Basil lay back on the gurney and closed his eyes. This instantly amplified the sounds and smells in the gymnasium. The nurse smelt of fresh rose petals and delicate sweat; the salt would add a nice touch to any roasted meat, he thought wryly.
He opened his eyes once again and looked at the woman’s name tag, ‘Wendy Lions.’ She hooked a small pouch up to the infusion stand and he watched her place a dark rubber cuff around his upper arm and press a finger to his vein.
‘This doesn’t hurt,’ she said. ‘And afterwards, we’ll give you a nice cup of tea and a biscuit.’
The nurse smiled once more, but that was more to do with his own response, flirting, drawing her in. He coughed, telling himself to behave; he was here to do a good deed: to give his own blood and help others for once. She pushed the needle in.
‘Ouch!’ he cried, taken off-guard.
‘Sorry, I’m so sorry.’ She looked bewildered. ‘I must have lost my concentration, but it’s fine sir.’ She added some tape to keep the needle in place. ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes.’
Watching her walk away, he was struck by the colourful bags of red from the hundreds of stands across the hall – and their smell. He snapped on a noseclip and started a pocket crossword. He had started a Romanian one this time. He was finding it more difficult to recall words, no doubt due to his age, but also due to the speed in which languages evolved. Take, for example, English, he said to himself, only a few years ago you would reply ‘fine’ in Britain when asked for your wellbeing. Now everyone says ‘I’m good.’ That’s an adjective, he railed inside – grammatically incorrect; another example of an American takeover. At least, such raillery as this kept his eyes off the dripping blood.
A few weeks later, Basil sat upright in his chair listening to the news whilst his manservant shaved his chin.
The body of a young man found under Richmond Bridge this morning is being investigated by Thames Valley Police. Detectives suggest it might be suicide since the body had lost a lot of blood due to puncture wounds to its neck. However, a weapon has not be found. Another lead may indicate murder since its neck wound replicates other deaths across London.
‘What on earth is going on?’ cried Basil, pushing Oscar’s razor away from his neck. ‘Whoever the killer is, he is being very reckless.’
‘Could it be one of your protégés, sir?’ Oscar raised an eyebrow, wiping the blade on a cloth folded on his forearm.
Basil gave him a scornful frown. ‘No, they are all discreet. They keep to their own territories. This one shows no training whatsoever’
‘And how will you find him, sir?’
‘By his scent.’
‘Oh, wearing Sauvage Elixir is he?’
Oscar calmed himself under Basil’s withering glare. ‘I just mean, London’s a big city.’
‘We shall visit the crime scene first. Then the morgue.’
Standing up he adjusted his cravat in a bronzed mirror and patted a trilby on his head.
‘Really sir! A trilby! Isn’t that a little… outmoded.’
‘Nothing is outmoded in London, Oscar.’
‘Even an unfinished shave?’
‘Ah, yes.’ He stood there a minute longer, whilst Oscar raked the razor across his pale skin. ‘Now, we can go.’
The water rushed by under the arches of Richmond Bridge. Many cyclists, too. Basil and Oscar sat on a bench and eyed the scene: a few rushes by the cement path, a fallen branch, but nothing they had found of any use. As they came out into the sunshine Basil opened his parasol, announcing, ‘To the morgue it is.’
Oscar scuttled after him.
Once at the public mortuary, clean, spark and welcoming, Basil entered the building and told Oscar to wait at reception. He gathered a white gown from a mettle coat hanger and pulled his white mouth mask on as he entered the dissecting room, as he liked to call it. A doctor stared at him. ‘You’re early. Did the Met send you?’
‘Yes, I am to inspect the victim from Richmond Bridge.’
‘Well, I’ve already sent my report and you’re too late for that body. The detectives looked at it this morning.’
‘Well, I am to have another look.’
Returning to the cadaver on the surgical table the doctor said, ‘locker 9,’ before adding, ‘You’ve shown your pass to reception?’
‘Of course. And my constable is waiting there.’
‘Huh! Can’t stomach the smell?’
‘Quite the contrary, but he is filling out the paperwork for our visit.’
The doctor wasn’t listening, already absorbed in his new body.
Basil pulled the tray out of locker 9 and pulled back the sheet, to look at a young and handsome man of Germanic origins. When the doctor turned around Basil had already gone.
‘Well, anything useful?’ Oscar asked.
‘Yes.’ Basil smiled. ‘The scent on the body was of soured rose petals.
‘And so?’
‘Wendy Lions. My nurse.’
‘Your nurse?’
‘She took my blood at the transfusion centre last month.’
Oscar rubbed his chin and looked confused. ‘She took your blood and drank it?’
Basil cuffed him around the head. ‘No, stupid. She must have had an accident and a blood transfusion was necessary.’
‘But sir, your blood can do this?’
Basil looked perplexed and vaguely annoyed. With himself for once. ‘I didn’t know that would happen. Even at five hundred years of age, you learn something new every day.’
‘Like not to donate your blood – sir.’
Basil gave Oscar a scathing look as the man opened the car door for him, a dark Plymouth Sedan. Basil stepped in and flicked open his telephone.
‘Hello,’ came a quiet, tinny voice, ‘how can I help you?’
After several redirections on his line and several questions later, he closed his phone.
‘She’s been off sick and hasn’t returned to work,’ Basil said. ‘You can find her online when we get back to the house. We’ll visit her in a day or two.’
