Blood Loss

by Andy Maslen

  I’m going home now. I left David there with strict instructions to keep all the doors and windows locked and not to open the door to anyone. It’s a bit like having a child in the house. But… oh, let’s not go there.

  43

  Hunt Book of Ariane Van Helsing, 4th January 2011

  I followed Caroline from our house; she ignored my advice about taking a cab and set out on foot. The hour was late, eleven or so. Although London has a well-earned reputation for 24-hour living – it has caught up with Manhattan, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Berlin – in Bloomsbury, there is less nightlife than the West End or Soho, just ten minutes’ walk westward. She was still dressed for court in high-heeled buckled shoes and these were to be the cause of her troubles with the daughters of Peta Velds.

  Caroline was heading for Euston Square tube station and she could have – should have – walked around the three sides of Bloomsbury Square, staying in the light from the street lamps all the way. Instead, inexplicably, she headed for the gate into the park and began to cross it diagonally. The park was unlit; bushes and trees swaying in the wind cast crazed shadows that seemed to grab at her legs as she hurried across the grass and flowerbeds to the gate on the far side.

  Then, from a deep pool of shadow to her left, three daughters of Peta Velds emerged in a group. Unseen by Caroline they spread out behind her, one to her left, one to her right and one dead centre, approaching stealthily. Their arms were outstretched, fingernails extended into talons and fangs already descended from the roofs of their mouths in position for a kill. From behind them a cat yowled and the sudden discordant noise caused Caroline to whirl round. In that moment she saw them and began to run. One thing I have noticed with the lamia: they never hurry. Perhaps they are always certain of their meal.

  Caroline reached the north gate of the park and grabbed for the wrought iron handle. The metal squawked in protest as she wrenched it open and headed across the road for the street that led to the tube station. This was a mistake and it placed her in even greater jeopardy than she had been in the park. The road was deserted, just a couple of parked taxis whose drivers were absent, perhaps drinking tea in an all-night café somewhere close by.

  The lamia continued their relentless pursuit, not dragging their feet as the popular imagination has it, but not sprinting either. As I said, they seem all too sure that blood will be theirs if only they stay on its trail long enough. Caroline turned to look over her shoulder and screamed. A plea for help that echoed and bounced off empty office buildings and loading bays for vacant commercial premises. The creatures were gaining on her; she was running out of breath and frequent trips and stumbles were slowing her down. I knew they would not attack in the open, even at this late hour. The lamia like to feed unseen; they would drive her into a side road or alley, and that is where I would take them. Then the unthinkable happened.

  As she ran across the road and reached the pavement on the far side, the heel of her left shoe jammed in a grating set into the road. Her ankle twisted and she screamed in pain as she fell to one side. The vampires twittered to each other, a hellish giggling that set my teeth on edge. Instead of speeding up, they slowed down, closing ranks until they were walking towards her three abreast in a knot of crooked claws and dripping fangs. Their breathing became audible, a panting sound as if in the throes of passion.

  She was wrestling with the shoe, holding her ankle with both hands and trying desperately to free either the shoe from the iron grating or her foot itself from the imprisoning leather straps. She screamed again, pleading with them to leave her be, but, of course, they paid her no heed. Instead, they fanned out around her, keeping to a radius of perhaps seven or eight feet. I had to wait – to pick my moment. I wanted to save her, not to seal her doom. One detached herself from the others and dropped to all fours. In that animal crouch, she began circling Caroline, hissing disgustingly and running her long red tongue over the tips of her fangs, which were dripping with the anticoagulant that would keep Caroline’s veins open until she was bled dry.

  Caroline was pleading now, yanking her ankle and swearing at the shoe that she would not let it kill her. The two others now dropped onto hands and feet as well, and the three daughters of Peta Velds began keening: a grating high-pitched song that I have heard before but which never fails to make my blood run cold. For it foretells death. It is the ancient song of the lamia.

