by Maynard Sims
There had been a time when young thugs like that wouldn’t have gotten the better of him, but those days were long gone. Now he was tired and bruised as well as scared for the girl.
If what he knew about the manor was anything to go by, she would not be well treated.
He had become used to the strange comings and goings over the months since he had started living rough on the estate. Often he told himself he would leave, find somewhere else to live, perhaps go back to his native Devon. There would be plenty of work on the farms or nature reserves for a man with his skills. Then reality kicked in and he knew he was tied to this place for good or ill.
He wasn’t certain they would allow him to leave.
Once, not so long ago, he had been head gamekeeper at the manor. That was under Lord Solsbury. A fine man, a real and proper English gentleman who could trace his family tree back before Henry VIII.
After the lord died, his wife and family had to sell the house and grounds to pay the Death Duties. Albert thought it was a real shame.
Built in the seventeenth century, the Jacobean house had seen much history during Elizabethan and Victorian times. In the grounds, an oak tree marked the spot where Princess Elizabeth heard she was to be queen.
The new owner was a businessman from London the staff were told. At the first staff meeting most were told they would not be needed any longer, even people who had been there all their lives. One day they were there, the next, gone.
Albert lasted about a month. He watched some guests of the new owner, Mr. Holly, hunt and catch a deer. Instead of shooting it, as was expected, they formed a circle around it, so it couldn’t escape, and then they took turns to press their hands into its side. Albert was not a superstitious man, but it looked to him as if the hands actually went into the deer’s body. It took a long time for the poor animal to die, and when it did the group fell onto the body like a pack of hyenas.
When Albert protested, he was dismissed.
He had no idea what to do or where to go. He had a crazy idea if he stayed around, Holly would realize his worth and reinstate him. That had been months ago, and if Holly knew he was still hanging around he had given no sign of it.
There wasn’t a lot to do. The shack was barely habitable. He caught rabbits and fished in the river, and he knew how to skin and gut and cook over an open fire. He existed.
His scheme took up most of his time.
While he worked the estate, he had begun to make a detailed plan of every aspect of the manor and the grounds. Each field and copse, each animal sighting. Back in the days when he had access to the manor itself, he made notes and drawings of every room, every entrance and exit, every hidden passage and priest hole. It had become quite an extensive piece of work. He had hopes he might sell the idea to Lord Solsbury and they might publish a book that would help the coffers. It never happened of course.
Nowadays he spent most of his time filling in the gaps so his work was as complete as possible.
Under cover of darkness he would get as close to the house as he could and note and sketch doors and windows, paths and walls. He noted where animals trekked and what flowers grew during which season.
He kept it hidden in the shack.
Vaguely he wondered whether it might be possible to interest Holly and get his old job back by giving Holly the book.
He flexed his legs. Stiff but not too much damage. His head ached but a good night’s sleep would cure that. Maisie was sleeping curled on the floor beneath a window.
A noise.
What was that?
Again, there it was again.
He raised his head over the couch to see if there was anyone there.
Then the front door crashed open.
Chapter Fifty-seven
In an underdeveloped country, don’t drink the water; in a developed country, don’t breathe the air.
—Changing Times Magazine
The grounds of Faircroft Manor, Hertfordshire, England
Albert watched the wood of the poorly fitting door to the shack splinter as something heavy smashed it open.
Then he saw what it was.
Maisie made an odd sound that would have been a scream in a human and hid under the couch.
Albert’s legs felt unsteady beneath him and all he could do was move slightly backward, though he knew the shack was so small that no amount of distance would be any help to him.
Nothing would help against what was standing in the doorway.
The monster he had seen that time at the manor left him in no doubt that there was evil existing there. The creature facing him had just one intention, although the eyes looked like those of a shark, black but dead, staring without recognition or emotion. Staring with one purpose, to kill Albert.
The wall of the shack was rough and greasy. Albert backed against it and felt the wood with his hands. His mind was racing. He realized he was speaking, jumbled words tumbling out of his mouth as the fear took hold.
It was dark with just enough light from the moon to let him see clearly enough, too clearly. He would have preferred it if he couldn’t see anything.
He briefly wondered if he shut his eyes whether he would wake and find himself alone, like every other night. Then he heard the grunts, smelled the fetid odor, saw the huge misshapen body, and knew this was not like any other night.
He knew it was also his last.
The creature shifted in the entrance to the shack.
There was blood smeared around the bloated lips.
Albert heard a piercing scream disturb the night and realized after a few moments that it was his scream.
The creature thrust itself at him. He felt the sharp talons tear his skin, then felt the agony as they burrowed deep within him, seeking out the soft organs, and began to feed. The breath was foul, as if corpses had been consumed and were trying to escape. The tongue was lolling over the mouth, moving cobralike, waiting to strike. Up close the head was immense. It was on a thick solid neck, wide powerful shoulders. The features were jumbled, as if a waxwork had been too close to a fire. Forehead dripped over eyes, a nose that was squat and hoglike, molten cheeks, and a skull of tufts and bone.
