from the works of several ancient vampire scholars that he'd been fortunate to access over the years. His time working for the Vatican had been a particularly enriching time intellectually. The mark of the Byzantines was stamped in wax in a corner.

  The handwritten notes which the professor had made, also contained in the muslin, under the parchment, were largely accurate. Kurt Andersen had made a decent attempt at translating the manuscript, but he had overlooked or was simply unaware of, the meaning of the sigils.

  Ferrers lifted up the paper to his nose and smelled it. He laughed. He rarely did and his amusement caught him by surprise. He refolded the parchment, covered it with the muslin and placed it in the deep pockets of his dark, wool overcoat.

  After leaving Kasper's lodgings, Kurt had floored the accelerator to get home. He was to collect the manuscript, get back in the car and return to Bethesda. Together, the brothers would destroy it.

  Kurt pulled up the handbrake, switched off his headlights and stared at the rain smashing into his windscreens. The storm had broken from nowhere, but he had grown used to it. You never got a rain shower in Wales; weather was an all or nothing affair. No drizzle, just an almighty downpour. God's country, my arse he thought. Perhaps God wanted him to build an ark.

  There was no point waiting for the rain to subside. He swung the door open and dashed for the house. The stone steps were worn in the centre and slippery. He fumbled for his keys, which he'd instinctively rammed deep into his coat pocket after locking the vehicle. Damn it, where were they? Aah, found them, he thought. Cold, wet fingers jammed them in the lock and he turned the key.

  The lateness of the hour and the events of the day had left Kurt depleted yet alert. It was a strange feeling to be so worn out and yet so alive. There’s surely time for a drink at least, Kurt told himself. Stiff drink, a cigarette, review his notes, decide what to do. In a few hours, it would be daylight. Rational decisions always seemed easier in daylight. He’d return to Bethesda then.

  Kurt knew that someone had been in the house as soon he opened the door to the sitting room. The shelves were neat, as he had left them, but the books were pushed into the back of the case, all lined up like soldiers. That would be impossible if the manuscript was behind them.

  Out of the shadows of the heavy brocade curtains stepped a tall, lean man. The intruder was a possibly a little older than Kurt, or maybe a little younger, he couldn’t quite tell, but he had a frosty demeanour that chilled the air without words being spoken.

  The two men stood looking at each other.

  “Professor Andersen?" asked Ferrers, smiling a slow, wolf-like smile.

  Kurt’s throat constricted. Beads of cold sweat formed at his hairline. The cut to his forehead throbbed with the prospect of further injury.

  He didn't need to guess what this intruder was. What else could he be? Why else would he be there? Vampire!

  “Yes,” Kurt replied, his chest tightening. “But you know that already, don't you?"

  The vampire trailed a finger over the back of a chair. "Yes, I suppose I do. You're not a difficult man to track down and you've left quite a trail behind you."

  Something shifted in Kurt’s body. He could feel it. His pulse raced. His skin seemed to come alive, burn almost. The knowledge that he was going to die smacked him around his head with such a force that he suddenly felt the need to do something. His fingers twitched. His spine lengthened. The hair on his scalp prickled.

  Kurt’s broad frame lurched forwards, arms outstretched. He clawed at the air. A protestation of defiance parted his lips.

  Ferrers stood to one side.

  Kurt landed in the armchair, breathy, red-faced.

  "Was that an attempt to deter me from my work?" Ferrers asked, grabbing Kurt by the throat. "Really dear boy, you'll have to do better than that."

  "I won't let you near her," Kurt spat.

  Ferrers arched an eyebrow, releasing his grip to allow the old academic to speak. "Who?" he asked.

  "You know who,” Kurt replied, his cheeks purpling, eyes bulging with rage.

  Ferrers smirked. "Who? The girl from your precious manuscript. What do you think you've found? Some half-human, half-vampire saviour?"

  "That's why you're here isn't it?"

  "I am here for the manuscript, that's true. But you don't actually believe this nonsense do you? My dear boy, academic you may be, bizarrely committed perhaps, but don't you see? It's a hoax. The whole thing. It’s a forgery."

  "What? No, it can't be." Kurt's ambitions and academic pride crashed around him.

  "I'm afraid it is, my dear chap. Of course, that's not to say that it doesn't have value. Fake the document may be, an excellent forgery in fact, but in the wrong hands, it could cause great harm. The document is old, yes, older than me even, but the ink is from a different era entirely. The placement of the sigils is entirely incorrect. If I were to hazard a guess, it's a vanity work, a literary folly for a vampire with too much money and not enough sense, I'd wager. Still, in the wrong hands, a vampire with enough motivation and enough education to be dangerous could believe it to be true, or wilfully use it to mislead others. That makes it dangerous."

  Kurt pushed himself upright with the aid of the chair's arms. His raincoat rustled with the movement as it began to dry. Just because it’s a fake, he thought, doesn’t mean that the content isn’t accurate.

