Those Who Dwell in Darkness – Chapter 1.

I wanted to share the opening chapter to my upcoming book, Those Who Dwell in Darkness. Out on Kindle/Paperback, and Audible on 19th December. Pre-order links below. Enjoy

[image error] Chapter One [image error]

Oliver McCarthy had been, by his own admission, a truly terrible human being.

He’d been a thief, a liar, a killer, and probably a few other descriptors he couldn’t quite recall. He once bragged to a priest that he’d broken most of the Ten Commandments, although he couldn’t remember his mother and father enough to honour them. He was only little when they’d died.

He was twenty-nine when he became a vampire, and if he was honest, his awfulness had only increased.

At first, he thought it was going to be the best thing that would ever happen to him. Vampires were powerful; they were mysterious, dangerous, and above all, sexy. It had been the mid 1960s when he’d been turned. Oliver had been living in San Francisco at the time, taking part in free love and counterculture. He spent his days getting high and avoiding the law, usually at the same time. He figured that becoming a vampire would give him power to do what he wanted.

It hadn’t turned out quite like that.

The man who had turned him, the name of whom Oliver couldn’t remember despite having worked for him for nearly seventy years, had promised much and delivered very little.

That wasn’t to say that his life had been awful—he’d seen the world; he’d made a lot of money—but he was, after all these years, beholden to the man who had made him. And would be for the rest of his unnaturally long life, unless the man were to die, and the likelihood of a powerful vampire just dying was infinitesimally small.

Oliver sat on the bare wooden floor of a third floor flat in Whitechapel. A part of London once known for the murders of one deranged psychopath, and a place that had been gentrified over the decades. Anyone who had been around during the latter part of the nineteenth century would probably find the place unrecognisable. Hell, Oliver had only purchased the building in the 1980s, and he found Whitechapel unrecognisable to back then.

He’d always known that he was going to need a place to go should he have to escape. The London Borough of Tower Hamlets—which Whitechapel was a part of—wasn’t controlled by the vampires. He’d purchased the building under an assumed name, using cash, and rented out the bottom two floors to human tenants who had no idea who their landlord was. The third floor was officially an office space, although there was nothing in the flat that suggested it was used for anything but storage.

In reality, that was exactly what it was used for. Oliver had stored his valuables in the flat, retaining any information that he might need to save his life one day. Using one of two safes hidden under the floorboards to keep documents, fake passports, and cash, replacing the latter on a regular basis as currencies or notes changed. It had taken a lot of work to maintain, to keep hidden, but two weeks ago it had saved his life.

Oliver knew that his job was illegal. He was under no illusions that the man he worked for, the Boss, was not one of the good vampires. The Boss was involved in the creation of illegal vampires—those not sanctioned by the Assembly—in drugs, in spiked real blood packs, in extortion, gambling, and a host of other crimes that would probably get him a long stay in an Assembly prison.

It was the illegal vampires that were the big news, though. An operation decades in the making where people, paying obscene amounts of money, could bypass the long and often arduous official process of becoming a vampire. All of their documents looked official, because technically they were official—how, Oliver still didn’t know.

It had gone well for years. Until two weeks ago, the most recent experience, when it had all turned to shit. When some old man wanting an extended life had gone wrong, and had become a monster.

Oliver lay down on the floor and closed his eyes. It was dark outside, and the windows were triple glazed, but with his hearing, Oliver could still make out the sounds of cars, of people out celebrating. He needed to find a place to hide. Away from London. Away from the UK. Too many vampires in the UK. Not Europe either; that was too close. Anywhere that spent all year being too hot or too cold was out, too; vampires didn’t like the heat because it killed them, and they didn’t like the cold because it made the need to feed too much to handle.

He knew if his Boss found him, he’d kill him. Slowly. Oliver couldn’t go against his Boss; he was too well connected, too powerful, and while Oliver had killed plenty of people, he’d never hunted down and killed a powerful vampire. Besides—how could he hunt a ghost? Whatever psychic blocking had been done to his brain meant he couldn’t remember his Boss’s name, or what he looked like, and if he tried too hard it gave him a migraine. All he knew was that he couldn’t win that fight.

Besides, they’d somehow found out that his loyalties didn’t quite lie with his Boss. Fleeing was his only option.

“You don’t need to check on them,” Oliver said to himself, thinking about the two girls he’d managed to save from the catastrophe he’d just escaped. “Just run. Just run and don’t look back.”

