by Preston, Ken
He slipped the mobile back in his pocket and wiped his sleeve across his forehead. All of a sudden he was sweating. It was the booze, and the stress.
Fucking Joe Coffin, why wouldn’t the bastard just die? The man had more lives than a fucking cat.
Wait a minute though. This could be the opportunity he had been waiting for. After his humiliation at the Punchline earlier, Gilligan needed to get revenge. To put things right, show them who was boss. Show Gosling and Coffin and Shaw and all the others that he didn’t take shit like that from no one.
If the robbery was happening tomorrow night that would be a perfect opportunity. Coffin, Gosling, the transvestite and that midget, the Stig and Shaw too, all of them would be there. All together in one spot, out in the middle of the countryside where no one was going to disturb them. And, if he timed it right, he could not only get those bastards out of his life but he could walk away with a pile of cash too.
Gilligan retrieved his mobile.
‘Hey,’ he said when they picked up. ‘What the hell are you playing at? That bastard Coffin is still alive.’
Gilligan listened.
‘Yeah well, you get another chance tomorrow night. But there’s going to be more people there, and they’ll all need taking out.’
Gilligan listened some more.
‘Fuck all that fancy, ceremonial sword shit. Just get some guys to take some guns along.’
He listened some more.
‘Yeah, I’ll get back to you with details of exactly where and when.’
Gilligan finished the call, slipped the phone away.
Forget the Mob and its debts, Gilligan was walking away with a ton of cash.
Before he did that he had to finish off his unfinished business with Mitch. Teach him a lesson he’d never forget, if he survived in the first place.
But it wasn’t just Mitch, was it? It was that fucking bitch, that stupid fucking bitch who thought she was some big shot investigative reporter. She was the one really needed teaching a lesson, needed putting in her place she did. Who the fuck did she think she was? Gilligan had killed her editor, he should do the same to her, too. Do her in before she went to the coppers. He could do both of them, her and Mitch. Do both of them, but she needed teaching a lesson first. She needed putting in her place, and Gilligan could do that. Yeah, he’d enjoy doing that.
Gilligan wiped at his mouth. His head was fogged up with too much drink, but he still knew what he had to do. And he could do it, as well, he could do it tonight, right now. He didn’t need to be sober for something like this because Gerry Gilligan was a sly fucker.
All he needed was the opportunity, and he wasn’t going to get that by getting well and truly shit-faced in the city.
Gilligan pulled himself up a little straighter, like he had made a decision.
Fucking soldier boy Mitch.
And that bitch, that slag.
She needed teaching a lesson.
* * *
Emma looked down at Louisa May, fast asleep in her cot. In sleep she looked so very peaceful, so beautiful. At moments like this Emma found it hard to believe still that she’d given birth to this child. That this tiny human had grown inside her.
Emma reached down and gently stroked her daughter’s soft cheek.
Thought about Nick, standing on the doorstep, accusing Mitch of having hit her. Thought about Nick lying on the gravel after Mitch had punched him.
Emma took a deep, slightly ragged breath. If she thought about it too much, she might start crying. But not for herself, perhaps, more for Louisa May. It seemed to Emma that Lou should have a father in the house. No, not a father but her father.
Nick Archer.
How would Emma’s daughter react when she was older and found out that it had been Emma who had finished the relationship with Nick? Would it matter to her? Would it be something she could dismiss? Or would she blame her mother for not having a father around as she was growing up?
The guilt tugged at Emma.
What had she been thinking when she disrobed in front of Nick? Had it just been about showing him, giving him proof, that there were no bruises? That Mitch hadn’t been hitting Emma?
Or had it been more?
Look at me. This is what you had once, but now you’ve lost it.
Emma took her hand from Louisa May’s cheek, straightened up. She shouldn’t have done that with Nick. It had been wrong and mean-spirited.
Emma heard Mitch moving around in the bedroom next door. He was stopping the night again, but Emma wasn’t sure if she wanted him to anymore. Everything had moved so fast between them after he had rescued her at Angellicit. Her counsellor had warned her against it. Told her that her emotions for Mitch were too strongly tied in to how she felt about him in his role as her rescuer.
Knight in Shining Armour Syndrome, the counsellor called it. That the emotion went both ways, that there was a bond between them now, but that didn’t mean it was a good thing.
Emma knew she was right, suspected that Mitch had had the same advice too, but neither of them spoke about it. Getting together, becoming intimate, just seemed the most natural thing to do after what they had been through.
How could anybody else hope to understand it?
Maybe though that didn’t matter as much as she had thought it did. They needed more than a shared trauma to grow closer together.
A police siren in the distance cut through the silence of the house. Emma wondered what had happened. Whether it was a regular police call or if it had something to do with vampires.
Emma could hardly believe the nightmare was starting again. How could it just keep happening over and over? If only they could be exterminated once and for all.
Emma heard Mitch swear at something.
He was still tense, wound up over the confrontation earlier. Every little thing was winding him up. Emma barely knew what to say around him. After the argument they’d had outside the two of them had barely spoken a word.
Nick hadn’t deserved any of this. The taunting, the beating.
