As Evan parked his car, an old second-hand Volkswagen Polo, down the road from Kingfisher Meadow, he could hear the construction work from within the gated street. Hearing the multiple drills, hammers, and god only knew what else, Evan understood why the Council had received so many complaints about the noise. however, noise complaints were the smallest of the issues on the list of reasons for today’s visit.

The apartment building that stood at the front of the street, walling it off from the connected street, now housed on its front state-of-the-art security cameras, the kind that could identify a face even in the dark. All of the windows were covered by blinds so Evan had no hope of seeing inside. How the residents of those apartments could stand the constant noise was beyond him, and he knew that they were putting up with it because not a single complaint had come from inside Kingfisher Meadow itself.

The metal gate that proudly wore the name of the street, stood at the entrance of the tunnel that cut through the apartment block and led to the protected community. For the first time, he caught a glimpse of the mansion beyond the gates.

Evan had looked at the plans first submitted to Maidstone Council all those years ago when the developers had proposed turning the entire street into a gated community and building a range of apartments within. There was no mansion on those plans. About two years ago, one of Evan’s friends had rented one of the cheaper apartments near the gates. Back then there had been no mansion.

If Evan remembered correctly the farther down the street you went the more expensive the apartments got. At the very end of the street by the river had been two fancy duplex apartments and a few other elegant buildings had been nearby. They were all gone now. At the end of the street, elevated on a hill above the rest of the community was a mansion that looked like it had been lifted right out of a horror movie.

It was an imposing Victorian-style mansion complete with a turret on one corner. The bricks had been painted dark red, almost burgundy, and Evan had to admit that it looked pretty impressive. He wondered what kind of work a man had to do to be able to afford such a thing.

Evan looked over at the wall, trying to find a bell to ring or some kind of intercom system. On the left of the gate he saw a simple number panel and the button below read “security”.

“Can I help you?” a male voice asked before Evan had even walked over to the buttons. The voice was not coming from the intercom but from above him.

Evan stepped out from under the roof of the tunnel and saw a man standing on the balcony above him. Evan could see a security office through the open door behind the man. He could make out the countless monitors over the wall. Why did Kingfisher Meadow need such an elaborate security operation? He added it to his list of issues to raise in the meeting.

“My name is Evan Renly, I have an appointment with Benedict Blake and…” he opened his faux leather organiser to check the details of the co-owner. “Riku Cole.”

The man on the balcony looked up at the darkening grey sky and then lifted his wrist to check his watch. “It’s still early. I doubt Mr Blake will be ready,” he said.

When Evan had been arranging the appointment he’d been surprised at how unaccommodating Mr Blake’s assistant — or whoever he’d been speaking to — had been. Usually, when Evan told somebody they were in violation of building and planning regulations they bent over backwards to make things right. Blake’s people had dictated all the terms and budged on nothing as though Evan were the one who needed to win them over. Blake point-blank refused to visit the council offices and when Evan had finally relented and agreed to come to Kingfisher Meadow, he’d been told that it was late afternoon or never. Clearly, Benedict Blake had not yet grasped the severity of his situation. Evan was about to put that right.

“The appointment is for four pm and it’s ten to four now,” Evan said, allowing a fraction of his annoyance to seep into his tone. His boss insisted that all staff return to the office before clocking out for the day which meant that no matter how long the meeting ran, Evan was still going to have to return to his desk to dump his papers before he could finally head home. He didn’t care if Mr Blake was ready yet. It was ten to four and Evan wanted this business handled quickly.

The man didn’t reply. He walked back through the door he’d come from and closed it behind him.

“For goodness sake!” Evan cursed and kicked a crumpled coke can that had been left on the pavement. The can skittered across the road and landed directly on the white line that marked the disabled parking bay. Evan would have been impressed if he hadn’t been so annoyed.

There was a loud metallic clunk followed by an electric hum and when Evan turned back around he saw that the gates were slowly swinging inwards to allow him access to Kingfisher Meadow. Just beyond the gates stood the man who had been up on the balcony a moment previously. He stood with his arms folded over his chest, pushing against his body and accentuating his muscles even through the thick fleece he was wearing. He was obviously trying to intimidate Evan, who was weedy by comparison, but it would not work. Those muscles were nothing but art and if he tried to use them Evan would see to it that he ended up on the inside of a prison cell.

Evan’s cheeks flushed red and he shuffled through the gates without waiting for them to open fully.

