Darkness Dominates - Chapter 5

Catherine was moving a dark grey wheelie bin up her driveway when her phone, switched to silent mode, vibrated. Tracking the buzz it gave off to her left-hand trouser pocket, she answered it before there was a fourth vibration. She heard three seconds of a recorded message spouting the non-existent virtues of claiming PPI compensation before hanging up. This was the twelfth time she’d had this breed of annoying afternoon call, and it was twelve times too many. Her phone was top of the line technology, but it lacked an app that blocked nuisance calls. She had borne witness to the evolution of the telephone, and had been in possession of the models that spanned the entire history of this communication device. Opening the left-hand side gate to ferry the grey bin through coincided with a second buzzing noise coming from her phone. She almost psyched herself up to snap irascibly at the caller’s voice, but when she heard John Arden speak Catherine put her bad temper back in its box.

“Home Secretary, I didn’t expect you to give me a ring at this time of the day.”

Arden didn’t stick to the pleasantries for more than a few minutes. He shifted straight into a business-like attitude and immediately demanded Ms Henfield give whatever details she had on Jade. The trouble was she hadn’t gotten any and there was no real closeness inside of which they could swap stories about what kind of lives they lead.

“Marcus won’t be forthcoming in passing on details to you about Jade.”

“Why won’t he?”

“I don’t mean to sound insubordinate, but I think you already know the answer to that.”

“Because he’s in a relationship with her”

He merely took a second to reach that conclusion, so there was barely a pause between Catherine rendering his query redundant and Arden providing the answer he was trying to obtain.

“There’s more to it than that, Home Secretary.”

“Such as”

“She’s a Detective Constable in Bolton CID. I doubt a police officer, even a junior one would swallow the kind of explanation Marcus will be giving her, if he succeeds in doing it, that is!”

“What do you mean, Catherine?”

“I get the feeling...actually, it’s more than a feeling.”

“I still don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“My new genetic bond with Jade makes me sense she isn’t that interested in what her boyfriend has to say.”

Henfield rode a protracted pause of thirteen seconds before Arden continued the phone conversation. These short-lived silences made her uneasy. They put on her the spot to think about what her next suggestion to him. She wondered if he was mirroring this. All there was waiting at the end of the gap in them two talking was Arden throwing another question.

“What do you think is the best thing to do here at this point, Catherine?”

She found her brain running through a list of possible courses of action. There was just one that she felt would make it easier for her to talk to Jade about the extraordinary biological change Marcus had forced upon her.

“Hand control of the investigation into Frank George’s connection to the missing girls back to DCI Oliver’s team.”

“Why the sudden change of tactics? You gave me a convincing argument in favour of letting you take over his investigation.”

“Until Marcus let his emotions get the better of him, I was certain I was doing the right thing. Jade being turned into the same species I was turned into has thrown that plan’s credibility out the window.”

“I might as well let you know, Catherine, that I wasn’t totally convinced the line you were taking would contain the bad situation Mr George is seeking to create.”

“Why did you okay it then?”

“Because you’re good at selling the idea of calculated risks, Catherine”

“In other words, I made a mistake in my sums!”

“With a little help from Marcus”

“I should have seen that coming a mile off.”

“If I tell the Chief Constable that DCI Oliver has a free hand to lead this enquiry again, he may wonder what’s going on.”

“I doubt it.”

“You don’t know him like I do.”

“If he does, he can’t say anything.”

“Neither can I, Catherine – the PM doesn’t know what motivated me creating this fake department...nobody in the entire government does. You would do well to remind yourself that I put you in charge of the Bolton branch of that department to cover up the existence of your ‘race’. All the other branches are there to convince the people that the Refugee Integration Centre is really tied into immigration. You are the one who made it plain about the catastrophic panic there would be if the population of this country got wind of the un-dead living amongst them!”

“Please don’t use that phrase, Home Secretary.”

“Why shouldn’t I? It goes hand-in-hand with what you are!”

“That’s the kind of thing Nigel Farage would say.”

Arden realised he’d shot himself in the foot. He was immediate in evaluating that such a remark was one any Home Secretary should avoid saying, unless spoken in a private capacity. The accidentally recorded comment Gordon Brown had made ought to have taught him that.

“Okay, I’m sorry, Catherine. What term would be more PC?”

“I just want you to stick with the pretence I’m a normal person. That goes some way towards keeping the public in the dark.”

“Very well, Catherine! Do what you have to!”

“Do you want me to contact the Chief Constable?”

“No, you don’t have the authority to do that – I do! I’ll call you back in an hour. The mess should’ve been cleaned up by then.”

Arden hung up abruptly. Catherine stayed on the line for a few more seconds before ending the call from her end. She was about to go back into her house when Marcus came into her eye-line by walking onto his driveway. He was doing up his shirt sleeves and checking the front of his car. Keeping her front door fractionally ajar, she strode over to him.

“That was Arden” Catherine said as she got to within several inches of him.

“Not now, Cathy! I’m going over to Bolton CID to try and talk to Jade!”

“No you’re not, I am – tomorrow, in fact! He’s transferring the enquiry into Frank’s activities back to the man Jade takes orders from!”

“Make up your fucking mind, Cathy! First, you seize control of an investigation you’d no right to commandeer, which has put me in danger of Jade splitting up with me, and then you relinquish control of it!”

“I have made my mind up! DCI Oliver will be back on that case by this evening.”

