The cluttered kitchen's usual busy and comfy atmosphere magnified to chaotic the next day in preparation for the feast. Abriella, June and I stood at various points around the kitchen wearing identical white aprons, all staring at the twelve large chickens and mountains of vegetables piled up on the wooden table.
"We should start, I think." Abriella said in a tired voice.
"How many vampires is Goliath planning to feed?" I asked, stunned at the pure quantity of food.
Abriella shrugged her shoulders delicately then proceeded to drop two raw chickens clumsily into a roasting tin. Following her suit, June and I hurried to put the rest of the chickens in the large oven where they began to cook gently from the blazing flame.
"Cooking for the vampires isn't that bad." I told June after peeling potatoes silently for a few minutes. "My first day with Ashley was much worse."
"It's not the cooking that bothers me," June grimaced, "It's serving the food to those stuck up vamps that I hate. They leer at you as if you're more appetising than the food."
"That's because you are." A new voice came from the doorway.
Joe leaned cockily against the doorframe with a mischievous grin on his handsome face. His forehead was glistening with sweat and he'd removed his waistcoat, his white shirt messily unbuttoned at the sleeves. June's cheeks blushed a deep shade of red at his words and she began to chop her carrots with unnecessary attention.
"Nice surprise seeing you down here Lizzy." He grinned.
"Yes, someone foolishly let me loose with a knife and a pile of chickens in the kitchen." I sighed. "I can't cook."
"I wouldn't bother to learn if I were you. You'll probably be dead in a few years anyway." Joe said in an offhand manner.
"You are, how do you say it, very tactful." Abriella said from over a pile of evenly chopped potatoes.
Joe sidled over to June and began talking to her. I suspected he was standing so close to her as an excuse to sample the carrots she was cutting. June was not paying much attention to her knife skills anymore and seemed instead to be deeply interested in Joe.
"June." I called in a slow voice.
She looked rather irritated that I had disturbed her conversation with Joe but motioned for me to continue anyway.
"These vampires that we're cooking for... This means that there are more than just the Sancruor family. There are more vampires..."
"Yes. Think of how these... humans adapted to become vampires. Helena probably made her husband drink blood to become a vampire but what's to say that she didn't make others drink blood as well? She could have created a sort of family, or an army. It's a total guess but I think that Helena probably created a few vampires. They created more and there's a whole civilisation, if you can call it that, of them now." June told me with a calculated expression in her eyes.
"See, Dane is not part of the family." Abriella told me.
"He isn't? I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense... Ashley always seems to order him about."
Joe made a tittering sound at my use of Ashley's first name and June giggled. I fixed them both with what I hoped was a dispassionate expression. June composed her face but Joe continued to grin in unabashed happiness. 'Why was he so happy?'I asked myself for what seemed like the hundredth time.
After stealing around a pound of carrots from under June's nose, Joe retreated back to the room opposite the kitchen that I assumed was a garage. Abriella and June watched his retreating figure before turning back to their vegetables.
I had a sudden urge to follow Joe into the room and see what was behind that door. For all I knew an escape route was directly opposite us. It was unlikely but still a possibility.
"I'll be back in a minute," I told June and Abriella.
Feeling their suspicious gazes on my back I dashed out of the kitchen door and closed it firmly behind me. Without stopping to knock or alert Joe that I was entering I pushed open the other adjacent door.
Piles upon piles of roughly stacked boxes of all shapes and sized took up the entire length of one wall. The rest of the hot room was equally cluttered with metal piece of machinery on the dusty, uncarpeted floor. Joe sat topless on a stool in the corner of the room fiddling with a greasy piece of metal.
"I expected a car to be down here or something," I stated.
Joe looked up from his work and grinned widely at me. His body was shining with sweat but it wasn't unattractive.
"Nah, it would have been pretty difficult getting the whole car down that flight of stairs. I work outside mainly."
A boiler was emitting wet steam in one corner of the dusty-smelling room and I could feel my body becoming hotter and damper beneath my layered uniform.
"It's pretty hot in here, isn't it?" I asked, peeling my skirt away from my thighs.
"It wasn't until you walked in," Joe flirted.
I laughed and approached him, examining the pieces of machinery surrounding him. His brown hair was darker in some places from the black oil which made his blue eyes stand out dramatically.
"How do you understand all of this?" I asked, picking up a pipe and examining it with a bemused look on my face.
"Just another area I specialise in."
Joe shot a jaunty grin at me and I rolled my eyes at his cockiness. Joe stood up leaving the greasy piece of metal on the makeshift table. He ran his hands, damp with oil, through his already messy hair and let his eyes scan the room. I mimicked his eye movements, remembering the real reason I'd entered this room. Unfortunately it was pretty clear that there was no escape route via the solid concrete floor and walls.
So engaged in searching the room with my eyes, I didn't notice that Joe was approaching me until I felt his warm breath ruffle my hair. I looked up into his blue eyes questioningly and he grinned in the brash manner he often adopted. Quickly, but not quick enough for me to not notice he was doing it, Joe leaned his face down to mine. Simultaneously his firm hand slid around my waist and he brought my body closer to his chest, my lips closer to his face.
Suddenly the boiler emitted a particularly loud blast of steam, alerting me to my senses. I pushed Joe away from me by his chest and he stumbled back a few steps.
"What?" He asked innocently.
"You were going to kiss me." I accused.
"You can't blame a guy for having fun, eh?" Joe grinned cheekily.
I supposed that I knew what he meant. Neither Joe nor I knew when we were going to die or be murdered, but it was going to be much sooner than either of us had hoped. So we may as well steal as much enjoyment out of the few years we had left.
I liked Joe, if not as a friend then maybe more. But the circumstances we were in didn't allow for trivial stuff such as kissing. If I wasn't so intent on escaping then I probably would have allowed him to kiss me; but to do so, to act like I had merely years left, seemed like I was resigning to the fact that I was going to die soon.
"I know when I'm not wanted..." Joe said in a tearful voice.
The effect of his fake misery was ruined when he cracked a grin at me before leaving the room to go to the kitchen, undoubtedly to glean some more food.
I'd started to follow Joe out of the room when my logical side made me stop. I had the room all to myself. If there was no escape route then there might be something useful in those boxes. The diary of Helena had been found there, had it not?
I stole across the room, wondering where to start with the mountains of boxes. Most of them were too high to reach but a wardrobe, about the same height I was, stood alone. The doors to it, inconveniently, faced away from me. Grunting but making as little sounds as I could, I nudged the wardrobe away from the wall little by little. Sweat from the boiler made my hands slippery so the job was trickier than it should have been. Eventually though, I'd pulled the wardrobe away from the wall and spun it to face me.
The doors of the wardrobe, however, remained unopened and forgotten. My attention was all focused on the thing behind the wardrobe, hung on the wall. A portrait in an ornate polished frame hung hidden behind the wardrobe. The inscription on the plaque read: Elizabeth Sancruor 1963-1994.
Elizabeth's face, framed by long, golden blonde hair, and dominated by deep green eyes was as human as mine.
But something else, apart from the fact she was human, bothered me about this portrait. I pushed the wardrobe back into place and then ran from the room, up the stairs and into the empty entrance hall. Then, for the first time in my life, I recalculated numbers.
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