Blood

by K. J. Wignall

  It had affected him so strongly and yet, until seeing the film, he’d allowed it to slip from his memory’s grasp. The real surprise to him now was that he hadn’t even thought Rachel or Chris familiar—true, in his eyes, they had aged twenty years in what had seemed a matter of days, but he should have recognized them from that night.

  Chris leaned forwards and turned the laptop towards him, fiddling with the buttons before turning it back. The screen was now frozen on the image of the figure standing in front of the cathedral wall.

  “That’s why you’re in our house,” said Chris. “It is you, isn’t it, Will?”

  Was this what Jex had meant in his journal, when he’d said that they had seen, that they knew?

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  They looked staggered, even though it would have been ridiculous to deny it. But their response made him wonder if they were ready for the truth they’d actually stumbled upon.

  Chris said, “But this was taken twenty years ago.”

  “You look exactly the same,” added Rachel. “How is that possible? You’re not a ghost.”

  “He’s a vampire.” Chris, Rachel, and Will all looked at Eloise. She turned to Will and looked apologetic as she said, “Sorry. But how else could you explain it?”

  Rachel tried to start a sentence several times and finally said, “When Ella said you’re a vampire, what exactly …?”

  “Er, as we’re being truthful and everything, my name’s actually Eloise.”

  Chris looked at her in a way that suggested even this simple admission was a shock to him. “But you’re not a vampire?”

  Eloise laughed and said, “Of course not! You’ve seen the way I eat.”

  “I prefer the term undead,” said Will, and all eyes were once again on him, no less than if he’d sought to mesmerize them. “I’ve been trapped inside this body since the night the witches burned in 1256, and since the winter of 1263, I have been, in the eyes of God if no one else, William, Earl of Mercia.”

  “Of course you have,” said Rachel, clearly in a state of shock. “You’re nearly eight hundred years old and here you are, sitting on our sofa, and you’re a vampire who needs our help. Of course.”

  “I prefer the term undead,” repeated Will.

  “I don’t get this,” said Chris. “That’s definitely you in the film, so as crazy as it seems, I have to go with the whole undead thing, but where have you been all this time? Where do you live? How? I mean, how did you become a vamp … undead?”

  “I can’t tell you where I live, and I’m searching even now for the one who bit me. That’s why we’re here— Eloise thinks you may be able to help us find him.”

  They stared at Will, taking in what he was saying, but still waiting for answers to their own questions. Of course they wanted answers; it was a natural desire, just as natural as his tendency to despair at the questions because, ultimately, he knew little more than they did.

  A part of him wished he could hibernate right now, that he could disappear deep underground and resurface again in another lifetime, move things along at a pace that suited him. But that choice wasn’t his, and whatever force controlled his existence, it had decided that now was the time for his reckoning.

  “On the night the witches burned, I was sixteen years old, heir to the Earldom of Mercia….”

  Will told them his tale as briefly as possible and all three sat entranced as they listened, even Eloise who’d heard much of it before. He described the nature of his condition, or at least as much of it as he knew himself, and ended with a revelation that still seemed to shock Rachel and Chris, despite all that had come before it.

  “I hibernated a few days after you captured my image, and awoke a few days ago. I needed blood and selected what I believed was a random victim, someone who would not be missed, your friend Jex. But I no longer believe I chose him at all, for in his possession I found a notebook.” Will reached into the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out the book. “This notebook. It talks of me, and it mentions you, which is why we’re here, even though, you’ll understand, it’s against my instincts to trust anyone.”

  “You can trust us,” said Rachel, and looked so sincere that he wanted to believe her.

  Chris shook his head, saying, “But how on earth do you expect us to help? Don’t get me wrong, we’re willing, I just can’t see what we can do.”

  Eloise answered. “You can help us understand some of the prophecies in the book. There’s a church we need to find, a place that might be the lair of Asmund—we think he’s the vampire who bit Will.”

  “It might not even be close by,” said Will. “The notebook talks of a church that lost people and steeple.”

  Rachel stared at Eloise questioningly and said, “How do you two know each other?”

  “He rescued me.”

  “Possibly because I was meant to,” added Will. Eloise looked at him, surprised by the comment, and he smiled a little and said, “In some way or other, I think Eloise might be part of my destiny. Perhaps you are, too.”

  Will didn’t say in which way they might be part of it, for good or ill, but Chris nodded at the final comment, as if he felt that, too. He seemed to be over the shock now and sounded briskly efficient as he held his hand out and said, “Let me have the notebook. I’ll run it through the copier and we’ll find out what we can.”

  Will handed him the book, but said, “You’ll give it back?”

  “In a minute or two,” said Chris as he took the book and left the room.

  Rachel also emerged suddenly from her shocked state and said, “A church that lost its people—do you think it could be a lost village?”

  “I’ve seen them on TV,” said Eloise enthusiastically. “You can see the outlines from the air. They were wiped out in the plague or something.”

