Anno Dracula (35 page)

OVRLKER1.

The call back came within minutes. Excellent service, she admitted, was well worth a supper and cocktails one of these nights. Baker teased her a while about that, then came over.

Amazingly, the plate
was
for a Jaguar. The car was registered in the name of Ernest Ralph Gorse, to an address in a town up the coast, Shadow Bay. The only other forthcoming details were that Gorse was a British subject - not citizen, of course - and held down a job as a high school librarian.

The Overlooker? A school librarian and a cheerleader might seem different species, but they swam in the same tank.

She thanked Baker and rang off.

If it was that easy, she could let the cops handle it. The Lieutenant was certainly sharp enough to run Gorse down and scout around to see if a Barbie popped up. Even if the detective hadn’t believed her, he would have been obliged to run the plate, in order to puncture her story. Now, he was obliged to check it out.

But wasn’t it all too easy?

Since when did librarians drive Jaguars?

It had the air of a trap.

She was where the Lieutenant must have been seven hours ago. She wouldn’t put the crumpled detective on her list of favourite people, but didn’t want to hear he’d run into another of the Sharp brothers. Apart from the loss of a fine public servant who was doubtless also an exemplary husband, it was quite likely that if the cop sizing her up for two murders showed up dead, she would be even more suitable for framing.

Shadow Bay wasn’t more than an hour away.

She parked on the street but took the trouble to check out the Shadow Bay High teachers’ parking lot. Two cars: a black Jaguar (OVRLKER1) and a beat-up silver Peugeot (‘I have a French car’). Geneviève checked the Peugeot and found LAPD ID on display. The interior was a mess. She caught the after-whiff of cigars.

The school was as unexceptional as the town, with that faintly unreal movie-set feel that came from newness. The oldest building in sight was put up in 1965. To her, places like this felt temporary.

A helpful map by the front steps of the main building told her where the library was, across a grassy quadrangle. The school grounds were dark. The kids wouldn’t be back from their Christmas vacation. And no evening classes. She had checked Gorse’s address first, and found no one home.

A single light was on in the library, like the cover of a gothic romance paperback.

Cautious, she crossed the quad. Slumped in the doorway of the library was a raincoated bundle. Her heart plunging, she knelt and found the Lieutenant insensible but still alive. He had been bitten badly and bled. The ragged tear in his throat showed he’d been taken the old-fashioned way - a strong grip from behind, a rending fang-bite, then sucking and swallowing. Non-consensual vampirism, a felony in anyone’s books, without the exercise of powers of fascination to cloud the issue. It was hard to mesmerise someone with one eye, though some vampires worked with whispers and could even put the fluence on a blind person.

There was another vampire in Shadow Bay. By the look of the leavings, one of the bad ’uns. Perhaps that explained Barbie’s prejudice. It was always a mistake to extrapolate a general rule from a test sample of one.

She clamped a hand over the wound, feeling the weak pulse, pressing the edges together. Whoever had bitten the detective hadn’t even had the consideration to shut off the faucet after glutting themselves. The smears of blood on his coat and shirt collar overrode her civilised impulses: her mouth became sharp-fanged and full of saliva. That was a good thing. A physical adaptation of her turning was that her spittle had antiseptic properties. Vampires of her bloodline were evolved for gentle, repeated feedings. After biting and drinking, a full-tongued lick sealed the wound.

Angling her mouth awkwardly and holding up the Lieutenant’s lolling head to expose his neck, she stuck out her tongue and slathered saliva over the long tear. She tried to ignore the euphoric if cigar-flavoured buzz of his blood. She had a connection to his clear, canny mind.

He had never thought her guilty. Until now.

‘Makes a pretty picture, Frenchie,’ said a familiar girlish voice. ‘Classic Bloodsucker 101, viper and victim. Didn’t your father-in-darkness warn you about snacking between meals? You won’t be able to get into your party dresses if you bloat up. Where’s the fun in that?’

Geneviève knew Barbie wasn’t going to accept her explanation. For once, she understood why.

The wound had been left open for her.

‘I’ve been framed,’ she said, around bloody fangs.

Barbie giggled, a teen vision in a red ra-ra skirt, white ankle socks, mutton-chop short-sleeved top and faux metallic choker. She had sparkle glitter on her cheeks and an Alice band with artificial antennae that ended in bobbling stars.

She held up her stake and said, ‘Scissors cut paper.’

Geneviève took out her gun and pointed it. ‘Stone blunts scissors.’

‘Hey, no fair,’ whined Barbie.

Geneviève set the wounded man aside as carefully as possible and stood up. She kept the gun trained on the slayer’s heart.

‘Where does it say vampires have to do kung fu fighting? Everyone else in this country carries a gun, why not me?’

For a moment, she almost felt sorry for Barbie the Slayer. Her forehead crinkled into a frown, her lower lip jutted like a sulky five-year-old’s and tears of frustration started in her eyes. She had a lot to learn about life. If Geneviève got her wish, the girl would complete her education in Tehachapi Women’s Prison.

A silver knife slipped close to her neck.

‘Paper wraps stone,’ suaved a British voice.

‘Barbie doesn’t know, does she? That you’re
nosferatu
?’

Ernest Ralph Gorse, high school librarian, was an epitome of tweedy middle-aged stuffiness, so stage English that he made Alistair Cooke sound like a Dead End Kid. He arched an elegant eyebrow, made an elaborate business of cleaning his granny glasses with his top-pocket hankie, and gave out a little I’m-so-wicked moué that let his curly fangs peep out from beneath his stiff upper lip.

