That was another thing—no one in his briefings mentioned those searchlights.
The whole night had gone wrong.
To cap it off, he’d only half laid the explosives. No doubt Weiss would jabber on about wasting resources.
But before then, he’d accomplish his mission. As soon as it was dark, he’d be back, throttle any fox he encountered, and set the rest of the damn things. He rather looked forward to watching the explosion. Would be better than any mortal New Year display.
But until then, he had a few sticky problems to resolve.
How could anyone repel him?
First, there had been that fire-throwing something. Left him nastily marked for a few hours, too. Pity he’d been so intent on his intended quarry that the creature came on him unawares.
Then, there was that mortal woman. Only she wasn’t mortal. Couldn’t be. She and her paramour should have been easy pickings but she’d repelled him as if he were a newly turned fledgling.
He knew who she was: the doctor who’d attended Miss Waite. Doyle her name was, and she lived in that big house on the edge of the village.
Maybe he should pay a call. What doctor refused to see a patient?
And her paramour, the one who so stirred Williams’s ire. Twice he’d escaped. Was he the one with the power? This he’d not expected. And it did not please. After he took care of his mission, he’d find a way to eliminate them both.
And meanwhile, might as well report in to the humans who considered themselves his masters.He did have some interesting news after all and his radio was safe, high in the church tower.
Didn’t take long to scale the tower and make contact. “Brunhilda arrested. Repeat: Brunhilda arrested. Will observe all cautions.”
That should keep them, and Weiss, off his neck for a day or two.
Following procedure, he cut the connection, waited two hours, and reconnected.
The reply message came clear and to the point.
“News received. Do not, repeat, do not delay mission. Timeliness imperative.”
Damn!
Gloria gave up on sleep. Usually after a good run she slept like a contented baby but this time she tossed and turned. Mind you, it could hardly be described as a “good” run. Too many unanswered questions and too many concerns. What was the thing that lurked in the woods and was up to no good? And why, come to that, had so many foxes answered her distress call? That had never happened before. Not that she’d ever given out such a frantic alarm before, but it worked and nicely foiled the thing’s nefarious schemes.
But she needed help, needed to talk to someone.
Right, she could see herself going up to Alice, or the new chap, Peter, or one of the ladies in the knitting circle and saying, “Last night, when I was running though the woods in my fox shape…” They’d lock her up.
She couldn’t let that happen.
Peter and Gran were sitting up when she got home. Drinking tea by the boiler, which Gran had obviously stoked up. The warmth was particularly welcome after the early morning drive home.
“Alice!” Peter had his arms around her and kissed her. Twice. “Everything alright?”
Not exactly, but where to begin? “Is that tea? I could use a cup.”
Gran produced it in minutes. Peter insisted she sit down, and suddenly fatigue seeped into her bones.
“Well, dear?” Gran asked. “Bad news?”
“I have no idea, but I think so.”
“What happened, love?” Peter was wearing Simon’s red plaid dressing gown. Gran was making him comfortable.
“I’m just going by guesswork here. Guesswork and little bit of hearsay, but I suspect that thing, that vampire, whatever it is, went up to the plant after I got rid of it down here.” She told them, pretty much word for word, what she’d learned from Jim Bryant and the three girls.
Peter looked as puzzled as she felt.
Gran had no such handicap. “He’s getting more dangerous and more confident. Must be gaining strength. Seems to me we need to trap him and destroy him before he really causes bother.”
“Gran…” Alice began.
“Don’t fuss at me, dear. We need to talk to Mother Longhurst and Howell Pendragon. One of them must surely know what to do next.”
“Sharpen stakes?” Alice suggested. Facetious, yes, but really.
“Why not? We know wood slows and harms them, but there has to be something more effective. You seem to have the key, I think, dear.”
“Hang on a minute. You can’t expect Alice to face that thing again.”
Dear Peter. “I managed alright last night.”
“What if it doesn’t work a second time?”
“Why shouldn’t it?” What was she saying? That she had magic in her and could summon it when she wanted? She was dreaming.
Gran obviously didn’t think so. “At last, my love, it took this to make you embrace your powers. We’ll destroy this thing yet.”
“Might it not be a good idea,” Peter said, sounding a trifle testy, no doubt worried, “to identify the creature first? I mean it could be living down the road, hanging around the village green, playing whist in the church hall, and buying newspapers at Worleigh’s.”
Chapter 35
“Peter’s right, Gran. How can we identify him?”
“You’ve both seen him face-to-face. Peter twice. Can’t you?”
“Face-to-face is not the word for it,” Alice replied. “It was more like face-to-shadow. It was like facing the dark, not a living thing.”
Helen Burrows shook her head. Young people…“He isn’t living, Alice, and therein lies our advantage. We are.”
“I don’t quite follow you, Mrs. Burrows.”
A good lad, once he came into his own. “You two and Howell have been closest to this vampire in his strength. I don’t doubt we’ve all seen him when he passes as one of us. But you have faced its power. You are our best hope in identifying it.”
“Then, Gran,” Alice replied with a sigh, “I think things are going to be difficult. We didn’t see anything.”
