Dog - 1. The fight with Greg

Chapter 1. The fight with Greg

I left my old life behind when I stepped out of the bus. I was glad to see it go. The bus, the people, the memories. I wanted to start over, to make some sense out of the mess everything had become over the last awful year. Going away was the only thing that was left for me to do, and after months and months of trying, I had done it. I had finally been able to escape.

I shifted my backpack on my shoulders and looked down at the large black dog by my side. Rex had followed me, all through the streets of LA where I first found him, through the hours and hours of the bus ride and now here. Wherever 'here' was. He seemed happy to be out in the open again, and he didn't stop to have long introspective thoughts by the side of the highway about everything we had left behind. In fact, the first thing he did was walk over to a tree that grew a few feet away, lift his hind paw and pee. I grinned. Rex was good about putting things into perspective. We had finally arrived—now it was time to make something of this. Time to start over.

It was raining. Of course it was raining. I didn't really mind, though, at least not the way I would have minded a year ago, before I’d had to fend for myself. Sure, I was getting wet, and this mountain air was cold, but it could be worse. At least now I had somewhere to go. Maybe.

I followed Rex to his tree, pulling up my hood to cover my face from the rain and looking around curiously. I couldn't see very far. The rain was light, but it fell down constantly in tiny, windswept droplets that formed a sort of mist in the distance, hiding things from view. Not that there was that much to see. As far as I could tell, I was effectively in the middle of nowhere, the only sign of civilization being the tiny town straight ahead, hiding among the trees by the side of the highway that cut through these mountains. It was only a little afternoon, but with the thick gray clouds covering the sky and the fine drizzle falling down as rain, it was gloomy enough to warrant lights on the few windows I could spot from where I was. Looking briefly back, I saw the highway stretching in both directions, knifing its way through the trees and getting lost then, leading wherever.

I headed straight for the diner that stood closest to the highway. It was the only building that I could see clearly, the other buildings of the town hidden partially by rain and the trees that seemed to want to swallow the entire place. When I had read the ad, I'd expected somewhere small, out-of-the-way and peaceful. I had not expected it to be so quiet, or so deserted. I hadn't seen anyone yet, although that might have been only the rain keeping everyone inside. Other than Rex and me, nothing was moving. The only sounds were the crunch of my feet on the gravel path leading to the diner and the soft patter of Rex walking beside me. It was weird. You don't really miss the near-constant din of noise that you have in the city until you are out in the country, where there are no cars driving by all the time, no far-off sirens wailing through the streets, no loud music echoing off the walls of dirty alleys. Here, there was only nature. It would take some getting used to.

When I reached the diner proper, I saw that it was much more dilapidated than I had assumed from a distance. The lights coming from inside seemed dim, the paint on the walls had mostly peeled away, and there was one cracked window on the far side of the building. Not the best outlook, but lights meant people, and I needed to know where I was supposed to go. On the phone, the guy who’d hired me had not been very specific on the details of anything regarding this job. Normally I wouldn't have gone along with anything this shady, but when I got the call I had long since run out of options, so I really didn't have anything to lose. Besides, they’d given me money up front, which had paid for my bus ticket and a few other things. They'd given me no reason to distrust them so far, and I desperately needed the money. If it meant moving to this godforsaken town for a while then that was fine by me. Anything but going back to the shelter for teenagers, where everybody looked at me weird because they all knew I’d turned eighteen three months ago. No way.

"Rex, stay," I said, gesturing to the big dog. He looked a lot like a wolf sometimes, and here, out in the open, even more so. When I spoke to him he looked at me curiously, then ignored me. He sometimes obeyed simple commands, but mostly he did whatever he wanted to. I didn't mind. I knew that one day he might disappear as suddenly as he had appeared, but for now I was thankful for the company.

I shrugged. "Whatever. Just don't go too far, okay?"

I left him there, and went inside.

I instantly felt the warmth and it was more than welcome. I dropped my hood down and shook some water off my sleeves, trying uselessly to dry them. I gave up after a few seconds, and looked around. It looked like a usual diner, a bit run-down and empty. I only saw a couple guys off by themselves sitting at table, and one guy behind the counter pouring some drinks. The lighting wasn't the best, and the place looked old and rickety, but it was clean, which was more than I could say about some of the places I’d had to stay at from time to time.

