11. An English Girl in Prague

Christmas Eve, 2009

“Love you too, Mum.”  Lola slaps a particularly bold, probing hand away from her thigh and switches the mobile phone to her other ear.  “I’ll be home before you know it.  Say hi to Dad for me.  Yeah, I will.  Yeah, merry Christmas to you too.  Love you.  Bye.”  She slides the phone shut and turns to the owner of the hand.

“That was my mother, you pig,” she says, helping herself to a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket.  “I thought you were going to the bar, anyway.”

“I did,” he replies.

“So where’s my vodka?”

“I drank. You talk a lot.”  His hand makes its way onto her hip, and Lola suppresses the urge to stub it with her cigarette.  Andrej might not exactly be the kind of man a girl would write about in her diary, but since meeting him this afternoon Lola hasn’t had to put her hand in her pocket once.  She might judge another woman for acting in such a way, but she can’t afford to have any feelings about it one way or the other just yet.  Can’t afford anything, full stop.

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.

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.

***

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.

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?”