Chapter 19

A black satin push-up bra lies side by side with a small pile of colourful thongs in the top drawer of the old, battered chest of drawers in Lilly’s room. Girl’s boxers, marvellous, so like French knickers but much more fitted and petite - I can almost imagine her in them. I am bedazzled by her underwear ...

‘Hey! Clear off.’

She pushes me aside. Scooping into the drawer she grabs her clothing and hugs them to her chest with irritation rather than embarrassment. She turns to the single bed dropping the pile on top in plain sight and I lean back against the wall to watch. She lifts up the two holdalls that lie open and packs them meticulously.

‘It’s nothing I haven’t seen before ...’

‘Why did you have to come? Did you think I’d run away or something?’

Yes.

‘No.’

She tuts. It echoes around the semi-empty room.

‘I thought you would need some help with these heavy bags.’

I open another drawer. Hold-up stockings; a miracle of modern invention. ‘Mmmm ...’

‘Stop it!’

She tosses the stockings quickly into the bag, all sign of tidiness disappearing as she pulls the zip closed. It judders like a train stalling on the track. I reach for the bags but she slaps my hands away.

‘I don’t need your help. I’m female, not disabled.’

Irritably she thrusts past me, her hand reaching for the brass door handle. ‘I’m not happy,’ she continues.

‘So you’ve said.’

‘And ... I hope you realise, although I’m coming with you, I’m sleeping in the spare room.’

I keep my face still and blank, even though I am disappointed. I had hoped for some more mutual sexual release. Lilly’s raised eyebrows dare me to argue. Am I so easy to read these days?

She turns the door handle, pulling in one liquid movement. Her delicate fingers transfer traces of the heat from her skin, which evaporates, outside edges first, leaving a faint misty stain that mesmerises me until the last blotch disappears.

As the door swings open I tear my eyes away from the condensation as it finally disperses and I find Carolyn with her hand frozen, fist clenched in the air, exactly where the white painted door had been.

‘Jay? What’s going on?’

Her gaze flutters between us. Her slender face is pinched. Carolyn knows, but doesn’t believe.

Lilly is silent, her face a closed book. I can’t tell what she is thinking nor do I try to speculate. Even though her eyes seem to say, ‘you started this ... finish it!’

‘Lilly and I are getting married,’ I say coldly. ‘We’re leaving.’

‘M ... m ... m ... married?’ Her voice is falsetto.

Everything is in slow motion. Carolyn reaches out, her fingers grabbing for Lilly’s luscious blonde hair, but Lilly easily sidesteps as the sharp nails rake the air where moments before her face had been. Caught off balance Carolyn tumbles forward and I catch her before she falls into the open doorway.

Her eyes are autumn.

‘I d ... d ... don’t understand. What’s happened?’

Her touch pours liquid fever into my skin, where it dies. The lust no longer recognises her. Not even in the sexual sense. The Game is over and my prey has escaped unscathed. I’m not sure how to feel.

‘I don’t love you,’ I tell her softly, honestly. Over her head I catch a glimpse of some raw longing burning in the ebony pinpricks in the middle of Lilly’s gaze, before she blinks and the moment is lost.

‘You’ve lied to me ...’

‘I’m sorry.’

Carolyn sobs, pushing away from me, and I let her go. I know she will run straight into the arms, and bed, of the ever-amorous Steve. I predict a life for them. Even marriage. Perhaps happiness may feature somewhere in there. Although my romantic soul knows better ... Mortals rarely are ever satisfied with the simplicity of their humanity.

‘We should go,’ Lilly says softly.

I nod.

‘Jay, I thought at first ... you were cruel, but in the end ...’

‘Yes?’

‘You did the right thing.’

Subtle as the burn of a sea breeze, something has changed between us. Lilly thinks I did something right; things are looking up.

‘I love you,’ I tell her.

‘No you don’t. You want to shag me again. That’s all. And ... we’re alike now.’

‘All true. Any chance?’

‘None at all.’

She smiles, holding out one of her bags to me but her eyes are serious.

‘So now you’re disabled as well as being female?’ I laugh.

Her hand brushes mine as I take the holdall and it is like liquid nitrogen has been poured over my fingers. Yet it is hot. There is an awkward silence. I step closer to her.

‘Let’s go,’ she says, turning away, and I watch her stalk forward, her lovely straight back stiffening as though she expects to receive a violent blow.

We exit the building through a gauntlet of curious faces. News travels fast on the University grapevine. By the time we reach the car park a group of students are following us at a distance; the air is fat with anticipation. Steve waits by my car, Nate at his side.

