Lost Christmas

Looks like I’ve lost the Christmas Day lunch job in the Priory crypt.

Damn.

It happened like this. It was just after noon and the last of the worshippers upstairs had gone home. The homeless were all asleep or passed-out (we feed them as the Eucharist service begins at ten to keep them quiet, and so that any willing to take communion have time to eat, burp, and stagger upstairs to the communion rail.) The last of the other volunteers had wished me a merry Christmas and taken the remaining rubbish sacks out with them. I was left with the washing up which is frankly soothing after the rush and the bustle and trying to keep the crazies quiet during the service up above and the drinking sessions downstairs. I always cherish those moments of quiet as the Vicar and his curates put the communion stuff away, and it gives me time to work up the psychic oomf to waken the sleepers and urge them out of the great wooden doors and on their way to the homeless shelter across the city for the night.

Usually I put on my winter costume of ankle-length coat, wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses at that stage, potter out of the back door, and sprint around the corner to the service area of the teashop and souvenir kiosk and wait in one of the great stainless steel rubbish bins until sunset at about 3.50. This time, however, the Vicar came down with a brightly wrapped parcel as the homeless lads and lasses were shuffling up the stairs.

‘Let’s check everything is switched off properly down here, Mister Dublin,’ he said, glancing at the tramps as they mumbled and bumbled and ‘Bless you Vicared’ past. Was he staring at their recently scarved necks? Lucy always spends the period between Halloween and Longest Night knitting warm winter scarves for these folk, and their bright colours are often visible for weeks into the New Year; in doorways and on park benches about the town. Hide the alcohol-swabbed clean patches a treat, my Lucy’s scarves do, in addition to keeping the cold out for the poor lambs.

I listened to the doors closing behind the last of the tramps, and the huge iron key in its lock squeaked and clunked. There was some scraping and dragging about going on in the church, and finally the two curates came down into to the crypt, standing between us and the stairs. The curates had some communion kit with them; wafers, cup, and heavy brass cross.

Oh-oh.

‘You know, Mister Dublin,’ the vicar went on, ‘You’ve been with us exactly ten years now, doing these Christmas lunches for the homeless, and you’ve been a tireless worker. You really are very dedicated, and I’ve always admired your hard work and early morning starts every year. And do you know, in all this time you haven’t aged a bit. Not by a single day. I wonder how that is?’

Oh, bollocks. I smiled. ‘I’ve discovered a really effective moisturiser, Vicar,’ I said, hoping to ploy my way out.

‘So I have come to believe. We’ve been discussing it this past week or so, and come to the conclusion that you ought to have your service and dedication recognised, and so we bought you a little keepsake. Go on, Mister Dublin. Open it.’

What could I do? Play the farce out, and hope for a nonviolent solution of sorts, I supposed.

The box contained a shiny disc of glass framed in white metal - not silver, thank goodness - that showed me a sequence of moving pictures of the crypt’s vaulted ceiling and then of the walls as I turned it slowly in my hands and then it showed the fear-blanched faces of the clerics as I held it vertical to face them. Of course it didn’t reflect me. I put it back in its box. I said. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Don’t say anything, said the vicar grimly. ‘Drink?’ He gestured to the younger of the curates; a shivering, pallid-faced child of thirty. He held a silver communion cup.

‘I don’t drink. Wine,’ I said. Well, it was true and absolutely the right thing to say, and could you have resisted saying it; scared to death or not?

‘Technically, it’s not wine, Mister Dublin, because we have blessed it for Holy Communion, as we have blessed these wafers. Technically it’s blood. Do you want some of it?’

‘The Reformation doesn’t seem to have stuck with you, Vicar, if you truly believe it’s blood. I thought that’s what the other lot believed. Isn’t it just still wine to you Church Of England types?’

‘“The other lot” is represented by Father Butler here,’ said the Vicar, nodding to the unfamiliar – and hard-eyed – face of a cleric I did not recognise from previous years.

‘Were you responsible for those terrible deaths at the Catholic Cathedral, Mister Dublin?’ the stranger asked; his voice hoarse with anger. ‘I saw you come in from the churchyard when it all started.’

