by Cat Thomson
"Wait, Katie. I'm coming."
Katie stopped and waited until Ed had caught up with her, then the two of them made their way down to the lower level together.
***
Ed didn't have an army, not unless fifty or so humans, two vampires and two dhampirs counted as one. And yet Helmut had just asked if he and his coven could join his army in the war against Nikolas. Ed didn't even think they could survive more than a few days in a physical onslaught against Nikolas's ever-expanding vampire network. Not only that, he and his crew also had to be constantly vigilant to ensure that their anti-vampire rhetoric and activities remained covert, for their survival was made all the more precarious by the perpetually watchful, chastising eye of the now infiltrated government, who were always on the look-out for so-called hate crime perpetrators.
"How many of you are there?" Ed asked Helmut.
"Including me, twenty nine."
"There's no way you could stay here," said Ed. "That would entail far too much risk - we humans would be almost outnumbered."
"We don't attack humans; we never have. We would never harm any of you and I will forbid my coveners from seeking out mates amongst your humans."
"And I'm supposed to believe that? If you don't attack humans, then how do you survive?" said Ed.
"We survive on mammals and there appear to be a multitude of rats down here for starters," said Helmut.
Ed felt disgust as his mind envisioned Helmut and his coveners gorging themselves on bloated rats.
"I'll need to discuss your proposal with the others," said Ed. "You can stay here today, but if the other humans aren't comfortable with the prospect of you and your coveners living here, then you won't be able to join us. I have to respect my crew's wishes; I don't want to make decisions about things as momentous as this without their input."
"Of course," said Helmut. "I understand; whatever you decide, I'll respect your decision."
***
Ed was returning to Collingwood when he felt a turbulent rush of air as he climbed the stairs. Helmut suddenly materialised in front of him. Ed began to slowly retreat backwards down the stairs, screaming. He had been foolishly complacent and he now stood exposed before this vampire, with no crucifix to wield in self-defence.
"I wish you no harm," said Helmut calmly, "I simply wanted to wish you a happy Christmas."
Ed and Helmut both heard the thudding of feet as humans began to run in the direction of where they had heard Ed scream. Tom was the first to arrive on the scene and he stood defiantly taunting Helmut with a crucifix. But Helmut remained where he was, transfixed by the crucifix rather than repelled.
Tom became increasingly agitated. "I knew there would come a time when this would happen," he said, "it's become immune to it."
"I have always been immune, as you like to put it, to crucifixes," said Helmut. "My coveners are also immune - they inherited this characteristic from me as their maker."
"So you're a dhampir then?" asked Tom.
"No, I'm a vampire."
"Then why are you immune?"
"I had an unusual beginning as a vampire. I never lost my soul."
***
Location: London
Thursday, 7 January 2027
Sunrise: 08:05
Sunset: 16:09
Night had only a short while to wait before it could begin to impregnate day with its dark tendrils when Katie left James sleeping in their prefab in Parry. She passed through the cross passage, entered Oldham sub-shelter and was soon tip-toeing her way carefully through Helmut's unconscious coveners, who were randomly sprawled on mattresses in the tunnel. Helmut was the only one of his coven for whom Ed's crew had built a prefab, and this was Katie's intended destination. When she reached it, she opened the door and peered into its dark interior. She saw that Helmut was alone, and crept inside.
Being in Helmut's sleeping chamber elicited a guilty frisson of desire within her. There was an air of mysteriousness about Helmut and she was fascinated by him. She wanted to delve into his psyche, to know him intimately, and she had entered his chamber while he was unconscious so that her eyes could rove freely over his beautiful form without distraction and without his knowledge.
Katie had intended to be gone from Helmut's sleeping chamber before sunset, but when Helmut's eyes first opened to the night, she was still there, sitting just beyond his mattress, watching him.
"Katie!" he said.
"I'm sorry, I'm intruding. I should go," she said, regretting her lack of self-restraint. "It was disrespectful of me to just walk into your chamber like I did."
She got up to leave.
"Stay!" said Helmut, and he took hold of her wrist as she passed him. "Sit down, Katie. Allow me the pleasure of your company."
Katie hesitantly sat down again, and she watched Helmut's lips move silently for the briefest of moments as he looked up at the crucifix hanging on the wall. It seemed to Katie that he was praying.
"You're so different from other vampires, even your own coveners in some ways. I mean, you're able to tolerate crucifixes," she said, gesturing towards the one on the wall.
"Ah, Katie. I'd have to recount the story to you of how I became a vampire in order for it all to make sense to you."
"Please, Helmut, I'd like to hear about the day you transformed," said Katie.
"The day!" said Helmut. "If only it had been that simple."
There was a long silence in the chamber. Helmut had become pensive, almost broodingly so. But then he focused the sapphire intensity of his eyes on Katie and he began to recount the story of his making to her.
"My family lived in Cologne, where my father was a priest," he said.
Katie was surprised. She had not expected him to divulge his past to her with so little persuasion.
"As children, we had heard many stories about vampires and when night fell, my father would bolt our door shut and forbid us from venturing out into the darkness.
