Chapter 13
I wandered alone in the direction Andre had hurried away. I was shivering in the cold night so decided to go into the pub that had thrown out George's new recruit. The bar was surprisingly full. A large group I presumed were students were dressed in Halloween costumes. The majority of which were meant to be puns or ironic outfits. They had all covered themselves in fake blood.
The rest of the regular demographic of the pub was visibly irritated by the presence of the students and the noise they made. Old men sitting by themselves shot dirty glares fuelled by years of bitterness and loneliness in response to the cheering and chanting of a group downing beers in a drinking game.
The two bouncers that had been beaten unconscious by George and his new recruit were slumped against the bar. A furious middle aged women, presumably their manager, was tending to the wounds on the face of the second one with cotton wool and disinfectant, whilst on the phone to what I presumed to be the police.
I pulled up a stool at the far end of the bar, away from the loud students. If the noise irritated the other customers, it would likely infuriate me, for I was far older and grumpier than any of the regulars.
A bartender, swamped with orders of difficult cocktails from the students and multiple rounds of shots, made eye contact with me so I ordered a pint of bitter.
A tall slim girl in her early twenties in a black coat and high heels with fake blood smeared around her mouth, noisily dragged a barstool across the hard floor and deposited it next to me.
"What are you meant to be?" she asked.
"Excuse me?" I replied, surprised that it was me she was addressing.
"Your costume... what is it?" she asked, cocking her head to one side and looking me up and down, examining me very closely.
"Erm... a contract killer", I said, waving my leather gloved hands in front of her.
"Ah! Cool. I'm a killer bee", she grinned proudly and opened her coat. She was wearing a very short yellow and black striped dress that fanned out at the bottom like a ballerina's with black tights. She had dripped fake blood down the front of her dress.
"Very nice", I replied dismissively and returned to my drink.
She watched me inquisitively for a moment.
"Were you kicked out of the party too?" she asked, leaning in very close. "The police turned up 'cos the fucking neighbours complained", she continued after I looked blankly back at her. She had quite a posh voice but slightly husky for a girl of her size.
"They confiscated all our blow as well", she complained and sighed sadly.
She looked bored. She turned her head back to look at her friends at the other end of the bar who were whooping and cheering about something juvenile. As she turned away I found myself transfixed by the pulsating of her carotid artery.
"What are you drinking?" I enquired quickly to regain her attention.
"I'll have whatever your having," she giggled flirtatiously.
"You wouldn't like this", I replied.
She took the pint of bitter out of my hands and took a swig. She screwed up her pretty face in disgust.
"Eww! Fuck that! I'll have a vodka and cranberry juice."
The very good bartender overhead her and began making one before I had even asked. I appreciated his efficiency and so told him to keep the change from a ten pound note I had peeled off the roll of bribe money from my inside jacket pocket.
The killer bee proceeded to complain about petty aspects her life as a recent university graduate. I appeared to be listening intently but was paying very little attention. Instead I was hypnotised by the rhythmic pulsating of the artery in her throat.
I ordered two more drinks, a large scotch for myself and another vodka and cranberry juice for her. I had initially been irritated by her cheery disposition and the tipsy confidence to approach a stranger, but I found myself increasingly attracted to her. She had quite short dark hair straight from an old photo of an activist in nineteen-sixties Paris, cut short and angular to the back of her neck but with a longer fringe that fell loosely down past her jaw.
I had tuned out her complaining but heard the occasional fragment about her parents divorcing, having nowhere to stay now after university, and how there are no jobs. She needed no encouragement to keep talking.
The more I looked at her, the hungrier I became. I wanted to consume her. I wanted to make her scream both from pleasure and from terror. I wanted to ravage her, to tear her to pieces. The droning of her voice became drowned out by the thumping of her heart. The thundering noise grew louder and louder until I could take it no more. It sounded like a man buried alive, frantically punching the inside of the coffin until his fists shattered and his knuckles were mangled and bloody, but he kept punching harder and more desperate.
"You feel lost", I suddenly interrupted. "You feel as though you have no purpose to your life because no one will offer you a job that you can build a future around."
"Exactly!" she exclaimed and beamed a pretty smile that looked even more beautiful to me smeared in the fake blood.
"What if I offered you a job?... gave your life purpose."
I had come into this bar to find a brute of a man. A thug with physical strength but without the mental capacity to question orders. Perhaps this bright young girl could have something to offer, or perhaps I was merely justifying my desires.