Oliver tried to talk himself out of going back to the scene of the crime, so to speak. The two girls, Carla and Teresa, hadn’t expected to become vampires almost the same day a monster tried to murder everyone. His Boss had wanted a clean slate, had ordered Oliver to kill them both, but … well, he couldn’t. He’d brought them to his flat, but realised it was a terrible place to hide them, too risky, so he’d taken them to one of the halfway houses he’d arranged for new vampires in Soho. Somewhere his Boss knew nothing about, as Oliver was the only one who managed them. Though that wouldn’t be the case if his Boss found him and ripped the information from his mind. Hence he needed to escape. For his safety—and the girls’. Oliver hoped they would never be found. Or at least not found by his Boss or those who worked for him.

“Fuck,” Oliver snapped.

He could smell the blood on his jeans and hoodie, despite them being sealed in a ziplocked black bag. He’d risked showering when he’d first arrived, although he’d had to settle for a freezing cold shower, which had made him hungry. There was no blood in the apartment, synthetic or real. He never came back enough to make it necessary.

“Fuck,” Oliver snapped again, feeling the pangs of hunger. He’d managed to feed once in the two weeks he’d been running, and even that was only one synthetic blood pack that he’d had to steal from a vampire emporium in Shoreditch, because he wasn’t sure who was watching or tracking him. Avoiding the Assembly at all costs was his main goal now. That and anyone associated with his Boss. Basically, he couldn’t trust anyone, he was all alone, and he was, frankly, utterly fucked.

Oliver got to his feet and stretched. He was six feet tall, and thin. He’d been disappointed to discover that while he was super strong, if he’d wanted a toned and muscular physique, he’d have to actually work out. It seemed like something he should have been informed of before he’d said yes to becoming a vampire.

He had pale skin, short blond hair, and two weeks’ worth of beard growth. He wore midnight blue jeans, dark brown boots, and a plain black T-shirt.

“Right,” Oliver said to himself. Despite having been born in France, he was raised first in Amsterdam, and then in California; his accent was more the latter, although occasionally the Dutch came through.

He ran a hand though his hair and went through the plan. “Blood, then fleeing,” he said aloud as though that might make it a better plan. He had a fake passport in his pocket, along with ID and credit cards, all paid for some time in advance and hidden in the flat.

“Shit,” Oliver said, realising there was something else he needed to do. He removed the burner phone from his pocket and dialled one of three numbers that were kept on the memory: Danny.

It rang three times, and Oliver began to feel anxious that Danny wouldn’t answer. The feeling of relief when the phone was picked up was palpable.

“Oli,” Danny said, his voice a whisper. “Where the fuck are you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Oliver said. “I need you to get a pen and paper and write this down.”

“Wait a sec,” Danny said, sounding flustered. “Right, what is it?”

Oliver recited the address he’d left the two women. “Go there, find them, get them to safety.”

“Shit, Oli, the Boss is looking for you,” Danny said.

“I don’t care, Danny, just fucking do this, okay?” Oliver snapped.

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Danny said. “Get the girls, keep them safe.”

“I mean it, Danny; they don’t deserve to be caught up in our shit,” Oliver said. “I know you like Carla, so I know you’ll do this. You tell anyone who asks that she’s your insurance. That should make sure any other gang members leave her alone and don’t ask too many questions. You wait until all this dies down, and you help them get out. The Boss has bigger issues than them to think about. Can you do that?”

Danny was silent for a moment. “Yeah, yeah, I can do that. Anything else?”

“No,” Oliver said, feeling as if this was the last time he would speak to the young vampire. “Keep your head down, your mouth shut, and the Boss won’t even bother with you. None of you were there when this happened. None of you are a liability. He needs you all to keep working normally. You don’t know anything, got it?”

“Got it,” Danny said. “Oli, take care.”

“Be safe, Danny,” Oliver said and hung up, feeling a weight lifted from his shoulders.

He looked over at the door and paused. He didn’t know where he was going to flee. He removed a piece of paper from his pocket with Fortress Falls written on it in blue pen, and stared at it. That was his last option, but it was an option. Could he really do that to her? Could he really walk back into Yvonne’s life and screw it over? He didn’t want to. The last time she’d seen him, she’d told him to fuck off and never speak to her again. That was thirty years ago. He hadn’t even known where Yvonne lived until he’d started digging a month ago.

Oliver screwed up the paper and tossed it aside, as his anger and need to feed threatened to overwhelm him. Damn it.

