Bloodthirst Read online

  Alerted by the crash and the cries of the lab assistant, Sister ran in followed by an alarmed nurse. Glass fragments glittered on the floor while the blood of two score patients seemed to have spattered the whole room. But it was not the thought that she would have to take the samples again that was making the girl hysterical.

  ‘Look, look!’ she shrieked to Sister. ‘Look what they’re doing … ’

  The commotion had aroused the children to full wakefulness and now they were jumping and crawling about the room in a frenzy, licking the venous blood as it dribbled down the bright walls.

  Only Britt remained in bed with a look of composure or her beautiful face.

  ‘Blodet,' she murmured. ‘God blodet, god blodet!’

  Chapter 5

  In Copenhagen Holly Archer walked into the foyer of a sex theatre, paying her fee to a bored girl who sat knitting.

  ‘This way,’ said a small man in a dinner jacket. ‘The live show will start soon. Meanwhile you can enjoy the blue movies.’ She was ushered into a long room with a small cinema screen at the far end. Rays of coloured light stabbed the cigarette smoke from an 8 mm projector to portray two masked but otherwise unclothed girls whipping a rather languid young man. Below the screen was an extra large mattress with a box of Kleenex at one side.

  Holly settled herself beneath the projection window, and looked with curiosity at her fellow voyeurs. There were several young men sitting by themselves; a group of well-dressed businessmen, perhaps from Germany, and a middle-aged couple holding hands. (‘American,’ decided Holly, noting the man’s tartan sports coat.)

  There was a pause in the clicking of the projector and then a new epic about an au pair girl began.

  A young man and woman took up seats in front of Holly, followed by a tall man in a black suit who sat down a seat away from her on the right. As the film reached its inevitable climax an English couple sat in the front row. (‘Must try and get their reactions,’ thought Holly. ‘After what Ah’ve seen ‘ere all Ah can say is that sex in ‘Uddersfield is in its infancy … ’)

  The little man from the foyer appeared and spoke in Danish then American: ‘Folks, now the audience is complete, we have pleasure in giving you the best live sex in wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen. It’s finger lickin’ good.’

  He stepped into the shadows and pop music vibrated from stereo amplifiers. A young girl stepped out of a curtained door near the mattress. With a slight, unexpected start Holly realized she was only about fifteen as, in a very matter of fact way, she began to unbutton her blouse. Unlike strippers Holly had once seen in Soho, the girl ignored the music and made no attempt to move to it. There was something strangely naive about her; to Holly it was like watching a large child getting undressed for bed.

  She shrugged off her blouse and, standing in a black bra, began to fumble with the waistband of her skirt. It seemed so artless, vet there was also something oddly impelling about it. The men in the audience had leaned forward, their eyes focused on her hands.

  The skirt dropped to her ankles and she stepped out of the circle of material; twisting awkwardly she unfastened her bra. For a moment she stood with her hands dangling limply by her sides while the combined gaze of the audience caressed her immature breasts. Then she slipped out of her pants and squatted on the mattress. She put her arms behind her and leaned backwards like an acrobat, her head almost touching the rug as she arched her body. Holly was conscious of the hiss of indrawn breath round her. She might have been at a religious ceremony where a sacred relic was suddenly displayed for worship.

  Music thudded through the room and slowly the girl resumed a standing attitude. She smiled at the audience for the first time, came forward and sat on the knee of a stranger in the front row. She guided his hand over her breasts and moved on to another. When she reached the American couple she slid her hand over the man’s thigh but his wife stood up and stalked to the exit. He followed sheepishly to muted laughter.

  The naked girl raised her shoulders, and went on to the next customer. After she had finished her round, she slipped into a kimono, collected her scattered garments from the mattress and walked out. At the same time the lights, which had been dimmed during the performance, came up and several girls walked in with glasses and bottles of Tuborg lager for general refreshment. With a mental shrug Holly thought: So that’s what it’s all about!