“I’ll show you up to the house, Mr Renly,” the man said.

“House?” Evan repeated. “That is a mansion.” He pointed up at the monstrous building that loomed over the street.

“House, mansion, it’s all synonymous,” the security guard said with a shrug as he turned and began walking down the centre of the street.

Evan shook his head. “It absolutely is not. There is a very significant difference between a house and a mansion and that difference is the reason I’m here today. Among others.”

The complex was empty. Too empty. Evan and his escort seemed to be the only two people there. Kingfisher Meadow was large enough to accommodate at least 300 people, and whilst many of those people would likely be at work, there were plenty who would be bringing their children home from school right now. And yet, there was not a soul insight.

Evan glanced up at the apartment blocks that bordered the road on either side and saw that, just like the windows at the front of the complex, these were all covered by curtains and blinds too. It was like the entire community was on a night shift. Something about the place was off. Very off. Evan’s skin started to prickle as he realised that there was something seriously wrong with Kingfisher Meadow. He zipped up his coat a little higher as though the cold was the cause of that feeling.

“Didn’t there used to be a roundabout here?” Evan stopped where the roundabout used to be. Now the area had been flattened in a boring stretch of concrete that housed matching benches on either side. It made the newly laid concrete section look like a stage or a dance floor.

“We’ve changed the layout so that cars don’t need to come up here anymore, so there’s no need for a roundabout.”

Evan looked around in confusion, noticing for the first time that there was not a car in sight. The parking spaces that used to be directly outside the apartment blocks were gone, and the paint that marked the floor was removed.

“Where do the residents park?”

“In the underground car park.”

Evan shook his head, recalling the plans in his mind. “There isn’t one.”

“We built one.”

“You did what?” he said in a shocked whisper that could barely be heard over the constant construction racket. “Do you have any idea how many regulations have been broken by doing that? And I thought the mansion was bad. This entire place…” Evan couldn’t even finish. In his entire career, he’d never seen such a flagrant disregard for the rules.

Evan followed his guide up the steep stone steps that led to the mansion. The stairs did not go straight up, instead about a third of the way up they turned in a sharp right angle before turning back again ten steps later. It was probably supposed to look nice, but it was wholly unnecessary to Evan.

The construction sounds grew in volume as he neared the mansion and he saw they were still working on the back of it. And that wasn’t all they were working on. A towering wall of concrete had been erected blocking the access to the river. Kingfisher Meadow had originally been open at the back so the residents could go down to the river if they fancied it. Now, the only way in or out seemed to be the front gates.

“This place is a fortress,” Evan whispered to himself.

Now that he was up close to the mansion he saw that it was not completely Victorian in design. The upper floors of the main building had balconies that looked like they ran around the length of the building. The turret stood separately from the main house and Evan caught a glimpse of the beautiful cobblestone courtyard that stood between them, walled in by a branch of the building that looked like it connected the house to the turret. The courtyard was the only part of the magnificent structure that didn’t scream with sinister malevolence.

The mansion was a truly wonderful piece of architecture; it was a cross between a Victorian mansion and the Creole designs found in New Orleans. It was a shame that it was most probably going to be torn down for the multitude of violations its construction had incurred.

Evan was a little out of breath by the time he reached the top of the steps leading up to the mansion. He breathed deeply to try to get his heart rate back to normal before his escort noticed how unfit he was.

The security guard, or whoever he was, was standing by the impressive double doors of the mansion with his phone in his hands. He slipped it into his pocket and looked up as Evan joined him.

“They’ll see you in the drawing room,” the man said.

He pushed open both doors to reveal a surprisingly sparse entrance hall. Evan had expected a grand staircase or a towering sculpture. Instead, he was met by a room that housed only a pretty normal-looking rug. There was no staircase to speak of, and no furniture at all. Maybe they hadn’t got around to kitting the place out yet, they were still building it after all.

“It’s just through the doors on the other side of the room,” the man said, ushering Evan inside.

“You’re not coming in?” Evan said, now inside the house.

“I’ve gotta get back to the office,” he said. Then he pulled the front doors closed, shutting Evan inside the house.

“This is utterly ridiculous,” Evan muttered. He was starting to look forward to the day when this humongous monstrosity of a house was knocked down. Maybe he’d turn up just so he could watch.

He strode across the hallway looking at the only other set of doors and wondering what was behind them. Nothing of interest, no doubt, but being in a house like this one added a streak of mystery to everything.

