by Watts, Peter
“What would you do with them? Kill them for food?”
Her dark eyes are suddenly soft, full of liquid sorrow. “Sometimes I think that would be more merciful. Why are you so kind to humans?”
“I almost died of the cold when I was a man. I know what it is to be frozen and hungry.” All the span of years hasn’t diluted the memory. “And they suffered so much through the plagues and massacres of the Dark. They suffer still, and I try to help where I can.”
We go down into the basement. It’s warm and dry, sealed against the light, and furnished with lucky flea-market finds; Turkish rugs, a glazed cabinet for books, a Davenport desk and a chaise longue upholstered in green brocade. There are no mirrors.
I’m comfortable here. Hoshi’s been with me for a couple of years. I found her one rainy night, soaking and starving, trying to suck a few drops of sustenance from a dead rat. I adopted her, like a stray kitten. Now she lives in my house, reads my library and shares my bed. She’s good company, quiet and not intrusive.
“I need a shower.” She sheds her clothing in a trail to the bathroom.
I follow, wanting to wash the dust that was the Count from my skin. The stall is large enough to take both of us. I almost feel human again under the hot water, and our bodies grow warm under the drying curtain of heated air. How strange, that need to recapture what I was, after two-and-a-half centuries dead.
Hoshi combs her hair by touch and leaves it loose, wrapping herself in a towelling robe I stole from the Savoy sixty years ago. I slide into my indigo silk dressing gown, a little frayed at cuff and hem, but still an old friend.
“I don’t understand.” She curls up on the chaise. “The Count was practically a hermit, living in that squalid old folly in Hampstead. Why was he so far from his usual haunts?”
“If he planned to make a kill, it would be sensible to hunt in a distant part of town, outside his habitual territory.”
“He didn’t plan on dying. We’re immortal, so it’s even more shocking when one of us is swept away in a random, tragic accident.”
“Was it an accident? Why was that woman even in the mall? All the shops were shut.” I drum my fingers on the arm of my chair. “We need to look through more of the security footage. The answers may be there.”
“I can do that.” Her eyes go blank, as if she’s reading something I can’t see. “I’ll go back a couple of hours from the slice Andreas showed us.”
“You can access it from here?” Some of tonight’s little mysteries abruptly become clear. “Do you have an implant? I thought that was impossible in a non-living brain.”
“I had it put in just before the holidays. It’s experimental tech–my net-link is wrapped in a cocoon of neurons grown from cold-adapted sea-slugs. I have to feed it glucose occasionally and recharge its oxygen cell. The lab say it’ll probably die in six months, and I’ll need to have a new one re-implanted.” She touches my outmoded laptop, waking it up and passing the stolen data to it. “There you go. I’ve taken the input from three cameras around the food court.”
I settle next to her and she turns the computer so we both can see. We scan the footage faster than a human could, spinning through all three images at once.
“There!” Hoshi taps the screen, selecting the best view. “That’s her. She’s a waitress at the bistro.”
I watch a fragment of the woman’s day on fast forward, seeing her take orders and serve food, then clear and tidy the tables. As the bistro closes, she sits and sips a coffee, unwinding, pulling the pins out of her bun and combing her long hair down with her fingers. Volkov catches her as she leaves for home. We run through the attack several times and I still can’t pinpoint the source of the light. It flares between them, high up, near their faces, a tiny, captive sun.
“Where does she go, after she’s watched Volkov burn?”
Hoshi calls up input from other cameras and we see the waitress slip away, walking into the shadows and vanishing. After that there’s no sign of her at any of the exits or in the surrounding streets.
Hoshi blanks the screen. “We can find her, ask at the café for her name and address.”
“Caldicott will do that.”
“If Andreas finds the poor woman before the police do, he’ll kill her.”
Something flutters in my breast, where my heart would beat if it still did, a sense of unease, a splinter of fear. “He may regret it, if he tries to do her harm. What do you know of Andreas?”
