THE WEST COUNTRY

Justin's body, the one that had brought him here despite the scruples, rose from the ground. The boy's eyes widened in terror.

Justin grabbed him, the boy's screams falling on deaf ears. He pulled him close, the similarity to an embrace striking him. The boy's pulse throbbed, whispering enticement, and the vein in his neck stuck out a mile.

His victim struggled hard, kicking Justin who didn't feel any of it.

The boy pulled his shoulders up to protect his neck.

Justin shoved his face in, his mouth landing on soft, salty skin and his tongue licking it up. Had anything ever tasted so amazing? He took that back a second later as his teeth sank into the boy's neck. The screaming came to an abrupt halt as the boy's blood drained out.

It flooded Justin's body, bringing every cell back to vibrant life. Around him, the dull, beige and grey colours of the compound intensified. Sounds sharpened in the distance, leaves that rustled and small animals moving on the forest floor, and best of all the savour and taste of skin and musky blood.

I'm the king of the world!

Arnaud shook him. "Leave some for Freya," he said. Justin thrust the arm aside, reluctant to share. His victim was still alive—just—and instinct told him blood was better when it was oxygen rich.

Cordelia grabbed him, her hand tightening on his bicep, and flung him across the room where he landed with a crash against the back wall. "Do as you're told."

He struggled, shuffling against the wall to push himself back to his feet. His body fizzed and buzzed. Was Cordelia and Arnaud's superhuman strength part of it? Did you experience it whenever you killed? No wonder the two of them could knock bodies flying across rooms and thrust the stakes people clung onto in the air.

A life without limits beckoned, endless possibilities.

Arnaud held the almost dead boy's dripping neck over Freya's mouth, her tongue lapping it up. He and Cordelia darted off, seeking other victims.

I killed someone. Someone my age—a boy with hopes and dreams.

The inner voice wasn't half as cocky now. Had his victim longed to get immunised and live somewhere way better than this? Did he have a girlfriend, a boyfriend? Someone who would cry for weeks, months, haunted by the way their loved one died?

More shrieking started. His fellow vampires had found other victims—youngsters judging by the lighter, higher-pitched tone of them. If only he could throw up, he would. Expel the blood that marked him as an animal. Worse.

Freya's colour and temperature returned to normal. He pushed the top off her shoulder and helped her take the stake out, easing it out carefully as instructed by Arnaud. The hole healed itself, miraculously disappearing although a scar remained.

She sat up, back against the wall. When she raised her head, her eyes shone.

He said nothing. If Freya wanted to talk about the wonderfulness of blood taken from a live human being instead of the artificial blood bags they'd survived on until now, she'd chosen the wrong audience.

I hate myself.

Cordelia and Arnaud returned ten minutes later, sirens sounding far off. Cordelia glowed, that transparent, luminescent skin even more so. Blood marked her clothes, the green bodice she wore stained dark red at the front.

She plucked at it. "Dammit, this was my favourite top. Do you like it, Justin?"

Mockery once more. The bodice pulled her waist into tiny size, breasts shiny white orbs spilling out the top.

Arnaud shot her a half-amused, half-irritated look.

"Shall I take one, you the other?" he asked. "Drop them off at whatever pitiful hideout they've holed themselves up in?"

Cordelia nodded. "We need to get out of here," she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. The lights in the place flickered on and off, the on-time highlighting the broken bodies surrounded them, eyes wide open and accusatory.

Above them, feet scurried along the walkways. The immunised ones checking their loved ones were still okay and protected. The unlucky ones wailed, sobs, low cries—an anthem of despair. The sound joined Justin's inner voice, protesting at what he had allowed to happen.

Never again.

I swear.

He got to his feet, holding his hand out. Freya took it. She was slower, pitching forward as the injury to her shoulder protested. Arnaud wrapped an arm around her and rose into the air.

Above him, Freya caught his eye. If it was possible to explode from excitement, he suspected Freya wasn't far off it.

"Can you manage?" Cordelia asked as she looked up at Arnaud, question edged with fake concern.

He smirked. "Oh, yes," and with that, he vanished, shooting straight up and out of the hole in the roof in the building, the air crackling as he did so.

The ability to fly an old one's trick. One that would take newbie vampires like Justin decades to learn.

If I survive that long.

Cordelia sauntered over, raising her arms to twist her hair into a long coil and pin it up.

Close up, she stank. Like a butcher's shop where the meat has sat out for too long on a hot day. Did he smell the same? Heaven help him, but the blood on her bodice dripped on the floor, tiny shimmering beads. He wanted to drop to his knees and lick it off the ground.

Cordelia undid the bodice, unfastening the hooks at the back that closed it together. It must qualify as the strangest striptease ever, where you watched someone peel off clothes, entranced, but kept your eyes on the clothing rather than the body that emerged. She wore a black, lacy bra underneath, her nipples poking through the material.

"Here," she handed over the bodice, its front soaked with blood, and he pressed it to his mouth, sucking hard to extract what he could. Bodice drained, Cordelia took it from him and cast it to one side. She stroked a finger down his face.

