Intermission: A Taste Of Things To Come

There we have it.  Volume 1 of Vampire Love Songs, "Name Your Poison", is complete: click here to read it in full.  I will be taking a break from Seth and Mallory for the next few weeks to work on other projects, before coming back with more confessions and misadventures.  In the meantime, here are a few teasers for Volume 2, which has the working title "Beautiful Creatures".  (Spoilers for all chapters so far after the jump)

10. Bad Kids

It is the best kind of winter's morning: bright, crisp, and so cold that even a vampire's breath can be seen in the air.  A tall, rakish gentleman with shaggy dark hair sits outside a fast food restaurant on Wenceslas Square, flicking cigarette ash into a cup of cheap, undrinkable coffee.  His companion, a pretty young blonde, finishes the last of her hot chocolate.  It is their final day in Prague; at the train station a few streets away they will choose a new destination.  A new adventure.

9. Mother's Ruin

St. Helier, 1920

It is a Friday, and Mallory wishes to die.  It dawns on her rather suddenly, as if she has just remembered how to spell a word that has been bothering her all day.  She wonders if the enormity of such a wish should shock her, but then she realises that this desire for her life to be over has slowly and irrevocably seeped into every corner of her being over the last several weeks.  It is not so much an impulse as it is mere inevitability.

Interlude: Seth and Mallory's Playlist

These tracks more or less sum up how both Seth and Mallory feel in the aftermath of the events of the Vampire Love Songs instalments "Euphoria" and "Holy Wine".

8. Holy Wine

Seth agrees with his wife; the blond boy is beautiful.  They’ve watched him for the last five minutes, since he strode into the bar with the purposeful rhythm of a man trying not to appear quite as drunk as he is.

7. Euphoria

Passion is always a mystery and unaccountable, and unfortunately there is no doubt that life does not spare its purest children; often it is just the most deserving people who cannot help loving those that destroy them.

            - Herman Hesse

“Good morning, sweetie,” Mallory breathes in his ear as he wakes.  “Ready to be reborn?” 

“No,” Billy says casually, sitting up in bed.  “I’ve changed my mind.  Would you mind terribly?” 

Mallory tuts and pretends to think about it.  Before she can come up with an appropriately sarcastic answer, Billy has dived on top of her.

“Happy birthday,” Seth says from the doorway.  He shrugs off his robe and joins them.  It occurs to Billy, as he finds himself fellated, bitten and sodomised all at once, that this might not exactly be how everybody imagines turning twenty-one.

***

Interlude: Billy's Playlist

Billy is something of a mystery to Seth and Mallory.  While they are usually able to work out a person's story fairly easily, Billy has remained a closed book.  "Billy" isn't even his real name.  He's running from something, that's for sure, diving headfirst into sensory overload to avoid his ghosts.  Below are a few songs you might find in his battered, liquor-stained iPod.  In contrast to the more retro, melancholy tastes of his vampire bedfellows, these are the choices of a wild young thing who is very much of the modern age.

6. In The Garden Of Earthly Delights

“How did you two meet?”  Billy asks.

The three of them are on the bed.  Mallory lies on her back, taking care to stay still while Seth rolls a cigarette on her stomach.  Billy is sprawled across the foot of the bed; looking, for all intents and purposes, like a very expensive, spoiled pet.

“It was the late eighties,” Seth begins.

Interlude: Mallory's Playlist

Mallory is Seth's better half.  She has gentler manners and arguably more of a conscience - but that isn't to say she is any less complicated.  Every time Seth gives into his impulses, it is Mallory who shoulders the guilt.  Unless she's busy indulging her own vices.

5. A Private Dance

"I'm worried about Billy," Mallory says. The two of them are sat at a tiny table, close enough together that they could almost be on a date. The neon-lit stage before them easily shatters that illusion.

"You sound like his mother," Seth replies. After a moment his scornful expression softens. "But I think I know what you mean."

The girl on stage winks at them before blithely removing her sequinned brassiere. Mallory smiles politely, then turns in her seat to face Seth more fully.

"Have you seen the marks?”

Interlude: Seth's Playlist

Nothing gets under your skin like music.  And for me, nothing helps me get into a character's head better than a song - something they would listen to, something they feel a connection with.  Seth, one of the main characters in Vampire Love Songs, inhabits a sleazy underworld of addict anonymous groups, dive bars and cheap hotel rooms.  The first video in this playlist, a cover of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" by H.I.M., perfectly encompasses the trash and pleasure of such a world:



4. Brandy Alexander

Tired of being on the heights I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensations. - "De Profundis", Oscar Wilde

They call him Billy, and lately that's what he's been calling himself. At first it was a novelty; like going on holiday. Bleaching his hair and getting himself inked had been the first step in creating distance from his old self, running into Seth and Mallory that night had been the second. So when Seth jokingly first christened him, he didn't bother to correct him. Now, Billy seems just as good a name as the one he had before.

3. Dr. Feelgood

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2. Happy Hour

Her dress was ruined.  It hadn't cost much, and it was hardly as if she didn't enjoy buying new clothes, but still.  Was it that hard not to get blood everywhere?  Seemed to Mallory that Seth never spilled a drop of vodka, but when it came to the red stuff he became a dribbling child.  She never could stand messy eaters.

"Calm down," she told her reflection.  She knew this was just one of those moments that transpired in a relationship, where every single thing her husband did, and the way that he did it, felt like it was done with the sole purpose of driving her crazy.

1. Rehab

"My name's Seth," he begins, the same three words week on week. “And I'm an addict.”

"Hi Seth," the group echoes around him. Like a choir. A cult.

“It's been eight months since I slipped,” he continues. “And it's not been easy. Especially when the temptation to give in is just about everywhere you look.”

A few heads nod appreciatively; it's the same for all of them. Seth knows that if most of them didn't have the group to come to each week, they'd not stand a chance. Strength isn't stopping, of course. It's not starting again. That particular pearl of wisdom, which he spied somewhere on one of the many posters adorning the meeting room, makes him wish he had a cigarette.