Tales from High Towers' Study

by Niall Teasdale

  In the corner of the room his torch lit up the figure of a woman standing with her back to him. Dressed in a long, white gown, she was tall, as tall as he was, with a slim figure and long legs. Her jet black hair fell down to the middle of her back, a long, straight pool of midnight. The skin on her bare arms looked pale in the light of the halogen bulb.

  ‘Lorna?’ There was no response, not even a twitch, and he moved closer. ‘Lorna, it’s me, John.’ Still nothing. He moved forward until he was barely a foot behind her. ‘Lorna?’

  She turned. He saw the red in her eyes first, the bright, inhuman sparks glowing in her pupils. Then he saw how pale her skin was, not lightened by the bright light, but white, almost translucent, as though the colour had been bleached from her skin. Then she bared her fangs and lunged forward, strong arms gripping him as she went for his throat…

  The same arms were holding him down as he struggled. He heard her voice. ‘John. John you’re having a nightmare. John, calm down. John…’ He stopped struggling as his brain came to terms with where he was and he felt her delicate hands releasing his arms. He was not a big man, but he spent an hour a day in the gym at Greycoat Street and he was physically strong. His wispy wife with the build of a model had held him down without the slightest difficulty.

  Blinking, John washed the blur out of his vision in time to see the red sparks receding from Lorna’s pupils. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘did I wake you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I was already awake.’ Vampires needed about four hours sleep a day, though most of them did that sleeping during daylight hours. ‘Was it that one again?’ she asked. He nodded dumbly. ‘Sorry,’ she said, looking away.

  He sat up sharply and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her naked body against his. His voice, when it came, was fierce. ‘You never have to apologise for that,’ he snapped. ‘Never!’ She said nothing in reply, just holding him almost desperately.

  The sound of the telephone ringing beside the bed was jarring. Lorna separated their embrace and plucked the thing from its cradle before it could manage a second ring. ‘What?’ she barked into the mouthpiece. Her expression changed from annoyance to resignation. ‘I’m sorry, Kate. Bad night.’ She handed the handset over to her husband without another word and rose to her feet, heading for the bathroom across the hall.

  John watched her leave the room before lifting the phone to his ear. ‘Yeah Kate, what’s up?’

  Westminster

  The morgue below Greycoat Street station was always unnaturally cold. Some people believed it was the result of haunting, but no one John had talked to had ever actually seen a ghost down there. Some of them suspected that seeing Wilks was worse; ghosts were less of a gross-out. The assistant coroner hovered over a mortuary drawer with a ham sandwich, which looked deader than the corpse, in one hand.

  ‘Okay,’ Wilks said, his mouth still half full of ham and cardboard bread, ‘this one’s Willard Tavisham. Identification came through from Social Services. They said he seemed to be regaining his senses and then “poof!”’

  ‘So what did he die of?’ John asked.

  ‘His heart stopped,’ Wilks said.

  ‘That’s exceptionally helpful, Wilks,’ John said. ‘You’re really pushing the boat out there.’

  ‘The results came back for the blood sample we took when he was brought in the first time,’ Wilks said, ignoring the sarcasm. ‘We found nothing, as in there was nothing weird added, but there was a lack of something. When we got him back in a body-bag, I got the test rushed for the same thing. This guy died of a massive deficiency of acetylcholine.’

  ‘I failed biology,’ John replied.

  ‘It’s a neurotransmitter,’ Wilks told them. ‘Inhibiting it or eliminating it tends to result in body tremors, tachycardia, loss of memory function, uh, dry mouth… a host of lovely symptoms.’

  ‘And death?’ Kate suggested.

  ‘Yeah well, the heart arrhythmia will get you eventually.’

  ‘I’ve heard of those symptoms before…’ Kate mused, squeezing the bridge of her nose as though it might force an answer out of her head. The office always called her to call John when there was something needing doing. That way she got to filter interruptions to his home life. Kate lived alone; getting her home life interrupted was less of a problem. Occasionally she entertained fantasies about answering the phone mid-coitus in an attempt to suggest she had a life. Unfortunately, that would have required having an actual life…

  ‘Typically,’ Wilks said, ‘you get those kind of symptoms from anticholinergic agents. Something like tiotropium or atropine.’

