Then one of the vampires looked up, spotting Frankie. The boy dived down, pressing his back against the wall, panting. If he were still human, he would have hoped that he hadn't been seen. But he was a vampire himself, so he knew with grim certainty that they had spied him.
It took a moment for the flood of panic to wash away, before his instinct to hide became an instinct to run. He dashed away from the wall, just as two dozen vampires climbed over it and gave chase.
Frankie raced through the dirt paths, leaping over the gnarled roots of trees, splashing through puddles, part-tripping, part-stumbling. He could feel the hunters gaining on him, especially the true O'Neills. He could almost feel their razor-sharp nails slicing through his neck.
One of the vampires leapt at him, swiping at the back of his right leg. It tore a gash in his trousers, and a strip of flesh from his calf. He yelped and faltered, and only the fear of annihilation spurred him on. He limped forward, dragging his wounded limb behind, finding it harder to jump now, and harder to dive and dash away.
Then another vampire came, snarling and slashing, shredding the back of Frankie's jacket, leaving a trail of blood dripping down him. The force of the attack sent Frankie tumbling forward and down a mound lined with soggy leaves. He clambered to his feet, disorientated, catching sight of the approaching silhouettes, which flittered through the trees behind him.
Then he ran again, out now into the road, his pace slowed, his steps awkward. He advanced a bit, then collapsed down, before pushing himself back up to take another few steps away. He knew he was done for, but he defied that knowledge, searching for some extra seconds of life.
As the hunters came out of the forest, watching Frankie bob and weave, and rise and fall, Frankie spotted the two wagons up ahead, and his own people crowded around them.
“Gather!” he shouted, reverting to the tongue of his people.
John peered out of the second wagon, which was a few metres further down the road on the right. His eyes widened at the sight of his son stumbling towards him, and a tsunami of vampires coming down behind. It seemed for a moment that he was about to come out to fight, but then he saw Dearg appear behind the wall of newly-made vampires, and the Brute Brothers with her.
“Awást!” John cried in Gammon to the driver.
As many of the Gorman family as possible bundled into the wagon, just as the driver set about whipping the horses into a light trot. Frankie raced past the first wagon, where the people were slower to get on board. The vampires struck that one like a flood, crashing through the wood, slashing and slicing. The Gormans there fought back fiercely, beating some of the newly-turned vampires to a bloody pulp. But there were too many of them, and soon the O'Neills were there, slaughtering the few remaining Gormans in that wagon.
Frankie continued his retreat, finding it harder to catch up with the second wagon, which was now moving steadily away.
“Run, kan!” his father shouted, stretching out his hand towards him. The tips of their fingers grazed each other, but then the horses picked up speed, and Frankie fell behind again.
Frankie couldn't see it, but he knew the look of desperation on his own face was harrowing. He was already starting to feel like giving up, that he couldn't make it to the wagon in time. A few of the vampires had broken off from the first wagon to pursue him.
“Slow it down!” his father told the driver.
The wagon slowed, and Frankie gave it one last effort. He put everything into that run, just as the vampires behind were closing in again. His father reached out once more, and now he gripped the boy's hand, and pulled him into the wagon, both of them falling to the floor in a mix of relief and pain.
The driver lashed the horses, and now they galloped. The vampires fell behind, turning back to the first wagon, where there was a mighty feast of blood and flesh.
“You're safe, kan,” John told his son, resting a hand upon the boy's shoulder.
But Frankie could see through the curtain at the back, where the first wagon, now driven by the O'Neills, was starting up. The horses were slain and bled dry, but Dearg worked a different set of reins, pulling the astral strings that set the wheels in motion.
Frankie was safe for now, but the Gormans still had a long road to ride, and the most vicious vampire clan hot on their heels.
33
The Wagon Chase
The wagons bounded down the uneven road, turning corners sharply, sending up muck behind them and causing a tremendous din as the horses galloped and the wheels span with a frenzy. The first wagon, in which the surviving Gormans sat, was fast, but the second wagon, with Dearg's spellcasting, was gaining on them.
“We won't last long at this rate,” John said.
“We shoulda fought 'em!” Pat 'Bruiser' Gorman replied.
“We'll fight 'em yet. But not off guard. It isn't a fair fight.”
“Those O'Neills never fight fair.”
“We've too much weight,” Frankie's older cousin, Mary, shouted. “I'll take my lot south.”
Before John could stop her, Mary leapt off the wagon with her son and daughter, the three of them charging into the safety of the trees. As the O'Neill wagon passed, a handful of vampires hopped off to chase them.
With fewer people onboard, the first vehicle picked up speed. But speed alone would not be enough, not with Dearg in pursuit.
The wagon rocked suddenly, and something blasted a hole through the canopy.
“What was that?” Pat asked.
“That'll be the Red Hag,” John replied. “She's the reason there isn't no fair fights here.”
He pulled back the curtain at the back of the wagon, where they could see Dearg standing at the front of the other wagon, hanging out of the door, casting small bolts from her hands towards them. John ducked as one flew by his head.
