I was standing in a kitchen, probably the largest kitchen I’d ever been in. It looked like something from a fantasy film, with three large open fireplaces along one wall, and shelves of enormous iron pots and pans along the other. One of the fires had been lit, and a pot of something delicious-smelling bubbled over the flames. Those flames – and the single window high in the wall – offered the only source of light. Two long wooden tables ran along the centre of the room, each one laden with jars or preserves and spices and baskets of produce. The large, industrial freezer humming in the far corner was the only clue that this room existed in a modern household.
A man stood behind the counter in the middle of the room, furiously cutting mushrooms, which he tossed into a large pot. Beside his elbow he’d set down a glass of red wine. As he finished chopping one stalk with shaking fingers, he leaned over and gulped a mouthful of wine, then broke off the next stalk.
“Tony, I’ve got someone who wants to meet you.” Victor called into the dim room.
The man jumped at the sound of Victor’s voice, hitting his head on the utensil rack above his head and causing a stack of pans to cascade down onto his head. Rubbing his temple, he whirled around to face us. As he did, his elbow knocked over the glass, and it smashed against the stone floor.
“Shit!” he cried out, dropping to his knees and trying to sop up the wine with the corner of his chef’s jacket.
“Never mind that,” Victor snapped. “There’s plenty more where that came from. Now stand up. I’d like you to meet Belinda.”
Tony looked up then, and his eyes met mine. He was a young guy, about my age – probably a bit younger. He had close-cropped blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, and some strange scarring on his cheek and down the side of his neck. He flashed me a brilliant smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back. If it weren’t for the scars, he’d be quite an attractive man. I was relieved to find Victor hadn’t been taking me to some kind of torture chamber.
“This is Tony.” Victor said. “He’s going to be our new chef. He’s fresh out of school, so he’s a little green. I thought if you wanted something to do during the day instead of sitting in your quarters, you could show him a thing or two.”
“Um, hi,” I said, uncertain. I glanced from Tony to Victor, not sure what to make of the situation. Victor was holding me prisoner, and now he wanted me to work in his kitchen?
“Hi,” Tony said. “Look, I don’t need an assistant—”
“Nonsense.” He shoved me towards Tony. “Belinda is an exceptional pastry chef. I’m sure you two will get on just fine. Belinda, I shall return for you in a couple of hours, and you can join me for a walk in the garden.”
“Delightful,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. If Victor picked up on it, he didn’t acknowledge it. He backed out of the room with a slight nod of his head, leaving me alone with Tony.
“So,” Tony stood up, brushing off his clothes. “You a prisoner here, too, huh?”
I nodded. “My boyf— I mean, someone I’m close to neglected to fulfil an order from Victor, and he wishes to punish him by keeping me here until he kills an evil vampire. What about you?”
Tony found a brush and shovel in the corner, and swept up the glass. I noticed his hand shaking again as he took the glass over to the rubbish bin. “I owe Victor money. A ton of money. He won’t let me leave until I work off my debt.”
“This is ridiculous. It’s like something out of a bad thriller film.” I moved around to the other edge of the table, and pulled another chopping board down from the shelf. “Would you like me to chop some of these carrots?”
“What? Oh, yeah. We need ten for the stew.” He jerked his elbow towards the pot on the stove. A vein twitched in the corner of his temple, and he scratched the scar on his neck.
“You don’t have to be nervous around me,” I gave him a friendly smile, as I picked up a knife and started chopping. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to get out of here alive.”
“Yeah,” Tony took a cautious step towards the table. He gripped the edge, his hands shaking as he fumbled for his own knife. “I guess we want the same thing, huh?”
“Yeah. So maybe we can help each other.”
“How?”
“Well, for starters. I’ll help you to prepare this meal. And maybe you could help me figure out how we could escape.”
“That’d be great,” he gave me a thin smile, as he started chopping again. “I’d like that very much.”
