by King, Danny
*
The reason 18 had been unable to find either warm body on his thermal image detector was simple: Mr Thatcher had fled the scene while Sebastian had been packed in ice. Unlike the rest of the occupants in the Mr Thatcher’s freezer though, Sebastian was still just about within his Best Before date. Henry guessed the enemy had some kind of heat detector and needed to hide Sebastian’s hot body if Boniface’s Trojan Horse routine was to work. It would’ve seemed needlessly ungracious to have killed him – and that wouldn’t have hidden his heat pattern anyway – so Angel suggested the freezer, stripping him off and bundling into the icebox alongside Mr Thatcher’s crispy pancakes and Mrs Thatcher’s tubs of Ben and Jerry’s.
Although Ben and Jerry’s what, Sebastian daren’t look.
The lid of the deep freeze popped open at the second time of asking and Sebastian sat up with a creak. He was so blue he could’ve probably passed himself off as a Smurf had he had a white hat handy.
“F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f…” he tried to say, unable to swear and scarcely able to move.
His arms wouldn’t work so he used his legs to hoist himself over the side and onto the stone floor below. He landed with a thump and cursed the Thatchers for not having an upright freezer in which to store their victims.
A wood burner stood smoking across the cellar so Sebastian wobbled to his feet and staggered over to it like Boris Karloff climbing off the laboratory slab.
“F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f…” he continued to attempt, hunkering over the wood burner until his teeth stopped chattering. It took a while for the sensation to return to his arms and legs but when it did he almost wished it hadn’t, they ached so much.
“F-f-f-f-f-f-f-fiddlesticks!” he finally got out, pleased to be able to speak again if not actually swear. That would come back with time.
Sebastian lit a fag and took and long loving drag before looking around for his clothes. Damn, he remembered now, Boniface had taken them all and a right knob he’d looked too. Some people just didn’t have that crucial ‘it’ factor to make such high-end threads look cool. Sebastian did but Boniface, and obviously the bloke who’d given them to Oxfam Shop in the first place, didn’t.
Sebastian needed something to wear. It was cold outside and he couldn’t hitchhike all the way back to London in his pants – not without ending up in someone else’s freezer. Luckily, sitting there neatly folded and awaiting their rightful owner’s return, was a suit and tie combo that had come through this whole scrape almost unscathed but for a dash of plaster and a drop of blood.
Sebastian donned Boniface’s clothes without a second’s thought. Fair exchange was no robbery, he told himself.
*
Henry and Vanessa could see the panic in the soldiers’ eyes. Something was coming for them and it was coming for them fast. Death and desperation stalked the night and nothing could stop it. Gunfire and flashbangs tried in vain to slow its pace but the screams just kept getting closer until a deathly silence fell across the whole forest.
For the few soldiers left guarding the prisoners, that seemed more terrifying than anything else.
“What do we do, sir? What do we do?” a soldier holding a crossbow on Vanessa asked.
Bingham was conflicted. He’d got what he’d come for in the shape of three live prisoners, only to lose them at the eleventh hour. Damn it, where was that science team?
Another scream called out in the night, this one barely a stone’s throw away. Bingham was out of options. And when Henry started shouting “Over here! We’re over here!” he knew the gig was up.
Vanessa tried joining in but her gag was too tight. Larousse on the other hand had no such restraints and with the prospect of deliverance so close, he cast God to the wind and threw his lot in with the Devil.
“Help me. Please help me. I’m one of you now,” he cried, making up Bingham’s mind once and for all. Dying would be bad enough tonight. But knowing that he’d died and Larousse had lived would torture him for all eternity.
“Kill them. Do it quick,” he instructed his men, picking up Larousse’s own stake from where he’d dropped it and pressing the point to his chest.
“No, please Colonel. Don’t do it. You don’t have to do it!” Larousse desperately pleaded, out of his mind with terror.
Bingham smiled as he fixed him eye-to-eye.
“I know I don’t, Mr Larousse. I just want to,” he told him, driving the stake as hard as he could until Larousse’s accursed black blood spurted out of his mouth.
“Damn you…!” Larousse whispered as his body crumpled and his hands snapped off at the wrist. He hit the dirt but barely made a thud; his uniform contained nothing more than dust and the charred stain of a burnt-out soul.
Colonel Bingham hadn’t expected that to happen and clearly neither had his men. They stood around gawping at Larousse’s empty battle fatigues and looking at each other in shock before the Colonel reminded them they had two more prisoners to execute.
“You son of a bitch!” Henry seethed as Bingham picked up Larousse’s stake to use once again and the crossbow-wielding soldier took up aim opposite Vanessa.
Now she was done for. Now she was dead. It wasn’t a case of lost hope but of seeing the soldier’s finger squeezing the trigger and knowing that the agonising pain that was about to follow would be the last thing she would ever know.
But Vanessa had one last card up her sleeve. It was a card of last resort and few vampires ever played it because it didn’t delay their deaths, it merely reclaimed ownership of it.
Henry knew what she was about to do but he couldn’t stop her. And before the bolt had left the crossbow Vanessa welled up with the force of almighty hell and unleashed it upon herself, obliterating her body and knocking her would-be murderer for six with the force of the blast.
