Vampire Beneficence

Part 4

“We spread out, whispering in song to each other. I myself sped to a staircase I knew led to the basement. Here once I had kissed Nicole, secretly in the night. The LSE is never closed, just the sort of place my kind like. After a short search I paused, panting. I needed to drink. The blood was soft in its packs now. I took out one, broke the seal and drank.

‘De-frosted blood! Foul!’

“A young brethren came up, out of breath, and leaned against the wall. ‘I haven’t found anything, sir!’

“I offered him some blood. ‘It tastes foul. I prefer menstrual blood, of virgins, if I can get it. But we need our energy!’ He declined.

‘You were Nicole’s lover?’ he asked in stilted English. I looked at him again. He might be Chinese.

‘I still am,’ I corrected him.

‘Can we beat then?’

‘We have to. But they have my daughter too, somewhere else. The vermin know I am only one. I have to choose. The vermin want to torture me some more before they kill me!’

‘How did you become a… ‘

‘Vampire? For that is what they call us. Don’t be ashamed of it! This must be quick. I hated to eat meat! I hated to see animals suffer. But I was physically run-down. I met a nurse and fell in love. As many lovers do, we tried different positions, cunnilingus was her favourite. She was a virgin when we met. Then she started to bleed. It was a full moon. It was her time of the month! I loved her and she asked me so I continued to lick her. I drank the blood.

“Nourishment!” she joked. But she was right. Immediately my health improved. I had a thirst for it. I sought other women, virgins if I could find them. A woman is in pain at this time of her cycle and they were eager. I had no trouble finding, in the end, hundreds of women, to feed my habit. Then I began to change.

“He nodded.

‘It’s the original way. Unlike biting, this is how we became what we are. But the bases would find my habit abhorrent.’

We stood silently, looking at each other. He stirred.

‘What is that?’

‘What?’ I replied.

‘A noise. In there.’ He pointed to one of the storage rooms. I padded over to it and peered through the small window in the door. Something moved on the floor in the darkened room.

I wrenched down the door handle and pushed in.

‘What happened?’ I asked the man I found lying in a pool of his own blood, as I held his head up.

‘Who are you?’ he said, looking at me with frightful eyes.

‘Don’t worry. I am here for them, not for you!’

‘In there!’ he whispered. ‘At the end!!’

“He had been pointing further down the corridor. Before he had finished we had left. We sped along the corridor. Through the windows in a set of red double doors I saw faces.

‘Here,’ I shouted to the lad next to me, holding out a long-bladed dagger. He looked at it with fear. ‘It’s iron; easy for us to use!’

‘What if they have guns?’

‘They won’t. Guns might not kill us! Theirs will be silver!’ I shouted just as I rammed the door, branding another iron dagger. I had no time to explain…”

“Wait!” interjected David. “Why iron? And why silver?”

Irritated for a moment out of his suavity, the gentleman was curt with his response.