Blood Loss: A Vampire Story

by Andy Maslen

  “It’s not about the money, Fred. He was different. One-of-a-kind different. Once-in-a-generation different. An Einstein of gene theory. A Hawking. A Leonardo da-fucking-Vinci!”

  For her to lapse into such contemporary idiom indicates a severe loss of control. I told her we would find someone to replace him. A woman, perhaps. A Marie Curie. A Dorothy Hodgkin. A Rosalind Franklin. If a woman could get within a whisker of the structure of DNA, I said, I was sure she could find a way to help the lamia overcome their problems with sunlight.

  Finally, I was rewarded with a smile.

  “You Americans and your relentless optimism. So you think your can-do attitude will save us from the night?”

  “Why not?” I answered. “Just give me some time. The banquet in your honour takes place in ten days’ time: June 5th, to be precise. The whole New York family will be there. Every one of our children. I will announce our need for a replacement for David Harker then.”

  She seemed placated. At 1.00 a.m., I went to my home office to catch up on some work. Peta said she wanted a dessert. She left the house telling me not to wait up. The woman has a sense of humour, I’ll give her that.

  55

  Email from Peta Velds to Lucy Easterbrook, 27th May 2011

  To: LE

  From: PV

  Subject: Matters of business

  My Dearest Lucy,

  How are things in London? I am too far away to feel my children.

  On which subject...

  Morgan described to me a most entertaining method of feeding. His creativity extends beyond the accumulation of wealth, it seems. Let me describe my search for something fresh to round off my dinner with him on Friday.

  I walked through the city to Central Park. Manhattan is so much livelier than London. Food abounds, even in the small hours.

  I found myself in a small copse of trees, their yellow flowers grey in the moon light. And guess what. There, trysting beneath the canopy, I discovered two lovers. A real Romeo and Juliet of New York. Romeo tried to play the hero, all bluster and biceps. Over Juliet’s protestations, I picked him up bodily and despatched him without even bothering to feed. Her screams were tiresome, so I simply pinched her throat, enough to put her vocal cords beyond use.

  Following the method Frederick had described over dinner, I strung her up by her wrists from a high branch. A broken branch made a perfectly acceptable hook.

  Then I opened the posterior tibial artery in her right foot, just above the knob of the ankle bone.

  I drank her dry. While she looked down and watched.

  Oh, there are people on whom I should very much like to try this technique! Two of them, happily for me, have followed me to Manhattan.

  I speak of Ariane Van Helsing and Caroline Harker. Yes! They have followed me here. The impudence. The sheer arrogance! At any rate, I assume they are here for me.

  I learned of their presence here from one of Morgan’s children. She, Idra, is a sweet thing, though traumatised by witnessing a cutter attack here three nights ago.

  Well, they may arm themselves to the teeth with Arnold’s silly toys. I relish the chance to meet them again. This time, we will see who flees the scene and who stays to feed.

  I must go. Send me news of my family in London.

  Warm wishes,

  Peta

  56

  Caroline Harker’s Journal, 28th May 2011

  I felt so good last week, despatching those lamia before they could attack the children playing basketball. Whatever Ariane says about them, I love the guns. I love the feeling of power they give me. Yes, killing with the blades is the established method. And perhaps, for Ariane, that carries weight. But I am not part of her tradition. Shit! Not so long ago the only tradition I was part of was the British legal tradition. Now I find myself thousands of miles away from the Inns of Court, shooting down lamia in a rundown neighbourhood playground using bullets filled with garlic oil and salicylic acid.

  Frederick told us this morning that he has learned the lamia of Manhattan are planning a grand dinner in honour – honour! – of Peta Velds. It seems that even vampires need banqueting suites and a cousin of Frederick’s works for the largest catering firm in New York. The caterers have apparently been asked to provide a pre-dinner drinks service for two hundred people at a swish boutique hotel called Mallory’s; the client will be bringing in his own chefs and waiting staff for the banquet itself. The client is one Morgan Hearst. He is a hedge fund manager, so another member of the one percent. Just like Peta. He is also the head of the New York family, so another member of the O-One.

