by Glen Duncan
For a hundred and sixty-seven years I’ve put off writing of Arabella and the death of love. Now that I’ve done it, what? Do I feel unburdened? Purged? Ashamed? Absolved?
Something’s happening to this business of talking about feelings. It’s becoming moribund. The analysand on the Manhattan couch opens his mouth to begin “I feel …” and knows that if he had any decency he’d close it again straight away. Humans are moving into a new phase, one based on the knowledge that talking about their feelings has never got them anywhere. The Demonstrative Age … I shan’t be around to see it. That, since I asked the question myself, is how I feel, surer than ever that my clock’s been right all along, that I’ve had enough, that it’s time to go, that I really can’t stand it anymore, the living and the killing and the wandering the world without love.
16
I’M JOURNEYMAN SCRIBBLER enough to know a natural stopping point when I see one, so I doubt I’d have written any more yesterday, even if the vampire hadn’t turned up.
In my lupine form his stink would have been blatant. As it was I didn’t catch it until, alerted by an anomalous creak from the upper floor, I was halfway up the stairs.
The faintest draft of snow-flavoured air said he’d got in through one of the bedroom windows. I backtracked on cartoonish tiptoe, mentally racing through the house’s furnishings for anything that might do service as a wooden stake. (It’s really the wooden stake thing then, is it? Madeline would doubtless ask. Yes, it’s really the wooden stake thing. Or sunlight, or beheading. By all means arm yourself with crucifixes and holy water and garlic and Latin—then prepare for fatal disappointment.) My ghost wulf hackles rose. In fact let me deal with this as straightforwardly as possible: Werewolves and vampires don’t get on. Mutual repulsion is visceral and without exception—and that’s before we get into the bloodsuckers’ survival strategy, their realpolitik, which, in the spirit of disinterested analysis, I’m forced to admire: Almost three hundred years ago the fifty most powerful vampire families formed an alliance and made a deal with the Catholic Church. (WOCOP—or SOL as it was then—was originally an ecclesiastical offshoot, though by the mid-nineteenth century it had become a secular corporation with a private army.) As well as paying a percentage of all vampire profits to God’s representatives on earth (nocturnals are peerless businessmen) they agreed to keep their world population under five thousand, give or take. Which means, since there are always a few rebels and rule-breakers who can’t resist creating brand-new vampiros, annually doing away with a number of their kin. Picture adult seals clubbing their own pups. In return, the Hunt allows the Fifty Families to operate uninterfered with. There have been flare-ups, of course, there have been spats (and naturally some cheating on the numbers) but by and large the deal’s held. The vamp Dons retain control of their households and the WOCOP cash registers sing. Half the “reconstruction” contracts for postwar Iraq went on no-bids to vampire-owned companies (whose funding favours, dear President Obama, the Republicans will be calling in about now). One of them, Netzer-Böll, has a weapons manufacturing subsidiary that specialises off the record in SDS—Silver Delivery Systems. A handful of particularly cynical boochies actually work for WOCOP. The Hunt uses them as trackers. Of werewolves. Grainer, Old School, will have none of it.
So what the fuck was this one doing here?
You speed-whittle a log—no, a chair leg—no, a broom handle—no, a pencil—no a—God dammit … In the kitchen I turned the solitary wooden stool on its side, braced it with one foot and stomped on it with the other. Nothing. I stomped a second time. A faint sound of stress from the joint. I picked the bastard thing up and dashed it against the chimney breast. (Oh for that saloon-brawl furniture of cowboy movies!) Nil effect except a terrible rubbery shock to my wrists. I put it back on the floor and prepared for a third stomp—by which time it was too late.
He stood in the kitchen doorway, a lean pug-faced young vampire in combat trousers and leather bike jacket with eyebrow piercings and bleached white hair cropped close to his skull, holding a bulky rifle. I say “young,” but for all I know he could have been alive since the days of Gilgamesh. He raised the weapon and pointed it at me.
“Wait,” I said.
