Thicker Than Blood (Marchwood Vampire Series #2) (10 page)

The girl turned to Aelia, a look of panic on
her face.

‘
Oh,’ she said, relaxing.
‘You gave me a fright. You sounded like my mistress.’ She looked
Aelia up and down and turned back to watch the
entertainment.

‘
Sorry if I startled you,’
Aelia said. ‘I was just wondering what’s going on.’

The girl reluctantly turned around again,
forming an insolent question mark with her eyebrows.

‘
The digging …’ Aelia
continued.

‘
What digging?

‘
Everyone is talking about
digging up the earth.’

‘
You don’t know about the
barbarians coming? Are you simple?’

‘
No.’ Aelia said, biting
her tongue at the insult. ‘I’ve heard about the invasion, of course
I have. But why is everyone digging?’

‘
I can’t believe you don’t
know.’ The slave girl smirked. ‘I’ll tell you, but you’ll have to
make it worth my while.’

‘
I’ll make it worth your
while,’ Aelia said, suddenly feeling angry with this sly-looking
girl. ‘How about this - tell me what you know and I’ll make sure
your mistress doesn’t hear how you spent the morning idling about
watching cheap entertainment, instead of getting on with your
work.’

The girl scowled. ‘Alright. No
need to be like
that
. But how do I know you’re not a barbarian spy from the
east?’

‘
Do I look like a
barbarian spy from the east?’

The girl sighed. ‘Alright, alright.’

‘
The digging?’ Aelia
prompted.

‘
We’re all to move down
there,’ the girl said.

‘
Move where?’

‘
Where d’you think? Down
there, below the ground. They’re moving all the villages
underground. We’re going to live down there so the invaders can’t
find us and slaughter us in our beds. Apparently, they’re the most
vicious race in the world. They keep their women in chains and eat
babies as a delicacy.’

‘
They eat babies?’ Aelia
gasped.

The girl nodded. ‘The mistress says living
underground will be fun. Fun for her maybe, swanning around with
all her fancy friends. Won’t be much fun for the rest of us,
lugging all their stuff miles under the ground. Cooped up for weeks
on end until the barbarians have gone. And what if they don’t go?
What if they stay forever? We’ll be trapped. It’s a stupid plan if
you ask me.’

Aelia had to agree with the girl. It sounded
like a ridiculous plan. Did that mean her old village would be
moving under the ground too?

The crowd broke into raucous laughter as the
dog selected the correct coin yet again and another punter lost his
money.

‘
Have you heard of Selmea,
the village?’ Aelia asked.

‘
Yeah, of course.
Everyone’s heard of Selmea.’

‘
Are they also moving
underground?’

‘
They were the ones who
came up with the idea in the first place.’

‘
Really?’

The slave girl glanced around and then
leaned closer to Aelia. ‘My mistress heard that Selmea had some
travellers from the east who warned them about the barbarians
coming. They said we’ve got to get the underground villages built
as quickly as possible or we’ll all be slaughtered.’

‘
Why don’t we stay and
fight them?’ Aelia asked.

‘
Apparently the capital
won’t arm us and there aren’t enough men to fight since the plague
took most of them.’

‘
When will the invaders
get here?’

‘
Oh, it won’t be for ages
yet,’ she said airily. ‘They’re hundreds of miles away to the east,
slaughtering and conquering as they go. At the rate they’re moving,
it’ll be a few years till they get here. That is if no one stops
them first.’

Aelia thought the whole thing sounded
dubious. Why would you build an underground city because of a
possible enemy that might never come?

‘
My mistress says it’s just an
excuse. A few timid old
councillors
are being
over-cautious and think it’s a good idea to build the city as a
precaution. And it keeps the people busy in work and out of
trouble. She thinks it’s all great fun. But then everything’s fun
for
her
.
She doesn’t have to do any of the work …’

‘
So where’s the entrance
to this city?’ Aelia asked.

