Two for tragedy. Volume 2 - стр. 17

– I'm a very hospitable person by nature. Just don't piss me off-that's the secret," the vampire replied, and we didn't speak again, just drove in silence until the car stopped at the tall iron gate.

"This is it: my prison is in front of me"-The thought flashed through my brain, and goosebumps ran through my body.

Grayson pressed some button on the control panel, and the gate opened slowly and silently. The car drove into a huge courtyard, and the gate closed just as silently. Grayson stopped the car at a beautiful large fountain.

– Welcome to my castle. Get out," the vampire ordered me in an indifferent tone, quickly got out of the car and walked toward the castle without paying attention to me.

The brightly shining sun immediately exposed his real form, and that horrible sight made me shiver and shudder with a sense of disgust. But I obediently got out of the car, and I saw the castle where the vampire had said he would keep me for a month.

It was a huge castle of dark stone, with two towers at the corners. Logically, I figured that the same two towers were on the other side of the castle, since it stretched even farther back. Grayson Castle looked like the castles in nineteenth-century English films: beautiful and elegant, with huge windows and columns supporting a large porch, and sheltering under a vault of slightly scary but eye-catching stone gargoyles. A wide stone staircase rose to the high porch, flanked on both sides by heavy but beautiful stone railings. The castle was mesmerising and there was something mysterious about it: looking at it, I felt this beautiful old building pressing down on me with its monumental weight. And I suddenly thought: "Did this beauty was created by human beings?

In front of the castle there was a huge park covered with well-maintained paths, greens, bushes and trees, and beds of colourful beautiful flowers bloomed under the huge windows of the castle. This free and natural layout of the park is commonly referred to by landscape designers as the "English Park". In the centre of the courtyard, where Grayson parked his car, surrounded by carved wooden benches, stood a large stone fountain in which three girls carved in white marble poured water from their palms. In the distance behind the castle could be seen a forest. The castle, park, and forest must have occupied a simply huge area. And all that magic belonged to a vampire I hated.

I turned back to the gate and took a closer look at it: it was part of the high fence that obviously surrounded the entire estate. The top of the iron gate was crowned with sharp spires, and the fence itself was wrapped in some bright, curly green plant covered in purple and dark pink flowers.

It was the estate of a true English aristocrat of delicate taste, and in my heart I involuntarily confessed to myself that it was simply magnificent. On the way to the estate I had imagined my future prison in a completely different way, thinking that Grayson's castle would be a scary dark building covered in fog, as it is often portrayed in vampire films, gloomy and frightening. But Grayson's castle was the complete opposite of that picture: it was beautiful, bright and well-maintained.