Silk Over Razor Blades (13 page)

Across another set of lights.
Past a pub. Over a bridge. He entered the grounds of a small park
linked to the primary school on the near side of the road and used
the path leading to the far end.

As Lenina entered the park,
Jason was a small figure, shoving his way past dog walkers, couples
with prams and kids on bikes.

She sped across the grass,
hoping to cut him off as he rounded the bend. So intent on his
retreating back, she didn’t notice the woman with the pram.

The woman shrieked.

Lenina stopped dead, her
momentum toppling her into a poor imitation of a baseball slide.
The impact jarred her spine and rattled her skull. She came to a
painful stop after four feet, knocking her arm against a fence.

‘Are you okay?’ The voice
seemed to come from a thousand miles away.

Groaning, she flopped on to her
back and stared at the darkening sky.

The woman’s face appeared above
her. ‘Are you crazy? You could hurt someone running like that. Is
someone chasing you?’

‘No.’

‘Are you hurt?’

She winced. ‘No.’ Though true,
with the rush of adrenalin spent, Lenina felt cold and shaky. She
eased into a sitting position, cradling her jarred elbow.

‘Wait, go slow.’

‘I’m fine.’

The woman crouched beside her,
one hand still on the pram. ‘I thought you were going to hit
us.’

‘So did I.’

‘Do you need help?’

‘No.’ With slow movements,
Lenina clambered to her feet and tested her balance. ‘I’m so sorry.
What about you?’

‘We’re fine. You’ve got amazing
reflexes.’ The woman gave a shaky smile.

‘Thanks.’ Limping past her,
Lenina returned to the path and looked. There was no real need; she
knew Jason was gone.

Sighing, she found a bench and
sat, resting her forehead on her knees.

The shakes continued, full body
trembling until her teeth chattered and her hands could no longer
grip her knees. Cooling air swirled around, but her skin flushed
hot, then cold, then hot again. Tears caught on her eyelashes and
she scrunched both eyes shut.

Deep breaths. She had to calm
down.

On the back of her closed
eyelids she saw him again. Grey eyes. Yellowed teeth. Trembling
lips.

The more she tried to avoid
him, the more she saw, until she had an impression of Jason leaning
against a wall in a narrow, litter-choked alley. He stared at his
hands and she saw through his eyes. Watched his fingers shake until
he curled them into fists.

His fear began to leak away,
replaced instead by sure, steady resolve. Thin lips mouthed the
words,
I have to get rid of her.

Lenina jerked her eyes open and
leapt off the bench.

She looked left and right,
shivering as every curious look became a death-glare, each stranger
morphed into a stalking spectre of bloody murder.

Though the images died, the
imprint of Jason’s thoughts remained.

He was coming back and he meant
to kill her.

Lenina set off at a brisk walk
which soon became a jog. Then a run. Out of the park and back along
the main roads. Her frantic flight took her back past the cluster
of buildings making De Montfort University, bumping through the
crowds of students with normal lives and normal troubles. Then past
the hospital, an ugly cluster of glass and concrete jumbled up with
older buildings of weathered stone.

By the time she reached the
giant bulk of the rugby ground, she knew she could run no further
and thrust out her hand to flag down a cab.

‘Oadby please,’ she told the
aged taxi driver.

He glanced at her ruffled hair,
flushed face and grubby clothes. ‘You all right, mi’duck?’

‘Fine,’ she gasped. ‘Please
just drive.’

He did, stabbing two buttons on
the meter that hiked the starting price to £3.

She didn’t care. It didn’t
matter. Nothing mattered as much as getting away.

With each passing mile Jason’s
presence faded. By the time they reached the main route leaving the
city, some of the panic eased off. Replacing it came a wave of
nausea that brought out goosebumps on her arms.

From the depths of her bag her
mobile rang with Ramona’s tone. She yanked it out and pressed it to
her ear.

‘What the hell, Nina? I’ve been
calling for ages. Where are you? Are you okay? Why did you chase
that guy?’

Lenina put the phone in her lap
and let her friend wear herself out with questions. She couldn’t
answer them sensibly anyway. After a moment or two she raised the
mobile back to her ear.

