by Anne Billson
All those years, I'd kept my black leather jacket. It was distressed enough to be not really black any more, but it was black enough. I dug out a crumpled black dress which reeked of a perfume I'd stopped wearing ten years ago, and ironed out most of the deep-seated wrinkles and tacked up the hem. But I didn't have any black stockings. I had to go out to the shops and buy some, so while I was there I bought a tube of hair gel and one or two extra items of make-up. I also bought a bottle of the loudest scent I could find - something called Fleur de Paris - and splashed great quantities around while I was getting dressed. It was a vile chemical blend of apples and roses, but I wasn't wearing it to smell sweet. I was wearing it to blot out the aroma of me. For the same reason, I had stocked up with twice the usual number of packets of cigarettes. This was going to be the sort of occasion on which my health might depend on chain-smoking.
I didn't normally wear a great deal of make-up, but now I trowelled on the foundation until my face looked dry and flaky, dull and very lifeless, though it still didn't look nearly as bad as Lulu's had done. I carefully painted my mouth in a scarlet bow, and slicked my hair back from my face, and it was only then I began to believe that the plan I had outlined to Duncan might have a fighting chance of working.
I unwound my bandages. The blood had dried and stuck to the dressings, and pulling them off made my eyes water. The palms were still raw. I dabbed at them with TCP and pulled on a pair of black gloves.
I was reluctant to venture out without pockets full of garlic, but the smell was too distinctive, and this was one occasion on which I wouldn't want to stand out from the crowd. I half solved the problem by wrapping some cloves in several layers of kitchen foil and hiding the small package in my make-up case; at least it was there if I needed it. I selected a single rosary and enfolded it in tissue paper before placing it in an old cigar tin which I then buried right at the bottom of Lulu's lizard-trimmed bag. I had a vague notion that the vampire sense of smell was something like the X-ray machine at Heathrow - unable to penetrate metal.
I took one long last look at myself in the full-length mirror in my room. Dora Rosamond Vale, vampire. I thought I looked quite good. I wondered if I would be the same person when I came back. I wondered if I would ever come back at all.
Not liking the idea of being caught halfway across town when the sun went down, I set out early for Molasses Wharf. By the time I got there, it was late afternoon. I marched straight into Multiglom Tower and announced myself to the po-faced receptionist. She checked her watch. 'You're four hours early.'
'I know,' I said. 'But I don't mind waiting.'
She shook her head. 'You can't wait. There's nowhere to sit.'
'You needn't worry about me.'
'You can't wait here,' she said, this time more emphatically, and I saw her trying to catch the eye of one of the doormen.
'OK, OK,' I said, 'I'll come back later.'
There was only one place to go.
I crossed the road to the Bar Nouveau.
The oil paintings had been replaced by out-of-focus photographs of cats and dogs, but otherwise the Bar Nouveau was exactly the same, and once again I was its sole customer. When I ordered a Perrier, the barman did a double-take. I thought for a moment he had recognized me, then realized it was more likely he was just surprised to see someone up and about so early.
'How are you, Mr Renfield?' I asked. He squinted at me suspiciously. I nodded and smiled before taking a seat by the window and watching as Multiglom Tower reflected the gathering night, windows glinting pink and navy blue as they shifted into unfathomable dark. The barman sauntered over to the jukebox and fed it with a handful of coins. The first record was a load of scratchy white noise overlaid with a bored female voice droning on about suicide, but I cheered up as soon as the needle hit the second platter and Roxy Music started up. It was just like old times. I hummed along under my breath. 'All I want is the real thing. And a night that lasts for years.' Then Marc Bolan sang, 'Girl, I'm just a jeepster for your love,' but that was as good as it got. The rest was rinky-dink synthesizer stuff.
Might as well work up a fug in here, I thought, and lit the first of my cigarettes. At about six o'clock a man and a woman came out of the Multiglom Tower and made their way across the street. They were both dressed in black. I steeled myself for the big test. Would they take one look at me and know? Or would it be assumed I was one of them? I was clothed not so very differently from the woman. She was yawning as they came in, but her teeth seemed as regular as mine. The man delved into his pocket and slapped some money down on the bar and I heard him say, 'Two halves of Special.' As far as I could see, his teeth were normal too.
