I heard another deafening thump behind me as the soldiers tried for the third time to break down the thick oak door, they would get through soon. I cast my eyes around me at the long thin room I was in, the cold stone floor was covered in dust and debris from when they gutted the place and the walls were empty apart from some graffiti slandering a local gang. The only thing in the room apart from me was an old upturned table with one leg missing, it was as grimy, tired and broken as the human who shared its space. It hurt me to think that this place had once been my home and the only place that I felt truly safe but now it was being cracked open on the orders of people who also had once found a haven here. But those people had turned against the people who had helped them and there was only me left who knew their true nature.

Suddenly my vision clouded and my head rushed with full force, the drugs were starting to kick in but I fought back and stumbled through the once elegant glass doors that lead outside. The bright sun made me squint but the bitter wind knocked a little more sense into me. Like the Manor, the gardens before me had once been beautiful but now were nothing but an overgrown wasteland home to only helpless vermin and longing. I looked around me for a means of escape but through blurred vision it was all I could do to fight back the misty haze that was threatening to overcome me.

An almighty crash informed me that soldiers had finally broken through and reduced the grand old oak door to splintered piles of wood. The world swayed in front of me as the effort of remaining conscious mixed with panic. There was a tiny hidden gate at the far end of the grounds which leads out onto the hyperway and if I could only reach it then I might have a chance to escape. Problem was that my feet wouldn't obey me as the drugs started taking their true effect and I was rooted to the spot. I stumbled slightly forward and nearly plunged into the grass until all of a sudden I felt a strong arm around my waist lift me up.

Up and completely off the ground into the sky. My bemused self giggled at the realisation that I was flying but when I eventually thought to look around at my rescuer the drugs took their final hold and I slipped into unconsciousness.

Labels: adventure, chase, extract

It was quiet outside. I don't know why I noticed it at the time but silence reigned over the parked cars and not even the wind was whispering in the stillness of the night. The inhabitants had either not risen from their vile pits since the night before or weren't due back until the following morning and I was probably the only (live) person in the street with a steady job that didnft involve some kind of illegal import. (If you call buying whisky for my drunken manically depressed skunk of a boss, whilst occasionally trying to write an article amidst the mountain of junk on my shared desk a job.)

Outside, a stray cat screeched to a halt at the base of an ancient lamppost clawing at a mouse in her paws, ripping at the flesh yet her yellow eyes were kept fixated on the moon. She meowed and hurled the carcass to the floor, leaping at the battered Skoda in the drive across the road.

The light flickered out above me which told me two things: I couldn't finish the book I was reading and I needed to top up the meter. The cat screeched again as I threw my jeans in the general direction of the wardrobe and curled up under my covers, huddling in the oversized t-shirt I had lived in for the past two days. A gunshot sounded outside and there was sheer silence before a bloodcurdling scream that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, sounded through the stillness, shortly followed by another gunshot.

This was going to be a long night.

I remember running down the stairs pulling my jeans on as I went and then I grabbed my keys and leather jacket from the bottom of the stairs before flying out the door, slamming it behind me. Nothing else had stirred but I pelted down the street like I was being chased before I reached the alley. I knew exactly where to go, nowhere else in this neighbourhood would I hear I scream that said "help me" like that one did. It was so secluded in the dark alley and I wasn't surprised to find I was the only person out there that night, I was the only one in this god-forsaken pit who actually wanted more than the next shag, the next high or the next fight. There was just me.

That is unless you count the two corpses on the pavement.

There was a young man, around his mid-twenties I'd guess, sprawled against the wall with a bullet hole right between the eyes. He had a shock of blond hair which looked grey in the moonlight. The blood was already dripping onto the smart grey business suit he wore, Armani, I'd say l although from the way he wore it, despite being a corpse, it was a fake. No class, a pretender.

Then, in the entrance to the alley, at my feet was a girl. Bright blonde hair, strikingly pretty in a classy dress that made her look like she had come straight out of the 60s. Shame about the blood stains. It was sad really because she wasn't from this side of town, she didn't deserve to be shot down because she saw something she wasn't supposed to. She had probably just missed the last bus home and now she was just Jane Doe.

I called the police.

They didn't arrive until about and hour later and I was freezing from sitting on the curb, starring at the two bodies. Not that they bothered me, it's just worrying how much I'm now used to corpses in this town. It's meant to be the new millennium but it feels like I'm surrounded by 20s gangsters: sex, drugs, money and death. But that's The Rouge Quarter for you, whoever thought giving it a French name would make it any better was sorely mistaken.

"Oy! Robson!" Even the police where piles of horse shit. This particular moron was the DC I'd encountered before, he couldn't be bothered to make an effort in his job so he blames me for everything. I stood up.

"I called it in, Grenn. Don't even try and pin it on me, just do your job properly for once." He eyed me up again.

"I don't care, Robson, you're the only witness we've got" he replied.

