Wolfsbane: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Mortlake Series Book 1)

by David Longhorn

  “Bingo!”

  He’d stopped acting like a terrier digging for a bone, so she moved up behind him to see what he’d found. A familiar sense of anticlimax spread through her as Phil held up a small, green plastic cylinder. But at least they were done now, at least they could hike back to the car and go find a place to have dinner. She looked at the western horizon and shivered. The winter night was fast approaching, and with it, a wall of stormy black clouds.

  “Hurry up and sign it,” she said. “Then we can get back to the car.”

  Phil unscrewed the cylinder and took out the small roll of paper. He signed it, took a picture, replaced it, then put the cache back in place. For a terrible moment, Nicky thought he was going to rebuild the whole cairn, but he just heaped up a few rocks then stood, slapping muck off his hands and looking pleased with himself.

  “Right,” he said. “Back to Bristol in time for supper.”

  “I doubt it,” she grumbled.

  But at least they were going home.

  ***

  “That is a point that’s been bothering me,” Mortlake said. “Why would a sane man have set out to become a lycanthrope? Perhaps, he originally intended to hunt one, presumably with silver bullets? The most dangerous game, and all that. Once rich people get an evil notion into their well-groomed heads, they tend to go all-out. It’s the poor who are more humane and show restraint, in my experience.”

  “And where did he get such a crazy idea in the first place?” Tara said. “Though I guess these aristocratic types have plenty of time to think of sick pastimes.”

  “True! But until last year, so far as I can tell, Gonfallon showed precisely zero interest in the occult, folklore, legendary monsters. He does not appear on anyone’s radar in my strange little world. Then, suddenly, he’s hiring people to catch him a werewolf. Why would such an outlandish idea occur to a narrow-minded aristocrat?”

  Tara shrugged.

  “Maybe he watched an old horror movie one night and something in his brain went ping,” she said. “Does it matter?”

  “It might,” Mortlake insisted. “Wheels within wheels, and all that. But first, we have to work out how to stop him.”

  “And his posh friends,” Tara reminded him. “At least two. Who knows how many there are in total? We’re definitely outnumbered.”

  “Now, there we may have some progress,” Mortlake said. “I’ve been looking into Gonfallon’s pals and found that he has an inner cabal of old Oxford cronies. Their kind tend to stick together. So, at least we have some more suspects. And it will be interesting to see if any of them give the game away. I’ll send you the list—nudge me if I don’t. You might unearth something yourself.”

  Tara found this encouraging.

  “My grandma used to say a secret is something you never tell a man,” she said. “Always claimed that men blab, while a woman who’s a good friend never will.”

  “I will take that sexist observation on the chin,” Mortlake responded. “But your grandma had a point. Wealthy men are often sloppy, assuming the little people—servants, police, old pals in general—will clean up their messes. It doesn’t always work. Given time, they will blow it.”

  “Yeah, but in the meantime, they’re keeping that girl prisoner,” Tara said. “Hell, they might even kill her, dispose of the evidence, now that Gonfallon knows we’re on to him.”

  Mortlake frowned.

  “You’re right, of course,” he said. “Saving that innocent victim should be our first priority. But she is unlikely to trust anyone who tries to rescue her. We’ve no idea what kind of state she will be in—might she need medical help? That raises interesting questions. Fair to say, it will be tricky.”

  “Tricky, sure, but I want to be part of it,” Tara said at once. “I want to help take them down. I’m the only person alive who’s faced them and survived.”

  “You survived by sheer good luck,” Mortlake added. “But you do have one advantage over any other potential recruit—up close and personal encounter with the paranormal. And I would rather have you on the team than have you going off on your own. Always best to have someone watching your back.”

  The professor leaned back, with a creak from the ancient leather chair.