He flicked to the second number in his phone: Barbarous. He dialled it and waited for it to go to answerphone. “It’s all gone to shit,” Oliver said. “There’s nothing that will come back to you. I’m going to see Yvonne; I need to see her before I disappear. Just do me one favour, and tell her I’m coming. I need to destroy this phone; I don’t want anyone to track me. She’ll be able to contact me if you need, but it’s too dangerous to stay here. The Boss, he’s fucked my memory, I can’t remember his name, his face, anything about him. All I know is, he knows who I am, and he’ll stop at nothing to find me. He can’t risk me remembering something.”

Oliver hung up again, feeling exhausted. He needed blood, not from a live person, he was too het up for that, but from an emporium. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Nothing good was going to come from anything that would happen next. He took a second deep breath, not letting it go until he’d stepped out into the hallway beyond.

He closed the door, posted the key back through the letterbox—he wasn’t going to be needing it again—and carrying a black rucksack with everything he needed, mostly money, left his building once and for all.

It was a short jog through the early morning streets of the still fairly busy city to get to the emporium. All shops of the kind were named the same thing, at least in the UK; Oliver wasn’t sure about everywhere else.

The windows of the shop were covered in dark fabric, and the door was made of metal, with a small grate at eye height. The sign above the door that said Emporium was in neon purple, giving everything an ethereal glow. Oliver knocked, took a step back, and waited as the grate opened.

“Need to feed,” Oliver said, adding, “please.”

The grate closed, accompanied by the sounds of bolts and locks being moved before the door was pulled open. “Weapons?” the deep male voice asked.

“No,” Oliver said, turning to show his rucksack.

“Open it,” the man said.

Oliver wanted to argue, but he was hungry, and needed food more than he needed to snap at someone. He unfastened his rucksack, showing the change of clothes inside, moving them aside to show his passport. The cash was inside a zip-up part inside the bag that was impossible to see unless you knew it was there.

The door opened wider. “Come in,” the man said.

Oliver checked both ways on the empty road, finding nothing out of the ordinary, and stepped into the emporium.

The emporium smelled of lavender and pot, presumably the former to mask the latter. There was a till, behind which sat a middle-aged woman with dark hair and tattoos all over her arms. The large man who had opened the door took his seat next to a glass cabinet showing a variety of products that could be purchased; gummies, cakes, and sprays were all on show. Each one had a healing benefit to humans. Vampire blood cured cancers and helped humans heal from injuries; it had been a big part of why humans and vampires now lived side by side. Vampire blood had revolutionised the medical industry, although too much at once, and it could paralyse the human taking it. If they were lucky.

After someone figured out what happened if you mixed it with CBD, it revolutionised the drugs industry, too. It was heavily regulated and monitored, but it had brought humans and vampires closer together. And had oddly made vampires less feared by the human population.

Emporiums catered to the humans who wanted to use vampire blood as a way to get stoned out of their minds, or mellow out, just as much as for vampires who needed to feed.

“How much?” the woman asked.

“Two pint packs, please,” Oliver said.

“What age?” she asked.

“Whatever is cheapest,” Oliver said. Humans had to be at least eighteen to donate, and it was considered that the older the human, the better the blood.

“ID,” the woman said.

Oliver fished it out of his pocket and showed her the card.

She practically snatched it out of his hand, turning it over and over. “Oliver Dent.”

“That’s me,” Oliver said with a smile.

“You want anything else?” she asked, passing him back his ID and moving to a door behind her and opening it.

“No,” Oliver said.

The woman shouted the order into whatever was behind the door, closed it, and retook her seat behind the till. “You ever tried the gummies?” she asked. “They mix the vampire blood with CBD and flavouring. It’s a good mellow high, even for vampires. And all completely legal, of course.”

“I need to feed,” Oliver said by way of explanation.

“It’s been getting cold,” the woman said. “You need to be careful.”

“Always comes earlier and earlier,” Oliver said with a smile. He tried to maintain some kind of small talk, while trying not to show his anxiety.

There was a knock on the door behind the woman, and she got up to answer it. Someone passed her a small black wooden box, with the word EMPORIUM inscribed on the side in gold lettering. Oliver only saw the person’s arm, but he felt the power that came off whoever it belonged to. No one in their right mind ever attacked an emporium. They were considered one of the safest places to work for good reason.

“That will be fifty quid, please,” the woman said, placing the box on the counter.