I watched his technique. For a chef fresh out of school, he didn’t seem to know what he was doing. His knife grip was all wrong, he was far too slow and the pieces were too uneven. Don’t be hard on him. He’s clearly just nervous, I reminded myself how clumsy and nervous I’d been when I first started in the kitchen.
“Alright then, it’s a deal. So, you’re the head chef here. What are we doing?”
“We have to … make the dinner.” Tony jerked his head towards the pot on the stove. “I’ve made a rustic loaf to go with the beef bourguignon, but of course I’ve just learned that Susan is on some kind of gluten-free, dairy-free diet, which means I’ve got to throw that out and start again—”
“I’ll handle the bread,” I said, starting on another carrot. “I run my own bakery. Bread is my speciality. I can make the dessert, also.”
“That would be amazing. Then I could focus on the soup course.”
“What are you thinking?”
“French onion. It pairs well with the bourguignon.”
“Excellent choice. And I shall make a tart tartin for dessert.” I grinned at him over my shoulder as I started pulling down ingredients from the shelf. “I know an excellent gluten-free recipe.”
Tony smiled nervously. “Brilliant. I didn’t want to think about what Morchard would do to me if I didn’t get a three-course meal on the table.”
“Tell me about it.” I lowered my voice. “Did you see those ravens sitting around outside? Do you know anything about them?”
He shuddered. “They’re the reason I’m here. I was one of a handful of students who was working in Victor’s lab on a post-doctoral internship.”
“I thought you were a chef?”
Tony shook his head. “I’m a chemist. I just cook as a hobby.”
“I often argue cooking and chemistry are two sides of the same coin. Delicious science.” I felt a flash of sadness as I remembered the conversation I’d had with Cole.
“Delicious science – that’s brilliant,” Tony smiled.
“So tell me about the birds.”
”Our project was analysing different strains of bird flu, with the aim of formulating a vaccine to protect certain species. We were working with raven specimens. One day, Victor stomped in and confiscated them all. It was seriously odd, but you don’t ask questions when a scientist like Victor Morchard is paying you to work on his research. It wasn’t until I discovered …” he blinked rapidly. “Victor is infecting those birds with a powerful avian virus. He calls it the Morchard virus. It’s extremely fast-acting, and deadly to humans. If those birds so much as scratch or peck you, you could be infected, and you’d die within twenty-four hours.”
I gasped. The sheer villainy of the act seemed impossible to believe. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m deadly fucking serious.”
“Wait a minute …” I remembered the birds bearing me away from Raynard Hall. They’d lifted me off the ground, and their talons had dug into my skin. I pulled up my sleeve and showed Tony the cuts on my arms. “When the birds captured me and brought me here, they pecked and scratched me. How come I haven’t died? Am I in danger?”
Tony shook his head. “Victor wants you alive. He probably gave you the antiviral as soon as you got to the castle. Don’t worry, if you haven’t snuffed it by now, you’re safe.”
“I can’t believe this. Why is he getting away with it?”
“Would you believe this story if you weren’t living it?”
“Good point.”
<
br /> Tony found a nearly-empty bottle of red wine on the bench and swigged the last drops. “I threatened to expose him to the funding board at the university. He laughed, and told me to do my worst. So I did. I went to the Dean and told him what Victor had been up to. Of course they didn’t believe me, but word leaked out into the college paper about my accusations, and they had to cut Morchard’s funding to avoid a scandal. I thought it was all over, but then one night I was walking back to my rooms when someone hit me on the back of the head. I passed out, and woke up here.” He shuddered again. “Victor won’t allow me to leave until I’ve worked off the funding that I cost him.”
Above our heads, something croaked. I whirled around. Sitting on the outside ledge of the high window were three black ravens. One tapped against the glass. My chest tightened with fear.
“This is insane.”
“You’re telling me,” Tony started to peel and chop a stack of shallots. “Victor’s been planning this for years. He hand-reared those birds, trained them to obey his commands. It was one thing to have them confined to the aviary, but now they’re outside, watching us, waiting for us to attempt an escape.”
“Or for someone to try to rescue us.” Cole’s face flashed in my mind. If he tried to get to me, and they bit him … I couldn’t bear it.
