The hush gave way to a softly swelling murmur. Dexter said, 'I might have known it, I thought I could smell a nip in the air,' and Josette nodded and asked, 'Who's going to have him?' and their friend said, 'I g-g-guess it's first c-c-come, first served,' and I could hear similar things being said all around us. Then one or two drinkers got up and, a little self-consciously, started to sidle up to the bar. The student didn't notice a thing until one of them, a tall woman with a mane of curly black hair, rested a hand on his shoulder. He looked at her and his grin vanished, to be replaced by a look of l-don't-believe-my-luck amazement.
'Hul-lo,' he said.
'Hi,' she purred back at him. Her fingers wound themselves around his hair, caressing the back of his neck, weaving a spell.
'And what's your name?' he asked. What did he think this was? A singles bar? I felt I should be warning him or running for help or something, but I didn't see how I could do it without giving myself away.
'You can call me Dolores,' she replied, continuing to stroke the back of his neck.
'Dolores by name, Dolores by nature, eh?' What a jerk, I thought, but I was still willing him to pick up his bag and get the hell out of there.
Dolores was joined by an angular man in a black polo-neck and leather jacket and dark glasses. He too began to stroke the student's neck. The student wasn't so keen on this unexpected new development. 'Hey, hang on…' And then he saw the others moving towards him. 'Hey, what is this? You weirdos or what? I'm not into…'
His voice tailed off as Dolores's lips parted in a brilliant smile and he saw her teeth. So did I. I wondered where she'd been hiding them. 'This is a joke, right?' he said. 'This has got to be a joke.'
At last it dawned on him that it wasn't a joke at all. I saw the barman duck down out of sight as though he expected a gang of Mafia hitmen to charge into the room at any second. The student had seen The Godfather too and he suddenly let out a frightened squawk and tried to worm free of Dolores's caress, but she raised her other hand and brought it down again in a flamboyant swooping gesture, like the dropping of a sword to signal the beginning of a cavalry charge, and the student's eyes snapped wide open in shock and disbelief. Her fingernails flashed scarlet. I thought this was a piece of theatre, just for show, until I saw the broad gout of crimson gushing in stops and starts from his ruptured throat.
There was a loud communal aaahhh — the sort of noise one associates with a packed cinema audience getting a glimpse of cute babies and animals — and then they were all over him, clustering around in a panic, jostling, trying to position their open mouths beneath the drinking fountain. The student sank beneath their onslaught without another word. I was thankful I couldn't see him any more. What I could see was not a pretty sight. Table-manners were shot to hell. Chairs went flying as the smell reached those who had been hanging back, trying to play it cool, and the urge became too strong to resist. Their teeth had suddenly sprouted as if by magic. They scrabbled and grunted, not caring what they drank from, so long as they drank. I saw a grey sweatshirt, shredded and stained, trampled on the floor. Briefly, I glimpsed a trainer with the foot still in it rolling out from beneath the scrum, but it was immediately snatched up. I saw one or two things which looked like giblets held up in the air and sucked dry.
I was watching, hypnotized by the spectacle, when it occurred to me that I was the only one left sitting down. It was a bad moment. I stood up and meandered, trying to make it look as though I was taking part, though the noises coming from the crowd were making me feel sick. My foot slid and I looked down and recoiled — I had skidded on a stray bloodclot. But then I thought better of it, and dipped down to smear some of it on my chin, trying to make it look as though, like everyone else, I'd had a couple of mouthfuls. No one was paying much attention, but it was better safe than sorry, better red than dead, especially now I'd seen them in full swing. This was a mob in heat; they confirmed all my worst fears about crowds. They made Violet look positively civilized.
It was over as suddenly as it had begun. One minute, mayhem. The next, customers were wiping their small, neat mouths and returning to their chairs and smoothing their hair down and chatting and smoking and retouching lip-gloss, raising halves of Special as though nothing had happened, though here and there one could still see a fine red stipple on their dead white flesh. The barman emerged with a dustpan and brush and began to shovel what was left on the floor into a black plastic bin-bag, but there wasn't an awful lot left to shovel. There were a few bones and what looked like scraps of desiccated parchment. I tried to work out how far a single student would have gone around the sixty or so people in the bar. Even though he'd been burly, it couldn't have been far. No-one could have got more than a sip. But the chat was more animated now, and a dozen people quickly knocked back their drinks and stalked off into the night as though questing for an entree to back up their bite-sized hors d'oeuvre. Juices were flowing.
There was an aching, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, and a bitter taste at the back of my throat all mixed up with the sour tang of Ruby Regular, and I began to wonder what the hell I was doing. I lit a cigarette with a hand which I willed to keep steady, and, as I did so, noticed to my annoyance that one of my gloves was wet. I hadn't intended to get quite so much of the student's blood on me. I was in the process of peeling the glove away from my hand when I heard Josette saying, 'That's funny. I can still smell him.' And then I saw Dexter peering in my direction, gazing at me with an interested but not entirely comprehending expression. I looked down at my hand and saw that the palm was gently but steadily weeping a thin mixture of blood and pus.
I closed it into a fist before Dexter could see.
This was hopeless. It was all going wrong. I'd been imagining it would be like my encounter with Fitch in Violet's garden, but the memory of the power I'd felt then must have turned my head. This was no longer a game. It was me on my own against sixty of them: not good odds.
I got up, straining to appear casual, but evaluating potential escape routes in the turmoil of my mind: (a) from my current position to the main exit was roughly thirty feet, with about five tables and ten standing customers in the way; (b) from my current position to the emergency exit was across a bare stretch of floor in full view of the dozens of customers who were standing at the bar, and after that would be required a great many complicated weaving manoeuvres through the tables nearest the door; (c) from my current position to the Ladies toilet was less than ten feet, and I had to pass only three people directly.
I went for this last option. It was the only door I could be sure of reaching before my stomach heaved one last heave and I threw up. Halfway there, I was hit by an attack of the cramps, but I struggled on to the swing door.
Inside was a sort of small, useless airlock and another door leading directly into the Ladies. I splashed cold water on my face and tried to sharpen my wits until, behind me, the outer door creaked. Just in time, I tucked myself away in the nearest cubicle. I could hear stiletto heels clattering over the floor, then there was a crash and a sigh and the sound of someone in the cubicle next to me. Vampires, it seemed, had to attend to their routine bodily functions like the rest of us.
I kept quiet and waited. While I waited. I did what I usually did in the circumstances — I read. I read the graffiti on the back of the door, and I read the small print on the wrappings of the spare toilet-rolls, and I read the instructions on the Tampax machine.