Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-one

I slammed my fist down on the table, blank and white like everything else in this awful place. The table shook violently, I felt a little giddy with rage, a little proud of my indignation. Doctor Steward didn’t bat an eyelid, as usual he was smiling, the smile was tired now though, more forced. There was woman by his side, another Doctor, short and Hispanic with a scattering of worry lines across her forehead. She jumped a little as my fist banged down, the small sprawling plant rang against the plywood.

‘Calm down,’ Doctor Steward said, some of his own calm had left his voice.

I glanced at Lisa, she was biting her lip, her eyes didn’t leave the Doctor’s face. I shook my head violently. As I began to talk I was so angry my voice was shaking, it was like an acid running through me, busting through my throat. ‘I saw his Mother,’ I mashed my finger against the table, ‘I heard her crying, screaming out for him.’

‘With all due respect,’ Doctor Stewart’s voice took on a smug undertone, ‘you also heard Mark’s high emotions.’

‘But I heard his mother,’ I sneered, ‘it’s different.’ I stopped for a breath. ‘What exactly are you doing here?’

‘I told you,’ now he was exasperated. ‘We’re trying to help these people.’

Now Lisa stood up. ‘How do you help the families of their victims?’ She said, ‘did you send a fruit basket to Tony Calliser’s parents?’ She snorted. ‘These are not people, what person would do what this,’ her voice turned ugly, ‘Mark, has done?’

‘You don’t understand,’ He shook his head. ‘You can only see them as monsters.’

‘You’re a monster,’ I spat at him.

His chair scraped loudly on the floor as he stood up to face me. ‘Mark was one of our greatest students,’ he said, outraged, his face red. ‘You destroyed all our work with him when you decided to have a cigarette.’

‘I didn’t know that would happen,’ I snapped, ‘I didn’t know you let your students keep rotting corpses in their rooms.’

‘Mark was different,’ the Doctor shot back, ‘our work with him was so important, you just don’t-’

‘Don’t tell me again that I don’t understand, you clearly don’t understand the pain of losing a child.’ I breathed deeply in an attempt to calm myself. ‘Tony Callister was Seventeen Doctor, Seventeen.’

‘But we’re doing this to stop that from happening again,’ he banged his fist down on the table, equally as violent as mine. ‘Doctor Garcia, please explain.’ He turned away from me and waved at the woman in the room, feigning indifference.

I was wrong to think that this woman, Doctor Garcia, was nervous and scared. As soon as she stood and smoothed down her skirt, short though she was, an air of authority beamed from her. She was stony faced, serious and unmoved. She nodded to us, ‘I see you’re frustrated.’

Lisa snorted, but one swift glance from Doctor Garcia, seemed to quiet her. Doctor Stewart sat still as a statue with his head in his hands.

‘I know you’ve had a lot to take in recently,’ she didn’t give us a moment to agree or disagree. ‘Now there are some things you’ll want to listen to.’ We didn’t have a choice.

‘I’m a leading specialist in Vampire Society,’ she went on.

‘Vampire what?’ Lisa raised her eyebrow. Doctor Garcia raised an eyebrow back and Lisa lowered hers, I had never seen her chastised before.

‘Yes, Vampire society,’ she paused. ‘Now, there are a few common practises when dealing with creation. That’s what they call making new vampires.’ She paused again, to check if either of us were looking sceptical or like we might argue. ‘The vampires they create are referred to as their children, and those vampires become brother and sister to each other.’

‘A happy family,’ I snorted, I couldn’t help myself.

Doctor Garcia ignored me. ‘There’s something we’ve discovered recently. In some cases the creator, or father, helps the new vampire, guides them through the first few weeks of their new life.’

‘Teaching them to ride a bike, patching up a grazed knee…’

‘Mr Duncan we quiet or I will remove you from the room.’ I shrank into my chair.

‘There’s the popular belief that the humanity in the new vampire needs to be wiped out, the compassion, the feeling that life is sacred, you understand?’ We nodded, neither of us dared say anything. ‘So on the first kill, they’re instructed to take someone who they’re attracted to, someone they’d desire if they were an average human. The point of this is a test of strength, a test that they’re beginning to lose their compassion.’

‘Tony Callister?’ I asked in a deep exhale, ‘that’s why Mark was special, because he couldn’t lose his humanity.’

She nodded curtly, ‘he didn’t attack when he was supposed to, he kept a relationship with him, even slept with him, and didn’t kill him. But, when the pressure got too much he gave in.’ She sighed, but she didn’t look particularly sad.

