The Cross vf-2

by Scott G. Mariani

  ‘Let me get this right,’ Chloe said slowly. ‘My dad’s killer wanted to be a vampire, so a real vampire hired him to steal the cross in return for making him one.’

  ‘We say “turning”,’ Joel said. ‘I mean, that’s the term that’s used.’

  ‘Listen to him, Chloe,’ Dec implored her, desperate to make her believe. A sudden flash of inspiration lit up his face. ‘All right. Listen. I can prove to you that vampires exist.’

  She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Don’t move. Stay right there.’ Dec jumped up, ran out of the room and came back a few moments later carrying one of the many laptops that Errol Knightly had lying around Bal Mawr. Flipping it open, he clicked on the desktop shortcut that took him straight to the home page of Knightly’s website. A couple more clicks, and the video clip from Romania was starting to play. ‘Wait till you see this,’ he said with relish, setting the machine down on Chloe’s lap. She was about to shove it away in protest, then relented with a sigh.

  Joel hadn’t forgotten the real reason he’d ridden all this way west. He rose from his chair and walked around behind Chloe to watch the laptop screen. Her neck was just a few inches away. He could hear the beating of her heart as though it were his own.

  No, Joel. No. He cleared his throat and tried to focus on what Dec was showing them.

  ‘This is the eighth time I’ve seen it,’ Dec said excitedly, pointing at the screen. ‘Can’t wait to see the rest. Hold on. There, now. Look. Look. See the vampire? See the frigging teeth on the bastard? Watch, watch. Any minute now and that Federation woman’s going to walk down them stairs and blow the fucker to hell.’

  Neither Chloe nor Joel replied. They were both staring at the unfolding images with completely contrasting expressions: hers was one of undisguised contempt, his one of growing anticipation.

  ‘Here she is,’ Dec said, pointing. ‘See?’

  Joel barely heard him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the screen as the unmistakable figure of Alex Bishop came walking down the cellar steps. ‘I have to find her,’ he whispered. ‘I have to talk to Knightly.’

  Chloe had seen enough. ‘This is bullshit,’ she muttered. ‘Come on. Any third-rate media student with a Photoshop program could fake this, easy.’

  ‘No way they could fake that,’ Dec protested, pointing to the screen where the vampire was being cut down by the gunshot, his body peeling instantly, horribly, apart. ‘Jesus, look at it.’ Just then, hearing the door opening behind him, he looked up. ‘Errol, I was just showing them the clip.’

  Knightly strolled into the library, glancing out of habit at the mirrors behind the door before his gaze landed on Chloe. ‘I’m so glad you decided to stay,’ he said, beaming warmly; he was obviously prepared to forgive her earlier remarks to him. ‘I’ve sent Griffin out to the local supermarket to fetch some extra goodies for dinner. Is it safe to say we’ll have the pleasure of your company?’

  From the glow in his face, Joel could tell that Dec had been hoping much the same thing. Chloe didn’t seem to share their sentiments, however. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ she said.

  ‘Errol, this is my friend Joel I was telling you about,’ Dec said, working to cover his disappointment.

  Knightly turned to Joel with wide eyes. ‘The one with—’

  ‘The one with the cross,’ Dec said.

  The glow in Knightly’s face had suddenly drained away to nothing. ‘You must tell me about it. You must show it to me.’

  ‘He doesn’t have it any more,’ Dec said. ‘He lost it in Romania.’

  ‘You were in Romania?’ Knightly marvelled, as if Romania were galaxies away. ‘And you actually destroyed a—’ He caught himself before he went any further. Flushing furiously, he said, ‘Not being a professional at the job, I mean. You’re lucky to be alive.’

  Joel was searching for an answer when the faint sound his sharp senses had picked up a few seconds earlier distracted him and he glanced towards the library’s bay windows. It was the rhythmic thump of rotor blades in the distance, growing steadily louder.

  It wasn’t long before the noise entered the range of human hearing and Dec followed Joel’s gaze with a frown. Within a few seconds it had grown dramatically louder, and now it was filling the room. The window panes began to thrum in their frames. Dazzling white light shone through the bay windows and illuminated the bookcases at the far end of the library.

  ‘Jesus,’ Dec said, shading his eyes. ‘He’s a bit close, so he is.’

  ‘Must be the coastguard helicopter,’ Knightly said. ‘They sometimes fly over.’

  ‘It’s not flying over,’ Joel said. ‘It’s coming in to land.’

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Moments later, the helicopter was hovering steadily over Bal Mawr’s courtyard — then began to settle groundwards, the hurricane from the rotor blades tearing at the hawthorn bushes on the walls. The chopper’s skids flexed under its weight as it touched down, and the deafening screech of the turbine instantly began to dwindle to a howl, then to a roar. The blazing white light suddenly faded to darkness.

  Inside the library, Chloe looked at Dec. Dec looked at Chloe, and then at Knightly, whose jaw had dropped open.

  And Joel was rushing towards the door before Dec could finish yelling ‘Where are you g—?’

  As Joel burst out of the library and into the hallway, he could hear the sound of footsteps outside. Three sets of feet, running, approaching fast. Too fast — the kind of speed that was beginning to feel uneasily familiar to him now. He braced himself for what was about to happen next.

  And he wasn’t surprised when the heavy front door crashed open with a violence that tore it half off its hinges.

  Joel stood and stared as, one by one, the three black-clad figures stepped in through the wrecked doorway and returned his gaze. Of the two males, one was blond and handsome, the other short, ruddy and swarthy. The third was a female, fierce-looking and muscular, with a shaved head. Tribal tattoos ran down either side of her neck. Her eyes burned with hate.

  They weren’t from the coastguard. Joel knew what they were even before he noticed the swords dangling from their belts. He could smell it, taste their presence. Vampire sensing vampire.

  The female was the first to draw back her lips to reveal her white fangs, fully extended for attack. Joel felt a twinge behind his lips as his own vampire teeth responded to the sudden threat. His hunger-weakness was completely forgotten.

  ‘What do you want here?’ he shouted.

  ‘We want you,’ the female spat, pointing at him. ‘Federation traitor!’ Before Joel could reply that he had nothing to do with the Federation, she’d whipped out the piratical cutlass from its scabbard and was advancing on him, swishing the short, curved blade through the air with a grin.

  ‘Cut him, Elspeth,’ laughed the blond male.

  Joel backed away. The blade came slicing towards him; he bent his knees and launched his body into the air out of the path of the blow. Landing lightly on a sideboard he reached up lightning-fast and grabbed the antlers of the enormous stuffed moose head that was mounted on the wall above it. He tore it away and brought it crashing down on the heads of the three vampires. The one called Elspeth slashed wildly at him, but the antlers blocked her blade and chips of bone went flying.

  With all the strength he could muster and a brutality he’d never known before, Joel bludgeoned her repeatedly, keeping up his frenzied counter-attack until he had all three pinned back against the wreckage of the door.

  Behind him, Knightly and Dec had burst out of the library and were standing gaping in the middle of the hallway. Chloe was peeking around the door with a look of terror. Joel glanced back at them, waving frantically for them to get back — taking his attention off the three vampires for just a fraction of a second too long. Elspeth’s cutlass hilt smashed into his face and he was sent sprawling on his back. He heard Chloe scream.

  Then the blond vampire was leaping at him, fangs bared in a lunging bite. Not to d
rink his blood — Joel knew that — but to tear out his throat and then twist his head off.

  Weakened and half-starved as he was, Joel knew there was no way he could take on another vampire in hand-to-hand combat — let alone three of them, armed and well-fed and plainly very angry. He lashed out with a wild punch, felt it connect, heard the grunt of pain and the snap of the vampire’s teeth as they closed on empty air. He scrabbled to his feet, narrowly avoiding another furious swipe of Elspeth’s cutlass.

  Up the hallway, the three humans were still standing there as if paralysed. ‘Run!’ Joel screamed hoarsely as he sprinted towards them.

  The first to break out of his trance, Dec grabbed Chloe’s arm and hauled her bodily out of the library doorway.

  ‘Go! Go!’ he yelled, breaking into a mad dash and shoving Knightly on ahead of him. Joel raced after them. ‘Faster!’ Knightly let out a keening blubber as he ran, his face turning from ashen grey to purple.

  The three vampires were right behind them and gaining with every leaping bound up the passageway. Joel picked up a little gilt ornamental side table and hurled it back over his shoulder. It smashed apart over the swarthy-looking vampire’s head but barely slowed him down. All three had drawn their blades now, holding them out in front of them as they pursued their prey.

  A few yards ahead, Dec skidded around the corner of the salon doorway and emerged a second later with Knightly’s flintlock pistol in his hand, still clutching Chloe’s arm in the other. ‘Joel, out of the way!’ he yelled at the top of his voice.

  What the hell was the kid doing? Instinctively Joel flattened himself against the wall. With a look on his face that Joel had never seen before, Dec aimed the heavy pistol at the pursuing vampires and pulled the trigger. The gun roared and a tongue of orange flame spat through the billowing white smoke that engulfed Dec from head to foot and filled the passage. Joel ran on blindly through it to where Dec was standing blinking and coughing with the discharged pistol in his hand.

  ‘Move!’

  They sprinted on, slipping on polished wooden floors and tripping over Knightly’s antique Persian rugs. Through the dissipating smoke came the three vampires, all still very much animate, swishing their swords. Elspeth had a big round bleeding hole in the middle of her chest and her eyes burned with even more ferocious hatred than before.

  Dec threw a disbelieving glance back over his shoulder. ‘It didn’t fucking work!’ he screamed. Chloe grabbed his sleeve and tugged him onwards, pressing a hand into Knightly’s back at the same time to make him move faster.

  The vampire hunter’s breath was coming in great wheezing gasps. ‘It’s not happening!’ he panted. ‘It’s not happening!’

  They went dashing round a corner, Knightly almost crashing headlong into a bookcase. Up ahead was the circular hallway dominated by his ancestor, Sir Eustace, astride his rearing charger. Urging the three humans to keep moving, Joel slowed his pace, grabbed the towering horse by one of its legs and jerked with all his strength.

  Close on two tons of glittering steel plate came toppling down with a resounding crash. The horse went sprawling on its side; saddle and armour broke loose and cannoned off the wall. The knight fell apart as his mount collapsed under him. Shield, breastplate, pauldrons, codpiece, chainmail and the knight’s great plumed helm all spilled clattering to the floor in a chaos of debris right in the path of the running vampires. The blond one tripped over a tumbling arm-guard and took Elspeth with him as he went down — but the swarthy-looking one made it over the heap of collapsed armour, scrambled over the side of the fallen horse and launched himself at Joel.

  Joel twisted out of the way of the slashing blade and it embedded itself with a crunch in the wall. Spotting the fallen mace, he kicked away the knight’s gauntlet that was still attached to it and snatched up the weapon. Only the strongest of medieval warriors could have swung the spiked iron ball on its thick chain, but to a vampire, even a vampire dangerously close to starvation, it felt like a pumpkin on the end of a rope.

  Joel swung it at the swarthy vampire’s head and caught him a massive blow in the shoulder as he tried to dodge out of the way. The vampire was sent spinning violently back into the debris, knocking Elspeth over again just as she’d been getting to her feet and reaching for her fallen cutlass. She let out a howl of rage, shoved her battered companion aside and came running, sword flailing.

  By then, Joel had already dropped the mace and turned and bolted after the fleeing humans, just in time to see Dec haul Knightly through an archway up ahead and bundle him through a huge riveted iron door, closely followed by Chloe. He raced through the door after them and crashed it shut with his shoulder. Dec was instantly at his side, slamming home the sturdy deadbolts and wedging shut the door with a short length of scaffold pole.

  ‘That’ll hold the fuckers,’ he said, dusting his hands.

  ‘Not for very long,’ Joel replied doubtfully. He looked around him. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘Armoury room,’ Dec said.

  Knightly was leaning heavily against the wall, bent double with his hands on his knees, wheezing loudly. Chloe’s face was pallid.

  ‘You all right?’ Dec asked her softly. She nodded. He touched her arm tentatively, then turned and strode over to the rack of weapons. He reached for one of the crossbows, grabbed a handful of silver-tipped bolts and began to stuff them into his belt.

  A heavy thump seemed to shake the walls. The vampires had reached the armoury door.

  ‘We don’t have a lot of time,’ Joel warned.

  ‘What are those things?’ Chloe said in a whisper.

  ‘What do you think they are?’ Joel asked her sharply.

  She couldn’t say it.

