Blood in the Wings

by J. L. O'Rourke

  Then I found him a towel and told him that I would throw his clothes in the washing machine while he took a shower. If vampires take showers.

  “Can you get your wings wet?”

  He snorted.

  “How do you wash them?” I had a mental picture of birds flapping their wings in dirt baths and wondered if vampires did the same.

  He pushed his glasses back up his nose with one finger and raised one eyebrow over the top of the frames in his most cynical of expressions.

  “With water,” he said pedantically, snatching the towel from my hand and heading towards the bathroom.

  The vampire that emerged looked most attractively human. And naked. Except for a towel draped around his waist but leaving an awful lot of leg and body enticingly exposed. As I walked towards him I could feel emotions bubbling and spilling through my body in physical waterfalls of desire. I hugged him close. His body, still damp, was hard under the towel.

  “What shall we do till your clothes are ready?” I gasped.

  He replied with a kiss, hard and passionate. I responded, kissing him back, my body telling me that the best thing, the only thing, the right thing to do would be to drag him into my bedroom. I don’t know what I expect it to be like. From the tales of the girls at school who had done it, and from the enforced, single-sex human biology lessons taught by the ancient, unmarried sewing teacher, it had sounded messy, uncomfortable and downright boring. But then, they didn’t have a sexy vampire.

  But as quickly as my body had responded, my brain took over. Vampire! Possible killer! Hunts humans! Sucks their blood!

  “Woah, wait,” I pulled back and gasped. “Too ... too,” I fumbled for the word, “too confusing,”

  “Confusing?” Severn sounded just as confused as I felt.

  “Yes, confusing. Damn it – you’re sexy as anything and you are standing in my house wearing nothing but a towel – that doesn’t cover much by the way – but I only met you a few days ago and since then I have found out that you are a vampire, with wings, and fangs, and all that nasty stuff. And there was a murder. And the police think you did it. Maybe you did. Maybe you’ll bite me and I will be the next body and Mum and Grant will come home to find me dead on the floor and you and your funny mates all sucking my blood out with straws!” I was gibbering rubbish. I shut up. Severn looked at me and sighed. Then he laughed.

  “Ok. We had better find something interesting to do though, because I could get distracted and then I might try to distract you and then if I succeeded and we both got distracted, sure as hell your Mum would arrive home. Has Grant got anything I can wear so that my towel doesn’t drive you crazy?”

  “Let’s go see.” I grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the laundry where we rummaged through the clean laundry that I had promised Mum I would fold. As I leaned over the laundry basket, Severn put his arms around me from behind, drew me close and, very gently, bit my neck. It felt delicious.

  “You really do have sharp, pointy teeth,” I complained later as we stood in the kitchen making lunch.

  “Sorry,” he grinned unashamedly. “Goes with the territory.”

  “It’s okay. I can see now why those dopey women in the vampire movies let themselves get bitten – it’s quite sexy really.”

  He laughed and handed me a plate of toast and a mug of hot coffee. He was back in his jeans and t-shirt and looked so normal I had to shake myself and concentrate.

  “Umm,” I began hesitantly through a mouthful of raspberry-jammed toast. “I know we didn’t do anything ... before ... with the towel...” This was difficult. “But if we had, if we did, would it have been safe,” I blurted it out quickly. Why did I blurt it out at all? I am such an idiot.

  Severn’s forehead wrinkled slightly as he tried to figure out what I was talking about. Then he realised. “Oh, safe? You mean would you get pregnant?”

  “Or a nasty disease. After all, you drink blood. Can vampires get A.I.D.S.?”

  Severn’s reply was quiet and serious.

  “It’s not something I’ve ever had to think about actually. But, no, you’d be quite safe in all directions. Technically I’m a dead man. Well, no, I’m an undead man. Undead are not fertile. It’s part of the change thing. I don’t understand it but I do know that that’s one of the things that changes. And because of the way our bodies use the blood we take in, we don’t catch any diseases that are carried in the blood and we can’t transmit them either. But don’t ask me to explain it – I leave all that sort of science up to Finn and the Reverend, I would rather build computers.”

