The Midnight Hour by Neil Davies Page A

window blind, and then there was a bat which darted between the shuffling ghouls before setting off after the girl.
    “Bloody show off,” grumbled Edward.
     
    Janet glanced backwards and kept running.
    She couldn’t see them now. She must have lost them.
    She grimaced at the pain in her knee but she had to keep going. Couldn’t give them a chance to catch up. But what in God’s name were they? They looked like… she shuddered… dead bodies!
    She began to mumble a prayer as she ran, fear tightening in her stomach, blurring her vision with tears.
    Surely this was a dream, a nightmare? Things like this just didn’t happen in real life did they?
    She screamed as a black shape flashed before her face and then laughed hysterically in reaction. Only a bat, she told herself. A bat can’t hurt you.
     
    The vampire transformed in mid flight and crashed into Janet’s back in his human form. She was unconscious as she hit the ground.
    Edward and his followers continued to shuffle steadily forward, their hunger growing painful. The imagined taste of virgin flesh already in their mouths. It wouldn’t be long now.
     
    The vampire looked at Janet, agitated longing clawing at his stomach, his loins, his whole being.
    She lay silent and motionless on her back, where he had rolled her. Her skirt had been pulled almost to her waist with the movement and her legs had fallen invitingly open. Nervously, he ran a hand between them and bent his head to her neck, allowing his sharp teeth to gently touch her skin with its pulsing artery beneath.
    No!
    He pulled away. He couldn’t. He was to share her with the ghouls, and for that she was to remain a virgin. An undrained virgin.
    Still, he argued with himself, it was a long time since he’d had a virgin. A hell of a long time!
    Grinning, he turned to look back to where, in a few minute’s time, the ghouls would appear. The vampire shrugged his shoulders and spoke to the unconscious girl.
    “You can’t fight it you know. Not when it’s in your nature.”
    Edward stared angrily at the girl. She was white, deflated, drained of blood. Legs wide open. Skirt thrown up around her shoulders. He grabbed at her torn panties where they had been hastily thrown and stared at them. His eyes jerked skywards as a bat darted among the upper branches of the wood. It seemed to be laughing at him.
    “Bloody vampires,” he grumbled, turning away from the dead girl. “Think they own the world. That was probably the first and last time a virgin will come through these woods alone and at night, and he has to ruin it for us!”
    He stuck two fingers up at the circling bat and shouted, “Bastard!”
    The bat seemed to laugh all the more.
    Stuart Suckm shuffled forwards and shyly touched the dead girl’s legs. “I wonder what it’s like?” he muttered to himself.
    Edward stared at him, suddenly alert.
    Stuart seemed unaware of the interest and continued to mutter, running his hands along the girl’s pale thighs.
    “I never had a woman when I was alive,” he said sadly.
    The assembled ghouls turned on him with wide hungry smiles.
     
    Edward licked his fingers appreciatively.
    “There’s nothing quite like virgin flesh,” he said, relaxing back against a suitably angled gravestone, his appetite almost fully sated. “Nothing fills you up quite so well.”
    The other ghouls, many still eating, mumbled their agreement.
    Edward smiled. The world certainly looked a better place on a full stomach. He even found himself considering forgiveness for the selfish vampire who had so nearly robbed them all of a taste of virginity.
    “Ah yes,” he said, pleased with Undeath generally. “There’s nothing quite like…”
    A chewing ghoul broke wind loudly and the assembly giggled like schoolboys. Edward laughed as the guilty ghoul apologised.
    “Never mind,” he said. “Stuart Suckm always did have a knack for interrupting!”
    He tore another finger from the corpse and chewed contentedly.
     

DEATH BY