by G. P. Taylor
As he had looked at the painting, the deep blue eyes appeared and stared at him as they had done hundreds of years before. Slowly, very slowly, the face of his dear friend came to life in the portrait as if it had found its place in eternity. Draigorian smiled at his old friend and then, as if the spell had finally been broken, was set in perpetual stillness of paint on canvas.
‘He’s dead,’ Morgan said. ‘Dead …’
The panelled door opened. Rathbone stepped in and took Morgan by the hand.
‘It can’t be, Master. Impossible,’ Rathbone said. ‘How could it happen? He’s –’
‘Immortal?’ asked Ezra Morgan. ‘Immortality comes at a price. Someone has the Book of Krakanu. I can feel it. Pippen has been the first victim. I have known the man for hundreds of years. He was my best friend. The only one brave enough to even think about the crusade to kill Strackan. That creature had plagued this land. When we heard the hermit was keeping it safe, it was Draigorian who said we should hunt it down. When the monster struck, it was Draigorian who tried to protect me. When we realised we were Vampyres he wanted to end it all. He tried and tried but couldn’t find a way …’ Morgan wept. ‘He has his wish at last.’
‘Father?’ said Hugh Morgan as he opened the door.
‘No, Mr Morgan. Your father needs to be alone,’ Rathbone said as he barred his way.
‘Let him come, Rathbone. He has to see.’
Hugh Morgan stepped into the room. It was cold, and the air was thick with incense. The smoked gripped the gilt frame like the talons of a large bird. In front of the painting the candle flickered brightly.
‘The painting,’ said Hugh Morgan as he looked at the face of Draigorian. ‘It has finally come to pass.’
‘There can be only one person who could have done this,’ Ezra Morgan said.
‘Jago?’ Hugh Morgan asked.
‘Your son – who do you think?’ came the stern and hapless reply. ‘I saved you from this curse and now my actions have come back to haunt me. If it was you, then I know you would have taken Strackan’s blood and that would have been the end of it. Now we will have to catch the boy and force him.’
‘I loved her,’ Hugh Morgan answered as his father sobbed.
‘Spend hundreds of years in someone’s company and then tell me about love,’ his father cried as Rathbone held him in his arms.
‘You sent her away, we could have married, lived here, and all would have been well. But you did not like the fact she came from the old town, bottom end, not good enough. You tricked her and stole Martha from me, gave her a new name, a new life.’
‘We had to guard him from the world so that you would be safe,’ Ezra Morgan answered coldly.
‘Once she was with child, I would be safe – that’s what you said. I was no longer innocent. You never mentioned that the boy would take my place,’ answered Hugh Morgan.
‘What would you have understood? This is the Lyrid of Saturn – the comet marked his arrival – everything was in place and now this,’ said his father.
‘Then you should have killed Strackan long ago,’ Hugh Morgan said as he stepped from the room.
‘Dangerous words, Hugh. Words that would see you dead,’ his father answered.
‘Then let me kill Strackan, burn down his labyrinth and dig him from the ground where he hides from the light,’ said Hugh Morgan as his footsteps echoed across the cold floor of the hallway.
‘Rathbone, get the car ready. I need to speak to Clinas …’
‘So,’ Bia asked as she and Jago took the path through the woods towards the bank of the estuary far below Hagg House, ‘where to?’
Jago looked at her and then pulled a strand of hair from her face. ‘We get to the station and buy a ticket to London,’ he answered as he felt the wad of notes in his pocket and thought how he would see Cresco and confront him with all that had happened. ‘I want to see Julius Cresco, the man who lives in the flat. He has some answers to give me.’
‘But he’s a Vampyre,’ Bia said as she picked her way along a narrow path that led to the river through a field of stinging nettles. ‘He could –’
‘Kill us?’ Jago asked stolidly. ‘I’ll take my chances with Cresco.’
‘But we’ll never get to the station at this time of night. There will be guards and the curfew. You get arrested if they find you outside and we don’t have identity cards,’ Bia argued, wondering where she was being taken. ‘We have to use the bridge and this isn’t the way.’
