My first instinct was to jump on the vampire's back and try to peel him off Mickey, who was now hunched over and desperately attempting to throw the creature off him by rocking side to side. It wouldn’t take much for me to leap onto them, and perhaps if I grabbed onto the creature I could get a grip onto his clothes and either pull him off completely or create enough space for Mickey to wriggle. Maybe give him the opportunity to get the wrench and take a swing at the creature.
But I also worried that if I added my own weight into the mix, we would all tumble to the ground, where we would be more vulnerable. Alternatively, the addition of my extra weight could just snap Mickey in two. I had no idea how much this thing actually weighed, but my additional 140 pounds could be just enough to tip the balance and crush Mickey completely. I’d need a better plan.
Remembering that I had the hammer tucked up my sleeve, I relaxed my grip on its head which sat cradled in my hand. The wooden handle slid down the sleeve of my jacket, falling gently into my curled fingers. Tightening my grip around the handle, I swung it with every bit of strength I could muster and brought it down hard onto my target. Given the speed with which they were moving and the lack of light, I was surprised at how good my aim was.
I heard a crack as the head of the hammer met the back of the creature’s head. Bile and vomit automatically shot up from my stomach, but I forced it down, ignoring the burning sensation as I swallowed it. Pieces of bone and tissue stuck to the metal claw as I brought the hammer down for another hit. The creature’s skull cracked like a soft boiled egg.
The creature relaxed his grip and dropped his legs to the ground; Mickey fell forward onto the cobbled street. As a result. As I instinctively moved towards him, extending a hand to help him to his feet, the creature turned to face me. I was frozen for a moment in my place. I guess I had just hoped that my blows, on top of his existing injuries, would be enough to debilitate the vampire completely. Naive I expect, but let’s be honest, this wasn’t a situation that I was used to. I’d never even been caught up in a pub brawl, let alone fought for my life in the street. My head was reeling. It is one thing to believe in vampires in theory, but quite another to fight one practice.
The vampire turned to face me, then reached around to the back of his head and tentatively fingered the dent in his skull. Bile rushed up into my mouth and I swallowed it back down again. Oh fuck, fuckity, fuck- fuck, fucker. Bringing his hand back to its face, it inspected the fragments of tissue and blood that hung from his fingertips, then brought the digits to his lips and licked the sticky residue from them. I wretched again, but there was no time to be distracted.
Mickey struggled back to his feet but was still having difficulty retrieving the wrench from his jeans pocket. He finally managed to yank it free from the pocket it was caught on, but it was too late; the creature turned on his heel to face him. Mickey was exhausted, confused, fighting to stay upright. There was blood on his shirt and somewhere in the mass of bodies I realised the creature must have really injured him at some point during the struggle.
I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, let him kill Mickey. This was entirely my fault, all of it, the handbag, getting attacked, dragging him out there with me. I wasn’t going to let him suffer anymore that he had, suffer from the physical pain of being beat up or the emotional stress of being responsible for someone else’s death. Someone? This isn’t a someone, this isn’t a person, this is some ‘thing’, something vile.
There was no time to spare; I brought the hammer down and aimed for the creature’s head again, but I wasn’t fast enough. I felt a sudden sharp pain in my arm as if it were going to break. My opponent had been lucky this time; he hadn’t been taken by surprise, but could see my attack coming. He wasn’t going to take it and had grabbed my wrist with a speed and ferocity I wasn’t equipped for.
Looking directly into my eyes, he twisted his grip on my wrist and I was certain I saw the flicker of a smile pass his lips. I was forced to turn my back to him so my arm didn’t break, and then the searing pain arrived as he put all his weight into me and pushed the palm of my hand towards my back, forcing it inwards so it nearly touched the inside of my forearm. The hammer clattered to the ground.