I approached the counter and sat down on one of the stools. The wood creaked under my weight, and that made me realize that everything was just as quiet here as it had been outside. In fact, nobody was making any noise. I looked to my right, where a couple of guys had been eating. They had stopped, and were openly staring at me. Slowly, I turned to look back at the guy behind the counter. His name tag said ‘Tim’, and he was also staring at me as if he couldn't believe I was actually sitting there.

It creeped me out, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I needed to know where to go and these were the only people around.

"Hi," I said. "My name’s Ryan. Could I get some coffee?"

I didn't really have a lot of money on me, just the remnants of the check I had gotten in the mail after paying for my bus ticket, but I figured that it would help my chances if I were a paying customer.

Tim blinked, as if he couldn't believe I could speak, then turned around and went into the kitchen. I assumed he was going to get my coffee, but then he came back out with a rag and started cleaning the counter over to my left, blatantly ignoring me.

I fought to control my rising temper, clenching my fists under the counter. I reminded myself that this was a new start, and it would be stupid to begin it with a fight. Besides, these hillbillies had probably not seen a new face all year. I had seen enough movies to learn what to expect from the ignorant, superstitious townspeople of a tiny town like this one.

"Hey, Tim, I asked you if I could get some coffee," I said, a bit more loudly.

Tim looked up at the sound of his name, and then back down.

"I said—" I began.

"You got any money?" somebody asked.

I looked to my right. The two guys who had been eating were still looking at me. The older one had spoken.

"What?" I said.

"You heard me. Don't waste Timmy’s time if you ain't got no money."

I noticed he was missing two front teeth. His eyes were hard, and openly hostile. The guy sitting next to him was looking at me the same way. I glanced briefly back to look at Tim, only to meet a similar look.

I felt the blood rush to my face and I knew I was flushed with anger as I stood up slowly, deliberately. The one thing I'd learned on the streets that had always helped me was this. You never take bullshit from anyone. If you do, you're giving them permission to mess with you.

"What did you say?" I asked, deceivingly softly. I would break some more of his teeth I had to.

The guy sitting with him spoke up. "They're getting stupider, huh, Joe? This one can't even speak English."

I walked closer to them. Slowly, but with purpose. I stopped close enough to the older guy, the one called Joe, for him to know that I meant business.

"I don't want any trouble," I said. "Maybe you can just tell me where the manor is and I can be on my way."

He didn't answer me, but he seemed surprised that I hadn't backed down, and his cockiness subsided. He averted his gaze and began to sit back down. Good. I relaxed. Time for them to know that it wasn't that easy to mess with m—

Joe spun around faster than I would have thought possible for a man his age and shoved me with his shoulder, hard. I was completely caught off balance and stumbled back, banged my calf with the edge of the chair and went down. I fell to the floor in a jumble of chairs, hitting the wooden surface with a crash.

The two guys laughed. "Get the fuck out of here, kid," Joe said. "You're not welcome."

I was livid. I fingered the switchblade I carried in my right pocket, as angry as I'd ever been in my life, and got back up with every intention of making that asshole eat his words.

From outside, a sudden, piercing yelp sounded.

"Rex!"

I imagined a couple more of these inbred idiots attacking my dog, and I rushed out of the diner, leaving my other fight for later, ready to murder whoever it was if they'd harmed him. Rex might not have been my dog officially, but I cared for the little son of a bitch and I wasn't going to let anyone take advantage of him.

"Rex!" I yelled, looking around in the rain. "Rex!"

I saw a dash of movement behind a couple of big trees some thirty feet away and I rushed forward. I was halfway there when I saw Rex, perfectly fine, sniffing something with great interest.

“Rex?”

Someone grabbed my shoulder from behind.

I didn’t think—I just reacted. I’d been in street fights before and I knew that if you didn’t get the first hit in, chances were you would go down. Fast.

I swung my fist through the air even as I turned, raindrops flying everywhere. I caught a blur of someone big standing behind me, corrected the trajectory of the punch and grimaced with the anticipation of the crunch that would follow my fist slamming on that guy’s jaw.

The crunch never happened. My punch missed by so little that I actually felt the back of my knuckles brush against the guy’s chin, but he stepped out of the way with casual ease, knocking my arm out of the way as he did.

I pretended to stumble out of balance and went with my own momentum, turning, trying to make the guy think I was giving him an opening to hit me back. It worked. I saw him reach forward and try to grab me, which was just what I wanted. I brought my elbow up and slammed it into his side, hard.

“Ooof!”

