Hey London! I’m back! What a headlong collision into Christmas madness, and snow!!!!

Apologies in advance, for two reasons. One, December is going to be a cascade of posts and liveliness. Videos, travel blogs and stories. And it’s been far too long since I annoyed the hell out of all of you with a regular story that I actually completed. We had Emmeline in January 2015, and Charis in the middle of the year, whom I’m embarrassed to admit is still lost in the midst of her story. She’ll get there one day. Then there was Starlit Fey and George, both of whom are longing to tell you what happened (they’ll get around to it), and Jenny, who often appears with the full moon.

Here, just for Christmas, you’re going to permit me to be UTTERLY indulgent, unoriginal and generally a bit basic, and I’m going to bring you the height of teenage vampire romance trash. It will be more brutal than twilight, I promise, but I also promise it will be thorough vampire fan girl trash.

Because I can. Because I completely, utterly, talentlessly, can.

Jokes about the talentless. I’m a whizz at cooking up vampire trash, I just don’t usually share it cause, well, twilight, vampire dairies and the quest to be original and all that……

Oh, and we’ll give it an M rating because of the opening bad word and the occasional bit of gore.

“Fuck you!” she screamed. And the door slammed, rattling on his hinges almost to the point of detachment. Almost.

The vampire stood a few feet back from the door, and stared. In his mind, an age had already passed since the door hit the frame, he’d watched the screws in the hinges until they ceased their panicked vibrations, and watched the shadows play under the door as the she walked away. He’d listened to the stroke of his own handkerchief across her neck as she wiped her blood away, smelt the soft tang as it began to coagulate in the tiny punctures, and then the ‘ding’ of the arriving elevator, the grind of the metal doors, and the spinning and coiling whirr of the rope as the car descended toward the ground floor, some ten stories below.

“She’s getting strong,” a mildly interested voice commented from the far side of the room.

Still the vampire didn’t move. He stared at the door, into the dust and fibres on it’s varnished surface, the joins and knots in the wood, and the cracks where the lacquer showed it’s age.

“You should go after her,” the voice from the corner suggested again. The voice was male, but fairly high – young – and there was an enthralling sweetness to the pitch of it.

“She’ll be back,” the vampire finally stirred, crossing his arms over his chest and turning his head slightly in the direction of the voice.

Out of the shadows in the corner, a boy rose from his chair, dropping to his side the body of a black-haired, slim, pale woman. Pale as her corpse was cold and dry of blood, just like the two others who lay on the floor beside her, and her beauty had left with her soul. The boy grimaced as he took a last look at her and stepped away.

“Are you full, brother?” the vampire asked the child.

The boy smiled, “Enough for tonight.”

The elevator opened on the ground floor. The girl swallowed her tears and stepped out. She didn’t care if the CCTV in the elevator saw her cry, but she did care if the man at the desk did. She flushed with embarrassment.

How was he to know they were angry tears? For all he saw, Mr Adams – CalebAdams – of the west-facing penthouse on the tenth floor, was simply clearing out the trash from the night before. A common occurrence.

If she’d asked for a car, she would have received one, taking her all the way home to South East London in only a short drive. But she didn’t want charity, and for the moment she didn’t feel the cold. London was in the first throes of winter, in the weeks before Christmas, and Mayfair was charming. Festive lights and romance strolling arm in arm in search of mistletoe. Shop windows expertly curated and custom wreaths crowning town house doorways. It was beautiful, despite all its snobbery, and despite the vampires – damn them – who lived in penthouses there.

She had snatched up her handbag and coat as she’d wrenched open the door. Her coat she had thrown on out of habit, but her gloves, scarf and hat remained forgotten in the bottom of her bag for the moment. It wasn’t until she’d long left the building, and wandered the streets down past Berkeley Square that she realised she wasn’t cold, despite evening gusts of wind and the flakes of snow which so sneakily danced above her head, never stooping low enough to touch the ground.

“Damn him.” She pulled out the scarf and twisted it around her neck desperately before she squashed the hat down over her mussed-up auburn hair with little ceremony.

The gloves annoyed her, so she didn’t put them on. The truth in its most disturbing form was that she wasn’t cold at all. Not in the slightest.

Even the snow tickling her face did not faze her.

The truth, in its most plain form, was that she was dying.