by Philip Henry
The boat was now only a few hundred yards from the beach and Davis was ready to meet it. He looked down at his best shoes, fated to be destroyed by seawater. The pitch of the engine sound didn’t change as the boat got closer. He wasn’t slowing down. That was when Davis really started to worry about Art. This big score: “The one we can retire on,” Art had said, was dangerous enough for him to take four men with him. They were hired muscle that could be paid and wouldn’t ask any awkward questions. They had left for Scotland three days ago. Art had sent a telegram to Davis just yesterday to say when he would be arriving and that Davis should bring the truck. Art had sounded excited in the telegram and Davis had assumed the buy had gone well. Now with the boat racing to the shore, Davis had a dark sense of foreboding. Something had gone wrong for sure, but how wrong?
Davis stepped back from the tide line as the boat ran aground on the beach. He checked the windows behind him again. No lights. The engine was still whining loudly, no one silenced it. Davis ran into the water, ruining his shoes, and climbed one of the mooring ropes that was hanging from the bow. When he set foot on deck his chest was wheezing heavily. He bent over and put his hands on his knees. His vision was blurry for a few moments then the focus returned and he saw the boards below his feet were stained red. He got his breath back and looked down the length of the deck and saw large patches of blood the full length of the boat. The engine noise interrupted his thoughts; it seemed even louder now. He carefully ran down to the stern and silenced the motor. He glanced up again at the terraced houses lining the promenade. No windows glowed.
“Davis,” a voice said weakly.
Davis turned and saw Art sitting on the floor of the cabin. His face stood out in the darkness because it was so white. Art had been wearing his best suit when he left and now the white shirt was half red from the waist up. Davis ran to him and kneeled beside him. “OK, Art. Just stay calm and I’ll have a look at this.” Davis carefully unbuttoned the shirt and peeled it apart. The blood had stuck the shirt to the wound and Art tensed and sucked air through his teeth as the pain spiked. Davis struck his lighter and looked at the wound. It was a bullet-hole just below his ribs. The ground beneath Art was slick and covered in blood. Davis moved the lighter and realised he was kneeling in blood.
“Jesus, Art, what the hell happened?”
Art spoke as if fighting tiredness. “Not my territory. A lesson for the paddies.” His eyes blinked and closed.
Davis shook him. “Art, stay with me.”
Art’s eyes fluttered apart. “It’s in the hold. All for you now, Will. Enjoy.” His eyes closed again and this time they did not open when Davis tried to wake him. Davis sat there for a while staring out to sea. What should he do? He could just leave and no one would ever have to know he was here. The soldier and the girl with Betty Grable legs wouldn’t admit to seeing him or they would have to explain why they were there. He could just walk away. Then there was the score in the hold. Davis didn’t know what it was. Art had told him that they could retire on what he was bringing in. No, he couldn’t walk away, not without at least talking a look. Art had been prone to exaggeration in the past. Davis opened the hold and climbed down. He struck his lighter and saw the bodies of Art’s four hired thugs with a couple of hand-guns lying near them. They had all been shot, some more than once. At the far end of the hold he saw the outline of a crate. Davis walked closer and saw something he didn’t expect: a huge black swastika was printed on the side of the crate.
“My God, Art. What the hell were you into?” Davis examined the crate and found it was nailed shut. He looked around for a crowbar and couldn’t find one. Take it or leave it? he asked himself. If Art was willing to die for it, it must be worth a lot. Take it.
Davis then had to face the bigger problem of getting it out of the hold, off the boat and into his truck. He pushed the crate (and it was heavy) across the floor, the blood of the hired thugs actually helping to slide it, and left it directly below the trap door to the cargo hold. He looked up and saw a winch. Of course they had a winch. Art’s hired thugs were strong, but even they would have had trouble lowering this crate gently. He climbed up quickly and checked that all the windows were still dark and ran his gaze along the promenade as well, just to be sure. In no time he had attached the winch and had the crate on deck. His chest was heaving but he didn’t allow himself very long to recover. He pushed the crate to the bow of the ship and then jumped off into the sand. He had parked the truck at the end of the street where it was darker. He ran there as fast as he could even with his lungs pumping furiously in his chest. Once inside he brought the truck to life and drove to the beach entrance. He turned the truck and reversed down to the beach and then along the sand ‘til the back of the truck bumped the bow of the boat. For one horrible second he thought he had hit it too hard and the boat was going to drift out to sea. The boat rocked but held fast in the sand.
Davis climbed into the back of the truck and began to undo the twine that held the canvas roof in place. He uncovered half of the roof and guessed it was enough. He looked up and saw the bow of the boat. The crate would only have to fall about five feet and it would be in the truck. He climbed back aboard the boat and ran to the bow, slipping on blood but ignoring it. He stood at the bow for a couple of minutes until his breathing slowed a little, then lifted the crate with all his strength and tipped it over the bow. The crate dropped into the back of the truck with a loud crack. Davis looked over the edge, gasping. The wood had split somewhere but the crate was still holding.
