by Paul Cornell
"Why did you want to find us?" asked Maddy.
"I've made a study of you. You're so important, as a species that is. Great things are about to happen. Can you not summon some more of your kind?"
"If you want. It's possible that they'll rip you apart, like."
"No it isn't. I'm here because of destiny. They'll listen to what I have to say."
"You asked for it. Madelaine, do you want to do it?"
"Okay." Glancing suspiciously at the stranger, Maddy stepped to the edge of the roof. She took a deep breath and clenched her teeth. There came a little popping sound from her throat. She let go the breath, and blew out a bright stream of red, a bloody mist that dissipated on the wind. She ran round the roof, spitting it as she went, until a circle of the stuff had disappeared into the night air. "Eck! She stopped, and put a hand to her throat. "Now I really need my dinner."
"Here," Jake opened up his wrist and offered it to her. "Have some of mine for a bit, I want to see how this turns out." Maddy dashed over and sucked quickly on the open vein, gargling with it.
Ruath watched them, shaking her head, a sad smile on her face. "Beautiful," she whispered. "Beautiful."
They only had to wait a few minutes. Ruath spent the time examining Jake and Madelaine with an enthusiast's glee, feeling their teeth, peering into their eyes and generally fussing over them in a way which Maddy found disturbing. Jake seemed entertained by it, though.
The first one to arrive was a fat, bald man. He materialized out of a mist that had been hanging around the edge of the roof. "What's this then, party?" he chuckled, rubbing his hands together at the sight of Ruath.
"No," Ruath told him, "I bring - "
"Where are you two kids from, then?"
"Down south. We're here for the beer."
"Listen to me - " Ruath began, her voice rising a notch.
The man shot out a finger, embedding it in Ruath's throat. "Shall I be mother? he asked.
Ruath calmly pulled something from her belt, and thrust it into the man's face. It was a book with an elegantly designed round symbol embossed on its ancient cover.
The newcomer threw up his hands and stepped back, bellowing in shock. Jake and Madelaine took a step back as well. They could feel the force of the symbol.
"The Great Seal of Rassilon!" shouted Ruath. She advanced on the man until he stood on the edge of the roof, on the verge of flying away. "I do not have time for these games. I know the secrets of your past, and have important news concerning your future. If you listen to me, you can rule this world and others. If you prey on me, you will remain ignorant and vulnerable. I am of the Time Lords. I come from another world, do you understand?"
"I understand." The voice came from behind Ruath. Standing there was an elegantly dressed young man in leather gloves and sports jacket. He doffed his cap to Ruath. "Pleased to meet you. The children of the Great Vampire are bound to the ring and the tradition."
Ruath quickly reached into her pouch again, and slipped a ring onto her finger. She held it out in the direction of the gentleman. "Thank goodness somebody knows the form. Kiss the ring."
"Of course." He went down on one knee and gently touched the silver band with his lips. Then he looked up at the others. "I advise you to do the same. Haven't you read the books? This lady is the herald of our jolly old saviour."
Ruath held the ring high over the other vampires. They all knelt. "Bring me the blood of a virgin," she told them. "And I will show you the truth of what I say."
Jake glanced at Madelaine. "It's the night for tall orders, isn't it?"
They spread the pool of blood in a circle on the roof, directed by the man in the cap, who introduced himself as Jeremy Sanders. He'd shaken hands with the bald man, pleased to meet his "competition in the Withington area". Ruath expected more vampirekind to arrive, but Jake explained to her that only a couple per major city was the norm.
"More than that, and it gets out of control. You get everybody biting each other, passing it on without killing. Soon your food supply's gone and you all starve. You're taught that by whoever initiates you, only make three of the kind as you go. Space them out as well, so you're not all fighting over the same meat."
"Ah, but do you know who the father of you all is? Ruath looked around the group. "The only vampire on Earth at one point. Anyone?"
"Count Dracula?" suggested Maddy sarcastically.
"No. No, that legendary figure's progeny all died out."
"The Great Vampire." Jeremy smiled. "You wear the ring of his cult."
