He knew she would be dead. There was no other way this could end. But Agnes had made him doubt that and now he had to know for sure.
Graham reached out a hand expecting the touch of a cold dead body. The pile moved under his hand. The black blanket fell down to reveal a pale face. Graham was sure that she was dead but then he saw her eyes open, blinking in the bright light that filled the room.
“Daddy?” Bridget said.
No one attacked him. No one tried to take her away. Graham couldn’t believe that they had left her there, abandoned like an unwanted puppy. He reached for her and she reached for him. Everything that had happened in the last few months melted away.
He had done it. Somehow, impossibly, Graham had his daughter back and it seemed that nothing, not even the end of the world could tarnish that.
CHAPTER 20
ARTHUR HELD HER HAND AND THEY RAN. THE dark streets were filled with monsters but they were monsters as well and he knew that now. Somewhere behind them he could smell the wolves and they were quick. But they wouldn’t be quick enough.
Elizabeth was weak but she grew stronger with every step. They were together again and that made him stronger. Together they could fight but it was better to run.
“Where are we going?” Elizabeth said.
“The docks,” Arthur said.
“Paris?”
“If we can,” Arthur said.
“And if we can’t?” Elizabeth said. Her rings of golden hair bounced up and down as she ran beside him.
“Then anywhere else,” he said. “We need to get out of the country.”
Already he could see that the river was filled with boats bobbing in the moonlight. They were all going out to sea. He wasn’t surprised, it wasn’t just the monsters that had survived.
Arthur pulled her after him as they ducked down an alleyway. It was a longer route but it would mean they avoided going past the Strand where most of the fighting seemed to be happening.
The wolves kept coming. Arthur could smell them on the breeze. He didn’t know who had sent them, both The Church and The Grigori had reason to. Neither of them would want him alive now.
“They’re catching up,” Elizabeth said.
Arthur sniffed the air and realised that she was right. The wolves weren’t far behind them now.
It was always better to run, Arthur thought, than to fight but that wasn’t always an option. The streets that had once been familiar to him were now strange and confusing. He and Elizabeth were at a disadvantage and it was inevitable that the wolves would catch them eventually.
When they could go no further they turned around to face the wolves. Arthur could see them perfectly in the darkness and watched as they slowly transformed into men. There were three of them but that wouldn’t be enough.
Arthur let go of Elizabeth’s hand. They stood together in the narrow alleyway. The rain had stopped but the sky was still full of thunder. Lights in the sky strobed and made them all appear to move in slow motion. Jagged movement. One moment they were standing several feet apart. The next they were fighting.
The wolf men tried to snap and bite and Arthur could tell that they didn’t have orders to take him alive. But if they thought he could be killed easily then they had a painful lesson to learn. Arthur pushed one of them back and he collided with another. Their bodies were light, built for speed rather than strength. They fell to the floor.
Arthur swung around and pulled the other wolf man away from Elizabeth. He swung the man around and threw him across the alley to land with his brothers on the floor. Then he and Elizabeth were walking towards them.
The wolves got to their feet, snapping their jaws and starting to transform into their animal forms. Arthur and Elizabeth let them. It was a panic reflex. They knew that their wolf bodies scared people but they must have known that Arthur and Elizabeth weren’t really people. They were smaller and weaker as wolves and no match for a vampire. If anything it made them easier to kill.
The wolf men leaped into the air, their teeth bared and their mouths drooling. Arthur stepped across to protect Elizabeth, although he knew that she didn’t it. The wolf fell as did the two that followed. They whimpered and whined and looked at Arthur as if he was their new master.
It was the way of the wolf. Anyone who overpowered it would become its master. They didn’t try to attack again but Arthur had no use for a pet.
“Come along,” Arthur said. He turned away and Elizabeth followed. For a few feet he continued to hear the scratchy sound of the wolves following behind them but then they stopped.