The barman muttered something. The man shook his head and was presented with some change and a couple of large Bloody Marys.
Other people drifted in, all of them dressed in black, with pasty faces. All the women and even some of the men were wearing an excessive amount of make-up, but other than that there was nothing unusual about them. Not one of them had an excess in the ivory department, and all could have mingled with a regular night-club crowd without attracting undue attention. One or two of them inhaled deeply, rolling the air around their olfactories and looking a little perplexed, as if they'd picked up the suggestion of an unaccounted-for scent, but no one looked twice at me. I was counting on their inexperience, on their not having learned to sniff the difference between bottled claret and haemoglobin on the hoof. They were all neophytes, I could tell, all new to this game and therefore easier to hoodwink. An old hand like Violet would never have fallen for it.
But they were all drinking 'Bloody Marys,' every last one of them. And I knew that if I wanted to blend in, I would have to drink one too. My glass of mineral water stuck out like a colourless beacon. I went up to the bar for another drink. I was just going to ask for a Bloody Mary, when I saw the barman looking curiously at me again, so I changed my mind and asked for a half of Special.
The barman stared straight at me and asked, 'Vintage?'
I held my ground and stared straight back. 'What have you got?'
He reeled them off in a bored monotone. 'Ruby Regular. Profondo Rosso. Premier Cruor. Take your pick.'
'Regular.'
'You go easy now,' he said. 'You don't want to drink it all at once.' And he winked at me.
If this was some kind of trap, I wasn't going to fall into it. I didn't even blink, just went on staring with what I trusted was a stony expression. I saw the label on the bottle as he poured it out. A rosy-cheeked infant in nappies beamed out from beneath a date-stamp which vouched that the contents were only six months old and guaranteed free from contamination. I wondered whether the six months referred to the liquid or to the age of the donor.
Back at my table, I gazed at the stuff for a long, long time. The red froth reminded me of Lulu lying in the bath with half her face missing. I tried to convince myself that what I had in front of me was vodka and tomato juice, and after about ten minutes' contemplation I took a tiny sip. The taste was quite unexpected. I had thought it was going to be vile, but it wasn't, not so long as I swallowed straight down without letting too much of it come into contact with the tip of my tongue. Just so long as I pretended it was tomato juice.
I began to relax. I was doing what they were doing. Was there any difference between us? And I could make a single half of Special last for ever. I smoked and, very occasionally, held my breath and sipped. Outside, the street had come alive and was swarming with people. They were just waking up, and it was breakfast time. Some headed uptown, others jumped into taxis and cars and roared off God knows where. Others wandered into the Bar Nouveau for some sustenance to set them up for the long night ahead. The place was hotting up - I had the feeling I would soon be forced to share my table. Sure enough, two men and a woman came up and asked if the seats were being saved. I said no, and they sat down. At first their proximity was unsettling, but once seated they barely glanced in my direction, concentrating on yattering amongst themselves.
I tried to keep aloof, but couldn't help eavesdropping. One of the men worked for the advertising department of a magazine. The woman was in publishing. I couldn't catch what the other man did because he had a bad stammer. Deja entendu. I risked another look. The advertising man was dressed all in black except for his red-framed spectacles, and his girlfriend had Rita Hayworth hair - she wished. Dexter, Josette, and friend, last seen saving a table down in the Foxhole.
I had a mild panic attack. Without thinking, I picked up my glass and gulped down a mouthful of Ruby Regular. As soon as the metallic taste hit the back of my throat, I started spluttering, and Dexter, Josette, and friend turned to look at me. I raised my glass at them and managed to cough, 'Libiamo, libiamo!' Obviously they didn't share Violet's taste in music, because they smiled indulgently and turned away, giving no sign of having recognized me. Of course I was safe; they hadn't observed me carefully enough to connect Duncan's subdued companion then with the white-faced red-lipped creature sitting next to them now.