“Tell me something, Cathy – why do you feel you should be the one to talk to her? She’s even less likely to listen to you than she is to me!”

“Because tonight she will become something she has always thought of as fantasy. Tonight, she will rob someone of their blood. That’s what awaits her!”

“I take it you’ll be standing by rather than stopping her doing it.”

“I won’t even be there.”

Simply five words unlocked a complicated explanation in Marcus’ mind. Catherine had expertly interwoven a bucket load of subtlety into a basic response. He didn’t share that explanation with her, though. His reasoning for denying it to Ms Henfield was that some reactions had to be private. He ran out of things to say to her regarding the revelation Jade would have to face alone and walked back inside to finish getting himself ready for his shift at Royal Bolton.

Catherine was out of conversational juice too. Explaining the updated situation to Marcus had drained her of it.

She went straight upstairs to the second room to the left on the upper corridor. It had once been a bedroom, but when Catherine moved in, she had it converted to an office. There was no shortage of apparatuses that helped her with administrative work she opted to do at home, but that wasn’t why she’d come in here. Ms Henfield opened the doors to a metallic cupboard across from the window. She rummaged around for several seconds until she could feel the back of a picture frame. Catherine intricately removed the object and when it was out of the cupboard, she was able to turn it round without knocking any the corners or damaging the glass pane in the front. The portrait of Ms Henfield behind it was an original painting. Everything from the brushstrokes to the pigment highlighted it hailing from the 18^th century. Its authenticity as a work of art from over two hundred years ago made it ideal to be sold off at Southerbys. She had no plans, however, to sell it. Her sentimental attachment to the painting put it beyond a monetary price. In her eyes, it was the sole visual proof that she had lived in a different era in British history to this one. Not even a billion quid was going to make her part with it. She began to use it as a tool to leapfrog her mind back through two hundred years to the circumstances that stopped her ageing process. Back then, Catherine had a different name, but she hadn’t used the one she was baptised with for so long that it couldn’t be retrieved for the millions of memories she’d tried to keep hold of. Without it, she used her current one to make the reminiscence easier to handle.

This recollection opened with the kind of summer day that was pure. The industrial revolution was over eighty-odd years away, plus there were no cars, trains or aircraft. Without pollution, the air was clearer and fresher, causing the sun gave more warmth to the countryside.

The fields outside Kendrick Hall were warm underfoot. Catherine and one of her elder sisters, Emily, delighted in walking where the sun shone on it the most. They had been at the estate for the past two days before perfect weather visited the grounds. Their invitation had come from the owner of the residence, Lord Miles Delaney. It came to him because he was his father’s only son from his first marriage, and the law in those days wouldn’t recognise children from a second as being entitled to a share of that legacy. Miles had a sister, Jane, but her share of the legacy hardly compared to her brother’s. Their father took a second wife, but no children came from that union. At the heart of Miles’ wish to have Catherine in his company was his romantic ambition to become her husband. That goal formed the hopes of all mothers who wished advantageous marriages for their children. The need for wealth and connection to be a part of young men and women’s lives prompted Miles to hold a ball at his home. He saw the merit of using the occasion to propose to the women he intended to marry. Catherine fast-forwarded the extraneous part of the memory to get to the one moment that defined the state of her existence from thereon in. The chain of events leading to it revolved around an unidentified male appearing amongst of group of expected guests. He had ingratiated himself with them quite swiftly because they were talking as if their friendships with him had been long-term.

It was no accident that Catherine caught his eye. Hearing none of the footmen announce him caused her to be intrigued. The names of individuals arriving were always vocally declared. There was too much of this custom, and it seemed to go on forever. Her mental faculties pressed the fast-forward button again. The recollection’s final part was more fragmented than the more tiresome elements: all she could picture was a full-moon and a small handful of wispy clouds that resembled trails of white smoke against the night sky; then the stranger bore down on her. There was a moment of total blackness, and Emily leaned over and started to shake her. Yet, it was not her sibling doing that, but her housekeeper, Sharon Durrell.

“What are you doing?” Catherine asked, once out of the very long trip down memory lane.

“You were fast-off, Miss Henfield.”

“For how long: one hour, two hours?”

“Eight minutes I reckon. Lovely painting: who’s it by?”

Catherine stood up, trying to lose some of the tiredness that now and then creeps up on people in the afternoon. She put the picture back where she’d taken it from and tried to politely usher Sharon out of her office, and into the upstairs landing. Then she blocked the doorway to stop Mrs Durrell trying to see what else was inside this room.

“I noticed some of the shelves are covered in dust, Miss Henfield – do you want me to get a cleaner in? I know these two sisters who run this...”

“Thank you but there’s no need! I’ll sort it out” she replied and then closed the door before Sharon get could another word in edgeways.

 

DCI Oliver used the short lull in his chain of responsibilities to join the ‘troops’ – as he occasionally called them – in gearing up for the pub quiz questions. Angela was already testing Donnie on various run-of-the-mill categories when Stewart stepped outside his office. DC Matthews was doing better on sport than the others, especially on football’s star players from the last forty years, and was able to use names like Steve Coppell and Glen Hoddle: people that Jade had never heard of.

“Jade, test me on history” her boss commanded.

To show she was on the ball with issuing answers that would put ‘Hot Fuzz’ points ahead of the other quiz teams, DC Pryce went for an easy question. It was almost too easy, but her brain was not solely focussed on the pub quiz and she wanted to come up with a test of Stewart’s knowledge that was easy to think of.

