SATURDAY NIGHT
1991
"I Wanna Give You Devotion…"
Music blared across the room. A cacophony of sound and light. Faces caked in make-up. Tablets being popped when the security weren't looking. Vacant eyes already among the crowd beneath them. Dancers in neon Lycra gyrated on podiums. A fog of Impulse and Lynx hung in the air.
The Ritzy.
As if the name could bring a touch of glamour to this, thought Ivan. He sighed. The same old scene, just a little duller. And not even a bodice or a can-can girl to rip…Rewind a hundred or so years, those dissolute days had been such fun…
"How can they breathe in this?" A suppressed laugh to his left. The light of his dark, dark life. Daisy. He leaned back against the metal railing, a smile playing on his lips.
"They don't. Well, not for much longer." He turned, blew out a plume of smoke, then dropped the cigarette at his feet. Her eyes caught his look, her fingers tensed, then grasped the railing a little harder. Now the real fun would begin. The game. That was the part she lived for, that made her feel alive. Chasing them down, cornering them, the whites of their eyes as they saw behind her mask. That split-second of absolute fear and realisation, that the monsters were real…The wonderfully illicit thrill racing through her, greater than any drug. Nothing can compare to the blood high as it surged through her long-dead veins…ripples of dark red pleasure…fire in the blood…
"Which one?" He said it cheerfully enough, but he was bored already. It'd been one crummy, dingy den of humanity after another, each worse than the last. Normally it added to the allure, but this time Britain seemed a worn out place, greyer somehow, slowly decaying. Even the bed and breakfast hadn't provided a decent, full Welsh breakfast. A decidedly stringy host…
He stifled a yawn. He really couldn't be bothered tonight. Every word, every move felt so tediously familiar, like a well-worn book.
Daisy's hand reached out over the balcony, one finger pointed lazily at the pale faces. Searching for the next one to disappear. In a puff of smoke. Another pile of bones.
"That one."
A gleam of a patent shoe. Or an arrogant smirk. That was all it took. Most of the crowd were half-drunk already. Always a plus. The more pliant a victim was, in the early stages, the better. A glint of a shiny gold wristwatch. That did it for her. And an open wallet, with lots of notes and cards. Even better. Shoving past her on the way to the bogs, not even a whisper of apology. Well, really…
That's just rude…
"Ah yes. I see your point my sweet. Nylon shirt. Such a wonderful taste in clothes. The static he's giving off…Do be careful you don't get a shock." He smiled warmly as she pouted back. With a flounce of the spectacularly short skirt she's wearing, she was gone, swallowed up by the crowd.
Her predatory gaze had been fixed on him for most of the night. Talking to the barman as though he was nothing. Waving twenties like he's made of money. She remembered that supercilious attitude from her waitressing days in the supposedly refined tearooms, the stuck-up pricks who thought they were impressing the brassy blondes sitting opposite. Their inane giggles as the men snapped their fingers at her. Having to fawn politeness as she fetched and carried for them, needing the tips so badly, feeling a hand reach up her skirt as she poured the tea. The so-called 'gentlemen' were the worst, eyes undressing her as she set the afternoon tea down, avoiding the urge to throw the whole lot in their smarmy, fat faces.
The times she'd spat in their Earl Grey, then smiled.
They were good days…
They were terrible days…
Keeping that smile on her face because she needed the job, needed the pittance to pay the tallyman, and to keep feeding that coin meter, just to keep the gas on. Living off the bread and tea that she half-inched from work, ignoring the growls in her stomach. Scrubbing the collar of her one uniform every night, the itchy black serge that made her want to rip it from her skin. Better than scrubbing floors, but not by much. No real home to go back to. No loving mother or father to run to. Crawling into that box bed every night, dreams of a better life slowly ebbing away from her no matter how hard she tried to grab them, to cling to something that seemed so unreal. A future.
A year of this, then I'll move on.