  “And I’m no spring chicken. I have been doing this for a while. A fresh perspective—yes, that’s always valuable, especially from a scientist, a trained skeptic…”

  Tara looked at the soles of Mortlake’s brown Oxfords, which were worn to smoothness. She wondered about his private life. She had no idea if he was straight or gay, had kids, none of the usual stuff. They had not really struck up a friendship, they were still more like work colleagues. Colleagues who belonged to different generations, genders, cultures.

  “But if you want to be part of this, right to the end, I ought to warn you,” Mortlake said. “The good guys don’t necessarily win. Sometimes, the baddies get away with it. Sometimes, they’re too clever, too powerful, or simply too damn lucky to be caught.”

  Tara stared into the blazing fire, watched sparks fly up the chimney, and thought of the time when a casual word uttered at the breakfast table had shattered her belief in Santa Claus.

  “I guess,” she said, half to herself, “life can be just one long disillusionment.”

  Mortlake startled her by jumping up out of his seat.

  “No!” he said, striding over to the window, where the black cat looked up at him with mild curiosity. “No, not this time. That’s the point I’m making—quite badly I now realize, sorry—in this case, we’re not up against some criminal mastermind or maverick genius, just some posh twit and his equally foolish friends. They are playing at evil and bungling it. We can beat them! And with luck, we’ll do it before they kill any more innocent people in their sick games.”

  “Yay team!” said Tara, accidentally spitting cake crumbs onto her lap.

  Sensing an opportunity for free snacks, Bigglesworth leaped gracefully down from the windowsill and approached, tail twitching in the air.

  “Ah, the mighty hunter senses his prey!” Mortlake joked.

  ***

  “Bugger!” Phil shouted. “Buggeration and buggery. With a side order of bollocks.”

  The car would not start. The storm front was almost overhead, and they were alone on Dartmoor, in a lay-by, with no cell service. Phil got out to check under the hood, but of course, he could see nothing wrong. His skills did not extend to machinery. Nicky had done a car maintenance course but she had no clue either.

  “What are we going to do?”

  Nicky felt the first hints of genuine alarm. People died in winter every year because they went out into the wilder parts of the British Isles without making adequate preparation. She had often described such people as idiots, never thinking she might be one of those statistics.

  “Somebody might come along,” said Phil, holding up his phone and waving it forlornly. “Bloody thing. If only we had a satellite phone!”

  “We can stay in the car, I suppose—wait for somebody to come along?” she suggested.

  “Yeah, it’s our only option. Must be some farmers around here. Or something…”

  They sat and waited for a while. Nicky looked in the glove compartment and found a box of Tic Tacs and a Mars Bar. She had a sudden vision of fighting Phil for the chocolate sometime after midnight.

  A while turned into a long while. The dark clouds rolled over and started spattering the car with rain, which turned to hail. The rattling impact meant that they didn’t hear the Land Rover coming until it was right behind them. Headlights flashed, and they twisted around in their seats.

  “Oh, thank God!” cried Nicky. “We don’t have to die out here after all.”

  They scrambled out in time to greet a tall, fair-haired man with a posh voice.

  “I say, are you in trouble?”

  Explanations took a few moments. The newcomer, whose name was Rupert, had rented an old farmhouse on the moors for a quiet Christmas break with some friends. Of cour
se, he would be happy to take them there, call a tow truck, and keep them warm with a hot toddy. They climbed into the Land Rover, and Nicky’s spirits lifted as the engine roared and hot air played around her damp legs. As they bumped up the road and off onto a barely visible dirt track, she asked if she could use Rupert’s shower.

  “Of course, you must both freshen up!” he said.

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Nicky said.

  “Not at all,” he said. “It will be lovely to have guests for dinner.”

  Chapter 6

  “What you got?” Westall asked his contact in Missing Persons.

  “Bugger all, mate,” came the reply. “Everything in this fair land is absolutely fine. Now, sod off, I’m doing the crossword.”

  Westall put a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and waited, knowing that his old drinking buddy was prone to be snappish over the festive season. Cops who had to work over the holidays were seldom full of the joys of Yuletide. Having counted to three, he tried again.