“Who was the second wife of Henry VIII?”

“Katherine Howard” said DCI Oliver eagerly.

Jade and Angela were open-mouthed at their superior’s boob. Donnie wasn’t much of a history buff, so he was unaware that the wrong answer had been given.

“Totes wrong, sir!” said Jade.

“Totes” Stewart replied.

“I meant to say ‘totally’!”

“I’m sure I’m right – Henry VIII’s 2^nd missus was Katherine Howard.”

Stewart’s steadfast belief he was correct made Angela momentarily anxious about the chances of ‘Hot Fuzz’ winning tonight’s prize. She took immediate steps to set him right.

“Katherine Howard was his fifth bride – Anne Boleyn was his second.”

“Are you sure?”

“A thousand percent, sir” said Angela.

DS Korrell was successful at hiding her own peaked incredulity that her boss didn’t know Ms Boleyn was wife number two. Stewart’s stare suggested that he didn’t completely believe she was right to correct him. He was about to say something on those lines when his mobile’s ringtone intervened. DCI Oliver only took the first few seconds of this call in front of his subordinates – the rest took place in his office when he realised how important it was. Angela looked over and saw he was standing not pacing, and she thought she saw the beginnings of a half-smile. She whispered what she was witnessing to Jade.

“I so hope it’s true: we need him a better mood than the one he’s in!” said DC Pryce.

“What about yours, Jade?” enquired Donnie.

He had referenced the sour expression DC Pryce had been saddled with for a tenth of the day. Jade falsified one for him to psyche him out, and then upturned the left-hand corner of her lips.

“Getting better”

The ‘but’ in this answer was thought of, not spoken. Jade selected the more upbeat half. The less optimistic side of her reply was demonstrative of her not yet being reasonably cheerful. Looming in that domain was the probability of having to live up to the guarantee she would listen to what Marcus wanted to chat with her tomorrow. It was a half-hearted gesture, but she was getting a little more comfortable with it, whether or not it was a waste of time.

“Test me on a subject, sir” said Jade.

“It’ll be a hard one, because I intend to put you on your toes as a result of your disappearing act this morning.”

A twang of jollity came through this promise. DC Pryce wasn’t slow to detect the tiny alteration in his mood. She stored it away in her thoughts and waited for Stewart to see how good she could be in a quiz subject that she was barely knowledgeable of.

“Who composed the opera Tristan & Isolde?”

When she heard the question, Jade saw DCI Oliver’s claim that it was hard as an understatement. She had a very limited knowledge of opera and next to none about who Tristan & Isolde were. Stewart had definitely stumped her and there was nothing to do but to admit she couldn’t even make a random guess. These historical figures were too obscure for s young woman in her early twenties to have heard of them. Trying to exercise some gumption, she said Beethoven. She knew it was wrong at the point she tripled the ‘n’, but it was the only classical composer DC Pryce had heard of. Since she constantly lumbered opera and classical music together as one giant entity, there was no differentiation for her to tell them apart.

“It’s Richard Wagner, Detective Constable Pryce.”

“Didn’t Beethoven write any operas?” asked Jade.

“He did, but...hang on, have you never heard of Wagner?”

Trying to heap on more bravado so she wouldn’t be visibly embarrassed, she made out that she’d heard her parents and Marcus mention something about him. The truth was they hadn’t.

“Listen, everyone, while you’re all within earshot, I’ve just received word from the Chief Constable that we’re back investigating the disappearance of those schoolgirls! Since I’ve had this news confirmed officially, we will be starting where we left off, and this means I’ll be at court trying to get a warrant to search Belle Amour tomorrow! This’ll give you enough time to recover from the amount our quiz team drinks tonight!”

DCI Oliver’s announcement didn’t warrant any applause. All the members of Bolton CID were happy to do was to think about the safe rescue of the girls lured away from their usual lives by Mr George. Jade was, unfortunately, keeping in mind Kara’s mum and dad were now refrigerated corpses in the mortuary. She was avoiding any notion a victory was in sight until Kara could come to terms with her parents being murdered in the way they were. Jade was also delving into this U-turn by the Chief Constable, but to work out how Catherine’s arm had been twisted. She merged this noiseless investigation into pondering the likelihood that Ms Henfield was going to be a model of cooperation with the police.

“You’re thinking about Cathy again, aren’t you, Jade”

“I can’t stop, Angela! It’s good news the Home Secretary and the Chief Constable had a change of heart, but I don’t see why Catherine would relent. She models herself on Thatcher – I’m sure of it.”

“I hate to break this to do, but you’re responding with too much pessimism towards what I feel is good news.”

“Catherine’s motives make me sceptical!”

DS Korrell pulled rank on Jade but in a gentle fashion.

“The DCI will want you to put it back in its box.”

“I will for his sake, not for hers.”

“He may want us towing the line, but he’ll accept the compromise.”

“Angela, test me on another quiz question.”

“Just one more, Jade: you know how clogged up our minds both get when we’re given too much to think about.”

The laying out of the habit neither of them could always control made Angela’s suggestion acceptable. Jade listed in her mind at least two dozen instances where excessive cajolement stifled their ability to think properly.