  The next act was a conventional striptease, followed by a lesbian exhibition in which two girls wrestled, embraced and caressed each other with purrs of pleasure and a growing unawareness — perhaps cleverly assumed — of the audience. To Holly’s surprise this seemed to have an electrifying effect on the males in the audience who stared with rapt expressions as the couple squirmed and kissed. She noticed the pair in front of her had their arms round each other’s shoulders and were huddling together like excited children. God knew what effect it was having on them!

  She glanced sideways at the man on her right.

  Silhouetted against the glow of a spotlight she saw a fine profile with hair curling over the forehead. He seemed to be the only one not rapt over the lesbians’ routine. He looked at her with what seemed to Holly a slightly cynical smile.

  Next came the girl who had taken the entrance money in the foyer. She held a battery-powered vibro machine which, amidst laughter, she began to use on the nearest man.

  ‘Here we believe in audience participation,’ she joked as she deftly wielded the device. ‘Would any ladies here like to try it?’ Holly found herself blushing hotly as she shook her head.

  So the show continued. The room filled with the tang of sweat and sexuality, and a static electricity of excitement emanated by the men — no, Holly had to admit — by the women, too. She felt she was the only one not turned on by the performances. She was still a little sickened by the first act — that young girl should be doing homework and going to bed with a hot drink rather than spreading her thighs for anonymous adults.

  Then Holly noticed the stranger on her right seemed equally aloof. She could not see him clearly but she sensed it would take a lot more than this mattress-tumbling to arouse him.

  The finale was announced and the young performer Holly had been thinking about walked out in her silk kimono. Another figure appeared, the MC who had changed his evening dress for a white towelling dressing gown. Only one spotlight illuminated the two pale figures standing ceremoniously opposite each other.

  Holly thought: They’re like Japanese judoka.

  Unselfconsciously they slipped off their robes and — with an oddly touching gesture — kissed each other gently on the lips. Music pulsed, heavy and savage with electronic distortion. ‘Go! Go! Go!’ cried a singer before he was drowned under a thundering wave of percussion.

  Almost reluctantly the performers relinquished their chaste embrace. This time it was Holly who sucked in her breath as she watched the male performer become aroused by caresses of his partner. They were not the caresses of lovers. The couple appeared to be fighting each other, trying to tear each other’s body with their hands. Yet they moved with a certain grace, perhaps born of long practice.

  First one then the other sank to the mattress beneath the onslaught of their partner. Like dancers they assumed position after position, sometimes grotesquely and sometimes with an erotic dignity.

  As the music surged towards a crescendo, a strong hand gripped Holly’s but she was now so intent on what was happening she hardly noticed and was only aware the stranger had moved beside her.

  In the merciless spotlight the girl closed her eyes and opened her mouth to emit a husky wail as the man clasped her to him and their bodies began to tremble in unison. Holly could hear the whistling of their breath above the booming beat background. She felt like crying out with their cries. Everything had lost importance except those writhing figures and the mysterious hand which gripped hers so tight, sending electric impulses up her arm.

  Both performers were drenched in sweat. Like silver rain it glistened on their bodies
as they parted from each other only to reunite in some new and more abandoned pose.

  Tears streamed down Holly’s face and her heart raced as a wave of hysteria rose to engulf her. The couple were on their feet again. Seconds later the girl tore herself away from her partner, leaving him forlorn yet proving the performance had been genuine.

  Holly sank back, her free hand across her eyes.

  ‘You must come with me,’ said the stranger. ‘This is nothing to what is possible.’ Turning her head, she saw that his expression was strained. His eyes were still focused on the performers. Following his gaze to where the girl was helping her exhausted partner into his robe, Holly saw a thin line of blood creeping like a worm down the man’s chest. The result of an erotic scratch, the sight of it made her almost lightheaded.

  She was hardly aware of being led out of the musky theatre to a long black Mercedes with ticking engine at the kerb. She was helped into the fur-upholstered back seat.

