Blood Loss

by Andy Maslen

  We went down this tiny little alley and we came to the Lotus House. I have to say, I’ve been drinking in Soho-slash-Chinatown for donkey’s years, and I have never even heard of the place. From the outside, it looked poky, but blimey! There must have been two hundred people in there! The noise was ferocious. It was lit by dozens and dozens of candles. And the smell! I mean, I like a little joss stick in the boudoir now and again, especially if I’m entertaining, but this was almost choking me. A waitress – pale, like Peta – showed us to a booth then returned with cocktail menus.

  We ordered drinks – a Mojito for me and a Bloody Mary for Peta – and then I asked her the question that had been on my mind ever since Caro told me she’d headhunted David.

  “Who’s the most famous actor you’ve ever met?”

  She laughed, showing these amazing tiny little teeth.

  “Really? I am one of the most successful women in the world and you want to know about actors? Oh, Lucinda, you are a dream. Well,” she lowered her voice to a whisper, leaning across the banquette to me. “You know Cady Brennan?” She actually looked left and right as if there were a chance we could be overheard. I nodded, and leaned over so she could whisper right in my ear. “I fucked him in my office last January.”

  I may actually have gasped. I know I did the worst-ever “surprised” face in the history of acting. Mouth wide open, eyes to match. She told me the whole story, how she had been producing a film he was in and he’d gone to see her in person about some changes he wanted to make to the script. The man has balls, I’ll give him that.

  Peta was rather fun, actually. She knows everyone, as you’d expect for a woman in her position, and she had this never-ending stream of anecdotes. Not at all standoffish, which she could be with her wealth. I could do a one-woman show called The Life of Peta Velds – it’d be a sellout. Ooh. Note to self: call her about that. She might even finance it. Then I remembered all that dreadful business in Norfolk and why Caro had been so excited when I said who I was meeting for drinks.

  “Ask her about David,” Caro said. Actually it was more of a command than a request. She was looking at me like I was one of her dreadful murderers. “I want to find out what she’s got on him, because something is really wrong and I intend to get to the bottom of it.” Honestly, she speaks in these dreadful clichés – it’s like The Mousetrap. Anyway, friends are friends, so I asked.

  “Oh, Lucinda!” Peta said, touching me on the arm for what felt like a little too long. “So many questions. Take me home and I’ll tell you a story. You’ll like it. I promise.”

  There didn’t seem to be any question of paying: Peta led me towards the door without so much as asking for a bill. The Maitre D’ – a dumpy little guy with taut, red, shiny skin – beamed at Peta as he held the door open.

  “So nice to see you again, Miss Velds,” he said as we left, “I see you have a new conquest.”

  As we turned onto Shaftesbury Avenue, dodging a squealing gaggle of knee-socked Japanese schoolgirls, a big black car stopped right beside us. The rear door opened on its own and Peta motioned for me to get in.

  “It’s mine,” she said. Her chauffeur-driven limo, no less.

  The seats were made of a wonderfully soft, supple leather, stained a deep shade of red. I leaned back and closed my eyes, suddenly bone-tired. Peta leaned across and began to nuzzle my neck. She smelled like wet stone. She murmured to me, nonsense words, and I felt myself drifting away, from her, from the car even. It was so relaxing. I could hear traffic noises and sense colour and light from the cars and shop windows but had no sense of time passing. I shut my eyes and felt the world spin, and it’s not as though I can’t hold my drink. A heaviness had settled on me and I could only lean against Peta as she stroked my neck. She was whispering to me but I couldn’t understand. Then she said something I could make out.

  “Here we are,” she breathed right in my ear. “My house.”

  How long we’d been driving for I don’t know. But we were in a very expensive street. Muswell Hill, perhaps, or Crouch End. Hampstead, maybe. Tall trees lined both sides of the street, and the houses were set so far back from the road that I couldn’t see them, only more trees, huge double gates and, occasionally, a tall black lamppost, its bulb casting a sad yellow pool of light onto the pavement that bled away to darkness after just a few feet.