  This could be our way in. Frederick and Ariane were doubtful when I suggested an attack. But I am confident I can win them round. Think of it! Every single vampire in New York, gathered for whatever obscene feast they have planned. Plus Peta Velds. I put forward a case for a final confrontation that could wipe out two families at once. By the end of my presentation, I could see Frederick was beginning to take me seriously.

  The only problem is one of numbers. A team of eleven New York cutters, plus Ariane and me, versus two hundred lamia. We need to find a way to even up the odds in our favour. And I think I may have thought of something.

  58

  Caroline Harker’s Journal 1st June 2011

  Frederick and Ariane have agreed to the proposal I presented to them last evening. We sat up until gone two in the morning discussing practicalities. I seem to have a talent for paramilitary planning, according to Ariane. Frederick looked impressed as I sketched out my thoughts on a large whiteboard in their conference room on the ground floor.

  Essentially, my plan consists of wiping out the colony of lamia in a single move. To engage 200 of the things in one-on-one combat is simply not feasible. No. I decided we needed to treat this as a battle, not a hunt.

  I suggested using a bomb. One need only open a newspaper or read the BBC homepage nowadays to see evidence of the destructive power of so-called IEDs. “Well,” I said, “we shall have to improvise our own explosive device.”

  My idea is for a three-part bomb. At its core, some sort of explosive charge. A big one. Not so big it will destroy the venue, since we will be inside too. But big enough to take out – see how I have picked up the military jargon from Frederick? – the lamia.

  Now, we know they have extraordinary powers of cellular regeneration, so flesh wounds and even broken bones are apparently easily mended. I therefore proposed a second part to the bomb: a wrapping or external layer of shrapnel of some kind. After some discussion, we settled on nails. These have already been purchased. Here is the beautiful part. And yes, I realise how far I must have come if my idea of aesthetic perfection is a nail bomb.

  The third part of the bomb is some sort of outer sleeve, double-walled like a wine cooler. A container, anyway. We fill it with salcie usturoi. The charge detonates. The explosion drives the nails outwards at presumably supersonic speed. They smash through the sleeve, collecting on their hot surfaces and dispersing into an airborne mist the poison that we know exterminates the lamia on contact with the smallest flesh wound. I think it’s fair to say that sitting or standing in the path of an exploding fireball of three-inch nails will result in plenty of flesh wounds.

  “What if some of the creatures survive?” Ariane asked. I suspect more to test I had thought of all the angles than to try to drive a hole through my plan.

  “Even if one escapes the blast, they will be disorientated. I imagine a bomb makes quite a loud noise?” I asked, looking at Frederick, who smiled and nodded. “Then while they try to make sense of the carnage we have unleashed, we step in with whatever weapons we carry and send them to hell.”

  “Caroline,” Frederick said, when I had finished. “You missed your vocation. As an attorney, you may have been good, but let me tell you, as a cutter, you’re fucking amazing.”

  It’s funny, I used to hate bad language. I think it’s a hangover from my upbringing. Mummy couldn’t abide swearing. But hearing Frederick praising m
e in such robust terms gave me, I admit, a thrill of pleasure. For a moment I could forget David and revel in my newfound role. I spent today with Con McKay. He is the engineer/fixer here. Short, dark brown, almost black hair, pale blue eyes beneath long, almost girlish black lashes. Irish ancestry screaming out from every pore. Whatever the New York cutters need, he can find it, fake it or fabricate it. Our first stop was to be Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. The headquarters of the NYPD Emergency Services Unit. Con had made an appointment and drove us there in the cutters’ van, a nondescript grey transit with scuffed paintwork and battered sides.

  “It’s not what I was expecting,” I said, as he blipped the fob to unlock it in the parking garage beneath their building.

  “Why? What were you expecting? The Batmobile?”

  His tone was affronted and I wondered whether he was one of those men who refer to their cars as their “pride and joy”. He said it with a grin though, and I guessed that perhaps the distressed exterior was merely a form of camouflage. I played along.

