B007XKEWAE EBOK (5 page)

"Don't start getting jealous," she said, "You know you'll always be my favourite."

Gabriella turned and kissed Francesca fully. "I know."

Hand in hand they left the warehouse. A horde of vampires followed them out. Separating at Francesca's
signal the assembled creatures of the night dispersed, vanishing into the dark as they spread secretly through the city.

"What about them?" Francesca pointed to a middle aged couple coming out of a public house. She and Gabriella were sat on the side rail at the top of a footbridge. A late night bus rumbled along the road underneath them. Gabriella giggled as the updraft lifted her skirt.

"No," she said. "I want something younger. Fresh and juicy."

She scanned the streets spread out around them. It wasn't all that late, not really, so there were still plenty of youngsters out. It took Gabriella only moments to locate something she fancied.

"There," she pointed. Two streets away a pair of children, one boy and one girl, about nine or ten years old walked along eating crisps from a bag the boy held in his chubby fingers.

"Gabriella, you know the uproar taking children causes. We don't need that kind of attention calling to ourselves. Besides they aren't likely to be out all alone in this dark."

Gabriella pouted. "But I want them."

"Look," Francesca said. The two children were met at the end of the street by a man, probably their father.

"We can still take them," Gabriella said.

"Not quietly enough."

Gabriella looked at the road between her feet. Presently a pair of
teenaged youths walked from behind them, under the bridge. "They'll do."

The two pushed off and landed silently behind the pair of lads. They followed the unsuspecting pair as they left the main street and turned down a narrow alley. Francesca caught Gabriella's eye signalling her. Gabriella capered around in front of the youths while Francesca stayed out of sight behind them.

"Hello there," Gabriella said with a smile in her eyes.

The youths stopped walking and checked Gabriella out. For her part Gabriella brushed her hair from her face coyly. "You wouldn't be looking for a good time would you?" she asked.

The lads passed a look between them. "What did you have in mind?" The taller one on the left said.

Gabriella shrugged. "A bite to eat followed by something just a little bit naughty," she replied with a suggestive little smile and a wink.

Francesca put her hand on the shoulder of the shorter boy and spun him round, letting her face change to her vampiric visage as she did so.

Gabriella let herself go at the same time pulling the taller one close and sinking her fangs into his neck. They didn't play with these for as long as they did with those they turned. It just wasn't worth it with the food.

It only took a few minutes for Francesca and Gabriella drained the two lads. The vampires took the bodies and
dumped them with the assorted rubbish behind a corner shop. Francesca had set rules for the rest of the nest to dispose of the bodies they left so that they wouldn't be found or so that the cause of death would be suitably disguised, but Francesca simply couldn't be bothered a lot of the time. Who was going to tell her off?

Covered in blood and high on the same the vampires danced through the night. Gabriella killed another man who happened upon the pair of vampires fondling in an alley. She punched him in the chest and pulled his still beating heart out through his ribs. She offered it to Francesca who tore into it with her fangs. After they had feasted on the meat Francesca and Gabriella made love in
the alley under the unblinking gaze of the dead man's eyes.

********************

He hadn’t eaten in days and Fulton imagined he could feel himself becoming weaker by the moment. His always lean body had become gaunt. He had looked at himself in a mirror to see how his weight loss translated to his features, but just catching a glimpse of the monstrous visage the mirror revealed had been enough to send him screaming. He rubbed his hand across his chin, at least being dead meant he no longer had to worry about shaving. Fulton tried to make the thought sound flippant but even in his own head he failed miserably.

             
His existence had become a nightmare. He spent his days cowering from the sun in various squats, unable to sleep except for the few moments when exhaustion overwhelmed him. His nights were spent wandering, consciously moving away from population centres to avoid temptation. But invariably when his concentration slipped he would find himself drawn back towards people, towards food.

             
This was how Fulton came to find himself crouched outside a small semi-detached house in the very early hours of the morning. He had sought this house out, drawn like a moth to the lighted windows when those in the neighbouring houses were all still dark, blank spaces.

Concealed from the street by thick bushes, and from his target by the darkness that wrapped around him, he watched. He watched as a woman, a mother, in a dressing gown her hair in glorious disarray, made breakfast in the kitchen. Her daughter, maybe ten years old, came into the room in a school uniform which was almost regimentally neat. She gave her mother a hug and a kiss without ruining the crisp lines of her shirt and skirt before taking a place at the table. Her mother came across and placed a small glass of fruit juice in front of the girl before walking across the open interior door and calling something which Fulton could not quite make out. She moved back into the kitchen,
took something out of the fridge
and continued busying herself at the counter.

A teenaged boy, a gangly youth, meandered into the kitchen. In contrast to his sister his shirt was wrinkled and untucked, his trousers creased. His mother looked across, gave him a look which somehow managed to convey both disapproval and love. Her son rolled his eyes and started to tuck his shirt into the waistband of his trousers.

Fulton started as he realised that the only reason he had managed to see the boy roll his eyes was that he had been creeping forwards and was now almost up to the kitchen window. From this close in he could see that the breakfast the woman was preparing was jam on toast. She continued to scrape the sticky red jelly across slices of toast even as she looked back over her shoulder towards her two children. Fulton
was now so close that he could see his monstrous reflection in the glass of the window, but even that could not force him to move away from this casually domestic scene.

