10. Lost
The man who passes below me in the street looks a likely candidate. He is too well dressed for this part of town, should not be here, and his demeanour tells me he knows it. His smart, woollen jacket is buttoned all the way to his neck, a cashmere scarf concealing much of his face. He is careful, looking around himself frequently, always aware of what is happening around him. But he is not aware of me. They never are. This place is a depository for the homeless and lost; a cesspit of drugs, prostitution and depravity. A man like him is not here for the drugs; of this I can be certain. But he also ignores the women on the corners and in the shuttered shop doorways, ignores their taunts and cat-calls. What does he want?
Silently, I drop from my perch over the doorway of the off-licence, and begin to follow, a small black shape barely darker than the shadows to which I cling. He crosses the street, and after several beats, I follow. As I mount the opposite kerb, one of the whores spots me and steps forward to block my path.
"Where ya goin', missy?" she slurs, her breath reeking of cheap liquor and rough, bootleg cigarettes. I glare up at her. Her own eyes widen as she notes the crimson in mine. Some instinct cuts through her befuddled mind to warn her to back off, and she steps away quickly.
I glance at the man, but he has not noticed our exchange, is still walking. I move back into shadow as he pauses at the entrance to an alleyway and looks around quickly before he enters – he does not want to be observed. I allow him a count of five, then follow once more.
We are not alone in the alley. Concealed in a doorway, the entrance to a closed-down night club, is a boy, of African origin and surely no more than thirteen or fourteen. He steps out as the man approaches, and I quickly, noiselessly, disappear into the shade of a fire escape ladder some fifty yards away across and down the alley from them.
"You Mickey?" the man asks. The boy nods once. Money changes hands, and a package is pressed into my mark's arms. The boy flicks through the notes as his customer turns away.
"Hey!" he calls in alarm. "This isn't the amount we agreed!"
The man turns back and, without a word, punches the child viciously in the guts. As he strides away, the boy falls to his knees in the doorway, retching and sobbing. I'm horrified – monster though I am, I will not stand to see a child treated in this way. And I know the man is not going to be allowed to live for this. I am not merely going to feed; I am going to take pleasure in making him suffer before I extinguish the light from his eyes.
As the man passes me, I catch the scent from his package – metal, grease and cordite. A gun! Who is making a child peddle weapons? I'm curious, but I need to deal with one thing at a time. With one last, pitying glance at the child in the doorway, I follow the man back down the alley as he retraces his steps. He passes the point I first saw him, then a couple of blocks later, enters a parking lot. He presses a key and the lights on a Mercedes blink.
I streak forward, too fast for human eyes to perceive, and open the rear passenger door to slip in at the same time as he opens his. Before he can react, I reach over the back of his seat and haul him easily into the rear with me. His eyes are wide, his mouth an 'O' of terror as he gazes up at me.
"This is for the child you just assaulted," I tell him. I crush his windpipe to prevent his screams. This means he has three, four minutes at the most before he expires, but I intend to make sure they are the longest, most painful four minutes of his life.
Back at the alley, the boy has disappeared. I pick up his scent, but confusingly, his trail hasn't gone anywhere. It is particularly concentrated around the night club doorway, though, and I surmise he must have gone inside.
I push gently at the door. It's warped, the hinges are rusted and it sticks, leaving me a small gap to squeeze through. Shutting it quickly before the sliver of light can reveal me, I flit down a short flight of steps into a dilapidated reception area. The carpeted floor is sticky and smells of mildew and urine. It is pitch-dark in here, but my immortal eyes adjust quickly. The boy is nowhere in sight but I can hear him, hiding behind the reception desk. He has heard me enter and is trying to hold his breath, but of course I can hear his heart thudding in his chest.
"Hello?" I call out, innocently. He gasps quietly, noting my child-like voice. "I'm lost," I complain, "it's dark in here."
This is a ruse I regularly use on prey, of course. Lost child needs help. But I don't feel like feeding on this one. I try not to harm children, it's considered bad form, and the fact that I have just fed will help my control. Hopefully. I actually want to help him, although I have no idea how. In my pockets, I have a roll of fifties, a wallet, an expensive looking cell-phone and a thick gold wedding band all freshly stolen from my meal. The gold and cell-phone will fetch several dollars, but I'm not naïve enough to think that giving him money will help him much.
"I know you're here, I saw you come in. Please speak to me."
"Go away."
I move silently to the desk and peer over. He is crouched down, his arms over his ears, rocking gently back and forth, heel to toe, heel to toe. He is clearly very distressed.