As it fed, the black eyes began to change. From a deep night black they began to lighten, so by the time Albert was so weak he could no longer stand, the eyes were a bright and brilliant blue.
When he used to skin rabbits, there was a moment when the final piece of fur was ripped from the body. He could never describe the sound that last tearing made, but it was ingrained in his senses. As the last vestige of his life was ripped from him, he sensed that was the noise his body was making.
He died, but the creature stayed a long time after that, devouring and mutilating.
Day Three
A hunter of shadows, himself a shade.
—Homer
Chapter Fifty-eight
The Home Office, Whitehall, London, England
Robert Carter had been speaking uninterrupted for almost half an hour.
“To summarize,” he said. “There is a race of vampirelike creatures. The race is called Spiraci, from the Latin to breathe. Colloquially they are known as breathers, and they feed on human souls. They also consume their bodies and use them as sex pets. They’ve existed since before man walked the Earth, evolving over centuries and, in the twenty-first, they are split into three factions.
“John Holly leads a global business that has franchised the feeding. He’s organized and ruthless and wants to genetically modify the creatures’ DNA so they are no longer dependent on humans. If his plan works, the breathers will have no need for us. We would, in effect, become redundant, and the breathers will become the dominant species on the planet.
“Rachel Grey runs the second faction. She and others like her want to destroy Holly and stop his research, want to maintain the status quo, so they can carry on as her forefathers did—in the traditional manner.”
“So they’ll continue to use us like cattle?” the home secre
tary said.
Carter nodded.
“Unacceptable,” he said, as if dismissing a proposal for an inner road route.
“I agree,” Carter said. “Both groups are a threat to humanity and have to be stopped.”
“And the third group?” Crozier said, prompting Carter. He’d noticed the home secretary surreptitiously checking his wristwatch.
“The third group is less organized, barely a group at all, more a collection of disparate individuals led by Jason Pike, who want to stop both Grey and Holly. Pike and his people want a complete end to the feeding.”
“Surely that will mean they die out completely?”
Carter nodded grimly. “I believe Jason Pike is aware of that.”
A silence hung in the air.
“Is Pike here?” the home secretary said eventually.
“He’s downstairs, waiting for us to reach a decision.”
“But surely this is all conjecture,” Alan Liskard butted in. In setting up this meeting with the home secretary, Crozier had effectively gone over his head, and the under-secretary was furious about the breach of protocol. “You haven’t offered us any proof of your findings.”
“How many more people have to die before you have the proof you need, Alan?” Crozier said.
Liskard flushed and turned to his boss. “Home Secretary?”
Richard Reid had been home secretary since the last cabinet reshuffle three months ago. It was a job he’d coveted since his first entry into politics fifteen years before. Now he was starting to wonder why he had wanted the job so badly. Riots on the streets of Hoxton, illegal immigrants swarming in from Eastern Europe via the Channel Tunnel, the Metropolitan Police threatening to strike over pay and working conditions, and now this.
Carter’s scenario was a nightmare. Even before he became home secretary, Reid had long been uneasy about Department 18’s existence and had actually chaired a select committee a couple of years ago that looked into the running of the department and the results it had achieved. It was his opinion then that Simon Crozier and his team of gifted people should be shut down, but the vote went against him, and now he was home secretary.
Department 18 was very much his responsibility. This was exactly why he had employed Alan Liskard to oversee it, effectively putting another layer of bureaucracy between the department and his office. He was thinking now that he should have found someone tougher and more experienced than Liskard for the role. He looked at the expectant faces around the table, all waiting for his decision, then reached into his briefcase and took out a thick manila folder.
The folder was old, curled at the edges, the ink on the title label faded with the passage of time. Reid rested his hands on it and cleared his throat. “This is an unfortunate sequence of events,” he said. “However, they are not without precedent.” He looked across the table at Simon Crozier. “One of your predecessors found himself in a very similar position to the one you find yourself in today. Unfortunately, at that time, no action was taken. Had it been, we might not be sitting here having this conversation.” He glanced down at the file and slid it across the desk to Crozier, who flicked it open and started scanning pages.
“This is dated 1951,” Crozier said, not looking up.
“Quite,” Reid said. “And the year is significant. You’ll notice that the report was compiled by Henry Manners, the director of your department at the time. By ‘51 Manners was about to be replaced. His credibility was wearing thin with the government of the day and, to be frank, the minister responsible for the department at that time had lost all faith in him. If you read the entire file you’ll see that Manners recommended that action be taken against a group of individuals who displayed very similar characteristics to these breathers. Unfortunately there was no one left to take him seriously and so the file was buried. Not long afterward, Manners was replaced.”
“So in effect you’re saying that successive governments have known about the breathers and have done nothing about them,” Robert Carter said incredulously.
