Exsanguination Read online

  Prologue

  She stretched and sighed. Sprawled out on the large, ornately carved ebony bed, she slowly opened her eyes. Vanessa Cecily Leyland-Smythe was a thin woman, almost painfully so. With high cheekbones and rather sharp features, she would be seen by most as gaunt but striking. One might expect to encounter her on a fashion runway. Staring up at the bed’s canopy, she no longer felt the passage of time. It had become irrelevant. She sat up gracefully and swung her slender, shapely legs over the side of the bed. Brushing a wisp of raven hair back over her left ear, she looked down. Her feet didn’t quite reach the floor. Sliding off the bed, she landed lightly and looked at the clock on the mantle with a grimace. One of those damnable tours would be arriving directly. She hated it when they scheduled a tour this late in the day.

  “Well,” she muttered, “let’s get this over with.”

  Typically, she would be dressing appropriately for clubbing, cruising through some dance floor in a Goth club. This evening, she decided to mix it up. Something different, she thought. Walking to the large wardrobe at the side of the dimly lit bedroom, she selected a white blouse, black skirt, and jacket. The skirt ended some four inches above her knees, just below the ornate design of her stocking tops. She looked very business-like with the black pumps she chose. After brushing her hair, which was cut at about mid-back length, she piled it up on her head, pinned it, and covered it with a black wig that was cut in a French bob. She added a pair of diamond earrings that dangled almost to her collarbone. The addition of the matching necklace was an excellent touch. She smiled. That combination would definitely catch the eye. Making her way down the winding staircase to the drawing room, she looked about her.

  “Good,” she thought. “Robert had remembered to make a fire.” Pouring a glass of wine, Vanessa sat back on the red velvet love seat facing the flames, listening to the popping and crackling of wood and feeling the warmth on her almost white skin. Taking a sip of the wine, she looked at her black, well-manicured nails for a moment, and turned a couple of gold rings into alignment. Two fingers of her other hand sported rubies and emeralds. She picked up her mobile phone and glanced to the left. She could see through the large west-facing windows that almost nothing remaining of the sunset. She would be up for the remainder of the night but that was fine. She shrugged. Vanessa was a night person, not by necessity but, rather, by choice. Smiling, she dialled the phone.

  “Yes, I need a cab at Smythe House,” she half sighed and continued sipping the wine.

  Some fifteen minutes later, the taxi pulled up in front of the large country house just outside of London. The driver honked.

  Rudeness was something to which she’d become accustomed. She didn’t like it but she’d come to accept it as the norm. Everyone seemed to be boorish. She walked to the foyer, lifted the black, brocade coat from the hall tree and opened one of the double doors. Closing it behind her, she walked down the steps and climbed into the back seat of the cab. At least the cab was reasonably clean, she mused.

  “Where to?” the driver tossed over his shoulder.

  She adjusted her skirt and pulled the long coat around her, looking very much the woman of means.

  “Kings Cross,” she said firmly.

  “Mum,” he replied, “seein’ as how it’s gettin’ dark, that might not be the safest area for a lady to be, especially dressed like ya are.”

  Oh, she thought with a slight smile, I’m counting on it.

  “Thank you for your concern. I know you mean well. Chalton and Polygon, if you please.”

  He whistled softly and shook his head, thinking she wouldn’t survive more than ten minutes in that neighbourhood. She’d be lucky to get off just being robbed. As the cab pulled out through the front gates, the tour bus was coming in from the opposite direction.

  She was dying. Not in reality but inside - emotionally. It wasn’t that her entire life had been dull but it had been rather humdrum of late. Day in and day out it was the same boring routine week after week and year after year, repeating the same tedium. Sometimes she thought of stepping in front of a bus just for a change of pace. She gritted her teeth with the realization that the next evening she would be back to the same routine.

