The Beckett Vampire Trilogy: Midnight Wine, Lycan and Sanctuary

by Jan McDonald

  “I don’t think so, you bastard!”

  Mike took Radu’s head clean off his shoulders and kicked it away with a bloodied boot. Darius stood upright and stared at him. “Thanks,” he said, as he spat some of Constantin’s flesh onto the red snow.

  “I owed you,” Mike said, his breath coming in violent heaves.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: STARING INTO THE ABYSS

  In the heart of the red mist, Beckett cast a rapid glance around and saw that not only had they survived, but Tepes blood had been spilled in bucket loads and the snow was awash with it. The others had decided that perhaps the House of Tepes would survive better if more of its members remained alive; they had vanished among the ruins and were, by now, heading back down to the valley below.

  There was a silence that claimed all, and for a moment they paused to take stock.

  Lane was bleeding from a gash across her arm and one on her face, but both had begun to heal. Beckett was breathless and his rage was still unspent. Mike stood next to him, ready to defend his friend against another onslaught.

  Two bodies lay among the Tepes dead: Lafayette and Jean-Baptiste. Lane was on her knees leaning over the First One, and, as she turned his head towards her and it rolled onto her own knee, she allowed herself a small cry of anguish, but quickly realised that there was more going on than would allow for her despair.

  Lafayette lay in a spreading red pool and lifted his arm towards her, and she moved to his side in an instant, unable to do anything now for Jean-Baptiste. She cradled his head on her bloodied knee and wiped his blood away from his eyes. The wound in his chest was bad, but perhaps not mortal. It would depend onhow quickly they could get him to a place of safety to allow him into the Long Sleep. It didn’t look good. She looked across at Mihai and shook her head.

  Mihai made a step towards her and began to speak – words that ended in a strangled gurgling sound, as Vasile thrust his blade with accomplished accuracy under Mihai’s ribs from behind, his face a twisted mask of hatred. Lane’s tears flooded her eyes and ran in rivulets down her cheeks as she saw her oldest friend cut down.

  Vasile Tepes stood among the Tepes dead, his eyes black and empty as he began to call down Shemsu once more.

  “No you don’t,” Mike snapped, and made a move towards him. An arm shot across his chest.

  “Mine,” was all Beckett said.

  The stench of blood filled his nose and the sounds of the dead and dying re-played on an endless loop inside his head, mingling with the sound of Lane’s sobs, but, above all that, the absolute dire need to end the life of Vasile Tepes became more vital than breathing. He pulled himself upright and stared into the abyss of Vasile’s eyes, frozen in the moment and then, before his heart could beat again, Vasile was leaping towards him.

  He crashed into Beckett, the force of which threw him back against the castle wall, knocking the wind from him and creating a pain in the middle of his back like nothing he had felt before. Vasile’s eyes were full of death and his fury was written on every pore.

  Beckett was acutely aware of the sheer drop that was onely a foot behind him and Vasile was taking full advantage, lifting Beckett off his feet and pushing him backwards. Beckett pushed back and for a moment it seemed as though his strength was no match for the blood-enraged Vasile. He was off his feet and Vasile could see victory only one thrust away. Then Beckett made a grab at Vasile and jumped onto the wall – if he was going over, he was going to take the Tepes bastard with him. Lane’s gasp sounded like a supersonic boom in the tension that hung in the layered air.

  By some miracle or unseen force, they both kept their feet as Vasile realised his own mistake and pushed Beckett backwards away from the wall, jumping down after him, snarling like a rabid dog and seeking Beckett’s throat. Blood and spittle flew as they tangled together mid-air, Beckett’s face unrecognisable in the heat of the blood-rage. Lane drew a sharp breath; this was Beckett as she had never seen him and he terrified her.

  Bestial snarls came from both of them as they fought to the death. Not one of the others dared move to assist Beckett, knowing instinctively that to interfere was to cause him to falter and lose the fight. They could only watch and pray.

  Suddenly on their feet again, Beckett pushed Vasile away from him, the upper hand within his reach, but in some perverse universe he decided to make it last. Vasile, sensing defeat, backed away until the only place left him was the ancient crumbling wall again. He jumped onto it, the height giving him back the advantage. But Beckett launched himself into the attack again and was facing him on the wall once more.

  Lane felt her heart miss its beat and her breathing stopped.

  “Fuck this,” Darius spat, as he bent to pick up one of the fallen blades and threw it into Beckett’s waiting grip. As the blade sliced through flesh and sinew above Vasile’s shoulders, his head appeared to wobble, just for a millisecond, and then he was gone, toppling off the wall, down the mountain, bouncing off the jagged rocks until he hit bottom.

  Beckett allowed his head to drop as he stepped down from the ruined wall. The adrenaline and rage met exhaustion head-on and he felt his knees buckle and take him to the floor. Lane had him in her arms before any of the others moved.

