BiteMarks (18 page)

I turn the volume up, accelerating over Trent Bridge, the ornate railings shining with a recently applied coat of pristine paint. The river underneath is anything but pristine, muddy brown in color with the rainbow swirl sheen of oil on the surface. There are murderous weeds lurking beneath, waiting to drag the 'jumpers' down until they're leached of color and swollen with gases, cruelly able to float in death where they couldn't in life. West Bridgford sits just across the river. It is Nottingham's premier suburb, exuding savory sanitized affluence; a self-contained oasis of up-market cafes, bar-restaurants, deli's and boutiques. The parks are neat and well maintained; the streetlights intact, graffiti and damage a rarity. The houses here look the same as the imposing double-bay fronted Victorian beauties in Mapperley Park. I pull into one of the public car parks and pay for the privilege, locking the doors and setting off past the attractive library building towards Central Avenue – the main thoroughfare. Although the afternoon is slipping away, the breeze is warm breath on exposed flesh.

'Yummy mummies' are everywhere, pushing bright abstract buggies with complete disregard for anybody in the way and conversing loudly into tiny phones, over-sized gaudy jewelry encircling their sun-kissed arms.

I draw the occasional attentions of curious eyes. I'm wearing a tight black t-shirt and black fatigues and police boots, out of the ordinary for this place where everybody else is a riot of summer color. I wish
I'd
worn eyeliner and brought the fangs along now.

Moving away from the main stretch I cross over the road and round the corner onto Gordon Road. A couple of doors down is my chosen destination, Number Eight, the best deli in the city. Minutes later I exit eating salami, sun-dried tomatoes, Jarlsberg cheese and jalapenos on fresh ciabatta with a dash of Tabasco sauce. I wrap the sandwich back up for a moment as I head into a small hardware shop and purchase a hand-axe and a bradawl – a small sharp tool like an ice-pick. I pay in cash, making polite conversation with the stooped elderly man with milky blue eyes behind the counter.

Back outside the air smells like suntan lotion and cocoa butter, until I raise the sandwich back to my mouth again and drown it out with savory food aromas. I can feel the burn of chili heat on my tongue, the weight of the tools in their brown paper bag and the first tingle of adrenaline as I walk.

* * *

Nobody is afraid of the dark.
They're
afraid of what might be out their stalking them under its smothering cover, stick-limbed night predators that pick off the careless and unaccompanied who stray across their paths, but not the darkness itself. I am no longer afraid of what might be waiting for me out there in the enveloping black, that would mean acknowledging that there are worse monsters in this world than myself.

The unfamiliar kitchen is not quite pitch dark. Orange light from the display on the oven illuminates a small area, a star burst of light that probes my eyes like the beam from a laser pen if I look at it directly. I am alone for now, with only the sounds of my thudding fluttering heart and the hollow clatter of loose heating pipes under the floorboards to disturb me.

It is somewhere around two in the morning; late enough to be sure that the man upstairs is sleeping unless he's an insomniac or heard me entering the house. I doubt it, I was quiet, and insomnia effects those prone to self analysis, troubled by their thoughts and actions and overwhelmed by the absence of daytime with its benign distractions.

I've
dressed for the occasion, all in black of course, right down to the eye liner smears around my dark eyes and crying from the corners. Only my teeth are purest white, fangs fixed in place - dangerous porcelain, I want him to see them in his mind for a long time to come. I head up the stairs happy that there's not been any movement overhead. The bradawl and axe twitch in my hand, and dying flowers are breathing their wasted last in a waterless vase on the landing, incongruous with the image of the man that I know, I wonder if there is a partner living here too?

Deep carpets cushion my footfalls and mask the creak of shifting floorboards; the air is thick with tastes of lavender oil and spoiled lilies. The deep reverberations of a sleeping man's breath mingles with the soft lullaby whisper of ruffled leaves through an open window. I slip into the room from which the breathing sounds are emanating with only the movement of air to announce my presence.

Jamie Moore is deep in slumber, lying on his back with his mouth open and slack. There is a lamp on his bedside table and I quietly remove the bayonet bulb with gloved hands, placing it on the carpet out of reach. I watch his chest rise and fall mesmerized for a moment, and raise the axe above my head; one more rise and fall and then I slam the blade down hard with a peace shattering roar.

* * *

The sound of rapid voices and a rattle of unpleasant sounding laughter erupts a short distance away up ahead. We're almost on top of them now, the lazy drift of sweet tobacco smoke floating into my lungs on shallow breaths. Dixon is sitting on the bough of a fallen beech tree, elevating himself above the others and flanked by the two Moore brothers. Nobody has seen us yet. He pats down his trousers and snakes a slight hand into his pocket, emerging with a bright yellow box of 'swan' matches.

I step out into the clearing to the noise of twigs breaking beneath me and the harsh rasp-flare echo as he strikes a match across the abrasive side of the box. The conversational drone dies instantly and a dozen of pairs of feral eyes flicker towards me, burning like the wavering flame in Dixon's still hand.

Meg and Will
don't
pause at all, a measure of the trust that they have developed in me. They move forwards to stand one on each shoulder, I can feel their tense trembling and risk a glance at their faces – blank and hard but falling just short of composure. The absence of obscenities and immediate violent reaction tells me that they're as surprised as my Granddad had told me that they would be - 'If a man's prepared to come to your own backyard to deliver his threat to you, then he probably means it'.

“
I've come to tell you that you won't be messing with any of us three again.”

My voice sounds much higher than usual. There is a short pause and then Dixon laughs incredulously, looking around for support.

The rustling movement of others is loud and menacing amongst the leaf-litter. I slip the kitchen knife down my sleeve, ten inches of serrated steel intent.