I grinned. Got him now. I turned around to face him again and brought my knee up to hit him in the groin.

He blocked me again, so fast I barely had time to process the fact before he grabbed my right arm and immobilized it with an iron fist. I tried jerking away, pulling with all my strength, but he didn't even move. Man, he was big. Too big for me to take down on my own. He wasn't letting go, either, so there was only one thing to do. I slipped my free hand in my pocket and brought out my switchblade. At the same time I said, "Please don't hurt me. Oh, please, please don't hurt me."

I put in a good tremble to my voice, cowering and trying to look as if he'd scared the shit out of me, drawing his eyes to my face so he wouldn’t notice the blade. His grip relaxed slightly, and at the exact moment it did, I lunged backwards throwing my whole weight into it. The guy was too big to be thrown off by such a move, but he got distracted, which was what I wanted—I immediately brought the switchblade up in a deadly arc, fast and precise, aimed right for his belly. It was a move I'd used once, and it had worked. The crack junkie I'd stabbed had also been bigger than me, but he was dead now and I was alive. He hadn’t seen it coming. That's all that mattered then, and it was all that mattered now, so I put all my strength into the move and didn't hesitate at all.

Another iron fist closed on my right wrist, stopping the blade less than an inch from the guy’s belly.

"Watch it," he growled, his voice surprisingly deep. "You don't want to poke someone's eye out with that penknife of yours."

"Fuck you!" I said, struggling against him. I couldn't break his grip, and when he tightened his hold on my right hand, I was forced to drop the switchblade. I heard it clatter to the ground, heard Rex coming closer, sniffing.

The guy holding me grinned.

"You got balls, I'll give you that," he said casually.

With that, he let go of me suddenly, which threw me off balance and I actually stumbled back a couple steps to avoid falling down on my ass. I was too surprised to say anything and I just stared at him. I kept waiting for him to fight back, only he didn’t. I kept my eyes trained on him but I couldn't see much. He was wearing a hooded raincoat that obscured his face, dark trousers and big black boots. It didn't look like he was armed, but I couldn't be sure. Raindrops pattered all around us, falling on his raincoat, dripping down his hood.

"Come on," he said, and turned around, headed for the forest. "I don't want to be here all day."

I blinked, now very confused. What the hell was going on? I looked around, but there was nobody else out in the rain. In fact, if it hadn't been for the lights in the diner and the man walking away, I would have thought this was a ghost town or something. Nothing was making any sense, and I didn't know what to do. I looked at Rex, who had finally trotted over to me.

"Some help you were," I muttered. "That guy could have killed me and you didn't even jump in."

Rex looked up at the sound of my voice, clueless. It was weird that he hadn't barked at that guy at all. Normally Rex was the first to alert me if there was anybody nearby with bad intentions. He was good at knowing when somebody was up to something, and I'd come to rely on him somewhat. A mistake, as I could see now. If that guy'd wanted to kill me, or just stabbed me to take whatever I had, Rex wouldn’t even have noticed.

"You gonna stay there all day in the rain?" The guy said, turning around briefly. He was already several feet away. “Come on!”

"Who the hell are you? Where are you going?" I asked him.

The guy just turned around and continued walking away.

I hesitated for a bit, but then I remembered that he hadn't actually hurt me even though he'd had the chance, so there was probably no harm in following him long enough to ask for directions to the manor. I stooped to pick up my switchblade, stuffed it in my pocket and started after him. I was already uncomfortably wet, and the wind was picking up. Wherever this guy was taking me, if it was dry, that was just fine by me.

"Come on, Rex," I said, tapping my leg. Rex perked his ears up and followed me as I hurried after the guy.

He was a fast walker. In the time it had taken me to make up my mind, he had already reached the forest and was making his way uphill through a narrow path I had not noticed from the road. I had to trot a little bit to catch up to him, Rex following close behind. The path was narrow, so we had to go single file. The rain was beginning to fall down harder, and I was thankful for the tree cover once we were in the forest.

"Do you know where the manor is?" I asked him. “I just got here and I need to see someone there.”

He didn't answer. I was left with staring at his back, walking uphill, the path we were following growing fainter and fainter. I noticed we were heading away from the town, which was not what I wanted to do. I was supposed to go straight to the manor without delays—the recruiter had been very specific about that.

