CHAPTER 5.
The girl slept in late the next evening. When she woke she felt refreshed and invigorated. Paris, indeed the world, lay at her feet. She was in a world with no rules, morals, or consequences. She could satisfy her ever whim.
And what she really wanted right now was coffee and that French chocolate bread.
She walked along the corridor and down the stairs to Lloyd’s room and knocked on his door. When there was no reply, she went down the next flight of stairs and into the lounge.
There she found him talking with Baron. They fell silent as soon as she walked in, and Baron stood awkwardly.
“Good evening lady,” Lloyd greeted her.
“Evening,” she replied.
“Evening mademoiselle,” Baron said as he left the room.
“I take it you slept well,” Lloyd said.
“Wonderfully.”
“Excellent. And what would the lady like to do first this fine evening, Notre Dame or murder?”
“Murder please… after breakfast.”
The lights of Paris faded behind them like some drug fuelled sunset as Baron drove Lloyd and the girl into the night. Sat together on the faded leather of the back seat of Baron’s car, the girl anxiously played with her hair whilst Lloyd gazed out of the window. Baron was chain smoking as he drove, filling the car with the sickly smell of cheap French cigarettes. There was a black briefcase beside him on the passenger seat.
“So who exactly are we going to kill?” the girl asked.
“Baron has found some thorough bastards for us,” Lloyd replied. “The gentleman runs one of the largest banks in Paris, his dear lady wife manages an orphanage… where, for large sums of money, she allows certain people to use the children for films with a rather limited audience. Tonight they are on holiday in a lodge a few miles from here. They are not expected back for several days, and have specifically asked not to be interrupted.”
“How do you know this?” she asked.
“Don’t ask,” Baron said. “and don’t forget that these are important people, you must be careful. Use the gloves and balaclavas which I have provided and don’t make too much noise… don’t make them make too much noise. And remember that the silencer on my gun isn’t actually silent- don’t get carried away!”
John Harvey got home from work at 2.40 in the morning. It had been an uneventful night, as was often the case when Lloyd was out of the country.
He micro waved a steak and kidney pie and washed it down with a glass of red wine. Then he turned on his computer and looked at his emails. Nothing new: just the email which Alice had sent him a few days ago, and which he had not bothered to reply to yet. He read it again; the third time.
Foolish human, he thought, as was only half joking.
He could see that she had written it late at night, and decided that she was probably drunk. She was wasting his time, he knew, and being insulting, but he could not stop thinking about it. He knew that he ought to forget the entire thing, but he could not. It had become a game to him; a strange, long distant game of cat and mouse. Like so many things in his life, it had become an obsession. And there was something about the girl…
He replied.
“Dear Alice,
How are you? Hope that your mood has improved since when last you wrote.
Yes, I am indeed a vampyre; in so far as that title can be applied to any real thing. And yes I have drunk blood, not for quite a while now, but, let me assure you that over the years I have drunk enough blood to drown a man in.
Have not, in this life, killed for blood. Many vampyres do, and some do not drink blood at all. ‘Then how are they vampyres?’ you ask. Because they still have the thirst, but limit them selves only to the taste of neck. We are all monsters, but we are not all beasts.
No, I was not Napoleon, but I did once see Napoleon (from a distance) whilst serving under The Duke. Do not recall ever being anyone famous, if I had been ‘a great man’ it is unlikely that I would be in my current situation.
What else would you like to know?
Yours sincerely,
John Harvey.”
When he had finished writing he reread it, thought about it for a while, then added an ‘x’ after his name. then he poured himself some more wine.
Tomorrow would be a better day. He and Molly had the evening off work, and would be meeting the lovely Charlotte.
Baron parked his car in a lay-by on a winding lane and cut the lights. Slender trees grew along side the road, it was too far from urban civilisation to have street lights or pavements. Baron passed back the briefcase, and from it Lloyd took a pair of black leather gloves, a black balaclava and the pistol and passed the girl a pair of gloves and a balaclava. She put them on as he carefully loaded the gun and screwed on the silencer.
