This is the penultimate chapter of the story. Thanks again to the BH writers and cast, and to TW and BBC, all of whom brought these wonderful characters to life. Readers, I'd love to hear what you think - corrections, critiques, complaints, comments.
"How many people have you killed?"
"Don't know. It's hard to say. More than a hundred, less than a thousand."
"No remorse? And does this make it easier to do it? This, what is it, this role that you play..."
In my mind I replay the conversation over and over. She knows my name. Why didn't I kill her?
It's been a couple of days since we got back to Bristol. I've been avoiding Herrick. Though he'll never admit it, he knows the London adventure was his mistake, and I think he's been trying to stay clear of me as well. I've spent the past few days keeping to myself, walking and thinking.
Right now I'm in bed listening to the traffic go by. It's drizzling and almost dark. As each car goes by, there's a sound like the static between radio stations, and irregular overlapping squares of light slide across the walls. Out of nowhere, Stephanie appears before the window, whole and pretty. The angles of mixed light and shadow slide across her body, revealing rosy cheeks, a gentle smile, a flowing black cotton blouse.
She sits on the bed and strokes my hair and says, "John don't be frightened. You're okay."
I wish it were true. I want to close my eyes, let go, and give myself over to her touch, but I know what's next. Her rosy cheeks go dead bluish-white. Blood wells up from beneath her skin and runs down her face and body. Her clothes fall away and her flesh shreds itself until she's nothing but the mangled corpse I made of her. Peach and violet fog ooze from her wounds onto the floor at her feet. Oily black smoke pours from her empty eye sockets and eventually consumes her face and cascades down her body, dissolving it until there's nothing left of her.
It's starting. I wrap myself in blankets, shut my eyes tightly and curl into a fetal position. For several minutes I lie there, shuddering. There's no safety, no solace, only this wretched isolation. I don't want to fall asleep because the dreams will be much worse than this. And round I go again.
I've resigned myself to staying awake and am digging about in the cluttered room for some wearable clothes when there's a rude banging at the door.
"Mitchell! Haul your arse out here!" It's Seth and Marco, with their charming invitation to go out.
"Wait a blasted second!" I finish getting dressed, attempt to smooth my hair down, and meet them in the hallway.
We end up at some run-down bar. I'm not exactly with them, more alongside them, because they think it's hilarious to dress up like skinheads: jeans rolled at the ankle, work boots, collared shirts, braces. It's great cover for them to make trouble when the mood strikes them. I have no interest in mayhem for mayhem's sake - I think it's imbecilic - so I'm in civilian clothes, sitting near the door, smoking. Through the open door, a streetlamp illuminates the occasional drops of rain that disturb the surface of puddles in the road.
There's an old man sitting at the other end of the bar. His nose and cheeks are mottled pink, the features blurred and flattened with age, bright-pink skin showing between the strands of sparse white hair. He's hunched over a small collection of empty glasses, pints and shots. When he lifts his drink I see that he's missing the last two fingers on his right hand. It could have been a farm accident, but the set of his jaw, the guarded, distant look in his eyes, and the bitter lines etched from the corners of his mouth tell me that it wasn't. His droopy grey mustache follows those lines all the way down his face, outlining his blocky chin.
Seth, who's standing at the same end of the bar, points at the man."Hey, Marco, look, it's a fucking walrus! He's even got flippers!"
His stupid giggle carries to the other side of the room. He's extremely pleased with himself. Jesus, he's an idiot.
The old fellow looks sideways across the bar at me as if trying to enlist a witness. I avoid his eyes. His skin is starting to flush red with annoyance. The frown lines deepen and the brows lower, hooding his sharp blue gaze.
"The world is already too ugly to be adding more ugliness to it." He gets up stiffly and limps out the door. Seth and Marco follow him to the street. I follow, but stand just outside the doorway. I don't really want to watch but it's impossible to look away.
Seth grins. "Oh yeah, I'll show you ugly, mister walrus. Wanna see my tusks?"
The man draws himself up. "Get away from me, you scum. Go back to the hole you crawled out of."
"Maybe we'll take you there with us," drawls Marco.
"If you're trying to pick a fight with me, look elsewhere, I'm not interested. Go beat up a hippie, or whatever it is you do for fun."
"This is plenty of fun right here." Without warning, Seth punches the old man in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. While he's bent double, Marco knocks the man's head back with a couple of brutal jabs to the face.
