A Girl, a Murder, and Twelve Dreadful Children

Chapter IX: ...Goes Unpunished

If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.
-- P. G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens

Dani stood frozen for what felt like an hour. At last her mind caught up with what was happening. She whirled round, scanning the room and the hall for any sign of the vampire. Nothing.

Only I, she thought sourly, could manage to lose a vampire.

Was it vampires or werewolves who went on murderous rampages when they were injured and alone in unfamiliar territory?

Dani tightened her grip on her sword. She would just have to search the whole house.

~~~~

She didn't have to.

She found the vampire in the kitchen.

It was a ridiculously mundane scene, after the horrors she had been imagining. The vampire wasn't hiding somewhere ready to spring out at her. Nor was she draining the blood from some unlucky passerby. Instead she was sitting at the kitchen table, looking through the first aid book.

Dani felt as if she'd fallen through a looking-glass. "What?"

She didn't realise she'd spoken aloud until the vampire looked up. Dani half-raised her sword. The vampire held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. An uncomfortable silence fell in the kitchen.

"You're awake," Dani said at last. Inwardly she winced. When in doubt, state the obvious. "Mind explaining why you're here?"

The vampire moved as if to shrug, then winced and held herself stiffly in her original position. Belatedly Dani noticed that the stake was still embedded in her chest. It wasn't deeply embedded in her skin, and probably hadn't reached any internal organs (almost certainly, since she was still -- somewhat -- alive and in no immediate danger), but removing it had seemed too dangerous last night.

"My name is Claire Oakden," the vampire said. Dani felt decidedly disappointed. She had been expecting some sort of dark, Gothic-novel name. "I had a nasty meeting with a priest yesterday. The idiot thought that throwing holy water over me would harm me, and he imagined he was strong enough to stake me by hand."

Extremely foolish, but by no means unusual. Many self-proclaimed vampire hunters believed that staking a vampire was as easy as stabbing someone. They didn't realise that knives were sharp and narrow, while stakes were comparatively blunt and broad. A knife could easily slide between the ribs to reach the heart, while a stake required considerable effort to drive through the rib-cage and sternum. There was a reason most true vampire hunters, if they used stakes at all, always made sure they armed themselves with sharp stakes and a hammer.

"...So after I broke his skull I realised his friends would come after me," Claire continued. "I heard you're practically one of us, so I thought you might help me."

What? Who was going around saying she was almost a vampire? Dani thought over the few vampires whose acquaintance she'd made. Loki, wherever he was, would almost certainly not be talking about how a teenage human had saved his life. Ella and Julius were dead. She had met Abi exactly once. Rupert had mysteriously disappeared, and he had never learnt her name anyway.

She tried not to think about the other vampire she'd met. It was highly unlikely that Vlad Dracula had ever spared her a thought since that nightmarish visit to Romania. He certainly wouldn't have been telling other vampires about her.

"Help you how?" Dani asked, focusing on the immediate problem. "Are the police after you?"

Claire shrugged. "I don't know. I ran away before anyone found the body."