The Young Vampire's Survival Guide E-Book

Lucy Eldritch

• Herausgeber: Lucy Eldritch
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

It started with his death.Student Robert James never asked to be bitten. He didn't want to be the leader of a new breed of vampires. Thing is: he wasn't offered a choice.Survival and destiny combine when Robert finds himself under threat from a mysterious cult known as the Dawn Warriors. Within months, many of those he cares about are dead and he vows to fight back without mercy. Robert unearths terrible truths and confronts eternal evils that threaten to break him. He may not succeed in defeating the Dawn Warriors, but he has no choice but to try.'The Young Vampire's Survival Guide' is the first book in the 'New Breed Vampires' book series. Described as "Anne Rice meets Kelley Armstrong", it is set in London and Manchester and written in British English. It's gruesome, compelling, horrifying and uplifting vampire fiction. This is one vampire book suitable for New adult readers and advanced Young adult readers. It is a vampire novel for fans of urban fantasy, horror - or any kind of vampire book! If you love vampires or urban fantasy fiction, this is the series for you.

Leseprobe

THE YOUNG VAMPIRE’S SURVIVAL GUIDE

BY LUCY ELDRITCH

BOOK ONE OF THE NEW BREED VAMPIRES BOOK SERIES

For S.K. Always, eternally, yours.

Copyright © 2016 by Lucy Eldritch All rights reserved.

The author exerts her rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

CHAPTER ONE

It was probably the fifth Jaegerbomb that did it. Or the sixth. Whichever, I couldn’t remember much about that, the last night of my life.

I recall turning up at Banshee, a rabbit warren nightclub packed to the rafters with willing Goths of both sexes whose sense of propriety worked in inverse proportion to the amount of rum and cokes they consumed. Even the watered-down rum and cokes for which the Banshee was rightfully infamous.

The evening got a little blurry around 3 a.m. There was a taxi or, maybe, some other kind of black vehicle. I recall two girls. One of whom may have been called Leticia or Delicia or something. Fuck it. She might have been called Delicatessen for all I could remember the next morning.

As it turned out, Delicatessen would have been the perfect name for this particular individual. Note to my twenty year old self and others: beware the super hot, curvy Goth chick who seems unnaturally interested in you despite the presence of a couple of minor rock stars salivating in the vague direction of her cleavage. Her ‘unnatural’ interest may well turn out to be exactly that.

When I awoke the next day, I discovered myself naked, and covered in blood.

I wasn’t an expert in blood - not then - but it was mine. There was a weeping wound in my neck. Strangely, it didn’t hurt much. I presumed the anaesthetic properties of Jaegermeister were working their magic. I said a prayer to Curt Mast, thanking him for his invention.

Then, and only then, I took the trouble to look around me. At that point I started to get scared. Terrified, in fact.

Next to me was a woman; also naked, also covered in blood. But very, very dead. Her stomach had been torn apart and her entrails stuffed between her legs.

She was missing half an arm, and the bottom part of her left leg was twisted so badly, her foot pointed in the wrong direction.

Even now, countless years later, I still pictured her ruined face, so fresh in my mind. All her teeth had been removed but the gaping, bloodied maw of her mouth was smiling. Smiling and, there’s no other way to put it, happy.

Worse still was the note. Impaled on some kind of stake driven through the woman’s heart, it had ‘Rob James’ - my name - written on it. The handwriting was that of an old, old woman. Like someone who had suffered a stroke.

My first thought was ‘I’ve got to get the fuck out of here’. Curiosity overcame me though, so, hands shaking, I opened the note. Things were never the same again. Within one month, it cost the life of my best friend. Within a year, hundreds had died. All because of me.

CHAPTER TWO

A second year political thought tutorial. Social Sciences Building, University of Manchester.

Two weeks passed since I read the note and I’d fed just once. I didn’t want to think about it so, unusually for me, I was focused on the subject: Thomas Hobbes ‘Leviathan’. I’d even read the book: twice. Well, I didn’t need to sleep anymore; what else was there to do?

“Hobbes is wrong,” I caught myself saying.

“A social contract is neither social nor a contract if it is promised under duress. The idea that the threat of violence does not undermine the freedom with which ones make an agreement is not something that stands up under close scrutiny. Furthermore…”

I pushed my hand through my long, thick black hair and paused. It was a gesture I frequently used for dramatic effect. This time, though, I was suddenly aware of a weird stillness in Professor Worthington’s tiny, over-hot study.

Every one of the six students, as well as the Professor herself, looked at me like I was something they had never seen before. Like I was some kind of Messiah figure, dispensing wisdom from on high. They were transfixed. Enraptured. Silent. I wasn’t sure how I’d done this but I was certain that my criticism of a rather dull 17th Century political philosopher wasn’t the reason.

