The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

Her suspicions. Her certainty. The terrible burden.

"I can't prove it," she explained. "But I know, more surely every time it happens. He steals something from them How can I say it? They surrender to him."

"Jesus God. Ye're saying he interferes with them?"

"No!" wailed Camilla. "That's nothing . I'm saying he takes the life out of them."

"But, Camilla, nobody's died!"

"No! He doesn't kill them, he's too clever for that. They die later, of something else, an accident, the flu; I've kept track. I know it happens. But he never gets the blame. What's worse is when they live, but it would be better if they didn't, because they're like him . I've known that happen, too."

The harshly furnished room listened in shock. The big TV screen gazed sombrely.

Camilla showed Noreen the photographs. The young housewife trembled. She babbled of "the polis". Camilla said, then he'd kill me . Oh, God, I don't want to die!

"I had to tell you," she wept. "I just had to tell. Oh, Noreen, the things I know "

And then the broken whispers, the breath coming fast. The last protests, the surrender. Noreen agrees abjectly that she will not raise the alarm. Shivering, sickened, she is deflowered, degraded, made complicit in something monstrous and she loves it.

For Camilla too, the experience was deeply satisfying.

She left the room, and crept back to number four.

A flash caught her as she opened the door, her lips still wet, features softened and eyes blind with afterglow. "Gotcha!" cried Sheridan, brandishing the camera, grinning; and she laughed. It was almost as if he'd kissed her. He turned away, and checked the preview screen. "Hmm." He sounded disappointed; or maybe puzzled.

"What is it?"

"Oh, nothing."

They left the big, stark yellow house early in the morning. Camilla found the moment of departure oddly disappointing. She would have liked to see Noreen again. She would have liked to see some consciousness, a touch of pallor; some shamed disquiet in the young housewife's eyes. But it's time to make a clean getaway. Noreen will wake up unsure that anything really happened in the night (she'll probably never miss what Camilla took from her): and that's the way it's supposed to be. In and out without a trace, love them and leave them.

She went into the kitchen for a moment, and stood looking around. The smells of kippers, blood-pudding, and laundry that's been dried indoors mingled sickeningly. Camilla felt suddenly, deeply disoriented. The taste of Noreen's life was in her throat; she had a horrible, momentary vision of somehow staying here, being trapped here , with the slab of a husband, the indifferent children, the sonorous Americans chewing overcooked bacon in that drear, meagre dining-room. She felt she had become transparent, suffocated

Sheridan tooted on the Bentley's horn.

"Sssh!" muttered Camilla, and hurried out to join him.

The big car drove away.

Noreen was up in time to hear them go. She'd had a sleepless night, but no staying in bed for Noreen. No one to bring her a tray. She had the breakfast for the guests to cook, Jonas in a poor temper, the children giving her hell and the baby fretful. But she was smiling. She stood in the porch and listened to the deep purr of the big car's engine. There they go, the beautiful people. She was fingering a rectangle of chaste cream pasteboard, simply inscribed Camilla Siibu . Nothing else, no address, no phone number: that's arrogance, isn't it? But it doesn't matter. You never do see them again, the passing trade. She tucked the card into the drawer, where she kept a select collection of such trophies.

"I have lovely guests, sometimes," she murmured. "It's lovely to have them."

And she returned to her domestic servitude, with a gleam of secret triumph in that beaming, rapacious smile; her naive hazel eyes no longer hungry, but replete.

They called ahead and booked a room in a place as far removed from that primitive B&B as money could buy. The country house hotel set in its own lush grounds: now this is more like it. Sheridan handed over the keys to the Bentley. Camilla flashed an automatically dazzling smile at the boy who took their luggage, and was faintly surprised to receive no eye-kick of appreciation in return.