Pretty Young Things Read online

  Title Page

  PRETTY YOUNG THINGS

  by

  Dominic McDonagh

  Publisher Information

  First published in England in 2006 by

  Telos Publishing Ltd

  17 Pendre Avenue, Prestatyn, Denbighshire, LL19 9SH, UK

  www.telos.co.uk

  Digital edition converted and distributed in 2011 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  Telos Publishing Ltd values feedback. Please e-mail us with any comments you may have about this book to: [email protected]

  Pretty Young Things © 2006 Dominic McDonagh.

  Cover artwork by Gwyn Jeffers

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  1: Brand New Vein

  It was late when Chelsea got back to the house: it was starting to get grey outside, and her eyeballs were itching from the first thin, washed out hints of daylight. She’d walked back to Faulchion Close after losing the car she’d taken from Victor near Sub Club. It’d probably be an idea to stay away from there for a while, Chelsea thought. She couldn’t say she was heartbroken at the idea.

  Chelsea was a bit surprised to find that Hayley was still up, perched on the bottom of the stairs in the hall, sporting her usual schoolgirl fetish gear and playing with her Gameboy Advance. Hayley looked up, her eyes widening, as Chelsea pushed the front door shut behind her and slumped against it.

  ‘What on Earth happened?’ Hayley said. Chelsea had to admit she looked pretty rough. One sleeve of her orange PVC puffa jacket had burst, and was trailing a snowdrift of stuffing out of its popped seam. She hadn’t looked in any mirrors on the way back, but she knew that she had a black eye. Her tights and her t-shirt were ripped, and she’d dropped her boots in a skip after she’d broken the heel off one of them. High heels, even of only a couple of inches, weren’t very practical in a fight. She hadn’t been very fond of them, in any case. Her face was covered in blood, though most of it wasn’t hers. She had a split lip as well, which hurt every time she breathed. She didn’t feel a whole lot better than she looked, having had a long and tiring walk home, which had taken a lot more out of her than the fight, particularly after it had started getting lighter outside. Her feet hurt as well.

  Chelsea shrugged. ‘A bunch of chavs tried to rape me outside Fraternity,’ she said. ‘I had to leave the car there because I shoved one of them a bit too hard and his head went through the windscreen. I think I might have killed him, so getting stopped by the police wasn’t a very good idea. Besides, they probably notice if you’re driving around with no windscreen.’

  Hayley smiled: her plump face was split open by her wide, slightly froggy, grin. She had the sort of mouth that made her look like a pit-bull when she yawned, and sometimes gave the impression that her head was going to split in half. Her video game beeped to itself a couple of times, ticking off her final lives in whatever she was playing, then fell silent. Probably something old school. Hayley looked like a teenager, but she was old enough to remember Space Invaders from its first time around the block. ‘Particularly given that the car was stolen in the first place,’ Hayley said. ‘One of those “You should see the other guy” things, then?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ Chelsea admitted. ‘I’m sure I broke his neck, and I might have killed a couple of the others, even if I didn’t. I threw one of his friends through a plate glass window, pushed another’s teeth down his throat, then ran like hell while the others were trying to get their heads around it all. I could probably have taken the rest of them, but it would have been more trouble than they were worth, given that I’d already wrecked the car. Besides, they were just the kind of wankers who’re likely to be tooled up.’

  ‘Shellsuits, baseball caps, a lot of cheap gold and their trackie bottoms tucked into their socks?’ Hayley asked. Chelsea nodded. ‘I wonder what a bunch of neds like that were doing in a gay club in the village?’

  ‘They weren’t in the club, I don’t think,’ Chelsea said. ‘Just hanging around outside, looking for a swish to beat up.’

  ‘It looks like you bled one of them, at least.’