"Not the Great Vampire. But I'm impressed by your knowledge."
"Ah, when I was initiated into the Undead back in the forties, everybody knew the form. We were expecting you almost immediately. Got a little miffed by the passing of the years, it must be said."
"Let me show you." She took a bottle from her pouch and let three drops of a clear liquid fall into the pool of blood. The red liquid shifted and stirred, as if it suddenly had a life of its own. Colours and textures swirled across its surface. "Activation code. Bioplasmic data-processors, go go go." She looked up as the blood started to glitter and swirl faster. "It has to be virgin blood, no hint of anybody else's genes. My little datapod virus structures hook into the memories of individual cells and go back into racial memory, interrogating it and following the trail back until they find what I've told them to find. Somewhere back in this person's ancestry, somebody will have touched somebody who's seen what we want to see."
The vampires looked blankly at her.
"It's magic," she told them.
"That's all right then," the bald man muttered. "For a minute, I thought it were going to be something complicated."
The pool shimmered and suddenly flattened into a vibrating flat surface. "There he is!" gasped Ruath.
In the pool, a picture had formed. A bearded man, running and snarling. The background was some sort of store-room. There was a flash of a crate. The man sped across what looked like a casino, past card tables and the like, and threw himself through the glass of a window, shattering it. The scene changed. Now they were in a darkened alleyway, beside a street sign of American design. Something about the look of the place suggested the nineteen thirties. The man lashed out at the viewer, and the picture whizzed aside in a burst of red.
"Like his style," whispered Jake. "Who is that?"
"Yarven." Ruath breathed, rippling the pool. "Lord Yarven. The assassin of Veran and the last Undead survivor of E-Space."
"Thought that was a car."
"Hush. Watch." The picture switched to the hold of a ship. The point of view was peering down into an earth-filled box. A hand shot up and pulled it into darkness.
"That's an initiation," Jeremy murmured. "Too much style for a killing."
A series of attacks followed, all from the victim's point of view. The setting changed from aboard ship to a familiar background of Big Ben and the Thames. But the details were strange, old-fashioned cars and men in trilbies shuffling by in the night.
"This is the early nineteen forties, by your calendar. Yarven came to this country during that decade, and initiated many of your kind into being. He was not exercising your restraint. He sought to create an army of the night. But what happened to him?"
The picture shifted suddenly to the hold of an aircraft. Somebody was grabbed, struggled in the darkness. A hatch was pulled open. Yarven stood suddenly framed in the doorway of the aircraft, an elegant figure in a dressing-gown and cravat. The viewpoint dropped away, down into the night. Yarven fell with it, spinning past in an elegant dive.
"Where's he going?" murmured Ruath.
The next viewpoint was crouched in a forest, a Sten gun propped in front of it. Yarven was running towards the bushes. The observer stood up and apparently shouted a warning, for Yarven turned and looked. He said something with a curl of his lip.
The observer opened fire. Yarven's body flew backwards, bloody debris blasted out of his torso. The observer stepped forward.
; Yarven stood up again, roaring, and snapped the gun with his fingers. He thrust a claw straight at the observer, and the picture became black and red. Suddenly, another point of view on the same scene, a partisan in a heavy coat and scarf kneeling before Yarven, his face a mess of blood. The vampire was caught unawares, looking around him in surprise. Into the picture was thrust a crucifix. From the forest all around came serious-faced countrymen, holding up the silver crosses they carried around their throats.
"Oh no, I can't look..." whispered Madelaine. "This is like a horror movie."
The burly men grabbed Yarven and dragged him through the forest. He was roaring and struggling, but their grip seemed to increase with his resistance.
"They've got faith, the sods," said Jake.
"I'm beginning to recognize this," grinned Jeremy, smoothing his moustache. "Just as the prophecies predict, what?" The observer was watching as two of his countrymen dug out a pit. Yarven was offered a blindfold, which he declined angrily. He seemed more irritated than frightened. A couple of the partisans were tying logs together.
