Of Unicorns & Vampyres
A disparate band of urban vampires go searching for their origins. They're not gonna like what they find
SO, this is where the voyage of discovery had led them: to this desolate ruin. Cavendish already loathed the place, but it struck him that his associates might find some gothic satisfaction to this derelict retreat.
The old church brooded against the oppressive backdrop of an overcast sky. Heavy rain lashed merciless at the crumbling stone. The masonry was already stained from decades of pollution. The water brought these dark hues of filth to the fore.
Stark amidst the piles of rubble that had once been Victorian houses, the church was gloomy and forbidding: isolated in its decay, much like the institution that built it. At one time, the structure had stood in a verdant rural idyll, until the city encroached and absorbed its tranquillity in the rush of urban evolution.
The Victorian neighbourhood arose to house a prosperous middle class. Time cycled, and the affluence ran dry, as the area declined to inner city slum, then a brief resurgence of regeneration, until finally abandoned to this lingering decay.
Until another cycle, the worms of decay turned, and now a fresh influx of modern wealth and opportunity promised the be-suited vultures of the developers, coming to pick over the architectural corpses.
One day, new streets and modern styles would rise from the crumbled ruins of yesterday. For now, the old church stood, broken though it was, as a legacy to better days, waiting for the inevitable to claim it. And inside, somewhere, perhaps lurked the remains of a darker chapter in its history.
Slowly, Cavendish and his three companions climbed out of the antique Mercedes. They were an unlikely collection of people, he knew, but bound – possibly – by the history of the church. Together, they regarded it coolly, oblivious to the pouring rain.
Cavendish moved forward. The others followed, picking their way over the rubble and garbage of accumulated years. A thunderclap blasted across the wasteland, causing a grim smile to flicker over his face; he appreciated the weather's sense of melodrama.
Onlookers might think it strange for such a well-dressed man to keep such company. He was dressed in a black overcoat underneath which he wore an expensive tailor-made suit.
Were it not for the multi-media groups he owned then the very same publications might scent a scandal and splash him across their displays. He looked an elder statesman, but for his deathly-pale face and colourless eyes. These latter features were not quite the only aspects he shared in common with his companions.
"This the place then?"
Cavendish glared up at the church, as though defying it to make him a liar, then he turned to face the speaker; a gangly youth in a weather-stained raincoat, hands stuffed resentfully in his pockets.
"Yes. This is it."
"Let's go then."
The youth made his way towards the boarded-up entrance; his trainers squelched every impatient step. The others followed more carefully, occasionally giving the old church an apprehensive stare, as if it was actually a menace more than a has-been.
At the entrance, Cavendish stood to one side while the younger men strained at the task of tearing clear the dilapidated efforts to seal the building. The girl – Lucretia, the eye-rolling name she'd adopted – watched, bedraggled impatience, her arms wrapped around her body.
The girl's pale, heart shaped face was streaked with black eye shadow, her lips coated with equally dark lipstick: every inch the cliché, but there were too few of them for Cavendish to pick and choose his kind.
At last the door to the church was exposed. A broken gap bordered by ruin-chewed wood. "After you, Mr Cavendish," the other youth, Karl, said.
He stepped forward, regarding the speaker with a cool stare. He looked the male equivalent of the girl, but wore black jeans rather than a flowing skirt. The two were occasional lovers, which meant she forever floated in his wake, while he let his eyes, his hands, and his prick wander at whim.
They passed underneath the crumbling arch. The old oak doors were jammed open on either side. The trio followed Cavendish as he picked his way through the rubble and broken pews. City neon flooded through the gaping windows and broken roof, but not enough to banish the dark entirely.
Cavendish withdrew a torch from his coat pocket and flicked it on. More shadow scurried clear of the brilliant beam to huddle thick and grim in the corners of perception. The church was smaller than it looked from the outside.
The scruffy youth scrunched over the rubble and broken mortar. Then he turned and waved his arms in disgust. "There's nothing here. This is a waste of time!"