Nicholson, Matthews, Pryce and Korrell were rounded up again by DCI Oliver. In both his hands, Stewart was holding two police uniforms for both sexes. They weren’t from the staff lockers and neither of them were regulation attire. Their original home was the back room of a costume rental business. The Chief Constable had imposed a rule about the use of official clothing for recreational purposes – put simply, he wasn’t letting them be borrowed for leisure activities. Nobody in their right mind was eager to call him a Scrooge, and so he never received any complaints from those who might’ve wanted him to lighten-up a bit. Jade recognised the constabulary costume in Stewart’s right hand matched her own body shape precisely and figure and pointed to it without hesitating.

“You were right to pick that one, Jade” said DCI Oliver. “You wore it at our 2010 Xmas party.”

It jogged DC Pryce’s memory at lightning speed. What sprang to mind first was an act of clumsiness involving a hot dog, some mustard and a can of Lancashire-brewed ale. The cylindrical container was shaken accidentally and a mini-eruption of dark brown liquid and the foam that was drifting to the bottom from the white, fluffy head on the surface happened. The stain’s outline hadn’t totally faded ever since the spray gushing diagonally upwards and Jade could still make it out, even from her observing it at the other end of the room to the DCI’s office. Some food or drink-based marks had the annoying quality of staying put, wash-after-wash. No adjustment to any wash cycle that had her clothes in made any odds to the suit’s cleanliness. These factors were discarded to allow it to be worn for the pub quiz. The outfits were gimmicky but DCI Oliver wanted them to advertise the police aspect relating to the four officers who’d signed up to this team. He was normally the first to be disdainful of cheap, poorly-thought out gimmicks, but he had made an exception. DC Pryce launched into predicting if he would bend this rule the next time the team entered. She had bought herself a posh, executive style suit three months ago, but it had still not been taken off its coat hanger. Jade had the feeling it would be perfect to wear something that didn’t have to be connected to the title of her pub quiz team, whenever they were next due to compete.

Stewart had been an annual contestant since The Tiger & Swan started hosting them to attract more punters through the doors. He had been one of the first people to notice how much more business the pub did after that evening activity debuted. The team players had changed over the years as did the names heaped on it prior to ‘Hot Fuzz’, but he was the mainstay participant. This meant he had plenty of anecdotes to share, but when he’d reached his fourth pint, DCI Oliver provided too many of them too repetitively and his current line-up of team mates would be bored of listening to them. This was the one gripe they had about their superior being the team captain, but none of them had yet complained about this routine of his. Jade, however, was feeling less tolerant to her boss’ habit now, and brought up the topic of investigating Frank George again to bury it deep down, but only with Angela and only in the police canteen.

“I thought you were going to give up donuts” Angela said to Jade.

“My bust-up with Marcus has made me want one again!”

DC Pryce had delivered one of her most obvious excuses. She’d tried to disguise it as an answer, but Angela couldn’t be fooled less.

“Bang goes your self-will, Jade!”

“I don’t care, Angela”

She’d excluded any signs of repentance from her reaction. Jade was enjoying a guilt-free moment by eating something she knew wasn’t good for her. She went on to say “I love the way the jam oozes out with one munch.”

“They should make a fat-free donut.”

“Then they’d be no fun to eat, Angela.”

 

The time set aside for the start of the pub quiz reduced the duration which meals could be served in. DCI Oliver hadn’t omitted to mention this to his officers. Jade and Angela took advantage of this news and turned up at The Tiger & Swan earlier than the others.

“Angela, are you ordering a drink with your meal like me?”

“Yeah, Jade, but only if its lager! Its alcoholic fizz makes me think on my feet better!”

“That’s not why I drink it, but if it does that for you, we might win some more points than last time.”

“What happened last...Oh, yeah, I remember now, Jade! Stewart shared his usual captainship with Sgt. Headley. He vetoed us drinking alcohol and managed to argue our superior down.”

“We won’t be able to call him that once he’s here, Angela.”

“What won’t we be able to call him?”

“Stewart. We’ll be addressing him as sir, even off-duty.”

Locating a table that seated four, Korrell and Pryce yanked the two menus from the vertical stand. Jade opened hers first. Angela allowed herself a single glance at the blackboard on which the specials were written. Seeing nothing that she felt she was in the mood to eat, she employed the menu to help make a decision on that front.

“What are you having, Angela?”

“You take a look first.”

Pryce unfolded her menu. The edge of her right-hand thumbnail scraped against the laminated plastic cover, but there was no scratch mark. The list of dishes on offer in the middle column was stared at by Jade for over a minute. Three had caught her eye, but indecision was clashing with the need to make a quick choice. The war between her not wanting to rush her selection and having to adhere to the deadline attached to pub meals being served had been declared. The mental conflict didn’t go beyond thirty seconds, though.

“I’ll have the beef steak – well done – and chips” decided Jade. “What meal are you going for?”

“The cod fillet in parsley sauce and roast potatoes.”

“I forgot you liked that.”

“That’s because we haven’t had a meal at a bar for a good couple of years now.”

“Haven’t we?”

“No. You were in uniform last time we dined together.”

“Did I spill anything down it?”

“That’s a weird question, Jade! No, you kept it spotless. What made you think you did that?”

DC Pryce was unable to come out with an answer. She deduced there wasn’t one and drowned the notion in a sea of silence.