Yarven stood before the pit, and bullets burst once more across his body. He fell back into it, and the partisans rushed forward, throwing silver crucifixes after him. A giant cross made of two great logs was thrown down on top of him, and the pit swiftly filled in. The last scene was of one of the men blessing the ground. He crossed himself before he turned away.
The picture clouded and became blood once more. Jake laughed in amazement. "The idiots. They haven't cut off his head, there's no stake. Bloody hell, he must still be conscious down there!"
"That's so cruel." Madelaine shook her head in anger.
"I see what you mean," Jeremy straightened up. "That's the story of - "
Ruath raised a finger. "Let me read it. " She opened the book with the Great Seal on its cover, and found the place she'd marked. "Here it is. 'And those who will the destruction of the vampiric races must be ever vigilant. The records of the Dark Time state that there shall come among their number one who was never completely killed. He will be entombed in a pit, not alive and not dead, on the world that will be called Ravolox.' " Ruath looked up. "That's another name for Earth." She found her place again. " 'He will be joined with a Prydonian Lady, and the two of them shall cause much suffering, for he is the one the Great Vampire predicted at his meeting with Rassilon, the one who will succeed him and be consumed in the maw of time that his people may prosper. They will call him the Vampire Messiah.' "
She closed the book triumphantly. "The Dark Time was when my people used their abilities to discover what should not be discovered. This isn't mystical nonsense, but an actual report of the future. I am that Prydonian Lady, and it is my destiny to set your people free."
"The Vampire Messiah ..." The bald man smiled broadly. "Even I've heard of him. Chap who initiated me said he'd come and save us all."
"Indeed." Ruath put a finger to the pool of blood, and it curled into a ball in her hand. "This will show us where to find him." She pointed to her TARDIS. "Shall we?"
Ruath's TARDIS materialized in the shelter of a low stone wall, its shape now that of an old well. She pushed aside the wooden well cover and hopped out. "Come on out," she called back. "It's dark."
A dense mist rose out of the well and resolved itself into the four vampires, who looked around themselves in amazement. They were at the edge of a forest. Nearby was a town with a battered clock tower. Across the night, tracer fire was rattling down out of the hills onto the buildings. Every now and then a small explosion bloomed in the square. The noise was terrifying.
"Bosnia," Madelaine sighed. "Cheers."
"It's not Bosnia," Ruath glanced at her map. "It's technically Croatia, but that's the whole nature of the current dispute. Now, we need to go ..." she felt the ball of blood move in her palm, "that way." She set off: The others followed.
"That thing," the bald man whispered, pointing back to the well. "It's bigger on the inside than the outside."
They made their way through the trees cautiously, Jake stopping to sniff" the air at intervals. "There's a lot of people about, all different sorts, all over the place."
"And judging by what happened to Yarven," Jeremy purred, "they've got a lot of faith. Fighting men generally do.
"Those we saw were Catholic partisans, one of the many factions assembled under the banner of one General Tito in the nineteen forties." Ruath pursed her lips. "Which shows what a strong leader can do, considering that the country eventually chose Communism. The local culture has been heavily influenced by vampires, there must have been a great number of them in the area at one point. That's why the partisans knew some of the lore. Fortunately not enough."
"Well, they won't believe in us any more, will they?" Maddy muttered. "Nobody does." She was getting irritated by the clear sky. Sometimes she liked the little pricking sensations that stars, distant suns, produced on her skin. But not tonight. There were people in these woods who might be able to actually do them harm. After years of invulnerability, that was a very worrying thought.
Ruath smiled. "Really? In this current conflict, Serbian spokesmen have alleged that an army of the Undead will arise to help them in their final battle."
The vampires laughed. "The cheek of them!" chuckled Jake. "We'll mop up afterwards, ta very much."
As the others moved forward, fanning out to better sniff the air, Madelaine tugged at the arm of Jake's Jacket. "Why are we doing this?" she whispered.
Jake shrugged. "Something to do. Where would you rather be?"
"Back in Manchester or somewhere. That woman's out of her tree, you can see it in her eyes."
