As remarks went it was innocent enough. Neither would have guessed it would prove to be the tiny push that was needed to bring the entire wonderful edifice of their love crumbling down around them.
Some days later Roxane sat up in bed. “I’ve just thought of something.”
Half awakened, Call turned towards her. “Was it bothering you?”
“No… I mean, yes… I suppose I mean that it wasn’t bothering me until I realised what it was - and that it was bothering me.”
“Well, thank you for making that as clear as pitch to me.”
She turned towards him, the sheet sliding from her shoulders, revealing her breasts. He reached for them without thinking only to have his hand slapped stingingly aside. “I’m being serious!”
He put the errant hand into the warmth of his other armpit. “I thought I was being serious too.”
She tugged the sheet up to her throat, dragging it partially off him. He shivered. Was the chill physical or psychological? Did it matter? “You know how, when we’re doing it…”
“Doing it?” he laughed, regaining some of the sheet. “Doing it?”
“Making the two backed beast, having sex, making love, doing it… we don’t hold anything back, do we?”
“I’ve never actually thought about it, but, no, I don’t suppose we do.”
She was silent for a moment. “Why don’t you ever bite me? I’ve never had a lover who didn’t bite me, my neck, my breasts, my nipples. Even before I was turned.”
The chill dropped several degrees. “Maybe I just don’t want to hurt you,” even though he knew he could not hurt her, no matter how much he wanted to do it. Of the many subjects they had so far avoided discussing, her vampirism occupied at least the top ten places on the list. Since their first kiss she had not mentioned it any more than he had told her of his excursions and alarums as a vampire Seeker. “Now I come to think of it, maybe I just picked upon the fact you don’t use your teeth that much.”
“Do you want me to?”
The elephant in the room stood up and introduced itself, and for a while they both tried to work out whether they could understand anything it was saying.
“I would not draw blood,” she said, eventually. The ‘not unless you wanted me to’ went unsaid. It did not need to be said. Still, his saying nothing made her squirm. “Don’t you trust me?”
Trust you? How can you expect me to trust you? You’re a vampire. You drink human’s blood and then you kill them. What has trust got to do with anything? He managed not to say it. What he said was “Of course I trust you…” and the truth was that he did trust her. He trusted the woman he loved. He could never trust the vampire that lived inside her.
“There is a solution to all of this,” she said, eventually.
“No.” His answer came out almost before she finished speaking.
“You don’t know what I am going to suggest!”
He did know. He was a human being in love with a vampire. She was a vampire in love with a human being. At some time that fathomless canyon would have to be bridged, and she could not have her humanity restored to her. Which left just one course of action.
“You will never turn me. If you love me – and I believe you do – you will never try.”
The ensuing silence was prolonged. He wondered if it was as painful for her as it was for him. Eventually she spoke.
“Have you tried looking at this conundrum from my point of view?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She shook her head, bewildered by his stupidity, his oafishness. “Robert, I love you. You make me feel alive in ways I have never known before. You make the world so much more vibrant, so much more real than it has ever appeared to me. From what I have observed, I should say that is pretty rare, even for human lovers. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“Most human lovers feel the same way, at one time or another.”
“So you say. So I read.” There was a harshness to her voice he had never heard before. “That takes no account of that certain discrepancy between your life expectancy and mine.”
“It takes a very special sort of person to want to live for ever,” he temporised. “I just don’t believe I am that sort of person.”
She leaned over him and kissed him lingeringly, having taken his face in both her hands. That was the end of their discussion.
He woke up in the early hours of the morning, light just beginning to infiltrate the room around the curtains, and lay there listening to the relentless rhythm of her breathing, something he had done regularly without ever noticing that every inhalation was punctuated by a small, almost inaudible ‘hic’ just before the breath became exhalation.
Without understanding how or why, that tiny, insignificant mechanical imperfection told him he was not sleeping next to a woman. Rather he was the lover, the pet of a five hundred year-old vampire, a creature whose future might see her standing over his grave looking no different to the way she looked now while his would shortly see him wondering when he would begin to lose his hair, his life, his vitality – her love.
He got out of bed and went to the window. There was just a hint of condensation in the corners, the first sign the seasons were changing.
“Where are you going?” Her voice was slow and thick with sleep as he sat on the end of the bed and laced up his trainers.
“Things to do,” he muttered, peering at his laces. “I can’t ignore them anymore.”
She said nothing. There was nothing to say. She had known this moment would come, no matter how she pretended, no matter how fervently she prayed to gods in which she did not believe. Or it might have been they did not believe in her any more.
She had wondered how she would react when the moment came, whether with rage or feigned indifference, and was surprised to discover she felt only a numbing, consuming sadness at the inevitability of it all. She turned over in the bed and pretended she had fallen back to sleep rather than watch him finish dressing and leave. She felt him lean over and kiss her gently on the cheek. She wanted to scream, to beg him to stay, but showed nothing and did, eventually, fall back asleep.