"But one stifling summer night, when I was a young man, I felt a desperate need to stand outside, in the fresh air, beneath the stars. While my family slept, I crept barefoot to the door and unbolted it as quietly as I could. I was soon standing on the cobbled street, with the coolness of the stones beneath my feet and my face upturned towards the pale circle of the full moon. The street was quiet and still, and I was filled with a sense of immense peace. I began to wonder why it was that vampire stories were so plentiful in Cologne. Surely vampires were nothing more than a myth, concocted for our entertainment on long winter nights?
"At that moment, I was pushed to the ground and the distorted features of what could only have been a vampire loomed close to my face. The vampire's cold fingers covered my mouth to stifle my scream. I tried to fight it off me, but of course it was too powerful to overcome and its fangs pierced my neck. The vampire drank my blood and I was soon weak and near the point of death. Then, as I lay there on the street, the vampire bit its wrist and held it over my mouth. I could feel the warm droplets of the blood which now flowed through the vampire as they fell against my parched lips and I licked my lips to quench the thirst of my desiccated body. The heady taste of the vampire's blood stirred an unfamiliar desire deep within me and I saw that the twisted features of the vampire had softened and I became enraptured by her prettiness.
"'I have decided to take you as my mate,' the vampire said. 'You will suffer while you are reborn as a vampire, but your suffering will be short-lived. Do not fear.'
"I could feel my body growing stronger and stronger with each passing moment as the vampire's blood trickled into my mouth, but my suffering was far from short-lived. My father had been awakened when I had unbolted the door and had seen the vampire attack me, before going off in search of a cross. He now ran from our home, out into the street, and held a cross in front of the vampire. The vampire withdrew from me, never to return, while I was in the throes of transformation. My father realised he was too late to save me, but he wanted to make sure my soul was not damned. He hel
d his cross above me and I could feel its heat burning my skin in the midst of the confusion brought about by the changes happening to my body. My screaming soon attracted others who lived close by, and my mother and sisters, out onto the street and they stood watching, horrified, as I writhed and twisted on the ground.
"'Help me to bring him inside,' my father said to his wife and daughters, and they dragged my body into our cellar, where I lay in conscious agony for days and nights.
"When my father grew too tired to hold the cross above me, my mother and sisters would take turns to hold it. I felt an excruciating hunger throughout those awful days and nights, but the cross left me incapacitated. I couldn't escape from its glare, as much I wanted to.
"My father told me afterwards that he had expected me to die, in fact he had hoped that I would. But I didn't, and after a week of great suffering, the transformation that had been delayed by the presence of the cross finally overcame me, and I lay motionless in a corner of the cellar. Strangely, I no longer reacted to the presence of the cross in spite of the fact that I was now undoubtedly a vampire, and another unusual thing also happened to me. Whereas my hair had been dark as a human, it had now become snow-white. Such changes don't ordinarily happen when a human transforms - we vampires keep our original physical form and our external features simply become altered, accentuated, by a bewitching beauty."
Helmut stopped speaking and took hold of a strand of his luxurious, long hair and coiled it contemplatively between his fingers.
"But how do you know you still have a soul, Helmut?" Katie asked, shattering Helmut's reverie.
"I have no proof, but my father called for the bishop to see if he could help me in any way. He visited our home immediately and it was he who said I had not lost my soul; he claimed he could see the light of it in my eyes. That really put my father at ease.
"I remained down in the cellar, hidden from the curiosity of others. I hadn't eaten throughout all those excruciating days of transformation and, somehow, my natural bloodlust as a vampire had been tamed. I felt hunger, but my killer's instinct had been blunted and I felt no urge to prey on humans. It was the mice in the cellar that provided my first sustenance as a vampire, which is paradoxical, as vampires intuitively find the mere thought of the taste of rodent blood abhorrent.
"Not long after that, my father learnt of a plot to capture and burn me. He took me for safekeeping to the farm where I have lived ever since. That is, until we recently had to flee and we came to London."
Helmut got up suddenly.
"Katie, I must feed now," he said.
Helmut then abruptly left his sleeping chamber, shutting the door gently behind him, leaving the enthralled Katie where she had ended up, stretched out on his mattress alongside the imprint his body had made in it where he had been lying.
***
A vampire knows the habits and predilections of its mate as well as it knows its own, and it was for this reason that Nikolas was now waiting just off Soho's Old Compton Street, and had been doing so at the same hour for several nights now. The dark facades of the street's closed restaurants and night clubs had a derelict air about them, and the environs were silent and gloomy, but in the days when Soho had swarmed with energetic humans, it had been Charlotte's favourite hunting ground, and Nikolas knew that she would eventually be filled with a nostalgic yearning to return there, even if only to reminisce.
Army vehicles roamed up and down in nearby streets and Nikolas was alert, constantly scanning his surroundings for any sign of danger.
He suddenly became aware of a presence besides the human counter-insurgency force - Charlotte was close by. But if he knew that she was in the vicinity then she, too, would soon sense him, and speed was Charlotte's intrinsic power. He would need to act swiftly.
