“It’s not coffee I want,” Kayla said, glancing at the bag I was carrying.
“Suit yourselves,” Potter shrugged, crossing the waiting room and going to the door. “Before we settle down, I’m going to make sure that there’s no one else around.” Then, he was gone, stepping back out onto the platform and into the storm.
Without saying a word, I handed my rucksack to Kayla. Unhesitatingly, she unfastened it and removed three tubes of Lot 13. Kayla handed one to Isidor and offered me the other.
“No thanks,” I said.
“Okay,” Kayla sighed. She unscrewed the remaining bottle, tilted back her head, and poured the thick pink liquid into her mouth.
With my stomach beginning to cramp for the red stuff, I went after Potter. The platform was deserted. I made my way along it, when suddenly I was grabbed and dragged through a door set into the wall halfway up the platform. I found myself in a bathroom. There was no lighting, but I could see him clearly enough in the dark. Potter locked the door behind me, and as if knowing why I had gone in search of him, he rolled down the collar of his coat and turned his neck towards me. Without saying anything, I darted across the bathroom and sank my teeth into his neck. Blood washed into my mouth, and it tasted coppery and sweet. It felt hot as it gushed over my tongue and down my throat. As his blood hit the pit of my stomach, the cramps eased. Even so, I kept drinking from him. Potter held me in his arms, and I felt him shudder against me.
Slowly, he eased me off him but I didn’t want to stop, not just yet, and I tried to bite his neck again. The cramps inside me became nothing more than a series of butterflies, and I knew that it was more than just his blood that I now wanted. Potter entwined his fingers in my hair and pulled my face towards his. I only had to look into his black eyes to see that by sharing his blood with me, he now wanted his fill. Roughly, he pressed his lips against my mouth, and I could feel his tongue wrap itself around mine. With his free hand, he started to pull my coat from me. I felt it slide down my back and onto the floor. He then ran his fingers up the length of my neck. Finding a vein pulsating just beneath the surface of my skin, he plunged his fangs into it. At once I felt dizzy and lightheaded as my blood pumped into his mouth. How long he drank from me, I do not know; but when I felt so dizzy that I was sure I was going to faint, Potter took his mouth from my neck.
Then, kissing my mouth again, he pushed me against the sink where he put his hand up my top and ran them across my breasts. With my head spinning and feeling dizzy, I loosened the buckle that held up his trousers and worked them down. Removing his hands from beneath my top, he hurriedly yanked my jeans down over my hips and turned me away from him.
“You want this, don’t you?” He breathed down my neck.
“You know I need you,” I pleaded. Pressing the flats of my hands against the mirror, Potter pushed himself into me. Our lovemaking was quick, almost frenzied, the act of drinking one another’s blood turning us both on. I didn’t understand why or how, but just like in the summerhouse, it was an act so intense and intimate, that it made my whole body ache for him. The climax of our lovemaking was like a wave of unbearable pleasure. Turning me around to face him again, Potter pressed his lips over mine, and I felt his rough stubble prickle my skin like needlepoints. Our kissing was as passionate as was our lovemaking again, and still I felt unsatisfied. With a shove of my claws, I pushed him away from me. He crashed into the wall, shattering the mirror fixed to it.
Taking hold of him, I pushed him down onto the floor. Kicking my jeans free, I lowered myself onto him and as I did, I covered his chest with kisses. His skin felt cold and tight, his chest firm. Moving my hips back and forth on him, he closed his eyes, as my hair dangled just inches from his face. Losing his fingers in it, he pulled my face towards his, but instead of kissing my lips, he covered my breasts with his mouth. He freed one of his hands from my hair and traced his claws down the small of my back. His touch was light, but painful, and I arched my back and shuddered. Then, forcing me onto my back and pinning my wrists to the floor, Potter made love to me again. But this time, it was slower, each movement more deliberate and precise than the last. I wrapped my legs around his back and pulled him deeper into me. At that moment, nothing else seemed to matter; it was like nothing else existed apart from me and Potter.
“I love you, tiger,” he panted, his voice sounding broken.
“I love you more,” I breathed, when all I wanted to do was scream it out loud.