When she woke there was a damp patch on her pillow, as though she had been weeping. She wondered why it was there. Then she remembered.
Chapter Twenty Six
That night Call left his house after making doubly sure all his locks and alarms and chains were in working order. Then he went seeking vampires.
On the dark streets he felt alive in a completely different way to the feelings of the past weeks, neither better nor worse, but more familiar to him, more comfortable, like a well-worn coat. Yes, he was a lover, the same as all men were lovers – or at least could be, when love came to town – but he was also a Seeker, a hunter of vampires, the only hunter and killer of vampires in London. It was a calling that was simultaneously a burden and a privilege.
Without him following that calling the balance of life in the city would not be maintained. The vampire population would increase if unchecked and in the blink of an eye there would be more of them than the human population could support. The killings would become too much to ignore, to pretend they were not happening. Humans would panic. There would be pogroms.
His culling of the vampire population was necessary to its upkeep, its survival, although he doubted many vampires would applaud his logic. To them he was a very much unnecessary evil rather than a necessary one. Oh well, nobody expected turkeys to vote for Christmas.
It was probably fortunate for all concerned that he found no trace of any vampires out and about in London that night. All their haunts and clubs were empty of them with only glum faced humans nursing drinks along with their perverse desires and wondering, with him, where the action was.
There were occasions when the hairs on his neck and the back of his hands rose up with a chill, the way they did when he was being followed, observed by a vampire who had got a little too close.
No matter how he searc
hed – and he was meticulous about it – he found no-one following him. Which meant that either he was imagining it or they had suddenly become better at remaining hidden than he was at seeking them out. Neither was a comforting conclusion.
There was, after all, only one vampire in London who should have skills to evade him, and he did not believe he was in any danger from her. The rest could not have learned so much in such a short time. Nobody had ever accused vamps of being fast learners. So the problem was with him.
His night ended with him standing outside her house, the sun rising, wondering whether he should go in or put his key through the letter box in the blue door in the garden wall. For a moment he was certain someone stood behind him, their breath stirring the hair on the back of his head, but he managed to keep from turning around and the sensation passed. He had imagined it and needed to get a grip on himself. Seeking out vampires and destroying them was a purely practical art. Imagination played no part in it and only placed him in danger.
A couple of minutes after the sensation passed he went on his way, the key still in his coat pocket. He was not prepared to take that step yet.
If he dreamed that day he was unaware of it when he awoke, although he was uncomfortably conscious that the feelings of peace and contentment he has enjoyed while with Roxane were gone, replaced by determination and a firm sense of purpose. They would just have to suffice.
When he went out that night he came upon a pair of vampires in a Compton Street bar that was popular with the gay community at weekends. They sat at a table in the almost empty bar, watching the out of town couples making the most of a dangerous night out in Sin City and looking like very disappointed tourists.
They did not look to have anyone in mind but that did not prevent Call following them when they left, luring them into a dark alley and putting an end to their afterlives. The act gave him satisfaction, but he acknowledged to himself it was not of the same depth and quality his previous executions had given him, feeling more workmanlike than ritualistic, professional rather than artistic.
Was that the way it was going to be until the day he found himself outmatched? There was nothing he could do about it. The doomed romance of his heart was dying a little more inside him with every moment passed not in her company had drained the romance out of his calling. He had grown up a little. That was all. He had choices. He could live with the loss or he could die because of it. On the whole, he preferred living to any of the alternatives.
She was waiting for him in his quiet room when he came in from his next night’s work. Again, he had not been successful, but it no longer weighed on his mind. A man did what a man could do and ignored everything else.
“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” he sighed as he entered the room and saw her. “My place is supposed to be secure, vampires only admitted by invitation.”
She laid a keyring on the table. “Your locks seemed to consider these an invitation. I can always leave them if you wish.
He shook his head a little more quickly than was wise. For a moment the room swam about him. Or it could have been her perfume. He had never noticed her wearing perfume in the past.
“Something the matter?” she said.
“I’m trying to decide whether I should kiss you.” She had always been a beautiful, desirable woman, but in the half light of that winter morning he felt the flesh on his hands prickling with the need to hold her.
“If you need to ask then perhaps you shouldn’t.” The onus was firmly placed on him. Her posture was indifferent. She didn’t care one way or the other. Only he knew that was a lie. Their on again, off again, on again estrangement had not been her choice and he had never explained his reasoning to her, the change in him rather than her. He had never tried to explain it because he would never be able to find the words, even if he lived to be as old as she was.
“A gentleman would try,” she said, as though reading his thoughts.
Was he a gentleman? He hoped he was. He had been raised to be a gentleman and a gentle man, even if his current vocation was killing. A gentleman respected women. That was one of the lessons from his childhood, and if he did not respect women then the reality was that he did not respect himself, and was lost. During their time together he had done everything he could to respect Roxane, from holding open doors for her to indulging and satisfying each other’s more primitive urges, those that grew out of primeval lust rather than courtly love, and neither had evidenced the slightest shame about that. ‘Whatever gives you pleasure’, that had been their watchword, and surely that was how a gentleman always behaved towards his lover.