When he looks up he's bleeding from both nostrils and one eye is swollen shut.
"You people disgust me," he mumbles through broken teeth.
Marco puts his hand to his forehead in mock upset.
"I think he's hurt my feelings, Seth. What ever should I do?"
I'm riveted to the spot. I don't notice the rain on my face. Marco licks the blood from his knuckles. His eyes open black.
"You poor sod. Let me help you make it all better." Seth easily hoists the old man against the wall of the building and begins to feed. My body responds to the sight involuntarily: reddening vision and a swirling black hunger.
"Hey, Seth, don't get greedy. There's three of us, remember?" Marco waves me over. "Mitchell, care to join us? You look interested."
The man is suffering, terrified, unable to speak, eyes full of horror. Half of his throat is just gone, ripped away. Blood runs from the corner of his mouth.
"Sorry, mate, you're done for," I whisper to him. "I'll make it quick." There's barely any blood left in him, but I finish it off. A well-practiced act. It'll hold me for a while.
We drag him into an alley and get out of there as fast as we can. Nobody wants to risk being stuck making excuses to a ghost, especially when it's raining. Someone will come back later to take care of the mess.
Later, I drop my bloodstained clothes on a chair. I'm so tired of this. I stand in the shower and watch the brown-tinted water flow down the drain.
It's the third day in a row that I've left roses on the steps. I've written on each card, "I am so very sorry. Please help me. Mitchell." Each day she picks them up and brings them inside. Does she take them in and water them, or throw them directly into the bin?
Today I've waited until she's about to come in, so she sees me leave the flowers. Whatever happens, it isn't up to me. I can only beg for mercy.
"Help me."
She looks a bit exasperated, but not surprised to see me.
"Why should I?"
I want to say, it's been more than fifty years since I've heard a kind word, a touch, a laugh, from someone who isn't dead now. Since I kissed someone without lying to her. Since a touch became a weapon. I want to say that I've forgotten what joy is like outside of the bestial satisfaction of a blood drunk. No-one knows me now. I'm floating in a space between lives, with no way to go back and no way to go forward. It's been over fifty years since anyone cared for me, wept for me, even remembered who I was.
I don't tell her. It doesn't matter to her. None of it really matters. We're all circling the drain anyway. Eventually we'll be pulled to the bottom.
I just want ... not this.
"Because I can't help myself."
She gives me a long, long searching look, then a barely perceptible nod. Gravity has reversed and I feel like I'm floating. I can't believe she's agreed to help me. I choke back an astonished laugh.
"I don't even know your name."
"It's Josie."
She takes my hand and leads me into the flat. It looks the same as I remember: cluttered but clean, a beaded curtain in the kitchen doorway, yellow windowshades, walls lined with books and records, dance posters and harlequin masks on the walls. I don't see the roses anywhere.
I sit on the sofa. Although it's not cold, I am shivering as if I'd just been pulled from freezing water. I wrap my arms tightly around my body and lean forward in an effort to be still. She pulls her chair close and puts her hand on my shoulder. The slight weight of it calms me enough that I can meet her eyes. She has an almost clinical look of concern.
"What do you think I can do for you? How can I help you?"
The words tumble out.
"Right now, just listen. Please. I'm so lost, Josie. I want you to know me. There's no reason you should want to, but I'm asking, please, I don't want to keep bringing pain and terror wherever I go. I never wanted that, but it happened, and now it's all I know. I need to find another way."
Really, why should she help me? It isn't her battle. This is nothing but grace. I can only be thankful.
"I don't know what I can offer you in return. Gratitude. Devotion. Someone to empty the bins and do the washing up.
"And please, listen. I need to tell you my story.
"No-one but Herrick knows anything about me. He made me for his own purposes, so I've belonged to him.
"I've been a vampire for more than fifty years now. I was a soldier. I was turned during the Great War. Mitchell is my surname. My given name is John. It's not me anymore; I haven't been called that since I enlisted. I'd seen plenty of combat before Herrick took me. That's all I want to say about it."
"So how old are you?"
"I was twenty-four then. So I'm ... seventy-six."
"You'll never look any older?"
"No. We look like we did when we were taken. I think. that's what I'm told. We can't use mirrors, so I can't be completely sure."
"Why not?"
I demonstrate: I take her hand, we walk into the bathroom. Alone in the mirror, she nods solemnly.
"How do you shave?"
"Very carefully. You learn. And we heal quickly, so that helps." I think I see the slightest smile.
