Language in the Blood

  Chapter 24: Serge

  As Roberto piloted me towards Monaco, and I left my fabulous life behind, I thought about the demons I needed to put to bed. I needed to grow up a bit and deal with things and, if I was to decide my future, I knew I had first to look at my past.

  For many years I had, from time to time, felt a presence in my life. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it but I had the impression that it was another vampire. I’d been very surprised when I discovered Nanette’s nature as this impression had led me to think I had a ‘vampdar’ that told me when I was in the presence of another – but Nanette hadn’t registered. I began to imagine that the presence I felt couldn’t be just any old vampire; it must be my maker. I had always been curious about how and why he had made me, and the fact that I had felt his presence over the years made me determined to find him. Who was he and why did he still have an interest in me?

  I’d had the foresight to send Roberto to Cannes on the train to retrieve my BMW, so now it was there waiting for me on the quay in Monaco. I pondered where to go next. Paris was always a good place in a crisis so I programmed the GPS to where I needed to stop for petrol and daylight hideaways. I wanted to stop off at a hotel along the way and try and contact Nanette via one of the chatrooms. She may have been unnerving, but she was the only person I knew that had met their own maker and I needed to know about her experience in order to track down my own.

  I was about to start the engine, when there was a knock on the windscreen.

  ‘Emmy!’ I was surprised to see George’s daughter. ‘Hi what are you doing here?’

  ‘Mr Blair. I’m so glad to see you. I need some help.’ She looked worried.

  Oh no you don’t! If you think I’m going to piss George off and have some SAS-trained super-motivated vampire slayer on my back, you have another think coming!

  ‘Listen, dear. Whatever problem you have, trust me, your dad is the best person to turn to!’ I said starting the engine of my BMW.

  ‘But you know my dad. He says you’re his oldest friend so you know he is a bit of a... erm... as you English say… a bit of a nutter.’

  ‘Well, A: I am not English and B: your dad is not a nutter. Please trust him and tell him what your problem is,’ I said revving the motor impatiently.

  ‘It’s just that a boyfriend stole all my stuff and I told dad it was a mugger. I really want my stuff back and I know he is hanging out in St Tropez. I am worried my dad would beat him up,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry, dear. Really not my problem,’ I said lightly.

  ‘But Cameron! Please!’ she insisted.

  ‘It’s Mr Blair to you, dear. Now, I am in something of a rush and I’ve got to dash.’

  I saw her tearing up, but even those blue eyes and golden locks couldn’t wipe the image of George wielding a wooden stake from my mind.

  ‘Look. I have to go now, but if your dad ever really can’t help you, send me a message on Facebook. I’m Cruftslover.’ I wound up the window and drove off. I didn’t look back.

  I headed for the motorway, hoping to reach Lyon before sunrise. I found a hotel with free wifi for the day and monitored the chatrooms for some Nanette activity. I didn’t have to wait long, but I had to be careful in case my internet traffic was monitored, so I just posted a message and hoped it would work.

  MacFangs: To the one that drains old suckers, the others that made us have not been eradicated. Below what caused Troy’s downfall we shall meet.

  QueenofFangs: Do you want me to come to Paris, or Helen? I think they were equally guilty.

  MacFangs: There’s a place called Helen?

  QueenofFangs: There is one in the USA, in Georgia.

  MacFangs: Yes, go to that one.

  QueenofFangs: So I assume it is Paris?

  MacFangs: I was trying to avoid plastering that all over the internet, but yes.

  No date, no time, but I knew we would find one another somehow and I would be waiting. I was surprised she’d agreed so readily to come all the way to Paris knowing how much she hated me. I drove on to Paris the next night and abandoned my car not too far from an entrance to the catacombs.

  The Parisian catacombs had been a good hideout on many occasions. I’d hidden some stuff from the 1920s down there, but with all the artsy happenings and rediscovery of Paris’s subterranean I had read about, I doubted it would still be there. As I re-familiarised myself with the subterranean network of tunnels, I found that the place was overrun with people and it was hard to find a quiet spot. Sometimes I’d come across an illegal rave in one of the rooms or stumble on a tour group going around all the interesting graves. There were also a lot of artists frequenting the tunnels creating colourful art on the walls with their spray cans. I even spotted a few sculptures on my travels. One day I got talking to a dreadlocked hipster and asked him what had attracted him to the catacombs.