Oliver smiled, removed two twenties and a ten from his pocket, and passed them over. Lots of vampires only used cash, as not everyone was able to move into new technology with ease.

The woman took the money, opening the till and placing it inside. “Please, enjoy your meal.”

“Thank you,” Oliver said, almost falling over himself in his hurry to get outside.

He walked down the street, carrying the box as though there were a bomb inside it, almost able to smell the blood it contained, despite that being impossible as it was sealed inside the box, and inside bags. All of his attention was on the box, so he didn’t see the two people—a man and a woman—step out of the shadows and begin to follow him. If he had seen them, he’d have dropped the box and run.

Oliver walked for five minutes before finding a small park that was encircled in a four-foot metal fence. There was a sign on the gate that said No entry after 9 PM in red lettering. Oliver leapt over the fence as though it weren’t even there, landing softly in the barely illuminated park, and walked through to find a wooden bench.

He placed the wooden box beside him and fought to calm his mind. He needed to feed. It was all he could think about. He pulled on the string on the box, and it unwrapped around the outside, letting him lift the lid to show the two blood pouches inside. Each one was exactly one pint. Enough to keep him going for two weeks before he would need to feed again, maybe three if he was sensible.

Oliver removed one of the pouches, twisted the top, and was almost overwhelmed when the scent of the blood reached his nose. He took a moment to savour it. It smelled good. Sweet.

He took a sip, letting it sit in his mouth before swallowing and feeling the warmth down his throat, letting it spread inside of him. Another sip, and another, and soon he was drinking it as if he’d just found water after a month in the desert. He drank the whole thing in seconds and let out a soft moan of contentment. It wasn’t the same as drinking from a person, as feeling that connection, but it was definitely better than nothing.

Oliver sat on the bench and let the feeling of euphoria flow through him. He was in a happy place, a comfortable place, but he knew it wouldn’t last.

He saw the man in the shadows outside of the park. He was watching him. Oliver didn’t let on that he’d seen him and instead removed the remaining blood pack from the box, placing it in his rucksack, before springing to his feet and running as fast as he could. He reached the outer fence, leapt over it, and narrowly avoided a woman in a dark coat as she tried to grab him. The fresh blood in his stomach made him slightly light-headed, but it also made him stronger, and faster.

Oliver tried to dodge a second grab, but the man who had been outside of the park leapt over the fence, catching him in the chest with a kick that sent him back toward the woman, who punched him in the side with enough force to break his ribs. Oliver scrambled away, putting distance between him and his attackers.

Both wore dark trousers, black boots, and blood-red shirts under slate grey jackets. A white badge on their lapels, with a red circle and a black infinity symbol across it, denoted they were Inquisitors. And the number of dots above the symbol denoted their rank. Both had three dots out of a possible six. They had been at their jobs for some time.

They both had bald heads, and while the man was several inches taller than his female companion, they were both over six feet in height. The woman had dark skin, while the man’s was pale; the streetlights illuminated the faint blue tattoos across their bald heads.

Oliver knew they were here to kill him. He ran.

He moved as quickly as possible, running across roads, dodging traffic which blared horns, drivers shouting a variety of obscenities in his direction. Oliver didn’t dare look back as he moved down an alleyway, leaping over strewn detritus, until he’d reached the end, and was almost hit by a van as he ran across the road.

“Fucking idiot,” the male driver said.

There was silence for a few seconds before the driver shouted, “You too, you fucking arsehole.”

Oliver risked a glance and saw the two Inquisitors in pursuit. He turned a corner, ran down another alley, and at the end turned right and sprinted as fast as he could down a street full of restaurants and takeaways. He stopped outside of a kebab shop, stepped inside.

“Can I help you?” the man behind the counter asked.

“Exit,” Oliver said.

“What?” the man asked, as though he hadn’t heard.

“Fucking exit,” Oliver snapped, showing his vampire side.

Fear filled the man, and he pointed through the kitchen behind him. Oliver didn’t need telling twice—he vaulted over the counter, ran through the building, and burst out into a small garden beyond. He clambered up and over the twenty-foot high wooden fence, landing in a garden behind the kebab shop. He continued on through the gardens until he reached the end of the street, and landed on a footpath next to a road. He crossed it, risking a look behind him, but saw nothing as he stood in the dark mouth of an alleyway and watched the road he’d just crossed. The two Inquisitors arrived at the end of the street a few hundred meters up the road.

Oliver needed to leave the UK tonight. Fortress Falls it was. He just hoped Yvonne would forgive him.

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