I dressed and waited at the bus stop for the last night bus heading in the direction of the hospital. In the early hours of a Sunday morning, the clientele were a mix of students who’d been out all night and early morning workers. I knew Mitchell finished at 8, but sometimes got away earlier if it was quiet. I bought a coffee from the machine, the cafe not yet open, and took a seat at a table where I could see the staff entrance and exit.
At 7.30, a familiar figure hunched his way out of the door, waving a fingerless-gloved hand at one of his colleagues. My drink long-since finished, I dropped the cup in the bin and trotted after him.
‘Mitchell! Mitchell, wait.’
He turned and there was a fleeting look of hope on his face before his features closed and he looked at me warily.
‘Did you leave some things at the house?’ he asked.
I shrugged. ‘Dunno. Maybe. Probably. But I wanted to see you.’ He was squinting slightly in the morning light. ‘Can we talk?’ He nodded. ‘Shall we go back to the house?’
We walked in silence although I was very aware of his presence. He opened the front door onto a seemingly empty house.
‘Coffee?’ he asked.
‘No thanks. What the . . .?’ Written, well, smeared on the living room wall in foot high letters was “MITCHELL IS A STUPID BASTRD”. The first four and a half words were in red, the final three letters a kind of muddy brown. ‘Who did that?’
‘Annie. She was a bit annoyed with me.’
‘Is that . . . blood?’
‘Erm, no, ketchup. A whole squeezy bottle. When she ran out she resorted to brown sauce. George won’t be happy.’
‘But why did she write it?’
‘Because of you.’ I pulled an embarrassed face. ‘She thought I should have come after you last night so she went all poltergeist on my ass. As they’d say in America. Stupid thing is, she was right.’ He flung himself loose-limbed onto the sofa. ‘Susie, I’m sorry.’
‘For . . .?’
‘For not being honest with you from the start.’ He leaned forward, elbows on knees. ‘But it’s not exactly a good opening line, is it? Hi, I’m John Mitchell and I’m a vampire.’
‘To be fair, it’s not one I ever thought I’d hear. Mitchell, about last night. I’m sorry I walked out.’
‘Understandable, under the circumstances.’
He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. I desperately wanted to reach out and touch him, stroke away the tension.
‘Have you had a human girlfriend before?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Josie. It was . . . 40 years ago now.’
‘Did she become a . . . one of you?’
‘No. She wouldn’t.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She . . . died.’ His face was completely closed to me.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was what she wanted. Her choice. But I can’t do this again. Not to you.’
I knelt on the floor in front of him. ‘Mitchell, help me. Help me understand.’
He cupped my face with his hands, stroking his thumbs over my cheeks, looking directly into my eyes. ‘You really want to know?’
‘I need to understand. And if I can’t . . . if I can’t deal with it, then at least I’ll have tried.’
We lay on his bed, curtains closed against the daylight.
‘Mitchell, why me?’
‘Why you what?’
‘Why did you choose me? Good veins, right blood group?’
‘Don’t take the piss.’
‘Sorry. But really, why me?’
‘Because I know you saved a vampire.’
‘I did? When? How?’
‘Her name was Julia. She helped me when I first decided I wanted to give up blood because she’d done the same. Do you remember about a year ago? Something that happened outside a club?’
‘Well, there was a girl . . . Was she called Julia? I not sure she even told me her name. I’d, er, been thrown out of the club because I gave a guy who was hassling my friend a bit of a mouthful. Unfortunately he was one of the bouncers and chucked me out the back door into an alley. There was a girl there trying to escape from a group of men. I got between her and them and, erm, well, I wasn’t in a very good mood by then and I think I must have threatened them a bit. A lot. Of course, it was a stupid thing to do at the time, there were at least three of them, but I was having a very bad evening. So you’re telling me they were vampires?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘But they could have . . . Shit!’
‘You must have scared them.’
‘Well, me and the group of guys who got thrown out just after me, perhaps. I checked to see if the girl was OK and when I turned back, they’d gone. I thought she’d been attacked. She was covered in blood and it was all over her face and in her hair. She wouldn’t go to A&E so I took her home with me and gave her a bath. Strange thing was that I couldn’t find any cuts.’
‘It was Herrick’s mob. They’d been trying to make her drink blood and she wouldn’t. They were going to destroy her if they couldn’t convert her back to killing.’
‘Is she OK?’
‘Yes, she’s moved away somewhere safe. She was very grateful for what you did.’
‘I didn’t do much, just put her to bed on the sofa, but in the morning she’d gone. I was just glad she hadn’t robbed me or murdered me in my bed.’
‘She wouldn’t have done that. She’s one of the good vampires.’
‘I didn’t know that. I thought she was human!’
‘Anyway, she came to me for a while and told me what had happened, although I never thought I’d ever meet you.’
‘But how did you know it was me?’
‘She left a mark on you.’
‘She did? Where?’
‘Oh, you won’t be able to see it, it’s not physical, more . . . spiritual. But it’s there. I could feel it when . . . when you kissed my scars the night we met. There was a connection.’
‘George said you couldn’t get scarred, but . . .’
He rubbed at his wrist. ‘I’d been without human blood for a long time, but a . . . friend needed feeding.’
‘Did it hurt?’
‘That time, yes.’ He looked brooding. ‘I thought then that I might be becoming human at last. But . . .’ he sighed.
‘So this mark Julia left, that was the only reason you chose me?’
‘Hell no. You’re gorgeous. And funny. And feisty. And yes, that is a good thing. But Julia’s mark proved you were, well, different. That maybe you’d understand. And the mark is also a protection against vampires.’
‘Except you.’
