CHAPTER 3

While the unfortunate Mr Kendrick was nailed inside his coffin with the two sleeping sentinels guarding him, Dmitri and Maximilian took a little wander around Manchester to amuse themselves.

It was still fairly dark when they parted ways- for vampires never hunt in packs- but when they met up late in the afternoon the summer sun was pouring down upon the pair as they sat in a beer garden. Dmitri wore his sunglasses at the table, drumming his fingertips upon the surface while Max read the latest reports concerning the doctor still stuck in prison.

“It seems we may need Sarah’s assistance,” Max said without looking up, “I know he still had a hand in killing one of them but we cannot allow the poor man to be done for all six. He isn’t a monster; he put one person out of their misery before their time. And I’m sure more doctors have done it than they let on.”

“I’m sure she’ll be able to convince them,” Dmitri shrugged, “she’s a little too good at convincing people sometimes. He may get away with it altogether.”

“The less attention drawn to the real villain the better I reckon,” the older brother replied, “Your girlfriend is so useful for us. We definitely need her all the more with things being the way they are.”

Dmitri didn’t say anything at first, and his expression was inscrutable behind the dark frames. When he did finally say something it was with a heavy sadness that did not suit the younger man, “We’re dying out, aren’t we?”

Max sighed and shook his head, “Not if I can help it, Dmitri. Not if I can help it.”

He had done plenty to prevent the extinction of their kind but with a vampire’s very nature it is almost impossible to control their destruction. Before the world wars had decimated most of Europe there had been as many as three hundred of the undead operating within the UK alone. By the time the Millennium approached, around only ten percent was left.

Most of the deaths occurred during the Second World War; German bombs had destroyed so many of their sanctuaries that almost half of them died from exposure to sunlight. They would be out amongst the ruins, attacking the wounded or wandering from bomb shelter to bomb shelter preying on the huddled souls within. And then they would go home, just in time for sunrise, to find their own home had been obliterated. Those that managed to survive hid inside train tunnels, underground stations and the bomb shelters they had fed in.

Another major cause of death had been their own doing. They were fiercely territorial by nature but sometimes a lack of mortals or opportunities meant that they would wander into another’s area. An intrusion could be sensed almost immediately and in their blood lust rage they would slaughter the intruder for daring to invade or the other would kill them and claim their territory for their own. In some ways they were more like predators on the African plains, but rather than stalking through grassland camouflaged, the vampire appeared as any normal human being and the urban land was their habitat.

With so many people now living in towns and cities it meant that vampires’ boundaries kept crossing and this was intolerable for many of them. They were solitary, they would not compete for prey and though there was an abundance available in larger cities like London, the vampires were too easily provoked into killing each other. Before 1914 there had been a sort of council amongst the more rational of their people that tried to draw up and define territories to resolve this bloody issue but it had failed.

So far the regime of Maximilian Vasile was holding well; seventeen years strong and surely more to follow. The man was highly intelligent, exceedingly stubborn, and above all, rational. He was young compared to some of them, but that was in his favour as he had yet to exhibit some of the madness that the elders did. He understood the mortal world in ways that some who seen generations go by did not.

He was an impressive man, physically as well as mentally. Much to his father’s dismay, he had grown head and shoulders above his old man, towering at a final six foot four. And he was broad with it, although some of it had come from his own labours. His size was more than enough to intimidate most mortals without his vampirism even coming into effect. Dark haired and pale skinned, his frown was heavy on his square face.

So while some of the brutish regulars in the pub glared at him, sizing him up and trying to gauge how they’d fare in a fight, the young man sitting across from Maximilian didn’t share the collective resentment. There was enough about their faces to make the family relationship evident, they had the same colouring too, but though Maximilian was intimidating there was something a little androgynous about Dmitri.

It wasn't just the eyeliner and the long hair. Dmitri was slender and he had long limbs like a colt; his legs were longer than the rest of him. He had inherited his mother’s pleasant round face, though understandably it was sometimes sunken and drawn, but it was one that made people warm to him quickly. His eyes had an impish mischief, as though he was amused by everything they looked upon. The girls he had known called him handsome, if a little effeminate. They thought there was something roguish in his expression so he amused them as much as they did for him.

To look at it him it was obvious he spent hours deciding what to wear, and how to wear it. Fortunately for Dmitri, with the millennium and everything it meant that being retro was cool so all the clothes he wore in the 70s and 80s could be used again. Everything he wore was vintage, the real thing, and not some tacky rip off that was sold to impressionable youths trying to emulate the nostalgic style.

As a rule vampires generally don’t like each other; other vampires are threats, they are neither friends nor kindred. Max and Dmitri did not feel this hate, although if truth be told Maximilian despised his father a great deal. The brothers however were fiercely loyal to the other; Max would do anything to protect the baby brother he still treasured, and Dmitri would do anything his brother would ask of him.

