You'll Be Surprised
Chapter Three
Eichhorst's pad
'Wait,' said Eichhorst.
Michael looked helplessly into the vampire's face.
Would Michael agree with Sandra that it was chiselled? Certainly. By a genius? Possibly. But a genius in a very odd mood! One who'd approached a brief for perfect male beauty in the Nordic style only after he'd rowed with the wife or trodden on an upturned plug.
The sculptor had taken too much out of the cheeks and the jawline could crack rocks. No curves softened the hardness of expression and Michael knew that the mind behind it would be just as sharp and cruel as the exterior. He realised with a jolt that this would be the last face he ever saw.
The face tried to smile reassuringly, but there were too many teeth.
'You haven't trimmed my ears yet,' said Eichhorst.
Michael's sigh of relief was audible.
As Eichhorst led the way into his dressing room and took a seat opposite the mirror, Michael briefly reconsidered an escape attempt. He knew the vampire was too fast though, and maybe, if he played nice and did as he was told, he could get out of the Stoneheart building and into the sun. And never spend another night in New York again. Maybe…
Eichhorst removed his prosthetic ears. The points on his real, vampiric ears were growing back rapidly and they needed to be a more rounded human shape for the prosthetics to fit. He unlocked a drawer on his dressing table and handed Michael the shears.
Michael knew that the blades were edged with a special metal that cauterised the wounds and delayed regrowth. He set his jaw in a grimace of resolve. He hated this part of the job. The cartilaginous crunch reminded him of teenage summers ear-notching the piglets back home.
It might have been better if his client had squealed like the baby swine but he kept silent, his body rigid with the strain of maintaining his dignity, his own jaw clenched, less against the pain of cutting than the burn of the silver-edged blades. The white flesh sizzled between the shears emitting a foul-smelling smoke.
Michael willed himself not to gag. And then it was over at last, both of them sighing with released tension.
He hesitated to surrender the shears into the outstretched hand. He knew these were the only things in the apartment that could hurt his client. There was another taut silence before Eichhorst distracted him with a question that Michael could never have anticipated.
'Do you believe I am a hero?'
Michael thought that he'd believe anything his client wanted for a chance of getting out of that apartment alive and human, shears or no shears.
Eichhorst sighed. He could see it in the boy's eyes - so clearly it might have been a thought bubble in a comic book. He wasn't particularly empathic, he'd just seen it so many times before. Only two of his captives had ever spoken their mind and only one of them had done so unprompted.
Yes, he remembered sourly. Unprompted, impudently and without ceasing. That reminded him…
'I did save a human life once,' Eichhorst mused, making Michael goggle at him. Was he trying to make a connection? Now, after six weeks of brisk taciturnity? He didn't know how to respond, but his client didn't seem to need an answer.
'Although I'm not sure it was a life worth saving,' Eichhorst finished, retrieving the silver-edged scissors from the manicurist's flaccid hands. He locked them safely away to cover his own confusion.
What had suddenly brought her to mind, after all this time? Eichhorst wondered. His thoughts had been so full of the Jew and this last great thrust of the Master's campaign, that he hadn't had room for anyone else. Why her? Why that…that creature? And why now? What had jogged those particular memories?
He paced the room for a bit, retracing his thoughts along with his steps. Michael took advantage of the distraction to sidle towards the door.
He'd nearly made it for a second time but, out of nowhere, Eichhorst was suddenly between him and safety, and far too close to him. Michael took a pace backwards to restore his personal space.
The move distracted Eichhorst again. That was another thing about Sandra Edwards, she had closed the gap when it should always be him. The old Jew never stepped back either. He was the only other person unafraid of him but the girl had stepped in. And she'd turned her back on him. In fact, the very first time she'd spoken to him, the little louse had turned away from him. No one did that to him unless they were running away.
Eichhorst stepped forwards again, reassuring himself that Michael was reacting normally. The boy scampered backwards and tripped over a stool. As he reached back to break his fall, he landed on the remote making the television rewind to the Well Dressed Man appeal.
Eichhorst pounced like a leopard, pinning Michael to the floor by the wrists and straddling his body just as the television announced, '…well-groomed man to come forward for an interview feature…'
Eichhorst froze and stared at it again. 'Of course. An interview…' he whispered. '…with the vampire.' He smiled absently but there was a trace of concern behind it.
A feeble struggle from the man beneath him brought him back to the now. Eichhorst smiled at him.
'I am sorry, Michael,' he said gently. 'I would have liked to make you last.'
He meant it, too, but now he had a pressing need to examine the sewers where he'd confronted Gus and Felix. Her? Here, in New York? Now? With all the other challenges facing him, he needed this complication like a silver enema.
He got to his feet and allowed the boy to stand before he lifted him over his shoulder and carried him, struggling like a landed eel, to the bathroom.
Eichhorst pitched him backwards over the edge of his bath, so far that the boy's eyes were beneath the surface of the blood that partially filled it. Michael was thrashing about, terrified and incoherent, but he didn't want to push him under and let him drown, not until every last drop of Aryan blood had been harvested.
He stroked his thumbnail expertly down Michael's jugular groove from his collarbone to the angle of his jaw, incising the skin and pushing the crimson muscles and the bluish jugular vein aside in one smooth movement.
His nails were always slightly blunter after a manicure but with enough force they still functioned as a scalpel. He watched the white carotid bounding with the boy's fear.
He withdrew his hand and licked his fingers. With the pressure on his neck temporarily released, Michael was able to raise his head and scream.
Eichhorst stared impassively into the panic-filled blue eyes for a moment as the boy flailed about in agonal terror. He was making too much noise, with all the yelling and his arms and legs banging into the wall of the bath. The bathroom wasn't as well soundproofed as the purpose-built feeding room.
He reinserted his hand and transected the boy's trachea just beneath the larynx. The breath puffed in and out from the severed end of the windpipe and the proximity of the now-isolated larynx meant that some noise still escaped. Eichhorst pulled the cranial end of the trachea out of Michael's neck with a nasty gristly sound. He could still breathe, although the sensation of his windpipe flapping about loose caused another paroxysm of horror. He curtailed it by slitting the carotid artery down the whole of its exposed length. Michael pumped himself empty in a few gorily spectacular seconds and was dead before he finished twitching.
Eichhorst watched the scarlet liquid spurting into his bath and was reminded again of Sandra, this time the exquisite taste of her blood. He wondered how she tasted now. Had she soured with age? Or matured like a fine wine?
He massaged the end of his stinger until he ejaculated a quantity of anticoagulant "saliva" into his bloodbath. The action reminded him of some of her more exotic suggestions. He shook his head at the memories of the dreadful creature but there was the shade of a smile there too.
Any other man would have dwelt on Sandra's Disney-princess beauty and golden brown voice but to Eichhorst she was nothing more than the most aggravating and importunate individual he'd ever had the misfortune to find delicious.
Still, he'd managed to train her eventually. After a fashion.