So she liked cemeteries too. She and Duncan made a fine pair. Inside, the faint moonlight illuminated ranks of tombstones glowing softly in the undergrowth. Violet was a dark and distant blur on the path ahead. After a few seconds I lost sight of her, but now I could hear her singing softly to herself. 'Libiamo, libiamo…' I couldn't understand the Italian, but I knew it was that bloody drinking song again.
What the hell was she up to? I had to find out. Whatever it was, I would be able to use it against her. I trod cautiously, avoiding the gravel and sticking to the grassy verges, trying to make as little noise as possible. Vandals had passed this way before me. Monuments had been daubed with graffiti, angels had lost their noses, graves gaped in preparation for the day of judgement. I wondered how I'd allowed myself to be lured into this stupid place, at this stupid time of night. But it never occurred to me that I might be putting my life in danger.
A pale grey mass loomed ahead: a mausoleum. I climbed the steps to the portico and was greeted by the stench of urine, and of something else, something familiar I couldn't quite identify. I was wondering which of the three paths Violet had taken when there was a clatter of metal which echoed and clashed — I stopped dead, ears straining, hardly daring to breathe, but the echo died and the rest was silence. I homed in on the source of the sound, and found myself creeping along a passageway lined with pillars; to the right they opened on to a moonlit courtyard; to my left they stood guard over the dim outlines of family tombs.
I had my ideas, most of them far-fetched. I thought she might be involved in espionage, or terrorism, or a spare-parts surgery racket. Or a black-magic cult whose members danced naked and sold their stories to the News of the World. I was an incurable romantic with a vivid imagination, but it stopped short of embracing the paranormal as a part of everyday life. I had always liked horror movies, but had never imagined the creatures they depicted were real. I didn't believe in vampires. But the process by which disbelief turned to acceptance was fairly swift, and it started around the next corner.
There was a soft rustling sound, like dry leaves trembling in the gentlest of breezes. I turned the corner, and what I saw was this: the moonlight casting pale strips across the floor, and a writhing shape slumped against one of the pillars. I knew the shape wasn't human because it had too many limbs. An arm flopped sideways on to the ground, and I heard the rustling again as the hand involuntarily tightened its grip around a crinkly plastic bag. Then a leg kicked out, also involuntarily, and once again a thick crepe sole came into contact with the tin and sent it spinning away on its side. As soon as I spotted the red and white label, I knew what the other familiar smell had been. Cow Gum had always been a vital factor in my collage assembly.
I took another look at the shape, and realized it was not a single entity, but two separate figures conjoined in an unnatural manner. The first figure was hunched over the second, which was skinny and male and slumped on the ground. The first figure was Violet, and she was making small bobbing movements — rather suggestive movements, I thought, only it wasn't a blow-job because whatever she was doing was concentrated around the head and neck. I could see by the way the other figure sagged that she hadn't been giving him the kiss of life — the closely cropped head lolled in a state of open-mouthed narcosis. One of his legs was locked in a violent spasm, the other crooked back at an unnatural angle. Then she stood up straight and wiped her chin with the back of her hand. She gazed down at him impassively, as though getting her breath back, before gripping his shoulders and dipping her head once again.
Then it all got confused, but for a few seconds I'd had a grandstand view, and I'd seen what had been left of the side of his neck. The blood which was still pumping gently out of the wound — which was turning his white shirt dark and his dark anorak even darker — had-been black and not red in the half-light, so I don't think it was that which was now making me feel queasy. I might have been hyperventilating, and I hadn't been eating properly for the past few days, but more probably it was sheer physical shock. Just because I believed what I was seeing didn't mean I was taking it in my stride. I felt a sound forming in the back of my throat. I knew I had to stop this noise from happening, so I jammed my fist into my mouth and retreated as far as I could into the deepest shadow. I would have turned and made a run for the gates, but I didn't altogether trust my legs.
Then she looked up again and I almost choked. She was looking right at me — but she didn't appear to see me at all. Later on, I would learn it wasn't the shadows which saved me. They can see in the dark, these people, like cats, and Violet had been around for so long she could scent dinner at fifty paces. If she'd been operating at full throttle, she would have been on to me in an instant, ripping my throat out with her teeth, or slicing my jugular with her fingernails, or cracking my head open on the flagstones, laughing as she did so. I found out later she was capable of all these things, and that there were several circumstances which combined to save my neck. First, she hadn't fed for several nights, and now this over-hasty blow-out was blunting the sharp edge of her senses. Nor was she behaving in orthodox undead fashion: she was ignoring all the recommended procedures, pursuing impromptu strategies of her own, taking risks, leaving herself wide open. Just because she was in love for only the third time in three hundred years, she thought it gave her the green light to behave like a complete idiot and forget what she was being paid to do. But then Violet didn't care about that. She didn't care about anything, except maybe Duncan.
And she had deliberately picked nourishment she knew would be contaminated with additives — Cow Gum and, at a guess, Lamb's Navy Rum, Carling Black Label, speed — whatever the pathetic squirt had managed to pour down his gullet prior to having it ripped out. Later, I realized she had provided him with most of these substances herself. It was how she had lured him there in the first place.
So when she stood up straight and wiped her mouth and looked around, she didn't see me, and neither did she, pick up my scent. I didn't know it then, but she was completely out of her skull. For the next few minutes she stood over the crumpled body, staring down at him as if to establish the state of play. He was either dead or dying, and she didn't give a damn. She brushed her hair back from her face, and, for the first time, I saw colour in her cheeks. She looked astonishingly beautiful in a predatory sort of way, but I thought she also looked weary. It was the weariness of someone who needed to catch up on a few hundred years' worth of sleep. It was then I knew she wasn't just old, she wasn't just weird — she wasn't even human.
This time I didn't think I could suppress the noise. It really had nothing to do with me, but it was coming up anyway, and now I knew for sure it was about to turn into something louder than a whimper or a gurgle — it was going to be a howl. I decided I could no longer fight it, and it would have been all over then and there, if my mouth hadn't suddenly been clamped shut so abruptly I felt the sharp edges of my front teeth slice into my gums. The howl died, smothered at birth by a hand smelling of whisky and tobacco and soap. I plucked at it feebly, but a tentacle wrapped itself around my waist and I was being pulled up and away, and I was kicking my feet in the air. My first thought was that she'd got me, but I could see Violet was still somewhere up ahead, and the tentacle wasn't a tentacle at all — it was an arm. I felt, rather than heard, a wet whiskery mouth pressed up against my ear and a hoarse whisper, 'Don't move. Don't make a sound. Do anything and you are dead.'