Arthur took Elizabeth’s hand and they walked together into the darkness, towards the river and onwards to a new life as far away from Lunden as he could get them.
CHAPTER 21
CAROL STOOD BESIDE THE OTHER SERVANTS AT THE bottom of the stairs. The children were by the front door with their parent’s. John was hidden beneath a tree because, despite what she had expected, he still wasn’t dead. Somehow she would have to hide him while the family made their way through the city and out the other side.
“Where is it?” Mrs Brambley said. She was a small nervous woman, although she had been one of the last in the household to accept that there was something very wrong in the city and that they needed to leave. If she hadn’t been so reluctant to accept this simple truth they might have gone two or even three days ago.
“They will be here soon dear,” Mr Brambley said. He glanced at the door and at the clock above the mantle.
They continued to wait. Carol listened to the people outside, making their way along the streets as one long caravan. She heard worried voices and rolling wagon wheels on the broken road. They were not the last to decide to leave Lunden but they certainly weren’t the first.
“Excuse me sir,” Carol said. She stepped away from the other servants and approached Mr and Mrs Brambley.
“What is it Carol?” Mrs Brambley said. Her hair was coming out of its neat bun and hung over her face.
“M’am, I was wondering if I might go and look?” Carol said.
“Go and look where?” She sounded angry but she was just scared. They all were.
“To see where the carriages are m’am. I thought I could go and see what was taking them so long?”
“The carriages,” Mrs Brambley said. “Yes, that’s a good idea Carol. Peter?”
Mr Brambley turned to look at them. “Yes, yes alright.”
Carol smiled pleasantly and did a neat little curtsey. She turned around and walked in the direction of the kitchen where there was a back door. Even in these end days she wasn’t allowed to use the front entrance.
Outside it was warm and dark. Carol hurried around to the side of the house where she had left John beneath a tree. She peered into the darkness but she didn’t see him at first.
“John?” Carol said. It was far from certain that he would answer to his own name. Sometimes he insisted he was called Charlie. “John?”
She heard a movement in the shadows and stepped towards it. A face looked out at her, its wide eyes seeming to glow in the dark. She barely recognised him until he crawled out to meet her.
“Katie?” John said.
“I’m here,” Carol said. She had given up trying to tell him that she wasn’t Katie. There no longer seemed to be any point. He had survived for this long but surely the rest of his life could only be measured in days. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t like the noise,” John said. “It’s scary.”
“I know it is,” Carol said. “We’ll be leaving soon. We need to go to the stable.”
“What for?” John said.
“It’s time to get into a coach. So we can leave.”
She led him across the lawn towards the back of the house. He was slow and unsteady, every step carried the risk of a fall and a broken leg. Carol didn’t try to rush him and eventually they reached the two large wooden buildings at the rear of the house.
There were no lights on in the stables. “Wait here,”
Carol said. She let go of his hand and walked a few steps into the darkness. Even if she couldn’t see anything she should have been able to hear the animals but there was nothing. The place was empty. She checked the shed where the coaches were kept and found that they were empty as well.
“Come on,” Carol said. She grabbed John’s hand and led him across the grass which was still wet from the days of rain. She could tell that she was moving him too quickly but she was desperate. She knew that Mrs Brambley wouldn’t wait for her and Mr Brambley was so distracted that he might not even realise she was gone.
Carol felt her arm yanked backwards. She was spun around by the weight of John as he fell to the ground.
He cried out and let go of her hand.
“Carol!” John said. His voice was like a small child crying for its mother.
She looked from John to the house and back again. He was trying to get up but he couldn’t manage it. He was wiggling around on the grass, his face twisted in a tortured, silent, scream.
He wasn’t going to make it, Carol told herself. There was nothing she could do for him if he’d broken his leg or worse. She had already done more than she owed him. If she stayed to help him the family would leave without her and then he would die and she would be left all alone.
She could hear him calling after her, finally having found her real name, but she didn’t look. After a moment she started to run towards the house.
