by Amy Cross
“Help...” the voice whispered again, sounding further away this time. “Please, have mercy...”
Driven forward by fear, Anna made her way along the wall until she felt what seemed to be a doorway. She was completely lost, with no idea which way she was supposed to be going, so she peered through the doorway and realized she still couldn't see anything. She stumbled, almost falling several times, before tripping on something and tumbling forward, only to land against something firm, something that let out a faint cry of pain.
“Who are you?” a different voice gasped, just inches from her face.
Realizing that she'd fallen against a person who seemed to be strapped into a chair, Anna pulled back, losing her balance and landing hard on the floor.
“Please,” the new voice continued, “just kill me...”
She stared into the darkness, and as her eyes began to adjust to the low light, she was finally able to make out the faintest outline of a head.
“Please...”
Looking around, she saw several similar chairs, each of them with a figure held tight by various straps and braces. Some of them were struggling to get free, while others were slumped down lifelessly. At first she thought there were just five or six, but a moment later she saw that there were more by the far wall, and more still when she turned to look the other way.
“Help,” another voice whispered. “Kill me now, before he comes back. Help me..”
Putting her hands over her ears, Anna tried to block the voices out, but she could still hear them as they became louder and louder, crying out to her and begging her to end their misery. Closing her eyes, she pressed her hands harder than ever against the sides of her head, hoping against hope that somehow the voices would stop. No matter how hard she tried to drown them out, however, she could still hear their pleas calling out to her, filled with pain and anguish. With tears running escaping from her closed eyes, she began to whimper, trying to make her own sobs louder than the horror
“Help me!” a man cried. “You have to do something before he comes back!”
“Kill me!” added another voice. “Just kill me now!”
And then, suddenly, Anna felt a hand on her shoulder.
***
“My brother can take over the business,” Benjamin explained, as he and Madeleine walked down the steps that led from the lighthouse to the shore. “He's immature at the moment, but people change and he'll just have to step up when the time comes. He won't have a choice.”
“You act like you won't be here to help out,” Madeleine replied, still troubled by a strange sense of unease in her belly.
“Everyone assumes I will be,” he told her. “Families on Thaxos tend not to move around so much. Very few people ever go to the mainland. For the most part, if you're born on Thaxos, you die on Thaxos. That's what it's like down here in the town, anyway. I guess it might be different for you...”
“It's basically the same,” she said, following him across the sand, “except that for us, the word lifetime tends to mean a lot longer.”
“How long can you live?”
“I'm not entirely sure,” she replied, stopping by the water and looking out at the darkness. She could hear waves lapping at the shore, and the night sky was clear enough to let moonlight fall across most of the island. “Forever, maybe,” she whispered, “barring accidents.”
“So I guess, to someone like you...” He paused. “The life of a human is nothing. We're mayflies compared to your species.”
She smiled sadly, but she knew he was right.
“That's fine by me,” he continued, putting an arm around her. “When I'm a doddery old man, I'll still have a young, hot girlfriend.”
“Don't joke,” she replied.
“But Madeleine -”
“It's not funny,” she added, turning to him. “When a human says they'll love someone for the rest of their life, it means fifty, maybe sixty years at most. When a vampire says that, it could mean eternity. Those are two very different types of love.”
“You seem thoughtful tonight,” he replied. “Is something on your mind?”
She turned and looked up toward the mansion, high on the hill, where bright lights were still blazing in the windows. The party was in full swing, and she figured that with a little luck, Edgar wouldn't even have noticed that she'd slipped away.
“I brought you here for a reason,” Benjamin continued.
“Good food?” she asked, turning to him with a smile. “Maybe a little fun on the beach?”
“You don't get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
He paused for a moment, before reaching into his pocket and taking out the ring-box.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Something very human,” he continued, opening the box to reveal the diamond ring inside. “I want to take you away from here, Madeleine. I don't care about your brother's money, I don't care about anything except making a life with you. I want to take you somewhere new, somewhere we can be happy, and when we go...” He paused, before getting down on one knee and holding the ring out to her. “When we go,” he said finally, “I want it to be as husband and wife.”
***
“This isn't the first time you've attended one of my parties,” Edgar said as he stood by the window of his study, looking out across the dark island.
“How could you tell?” Kate asked, picking up a glass of wine and heading over to join him.
“You haven't asked any of the questions people usually ask. You haven't asked where all the people suddenly came from, or how all the food and drink suddenly appeared, or how I arranged for the band to come and play. I can only assume that you must have asked all those questions once before.”
“You never really answered properly.”
“But you want to get back to your own time, don't you?”
