Doctor Who - [New Adventure 29] - [Vampire Trilogy 2] - Blood Harvest

by Terrance Dicks

"And now we know where," said Bernice. "What happened next?"

  Lord Sargon said, "The creature buried itself beneath the soil of our planet. But its body was not dying but dormant, and its mind was still alive and possessed of incredible powers. It used those powers to bring to our world a ship that travelled through space. That ship landed close to the buried monster's body. With the power of its mind it corrupted the ship's crew. They became vampires. Over long years their ship became the Tower and they became the Lords of the village and all the country around - the Three Who Rule."

  "Zargo, Camilla and Aukon," said Romana. "They were still there, all those years later, when the Doctor and I came to this planet."

  "Their vampirism gave them great strength, long life and a savage determination," Sargon continued. "For generations they drained the blood of the peasants who served them, feeding their buried master, who they called the Great One, with their blood. From this evil centre the taint of vampirism spread out to corrupt our world. Just as the vampires had become Lords, so many of our Lords became vampires. By now the peasants were beginning to demand their freedom. To their eternal shame the Vampire Lords used their powers to crush them, plunging our planet into an age of darkness. Many Great Houses were as corrupted as the Three themselves. Others were only partially tainted, with a single vampire working behind the scenes."

  "Like Lord Veran's son," said Bernice. Sargon nodded.

  "Some families resisted the taint entirely. Mine, I am proud to say, was one of them."

  "Even though your castle is so close to the Tower?" said Bernice. "That can't have been easy."

  Romana took up the story. "All this time the Three Who Rule were following their master's plan. They stored the blood of the peasants in the ship's fuel tanks, and pumped it into the burial ground to feed their master. On the Day of Arising, the Great Vampire, his strength restored by the blood of generations, would return in all his glory. Then he would summon his vampire servants and lead them in an assault on the entire planet. When it was drained, he would use his powers to take his vampire horde back into normal space, where they would have a whole universe to feed on, swarming over planet after planet."

  "But you and the Doctor turned up," said Bernice. "And the Day of Arising never arrived."

  Romana nodded. "The Doctor discovered the old Record of Rassilon in the TARDIS. It revealed that Rassilon had destroyed the Great Vampire with bow-ships, specially constructed to fire a mighty bolt of steel."

  "I suppose the Doctor just happened to have one handy?"

  "No, but he improvised - as usual. He activated one of the little scout ships attached to the Tower and programmed it to go straight up and straight down again. It plunged right through the Great Vampire's heart and destroyed it."

  "Well, it's certainly dead enough now," said Bernice, giving Lord Sargon a reproachful look. "What with bits of its body scattered all over the countryside ..."

  "It's odd though," said Romana. "When the Doctor's scout ship pierced the Great Vampire's heart, the Three crumbled to dust."

  "If they crumbled they've been reconstituted," said Bernice. "Instant vampire - just add fresh blood and stir."

  That night they joined Lord Sargon for dinner in a small comfortably furnished dining room in one of the castle turrets. The afternoon had been spent in an item-by-item tour of the museum, with Romana politely attentive and Bernice openly bored.

  Over dinner, a simple meal of omelette, salad and venison, Romana and Lord Sargon indulged in an extensive discussion of the local nobility, all of whom Romana seemed to know intimately.

  Feeling left out and bored, Bernice ate in sullen silence, downing frequent goblets of the excellent local wine. By the end of the meal Sargon and Romana had run out of noble families, and the conversation was flagging a little.

  Suddenly Bernice leaned forward. "Lor' Shargon - sorry, Lord Sargon," she said, speaking with exaggerated distinctness. "Does the garil plant grow around here? I don't seem to have seen any in your castle."

  Romana gasped. "Bernice, really!"

  Lord Sargon smiled. "It grows in great profusion, I assure you." He summoned one of the servant girls and whispered in her ear. She hurried away.

  "It's not usually found in the living quarters, of course," Lord Sargon went on. "But we use it a good deal in cooking. The omelette we all enjoyed earlier was flavoured with it - and so was the venison."