  “Well,” I said. “I just imagined for people engaged in a centuries-old struggle with vampires, you might have something a little more, you know, purposeful.”

  He grinned. He’d twigged I was teasing him.

  He opened the rear doors and stepped back, throwing his arm wide with a courtly flourish.

  “Step inside, my lady,” he said.

  Stepping inside was hard; there was barely any room. Just a narrow passage between two wooden racks. Each rack was divided into compartments housing reels of electrical flex, lidded plastic tubs in various colours, tools, coils of rope, and what appeared to be climbing equipment: karabiners, helmets and the like. I looked up at the roof. It seemed too close to the top of my head given the van’s external dimensions. I rapped my knuckles against the bare metal. The roof thudded. I turned to look at Con, who as still smiling, if anything with the proud look of a new father.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Twin-walled all the way around. Four-mil steel plate. The gap’s packed with roofing insulation soaked in, guess what? Our verminous friends’ favourite-recipe hot sauce.”

  “What about up front?” I asked. “The glass isn’t steel-reinforced, surely?”

  “Nope. Bullet-proof. You could empty a Kalashnikov into it and anyone sitting inside could carry on sipping their latte or whatever. Step down without a scratch on them and send the fucker with the AK to meet their ancestors. Then you’ve got your run-flat tyres, extra armour over the battery, fuel tank, ECU and tail pipe. Shall I go on?” he finished with a smile.

  I could see he was enjoying himself and decided to indulge him. Although I had dropped the pretence at teasing him. I was genuinely fascinated by now.

  “Doesn’t all this extra weight make it a bit sluggish?” I asked.

  “It would if all we had was a stock Ford engine under the hood. But I’ve breathed on this baby a little. Now she’s got five hundred horses under there ready to let rip if I tell them.”

  I confess his macho enthusiasm for “car stuff” left me perplexed for a moment and I asked him to explain.

  “And when you say ‘breathed’, you mean...”

  “Oh, sorry Caroline. OK, so in laywoman’s terms, I boosted the power. Took out the original motor and dropped in a 6.8L V10–”

  “Sorry,” I said. “You’ve lost me again.”

  Perhaps suspecting that my enthusiasm was for what it could do rather than how it could do it, Con changed tack.

  “Let’s say you’re driving around late at night. And you come round a corner – it’s a bad neighbourhood. Suddenly there’re lamia every-fucking-where. This thing weighs a couple tons unmodified. Set up like I’ve got it, you can add another three-quarters of a ton, maybe more, depending on the payload. A couple of them jump on the roof but that’s OK, they just rip their claws off trying to get through the steel and if they do they hit the insulation and it’s red-shower time! So you put your foot down. Just mash that fucker to the floor. You’re doing sixty before you’ve breathed in and out all the way. If you’re feeling feisty, you just turn it around at the end of the street and come back for a second bite. Run the bastards down then get out and do them with your Glock. Or whatever you British cutters use. I heard Ariane saying how she still likes blades. That right?”

  “She’s old fashioned. They have their uses, but I’m a convert.”

  He nodded as if satisfied I wasn’t clinging to outmoded equipment like some olde worlde vampire hunter out of a Hammer horror.

  Having agreed between us that “Martha”, as he calls the van, was the hottest and possibly deadliest thing on four wheels in the whole of the five boroughs, we climbed in and set off for Brooklyn.

  This is my first time in New York, and I confess to being startled by its beauty and sheer grandeur. Con kept up a running commentary as we passed buildings and parks I was familiar with only from TV or films. The Chrysler Building is a favourite of mine: although I said I haven’t visited Manhattan before, or not in person, I have books at home that celebrate its architecture. And here we were, driving down Lexington Avenue right past it. I craned my neck to try to get a better view but all too soon we had moved on. Perhaps if we can bring this business to a satisfactory conclusion, I might stay on for a while. I could take a holiday! Ha! Do cutters get paid holiday? How about dental?

