Beastly

Chapter 7

Alia wandered through the lab. She missed the days of collaborative brainstorming and conferences. She was doing so much cutting-edge research, and there was no one to share it with. She sighed. She would be able to share it all soon, once the cure was finished.

She was close to the cure. She could feel it in her bones, and despite her entire life being founded on science and rationality, she trusted her instinct. Arnav had spent years living in the shadows. Vampires weren't so pureblooded nowadays that they were burnt to ash by sunlight, but he had spent years avoiding the light. The sun didn't kill him, but it hurt him.

After she developed his medication, he finally began to trust her. He could integrate more easily into society with his prepackaged blood meals and the medication. Alia tied her hair into a knot using a pencil and paused at the autoclave. She needed a research assistant, but the risk of a leak was too big.

Her lab was built underneath Arnav's farmhouse, a basement that was three times the size of the structure above it. There was a man on the surveillance cameras. She'd forgotten to close the front gate after coming back from her morning jog.

His car, an expensive SUV, was parked in front of the main house, and he strode up the porch steps as if he was familiar with the place. She heard the clack of the door handle being pulled down, and the grunt as he tried to push the door open.

She called Arnav, and he answered after two rings.

"Arnav, there's a man at the main door."

"What?"

"Mid-fifties, tall, grey hair, expensive car," she paused to look closer at the footage. "Squarish face... I can't see more."

Arnav sighed. "Is he wearing a white suit?"

The footage wasn't in color. "Some pale color, not sure it's white."

"It's my uncle."

"Oh, should I let him in?" she asked.

"He's mostly harmless... but ignore him. He's nosy," Arnav said. She heard the shuffling of paper and the distant clammer of office workers' voices. He was busy, as he usually was. She ignored the doorbell ringing and the repeated attempts to open the door, going back to her work.

After a few hours passed, she felt the pangs of hunger. It was near twilight, and she went upstairs to the farmhouse. She grabbed a smoothie from the refrigerator and stepped onto the porch.

The man from the morning was sleeping on the porch swing. She was afraid for the frail, wooden structure, but tried to walk back quietly and go back into the house. He woke with a start when the door clicked open.

"Hey!" he yelled. "Hey, hey, hey, hey!"

She gripped her phone. Despite Arnav's confidence, his uncle didn't look harmless. He was bigger than he looked on the CCTV footage, and with this hair disheveled, sitting on the swing meant for smaller people, he looked intimidating. The farmhouse was so remote that calling anyone was useless, but the chunk of metal could function as a projectile if nothing else.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"You're at my house. I should be asking you that!"

"No," the man said. "No, no. This is my nephew's house."

"I'm Mr. Raizada's tenant. I've rented this house."

For a second he was taken aback. "Arnav rented this house to you?"

Alia nodded. It was the cover they had decided on. "Obviously."

"I never thought he would let anyone live in this house."

She knew the history of the house. She added her own things to the house, but didn't remove any of the things that had been there before. The walls were covered with faded cross-stitches of birds and butterflies, the walls were repainted the same warm colors, and the plaque at the front door still had Arnav's mother's name on it.

She was a welcome guest in the house, but she was not the owner. Even Arnav wasn't.

"Anyway, could you please leave?" she asked.

"I wonder what makes you so special," he wondered out loud.

"I'm an old classmate," she lied.

He looked at the sweatshirt she was wearing. The block letters spelling Stanford announced her lie loud and clear.

"My nephew went to Oxford."

"They have these things called semesters abroad," Alia responded. She cleared her throat and opened the front door. Before she could react, the man was half in the foyer, his foot placed firmly on the threshold.

"I see you haven't changed anything about the decor. Was that one of the conditions for renting this house?" he asked.

She sent a text to Arnav and tried to block his way inside.

"Please leave."

"Devansh Malik," he said, stretching out his hand in greeting. "I should know the name of my host, Miss...?"

"Mrs. Alia Kapoor," she answered.

He looked down at her hand. At the absence of a ring, at the bareness of her neck. His gaze wasn't at the junction of her collarbone, but at the side of her neck, where the slightest hint of her jugular vein shone through her skin.

He was like his nephew. Devansh was a vampire.

"Won't you invite me in?" Malik asked.

She knew the rules they had to abide by. He couldn't step inside unless she invited him in. Vampires operated by some rules she didn't understand, but for once she was thankful for them. Perhaps it was etiquette they never broke, or a behavior inherited so strongly from their inhuman ancestors it was innate.

Mostly harmless, she reminded herself. Mostly.

Writer's Note

Since you guys have been asking, I've decided to update this.

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