Futile Flame

  Title Page

  FUTILE FLAME

  Book Two Of The Vampire Gene

  by

  Sam Stone

  Publisher Information

  First published as Futile Flame in 2009

  by The House of Murky Depths

  www.murkydepths.com

  This digital edition published in 2010 under licence to

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  Futile Flame © 2009, 2010 Sam Stone

  Cover by Martin Deep

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Prologue

  Present

  Cry.

  It won’t make any difference. Once we have set our minds to possess your blood then nothing will save you. Though mostly we are merciful and only take what we need, sometimes we need to kill. Lilly has taught me, in her simple fashion, what it is to be truly immortal. We are above the law. Fear of the future, fear of mankind, is a form of self-delusion I have held for centuries. Immortals cannot be killed by man. But now I am sounding somewhat biblical. Forgive me. Quoting from the past is such a part of my nature.

  Plead.

  The woman won’t stand a chance. Her mousey hair, plain face, dowdy clothes and downcast eyes are all part of the attraction. She is older than she seems, almost forty and still single. Our victim is a real ‘nobody’. Already I have plucked from her mind the lack of family interest in her life. She will not be missed. She is called Ellie and works for the local church. I am reminded of the Beatles song. There is an irony in the similarity and the chances of us finding our own Eleanor Rigby. It makes her all the more appealing.

  I am Gabriele Caccini, Italian by birth and vampire by nature. I am over four hundred years old. And Lilly, she is my love and my only successful re-born mate in all that time. All my other loves died on the night I loved them, the night I took their blood to satisfy my own hunger.

  I look to Lilly as she licks her lips. She has decided; tonight we will kill. Lilly’s teeth grow over her lip as we follow Ellie through the streets towards her empty, lonely flat. Ellie hitches her rucksack up onto her shoulder and hurries along past a noisy bar as four drunken men tumble out. They don’t notice her: she almost has a talent for invisibility as she scurries up the street. She stops hesitantly in a graffiti-covered doorway and searches her pocket for keys. This unobtrusive entrance marks her home. A spider spins a web in one corner and I notice that the paint is peeling from the door. She lives above a shop. It’s called Booze Snooze. It’s a bargain drinks store and attracts all kinds of unsavoury characters. The doorway to her flat is dark and hidden. It is full of shadows. Good. Even the access aids us.

  We sweep forward in a cloud of invisibility, but some sixth sense makes Ellie glance frantically over her shoulder. Her eyes are a non-descript brown. She cannot see us, but anxiety makes her heart leap as she feels a stir in the atmosphere.

  Death is coming, Ellie.

  I can see the terror flicker in her eyes. It’s as though she is aware of us as she peers into the dark in our direction. We stand across the road, waiting for her to open her door. The streets are busy, too many people passing, a stream of traffic: all of this could make our sport more risky but it only adds to the excitement. I feel aroused as I take Lilly’s hand in mine, rubbing my thumb against her palm. She shudders. I feel her sexual energy surge through my fingers.

  ‘I want her,’ she murmurs.

  I chuckle quietly in my throat. ‘Wanting’ has so little to do with sex for us and everything to do with need.

  ‘Whatever Lilly wants, Lilly gets,’ I whisper, kissing her neck.

  She curls into my arms. Her anticipation ripples around me. I kiss her passionately and then we turn, still embracing. We watch Ellie like voyeurs, our heads pressed together, as she fumbles with the lock in her front door. It creaks and groans. It needs oiling. Her aura is a mass of memories and thoughts, mostly mundane. Ellie’s life has been one of drudgery. She has never experienced luxury, has never felt her life had any meaning. She has barely noticed the years pass by because she has been so focused on surviving the daily hardships and on worshipping a God who does not know she exists. Now, at least, something different is happening in her world and her ending will have some significance. There is poetry in death. Mortals don’t know it. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Other times, sickening. Violent death leaves an imprint on society. Ellie’s end may even be reported, giving her some form of immortality even though her life has added nothing to the world.

  Blood oozes from my lip as I bite down in subconscious response. I am imagining her taste. Will her blood be bitter? Or merely tired? Blood itself has an essence of the person’s life. It tells a story. I have hundreds of them. The memories of a life taken remain in my subconscious to be recalled at will. I suspect, though, that Ellie’s will not be so memorable.

  A double-decker bus turns the corner and drives slowly down the street towards us. I watch it with curiosity as it slows and comes to a stop, blocking our view of Ellie’s doorway. A tall skinny boy in a hooded top jumps off the bus, avoiding the steps and narrowly missing us as we step back in a reflex to prevent a collision. The boy shudders as his body touches our invisible auras, and he pulls his hood farther around his ears as he walks down the street towards the pubs and the nightlife. The bus moves away.

  Ellie is gone.

  I look up at the flat and wait for the telltale lights to switch on but nothing happens.

  ‘Where did she . . ?’ Lilly asks, drawing away from me.

  ‘She must have changed her mind and gone somewhere else. Perhaps she couldn’t open the door.’ I scan the area for a trace of her aura. ‘This way.’

