Morpho

by Philip Palmer

  Remember Hebden Bridge.

  Every day, she thought about what had happened that night. She’d killed and fled and now she would never see her family again.

  She spoke to Cheyney regularly on the phone number Liam had given her. It was for a ‘burner’ phone, he had said. The two sisters talked about everything except Hebden Bridge, and fish and chips. Because Hayley didn’t dare leave any clues about where she was.

  One day, Cheyney didn’t answer. That was the day her sister had to leave behind the burner phone that she’d hidden under the marble kitchen floor of Liam’s house; the day when she and Barraclough ran away from the blinded Detective Sergeant Smith.

  Now Hayley felt truly alone.

  YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

  Exters were dying all across the country, and in Europe and America and Russia and China too. It was a genocide. Every day the darknet site carried more condolences:

  We shall miss our friends from Peterborough. Eleven gallant comrades, now staying in gated accommodation somewhere – alas! – but we have no forwarding address.

  Rest in Peace our friends from Bath. Twenty-four of them, they found they were no longer welcome in God’s own country. For God is Love but not all guests are welcome it seems.

  And then:

  News from friends who are staying at the pleasure of our Christian Brothers. We are told that in Scotland in the lovely castle of Rothbury a new guest has arrived, one we feared was no longer with us, and her name is Jane Allison Carter. Greetings to you Jane, though we fear you may not be able to read this.

  Hayley stared at the words. Impossible! It was completely impossible!

  ‘Help me. Save me.’

  Hands outstretched.

  ‘We have to rescue her,’ said Billy.

  Hayley was torn between shock and relief and some other emotion she couldn’t even identify.

  ‘It’s no kind of life. They will leech blood from her every day. She should not have to endure that.’

  She cannot be alive. Not after what –

  How could anything survive the injuries Hayley had inflicted?

  ‘Please! We have to rescue –’

  Billy had a crazed look in his eyes.

  Discretion is.

  ‘We can’t, Billy,’ Hayley said gently.

  The better part.

  ‘There are just two of us. You’ve told me how powerful these people are.’

  ‘Yes, they are very powerful.’

  ‘They are many we are few.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it’s impossible. Even to try would be –’

  Of valour. Who said that?

  ‘I’ll go on my own,’ said Billy in a cracked voice.

  She remembered what a coward he was.

  She realised what a coward she was.

  ‘We stand no chance,’ she said firmly.

  ‘You may be right but we have to try.’

  She didn’t recognise him, this man who stood before her now. Quietly resolute. Utterly determined. Blindly adoring of his soul mate, the woman who he had shared more than ten lifetimes with. Would anyone ever love her this much?

  Hands outstretched. ‘Help me. I’m begging you. Help!’

  Hayley dug in. She gave Billy her angry look. She knew how easy it was to intimidate him. He was the kind of beta male who looked tearful if she told him he’d put too much sugar in her tea. ‘You have to face facts,’ she said sternly. ‘It’s too late to help her. She’s gone. Lost to you. Oh grow up, Billy! You’re not cut out to be a bloody hero. Nor am I! Just – let it go.’

  ‘She is your mother,’ Billy reminded her.

  God is Love.

  Hayley wept.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Gwendolyn said frostily.

  He looked like a street kid. Seventeen, eighteen? A wolfish grin. What the HELL was he doing in her garden? What happened to the security –

  ‘Hello, Gwendolyn.’

  That familiar voice. Cultured. Predatory. Rasping. An old man’s voice in the body of a beautiful young boy. And then she recognised him.

  ‘How is this possible?’ she whispered. In six months she had struggled to diminish her physical age from eighty-eight to somewhere in her early forties. Yet even so, she still had crow’s feet. She still had the vestige of that liver spot. But he, the bastard, had lost seventy years overnight.

  ‘Fresh blood,’ admitted Rothbury. ‘Acts faster.’

  ‘You said it was dangerous,’ Gwendolyn said angrily.

