• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Anji had missed the first part of the story. Dupre had brought his group to a pretty street in front of a walled eighteenth-century convent, and she had been admiring the houses, particularly a mansion that a sign announced was open for tours. That's more like it, she thought, making a note of the name.

'But why didn't they wait till they got here?' This time the questioner wasn't Fitz but one of the college students. 'I mean, people made coffins here, didn't they?'

Dupre ran right over her. "They brought their own coffins. And where do you suppose those coffins are today?'

He looked at Anji. 'In the ground?' she guessed weakly.

'No!' Dupre whirled and pointed to the shuttered attic of the convent. 'In there!'

'What are they doing in there?' asked the student.

'And in each coffin rests a vampire!'

'Do the nuns know about this?' said the student, confused.

'Sure they do,' said Fitz. "They party with the vampires.'

Dupre snarled at him. Fitz moved back a step. 'Sorry,' he muttered.

'Your unbelief,' Dupre hissed, 'is the reason we have seen no spirits tonight.'

'Sorry; Fitz repeated, as everyone glared at him.

'You.' Dupre gestured at Anji. 'Come here.'

'Oh, no, I'd rather -' she began, but he seized her hand and drew her forward to the wall. His palm was sweaty.

'Here.' He placed her other hand against the wall. 'Feel.'

Anji felt. It was the usual plastered brick wall, though in better shape than most. She wished Dupre would let go of her hand. He was holding it too tightly for her to remove it without fuss.

'Can you feel it?' he murmured.

'Erm 'she said.

"The vibration.'

She concentrated. There might be a slight vibration. She presumed it was from traffic on the next street. 'I think Maybe.'

"The echoes of the screams of the nuns who were walled up alive for taking vampire lovers!'

He can't believe this, Anji thought, facing his intense gaze. But why doesn't he seem to get the joke? Even the man with the ghost book was looking happily amused, as if being treated to a corny but fun scare movie.

'You want to give her hand a rest, mate?' said Fitz casually. 'She might have to use it again.'

'Ah,' purred Dupre. 'I am so sorry. You must forgive me if I have hurt you.'

He brought Anji's hand to his lips. She slipped it away as subtly as possible and crossed back to Fitz.

'I don't need a protector,' she muttered to him as they followed Dupre away from the convent.

'It wasn't about you,' said Fitz. 'He was getting on my wick.'

The Doctor never did get to the bottom of the cat crisis. He ended up in one of the back rooms on a sprung-cushioned sofa with a lot of other people, most of them young. Candles burned in blue, red and purple glass containers, and cigarette smoke writhed languidly through the wavering light. Discordant, enraged, high-tech music blared from the speakers. The Doctor was wedged between the girl with the chartreuse shoes and a heavy person with long lank hair, a beret and a sneer who could have been either male or female. The Doctor looked for the telltale Adam's apple, but the person had a scarf thrown artily around her or his throat.

'- like that rat's ass Flood,' he or she was saying.'He wants to be in the scene, he wants to be a magician. But, contrary to what Nietzsche has taught us, will isn't everything, and he remains a redneck loser.'

'You're being classist,' said someone.

'That's a typical middle-class response. "Classism" is a middle-class idea, a goody-goody way to censor subversive opinion.'

Though everyone in the room was to some degree pierced, tattooed or dyed, the only intoxicating substances apparent were humdrum cans of beer. Three or four boys in a corner had actually started a burping contest at one point but been yelled into silence. Now they were lying in a pile, snoring.

The Doctor politely declined a proffered plate of cheese cubes. This was a party thrown by people without enough money to throw a party, he thought,