  Peta reached down between us and pressed the red button to release me from my seatbelt. The black strap of the belt snaked into a slot beside my left ear. The driver came round and opened the door for us and as I climbed out I looked down at the seat I’d just vacated. In its centre was a pattern – a rose with a scroll underneath it. There was writing on the scroll. It said,

  Linda & Zak

  Love Burns Eternal

  I was just wondering what sort of weirdo would have a luxury car with such nasty upholstery when Peta materialised by my side.

  “Come in,” she said. “You must be hungry.”

  “I am,” I said. “I haven’t eaten for ages.”

  “Me neither,” she said.

  Inside the house, I gasped. I have honestly never seen anywhere so beautiful. The hallway was painted a deep green, decorated with what looked like real branches of holly or yew, something evergreen, anyway. It was like being in a forest. There was a big gold-framed mirror above a table standing against the wall. I watched myself in it as Peta stood next to me and put her arm around my waist. She smiled at me in the mirror and at that moment I knew I was in love. The long, glossy tendrils of her hair seemed to squirm and shift and I watched, entranced, not turning to her but fixed on her reflection in the mirror, as two of the long tresses snaked away from her head and encircled my neck like snakes. It tickled and I laughed. Peta’s smile widened.

  “Let’s have a drink,” she said, “then we can eat.” She led me into the sitting room. “What do you think, Lucinda? You’re a woman of taste.”

  It was a long room, painted a deep red, and lined with shelves full of large, leather-bound books: the sort people usually call “tomes”. A fire was already burning in the grate. Maybe she had a servant, I thought. Over the mantelpiece hung a big antique mirror. It was slightly convex, leaning out from the wall. The gold frame was moulded into crazy shapes: foliage, bunches of grapes, animals and, clinging to the very top, two grinning gargoyles.

  “What would you like to drink?” Peta called from the kitchen. I hadn’t noticed her go while I’d been practising for the Antiques Roadshow.

  I asked for red wine then I took in more of her baroque taste in interior décor: heavy velvet curtains puddling beneath the sash windows; a crystal vase full of deep red velvety roses; and, at the far end of the room, a grand piano. I sat and picked out the first few notes of The Lady is a Tramp. Just then Peta reappeared with the wine.

  “Is that what you think of me?” She was smiling and her eyes reflected the firelight as she handed me a goblet – the only word for it – brimming with wine. “I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. I come from rather purer stock. Come and sit with me. Let me tell you about myself.”

  We sank into the squashy leather sofa opposite the fire and clinked glasses. As we drank she unfolded her story. She could probably have lived for six months on what some Hollywood producer would pay her for its catalogue of scheming prince-bishops, spice merchants and — frankly — murderous relatives.

  As she spoke, savouring every debauched great aunt, every libertine cousin, Peta tipped her head back and closed her eyes. Blue veins showed beneath the pale skin of her throat and I realised I had this overwhelming urge to kiss her there. I pulled back. It’s not that I’m a prude or even particularly straight. But there was another feeling, just beneath the first one. Like I wanted to bite her.

  She opened her eyes and looked straight at me – only it felt more like through me. She took my unresisting hand and led me upstairs, past some very old, very ugly portraits – Velds ancestors, I assumed. At the top of the stairs she placed a hand in the small of my back and us
hered me along the wide corridor towards a door at the far end. Light spilled from under the door across the polished wooden boards and I could hear piano music from inside the room.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “Yes, isn’t it? Mozart. He wrote that piece for me.”

  “For you? How? Oh, you’re teasing me. You mean it’s your favourite. I have songs like that too. I feel the artist wrote it just for me.”

  She laughed, and I’m afraid I flinched a little. It was a really unpleasant rough-edged sound.

  “Of course! I’m just teasing you, darling. Now, why don’t you go first?”

  She stood back and let me open the door. I closed my hand around the handle. It felt cold in my hand and silky to the touch. I looked down. It was a polished length of bone with a shiny hemispherical knob at one end. I looked around at Peta but she merely nodded, encouragingly.

  “In you go,” she breathed.

  I pushed the door. It swung open quietly, the bottom edge brushing against the carpet. In the centre of the vast bedroom was a big four-poster bed, draped with gauzy material in whites, golds and reds. The music was louder now, the insistent trilling of the piano keys filling my ears. But it was what was on the bed that held my attention.