  A dark figure, with long hair falling from under a rakish chauffeur’s cap, lounged behind the wheel. She addressed the stranger as ‘Stromberg’, and spoke some words in oddly-accented French before the big car accelerated into the cold night.

  * * *

  Anne-Marie, in a white raincoat with epaulettes and a matching white beret, walked into the Black Sheep coffee bar which was usually deserted at this early evening hour. Peter Pilgrim was hunched in a comer seat, and she could tell by the bleak smile he gave her that he was very worried. He tried to hide it when he said: ‘Hello, darling. You look very stylish in that outfit. I hope you’re not too knocked out after such a packed weekend.’

  She ordered a lemon tea and said: ‘It was a lovely weekend, but the grapevine says you came back to problems.’

  ‘It doesn’t lie,’ he answered. ‘While we were away my patients went berserk. Britt upset a tray of blood samples and they licked it like dogs in a slaughterhouse. There’s no explanation other than Britt. She attacked that wretched orderly, and the other children … it’s starting to give me a rather wild idea.’

  The French girl sipped her tea.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say. I too remember what your father told us about Owlwick Grange.’

  ‘What happened there was put down to a vampire,’ Peter said.

  ‘And you can hardly write in your report there’s an outbreak of vampirism in the London. Sir Henry would have you struck off.’

  ‘I think I’m on to something so rare that in the past, whenever it happened, it was startling enough to give rise to legends. It’s happened before. In mediaeval Europe there was the Dancing Madness when whole villages jigged in the streets for days. Then Satan was blamed. Now we know those villagers were die victims of ergot poisoning which they got through bread made from fungus-infected rye.’

  Anne-Marie put her hand on his. ‘Pauvre cheri, I know it is very worrying for you, but in the end it could make your reputation.’

  ‘If only that cow of a nurse hadn’t dozed off when Britt interfered with the others,’ he said, scowling at his empty cup. ‘Matron is up in arms in case the parents lodge complaints. Even though I’d asked for full surveillance after the orderly business, I’m still responsible. They’ll say I should have had her isolated.’

  ‘It’s not the first time a patient has got violent at the London,’ said Anne-Marie consolingly.

  ‘My father’s coming down to stay with my aunt in Chiswick. I’ve written asking him to dig up everything he can on the vampire myth just in case there could be a connection. Now let’s forget it for a while. I’ve got the car round the comer and we could go to Regent’s Park and take a walk.’

  A few minutes later they left the Citroen by the park entrance. A drizzle fell, so fine it glistened on Anne-Marie’s hair like yellow diamonds in the pale glow of the lamps lining the inner circle. She turned up her collar and they walked hand in hand, enjoying the odour of damp earth and the mysterious shadows of trees silhouetted against the orange aureole of the city.

  ‘You know I return to France soon,’ Anne-Marie said.

  ‘That’s the other thing that’s bothering me,’ said Peter. ‘I don’t want you marrying some handsome young French surgeon.’

  ‘I won’t be marrying,’ she said with an ironical laugh. ‘Listen, Peter-Pierre, before I get work in Paris I’m going for a holiday at a house belonging to an old family friend. It has a lovely name — La Maison des Papillons — and it’s on the edge of the Camargue. Spend a fortnight there with me.’

  ‘I wish I could, but how can I leave my patients at this critical stage?’

  ‘I know,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘But you would love the Camargue. Even year Gypsies come from all over Europe to worship their saint at Saintes Maries de la Mer. It is both a carnival and religious festival — there is dancing and bullfighting and processions. It’s what you need. You look so … so serious these days.’

  For a while they strolled in silence. In the distance they could hear a lion roar in the zoo. It was a powerful and primitive sound and a reminder that while civilization might give the illusion of comfort and security, primitive forces were still abroad like barbarians prowling the frontiers of Rome. Peter felt Anne-Marie shiver against him.

