Kiss of Life

Prequel: Dracula Doesn't Live Here Anymore-2

“Here we are then”, said Christina, not much to look at is it?”

Dexter looked around as he drove into the tiny village, (hamlet would have been a better description he thought), and inwardly groaned. The place made Vilna look like a thriving metropolis! The road on which they had travelled hadn't been much to speak of, but here it just deteriorated into nothing but a muddy morass with hard snow mixed into it, surrounded by a few cottages, a minuscule church (the cross on the roof being the only thing to outwardly distinguish it from the cottages), and (horror of horrors), an inn, once again without a name, just the hanging sign with the picture of a tankard giving away the building's purpose, and even smaller than the one in Vilna (if such a thing were possible). He suddenly realised that he was still freezing, the car's heater still didn't work, and all his layers of clothes seemed impotent to stop the penetration of the icy chill, and he concluded that he would never be warm again until he left this country far behind and returned to his wonderfully centrally heated apartment (studio), in good old London.

Let's get this story finished, he thought, and get back home, bank Perryman's cheque, and return to a life of simple free-lance investigations into the murky lives of so-called celebrities and crooked businesses etc. etc.

“Your thoughts are miles away?” Christina's voice brought him sharply back to reality.

He even noticed that she hadn't called him Dexter this time.

“Sorry”, he replied, “feeling a bit sorry for myself actually, missing home a bit. Silly isn't it?”

“I think maybe our Romanian winter and lack of country conveniences is getting to you, and you've only been here for a couple of days. I think perhaps you don't really want to be here, this is maybe not your cup of tea, chasing an unknown vampire around the Transylvanian countryside”.

“Look Christina, I have to be honest with you. I don't even work for The Sentinel full-time, I'm free-lance and I only got this job because their usual guy fell and broke a leg, and the editor wanted someone cheap and who was free to come over here at no notice at all. He thinks the whole vampire theory is a load of crap but, just in case some other publication gets a good story out of this he wanted someone out here pretty damn quick to get the lowdown. He knows your editor from long ago and so they arranged for us to work together, but, to tell the truth, this isn't really the kind of thing I usually get to work on”.

Christina was silent for a few seconds, then, as Dexter brought the car to a halt outside the inn, she said only

“I understand Dexter, I really do. I know what it is like to be a 'fish out of water' as you say in England” “

Yes, I suppose you do”, replied Dexter, and then, “Maybe you and I have something in common Christina”.

“You mean aside from vampire hunting”, she said with a laugh in her voice. Dexter laughed too, and the laughter destroyed the train of maudlin thoughts which were about to take over his mind.

“Come on”, he said, “Let's go check into the Auschstadt Hilton, it can't be any worse than the one in Vilna”.

He was wrong. Compared to this, his last accommodation had been nothing short of luxurious! The room he was given was dirty, even colder than the one in Vilna, (there was a c***k in the window frame big enough to allow an Arctic gale to blow unfettered around the room, and the bed, oh the bed! If the mattress in Vilna had been hard, this one was its big brother, twice as hard but only half as thick, so that every spring in the ancient bedstead seemed to penetrate the body of anyone foolish enough to lie down on it. He assumed Christina's was just the same, and felt sorry for her in away he hadn't felt for anyone in a long time.

What's wrong with you Dexter, he thought to himself. You've only known the girl a few hours and you're feeling sorry for her just because she has to sleep in this dump. You don't even know what her own place looks like, or where it is. She's probably got a hunk of a boyfriend somewhere, (the image a Rumanian Olympic weightlifter or marathon runner suddenly came into his mind), and another thing, this cousin of hers must have a large patch to cover if he's investigating the murder here when he lives and works in Vilna. Then again, these country villages are so small, maybe one police force covers hundreds of square miles of this God-forsaken country.

He had to admit to himself that the current case aside, having seen and experienced a small window of life in the rural parts of the country, he could quite understand how the locals had begun to believe in vampires, werewolves, (he assumed this belief), and things that generally go bump in the night!. Certainly, when the gales howled and the days were as short as this in winter and there were nothing but stark trees with n***d branches looking like accusing fingers pointing at the dark, snow-laden sky to interrupt up the view of bleak countryside dominated by the distant mountains, one could probably begin to believe in anything! Every sound of nature was eerily amplified by the sheer loneliness and barrenness of the country and made worse, in his opinion, by the medieval architecture and way of life of the peasant folk he had so far encountered. Even Christina, though incredibly beautiful in a unique Eastern European way had a strange, almost other-worldly aura about her. In fact, she was almost as mysterious as the whodunit he had been sent to report upon. Suddenly his reverie was broken by the sound of knocking on the heavy wooden door. Rising from the bed he moved across the room and slowly opened the door to find the woman who'd been occupying his thoughts standing in the passage outside. She was dressed in a simple black dress with matching shoes and from her neck hung what appeared to be a shimmering ruby set in a simple gold setting. The stone caught his eye as much as Christina herself, its luminescence in the dimly–lit corridor making it appear almost blood-red in its intensity.