  The lead lamia gathered itself: I could see the muscles of its thighs bunching as it prepared to pounce. Caroline uttered a wail of the purest terror as she saw a sight very few humans have ever lived to speak of. The lamia’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, revealing blood-suffused corneas of the deepest scarlet. As all three of them blindly leapt, I emerged from my hiding place and commanded them to stop using an old curse, “Makhni se’fal dushteri na kruv. Az izprati vi’obratno vada.”

  They turned away from Caroline, as I knew they would. Death threats in the old tongue have the power to arrest the lamia, even now.

  I levelled my crossbow at the lead lamia and murmured one of the old cutter prayers under my breath. “Hell calls you, filthy demon. Let the only blood you taste from this moment be your own.”

  I sighted on its heart and pulled the trigger. With a hiss, the willow-wood quarrel flashed across the road, catching the pinkish orange light from the streetlamp, and embedded itself in the creature’s chest. As it squealed in distress, clawing at the shaft of the quarrel, the salcie usturoi did its deadly work. In just a few seconds, its heart had taken a lethal dose of the poison and pumped it around the body. The lamia looked at me in shock and surprise and then was destroyed. Every blood cell expanded and ruptured; the tissue forming the arteries, veins and capillaries degraded as the cells swelled and burst; and the heart itself, infernal pump, spasmed as it tried to contain the additional pressure. Then, with a shiver and a plaintive scream, the lamia arched its back, arms outstretched, mouth wracked wide in a rictus of agony – and exploded. The blood sheeted from the dying body, covering its siblings – and Caroline, too – in a red caul. They hissed and began to advance on me, fingers curled into claws, mouths lolling wide as the slime dripped from the tips of their fangs and curdled with the saliva that ran from their lower jaws.

  With those terrible hissing sounds the lamia make when prevented from feeding, the two remaining creatures sprang, not at me, but sideways. Each found crevices and handholds on the walls of the old buildings facing each other across the street and began creeping higher, the talons on their hands and feet digging into the old brick. I kept them both in view even as they separated and began crawling horizontally along the walls towards me, Caroline forgotten. With relief, I noticed from the corner of my eye that she had finally wrenched her shoe free of the grating, minus the ridiculous heel, which tore off the sole with an audible pop.

  “Run, Caroline,” I called.

  But she disobeyed me. Instead, she kicked her other foot hard against the kerb, ripping the heel off that shoe as well, so she could move with greater ease. I was impressed with her practicality; they looked expensive. She reached down into the pool of blood and slime where her erstwhile attacker had disintegrated and picked up the crossbow bolt, wiping it on her thigh. Then she advanced on the lamia from behind, keeping a safe distance. Well, I remember thinking, perhaps I have misjudged this lawyer with her regard for the proper way of doing things.

  My attention was pulled rudely back to my more immediate challenge. I had been backing up carefully, keeping both remaining lamia in view to left and right. They were 12 feet off the ground now and I knew as I looked up at them that my neck was stretched and they could sense the blood flowing up and down the vessels inside. Then, silently, they dropped to the ground in a crouch, first one, then the other. The tendons and muscles in their limbs were clearly visible, almost straining in their desire to leap onto me and feed. But I have met their kind many times and so far it is I, Ariane Van Helsing, who still walks the Earth, and they who rot and scream from torments in the deepest p
its of hell.

  I had reloaded my crossbow by this time and was carrying it up at my right shoulder, sighting down the gleaming white shaft of the quarrel at the creatures, moving it through a 90 degree arc slowly and consistently, so neither could be sure it wouldn’t receive the deadly missile in its heart. But they knew something. One quarrel, two lamia. I would not have time to reload. To slow them, I reached down with my left hand and swept the skirt of my coat aside. Strapped to my side, inside its chased steel scabbard, was a short, curved sword, forged in Bohemia in the 13th Century and whetted many, many times since then by Van Helsings. My great-great-grandfather, Abraham, wielded it in his battles with the lamia. The hilt glowed dully in the sodium streetlight, promising destruction.

  “Come, lamia,” I said in the old tongue. “Come and let my blade feed on you. It is thirsty and has not drunk of your kind’s blood these three months.”