  ‘For the neophyte, yes.’

  He was eyeing her up, in that way he used to.

  ‘It doesn’t feel right. You look like my grandchild.’

  ‘We don’t have a grandchild. I am in fact the grandson of Lord Rothbury’s younger brother George. Hence you are my Great Aunt.’

  Ah.

  Gwendolyn had always been quick on the uptake.

  ‘When is the funeral?’

  ‘Next Sunday.’

  ‘And when do I die?’

  ‘Tonight. You can hardly attend my funeral looking like that.’

  She always thought she would be the one to die first. It gave her a peculiar satisfaction to have outlasted him.

  ‘And then the great nephew inherits the land and the money and, I assume, also the title,’ she said calmly.

  ‘You are looking,’ said Rothbury, in his familiar rasp, ‘at the 10th Earl of Rothbury.’

  ‘And what should I call him? You?’

  ‘Timothy. Call me Tim.’

  Gwendolyn took a deep breath.

  I can endure this.

  ‘Hello, Tim.’

  YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

  Ten of our friends have died in West Drayton.

  Six of our friends from Birmingham were arrested at dawn today and have been detained At Our Defenders’ Pleasure.

  Forty-three of our friends in Aberystwyth took their own lives today by means which we do not wish to describe. It is believed they were expecting imminent arrest and detention.

  Attached is the list of the governing body of the society known as the Knight Defenders of Humanity, which we understand became in the twelfth century an offshoot of the society known as the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Order of Solomon, also known as the Order of the Knights Templar.

  YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

  You are in danger. All of you, all across the world. You must unite. You must defend yourselves. You must if necessary use guns to defend yourself against those who are trying to either kill you, or enslave you and bleed you against your will.

  Attached is a list of places in the United Kingdom where you may obtain hand guns, submachine guns, and grenades by typing in a passcode which will be published on this darknet page at midnight tonight.

  YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

  Cheyney finished typing.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ asked Harry Barraclough.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  He opened another exercise book. Carefully perused the elegant copperplate notations. ‘Here is information that may be of interest to the Lothian nest.’

  YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

  Gwendolyn could not believe the evidence of her eyes. It was monstrous. It was barbaric. It was – it was –

  Old blood makes you live forever. But new blood, that’s a different kind of buzz entirely. So Jane Carter had said...

  Your husband likes it fresh. Sometimes he stabs my breasts and drinks from me as if he was my baby.

  There is still juice in this flesh. Or so your husband tells me.

  After Jane’s cruel hints, which had lingered darkly with her, and after Rothbury’s casual admission that he had been drinking fresh blood, Gwendolyn had decided she had to know the truth.

  I have always loved you, Hugh, in my own way.

  And so, while her husband was away in London on business, she installed concealed cameras in the dungeons, embedded into the crevices of the stone pillars.

  It took a while but she had always been practically minded.


  And I always thought you loved me too. Did you not? Was there not a true bond of love and loyalty between us?

  Forgive me, my dear, I noticed you standing there in a reflective mood, may I presume to introduce myself? I am your humble servant, Hugh Rothbury.

  She remembered him well, that gallant youth who had stolen her heart.

  And you, madam. In a room full of ghastly young women and their ghastly mothers, you are a ray of sunshine. You have a mind, madam, as well as looks and charm. You are – I am lost for words – you are – yes there is only one bon mot for this occasion –

  And she could now see the same youth, a half century later, in a series of stark medium shots that spanned the entire dungeon, acquiring fresh blood. The fresh blood that allowed him to transmute from geriatric to youngster in the space of a day. The fresh blood he would continue to need to keep his body young and active and soft and unblemished.

  She could also see the effect the fresh blood had on him. It inflamed him. It made him crazy with desire. In a dungeon full of slaves, he was no longer the courteous medieval knight. He was a demon filled with lust.

  She could not watch for long.

  Yes, I have it – You are the belle of this ball, madam! A veritable princess. Now may we dance?

