Northern Fiction - Going Underground
Masquerade
'Yes, thanks, Nick,' Eloise said hurriedly. 'Now then, what I suggest we do is split up and search the place. Shouldn't take too long. You take this floor, Hamish; you look for them upstairs, Nick; and I'll check the cellar. When you've finished looking, come back here, whether you've found them or not.'
'Okay,' Nick said. He headed for the stairs. As he started up them, he looked back and saw Hamish reaching for the door to the front room, and Eloise opening the cellar door.
He hurried up the steps.
Upstairs, the rooms were in much the same state as below. Nick could tell that the place had once been pretty pleasant; large enough for a family as big as his own, and no need to cram all the kids into one room. He'd had no privacy back home in Garston, and he was a very private kind of person; it had been that as much as anything that had prompted him to leave home. Well, being thrown out for not getting his hair cut had helped, of course...
He wandered around, glancing enviously into the rooms, wondering why people left a house like this deserted when in other parts of the country kids were growing up like he had; when the streets were full of the homeless...
His inner monologue came to an abrupt end as he forced open the door to the final room.
Four corpses dangled at the end of ropes suspended from the ceiling. Paralysed with fright, he stared at the scene as one of the swinging corpses gyrated unsteadily towards him. He gaped in shock at the throttled face. He recognised it! Though she had the hairstyle and clothes of fifty years ago, her face was unmistakable.
It was the dead_faced Gothic girl who had helped them escape the police. Nick stared in horror. All he could hear was a pounding in his ears, faster and faster...
Then the corpse smiled, and he blacked out.
Rebecca stood by the altar, silent and expressionless. Around her stood the other three girls, their high_collared black cloaks almost enveloping her white robes. On the far side of the altar stood Vlad, in the process of completing the main incantation of the rite. He fell silent, and reached for the small chalice and knife on the altar. Then he nodded to Miriam.
She reached out towards Rebecca's robe, and slid it down to her shoulders, revealing her bare breasts. Vlad gazed at them dispassionately, and leaned forward. Placing the chalice beneath Rebecca's bosom, he held the blade of the knife against her left breast, and quickly sliced across it. Blood began to trickle down her creamy skin. It reached her nipples and dribbled off into the chalice like ensanguined milk. He did the same to the other breast, and soon the chalice was filling with blood.
Throughout the operation, Rebecca made not a sound.
Stepping back, Vlad silently raised the chalice towards the mural of Cain, then put it to his lips. He reflected bitterly on the ignorant masses' belief that vampires sucked blood from their victims' jugular veins _ a myth invented by sexually repressed Victorians who had been incapable of facing the truth, chronicled as it was in Slavic legend. Once he had drunk his fill, he passed it to Miriam, who sipped it and handed it on to Maria. She did the same and passed it on to Diana.
When they had drained it, they turned to Rebecca's unresisting figure. Their eyes wild, they bent towards the oozing gashes in her chest and greedily began to lap up the sluggish blood.
Vlad heard a gasp from the cellar steps, and turned suddenly.
Another empty room. Hamish glanced around the dingy backroom with its old_fashioned, broken down furniture, and shook his head. Not even Goths would squat here. Well, that was that; he'd explored the ground floor, and now he'd have to go and wait for the others. He pushed the door open and stepped out into the hall.
He glanced upstairs, and listened. Not a sound. What was Nick doing, he wondered. Not a lot by the sound of it. He turned to the cellar door. Surely Eloise had had enough time to check out a cellar by now? He opened the door to a crack. It creaked as it did so, but the noise failed to mask a low chanting sound from below, which ended as Hamish cocked his head to listen. He paused briefly, then began to pick his way down the steps. Flickering candlelight was visible at the bottom of the steps, but it failed to illuminate his advance. He reached the bottom and put his foot down on something soft and mobile. Eloise gasped in the gloom before him.
He'd stepped on her.
'Nick? Is that you?' she hissed, as he stumbled back.
'Och, it's me,' the skinhead grunted. He peered down at her. She was looking up from the floor, where she had been crouched at the crack of the door. Through the crack, candlelight was flickering. 'What are you doing down there?'
Eloise drew herself up. In the faint light, Hamish could see that her eyes were wide and her face pale.
'What's up?' he asked, an uncharacteristic note of concern in his voice.
But before she could speak, the door behind her swung open, and Hamish saw a dark figure silhouetted against the dim light within. Over its shoulder, Hamish caught a confused impression of coffins, robed figures, and an altar. Then the figure spoke.
'Ah! Two more innocent victims come to join the bloodletting.' It was Vlad.
Hamish grinned wolfishly.
'It's blood you want, is it?' he growled. 'There's a matter between the two of us that needs sorting out.' He pulled out his knife.
'Hamish, no,' cried Eloise, as candlelight glinted from the naked blade. But the skinhead ignored her, and leapt to the attack.