It was all just so fucked up.
Tomorrow, yes tomorrow Emma would call Nick, apologise. And tell him, tell him that she had kicked Mitch out, that he was no longer living in Nick’s house. Not that she was going to invite Nick back in to her life. Might be a good idea to just stay away from men for a while.
Emma quietly stepped out of Louisa May’s bedroom, closed the door softly behind her.
Mitch was standing in the doorway of their bedroom.
Looking at Emma.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
‘Everything,’ he said.
They continued to look at each other in silence, and it seemed to Emma that Mitch understood, without her having had to say a word.
They both jumped at the sudden pounding on the front door.
‘Who the fuck is that?’ Emma said.
‘Let me go check it out,’ Mitch said.
Emma touched him on the arm as he passed her on the landing. ‘Be careful.’
‘Yeah.’
Mitch ran down the stairs. Emma stayed at the top where she could see the front door.
Mitch paused at the door and bent down to peer through the spy hole.
‘Who is it?’ Emma said.
‘Can’t see anyone,’ Mitch said.
‘That’s good, right?’
Mitch stood up, looked at Emma at the top of the stairs. ‘No, it’s very bad. Whoever is out there doesn’t want to be seen.’
They both flinched at the sound of shattering glass from the rear of the house.
‘Don’t open that door!’ Mitch said as he ran towards the kitchen and out of Emma’s view.
Emma turned back to the baby room and opened the door a crack. Louisa May was still sleeping soundly. Emma shut the door again.
Louisa May was safe up here.
Emma took the stairs two at a time as she bounded down them.
She put her face to the door, her eye to the peephole. No one
there, just like Mitch had said. But then she saw a dark shape scurrying past, and she recoiled as it pounded on the door.
‘Shit!’
Her heart was pounding.
More glass shattering, another window gone.
Where was Mitch?
Emma ran through to the back of the house, into the kitchen. She shivered in the cool breeze flowing through the house. The patio door was wide open.
‘Mitch?’
She slowly approached the open door. Stepped outside.
The floodlight should have come on, triggered by her movement, but the garden stayed shrouded in darkness, apart from the pool of light cast from the kitchen. As she made that realisation her feet crunched over broken glass on the patio. She looked at the glass and then up and saw the broken light hanging from the wall.
‘Mitch?’ she whispered.
Silence, apart from the soft whispering of the trees at the bottom of the garden, the movement of their branches in the breeze just discernible in the dark.
This was stupid, she needed to get back inside and call the police.
Emma turned back to the house and screamed as a figure lunged at her from the darkness. A pair of hands reached out and grabbed onto her, fingers snagging at her clothing. She tried to pull away but her attacker was on top her, his weight dragging her down.
Losing her balance, Emma staggered backwards a few steps and then toppled off the edge of the patio and onto the damp, cold grass. The man had fallen on top of her, his weight pinning her to the ground. Emma kicked and screamed and managed to push him off.
He rolled over onto the ground and lay still.
Emma pushed herself up and onto her knees.
Looked at the prone form lying next to her.
‘Mitch?’ she said.
His head had been bashed in, the side of his skull a mangled, scarlet mass of matted hair.
Somewhere in the distance another siren began to wail.
blue sky
Steffanie eyed her companions uneasily. The girl, Julie Carter, she remembered seeing on the news when she disappeared. That had been Abel Mortenson, the vampire who had originally turned Steffanie and Michael. And the black woman, the maid from the Travelodge on the motorway where she had been hiding with Merek Guttman.
But the others she didn’t recognise. Victims of Abel’s probably.
Chitrita had been roaming the city throughout the night, finding these lost vampires and drawing them to her, bringing them back here. For the most part they were a sorry-looking group. Emaciated and dirty. They needed fresh blood. They needed to learn how to hunt.
And Chitrita was about to give them their first lesson.
Michael kept close by Steffanie’s side. He wasn’t at all sure about these new members to their ‘family’. He watched them constantly, and if one of them happened to shuffle too close, he growled at them. The only one he allowed near was the girl, Julie.
She seemed to have a calming effect on him.
The room above the bar was crowded now, with all these vampires. It was obvious they couldn’t stay here much longer. With so many of them they would be discovered soon.
And besides, the renovation downstairs was almost complete, and the new owners had been upstairs earlier in the day, before Chitrita had begun gathering the other vampires, talking about their plans to extend up here.
Steffanie and Michael had hidden with Chitrita and listened furtively as they talked. Steffanie had been all for opening up their throats, but Chitrita had urged caution.
It seemed she had another plan in mind.
But what that plan was she was keeping quiet about.
As soon as the sun had set, Chitrita had left to search out the stray vampires and bring them back. Steffanie and Michael had watched from the window as Chitrita led her band of shuffling, abject looking followers to their hide out.
But she hadn’t brought them inside.
Instead she had called Steffanie and Michael down and out onto the street. It was gone three in the morning and the city was finally, fully asleep. The vampires walked, shuffled and ran up Broad Street, away from the city centre, with Chitrita leading. Bats flitted overhead, their dark shapes almost invisible against the night sky.
