Sarah laid a hand on her arm. ‘The Colonel and his men have been defeated,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s time for us to leave.’
‘If only Colonel Griffin could have been here.’
‘There’s nothing more that could have been done.’
Melanie hardly heard them. She dropped to her knees next to Ben and held his hand. His breathing was slowly returning to normal, but his forehead was bathed in sweat. His eyes were shining and feverish and his hand burned hot.
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘It’s just a scratch, just a tiny scratch.’
James lay down next to him, his tongue lolling, his paws folded neatly in front. The savagery that had engulfed him after Helen’s death had gone completely. ‘I’m so sorry, Ben.’
Despite everything, Ben managed a small smile. ‘It’s not your fault. But make me a promise, James. Take the others to safety. Look after them. And don’t let Melanie boss you around.’
‘I promise.’
Ben’s eyes began to close.
Melanie’s eyes were wet, but she shook the tears away angrily. ‘Don’t you die on me, Ben Harvey!’ She shook his shoulder to rouse him. ‘If you do, I’ll make you regret it, I swear to God.’
His eyes opened again at her words. ‘Die?’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I wouldn’t dare.’
Chapter Seventy-Five
Gatwick Airport, West Sussex, full moon
The black cat gouged the captain’s face with its claws. From out of nowhere, Kevin produced a gun. Within a second he was pulling the trigger. The shot passed straight through the head of one of Major Hall’s men, who was standing right in front of him. By the time the man’s body hit the ground, Kevin had unloaded three more rounds at close range. Bodies began to drop all around him.
Liz dived toward Mihai, dragging the boy to the ground with her. ‘Get down!’ she shouted to the other kids.
From the other side of the roof, Evans opened up with his machine gun. A hail of bullets began to rip indiscriminately through flesh. Liz wondered if the Welsh Guard had any idea who he was aiming at. Blind panic seemed to be his only guide.
A single shot went off from close to Liz. Major Hall stood still, his arm outstretched, his pistol in his hand. Evans slumped to the ground, dead, his onslaught brought to an abrupt end.
Liz looked for Llewelyn, but the Welshman was still in some kind of trance. He stood near the edge of the rooftop, staring out into the darkness. As she watched, he sank to his knees as if in prayer. What had happened to him? She had no time to wonder now.
She was changing again, transitioning from human to vampire form. The relentless pull of the moon had seized her unawares, and her body began to take on the familiar shape unbidden. Nosferatu. Metamorphosis was now her automatic response whenever danger threatened. There was no way to stop it. Her muscles pulled tight as steel cables, her skin remaking itself into armour plate. She felt her blood turn icy cold.
Major Hall’s men were changing too. She watched them slip from man to monster, losing their humanity as they took on hellish forms, standing tall against the moon like ghoulish skeletons, with papery skin stretched taut across sunken cheeks.
Major Hall had pulled off his glasses at last. A cold light radiated from them, chilling to see. His face had turned white as bone, with the hollow features of a corpse. He smiled a grisly smile, revealing sharp fangs, and nodded at her in recognition, one undead creature to another. He threw back his head and laughed.
Liz stared at him in horror. Was this how she must look? A living cadaver. A wraith; a ghoul. She examined her own gaunt fingers, glowing pale ivory, twisted into monstrous skewers. The sight of them revolted her. She was a creature made to kill. A slayer, a slaughterer. She had no other purpose.
Then let the killing begin.
This time, she made no effort to resist the beguiling voice. It wanted blood; she would give it blood. She hurled herself at the Major’s throat, sinking fangs into his flesh.
This is how it feels, Major. The kiss of a vampire. Do you like it when it’s done to you?
But his skin was hard, like scales, and resisted her attack. She clamped down harder and her teeth broke through, releasing thick dark blood that trickled down her throat as cold as ice. Never had she tasted anything as good as vampire blood. She sucked deep and drank hard, the rich liquid filling her with new vitality.