There were only nine minutes between them telling the waitress serving what they wanted and the meals and the two lagers being brought to their table. Keen to be done before the hasty reorganisation for the pub quiz commenced, the two women got stuck into their dinners. The alcoholic beverages had come first, but they’d slowed down their rate of drinking to one gulp per four minutes. Since the wait for the meals was shorter than they had expected, there was no danger of them getting drunk too fast. They eat enough of their dinners at the correctly established intervals to have something in their stomachs. This reduced the rate of intoxication.

“You know what Angela – I reckon the lager makes this meal doubly yummy. It brings out the....”

Jade stopped what she was saying and realised she had made an error when ordering the lager without thinking about it.

“Shit...I forgot to ask for the lime!”

“Perhaps that’s why it’s making the meat taste that good.”

She was grateful for Angela’s theory. Jade loosened her moderate anxiety and settled back into devouring the steak. Her resumed enjoyment of what was on her plate was inexplicably interrupted by a curious smell. It navigated its way up her nasal cavities and she began sniffing lightly as if she had the start of a cold.

“Angela”

“What”

“Can you smell blood?”

“No, Jade – I don’t smell anything.”

“Weird! Wait a minute!”

DC Pryce lowered her face closer to her plate, so her nose would be near enough to detect odours that wouldn’t reach it sat up straight. A few quick sniffs dismissed this as being the source of the peculiar fragrance now invading her nostrils.

“No, it’s not the meat.”

With another swig of her lager, the smell that had gotten Jade’s brief but fullest attention dissipated. The steak’s more palatable flavour replaced it in a second.

“Wonder why I smelled blood!”

The query was spoken as if driven by a self-lessening interest. It was down to six percent as she tried cutting into the tougher parts of the meat. The uselessness of the knife provided was suddenly made the topic DC Pryce wanted to let pass through her mind unimpeded.

“How am I meant get this meat down my gob if this knife doesn’t cut properly?” she complained serenely.

“Try slicing it diagonally and a little slower” said Angela.

Although the knife’s blade lacked any sharpness, the steak’s meat gave way when she tried Korrell’s suggestion. Jade was then able to detach morsel after morsel and pop each segment into her mouth. She did this with measured gusto. Pryce had once eaten this type of meat too swiftly and had to endure nearly half an hour of indigestion as the consequence. With the start of the pub quiz over an hour away, she didn’t want that stomach complaint to follow her into that half of her evening out with colleagues, so she was only too glad to do something to prevent that.

When their plates were virtually empty, Jade and Angela pondered whether or not to have pudding. The photos depicting the items on the desert menu looked delicious, but they both shared the concern it might lead to them breaking wind, so they told themselves no.

Roughly 45 minutes later, the bar staff were starting the process of moving the round tables to the best positions from where the teams could hear the quiz’s host succinctly. One such table was carried by the left-hand side of the table Korrell and Pryce were occupying.

“Come on,” said Jade “we’d better pay up before the boss, Donnie and Graham get here.”

“They’re already here” said Angela as she looked to her left.

A surly pair of men in their twenties had to be asked to move out of their way. DCI Oliver had tried to ensure they could reach the designated table three times, but there was still not any visual indication they were going to move. Without being too bullish, Donnie made his version of his superior’s quest sound more like a warning. Neither man thought they could take him on and shuffled out of the way. A third man, who’d been watching his friends, implemented a crude effort to trip Donnie up. He almost physically responded, but Stewart kept hold of Matthews’ right arm long enough to make him back off from the person trying to provoke trouble.

“Nice to see you turn the other cheek” said one of the barmaids laying out the four notepads on each table.

“Doing it for my boss, Lisa: he wants a night free from nicking anyone”

“Don’t all coppers!”

Donnie was given a suggestive smile by her as she walked away, but he already had a girlfriend – Jodie Stratham – so all he could offer in return was a “we’re better as friends” glance. His good looks lead him to use it four times on young women trying to muscle in on his affections. Like the others who’d been on its receiving end, Lisa understood the silent message only too well.

A fair-haired young man DCI Oliver recognised as the landlord’s 2^nd son began tapping the microphone perched precariously on its stand. Every one of the teams seated at the circular tables focussed on him once the noise pervaded every corner of the immediate area. The section for bar meals was no closed, but it had been empty for at least twenty minutes or more. The landlord’s middle child picked up one of the cards that had been in a rectangular box. On it was a warm-up question. The top right-hand edge had a blue ink mark, drawn on by a biro pen, to show him what it was. His dad had not done the same to the edges of the other question cards. They all had revealing signs that they hadn’t been cut around neatly by the pair of scissors used.

“Before we get cracking, I would like to get your brains all fired up for the race to win this quiz.”

“He makes it sound like the Olympic opening ceremony speech from 2012” Jade whispered to Donnie.

The bid to reduce the volume of her voice when making her snide remark failed. A forty-something woman sat at the table allocated to the quiz team titled ‘Short, Back & Sides’ shushed DC Pryce fiercely. Jade mouthed the word ‘sorry’ back to her, but she didn’t get a forgiving look by way of a response.

“This is for all you fans of Miley Cyrus!”

By saying that, he had sucked all enthusiasm for answering it correctly from the room. No-one seated at the tables was a fan of hers, so the impromptu dedication had been left dead in the water in a split-second.

“What is the title of the Nineties hit her dad had in this country?”

“Get a Life!” yelled someone from the ‘Short, Back & Sides’ team. A few minutes of laughter followed.

