Walking Shadows (3 page)

Finally I emerged into the upstairs lounge. It was decorated in solid, antique furniture, the
back of the room divided from the rest of the space by a heavy black curtain. There were booths
behind there, I knew, and a faint smell of old blood. Also several first aid kits, kept discreetly
out of view. At the top of the stairs was a black-painted window which overlooked a dead end, Gary
had told me. I'd once seen it from above, a debris-filled space between buildings, its ground level
access long since cut off by the press of time and real estate.

Inside the lounge, a deep, low heartbeat reverberated through the top of my head and the soles of
my feet. Just like it used to be, only two floors up.

Gary stood at the bar between two other people, his expression studiously bland. The very pale,
unbreathing person on his right I recognised as Beryl. She cultivated the prim look of an academic
and had a preference for the shy punters who came to the club. She was looking at Gary like he was a
bad smell.

On Gary's left stood a man I knew as Mr Smith. He had a beating heart, technically speaking, but
as he was the representative of Magdalene's shady business partners, I knew a pulse didn't make him
any more trustworthy than her undead clients. Probably less. At least I knew what the vampires got
out of this deal.

I thrust the bag at Gary, pleased to be rid of it. "I want to get out of here."

"What happened?"

"Magdalene tried to wind me up. It worked."

That's when Magdalene, with immaculately terrible timing, appeared from yet another staircase on
the other side of the room. She had, I gathered, taken the private way to her ground floor offices
then walked up to make her grand entrance.

Magdalene's eyes wandered dismissively past me, for all the world as though the alley incident
had never occurred, and then she strode up to Gary. Despite the fact that she was shorter than he -
and Gary is not tall - she somehow managed to tower over him. The unspoken "What the hell do
you want?" radiated from her large, soft frame.

"You know Lissa's not a member, right?" Gary asked, a hint of defiant tension in his
tone.

For a moment she tried to look like she didn't know what he was talking about. Then she said,
"I know this, Gary."

"And you know that no-one can bite someone who's not a member. Volunteers only. Those are
the rules."

"I know the rules," Magdalene snapped, "I made them."

"Good. Just checking." He nodded as though this settled the matter.

"Does this mean you have brought your little friend to join us, Gary?" Magdalene asked
waspishly, "I can't imagine why else you would bring her here."

"This was at Mundy's place," said Gary, thrusting the bag at her, "I think it's
his."

Magdalene arched an eyebrow at the offering.

"There's a hand in it," I expounded, since Gary had forgotten the important noun. I was
also hoping to shock her, just a little. No such luck.

The arched eyebrow was turned to me, but eyebrows don't bother me particularly, no matter how
arch they get. Magdalene turned and got Mr Smith to hold the bag while she unzipped it. She dropped
the frozen veges onto the bar counter and pulled out the limb in question.

She raised it to her face and sniffed. "Smells like his," she concurred.

"I thought so, yeah," Gary replied.

"Why the bag?" asked Beryl, looking at the pale, all-wrong hand that Magdalene held so
matter-of-factly in her own.

"Keep it fresh, of course," said Smith, "Is the old bastard around then?"

"Not at present." Magdalene was regarding the twisted stump of the hand speculatively,
no doubt wondering, as I did, what could have torn it off.

The sound of excited voices floated up the stairwell behind me and Magdalene rapidly dropped
Mundy's hand back into the bag. Smith swept the bag of peas on top of it. Beryl's head lifted like a
cat sensing nearby sparrows and she moved away from Gary. Three steps took me into the gap beside
him. He shifted slightly to allow me room and seemed to relax marginally.

"You should put that in the fridge," I told Magdalene, nodding at the bag, "in
case Mundy wants it back."

"If he still needs it," she said carelessly.

"If," I agreed. "It'll be interesting if he does and you didn't look after it for
him."

She gave me a sour look and turned to Smith. "Take it to my office."

She handed Smith the bag as the voices coalesced into a group of three young people - two girls
and a guy. Just kids, really, enveloped in black clothes, dramatic make-up and an air of
anticipation like they were off to a rock concert. The boy had a long, lanky grace that made me
think, piercingly and painfully, of Daniel. My never-quite-a-boyfriend, not even a whole year
buried. Drained of life so that a dead woman could pretend she still had feelings. Of everyone I
knew who had died, the selfish bitch who'd killed Daniel was the only one I was wholeheartedly glad
was properly, utterly dead.

