Page 27 of Box of Frogs
I didn’t need telling twice. I gulped down the entire contents of my glass, draining it to the dregs. Then I dropped it on to the side table next to me. ‘Time to ’fess up.’
If I’d been expecting a chatty preamble, I was mistaken. Julie raised her glass to me and, before taking another sip, said, ‘I am a vampire.’
The only sound in the room was the ticking of the small clock on the mantelpiece. Julie lifted the glass to her lips and finished off her gin. I just waited.
‘You know,’ she said finally, ‘I’ve done this seventeen times. Never have I had a reaction like yours.’ She leaned forward and repeated, ‘I’m a vampire.’
I nodded. ‘I heard you. I was expecting more.’
She raised a plucked eyebrow. ‘More?’
‘More explanation.’ If I was going to give any credence to the idea that I was a faery, I could hardly be taken aback that Julie was a vampire. And she hadn’t questioned my assertion that I was a superhero; she deserved the same respect she’d granted me. As long as she didn’t grow fangs and try to bite me, of course.
‘Unless I’ve forgotten more than I realise, vampires can’t go out during the day or they burn up in the sun. They can’t drink anything other than pure blood. They’re pale and cold and,’ I hesitated, although there was no point in beating around the bush, ‘dead. None of the above seems to apply to you.’
‘Where does all this knowledge about vampires come from?’ Julie asked. Her expression was patient and I sensed she’d had this conversation several times before. At least seventeen times before .
I scratched my head. ‘Uh, I’ve got amnesia, remember? I assume I’ve heard about vampires from horror stories.’ I tried to think. Did vampires exist across the Fey border? Who knew? ‘Count Duckula, perhaps.’
A trace of a grin flashed across Julie’s lips. ‘Everything you know, or think you know,’ she amended her words, ‘or think you remember or don’t remember, is nothing more than propaganda. Vicious lies designed to wipe my kind off the face of this planet. A campaign of pure genocide has been waged against us. That is why I have to go to such lengths to keep my secret safe.’ She pointed at the floor, where the contract still lay. ‘The blood you have signed there will bind you forever. If you even think about revealing what I’ve just told you, you will suffer and all those of your own blood will suffer along with you. You will die – and not pleasantly or quickly.’ She licked her lips. ‘You’re welcome to try. Others have in the past and it didn’t go well for them.’ Julie sighed. ‘It’s not a threat. It’s simply fact. And, alas, a necessary evil.’
I shrugged. ‘Hey, I get it. I still have questions, though.’
‘Do I need to drink blood to survive? Yes.’ She waved her glass at me. ‘But I do enjoy other beverages, as well as food. You already know about the Valium. I don’t need to kill to obtain the red stuff, Madrona. There are eight pints of blood in the average human body. I don’t know about you but I couldn’t drink eight pints of beer.’
I couldn’t be sure but I reckoned that, if challenged,Icould. I decided it wouldn’t be sensible to say so. ‘Do you wantmyblood?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘No. You’re my bodyguard, not my chef. I get a pint delivered every week from the local hospital. They think I have aplastic anaemia so it’s no problem to get hold of it. And a pint a week is more than sufficient for my needs.’
I considered this while trying to prioritise my next questions. ‘How oldareyou?’ I coughed. ‘I mean, do you age?’
‘I’m 173 years old. I stopped ageing when I reached my fortieth birthday.’ Her face took on a distant expression. ‘That was some time ago.’
I frowned at her. ‘Is it wise being an actor then? Especially on television? Surely people will notice sooner or later.’
She smiled. ‘Advances in plastic surgery, not to mention Botox, mean I can get away with it for some time yet. I am aware, however, that there will come a time when I have to stop. It will be an easy matter to alter my appearance.’ She touched her hair self-consciously. ‘Although I will miss being blonde.’
‘Do you have a soul?’ I asked.
Her smile turned into a laugh. ‘Do you?’
Good question. I grimaced and leaned over to grab my glass. ‘I need some more gin,’ I said.
Julie stood up. ‘I knew I liked you.’
***
It took some time – and several more gins – but I finally managed to get the full story out of her. And I’d thoughtmylife was complicated. It turns out that vampires are born, not made. Several hundred years ago there were thousands of them scattered across the globe. The paranoia of the Middle Ages, however, did them few favours. Even the slightest hint of anything untoward – such as a smear of blood about their lips, more animals going missing than usual or weakened damsels with blood loss, and they would be outed, rather stupidly, as witches. Vampires were strong but burning at the stake would kill them just as surely as it would anyone else. Not all of them were circumspect about their … ethnicity, either. In the end, confiding their secret, even to a select few, proved to be their undoing. Vampires, it turned out, were an endangered species.
‘As far as I’m aware,’ Julie told me, with only the slightest waver in her voice, ‘there are now fewer than fifty of us across the globe. I should be able to give you exact numbers but I’ve not heard from several old friends for some months and I fear the worst has happened.’
I leaned forward. ‘What do you mean?’
She fiddled with the hem of her skirt. ‘Despite our best efforts to hide our existence from the world, the damage was done centuries ago. There are people today who know of us and who seek to either destroy or entrap us. These hunters are the same people who have used literature and the media to transform us into the monsters that the world now believes us to be. I’m no more evil than you are.’
According to Morgan, that meant she was pretty darned evil. The NDA I’d signed only worked one way though, so I wasn’t about to reveal that little titbit. Not yet. ‘So holy water?’
‘No effect.’