"Perhaps. But we haven't looked down there, have we my impatient friend?"
He pointed with the torch beam towards a dark archway. The youth shrugged and made towards the portal. Lucretia and her look-alike mate followed.
"Ey! What do you think yer doing 'ere?" A watchman walked down the aisle; his stealthy appearance might almost have signified he shared their nature. "Don't yer know this place is dangerous? The 'ole fuckin' place could come down at any time!"
"It's all right, we have permission to be here."
"Yeah? So what are yer doin' here anyways?"
Cavendish laughed quietly and nodded gently towards Karl. "Answers," he said at last. "We are seeking answers."
The watchman stepped back. The confidence was beginning to drain from his face, but not enough.
"You doubt me. Karl, show our friend our permit to be in residence."
Karl grinned and turned towards the watchman. He reached into his bike jacket, fumbling for the inside pocket. Once he was close to the old man, he withdrew the hand. The watchman looked at it expectantly, then recoiled as a clenched fist smacked into his face. A cry marked his collapse into an unconscious state.
Lucretia moved forwards and crouched beside the old man. She breathed heavy, staring with gleaming eyes. She pulled him into a seated position, turned his head then leaned in as if to kiss.
"No! Let him be."
The girl looked up, her eyes narrowed. She bared her teeth and hissed defiance, showing she had watched far too many old movies. Blood stained her teeth. On the old man's neck two puncture wounds dribbled the source.
"Let him be!"
Lucretia finally relented and let the man fall. She wiped the blood from her face and stood up with a wistful glance at the unaware man. Karl came up to her and placed a consoling arm around her waist.
"As the man said, this place is dangerous. Take him outside – a safe distance from this heap. And Karl – do not harm him!"
Karl looked at him sullenly, but complied. He began to drag the old man down the aisle.
"The rest of us will be down below. Come on."
As they descended, their footsteps echoed like the ghosts of past generations. The steps were not deep, but they twisted round and round until they led to a short, dank passage. At the far end an iron gate was rusted ajar. On the other side the church's crypt lurked. Cavendish stood on the threshold and scanned the dank chamber with the torchlight. Finally, as if satisfied at something, he stepped inside.
"Bit creepy," the scruffy youth said. No one answered his comment. He slouched against the wall; hands thrust into the pockets of his raincoat, feigning a nonchalance his face failed to carry off. What was he afraid of, ghosts? The thought amused Cavendish, wasn't that precisely why they'd come here? Yes, to lay some haunting questions to rest once and for all.
The crypt was long devoid of its musty occupants; the recesses lining the wall were empty, but the crypt itself wasn't completely barren of purpose. In one niche, a pile of old rags like a tramp's forgotten bedding, but it was a flat surfaced tomb that occupied the space before the northern wall that grabbed his attention.
The other two stepped in behind as he stalked towards the altar-like block. He placed the torch upon it in such a manner that it lit up the crypt, then he rummaged through the junk he found. Dusty test tubes were scattered on its surface, some broken, others intact. Petri dishes, covered in dust, the contents dried to a crust. A pile of books, but these were mouldered and stained, their pages bonded together.
Finally, what looked at first glance to be a portable computer: a keyboard and system unit unfolded to show a dark screen. Cavendish wiped some of the dust from the blind display and saw the cracked surface beneath. "It's a gene sequencer, I think," he muttered, "but it's an old one – sixty years obsolete maybe."
He walked round the table. His feet struck something that clattered plastic. A handful of storage disks and the sequencer's synthesis unit. Karl returned while he pondered these relics. He went up to Lucretia and gave her a passionate kiss, but a trickle of blood leaking from their lips gave them away. Cavendish scowled, and tried to push back his anger.
"I've found something!"
The interruption pulled him out of the red fumes of anger. He turned towards the youth, who walked over, holding up a bundle of grubby rags like a prize.
"What is it?"