"I'm lost," I try again.
He starts, not expecting to hear me so close, and jumps to his feet. He is glaring in my general direction, but of course, he is blind in this darkness.
"It's not safe for you here," he responds. "Go find a cop."
His voice is surprisingly deep and husky for one so small, and his accent is strange – he doesn't sound like the other African-Americans round here. There is more than just a hint of French-Canadian there, I think, but underneath, something else I can't identify. He doesn't look African-American either, but it's more to do with his bearing than his appearance - nothing I can really put my finger on. He wasn't born on this continent; that can be the only explanation. I wonder what brought him all this way, to this hole and this set of circumstances.
"I can't. I ran away," I tell him. He doesn't respond to this immediately, and I wonder if I'm losing my touch. Maybe it's his age. An adult would not leave a lost child struggling, but he's so young himself – maybe he merely finds me irritating. I'm about to try another tack when a noise from the alley catches my attention.
"Someone's coming!" I hiss. He groans in fear.
"Hide in here, quick," he answers. As I slip behind the counter, he rises to his feet, just as the door is prised open once more. The sudden flash of light barely blinds me at all, but the boy (is his name Mickey?) blinks rapidly.
Closing the door behind him and turning on a flashlight, a man descends the steps. I can't tell his age, anywhere under forty, and his body odour precedes him. His dark hair is tied back in a pony tail, and his white shirt has yellowish stains around the arm pits. Apart from this, he looks quite smart, with jeans, leather waistcoat and cowboy boots that click on the steps.
"Yo, Mickey," he calls, leering as his light picks out Mickey's face. "You do it?"
"Yes."
"Where's the money?"
Trembling, Mickey pulls the notes from his jeans and hands them over. Cowboy-boot Man counts the cash quickly, then counts it again.
"Where's the rest?" he demands, drawing himself up to look taller, more menacing.
"I'm sorry," Mickey gulps. "That's all he gave me."
"LIAR! Where is it?"
"I don't have it. Please. I'm really sorry. I screwed up…"
With an angry roar, the man snatches a fistful of Mickey's thick, black hair and hauls him round from the counter. He shakes Mickey so that his teeth rattle.
"Never try to short-change me, boy," he hisses, and suddenly draws back his fist, delivering a resounding blow to the side of Mickey's head. Mickey drops to the floor, his arms protecting his head, and tries to crawl away.
I want to stop the attack, but I can't reveal myself to Mickey, can't let him see what I am. Cowboy-boot Man is going to pay later, and then some.
Mickey is whimpering as the man delivers two, three, four kicks. The fourth connects with Mickey's head again, and he falls silent. He must be unconscious. But Cowboy-boot Man hasn't finished – he puts the flashlight between his teeth and begins to unbuckle his belt and I can't bear to see what he intends to do next – I fly from my hiding place and leap onto his back. He reels in shock, and we fall to the floor together, the flashlight dropping and going out. He reaches blindly for me, and I reward him with a bite on his wrist. He screams in agony as my venom enters his blood stream. I would like to let him suffer a bit, but there's no time to waste – Mickey could come round at any time, and I can't let him see this. I plunge my teeth into his shoulder and drink deeply. Although I have just fed, his blood is warm and inviting, and I close my eyes with pleasure, drawing harder and draining him within seconds.
Then the flashlight clicks back on, snapping me out of my ecstatic daze.
"What are you doing?" Mickey's face is a mask of horror. Blood oozes blackly from his temple. Quickly, I drop my prey and clamp my hands over my mouth and nose so I can't smell it. But I can't talk like that, either, so I take a breath through my hands then lower them.
"He was hurting you."
"But, you… what did you do?"
"It doesn't matter. He won't hurt you now."
Mickey approaches, and I scurry backwards.
"Mickey," I gasp, taking a breath and getting a full hit of his scent. The frenzy is threatening to return, but somehow, impossibly, I remain in control. "Stay back, Mickey. Don't touch me."
"I'm not Mickey. Don't use that name."
I'm momentarily distracted by this.
"What is your name?"
"Jabir. Jabir Mbaye."
"Jabir Mbaye." I repeat. The name is beautiful, it sounds exotic and strong all at once. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Grace."
"Just Grace?"
I think about this for a moment. I've never had a surname, never had a family, except one…
"You could call me Grace Piccoli."
"Sounds Italian. You don't look Italian."
"Adopted."
