Dolly Biters

Prologue: City of Dreadful Night

Prologue: City of Dreadful NightLondon, 20??

The door opens and I sense my prey immediately. I can smell her, smell the fear rising from her, a terrible perfume, as intoxicating as human fear always is. I can hear the blood pumping through her veins and the air being dragged in short, terrified bursts into her lungs. I can't see her, of course. My eyes had been lost during the Battle of Brick Lane back on New Year's Day, 1867; but my remaining vampire senses more than compensate for their loss, and during the intervening years they have been sharpened and heightened to such a state that I hardly notice these days that my eyes are lost. Some would say that I am blessed, others that I am cursed. I'm undecided either way. All I do know, these days especially, is that I am a survivor. I have seen the British Empire rise to unimaginable heights and then collapse again, I've lived through both of the World Wars that the humans fought against each other, and I'm still here, large as life. Still eighteen years old, as near as immortal as it is possible to be; still the handsome girl who turned the heads and bit the necks of the Poor Unfortunates down Spitalfields way. I am still here, minus my eyes of course. But I am still here when all the rest of the Spitalfields' g**g have gone. Every last God-forsaken one of them.

The woman they have provided for me is trying to scream, but the gag they've put around her mouth is keeping her relatively quiet, save for little whimpers that serve to do nothing more than increase my excitement. My fangs, my dreadful, awful, pearly white fangs, extend in my mouth and the saliva begins to flow. On bare feet, I pad quietly up behind her. I do not think that she knows I am here. Perhaps she heard the door open and knew, instinctively, that it signalled her doom. But as for hearing me approach, no, I don't think so. You should understand that I am as quiet as the serpent when I want to be, a genuine snake in the grass. She does not know that I am behind her, but where, I ask, is the fun in that? I want her to see me, for her to know that it is I, this ancient eighteen-year-old relic of a by-gone age, that is about to feast upon her. For her to look at my face and know that my face, this face without eyes, is the face of her death.

The woman is tied quite securely to a chair, of course. The people who provide my food, who observe and record my every move, do not want to see the prey trying to escape. Personally speaking I think that I would prefer the sport of the chase, but the scientists, the observers, don't see it that way. I do not believe they want any undue distractions as they scribble on their notepads and push buttons on those machines that I do not understand. So she is bound to the chair as I sidle up behind her. I would have preferred the chase, but there is fun to be had in this game too.

I brush a hand through her hair, matted though it is with sweat and fear, and she stiffens at my touch. She is probably quite pretty. The scientists seem to get a perverse thrill from seeing me feast on pretty young ones, although, of course, they would never admit as much out loud. But I know humans and I know what makes them tick, and they cannot hide their dirty little secrets from me. I am too wise and too old and too full of sin for that.

“Don't worry, treacle,” I whisper. “It will soon be over.”

Her squealing begins afresh and she fights desperately against the ropes that bind her, the chair to which she is tied rocking backwards and forwards with her exertions. It is all to no avail.

I move around in front of her and sit on her lap, face to face, cheek to cheek, my legs straddling her. Her protests end and I imagine that she tries to beg with her eyes, beg for her life. I smile sweetly, like I used to smile close to two hundred years ago when this vampire life was new and there were adventures to be had. And then I bite down into her neck, deeply, mortally.

Her blood gushes in a torrent down my throat as her body convulses beneath me. As the convulsions subside I feel her life-force enter me, giving me sustenance, giving me strength, giving me life eternal.

I am not happy here, being watched and observed like some rat in a cage. But I am biding my time. Time. Time is my only friend.

Yes, I have seen empires rise and fall, wars begin and end, and through it all I have endured and shall endure again. This humiliation will not last, for nothing lasts forever save for myself and the ticking seconds of time. We endure. We are eternal. As eternal as the dreadful night…