The Seeker
by
Martyn Taylor
A Wild Wolf Publication
Published by Wild Wolf Publishing in 2019
Copyright © 2019 Martyn Taylor
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters, and incidents, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales, or any other entity, is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
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Chapter One
The Phoenix Club had never been the place to see and be seen. Down steep, rickety stairs to a basement off Wardour Street, it was a cramped room where the sweat sometimes ran down the walls, where the drinks cost more than any sane person would pay and were mostly water anyway, where dancers went in the expectation of good dance music and were never disappointed.
Even at four on a Sunday morning the dance floor was filled with young, and not so young, out of their brains on the recreational chemicals of choice, throwing extravagant shapes and sweating like the athletes they were too cool to be.
In a dark corner two couples sat close to each other, cooling down after an enthusiastic evening’s dancing, drinking and drug taking. Gary and Emily had come to the Phoenix together from Bromley, with half a dozen friends who were here and there, round and about. This escapade was a celebration of their being a couple for six whole months, practically a lifetime at their age.
Shona and Fill had also come together. They were regulars at the Phoenix, better dressed than most punters, tall and chic and so cool they were practically glacial. Taking up with Gaz and Emily had been easy, once Fill showed them the pharmacopeia of goodies he had in his jacket pocket. The youngsters had taken to his sweets eagerly, and hadn’t minded when Fill began to dance with Emily and Shona took Gaz in her arms, which was about the time their friends drifted away.
Now, in their corner, Gaz was slumped, head on the table and eyes shut, drooling. Fill and Emily were engaged in an enthusiastic game of tonsil hockey while Shona was stroking Emily, allowing her fingers to play ever so fleetingly with the girl’s almost exposed breasts. Emily didn’t seem to mind, groaning a little and reaching down under the table to take hold of Fill, thinking somewhere in the farthest recesses of her mind that he seemed a lot bigger than Gaz.
Without any decision appearing to be made, Fill lifted Emily to her feet without releasing her lips while Shona slid out from behind the table, leaving Gaz where he was, comatose, no use to anyone in his condition, not even them.
“Where are we going?” asked Emily, when she realised she was on her feet. Fill whispered into her ear. Her eyes widened and she blushed beneath her makeup. “I’ve never done anything like that before,” she whispered.
“Oh, you’ll enjoy it,” promised Shona. “It is real decadent fun.”
Decadent fun was what they had come to Soho to find, although they had been in no real expectation of discovering it. Emily shivered as Shona slid her hand inside her dress and gave her nipple a sharp tug.
She could not have described the sensation that lanced through her, or the trembling need it set up in her groin, nor would she have tried to. All she knew was that she wanted more.
Fill all but had to carry Emily out of the Phoenix, and enveloped her in his jacket to keep her warm as the sudden morning chill made them hurry along the rain slicked pavement that was almost, but not quite empty. Streets around there were never empty, or quiet.
They had only gone about twenty yards when Fill turned into a dark, narrow alley, almost impassable because of the wheeled, battered and scarred green refuse bins that were outside most of the locked doors, the bins themselves chained shut. Halfway along the alley Fill turned into a pitch dark doorway where they would be hidden from the CCTV cameras that monitored even that insignificant thoroughfare in central London.
“What…” Emily began as she found her back pressed against a cold, dirty brick wall. This was not what he had promised. Before she could say anything more she found Shona’s hand pressed hard against her mouth.
“Shut your whining,” Shona hissed. Emily began to panic, began to struggle as realisation of what was going to happen to her fought to drive the intoxication out of her utterly addled brain. She did not want to be raped. Dear God above, she did not want to be raped. What would Gaz say if she knew she had been raped? Where was Gaz?
What she saw then put all thoughts of her boyfriend out of her head. Both Fill and Shona had drawn back their upper lips and their canine teeth looked as though they belonged in a real wolf’s jaw, longer than the other teeth and pointed, sharply pointed. Fill’s face moved to her exposed throat while Shona dipped hers towards Emily’s breast.
Their first bites were the purest, most agonising pain she had ever known. Behind Shona’s hand Emily screamed as she had never screamed before, fire shooting through every artery and vein in her body, her brain exploding in the white light that had accompanied the birth of the universe. She was dying. She knew she was dying, even though she did not have the slightest conception how she had come to be in this deadly place.
Just as the pain filled her up so that she could not breathe, did not want to breathe, it began to evolve - turning into pleasure that was just as consuming, just as transporting, just as dangerous.
The cold of the morning vanished, her eyes losing their focus as the muscles that had been tensed to snapping point relaxed into a liquid warmth that promised to float her away to paradise. This was the sensation Fill had promised her. He had kept his promise, and she wanted to reach for him again so she could satisfy his need. Shona’s hand took hold of hers and thrust it between her own legs…
“You really ought to get a room if you want to do that sort of thing.” The voice came from the opposite side of the alley. Emily opened her eyes to see a tall, dark figure that seemed to be made of shadow. Then she was falling as Fill and Shona released her, turning to face the newcomer. As she fell, her head clattered once, twice into the brick, knocking her unconscious.