‘No, ’fraid not. Lovely to look at, delightful to know, but frightfully thick, that’s our little Barbara.’

The Overlooker - ‘Yes,’ he had admitted, ‘bloody silly name, means nothing, just sounds “cool” if you’re a twit.’ - had sent Barbie the Slayer off with the drained detective, to call at the hospital ER and the Sheriff’s office. Geneviève was left in the library, in the custody of Gorse. He had made her sit in a chair, and kept well beyond her arms’ length.

‘You bit the Lieutenant?’ she stated.

Gorse raised a finger to his lips and tutted.

‘Shush now, old thing, mustn’t tell, don’t speak it aloud. Jolly bad show to give away the game and all that rot. Would you care for some instant coffee? Ghastly muck, but I’m mildly addicted to it. It’s what comes of being cast up on these heathen shores.’

The Overlooker pottered around his desk, which was piled high with unread and probably unreadable books. He poured water from an electric kettle into an oversized green ceramic apple. She declined his offer with a headshake. He quaffed from his apple-for-the-teacher mug, and let out an exaggerated ahh of satisfaction.

‘That takes the edge off. Washes down
cop au nicotin
very nicely.’

‘Why hasn’t she noticed?’

Gorse chuckled. ‘Everything poor Barbara knows about the tribes of
nosferatu
comes from me. Of course, a lot of it I made up. I’m very creative, you know. It’s always been one of my skills. Charm and persuasion, that’s the ticket. The lovely featherhead hangs on my every word. She thinks all vampires are gruesome creatures of the night, demons beyond hope of redemption, frothing beasts fit only to be put down like mad dogs. I’m well aware of the irony, old thing. Some cold evenings, the hilarity becomes almost too much to handle. Oh, the stories I’ve spun for her, the wild things she’ll believe. I’ve told her she’s the Chosen One, the only girl in the world who can shoulder the burden of the crusade against the forces of Evil. Teenage girls adore that I’m-a-secret-Princess twaddle, you know. Especially the Yanks. I copped a lot of it from
Star Wars.
Bloody awful film, but very revealing about the state of the national mind.’

Gorse was enjoying the chance to explain things. Bottling up his cleverness had been a trial for him. She thought it was the only reason she was still alive for this performance.

‘But what’s the point?’

‘Originally, expedience. I’ve been “passing” since I came to America. I’m not like you, sadly. I can’t flutter my lashes and have pretty girls offer their necks for the taking. I really am one of those hunt-and-kill, rend-and-drain sort of
nosferatu.
I tried the other way, but courtship dances just bored me rigid and I thought, well, why not? Why not just rip open the odd throat. So, after a few months here in picturesque Shadow Bay, empties were piling up like junk mail. Then the stroke of genius came to me: I could hide behind a Vampire Slayer, and since there were none in sight I made one up. I checked the academic records to find the dimmest dolly bird in school, and recruited her for the Cause. I killed her lunk of a boyfriend - captain of the football team, would you believe it? - and a selection of snack-sized teenagers. Then, I revealed to Barbara that her destiny was to be the Slayer. Together, we tracked and destroyed that first dread fiend - the school secretary who was nagging me about getting my employment records from Jolly Old England, as it happens - and staked the bloodlusting bitch. However, it seems she spawned before we got to her, and ever since we’ve been doing away with her murderous brood. You’ll be glad to know I’ve managed to rid this town almost completely of real estate agents. When the roll is called up yonder, that must count in the plus column, though it’s my long-term plan not to ever get there.’ Actually, Gorse was worse than the vampires he had made up. He’d had a choice, and
decided
to be evil. He worked hard on fussy geniality, modelling his accent and speech patterns on
Masterpiece Theatre,
but there was ice inside him, a complete vacuum.

‘So, you have things working your way in Shadow Bay?’ she said. ‘You have your little puppet theatre to play with. Why come after me?’

Gorse was trying to decide whether to tell her more. He pulled a halfhunter watch from his waistcoat pocket and pondered. She wondered if she could work her trick of fascination on him. Clearly, he loved to talk, was bored with dissimulation, had a real need to be appreciated. The sensible thing would have been to get this over with, but Gorse had to tell her how brilliant he was. Everything up to now had been his own story; now, there was more important stuff and he was wary of going on.

‘Still time for one more story,’ he said. ‘One more
ghost
story.’

Click. She had him.

He was an instinctive killer, probably a sociopath from birth, but she was his elder. The silver-bladed letter-opener was never far from his fingers. She would have to judge when to jump.

‘It’s a lonely life, isn’t it? Ours, I mean,’ he began. ‘Wandering through the years, wearing out your clothes, lost in a world you never made? There was a golden age for us once, in London when Dracula was on the throne. 1888 and all that. You, famous girl, did your best to put a stop to it, turned us all back into nomads and parasites when we might have been masters of the universe. Some of us want it that way again, my darling. We’ve been getting together lately, sort of a pressure group. Not like those Transylvania fools who want to go back to the castles and the mountains, but like Him, battening onto a new, vital world, making a place for ourselves. An exalted place. He’s still our inspiration, old thing. Let’s say I did it for Dracula.’

That wasn’t enough, but it was all she was going to get now.

People were outside, coming in.

‘Time flies, old thing. I’ll have to make this quick.’

Gorse took his silver pig-sticker and stood over her. He thrust.

Faster than any eye could catch, her hands locked around his wrist.