  After a fashion, dodging London traffic, the cab pulled up to the curb and she exited, showing a good deal of leg. Looking at the sky, she could see that inclement weather was on the way. Hoping for snow, rather than rain, she shrugged. At about five feet seven inches, she was of average height by the day’s standards. The heels of her pumps added some four inches. Her eyes were her most attractive feature, capable of stopping a person in his or her tracks. Most men, and a good number of women tended to lose track of their thoughts, having been fixated by Vanessa Smythe’s gaze.

  Working her way through the streets she finally found a dead-end alley that was poorly lit. She walked to within twenty feet of the end and looked around. Brick in front of her and on either side, the only windows were about ten feet off the ground and those were opaque with filth. Turning her back to the end of the alley, she gazed down toward the opening to the cross street and waited. Sighing, she realized she had been in this very spot not more than a month before. Predictability wasn’t a good thing. She waited quite a while before spotting two men walking on the cross street at the end of the alley. Ah, she thought with a slight smile, there you are. This was her favourite part of the hunt.

  “Excuse me!” she waved her arm and spoke in a clear, strident voice. Her upper-class London accent was clipped and proper. It was the latest in a series of dozens of accents she had affected in her lifetime. “I wonder if you might help me?”

  The two men stopped, turned and began walking toward her, grinning and strutting with confidence, elbowing each other in anticipation. Here was money and, likely, some fun!

  “Oh now, ears a prize if I ever seen one!” one said, under his breath to the other.

  “I get firsts,” his companion replied with a sneer.

  “I seem to have lost my way . . . taken a wrong turn or some such,” Vanessa groaned in apparent helplessness while still keeping her nose in the air.

  “Oh, we’ll elp ya out! Always ready to lend a hand or two to a fine lady like yerself. Them are some pretty sparklers ye got there.”

  She glanced down at the necklace and smiled. “Yes, I picked this little thing up at Buccellati’s just this afternoon,” she looked back at them. “It’s terribly kind of you to help me find my way. Thank you!”

  “Nah, thank you!”

  They continued walking toward her and she glanced over their shoulders to ensure she wouldn’t be observed.

  As they came into arms’ reach, she grabbed the more grubby looking fellow by the front of his jacket, lifted him in the air and, with a casual smile, hurled him against the brick wall of the building some ten feet to her left. He collapsed to the ground, unconscious. The second man stared at her in complete astonishment, his eyes wide in disbelief. The fact that there were two of them made for the high point of the evening. The expression on his face was positively priceless.

  “Wha . . .?”

  She held up a hand, gazing intensely into his eyes. She slowly wagged her index finger left and right as he stared at her face, transfixed.

  “You will remember nothing of this – nothing,” she said smoothly.

  He stood, wavering slightly, feeling as if he’d pass out.

  She reached out and turned the collar of his jacket away from his throat, put an arm around his waist and, grabbing his greasy hair, pulled his head to the side. A short scream escaped him as she drove her fangs deeply into his neck. Several minutes later, she loosened her grip and he slid to the pavement, dazed. She wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth and smiled, satiated.

&
nbsp; There, she thought, no muss, no fuss, needs fulfilled and no one had to die. It had been quite some time since she’d killed. There was, after all, no real need for it and dead bodies tended to attract undesired attention from the authorities. Kings Cross was one of the areas she used for feeding but she moved from neighbourhood to neighbourhood in-between her club feedings so as to garner as little notice as possible. Had she taken the man to death’s door, he would have turned. She always stopped well short of that point.

  Moving to a main street, she hailed another cab and began the trip home. The experience had satisfied, at least for the moment, her need for predation.

  I

  For some time, Phillip had been staring at the large painting above the hearth in the drawing room that was central to the Smythe house. He thought it to be the product of an artist’s fancy. While appearing sharp, the woman’s features seemed just a bit too perfect. Her eyes were a deep azure. He frowned and then glanced to his side. Another tourist, an elderly man, was standing next to him, head tilted as he looked at the painting.

  “The resemblance is remarkable, isn’t it?”

