B007XKEWAE EBOK (9 page)

"What were you doing out so late?" She asked.

"N . . . nothing I was just, I mean I was . . ." The human woman stammered.

As Gabriella took hold of the woman's arms and held them behind the post Francesca said. "Get on with it."

"I was just going home. I just dropped my mother off at the airport and I took a different way back and my car broke down and I knew I was near home
but I didn't know where and I phoned my boyfriend and . . ."

"Enough," Francesca ordered.

"She's starting to give me headache," Gabriella said. "Naughty."

"What is this?" Susan said. "Please I just want to go home. Please." She started to sob.

"We're going to play a little game," Francesca said turning around slowly in front of Susan her arms outstretched watching the stars. "I'm going to ask you a riddle. You do like riddles, don't you?"

Susan just stood there, her back against the lamppost with her arms firmly held. Francesca stopped spinning and glared at Susan. "You
do
like riddles?"

This time Susan nodded tears still running in tracks down her cheeks.

"Good. I'll tell you a riddle then and if you get the answer right we'll take you back to your car."

Francesca looked away and when she turned back she wore the face of the vampire. "If you get it wrong, you're dinner."

Gabriella let out a peal of laughter.

"Oh my god. What are you? Please I . . ."

Francesca silenced her with a finger to her lips. "There is a man in a gallery looking at the portrait of a man on the wall," she began. "So this man he says, '
Brothers and sisters. I have none. But this man, his father is my own father's son.
' Now you tell me, who is the man in the picture?"

"What? Wait."

"Tick-tock. Tick-tock," Francesca said wagging her finger back and forth in the air.

Susan closed her eyes. If she had not remained upright Francesca would have believed that she had fainted.

"Hurry it up," Gabriella said. "We don't have all night."

"She's right," Francesca said. "Time to answer."

"Just a second," Susan said. Her anger at being rushed seeming to dispel her fear for a moment. "The man in the picture is his son," she proclaimed triumphantly.

"Well done," Francesca said. "And under such difficult conditions as well."

Gabriella released her grip on the woman's arms. Susan stepped to the side so that she could see both vampires.
The vampires stood side by side watching her. She dare not turn her back on them to run.

Gabriella regarded the woman for a long moment. She still wore her human mask. She looked over to Francesca.

"You said we could eat this one," she said making puppy dog eyes up at her.

"You promised to let me go back to my car," Susan said shaking all over.

Francesca looked from one to the other of them. "I promised you," she said looking at Gabriella. "Then I promised you," she said looking at Susan.

There was a moment of silence. The only sound was the human’s ragged breath and the sound of her clothes and jewellery as she trembled.

"Well this is a predicament," Francesca said. "It looks like I'll have to break my promise to one of you." She looked at the human.

"Now if I break my promise to her," she said indicating Gabriella. "She'll get all upset and she'll probably pout for the next hundred years.

"Whereas, if I break my promise to you, you'll be dead and we can feast."

Susan's shaking grew in intensity up to the point that Francesca truly believed that if they let her carry on her bones would turn to jelly.

"Hold on a second," she said. Hope spread across the human's features. "I can keep both promises. You see, I said we'd
take
you back to your car. I never said you'd be alive when we did."

Susan turned to run. She thought she could get away. But even though she was running away from the vampires she charged headlong into Gabriella, her face was now a contorted mess with an angled brow leading to an upturned nose with flared nostrils and a mouth full of sharp elongated  fangs. With a ferocious growl low in her throat Gabriella took hold of the screeching human and used her fangs to full effect.

Francesca was there with her tearing through the flesh on the opposite side of her neck. The vampires looked into each others eyes at exactly the same instant and they leaned together to share a bloody kiss. Susan's blood mingled in their mouths and ran down their chins.

When they were through with it Gabriella let the corpse drop to the floor.

"Pick it up," Francesca said.

"Why?" Gabriella asked.

"I made a promise," Francesca answered. "I really should keep it."

"Promises don't mean anything to a dead person. Doesn't death void them or something."

Francesca looked at her mischievously. "We haven't had all the fun out of her that we can. Follow me."

Gabriella took a hold of the lank hair of the cadaver and dragged it along behind them. They came back to the car and found it where they had left it. Francesca pulled the driver's door open busting the lock. The car alarm went off and Gabriella dropped the body startled.

"Get the keys."

Gabriella took them out of Susan's pocket and tossed them up to Francesca.
With the alarm silenced the vampires propped Susan's corpse up in the seat resting her head on the steering wheel. Francesca slammed the door shut and led Gabriella back into the shadows.

They waited there, lurking in the shadows until another car came down the road. It pulled over in front of the dead woman's car and a young man in a dark blue fleece hurried out of the car, leaving the door open behind him, and ran back to his girlfriend’s car.

Francesca and Gabriella left their hiding place and padded out silently up behind him. He looked relieved to see Susan in the car but as he approached and saw her leaning against the wheel his apprehension grew.

"Suzy?" he said tentatively tapping on the window.

When she made no sign at having heard him he reached down to try the door handle. The ruined door stuck slightly when he tried to open it but with a final tug it swung open.

The boyfriend crouched down and gently put a hand on Susan's shoulder. "Suzy?"

He pulled his hand back and stared at his palm and fingers now covered in a slowly congealing mess of bloody ichor.

"Oh my god, Susan?" he said in anguish. "Please, God, no."