  The servant girl reappeared with a bunch of fresh garil flowers, and Sargon took them from her. "Ah yes, here we are!" He buried his nose in the flowers and took a deep breath.

  "A humble everyday flower," he said. "A little sharp, a little pungent. Not to everyone's taste, but not entirely unattractive all the same. I'm very fond of it myself."

  He rose and presented the bouquet to Bernice with a flourish of his long white hand. "Now if you will forgive me, ladies?"

  He bowed and strode elegantly from the room. With a toss of her head, Romana rose and followed him.

  Left alone at the table Bernice emptied her goblet and decided reluctantly against another one. She stared rather blearily at the bunch of garil flowers. "Worth a try," she said defensively. "I mean, you never know."

  When she eventually managed to find her room again, Bernice found her own clothes, washed, pressed and neatly folded on a chair. Her boots were underneath, all gleaming and polished.

  "Ha!" said Bernice. She went into the adjoining room, filled a stone hand-basin with cold water and plunged her head into it. She came back into the bedroom, dried herself on the coverlet and started climbing into her own clothes.

  She was struggling with her boots when Romana came into the room and said, "Really, Bernice!"

  "Oh shut your face," said Bernice. "I had an instructor at Military Academy who used to say Really! in that tone. That's why I ran away."

  Romana struggled to keep her temper. "I've told you how important it is to us to gain Lord Sargon's support, and you practically accuse him of being a vampire at his own dinner table and - what are you doing?"

  "Getting dressed."

  "Why?"

  "I want to take another look at that museum."

  "You didn't seem to enjoy it much the first time."

  "I don't think we saw the most interesting bits. Coming?"

  "I'm certainly not letting you roam round on your own." Romana nipped next door into her own room and reappeared surprisingly quickly, dressed in her own clothes. They moved quietly along the darkened corridors of the castle, lit now by the occasional glowing light-globe. It wasn't hard to find the museum. They just kept heading downwards until they reached the big underground chamber and went inside.

  The place was strangely forlorn-looking as if waiting for crowds who would never come.

  "Well?" said Romana.

  Bernice dropped down and pressed her ear to the floor. "Come and listen!"

  Romana sighed and lay down beside her. She put her ear to the flagstone and heard a faint steady hum of power. There was something else behind the hum, a steady pulsing sound. Romana found it strangely familiar.

  They both got up.

  "He said there was a generator," said Romana.

  "That's no steam generator, it's something much more hi-tech. The thing is, how do we get to it? I'm pretty sure there's an entrance in here."

  Bernice roamed around the museum until she found herself standing before the portrait of the Great Vampire. She drew back the curtain and rubbed her finger across the bottom of the painting. It came away smudged with paint. "Ancient artist," she muttered. "It's so new the paint's still wet. So why bother, unless..." She gripped the edge of the painting and pulled. It swung open like a door, revealing a real door behind it: a perfectly ordinary door, made of shining steel. She opened it and revealed a metal staircase leading downwards. She looked at Romana and started to descend the steps. Romana followed.

  The metal steps led them down into an enormous, brightly lit underground chamber. Romana and Bernice stopped at the bottom of the steps
and stood looking around them.

  The centre of the chamber was occupied by a colossal glass tank. The tank was filled with a dark swirling fluid, at the heart of which floated a huge, dimly seen form. A low steady pulsing sound came from the tank, like the beat of a great heart. One end of the room was filled with a complex-looking bank of instrument consoles, humming with power.

  Around the other three sides of the chamber were upright glass coffins. The coffins were occupied by vampires, white-faced and bloody-fanged, eyes closed and hands folded on their breasts.

  They heard the slam of the door and turned to see Lord Sargon looking down at them, no longer old and white-haired but young and handsome. He smiled, stroking his chin with his long white hand. "You were right, after all," he said. "Instant vampire - just add fresh blood and stir."

  He seemed to float down the steps toward them, and Bernice instinctively snatched the blaster from her pocket.

  "Keep back!"

  Sargon smiled and kept coming. Thumbing the blaster to the "kill" setting, Bernice fired.

