Blood Read online

  It was a winter Tuesday and it was after six, the woman in the church had told him that much, but the city was still thronged with tourists, and even the backstreets were full of visual hazards. He hadn’t wanted to do this, but he reached into his overcoat pocket and took out a pair of dark glasses.

  The city was brighter than it had been last time and his eyes would take longer to adjust, if they adjusted at all. But with the glasses on, the pain eased enough for him to open his eyes fully again and see clearly what lay around him.

  The clothes of the people were not much different from the last time and, while he saw no one dressed exactly as he was, nobody stared at him, except for the occasional glance towards his dark glasses.

  He was troubled though, because he could smell blood all around him, and he’d smell it that strongly until he satisfied his need. Until he fed, he wouldn’t be able to move easily among people.

  Will made for the South Gate, and from there into the derelict area that led down to the river. The time before last, 1920 to 1938, this Victorian warehouse district had been thriving, even at night, but the last time it had fallen into decay and become home to vagrants and drug users—people who wouldn’t be missed.

  It hadn’t changed. Will stopped outside the second gutted warehouse and breathed deeply, the scent of his victim immediately flaring in his nostrils. He put his glasses back in his pocket and pushed through the gap in the boarded-up doors.

  It was a long, low building under a gently peaked roof, only one story. The whole space was open and dark, but there was a small partially enclosed office at the far end, and through the openings where its windows had been, he could see the dim flickering of candlelight.

  He walked quickly and stood in the office doorway. The little room was now a makeshift home, with charcoal pictures hanging on the walls, books stacked up on crates and shelves, an old mattress, and various grubby clothes and blankets and sleeping bags.

  There was a small stove in the corner, the one remaining part of the original office’s comfort, a black pipe rising from it and up through the roof. The stove was lit and two wiry black dogs lay dozing in front of it.

  On the other side of the room, sitting cross-legged on the mattress, was a man with matted brown hair and a beard. He was barefoot, wearing khaki trousers and a thick top, which had once been pale blue, but now appeared to have grime in every one of its fibers. There were beads and bangles around both of his wrists, and a leather bracelet around one of his ankles.

  The man was writing in a notebook by the light of three large candles, but he stopped now and looked up. He was surprised but not alarmed to see Will standing there.

  Will was surprised, too, because the man’s face was young beneath his beard and scraggly hair. He was young and healthy and, judging by the many books, educated, too, so Will found it hard to understand how his circumstances could have been so reduced.

  The man spoke and his voice was soft and distracted, as if he had to keep calling himself back from some distant place. “Hey, man, I didn’t see you there.” He looked towards the stove and said, “Weird that the dogs didn’t hear you coming—they’re normally bang on.”

  Will stepped inside without answering, avoiding a waist-high stack of magazines just inside the door. He picked one up and looked at it before saying, “What is this?”

  “It’s the Big Issue, man. I’m a seller.” Will didn’t comprehend, even though he could see the name of the publication. “You must’ve heard of it. You must have seen people selling it in the street.” The man seemed intrigued now and put his notebook to one side, staring at Will. “You don’t seem like the usual kind of runaway—what’s your story?”

  Will was still looking at the magazine and said, “Is this the date?”

  “Yeah, it’s this week’s.”

  It should have been obvious to him because he’d already come to the conclusion that he’d slept for at least ten years, but even so, Will was shocked at the realization that this was the twenty-first century.

  He’d found himself in new centuries many times before, but the thought of being adrift in a new millennium was troubling somehow. He imagined the next thousand years stretching out ahead of him, saw himself a prisoner to this half-life across ten more centuries, then another, and another. The only thing he couldn’t imagine was why, to what purpose?

  “Look, man, whatever your problem is, it’s cool, you know.” Will dropped the magazine back on the pile and stared at him. “I’m Jex, and trust me, I’ve seen and heard everything, man, and it’s all cool.”

  Will had never heard such a name before—Jex. Jex, who thought he’d seen and heard everything.

  He continued to stare and said, as a matter-of-fact, “I could tell you some things you haven’t heard before.”

  Jex started to laugh, perhaps thinking it funny that this boy thought he knew more of the world than him, but then he made eye contact and stopped with the sound still unformed in his throat. Within a moment, he’d become mesmerized by the intensity of Will’s gaze.

  Will took another step forwards and knelt down in front of him. He took the young man’s hand and pushed up the grubby blue sleeve of his top. Jex looked down at his own forearm and then back at Will, already totally within his power, no less than a fly paralyzed by a spider’s venom.

  Will held the wrist, just above the assorted bangles and bracelets, then took a small knife from the pocket of his overcoat and cut a short, neat line up the arm. As the blood started to flow, his instinct was to lap it up urgently, so great was his need, but just as he was about to lock his mouth around the wound, Jex spoke from deep within his trance.

  “He’s calling.”

  Despite his hunger for blood, Will sat back on his haunches and stared at Jex in shock. This didn’t happen: his victims did not speak once they were entranced. And Jex was still hypnotized, but he had definitely spoken, a fact that unnerved Will more than perhaps it should have done.