  "So just take it, go,” Kurt said. “I know what you are. You don't want me, a dried up husk of a man. Get out, go feed somewhere else. I won't tell anyone."

  Ferrers stared at him.

  "Nobody else knows about it,” Kurt continued. “I don’t need it. I was a fool. Take it."

  Ferrers dipped his genteel fingers into his pocket and withdrew the paper housed within. "But I already have taken it," he grinned.

  “I hope you burn in hell and take that phoney piece of shit with you." He squared up to the vampire, chin proud, shoulders back. "Take me, kill me, and then go. I'm ready. I have nothing left to bargain with."

  Ferrers was finding the whole scene quite entertaining. It had been a while since he'd had such fun. Margeaux was right. He was good at this. "Now, my dear, dear professor, that isn't quite true."

  22

  I woke up almost mid-thought – a feeling that somehow in my sleep I’d worked out solutions to all my problems, or had at least made peace with them. When I opened my eyes, I was smacked with a moment of clarity that told me exactly what I needed to do to sort out the convoluted mess my l
ife had become.

  The process of having a good cry, a good rant, a good curse, more sugar than most bodies could handle and a good film, had apparently paid off.

  I kicked back the covers and took stock.

  Right, I said to myself, no point worrying about vampires, I told myself – can’t do anything about them. No point investing time pining over Mickey - if it was meant to be then it would be. One problem, that had yet to be resolved, was this whole new uncle thing. Before long, he would no doubt seek me out again, I thought. I decided that next time we met would be on my terms.

  Yep, Sophie Morgan, I said to myself, swinging my legs over the bed, I am kicking ass and taking names. This is my life and I'm not going to let other people’s shit, human or vampire, hijack it again.

  I grabbed my phone from the bedside table and checked the time. It was 6am and I already had three messages. The first was a text from my mum checking I’d got home okay and apologising for snoozing on me. That had come in at around one, not long after I'd left her. I text her back, confirming I was fine, with the addition of a big smiley face for good measure. I was in an emoticon kind of mood.

  There were two voicemails. The first one was from a telemarketing company in India, asking me about my mobile phone contract, which I deleted. I was quite happy with my service provider, thank you very much.

  The second voicemail was from someone called Darren Thomas. It took a second or two for the penny to drop. Okay, I thought, well Mr. Thomas is either a very early starter or a very late worker.

  My heart sank when I began to listen to it, praying that he wasn’t going to ask me out on a date. As it turned out, Darren Thomas just wanted to insult my crappy stationery some more. He hated the poor design of my business cards, but he’d given some thought to what would look better. In return for some property advice, he’d be prepared to give me some tips. He’d already worked up a few ideas, the message said. He suggested meeting u for breakfast to discuss.

  As I had decided to look up my uncle in Cardiff, all part of my taking control of the situation resolution, I saw no harm in meeting up with Darren. Plus I was hungry. Red Vines and popcorn do not a dinner make!

  Once I'd showered, dressed and fed Charlie, I called Darren on the number he'd left, mindful that it was generally too early to call an acquaintance but emboldened by the fact that he'd suggested breakfast.

  “Hi, Darren?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Sophie, Sophie Morgan.You left a message for me. Sorry, have I woken you?”

  “Oh, I must have just dozed off a second. I’m glad you called back, I might have missed my meetings and I’ve got a stack of things to do today. So, you up for breakfast?”

  My stomach growled. “Sounds great.”

  I heard rustling down the line. “Good. I’m starving. Do you know Benny’s?”

  “No, I don’t think I do. Is that in one of the arcades off Saint Mary’s Street?” Cardiff was riddled with boutique arcades and small indie cafes.

  “Nope, it’s not in the centre. You’ll need to head up Cathedral Road and onto Llandaff.” Darren paused. “Oh no, you’ll be coming from Bethel direction won’t you? That’s fine. It’s not far from an exit. Anyway, it’s easy to find if you look up the address. You’ve got a sat-nav right?”

  I didn’t hear anything past Cathedral Road. Kurt lived there, or at least that was the address he had scrawled on the paper he’d left for me. I would go for breakfast with Darren, talk a bit of shop, and then swing by matter-of-factly.

  “Sophie?”

  “Uhuh. Sorry, yes, Benny’s.” I quickly rattled through the words he’d said but hadn’t processed in real time. I didn’t have a sat-nav in the car, I had never needed one. I only ever went to the same places. Heck, I thought, how hard can it be to find. I knew how to get to Cathedral Road anyway.

  “Shall we say half an hour? I’ve got some designs that I was working on last night, just rough stuff, they’ve not taken any time at all really, but feel free to take a look. Let me know if you like any of them.”

  I wondered how close Benny’s would be to Kurt’s house. Perhaps I should try to go there first, I’d have an excuse not to stay long, I thought. I can say I’ve a breakfast meeting. My stomach rumbled again. “Sure.”

  “Great, should I text you the address or are you okay to look that up on the internet on your own?” Darren asked. It was difficult to tell if he was being sarcastic or whether this was the tone he usually used for someone he wanted something from, but who he secretly loathed.

