Vampire "Untitled" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 1) (21 page)

Paul flicked the images back and forth. His bruised
and grinning face, the splashes of blood. He smiled at the thought of Nealla
driven to insanity by jealousy. Nealla furious. Nealla seething with anger.
Nealla swinging his fists because he couldn’t get his own way and having a
tantrum like a child.

Paul clicked the image back further from the bloody
sink and landed on a picture of Ildico at Bran. She was standing on the castle
balcony, the wind blowing her hair against a backdrop of snow covered
mountains. She looked lovely, but seeing her broke the mood; he wanted to live
in his fantasies of masculine violence and aggression. As he clicked back from
Ildico’s face to the bloody sink it was such a jolt that it almost made him cry.
The loveliness of Ildico, the blood splashed sink, Ildico, bloody sink. This
place was shit.

Ildico’s image shocked him out of his macho
complacency and the sudden reality of life seized him. For a few minutes he’d
been living in his own delusional little universe where things weren’t so bad;
then reality intruded and made him realise that he was living in a complete
shithole. He had been assaulted, beaten up and was injured. There was nothing
to enjoy here.

Fuck Nealla. Paul drank his wine.

Fuck this place. Paul refilled the glass.

Fuck Romania. Paul drank it in two gulps, refilled and
downed the last of the bottle.

Fuck everyone. He closed his eyes suddenly feeling
tears on his eyelids.

I hate this fucking place.

----- X -----

He
was trying to sleep on the living room sofa. The alcohol and painkillers were
working, but the stinging in his bitten lip and the throbbing of his grazed ear
stopped him from getting too comfortable. He was half asleep and half awake,
half dreaming, half conscious, half settled and half in pain. Mixed into this
state was a full bottle of red wine and a few too many codeine tablets.

He dozed.

Ildico was somewhere in the basement with him,
imaginatively, in his creative mind; but it was all horribly discordant. It was
concrete tunnels with pipes overhead; a deep, underground and endless dark
hole. The ruby glow highlighting edges was the only way he could see anything.
It was a stupid dream and his ear hurt.

Fucking Nealla deserved to die for this.

Ahead of him a single naked leg emerged seductively
from a corner. He knew who it was and he had no appetite to see her. She
slipped sensuously around the corner, revealing herself, wearing nothing but
black cotton panties and carrying the sharp knife from the kitchen. What was
she going to do with the knife? Why was she here anyway? She should go away. He
was in no mood for her.

Ildico was barely visible, a silhouette against a
black background. She could only be seen by that delicate ruby highlight lining
her face and chin, following the slight curves of her breasts. She stepped one
bare foot forward. The concrete must be cold underfoot, must be dirty on the
soles of her feet.

Go away Ildico.

Leave me alone.

In his mind the camera angle reversed. It was like he
was watching a movie and the editor had decided, at precisely the right moment,
to switch to another view. Now the camera of his mind’s eye was behind her,
filming from the back of her knees to the small of her back in a way that
highlighted her ass and skilfully included the knife held by her thigh. Beyond
her, further into the corridor he saw himself; and beyond, far deeper behind
him, he saw the vampire.

Strange dreams.

Ildico walked to him, close enough to touch, to kiss.

“My ear hurts,” Paul said to her.

“I love you,” she replied.

Paul ignored the naked man he knew was behind. Ildico
was... more interesting.

She lifted the knife to her face. The blade brushed
past her hair and caressed her skin. She swayed, slow motion dancing to
invisible music, the red lines that edged her body moving as slow ripples of
light. The knife blade caressed down her body, the razor sharp tip resting
against her nipple, pressing it away until the knife passed and her nipple
flicked back. Lower, the blade slipped across her navel and under the waistband
of her underwear.

Despite his depressed mood, Ildico’s seduction was
adamant. He wanted those pants off her, he wanted to see her, to touch her, to
taste her, to run his tongue up her slit and make her moan.

The knife in her underwear.

Slice.

Zero effort, the fabric was cut; the lingerie fell on
one side, the other side held for a second then slipped down her leg. He
watched it go in slow motion, seeing the fabric slide over her thigh, her knee.

Behind him he felt the vampire close in, almost
breathing on his neck.

Strange dreams.

Ildico lifted the knife to her face and turned the
blade towards her to rest the cutting edge over her lips.

Slice.

She drew the blade down cutting through both her top
and bottom lip. Blood came instantly, running over her chin, her throat,
between her breasts. It was arousing. Primal. Blood and sex. It pulled Paul
away from his misery by detonating a shock of hormones. Testosterone and
adrenaline as a shot to the heart.

From behind he felt the vampire rest one of its hands
on his shoulder. It felt as real as any waking moment. It was ice cold. Burning
cold. The vampire had its left hand on his shoulder almost as though it was a
parent with a child, a reassuring hand that says, ‘I’m here.’

Ildico handed the knife to Paul.

“Kiss me,” Ildico said, stepping closer.

Paul wrapped his hand holding the knife around her
waist. He pulled her closer, resting the knife against her buttocks. He felt
his tightness of grip, controlled but powerful, he felt stronger and more in
control than he’d ever felt before in his life.

“Kiss me,” she said again.

His mouth pressed to hers, stemming her bleeding with
his own lips. It tasted exquisite. The salinity, the warmth, the sensuality of
the situation as he pressed his mouth over her bleeding lips seemed to feed
into his body. It coursed and crackled through him like a spreading electric
current, preparing him for action, firing him up in readiness.

