by Parker, Des
Dick tapped his gun and challenged him. “No – it’s not.”
“Do have silver bullets in that gun?” the vampire asked.
“No – why?”
“Got garlic or a wooden stake nearby?” The vampire was very calm, very quiet and deliberately taking his time, savouring the moment.
“No, we don’t.” Caroline responded, as she slowly glanced about the room, the blade of the sword tracking her line of sight.
“Then, I stand by my original statement,” the vampire smiled.
Simon looked him straight in the eye and, without even missing a beat, whispered, “We are wearing mohair though, if that changes your mind.”
“Oh bugger.” The vampire muttered and promptly fell downwards in a heap.
He stood up immediately and adjusted the cloak on his cheesy vampire outfit, which, by the way, didn’t quite fit right. “You wouldn’t consider taking them off for five minutes, would you? It’s just that we are a little hungry.”
“Who is we?” Caroline asked.
The sound of rapidly beating wings filled the room. Five bats swept out from the chimney, their small bodies flashing around the room for a few seconds before blurring into pillars of dark mist and settling into the vampire’s human forms. The vampires oozed charmed and urban cool. There were two men in well-fitting, expensive suits and three beautiful dark-haired women, all in long, tight fitting gothic dresses with necklines plunging halfway to hell. One was dressed in red, the other two in black.
Dick lowered his gun and stepped forward. Simon just stood there, stunned.
“Good evening,” The woman in red whispered as she slithered up to Simon, studied him briefly with a wicked smile, and walked right past him towards Dick, accompanied by her two female companions.
“I must be fucking invisible,” Simon whispered sadly as they walked away.
As they passed Caroline, she slashed at them with Dick’s sword, but they transformed briefly into mist and the blade passed uselessly through them.
A half-second later, they resumed their human form as they closed on Dick, while Caroline’s expression turned to stone.
Dick lowered his gun, stepped forward and smiled weakly at Caroline as the women approached him.
They circled him slowly, moving in a reptilian fashion as if they were circling prey, which was probably accurate.
“Wouldn’t you like to touch us?” the one in red asked with a voice like liquid darkness, enfolding breathless wanton need.
“No, he wouldn’t,” barked Caroline. Though she still wasn’t sure about her feelings for Dick at the moment, she was still sure that nobody else could have him, until she discarded him. It was jealousy, plain and simple.
Dick wasn’t so sure about this development. He shrugged his shoulders and rolled them around, his eyes following the sirens far too closely for Caroline’s liking.
Simon and the vampire leader stood side by side, mesmerised.
“I love it when they do that,” the vampire said.
“I can see why,” Simon replied blankly.
The other two male vampires sidled up beside Simon. One reached out a bony finger to stroke Simon’s neck and was smashed backwards into the wall.
Simon and the vampire leader glanced briefly over their shoulders. “You get used to that,” Simon added as an afterthought, while his forethoughts remained completely transfixed on the vampire women.
“Just take off that tiresome mohair and we can be together,” one of the women in black whispered to Dick as she leaned in close, not close enough to touch, but close enough for him to see down into her tight-fitting dress where there was cleavage and all manner of delights awaiting him.
Every part of him wanted to comply, some parts much more than others, but he knew what he was looking at, and the parts of him that couldn’t see, had no real idea what they were hankering for. “I’d really love to,” Dick replied, almost completely besotted, “but you’d tear out my throat and drain me dry.”
“Only for a few moments.” The red dress of sex replied. “Then you could be with us forever, feasting, laughing and loving with us.” Her hand played down the front of the tight red dress, her eyes consuming his as she stopped directly in front of him, her two companions hungrily waiting on either side.
“He doesn’t need you, he has me,” Caroline sneered, not really sure she believed it herself, but Dick seemed to ignore her, his gaze concentrated intensely on the cleavage before him.
“Ah, child, but we can offer him so much more than you.” The woman in red smiled and her lips curled in a way that was both terrifying and inviting.
Caroline thought it looked like a scratch.
“I’ve got everything you have – Oh, and I’m not a rotting corpse with cheap mascara to hide the fuck ugly bits.”
The woman did not seem to react, but her smile hardened for a moment, then softened as she looked back at Dick, ignoring Caroline. “But at least we know how to use them. We are so much more primal, more animal in our instincts – and I am sure he is just the same, even if you can’t see it.”
Dick was completely captivated.
The eyes turned back to Caroline, but they were as cold as the grave, “And as you can see, I have captured him with my smile.”
“Except - your smile looks like a skid mark.”
This drew an immediate reaction from the woman who vanished into thin air. Caroline was vindicated.
A split second later, the woman re-appeared, right by Caroline’s ear, her icy-whisper cruel, “At least it’s only my smile.”
The vampire suddenly bared her fangs to sink them into Caroline throat – or at least that was the plan; being catapulted against the nearest wall wasn’t. She crumpled to the ground and leapt back to her feet, her entire body coiled and tensed with ill-disguised rage.
“Oops,” Caroline whispered with a cheeky, satisfied smile.
The vampire woman hissed at her and transformed into a bat, disappearing into the blackness of the rest of the house. Her dark sisters followed.
