TheVampireandtheMouse Read Free Page B

madness! This is… This is… Argh!”
    “Let’s take a walk,” Ben said. “I want to show you
something.”

Chapter Four
     
    Ben led me through the streets to a council estate. We walked
through a few rough streets filled with kids drinking from cans. Ben took my
arm as we walked past the groups. Usually they would shout things at me, like ooh
yeah, wouldn’t mind fucking her ha, ha . One look from Ben, however, with
his night-black eyes and his bodybuilder-like muscles, and they were
grave-silent. One guy, a little older than the others, maybe eighteen, stared a
challenge at Ben. Ben let go of my arm and walked up to him, staring him
straight in the eye. His friends rose and Ben smiled and said, “Better make it
a good shot, ’cuz if I get up you’re all dead.” He said it with such calm, such
self-confidence, as if any other outcome was unthinkable. The eighteen-year-old
backed away and the others turned with him. Ben smiled and said, “Yep, thought
so,” and then returned to me.
    “People like that rely on fear,” he said as we moved through
the estate. “Take it away from them and they’re powerless.”
    “What if they had attacked you?” I said, trying to keep fear
from my voice. For some reason I was embarrassed by it in Ben’s presence,
though usually I would’ve freely admitted that they scared me senseless.
    Ben laughed a low, throaty laugh. “Then they would’ve
attacked me.”
    My hand was on his arm. It was big and hard with muscle, and
as he curled it so we could interlock arms, the muscle tightened. Finally, he
stopped.
    “See that woman?” he said.
    He pointed to a lit window where a woman with a nasty bruise
on her eye was washing dishes. She wore a small smile that looked unnatural on
her face, as if she was either forcing it or she wasn’t used to wearing it. She
was beautiful, but she had that look of vulnerability that told me she’d been
told she was ugly or had been demeaned and bullied, or she had been through
something horrible. It was the look girls in school get if they’re bullied. It
was a look I’d had many, many times throughout my life.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “That’s the girlfriend of the man you killed. He repeatedly
raped and beat her and stole her money to buy drugs. She left him twice, but he
threatened her family so she returned to him. He’d beat her for anything, for
coughing too loudly, for wearing the wrong kind of makeup, anything.”
    I looked again at her smile, at the insecurity in it. She wasn’t used to smiling then.
    “How do you know all that?”
    “I asked her,” he said. “Well, Detective Chief Inspector
Bretel asked her.”
    “Why?”
    “To show you. Don’t you see? Killing that man, it wasn’t a
bad thing. He’d killed people, too, when he was younger. He killed a girl with
a baseball bat and another by strangling her. He was released from prison not
too long ago.”
    “But killing is wrong,” I said quietly, the blood, the
slack-jawed gaze, filling my mind.
    “Yes, yes, killing is wrong,” he said, with a dismissive
wave. “But you don’t need to dwell on that. Think instead of this woman’s
happiness. Because of you she’ll never have to spend hours cleaning the flat,
terrified that he’ll return and beat her until his hand aches because one dish
was out of place.”
    I tried to think of that as I stared at the woman, but all I
could see was Rat’s reproachful, lifeless eyes, asking me, Why did you do this,
darlin’? We just wan’ed to ’ave some fun! My breath came quickly and I fell
down. Ben knelt down next to me, but he wasn’t there, he wasn’t Ben. He was
Rat, gazing, gazing.
    “Go away ,” I spat. “Go away, go away, go away.”
    Rat stared on, unflinching. He wouldn’t go. He would stay
there and he would torment me and he would never leave me. His dead lips filled
with life and turned upwards into a twisted caricature of a smile. “Darlin’,”
he said. “You can’t leave me. We’re made fur each