  ‘No police here, man,’ he explained, posing in front of a rather good mural, ‘I can just get on and create my art.’

  ‘There are quite a few of you down here now, do you not want your work to be seen by a wider audience?’ I asked him.

  ‘They call us cataphiles and I get a good-sized audience. And they are like-minded,’ he told me. ‘There’s a great community down here with performing artists, sculptors and painters like me.’

  We talked about art for a while and he showed me some of his friends’ works. Some of it I liked very much. He told me his name was Jonas and before he left he invited me to one of their get togethers at the weekend.

  I met Jonas and his friends a few days later at their weekend gathering where we discussed art and listened to music. It was good, and reminded me a lot of my time with Hélène and the Paris of the early 1920s, but this time there was loud techno music and people kept checking their phones and iPads even though they couldn’t have had any reception down there. I left when they started smoking joints and wanted me to smoke too. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. A short, dumpy girl with a dirty anorak and messy hair followed me out.

  ‘Hey! You’ll get lost without a light,’ she shouted after me. I hadn’t stopped and thought that my not needing a torch would seem odd to a human.

  ‘Oh, it’s OK. I don’t live far from here and I could find my way blind,’ I told her.

  ‘Can I see where you live?’

  Crap. I had made myself a comfortable place in a less frequented room, but it was rather out of the way and she’d be astounded that I could find my way there in the pitch dark.

  ‘My place is still a bit away. Are you sure you want to leave your friends and follow a complete stranger into some dark tunnels?’ I asked.

  She hesitated and then said, ‘I’ll ask my friend Linda to come with us.’

  Soon, Linda, Anaïs, some torches and a bottle of wine joined me for a private party chez Cameron. I didn’t like Anaïs – she was a tad grubby and she was stoned. Linda I liked a lot more as she was clean and not too stoned by the looks of it. I slipped a sleeping pill into Anaïs’ drink and hoped that I was Linda’s type. I was more groomed than the rest of her friends, but hopefully living underground in the catacombs would give me enough street cred to get into her knickers.

  Anaïs quickly fell asleep and to my delight Linda didn’t mind and she crawled closer. She was pleased to speak English with me as she said she still found speaking French difficult and tiring and late at night she’d rather gave it a rest. She told me she was there as an au pair for a year and hoped to study French the following year in her home town of Sheffield. Soon we were making love, quietly so as not to wake her friend. It wasn’t great, as she didn’t want to get naked in the cold underground room and the floor was hard and uncomfortable. I think we were both a little disappointed at the end of it.

  She lit a cigarette and poured herself another glass of wine. The conversation was a bit awkward and banal and after a while she asked, ‘Do you have somewhere I could brush my teeth?’

  I gave her a bottle of water and she disappeared into a tu
nnel with her torch. With her gone for a while I was able to sink my fangs into Anaïs. I needed to be careful not to drink too much as the girl had smoked a lot of hashish and god knows what else.

  Linda came back, lay down next to me and got ready to go to sleep. I cuddled into her and got ready for the drugs I’d ingested to take their effect. I had vivid nightmares. Nanette chased me around the catacombs with a stake and I could have sworn she was standing right next to me at one point. I must have yelled out loud, as Linda sat up and switched her torch on.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, alarmed.

  I told her it was just a nightmare and checked my watch. It was only four in the morning, so I told her to go back to sleep. She moved herself over to the other side of the room and soon drifted off. When I felt the effects of the drug wearing off, I switched on my laptop. I couldn’t get an internet connection this deep below ground, so I had to make do with some games I had stored on the computer.

  I woke the girls up at nine o’clock and offered to walk them back to an entranceway. Linda was pretending nothing had happened between us, as I think I was probably meant to be her friend’s date. I stopped in the tunnel when I saw the daylight ahead, kissed them both on the cheeks and said I’d see them around. They disappeared into the daylight and I turned round to go back to my room.

