Earth, page 3
Even though I was held against my will in a vise-like grip, at that point I wasn’t overly worried about my predicament. I felt inexplicably safe. A man couldn’t just accost a woman in a crowded public place like Dalston and expect to get away with it.
It was late afternoon or early evening, take your pick, depending on the time of day you get up. I’d not been awake long, so I’d opt for late afternoon. The autumn sun had set a while ago, but the streetlights, the traffic, and the shopfronts ensured Dalston was bright and well-lit, busy and bustling. People surrounded us.
The ginger stranger had a sincere face. He didn’t look like a pervert, and if only you could tell by looking, there wasn’t any inappropriate hard-on pressed against me. And believe me, we were close enough that if he had any erection of note, I’d have known about it.
I seemed to dangle there for a long while before I processed what was happening to me, but it probably took two or three seconds.
“Shield,” he whispered.
What?
Only because Thor held me aloft could I look him in the face and even consider his ear within biting reach. More importantly, I caught a glimpse over his shoulder.
Behind him, a group of men passed by. They appeared agitated. The reason for that may have been to do with the man at the center of the group who wore a loud 1970s retro shirt. It wasn’t the dazzling shirt that made me believe he was at the heart of the commotion. It was the huge fucking machete that he waved above his head as if it were a harmless flag or banner on a protest march.
The men shouted at each other, arguing in a language that I didn’t understand, Turkish, I’d guess, given we were in Dalston and its local population. I couldn’t understand a word of it except for the one word, the frequently used expletive.
On my travels, I’d discovered fuck and taxi are two words that are the same in any language and used all the world over. These men weren’t hailing taxis.
Thor and I weren’t the only people squashed against the storefront.
A silent huddle of men, women, and children held their breaths as they stood petrified in a compact huddle. Using their bodies to hide and protect their loved ones, adults held on to youngsters, burying their innocent faces in clothing so they wouldn’t see.
Turned to the buildings, people stayed still and quiet, trying to make themselves small and invisible. I knew what they were all thinking, because I had the same idea. They hoped they wouldn’t attract the attention of Retro Shirt. Collectively, we tested the magic we’d all learned as kids when hiding from a monster under the bed covers: if we didn’t see him, he wouldn’t see us. By the same token, if we didn’t look at the sharp blade, it wouldn’t find us.
I realized the immense wall of man-muscle might have just saved my skin. His broad back, more or less, hid my body. He continued to offer protection while, like the other people, he didn’t look back.
Shield? Is that what he’d meant?
I looked beyond my human shield.
Some people called out. “He said he’s going to cut his head off,” one voice shouted. Others said things about bloody bloodsuckers and washing the streets with blood. It was all far more bloody graphic than I wanted to hear.
Thanks for the translation, but TMI.
Although even I knew the translations weren’t verbatim, because I heard frequent fucks in every sentence.
No one needs the F word translated. But if they didn’t translate his sentence accurately, how much could I trust in the translation at all? There was a big difference between going to cut their heads off or cutting all your heads off, minus the fucks. Only slight changes in the words, but resulting in vastly different meanings. If he was just going after one specific person, then I needn’t worry. Obviously, I wouldn’t condone his intentions, but at least I didn’t face imminent danger.
As things stood, I didn’t know if we stood in the path of danger or who was the intended target. But whatever, Thor stood between me and everyone else.
In English, in an incongruous cockney accent, Retro Shirt shouted in my direction, “I’m going to fucking cut his fucking head from his fucking shoulders.”
Plenty of fucks there made him sound proper cockney.
Finally, fear took hold. My mouth went dry, and my stomach felt like that sharp blade had sliced through it.
The ground trembled, as it often did in London. That always seemed magical. I accepted the rumbling under my feet was only ever caused by a passing truck or an underground train. We didn’t have earthquakes or volcanoes in England.
I shut my eyes, hoping that Retro Shirt didn’t focus on me. And if I couldn’t see him, he wouldn’t see me. Wouldn’t it be great if there was such a thing as invisibility magic and it worked that way?
I’d only been back in the country of my birth for twenty-four hours, and it had been nonstop eventful. Wild dogs on leads, my first threesome, machete man. Whatever next?
When the sound of the shouting moved away and I sensed the people around me beginning to breathe again, I opened my eyes.
People scuttled away, whispering and holding on to their family members.
Thor stepped back and lowered me to the ground.
Not usually stuck for words, I was at a loss after sharing such a scary and intimate moment. I should say something like thank you for protecting me, and I liked your enormous body squashing all my soft bits.
Thor didn’t look at me; however, instead, he looked all about, up and down the street and across it, everywhere but at me. He didn’t allow me to say anything. “You’re safe for now,” he said in a low whisper. Then he walked away without looking back.
Stunned and confused, I stood still and watched him pace off toward Stoke Newington, the same direction as I should’ve been going, except I just stood still in a daze. The real-life human Hagrid who’d always tower above most people wouldn’t disappear into the crowd soon. I’d bet he got fed up with being asked if he played basketball and if he’d reach up with those long arms to rescue kittens out of trees.