“He’s powerful and has several young vamps in his gang. He tried to sweet-talk me into swelling the ranks. He likes me.”
“He wants you, isn’t that more likely? Why didn’t you join him?”
“He scares me. He hurts people for fun, humans and vampires, and he enjoys making people afraid. Anyhow, I wouldn’t leave you, John.” She leans close to kiss my cheek. “You’re too kind to me.”
“How could I be cruel to you, my dear? You’d never make me angry enough.”
We make preparations to rest for the day, and perhaps sleep. Coffins are unnecessary and uncomfortable; we share an old brass bed.
“I’m hungry,” Hoshi says.
I nod towards the cooler. “There’s some blood in there. Nothing special, just unused bloodbank stock.”
She wrinkles her nose. “I want real food.”
“Try the kitchen upstairs. Nina always has leftovers in the fridge. Be quiet–don’t wake them.”
She comes back with cereal, something that crunches and crackles in the milk. She giggles as she devours it, like a naughty child.
I say nothing when she creeps out of bed later and heads to the bathroom to vomit. It’s hard to unlearn human habits. Sometimes I’ll find a restaurant, one of the few good ones in town, and treat myself to steak and all the trimmings, or fried fish, or pie, mash and peas. For the hour or so it stays in my belly I feel like a living man again.
~
Nina, the housekeeper, wakes us in the late afternoon.
“The police are upstairs, John. One armed constable and an inspector. She said her name was Caldicott.”
“I’ll talk to them in the parlour. Bring them tea, if they want it.”
We take our time dressing. I opt for informal; my black smoking jacket over loose trousers, soft grey shirt and blood-red cravat. Hoshi chooses a dress, a short, fancy thing in velvet and tattered black lace. She plaits her hair, and only paints her eyes and lips. She looks like a princess in rags.
Caldicott is impatient when we enter the parlour, scowling at the decor, pacified a little by the tea. Her constable is on his second slice of Nina’s excellent fruitcake.
“Mr Strong, Miss Maki.” She sets the cup aside. “I’m sorry to disturb you during the day.”
The curtains are open. Outside it’s almost dark, as a cloudy winter day dies. “It’s no trouble. Do you have more questions for us?”
“The mall has an extensive security net and we reviewed all of the video data for last night.” She hands me her datapad. “Do you know this woman?”
It’s the waitress, an unsmiling image taken from an ID card. She’s prettier than I’d have guessed from the grainy surveillance footage, in her late twenties or early thirties, with long, sleek auburn hair and eyes of a vivid pea-green.
“No, I’m afraid not.” I pass the pad to Hoshi, who surveys the picture with perfect blankness, her face a still, calm mask. “Who is she?”
“The last person to see the Count alive.” Caldicott shakes her head slightly, aware of the falsehood. “She works in Westbourne Mall, as a waitress. Her name is Melissa Sinclair. Are you sure you don’t know her?”
“Certain.”
Caldicott sighs and takes back her pad, opening another image. It’s from the attack, the woman held by her hair and the Count with his fangs deep in her throat. “Your Count fed on her, a nasty, little midnight snack. She fought him off, possibly using a weapon to defend herself, a taser or a stun-gun.”
“Neither is capable of destroying us. Did you question he
r about the incident?”
“She failed to turn up for work this morning and she wasn’t at her address. Her neighbours say that she didn’t come home yesterday. We checked the hospital and the walk-in centres, but none of them treated a patient with a severe neck laceration. Melissa Sinclair has disappeared.”
Hoshi laughs. “And you think we’re responsible?”
“I think you might have a motive to harm her, to take revenge for the Count’s death.”
I admire her directness. “I can assure you, Inspector, that neither of us have ever met Ms Sinclair. If you wish to search my house to make sure that she isn’t imprisoned here, or that her body isn’t concealed within these walls, please feel free to do so. We are innocent in this matter and have nothing to fear from a thorough search of the premises.”