  Still, he had gone to the trouble of doing some designs for me; that was nice at least. I took a deep breath and tried not to sound cross. “No, that’s quite alright Darren. I’m sure I can manage.”

  “Good, see you there.”

  I was about to remind him to bring the property listings that he’d mentioned in his voicemail, but before I could get my words out he’d hung up.

  Darren grabbed himself a shot of espresso from the machine on his kitchen counter and knocked it back in one. After he’d worked up some examples for Sophie, he had spent most of the night flicking through his grandfather’s old journals. All the thinking about vampires had sparked his curiosity.

  He’d poured over the pages of handwritten notes, scrawled in an assortment of exercise books and a couple of more expensive, leather-bound journals. They didn’t give much away. The earlier diaries were very business-like and factual, short accounts of where his grandfather had discovered a vampire, their background, if he had killed them. Occasionally there was a sketch or a diagram, a symbol here or there. The accounts became more detailed as the entries became less frequent and the notebooks became more expensive. They provided a narrative around vampires and their history, of their connections to each other, the way their world operated, along with descriptions and methods for killing other demonic beasts – werewolves mostly, occasionally a witch practicing black magic. They were interesting, if not a little fanciful, thought Darren.

  The most recent books, the ones written in his grandfather’s later years, made Darren feel sad. The writing had disintegrated to a barely legible scrawl, the text formed from a stream of consciousness rather than with care and intelligent thought. It had been distressing to see his grandfather’s decline on paper. It somehow made it more real than his teenage years had enabled him to appreciate.

  Darren put down his tiny espresso cup and stared at the dozen books on the counter. He’d put them in a cardboard box and taped them, wondering if his mother might like them. He wasn’t sure yet. She definitely didn’t hold with the supernatural, having a very vocal and firmly set view that her father was “off his rocker,” but they were still part of their family history. Darren had no interest in reading them again. Times had changed. He was renting out houses to vampires after all.

  The thought reminded him of the meter readings he had taken at the house in Cathedral Road. He had decided to drop them over to his new tenants, just to keep everything above board, so he ripped off the sheet of notepaper with them on and slipped it into his messenger bag. He sorted through the sketches he had made for Sophie and put a few in the bag too. He decided not to take everything. He'd email some designs over to her later on, once he'd had some initial feedback from her. Also, the Jpeg images. She should have a copy of those if she wanted to use them elsewhere, he thought.

  He pulled out a sheet of letter headed paper, a mock up he'd made with Sophie's name and address and one of the suggested logos on it. He pulled out a pen and, using the box of books as a rest, he scrawled a reminder to himself REMINDER – MAIL MATERIALS TO SOPHIE MORGAN.

  Caffeinated and ready for the day ahead, Darren grabbed the keys to his camper van and headed off.

  Darren and I met in Llandaff, a residential part of Cardiff but close to the centre. Although I hadn’t asked him to, he text me the address for Benny’s, along with the suggestion that I park in a side street as parking was limited. That would work out well as it wouldn’t be an
unreasonable thing to walk to Kurt's place.

  Darren smiled as I approached. I was usually good with time keeping so I checked my watch. He must have been early. He opened the door for me and I squeezed through the customers vacating. I stood at the counter admiring the organic, gluten-free cakes.

  The cafe was small, perhaps a dozen tables, mostly set for two, some pushed together to accommodate four. The walls were painted a pretty primrose pink, and paintings by local artists hung on the wall. Many were for sale, small prints between twenty to forty pounds. Most of the patrons were business people, coming in for a coffee to go and a pot of porridge. Two women in their thirties sat gossiping, wearing pashminas and rocking pushchairs, each containing a sleeping child. A greying man in a polo neck and glasses languished in a squishy, leather armchair, reading his paper and sipping espresso.

  Darren soon shuffled behind me, swinging his messenger bag behind him and unwrapping the scarf he wore loosely around his neck. "You need to order at the counter and they'll bring it over. It's all good here. Whatever you pick will be fine." He nodded at a guy behind the paper with a handlebar moustache and an apron tied around his waist. "I'll have an Americano and the usual, Terry."

  Terry gave him the thumbs up and stared at me in anticipation. The pressure was clearly on to choose something from the menu, so I selected the first thing on the list and a pot of Darjeeling.

  Breakfast was surprisingly non-awkward and trouble free. There was a complete absence of chemistry, at least on my part, but I think for him too, so we happily talked shop.

  Darren told me that he had business in the area too. He had some paperwork which he wanted to drop off to his tenants - a copy of the meter readings or something, as evidence of what they might underpay, or overpay. Over cream cheese and bagels, I told him that in my view it was better to get tenants paying their own bills. There's no arguments that way and nobody ends up short-changed. Renters flashing cash early on can be the ones who cause you the most problems, I told him. I guess he does need my help with this whole property thing, I thought, even though I’m a relative novice myself.