  “Who?”

  Jex’s eyes were fixed on the point in space where Will had stood, and he showed no signs of having heard him, but even so, he responded mechanically, saying, “Lorcan Labraid. He calls.”

  “Who is Lorcan Labraid?”

  Jex’s head shook with a fearful tremor, as if he didn’t want to hear what he could hear, as if he didn’t want to speak, but could not stop himself. “Lorcan Labraid? He is the evil of the world. And he calls you.” He slumped back a little, apparently exhausted, mumbling, “You need the girl, the girl needs you, you need the …”

  Will stared at him for a second or two more, intrigued even as he tried to dismiss the words as those of a dying man, but he could wait no longer, distracted by the rich scent of the blood. He lowered his head to the wound and took the liquid as it pumped gently from the torn flesh.

  He felt better almost instantly with the metallic warmth filling his mouth. He’d long understood that this wasn’t food—he didn’t need blood the way he’d once needed meat or bread. It was something else that he took from it, as if he was draining the life force itself from his victims.

  He didn’t need blood all the time. He needed it most when he first emerged from hibernation. After that, he could go weeks or even months without the need for more, and the need wasn’t a bodily hunger, but a spiritual one.

  He was never physically weak for want of blood, but sometimes before he fed, it felt as if every last fragment of his soul was floating away and dispersing into the void. Only blood brought it back.

  Within forty minutes it was done. Jex lay on the mattress now, both arms exposed, two cuts on each, and the blood continued to seep weakly out of the wounds. Will hadn’t drained him and had stopped drinking as soon as the life had left him.

  He stood and looked around the room. For a moment, he thought back to the strangeness of Jex talking through his trance and of the things he’d said—Lorcan Labraid, the evil of the world, something about a girl— but the room alone was enough to convince him that Jex had taken dr
ugs aplenty in his time, that his mind had been unhinged even though his body had remained healthy.

  The dogs were still sleeping, unaware that he was there or what fate had befallen their master. The stove was burning low and orange, and if Jex had been still alive, he might have put more wood on it.

  He looked at the charcoal pictures then. They were well drawn, some of the dogs, some of faces, including a girl who looked cross and unhappy, many of the city itself, some of the church. Again, it surprised and even saddened him that a young man of talents had come to live like this.

  Will felt a little saddened, too, for having ended that life, but it was the nature of his sickness. Besides, millions of people had died during his long existence, and many of them had lost their lives far more pointlessly than the man in front of him now.

  Will spotted the notebook that Jex had been writing in and picked it up, thumbing idly through the pages. He probably would have thrown it aside again, but as he looked through it, his forearm started to itch, on the exact spot where he’d once been bitten himself.

  It was a sensation he’d never experienced before, the second new experience in one night, and once again, he started to think seriously about the things Jex had said. Could it be that Lorcan Labraid was the name of the creature who’d bitten him, and that through the flaring up of this ancient wound, he was indeed calling to Will?

  He even wondered if the itching was somehow linked to the simple act of picking up the notebook. It was hard to believe this book could have any connection with the creature who’d infected him so long ago, but even the slightest promise of it was enough to pique Will’s interest.

  Most of the pages were filled with dense script, but there were drawings, too. Much of the writing was in a tight scrawl that was hard for him to read, and nonsensical where he could, but here and there notes were written in large capital letters.

  As he flicked through the pages, his eyes fixed on one of these bold statements. Two words in particular had leapt out at him as they’d flashed past, words he couldn’t believe he’d seen. Surely his eyes had deceived him. He turned back, a page at a time, his heart lurching.

  Then he reached it and read it again, one simple but shocking sentence, written bold, the words underlined. And there were the two words in particular that had caught his attention, words that could have no reason for being in this man’s notebook—William … Mercia.

  He tried to take in the meaning of them appearing there and of the sentence that carried them, but felt a sudden sharp discomfort on his forearm, deep in the tissue—not itching now, but the sensation of two teeth sinking into his flesh. He had to be imagining it, or remembering it, dredging up a memory that he’d never knowingly possessed. It got worse—a needle-like pain tore through his flesh, a pain so alarming, so disturbing that Will dropped the book and stumbled, kicking one of the crates.

  The dogs stirred and jumped up, starting to growl, but uncertain what to do. A candle toppled and rolled across the crate before dropping to the floor, the flame catching under the edge of the blanket that covered the mattress.

  Will recoiled instantly from the fire, as small as it was. One of the dogs barked at him, then the other, maybe sensing his moment of weakness. He turned and glared at them and they quietened, looking hesitant, then sloped one after the other out the door.

  The blanket had started to burn properly by the time he turned back to it, smoke billowing upwards, the flames dancing against everything they touched, trying to take hold. Then he spotted the notebook lying on the mattress next to Jex, the edges of its pages already beginning to singe and crackle.

