Red Grow the Roses

by Janine Ashbless

  Wakefield was first; he arrived by taxicab. I watched him stalk up the long stairs – the entrance to The Bonding was a floor above the ground outside – and I checked on the security guards visible beyond him in the compound. They were all armed with tasers, which were in fact a good deal more effective against vampires than guns of any sort, should it ever come to that. Wakefield, his grizzled hair a dramatic frame to his elegant features, and dressed in a frayed Victorian frock-coat that quite possibly was one he’d worn when alive, brought me as usual a single dark-red rose from his garden, and he bowed as he presented it.

  ‘Chatelaine.’ His pale eyes seemed to apologise for the inadequacy of a gesture that I actually found perfectly charming.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  I’d always had a soft spot for Wakefield. Not because he was handsome – God, they’re all beautiful, an evolutionary trick that helps with the hunting, I suppose – but because he was always so polite and so melancholy. Never any trouble to Reynauld, either. I invited him into the room beyond the foyer, where they would all be meeting. There were bottles of wine already uncorked upon the table, but no servants to pour: the only members of staff visible tonight would be myself and the security men.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, sir.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The next arrival was Estelle, whom I did not like one bit. She was one of the ones it was wise to show that you feared. She drove up behind the wheel of a crimson Lamborghini convertible that growled like a tiger, and threw the keys at one of the guards. Her dress matched the arterial blood of the car’s paintwork and was quite breathtaking: a silk cheongsam embroidered with chrysanthemum flowers, so tight that her lean body and full breasts seemed to have been vacuum-packed into it, ankle-length but slashed to the thigh to reveal her peerless legs. Her hair was cut short to her head but with a face and bone structure that beautiful she didn’t seem to lack any ornament, and her earrings were complex chandeliers of ruby chips that hung low about her neck.

  She didn’t even look at me.

  Ben was the third, and he arrived on the back of a motorbike driven by a girl in leathers, whom he kissed passionately before he sent her on her way. He swaggered up the steps like James Dean and I had to hide a smile.

  ‘How’s things, Amanda? He treating you well?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Don’t forget, if you ever get bored of him you can always come and ride my face for a fortnight.’

  Oh, dear, thought I – and yet he did it with such charm. ‘I’ll bear it in mind, sir. Would you care to step this way?’

  Naylor cut it fine; at a minute to midnight there was no sign of him at the front door and I was scanning the CCTV images on the bank of monitors at the desk, looking over the shoulder of one of the security men at shots of the roof. Vampires, unless they’re very old or in a powerful hurry, show up on video as they do in mirrors.

  ‘There,’ Colin said, pointing at another view altogether: the old ramp leading down into the river. Something slim and pale was climbing the slipway, streaming water; something so pale it was obviously naked, though its features were a blur. ‘That’s him, isn’t it?’

  I took the microphone. ‘Dafydd: guest number four is down there in the undercroft with you. Take three men and escort him up in the lift. No eye-contact, remember.’

  ‘Wilco.’

  We watched Naylor on CCTV and my mouth was dry every step of the way. Naylor was, of them all, the one I considered most dangerous. The staff were all under Reynauld’s protection, of course, and very definitely off-limits, but Naylor was feral enough, in my opinion, to attack on instinct and not consider any consequences. When the door to the elevator opened my eyes went first to the three guards in there with him: all three were still on their feet, thank God, with face-visors pulled firmly down and tasers held across their chests.

  Naylor, completely dry and dressed in soft trousers and shirt woven from shadows, smirked at me. I dropped my gaze from his wickedly narrowed eyes and indicated the door with my open hand.

  ‘This way, please, sir.’

  He paused. ‘You think I’ll have forgotten the way some time in the last twenty years?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then why feel you have to tell me yet again?’

  I set my jaw. He was actually no taller than I was, I reminded myself in an attempt not to give way to fear. At the periphery of my vision I could see the guys sidling out of the open lift and spreading out to get an angle. ‘Would you care to go in, sir?’ I said softly.

  Naylor snorted down his nose. ‘So why does he keep a dried-up old bitch like you?’ he asked blithely. ‘Does he like his donors wrinkly? Do you remind him of his mother?’

