by Karen Payton
“All work and no play, hmm?” Connor murmured.
“Wishing you had time to hunt tonight?” Charles asked idly.
“Something like that.” Connor laid a hand on Charles’ shoulder. “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” he said and moved away feeling more uneasy.
Even civilized vampires still enjoyed the thrill of the hunt, and the jaunt down to Exeter was a mere two hundred miles. It marked the closest boundary of the three hundred and fifty square miles of Dartmoor scrubland; the enclosure which was now home to the big cats moved out of the human zoos of the 90’s.
Connor visited the hunting grounds regularly, and the excitement that sang through him at the prospect of the journey was hard to beat.
Will the girl be wandering about when the hunting parties set off tonight? Connor’s walk slowed, becoming an aimless circle as anxiety took hold. With a harsh laugh, he faced his own stupidity. He had not prepared for a human examination. Putting on my mask and using revival sleep didn’t occur to me. Idiot. The cloying residue of her sweet smell coated his throat again and lay as a creamy pool in the pit of his stomach. He had no memory of food, but he felt full.
Her fierce stubbornness had winded him, and he shook his head in disbelief. Somehow, she survived out there fifteen years. The heart of a lion inside a sacrificial lamb. She’d almost be worth the risk, to keep her as a pet and get inside that head of hers.
Suddenly whipping around and peeling the white coat from his powerful shoulders, he decided it was not a crime to make sure she had gone.
The walls of the hospital corridors melted to a chalk-white blur as he gathered speed. With a flick of the wrist, he delivered the coat into the open mouth of a laundry basket without breaking stride. Taking a shortcut through a deserted loading bay, he pushed on the emergency exit and the inch-thick metal door flew open as though it was made of cardboard. He hit the sidewalk running and retraced his steps to the house he had taken her to only a few hours before, and then kept going. I just needed to make sure she was safe. He guessed she would lie, and she didn’t disappoint him. Tracking her to the real hideout was child’s play.
Stopping on the sidewalk outside the rundown Victorian house, Connor surveyed the shabby facade. A grim smile creased his cheeks, giving fleeting expression to the smooth skin. So, I’m risking becoming an immortally conscious brain, trapped inside a granite body. Forever. Nice. Humans were community cattle. If a vampire kept one hidden, or was foolish enough to kill one, he was guilty of threatening the food supply and sentenced to an eternity of locked-in syndrome.
As a doctor, Connor had seen vampires condemned to this state when, by their own stupidity, they neglected revival sleep. Escalated stress levels prevented feeding, allowing dehydration to progress to the point of no return. That ‘point’ is a call I’ve had to make more often than I would like. It’s definitely not a picnic.
His fingers twitched. Thinking of stress levels brought the texture of her smooth stomach to mind.
Okay, the house is in darkness, but what does that mean? Nothing, he decided as he ascended the wide stone stairway. At the front door, he turned the handle and kept turning until the metal inside twisted and gave way with a crack that rang out like a gunshot to his sensitive ear.
He passed through the house in a breeze of movement. There were eight rooms in all. No one is here. Stopping in the hallway of mirrors, where the reflection of his starkly white face floated in the gloom like a macabre magician’s illusion, he could not help but be intrigued. The foam padded rack of rubber flashlights and the collection of soft moccasin shoes positioned just inside the door proved the humans had some understanding of the dangers they faced.
The largest room on the ground floor revealed much more than Connor bargained for. A mosaic of cork tiles covered the longest wall, and an array of woolen-legged spiders crawled over a map which recorded the girl’s activities of the last decade. His lip curled in derision. Or rather, the activities of her group. Upon closer inspection, the head of each tack forming the body of each spider was color-coded, and indicated the location of resources the humans considered important, such as hardware stores, large food outlets of canned and dried goods, textile warehouses, and pharmaceutical chains.
The foraging map also recorded the stock reserves. A black pin declared a neighborhood as empty, a red pin warned the area carried a high risk, with a variety of other colors relaying other useful information.
