So what the fuck was this one doing here?

You speed-whittle a log—no, a chair leg—no, a broom handle—no, a pencil—no a—God dammit  … In the kitchen I turned the solitary wooden stool on its side, braced it with one foot and stomped on it with the other. Nothing. I stomped a second time. A faint sound of stress from the joint. I picked the bastard thing up and dashed it against the chimney breast. (Oh for that saloon-brawl furniture of cowboy movies!) Nil effect except a terrible rubbery shock to my wrists. I put it back on the floor and prepared for a third stomp—by which time it was too late.

He stood in the kitchen doorway, a lean pug-faced young vampire in combat trousers and leather bike jacket with eyebrow piercings and bleached white hair cropped close to his skull, holding a bulky rifle. I say “young,” but for all I know he could have been alive since the days of Gilgamesh. He raised the weapon and pointed it at me.

“Wait,” I said.

“Can’t,” he said, and smiled. Before what happened next happened I had just time to think: No, he’s a young one. The eyes haven’t gone dead. Time hasn’t done its thing. An elder wouldn’t even have paused to say “Can’t.” Then what happened next happened.

From outside came a feminine shriek, cut short with a shocking abruptness.

A silence of uncomfortable richness for two seconds. Then a severed female head smashed through the kitchen window and bounced uglily across the tiles, before coming to rest at the foot of the oven. The long dark hair fell back to reveal green eyes, semi–rolled back, mouth horribly slack. Spittled fangs. Her skin was already beginning to blacken.

“Laura?” the vampire said, quietly. Then a wooden spike tore his chest open from the inside with a wet crunch. He frowned. Dropped his weapon with a clatter and sank to his knees, the capillary webbing of hands and throat and face darkening. Ellis, in winter combat fatigues and holding a top-of-the-line Hunt Staker, stood behind him. The long blond hair had been pulled back and bound into an extraordinary solid bun.

“Hi, Jake,” he said. “You all right?”

I exhaled, slowly, set down the wooden stool. “Come on in,” I said. “Join the party.”

“Well, now that you mention it,” he said, “I could murder a drink.”

“What the fuck is going on here?”

“I really don’t know.”

He stepped around the crisping corpse of the vampire and called out of the window: “Russell?”

“Yo!”

“We good?”

“We’re good.”

“Okay. You’ve broken Mr. Marlowe’s window, however.”

“Apologies, boss. Exuberance.”

Ellis didn’t answer. Instead picked up the severed head and tossed it back out. Sounds of amusement from the juniors. The skin on the darkening corpse crackled softly. “Let me get rid of this for you,” Ellis said. He grabbed the cadaver by its bike jacket collar and dragged it out the back door. Vampire decomposition isn’t the screen-friendly instantaneous transformation to ash heap Hollywood peddles, but it is quirkily rapid. In an hour or two there’d be nothing but bloodstains to show the boochies had been here. I went into the living room, tossed a fresh log on the fire, lit up a Camel and poured a couple of straight Glenlivets.

“No hard feelings?” Ellis said, when he came back in and I handed him his glass.

“Let’s not get carried away.”

“Understood. L’chaim, anyway.”

“Chin-chin.”

He sat down on the arm of the couch and propped the vampire’s rifle alongside him. I, cold and queasy from truck with the undead, remained standing by the fire. Surrounded by surveillance, the house had retained its feel of fragile sanctuary. Now, with icy air coming through the broken kitchen window and Ellis actually in here, the magic was gone. Just as well I was leaving tomorrow.

“So?” he said. “What’s your theory?”

“I was hoping you might have one.”

“Nope. Presumably you’ve got enemies in vamp-camp?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so. I don’t have anything to do with them.”

“But you used to, right? My understanding is that for a while in the fifties you were something of a thorn in their side.”

True. See under Werewolf Philanthropy . Vampire-run businesses had paid the Nazis a fortune for ill-gotten genetics data during the war (their search for a solution to the problem of nocturnality goes on) and the Allies a fortune for what remained up for grabs after it. They’d made a fortune fencing treasures appropriated by the Reich, augmented by a highly profitable sideline smuggling war criminals out of Europe. (Decades later, naturally, there was additional money to be made selling the whereabouts of these ancient Nazis to interested Jews, but by then I’d given up interfering.) Back in the early postwar years I was the money behind and frequently leader of a disparate dozen groups convinced that direct action against certain organisations served their disparate causes. Communists, anarchists, animal rights supporters, vigilantes, conspiracy theorists—for a decade or so anti-vamp activism was rationalised by me into protecting the human , to make up for the losses I was inflicting on the poor old human myself. Crazy, I know, but true.

“I threw a few stones,” I said. “Petulance, really. Anyway, it’s ancient history.”

Ellis took a sip, looked around the room, unblinking. Nothing, apparently, disturbed the man’s air of having his mind on something more important than you. You wanted to slap him. “Yeah, but these guys are the grudge club,” he said. “Fifty years? What’s that to them? It’s yesterday. It’s five minutes ago.”

“Well, maybe you should have a word with them. Tell them there’s a queue.”

“They weren’t trying to kill you.”

“What?”

He set the glass down on the couch and picked up the rifle. Or rather what I’d thought was a rifle. The creepily nimble long fingers went to work, popped the chamber and took out the ammunition. Held it up for me to see. A dart.

“Tranquilizer,” I said.

“Tranquilizer. If it wasn’t for us you’d be fast asleep and on your way.”

“On my way where?”

“Pennsylvania.”

“What?”

Ellis smiled—alarmingly, since it brought a sudden nude babylike quality to his face. “My sister teaches second grade. One kid’s telling his buddy about Count Dracula. Says he lives in a big spooky castle in Pennsylvania. You know, instead of Transylv—”