He took the bundle, felt the weight of whatever was inside. Hope urged him on. He placed the bundle on the table and hurried to untangle the old cloth, tearing it in his haste to unveil the contents. The rags came free. A book, a scrap of folder paper and a silver crucifix fell onto the table.
Cavendish smiled at the light shimmering off the crucifix, but other than that he ignored the object to regard the book; its mildewed cover and pucker-edged pages promised him what he wanted to know. That, or another frustrating false lead. Time to find out how fate's dice were about to roll. He licked his lips in anticipation.
Lucretia, meanwhile, picked up the scrap of paper in idle curiosity. She unfolded it carefully and revealed an old poster. The colours were dulled and stained, but still conveyed everything of its original homage to vintage bad taste.
The picture portrayed a young woman sat up in bed, naked but for the hastily and inadequately held sheet failing to veil her modesty. Her virginal purity was rather marred by the outdated 'tribal' hair styling, body tattoos and piercings. The look on the women's face was a mix of exaggerated fear and sexual fever.
The other figure was every bit the caricature; pale of face, narrow but handsome features, black hair slicked back, fangs bared like a snake poised to strike. His clothes were archaic beyond even the antiquity of the poster: frock coat and flowing black cape. Every thread and cut the vampire cliché.
"Maleficio's theme park of the mythical presents for the public's enjoyment, the ghoulish exploits… Who is Baron Blood?"
Cavendish ignored the girl's question. The poster, the layers of lie masking truth, was a distasteful thing, and he would not credit its existence with an answer. Instead, he raised the book and with a tremble of anticipation, opened the cover.
The Diary of Baron Blood
Alias 'Quinn' – an unwilling vampire
"Quinn," he whispered. Was this another disappointment? He turned the pages, looking for legible text. Water had seeped in, stealing the ink from the words, but it was far from obliterated. He let the dead hand of its author scratch out his message from yesterday.
March 5
Welcome to my diary, curious reader. I am Quinn. Quinn the Vampire. Quinn the Slave. Quinn the Damned. Perhaps you know me better by my atrocious stage name – Baron Blood. That is the name under which I drain the blood from the cloned bio-morphs for the titillation of the paying, baying hoards whose blood-lust cuts far deeper than my own curse.
Forgive me if I seem bitter, but if you were in my place might you not twist the same way, even if you retained but one shred of sanity? Perhaps I should be grateful; were it not for certain copyright issues I gather I would have become known as Count Dracula. More than a cliché but an insult to literature, one might say. Do I care either way? No, not any more.
I am of course – here the writing was illegible. Cavendish skimmed the page until more of the words surrendered some meaning.
You may regard this script as my testament and my will, not that I have anything to bequeath to you other than the products of my mind, for I – along with my fellow inmates in this accursed asylum that calls itself a circus – am to be destroyed. We shall not be granted an execution, as befits a living creature, but disposed of as if obsolete machinery.
I, a being of flesh and blood, of cultivated mind, am to be destroyed because the lusts of the paying hoard have grown dulled by atrophied imaginations and so this travelling theatre of shame is cutting out costs. I would weep were I not so enraged at the folly of my – again the writing was obliterated by mould, much like the mind of the maker. Cavendish flicked the page, hungry for more. This was surely it.
March 11
My friend the Wolfman is dead. This poor creature of humble intelligence, yet benign nature, was shot like a mad dog. I grieve to think of his terror and desire to live that provoked such a foolhardy attempt at escape.
It was my misfortune to watch his final moments from the observation grille of my mobile holding pen. Poor creature; he attempted to climb the electrified perimeter, held there by the voltage locking his muscles, until the security guard blew out his scrambled brains. Soon, I fear, my demise will be delivered.
The next few pages were, again, badly stained and water-damaged. Cavendish flicked through impatiently, ignoring the rising boredom of his companions.