“That’s about the size of it,” Reid said.
“That’s despicable,” Carter said. “Have you any idea how many people have died at the hands of these creatures since 1951?”
“No,” Reid said bluntly. “But then I’m sure that you don’t either, so climb down from your high horse. Posturing will get us nowhere.” He poured himself a glass of water from the carafe in front of him. He took a sip and turned to Crozier. “So what you’re proposing…your solution…is a surgical strike against Holly.”
Crozier nodded.
“We believe it’s the only way,” Carter said, interrupting again. “We need to rescue our people.”
“Czerwinski and Dr. Payne.”
“Of course.”
Reid leaned back in his seat and steepled his fingers, blowing lightly across the tips.
“I’d hardly call Czerwinski one of our people,” Alan Liskard said.
Carter had his mouth open, ready to slap Liskard down, but Reid beat him to the punch.
“Alan, stop being such an ass. The department brought Czerwinski on board, so he counts as one of ours. And as far as Dr. Payne is concerned…If you want to go see Sir Nigel Foxton to tell him we’re abandoning his little girl and leaving her to the mercies of these monsters, then please be my guest.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Liskard blustered, but the home secretary waved him away, turning instead to Simon Crozier. “Okay, Simon. I’m going to authorize this.” He checked his watch again and got to his feet. “I’ve got a meeting with the PM in five minutes, so I have to draw this to a close. Tell Alan here what you need in the way of support. Alan,” he said, glancing at Liskard. “Accommodate the department in any way they feel is necessary. Let’s bring this to a satisfactory conclusion, gentlemen, and do it as quickly as possible.”
The meeting was over.
Chapter Fifty-nine
Nutrimentum Spiritus (food for the soul)
—Berlin Royal Library inscription
The Home Office, Whitehall, London, England
Pike was pacing the lobby.
“You’re making me nervous,” Rachel Grey said. She had arrived a little over an hour ago and was now sitting on one of the green leather visitor’s benches clutching a plastic cup of watery coffee.
“This is taking too long,” Pike said. “We need to strike against Holly sooner rather than later.”
Rachel crossed her long legs and sat back on the bench. “Patience was never your strong suit, Jason, was it?”
He scowled at her. The alliance with Rachel Grey was born out of necessity. Given the chance, he would have ripped out her throat. Instead he was killing time in an ancient building belonging to the British government making small talk with the woman.
He gave an audible sigh of relief when he heard voices from the top of the long, curved staircase and Robert Carter and the others came into view.
By the time they had reached the lobby, Pike was standing at the foot of the stairs, Grey at his side. “Well?” he said.
“We have a green light,” Carter said.
Pike sighed with relief. Even Grey allowed herself a moment, shutting her eyes for a second and imagining what it would be like to tear John Holly apart; she could almost feel her fingers burying themselves in his flesh, ripping, rending.
“We go this evening,” Crozier said. “Now I suggest we get back to the department. We need to plan this very carefully.”
Pike shook his head. “Rachel and I will meet you at Faircroft Manor later. There are things we have to do first.”
Crozier looked taken aback. “I thought we were joining forces on this.”
Pike gave an easy smile. “And so we are. But you shouldn’t underestimate Holly’s powers. He would be aware of our presence before we got within a mile of the manor, and it would take very little for him to turn us against one another.”
“He needs distracting,” Grey said. “And Jason and I will provide that distraction.
”
Pike turned to Carter. “We’ll coordinate by cell phone. You can let us know your progress and we, in turn, will tell you when it’s safe to strike. Are you happy with that?”
“It makes sense,” Carter said.
Simon Crozier looked uncomfortable but said nothing.
“Okay. That’s settled. We’ll see you at the manor.”
As they watched Pike and Rachel Grey leave, Harry Bailey said, “I don’t trust them.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Crozier said.
Robert Carter said, “They don’t trust each other, those two. I’m amazed they’re able to work together, especially considering where this strike against Holly will eventually lead them.”
“What do you mean?” Crozier said.
“Civil war among the breathers is what I mean. This afternoon we are going to set a chain of events in motion that will inevitably lead to carnage.”
“And how do you feel about that?” Bailey said.
Carter smiled grimly. “Well, I won’t lose any sleep about it, if that’s what you mean.”
Crozier buttoned up his coat. “Come on. We’ve work to do.”
Chapter Sixty
Department 18 Headquarters, Whitehall, London, England
Martin Impey sat at the conference table flanked by the two senior members of the assault team who were going to spearhead the attack on Faircroft Manor.
Captain Frank Allen and Lieutenant Ian Fulbright had worked with the department a number of times in the past. Both ex-SAS, but now employed by the government and used for projects where conventional methods were deemed inappropriate. They were hard men with many years of active and dangerous duty under their belts. A map of the manor and its surroundings was spread on the table in front of them.