“Of course.” She paused for a moment. “I feel like I'm in shock, almost as if I haven't quite accepted the truth. I should be running around, screaming like a mad-woman, but instead I just keep trying to rationalize everything.”
“I need to ask you something important,” he replied. “It's about the future.”
“Edgar -”
“I know you don't want to tell me what happens, but there's one vital thing that I must know.”
“If it's about you and Estella -”
“It's not about that. It's about something important. I need to know about Ashalla.”
“I already told you, I've never heard that word before. I don't even know if it's the name of a person, or a place, or -”
“I fear that a great darkness has reached Thaxos,” he replied. “Something vast and evil, something capable of destroying the island and then moving on to threaten the entire world. If that is indeed the case, it seems impossible to me that you aren't aware of the events that are taking place today.”
“Edgar -”
“Are you hiding something?”
“No.”
“Are you protecting me?”
“From what?”
“From something awful that's going to happen. I swear, if you know anything -”
“I don't,” she said firmly. “The only reason I haven't told you much is because Nixon and I talked and we realized it might be dangerous. If you know the future, you might change things.”
“And you never heard anything about Ashalla being here on the island, or about any kind of evil?”
“I carried out a lot of research into the history of Thaxos,” she told him, “but I didn't uncover anything like that. You didn't mention it to me, either. I mean, it's the kind of thing that someone would probably mention at some point, isn't it?”
“And that worries me even more,” he continued. “Either I'm completely wrong, or whatever's happening, it's only slowly closing its grip on the island. Perhaps, one hundred years from now, Ashalla is still preparing to strike. Believe me, when it comes to vampires, these things can take a while to manifest.”
He made his way over to the desk and picked up some papers, which he examined for a moment. “I've studied the island's history extensively;” he said after a moment. “I've lived a great deal of that history and I can sense the evil approaching. I've been aware of it for a while, but it's only now that the pieces are starting to come together. It's an evil that I encountered once before, when I fought in the great war, and I thought it had been vanquished forever but now...” He paused again, before turning to her. “I almost expect to see it, whenever I look out the window or glance over at a door.”
“All I can tell you is what I know. In the future, you never mentioned any of this. Maybe you turned out to be wrong after all. Or maybe it happened and you managed to stop it.”
“I don't believe I can stop it,” he said darkly.
“You talked a little about the island's ancient history,” she continued. “About cults and sects that might have been here long before recorded history began. That was one of the reasons you hired me to go through your archive, actually. You said you wanted to start marking out the history of Thaxos. I got the impression that it was something you'd ignored for a long time, but that you finally felt was important.”
“So I was paying you to do that work?”
“For a while,” she replied. “Before things got complicated.”
“I fear that whatever evil took root here, it began many centuries ago,” he continued. “As you're no doubt aware, the history of Thaxos has never been chronicled properly. We know nothing about the old cults, but I doubt it ever occurred to anyone that they might have been important. I'm starting to think, however, that it's time to look again.”
“You never used any specific names, though,” she told him. “It was always very vague, as if you didn't really know the details.”
“I hate not knowing things,” he said bitterly, pouring himself another glass of brandy as music continued to drift through from the ballroom. “This is my island, it's -”
“Oh Edgar!” a woman shrieked suddenly, drunkenly stepping into the room. “Why are you hiding away in here? Come and join us!”
“Get out,” he snarled.
“Oh don't be so -”
“Get out!” he shouted, stepping toward her. “Get out before I banish you!”
Stopping in her tracks for a moment, the woman stared at him with a shocked expression before muttering an apology and hurrying out of the room.
“How can this be happening?” Edgar asked, turning back to Kate. “How can control of this island be slipping through my fingers?”
“But the important thing,” she replied, “is that Thaxos still exists one hundred years from now. There are still people living here, and no-one mentioned any great disaster or the arrival of some kind of evil. Don't you think that's the kind of thing people would remember?”
“I still can't shake the feeling that it's here. I'm missing something, I have to be!”
“I don't think I can help you, Edgar,” she continued. “I've never seen anything that seems to tie in with the things you're talking about. The only thing that seems remotely linked to it would be the stone circle.”
“I doubt the circle has anything to do with this,” he replied, taking a sip of brandy. “The circle's just a ruin.”
“And I studied the chamber under the circle pretty extensively. I think I'd have noticed if there were any references to this Ashalla name you keep mentioning.”
He turned to her.
“There was nothing down there,” she added. “If I had my notebooks with you, I could prove it.”
He paused for a moment, before setting his glass down and making his way over to her with a hint of concern in his eyes. “What chamber?”
