The Sweet Scent of Blood

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The vampire looked a beautiful, dangerous cliché. Jet-black hair tied back in a French plait emphasised the pale angles of his face. Shadowed grey eyes stared out with moody promise. Black silk clung to hard abdominals while soft leather stretched down long, lean legs. An ankle-length coat pooled across the stone steps on which he sat so it seemed he existed in his own well of seductive darkness. Behind him, the ferris-wheel silhouette of the London Eye, backlit by exploding fireworks, added a less than subtle suggestion to the scene.

The picture was splashed across the front page of every national newspaper: a celebrity story made more sensational than the norm thanks to the mix of murder and vampires. Other than providing a few moments of idle interest, the news had nothing to do with me.

Or so I thought.

London was in the middle of a late September heat-wave and the bright sunshine blistered hot into the city as I sat at my usual corner table in the Rosy Lea café, staring at the vampire’s picture. Outside the tourists that normally thronged Covent Garden huddled in the shade under the stone canopy of St Paul’s Church. Even the street entertainers had succumbed to the heat, leaving the expanse of cobbled paving deserted. Inside the empty café was no better. There was no air-conditioning and even with the doors wide open, the hot, heavy air pressed against me as if it were something solid. If nothing else it was peaceful.

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