  Suddenly, she was just there. Nanette had found me! In over 300 kilometres of tunnelling she’d just walked right up to me.

  ‘So what do you want, dog breath?’ she asked.

  ‘Hi Nanette. Would you like a tour?’ I offered with an inviting sweep of my arm.

  ‘Cameron. Make it short. I’m really not in the mood for your stuff. I can’t believe I came all the way to Paris to talk to you. I have a good mind to stake you and do everyone a favour,’ she said, none too pleased.

  ‘Wow Nanette. I just dreamed that you did exactly that, but anyway... I wanted to talk to you about your maker. Can you tell me about him?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ she said walking back in the direction of my hideout.

  ‘Hang on a minute. It’s morning. How long have you been here?’ I asked her and she looked at me with those weird golden eyes and grimaced.

  ‘Too long. And I don’t think I will ever erase the image of your pale, naked bottom from my memory.’

  ‘Eeeuw! You were watching?’ I cried in disgust.

  ‘I thought your use of a sleeping pill was inspired. I might try that one. The girl really didn’t feel a thing, not even when I bit her too!’ she said, walking on.

  ‘Does the hashish not affect you?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, it did! I think we vampires really can’t cope with drugs. You only bite a junky once. I slept the hashish off in one of the tunnels. Now why do you need to talk to me?’ she asked, as we reached my hideout.

  ‘I think my maker is following me.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘I can sense him. Now and then I just feel he is there, watching me.’

  Nanette sat down and thought for a while. ‘I think maybe it’s only our makers we can sense. I didn’t sense you until you became such an idiot and started to give the game away. Apart from my maker I’ve never sensed anyone else.’

  ‘Tell me. You met and staked your maker didn’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘You heard that story then?’ she asked me suspiciously. ‘I never told you.’

  She couldn’t have been happy that I knew that story, she had carelessly divulged it in a chatroom. Once I’d realised QueenofFangs was Nanette, I’d remembered it.

  ‘I need to know my maker. Your story might help me find mine,’ I told her.

  ‘Why do you want to find the bastard?’ she asked.

  ‘Bastard indeed. I’ve never understood why he made me and then just left. I’m also starting to agree with you, that I’m a bit of a nuisance and that there probably shouldn’t be any more of me,’ I said.

  ‘First sensible thing I ever heard coming out of your mouth,’ she said emphatically.

  ‘Who knows how many this vampire has created?’

  ‘The thought of you having idiot brothers and sisters running around Europe is making me feel quite nauseous,’ she said with utter distaste.

  ‘Apart from you, I don’t know any other vampires. I need to know how my maker has coped over the years and why he has looked in on me but not made contact,’ I went on.

  ‘So. Are you going to kill him?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t know yet, but does the wooden stake in the heart really work?’ I asked her.

  ‘Well, I tried it and the next thing I knew there was a little heap of dust,’ she said.

  ‘Do you think it would be frowned upon by the others?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ she said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  ‘So what wood did you use?’ I asked.

  ‘For heaven’s sake Cameron, I grabbed the first broom stick that came to hand. I didn’t stop to see what type of wood it was,’ she said impatiently.

  ‘Please. Tell me about your maker,’ I asked her again.

  She sighed. Then: ‘Serge made me because I reminded him of his wife. In 1845 he had managed to piss off a vampire by I don’t even remember what, but you know how petty we get when somebody annoys us.’

  ‘I do! I nearly set fire to a woman once for stealing my scooter,’ I said.

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ she asked me mockingly. Has she just accused me of being a soft wuss?

  ‘Well, I thought it was a bit extreme so I made her steal her parents’ dog instead.’ Nanette gave me one of her looks filled with loathing and then continued her story.

  ‘The vampire came to his house, killed his two small children and his wife, made him watch their murders and then made him a vampire to make him live with the memories for all eternity.’

  ‘Wow! So did he ever go after his maker?’ I asked.