  We run down the street in the direction from which the bus came. Lilly tugs at my hand. She is hungry. We haven’t fed for two weeks. We pick up Ellie’s scent a few blocks away. Lilly rushes headlong into a narrow side street then stops.

  ‘She was here. But now...’

  ‘Gone. Again.’

  We stare at each other, confused. Then I turn and look down the street, examining every house. It is a tapered terraced row with tiny front gardens that are made of concrete. Maybe she is visiting one of the occupants. A dull light throws shadows on the cream coloured blinds of the first house. Farther down I see a woman yanking the curtains closed over an upstairs bedroom window. There is nothing extraordinary about this road. Ellie’s essence is here but she isn’t, and I can’t sense her in any of the houses.

  Darkness.

  I feel a change in the air. I look up. There is a hollow patch in the sky and I experience a moment of disorientation. Something is falling. It seems like a black hole has disengaged itself from the rest of the heavens. It gathers momentum and I’m frozen, fascinated, as I watch it fall towards me.

  Lilly gasps, grabs my arm and pulls me away as something thumps to the ground at my feet, precisely where I’d been standing. The noise of breaking bones and punctured organs deafens my mind.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  Lilly bends to examine the body. It is Ellie. Her face is smashed but the smell of her blood is unmistakable. Her throat has been mauled as if an animal has attacked her, but we know different.

  ‘Vampire,’ Lilly whispers, confirming my thoughts. ‘But why steal her from us?’

  I shake my head. The only other vampire I know is Lucrezia and this is not her handiwork. I bend down. There is a thick black substance oozing from the gaping wound on Ellie’s neck. It is not blood.
Lilly reaches out to touch it.

  ‘Don’t,’ I hiss, grabbing her hand.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it looks unhealthy.’

  There is a wailing screech and we both look up as something leaps from wall to wall down the street. It is fast, agile and leaves an aura unlike any I have ever seen before. With a final triumphant cry, it soars up onto one of the rooftops and away.

  Lilly and I look at each other in silence.

  ‘What was that thing?’ she asks, but I can’t answer.

  It felt old. It smelt – unique. It oozed power. This creature is certainly an immortal. Vampiric in nature, though very different from us. For the first time in four hundred years I actually feel vulnerable. I have to find out who or what this entity, this creature, is and I know just the person to speak to.

  Chapter 1 – Present

  Mortuary

  ‘I suppose it is pointless to ask how you found me,’ Lucrezia says through her mask, raising her blood-covered hand as though in greeting.

  I sit down slowly on a wooden chair in the corner of the mortuary, well back from the gruesome spectacle of the female corpse she is dissecting. I can see her face framed by the cadaver’s blood and mud-caked feet.

  This cold, stark, white-painted room with its clinical cleanliness is the last place I would have expected such a vivacious creature to be working. But then, Lucrezia is always full of surprises.

  ‘When I want to find you, I can.’ I remain still, concerned that I might spook her.

  She is a magnet drawing me ever closer to her, despite my beautiful Lilly who keeps my feet firmly on the ground with her twenty-first-century-girl common sense.

  ‘And I, you.’

  I let this little piece of information sink in. So, she can always find me. Does she know then? Does she care that I have added to our numbers? Is Lilly in danger? Panic surges forward but I quickly quell the sensation; animals can sense fear and so can vampires.

  ‘I mean you no harm,’ I say calmly, hoping she feels the same, although going up against each other would be an interesting prospect, one I’ve often wondered about. Can one immortal kill another?

  Lucrezia puts down the large scalpel she was using as I entered. She gazes down at the ‘Y’ shaped incision, which curves from the shoulders, under the girl’s breasts and joins at the sternum. The line traces down as far as her pubis, leaving a faint red stain on the blue white skin. Lucrezia removes the blue theatre mask from her face and looks at me over the rim of her glasses. The glass in them is clear, not prescription because her eyesight is perfect. Does she wear them as a disguise or because she thinks they make her look more intellectual? She turns away, reaches behind her to an instrument trolley and lifts a small saw with a round head; it springs to life in her hands, purring like a cat being caressed by a loving owner.

  ‘Do you know what this is, Gabriele?’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘It’s a bone saw. I use it to cut through the breast bone and the skull of a corpse in order to determine the cause of death.’

  Lucrezia demonstrates. She reaches down and roughly scrapes back the skin from the girl’s chest, exposing the ribs beneath. The saw bites into the bare bone of the dead girl as she lies on the stainless steel slab. Minute particles of bone dust and traces of blood spin off into the air and splash briefly onto Lucrezia’s clean blue theatre robes and across the lenses of her glasses but she presses harder until a loud crack echoes in the room. The saw’s purring changes pitch. Like the song of a Siren, it is hopelessly hypnotic, powerfully beautiful. Hideous. Though all too brief. The silence is deafening as she turns the instrument off.

  Her gloved hands reach down, fingers pressing along the edges of the cut bone until they find their grip. The wound yawns as she pulls the two halves apart with a practised shrug.

  ‘Are you trying to psyche me out?’ I smile.

  There is no horror in the dead for me, not since I spent several nights locked in a cabin of the Princess Marie with my dead wife Amanda. I had watched her corpse rot, denying that I had killed her as she failed to rise. So, no, Lucrezia’s behaviour is far from intimidating.