  Mike looked around at the bloody snow and the dead from both sides. The tell-tale muscle in his cheek twitched as he ground his teeth together. Enough was enough and in his opinion that line had been well and truly crossed. He bent to pick up one of the discarded blades.

  In that moment the flames on the torches flared into the night sky as Vlad rose to his feet, desiccated no longer.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” Mike said, swinging the blade high.

  Before it could reach the top of the arc, a booming noise and a great rush of air seemed to consume all breathable oxygen, as the Blood God, summoned repeatedly, materialised in front of them.

  Shemsu appeared in his natural form; an enormous, muscle-bound man’s body clothed only in the pleated linen kilt of the pharaohs and with the head of a lion. In his hand was a wine-press.

  Once summoned, Shemsu demanded a blood sacrifice and he made his choice …

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: THE BLOOD GOD

  No blade was required. Shemsu’s hand reached out, displaying the talons at the end of huge fingers that reached out and ripped Vlad’s body in two. The ancient Prince’s face was still set in an expression of victory that had no time to transpire.

  No-one moved as Shemsu fell on his prey and began to devour him; they couldn’t, they were paralysed – the presence of the Blood God had its own dark magic.

  His lion’s jaws tore the flesh from Vlad’s bones and the sound of crunching bone hung in the air until he tossed aside the remains of his kill. He picked up Vlad’s head and with one deft movement he tossed it into the wine-press and promptly de-materialised.

  Mike knew a demon when he saw one – that was his territory – but he refrained from comment. What would be the point, it had gone back to its own hell?

  Several minutes elapsed as they all sought to bring the reality of their situation into focus.

  There had been terrible losses – Mihai and Jean-Baptiste – and there was still the possibility of losing Lafayette. Lane seemed inconsolable and Beckett had no clue how to comfort her. Mihai would always be that spectre between them now. They hadn’t been involved romantically, as far as he knew, but she had always turned to Mihai when the chips were down and he knew that there was love between them. He wondered if he’d done enough to fill that role from then on. Somehow he doubted it.

  Alexis Vasilakis went to Beckett and Lane. “I am so sorry for the loss of the Patriarch,” he said.

  It was Beckett that replied. “I wasn’t sure which side you’d taken. I always thought the House of Vasilakis stood with Vasile.”

  Alexis seemed to ponder the comment. “Perhaps, at one time, but the raw truth of it was that the House of Tepes was set to rule us all – the Council would be extinguished along with the Created and the last
of the vampire wars would eventually bring about the destruction of our race – I saw no sense in that. And I had my own score to settle with Vasile; he badly mistreated someone I care for.”

  Lane raised an eyebrow.

  “Davina Marinescu.” He met Darius’s gaze. “She’s your cousin, Darius – another victim of your brother’s unquenchable thirst. I met her at Vasile’s home. He left her for dead when his obsession for another took hold of him. Luckily, her grandfather, Nicolae, brought her to me. She is at present in the Long Sleep, healing. You will find Nicolae’s body out there in the snow; his heart gave out I’m afraid. But at least he didn’t die bloody.”

  He looked around – now the oldest of the vampires present, older than Lane by a century – and continued. “The Council must carry on and I have a letter from Mihai, signed and endorsed by the rest of the Curia. We have no Patriarch now, instead we have a Matriarch. Serve us well, Lane. You have the support of the most important of the vampire Houses. It will be a long time before the name of Tepes engenders fear again, and in that time we hope that sense will prevail among those who supported them.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Lane managed. “Are you saying that Mihai knew that he was going to die here?”

  Alexis shrugged, “Let’s just say he was being cautious. A power vacuum is no good for any of us. You should call an emergency meeting of the Council; there is much to settle.”

  He took his leave and said in parting, “Drop the bodies over the wall into the valley; the snow will cover them and no-one will be up here again before the spring. I still have some influence with the more rational of our kind in this region and I will arrange for no trace to be left here. These ruins will stay ruined and remain nothing more than a tourist attraction, and the name Vlad Dracula will be consigned back to history and fiction.”

  And he was gone.

  Beckett saw his plans for his future with Lane, the Matriarch of the Council, begin to fade. She read him.

  “I’m still me. I still intend to rebuild the Sanctuary and make sure the others are too, in every city. It means I won’t have time for my clinical practice, it’s yours now – yours and Darius’s. And if you think you can walk away from me, you’re wrong. You’re Beckett, my vampire priest who will always be there to hear my confession. Good enough?”

  He allowed his face to try and smile, “Good enough. We need to move quickly now, we need to get Lafayette to safety, so let’s start shoving this lot over the edge. And there’s something else.” He nodded towards the hearth where the Bloody Chalice lay in a wide red pool of Tepes blood. “We have to deal with that; it needs to never see the light of day again.”