  ‘I didn’t, as a matter of fact,’ Chelsea said, irritation dripping from her voice. ‘This mess is because I burst one of the retard’s eyeballs hitting him. I hope somebody else got lucky tonight, because I obviously didn’t.’ Chelsea’s tone changed a little as she continued. ‘And I had to walk back here from bloody Princess Street; I could hardly catch a taxi or a tram looking like this. I’d left early because there was nothing happening in Fraternity and I thought I’d try somewhere else, and then these wankers accosted me.’ Her accent skipped up a couple of classes. ‘Rather spoiled my evening out, dear.’

  ‘Sophie and Rowena both pulled, so don’t worry about that,’ Hayley said. ‘You should probably have a look in the cellar before turning in. You look terrible.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Chelsea said. ‘You were sitting up late waiting for me?’ Hayley nodded. ‘You get off to bed now, then. I’ll be up myself in a minute. Just want something to eat and a shower first.’

  ‘Another club we probably shouldn’t go to alone,’ Hayley said, shaking her head as she stood up. ‘It’s getting so Manchester isn’t safe for the single female vampire anymore.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Chelsea said, ‘but this sort of shit plays havoc with a girl’s diet. I wish they’d found a loved-up teenager to molest or a queer to send to casualty instead.’

  ‘So do they, I’d imagine. Still, I doubt they’ll mention anything about a skinny girl with a posh accent beating the shit out of four of their mates. There’s no way in hell any wannabe tough guy is ever going to admit to that, is there?’

  ‘True enough. I’m obviously some dreadful gang from Moss Side. Or perhaps Eastern European immigrants.’

  ‘Maybe it was your pimp who started the trouble,’ Hayley said, smiling. ‘A big black guy with low carat rocks sunk into his teeth and a feather in his hat.’

  ‘Whatever story they come up with,’ Chelsea said, ‘it probably won’t much resemble what happened, which is the main thing. You get off to bed, Hayles. I’ll be up in a bit.’

  ‘Morning, then.’ Hayley started up the stairs as Chelsea made her way into the kitchen.

  Chelsea looked at the clock over the worktop. It was a little after half five. She removed her straight razor from her inside pocket, then stuffed both the jacket and her ruined tights into the bin. After that, she picked up the razor and headed down a narrow staircase into the cellar. This was a large, detached, Victorian residence in an expensive part of Didsbury, though not quite large enough for the population of vampires it supported, hence Chelsea sharing a room with Hayley. Chelsea had always been a little surprised that Coral could afford the place at all, though she was obviously a refugee from one of the richer London families, some of whom had supposedly been steadily accumulating cash ever since the 1745 argument between Parliament and Bonnie Prince Charlie.

  There were a couple of fresh bloodcalves hanging by their ankles from the ceiling, along with Adrian, who’d been there for the best part of a month already and now didn’t even twitch when he heard somebody enter the room. The new talent had taken the pressure off him for the evening, and there d
idn’t seem to be any fresh cuts about his person. He’d probably last another month as long as somebody remembered to feed and water him occasionally. On the other hand, one of the new arrivals, his bare torso criss-crossed with slashes and gouges, started to twitch as soon as he heard the stairs creak. The other didn’t move, but he was probably in a dead faint.

  ‘Don’t be such a baby,’ Chelsea admonished the wriggler. He’d probably been quite good looking when he was picked up, but he’d had a rough night, which hadn’t done a lot for his charms. He had longish, blond hair and eyes that looked grey in the light spilling down into the cellar. He’d also shat himself at some point. It was easier leaving their trousers on and letting them mess themselves than trying to clean them, but it didn’t make them any more appealing. His unconscious friend seemed to have better control of his bowels, though there was an ugly fresh stain spread over the crotch of his jeans. Adrian’s scent wasn’t easy to distinguish from the odour that permeated the cellar, though the new arrivals both stank of terror. The coppery hint of blood in the air tended to overpower the stench of sweat, faeces and urine for somebody with Chelsea’s perceptions.

  The wriggler flinched as he heard Chelsea’s straight razor click open. It looked like he hadn’t been used as heavily as the other new arrival had, which might be why the other guy had flaked out before him. Chelsea thought she’d better check that he was still alive before leaving. In the meantime, she ran her fingers down the wriggler’s back, looking for a good place to cut. She could hear him whimpering around his gag.

