by Paul Cornell
He lunged to bite her neck.
She butted his nose with her forehead. He reared back, screeching, and something caught him across the side of his head.
A spade.
"Get off her, you little bugger!" A rosy-cheeked man in overalls brandished the garden implement before him. Beside him were a group of similarly armed men and a few dangerous-looking women with kitchen equipment.
Matthew clicked his head back into position and stared at them. He still held Tegan down like a dog with a bird, but he was sizing up the opposition.
"I told you, get off! We've had enough of you!" The man gave a few experimental lunges with his spade. At the end of the street, two uniformed policemen were trotting up.
Matthew shook his head, flustered, and returned to his task. Oblivious to spade impacts on the back of his skull, he seemed intent on suckling Tegan's neck.
His teeth sped forward to their target and Tegan cried out.
The Doctor's body sprawled inert on the pavement, a green mask fitting tightly to every curve of his face.
The plasma was trying to get into his nose and ears, and around his eyeballs, but everywhere it advanced, nonporous barriers had erected themselves. The Time Lord had stopped breathing a long time ago, but the plasma could sense that he was still alive.
It was fighting a vicious battle on a molecular level, sending tiny battering rams against the Doctor's bodily defences. Sooner or later, it knew, something would give. Then it would feast on what was inside.
Ruath ran to the globe, enveloped by the ray, and cried out in laughter: "I did it!"
Yarven stood beneath a grating in the roof of the cellar and looked up. "The night," he breathed. "The blessed night. At my command. Indeed, my dear, you have done magnificently!" There came a crackle from the machine. A blue spark leapt across a junction and there was a small explosion.
Yarven leapt back from the grating.
Just in time. The ray vanished from around the globe and late afternoon sunlight blazed through the grating, catching the hem of the vampire lord's cloak. He snatched it away and glared at Ruath.
"Teething troubles," she told him.
The sun had leapt back up from the horizon.
Matthew had been breathing on the skin of Tegan's throat, stretched as it was by their combined efforts. His head was a mess, probably. He hadn't looked up as he felt the dull impacts of the weapon. And in the last few seconds people had started to pull at his clothes, but he was too hungry for blood to notice.
But when the sun came up, he felt it.
Every hair on his head flared with the pain, like all his human wounds had been bathed in salt water.
The crowd jumped back and he staggered upright, looking around himself and at his skin.
His hand was on fire.
And there was tremendous heat from his back, like he ... He was on fire all over. Patches of his face started to smoke, and the old sensation ... pain. Pain was back. He screamed. He changed.
A fast unshaped creature sped down into the sewer where Tegan had found him. In one liquid movement, he was gone.
The man with the spade helped Tegan to her feet. The policemen were staring at where the apparition had been. "Arthur," the man said. "We're the Neighbourhood Watch."
"Thanks," Tegan gasped, rubbing her throat. "Can anybody tell me ... what happened just now?"
Arthur shrugged. "Night fell just like that, then day came back on again." He turned to an old lady in the crowd and put an arm round her shoulder. "End of the world, me and Iris think."
The Doctor sat up and put his hands to his face. They came away covered in ashes. He blinked and rubbed at his skin more fiercely until most of the grey dust had come away.
"Interesting!" he whispered, and glanced up at the low sun. He'd anticipated a fight for his life when returning to consciousness, but whatever had altered time was obviously on the blink. For now anyway.
And the plasma hadn't been able to stand sunlight, which confirmed his theory, at least. Newton would have appreciated the nature of that experiment. But then old Isaac tended to drink whatever mercury compounds he was working with and had gone mad as a hatter as a result.
The Doctor headed back to the TARDIS, carefully gathering ashes in his handkerchief. He hoped that when he found her, Nyssa appreciated these efforts on her behalf.
"So what happened?" Yarven was enjoying a working breakfast, a goblet of blood, as he watched Ruath examining the banks of equipment. Outside the castle, the sun had sunk towards the horizon on its natural course.
