‘Liz not dangerous,’ said Mihai, shaking his head vigorously. ‘Not very.’
‘Well, maybe just a little bit,’ admitted Drake. ‘Actually, yeah, now you mention it, she is really dangerous. But not to her friends.’
‘But we don’t think she’s the killer?’
‘Defo not.’
Vijay breathed a sigh of relief. He liked Liz a lot. It was hard not to. He still liked her, even now he knew she was a vampire. As a Sikh, he had been taught to accept all people, regardless of race, colour, religion, or sexuality. He knew that in troubled times, tolerance of others was more important than ever.
‘So why are you telling me all this?’ he asked.
Drake looked at him as if he was an idiot. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘No,’ said Vijay crossly. ‘That’s why I asked.’
‘The murderer must be another vampire, yeah?’
‘That’s just one possible theory.’
‘Now you’re starting to sound like Aasha,’ moaned Drake. ‘She always tells me I’m wrong, even when she knows I’m right.’
Vijay had nothing to counter that. That was exactly how Aasha was.
‘So,’ said Drake, ‘let’s use our brains. What do we know about vampires that could be useful?’
‘They like to drink blood?’ suggested Vijay.
‘Right. So that explains the wounds on the neck of the victims. And it also explains why there wasn’t much blood on their bodies, or on their clothes.’
‘Because the vampire drank it all?’
‘Yeah,’ said Drake. ‘What else do we know?’
‘They’ll just carry on killing,’ said Vijay.
‘Right, yeah. Good point.’
The thought was sobering. This was no ordinary serial killer they were dealing with, although that would have been bad enough. This murderer had abilities that went far beyond the human, and they would never stop killing, because for them, killing meant life.
‘Vampir can turn into bat,’ said Mihai.
Drake stared at him. ‘You reckon?’
‘Yes,’ said Mihai eagerly. ‘Is how killer vanished into thin air.’
Drake seemed to be taking the idea seriously. ‘That’s what that guy Frank said, wasn’t it? The murderer just disappeared.’
‘You can’t believe that,’ said Vijay. ‘People can’t really turn into bats. That’s just impossible!’
‘No, you’re probably right. But maybe vampires are very good at hiding.’
Vijay snorted. Liz had never demonstrated any amazing ability to hide. Unless of course she had been hiding so well he hadn’t even known she was there. He looked over his shoulder now, just in case. But there was no one else on the rooftop with them, vampire or otherwise.
‘Maybe vampir turn invisible,’ suggested Mihai.
‘No,’ said Vijay. This discussion was turning silly. He’d agreed to vampires, but there was no way he was going to believe in invisible vampires, or people who turned into bats. ‘That old guy probably just couldn’t see very well. He told us he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He didn’t even have a description of the murderer, or anything. I wonder if he was making the whole thing up.’
Drake shook his head. ‘We must keep an open mind. And we gotta use all our clues.’
Mihai nodded. ‘Use all clues. Yes.’
‘The big question,’ continued Drake, ‘is how we gonna use all this info to catch the vampire?’
‘Catch the vampire?’ echoed Vijay.
‘Catch it.’
The boys regarded each other nervously for a moment.
‘Is easy,’ said Mihai at last. ‘To catch vampir, just set trap.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Norbury Park, Surrey, new moon
The number of sticks on the forest floor grew ever larger. Griffin dragged himself from his tent to count them. Fourteen.
That did not necessarily mean that fourteen days had passed, however. It was not that simple, not now that the fever had come.
He tried to place a new stick each morning, but some days he forgot. It was hard to focus on the task, even though it was truly not a difficult one. Some mornings he woke, then slept, then woke again. Some days he could not be sure if he had woken at all, or if the feverish dreams that invaded his sleep were with him still.
He could not be certain, even now, that he was truly awake.
It was the infection in his leg that had brought the fever. The wound had become infected on the seventh day, or perhaps the eighth. He had unwrapped it to be greeted by the early smell of decay. He had cleaned the open sore thoroughly with antiseptic and bound it as well as he could. But the infection progressed quickly.
He had treated a case of gangrene once, long ago in a faraway country. A hot, desert country. He couldn’t quite recall its name. Gas gangrene, a nasty business. The patient’s toes had already turned black and cold when Griffin first saw him. He should have been brought in earlier, and it was too late to treat the infected tissue. The man’s foot was already dead. There had been no other option than to amputate the foot and lower leg. The patient had survived, thanks to good modern medical care. Without it there would have been no chance.
Griffin’s own leg was turning bad. He had known that infection was a risk, and had done his best to prevent it. But he could only do so much here, alone, in the middle of a forest. Despite fastidious cleaning and binding, some kind of bacteria had invaded the wound. The symptoms were clear enough. Swelling, inflammation, a discharge of yellow fluid. And the smell, of course. The smell of death.
Death. The word stirred another memory. Ah yes, his dead companions, the pilot and co-pilot who had brought him on this mission, and done their best to save the helicopter from crashing. Brave men. They hadn’t deserved to be left to rot inside the mangled frame of the helicopter, or to be feasted on by the red kites. He had somehow found the strength to pull them from their seats and bury them in shallow graves, one lying next to the other, brothers in arms. He had managed to do that for them, at least. He remembered saying a prayer at their graveside, a few stumbling words of comfort.
‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’
But who had he really been trying to convince by those words? The dead men, or himself?
He hauled himself across to the babbling stream and splashed cold water over his face to see if it would help. It did. He leaned forward to immerse his face fully in the icy water and held it there for as long as he could bear. It had the desired effect. He was properly awake now. Wide awake, and that was how he had to stay. He wouldn’t make it if he kept lapsing into the dreamworld.
He must choose life, or else death would choose him.
His leg was numb where the broken bone had damaged the nerves. It felt cold. The bone would never heal, he knew that much. The femoral shaft must have snapped right in two. He could feel the break with his fingers. The nerve damage might be permanent too. And the infection? If it spread beyond his leg, he would die. There was no doubt about it.
If there was a bonus, it was that the numbness had dulled the pain. Just as well, since he had used up all the morphine. His leg no longer burned, although now his head burned fiery hot instead, like the flare he had fired into the black night sky. No one had answered that flare. His cry for help had gone unheeded. He scanned the morning sky now, looking for the tell-tale vapour trails of overflying aircraft, and listening for the sound of helicopters. Nothing. Not one sign of life in fourteen days. He hadn’t even heard the distant engines of cars or other vehicles. The only sounds were the calls of the birds and the gentle rustling of the trees.
Had the world ended? Was he all alone, the very last person on earth? From what he had seen so far, it seemed quite possible.
He was no stranger to solitude. As a boy he had spent long hours of every day alone with nature, and had loved every moment. Another memory floated into his mind, this one of a deer, in a forest just like this, many years ago. It was a fallow deer,
a young buck, its antlers magnificent. He had approached it warily, expecting it to flee at any moment. Yet it did not move, but remained crouched in the thicket, its legs folded beneath its body. He had walked closer, moving slowly and quietly. The deer knew he was there, but did not run. Eventually he came within six feet of the creature.
It was beautiful. Its coat was red-brown, with white spotting along its flanks, and a white throat. The deer lay with one leg out to the side. He moved closer to take a look. The animal tried to rise to its legs, but the one leg buckled, sending it back to the ground. It groaned loudly.
Its leg was broken, he realized. ‘Don’t move, I’ll get help,’ he told the animal, and ran back to the house to tell his father.
On hearing his story, his father had reached for his rifle. ‘We can’t save it, Michael. We can only put it out of its misery.’
He had begged his father not to do it, to show mercy and compassion, to somehow find a way to save the deer.
His father had explained it to him. ‘The leg cannot be saved. Without it the poor creature will die a slow and painful death. This rifle will bring compassion. Death will be a mercy.’
He hadn’t left his father to do it alone, but had gone with him. ‘Please, is there no other way?’ he had asked, a hundred times. His father shook his head, patiently.
In the end, death had come quickly. A single shot to the back of the head. ‘The deer felt nothing,’ his father assured him. ‘We did the right thing. It was better this way.’
He had almost forgotten that deer. It had been so long ago.
A broken leg. Death. He had been unwilling to accept it, no matter how many times his father had told him it must be done.
That experience had propelled him to study medicine and eventually to become a doctor. A chance event had changed the course of his life.
Life is nothing but chance, my friend. Just one crazy dice roll after another.
Someone had said that to him once. He hadn’t believed it at the time. He didn’t believe it now.
I would always have become a doctor, deer or no deer. Chance had nothing to do with it.
He looked up and saw a small deer staring silently at him through the trees. A roe deer, not a fallow deer. A doe, not a buck. A real live animal, not a phantom from his past. It stared at him briefly, then bounded away in a flash.
He had been unable to save the deer of his childhood, but he was damned if he was going to allow a broken leg to end his own life.
‘There’s no one around here to dig my grave,’ he muttered. ‘And dead men don’t bury themselves.’
To die with no one to say a word over his grave, that would never do. In any case, he had already made his choice, and had chosen life.
Death was for other men.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire
James shifted in the confined space of his cage, seeking comfort, but finding none. His arms were still tied behind his back, even though he was within the cage, and they ached terribly. The cage stood in one corner of the doctor’s laboratory and he had not been allowed out of it since his capture. This was his entire world now, and he had nowhere else to go, nothing to do, and no one to talk to, except Sarah when no one else was around to listen.
That was not often. Usually the doctor spent long hours at work in the lab, and often a soldier would come and watch over him. The soldier never spoke to him, except to give orders. ‘Stand up!’ ‘Lie down!’ ‘Do what the doctor says!’
He always obeyed without question. He didn’t want to cause any trouble.
He had watched the doctor closely, noting the single-mindedness with which she went about her work. She was always reading papers, or examining samples under a microscope, or else staring intently at something, thinking hard. She never seemed to stop. But he had also noticed the way her fingers trembled, sometimes her whole hand shaking. He had seen her stumble as she rose from her chair, and the clumsy way she bumped into furniture, or knocked over objects on her workspace. Her papers were covered in coffee stains, or were misfiled, or lay in great heaps, ready to topple over onto the floor. She spent a lot of time hunting for misplaced items, and cursing her own untidiness.