  ‘A goose must have walked over my grave,’ she said.

  Chapter 6

  While Peter and Anne-Marie were walking in the fine drizzle, the ward orderly Lionel Tedworth arrived at a decaying Georgian house in a decaying street less than a quarter of a mile east of the park. Having checked its number against a scrap of smudged newsprint, he rang the bell and waited, A man in a white sweater, whose middle age was betrayed only by his curling silver hair, opened the door.

  ‘Good evening. I’m Mr Tedworth. I phoned earlier on.’

  ‘Welcome,’ said the man in the sweater. ‘I’m counsellor for tonight’s session. Call me Sam. Hang your coat in the hall, and I’ll take the donation now.’

  Lionel handed him a couple of pounds and was ushered into a bare room. The only furnishings were cushions strewn about a worn carpet which smelled faintly of cats. A dozen people — nearly all younger than himself, Lionel noted with trepidation — were lotus-positioned on these. Some showed their tension by smoking rapidly.

  Sam took the centre of die floor. ‘Our group is complete now. Er, Lionel, I suggest you take off your shoes and get yourself a cushion. Before we begin I would like to welcome those of you who haven’t been to the Bloomsbury Human Communication Centre before.’

  From the circle of cushions the small audience gazed hopefully at Sam. There was something indefinably lost and languid about most of the group. This disappointed Lionel; perhaps he had expected too much from these contact sessions he had read about. Run by several progressive groups, they competed to help the lonely gain confidence and establish therapeutic relationships with their fellows.

  This is what Lionel felt he needed. Outside hospital life he had no contact with the world, and he realized this because of a feeling that something mysterious had happened to his personality after Britt’s attack. He experienced a desperate compulsion to join the mainstream of humanity, but were these nervous strangers the support he needed?

  ‘ … for the sake of newcomers to our drop-in session I’d better explain a little of what we do here,’ Sam was saying.

  ‘Freedom is the key word. Feel free to express yourselves however you like. Don’t let old-fashioned bourgeois taboos hold you back. If you want to swear or use so-called dirty words, use them at the top of your voice. Nobody is going to be shocked or, if they are, it’s a bloody good thing for them. While you can be as free as you like, no one has the right to interfere with the freedom of others, so we draw the line at violence.

  ‘You’ll see the form the session takes as we go along, and I’ll explain the philosophy behind it afterwards. Remember, I’m not a director but a catalyst, I’m merely here to get things moving — you have to liberate yourselves. And now, on your feet, friends, and we’ll start with exercises.
’

  Lionel stood up with embarrassment and had the consolation of sensing some of the others were embarrassed too, though several veterans looked forward with shining-eyed expectation to the good time that was to come.

  Sam said with authority: ‘I want you to walk about with your eyes closed and with your arms folded, and just bump into each other.’

  Lionel understood that basic contact between human beings came through physical touch, but he couldn’t imagine it assuaging the strange longings which had recently begun to torment his subconscious.

  A blind, aimless walk began again. A youth nudged Lionel and shouted: ‘Piss off, you sodding bastard!’

  Lionel felt some resentment at this rudeness, but could not find it in himself to reply in similar terms. The words of abuse cleared the way for even one else and within seconds the room rang with insults and curses.

  ‘Splendid!’ enthused Sam.

  Next the group was encouraged to jump up and down with their eyes still closed, breathing deep and shouting. Lionel was surprised to hear some of the words, particularly from a pale but buxom young woman who bounced up and down like a mechanical toy beside him. A tang of sweat filled the room as the group continued to leap and let their inhibitions crumble.

  ‘That was a good start,’ Sam declared. ‘Now I’m going to ask each one of you in turn who you are and why you’re here. You first,’ and he pointed to a bearded young man.

  ‘I’m William Head,’ he said with difficult). Lionel saw his eyes were dangerously moist. ‘I’ve … I’ve … I’ve come because I have great … great difficulty … in getting along with … people. People … frighten me.’