Opening both doors to the drawing room was just unnecessary, much like most of Evan’s current surroundings. He took the handle of just one and eased it open. It swung open smoothly unlike the creaky old things in his own house that he could barely afford.

Evan turned his nose at how ridiculously lavish the drawing room was. It was like a room right out of a palace. Looking at the royal red damask sofas and the golden-trimmed rugs, Evan felt like he’d walked into a scene from The Crown. It looked to him like Benedict Blake had a serious grandiose complex. One of the armchairs had been positioned eerily like a throne at the head of the room.

Evan put his organiser down on the occasional table and looked around at some of the artwork on the walls. Most of the paintings were dull and uninteresting, the kind of artwork a person bought to fill a room when they didn’t really know much about art.

There was one painting of a small man alone on a street. Dark clouds gathered around the edges of the painting and were swallowing the street. The man stared ahead, oblivious to the coming darkness. Evan wondered if the painting was supposed to represent depression or something far more sinister.

He turned to the next painting only to see a hideously detailed hippopotamus with the most ludicrous grin imaginable on its face. It was standing on its hind legs, wearing a sunhat, and had an ice cream cone clutched in one foot — or whatever Hippos had. The artist had painted the thing as though it was a completely serious piece of art and took it beyond the realm of funny and made it utterly disturbing. What was all the more disturbing was that he was in this mansion.

The single door in the lefthand corner of the room opened and a young man came bounding in. Long curly hair bounced around his shoulders and his long cardigan flapped about like a cape.

“Hello, there! I’m Rik and you must be Evan Renly. Sorry to keep you, we are so immensely busy here. As you’ve probably noticed,” Rik said.

“To be perfectly honest I’ve only seen two people here since my arrival so you don’t seem all that busy. Unless, of course, you’re referring to the builders whose noise it is impossible not to notice, Mr Cole.” Now that Evan noticed it, he could not hear the construction work from inside the mansion.

“Call me Rik, I insist. As for the builders,” Rik said, flapping his hand as though it were a trifle matter. “We’ve blocked that racket in here. Wouldn’t be able to get anything done with that infernal rumpus.”

“Yes. The surrounding residents have had similar concerns about all the rumpus,” Evan informed him. “How have you managed to block the sounds out in here?” Evan had never seen such efficient soundproofing on a residential property.

“Oh, you know, the house has a magic flare.” Rik fell onto one of the sofas like a rock dropping off a bridge and then indicated for Evan to do the same. “What do you think of the house, nice eh?”

Grabbing his organiser, Evan sat down opposite the energetic young man. He pulled his glasses from his breast pocket and pushed them onto his nose. “The mansion is exquisite. It is also rather out of place in the centre of town, don’t you think? A property like this would be more at home somewhere like Bearsted, which we would have told you had you submitted the required forms to the planning office.”

“Ah, so it’s about that,” Rik said, not at all bothered by the frosty tone Evan was using.

“Yes, Mr Cole, it’s about that. What else would this meeting be about? Where is Mr Blake?” Evan slapped his palm on his organiser, exasperated by the farce of the situation.

“He’s just having a bite to eat actually. Thanks for reminding me.” Rik jumped up and crossed over to the window where he pulled the heavy curtains closed. “Not quite dark yet.”

Evan stood up and his organiser slipped to the floor, spilling papers all over the rug. “What on earth is going on here?” he demanded.

The door at the back of the room opened again and a man Evan assumed to be Benedict Blake entered the room. Rik Cole seemed a bit eccentric and unusual, but Benedict Blake was unaccountably unnatural. Evan stared at the new arrival for seconds that dragged into minutes trying to figure out what about him was so off-putting. He looked around the same age as Rik, late twenties. He was dressed in expensive, but otherwise normal clothes. His dark hair was short and styled in a modern side parting. There was nothing obviously peculiar about his image that explained why Evan felt so unsettled. And yet something about the young man was so uncanny.

As Benedict stepped further into the room and closed the door behind him, Evan saw it. His eyes. The pupils were larger than any Evan had ever seen. Huge pools of inky blackness dominated the globes of his eyes. He must have taken something to make them like that. With all the money the young man obviously had, he wouldn’t have had any trouble getting hold of illegal drugs. He looked like he was on an acid trip.

