B007XKEWAE EBOK (19 page)

"Now is not the time."

"It could be."

"You wouldn't be chickening out on me would you? Because a suspicious
person might think that you would rather do that to get out of doing your part in the hunt."

"A suspicious person could think that," Fulton answered. "But then if they saw you they would understand my reasons perfectly."

"Flattery will get you everywhere."

A few paces up ahead Gabriella froze. Then she twirled around with a huge grin on her face and a predator’s gleam in her eyes.

Francesca skipped forwards to her. "You have something?"

Gabriella nodded and her grin became mischievous. "Follow me."

She took Francesca by the hand and they capered along together. Fulton brought up the rear. The trio crossed the street and followed an access road that
ran behind a long row of terraced houses. The streetlights were in pretty good condition with only a couple of spots where the lights were broken and darkness reigned.

The three vampires came to a halt beneath one of the broken lights and hid in the blackness.

"There's nothing here." Fulton said.

"Be patient," Francesca said. "Gabriella knows what she is doing. "Don't you smell them?"

Fulton took a deep sniff of the air. He could smell the intoxicating perfume of Francesca standing so close to him. There was also the, less intoxicating but still alluring, aroma of Gabriella standing only slightly further away from him.

He took another sniff. There it was.

Beneath the twin scents of the vampires with him, but stronger than the faint background smell of the humans in their houses, he could pick out four distinct human odours. And they were getting gradually stronger as they walked obliviously to their doom.

Then they were near enough for Fulton to see them and match images to their scents. One was a man in his thirties. A woman of approximately the same age walked beside him. In front of the man a young boy, perhaps fourteen years old, walked along with his hand on the side of the pram his mother pushed along. The last scent belonged to the sleeping baby.

"Plenty to choose from," Francesca said.

"I want the-" Gabriella began.

Francesca silenced her with a look.

"You are forgetting you manners, sweetie. Fulton is our guest so he gets first choice."

She turned to Fulton. "Go on then. Choose your victim."

"I want the mother and baby," he said.

"Two for one," Francesca said.

"But I wanted . . . you know that I picked these so that I would get them." Gabriella pouted at Francesca. She glared daggers at Fulton.

"And under other circumstances you would have them. You can still have the other child."

With another venomous look at Fulton she gave in. "Fine."

Now Francesca took the lead as the vampires emerged from the shadows to
confront the humans. The family continued walking on. Seeing only three young people out at night, they showed no fear.

All that would change in an instant when the vampires revealed their true selves. Again Fulton knew that what he was about to do should sicken him beyond belief. He knew there had to be something inside him that had become somehow twisted for him to even contemplate going through with this. But despite thinking that this was how he should feel, it wasn't how he actually felt. It was like watching a character in a film doing something they shouldn't. You can see what they are doing is wrong and you know how they should feel and you know how you would feel doing it in their place but you don't actually feel it. You
are apart from it, divorced from the action. That was how Fulton felt.

He knew that something terrible was about to happen and that if he was complicit in it, or even if he did nothing and allowed it to happen, he would have become something truly terrible. But he just couldn't seem to bring himself to care. What did it matter if he became a monster? He had already committed horrible atrocities.

What good had his conscience done? All it had achieved was to torture him. But now he was becoming free from guilt. This was who he was, what he was. If  they hadn't been interrupted he would have become Francesca's full-time lover and they would have raged around the world wreaking carnage as they went.

He had sought to suppress these instincts. Only feeding when the desire became so unbearable, so overwhelming that he could no longer resist the urges.

But even as he thought all this the little itch at the back of his mind continued to trouble him. It was definitely time that he did something about that.

Fulton was the first to vamp out. He was following behind Francesca and Gabriella and most of his face was still concealed by shadow. When they walked under the next functional light he was revealed.

The mother screamed and pointed at him. Francesca and Gabriella took that as their cue to transform themselves. The three vampires faced off against the three humans who were frozen in shock.

"It's no fun if you don't run," Fulton said.

"But don't think we won't kill you any less dead if you just stand there," Francesca added.

That startled them out of their inactivity. The father shoved the boy behind him and told him to run. Gabriella backed off behind Fulton and melted into the darkness. The woman struggled to turn the pram around as the remaining pair of vampires advanced on them.

The father stepped forwards and in a display of admirable bravery he interposed himself between the vampires and the rest of his fleeing family.

The fathers actions in the face of such horror tugged at Fulton and added to the niggle he felt. This man knew he faced death but he was willing to accept
his fate if it could buy his family a little extra time to escape. To keep them from meeting the same end. There was a time when Fulton hoped he would have done the same. Now he simply waited for Francesca to bat the human aside before stalking the wife and child he had valiantly tried to save.

Burdened with the pram the woman had not made it far. If she had left the pram behind she could have potentially escaped. Her desire to save her baby had sealed both their fates.

He closed up with her easily and could have simply snapped her neck before she knew he was there. But where was the fun in that?

Instead he struck out with his foot to trip her. As she stumbled her weight started the pram tipping. Sacrificing
herself to a painful landing the woman put her last effort into making sure the baby stayed safe by keeping the pram upright.

