Red Grow the Roses (25 page)

Ow. She looked down at her hand. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘So, anyway.' His voice was soft. He sat up, brushing her off gently, and rubbed at his thighs with a certain awkwardness. ‘I've got hospital visits to make this morning.'

‘Uh-huh?' He was
so
the wrong sort of person for her to fall for, she told herself.

‘So … I'd better go have a shower. I don't smell all that fresh.' Doug stood, and she looked up at him regretfully, wanting her last memory of his naked body to be a good one.

‘OK.'

He bit his lip. ‘Want to join me?'

Tentatively, she smiled. ‘Yeah. I'd like that.' As he held out his hand and pulled her up into what turned into an embrace, she decided she'd like that very much.

(Naylor)

And this is Naylor, as sweet and cruel as a wasp hidden under a windfall plum. It's a curious fact that of all the vampires in the City, he's the only one that was born here; though he often leaves for protracted periods, he's always drawn back. This is his home. Matthew Naylor – Little Matty the apothecary's son – grew up on the banks of the Fleet River long before it was paved over, while it was still an open drain carrying the ordure and rubbish of the streets away down to the river confluence. There were a lot of dead rats in the Fleet the year he died, their bedraggled bodies so swollen by gas that it looked like they had perished from over-eating. And perhaps they had. They certainly had plenty to dine upon that year.

It was 1665, the year of the Great Plague.

That summer, he remembers, was unusually hot and humid – and the bonfires burning all day and night at street corners, by order of the parish, only added to the filthiness of the atmosphere. In that hothouse air strange flowers blossomed: swollen buds of livid flesh that burst to reveal red and sticky hearts, their perfume unbearable. Upon boarded doors and window-shutters the daubed crosses began to appear.

He remembers being told that the King and all his court had fled the City for the healthier environs of Oxfordshire, and, though he'd never seen the King, it had felt like they'd been abandoned by Providence. He ran wild through the streets that summer, defying the edicts to stay indoors, to stay away from other people. Adolescent fury burned in his veins. He led a pack of youths in hunting down the dogs and cats that were blamed for spreading the Sickness, and rejoiced in every kill.

He remembers when the men of the watch came to secure his father's house with the whole family still inside; his father and stepmother semi-conscious in their bed upstairs, their faces swollen beyond recognition, sweating and groaning from the fever and the pain. Matthew sat in the half-dark and the suffocating heat behind the rough new boards, with his little sister Anne in his arms, watching the chinks of light. Sometimes a parcel of food would be pushed through the gap under the door, but if he didn't get to it fast the rats would have it before he did. Anne wasn't much interested in eating. He sang her nursery rhymes and told her stories, whispering because his throat was parched and sore. Often he'd forget where he was in the tale, but Anne didn't notice. She just liked the sound of his voice.

Ring a ring o' roses …

He remembers half waking in the middle of the night, his back and arse numb from the hard boards, and looking up to see the glimmering Lady hovering over them. She was as beautiful as an angel, as light as mist, and she held Anne in her arms, stooping to kiss her. Matthew watched, smiling in wonder at the cloudy drift of her red hair, the shimmer of her bare limbs. Even when she let Anne's limp little body slide to the floor and advanced on him, he still smiled. She slipped her arm about his neck, tipping his head back as she straddled his thighs. He remembers that her up-tilted breasts brushed up against his chest, and against his feverish skin she felt as delicious as cool water. Tenderly her fingers sliced open the rough linen of his clothes and furled about his lobcock. He was young: even in the midst of this drifting delirium it stirred and stood. His mouth fell open as she slid his member into the cool depths of her puss. He remembers that moment of pure gratitude at the undeserved grace, as her pelvis writhed upon his and she bent to kiss his lips and nuzzle down to his throat. He remembers that her mouth did not taste as sweet as he had expected.

