Language in the Blood

by Angela Lockwood

  Chapter 27: Hedwig

  The next day I spotted an Italian lorry making a late delivery to one of the shops in town. I managed to climb on board unseen and settled in for the journey south. I was hoping the driver was heading for the Newcastle crossing, as I planned to travel to Berlin and thought I’d be able to find another lorry heading in that direction on the ferry. But that’s where my luck ran out. We made another two stops along the way, picking up pallets of Scottish whisky, then there was a very long drive south that meant we must be heading for the Dover-Calais crossing.

  On board the ferry, I managed to swap to a German horse box with some sheep in it, things were starting to look up. The sheep were an unusual breed and probably on their way back from an agricultural show. I later looked them up online and found they were called Heidschnucke. They looked quite cute with their black faces and long, grey hair. If I ever had a farm again I’d certainly get a few. They were nervous and tried to get out of my reach, but eventually I had one of the fluffy jumpers pinned to the ground. It wasn’t as good as cow or dog and it kicked and struggled through most of the meal, but afterwards I was well fed and bursting with energy. Damn this was going to be a long and boring ride.

  As the sun began to come up, I covered myself with my coat and some straw as best I could. There was a large gap above the door and sunlight would soon be flooding in. Good for the wee beasties, but not for me.

  It was a very uncomfortable ride, but fortunately it was winter and when we reached our destination in the early evening it had just gone dark. So what now? I didn't want to be caught by farmhands with pitchforks so I decided that the only course of action would be to make a run for it as soon as the door opened. It must have been quite a sight, me covered in straw and sheep muck dashing out of the horse box surrounded by bleating startled sheep. I heard the farmhands calling after me, but I just kept running. When I stopped and looked around, I found that I was in a quiet rural area. The land was flat so I guessed I was somewhere in the north of Germany, but I had absolutely no idea where.

  I needed a bath and some clean clothes and preferably a car. Logistics were just so much easier when you could kill people – I could have gone up to one of the remote farmhouses, eaten the inhabitants and relaxed in a nice warm bath. There would probably have been a nice German car in the driveway and a feisty farm dog to have taken along for the journey too.

  I decided to do the decent thing and just steal a car. I could always find a hotel for the day and have a bath then. I spotted a nice BMW parked next to a farmhouse and to my delight the keys were still in the ignition. The lights in the farmhouse were out so I gathered the owners had gone to sleep trusting their neighbours and not suspecting any criminals were likely to be in their remote neighbourhood. I pushed the car down the drive to the road before I started the engine and drove off.

  I soon reached a motorway and managed to get my bearings; I was just south of Cologne and still about 570 kilometres from Berlin. Now, German motorways are something else: straight and wide and no speed limit so this late at night and with no traffic I was sure I would get to Berlin before daybreak. Come on baby, let’s see what you can do! I pushed down the accelerator and soon I was doing 185 kilometres per hour. It was exhilarating and probably the most fun you could have legally. I sped past Hanover and Braunschweig and after about four hours Berlin came into view. My maker had last been spotted in Berlin, but would he still be there and would I be able to find him? I parked the car and found a hotel for the day. Woo hoo! Free wifi and a bath.

  I couldn’t wait to go online and see what was going on. I tracked down the article about the woman in Berlin who had been murdered and was missing a few pints of blood. I also found the address of the apartment where she’d been killed. It wasn’t much to go on, but I had to start my search somewhere.

  I spent the night walking through the streets, starting at the apartment and working in a spiral pattern outwards. It was a quiet residential area and there weren’t many people about. Suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I turned round and saw a tall, blond man coming out of a building. He stopped and looked directly at me. What was I to say? What should I call him? Dad? Maker? We both stood, staring at each other, and then I started to move towards him.

  ‘Hello. I’m Cameron. I think you made me,’ I said looking at the taller, blond man. He looked about 23 and seemed shy and awkward.