They walked up the centre of the road. A solitary car appeared coming towards them, its headlights growing larger and brighter, even as it slowed down. The driver sounded his horn but Chitrita paid no mind and kept walking.
What a sight we must make, Steffanie thought. Do we look like zombies from a late night horror film? Or ghosts perhaps?
The driver obviously had similar thoughts as he suddenly turned off down a side road and drove away.
Chitrita continued to walk, leading the way for her ragtag band of vampires. She hadn’t even told Steffanie where they were going or what they were doing.
Trust me, she had whispered in Steffanie’s ear.
And Steffanie did.
As they approached Five Ways Island and the underpass, Chitrita turned off down a side road. They all followed her obediently. Chitrita halted, and they gathered outside a large building, one of the old Georgian houses. There was a large sign at the driveway’s entrance which said it was now the Blue Sky Care Home.
And Steffanie knew what they were here for.
Chitrita walked up to the large front door, lifted the ornate brass knocker and let it fall. Then she saw the metal intercom attached to the wall beside the door and she pressed the buzzer.
Steffanie stayed behind with the other vampires, out of sight of the door. They waited in silence.
Chitrita lifted the brass knocker once more and rapped out a quick succession of three short, sharp knocks.
They waited again. The vampires shuffled in and around each other as they grew restless waiting. Steffanie had to keep herding them back into position out of sight of the front door. The bats were darting around the house, swooping and diving, whilst others had roosted in the eaves.
The vampires’ heads snapped up at the sound of movement behind the door.
‘Who is it?’ a muffled voice called out.
‘Please, can you help me?’ Chitrita said. ‘The battery on my phone is dead, and I need to call my husband, he’ll be wondering where I am.’
Steffanie was impressed. Chitrita had learned a great deal about this new, modern world since she escaped from Stump and Corpse.
Steffanie watched from behind her hiding place as Chitrita took a small step back from the door. There was a peephole in the front door, and Chitrita was letting the woman inside take a good look at her, and let her see that she was on her own.
‘He’ll be so worried,’ Chitrita said. ‘I should have been home hours ago, but I took the wrong junction off the motorway and I don’t know how I’ve ended up in Birmingham.’
More movement behind the door.
‘All right,’ said the woman.
The sound of a lock turning was followed by the door slowly opening.
The look of horror on the woman’s face as Steffanie and the others stepped into view was wonderful. Chitrita had her foot in the door and her hand over the woman’s mouth before she knew what was happening.
The vampires crowded in behind Chitrita and Steffanie shut the door.
The woman was crying silently, long trails of tears running down her cheeks and off her chin.
Chitrita held the woman close in an embrace and licked the tears away.
‘Don’t cry,’ she whispered as she arched the woman’s head back, exposing her throat. ‘You’re going to wake up a new woman.’
Chitrita sank her teeth into the woman’s fleshy throat.
As the other vampires began wandering, Steffanie took Michael’s hand and led him up the stairs.
‘Come with me,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s find something to drink.’
Michael hooted softly with excitement and anticipation.
They padded softly along the landing, past closed bedroom doors, tables with vases of flowers, paintings of
lakes and blue skies and mountains on the walls. They stopped outside a door and Steffanie placed her palm against it. She pressed an ear to the door and listened.
She grasped the door handle and turned it softly.
The door opened quietly into a darkened room. A small, curled up form lay under blankets on a bed. Steffanie could hear a soft wheezing and snoring.
They crept into the bedroom. Steffanie had hold of Michael’s hand and she could feel his excitement building. They stood by the bed and looked down at the huddled old lady, her jaw slack and revealing her wasted gums in her mouth.
Michael was trembling.
Steffanie let go of his hand.
The boy climbed on the bed and pulled the covers back to reveal the old lady’s wasted, frail body. She stirred, moaned a little. Sounded like she was muttering something, saying someone’s name.
Michael, hunched on all fours on the bed, lowered himself down and sniffed at the old lady’s throat. Had he been too long without hunting? Was he unsure what to do?
The little boy rotated his head, like an automation, and smiled.
‘Blood,’ he said. ‘Blood.’
His smile grew wider, revealing his fangs. He turned back to the old woman and sank his teeth into her throat. Her eyes snapped open and her whole body stiffened as the boy began drinking her blood. The slurping noises he made grew louder as the scarlet liquid ran from his mouth and over the woman’s wrinkled, scrawny neck and pooled on the bed sheet.
Steffanie watched silently as Michael fed. The old woman’s body began to relax as the life force drained from her.
Steffanie left Michael feeding and wandered along the hallway. Doors to rooms had been left open and Steffanie could hear scuffles from some as the occupants struggled to fight off their attackers. A shrill, cracked scream rang through the home and was abruptly cut short.
The black maid from the Travelodge staggered drunkenly from a bedroom, blood running from the corners of her mouth and over her chin. She saw Steffanie and gave her a little wave and a goofy smile.
Steffanie ignored her.
She picked a closed door at random and opened it up, sliding silently inside the bedroom. The old man in the bed lay on his back, his huge belly a large mound beneath the bedsheets. The only sound in here was the man’s snoring.
