What Could Go Wrong When a Vampire Gets Bored

The acid-yellow taxi squealed to a halt against the high kerb, flinging a fan of icy slush across the pavement. Nika leapt out, slammed the door, yanked up the collar of her leather jacket as she went, and instantly regretted the outfit. A collar against the wind here was like a condom against a tsunami: technically protection, but designed for entirely different purposes.

Tonight Glasgow had served up a classic: neither rain nor snow, just a raw grey suspension hanging in the air, where drizzle mixed with factory smog and crept under the skin like a cocky cabbie's hand under a skirt. And the wind, the third member of the ensemble, tore at her hair as if it owed the wind money, flapped the hem of her jacket, crawled up her sleeves, and generally carried on like a drunk wedding guest who had decided to grope the bride.

For a second her thoughts slid elsewhere, to a place where weather like this passed for normal. There the damp wasn't an enemy but a familiar backdrop, almost a relative. How did the joke go? "In the Bible it rained for forty days and forty nights, and they called it a flood. In my city, we call that summer." And suddenly she felt strangely calm at the thought that one day she should simply drop everything and fly back for a couple of days, stand under that familiar rain, not cursing it but welcoming it like an old friend. But now wasn't the time for nostalgia. Right now she had to avoid turning into an icicle on the pavement.

She cut straight across to the three-storey brick building, not granting the taxi driver, who sat frozen and staring into space, a single glance. The building stood heavy and sullen, as if deliberately built to make passers-by uneasy. Thick brick, rough with soot and age, looked like armour. In the basement lurked the Iron Fang: it smelled of iron, tobacco, beer and rock, and of that peculiar tension that always hangs in places where people and non-people settle business without unnecessary paperwork. Above the bar, floor after floor, ran the departments of the Inquisition: offices with identical desks, identical chairs and identical folders, which stayed empty most of the time. Nika knew perfectly well that the inquisitors preferred to settle everything downstairs, in the hum of voices and the smell of whisky, where tone of voice and the weight of a stare did the work of protocols. The upper floors were kept as scenery: look, we're a serious outfit. But the seriousness lay not in the paperwork but in how abruptly conversations died whenever Sol, head of the local branch, walked through the door.

Outside the Iron Fang, propped against the heavy stonework, loomed the bulk of Duncan. Six foot six of beard and shoulders: with a build like that, Glasgow offers two career paths, bouncer or biker. Duncan had managed to combine them. He stood there in a biker jacket over a T-shirt with the logo of some ancient rock band, as though the famous "charms" of the weather were a mosquito bite to an elephant.

He watched the departing taxi with a lazy gaze and, as Nika approached, arched one thick brow, like a man who has caught a drunk hooker sprawled across his bike: not so much furious as wearily astonished. Here we go again. What am I supposed to do with this? The streetlamp glinted off his silver inquisitor's badge.

"In a taxi, eh, Ni?" He grinned. "Whit's the matter, then?¹ Yer wings at the dry cleaner's, halo needs charged?² Is the broom back in the cupboard where it belongs? Sweeps better than it flies, I hear. Whit did ye dae tae the poor cabbie? An' mair importantly, whit for?"

Nika stopped a couple of paces away, pointedly ignoring the heavy "holy" aura rolling over her in waves. Any other vampire would have felt it like a taser. She, on the contrary, felt warmed by it. A walking corpse, if you believed half the films, and here she was, edging toward her natural enemy like a cat toward a grizzly bear. He was no grizzly, and in any way that mattered he was no enemy either. Bloody hell, she wouldn't have minded warming herself against him right now, but he'd be the last to find out. Ever. Hee-hee. Instead she said something entirely different.

"Duncan! I'm a vampire, no'³ a witch, and definitely no' an angel!" Nika snorted, burying her frozen hands in her pockets. "And for your information, even witches dinnae fly on brooms any more. I doubt they ever did. Most likely your inquisitor numpties⁴ made that rubbish up, the sort whose sex life happens once an era and only with a protocol. And as for the cabbie…"

Her face twisted in a squeamish grimace.

"I can't stand it when they undress me with their eyes, weighin' up how to lay me out in that very taxi and shag me. Macho man, my arse. Half-baked, with a pathetic imagination to boot!" Nika jerked her head toward where the car had gone. "And the funny thing is, he looked like a model family man: wedding ring, photo of the kids on the dashboard, even a keyring that said 'My Family, My World'. And in his head, a rubbish dump. Fiddlin' passengers, billin' for traffic jams that never existed… and thinkin' that way about customers. I'd get it if he were just some lecherous good-lookin' bloke who at least knows what he's doin'. But no! This one genuinely believes he's entitled to those looks and thoughts. The only reason I didnae kill him is that he's never assaulted a drunk fare. Sometimes he got handsy, pocketed 'forgotten' handbags or wallets, but never crossed the line. That's his whole virtue: 'I'm no' a rapist, I'm just a crook and a pervert.' Lovely man."

She sighed, shivering again as a fresh gust hit.

"So I had to lean on his will a wee bit,⁵ just to get his brain back out of his trousers and into the skull where it's meant to be stationed. Then I wiped every memory o' me and replaced myself with two old gentlemen who snogged⁶ furiously on the back seat the whole way and kept invitin' him to join in! Let him start savin' up for a therapist."

Duncan shook his head, plainly trying to banish the picture, and, judging by his face, failing. Having savoured his suffering, Nika sighed dramatically.

"Now, about my beloved bike…" she began, and promptly jabbed an accusing finger, its sharp nail painted scarlet, into his broad chest. "One ginger-bearded git, six foot six and built like a bear, has been promisin' for two weeks to swing by and listen to what's knockin' in the engine. But naw!⁷ The second I so much as hint at it, this certain someone melts into the fog like a girl's illusions. Testin' my bloodlust, that's what it is. I'm this close to grabbin' him by the beard, draggin' him home and standin' him next to the bike as a livin' battery. Let his blood be the fuel for once. I'm nearly convinced that if I poured it into the tank instead of petrol, the bike would start, seein' as there's clearly more alcohol in this man's blood than the legal limit allows. And if the knockin' finally stops too, the sacrifice wasn't in vain. Almost like tuning: only instead of a new gasket, an opened artery."

"Och,⁸ so is that an invitation tae a date, m'lady?" Duncan pressed a theatrical palm to his chest, his voice dripping pathos like a leaky tap.

"Duncan!" Nika barked, jumping in a futile attempt to reach the back of that ginger menace's head. He dodged with ease, roaring with laughter like a whole garage of Harleys idling. She planted her feet on the wet tarmac and glared up at him, eyes flashing. "We've been through this! At least three times. Or are you suggestin' we act out a scene from that film? The one your department, the one failin' to disguise itself as a motorcycle club, howled at like a herd of geldings on an outing?"

She put on an innocently roguish look and breathed out, in a dramatic half-whisper, like a cheap actress in a B-grade horror:

"'Oh, hi, I'm a bloodsucker… shall we greet the dawn, claws locked?'"

Duncan's whole manner changed. He leaned in, looming over her, which was easy with his size (everyone looms over her, annoying, damn it), and with a lazy huskiness delivered the film's next line, copying the on-screen expression down to the last detail: anticipation in his eyes, the corners of his mouth turned up, as though he'd played this scene a hundred times and enjoyed it every time.

"…Actually, sounds kinda romantic."

And he winked, so quickly that anyone who blinked would have missed it. It held everything: mockery, challenge, and the silent I know you're angry, but we both