"As I suspected, the electronics are faultless, it's the processor that's shorted out." Ruath opened up a hatch in the front of the machine and revealed a dead sheep, its head shaved and the skull bolted to several electrical terminals. Thin coils of smoke rose from its eyes. "Couldn't handle the size of the concepts required. Which is surprising, really, because I thought an animal night manage it better than a human. Too tied in to the natural rhythms of the planet, though. Poor little thing." Ruath glanced up at Yarven, wondering at his lack of concern. Didn't he appreciate what was expected of him? That, like an old human king, his place was as sacrifice to the future? Perhaps he just had tremendous courage.
Yarven was chuckling. "Give it to Nyssa, she'll eat it."
"Don't be cruel, my Lord. By the way, did you notice her expression door?"
"I did. I do believe that we have read the book of that young Trakenite rather well. I will show her the sheep, as a matter of fact, it'll add to her discomfort. How do you think she'll do it?"
"She'll find a way. The people of Traken have a vastly creative scientific class, of which she's a prime example." Ruath began to disconnect the sheep. "With her help, he'll soon be here."
"He will come like -"
"A lamb to the slaughter."
"Hah!" Yarven threw back the contents of the goblet. "You took the words right out of my mouth."
When Tegan ran into the TARDIS, the Doctor was wiping the final traces of ash from his face. The sight of him stopped the rush of information that she was about to unleash. "What happened to you?"
"A hands-on experiment. Unfortunately, it got its hands on me. Still, I learnt a lot from the experience. And you?"
Tegan threw her coat onto the hatstand and closed the doors. "The kid who survived Alderley Edge is now a vampire. He thought I looked like supper, or maybe breakfast, because then the lights went out. What the hell is going on, Doctor?"
"Somebody is playing a very dangerous game, altering time. How, I have no idea, as yet. But I think it's obvious why they're doing it."
"They want it to be night?"
"Exactly, Tegan. They want it to be night all the time."
Lang had been pacing the pit, praying and considering the Bible. Vampires, if they were real, must be demons. And, dear Lord forgive him, he'd always thought that demons were kind of, well, metaphorical. He'd thought of demons as those things that good men find in bad places. Demons of alcohol or drugs or sexual gratification.
But the good book did not deal in metaphors and, Lang now realized, when Christ had met Satan in the desert, he hadn't met doubt and hunger and thirst. He'd met the guy with the forked tail.
"Easier, isn't it?" The lid had swung back without him even noticing. Obviously he was getting used to captivity. Sitting on the edge of the pit, swinging her legs, was Madelaine.
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's easier when demons are solid. I read your mind. Sometimes that's easy to do. Sorry."
"That's okay. A man's thoughts ought to be things he doesn't mind the world hearing."
Madelaine laughed. "You're really old-fashioned. How are you getting on? Me and Jake just got back from the moon."
"Really? What was it like?"
"Like it is on telly. Good fun, though. We had a ride in the moon buggy. Terrible gears."
Lang opened his mouth and then closed it again. "I don't know what to say to that," he ventured. "I'm sorry."
"Have t
hey been treating you all right?"
"They've given me some food. Roast lamb, I think. It was okay. Madelaine, what are they going to do with me?"
"I don't know. That's up to the King. But, I tell you what, if they were going to eat you, they'd have done it by now. You've been sitting there getting all worried, calming down for a bit and then getting stressed again. You'd taste really crap. And they wouldn't have fed you. If they'd wanted to mature you, they'd just have ripped open your throat and hung you over a bucket."
"Thank you. That makes me feel better."
"Good. So, what's your secret, then?"
"My ... secret? What do you mean?"
"You've got a secret. There's a corner of your mind walled up and hidden away. That's quite odd in such an open person. It reminds me of a girl who used to pick on me at school. Me and Jake found her and dropped her through the roof of a cathedral. She had a lot of secrets, and she couldn't wait to tell me them, while we were holding her there at three thousand feet. But we didn't listen."
