"It's sour!" he exclaimed.
"Sour?" questioned Cassidy still looking in the direction the tentacle had retreated. "Can blood even go sour?"
Darwin felt rage surge through his body, probably a release of the adrenaline that had been fuelling his Blood Lust. He twisted the corpse's head, pointed the bloody neck toward Cassidy and snapped, "You wanna try?"
Unusually for Cassidy, she kept quiet, as Darwin stood up and paced around the body, hands in his hair.
"Fuck!" he screamed, kicking at bins, pounding on garage doors and generally lashing out at anything in the near vicinity. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
After so long without proper food, to have this happen, was beyond cruel. He fell to a crouch, put his head in his hands, and wept.
"Darwin, it's OK," said Cassidy, more chirpily than he would have liked. "We'll find another body. Maybe we'll get you some rats on the way back?"
Darwin noted she kept her distance. Was he really that much of a monster when in Blood Lust that she felt the need? He'd never been violent toward her, never threatened her, yet still she remained a couple of steps away.
"Don't you understand?" he said as his urges subsided and his fragility seeped back into him, "I can't control this."
He felt weak for saying it, but it was true. However much Cassidy went on about him being half human he was also half vampire. Why couldn't she accept that? He wished he could be the man she wanted him to be, but this wasn't a case of being good or evil, it was about survival.
He looked at her, trying to choose the right words to say; words that would make her understand what he was going through. Yet looking at her faint reconciliatory smile, he knew those words, that reason, didn't exist.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, stood up and offered her the faintest of smiles. She came running up, threw her hands around his abdomen and rested her head on his shoulder.
"It'll be all right, Darwin," she said squeezing him tight. "Trust me, it'll all be all right."
He looked down at her and took solace from her never ending faith: a faith in him and the world around him that he was blind to. Just as she'd never understand his vampirism, he'd never understand her belief. They were close enough to know what the other was feeling, yet they were still so alien to each other.
He bent back down to the body and started rummaging in all the pockets for anything that might be of value. The wallet had just over a hundred pounds in it, a fact that made Darwin feel that this whole episode hadn't been entirely wasted. The corpse's waistcoat pocket held a small hardback notebook, which Darwin handed to Cassidy.
"Could be worth something," he said as she took it.
“E. F. McFadden,” she said reading the name embossed on the front. “Who do you reckon he was?”
Darwin shrugged. “Who cares?”
He pocketed the majority of the money as Cassidy stuffed the notebook into her coat.
In the distance a siren wailed. It was unlikely to be destined for here, yet it was enough to make Darwin pat the corpse's pockets over one last time and then stand.
"Come on," he said flashing one of the corpse's tenners at her. "At least Mr McFadden here can give one of us a hot meal tonight."
CHAPTER TWO - A Knock At The Door
Maureen Summerglass sat in front of the fire in her favourite armchair covered in quilts and blankets. Despite the heat from the flames that were causing her to sweat she still felt frozen, a hint of a draft managing to get under the layers of bedding and chill her toes.
Winter wasn't so much something that was endured as fought. Most winters she got off lightly, the fire or the aged electric heater enough to keep her lounge warm. But on nights such as tonight she felt like King Canute trying to stem the tide. She had no central heating or double glazing in her little semi-detached cottage - she dare not - so she'd barricade herself in by the fire and hope that the winter would not last too long. The water taps were all turned on to help prevent her pipes from freezing, because she couldn't have any repair man come in and fix them if they broke. Not with what was downstairs in the cellar. She dare not let anyone accidentally find that.
It was especially cold tonight, such that her cats, Nicholas and Neil, wanted to climb under the blankets with her rather than just curl up on her lap. Whilst she preferred the comfort of her own bed, she was wondering whether it would be better to stay here for the night; if she was cold here, what would her bedroom be like?
She had been expecting the knock at the front door, yet when it finally came it still made her jump. She didn't want to get up. The hallway would be frozen. She was sure that by the time she returned what little warmth she currently had in her body would have left her. But if she was cold sat here in front of the fire, heaven knew what Ernest was feeling out there on the doorstep.
Still, she thought as she got up and wrapped one quilt round her like a shawl, the man was still over four hours late. She opened the door between the lounge and draughty hall, the difference in temperature hitting her with a shiver. Whatever that man's excuse, he was about to be given a talking to. She unlatched and unbolted the heavy wooden front door and began to open it.
"So Ernest, you gonna tell me where you've been all..."
But it wasn't Ernest, it was her next door neighbour, Sally. Maureen managed to stop herself from flinging the door wide open, and luckily too, as Sally was already moving to make her way into the house. She was covered in snow. Beyond her, the front garden, path and even the road that ran along the front were covered in a thick blanket of winter. An icy blast that blew snow swirling into the hall gave Maureen the perfect excuse to close the door to just a crack.
"Oh Sally, it's you?" said Maureen trying to feign pleasant surprise through the eye-width gap.
"Of course it's me," mumbled Sally indignantly, almost unrecognisable with her coat zipped up to her nose and hood pulled forward to cover her eyes. "You don't think anyone else would be crazy enough to brave this weather do you?"