  “Right,” I said. Then, because I couldn’t think of anything else remotely intelligent to say I took another bite of toast. The red, blood-coloured jam ran down my chin.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “So, explain something else,” I demanded as I washed our dishes. “I thought vampires fed on blood. How come you guys eat pizza and chocolate. Pizzas with garlic – isn’t that supposed to frighten you away?”

  “Yeah, it does. Ever smelled the breath of someone who’s eaten too much garlic? Words of wisdom spoken from experience – never drink the blood of someone who’s just eaten garlic. But, garlic on pizzas, not a problem.”

  “But, but but...” I flapped my hands in the air. “You guys break all the rules. Vampires sleep in coffins during the day, turn into bats at night, are allergic to garlic and crucifixes and frizzle into piles of soot in the sunlight. Don’t they?”

  “Not quite. We prefer it in the dark. It’s easier to hunt at night, less chance of being caught. And as we’ve got vastly enhanced sight and hearing, and speed for that matter, we can stay undetected under cover of darkness. And it follows – if we work at night, we sleep during the day. That’s why being theatre crew is a great job for us. It’s mostly night work and it’s always in the dark. Black clothes, dark theatres, invisible people. Vampire paradise. Oh, and crucifixes only frighten good Catholics and I was never one of those.”

  “Riiight,” I drawled, chewing mindlessly on my thumbnail as questions formed themselves in my brain and sorted themselves into a vaguely coherent order. “You said before that you were a dead man. Then you changed that to undead. So what’s the difference, which one are you and if you’re either dead or undead, how can Seth kill you so why are you hiding from him? And if your eyesight’s so good, why do you wear glasses?”

  “Woah!” Severn grinned. “Slow down! One thing at a time! Okay. Dead was a bad choice of word. I only said that to watch your reaction. Undead? Well, that’s the opposite of dead, isn’t it? Anyone who’s alive is undead. Yes, we are alive. Very much so. That’s the whole point. We stay that way. Forever. Or until something nasty happens and someone rams a wooden stake through us.”

  “Does that really work?”

  “Oh, yes. So does ripping us limb from limb or any other sort of gruesome physical death. We’re only human after all. We just don’t die from disease or age-related thing.”

  “Just nasty, icky, painful things?”

  “Indeed!”

  “And that’s what you’re afraid Seth will do to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “That dead guy in Dunedin forty years ago.”

  “Huh? I thought you said you didn’t kill him?”

  “And I don’t know how you even know about him.” He put up a hand to stop me interrupting. “I made a mistake. A serious one that Seth is never, ever, going to forgive me for. That guy was pretty weird. I had picked him up in a bar, as normal, and he was pretty drunk, but he must have had a really fast metabolism because he sobered up half way through, ah, supper. When we realised he had figured us out, Seth was all for killing him then but he was so obviously enjoying himself, I talked Seth into keeping him. He was quite happy to be a feeding snack, for the girls in particular, and I thought I could change him into one of us. It would have been the final part of the change for me and I think that’s why the girls ruined it. They’ll do whatever it takes to stop me flying. I
’m much more fun to them as a flightless fledgling.”

  “What?” I was lost.

  “They get it all wrong on the movies. You don’t become a vampire when a vampire bites you. You become a vampire when you drink the vampire’s blood. You have to bite him. That starts the process of turning you into a vampire. It also finishes the process for him. I am pretty sure that it’s not really a physical change – just a really well implanted hypnotic suggestion, but until I change my first person, until they drink my blood, I can’t fly. I absolutely cannot, no matter how hard I try, unfurl these stupid wings. So that was my big chance. We had found someone who actually wanted to be one of us, he was quite willing, but the girls killed him. Not because they didn’t like him, but because they really don’t want me to get up to their level.”

  “Why not? What’s the big deal?”