“Can’t,” he said, and smiled. Before what happened next happened I had just time to think: No, he’s a young one. The eyes haven’t gone dead. Time hasn’t done its thing. An elder wouldn’t even have paused to say “Can’t.” Then what happened next happened.
From outside came a feminine shriek, cut short with a shocking abruptness.
A silence of uncomfortable richness for two seconds. Then a severed female head smashed through the kitchen window and bounced uglily across the tiles, before coming to rest at the foot of the oven. The long dark hair fell back to reveal green eyes, semi–rolled back, mouth horribly slack. Spittled fangs. Her skin was already beginning to blacken.
“Laura?” the vampire said, quietly. Then a wooden spike tore his chest open from the inside with a wet crunch. He frowned. Dropped his weapon with a clatter and sank to his knees, the capillary webbing of hands and throat and face darkening. Ellis, in winter combat fatigues and holding a top-of-the-line Hunt Staker, stood behind him. The long blond hair had been pulled back and bound into an extraordinary solid bun.
“Hi, Jake,” he said. “You all right?”
I exhaled, slowly, set down the wooden stool. “Come on in,” I said. “Join the party.”
“Well, now that you mention it,” he said, “I could murder a drink.”
“What the fuck is going on here?”
“I really don’t know.”
He stepped around the crisping corpse of the vampire and called out of the window: “Russell?”
“Yo!”
“We good?”
“We’re good.”
“Okay. You’ve broken Mr. Marlowe’s window, however.”
“Apologies, boss. Exuberance.”
Ellis didn’t answer. Instead picked up the severed head and tossed it back out. Sounds of amusement from the juniors. The skin on the darkening corpse crackled softly. “Let me get rid of this for you,” Ellis said. He grabbed the cadaver by its bike jacket collar and dragged it out the back door. Vampire decomposition isn’t the screen-friendly instantaneous transformation to ash heap Hollywood peddles, but it is quirkily rapid. In an hour or two there’d be nothing but bloodstains to show the boochies had been here. I went into the living room, tossed a fresh log on the fire, lit up a Camel and poured a couple of straight Glenlivets.
“No hard feelings?” Ellis said, when he came back in and I handed him his glass.
“Let’s not get carried away.”
“Understood. L’chaim, anyway.”
“Chin-chin.”
He sat down on the arm of the couch and propped the vampire’s rifle alongside him. I, cold and queasy from truck with the undead, remained standing by the fire. Surrounded by surveillance, the house had retained its feel of fragile sanctuary. Now, with icy air coming through the broken kitchen window and Ellis actually in here, the magic was gone. Just as well I was leaving tomorrow.
“So?” he said. “What’s your theory?”
“I was hoping you might have one.”
“Nope. Presumably you’ve got enemies in vamp-camp?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. I don’t have anything to do with them.”
“But you used to, right? My understanding is that for a while in the fifties you were something of a thorn in their side.”
True. See under Werewolf Philanthropy. Vampire-run businesses had paid the Nazis a fortune for ill-gotten genetics data during the war (their search for a solution to the problem of nocturnality goes on) and the Allies a fortune for what remained up for grabs after it. They’d made a fortune fencing treasures appropriated by the Reich, augmented by a highly profitable sideline smuggling war criminals out of Europe. (Decades later, naturally, there was additional money to be made selling the whereabouts of these ancient Nazis to in
terested Jews, but by then I’d given up interfering.) Back in the early postwar years I was the money behind and frequently leader of a disparate dozen groups convinced that direct action against certain organisations served their disparate causes. Communists, anarchists, animal rights supporters, vigilantes, conspiracy theorists—for a decade or so anti-vamp activism was rationalised by me into protecting the human, to make up for the losses I was inflicting on the poor old human myself. Crazy, I know, but true.
“I threw a few stones,” I said. “Petulance, really. Anyway, it’s ancient history.”
Ellis took a sip, looked around the room, unblinking. Nothing, apparently, disturbed the man’s air of having his mind on something more important than you. You wanted to slap him. “Yeah, but these guys are the grudge club,” he said. “Fifty years? What’s that to them? It’s yesterday. It’s five minutes ago.”
“Well, maybe you should have a word with them. Tell them there’s a queue.”