  I felt a flush mount my neck. ‘Follow me, please, sir,’ I said, turning to walk away. It was a risky move: if Naylor took offence at my turned back he could move too fast for anyone to save me. My heels clicked on the quarry-tiled floor like ticks of a clock counting away my life.

  ‘Nice tight ass though,’ he whispered in my ear, making me shiver. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting my fist up that.’

  God, he was a little shit.

  The room they met in was windowless and nearly bare, dominated by a huge table whose chairs had been pushed back to the walls. It wasn’t intended to set anyone at their ease. If this had been a meeting for humans it would have inevitably included dinner, but Reynauld drew the line at providing any of his employees for the entertainment of his kin. The three who had already arrived were standing about with glasses in hand, quite apart and as far as I could tell not speaking.

  ‘Dahhhlings,’ said Naylor, as if he were some stage lovey. Ben grinned, Estelle and Wakefield just looked at him.

  I touched the electronic box looped over my ear and spoke into the microphone: ‘They’re here, sir.’ Then I went back to close the door. By the time I’d done that and moved to the velvet-draped mirror that hung beside it, Reynauld had entered from the far side of the room.

  Oh, thought I. He impressed me, even if it worked on none of the others. He paced across the room without any hurry, his brows knotted and his mouth set in a hard line, his gaze sweeping over the assembled guests. He looked handsome and grim in equal measure. There was no telling where his robe ended and the shadows began, and the air seemed to flow in his wake. One hand was curled into a loose fist. Even the most insensitive would’ve been able to tell he was in a black mood.

  ‘Hey,’ Ben said, deliberately nonchalant.

  ‘Reynauld,’ said Estelle, straightening even taller on her stacked heels. ‘What a delight to be here again; we need to talk about the financing of the –’

  He held up a finger, silencing them. ‘Wait, please. We will talk later, Estelle.’ His gaze fell on me. ‘Amanda?’

  Obediently I drew down the green velvet spread, revealing the huge mirror in its gilt frame. It was in fact the only ornamental mirror in that house. Spotted a little with age, the glass loaned a grey cast to all it reflected of that room and its occupants. I was pictured most clearly of all because I stood in front of it, but all five others showed up to some degree. Reynauld and Naylor looked blurred, their shapes warped and undefined and my employer little more than a shadowy smudge, but the younger vampires looked clear enough, staring from behind me.

  ‘Roisin!’ called Reynauld.

  ‘Ro – ro – ro – sheen,’ echoed Ben under his breath and I clenched my teeth, wondering what he thought he was doing, pushing it like that.

  Inside the mirror her appearance was heralded by a flickering cloud of darkness that poured out from under the reflected chimney-breast: bats. Hundreds of bats. They swooped in a skein through the room’s reflection, circling our heads. Out here in the real world we felt not a single brush of air against a cheek, saw no fluttering wing, yet in the mirror they whirled all around us. Three times they circled the room, and then headed straight for the glass – and out into the room, because the hard mirror yielded as easily as the surface
of a pool. For a second the air was full of beating wings, and then the swarm furled itself into a clot over the table and coalesced quite suddenly into a human figure.

  Roisin was enchanting, I had no qualms admitting that. She hung over the table with her bare feet not quite making contact, her delicate figure surrounded by a nimbus of translucent white veils, her hair afloat like her garments. That pointed, elfin little face was as inscrutable as ever. She stooped to offer a hand to Reynauld.

  ‘Welcome, Roisin,’ said he, taking her hand and kissing it. Then he turned it over and sank his teeth into the heel of her thumb, drawing deeply from her palm. Roisin trembled and if she’d been heavy enough she would have fallen to her knees; as it was she ended up in a crouch floating over the tabletop.

  ‘No, don’t beat about the bush,’ muttered Ben. ‘Out with it.’

  Roisin’s lips worked but she said nothing: it was years since I’d heard her voice. She just watched Reynauld’s mouth at work on her hand as if it were the most mesmerising and terrible thing she could imagine.