The guy looked nervously excited while the other two offered words of encouragement. "This
is so a-
maz-
ing, Hamish, honest. There's nothing like it. It's so..." the taller of the
girls flailed her hands as a general indication of how
so
it was.

"Awesome," the shorter one supplied enthusiastically, light brown roots showing under
black-dyed hair, "We'll find you someone perfect. Thomas is kickass. I could just
die
.
And
Mundy
!" She clasped her hands over her heart and mimed it beating out like a cartoon
character in love. Like Mundy was some kind of heart-throb movie star. She caught a look of
uncertainty on the boy's face. "Oh, you'd prefer a girl, huh?"

"I don't mind," Hamish said, attempting disdain at such petty distinctions.

"It'll be cool," the tall one reassured him.

Magdalene put on her sweet-as-dumplings persona to greet them. The three of them smiled,
dazzled.

Idiots.

I hadn't yet been able to work out why so many people came here to voluntarily let the undead
drink their blood. It might have been the attraction of the taboo, the sexiness of the danger, the
life-affirming thrill of seeing someone come alive with your own hot blood running in their veins.
The dizzying physical combination of adrenalin and blood loss. Mostly I figured that people are
perverse and this was just another example of how self-deluded we can be.

They weren't all young volunteers either, nor all Goths. One of the regulars was a man of 50-odd,
who skipped his blood pressure medication for three days before coming on his monthly visit, knowing
that 'his friends' didn't like drugs messing up their experience. I suppose that was one thing about
the Gold Bug. It was a proponent of Hugs Not Drugs. Yay them.

The undead I could understand. Blood gave the vampires the buzz they needed to feel almost-alive
again, without having to do any killing. Not that they objected to killing but it was all so damned
inconvenient these days, having to cover it up and so forth. This was easy and accessible and did
not lead to enraged mobs with pitchforks and burning brands.

The whole place creeped me out. I had not been back since I had come last year looking for
answers to Daniel's murder, yet a certain worrying attraction lurked at the back of my mind.
Sometimes, the idea of coming here seemed therapeutic, for a little of the same reason that helping
Gary catalogue his collection was soothing. It might put the horrors I couldn't hide from into their
place. Labelled, catalogued, shelved neatly in my head, and that would made them controlled. Sort
of.

People do stupid things, thinking it gives them control. I never quite succumbed to that
particular folly, though.

The newbie was looking at Beryl the way a nervous debutante in an Austen novel eyes the dashing
yet slightly scandalous regimental captain. Beryl, for her part, was eyeing the newbie like the lad
was a particularly appetising
hors d'oeuvre
at the same soiree.

As hideous as I found the whole thing, at least I knew that Beryl was generally very careful in
her appetites. The primness wasn't a mere affectation. She tended to be precise and tidy beforehand,
but a little kinder once the blood filled her, talking to them while they sipped nourishing liquids
and recovered.

Thomas, who the short girl had mentioned, was another matter. He was slick, sleazy and sly,
covering it with calculated charm. He had bitten me on my first visit to The Gold Bug, not caring
whether I was a member or not.

I considered giving Hamish and his friends a lecture on their idiocy, but I'd tried that before,
with predictable results. Scorn and hostility, on behalf of both vampires and suck-buddies. So the
anti-blood diatribes went the way of the anti-drug ones, years before. Besides, Beryl had taken her
new friend behind the curtains already and the moment was gone.

Gary leaned in close and said quietly into my ear, "Do you want to go now?" I dragged
my eyes away from the Jane Austen meets Bram Stoker tableau and nodded vigorously. "We could
see a film," he suggested with half a smile, "There's a new one with giant robots in
it."

That made me grin. Who doesn't love a film with giant robots? "Sure."

"Kate's not expecting you home?"

"Nah. She's gone off for a long weekend." With her newish boyfriend, the Lovely
Anthony, of whom I so far approved.