“I do believe you're staring Mr Dexter”, she said quite coquettishly “and not at me either at a guess”.

“I'm sorry Christina, I just can't remember ever seeing anything quite like it, your pendant that is”.

“It is quite beautiful, isn't it?” she replied, with a certain pride in her voice. “It's a family heirloom, it once belonged to my great-something grandfather, I'm not sure how many 'greats' to say. It's been in my family for hundreds of years. My mother possessed it before me and when I was a little girl, I used to stare into it, and I could swear I could see another world in it. It has an ethereal beauty don't you think? You feel as if you can reach out and touch another time and another place if you look at it for long enough.”

“Then I'm sure it's found its rightful home with you, I think”, responded Dexter, surprised by the intensity of her words. “It certainly suits its wearer too, if I may say so”.

So unused was Dexter to paying such compliments that he felt himself visibly flushing, and Christina noticed it too,

“Why, Mr Dexter sir, I do believe you're blushing!”

“Don't mock me Christina, please, I'm just not used to……”

“I'm sorry Dexter, I'm not mocking you at all, really. Forgive me. Anyway, are you going to keep me standing here all evening, or would you care to come downstairs with me for some dinner?”

Twenty minutes later they were seated opposite each other enjoying what Dexter had to admit was a very tasty stew of local origin. He had hesitated to ask what it comprised for fear of putting himself off, but he assumed it to contain lamb, parsnips and potatoes plus other, unidentified ingredients. He couldn't help but notice however that Christina had barely touched hers.

“Not hungry?”, he asked.

“Not really”, she replied and then, “I can't stop thinking about the case Dexter.”

There it was again, that certain something in the way she said 'Dexter', he was sure he wasn't imagining it. There really was something remarkably sensual in the way she spoke his name.

“Then tell me Christina, you don't subscribe to this vampire nonsense do you?”

“Look Dexter, there are things you should know before we go any further. Forget about the vampires described by such men as your Bram Stoker. He was very clever in his mix of truth and fiction, but the people here take vampirism very seriously, and Stoker was quite inaccurate in much of his data”.

“In what way?”

“Well, for a start vampires, contrary to Stoker can actually move about in daylight, though their powers are greatly reduced. Secondly, they do not feed exclusively on human blood. They can take cattle or fowl, or indeed any living thing, though of course human blood is the ultimate feast for the undead. It is said that all vampires must feast on human blood every so often in order to maintain their human form, so a vampire may go months, maybe years without tasting human and then go on a feeding frenzy when the need becomes imperative”.

“Oh come on my dear girl, you're not seriously suggesting that we're dealing with a vampire feeding frenzy here, are you?”

“Why not Dexter? Just because we're living in the twenty-first century doesn't mean that the legends of the past can't be true”.

“Oh, come on Christina, let's not get carried away by the atmosphere of the location. You and I are professional reporters, here to do a serious investigation into a series of grisly murders, that's all. We can't let ourselves be led into the realms of fantasy just to suit local superstitious belief. Now come on, tell me more about the victims, and let's try and form some kind of coherent theory as to what we're really dealing with here and, by the way, you really are quite beautiful you know”.

The last comment had slipped out before he realised what he was saying, and he couldn't quite believe he had actually allowed himself to be quite so forward in the middle of a serious discussion. Christina however seemed to accept the compliment with a placid good grace and certainly appeared unfazed by the directness of the observation. Her reply was certainly surprising, at least the first part.

“I find you quite attractive too Dexter, you are not like the men here in Romania”.

He liked the way she pronounced it 'Romarnia' as opposed to the anglicised 'Romania'. He realised that he was beginning to like everything about this young woman. She continued.

“You have a directness I like in a man. We will work well together, you and I. As to the victims in the case, they were all killed in the same manner, as you know, and all within a twenty mile radius of Vilna. All were visitors to the area, the last one was actually a Russian naturalist, Vladimir Zhukov, who was here to study local wildlife”.

“In the midst of winter?” Dexter interjected.

“Apparently he wished to study the behaviour of the mountain wolves in the winter, when food is scarce, or at least, that is what he told the landlord of this very inn when he stayed here”.

“What!?” Dexter was taken aback. “Why didn't you tell me that he'd stayed here?”

“I'm sorry Dexter, I should have told you before, but I wanted us to get to know each other a little better first. The landlord told me these things when we first arrived, you remember? I was talking to him for quite some time. He's a friend of my cousin Alex actually. His family once served mine at our old ancestral home, a castle in the mountains not far from here. It is nothing but ruins now of course, so sad. My family were unjustly hounded from their home and lands many years ago by the oppressors of a bygone age Dexter. They even had to change their name to prevent future generations from suffering the same way”.