Vampire: Beneficence (Short Stories Volume III)

Vampire: Beneficence (Short Stories Volume III)

Lazlo Ferran

Copyright © 2013 by Lazlo Ferran

All Rights Reserved

Visit the Lazlo Ferran blog to see what I am currently working on: http://bit.ly/12nFGgI

Sign up for the Lazlo Friend Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/K9r8P

Vampire: Beneficence

Copyright © 2013 by Lazlo Ferran

All Rights Reserved

From an original idea by Luxmi Kiran

Note from the Author: Originally submitted for publishing in the Daily Express by my boss and the Chief Editor, David Shief, in September 2012, after an interview David did with a rather tall, suave looking gentleman, elegantly dressed with jet-black hair. It was withdrawn after David suddenly died of a heart attack the day before publishing. I was freelancing for the Daily Express at the time as a journalist and editor and worked on the copy for David. I tried to publish a week later but found that no copy still existed, except one on my iPad.

***

"Do you remember news reports of a red-haired, baby girl’s head found floating in the Thames near Canary Wharf at the end of 2011? The body must, alas, have long ago floated out through the Thames Barrier and out into the English Channel. Who knows on what distant shore it will wash up, if a shark doesn’t get it first. Too small, d’you see?

"I can tell you how that darling little head came to be there. You see, that is probably the only beneficence that can be bestowed on me, the only justice I can expect.

"On a warm evening at the end of the 2010 summer, I was stalking the Vicar of St James Church in Clerkenwell. I am what is commonly called a vampire, d’you see...?

"Let me get one thing straight, though. We have been around forever. Homo Sapiens wouldn’t be Homo Sapiens without us. We are the more evolved manifestation of the species. I know all this because I was once a writer and I have spent many lifetimes researching the subject. I have even visited the far-past… but that is another story…

"I was lurking in the shadows beneath the trees in Clerkenwell Close at about 10 pm when the present Vicar stepped out of the Church and locked the doors. It was a fine evening, inky black in the shadows, cool, midnight blue in the sky apart from an exquisite halo around the full moon. The Vicar, quite understandably, stood there for a few moments, enjoying the sounds and smells of a summer evening. I too listened to a moment to the whispering of the trees in the gentle waft of air that flickered around my face. I cannot smell earthly smells as well as the Vicar could but the resinous smell of the pine behind me was divine.

"The tall, elegant man in a dark suit at the top of the stone steps, descended and walked towards me. I stepped out of the shadows.

‘You! I… I wasn’t expecting you…’ he exclaimed, stopped in his tracks.

‘I wanted to talk to you. Let’s go somewhere quiet.’

‘Yes. It’s not safe here. We can sit in my car.’

‘You have a car? Hm! How times change!’

‘I have been told you are warming to our idea?’ I asked cautiously, once he had closed the door of his gleaming white car.

‘Yes. I have thought about it a lot. I would need something from you, though… for it to work, in my view.’

‘What is that?’

‘A large supply of…manna. Can you get it? If you can… regularly… enough for the Church’s use, I would be on-board.’

I smiled at the nautical term. I delight in such linguistic niceties. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps, yes! When would you want the first… delivery?’

‘Before Sunday? Early Sunday morning would be best. Fresh!’

‘Very well. Sunday it is.’ I noticed a photograph of an attractive, natural red-haired girl stuck to the dashboard. ‘Yours?’ He nodded.

‘Sad’ I thought.

I had work to do. As soon as I left the car, I headed west, for University College Hospital. Travelling in the animal-state, it only took me fifteen minutes to reach; I was due to meet Nicole later.

"It was a simple matter to slip past the guards and get to the refrigerator stores on the fourth floor. Bases, base humans, are easily distracted and we become, to all intents and purposes, invisible when we cast-the-cloak.

"I lifted fifty of the shining silver packets from their racks but then decided one hundred was probably required for a good congregation. I had to purloin a large mail sack from another room to carry them out. I don’t like taking such things from bases, it’s immoral, given that it will cause more deaths, but it is necessary. And we have always practiced theft.

"On the way to Nicole’s flat, in Highgate, I passed another, going about his nightly work. I nodded as we passed. He nodded back. There are so many of us now in London. One doesn’t even know their names, most of the time.

"Unfortunately, Nicole’s flat was locked. And the lights were out. I wished again that she would give me a key!

‘You’re late!’ Nicole admonished me as soon as I saw her in the London School of Finance computer room.

‘I can explain, dear…’ It was regretful how a vampire of nearly 1000 long years sometimes felt under the thumb of a mere twenty-two year old. Even if she too, was a one of us.

‘Later! I have to drop some books off in the library. And what is in that dirty-great big sack, you are dragging about?’

I grinned and followed her to the library. Descending the steps, I was gratified to see several new faces hanging, bat-like from the ceiling. It has long been established among ourselves that, because of our dependence on blood, the mind benefits from the increased flow, being upside down while asleep. It is a simple matter to create perches for the purpose and even simpler to distract bases from seeing us. I could see that Nicole had created at least a baker’s dozen fresh vampires of her own, though mostly male. This last detail did irk me somewhat.

"Here the tape pauses, while David asked the man whether he really meant there were vampires hanging from the roof in the LSF library.

"Yes. Where was I? When we reached her flat, I pushed the sack though her door.

‘Help me put this in the freezer, dear,’ I replied, rather ingratiatingly.

‘Hm! Don’t think that will get you off the hook! I have loads of it already!’

Reluctantly, she helped me and it was only when we finished that I explained.