‘No. I was as surprised as you were. I just carried a few lame ones out of the broken window. I saved their lives, Father Butler.’

‘And drank their blood!’

‘The blood of the dead people which something nasty that a human being had conjured up spilled. It couldn’t be used for transfusions and all I did was clean up for a few moments whilst I picked through the ruins and pulled fallen beams and suchlike off the injured. I saved a good few lives that night, Father Butler, and all the rest of them when I tracked the perpetrator down and took the book from him.’

‘Produce him, then. Let us hear him complain about you. Perhaps we’ll believe him, and think you innocent.’ This from the quivering curate.

‘I can’t. He attacked me. I didn’t have time to be gentle.’

‘Produce the body, then, and his summoning gear.’

‘I can’t do either. The body was destroyed. I burned it on the moors. He was a mad bastard when tepid. He’d be a real disaster if I made him tepes. As for the book; well, Father Butler’s people have a third, and some bald chaps I met on the station platform have taken their part to India, and the last portion will literally require Armageddon to prize it out of its nice deep bunker, built at wholesale prices. Or at least some seriously stupid foreign policy from the American and British governments which, on recent form, I must say seems rather likely. Oops. So; there’s no end-of-the-world nutcase to prove I’m not the bad guy, but this is still England (just about) and I don’t have to prove myself innocent just to stay alive. Sorry to disappoint you, and all that, but I’ll just be on my way now, gentlemen. Pity. I enjoyed helping the old winos out each year.’ I made to move toward the staircase.

‘What will happen to the bitten ones?’ asked the Vicar, raising the heavy cross to block my way.

‘Short term, they’ll be a little less prone to bacterial infections for a week or two, but slightly more vulnerable to viruses for the same time. They won’t feel the cold much. Dogs will avoid them, and the local thugs will think twice before beating them up. They’ve got a temporary dark aura. Good insurance; like Redibrek with attitude.’

‘And when they finally die?’ pressed the Vicar.

‘That’s for you to answer; not me. They aren’t drained and they only drank hock and port today. There’s no chance of them turning.’

The Vicar wasn’t buying it, and stood foursquare between me and the steps. Father Butler looked a little less firm; thinking, perhaps, of why a vampire would hand a deadly grimoire over to the Vatican. The third man was quaking even harder now, the poor sod.

Time to attack. ‘Is this really your thing, Father Butler? Luring a vampire to his death? Can you really wield the cricket stumps or pool queue or whatever it is you’ve got under your vestments? Slam it through my chest and hear me scream as the blood flies all over you? Or are you just pleased to see me?’

That got a smile; he was no brainless fanatic. ‘A colleague of mine did okay in New Mexico a few years back,’ he said, ‘and I think as a rugby man I’m better than a mere soccer player any day.’ Tough bastard.

More pressure, Adonais, or you’ll have to really hurt one of them. ‘Do you know what the important point about your internal organs is?’ I asked. Butler looked blankly back at me. ‘I mean, the really essential, the vital, the sine qua non of your internal organs. What is it, do you think?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he shot back, anger growing.

‘I’ll tell you then Father. It’s “internal.” That’s what you need to keep in mind about them, and just the way you ought to keep them, Father.’ But I wasn’t talking to him or the stony-faced vicar. The curate thought about the alternative to internal, dropped his box of Hosts, and ran up the stairs whilst the vicar and Butler turned to look at him. A thing to bear in mind about vampires is that ‘up’ and ‘down’ aren’t as absolute for us as they are for the tepid. I was able to scuttle up the walls and across the ceiling in a blink and I actually overtook the fleeing curate. Nice man; lousy leg muscles.

The main door was blocked to me by a large standard crucifix that had been dragged in front of it. The vestry door was covered in dotted communion wafers, and in any case looked to be soaking wet. I guessed the font would be empty. I never saw the fleeing curate again that day, and I think he must have been cowering amongst the pews. I ran back towards the rear of the church and through the back to the souvenir shop door. It too was barred; this time by widely splashed holy water and a couple of smaller old crosses. How rood. However, there was a stained-glass window between the arch above that door and the Lady Chapel on the left hand side of the nave, and a four-seater oaken pew smashed it open beautifully. It has not been my month to respect church architecture and fittings, I’m afraid, but needs must when the slayers drive. I leaped through and ran into the night.

