The Cross vf-2

by Scott G. Mariani

  The story had spread like bubonic plague through Wallingford and might have reached the outer galaxies by now, for all Dec knew. The news of the inexplicable, shockingly sudden demise of the teenager Kate Hawthorne from 16 Lavender Close had been awful enough; but the disappearance of her body, without a trace, from the hospital mortuary just hours after her death, had violently shaken the whole community. The speculation of the town gossips was savage and quick to venture where the media didn’t dare: much more appealing than a gross administrative error was the popular theory that some deranged individual might have removed Kate’s body from the morgue and was keeping it at an unknown location for his own indescribable necrophilic purposes. So many people had got carried away with that notion that the strange, somehow associated death of Bill Andrews, the Hawthornes’ family doctor, had been largely glossed over to make room for it. Andrews had been found slumped on the cold tiles of the morgue floor, near to Kate’s empty slab. Something had stopped the doctor’s heart where he’d stood. A chance cardiac arrest? The shock at finding the dead girl gone? Or something else? Nobody knew.

  Nobody but Dec.

  Dec knew the truth of what had happened to Kate, and he was pretty sure it explained what had caused her doctor to drop dead of fright. It had almost done the same to him, when he’d met her walking in the grounds of the crumbling Oxfordshire mansion to which she’d been drawn from the morgue. It wasn’t every day the dead girl from next door tried to seduce you in a see-through dress.

  But his terrible knowledge was something Dec would admit to no one. Not to the reporters who’d come beating on the Maddons’ front door after they’d found out that Dec and Kate had gone out together, albeit briefly, days before her death. Not to his parents, who’d ferociously warded the press hounds away from their son. And certainly not to the baffled cops who’d come to poke around and find out what Dec knew about her disappearance. Last time he’d tried telling the police about the vampires that were running amok in the Oxfordshire countryside, he’d been ridiculed and almost ended up in jail for his trouble.

  In fact, Dec could barely even admit the truth to himself. And there was just one living soul in the world he could openly share it with: Detective Inspector Joel Solomon. Joel had been the only one who’d taken Dec seriously when he’d claimed to have witnessed a vampire ritual killing at Crowmoor Hall near Henley that terrible night. The only person who would have gone back there to investigate with him, when anyone else would have thought it was crazy.

  And Joel was the only other person in the world who knew just why Kate Hawthorne had died so suddenly, and then apparently vanished. It had been Joel who had ended Kate’s suffering, armed with the strange stone cross he’d refused to tell Dec too much about. A scene Dec wouldn’t forget. It didn’t matter that it had happened only two days ago. It wouldn’t fade. Even if he lived to be a thousand and one it would stay burned into his mind, like a brand.

  Joel hadn’t just freed the girl — he’d saved Dec from the same fate after she’d enticed him with some power that had seemed almost hypnotic. Rendered him helpless with those sweet, sweet, terrible kisses. Dec felt the marks on his neck. They were healing well, but still painful to the touch and he’d taken to wearing a roll-neck jumper to hide them. If Joel hadn’t stopped Kate when he had … Dec shuddered. He wondered where Joel was now. The last Dec had seen of him, he’d been heading for Romania to track the monsters who’d done this to Kate. There’d been no contact from him since. Dec had no idea where Joel was, or even if he was still alive.

  Dec glanced back at his rumpled bed, and for a second all he wanted in the world was to clamber back into it, yank the covers right over him and stay in that little cocoon for the rest of his life.

  He bit his lip. He wouldn’t make the world any less insane by vegetating in his bed. But no way was he going into work, either. Feeling like he’d gone several rounds in one of the bare-knuckle boxing matches his da had told him about from his merchant navy days, he shuffled to the bathroom to pee and brush his teeth and beat his hair into some kind of order; then he sneaked down the stairs.

  But it wasn’t easy to sneak past old man Maddon.

  ‘I need you today,’ his da called from the kitchen doorway.

  ‘I’m sick,’ Dec said. Out of habit, he’d gone to grab the key to his old VW Golf from the stand in the hall when he remembered it was still in the repair shop after he’d crashed the damn thing getting away from Crowmoor Hall that night. He grabbed the key to his ma’s Renault instead, knowing she wasn’t working today. ‘Got to go out,’ he yelled as he ran to the front door.

  ‘Thought you were sick, you wee skitter,’ his da growled after him. But Dec was already out of the door and running to the yellow Clio. Before the reporters could collar him, he’d skidded down the drive, pulled a screeching K-turn in the street and gone speeding out of Lavender Close.

  Roaring past the Hawthornes’ house, Dec saw that the curtains were pulled tightly shut and felt a stab of desperate pity for Kate’s folks — even if her mother hated him and looked down on his family. He’d have liked to have been able to tell the Hawthornes the truth, to offer them the sense of closure of at least knowing that their daughter was safe and in a better place now.

  ‘Sure, Dec, that’ll work,’ he muttered to himself as he drove. He could just imagine the scene: the distraught parents looking up red-eyed as the grungy teenager from next door strode into their sitting room and announced: ‘It’s okay, Mrs Hawthorne. Kate was in trouble there for a while, because a vampire called Gabriel Stone made her into his wee playmate. But then a pal of mine, Joel, set her free with this strange-looking cross that has the power to destroy vampires on sight. She’ll be all right now, so she will.’

  He sighed. Next thing, it would be the men in white coats coming to catch him with a big butterfly net and drag him off to a padded cell.

  Dec headed aimlessly towards the centre of Wallingford. All around him were people going to their work, ferrying their kids to school, doing their shopping. Normal folks going about their normal lives, unaware of the things that were out there, lurking in the shadows by day, stalking their victims by night. Who would be next in line? It could be anybody, anywhere. Dec shuddered. It could be his own family — his ma, his da, Cormac. It could be anyone he knew. And these things would never stop.

  ‘What are you gonna do?’ He slammed the steering wheel with his fist. ‘Gotta do something.’ And then it came to him in a flash. He was going to devote his life to destroying these monsters. He was going to make it his mission.

  Dec Maddon, vampire hunter. Mallet in hand, silver stakes and crosses glinting against the lining of his long black leather coat. Walking into a party, seeing the heads turning; being asked ‘What line of work are you in, Dec?’; their faces as he coolly handed out his business card. He’d have an office, too. Like the ones in the old detective movies, with his name painted on the window. A busy phone on the desk. A wall safe filled with the tools of his trade.

  ‘You big friggin’ eejit. Dream on.’ What was he going to do, turn up at the local college of further education to find out about NVQs in Vampire Hunting?

  But he had to do something. Joel had, by going off to Romania armed with the cross to hunt down Gabriel Stone. Now it was Dec’s turn to do what he could.

  Five minutes later, Dec was pulling up in the car park outside Wallingford’s public library and hammering up the stairs to the computer room. The rows of PCs looked antiquated and worn-out, but anything was preferable to using the laptop he shared with his elder brother. Cormac was uncomfortably expert at checking up on anything and everything Dec had been looking at online — and Dec could do without his sibling’s considered opinions right now.

  A couple of pretty girls looked up as Dec walked in. He brushed self-importantly past them. Dec Maddon, Vampire Hunter. There was a terminal free in the back row, and he was thankful that it was right at the far end of the room where nobody could peer over his shoulder. He perched o
n the edge of the plastic seat, nudged the mouse on its pad and the screen flashed into life. Dec glanced left and right, then self-consciously keyed in the words ‘proffesional vampire hunter’.

  Did you mean: professional vampire hunter? the computer prompted him.

  ‘All right, all right. Smart arse.’ Dec clicked impatiently. The machine’s outdated innards churned for a second, and then spat up a lot more stuff than Dec had been expecting. Scrolling through, he quickly realised that, unless he was going to check out a bunch of pulp novels or the old Hammer movie Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter as reliable sources of erudite information on the pursuit of his future career, there was little of use to him here.

  ‘Shite,’ he said, and moved on.

  ‘A vampire hunter or slayer is a character in folklore and works of fiction, such as books, films and video games, who specialises in finding and destroying vampire and sometimes other supernatural creatures …’ Wikipedia informed him.

  ‘This isn’t a frigging video game. This is real, for fuck’s sake,’ Dec said a little too loudly. The two girls across the room looked up from their computer terminals and he heard a giggle. He flushed and clicked again. Next up came ‘Semi-professional or professional vampire hunters played some part in the vampire beliefs of the Balkans, especially in Bulgarian, Serbian and Romany folk beliefs …’

  ‘Pish,’ Dec said. Ancient folklore was one thing, but didn’t anybody actually believe in this stuff any more?

  ‘Crap.’ Click, scroll.

  ‘More crap.’ Click.

  Then Dec stopped and stared at the screen. ‘Hmm,’ he said.

  THEY LURK AMONGST US.

  Dec’s eyes ran quickly across the couple of lines of text below the header: ‘Errol Knightly is a professional paranormal investigator, historical scholar and vampire hunter based in west Wales. His new book, They Lurk Amongst Us, has shot up the bestseller charts and is being hailed as …’

  Two thumbnail images were displayed alongside the header. One showed the glossy cover of Knightly’s chunky hardback. The other showed the author as a slightly beefy guy with ruddy cheeks and thick sandy hair down past his ears, somewhat younger than Dec’s da — maybe in his late thirties or early forties. He had a look of earnestness. A look that said ‘You can trust me’.

  ‘Hmm,’ Dec said again. He rolled the mouse over the pad, landed the cursor on the web URL, www.theylurkamongstus. com, and clicked to enter the site.

  Chapter Four

  Romania

  The mid-morning sun was bright over the mountains, gleaming down out of a pure blue sky across the fresh snows of the valleys. The only signs of movement on the landscape were the three skiers winding their way down the vast whiteness of the mountainside, slaloming through the pines, twisting to avoid jutting rocks. To those who were happily unaware of the half-buried local legends, the place seemed an unspoilt wilderness paradise. None of the three could have any idea that just a few miles off lay the deserted ruins of the ancient, accursed settlement that local people only whispered about. Only on very old maps did the name ‘Valcanul’ feature at all.

  The three skiers glided to a halt at the bottom of the valley. Chloe Dempsey wiped the powder snow from her goggles, brushed her windblown blond curls away from her face and grinned back over her shoulder at her friends Lindsey and Rebecca.

  ‘Had enough yet?’ Rebecca called out.

  ‘Not on your life,’ Chloe said. ‘I could go on all day.’

  Lindsey’s cheeks were flushed with cold and adrenalin. ‘See?’ she beamed. ‘Didn’t I tell you this place would be the best?’

  Chloe smiled. ‘You were right,’ she admitted. It had been Lindsey who’d come up with the idea of a break from their studies at the University of Bedfordshire, flying out to Romania to take advantage of the year’s unexpected early snows for three days of off-piste cross-country skiing. An adventure, she’d said. Lindsey’s schemes usually ended up badly enough that Chloe had initially regretted letting her steer them so deep into the wilds, far away from any hostels and major towns. But there was no denying that Lindsey might actually have been right this time.

  ‘Look at this place,’ Lindsey said, gazing around her. ‘Just look at it. Pisses all over St Moritz, I can tell you.’

  ‘I’m sure you can,’ Chloe said. It was all part of Lindsey’s routine to take every possible opportunity to remind everyone around her that she came from a moneyed family and was, as a result, terribly familiar with all the in places. Chloe had stopped minding too much. Besides, having a rich college friend had its perks. Whether he even knew it or not, it was Lindsey’s gazillionaire daddy who footed the rent for the luxury apartment the three of them shared. It beat living in cramped, dingy student digs. Being able to jet off for impromptu skiing vacations wasn’t so terrible either.

  ‘Hey, look,’ Rebecca said, pointing upwards and shielding her eyes from the sun. Chloe turned to follow the line of her gloved finger through the pines. Funny — she hadn’t noticed it before. Perched high up on a mountain crag above them, silhouetted against the blue sky, were the towers of an old castle. The snow lay thickly on the dark stone of its battlements.

  ‘How old do you think it must be?’ Rebecca said.

  ‘Medieval times, I guess,’ Chloe said. ‘Maybe older. Wow.’

  ‘You Yanks,’ Lindsey snorted at her. ‘Anything that’s dated more than fifty years, you go all gooey about it.’

  ‘We do have a little more history than that,’ Chloe said.

  ‘Huh.’

  Rebecca made a face as she stared up at the castle. ‘Makes me feel a bit shivery. Think anyone’s up there, watching us?’

  Lindsey laughed. ‘Give us a break. It’s just an old ruin.’

  ‘I don’t get such a good feeling about this place,’ Rebecca said. ‘I think something really bad happened here.’

  ‘It’s a castle, Beck. They used to have, like, wars and things. I’m sure a lot of pretty nasty shit happened here, a long, long time ago. That’s why they call it history. As in, dead and gone? Come on, guys. I’m freezing my arse off standing here.’

  Chloe stabbed her ski sticks in the snow and unzipped her backpack to take out her map. ‘That’s strange,’ she said, studying it. ‘The castle’s not here.’

  Lindsey snatched the map out of Chloe’s fingers and gave it a cursory glance. ‘Guess you’re right. It isn’t. Or else we’ve taken a totally wrong turn somewhere.’

  Chloe shook her head. ‘I know exactly where we are.’

  ‘And I know exactly where I want to be,’ Lindsey said. ‘Somewhere else.’

  ‘I agree,’ Rebecca said. ‘Let’s move on. I don’t like it here.’

  They skied on down the valley, leaving sinuous, intertwined trails behind them on the bright virgin snow. Chloe was the best skier and could have left the others far behind, but she hung back to keep a watch on the less experienced Rebecca. The valley skirted the base of the mountain, sloping steeply away from its rocky foot. The trees were thicker here, and the going was trickier. Chloe was slicing through the powder snow when Rebecca, fifteen yards ahead, gave a muffled yell and took a sudden tumble. With a big spray of snow she rolled flailing down the slope, toppled over a bluff, and disappeared from sight.

  ‘Rebecca!’ Chloe yelled, racing after her. There was no reply. She glanced back over her shoulder. Lindsey was a long way behind, taking it easy over the terrain, and didn’t seem to have noticed anything was wrong. Chloe made it to the edge of the bluff. Her heart was hammering and she was thinking about the long-range walkie-talkie in her backpack that she could use to call out the mountain rescue helicopter in an emergency. Her mind raced. Would they be able to find them? Would they make it out here while it was still daylight?

  ‘Rebecca! Talk to me!’ Chloe yelled as she tore at the quick-release mechanism of her ski boots, kicked the skis away and scrambled to the edge of the bluff.

  She sagged with relief at the sound of Rebecca’s voice calling up to her. Peering dow
n, she saw her friend sprawled ten yards below, near a trickling stream that had melted a stony path through the snow. She’d narrowly avoided hitting a jutting outcrop of rocks at the base of the mountain. Her left ski had become detached and was sticking out of the snow halfway down the slope.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Rebecca called, struggling to her feet as Chloe scrambled down towards her. ‘Must have snagged a root or something.’ Putting weight on her left leg, she made a face and her knee seemed to give way under her. ‘Ouch. Shit. My knee.’

  ‘Sit on that rock and let me take a look.’

  ‘Glad one of us has done all the first-aid courses,’ Rebecca muttered as Chloe checked her over. The knee was grazed, but not swollen.

  ‘That hurt?’ Chloe asked, supporting Rebecca’s ankle and gently flexing the leg.

  ‘No … ow. Yes, a little.’

  ‘You’ll have a bruise like a rainbow,’ Chloe told her, ‘but I think you’ll be okay. Could have been a lot worse.’

  ‘I’m frozen,’ Rebecca muttered, hugging her sides.

  ‘Want some hot coffee? I think I have a bit left.’

  ‘You’re a lifesaver.’

  Chloe fished the Thermos flask from her backpack, unscrewed the cap and poured out a steaming cupful. As she leant across to hand it to Rebecca, she knelt on something sharp and looked down to see what it was.

  ‘That’s a funny-looking thing,’ she said, picking up the small, jagged object that had jabbed her leg. It wasn’t anything like the other pebbles and small rocks scattered around the stream bed.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Rebecca through a mouthful of hot coffee.

  Chloe showed her. ‘Looks like a piece of something.’

  ‘Pottery?’

  ‘More like a stone carving.’ Chloe turned the fragment over in her hands. It was the size of a walnut, made of some kind of pale, glittering rock. The faded markings on it looked like writing, but the language was one she’d never seen before.