by David Wood
And he didn’t have long to suffer it. Barely ten seconds had elapsed when he seemed to take one last step and his foot crunched down on gravel. The world stopped moving with a jolt that threatened to throw him, disoriented, off his feet, and his legs felt as if he had just stepped off a boat after long hours in rough seas.
They were in front of the house again, its black stone seeming no less menacing than before.
Donald Allan put a finger to his lips in an exaggerated request for silence. At first Brian didn’t hear anything, but then it came to him…the far off, muted chorus of chanting.
“Come on,” Donald Allan whispered, and, walking over to the nearest wall began to climb it as it had steps and handholds built in exactly where he wanted them to be.
Brian was about to complain, but he realized that this was just another manifestation of what he had become, just another piece of his learning. He had no idea what he was doing here, no concept of what they were up against. All he knew was that Donald Allan was his best hope. He walked up to the wall looking up to see the vampire some ten feet above him.
He placed his hands to the stone, not knowing what to expect. He found that his fingertips found crevices and holds of their own volition. He pulled himself upwards, feeling as light as a small bird, and was surprised to look down and find the ground already five feet below him.
Donald Allan was only another black shape among the turrets above him, and it wasn’t until the vampire moved that Brian could pick him out and follow him upward. Ten seconds later they were standing together on the edge of the roof.
Far off to the east there was a red glow in the sky, a glow that flared and spat, lighting the low clouds in shades of vivid pink. Across the night air came the sharp reports of weapons fire and, just once, Brian thought he heard a high animal scream that was sharply cut off.
From behind them the sound of chanting was coming louder…louder and faster, as if building to some kind of a climax.
Brian turned to speak to Donald Allan, but the vampire was already off and away across the roof, striding purposefully across the sloping slates as if he was strolling on a pavement. Brian had little choice but to follow.
The moon was high in the sky overhead, lighting the roof space in blue-silver patches of dark and shadow, like a nightmare expressionist film, all angles and blackness. Donald Allan was a black silhouette against the stars and suddenly Brian wanted to be far away, somewhere the sun shone and he didn’t have a new pair of teeth in his gums.
Donald Allan stopped and waved him forward, indicating with complex gestures that Brian should be quiet and careful, and that there was something just over the next slope of the roof that required their attention.
Brian joined the vampire, navigating the slopes and falls of the roof with remarkable ease, and together they peered over the crest of the roof.
They were looking down into the domed room.
The mosaic curled on the floor beneath them, its colors magnified and somehow sharpened by the glass of the dome. The chanting was coming from the room, but there was no sign of its source...only the circle of the mosaic could be seen from their vantage point.
A young boy lay in the middle of the circle, and at first Brian didn’t recognize him. He gasped as the boy’s eyes opened.
“Tony Dickie?” he said.
A strong hand clamped over his mouth as Donald Allan forced him into silence.
The chanting got louder, then louder still, and a dull vibration shook the roof beneath them in time with the chant. The glass of the dome wavered and distorted the scene below so that the serpent seemed to coil and uncoil with each vibration.
And then a figure walked into the circle, slowly, her movements ritualized as if she was taking part in some Zen dance. Brian didn’t have to see her face...one look at that hair was enough...Margaret was in the room beneath him.
He made to move forward, not thinking of his action, knowing only that he needed to be down there, but there seemed to be an iron bar across his chest. He looked down to find Donald Allan’s arm blocking any further movement.
“Wait,” the vampire said, and went back to watching the scene below.
But Brian found it almost impossible to watch. A pale creature appeared at the edge of the circle. Brian saw little more than an arm and a lower leg.
“Shoa,” Donald Allan whispered.
The creature handed a sword to Margaret, a shining bar of silver and again Brian leaned forward.
The sword came up and back.
“No,” Brian shouted, and pushed past the vampire’s outstretched hand, diving for the dome like a parachutist.
He hit the glass and kept on going.
Jim Kerr pulled himself over the lip of the trapdoor and dragged his bad leg behind him as he rolled onto the cool linoleum of the kitchen floor. His leg flopped out of the trapdoor like a cold, dead slab of fish, and it was only as he lay still that he realized that the cold numbness had reached as far as his waist...everything below belt level frozen and dead.
The climb had taken what little strength he had left. He lay there, trying to get air into his lungs, pretending to himself that it was only tiredness, a momentary weakness that would pass with time.
He was closer to the chanting now, close enough to hear individual voices, men, woman, and yes, children, their voices mingled in the demonic chorus.
Pale moonlight threw dark shadows across the floor, a floor that vibrated in time with the infernal chanting that was working its way into his brain, threatening to drive everything else from his mind.
He struggled with the folds of his coat, having to roll over on to his back to free the material from underneath him. It was only then that he could reach the crossbow.
The feel of the warm wood of the butt in his hand was strangely comforting, and after he had cocked and loaded the weapon he felt much more secure...a certain amount of the old self-belief returning. He patted his pocket, making sure that he had the garlic packets. Something rattled, and he realized that he still had his can of lighter fluid.