‘Trust me. Draigorian told me of a way to get to the station without being seen,’ Jago answered.
‘Draigorian?’ Bia asked.
‘In his room when I said goodbye. He made me promise to take a letter to Clinas and post it through his door. He said I should do it tonight and that Clinas would understand. There is a boathouse by the water and a rowboat. Draigorian told me to take it across the river and then cut up through the alleys.’
‘But –’ Bia tried to argue.
‘There aren’t any guards. Draigorian said …’ Jago insisted. His eyes were wide, his voice strained.
‘Is he dead?’ Bia asked. ‘Did you kill him?’
‘He’s dead. It was what he wanted,’ Jago said coldly as he fought the urge to be sick. ‘Draigorian said he would help us if I did one thing for him. I had to release him from the curse.’
‘You stabbed him with the knife,’ Bia sniffed. ‘You had it with you all the time. You went back on that excuse and you killed him.’
‘It was right. He didn’t want the life any more.’
‘So you killed him?’ she asked. ‘Just like that?’
‘Yes. I had to.’
‘We could have just left him and gone away,’ Bia said as the sound of the river grew louder.
‘But you don’t understand,’ Jago said. ‘Strackan wants to drink my blood and make me like them. I am Hugh Morgan’s son. I have a father and a family. I have to kill Strackan. You have to understand.’
It was the first time that the reality of all he had learnt had struck his heart. Jago knew his fate pursued him like a hound from hell. ‘It all started in these woods. This is where the hermit lived. He was an unholy man, caring for Strackan. Draigorian said to me that he was a demon that they had to destroy. It was their quest, a pilgrimage, a crusade. And it won.’
‘And we could have just left it all in Whitby and started again,’ Bia said.
‘I can’t run away, not from this. I will take you to London and I will see Cresco. Draigorian told me that all I needed was in the book. In hundreds of years I am only the second child to be born of a Vampyre. That’s why Strackan needs my blood.’
In the shadows of the wood, by the edge of the water, was an old boathouse. It looked as though the water was about to carry it away as it listed awkwardly to one side, its black timbers creaking and groaning with the ebb tide.
Jago opened the door and there, as if prepared for them was a long rowboat. It bobbed in the water, held in place by a thin rope tied to a brass ring.
‘I saw Draigorian in this three years ago. He was with Clinas inspecting the Penance Hedge,’ Bia said as Jago quickly untied the craft and stepped inside, not waiting for her. ‘Wait. ..’
‘Let me do this alone. Wait here and I’ll come back for you,’ Jago said as he tried to push the boat from the side with the long oar.
‘No. I’m coming with you,’ Bia said as she leapt from the decking into the boat and stumbled.
The rowboat rocked back and forth as Jago pushed at the side of the boathouse.
‘Bia, stay here,’ he insisted.
‘I’m coming with you, whatever happens,’ she answered. ‘I don’t want to be away from you. You’re all I have. Live or die, we do it together.’
Jago slumped to the seat and instinctively felt the three wounds on his cheek. They burnt intensely.
‘Just let me go alone,’ he argued in a whisper as he folded his arms to show he wasn’t going to move.
The boat moved slowly, taken by the tide toward
s the open doors of the boathouse. Bia wasted no time. She sat next to Jago, took the oars and pulled hard.
‘You can either sit there or work, but I am not getting out,’ she scolded as she pulled harder.
‘Done this before?’ Jago asked.
‘More than you would ever know.’ She smiled.
Jago slipped from the seat to the back of the boat and as the rowboat left the cover of the ramshackled shed he began to steer. Deep pools of dark water swirled around them over hidden stones. The moon cast its pathway to the other side of the estuary. The ruins of the abbey loomed over the town like ghostly fingers of stone. There was no light other than the stars. The sky appeared empty. Where the comet had been was just a black hole.
‘Draigorian said that he knew I was coming,’ Jago whispered as the rowboat beat steadily towards the other side of the water. ‘He said as soon as the comet appeared he knew I would be back.’