‘And with a single bound, he was free,’ right?

Remember the time of day it was? Emphasis on day?

I’m thinking of lying low for a few weeks, or maybe months or decades. At least until the scars heal and my ears and fingers regenerate. I’m going to have to be extra polite to Lucy, (who is typing this with her slender, deft digits of unsurpassed loveliness and grace), if I want to continue my blog.

So there you have it, vampire fans. A handful of amateurs led by the one solitary witness of my unthanked heroism at the Cathedral almost had me staked. I’m suffering massive burns and lots of acute things, and Lucy and I will have to avoid public appearances into the New Year. A good deed never goes unpunished, they say.

Perhaps we’ll stay with Benny the Zebra in Manchester. He’s an understanding chap, and he owes me a favour for once, instead of the other way around.

A Happy New Year to you all, dead readers, and see you in it.

("")

Adonais and Lucy.

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A Merry Christmas To All Our Bleeders

A Merry Christmas to all our readers and friends from Adonais and Lucy.

We’re not at home today and a friend is posting this for us from our home - slayers please note! - as we’re doing our usual Christmas Day good deeds. We like to spend this day each year in the company of people who are less fortunate and slower-moving than we are.

The Priory church in town has a very large crypt which the Vicar uses as a dining-hall, kitchen, and dormitory over Christmas Eve and until Christmas Day evening when other charities take over. I join him and, as there is no direct sunlight down there, I can stay all day long in complete safety. There are other helpers, usually, but none who sticks as close to the kitchen as eagerly as I do, or who take no breaks. I like to keep the festive fare traditionally English for this meal, and no fancy foreign muck spoils the roast geese I bring, nor the potatoes, vegetables, Yorkshire puddings, or stuffing. Plum pudding as per Dickens and the local supermarket managers and lots of unlicensed booze. None of your garlicky French rubbish.

It’s a really enjoyable day out as we get a few homeless coming down for a feed and a step out of the weather. There’s a great feeling of bonhomie and companionship and, if I can’t join the services in the church above (the Vicar’s bit over-generous with the cross-waving) I can surely echo his seasonal sentiments from the shady place below. And shadow part of the ritual. Besides, the homeless have a tendency to pass out by about noon anyway. Turkey, goose, and potatoes roast in goose fat and a big portion of Christmas pudding on top of something from the case or two given by the local Freemasons tend to relax the old boys and girls something wonderful. There’s this magical combination of vitamins, protein, trace elements, fats and carbohydrates in the English Christmas lunch; along, no doubt, with the clouds of alcohol fumes and warm fellow-feeling of the day itself that strengthens and enriches the blood of those unfortunates. Keeps them alive over the winter’s deepest cold, it does, and so nourishes more than one life. Vodka is never nicer than when it has been quadruple-filtered: three times at the distillery and once through a wino.

Then they can totter safely (or be carried) to the shelter at the other end of town to sleep Christmas night in warm and security. Nobody attacks my town’s tramps over Christmas; it’s as if they have a guardian angel keeping watch over them. In fact, they attain a dark and foreboding aura for a day or two which the local toughs shy away from.

Lucy spends the day in the hospital. She’s an illustrator for children’s books and so gets a free pass to the pediatric ward to read them stories and generally be all cheerful and Mary Poppins for them, poor scraps. It’s right next to Haematology, so she never has to leave the second storey for refreshments, either, though there’s usually a tipsy nurse or a porter or two to be tapped, and consultants tend to alcoholic excess at the best of times.

It’s handy for the mortuary, too, which is good because Lucy likes plans that save life in more than one way. Christmas Day is about three days after the Longest Night.
Amongst out kind, this is a big celebration, of course; the triumph of the darkness over the light and so on. Some idiot always has too much to drink and takes no precautions at all. So three days later there’s often some weeping assistant pathologist describing what’s scared him to policemen who tactfully cease to take notes after the first couple of sentences, or who begin to wonder whether to breathalyze him or check him for narcotics. Then some bright spark in the local fortean club gets to post online about another Christmas Day case of spontaneous human combustion and Lucy weeps until New Year’s Eve when we provide first aid and clean up after drunk-drivers.

