6. Twenty Four Hour Party People.
There are a few people hanging out outside. There's some serious tongue action between a girl and a guy near the castle gates. I walk on past, heading towards the door. Heavy Electro spills out from within, not at all my taste in music. Too lively, too vibrant, too colourful. The same can be said of the situation indoors. I walk into the main room. It's all kitted out in neon colours, glow sticks and cheap plastic. The only thing that's missing is a UV light to make all these bright whites sing out. It's packed out in here. I keep to the sidelines, watching the throng. The place is seething with plastic-bespectacled teens all twisting and pulsating with neon colour. Feels like half the teenaged population of Stokely are sweating it out inside these walls. Most of the faces that I recognise from school are people I've not seen for ages. They've all got a lot paler and older-looking since they were last in school. I guess that's what working life does to you.
A girl wearing pink slatted-sunshades, a bright green tutu and deep red lips falls across my path, pushing into me. She's totally wasted.
"Hoooo! Hey there boy! I don't recognise you. What's with all the black? That's so old school! Dressing like a proper old fashioned vampire."
"Um…" I try and get her to stand up straight, without needing to lean on me. "I don't really dress like a vampire anymore. Haven't done for a while now," I say in my defence, having to holler loud over the volume of the music. She laughs at me with a proper cat-wail cackle that makes my ears hurt more than they did already from this crappy music.
"Good one! …You seem a little stressed out there. You need to take a chill-pill mate. Get some spliff or something." I think she reads my confused expression, "The Countess got a couple of ounces off a local junk peddler. A couple of ounces and about nine pints, if you know what I mean!" she nudges me and winks, very out of it. I place my hand on her shoulder and ask if she's okay, if she wants some water, but she just laughs at me, sways and then collapses in a heap at my feet. I look down at her, consider her words, and then step over her limp rag-doll form, heading for a door.
There's a guy leaning in a doorway with a look of boredom written plainly across his face.
"Hey," I say to him, not making eye contact, just looking out over the party. "I'm looking for a couple of people. 'Vlad' or 'Ingrid'. You seen either of them?"
I turn my eye to him and see the guy's bored expression fizzle out into a much more aggressive hard look. He pushes himself upright and steps up to me, grabbing my collar and shoving his face right up to mine. He smells like musty forgotten clothes.
"Where did you crawl from? It's The Countess to you, knob-jockey." His grip on my collar digs in against my throat and as he speaks he shakes me about.
"Alright!" I exhale, winded from all the shaking he's doing. I think that maybe my breath stinks something rotten because he puckers up his nose and loosens his grip on my collar for a moment.
"Breather!" he says with wide, excited eyes. I'm not sure what that means. What I am sure of is trouble. There's trouble and I'm in it and maybe it'll lead me someplace I want to be at. He yanks me into the next room and across the way through another door. The music is quieter in here, different, but still too lively for my tastes. The guy pushes me heavily away. So much so that I loose my footing and fall on my side in a heavy heap.
"Found a breather, Countess," I hear him say with knives in his voice box. I crawl to my feet and straighten myself up, looking across to a girl a couple of years older than me. There's something about her that I recognise, but I tend to get that feeling with any pretty girl I lay an eye on, so I'm not sure how to read it. Her dark eyes flash and almost seem to lighten to grey, or blue, for a moment. Maybe being pushed to the floor like that jolted my brain about. Maybe I'm seeing stuff all wrong. The next time I clock in the colour of her eyes they are deep black once more. I shrug my shoulder to realign my coat in its proper position and scowl up at the girl. She's sitting on a large chair, like a throne or something. There are a fair few guys in here, and a couple of girls, hanging around near to her. The ambience is sharp steel.
"Robin Branagh. Long time no smell, Breather Boy," she says to me with a cocked scornful smile. My brows flutter into a furrow. She knows my name. Maybe I do know her from someplace, after all. "I see you're still skulking around pretending to be one of us, dressed all in black and on a constant downer. I've got news for you, garlic-breath; it is no longer in fashion to wallow about in angst-ridden confusion, threatening to slash your wrists, wearing a fringe you can't see through. The discerning modern teenager prefers to get shit-faced and lost under a cloud of euphoric, neon haze. It's mildly more constructive." I don't respond because I don't know what to respond with. I keep my face a stony mask. Don't let her see how lost I am. She shifts her position and sits forwards on her throne. "You're two days early. I'm not ready for you yet. My watch is on the Slayer boy. I haven't even sent you your invitation yet. It's quite rude of you to burst in here unexpected like this. So what brings you here all of a sudden, nearly three years after your last visit and nearly three days before your scheduled final visit? Having flashbacks are we? Your memory has come back has it?"
I blink and hesitate before deciding to go along with this, to play it like I know what the hell is going on.
"Where's Vlad?" I demand. She laughs at the tough-guy tone I put into my question, her laughter trickling on the air.
"He's in the crypt, dear Robin. Since your memory has been restored I'm sure you'll remember exactly where that is, won't you?" Maybe she's playing with me. It makes no odds. I'll play along and see where this ride takes me. "Get your best clogs on though, breather. This place is teaming with hungry little vampires. If they catch a whiff of your virgin blood I'm not sure they'll fight the urge for a swift-one. I've already put out a warning that The Branaghs are a no-snack stop. But you're getting awfully close now and I wouldn't blame any of them if they saw red and let the bloodlust force them to loose rationality."