A low growl started low in his chest and Fulton moved right up so that he was standing directly outside the window. He was in the process of raising his arms when the woman caught sight of him. She spun around to face him sending toast and jam scattering from the side to the floor. Her children turned to look at their mother. Fulton stood frozen, his eyes fixed on the blunt knife she had been using to spread jam and which was now pointed towards him as though it was some sort of weapon. He watched a single drop of glistening red jam drop from the rounded tip of the steel blade.
The children started to reverse their turn to see what had startled their mother. By the time they were facing the window Fulton had gone.

It was the smell that hit her first, it always was. The scent of so many human bodies pressed together in such tight quarters. The smell of their heat as they danced together, their combined lust thickening the air. The sexually charged atmosphere added extra spice to the smell that could only be bettered if it were combined with the copper tang of freshly spilled blood. Gabriella sucked in a
breath and calmed her racing heart. The blood would come soon enough. First it was time to play.

             
The two vampiric women waited just inside the club. They had passed the cloakroom without handing anything over. If they had removed any of their clothing they wouldn’t have been decent enough even for a place like this. As it was they were still amongst the most barely clothed bodies in the club. Flashes of light painted the dancers in unnatural colours, Gabriella doubted that the lights could make her hair, recently dyed a screaming pink, look any less natural.

             
A pounding beat thumped out from stacks of tall speakers sending a bass rumble through the walls and floor. A beat which resonated within Gabriella’s chest, making her heartbeat take up the
rhythm as it pumped her dead blood throughout her eternally youthful body. Francesca leaned in to speak to Gabriella over the din.

             
“Go off and play, my lover. It looks like there is plenty of fresh meat to choose from.” She punctuated her comment with a light slap on Gabriella’s backside. The younger vampire yelped playfully with the blow. She narrowed her eyes and slowly let the very tip of her tongue play over her lips to moisten them. The two brought their lips together and engaged in a long kiss.

Gabriella pulled away and smiled up at her partner. “See you soon.”

             
With that she turned away and headed down a short set of steps out onto the dance floor proper and into the
midst of that teaming mass of human flesh.

             
Gabriella cut her way surely through the crowd. Although she was buffeted by the press of people she was never swayed from her course. She suffered numerous accidental impacts as she forced her way through and yet more that were anything but, a number of the men on the floor were eager for any contact with her that they could get. There were others who tried their luck more politely. Rather than simply slipping a hand out to grope her or positioning themselves so that she had to push past, these men attempted to catch her in conversation.

             
Gabriella stopped a couple of times to give them the brush off. The only men who were able to gather enough
courage to talk to her all seemed to be suffering the same delusion that they somehow stood a chance with anyone in her league. Besides, Gabriella had had her target picked out almost from the moment she entered the room. Her keen predators eyes having cut through the alternate gloom, smoke and strobe lights to settle on one man.

             
Gabriella came up to the man she had chosen. He was dancing with some woman when she reached him. She hadn’t really been paying attention at the beginning so Gabriella couldn’t remember if this was the same woman he had been dancing with when she first spotted him or somebody new. Not that it mattered, she could be some tart he had known for five minutes or the love of his life who he had wanted since he was five
years old. After Gabriella had him in her snare he would forget all about the other woman.

             
Surreptitiously the vampire danced her way around the pair. When she had positioned herself behind the woman she stopped and turned her attention on the man. From over the woman’s shoulder she started her seduction.

             
It took a few moments before the young man’s attention diverted even slightly from his partner. For a brief instant his gave slipped past the woman he was with. His eyes locked with Gabriella’s for that split second. His eyes went back to his partner, but then, as though of their own accord, they were drawn back to Gabriella. His drab mortal eyes locked on her striking ice-blue orbs.
The corners of her mouth twitched into a smile. She had him. He kept flicking his attention back to his partner but for longer and longer periods his focus was purely on Gabriella. The vampire’s smile was full now, serving to further entice her target. She gave him a wink and he smiled back at her.

             
His partner wasn’t entirely stupid. She had noticed that he was no longer as caught up with her as he had been moments before. Now with him quite obviously smiling to somebody just behind her the woman had something to direct her anger and jealousy against. The woman stopped dancing and put a hand on the man’s chest to halt him. She turned on Gabriella who regarded the human calmly.

             
The human sized Gabriella up, seeing a relatively small young woman who was easily attractive enough to win her man away from her unless she did something about it. Gabriella’s apparent physical weakness was the only weakness the woman could seek to exploit to keep her territory. She certainly wouldn’t win on looks or sexuality.

             
Gabriella wasn’t worried. She might have looked weak but that was far from the way things truly were. If it came down to a physical contest between the two of them Gabriella knew she could take her in a human heartbeat. But having worked her own brand of magic she doubted it would ever come to that.

             
The man’s former partner started tossing insults her way as she moved to square up against Gabriella, seeking to
use her taller frame to intimidate the vampire.

Gabriella took her eyes off the woman who was standing up against her and turned them on the man. So deep was he under her spell that she didn’t even have to use words to make him understand what she required of him.

             
The human woman was really trying to get in Gabriella’s face when the man placed his hands on her shoulders. None too gently he pulled her back out of Gabriella’s personal space and turned her around.