So Lucy always checks up on the pathologist and his cooling charges in case there’s a happy event, and she can bring the newborn home to ours in the shade.

Otherwise we meet up again after our shifts, and then we do our annual prison visit.

The castle in town has been converted to a prison where the convicts spend the last few months and years of their all-too-short sentences. Murderers, rapists, armed robbers and gangsters all; they used to believe that they and their crimes were forgotten by all but the victims’ and their grieving relatives.

Lucy and I are able to put them right on this matter each Christmas, and it is easy as the prison can hardly be described as a home, barred by the protective aura of property and familiarity, and the skylights on the roof are poorly secured. I think those old felons really look forward to our visit every year. I’ve heard the Vicar saying that all the Christmas services are packed out in the prison chaplaincy: morning, noon and night, and no-one ever wants to return to their cells, bless them.

I truly think we’re making a difference there.

And so to those who, as Lucy and I do, make your livings by earning and buying or persuading others to give you the wherewithal of survival, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all. Whatever your species or faith, your race or station in life or your vital signs, we hope you enjoy the festive season, and that next year we can find even more ways to get along without actually killing each other.

Blessings from Adonais and Lucy.

PS. To the predators and the humourless slayers that they inspire and motivate to come a-calling, see you in 2008.

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Wide A Wake

Next day.

Typical.
There’s always some idiot who’s prepared to spoil everything, isn’t there?
It was all going so well; grand baroque music and charming flickering candles in the cathedral; I had a pew not too close to any crucifixes; lovely new roof and an impressive new green and gilt rood-screen.
Come half-time and the mulled wine is going down a treat and young Deidre and I had just popped out behind the Social Centre for a quick nip when some total bastard decides to open up a temporary interdimensional rift. For ten or fifteen tentacled seconds of claw-slashing, crimson-spattered chitinous horror, the cathedral became a chthudral.
The authorities will probably put it down to a gas explosion, now that terrorism is no longer a safe excuse to explain away supernatural slaughter. After all, who would ever slaughter a churchful of worshippers and their friends whose only offence was to listen to some Christian music? Who could possibly be offended by such innocuous behaviour? It just never happens. Anywhere. Too much trouble asking such questions.
Nope, a gas explosion is what it’ll be, and the job’s finished. Dignified services for the dozen or so dead, a news blackout about the strange lights in the sky, and a quick, misleading, and above all accurate account in the weirdoes’ news magazines. No-one but a few witnesses will remember a black-clad figure leaping like a flea through the shattered east window and hopping out again with the wheelchair-bound and Zimmer-framed survivors. Government-appointed ‘Stress Councillors’ will treat and discredit with any such false memories.
Not that I want the attention. There was a lot of claret about last night whose owners no longer needed it, and ‘waste not, want not’ is a Lancashire saying.
But now I learn that there’s an eschatological nutcase hanging around my hometown. That should add to the fun over Christmas; finding him/her/it/them, and dealing. As if I didn’t have enough to do this month already, what with staff parties and the Homeless Shelter work on Christmas day itself…Busy, busy, busy.
It’s two-thirty GMT and it really is time I got some sleep. Got people coming round tonight for my wake, and I still haven’t sorted out the catering.

Sainsbury’s deliver food right to your door now, they say.

Sleep well, friends.

AB-

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Who Knows Where The Thyme Goes

Today is the eve of the anniversary of my mortal body’s birth.

Each year I commemorate this event by visiting my grave and pruning the rose and hawthorn bushes that my widow planted on the site. A thorough woman, that. Lives in a garlic farm on a river island. Remarried too; to a crossbow manufacturer. Very thorough. Makes child contact a bit difficult occasionally, that does.

Still, I have few regrets having come into this life. The strength and the longevity are fine things to have, of course, and if the diet is unvaried it is at least low on cholesterol except for when I meet gluttons.

It’s difficult to remember after twenty years what daylight felt like, but my Lucy makes the night a warm and bright enough place for me.

It’s only the damned predators and the remorseless slayers that they inspire that keep life being from being pretty damned perfect.