"Listen." He put a gentle hand on her shoulders. "If things get rough, we'll just take off and go somewhere else, okay?" Madelaine smiled, not particularly convinced. "I just don't want to lose you. I don't want us to get hurt for nothing."
"No chance. I'm not signing up for anything, I just want to see what this is all about."
Ruath had looked back to them, a sharp little glance that Madelaine felt was directed at her. "Hurry up," she said. "We haven't got all night."
After ten minutes or so, the party came to a familiar clearing. The ball of blood in Ruath's hand pulsed and fell into liquid. She wiped it from her hand, conscious of the sudden attention of the Undead around her. "We're here. Look for the pit."
The bald man fell to his knees and sniffed the ground, scuttling about like a hunting dog. At one point, he raised his head. "Eric," he said.
"Sorry?" Ruath frowned.
"Eric Batley, pleased to meet you. Forgot to mention it in all the excitement."
"Yes, yes ..." Ruath waved her hand impatiently. "Do get on with it."
Jeremy raised a hand. "Think I've found it." He was staring down at a depression in the soil by a young sapling. "Look at this tree."
The vampires gathered around. The little sapling was covered with fleshy black flowers. Ruath clenched her fist round its stem and pulled it out of the ground. The roots thrashed and stretched, trying to reach the flesh of her face. "One of yours, I think." She threw the plant onto the ground, drew a small staser pistol and reduced it to ashes with a pulse of light.
She pointed to the soil where the plant had been growing. "Vampire DNA on the move. Dig."
Ten minutes later the vampires had reached the rough wooden cross. It had rotted greatly, but they still couldn't touch it. They'd burned their hands on quite a few silver crucifixes on the way down.
"Got a scientific explanation for that, then?" Eric asked.
"Yes. It's all to do with faith and how it affects the transition between the quantum and classical states of physics in the humanoid mind. An Ice Warrior wouldn't be able to perceive any of you, you know. It'd think that I was talking to myself."
"Many a true word." whispered Maddy.
"I'll go into the details of it with you at some point." Ruath snapped, stepping forward to haul the rotting wooden cross out of the ground. She dropped it a few metres away.
Beneath it, the top of a skull-like head was visible, a few tufts of ragged hair poking out. "There he is!" She helped the vampires with the final scrabble at the earth, carefully heaping the soil away from the parched skull. They revealed a furrowed brow and the top of a face, deathly pale. The eyes were closed.
"He's still conscious, he must be." Ruath bent closer, reaching out to touch... The corpse's eyes opened.
A hand shot out of the ground and grabbed her sleeve, pulling her down. Her face hit the earth by Yarven's head.
He was inching up out of the soil, his neck craning like a man thirsting for water. His teeth moved in a mechanical biting motion, his arm pulling Ruath inexorably towards his soil-filled mouth.
"No, master, no!" Jeremy pulled the gnarled old hand off Ruath.
She leapt to her feet. "Get him out of there," she whispered, a look of excitement on her face. "Yarven must feed. But not on me. Not yet."
Jeremy and Jake pulled the shuddering and naked figure up out of the soil. Yarven was as thin as a skeleton, skin hanging off him in flaps. Ragged bullet holes formed a series of white craters across his wizened chest. His eyes were caked shut, and soil fell from his mouth and nose in a steady stream. After the effort of grabbing for Ruath, he seemed weak as a baby.
"The Messiah." Ruath knelt. "Open your veins for him."
Ruath's TARDIS console room was all oak panelling and elegant black leather padding. The console itself was silver and black, burnished metal and slate-like work surfaces. The Time Lady closed the doors behind the vampires as they carried Yarven in, and activated another control. A panel in the ceiling swept open and a silver hammock descended, a twisted umbilical of pipes leading down to it.
Jake was feeling quite weak, having made his contribution to the blood that the vampires had squirted down Yarven's throat. With a final effort, he managed to heft the inert body into the hammock. A plastic screen inflated around it and nutrients poured down the tubes, making them pulse with liquid.
