Walking Shadows

by Narrelle M. Harris

  "Magdalene?" The voice was a croak. I thought for a moment it was Mundy, then it lifted both hands in front of its blackened face to look at the devastation. His one good eye was wide as he inspected the damage, apparently unaware that his face was in a worse state. "Fuck, Magdalene, look what they did to me."

  Magdalene moved to get a closer look and her face scrunched up in disapproval. "What who did to you Thomas?" No sign of the sweet nanna persona now.

  One of the girls gave a little peep of despair and rushed towards the injured figure. "Thomas!" Head thrown back, she offered her throat to him. Thomas stared at her blankly.

  "It's me, Ingrid," she reached out to him imploringly but was afraid to touch his skin. It would probably flake away, I thought, horrified on too many levels to count. "Please. Let me help." She held her T-shirt down, stretching the fabric, offering herself.

  "Don't," I began. Too late. Thomas, with a frightening, guttural growl, buried his teeth in her skin. Into flesh and pumping blood. I could hear the wet sucking sound, and Ingrid's whimper. I could see her face, her little nose screwed up against the smell of burnt flesh.

  "Why is she doing that?" Gary said, not bothering to whisper.

  I dragged my eyes away from them. "I think she thinks it's going to heal him."

  "That's stupid," said Gary.

  As far as Gary understood and had explained it to me, the stuff in their veins could repair their flesh and bone - like gluing a broken vase back together, he'd said all matter-of-fact - but it couldn't grow brand new cells. Even a haircut was permanent. The destruction visited on Thomas was much too severe to ever repair itself. His skull showed cavities where his face used to be. Whatever he looked like under the soot, that's how he'd always look now.

  "I don't know why he's doing it either," Gary sounded irritated. "Blood only makes you feel more alive. It'll probably make it hurt more."

  "Maybe he's got it wrong too," I suggested. It wasn't like being undead came with a manual. How many of them ended up disappointed that they couldn't change into bats or smoke after achieving eternal life?

  Perhaps right now, Thomas really wanted to believe that the girl's blood could restore him. Vampires feel less intensely than living people, but they do still feel. I hoped he wasn't in as much pain as it looked like he was.

  Then I decided it couldn't be more pain than Ingrid was in. Her eyes were widening as belatedly she realised this was not the brightest idea she'd ever had. She gasped and pushed at Thomas's shoulders, gently at first, then more energetically. A layer of shirt and skin gave way and Thomas growled and bit harder.

  "Thomas?" a weak plea was in her voice. I stepped forward at the same time as Ingrid's friend and while the friend pulled on Ingrid's shoulders, I went straight to the source of the problem.

  Dumb ideas were clearly on a "have two get one free" deal this evening. I ignored Gary's half-vocalised protest and strode across the floor to crouch by Thomas' side. Ingrid watched me, unable to verbalise the plea in her eyes. For an awful moment, they looked like Belinda's eyes, back in those days when our parents were fighting over her hospital bed, forgetting their dying daughter in their hurry to blame each other for her cancer.

  I had no idea how to detach Thomas from the girl. I mainly thought of how I had to stick my finger in the corners of my dog Oscar's jaws to make him drop the remote whenever he was in the chewing mood.

  "Let her go, Thomas," I ordered. Predictably he ignored me, so I worked a finger into the corner of his mouth. His back teeth crushed down on the top knuckle and I winced.

  "Come on, you creep. It's not helping you. You know it's just making it worse."

  I was aware of the way his clothes and skin stained black against my shirt and my hand. Another outfit ruined, I thought, trying to render this horror into a minor nuisance. My finger was starting to really hurt. Oscar was never this much trouble.

  "Drop it," I commanded gruffly, as though Thomas really was just a naughty puppy wilfully ruining the TV remote. He responded by biting down harder than before. Feeling his teeth tear my skin, I snatched my hand back, cursing.

  "Enough." Magdalene closed in, dug her fingers into the back of Thomas' neck, "Let go of her. Now." She gave him a shake. He whimpered and let go. Ingrid scrambled out of the way, her friend helping to drag her back, and they both glared at Thomas like they had been betrayed.