‘What’s your game, Jay?’ he asks, his hand clenches by his side.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Messing around with my girl, filling her head full of fairy princess shit and then running out on her with this ... slag. That’s what I mean.’

I grow still. Anger burns cold inside me. Any insult to me I could shrug away but this - this disrespect of Lilly - I can’t allow. Call me old-fashioned but it is a matter of honour. I have to kill him now, despite all of my good intentions.

‘Arsehole,’ Lilly fumes. ‘Don’t you know he’s done you a major favour? What is it with you men? D’you still think you live in the dark ages or something? Get in the car, Jay. And you lot can clear off as well. There’s nothing to see.’

She glares at the gathered crowd until they begin to guiltily disperse.

‘It’s worse than high school. I thought we grew out of the mob mentality when I went on to sixth form. I never expected this at Uni.’

‘I’m talking to him.’ Steve stands his ground even though he’s uncertain where to take this. He had hoped to bait me and it almost worked.

‘If you don’t want exposure then get in the car,’ Lilly whispers and my unmoving limbs begin to shift and relax. Tension slips away from my shoulders as I see the sense in what she says. Beside me she opens the door, slips inside, her lovely long legs flash briefly as she swings in. I walk around to the driver’s door.

Steve tries to block me and I swat him aside. He falls to the ground, his eyes wide with shock at my effortless strength. Nate moves in swiftly. The air rings but I catch his fist midair and squeeze. His fingers pop like bubble wrap and I hold him suspended, his mouth contorted into a silent ‘o’. Crying out, Nate crumples to the ground at my feet.

My heart goes cold and still. Violence always breeds hunger. My fangs burst forth painfully from my gums as I lift him up, his crushed hand gripped firmly in my grasp, closer to my yawning mouth.

Lilly’s hand clamps down on my shoulder. She shakes me and I am forced to drop Nate back down on the concrete. I snap my mouth closed; my fangs grate the back of my lips, drawing blood. For a moment the rage surges forward again, almost wiping away the last vestige of common sense until Lilly’s nails dig firmly into my arm.

I look at her. Dazed. Her lips bulge with the strain of holding back her own demon nature. My ears buzz with a million unfocused sounds. I take a breath. My reason returns and I become aware of others around me. The sounds of the world return with ragged slowness. Nate weeps on the ground; a girl is shouting as she runs towards the main building; the engine of a car firing up on the other side of the car park; the yell of a security guard as he rushes out of the main building to see what is happening.

Steve stares at me, his eyes focused on my lips as a tiny drop of blood squeezes from the corner and slides down my chin. I lick at it, deftly wiping away the crimson stain while deliberately flashing the sharp points of my fangs. Backing away, his eyes wide, Steve turns and runs towards the campus; cowardly - he leaves Nate in the gutter nursing his broken hand. Nate cries like a destroyed child, not a hardened, drug abusing young adult.

The arrogant ones are always the easiest to intimidate.

As the doors of the Mercedes slam shut I know that some night soon I’m going to find my friend Steve and his sidekick Nate and carefully, surely, eradicate them both from the face of the earth.

‘That was so fucking stupid.’

‘Stop swearing,’ I respond automatically.

‘I’ll bloody, buggering swear ... when I fucking well want to.’

I exhale noisily, lapsing into thought. The fight has gone out of me because I understand more than Lilly how dangerous this all is. My heart beat is irregular. Exposure - perhaps that is what this serious error means. Although I’ve taken risks in the past - Oscar Wilde and his ridiculous book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, didn’t even out me, (his theory of my eternal youth was way off base anyway) - the modern world is a different issue. It is not a world of superstition, but of science.

‘We have to go to ground.’ My foot presses down on the accelerator as if to prove how urgent our flight must be.

‘Oh Christ. This is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it? Well you haven’t won anything, Jay. You still don’t own me.’ Her muffled voice trembles.

I glance at her, see the sharp protruding points draping over her lip. My heartbeat speeds up again. There is something so very sexy about that lovely, deadly expression.

‘Call me Gabriele. Jay doesn’t exist now. We had better work on your new identity.’

‘New identity?’

‘Of course. If they can’t find me they will try to trace you. One way or another we’ve blown Manchester. We have to leave but before we do, you need to feed. Then you’ll be stronger, harder to hurt.’

‘Oh f ...’

‘Please spare me more colourful language ...’

‘I swear to God, Jay ... Gabriele ... whatever the hell your name is. I’m going to be free of you, even if you have won this time.’

‘Lilly, why on earth do you think this is a competition?’