She told herself that over and over, and when the year turned, she started again, at another tearoom. Buchanan Street this time, closer to the shiny things in the Argyll Arcade. She would stare at the fine jewellery, and ask herself, when would it be her turn? Why shouldn't she have nice things? To just take them…take that bite out of the world…
New faces, but the same old eyes in the tearoom. And even more old biddies, who thought it beneath them to tip her, or to even say 'thank you' as she set their tea down. Hoping the scones would choke them half the time. Black and white images of a glamorous world playing out on the screen of the Odeon, all saying the same thing to her, there's more out there, you just have to find it…Dancing at the Barrowland Ballroom every Saturday night, the glitter ball shining down on eager faces. And eager hands. Sordid couplings in alleyways. Whispers that came to nothing in the cold light of day…
And then he'd walked in the door of the tearoom. Promises, promises. And she'd fallen so hard for him, it hurt, like a knife going in. A quick engagement, and a wedding night straight from hell. Fumbled hours in a seaside hotel in Hastings. The bruises stayed with her far longer than he had. She blessed the day that ship had gone down. Even then she still had his leavings. Her brightest jewel, her Pearl. The stranger in the white, white cot. Looking up at her with wide, innocent eyes. A permanent living, breathing, reminder of him. Endless nights full of screams – her own silent ones drowning out the baby's.
Shut up, shut up, shut up…
She'd lain awake night after night wondering - is this all there is? Years of washing nappies, beating rugs, never being good enough for his mother, marrying another man after a suitable period of mourning, as the child needs a father, you're useless, can't do right for doing wrong…And the cycle would start again, repeating over and over until her head exploded…and she reached for oblivion in that bottle of gin…
Cut the cord, for Christ's sake…fifty years…
She spotted her chance as the DJ changed tracks. Some hi-energy pap. She rolled her eyes.
Sooooo eighties…
A good stamp of her heel on his foot. He spun round at her, his face a snarl of tanked up anger. Her sweetest, most seductive smile met him.
"Oh, I'm sorry…was that your foot?" She kept one hand on him, as she tripped forward, a textbook example of a drunk woman. "Do I know you? Your face is familiar…" Oldest line in the book, but he fell for it, like they all did. "Now, let me think, is your name James? No?" She swayed slightly, as though she'd drunk a fair few White Lightning. She draped the other hand on his shoulder, as if to steady herself. He shook his head, muttering his name.
"Malcolm?! Do you know Julie? Works in accounts?" There's always a Julie somewhere, she thought to herself. "No?" she feigned disappointment. "Well Malcolm, do you know what I'd like?" She leaned forward, grabbed his shirt, and whispered in his ear; "A good…hard…fuck…" She let the image sit in his mind. His eyes almost burst out of his head. She bit down gently on his ear, a playful nip. Compared to what was coming, anyway…She ran a finger down his drink-stained shirt, then took his hand firmly in her own. So easy. And so predictable…
In no time at all, her back was against the wall of the Gents toilet. Classic one-night stand. Such a cliché. A 'delightful' aroma met her nostrils, bleach and vomit. His aftershave made her want to heave.
Did anyone really wear Old Spice these days?
She uttered the odd encouraging moan, mainly to keep herself awake.
"Just there…yes…yes…"
She let her mind drift, smiling the fixed smile that she wore for such occasions, the come-on one that works with every man she'd ever taken. At least until the screaming started. She went through the motions, as he grunted and thrust, but she felt nothing. When was the last time she felt anything?
She stared up at the ceiling of the toilets. Twinkling spotlights shone down on them. The poor sod, she thought, just for a moment, then as he fumbled for his zip, mumbling something about a number - the memory of every man who ever put her down, leered at her, insulted her, used her, reared up, and the fangs descended as her eyes turned black. He hadn't even asked her name…
"Not even a cigarette? I'm hurt…" She pulled her skirt down, and yanked him back into an embrace. Her hand covered his mouth, as his beer goggles cleared, sheer terror filling his eyes.
"Ssh sweetheart…I'll kiss it all better…"
"Aw…You got my hopes up for nothing. It's a fake." She dangled her wrist, the man's watch now hung there loosely. She often collected little trinkets from her victims. She looked down at the body, pulling a face, as she wrinkled her nose. "Much like you…fake tan? Really? The closest you've been to the sun lately was a wet weekend in Bognor Regis…" She pursed her lips, the petted face look that Ivan secretly adores. And he was watching her, she knew. She could feel his eyes on her from the shadows. She pushed the body into the cubicle. It slumped to one side of the toilet pan. A cursory glance and he was just another sad drunk waiting for chucking out time. One more body for the pile. She imagined the cleaner finding it in the morning, the clang of the mop bucket, all Pledge and Harpic, then…
"WAAAAGHH!"
She smiled, imagining the delicious tingle of fear…
She sighed contentedly, this time her eyes finally shone with something more…like the Daisy he knew so well. A brief glimpse of the woman he'd wanted from the moment he'd set eyes on her, nearly fifty years ago now. She waved her hand in the air, an invitation to her maker to step out of the gloom.