It wasn’t just his eyes. His skin was too white. He’d seen plenty of pasty people but they did not compare to Benedict Blake. The man’s skin was like milk. Somehow his presence had sucked all of the warmth right out of the room, and there hadn’t been much to start with.

“Sorry, I’m late. What did I miss?” he asked. His voice sounded no different to any other twenty-something-year-old’s and some of Evan’s nerves were dispelled.

Evan knelt down and began gathering his papers, shaking his head at how ridiculous he was being. The two young men were about a decade younger than him and here he was getting nervous in their presence as though he were a schoolkid.

“Mr Blake, I presume?”

“Yes,” Benedict said. He joined them by the sofas but made no offer to help Evan with his papers.

Once Evan had stuffed his paperwork back into his organiser and stood up, his face red and flustered, he said, “I am Evan Renly, I’m from the Building and Planning Department of Maidstone Borough Council. Can you please explain to me what on earth is going on here, because this whole situation is bloody strange?”

Benedict and Rik exchanged a glance before sitting down together on the sofa. Evan lowered himself onto the other, surprised that Benedict had not taken the throne-like chair.

“We’re building a house. What’s strange about that?” asked Benedict.

“This is not a house. This,” Evan pointed down at the floor, indicating the mansion they were in. “Is a mansion. You have built high walls around the entire property. The apartments at the front have been turned into security offices by the looks of things. And there are state-of-the-art security cameras all over the place. This is a fortress.”

“A fortress,” Rik repeated, laughing as he spoke.

“A fortress,” Evan affirmed. “People build fortresses in preparation for an attack usually, so what on earth are you expecting to happen here?” He was well aware that he was speaking to the pair the way a headmaster would speak to a couple of naughty boys, but he was starting to suspect that they both needed a firm telling-off. Clearly, they’d not had one when they were children.

“You say “what on earth” a lot,” Benedict said, as though that were the most salient takeaway from everything Evan had said. “This isn’t a fortress, we just value our privacy.”

Evan let out a high-pitched burst of laughter. “Privacy? If you valued privacy you wouldn’t have built a bloody great mansion in the middle of the town centre. I’ve seen the deeds. You own every building on this street. Kingfisher Meadow is yours entirely.”

“Yes, we took possession of all the land that makes up the street,” Benedict admitted.

Evan adjusted on the sofa, made uncomfortable by the way Benedict said “took possession of” rather than bought or purchased.

“Yes, and therein lies the problem. You bought the land but you did not acquire planning permission to build on it.”

“There were already buildings on it. We simply replaced them.”

“You cannot do that.”

“And yet I have,” Benedict said, his voice carrying an underlying menace that Evan was having a hard time ignoring. “One of the buildings burned down in a tragic fire. I couldn’t just leave it.”

“In such circumstances, you must replace the destroyed building with a building of a similar type. You have replaced an apartment with a mansion. You’ve also constructed underground without permits or permission. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? And, according to several neighbourhood complaints, you have had twenty-four-hour construction crews working here for the last seven months.”

“That’s how we got everything built so quickly,” Rik said.

Clearly, neither of them had yet grasped the severity of the situation.

“Everything you have built is going to be destroyed. Brick by brick we will tear it all down.”

Benedict’s face darkened and he slid forward in his seat so he was suddenly a lot closer to Evan. “That is not going to happen,” he said in a nasty whisper.

Despite how uncomfortable he felt in Benedict’s company, Evan forced himself to stare into the young man’s unnatural eyes. “You have no choice. We are past the point of filling out forms. This blatant disregard for the rules will need to be made an example of.”

Benedict surveyed Evan, his dark eyes taking in every inch of the inspector’s face. “How old are you, Evan?”

“Excuse me?” Of all the things he’d thought Benedict might say that was the least likely.

“Tell me you’re age.”

“That is none of your business.”

With an irritated sigh, Ben got to his feet and walked over to the window. He pulled open the curtains to reveal the courtyard outside. The sun had now set fully. The courtyard was illuminated in the pale light cast by fairy lights that had been coiled around a leafless tree that stood next to the tower.

“Excellent,” said Ben.

Evan blinked and Ben was standing directly in front of him. Evan jumped back and the sofa jolted with him.

“How did you—”

Benedict stared into his eyes with those inhumanly large pupils. “Tell me how old you are.”