  The plague—it seemed his whole life had been set against the backdrop of one plague or another. But Will also knew that the timing would be right, that Asmund might well have gone to ground during those first terrible visitations of the plague.

  “Let’s check on Google,” said Rachel, turning the laptop towards her.

  As she tapped away at the keyboard, Will thought he sensed Chris coming back into the room and turned, eager to get the notebook back. But it wasn’t Chris, and now Will heard the gentle creaking of the floorboards above, barely audible, as of someone trying not to be heard. He could hear Chris in his study now, so knew it wasn’t him.

  Rachel and Eloise didn’t seem to have heard anything and were busy discussing the villages they were finding on the computer, so Will said, “Is there anyone else in the house? Anyone upstairs?”

  Rachel looked up. “No, why do you ask?”

  “Nothing, I … Do you mind if I take a look?”

  She shook her head as if she’d have allowed him anything he requested right then.

  Eloise shot him a concerned look, but he stood and said, “It’s fine—I’ll be back soon.”

  He walked along the passageway, past the study where Chris was copying pages on a machine that whirred and blinked, up the stairs to a long landing. He stopped and listened, hearing that distinctive shuffling footstep coming from a room, which was probably above where he’d just been sitting.

  He opened the door and stepped inside. It seemed to be another study, a small lamp lit on the desk, bright enough that it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The room was empty, and silent now, too, but Will could feel in his spine that this wasn’t just his imagination—something was wrong in this house.

  He walked over and looked at the desk, and the wind whistled lightly, having found its way in somewhere, skipping through the upstairs rooms, rattling a couple of the doors. Just as he was wondering if he’d been mistaken about the footsteps, that stray gust of wind picked up some of the papers from the desk and scattered them on the floor.

  Once more he felt the chill in his spine as if someone was behind him, and turned, certain he’d heard the same soft footsteps walking past the op
en door. Again, there was no one there.

  Before moving on, Will picked up the papers and placed them back on the desk. They were addressed to Chris and were all on printed notepaper from the same company, the Breakstorm Trust. He glanced through the contents, but it was little more than an educational charity, the sort of thing a wealthy man like Chris might be involved with. If some spirit had meant Will to see this, he couldn’t understand why.

  He walked back out on to the landing and closed the door behind him and stood for a moment. He could hear no footsteps now, and nothing unusual, but he sensed too strongly that there was someone or something up here and he walked further, finally stopping at a door on his left.

  Beyond that door, there was no scent, but certainly a presence. Will listened to the whirring sound of Chris’s copying machine down below, Rachel and Eloise talking, then pushed open the door and stepped into the room.

  This was a bedroom and a small lamp was lit in there, too—Will wondered if Chris and Rachel were afraid of the dark. But once again, now that he was inside, the room was empty and the presence he’d sensed was gone. There was something ill at ease here, and it was drawing him on, toying with him.

  He walked around the room anyway, and finally over to one of the windows that looked down on to the narrow street at the front of the café. And now he knew what presence had been calling him onwards through these rooms.

  In the empty street below stood one of the robed women from the cathedral. She stood, her face tipped forwards just enough that it was obscured by the hood of her robe.

  Will looked down at her, vaguely aware of his own pale reflection in the glass of the window. It seemed she knew he was watching because she raised one arm and pointed along the street. He looked in that direction, but could see nothing, only the floodlit spire of the cathedral. He wondered if that was it, if she was telling him to return there, warning him perhaps of the dangers he faced at the Whole Earth.

  She lowered her arm again, then slowly, for the first time, she lifted her head, and Will understood immediately what Eloise had meant. The spirit only had the shadow of a face, as if her features were covered with a veil of mist, all of them indistinct, only darker patches where her eyes had been.

  And then another dark hole appeared in the shrouded face and he realized the spirit had opened its mouth, that even though no sound emerged, the spirit was calling to him. He couldn’t understand why, but he took a step back, horrified and disturbed by the sight of this woman, even after everything he had seen in his life.

  Behind him, he heard Chris calling, “Is everything okay, Will?”

  “Fine,” said Will, turning, and when he looked back, he saw with some relief that the woman had gone and the street was empty again.

  Chris was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I thought I heard someone walking about up here, but it was nothing,” said Will.

  Chris smiled and said, “Well, we know it’s haunted. I expect you’re more in tune with that kind of thing than we are.” Will nodded and stared at him, trying to read what he could from this young man’s eyes. Then Chris smiled, looking embarrassed, and held something out. “Your notebook.”

  “Thank you,” said Will, and they walked back into the other room.

  Eloise looked up and said, “Nothing that really fits yet—lots of lost villages, but …”

  “I’ll carry on looking,” said Rachel.

  “Thank you.” Will looked at Eloise and said, “But now we have to go.”

  She nodded as if she understood and started to put on her coat, stopping only as Chris said, “How will you get there, when you find it?”

  He sounded urgent, sensing perhaps that he was about to lose Will, having found him again after all these years. It didn’t mean his intentions were bad, and Will wanted to believe in Chris and Rachel, for Eloise’s sake as much as anything.

  Will said, “What do you mean?”

  “You said it’s not likely to be in the city, and presumably you can’t go about in daylight.” Chris smiled and said, “All I’m saying is, when you find out where it is, we’ll take you there, if you want us to—any time and place.”

  “That’s very generous,” said Will, but offered no more for the time being. He was now sure that Chris and Rachel were bound into this in some way, one more small part of the puzzle that was falling into place, but it was still too soon to know if he could trust them or not.

  It was true, some of their behavior had been explained— they had accidentally filmed him in 1989, but he knew nothing else about them, and had no way of knowing what they had done in the intervening years. For all he knew, and until they had proved otherwise, they had sold their souls and were in league with the very forces that sought to destroy him.

  19

  “You must feel better about them now?” Will and Eloise were walking back along the pedestrianized street that ran most of the way from the café to the church, and it was deserted. The whole city seemed quieter now, and if there had been any violence, there was nothing left to show for it.

  “A little.”

  “A little?” She sounded outraged. “You know now why they were acting weird—because they filmed you twenty years ago and here you are looking just the same. And you have to admit, they couldn’t have been more helpful.”

  She was right, and Will was finding it harder to suspect them, but there was still a nagging doubt and he said, “Everything you say is true, but nevertheless, you can’t expect me to trust them right away.”

  “You trusted me right away.”

  “And was I right to do so?”

  “Of course you were!”

  “So if my judgment was right in your case, should you not acknowledge that I might also be right to treat Chris and Rachel with caution?”

  Eloise groaned with frustration and said, “God, sometimes you really do talk like a seven-hundred-and-fifty-year-old.”

  Will laughed, but stopped almost immediately, catching a stray scent. And at the same time, Eloise stopped walking and said, “Wow, look at the size of that rat.” She was pointing into the shadows, where the buildings met the street, at a large rat running with some determination as if towards the river. “There’s another.”

  But there wasn’t just one other—along both sides of the street more rats were following, hundreds of them, all running from the direction of the cathedral, no less than if it was a sinking ship.

  Eloise looked up at the night sky and said, “I wonder if there’s a fire somewhere.”

  Will shook his head. “There’s no fire.” But there was something coming, visible in the urgency of the city’s rats, fleeing like a defeated army. “Nature often seems to foresee a catastrophe, sometimes days before it happens. Now that I think of it, something has felt wrong since I killed Jex. And I fear the rats are a sign that we don’t have time to waste in finding this church.”

  “Rachel and Chris …”

  “Will drive us there.” Even as he said it, he wished he could think of some other way to reach the place, sensing that their involvement could only end badly. “But I can’t wait for them to find it, and besides, I realize only now that I know where we’ll find this information, a place their computers cannot go.”

  Eloise looked at the rats in the shadows, growing in number, tumbling over each other in their desperation to escape the city and reach the river, running in fear without knowing what it was they feared.

  A dog barked in a nearby street, equally spooked. And beyond it, probably beyond Eloise’s hearing, Will could hear more dogs barking across the city. No doubt the dogs would have fled, too, if they could. There was a storm coming—of what kind, he didn’t know, but a storm nevertheless.

  Eloise pointed at the rats and said, “Please tell me we’re not going with them.”

  He shook his head again and started walking onwards as he said, “Have you ever seen the cathedral library?”

  “It isn’t open to the public,” said Eloise
.

  “It’s a thing of beauty, something you ought to see. During the dissolution, the Earl of the time, an unwitting impostor who shared his name with the King, ordered its construction.”

  A rat collided with another and ran into their path briefly before darting back to the cover of the wall. Eloise’s step faltered, but Will didn’t break his stride and continued as she ran a step to catch up.

  “Henry of Mercia was an interesting character, happy to take the monastic lands, yet equally determined to save the monastic library, containing countless illuminated manuscripts, which would have been lost otherwise. Some of them, of course, have since found their way into my own private collection.”

  “That’s great, but if we’re running out of time, we can hardly search a whole library. Google might be quicker.”

  Will smiled at her impatience and said, “He also commissioned some of the monks to produce two more great works, a pictorial map of his lands and a written account of all the parishes in his realm, a personal Doomsday Book. It’s those two works that I think might give us some clues to the church we’re looking for.”

  “Okay, on this occasion Google might not be quicker, assuming you know where to find them.”

  Will looked at her, bemused, realizing she still had little concept of the years he’d lived, of the emptiness, the night after night of lonely isolation, the sleepless days confined to his chambers. Set against such desolation, the library had become as familiar to him as a favorite toy.

  They entered the cathedral through the small side door and made their way to the caretaker’s office. Will picked up the spare key he was looking for, then led the way across the church.

  On the far side, he opened a heavy wooden door with the key and led Eloise up a long spiraling staircase and through a small door set in an ornate stone arch. Once inside, he turned on the lights for her benefit and as his eyes struggled to adjust, he waited for her to comment.

  She looked around and said, “Er, yeah, it’s … it’s nice.” She was disappointed.