  “Come on, mate—there must be some unusual cases, odd witness statements, people who don’t fit the usual profile?”

  “Nothing around Wyebridge, and no mysterious vans prowling the mean streets of London offering shoes to vagrants,” came the reply. “Is that it? I could win a cash prize if I finish this today and I’ve only got two clues to get.”

  Westall suppressed a sigh.

  “You’re saying nobody’s gone missing in the south-western portion of this island?” he asked. “At all?”

  “Nobody’s been reported missing,” said his contact, with the pedantry of a tetchy man. “You know the score. Hundreds of idiots could vanish without anybody reporting it. But so far as I know, nobody has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. It’s just the usual—people with dementia wandering off, teenagers who’ve run away from care a dozen times before.”

  Westall grunted acknowledgment. Then he asked what the last two crossword clues were. One was a bit baffling, but the other was quite straightforward.

  “‘Thong for a revealing entertainer’,” read the contact. “Eight letters, last letter’s R. Come on, you used to be good at these when we were on stakeouts.”

  Westall pondered a moment, then said, “Stripper? A thong is a strip of material.”

  There was a small, jaded whoop from the other end of the line.

  “Brilliant! What’s this one? ‘People injured by throwaway neckwear’, ten letters. You got ‘C’, something-something ‘U’, something-something ‘L’…”

  “Casualties,” put in Westall. “It’s casualties. Casual comes from throwaway, and ties are neckwear. You’re welcome. Maybe buy me a pint in the New Year.”

  ***

  “There’s something wrong, Phil,” said Nicky. “I can’t figure it out, but these guys—they seem wrong, somehow.”

  “The upper classes aren’t like us,” said Phil. “They’re just different. They go to those weird all-male boarding schools, then they get a job in daddy’s firm or a job with a newspaper owned by an uncle. They don’t engage with real life much. People like us, we’re usually their employees, not their guests, so we don’t usually interact enough on a personal level to know how weird they really are.”

  Hailstones rattled against the window. The room was pitch black, and the couple was snuggled up in a slightly musty double bed. Rupert, their host, had called the nearest garage and sadly informed them that there’d be no help that night.

  “I’m afraid the breakdown chaps don’t like coming out in bad weather, especially at night,” he said. “But that’s no problem—you can sleep here, and we can sort things out in the morning.”

  It had been a generous offer, very much in keeping with the festive season. Peace on earth, goodwill to all men. Rupert and his three friends seemed pleasant enough. Whiskey was supplied, shepherd’s pie produced, and the shower facilities were adequate. The others even supplied warm clothes, a mish-mash of sweatpants, thick socks, sweaters, and t-shirts.

  Yet, somehow, it all made Nicky feel uncomfortable. Sometimes, she caught Rupert exchanging glances with one of his pals that suggested they were sharing a private joke. She felt self-conscious, vulnerable, among these loud, wealthy men who wore their privilege with such ease.

  “What don’t you like about them, apart from the fact that they’re posh?” demanded Phil. “So far as I can see, they’re just a bunch of posh blokes who fancied a holiday on their own rather than spending Christmas with their families. They might be gay, explains why there are no women. Some of these old-money families can be very intolerant.”

  Nicky tried to articulate why she felt uneasy. She mentioned the way their host and his other guests seemed to be constantly sharing a secret joke, as if they had played some kind of prank. But there was something else, something niggling at the back of her mind. Something she had heard, or seen—what was it?

  “I just don’t trust them,” she said. “Something about that phone call… and that little bloke, Alfred. He seemed so nervous, like he was scared of us. Boggle-eyed, jumpy. Why was that?”

  “Oh God, I don’t know, perhaps he’s just generally the jumpy type,” moaned Phil into the pillow. “Can’t we just get some sleep?”

  Nicky was tired, too, and resolved to get some sleep. After all, they were having a little adventure and it would be a nice topic for dinner party conversation over the holidays. She tried to sleep, but the sounds of their hosts talking downstairs seemed intrusively loud in the darkened room.