As I listened to their talk about accounts and magazines and salaries and mortgages I couldn't help but be disappointed. Being undead didn't seem to make much difference - they were still talking about the same tired old topics. The only difference, as far as I could make out, was the way everyone kept referring to 'nips.'
'Maybe we could pop into Gnashers for a nip,' Dexter said, and I assumed he meant a small quantity of alcohol until Josette started bragging that she'd had three 'nips' the previous night. I didn't think three small quantities of alcohol was anything to get worked up about, but then they all swapped 'nip' stories, each trying to top the others with their nip-counts. I changed my mind and decided they weren't talking about alcohol but about Japanese people - it wasn't so wayward an assumption, what with Murasaki and everything - but at last I couldn't escape the conclusion I'd been trying to evade all along. 'Nip' was vampire slang for human.
When this information sank in, I felt a bit giddy. The bar was full of the sort of person I encountered every day in the course of my career; shallow, boring, trivial. It was a shock to realize they could no longer be dismissed as mentally defective but basically harmless. They were nothing like Violet, they didn't have her skills or her style, but the lack made them, if anything, even less human than she. It was disturbing to think just how easily they'd crossed the line. They still had a lot of practical things to learn, but they were taking the ethical shift in their stride. Perhaps this was the first time in history when neophytes had ever been able to embrace the circumstances of their radical new existence with a complete lack of moral scruple. They'd already been halfway there in life, and they weren't so very different now they were dead - they were still cramming into bars and talking too much. I had always despised such people, but now - thanks to one of nature's malicious little pranks - they would be looking on me as just another bloody nip.
Even so, it was hard to take them seriously until the student walked into the bar.
This was not a local boy. He had longish hair and wore shabby blue jeans and a hooded grey sweatshirt with GREENPEACE appliqued to the front, and he was carrying a zippered nylon holdall decorated with a recurring Snoopy motif. God knows what he was doing in Molasses Wharf. Perhaps he'd been trying to find the Tower of London and had boarded the wrong train. But he strolled into the bar, grinning cheerfully, and, in an accent that might have been Canadian, asked for a pint of Moosehead.
The whole place went quiet. Every head swivelled to stare at the newcomer. The barman leant over and whispered something, but the student shook his head and carried on grinning, waiting for his drink. The barman shrugged and picked up a glass and started to fill it from one of the taps.
The hush gave way to a softly swelling murmur. Dexter said, 'I might have known it, I thought I could smell a nip in the air,' and Josette nodded and asked, 'Who's going to have him?' and their friend said, 'I g-g-guess it's first c-c-come, first served,' and I could hear similar things being said all around us. Then one or two drinkers got up and, a little self-consciously, started to sidle up to the bar. The student didn't notice a thing until one of them, a tall woman with a mane of curly black hair, rested a hand on his shoulder. He looked at her and his grin vanished, to be replaced by a look of l-don't-believe-my-luck amazement.
'Hul-lo,' he said.
'Hi,' she purred back at him. Her fingers wound themselves around his hair, caressing the back of his neck, weaving a spell.
'And what's your name?' he asked. What did he think this was? A singles bar? I felt I should be warning him or running for help or something, but I didn't see how I could do it without giving myself away.
'You can call me Dolores,' she replied, continuing to stroke the back of his neck.
'Dolores by name, Dolores by nature, eh?' What a jerk, I thought, but I was still willing him to pick up his bag and get the hell out of there.
Dolores was joined by an angular man in a black polo-neck and leather jacket and dark glasses. He too began to stroke the student's neck. The student wasn't so keen on this unexpected new development. 'Hey, hang on...' And then he saw the others moving towards him. 'Hey, what is this? You weirdos or what? I'm not into…'
His voice tailed off as Dolores's lips parted in a brilliant smile and he saw her teeth. So did I. I wondered where she'd been hiding them. 'This is a joke, right?' he said. 'This has got to be a joke.'