  I really should have been out of the room by that point, but I couldn’t move now, not while such an intimate exchange was taking place and all eyes were fixed upon that.

  After about a minute he lifted his face and let her go, dropping her hand with a nod of acknowledgement. She withdrew slowly, swimming over to perch on the back of one of the heavy chairs like the ghost of a bird of paradise. This, of course, was what it was all about: they each had to submit to Reynauld feeding from them.

  ‘Well,’ said Estelle with arch humour, ‘since we’re cutting to the chase tonight …’ And she sashayed forward to face Reynauld. She would have died rather than sound unwilling, I thought: nothing would make her admit she was doing this because she had no choice.

  He looked down at her and licked the blood off his lips thoughtfully. There was a history between these two, I knew, and every glance between them was loaded. Her Chinese dress covered her torso and had a high collar, but it left bare her arms and a decorative panel over the upper slope of her cleavage, which her constrained breasts squashed up to fill. Reynauld took what was on offer by wrapping her in his embrace as if they were dancing the tango together, tipping her backward over his arm and sinking his teeth with very obvious relish into the exposed curve of her inner breast. Estelle, hanging almost upside down, made a noise as her eyes rolled up in her head, a noise I suspect she deeply regretted: a deep animalistic groan of pain and lust.

  All the vampires stirred uneasily. I felt my own sex flutter, aching for the stab of his teeth and the thrust of his cock, without distinction. I really was trapped in my place now: moving would draw too much attention to me and all the vampires were strung out on tension and blood-lust. They hated letting Reynauld feed from them, but got horribly aroused watching it happen to each other.

  ‘Wakefield,’ said Reynauld in a low throaty voice, once Estelle had been finished with and had slunk off to the wall. Wakefield stood up, visibly trembling, unbuttoning his coat and shirt and pulling his cravat aside.

  That was about as submissive a gesture as a vampire could make. It verged on the obsequious.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Ben muttered, embarrassed, but Reynauld shot him a glance that quelled him instantly. He fed from Wakefield’s shoulder, holding him close, body to body, and they both gasped a little upon release. Wakefield’s pale cheeks couldn’t blush, but when he retreated to the side of the room he moved with a limp that suggested there was a surfeit of blood left in his groin at least.

  ‘Ben.’

  Ben shucked off his leather jacket to reveal a short-sleeved black T-shirt beneath. ‘OK, OK.’ He held out his arm. ‘Here.’

  His casual act was marred somewhat by the fact he’d worn a soft pair of jeans and his semi could be seen bulging against the stonewashed fabric. Nor did Reynauld take his attitude well. ‘You’re telling me what to do?’ he asked softly, looming in over the shorter, sturdier man, right into his space, almost lip to lip. Ben swallowed, trying to shrink back but with his retreat blocked by the table.

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad to hear that.’ He lifted Ben’s arm and bit down on the inside of the bicep. He could have gone for somewhere more humiliating – but mercy was part of Reynauld’s repertoire too. Ben sucked his own lips hard and endured the feeding with wide eyes. What he couldn’t help was his own free hand straying to his groin to cup the bulging erection there.

  One to go. Ben slumped back against the wall. Reynauld wiped his mouth with his forearm and crooked a finger at the last of them. ‘Naylor.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Old Man.’ Naylor hadn’t spoken a word after Reynauld had entered the room. Now his eyes were cool with resentment and he approached with the staccato movements of a scorpion poised to strike.

  Reynauld wasn’t put off. ‘That’s right: whatever I say. In here and outside. My city. My rules.’

  Naylor sneered a little. ‘You and your rules, Old Man. It really gets you off, doesn’t it? Always your fucking rules.’

  Reynauld moved so fast then that I saw nothing but a blur: one moment both men were standing by the table, the next he had Naylor pinned on his back across the wood, his hand at his throat. ‘You remember a single one of them, Naylor?’ he hissed, and his fangs were bared. Naylor, wide-eyed, made a choking noise. ‘The one about not killing anyone, for example?’

  ‘What you talking about?’ Naylor managed to rasp.