The last part of his plan seemed the worst. Still, in for a penny and all that. He got off the boat and used his truck to nudge the boat back until it was no longer grounded. Davis brought the truck out of the water and a safe distance from the shoreline – he didn’t need it getting stuck in the wet sand. He swam out to the boat that was now bobbing in the water close to the shore. He went to the cargo hold and got one of the guns that still had the full six bullets in it, then climbed back on-deck. He started the engine and turned the boat so it was facing out to sea. He used a piece of the twine from the truck’s canvas roof to tie off the wheel. He looked down at Art’s body and felt a pang of regret. He comforted himself with the thought that Art would do the exact same thing if the roles were reversed. Before starting the engine he went back and stood above the cargo hold. He fired all six shots into the bottom of the boat. The water was seeping in but it would take time to sink, and by that time the boat would be far out at sea. Davis looked around the boat, wondering if he had done everything he intended to. He had. He pushed the throttle forward on the boat and waited a few seconds to see its course was running true, then jumped over the side.
By the time Davis had made it back to the shore he was exhausted. He told himself he could rest when he got the crate somewhere safe. He dragged himself to his feet and walked to the truck. The world spun before him as he reached the truck’s door. Bright spots sparkled before his eyes and then there was perfect darkness. When he awoke he could tell the dawn was close. He looked over his shoulder and couldn’t see the boat anywhere in the sea. He pulled himself into the cab of the truck and started the engine.
It was still early enough that the roads were empty, so no one noticed how many times Davis veered onto the grass verge or flattened part of a hedge. Somehow he made it to Art’s warehouse, which was actually a barn in the country. Davis unlocked the barn doors and brought the truck inside. He closed the doors and locked himself in. He staggered to a very inviting pile of hay and dropped. He slept soundly.
It was five-thirty in the evening when he woke. He put aside thoughts of hunger and found a crowbar. Now he had his strength back he wanted to know what he had risked his life for. He climbed into the back of the truck and, after putting the crate right-side-up again, slammed the crowbar under the lid. It opened quickly and easily. Davis lifted the lid back and his mouth fell open. He saw the gold first. A solid gold Maltese Falcon. Gold candlesticks. Diamond necklaces, rings and watches mad
e of gold by the finest craftsmen in the world. Loose jewels: rubies, emeralds and more diamonds. In one corner were rolled up paintings and parchments. The crate was filled to capacity with this stuff. This was Nazi loot, stolen from all the aristocracy of Europe. Davis thought he was going to have an asthma attack there and then. He was rich. Beyond rich! He looked up and screamed triumphantly at the roof of the barn.
Davis wasn’t the sort to want to buy himself a mansion and have a dozen servants tending to his every whim. He was content to stay in the house they had and fix everything that was wrong with it. He knew he would get his collar felt if he tried to sell the loot all at once, so he sold it a little at a time, using the people he had met while working for Art to put him in touch with interested parties. Over the months and years that followed the stash got smaller while the money in his bank account grew. Elsie had asked him where all the money was coming from. Davis had told her he had been putting a little aside each week and had invested it wisely and now the dividends were paying off. He was never sure if she completely believed him, but she never asked again.
The last things to go were the paintings and the parchment pages. Davis had a buyer lined up for the paintings but the parchments were proving impossible to sell. No one knew what they were so no one wanted them. Davis had glanced over them a few times but the language they were written in was unfamiliar to him. He held onto them because he figured if the Nazis took them they must have been valuable. When the paintings sold, Davis looked at them more closely. There were three pages in all. Near the end of page two he found a word he understood: Vampyre. He immediately thought of the Ministry. This was their area. Since he knew the Ministry wasn’t likely to offer him thousands of pounds he decided to give the pages to them free of charge. It was a scholarly fellow who answered the door when he took them to the Ministry and Davis thought the man was going to wet himself when he looked at the pages. Davis told him the pages had come his way in a job lot and he didn’t know where they came from.
A few months later Davis had ran into the Ministry employee in a pub and he had told Davis what the pages were. What he said made little sense to Davis and he just nodded politely to humour him. Davis didn’t know then that his son would one day put his career and life on the line because he believed the pages were authentic. The scholar had told his dad: “These are the missing pages from the Vampyre Corpora. The lost writings from the Book of Days to Come.”
Portstewart, Present Day
“I’ve read the Book of Days to Come,” Nicholl said. “I never noticed any gaps in it.”
“You’ve read a reprint. The Ministry’s had a copy for decades and they’ve translated it into English and never mentioned the gap in it because no one could ever prove there were any missing pages. It was a theory held by a lot of Ministry historians over the years that the writing didn’t flow in one section of the Book of Days to Come. They always believed there was a missing section.”
Nicholl was confused. “Wait. If this all happened back in the forties and the pages were given to the Ministry, why wasn’t our version of the Vampyre Corpora updated?”
Rek looked at his shoes briefly and then raised his head. “Because they never told HQ.”
“What? Why the hell not?”