  We crossed the East River by way of the Brooklyn Bridge. More spectacular views of Manhattan’s downtown skyscrapers behind us and Brooklyn up ahead. The sky was a bright blue, streaked here and there with white trails from jets. As we crossed the midpoint from Manhattan to Brooklyn, Con pointed to my right. I looked down. A bright yellow water taxi was passing under the span. Its sides were striped with black and white chequering like its land-based cousins.

  We arrived at Floyd Bennett Field just after 11.00 a.m. It’s an old naval base, Con said, and now houses the ESU’s headquarters. Con showed the officer on duty at the gate a piece of ID, which clearly satisfied her because she nodded at him and opened the gates. We parked at the rear of a nondescript building at the southwestern edge of the base, just inside the security wire.

  Inside we passed through security and found ourselves escorted into the office of one Captain Jerome Stensgaard, his name being affixed to the door in one of those sliding aluminium plates. Or, what do they say over here, a-LOO-minum? I judged him to be in his midfifties. Trim, though running a paunch under his immaculately cut uniform jacket. Very short, silver hair, appraising blue eyes, clean-shaven cheeks disfigured on the right side by a jagged scar that stretched in a crescent from his ear to the corner of his mouth. Rising from his chair behind a cluttered desk, he didn’t look pleased to see us. His forehead was creased with, what? Worry? Displeasure? And his thin lips were clamped together into a slit.

  “Con,” he said, packing plenty of Eeyore-ish gloom into that single syllable.

  “Jerome.”

  They shook hands and Jerome beckoned us to sit.

  “What do you need?” Jerome asked Con. “And who’s your colleague?” He turned to me. “No offence, Ma’am, but we have what you might call strict protocols for dealing with Con and his, er, crew.”

  “That’s perfectly all right, Captain Stensgaard,” I said, in my best courtroom manner. “My name is Caroline Harker. I’m a barrister, or what you would call an attorney. I am working alongside Con and his colleagues.”

  “Long way from home, aren’t you?”

  I don’t think he was actively trying to be rude. It’s just that I sensed he found the whole business of dealing with cutters – and, therefore, their prey – deeply unpleasant.

  “I am,” I answered. “Although ‘home’ has become significantly less attractive to me in the last few months.”

  Con interjected.

  “Caroline lost someone to the lamia not too long ago. She’s helping us fight the good fight, you could say.”

  Jerome’s expression softened and he shrugged his broad shoulders.

&nbs
p; “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, and I felt that he meant it, despite its being a formula they teach at police colleges all over the world nowadays.

  “Yes, well, I’m dealing with it. Fighting those creatures helps. Tell me, if I may ask a question...”

  Jerome spread his hands and I noticed he was missing the top joint of his left index finger.

  “Fire away. Seeing as how you’re on the side of righteousness.”

  “How is it that the New York Police Department has outsourced the hunting of the lamia to what is essentially a family-owned business? Surely the city should be paying for it. After all, isn’t the ESU better resourced and equipped?”

  Jerome and Con exchanged a look. Amused. Resigned. World-weary. Amazing how a few millimetres of lift to the eyebrows and the faintest curl of the lips can signal so much. I began to hear Jerome’s answer even before he started speaking, so eloquent was their body language.

  “You’re right. We got specialist vehicles. We call them trucks. We got body armour. We got semi-automatic weapons. We got highly trained SWAT teams. We can talk jumpers off bridges, stick it to terrorists in a firefight, take down school shooters. But vampires? We get into action and you can bet within five minutes there’re media choppers overhead, citizen journalists getting in the way, every damn thing. You really want to see those abominations exploding in clouds of blood on Facebook or primetime TV? I tell you,” he said, clearly warming to his theme, “we went into action against those things, and it got on the Internet? Half the population of New York would get tooled up with crucifixes and sharpened stakes, and the other half would film the whole thing on their cell phones and put it all on YouTube.”

  “Crucifixes don’t work. Only –”

  “I know that!” he said, clearly exasperated with my pedantry. “But you think John Q. Public does?”