He pushed Susan's corpse back in the seat. Her head rocked to the side exposing the gory mess of her torn jugular. Bloody veins and flesh hung in loose flaps. Dead empty eyes stared at him out of lifeless sockets.

"Oh no." The boyfriend held her hand between his own and rocked back and forth on his haunches. He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it tenderly.

Gabriella put her hands on his shoulders. "There, there." she said soothingly.

The boyfriend jumped under her hands and looked up. "What . . ."

Gabriella smiled sweetly. "I hope you taste better than she did," she said.

Realisation dawned slowly on the boyfriends face. Helped no doubt be seeing Gabriella's fangs  coming down on his face. Francesca joined her in the feast tearing strips of flesh from his throat.  Blood spouted free covering the two vampires, the car and a large portion of the road. When they had done they
arranged the couple in the woman's car, placing her mouth to his ruined neck and his to hers.

Gabriella capered around Francesca as they turned onto the driveway of their ex-steelworks home. "Did you see his face?" she asked. "That was so much fun. Can we do it again? Soon."

Francesca watched Gabriella dancing and twirling like a nymph. "Of course, my sweet. When we . . ." She let her voice trail off.

Francesca and Gabriella were plastered in blood but a new scent of blood was redolent in the air. Francesca looked around and saw the remains of a body. Flesh sliced off by dozens of pairs of razor fangs.

She turned on the nearest minion. "What is that?"

"Mistress." The minion said looking at his feet. "He was snooping around. Some of us took care of him."

Gabriella skipped over to the remains and turned them over. "So here you are?" she said.

"What is it, my sweet? Who have they eaten?" she asked.

Gabriella turned the body over to show the hint of a uniform under dark black blood.

Francesca laughed. "So that's what happened to our friendly neighbourhood security guard."

She turned back to the vampire. "Dispose of the remains far from here. We don't need people poking their noses into our business looking for him."

Fulton walked up to the main entrance and the pair of burly vampire doormen stepped across to cover his path.

"Show us your pass," The one on the left said.

Fulton thought quickly. He had no idea what the pass was but he couldn't imagine vampires going to the printers to get any made up. No, a pass to get into a
vampires club would probably be something a lot easier for vampires to remember. Fulton looked the left side doorman in the eye and let his face morph into his terrible vampiric countenance.

The doorman nodded and they both stepped aside. "Have a nice night."

Fulton stepped through the doors into a personal nightmare. He hated being a vampire. He hated everything about them. But in here it was a celebration of vampirism.

It was dark and gloomy. Some sort of rock music played from hidden speakers. There was a stage on the opposite end of the large room where instruments waited for a band to play. The backdrop of the stage consisted of a huge velvet curtain red like blood and
spattered with darker patches of what had to be real dried blood.

Dark velvet curtains, this time in a rich purple, covered much of the walls and the interior of the blacked out display window. None of the walls were bare. They were covered in an eclectic mixture of old fashioned weapons. Swords, axes and spears along with others Fulton could not name. Where they weren't covered in velvet or weaponry there were cages bolted to them, with human victims trapped inside.

Other cages hung from the ceiling. As Fulton watched a vampire lowered the cage to the ground. It was rapidly surrounded by a crowd of vampires and when it was raised up again the human inside had been shredded by dozens of sets of fangs. The victim remained
bleeding from sliced veins and arteries spraying the crowd below with blood.

Well over a hundred vampires danced on the floor. There were no inhibitions in this place and some of the dancing that was going on could only be described as explicit. After a few minutes of watching Fulton noticed that when the moves got to a certain stage the couple, or more, involved would head out of a doorway to the side. This was watched by another well built vampire who only let couples or groups through. Fulton had casually approached and he saw a lone vampire walk up to the door.

"No watching," The well built vampire said. "Find a partner."

At random intervals vampires would return through the door and rejoin the party. More often than not they
abandoned the partners they returned with and moved on to another.

The rock music cut off as the band emerged onto the stage. They were all vampires and a raucous cry went up from the crowd as they started playing. The gloom was broken by the rhythmic pattern of strobe lighting. The dancers now seemed to be moving in slow motion as they revelled to the music.

Fulton mingled with the outskirts of the crowd as he scoped out the interior. There were more vampires than he had expected, and that was only on this one floor. The layout of this level didn't provide many places of cover so when he didn't see Francesca in here it wasn't like there were many places she could be hiding.

But Fulton needed to have a look at the other floors which he had to assume could be accessed through the guarded interior door. Francesca could still be up there.

Fulton sniffed the air. There was something amiss that he couldn't quite place. He could smell vampires. He could smell freshly spilled blood, the air was thick with it. And he could smell the humans in the cages stinking with fear. But there was something else.

Fulton took another sniff of the air and another. He could smell more humans than just those in the cages. He could smell many more, and they weren't afraid. They were
aroused
.

Fulton looked across the crowd again, this time using his nose as well as his eyes. Now he saw them.
Outnumbering the vampires there was a vast number of vampire wannabees. Some of them fitted the stereotype; Gothic dress and pale face make up except for black rings around their eyes and black lipstick. Some had extensions on their teeth to mimic fangs and some drank blood from wine glasses and golden goblets. Others were dressed more normally but they all fawned over vampires. They had absolutely no idea of what they were getting into. They thought this was something from an Anne Rice novel. They had been brainwashed by the romanticized vampires portrayed by attractive Hollywood actors or on TV. They were attracted to the scene and the myth of the vampire but had only the slightest idea of how the reality would be.