“We did, Alice,” Peter said. “It’s just we don’t know what we saw.”
The lad would do. Together they would prosper. Once they took care of this problem, and as long as the invasion never happened, and we win the war. And all that was too much for one old Pixie to contemplate. Best start with what could be done.
“Peter’s right. Think about it, Alice.”
“Gran, it’s too much on top of no sleep.”
“I’ll make you some good strong coffee.”
Alice stared after her grandmother. She hated to think “senile” and Gran at the same time but heaven help her. And as for Peter. “What the flaming Hades did you mean about us seeing but not knowing what we’ve seen?” Drat, she never swore, but the past few days were enough to set a nun cursing.
“Don’t you understand, Alice?” No, she didn’t, apart from the gleam of excitement in his eyes. Had to be lack of sleep was making them punch-drunk. “We, and the sergeant, have been closer to this thing than anyone. That gives us the edge—we just have to work out what we know and how to use it.”
Alright. “We know it’s dark, powerful, and somehow projects enough menace to instill enough fear to make healthy men pass out.” She couldn’t forget the two guards up at the camp.
“Right,” Peter said. “Plus, we know he’s repelled by fire. Or at least dragonfire and some sort of magic that you can produce.”
Was it magic? “That would be handy if I knew what the heck it was.”
“It’s your power, girl! How many times do I have to tell you that!”
They hashed things over for ages. Gran made coffee and they drank it, but still they were back at the same, hardly helpful facts: Wood harmed it. The dead and wasted animals and poor old Farmer Morgan were presumably vampire victims. And fire and Alice’s unreliable and untutored magic would repel him.
Seemed Alice’s half-facetious comment about sharpening stakes was a
s helpful as anything.
“We need the sergeant in on this, too,” Peter said at last. “He’s part of it after all. That fire…” He broke off. “Stone the crows! It’s a wild possibility but…”
“What?” Alice asked.
“The odds are it’s purely a coincidence, there’s probably dozens of people in the village who have been burned, but…” He explained about Jeff Williams’s demand for Aquaflavine. “He took six tubes of the stuff. Nicked five when my back was turned. Didn’t make an issue of it my first day up there, but what if he really did want it for someone who was burned? I kept telling him bad burns needed medical attention, but what if he wanted it for a burned vampire?” Peter shook his head. “Far-fetched, I know.”
“Maybe not.” Gran might be bustling at the sink, but her old ears missed nothing. “No one in their right mind needs six tubes of the stuff unless they’re planning on going into business and hawking it on the black market.”
“With Aquaflavine that you can get for sixpence over the counter of any chemist?” Alice shook her head. “It’s the best bet we have so far. All we need to do is find out who he got it for.” Yes, very tenuous but…“Think he’ll tell us if we ask him?”
Peter grinned. “Since he hates my guts, most likely not.”
“But if I, as the local doctor, heard he needed ointment for burns and ask if there’s anything I can do?”
“Worth a try, my love. Worth a try.” Gran wiped her hands on the tea towel.
Alice only half heard her. Peter’s reply struck her. “What do you mean, ‘hates your guts’?” Darn, this was obviously some sacred male thing. Peter’s mouth clamped shut.
Gran filled in for him. “The man’s got a thing about Peter being a CO, goes on to everyone who’d listen and plenty who don’t.”
That was news to her.
Not apparently to Peter. “He made a scene in the Pig the other night. He was drunk, that’s all.”
Again acting the he-man, brushing it off. “You had a fight in the Pig?”
“Not really, might have had, but Joe Arckle was with me, the father of those two boys. He pretty much made him stand down. Fred Wise told him and the chap he was with to be on their way.”
“Who was he with?” Gran asked. “As far as I know that creature has had no friends in the village since he accused Sam Whorleigh of giving short measure and then two days later pushed Mrs. Jackson into the road when she was waiting for a bus.”
Amazing how a man could lose his reputation. “Who was it, Peter?”
“I’ve seen him around but don’t know his name.”
“Fred Wise is bound to know.”
“Yes, Gran, but we can hardly knock on the door of the Pig and Whistle at…” She glanced at the kitchen clock. “Seven-thirty in the morning and ask.”
“No, dear, let him get breakfast first, but we’ll find out. That should sort things out.”
More like snarl things up.
But for want of anything better to do, she might as well.
“I’m coming with you, Alice,” Peter said.
Good, she’d feel less of a twit asking questions with Peter there. “Let’s go soon.” And get it over with.
“Right, I’ll cycle down and meet you there.”
At this point, did discretion matter? “I’ll drive you down.”
“Good idea,” Gran said. “Might as well let everyone know how things stand.”
“Gran!”
Peter just stared, probably didn’t like to tell an old woman she was presuming.
“Don’t be silly either of you. You both know you’re getting married. So you might as well get the village used to the idea.”
“Gran!” Dear heaven, her face burned and poor Peter looked ready to croak.
He was so bumfuzzled it took him a good few seconds to speak. “I think that’s a damn good idea!”
“When you two have finished organizing my life, maybe we can sort out this vampire business.”
