The Reformed Vampire Support Group (7 page)

BOOK: The Reformed Vampire Support Group
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‘You can clean up your own bloodstains,’ she finished, ‘and work out a shower schedule. Two extra showers a night are the absolute limit – I’m not made of hot water. As for the lights, you can leave them off. Nina does, and I don’t want the neighbours thinking I’ve opened a bloody backpackers’ hostel.’

‘But Nina has exceptional night-vision,’ Sanford objected. ‘I’d be worried that Bridget might fall downstairs if she has to walk around in the dark.’

‘Then she can stay in the basement.’ Mum rose abruptly, pocketing her lighter and her cigarettes. ‘In fact you can all stay in the basement, unless you absolutely
have
to be somewhere else. I don’t want people banging around upstairs while I’m trying to sleep.’

Gladys pouted. Before she could start talking about her inalienable right to a daily scented bath, however, Dave was able to head her off.

‘We’ll try not to make too much noise, Mrs Harrison,’ he promised, placating Mum with his husky voice and spaniel eyes. My mother has always had a soft spot for Dave, and you can’t really
blame her. To begin with, he’s the sort of bloke mothers tend to like; he’s neat, polite and soft-spoken. What’s more, he really admires my mum. His own mother abandoned him when he was two months old, so he’s very respectful of mothers who stick by their kids. And to give Mum her due, she’s always stuck by me. She might treat me as if I’m still fifteen, and bitch about everything I wear, and give me haircuts that make me look like Judith Durham from the Seekers, but at least she’s stuck by me.

‘I know I can trust
you
, love,’ she assured Dave. ‘It’s not you I’m worried about.’ And she fixed Sanford with a baleful glare, because she’s never liked him much. In fact from the very beginning she’s regarded George as a moron, Bridget as a wimp, Gladys as a pain and Horace as a ‘nasty piece of work’. (Can’t say I disagree with her there.) Sanford lost her good opinion the minute he told her to stop smoking, and as for Casimir … well, I’d better not tell you how she used to describe Casimir. You might be shocked. My mother’s an ex-barmaid, you see, so she’s picked up a lot of bad language over the years.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering how an ex-barmaid managed to afford a big old terrace house in Surry Hills, don’t forget that Surry Hills used to be a real dump thirty years ago. Besides which, until I was infected, my mother used to help pay the bills by taking in boarders. At one time we had three other people living with us: two country girls and a very shy Pakistani student.

Ordinary boarders are one thing, though; vampires are another. Reformed or not, they’re still vampires. I couldn’t blame Mum for being cross.

‘We wouldn’t ask you if we weren’t desperate,’ I pointed out, as she began to shuffle off towards the stairs. ‘I mean, you do realise that it’s a matter of life and death, don’t you, Mum? You do realise how serious this is?’

‘Of course I do, I’m not senile!’ she snapped. ‘I understand what’s going on! I’m just not very happy about it, that’s all.’

‘Neither are we,’ said Gladys, sounding resentful. Sanford, too, seemed put out.

‘Casimir was killed today, Estelle,’ he reminded her. ‘Surely that merits a little sympathy? It was a very great shock for all of us.’

Mum sniffed. ‘Should have happened a long time ago,’ was her blunt rejoinder, which made Gladys gasp, Horace snicker and Dave choke.

‘It could just as easily have been Nina!’ Sanford protested. But my mother didn’t agree.

‘If you think I’d let anyone into
this
house with a stake and a silver bullet, then I don’t know why you’re here,’ she said contemptuously. ‘Nina’s perfectly safe as long as I’m around. I once held off six drunken bikers with a cricket bat and a bottle of Guinness, so don’t talk to me about self-defence.’

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard about the infamous cricket-bat-and-bottle-of-Guinness affair. It’s one of Mum’s favourite stories. But before I could even roll my eyes, the doorbell rang.

‘That must be Father Ramon,’ Sanford conjectured.

It was. The priest had finally arrived. With him were Bridget, George and seven alpine sleeping-bags, which were promptly carried downstairs and arranged across the basement floor. Sanford supervised this job, while Gladys complained about the smelly sleeping-bags, and Mum made the priest a cup of tea.

I took Dave and Horace upstairs to my room. There I showed Horace my computer, which he hadn’t seen before. To tell you the truth, he hadn’t so much as set foot in Mum’s house for at least twenty years; it was Dave who installed my computer, because Mum had always discouraged Horace from coming around. She’s never been able to stand Horace. ‘That slimy little bastard belongs in a
spittoon,’ was how she once expressed her feelings about him.