It stemmed from a moment in childhood, when Maximilian had only just turned twelve and Dmitri had been a sickly but elfin boy of five. A certain vampire hunter had came to their house and left their mother dead on the living room carpet. They did the only thing two children could do in such a situation; they ran away.

Dmitri had cried because he was frightened. Max cried because their mother was dead. He’d hugged his little brother to himself and wouldn’t let him go again, terrified that his brother would be torn from him and killed just like their mother.

Dmitri couldn’t remember it very well. He just remembered knowing she was gone. That created a strange sort of emptiness in his chest, like he hadn’t properly acknowledged her death or said goodbye but there was nothing he could do about it now.

Something else had happened that day however. It was quiet, and fierce and overwhelming, and neither had noticed at first. Although Dmitri had been his father’s favourite, his own adoration switched sides and Maximilian became the most important person in his life. Maximilian also became dependent on his baby brother. The need to protect Dmitri became the centre of Maximilian’s universe and how he measured right and wrong depended on him too.

That was how the whole bloody thing was started.

It was bad enough that the undead seemed determined to kill themselves off, but to have a vampire hunter actually active in the UK? Max decided enough was enough, and despite his lack of years he started up his brotherhood, his organisation, his community. It hadn’t actually been given a proper name but with some patience and determination it started to mean something to other vampires.

Some saw it as a means of protection, a sort of glorified neighbourhood watch scheme. There were things called telephones now so they didn’t have to see each other or wander in and out of territories. They could keep a careful eye on each other and watch out for those with a stake in one hand and death in their minds.

Others saw it as the future. A nation. They saw it as a way of coming together and taking pride in what they were. That idea sat well with Maximilian for he was very patriotic and, in a moment of youthful self indulgence, he had a tattoo of a Union Jack painted somewhere on his body. If this tentative nation could exist without more internal strife then it was possible, perhaps even likely that they could move beyond being predators and become civilised.

There were a few, like Dmitri, who felt it was better as a means of control. He had terrible problems with his own thirst and he was afraid that his own force of will wouldn’t be able to combat it. The fact there were rules and regulations to follow now also paved the way towards civilisation. They would behave themselves. They would be sophisticated. And if one or two risked the safety of the entire nation by killing a few mortals, betraying the forbidden truth, then steps should and would be taken to protect everyone else.

It also helped Maximilian Vasile was the leader of all this chaos. Fierce and commanding on the outside, but discerning on the inside. He was a man to be frightened of but Dmitri was always more afraid of disappointing him.

“So where did you end up last night then?” Maximilian asked because he was interested and because Dmitri hadn’t said much in a while. He was used to near constant voice of his little brother and when it was silent he was concerned.

Dmitri shifted in his chair for a moment, one arm hugging his torso and he shrugged again, “I was down near Sackville Park. You know? Near the canal?”

Maximilian didn’t know the territory all that well actually. He just nodded and turned his attention back to the FTSE 100, tutting to himself from what he read. Dmitri stared at him for a few minutes, his eyebrows slightly raised but there was to be no reaction from the older man and so Dmitri relaxed into his chair.

“I don’t know if the Bolingbrokes’ are going to be able to hold Kendrick for the entire month,” Dmitri voiced his opinion.

“They could,” Max looked over his newspaper, “They’re good at what they do.”

“That as may be,” he replied, “but you weren’t with Lionel the entire time. Sure, you scared him shitless, and well done on that by the way, you scared me too, but he was agitated before that. He didn’t seem healthy if you know what I mean? I think the loss of his old lady made him unbalanced.”

“So perhaps he is not fully responsible?” the older brother narrowed his eyes slightly.

“No, I don’t mean that,” Dmitri tried to explain, “Of course he’s responsible for his actions. I just think maybe he wouldn’t have done that if she had been alive. Lionel may have been hanging around the likes of Eric but we’ve never had trouble with him before. He usually followed your rules to the letter, even if he didn’t agree with them.”

“So you think there were extenuating circumstances?” Max suggested.

“Pardon me while I look up my dictionary,” Dmitri frowned, “Some of us don’t have big vocabularies. I’m sure I only know about 127 words.”

“Most of which either has four letters or one syllable,” was the amused reply.

Dmitri glared back at him but with his sunglasses Max was immune to it, “I think we both have the same idea of what we mean. But I’m just worried that if he is unbalanced he won’t even survive a month. Either he’ll stop drinking or he’ll take extreme measures, and our numbers are too low as it is.”

“I was thinking along similar lines,” Maximilian agreed, “We are already too few. And I suppose that problem could be fixed over night but I want the next generation to be civilised and sophisticated. That will take time.”