Lang sat down. "I never know when you're threatening me."
"I'm not threatening you. Why do you think I'm doing that?"
"Because you're talking so casually about such violent things. You sound like a gangster, talking sweetly to some victim."
"Yeah, I see what you mean. Like the villain's being really nice to somebody and you know that any minute they're going to kill them? No, it isn't like that at all. I've just spent so much time with our lot, you know, the Undead, that I forget this stuff seems bad to people."
"Bad? It's evil, wicked, whatever you want to - "
"Oh come on, do you really want the PC lecture? What we do to you is what you do to cows, and all that?"
"But cows are just animals."
"So are you. We're not. We're not just higher up on the evolutionary scale, we're off it altogether. Sooner or later you're going to die, but we aren't, necessarily. If you were one of us, wouldn't you just take the food and get on with it?"
"If I was one of you I'd kill myself."
"That's what they all say. Nobody does. Still don't want to tell me your secret, then? What's your personal demon?"
"I don't have any secret to tell."
"You're lying, but that's okay. I'm not interrogating you or anything. Whoops!" She hopped to her feet and glanced conspiratorially down at Lang. "Here comes the boss."
Yarven had stridden in, and glanced suspiciously at Madelaine when he saw that the pit was open. He took a look over the edge. "Ah, Mr. Lang. Glad you're still with us. By the smell of you, you've rid yourself of garlic. You'll be glad to hear that you're going on a journey."
"Where?"
"Initially," Yarven produced a tiny capsule, and dropped it into the pit, "into the arms of Morpheus! The capsule broke on impact and a bloom of anaesthetic gas filled the pit. Lang fell onto his side, unconscious.
"Bring him to the operating theatre." Yarven gestured to Madelaine, and swept from the room.
Maddy floated down into the pit. "Who died and left you in charge?" she whispered.
Tegan stared down into the microscope. "What am I supposed to be looking at?" she asked.
"Well, what do you see?" the Doctor replied. He'd bustled Tegan into the laboratory and sat her down in front of the instrument with the air of Louis Pasteur in a dairy.
"Some black things fighting some green things."
"And are the black things winning?"
"Yeah. Well, they're getting inside the green things. And now - " Tegan looked up from the microscope. "The green things turned black."
"Exactly, Tegan! Do you see?"
"Yeah. Right. Bet on black things, tell any green things you meet to be careful. What was I watching just then?"
The Doctor grabbed a plant pot from a nearby bench, and thumped it down on the lab table, exasperated. In it was a Busy Lizzy. "You were watching cells from this being taken over by the compound which was released at Alderley Edge. The compound that turned that young boy into a vampire."
Tegan looked at him in amazement: "So it has the same effect on plants?"
"On all living cells, Tegan. And no, we don't have to worry about Undead begonias, I've only exposed a tiny sample to the substance. It's a vampire DNA compound, every cell of it a miniature bioplasmic vampire. I was foolish enough to concentrate it, but it's dangerous enough in a gaseous state. It could only infest a Time Lord through prolonged and violent contact, but in the case of a human being, it would diffuse straight through the cell wall. The merest brush with it, a drop landing on the skin, and it's like they've been bitten."
"My God ..." Tegan whispered. "That's what must have happened to Lang's kids. They got it on them, but-"
"They were full of faith and garlic. Instant vampires, or instant death to anybody who's armed themselves against the Undead. Quite a weapon, isn't it? Still, there's one consolation."
Tegan was amazed. "What's that?"
"They haven't used it yet." He held the sample slide up to the laboratory lights. "I wonder why?"
The setting of the sun in its natural course brought panic to the city, perhaps even more than the two minutes of unnatural darkness had done. Across the northern hemisphere, experts were arguing about what had happened and religious leaders were making declarations. In the southern hemisphere, of course, things were exactly the opposite. Those up early had experienced a false and brief dawn. There, the talk of coming apocalypse wasn't quite so intense.