At last it dawned on him that it wasn't a joke at all. I saw the barman duck down out of sight as though he expected a gang of Mafia hitmen to charge into the room at any second. The student had seen The Godfather too and he suddenly let out a frightened squawk and tried to worm free of Dolores's caress, but she raised her other hand and brought it down again in a flamboyant swooping gesture, like the dropping of a sword to signal the beginning of a cavalry charge, and the student's eyes snapped wide open in shock and disbelief. Her fingernails flashed scarlet. I thought this was a piece of theatre, just for show, until I saw the broad gout of crimson gushing in stops and starts from his ruptured throat.
There was a loud communal aaahhh - the sort of noise one associates with a packed cinema audience getting a glimpse of cute babies and animals - and then they were all over him, clustering around in a panic, jostling, trying to position their open mouths beneath the drinking fountain. The student sank beneath their onslaught without another word. I was thankful I couldn't see him any more. What I could see was not a pretty sight. Table-manners were shot to hell. Chairs went flying as the smell reached those who had been hanging back, trying to play it cool, and the urge became too strong to resist. Their teeth had suddenly sprouted as if by magic. They scrabbled and grunted, not caring what they drank from, so long as they drank. I saw a grey sweatshirt, shredded and stained, trampled on the floor. Briefly, I glimpsed a trainer with the foot still in it rolling out from beneath the scrum, but it was immediately snatched up. I saw one or two things which looked like giblets held up in the air and sucked dry.
I was watching, hypnotized by the spectacle, when it occurred to me that I was the only one left sitting down. It was a bad moment. I stood up and meandered, trying to make it look as though I was taking part, though the noises coming from the crowd were making me feel sick. My foot slid and I looked down and recoiled - I had skidded on a stray bloodclot. But then I thought better of it, and dipped down to smear some of it on my chin, trying to make it look as though, like everyone else, I'd had a couple of mouthfuls. No one was paying much attention, but it was better safe than sorry, better red than dead, especially now I'd seen them in full swing. This was a mob in heat; they confirmed all my worst fears about crowds. They made Violet look positively civilized.
It was over as suddenly as it had begun. One minute, mayhem. The next, customers were wiping their small, neat mouths and returning to their chairs and smoothing their hair down and chatting and smoking and retouching lip-gloss, raising halves of Special as though nothing had happened, though here and there one could still see a fine red stipple on their dead white fle
sh. The barman emerged with a dustpan and brush and began to shovel what was left on the floor into a black plastic bin-bag, but there wasn't an awful lot left to shovel. There were a few bones and what looked like scraps of desiccated parchment. I tried to work out how far a single student would have gone around the sixty or so people in the bar. Even though he'd been burly, it couldn't have been far. No-one could have got more than a sip. But the chat was more animated now, and a dozen people quickly knocked back their drinks and stalked off into the night as though questing for an entree to back up their bite-sized hors d'oeuvre. Juices were flowing.
There was an aching, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, and a bitter taste at the back of my throat all mixed up with the sour tang of Ruby Regular, and I began to wonder what the hell I was doing. I lit a cigarette with a hand which I willed to keep steady, and, as I did so, noticed to my annoyance that one of my gloves was wet. I hadn't intended to get quite so much of the student's blood on me. I was in the process of peeling the glove away from my hand when I heard Josette saying, 'That's funny. I can still smell him.' And then I saw Dexter peering in my direction, gazing at me with an interested but not entirely comprehending expression. I looked down at my hand and saw that the palm was gently but steadily weeping a thin mixture of blood and pus.
I closed it into a fist before Dexter could see.
This was hopeless. It was all going wrong. I'd been imagining it would be like my encounter with Fitch in Violet's garden, but the memory of the power I'd felt then must have turned my head. This was no longer a game. It was me on my own against sixty of them: not good odds.
I got up, straining to appear casual, but evaluating potential escape routes in the turmoil of my mind: (a) from my current position to the main exit was roughly thirty feet, with about five tables and ten standing customers in the way; (b) from my current position to the emergency exit was across a bare stretch of floor in full view of the dozens of customers who were standing at the bar, and after that would be required a great many complicated weaving manoeuvres through the tables nearest the door; (c) from my current position to the Ladies toilet was less than ten feet, and I had to pass only three people directly.