Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3) 6

She needed to crash. Besides all the excitement, she'd spent too much time in the sun lately. With a pint and a half in her, she was drowsy. Not in the best shape to drive, though there was no breathalyser for vampires.

She switched on the car radio and caught the BBC news headlines. The well-spoken announcer quoted Bellaver as giving 'no comment' about the death in custody of Peter Craven. Donna Rogers wasn't mentioned, though a woman was said to be 'helping police with their enquiries'. As if to remind her that the rest of the world was a mess too, the other stories were about the incident at My Lai in Vietnam which the US army were not calling a massacre; the arrests of the assassins of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King; and a strike by women workers at the Ford car factory in Dagenham. Kate wished she was covering that. She'd written about the match girls' strike of 1888, and conditions hadn't changed enough since then.

Kate kept the wireless on, to fight off sleep. After the news was a repeat of last night's The Bowmans, the long-running serial ('an everyday story of country folk') with the irritating theme music. Since Sister George rose from the grave, and Fenella Fielding took over the role, the show had become more and more focused on its token vampire, though this episode was all about brucellosis at Bowman Farm and the vicar's shoplifting habit. Television soap operas The Northern Barstows, Cowley Mansions and Crossroads all followed The Bowmans by bringing in domineering female vampire characters  -  always played by warm actresses with false fangs.

She got back to Holloway Road and parked her Mini in the hard-fought-for space outside her flat. Collecting a sheaf of post she could afford to ignore until later, she went upstairs and let herself in. Her flat was one large room used as study and crypt, with a small kitchen area marked off by a bar, and a separate bathroom. Many vampires would use the bath as a coffin, but she liked to soak and think sometimes. She kept a sleeping board in the main room, surrounded by book-piles. As soon as she stepped inside, the fuzziness in her head became thicker. She saw grey spots  -  a sign of impending lassitude. She lowered and locked the blinds, expelling light from the flat. She took off the clothes she'd been wearing too long and put on pyjamas. In the bathroom, she used the loo and cleaned her teeth. A framed Aubrey Beardsley print hung above the sink where the mirror had been.

She lay on her sleeping board. The lights went out.

Technically, vampire lassitude was deep coma, not temporary death.

No dreams, though. Vampires didn't dream. Warm critics who said vampires would never create harped on about that.

Two days later, at nightfall  -  well past nine o'clock  -  her eyes opened.

She sat up on her board and found she wasn't alone. Nezumi perched on a bar-stool. An anglepoise light was on and she was reading Bunty. Someone lay senseless and face-down on the carpet. A young, warm woman. Shaggy blonde hair and a long white dress. Barefoot and bleeding a little.

'What did I miss?' Kate asked.

Nezumi solemnly folded the corner of a page and shut her comic.

'The flattened filly is Jessica,' Nezumi said. 'I had to slosh her on the noggin. She was carrying this. For you.'

Nezumi picked up a sharpened stick.

Kate was alarmed. She must remember to thank Richard Jeperson for providing a bodyguard.

Refreshed, Kate sprung up. She crouched by Jessica.

'Did you kill her?'

'No. Just packed her off to Bedfordshire for a forty winks.'

Kate stood and went to the bar. A fringed leather shoulder bag she didn't recognise was plumped on the counter, contents removed and arranged neatly.

'Who is she again?' Kate asked.

'Jessica Van Helsing,' said Nezumi, holding up a student union card. 'You met her grandfather last night.'

So, the feud was passed down to another generation.

'This isn't going to end, is it? Did she come to kill me?'

'Not seriously, I suppose. She hummed and hahed and bit her lip like a clot for minutes. And she didn't prepare properly. She forgot to bring a hammer. To be on the safe side, I tapped her on the bean to make sure she couldn't give you a poke with a sharp stick.'

'Thanks.'

'Anything for a chum,' said Nezumi.

Jessica Van Helsing moaned, stirred and tried to push up. Nezumi reached idly for her hockey stick.

'Do you like her hair?' asked Nezumi. 'I mean, not now, with blood in it, but in general... ? I was thinking of going blonde. For a lark.'

Kate pulled on a dressing gown.

'We better take care of the silly goose,' she said.

Kate and Nezumi turned Jessica over. The tang of leaking blood hit both their palates at the same time and their fangs flicked out. They giggled and wrestled the warm girl onto the sleeping board.

Jessica's eyes fluttered open. She saw two vampires looming over her. Her face started to contort.

'Please don't scream, dear,' Kate said. 'Would you like a cup of tea? It'll have to be lemon. I've not got milk in.'

'I'll brew up,' said Nezumi, flitting into the kitchen area. She knew where everything was.

Kate had forgotten the Japanese girl was an elder. She was so fast.

Jessica put her hand to her head and said, 'I could murder a cuppa.'

'Be thankful that's the only thing you're murdering, girl,' said Kate, twiddling Jessica's stake. 'What on Earth were you thinking?'

'Sorry. It's Granddad. He's locked up... he left instructions for... well, for reprisals.'

'No offence, but your granddad is a loon.'

'A gibbering loon,' Nezumi elaborated.

Jessica was embarrassed. 'I know, I know... it didn't used to be so bad, but when he lost his job because of vampires, he went potty... and when I started seeing Paul, he went pottier...'

'Paul?'

'Paul Durward. He's a Karnstein, twice removed.'

Jessica's eyes and cheeks shone when she mentioned her beau. Kate knew who Durward was. Blond and too pretty. Knee-britches, tight weskits and ruffle-shirts had come back into fashion and let him enjoy a third or fourth stab at golden youth. He'd signed with Decca and recorded an album of folk-inflected covers ('Season of the Witch', 'House of the Rising Moon', 'Quinn the Eskimo'). He had a three-octave range but little character. Paul Durward was not only a vampire with no reflection; he was a vampire with no echo. He'd been at Syrie Van Epp's party. Kate realised she'd seen Jess in the crowd photographs, too. The blonde with the cleavage.

The girl had new and old love-bites.

Kate dug out a first-aid kit and treated Jess's head-wound. She'd have a lump and an ache but nothing permanent.

'You're not in the Circle of Light?' Kate asked the girl. 'Pledged to destroy all vampires?'

'Far from it. I think vampires are dreamy.'

Kate's kettle whistled a shrill comment. Nezumi brought over a stoneware teapot Kate had bought from a craft shop in Somerset and what cups she could find. Kate feared her crockery wouldn't satisfy a Japanese anglophile. Nezumi poured tea into a mug with a Mondrian design, a plastic beaker salvaged from a broken thermos flask and the last surviving china teacup from Kate's mother's Sunday set.

'So what's up with the stake?'

Jessica couldn't say. She was a sheltered twit, but not essentially malign.

'Why's it all so complicated?' Jessica asked, and burst into tears.

Kate hugged the girl, gingerly. Jess presented her neck shyly, which Kate pointedly ignored. What kind of creature did this girl take her for?

So Lorrimer Van Helsing's granddaughter was going out with a viper? He must take ribbing about that in FVK circles, what with his endless speeches about avenging the wrong done to his beheaded ancestor. Vampire haters always went on about monsters 'coming for our women'. If they spent less time fulminating, maybe 'their women' wouldn't be so inclined to seek out a fang on the side. Kate suspected the Circle of Light was at bottom a neurotic response to this affront. The Professor's grudge probably began with minor sleights, like Caleb Croft getting a nicer office and invitations to bunfests with the Vice-Chancellor, then escalated until it seemed vampires were behind all his disappointments.