The younger man slid his sunglasses down his nose so he could stare right at the other man, his eyes wide, “Is that the real reason Alexander is joining us?”

“Not entirely,” he replied, “But I do intend him to be the start of something. The first in a new generation. I have high hopes for him, as any father does, but I have thought about transforming him for a while now, and those thoughts were separate from the need to increase our numbers. It is just fortunate that they will help solve a few problems.”

“So Mr Kendrick is still expendable then?” Dmitri asked.

Maximilian didn’t say anything. They just looked at each other for a few moments and Dmitri became aware that yet again there was a lot more going on in his brother’s mind than he might have thought. It sometimes amazed him exactly how much seemed to be going on up there, although with Maximilian’s height their father often joked that Max’s brain capacity must be affected by a lack of oxygen.

“Lionel Kendrick will face the others,” Max said, “and he may face death. I said as much to frighten him and I said I would kill him only if he escaped. Like you so rightly suggested there are extenuating factors regarding Mr Kendrick. I did not want him to escape and kill more people. If he goes in front of the others they will probably demand he dies, they will toss him overboard. But I’m sure Sarah could convince them otherwise.”

“So what are you going to do?” Dmitri asked, intrigued.

The other vampire just smiled.

***
Dmitri didn’t pretend to be the smartest of men. He had no knowledge of science, very little interest in politics and he had never excelled in anything worthwhile. He was a little too obsessed with music and fashion but then he was still young and punk rock had always inflamed something in his soul. Sometimes he did get lost in his own thoughts but while Maximilian had a disciplined mind that set every brain cell to work, Dmitri thought more about the nature of life and why things existed.

For example, when he had been sickly and confined for all those hours as a child, he began to measure his sense of worth in the world, and his imagination was fired by the idea of all the people that has ever existed and those to come, where they were, what they were doing and why. What was the point of it all? He had first come upon the subject when his father said that if it hadn’t been for certain circumstances then he himself would never have existed at all. When you are only little and this is told to you it makes you see things in an entirely different way.

He began to see everything afterwards as having some sort of purpose but what the purpose was he was still trying to discover. So he was more open minded than his brother. Dmitri had travelled extensively, marvelling at the Himalayas and experimenting with sushi in Japan. He had biked the entire length of the historic Route 66 simply because it was there and he had found a strange inner peace when he was taught how to meditate. But the answer still eluded him. As if to silence his worries he told himself that 42 was the answer after all and he should just get on with living life.

So, trying to root himself in the real world, Dmitri found himself climbing all those stairs back to Lionel Kendrick’s flat while the sun was still sinking down on the horizon. He reminded himself to ignore God’s wonderful brushstrokes across the sky and instead thought about what he was going to do and say to their unfortunate prisoner.

At that moment in time however there was something about his vampirism that he truly regretted. His rather sensitive sense of smell was balking at the stench of vomit and urine still in the stairwell and he put his sleeve over his face in a vain attempt to block it out. Dmitri was sure he would still be able to smell it on his clothes later on.

He found that everything was as they had left it in the early hours of the morning. The room was dark with the blackout curtains that the Bolingbrokes had hung over the offensive windows and Dmitri could barely make out the three long caskets lying in the middle of the room. The one on the left and the one on the right each held a twin but the one dead centre held Lionel, so it was to this one that Dmitri crept over to.

He ran his fingers over the lid, taking a momentary delight in the smooth finish of the wood and then he knelt alongside the sleeping vampire, his hair hanging a little over his face.

“Lionel,” he rapped his knuckles on the lid, trying not to disturb the Bolingbrokes, “Lionel? Are you awake? Can you hear me?”

There was a creak and the sound of something stirring within, and the voice that eventually replied was a worn out croak. Lionel Kendrick had barely slept and if he had it was the stuff of nightmares, “I hear you.”

Dmitri sighed and leaned closer to the box, “It is almost night. I will begin to remove the nails although I’m sure our friends intended to carry you as you are. I think it would be rather difficult trying to explain that to the mortals around to see it, don’t you? Two men carrying a coffin out of a flat? And imagine if the police were on the beat.”

“Yes it would,” Lionel agreed, frightened and puzzled as to why Dmitri seemed gentler than the night before.

Feeling around, Dmitri finally located a hammer, and with the clawed side of the tool he started the rather awkward process of removing the nails. It seemed the less noise he tried to make the more he created and it was often his grunts of effort that were the loudest. Each nail he managed to yank out he tossed to the side, and they pinged as they hit the floor. Eventually he pulled the very last from its place, wiped his brow from the effort and slowly he lifted up the coffin lid.