"You can give me a job?" squealed the killer bee in a girly manner that made me question my offer. "What is the pay like? What are the hours?" She questioned excitedly.
"The hours are all night, every night, and there is no pay." I replied flatly.
The girl began to laugh but it died in her throat when she saw that I was not joking.
She looked disappointed. "Why would anyone ever take that shitty job?"
"Because I offer you something better than money or holidays", I said with my best attempt at charm.
The girl appeared intrigued.
"Follow me and I'll show you", I continued, "and don't scream".
" I can't promise anything" she said with a smile.
As we left the bar by the back door and pushed our way through the smokers area, she took my hand in hers and interlaced our fingers.
"Tell me about your family", I instructed more firmly than I had intended.
"Well, I told you already that they divorced when I was little. My Dad got remarried a few years ago to a woman he already had three kids with that my Mum didn't previously know about. This summer she met some Canadian bloke and decided to get married too. I'm pretty sure she did it just to get even with my Dad in her head. She sold the house I grew up in and moved to Vancouver with my new step-dad". She told the story bitterly and spat the words 'step-dad' with angry sarcasm.
"Sounds like they wouldn't miss you if you disappeared", I said with thinly veiled hope.
"They wouldn't even fucking notice", replied the girl with a depressed chuckle.
I ticked a box in my mental notes.
"So what's this offer then", she asked impatiently, wrapping her coat tightly around herself to fend off the cold of the night.
"This job comes with rather unusual benefits. It is not easy, not by any stretch of the imagination. There is no pay, no time off, you live where you work, and above all else you must know your place and stick to it at all times".
"You're not really selling it", giggled the girl, who had not yet made up her mind whether I was serious or not.
"But what you get in return for your service to the Elders is eternal life", I said.
The girl, who had sneaked her vodka and cranberry drink out of the bar and was in the process of finishing it, laughed so hard that she snorted the red liquid out of her nose, which made her laugh even more.
I waited for a moment for her amusement to fade. I had lost patience with her, so I drew my large knife from its sheathe behind my back.
"Whoa! What the fuck!" screamed the girl.
"The only way to show you I'm serious, is to actually show you", I said.
I tossed the combat knife into the air and caught it by the blade, offering the handle to her.
"Stab me in the stomach", I ordered.
"No! You're crazy", gasped the girl in shock, stepping backwards.
She looked around at our surroundings. We had walked a while away from the bar and were now at the far end of an alleyway that fed into a car-park surrounded by a small brick wall. There was no one else around. The cheers and chants of her noisy friends playing their drinking games were lost far behind us.
"Either you stab me... or I shall stab you", I threatened, thrusting the black handle towards her. I unzipped my jacket with my other hand and ripped open my black shirt, exposing my chest. The girl panicked and grasped the handle of the knife, and thrust it forwards and into my abdomen. She screamed as she felt the blade slide in. She let go of the handle and turned to run away through the car park.
The killer bee tottered away on her high heels as fast as she could, constantly checking over her shoulder to make sure she was getting away. She was looking behind herself when she ran into me. She reacted with such fright that she fell backwards onto the tarmac of the car-park.
Her eyes were wide with horror and focussed on the bloody blade I held in my right hand. I noticed the direction of her gaze and so pointed with the tip of the blade towards the wound in my stomach. She watched open mouthed as my flesh knitted itself back together, closing the small stab wound. In less than a minute the cut had fully healed and only a faint white line remained on my pale flesh. The girl rose to her feet and approached me slowly. She lay her hands on my stomach and felt where the stab wound had been with her cold fingers.
In her heels she was not much shorter than me, but when she looked up at me she resembled a fragile child.
"I accept your job offer", she whispered softly, her hands still caressing my chest, tracing over the other small white lines that covered my skin.
I scooped her up into my arms and carried her a few steps to a car, where I lay her on the bonnet. I opened her coat and ripped a large hole in the tights on the inside of her right thigh. I looked at her green eyes once more. The terror had been replaced with wonder.
I bared my elongated and sharp teeth and bit down hard into the exposed skin on her thigh. I clenched my jaw and severed her femoral artery. She ran her fingers of both hands through my hair and yanked hard in response to the pain. The blood flowed uncontrollably fast like a breeched dam. It poured into my mouth but I could not drink it fast enough. The blood flowed over my lips and onto the hood of the car where it dripped with a tinny sound. The girl's blood was divinely delicious. It's warmth filled my whole body. The night was no longer freezing cold. My skin tingled as the warmth spread. I bathed in warmth the way I used to in the shining sun.
