Tim Lebbon - 30 Days of Night - Fear of the Dark

“Lights out,” Duval said, and they were plunged into darkness once again.

The sharp things touching his face, coldness on his throat, clothes plucked, skin pricked, each sensation a promise of more pain, and the promises were worse than the pain itself …

Marty whined, and the short woman vampire holding him squeezed his arm until he stopped.

Kat opened the door and artificial light crept in. She and the other humans left the basement, and Duval followed, moving with an unlikely grace for a creature of his size.

“Come on,” the woman vampire said. Marty thought her name was Bindy, but he no longer knew why that would matter. He was finished. He felt destroyed, hollowed out by Duval and left as a useless, wanting husk. It wasn’t that he had revealed what he knew about the British Museum and the Humains’ knowledge of the Bane: that had been inevitable, and there was no way he could be blamed. It was that the future felt so barren. Duval had brought home to Marty just how little his life meant now, and death was no longer as terrifying to him as it had once been. There were worse things than death.

They walked out from the basement and climbed a spiral of old stone steps, emerging into a small, old-fashioned bar. This was one of London’s genuine old boozers, untouched by the allure of chrome and glass furniture, cocktail hour, walls wood-paneled and hung with mirrors bearing the names of long-dead brewers and breweries. The furniture consisted of bare chairs and uneven tables, and the bar was lined with six beer pumps and decorated with a score of locals’ mugs hanging from hooks above.

An old woman stood behind the bar, a rag in one hand, mouth open in shock.

“We’re not open til…” she said, as if not realizing that these potential customers had risen from her basement.

Stoner and Kat approached the bar, drawing their guns and looking back at Duval like hungry puppies awaiting their master’s voice.

“No,” Duval said. “Not yours.” He approached the bar and reached across, clasping the woman in one hand and pulling her over as if she weighed nothing. She let out one squeal before his hand clasped across her face, nails scoring vicious lines down her left cheek. He looked up then, glancing around at the other vampires, and the grip on Marty’s arm relaxed.

Bindy and the others went to feed.

Oh, no, Marty thought. He backed as far away as he could, pressing himself into a corner and watching the woman’s terrified eyes. When she looked at him, he glanced away, and saw Stoner, Kat, and the other human watching with a sick, gleeful desire.

Duval tilted the woman’s head to one side and bit out her throat. Her scream came as a hiss of escaping air, her feet drummed on the wooden floor, and he buried his face in the geyser of blood. Pulling back—face bloodied, eyes black, teeth smeared, tongue swollen and red—he offered the woman to each of the other vampires. They took turns, Bindy first, then the other two, chomping deeper when the spray of blood began to lessen.

Marty wanted to close his eyes but he couldn’t. All he could think of was his family: his mother and father having the same done to them; and Rose, his vampire sister… had she ever drunk true blood? He tried to see her in Duval’s place but could not. But then Bindy looked more human, her body and features not so misshapen as her master’s.

“No,” he whispered. “Not Rose. Not ever.”

“Me,” Kat said, creeping forward. “Me. I want some.” Stoner stood behind her, shifting from foot to foot, but the other man had backed away. He was pressed against the locked frosted-glass front doors. Marty thought he looked terrified, or maybe he was just coming down from his high.

Duval dropped the woman—one of the other male vampires caught her, chomping into the motionless corpse—and stood up straight. He hissed as he approached Kat, apparently unable to talk as the blood rush invigorated his limbs and fangs. And Marty realized how similar Duval and Kat were: both junkies, depending on something external for their survival.

Kat looked excited and terrified in equal measures, shaking where she stood and yet not backing away. Duval swept her aside. She fell onto a table and it smashed, chairs spilling over backwards.

“No!” she shouted, but Duval was already on the human cowering by the doors, tearing into him with clawed hands, ripping at him with those swollen teeth.

It was then that Marty closed his eyes, and he kept them closed until the chaos had subsided. He still heard, though. For those two long minutes, what his eyes didn’t see was more than compensated for by the things he heard, and smelled.

He kept his eyes closed when one of them grabbed him again, clasping his wrist so hard that he thought the bones would crumble. He walked behind them through the mess of the pub, kicking something soft and wet as they exited into the cool night. And only then did he open his eyes.

The streets were busier than he’d expected, and for a moment he thought, Someone will see! The four vampires were glistening with blood, their faces smeared with it even though they’d halfheartedly wiped at themselves with bar towels. Even Kat and Stoner were splashed with their friend’s blood. But it was past dusk, and bustling, and no one saw. The small group walked along the pavement, and even if someone did notice something amiss, this was London. Problems generally belonged to someone else.

They soon reached the British Museum. After Marty had told them everything he knew, they must have traveled belowground until they were close by, guided perhaps by their human servants’ knowledge of this area and their experience of London’s underside. There they’d waited for dusk. We’ll be there long before Rose and the others, he thought, and he wondered what the cost of his betrayal would be. Shouting what he knew down in that pitch-black room, he’d not been able to perceive any other way. But now he knew that was wrong. There had been another way but, thrust into a pain-filled panic that forbore logical thought, he’d been unable to even consider accepting death. Instinct had driven him. Like that woman in the pub, he thought, or that man . If he’d refused to speak and died like that, perhaps he could have changed things.

But there was that one small lie he’d managed, yet to be revealed. And it was too late for self-recriminations. He’d had time to think, and as they approached the British Museum and whatever the Bane might be, he knew that given even the slightest chance he would upset the vampires’ plans. Duval had made him a nothing, after all. And what did a nothing have to lose?

Stoner and Kat appeared more subdued. Marty wanted to laugh at them, tell them that they were only being brought along as cattle, but he wasn’t so sure. The vampires had fed now. Murderers, drug addicts, craving something that the vampires might have promised or perhaps only hinted at; maybe Duval and the others had a use for the two humans yet.

Marty could only hope that was true. Because if it wasn’t, then perhaps the same applied to him, and he was being brought along for one thing only.

Fresh meat.

Close to the museum, he saw a girl. She was a teenager, but dressed in clothes that were strangely bland and pedestrian. The trousers were too long and ill fitting, the T-shirt gray, the jacket grubby and old. He knew few teenagers who didn’t take at least a little pride in their appearance, but this girl was a mess. And she stared.

Marty looked away, then back again. The girl was standing beside a concrete pedestal bearing a statue, her hands crossed in front of her, her long hair tied with elastic bands and slung carelessly over one shoulder. She was only twenty steps away, but her features seemed vague, as if obscured by a haze of smoke. She was in the shadow of the statue, away from the glare of artificial lights.