Walking Shadows. Narrelle M Harris

wrong too," I suggested. It wasn't like being undead came with a manual. How many of them ended up disappointed that they couldn't change into bats or smoke after achieving eternal life?

      Perhaps right now, Thomas really wanted to believe that the girl's blood could restore him. Vampires feel less intensely than living people, but they do still feel. I hoped he wasn't in as much pain as it looked like he was.

      Then I decided it couldn't be more pain than Ingrid was in. Her eyes were widening as belatedly she realised this was not the brightest idea she'd ever had. She gasped and pushed at Thomas's shoulders, gently at first, then more energetically. A layer of shirt and skin gave way and Thomas growled and bit harder.

      "Thomas?" a weak plea was in her voice. I stepped forward at the same time as Ingrid's friend and while the friend pulled on Ingrid's shoulders, I went straight to the source of the problem.

      Dumb ideas were clearly on a "have two get one free" deal this evening. I ignored Gary's half-vocalised protest and strode across the floor to crouch by Thomas' side. Ingrid watched me, unable to verbalise the plea in her eyes. For an awful moment, they looked like Belinda's eyes, back in those days when our parents were fighting over her hospital bed, forgetting their dying daughter in their hurry to blame each other for her cancer.

      I had no idea how to detach Thomas from the girl. I mainly thought of how I had to stick my finger in the corners of my dog Oscar's jaws to make him drop the remote whenever he was in the chewing mood.

      "Let her go, Thomas," I ordered. Predictably he ignored me, so I worked a finger into the corner of his mouth. His back teeth crushed down on the top knuckle and I winced.

      "Come on, you creep. It's not helping you. You know it's just making it worse."

      I was aware of the way his clothes and skin stained black against my shirt and my hand. Another outfit ruined, I thought, trying to render this horror into a minor nuisance. My finger was starting to really hurt. Oscar was never this much trouble.

      "Drop it," I commanded gruffly, as though Thomas really was just a naughty puppy wilfully ruining the TV remote. He responded by biting down harder than before. Feeling his teeth tear my skin, I snatched my hand back, cursing.

      "Enough." Magdalene closed in, dug her fingers into the back of Thomas' neck, "Let go of her. Now." She gave him a shake. He whimpered and let go. Ingrid scrambled out of the way, her friend helping to drag her back, and they both glared at Thomas like they had been betrayed.

      Ingrid had her hand pressed over her bleeding throat. Magdalene drew a pale silk handkerchief from her cleavage, spat liberally on it and handed it to Ingrid, who dabbed it carefully on the wound. She'd done this before. I could see already that the flow was slowing. Ingrid would be all right. There probably wouldn't even be a scar by morning. I tried not to think of Belinda again, who'd had no such luck, and felt a surge of anger at Ingrid the Idiot for letting this happen in the first place.

      "What happened?" Magdalene demanded of Thomas.

      "Little one jumped me. Big one stuck me with something." Thomas's voice sounded strange. The oxygen he drew in to talk with was escaping from holes in his throat, like damaged bellows. I withdrew, nursing my injured digit, to stand beside the relative safety of Gary.

      "What kind of something?"

      "Dunno. Needle, I think. Made me feel weird."

      "And then?"

      "I ran. Big one threw something - a firebomb I think. Hit me in the back." An odd manic grin now twisted Thomas's face as he heaved his next words out. "The big one said - he said - to come back - let them - finish it clean." A hideous wheezing laugh. "Crazy bastard. So I - ah - climbed across town. Here."

      Magdalene gave him a truculent look, drew her hand away and wiped it on the back of her dress. Maybe she was wondering the same thing I was - had these crazy people followed him here? "What did they look like?"

      "Like bastards." Thomas's voice faded out and he drooped, like all the puff had gone out of him. My finger ached where he had bitten me and I surreptitiously glanced at it. The bleeding had slowed, though the skin was still a ragged tear. My knuckle bore a ring of black where it had touched his skin. I wiped it against my skirt, then rummaged in my satchel for a purse pack of tissues to soak up the blood. I managed to extract one, spat on the paper and scrubbed at the wound. The black mark came off. The bleeding started again.

      "Don't do that," muttered Gary, and he took my hand and stuck my finger in his mouth. I felt his tongue swirl over the wound before he pushed my hand back at me.

      "Leave it this time. It'll heal faster," he said.

      "Did your mum ever use her own spit to clean your face?"

      Gary looked both bemused and faintly disgusted. "Yes."

      "Did you like it?"

      "Not after I was about three. Oh." Some moments later he thought of a comeback. "Mum-spit doesn't have healing properties. Mine does."

      Which was true. Still. "Next time, spit on a hanky."

      "Try not to let there be a next time."

      Our conversation had, I thought, been quiet and unheeded, but I caught Smith watching us speculatively. He still had the blue bag in one hand.

      "Shouldn't you be putting that in the fridge for Mundy?" I suggested.

      The sound of shattering glass cascaded over whatever response he'd been about to make, this time coming from the downstairs bar. Smith cursed, thrust the bag at me and ran for the stairs. He had a gun in his hand, and for all I hadn't known he was carrying one, it didn't surprise me in the least. It frightened me though, more than anything else I'd seen. Guns were a more commonplace violence, and more alien to me than the undead. My life is weird like that.

      Smith didn't get far. Two steps down, and three ear-splitting bangs - gunfire obviously - were followed by the gut-churning sound of a grown man's scream and its abrupt halt.

      A body came flying up out of the stairwell. Up. At speed. It was Jack, arms and legs swinging floppily. He collided with Smith and they fell in a tangle of limbs at the top of the stairs.

      You would think by now that I would know to run away from trouble; but I needed to know what was going on, and how thoroughly I was cut off from the only exit for those of us who couldn't climb walls. I ran to the stairs and peered into the dark.

      A ghostly face resolved out of the gloom at the bottom of the stairwell. White blond hair framing a solemn, almost pretty countenance. Most of the details were fuzzy, but his eyes were intense.

      "Be gone," he said, with a terrible smile. "Run, sinner, or be purged."

      The words, in a strange accent, were ridiculous, like a schlocky horror film villain. I wanted to give him a librarian-glare. Surely you can do better than that, emo kid. I didn't get that far. He raised his hand, and in it was a bottle, filled part way with pink liquid. A rag was stuffed into the neck of it. That was less on the Dastardly Dan side.

       Oh shit. So that's what a Molotov cocktail looks like.

      "Abe?" A different voice roared out of the back room, hoarse and angry, "Where the hell are you? That wasn't the bloody plan! Get back here!"

      The boy - Abe, I assumed - kept his eyes fixed on mine. He took two steps back, almost disappearing in the shadows, then a flame flicked on and touched the rag, which blazed into life.

      "Run," he said, grinning, like even if I ran it wouldn't help, and he threw the firebomb up the staircase. I recoiled as it splintered on the top step and the fire bloomed across the stairs, the banister, the floor.

      Smith had scrambled out from under Jack's motionless body. Jack remained unmoving as the corner of his coat began to smoke and burn. I reached for him, thinking to beat out the flames with my hands if I had to, but Smith shoved me back.

      "No point now. Dead as a fucking dodo," he explained gruffly, "We gotta get out of here."

      Poor Jack. When he'd