  ‘Hush. I bet you used to fantasise about this sort of thing. You’re in a house with nine women, and they’re all interested in your body. The liquid part of it, at least.’ The wriggler didn’t seem very consoled by the thought. ‘You’re even chained up in a dungeon, my boy. Some guys’d pay a small fortune for that.’ Chelsea made her incision a little deeper than she’d intended, then lowered her mouth to it to suck and lap at the welling blood. It’d be a lot easier if they could just open arteries and let the donors spurt, but Coral always insisted that their guests had to last a while, so bleeding them to death that quickly was considered a bad idea. Chelsea was sure slitting somebody’s throat over a plastic bin would work perfectly well. The blood would spoil quickly, but there wouldn’t be all that much wasted. As it was, Chelsea had to cut the wriggler three times before she was satisfied. She felt the pressure around her eye begin to fade, and the grazes on her knuckles had closed when she next looked at her hands. Her lip had stopped throbbing as well. Chelsea had to admit that her metabolism had its advantages, even if she did wish she could do a bit of work on her tan.

  ‘Look at me like that again,’ Chelsea said, ‘and I’ll slit your eyeballs for you next time.’ The wriggler squeezed his eyes tight shut and seemed to be trying not to breathe. Chelsea was lying, of course, but he didn’t know how revolting she found aqueous humour. Chelsea shut her razor and watched his face turn purple. He’d stopped wriggling, at least. ‘Try to look on the bright side,’ she added. ‘That’s it for the moment. If you’ve been a good boy, you’ll probably get fed before we start bleeding you again. Do you think you’ve been a good boy?’

  He was chewing on the gag and panting now, trying to say something. Whatever it was, Chelsea doubted that it was very complimentary. She clenched her right fist around the razor she was holding and punched him in the nose. It was supposed to be a playful tap, but she was a little wired: bone and cartilage crushed under her knuckles, and he started to blow bloody bubbles out of his flattened nostrils with every breath. A little embarrassed, Chelsea stood and watched him until she was sure that he wasn’t going to suffocate, then turned her attention to the other newbie.

  Somebody had left him facing into the far corner of the room. Obviously Rachael hadn’t strung them up, or she’d have left them hanging up facing each other, close enough to touch if unrestrained. Chelsea grabbed an arm and turned him around so that she could see his face. He was out cold, and white as a sheet of cartridge paper, but still breathing. Obviously a fragile type. Chelsea watched his face rotate into view, then realised that however wretched you thought your night was, it could always get worse.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Chelsea said. It was Jared.

  2: The Great Escape

  The following night, Chelsea made it her first mission to find a decent pair of sunglasses: she might well end up outside during daylight, and would need some protection. There were quite a few pairs floating around the house, but these tended to tie in more with the disco bunny dress code favoured by Coral’s brood than to offer much of a guard against sunlight. Given that their owners were nocturnal, this was hardly surprising. Chelsea really didn’t fancy trusting her eyesight to most of this stuff, and the notion of extracting Jared from the cellar close to daylight hours was almost abandoned in favour of ‘accidentally’ opening an artery so he could bleed to death quickly rather than take a thoroughly miserable four or five weeks. Eventually she found a pair of old-fashioned Ray Bans in the box room. They were stuffed into the pocket of a lime-green linen jacket, so Chelsea assumed that they’d belonged to the electroclash fan with a taste for ’80s retro that Sophie had brought home the other year. Even these wouldn’t blot out the daylight as effectively as she would have liked, but they would have to do.

