The Dark Side of the Road

  ‘Damn right!’ said Leilah. ‘No more deaths on our watch. And no more superstitious bullshit!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Khan. And just like that, everyone was looking at him. Because there was something in his voice. He realized all eyes were on him, and he shrugged uncomfortably. ‘Weird shit does happen. Strange things do exist. I know that because I have encountered them before. I used to work for Black Heir.’

  Jeeves and Leilah reacted to that name immediately and looked at Khan with something very like respect.

  ‘We worked a case with two Black Heir field agents, once,’ said Jeeves. ‘A Muti black magic case, in the East End of London. They were … scary types.’

  ‘Very professional,’ said Leilah.

  ‘What’s Black Heir?’ said Penny.

  ‘You know all those secret departments that don’t officially exist?’ said Khan. ‘Well, even they don’t have high enough security clearances to know about Black Heir. It is an organization specially tasked to deal with … weird shit.’

  ‘Are we talking X-files?’ said Penny.

  ‘Very definitely not,’ Khan said firmly.

  ‘So … you’ve had experience with vampires?’ said Sylvia.

  ‘Of course not!’ said Khan. ‘Never met one in my life. Don’t know anyone who has. And I haven’t worked for Black Heir since the eighties. With Ishmael’s father.’

  Melanie had been sitting slumped in her chair, only vaguely following what was happening, but suddenly she was sitting bolt upright, to stab an accusing finger at me.

  ‘You! It’s you! You’re the vampire! Has to be you … Because you’re an outsider! No one here knows you. What kind of a name is Ishmael Jones, anyway? Has to be fake … And besides; you’re different. I can tell. Everyone can tell!’ She glared around the room. ‘You must have noticed! The things he says, the way he acts …’

  ‘This is no time to be vindictive, Mummy,’ said Penny.

  ‘You like him, don’t you?’ said Melanie, smiling unpleasantly. ‘Unnatural child …’

  ‘Mrs Belcourt does have a point,’ said Jeeves, looking at me steadily. ‘Too many unusual things have happened around you, Ishmael. I don’t think we can trust you any more.’

  ‘Do you trust anyone here?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Jeeves. ‘But you stand out more than most. I’m not taking any more chances. I think the safest thing to do is to lock you up somewhere. Until my people arrive in the morning. Somewhere safe, and secure.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  Jeeves and Leilah both turned their guns on me. Leilah was nodding quickly. ‘Has to be done, Ishmael. You’re the one trying to distract us, with all this nonsense about vampires. And saying you could smell blood … That’s not suspicious, at all.’

  ‘I’m the only one here who can save you from the vampire,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ said Jeeves. ‘I think Leilah and I are perfectly capable of dealing with this. We are, after all, professionals. Now, be a good boy and do as you’re told, Ishmael. Or I’ll have Leilah shoot you somewhere painful.’

  ‘Love to,’ said Leilah. ‘Never did trust you, Ishmael.’

  ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve!’ Penny said loudly. ‘Where were both of you, when four people died? Including the one who hired you to protect him? My father trusted you … and what have you done to find his killer? At least Ishmael’s been doing something! I trust him more than I trust either of you!’

  ‘No surprise there,’ said Leilah, not taking her eyes or her gun off me. ‘You’ve been sniffing round Ishmael ever since he turned up. And with your stepbrother and your father dead, you’re the only one left to inherit all this … If something was to happen to your mother …’

  ‘Unnatural child …’ said Melanie, slumped back in her chair again.

  ‘I swear, if you say that one more time, Mummy, I will slap you a good one,’ Penny said coldly. ‘And it will hurt.’

  ‘I think we’d better lock you up with Ishmael, Miss Belcourt,’ said Jeeves. ‘Just as a security measure. If we’re all still alive come the morning, there will be plenty of time for apologies then.’

  ‘Lock me up and you won’t live to see the morning,’ I said.

  ‘Shoot him,’ said Melanie. ‘Shoot him! He murdered my Walter …’

  I stepped forward, to say something reasonable, and Jeeves shot me twice. Except I wasn’t there. By the time the bullets slammed into the wall I was already somewhere else, heading rapidly for Jeeves and Leilah, ducking and dodging bullets as I closed in. They both fired with professional speed and accuracy, but I was faster. My eyes work better than most people. I can see bullets travelling through the air. It’s all a matter of concentration.