Sometimes she hummed absent-mindedly, or muttered words and phrases to herself in her slightly clipped Australian accent.
She rarely bothered to say anything to him.
He would have liked to help her, by alerting her whenever a stray piece of paper fluttered to the floor, or telling her where she had left the safety glasses she was searching for. He would have liked to question her about the cure, and how it might affect him. But some instinct warned him to stay quiet and not to draw attention to himself.
And so he said nothing.
He understood why Sarah couldn’t speak to him openly, and why they had to pretend that they didn’t know each other. If the doctor discovered their secret, surely Sarah would be sent away. That was the very last thing he wanted to happen. He didn’t really mind not being able to talk to her, just as long as he could see her and be near her, and know that she was safe.
The doctor wasn’t as cold and cruel as she had first seemed, either. She had been afraid of him, that was all. Now, by being obedient and well-behaved, he was starting to win her over. She no longer regarded him with open fear and hostility. Sometimes, her voice sounded almost kind.
Her name was Helen, but he didn’t dare call her that.
She wandered over to the cage and studied him now, some thought animating her features.
James said nothing, just sat quietly, watching her tuck stray golden hairs behind her ear.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked him eventually.
He didn’t understand the question. ‘Sad. Lonely. Confused,’ he said.
She shook her head dismissively. ‘I meant, how do you feel physically? Do you feel any different since I began giving you this treatment?’
He thought about it hard before answering. He had been thinking about it every day since Helen had started the programme of injections. He hoped that the cure would work, and that he would become human once again. He really wanted to change. But he didn’t feel anything yet.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Do you understand what this treatment is for?’
‘I think I do. I’ve been listening to what you tell Sarah, your assistant. You’re hoping that the injections you’re giving me will spread antibodies through my bloodstream, and destroy the virus.’
She nodded. ‘If it works, the genetic changes that the virus caused will be reversed and you’ll become human again.’
‘Do you think it will work?’
‘I haven’t seen indications of any changes yet.’
‘I hope it does work.’
‘Do you?’ she asked, sounding surprised
‘Yes. For one thing, I’d like to be able to eat normal food again.’
‘Right. You must be getting very hungry.’
She had offered him a plate of cooked food when he’d first arrived, but he had politely declined, explaining that he could only eat raw meat, preferably from live prey.
‘I am hungry,’ said James. ‘Very hungry.’
‘There isn’t much I can do about that,’ said the doctor. ‘I can’t give you the kind of food you want. I’m sorry.’
‘No.’ He hadn’t really expected her to bring him live animals to eat. He knew that people found the idea of him killing and eating live prey disgusting, even though they were happy enough to eat animals that other people had killed. He had felt the same once, when he’d been human.
Still, it didn’t seem fair to starve him. Even animals got fed. Even laboratory rats. But he kept the thought to himself.
‘Is there anything else you need?’.It was the first real sign of kindness she had shown him.
‘I wonder if you might bring me a blanket?’ he asked. ‘I don’t need it for warmth. I don’t really feel the cold. But it would be … comforting.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘And you could call me James, if you like.’
‘What?’ Her voice had become hard again.
‘I know you might not want to call me by my name,’ he added hastily. ‘You prefer to call me the patient, or the test subject. I know why you do that. It’s in case something goes wrong, and the experiments … don’t work out.’
‘It’s not that,’ said the doctor crisply. ‘You’re not the only lycanthrope I’ve known. The first one was a student. She came to the university where I worked, and asked if she could study with me. I knew at once that there was something wrong with her, but against my better judgement I trusted her. That was a big mistake. When I discovered the truth about her, she tried to kill me. She very nearly succeeded, and I could tell how much she enjoyed it.’
‘I’m sorry about that.’
‘I won’t ever make the same mistake again,’ said the doctor. ‘So, the reason I call you the test subject is to remind myself that despite your harmless appearance and your good behaviour, underneath you are still a cold-blooded, flesh-eating monster.’
She turned away and left him then, alone in his cage in the darkened laboratory.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Gatwick Airport, West Sussex, crescent moon
‘So, let’s work this out. Logically, yeah?’
Vijay nodded. Drake was on a roll and when he was like this, it was best to let him get on with it. Interrupting him would just make him cross.
The three of them – Vijay, Drake and Mihai – were up on the rooftop again, a good place for blue sky thinking. They were spending a lot of time up here now, weather permitting. Back in the hotel room was no place to be, what with his grandmother’s knitting, Kevin’s complaining, Aasha’s moods, Samantha’s pregnancy, and Liz being generally grumpy about not being able to catch the murderer. Outdoors was off-limits to civilians, and if the soldiers caught you sneaking around outside, they would give you a hard time, even though the boys were supposed to be police deputies now.
Besides, there was nowhere better to work out a plan like this. A top secret plan. One so secret, they couldn’t even tell Liz about it. Especially not Liz.
Lycanthropic (Book 4): Moon Rise [The Age of the Werewolf] Page 15
