Son of Blood Read online

  ‘You have always hated the taste,’ Martin said when Christian rejoined him at the table, his face ashen.

  ‘Have I always drunk it, since I was a baby?’

  ‘No. No, not at all. You took in normal food for a long time. But you were not growing, not developing. I knew why, but could not bring myself to feed it to you.’

  ‘What changed your mind?’

  ‘I thought you were dying, son. No. I was sure I was going to lose you. So I took a risk, and it worked.’

  Martin smiled when Christian’s head nodded at him slowly.

  ‘Is that why I am so…?’ The boy pinched at his slender arms.

  Martin shrugged.

  ‘Maybe. I do not know the answer to that. But you are a strong boy, rapidly becoming a man.’

  ‘But if I were…proper, then I would be—’

  ‘Again, that I—we do not know for sure.’

  The conversation was over. Christian knew his father well enough to comprehend that. But it did not stop thoughts from racing through his head. Thoughts of his father being driven away. Thoughts of Martin feeding the sick child blood, hoping that it would keep him alive. Thoughts of himself older, a fully grown man, a fully accomplished vampire. And Sinead. And Sinead. And Sinead.

  When Christian awoke, his face flat against the table, his nose squashed, he instinctively knew it was morning. His father must have extinguished the candles before he had gone downstairs. The rug was left out of position. He got up, quickly locked the chains in place, and pulled the rug back over them. Checking that the front door was properly bolted, he made his way up the stairs to the first floor of the tower, staggered through his study and into his bedroom. He was asleep seconds after he collapsed onto the mattress on the floor.

  12

  Patrick Robinson passed a note over the bar, told the young blonde girl to keep the change and picked up the two perfectly poured pints of Guinness. Nealon’s Bar was busy for a Thursday—the cold of the winter night had driven people indoors. He had been surprised when, having requested a meeting with Mooney, the mayor chose such a public place. It was easy to see why Connor Mooney held such a sway over the town, and not just because of his relationship with Martin. He manipulated every aspect of life in Skerries, from the way other people did business to who was allowed into his perfect little enclave. As Robinson crossed to their table near the front windows he decided to assume that Mooney already planned to maneuver the conversation and any decisions that came from it in his favor. He would have to try to play the same game, only somewhat better.

  He placed the glasses down on the thin cardboard beer mats, the perfect white head of the black liquid spilling slightly over the edge of Mooney’s pint.

  ‘Sorry.’ Robinson smiled.

  ‘Not a problem,’ responded Mooney, leaning forward and swapping the drinks and their mats across the table so his own glass was now without spill. He leant back in his chair, making the wood under him moan more than a little. Robinson scrunched his lip, chose to say nothing and took his seat opposite Mooney, who had picked up his Guinness and took a slow mouthful.

  ‘Ah,’ he exhaled, tilting his head towards the glass. ‘Years and years of the same approach producing consistent quality. The ideal end result.’

  ‘Are you talking about the Guinness or your approach to being mayor?’ Robinson replied as he took his first swig.

  Mooney laughed.

  ‘You’re not wrong, you’re not wrong. So, Patrick, what can I be doing for you?’

  ‘Can we not just have a beer together before we start business?’

  ‘So it is business you want to talk about. I thought so. And no. We can have a civil drink after we’ve put this business to bed. If you don’t mind?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘So,’ Mooney leant forward, clasping his hands together, elbows on the table. ‘What’s on your mind?’

  ‘The Pearce land sale.’ Robinson pulled at the lapel of his grey suit jacket. Mooney picked up on it. He immediately saw it as a weakness, a gambler’s tell.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I have the ability to raise considerable capital. We could enter into a bidding war where the only person who wins is Pearce himself, or…?’

  ‘Or we go into partnership?’

  ‘Fifty per cent each. Legally. With our combined financial clout, we could turn that land into a very desirable residential area. Not too pricey to sit there empty, but pricey enough to scare off any type of person we wouldn’t want moving into town.’