April 2
Today I witnessed an event that should have lifted my heart, at least for a few precious moments. Yet I must confess that it has only added to the melancholy burden pressing on my shoulders. The unicorns have a benefactor it seems. One who is willing to save these noble beasts from the slaughter. I know not, of course, who has purchased their lives and I begrudge them not their salvation. Would that my fellows and I be likewise spared; but who would buy 'Baron Blood' – and would he truly wish to have the remaining dregs of his dignity sold on?
Strange, to think that these beautiful creatures should be spared for being none but animals, while we beings gifted with speech and intelligent minds are condemned to perish. One might think there is little merit to our intelligence. Fools for our fate and none so deserving you might think – should stupidity be worthy of such a punishment? Do you even care, you who might well have been one of the baying mob, paying to watch my fangs tear into the warm flesh of the clone and drink the pumping blood. That and what we might euphemistically call our foreplay. Yes, you might condemn me for your pleasure – but look first to your own misplaced morality.
Again, the rest of the page was rendered illegible. He turned through, the next page, the one after that, then he flicked through with more haste. The same. Leaf after leaf of smudged ink and water damage, mould and the ravages of time. Too many years in this dank crypt had digested the message in the handwriting.
Cavendish swallowed the bitter taste of frustration; a few snatched lines here and there managed to whisper a fragment of meaning. Clues that might lead somewhere; after all these years he'd take what he could and be grateful.
On one page, a reference to Quinn's escape, on another a priest and this very church. He also found a reference that both puzzled and intrigued, and he suspected its meaning – if any – was destined to remain forever an enigma.
Two words, heavily underscored: the unicorns.
He closed the book with a sigh and realised his companions were waiting to share the revelations. Why disappoint, he mused, and with an exaggerated motion to draw out the delay he rested the book back on the dusty altar.
"Nothing," he said. "Only bitter ramblings and some nonsense about unicorns."
Karl shrugged. The others looked crestfallen. "So that's it then?"
This was the dead end he'd long dreaded. The one thing that bound them was the unity of the question – how did they come to be? Yes, how was it that Lucretia and Karl, the youth, himself for that matter had all been touched by the blood of this long dead vampire Quinn? What was the secret that made them what they are? It was frustrating that decay in this old crypt had bleached and blurred the possible answer.
Then he thought. The church. The priest. There had been a priest. An insane fellow who might still be alive. Yes, the connections started linking up in his mind.
The sins of the father
FATHER Ryan the man had called himself. He was said to have been a priest who lost his faith along with his congregation and lived alone in the church, at least until Quinn came to him.
Whether the man was truly a priest once was neither here nor there. Considering the twist his faith or lack of it took, it would be of no surprise that 'respectable' religions disavowed him. Only the disturbed and the decadent flocked to his calling, in those troubled and fearful times.
Ryan had been with Quinn at the end, when police marksmen had caught him in their sights. Afterwards, he played dupe and slave – an innocent co-opted to the beast's will. He slipped the net; in those days the killing of even a vampire caused but few ripples and concern in a world gripped by apocalyptic dread of catastrophes born of human folly. So Ryan, poor mad 'Father' Ryan, found the niche to forge his obscene cult.
They worshipped the vampire. They worshipped the blood. In Quinn they found their Christ – and they drank the blood of others in homage to his will on earth and to sanctify their flesh with his spirit. The cult's victims died in the old church. Perhaps their bloodless corpses had once mildewed in that old crypt. Whatever, these fanatics who stalked the night and stole their victim's live were no vampires. That was the shocking horror of it – humans mimicking their betters.
In time, the world changed, crises passed, catastrophes averted, the world got back on what passed for an even keel. Society suddenly had time to root out the sickness in its midst. Ryan's cult went the way of its unwilling founder – but the priest himself avoided the martyr's fate. No, the dregs of his life were drained slowly out of him in a succession of institutions, until history largely forgot his sick footnote.
He lived still. Just. Close to a century old, but it would not take too many pulled strings to gain an audience with the one living creature who had spoken to Quinn.