  Three young women. All completely naked. All completely beautiful. They beckoned me and I complied, dumbly. I felt rather than saw Peta undress me and then I climbed onto the bed. The women embraced me, cooing and purring as they stroked me all over. One of the women placed her cold, cold hand on my breast.

  Peta watched from an armchair, smoking a thin cigarette, the blueish smoke climbing sinuously to the high ceiling.

  “Watch me,” she said. Then she stood up and undressed.

  Faint blue lines showed through the skin of her breasts — hardly there, by the way, unlike mine — and ran beneath the taut, puckered nipples. She was standing so close I could feel her breath on my face. She pushed me back onto the bed and sat astride me; her skin was deliciously cool. The other three retreated to the corners of the bed.

  She held her right hand in front of my face and I noticed a ring on her first finger that I could have sworn she hadn’t been wearing earlier. She gave the jewel a twist and I heard a metallic click. Once more she held out the ring, now sprouting a tiny, needle-pointed spike. Holding my gaze, she brought her hand up to her left breast and pushed the spike gently but firmly against the skin. I knew what she wanted me to do. I knew her type. And I didn’t care. Some people are into leather, rubber, role playing: she had a kind of S&M thing going. I wanted her so badly I’d have done anything right then, and anyway, I’ve experimented myself a bit over the years. I moved closer and began to lick up the blood. I could hear the other three hissing quietly, such an odd sound for a person to make. The blood tasted salty and I felt woozy after a couple of seconds. Then I sensed the other girls coming closer. I felt their lips on my neck.

  I woke with a start and turned to look at the clock on the bedside table: 4.42 a.m. Turning to tell Peta I’d have to go, I realised I was alone in the bed. The girls had gone too. There was a note on the pillow next to me.

  “Dearest Lucinda,” it said. “I will be back later but you must leave while it’s still dark – I have very curious neighbours. I will see you very soon. Peta.”

  I left Peta’s house and headed in the direction of the traffic noise. It sounded like a main road so I imagined I’d find it easy to get a cab. I felt different — buzzy. I heard a loud rustle and looked around for what I assumed would be a cat or dog scavenging in a bin bag, only to see a beetle picking its way laboriously through some dry leaves. And though it was dark, flowers were almost radiating colour: luminous yellows, acid oranges, fleshy pinks. Round the next corner I almost tripped over a fox rooting in a fast food carton. But instead of running, it circled around me and, as I bent down, sniffed then licked my outstretched hand. Then I reeled back. A sudden impulse to kill the fox had flashed through me, an almost physical desire. The fox recoiled, snarling, then turned and ran.

  I hurried the rest of the way to the road, my pulse banging in my ears, and hailed a cab. By the time I got home it was 5.15. I pulled my clothes off and fell into bed.

  19

  Caroline Murray’s Journal, 28th October 2010

  Oh. My. God. They’re real. Vampires are real. I’ve seen one with my own eyes. Hissing and spitting like a cornered cat then lapping from a bowl of blood. Jesus, I hope the blood wasn’t human. Though I wouldn’t put anything past Ariane Van-Bloody-Helsing. She probably burgled a bloodbank.

  As I write this, I am sitting in Ariane Van Helsing’s study at the house she shares with her crew of, well, I suppose I must get used to their professional nomenclature, cutters. For God’s sake, they are vampire hunters! How is this even possible? This is the 21st Century! People simply don’t go around at the dead of night with sharpened stakes, plunging them into other people’s hearts and saying, “there’s another one gone”. I mean, it’s insane! Except. Except, it isn’t.

  Three floors below me, in a steel cage that wouldn’t look out of place in a zoo, there’s a young woman who Ariane claims is a vampire. Only she doesn’t call them vampires. She uses the term, “lamia”. Latin for vampire. What does it matter? The woman downstairs is not human. She can’t be. She has fangs like a snake’s. She, it, drank blood from a bowl Ariane put down on the floor.

