'You reach a certain age – sometimes it's fifteen, sometimes its forty-six – and you realise the cliché you have adopted for yourself isn't working. That is what is happening to Peter Radley right now, chewing away at a pier of buttered multi-grain toast and staring at the crinkled transparent plastic which contains the remainder of the loaf.
The rational law-abiding adult with his wife and his car and his kids and his direct debits to WaterAid.
He had only wanted sex, last night. Just harmless, human sex. And what was sex? It was nothing. it was just a hug in motion. A bloodless piece of body friction. Okay, so he might have wanted it to lead somewhere else, but he could have contained himself. He has contained himself for seventeen years.
Well, fuck it, he thinks.
It feels good, swearing, even in his thoughts. He had read in BMJ that there was new evidence to suggest the act of swearing relieves back pain.
"Fuck it," he mumbles, too quiet for Helen to hear. "Fuck. It." '
The Radleys
(Page 13)
Vampires living next door?
Abstaining from blood?
Unaware strigoi children experiencing bloodlust for the first time?
Long-hidden familial love affairs and lies aplenty?
Secret blood societies?
Death everywhere?
Why wasn't this better?!
Oh yeah, because the damn vampires could fly.
...
Not cool.
Not cool at all.
I do not subscribe to that particular facet of vampiric folklore.
Mostly because it's beyond dumb.
Fine, if you can transmogrify into a bat or something then sure, i'll believe you can soar to your heart's content picking up us meat puppets for dinner along the way.
But as a human-shaped vampire?
Nuh uh.
No way.
Stupid.
And i do realise i'm being pernickety over a mythological creature but y'know, everybody's got a hobby.
Mine is supernatural snobbery.
And curmudgeonliness.
Will i watch the film adaptation though?
Yeah, probably.
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