"I've danced on the white sands…I've fucked under the stars…and now I'm reduced to feeding off the chip-wrappers…Such a romantic weekend, sweetheart." Time to go. Again. He always knew just the right moment. He sensed it before she did.
"It is, sweetheart," he said quietly, as he turned away.
He hasn't regretted a single minute. His wild, unpredictable Daisy. Found surviving amidst the ruins of London. A bolt hole in the dark. As if the bombs could harm him…That long-ago night among the ruins and the flash fires. A city living for the moment, for that one blast to take them back to God's loving arms. God's forgetful arms. He'd watched her from the shadows of a bombed-out back court. He'd seen her attentive eyes taking in the fires raging that night, she'd seemed almost mesmerised by the horror. There'd been fear in those pretty eyes, but something else stirred, something that drew him. A kindred spirit, just waiting in the dark…
The yell of the air-raid warden, so proud in his armband. Such a little man, full of his own importance.
"Get inside woman! You want your head blown off?" Her reply, a shrug of the shoulders.
"Keep what's left of your hair on. I'm going, I'm going…" But she'd taken her time walking along the blacked-out street. Almost as if she'd known he was there, waiting.
Fate.
A flash of a cigarette lighter. An inquisitive gleam in her eye. Two souls, that was a laugh in his case, but still…He remembered every word he said to her that night, weaving a tale of how her life would unfold, the dreariness of it, the gradual wearing down of that spirit, that indefinable something that he'd seen the moment he'd set those old eyes on her. He'd just been sleepwalking through this war. Wandering here and there. A war that his kind had stood back from, for once, like scientists observing specimens under a microscope. Warming their hands whilst the world burned.
Let them fight themselves to the brink, we'll watch from the sidelines as they screw up this world. Again.
What would come out of this one, he wondered in his idle moments. He'd had too many of those lately. Flitting from one kill to the next, knee-tremblers up closes that always ended the same tired old way – a heap of clothes and a form that had once been human. And door upon door in one bombed out house after another. Such rich pickings, he should have been happy, though happy wasn't quite the right word. Satisfied? Perhaps, but he'd grown ever more detached. The kills left him devoid of anything resembling feelings. He felt no joy, no fear. Alive but so dead inside. Disconnected from the lives played out in all those Anderson shelters and in the caverns of the Underground, humanity cowering in the dark…
"Please…" The young girl begging to be let go.
As if that would happen.
Just a chance meeting, helping her pick a going-away gift for her sweetheart. Rationing biting, but he knew exactly where to find what she was looking for. Everything could be bought for the right price. Her coy smiles as he bartered the man in the tobacconist's down, not seeing the knowing glance that passed between them, one monster to another. What was she, seventeen, and eighteen? The box with her precious gas mask in it, lying tangled at her feet, its strap torn in the brief struggle. Her threadbare, hand-me-down coat. Funny, the things he remembered. And the things he forgot.
What colour was it?
What?
The coat.
Grey, like everything around him. Drab, dull, dreary. Same old, same old.
Where was he? Which station was it? No matter.
White tiles. White skin. Acres of it. She had been very obliging. Until now.
He slammed her back against the mesh gate. The rattling barely sounded against the air raid sirens. No challenge at all. A pathetically easy kill. Barely a whimper and she was gone, an insubstantial wisp of a wraith, under a moonlit sky. A direct hit had covered his brutality with concrete and dust soon after. He found the little package easily enough. Brown-paper wrapping. Didn't she know there was a war on?! A fine choice, always useful. A cigarette lighter.
And then he'd met Daisy…
He'd been looking for something, anything, to relieve the monotony. A desperate boredom had set in, it did every so often, a tiresome side-effect of surviving. Cruelty was the only vice that made him feel even remotely real, that there was some life in him. Even as he'd spun his web, enticing her, tormenting her with the sad future she would inevitably lead, reading every flicker of the truth as it dawned on her pretty face, all hope draining from her life as the years took their toll, he'd watched for any signs of weakness, like a hawk watching its prey from above. What life could she ever have with humans? They didn't understand her the way he did, in just a few minutes he had stolen her humanity and she'd not even realised it. He'd seen the darkness under her veneer, and wanted to possess it, body and soul.
"It's not your baby's who's in the wrong place…" he'd whispered, as she sat, rapt in his words, as one lie after another tripped off his tongue.
Not lies, the truth. The naked, unvarnished truth.