There was a glazed look in my tutor’s eyes I had never seen before. In anyone. I was sure that if, at that moment, I asked her to strip down to her underwear, and twerk like Miley Cyrus while singing the chorus of Marilyn Manson’s ‘Cake and Sodomy’ she would have done. Willingly. Well, willingly by Hobbes’ definition, if nothing else.

I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to reach out to each of the room’s other occupants. Touching their souls, one by one I brought them back to normality. They glanced around, briefly puzzled, but otherwise it was as if nothing had happened.

This wasn’t the ‘glamour’ I’d read about in vampire fiction. This was something quite different. I named it ‘Rapture’. I needed to make a note.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket to do just that when Professor Jane Worthington spoke.

“Ah, Mr James,” she said, “you were doing so well for a minute.”

She sighed, sad and weary, and nodded in the direction of my phone.

“But, I see you have already returned to your old ways. Put your phone back whence you found it and I’ll explain to you, and the rest of the group, why your understanding of Hobbes’ argument is flawed.”

*****

The student union bar was fairly empty at 12:30 p.m. that day, as usual. That’s why I’d made my way down Oxford Road, instead of heading back to the house. I desperately needed to think, without too many distractions. Of course, the university library had the benefit of peace and quiet. I did consider it. However, the presence of a cute twenty-something dispensing flirtatious smiles and alcohol in equal measure swung the pendulum in favour of the union bar.

The cute twenty-something had a blue streak in her auburn hair. Her name was Pixie. Actually, she wasn’t christened Pixie at all. But she looked like one, so that’s what everyone called her. Pretty much everyone I knew - male and female alike - had a thing for her. She was sparky, feisty and funny.

Her real name was Patricia and she was studying Spanish and Russian. She lived with a girl called Tarrie. The word was Tarrie was her girlfriend as well as housemate. That made all the guys just fancy her a little more, of course.

Pixie was the reason I knew that mythical ‘glamour’ thing was nothing more than an invention of fiction writers.

The previous week, I hit the bar even earlier, just as Pixie started her shift. The place was deserted aside from the two of us.

“You look exhausted,” she said as I ordered a quick mid-morning leveller of Bourbon and Coke.

“Late night,” I replied. I couldn’t tell her what I’d been doing the night before. I struggled to get to grips with it myself.

“Don’t tell me you’ve actually been studying?” She threw her head back and laughed.

I couldn’t help but mimic her. Then she saw.

The wound on my throat had healed fast. Even if she noticed, the scar was nothing more than a couple of white patches against the darker surrounding skin.

That wasn’t what she’d spotted. Her Bambi eyes widened - at this point, I was too inexperienced to tell whether in surprise or fear - as she caught sight of my opened mouth.

Without meaning to, my hands went to my face. I could feel the razor points of my canines. More disturbing still, my hands came away with sticky, congealing blood on them. There was still blood all over my teeth and this is what Pixie had seen.

For a brief moment, my head filled with a troubling thought, insistent and compelling. ‘Just kill her.’ I shook the desire away.

A pause, as if time itself had stopped. Pixie stood there, unfilled tumbler in her hand, saying nothing; doing nothing, except staring at me. I had visions of the moment ending with a scream. I had to stop that from happening.

Looking back, my actions were totally ridiculous, but at the time, it was all I could think to do. I’d seen Tru Blood enough times to know how this worked.

Making steady eye contact, I tried to bore into Pixie’s mind. I would use the ‘glamour’ to erase the memory of what she had seen. Job done.

Job not done. Carefully putting down the glass, Pixie backed up slowly until she touched the row of spirits lining the shelf behind the bar. She spoke very slowly, punctuating each word as if it was a sentence of its own.

“What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing?” she said. “And, more to the point, what the fuck. Is. That. On. Your. Teeth?”

The urge to touch my mouth again overwhelmed me. My hand strayed in that direction before I fought the urge and stopped it.

Stammering out the most convincing laugh I could muster, I said “Well, it’s like this. I’m a, er, vampire and I was sucking the blood of virgins all night. And, um, forgot to brush my teeth this morning.”

The truth, I’ve heard said, will set you free. Pixie relaxed, picked up my glass and turned to fix my drink.

She looked back over her shoulder, strangely coquettish.

“I thought that was probably it,” she said, “but you just took me by surprise.”

Her tone was sarcastic. The truth may set you free, but - on this occasion - it worked best when it wasn’t believed.