“I can’t.” He shrugged. “I just can’t.” He sat down, and as he did so he felt the tension that had built up inside him during the passage of the night just dissipate as she smiled at him. “You want something,” he said.
She nodded.
“Whatever it is, if I can do it, it is yours.”
She leaned forward and her glasses slid down her nose a little, so he could see her eyes. Were they glistening?
“I want to die.”
The breath gushed out of him. He wanted to scream but could only gasp air into his lungs; he was unable to get anything out. Every muscle shrieked from the pain of that virtual blow. The question manifested itself briefly, was she trying to manoeuvre him into allowing himself to be turned, only to be pushed back down into the maelstrom. She would not do something like that. Eventually he recovered himself to say “Well, I would help if I could, but we both know I can’t.”
She smiled and pushed her glasses back up her nose. “I know that. I appreciate the offer, but I think we both know there is only one who can put an end to my life if I lack the courage to go into the flames as my brother did.”
Call doubted that Cyrano had gone to his death other than by an accident of hubris, but he said nothing. After all, she knew her brother much better than he did. If she could prove so very different to his expectations there was a possibility he could have been the same, a possibility.
“Paulinus Antoninus Drusus,” he whispered.
Her smile became so thin lipped her lips vanished altogether.
“And you want me to find him.”
“You are the Seeker.”
Whatever it is, if I can do it, it is yours. He should be more careful what he promised. On the other hand, it was a challenge, and perhaps a challenge was what he needed. “How do you know he is still alive?”
The smile vanished altogether. “Some things you just know, Robert.”
“You’re sure?” he said.
“That he is alive? Yes, I am sure. As sure as I am of anything, although I confess you have undermined my belief in a lot of things I would previously have considered unassailable facts.”
“I meant, are you sure you want to die?”
She smiled. “Are you a religious man, Robert?”
“You know I’m not.”
“Most of the holy books can make for illuminating reading whether you believe their prescriptions or not, and I have read most of them. If you want to know why I want to die I would refer you to Ecclesiastes, Chapter Three.”
“To everything there is a season…” he said without thinking. “My mother read the Bible to me instead of bedtime stories. Her mother was from Ireland – Galway - and her brother was a priest in Boston. She was more or less lapsed by the time I came along, but she had a lot of time for the book if not for the church.”
“Time has a very different meaning to those of us who need not die, Robert. It is not nearly so precious as it is to you. We have so much of it we find it almost impossible not to waste it. Then the sun rises on a day that is no longer summer, but autumn, even winter, and we realise that even eternity has its limits. I have lived long enough, Robert. It has nothing to do with you…”
“Gosh, that’s a relief.”
Her face contorted from a pain he had not intended to inflict. It was all he could do to keep from embracing her. He knew where that would lead, and the m
ight never find their way out of that idyllic place to find themselves here again.
“You want me to find Peter the Roman, find him and tell him that his finest creation is tired of life and he’s the one to put an end to your existence?”
She pushed her glasses back up her nose so that her eyes were hidden. “I might not put it like that, but… yes, yes that is what I want of you.”
Don’t ask much, do you? “Fine, I’ll do it.” He had no idea why he spoke those words, other than that it was what she wanted and he had promised to get her whatever she wanted, if he could. He walked past her to a battered box of file cards and sorted through them until he found the one he wanted. “You don’t know where he is and I don’t know where he is, but I know someone who just might.”
Chapter Twenty Seven
Call knocked on the door and waited, then knocked again and waited some more. He was just about to knock again when the door opened and the largest woman he had ever seen stood there, filling the doorway, leaning heavily on two black walking sticks.
She stood half a head taller than he did and was bigger of build than him. She had been a big woman before whatever glandular disorder it was had added weight everywhere. Now she was huge verging on gross, and Call imagined she must have a difficult time out in the world, but he tried not to judge people on things they couldn’t control. He smiled and held out his right hand.
“Good afternoon, Professor MacLaine, I’m…”
She did not give him time to finish, taking his offered hand and, for a moment, letting him know he would not win a ‘more macho than thou’ handshake contest. “You’re Robert Call. I’m pleased to meet you.” He must have shown some surprise in his expression, because she laughed. Like her speaking voice, it was a low, creaking sound that came up from her gut. It was almost masculine. “Whatever makes you think I wouldn’t know who you are, given my area of academic expertise?” Call liked to believe he existed in some sphere of anonymity, where he was secure. To be told that even a bystander, an observer of his area of deadly practical expertise, knew recognised him came as a blow. One more of his illusions was shattered. Surely he was entitled to some illusions? Or perhaps he wasn’t, if he intended to survive.
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