I explain a bit about the organization, how we straighten one another's ties, choose clothing, give haircuts. She's a bit incredulous. I don't blame her.
"Would you need me to do that for you? If you don't have your mates around?"
I'm embarrassed. This is harder than I'd ever imagined. I've thought through some, but not all of the logistics of this.
"Er, I might. If it's not too much trouble... but tell me about you."
"I have a quiet life. I go to work, I come home, I like to read and knit and listen to music. I studied world history at Uni. I'm a dancer and I teach dance to children as well, which pays my rent between gigs. I'm between gigs now..."
Her voice trails off. I'm accustomed to tuning out people when they talk about themselves. The more I know about them, the worse I feel about killing them. I'm trying to overcome the impulse to glaze over by watching her face intently. I want to learn all about her.
With a pained expression, she edges away from me. "Don't look at me like that, please. It scares me."
Clearly I have other things to learn as well, like how to not frighten her. She gets up and I follow her into the tiny kitchen, where she gestures at the small table in front of the window.
"Sit here. I'll make you some tea. I'd like to find out more about what's going on here."
After she's put the water on, she sits at the table across from me and fixes me with that forthright look.
"So, I never thought you were serious when you said how many people you'd killed. Were you? Honestly, what have you done?"
I look down at the table and fidget with my rings. Normally I never fidget.
"So many bad things. I've been a killer for a very long time. If you really want to know about it, I will tell you. You'll beg me to stop talking."
"You can talk about it if you need to. I won't like it, but I'll listen. And you think you can give up killing?"
"I hope so. If you'll help me. What really helps is that I can't stand the thought of what it must look like to you."
"I'll tell you what it looks like." She extends a finger with each statement, like she's counting. "You broke into my flat and took me hostage. You told me some unbelievable story about having killed hundreds of people, then an even more ridiculous story about a hungry monster making you afraid to stop. You seemed trapped, like a prisoner.
"Somehow I got the idea I could help free you if you wanted it. This might be the most foolish thing I've ever done. I've probably got a death wish or something. I just figure you'd have killed me already if you were planning to.
"Also: I like you."
She gets up and brings back two mugs, gives me one, and sits back down at the table with her own.
"So, do you remember what it was like when you first became a vampire? You don't have to answer if you don't want to. But I'd really like to know."
I wrap my hands around the warm mug and let the steam rise into my face. I want to be as truthful as I can be. It takes me a long time to answer.
"Cold. The first thing I remember is feeling cold and seeing nothing but black. Then I drifted up through what seemed like layers of dark mist toward a tiny pinpoint of light above. The pinpoint got bigger and bigger like I was rising up from a deep hole into broad daylight.
"Then it hurt so much it was unbelievable. Imagine having all of your bones ripped out through your skin. I passed out from the pain.
"When I awoke I felt hollow, just skin surrounding vapor in the shape of a body. I got used to that feeling. It's the blood that makes me feel solid."
She raises her eyebrows and leans forward. "What does it feel like, to drink someone's blood?"
"Like the best drug there is. Like food and sex and energy and power. Imagine drinking life itself. Transubstantiation is bullshit. Wine is wine and blood is blood.
"In a way, all blood is holy to us. Vampires have cut out the middle man."
It's 1918. We're still at war. I've been travelling with Herrick and his mates for a few months now. Feeding has been easy; we follow groups of retreating soldiers, and most of the time we find horribly wounded men who don't fight us: men torn in two, men with faces shot off, men with limbs pointing in impossible directions. If I were one of them, I know I would be grateful for death.
I'm no longer shocked at the number of ways a body can be damaged by flying metal. Freshly torn flesh and screams of anguish make me hungry. Today I fed from a sandy-haired, green-eyed boy missing both legs above the knees, but I didn't understand his last mumbled words because they were in German. He wasn't quite enough. Sometimes we must feed from several men because most of the blood has already soaked into the ground.
Tonight we are camped in a half-destroyed church somewhere in Flanders: Herrick, me, Seth, a short stocky dark-haired bloke called Allen. We've just lost Harvey, who was feeding in a trench when a shell burst in it, so we might recruit tomorrow. Bombing has destroyed whatever it is in churches that would have prevented us from entering this one. We've built a fire on the stone floor. All of us could do with a wash and a shave, so we've filled a tin with snow and set it beside the fire to melt.