  ‘He hunted and searched for this vampire for 25 years, but never managed to find him. Serge was rather pathetic you know. He would catch prey for me and let me have the first bite. He insisted on calling me Marie-Louise and kept telling me that now we would be together forever and that I was safe. After five days I couldn’t take it anymore, so I staked him,’ she told me calmly.

  ‘Poor guy,’ I said in mock compassion.

  ‘I think I did him and the world a favour. He had gone quite mad by living so long. He wanted to recreate his family and was stalking a family that had a child the same age as his oldest son. I mean, I wasn’t going to be looking after a vampire child for all eternity! I believe vampires do age and that they go a little peculiar over time. Bit like you really,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think that’s true! I’m as sharp as I used to be in the 1920s’ I said, outraged.

  ‘Then maybe you just weren’t that bright to start with, but you do have some weird habits,’ she said lighting a cigarette.

  ‘Have you ever even tried dog?’ I asked her.

  ‘We’ve all been hungry,’ she said. Suddenly I saw her face change. The façade came down and she looked vulnerable. ‘I need a favour Cameron,’ she said softly. I was surprised, but now I understood why she had come to Paris. As much as she disliked me, I was the only person she could reveal herself to. I was the only person that she could trust and that could help her.

  ‘Harold wasn’t as stupid as everyone thinks. He never did marry me,’ she told me. ‘When he dies I will, as his companion, inherit just 100,000 euros. The kids will get everything else.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound too bad for a nursing job with food and board included,’ I said looking at her with interest. She was very different now.

  ‘I still use my real paperwork. I’m called Wided Medjnoun and according to my passport I should be 53 years old. Once Harold dies I want to disappear and start a new life with a new identity. I think Harold has just a few weeks left,’ she told me.

  ‘So you need an introduction to my contacts?’ I asked.

  ‘I
f you don’t mind,’ she said looking at her feet. I realised that the hatred had come from envy and jealousy, the fact that I was independently wealthy, living it large, apparently without a care in the world and being dependent on no one. Then I had wrecked it all by one stupid murder! She would have killed to have my life and she was sure she wouldn’t have been so stupid. Wided, you are still a young vampire. Wait until the human blood makes its changes and then greed will take you over too!

  I promised I would call my contacts that evening and set up a meeting for her to get some new papers. I asked her to stay till nightfall and told her my life story. Then reluctantly she told me hers. I knew she’d ended her human days as a prostitute, but not much else.

  She told me she had left school at sixteen even though her teachers had said she was very bright. By the age of eighteen she had married a man called Ali Medjnoun, a second cousin who wanted to move from Algeria to France. Both sets of parents thought the two would be a good match.

  Wided hadn’t yet realised how pretty she was, but Ali had, and he jealously guarded his new wife. He controlled her every move, not even allowing her to go out and work. The couple didn’t have much money and arguments soon started. Her great misfortune was to discover that she couldn’t have children and Ali grew frustrated at her inability to bear him sons. He was a cruel man and would beat Wided and lock her in the house while he went out to work. At age 25, Wided couldn’t stand it anymore and she ran off to Marseille.

  Unable to hold down any legal, paid work, as she didn’t want her husband to find her, Wided soon caught the attention of a local pimp, Sahid. He took her in and gave her a place to stay, but he also raped her and made her work in his brothels. She was held captive with some other unfortunate girls for many years until one day Sahid got into a fight with another pimp and was gunned down in front of his brothel. Not knowing what else to do, and now in her 30s, Wided decided to stay on the game.

  Without a pimp, or a brothel to work from, she ended up working in some of the most dangerous parts of Marseille, picking up sailors on shore leave. These were the hunting grounds for the likes of me, and poor Wided met her end there. The vampire that made her was quite taken by her beauty and, as she’d explained already, wanted her to be his companion, but by this time Wided had had enough of all the evil bloodsucking bastards in the world, so she put a wooden stake through his heart. Wided died with him and Nanette rose like a phoenix from the ashes. She reinvented herself as a confident woman who used her beauty to get what she wanted and never cowered from a man again. You would mess with Nanette at your peril.

  We parted that night knowing each other inside out. We’d never be friends, but I knew now that I could trust her and call on her if I needed to.