‘Are you sure this will work sir?’ Oscar asked, anxious that this plan was not a plan at all.
‘Yes, I’ll be waiting for her, and pounce before she gets her fangs into you.’
Oscar coughed and looked at the long lines of moss-eaten headstones. Overhung with cedar trees, holly, yew and giant redwood there were many places to hide. ‘This is hallowed land.’
‘And? Since when are we not allowed to enter graveyards? That is manmade nonsense. I am a devout Christian who still goes to church on Sundays.’ He walked towards the gated archway and took a left over the railway bridge. Oscar followed him to the Waldegrave Arms.
Wendy Lions arrived on time for her SingleFlirtdate.com. Oscar sat in a corner and waved when he saw the red rose in her wild-looking frizzy hair. She looked pale and drawn but gave him a coquettish grin as she sat down next to him. She had already ordered two glasses of red chianti, and drank to Oscar’s health.
‘Don’t be nervous,’ she purred.
Remembering his lines Oscar responded with a shaky voice, ‘I’m not. I’m just very hungry. Can we go somewhere else? They don’t do vegetarian here.’
‘A vegetarian,’ she mused.
Probably wondering what he tasted like, Oscar thought.
‘Yes, why not. I’m feeling very hungry myself.’ Oscar felt uncomfortable the way she looked at him when she said that. ‘Where would you like to go?’
‘The Indian Palace is good,’ he said, mechanically pulling the collar up on his coat.
She followed him out, slipping her arm into his. He led her along the road.
‘There’s a short-cut through here,’ he suggested.
‘The cemetery indeed. Shouldn’t I be afraid of you?’ she giggled, following him in.
The eerie silence made Oscar gulp. ‘This way. It’s a big cemetery, so we mustn’t get lost.’
‘Yes, I know it well,’ she smiled. ‘I do live here.’
After a few yards she stopped suddenly, her heel caught in some weeds between tombstones. She bent down, leaning on Oscar’s arm for support. Then, without warning she gripped his arm, tightly clawing it. Oscar heard a low snarl from the ground. As though an animal had been raised from the dead. Then a screech – it was his.
‘Oh, my god! Not here, not now.’ He tried to remain calm, pushing her away. ‘Wendy! What passion. But you must wait.’
The woman couldn’t wait. ‘I’m hungry, so very hungry.’ She rose up and plunged the stiletto into his neck.
As she licked her lips Oscar just had time to shriek, ‘Basil! Help!’
‘Keep it down. I’m right here.’
His lordship appeared by his shoulder, casting no shadow in the moonlight, only a silver nail file that he held against the woman’s canines to push her head back in order for him to grip her tiny neck. He wasted no time in digging his own teeth into her sweet-smelling throat until… until he gagged. He spat the blood out with a disgusted grunt.
‘What is it, master?’ Oscar shuddered.
‘It’s, it’s inedible.’
Basil spat again. ‘I can’t drink my own blood!’
The woman bit down on the nail file and into one of Basil’s fingers.
‘Ouch!’
‘Get your arm off me. I’ll call the police. A poor woman being molested by two men in a cemetery.’
Basil looked at her awhile, surprised by her audacity, her calm. Speculating on what to do next, he finally replied, ‘Go ahead. Call the police.’
Turning her red-rimmed eyes on him, she glowered, suspicious, ‘You want me to call the police?’ Again angry, she spat, ‘Why are you here with me and my… dinner?’
Oscar took a step behind Basil.
‘Wendy, isn’t it? Blood-hunting at night...?’ There was silence. ‘After your accident?’
‘I was in a car crash and…’ She looked a little lost and ashamed. ‘And then, I woke up like this.’
Basil pursed his lips and took a breath. ‘Well, that is partly my fault. You see, you had a blood transfusion. And I’m guessing that you were given my blood which,’ he continued, ‘was contaminated.’
‘Contaminated?’
‘Yes, I meant to do a good thing for humanity and donate my blood, but,’ he stopped, ‘it seems I can’t.’
‘Does that mean you’re… you’re like me?’
‘Very much so, I’m afraid.’
‘So, you want me to share Oscar with you?’ She flung a clawed hand over Basil’s shoulder. ‘Never. He’s mine!’
Oscar gulped and clung onto the back of Basil’s coat.
‘No, no.’ Basil sounded exasperated. ‘My name is Dracula, Basil Dracula. I am your creator, your father, if you like, and I need you to come home with me, quietly, and not eat my manservant.’
‘Why should I come back with you? Why should I believe you?’
Basil tightened his grip on her. ‘Because I don’t have another plan for the moment.’
‘You were trying to drink my blood earlier. Who’s to say you won’t do it again?’
Basil laughed. ‘As you witnessed – I can’t drink my own blood, so you are safe there.
‘No time to waste.’ He gave her a knifehand strike to the base of her neck and caught her as she slumped unconscious.
‘What are you going to do with her sir?’
‘What are you going to do with her?’ Basil corrected his manservant. ‘Carry her to the car and put her in the boot.’
‘Why?’
‘We have to take her home with us; I don’t want her waking up in the car: she might eat you.’ Oscar gulped. ‘The trunk is the safest place until we’re in the garage.’
Leaving the graveyard, Basil held the wooden gate open, watching Oscar stagger under the weight of Wendy. There was a slight tremor to one of her feet as Oscar quickly dropped the woman inside the car boot.
Hardly an auspicious beginning for their newest recruit, Basil ruminated.