It was freezing that night. I remember feeling as though the blood were thicker in my veins. Sluggish as it moved along reluctantly, unable to disobey the beats of my heart. I felt as though my bones must be as cold as the pavement beneath my feet. My breath rose before me in wispy clouds. I heard not. I barely saw in the darkness that was black as midnight. The wall before me had been white once, but it was grimy and grey now, caked with the filth of centuries of a modernising London, and they reflected no light in the darkness. It had been months since any stars had been visible in the night sky, and the dark clouds rolled ahead overhead, oblivious to the trivialities of the human beings below. We had been waiting all night, and it was now approaching four in the morning. Several of the men with me had fallen asleep on the ground, wrapped in their heavy winter coats, and the rest, like me, preferred to keep their own counsel. No one spoke. No crickets sang to each other in the park a block away, and even the frogs in the pond therein were silent. No dogs barked, no owls hooted, no late (or early) carriages ran by. No horses twitched and whinnied in their sleep, no pots clanged, no shutters banged, no couples screamed in the throes of passion, nor yelled at each other in domestic upheaval. London was dead at four in the morning.
We all saw it at the same time, those of us who were awake. The briefest flash of red in the hole that let out the noxious sewer gases. And then it was gone. We watched more carefully after that… silent as tombs, still as statues, hardly daring even to draw breath. It reappeared after five minutes had gone by. Two steady gleams of red. Its eyes, we realised. Followed by a torso, then arms and legs. It had a human form at any rate. As soon as it was clear of the hole, we pounced. It was old and shaggy, and there were many of us. It took off and we followed it through street after street, alley after alley. Torches lit, yelling for blood, seeming very much like animals ourselves. It was fast, but not enough that we could not keep it in our sights. The lights came on in the buildings in our wake; London was stirring from the commotion. It must have been very weak, the vampire. It suddenly stopped, and turned, and seemed to remember that we were its prey. I was ahead of the pack and it got to me first, grabbing me with strength that belied its appearance of weakness. I heard the bones in my forearm crack and snap into pieces. The pain was dull compared to what I felt when it bit me. I was on fire. It drank deeply from the wound, and then the crowd was upon us, and it abandoned me. Taking off with old Harold Parsings who had been a step ahead of the crowd. They thundered on past me, after the vampire and his prey. One of the older men in the group tripped over my boot and fell on the pavement, picking himself up with difficulty.
"Have heart, Carlisle! We'll get him yet!" he said, taking off after the mob. He hadn't noticed the blood.
The sounds of the mob faded, and London behind them once again slumbered into a midnight death. I saw her then, and she was frightened. My sister. My wonderful, beautiful seven-year-old sister. She was terrified of me, for I was becoming the very thing that destroyed her.
"Noooooo!!" I screamed in agony. A pain that was not physical tearing me to shreds inside.
Above me, a light came on again in the window, and someone drew back the drapes, peering outside. I suppressed the cries that had been about to erupt from my mouth. A few moments. It seemed like eternity before the drapes were shut again. Another lifetime before the light went out.
I crawled then, along the pavement till I came to a building with a broken cellar door. I let myself in and dropped to the floor, no longer fighting the red haze of fiery pain that was taking over my senses. Already my sense of self-preservation was doubling, tripling what it had been before.
I reached out with my hand and felt about me. Soft and round and tuber-like. Potatoes. Something, a rat I think, sniffed about my face and then scurried away. Already fearful of what I was becoming. I buried myself in the potatoes, willing fate to keep me hidden. I knew my father. I knew his soul. He would have me destroyed if he found out that the vampire had bitten me. It would kill him to do it, but he would have me destroyed.
The stench of rot.
"Great. Rotten potatoes," I had time to think before the fire enveloped me completely, and I could think of nothing else except the wish for, the need for, the absolute necessity of my immediate death.