When Lloyd woke the next evening, he thought that he was dreaming.
Anne stood before him, illuminated by several candles which she has lit behind her. She wore a new dress, of ankle length white silk, her hair had been washed and brushed, and her eyes looked a little less like those of a corpse. She was, to him, a vision of beauty.
“Good evening,” he said sitting up on the sofa.
“Good evening.”
Her reply told him that he was not dreaming. The French accent was there in her voice, and in his dreams the nice girls were never French.
He suddenly felt very self conscious. He wore no shirt, his bedding was around his legs, and his hair was a disgrace.
“Are you thirsty?” she asked.
“A little.”
She produced his razor and pulled back her sleeve.
“What the blazes are you doing?”
“You said that you were thirsty,” she replied innocently.
“I was thinking of a glass of water, perchance a tomato juice.”
Ann look surprised, almost offended.
“I don’t drink like that… I like to hunt my food,” he explained. “I don’t tend to drink people who I… like.”
She continued to look confused. He pulled on his shirt, discarded his blanket and brushed back his hair with his hands.
“Ann, what ever am I to do with you? … Take a seat, please.”
She sat down opposite him. He found a cigar and lit one. She looked at it as though it were some great wonder.
“Would you care for a cigar?” he asked her.
“Yes, thank you, they look ever so much fun.”
He found another cigar, lit it with the end of his own and passed it to her. She sat smoking it, coughing daintily after the second drag, then puffing away quietly. Her face blank and her dark eyes like a deer in the headlights.
“Pray tell me, lady, as clearly as you can, who, and what, are you?”
John walked into the Black Boar. He was tired and miserable, but he knew that life must go on.
Molly met him at the door and hugged him tightly.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
He looked at her blankly.
“I’m so sorry to hear about Victoria. Charlotte told me. Are you okay?”
“I will be,” he replied, and walked past her towards the bar. He stepped behind it and was about to hang up his coat, when Molly stopped him.
“You can’t work tonight, John.,” she said.
“It’s my shift.”
“Olly and I are covering for you.”
“It’s alright mate,” Olly said.
“Need something to do,” said John.
“You can sit down over there, and have a drink. That’s what you can do. And when it’s quite, I’ll come and talk to you.”
He nearly objected, but he didn’t have the energy, and he knew that she was right. He nodded, took a seat at the nearest empty table and stared up at the ceiling. A moment later, Olly silently placed a glass of red wine in front of him. Just before he had finished drinking that, Molly put down a second glass and sat opposite him.
Lloyd had listened carefully as Ann told him her life story.
She had been born in Paris twenty five years ago, the only daughter in a family where her father had been a lawyer and her mother a barrister. As a child she had been very fond of music, and had learnt to play the violin. At the ago of twelve, her father had been left crippled by a car accident. Her mother had raised her as best she could, but was extremely busy with work, and so Ann had spent the majority of her time at boarding school.
At the age of seventeen, she had meet The Count de Sainte Germaine whilst on a night out in Paris with her friends. He had invited her to the Opera the next night. After that she had gone with him to the opera, ballet and a wide range of classic concerts. The Count had played to her one night in the moon lit street outside of a café. She had abandoned her studies in the belief that he was the greatest teacher that she would ever find, and moved in with him in an opulent villa on the outskirts of Paris. They had become lovers.
Soon after that, he had begun to feed on her.
She had loved him, she thought. A year went by before she was aware of his irrational obsessions and violent tendencies. Once she was aware of them, he no longer hid them from her. She had felt that she loved him, and he her, but was aware that he treated her far more like a possession than a lover.
Things had not improved.
Almost two years ago, they had moved to England. After a few months in London, he began to tour the country, hunting down old enemies and collecting what he considered to be old debts. That was how she had found herself in her current situation.
By the time that she had finished, Lloyd had deduced three things. Firstly, that she had been suffering from Stockholm Syndrome for many years, and that it would continue to affect her for quite some time. Secondly, that she was entirely human, for no vampyre would tolerate such a relationship and lifestyle for so long. Thirdly, that she was very much French.
He lit another cigar, and looked thoughtfully at her.
“What is wrong?” she asked him.
“As a general rule, I am not at all fond of The French.”
“We are not all the same,” she replied defensively.
“All people are the same, in that they are all unique…” Lloyd was unsure as to exactly what his point was. “However, I have observed certain trends.”
“I have not met another French person who was similar to me, and I have never met anyone who was quite like you…. I have told you about myself, it is your turn to tell me about yourself.”