“You’re new in town, aren’t you,” the man said. He appeared to be calm and at his ease confronting two vampires. “My guess is you’re newly turned as well, and your master didn’t spend much time on your education.”
Fill glanced as Shona, nodding his head so she should move away from him, give the stranger two targets rather than one. It was, indeed, only half a year since Malachi had kept his promise to their father and turned his major domo’s children after the old man died.
“Who are you?” hissed Fill, moving his weight from foot to foot, as though sizing up the shadow for an opportunity to attack.
“My name is Robert Call,” the shadow replied, ostentatiously not moving as Fill and Shona weaved like snakes. “If you weren’t so new in town you would know who I am, what I am.”
“And exactly what are you?” Shona laughed.
“Other than a fool who is way over his head,” Fill added.
“I’m a Seeker,” Call said, “The Seeker, you might say.” Something fell from his hand, landing softly on the pavement and seeming to fold up on itself. Something glittered in the shadows, something that attrac
ted every gleam of light in the alleyway. “I seek things like you.”
Fill leapt towards Call, screaming a blood chilling cry and extending his arms out in front of him, his fingers nails very much longer than any man could possess, even a Howard Hughes.
The silver in Call’s hand lashed out towards Fill, and the war cry was cut off in mid scream as his head separated from his body and tumbled down the damp pavement, sparking and smoking as it went until it came to a stop and disappeared in a plume of acrid scented smoke.
His body would have fallen on top of Call, had the hunter not stepped to his right to confront Shona with his blade extended towards her throat, Fill’s blood still fizzing along its length and dripping from it, the drips evaporating in purple tinged smoke before they hit the ground. Fill’s body was consumed by sudden fire.
The momentary stench was almost overpowering, but Call did not appear to notice it. He stood perfectly still. Now that he was out of the shadows Shona could see this was a not-quite-still-young man of just over average height, just under average build, his thick, dark curly hair streaked with grey at the temples. He wore a black waxed-coat that reached his ankles and large, clear plastic glasses. Without knowing why she thought his eyes were the darkest, saddest she had ever seen.
“We were only feeding,” she whimpered. “We weren’t going to kill her. We have to feed.”
Call said nothing, did nothing, just stood as he was, his blade not even trembling.
“Any last words?” he asked.
“I don’t understand,” she said, wondering what he had done to remove the power of movement from her. She wanted to run away as fast as she could and at the same time claw him into bloody pieces, then lick up the blood from the filthy ground.
“You would understand, if you had paid attention.” He regarded her for a long moment, and then shook his head. “I can’t be bothered to discuss the finer points of extinction with a thing like you.”
“I’m not a thing!” Shona yelled. “I’m…”
Then her head tumbled from her body and both fell to the ground, where they were consumed by the same foul smelling fire and smoke as Fill.
Call did not waste any more time on her, quickly examining where both bodies had fallen and reaching down to retrieve the gold and jewellery they had left behind. With their being new to the business, they did not leave much behind by way of bling, but it looked enough to keep Call in bread and milk for a few days.
He took a blue padded cloth from his pocket and wiped the blood from his blade. The cloth began to steam even as he did so, and caught fire as he dropped it and stamped out the flames under foot. He picked up the sword’s sheath from where he had dropped it, put the one inside the other and hid them and the glasses inside the sports bag in the shadows on his side of the alley after first removing a long, black coat and a wide brimmed black stockman’s hat, which he planted on the back of his head, tugging it forward over his eyes.
He walked to where Emily lay against the wall, her clothing disarrayed, blood still seeping from the puncture wounds in her throat and breast. She looked so small, so helpless, so pathetic. No matter how many victims of vampires he had seen and saved – or not saved, as was far too often the case – he had not grown immune to their appalling, desperate need. It made no difference to him she had probably put herself in harm’s way believing she understood the danger.
However weak minded, however ignorant she might be, she did not deserve to have her life sucked out of her by a vampire. Nobody did. Even those who went in search of the creatures.
Reaching inside his bag he produced a small spray, the contents of which effervesced on the wounds as it hardened into a seal that stopped the bleeding. The spray was an invention of his own. Ordinary anticoagulants would not have been effective enough, quickly enough against the vampire bites. He dressed the wounds, rearranged her clothing and carried her towards the entry to the alleyway, laying her down a few feet inside. Then he turned and walked away smartly in the opposite direction, not quite running but definitely not strolling.
