Sarah the Vampire Slayer – Excerpt from Book 3

The area of Belgravia where I lived was a network of connecting horizontal and vertical roads, consisting mostly of these ridiculously expensive town houses. You could make you way through these streets very easily, cutting through side streets rather than taking the longer route around. If you missed one turning, you could easily get onto this road by taking the next turning. Unfortunately for me, it seemed the vampire was well aware of this and had used this to fool me into thinking she had given up the hunt. Of course, she had done no such thing.
As I headed up the road, I felt the stab of pins and needles shooting into my spine before I saw the vampire herself. Before I even had time to turn around, a dark shape came whirling out of another side street to my right and hit me full force; she literally barged into me and I was unable to stop my fall as I tumbled to the ground, with a frenzied vampire wrapped around me. The knife went flying from my hand and clattered into the gutter. Together we hit the floor in a jumbled mess of arms and legs and as we rolled onto the pavement, I could feel her hot breath on my face and I panicked, hitting out with my fists to try and keep her awful mouth away from my skin. I caught her across the forehead and she cried out but still clutched at me as I desperately tried to pull away. I swung out again, harder this time and managed to catch her nose, which cracked easily with a sickening crunch. Blood flowed immediately and she cupped her face in her hands and shrieked. Droplets spilled out between her fingers and splattered red onto her white pumps. Holding out her blood stained palms in front of her, she stared at her shaking hands as if she could not quite believe it was her own blood. Her lip trembled.
“Please….” I pleaded, backing away “you don’t have to do this. We can stop this now, you can turn around and walk away…..please.”
She stared at me, eyes widening at my words and for a moment – just for a moment – I was sure she was going to do just that; at least I think she wanted to, but then she blinked and it was gone. She sneered at me, blood snaking down her chin and I knew this vampire wasn’t going to just turn around and walk off into the night.
I whipped round, knowing my only hope was in retrieving the knife and, seeing my intentions, the girl threw herself at me with a strangled yelp. My face hit the kerb before the rest of me did and I felt the cold, rough kiss of concrete on my cheek and the vampire on my back, clawing and scratching at me. I tried to stretch out my arm but the knife was just beyond my reach. She was so small and slight that it wasn’t that difficult to knock her slightly off balance and I twisted around and found myself underneath her as she came at me again with wildly flailing arms and blood-stained grimace. Her face was just inches from mine and she was panting; a wheezy excitable sound, although it seemed fuelled more by panic than anything else. Her eyes were drenched in anxiety and you would have thought it was I, on top of her, hammering at her frail body and not her on top of me and about to feast on my carotid artery.
With a cruelty I did not know I possessed, I slammed my fist into her nose again, and she cried out, clutching at her face. Pushing her off, I scrambled backwards and managed to grab the knife, just as she threw herself at me again and we stumbled across the pavement. Now it was my turn to cry out as my back hit the railings outside a house, the iron bars imprinting onto my spine. She grabbed me and we spun, like dancers waltzing in the evening dusk, before I lost my balance and went tumbling back into the gap at the top of a basement stairwell. With a gleeful smile painted on her face, she threw herself at me, squealing in excitable triumph knowing that she had me cornered.
As she hit me, her face turned from one of glory to one of shock. For a moment, her eyes glazed over in bewilderment and she pulled back, her hand slowly reaching for the knife which was now embedded in her neck. I pressed myself up against the wall, watching in horror as her hand found the knife and grabbed at it, pulling slightly and releasing a spray of blood. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but the only sound was a volley of shallow gasps. Her hand fell limply to her side and she stumbled backwards. Realising she was about to fall I quickly tried to grab her but her hand was so slick with blood that she slipped out of my grasp and tumbled down the stairwell behind her. She fell, as if almost in slow motion and I watched helpless, on all fours at the top as she bumped her way down the short flight of steps and ended up in a crumpled heap at the bottom.
Hesitating for fear that someone might have heard or seen our fight and was now coming to see what was going on, I waited for a few seconds before running down the steps and hovering over her, not knowing what to do. She stared up at me, her eyes wide in shock and pain and she again tried to grab at her throat, but her hands missed the knife and she just grabbed at air, fingers twitching in front of her. Slowly I knelt down beside her, feeling sickness twisting in my gut as I saw the knife still sticking halfway into her neck, and a dark, sticky stain spreading onto the ground. She breathed out in sharp, staccato gasps and her chest heaved in and out violently.
Feeling the sobs bubbling up into my throat, I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the noise that wanted to escape. Reaching over I touched the knife, wrapping my fingers around the hilt and almost recoiling at the wetness. I tugged at it, hating the noise it made as I pulled it from her throat. The blood flowed copiously now and I put my hand down on it, trying to stem the tide but knowing it was pointless.
“I don’t know what to do,” I croaked “I can’t stop it. It won’t stop. I didn’t mean to. Really I didn’t. But you wouldn’t give up. Why couldn’t you just give up?”
I was sobbing now, tears streaming down my face and my cries leaving me in great, guttural groans. Her eyes never left my face as I cried. I abandoned the knife now and pressed down harder with both hands.
“What can I do?” I urged her “please tell me what to do!”
She wrapped a small, bony hand around my wrist and squeezed weakly; her wide, frightened eyes fixed on mine.
“Run,” she whispered “they’re coming..”

Copyright (c) Lindsey Clarke 2012