‘People put too much faith in the stars, that’s what my father would say. Why follow the stars when you can believe in the one who made them?’ Bia laughed to herself as she thought of her father lost in France. ‘He went missing at Dunkirk, rode a motorbike. Never believed in any of the things my mother did. He said it was just superstition.’
‘What was he like?’ Jago asked as the shadow of the factory loomed nearer.
‘I saw him every day of my life until he went to war. Strange how something can change you so. Father gone, mother gone, Vampyres, poltergeist, orphanage. Never expected life to be like that,’ she said.
‘My mother said you had to believe in something or life wasn’t worth living. I can’t understand why she didn’t tell me –’
‘What? That your grandfather is hundreds of years old and he’s a Vampyre?’
Jago smiled.
‘I knew there was something different. It always felt that way. Just little things, like knowing when the bombers were coming or what was inside a Christmas present before I unwrapped it.’
‘Loved Christmas,’ she said tearfully. ‘First one I’ll spend alone.’
‘Alone?’ Jago asked. ‘You forgetting me?’ he said as Bia rowed until the boat stuck on a spit of sand on the far side of the estuary way upstream from the town. Jago looked back at the shadow of the factory and wondered what went on inside. Even in the dead of night there was a low groaning noise that every now and then would tremble the water. ‘Do you think the factory has something to do with all this?’
‘Wouldn’t be surprised,’ Bia answered as she stepped from the boat and took the rope, wrapping it around a large stone. ‘This town changed when that place opened. All the fish disappeared and there were noises from under the sea.’
Without warning a bright, white searchlight was cast across the water as if it searched for the voices.
‘Down!’ Jago said as he ducked into the boat and hid from sight.
The light scanned back and forth across the riverbank. It rested on the boat as if eyes in the factory searched the gloom. Jago waited. He couldn’t see Bia and didn’t know if she had been seen in the searchlight. Then, as quickly as it had come, the light was gone.
Jago crawled from the boat and scurried across the sand and into a clump of thick reeds.
‘Jago?’ whispered a voice near to him as a hand took hold of his sleeve. ‘This is the way.’
Bia pulled him through the reeds until they came to the road that ran the length of the far side of the estuary. It was fronted by a row of high Victorian houses with bright painted doors and sculleries below stairs. They looked deserted, void of life, barren. On the corner of the terrace was a lookout made of sandbags and barbed wire. It too was empty. Just as Draigorian had told Jago, there were no guards. Soon they had made their way through the empty streets, ginnels and alleys until they had reached Scoresby Terrace.
The crowded houses hunched on the brow of a hill like the arched back of an armadillo. Each window was blacked out and criss-cross taped. Some had grimy hessian sandbags piled by the doors, and bicycles leant against the window ledges. The bags were rained-soaked and seeped grains of sand across the pavement in golden trickles.
At the end of the street, on a patch of open ground, was an air-raid shelter that looked as though it had been hastily built. A spiral of smoke filtered into the night air from the metal chimney that came from underground.
‘Number 103,’ Jago said as he took the envelope from his pocket and looked at the number written in bold letters.
‘Do you know what it is?’ Bia asked.
‘His last will and testament,’ Jago answered quietly. ‘He showed me before …’ Jago stopped and considered his words. ‘He’s left everything to Clinas, everything.’
He folded the envelope and looked on every door until he found the house. Number 103 was brightly painted and the pavement outside the terrace was swept clean. Several plants grew in neat pots on the window ledge and even the blackout curtains had been edged with ribbon. In the corner of the window facing the street was a small poster advertising that the Ziegfeld Follies were coming to Whitby.
‘It’ll change his life,’ Bia said as Jago soundlessly slipped the will through the brightly polished letterbox. ‘He was always with him, it will break his heart.’
Jago hoped that Clinas would understand. When he had left the bedroom, Draigorian looked peaceful, a shallow smile on his young face as if he had just fallen asleep.
‘Draigorian said it would look like he had just died naturally,’ Jago answered, hoping his words would take away the rising guilt that made his hand tremble as the envelope fell to the floor.
