Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3) 6

Outside, the seminar done, it was still annoyingly light. These long summer evenings were a bore.

Kate didn't know if she'd learned anything.

The Black Monks were a scary concept  -  the disciples of Caleb Croft, yearning for the good old days of unfettered slaughter and hellfire to quaff (snap!)  -  but mostly ridiculous individuals. Weary Withnail or Apologetic Armstrong couldn't get it together to hurt anyone, though she supposed they might hold the others' coats in any group atrocity. Mo?se King would swallow any evil impulse and redirect it into a sonnet sequence. Anna Conda and Full-Bosomed Fran were just passing through. Neither were so into the Black Monk scene they wore the habit, though they cared enough not to clash. James Eastman was not of this party  -  to squelch a pang of embarrassing desire, she decided she fancied the brooding biker much more than DeBoys.

Which left Evil Eric, Carnal Keith and Scruffy Scrawdyke on her active suspects list. DeBoys was the obvious Top Cat in this alley ('He's the boss, he's the pip, he's the championship... he's the most tip-top...') while Keith was a fashion-plate sensualist with brawlers' knuckles. Point of information: Scrawdyke was a vicious misogynist. He'd glared at her throughout the seminar, waves of loathing spilling over onto Anna and Fran. When Croft dismissed the group, Scrawdyke wheedled, trying to get Anna to lend him notes on a lecture he'd missed. A painful performance. When generally powerless people thought they could hurt someone without consequence, they were terrifying. Still, he'd have to stir from his coffin and show some initiative to hurt anyone.

The open, mostly concrete space between the college and the river was busy. More Rag Week shenanigans. Mummified medical students trailing bandages were chased around yellowing grass and by Groucho-loping whitecoats with big butterfly nets. 'They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!' roared from speakers. The routine  -  and the song  -  ended and hats were passed for small change. A white-faced mime shook a shako at her. She got rid of some threepenny bits from her purse. What charity were they supporting?

Sat around a fountain was the negative image of the student gang she'd run into earlier: six or seven vampires, mostly not dressed in black, and one warm girl in a grey shroud. Croft wasn't the only lecturer with a seminar group in the School of Vampirism  -  this must be another clique. Now the lunatics' act was over, a vampire boy in a kaftan, eyes bright with recent feeding, took up an acoustic guitar. Fingers strumming faster than humanly possible, he combined Robert Johnson's 'Cross Road Blues' with Tony Hatch's 'Theme From Crossroads' in one too-clever-by-half racket.

The scarf knotted around Laura Bellows' leg could lead to any vampire at St Bartolph's. Student or faculty. Or the murderer might want to direct attention here, away from themselves. Clive Landseer or Syrie Van Epp or Sebastian Newcastle or U.N. Owen-Vampire?

'Kate,' barked someone.

She scanned the area. First, she clocked her bodyguard. Nezumi, her mousy neighbour, must have been marking her since she left the Club. Dressed in claret blazer, skirt and straw boater, she solemnly joined a warm schoolgirls' skipping game. She was, as might be expected, expert. Though they lived in the same building, Kate hadn't talked much with the young-old Japanese girl. Thanks to an insufficiently soundproofed ceiling, she knew Nezumi was a devoted listener to Junior Choice on Saturday mornings. She often played children's or novelty singles on her Dansette. 'Nellie the Elephant', 'I Am a Bat and I Live in a Hat', the Goons' 'Ying-Tong Song'. As a Lovely, she was presumably lethal. To match her uniform, she carried a battered, bandaged hockey stick  -  a formidable weapon in a street-fight. However, it was hard to see Nezumi as a samurai sex kitten when she looked thirteen and sang along in a thick accent to 'A Mouse Lived in a Windmill in Old Amsterdam'.

Nezumi hadn't called out to her, though.

Sergeant Griffin sat alone on a bench, pretending to read the Mirror (ENOCH SAYS 'NO MORE VIPERS'). Every student who passed grunted or snorted like a pig, so being in plainclothes  -  if an electric blue suit and crimson shirt could be counted as plain  -  wasn't working. He might as well wear a tit-helmet with a blue lamp on top. A wag in a Magic Roundabout t-shirt set fire to an enormous roll-up and exhaled a marijuana cloud. Griffin told the kid to push off and take a dip in the Thames.

Kate had no choice but to go over and sit next to the vampire copper.