“They weren’t trying to kill you.”
“What?”
He set the glass down on the couch and picked up the rifle. Or rather what I’d thought was a rifle. The creepily nimble long fingers went to work, popped the chamber and took out the ammunition. Held it up for me to see. A dart.
“Tranquilizer,” I said.
“Tranquilizer. If it wasn’t for us you’d be fast asleep and on your way.”
“On my way where?”
“Pennsylvania.”
“What?”
Ellis smiled—alarmingly, since it brought a sudden nude babylike quality to his face. “My sister teaches second grade. One kid’s telling his buddy about Count Dracula. Says he lives in a big spooky castle in Pennsylvania. You know, instead of Transylv—”
“Got it. Hilarious. Did you know these two?”
He stowed the dart in one of his jacket’s innumerable pockets. Retrieved the Scotch. Now that the smile was gone it was as if it had never been. “The girl,” he said. “She’s maybe Mangiardi. The guy I’ve never seen.”
Mangiardi’s one of the Italian houses, one of the Fifty Families. I might have bombed a couple of their labs back in the day, but couldn’t believe this was a belated revenge attack. Vampires don’t go in for that sort of thing. Not on any kind of principle but because nine out of ten times they just can’t be bothered. All motivation derives from the primary fact of mortality. Take mortality away and motivation loses its … motivation. Thus vampires spend a lot of time lounging around and staring out of the window and finding they can’t be arsed.
“Well, it means nothing to me,” I said. “But I suppose I ought to say thank you. Whatever they want me for I don’t imagine it’s pleasant.”
“All part of the service, Jake. But listen, if you’re really grateful, there’s something we should discuss.”
“What?”
“Mutual benefit. We’ve got som—” His headset clicked: a squad communiqué. The white waxy face and lazuli eyes very still while he listened, processed, concluded. “Roger,” he said. Then to me, covering the mic: “Christ, they can’t be left alone for five minutes.” He swallowed the last of his drink and stood up. “This’ll have to wait. But look, we’ll find a time, seriously, okay?” His tone would have been just right if we’d been minor studio executives.
“I didn’t appreciate the gesture with the foxes, by the way,” I said.
“I know. I can only apologise for that. These rookies. I’m sorry, Jake, really.”
“And now you’ve broken my window.”
“We’ll fix it up first thing tomorrow. And again, seriously, I’m sorry about the foxes. Critters can be such a comfort. I’d love a dog, but with my life? It’s not fair on the animal. We’ll talk again.”
The temptation, immediately Ellis had left, was to call Harley. I resisted: Again, the Hunter could have planted a bug. I’d been sloppy to leave him unsupervised even for a moment, but the vamps had thrown me. Besides, a report would go to WOCOP this evening; Harley would get the story without my help. Which wouldn’t do me any favours, now that I thought it through, since he was already in anxiety overdrive. This latest—vampires are after Jake—would only give him something else to waste time and energy fretting about. I sent him a text: “Audio compromised. SMS only until further notice. Small incident here. You’ll get it from Ellis. DON’T WORRY. I’M FINE.”
Vampires are after Jake. It’s ridiculous. I haven’t seen a vampire in more than twenty years. A mistake? Or some new Hunt twist? But there, beyond argument, was the tranquilizer dart. If it wasn’t for us you’d be fast asleep and on your way.
On my way where? And for what?
Here it is again, the wearisome thing, life’s compulsion to woo, the suitor who won’t take no for an answer. Vampires, Jake. What’s that about? Stick around. Find out what happens.
Yes, well, I know what happens. More happens. Variations on the same half dozen themes. There are only six plots, Hollywood says, or twelve, or nine … whatever the number it’s finite, it’s small. If this is life trying to narratively intrigue me back in, it won’t work. I’m not coming in, I’m going out.
I went around the house closing all the curtains. The darkness outside was loud, now that I listened, with the sound of Life’s indefatigable random plotting, the gossipy simmer of a new assault on my resolve. It gave me a peculiar tender sad thrill of emptiness, as when you catch your wife in bed with another man and realise you don’t care, haven’t for years, feel a little pity for them, wish them both a little luck.