  ‘I doubt you could match the depths of my pockets,’ Mooney countered. ‘Convince me.’

  ‘I don’t want to enter into a war with you. You’ve got, how can I put this, too much collateral. But you’ve got to admit you are leaving yourself open to running, well, if not a dictatorship then at least a monopoly, and this joint venture could mean good public relations for us both.’

  Mooney finished his drink in two deep gulps.

  ‘Are you going to get the drinks in while I think this over?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure. Yes. Same again, then?’

  Mooney nodded and passed Robinson his empty glass, the white foam clinging to its sides.

  Mooney hated to admit it, but Robinson made a good point. A cheeky little marketing ploy. Clever. But that tug on the lapel. A sign of nervousness? More than likely Robinson did not have the funds like he made out, but of that Mooney could not be sure. If he was to go to auction in the next month or so, he knew he had too much cash tied up in other property to compete if Robinson upped the ante. The mayor nodded to himself. He’d been right to bring Robinson into the inner council; he was a shrewd operator and he was obviously a man one wanted in their corner rather than the opposition’s. And if he stepped out of line as the deal progressed? Mooney grinned. Well if he did, then Mooney always had his ‘go-to guy’.

  Okay, let Robinson have his moment in the sun. Then a few lines of contractual small print that any unfortunate accidents to one partner brought all to the other. If that didn’t send a subliminal message to the upstart, then nothing would.

  ‘Dare I ask if you think this is a good idea?’ Robinson appeared, this time carefully placing Mooney’s glass down in front of him.

  ‘I do,’ Mooney said, standing up and extending his right hand.

  They shook, Robinson exhaling with open relief. As they took their seats once again, he let his calm slip.

  ‘I thought you were going to throw me out of here, you know. Not just the pub, I mean the—’

  ‘Keep your voice down, young man,’ said Mooney. ‘We have a certain standing in this town, and we never let that slide.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry. It’s just, I knew we could work well together, but I didn’t want it to look like I was going up against you…’ He lowered his voice. ‘Not when we all know it is you who truly controls Martin.’

  ‘Like I said,’ Mooney countered, glancing around the bar, ‘keep your voice down. You may be right, but I don’t want the whole town thinking that.’

  The hell you do, thought Robinson.

  ‘Sorry.’ He leant across the table, virtually whispering. ‘Now that the business is out of the way, can we enjoy a beer together as partners?’

  ‘Yes, we can,’ said Mooney, lifting his glass from the table and tapping it against the rim of its partner in Robinson’s hand.

  ‘So how long have you known him?’

  ‘Martin? All my life. He’s been around forever.’

  ‘How did this arrangement take shape, though? Surely when he first arrived everyone would have been terrified of him.’

  Mooney made himself comfortable once again. He loved holding court and he noticed a few people around the pub were now paying attention to the conversation—he was about to become the focal point of the bar. He had checked carefully earlier that the only people in the bar were town residents. He was not a man for missing small details.

  ‘Well, according to the stories, the town, as it was back then, was aware o
f someone living on the island from before the end of the seventeen hundreds, but whoever it was kept himself to himself. Aye, kept himself to himself until some thieving started. Not sure if it was livestock, not sure what it was, but the town was fairly certain who it was. One of the locals’—Mooney raised his eyebrows to emphasize the point—‘disappeared not long afterwards. Then someone passing through was thought to have got a bit too friendly with one of the young girls. Well, the story goes that he was found, but not in a healthy state.’

  Mooney paused. He owned the bar; people were twisting in their chairs, others had foregone subtlety and rotated their stools to face the mayor.

  ‘So the townsfolk, well they had an idea, but not a clue why. And then time moved on and the famine hit the whole country. You know your history?’

  Mooney smiled deep inside himself when Robinson nodded and his actions were replicated by everyone else in the room. The hubbub of chat had died to nothing. Even the bar staff, polishing glasses, did so with a lack of attention to their task.