Though he knew the question had gone down like a lead balloon amongst those competing, the landlord felt the mirth was harshly aimed at one of his children. Jade soon saw that too. Feeling a little guilty about her previous remark, she stood up and yelled “Stop giving the lad grief!” The pub owner’s son swallowed before revealing the answer.

“The song you’re looking for is ‘Achy Break-y Heart’”

There were still sniggers, but the landlord was now in the back, talking to one of the barmaids, so he didn’t hear it. His son did, but he wasn’t about to make anyone think the burst of humour at his expense was getting to him. Appearing manly was his way of saving face in a really embarrassing moment that was best forgotten. He had been bullied when he was 15, but that was four years ago. This was his time to be an adult and this incident was hardly on a par with having his head shoved down a toilet for three week solid.

“Pens at the ready, everyone” he said with a touch more confidence, now that the laughter had died down. “Here is your first question – and it’s a pretty easy one: who said ‘you turn if you want to: the lady’s not for turning’?”

 

Mr George, having seen the sky outside start to darken, entered his living room. The young women whose normalities he’d stolen were stood waiting for him in an obedient pose. Their joint acceptance of who they were now had almost ripened.

“You look like soldiers” he said to them.

“Cheers” said Kara.

Seeing that she was at the head of the line of ex-schoolgirls and picking up on the authority in her voice, Frank wondered if they’d voted her as their leader in his absence. He had a quarter of a century experience of being in a rabble of vampires, so he wasn’t unfamiliar the way his kind would unite behind the one they had the most respect for. That brought into the open the tribal element. He’d been exposed to it then and he was detecting it now amongst Kara and her fellow teenage girls.

“Do we feed again tonight?” enquired Holly.

Kara gave no indication to Miss Ambridge that her comment was impertinent, not that she could know what that word meant anyway. It was too Jane Austen for her to understand. From that, he guessed that she wasn’t assuming control of what the others thought, did or said, despite the symbiotic nature threaded through their existence.

“No – tonight I intend to make you aware of how strong I’ve made you.”

He tried not to make the answer too old-fashioned, but his language had that grammatical texture. Frank didn’t care that the girls’ 21^st century lingo sounded foreign to him. His mastery over a tribe of immortals more than made up for the generation gap between him and his six permanent co-residents. Mr. George’s PA knocked on the living room door.

“Come in” he said.

The blonde woman strode in holding onto six fur coats. The modern-day backlash against Mink being killed to make clothes of this nature had passed from the girls’ parents to them, and becoming part of a race of people deemed fictional hadn’t snubbed out this ethic. There was a rapid exchange of glances suggesting some kind of opposition to being seen in these garments.

Quick to dispel their shared concerns, Mr George said “Its’ fake fur”. Fiona suddenly said what the other girls were thinking.

“That’s not what why were staring at each other.”

“Why were you swapping stares then?” asked Mr George.

“Because of us wearing thick coats: I thought vamps don’t feel the cold!” explained Fiona.

“We don’t, but they’re just for effect – if anyone should spot you, I want you and the other five not to look like school girls. The police think you’ve been abducted by me, so we’ve got to take care. Now, put on your coat.”

When Fiona obliged, they all followed suit and put them on over the revealing outfits they’d changed into earlier on. Frank turned to his PA and issued the instruction “Tell Roger to get the minibus ready!”

“Yes, Mr. George” she said and left the living room without saying anything to the girls.

“What’s her name?” asked Jenna.

“Cassandra Bentham” he said.

“Is she new or from years gone by?” enquired Kara.

Miss Howarth was the first amongst them to have curiosity about others of the species she’d biologically joined. Her question had already echoed in Frank’s mind before it had been spoken by Kara. The cranial phenomenon prompted an answer to be formed at the exact moment the query had been made.

“She’s a hundred and forty-seven years younger than me.”

It was a response that didn’t quite get to the heart of how many centuries he and Cassandra had racked up. He wasn’t reluctant to share their ages with the ensemble of young adults now staying with him. Frank was keener to believe he wanted them to absorb information about his and Miss Bentham’s pasts at a measure speed. As far as he was concerned, they had years, centuries, or to be privy to that: compared to that, waiting for more than a day for those details was now a microscopic duration.

The engine of the minibus had been running for four minutes when Frank and the procession of female teens boarded the vehicle. There was no surge into the seats by the young ladies, though. Gone was a vast amount of impatience they were known for when they had a conventional life span. Mr George’s emotional sturdiness was a facet of his personality that had been replicated in theirs. They organised themselves to sit where they wanted to. The last to enter this form of transport was Cassandra. She did a head count and announced “All six are here”. Not breaking their old human habits, the girls proceeded to fasten their seatbelts. Mr George wanted to tell them this was unnecessary, but he quickly reasoned this could probably be used for appearances sake. Light around the middle of the minibus and close to the rear of it was at a minimal level, so it didn’t illuminate a single face of the passengers as they looked out of the vehicle’s windows. From the view that passers-by might have, the only one visible to them was the driver. He was also singled out by his mortality, but he wasn’t fearful of ending up as the next meal for those who were seated behind him. He was aware of his value to them, but he occasionally prepared himself for when Mr George would see him at a loose end; he wasn’t going to think about when that moment was set to approach; ignorance was his morphine.