I pull a face at her and mutter "Very funny." I wish people would quit referring to that phase in my childhood in which I felt compelled to go around wearing vampire capes and hanging upside down on a custom-built hanger. No kidding. I really did do that, and yes I am ashamed. In my defence, I was twelve years old. Everyone had something weird going on in their lives when they were that age. Anyone who says different is a liar.
With not a clue about where I'm headed I make my way through the castle, glad to be by my lonesome once more. With a steady pace I move in the opposite direction to the music, my footsteps getting crisper as the music gets further away. I have no idea where I'm going and all these corridors look alike. It wouldn't surprise me if I have been going round and round in circles. Some way down a corridor my ears pick up a small sound above the distant throb coming from the party room. It sounds like a voice. I pause and listen for a while until the voice comes again.
"Help," it whispers. I look back down the corridor, then along it the other way. There's no one here. Just one of those suit of armour guys. "Help me. I'm stuck." My attention is on the suit of armour, so that might be why it seems to be from there that the voice is coming from. I squint, wait a moment more, and then approach it.
"Hello?" I ask.
"In here," says the suit. I lift the visor and see two pretty blue eyes staring back at me. I really wasn't expecting this. It shakes me up, what with being on edge already. I leap back away from the suit with a little yelp. "I'm really hungry. I've been trapped in here nearly a week now. I'm too weak to move the metal," she says.
"A week?! Hells bells."
"Can you help me out of here?"
"Sure," I mutter, already lifting her helmet off. "How did you get in here in the first place?" I ask with a smirk as I tackle the torso piece. It is really, really heavy. As I remove each piece to reveal the prisoner I can see how she wasn't able to get herself out of it. She's stick thin and fairly petite. I'm struggling with the weight of the suit myself, and I'm not trapped inside, or a smallish girl.
"The others put me in here," she winces as she stretches her freed limbs out. I crouch down to remove the shin plates.
"Which others?"
"That lot upstairs." Her blue eyes flick upwards and I follow them.
"The party guests?"
"Twenty four hour party people. They're not guests precisely, since they are here all the time."
After managing to free her entirely I stand up straight and let my eyes study the prize inside. The suit is scattered around our feet, broken into its many parts, something like a discarded banana skin. The contrast between the hard, shiny outer layer and this small soft girl inside is almost artistic. She's wearing hardly anything at all. I find it hard to know where to put my eyes. Pinching my lips together and grabbing the lapels of my jacket I raise my brows and rock my weight back and forth.
"I think that's a pretty sick thing to do. They put you in there on purpose?"
She shrugs, indifferent to what must have been fairly traumatic. I drink in her features like she's a strawberry milkshake. There is something very elfin about her, very small but very strong. "They've done a lot worse to me."
"What? Why? Why trap someone in a suit of armour for a week?!"
"They think it's funny. Plus they don't like me because I'm a half-breed…" as soon as she says this her eyes widen and she slinks away from me. "Hang on… how old are you?" It's a pretty weird question to ask in the middle of a pretty weird conversation.
"Recently turned seventeen." I'm not sure my answer was the right one. She takes another back step, suddenly very cautious and scared looking, her eyes becoming big and dark. "Quit looking at me in that way. I'm not going do anything to you."
"Wh…who are you? What are you doing here? Are you one of the Count's friends? Did Ingrid send you?" her voice shakes. My head shakes.
"I sent myself. Looking for the crypt. Do you know where it is?"
"A little early in the night for a snooze. You've got me all curious. Dressed in black like the olds. The niceties. The post-16 status. It doesn't fit." She narrows her gaze and dips her chin, those bony limbs tense like a wound-on wind-up toy.
I blink and look down the corridor. "I'm searching for Vlad. I've been told that he's in the crypt. Was I told right?" I see her relax a little. She shrugs and pouts her lips, pressing her two index fingers together.
"Yeah... That's where he is," she smiles, aura switching totally, turning light and easy. "Well maybe I'll tag along, if you promise not to be nasty to me."
"Cross my heart."
"And hope to what?" she laughs. "Un-die? Ha."
I pull a face and give a weak smile, hiding my confusion under it. "Shall we?" I gesture that she should lead the way. But she doesn't move.
"I'm really hungry. Might be close to fainting. I've not eaten anything for a week. The crypt is some steps away and I'm not sure I'll make it without blanking out."
"Can I get you something to eat? The party didn't look much like a dinner-do, but maybe there's a buffet table up there someplace," I suggest.
"You're so weird! I'm a half-breed. I don't eat what they eat. Just give me your legs and I'll be fine."
"My…legs?" I ask after a beat.
"A piggy-back ride, dumb-ass." I consider it a moment and think that there's no reason why not. She looks light enough. So I offer her up my back and she hazily climbs on. She's crazily light and she smells of old coins. After she tells me which way to head I ask for her name.
"Lucinda. You?"
"Robin."
I am in the process of drawing a picture of the New Rave vampires. Let's see if I have time to finish it…
Thanks to drygionus I took the liberty of asking Craig Roberts to be my facebook friend. The crazy kid accepted me (why?!). The result of this is a few more reference pictures to help me form a clear image of 17year old Robin in my head. Previously all I could envision was 14year old Robin crossed with Joseph Gordon Levitt. Not great.
Please review. Thanks muchly.