"Since when do you use witnesses?" Sarcasm: always my best form of defence. He rolled his eyes and turned to watch the bodies being loaded into a nearby ambulance. DC Grenn was short, overweight and hated his job when first met him, he's still the same just older and, if it's possible, he cares even less.

"Just because you think you're a bigshot reporter for the daily rag doesn't mean you get to come to any old crime scene and take a few snaps," he said. I bit back a smarmy retort.

"I heard the gun go off," I said slowly. He looked up to see how serious I was, "I heard the scream and then the second gunshot." Cautiously he scanned the scene again, looking for a way out. That wasn't going to happen, I was the last good person in the Rouge Quarter and I'm not that good. I wasn't letting him win. "Do you really think I would've turned over and gone back to sleep after that?"

I saw the look on his face which said it all. This was the fourth shooting in the past 2 months and he was meant to be catching the killer whereas I was doing a better job through the press. Witnesses would much rather be anonymous tha threatened by the police and that was the way Grenn worked. The pen is mightier than the sword? It seems more people with open up to a nosey reporter than a drunken cop. That's what it was like in the Rouge Quarter, trying to choose the lesser of two evils.

DC Grenn flicked his cigarette onto the floor and stalked off back towards his panda car, ignoring me and my question.

Labels: crime

Thou hast so wrong'd mine innocent child... Thou hast belied mine innocent child... thy slander hath gone through and through her heart... The words of sweet Hero's father swam in front of Claudio's mind's eye as he looked out through the dark grounds to the church. Such anguished, angry words once sounded with grief and fury from Leonato's mouth now echoed in Claudio's ears, taunting him with his own dire mistake. How could he have acted so brash, so unforgiving, so cruel, when he knew in his heart of the pure sweet innocence that is... was Hero. The fall of that delicate girl was his doing and so on this night he was undone.

Labels: afterlife, paranormal, school, shakespeare

The cold air surrounding me whipped at my long black hair and bit into my pale skin ripping away any feeling I had left. The thin coat I was wearing was no kind of protection nor was the thigh length dress I was so fond of and of course tonight had to have been the night I chose to wear stockings. My mother used to tell me that stockings were the “socks of a prostitute”, my grandmother believed them to be the “devil’s apparel”, I however reasoned that either way sheer black hosiery looked hot. Admittedly walking down a cold dark alley didn’t exactly give me chance to flash a bit of leg. Suddenly a shiver ran down my spine and I snapped my head around to look back to the entrance to the alley. I figure was standing there, a familiar figure who’d I’d passed minutes earlier at the bar. He seemed somehow taller and thiner, more threatening, less human. Someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley in the witching hour. His hands were shoved in his pockets in a way that seems that he was at utter ease in the dark night. He brushed a hand through his hair and stepped over the threshold of the alley.

I turned away from him again and continued down the alley, I smiled remembering the gate at the other end, perfect for a swift escape. Two sets of footsteps echoed in the quiet shadows out of joint with each other, different species if you didn’t know any better. One set stopped.

I had frozen just a metre from the end of the alley, my hair was let go by wind and the gentle curls lay over my shoulder as still as my frozen heart. Yet more silence as his footsteps came to an end directly behind my own. The scene could have been from a painting considering the stillness as he breathed out. He hot breath swelled over my neck making my skin burn and in a movement that seemed sudden in the stillness he trail one angular hand over my hair to the base of my neck making my spine prickle.

Leaning right over my shoulder, his hot skin touching my own, he breathed in slowly and deliberately, taking in my scent. His thin hand snaked down my back and settled on my waist then with some force he gripped my waist, spun me and thrust me against the gate. The rattling sounded loudly but neither of us heard it. A guttural growl came from his throat as he pushed me into the wall with the full weight of his lean figure, I could not move, whether from force or fright. One hand worked it’s way deep into my hair and the other steadily followed the curves and contours of my body as he stroked down and settling on my thighs. Fingering the hem of my dress he buried his face in my neck, breathing deeply, his breath becoming more and more ragged. As his breath shuddered though his body once more his hips pressed into me, his lower hand now firmly grazing the top of my stocking on the inside of my thigh.

His lips brushed my neck bringing my eyes to the pale exposed skin before them, I was close enough to feel his pulse right there and suddenly all I could smell was lust and blood. That familiar energy once again course through my body and in one swift motion my incisors sharpened once more and I sunk my teeth deep into his neck, hot blood rushing over my tongue. The overwhelming taste filled me to my core with blood and as I drank, my visioned blurred, I was deaf, his scent filled my nostrils and we were one.

When I finally had drained him I examined his neck, I gently licked the two perfect bite marks in his sweet flesh, already mourning the passing of the high and dropped him to the floor. I breathed in the cold night air and with a stark realisation that my thirst was still not quenched I stalked off into the night checking that the subtle line of my stockings was still visible. Visible enough to create that perfect lustful temptation. The one that would bring me to my next Bloodlust.

Labels: sexual, vampires