A Love Like Blood Read Online Free

and then, though I am ashamed to admit it, I turned and ran from the hole, stumbling back up into the sunlight. I staggered away from the bunker to a bench, where I sat down and was sick.
    I don’t know how much time passed. Suddenly I felt afraid again, as I realised I was sitting with my back to the hole, though it was perhaps a hundred yards behind me.
    I stood, and turned.
    Below me lay Paris in the August sunshine. The morning was wearing on, and the heat was building. I could see for miles, beyond free Paris, maybe as far as land still occupied by the retreating German Army, I didn’t know. Yet it reminded me that the war was still on, that this sojourn in Paris was some strange anomaly, not what life really was.
    On the ground between my feet I saw the book of matches; I must have dropped it there. I stooped and picked it up, and turned back the way I’d come.
    Forcing my eyes over to the bunker’s mouth again, and knowing I ought to do something, I set off towards the hole. Even in times such as this, times of great stress, the mind is still able to throw up irrelevant details. I noted the grim coincidence of the picture of the vampire I had just seen, and what I’d seen the man doing, and then I wondered if I’d imagined it all; if my tired and drunken mind had shown me things in the shadows that weren’t really there.
    I think I was about halfway there when my steps began to falter and my legs to tremble. I stopped, forced myself on again for a few feet, and then stopped again.
    ‘Captain?’
    I turned to my right and saw the private a few paces away. He appeared to be less grumpy now he’d had a bit more sleep in the sunshine.
    ‘The Major’s waiting. Time to go, sir.’
    I nodded, but didn’t move.
    I hesitated. ‘Private,’ I said. ‘Do you see that bunker there?’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘Would you . . .’
    I stopped. Wondered what exactly I was asking.
    ‘Would you . . . take a look in it?’
    ‘Sir?’
    The private stared at me.
    ‘Are you well, sir? You don’t—’
    ‘I’m fine. Just do as I ask, will you? You needn’t go far in.’
    The private nodded, seeming to think it would be faster to accede to my strange request than question it. He set off towards the hole.
    Watching him about to enter, I felt a sudden pang of guilt at my cowardice. What was I doing, sending this man instead of me?
    I caught up with him and, afraid to make any noise, made a dumbshow that I would come down with him.
    At once the look on his face changed.
    ‘No, sir,’ he almost barked at me. Disgust spread to his mouth. ‘I’m not like that.’
    He held my eye for a moment, and before I even realised what it was he thought of me, he turned.
    ‘I’ll wait for you at the jeep,’ he said. ‘Sir.’
    The penny dropped and my face burned.
    ‘No!’ I cried after him. ‘No, no, I—’
    But he was gone. My shoulders hung, and I turned to face the hole again.
    I waited, glancing at the chateau, where I could see the Major talking to the private.
    My breathing had almost stopped, my chest tightened as, with shaking hands, I pulled out the matches from my pocket again, striking one as I rushed down into the hole.
     
    There was nothing there. No one.
    I began to doubt myself further, wondering if I had indeed had some strange hallucination, and I called out.
    ‘You there!’
    There was no reply but a tiny dead echo.
    My match went out and I lit another, approaching the place where I’d seen him, and then I knew I wasn’t losing my mind, because there was blood on the ground.
    But no woman, and he had gone, too. Vanished.
    My second match went out, and I lit a third, turning around.
    I saw I was in a corridor, with the mouths to at least three other passages leading away to total blackness, into which I gazed for a moment or two, my heart beating hard.
    Then my nerve left me, and I turned and ran up into the sunshine again, slowing to a walk when I saw the Major, climbing into the jeep beside him, sitting in silence