  ‘Atropine!’ Kate snapped. ‘That’s the poison you find in Deadly Nightshade, right?’

  ‘I know you know your herbs, Middleshaw,’ Wilks replied.

  ‘So?’ John said. ‘Guy wasn’t poisoned.’

  Kate looked at him. ‘No, but the Latin name for Deadly Nightshade is Atropa Belladonna.’

  ‘That’s what…’

  ‘Mr Tavisham kept mumbling. I know what killed him.’

  John raised an eyebrow. ‘Going to tell me, or do I have to beg.’

  Kate’s lips quirked. ‘I might like the begging,’ she suggested, turning on her heel to walk out of the mortuary.

  ‘Thanks, Wilks,’ John said, starting after her.

  They were in the lift heading for the third floor before she spoke again. ‘We call them Nightshades,’ she said. ‘They were witches.’

  ‘Were?’

  ‘Technically still are, I guess, but they’re not really human anymore.’ She grimaced slightly, looking a little like she was not sure what she wanted to say. ‘There’s this potion. Witches call it the Belladonna Linctus. There are various ingredients, but the primary one is Atropa Belladonna. It makes you pretty, keeps you pretty. Actually, it makes you beautiful and a Nightshade can live for…’ She shrugged. ‘Well, no one’s sure how long they can live for. They have to take the potion every month, on the new moon, and it would poison them if they didn’t up their acetylcholine levels massively. They do that by draining it from normals.’

  ‘Like vampires?’

  ‘Well… no. Vampires drain a metaphysical “life force” through the blood of living things, Nightshades extract a chemical they require to stop themselves dying due to their nervous systems packing in.’

  As far as John was concerned, that was a very limited difference. ‘So how do we stop this thing?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘The only humane method of dealing with them is entombment. That’s if they let themselves be taken alive. The problem’s going to be finding her.’

  ‘Anything special about them? I mean, aside from the neurotransmitter sucking and the immortality.’

  The lift doors opened and they started out down the corridor to the office they shared. ‘They tend to have black hair, long black hair, and black eyes. Pale skin, uh, and they could give Lily Carpenter a run for her money on the beauty stakes. With them it’s all supernatural though. If they come off the drug not only do their hearts pack in, but they turn back into ugly old bats.’

  ‘You realise,’ he said, ‘that you could have described my wife there, give or take.’

  Kate paused in the door, considering. ‘Uh, yeah. Think Lorna on steroids. And alive, obviously. Think the security cameras on the psychiatry ward might have picked anything up?’

  ‘It’s somewhere to start.’

  Herne Hill

  Kate kicked off her low heels with a sigh, dumped her suit jacket over the back of a chair, and padded through the house to the kitchen. The house she had inherited after her grandmother’s death had needed a bit of work to bring it up to spec, but the one part which needed almost nothing doing to it was the kitchen. The big Aga ran off wood which sat in the little roofed area outside the back door. The surfaces were all heavy marble and there was a very adequate amount of storage, never mind the big, stone-lined pantry which sat at the back. When you came from a family of witches, you got used to having a big kitchen.


  You also got used to cleaning them very early in life. Kate’s kitchen was utterly spotless because she had been brewing potions that Sunday and the one thing you learned to do before your mother or grandmother would let you so much as look at a brewing recipe, was clean up before you used the kitchen for food. Tales of how Great Uncle Bertrand had been turned into a stick of celery were used to reinforce the point and, while Kate had eventually discovered that there was practically no chance of actually turning yourself into a tasteless vegetable, she still cleaned religiously between uses.

  As it happened, today it was a little superfluous; all she wanted was a cup of tea. She would make it good and strong. Coffee was for work; tea was for home. While the kettle boiled on the stove she examined one of the overhead cupboards, considering whether chocolate chip or rich tea was more appropriate for her mood. Pulling out a packet of bourbons instead, she closed the cupboard door and froze.

