Blood Song

"I was worried that she'd been sick or something," he said as he lifted her onto his lap. He had parked himself in his usual spot - on the floor against the wall with his legs straight out in front of him. I wondered briefly what he had against furniture.

"We met a new family of iron metabolisers," I told him, expecting surprise. He barely reacted.

"Cool."

"One of them met us at the airport. His name's Oliver. He invited us to go and visit the rest of his family in Dundee, so we drove up and stayed at the estate on Saturday night. Marcus and Fergus met us there."

"How are those two?" Mark looked up from massaging the kitten's back and grinned at me.

I grinned back. "Same as ever. 'Cept for the fighting. You should have seen them."

"What?" Mark frowned at me. "I missed seeing those two fight? That's not fair. How did that happen? Start over."

So I did. I told him about the encounter with Oliver at the airport, and about the trip up to their mansion near Dundee. I described the family, leaving out the bits about Bill Colborne's death, and the fact that Oliver was Jack's biological son. I tried to tell it as we'd lived it, occasionally shuddering as I shared our experiences of the past four days. I glossed over some of the gorier bits, but I should have known better. Mark wanted details. Lots and lots of disgusting details. I wondered how much of that was due to him being a future vampire, and how much was because he was a male teenager. Hard to say, really. Either way I had to give him a blow by blow account of the clash with the blood drinking vamps. His eyes grew bigger by the minute, and after a while I wondered if he had stopped breathing. I paused for a moment when Angus walked into the sitting room, carrying two steaming mugs. He took one look at Mark's face and gave a bark of laughter. Mark appeared to come out of his trance.

"Well, bugger me. I can't believe I missed it!" he breathed.

I stifled a giggle at the uncharacteristic language.

"That's what Angus said," I told him. "Apart from the buggering bit, of course." Angus chuckled at that and handed us our coffees and disappeared back into the kitchen. I wondered what gourmet feast he was creating in there that demanded all his attention. Then I realised that he was giving us some space and a chance to cover a lot of missed ground. I smiled at his thoughtfulness. Mark objected, and told me to stop looking so damn soppy and crack on with the story.