As he went he used a mobile phone to summon an ambulance for Emily, giving only her location and that she needed medical attention quickly. He did not wonder what the paramedics would make of her wounds and his attention to them. What they did not know would not harm them, and their ignorance was not his problem.
His problem was his knowledge that there were now two less vampires in London than there had been when he left home that night, two less but still far too many. As far as Roger Call was concerned, one vampire was too many.
Chapter Two
When he stepped out of the alley and turned west Roger eased his pace, becoming just another reveller walking home after a night out among the pubs and clubs, restaurants, theatres and flesh pots of London.
His coat collar was turned up against the drizzle that the wind could whip up into the face of anyone walking those streets, no matter which direction they faced. The brim of his black hat was pulled down low over his eyes. Anyone looking at him would see only a dark figure, not an identifiable individual.
He didn’t deviate or stop to look in some shop window or other like his few fellow pedestrians, most of whom were drunk, or close to, whereas he was entirely sober. He never drank anything, never took anything – not even anything that might enhance his performance – when he went out seeking. He did not hurry, however, because that would attract attention to him just as much as staggering or weaving. It was a skill he had, to be able to move unseen, but it worked best when the streets were as crowded as they usually were. Without appearing to do so, he regularly made sure he was not being followed or observed.
Not that he had anything to hide; just a ceremonial sword in his bag that was as clean as clean could be, cleaned by the corrosive blood of vampires.
This was by no means the first time he had dealt with vampires and gone home afterwards, revelling in his sense of awareness, his being attuned to the rhythms and tides of the city in ways few others were - and none he knew. It wasn’t that he could see more clearly, hear any better, smell more intently, but that the act of execution gave him access to other senses, senses that would drive most other men to distraction were they aware of them. Most humans had enough difficulty processing the information their five conventional senses gave them.
He could have skipped home safely, twirling the umbrella he didn’t have, crooning ‘Singing in the Rain’, only some tiny knot of blackness at the very farthest reach of his consciousness, that was inaccessible to him, made him feel uneasy without actually knowing why. His instincts contradicted his senses, and he trusted his instincts more than he did his senses. There were things hidden away in the city he could not comprehend, did not want to comprehend because, in the marrow of his bones, and well away from his intellect, they terrified him. Atavism would keep him alive.
He eventually reached home and turned around, taking a long, clear look around himself, seeing nothing. Cursing silently, telling himself not to be a fool, he walked into the cobbled cul de sac of Tancred Mews, in the down market end of Knightsbridge and went inside the home that was all he had left of the time when he’d been a different man, a family man with prospects and the ever widening circle of friends, acquaintances and contacts that any man rising in the jungle that was the City of London had. The house was all but empty now. He could hear himself breathing and his foot-steps sounded like rifle shots as he walked upstairs. There had been carpet on the stairs in those days. Marion had insisted on it, and child gates at both top and bottom of the stairs, the only evidence of which were circles of slightly cleaner white paint on the balusters.
Once upstairs he shook himself out of his coat and dropped his hat on top of it before going through into the bathroom. He stripped naked and stuffed all his clothes into a black plastic sack, which he tied shut with the moulded handles before placing inside another larger, thicker sack, which he secured with a length of green plastic covered gardening wire.
Aft
er that he got under the shower and just stood there as the water went from shiveringly cold to flesh strippingly hot. He endured this until he was sobbing and gasping, on the verge of howling, when he reduced the temperature to merely hot and set about cleansing himself with an abrasive shower gel and a mitt made of loofah. He glowed when he got out of the shower, towelled himself dry with a soft towel that had been sold to him as a bath sheet because it was almost as big as a single bed sheet.
He put on a towelling bathrobe that almost reached the floor, brushed his teeth and ran his fingers through his still damp hair. Unless the reflection was lying to him, he could pass muster as a human being, which was as much of a relief tonight as it always was. There was a fear, deep inside him, that his humanity would eventually be eaten away by the vampire blood he shed, turning him into… into what he did not know.
He walked through into his bedroom. Daylight would show this room as being as Spartan as it could be without his actually sleeping on the floor. It was a long, narrow room furnished with a single bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe, which he had acquired from a junk shop when Marion had taken all their furniture with her.
They were all in the wartime style known as ‘Utility’, plain but still serviceable all these decades later. There were no curtains at the windows, which allowed the moonlight to fill the room now the rain clouds had dissipated. He went to the side of the window and looked down on the mews below, at the few parked cars – who really needed a car if they lived in that part of London? – the artfully clipped into perfect ball shaped box trees in their wooden planters, the flowerpots on windowsills, the carefully padlocked blue painted garage doors. The gnawing sensation at the edge of his attention had returned, the conviction that something was not quite right even though he did not yet know what it was, but there was nothing to be seen that looked in the least out of the ordinary. He shook his head and lay down on the bed, closing his eyes and waiting for sleep to take him.
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