The slope of the terrain got steeper the higher up we went. We wound our way through the trees, and pretty soon I was having trouble keeping up with the fast pace of the guy in front of me. The distance between us grew little by little, and I knew I should probably go back to the town and ask somebody else, because I had no idea where we were going and I couldn't afford to get lost today, not when my employer was expecting me… but then thought about starting another confrontation down at the town and decided to just follow.

After about ten minutes of solid walking I was panting, and the guy was almost out of earshot. I looked back for Rex, but he had disappeared somewhere among the trees. This was stupid. I finally stopped and yelled, "Hey! You! Do you know the way to the manor or not? Where the fuck are you going?"

Several feet above me, partially hidden by one of the trees, the guy stopped. He looked back at me, then away.

I gritted my teeth and hurried up, assuming he had stopped so I could catch up and he could tell me where the hell we were headed. It took me more than a minute to get there, and when I finally did, I saw that he had stopped in the middle of a paved, wide road.

"What the fuck?" I said, looking left and right. The road looked old, and there were several potholes that I could spot, but I was stupidly glad to see it. It meant I could follow it to the town, and sure enough, looking to my right I could see the town through a gap in the trees. It spread out below us, lights glinting in the overcast gloom. The rain was beginning to let up, and I realized that we had climbed a lot higher that I had expected. We'd gone up the side of a hill, a shortcut from the looks of it, and left the town well behind in surprisingly little time.

As I looked, I heard the sudden sound of scuffling in the underbrush in the direction from which he had come. I started, jumping a little bit from how wound-up I was, but it was only Rex. He jumped out of a brush with something in his mouth. Seeing me, he carried over to my side and dropped the thing he had found at my feet.

"An egg?" I said to Rex. "Where did you even find this, buddy?"

Rex nosed the egg, curious. He looked at me, then at the egg. Then back at me.

"He wants you to crack it open," the guy said. His tone had changed. It was softer, somehow. I noticed he was looking at my dog. "Smart dog you got there. Not many would have carried an egg far without breaking it by accident."

I looked briefly at the guy as I reached for the egg. I was beginning to think he was a lunatic or something.

Rex gave a little impatient yelp, demanding his prize.

"Okay, okay," I told Rex. "Here you go."

I cracked the egg open with my thumb and tossed it at him. Rex rose up on his hind legs to catch it and closed his mouth around the egg with a crunch. He seemed surprised at the sudden taste filling his mouth, but pretty soon he was licking his chops, noisily swallowing the egg and trying to chew it as best as he could. Bits of yolk dripped onto the road, but he licked them off after he was done with the main part. When everything was gone, he looked up at me, ears perked up, waiting.

I shrugged. "Sorry, buddy. I don’t have another one. You brought it to me, remember?"

The guy chuckled, reminding me he was there.

The rain was pretty much gone by then, and the guy unzipped his rain coat and pulled his hood back, letting me have a good look at his face for the first time.

"He’s a nice-looking dog,” he said, and there was real sincerity in his voice. "Reminds me of one I had in a few years ago. He was all black, like yours. What's his name?"

"Rex," I answered automatically.

"He looks young," the guy commented, going on one knee on the road. He took something out of his pocket and held it in his open palm, a clear invitation for Rex to go and investigate. "Here, Rex," he said.

To my total surprise, Rex didn't even hesitate. He was usually wary around strangers, growling and keeping his distance, but with this guy there was none of that at all. It was like they were best friends. He trotted over to him, smelled his hand and then gobbled up the treat that was offered. He licked his chops and looked at the guy expectantly, his tail wagging slightly behind him.

The guy smiled, took out another treat and gave it to Rex. Then he scratched my dog behind the ears, and Rex let him.

Unexpectedly, that smile made me realize how attractive the guy was. It was a sudden shift in perception, from potential enemy to hot guy petting my dog. I was surprised I hadn't noticed it before, but I had probably being too stressed out to care.

Now I noticed him, though, and I liked what I saw.

He had a rugged, slightly wild appearance that I liked right away. Without his hood on, I could see that his hair was short and slightly messy, like he had just gotten out of bed. It was completely black, and very thick. I supposed the guy was older than me, around thirty, or maybe forty—impossible to tell, since his face was not lined, but I could see the traces of experience there, of a strong man in his prime. When he looked at me, I noticed he had dark eyes, almost black, and that smile of his made him look like one of those models you see on the cover of outdoor magazines. He was certainly dressed for it with the boots, the raincoat, and the flannel shirt underneath. I wouldn't have been surprised to see him holding a rifle and standing over a dead deer somewhere.