  “Huh?” Phillip responded with a frown.

  The man gave a short laugh. “Ah, you’re too young. You don’t remember her.”

  “Remember who?”

  “A true queen of the horror genre. Her name was Barbara Steele,” he sighed. “A great beauty with a remarkable face - unique.”

  Phillip pulled the name up on his phone. Yes, he mused, there was a definite resemblance. Not a dead ringer but surprisingly similar features.

  The man was no longer next to him and he looked around. It appeared that the sitting had taken place in this very room. She was leaning back, relaxed, in the centre of an elaborately carved loveseat that was upholstered in dark red velvet. Her long, lean arms were stretched out to her sides, wrists resting lightly and relaxed on the dark oak frame of the fixture, holding them at shoulder level. The image conveyed a confident but relaxed grace. She wore slacks, her left ankle rested comfortably on her right thigh above her right knee. It was her face – her eyes that he found riveting. It was almost as if they were looking straight into his soul. Moving closer to the painting, he could see that it was anything but recent. Probably painted in the early nineteen hundreds. Wow, he sighed quietly, to have been around when it was made would have been something.

  He suddenly realized that the low murmuring of voices had gradually quieted and finally disappeared. He shook himself out of his reverie. His head darted one way and then the other. Where the hell did everybody go? Oh, Jesus, he thought. Did they leave? No, it couldn’t be!

  Dashing through the room and into the foyer, he exited the front door in time to see the bus travelling down the long drive that led from the house. Jumping up and down and waving his arms frantically in the air, he made a desperate attempt to get someone’s attention on the bus. After a moment, he sighed and his shoulders slumped. A snowflake settled gently on his nose.

  Oh great, he thought as he turned back to the house. The double oaken doors were shut and he tried them but they failed to yield. Banging the large brass knocker repeatedly he came to the conclusion that either no one heard him inside or he was being ignored. He started to shiver and then turned to look at the dark road leading from the hillside to the house in the hopes he would see a car. It wouldn’t matter, he realized. At this distance, no one would notice him no matter how much he jumped up and down. The gates that attached to the twelve foot high stone wall limited the line of sight to the crossroad. In any case, the top of the sun was disappearing on the horizon. What the hell was he going to do?

  Taking his mobile phone out of his coat pocket, he dialled the operator.

  “Yes, can you please connect me with a cab company?”

  He could ill afford what a taxi was going to cost to take him back into London, but it was his only option other than walking. When the line answered, he told the dispatcher where he was. It would, the man said, take a while to get to him.

  The sun had set and the snow flurries had transitioned to a heavier fall in the twilight, laying a white foundation that would possibly lead to thicker and thicker layers. If he was out here for much longer, not only the ground would be thickly blanketed but he would be as well, he reflected. What had been a slight breeze had picked up and was blowing snow on his coat. It was becoming sodden as it melted on him. He turned up his collar against the cold, his face positively freezing.

  “Take some time off,” his parents said. “Go to Europe for a month or so,” they said. “It’ll be fun and relax you,” they said.

  Well, at least they’d paid for it, he mused as he stood there shivering. He began bouncing up and down, his hands jammed in the front pockets of his woollen coat in a vain attempt to warm himself. Finally, after what seemed to him like a very long time, he saw the headlights of a car coming down the drive. As it grew closer, he saw it was a cab.

  “Oh, thank God,” he muttered. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, the large, lantern-shaped lights on either side of the doors came on. Triggered by the cab, he thought.

  As the car reached the circle drive and then stopped in front of the house, the rear passenger door opened. A pair of shapely legs preceded the passenger climbing out. She looked at him questioningly. It was the woman in the painting! He stared at her, stunned and taken completely off balance. The cab sped out of the circle drive and headed down the road. It startled him back to attention and he partially raised one hand to wave at the driver. Realizing the futility of the gesture, he lowered his arm and looked back at the woman who had begun walking toward him.