Twenty-two minutes of travelling time elapsed before the minibus parked outside the gates to the grounds of the headquarters of a haulage firm. Frank stayed in the vehicle, waiting for the six teenage passengers to emerge before joining them in the crisp night air. He walked to the gates and gave them a push, but they only moved inwards by several inches. “I see – they only open for the trucks.” Mr George turned to Kara.

“Why don’t you do the honours?”

Miss Howard walked to the point where the edges of the gates met in the middle. With one kick with her right leg, this basic type of security had been stripped away from the entrance, and it flew wide open. Jenna joined in and employed her left leg to kick the right-hand gate away. With no barrier, the haulage yard was now their replacement playground.

Facing all six vampires were each of the HGVs that were still here, waiting for the drivers to board them. Quite a few were gone from their parking spaces.

“So, what do we do now?” asked Ashley.

“Try lifting one of them” replied Frank.

All eyes moved towards Kara. She flexed her fingers gently, walked over to the lorry and started sliding her palms under its bumper. Miss Howarth tried to envisage she was a professional iron-pumper to see if it could prompt the kind of super-strength Frank had been making her believe she had. In just two seconds, the mammoth vehicle was three foot off the ground. The creaking of the metal attracted the attention of a silhouetted male outline from a lit-up room inside the building across the way from the yard. He raced out, not yet seeing the incredible feat of strength occurring, and yelling “What the fucking hell is going on here?” When he got to where the HGVs were situated, Kara had raised the front half of the truck to a height approximately near to five feet eight inches. The employee’s eyes were at the widest as Kara moved her hands along to seize the bottom of the left and right wheels. Her amazed smile got wider as she lifted the entire bulk of the vehicle up off the ground.

“Eat your heart out, Incredible Hulk!” she excitedly yelped.

“How the fuck are you doing that with....hang on, you’re that missing girl, Kara Howarth!”

She looked to Mr George for some solution to deal with her identity suddenly being compromised. Frank came out with a command that veiled a destructive intention.

“It belongs to his boss, Kara – better put it down.”

“Where do you want it?” she asked the employee.

“On the ground” he said, still in a state of shock from the impossible event happening in front of him.

He was about to walk forward, but Ashley grabbed the back of the overall he had on and pulled him backwards softly. The thrust was sufficient for his back to collide with the floor. He cried out in pain as the impact severely damaged some of the muscles on the right-hand side of his spinal column.

“Give me a hand, Holly!” commanded Kara.

Miss Ambridge set about lifting the back of the HGV until it was raised above her head. Between them, Holly and Kara turned the vehicle around so that its right side was adjacent to where the haulage firm worker was lying. Now injured and scared out of his wits, he shakily pleaded “Put it down and I won’t say anything!”

“Deal”, Holly and Kara said in unison.

He barely had a moment in which he could scream. It toppled sharply; its’ weight hastening the descent. The enormous thud was followed by an outward explosion of blood and innards decorating the concrete floor, and the noise of bones being crushed into powder.

“They’re learning fast” said Frank malevolently.

“Copy that!” was Cassandra’s automatic response.

Pointedly, Mr George called out “Girls, don’t forget to tidy up when you’re done.” He infused the instruction with the level of irony certain to make them seize upon what the command really meant. Kara, Fiona and Ashley handled the haulage trucks, whilst Holly, Jenna and Rhona took care of the business offices. The yard was soon filled with the sound of the HGVs being wrenched apart and the building demolished by their bare hands.

 

“We’re down by seven points” moaned DCI Oliver. “I can’t for the life of me think why ‘Short, Back & Sides’ are doing better than our team!”

The score sheet had for the past hour made for gloomy reading. With only three quarters of an hour remaining until the quiz was to end, there wasn’t a lot of time to pull back from the defeat. Compounding a highly probable defeat at the hands at the barbers was Jade’s and Angela’s growing disinterest in winning. Her suspicion of the U-turn regarding the enquiry into the missing teenage girls was resurfacing, and trying to win a prize that anyone could have paid for themselves just seemed daft. Suddenly, the odour of blood also paid her a second visit. Her nostrils twitched more vigorously this time.

“It’s back!” she said in a harsh whisper to Angela.

“What is?” she whispered back.

“Me smelling blood like crazy”

DS Korrell had to wait until the young man dispensing the questions had asked the penultimate one. The nervousness arising from the temporary ridicule he’d undergone before the start of the quiz was completely absent and he spoke without a single tremor in his voice.

“We’re down to the last two questions, everyone! This one is for all you GOT buffs.”

“GOT buffs?”

Jade leapt in and clarified the abbreviated initials for DCI Oliver. She was able to tell it drew a blank for her superior.

“Game of Thrones, sir”

“That leaves me out, Pryce: I’ve never watched it.”

“What actress connects ‘The Tudors’ and ‘GOT’?” asked the landlord’s son.

Angela was the first to write down the answer and she excitedly thrust it up at where the ‘adjudicator’ was stood. It was collected from her, as were two more and they were handed to the young man.

“Well, it looks like only three have come up with an answer this time...a lot of don’t knows around. I can tell you’re all waiting with bated breath, so I’ll put you all out of your misery! The right answer is...Rose Leslie! Three points to ‘The Kennel Kings’!”

Muted applause circulated. None of it came from the table housing ‘Hot Fuzz’. Increasing her whisper’s volume, Angela said “What the fuck! That’s not the answer! It’s Natalie Dormer that connects both TV shows!”

“You’re getting over-heated about this, Angela” said Jade sternly. “It’s only a stupid...”