My thirst was quenched in a way my body had been longing for. A crucial part of me had been missing but now it was returned and I could function as a whole being. The salty, coppery, thick liquid rolled down my throat like hot treacle. I closed my eyes in bliss.
I felt the tug on my hair lessen as the girl's strength weaned and remembered the consequence of the first and only other time I had fed from a Human.
I returned sharply to reality and dragged myself away from the girl. Thick crimson blood still gushed from the vicious bite wound in her inner thigh. I staggered drunkenly backwards and laughed a great whooping laugh which echoed around the empty car park. The killer bee's delicate and deathly pale arms fell onto her lap in my absence. I rushed forwards, digging my nails into my wrist to draw blood and returned the favour, forcing my wound into her mouth. At first the girl mumbled weakly and tried in vain to turn her head away, but then with a sudden burst of strength her hands shot up and wrapped around my arm like boa constrictor. She slurped noisily in the same way that I must have been doing.
I waited for the feeling of weakness that usually signified the recruit I was turning has had enough, but in my current state I could feel no weakness, just overwhelming amounts of energy and vigour. I waited for probably too long, and then dragged my arm out of her clutches.
"Wo..ow", said the girl breathlessly. I was still looming over her on the hood of the car. She grasped the collar of my jacket in her hands and pulled me towards her to kiss me with her bloody lips. I placed my hands softly on each cheek and brushed a dark curl of her hair behind her left ear with my finger, before snapping her spine. Her head lulled backwards and thumped into the bonnet of the car.
I scooped her up, placed her on my shoulder and set off for where I had parked the van.
The girl weighed nothing. As I walked with her slumped over my back I hoped that she would prove a valuable recruit. I had almost reached the place where I had parked the van when a voice shot out from the darkness of a doorway.
"Put her down you pervert!", growled an angry man's voice.
After consuming the girl's blood, my vision was beyond perfect. It seemed to me as if it were daytime, but without the blinding glare. This is how I am meant to see.
I looked in the direction of the voice and saw a homeless man emerging from under a filthy duvet in the doorway.
"Put her down!" he repeated and balled his hands into fists.
The homeless man appeared to be in his mid forties. His hair was staring to recede and his stubble was grey. He wore a dirty green Parker coat with a fluffy hood which had once been expensive, but no shoes. The man ran bravely towards me and pulled his arm back to swing a desperate heroic punch.
"I admire your courage", I said calmly with a big smile on my face.
I was in a great mood. The homeless man threw his punch but I caught his wrist in the air with my free hand. I continued walking in the direction of the van, with the girl slung over my shoulder and the homeless man dragging behind me by his wrist.
Both George and Andre were leaning on the back door of the van waiting for me. They peered into the gloom to see what was causing such a loud approach. The homeless man I was dragging behind me like a reluctant child in a supermarket, was digging his bare heels into the pavement and screaming in pain at my grip on his wrist. He punched my arm repeatedly with his free hand to force me to let go, but I was so blissfully high on Human blood that I felt nothing.
"Why are you allowing him to cause such a racket?" asked George disapprovingly.
"I only just found him around the corner. Brave little bugger attacked me to save the killer bee", I replied with a happy grin.
"Killer bee?" said Andre.
George pushed him out of the way and opened both back doors of the van. I lay the girl inside next to Andre's friend Marcus, the man who had fought the bouncers, and another particularly large and strong looking man that George had turned and killed to complete the process.
The homeless man looked terrified upon seeing two other men, who were not at all disturbed by his trouble and obviously had no intention of helping him. He caught sight of the four bodies in the back of the van and screamed in terror, shouting for help. I released my grip on his wrist, which was now clearly broken, and he fell backwards.
"Please shut him up", moaned George.
I aimed a vicious kick at the chest of the screaming man and felt his rib cage give way. He moaned and sank defeated back down to the floor. I retrieved four plastic blood bags from my hold-all and a needle, to set about extracting his Human blood and feeding him mine. When I was finished I snapped his neck like the others and threw him into the back of the van to join them.
Andre was sitting in the driver's seat. I opened the door and dragged him out by his arm.
"Come on man, I've not driven yet", he said.
I shot him a dirty look and he slunk off to get in the back of the van with George and the bodies. I was filled with far too much energy to sit still in the back, and I did not want to be in close proximity to the other two in case they became suspicious of my great mood and that my hold-all contained four less blood bags than it should.