Language in the Blood

by Angela Lockwood

  Chapter 12: George the Elder

  It was about two weeks after Yvette’s murder that the French police came to see me on my yacht. George led them into my office below decks and offered them coffee. They asked me about Yvette and I confirmed that I had met her at various parties and that we had spoken to each other on a number of occasions. They didn’t ask me about the night of the murder, so I knew they were early on in their investigation and were not yet following any firm leads. When they’d left, George came into my office and sat down.

  ‘It was you that killed her, wasn’t it?’ he accused.

  ‘Yes George. I couldn’t see another way. She was young and fit and she knew me. You should have seen her jewellery collection, it was just too good,’ I explained.

  ‘There’s always another way, Cameron. I wish you’d talked to me first.’ He sounded very disappointed.

  ‘I try not to get you involved in my robberies. I know you don’t approve,’ I said.

  ‘But I am involved,’ he said, angrily.

  ‘Do you want to leave?’ I asked him quietly.

  ‘I don’t know Cameron. I do owe you and we’ve done some great things together, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the lifestyle, but you’ve gone too far this time!’

  My meeting with George had been no accident – it was the result of a promise I had made many years before. World War Two was a dangerous time for everyone, me included. Fucking Nazis! I swear they had a bitter taste. Like a lot of people, I’d believed the Germans would respect Dutch neutrality so when war loomed I’d made my way north. I’d heard stories about the Nazis and I knew if they invaded Paris it would be a very tricky time to be in the city. I thought it’d be better to live in the countryside again and I knew Holland had a large population of cows and other livestock.

  In August 1939, I arrived in Rotterdam, then the largest harbour in Europe. The outbreak of war in September was a disaster for the normally thriving port which relied on the free movement of ships, but I decided to stay anyway. I still believed Holland was the best place to be and I liked the town with its seedy nightlife that catered to the visiting sailors. The rural, cow-filled areas of Brabant to the south weren’t too far away.

  On the 10th of May, Germany invaded the Netherlands and Rotterdam was thrust into the thick of it. The German attack was unexpected and the city was ill-prepared. From my hiding place in the deep, damp and narrow cellar of an old house, I heard fierce fighting in the distance. I stayed there until I heard bombs rain down. The ground shook and I was thrown up and out into the air. The fires and the afternoon light burned my skin and I ran to find some cover. Many were killed and I was not proud of eating that night, but I was injured and had been stuck in a small, dank place for four days. I knew I would need strength to get out of the hell Rotterdam had become.

  As I made my way south I came across some soldiers’ bodies and decided to change into a Dutch uniform. A blood-stained uniform might be useful to get me out of a tricky situation and I was rather good at playing dead.

  I followed the front into Belgium where the Allies were trying to hold on to the port cities. The German army was advancing fast, totally wrong-footing the Allies with their attack from the north and I followed the advance into northern France. I was back in war-torn France where I had first learned to survive nearly 30 years earlier. I rapidly came to realise that the German invasion was not being halted and that Paris would probably fall into German hands before too long.

  Normandy seemed like a good place to ride out the storm; more livestock and fewer Nazis. I stayed there in relative calm and safety until the D-Day landings when my cowshed was suddenly caught up in the middle of a battle. It was bright daylight and I was terrified that the cows and I would be blown to high heavens with me then burning to a crisp out in the summer sunshine. However, miraculously, we all made it through and later that night calm returned to the countryside.

  I ventured out and it was that night that I found George the Elder. He had been mortally wounded by German machine-gun fire and was lying in a ditch, bleeding heavily and close to death. He was a British soldier and I estimated that he was about 25. He had short, dark hair and was a good-looking man. I could imagine him making a good wingman. The solitude of being in hiding for so long and keeping out of everyone’s way was starting to bother me and I had begun talking to myself and to the cows during my nightly snacks. I was desperate for some conversation and companionship so I drained George of his remaining blood and then brought him back with some drops of my own.