We've all fed well, and Seth and Allen are already asleep. Herrick's eyes glisten bright blue in a bristly face smeared with blood and grime. Being in a church makes him philosophical. He speaks in the same mock-inquisitive tone he uses when he's trying to impart some nugget of vampire wisdom that he's sure I'll need.
"Did you ever think Jesus was a vampire? He offered his blood to all his disciples. Drink it, and you'll have life everlasting. What's that sound like to you, Mitchell? Sounds awfully familiar to me."
This is part of his program of undermining every human belief I've ever held. Maybe if I pretend to be asleep I'll be spared this conversation. I fold my knees up under my tattered blanket, put my head down, and think about what a relief it is that I've consumed some residual body heat, and how grateful I am that vampires don't attract lice.
Herrick moves to sit closer to me. He is much warmer than I am.
"He was temporarily dead, they took him off that cross and he rose..." He speaks more and more slowly and forcefully, punching his fist into his other palm: "Right..." (punch) "Back..." (punch) "Up!" (punch).
His voice is rising in pitch and becoming more insistent.
"All they had to do was replace the drinking of actual blood with a fairy story about magic wine. Maybe we're the blood descendants of Jesus, and those playacting children out there just don't realize it yet.
"I saved you with my blood, didn't I?"
He wants to know that he has my attention. His finger traces slowly down my cheek, then he grips my chin and gently pulls up until I meet his gaze. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepen. His voice is soft and full of malice but wrapped in a smile.
"What do you make of that, Mitchell?"
It's fucking insane. I look at him for a second or two.
"Dunno."
I am somewhere I have never been before. There's a girl giving me tea and holding my hand and looking into my eyes and I have no secrets. I'm terrified.
"What else do you want?" she asks.
"I don't know. I'm so poisoned and broken, how can I stop?"
"I'm sure I can't tell you. How could I know?"
"Why did you let me in?"
She squeezes my hand. I know it's meant for reassurance but it's an alien feeling for me. I have to suppress the urge to form my fingers into a fist.
"I saw you change," she says. "And I don't mean... I mean you heard me. It meant something to you, what I said. That made me care for you a little."
She fucking asked me to kill her and I as much as said yes. How could she care for me?
"I was horrid to you."
"You were." Her eyes drop.
"I could have killed you."
"You didn't, Mitchell," she says hotly. She looks up into my face. Her mouth is set in a determined line. "You listened. I can't imagine what that cost you."
I study the tabletop. "I'm not sure yet."
"Are you in danger? Your friend Herrick, does he know you're here?"
"He knows I'm not there. That's all he needs to know."
"Will he come after you?"
"I don't know. If he does I won't let him get anywhere near you. Since he's the one who made me a vampire, he does have a claim on me."
"What kind of claim?"
"Like a father to a son, or maybe a master to a slave. Somewhere in between, I guess. He taught me how to live this life. There's a community. There are rules and traditions. I'm breaking them now."
For a while we sit at the small table by the window and don't say anything. I want to fall into her, press up against her, forget everything, make the past disappear. Leave behind the noise and horror and... and blood. I hope to God I can do it. She holds my hand in both of hers.
"I've seen this monster you keep talking about," she says. "It is hurting you. I'm willing to try and help you. It may be bloodthirsty and cruel, but you are not."
Her voice is soft as she strokes the back of my hand absently, like she's soothing a child. Her fingertips are so warm. This tiny girl would stand between me and carnage. I imagine how her face would go cold if she were to witness the things I've done. How could I possibly allow that?
Even in the dark, with my eyes closed, I feel her gaze. It steadies me. I picture burying the monster in the ground and grinding my boot heel into the dirt above it. I ignore its muffled howls of protest. Stay there, you filthy abomination.
It's just two people here, Josie and me, all alone.
I press her against the wall and kiss her. She kisses me back. Only me.
She reaches for me and pulls me close. Her fingers are in my hair and over my back and I am on her, she kisses and bites me, she is on me, the clothes are in the way, we take them off. She's warm against my chest. She's invited me in. I enter.
Oh God. Hunger.
She sees my blackened eyes, my fangs extending, and takes my face in both hands, very close to hers.
"No," she says. "You don't do that. Let's do this instead."
Her hands reach into my hair and pull me to her. She kisses me full on, her tongue exploring delicately between my distended teeth, then pushing further and further until I meet her halfway.
She keeps hold of me. I am still here. I am here.
We are here, together and I don't need anything other than this.