‘Clinas loved him,’ Bia said as the parrot called inside the house. ‘That’s what Mrs Macarty said to my mother.’
Jago listened to the squawking bird that seemed to be muttering hell and damnation. The sound of a car engine echoed through the streets. It was familiar in the way it growled and purred as it came closer.
‘Morgan?’ Jago asked as he took Bia by the hand then started to run. ‘It’s him, I know it.’
‘Where to?’ Bia panted as they crossed the waste ground by the air-raid shelter and headed towards the railway line.
‘Bradick. We’ll buy a ticket to London and get the first train out of here,’ Jago answered just as the lights of the car turned in to the streets. They were muffled by a slit-like fender that covered the lens and cast the light to the ground.
Jago and Bia hid by the fence on top of the embankment and looked back. The familiar frame of Rathbone stepped from the Daimler car. He banged on the door of Number 103 and waited. A shaft of light flooded into the dark street. Rathbone opened the car door as Ezra Morgan got out and walked to the house.
‘They know he’s dead,’ Jago said.
‘How?’ she whispered as they heard the sound of the factory siren across the estuary.
‘The painting at Hawks Moor … It will have been just as Draigorian said. When one of the Vampyre Quartet dies then their face appears in the painting.’
‘So why are they here?’ she asked as they crept down the embankment to the railway line below.
‘They’ll want to go to Hagg House and take Clinas with them,’ Jago answered as they walked along the gravel track towards the railway station. ‘It’s only a matter of time before they come for us.’
‘But how will they know where to find us?’ Bia asked.
‘With any luck they won’t, not until we are in London.’
Bia said nothing; she could feel the cold tremble in her hand as the venom surged again through her blood. This time it was all she could do to stay on her feet as the world began to change around her.
[ 22 ]
The Theosophist
THEY WALKED THE LAST MILE in silence. Bia could feel the venom taking hold of her and she held her stomach as she trudged wearily, one step at a time. She hoped Jago wouldn’t see the pain on her face. The venom seared through her veins and burnt her skin. It was as if her jaws were being pushed forward as the teeth grew. She wondered if
it could be controlled. Draigorian didn’t look like a monster. When she had last seen him, she thought he was quite beautiful. Regardless of the myrrh balm, Bia knew that with each hour, the venom took over more of her body. Soon, she felt, she too would be a Vampyre.
‘Do you have the balm?’ she asked when the pain got too much for her to walk without stumbling.
Jago looked at her. He had been in another world, thinking of Cresco and why the man had been so kind to him.
‘Is it the venom?’ he asked, seeing her ashen face.
‘I don’t think it’s working, it takes away the pain for a while and then it comes back.’
‘There has to be an answer in the book. When we get to the station I will find out,’ Jago said as he put his hand on the book wedged in his coat.
‘I don’t think I can get that far,’ she said. She dropped her hands to her side and wanted to cry. ‘I can feel it inside me – I can feel it changing me.’
Jago brushed the hair away from her neck to expose the wound. It looked as though a snake had bitten her. The punctures were precise, burnt red, and were raised from the skin like small volcanoes. He took the balm and anointed the wound. They bubbled as the balm cauterised the flesh. Bia gasped.
‘It’s all right,’ Jago said. ‘It’s all right to be frightened.’
He held her hand softly in his. She could feel the warmth of his skin and momentarily wondered what it would be like to bite his neck and taste his blood.
‘There is a way,’ she said as her breath faltered. ‘There is a way we could stay together if I am never healed. You could give yourself to them and we could be Vampyres together. Then we would never be apart. We could live for ever.’
Jago smiled as the soft breeze blew the trees around them. It was something he had thought of and then disregarded. In the time just before he had released Draigorian from life, the Vampyre had told him what would happen to him. He had said that only those who had exchanged blood with Strackan could live forever. Those who were victims of a Vampyre would live on for the life of the moon and then die. Their souls would walk the earth and haunt the land three chains from where their bodies were interned.