‘We finally have the Vicar of St James Church. This is for his congregation, this Sunday.’

‘Why bring it here, now, then?’

‘I will be too busy. There is so much to organise. We have wanted our own place of worship for so long!’

‘Well, as you know, I’m an atheist. But if it lights your fire?’

‘Lights my fire?’

‘Oh, never mind…’

‘Where’s little Serenata, then?’

‘Baby sitter’s.’

I shook my head. Baby sitters? Whatever next!

"Half an hour later we collected Serenata, on foot. I marvelled again how like her mother she was. And that she was alive at all! She had curly golden locks and gorgeous clear sky-blue eyes. Of all the women I had loved, Nicole was the most beautiful.

‘I still can’t believe she is here, real!’

‘I told you…! There’s no reason we can’t have babies. If we’re part of the species, as you say…’

‘But you doubted me once. We argued…’

‘Well now I know you’re right.’

‘It’s so rare! I have only ever seen one before. And that was hundreds of years ago. 1645, I think…’

‘Oh shut up,’ she said, and touched my hand lightly.

"I pulled her to me and kissed her soft, lipstick pink lips. I marvelled again how easy she was to be with. Her body excited me like a fire that whispered to me in the darkest night.

‘Are you?’ I whispered.

‘Yes.’

"Slowly, gently, I undressed her. I caressed her breasts. Laying her across edge of the table, I moved, kissing, down to her thighs. There I found what I most sought… what I had learned to need. It was just like the night I had taken her. Then I left.

"Moving from rooftop to rooftop, like a shadow, I passed the news and gathered the followers together. From all mouths came the same reply.

‘We want the congregation of St James to be wholly of the brethren and not bases.’

"All that I spoke to were excited. All had clung to their faith, down the ages, through trial by conflagration of the soul. All needed to believe, even more than you.

"I stood on Nicole’s roof at 10.30 am on the Sunday and took in the half-light that we see during day-time. But something felt wrong. When I entered Nicole’s bedroom window, she was not there. At least most of her wasn’t. A bloody hand, her hand, lay on the bed and pinned to it by a silver nail was a bloody note. I could not shed tears any more but a pain burned in my chest. I touched the hand for a moment and then tore the note loose.

Sunday at noon.

"It was signed in blood: Concilium Putus Visum

‘Oh no!’ I thought.

"My already cold blood ran hot at their mention. I had dealt with them before. An obscure, yet lethal Catholic sect of… well, assassins, originally set up to eliminate the Cathars, they must have heard of our Vicar and taken revenge. What was worse, the clock, a modern evil, was ticking! I had no doubt, if she was still alive, they would kill Nicole, and Serenata too. I noted the small blood stain still on the table from where I had licked Nicole. This meant they had taken her straight after I left.

"I was tired and had to drink. I hate defrosted blood: the only reason Nicole and I had a store was for emergencies. It was a trick I had passed on to her. I took what I needed, stuffed it in my coat pockets and left. Where to go? The CPV would not be stupid enough to take either of them to St James Church until the very last moment. On the other hand, they are clever enough to hide something where you least expect. And of course they wanted to trap me. Nicole and Serenata were bait.

"As I left through the window, a calculating voice inside my head laughed inanely at an irony: both the sect left the same signature: the mark of human blood. Even before I had reached the roof, I heard the wail of police sirens. And two cars screeched to a halt outside the door.

‘So the CPV have called the police… Probably found the blood bags in the freezer. Now both Nicole and I would be fugitives, perhaps even little Serenata,’ I thought.

There was only one place that fitted the criteria I thought the CPV would want. I reached LSF within thirty minutes, traveling in the animal state. It always makes one feel sick, doing that, for a while at least. Until the mind has caught up with the body. But traveling by tube or taxi is more dangerous…

Wait a minute! interjected David. He had a question for the man. So far, most of the time in your story, you seem very human. And you said vampires are human, at least part of the species. So how do you move so fast? Can you explain it to me?

Simple physics, sir! My kind, the brethren, have little time for science. Physics is simply the engineering of freedom. Once you have the freedom, our state gives us, you have little interest in the sciences. However, I have studied some basic physics over the centuries. When something is lighter, it can move faster. We can vary the degree to which we are in the physical or spiritual world. With less mass in the real world, I can move much faster. I can even increase this more by traveling as a fast animal. It’s customary for werewolves to travel as wolves, vampires as bats, but it’s not impossible for me to travel as a wolf. I often do. The nausea, I believe, is caused by the mind, in the spiritual world, being left behind. One’s body reaches the destination ahead of the mind, so to speak. It takes a while to catch up! It’s most like those funny round-about things children play on in parks. The feet are moving much faster than the head, d’you see?

Sort of. And the blood? You mentioned blood on the table? And licking?

"And I was once a vegetarian! Ha! Yes. I am coming to that. I have rehearsed this story a thousand times. Anyway, I reached LSE in about thirty minutes… There was so little time! And I had to find both of them! My mind was a tumult. I just tried to keep going. I would try to get help from some of Nicole’s recruits, I didn’t like doing it, but I had no choice. But as soon as I arrived at the main entrance, I saw many CPV agents among the students who are there, even on a Sunday. The library is never closed and I wanted to reach it. I tried not to look at any clocks, as I streaked past all manner of agents and students; what would be, to you, impossibly, fast. Streaking up the library stairs, I began to sing to the young brethren hanging from the roof.

"They heard me and whispered to my spirit, ‘Shall we help?’

"I drew them down and like ghosts in