  ‘I knew you would come for me eventually. I’m Carl-Heinz…’ He held my gaze and then he asked hesitantly, ‘Are you here to kill me?’

  ‘I’ve thought about it, but with you being older and able to sense me it might be difficult,’ I said, feeling very awkward too.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on me.

  ‘Can we just talk?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course. Do you want to come up to my apartment?’ he asked and I nodded. He led me into a grey building that must have been constructed sometime in the 1960s.

  So there he was: my maker – living in a one-bedroom apartment in residential Berlin. I looked around and already knew I had little in common with him. I wouldn’t have chosen the ghastly flowery wallpaper and pink velour furniture. It looked like an old lady’s apartment. I studied him: he was very tall with blond hair and blue eyes. He’d have made a great poster boy for the Nazis if they just could have captured him on camera. He was dressed in nondescript jeans and a sweatshirt and could have been any quiet university student studying something serious like maths or theology.

  ‘Tell me, why did you make me and then just abandon me? It’s always seemed so senseless. I mean, you must have had a reason to do it?’ I started off resolutely.

  ‘I wasn’t a free man then, and it took me a long time to get my freedom,’ he said looking sad and resigned. I imagined he was unhappy about me turning up. He hadn’t wanted me in his life before, so why would he want to see me now? But I wasn’t going to go away until I had some answers, so I leaned back in my chair, got comfortable and waited for him to speak. He took a deep breath and started telling me his story.

  Carl-Heinz had been born there in Berlin in 1875. He had, like me, a normal and happy childhood, but unlike me he’d been a very bright student and had won a bursary to study medicine at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, these days known as the Humboldt. There, he’d studied under Professor Lindtman, a specialist in haematology. Carl-Heinz had admired his professor and was delighted and honoured when he’d received an invitation to dine at his house. Lindtman had caught a vampire, a young woman – well really just a girl as she was only fifteen when she was made. Lindtman believed in vampires and had suspected there was one in his neighbourhood and not a very careful one at that. Hedwig had been so young when she was made that she really didn’t know how to live as a vampire, she just felt the hunger and attacked the first thing that came along, be it human or animal. Lindtman had hunted the streets at night looking for this immature vampire and had soon found her feeding on a stray dog in a back alley. She’d been dressed in rags and was filthy, more wild animal than human. When she saw him she had tried to run away, but he threw a fine net made of silver mesh over her and stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘I’m sorry, girl. I know it hurts, but I really don’t mean you any harm,’ he’d told her in a soft voice.

  She’d screamed and fought hard against the mesh that was burning into her skin.

  ‘Stop fighting and I will free you,’ he’d said, trying to calm her down.

  She didn’t hear him. She was like any trapped animal fighting for survival, but eventually she tired and slumped to the floor crying in frustration and defeat, and waiting to die.

  ‘Now, now. I will help you as long as you don’t attack me,’ Lindtman had told her as he peeled the net off her and hugged her to him. She’d tried to crawl away at first, but when he lifted her up she had put her arms around his neck and rested her badly burned face against his chest. He’d carried her to his home and stayed by her bedside all night, stroking her ha
ir. He’d told her not to worry and that he would take care of her.

  Hedwig had accepted her master gladly. She’d been out of her depth living on the street, and here was someone who was kind, supplied her with food and clean clothes and accepted her for what she was as long as she obeyed him. He’d also convinced her to let him experiment on her and she accepted the tests without question.

  Lindtman had developed a drug that made vampires easy to manipulate, but as Hedwig was already mostly in his control he’d needed another test subject. When Carl-Heinz came to dinner, he found that he himself was the main dish. The professor had watched as Hedwig drained the young student of his blood, and then he’d made her cut her own wrist so that Carl-Heinz could drink her blood and come to life again.

  All night he’d paced around the corpse, taking notes and photographs. At about two o’clock, Carl-Heinz had stirred and sat up. The professor gave him a shot of serum and the student became his professor’s next test subject and slave. He’d needed a vampire with more fight in him to see if the drug really worked.