Dick swallowed and returned to the living world, calling after them, his tone bright, almost apologetic, “Hey come on ladies. No need to fight, there’s plenty of me to go around.”
“No, there isn’t.” Caroline said, spinning to face Dick, who drew back in fear.
“Actually, I think there probably is,” Simon muttered to the vampire leader.
“Ah, Leticia certainly has a way, don’t you think?” the vampire leader whispered casually.
“Leticia,” Dick muttered, almost dreamily, “she can have her way with me any time she likes.”
“Hey,” Caroline said, stomping over and jabbing Dick with her palm.
“Sorry, Caroline – but it’s just, she has something, I don’t know what it is, but she has it.” Dick was off somewhere in his mind; it was like some kind of trance and Caroline found it hard to penetrate the veil.
“I have the same something, you know, except mine is still alive and working.”
“Does Leticia’s still work?” Simon asked the vampire leader absent-mindedly.
“Absolutely,” the creature replied.
Caroline’s face went crimson. An ancient part of her nature saw red. The vampire laid down a challenge, and even if Caroline wasn’t sure she’d bother joining the race, she still had her pride and there was no way she would be relegated to second place, even if the prize was a bad joke.
She stormed back to the sofa and sat heavily, jamming the sword blade into the fabric. “Just hurry up and kill them, will you, I want to leave.”
Dick seemed a little confused by the events but Simon could see exactly what was going on, having been in the same position since they met Dick. It was something to do with pigeons coming home to roost. “So what now,” he turned to the vampire leader. “Clearly we can’t kill you, and you can’t kill us, so we have a bit of an impasse.”
“Yes,” replied the vampire as his male companions hovered nearby awaiting some kind of
guidance. “Would you like another cup of tea? I’m Bob, by the way.”
“Sorry?” Simon asked, a little taken aback.
“Well, any fighting seems pointless. I may be a vampire but I still have my manners and we need to have a long, serious chat about where we go from here.”
Dick walked forward, looking around, a little confused. “So – you want to have a chat and a cup of tea and there’ll be no fighting?”
“No,” Bob replied.
“No Killing?” Dick asked.
“No killing.”
“And I don’t get to shoot anybody,” Dick queried, waving his gun around half-heartedly.
“Not unless you want to waste bullets and make a God-awful racket for no reason whatsoever.”
There was a quack from behind him, and a sleepy Mr Percival surveyed the scene from the direction of the kitchen. Seeing no immediate threat, he sat down on an elegant coffee table in front of the sofa and went back to sleep.
Bob looked over at the duck. “You have a duck?”
“Yes,” Simon replied.
“His name is Mr Percival,” Dick added, with a degree of growing awkwardness.
“And he’s wearing a mohair bib,” added Simon.
“You wouldn’t consider letting us –" Bob suggested.
“No,” Simon replied firmly.
“Fine. Um well look, I’ll put the kettle on again and we can have that chat.”
“So you can trick us into letting our guard down and eat us anyway?”
“Do you think that will work?” Bob asked.
Dick cocked the gun, “Not a chance, bloodsucker.”
“So, it will just be tea then,” Bob replied.
Chapter 22
Tea
The ritual of tea, or something very much like it, is as old as time itself. It is a pause in proceedings, a moment of reflection, a time to gather thoughts, to sit and talk, or in this particular case, a rather peculiar moment of calm in a rather peculiar world.
The drawing room was big enough to accommodate several souls, although this descriptor is probably a little inaccurate.
There were three souls in the room, or four if you count Mr Percival, and six creatures without souls. It all seemed very comfortable as they gathered around the lounge setting, but comfortable is probably the last word one would use to describe the situation.
It was more like a pride of lions gathered around wildebeests, offering them a lovely cup of English Breakfast tea just before they tore them to shreds.
The question one would probably ask is, who were the lions, and who were the wildebeests? The answer would determine how the rest of the night proceeded.
Caroline was sitting in a big armchair, a handsome young vampire on either side of the backrest. She should have been nervous, most people would be, but then most people weren’t wearing a mohair beanie and staring daggers at a beautiful raven-haired vampire who was currently lounging against the mantelpiece, her head resting in her chin, her eyes coiled around Dick like darkness, while Dick leaned back on the mantelpiece, a glass of something alcoholic in his hands, a slightly goofy expression on his face, his attention trapped by Leticia’s stare.
“Eternal life, Mr Bond?”
“Sorry, my name is not Bond,” Simon said, half dunking a biscuit in his tea as he sat in the large old sofa, Bob sitting beside him, leaning in close, but not close enough to touch.
On either side of Simon, Leticia’s companions, Morgeth, formerly known as Becky and Nialia, formerly known as Cheryl, were draped over the sofa, cleavages hovering like serpent’s eyes. Simon found it hard to keep his gaze off those eyes.
Bob was formerly known as Bob, because he didn’t see any point in changing his name to something sounding middle-European, just to get some cheap vampire cred.