  I grabbed the guns out of Jeeves and Leilah’s hands, careful not to break their fingers in the process, and then stepped back and covered both of them with their own guns. James and Leilah looked at each other incredulously, then at me, and decided to stand very still.

  I glanced quickly round the room. Khan and Sylvia were staring at me open-mouthed. Penny was grinning broadly. Melanie wasn’t looking at anything. I smiled at Jeeves and Leilah, and then stepped forward and gave them their guns back, again.

  ‘Really,’ I said reproachfully. ‘How many times do we have to do this dance? If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.’

  ‘I never saw anyone move that fast in my life,’ said Leilah.

  ‘What are you, Ishmael?’ said Jeeves.

  ‘Busy,’ I said.

  ‘All right …’ said Leilah. She hefted the gun in her hand uncertainly, as though I might have somehow substituted a fake, and then looked at me squarely. ‘Maybe you aren’t the killer. But we still have to work the evidence logically. The killer made a real mess of Mister Belcourt, so they should have blood all over them. No one here has had time to change their clothes. But I don’t see blood on anyone …’

  Everyone in the room looked at everyone else, took in the complete lack of blood and actually started to relax a little.

  ‘The killer can’t be one of us!’ said Sylvia. ‘The lack of bloodstains proves it!’

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ I said. ‘Things are a little more complicated than that. I’m pretty sure the vampire has the ability to mess with our minds, make us see what it wants us to see. To hide its true look behind a glamour; a pleasing illusion. The killer could be standing right here, in this room, soaked in the blood of its victims, and we still wouldn’t know it. Because the vampire wouldn’t let us know it.’

  ‘Oh, that’s just marvellous!’ said Sylvia. ‘First you tell us the killer is a creature of the night, and now we can’t trust our eyes, either?’

  ‘I’m not buying any of this,’ growled Leilah.

  ‘I’m not sure I do either,’ said Jeeves, frowning deeply. ‘But something weird is going on here. Hiding behind a pleasant illusion … You mean, like hypnosis?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said. ‘I think that’s how the vampire takes down its victims so easily. It hypnotizes them, overpowers their mind temporarily, holds then in place unresisting, and then attacks them. That’s how it was able to take down a seasoned old fighter like the Colonel. He literally never saw it coming. That’s why the vampire only attacks one victim at a time, so there’s no distraction to break the trance.’

  ‘So there are some limits to this thing’s power,’ said Jeeves. ‘That’s something …’

  Leilah looked at him. ‘You’re buying this …?’

  ‘I’m … going along, for now,’ said Jeeves.

  I looked around the room, studying everyone, taking my time. Jeeves and Leilah were standing close together, still guarding the locked door. Still holding their guns, though they didn’t seem too sure where to point them. Penny was right there at my side, looking hopefully at me for an answer. Or at least some idea of what to do next. Melanie was leaning forward in her chair, staring sullenly at me, and Penny. Sylvia stood alone,
hugging herself tightly, lost and scared and confused by what was happening. Khan stood off to one side, studying one face after another, trying to spy out the real face beneath the mask, through sheer concentration.

  ‘Someone in this room has to be the killer,’ I said. ‘Can’t be Penny, because she was upstairs with me while Walter was being killed down here. Can’t be Jeeves or Leilah because they’ve been working as a team, and what evidence there is suggests a single killer.’

  ‘What evidence?’ said Leilah.

  ‘The single set of bite marks on each neck,’ I said.

  ‘They could be killing separately,’ Penny said eagerly. ‘Providing alibis for each other!’

  ‘That would mean two vampires operating under one roof,’ I said. ‘How likely is that?’

  ‘How likely is one vampire?’ said Penny.

  ‘True,’ I said.

  ‘Wait just a minute,’ said Leilah. ‘Following your logic … you say Penny was upstairs with you all the time, but how can you be sure? How can you be sure she didn’t just hypnotize you into believing she was there, while she nipped down the stairs and killed her father? And then hurried back, before you came out of your trance?’