He should have thought of it before, but until the diary in the crypt the tumblers to unlock the clues had failed to fall into place. But now…
"I never knew the old man had any relatives, guess I can't say I blame you for staying away all this time, but whatever changed your mind you came just in time."
"Is he dying? Is he conscious?"
"Concerned about an inheritance, eh? Didn't think he had anything."
"Yes. Yes. Well, Doctor?"
"He's dying. He's long overdue, if you ask me. We give him a few hours – a couple of days – a week at most if he's lucky."
Cavendish nodded. Just in time, indeed.
"You don't seem concerned?"
"Should I be? He's old. When you spend so long waiting for the inevitable, when it arrives – well… Like you said, overdue."
"Of course, I understand. I'll leave you in the orderly's capable hands. If you need anything else I'll be in my office."
The doctor offered his hand. Cavendish shook it, not only for the look of the thing, but to complete the 'greasing' of the wheel. They were in. The only hurdle remained the man's state of mind: to come so far, only to find a confused and bumbling dementia patient. No amount of bribery would ever open such a dark vault…
"This way, Sir."
Snapping back to attention, he followed the orderly. The man led him through a warren of dreary corridors before stopping at a secure door.
"Is the prisoner, I mean to say Mr Ryan, dangerous?"
"No, Sir, don't worry on that one. He's too weak to be any bother now, apart from an acid tongue, but I hear he was a right monster once."
"He was."
The man swiped his identity card through the lock and wrenched the door open. With a taught step brought by anticipation, he followed the orderly into the secure wing. The others straggled behind, like a flotilla of bored offspring.
The journey took them through several more grey corridors, by-passing rows of doors, and rooms and wards. The place was largely empty, as if its sole purpose was to cater to the needs of one relic of faded history. The orderly knocked on a door, no different to any of the others, and then he slipped inside.
"Visitors for you, Mr Ryan."
He adjusted the old man's pillows, helping him sit up and view his guests. The shrunken and shrivelled face almost swallowed the rheumy eyes in bags and folds of flesh. Cavendish felt the sharp sense of awareness contemplate him from across the distance of time. This cadaverous caricature of a man had known Quinn. He swallowed the urgent impatience rising like bile.
"Don't know you," the figure rasped, "but it's always nice to receive penitents."
A wheezing, hissing rumble came out of the turkey-throat, shuddering into a hacking cough. For an alarming moment, Cavendish worried that the man was about to expire. The orderly moved to tend the old man, but the patient brushed him clear.
"Get off! I ain't snuffing yet. Can't be doing with you pawing me."
"Now, now, Mr Ryan, we have to see you're all right."
"I'm dying, you stupid bastard – how can I be all right? Now clear off and leave me to my penitents."
The orderly shrugged, and glanced up to a CCTV camera on the ceiling. Cavendish took note and nodded. "If you need me, I'll be on the ward down the corridor," the orderly said.
Once the man had gone, he stepped closer to the bed, where the old man could see him better. Lucretia, Karl, the youth, all hung back and clung to the corners of the room, as if the man retained his monstrous vigour of so long ago. For all their shared need for answers, this had always really been his need to know.
"So, who are you then?"
"Nobody. Just someone who wants to know about beginnings."
"Must be somebody to dig out an old fossil like me – and walk in to the vault like you own it."
"Wealth and influence grease many wheels."
"That's the truth. Never had much of either, except for what I bled from my little penitents. So what do you want with an old corpse then?"
"Some answers –"
"Tell us about Quinn," Lucretia demanded.
The old man turned to stare. He grinned gummy; a little spittle dribbled from his lips. Then he leered. "My my girl, s'been a while but I don't mind pleasing a bit of succulent woman flesh like you. Come on over here lass" – he patted the bed – "so's I can have a taste."
"Fuck you!" Lucretia bared her fangs. The old man's leer dropped away. Suddenly he looked thoughtful.
"Well, I'll be a – It actually worked."