The sirens got that bit closer, the footsteps noisier. Whoever was above them counted in greater numbers than the small, doomed army that had greeted them. Everyone would be armed with a stake and a much better plan this time...

*****

Five people appeared at the top of the steps. They clattered down them, stakes at the ready.

Cordelia pulled Justin to her with one arm, the grip vice-like. When she took off, him clutched to her, the speed of it startled him. One second, they were at ground level, the next high above the tower and the pine trees hurtling through dark night skies. His legs dangled down, forcing him to close his eyes, terrified. The arm that gripped him was rock solid, but Cordelia tipped to the side from time to time, losing her balance.

"Whoops!" A little laugh when she corrected herself. "I don't want to drop you!"

They landed minutes later at an underpass close to the West Country's principal city. Searchlights swept the area, beams of light that lit up the rough ground, dirt, rubble and thin patches of grass. Cordelia flattened herself, flapping her hand at Justin, who dropped to the ground, too. The light floated over the top of them. Disorientated, relief flooded him when he saw the warehouse he and Freya called home at the far side of the underpass.

"Sneak back as quietly as you can," Cordelia ordered him.

About to scramble away on his hands and knees, he stopped when she reached for his hand, the super-strength of her pinning him there on the ground beside her. She rolled in close enough for her face to be next to his.

God, those eyes! Might you fall into the pool of them and drown? Hundreds of years, thousands of deaths. For a second, he imagined all those she had killed—the eyes that had stared in terror at Cordelia the instant before they died, trapped in her irises. Tendrils of red hair fell around her face, softening the sharpness of her profile.

"Do you know what my favourite thing to do after I've replenished the blood supplies?"

She reached for his crotch and squeezed hard. "That."

Her fingers danced, a tiny pressure that started, stopped and started again.

"And I know you want it, too."

His body might. His head loathed the idea. Cordelia's body might be what most human females craved as ideal. Men, too. Slim, tiny waist, perfect tennis-ball breasts, glowing skin and generous hips. And yet, and yet, and yet...

"I know how difficult the adjustment is," she said, her voice a low purr. "And you feel for them; the ones you kill. How could you not? But I promise," and the voice dropped lower, "solemnly promise, it gets easier. The blood will last you three or four days. We don't need to kill too often."

Her lips touched his lightly. He caught the remains of blood crusted around her mouth and forgot everything, twisting to push her on her back, mouth seeking skin and the sauce that coated it. When she tipped back her throat, he dropped tiny kisses that pressed on her windpipe until he reached her chest. More crusted blood where it had splattered on her bodice. Traces of it stuck to her bra, too, and his mouth homed in on her nipples, sucking them through bloody lace as her back arched underneath him.

The whine of sirens sounded to the right of them. Cordelia shoved him off and pushed him away.

"Go," she said, "we'll finish this next time."

As he headed towards the warehouse, blackness enveloping him and making him stumble as his eyes adjusted, he heard her call after him.

"See you soon, Justin!"

Two minutes later and remorseful regret whammed into him. He stooped, bending over double, and sobbed. Had he ever wept like this? No, not even when...

How did you live with yourself like this?

The walls of the underpass dripped in sympathy. Rats scurried off, fleeing the monster. In human life, Justin hadn't liked rats. Did anyone? Now, he wished one of them would change its mind, scuttle over to him and sniff, nose in the air, tail flickering.

Remind me I'm human.

Was human.

"Pull yourself together."

Alice. Always the practical sort who thought self-pity a waste of time. There she was in front of him in the underpass now, hazy and indistinct though he could make out the round face and shaggy hair. She'd been dead now for three years. The ability to see ghosts must be a vampire trait.

"What you were today is not you, Justin."

The next words were far clearer. "Sorry, darling. Forgive me. I'm so ashamed that I left the family in the situation I did."

Then, she tipped her head to one side, regarding him. "You are not a monster."

Justin protested. "Yes, I am. Someone who attacks a defenceless boy my age, younger even. I went straight for his jugular without thinking. At that moment, nobody could have stopped me."

"Well," Alice said. "You messed up. Don't we learn from our mistakes?"

At that, she looked askance. The woman who never did—a gambling habit with consequences impossible to envisage.

The end of the tunnel approached. Water swirled around his feet, freezing and no doubt filthy.

"What you need to do," Alice continued, holding up her fingers to tick off points on them, "is work out how you will deal with such a situation from now on. You don't want to kill again, do you?"

He shook his head, green-topped tips flapping.

She smiled at that; the Alice smile he remembered so vividly. It split her face—round apple cheeks, a shiny red on top of brown, and creased her eyes into small, joyful slits.

"Well, then! What can you do to prevent it? There's temptation everywhere and you must avoid it. I know it isn't ideal, but the state programme is your best bet."

He nodded, Alice's suggestion confirmation of something he had already decided.

"I'll do that, Alice. I promise."

As he climbed the steps out of the tunnel at the other side, he felt her beside him even if her image had vanished. The wind whispered, "I know you will."

Maybe it was meant for them both. The gambling addict who had never conquered what kept her shelling out money on pointless odds.

Thevampire son who had to begin again and work out how to live without killing.