He stood up then, and I got a good look at his body, seeing he was powerfully built. Before, I had only noticed his size, but now I saw that he had impressive wide shoulders, a narrow waistline and big, strong hands. He radiated masculinity and confidence. The dark stubble of his two- or three-day beard only emphasized the effect.

With a start, I noticed I had been staring, and hurriedly looked away. Rex chose that moment to go running off into the woods, providing me with a good excuse to look in a different direction. I hoped this guy hadn't noticed me checking him out. I didn't want to have to fight him again if I could help it.

"You're not like the others," he said thoughtfully, and I looked back at him then.

"What you mean? What others?"

"You fight first, ask questions later. The switchblade was a nice touch. Almost got me." He looked away, down the other end of the road, sighed and then looked back at me. He didn't say anything, just looked at me.

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"What's your name?" he asked me.

"Ryan," I answered. "You?"

"Greg."

"Okay, Greg. You mind telling me where the manor is? Or why the fuck you told me to follow you?"

He looked back down the road again, at something I couldn't see among the trees.

"I just showed you the way. But you should go," he said, his voice low.

"What?" I asked.

"You might last longer than the others, but you'll break in the end. All of them do."

"Dude. Just… what the hell are you talking about?" I asked him.

He looked back at me, suddenly angry. "This is bullshit!" he yelled. "Listen, kid—Ryan. Just leave. There’s no need for this. Just—"

Greg stopped talking suddenly, his eyes darting back and forth as if he had heard something and was trying to locate the source. He didn't seem to find anything, but he nodded slowly and bunched his hands into fists.

"Fine," he growled, with such venom in his voice that it made my skin crawl. He dug his hand into one of the pockets of his trousers and took out a key. He tossed it to me fast, and I snatched it out of the air, surprised. Then he turned away and walked back in the direction of the town, hands in his pockets. "FINE!" he yelled, and walked away faster.

"Hey, Greg!" I shouted. "What the fuck?"

He didn't answer me, just kept on walking away, downhill. I looked at the key I held in my hand. It was big, and it looked old. The top of it was emblazoned with stylized S.

I looked down the other end of the road, where it went uphill, then at Greg. I waited until he was well out of sight in case he really was crazy, because I didn’t want to run into him again. I meant to go back down to the town, but curiosity got the best of me and I started following the road in the other direction, further uphill. It took me less than a minute to make a turn to the right and see the huge iron gates, standing tall in the break of the forest trees. The road came to an end there. Beyond that, there was the manor.

I guess a part of me should have expected it. I mean, all along the job offer seemed too good to be true. I kept expecting to learn what the catch was, and now, looking at the decrepit building beyond the gates, I saw why the pay was so good.

The place was awful. From where I stood, I could see the manor clearly, although it was still maybe a couple hundred yards away. I supposed that back when it had first been built it must have been an impressive building, but now it looked like a cross between a bad background prop for a horror movie and one of those houses scheduled for demolition. It stood among a big garden of overgrown weeds, tall hedges grown completely out of shape, and smaller buildings here and there that might have been sheds of some kind at one point.

"Man, this place is a dump," I said to Rex, who'd decided to walk by my side. He perked up at the sound of my voice and the seem to take it as an invitation to squeeze past the gates, into the overgrown pathway leading to the manor. I shrugged and looked for a way to open the gates so I could go in myself. After spending maybe one minute looking around for a padlock of some kind so I could use the key that Greg had given me, I accidentally pushed the nearest gate inward and it gave way. This place wasn't even locked.

I went inside and closed the creaky gate behind me. I swear, if a vampire had started following me around at this point, I wouldn't have been surprised. I wasn't particularly scared or anything, but the fact that the place was in such a serious need of maintenance made me wonder if the guy who'd hired me would really be able to pay what he had promised. I'd come all this way because the offer seemed genuine, and also because he had given me cash up front just to come, of course. Now I was starting to wonder if that had been stupid of me. It's not like I’d had much of a choice when the offer came, but still. For a moment there, I had actually started to believe that I would be able to make the three thousand dollars they had promised, tax-free, 'for a fortnight’s hard work assisting the master of the manor', as some old-timey guy had said on the phone.