My legs buckled and I dropped to the floor, hitting my knees onto the cobbles and the handle of the hammer. Thankfully, my wrist hadn’t snapped, but the muscles in my arm and shoulder were burning and I couldn’t have turned back to face my attacker without dislocating them. I tried to reach the hammer with my free arm, but it was impossible. Everything hurt and I felt tears form. I was going to die and so was Mickey. At least if I could keep this beast occupied, he wouldn’t be raining the violence down on Mickey. That was something. Please Mickey, run, just run.
Maintaining consciousness wasn’t easy, but the longer I stayed alive and lucid, the greater chance of escape Mickey would have.
Then I saw Mickey’s feet, staggering towards us. My movement was severely restricted and I could only make out a few inches above ground level, but I would recognise those scruffy old boots anywhere. He was dragging them across the cobbles with scarcely enough energy to lift them.
"Mickey," I yelled through the tears, "Run".
Whatever happened, it happened quickly - fast enough to take the creature off guard anyway. First of all I heard a tirade of expletives from Mickey, followed by a kind of wet noise, a yelp and then I felt my arm become free and drop back to its natural position. When I was finally able to look up properly, I saw the vampire wrestling with the handle of the mole wrench, trying desperately to pull free the rest of the tool buried firmly in his eye socket. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what had happened.
While I got to my feet, Mickey finished off the creature by firmly smacking the wrench further into his head with the palm of his hand. That seemed to finally be enough as the thing dropped to the floor.
We stood looking at the body for a little while, half expecting it to get back up. I’ve seen enough horror movies to know that they always come back, and it never makes sense to turn your back on them.
I’d never seen a corpse before, but was confident that they didn’t usually look like that. It was horrible and I wasn’t sure what to feel exactly. There was a massive part of me which felt relief that I was alive, Mickey too of course. But I also felt numb; I didn’t know that I had it in me to hurt another living creature, whatever the circumstance. Mix in the feeling of being genuinely happy to be alive and a mild panic about what to do with the body, and it was a real melting pot of emotion.
"What do we do now?" I eventually managed to ask, breathing heavily through the physical and emotional exhaustion.
"Feck knows. We can’t leave it here. Should we call the police?"
"I don’t know."
"He’s definitely a vampire right?"
"I think so, yes."
Mickey knelt down to inspect the body more fully. It was an awkward movement; he’d pulled muscles in just about every part of his body trying to shake that thing off him. The eyes were still open, admittedly one with the assistance of the mole wrench. He pushed back the vampire's eyelids and took a closer look. I held my breath as he brought his face towards the vampire and inspected it in more detail.
Logic told me that the creature was definitely dead, but this wasn’t an everyday situation; I could visualise the corpse reanimating and grabbing Mickey by his head and taking a chunk out of him. But there was no reanimation, the body stayed dead and completely still.
After inspecting the eyes, Mickey moved his attention to the mouth. He pushed back the lips to reveal the teeth, including the two fangs at the front of the top set.
"Take a look at these", he instructed.
I hesitated for a moment, but eventually crouched down beside him, cringing as he placed his fingers in the creature’s mouth and proceeded to rub them on the gums.
"What is it?" I asked.
"There are two sets of teeth there."
"What?"
He grabbed my
hand and delicately placed my fingers into the open mouth, retracing the path his own had taken. He was right, behind the fangs there was a pair of perfectly normal teeth.
Overcoming my distaste, I peeled back the vampire's lips to get a better look. The fangs appeared to protrude from two small bumps of skin, covering the regular dentures beneath. I pushed on one of the mounds and a little discharge of fluid dripped out. It was clear, like saliva.
"Like a shark," I muttered to myself.
"I don’t follow," Mickey frowned.
"Sharks have multiple rows of teeth. They have a row of regular, functional teeth at the front, with rows of replacement teeth behind it. In this case, though, these enlarged teeth don’t seem to appear all the time, only when they need to bite. Also, it doesn’t seem to be a full set, it’s just these canines, and they're in front of the regular teeth, not behind. When they're not in use, they must sit underneath these flappy gum thingies."
