Vampire Seeker by Tim O'Rourke

Author:Tim O'Rourke [O'Rourke, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-08-12T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

I hadn’t felt like eating that lump of red meat before, but now the atmosphere in the room was so frosty, my appetite went altogether. Harry threw his napkin onto his plate and I watched some of the blood from the meat soak into it. He pushed his chair back from the table and left the dining car without saying a word to anyone.

I glanced at Zoe, who drank the last of her wine in one quick gulp and stood up.

“Excuse me,” she said, “but I think I’ll go to bed now. Thank you for dinner, it was very interesting.” Then like the others, she was bolting through the dining car door.

“And then there were three,” Drake smiled at me and the doctor.

“I guess,” I said, wondering if I had caused the scene by doing the whole holy water thing.

Setting his glass down, Drake looked across the table at me, and the candlelight flickered in his eyes.

“You’re not like the others,” he said.

“How come?” I asked him.

“They seem to be so…how can I explain,” he mused. Then gathering his thoughts he went on. “They seem to be so uptight.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I lied, not wanting to start slagging off my friends.

Friends? Were they? I wondered. I didn’t really know anything about the preacher and the others. But still, I wouldn’t say anything bad about them, as they had given me food and shelter- taken me in – since arriving in 1888.

Changing the subject, Drake said, “So, Miss Carter, do you believe in these Vrykolakas – these vampires?”

“Yes,” I said looking straight back at him through the candlelight.

“So you’ve seen one then?” the doctor asked, sitting forward at the table with interest.

“I’m not sure,” I said, remembering the man who had strangled me on the train.

“You’re not sure?” Drake asked, lighting a cigarette. He dropped the match onto his plate where it floated in the bloody-red gravy. “Does this have something to do with faith, the faith that the preacher likes to talk about so much?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve always believed in the existence of vampires. I don’t need to see one to believe.”

“So it is a matter of faith then?” the doctor asked me.

Ignoring the doctor, I looked at the cigarette smouldering between Drake’s fingers and said, “Can I have one of those?”

Without saying anything, Drake slid a silver box and a book of matches across the table with his fingertips. I took one of the cigarettes from the box and lit it. With smoke curling up from the corner of my mouth, I said, “I’ve just always known that vampires exist – I don’t know why.”

“Tell me about this vampire who you thought you saw,” Drake said, reaching across the table and refilling my empty glass with wine.

I lifted my glass and took a sip. The wine was sweet. Drake and his doctor stared at me from across the table and I could sense their eagerness as they waited for me to start talking.

“I followed this man down onto the Tube,” I said.

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