Truth be told, he had actually experimented with several different names, all sounding just a little worse each time. At the end of the day, he simply preferred Bob and seeing as he was able to transform into a bat and had the smarts to get three gorgeous vampire women and two husky vampire men to follow him, he figured he had earned the right to be anyone he liked. He was the brains of the outfit and knew how to use them. His present plan involved animal husbandry and he certainly had the breeding stock for it.
“Sorry,” Bob said. “It’s just that I have watched a lot of old movies and I feel a bit like a Bond villain, explaining my plan to my nemesis.”
“Aren’t you supposed to keep your plan secret, so you can outsmart the hero and take over the world?” Simon replied, spitting a little biscuit on the sofa.
“Where’s the fun in that. And besides, the world has gone to hell in a hand basket and none of us has the time to waste with silly games -”
Bob was momentarily distracted as Mr Percival trotted across the rather elaborate coffee table in front of the sofa, sat down in front of the biscuits, and started shovelling through them with his beak.
“Does he have to do that?”
“You try making him stop,” Simon replied.
“What the hell are we doing here?” Caroline interrupted.
“High tea,” Simon replied absent-mindedly.
“Not all of us,” Dick chimed in. “Some of us have something a little stronger.”
“And some of us can’t wait for our first drink,” Leticia whispered, her tongue sweeping sensuously over her blood-red lips. Dick nearly choked on his drink.
“Fuck-off, bat boobs,” Caroline hissed.
“Ooh – such spirit,” Leticia hissed, a hint of teasing in her tone. “You would make a charming – actually no, you wouldn’t. Far too old and crabby.”
“At least my crabs are only in my words,” Caroline replied.
“Now come on, can’t we be civilised,” Simon interrupted. “It’s not like the vampires are any threat to us. In fact, nothing supernatural seems to be able to touch us in any way.”
“No, more’s the pity,” Bob added sadly. “However, we work with what life gives us. But, I am a vampire, so I must act according to my nature.”
“And what nature is that?” Caroline said, hardened eyes watching the two young vampires hovering near her ears.
“Why, European charm and civility,” Bob said. “We have no intention of biting you unless you willingly give yourselves to us. It is our way and has been for several thousand years.”
“And how long have you been a vampire?” Simon asked, “if you don’t mind me asking?”
“About seventeen hours,” Bob replied, “but I have been using my time wisely. I googled vampire lore and worked it all out.”
“The internet is still working?” Simon said, hopefully. “Maybe we can use it to contact other survivors?”
“Well, you see, that was my plan,” Bob said. “As vampires with a conscience, we would like to offer our protection to any remaining humans, in exchange for –.”
“In exchange for draining them dry,” Caroline interrupted.
“Actually, no,” Bob replied. “Unlike the stories, we are not psychopathic, crazed fiends with an unquenchable thirst. Our needs are far more modest. In fact, we are much like you in our desire for sustenance.”
“This sounds like a commercial for love your local vampire,” Simon interjected.
“No, really, we only need to sip from the sweet cup of your lifeblood in modest amounts, once or twice weekly. And we believe that, with your help, we could establish a colony where humans can live in safety, protected by us, and in return, allow us to feed, occasionally, from various members. We will even offer the incentive of eternal life to those who are willing to give their all, so to speak, for our needs – but we will not force ourselves upon you.”
“So you basically want to farm us?” Simon said, realising what Bob was suggesting.
“Yes, I suppose we do. Well, not you specifically, but we would like you three to be our liaisons to the wider community of survivors.”
“Oh this is so much bullshit,” Caroline said with a distinctive edge
to her voice. She was not falling for the line she was being handed. “I think we should leave – and you know what will happen if you try to stop us.”
“Actually no,” Bob replied very quietly, “that is not what will happen. You see, I can see your weakness. Though we cannot touch you at the moment, I am sure we could find a way to remove that beanie from your head before you can leave this house, then you would no longer have that magical shield of protection, and we will have free reign over you, dear lady. And as there are six of us, I doubt if there is anything your gallant gentlemen could do to protect you from all of us. I am sure Leticia, in particular, would like to get up close and personal with you.”
“Oh very much so,” Leticia said, licking her fangs.
“And then in no time you would be one of us. And, from that moment on, you would do everything in your power to help us bring your boys across. Then you would all be like us, we would have no one to help control our bloodlust and every human we come across would be nothing more than a meal. So, in a sense, everyone loses – unless you help us.”
“You bastards,” Caroline tensed. Dick snapped out of his trance and assumed some kind of posture that he thought would make him look even tougher, although he did finish his drink first.
The vampires beared their fangs and coiled their bodies, ready to spring.
Simon just sat there and finished his tea. “I think we should help them.”
“What!” Caroline snapped.
“Um, I’m not following this?” Dick said.
Simon put down his cup. “I seriously think we should help the vampires. I am sick of fighting every supernatural shit we encounter, no offence.”
“None taken,” Bob said.
Simon continued, “ Now, granted, none of us want to be vampires at the moment.”
Leticia smiled at Dick, “But you could be, and then you could party with us, forever.”
Dick was clearly tempted.
“No, he couldn’t.” Caroline hissed.
“Well, yes he could,” Simon added, “if that’s what rings his bell.”
