Vampire "Unseen" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 2) (4 page)

“English vampire,” the boy said.

Ciprian felt a hit of adrenalin. “What English vampire, Mihai?”

“The English, he is a vampire. He drink my blood.”

“Who is the English?”

Mihai turned his face directly to Ciprian and for a few seconds made absolute contact with the world. “The English is a vampire. He drinks my blood. He is vampire but the lady tells me he is a good vampire and I must tell nobody.”

“The lady told you to tell nobody?”

Mihai made a very slow nod of the head.

“Mihai, listen to me... This is very important. Do you know where I can find the English vampire?”

Mihai made a another nod. “He drinks my blood.”

----- X -----

He got the money. Ten thousand in cash. The alluring bank clerk Louisa was waving at him to say hello. He half waved back but was so desperate to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s sexual frustration that he practically ran from the bank to the underground station. He was stealing money and he felt the heat on his skin as he pulled off the crime. It was borrowed legitimately, but he would never pay it back; the theft had yet to happen, but he felt like a criminal and his hands trembled as he took the cash. Emotionally, it felt a far worse crime to knowingly defraud the bank than it did to murder Nealla and Raul.

Now he needed a new home. He began by wandering North London’s more decrepit suburbs in search of a squat or derelict building and got lucky just north of King’s Cross. He stumbled onto a row of terraced homes with a fire damaged property at one end. It looked like a garage business of some kind, a mechanics yard had gone up in flames and spread to the house next door. The second house after that was damaged too but in a much better condition; from the street he could see nothing wrong with it other than the ground floor window being boarded up.

As he walked the perimeter he felt it necessary to act calm and only peek from the corner of his eye. He knew it was stupid, but somehow his paranoia was keeping him in check, ensuring he didn’t look like a burglar casing buildings to break into.

There was a tight alleyway leading to what he presumed were small private yards on the rear. The walls were seven feet high but could be climbed by jamming his feet in either side of the alley. He was right about the yards; each home had a small enclosure no more than ten feet square, space enough to store a bicycle or perhaps a dustbin. He dropped into the yard of the fire damaged home. The back door had been kicked in and led to the remnants of a kitchen. As a home it was unusable. Stairs led down to a basement that looked uninviting, another set of stairs led up ten feet and opened to the sky. The building was gutted by fire above the first floor and the structure was braced by scaffolding. The four walls were held in place by a skeleton of steel-work and braces. It looked like a child’s climbing frame with ladders fixed to the top.

He noticed a detail.

The fire had destroyed the roof of this building and spread into the roof of the next home. It looked as though he could access the second home through its roof. He climbed the ladders, feeling the height becoming exponentially more lethal with every rung. At the top there was an opportunity to reach out and grab the very top of the wall. It was perilous. In fact it was deadly. There was access to the roof of the second home but it would take a long reach and a leap of faith, made more difficult by wearing a backpack. There was no surviving a fall from this height.

He took the chance, grabbed the brickwork and released himself from the ladder to hang off the wall almost fifty feet above a rubble heap.

It was worth it. He could see a square hole in the floor that dropped into the top of the building. He pulled himself into the roof and walked carefully on charred beams, knowing they could give way at any moment. He lowered through the gap and dropped.

“Jesus Christ, I’m doing this.” he gasped on landing. He stayed in a crouch position, listening carefully. Frozen in place. Scared. Worried that he wasn’t alone in the building.

It was bold. Scary. He was trespassing, on the run, with thousands of pounds of stolen money in his backpack. He’d lost everything but was on the cusp of building something new. This place could be a home. The carpet was sopping wet and waterlogged and the wallpaper was peeling, but it still had the potential.

Paul worked his way down, checking the layout as he went. Small rooms with single beds, minimal furniture and a smashed lock on each door, presumably broken open by firefighters ensuring the building was clear.

There was a communal kitchen, shower area and toilet on the second floor. He instinctively pressed the light switch on the staircase and was surprised to see the light come on. There was power. He couldn’t have hoped for better.