“This shall spoil my hair terribly,” Lloyd complained as he pulled on his balaclava.
“You can borrow my hairbrush afterwards,” the girl said, her voice strained with impatience.
The two of them left the car and walked along the lane, dry leaves crunching under their feet in the darkness. After walking three hundred yards they came to a massive log cabin with wide bay windows and an imposing porch supported by two huge upright logs. There were no other buildings insight, just the lane and the woods around a large lawn.
They entered the porch and knocked loudly on the oak door. After a few moments of silence they knocked again. A moment latter they heard footsteps inside the cabin. Then they heard a lock being turned and the door was opened by a middle aged man with a moustache, in a dressing gown, with a fire piker in his hand. The man’s sleepy expression turned instantly to alarm as he saw them.
The girl jammed her foot in the door, her boot stopping him from slamming it closed. Lloyd burst inside. With his left hand he grabbed the hand which held the poker and twisting that arm behind the man’s back. The man dropped his weapon as Lloyd slammed him face first in the wall. With his right hand, Lloyd jammed the gun under the man’s chin.
“Be silent,” he hissed as the man grunted in pain.
The girl stepped into the cabin and shut the door behind them, then ran through the house. The second open door she found led to the bedroom where a platinum blonde woman in a pink silk nightgown sat up in bed. The woman screamed when the girl stormed in, but the girl silenced her with a slap across the face that sent her sprawling, followed by a hand over the mouth. The girl then grabbed the woman’s hair and, still holding her left hand over her mouth, dragged her out of bed. The woman crawled along the floor as the girl dragged her to the front room.
When they came in, Lloyd turned the man round so he could see them, keeping one arm twisted behind his back and the pistol at his throat. Then the man saw his wife his eyes flared and he began to struggle- until Lloyd twisted his arm tighter and jammed the gun harder into his chin.
The girl forced the women to kneel then she stood behind her and drew her dagger from her boot. She kept a hand over the woman’s mouth, and held the dagger to her throat.
The married couple stared wildly at each other, mad with fear.
“You have both been very bad people, now you shall die,” Lloyd said.
“Can I use the gun?” the girl asked.
“No, lady, use your teeth.”
The girl pulled the woman up by her hair until she stood, then yanked her head back. Then she bit into her throat. She felt the blood pumping rapidly through the woman’s body and smelt terror in her sweat. She bit harder. Then, with a strength she did not know she had, bit harder still until she tasted blood in her mouth. Ecstasy overwhelmed her. She sank her teeth into that soft flesh, then twisted her head and ripped out a chunk of throat. She began to drink as the woman thrashed wildly in her grip. She stabbed her dagger into the woman’s chest and left it there, using both hands to steady the woman as she died.
Her husband watched. No longer struggling but limp with horror and fear.
Lloyd jerked back the man’s head so fast that his neck was broken then bit out his throat in one smooth motion.
When he had finished drinking he looked up to see the girl standing over the woman’s corpse. The dagger was back in her boot and her gloves and balaclava were soaked in blood.
“Shall we rob them?” Lloyd asked.
“No, I don’t want anything which belonged to them,” she replied.
“As you wish,” Lloyd said as he pulled a gold ring from the man’s finger, then took a diamond ring from the woman and a gold chain from her neck. “Best get going, Baron will be getting worried.”
On the silent walk back to the car, Lloyd reflected that the girl had not stopped smiling from the moment they entered the house to the moment they left it.
Back in the car they took off their gloves and balaclavas and put them, with the gun, back into the briefcase.
“How was it?” Baron asked as he started the engine.
“Wonderful,” the girl beamed.
“It went well, no complications,” Lloyd said.
“Can we go to Notre Dame now,” the girl asked.
“So impatient,” said Lloyd. “No, we had best make ourselves presentable first… Hairbrush.”
She passed him her hairbrush, then looked at the spots of blood on her arms and t-shirt and nodded. He handed her the hairbrush when he was finished and lit a cigar.
Before long they were back in Baron’s hotel, where they showered and changed whilst Baron burnt the gloves and balaclavas in the incinerator in his basement and returned his gun to his office. The girl and Lloyd met again in the lounge.