It just isn’t necessary to kill humans for us to live. A sip here, a good long slug there, and we can be on our way to the next party or a midnight conference call with our offshore portfolio managers, or just go for a stalk or hang around in a favourite graveyard. All this taking over the world nonsense is pointless, dangerous, and expensive. If they’d only lay off the humans for a generation or two, hit the bottle all the while, and let the chick lit and films do their work, and we could come out of the casket and be acknowledged as yet another interesting tribe of mankind. We’d be able get a lot of work as historians and mine rescue workers and detectives, and the priests and the pubescents could go back to their parishes and pimples and leave the rest of us in peace.

As it is, since Sumerian times and even before, some of – well, almost all of – our kind have decided upon a manifest destiny to rule and dine on the rest of humanity. The bastards. The total, utter bastards. Do they know how easy life can be in an industrial civilization with sterile needles and refrigeration and 24/7 online shopping and banking? But, no! They have to rule the cringing mortals / own the Power Of The Night / hunt through eternity to satisfy their Endless Thirst. It buggers it up for the rest of us who’d like to live as peaceful citizens of good standing, and we could truly rest in peace. It’s inevitable really. Though paying taxes does not look at all appealing we’ve got the death part beaten into a cocked hat.

Well, it’s fully dark here, and they’re doing mince pies and mulled wine at the Cathedral, so I’d better run so as not to miss the rush. Amazing what a spoonful of cinnamon and ginger in a drop of heated vin ordinaire will do to even the nicest catholic girl’s inhibitions.

I won’t even be able to see my widow’s dancing shoe heel marks on the turf, either.

Cheers,

AB-.

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Chick flecks.

Dear ‘Vlad’,

It’s all your fault.
Your ‘Eternity Without Cruelty’ lark is sending me mad.
Mad, I tell you.

In the old life, the Bride and I could spend our evenings hunting and stalking and bleeding our prey. All good, clean, vampiric fun. Now that we have joined the IV League and mealtimes are rapid and joyless occasions, and therefore the remainder of the nighttime needs to be filled with some activity or other. Our wealth is copious and diversely invested, and using the internet has made attending to them an easy and quick thing, and so it is no longer a diverting challenge.

Well, we’re both keen readers, and my Marjorie has been so ever since Mister Caxton made books cheap enough for commoners such as we. There are some splendid books available, and many of them to my taste, as I see they are to yours. Reading is, at best now that we are all literate, a solitary vice. We need such amusements as can be enjoyed together, as a couple. And so we have turned to the cinema and television, as I see you have, as a suitable pastime.

There are many splendid vampire films available, as you know, but can Marjorie and I choose films which we both enjoy equally?

Can we hell! I like light, romantic comedies with happy endings, such as Daughters of Darkness and The Hunger, or musicals wherein all the would-be vampire killers end up variously anxious, heartbroken, or ashamed. My Marjorie, however, prefers dreary weepies where the vampires suffer pain - both emotional and physical - and even defeat, such as Van Helsing or Blade.

Why, oh why, is it that women always seem to enjoy cruel and violent tales, while we menfolk prefer cheerful and edifying stories after which we can sleep soundly all day long, unafraid that the mortals will destroy us?

Could we but hunt and kill once more, Mister Blackburn, Marjorie and I need never squabble over the choice of DVDs again.

Dining non-lethally was your Mistress Bountilaire’s quirkish gift to my marriage, and I insist that she, or you, provide a solution.

Regards,
Bernard Hatton, (deceased.)

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Take away food

Sir,

The eco-freaks are trying to kill me.

I live in a small suburban street and I usually cook human food each day and then flush it down the toilet. This was so that neighbours will smell my kitchen and to provide empty wrappers and cans to leave out for the dustmen to collect. They would then believe that I eat. Camouflage is everything.

No more.

The mortals in my city have recently discontinued the weekly collection of rubbish bags. There are now alternate weekly collections of trash for the dump, alternating with collections of recyclable materials such as glass, paper, card and plastic. I must try to fill an enormous wheelie bin the size of a teenager’s coffin with stuff or else people will begin to suspect that I never eat.