“Nan,” he called.
Out of the front, sitting with the driver, came Nan Gorman, the matriarch of the family. She wasn't a vampire, and they never turned her, respecting her wishes, but she stayed with them all the same. It was just as well, because she was the only one of them who knew anything about magic.
Nan hobbled into the back, clutching a pile of talismans strung together. They didn't ward off vampires, or she'd have no family at all. They stored some of the power she had amassed over the years, like a battery. Now it was time to spend it.
“Get outta me way!” she growled at Pat and John as she came through. She had never quite forgiven them for getting involved in this dark side of the world, or for bringing Frankie with them. But you didn't get to pick your family, living or dead.
Nan grabbed a handle at the back of the wagon, holding out her talismans in the other. She swung her head through the curtain to get a better look, and pulled it back in time as Dearg fired another bolt her way.
“That witch!” Nan said. Some said that about her too, but she'd slap you if you called it witchcraft. This was good solid Christian magic, as far as she was concerned. That some of her family weren't quite in the state to be good solid Christians any more was beside the point.
She shook the talismans and pointed her hand through the curtain. A bolt of electricity extended from it to the other wagon, and Dearg retreated inside. Then she edged out again, returning fire. Nan did the same, until both of them were lashing bolts left and right, tearing up parts of the road, and leaving sizzling marks upon the sides of the wagons.
Then a bolt struck one of the back wheels of the first vehicle, splintering the wood. The wagon slumped down and slowed, and the horses found it difficult to pull. Another bolt came, destroying the wheel entirely.
Nan came back inside, shaking her head, and seeming like she would slap anyone who said anything to her. She hustled past John and sat down beside Frankie, casting at him the only look of sympathy she had in her. She held the talismans in both hands, then closed her eyes. After a brief moment, she began rotating her hands in circles, and outside formed a spectral wheel where the other one was missing. She kept spinning,
and now it span in turn, and the wagon sped to life again.
The chase continued, but now Nan Gorman had to divide her attention between the wheel, which she kept going with her right hand, and the other wagon, which she attacked with her left. She raised her left hand high, palm outwards, and formed a shield around them, then pressed the shield outwards, until it struck the other vehicle, slowing it down. This was more tiring than all the other efforts, but it was also the most effective, so she did it again.
Yet to poor Frankie, who peeked outside, it seemed that Dearg had stopped her now fruitless attacks and had gone back behind the curtain. He didn't know much about magic, but he'd heard enough of Nan's tales to know that Dearg didn't give up easily. If she was silent now, she wasn't still. She'd be working on something else, something big.
The gap between the wagons grew, but the horses were growing tired, and the driver warned that they could only keep up this pace for so long. They only hoped that Dearg too was tiring, that she didn't have access to that infinite well of magic that some said she did.
“We're out of their reach!” John declared, smiling.
Frankie peered out and saw the other wagon fading into the blackness of the night far behind. It seemed like a good sign, but he couldn't help but feel in the pit of his stomach that it was a bad omen. Nan must've felt it too, because she came back in with a grim look upon her face.
Suddenly there was a flash of light, like far-off lightning, and Dearg's wagon seemed to appear out of nowhere side-by-side with their own. With just as much speed, vampires leapt from the doorways of that one to the next, clutching the side of the Gormans' wagon, sidling along or climbing onto the roof.
“I guess we fight now,” Bruiser said, showing his fists.
“I guess we die now,” John said. He was never much of a fighter.
Nan rose to her feet, firing a wall of energy at one of the vampires that came through the curtain at the back. She readied for the next, while the others stood back-to-back, fangs bared, fists raised.
They heard the thuds and stomps of vampires on the roof, and the whacks against the walls when several more jumped across. There were too many of them. The Gormans could fight, but they knew that sooner or later—and likely very soon—they would lose.
“Don't let them turn me,” Nan pleaded. That was what she'd made John and Pat promise her before. They let her age gracefully, let her keep her soul, and keep her place in heaven. That was what she feared the most. She still wore a crucifix around her neck, but it was tiny, out of love for her sons.
John and Pat said nothing. Frankie knew they'd try their best, that they'd go to the ends of the earth—and beyond—for family, just like they had for him. He was only alive, if this was life, because of them. He didn't even have to hunt for blood like they did. They did it for him, spared him the horror of the slaughter. He was still newly turned, less than a year, almost as fresh as the O'Neill's entire army. He thought he'd live at this age forever. He never thought it'd end so soon.
The vampires crawled inside.
Then both wagons halted suddenly.
Up ahead, the road was blocked by three more wagons, but these ones were different in style, with Gothic elements in their design. There were hundreds of metal and wooden crosses nailed across their hulls. Standing before them were several dozen people, so-called “gypsy” folk, wearing black, with metal masks, all adorned with hundreds more smaller crosses. You couldn't see any of their faces. The masks were made up of hundreds of large nails.
Inside the Gormans' wagon, the vampires froze in place.
“Who the hell are they?” one of them asked.