Connor ran his fingertips over the yellowed pin-pricked parchment as though he could somehow absorb their thoughts. He cast a glance around at the meager furnishings hoping to see a pile of wooden stakes, or a few strings of garlic bulbs he could laugh at. So, not superstitious vampire hunters then. Survivors.
Lurking in the darkest corner, a black rectangle arrested his attention. Although the sweeping strokes of a blackboard rubber had wiped it clean, his preternatural sight read the erased words as though they had been engraved. “Rebekah, meet at Station Four, Uncle Harry”. Rebekah. As he digested this, chaotic thoughts wrestled for supremacy. Doing-the-right-thing is taking a beating, he thought dryly.
Occasionally, the discovery of an emaciated human straggler caused a ripple in the pond of vampire boredom. They were quickly introduced to life on the farm and just as quickly forgotten. But, this ‘Station Four’ is not one straggler. It suggested there were organized groups of free humans, a society, even. What the hell should I do with that? My status as a doctor makes this an easy choice, and setting a trap is a piece of cake. So, what am I still doing here?
He retraced his steps back along the hallway. She’s gone. I could leave it at that. He sighed in exasperation, and as her scent clawed at him, he found some release from frustration by giving free rein to his feeding instinct.
Venom flooded his mouth, his shoulder muscles knotted, and his gut twisted as his body prepared to release the tension which, if she was within his grasp, would have snapped his jaw closed as it locked onto her flesh and drenched him in her fragrance.
He pulled himself up short. It was not only his gut which tightened, and conflict raged again. With a wry smile, he considered staying to take rap-sleep. Okay, that control center needs refreshment. He glanced back along the passageway. The house provided the seclusion he needed. But definitely not here. Her pervasive smell was too distracting.
Relieved that he could now pretend she had never existed, he left the house. As he moved away, almost off the bottom step and onto the sidewalk outside, he heard it. A sigh. His muscles, with the tensile strength of steel, locked in an effortless comical mid-step posture.
Three seconds saw him back inside the house, standing with his ear cocked towards the wooden floorboards. Stupid. Of course she would hide. He could hear the whisper of the air moving through her lungs, and a full feeling weighed him down again as he tuned into a sluggish syrup-thick heartbeat, so slow it was a lullaby.
Within the space of one of those heartbeats, he was down inside the basement with the trap door back in place. He lowered himself down on to a wooden bench near her bed and watched her sleep. An empty bottle of beta-blockers gave him another moment of revelation. Ah, not losing my marbles then, suppressed physiology. A frown creased the porcelain perfection of his skin.
He studied her relaxed features. Flexing the bellows of his ribcage, he filled his lungs with the air inside the musty space and infused his nasal lining with the cloying scent her warm body percolated. His cheekbones bleached to bone-white as he prevented the sneer molded to his lip from baring his teeth.
His penetrating gaze clung to Rebekah’s face. Her lashes fluttered, and then, her eyes snapped open.
She shot out of the bed and made it to the bottom step before he surged to his feet and caught her in a vise-like embrace. His arms encircled her, holding her pinned to his chest as her heart shunted blood into her brain so fast Connor could smell the waves of adrenalin.
“Don’t struggle,” he muttered.
Holding her still, Connor crumbled the
handful of wood he had gouged from the bench into sawdust; instinct had kicked in, and he had forgotten to release his grip when he leapt after her. His lips brushed her hair as he spoke again, “Don’t move. I will hurt you.” He paused to gulp down the acrid concoction that had oozed into his mouth in expectation of a meal. “And I don’t want to,” he finished on a hoarse whisper.
The girl, Rebekah, he reminded himself, froze.
And Connor froze too. His braced arms formed a cage, and not pulling her back into him took all his willpower as visions of her sleep-flushed peach skin flashed like strobe lights inside his brain. Without moving, his body took action of its own - his aroused mind shot the signal to his aching groin and his vision clouded alarmingly to red.
Connor cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I need to sleep.” He was deliberately vague. I’ve already revealed too much; revival sleep was certainly news to her, and I need rap-sleep. Now. But first, I have to feed.