‘And stole his body?’ Lisa asked sceptically.

‘Yes, eventually. You see, he thought he could change the boy, turn him into one of his own. But it was much too late.’ She looked uncomfortably at the floor, it was the first time she had shown a weakness. ‘He’s been holding onto the belief that he can do it, he hasn’t drunk a single drop of blood since Tony Callister.’

‘But he can’t do it,’ Lisa shot at her. ‘It’s far too late, that,’ she shuddered, ‘thing, that’s never going to be anything, is it?’

‘Of course not,’ Doctor Garcia said with a sly smirk which made my stomach lurch.

‘But you let him believe it was,’ Lisa started back. I stared at her in return, she had never shown any of these sympathetic feelings before, especially not to these creatures. ‘Why?’

‘We’ve told you before,’ Gave Doctor Stewart’s groan, ‘we’re trying to help.’

‘By letting him die?’

‘It’s not him,’ Doctor Stewart said desperately, ‘it’s the others. All of them, and all the ones who might be, we’re trying to rehabilitate them. We lose Mark but we learn so much from him.’

‘If he’s more human than the others, then what you’re doing is wrong.’ I realised Lisa was right, though I was still surprised by her.

‘He was always going to die!’ Doctor Stewart shouted back at me. His sudden anger made me jump. ‘He heard a rumour,’ he started again more softly. ‘A rumour that vampire blood would sustain a vampire, the wound heals and no one dies. He was going to feed from his lover exclusively.’

‘But that rumour isn’t true?’ I guessed.

Doctor Stewart broke into a sarcastic grin, more like the wide smiles he had first greeted me with. ‘Have you ever smelt the blood?’ He asked me, ‘it’s rancid, it’s a poison, a killer, which is why it spreads the infection. It’s dead blood, they cannot live on it.’

‘But you let him believe he could, just like you told him he could bring a month dead corpse back to life.’

‘No,’ Doctor Garcia cut in sharply, her tight thin eyebrows contracting, she was looking at me like a stern teacher. ‘We did not, we do not influence the creatures, in any way. We leave them to create and feel and learn, alone. Progress is not the same if it is forced.’

‘Then where did he hear these rumours?’ My head had started to thud painfully. I began to doubt everything I was being told.

The Doctors looked at each other with caution. ‘From his brother.’

‘And by brother you mean…’

‘A vampire with a shared father,’ Doctor Garcia nodded. ‘I believe you’ve met the father.’

‘Jarl,’ Lisa breathed slowly. ‘What are you doing about him?’

‘We’ve been tracking him, of course,’ she said curtly, ‘there are authorities stationed in Cuba to try and contain him.’

‘Just like you contained him from Marietta Benavente,’ I snorted. ‘Just like you contained Al-’ I stopped myself. ‘Its Alex, the brother is Alex?’

‘They were easy to track,’ Doctor Garcia smiled shallowly. ‘Jarl has a calling card.’

‘In death we love,’ Lisa repeated, stony faced, her voice thin.

‘Alex likes to do these things, create chaos, spread rumours,’ Doctor Garcia started, ‘as a case study he’s fascinating, as a vampire, he’s very dangerous.’

I thought about Robert Thompson. ‘I know,’ I shuddered.

‘For his first kill,’ she continued, ‘he chose his ex-girlfriend.’ She paused, ‘he ripped her throat out with his bare hands, he didn’t even drink from her. He laughed and moved on to the next.’

‘The children in Norway,’ my voice shook.

Doctor Garcia nodded again, ‘he liked the idea of a pack of feral children, haunting the cold northern towns the way wolves used to, that’s what he told me.’

‘Alex looked at me,’ I confessed, ‘he looked at me like he hated me. Are you sure he’s safe here?’

Again the Doctors looked at each other like they shared a common secret. ‘Alex has escaped from here twice.’ Doctor Stewart said with a careful sympathetic smile. Flashes of Robert Thompson’s mangled body splashed like blood splatter across my thoughts.

‘We try to help them,’ Doctor Stewart continued, ‘but sometimes there is no helping them, they’re past being wild hungry animals and have developed this deep malicious intelligence which Alex has. It’s a disappointment for the research but in cases like these there is only one thing we can do.’

‘And that is?’

‘Keep them heavily sedated, and when we’re sure they can’t defend themselves.’ He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a length of dark wood, pointed sharply at one end. ‘We terminate the vampire.

‘A wooden stake? You’ve got to be joking.’