  “I’ll take it,” Mike said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: LOCKED AWAY

  Roman Wolfe leaned on his desk, his fingers steepled under his chin as he listened to Mike’s account.

  “I don’t say that it is the last of the conflict between the Born and the Created – there are others like Vasile Tepes out there. But for now …”

  “So, what is it that you’re not telling me?” Roman asked.

  Mike stood up and left the room. When he returned he had a small holdall with him, which he placed on the desk.

  “This needs … safe keeping,” he said. “I don’t recommend you touch it.” He unzipped the hold-all and opened it wide.

  Roman bent over it. “The chalice. Well, we have just about the safest place for it. Let’s do it now.”

  Mike picked up the holdall and together they descended to the basement levels, Roman opening all of the doors with his retinal scans and hand-prints. As they walked through the armoury, and the room containing sacred objects and power amulets, neither of them spoke. At the far end, Roman activated the scanner that gave them entry into a long room with artefacts in lead-lined cases. This was where the objects that had evil connotations and were deemed dangerous were locked away from the world, and this was to be the secure home of the Bloody Chalice.

  Roman used his hand-print to open an empty, lead-lined case and Mike placed the chalice inside without a word. He nodded his satisfaction as he heard the security bolts fall into place in the box.

  His first act on returning to the Strazca headquarters had been to run up the curved staircase and into his wife’s room. Beth greeted him as if he had been away for an hour or so, with her usual faraway smile. He hugged her tightly and was suddenly and strangely glad that she was locked in this world of hers, away from vampires and their wars, away from demons and things that had no right to be in this world. In her world it was always sunshine and the occasional rose. His was in a stark contrast.

  Now, with the chalice secure, he had returned to her side.

  He sensed a presence behind him and Beckett stood framed in the doorway.

  “How is she?” he asked, in doctor mode.

  “Same as always,” Mike said, as he turned away lest Beckett see the tear forming in his eye. “She’s happy.”

  Beckett said nothing as he sat in the comfortable armchair opposite Mike and Beth on the sofa. There wasn’t any need for words for them both to feel the strengthened bond between them that was now far beyond simple friendship.

  “How’s Darius?” Mike asked.

  “Hungry.”

  Mike couldn’t prevent the involuntary laugh that escaped him. “He’s always going to be hungry, that one.”

  Beckett smiled. “It will get less. But Roman has kindly said we can stay here while we rebuild the Sanctuary and make use of these facilities. Darius has a room on the floor above this one and Raven is determined to be his donor. We have time to gather blood from other resources too, so … Darius is going to be OK.”

  “And Lafayette?”

  “Lane has used our network resources to fly him back to New Orleans. Apparently there is a woman there named Monique, lives out on the bayou. Don’t know how she knew what had happened to Lafayette but she made contact with Lane somehow and demanded he be brought to her to ‘recover’. That was the word she used, but it seemed to contain an unspoken understanding of his condition. She said something about ‘the bones’. He was in and out of early Long Sleep and seemed happy with that arrangement and asked Lane to make sure there was a bottle of good rum for the woman.” He shrugged, “I don’t know, Mike, but if she’ll care for him, that’s all we can ask.”

  “It’s all any of us can ask,” Mike said gently. “So, what now for you?”

  Beckett leaned back against the comfortable sofa. “For now, I’m going to look after Darius’s full transition, and oversee the re-build of the Sanctuary, long-distance. I can keep an eye on Beth, too. At some point I’ll go back to the practice in Abergavenny, but not yet. In the meantime … in the meantime I have to stake my claim somewhere else.” He grinned.

  Mike grinned back. “Lane?”

  “Lane,” Beckett said.

  “And Helena? Is there any progress?”

  “Some,” Beckett replied. “At least now they know it’s genetic; once they find the correct genome to silence they are almost there. But Helena has a problem. An ethical one.”

  Mike frowned. “How so?”

  “It’s a matter of ‘Disease or Species’. Put quite simply: if they succeed, is it ethical to silence the gene in the Born, because their vampirism is in their nature; they are a species. The Created have been infected, essentially, and their natural DNA altered, so … a disease. Once she gets her head around it the rest will follow.”

  “There’s a load for all of us to get our heads around,” Mike said in a lowered tone. “But we will, because we have to.”

  THE END

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  About Jan McDonald

  Jan lives close to the Welsh borders which have their own mystical quality and provide endless resources in the way of legends and folklore surrounding paranormal experiences. She loves all things paranormal and has read the best: Dennis Wheatley, Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker and all those authors that excel in the creepy or downright scary world of paranormal events.

  When she embarked on the Mike Travis series, she realised that the field of paranormal investigation is more than we see on the popular TV programmes. So in order to provide compelling ghost hunting tales but with the greatest accuracy, Jan trained as a Paranormal Investigator and has studied parapsychology.