A sudden gust of wind blew my hair across my face, and a gentle hand landed upon my left bicep, distracting my attention.
“Are you all right?” Clad from head to toe in black leather biker gear, the young woman who spoke looked vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t sure where from. Not here, that was for sure. I hadn’t been down this road for almost fifteen years.
She had black hair and tanned skin. She might have been Turkish, but I shouldn’t assume everyone around Dalston was from that country.
“Yes, I’m fine.” I wasn’t. I was in shock. I needed to work on a better response to such questions if things like this were going to keep happening. “You should check on the kids, not me.”
Of all people, I knew from first-hand experience that children shouldn’t be confronted with the reality of knife crime. They shouldn’t be aware of people being hacked to death, even less see such a monster as that man making terrifying threats.
Realistically, I was the last person who could offer support at a time like this. The event stirred up my childhood memories in a way that I didn’t want to deal with right then.
Though I didn’t see the murders with my own eyes, I’d grown up haunted by stories of people stabbed and decapitated in frenzied knife attacks. It was all too close to home.
Ignoring the woman and everyone else, I glanced back in the direction Thor had taken. He’d disappeared from view. That was what I needed to do too. Get the day back on track. It had already begun late enough after last night’s impromptu party.
Incredibly, my threesome buddies hadn’t snoozed after they come for the first time; they’d insisted on staying up throughout the night. We’d chatted, and drank, and kissed, and more. When I thought I couldn’t stay awake any longer, one of them would go down on me, an action guaranteed to wake me up. All in all, it passed as a very pleasant night of sleep-deprived erotic torture. It had been well into the day by the time I left the guys and went back to my room to catch up on much-needed sleep.
The consequence of my late night meant I had a late check out from the hotel. I then deposited all my worldly goods in a couple of bags in a left luggage place next to King’s Cross station. I wasn’t sure whether I’d stay in Stoke Newington with my uncle, check into another hotel in London, or take off on more travels again.
It all resulted in my trip to Hackney taking place in the evening instead of the daytime as I’d intended. If I’d have been earlier, I would have missed that bit of excitement.
Keeping the children close, many of the adults were scuttling away. Other people around me talked on their mobile phones, and I overheard enough to discover at least one person called the police.
There wasn’t any practical way I’d be helpful by sticking around. The police wouldn’t need my account of what happened or a description when many other people around me seemed to know the knife man’s identity. I heard them muttering names in their conversations. My staying there was pointless. And on top of everything that had happened over recent days, it drained me.
“Good.”
I looked back. The woman who had spoken to me raised a crash helmet and pulled it over her head. She looked cool in her leather outfit with her gleaming motorbike beside her and her unfazed attitude.
Her motorbike rested right by where she stood, which was along the path that machete man had walked, so she couldn’t have been parked there through the traumatic event. She wasn’t there when it all happened, yet she’d stopped and spoken only to me. I didn’t know where she’d come from or when she’d arrived, but apparently she was leaving.
Strange.
I needed to calm down and take five minutes out.
I couldn’t go from this incident directly to face my past head-on. I shuddered. I didn’t like to think about how I was raised in my early years sharing my former home with the woman who was to become a notorious brutal mass murderer: no matter how many years had passed, and no matter that she was my mother.
By luck, I found myself standing outside the perfect place to regroup before making my way back to the house that held so many memories. And in need of a drink, I headed into the nearest juice bar.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Red Berry Delight of the Kingsland High Road
Varu Vasile
MY TEETH ACHED. IT was early evening, and I hadn’t had a bite to eat.
Tantalizingly, she walked right up beside me and pulled out the next stool at the counter as if she didn’t know what I was. Didn’t know or didn’t care.
Interesting.
She was no more human than I was.
Well, perhaps a little more human than I.
She had a pulse, for a start. And strangely enough that pulse was racing as she entered but even as she approached is slowed down.
“What are the chances?” The rest of the thought stayed inside my head: Of a woman like that entering my space. What were the chances of a witch like that approaching me without trying to kill me as if I posed no danger to her?
Yet, here she was, alone and pretty much harmless and defenseless, from what I could tell.
“Pardon?” Sitting down on the barstool, she turned to look at me. “Did you say something?”
“I wondered why of all the juice bars in all of the towns in all of London town you had to walk into mine?”
Her eyebrows raised in disbelief. “Yours? This is your juice bar?”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” The question was a test. Did she know who I was? What I was? Would she tell me that vampires don’t do cafés, restaurants, and bars?
“You’re about my age.” She shook her head. “I suppose you don’t have to be old to run a juice bar.”
I smiled. So we were going to play that game. Pretend we were both mundane. Pretend we were of a similar age.
“I’d guess you’re twenty, coming up to twenty-one. And I’m just a tad older.” Tad older by hundreds of years, poppet. And the youth of today don’t say tad, do they? I kicked myself for the error. And they didn’t call each other poppet. Keeping up with modern languages was such a bore. “And if the Dalston Smoothie Shack wasn’t mine, why else do you think they’d let me sit in the prime seat at bar, here, without a drink?” I waved my hand across the clear countertop in front of me.