  The English upper-classes, she thought, have a way of braying when they laugh that’s downright imbecilic. Haw-haw-haw. Though this lot sounds more like they’re barking, now.

  Then she opened her eyes, lifted herself on one elbow. A floorboard had creaked, not inside the bedroom but nearby. Someone was outside their door. She nudged Phil, who said something grouchy but incomprehensible. Then there was a slight rattling noise, and a click, followed by a creak.

  “Hello?” she said, trying to sound confident.

  “Please, keep quiet,” hissed a voice from the darkness. “We mustn’t be heard!”

  “What?” mumbled Phil. “Whassup?”

  “Shh!” Nicky hissed urgently.

  She peered toward the door and could just make out a small, slightly hunched figure. She recalled the little man who hadn’t seemed to fit in with the others. He had been less confident and looked a few years older.

  “Is that you Alfred?” she whispered. “What’s wrong?”

  “You must get away!” came the reply. “It’s not safe!”

  Phil was awake now.

  “What’s not safe?” he demanded in a normal voice.

  “Please be quiet and get dressed!” Alfred pleaded. “Climb out of the window, slide down the kitchen roof, get to the car, and go. Here—the keys!”

  Something clinked on the bed.

  “Is this some kind of silly prank?” Phil asked. “Because, we’re grateful for the help and all that, but we really don’t go in for practical jokes…”

  “Shut up!” Nicky ordered, driving her elbow sharply into his ribs.

  She had just remembered the thing that had been bothering her. The old farmhouse had a suitably ancient-looking landline phone. When Rupert had called the garage on their behalf, he’d been standing with his free hand on the base unit. Pressing down with his fingers. Like a character in an old movie, pushing down on the cradle with two fingers.

  To block the outgoing call.

  “Phil,” she said firmly. “Let’s get dressed. Just do it, don’t argue. There’s something wrong here.”

  “Quickly!” urged Alfred. “Believe me, you’re in terrible danger!”

  A posh voice bellowed from below, echoing up the staircase. Nicky could not tell if it was Rupert or one of his cronies—they all sounded much the same to her.

  “Are you taking a leak or redecorating the bloody bathroom, Alfred? Hurry up old chap—the party’s just getting started!”

  The door closed. Nicky did
not know what was going on but tried to explain about the phone to Phil. He said she might be mistaken. She told him not to be a complete idiot and damn well get dressed. He had heard that tone before and, grumbling, started to do as he was told.

  Nicky was ready first and opened the bedroom window. As Alfred had said, the gently sloping roof of the kitchen was right below them. The last of the storm had passed and some light was spilling from downstairs.

  “We can make it,” she said and climbed out onto the rain-slick tiles.

  ***

  Tara unbuckled her safety belt and wished she had a window seat. It was a perverse desire, as there was nothing to see but the lights of England vanishing below. Soon they would be over the night-bound Atlantic, and perhaps a passenger gazing down would glimpse a ship or two. And when they arrived it would be three hours earlier, extra time given to the night.

  Tara was on a flight to New York, where she would change for another flight, and then another. She was heading home for the holidays to spend Christmas with her Mom and her mom’s new boyfriend, then New Year’s with her dad and his old girlfriend. She had explained this to the garrulous forty-something woman with a bad blonde dye job who did have the window seat. Blondie had, predictably, now fallen asleep just when Tara felt like talking.

  “Sucks to be me,” she muttered and unfolded an in-flight magazine. After ten minutes of trying to work up an interest in the lovely holiday homes of celebrities whom she had vaguely heard of, she tried the in-flight movie. It was an upbeat, zany family movie about a Great Dane that swapped personalities with its owner. There were dog jokes, cute kids, madcap chases through stores, and a floofy cat as the villain. But the image of the dog, fangs on show and tongue lolling, made her turn it off. She reclined her seat just a little and plumped her pillow, determined to at least doze.

  “Chicken, beef, or vegetarian option?”

  The flight attendant was standing over her.