  Will had never been burned, but just as some sicknesses could make their victims fear water, so he feared the flames, no less than if he were a wild animal. He’d learned to live with the careful, controlled fire of the candle, but this kind of flame, volatile and fast and greedy, made him almost as uneasy as the first glint of light at the edge of every morning.

  But he knew what he’d seen in that book and the sensations it had stirred in him, and he couldn’t let it burn. He kicked it clear of the flames and stamped on it, making certain that it was no longer alight before daring to pick it up.

  He slipped the book into the pocket of his coat and ran from the fire, out into the freshening night where he halted again. A wind had picked up, whipping through the old warehouses, carrying broken sounds from here and there in the city, tugging violently at his hair and coat.

  The night seemed volatile and in fear of itself, as if something had just been unleashed into the darkness, perhaps by his killing of Jex, or by his discovery of the book, or both. Whatever had happened in there, Will could sense that something had shifted in his nocturnal world—things were not the same as they’d been an hour before.

  He put his hand into his pocket, reassuring himself that the notebook was still there, but almost instantly the wind dropped and the crisp calmness of the night settled back on to the city. He could hear only the faint crackling of the flames now, and the distant traffic that would soon bring a fire engine.

  Before finding the book, he’d wanted to walk and breathe air he hadn’t breathed for more than a decade, to clear his thoughts. Now he wanted only to go back to his chamber so that he could read and decipher everything Jex had written, to understand something of what was happening and the things of which he’d spoken.

  But Will hadn’t even started to walk again when he heard a noise from the direction of the river. He stared into the darkness and saw the two dogs, running at full speed. At first he thought they were running back to their master, but they sprinted past, determined, not even noticing Will. The look and the smell of them were unmistakable—they were running away from something in fear for their lives.

  He looked back in the direction from which they’d come, and without giving it any further thought, he set off towards the river. If there was something down there that had scared the dogs, he wanted to see it, and as he walked, his heart was full of the nervous blood of hope.

  He’d lived in ignorance for nearly eight hundred years, understanding little of his sickness, gathering fragments from the superstitions of others. Nor, in all that time, had he ever met another of his own kind, but finally in this notebook, in the words of a dead man, there was perhaps a sign.

  At last, in this new millennium, he’d found a message in the most unlikely of places. And it promised something that he’d never dared hope, that there had been a reason for all of this, his sickness, the centuries of loneliness, that he had a destiny.

  There was something else, too, in the aching of his arm, in the way the darkness had become possessed, in the terror of the dogs, a tantalizing suggestion that the book would lead him to the one who’d made him what he was. Will rested his hand on the book now, and was almost afraid to hope that their meeting might be imminent—for after all, the dogs had run from something, or someone.

  4

  All the way to the river, the dull ache remained in his arm, reminding Will that he had been cursed with this existence, born of wickedness, reminding him, too, that whatever had come back into his life in this last hour was also wicked. And with Jex’s words still in his mind, it was evil he expected to find at the river.

  What he actually found there was a scene of confusion, a scene of dereliction lost. The first riverside warehouse he saw was surrounded by scaffolding and appeared to be undergoing some building work. The next one, a large four-story block that stretched all the way to the road and the bridge, had been converted into living accommodation, as had the one on the opposite bank.

  Will stared at the buildings, unable to take in what was happening here. He looked up at the lit windows, at the people moving about their domestic business. It was a strange choice of place to live, he thought. If the creature who’d bitten him was anywhere here, it would not be among the living.

  Instinctively, he turned and walked the other way along the river, away from the light and signs of life, further into the small
island of desolation which it seemed he was already on the verge of losing.

  He hadn’t walked far when he sensed someone up ahead and his hope faded of finding the creature tonight, for this was a healthy living person. If she, for he sensed it was a she, was unharmed and unafraid then it was unlikely the creature was close by. With even more disappointment, he wondered if the dogs had been spooked by nothing so much as their own shadows. Even so, he walked on.

  He couldn’t see her, not even when he knew he was close, and he was only a few steps away when he finally spotted her, sitting on the floor inside the deep doorway of what had once been a coffee merchant’s.

  She looked no older than him, her skin was almost as pale, her raven hair even darker than his, and she, too, was dressed all in black, albeit with silver rings on nearly every finger.

  The girl was beautiful and sad, but more importantly, Will recognized her and became hopeful again that he’d been drawn here for a reason. Because this was the girl whose picture had been on the wall of Jex’s hovel. “The girl needs you, you need the girl,” that was what he’d said, or something like it. Had he meant this girl?

  “What are you staring at?”

  Her tone was hostile and Will had been distracted, not even realizing that he was staring. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

  She ignored the apology, leaving no opening for conversation. Will scratched absentmindedly at his arm, not because it was itching now, but because he could still remember the discomfort so clearly.

  “Are you a junkie?”

  Her tone was accusatory and he dropped his hand and said earnestly, “No. Something bit me, that’s all.”

  “Charming,” she said sarcastically. He wasn’t sure how to respond, but a moment later she added, “So? Go away. Leave me alone.”