The Major reacted with shocking speed and strength, gripping her with the blades of his fingernails, slashing through her hardened skin, burrowing sharp spikes deep inside her. She screamed.
The Major grinned again and pressed harder. His fingers cut through her flesh, edging closer to vital arteries and veins. With a howl of rage she thrust her own fingers against his face, forcing them right into his eyes, and boring hard into the sockets.
The claws that impaled her sprang free and he grasped her arms instead. He pulled at her with all his strength, drawing her fingers out from his eye sockets. They came away dripping blood. Where once had been yellow eyes, now only empty holes gaped back at her. The Major clung to her tightly, seeming oblivious to the damage she had inflicted. He must know that if he ever released her, he would never find her again. Slowly he dragged her closer, ready to sink his teeth into her neck.
She struggled in his iron grip, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t pull away.
Chapter Seventy-Six
According to his father, Corporal Llewelyn Jones should never have become a soldier. He was destined to be a coal miner, like his father and grandfather before him.
His grandfather was a miner all his working life, descending into the pit for the first time at the age of sixteen and working in the bowels of the earth every day until his death. He was a formidable man, whose physical strength, huge drinking capacity and quick temper were unmatched in the South Wales valley where he lived.
Llewelyn’s father had worked for only a few years before the mine ceased production, and never found work again. He might have left the village and looked for work elsewhere, but he was caught in a trap of the past, refusing to accept that the pit was closed for good. ‘They’ll reopen it one day soon,’ he would tell Llewelyn confidently. ‘When the next government gets in, they’ll reopen all the closed mines. They’re bound to. Welsh anthracite is the best coal in the whole world.’ But the mine never reopened, and his father never found another job.
Llewelyn had never wanted to become a miner and was glad that the mine had closed down. If the pithead in his village had remained open, it would have swallowed him, just as one way or another it had consumed two generations of men in his family before him. Closure of the mine meant freedom, and for Llewelyn, freedom meant the army.
His dream was to join the Parachute Regiment. Instead of descending underground, Llewelyn wanted to go up in the world. The paras were the army’s elite, second only in status to the special forces of the SAS. The toughest, bravest men always joined the paras. And Llewelyn had always been tough and brave, just like his grandfather. Yet it took all of his courage to leave the village where the men of his family had spent their lives in the shadow of the pit.
‘Why do you want to join the army?’ his father demanded. ‘The government closed the mine. Now you want to go and fight their wars for them?’
Llewelyn endured his father’s drunken raging in silence. The sooner he was gone, the better. He applied to join the British Army aged fifteen years and seven months, the earliest age possible. His father refused to give his parental consent, so his mother had to sign the forms instead. After he left home he wrote to her regularly at first. Every Christmas he tried to send some money to make up for his father’s lack of work. But he never saw his family again.
After joining the Welsh Guards and completing his basic training, he volunteered for P Company, the “Pre-Parachute” training and selection process for soldiers wanting to join 16 Air Assault Brigade. It was there, in the demanding test environment of assault courses and endurance races that his dream of becoming a p
ara was brought crashing to the ground.
The problem was heights. Llewelyn had never been much of a one for heights. As a kid he’d never wanted to climb trees like his friends. It wasn’t that he was scared. Anyone who suggested that Llewelyn Jones was afraid of anything would walk away with a bloody nose. There was no question of him being scared of climbing trees. He just didn’t want to. What was the point? It was stupid.
Anyway, trees weren’t the same as parachutes. Just because he didn’t want to climb a tree, it didn’t mean he couldn’t jump out of a plane. And nobody ever asked him about climbing trees when he signed up for P Company.
The aerial assault course was a steel framework of bars, ladders and platforms reaching sixty feet into the sky. It didn’t look much from a distance. Sixty feet was nothing, measured out on the running track. But sixty vertical feet were so much more than they sounded. Close up, the top of the assault course seemed to stretch away forever into the blue sky above him. No matter how loudly the P Company sergeant shouted at him to climb it, his hands remained frozen to the ladder, his feet resolutely stuck to the ground.