“So that escape plan might take some time.” Tony chopped furiously.
“Why would Morchard let us see each other?” I asked, as I measured almond flour into a scale. “You wouldn’t think he’d want us to share information?”
“I don’t think he cares,” Tony said, his voice bitter as he moved across the room to stir the pot on the stove. “Victor believes he’s invincible. Can you blame him? Here in his castle, protected by his army of black birds, he’s playing God.”
He’s playing God. A cold shiver ran through my body. I was starting to understand a little of what Cole must have felt being at the mercy of this man. I didn’t like it, one bit.
“Then we must prove him wrong,” I said, my voice showing more determination than I felt. “And that means we must arm ourselves with the only weapon we have.”
“Celery?”
“No.” I grinned. “Information. So go on, tell me about yourself. Where did you learn to cook?”
“I did a summer aboard in France. My host-family forced me into the kitchen every night.” He laughed at the memory. “I was sixteen at the time, so I thought it was completely stupid, of course. But I never forgot what Madame Moreau taught me. And, of course, a man who can cook gets all the chicks.” He looked up then, and grinned. “Now I study molecules, which also impresses the ladies.”
“You’re the complete package.”
We chatted all through the meal preparation. It was actually really nice to have someone to talk to who wasn’t one of my captors or their weird butler. By the time 6 pm rolled around, Tony and I had filled each other in on both of our backstories. I felt instantly comfortable around him, as if we’d known each other for years instead of only a few hours. I told him about Cole, about Ethan, about what Victor had done to the shop … everything.
The creepy butler slunk into the room to collect the first course while Tony and I were having a swordfight with two leeks. He shot us a creepy, filthy look, grabbed the tray of soup, and stormed up the stairs.
Tony and I looked at each other, and burst out laughing.
It felt so good to laugh. I hadn’t laughed since … since Cole. My heart ached. I missed him terribly.
After we’d cleaned up the kitchen and piled our own plates high with all the leftovers, Tony suggested we go out into the garden to eat. I didn’t really want to be around all those menacing ravens or the flower beds and topiary that reminded me of Ethan, but I did want to keep talking to Tony, so I nodded. He thrust two bowls of leftover beef bourguignon and two thick slices of sourdough into my hands, then grabbed a bottle of red wine from a box on the floor, and another from the cellar at the end of the kitchen. “We’re ready.”
We climbed the steps, slipped through the ballroom and out of the French doors onto the patio. Instantly, I could feel two hundred beady eyes focusing on me through the darkness. Tony, however, seemed oblivious to our guardians. He set down the bottles on the edge of the trebuchet’s plinth, and settled himself down, facing the house. I sat down beside him, placing the bowls between us, and he handed me one of the bottles.
I popped the cork and clinked my bottle’s neck to his. “Cheers. To new friends in bad situations.”
“Cheers.” Tony threw his head back and gulped back at least a third of his bottle in one gulp. That probably explained his shaking hands. I took a long sip of wine, enjoying the warmth spreading across my stomach.
“That’s my prison.” Tony pointed the neck of his bottle to a room on the fourth floor, three along from mine.
“You’re going to get fit climbing all those stairs.” I said, dragging my bread through the thick beef bourguignon and bringing it to my mouth. It was delicious. For a novice chef, Tony was very good, if a little rustic.
“Yet another thing I’ll be able to impress the ladies with when I get out of here.” He sighed, and took another long swig of his wine. “If I ever get out of here.”
“We’ll find a way out of this.” I patted his arm. His skin felt oddly cold.
“I’m glad we met each other.” He didn’t meet my eye as he picked up his bowl and pushed a heaped spoonful into his mouth, swallowing it down with another swig of wine. I noticed his bottle was over half-gone.
“Me too. Hey, Tony, have you seen anyone else out here?”
He was too busy shovelling food into his mouth to reply, so he shook his head.
“No one? Not any other people?”
He gulped down his mouthful. “Victor’s the only person who comes out into the courtyard, apart from the tourists. Why?”