The best place to build a home was the ground floor. It was a small, self-contained apartment consisting of a bedroom, lounge and kitchen that connected to the yard. The sink ran with cold water. There was no gas for the cooker, but with running water and electricity it was perfect.

Like the burnt-out shell next door, there was a staircase leading from the kitchen to a cellar with a door at both the top and bottom. The light didn’t work down there but Paul could make out a short T shaped junction. One end led to a toilet and the other a square room with a washing machine. This had been someone’s laundry.

“This is it, Paul,” he whispered to himself. “This is going to be home. This is where you’re going to make your plans and escape. Stay paranoid. Stay invisible. Be bold.”

He would sleep here tonight, then tomorrow he would buy new locks and tools to make the back gate and back door accessible. He would get dry bedding and create a space to live.

Today had been a success. He needed more days like today, more successes, a little bit of luck. If he could get that, then he could get better, get away and everything would be right with the world again.

That is what he wanted. For everything to be all right.

He even said it to himself. “Everything is going to be alright, Paul. Everything is going to be all right.” Best of all, he really believed it. Everything really would be all right. From here on out, it would be plain sailing.

----- X -----

Ciprian was looking for obvious English names on the mailboxes.

“Are you sure this is the building, Mihai?” The boy nodded. It was an oppressive place, concrete and bare fluorescent striplights. A middle aged lady in a headscarf came down the stairs.

“Buna,” she said politely on seeing his uniform.

“Buna,” Ciprian replied. “Can you help me. I want to speak to the building supervisor. I’m looking for a man living here who may be English or American.”

“Da,” the woman replied. Yes. “I know him, he lives upstairs. Is this about him being attacked?”

“You know of the attack?” Ciprian asked.

“It was right here,” she pointed to the doorway. “The day before yesterday. I came in and the Englishman was on the floor. He was attacked. Look, you can still see some blood on the wall. I helped him.”

“Who attacked him?”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. A man, he came in through the doors and fought the Englishman before running away. I didn’t see him.”

“Did he have a shaved head? About this tall?” Ciprian held out his hand to indicate height. The woman rolled her eyes to the side. She didn’t want to be involved. “Do you know where the Englishman lives, which apartment?”

“Oh, yes. I can show you that.”

Ciprian radioed for assistance and waited for backup. They dropped Mihai off with a social worker and then with four men in tow he made his way to the sixth floor.

Ciprian raised his hand to knock.

“Remember, this guy could be insane.” One of the officers commented. “You saw what he did in the forest. He cut that guy’s guts out.”

The police officers looked to one another waiting for guidance. For the first time in his career, Ciprian withdrew his pistol. He motioned the others to do likewise and step back. They backed away from the door and prepared to shoot as Ciprian knocked.

They waited.

He knocked again.

Nothing.

He banged hard. It brought out a neighbour who was surprised to find five armed policeman all poised for a shootout. The neighbour said they hadn’t seen or heard anyone there for a few days and asked if they wanted the landlady’s telephone number.

They all sighed in unison.

“Please,” Ciprian answered.

----- X -----

Lupescu stared through his office window slowly drawing on a cigarette. The room was lit with a single desk lamp, dark and subdued. There was no guilty culprit sitting around. That was what he’d expected. Most of the police knew this stuff by superstition and reputation and none of them really believed in vampires. Of course the word ‘vampire’ was nothing but a label, a moniker for a violent and random act. Lupescu knew there had to be some truth in it somewhere.

Noua, just like the last two times. One of the big reasons that Noua was so cheap and filled with poor people was the belief in devil forests. There was a local superstition of men becoming vampires and people only lived there because they couldn’t afford a place in the city of Brasov.

The back wall of the office was a bookcase of dark mahogany with crafted glass doors. It was the type of case to hold antique books and was a fine piece of workmanship made during communist times. Lupescu unlocked the case, located the file he needed and sat down with it on his desk.