  Through the kitchen window she could see a woman. Tall, slim, fantastically beautiful, she stood at the bottom of the small garden behind the house with her hands clasped in front of her and her legs together. Pensive, that was the word; she was standing there looking pensive. The dark hair and the pale skin suggested vampire or, given the circumstances, the Nightshade they were looking for, though that begged the question “what was she doing here?” Wondering whether she was being a complete idiot, Kate opened the back door and stepped out into the garden.

  Kate pulled up short just outside the door. Somehow, in the time it had taken her to take a couple of steps and get out through the door, the woman had moved from the end of the garden to barely a yard from the porch. ‘Shit, lady!’ Kate said. ‘What are you…’ She really was incredibly beautiful; mesmerizingly so, but somehow familiar. Looking away from those dark eyes was impossible. Kate could not, did not want to, shift her gaze.

  ‘Lonely girl.’ The voice seemed to bypass her ears and go straight to her mind. It was soft, feminine, perfect, and it wrapped around Kate’s mind like a blanket. ‘Such a lonely girl. I’m so sorry… sorry I left. So sorry I couldn’t come back sooner.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Kate’s own voice sounded distant, or muffled, as though she were hearing it through water.

  ‘I can give you what you want.’

  ‘I don’t…’

  ‘I can give you what you want. Anyone you want. You just have to say yes.’

  ‘Yes to what?’

  ‘Join me…’

  ‘No!’ Suddenly the air seemed to vanish. Lungs heaving, Kate fell to her knees. The dark pools of the woman’s eyes were gone and there was only the pain in her chest. She dragged herself across the kitchen floor, struggled to stand and reach the phone in its charging cradle on the wall. She slid down the wall as she managed to thumb the speed-dial button she wanted. Her limbs felt weak, her face slack, and she could not manage to hold the phone to her mouth.

  ‘Hello?’ The voice coming from the earpiece was barely audible, but it sounded like Lorna. Kate tried to say something, and managed a moan. ‘Kate?’ Lorna’s voice said. ‘Kate, are you there? Answer me.’ Another groan. ‘Shit! I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but all I can hear is a few groans.’ It sounded like the vampire was talking to her husband. ‘Kate? If you can hear me, John’s on his way. You have to hold on, okay?’ Kate managed a groan in response and the voice on the other end said, ‘Thank God.’

  Westminster, June 8th

  ‘I’m fine,’ Kate said, again. ‘I have Lorna and you to thank for it, but I’m fine. The hospital checked me over, I have some pills to help replace the neurotransmitters, I’m fine.’

  ‘You look pale,’ John said.

  ‘I’m a redhead, I always look pale.’ She did feel a little uncomfortable; warm and slightly nauseous.

  Even he had to admit she was right about her colour, however. ‘Why did she come after you?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘We’re working the case. I don’t have a vampire at home.’

  ‘Then you’re staying at our place until we catch her.’

  ‘I can’t…’

  ‘That’s not a request, Sergeant,’ John replied, though there was a slight smile on his face as he said it. ‘This woman is targeting you. If we’re lucky we can use that to catch her, and at worse I’m not losing a partner without a fight.’

  There was obviously going to be no arguing with him. ‘Did the surveillance cameras get anything?’

  John raised his finger in a silent “oh yes” and reached for his keyboard. A couple of taps later and he twisted the screen around so that Kate could see the still frame image. It showed a woman in a grey, institutional room, walking away from the iron framed bed on which lay a body. ‘That look like the one you saw?’ John asked.

  Kate nodded. It was a little hard to tell. There was motion blur suggesting the woman was moving very fast and the low light added to the poor quality. However, it certainly looked like the same woman. ‘Crap image,’ Kate commented.

  ‘This is the only one where you can see her face,’ John replied. ‘The techs say she moves at incredible speed. She barely shows up on any of the corridor cameras. The odd blurred shape, that’s about it.’

  ‘Kind of sucks.’ Kate stared at the image, trying to work out why the woman looked familiar. ‘You’ve got this out to Uniform?’

  John nodded. ‘Not that I think it’ll do us much good.’

  Something about the bone structure… ‘No, no I doubt it will. No other evidence?’

  ‘We think we got some saliva off our victim. Forensics are running it through the lab to see if they can get any DNA from it. Results tomorrow, if we get lucky.’