“Notre Dame?” she asked instantly.
“Of course, our taxi is on its way.”
“Can I kill the driver?”
“That would be unwise- too public.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
They were driven through the streets of Paris to a large bridge across the River Seine. As soon as the taxi stopped, the girl leapt out and gazed at the glorious gothic cathedral. Lloyd paid the driver then stood at her side.
“It’s fantastic,” she said.
“Rather.”
“Let’s have a closer look!” she exclaimed, running across the bridge.
Lloyd stood and watched her.
As soon as she crossed the bridge to the island where Notre Dame stood she was struck down by a blinding light.
She fell to her knees as it struck her, paralysing her with agony. With her eyes screwed tight shut a white light burnt into her retinas. The ground beneath her scorched her, but she could not move from it. The air was like quick lime in her lungs.
A moment later she was pulled back roughly. The light and heat faded. She gasped for breath as bright coloured lights swam before her eyes.
Lloyd had pulled her back onto the bridge.
“What?” she gasped.
“Holy ground.”
“What?”
“Holy ground. We cannot set foot on consecrated ground.”
“What? … Why?”
“Because God hates us.”
“God? The bastard!”
“Quite.”
The pain left her. She managed to rub her eyes and could see Notre Dame before her. So beautiful...
“You knew this would happen!” she accused him.
“I suspected.”
“You suspected! You bastard!” she tried to stand- to run from him- but her legs would not respond. “You bastard!”
“I could have left you there,” he snapped.
“You let that happen to me!” she cried, tears overcoming her anger. “You bastard!”
“Quite.”
She did not react as he lifted her up and carried her- limp and sobbing in his arms- across the bridge. He held her cold body in his arms, smelling her sweat as his shirt became damp with her tears. In that moment, more than ever, he wanted her. He wanted her right there, when she was mad and broken, but he knew he would have to wait.
He put her down on the nearest bench and hailed the nearest taxi.
“Leave me here,” she hissed.
“No, it will be sunrise soon. Do not be foolish lady, come with me,” he said, leading her into the taxi.
“I’m a monster,” she said, taking another sip from the large glass of port which Lloyd had poured her.
They sat in Baron’s lounge, faded velvet curtains shut tight against the coming dawn. Classic music crackled out of an old radio and the air was stale with cigar smoke.
“You will become accustomed to it,” Lloyd replied.
“I don’t want to become fucking accustomed to it!”
“This is what we are. You have killed men, and you have drank their blood, and you have loved it… We shall always we apart from men, we shall be above them. We shall stalk their world at night, and we shall be their nightmares. You are more than they can ever be, and they are but prey to you, like the lamb unto the wolf- but there is a price…”
“Please stop talking.”
For half an hour they sat in silence, and when she went up to bed alone without a word Lloyd knew that he was going to have to kill her.
An alarm clock woke Lloyd at the very crack of dusk. He dressed quickly, avoiding his usual fastidious care for his appearance
He left his room and strode silently up the stairs, holding in his hand the spare key to the girl’s room which Baron had given him. They had planned it together, in case things did not go as well with the girl as Lloyd had hoped. He had planned to spend more time with her, to show her all the sights of Paris and to kill and drink together many times. He had hoped that she would come willingly into his arms, that she might love him, and would have made it even sweeter to kill her in the end. But now it was clear that she could not love him, and that she would become unpredictable and so uncontrollable.
That would not do, and Lloyd had run out of patience.
As he reached the top of the stairs and turned down the corridor to her room, a second figure moved silently from the other end of the corridor and down the stairs.
He walked along the dark corridor, his foot steps as silent as a ghost. He paused outside her room, revelling in expectation.
He would kill the girl and drink her blood.
Already he tasted her on his lips as he turned the key in the door.
The door swung open and he strode into the room, ready to leap onto her bed and end her life.
To his horror he found her bed empty. Her dagger pinned a note to the wall above her pillow. It read;
“In the time in which you have been reading this, I have been in your room, stealing all that you own. You shall never see me again. X. “
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