My wounded hand was tucked beneath my right armpit. I had discovered that, if I squeezed hard enough, at the same time rocking back and forth and making small whimpering sounds, I could damp the pain down to an acute throb. But the singing was setting it off again. I wanted to block my ears, but I couldn't — not with only one hand operational. 'Make her stop,' I begged.
Duncan was staring down at the body, muttering, 'Shit, I really killed her.'
'No you didn't,' I gasped, between throbs. 'She's a vampire… she was dead already… and they call her Mimi…'
Duncan appeared to notice me for the first time. 'Dora,' he said. 'You all right?'
'Oh, I'm fine,' I said through gritted teeth. 'I'm only bleeding to death… For God's sake, get me something to wrap this in.'
He went out of the room, and I wished he hadn't left me alone with her. She was staring at me through that one eye, staring at me as though the appetizer had been so finger-lickin' good that she'd developed a taste for the rest of me. I half expected her to fly across the room and fasten her teeth in my throat. I knew I would never feel safe, not ever again. Not unless someone put her completely out of commission.
Duncan came back and wrapped my hand in a dirty teatowel, which he fixed in position with masking tape. It didn't look too hygienic, but the wrapped hand fitted under my armpit even more snugly than before. I went back to my rocking and whimpering routine, pretending not to notice the grubby linen was already turning red.
There was a burbling noise from the bundle on the floor.
I said, 'You've got to… finish her off… you know.'
Duncan gazed at me through red-rimmed eyes and asked, rather sarcastically, 'So what do you suggest?'
'Stake,' I said in what I hoped was a matter-of-fact tone, though it was undermined by a nervous tremor. 'Through the heart.'
He groaned, and it was then I knew he was going to co-operate. 'Stake through the heart. Of course.'
Violet made wet chuckling sounds. It was like listening to someone with a serious speech impediment, but I knew exactly what she was trying to say. She was trying to say we'd gone too far. It was too late for us to turn back now. If we didn't go all the way, we would wind up even deader than she was.
He'd spread newspapers on the floor and rolled her on to them, but the carpet was still getting soaked. What with the both of us bleeding, the room was beginning to look like an abattoir. She lay there winking at him while he wrestled with the cocoon in which she had wrapped herself — layers of leather and cashmere and fur, all the way down to a black silk slip edged in lace and crusted with blood. Even when he'd peeled that off, I was relieved to see there was so much blood and mottled purple bruising that she didn't look naked at all. Nakedness would have made her seem too vulnerable, but the patches of visible skin were so white they were almost luminous, and reminded me of the flesh of the crawling things you sometimes find under stones.
Still, she wasn't as badly hurt as I'd thought — the clothes had obviously absorbed a lot of the punishment.
'She's shamming,' I said.
'No she's not.'
'She is shamming. Any minute now, she'll sit up… and sink her fangs into you.'
'She wouldn't do that,' said Duncan. 'Maybe to you. Not to me.'
'You don't know that.'
'Believe me, she won't sit up. Not when I've finished with her.'
'You knew all along didn't you? That she was a vampire, I mean.'
'There's a lot I didn't know,' he said.
'Oh,' I said, 'and by the way, I am not a lesbian.'
Duncan raided his stationery cupboard. The stake wasn't really a stake but an eighteen-inch ruler whittled to a point. He positioned it over her heart and began to bash the other end with a chunky Sellotape dispenser. The point sank in very slowly. He was very calm, as though he were stretching a canvas, or tacking a sketch to the wall. She was calm too; I'd expected her to screech and clutch at her chest, at the very least, like I'd seen in the movies, but all she did was cough up a small amount of claret-coloured blood and belch. When he'd finished she lay there with the ruler sticking out of her, fixing us with her one open eye as she began to hum 'Sola, perduta, abbandonata.'
I hadn't expected this.
Duncan gawped in disbelief. 'What's wrong? Why isn't it working?'
'Mmmnnnn mmmmgggghhh,' sang Violet.
'It's not enough,' I whimpered. 'You'll have to cut her head off.' I was thinking of her as a piece of meat now. I'd gone way beyond the stage of wanting to pass out, but I tried not to look when Duncan fetched a small hacksaw and set to work with it. The teeth kept getting clogged up with bits of gristle, so after a while he switched to a serrated blade designed for carving through frozen meat. It wasn't easy for him because she kept rolling around, spluttering and giggling, while he carved, and the ruler that was sticking out of her chest kept whacking him on the chin.
The head, even when it had been separated from the neck, continued to make noises. This time, I thought I recognized the Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly. She was deliberately choosing well-known pieces to annoy me. I stepped up my whimpering, trying to drown her out.
'Oh for God's sake shut up, the both of you,' snapped Duncan.
Violet continued to hum. I rocked back and forth and tentatively suggested dismemberment.
She had been born into an age when the average human frame was smaller, and her smallness was an advantage to us now. Her ankles were no thicker than my wrists, and it didn't take long for Duncan to hack through them, even though her legs kept dancing around. He did the feet, and the arms, and the hands, and all the pieces continued to wriggle, and the head kept up a contented gurgling interspersed with snatches of melody.
Eventually, Duncan yelled at her to shut the fuck up. The walls of his flat were solid enough, but it was getting late and I didn't want the neighbours getting nosy, so, at my suggestion, he stuffed her mouth full of garlic. She kept trying to spit it out, so he tied my black chiffon scarf around her head to keep the jaw shut. Even then, she kept up an audible insect-like buzzing. Duncan finally lost patience, smothered the head in pages of the Guardian, and dropped the whole bundle into a black plastic bag, which he sealed with several yards of electrical tape.
'I've had enough,' he said, collapsing into a stained armchair and covering his face with sticky red hands.
'You haven't finished,' I objected. 'You've got to displace parts of the skeleton and pickle the major organs in holy water.'
'Oh, bugger that. Can't we just put her outside and wait for daylight?'
'Wouldn't work,' I said. 'Not if the stake didn't.' Deep down, I was realizing the books hadn't given the whole picture. Either that, or Violet had been around for so long she was no longer required to play by the rules. She was still singing, for Christ's sake. And we'd need more sunlight than we were likely to get at this time of year. Besides, wherever we dumped the body, Grauman would find it.
Grauman. I'd forgotten about Grauman. The thought of him instantly made me feel twice as sick as I'd already been feeling. This hadn't been part of Grauman's plan, not at all. When he found out what we'd done, he would kill us, no question. I retreated into my rocking, but it wasn't just the pain that was making me whimper now.
The pieces had finally stopped squirming. Duncan settled down to the task of wrapping each one separately in newspaper, and tape, and bin-bags, making a set of neat black plastic parcels. I thought he was being unnecessarily conscientious, but since he was doing all the work I didn't have the right to criticize. All I wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep, but something told me that if I did that, I might never wake up again. I could have murdered a line or two, but I'd left all my drugs at Matt's. I was dying for the night to be over, but I had an uncomfortable feeling the arduous part was just beginning.