  Reynauld bent low over him. ‘I’m talking about a body found in the docks, you little shit. A pretty girl when she was alive – not that anyone could have told that when they found her, given how thoroughly she’d been mutilated.’

  My heart sank. So that was what he’d been brooding over.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Not badly mutilated enough, though, to hide the fact she’d been bitten to death. The other wounds were all post-mortem. Do you think I don’t keep an eye on the morgues for that sort of thing?’

  ‘You assume it was me, do you?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Reynauld nearly spat. ‘We do remember your previous exploits, Naylor. Even humans remember the mess you made in Whitechapel.’

  ‘What can I say? I’m a victim of my own fame.’

  ‘You’ll be another sort of victim when I’ve finished with you. That girl was one of mine – she used to be one of my donors. Lillabet, her name was. Does that ring any bells, or didn’t you bother to ask?’

  I felt my insides clench. I remembered Lilla well: blonde and busty, a music-college student he’d spotted at a concert. Her perky mischievous persona had hidden a heart obsessed and envious. ‘Elitist!’ she’d screamed at Reynauld on their last meeting, like the word was some ultimate insult: ‘Arrogant! Smug!’

  Well, duh … as they say these days.

  Poor girl.

  Naylor on the other hand gave no sign of recognising the name.

  ‘And what in the fuck makes you think I’d want your cast-offs,’ he grunted, ‘you – old – fart?’ With the final words he got his legs up and kicked Reynauld away, striking out at his face as he rolled up on to his knees and rose to his feet in the centre of the table. Reynauld lurched back, lifting a hand to his cheek. Blood ran down from two parallel cuts just below his eye.

  There was a collective hiss at that sight. Naylor grinned, happier than I’d ever seen him, and lifted his hand. His nails were now two-inch claws, black with Reynauld’s blood, and he licked at them. ‘Very tasty,’ he growled, his voice thicker, his lips wet with drool that was gathering uncontrollably in his mouth. ‘Better than any of your sycophant blood-bags, any day.’

  The small wounds on Reynauld’s face closed up, but the real damage I knew was much greater. They’d all just seen him bleed, and for vampires bleeding is not taken lightly. He’d bled, and Naylor had drunk his blood. Reynauld’s expression was like stone. For the first time they’d had an excuse for doubting his dominance.

  With one step he was three foot up, standing on the
table.

  ‘Oh, are you going to hurt me?’ Naylor whined, somehow both craven and mocking. ‘That’s just mean of you, Old Man. All I want to do is have a good time and mind my own –’ He never finished the sentence. There was a blur and suddenly the two figures were one, moving at incredible speed as they struck at each other, shadows whirling and shredding about them. I blinked and suddenly Naylor was face down on the table with one arm twisted up between his shoulders, his nose and cheek mashed to the hard wood, and Reynauld’s fist locked in his hair.

  Naylor made a strange gasping noise, and I was disturbed to realise he was laughing.

  ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Reynauld snarled, his weight on Naylor’s arm and back. ‘This matters! We leave them alone so they will leave us alone. Accommodation. Symbiosis. That’s why there are rules!’

  ‘I get it,’ he hissed. ‘You get off on being their daddy; I get that. Just like you get off on slamming me. I can feel your cock, Reynauld. You going to do something with that? I can feel it poking my asshole like a sweep trying to get his brush up the flue, you horny old fucker. Like a pig with its snout up my trough.’

  Naylor wasn’t lying: they’d both worn shadows rather than real clothes and now that these were reduced to whipping shreds both men’s bodies were only too visible to those of us watching. Reynauld had a full erection and inevitably given their relative positions he was jabbing the man beneath him. I’ll tell you something else: Naylor’s cock was just as stiff. You could see it as he humped his butt up, heaving his hips from the table in an attempt to connect with the man behind him. His cock was slimmer and more curved than Reynauld’s; it jutted beneath his belly like the share of a plough, and a strand of clear pre-cum was drooling from the tip, connecting flesh and tabletop. It was the blood, see. I knew the inevitable effect it had on them. Blood shed, blood drunk: they were both high on the taste, the smell, the violence.