Then he felt the teeth pierce his shoulder, and the sudden jagged pain. The rush of rapture was almost instantaneous – but not so swift as his own response. Matthew Naylor, the despair of his father and the terror of the parish, the young man they'd prophesied would swing from the gallows if he didn't mend his ways, lashed out the only way he could – twisting his neck and sinking his own teeth into that slim throat. He remembers the skin parting reluctantly under the grind of his blunt incisors, and as the ecstasy exploded in his head her blood flooded his mouth, fiery as brandy. After that he could neither let go nor fight further: he passed out in seconds as she tore his throat open.

He remembers them throwing him into the burial pit. He lay there upon the heap of the dead with his eyes open, though withered as figs, unable to stir as the carters dropped body after body down on to the mound of cold flesh. He wanted to shout at them that he was still alive, but his mouth wouldn't move and there was no breath in his lungs. He wanted to thrust the stinking meat aside and rise up to strike them, he wanted to hold his hands up to protect his face as they shovelled a sprinkling of slaked lime over this newest layer in the cadaver-pudding, but he couldn't lift a finger. He wanted to call for his mother, but she couldn't hear him. The lime burned his lips and eyeballs. The bodies piled higher, cutting out the light.

After three days he clawed his way out through the corpses, into the free air.

Naylor is dangerous, anyone will tell you that. Brought up in an era where empathy and compassion were stunted values, he took to the unlife of the vampire without the faintest distaste. Every warning he'd been given about death and Judgement had been exposed for a lie, and he made the most of his new freedom. He has a yen for the hunt, a taste for the adrenaline and cortisol shot in a circulation charged with terror; that effervescence of fear. Left to himself, he would kill almost every time.

Pray you don't run into Naylor. He is not gentle in his feeding or his fucking. If you meet him, it will most likely be the old-fashioned way – he is, after all, old, despite his looks – down a dark alley in the depths of night. He wants you to run. He wants you to try and scream, though his hand will close over your throat and stop your breath before you get the chance. Or, worse, he will stalk you in the places you cannot avoid, closing slowly, letting you know the full hopelessness of the fate that awaits you. He wants your fear and your despair. He wants your death.

But luckily for the inhabitants of the City, Naylor is not left to make that decision on his own. After Naylor's notorious spree among the whores in 1888, indulged shortly after he had returned from the Belgian Congo, Reynauld took it upon himself to tame him and make the parameters clear. This training involved inflicting a great deal of pain, and it took Naylor several months to regenerate certain body-parts. He got the point though, in the end.

That point being that Reynauld owned the City and was stronger than he was.

There are no two ways about it: Naylor hates Reynauld. It's possible to argue that he doesn't even see the other vampires of the City, not really. Wrapped up in his own interests, Naylor's opinion of the others is scathing, his understanding shallow. Ben is his little buddy, his satellite, his gofer. Roisin is an irrelevancy: she wrenched him into this new world without meaning to and has avoided him ever since. She's weak: The Alzheimer's Vampire, he calls her with that sneering grin of his. Estelle is a bit of a hard bitch, but far too young to worry about. Maybe he'll take her down a peg or two one day; she could certainly do with it, and he'd like to shaft that fine caramel ass of hers. As for Wakefield – fuck, he's a joke, a tofu-munching piss-take of everything a vampire should be. Naylor doesn't hang round this city for the pleasure of their company, that's for sure.

He's not without his less predatory side, though. His interest in art is genuine: he craves the new in music and sculpture and painting. Apart from blood, creativity is all he values in human beings. Their flashes of inspiration, their ephemeral and unpredictable moments of innovation, utterly fascinate him. He likes to hang out with interesting people and lead them in a dance on that vertiginous edge between vision and chaos. All too often their contact with him leads to a self-destructive spiral that ends in alcohol-induced brain damage or an overdose, but the symbiosis is genuine while it lasts. His own art is derivative, though he tries his best; he's an extraordinary artistic mimic who can recreate almost any style with those wickedly clever hands. But he never feels satisfied by anything he makes himself. Everything he does is old, and he craves novelty.