“I am Lloyd, and I kill people,” he said theatrically
She continued to stare blankly at him.
“Are you a bad man?” she asked him.
“The very worst,” he said playfully.
“No, not the worst.”
“Perchance...”
“But you are a vampire?”
“Very much so,” he smiled his wolfish smile.
“So you have lived forever?”
“No… Not in the way Germaine claimed he lived forever. We live and we die, and we live again. All of us, but I remember better than most.”
“What do you remember?”
“Agincourt. The Napoleonic Wars. Once I may have been a Highwayman… not certain, think they hung me. One tends to forget things like that.”
“You were a soldier.”
“Indeed. An Officer.”
“What is it like to be a soldier?”
“We were in love with Death, so we destroyed the world.”
He was rather pleased with that line, but she stared at him intently, unmoved.
Lloyd was beginning to find the situation tiresome and uncomfortable.
“I could do with a bite to eat,” he said, standing and stretching lethargically
She tilted her head to one side, exposing her pale neck in a manner which was both mechanical and submissive.
He bit her affectionately, then went through to the kitchen and began preparing a cooked breakfast for them both.
By closing time in the Black Boar, John Harvey had drunk ten glasses of wine, and talked to Molly much more than he had intended. By the time that he had tried to help them tidy up for the night and walked home, he felt better.
But his mood was soon spoiled by a lonely walk home in the rain to an empty house.
He put on the radio, sat down in his favourite chair, and decided three things; Firstly, he was drunk. Secondly, he missed Victoria. Thirdly that he would feel better after her funeral.
He poured himself a glass of port and tried to relax.
He could not.
He turned on his computer, and looked at his emails.
There was one from a society for writers of Romantic and Post Romantic poetry which he had joined years ago and soon lost interest in, and another from a company who offered to turn his unwanted gold into cash.
“Pirates,” he muttered to himself.
Alice had not replied to his last email. That bothered his drunken and melancholy mind. He decided to email her.
He wrote;
“Dear Alice,
How are you?
From John the Vampyre. X”
Then he finished his port and went to bed.
Anne and Lloyd sat together on a bench on the bank of the river. After the rain had stopped, they had gone for a walk. He had led her around the town, carefully avoiding Queen’s Street, but showing her anything else of interest. They had been through the park, to the ruins on the hill, and past every pub and restaurant which Lloyd recommended. She had not wanted to eat out or go to the Black Boar that night, but she had considered going there soon.
The sky was overcast, but a few stars shone through, the smoke from their cigars drifted into the cool, fresh air, and the river flowed rapidly, taking the rain from the fells down to the distant sea.
Lloyd was deep in thought. He was experiencing a period of morality, and the novelty of it amused him. He was very keen on Anne; if memories of The Girl from the ferry had not still occasionally haunted his mind, he would probably have been in love with her. He knew that the sensible thing to do was to take advantage of her situation and make her his lover until he grew bored of her. However, a part of him desired to do what was best for her.
“Are you still in contact with your mother?” he found himself asking. “Maybe you should try to see her until you are back on your feet again.”
“I have not spoken to her, or my father, since I moved in with The Count. We fell out.”
“Things have changed. Maybe you ought to make amends with her. Could you find her?”
“Maybe…. Later. I would like to stay with you for a while first,” she put her hand on his, “I you don’t mind…”
“Not at all lady, rather enjoy having you around.”
“Then I shall stay with you.”
“Jolly good.”
He put his arm around her. She clasped his hand tighter and nuzzled her head against his shoulder.
“Take me to bed,” she whispered in his ear.
“Certainly.”
The next evening, far further north, Alice typed the last few lines of her essay, then sipped the last of her coffee. Her essay was far from perfect, but it would do. After spending a day talking to Tracy, eating chocolate and listening to Elvis and Meatloaf, she had tried to pull herself together and concentrate on her work. She had intended to immerse herself in her work, to loose herself in deep concentration, but mostly she had procrastinated. The work was done, the dead line was the next day, and she was tired. She saved it, printed it and put on her desk. It was done.
In an hour she would be going for a drink with Tracy and Louise. She changed, put on her make up and brushed her hair. Then she had a quarter of an hour to kill, so she looked at her emails.
There was one from Sam, asking if they could still be friends, and could he please have his CDs back. She deleted it. The other email was from John Harvey. She replied.
“Dear John,
Not bad. And yourself?
