He takes a fierce drag on his cigarette. His eyes burn with resentment.
"Isn't your father proud that you have this talent?"
"Proud?" he spits. "He despises me for it! Says I'll end up in the gutter."
"Why don't you leave?" I speak softly and I am paying more attention to the movement of his tender throat than to his words. "Go to Montmartre, be an artist. Prove the old man wrong."
"It's not that easy. There's this girl, Meg"
"Take her with you."
"That's just it. I can't. She's the gardener's daughter. My father employs her as a maid. D'you see? Not content with being a failure at everything else, I go and fall in love with a common servant. So now the old man tells me that if I don't give her up and toe the line, he'll disinherit me! And Meg's refusing to see me. Says she's afraid of my father. Damn him!"
I have not been a vampire so very long. I still recall how hopeless such dilemmas seem to humans. "That's terrible."
"Vindictive old swine! I'll lose her and I'll be penniless! He can't do this to me!"
"What will you do about it, Rupert?"
He glares down into his whisky. How alluring he looks in his wretchedness. "I wish the old bastard would die tomorrow. That would solve all my problems. I'd like to kill him!"
"Will you?"
He sighs. "If only I had the guts! But I haven't."
So I smile. I rest my hand on his, and he is too numb with whisky to feel the coldness of my fingertips. I have thought of something more interesting to do than just take him outside and drain him.
"I'll do it for you."
"What?" His eyes grow huge.
I should explain, I am poor. It seems so cheap to go through the pockets of my victims like a petty thief. I do it anyway, but it yields little reward. The wealth I crave, in order to live in the style a vampire deserves, is harder to come by.
"Give me a share of your inheritance and I'll kill him for you. No one will ever link the crime to you. Natural causes, they'll say."
His breathing quickens. His hands shake. Does he know what I am? Yes and no. Look into our eyes and a veil lifts in your mind and you step into a dream where anything is possible. "My God," he says, over and over. "My God." And at last, with a wild light in his eyes, "Yes. Quickly, Antoine, before he has a chance to change his will. Do it!"
I am standing in the garden, looking up at the house.
It's an impressive pile, but ugly. Grey-brown stone, stained and pitted by the weather, squatting in a large, bleak estate. A sweep of gravel leads to a crumbling portico. No flowerbeds to soften the walls, only prickly shrubs. It's tidy enough but no love, no imagination and no money have been lavished upon it for many a cold year.
In the autumn twilight I traverse the lawns to the rear of the house. The gardens, too, are austere and formal, with clipped hedges standing like soldiers on flat stretches of grass. But there are chestnut and elm and beech trees to add sombre grandeur to the landscape. Brown leaves are scattered on the ground. The gardener has raked them into piles and I smell that English autumn scent of bonfires and wet grass.
Somewhere behind the windows of the house sits the father, the rat in his lair, Daniel Wyndham-Hayes.
It's growing dark. Rooks are gathering in the treetops. I am taking my time, savouring the experience, when a figure in a long black overcoat steps out of the blue darkness and comes towards me.
"Antoine, what are you doing?"
It is another vampire. His name is Karl. Perhaps you know him, but if not I shall tell you that Karl is far older than me and thinks he knows everything. Imagine the face of an angel, one who felt as much bliss as guilt when he fell, and still does, every time he strikes. Amber eyes that eat you. Hair the colour of burgundy, which fascinates me, the way it looks black in shadow then turns to crimson fire in the light. That's Karl. He's like a deadly ghost, always warning me not to make the same mistakes he made.
"I am thinking that this house and garden are the manifestation of the owner's soul," I reply archly. "Will they change, when he is dead?"
"Don't do this," Karl says, shaking his head. "If you single out humans and make something special of them, you'll drive yourself mad."
"Why should it matter to you if I am driven mad?"
He puts his hand on my shoulder; and although I have always desired him, I am too irritated with him to respond. "Because you are young, and you'll only find out for yourself when it is too late. Don't become involved with humans. Keep yourself apart from them."
"Why?"
"Otherwise they will break your heart," says Karl.
They think they know it all, the older ones, but they will each tell you something different. You can't listen to them. Give them no encouragement, or they will never shut up.
We stand like a pair of ravens on the grass. Then I am stepping away from him, turning lightly as a dancer to look back at him as I head for the house. "Go to hell, Karl. I'll do what I like."
I am inside the house. The corridors are draughty and need a coat of paint. Yet Old Masters hang on the walls and I finger the gilt frames with excitement. Riches. This seems ironic, that Daniel should collect these grimy old oils for their value and yet consider his own son's potential work valueless.
Following Rupert's instructions, I find the white panelled door of the bedroom, and I go in.
The father is not as I expect.
I stand beside the bed staring down at him. With one hand I press back the bed-curtain. I am as still as a snake; if he wakes he will think someone has played a dreadful joke on him, placed a manikin with glittering eyes and waxen skin there to frighten him. But he sleeps on, alone in this big austere room. Dying embers in the grate give the walls a demonic glow. Like the rest of the house it is clean but threadbare. Daniel is hoarding his wealth. Perhaps he thinks that if he disinherits Rupert he can take it with him.
Why did I assume he would be old? Rupert is only twenty-three and this man is barely fifty, if that. And he is handsome. He has a strong face like an actor, thick chestnut and silver hair flowing back from a high forehead. His arms are muscular, the hands well-shaped on the bedcover. Even in sleep his face is taut and intelligent. I stand here admiring the aquiline sweep of his nose and the long curves of his eyelids, each with a little fan of wrinkles at the corner.
He will not be easy to kill. I expected a frail old goat in a nightcap. Not this magnificent creature, who is so full of blood and strength, a lion.
I bend over the bed. I am salivating. I touch my tongue to his neck and taste the salt of his skin, the creamy remnant of shaving soap, such a masculine perfume I am shaking with desire as I press him down with my hands, and bite.
He wakes up and roars.
I try to silence him with my hand in his mouth and he bites me in return! His teeth are lodged there in the fleshy part of my hand but I endure the pain, I don't care about it; all is swept away by the ecstasy of feeding. We lie there, biting each other. His body arches up under mine.
A scratching noise at the door.
We both freeze, like lovers caught in the act. I stop swallowing. Slowly I withdraw my fangs from the wounds. Daniel gives only a faint gasp, though the pain must be excruciating. We look at each other; the door opens; an apparition floats in.
She's wearing a thick white nightgown and she carries a candle that reflects in her eyes. "Daniel?" she whispers. "It's midnight"
I can tell from her manner that she hasn't come in response to his cry. I doubt she even heard it. No, she comes in like a thief and it's obvious that she is here by appointment. I am partly hidden by the bed curtain so I have a good look at her before she sees me.