He shifted so that he could peer down Old Compton Street. Charlotte was there, standing in the doorway of a pub, but had already picked up that something was amiss. She took a step as she prepared to take flight, but as she did Nikolas came out of hiding and rushed towards her. Had Charlotte become aware of his presence a moment sooner, she could have escaped, but she now found herself pinned to the ground by Nikolas. As he held her captive he recognised a familiar scent, intermingled with hers.
"I detect a strong humanish scent on you, Charlotte. Please, enlighten me as to whose it is."
"Oh, Nikolas, my fate is clearly already sealed," said Charlotte. "We both know why you've been waiting here for me. It was really very stupid of me to return, knowing how a vampire's mind works. I'll never enlighten you as to whose scent it is. Just be done with it and destroy me now."
Nikolas smiled; it now dawned on him that the scent was connected to the clock radio camera he had found in his hotel suite.
"I will allow you to live, Charlotte, if you take me to this human. Is he now your lover, darling?"
Charlotte saw that Nikolas was examining her face intently and so she sealed her thoughts from his potent, prying mind to prevent him from reading them.
"I have missed you. I think it's time you came home, Charlotte."
With that, Nikolas dragged her up from the tarmac and took her to his coven on the Heath.
***
Location: London
Friday, 15 January 2027
Sunrise: 08:00
Sunset: 16:20
A white half-moon hung suspended on the canvas that was the darkening blue sky, with fragile wisps of cloud to its left and a toy-sized plane edging its way across the tableau in the right corner.
Soon night had completely replaced day, turning the sky black, and some of Nikolas's coveners, Michelle amongst them, emerged from their underground hideout on the Heath, with its ever increasing labyrinth of tunnels deep within the earth's innards.
Michelle, being naturally more stunning as a vampire than she had been as a human, had taken to the theatrical side of her vampire existence with relish, wearing far more extravagant, daring clothes than she ever had as a human, eager to expose her physical attributes to the humans she enticed.
When Michelle and her fellow coveners reached the streets of central London, they joined the chaotic throng of panic-stricken humans rushing to barricade themselves away before the prowling night-time threat arose, and eventually they entered one of the government shelters, where they dispersed amid the human crowd.
Michelle made her way between and around the swarming humans in the shelter with deliberate slowness, her senses fully engaged. Her objective was very specific and so she was euphoric when she unexpectedly found a human that met her requirements. She focused her eyes fixedly on the human, until he became acutely aware of her presence and turned to stare at her. Michelle approached him, and he was overcome with a heavy and inexplicable sinking feeling when her icy hand brushed against his. He wanted to run, to escape from the crammed and claustrophobic shelter, and yet a part of him knew that running would be futile. He was trapped.
"What is your name?" Michelle asked him.
His voice quavered as he said, "Brian."
Michelle's cold hand clasped his in a tight grip. "Sh, Brian, everything's going to be fine," she whispered.
Myriad emotions stirred up within Brian as she led him to the shelter's stairway, and his legs began to feel more leaden with each step he took as Michelle escorted him up the interminable steps that led to the street.
"Why are you leaving?" a soldier asked them when they reached the entrance.
"It's too crowded in here. And I know of a safe place close by," Michelle said.
"It's true, it's exceptionally crowded in here tonight," said the soldier, "and we can't force you to stay, especially at this early hour while the streets are still full of people. But please, be careful. How far is the place you're going to from here?"
"Oh, it's very close; only a hundred metres or so away," Michelle said, and the soldier stood aside to allow her and Brian to exit the shelter.
Michelle had been telling the truth when she had told the soldier that they d
idn't have far to go, for they very soon entered a building and took the elevator up to the fifth floor, where they entered an apartment. Michelle turned on a light.
"Take a seat, Brian," she said.
Brian sat down.
"Would you like something to drink? Wine perhaps?"
Brian nodded. It seemed to him that Michelle's conversation with him was somehow absurd, a mere charade beneath which sinister intentions lurked, but he was even so put at ease by her casual offer of something alcoholic to drink. Michelle disappeared into the kitchen and soon returned with one wine glass filled with red wine. She placed it on the table next to Brian and knelt before him on the carpeted floor. Brian took the glass in his trembling hand and drank its entire contents in one go. He leant back, rigid with apprehension.
Michelle leant forward and unzipped his trousers then slipped her hand inside them and began to caress his cock. Brian soon forgot his morbid fear of her as he became aroused into a state of heightened and outlandish ecstasy. He begged her to devour him, pleaded with her to let him have her. Michelle laughed and Brian's breath momentarily froze as he caught a glimpse of her unnatural, sharp canines. But his renewed anxiety quickly faded as he watched her rip off her dress to reveal her glorious body. She straddled him, expertly easing herself onto his cock.
As Michelle hovered atop Brian, her lithe hips plunging and receding with wave-like fluidity, a stately figure came out from the shadows of the doorway where he had been standing, unseen. It was Nikolas, and he lifted the dark blind that covered a window, to look out at the stars glistening in the clear sky. Before the advent of the state of emergency, light pollution in London had rendered the beauty of the night sky invisible, but with the city now almost completely cloaked in darkness after sunset, for the first time in aeons the starry expanse above the earth could be seen and enjoyed.