She gave them her best appealing look. ‘You don’t believe any of this nonsense, do you? You’re professionals! I mean, vampires? Really? In this day and age?’
‘I let you leave this room to go to the toilet, unaccompanied,’ said Leilah. ‘Why can’t I remember how long you were gone?’
I walked slowly forward, to stand before Sylvia. And then I sniffed, hard. ‘My, what strong perfume you’re wearing,’ I said. ‘Strong enough to hide your true scent from most people. But I’m not most people. Now I know what you’re doing, you can’t get inside my head any longer. My thoughts are my own, and I can smell blood and decay. Go on, Sylvia; show us. Show us all what you really are.’
She smiled at me, and her grin seemed to grow wider and wider and wider.
She dropped her glamour, and just like that we could all see what she really looked like. The others all cried out, in shock and horror and disgust, at the sight of what had been moving unknown among them for so long. Sylvia was just a rotting corpse, with bright shining eyes and huge teeth, dressed in the old-fashioned formal clothes she’d been buried in: spotted with grave mould, and soaked in old and new blood. I fell back despite myself, and Jeeves and Leilah immediately opened fire on Sylvia.
She just stood there, smiling her horrible smile, as her undead flesh soaked up the bullets. She didn’t even shudder under the impact. Jeeves and Leilah only stopped shooting when they ran out of bullets. It had been an instinctual thing; like stamping on a spider. Leilah was making shocked, almost feral noises. Jeeves’ face was twisted with disgust. And when their guns fell silent, they just stood where they were, unable to deal with something so far outside their experience. Sylvia’s smile widened even further; the rotting flesh of her cheeks split apart to reveal even more teeth. She laughed, softly, and there was nothing human in the sound.
‘Why are you here?’ I said loudly, and her attention immediately switched to me. Looking into her brightly burning eyes was like being hit by a malign spotlight. I met her gaze unflinchingly.
When she finally spoke, in her true form, with her true voice, what issued from the torn and decaying lips was just a liquid, gargling rasp. Something I heard with my mind, or my soul, as much as my ears.
‘It’s what I do, Ishmael. I go from place to place, striking up friendships with powerful and influential people, using my glamour and charm to get invited to isolated gatherings just like this. So I can feed and move on. Usually just a nip here and there, from everyone present, and they never even notice. Though afterwards they are just that little bit more … susceptible. So if I ever need a favour, or a get out of jail free card …’
‘Why don’t they become vampires?’ said Penny. ‘Why don’t all your victims rise again, to become like you?’
She was trying to sound reasonable and inquiring, but couldn’t quite bring it off. The tremor in her voice showed how scared she was. We were all scared. It was the only sane reaction to the horrific thing in front of us.
‘Because that’s not how it works,’ said Sylvia. ‘It takes a lot of effort on our part, to make another of our kind. And I’ve never really seen the point. Who needs more competition?’
‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘Why here, and now?’
‘Your Colonel thought he recognized me for what I am, at some dreary Ambassadorial reception,’ said Sylvia. ‘Don’t ask me how he knew. He was only human, after all. Not like you, Ishmael. So I struck up a friendship with his mother, poor lonely old Diana, just so she would invite me here. To the Colonel’s family home. I let him know, through certain channels. I thought I could ensure his silence by threatening his family. But he wouldn’t play. Came all the way down here to stop me and protect his loved ones. So I killed him. No one defies me and gets away with it.’
‘And then you were trapped here, by the storm,’ I said. ‘And you had no choice but to stay and play along, pretending to be human. You didn’t know the Colonel had sent for help.’
‘But if James was the only one who knew about you, if he was the only real danger to you,’ said Penny, ‘why did you kill all the others?’
‘You know how it is,’ said Sylvia. ‘You get a taste for something, and you just can’t stop. You have no idea what it’s like, to be undead. There’s more to blood than just the feeding. Blood … is better than drugs. Better than sex. And there’s no conscience to trouble you any more, nothing to hold you back from doing absolutely anything you want. From being a red-mouthed wolf in a world of sheep. I love it …’
‘That’s not why you started killing again, after the Colonel,’ I said.
‘I never leave witnesses,’ said Sylvia. ‘The world likes to believe things like me don’t exist any longer. Except in safe, romantic fantasies. It makes things so much easier for me.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Jeeves. ‘That thing’s going to kill us all. It has to, to prevent anyone from telling what happened here.’
‘Hold it together!’ Leilah said harshly. ‘There’s just one of it! We can still stop it!’
‘How?’ said Jeeves.
‘You hold it down; I’ll hammer the stake through its heart!’ said Leilah.
Jeeves almost smiled. ‘Sounds like a plan. Where’s your stake?’
‘I’m working on it,’ said Leilah.
Sylvia ignored them, her bright hellish gaze fixed on me. Her hands opened and closed slowly at her sides, pale as death, caked in dried blood, ending in long filthy claws.
‘I didn’t know the Colonel had sent for another monster. I can tell you’re not really human, Ishmael. I can see things most people never even dream of … and I’ve never seen anything like you, Ishmael. What are you really?’
‘Not from around here,’ I said.
‘Why do you side with them?’ said Sylvia. She sounded honestly curious. ‘You’re no more like them than I am. They’d kill you in a moment, if they only knew …’
‘You prey on them,’ I said. ‘I protect them. It’s what I do. I still have my … humanity.’
‘Ishmael?’ said Jeeves. ‘What is she talking about?’
Sylvia and I ignored him.
‘It doesn’t matter what you are,’ said Sylvia. ‘You’ll die just as easily as the others.’
I could feel her reaching out to me with her mind, trying to trap my thoughts inside my head. Hold me in place, as she had with her other victims. But they were human, while I was just a little bit more than that. I could feel her influence, drifting across my mind like cobwebs; I blew them away with no effort at all.
Sylvia snarled, and threw herself at me, moving impossibly quickly. Just a blur on the air, all bared teeth and reaching hands. I went to meet her, moving just as fast. We slammed together in the middle of the room, with an impact that would have killed anything human. We grabbed on to each other, and lurched back and forth, smashing any furniture that got in our way. Everyone else scattered, crying out. I dodged the claws that would have opened me up like scalpels and the fanged mouth that snapped shut near my neck like a steel mantrap.
She was stronger, but I was faster.
Sylvia suddenly broke away from me and sprang up on to the wall, clinging there like some impossibly large insect. She scuttled up the wall and on to the ceiling, hanging upside down. And then she dropped back on to the floor, in front of Jeeves and Leilah. They’d had time to reload their guns, and both of them opened up again. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space. Sylvia surged forward, into the blaze of bullets, and took no harm at all. It was like shooting into water. Her clawed hands reached out for them.
I grabbed her from behind and hauled her away. She spun round in my arms, grabbed my head with both hands, and jerked it round hard, to break my neck. But my head turned all the way round, and my neck didn’t break. I’m built better than that. I’m flexible. I grabbed her wrists with both hands and almost cried out with revulsion. It felt like plunging my hands into a mess of maggots. Her undead flesh seemed to squirm inside my clasp. She broke my grip easily and backed away, hissing angrily.