Anne Billson - Suckers

Someone asked Dino how come he didn't know, since he seemed to know everything else. 'They didn't fix the date until after I left,' he said, with that shifty look you get when someone isn't giving you the whole picture. He stood there a bit listlessly, as though he'd run out of things to say, but Ruth was already gesticulating in my direction. 'Tell us what you know, Dora,' she pleaded.

'Not a lot,' I said. 'All the usual stuff. Don't invite anyone into your home. You know about the garlic, and some of you are already wearing crucifixes. Swot up on your Stoker. Watch some Christopher Lee. I would have advised everyone to wear black, so you don't stand out in a crowd, but I see most of you are dressed in black anyway.'

There were a few chuckles at this. Someone asked, 'Why black?'

I shrugged, but everyone was looking at me as though I was the expert. I realized I probably was. 'Something to do with absorbing the sun's rays? I don't know. I don't have a degree in biophysics.'

'What do you know about Rotnacht ?' asked Ruth.

'I'm no wiser than you,' I said.

'But you're closer,' said Dino. No one was paying him much attention now, and he wasn't looking very friendly. 'You're in with the vampire's boyfriend.'

'Oh, for Heaven's sake,' I sighed. 'He isn't the vampire's boyfriend, not any more. He hates vampires.' I paused, and decided I might as well spill the beans. I couldn't have them thinking Duncan was a traitor to his race. 'As a matter of fact, we staked one only last night.'

There was a shocked hush, followed by an awestruck murmuring. I felt proud of Duncan. For all the fine talk here, no one had yet seen action the way he had.

'Lulu,' Ruth said quietly.

'Let's go get 'em all!' someone yelled.

'Where is this Duncan? We should raise our glasses to him.'

'It's no good plunging straight in without a plan,' said Dino, trying to regain the goodwill he could feel had shifted towards the absent stake-wielder. 'They'll just pick us off one by one. We've got to get ourselves organized.'

'It's quite simple,' I said, with a withering look. 'But bloody hard work. You track them down in the daylight, while they're asleep, and you hammer stakes through their hearts. In most cases, that should be enough, but if you want to be on the safe side you give them the garlic treatment as well, cloves up the nose to short-circuit their sense of smell, and then if you really want to be on the safe side you drag them into the open and let the sun finish them off.'

'Stake 'em, stun 'em, and sun 'em,' said the copy-writer.

'But what if they're taken over the whole of Multiglom Tower?' asked the computer buff. 'It's a massive place. That'll take for ever.'

'Well, yes, I told you it would be hard work,' I said. 'Perhaps you can suggest a better method.'

'We could negotiate,' someone piped up.

Dino whirled on the speaker. 'Negotiate? With murderers? Not only would that be immoral, it would also be extremely dim-witted. We're not talking about the MCC here. This is not cricket, this is war .'

'Not yet, it isn't,' said Ruth. 'If we can just find out about Rotnacht , we can nip the whole thing in the bud.'

I said, 'I might be able to find out something.'

'You can?'

'I might . Give me a couple of days. Can't promise, though.'

'Of course you can find out,' sneered Dino. 'Just ask Fender.'

'Leave Duncan out of this,' I snapped back, and then I remembered something. 'Hey, I was snooping around in die Multiglom Tower,' I said, 'and I found your name and address on the computer.'

Dino looked embarrassed. He glanced sideways to see how many people were still listening. 'So? I told you I used to work there.'

'When your name came up, so did the word Rotnacht .'

Dino's face went a pale green colour which toned almost perfectly with his T-shirt.

The meeting broke up. As people began to drift towards the door, Ruth barred their way and shouted for quiet. 'Now you know what we're trying to achieve, perhaps you could persuade some of your friends to come to Tuesday's meeting. The more the merrier. Same time, same place.'

A few minutes later, as I was trying to slip past without her noticing, she caught my arm. 'I've got something for you,' she said, pressing a small paper packet into my bandaged palm. 'For old times' sake.'

'What is it?' I asked, realizing what the packet contained as soon as the words were out of my mouth. 'Thanks,' I said, intending to throw the drugs away as soon as I got outside. 'Oh, and may I make a suggestion?'

'Of course you can, Dora.'

'Why not hold your meetings during daylight, hours? It would make things so much simpler.'

I left her at the top of the stairs, staring after me with her mouth open.

I made myself a nest of garlic and slept soundly in it, even though the Krankzeits had a visitor and made a great deal of noise overhead. But I was so tired I managed to stay asleep and incorporate all their usual thudding and shouting into my dreams, which for some reason were about Patricia Rice and involved a lot of chasing around. At one point, I woke up and peered out through the curtains and saw her standing perfectly still on the pavement outside, face tilted upward and her gaze fixed on the floor above. I blinked, and then I saw it wasn't Patricia Rice at all, it was Lulu. And then I knew without a doubt that I was still dreaming. Because Lulu was dead.

All those years, I'd kept my black leather jacket. It was distressed enough to be not really black any more, but it was black enough. I dug out a crumpled black dress which reeked of a perfume I'd stopped wearing ten years ago, and ironed out most of the deep-seated wrinkles and tacked up the hem. But I didn't have any black stockings. I had to go out to the shops and buy some, so while I was there I bought a tube of hair gel and one or two extra items of make-up. I also bought a bottle of the loudest scent I could find — something called Fleur de Paris — and splashed great quantities around while I was getting dressed. It was a vile chemical blend of apples and roses, but I wasn't wearing it to smell sweet. I was wearing it to blot out the aroma of me . For the same reason, I had stocked up with twice the usual number of packets of cigarettes. This was going to be the sort of occasion on which my health might depend on chain-smoking.

I didn't normally wear a great deal of make-up, but now I trowelled on the foundation until my face looked dry and flaky, dull and very lifeless, though it still didn't look nearly as bad as Lulu's had done. I carefully painted my mouth in a scarlet bow, and slicked my hair back from my face, and it was only then I began to believe that the plan I had outlined to Duncan might have a fighting chance of working.

I unwound my bandages. The blood had dried and stuck to the dressings, and pulling them off made my eyes water. The palms were still raw. I dabbed at them with TCP and pulled on a pair of black gloves.

I was reluctant to venture out without pockets full of garlic, but the smell was too distinctive, and this was one occasion on which I wouldn't want to stand out from the crowd. I half solved the problem by wrapping some cloves in several layers of kitchen foil and hiding the small package in my make-up case; at least it was there if I needed it. I selected a single rosary and enfolded it in tissue paper before placing it in an old cigar tin which I then buried right at the bottom of Lulu's lizard-trimmed bag. I had a vague notion that the vampire sense of smell was something like the X-ray machine at Heathrow — unable to penetrate metal.