  After her experiences the previous night, Chelsea had been told to lie low for a few days. It was very unlikely that any new talent would be needed for a fortnight or so, unless somebody got over-enthusiastic bleeding one of the newbies, but Coral and Hayley were out investigating a new Gabba night in the gay village – ‘research’, as Coral put it, although Chelsea suspected that this was just an excuse to party a lot. Rowena, Sophie and Nicola, on the other hand, were busy poking around a few of the grimmer nightclubs near Princess Street, looking for Chelsea’s remaining assailants. This had struck Chelsea as deeply stupid: apart from losing a car and a pair of cute ankle boots, and ruining her jacket and tights, she hadn’t suffered any real harm. The girls wouldn’t be told, though, and Sophie was furious at losing a couple of UNKLE CDs she’d left in the car the last time she’d used it. Chelsea didn’t mind that they’d gone, in any case. She didn’t particularly give a damn if the mouth-breathing Neanderthals who’d accosted her got skinned alive, and it meant there were three fewer of her housemates that she might have to deal with on her way out, which was a good thing. Sophie had skulked down to the supermarket shortly before it closed, huddled under a big, floppy-brimmed hat, in search of the day’s Manchester Evening News, to see if the fracas outside Fraternity was mentioned. (It wasn’t.) But Chelsea wished Sophie hadn’t still been wearing her hat when she’d left with Rowena and Nicola. It might have been useful. It had never occurred to her before that a sun hat could be so desirable.

  This was going to be the best night for her rescue bid, Chelsea knew: Coral, who terrified her, was out, and there were only three of the other girls left in the house. She’d therefore got dressed, stuffed as many of her other clothes as would fit into an airline carry-on bag, then started plotting. Nobody was using the BMW, so there was a car outside, which would be useful, as she doubted Jared would be capable of running very far at the moment. Probably everyone had eaten yesterday, but Lucinda or Rachael might still sneak down for a snack. Given Murphy and his law, they’d be likely to wait until Chelsea had Jay unchained if they did.

  Chelsea was about as dressed down as she’d been in years, in her Carhartts and a pink t-shirt from Muji. A leather biker jacket, with her three straight razors zippered into the pockets, lay on the end of the bed, alongside a pair of trainers. Most of her other shoes weren’t really designed with fighting or running in mind. That didn’t matter when dealing with most people, but might be problematic if she got into a fight with any of her housemates. Chelsea assumed that the other girls would split the bulk of her nightclub finery, which she hadn’t been able to pack, once she was gone. Most of what she’d taken was underwear. I
t was only likely to be a problem if she managed to get away successfully, of course. For all Chelsea knew, she might end up hanging from the cellar ceiling herself by dawn. Her plan was to leave before Coral, Hayley and the lynch mob got back, but as close to dawn as possible. That meant a bit after 4.00, which was far too early, but she’d have to make do. If she left it too late, she’d never get out of the house.

  Chelsea looked at her watch. It had just turned 11.30. It was going to be a long evening, she suspected. She could hear the television downstairs, and realised all three of her remaining housemates were currently in the living room. It’d be the easiest thing in the world to remove Jared now and sneak him out while they were busy, but lying low until dawn would be tricky, to say the least. It’d probably be too much to hope for that they’d all be clustered together doing something noisy in another four and a half hours’ time.

  Chelsea checked her watch again. It was 3.50. Time to make her move. She headed cautiously downstairs. Giggling and buzzing sounds were emanating from the bathroom, so it seemed a fair bet that Rachael and Michelle had locked themselves in there for a depilatory party. The time definitely seemed ripe to spring Jared. A sudden burst of laughter from the bathroom scared the crap out of her. She paused to let her heartbeat slow to something close to its normal tempo, then carried on downstairs.

  Jared was still either dazed or asleep when Chelsea pushed open the cellar door. The wriggler had stopped wriggling at some point. Chelsea noticed a series of fresh, parallel gashes in the meat of his right bicep: Rachael wasn’t removing her pubic hair on an empty stomach, then. Adrian, as always, hung quiescent and resigned to his fate. Chelsea wondered if his travails after the first week of his imprisonment might have left him with an insufficiently oxygenated brain. She kept meaning to read up on the circulatory system, but despite its importance to her, she had never got around to doing so. It wasn’t really the sort of thing she wanted to think about with her erstwhile lover in this condition.