by King, Danny
Just as those he’d struck his Faustian pact with were also.
The Marquis put an end to his daughter’s curse by driving a stake between her ribs, removing her head and burying her remains beneath a great marble slab inscribed with a warning for future generations not to disturb her rest.
But he showed no such leniency towards those who’d condemned her to eternal damnation. He took a hundred men to their castle keep first thing in the morning and clamped them in irons as they slept. The chief vampire threw himself at the mercy of the Marquis and begged him to not to expose his daughters to the light. He’d been the one to infect the Marquis’s daughter. He alone should be the one to suffer the unthinkable.
But the Marquis was a vindictive man and dragged them into the sun one-by-one so that each of them could witness the full horrors of what was about to befall them. The chief vampire died last, knowing that it had been his folly that had condemned his daughters to the ultimate agonies.
Henry couldn’t remember who’d told him that legend but he remembered the fear he’d felt when he’d first heard it. It was the same white fear he now felt as he looked out of the window and up at the ridge –
– at men who’d been sent by another vengeful Marquis.
CHAPTER 14
Sebastian had been twisting his wrists over and over until he felt he’d worked a little slack into his bonds. Unfortunately, at the same time, the rope chafing had caused his wrists to swell so that he was not only no nearer to escaping, he was now in considerable discomfort.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw the iron leg of the workbench just behind him. It was peeling and rusty. If he could shunt a couple of feet backwards he might be able to rub his ropes against the corroded metal to free his hands.
Sebastian tried bouncing in his chair but didn’t move. He bounced a bit harder and bumped into Mr Thatcher.
“Excuse me,” Sebastian said but Mr Thatcher didn’t reply. He couldn’t. He and Mrs Thatcher still had their gags in whereas Henry had neglected to replace Sebastian’s.
Sebastian bounced again and then again, slowly and agonisingly, clattering his way across the cellar floor until he was almost within reach of the rusty leg. One more bounce and he’d be there but in his excitement he lost his balance and keeled over sideways, crashing into the floor face-first to knock himself and couple of teeth out for several minutes. When he came to he discovered he could move his arms. In fact he was completely free. The chair had disintegrated around him when he’d hit the floor, releasing him from his ropes and his predicament.
“I did it,” he told the Thatchers as if he’d just performed a Harry Houdini trick of careful design. “You see that? I did it.”
The Thatchers nodded approvingly but this turned to protestations when Sebastian went to climb out of the coal chute without releasing them too.
“Don’t worry, I’ll come back with help,” he reassured them. “Every second counts.”
This just made Mr and Mrs Thatcher object even more vehemently and Sebastian thought he made out the word “motherfucker” in between Mr Thatcher’s muffled grunts. He knew deep down that he should free the pair of them but the thought of lingering chilled Sebastian to the bone. Henry and the others could return at any second and that would be that, his one and only chance to get away would be gone. It might not have been the noblest course of action he was pretty sure he could live with himself all the same.
Mr and Mrs Thatcher continued to scream at Sebastian from behind their gags, so much so that he feared they’d alert their captors upstairs before he could escape. Resigned to taking the Wurzels with him he climbed down from the coal chute and stepped behind Mrs Thatcher.
“Fine, but you owe me,” he told her, yanking down her gag.
“You can have a Victoria Cross and a nosh if you like, just get us the fuck out of here!” Mrs Thatcher replied peevishly, albeit quite understandably so.
*
Colonel Bingham had things on his mind too. Most people do when there’s a bunch of gun-toting supernatural beings nearby intent on breaking out and killing everything in sight, but curiously the Colonel’s thoughts had nothing to do with this.
Or at least not directly.
He was pondering the price of loyalty. Could a mercenary ever truly be considered loyal? He had fought all over the world, for banana dictators and freedom fighters alike, occasionally at the same time, but he had always done so for money.
Money was the key to Colonel Bingham’s heart. Some mercenaries fought for the buzz and some for the cause but the Colonel had always looked at the pay packet first and the objectives second. Larousse paid well. Extremely well in fact. And up until tonight the job had been safer than guarding a homework shop on Christmas Day. It was the nest-feathering job to end all nest-feathering jobs.
And, of course, complete bonkers.
But the Colonel was happy to go along with it just to see his bank account fatten up. And it made a lovely change to be working in England after so many years abroad.
But then while on leave one weekend, the Colonel had been approached whilst feeding the ducks on Hampstead Heath. How this person knew who the Colonel was or what his mission concerned, he could only guess, but he’d even more money than Larousse and made the Colonel an offer he could not refuse –
– nor indeed fulfil.
Until tonight.
The creatures in the farmhouse were a plague to Larousse. But to others they were an opportunity. The Colonel pondered this thought in the darkness, as he sat on the ridge and stared out across the valley and into the abyss – in more ways than one.
The Colonel heard Larousse before he saw him. The rustling of leaves and cracking of twigs gave him away a full twenty seconds before anyone saw him. It could’ve only been Larousse. The Colonel’s men moved silently through the forest. Larousse wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the Congo.
“Feeling brave, Mr Larousse?” the Colonel said, speaking up to help his employer find him in the darkness.