The title read, Aberantă Violente Incidente

Reporting guidelines. There had to be something in this vampire legend in Noua. Three incidents at least in the space of his career. This stuff didn’t happen elsewhere in Brasov.

Lupescu flipped through the folder wishing he didn’t have to. He wanted to report this when it was all wrapped up and final, not whilst the investigation was ongoing.

He didn’t even know what he was supposed to say. The half-baked forensic investigation could tell him no more than Nealla Stolojan’s body was frozen solid. Time of death was impossible to determine. For all they knew he could have been there for a month.

The only thing the forensics team did of genuine merit was accidentally discover a second body. Nealla’s sidekick Raul Ponta had also met his end out there. In Raul’s case, the killing seemed controlled, a few precise knife wounds to the neck, but Nealla was quartered by a maniac who enjoyed the sight of blood. Lupescu had put a few extra officers aside to help the forensic team pick through the area just to make sure there weren’t any more bodies in the immediate vicinity. Nothing would make them look more inept than discovering a third body after the fact.

Lupescu dialled a telephone number. A serious sounding woman answered on the second ring. “Bună dimineata,” the woman said. “Institutul de Cercetare Psihopatologice.”

Institute of Psychopathological Research. What the hell did that even mean?

“Bună,” Lupescu said. “This is Comisar de Poliţie Brasov, Ion Lupescu. I wish to report an ongoing A.V.I.”

“Ongoing?” the lady asked.

“We have two murders that meet A.V.I. criteria. We do not have a suspect or obvious perpetrator.”

“One moment, Officer Lupescu, I will transfer you to Dr. Noica directly.”

----- X -----

By late afternoon darkness had consumed the squat. The window was boarded up with corrugated steel plates and the slight wave at the top allowed the tiniest light to spill in from the street. Paul thought it best to block the window entirely before turning on any lights. The home must look abandoned from the street.

The bed and mattress were wet and he’d muscled them out into the back yard. He’d brought dry bedding down from one of the bedsits, but the place was still damp. With nothing to do he climbed into the bed and set his laptop on his legs.

He was in a strange bed, in a strange room, with odd smells and a musty, dank quality to the air. It was dark except for the laptop screen. The air felt icy cold.

“This is your life now,” he mumbled to himself. Somehow he knew not to dwell on this, to fight the misery away and focus on what had to be done. He couldn’t allow himself to feel sad, or to wish that things hadn’t happened as they had. He couldn’t permit his mind to drift to his lost future. He was supposed to become a journalist or writer for money, but the offer of a middle class existence as a professional man had been withdrawn. His friends would all attain their professional status and happy family lives whilst he would be a drifter for life. He wouldn’t permit himself to think about what his friends would say when the police eventually came to talk with them. It was gone. His friends, his future, his happiness.

The exhilaration of finding the place had evaporated to leave him with the reality. He was living in a damp squat. He was on the run.

“This is all your fault, Nisha.”

It wasn’t, but he just wanted to say it. He wanted a target, a focus for his attention to place blame and hate. A swell of emotion in his chest threatened to make him cry. He felt like he should purge and get it all out but some lower instinct was preventing him. He had to stay tough and focussed. No matter how badly Nisha Khumari had ruined his life. He had to remain single minded in his goal of evasion by new identity. God, he wanted to slit her throat right now. The logical part of his mind that was focussed on future planning was controlling him and wouldn’t let him cry. But Nisha was still there, teasing from the edges. Nisha Khumari with her Bollywood beautiful looks and sensuous dusky skin. The logical part of him had no patience for emotion. But the lower part of his instinct was looking into her eyes as she hitched up her dress, he could feel his heart quicken as she took hold of his hand and guided his fingers into her panties so he could feel her cunt. The bitch even squatted slightly as she leaned against the wall and opened her legs wider to make it easier for him to finger-bang her. How the fuck could she accuse him of rape? She was leaning against the wall, sipping vodka over ice and getting her pussy rubbed in the darkness whilst everybody else partied downstairs.

And now he was a vagrant in a damp squat and it was all her fault for her fucking lies. The bitch cunt!