“Seriously, though,” she added, “You do actually have blood all over your teeth. Not a good look.”

I blushed.

“I was at the dentist and had to have a tooth removed. They told me it would have stopped bleeding by now.”

“I guess they were wrong,” I shrugged.

Pixie twirled a piece of hair around her finger as she started pouring Coke direct from the bottle into my drink.

“Tell me when you want me to stop,” she said.

I put up a hand in the classic ‘Woah’ signal. She stopped pouring and pushed the glass across the bar to me.

“I liked your original excuse better, but you did freak me out with all the staring and looking intense,” she admitted. She paused for a beat. “But there is something hot about that whole blood sucking vampire thing. I think it’s the blood.” She paused again.

“Or the sucking.”

This time, I freaked out. Was Pixie coming on to me? What about the whole ‘lesbian-in-a-committed-relationship’ stuff?

I tried to turn smartly on my heel, throw back my hair, and leave the bar while looking super unflustered and cool. Tripping over my New Rocks, I failed. Doubly so when Pixie said, “Er. Before you go, that will be three pounds twenty for the drink, please.”

*****

That was the week before. This time it was like we’d never met; never spoken. I paid for a Coke, got my change in complete silence and sat down in one of those fabric-print 1970s style sofas that looked comfortable until you actually used them. No surprise that so many of them ended up in Student Unions.

I threw my bag huffily on to the scratched Formica coffee table in front of me. The Falling In Reverse tune, ‘Bad Girls Club’, was playing. I sang along with the opening verse, while shooting daggers in the direction of the bar and the oblivious Pixie. In truth, I was sulking.

I had to get it together. I needed to write things down. For me, this was essential. Otherwise those who came after would never gain the knowledge they required to thrive.

The note I’d read that first, awful night was very clear. My duty was to put together a kind of survival guide for young vampires. I was the first of the new breed. The old rules - the old ways - no longer applied. What had been true was true no longer. What had been myths must be exposed for the lies they were.

Sulking like a child over a girl who wasn’t into guys was not part of the plan. It wasn’t behaviour befitting a vampire. I was the only vampire I knew, admittedly, but that was not the point.

Opening the Evernote app on my Samsung Galaxy, I took a couple of minutes to scroll through all the stuff I’d already added.

I created a new heading, ‘Rapture’, and tried to capture - as best I could - what had occurred during the Political Thought tutorial. Trouble was: I wasn’t sure quite what had happened.

It was as if the intensity of my words had hypnotised the people in that room. No, not hypnotised. That wasn’t it. Their expressions weren’t vacant, more like entranced. Spellbound by the passion with which I was speaking.

I put the phone down on the coffee table and took a quick sip of my drink. The bar was unusually hot for the time of day; I could feel the first beads of sweat forming just below my hairline. I took off my hoodie and tried to get a little more comfortable.

Reviewing my draft, I’d added plenty of question marks and maybes. I would have to invoke this Rapture thing deliberately before I could be sure what I’d written was correct.

The heat in the bar was getting to me. Time to get some fresh air.

I wiped the back of my sleeve against my face, forgetting that the phone was still in my hand. It slipped from my grasp and skidded across the sticky floor of the Union bar.

“Shit,” I said out loud, casting around to grab my hoodie and bag as the Samsung Galaxy made its bid for freedom.

“Well, it’s not the best phone,” said a familiar voice, “but it’s not that bad. Certainly not worth throwing across the room, for sure.”

In the time I took to gather up my bag and hoodie, Pixie had bent down and picked up the Samsung. She wore a wry smile on her face as she spoke.

“Here, vampire boy.” She held out the phone.

Fuck. The phone was still on. No way did I want her to see what I was writing. I tried to be calm and accept it gracefully but I was just a little too quick to take it, causing her to frown slightly.

I managed a perfunctory ‘thank you, Pixie’ and started towards the exit door.

Even now, I’m not sure whether I heard her final words to me that day. Or just imagined them because of what happened later.

As I pushed past a group of three rugby types who were messing around outside, I was almost sure I caught the words ‘I know what you are, vampire boy. I knew before you did.’

CHAPTER THREE

The tidiness gave it away. If my room in our shared house had been left in the mess I was accustomed to, Mike - my best friend and housemate - would still be alive.

Mike, Smithy to his mates, was the only person at college I’d known before I got there. From the age of 14 when we first met, Smithy stood out.

Fearless to the point of stupidity, it didn’t matter what the situation was. Smithy would never back down. The fact that he was the skinniest and tallest person I’d ever met made it all the more impressive. He looked like a whisper would blow him over.

The time when the Head of our school, a former Army major, caught us smoking weed outside the gates was one of two occasions I still think back on.

