Anne Billson - Suckers

'Oh, for God's sake,' said Duncan.

'Help,' I said weakly, but he wasn't even looking at me. My finger was gone and the bastard wasn't even looking.

He said, 'Oh, hell .'

Violet seemed to have lost interest in me too. 'Remember what I told you,' she said to him. 'Do it.'

'I can't .' His voice was much too loud. 'Not now .'

'Excuse me,' I whispered, 'I think I'm bleeding to death.'

'Remember what we talked about.' An edge of impatience had crept into Violet's even tone. 'Do it.'

'I remember, for God's sake. Stop treating me like a child.'

'So go ahead,' she said. 'What's your problem?'

I thought he had calmed down, but I was wrong. He suddenly bunched up his fists and started yelling again. He was yelling so hard the veins stood up on his forehead. I couldn't make it all out, but I caught the last part: 'You never told me. You never told me you were fucking dykes. Both of you.'

This was too much. I wanted to tell him no, he was wrong, I had never liked women, and it had been Violet's fault, not mine, and anyway he'd got it all back to front, because after all she hadn't been seducing me, she'd gone and bitten off my finger , for Christ's sake, and that wasn't my idea of foreplay, not at all, and now look at me, I was bleeding to death. I wanted to say all this, but I could barely string two words together.

And then I forgot all about it anyhow, because she laughed at him, and he immediately clouted her hard, across the face.

Time stood still. I even forgot the pain for a second. I held my breath, waiting for her to lunge back at him and take his head off. She could have done it with a single swipe. But she didn't. Her gaze never left his as she slowly wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes were glittering dangerously as she said, 'Or maybe you're not up to it, eh?'

'Bitch,' said Duncan, and hit her again. There was a soft scrunch as his fist connected with the bones in her nose. She stepped back in surprise, and her hands flew up to her face. Blood was gushing from her nostrils. Her fingers pushed and probed, as if to inspect the damage. When the gloves came away soaking wet, she studied them calmly for a moment. Then she turned back to Duncan, and smiled and said in a voice that was now slightly nasal, 'You guys, you're all alike.'

When he whacked her again she stumbled, and then he kicked her legs away from under her, and she went down, and there was a loud crack as her head struck the floor, and he immediately started kicking her in the face and stomach, but she kept on laughing and rolling around, as though he were tickling her, as though this were the most fun she'd ever had in her life — which just seemed to make him kick all the harder.

If she'd been human, I might have asked him to stop what he was doing, but it wasn't as though she were one of us. She wasn't human at all, so it didn't count. And besides, she'd eaten my little finger and now my hand was hurting like hell, so she deserved everything she was getting. But I didn't care for the expression on Duncan's face. It was an expression I'd never seen before — not on anyone. Under any other circumstances, it would have made me feel uneasy. I tried to work out what it was, but my finger was hurting so much, I couldn't think straight, so I sat down and stared. The whole thing was unreal. It was like watching a movie.

Eventually, when her face had been reduced to a bloody pulp, the swelling made it almost impossible for her to laugh. But one of her eyes was swollen shut, so that she seemed instead to be tipping the wink at some huge arid incomprehensible joke. Duncan stood over her, only slightly out of breath, and every time she made a noise, he kicked her again. 'You'll have to speak up,' he said with exaggerated clarity, like someone talking to his deaf grandma. 'We can't understand it when you mumble.'

She made another noise. Bubbles of blood came out of her mouth and the remains of her nose. To my horror, I realized she was singing. Something from La Boheme . It was a thick liquid sound, like someone warbling through an ocean of treacle.

My wounded hand was tucked beneath my right armpit. I had discovered that, if I squeezed hard enough, at the same time rocking back and forth and making small whimpering sounds, I could damp the pain down to an acute throb. But the singing was setting it off again. I wanted to block my ears, but I couldn't — not with only one hand operational. 'Make her stop,' I begged.

Duncan was staring down at the body, muttering, 'Shit, I really killed her.'

'No you didn't,' I gasped, between throbs. 'She's a vampire… she was dead already… and they call her Mimi…'

Duncan appeared to notice me for the first time. 'Dora,' he said. 'You all right?'

'Oh, I'm fine ,' I said through gritted teeth. 'I'm only bleeding to death … For God's sake, get me something to wrap this in.'

He went out of the room, and I wished he hadn't left me alone with her. She was staring at me through that one eye, staring at me as though the appetizer had been so finger-lickin' good that she'd developed a taste for the rest of me. I half expected her to fly across the room and fasten her teeth in my throat. I knew I would never feel safe, not ever again. Not unless someone put her completely out of commission.

Duncan came back and wrapped my hand in a dirty teatowel, which he fixed in position with masking tape. It didn't look too hygienic, but the wrapped hand fitted under my armpit even more snugly than before. I went back to my rocking and whimpering routine, pretending not to notice the grubby linen was already turning red.

There was a burbling noise from the bundle on the floor.

I said, 'You've got to… finish her off… you know.'

Duncan gazed at me through red-rimmed eyes and asked, rather sarcastically, 'So what do you suggest?'

'Stake,' I said in what I hoped was a matter-of-fact tone, though it was undermined by a nervous tremor. 'Through the heart.'

He groaned, and it was then I knew he was going to co-operate. 'Stake through the heart. Of course.'

Violet made wet chuckling sounds. It was like listening to someone with a serious speech impediment, but I knew exactly what she was trying to say. She was trying to say we'd gone too far. It was too late for us to turn back now. If we didn't go all the way, we would wind up even deader than she was.

He'd spread newspapers on the floor and rolled her on to them, but the carpet was still getting soaked. What with the both of us bleeding, the room was beginning to look like an abattoir. She lay there winking at him while he wrestled with the cocoon in which she had wrapped herself — layers of leather and cashmere and fur, all the way down to a black silk slip edged in lace and crusted with blood. Even when he'd peeled that off, I was relieved to see there was so much blood and mottled purple bruising that she didn't look naked at all. Nakedness would have made her seem too vulnerable, but the patches of visible skin were so white they were almost luminous, and reminded me of the flesh of the crawling things you sometimes find under stones.

Still, she wasn't as badly hurt as I'd thought — the clothes had obviously absorbed a lot of the punishment.

'She's shamming,' I said.

'No she's not.'

'She is shamming. Any minute now, she'll sit up… and sink her fangs into you.'

'She wouldn't do that,' said Duncan. 'Maybe to you. Not to me.'

'You don't know that.'

'Believe me, she won't sit up. Not when I've finished with her.'

'You knew all along didn't you? That she was a vampire, I mean.'

'There's a lot I didn't know,' he said.