Lenina set off at a brisk walk which soon became a jog. Then a run. Out of the park and back along the main roads. Her frantic flight took her back past the cluster of buildings making De Montfort University, bumping through the crowds of students with normal lives and normal troubles. Then past the hospital, an ugly cluster of glass and concrete jumbled up with older buildings of weathered stone.
By the time she reached the giant bulk of the rugby ground, she knew she could run no further and thrust out her hand to flag down a cab.
‘Oadby please,’ she told the aged taxi driver.
He glanced at her ruffled hair, flushed face and grubby clothes. ‘You all right, mi’duck?’
‘Fine,’ she gasped. ‘Please just drive.’
He did, stabbing two buttons on the meter that hiked the starting price to £3.
She didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered as much as getting away.
With each passing mile Jason’s presence faded. By the time they reached the main route leaving the city, some of the panic eased off. Replacing it came a wave of nausea that brought out goosebumps on her arms.
From the depths of her bag her mobile rang with Ramona’s tone. She yanked it out and pressed it to her ear.
‘What the hell, Nina? I’ve been calling for ages. Where are you? Are you okay? Why did you chase that guy?’
Lenina put the phone in her lap and let her friend wear herself out with questions. She couldn’t answer them sensibly anyway. After a moment or two she raised the mobile back to her ear.
‘I’m going home, Romey.’
‘I’ll come meet you. I don’t think you should be alone right now.’
‘I won’t be; Nick finishes early today.’
‘Will you at least get a bus rather than jogging?’
‘I’m in a cab. I’ll be fine.’ Her stomach tightened, doubling her over and drawing gasps from her lips. ‘I need to go.’
The driver paused at a set of traffic lights and swivelled in his seat to peer through the plastic partition. ‘There’s a £50 fine if you throw up back there.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘You’re hyperventilating.’
The phone rang again. Lenina clutched her knees until her fingernails bit through the denim and let the call ring out. When it did, she turned the phone off.
‘Just go,’ she told the driver.
As the lights changed, the driver turned forward again but he looked back regularly, often swerving as he tried to see what she was doing. After the third such slalom across the lanes, Lenina scrabbled for her purse.
‘Let me out. You’re going to kill us both.’ She shoved a wadded ten-pound note into the tray at the base of the partition. ‘Keep the change, just let me go.’
No complaints. The driver pulled into the car park of a large supermarket and unlocked the doors.
Lenina threw herself free of the vehicle, landing on her knees. Her stomach clenched with ferocious intensity and seconds later she vomited, retching and spitting until her stomach contracted on emptiness.
The cab driver gave a disgusted groan as he drove away.
A security guard approached with his hands outstretched, as if she were a potentially violent animal. He crouched nearby. ‘You okay? Do you need help?’
Bitterly wondering where such help had been last night, Lenina shook her head. She wiped her mouth, side-stepped the lumpy puddle and began walking again.
Rain began soon after. A drizzle at first which quickly evolved into an angry downpour. Turning her face skyward, she let the rain wash her mouth clear and spat the tepid mouthfuls on the paving slabs.
Lenina thought of her warm, comfortable bed and moved faster, her feet automatically choosing the path home she had used hundreds, if not thousands of times before.
The house was only ten minutes away now.
At the north gate of Grick Park she stopped dead, staring across the rain-slicked grass.
Nick’s voice filled her head, begging her not to cut across the dark and lonely park.
Surely it made no difference now. The worst was already done.
She opened the gate and slipped through.
Though not as late as the day before, the rain made the park similarly dark. This time, without the lull of her music or the comfortable rhythm of running, Lenina felt awkward and out of place.
Halfway through she turned off the path on to the grass, angling her route towards the middle where white lines marked the edges of three familiar football pitches.
With each step, the bite marks on her throat itched and burned.
It didn’t take long to find the spot.
Tears ran down Lenina’s cheeks and mingled with the driving rain.
As though her body were attuned to the site, an echo of last night’s panic fizzed through her limbs. Growing warmth filled her belly. Her lungs tightened. Breathing became difficult.
Here, she thought, bending to touch the grass. This was where he bit her. Where she bit back and filled her mouth with his blood.
As if to think of him was to call him to her, Jason’s presence filled her head. She felt him like she had earlier, close enough to be peering over her shoulder.
He sensed her. A prickle of unease trickled down the link between them. Then the connection died and her mind was her own once more.
Peeling off across the grass again, Lenina ran with her face in her hands as if by not seeing she could erase the images dancing behind her eyelids.
Long teeth. Sandy dunes. Flesh stained red.
Saar, the man from her dreams, bent over a twitching body in Roman armour and feasted from his throat.
She heard distant barking and banked left away from it, aiming for the dim grey of the industrial estate hemmed in by high rail fences. Buildings loomed out of the darkness like thick, stubby fingers, unlit but for the occasional sparkle of a wet security camera catching the rising moon’s glare.
She clung to the fence, resting her forehead against the twisted metal.
Rain hammered her head and shoulders. The barking grew louder.
Saar, she thought. A soldier in Cleopatra’s time. A man who drank blood, grew fangs and talked of ‘children’, even though some of those were clearly older than him.