'It takes all of ten minutes to read the Mirror,' he said. 'Including the flippin' horoscopes and Andy Capp. I've been here an hour. it's been a pain.'

'You should have brought a book. I always have one on the go.'

She was in the middle of J.P. Donleavy's Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule.

'I'm stuck on the first chapter of Valley of the Dolls and don't want to carry the thing around in public.'

A warm student kindly put a hand-drawn 'BEWARE OF THE PIG' sign on the bench next to Griffin. The policeman flicked out fangs. The student flashed the peace sign and scarpered.

'Is Bellaver calling me off? Did Landseer confess?'

'Far from it. Bastard's got an alibi. Edward Langdon, MP, no less. While the girls were being drained and dumped, the Honourable Member was getting sucked off by our Clivey. After arm-twisting, Langdon gave up a statement. Checks out, too. Wouldn't you know it, Langdon is on the Manfred Commission. At least he can't be prejudiced...'

'Don't you believe it, Sergeant. Some of the loudest Enochites cover love-bites with make-up. You know the type. Spend the week screaming we should be impaled and burned and buried at the crossroads in graves sprinkled with salt and sown with garlic, then crawl round the viper bars on Saturday night begging for a little nip. Remember that shrink in the 1950s who said he could "cure" vampirism? Dr Holstrom. Held the Hyde Park rallies which kicked off the Blood Riots. He turned out to be one of Lis Bathory's castoffs. He turned. After all the trouble, I doubt he's been embraced by "the community".'

Griffin folded his paper and chucked it in a bin. He threw the funny sign after it.

'If you're hoping for a culprit here, I can't give you one,' she said. 'Every vampire I've seen today looks guilty. Including you.'

'I have an alibi too. I was on duty Saturday night. Until the call came in, it was a boring shift. We played Monopoly in the B Division squad-room in Holborn. Bellaver cheats. Keeps a "Get Out of Jail Free" card up his sleeve. What about you?'

'If either of my neighbours were home, they'd have heard typing from my flat. One thousand words for Woman on bright red or royal blue Bri-Nylon long-johns for the younger  -  or younger-seeming  -  girl.'

She didn't mention that she could produce a neighbour with a loud whistle. The Diogenes Club liked to keep some separation from the authorities  -  the other authorities.

'Thin. You could have a fascinated minion hitting random keys for hours while you were off haunting the night in search of your prey.'

'If I had a fascinated minion, all sorts of things would be much, much easier. Still, if I'd drained two girls an hour or so before I saw you in Maryon Park, I'd have been practically purple.'

Two tall warm girls in mini dresses walked by. Griffin's eyes nearly popped. They sat on the lawn, arranging their legs into lotus positions. The dope-smoker offered his huge reefer and they took substantial hits. Grass did nothing for Kate but give her a headache. The drug revolution turned up all sorts of hallucinogens and narcotics which didn't work on vampires, and one or two which did. Griffin ogled the pretty girls. They were swan-necked as well as long-legged.

'Volunteer for this?'

'The Super sent me with a heads-up for you. B Division will be all over this patch tomorrow. Those flower children had better not be passing around that Camberwell Carrot. The Drug Squad has invited itself into the investigation. Sergeant Pilcher is itching for an excuse to get his size-elevens up the fundaments of the chemical hippies of this parish.'

'Is this one of those pacify-the-papers shows? To prove you're doing something?'

'Ah-hah, we'd like you in the press to think so... because you'd still have to pat us on the back. But there are wheels within wheels. There's a real reason.'

Are you going to make me try to fascinate you into coughing it up?'

Griffin enjoyed playing I've Got A Secret, but let it go. 'The autopsies, love. Tres interesting. They called in Hardy...'

The pathologist Dr John Hardy worked with the Home Office on high-profile cases. He ruled Stephen Ward's death a suicide and Joe Orton's a murder.

'...and he found something which would have been easy to miss. When the blood's gone, it's difficult to test for, say, alcohol.'

'But the blood's never all gone, is it? Even in white-lips cases.'

'No, there's always something. The brain, they say, is a retentive sponge. All those little capillaries. If you suck them dry, would you pick up the dying thoughts of your victim, do you suppose?'

Kate looked at Griffin. He can't have been a vampire more than a year.

'Try not to use emotive terms like "victim",' she said. 'Irks the Enochites.'