  ‘And did it?’ I interrupted him.

  ‘It did on me.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone miss you? Wasn’t the professor a suspect in your disappearance,’ I asked him.

  ‘Lindtman was questioned and when he said I’d left the dinner alive they believed him. He was such an eminent man they never treated him as a suspect. He even visited my parents a few times to see how they were doing. On the surface he was a very caring and considerate man. I think he thought that what he was doing was necessary for the progress of science; sacrifices had to be made.’

  ‘It sounds like you’re still fond of the guy.’ I found it hard to believe how he could have been.

  ‘He was like a second father to Hedwig and me and, thinking back, he was much more humane than some of the other scientists I had the misfortune to encounter. But excuse me, Cameron, where are my manners? Have you eaten yet?’ Carl-Heinz asked.

  ‘Not recently. What does one eat here in Berlin’ I asked, excited.

  Carl-Heinz took two doctors’ coats out of a wardrobe and showed me a hospital ID badge.

  ‘I managed to get hold of this, so I’ve been visiting a few patients in hospital,’ he said without a hint of irony.

  ‘Lead the way!’ I said, enthusiastically. He gave me a strange look, I don’t think he’d expected such youthful exuberance. He too must have wondered why we were so different.

  The hospital was large so two more men in white coats didn’t attract attention. Carl-Heinz had been coming here for a few weeks and had come to know the wards. One or two of the nurses even gave him a friendly nod and an ‘Evening, Herr Doktor’. He did look like a medical student or young doctor. We visited a lady with Alzheimer’s who was restrained as she’d been trying to pull out her drip, but we made sure it went back in properly. Then we visited a coma patient who had so many holes in his arms that a few extra punctures wouldn’t show up. For dessert, we made a visit to the blood bank.

  ‘Thanks for dinner, Carl-Heinz,’ I said, as the blood rushed through my veins making me feel energetic.

  ‘Don’t mention it. It’s rare to share a meal with someone,’ he said, deadpan.

  We agreed to meet again the next night and I went back to my hotel and settled in for the day. I was hyper on human blood and wanted to share my day with someone so I decided to go online and post Hedwig’s story on one of the vampire forums. Soon the venom started to appear.

  Mangateeth: Stupidest thing I ever read, if this were true we would have vampire armies by now.

  I would have to ask Carl-Heinz about this – maybe we did...

  LadyVamp267: Stop posting all this nonsense, you obviously know nothing about vampires, they are all powerful and would never be captured by a mere human to be used in experiments. I am sure this Hedwig would have ripped his throat open.

  Then Truthseeker came on.

  TruthseekerNL: So you found your German vampire then?

  MacFangs: I think so.

  ThuthseekerNL: Is he in Berlin?

  MacFangs: I don’t know, I just managed to establish contact with someone.

  TruthseekerNL: Shame, I didn’t have much luck in Cannes finding my two Vamps, I would like to meet you and find this guy.

  MacFangs: Oh dear, I hope you had a nice holiday anyway.

  TruthseekerNL: It was ok, Cannes is very touristy and the beaches are too full. Why is this vampire talking to you?

  MacFangs: I think I know his original identity, I think he is a relative, a cousin of my great-grandfather.

  ThuthseekerNL: Wow that would be awesome, can you tell me his name?

  MacFangs: Not yet, he could be telling me a pack of lies.

  Then Ladyvamp267 butted in again.

  Ladyvamp: MacFangs He is always full of s**t, I wouldn’t go all the way to berlin for that c**t, F**kwit sometimes even pretends to be a vampire.

  MacFangs: You kiss your mother with that mouth Lady?

  Ladyvamp: F**k off you puny human wannabe.

  I decided to play a bit of poker, not wanting to give Truth any further clues and because slanging matches are only fun for a little while.