‘I’m going home, Romey.’

‘I’ll come meet you. I don’t
think you should be alone right now.’

‘I won’t be; Nick finishes
early today.’

‘Will you at least get a bus
rather than jogging?’

‘I’m in a cab. I’ll be fine.’
Her stomach tightened, doubling her over and drawing gasps from her
lips. ‘I need to go.’

The driver paused at a set of
traffic lights and swivelled in his seat to peer through the
plastic partition. ‘There’s a £50 fine if you throw up back
there.’

‘I’m okay.’

‘You’re hyperventilating.’

The phone rang again. Lenina
clutched her knees until her fingernails bit through the denim and
let the call ring out. When it did, she turned the phone off.

‘Just go,’ she told the
driver.

As the lights changed, the
driver turned forward again but he looked back regularly, often
swerving as he tried to see what she was doing. After the third
such slalom across the lanes, Lenina scrabbled for her purse.

‘Let me out. You’re going to
kill us both.’ She shoved a wadded ten-pound note into the tray at
the base of the partition. ‘Keep the change, just let me go.’

No complaints. The driver
pulled into the car park of a large supermarket and unlocked the
doors.

Lenina threw herself free of
the vehicle, landing on her knees. Her stomach clenched with
ferocious intensity and seconds later she vomited, retching and
spitting until her stomach contracted on emptiness.

The cab driver gave a disgusted
groan as he drove away.

A security guard approached
with his hands outstretched, as if she were a potentially violent
animal. He crouched nearby. ‘You okay? Do you need help?’

Bitterly wondering where such
help had been last night, Lenina shook her head. She wiped her
mouth, side-stepped the lumpy puddle and began walking again.

Rain began soon after. A
drizzle at first which quickly evolved into an angry downpour.
Turning her face skyward, she let the rain wash her mouth clear and
spat the tepid mouthfuls on the paving slabs.

Lenina thought of her warm,
comfortable bed and moved faster, her feet automatically choosing
the path home she had used hundreds, if not thousands of times
before.

The house was only ten minutes
away now.

At the north gate of Grick Park
she stopped dead, staring across the rain-slicked grass.

Nick’s voice filled her head,
begging her not to cut across the dark and lonely park.

Surely it made no difference
now. The worst was already done.

She opened the gate and slipped
through.

Though not as late as the day
before, the rain made the park similarly dark. This time, without
the lull of her music or the comfortable rhythm of running, Lenina
felt awkward and out of place.

Halfway through she turned off
the path on to the grass, angling her route towards the middle
where white lines marked the edges of three familiar football
pitches.

With each step, the bite marks
on her throat itched and burned.

It didn’t take long to find the
spot.

Tears ran down Lenina’s cheeks
and mingled with the driving rain.

As though her body were attuned
to the site, an echo of last night’s panic fizzed through her
limbs. Growing warmth filled her belly. Her lungs tightened.
Breathing became difficult.

Here
, she thought,
bending to touch the grass. This was where he bit her. Where she
bit back and filled her mouth with his blood.

As if to think of him was to
call him to her, Jason’s presence filled her head. She felt him
like she had earlier, close enough to be peering over her
shoulder.

He sensed her. A prickle of
unease trickled down the link between them. Then the connection
died and her mind was her own once more.

Peeling off across the grass
again, Lenina ran with her face in her hands as if by not seeing
she could erase the images dancing behind her eyelids.

Long teeth. Sandy dunes. Flesh
stained red.

Saar, the man from her dreams,
bent over a twitching body in Roman armour and feasted from his
throat.

She heard distant barking and
banked left away from it, aiming for the dim grey of the industrial
estate hemmed in by high rail fences. Buildings loomed out of the
darkness like thick, stubby fingers, unlit but for the occasional
sparkle of a wet security camera catching the rising moon’s
glare.

She clung to the fence, resting
her forehead against the twisted metal.

Rain hammered her head and
shoulders. The barking grew louder.

Saar
, she thought. A
soldier in Cleopatra’s time. A man who drank blood, grew fangs and
talked of ‘children’, even though some of those were clearly older
than him.