I was suddenly aware of a large, silk-clad bosom looming in our vicinity. "A date now, is
it?" Magdalene managed to put a lot of venom into the query. "Really, Gary, this is no way
to conduct yourself."

His brow furrowed with puzzlement.

"While it is pleasing to see that you have finally come back to our way of thinking, you
really should vary your sources. There is no point in getting too attached to only one. They wear
out after a while. Look at Alberto."

Gary frowned more deeply still at the cryptic comments, before comprehension dawned. "It's
not…we aren't…I don't."

"Of course you do," Magdalene said scornfully.

Gary stared at her, slack-jawed for a second, before closing his mouth on whatever response had
occurred to him. Magdalene's tight-lipped smile contained a tinge of triumph that made no sense to
me.

"What?"

"Later," Gary muttered, "not here."

Fine by me. I let him take me by the elbow and guide me back towards the stairs.

That was when the window at the top of the stairs smashed inwards and a smoking body, smelling of
burnt cloth and charred meat, tumbled onto the floor in a shower of glass.

Everyone froze - vampires, people, idiots. After a rigid second I looked for, but
couldn't see, a fire extinguisher. Too late anyway - whoever it was, they weren't on fire any more.
An ambulance was no good either. I'd figured out pretty quickly that, to have climbed over roofs and
down walls to get to the dead-end window in that condition, they'd probably been dead for a good
many years already.

"Who the hell's that?" Smith asked from behind me, more curious than shocked.

It took a moment for the body in the midst of the shards of glass to move again, dragging itself
into a sitting position. It was a man, hair burned away, along with half his face, shirt hanging in
sooty ruin over his thin frame. His arms were streaked with black too, and the fingers of one hand
were fused together. A triangle of glass was sticking out of his upper arm. He jerked it bloodlessly
free and tossed it aside.

"Magdalene?" The voice was a croak. I thought for a moment it was Mundy, then it lifted
both hands in front of its blackened face to look at the devastation. His one good eye was wide as
he inspected the damage, apparently unaware that his face was in a worse state. "Fuck,
Magdalene, look what they did to me."

Magdalene moved to get a closer look and her face scrunched up in disapproval. "What
who
did to you Thomas?" No sign of the sweet nanna persona now.

One of the girls gave a little peep of despair and rushed towards the injured figure.
"Thomas!" Head thrown back, she offered her throat to him. Thomas stared at her
blankly.

"It's me, Ingrid," she reached out to him imploringly but was afraid to touch his skin.
It would probably flake away, I thought, horrified on too many levels to count. "Please. Let me
help." She held her T-shirt down, stretching the fabric, offering herself.

"Don't," I began. Too late. Thomas, with a frightening, guttural growl, buried his
teeth in her skin. Into flesh and pumping blood. I could hear the wet sucking sound, and Ingrid's
whimper. I could see her face, her little nose screwed up against the smell of burnt flesh.

"Why is she doing that?" Gary said, not bothering to whisper.

I dragged my eyes away from them. "I think she thinks it's going to heal him."

"That's stupid," said Gary.

As far as Gary understood and had explained it to me, the stuff in their veins could repair their
flesh and bone - like gluing a broken vase back together, he'd said all matter-of-fact - but it
couldn't grow brand new cells. Even a haircut was permanent. The destruction visited on Thomas was
much too severe to ever repair itself. His skull showed cavities where his face used to be. Whatever
he looked like under the soot, that's how he'd always look now.

"I don't know why
he's
doing it either," Gary sounded irritated. "Blood
only makes you feel more alive. It'll probably make it hurt more."

"Maybe he's got it wrong too," I suggested. It wasn't like being undead came with a
manual. How many of them ended up disappointed that they couldn't change into bats or smoke after
achieving eternal life?

Perhaps right now, Thomas really wanted to believe that the girl's blood could restore him.
Vampires feel less intensely than living people, but they do still feel. I hoped he wasn't in as
much pain as it looked like he was.

Then I decided it couldn't be more pain than Ingrid was in. Her eyes were widening as belatedly
she realised this was not the brightest idea she'd ever had. She gasped and pushed at Thomas's
shoulders, gently at first, then more energetically. A layer of shirt and skin gave way and Thomas
growled and bit harder.