  Sargon's body absorbed the energy bolt with no apparent effect. He reached out and plucked the useless blaster from Bernice's fingers, tossing it aside.

  Faced with a smiling and apparently invulnerable enemy, Bernice reached into her other pocket, found the Doctor's signalling device and did the only thing possible.

  She pressed the panic button.

  24 THE QUARRY

  It was closing time at Doc's place, and the last customer had just left. Ace was bathed, dressed, fed and her old stroppy self again. She'd had a couple of celebratory drinks with Dekker and sent him home, and she was ready to confront the Doctor.

  He was sitting in his usual alcove, immaculate in his white dinner-jacket, whisky glass by his side, cigarette burning in the ashtray. Ace sat beside him in a new black evening gown, the black velvet bag with the Browning automatic inside close at hand.

  They were tourist attractions by now, the mysterious Doc and his Lady in Black. Rumours about the events at Schofield's flower shop and the Palace Hotel were already circulating, and that night Doc's place had been busier than ever. Ace was beginning to worry that their images were taking over.

  "All right Doctor, I've been drugged, kidnapped, shot at, beaten up and almost ravished, and that's just this afternoon. Don't you think it's time you told me what this is all about?"

  "Yes," said the Doctor. "I suppose it is." He took a small crystal sphere from his pocket and handed it to Ace.

  She took it cautiously. "What is it?"

  "It has several uses. For you it's a kind of snapshot album."

  Ace stared into the sphere which was full of swirling mists, and suddenly she was somewhere else. Several somewhere elses in fact, in rapid succession.

  She was on a balcony overlooking a bakingly hot city square scattered with blazing bonfires. Eager crowds watched human figures writhing in the heart of the flames. Beside her on the balcony stood an elegant figure in a black robe and hood, a tall man with a long thin face and long white hands. He was savouring the smoke and the screams like perfume, and he was smiling.

  She was on another balcony overlooking another square in another place and another time. Wooden carts rumbled along the street beneath, filled with white-faced men and women in tattered finery. At the centre of the square was a scaffold built around a tall framework holding a triangular blade. As the carts reached the scaffold the prisoners were bustled out, formed into a line, thrust up the steps and strapped under the framework, all with a ghastly well-practised efficiency.

  The blade came down, the head dropped into the basket, the executioner held it up by the hair for the delectation of the crowd. There was a roar of approval and another victim was hustled up the steps. Beside her on the balcony, a tall elegant figure, neat in black velvet, stroked its chin and smiled.

  She was on a hillside, overlooking a plain where a battle raged. She saw an aide, tall, thin, immaculately uniformed, hand a dispatch to a baffled officer. She saw him point a long white hand. "There lies your enemy!"

  She saw the officer lead a charge of cavalry straight into the mouths of a battery of cannon, heard the screams of dying men as the surviving horses trotted by with blood-spattered empty saddles. The aide flicked a speck of dust from his cuff with a silk handkerchief and smiled.

  She was on another hill, overlooking a mud-filled trench filled with grimy, weary soldiers. The rumble of artillery filled the air. A car arrived from the rear and a tall thin staff officer got out, wearing the red tabs of a brigadier. He summoned a tired young officer and gave orders.

  The officer led his battle-weary men out of the trench, across a strip of barren ground strewn with barbed wire, and into the fire of a concealed machine-gun nest. As the men twisted and writhed and died in the choking mud, the staff officer smiled.

  She felt the Doctor take the sphere from her hand, the stream of horrifying images faded and she was back in the alcove.

  Ace found she was shaking with anger. "It was the smile," she said. "That damned superior smile."

  "Yes," agreed the Doctor. "It's the smile that gets you."

  "Who was - who is he?"

  "It's is, I'm afraid. And not so much who as what. He, or it, is sometimes called Agonal, it's as good a name as any. It's a Greek word, means the agony of death."

  "Doctor - "

  "Bear with me Ace, this is difficult." The Doctor paused, concentrating his thoughts. "There are beings in the universe, call them elementals, spiritual in essence, but with the power to interact with the physical world. Some are very powerful, some so weak you hardly notice them. Some are what you'd call good, some bad, some completely neutral. With me so far?"