Vlad stumbled backwards into the cellar, tripping over his dark robes and scrabbling desperately for his own weapon. As he did so, Eloise glimpsed her sister, standing unresisting and semi_naked in the arms of three black_clad girls. Her eyes widened with horror; they were hungrily sucking blood from deep gashes in Beckie's breasts.
Then the scuffling forms of Hamish and Vlad blocked her view of the sinister scene.
Hamish lashed at Vlad with his knife, but it caught in the folds of the other's cloak. Vlad struggled to free himself and at the same time brought his knife whistling down. Hamish turned and twisted just in time, and the blade merely skidded along a rib, opening up a shallow wound across his muscular torso.
The skinhead snarled, and after freeing his blade, he stabbed down at the Goth. Vlad's scrawny hand shot out and grabbed Hamish's arm. Despite his scrawny, unhealthy physique, Vlad was incredibly strong, and Hamish found himself unable to free himself.
'Look at me,' Vlad muttered. Hamish tried to pull his arm back.
'Look at me, I said,' Vlad repeated. Hamish glanced briefly at his face and froze as their eyes met. Instantly, Hamish's aggression fled. He stared into Vlad's eyes with his mouth open, fascinated by the intensity of their gaze, almost unaware of anything other than their existence. The eyes were dark, looming, dangerous, and feral with an animality that spoke to Hamish of wildness and blasphemous freedoms beyond the confines of his own narrow life...
He heard words on the edge of his awareness but they had no meaning.
'Hamish! Do something!' Eloise yelled.
She gazed at the skinhead with unease. A few seconds ago, he'd been fighting Vlad with tigerish ferocity _ now he seemed to have given up. She shuddered at the realisation that even someone like Hamish could fall under Vlad's spell. She remembered her own infatuation with him, and how it had soon turned sour; the things he had wanted her to do... They brought a bad taste to her mouth even now. And what he had done to Beckie!
Hamish was slowly sinking to the floor, his shaven head falling back as Vlad's elegant features bore him down. But his knife_arm still rose above them. Eloise swallowed. She would have to do something. But she couldn't hurt Vlad... Could she? But... She...
With an awful suddenness that surprised even herself, Eloise ran at the pair, grabbed Hamish's arm, forced it out of Vlad's weakened grip and plunged the knife into her ex_boyfriend's heart.
Hamish was jerked back to normality as he hit the floor. He got up into a crouch, shook his head, blinked, and looked around.
Eloise was standing over Vlad's motionless body, a look of horror and self_loathing on her face. Behind her was a shocked tableau. Vlad's three disciples stood around the slumped body of Rebecca, their faces unusually alive with expressions of consternation. Rebecca lay across the altar, her skin an anaemic white.
Eloise dropped the bloodstained knife with a clatter. She turned to Hamish. He shook his head again, like a dog just come up from a swim in deep waters.
'What happened?' he asked, bewildered. 'One minute I was fighting fuckface there, next minute I'm over here and you've killed him.'
Eloise gazed at the lifeless corpse at her feet. She bent down, and reached into his mouth, pulling out his false fangs.
'He wasn't a vampire,' she murmured. 'But he had some amazing psychic powers. He could mesmerise you, Hamish, and that's something I wouldn't have credited from anyone.' Then she rose, and turned to face the three girls. She paled.
'What have you done?' she shrieked. She rushed forward to check her sister's pulse. Nothing. She turned on the three bewildered girls, her face a mask of fury.
'You've killed her, you blood_sucking bitches!' she shrieked. She glanced around. Seeing the bloody knife on the floor beside Vlad's corpse, she ran towards it. But as she reached for it, Hamish grabbed her hand.
'I think we should hear what they have to say for themselves first,' he said grimly. Eloise glared at her. He returned her gaze unflinching. After a few seconds, she relaxed.
'Yes,' she replied. She got to her feet, and turned toward the girls.
'Well?' she demanded.
Cautiously, Miriam spoke.
'I...' She looked at her two companions. They nodded, encouragingly. 'I don't really know,' she admitted. Her voice was high_pitched and tremulous with nerves. Absently, she prodded at her false incisors. 'The last few weeks seem like a dream.'
'Or like being on drugs,' Maria ventured.
Diana took up the story. 'We started hanging round with Vlad not so long ago. I think we all fancied him a bit. And we were so under his influence. We ran away from our homes to stay with him here. It all seemed cool. But he made us do... horrible things.' She went red.
'Like what?' Eloise frowned.
'Things that bring true vampires into disrepute,' came a voice from behind them. They turned, and saw the dead_faced girl and her three friends framed in the doorway. She folded her arms and bared her fangs. 'Thanks for getting this bastard out of our way, incidentally.'
'True vampires?' Eloise asked cautiously.
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