Somebody  -  who could only be The Boy Eric  -  had definitely put something in her drink. It was now in her brain.

Not BOP, because that did blow-all to vampires. Not aspirin, because she had the beginnings of a headache. She wished she'd paid more attention to all the drugs experts  -  E.B. Fern, Jerry Cornelius, Semolina Pilchard  -  she'd run into lately. But they were all so boring, like people who tell you their amazing dreams or enthusiasts for new systems of physical jerks. Lord, she remembered Frank and Oscar cracking on about absinthe making the art grow fondlier in the '90s... the haunted puffers who patronised the Lord of Strange Deaths' chain of opium dens. and the discovery, upon turning vampire, that all it took to get high as a bat was human blood. Mmmm, ninety-eight point six!

The lair of the Black Monks was a student common room with crepe hangings and a portrait of Dracula propped up in front of the unused fireplace. Joss-sticks burned in pots. The Count was angry, as if he smelled the incense and didn't like it. Dracula's snarl was in slow motion. His cloak riffled in Carpathian winds. The folds of crepe moved too.

She shut her eyes and saw busy red squiggles. Rats.

Someone chortled in the room and it frightened her.

She looked again. Things crawled in the periphery of her vision, as if the world were melting just beyond her eyeline.

DeBoys manoeuvred her around the furniture. Transparent inflatable chairs, a low plastic coffee table, a couch shaped like giant lips. Four lava lamps were placed around the room at the poles of the compass. Competing multi-coloured liquid swirls slid across the ceiling, the walls, the faces.

On a large round soft thing like an upended paddling pool, one woman held another down, restraining, comforting and/or groping her. The woman on top was Fran, the Black Monkess. Black Nun? Her robe rode up on her thighs  -  her flanks were reptile-scaled by the lava light  -  and her hood was down, unloosing her cascade of hair. The woman underneath was Jess Van Helsing, stoned out of her tiny little mind. She was the chortler. Her white shift was cut low in the front. Boob spill was inevitable. Did every sweet young thing these days have a 'sacrificial victim' dress in their wardrobe? Kate saw the pulse in Jess's throat. Red-and-blue traceries of veins flowed under her skin.

Another vampire sat in a blow-up chair, watching with soulful eyes. A beautiful boy in a white fur coat and turquoise trews. Paul Durward, of course. He had pageboy blond hair and girly lips, though his mouth was forced open by his full fangs. That always gave vampires an imbecile look. Durward drooled a little. On the point of feeding, everyone was an imbecile, she supposed. Instinct took over. She was no different. Especially not now. Her mouth was wet too. She could taste blood.

Fran held an open razor in front of Jess's face, drawing her gaze, catching the shifting light. Pearl handle, steel blade. Fran slow-waved the cutthroat with a limber wrist, hand turning a circle like an owl's head.

Even if she weren't tripping, Jess would have been fascinated. Kate couldn't take her eyes off the sharp edge, either. A drop of blood trickled along the blade as it turned, forever almost falling free but turning back.

'We're not all students in our little group,' DeBoys explained. 'Paul is as much a Black Monk as any of us. He's been very generous to the Cause...'

'Hellfire to quaff,' said Durward, deadpan.

Dutifully, fingers snapped. Even Fran joined in, with her free hand.

Kate couldn't snap her fingers. She'd never got the trick. She couldn't wiggle her ears, either. Though she could touch the tip of her retrousse nose with the point of her vampire tongue, so there!

She actually did that now. To prove to herself that she was in control. Her body would do what she told it to. Except she wasn't demonstrating anything of the kind. She was being silly. Double rats. Though steady on her feet, she was losing her moorings.

The Black Monks had seen this before.

She was tripping.

Fresh cuts on Jess's arms and breasts were sealed by Elastoplasts. Kate could smell the blood.

Gold Top.

She knew what DeBoys had done. To Jess, to her. Also, to Carol and Laura.

She'd been only partially right in thinking herself immune to the effects of Bowles-Ottery's hallucinogenic ergot. Just swallowed, it did nothing to vampires. Morgan Delt, for one, had tried it and been disappointed. But. if a warm person took BOP, it entered their bloodstream. If a vampire drank that blood, then.

SNAP. CRACKLE. BOP.

She hadn't drunk much in the Chapel. Just ounces. Very fresh. DeBoys must have decanted it into her glass when he went to the bar supposedly to buy her a drink.

What a gent. What a git.

Maybe the druggies were right. Thinking clearly, along neural paths she didn't usually tread, she put it all together. The BOP in Carol's and Laura's blood. The bitemarks on Fran and Keith's necks.

She understood Eric DeBoys' kink. The girls took the drug, the designated murderers drank their BOP-laced blood, then DeBoys bit them. The high passed up the chain to the Grand Master of the Black Monks. Like Renfield, Dracula's first British disciple, DeBoys saw himself at the top of a pyramid of predation, absorbing lower forms of life. But that wasn't how the Siphonaptera Syndrome worked.