Neither of us spotted the fat old bugger coming until a meaty hand landed on Smithy’s shoulder and his unmistakeable Sergeant-Major voice barked out.

“You, boys,” he said, “are in a world of trouble.”

I had no idea what he was going to say next because Smithy, pulling himself up to his full height, brushed the Headmaster’s hand from his shoulder and spoke.

“Yes sir. We know. The global economic crisis and increase in fundamentalism of all kinds has certainly resulted in a world of trouble. Is that what you meant, sir?”

This kind of stuff made Smithy a legend. Well that, and the time he punched out one of West Ham’s firm. He only did it because the combination of claret and blue on the guy’s football shirt hurt his eyes, he claimed.

*****

I sensed what was missing as soon as I walked into my room that day, two weeks later. My bed looked made and the pile of textbooks and papers on the desk was stacked neatly.

Mike was in the room next door, sitting at his own, almost identical desk, laptop open in front of him. Next to it was the note. My note. I could just about read my name scrawled on the front in that weird, stroke-victim handwriting. He had placed it at a precise equidistance from each corner of the left hand of the desk. I almost laughed. Typical Smithy.

He didn’t even bother to turn round when I walked in.

“I can smell it, you know.” His voice was slow; resigned.

“You stink. Like something’s gone rotten. But it’s you. I can smell you. It’s you that’s gone rotten.” The voice was still resigned, but now had an edge. Anger? No. Hatred.

“I so wanted to be wrong. So wanted to…” He tailed off and turned towards me, eyes bloodshot.

I put my hands up, palms open in the time-honoured ‘I surrender’ gesture. I didn’t want to anger him. I didn’t want to make things worse. I wanted to pretend that none of this was happening; that none of any of it was happening.

Smithy picked up the note between thumb and forefinger, gingerly as if it was burning.

“I had to look, though. You do understand that, Robbo, don’t you?”

I gave a single nod. Go on.

“I knew I would find something. I just knew,” he continued. “But this…this thing.” He raised the note a little higher and shook it.

“You are an abomination, Rob.”

“This…” Again he shook the note.

“This…is your damnation.”

It was then he stood and looked me straight in the eye. I wanted to turn away, wanted to run. But I didn’t. This was Smithy. This was my best friend. Whatever he had to say I was going to take it, because that’s what you did when your mate has something important to tell you.

He was crying now. Silent rivers of tears flowed down his cheeks. He didn’t wipe them away. He just kept on speaking. Just kept on building up to whatever was going to happen next. Just kept on. It was excruciating.

“I’ve killed several of your kind, Robbo. You were all dying out. We’d won. But now, there’s you. You, of all people.”

“I’m still me, Smithy, ” I replied, “Still Robbo.”

I’m not one hundred percent certain of the order of events after that. I remember taking a step forward, my arm outstretched to pull Smithy into a hug.

When it was all over, when Smithy was lying dead with his neck broken, I told myself I’d just wanted to reassure him. I wanted to make it OK. Honestly, though, I’m not sure it’s true.

Somewhere deep inside me, I knew - by taking that single step - I was bringing things to a conclusion.

*****

Smithy moved faster than I thought. I’d seen him fight before, but this was something practised; expert. From within the faded brown jacket he always wore, he pulled a sharpened metal stake.

The point pierced my ribs. My flesh tore open as it went in. There should have been blood. There wasn’t. I should have been hurt. I wasn’t. Not physically. Mentally, though, I was already defeated, and Smithy could taste victory.

Stumbling back under the force of his assault, I hit the door frame and went down. Smithy was on me in a second.

“Mike,” I croaked, “Stop.”

He didn’t even pause. He pushed even harder this time and drove the metal stake down. It sliced through my breastbone, down and to the left. My heart exploded and the stake stuck in my spinal cord.

Smithy, sweating with the effort, tugged to try to free it. There was a ripping sound but the stake did not come all the way loose.

I could feel little, but I was dying. There was blood now, but not as much as there could have been. The stake through my heart stopped the blood spurting in great gushes from the wound.

As my eyes clouded over, my thoughts became jumbled - odd and inconsequential. I was pleased I wasn’t making a mess all over Mike’s room. He would have hated that. Visions came to mind of him swearing and cursing my name as he scrubbed the floor clean of blood and guts. Then, blankness. I died.

CHAPTER FOUR

My eyes opened. My heart wasn’t beating. There was a metal spike right through it and a ragged, crusted wound in my chest. And Mike Smith, my best friend, had just tried to kill me. Scratch that. Mike Smith, my best friend, had succeeded in killing me.