The Vampire Burns
Page 18
“Are we going back to Paris?” I asked.
“It would make some sense, I suppose,” he replied, “but...”
He hesitated.
“No,” he added finally. “We're going to London.”
“London?” I asked. “Why?”
“Because that's where I can find the resources that I'll need. Anywhere else would either be too far, or too under-developed. Besides, I have some contacts in London, there are some people whose advice I'd very much like to access. Like it or not, London is by far our best shot now. And don't worry, even in wartime I know some people who can help get us there.”
“Then we're going to London,” I said, with a flicker of fear in my chest, as the glow continued to flicker in the distance. “But first, before we do anything else... We're going to find Matthias.”
Epilogue
Chloe
Many years from now...
“And then what happened?” Harriet asked.
I opened my mouth to tell her, but at the last moment I felt a sudden wave of tiredness. I forced a smile, but in truth I was tiring much more easily of late, and it didn't help that I was going over the past in such exhausting detail. Not that I'd ever forgotten what had happened, of course, but it was still strange to have to explain it all. And it didn't help that there were still parts of the story that I didn't quite understand.
“Would you mind terribly if we finish this tomorrow night?” I asked wearily. “There's still quite a lot to get through, and it's almost midnight so this seems like a good point to take a break.”
“But -”
“And I'm exhausted, Harriet,” I added, before reaching out and taking her hands in mine. As I did so, I saw how young her hands looked. “Not a day goes by, that I don't think about everything that happened back in the old days, but it's difficult for me to explain it this way. After all, your mother was never really very interested.” I glanced at the window, and I felt a flicker of surprise that once again he hadn't come. “I rather think that I'd like to sleep now.”
“Okay, fine,” she said with a sigh, “I get it. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be a pain.”
“I'll finish the story tomorrow, I promise,” I replied. “Hand on heart.”
“There's just so much I still don't understand,” she said. “I mean, where was Matthias at the end? I was convinced he was going to come swinging in like a big hero and save the day.”
“So was I, at the time.”
“I still don't even know if it's him you're waiting for every night.”
“I need to tell you the whole story.”
“And Hugo...” She hesitated. “I mean, I'm not saying that I like him, but at least I understand him. And he doesn't seem like the monster you described yesterday, so I guess I don't understand how things could have gone so totally wrong for him. And did you save Judith in the end? Did you change history? Or did she just end up dying another time?”
“That's something I can tell you about tomorrow,” I replied, “or try to, at least. I'm not sure that I truly know everything.”
“And how was I getting Matthias's point of view?” she asked. “It was the same last night, too. While you were talking, I was somehow getting the story through his eyes as well as through your eyes.”
“Storytelling is a strange, often misunderstood process,” I replied, “and this story has vampires at its heart. So I'm afraid that while I don't exactly know how you're seeing all of that, I can only assume that some element of Matthias's soul is lingering in the telling.” I sighed. “Please don't ask me to explain that,” I added, “because I can't. To be honest, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, either. I learned a long time ago that, when you're dealing with vampires, it's sometimes necessary to focus on the parts that do make sense and sort of try to fill in the gaps as best you can.”
She paused, and I felt rather bad for not being able to explain more.
“So you were really in the war, huh?” she asked finally. “Like, you really had to duck because a tank was firing at you?”
“It was a long time ago,” I reminded her. “I was a little more limber back then.”
“It's still pretty cool,” she replied. “Wait, I didn't mean it like that! I know people died, I shouldn't say it was cool. I know people lost their lives and lived through misery, and you knew people who were killed. I really didn't mean to offend you, Gran!”
“Don't worry,” I said, before pausing for a moment. I was still so very tired, but Harriet had reminded me of something that I suddenly wanted to show her. “Wait right here,” I said, slowly getting to my feet. “I put a box in the cupboard on the landing, just a few weeks ago, and there's something in there that I think you'd very much like to see.”
“I'll get it!”
“No, I'll go,” I replied, gently slipping away from her attempt to support me as I shuffled toward the door. “I haven't been very active today, so the walk will do me good. When you get to my age, Harriet, it's so easy for your bones to feel heavy.” I opened the door, and then I glanced back at her as she sat on my bed. “I'm so glad that you're interested in all of this,” I added. “I just wish I hadn't had to split the story up over three nights. I wish I'd been able to tell it all in a more condensed format. Then again, so much happened. I'm sure I've already left things out, as it is. At the end, you must ask me any questions that you still have.”
“It's cool,” she said with a smile. “Like I told you before, I'm enjoying it. I've always wanted to know what really happened to you.”