Bigger fleas have little fleas, upon their backs to bite 'em,

And little fleas have littler fleas, and so, ad infinitum...

Eric DeBoys wasn't Grand Master. He was the Littlest Flea. If he needed a murdering trade name, it shouldn't exalt his status. He wasn't Jack the Ripper, the Gorilla of Soho or the Boston Exsanguinator. He was the Mite. The tiniest tick, the pinprick pinhead. There were no lower forms of life.

He hadn't touched the girls, directly. But he was the killer. The absence in Thomas Nolan's photographs. the vampire who scrambled the photographer's brains. the culprit B Division was after. Case closed. Now, all she had to do was live through the night and bring in her man.

Determined and angry, she darted close to DeBoys. She was older and stronger than him. Her talons traced his face. She wound a nail into his chin dimple. Her tongue slid over his finely stubbled throat. She could taste the smell of Brut. She thought about ripping his face off his skull. She thought about kissing him till he passed out in orgasm.

He pushed her away firmly and took hold of the back of her neck, as if she were a cat who might scratch. He guided her across the room. Towards Fran and Jess. She stiffened, but Anna and Keith gripped her arms. She was not stronger than all of them together.

She was being led to water. She was to be made to drink.

Anna hissed in her ear, not in any language she knew.

'Once we were hunters, Kate,' said DeBoys, lecturing again. 'Now, we're pets. That's against nature. Croft has lost his way, stood back, left us free. We respect the example he set, B.D.  -  when we could live by our wits and teeth. Before we were coddled, registered, stamped, folded, numbered, briefed, debriefed and shut in coffins. We are vipers, my darling. We should be proud. It's not war; it's the wild. The natural state of things. This pretty bird is for our pleasure, our sustenance. Jessica is our gift to you, Kate. She's nothing. A circulatory system with a national insurance number. Her grandfather would understand. We respect Van Helsing. This murder is a tribute to the name.'

This murder?

Was Kate the weapon or the culprit?

She tried not to be forced further. That bloody St Bartolph's scarf had been a snare. It had pulled her to this.

'You must see we're not doing something wicked to you, Sister Kate,' said DeBoys. Anna murmured agreement and Keith smirked nastily. 'We're helping you find out who you are. We admire you, sincerely. More than Croft. More than Dracula. We want to help you unlock your potential, as your example has shown us. You can be a Black Monk. A Black Abbess, even. Just drink, pretty creature. It's such a small thing. Killing one of them. But it's a liberation. This bird's pals know about it. They ink crucifixes on their bodies for each of us they cross off. We don't need to keep tallies to impress each other or scare our enemies. That's not our bag, baby. Our trophies and markers are under the skin, in the blood, in the head. Once you're free, you'll see...'

Her red thirst raged. Her teeth tore the inside of her mouth. She tasted blood and wanted more. She was angry with the Black Monks, furious at DeBoys... but that compounded her need for blood. She couldn't resist or attack or hurt the people who were doing this to her  -  and, no mistake, even zooming through the ionosphere on BOP, she knew something wicked was being done to her  -  but Jess Van Helsing lay there, available, unresisting, ripe, delicious, bleeding...

Fran played the razor over Jess's wounds. She teased an Elastoplast off the girl's bosom, scraping away the just-formed scab. but didn't slice off any more skin.

Blood welled from the cut.

She saw, in microscope vision, every pore. She flew on leather wings across a vast human landscape  -  the breast a hillside, the veins underground rivers, the wound a crevice, the blood a geyser.

'Go on, woman,' said Keith, 'get some in!'

She froze. The flesh map under her was a person. Kate was expected to bite, to suck more blood and BOP. To surrender humanity, to unleash her inner vampire. To take a trip.

To trip was to embark on a voyage of discovery. But to trip was also to stumble and fall.

Life was a trip. Love was a trip. Murder was a trip.

Jess's eyes were open but empty. With even a small amount of Jess's blood in Kate, they had a connection. The girl's trip  -  different from Kate's wooziness and wavering realities  -  washed over her. The barriers between their minds thinned. Jess heard Paul singing la la la in the middle of a plain of long grasses, crowned by a circlet of fluttering cartoon butterflies. Kate was overwhelmed by the girl's feelings. Her own heart caught on tragedy.

DeBoys wanted her to see Jess as a thing, a token, a convenience, a snack. A centrefold filled to bursting with strawberry milkshake. That was what blood-drinking was for him. That was what murder was for him. A moment of struggle and inevitable dominance, then supping from an empty vessel. He didn't get communion...

...Kate was nauseated by how much she felt for Jess, a girl she barely knew. This connection was easy to mistake for love. She'd done that before. Too often.

In Jess's mind, something impossible happened. Paul, her Paul, was singing 'Hey, ninety-eight point six, it's good to have you back again...' Not 'Scream and Scream Again, oh baby, scream and scream again...'

Impatient, DeBoys pressed Kate's face to Jess's breast. As always, intimate contact with a warm person was a pleasant shock. Warm meant 98.6- Fahrenheit. warmer than Kate, warmer than any vampire. One thing vampires rarely told their warm friends  -  kissing them was like kissing a hot-water bottle.