I am not a wealthy vampire. I can ill afford to waste cash on even more groceries. I have taken the pledge and gone non-lethal, but it means that I have to spend even more of my nighttime hours in seducing people to feed on. Mine is a pleasant and orderly neighbourhood at the edge of town. There just aren’t enough muggers for me to make a decent living stealing from and dining on them. Please don’t suggest drug addicts, Mr. Blackburn. I refuse to live off junk food.

I really don’t want to revert to predation as I would need to hunt quite far afield. We have very few homeless people here and hardly any illegal immigrants, so culling a few would not be an option as even a handful would be missed. I’d have to travel to the nearby cities in that case.

How am I to fill up these monstrous bins and blend into the background and still stay solvent?

Why were the old days so much simpler?

Regards,

Worried,
Alderley Edge, Cheshire, England.

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Sign of The Times

Sir,

I read with dismay in an archived page of the Times that the local council had been hoping to restrict human immigration into these islands from Romania. I abhor such a notion; the more fresh blood that is brought into this island the better. Old World, New World, and Emerging World: each has its distinctive character and appeal; to both nose and palate. I applaud, by contrast, the European government’s liberalisation of the movement of livestock in this way as travelling to châteaux abroad can be tiresome and hazardous. However, there is a hidden peril here, which I should draw to the attention of our kind.

Were it not for one particular Romanian immigrant, the cattle would have known less about our kind, and our existence would be safer. The creature was a savage. He was ignorant of the ways of this land. He knew nothing of property rights such as our established hunting grounds. Imagine; taking unmarried girls before they could breed and perpetuate the herd!

He was an exhibitionist, with his killing and appearing in public and so on. The dissembling that we were obliged to perform cost us all dearly, in effort and treasure. Enchanting his servant to fancy himself the author of a work of fiction was my idea, as you may know, but our existence and natures were made known to the common herd in ways that previous, less successful chronicles had not employed.

Suddenly the toxicity of garlic, the need for an invitation to enter homes, the timber stake and the problems with mirrors were common knowledge, and our food was forewarned. Unless our plot to stifle humans’ fear of vampires by portraying us as sympathetic, unpredatory victims of circumstance is successful, then I fear that the cattle will never again be gullible enough to put themselves willingly into our clutches.

And he was a convert to the Roman church! An idolater! An indecorous, strutting, foppish barbarian who placed our kind in the light of publicity forever. Without his tale being published worldwide, when a rogue infected the President both she and her meal could have been staked and beheaded and the killing put down to a lone madman. The mortal world would have been none the wiser. All the expensive foolishness of graphite bullets, interfering with the forensic evidence, enthralling witnesses and so on would have been unnecessary. It would have been forgotten in a decade or so. Instead there are those humans who will now never cease looking for the truth.

Let that be a lesson to you, boy. Publicity is rarely to our advantage, though I admire the dissimulation which our servants are achieving in the worlds of storytelling, the cinema and television.

I remain affectionately yours,

Prudence Skelton, Lady Mobberley.

Post scriptum.

I once had spawn of my own. A fine young man whom I stalked, drained, and killed. Then I brought him back to the world and to this life of ours. He was such a sweet child; always ready with an unkind word and ever willing to perpetuate such acts of cruelty as to make a mother’s heart stay stock-still with pride. I remember raising him as a whelp; weaning him off solid food and staying with him all night while he was teething. I wonder what became of the boy. Perhaps he is too busy now with his affairs amongst mortals; trying to be their friend. Perhaps some slip of a girl, a Papist and a free-thinker both, is more important than the dam who raised him from a grave that she had made for him herself? Well, eternal life here on Earth can only become everlasting loss and grief. Tell me, Mister internet vampire, how can a mother mend a heart broken, not by the preacher's stake or the Sun's cruel light, but by the one she loves the most in all the world?

Farewell, Adonais.

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Vampire slayers: good enough to eat?

I shall begin with a rant of my own to get this page started off.

