"At last! I k-knew if I w-waited long enough, one of y-you w-would finally come!"
"I said get up , you little toadeater!" I kick him away, but it does no good. Rhymer crawls back on his belly, as fast as a lizard on a hot rock. I was afraid something like this would happen.
"I'll do anything you w-want give you anything you n-need!" He grabs the cuffs of my jeans, tugging insistently. "B-bite me! Drink my b-blood! Pleeease ! M-make me like you!"
As I look down at this wretched human who has lived a life so stunted, his one driving passion is to become a walking dead man, I feel my memory slide back across the years, to the night a foolish young girl, made giddy by the excitement that comes with the pursuit of forbidden pleasures and made stupid by the romance of danger, allowed herself to be lured away from the safety of the herd. I remember how she found herself alone with a blood-eyed monster that hid behind the face of a handsome, smooth-talking stranger. I remember how her nude, blood-smeared body was hurled from the speeding car and tossed in the gutter and left for dead. I remember how she was far from dead. I remember how she was me.
I can feel myself trembling like I've got a high fever. My disgust has become anger, and I've never been very good at controlling my anger. And part of me — a dark, dangerous part — has no desire ever to learn.
I try hard to keep a grip on myself, but it's not easy. In the past when I've been overwhelmed by my anger I've tried to make sure I only vent it at those I consider worthy of such murderous rage. Such as vampires. Real ones, that is. Like myself. But sometimes well, sometimes I lose it. Like now.
"You want to be like me?"
I kick the grovelling little turd so hard that ribs splinter as he flies across the basement floor and collides with the wall. He cries out, but it doesn't exactly sound like pain.
"You stupid bastard! I don't even want to be like me !"
I tear the mirrored sunglasses away, and Rhymer's eyes widen as he sees my own. They look nothing like his scarlet-tinted contact lenses. There is no white, no corona — merely seas of solid blood boasting vertical slits that open and close, like those of a snake, depending on the strength of the light. The church basement is very gloomy, so my pupils are dilated wide — like those of a shark rising from the sunless depths to savage a luckless swimmer.
Rhymer lifts a hand to block out the sight of me as I advance on him, his trembling delight now replaced by genuine, 100 per cent monkey-brain fear. For the first time he seems to realize that he is in the presence of a monster.
"Please don't hurt me, mistress! Forgive me!"
I don't know what else he might have said to try and avoid his fate, because his head comes off in my hands right about then.
For a brief second Rhymer's hands still flutter in their futile attempt to beg my favour, then there is a spurt of scarlet from the neck stump, not unlike that from a spitting fountain, as his still-beating heart sends a stream of blood to where the brain would normally be. I quickly side-step the gruesome spray without letting go of my trophy.
Turning away from Rhymer's still-twitching corpse, I step over the ruins of the antique coffin and its payload. No doubt the dirt had been imported from the Balkans — perhaps Moldavia or even Transylvania. I shake my head in amazement that such old wives' tales are still in circulation and given validity by so many.
As I head up the stairs, Rhymer's head tucked under my arm, I pause one last time to survey what is left of the would-be vampire king of the Goth chicks. Man, what a mess. Glad I'm not the one who has to clean it up.
This isn't the first vampire-wanna-be I've run into, but I've got to admit he had the best scam. The Goth chicks wanted the real thing and he gave them what they thought they wanted, even down to retro-fitting the church with theatrical trapdoors and magician's flashpots. And they bought into the bullshit because it made them feel special, it made them feel real, and, most importantly, it made them feel alive . Poor, stupid bastards. To them it's all black leather, lovebites and tacky chrome jewellery; where everyone is eternally young and beautiful and no one can ever hurt you ever again.
Like hell.
As for Rhymer, he wanted the real thing as badly as the Goths. Perhaps even more so. He'd spent his entire life aspiring to monstrosity; hoping that given time his heart-felt mimicry of the damned would either turn him into what he longed to be thorough sympathetic magic, or that his actions would eventually draw the attention of the creatures of the night he worshipped so ardently. As, indeed, it had. I was the real thing all right; big as life and twice as ugly.
But I was hardly the bloodsucking seductress Rhymer had been dreaming of all those years. There was no way he could know that his little trick would lure forth not just a vampire but a vampire-slayer as well.
You see, my unique and unwanted predicament has denied me many things: the ability to age, to love, to feel life quicken within me. And in retaliation against this unwished-for transformation, I've spent decades denying the monster inside me; trying — however futilely — to turn my back on the horror that is the Other who dwells in the dark side of my soul. However, there is one pleasure, and one alone, I allow myself to indulge. And that is killing vampires
And those that would become them.
Dawn is well under way by the time I re-enter the nave. The whitewashed walls are dappled with light dyed blue, green and red by the stained glass. I take a couple of steps backward, then drop-kick Rhymer's head right through the Lamb-of-God window.
The birds are chirping happily away in the trees, greeting the coming day with their morning songs, as I push open the wide double doors of the church. A stray dog with matted fur and slats for ribs is already sniffing Rhymer's ruined noggin where it has landed in the high weeds. The cur lifts its muzzle and automatically growls, but as I draw closer it flattens its ears and tucks its tail between its legs and quickly scurries off. Dogs are smart. They know what is and isn't of the natural world — even if humans don't.
Last night was a bust, as far as I'm concerned. When I go out hunting I prefer bringing down actual game, not faux predators. Still, I wish I could hang around and see the look on the faces of Rhymer's groupies when they find out what's happened to their "master". That'd be good for a chuckle or two.
No one can say I don't have a sense of humour about these things.
Just His Type
Storm Constantine
Storm Constantine lives in the Midlands of England with her husband Jim and nine cats. The author of seventeen novels that span the genres of science fiction, horror and fantasy, she has also co-written non-fiction titles on Egyptian feline goddesses and esoteric psychology, as well as numerous short stories.
Her recent works include the "Magravandias Chronicles", a fantasy trilogy whose second volume , The Crown of Silence, was published in 2000, and Silverheart, a novel co-written with Michael Moorcock .
" When I was researching my novel Stalking Tender Prey," recalls the author, "which was primarily about the legends of fallen angels, it seemed clear to me that the vampire myths might also have stemmed from the same origins .
"The Biblical rendition of the fallen angels derived from earlier myths from Sumeria, which perhaps came from times earlier than that. The old stories seem tantalizingly to suggest that the image of winged beings grew from memories of a real race of flesh and blood, who were vulture shamans. The idea of them having wings could derive from the fact that in their rituals they wore the wings of griffin vultures around their shoulders. (Ancient remains of these wings have been found in caves in the Middle East, along with bones and other evidence of ritual.) Drinking the blood of both animals and humans is something the fallen angels were accused of doing, and this may well have been part of their shamanic rites.