“I can’t see anything from back there. I need to know what’s happening,” Larousse replied.
“Not much for the time being,” the Colonel informed him. Indeed, all was quiet on the Western Front. The targets hadn’t tried to move and the Colonel was content to leave them where they were. Stalemate.
Larousse squinted down at the farmhouse so Colonel Bingham handed him his binoculars.
“Thank you.”
The Colonel watched Larousse as he studied the location. He was like a Peeping Tom in the bushes outside a Mastectomy Clinic. How could something so wrong feel so right?
“Can we hold them until sunrise, Colonel?” Larousse asked.
“If we don’t, I’ll be sure to let you know,” the Colonel promised him.
Larousse ogled the farm some more. Was that a flicker of movement in the windows he saw? Was that one of them?
“They’re really in there, aren’t they? They’re really just down there,” he croaked. Larousse’s throat was dry. Just like his outlook.
Bingham decided to test the waters with a suggestion of his own while he had Larousse to himself.
“What if we could take one of them alive?”
Larousse almost dropped the binoculars and looked at the Colonel in disbelief. Did he hear him right?
“What are you talking about?”
“Just to get a sample. Just for the sake of science,” the Colonel probed, icing the cake to gauge his benefactor’s reactions.
Larousse was outraged. After everything he’d tried to drum into these men and he should speak of science?
“These things are an abomination. They need to be wiped out, erased from the face of this Earth,” Larousse sermonised. The spit had returned to his mouth with a vengeance and now threatened to douse the Colonel’s collar.
“Righteous words, Padre. But could we be missing an opportunity here?” he smiled, brushing Larousse’s flecks from his jacket, if only for effect. His jacket had seen far worse in i
ts time. And no doubt would again tonight.
“We’ve got them trapped, Captain. This is our opportunity. We might never track so many of them down to one location again,” Larousse harangued. He considered himself an open-minded individual. He had to, otherwise he wouldn’t be here now. But some things were simply sacrilegious. Allowing even one of those creatures to live, even if it were muzzled and caged, was akin to harbouring Doctor Mengele from justice because he’d produced some interesting data in the death camps. “This is the chance of a lifetime.”
Colonel Bingham pondered that last sentiment for a moment and found he agreed with it wholeheartedly. But for entirely different reasons.
“You’re right,” he told him.
“I know I am. And my authority comes from the very top,” Larousse assured him, meaning not just the top dog on Earth but Him above too – if you believed in that sort of thing.
The Colonel pulled a dog-eared business card out of his pocket and nodded at one of his men crouched in the shadows just behind Larousse. Larousse heard the gun cock and felt its sights turned in him.
“Oh no no no no, you can’t. What is this?” he demanded.
“My authority,” the Colonel told him. “I’m in charge from now on.”
CHAPTER 15
Down in the farmhouse things were no less fractious but at least no one was pointing their guns at anyone else. Their hackles were more than enough.
“Stay here then. See if we care. You’re not one of us anyway!” Vanessa hissed at Henry by way of disagreeing with his last sentiment.
“I didn’t say I wanted to stay here. I just said I wasn’t going out there without a plan,” Henry reasoned back. His colleagues might not have respected him for his feeding habits but they still listened to him. Henry didn’t want to die any more than anyone else. On that they at least agreed.
“Let’s just go for it. Make a run for the trees and go,” Angel said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Running’s not a plan. Running’s what you do when you don’t have a plan,” Henry pointed out.
The kitchen had been shot to pieces so they’d taken shelter under the stairs. The walls were thicker here, it was in the centre of the house and this part of the home had long been regarded as a bastion of sanctuary from outside harm. Why else had the Ministry of Defence in the 1980s recommended that people leant a door against the stairs to make a nuclear fall-out shelter in the event of a four-minute warning? It wasn’t likely to protect anyone from an intercontinental ballistic missile strike but it gave the people a semblance of reassurance and kept the roads clear while Government officials raced for the real shelters.
Boniface remembered the Cold War as if it had been yesterday, which in his case it practically had been. He hadn’t liked it. It had been his least favourite war so far, and this was coming from someone who despised all wars as a matter of course. But the Cold War was particularly repugnant: too much sneaking about, not enough carnage. What was the point of a war without some modicum of waste?
“Kismet catches everyone in the end. You can’t run from it forever,” Boniface said as he peered out of a bullet hole in the front door and up towards the ridge.
Angel disagreed. “Better to die roaring like a lion than bleating like a lamb.”
“The whole place is surrounded,” Boniface snorted with a shake of the head. “Just how far do you think you’ll get anyway?”
“Far enough for my ashes not to get mixed up with yours will do just nicely,” she replied.
“People, people,” Henry urged them. They had enough to contend with already without tearing each other’s faces off.
“I’m ready,” Chen announced with steely-jawed determination.
“For what?” exclaimed Henry. “We haven’t even decided what we’re doing yet and you’re already ready? Give us a chance, for fuck’s sake!”
“Look, the game might be up for us but we can still make a few widows before this night’s out,” Angel said, flexing her talons around the handle of her assault rifle. Angel was psyched. She was a wolf on a leash just waiting to be released.