Suddenly, every fiber in his body compelled him to steal her heat. He needed to escape the lure of the warm river of blood flushing her skin before his control faltered.
He lowered his arms carefully, intending to step away, but, as Rebekah turned to look at him in alarm, his mind, all three centers of it, scattered. Slipping his fingertips into her hair, he framed her skull in his palm and leaned in to sip the salty, nervous perspiration from her top lip. She gasped, and her hot hands branded him as they settled on his chilled torso.
Connor was captivated by the shockwave of the shiver that knotted her stomach and stole the breath from her chest. As his cool tongue traced over Rebekah’s lips to taste her, he drowned in another rush of her adrenalin as she closed around him and pulled him in.
His hunger surged, but before her blood-red vapors could steal his sanity, he tore himself away, snarling in an effort to expel her scent.
In the next moment, the damp night air filled his lungs as he raced away, his tendons and sinews resonating with a low thrum while he found refuge in acceleration, ramping up his speed until the dark streets were a blur.
Like an animal going to ground, self-preservation drove him back to the familiar territory of his hospital, with the solution to his sudden surge of bloodlust there at his fingertips, in vials, and not confusing the hell out of him.
Slowing his pace to a sprint, Connor arrived in the loading bay as the human blood delivery was in progress. He narrowed his gaze, even though the blown pupils of his vampire night vision adjusted to the sudden glare of the fluorescent lighting in less than a nanosecond. Most buildings had no electricity supply anymore, however, the hospital did. Old habits die hard, and a darkened hospital will always seem wrong. The array of crimson glass vials winking in the light drew him along the corridor, and when he passed the loaded trolleys, he snagged two vials of blood and slipped them into his pocket.
He powered on around a corner and narrowly avoided colliding with a member of the vampire council. Like a cat whose territory had been invaded, the hackles prickled on Connor’s neck. He recoiled, stepping back a pace. His marble face adopted a carefully blank expression as he inclined his head in salute and apology. “Councilor Serge.”
Serge’s reptilian-yellow eyes glistened while he stared intently up at Connor’s impassive features. “Ah, Doctor Connor, who was that young vampire I saw you with earlier? She looked a little... slow.” He oozed oily concern. “I do hope you looked after her?”
Already uneasy, Connor’s guard went up. This guy is literally a bloodhound, and if he suspects she’s human, he will track her down. Even beta-blockers won’t help if the hunt is on. Connor ruefully admitted he should have known immediately. Her smell alone was enough, but he had been distracted by his own responses.
Connor shrugged. “Just a dehydrated youngling. It slowed her down some, and her escort had to leave, so I returned her safely to her cluster.” He forced a callous laugh. “Graveling has set in. She’ll not be much use for anything other than kitchen duty on the farm.” Looking past the councilor, he adopted a distracted doctor-on-a-mission air, and began to move away.
Serge’s voice stopped him. “Name?” At Connor’s sharp look, he said, “I assume she has a name? I’ll look out for her application at the farm.”
Connor’s hackles rose again as Serge’s smile pulled his dried skin tight over angular bones. A knot of tension almost turned Connor into the most stupid vampire on the planet. Attacking a councilor was a death sentence without trial.
Connor eased his shoulders and breathed. “Annabelle, her name is Annabelle.”
Serge inclined his head with a knowing look. “I’ll look out for her,” he said, before, turning on his heel, he moved away.
Connor watched until Serge was a black smudge in the distance. A low growl escaped Connor’s lips. The guy stinks. Wondering why the councilor never noticed the decaying blood clot aroma which clung to him, Connor did the breath-on-your-palm date ritual to check his own and was relieved to find it odor free. But why should it matter? Rebekah’s taste still lingering on his lips suddenly propelled him into action.
He considered every square inch of the hospital his home. Moving through his own terrain, Connor’s rap-sleep habits had an ingrained routine which took him the length of the building to the seclusion of his usual spot, examination room 2.
Taking a short cut, he pushed his way through the mortuary door, and the vampire attendant on duty looked up.
“Carry on, Isaac,” Connor said, dipping his head in greeting.