Fulton rushed around her and placed himself between her sprawled form and the baby child. She looked at him from the tarmac. Her chin and hands were grazed and bleeding freely. Some of her clothes had torn. Fulton took a long sniff relishing the bloody redolence.

The woman started to push herself up but as she looked up at him sanding there waiting for her she seemed to deflate. She wept freely and collapsed back onto the floor.

"Do what you want with me but please don't hurt my child," she sobbed.

Fulton looked over his shoulder at where the baby still slept snugly. "Do you want to watch me kill it?"

"No! God, no!"

"Don't they look angelic when they're asleep?" he commented circling the pram like a shark. "Of course even if it were a real angel it wouldn't be protected from me."

There was a scrabbling behind him and then the mother charged him holding a silver crucifix on a chain in front of her.

"Get away from there devil!" she screamed.

Fulton stood his ground and had wrested the jewellery from her grasp before she could blink. He lifted her up by her wrist and took her feet from the floor as he regarded the piece.

"I'm not a devil. I'm something worse."

He crushed the necklace until it was nothing more than a misshapen lump of silver metal that he cast aside.

He applied the same amount of pressure with his other hand. The bones in the woman's wrist ground together, cracked and shattered. She cried out in agony and he dropped her to the floor.

She cradled her broken arm and looked up at him. "Why are you doing this?"

"It's what I am," he replied simply. "This is my nature. I have no choice."

"You always have a choice." The mother said.

"Not when you are like me," Fulton retorted. "I have to kill you to feed. To live."

"But you don't have to torture me." The woman shot back driven by her anger. "You can feed off me but you don't have to kill my baby as well. You get to make the choice of who you kill and how. Nature may have played a part in making you like this but you make choices that decide how you cope with the cards you have been dealt. You may be a monster but you don't have to be monstrous."

"Shut up." He hadn't had much experience of this but he was certain victims weren't supposed to talk back like this.

"No. You know I'm speaking the truth. You just don't want to accept it because you are afraid to look at what you have chosen to become. The path may be laid out before you but
you
must choose to walk down it. There are always
other paths to be taken and you are scared to admit that you took yourself down this one."

She looked at him resignedly. "You need to kill one of us to feed, you don't need us both. If you just take me you will have taken the first steps to forging a new path. If you kill my baby you will be choosing to walk the path of evil and you will have no-one but yourself to blame."

Francesca slapped the human man and sent him flying across the street. She saw Fulton slip by her on the trail of the bolting mother and baby. The man picked himself up and faced off against her again. He bled from his mouth.

"You want some more?" Francesca said. "I must say I admire that. You have a pair and I like that in my men."

"Screw you."

"I bet you'd like to," she shot back. "But I'm only here to kill. Sorry."

She sauntered up to him casually. She stared deeply into his eyes. With an effort he wrested some control back to himself and made as if to strike her. She raised her hand and slowly waved her first two fingers in front of his eyes. The man's head swayed from side to side following the rhythm she created.

"Lower your hands."

He let his arms drop to his sides.

"Good. Now do not attempt to strike me again."

She stepped closer. Guiding his head with her fingers she made him lean to the side and expose his neck to her. Sometimes she liked it to be easy. Leisurely she lowered her fangs and sliced through the skin to get at the precious fluid in his veins. He remained still throughout until the very end when the last of his life was taken from him, when he shuddered and collapsed.

Francesca looked up and wiped congealing blood from her mouth and chin, the fluid of life surrendering to death as it cooled in the night air.

Leaving the man where he was she set off after Fulton. She was curious as to
how he would deal with this situation. He had killed in her presence before. But this was no ordinary kill. If he managed to go through with killing the mother and baby he would have proven his loyalty to her. If he was unable to go through with it then she would have to reconsider his position.

Whatever the outcome she would make the best use of it. But she could only do that if she knew what the end result was. Francesca cloaked herself in the darkness. It would not provide any real cover from Fulton if he was looking out for her, but she expected his mind would be on other things.

She crept up until she could see the scene playing out clearly. The mother was sprawled on the road cradling her left arm tenderly. She was saying
something to Fulton that she couldn't hear. But looking at Fulton she could see the effect it was having on him. He seemed to be growing confused, his stance becoming somehow ambivalent. He was having doubts, second thoughts about what he was about to do.

That gave Francesca pause. Was he simply playing with his food, adding a little mental torture to spice his meal up some? Or was this something else, was he genuinely having second thoughts about what he was doing? Francesca watched with growing interest as the scene played out.

Fulton listened to what the woman said. She spoke only in an effort to save at least her baby and maybe even herself. She didn't speak to try and help
him. But her words resonated with the tiny nub of himself that had remained intact since he was first bitten on that fateful night so many years before. Perhaps he should spare this one. But then sense kicked in. He could not return to Francesca without blood on his lips. Not that he
had
to return to Francesca, he could just vanish right now. But he
wanted
to return to her. But even if he had to kill the mother he could at least spare the child.

The woman was struggling to her feet using her good arm for leverage.