  “Who are you?” she moved past him toward the front door.

  “I . . . I . . . was on a tour and got left behind. I tried to get back in but no one answered,” he stared at her eyes.

  She looked at him for a moment, appraising him, and then sighed. “Well, you’d best get inside before you catch your death. You’re positively wet through.”

  “Oh, thank you so much,” he said gratefully, thinking he loved her accent.

  The doors swung open wide at her touch. Thinking it a bit odd, he watched her as she walked inside, the tapping of her heels on the stone floor lightly sounding in his ears.

  “Well, come along. Don’t dawdle,” she prompted impatiently as she hung her coat up.

  “Uh . . . sorry,” he spoke softly as he followed behind her, unable to see the smile that flickered across her face.

  Gesturing over her shoulder to the coat rack, she raised her eyebrows. “I’m not the butler.”

  She knew his type. Young, very good looking, possibly twenty-four or twenty-five, uneasy in the company of a woman such as herself. Intimidated? Doubtless, she thought. The only time she reflected on her own appearance was when men or other women reacted to her. She frowned and stopped just as she passed him. Short, dirty blonde hair, nice features . . . clean shaven with a rather innocent appearance to him. She could hear his heart racing. Turning, she moved closer to him.

  He stared at her eyes, suddenly feeling weak in the knees, his stomach fluttering. Her nostrils flared slightly and her smile returned. The terseness that was pronounced in her manner seemed to completely evaporate. It was as if her personality had, on the spot, become something quite different. Her frown of inconvenience had been replaced by a smile, inviting and warm with barely parted lips.

  “You poor soaked man,” her entire demeanour changed from one of annoyance to being almost eager to help someone in distress. “Let’s get you into some dry clothes, shall we?” she said, softly.

  He shook his head, trying to compose himself. “That’s okay, I’ve got a cab coming to pick me up.”

  “Which company was it?” her brow furrowed slightly.

  “Um . . . Minicar or something like that.”

  “Well, you can forget them,” she waved her hand dismissively. “It will be hours before one of them gets out this far – if they come at all in this weather,” she put a hand on
his shoulder. “Come upstairs,” she smiled, “I’m sure I have something that will fit you reasonably well.”

  “Really, you don’t have to do this,” he protested.

  “Nonsense. I’ll not have a darling young man, such as yourself, contracting pneumonia under my roof.”

  He thought her choice of words odd. He may be young but he didn’t think he was much younger than her. He had her pegged at about thirty-five or so. “Your roof? This is yours?”

  She laughed lightly and winked at him as she took his arm. “Every quid sucking inch of it.”

  “Wow,” he whispered.

  “Don’t be impressed. It’s a money pit,” she smiled and squeezed his arm. “My name is Vanessa. Vanessa Smythe,” she cocked her head, making every attempt to keep him at ease.

  He began to feel a sense of awe. “Are you like a duchess or something?”

  “Hardly,” she chuckled, “just a countess but don’t let that impress you either. It’s something I was fortunate enough to marry into. I did absolutely nothing to earn it.”

  “I’m Phillip. Phillip Henderson.” Where the title came from didn’t matter a whit to him. Those eyes . . . that velvety voice . . . he felt as if his heart was going to pound out of his chest.

  “A bit like ‘Bond, James Bond’?” her eyebrows went up and she laughed lightly as she led him up the large, winding staircase and down a hallway.

  “Here we are,” she opened the door to a bedroom and took him inside. Opening a wardrobe, she began rifling through a row of men’s clothing. “What are you? About five-nine? A little over ten stone?”

  “Five-nine is about right but I don’t know anything about stones.”

  “A stone is fourteen pounds, darling” she smiled.

  Her use of the term sounded perfectly natural to him. It seemed, somehow, to be a perfectly sensible substitution for his name. He’d seen movies where it was used often. Most of those were old – from the twenties and thirties. “Then that’s about close enough, I think,” he replied after a hasty mental calculation.