When he spotted my David Bowie poster, Horace smirked.

‘This bedroom hasn’t changed much,’ he remarked. ‘Anyone would think you were still fifteen.’

‘Anyone would think
you
were still eight,’ I snarled, as Dave settled into my office chair and booted up the machine in front of him. ‘Just keep your greasy mitts off my things, will you?’

‘Why do you still have a bed up here, when you sleep downstairs in an isolation tank?’ Horace queried. It was the sort of question you should never ask a vampire. It was hurtful. It was
cruel
. You might as well ask a paraplegic why she keeps her old sports equipment.

But despite the fact that Horace had hit a nerve, I wasn’t about to let him know it. I folded my arms and said, ‘Why do
you
still bother brushing your hair, when no one would possibly want to look at your ugly mug anyway?’

Horace narrowed his eyes. Before he could think of a comeback, Dave interrupted us.

‘Come on, guys,’ he pleaded. ‘Lay off. I know it’s hard, but show some respect, eh?’

‘For Casimir?’ Horace scoffed, and Dave regarded him gravely.

‘Casimir’s dead, mate. We could all be dead soon, if we don’t stop wasting time.’ Dave shifted his attention. ‘You want to log on, Nina?’

‘Only if nobody looks,’ I said, then glowered at Horace.

Dave got the message, of course. He averted his gaze. But I wouldn’t enter my password until Horace was safely out in the corridor. It was Horace, after all, who once terrified the rest of us by pretending to be an obsessed fan of the Bloodstone Chronicles. Having ‘discovered’ my street address, he kept sending me creepy letters until Mum and I were on the point of moving house. And when he finally came clean, he didn’t apologise or anything. Oh,
no. According to Horace, he’d only been trying to demonstrate how risky it was, publishing books when you were a vampire.

After that, I decided never to cut him any slack ever again.

So he was only allowed back in after Dave had launched an online search for silver bullets; within minutes, we were all three peering at the official website of an American company called Ranger’s Inc.

You could order Ranger’s Inc. silver bullets over the Internet, for fifteen dollars each plus postage.

‘Here it is,’ said Dave. ‘Here’s the trademark. This is where he got ’em – whoever he might be.’

‘But who else buys them?’ It troubled me that the demand for silver bullets was big enough to sustain a viable business. ‘I mean, surely
every
customer isn’t a vampire slayer?’

‘Of course not,’ Horace rejoined. For a moment I actually thought that he might have something insightful to contribute. But then he drawled, ‘Most of these people must be after werewolves. Though they probably wouldn’t draw the line at shooting the odd vampire. What do you reckon, Dave?’

Horace has an irritating habit of teasing people as a form of stress relief. He was certainly teasing Dave, who had always maintained that werewolves might very well exist, though not necessarily in the form that populates most films and comic strips.

No one else shared this opinion. Not back then.

‘Well … I reckon if there
are
any werewolves out there, they’d better watch out,’ Dave replied. (As usual, he didn’t rise to the bait.) ‘Someone must be buying silver bullets, because this mob don’t seem to supply anything else.’

Further investigation, however, uncovered the fact that Ranger’s Inc. silver bullets were being promoted not as ammunition, but as ideal gifts for police officers, computer programmers and recently
divorced men. It was possible to buy your silver bullet in a velvet-lined box, or attached to a silver chain. Special requests were also catered for.

‘Like disguising your bullets as something else,’ Horace suggested. ‘You’d never be able to post them to Australia, otherwise. Would you?’

‘Maybe if you pretended they were jewellery.’ Dave was scribbling down a telephone number. ‘Which they’re mostly sold as, by the look of things. There can’t be many people who buy them as ammo. Not at fifteen dollars a pop.’

‘In which case, our loony should stand out like a sore thumb,’ said Horace. ‘He’ll be ordering his bullets by the cartload.’

At this point Mum called my name, so I missed Dave’s telephone conversation with the vice-president of Ranger’s Inc. Instead I went downstairs to say goodbye to Father Ramon. Then I shooed Mum off to bed and arranged things in the basement. I filled it with kitchen chairs, card tables and electronic equipment. I drew up a shower schedule and distributed cans of insecticide, in case the roaches became a problem. I even dug up a couple of old board games, a set of dumbbells, and some movie magazines.