Gran smiled. “Yes, my loves, you’d better. Can’t have a vampire messing up things around here, can we? Jerry’s enough trouble.”
“Could they be connected?”
At least that diverted attention from her sex life. Peter stared at her.
Gran just nodded slowly. “Why not? We’ve been bombed, that Miss Waite arrested as a spy, and now, trouble up at the camp, which would no doubt suit them. You could be right, child. In fact I think we should look very closely at that newly arrived nephew of hers.”
“You think he’s involved in all this, Gran?” Alice hadn’t much cared for the man but it was a bit of a leap from mild dislike to thinking he was a terrifying bloodsucker bent on mayhem and destruction. And working for the enemy to boot.
“I think you’d best go and talk to Mother Longhurst.”
Mother Longhurst? The village witch who’d scared the willies out of Alice when she was a child and tried her darnedest to filch patients with her potions and nostrums? “Honestly! Gran, no!”
“Please yourself, but she knows more about vampires than anyone in the village.”
Not hard to believe. “Is she pals with them?”
“Oh, child!” Gran snapped. “Look beyond yourself! Did you never listen as a child?” She started humming one of the old songs. “Pixie songs” Gran used to call them when she sang Alice to sleep as a child.
The familiar tune triggered memories. Very nice but now was not the time to relive childhood moments. Until the name of the ballad struck him. “When Magic and Time Sundered.”
“They fought and we cried, as the people’s hopes died, and the timeless departed forever. And the magic was lost, to our shame and our cost, and the people fled into the heather.”
Alice felt her jaw drop to her chest. Peter!
Gran smirked. “I knew there was something right about you, young man. I knew it the minute I laid eyes on you. Who taught you the Pixie lore?”
Now he looked as puzzled as Alice felt. “Old Mrs. Nor-sworthy. She used to come in and take care of me when my parents went out. She sung songs and used to tell me tales of battles and magic.” He want pale. “I thought they were just stories made up to entertain me.”
Gran rolled her eyes. “The woman was sharing the lore of the Pixies with you, and you thought they were made-up tales. I don’t know—seems you and Alice belong together. Handed the wisdom of our people on a plate and you brush it aside.”
“Alright, Gran. We were both mistaken. Can we cut out the recriminations until we take care of this vampire?”
Gran stood up and took her everyday coat off the hook on the door. “You do what you please. I’m getting the bus into Epsom. But if you’ve any sense between your ears, Alice, and you too, young man, you’ll get yourselves down to Mother Longhurst before she goes out gathering.”
Gran as good as slammed the door on her way out.
“Gran,” Alice called after her, but she was already down the path and in the lane.
“What now?” Alice asked.
“I think we’d better do as she told us,” Peter said.
Chapter 36
Gloria exhaled with relief. Sergeant Pendragon didn’t ask questions, just listened and behaved as if what she was saying made sense, rather that sounding like balderdash. She’d agonized over coming and telling him. She couldn’t go to the police; they’d want to know what she was doing traipsing around the woods in the middle of the night, and even though Alice was her best friend, she’d look at her as if she’d been drinking if she heard half of what Gloria just told the sergeant.
When she’d seen the chink of light through a gap in the blackout curtains, she’d knocked on his door, knowing she had to talk to someone, and he was different, an outsider like her, not one of the born and bred villagers.
As she waited in the near dark, she’d almost turned and run, but he’d opened the door, looked at her in surprise, and said, “Come in, Gloria. Best get the door closed. You look as though you could do with a cup of tea.”
She’d half eaten the toast when she realized he was spreading a second slice for himself. He’d given her his breakfast but her guilty apology was brushed aside. “Eat it up. Plenty of bread for toast, and you look as if you need it.”
She was hungry.
“Want another slice?” She shook her head but when he lifted the tea pot and looked at her, she pushed her mug forward and he refilled it. “Right then,” he said as he topped up his own mug. “What brings you to my door before breakfast?”
She told him.
Everything about the night before—except for the detail about being four-footed and furry at the time.
And he treated her as if she made perfect sense.
“What do you think he was setting in the ground?”
“I don’t know for sure, couldn’t see, but I had to think land mines or explosives of some sort, don’t you?”
He nodded. “I don’t know what else. Doubt he was getting an early start on Guy Fawkes.”
“You believe me!”
His eyes creased as he smiled and she let out the anxious breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “It’s so far-fetched.”
“Nurse Prewitt, how long have I known you, five, nearly six years? You came right after Nurse Hampton retired.” She nodded. “Long enough to know you’re not the sort of woman to come knocking on my door before dawn with an elaborate fiction.”
Tears of relief stung her eyes. “I don’t know what to do. I just couldn’t see going to Sergeant Jones or PC Parlett with such a story.”
He chuckled. “Wise of you. Look, you’ve told me. I’ll see it gets passed on to those who need to know. Want another cup of tea?”
“No, thank you. I ought to be going, but thank you for believing me.”
“I’d believe whatever you told me, Nurse Prewitt. Truly, I would.”
Bloody Good Page 24