  They paused at this. The lamia have a healthy respect for cutters, as well they should. And my family has dealt with many thousands of the creatures since first we discovered their existence.

  One of the two facing me seemed more confident than its sister. With a shriek that echoed off the buildings looming over us it sprang at me. So be it. I let fly the quarrel and before it had buried itself in her chest, I had danced back a couple of paces, drawing my sword as I did so. The remaining creature screeched with pain and continued to advance on me, even as her sister splashed into nothingness beside her, her remains flowing away down a drain in the gutter. Her hips twitched from side to side as she prepared to spring, like a cat. Her red lips were drawn back from her gums and the long fangs dripped. But spring she did not. With a scream of purest hatred, Caroline Murray appeared behind her and, with a sweeping downwards blow, stabbed the crossbow bolt though the evil creature’s back and into its heart. Caroline staggered back and watched the lamia dissolve with a wail into a third mess of liquefaction and gore.

  I ran forward and caught her as she subsided to the pavement. It was an unfortunate place to sit, and her clothes were soon soaked in blood. I was not worried about the parasites; they need to be injected into an open wound in order to multiply. But Caroline would cut a rather conspicuous figure were we to rejoin the throng on the main road. I called Lily. I told her to bring the car round to the alley. We needed to get Caroline to safety.

  As we waited, a scrawny fox emerged from behind a rubbish container. I have noticed more and more of these animals around London’s streets. So many night creatures, all feeding, consuming, killing, dying – this city is nothing more than a forest built of concrete, steel and glass. There is as much death, or more, here than ever there was in the days when we hunted lamia in the Old Country, among the trees and scrub of the wooded uplands.

  The fox bent its head to the first pool of blood, then jerked it upwards again to look at us. Seeing we were not moving, it bent its head again, lapping at the blood, but keeping its head turned at an angle from the ground so it could keep us in its line of sight. Then it put its head up and opened its mouth. I saw sharp teeth and a long pink tongue. It pulled its mouth into a wide grimace that pulled its eyes into slits that showed white at their edges and called: a sound like a child in pain. Three of the racking cries, one after the other, rising in pitch. Then it stood still and looked towards the rubbish container. Three cubs emerged, tightly grouped, and tottered over to their mother. She yipped quietly and they seemed to take this as a signal. Hesitantly at first, then with greater enthusiasm, they drank at the edge of the pool of blood. Then all four animals scattered as bright white headlights illuminated the alley. It was Lily. Within seconds we had guided Caroline inside the car and were on the move, leaving the foxes to their evening meal.

  Once we were back inside our house, I sat Caroline at the kitchen table and unstrapped her shoes.

  “It’s a shame,” she said. “I really liked that pair.”

  I slung them into a corner where we had laid a sheet of thick plastic on the floor.

  “Can you stand, Caroline?” I asked her. “We need to get you out of these clothes.”

  She complied meekly, standing perfectly still, her hands dangling at her sides, as Lily and I removed the wet trousers, jacket and blouse. Lily wrapped her in a thick white towel and took her to the bathroom.

  I gathered the soaking clothes and ruined shoes and took them downstairs to the furnace. Lily joined me a few moments later, holding Caroline’s underwear. We burnt the lot. It doesn’t do to leave traces of the lamia near humankind. The foxes and other creatures of the night would do an adequate cleanup job on the street. The writers in the Bible who talked of the cleansing power of flames were not speaking metaphorically: lamia multigena are unable to survive in such temperatures and we can sever the bloodline of parasite and host alike.

  “What shall we do with her?” Lily asked.

  “For now, nothing. In the morning, we will talk to her and decide what needs to be done next. She’ll need new clothes, too. We must act fast though. I am sure Velds will be making plans to flee, taking David with her if she can.”