“Sometimes making love to you isn’t enough,” he gasped. “I want more of you. You drive me fucking insane.”
“And drinking my blood – isn’t that enough?” I moaned, as he moved faster above me.
“It’s a start,” he whispered and continued to make love to me until we both collapsed in each other’s arms.
When we returned to the waiting room sometime later, Sam was still asleep on one of the leather benches, and Kayla was curled up on the other. She opened her eyes as we came in, the wind blowing in behind us.
“Did you see anyone?” she asked.
“No”, Potter said, before I’d the chance to say anything.
Isidor was looking at the levers sticking out from the wall to the left of the tiny ticket office. Hearing us come in, he looked around and said, “Look what I found.”
He held up an old-fashioned radio.
“Great, we’ll be able to have a party,” Potter said, hunkering down on the floor, where he made himself comfortable by leaning against the wall and crossing his feet at the ankles.
“Actually, I can’t get a signal,” Isidor told him. “All I can get is static. We must be too remote.”
I cuddled up next to Potter and glanced at Sam. His skin didn’t look so sallow as before and his face was no longer covered in sweat.
Perhaps his fever had broken after all,
I thought.
“So what do we do now?” Isidor asked, sitting on the last remaining bench.
“We wait for the storm to clear,” I said. “Hopefully it will have eased by morning.” Then, as if speaking too soon, the night sky fizzled with lightning and a clash of thunder. Rain battered the windows, and I could hear it drumming off the waiting room roof.
“And what if a train doesn’t come through?” Isidor asked. “This place doesn’t look as if it’s like a main commuter station or anything like that.”
“Then we think of something else,” Potter said, half closing his eyes. “You know, we use our brains. I know that puts you at an unfair disadvantage, Isidor.”
“Fuck off!” Isidor suddenly said.
I was shocked to hear him say this, as I couldn’t ever recall hearing Isidor swear. Potter looked just as shocked, as he opened his eyes and stared at Isidor. With half a smile tugging at the corner of his lips, Potter said, “What did you say?”
“I told you to fuck off,” Isidor snapped again, and I could hear anger – frustration – bubbling away in his voice. “What, has your ego got so fucking big that it’s covered your ears and made you deaf?”
“Isidor,” Kayla gasped and sat up. “What’s gotten into you?”
“He has,” Isidor barked and pointed at Potter. “I’m sick and tired of him taking the piss out of me all the time.”
“Look, can we do this tomorrow or something?” Potter moaned. “I need some sleep. We all do, by the look of things.”
“The only thing I’m tired of around here, is you,” Isidor spat, staring at Potter.
“Okay, kid...” Potter started.
“And I’m not a fucking kid!” Isidor shouted. “I’m eighteen years old. Stop treating me like a child.”
“Grow up then,” Potter shouted back. “You’re always coming out with dumb stuff all the time.”
“Okay, so I don’t know as much as you do about cartoons and stuff,” Isidor snapped back at him. “But who really gives a shit about Scooby-Doo, Captain-fucking-Caveman, or some stupid mouse?”
“Stuart Little,” Potter smiled.
“Who gives a shit!”
Isidor almost screamed and stood up. “You don’t know anything about me. You only know what I’ve told you.”
“So why haven’t you told us?” I asked softly, seeing that Isidor was really upset.
“Because people never listen to me!” he roared. “Everyone just thinks I’m dumb. Good old Isidor. He’s good to have around in a fight – but I’m not much more than that. But I am more. I know I’m more.”
“Like what?” I asked him, my voice still soft and compassionate.
“Like I knew that Luke was really Elias Munn,” he said. “I knew it was him back in The Hollows, but I was too scared to say anything."
“Why?” I asked him.
“Would you have believed me?” Isidor shouted. “No – you would’ve just taken the piss. Potter would have taken the piss. He would’ve called me numb nuts.” Then, turning on Potter, Isidor said, “You wouldn’t have believed me because Luke was your friend – he was your best mate – and I wasn’t. I was just the joker in the pack – Shaggy-fucking-Doo. Just like Shaggy-Doo, I provide the laughs. He never gets to solve the mystery, does he? It’s always the others – the clever ones. Well, I did solve the mystery way before any of you, but I sat back and let that animal kill my sister, then murder me, because I was just too fucking scared to speak up.”