"I thought you said your degree was in business management? How come you know so much about this sort of stuff?"
"Shark Week", I explained, but Mickey's expression remained vacant. "The Discovery Channel," I added. "I’ve watched a lot of TV lately. Anyway, I think that rather than acting as replacement teeth, they probably walk around with these normal-looking teeth most of the time; then, these bad boys pop down out of as and when required."
"They?" Mickey asked. "You think there’s more than one of this thing?"
"This thing here has to come from somewhere, from something. This can't be the only vampire in the world, I know it."
"I know, you're right," he replied," at least I think you're right."
"What’s the alternative?" I continued, "Think about it, if this was some evolutionary blip, then why materialise now and why here of all places?"
"It could be a blip you never know, or something else," Mickey replied with forced optimism.
"Possibly," I countered," but I can’t imagine that evolution suddenly created something which we’ve been talking about in books, films and folklore for several hundred years."
He agreed that it was a fair point, but it didn’t solve our immediate problem - what should we do with the body? Neither of us had ever been in this sort of situation before and I, for one, was in an entirely strange place. I wasn’t sure if I’d be any better equipped if I were on home turf, but at least I knew the area and I’d have a car. But there we were, two strangers in a strange country without a plan, transport or anyone we could turn to for help.
After a brief debate, we agreed that going to the police was not going to be an option. We didn’t want to get locked up, either for murder or for being crazy. Besides, we weren’t sure that the law would even be equipped to deal with this sort of situation.
Mickey theorised that vamps were wandering around, and had been doing so happily for who knows how long. If so, then it was possible that the establishment would know. We didn’t know if we could trust the police or anyone else.
However, we were confident of two things. One, we would need to get rid of the body somehow. Two, we would have to make sure that there was nothing to track it back to us, what it was or what had happened to it. Mickey was particularly resolute on this issue as he was ultimately going to be the one left there to pick up the pieces of any fallout. After all, I was going to be heading back home in less than two days; if there were going to be any accusations of foul play, they would probably be levied solely on him.
Neither of us had a car and that was going to present us with a bit of a problem. We had no way of transporting the carcass, something that seriously restricted our options. Not that we were sure what those options even were; neither of us were experts in 'disappearing' people or vampires. The more we discussed the matter, the more it seemed like we might just have to leave the body there. Not an ideal situation admittedly, but neither of us wanted to go back and ask Maggie for her car keys, agreeing that she shouldn't have to be involved in the mess we'd created.
"What are going to do with it then?" Mickey asked, "Between us we could probably manage lifting him, but we couldn’t carry him far. I don’t even think we’d make the canal".
"We’re going to have to try; I really don’t think we should leave him here. We should at least try to get him out of the way, somewhere a bit more discrete. People are going to be getting up and about in a few hours, not to mention anyone could walk past here anytime. We’ve been lucky as it is."
"Lucky?" Mickey was astounded.
"You know what I mean." I huffed, " I’m surprised that nobody’s come by already."
"Okay, well, we need to make sure that this doesn’t look like there’s any trace back to us." Mickey frowned as if in deep thought.
"How could there be?" It was me being optimistic now." We’ll take the tools and clean them off. There’ll be no reason to search the pub or anywhere else for them,”
"I think we should dump them," he declared. "It’s too risky your way. Besides, there’s plenty of circumstantial stuff to connect us, we don’t need any tangible evidence." I didn’t know what he meant, but Mickey caught on to the fact that I wasn’t following him pretty quickly. I must have been wearing my perplexed face. "The bite," he explained, "your neck and his teeth. There’s probably some way of matching them or DNA or something. Plus your clothes - look at you!"
I touched the dressing on my neck. Although it had inexplicably healed, I had the strangest sensation there, as if the cells in my skin were somehow trying to get my attention to tell me something. Anyway, I’d watched enough detective shows to know that Mickey was right; we had to dispose of as much of the evidence as possible. That meant the bodies, weapons and probably our clothes.