"Sure. Right." Jabir turns the torch back to the elephant in the room – the corpse. "You did that. How?"
"You really don't want to know."
Jabir rubs his head, frustrated, and winces as he touches the wound. I gag slightly, then pull an old, dirty handkerchief from my pocket and throw it towards him.
"I don't cope with blood too well," I whisper, by way of explanation. He obliges me by cleaning himself up. The handkerchief is simply not up to the job, so he pulls off his shirt and uses that instead, revealing a vest-top underneath. As he works, his eyes are growing heavy, and he yawns several times.
"Are you alright?" I ask.
"No. My head hurts. I'm real tired."
"It might be a concussion. We need to get you to a doctor."
"No doctor. I ran away, too."
"Well, maybe if you just rest a bit. See how you feel later."
In response, he simply crumples back to the floor, and within moments, he is snoring. I realise this is not normal, that he is quite sick, but I have no idea what to do. I scout around the night club foyer and follow Jabir's scent through a door at the back into a smaller room. To the left of the door is a hatch opening back into the foyer, and the room has two railings on wheels. On the floor is a bed of sorts; its base made from flattened cardboard boxes, then covered in old Salvation Army blankets. I can tell by the concentration of scent that it's Jabir's bed.
I return to the foyer, and look back toward the hatch. A faded sign above reads "Cloak Room." Emptying my lungs of air, I cease breathing altogether as I approach Jabir. I kick the bloodied shirt away, then bend and lift him easily. He stirs slightly, but doesn't waken. As I carry him through and lay him on his bed, I am reminded suddenly of Nate. There's similarity in the high, flat forehead, and the dark ebony, almost jet, skin.
When I lay him down, he rolls onto his back and snores loudly. I don't like the sound of it; I wonder whether he's struggling to breathe, so I push him onto his side. When I pull his head back, the snoring finally stops. All this time, I haven't taken a single breath myself.
Once satisfied he won't move, I return to the foyer and slip up the steps to force open the door and check the alley is clear. I need to dispose of the corpse before Jabir wakes. Maybe he'll think whatever he saw was some sort of concussion-induced nightmare, and that Cowboy-boot Man is alive and back at his place. Maybe I should disappear, too, and let Jabir think he dreamt me. But as I throw the grisly load over my shoulder and make my way outside, I know I'm not going to do that. I tell myself it's because I need to ensure he doesn't suspect the truth about me, that I haven't broken the regola unica and exposed our kind to the humans. But deep down I know it's because I'm curious about him, and I can't help feeling that having saved him once, I'm responsible for his continued survival.
At the furthest end of the alley is a cluster of dumpsters, which I think provide an apt burial for Cowboy-boot Man, so I half empty one, dump the body, then refill it so he is concealed. I return for Jabir's soiled shirt and my handkerchief, and place them in another dumpster. As the handkerchief falls, I see Graceembroidered in the corner, the stitching flattened and grimy from years of use, and now somewhat bloody, too. With a sudden pang of regret, I lean over and retrieve it. Maybe I can clean it, mask the scent of blood somehow.
In that moment, I decide I am going to change lodgings temporarily. I want to know more about the boy with the exotic name, and his little den seems just as secluded as mine. I leave this alley and run back to the one behind the off-licence, where a loose window admits me into their dank basement. My whole life is here, in a medium-sized rucksack concealed behind some old, empty crates.
I find what I am looking for in a side pocket – a thin sliver of light brown soap. It still has the sticker saying Imperial Leather on it, standing proud as the soap has been used up around it. I take it with the handkerchief to the filthy Belfast sink in the corner with the dripping tap. I turn it on full, but a feeble trickle is all it gives me. I wet the handkerchief and scrub at the blood with the soap. Possibly because the blood is still so fresh, it comes out reasonably easily.
This whole time, I have not breathed, but I now refill my lungs and sniff cautiously at my handy work. The blood is very faint, bearable, and definitely masked by the fragrance of the soap. I cannot help but to remember the strange, gentle vampires that gifted me these things – how many years ago, now? Five? Six? More? And in all this time I have never been in touch with them. It is really not in my nature to hang on to old ties, but I suspect they would have liked the odd progress report from me. The longer I leave it though, the more awkward I feel about contacting them.
I wipe the soap dry against my jeans and replace it in the side pocket of the rucksack, then tie the handkerchief to one of the straps so it can dry. Hoisting the rucksack over one shoulder, I crawl back out of the basement and make my way back to Jabir.