Nan knew the answer. It brought some comfort, but also some pain. “The Order of Nails,” she said, knowing that her family were at as much risk of them as the O'Neills' new recruits were.
34
The Order of Nails
They called themselves Strigoi Stalkers, and they were members of the Order of Nails. Their identity was secret, and though the Order had originated as a Romani gypsy group, it now included members of various backgrounds—all united by the desire to wipe out the vampire scourge.
They leapt into action, charging towards the vampires with weapons bared. At the back, more Stalkers stood, firing crossbows full of nails, which were dipped in holy water. Their aim was not just to eradicate, but to inflict as much suffering as possible to those evil fiends.
Their leader, Manus, stood out easily, for his helm was adorned on the top with a large metal cross the size of his head. It must have been heavy, and unwieldy, but he wore it with ease. He carried a giant flail, the head of which was encrusted with hundreds of outward-pointing nails. When he swung it, it caught in the flesh of a vampire, and he pulled them close to finish them off.
Several Stalkers caught fleeing vampires and held them down. The vampires squirmed and screamed, for even the gloves of the Stalkers had nails and crosses on them. Yet all of that was nothing compared to what the vampires faced now.
Manus approached the first of them and knelt down nearby. He took a long, thick, rusty nail from his belt, said to have been used to affix Christ to the cross, and lined it up at the forehead of the vampire. Then he took a hammer from his belt and held it aloft.
“Through this we cleanse even Hell itself,” he said, his voice muffled by the mask, and made to sound a lot more sinister.
Another Stalker came by, holding a glass cube towards the crown of the vampire's head. Inside the cube, the walls were lined with many more little nails, all doused in holy water or anointed oil. There was something else in it that no one ever spoke of, but could attract demons like fish to bait.
The vampire seemed about to say something, but the leader of the Order of Nails drove the hammer home, and so the nail pierced through the head of the creature. Another tap and it went in further, eliciting another blood-curdling scream.
A black smoke rose from the wound, growing in size, and the Cube-holder trapped it inside the glass vessel, where it visibly writhed in pain. She brought it back to one of the wagons, where there were dozens more cubes with their own shadowy victims, all facing eternal torment. These were only the ones recently collected. There were far more in the hidden dungeons of the Order of Nails, going back a century, to the time when the blood wardens abandoned their watch.
Inside the first wagon, there was no fight. The O'Neill army fled, or fought with the Stalkers, until the ground outside was littered with dust.
“Stay in here if you know what's good for ya,” Nan warned her family. There was a troubled look in her eyes, more troubled even than when they came to her with news of their plans to turn the sick and feeble Frankie in one last-ditch effort to save his life.
Nan hobbled outside, casting a few paltry magical bolts at the fleeing vampires, not to hurt them, but to demonstrate to the Order of Nails that they were her enemy too.
Manus approached. He looked at the cross around her neck, tiny though it was.
“A fellow believer,” he said.
“Till the day I die,” she replied.
“Not today then.”
They stared at each other for a moment.
“We were attacked on the road,” Nan explained. That wasn't a lie, so it was easier to say.
“You are lucky,” Manus said, “that the road is stalked by good as well as evil.”
“Yes.”
“Why did they want you?”
“God knows why.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice suddenly deep and rumbling, like thunder. “He does.”
“Blood, I guess.”
“That was quite a force for a little feast. How many of you are there?”
“There's only a handful of us left. We numbered a few dozen at first. Most were in the other wagon. It was what slowed 'em down.”
“My sympathies.”
Nan hung her head. Those were good people, and not all of them were vampires. The Gormans stuck together, living or dead. They had a saying: “You travel
the long road with kin, an' travel the longer roads after with 'em too.”
“Well,” the leader said. “Let a fellow gypsy go back to the road now safely. The way ahead is clear, for we have cleared it. The way back … we'll clear that too.”
She nodded to them and walked back to the wagon.
“And be careful,” he told her as she neared the door. “Evil has a way of getting close. You never know where you might find it.”
She sighed as she climbed inside and looked at her vampire kin.
35
The Monolith
On that same night, James met up with Lilly in the City Centre, finally getting some time to catch up after all the trouble of the past few days. They went to an old pub around the corner from Trinity College, pretty much at the heart of the city, and yet tucked away enough that few people really knew about it. Those who did tended to avoid it too.
Inside, it was dim, cosy, and quaint. It had been refurbished over the years, but some of the original style and furnishings remained, and what was new was deliberately weathered. The walls in some parts were lined with old newspapers, and the central area had a gigantic wooden face as a fireplace, with the gaping mouth leading to the logs and flames. That fire seemed to be always on, night and day.
The pub was called the Monolith, and it was run by Oscar Elsey, a burly effeminate man, who looked at times like he was deciding between hugging you and knocking your lights out. James was glad that Oscar seemed to like Lilly. He ran to her and picked her up in his muscly arms.
“Girl, you are looking fine,” he said in his shrill voice.
They exchanged some moment of glee, hopping up and down together, until Oscar noticed James and became suddenly very butch, then just as suddenly very camp again.
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