"What worked? Tell us, Ryan. Tell us about Quinn. What did he do to us?"
"To you lot? Now how could he have possibly done anything to you? He's been dead more 'n 60 years. But you, maybe you eh? You could be old enough. Well preserved, like." The old man chuckled. His mirth sounded like a death rattle. He turned to look at the others. "So you'd be the grand-children. You poor bleeders. He did a good job on you, I'll say that."
"What do you know about Quinn? Start making sense!"
"Like anything I'll say's going to make sense to you after all these years. Were you there in those days, when the world was going to Hell and this mess called civilisation was clinging on by its fingertips? What do you know?"
Cavendish forced himself to bite down the rising anger. A stern glance told his companions to do the same. He turned back to the old man.
"I know he hid in the theme park, masquerading as a mockery for the sick pleasures of the time, hiding what he was by being a caged version of himself. Then I read the remains of his diary and realised he was a captive, forced to flaunt himself for your twisted kind. I know he escaped. I know that in time they killed him. I know nothing of others like him in those days, nor how he bequeathed us our existence. We want answers. We need understanding of how we came to be."
"A father figure or a god – you'll get neither. He was the first of many but not all like you. They were different. Quinn was a freak. Ironically, that's why he survived the cull so long – and why you came to be."
"Talk sense to us," Lucretia said, her pretty face sullen with frustration, and a dawning hunger. "Make sense – or I'll drink you!"
"Fuck me, vampira, you're a severe case aren't you, but I likes a girl with a bit o' juice in her gash. Don't be so sure I'll not have a sip 'o you first though. Or second, got to get a nibble in first, eh? Shame to waste a little treat like you."
Karl pulled her back before she managed to rake her nails across the man's face. Ryan turned back to Cavendish; he was feeling some of Lucretia's mood too.
"Pretty fine vampires. All of you." Ryan chuckled again. "Except you ain't. You're as big a fake as Quinn. I reckon I'm more genuine than you – and I'm a complete fraud. Quinn wasn't hiding; he wasn't a captive either, not in the legal sense. He was owned. He was property. He was what they called a 'repromorph': a genetically engineered fiction. As close to the myth that reality could fashion.
“That was the thrill, get it? No fake blood, no actors in prosthetics. Real blood. Real death. Real corpses. And don't think the sex acts they made him do excluded those pretty poor dead things. 'Course, they were all engineered too, but I wondered then and I wonder now – were they all clones? Maybe some poor slip of a girl, forced to make a hard living selling herself, made a raw deal with the wrong punter. That was your Quinn. Your maker!"
"No!"
"Oh yes! Shocked? I don't blame you. Don't blame Quinn either. He never had a choice like me. That's the thing about us humans, you see – we have choices. That's why we're the supreme creation. Even God is in awe of that. He's rather like Quinn in a way – trapped by what He is."
The old man grinned. He was loving this. Cavendish stared. Lost for words. Karl cursed, his throaty murmur turning softer to verbally caress Lucretia's sore mood. The youth, the one who loved his sullen anonymity, he pictured as always leaning against the wall, hand thrust into his coat pockets, daring the world with the expression 'so what'.
Instead, he snarled out. "So what does that make us? What the fuck are we?"
"Even bigger freaks than he was. At least they made him with a purpose, but you – you're a wild impulse, a foolish hope, a hot streak of fucking luck! Good job old Quinn was a smart one, eh?"
"He can't have made us. Look at them – they were born long after he was dead. How can we be like him? We must have got things wrong. There must be others out there. Vampires. Real ones. Like us. What you say makes no sense."
"Been to the old church have you? Found his diary didn't you? So, you saw the gene-gizmo, I guess. Does that give you a clue? Hard to infect the germ line of a mature adult – but life's a funny thing, sometimes it let's you play!"
"He… made us?" Karl spat the words with his disgust.