Her dismissal of this quiz’s importance tailed off. The smell of blood was getting more potent by the second, and ignoring it was proving to be increasingly difficult.

“I need fresh air!” said Jade.

“Do you feel sick?” asked Angela. “Was it the steak?”

“No, it’s that smell of blood – it fucking won’t leave me alone!”

Jade pushed herself away from the round table and darted away towards the pub’s entrance, oblivious to the astonished glances on the faces of DCI Oliver and DC Matthews. Korrell left her seat six seconds after to attend to Jade, in case she was about to throw up.

This wasn’t what DC Pryce was engaged in when Angela caught up with her. Jade was sniffing more fiercely and scanning the road from the pavement to see if any animals had been run over in the last two hours. The mystery deepened for her when the headlights of the passing cars did not illuminate any furry creatures lying by each side of the main road. She looked left and right three times, and Korrell was slipping into confusion due to Jade’s sudden odd behaviour.

“What’s going on?”

“I can’t find where that blood smell is coming from! It’s driving me up the fucking wall!”

Jade was speaking more obsessively. The odour’s reappearance had awoken a more feverish need to detect its location and her speech was incorporating this change. When Angela snatched the right-hand empty space on the kerb, the smell was at its strongest. Jade moved her nose to Korrell’s neck and was dropped into a state of disbelief at what her nasal passages had just uncovered.

“It’s yours” DC Pryce yelped.

“What’s mine?”

The solution to the mystery was infinitely more baffling. She couldn’t handle having this answer in her hands and started running away from Angela. The chance for Korrell to see where Jade was heading was ruined by Donnie coming over to the pavement she was hovering about. He called out “Are you getting the next round in?” She yelled back “It’s the boss’ turn!” When the DS turned her head back to examine how far Jade had gotten with her sprint, but the street ahead was clear of anyone running away.

The practical endeavour of racing away from her troubles hid from Jade that she was running a hundred times speedier than any athlete. She only realised it when her new surroundings couldn’t be reached in this short a time by sprinting alone. For a minute, DC Pryce opted to ride out the thought she was in some kind of hazy imagining. It dissolved when she heard a voice nearby, but there was nobody lingering on the street that was that close to her. She took a few normal-paced steps in the direction it was coming from, but in twenty-two seconds she was in the proximity of the voice’s owner, four blocks away. The Pakistani young woman in front of her was irritated that Jade was staring so intently whilst she was on her mobile to a friend.

“What’s your damage? Why are you in my face?”

Telling her the reason was out of the question for Jade. The truth was going to end up sounding like fiction.

“I’m out of here!”

The woman DC Pryce had heard from a fair distance away turned round to find a way to avoid bumping into Jade again. She was a block away from the off-duty police officer when Leon emerged from round a corner and began to hassle the young lady with the ethnic background in a racially abusive tone. Without meaning to move at a supersonic pace for the third time, Jade was at the scene in a second. She grabbed the rear of the jacket Harris was wearing and pulled him back an inch or two, but ended up yanking him over a foot in the opposite direction to her. He collided sideways with a grey wheelie bin and it toppled over, but this merely dazed him momentarily. Harris was rapidly on his feet. Mistaking her for a WPC, he chucked a brick he found on the street in retaliation. It struck Jade’s chest, but it bounced off. The impact had failed to make her lose her balance. A sudden surge of anger overcame her but it was buried beneath her suddenly feeling that two of her teeth had altered their shape. Her tongue got lightly pierced when the top of it skimmed the space below, but they were pinpricks, and didn’t cause any bleeding. She opened her mouth to give Harris a procession of abusive remarks, but it showed the brand new shape they’d mutated into.

“What the fuck!” Leon roared at Jade. He found another use for the brick: breaking the windscreen of a car across the road. He climbed through the vandalised vehicle and released the handbrake. Opening the door to the driver’s seat from within, he was able to push-walk the car to make sure the bonnet was aiming at DC Pryce. Leon gave the boot a mighty shove and the whole vehicle gathered speed without help from the engine running or the gear being in the right position. She couldn’t understand why, but she didn’t dive out of its path and it crashed into her. A quarter of a minute passed and Jade was swept up in a new wave of strangeness as she stood up. The collision between metal and flesh & bone was no more injurious than bumping into someone harder than usual. Harris had no chance of scarpering like he’d done when he’d effectively stabbed her. Jade seized hold of his right shoulder and arm. The grip was like iron and he couldn’t free himself. The body lock was rigid and decreased the fight back in him. The pointed molars were in the flesh in his left-hand shoulder blade like lightning and her teeth were currently like syringes, removing blood. Nine pints of it were being sucked through the hollow part of them and three minutes later, there was none left in his body. She let the corpse drop clumsily to the pavement. The whole of her mouth and lips, as well as a small portion of her chin, was smeared in the liquid that had been keeping him alive. The two teeth that were responsible were the shape they’d been. Jade came out of this bizarre trance as she wiped the blood away with a tissue in her handbag: seeing Leon’s corpse made the horror of what she had done very real. She stared at the lifeless cadaver of Harris as if someone else had carried out this atrocity. A set of footsteps from a mile away reached her right ear and she was gone from this stretch of the street in the blink of an eye. Two pairs of feet walked up to Harris’ body, and carted it away. With no eyewitnesses to this covert removal of a corpse, there was nothing to suggest that Leon had met his end here.