He was weak, and he knew that he was near death, but he was ready to take some of them down with him. He put his weight onto his elbows and, the crossbow held before him, began to inch forward, towards the source of the chanting.
There was only one place where the noise could be coming from. The serpent would draw them. He wondered what was going on, what kind of dark ceremony was taking place. Then he remembered the woman and the boy, and began to have some idea.
He pushed himself forward as fast as he could as the chanting rose in intensity and the floor began to vibrate with the stamping of many feet.
Margaret brought the sword down, just as the sky above shattered and fell inwards, the stars falling around her to burst on the tiles of the mosaic.
And when the sword came down, there was someone standing there to meet it, a black haired, black dressed stranger with eyes of fire.
He caught the edge of the sword in the palm of one hand, raising a cut that nearly cleaved his hand in two. There was no blood, and his eyes never left Margaret’s.
“Margaret,” he said, and she almost recognized him, but then a vice took hold in her mind and the chanting rose to a shriek. She brought the sword up again.
And the eyes of the man in front of her changed. Softened and deepened, as if tears were waiting there.
“Margaret,” he said again, softer this time.
She let the sword fall to the floor. It clanged on the tile with a sharp ring and chipped a fragment from a tile near the serpent’s snout. The crowd around the mosaic screamed again and began to stamp louder.
And in the center of it all, the great white vampire raised his head to the roof and howled, a roar that brought more glass down from the dome, twinkling like diamonds on the tiles underfoot.
But Margaret saw nothing of any of this. Her eyes filled with tears as she stepped forward into his arms.
“Brian. Thank God you’re alive.”
&n
bsp; She saw something in his eyes that looked like despair, and it was only when the tears cleared fully that she saw the full extent of the changes in him.
He had grown. Or rather, he had straightened. A straight back, ramrod stiff, had replaced the normal diffident stoop of his spine, and his eyes flashed with a self-belief she had never seen in him.
She pushed at him with feeble arms.
“What’s happened to you?”
She wasn’t given time to wait for a reply. She got yanked backward by the hair, a searing tearing pain as if her scalp was on fire. And suddenly there was a pale white arm around her neck, an arm that was as cold and as strong as iron.
“This one is mine,” a voice boomed in her ear.
Brian made to move forward but seemed to be walking in treacle. His eyes faded to deep black shadows and his movements became slow and lethargic.
He stared at her, but he saw something else...just like the last time.
The chorus of vampires echoed around in her head and the feet stamping reached a new frenzy. The throng crowded around the mosaic, but still they didn’t enter the circle.
Brian stopped moving; a dark statue in the center of the mosaic, and once more Margaret felt the vice in her head. She was released from the steel grip of the vampire, but she didn’t run, couldn’t run.
All she could see was the sword and the small body of the boy who still writhed on the floor at her feet.
Brian was caught inside the shell of his body, still aware, still able to see and hear, but unable to move, not even an eyelid.
His eyes stung with the need to blink, but he couldn’t scratch that itch. He could only watch as Margaret moved across the mosaic, her feet barely rising above a shuffle.
She knelt to the floor and ran her hand longingly across the mosaic before grasping the hilt of the sword. Brian heard the scrape of the metal across the tile as she lifted it, to her side, to her shoulder, then high over her head.
The boy on the ground screamed her name again, so high, so loud that she must hear, must stop. But she kept moving forward. She brought the sword back to its highest point above her head, and Brian wished that it were possible to close his eyes.
“Powers of the Kingdom, be ye under my left foot and in my right hand.
Glory and eternity, take me by the two shoulders and direct me in the paths of victory.”
The words seemed to come out of the air around them.
The room suddenly fell quiet, the foot stamping stopped mid-step, and the chorus of voices cut off in mid chord as if a needle had been lifted from a record.
“Mercy and justice be ye the equilibrium and splendor of my life.
Intelligence and wisdom crown me.”
All motion in the room had been stopped, freeze frame, and for the first time Brian saw confusion in the white vampire’s gaze. The white-maned head leaned back and stared at the sky through the ruined dome.
Donald Allan jumped from the edge of the dome, landing on the floor in front of Brian as light on his feet as a cat.
And Brian blinked, once, feeling a tenseness slide from his muscles, the merest hint of relaxation.
He saw Margaret shake herself, like a dog just after it has come out of a river, and once again the sword fell from her hands. The clang and clatter as it hit the tiles echoed loudly around the suddenly silent room.
Donald Allan stood in front of the white vampire, eye to eye in confrontation. The air between them seemed to crackle with tension. The pair circled each other in a slow motion waltz, like a pair of knife fighters probing for an opening.
Brian felt some feeling return to his legs, but he was still held tight in the grip of the vampire, and he could only watch as the pair continued to circle.
Donald Allan was first to move. His left hand swooped in front of his chest, a series of passes that were almost too quick for the eye to follow. A circle of blue flame grew to burn in the air in front of him, forcing Shoa to take a step backward. And that act seemed to loosen Donald Allan’s throat.
“Spirits of Malcuth lead me betwixt the two pillars upon which rests the edifice of the temple.