“Scared of what?” I asked, starting to feel ashamed of myself for not knowing that he had been feeling like this for so long.
“I was scared that you wouldn’t believe me – that you would call me stupid,” and he looked at Potter, who sat on the floor, that look of arrogance wiped from his face. “But I do know stuff and I can’t stay silent again. I don’t care if you laugh and take the piss out of me. I don’t care what you call me. I won’t watch my friends walk into danger again.”
“What do you know?” Potter asked him, and for once, Potter spoke to him as his equal.
Taking a deep breath as if trying to calm himself, Isidor finally said, “I’ve seen that word
push
before.”
“Where?” Potter asked, his eyes narrowing.
“I saw it before the world was even
pushed
, if that makes sense,” Isidor told us. “And I have the proof right here.”
“What proof?” I asked him gently.
Patting his chest, Isidor said, “Right in here.”
Then, sitting down again on the bench, and with the storm howling outside, Isidor began to talk. This is what he told us.
Chapter Nine
Isidor
Melody Rose stood out from the rest. Not because of anything she said or did, it was her ordinariness, that’s what drew attention to her.
I was fourteen, and had never dared leave The Hollows, not once. Some of the other Vampyrus I hung out with had shared stories of how they had snuck above ground. I was fascinated by what they told me, although some of what I heard I wondered if it was even true. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know anything about how the humans lived and the inventions that they had created. Over hundreds of years, other Vampyrus who had ventured above ground had returned with picture books, magazines, and newspapers. One Vampyrus, he was just a kid, I think his name was Burton, had returned one day with this odd-looking contraption, which shone moving pictures against the cave walls. It was like magic. He said the humans called it a
movie projector
.
My mum, well, the woman who I believed to be my mother, told me how many years before I’d been born, Burton had returned below ground with a magical roll of pictures. Claiming that he had magic moving pictures of the most beautiful creature that had ever existed below or above ground, he gathered as many Vampyrus into the great chamber beneath the Dewy Pyramids and projected the magic pictures of this most beautiful human. As he stood before the hundreds of Vampyrus crammed into the chamber before him, Burton proudly announced that her name was Marilyn Monroe. During that short clip of film, my mother told me how the male Vampyrus had whooped, whistled, and cheered as she had stood in a flowing white dress which rippled up around her thighs. With a wistful smile on her face, my mother told me it was because of those magical moving pictures of that beautiful woman that hundreds of male Vampyrus left The Hollows the following day in search of their own creature as stunning as the one they had seen on the chamber walls.
When I asked my mother what had become of this Burton, who had loved the magic moving pictures, she explained that, like the others, he had disappeared above ground.
“Some say that he fell so in love with those moving pictures, that he spent the rest of his life learning how to make his own,” she said.
I loved hearing stories about above ground and I wanted to be able to tell my own. The humans sounded magical to me. They had so much and did so much. But the one thing that grabbed my attention the most – and I just couldn’t believe it to be true – was that humans wanted to be the same. They didn’t like other humans who were different in any way. I got the feeling that it scared them. But I wouldn’t know for sure unless I ventured above ground and saw these humans for myself.
My mother never knew of my adventures above ground – not until much later, that is. Once I’d made up my mind to go above ground, it took me about a week to pluck up the courage to venture out of The Hollows. It took me three days to find a route that I was happy with. I could have followed the paths that my friends and had taken, but I wanted my own. I didn’t want mother to find out, you see. I wouldn’t find out for some years why she was scared of me going above ground. Perhaps she was worried, that like the kid Burton, I would fall in love with something and never go back to her.
The path I finally chose I found by chance. I lived with my mother in a hollow carved into the face of the Ageless Hill. I often wandered alone, conjuring stories inside my head about the world I had yet to see which existed above me. It was while I was walking one chilly afternoon that I noticed a root which protruded through the ground from above. It was so cold, the root was covered in a white frost and it glistened above like a stalagmite.