What the people who lived in the city were wondering, along with where their children were, and who had any authority any more, and if anybody still loved them, was if this night would end. Over the last few weeks, it had felt as if real darkness was encroaching with winter. In the shadows were things that the older folk hadn't expected, that they felt nothing to do with. It was like being in Rome, somebody said, and seeing the barbarians at the gate. It wasn't just that you were going to die, it was that your whole way of life would go with you.
So at the start of that long night, the Arthurs and Irises of Europe, and plenty of them there were still, grouped together and found each other and knocked on doors to meet people they had never enquired of previously. Tea was made, and old wine uncorked, and those of religious inclination actually found a smile to face their God with.
In America, some cities burned and the pendulum swung both ways; those who'd never had anything looking forward to the great scythe of levelling, those who had something taking up guns to protect it, and those who just wanted a television or a toaster going out and taking one.
Nobody had told these people that the world was coming to an end, but then nobody had explained the thing that defied all physics. The day had stopped and started again. That made everything they'd taken for granted into a frightening fiction.
And, oblivious to the news that the sun had stopped in the Old Testament once, the Children of the Night went about the world and PARTIED.
Nyssa had put on gloves, mask and apron, and had persuaded Jeremy to let her into the operating theatre.
"If you're thinking about a rescue attempt, old thing ..."
"Of course not. I want to help."
"All right. I believe you." He'd let her pass and smirked after her, as if he had some secret knowledge which was denied her.
Ruath was staring down at Lang's open torso when Nyssa entered, a scalpel poised in her hand. "I know it looks delicious," she was saying, "but I'll be checking your pockets on the way out. Don't even lick your fingers." Three other vampires were standing by similarly dressed in surgical gowns, holding various bloodied instruments.
Nyssa swallowed back some bile. She'd watched and assisted in some minor ways in operations on Traken, and she wouldn't normally expect to feel nauseous at such a sight. But it was hard to maintain clinical detachment when you were so hungry. The way Lang's colon was tantalizingly exposed ... Horrified at herself, she concentrated on the instruments around her.
The vampires had an incredibly advanced surgical area, with
many devices she didn't recognize the function of. Beyond Earth technology, once more. But why would the Undead ever require such facilities? She realized that Ruath had noticed her. "Why, it's little Nyssa! What are you doing here?"
"I hadn't anything to do, and wondered if I could help. I have some medical training. Has somebody been injured?"
"Not yet. This is Mr. Lang under here, enjoying his general anaesthetic. You're welcome to watch, but the procedure's very simple. It won't take a moment."
Nyssa moved up to the head of the bed and looked down at Lang's face, his mouth moving with random silent syllables. She put her hand on his forehead and gently traced the creases of his brow. "He looks very peaceful."
"Does he? Well, he isn't. He's been shouting things out in his sleep." Ruath quickly slipped something out of a silver pouch and placed it carefully inside the body. She made several connections with a staple gun, and began the lengthy process of tidying and closing the surgical wound.
"What have you done to him?"
"That's a secret, I'm afraid. I'll tell you when you're permanently one of us."
Nyssa stopped. "But Yarven said - "
"Yarven says many things," Ruath muttered, busy stitching. "I've learnt not to believe all of them."
"But he's a noble man, he promised!"
"He's noble to members of his own species, my dear. What sort of promises do you make to your dinner, eh?"
Nyssa put her hands on Lang's scalp as if holding herself upright. She concentrated on her doodlings, shivering slightly. "I don't believe you."
"He told you that you could be changed back on the next full moon, but if things go as planned, that may not be for months. And when we get to the point where we let time go forward again, you silly thing, there won't be much point in being human again, because everyone else will be a vampire."
Nyssa shouted something and ran from the room, throwing her gloves onto the floor.
"Pick those up ..." Ruath told one of her assistants. "By Rassilon, it's easy to manipulate these primitives."