Disappointment flickers across Caldicott’s face. She believes me, and the truth makes her case harder, more complex. “This is a nice house, full of nice things. You live very well, and even employ a housekeeper. What do you do, Mr Strong?”
“I’ve had many professions, all the ones listed in the children’s counting game. At the moment I’m lucky enough to be a rich man.”
“How did you make your fortune?”
“In mining.” That’s not a lie; I’d found gold in the Yukon and dug gems out of the earth in Brazil. “With clever investments, it’s easy to build up a considerable sum over decades, centuries. I’ve also lost as much, from backing companies that failed, and from taxes so prohibitive they might as well have been extortion.”
Caldicott nods, and I see her envy for my lifestyle. She’s old enough to have lived through the bad years, when even gold had no value, when food had to be scavenged, stolen or bartered for, and a safe, warm bed was nothing but an absurd dream. Things are better now, with fairly reliable power and piped water, limited medical services and a widening transport net of buses and robocabs, but most humans are still poor.
“We’ll leave you in peace,” she says, rising from her chair. “Goodnight.”
Her constable follows her out, taking a third slice of cake to eat on the way. When they’re gone, Hoshi’s eyes narrow. “What’s wrong?”
“Why would anything be wrong?”
“I know you, John. You can’t hide your worry from me.”
I try to analyse my unease. It began when I looked at the photo of the waitress and doubled when I heard her name. “It’s that woman, the victim of Volkov’s attack.”
“Do you recognise her? Is she a familiar face from your past?”
I shake my head, frustrated that the solution has slipped from my grasp. “It’s nothing. Let it be.”
It’s full dark now, so I change to go out. We split up to feed, and never ask the other where they’re going or if they intend to kill. Vampire etiquette; perhaps simple politeness or perhaps the need not to spread the guilt.
I visit one of my girls and eat lightly. When I return, the house is in darkness, so I go through into the garden. There’s a bench beneath the fig tree and I settle down. Once I would have sat on deck, smoking a pipe or two under the stars. Now I just sit and think.
Hoshi comes home after midnight and finds me in the cold darkness. “What are you doing out here?”
“Considering the mystery.”
“The Sinclair woman?”
“You were right, little Star. I have seen her before–in a fever hospital in Paris, back when the first influenza pandemic took hold. She was on the medical staff.”
“No, she’s too young for that. It was more than forty years ago. Perhaps her mother or another relative?”
“I’m sure it was her.”
Hoshi screws up her pretty face in a frown. “But she’s human, isn’t she? I don’t think she’s one of us.”
“We aren’t the only monsters to walk the earth. There are others out there, hiding in plain sight among the humans, pretending to fit in. You must have heard some of the classic urban myths–the serial killer picking the wrong prey and being flayed alive, the rapist being violated and killed for his crimes. There are more things in Heaven and Earth–”
She giggles. “What, ghosts and werewolves, the fae and evil spirits?”
“I don’t know what they are. I’ve sensed a few of them, an odd presence in a crowd, a sudden whiff of immense chaotic power lurking in the shadows. If you feel such entities near, it’s wisest to walk away.”
“And you think that Melissa Sinclair is one of these monsters, a vampire hunter killing us with the power of the sun?”
I haven’t prayed for centuries, and I’m sure that God won’t be listening if I start again now. “I hope not.”
~
It starts to snow at dawn and at midday the power goes out. Nina lights a fire in the parlour and puts candles around the room. I wake early and take my book up there, and Hoshi joins me an hour later. It snows for the rest of the day, sometimes so heavily that the far side of the square is obscured. As darkness falls, the blizzard ceases. The world is transformed, smothered beneath a killing cloak of pure, virginal whiteness.
“I love snow,” Hoshi says. “It’s so beautiful. It makes a fairyland out of the ordinary.”
“I hate it.”
“It’s New Year’s Eve, at the start of a new century. That’s kind of magical, isn’t it?”
“I’ve seen three centuries in, one of them a new millennium. Perhaps there’s a little more hope for the future this time, as humanity rises slowly from the wreckage of the Dark.”