  It took them two weeks to get to Rothbury Castle, in a hire car that zigged and zagged along B roads.

  Billy had bought a crossbow, the only weapon he could legally purchase. Hayley had acquired a pair of high-powered binoculars and an assortment of knives. They parked the car three miles from the castle and hiked the rest of the way.

  On the brow of a small hill they were able to look across to the castle on its summit. The turrets, the crenellations, the drawbridge. With the aid of the scopes Hayley could see men patrolling the parapets, armed with machine guns. Every now and then a helicopter did an aerial patrol of the area. All approaches to the castle were exposed and Hayley guessed they had an arsenal of high-grade weaponry inside.

  Rothbury Castle was impregnable.

  ‘Can you still do the thing with the blood?’ Billy asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I only did it – in anger.’

  ‘Me too.’

  What did you expect? That it would be easy?

  ‘What do we do?’

  Hayley coughed; that frog in the throat feeling. The skin on her neck fluttered. Her Morpho butterfly tattoo shimmered. Then it detached itself from the soft space below her jaw. It fluttered in the air before them. A bright flash of two-dimensional blueness.

  Hayley slowly slumped, then fell asleep. Billy gently lay her down on her back. He cradled her with one arm. He stroked her hair with his hand. He stifled an urge to read her a story.

  The Morpho flew from smaller hill to larger hill and entered the castle from above.

  In the dungeons, Jane Carter smelled kindred outside the castle. Her weary body twitched. She had no more than a few fluid ounces of blood in her veins. She felt like dust that has been desiccated. Yet still she was able to smell kindred.

  Not just kindred. Her kindred!

  Two days had passed since Gwendolyn had viewed the CCTV footage of Hugh feasting in the dungeons. The trauma of it had, some might argue, unhinged her. And yet she had never felt saner.

  Now, in the library, Gwendolyn caressed her husband’s head.

  You are the belle of this ball, madam! A veritable princess. Now may we dance?

  Oh Hugh.

  There was a faint down upon his cheeks, the pathetic beginnings of a beard, on a young man barely old enough to grow one. His eyebrows were unruly and black, she remembered how much she had loved that. The head was empty of blood now and she cradled it like, or so she fondly imagined, Judith with Holofernes, in the moments prior to the arrival of her servant bearing a helpful sack.

  Rothbury, bless him, had not been expecting it. Surprise was her chief weapon, she had been aware of that. So she had taken down his Crusader dagger from the wall – not the sword, she could barely lift that. And she had checked the sharpness and had spilled a thumb’s worth of blood in doing so. And then she had called him on her mobile phone and told him that tea was served in the parlour – oh and by the way she had made some scones. When he entered the room she was behind the door and she struck.

  He’d fought her bravely, in fairness. Even with a severed artery in his neck he was still nimble and strong, and he’d struck her arm and knocked the blade out of her grip. And he had grabbed her by the throat and attempted to strangle her with a single hand.

  But arterial blood is the elixir of life itself. And as his blood pumped out of him, so his strength pumped out of him, and his grip weakened, and she waited patiently with a cracked trachea. She was drenched in his spray by the end but she continued staring into his eyes until he realised why she was doing this.

  Then his grip waned and he fell to the ground. And then, for about forty minutes, she had hacked at his throat until the head was separated from the body.

  I gave you my heart, my darling Hugh. What a fool I was, and am. I should have known. You always were a cold and selfish man. But I chose not to see that. Ah, to hell with you, and to hell with me too!

  The images of what he had done with those helpless girls would never leave her. The cowardice of his acts appalled her.

  But guilt was her true motive. It was not until she had seen Rothbury defiling Jane and Sheila and Sylvia and Tallulah and Una and Sylvestra and all the others, sucking blood and slashing flesh and abusing them in every conceivable way, it was not until then that Gwendolyn’s own culpability smote her. Once she had been a girl who was brimming with ideals, a radical feminist no less by the standards of her age. And now she was – what?

