The Four Realms (5 page)

He hated it when she was like this, pushing him on his past.
 
He didn't push her on hers, despite knowing that she was a lot older than the late teens she looked.
 
In fact, he was sure she looked a lot younger than that.

The truth was, he'd learned those words of Elvish at a very traumatic time in his life, and didn't want reminding of it.
 
Even so he was intrigued by the notebook.

"I wonder what it says."
 
Cassidy asked, snatching it off of him.
 
"Do you know anyone who could translate it?"

He remembered the old library in the Vampire Council, where he used to hide from the other vampires.

"I don't know anyone who could translate it," he said absently, deep in thought, "but I know where there's a book that might help us."

He realised his mistake instantly but it was too late.

"Really?"
 
squealed Cassidy, "we should go there."

"Why?"
 
Darwin said curtly.
 
It had taken him fifteen years to escape from that god awful place, he had no intention of ever going back.
 
Screw the traditionalists and
Die Neuen
and their fucking never-ending factional power plays.
 

"It could be important?
 
Maybe valuable?"
 
Cassidy said.

Darwin snatched it back and threw it at the bin across what would have been the road, but was now a field of snow.
 
It missed, bouncing off the rim.
 
"It's a piece of shit," he said as he flung it.

"Don't!" Cassidy got up and ran over to it.
 
She picked it up, dusted the snow off, and put it back in her pocket.

"Why are you being like this?" she asked.

"Like what?"

"You're being lame."

"No, I'm not," Darwin protested.

"Yes you are.
 
Why don't you want to find out what it says?"

"Cos I've got a headache and you're not helping it."

In truth, what he wanted was a good feed.
 
Look at yourself, Darwin
, he thought to himself.
 
What have you become?
 
You ran away from the Vampire Council because you wanted a better life, and what have you done with it?
 
Living like a tramp and living off rats.
 
That's hardly the bright future you envisaged for yourself
.
 
At the Vampire Council he'd been an abomination, a child born to a woman sired when he was still in the womb.
 
Even she'd rejected him.
 
Beaten and tormented, he'd loathed his humanity.
 
The ability to grow old, the ability to go out into daylight without instantly bursting into flames, they had all seemed like such abnormalities as he was growing up.
 
It was only when he was in his teens that he realised he could step out into the daylight and they couldn't follow him that he found his freedom.
 
And what had he done with it?
 
Nothing.
 
He'd run out that day four years ago and had never stopped running.

Cassidy was lying in the middle of the road, waving her arms and legs back and forth, making a snow angel.

"So what we gonna do with the money?" she asked.
 
It was a leading question, Darwin knew, but he wasn't in the mood to play games.

"I thought maybe we could go somewhere new.
 
You know, visit the country."

Cassidy stopped playing and sat up, her face very serious.

"Oh," she said.
 
She knew what he was saying.

"Cass, I can't carry on like this.
 
Look at me, I'm dying here.
 
I look terrible."

Cassidy stood up, brushed the snow off her as she walked over and sat back down beside him.

"We could try other things.
 
Maybe the rats don't work, but what about..." she thought for a moment, "...ducks?
 
Pigeons?
 
We haven't tried birds."

He put his hand on her arm.
 
"Cass.
 
I know you're only trying to help and I appreciate it, I really do.
 
But you've got to remember I'm half-vampire."

"But you're also half human."

"But I'm also half vampire."

Maybe that's the point
, he told himself.
 
He hadn't been running from the Vampire Council, he'd been running from the part of him that belonged there. He'd been trying so hard to regain his humanity he'd forgotten about that vampire side of him.
 
He needed blood to sustain himself, it wasn't as if he was killing for pleasure.
 
How was that any different to people eating beef?
 
People - well people who weren't vegetarian like Cassidy - didn't have guilt trips about cows being slaughtered to sustain them.
 
He was wrong to deny that side of him.
 
He'd spent all this time looking for the human side of him when what he really needed to do was look for the vampire side.

His mind was made up.
 
As much as it would pain Cassidy, he couldn't continue eating rats.
 
He'd find himself a nice human, preferably someone young where the blood would be sweeter, and he'd feast on them.
 
He could almost feel the Blood Lust rising in him at the prospect.

Not now
, he told himself letting the feeling subside, the throbbing in his head returning at twice the strength,
but soon
.

#

The squat was an abandoned scout hut. It was surrounded on three sides by a high chain link fence, presumably to keep out undesirables such as Cassidy and Darwin until such time as demolition of the building could take place.
 
At the rear, a huge bank led up to a railway line which trains rattled along every couple of minutes or so.
 
Overgrown bushes obscured the view of the scout hut from the road and the railway track.
 
This allowed people to crawl through an opening at the bottom of one of the chain link fences someone had cut.
 
The building itself had been boarded up and was now covered in graffiti, but someone had managed to prise the back door open.

Inside, were a dozen or so homeless people.
 
The whole place stank of stale piss.
 
With the water turned off, the lavatories had soon overflowed to the extent that some people now just pissed in the corners of the main hall.
 
Everyone pretty much kept themselves to themselves, anyone getting too drunk and rowdy finding themselves at the mercy of the other inhabitants in some democracy of consensus.
 
Some had managed to find mattresses to give them some comfort, and Darwin had managed to liberate one of these, in a moment Cassidy still chided him for.
 
The guy was an arsehole anyway
.
 