From behind the vampire took hold of his free hand and
guided it between her legs. He pulled Ildico closer into the kiss, feeling her
blood pour into his mouth, feeling the wetness of her sex. Blood, ran from
their lips down her body to ignite burning sexual juices that made his hand
feel as though it were on fire. If he pulled it away from her vagina now he would
expect to see it in flames. His cock throbbed and ached wanting to fuck her, to
hurt her, to stab her.

He bit.

His teeth gripped her lips and sunk deep, piercing the
flesh, drawing ever more blood. Oh, God. The blood was amazing, powerful,
sexual.

Kissing a girl.

Holding a knife.

His penis was as hard as steel, his testicles raging,
his muscles tensing.

More.

He clenched his teeth tighter feeling them bite
through Ildico’s flesh, eating her lips off her face. He felt her panic,
changing from temptress to helpless prey. His fingers hooked into her cunt,
squeezing, brutalising, scratching her insides with his fingernails.

MORE.

He was almost there, almost crossing the precipice to
a new sexual experience where pleasure would strike like a touched nerve, but
instead of being an overload of pain, it would be a pleasure of the flesh.

It built to the point of climax.

He bit her lips so savagely he felt her flesh come
away and hold in his mouth.

Then he exploded.

He grabbed the skin of Ildico’s chest so tightly it
gathered in his fist like clothing. He lifted her off the floor with a single
hand and cried out a guttural roar as he smashed her body off the wall. Her
face, her beautiful face so deformed without lips, spurting blood as he crashed
her body against the concrete, pulverising her bones.

He screamed. Not a frightened scream but a ferocious
roar, a battle cry, a statement, a declaration. His muscles pumped and flexed
as his balls pumped semen out of his cock. The roar of self continued as he
smashed her body to the ground and fell on her holding the knife.

Then it changed.

She was on the floor of the forest. He was falling
towards her under the weight of gravity. The knife was between them. Nothing
could prevent the blade from skewering her. It stabbed into her, doubling her
body in two; blood spat from her mouth.

“Please, Paul,” she begged.

He pulled out the knife and stabbed her again,
intensifying the sexual ecstasy of killing, the thrill, the power of having the
strength to snuff another’s life on a whim.

Ildico in the forest.

She was dead.

Paul smiled as he remembered it all.

She came to visit, he tried to kiss her, she resisted.
It hurt him, humiliated him. He met her the next day, took her to the shrine
and killed her in the forest.

Strange dreams.

Killing Ildico in the forest. Washing blood off his
hands and clothes in the sink.

Strange dreams.

Taking the cruciform from the shrine as a souvenir.
Standing on the balcony with the cruciform, staring at the forest, trying to
relive it in his head, trying to reimagine and capture the moment, that exact
precise moment when she died.

“Please, Paul,” she cried after he stuck the knife in.
He pulled it out and stuck it in again. Blood had come from her mouth and he
had kissed her. He had washed his hands in the sink and watched the blood
spiral away down the plughole.

Strange dreams.

Strange.

Dreams.

The cruciform was here in the flat. Took it as a
souvenir. Killed Ildico at the shrine, took the cruciform as a souvenir. Had a
strange dream that it was left on the balcony by a vampire.

It was.

Dream over.

Time to open his eyes.

Time to wake up.

Time to look at the cruciform and know exactly how it
had gotten here.

Eyes open. Sitting up on the sofa.

Reality returned.

And it was terrifying.

----- X -----

Paul
bounced up out of sleep, woken by a tsunami of adrenaline, fight or flight...
or panic. He sat rigid like he had just watched a car accident and was in those
few seconds after the collision, where shock stopped coherent thoughts from
forming. The alcohol caught up. His head sloshed and his ear throbbed. His lips
throbbed, the back of his head throbbed, his face felt bruised and swollen.

There was dried blood on his shirt. His blood, not
Ildico’s.

It was a dream, it was just a strange dream.

The crucifix. It was on the table beside the laptop.

He dreamt he’d seen the vampire on the balcony and the
cruciform was there the next morning. He hadn’t seen it before that. Now he’d
dreamt of stabbing Ilidco in the forest and bringing the cruciform as a
souvenir.

Which was true? Did the vampire bring it or did he
kill Ildico and bring it himself? Two options. Two choices.

It can’t be. There is a third option. But what could
it be? Amnesia? Hardly likely. There was misunderstanding of some kind, some
stupid confusion in his own head with twisted strands of thought that didn’t
immediately unravel. There was that time when Ildico turned up saying he’d
arranged to go to Bran with her, yet he had no recollection. Amnesia?

Paul stood up and paced the room. His eyes turned to the
story panels on the wall and his eyes drifted to the same patch a few times
without reading it.

“What the hell?” he whispered. “There’s blood on my
clothes, but this is my blood from tonight. What about earlier?”

He walked to the bedroom to examine his dirty clothes
and search for traces of Ildico’s blood but there weren’t any dirty clothes,
he’d washed them all this morning. Any evidence was gone. If there was a crime,
he’d cleaned up after it. As he tried to think back he saw his hands in the
water with the clothing; it was only this morning but it seemed a lifetime ago.
He’d washed everything and found the cruciform out on the balcony as he hung
stuff to dry. He then imagined the bloody sink; in his mind he watched the
blood disappear in a whirlpool down the drain.

“Ildico is fine. I know she is.”

He walked back to the living room and again his eye
was drawn to a story panel. This time he read it. It said, ‘A stranger comes
from a foreign land.’

Logic was failing him; emotion was taking over. He was
scaring himself. Ildico was fine, but he was scared to be so uncertain. He sat
in the chair and tried to piece things together.