She was meant to be one of them. He'd have recruited her that night, whether she'd been willing or not. All the signs were there. Not fitting in, that need, that furious hunger already waiting to be fed. He'd been so sure that she'd take his hand. That was when the deal had been struck, when she'd chosen to follow him, to take the same path as he'd done so many years before.
"I'll make you indestructible…"
He'd seen the fire of desire there, the raw ambition for something more, anything more, than this existence, burning so brightly. And he'd taken her. It didn't matter to him that in the years since, she'd begun to turn as cold as he was, she was still his Daisy. And always would be. He indulged her too much, he knew. He'd been warned by others, in hissed whispers behind hands, when he was still speaking to any of them.
"Let her have her head, Ivan, by all means, but you are an Old One…"
"Politics were never my strong point. I leave that to you Edgar." A clink of glass shattering as someone nearby let rip a scream of agony. The sharp intake of breath from his old acquaintance. The glare of outrage that was levelled at him. "She'll be the death of me, I know. One of these days. And then you can say you were right." He raised his own glass. "Dinner is served. Daisy, please don't eat the staff. Edgar gets very upset about that sort of thing." He'd kept his own status as an Old One hidden from her, at first. His absence from that select group was treated as a quirk, they all knew that when the time came, he'd be with them, enjoying the bloodshed and chaos as much as the rest of them, dropping sharp quips as the terror began;
"You know, I always thought Downing Street was lacking a few heads outside on the railings. It'd cheer the place up no end…"
He kept a few secrets locked away. Among them, his own making. It added to his mystery, and kept her guessing. As it should be, he thought to himself. A little mystery in a relationship was a good thing, especially for two beings with such dark pasts. He'd seen that in her eyes, that first night. Those hungry eyes…damaged eyes…
He even tolerated her brief fling with John Mitchell. Tempting and teasing the renowned Mitchell, she had run the proverbial rings round him. He smiled in remembrance. Knowing all the while that she would come back. She always did. Not with her tail between her legs, no, that would never be Daisy's style. A rueful smile. A pout of those bloody lips and she'd be back, slipping her hand through his, her eyes bright in anticipation. What was a vampire's long life for but to experiment, to seize every drop from this world, to taste the rain, as well as the sun…They'd take off on their travels, the two wanderers, seeking ever increasing thrills among the darkest corners of this world. As the crunch of bones became louder and louder, another country would be chosen, more highlights on the dark list to be ticked off. Running for as long as they could from the past, as though the past could hurt them…
And now here they were. In the car park of a decidedly average nightclub, with decidedly average catering. One of the club's doormen lay in a handily-placed skip nearby. How nice of the humans to think of their recycling needs…he grinned at the ludicrous nature of their world sometimes.
"How did he taste, Daisy?" She sat in the car wiping the corners of her mouth. He ran his hand over the dashboard. Vintage now, but he would never replace it.
"Hmm. Greasy. Can we get some candy floss to take away the taste? There must be an ice cream van somewhere…please baby…" She kissed him on the lips. He could taste the man's blood on them. It was as though five minutes ago she hadn't been screwing a complete stranger at all. Even by Daisy's own, particular standards, she was blowing more cold than hot tonight. There was no fire in her eyes now, in fact they looked hollow. It was the first time he'd seen those challenging eyes so dead. Her smile was automatic, with Daisy that was a given, but tonight it appeared false. She was growing restless, as was he. Never too long in one place, always another sight to see. They needed a holiday. Somewhere warm this time. Australia was next on the list, some tale of how a convict ship in the last century had been found drifting, empty, no crew, no enforced passengers in the hold, save, strangely, for one small child, who cried as they were questioned: "His eyes…his…face…black, black eyes…and sharp, sharp teeth…" but the flights would be a problem. Their forged passports, with suitably-blurred photographs, would pass the oh-so-conveniently staffed check-in desk at one of the smaller airports on the continent. Humans rarely noticed what was right in front of them, and long-haul passengers took little notice of the being at the other side of the desk. That had been a wonderful idea, recruiting the odd pen-pusher or two. As long as they had a recent photo. One of Herrick's better ideas…But he was sure the airline would miss an air-stewardess, and a good chunk of the passenger list…
"I've been thinking, Paris is lovely at this time of year…the autumn leaves…" He left it with her, turning the key in the ignition. The engine roared into life. He turned the dial on the radio. A familiar wail came through. Fifty years demanded a celebration, after all. And the Seine was a wonderful river to dispose of the odd tourist in…