A Love Like Blood Read Free Page B

legs awkwardly long.
    M Dronne explained that the female figure was a vampire, and that the image was a talismanic device to ward off such creatures; if they did not heed the warning, their fate would be that of their colleague on the bowl.
    How any of this was known, M Dronne did not say.
    My head swam, and in the darkness of the cellars I felt a return of the nausea from earlier.
    ‘I’m going up for some air,’ I called to the Major, but I don’t think he even noticed me.
    I climbed back up into the daylight and, suddenly feeling desperate for some air, found my way out into the grounds beside the chateau, overlooking the city.
    In the distance I could see our jeep and the private with his legs draped over the steering wheel, so I turned away and took a walk around the park, breathing in as much of the gently warming air as I could.
     
    That was when I saw it.
    The bunker. In fact, there were several of them, two by the chateau alone, more in the park. I found out later that, as the HQ of Oberbefehlshaber West, Saint-Germain in general and the chateau in particular had had numerous concrete bunkers and air-raid shelters constructed there, but why I wandered over to the one I did, I have never known.
    I wondered later if I’d heard something, but I don’t think so, not consciously at least. Maybe I just picked up on something without really knowing it and that was what took me over to the bunker’s mouth to look in.
    Though it was a bright morning, little light penetrated beyond the open doorway, and yet despite this I felt compelled to enter. I put my foot on the first step, ducked my head under the low lintel of the entrance, and went down, into the gloom.
    Then I did hear a noise, but it was very faint and I could not determine what it was. I trod quietly, the ground levelled off in front of me, and I took another step, waiting for my eyes to grow used to the dark.
     
    There was that noise again, just a little way ahead of me, and without making a sound, I pulled a book of matches from my pocket.
    I tore off one of the matches, lit it, and held it out in front of me, shielding my eyes from its light.
     
    What I saw there . . .
    What I saw there I saw only for the length of time it takes a single match to burn down, and yet it changed my life.
    Crouched on the ground, just a little way away, was a man. He was hunched over something, and as I lit the match, he stopped what he was doing, and turned to look at me.
    Underneath him, the lifeless body of a woman lay on a raised slab on the floor.  Her head hung back off the stone step, her hair splayed out. She was dressed, mostly, though her blouse was torn a little around her neck and breast. She was young.
    I saw that.
    At the same time, I saw the man. I couldn’t see what he was wearing – some dull uniform of sorts, but it was too dark to tell whether it was British or American. Or even German. His hair was short, dark, swept to one side, and from his mouth blood dribbled on to the woman’s once white blouse.
    His hand was on her left shoulder, holding back her clothing to expose a long and fresh wound from which blood flowed freely, and from which, I understood at once, he had been drinking.
    I didn’t move.
    It might sound like madness, but I didn’t move. I can only explain it as if I’d come across a giant wolf in the woods, and my body and mind had frozen from the fear. Somewhere, at the back of my mind, that’s how I felt: frozen. And yet I also knew instantly that I was in terrible danger. As a medical officer, I was unarmed, but that was not the source of my fear; my fear came from the look on the man’s face.
    He’d been discovered in the midst of some appalling act, and yet he didn’t even move, much less get up and run, or fight.
    All he did was look at me, and it was the look that terrified me, for it was a look of amusement, but not at what he was doing.
    He was amused by me .
     
    All that, in the time the match took to burn my fingers,