Bingham found himself on the ground and wondering how he’d ended up there. He looked up at Vanessa and saw she was gone, only a cloud of red mist hung around the A-frame she’d been tethered to while the soldiers who’d tried to kill her was lying some ten feet away with a crossbow bolt sticking into his own neck.
But this had been more than about simply taking her killer with her. Henry still had a chance. And with her sacrifice, Vanessa had bought her oldest and closest friend a few more precious seconds.
CHAPTER 25
27 was in the clear. He’d abandoned his post and left his mates for dead but it was a decision he could live with. He was a soldier of fortune, not misfortune. Some people died for their friends but not 27. He preferred his friends to die for him.
Like Bingham he’d served in no regular army. He’d got into this game after escaping the Scrubs and had headed south to avoid the authorities, stopping only once he found himself in Chad.
It was here that he’d first held a gun and it was in Benin that he found he could turn it to a profit. Half a dozen wars later and he was a veteran with a reputation if not a name, at least not in the UK, not anymore.
27 stopped in a little gully and listened. He was in the deepest darkest part of the forest, waist deep in bracken and surrounded by pines. He could still hear gunfire and screaming in the distance and reckoned himself to have made at least half a mile. The farm and the main road lay southeast. He would head due west, through the densest woods and the roughest terrain. It was his own particular tactic. When the shit hit the fan and the dead started piling up, don’t bolt for the quickest escape route, head cross-country. It was the surest way to leave friends and foe alike far behind.
27 could see the sky starting to glow above the forest canopy. The dawn was fast approaching. He’d take to open ground once the sun came out but for now he would stick to the trees. It felt like the safest option.
He squinted through the shadows one last time then decided to keep moving, making for a gap in the bracken at the crest of the next hill. He never made it. Something popped up out of the ferns to block his path. It was too close to shoot and too quick to avoid. A blow to the neck knocked 27 down and suddenly something
was straddling his chest.
“Trespass on my land, will you! Frighten my chickens, indeed!” Mr Thatcher raged as he pounded 27’s head with his meat cleaver. 27 didn’t stand a chance; he was dead before Mr Thatcher struck the fourth blow but that didn’t seem to faze Mr Thatcher who just went on chopping, over and over again until his cleaver hit mud and 27’s head rolled away down the hill.
“You won’t get away from me like that,” Mr Thatcher barked angrily but then stopped when he sensed someone was standing just behind him.
He turned his head slowly and saw Angel leaning against a tree watching him with delight, her eyes glowing red in the darkness as though they were smouldering.
“He was like this when I got here,” Mr Thatcher assured her. “I just found him like this.”
“Oh really?” Angel replied, pushing herself off the tree.
“It wasn’t me, honest. It must’ve been the wife.”
And with that, Mr Thatcher quickly rolled off 27, grabbing his SMG and squeezing the triggering to empty the clip in Angel’s direction.
He was fast, very very fast.
But unfortunately for him, not fast enough.
*
18 was likewise running for his life, through the farm, across the fields and into the trees on the other side of the valley. Death and destruction had rolled through here already and 18 stumbled across the evidence, tripping over one former colleague and sliding on what was left of another. There was very little left of either of them. Throats were gone, as were hearts and in some cases, limbs, but 18 knew better than to sit around conducting autopsies on his mates. They were dead. And he knew what had killed them: the same thing that would kill him if it got a hold of him.
18 jumped to his feet and motored on, leaping through the brush and going for broke in the direction of the main road. If he could just get to concrete there were few men nor beasts who could run him down over open ground. Not when he had the Devil at his back.
“One, two, three, four,” 18 counted off, just as Bingham had instructed him to do the last time he found himself fleeing through the woods. This time however, he failed to get to five.
“F… ooofphhh!” he groaned, running bang smack into something without seeing was it was. A gangly figure had come crashing out of nowhere and ploughed straight into him, knocking him for six and sending him and his SMG spinning off into the undergrowth. But 18’s training quickly took over and within a second he was back on his feet and ready to fight. He might’ve lost his gun but his will-to-live was fully loaded and he was ready to get messy if need be. He pulled out his combat knife and slashed the air between them as he sized up the opposition.
His attacker stood up, turned and stared at 18. 18’s eyes narrowed. His attacker’s eyes narrowed. 18 crouched in readiness to strike. His attacker reached out for a log. 18 circled one way. His attacker circled the other.
Neither dared move.
Then, without warning, his attacker tossed his log aside again.
“Hold on, hold on. Time out,” he said, holding out his hands to show 18 he was packing nothing more than short arms and yellow fingers.
18 stared at the figure opposite. He looked like the human who’d tried fleeing the farm at the start of this evening, only now he was wearing one of the vampire’s clothes. Who the fuck was this guy that he could get the shirt from a vampire’s back?
“Look, we don’t have to do this,” Sebastian said with a hush, looking from side to side to make sure no one else was eavesdropping.
“What?” 18 gawped, not sure he understood him right.
“Let’s just pretend we didn’t see each other, yeah? No one needs to know,” Sebastian suggested, nodding in agreement at his own plan.