Closer now, the furious yapping brought her attention to the ground.
A small terrier blinked in the rain then growled again. It backed off a step then bounded around her ankles, worrying her laces.
‘Go away,’ she snapped.
The dog barked harder.
‘Get lost.’
More barks and a growl, followed by a nip at her toes. Sharp teeth punched through her trainers.
‘Get away from me!’ Rage burst like a pricked balloon. She kicked out with a wordless grunt, not caring, not seeing, not thinking at all. The side of her foot struck the dog in the ribs with a loud crack, catapulting it across the wet grass. The small creature hit the ground with a sickening thud more than twenty feet away, then slid through the oozing brown mud a further six feet. It didn’t move after that.
Lenina’s hands flew to her mouth.
Before she could check on the creature, she heard shrieks from behind.
‘What have you done? God— oh no— Poppy!’ A woman shouldered passed her and threw herself down beside the silent dog. ‘You killed her.’ Raw horror filled her voice.
Lenina chewed her thumbnail until it bled. ‘I’m sorry— I didn’t mean to.’
‘What sort of crazy person kicks a dog?’
‘She bit me.’
‘She’s only a baby!’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Lenina reached out, but the woman twisted free like a greased eel and shouted into the darkness.
‘Police! Help me, police!’
The shrill voice seemed to fill the empty park, bouncing off raindrops until it built to a deafening crescendo of panic and anger.
Lenina pressed her hands over her ears, but then the woman was in front of her, clawing at her face. She hid beneath her hands. ??
?Stop it.’
‘You killed my dog.’
‘I’m warning you, lady, leave me alone.’
But the woman screeched and dived in again, folding Lenina’s fingers back with strength born of madness. She struck out, with a closed fist this time, and Lenina caught her wrist a trembling inch from her cheek. Then the fist opened and sharp fingernails scored her cheek.
Lenina’s vision tunnelled. Loud thudding filled her ears and it took long seconds to recognise it as a heartbeat. Not her own, but the rapid drumming of the other woman’s heart, powered by a rush of adrenalin.
Fangs reappeared in her mouth. She felt them this time, heard the little click and grinding sound of them extending from her gum line. They shot downward in response to an absent thought, linking blood to the rhythmic tattoo of that racing heartbeat.
She opened her mouth, acclimatising herself to the new mouthful of weaponry. She growled. A quick step pressed her against the woman and she snaked one hand around the back of the damp head and pulled her close. It might have been preparation for a lover’s embrace if not for the saliva flooding her mouth, or the appreciative rumble of her stomach. Or the fury in her mind.
Free hand beneath her assailant’s chin, Lenina pushed up, tilting the woman’s head back to expose her throat, long and white beneath a fluffy, pink scarf.
She ripped the scarf away. Lowered her head. Placed her fangs against that trembling flesh and bit down.
The woman screamed.
Lenina heard the sound and the increase in her heart rate which followed. Both sent a surge of pleasure crashing through her body and she groaned through her mouthful of flesh.
When the blood hit her tongue the flow was fast and powerful. Swallowing it brought a warmth to her body that chased out the chill of the rain. Thin lines of fire raced through her limbs.
The woman in her arms made a strange choking sound.
Lenina heard it and deepened her bite, sinking to the ground with the woman cradled against her chest. She sat in the grass and suckled like a newborn enjoying that all-important first drink at the breast.
Minutes later . . . hours later . . . Lenina raised her head.
The thudding of drums that she knew to be a heartbeat, slowed to a barely audible patter. When she pulled her teeth free of the woman’s throat the sound stopped completely.
The body in her arms gave a sigh, then slipped free of her arms and rolled across the grass.
Lenina noticed the woman’s eyes were still open, blank and unblinking, fixed in an expression of horror that would last forever.
A large part of Lenina longed to run away again. To put as much distance between herself and the truth as physically possible. A smaller part luxuriated in the afterglow of her actions and applauded her. Thanked her.
For the first time in hours her stomach neither rumbled nor ached.
She felt full. Even glutted.
Three small trails of blood oozed down the side of the woman’s neck. Before the rain could dilute them, Lenina lowered her head and licked them away.
The last explosion of sweetness on her tongue stole her breath. It clung to her gums, her teeth. Tiny drops of it lingered on her lips and her tongue stole out to lick them away even as tears gathered in her eyes.
The points of her fangs receded back into her gum line.
Lenina swallowed a sob and struggled to her feet. She stared across the grass. Gasped.
Everything looked brighter. Clearer. The entire world was picked out with diamond hard edges and deep, rich colours, even in the poor light, with a level of detail reserved for close-up shots in nature documentaries.
Every blade of grass was visible against its companion. Broken windows in the face of the dark and lonely industrial estate. The wisp of fine hair across the dead woman’s upper lip.
Lenina smelled the churned-up earth. The fresh, faintly metallic scent of the rain. The musk of wet dog fur.
She glanced at the bruised and broken carcass and finally lost her grip on the sobs. Tears ran freely and she lowered her face to her bloodied hands, as if to save herself from the sight of those cooling bodies.
Not that it helped. She would see that dog and its owner forever, stamped on the fabric of her memory, never to be erased.
Chapter Thirteen