Evan’s mind swam as Benedict’s order floated in through his ears. It was a peculiar sensation, like the feeling of drunkenness that hits you the first time you stand up after a serious bout of drinking. Hidden beneath that feeling of delirium was the sensation of cold groping fingers feeling their way through his mind. As he stared up at Ben he knew that he needed to leave that mansion immediately, and yet all he wanted to do was answer.

“Thirty-eight,” he said, shocked to hear the words fall out of his mouth.

Evan jumped to his feet, eager to leave and get away from whatever the hell was happening. Benedict placed a hand on his shoulder and held him in place with disturbing strength.

“Let me go,” Evan said, embarrassed by the tremor in his voice.

“Relax,” Benedict commanded.

Evan’s panic seeped out of him like a cool breeze had washed over him on a hot day. He could feel it trying to build back up but every time it did another soothing wave fell over him and quelled it.

“You’re very close to forty, Evan. Tell me honestly, are you happy with your life?”

His head swam, the fingers probed, and Evan answered the question. “No.”

“Why?”

Out came every bit of Evan’s misery. Against his will, he delivered his sad life like a depressing list. “I’ve been single for the last two years because my wife left me for a man who owns his own company. She said my lack of ambition and success was draining. Nobody ever replies to my messages on dating sites and I’m too nervous to go out to meet people in person. I’ve been in the same job for seven years with no hope of ever climbing any higher because my boss hates me. I can’t even get another job because all the jobs I’m qualified to do pay less than I’m on now and I can’t afford a pay cut. All my money goes on my mortgage and I barely have anything left to buy food with. I have no money in my pension, nothing to fall back on, and I’m going to die miserable and alone, possibly homeless.”

Benedict released him as he finished his speech and Even collapsed back on the sofa, feeling that massive weight had been taken off him. It hadn’t. He’d shared the truth but the burden was still his.

“What a tragedy,” Rik said without a trace of empathy in his voice.

Evan turned scornfully his way but said nothing to him.

“What are you?” he said to Benedict.

Benedict casually returned to his seat. “I’m a vampire. You’ve experienced what I can do. You know I can get anybody to do anything.”

Evan shrunk into the corner of the sofa, not wanting his mind to be tampered with again. “Yes,” he said.

“I can get you anything you want. More money, a promotion, confidence. What I need in return is for you to be my man on the inside. A person working for the town council could be quite useful.”

Evan snorted. “I’m not useful. I’m pretty low in the chain of command. I don’t have the power to get you anything.”

“No, but you know the people who have the power and you can get me access to them. Or I could put you in a more powerful position. A moment of eye contact with the right person is all it would take.”

Everything Benedict had offered sounded great, but not as great as the thing Benedict had not offered. “I want the power you’ve got. The mind control.” With mind control, he could take anything he wanted whenever he wanted it. Nobody could ever deny him anything again.

But Benedict shook his head. “I can’t give you that. I’d have to make you a vampire for that. What I need is somebody who can move during the day. Somebody who can go to work at the Council. If I made you a vampire then you’d have no incentive to help me. You could get everything you wanted without me. But I can give you the life you want.”

“Do you think the life I want involves working for Maidstone Council?” Evan said with a sneer.

“He’s got you there,” said Rik.

Benedict smiled. “Fair point. How about this, you work for me and I’ll give you a wonderfully comfortable life. And, when the time is right, when I no longer need your services, I will make you a vampire.”

Evan knew that he had to take the deal. It was the best offer he was going to get and refusing it now might mean going back to his existing life of ineptitude and misery. Or maybe Benedict would just kill him.

“What exactly do you need me to do?” he asked. It would be stupid to agree only to learn that he had nothing to offer after all.

“First of all, I need this planning problem to go away. Can you do that?”

Evan nodded. “If you fill out the forms retrospectively, I can get you a meeting with my boss and you can do your mind control thing to him. He will be able to get everything approved.”

“Excellent. Here’s the offer. You work for me and every time I ask you to do something, I will give you something in return. Before we shake on our deal, why don’t you tell us what the first thing you want is, Evan?”

Evan’s tongue flicked across his lips. It was like being offered the first wish from a genie. He had to pick carefully. There would be other opportunities but he didn’t know when. “Can you make it so my boss gets demoted and I get promoted to his job?”

Benedict smiled like a wolf spying its prey. “Interesting choice. Yes, Evan, I can do that.”

Evan took his hand greedily and shook it with the enthusiasm of a homeless man opening a food wrapper. This meeting had gone significantly better than he’d expected it to.