To put yourself in Lionel’s place, the sight of Dmitri was a vision, hovering over him with the faint light just highlighting his softer features. The vampire took a deep breath, panicked for a moment that this sight was nothing more than another nightmare, a rather handsome picture that would turn foul and drive a stake through his chest or force garlic between his lips. But the young man before him did not do that; he just smiled his sad, slightly lopsided smile.

“What are we going to do with you?” Dmitri asked again, chuckled for a moment and the impish mischief returned to his eyes.

Lionel wasn’t sure how to answer him. He was still rather struck by this strange creature leaning over him and when he returned to himself, and remembered his grave plight he let out a small gasp of anguish, “I don’t want to die!”

“Shh,” Dmitri whispered, “Shh, I know. No one wants to die. But you have killed, Mr Kendrick, did those women want to die?”

“I didn’t mean to kill them,” Lionel sobbed, “I just wanted to be close to them.”

“You missed your mortal friend,” he nodded, “You missed her so entirely that you could not control your thirst.”

Dmitri didn’t want to but he could almost imagine what had happened; Lionel sitting with the old dears, feeling the sudden need to possess them, make them his own companion. Maybe they resisted, Dmitri couldn’t be sure, or maybe they froze in fright, their old hearts unable to take the strain but it wouldn’t have mattered because Lionel would have did it. He would have sunk his teeth into their throats and drained them, maybe crying in the pathetic, ridiculous way he was doing now.

Lionel Kendrick would become a strange sort of Norman Bates if this was allowed to continue. So mustering something inside himself, Dmitri became firm in the way that Maximilian would. He would be commanding, he would be in control. Though his face did not take on that terrible death mask like Max used to frighten Kendrick, the vampire stopped sobbing because the expression on Dmitri’s face seemed to seize him. Lionel’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropped open with a startled “oh!” and he no longer trembled.

"Now Lionel, I'll put in a good word in for you,” Dmitri spoke quietly, but there was something forceful in his voice, “I'll personally make sure you don’t die or be punished too severely. But in return I want you to be loyal to me, not Max, not Eric, to me only. I want your absolute and most honest loyalty.”

“Yes,” Lionel whimpered, willing to promise anything regardless of what it meant.

“I’m sure you know of the woman I see,” he continued, “and I’m sure you know just how convincing she can be, even to our kind. I will say a word in Max’s ear and I will bring my Sarah on the day of your trial. She will save you. But there is a price to pay. You have been rather naughty, and you have been conspiring with some others.”

“I haven’t!” Lionel protested, he didn’t need any more charges laid against him.

“You may be telling the truth, but I know there is some amongst that little group of Immortals that hate my brother. Max is everything to me, and if something happened to him I would not be responsible for my actions.”

Lionel shuddered. For though the man beside him seemed such a pleasant thing there were stories about him; about sudden, violent, furious bursts of madness. About a thirst that could never be sated, not even by a vampire’s blood. One man told him that Maximilian had confided in Alfred that he too feared Dmitri’s darker self, the one barely controlled by Max’s own will.

So though Max had frightened him, Lionel was chilled in fear because of what Dmitri could be. He would swear anything, even his absolute loyalty.

“I want you to tell me everything that the Immortals get up to. Where they go, what they do, how often they do it and why. It's not much of a sacrifice. Your life for some information. Tell me and you will have your life for as long as you wish it. But play tricks with me, or if you kill anyone ever again while it’s still against the rules and I will do to you what Max did to Henry the Tudor."

The other vampire nodded. He swore and promised all, and he pleaded for Dmitri to be merciful. Dmitri on the other hand felt numb. He didn’t feel quite himself and part of him wished it had been Maximilian to make Lionel submit to authority at last.

He got up off of his knees and went to wake both the Bolingbrokes. He told them nothing of this new plan but if they had heard anything then Dmitri hoped they would be loyal enough to Max and remain silent. He was sure he saw something like distrust in Edmund’s eyes but then Dmitri had never appreciated the doppelgangers or gave them the respect they felt they deserved from him.

Max was waiting down in his car for his brother to finish and Dmitri waved to him from the landing. In a moment of sheer abandon, and simply because he could, Dmitri leapt from the building, his heart thumping wildly from the exhilaration. The wind whistled in his ears as he descended, his hair whipped around his head and his coat billowed behind him. He landed in a crouch and he smirked up at the man in the car.

His brother snorted and shook his head, leaning out of the car to holler, “Trying to get yourself caught?”

“Not at all,” Dmitri chuckled and rose back to his full height, his pulse slowly returning to normal.

He went and slid into the passenger’s seat beside Maximilian and slammed the door shut. Before the other man could protest, Dmitri reached over and slid in a CD of Adam and Ants into the stereo and relaxed into his seat.

“So, Prince Charming,” Max smirked, “Did he buy it?”

Dmitri grinned back, “With his life on his line? Let's just say I have my own personal bitch.”