‘
It’s a secret. We won’t
find out until nearer the time. The workers are being lowered down
through ventilation shafts for now.

‘
Musa!’

Aelia saw a hairy arm thrust its way through
the crowd, its hand gripping the slave girl’s scrawny shoulder. She
stared up to see a male slave with irritation in his eyes.

‘
Musa, you’ll get a
whipping if you don’t hurry up.’

The girl rolled her eyes at Aelia and let
herself be led away. Aelia stared after her, pondering on what she
had heard. Widow Maleina had said rumours of the barbarians were
nonsense, but how could she possibly know that? Whatever the real
truth was, she hoped her family was going to be safe.

Chapter Twelve

Present Day

*

The shard of plate felt smooth and slippery.
She worried she might lose her grip on it, that it might slip and
slice her own hand instead of cutting into the girl’s flesh. Maddy
had decided to wait behind the door. She would have to aim for the
girl’s face because she wasn’t sure the shard was sharp enough to
pierce clothing. She would go for her cheek – that would be soft
enough. Maddy touched her own cheek and wondered what it would feel
like to have someone rip it apart. But she couldn’t afford to think
like that, couldn’t be sentimental. The girl was holding her here
against her will. If she got hurt it would be her own fault.

She had been waiting by the door for hours
now and she crouched down to give her legs a break from standing.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something scuttle under the
bed. It was either a very small rodent or a massive spider. Maddy
decided she’d rather not know which. She gave a shudder and then
suddenly heard the unmistakable rattle of the lock. Here was her
chance. She only hoped it was the girl and not some larger, more
powerful captor. As the door opened, Maddy stood and took a step
forward so that she was just at the edge of the open door. Her
heart raced and she held her breath. Adjusting the pottery shard in
her hand, she raised her arm up high.

Maddy saw the smooth thick
braid at the back of the girl’s head and as the girl turned to face
her, Maddy brought her arm down swiftly, aiming directly at her
cheek. There was no way she could miss. But the girl didn’t even
register surprise. She just stepped neatly backwards out of harm’s
way.
How?
It was as though she’d moved lightning fast, but in slow
motion. Then realisation hit Maddy as she remembered where she’d
seen that type of movement before - at home. Alexandre and the
others could move in exactly the same way.

The girl was a vampire.

Maddy couldn’t believe she
hadn’t realised earlier. Of course she was a vampire; no human
being was that beautiful. The girl had clear hazel eyes and perfect
porcelain skin. Her braided hair was a thick and lustrous chestnut
colour and she had the aura of a film star. Maddy must really have
been half-asleep last time not to have noticed all that. Her
shoulders slumped as she understood there would be no escape. That
it was hopeless. The girl smirked. She
actually
smirked at her. Maddy’s
disappointment was replaced with blazing anger.

‘
Why am I here?’ she
yelled. ‘Who are you? Yeah, laugh it up – the stupid human’s far
too slow to catch out the vamp girl. So? What’s going
on?’

The girl held out her hand for
the piece of plate. Maddy grudgingly passed it over. In her other
hand, the girl held a plate
piled high with something which smelled delicious.
She dumped it on the bed before striding into the bathroom to
gather up the other pieces of plate.

‘
This place is disgusting,
you know,’ Maddy said. ‘And I’ve been starving all day. How long am
I supposed to stay here?’

‘
I can’t tell you
anything,’ the girl said softly. ‘So there’s no point
asking.’

‘
So you do talk
then.’

There was that smirk again.

‘
Why am I
here?’

The girl shook her head and walked past
Maddy to the door.

‘
Hey!’ Maddy tried to grab
her arm. The girl evaded her grasp and thrust her face up close to
Maddy’s.

‘
I wouldn’t try that again
if I were you. You know what I can do. Don’t be stupid. I don’t
want to hurt you.’

‘
So what
do
you want?’