“We don’t know why they didn’t share it back in the forties. The first we know is when Davis – that’s Davis junior, the man you and I knew – started working for the Ministry. His dad told him about the pages he had given to the Ministry and Davis got curious and dug them out. He studied them and then I guess they just got forgotten. Then, when the thing happened with Xavier and Zigatta-Kaaliz, it rang a bell and Davis dug them out again.”
“What exactly did happen to these vampires?” Nicholl asked.
“They turned back into humans.”
Chills ran up Nicholl’s spine. “They did what?”
“They turned human. No one could explain it. We had one of our doctors planted in the hospital and he examined both of them. They were human. Zigatta-Kaaliz, or Claire as she’s known now, was pregnant and nine months later she had a baby boy. We watched them for ten months after they got out of the hospital. They walked in the day, they ate at restaurants, they didn’t kill anyone. They really were human. Davis remembered about the pages as soon as she had the kid and then he did send them to Ministry Intelligence – after taking photocopies of course. MI said they would have the parchments dated and that we were to keep up the surveillance on them. We never heard anything more back from them.”
“Typical of Ministry Intelligence. Why didn’t you send copies to HQ as well?” Nicholl asked.
“Davis said HQ didn’t have much time for ancient writings and probably believed in prophecies even less. He thought if there was even a chance that it was true, it was worth taking. He said HQ would have Xavier and Claire incarcerated at least, and dissected at worst.”
“He was probably right. But what does it matter? What did this prophecy say? Do you still have the copies?”
Rek shook his head. “I don’t know where Davis kept them. He did make me memorize the important part, though.”
Nicholl’s face brightened. “Go on, then.”
Rek cleared his throat. “Book of Days to Come, Chapter nineteen, verses six to eight: And it will come to pass in those days that two will be released from the spell of night; a vampyre and his bride. They shall walk in daylight once again. And they shall bring forth a child and he will be unlike any other; neither vampyre nor human. He will age as a man does and live as a man. And when he reaches maturity his purpose will be known to him. The thirst of blood will be ended and the cage of night will be destroyed. He will liberate us from the curse of creation. And a new age will be upon us.”
“You think this kid…”
“Will bring about the end of vampires,” Rek finished. “It’s what Davis believed and it’s why we can’t harm Claire when we go to see her. In all likelihood she and the kid are in as much danger as anyone. Probably more. Vampires will feel drawn to the child. They will fear him and want to kill him above everyone else. Now, you need to tell me, Nicholl, what do you believe?”
the karma suture
Claire pulled Tom’s clothes on as fast as she could. The boy didn’t question or resist her. The nurses were yelling about the chance of infection behind Claire. She ignored them until one put her hands on Claire’s shoulders to try to calm her. Claire shrugged her off violently and finished zipping up Tom’s coat. She grabbed Tom with her right hand and swung her hockey bag over her shoulder with her left. She pushed through the protesting nurses and headed for the door. This was the day Claire had dreaded. Though she had no specific religious beliefs, she believed that everything got balanced, sooner or later. As she had watched Tom grow she always had the haunting suspicion that she was in deep karmic debt and that someday someone would call to collect. This was the day. This was going to be payback for all the people she had killed as a vampire. All the families she had destroyed. Xavier sounded badly hurt on the phone; he might be dead already. Now they were coming to kill Tom. To balance the universe. To make Claire atone for what she had done. A single stitch in a massive wound that Claire had left in her wake over the past one hundred and seventeen years. Well, karma wasn’t going to get Tom without a fight.
Claire reached the inside door of the Children’s Ward and needed the code to exit. She had been told, but couldn’t remember with all that was going on in her head. She turned to the closest nurse. “What’s the code?”
“Listen, Mrs Ford. Why don’t you let me page the doctor and he can have a little chat with you?”
“What’s the fucking code?” Claire snapped. She turned to the door to see if she could kick it down and saw the Emergency Release on the wall. As she drove her elbow into the glass an alarm went off and the doors released. Claire pushed through and headed for the outer doors. She needed to get away from here as soon as possible. She would need a car. She would have to steal one from outside. Then they
would have to go somewhere and hide. She pushed through the outer doors and turned right. She rushed along the corridor with Tom being dragged behind her. She stopped dead as she saw people in the lobby running in all directions. Something was scaring them. Claire brought Tom close and put an arm around his shoulders. She kept her gaze on the lobby. Kaaliz walked from the lobby and turned into the corridor towards Claire. He saw her and smiled when the fear blossomed on her face. Behind Kaaliz a second creature followed that scared Claire even more. It was a huge, hulking brute with only the vaguest resemblance to a human and its face covered in blood. Claire shook and held Tom closer to steady herself. Kaaliz was nearing her. She snapped out of her terrified reverie and glanced around her. The sign on the wall to her right said Hospital Chapel.
“In there,” she said pushing Tom through the doors. She watched Tom run into the safety of the chapel and walked back to the centre of the corridor and faced Kaaliz. She reached over her back and unzipped the top of her hockey bag.