  ‘People starved across the provinces, God rest them. But not here, because the man from the island, he provided for Skerries. Meat, vegetables, the lot. And not just now and then, but regularly. He asked for what he did to be kept a secret, and in return he would always provide. He’s never let us down since.’

  ‘So that led to the special bond between him and the town?’

  ‘Aye, so it did. Of course, the world moved on. Other problems came to our door. Well…’ he said with an ironic giggle, ‘Not our door. Society’s door. Ireland’s door. Violence. Murder. Drugs. But not here. Because he helps us keep them out..’

  This caused a stir amongst the patrons. Voices rose in agreement, glasses were tapped together and onto the wood of the tables. The barmaid, comfortable that the mayor had finished his tale, delivered two fresh pints to their table.

  ‘On the house,’ she said

  Mooney thanked her and raised his glass.

  ‘Skerries,’ he exalted.

  And the whole bar echoed the word back to him. Robinson hated to admit it, but the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he found himself shouting along with the rest of them.

  13

  Martin ran his index finger around the rim of his whiskey glass, knowing he was the only person in the room who could hear the tiny whistling noise that followed his fingertip. He had hardly touched his drink in the half hour he had been sat at the bar and noticed that the barman— middle-aged and with, as far as Martin could tell, terrible circulation—was making it apparent that the seats didn’t come for free. Martin gestured for another and lifted the glass to his lips, finishing the golden liquid in a single swallow. The barman placed a fresh glass in front of him as Martin took a roll of notes from the inside pocket of his leather coat. He passed the money across without a word and refused any change.

  He did this once a week. Alone. When his hunger reared its ugly head high. It burned within him like a lit cigarette dropped onto a sofa. At first it would smolder and, if controlled, could be easily contained. But once it took hold, the strength to maintain command over it was next to impossible to find.

  Sometimes it would be so easy to launch himself across the water and simply terrorize the town, to devastate Skerries in a way he had promised he never would. There had been times in meetings with Connor and his group that he had fantasized about streaking the walls of the mayor’s parlor with red, but he battled to draw back from his secret desires because he knew he owed them, these people. They had taken him in at a time when he thought he would wander the world an exorcised soul, and for that he would always be grateful. So when the urges took him, he travelled; always somewhere new, always somewhere far away. He chose his victims carefully. It would be easy to pick off the tramp, the loner, but Martin understood enough about how the world used technology to know that links would be made, patterns formed, and that was therefore a risk.

  Gender made no difference. Nationality or race made no difference. He drew the line at children, but apart from that, age made no difference. To Martin, when he needed to feed, everything was potential prey. Sometimes it was opportunistic, other times he would stalk his meal. Tonight he would let his unsuspecting dupe make all of the running. All he had to do was sit and wait until someone suitable arrived.

  He had chosen the bar well; just next-door to a busy hotel in the heart of Liverpool. The hotel would attract businesswomen, away from home and lonely. The bar in the hotel would have been too obvious, too much of a gamble. But the little pub next door? That was a different issue. So Martin sat and waited, and his instincts paid off when she walked in. Expensive suit, tall even in flat shoes, and short, styled dark hair. Her grey dress was short, too short for the time of year, and she wore a tight black jacket over the top of it. She strutted towards the bar, head held high and full of confidence. In a glance Martin picked up that she was clearly putting on a show and that a lighter, less tanned band of skin circled her finger where her wedding ring, until probably about fifteen minutes ago, would have been.

  ‘Vodka, orange juice,’ she instructed the barman snappily.

  He nodded and went about his task with far more enthusiasm than he had shown Martin. He placed the drink before her, was searching his mind for something witty to say as he asked her for payment, when Martin interjected.