Vampire slayers come in all manner of shapes, sizes, sexes, and species. They come in small, private-sector firms, and large, government-sized organisations and they come in disguise. They come in through the doors and the windows and down the chimney if they can.
Now, I have taken the pledge, like this lot, for the love of a wicked woman: my Dark Bride; the beat of my unbeating heart; milady Lucy Bountilaire. Her tender concern for our fellow bipeds is compelling. Human beings are people (of a sort), and it just doesn’t seem sporting to take their blood without their permission any more.
Sigh.
Okay. So one is obliged to ask permission (if only to keep this lot off one’s chest). It requires dinner and a movie to take a drink on draught. The rest is from the bag these nights, and one is told one must be grateful for that.
I try. I really do. I go to meetings.
The question is... what to do with the beggars when they arrive unexpectedly and uninvited?
It’s all very well arguing, as Lucy does, that humans’ mayfly lives are precious to them. However much turning to dust is inevitable for them, to take such a small gift from the poor creatures would be cruel. Fair enough. I can exist above the level of my thirst and practise good works, and enjoy a blissful marriage. As opposed to the other kind.
Only. Only they don’t all potter past us in the night; oblivious to our existence and the thirst that never ends. Slayers arrive equipped with a variety of baggage. Burglary tools. Holy objects and substances (often toxic). Righteous anger you could shave with. The generosity and gentle forgiveness of a first wife. Plans for cardiothoracic carpentry.

One morning you settle down to rest, pull the lid closed after you, and WHAM! Some dreary Van Helsing wannabe’s scratching the lacquer and jimmying off all the ornate carving that’s going to cost a fortune to have repaired. Your bleary eyes, pale and bloodless with exhaustion, stare up into the humourless face of someone prepared to Do The Right Thing, no matter how much it hurts you or stains the flagstones, so it’s up you get, hissing and clawing, dancing the light fandango around the cellar/loft/castle room/belfry, avoiding the light from the cracks in the curtains you left there in your hurry to get to sleep. It’s the drink, you know. The fight can go five ways. You can die. The slayer can die. You can flee, blanketed and gasping. The slayer can flee.
Or you can capture the slayer. What then? Lucy says you should let them go with a warning and an invitation to come back for a chat some night to see if there is room for you both to compromise. Note that ‘both.’ You were just minding your own business, sleeping it off and dreaming of the plastic delights of a reheated half litre of A+ and watching a game of floodlit football before off to the seedy end of town to find the special muggers with too much stolen cash and too little interest in folklore and horror films. You didn’t ask some skinny pubescent or overheated dhampir with a sense of grievance to burst you door down. You only come in when invited. But no! They have to turn up, disturb your sleep, and try to fit you with an ash wood aorta. What room to compromise is there? The slayer believes you’re a Hell-spawned monster fit only for a Tequila Sunrise without the tequila but with a side order of Special Ribs. You believe that they’re about a hundred pounds of meat soaked in the world’s finest marinade. Now that they know where you live the only way to avoid having to relocate and find another nest is to slip them the enamel syringe, glug glug, yum yum, and it’s off to the mortuary for them and it’s down to the Coroner’s house tonight for a spot of hypnotic suggestion for you.
It makes me mad. Okay, going against my nature and living off ready meals is just about acceptable. I can do it. I really can. But an English vampire’s castle is his home, and I say that if slayers break in with mayhem on their mind, then drinks are on the house, and hard luck to the hapless housebreaker.

What do you think, dead reader?

Adonais Blackburn

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Vampire Writers Welcome

Welcome to a place where vampire fiction fans and writers can showcase their original writing and critical talents, and link to their own sites elsewhere if they wish.

Our specialist sister pages are enabled for you to post criticism and reviews directly once you have sent your first email.*

Why an agony column?

Because it’s such a great idea. Alas, it is not mine. Nothing is new under the moon, of course, and I came across this one recently in a valuable and delightful series, by a hugely entertaining writer, MaryJanice Davidson. In Undead and Unreturnable her heroine, the marvelous Betsy, Queen of the US vampires goes along with the idea of writing an advice column for her more-and-less obedient subjects.

She does so hoping to civilize her subjects into drinking only from willing donors who are then allowed to survive. In her world, you don’t have to murder to feed. Predation is out – love and voluntary exchange are in.Her first effort is to advise a lonely vamp to contact his ageing parents before it is too late, and how to do it tactfully and without inviting suspicion and - presumably - incoming woodwork…

So I write short varied pieces as part of the ‘Dear Vlad’ column. I have fun with my secret history of the many vampire conspiracies. My readers, if any, who want to show off their own stuff or rave about their favourite vampire or related fiction are invited to provide questions and comments, but it’s not compulsory. Vampire prose only, please for ‘Dear Vlad’.

