Walking Shadows. Narrelle M Harris

find you someone perfect. Thomas is kickass. I could just die. And Mundy!" She clasped her hands over her heart and mimed it beating out like a cartoon character in love. Like Mundy was some kind of heart-throb movie star. She caught a look of uncertainty on the boy's face. "Oh, you'd prefer a girl, huh?"

      "I don't mind," Hamish said, attempting disdain at such petty distinctions.

      "It'll be cool," the tall one reassured him.

      Magdalene put on her sweet-as-dumplings persona to greet them. The three of them smiled, dazzled.

      Idiots.

      I hadn't yet been able to work out why so many people came here to voluntarily let the undead drink their blood. It might have been the attraction of the taboo, the sexiness of the danger, the life-affirming thrill of seeing someone come alive with your own hot blood running in their veins. The dizzying physical combination of adrenalin and blood loss. Mostly I figured that people are perverse and this was just another example of how self-deluded we can be.

      They weren't all young volunteers either, nor all Goths. One of the regulars was a man of 50-odd, who skipped his blood pressure medication for three days before coming on his monthly visit, knowing that 'his friends' didn't like drugs messing up their experience. I suppose that was one thing about the Gold Bug. It was a proponent of Hugs Not Drugs. Yay them.

      The undead I could understand. Blood gave the vampires the buzz they needed to feel almost-alive again, without having to do any killing. Not that they objected to killing but it was all so damned inconvenient these days, having to cover it up and so forth. This was easy and accessible and did not lead to enraged mobs with pitchforks and burning brands.

      The whole place creeped me out. I had not been back since I had come last year looking for answers to Daniel's murder, yet a certain worrying attraction lurked at the back of my mind. Sometimes, the idea of coming here seemed therapeutic, for a little of the same reason that helping Gary catalogue his collection was soothing. It might put the horrors I couldn't hide from into their place. Labelled, catalogued, shelved neatly in my head, and that would made them controlled. Sort of.

      People do stupid things, thinking it gives them control. I never quite succumbed to that particular folly, though.

      The newbie was looking at Beryl the way a nervous debutante in an Austen novel eyes the dashing yet slightly scandalous regimental captain. Beryl, for her part, was eyeing the newbie like the lad was a particularly appetising hors d'oeuvre at the same soiree.

      As hideous as I found the whole thing, at least I knew that Beryl was generally very careful in her appetites. The primness wasn't a mere affectation. She tended to be precise and tidy beforehand, but a little kinder once the blood filled her, talking to them while they sipped nourishing liquids and recovered.

      Thomas, who the short girl had mentioned, was another matter. He was slick, sleazy and sly, covering it with calculated charm. He had bitten me on my first visit to The Gold Bug, not caring whether I was a member or not.

      I considered giving Hamish and his friends a lecture on their idiocy, but I'd tried that before, with predictable results. Scorn and hostility, on behalf of both vampires and suck-buddies. So the anti-blood diatribes went the way of the anti-drug ones, years before. Besides, Beryl had taken her new friend behind the curtains already and the moment was gone.

      Gary leaned in close and said quietly into my ear, "Do you want to go now?" I dragged my eyes away from the Jane Austen meets Bram Stoker tableau and nodded vigorously. "We could see a film," he suggested with half a smile, "There's a new one with giant robots in it."

      That made me grin. Who doesn't love a film with giant robots? "Sure."

      "Kate's not expecting you home?"

      "Nah. She's gone off for a long weekend." With her newish boyfriend, the Lovely Anthony, of whom I so far approved.

      I was suddenly aware of a large, silk-clad bosom looming in our vicinity. "A date now, is it?" Magdalene managed to put a lot of venom into the query. "Really, Gary, this is no way to conduct yourself."

      His brow furrowed with puzzlement.

      "While it is pleasing to see that you have finally come back to our way of thinking, you really should vary your sources. There is no point in getting too attached to only one. They wear out after a while. Look at Alberto."

      Gary frowned more deeply still at the cryptic comments, before comprehension dawned. "It's not…we aren't…I don't."

      "Of course you do," Magdalene said scornfully.

      Gary stared at her, slack-jawed for a second, before closing his mouth on whatever response had occurred to him. Magdalene's tight-lipped smile contained a tinge of triumph that made no sense to me.

      "What?"

      "Later," Gary muttered, "not here."

      Fine by me. I let him take me by the elbow and guide me back towards the stairs.

      That was when the window at the top of the stairs smashed inwards and a smoking body, smelling of burnt cloth and charred meat, tumbled onto the floor in a shower of glass.

      CHAPTER 3

      Everyone froze - vampires, people, idiots. After a rigid second I looked for, but couldn't see, a fire extinguisher. Too late anyway - whoever it was, they weren't on fire any more. An ambulance was no good either. I'd figured out pretty quickly that, to have climbed over roofs and down walls to get to the dead-end window in that condition, they'd probably been dead for a good many years already.

      "Who the hell's that?" Smith asked from behind me, more curious than shocked.

      It took a moment for the body in the midst of the shards of glass to move again, dragging itself into a sitting position. It was a man, hair burned away, along with half his face, shirt hanging in sooty ruin over his thin frame. His arms were streaked with black too, and the fingers of one hand were fused together. A triangle of glass was sticking out of his upper arm. He jerked it bloodlessly free and tossed it aside.

      "Magdalene?" The voice was a croak. I thought for a moment it was Mundy, then it lifted both hands in front of its blackened face to look at the devastation. His one good eye was wide as he inspected the damage, apparently unaware that his face was in a worse state. "Fuck, Magdalene, look what they did to me."

      Magdalene moved to get a closer look and her face scrunched up in disapproval. "What who did to you Thomas?" No sign of the sweet nanna persona now.

      One of the girls gave a little peep of despair and rushed towards the injured figure. "Thomas!" Head thrown back, she offered her throat to him. Thomas stared at her blankly.

      "It's me, Ingrid," she reached out to him imploringly but was afraid to touch his skin. It would probably flake away, I thought, horrified on too many levels to count. "Please. Let me help." She held her T-shirt down, stretching the fabric, offering herself.

      "Don't," I began. Too late. Thomas, with a frightening, guttural growl, buried his teeth in her skin. Into flesh and pumping blood. I could hear the wet sucking sound, and Ingrid's whimper. I could see her face, her little nose screwed up against the smell of burnt flesh.

      "Why is she doing that?" Gary said, not bothering to whisper.

      I dragged my eyes away from them. "I think she thinks it's going to heal him."

      "That's stupid," said Gary.

      As far as Gary understood and had explained it to me, the stuff in their veins could repair their flesh and bone - like gluing a broken vase back together, he'd said all matter-of-fact - but it couldn't grow brand new cells. Even a haircut was permanent. The destruction visited on Thomas was much too severe to ever repair itself. His skull showed cavities where his face used to be. Whatever he looked like under the soot, that's how he'd always look now.

      "I don't know why he's doing it either," Gary sounded irritated. "Blood only makes you feel more alive. It'll probably make it hurt more."

      "Maybe he's got it