  Ingrid had her hand pressed over her bleeding throat. Magdalene drew a pale silk handkerchief from her cleavage, spat liberally on it and handed it to Ingrid, who dabbed it carefully on the wound. She'd done this before. I could see already that the flow was slowing. Ingrid would be all right. There probably wouldn't even be a scar by morning. I tried not to think of Belinda again, who'd had no such luck, and felt a surge of anger at Ingrid the Idiot for letting this happen in the first place.

  "What happened?" Magdalene demanded of Thomas.

  "Little one jumped me. Big one stuck me with something." Thomas's voice sounded strange. The oxygen he drew in to talk with was escaping from holes in his throat, like damaged bellows. I withdrew, nursing my injured digit, to stand beside the relative safety of Gary.

  "What kind of something?"

  "Dunno. Needle, I think. Made me feel weird."

  "And then?"

  "I ran. Big one threw something - a firebomb I think. Hit me in the back." An odd manic grin now twisted Thomas's face as he heaved his next words out. "The big one said - he said - to come back - let them - finish it clean." A hideous wheezing laugh. "Crazy bastard. So I - ah - climbed across town. Here."

  Magdalene gave him a truculent look, drew her hand away and wiped it on the back of her dress. Maybe she was wondering the same thing I was - had these crazy people followed him here? "What did they look like?"

  "Like bastards." Thomas's voice faded out and he drooped, like all the puff had gone out of him. My finger ached where he had bitten me and I surreptitiously glanced at it. The bleeding had slowed, though the skin was still a ragged tear. My knuckle bore a ring of black where it had touched his skin. I wiped it against my skirt, then rummaged in my satchel for a purse pack of tissues to soak up the blood. I managed to extract one, spat on the paper and scrubbed at the wound. The black mark came off. The bleeding started again.

  "Don't do that," muttered Gary, and he took my hand and stuck my finger in his mouth. I felt his tongue swirl over the wound before he pushed my hand back at me.

  "Leave it this time. It'll heal faster," he said.

  "Did your mum ever use her own spit to clean your face?"

  Gary looked both bemused and faintly disgusted. "Yes."

  "Did you like it?"

  "Not after I was about three. Oh." Some moments later he thought of a comeback. "Mum-spit doesn't have healing properties. Mine does."

  Which was true. Still. "Next time, spit on a hanky."

  "Try not to let there be a next time."

  Our conversation had, I thought, been quiet and unheeded, but I caught Smith watching us speculatively. He still had the blue bag in one hand.

  "Shouldn't you be putting that in the fridge for Mundy?" I suggested.

  The sound of shattering glass cascaded over whatever response he'd been about to make, this time coming from the downstairs bar. Smith cursed, thrust the bag at me and ran for the stairs. He had a gun in his hand, and for all I hadn't known he was carrying one, it didn't surprise me in the least. It frightened me though, more than anything else I'd seen. Guns were a more commonplace violence, and more alien to me than the undead. My life is weird like that.

  Smith didn't get far. Two steps down, and three ear-splitting bangs - gunfire obviously - were followed by the gut-churning sound of a grown man's scream and its abrupt halt.

  A body came flying up out of the stairwell. Up. At speed. It was Jack, arms and legs swinging floppily. He collided with Smith and they fell in a tangle of limbs at the top of the stairs.

  You would think by now that I would know to run away from trouble; but I needed to know wha
t was going on, and how thoroughly I was cut off from the only exit for those of us who couldn't climb walls. I ran to the stairs and peered into the dark.

  A ghostly face resolved out of the gloom at the bottom of the stairwell. White blond hair framing a solemn, almost pretty countenance. Most of the details were fuzzy, but his eyes were intense.

  "Be gone," he said, with a terrible smile. "Run, sinner, or be purged."

  The words, in a strange accent, were ridiculous, like a schlocky horror film villain. I wanted to give him a librarian-glare. Surely you can do better than that, emo kid. I didn't get that far. He raised his hand, and in it was a bottle, filled part way with pink liquid. A rag was stuffed into the neck of it. That was less on the Dastardly Dan side.

  Oh shit. So that's what a Molotov cocktail looks like.

  "Abe?" A different voice roared out of the back room, hoarse and angry, "Where the hell are you? That wasn't the bloody plan! Get back here!"