  ‘Vampires,’ Dec grunted as he cocked his crossbow. ‘That’s what the fuckers are. And we’re going to frigging murder them.’

  Knightly hadn’t spoken a word until now. His face had turned grey and he spoke in a quaver. ‘Wha — wha … real vampires? But it’s impossible … They weren’t invited in … How could they cross running water … get past the hawthorn …?’

  ‘You told me that silver ball would work, Errol,’ Dec said, fitting a bolt to his bow. ‘I got the bitch right in the heart. What’s going on?’

  ‘I … I don’t know,’ Knightly stammered. ‘Perhaps the silver wasn’t pure enough …’

  Another crash, louder this time, brought a shower of plaster down from the ceiling. A long crack appeared between the blocks in the wall by the door. The scaffold pipe that Dec had wedged into place clanged noisily to the flagstones.

  ‘Dec, there needs to be another way out of here, right now,’ Joel said urgently.

  ‘I say we stand and fight them,’ Dec said, slinging the loaded crossbow over his shoulder and grabbing the spray gun with the holy water canister. ‘We’ve got all this stuff.’

  ‘Bad idea,’ Joel said. ‘And that stupid thing’s not going to work, either.’

  ‘What do you mean, it’s not going to work?’ Knightly roared indignantly, forgetting his fear for an instant.

  ‘Trust me,’ Joel said. ‘I know.’

  ‘I believe in it,’ Dec insisted, clutching the spray gun. ‘It’s holy water, Joel. Blessed by a priest.’

  Crash. They all turned. The armoury door had begun to buckle. An iron rivet fell to the floor. The cracks in the wall had widened a quarter of an inch.

  ‘Suit yourself, kid.’ Joel grabbed a pair of katanas from the sword rack and tossed one to Knightly, who fumbled and almost dropped it.

  ‘What about me?’ Chloe said. ‘I know how to use a sword.’

  ‘You need to take the head off,’ Joel told her, tossing her another katana. ‘Swing hard and hope the blade’s sharp.’

  ‘They’re silver,’ Knightly croaked.

  ‘Fuck silver,’ Joel said, but his words were drowned out by another crashing impact against the door, louder than before.

  The vampires were using the medieval mace. One more blow like that, and they’d be inside
.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The armoury door was battered off its top hinge and there was an eight-inch gap between its upper edge and the stone-work. A hand darted through the gap, groping for the lock. Dec quickly aimed the crossbow and fired. The hand withdrew as the bolt whanged harmlessly into the wall. There was no time to reload.

  ‘We have to go, Dec,’ Joel said. He unsheathed his katana and tossed the scabbard away. He wouldn’t be needing it.

  Dec dropped the bow. ‘Fuck it, I think you’re right. This way! Through the archery range. There’s another door.’

  Joel grabbed Knightly’s arm and yanked him away from the wall. ‘Move! Move!’

  Seconds after they evacuated the armoury, Joel heard the final devastating crash as the iron door gave way to the power of the mace and the vampires came roaring inside.

  Dec led the way. Nobody spoke as they hurried onwards. Through another door, along another passage, around another bend.

  And suddenly they were facing a fork in the road. The passage divided between two flights of stone steps, one leading up and the other leading down.

  ‘Where does that go?’ Joel asked Knightly, pointing at the downward staircase.

  ‘Cellars,’ Knightly mumbled. His whole body was trembling. ‘I think.’

  ‘No good.’ A cellar was a deathtrap, even if the door held. Down below ground, the vampires could happily besiege them for eternity while all four of them starved.

  That was if Joel didn’t find an alternative food source among his human companions that would enable him to outlast them. He couldn’t let that happen.

  ‘What about that one?’ he asked, pointing at the other stairway. ‘Quickly.’

  ‘That leads up to the old servants’ quarters,’ Knightly blurted. ‘Right at the top of the house.’

  There wasn’t a lot of choice. ‘Okay, that’ll do,’ Joel said. Chloe bounded up the stairs, Dec behind, Knightly following. Running up behind them, Joel could hear the vampires giving chase.

  The staircase curled into a tight spiral as it took them higher. It smelled of rats and mould. Plaster was falling off the walls and the only light came from the occasional dim bulb, crusted with dead moths and old spiders’ webs.