I explained to him about the three figures I’d seen last night, leaving out the part about one of them looking like Ethan. I was so sure I’d imagined his face.
“We didn’t know about each other until today. Maybe Victor has others trapped in the castle?”
I thought of the locked room opposite mine. He could be right. “They were acting very peculiar.” I shuddered, remembering the way they’d leapt forward into the light, and then disappeared into the gloom without a trace. “Do you think … maybe they’d fallen victim to Morchard’s virus?”
“You might be right.” Tony glanced up. I followed his gaze to the row of birds sitting on the wall, their eyes following our every movement. All the warmth and mirth inside of me fled as I regarded those still, silent birds. I thought of what they could do if Victor ever sent them out into the world; the damage they could do. And I knew that I couldn’t leave the castle until I had found a way to stop them.
5
Cole
Today was the day I met my new master. Or mistress.
I slumped in the back of Sir Thomas’s Bentley, facing the ancient vampire himself. Rudolpho sat in the front to work the GPS, while Leonard was driving, and I when I say driving, I use the term loosely. He weaved in and out of traffic like he was playing some kind of computer game – one of those where you got extra points for how many postboxes or prostitutes you hit. Sir Thomas seemed oblivious to the chaos in our wake. He stared out the window, humming a tune under his breath. He looked almost … excited. A four-hundred-year-old vampire, giddy with anticipation of seeing his girl? It was a strange image.
Her name was Elisabeth Carlisle, although Sir Thomas called her Libby. I’d googled her last night, and her social media profiles showed a sweet-looking, white-haired girl with bright red lipstick and kohl-smeared eyes. She was young, probably not a day over twenty-five. Several gossip blogs had been following their romance for months, and there was lots of speculation about the upcoming wedding. I couldn’t fathom how she’d ended up engaged to a slimy murderer like Sir Thomas Gillespie, but it certainly didn’t speak much for her character.
Libby’s fam
ily lived in a box-shaped Georgian hall on the other side of Crooks Crossing. The place appeared run-down; the exterior smeared with dirt, the driveway cracked, the gardens overgrown. A guard at the gate waved us in, while two members of the paparazzi camped on the verge banged on the windows and snapped pictures of our faces through the dark windows. I cringed, not liking knowing my face could be in the papers.
The large fountain in front of the doors didn’t appear to be working, the pool beneath it drained of water, leaving behind only a muddy film caked with dead leaves. When we pulled into the round driveway, several mangy dogs leapt at the car, yapping and bouncing in excitement.
Leonard and Rudolpho pushed their doors open, fighting their way through the leaping dogs. Leonard grabbed Sir Thomas’s door and yanked it open, and as soon as the vampire’s smell hit the air outside the car, the dogs leapt back. Smart pooches, I thought wryly, as I pushed my own door open and we approached the house. If only Bran could have such self-preservation skills.
The front doors swung open before we’d even started to ascend the cracked marble steps. A woman leaned out, frowning. “I thought I heard you, Sir Thomas.” She said, tucking a strand of dirty blonde hair behind her ear. She didn’t sound pleased to see him.
“Hello, Rose.” Sir Thomas grinned. “I have brought Libby a wedding present.”
“Very well,” she looked at me with a mixture of distaste and interest. She pulled the door open wider, and I followed Sir Thomas inside.
The interior of the house was even more run-down than the outside. A pile of newspapers and glossy fashion catalogues stood beside the door, next to a mahogany coat rack on which hung a threadbare white mink coat. A grand oak staircase wound up from the right, the ornately carved balustrade caked with dust and draped with laundry. The wallpaper had peeled away in sections, and several of the dusty gilt frames were crooked. The whole place stank of damp and neglect.
“Elisabeth is in her room.” The woman, who I presumed was Libby’s mother, mumbled, as she picked her way through a pile of laundry dumped in the doorway of the main receiving room. “I’ll just call for—”
Reaper: A raven paranormal romance (Crookshollow ravens Book 2) Page 7