  “They are just bitches. There’s no real reason except that once I can fly there is no one at the bottom of the heap for them to kick around. They like having someone to pick on. Aiden stood up to them years ago so now it’s me. Like I said, they’re just bitches.”

  “Like Tasha.” I replied.

  “Yes, very like Tasha. Maybe that’s why I disliked her instantly.”

  “But if the girls killed him, the guy in Dunedin, why should you be in trouble for it?”

  “Because he had handed me his business card and asked me to write our address on it so he could go home and get some clean clothes then come back to us. And I did. That was my big crime. I wrote our address on his stupid card, which the police found in his pocket. With my fingerprints on it. So now the police have a permanent record of me, which will show up every time anything happens. Like now! Seth was furious. Said I had put the whole group at risk – it didn’t seem to matter that it was the girls who murdered the guy! I was the one who could be traced. And he said that if anything ever happened to put us at risk again, he would personally make sure I was no threat. He would kill me himself. And I believe him. So I’m hiding, Because I know full well that by now the police will have my fingerprints off the sound board and it won’t be long before the old records turn up.”

  “They already have.” I repeated what I had heard in the police station. Severn moaned.

  “Which means we are running out of time,” I continued. “Let’s get thinking. Obviously the only way to get the cops off your back is to figure out who really beheaded Tasha and convince the cops we’re right. Maybe that’ll work with Seth as well.”

  Severn looked dubious. “Maybe the first part will work,” he agreed reluctantly, “but Seth? I doubt it! Not to mention that the cops will want me for that body at New Brighton.”

  “Don’t be so bloody pessimistic!” I snapped. “Have you got any better ideas? So far your only good idea has been to hide in my room! Brilliant planning!”

  “Ok, okay. I bow to your superior planning capabilities. What do you suggest?”

  “Well, let’s start by making a list of all the things we know so far.” I grabbed Mum’s shopping list and pen from the bench. “So, what do we know? Timing. We know she was dead on Wednesday, before the show because she wasn’t there. No, before school, because she wasn’t at school.”

  “What about Tuesday – was she at school on Tuesday?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it had to be Tuesday night?”

  “Or Wednesday morning.”

  “Tuesday night’s more logical. There would be cleaners and front of house people there during the day.”

  “So why didn’t they find her?”

  “Because the curtain was down. They wouldn’t have gone up onto the stage.”

  “True. So we agree on Tuesday night.”

  “Right. What else do we know.” Severn sauntered to the bench and began making us more coffee.

  “We know she sneaked back into the theatre through the fire escape in the dressing room.”

  “But we don’t know why.” Severn handed me a mug.

  “Maybe we do,” I replied enigmatically. “Hang on a minute.” I dashed to my room and returned to dump a crumpled ball of paper on the table.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “It’s not a lot of help,” Severn said as I spread the paper out on the table. Mind you, I could have replied that he wasn’t a lot of help at that moment either as his body, closely held against mine, was definitely drawing my attention away from the note. I tried to ignore the soft breath on my ear as I replied, as businesslike as possible.

  “It proves she went there to meet someone.”

  “True, but it doesn’t tell us who.”

  “That would be too easy, but my bet is on Jason Broderick.”

  “Why?”

  “She wasn’t wearing any knickers. She didn’t go there to meet her grandmother.”

  Severn sniggered.

  “No knickers means it was a man,” I continued. “It also had to be someone she couldn’t meet at any normal place or time, so that rules out the local guys.”

  “Unless he was married,” Severn interjected.

  I shook my head. “Still rules out the locals. All the married ones are about a hundred and fifty years old.”

  “Gosh!” Severn replied with mock horror. “Even older than me.”