Part Thirty
I
“Edgar? Have you seen Edgar? Do you know where -”
Stopping as she reached the door, Estella turned and looked back the way she'd just come. No-one seemed willing to answer her, with all the dancers continuing on their way without even so much as glancing in her direction. She'd tried reaching out to gently nudge their shoulders, hoping to get their attention, but somehow she was unable to make a connection. Looking over at the band on the far side of the ballroom, she suddenly felt as if – despite the hundreds of people dancing all around her – she was utterly alone.
“Problem?” a familiar voice asked.
Turning to find Nixon sidling up behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Have you seen Edgar?”
“Not for a while,” he replied, frowning as he took a sip from his champagne flute. “I wouldn't worry about it, though. He always shows up. Trust me, Edgar not appearing has never been a problem.”
“I've been looking for him all evening,” she replied, trying without much success to hide her growing sense of panic. “I've been through all the rooms twice over, I've searched all the corridors, I've even been out into the grounds but I simply can't find him anywhere!”
“Well, I'm sure -”
“I can't find Kate Langley either!”
“Oh.” At this, Nixon paused for a moment, as if even he couldn't dismiss the implication. “Well, still, that doesn't necessarily mean that anything's amiss.” He forced a weak, unconvincing smile.
“I've checked the whole house,” she continued, “and neither of them are to be found! I'm not a woman who's given to flights of fancy, James, but you must admit... I mean... This isn't right!”
“Have you asked Jacob? He always knows where to find Edgar.”
“He's nowhere to be found either.”
“Well that is a little strange,” Nixon replied, taking another sip of champagne. “Still, I wouldn't worry about it, if I were you. Just have another glass and I'm absolutely certain Edgar will show up before too long. I wouldn't push him to tell you where he's been, though. You know how he hates that sort of thing.”
“But -”
“Got to dash,” he added, cutting her off. “People-watching is so fascinating, isn't it? Especially when the people in question have been dead for so long.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but Nixon was already off, pushing his way through the crowd. Filled with agitation and concern, and unable to stop imagining some kind of secret assignation between Kate and her fiance, Estella turned and hurried along the corridor, determined to once again check Edgar's study. Reaching the door and finding once again that the room was empty, she made her way over to the desk and stared at Edgar's empty chair for a moment, before her rage began to boil over.
Turning, she threw her empty glass across the room until it smashed into the fireplace.
“Where are you?” she whispered, her whole body starting to tremble with rage. “What are you doing with that woman?”
***
As soon as Edgar called out to them, the horses began to slow, bringing the carriage to a halt just a few meters from the moonlit stone circle. Climbing down and making his way around the side of the carriage, Edgar reached up to open the door before helping Kate down.
“That was certainly a dramatic way to get here,” Kate told him, a little flustered as she took a moment to get her bearings. “I always used to walk before.”
“Why walk when one can travel so much faster?” Edgar asked, heading back over to the horses and taking a moment to run his hand through their manes. He began to whisper something, as if to calm them, and after a few seconds the two large black animals seemed much less agitated.
Kate watched for a moment, stunned by Edgar's sudden display of care and patience.
“They'll be fine here,” he said eventually, turning and heading toward the stone circle. “Show me this chamber.”
“As I tried to explain,” she replied, hurrying after him, “there's actually a passageway that leads directly from your house to -”
“There's no passageway.”
“I really think you'll find that
-”
“I know that house,” he continued, interrupting her as they reached the edge of the circle. “I know every inch, every nook, and I can assure you that there is no passageway.”
“This way,” Kate replied, leading him around the side of the stones, “but I swear, when I was here the other day I couldn't find the entrance. We really should have gone into your basement and tried to get in from there.”
“Just show me where you think it should be,” Edgar told her. “I'll do the rest.”
“So you're seriously telling me that you don't know anything about this?” she asked. “A large chamber, directly beneath the stones, with an altar and carvings on the wall? That doesn't ring any bells?”
“What carvings?”
“Something about a war,” she replied, already starting to search through the long grass for the exact spot where she hoped to find the entrance. “It didn't make a huge amount of sense, but there were pictures of people, and large spiders -”
He grabbed her arm, causing her to stop and turn to him.
“Spiders?” he asked, with obvious concern.
“What's wrong? Scared?”
“I'm not scared of anything,” he replied firmly, as if the idea offended him. “What do you...” He paused for a moment, staring into her eyes as if he was trying to divine some hidden truth. “What do you know of the war?” he asked finally, clearly shocked that he would even have to ask such a question.
“I know you fought in it,” she told him. “I know it scarred you, that it -”
“The war was a great thing,” he countered, interrupting her. “I am proud to have fought, and I am only sorry that it had to end.”
“That's not quite the sentiment you expressed the first time you told me about it.”
“Are you suggesting that I have become a weak man in the future?”
“There's nothing weak about admitting the truth.”