"Nah! Dame Nature did that the tried and tested way, same as folks have been doing since day one. Quinn, he just tweaked things a little, paid a few visits to people, back then when things were crazy enough for him to get away with it for so long – and crazy enough to give hope a wild shot. Let's say he added a bit of himself to the mix, before his victims got it together and spawned a sprog. Most failed, I guess, but some… well, you're proof enough Quinn's genes showed some staying power."
"Let's go, I've heard enough. This is too much." Lucretia's voice was shrill. The clicking heels of her boots emphasised the point, as she hurried out of the room. Karl followed slowly, cursing and muttering. As he passed the old man, he muttered: "You're a fucking liar. We aren't genetic freaks!"
Ryan winked and his withered hand reached down to grip the bedclothes covering his crotch. "Tell the pretty one, I'll be thinking of her – naked!"
Karl swore and stormed off. Cavendish, biting back a growing anger, turned to the youth. "And you?"
He shrugged, but didn't move. Cavendish sighed. There was nothing more to learn here. No information that took them closer to an understanding of where they came from – but this gleeful storytelling of a man who had clearly missed his congregation. Aside from one nagging curiosity, he wanted nothing more to do with this freak.
"Why was Quinn so struck by unicorns? What possible relevance could they have to his life?"
"Ah! So you know about them, eh? Those beasts set him up on that mad quest of his. Now, if he'd only stuck to drinking blood out of the addicts and whores that used to infest the place, he'd probably be around to chat with you face to face. But no, he had to start putting himself about a bit."
More laughter. The mirth turned to a barrage of coughing. Then back to a strained laughter.
"What's that supposed to mean?
"Means your lad and that pretty little squeeze danced out of here before the best bit. You want answers? Here it comes. Quinn was mad, see, especially when he learned the truth about himself. Thought he'd been hiding out in plain view so to speak. Well, he was smart – they made him smart to fit the stereotype – so he started studying. Took him a while, but he cracked it. How to put his key gene sequences into people – into their germ lines."
"The gene sequencer? But I still don't understand what the unicorns have to do with any of this."
"No, you wouldn't. Got to be as mad as Quinn to make that connection. When he was in Maleficio's waiting to be destroyed, the unicorns were saved. Breeding stock. They gained legal status as a naturalised species, see, after some disgruntled programmer released a cracked version of their genome onto the public domain. Too many to enforce the intellectual property rights. Quinn thought if he could do the same for his kind, he'd gain a similar kind of status. Round the bend, like I said, poor sod."
The anger flashed. That's all they were? Fakes concocted in the alchemical brew of back street gene therapy? They were made to suffer the curse of the vampire because of all that. He found himself leaning over the bed, gripping the headrest with one hand, his finger pointing a threat at the old man.
"We're cursed with the damned lust for blood because of the mad need for a fake vampire to be accepted!"
"Pretty much, yeah. I hadn't figured it like that, but now you mention it that sounds about right."
"Quinn actually thought that if people gave birth to – what? Vampires and quasi-vampires – that humans would say all right, you can live among us. That they'd grant a legal right to exist to a manufactured blood-drinking fiend?"
"You're getting good at this. You obviously inherited Quinn's smarts!"
"What could we have done to earn such a curse?"
The old man snorted a cynical laugh. "Same as the rest of us – you got born. Deal with it, instead of coming crying to old Father Ryan."
"You're loving this aren't you – you sick bastard." The youth lunged at the old man, all his sullen detachment gone. Cavendish found he was surprisingly strong for his build as he struggled to pull him back.
"Calm down."
The boy's face was an oblivious fury, his eyes boiling with the need for the old man's painful death. He shook him hard until he began to emerge from the red haze.
"Don't give the old bastard the satisfaction. We're not his disciples whatever he thinks. We're not here for his show!"
"Okay. I'm fine."
He pulled free and adjusted his coat. The aloof detachment returned and he slunk back to the wall, once more pulling himself away from proceedings. Perhaps it was time to leave, before they ended up with a hard to explain corpse and some suspicious CCTV footage. Even the strategic application of fiscal grease might fail to turn that wheel. The old man clearly thought the same, from the malicious humour in his eyes.