Alice. X”
Lloyd woke in his bed. The faint glow of street lights shone through his curtains. He looked to his left and saw a mass of raven dark hair on his other pillow.
Great Scott, he thought, I’m sleeping with a Frenchie.
She rolled over in her sleep and he saw her pale, elfin face, slender neck and delicate shoulders amongst the fey hair.
He smiled, then looked around his room. On his desk a small bronze bust of Wellington served as a paper weight for a mass of documents and newspapers, on the end of the desk nearest his bed a dagger was stabbed into the wood, standing upright and ready. A faded Union Jack hung above a huge, disorderly bookshelf with additional books stacked on top of it and on the floor beside it. On the other side of the room a landscape by Ruskin hung in a dusty frame. The sheep skin rug on the floor had a stain where he had spilt tomato juice- or was it blood?- on it.
Best tidy up this sty if there is to be a lady staying, he thought.
He was restless, but he did not want to wake her. If she woke in a good mood, it would be a more entertaining morning for all concerned. Reaching over the bed, he found his jacket on the floor, rummaged in it until he found a cigar and his lighter, then lit it and lay back in bed, admiring her sleeping form.
John’s phone rang just as he was finishing his breakfast. The noise did not help his hangover.
“Hello,” he answered.
“Hello, its Charlotte, how are you?”
“Okay.”
“Really?”
“Almost, how are you?”
“Not bad. Listen, I’ve spoken to Victoria’s father. The police are still examining her body, the funeral won’t be on for over a week.”
“Understood.”
“They are planning a Church burial, I’ll let you know when it is.”
“Thanks, Charlotte. I’d best get to work.”
“Okay. I’ll be in touch soon, take care.”
“Take care.”
He put down the phone and finished his tea. His mouth was still dry, and his head hurt. He poured himself a small glass of port and downed it in the hope that it would help, then set off to work.
At the end of the day after speaking with the farmer’s daughter, Hunter decided that the trail had gone entirely cold, so he had moved to his London town house to take stock of the situation.
As John walked to work, Hunter sat at a huge, pine desk, lit by two table lamps and stared at a pile of newspapers. He poured himself a glass of sherry to clear his head.
Immediately upon returning to London to had began studying newspaper articles, both national and local, from the last few days. In the day time he worked in The British Museum, looking through their archives and on the internet- a task which seemed to him far less like ‘surfing the net’, and more like casting a vast dragnet and trawling through it. He had found nothing over the last few days, a gang killing and a domestic murder, but nothing to suggest his vampire. After that he had searched articles from the last few weeks. When the museum was closing he had gathered as many local newspapers as possible and retired to him home in Camden Town.
He had been at this dull task for four hours, and was working on a pile of papers from a newspaper which claimed to represent Westmorland, despite the fact that the county had not existed since 1972. Mostly the papers were full of the follies of ramblers, the sale of sheep and the exploits of the local Liberal Democrat MP who was apparently a paladin of virtue.
Suddenly a headline caught his eye.
“HORROR! ANIMAL ATTACK!”
The article described an attack which was suspected, amongst other things, to be the work of a dog.
Hunter knew better.
He had his lead. Even if it was not his vampire, it was surely the work of a vampire. Unless his vampire could fly, he must have been in France at the time, but there might have been some ‘coven’ or ‘nest’ of vampires in that God forsaken Northern town, and the monster ‘Lloyd’ could be part of it. It was the only lead he had. He would go there the following day and do God’s work
He would prepare himself that night. He packed a suitcase with a change of cloths, the relevant newspaper articles, a lock picking set, and his usual kit of a Bible, a bottle of Holy Water, a pouch of salt, a candle and a stick of chalk.
Then he considered what else he might need. He had given this a lot of thought over the years. Stakes were the traditional weapon, but traditionally fencing stakes up to six feet long were used to hold down the monster. They would not be practical for travelling with. His Holy Water was bound to help, but he knew that he was hunting a monster who needed food and money, and went by the name ‘Lloyd’- something closer to a man than a ghost or a demon. He considered garlic, but he had always found that to be only mildly effective against the enemies of God. He thought about packing his dagger, but them remembered an item which he had had specially made years ago. A hammer: a normal claw hammer; the head of which had been plated in silver. He had been keeping it for a special occasion, and now that occasion had come.
Satisfied that he had prepared well, he finished his sherry, prayed briefly, then set off to the Purple Turtle, his favourite pub.
Drink and be merry, he told himself, for tomorrow you may die
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