He had failed. And he would always be a failure. There were no second chances with P Company. It didn’t matter that he had excelled in all the other tests. If you failed the aerial assault course, you couldn’t ever join the paras. What use was a paratrooper who was scared of heights?
The world turned and the moon rose. Llewelyn lay flat on his back on the hotel rooftop. The cold, hard surface pressed into his bones, reassuringly solid, yet somehow swelling like the surface of the ocean. Overhead, the sky moved alarmingly. Dark clouds scudded across it like waves crashing on a beach. He tried to fix his gaze to them, but they slid away, seeming to pull him sideways toward the edge of the roof. He pushed his sweaty palms against the bitumen surface, ignoring the grit and gravel that bit into them, willing the ground to stop swaying. If he tried to stand, or even to move, he knew he would fall.
Why did Liz have to bring him up onto the rooftop?
It was P Company and the aerial assault course, all over again. Then, as now, the enemy was fear. Nothing but his own fear.
But Llewelyn Jones feels no fear.
It was an empty boast, just as it had always been. He gripped the roof even tighter than before. It made no difference. Still he felt himself slip closer to the edge. He gripped it harder, ignoring the pain as sharp stones split his skin.
I am as strong as an ox. No man is stronger.
So why could he not stand up? He knew that the roof was perfectly still and flat. Nothing could make him roll toward its edge. Nothing could make him fall. But knowing the facts made no difference to how he felt.
The voice of the P Company sergeant from so many years ago bellowed in his ear. Get up, you useless piece of dirt! Get up and fight!
I will fight, he promised the sergeant. I will get up now, and fight. I will not fail again.
Liz needed him. They all needed him. Right now this instant. Yet still he lay there, powerless to move.
He risked a glance to his side and wished he hadn’t. The edge lay that way, not so very far off. Had it come nearer? No! That was madness. Then, had he rolled toward it? It seemed so close. And over the edge, the precipitous drop … down into the blackness of the deep pit …
He thought of his grandfather, descending into the coal pit every morning in the cage, listening to the clanking in the dark as the winding gear lowered him one third of a mile into the earth’s crust. Over the years, a hundred and fifty men had met their doom in that pit, yet still his grandfather had allowed himself to be lowered into it. He had relished it, by all accounts.
You are a coward, boy! It was his father’s voice this time. You ran away to the army because you were afraid of going down the mine. I read your letters to your mam, boasting of soldiering in far-off lands. That was not bravery, it was cowardice that took you away from home. You have been running away every day of your life!
‘No!’ he shouted. ‘It’s a lie. Llewelyn Jones feels no fear.’
Then why are you lying there, while your comrades fight without you?
His father was right of course. His friends were fighting while he lay on the ground. What use was it to be as strong as an ox, if he could not fight? What kind of man was he, after all?
The strongest. The bravest.
Then do your duty! shouted the P Company sergeant.
I shall.
Slowly, he pushed his hands against the rooftop, this time lifting his weight up, not simply in a futile attempt to grip. There was no need to grip. The roof was perfectly flat. He would not fall as long as he kept away from the edge.
He rose just enough so that he could see the battle.
Close to him lay the body of Evans, his eyes closed, his chest still. Blood trickled from a wound in his forehead.
Oh God.
Evans was dead. All his men were dead.
It was enough to make him lie down again.
But Liz still needs me.
Whose voice was that? It was his own. He looked and saw that Liz was grappling with Major Hall. She had his thumbs pressed in his eyes, but he was pulling them out. He forced her to the ground, then rolled with her, closer to the roof edge. Both of them were covered in blood.
You can do this, boy. I know you can.
Another voice this time – his grandfather’s. He had never heard that voice before. His grandfather had passed away before he had even been born. But the man had always been there, a towering figure in Llewelyn’s life. A legend.