Maureen eyed the path pockmarked with Sally's footprints and then the snow at Sally's feet that reached to just below her knee.
"Oh, it has been snowing, hasn't it?"
"Snowing? They've had three foot of the stuff in Elstead. And it's so thick up on the Hog's Back, they've closed the road. Simon can't even get home. Luckily his firm is putting him up in a hotel in the city. I don't know what he would have done otherwise."
Maureen wasn't quite sure how to respond, but Sally never gave her any time.
"Well, Simon said I had to check in on you. Old people and being vulnerable and all that."
"That's very kind of you," Maureen replied, trying to subdue sarcasm.
"It's the least we could do. Now we've finally finished doing up the spare room, if you want to pack some clothes you can stay with us until the snow melts. Mind you, we've still got all the tools in there, but you can put up with some power tools and a workbench, can't you? Just for a couple of days."
"Sally, whilst I appreciate the offer, I'm not going anywhere. I've lived in this house all my life, and through winters far worse than this."
"No-one's doubting your ability to cope, Maureen," Sally patronized. "You're a very ... hardy woman. But with all the fuel bill rises over the summer ..."
"I have plenty of wood stockpiled for the fire," Maureen lied, "which won't cost me a penny and keep me warm all winter long if necessary."
"Oh," said Sally, a little taken back by Maureen's apparent resourcefulness. "Perhaps, I could make you a thermos flask of soup then?"
Maureen was about to tell her that it was all right, she had plenty of soup; which was again a lie. Maureen expected that she would ride out the snow living off whatever she could find in the cupboards. However before she could respond to Sally, there was a large bang from within the house, like a sledge hammer hitting wood.
"What was that?" exclaimed Sally, in such a flurry of excitement she nearly burst through the front door into the hall.
"That?" said Maure
en, braced behind the door to ensure that damned woman did not set one foot inside her house. "That's nothing."
"But I heard something! It was coming from inside your house."
There was another large bang, identical to the first.
"There it is again," squealed Sally. "Do you think it's robbers?"
"In this snow, I seriously doubt it. It's probably just the cats knocking the firewood over. They're terrors at times."
Sally seemed unconvinced.
"Are you sure? We've got a baseball bat; Simon says we can never be too careful in this day and age. I could go and get it?"
"It's alright," Maureen smiled. "The cats are always doing this. Gave me an awful fright the first time it happened too."
"You should be careful. Someone your age shouldn't be getting shocks like that."
"Well, I'm not dead yet," said Maureen, slightly offended.
A third bang came from the house.
"I'll have to go Sally; they will have all my nicely stacked firewood all over the place unless I stop them."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes Sally, I'll be fine. Rest assured that if I get into any difficulties, I will be straight round."
Sally smiled, but just stood there, as if still expecting an invitation inside.
"Sally," said Maureen. "The door? I'm letting out what little hot air I have," which was about the only truthful thing she'd said in this entire conversation.
"Oh, oh yes," Sally replied. "Of course." Then gathering her senses, she took a step back off the porch, suddenly engulfed in a flurry of white. "You get back inside and keep yourself warm. If you ..."
Maureen never heard the rest as she slammed the door shut.
"That bloody woman, I'm sure she won't leave me alone until I'm dead," Maureen told the cats who had been purring at her feet this entire time. "And will then continue to bug me in the afterlife."
A fourth bang echoed round the cottage.
"All right, all right," she shouted, then mumbling to herself, "I am in my eighties, you know. I take time to get places."
She opened the door under the stairs and reached for the cord to turn on the light bulb crudely fixed into the side of the wall. Descending down was a set of old rickety wooden stairs.
She really needed to get them replaced - especially the loose one, second from the bottom. Perhaps she could ask Ernest to have a look at it sometime, before she took a tumble and broke a hip or something. Oh that would please Sally and Simon no end, she thought to herself.
"Then they could kidnap me," she told the cats who followed her down, "take me to their house where they could look after the old invalid, smother me with kindness and bore me with stories of their never ending home renovation project in my last remaining days."
Nicholas purred, and rubbed himself around her legs.
It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the offers of help, it was the way they forced it upon her. She'd seen their sort before; it wasn't so much about helping someone as being seen by others to appear to be helping. That, and the fact they were just so damn nosey. Her previous neighbours, the Philips, had lived in the house next door for near on fifty years, and whilst they weren't beyond a neighbourly chat if they saw each other over the garden fence, they largely kept themselves to themselves, respecting Maureen's privacy. With Sally and Simon, they seemed to relish in regaling her in every observation they had made; from when she went into the village to commenting on those visitors who "seemed to come at strange times of the day or night". Maureen was almost thankful that she had fewer visitors than twenty or thirty years ago.
She took her time down the creaking stairs, a hand on the ancient grey stone wall. An astute observer would have noticed that the stone here was much older than the cottage above, although Maureen didn't know by how many years.
Half way down, the stairs stopped on a small landing, before turning one hundred and eighty degrees and continuing down into the cellar.