  ‘Why? Is it working?’

  ‘No. It reminds me of a movie I saw once – Re-Animator. A cheap, nasty, slash-horror. Not frightening, but rather silly.’

  She stops, her hand still inside the chest cavity.

  ‘Mmmm. So you think I’m rather silly? Well actually it might surprise you to know: I’m just working; certainly not trying to gross you out, Gabriele.’

  I stand slowly as she lifts the heart from the girl’s chest with infinite care. She places the still, diseased organ onto a weighing scale that hangs beside the autopsy table. She looks at the LCD below briefly before turning to the unit behind her, where a computer with a flat screen monitor and a plastic covered keyboard waits. She taps quickly on the keyboard and the weight of the heart registers on the monitor.

  ‘What do you want?’

  As she speaks, she removes her soiled gloves and throws them casually onto the bare stomach of the corpse.

  ‘You know I look you up from time to time. Sometimes you’ve made sure I saw you. Like the last time – your club in New York.’

  It was the perfect hunting ground for a vampire and I understood why she would want to be there. Instead of her usual indifference Lucrezia had warned me of the forthcoming AIDS epidemic. Then, she had tried to seduce me.

  ‘That’s ancient history. I only do real work now.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lucrezia raises an eyebrow and looks at me; she seems surprised by the question. She stares at me for a moment as if considering her answer. Perhaps she is unsure herself why she ‘works’.

  ‘I want to be useful. I want to learn new things.’

  ‘And this coming from a woman who only wanted to experience new male lovers,’ I laugh. ‘What’s really in it for you? Because you know I don’t believe that.’

  ‘That’s a bit of an assumption. Who said all of my lovers were male?’

  Lucrezia strips off her scrubs, stuffing them into a basket under the cabinet, to reveal blue jeans and a tee-shirt. She removes the glasses, placing them beside the computer. She is beautiful: blonde natural curls, tied back into a neat ponytail with pale green eyes and a slender, but curvaceous frame. She looks like a young woman, barely old enough to be an intern, but I know better. She was born in 1480 and did not die in 1519 regardless of the historical records that say she did but she looks to all intents and purposes like a modern girl. Even I have difficulty remembering that she is a monster when she looks at me through such youthful features.

  ‘I do not waste my immortality, Gabriele. Unlike you with your playboy lifestyle. I use my accumulated knowledge to inform my work.’

  She stands with her hand on her hip. She is young, stunning and I burst out laughing.

  ‘What is so amusing?’

  ‘Well... I just don’t know how you get away with it. Looking like you do.’

  Her eyes narrow slightly and for a moment I see her age and experience reflected in her black pupils as rage surges into them in a visible rush. She straightens her spine, losing the sloppy modern stance she’s adopted and her old arrogance reappears in the straight line of her shoulders. She, like me, has always been an excellent mimic.

  ‘At least that posture is more like the real you.’

  ‘What would you know?’ She folds her arms over her chest.

  ‘What are you really doing here, Gabriele? Because I know it is not that you felt like looking me up.’

  I imitate her posture before I realise I’m doing it. We are two old enemies unsure if the feud still remains.

  I force my arms down by my side trying to remain still for fear that she will think I’m defensive. After all, I need her knowledge, despite my ridicule of it. I need to know more of her past. Because then maybe I can understand how my only success, after years of trying to make a mate, was Lilly – a direct desc
endant of my own daughter, Marguerite. More than ever I need to know if there is any threat to our continued existence. The entity we encountered in Turin and later in England has left me with an uneasiness that I cannot shake. I’m afraid for Lilly more than myself. How then can I persuade Lucrezia to tell me about her life without revealing too much about mine?

  ‘Something has happened.’

  ‘Really? And I’m interested because?’

  ‘It may affect you.’

  ‘You’ve told someone, haven’t you? You’ve fallen for some little tart who’ll die once you fuck and feed, because everyone knows that’s how you get off, and then...’

  ‘Whoa... How would you know how I “get off”, Lucrezia? You, who only have one-night stands. I’ve built relationships, loved even, while you isolate yourself by working in a mortuary. What’s that, some morbid obsession with death? Or maybe there’s something more to it?’

  She is silent, face blank, and I begin to regret my outburst as she slowly turns to the body of the dead girl. I find myself wondering who she is, how she died. I scrutinise her face and, as if she understands my interest in the girl, Lucrezia explains.

  ‘Poor kid. Only twenty-two. Major heart failure after using “E” for the first time. Seen the state of the heart? Looks like one of our lot sucked it dry,’ Lucrezia tells me as she picks up the heart and places it back inside the dead girl’s chest.

  ‘How do you know it was drugs?’ I ask despite myself.

  ‘Experience. Plus I can smell it on her. Here,’ she beckons me forward with her now blood stained fingers. ‘Breathe in. Can you smell that?’

  ‘Yes. Sickly sweet. But subtle.’

  ‘Exactly. A tantalising smell. Prolonged abuse would give her organs the odour of Royal Jelly. So, clearly a first timer. Of course, I have to back myself up with medical evidence which means blood analysis and pathology on the remains.’