  Kate nodded, giving a slight sigh. ‘If…’ She shrugged and put the weird feeling of knowing out of her head. ‘What have we got on that herbal slimming scam?’

  ‘Oh that…’

  Hammersmith

  ‘Kate! How are you? You weren’t too badly hurt where you?’ If there was one thing which demonstrated Lorna’s relative youth, in undead terms, it was her concern for the living. Kate accepted the hug which enveloped her from the much taller woman, smiling as she did so.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks to you.’ Vampire hearing was not exceptional; Lorna had heard her moans and sent her husband because she was Lorna, not a vampire. The thought that there would come a time when the willowy woman would, instead, have just hung up the phone was not an appealing one.

  ‘John can take your case up to the spare room,’ Lorna said. ‘You come in the lounge and sit down. You need to rest.’

  ‘I’m really okay, Lorna, honest,’ Kate protested, but the vampire was far stronger than she was and those guiding arms had a lot of force behind them. The last thing Kate saw of John before she was pushed into the lounge was the enormous smirk on his face. Then she was being pushed down onto a couch, her shoes were being removed, and a blanket was being tucked around her waist. The vampire even lifted her legs and curled them under before applying the blanket!

  ‘She’s like this with me when I get sick,’ John said as he walked back into the room. Lorna had gone to the kitchen to make tea. ‘There’s no point in trying to resist, especially since she died. Now she has the strength to go with the determination.’

  ‘She’s sweet,’ Kate said. ‘You’re a lucky man.’

  ‘Mostly,’ he said softly, his voice holding a hint of regret.

  ‘Most people don’t get loved ones back when they’re murdered, John.’

  Any reply he might have made was cut off by Lorna returning with two mugs. ‘Now you get this into you,’ the vampire said, ‘and I’ll get some food sorted.’ She saw Lorna’s raised eyebrows and shrugged. ‘I spend all day at home, not making him dinner seems a bit… lame, even if I don’t eat anything.’

  ‘Okay,’ Kate said, well it did seem kind of reasonable; Kate was not that much of a feminist anyway. ‘What’re we eating?’

  ‘Steak,’ John said, dropping onto a chair with a sigh. ‘I eat a lot of steak.’

&nbs
p; June 9th

  It was pitch black outside and Kate had no idea why she had woken up, but she was awake and aware of the possibility that the second glass of wine Lorna had persuaded her to drink might not have been a great idea. Swinging her legs out of bed, she padded out onto the landing and across to the bathroom in the cropped T-shirt and boy-shorts she had brought over for sleeping in.

  The toilet was a soft-flush design, quiet enough to use without disturbing anyone, but to be extra sure she waited for the cistern to refill, taking the time to splash a little water on her face, before opening the door and stepping out. Her vision filled with pale skin as she ran straight into Lorna.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I…’

  ‘No, I should’ve been more…’

  Kate was acutely aware that the stunning woman with the model looks and pale, vampire skin was wearing nothing at all, and her pulse quickened. ‘Too much wine,’ she said.

  There was a tiny flare of red in the vampire’s pupils. ‘Same,’ she whispered. There was an intake of breath through Lorna’s nose, but she remained standing still, not moving further away. ‘That’s a lovely scent. You smell…’ The vampire’s head bent down toward the smaller woman, sniffing.

  Kate found herself turning her head, tilting it slightly, baring her neck. But she whispered, ‘I’m not wearing a scent,’ even as she longed for Lorna’s fangs…

  Lorna spun, dropping into a crouch as she hissed into the silence of the dark house. Kate blinked, struggling to pull herself together and squinting into the shadows, but Lorna’s night vision was almost perfect and she could clearly see something. ‘What…’ Kate began.

  ‘I know what you want, Kate,’ the voice was familiar, soft, warm, and coming from the stairwell. ‘Join me…’

  ‘No,’ Kate breathed.

  ‘…or I eat your pale friend instead.’ Lorna let out a gasp as something grabbed her throat, twisting her quickly around and leaving the vampire in the Nightshade’s grip. ‘I’ll suck her dry,’ the soft voice said, ‘stop her heart, and you’ll never…’