Kate rolled her face against Jess's bosom. Was she remembering her mother. or a long-gone wet-nurse? Red wetness seeped between the girl's skin and her cheek.

Kate's mouth found the open wound. Blood stung her tongue.

The Black Monks repeated 'hellfire to quaff' as if on a tape recording played at the wrong speed, elongating the words to meaninglessness.

She was in a quick moment.

Fran whispered 'Bite her'. So did the others. Bite her, bite her, bite her...

Bite. Bitter. Bat. Her. Herr. Hair.

Jessica's blood was sweet as the filling of Cook's cherry pie.

BOP and Gold Top took her back to childhood. Was hers a trip to the nursery? The womb?

Kate's fangs ached. And all her bones were fangs. Fangs around her eyes, at the ends of her fingers, in her belly, in her vulva, budding from the insides of her elbows. She had more mouths than skin.

'She's holding out,' Keith said to Fran. 'Longer than you did...'

'She's a stubborn sister,' said DeBoys.

Kate's lips were stuck to Jess's chest, as if by black frost. She couldn't pull away without leaving skin. The vacuum in her mouth drew blood from the superficial cut.

Rainbow pathways. Faces in clouds. Kaleidoscope eyes. Lemonade pies.

Even Jessica Van Helsing's hallucinations were shallow. It was a wonder she didn't hear sitar music and see a hookah-smoking caterpillar.

She just heard and saw her Paul, ululating her own love back at her. He didn't need a reflection while he had Jessica.

Kate's eyes were bloody with tears.

This poor idiot was going to die under her fangs and she couldn't stop. Jessica Van Helsing would be the next victim. Kate Reed would be the next murderer.

Some detective. She had caught herself.

'Bite her,' said DeBoys, issuing an order, not making a suggestion.

He was getting impatient. That came with privilege. Being the man on the horse looking down at the peasant in the field. And being a junky. That was the other thing, the thing he'd covered up. He needed his fix. BOP, human blood, vampire blood. His drug cocktail. Eric DeBoys was sweating blood. Great bullets of it stood out on his forehead. Trickled in his chest hair. Made sticky patches on his shirt. He was starting on the shakes.

Take away the black robes, the hellfire salutes and the pseudophilosophy and this was all about shooting up. She was almost disappointed.

But that was a tiny quibble.

Jess's heartbeat sounded like a galley drum. Standing speed. Racing speed. Ramming speed. Biting speed.

Kate's red thirst could be restrained no longer.

Her jaws gripped like a bear trap and her fangs sank into meat. Sundered blood vessels emptied into her mouth. She nuzzled against ribs, probing for a vein and a steady pulse. Jess's heart thumped her skull.

If unrestrained, she'd break Jess's sternum and pry away the bones. She'd chew towards her heart and tear into the aorta, the body's mother lode, the great river surging through the trunk.

She would swim and tear through flesh and bone and exult in killing with no shame.

Only.

She stopped.

'What's wrong?' asked someone. 'Why's she not...?'

Only she wasn't that kind of girl.

She was the Sensible One. She knew  -  had always known, despite the stings of Penelope's put-downs  -  that she could be as sensual as sensible. She wasn't prim. She wasn't an old maid. She wasn't what they'd expected her to be.

But she had her limits. This was one.

Dammit.

She was cold sober now. Jess was tripping enough for the both of them.

DeBoys grunted in frustration and anger.

She took her mouth out of her victim's chest. She'd bitten a sizeable hole. The girl was bucking and bleeding. At last, she was afraid  -  her rainbows shone black and her butterflies metamorphosed into giant wasps.

Fran bent to drink from Jess's wound, but Kate blocked sharply with the heel of her hand. She felt the vampire's nose break. Fran was pushed across the floor and knocked over a lava lamp. She yelped as the hot object stuck to her bloody face. She flailed with her razor and slashed an inflatable pouffe. The thing hissed and collapsed like a burst souffle.

Kate pressed her fingers over Jess's bite-wound, stanching the blood.

'I told you, Eric,' said Anna. 'She's weak.'

'No,' he said. 'She's strong. That's her problem.'

Kate concentrated on the warm girl. Jess wasn't safe yet, the little fool. Her eyes flicked away, towards the impassive youth who'd watched all this happen.

'Paul,' she said, imploring, 'Paul...'

'Look at me, Jess,' said Kate. 'Me. It's Kate Reed. Remember.'

Of course, her face must be red with Jess's blood. Scarcely reassuring.

She hadn't bitten anything vital. Jess would dribble blood for a while, needed to to be careful about infection and would have an unsightly scar that might make her buy some high-necked blouses, but she would live  -  or, at least, not die from anything Kate had done to her. A pint of Bovril and a mustard plaster and she'd be right as rain. Providing she was let alone now.

A cold metal ring pressed into Kate's temple.

Eric DeBoys held a gun to her head.

'Her. You. Choose.'

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***