18 thought on this for a moment or two. He was a professional soldier, hired to do a job. He had the training, the ability and the experience. He even had the weapon. He could’ve carved up this civilian in an instant. On the other hand, so many people had died already tonight, many of them needlessly, what difference would one more or less make? And if this guy could survive a house full of vampires then perhaps it wasn’t his time to die anyway.
18 thought on the dilemma then made up his mind. He chose life over death, both for himself and the charmed young man opposite.
“Sounds good to me,” he said, sheathing his knife and continuing on his way.
Sebastian watched him go with a sign of relief, up the track and into the long shadows until he could see him no more.
“Mind how you go now mate,” he said to himself, looking to the heavens and thanking ‘whomever’ for blessing his fellow traveller with that most precious of gifts – the gift of reason.
CHAPTER 26
But while peace had broken out on the cut-through to Christ’s Hospital, the war was still raging back up on the hill.
Colonel Bingham regained his senses after Vanessa’s self-destruction and armoured himself with an extra layer of kevlar. He only had Henry to go but he wasn’t about to end up like his trooper with a loose bolt sticking through his jugular. No, if Henry wanted to blow himself up, Colonel Bingham would ensure it was a controlled explosion.
He hovered the stake over Henry’s heart and braced himself for any funny business.
“It’s a bit old school, I know, but it should still do the trick,” he assured Henry with a smile, slamming the stake into his chest only to find it barely sunk in an inch. He tried again and met with the same results before realising that Henry had donned his own set of kevlar, only tucking it in beneath his shirt.
“That won’t stop me,” Colonel Bingham promised him, using his combat knife to cut away at Henry’s layers until he reached skin and bone.
“You’re mad,” Henry told Bingham as he grabbed the wooden stake again. “You’re throwing away the chance to have something that Kings have tried to trade their Kingdoms for.”
“Kingdoms are overrated,” Bingham replied. “I value my privacy.”
Bingham saw Henry’s eyes glance to the left but he was too slow to respond. A burst of automatic gunfire cut through the pair of them, knocking Bingham to the ground and finishing off Henry’s jeans once and for all.
Bingham tried to reach for his sidearm but it was plucked from his hand and tossed into the bushes to join the rest of Bingham’s spent forces. A tall figure squatted over him as he squirmed in the mud and bared his fangs at Bingham.
“You killed a lot of my friends today,” Boniface snarled, breaking out into a smile and giving Bingham a little wink. “Thanks.”
“Enough trumpeting. You want to cut me down or what?” Henry called over to Boniface, eager to get his own hands on Bingham, and scratch his own backside, but not necessarily in that order.
Boniface took the stake lying neck to Bingham and approached Henry on the A-frame.
“So, I get the Duke’s old territory, do I?” Boniface said, picking up negotiations where they’d left off earlier that evening, only from a more advantageous barging position.
Henry was dumbstruck. “I don’t believe this. You’re really doing this? Really? Really?”
“Yeah really?” Boniface confirmed. He’d had enough of Scotland. He’d been there for about eight hundred years now and was ready to use the stake on himself. Eight hundred Scottish winters could do that to a man. This was the chance of a lifetime – nay a hundred lifetimes – and he wasn’t about to let it slide.
Henry recognised a winning argument when he was confronted with one and conceded the point.
“Fine, take it. It’s yours if it makes you happy.”
“That does. That makes me happy,” Boniface concluded, cutting the ties that held Henry’s wrists and looking forward to his new life in the Smoke. He’d not seen London since 1236. He wondered if it had changed much. “Good meeting,” he said, freeing Henry of the last of his bonds and helping him to his feet.
As grating as it was to see Boniface come away from this get-together with everything he could’ve hoped for, it was a relief to
be free again and Henry celebrated his release with a flexing of his fangs.
The next thing he did was pick up Bingham’s blood trail and follow it down the hill to where the Colonel was attempting to flee. He hadn’t got far. About ten feet in all but it was the thought that counted.
Henry rolled him onto his back, indifferent to the pain it caused him and stared into his eyes just as they’d done earlier, only this time with the tables turned.
“Just so you know, we would’ve kept our word. We would’ve let you and your men leave if you’d let us go,” Henry said, only too aware that this knowledge would torture Bingham more than any red hot poker possibly could.
“Bullshit. You’re a monster. You know only death,” Bingham gasped, trying to roll over as he coughed on his own blood.
“There was only one monster here tonight. And it wasn’t I,” Henry disagreed.
Bingham had nothing to add to this. It was all immaterial now anyway. He’d come to the end of the road and there were no alternate endings for him. He lifted his head to expose his neck and told Henry to get on with it.
But Henry wasn’t about to let Bingham off that easily.
“You should’ve taken our offer,” he scowled, his teeth engorged and his eyes blood red as he fulfilled one of his vows at least – and claimed his first human victim in six hundred years.
CHAPTER 27
Sebastian tripped over his own feet and managed to sustain his stumble until he’d found something cold and hard to plant his face into. As it turned out it was a road. He looked left and then right and remembered it as the one that led up to the entrance of Thatcher’s farm. He’d made it out! Somehow he’d got away.