Naylor would leave if he wanted to; there are countless places where he'd be freer to indulge himself. But somehow he always comes back, drawn to his home. The water of the subterranean Fleet runs in his veins and his bones are packed with the ash and grime and soot of this city. He feels its pulse and it makes his own flesh quicken with arousal; he breathes deep the dark secret smell belched from the vents of the Underground, a scent so pervasive that the living do not register it, and to him it tastes of an eternal promise. Though its buildings fall and rise with the years, and the faces on the streets change, this is his place.

Yet he's restless, like any young man. He chafes at Reynauld's rule, and when his feet itch he burns up the miles. In this last century he has taken the increasingly easy opportunities to travel, a tourist of particular tastes. He goes where the mess he makes will pass unnoticed, where bodies fall unexamined. He was in Ethiopia after the Italian invasion and South Africa during the Second Boer War. He stalked the trenches of Ypres and the Somme, took enthusiastic though perfectly bipartisan part in the Spanish Civil War, and favoured the Eastern Front throughout the upheaval of World War II. His accent went unremarked in Korea and Vietnam though he was forced to be more cautious there: he has huge advantages of stealth and evasion but he's not invulnerable. He spent a chunk of the 1970s and 80s in South America under various regimes, was annoyed to miss the First Gulf War but made up for the loss in the Balkans at his leisure, and Sarajevo is still a place he remembers with nostalgia. When the invasion of Iraq took place he made sure he was embedded with the American ground troops: he disliked the weather but appreciated the many opportunities presented to him after dark.

He's back home now, the wildness out of his system for the moment, his feral hunger temporarily assuaged. Under grey skies his behaviour is more restrained – in this he's no different from any young man of the City who jets off to Ibiza or Ayia Napa and goes a bit crazy, the heat and the copious drink and the easy sex going to his head. After his frenetic vacation he wants to kick back a bit and relax, hanging out with friends like Ben. Just chill.

But this latest run-in with Reynauld has fired him up. The girl's death didn't have anything to do with him, for fuck's sake – he'd never touched or even met her. He's been blamed purely out of habit.

Aggrieved, he casts around for release or for vengeance. And with the innocent recounting of an old story, he thinks he just might have found the way to it.

Last night it was wet and slick on the streets and the puddles were red with neon. I went underground instead. Word was there was something on the Circle Line, something that hunted along the platforms late at night when there were hardly any travellers left – just the lost. Something that slithered out of the dark tunnel mouth like a snake and left fang marks in its prey.

Mind the gap.

I caught up with it deep in the AM. Not saying which station, but we were three flights of escalators below street-level and the air smelled stale and burnt like all of the day's hopes gone up in smoke. I lurked about on the northbound platform, doing my Lone Female thing on a bench with head bowed like my bloke had just dumped me, ignoring the drunks and the clubbers, hoping that no one with a pulse was going to try anything on because I always feel a bit bad when I hurt a live one. Not too bad, but a bit. Call me sentimental.

With the third tube train pulling out I found myself alone. Suddenly it was quiet, only the growl of an unseen engine on another line to keep me company. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stir. My senses are honed to the presence of vamps. I knew there was one there even before I raised my face and saw him ooze from behind a pillar.

He looked like he lived in the Underground, did this one: bald as a rat's tail and pale as a slug. Shabby-looking parka coat. Lips all black and cracked with hunger: typical Bloodkind. As he closed on me I stood, pulled a stake from under my own coat with a slick movement and had it heading for his ribcage before the sudden flash of alarm in his red eyes had time to work its way through to his forebrain. It was only instinct that enabled him to twist aside from the stake, and the wooden point scored his ribs beneath his arm, catching on the cloth and jerking out of my hand. Bastard. I followed my strike up with a tae kwon do kick to the solar plexus and he folded over my New Rock boot like wet newspaper. But he didn't go down. He just staggered back down the platform, shaking his head and staring like his chicken nuggets had just stood up and pecked at his face. His mouth was suddenly full of jagged teeth.

I slipped another stake from my belt-holster and reached into an inside pocket of my coat for the bottle there.