  She had purchased immortality and youth at the cost of, well, her soul.

  Gwendolyn excoriated herself for her complete lack of morality. She did not excuse herself one jot. She did not for a second delude herself that it was all ‘his’ fault. She had chosen sin and sin had consumed her.

  I am unworthy. I am ashamed. I have transgressed.

  When Henderson entered, Gwendolyn was sipping a glass of port. Rothbury’s head was resting now on the coffee table, peering across at the bookcase. Gwendolyn had wiped her face a little but she still resembled a blood clot. She beamed at her butler when he entered.

  Henderson was fast. He had his gun in his hand and he was sidestepping nimbly as he took aim. At the same time he was calling into his throat mic: ‘Eagle Down, all units to the parlour, Eagle Down, Out.’ And he was staring at her with shock.

  ‘The tea is cold, Henderson,’ she informed him. ‘I’ll take a fresh pot.’

  ‘Who are you working for?’ he whispered, and she actually laughed.

  Jane began to sing. The others in her dungeon, with bodies like skeletons, chained to walls, joined her in her song. A song of hope, or so some scholars argue; hope slowly blossoming in the darkest days of American history, when the Underground Railway was a dream that could only be referred to in allegory:

  ‘Swing low, sweet chariot

  Coming for to carry me home.

  Swing low, sweet chariot

  Coming for to carry me home.’

  Morpho flew through the castle courtyard and into the house itself, via the thin crack between the front door and the frame.

  It flapped through the corridor, and into the living room, then through to the kitchen. It came out again and flew to the library where it found a scene of carnage, with a headless corpse on the floor and a woman in handcuffs, held at gunpoint by a dozen or so armed men. There was much screaming but the woman was strangely calm.

  Hayley, who was seeing all this through her butterfly-eyes, wondered who the woman was and who the dead man was. He looked far too young to be Rothbury, the owner of the castle.

  Morpho flapped onwards. Hayley/Morpho could sense kindred here, somewhere. But it was hard to tell where. Eventually she found a gap in the floorboards and slipped through.

  And then downwards further,
through another gap in the lower set of floorboards. The scent of kindred was getting stronger.

  Morpho/Hayley could hear far-off singing. Sing Low, Sweet Chariot, the old rugby song.

  When Morpho flew out of the ceiling and into the dungeon the butterfly beheld the scene and Hayley’s spirits sank. Everything she saw appalled her.

  It was a vision worse than Hell. Could humans truly do such things?

  But despite the anguish of the chained captives, and the stench of bodies, and the bleak horror of these emaciated forms, the slow rhythmic singing shone a glimmer of hope into a scene of dark despair.

  Morpho flickered past the prisoners, nothing but skeletons in chains, and Hayley felt rage at the sight of all the decanted blood in glass containers.

  Then she saw Jane Carter, with her raven black hair, and a motionless face. Singing lustily. Frail as gossamer. Chained, like all the others, to the walls. Morpho flapped in front of her but Jane didn’t comprehend what the little creature was. She didn’t know it was a wisp of Hayley, a sliver of her self; and it was too flimsy to bear the scent of kindred.

  Morpho flapped against Jane’s chains, helplessly. Could she break them? Hayley wondered. Clearly not. Was there a way she could use the butterfly to pick the locks? The very idea was absurd.

  ‘Sing low!’ sang the prisoners. One of the old men had a lusty bass voice. Jane had a mezzo soprano. It was very touching. Hayley had no idea what the lyrics meant but she knew it was a spiritual, and the river Jordan was mentioned in the chorus, which stirred her heart strangely.

  On the hill that looked across at the Victorian castle set upon the summit of a higher hill, Billy watched Hayley twist and mutter in her sleep.

  Brave, he marvelled. So bloody brave!

  Morpho flapped uselessly against chains, and against the walls, and against the locks, as the lyrics repeated, and repeated: