by Nick Moseley
Ready for a scrap, lass? said Caladbolg.
What nature of enemy do we face? asked Tyrfing.
Caladbolg paused dramatically before replying. Demonspawn.
'Or maybe just three ordinary people who've been possessed by a demon,' Trev clarified.
They will not fight like humans, Tyrfing warned him. The demon controls them, and can give them some of its power, also.
'I'm sure we can handle them,' said Trev. With the two vapour weapons in his hands and the power buzzing through his body, he felt suddenly calm, relaxed and confident. Graeme hurried past him and opened the front door. Nodding his thanks, Trev stepped through.
The three intruders didn't appear to have moved. They still stood at the edge of the lawn, staring toward the house with their empty eyes.
Trev walked to the top of the steps and began to descend them. He kept his full attention on the unmoving figures in front of him, his enhanced reflexes ready to respond to an attack. None came. His feet crunched onto the gravel and he stopped, facing his opponents.
'Careful, m'boy,' said the Colonel's voice from somewhere behind him. Trev's attention reflexively wandered in that direction, for just less than a second, and at that exact moment the three possessed people sprang to life and charged him.
They moved quickly. Very quickly. Trev dodged aside as the skinny youth's fence post hissed past his face, then used Tyrfing to deflect the tramp's baton before leaping backward to avoid an overhead swing of the old lady's axe. The axe's head thumped into the ground, scattering gravel.
'Bloody hell,' breathed Trev. He didn't have time to say anything else because his three playmates were on him again almost immediately. Their tactics were very simple. They attacked as a group, not allowing Trev to deal with them individually. He couldn't focus his attack on one of them without the other two moving to outflank him.
Without his hot-wired reflexes, Trev knew he wouldn't have lasted more than a few seconds. He kept on the move, making himself a difficult target. His opponents did likewise, staying just out of reach and trying to tempt him into a rash attack which would overbalance him. Trev was careful not to oblige them.
Keen to bring the fight to a conclusion, Trev drew on his weapons' experience and selected an appropriate tactic. He feinted to his left then sprang forward to engage the baseball-capped youth. Without hesitation the tramp and the old lady moved to circle around behind him. The youth swung his fence-post, and Trev raised Tyrfing as if he intended to parry the blow. As he did so he allowed the blade to lose enough of its solidity that the fence-post passed straight through it, while he neatly side-stepped out of the weapon's path. Having expected to meet solid resistance, the youth was unable to check the post's momentum and it struck the tramp, who was about to launch an attack of his own from Trev's rear, square on the top of his head.
Passing through Tyrfing had taken enough of the force out of the strike that it was a staggering blow rather than a killing one, but it was still more than enough to drive the tramp to his knees. The youth was caught off-balance and Trev was able to continue his side-step so that he was behind him. He swung Caladbolg, concentrating on the demonic presence he could feel pulsing within his opponent's body.
The lightning-blade swept straight through the youth's torso, leaving his clothes and flesh undamaged. When it emerged from the other side it brought with it a thick streamer of the black essence Trev remembered seeing pouring out of Steven Harvington's body. It writhed along Caladbolg's blade as if it were alive, trying to get back into its host. Horrified, Trev drove a jolt of energy into the sword, and the squirming blackness fizzed and evaporated. As Caladbolg had predicted, the youth crumpled unconscious to the ground.
With only two opponents to contend with Trev felt the odds were much more in his favour. He leapt over the youth, intending to deal with the tramp before he recovered, but instead had to defend himself against the little old lady, who came at him like a Viking berserker, dentures grinding and axe swishing.
Without thinking about it Trev re-solidified the two vapour weapons and brought them up in an X shape, catching the axe between them. He pivoted his body to the side, forcing the axe into the ground, before snapping the swords together like a pair of shears. The axe's handle disintegrated between the blades. Before the woman could recover, Trev had whipped Tyrfing through her body and the black essence controlling her was gone. She folded to the ground.
That just left the tramp, who by now had shaken off the blow to the head he'd received. He closed with Trev, quickly shifting his baton from hand to hand in an attempt to confuse his opponent. It didn't work. Without the fear of being surrounded and attacked from behind, Trev was able to devote his full attention to the foul-smelling man. He flicked a wrist and Caladbolg crackled through the air, splintering the baton into two ragged pieces.
Enraged, the tramp lunged at Trev with his bare hands. Trev brought him to a halt by kicking him hard in the groin. As the man dropped to his knees for the second time, Trev swung Caladbolg through him, destroying the demon's essence and its control along with it. The poor bloke looked almost relieved to be slipping into unconsciousness.
'Well done, you two,' said Trev to his weapons.
Bah, that was barely a fight at all, said Caladbolg, but thanks anyway, lad.
Their master will be a much more dangerous opponent, Tyrfing chipped in. Be wary.
'Blimey, you really know how to take the gloss off a victory,' grumbled Trev, shutting the swords down before they could reply and returning them to their holsters.
Gravel crunched behind him and he turned to see the Colonel approaching with Graeme in close attendance.
'Jolly good show, m'boy,' said the vampire. 'That was rather impressive.'
'How the hell could you all move so fast?' asked Graeme. 'It was pretty bloody frightening.' He grinned suddenly. 'Although it was also pretty bloody funny when you caught that last fella in the bollocks. Wasn't expecting that, was he?'
'That seems to be becoming my signature move,' reflected Trev. 'You can't beat a boot to the 'nads – it’s the great leveller.'
'I want these people off the estate immediately,' said the Colonel to Graeme. He gestured at the unconscious intruders. 'After you've done that, I want you to go and find out what happened to my security patrols.'
Graeme's grin disappeared and he nodded. Taking a set of keys from his pocket he unlocked the Range Rover and began loading the unconscious youth into the vehicle.
'I don't want them waking up here,' said the Colonel. 'There would be too many awkward questions to answer.' He clapped Trev on the shoulder. 'Let's get you a cup of tea, shall we?'
'Wouldn't say no,' Trev admitted. 'I just have to make a phone call first.'
Thirty-One
'To whom?' enquired the Colonel.
'Granddad,' said Trev. He dug his battered mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled Granddad's number. The old man answered straight away.
'Trevor? What is it?'
'The demon just sent three possessed people here to attack me,' replied Trev. 'I've sorted them out, but -'
'They're dead?'
'No, they aren't. Let me finish.'
'Sorry, go on.'
'I was able to get the demon's essence out of them using The Twins, so they're safe but unconscious. I'm just thinking that they could've been sent here to keep us busy while the demon goes after Kolley. You might want to check up on him.'
'Good thinking, I will. I'll call you back.' Granddad rang off.
Trev put his phone back in his pocket. 'Sorry about that,' he said to the Colonel. 'Is that cuppa still on offer?'
Sat on the leather sofa with a fresh cup of tea, Trev reassessed his host. The Colonel had reverted back to his posh-but-eccentric country squire persona, but Trev could see through it now. He remembered the unconcerned way in which his host had decided to kill the intruders. Underneath the jovial character the vampire had created to protect himself, he was about as warm and genuine as a la
p-dancer's smile.
Trev became aware that the Colonel was waiting for him to speak.
'Er, so,' he said, 'Granddad tells me that you've been a vampire since the nineteenth century?'
'Since eighteen seventy-nine, to be precise,' said the vampire. He was busy refilling his pipe. 'Though sometimes I think it really must be longer ago than that.'
'What happened?' asked Trev, unable to hold back his curiosity.
The Colonel lit his pipe and puffed it into life. 'Have you heard of the Battle of Isandlwana, m'boy?'
'No.'
The Colonel shook his head. 'Not surprising, I suppose. I doubt they teach about the days of the Empire any more.'
Trev shrugged. 'They might've done, for all I know. I didn't pay much attention in History lessons. I was already getting enough lectures from Granddad on the subject.'
'The Battle of Isandlwana,' the Colonel said with a sigh, 'remains to this day the worst military defeat inflicted on the British by a native army, namely the Zulu. I ought to know. I died there, in a manner of speaking.'
'If you died in battle, how did you end up a vampire?'
'I was an officer in the British Army at the time, stationed in South Africa,' the Colonel began. 'I was a low-ranking Lieutenant, a middle-aged career soldier without much interest in promotion. Didn't need the extra aggravation, y'see. However I was making a tidy living by running an efficient black market in the camp. My right-hand man was a Boer called Joubert Retief. I first met him when he'd just been caught cheating at cards by some of my men. They were rather upset about it, as well as rather drunk, and probably would've killed the bugger if I hadn't intervened. As it was he'd had quite a pasting by the time I got to him.'
'That meant he owed you,' observed Trev.
'Quite so, m'boy, quite so,' agreed the Colonel. 'Being a Boer he had access to people and places that I, as a British officer, did not. With his help I was able to extend my sphere of operation considerably, and for a while we were both lining our pockets nicely. Then one day Joubert came to me and said he was meeting some people that night about a… transaction that stood to make us even more money. He was very vague on the details, so when he failed to return I didn't know where to start looking for him. In the end I had to assume that he'd either decided to cut and run, or fallen foul of the people he'd gone to meet.' He drew on his pipe thoughtfully. 'Not long after that, the British declared war on the Zulu, and we set off to invade Zululand.'
'They were pretty keen on invading places in those days, weren't they?'
'Indeed they were, old chap. This particular invasion was a spectacular fiasco. The Commander-in-Chief, Lord Chelmsford, decided to send us into Zululand during the rainy season, which meant we spent most of our time slogging through ankle-deep mud. Our advance was embarrassingly slow. Eventually we reached Isandlwana, which is an empty bit of plain with nothing to commend it except a large rock formation, and set up camp. Chelmsford, cunning strategist that he was, decided not to bother with trenches or fortifications to defend the site. That decision cost several hundred men their lives, including me. I'm still quite cross about it.'
'So then the Zulu attacked the camp?' asked Trev.
'Not immediately,' replied the Colonel. 'We got reports of a Zulu force nearby, so Chelmsford took two-thirds of the troops – well over two thousand men – and went looking for them. It was only once they were gone that the main Zulu force attacked the camp.'
'Chelmsford had been fooled.'
'Indeed he had, m'boy. There were just over a thousand of us left in the camp, against around twenty thousand Zulu. We had guns, of course, while they were mostly armed with spears and clubs, but the chaps left in charge by Chelmsford had us defending much too large a perimeter. They couldn't get the ammunition distributed quickly enough, and in the end we were overrun.' The Colonel frowned, remembering. 'They slaughtered us to a man,' he said, his eyes distant. 'We ran out of bullets and ended up fighting with our bayonets and rifle-butts, back-to-back. The bodies were piled up where groups of men had fallen. You know, it's the noise that's stayed with me more than anything. The shouting, the gunshots, the screams as men were stabbed to death with those awful Zulu spears. It's not a good way to die, Trevor. I really can't recommend it.'
Trev nodded. It seemed like a fair point. 'So they… killed you, too?'
'They must've thought they had,' said the Colonel. 'I was fighting with a group of other men and I'd been wounded. Fortunately the spear-head had gone along my ribs rather than between them, or this story would be quite a lot shorter. Still, I was struggling on when the chap behind me went down, taking me with him. I cracked my head on something – a discarded rifle, maybe, or a rock – and that was the end of the battle as far as I was concerned.' He got up from his chair and poured himself a glass of brandy from a crystal decanter. 'When I came to my senses it was almost night. I'd been dashed lucky – the body of the man who'd fallen on top of me had been pressing down on my wound, which had staunched the bleeding somewhat. I'd likely have bled to death while I was unconscious otherwise.'
'Were there any other survivors?'
'A few, but they'd fled the battlefield while the fighting was still going on. Maybe fifty men escaped with their lives.'
'Bloody hell,' said Trev. 'Sounds pretty horrific. But how did you go from waking up on the battlefield to becoming a vampire?'
The Colonel swirled the brandy around his glass. 'Well I dragged myself out from under the bodies, and that effort nearly finished me. I knew I was going to die. I was in such a rotten state I began to wish that I'd never woken up. All I could do was slump against the mound of my comrades' corpses and wait for the end. Then I heard the sound of horses approaching.'
'Reinforcements? Chelmsford's men?'
'That's what I was hoping, m'boy. But it wasn't them. Even in the near-darkness I could see that they weren't wearing uniforms. There were perhaps five or six of them, all dressed in dark clothing. They rode into the middle of the battlefield, dismounted, and began rummaging through the bodies, helping themselves to anything of value the Zulu hadn't already taken.' He sipped his brandy. 'Now of course I was something of a rogue myself, but looting the dead? That was the sort of thing that even I found distasteful. I picked up a rifle and staggered to my feet, calling out a challenge. I knew I had no chance against them – I could barely stand, much less fight – but I saw it as an opportunity to die with some honour, rather than just lying in the dirt and waiting for the chap with the scythe to claim me.'
'What did the looters do?' asked Trev. He was still clutching his cup and saucer, but the forgotten contents were going cold.
'They were startled at first,' replied the Colonel, 'but they recovered very quickly and surrounded me. They seemed to find my challenge amusing, and I suppose it was. I had no ammunition and wouldn't have been able to raise the blasted rifle to my shoulder even if I had. They were enjoying a jolly good laugh at my expense when one of them recognised me.' He paused. 'It was Joubert.'
'So he'd run out on you to join a bunch of grave-robbers? Nice bloke.'
'That was what I thought too, at first,' said the Colonel. 'He told me that his group had been following us since we'd entered Zululand, sneaking into the camp every night and stealing from us. The battle had been a bonus for them, it meant they were able to scavenge a good deal more. I would have given the bugger a piece of my mind, but I hadn't the strength. Joubert wasn't stupid. He could see that I only had an hour or two left in me, at best. He laid me out on the ground and went to confer with his associates. There was some sort of disagreement, and I heard Joubert telling them that he owed me a debt. Eventually the leader gave in to him. He said, very clearly: "Do what you must, but he will have to take his own path."'
'What did that mean?'
'I didn't understand either, but by then I was struggling to even think. Joubert came to me with a cup or flask of some kind and told me to drink. I did as I was told, thinking it was water. It wasn't. It was warm and bit
ter-tasting. I tried to stop drinking, but Joubert wouldn't let me. When the stuff was all gone he told me that he had repaid his debt to me, and that I should rest. I fell unconscious again.'
'So what was it he made you drink?' asked Trev, who thought that he already knew the answer.
'His own blood, m'boy,' said the Colonel. 'Joubert had become a vampire, although I didn't know it then. Vampirism isn't some form of magic, or necromancy, or curse, as you may have heard. It's a type of virus. Joubert knew the only way he could save my life and repay his debt to me was to pass that virus on to me, and he did so with his blood.'
'That's pretty grim,' said Trev, setting his cold cup of tea aside.
The Colonel finished his brandy and re-lit his pipe. 'He saved my life,' he said simply. 'But in doing so he changed me. The virus actually alters one's body. A fellow vampire I once knew, who was of a scientific bent, told me that it re-writes its host's DNA.' He drew on the pipe. 'Whatever that means.'
Trev suspected that the Colonel knew exactly what it meant, and was feigning ignorance as part of his act. He decided not to comment.
'I woke again at dawn,' the Colonel continued. 'Just in time to meet Chelmsford's relief column as it returned to camp. I couldn't believe I was still alive. My wound appeared to have stopped bleeding and I felt stronger, if a little strange. The reinforcements put me in a wagon and took me to Rorke's Drift, a small compound back across the river which had a hospital. That place had been attacked by Zulu as well, but they'd been able to fight the buggers off. They made a film about it, starring Michael Caine. I had a good laugh when I went to see it.' He stroked his moustache. 'I had to, really – it was either that or have flashbacks.'
'There can't have been many other people in the cinema with your first-hand experience of the subject matter,' observed Trev.
'The odds were against it,' agreed the Colonel. 'Anyway, m'boy, Chelmsford's men took me to the hospital, where I was pronounced to be lightly tarnished but otherwise intact. The consensus of opinion was that I was the luckiest man in the British Army. For a day or two, I agreed with them.' He frowned and drew hard on his pipe. 'It was only after I left Rorke's Drift and went back to civilisation that the symptoms began to take effect. It started with sunburn. I couldn't stay outside in the sun for more than half an hour or so without getting the most awful sunburn. Absolutely mystified the doctors, especially when it was gone again the next morning. I lost my appetite too, for food and water at least. What little I could eat didn't seem to be doing me any good. I became so weak that I ended up in a hospital bed again.'