Smiling, I shuffled out onto the landing and made my way toward the cupboard at the far end. I was moving so slowly, hunched over and in pain, and it was hard to believe that once I'd been young enough to try escaping from a prison camp. I didn't feel old in my heart, of course, even though I was under no illusions about my body. I was frail, and my joints struggled with the most simple of movements, and as I reached the cupboard and pulled the door open I began to think that I should have let Harriet do the heavy lifting after all.
Then again, she wouldn't know what she was looking for.
I quickly found the large box, but then I had to root through all the old items that I'd kept over the years. There were so many reminders of my life in the box, things that I'd kept but which I hadn't looked at for a long time. I'd kept telling myself that one day I'd go through everything and have a good clear-out, but in truth I'd found it rather sad to linger on a bunch of old mementos. I'd lost so many people.
Finally I found an A4 envelope, and I struggled to slide the piece of paper out from inside.
I felt a flicker of shock, and sadness too, as soon as I saw the old newspaper clipping. It was from a French publication, and I'd tracked it down online several years earlier. My French still wasn't particularly good, but I hadn't saved that particular piece of paper for the text. No, I'd saved it for the grainy black and white photograph that showed a smiling Pierre Menard standing next to a truck. The article was about French resistance heroes, and Pierre had been one of the key figures.
As I stared at the picture, I couldn't help but think back once again to the moment when he'd put his arms around that soldier and pulled the pin from the grenade, blowing them both up.
“It's at times like this that you need to keep hope in your heart,” I remembered him saying all those years ago, when I was lost in a different time. “Sometimes hope is the only thing that can keep you going. It wouldn't work if it was easy.”
There had been plenty of times, in the intervening years, when I'd used those words in order to stay strong. I only wished that I could have thanked Pierre, that he and Michelle and the others could have lived to see that their hope had been well founded.
I set the box back in place, and then I turned and shuffled back toward my room. I knew it was perhaps rather foolish to expect Harriet to care about Pierre, who after all had been a side character in the story I'd been telling her. At the same time, she was a perceptive young woman and I had a feeling that she mi
ght very well be ravenous for information. I imagined her doing some private research in her own time, and I thought that perhaps she would like to see the ring as well. Not that I'd let her keep it, of course. Even though I knew the ring was merely a conduit for what had happened, I still worried that it might retain a trace of its former power.
“I think you'll find this photo very interesting,” I said as I shuffled back into my room. “Think of it as a springboard for any research you might want to carry out. I always thought that -”
Suddenly I froze as I saw him standing by the window.
I'd waited so long, and finally he'd come.
And he was holding Harriet firmly from behind, with a large knife pressed against her throat.
“Hugo,” I stammered, horrified by the sight of him, “what -”
“Gran,” Harriet gasped, with tears running down her terrified face, “help me.”
“Leave her alone!” I shouted, dropping the photo and taking a painful, shuffling step forward. “Hugo, whatever you want, your business is with me! Not her!”
“Is that right?” he snarled, his voice thicker and more agonized than ever before. “You must have expected me. You must have felt me coming.”
“I -”
“You must have known this day would arrive.”
“Hugo -”
Before I could finish, he sliced the knife's blade across Harriet's throat, ripping her flesh open from ear to ear and sending blood spraying across the room.
“No!” I screamed, but I stumbled as I tried to run to her, and I fell down hard on my pained, arthritic knees.
“There's no magical healing paste that can save the day this time,” Hugo sneered, holding Harriet tight as her body began to shudder wildly. A moment later, after twisting the knife around, Hugo began to carve through the rest of her neck. “That's if you even had any, which I doubt you do.”
“No!” I sobbed, staring wide-eyed with shock as I saw blood gushing in torrents from Harriet's body. “I'm begging you! I'll do anything!”
“Anything, huh?”
With that, he cut one final time and then let Harriet's headless body slump down to the floor. A moment later he leaned down and placed her severed head right in front of me, so that I could see the horrified expression in her poor dead eyes, and the blood that even now was dribbling from her mouth and running down her chin. My poor dear darling beautiful granddaughter was dead, and my whole body was shaking with sorrow as I stared at her face.
“I came here tonight to give you another chance to help me, Chloe,” Hugo said, towering above me. “Perhaps you were insufficiently motivated before, but it seems that we might finally have something in common. We've both lost someone we loved very much. So now are you ready to help me go back in time and change the course of history?”
TO BE CONCLUDED IN
The Vampire Rises
(Three Nights of the Vampire book 3)
ALSO AVAILABLE
The Vampire Falls
(Three Nights of the Vampire book 1)
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