I headed up the ancient driveway with a determined step, trying to ignore the doubts I was having now that I was here. I quickly lost sight of Rex among the tall grass that grew at either side of the old and weathered stones that made up the driveway, but I wasn't worried. Actually, it might be better if they did not see Rex at once, since I had not really mentioned that I had a dog. And, really, maybe I was just being too paranoid. After all, as I got closer to the manor I saw that the building was not a complete wreck as I had initially supposed. There were lights in many of the windows of the ground floor, and although there were a couple broken windows a couple stories above that, the rest of the impressive house was still in one piece. It needed a fresh coat of paint, but the ivy climbing up one wall and the general gloomy air about the place reminded me of one of those dreary college buildings you see sometimes on television. Who knew; maybe my new boss was just eccentric or whatever, and none of the superstitious locals wanted to work for him. Maybe that's why he was suffering so much money for whatever I was supposed to do. As long as I got paid, though, I didn't really care.

I got up on the porch and stopped before the massive, heavy-looking door. I looked all around for the doorbell, but there wasn't one. Weird, but not unexpected, given how old the house looked. I simply knocked really loudly.

There was no answer whatsoever to my knocking. I tried again, a bit louder than before, and waited for a couple minutes. Still nothing. I knocked again. Waited. I was seriously considering simply breaking in one the door finally creaked open and a man stepped out to greet me.

"Ah, the new boy," he said in a voice that sounded bored. His eyes swept over me once, dismissively. "Follow me."

The sight of his face shocked me. The man did not wait for me, but went right back inside the manor without even seeing if I was following. I hesitated for a split second but then recovered enough from having seen that man's face to actually follow. I had not been expecting that. He was probably the butler because of the impeccable way in which he was dressed, even though he was obviously a servant, but the almost perfect neatness of his clothing contrasted with the scarred, mangled ruin that was his face.

I was glad I had not said anything or backed away when I had seen him, but mostly it had been surprise that had kept my mouth shut. I had only seen the butler's face for a second, but the image of those three parallel gashes running diagonally across his face was definitely going to be in my dreams tonight. One of his eyes had been blue, the other white, sightless, probably damaged in whatever accident had left those horrible scars. At first I had thought they were burn marks, because of the way the skin looked, but on second thought they looked more like somebody had raked his face with something really sharp. I couldn't really think of what would leave such a mark, except maybe bear claws. Only I was pretty certain that there were no bears in these parts.

Anyway, I didn't really have much time to think of the mystery of the scarred butler because he was walking fast and I had to hurry to keep up with him as he moved through the mansion. The very expensive-looking, incongruously perfect and immaculate mansion we were in.

The inside was the complete opposite of the outside of the building. I followed the butler across what must have been the main hall and headed for an enormous staircase dominating the space. There were expensive rugs on the floors, ancient-looking furniture arranged in precise locations like a museum, old paintings of dead people like you would expect in a castle, and even a gigantic candelabrum hanging from the ceiling. Everything was spotlessly clean, so much so that I felt bad about leaving a slight trail of dirt behind me as I walked on the plush carpets. I was thankful that Rex hadn't decided to follow.

I did not have much time to admire my surroundings, though, because the butler headed right for the stairs and proceeded to climb them quickly. I wanted to ask him where we were going, but both his attitude and his disfigured face kept me quiet for the moment. He was not very talkative, and I really wasn't here to make friends. He was probably taking me to my boss anyway. It was him I had to impress, not his servant.

"Right this way," the butler said, and even though I couldn't see his face because I was walking behind him, I couldn't miss the derisive tone in his words. I bit back a dozen smartass remarks that came to mind, thinking that this was my job now. I had to be polite. Or try.

The stairs were deceptively long but we finally came out onto a landing that led left and right into what looked to be corridors that could have easily belonged to a palace. I mean, there were suits of armor and everything. Right in front of me, a huge balcony had a commanding view of the neglected gardens in front of the house, and I realized that it was even possible to see the far-off town from where I stood. Light trained appeared to have started falling again, so the entire landscape looked kind of washed out, the lights of the town blurry twinkles of warm, inviting glow.

By this time, the butler had already turned right and I followed him with quick steps. A plush red carpet underfoot let me along a corridor that was flanked with more portraits of dead people, and now that I paid more attention I realized there was a strong family resemblance in all of them. They all had platinum blonde hair, icy blue eyes and a slightly hooked nose.

"The Master will receive you now," the butler said, stopping in front of a particularly ornate set of double doors just to the left. He knocked once and left before I could ask him his name.

"Enter," a deep voice called from within.

I looked left and right, but I was alone. Hoping not to meet Count Dracula, I pushed open the door and stepped inside.