  "Not really, but go on."

  The Doctor sighed. "I told you it was difficult. Perhaps if I used more familiar names. The good ones might be called gods, or angels or earth spirits; the bad ones devils, or demons or ghouls. The feeble ones like poltergeists can only manage to smash cups and slam doors in the night."

  "And this Agonal is one of the powerful and bad ones?"

  "Yes, but in a very odd way. He doesn't cause anything. He just magnifies evil."

  "How do you mean?"

  "What did you see in the sphere?"

  Ace told him and the Doctor nodded.

  "The Spanish Inquisition burning heretics, the Terror in the French Revolution, the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea, the First World War ... Agonal didn't cause any of those events, he just takes advantage of them."

  "He caused that charge, and he got those soldiers killed."

  "That's right. But the wars were happening already. No doubt he stirred up the Spanish Inquisition to resume religious persecution, and helped whip up revolutionary terror. Don't you see, Ace? He chooses his period in history and intervenes to make bad things worse."

  "And he's intervening here, now, in Chicago?"

  "It's perfect for him. A turbulent period which ought to be settling down by now. Everyone's getting fed up with the violence, even Capone wants to sell booze not kill people, but one incident after another keeps the pot boiling."

  "So he's behind these three murders, the ones we've been investigating?"

  "He killed Lingle, the reporter, and Dekker found a witness who saw him kill McSwiggin. I'm pretty sure he machine-gunned Hymie Weiss, and he was certainly behind your kidnapping - which means he knows I'm after him."

  "Why are you after him, Doctor? What got you involved?"

  "An anonymous message from Gallifrey," said the Doctor. "It suggested Agonal might be likely to be operating in Chicago in this time-period. I decided to establish myself here and trap him."

  "Why dump poor Benny on that peculiar planet first?"

  The Doctor sighed. "This is where it gets a bit complicated. Just as I got the report from Gallifrey I got another message as well - a telepathic one from a Time Lady who travelled with me for a while."

  "Romanathingy?"

  "The Lady Romanadvoratrelu
ndar. She felt things were going wrong on a planet we'd visited earlier, she was a bit vague about why. I didn't want to put off dealing with Agonal so I dropped Benny off to look round and give Romana a hand. As soon as we're finished here we'll go and find her and sort things out. I don't suppose there's very much wrong. It's probably just Romana panicking."

  "This first message," said Ace. "The one from Gallifrey. Did you say it was anonymous?"

  "It was probably from some unknown well-wisher in the Earth Section of the Bureau of Historical Observation."

  "Why tell you?"

  "I've been urging the Time Lords to do something about Agonal ever since I first started studying human history. But until now they didn't seem to think he was important enough. He doesn't change history, you see, just makes the bad worse."

  "Why?"

  "Because it amuses him," said the Doctor simply. "Some elementals nourish themselves on the emotions of living beings. Agonal feeds on agony and death."

  "So he kills people, or gets them killed, just for kicks?"

  "Yes - and you know, Ace, I find that quite intolerable." The Doctor's voice was shaking with anger. "The universe is all too full of pain and suffering - and that someone, some abominable thing should increase that pain for its own selfish pleasure..."

  "All right Doctor, I'm with you, we'll find him and scupper him. What are we up against? What are this thing's powers?"

  "Pretty formidable, I'm afraid. He isn't human but he can assume a human body. Luckily for us he always seems to choose very much the same appearance, tall, thin, aristocratic-looking, just out of vanity, I think."

  "Wait a minute," said Ace. "I've seen him - I even spoke to him!"

  The Doctor leaned forward. "Where?"

  "At that peace conference, when I had to stay downstairs. He was going round chatting to people. He warned me not to trust Capone. Everyone seemed to know him ... I even felt I knew him from somewhere myself."

  "That's one of his gifts. He clouds people's minds. He can turn up anywhere, make people accept him, even think they already know him, and influence their behaviour. Then he fades away and they forget he was ever there."