"You know –"
"I think we've heard enough!"
"Not yet, you haven't. Oh no, you started this with your dewy-eyed search for some father-creator, so I'll finish it. Quinn didn't have no bloodlust. That part of the coding failed to express. He was a failed prototype. That's why he was at Maleficio's. They bought him cheap. Got round the problem by spiking his blood victims with drugs. Got him high, got him hooked, got him thinking it was the blood.
“Fucked with his mind when he started craving and his drug-free victims did nothing but make him sick. That's what he was your maker, a fucked up junkie pseudo-vamp. He'd have been lost without me. I put two and two together and came though for him. Until he had that mad idea about the unicorns."
"No blood lust? No curse?"
"That's right. You got the raw deal there all right. Got Daddy's genes and made 'em work too! You're vamps after my own heart." The old man grinned, winked. "Got everything you came for? More than you bargained for, I'll bet!"
Cavendish felt cold. Angry cold. Hollow cold. The kind of void only a hot flush of fresh blood might soothe. Never the old man's: enough of his poison was darkening his soul without imbibing more of his noxious senescence. He nodded a curt response, reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a pen.
"What's this, you want my autograph? I'm touched. Been a long time, but it's nice to be acknowledged. I brought art to a depraved time, you know."
This time Cavendish smiled and it was genuine, if frosted in ice. "I've been doing some homework of my own. I figured I owed you something for Quinn. I never thought you'd earn it so generously. Turns out he and I share an aptitude in common, perhaps that's not so strange given our common genetic heritage. How's your immune system?"
The old man frowned, baffled. "Wha–"
"Not so good given your age, and terminal decline, I should think."
He stepped close and pulled off the pen's cap. Ryan stared at the elegant fountain pen, his puzzled frown deepening as he witnessed the pen's transformation to a hypo-injector.
"You drank the blood in your day, Ryan, but you never felt the need, you never knew the blood for all it was worth, so I brought you a gift."
Leaning over, as though sharing an intimate secret with the old man, Cavendish pierced the injector into the old man's arm and triggered the release of its contents. Ryan gasped at the sharp brief sting, but in that brief interlude the deed was done and the pen returned to a pocket. Cavendish stood up, keeping his back to the monitoring CCTV.
"What have you done? You've poisoned me, you bastard! Well, so what – I was dying anyway so fuck you."
"Like you said, life sometimes let's you play, but maybe you'll die before it starts to express, " Cavendish laughed. "You should hope it doesn't, because you are not going to like it, my gummy friend."
The youth stepped forward, curiosity overcoming his usual reticence. "What have you done?"
"Answer him, you fucker, what have you done to me?"
"A gift from Quinn. From us. When it encodes in your genome, you'll find you have a little reprieve from your appointment with the mortician."
"What? Why? What's that supposed to achieve? You wanna keep me in here a little longer? That's supposed to bother me? You're as nuts as Quinn."
"Think it through, old man. The next time I – we – are struggling with the agony of the need, it will ease some of the suffering to think of you lying here screaming out the same agony. The genes won't just extend your life – they'll make you thirst the way we do. After all these decades you'll finally know the blood – and you'll never taste a drop to ease that agony."
"No! You can't do that to me! Do you know who I am?"
"Yes – and I've already done it. Quinn is inside you now. Enjoy it."
Cavendish turned to leave. The youth waved the old man a contemptuous finger as they closed the door on history. Ryan shouted, more a strangled cry of rage than words. Soon, he'd know what the blood truly meant to a vampire. Quinn, possibly, might have appreciated that.
MC
Copyright © July 1991/November 2007
Of Unicorns & Vampires was first published in the author's collection of short fiction, Isolation Space (2009). It subsequently appeared under the title Baron Blood in the anthology Vampires, Zombies & Ghosts, Oh My! published by No Tree Press (2010)