By the time I’d finished, I could hardly stand up. But I felt quite proud of myself, because I’d exhibited a degree of energy and enthusiasm that you don’t often see in a vampire.

But Dave had done even better. With just one phone call, he had managed to secure a printout of the Ranger’s Inc. customer list – for five thousand American dollars.


Five thousand
?’ Horace cried, aghast.

‘That’s less than a thousand for each of us,’ said Dave. ‘I thought it was a pretty good deal.’

‘But is the list even helpful?’ I queried, and he looked slightly hurt, as if I’d been questioning his competence.

‘See what you think,’ he mumbled. ‘If you ask me, it’s paydirt.’

Upon examining the printout, I had to agree. Ranger’s Inc. hadn’t been doing much business in Australia during the past two years. Dave had underlined just five local orders. A Queenslander named Nefley Irving had purchased twelve silver bullets. Finian Pendergast, from Western Australia, had bought six. Two of the other customers had requested only one bullet each. And Barry McKinnon, of Wolgaroo Corner (‘via Cobar, New South Wales’) had ordered a hundred.


A hundred bullets?
’ Horace exclaimed, when Dave had drawn our attention to this fact. ‘What’s he using, a machine gun?’

‘That’s got to be him,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think? Sanford?’

But Sanford was frowning, and stroking his moustache. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Cobar? That’s an awfully long way away. That’s near the South Australian border. It’s not just a day trip – not for anyone coming to Sydney.’

‘Then we’ve got a problem,’ said Dave. When the rest of us stared at him, he explained that Barry McKinnon’s phone number wasn’t listed. ‘Either it’s silent, or he doesn’t have a landline,’ Dave reasoned. ‘Which makes things pretty difficult.’

‘What about the other customers?’ asked Gladys. ‘Did you try them?’

‘Yeah.’ According to Dave, Nefley Irving’s number was disconnected, and Finian’s number had been answered by a machine. ‘I didn’t leave a message,’ Dave concluded, in his slow, quiet way, ‘because I didn’t know what to tell him.’ He scanned the basement, looking for help. ‘Does anyone know what we’re going to say to this guy?’

No one did. We hadn’t got that far. After all, what
can
you say to a vampire slayer?

How on earth do you persuade him to change his views?

‘I suppose we’d better speak to Father Ramon before we make any final decisions,’ Sanford said at last, with a sigh. ‘We have to consider how to approach our suspects, now that we’ve narrowed down the possibilities.’

‘We’ll narrow them down a lot more if we make contact with Fangseeker,’ Dave mused. ‘The trick will be to find out where he’s from. If he mentions Cobar, we’re in luck.’ Scratching his scrubby jaw, Dave turned to Horace. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs now, and send him a message?’

‘At two o’clock in the morning?’ Horace’s tone was contemptuous. ‘He’ll be fast asleep, if he
is
our man.’

‘It’s still worth trying,’ Sanford interposed. And everyone agreed.

So Horace went upstairs with Dave, to make contact with the mysterious Fangseeker. And the rest of us settled down in front of the television – because there wasn’t much else we could do. Sanford suggested that we watch
30 Days of Night
, so that we could ‘gain a bit of insight’ into the mind of our adversary. But there are some things it’s better not to know. By the end of that movie, we were more depressed than ever.

I can’t tell you how sick I am of bloodsucking monsters with long yellow fingernails and no moral imagination.

‘If
that’s
what the killer’s mind is like, then we’re in trouble,’ I said. And we all glanced fearfully towards the basement door. Outside it, somewhere not too far away, a ruthless murderer was lying in bed, either plotting his next act of butchery or dreaming about the last one, while we sat cowering in our underground hole as helpless as a litter of newborn guinea pigs.

Can you blame me for inventing Zadia Bloodstone? At least she is in control of her life – unlike most vampires of my acquaintance.

6

There’s a scene
in
The Redemptionist
(Book One of the Blood-stone Chronicles) where Zadia is asleep in her ancient stone sarcophagus. The carved lid is fitted snugly in its proper place, because she’s so strong that she never has any trouble moving it. She lies like a corpse as two blood-soaked Mafia hit men lift the lid, grunting and straining under its immense weight.

Then the largest hit man leans towards her. He’s holding a sharpened stake in one hand, and a wooden mallet in the other. But the blood on his shirt is still fresh; a drop of it falls onto her lush, ruby-red lips.

BOOK: The Reformed Vampire Support Group
5.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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