  ‘You are a deeply cynical and suspicious woman,’ said Penny.

  ‘Just doing my job,’ said Leilah.

  ‘I don’t think it works like that,’ I said. ‘It’s clear the vampire can overpower human minds, but only when we don’t notice. Most of its strength must go into maintaining its cover illusion; keeping us from seeing it for what it really is. Any further mind control must be a real effort, or I’d never have been allowed to work out this much. It kept you all from noticing Walter’s absence, but only until I pointed it out. And once the spell was broken it couldn’t keep you from noticing any longer. It can’t stop us from discussing its existence, not now I’ve got you all thinking about it. It’s probably reaching its limits just hiding from us, now we’re looking for it.’

  ‘You keep using the word probably!’ said Jeeves. ‘I need a hell of a lot more than probably, if I’m going to try and take down a vampire!’

  ‘What’s it going to take, to bring down a vampire?’ said Leilah. ‘I’m guessing bullets won’t do it.’

  ‘Silver bullets?’ said Sylvia.

  ‘That’s werewolves,’ said Khan. ‘With vampires, you must drive a wooden stake through their heart.’ He smiled briefly. ‘I used to love Christopher Lee, in all those old Hammer horror movies.’

  ‘I don’t think we can trust what they say in the movies,’ I said.

  ‘Wooden stakes feature in all the old stories and legends,’ Khan said firmly.

  ‘What else would work?’ said Leilah. ‘Fire?’

  ‘I’m not an expert in this field,’ I said. ‘If you’ve got Van Helsing’s home number, feel free to call him. I’m working this out as I go along.’

  ‘Maybe we should start sharpening some wooden stakes?’ said Khan.

  ‘You go right ahead,’ said Leilah. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start. How do you sharpen a wooden stake?’

  ‘No one here has an alibi for the Colonel’s murder,’ I said loudly, to draw everyone’s attention back to me. ‘Or for Roger’s, because we can’t be sure of when they were killed. And Diana could have been killed before or after Roger. And we can’t be sure who was and wasn’t in this room when Walter was killed. So; we have to face the fact that we can’t rule people out through alibis. That just leaves deductive logic. I wish the Colonel was here; he was always so much better at this than me. But he did do his best to teach me the basics. And I do notice things, even if it takes me a while to realize.’ I turned slowly, to face Sylvia. ‘Why did you scream, when you looked through the open door into Roger’s room?’

  ‘Because I saw what had been done to him!’ said Sylvia. ‘You saw the state he was in!’

  ‘But how could you see that?’ I said. ‘The room was in complete darkness. I couldn’t see anything; none of us could, until I turned on the light. It was an obvious question that didn’t occur to me till later. Perhaps you were interfering with my thoughts, or perhaps I was just being slow. After all: a pretty woman, screaming at a gruesome sight? We’re conditioned to accept such a scene, from seeing it in so many movies.’

  ‘Look,’ said Sylvia, very reasonably, ‘if I did kill Roger, why would I leave the door open, and scream, and draw everyone’s attention to the murder?’

  ‘To distract us,’ I said. ‘While we were all concentrating on the awful thing that had been done to Roger’s body, we weren’t thinking about how else he might have been killed. And, we weren’t thinking about Diana not being there with us. Almost certainly already dead. And finding the body did help to clear suspicion away from you. Poor shocked little thing that you were.’

  Everyone was looking at Sylvia now, with growing suspicion and horror. Khan backed away from her. From the look on his face, he was remembering holding Sylvia in his arms and comforting her … Melanie rose shaking from her chair and moved unsteadily back to hide behind Khan. Penny glared at Sylvia, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Jeeves and Leilah turned their guns on Sylvia, who stood very still.

  She gave them her best appealing look. ‘You don’t believe any of this nonsense, do you? You’re professionals! I mean, vampires? Really? In this day and age?’

  ‘I let you leave this room to go to the toilet, unaccompanied,’ said Leilah. ‘Why can’t I remember how long you were gone?’