Closer now, the furious yapping
brought her attention to the ground.

A small terrier blinked in the
rain then growled again. It backed off a step then bounded around
her ankles, worrying her laces.

‘Go away,’ she snapped.

The dog barked harder.

‘Get lost.’

More barks and a growl,
followed by a nip at her toes. Sharp teeth punched through her
trainers.

‘Get away from me!’ Rage burst
like a pricked balloon. She kicked out with a wordless grunt, not
caring, not seeing, not thinking at all. The side of her foot
struck the dog in the ribs with a loud crack, catapulting it across
the wet grass. The small creature hit the ground with a sickening
thud more than twenty feet away, then slid through the oozing brown
mud a further six feet. It didn’t move after that.

Lenina’s hands flew to her
mouth.

Before she could check on the
creature, she heard shrieks from behind.

‘What have you done? God— oh
no— Poppy!’ A woman shouldered passed her and threw herself down
beside the silent dog. ‘You killed her.’ Raw horror filled her
voice.

Lenina chewed her thumbnail
until it bled. ‘I’m sorry— I didn’t mean to.’

‘What sort of crazy person
kicks a dog?’

‘She bit me.’

‘She’s only a baby!’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Lenina reached
out, but the woman twisted free like a greased eel and shouted into
the darkness.

‘Police! Help me, police!’

The shrill voice seemed to fill
the empty park, bouncing off raindrops until it built to a
deafening crescendo of panic and anger.

Lenina pressed her hands over
her ears, but then the woman was in front of her, clawing at her
face. She hid beneath her hands. ‘Stop it.’

‘You killed my dog.’

‘I’m warning you, lady, leave
me alone.’

But the woman screeched and
dived in again, folding Lenina’s fingers back with strength born of
madness. She struck out, with a closed fist this time, and Lenina
caught her wrist a trembling inch from her cheek. Then the fist
opened and sharp fingernails scored her cheek.

Lenina’s vision tunnelled. Loud
thudding filled her ears and it took long seconds to recognise it
as a heartbeat. Not her own, but the rapid drumming of the other
woman’s heart, powered by a rush of adrenalin.

Fangs reappeared in her mouth.
She felt them this time, heard the little click and grinding sound
of them extending from her gum line. They shot downward in response
to an absent thought, linking blood to the rhythmic tattoo of that
racing heartbeat.

She opened her mouth,
acclimatising herself to the new mouthful of weaponry. She growled.
A quick step pressed her against the woman and she snaked one hand
around the back of the damp head and pulled her close. It might
have been preparation for a lover’s embrace if not for the saliva
flooding her mouth, or the appreciative rumble of her stomach. Or
the fury in her mind.

Free hand beneath her
assailant’s chin, Lenina pushed up, tilting the woman’s head back
to expose her throat, long and white beneath a fluffy, pink
scarf.

She ripped the scarf away.
Lowered her head. Placed her fangs against that trembling flesh and
bit down.

The woman screamed.

Lenina heard the sound and the
increase in her heart rate which followed. Both sent a surge of
pleasure crashing through her body and she groaned through her
mouthful of flesh.

When the blood hit her tongue
the flow was fast and powerful. Swallowing it brought a warmth to
her body that chased out the chill of the rain. Thin lines of fire
raced through her limbs.

The woman in her arms made a
strange choking sound.

Lenina heard it and deepened
her bite, sinking to the ground with the woman cradled against her
chest. She sat in the grass and suckled like a newborn enjoying
that all-important first drink at the breast.

Minutes later . . . hours later
. . . Lenina raised her head.

The thudding of drums that she
knew to be a heartbeat, slowed to a barely audible patter. When she
pulled her teeth free of the woman’s throat the sound stopped
completely.

The body in her arms gave a
sigh, then slipped free of her arms and rolled across the
grass.

Lenina noticed the woman’s eyes
were still open, blank and unblinking, fixed in an expression of
horror that would last forever.

A large part of Lenina longed
to run away again. To put as much distance between herself and the
truth as physically possible. A smaller part luxuriated in the
afterglow of her actions and applauded her. Thanked her.