  The boy - Abe, I assumed - kept his eyes fixed on mine. He took two steps back, almost disappearing in the shadows, then a flame flicked on and touched the rag, which blazed into life.

  "Run," he said, grinning, like even if I ran it wouldn't help, and he threw the firebomb up the staircase. I recoiled as it splintered on the top step and the fire bloomed across the stairs, the banister, the floor.

  Smith had scrambled out from under Jack's motionless body. Jack remained unmoving as the corner of his coat began to smoke and burn. I reached for him, thinking to beat out the flames with my hands if I had to, but Smith shoved me back.

  "No point now. Dead as a fucking dodo," he explained gruffly, "We gotta get out of here."

  Poor Jack. When he'd bothered to speak to me at all he would mention his sister's wedding plans. His father's greyhounds. Once, his mother, out of hospital after a bad asthma attack and fretting that no-one had done the housework in her absence. Normal family stuff outside of his life as a bouncer for the bite club. Another dead body to add to the count in my head.

  The bag felt welded to my skin, like I would never get rid of it. I wondered if Mundy was still alive to receive it. Wondered if it mattered to me if he wasn't. Found that it did, and didn't understand why. I don't like you Mundy. You're dangerous. You're a killer. If you're dead you probably deserve it.

  Hands on my shoulders pulled me out of the numb reverie.

  "We have to get out of here." Gary urged me towards the window over the blind alley. Thomas had gone, and I glimpsed Magdalene's flowing gown disappearing over the sill.

  "Where is everyone? The girls?"

  "Window," he said, jerking a thumb in a distinct signal that we should follow without delay. I picked through the glass and peered outside. A feeble fire escape ladder was bolted to the wall. Smith was at the bottom, the two girls close behind. Thomas was half way down, having trouble holding on, with the ladder wobbling ominously. As I watched, one side of the rusty railings tore free from the wall and Thomas, railings and all, fell twenty feet to the ground with a crunch.

  Shit.

  A wet hiss indicated the water sprinklers had come on - this place conformed to the fire code that much, anyway - but the room was filling with smoke and the stairs were consumed with flames.

  "Not everyone's down there," I realised with a frantic stab of adrenalin.

  "What?" Gary was dithering by the window, keen to be on his way and looking for hand-holds now that what was left of the ladder was hanging drunkenly off the brickwork.

  "Beryl and that boy haven't come out." The room was rank with the smell of burned skin. The din of sprinklers and flames and shouting and sirens were overwhelming. All it needed to be a perfect representation of hell was for my mother to turn up.

  Damn. Damndamndamn. First, I dropped the blue bag the two storeys to the ground outside and hoped that if we ever found Mundy he'd forgive any extra dents in his detached person. Then, ignoring Gary's protests, I ran to the heavy curtains and pulled them aside.

  The boy's legs were kicking feebly from a booth. A vivid image of something I had never seen filled my skull. I didn't know where Priestley had killed him, but this was how Daniel had died. Kicking against death while a vampire fed. I ran towards them.

  I pulled Beryl's hair, hard and sharp. It didn't hurt her but it certainly distracted her. Beryl scowled at me, blood staining her teeth and her chin.

  "The building's on fire, you stupid cow!"

  She looked at me like I was the moron, and it made me angry that I let her make me feel like that.

  "I noticed," she said.

  And you thought you'd take an opportunistic moment to actually kill someone and hide the evidence in the fire. I was tempted to rethink my opinions on the deserving dead. I let go of her hair but my hands clenched convulsively into useless fists. "Let him go."

  Beryl all but laughed at my non-status as a threat. A peculiar expression of dreamy pleasure and savage satisfaction transformed her face. Strings of blood stretched between her pointed canines and lower lip. Her eyes were luminescent with an ugly mimicry of life.

  She had never looked less like a buttoned-down academic, and I felt more stupid than ever, for forgetting what she was and ever thinking that she was any kind of harmless.

  "I don't think I will," she said, through that terrifying expression. "God, it's exquisite. I haven't felt anything this intense since I died."

  The boy, still held in her tight grip, sobbed.