There were no coaches at the front of the house so nothing to run after. The lights were still on inside. Carol ran to the front door and burst into the lobby. She was shocked to find that the family was still there.
“Carol!” Mrs Brambley said. “What do you think you’re doing.”
Carol realised what had happened. The family was all still there, waiting for the coaches to be brought around to the front but the coaches were gone. They had been stolen and now the family were without transport. If they were going to leave Lunden they would have to find some other means of doing so.
CHAPTER 22
GRAHAM STARED THROUGH THE WINDOW. HE WAS LOST in thought and barely saw the dark towers that had emerged in the distance. They limbed high above the Lunden skyline, they looked like horns.
Agnes was gone. He was sure of it. She hadn’t been there when he had left the church with Bridget and she hadn’t been there since. He didn’t think that he would ever see her again.
Bells chimed somewhere in the distance, ringing out across the city. They greedily called people towards them, hungry for another sole to keep.
Eventually the fires started. They sprung up across the landscape, lighting the night like it was a pit in Hell. Graham turned away.
The dormitory was as it had been that first day he had found it, although many had passed since then. The singular difference was the small body laying atop one of the bunks. A tiny form whose chest rose and fell but who never made a sound.
Bridget hadn’t spoken or opened her eyes since they had returned to the workhouse. It had been three days and, while Lunden continued to burn just outside the window, Graham could barely stand to look at her.
There was nothing, obviously, wrong with her but that didn’t mean she was alright. If she wasn’t hurt then she would be able to talk to him but he had no one to go to who would be able to help. He couldn’t get to the hospital, even if he thought a doctor might be able to help, which he didn’t.
He walked past her and stopped at the door. Something about the measure of her breathing was different. He couldn’t say exactly what but he had been listening to it for days now and he knew that it had changed. Graham looked back at her and he was surprised to see, in the darkness, that her eyes had opened.
“Bridget?” Graham said.
He walked towards her, his breathing quickened and his heart pounded. He stopped in front of her but she didn’t react.
“Bridget it’s me,” Graham said.
She didn’t move.
Graham was not a medical man. He had only the barest knowledge of the workings of the human body but he could see that something was wrong. “Bridget can you hear me?”
He realised that she wasn’t blinking.
He crouched down by her bedside and took her hand. It was cool, just as it always had been. He held it firmly but not tight. “I’m here Bridget. Can you speak?”
When she opened her mouth Graham thought that he was going to hear her voice for the first time in days. That she might be able to say something other than the few words she had managed in the church. When she opened her mouth and began to speak it was not his daughter whose voice he heard;
“Lunden fields are burning. I hold the key to the mansion. Find me the Lord and we can save them yet. The land is not ruined yet.”
Graham fell to the floor with a heavy thump. His surprise was not just from the nonsense that he heard but from the voice that spoke it. His daughter was a nine year old girl. The voice he heard was older, deeper and unmistakably male. He looked at her as if she might be about to explode. “Bridget?”
“Lunden fields are burning. I hold the key to the mansion. Find me the Lord and we can save them yet. The land is not ruined yet.”
It wasn’t his daughter speaking, he was sure of it.
Then she seemed to hear. She turned to look at him and her face softened. “Daddy?” Bridget said and it was her talking this time.
Graham couldn’t pick himself up or answer. The shock was too much for him.
“Daddy?” Bridget said again and this time it was definitely her speaking. “What are you doing on the floor?”
Graham picked himself up and went to her. She had eaten but she was still small. He picked her up with little effort and held her tightly. He rocked her back and forth as tears began to stream down his face. He wasn’t sure whether they were tears of happiness or fear. There was something inside his daughter and it shouldn’t be there.
About the Author
J.M. Robinson is really James Loscombe in disguise.
It is an open pen name used for publishing fantasy fiction.
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Darkness Falls (Blood Hound Book 3) Page 11