Darwin had set it up in a store cupboard, with a floor area not much larger than the mattress, and it had been their home for the last couple of months.
 

There was someone new here tonight though - a boy, late teens, possibly a couple of years younger than Darwin.
 
He looked like he'd only recently gone on the streets given the cleanliness of his clothes and how fresh that black eye looked.
 
Darwin saw Cassidy flinch as she first noticed him.
 
She looked up at Darwin, eyes full of sorrow and shook her head.
 
He could only shrug back, before turning his back on her and walking over to the boy.

"Hi, you must be new here, I'm Darwin."

#

Cassidy was going to be so pissed at him in the morning.
 
Not just because of the boy, though he was still alive - for now - and pumping Darwin's arse with the rhythm of a drunk dad at a disco.
 
No, it was because after working his charm, Darwin had lead him into the little storeroom bedroom and shut the door, leaving Cassidy outside in the hall.

Darwin wasn't a fan of sex, and if he was honest, couldn't really understand the appeal.
 
Yes, he would often bring a victim to climax before killing them but that was simply so prolactin would be released into the blood.
 
As he had once explained to Cassidy, this was akin to sugar in a cup of tea.
 
He'd not had fresh human blood in so long, that he intended to maximise the experience.

This is what vampires had been doing for centuries and a skill that came quite naturally.
 
They could turn the prudish, wanton, the straight, gay, or as he put it, "talk the pants off anyone".
 
Some said there was something in the pheromones vampires secreted, but Darwin thought it was a just a necessary skill vampires either learned to do, or died from starvation.
 
Very few refused his wiles.
 

Of course, Darwin was so hungry for blood he could have taken the boy there and then.
 
But the thought of that young blood, as accepting to the palate as fine wine, made Darwin want to savour the taste.
 
After months of near starvation and living on rats what was a few minutes longer to let the boy climax.

However, he was taking his fucking time.
 
As he lay there Darwin wondered if he'd done the right thing.
 
How long before his charm wore off and the boy started to reconsider what he was doing?
 
Should have talked him into letting me give him a blow job
, thought Darwin.

He'd often heard vampires being labelled as sexual predators, but other than the physical acts themselves there was very little sexual about it.
 
Darwin certainly drew no pleasure from it whether his victim was male or female, young or old, save for the pleasure any hungry man feels at the promise of a warm meal.

So instead he lay there, his entire body jerking as the boy thrust deep inside of him, wondering just how pissed off Cassidy was going to be with him in the morning.
 
He could tell by the way she'd looked at him as he'd lead the boy away, she wasn't impressed.

There was a grunt from the boy as he withdrew and came over Darwin's buttocks.
 
Great
, thought Darwin,
just what I need, a sticky arse
.
 
But as the boy milked the last drops of cum out in a state of post orgasmic euphoria, Darwin arched backward as if to kiss the boy.
 
His victim was too lost in their own state of euphoria, as Darwin twisted his body around and his mouth found the boy's neck.

He bit down hard, so much so that his teeth didn't just puncture the neck, but tore at it. At once the blood started to flow, the boy starting to shake violently.
 
Some victims tried to fight, some like the boy, just convulsed.
 
Darwin twisted and put his hand out to steady the boy as he slurped greedily at the neck, not wanting to spill a drop.
 
After months of living off rats' blood, the taste was almost overpowering, and Darwin found himself lost in the ecstasy of the moment.

He laid the boy down on the mattress, still sucking at the neck, as the convulsions subsided and the boy slipped away.
 
It had been a clean death, possibly even a humane one.
 
Cassidy couldn't moan at that.

He continued to bite at the neck, as he drank deeper, the blood no longer flowing but having to be sucked out. It tasted even better than he imagined, Darwin finding himself getting hard for the first time since bringing the boy in here.
 
It didn't take long before the body was dry.
 
What little blood it had left was in such extremities that Darwin did not have the strength to suck it out.
 

He spat the lump of flesh he'd torn from the boy's neck onto the corpse's chest.
 
It landed with a wet bloody slap.
 
Darwin tilted his head back, eyes closed, and for a minute just felt the life returning to his body. It was a glorious feeling, like feeling full for the first time in months, maybe even years.
 
It caused his body to tingle as he sighed his own personal form of orgasm.

Then exhausted, he flopped back onto the mattress next to the corpse.
 
His back was still wet from the boy's cum, but his rejuvenation had exhausted him.
 
He felt alive, yet extremely tired.
 
Such was the way after a big feed.
 
Still the mess didn't matter, he'd be leaving, and the sheets were dirty anyhow.
 
They'd not be taking those with them when they left early in the morning.

Nobody would come in here for days, such was the other squatters' fear of him.
 
Too fucking right
, he thought.
 
But eventually the smell of decay would pique their interest, and by that time they'd be long away.
 
Scotland, perhaps?

Cassidy now played on his mind.
 
She was lying out there in the hall on her own.
 
If any of those freaks touched her...
 
he stopped the thought mid-flow.
She can take care of herself
, he reminded himself.
 
Besides it was her fault he'd got in this state.
 
If she came in here, she'd just start lecturing him on the sanctity of life and try and humanise him.
 
No, better she stayed out there.
 
Tonight, he was a vampire, and whilst he was happy to go along with her little games for the most part, he needed to feed.
 
She needed to learn that and he needed to stop succumbing to her guilt.