Hotel Sanguinaria

Chapter Three

Stepping inside the back room, Shiloh felt the apprehension she had forgotten whilst watching the carefree goings-on around her leap back up into her throat.  Looking around the room gave her a view of several people what seemed to be a large storage cupboard.  Faces from all parts of the globe imaginable stared back and at her with unmasked curiosity.

“What is this place?” she whispered.

“Welcome to the magnificent Hotel Sanguinaria,” the answer came from behind her; a female voice with an accent that reminded Shiloh a little of the Nigerian family that had lived in the flat across the hall from her and her parents, only lighter and richer.  She turned to see who it was, but the voice could have belonged to a number of people watching her.

“Thank you,” another voice reprimanded the first speaker, this time a male one with a thick cockney accent – so thick, in fact, that it took a replay of his words in her head to understand what he had said.  This speaker was, she realised with surprise, a small Korean-looking guy with deep, dark brown eyes and almost painfully bright blue hair.  He had his hands in the pockets of his large, old jeans and was watching Shiloh closely.  “Can you tell us your name?” he asked.  After a beat, she remembered she needed to answer.

“Uh…Shiloh,” she stammered.  A woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties with dark curls to just above her shoulders smiled encouragingly.

“Do you ‘ave a last name?” she asked gently. Her accent, like Mariella’s, was French, but unlike the other woman, hers was richer and throatier, the letters rolling over her tongue before escaping through her lips.

“Richards,” she said, a little more confidently.  “Shiloh Richards.”

“Very Bond,” a young guy about her own age grinned.  He had sandy blond hair, green eyes and an Irish accent.  Standing next to him was a girl who looked practically identical, her long hair pulled up in a ponytail.  “Where’re you from, Shiloh?”

“London,” she said.  The whole room suddenly shifted uneasily.  Shiloh suddenly felt the urge to shrink back into a corner and curl up.  Mariella cast a look about herself that clearly read I told you so.

“London…” the Korean-looking guy said slowly.  “That’s not good.”

“What’s the problem?” she snapped indignantly.  “Aren’t you from London?”

“No, it’s not that,” the Irish guy spoke up again.  She looked at him.  “I’m Dylan,” he explained, before going on.  “If you’re from London that makes you the third rogue biting victim in two months.  And there haven’t been any for over sixty years.”

“Um…I’m sorry?  Biting?  Can I have some answers before you go any further?”

“She doesn’t know?” Dylan blinked at Mariella.

“I’m still here, you know,” snapped Shiloh.  He smiled apologetically.

“Right.  Well, basically – this is really gonna mess up your sense of reality and all – but you’re a vampire.”

For a moment, there was silence.  Then Shiloh’s brain caught up with what he’d just said, and she shrugged.

“Okay,” she said. “Now, what about London?”

There were several incredulous laughs.

“That’s the smoothest I’ve ever seen anyone take that news,” the girl next to Dylan – Shiloh assumed they must be siblings, for as well as the similar appearance, she bore the same accent – smiled.  “I’m Lily.  You’re doing pretty well for someone who got bitten in an ambush in the middle of the night.”

“Yeah, that reminds me – where am I?  Because it was night when I left London and it looked to be about three in the afternoon outside.”

“New Orleans, Louisiana,” the woman with the dark curls clarified.  “The biggest, safest vampire community in the world is right 'ere.”

“Why New Orleans?  It’s a busy city – wouldn’t it be safer out of the way?”

“We can discuss that later, if you want," Dylan replied.  "Right now I’d like to focus on what’s driving London’s vamps out of the underground.  Why aren’t they registered?”

“I think I’ve got an idea,” the blue-haired boy spoke up.  “There were these homeless spikes put down in London a little while ago.”

“Fair, but Mo, why would that make them so agitated?” Lily sat down on a chair and pulled one up, gesturing for Shiloh to sit, but the French woman standing by Mariella shook out her dark curls.

“Non,” she said.  “I’ll take Shiloh up to a room.  She deserves a good night’s sleep.”

She motioned for Shiloh to follow her – something that was becoming a pattern that she was not fond of – and they left the room as the debate restarted.  As they climbed the stairs, the woman began to introduce herself.

“My name is Renée,” she began.  “You’ve ‘ad a long night – it’s getting close to midnight on your body’s clock.”

Shiloh only then realised how tired she was.  Her entire being seemed drained with utter exhaustion that the confusion she had been feeling had masked.  Up the stairs, around a corner to the left, then right, then up another, smaller flight of stairs, they came to a door.  Simple, wooden – like any other that they had passed.

“You can sleep ‘ere until we find you somewhere more permanent to stay – if, that is, you choose to remain 'ere.  Some leave almost as soon as they know ‘ow to survive alone.”

Shiloh was about to ask how the hell she was supposed to learn how to live a completely new life – well, afterlife – but the sight of the bed in the corner of the simple, sparsely furnished room made her forget anything except her need to sleep for eight hundred years.

“Sleep,” Renée murmured, her accent curling around Shiloh’s consciousness.  “You’ll feel better tomorrow, I promise.  Just get some rest.”

Staggering over to the bed, kicking off her trainers as she went, Shiloh collapsed on top of the covers, fully dressed, and instantly crashed into oblivion.  Her silhouette framed by the soft light of the hallway, Renée smiled at the still form on the bed before her.  Life could be strange, she mused.  The young woman asleep in the room had no way back to her old life, but she seemed to be taking the news well.  Renée recalled how the news had come to her – not anywhere near as well: her life was in tatters, her mind was confused and now she was being told she was a member of a devil-spawned breed of demons.  Well, she couldn’t be blamed: raised a Catholic in 17th-century Calais, she had been considerably less enthusiastic about becoming something that she had always been taught was a wicked, sacrilegious monster that hid in the shadows and snatched naughty children from their beds.

Shiloh, though – she was something else.  Renée had expected disbelief or possibly mocking laughter from the girl – at least some confusion, as most would display – but instead she had simply accepted it.  True, it was probably a pretty good explanation for why everything had been turned on its head, but even with that logic it was unusual for someone to be so relaxed about it.  She really was something else.

The voices from downstairs barely penetrated the soundproofed rooms above, and she smiled, safe in the knowledge that Shiloh wouldn’t be disturbed.  She closed the door, leaving Shiloh to sleep in peace, and rested back against the simple, dark wood.  Then, she pushed off it and strode downstairs, not once pausing as the sound of windswept sand whispered down the empty corridor.

Renée re-joined the conversation in the back room, Shiloh unaware of anything as she slept on.  No-one saw the door slip open, spilling a narrow sliver of gold onto the sleeping teenager.  She didn’t wake, and for a moment, a pair of russet-gold eyes watched; dark, shadowy fingers curled around the door.

Then they were gone, and the room was still once more.