A bare bulb hung overhead, which Maureen turned on via pulling on another cord. The cellar was large but there wasn't a lot of stuff down here; several boxes stacked in one corner, an old standing lamp in another, a shelf along one wall with the flower pots she'd brought indoors back in the autumn and now seemed to be doing a roaring trade in mushrooms. The walls were made of the same large grey stone of the stairway. In the centre of the wall that would technically separate her house from her neighbours' was a huge oak door. It was nearly twice as wide as Maureen's front entrance and tall enough that it reached right to the ceiling. By rights it should have connected Maureen's cottage with Simon and Sally's except, as Maureen knew, this was the only cottage that had a cellar.
The bang came again, and had anyone other than her cats been with Maureen that day, they would have observed that it was caused by someone thumping on the other side of the door.
"All right, all right," Maureen shouted. She took a solitary iron key that hung on a rusty nail beside the door and placed it in the keyhole. Using both hands to turn it, it clunked unlocked. She pulled back the large bar that acted as a bolt, and then, again using both hands, she slowly pulled the door open. Warm air rushed in.
The door opened to a passageway, only a metre or two in length and beyond that, a second doorway. This hung open revealing one end of an ornate covered walkway. To the left iron braziers punctuated a huge sandstone wall. On the right, Maureen could see through the arches to the vista beyond: blue skies and spring sunshine beating down on spires and steeples; beyond them plains and white crested mountains. However, Maureen's attention was not captivated by the vista; she had seen it thousands of times before, but instead by the source of the banging.
"Sorry to disturb you, Maureen," said the eight foot troll, "but we've got a bit of a problem."
CHAPTER THREE - Mr West
It was snowing in New York. The thick storm clouds overhead had turned afternoon into evening and filled the streets and avenues with their cargo. On news of the storm's approach, most of the city had emptied, workers leaving their offices before the journey home became impassable.
Broadway was practically empty. The clothing sellers who normally crowded the sidewalk were gone, having shut up and left hours ago, leaving a solitary figure making his way south through the shin deep snow. He seemed unprepared for the weather. His trousers were a size too big for him and his shirt was partly untucked.
Winds whipped around the city blocks like a serpent, striking from every direction with icy blasts, causing Mr West to draw his jacket ever tighter and vow to couple his plans with the weather forecast next time.
There were much easier ways to get from New Jersey to the meeting place in the heart of New York City. However, Mr West had 'chosen' to take the Transit in, and walk, rather than take a cab, down from Penn Station. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. "Know your enemy," the training programs had told him, and he felt that by experiencing choice, he better understood the inhabitants of this world.
Choice was abhorrent to him. Yes, he told himself, decisions often needed to be made, but that should only be done by those whose job function it was to make them for individuals, and then only after careful analysis and consultation. Otherwise, you had what you had here... a chaotic system.
Of course the humans and dwarves, and even the elves would argue that without choice there was no freedom, but what use was freedom when all that was stopping people killing you or stealing from you was a thinly guised code of moral conduct. With choice, it gave people the right to do bad things to others. Where was the freedom from crime, the freedom of job security, the freedom of not having to worry about the course of your life?
No, Mr West told himself, the amount of choice here was bad. Even worse it was so unproductive. It made their enemies unpredictable and irrational, something that the data models still needed to take into account.
He stepped off the sidewalk to cross 27th street and jarred himself as the drop, hidden in snow, was more than he expected. The snow soaked his
trouser leg up to above the knee. He hated New York, even their sidewalks weren't uniform. No wonder they needed so many lawyers.
He was surprised to see that the Pizza restaurant was still open, and despite feeling slightly uncomfortable about it, 'chose' to stop and buy a slice. If there was one redeeming feature of New York, and indeed, the whole of this realm, it was Pizza. Since the start of the operation here, he had tried just about every variety. He ignored his logic which told him he did not need to eat and ordered a slice of pepperoni. Pizza heated and bagged to go, Mr West left the relative warmth of the parlour and stepped out into the snow once again.
He didn't have far to go. The awning of the next building marked his destination. The shivering doorman saw him, swung into action, opening the door, and upon noticing the pizza, asked Mr West: "You get that from next door?"
Mr West nodded.
"Best Pizza in the city," the doorman exclaimed as Mr West shook himself off and stamped the snow from his feet. He walked up the narrow passageway toward the lobby and elevator. A member of cleaning staff was busy fighting a losing battle trying to mop the floor of melted snow the guests had brought in.
Mr West took the elevator to the twelfth floor, and knocked on door 1203. He was expected and the door opened almost instantaneously. Three men dressed immaculately in black suits and white shirts stood on the other side; so alike in every such way that it would be easy to confuse them for identical triplets. They looked slightly nervous as Mr West entered. The one who had answered the door closed it quickly behind West, whilst the other two stood up from the twin beds they had been sitting on. Mr West grabbed the chair from the writing desk and sat down to face the huge window that looked out over the city. Standing in front of it was a fourth man, much older than the other three but similarly dressed. His cropped hair and beard were as white as the snow outside and his face was etched with a scowl as deep as his wrinkles.
"You're late, Mr West," the older man growled.
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