  44

  Text from Caroline Harker (posing as Lucinda Easterbrook) to Peta Velds, 5th January 2011

  Plan to kill Caroline. I catch her after work tomorrow. Do my transformation thing and force her to drive to Thames Barrier. I know a perfect spot – I filmed an ad there once. I’ll text you when we’re on way. You join us and finish her. Then we’re free of her. Lucy x

  45

  Hunt book of Ariane Van Helsing, 5th January 2011

  So, it is settled. We cut the London bloodline tomorrow evening. I have waited many years for this moment. Now it is here, I feel the old familiar trepidation. Mothers are always the hardest. But we will be well armed. Shimon and Jim have struck up an unlikely but firm friendship, based, I think, on a love of weaponry and, surprisingly, chess. I see them playing late into the night after the armouring is done.

  Jim referred mysteriously to “old mates” when I asked him where he had sourced the automatic pistols and ammunition he presented to me a few days ago. He wouldn’t be drawn. No matter, they are fine weapons. They are heavier than I expected, but with magazines holding 17 rounds each I feel sure we can deal with the target and all who come with her.

  He and Shimon have rigged up quite the ammunition factory in the basement. They have spent hour after hour drilling out the lead projectiles, filling the cavities with salcie usturoi and capping them with a small blob of molten lead. Altogether they have converted 102 rounds – enough for six full magazines.

  So, our weaponry stands as follows:

  six crossbows, each with 12 quarrels

  two pistols, each with 51 rounds

  two swords

  four daggers

  Against us we have the target and I do not know how many lamia. But our priority is the mother herself. With her gone, I suspect the others will flee and we may continue to eradicate them one by one as they disperse. Now I must sleep. Tomorrow, I will confront evil once more.

  46

  Caroline Harker’s journal, 7th January 2011

  Yesterday was supposed to be a triumph. Ariane’s victory over the target and her disgusting brood.

  As planned, I sent the text to the target at 8.00 p.m. Short. Terse. As if Lucy were on the move and didn’t want to waste words – or time – when she had a prisoner in the car.

  The drive to the Thames Barrier was interminable. London stops being an interesting place to drive through remarkably soon after one leaves the West End. Just mile after mile of boring semi-suburban streets.

  Lily accompanied me, in the seat where Lucy was supposed to be sitting. We had crossbows and daggers on the rear seat. Behind us, in that huge estate car they use, were Ariane, Shimon, David and Jim. “Tooled up” was how Jim put it. God knows what they’d have said if the police had pulled them over. Shimon and Jim with, what did he say they were, Glocks?, stuck in their waistbands, Ariane and Shimon also toting bloody great swords, and a bootful of
crossbows and spare magazines.

  As we negotiated the narrow lanes that led down to the Thames, I could tell Lily was getting really tense. Or maybe not tense, exactly, but revved up. For a kill, I suppose. The killing ground was a flat patch of ancient tarmac, cracked and fractured, with Buddleia growing up through it. The moon was out and the whole scene had an unreal look to it. Hard-edged shadows gave everything a flat, two-dimensional look. There was no sign of the target or her brood. That was deliberate. We’d timed it so they would be behind us.

  Lily is roughly Lucy’s height and build and she’d dressed, as I’d advised, in a flowing purple cape and a floppy-brimmed hat. No question she wasn’t Lucy up close, but to an approaching car, if she kept to the shadows, a passable ringer, at least for long enough for the others to spring the trap.

  She and I sat in my car and waited. My heart was thumping, and no amount of breathing exercises would calm the fluttery feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’d killed twice by that time, but knowing I’d be facing an enraged mother lamia and her brood filled me with dread. Hidden along one side of the tarmac, between old shipping containers, were the other four.

  Then I heard it. A car engine. A big, black Merc cruised into the centre of the killing ground and stopped. The driver cut the engine and the lights went out too.

  All four doors opened simultaneously and out stepped the target plus three lamia: the driver — a male — and two females from the back seats.

  Just as I was mentally congratulating Ariane and Jim for their clever plan to outwit and outnumber the target, something awful happened. There was this hideous gibbering and at least a dozen lamia dropped from the edge of a deserted warehouse on one edge of the space. I hadn’t really noticed it before because it was unlit. They skittered over to join the target and the other three. So now the odds were in her favour by sixteen to six.