  And her body. Oh my God! I’ve seen girls at the gym who clearly work out too much, with their six-packs and muscly arms, but this, this thing, is beyond anything I’ve ever seen – even in the Olympics, those awful East Europeans. Its muscles are so sharply defined, it’s as if you could see the individual fibres under the skin. Veins, too, and tendons. Apart from minimal breasts, I would say it has absolutely zero body fat. No hair, either, apart from her head. It doesn’t look shaved, either. Just smooth, like porcelain.

  I tried to convince myself she is just one of those poor souls who suffer from some sort of body dysmorphia disorder and repeatedly modify themselves. There was a documentary last year about a man who had transformed himself into a leopard. But of course he hadn’t at all. Just tattoos, coloured contacts and some filed-down teeth. But she isn’t and she doesn’t. For a start, she can support her weight upside down from the roof of the cage using great curved claws that extend from her toes. And, she can dislocate her lower jaw – an absolutely revolting sight. No surgeon could produce that effect; and none would ever want to.

  So this is my situation. My fiancé has been effectively kidnapped and imprisoned by a very rich, very powerful businesswoman called Peta Velds, whom I am reluctantly forced to admit is the so-called “mother” of a clan of vampires. I still gasp at the mere fact of my writing these words without being drunk. My best friend has disappeared off the face of the earth. And I have moved in with Ariane Van Helsing, who is apparently the descendant of a fictional vampire hunter in a book that turns out to be a PR stunt by Peta Velds, who, by the way, was alive and kicking – or biting – in the 19th Century. I need a drink. A large one.

  But we need to rescue David. Whether he’s a prisoner or not; whether this whole thing is going to turn out to be a massive “gotcha” for some reality TV show or not; whether I have gone mad without realising, or not; he is stuck in that windowless laboratory and he said he’s dumped me in an email. If she tempts him off his meds the poor boy will suffer a breakdown and I can’t let him go through that again; the last one nearly finished him. Nearly finished me, too, if I’m honest. So tomorrow, Ariane and I, together with Tomas, Shimon and Lily, who are actually very sweet to me, will sit down at her table and construct a plan.

  I have taken leave of absence from work. Georgia, our Head of Chambers, was not best pleased but I told her it was simple: accept my application or I’d up sticks and leave for good. She knows she needs me: 23 Middle Temple have tried to lure me over to their chambers on more than one occasion and she knows that, too. So with grudging good grace she allowed me to go. I said I just needed a mont
h. I hope I was right.

  What am I going to do? David has been locked up by the literal mother of all vampires in the wilds of bloody Norfolk. I tried to call Luce but she’s stopped picking up. I hope it’s not because I got her attacked in that pub. I haven’t told Ariane about her; I don’t want that mad Dutchwoman and her crew rolling up outside Luce’s flat with pitchforks and flaming torches.

  This is crazy! It’s like a dream. And the worst of it all is there’s nobody I can talk to. I mean, I can hardly go running to the media. It would spell the end of my legal career faster than being caught doing a line on the jury box. Or social media? I know! A selfie with a sharpened stake: #ReadyForAction. No. This is just awful. All I have is Ariane and her people. I mean, they’re very nice, just a bit intense.

  There are three of them.

  Lily Bax. She’s the mechanic, the driver and the weapons specialist. Maybe 40 or so. Looks like she works out. Biceps like oranges in a sock. Sexy, though, the way she moves. Lithe. She has the bluest eyes I have ever seen - like sapphires.

  Shimon Gregorius. The medic. Jewish, balding, a few gingery hairs kept in place by his skullcap. A big man, too. Well over sixteen stone. Friendly though, kept taking my hand and patting it. He used to be a psychotherapist in Israel. Then one of his patients died, drained of blood, and that’s when Ariane recruited him.

  Tomas Martinsson. I’m not sure exactly what he does. Apart from killing vampires, obviously. He knows his way around the Internet and does research for Ariane. We’ll call him the intelligence officer for now. Absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. Tall, built out of muscle and a stylish dresser.

  Plus Ariane herself. She says she’s related by blood to the character in Dracula called Abraham Van Helsing. Who was also real. They both were, I mean. Ariane’s the current head of a family of cutters based in London. My only goal at this point is to rescue David. I can’t think beyond that.