The girl gave her a strange look and left,
locking the door behind her. Maddy sank onto the bed with a
sigh.

‘
Well that went well.
Not.’

So … the girl was a vampire.
She was a
vampire
. What was going on? Could Winston Blythe, that slimy
solicitor, have something to do with this? Of course he could. But
then again, maybe it was nothing to do with him. Maybe … Oh, what
was the point in all this guessing. She didn’t know. She really had
no clue why she was being held here, other than it must be
something to do with Alex and the others. She hoped they were okay,
that they weren’t in any danger. And Ben! Please God let him be
alright. What if they’d abducted him too? What if he was locked up
in one of these hideous rooms? If they’d laid a finger on him she’d
… She’d what? What could she possibly do against one of them?
Nothing.

She had to get some information from
somewhere. This ‘not knowing’ was sending her loopy. She had to
calm down, but being in this concrete cell wasn’t helping. It felt
as though the walls were closing in on her, squeezing the air from
her lungs. Her vision blurred. Maddy swung her legs over the edge
of the bed and let her head hang down between her knees. She was
having a minor panic attack, that was all. If she just breathed
slowly she’d be fine. In through her nose and out through her
mouth. The floor was tilting. No. She couldn’t give into this
stupid panic, that wouldn’t help at all.

Gradually, the giddiness passed and she lay
down on her side, curling into herself. She’d been in bad
situations before and she’d managed to come out of all of them.
She’d come out of this one too. The horrible musty smell of the
sheet made her want to cry.

Maddy closed her eyes and pretended she was
back home at Marchwood House, lying on her huge bed, the French
windows open and an evening summer breeze ruffling the curtains.
Darkness had just fallen and Alexandre was on his way to see her,
to wrap her in his arms and kiss her lips. She sighed, her
breathing calm, her mind no longer racing through dark tunnels. She
would have this dream again, but next time it would be real.

*

In Gloucestershire, the weather had turned
miserable. Iron grey clouds took up residence in the sky,
sporadically shaking out vicious drops of sleet. The wind blew from
the east and the temperature hadn’t risen above two degrees.

The basement already felt neglected and sad
without them here, but it smelt of them – a faint scent of vanilla.
It made him feel hungry. Ben bounced down onto a cream chaise,
swung his feet up and lay back against the firm upholstery. He
still had his shoes on. Good thing Isobel wasn’t here, she’d go
mad. Maddy and Leonora didn’t get so stressed about stuff like
that.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket – no
new calls or messages. He’d ring Morris soon to see if they’d
landed in Turkey yet. Ben’s eye rested on the TV remote. He picked
it up and hopped through five or six channels before turning it off
again. The sudden silence made him nervous for some reason.

It would be Christmas soon;
next week in fact. She’d better be home by then. They couldn’t have
another terrible Christmas like last year. God, this was
useless.
He
was useless. What could he do to help? Surely there must be
something … What was the name of the hotel they were staying in? It
was close to the underground city, he knew that much. Maybe he
could look it up online. He glanced around the room.

Leonora’s dark blue laptop sat on her
writing desk in the corner. Ben wandered across, lifted the lid and
pressed the power button. A green light blinked and the machine
began to hum. Ben settled himself in the carved oak swivel chair
and gently spun himself around while he waited for the laptop to
fire up.

Their hotel was in a place called Ayvali.
Ben googled the place, found the hotel and clicked on the room
images. They were proper caves, done out like posh hotel rooms. He
clicked on some of the links. It looked like Cappadocia was a
full-on tourist resort now. They had hot air balloon trips and
horse riding tours, cave expeditions and all sorts of stuff. Lucky
no one had discovered the vampire city yet. Well, if they had, they
probably wouldn’t be around to tell the tale.

‘
What are you doing
mooching down here all by yourself?’

Ben turned around to see Esther poking her
head round the door, frowning at him.

‘
It’s no good you hanging
about down here. Come on upstairs, you can give me a
hand.’