  Unlike my maker, I stayed with my victim and told him what I was and who he now was. I had always been annoyed with my maker. Why on earth had he created another vampire and then left the poor bastard to his own devices? Downright rude if you ask me!

  When I’d finished, George was very quiet and sat with his head in his hands for a long time.

  ‘So how do you die?’ he asked me.

  ‘I don’t know. Why would you though? I just brought you back!’ I said, alarmed.

  ‘Does the sunlight kill you?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so, and it hurts like hell.’

  ‘Do you have to drink blood?’ he asked, and I could see he was mortified by the prospect.

  ‘Again, it hurts like hell if you don’t. I’ve never gone more than 14 days without and frankly I wouldn’t want to!’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be human blood though?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Dog and cow are rather good too. Nazis not so much – they’re a bit like cod liver oil. Nasty flavour, but they’re meant to be very good for you,’ I quipped.

  George gave me a wry smile, but then he put his head in his hands again.

  Daylight was just an hour away so I took George to my hiding place at the farm. He refused to drink cow, saying he wasn’t quite believing it yet.

  George wanted to follow the front as he felt it was his duty to continue the war. He didn’t mind getting shot – I think he thrived on it – but he refused to use his fangs to kill, preferring a gun instead. After five days he was exhausted and in agony.

  ‘You have to feed, George,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Let’s just see what happens. It might get better, it might not all be true,’ he said, lying down and looking in great discomfort.

  But it didn’t get better, it got worse and eventually George passed out. I was left with a choice. It looked as though he could die; should I make him drink against his wishes? I had been on my own for a long time, I craved companionship almost as much as blood. I had been obsessed with trying to survive and stopping the pain in my stomach at whatever cost. George, from day one, had not wanted to cross that line. I could have left him there and made a new companion, but I wanted to convince him. I was sure he would eventually become like me and kill if the craving became too bad. Vampires are selfish, if I wanted a friend I would bloody well create and have one!

  As the cow blood trickled into his mouth, he slowly started to come back. Suddenly, he grabbed the cup and drank till the last drop, then he lay flat on his back and stared at the sky for a long time.

  It took George a while to get back to full strength, but when he did, he was still determined to follow the front. The fight had moved on and the Americans were advancing quickly, but while George wanted to go north-west and kick the Germans back over their border, I dreamed of Paris. But there was no stopping him; he was determined to go on fighting.

  We thought it best to dress in civilian clothes as it was confusing at times to know which army we were close to and I don’t think either side catching us would have been a good thing, though we could have pretended to be French resistance.

  George was feeding reluctantly on cow and slowly we started to bond. During the long daylight hours he would tell me about his wife, Gail, and boy, Thomas. He had grown up in London and hoped to get back to his job as an engineer after the war. Even though I was 49 at the time, George seemed way older: a job, a wife and a son – it was all very alien to
me.

  We ended up in the Ardennes in Belgium after a few months when the advance ground to a halt. It had become bitterly cold which made us both hungry and moody. George and I were working well as a guerrilla army, picking off Germans where we could and avoiding the Allies. One night it was so cold it had perhaps dulled our normally very sharp senses and we ended up with six German guns pointing at us. We raised our hands and let the Germans disarm us. Being armed in civilian clothes was sure to get us shot. I looked over at George and asked him if he was willing to do what was necessary. He slowly nodded his head, knowing he would finally have to cross the line.

  The German patrol didn’t expect to be so suddenly and so savagely attacked by two unarmed men. If you bite a man’s neck and let your fangs rip the flesh, the human is immediately immobilised as their reflex is to put their hands over the wound to stop the blood gushing out. It was very swift and very violent, but George knew instinctively what to do. After the massacre, we ran away through the dense forest and eventually collapsed panting in the snow. George’s face was covered with blood and he looked shell-shocked.