"What about you," I asked with concern," you’ve got blood on you. Where did he get you?"
Mickey inspected his shirt. It was splattered with blood and dirt. He patted himself down until he struck upon a sore patch on his shoulder. Pulling the neck of his tee shirt to one side, he tried to see what the source was. Witnessing his struggle, I pulled his top up and took a closer look at him. Thankfully, all that was there were some grazes and scratch marks. The majority of the blood must have come from the creature.
"You’ll live." I wondered if it would be an inappropriate, to wrap my arms around his pale, bare skin and nuzzle my face into the safety of his flesh.
"We’ll have to do something out about them, won’t we?" he said pointing to the creature’s fangs. Without speaking, we were both on the same page.
Mickey held onto the handles of the mole wrench and tugged, causing a distinct popping sound when he pulled the tool out of the eye socket. They were the biggest set he had in his tool kit, but they were perfect for the intended job. He twisted the locking bolt around until the jaws of the wrench were clasped tightly around the first canine. Once the wrench was locked in position, he pulled hard and fast in an out and upwards direction. It took a couple of attempts, to rip the tooth away from the stringy ligaments which secured them in place. Having perfected the technique, it didn’t take long to get the other canine out.
While Mickey set about disposing of the canines down a drain in the gutter, I smashed at the remaining dentures with my hammer. I felt the need to vomit with every swing, but I swallowed it down and kept at my work. It was one thing to hit something in self-defence, but it somehow felt wrong attacking something that was just lying there, even if it was dead. I hoped I wasn’t turning into a serial killer or something. By the time I had finished, there wasn’t much left of the creature’s face at all. I sat on the ground and cried.
"It’s alright Sophie; it’s going to be alright". Mickey's words were comforting. He gently lifted the hammer out of my hands, wiped it off on his tee shirt and dropped it into the drain. He then did the same with the wrench to make sure that there were no fingerprints on it either. I just sat there watching him. It was nice to have someone else take charge. I didn’t protest when he took my hands and pulled me up from the kerb. He said that we had move the
body. I nodded in silent compliance,
"It’s alright Sophie," He reassuringly wrapped his arms around me and cradled my head on his shoulder. "We’ll sort this out. We’re going to get rid of this, this thing, and it’ll be like nothing has ever happened."
I was close to believing him when I heard the screech of tyres coming towards us.
CHAPTER 7
The van careered to a halt in front of us. The nearside door slid open and a man, dressed in a dark sweater and trousers jumped out. Another man, similarly attired, got out of the driver’s seat and made his way around to the front of the van. Mickey released me from his embrace and turned his back to me, shielding me from whatever was going to happen.
The two men stood in front of us, taking in the situation. They looked down at the body on the ground and my first thought was crap, I don’t want to go to prison. But I didn’t have to worry about that for long. These guys weren’t the police and they weren’t honest civilians, good Samaritans stopping to assist at the scene of a crime. I should have known better after the night I’d had; I should have recognised them straight away. These were the guys who had taken Tracy’s bag, the men who had started all this in the first place. Although this time, they didn’t look confused by my bravado, they looked angry, really, furious.
"Now I get it," Mickey muttered under his breath.
"I don’t," I replied. I tried to peek over his shoulder to see what was going on, but he kept ushering me back with his hands. I wasn’t giving up that easily though and managed to break free by taking a step back and then nipping up to his side.
"Jesus," he explained, "do you have a death wish or something?"
I was going to ask him what he meant, but I stopped myself. As I processed the information before me, I understood everything. It was the eyes that gave it away – the dilated pupils which locked on mine as if studying my every skin cell, analysing every movement, waiting for any sign of weakness. When their lips curled back to reveal sharp fangs, what I suspected was confirmed. Vampires.
Sophie Morgan (Book 1): Relative Strangers (A Modern Vampire Story) Page 7