Griffin shrugged and carried on. 'Hardy found enough blood in the cerebella to test. Both girls were high when they popped off. tripping on quality BOP, manufactured close to the source. Which would mean in that building over there. The one with the mural which looks like the Dulux dog spewed up fifteen shades of non-gloss on the wall.'

'The dead girls were on Bowles-Ottery Pellets?'

'Handfuls. Not that it should make a difference. One'll do the trick. Serious bopheads drip liquid Bowles-Ottery onto a sugar-cube. You could have it in your breakfast cuppa and take a trip to work. Semolina Pilchard gave a speech about ways and means of turning on. He's like your secret vampire lovers. Rabbits on and on about filthy drugs. The thought of duffing up a long-haired pop singer and copping a stash gives him a week-long stiffy. He times his raids when the dim herberts are with groupies so he can get an eyeful.'

Sergeant Pilcher collected famous hippie scalps. He'd busted Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Jerry Cornelius, and had American singer Lionel St Dubois turned back at Heathrow. A policeman with a press agent, Pilcher sailed close to the wind in staging his headline-grabbers. In court, Horace Rumpole, Cornelius's brief, proved Crown Exhibits A through C were herbal cough medicines. Pilcher knew a lot about drugs but couldn't spot the good ones. He should have led with Exhibit D: Chew-Z cut with vraxoin, bug powder and dreamshit. So dangerous a cocktail Jerry didn't nerve up enough to drop it until the seven-day party thrown in Derry & Tom's Roof Garden to celebrate his acquittal. He was still in a happy coma and seemed to have changed colour.

'I assume everyone at Syrie Van Epp's bash was on something?' she said.

'Uh-huh, and we can guess how the BOP got from here to there. With one of your Prof's pals.'

'He's not my Prof.'

'Bellaver's not happy.'

'Front page news?'

Griffin shrugged. 'He doesn't like the way everything in this case leads to St Bartolph's.'

'He's right. It's too neat and tidy. Little arrow-signs. Pointing here. Makes you think we should be looking somewhere else.'

The sun was down now. Blessed shade.

Griffin took a small pack out of his pocket. 'Opal Fruit?'

'Ta,' she said. 'Lime, please.'

'Connoisseur, eh?'

He shucked sweets from the tube like bullets from an automatic, till he found a lime. He took a strawberry one.

They sucked and chewed. Her taste buds still worked. She got no thrill from cocaine, opium or vintage champagne (yes, she had tried), but Opal Fruits  -  'Fresh with the tang of citrus! Four refreshing fruit flavours!'  -  made her mouth water. And saliva brought out her fangs.

'At least these never let you down,' said Griffin, looking at the individually wrapped sweets in his hand. 'Not like...'

'Drugs?'

'Blood.'

Kate knew how Griffin felt. She'd got past the disappointment a long time ago. None of Croft's Black Monks had shown the signs, and most must have turned about when Griffin did.

'Know why I became a vampire, Kate?'

She didn't.

'Donna...'

'WPC Rogers?'

She had known they were going out but keeping it quiet.

'Know why she turned? B Division. As a viper, she was a cert for promotion... Otherwise, she'd stay a glorified traffic warden. Warm WPOs have a hard time in the Met. Best she could hope for is Vice Squad. Dressing like a tart and entrapping kerb-crawlers. But in B Division... well, there are opportunities for advancement. So, she was all fired-up for the turn. Good Old Cheery Old Jolly Old Julian went for it too.'

Kate hadn't known Griffin's first name.

'No one told us about vampire couples. It's not in that little leaflet you get at the doctor's.'

Kate understood. Turning quickened every sense, but realigned them too. No more booze or sunny days on the beach. but Opal Fruits triggered your pleasure centres.

'Some stay together,' Kate said, well aware she'd never stayed with another vampire for more than a few weeks. 'Some marry.'

'And become those two-in-one monsters. Mind-melded forever. Can't tell where one leaves off and the other begins.'

'Isn't that love?'

'Maybe, but it's terrifying. Most of the ones you're talking about are elders, right? They got together when there weren't so many vampires walking about.'

Croft had been married, Kate remembered. Lady Croydon was burned at the stake in Massachusetts in the eighteenth century. Perhaps that explained him  -  he was only half a person. Not that it was any excuse.

'If one partner's strong in the head, the other dwindles,' said Griffin. 'I've read about Dracula's "wives"...'

The ghost of Lucy Westenra walked over the grave Kate wasn't resting in.

'I doubt WPC Rogers is a psychic quagmire like Dracula.'