  We didn’t have time to gather our thoughts or discuss what had just happened, as all hell broke loose an instant later. The Ardennes offensive had started, as we later found out. The night sky lit up with blasts of exploding ammunition and we scrambled for cover. There had been a stalemate between the two armies for sometime while we were picking off a few German soldiers here and there when we could, so neither of us had expected this sudden onslaught.

  The cold and the anger made George hungry, vicious and reckless. He was upset about the sudden change in the way the war was going and that he had just made his first kills as a vampire. I often had to bury his shot-up body under the snow to protect it from the daylight, but he fed now so he healed quickly.

  At times it was tricky to stay hidden during the day and avoid stumbling across allied forces at night, but our superior hearing and excellent night vision gave us an advantage in figuring out if we were near friend or foe. One night, when we were eyeing up a German position, George turned to me and said, ‘Cameron, will you promise me something?’

  ‘Depends, George. I’m not like you,’ I said, counting the Germans who were just about a hundred meters away.

  ‘You owe me. You brought me back twice,’ he whispered.

  ‘Some people would say you owe me for doing that,’ I whispered back, assessing whether the position could be taken.

  ‘Are you happy, Cameron?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘I don’t think I can be, being what we are,’ said George, wiping snowflakes from his face.

  It was a very cold night and surrounded by all the misery and mayhem of war I saw his point.

  ‘This war won’t last for ever. We’ll go to Paris and live a life you can only dream of. I tell you George, you haven’t lived until you’ve had champagne-soaked floozy,’ I said gleefully.

  ‘You really should hear yourself sometimes, Cameron. Those are human beings you’re talking about.’

  ‘So are Germans, George, but you were happy enough to board the landing craft to go and kill them,’ I snapped back at him.

  ‘We’re not human anymore!’ George put his helmet on and got a grenade ready. We always picked up what we found and we had got to know the German weapons and ammunitions well by now.

  ‘Wait a while. I still haven’t sussed out how many there are,’ I warned, but he didn’t listen.

  He moved forward and threw the grenade at the German position. I sighed and got ready to follow George as he made his frenzied attack, to ensure he’d be safe for daybreak. He was reckless and I was tired of it.

  I wanted to head to Paris, which I’d heard had been liberated without much fighting from some local French people. That had been back in August and I was already upset to have missed the celebration parties, but I was sure that people would still be in a festive mood. I also thought that in the post-war chaos it would be easy to move about and establish a new identity.

  ‘Come to Paris with me George. I think you’ve done quite enough for the war effort already,’ I said to him the next night.

  ‘What would I do in Paris? I don’t speak French and I’m not ready to leave the boys yet,’ he said, as he cleaned a gun.

  ‘The boys would kill you in an instant if they knew what you were. Remember, the Germans are not your only enemy now! And one of the perks of this thing is that you do speak French now. Do you not remember understanding those Germans the other day?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes! How did that happen?’

  ‘You had their blood and you had mine and with it you acquired all our linguistic skills,’ I explained.

  ‘Will you do me that favour then, if I come with you to Paris?’ he asked again.

  ‘Depends what it is. I still feel you owe me more than I do you.’

  ‘Don’t you ever wonder what happened to your family, Cameron?’

  ‘Yes, but I know I could never go back and see them,’ I told him.

  ‘No, I couldn’t either, but you could, just to see if they were ok. I’m worried about my wife Gail and my boy Thomas. He was only two when I left.’

  ‘Crossing the Channel would be difficult,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll stay with you in Paris for a year, but you have to promise me you’ll look after my boy. You know, help him when you can.’

  ‘What, frighten the bejesus out of the school yard bully and any blokes that come sniffing round your Gail,’ I said jokingly.

  ‘Seriously, Cameron. Just make sure they’re all right,’ he begged.

  ‘Two years in Paris, doing life my way, and I’ll be that boy’s fairy godmother!’ I promised as I shook his hand.

  I was convinced that after two years of living the high life, George would get a taste for it and stay.