  "Leave him alone or I'll set fire to you myself." An empty threat, since my chances of getting near enough even if I grabbed a burning brand were minimal. I glanced around, looking for something I could use as a weapon anyway.

  Beryl looked over my shoulder and tilted her head to one side, eyes narrowing. Watching the fire maybe. I didn't look over my shoulder to check.

  And lightning fast, she bent her head to the boy's throat, ripped at his flesh, then stood straight, blood dribbling from her lips. "You may have him now."

  Blood was pouring from the spiteful tear she'd made in his neck. She let him go and he dropped like a stone. Beryl strode towards me and I stood transfixed, knowing I could never be fast enough to escape. She paused by my side and bent to murmur in my ear: "I'll bet you taste sweet and full of fire, girl. Perhaps I will ask Hooper to share."

  "It's not like that," came the immediate protest behind me. I glanced back to see Gary's irritated expression. Beryl paused to sneer before she ran to the window. I turned my back on both of them, ran to the boy and pressed the heel of my hand to his wound.

  "It'll stop bleeding in a second," I told him.

  His eyes were huge. China blue. A different blue to my late brother's. They made me think of Paul anyway. The pale lids began to close.

  "Hamish, isn't it?" I wanted to keep him awake, as alert as possible. I had to get him out of the building yet and that would be impossible if he passed out. He began to nod, but it hurt him and he gasped.

  "Stay still, Hamish. You'll be right in a tick." Only he wouldn't be. The blood was still flowing, not clotting as I expected it to. I shifted my hand to inspect the gash, and blood spurted. Damnit. Beryl had bitten deep and hard. I couldn't think of words obscene enough to express my rage and despair.

  "Are you going to be long?" Gary edged up behind me. "It sounds like the fire's getting worse downstairs."

  "The bleeding won't stop. I need help."

  The please was at the back of my throat, on my tongue, but before I voiced it Gary blinked at me, then Hamish. "Okay."

  Hamish whimpered and tried to crawl backwards, out of Gary's reach. He didn't get very far, weak from blood loss and terror. I pressed my hand on the wound again, trying to staunch the flow.

  A small sigh and Gary knelt down on Hamish's other side. Hamish tried to struggle but he had no strength.

  "Don't be scared," I said. "We just need to make the bleeding stop."

  "No. No. No." Each sound a sharp hiccup of fear.

  "Trust me. Trust us."

  His china blue eyes fixed
on mine.

  "I don't have a hanky," said Gary.

  "Just do it like you did that time Tug bit me."

  In my peripheral vision Gary moved, lowered his head and I shifted my hand at the last minute. Instead, I clasped Hamish's nearest hand in my own blood-slick ones. His return grip was as tight as he could make it. Not tight at all.

  Hamish's eyes widened. He whimper-gasped and the sound turned briefly to a keening cry at the back of his throat, and then that passed and his expression flitted from terror to bafflement.

  "He's..." Hamish's brow furrowed, "he's licking me."

  "Yes," I tried to smile. "He's sealing the bite."

  Hamish's look of confusion became more entrenched.

  "His saliva has healing properties," I explained as matter-of-factly as I could, trying to channel all the doctors I had ever despised, suddenly understanding why they sounded so cold.

  "Normally, if the bite isn't too deep and hasn't hit an artery, it's enough to stop the bleeding almost straight away. By morning there isn't even a scar."

  "R-really?"

  "Yeah. See?" Stretching my neck up to show the flawless skin where my one-time friend Tug had tried to kill me. "Gary did the same for me once. Now I'm right as rain."

  Somehow, I always end up talking like my Nanna when I'm trying to be reassuring. I'm surprised I didn't pat him on the head, call him 'love' and offer him one of the good biscuits.

  The whole time I tried not to look at Gary with his mouth nestled in Hamish's throat. When Gary finally sat up, however, I couldn't avoid the sight of him, face streaked red, his skin flushed with the pseudo-life that Hamish's blood had given him. Hamish was staring too.

  "There." Gary's hazel eyes looked startlingly on the green side with that almost-life sparkle behind them. "You'll be right." He glanced at us staring at him and rubbed the heel of his hand across his chin. He inspected the resulting stain and, with a disturbed frown, scrubbed his hand clean against his jeans.