Excerpt: The Last Vampire

CHAPTER 1 - The VA

"My name is Daron Ithaman, and I am a vampire."

Despite the polite applause this sentence received, despite the reactions Daron knew it should have evoked, he still felt nothing. Deep down, Daron knew that he felt no guilt at being a vampire. He just was.

"Well done, Daron," Miriam clapped, the movement sending ripples through her pudgy flesh. Daron found himself staring at her pulsing jugular, feeling his own heartbeat synchronise itself to the barely perceptible throb of Miriam's bloodstream. His attention did not go unnoticed; Miriam's hand tightened round her pen-sized panic button. Daron averted his eyes. Old habits, he thought. Nothing but old habits.

"Thank you," he muttered, looking at his hands.

"It's a brave thing," Miriam said loudly, "to admit you have a problem. It's the first step to confronting it, and becoming your own master. Daron, you are on the road to recovery."

Which was a trite and cruel thing to say, Daron considered, because he wasn't going to recover. Vampirism wasn't treatable. The best he could hope for was a steady supply of pigs' blood. Otherwise it was back to the rats, and that was a prospect he didn't welcome.

The other vampires in the room - twelve bloodsuckers in total - were aware of the farce inherent in the VA meetings, Daron was convinced. However, not one of them - Daron included - would make any complaint.

Daron felt a pat on his leg, and looked to see Beatrix smiling at him. At first glance, her face suggested she was no more than twenty years old, but closer inspection of her eyes showed that she was considerably older. If she even had a hundred years under her belt, that would make her a considerably more powerful vampire than anyone else in the room.

Was she hiding something, Daron wondered, not for the first time. He had known Beatrix for a couple of weeks, and she was guarded about her past. This in turn had inspired Daron to remain silent about much of his own history, but even so Beatrix seemed to be able to second-guess him much of the time.

Even so, Beatrix made unusually good company, particularly relative to the other vampires around them. In Daron's experience, vampires had a tendency to be either arrogant or depressed. There was a sizable contingent of vampires who fell into both categories. Beatrix, on the other hand, had retained the ability to smile, and seemed unaffected by the pride inherent to some vampires. The fascination that his kind held to humans - particularly goths and their ilk - gave many vampires ideas well above their merits.

It had been Beatrix who had finally persuaded Daron to come along to the VA. She didn't seem to believe in the message of the VA any more than the other vampires, but she recognised a depression in Daron; a hole in his life that needed something to plug it. The depression was not particularly difficult to spot, but vampires were even more self-absorbed than most normal humans, and Daron no longer held contact with anyone but other vampires. Before coming along to the VA, his contact with other vampires too had been limited at best. Mostly he spent his time with West, who was seated opposite Daron and Beatrix in the VA circle.

Compared to Daron's contact, vaguely mal-nourished physique, West was a bulky giant of a man. Born and raised in Liverpool, he had emigrated as a young teenager to America. There he had fought in the Civil War before becoming a gold prospector and - later - a vampire.

It was West that spoke now, his thick, slurred drawl echoing across the nicotine-stained gymnasium.

"How long does it take to recover?" he asked Miriam, "How long did it take you?"
Miriam shot West a look of mild contempt. West had known immediately - as had every vampire who ever walked into this room - that Miriam was not of the same species; that she was pure, normal homo sapien. This was a standard trick of the VA, and of the Vampire Council at large: offering the vampires carrots in order to be able to beat them with the sticks.

Miriam, at the start of this meeting, and at the start of every meeting she oversaw, made a standard speech. The words never varied, lest they be confused by a vampire of lower intellect or higher hunger.

"My name is Miriam," she said, "I will be running this VA meeting. I am not a vampire, but you will not drink from me. If you try, or if I believe you are about to try, I will press this button in my hand, which will cause the UV lighting wired in above your heads to turn on. This will kill you. Some of you may be older than others, and therefore faster. You will not be able to get to me in time to take my hand off this button. Do not try. Tea and coffee is available over by the hanging bars."