'It's not that, though. It's the bedroom, isn't it? You can do all the things you did before and they're... well, nice. Strawberry Opal Fruit nice. But it's not blood. And for blood, you have to find. other people.'

Kate understood. Frank Harris, the vampire who turned her, lost interest the moment she ceased to be biteable and became a rival. She had sought him out in the first place because he could give her an experience but wouldn't fill in her dance card. She'd  -  scandalously  -  slept with him, becoming 'a woman who did'. It seemed a waste not to. She knew turning vampire would enrage her father so much he wouldn't trouble to be bothered about additional harlotry.

'When we were warm, we'd lie there... afterwards. Smoking, dozing, sticky. Together. Now, after we have it off, I know what Donna's feeling because I feel it too. Red thirst, screaming in the brain. I want to get out of bed, get away on my own, and find someone to...'

She held his hand.

'I know. It's part of turning. I've been a vampire for eighty years. Sometimes I don't know why I did it. Except I'm still alive and I get to see how the story turned out.'

'What story?'

All of them. Do you want me to talk with Donna?'

A new vocation  -  Agony Auntie. Katie Reed's Advice to the Lovelorn. Many of the men in her life would laugh at that.

'Too late for that, love,' he said, letting her hand go. 'We're on different courses, now. We're not the same kind of viper.'

Few vampires used that word. Griffin retained the prejudices of his former life. Scratch him and he probably agreed with Enoch Powell. He hadn't yet accepted that he was one of the monsters.

'You're a catch, Julian,' she said, trying to mean it.

He was a new-born, not one she responded to. It wasn't a matter of fancying or not fancying him. She had extra senses. This was like glancing at a field of horses and knowing the winners from the also-rans before the race. She didn't see the spark, the hint of sharp ivory in a smile, in Sergeant Griffin. In DeBoys and Eastman and even Donna Rogers, she did  -  they would be great vampires. Griffin was fated to be Good Old Cheery Old Jolly Old Julian. Just like she was always going to be Carrot-Top Katie, Four-Eyes Reed, the Freckled Freak. Not that she wanted to be great, just good.

There was a commotion on campus.

'Talk about careless driving,' said Griffin.

A blue-and-white Volkswagen van swerved off the approach road to the car park. It ploughed across the lawn, making ruts. Students scattered out of its way. The dope-smokers were befuddled by the sudden excitement. One of the girls was together enough to shift her friends. Their blanket was ground under the wheels of the juggernaut. The VW's unusually bright headlights hurt her eyes. Heraeus metal-halide incandescents. Sun-lamps, developed in Germany for military use. Extra beams were mounted on the roofrack.

Kate was fully alert.

Griffin stood. His fangs were sharp and his eyes reflected red.

'Oi, you,' he shouted, hand up to shield his face from the dazzle.

The van wrenched to a halt. Its side-doors opened. Several men jumped out. They wore white boiler-suits with crusader crosses on their fronts  -  vertical bar from crotch to neck, horizontal from armpit to armpit  -  and heavy Doc Martens, plus cheap plastic masks of Beano and Dandy characters. Dennis the Menace, Plug from the Bash Street Kids, Desperate Dan, Biffo the Bear, Korky the Cat. Students laughed but this wasn't another Rag Week stunt.

Plug and Korky had crossbows, Biffo a blowtorch. Dennis and Dan touched rag-wrapped sticks to the flame, and they caught. The firebrands advanced across the lawn, waving flames at any creatures of the night.

One of the vampire kids  -  the lad with the guitar  -  got in the way, and his kaftan was set on fire. He screeched and rolled on the grass, extinguishing the flames. The comic characters stepped over him. Korky stuck the boot in, landing a vicious kick to the kid's ribs. His Docs had metal toe-caps. Steel or silver.

Kate had her claws and teeth out.

'Knock it off, you lot,' said Griffin, producing his warrant card. 'Police officer.'

Plug raised his crossbow and fired.

The bolt pierced Griffin's eye, its silvered tip punching out the back of his head.

The policeman dropped his ID and buckled at the knees.

Kate caught Griffin and tried to let him down gently. His good eye stared, angrily. Blood gouted from his wound. His whole body spasmed. She didn't know what to do. How to start to help. His mouth opened and closed. Word-chains leaked out.

Most of the students legged it.

Kate saw Nezumi running towards her, hockey stick raised, boater blown off. Plug fitted another quarrel, turned and fired. Nezumi leaned out of the way of the dart but didn't break step.