“
Let me clarify for you.”

My tone is lower now and calm, even though I am screaming and shouting inside, rage beating a regular rhythm against the back of my eyes. The tormentors are transformed back into mere children again now, fearful of the dark sheen of the blade. I raise the knife to eye level, allowing them to study the contours fully and I smile.

* * *

The percussion thud of the axe head into the bedside table, accompanied by an animal roar in the darkness, wrenches the sleeping man awake. His hand scuttles frantically after the switch for the lamp – click, click, click – nothing happens and the fear is a tidal wave that holds him screaming in place, crushed against the mattress half-blind and disorientated.

In the absence of sight his other senses are heightened, he feels the sharp point like a needle settling on the hollow of his throat and opens his bladder involuntarily. Sharp white teeth gradually come into view a foot away from his face, followed by dark eyes that appear to be leaking black tears. Police constable Jamie Moore listens carefully to the softly spoken words that follow, laying paralyzed with fear in his own cooling urine, and he agrees with every single word that the man that he had believed he knew says.

Chapter 12

I carry the man's screams around with me like a souvenir all day, taking out his fear to study its pleasing contours from time to time. This part of me has lain dormant for a long while. The side that wants to be feared, bearing its sharp teeth in threat at those that might seek to hurt me and sinking them into those that ignore the warnings. Usually I am uncomfortable when having to resort to physical violence, considering the fact to be indicative of a failure on the part of my intellectual abilities. I expect to be able to talk people away from having to find out what
I'm
capable of. Not right now though; I feel no guilt or shame, and I strongly suspect that Moore will eventually emerge as a better human being for the encounter. Sometimes more extreme measures can achieve surprising results like that. I had forgotten the particular resonance of screams uttered in abject terror, the strange musicality of the notes that replay in the mind afterward.

Word has reached me that another meeting of the Vampire Society has been arranged for tonight, but it did not come via the venue owner and meets organizer, Kevin Lee. I'm evidently no longer invited, not considered to belong to the fold now that I've withdrawn my details from the database. The rejection stings intensely, the touch of a hot iron on cold skin. It is a fight to keep the maelstrom of internal reactions at bay; panic, sorrow, desperation, rage and different kinds of bloodlust running a rapid repeating mental slideshow until I manage to press the lid back down and drive in the nails again. 

Karen is supposed to be visiting tonight, but I cannot allow her to see me like this. The fleeting distraction of the standard array of sexual releases on offer won't work,
can't
reasonably be expected to scratch the maddening itch. I need blood and my self control is dangerously askew, a bad combination. I pick up the phone and dial her number.

“
Well, hello there. I'm looking forward to tonight, Officer Marks.”

Her tone is playful and suggestive, I suppress the sudden urge to tell her everything, take me as I am or leave me forever.

“
Hi, that's why I'm ringing actually. I'm feeling pretty peculiar and just wanted to see if we could put it off to another night.”
You see I've got this urge to drink somebody's blood and it can't wait.

“
Oh.”

One simple syllable, but I can hear the years of disappointments. The long lonely waits for men who never showed up and silent furious taxi rides for one, back to the embrace of a neatly made cold empty bed. “I'm not giving you the brush off, Karen; I love everything about being in your company. I just don't bear resemblance to the Shane that you know right now. Could we get together on Friday instead?”

The reply sees her familiar tone back again. “That would be great; I've just had a particularly hard day and was looking forward to seeing you and unwinding. Hope you're feeling like yourself again soon. I'll call you later.”

One call finished, another couple to make. Time's getting short if I'm going to set things up for later on tonight.

* * *

The thronging crowd outside 'The Pit' is just like the building itself, haphazard and spilling out across the road in threatening disheveled disarray. The individuals making up this untidy scene are a study in the outsider lifestyle; svelte preening pretty boy skinheads lining up alongside corpse decorated Goth girls, long haired aging rockers in tattered and studded leather biker jackets or ripped blue denim, chatting animatedly  to fatigue wearing and gel-spiked under-agers trying to pass for eighteen in their nu-metal band tops. In amongst the rainbow-haired chaos we are stood in a small huddle of our own, smoking a tightly rolled joint and fidgeting from foot to foot to stay warm in the rapidly descending chill of the half-lit evening.

Most of the streetlights in this section of town are regularly broken by well-aimed stones, which suits the darkness loving rock crowds that flock here on live band nights. The darkness brings danger though; the drunk or stupid that stray into the surrounding industrial wasteland are picked off on occasion by opportunistic predators.

The club itself is painted black outside and in, crumbling and patched up with boards over the windows and a collage of posters on top of the boards advertising gigs past, present and future. There are black steps made from some sort of hard resin with stainless steel trims leading up to the entrance doors. Here and there is a dark sheen of spilled alcohol or old blood dappling the pocked floor surface in between the discarded nub-ends. 

The more focused surge of the crowd says that they've started to let people in now, the box office booth open to sell the last few tickets to those who didn't have the foresight to buy in advance. Thick-necked doormen wear tight black t-shirts with 'security' emblazoned in bold white capitals on the chest and back, they stand in pairs either side of the doorway, with more watching unseen in the back-rooms monitoring the CCTV pictures. I reach the front with my ticket in one hand and the smoldering roll-up in the other, handing both over to the bouncer with a smile. He smiles back and takes a huge draw on the joint, finishing it in one giant breath before tossing it to the floor and grinding out the embers with a steel-toed boot.

“
Good shit.”

He laughs and exhales a long vapor trail of smoke, resembling a fighter jet speeding on a death mission.

“
Do you boys, and girl,” he nods towards Meg, “have any more illicit substances concealed about your persons?”