  “Yeah, but they look it,” I giggled. “Any way, you know what I mean. The only possible suspects are young (at least young-looking) and foreign. That narrows it down to you lot – Seth, Aiden, Reverend, yourself – and Jason Broderick. Off the top of my head I can rule out the Reverend – he’s too short for Tasha’s taste, and Aiden – because Tasha hadn’t even noticed him or she would have said something. We know she fancied you but I’m going to rule you out even though you are currently the police’s prime suspect, just because you said you didn’t do it, you haven’t axe-murdered me yet, and it is quite shocking enough that I’ve slept with a vampire, I don’t want to think I slept with a killer as well.”

  “That leaves Seth and Jason.” Severn had kept up.

  “What about Seth? Do you fancy him as the killer”

  “As A killer, yes. As THE killer, no. Not if it was Tuesday night. He has an alibi. We were all together. All night.”

  “So, like I said, we’re left with Jason. Elementary, as Sherlock Holmes would say.”

  Severn unwrapped himself from around me and sat down, peering at the note but carefully avoiding touching it. “Backstage, midnight,” he read aloud.

  I leaned on the back of his chair and picked the note up, turning it over on my hand to read the printing on the back.

  “It’s a piece off a rehearsal schedule, so it’s definitely someone in the cast,” I exclaimed. What I didn’t add was that there was something familiar about the two words that I couldn’t quite place.

  “How do we prove it?” Severn pondered.

  We sat, silently thinking.

  “I guess I should give the note to the police,” I said finally.

  “With your fingerprints all over it!” Severn’s tone was icy. “Good idea.”

  “Oops!” I felt suitably chastened for not thinking about that.

  “Anyway,” he continued, still dripping sarcasm, “How did you plan to explain how you got it? How did you get it?” he finished, his tone changing icy to intrigued.

  “It was in her bra.”

  He raised one eyebrow. I laughed.

  “It’s her favourite hiding place,” I explained. “That cleavage of hers was not all natural, it had a lot of help from underwiring and padding. All the bras in those red costumes have little pockets in them that hold the extra padding. At school Tasha would always stuff little things like money into her bra and I saw her stuff her hanky into her red costume several times. So I looked and I found! Simple!”

  “Amazing!” Severn shook his head in disbelief. “But you still can’t go to the police. They are going to want to know how you got into the theatre and you can hardly tell them you broke in with a master key, can you?”

  “Tomorrow,” I had an idea. “We
’ve got a show again tonight. I can pretend to find it tonight and give it to them tomorrow! My fingerprints won’t matter because I’ll do a big excited act and they’ll just think I’m stupid not to have thought about handling it carefully.”

  “That might just work,” Severn nodded. He stood up and pulled me to him. “Any ideas how to fill in this afternoon?”

  “Maybe,” I replied and tilted my head back to kiss him.

  It was well into the afternoon when the phone rang. I had almost finished tidying up all references to my illicit guest and the jangling ring made me jump with guilt. I grabbed for the receiver, half expecting to hear my mother’s voice say “I know what you’ve been doing,” and sank onto my bed in relief when I recognised Anita’s cheerful “Hi there”.

  “Hi yourself,” I hoped I didn’t sound as flushed as I felt.

  “Are you busy?” Anita asked. “It’s just that I think we should get together. I need your help. I collected all Tasha’s things from her locker to take over to her mother but I think we should go through them first because I think there is a lot of stuff she might not have wanted her mother to see. If you know what I mean.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. Tasha’s diary sprang to mind, as did her little black book with all the guys’ names and dates, and scores, beside them. Tasha’s mum thinks she was a sweet little goody girl. Yeah, Anita was right, maybe we should let her go on thinking that.

  “Ok, but it will have to be tomorrow,” I replied. “The show opens again tonight and I have heaps to do before then. How about I come to your place about eleven, then I can go straight to the theatre for the matinee.”

  “Ok, see you tomorrow.” Anita hung up.

  Well, that should be interesting. All Tasha’s secret love life. I hummed a tune from the show as I waltzed through to the kitchen. Maybe I would be a dutiful daughter and start preparing dinner. Besides, I was hungry!

  Severn looked up from the table where he sat reading the newspaper. With an automatic gesture, he readjusted his glasses, which made me remember.