Biffo made 'quick quick' hand-gestures.

Dennis and Korky grabbed Kate and dragged her towards the van. She lost hold of Griffin, who was left behind on the grass. She twisted and got an elbow in her face. Her glasses flew off in pieces. A gloved hand closed over her mouth. She tried to bite, but shock flew through her fangs. Silver plates under canvas. The Bash Street Gang had come prepared for vampires.

Fire was held close to her and she went slack. Biffo nodded approval. He was in charge.

She was nearly in the back of the van.

Griffin wasn't moving. Plug put a bovver boot on the policeman's chest and pulled out his bolt. Silver tips were costly. Dan stuck his firebrand against Griffin's side. That polyester suit caught light, sheathing Griffin in flame. He didn't writhe or screech.

Sergeant Griffin was truly dead.

She couldn't let herself be taken into the van.

Nezumi charged through, bringing her hockey stick down against Plug's knee. Biffo dropped his blowtorch and took a revolver out of his hip pocket. Could the Japanese vampire dodge bullets?

Kate grabbed Dennis's wrist, where the skin was bare, and extruded her nails into his meat. He let go of her mouth and she scratched, hoping for an artery.

Nezumi stood, demurely. Biffo aimed his pistol at her.

Dennis got his arm free of Kate's claws. He dropped his flaming torch and pulled a lathe-sharpened length of wood from his tool-belt. She bobbed and ducked like a boxer, shifting her torso so a heart-stab wouldn't be easy. Especially through the eyeholes of a plastic mask. Dennis ripped off his face  -  she didn't recognise him, but he had the close-cropped haircut she associated with Enoch's nastier followers  -  and concentrated on her. Blood flowed freely over his gauntlet. She felt inconvenient red thirst.

Korky, Dan and Plug joined Dennis. They made a ring around her. Dan jabbed with his torch. Korky and the limping Plug held crossbow bolts like stakes. She wheeled about, hissing. She resented being reduced to this defensive cartoon. She saw in a bloody blur.

They were herding her towards the van.

Then, Dan's torch was ripped from his grip and tossed away. It arced high over the lawn like a distress flare. Dan's mask came off, disclosing a plump, bland, scared white face. An instant later, his face came off. Wild eyes stared out of a red ruin.

Black shapes mixed in with the comic characters, moving swiftly, tearing and biting and breaking. Plug screamed when his bolt was taken from him and stuck into his back before he could see what had attacked. Korky's arms kinked the wrong way and he was dragged yards away from the light. Dennis, undeterred, knocked Kate down and got his knee on her stomach. She crossed wrists over her heart as he raised his stake high. For a moment, she saw clearly  -  the clean wooden point. This would kill her.

And she'd never know how this story turned out.

Then Dennis was wrenched upwards and off her. She heard the squelch of the stake ramming into something with bones and flesh.

Dennis was struggling with a Black Monk.

It was Eric DeBoys, grinning though he had a stake stuck in his shoulder. He took Dennis  -  a much bigger man  -  by the throat and lifted him off the ground. His thumb-barb dug into Dennis's neck, rooting for the pulse, nail edging near the purple worm of the jugular vein.

All vampires knew their human anatomy.

Dennis spat at DeBoys and tried to call him a viper. DeBoys dropped him and he clutched at his own throat, stanching the seepage. DeBoys licked his thumb like a cake-spoon.

The other Black Monks, cowls up, stood over the fallen thugs. Biffo lowered his gun in surrender. Nezumi darted back into shadow, leaving credit to the student vampires. Eastman found the dope-smokers' blanket and used it to put out the fire that had sprung up around Griffin.

Dan touched his wet face in horror and screamed. Anna Franklyn slipped close  -  green scales on her forehead, forked tongue darting across her lips  -  and sank needle-fangs into his neck. Her venom paralysed his vocal cords and shocked him into immobility. He might even live. From now on, he'd have more use for a mask.

Four of the Bash Street Gang were down. Only Biffo stood. Now the ring was closing around him.

'Let's have a sight of you, Mr Bear,' said DeBoys, removing the mask.

Biffo was a thin-faced, bright-eyed, middle-aged man. His thin lips twitched over nicotine-discoloured teeth. His thin hair stuck up in odd directions. He looked utterly mad.

'I'm not afraid of you,' he lied.

Kate recognised Lorrimer Van Helsing.