  I walked slowly forward, to stand before Sylvia. And then I sniffed, hard. ‘My, what strong perfume you’re wearing,’ I said. ‘Strong enough to hide your true scent from most people. But I’m not most people. Now I know what you’re doing, you can’t get inside my head any longer. My thoughts are my own, and I can smell blood and decay. Go on, Sylvia; show us. Show us all what you really are.’

  She smiled at me, and her grin seemed to grow wider and wider and wider.

  She dropped her glamour, and just like that we could all see what she really looked like. The others all cried out, in shock and horror and disgust, at the sight of what had been moving unknown among them for so long. Sylvia was just a rotting corpse, with bright shining eyes and huge teeth, dressed in the old-fashioned formal clothes she’d been buried in: spotted with grave mould, and soaked in old and new blood. I fell back despite myself, and Jeeves and Leilah immediately opened fire on Sylvia.

  She just stood there, smiling her horrible smile, as her undead flesh soaked up the bullets. She didn’t even shudder under the impact. Jeeves and Leilah only stopped shooting when they ran out of bullets. It had been an instinctual thing; like stamping on a spider. Leilah was making shocked, almost feral noises. Jeeves’ face was twisted with disgust. And when their guns fell silent, they just stood where they were, unable to deal with something so far outside their experience. Sylvia’s smile widened even further; the rotting flesh of her cheeks split apart to reveal even more teeth. She laughed, softly, and there was nothing human in the sound.

  ‘Why are you here?’ I said loudly, and her attention immediately switched to me. Looking into her brightly burning eyes was like being hit by a malign spotlight. I met her gaze unflinchingly.

  When she finally spoke, in her true form, with her true voice, what issued from the torn and decaying lips was just a liquid, gargling rasp. Something I heard with my mind, or my soul, as much as my ears.

  ‘It’s what I do, Ishmael. I go from place to place, striking up friendships with powerful and influential people, using my glamour and charm to get invited to isolated gatherings just like this. So I can feed and move on. Usually just a nip here and there, from everyone present, and they never even notice. Though afterwards they are just that little bit more … susceptible. So if I ever need a favour, or a get out of jail free card …’

  ‘Why don’t they become vampires?’ said Penny. ‘Why don’t all your victims rise again, to become like you?’

  She was trying to sound reasonable and inquiring, but couldn’t qui
te bring it off. The tremor in her voice showed how scared she was. We were all scared. It was the only sane reaction to the horrific thing in front of us.

  ‘Because that’s not how it works,’ said Sylvia. ‘It takes a lot of effort on our part, to make another of our kind. And I’ve never really seen the point. Who needs more competition?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘Why here, and now?’

  ‘Your Colonel thought he recognized me for what I am, at some dreary Ambassadorial reception,’ said Sylvia. ‘Don’t ask me how he knew. He was only human, after all. Not like you, Ishmael. So I struck up a friendship with his mother, poor lonely old Diana, just so she would invite me here. To the Colonel’s family home. I let him know, through certain channels. I thought I could ensure his silence by threatening his family. But he wouldn’t play. Came all the way down here to stop me and protect his loved ones. So I killed him. No one defies me and gets away with it.’

  ‘And then you were trapped here, by the storm,’ I said. ‘And you had no choice but to stay and play along, pretending to be human. You didn’t know the Colonel had sent for help.’

  ‘But if James was the only one who knew about you, if he was the only real danger to you,’ said Penny, ‘why did you kill all the others?’

  ‘You know how it is,’ said Sylvia. ‘You get a taste for something, and you just can’t stop. You have no idea what it’s like, to be undead. There’s more to blood than just the feeding. Blood … is better than drugs. Better than sex. And there’s no conscience to trouble you any more, nothing to hold you back from doing absolutely anything you want. From being a red-mouthed wolf in a world of sheep. I love it …’

  ‘That’s not why you started killing again, after the Colonel,’ I said.

  ‘I never leave witnesses,’ said Sylvia. ‘The world likes to believe things like me don’t exist any longer. Except in safe, romantic fantasies. It makes things so much easier for me.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Jeeves. ‘That thing’s going to kill us all. It has to, to prevent anyone from telling what happened here.’