Angel hadn’t felt this pumped in almost 130 years. Then it had been personal; her former familiar had crossed her and gone off on his own killing spree across Whitechapel, convinced that this would give him the gift without Angel’s blessing. He’d managed to kill six times before she’d finally caught up with him. And when she did no one ever heard from Jack again.
“Of course we don’t all have to get away, you know,” Alice suggested with a knowing smile.
Vanessa wasn’t sure she heard right. Was this some sort of drawing straws shit designed to help old granny get away. “What are you talking about, old woman?” she snapped irritably.
“I’m a hundred years younger than you,” Alice took pleasuring in reminding Vanessa.
“And don’t you look good for it,” Vanessa replied, equally pleasured to remind Alice of that.
“Shut up both of you and stop bickering,” Boniface said, when the penny dropped with him. “She’s right.”
“About what?” Vanessa said, now doubly irritated that Alice seemed to have seen something that had, thus far, eluded her.
Boniface explained. “As long as they’ve got us where they can see us we’re hog-tied. But if just one of us can get clear, get to the shadows…”
“… the night is ours.”
All eyes turned to Angel and now understood. The night was indeed theirs. No mortal man could outmanoeuvre them in the shadows. They could get behind their attackers, pick them off at will and create a panic which, in theory, would allow more of their rank to slip out and join the fray.
Henry nodded in approval and looked around.
“Okay okay, so now we’ve got a plan,” he said.
“I’m ready,” Chen agreed, his jaw still clenched in anticipation.
“There you go, Chen’s ready,” Henry sighed, rolling his eyes in exasperation. Some people couldn’t wait to die, could they?
Angel cocked her gun even though it didn’t need cocking. But she felt the occasion called for a gesture of machismo and was willing to waste a cartridge on theatrics. “So we break as one, in one direction, at the same time,” she told her comrades.
Alice, the architect of the idea, also felt the need to demonstrate a show of strength and finally set her knitting needles down once and for all. “Then first one clear doubles back and butchers every last living one of them,” she smiled sweetly.
*
Colonel Bingham had never called the number on the business card before. He’d been tempted, but he’d never had the need and he wasn’t a man to waste other people’s time. Their lives perhaps but never their time.
When he finally did call he had expected alarm bells and helicopters but all he got was a recorded message.
“Thank you for calling. Please leave your name and circumstances after the tone and someone will get straight back to you,” the message had told him.
“Fuckers!” the Colonel replied. Larousse’s lips curled in the darkness but they didn’t stay curled for long. No sooner had the Colonel hung up than his phone lit up again. He answered.
“Yes?”
Larousse watched the Colonel’s conversation but gleaned very little.
“Yes. Yes. Maybe. Yes. Half a mile. More than four. No sooner than that? We’ll be here. Roger. Over and out.”
Colonel Bingham pocketed his phone and Larousse stepped towards him, although he was careful to do so as unthreateningly as possible, bearing in mind the assault rifles trained on his back.
“Who was that?” he demanded.
“Someone who pays more than you, Mr Larousse,” the Colonel replied.
“Thirty pieces of silver is it?” Larousse scowled, much to the Colonel’s amusement.
“More or less, and adjusting for inflation,” he winked.
18 was happy to stay out of it. He was rank and file. Nothing more. Politics and mutinies were the prerogative
s of the officer classes. All he wanted to do was keep the enemy at arm’s length, watch his buddies’ backs and make it out of here in one piece. Anything else was bacon and eggs to 18 and he would deal with that in the morning.
“Oh shit! We’ve got movement,” he said, spotting a stirring in the shadows at the side of the farmhouse.
Colonel Bingham hurried to his side and aimed his binoculars at where 18 was pointing.
“What the hell is that?”
18 didn’t know. But whatever it was it was big and gnarly and growing gnarlier by the second.
CHAPTER 16
“Oi watch it! I don’t even let my husband put it up there!” Mrs Thatcher barked down the coal chute as Sebastian sought to shove her up it.
“Well use your arms as well then, I ain’t a bleeding lift!” Sebastian replied, becoming better and better acquainted with her in ways that Mr Thatcher could only vaguely remember.
Snug wasn’t the word (the coal chute that was) but Mrs Thatcher was determined to get out of that cellar one way or the other.
“Come on Frodo, put your back into it!” she urged her knight in shining armour, scrambling all over his head and kicking him in the face on the way out. She dropped out of the hole and rolled over in the frozen mud outside. The moon shone brightly above. She’d done it. She was free! She’d stared death in the face and had now been reborn. She felt exhilarated. Delirious even. Nothing could stop her except possible for…
CRACK!
A bullet pinged off the brickwork just inches from her head.
Mrs Thatcher screeched and hugged the mud.
CRACK!
Another shot. This one even closer.
Mrs Thatcher couldn’t move. She was paralysed with fear. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. When would this nightmare end?
“Well get up then you lazy old cow. Go on, get out of here!” Sebastian urged her, popping his head up out of the coal chute to see what the delay was.
“But they’re shooting at me!” Mrs Thatcher replied.