She doesn’t really understand. She’s so young, only a decade dead. She didn’t live through it, the climate change that starved millions, the earthquakes and floods, the viral pandemics, and the wars over resources and land. I’d watched the humans die, billions of them. A battlefield is a good place for a vampire, and I’d walked a few in my time, recovering the dead and the wounded, giving a merciful end to those with the most grievous injuries in exchange for a few mouthfuls of blood. I’d worked in the tent-city hospitals too, immune to all epidemic diseases. I held water so the shaking, fever-victims could drink, wiped sweat and blood from their faces, maybe comforted them a little, and buried them when they died. The worst of it was over by the time Hoshi was born.
“You don’t talk about the past much, do you? How were you made vampire?”
“I was a sailor on an ill-fated voyage. Our ships were trapped in the ice.” The memory is close to the surface, summoned by the freezing weather outside. I close my eyes and I’m back in that blizzard, my fingers and toes aching with frostbite, my breath a pale cloud in the air.
We’d trekked over the ice, a small group of us, in search of the nearest settlement and safety, until the raw arctic wind caught us up in a terrible, blinding snowstorm. I was weak and so hungry, as all of us were. My companion, the real William Strong, fell down in the snow and couldn’t summon the will to go on, so I stayed with him and tried to keep him warm. He died within the hour. I wept for him, my tears freezing in the rime on my beard. I still use his name and others of the crew for aliases, simply to keep their memory alive.
I’d been very close to death, on the point of closing my eyes and slipping into a sleep that would last for eternity, when a figure loomed out of the storm, a tall woman with braided dark hair, wearing robes of sealskin, as the Inuit tribes do. Two ice bears stalked at her heels.
“Help me,” I’d said.
“Do you want to live?” Her voice was deep, and as cold as the land around us. “I may save you, but granting that boon will be a curse rather than a blessing. Are you prepared to accept the cost?”
“What cost?”
“My people say this–the greatest peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls. If I save you, you must kill and sacrifice a soul each time you need to fill your belly. Can you live with such guilt?”
“Yes,” I’d said. “Anything.”
She’d gestured with her left hand and one of the bears reared over me. I looked up into the dark g
ape of its jaws and felt the heat of its fish-scented breath before it ripped out my throat.
When I awoke, I was no longer cold or in pain. My body was whole again and all my fear had gone.
The woman sat beside me on the snow, leaning against the larger bear, which was still licking my blood from its muzzle. The other lapped at his mistress’s wrist, cleaning a fresh wound there.
“What have you done to me?” I’d asked.
“Saved your life, for the rest of time.” She’d climbed to her feet, and the bears rubbed against her, like pet dogs or house-cats. “Let me leave you with one piece of advice–be kind.”
Then she’d walked away, disappearing back into the storm.
“John.” Hoshi’s voice calls me back. I blink at her and she touches my cheek, smiling. “You looked so very far away.”
“I was remembering being alive, then dead again.”
“We won’t talk about it. Now, what shall we do to celebrate the New Year? I feel we should do something–”
My phone sings, a call from an unknown number.
“Mr Strong?” I place the weary, husky voice–Caldicott. “I thought that you’d like to know we’ve found Ms Sinclair.”
“That’s good news. Where was she?”
“In hiding, with a friend. She returned to her flat to collect some belongings. Her intention is to leave the city, but she’s agreed to be interviewed before she goes.”
“I’d like to speak with her, if that’s possible.”
Caldicott considers it, weighing up the risk and harm. “I’ll allow it. We’re taking her to the station in Shepherd’s Bush. Meet us there in an hour.”
~
It takes us a little longer than that to reach the police station. The robocabs are running slow, struggling to cope with the deep snowfall. The reception hall is in chaos, full of people. Few are there to report a crime, most just finding refuge from the cold and the blackout. We make our way to the desk, which is manned by a harassed sergeant and a single support worker.
“We’re here to see DI Caldicott.”
