Blood Hunt (Blue Blood Babies sequel!)

Chapter One

Chapter One

 

The sky was grey.  I mean, I know it’s always grey, but today it seemed worse.  Heavier, somehow.  Darker.  I stood at the window and stared out at the row of hearses.  The murky light reflecting off the glossy black made ghostly shadows ripple over the curves of their roofs.  I felt a hard lump lodge itself in my throat and it wouldn’t go away not matter how many times I swallowed.

“Alfie, it’s not your fault.”

I turned around and saw my little sister Anna hovering in the doorway, watching me watching them.  She smiled at me and I forced my lips to twist up at the corners so I could smile back.  Then a black thought hit me and I actually did smile.  It only took the end of the world for me and my sister to start being nice to each other.

But that really wasn’t funny so I went back to watching the funeral.  Another one. 

“Do you know who it is?”  Anna had approached with silent footsteps and stared alongside me as men and women started pouring out of a house diagonally across from ours.  Nobody lingered on the street to say any final farewells.  They hurried into cars, heads down, some even clapping their hands over their mouths.  Paranoid.

“No,” I looked away, looked down at Anna.  Her head was just level with my shoulders, her bouncy curls adding at least another inch.  “The old man, I think.”

We hardly knew any of the neighbours.  One of Mum’s rules when we’d moved here.  Fifteen years we’d lived in this street – almost as long as I’d been alive – and I still didn’t know the names of any of the people who lived in houses just a stone’s throw from ours.  Of course, that wasn’t going to change now.  If anyone round here found out who I was, there’d be hell to pay.

“It might have just been natural causes,” Anna offered.  “He was ancient.”

“Maybe,” I muttered. 

And maybe not.  Maybe he’d died from the same thing that was slowly killing off everyone else.  Maybe the cause of death on his certificate was the same as it had been for the other four funerals that had lined the pavement just outside our house with hearses this month.  Or was it five?  It was hard to keep count.

I checked my watch - an excuse to get away from Anna’s scrutinising stare.  It was only the 18th; April wasn’t even done yet.  How many more would be added to the tally before we rolled into May?

“Where’re Mum and Dad?” I asked.

Anna made a face.

“Mum’s upstairs crying-,” – the same place she’d been all week then – “and Dad’s gone to work.  I think he just wanted to get out of here,” she finished.

I didn’t blame him.  The atmosphere in our house was choking.  Had been ever since the letter arrived.  I sighed, wrapped my arms around my stomach.  The radiator beneath the window was pumping out heat, but I was still cold. 

“Lunch?” I said.  “Might as well have something decent if dinner’s going to be a disaster.”

Anna laughed as she followed me into the kitchen.  Mum’s cooking had not improved and with Dad hiding at the Electric Board, tonight’s meal was unlikely to be anything edible.

“Feels weird, being at home on a Tuesday,” Anna commented as she grabbed the cheese from the fridge.  I’d already shoved two big potatoes in the microwave where they were revolving slowly.

“Feels awesome,” I corrected her.  “Only good thing about this mess.”

I grinned over at her, then immediately felt bad.  The face Anna used to grin back with was pale to the point of being wan.  Her lips were white and there were light bluish circles under her eyes.