  ‘I’ll pay for that.’ He slid a fifty pound note from his roll down the bar, making sure she could see its value.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said huskily, not hiding the fact that she looked him up and down as she turned to face him. Martin straightened his shoulders as if stretching after a nap, enjoying her eyes as they traced the outline of muscle through the front of his shirt. He took her hand in his and gave it a delicate shake. He reached onto the bar and picked up his own drink.

  ‘My pleasure. I’ll be sat over there if you want some company,’ he said, nodding at a booth towards the back of the pub. He smiled and walked away, knowing her eyes were on his back, watching every stride.

  An hour later they were sat side by side, a plethora of empty glasses strewn across their table. She had her left arm wrapped around Martin’s right wrist and there was no way she was going to let go without a struggle.

  ‘Now what was your name again?’ Martin asked. ‘Claire Penny?’

  The woman giggled, pushing her hair back from her eyes.

  ‘No. You know that’s not right.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ pondered Martin. ‘Claire Euro?’

  ‘Oh, you,’ she said, slapping him on the chest and letting her hand rest there. ‘It’s Claire Pound and you know it is!’

  ‘That’s right, that’s right. Claire Pound. And is your hotel room booked in the name of Claire Pound too? I’d hate to knock on the wrong door later.’

  She leant in close to him, so much so that he almost recoiled when the mix of alcohol and perfume threatened to overwhelm the scent of her blood. He closed his mouth quickly. For a moment, he had lost the tension he kept in his gums and his canines had extended.

  ‘Well,’ she purred, ‘to save confusion, why don’t you just come with me now?’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea,’ he replied low and quick, getting to his feet and helping her keep her balance as she struggled to exit the booth. As they passed the bar he slipped a ten pound note to the steward with a wink, a finger to his lips.

  As soon as they got outside and the cold night air hit her, Claire virtually fell into Martin’s arms.

  ‘It’s lucky you’re so strong,’ she said, trying to kiss him.

  ‘You have no scruples, do you?’ Martin questioned with a hiss, grasping her around the shoulders and guiding her down the narrow alley between the pub and the hotel, away from the CCTV cameras he had noticed earlier. He pushed her against the hotel wall, glancing up to make sure there were no windows above them.

  ‘I don’t if you don’t,’ she smiled, teasing her tongue along her lips.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he snarled. ‘I certainly don’t.’


  The hand that he’d placed around her shoulder reached further until he grabbed her chin, whipping it backwards. He heard a snap and her body fell limp. He opened his mouth as wide as he could, the street light reflecting off his teeth as he sunk them into her neck and chewed his way through to her veins, the blood gushing down his throat, across his cheeks and chin. He pushed upwards and he and the body flew up the side of the hotel. He landed on the roof, threw her carcass to his feet with contempt and fell on her once more, growling and feeding like an animal. What were left of his clothes looked damp and dark where the last of her blood had stained them. Although he appeared to be out of control, he was meticulous in his work.

  He lapped up every drop, savored every organ he devoured until he finally reached her heart. Carefully he spread her ribs even wider, the crack of her bones resonating deep within him even as it was swallowed up by the night, and he plucked it from her body. And then, with two quick bites, the heart was gone, eaten, and she was no more.

  Only now did he pause. Only now did he notice the lights and the sounds of the city below him. The drone of the cars, the chatter of the people. He opened himself up to it all, their voices, their thoughts, their hopes and their fears. He looked down at what was left of this woman, of this Claire Pound; her hopes extinguished forever, her fears made real. He felt no remorse, he felt no pity. It pained him a little that he felt nothing when he took a life, but those thoughts were not for now.

  He folded her body over his shoulder, kicking the gravel that covered the rooftop into a more even spread, and then launched himself into the dirty grey clouds that covered the city. What was left of her body was slick and slimy and slid against his shoulder. When he was far enough out over the sea he dropped back through the cloud formation, straight down into the dark waters. When he emerged less than twenty seconds later, his clothes were soaking wet, his hair dripping into his eyes, but he was bloodstain free, and Claire Pound’s body was never to be seen again.