The cafe wasn’t mine, of course. I threw out the challenge to test her reaction.
Out of sunlight, I could sit anywhere I damn well pleased. As an aged elder vampire, I possessed powers that witches could only dream of. Powers that should have meant she stayed well away from me, if she knew what I was and what was best for her longevity.
I am a little arrogant, I will admit. And I have earned the entitlement to be arrogant.
“What can I get you?” Chris, the bartender, interrupted our conversation.
“Um, I haven’t decided.” She stared up at the chalkboard behind him.
Chris reached out to pick up a laminated menu, but before he handed it to her, I tendered my suggestion.
“May I recommend the Red Berry Delight?” There were few things lovelier than watching the rich, red liquid wash around lips and the residue settle around smiling white teeth. Of course, I wanted to watch her consume a drink the color of fresh blood rather than something like mown grass or, even worse, warm sunlight.
My purpose for visiting the Smoothie Shack was one big ulterior motive. This was the best place to pick up an early evening snack, even for a blood-sucking vampire, because healthy-juice drinkers had the sweetest vital fluid flowing through their arteries.
I hadn’t expected the scintillating scent of the blood of a powerful young witch to come so close to me, the provocation almost more temptation than my hungry teeth could take. How delicious would she be? I imagined taking her right there and then, before she could find some way to disable me.
Merely the way this witch’s bouquet teased my olfactory cells was almost as pleasurable as draining the blood of a virgin.
You didn’t find many adult virgins in East London these days, at least not one without a chaperone.
The last time I stumbled across such a delicious smelling stranger, he was a young virgin and a witch. And that bloomed into a wonderful ongoing relationship. I doubted if I’d be so lucky to begin a similar relationship with another witch within a decade of meeting Beck Colborn. A meeting which, by coincidence, also happened right here in Dalston.
Typically I’d come to expect a century to pass before I’d meet a new treasured friend like Beck, although there was one other in recent times. That relationship came to a tragic end a mere couple of decades earlier.
A virgin’s blood is hard to resist, and the temptation is nigh on impossible to resist when it is the blood of a virgin elemental witch.
Beck tasted every bit as good as he smelt, and there weren’t many vampires who’d ever been fortunate enough to sample such a rare treat.
“It’s her first time in this place, Chris—make it a Red Berry Delight on the house.” I worded my request to suggest I was in charge of the place.
And in a way I was; it was the natural way of things. Powerful vampires are in charge when we want to be. It didn’t matter that I didn’t own the Smoothie Shack. I compelled Chris to carry out my bidding whenever it suited me. It was one of my useful skills.
“My treat. Now, while Chris whizzes up the fruit-filled delight, tell me why you’re here?”
“For a smoothie?” Her eyes examined me intently. “I mean, a drink. Obviously, what other kind of smoothie could I mean?” Her cheeks colored a little, and the subtle change in her scent also gave her away. She was flirting with me, but she stayed calm and at ease. In fact, her heartbeat stabilized at a steady rhythm indicating she was perfectly relaxed.
Curious.
Few witches in her seat would remain so relaxed sitting next to me. It was as if she didn’t know I was a vampire.
The usurpers, humans and witches together, persecuted my kind because they feared our power. If she were any other witch, she would have recognized me, turned around as soon as she’d entered, and put as much distance between us as possible, hoping I wouldn’t track her and kill her. Or she’d have pulled out a weapon and threatened me.
Many a vampire hunter had fancied their chances and tried it, and yet, my undead form still graced the night.
There were two feasible explanations for her composure. First, given her young age, she might not yet know about me, or second, she didn’t fear me because of who she was.
Possibly, of the two of us, I should be more concerned.
She radiated great energy such that I’d rarely sensed before. Before she’d entered the Smoothie Shack, I’d sensed her massive aura moving closer. I’d been aware of her since she’d entered East London. I hadn’t felt a presence like her since... well, I’m not sure I’ve ever known a presence like hers.
One day, if she lived long enough, she’d be a powerful woman. A witch of the highest order, I reckoned. But she hadn’t tapped into her potential yet.
“I mean, tell me why you’re here in East London? Do you live around here, or are you visiting someone?” I asked.
“I’ve been traveling abroad, and I’ve just arrived back in the UK, and I’m on my way to visit my uncle.” She smiled innocently. “What about you? You have an accent, and I’m wondering if it’s from a place I visited. Where are you from?”
I had a story I’d pull out for such chit chat. “I’m from Romania.” We were doing this. Pretending we were ordinary, mundane mortals having a casual conversation and knowing nothing about each other. “My family came here when I was just a child, but I held on to an accent. My name is Varu, by the way, Varu Vasile. And welcome to The Smoothie Shack.”
At that moment, Chris placed the creamy red drink before her. “Enjoy. It’s complimentary,” he said and ignored me as if I wasn’t there.
It was difficult to tell if a mundane like Chris had any awareness of the powerful, wild, aura surrounding the witch. Humans sometimes seemed to sense things, but most of the time, they were such simple creatures. The way they called themselves rational always made me laugh. And I realized I was showing a smile to my new companion. Teeth retracted.