Back on the couch with a fresh Camel and a topped-up Glenlivet I kicked my shoes off, stretched my legs towards the fire and yawned. It was only six in the evening but the booze and hullabaloo had made me sleepy. In a concession to Life I thought back over my years of antivamp activism, sifted memories for high-ranking bloodsuckers I might particularly have ticked off. I couldn’t come up with anything compelling. Certainly Casa Mangiardi didn’t ring any bells, and I’d never seen the lately beheaded Laura or her young companion before, I was positive.
I swallowed the last of my Scotch, put my feet up, rested my eyes. Fuck them, anyway, whatever they wanted. Under Grainer’s orders (God being dead, irony etc.) the Hunt would watch my back. I had a suicidal date with WOCOP’s werewolf-killing maestro just over a week from now, and boochies or no boochies I intended to keep it.
17
EVEN BY MY own efforts I make a pretty convincing woman, but for the rendezvous with Harley back in London I had professional help.
“Are you sure this is necessary?” I asked. “I mean, why can’t I wear trousers? Women do wear trousers, after all.”
“In trousers you’ll move like a man. The body language will give it away.” This was Todd Curtis, a friend of Harley’s, and he was waxing my legs from the knee down. I’d been instructed to shave them before leaving the Zetter. The waxing was an extra—and in my view—unnecessary precaution.
“Look, if they get that close I don’t think it’s the legs that’ll—Ow! Jesus Christ.”
“Three more and you’re good to go.”
Todd, good-looking, understatedly muscular with dark curly hair cropped very close and a thin face of calm Mafioso cruelty, was the sort of gay man very few heterosexuals would be able to tell was a gay man—though on discovering his profession they’d start to wonder. He and his team specialise in elite transvestism. For film, stage and television, yes, but also for private clients and drag competitions. Turnover last year, he told me, was just under a million euros.
“The weather’s on our side,” he said, selecting a three-quarter-length fake chinchilla from the rack his assistant had wheeled in. “The coat will do a lot of the work. How are the shoes?” We were in a massage cubicle at a health and beauty spa in Knightsbridge. Conditions were cramped and the air-con was set for nudity. The wig didn’t itch (my wigs don’t itch, Todd had said, calm as God) but the makeup caused mild claustrophobia. I’d been tailed from the Zetter but had given the two agents the slip in Covent Gard
en. WOCOP’s hooked into a lot of the city’s CCTV but Harley knows the blind spots. These, plus four cab changes, made it virtually certain I’d reached Halcyon Days unmarked. Virtual certainty notwithstanding, Harley’s life was at stake. Hence Todd, hence the new me.
“Wow,” I said, looking in the full-length mirror. “Maybe I’ll just take myself back to my hotel.”
“Yeah, you’re hot,” Todd said, without apparent emotion. He’d worked the transformation with a sort of impersonal concentration, and now it was done I very much had the impression he had other places to be, other men to turn into women. “Go up and down in here a few times to get used to the heels.”
The disguise followed my natural dark colouring. I looked like a plain big-boned woman who’d availed herself of maximum cosmetic assistance but about whom there remained something eerily unfuckable. No denying slight titillation. The tights in particular delivered secret arousing snugness. An erection halfheartedly threatened. You’ll be delighted to hear, dear Harley, that—
Todd’s assistant put her head round the door. “Car’s here,” she said.
The vampire attack in Cornwall had put WOCOP in a stir, though Harley’s snooping had thus far turned up nothing. Calls had gone back and forth between the London HQ and most of the Fifty Houses, but the head families, Casa Mangiardi included, were feigning ignorance, or were ignorant. Laura Mangiardi, allegedly, had forfeited familial rights by running around with pariahs, illegally made vamps who’d eluded the annual cull. The Dons’ line was they were just as irked as WOCOP. Efforts would be redoubled, controls tightened. A regrettable glitch, no harm done, long tradition of mutual respect blah blah blah. Harley, of course, remained sceptical. It doesn’t matter, I’d told him. None of it matters. In seven days—