Dear reader, what do you think of the new lines in sun blocks this year? Good enough for twenty minutes free from agonizing noonday pain, or just a cosmetics industry con trick? Let us know, and also show us what other vampire thoughts you have.

Do you have difficulty fitting in at your local church, what with the hissing and the cringing and the frankly careless way the priest flings the holy water about?

What do you think about Renfields today: too twitchy, needy, and unreliable? Is Contract Henchmanship the way to go? Is there an easy solution to the domestic help problem, or are we all going to have to be nice to the werewolves again?

Let’s see what you’ve got, midnight scribes.

Yours.
The late Adonais Blackburn.

* I need your email address to give you posting rights with blogger.com. You will need a Google account to post thereafter.

Book, television and film reviews can be posted directly by enthusiasts here and here and here.

I hope to add specialist as time allows and demand prompts.

I might not think that a post, thread, or link is suitable for a fun blog. I’ll be putting links to such work in an overflow blog, suitably flagged with warnings. If you do me the favour of writing something vampirish and it’s not actually illegal, the least I can do is let your work be seen, and linked to. Excessively political, religious, technical, abusive and sexual stuff will go there. (Basically stuff I wouldn’t want my daughter to read until she’s eighteen.)

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Vampire Secret History

All vampire fiction is true.

All the books, films, television shows, graphic novels and games which are commonly sold as entertainment somehow reflect the real underworld where vampires exist and prey on mankind. Vampires have many different kinds of political organisations and overlapping jurisdictions and are often unknown to each other and in secret conflict amongst themselves. Don’t even get me started on the American South.

The wreck of the Demeter still attracts scuba divers off the coast of Whitby each summer and the Czech government has not yet discovered the cause of the massacre in the European Health Consortium's head office building in Prague. There really is a New England town where the people disappeared and a crater in California where the town just disappeared.

There are two kinds of vampires; traditionalists and the Peace Movement.

Traditionalists are predatory raptors who regard humanity as food and of no intrinsic worth otherwise. They are monsters and through a variety of organisations and plots threaten the freedom of human beings. They mean to take over the world. Fortunately, they are divided amongst themselves, and haven’t managed to take control yet. But they’re working on it. Traditionalists promote vampire fiction to discredit witnesses who might try to ‘out’ their existence, and to spread the message to would-be slayers that vampires are a pushover, so why bother organising?

The Peace Movement are far less numerous than the traditionalists, and are similarly disunited, and represent a wholly unrepresentative minority of the vampire nation as a whole. They pursue a variety of strategies in order to live peacefully with their human neighbours. They are considered to be traitors and milksops by the traditionalists, and are hated and targeted by the bloodsuckers more fiercely than they even attack slayers.

Slayers, too, are divided amongst themselves, with the Vatican having at least three separate and mutually unknown groups, who can therefore not produce a common front against the predators. The military and security apparatus of various countries have anti-vampire units within them, but since such organisations are founded on both obedience to authority and secrecy, they rarely if ever co-ordinate together. Then there are the private sector and voluntary slaying organisations…Some slayers can accept the existence of non-lethal vampires, but other refuse to believe that leopards can change their spots and pursue a-stake-them-all-and-let-God-sort-them-out policy.

I, Adonais Blackburn, a modern-day vampire in Lancashire have taken the pledge to live Eternity Without Cruelty out of affection and respect for my Dark Bride; Lucy Bountilaire. I am a British representative to the IV League, one of the international groupings of the Peace Movement. As part of my commitment to bringing the two species together, and to help his fellow vampires to survive in a confusing, changing world, I run an agony column at Dear Vlad.

I welcome queries and problems from vampires, slayers and the preyed-upon of all sorts, in the hope both of making life better for my fellow vampires and more long-lasting for my human neighbours.

You are very welcome to mail your queries to ab dot negative at yahoo dot co dot uk and to add your comments to any of the postings.

Your agony uncle,

(The late) Adonais Blackburn