The vampire laid out on the metal bed of an open cadaver drawer caught his eye as she calmly clasped her hands, rested them on her stomach, and expelled her breath in a long sigh.
“I won’t be a moment,” the vampire said. “She’s nearly there.”
Connor watched closely as the attendant turned back to where the female vampire, lying motionless, had closed her eyes.
Isaac lifted an eyelid and, nodding his satisfaction, he muttered, “She’s asleep now.” Quickly, he fastened the restraining straps over her body and yanked them tight before gripping the drawer handle. The metal tray shuddered as her body erupted into convulsions, and her eyes snapped open.
Connor recognized the cavernous oil-black sheen of her blown pupils as classic signs of grave sleep. The blood rushed in to hydrate the brain center which housed a bloodthirsty psychopath, the urge to kill burned along her nerve endings.
Unperturbed by the violent rattling of metal, the attendant trundled the drawer in along its rails, pushed it home, and the rubber seal on the door frame muted her murderous rage. Isaac flipped the metal catch, turned the door marker over to display red, and faced Connor.
“It’s a busy night for grave sleep,” Connor said, indicating the high number of red ‘occupied’ tags jiggling on the cadaver drawer handles. The pressed-tin discs clattered against the locked brushed-steel doors. With the familiar shrieking sound of vampire nails clawing at the confines of their prisons punctuating their conversation, Connor asked, “Have you let the blood dispensary know you are full?”
“Yes, Doctor Connor.”
“Good, I don’t want to pronounce deaths we can avoid. It’s better if Charles redirects the overflow to the abattoir cold-stores, now.”
Some vampires still left the city limits to take grave sleep, and sought out old haunting grounds, literally. Elder vampires, hundreds of years old, laid claim to mausoleums, feeling it was more dignified.
Connor was not concerned where they sought seclusion, as long as they obeyed the law. Confinement for grave sleep was mandatory. The uncomfortable necessity of vampires clustering around their food source made conflict inevitable, and in some cases fatal. The upside is we now have someone to lock us away.
“I hear you had another one in today,” Isaac said.
“Female?” Connor met the vampire’s curious gaze. “I did, yes. I guess two in one day is unusual.”
“Will they die out altogether, do you think?”
“I hope not, but they are still the w
eaker species, pound per pound of muscle, that is. They will always come off worse if they go up against a male vampire. Though, there are no winners, not really,” said Connor. “Let’s face it, wounding a vampire will get you locked up in Storage Facility Eight for decades. No one wins.”
The vampire attendant shook his head. “Go back forty years, and I was so tired of killing, I kept a pet. It was before the pandemic, of course,” he said hastily, darting a nervous look at Connor.
Connor shrugged. “I’m not about to judge you. That was then.”
When food was plentiful, feeding from a human pet was thought of as worse than killing, in the eyes of some. It was an art form of a kind, only taking the amount of blood per day the healthy human body could replace. Now, it was frowned upon as being greedy. Vampires were expected to share.
“Anyhow, Doctor Connor, you must have seen a lot of changes in a hundred years. Losing all the female vampires will be just another nail in our coffin, in my book,” he said.
“Nothing stays the same. We are all fighting for survival in one way or another, not just females,” said Connor grimly. Realizing that Rebekah’s presence may have stirred an interest in other vampires inside the hospital was an uncomfortable thought. Stick to the story.
“I took her back to her cluster, so she’s safe.”
As the vampire attendant drew a breath to answer, the wall of cadaver doors rattled with renewed vigor.
With Rebekah’s fight for survival front and center in his mind again, Connor smoothly made his escape. “I have rounds. And I can see you are busy.” He tossed the words over his shoulder as he moved away, barely catching Isaac’s nod of agreement. The doors swung shut behind him and he headed towards the wing which, in the human era, had been the ‘out-patient department’.
When he arrived at the examination room, he didn’t miss a beat. Moving fast, he flipped the white disc secured to the door handle over to display disturb-at-your-peril red, disappeared inside, and closed the door with a decisive click.