His grandfather had gone into the black pit every day of his working life, facing his fear. Llewelyn had always been told that his grandfather was fearless. Now, suddenly, he knew the truth. His grandfather had been a mortal man, just like him, and he had surely known fear. How could he not? The deep mine had claimed the lives of his friends and comrades. It was a monster waiting to swallow more. But his grandfather had faced his fears, just as he must do, and shown himself to be stronger than fear.
Go on, boy. You are as brave as I ever was.
Llewelyn sat up. His rifle lay at his side. He grasped it and hefted it into his arms.
On the other side of the roof, Kevin was doing battle with the vampires, firing from the doorway that led back down inside the building. The kids must have escaped inside. Kevin was heavily outnumbered and the vampires moved with unbelievable speed, almost a blur as they dodged around the rooftop, returning fire. Kevin couldn’t hold them off much longer.
But Liz looked ready to die right now.
Major Hall, or the creature that he had become, pushed his face against Liz’s throat and plunged his fangs into her neck. A vision of the dead people in the aircraft hangar came to Llewelyn, their bodies hanging lifeless, two neat puncture wounds in every neck.
The Major was quickly draining the life force from Liz.
Llewelyn rose to his knees and took aim.
He waited for the rooftop to quake beneath him. He waited for the voice of the P Company sergeant to tear him down again. He waited for his father to try once more to heap his own failings onto his son. But the demons in his head remained silent.
He pulled the trigger.
Major Hall tipped over to the side, releasing Liz from his grip. She reached for her own gun and put a single bullet into his skull.
Now Llewelyn turned his gun on the vampire paras and opened fire again. The bullets tore into them, making short work of their crystalline skin. They were fast, but not fast enough for an SA80 in fully automatic mode. By the time his magazine was empty, they were all dead.
I did it.
Once he had said, I will do it. But he had let himself down. Then he had been just a boy.
He was a boy no more. He was a man. And a man made different choices to a boy.
A true man faced his fears, and did not pretend that he was fearless.
A true man faced his fears, and knew that he could beat them.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Glasto
nbury Tor, Somerset, full moon
When Chris Crohn had worked as tech support guy at Manor Road Secondary School, he had often resented the fact that Seth had a much better job than him. He had envied his friend’s position as a software developer in a financial tech start-up. He had coveted his friend’s too-small-but-hugely-expensive apartment in trendy Docklands. He had even found himself longing to be part of a disruptive, visionary, hipster business team, just like Seth, even though he hated hipsters and loathed teams of any kind. His secret dream had been to see Seth brought low, so that he and his old friend could once again be equals, just like when they’d been growing up together as kids in South London.
Now Chris’ dream had come true. Here they were, both brought low, Chris tied back-to-back against Ryan’s beaten-up and barely conscious body, and Seth lying helplessly on the grass nursing his broken ankle. Now he and Seth had the same. They both had exactly nothing. There was a good lesson here, Chris reflected. Unfortunately it had come too late to be of any use.
‘What are we going to do?’ whispered Seth.
‘It’s too late to do anything. I told you we should never have lit that fire.’
‘No one wants to hear that now, Chris.
‘I also said we shouldn’t have come with these guys.’
‘Chris. No one cares.’
‘That’s the whole problem. No one ever listens to what I say.’
They waited helplessly inside the ruined tower, listening to the screams and gruesome noises coming from outside.
Josh’s friends were in full blown panic. The flute player dashed out through the nearest exit, but a dark shape outside lumbered into view and shoved him back in. The others bolted for the archway on the opposite side, but two more black figures were waiting there. They muscled them into the tower and stood blocking the exits.
Brittany was on her knees, sobbing and shaking. ‘Josh,’ she kept saying. ‘What’s happening to Josh?’
Eventually the noises came to an end. The silence that followed was only marginally more comforting.
Lycanthropic (Book 4): Moon Rise [The Age of the Werewolf] Page 31