“Angels of Nestah and Hod strengthen me upon the cubic stone of Jesod.”
The chant rang with a deep bass resonance that could never have come from a mortal throat, so loud that the floor beneath trembled and shook and small sparkling edges of broken glass rained from the ruin of the dome.
The circle of fire flared and grew. With a wave of his hand Donald Allan set it spinning, first clockwise then counter clockwise, all the time driving Shoa before him as he chanted.
“Oh Gedulael, Oh Geburael, Oh Tiphereth, Binael, be thou my love.
“Ruach Hochmael be thou my light. Be that which thou art and thou shalt be.”
Brian trembled all over his body, as if a mild electric current was running through him, and his left foot took a step.
But Margaret was also on the move. Before Brian’s foot hit the floor she bent and picked up the sword. Holding it like a hockey stick she began to advance on Donald Allan.
Jim Kerr crawled along the corridor leading to the mosaic room.
The cold had infiltrated him, seeking out the warm spots and slowly, surely, turning them to ice until the only heat he had left was the rage that burned in his mind, the only fuel he had to consume.
There had been a change in the atmosphere of the house. A minute ago he thought he had heard a crash, but there was a rushing in his ears like waves on a pebble beach that threatened to drown out everything.
He pulled himself over to the nearest wall and began to pull himself upright. It took three attempts, but nearly finished on the second. His grip slipped and he fell heavily to the floor, great waves of blackness engulfing him. It was only the thought of the boy that got him moving again.
He was almost upright, at least as far as his wounds would allow. Dragging a dead leg behind him he pulled himself around the corner.
The room was full of light. Dancing whirling spirals of flame and color. And in the color there were bloodsuckers. A great circle of them, all still, all quiet.
The only movement was in the center of the circle. The woman...he realized that he didn’t even know her name...was advancing on someone who had his back to Jim, someone in a leather jacket.
The woman carried a sword, a heavy, silver rod of fire. The man in the leather jacket turned.
Only it wasn’t a man.
Jim saw the creature’s eyes flare red as they saw the sword, and he saw the teeth slip bloodily from the gums as the bloodsucker turned in one fluid movement and grabbed the woman by the upper arm.
Jim raised the crossbow. His arm trembled and shook, the sight wavering, but then the circle of bloodsuckers swayed slightly, and between them Jim saw the small body of the boy on the floor at the woman’s feet.
Suddenly his arm was as straight as a rod of iron and his head was clear as he pulled the trigger, sending a silver tipped bolt directly towards Donald Allan’s heart.
Brian saw it all happen between one step and the next.
Margaret raised the sword above her head, and the look in her eyes was so cold, so fierce, that he felt a part of his heart break at the sight.
Donald Allan turned, just in time to see her approaching. His eyes went red, just one flash of burning fire, then immediately back to black.
Brian saw him register something else; a flicker in his eyes accompanied by a slight, almost imperceptible movement, just before a flash of silver impaled him over the heart.
The circle of flame Allan had created sputtered and crackled, its colors fading to a dull orange glow before finally collapsing in on itself, like a spent fire.
The vampire staggered, almost falling, but managed to pull himself upright just as Margaret brought the sword down, through his jacket, his shirt and the flesh of his shoulder, cleaving a wound six inches deep just below his neck.
And this time the vampire did go down, first to one knee, a hand outstretched towards Br
ian, then all the way to the floor where he lay, still and strangely flushed.
Margaret stood above the body and raised the sword once more, but before she could bring it down a high-pitched voice rang through the room. Brian could turn his head enough to see the boy, Tony, get to his feet. He read from a sheaf of papers, his brow furrowed in concentration.
But there was no hesitation to be heard in his voice.
“Oh Jethriel Tschim assist me in the name of Amro, be my strength in the name of Yoriah.
“Oh Beni-Elohim, be my brethren in the name of the Redeemer and by the power of Zebaoth.
“Elohim do battle for me in the name of Rokar.”
Shoa staggered, his frame suddenly bent almost double as if under a great weight. It hissed, like a cornered snake, and the fangs slid in and out of the gums, almost faster than the eye could follow.
The boy moved past Brian, his eyes never leaving the paper in front of him, and Shoa gave way before him, scuttling backward almost to the edge of the circle. But it wasn’t finished yet.
Brian saw the muscles in the white flesh ripple and flow, saw the red eyes flare, so bright it was like being pierced by car headlights.
And Tony stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth hanging open, his eyes glazed.
Around them the gathered vampires roared and the foot stamping started again.
“Don’t hurt me,” Billy said.
Tony looked down at his friend cowering in front of him. Why was Billy afraid of him? Billy was never afraid of anything.
“Don’t be silly,” Tony said, and stretched out a hand to his friend.
Margaret looked down at the man at her feet. She held the sword above her head, ready to strike. She wanted to strike. No. Something in her head wanted her to strike. But surely the man at her feet was dead already.
As if to prove her wrong, the man’s eyes opened. She saw great pain there, and also great sadness. He held her in his gaze and it was like a veil falling from before her eyes. She let the sword drop to her side but he shook his head, and with an effort, raised his arm and pointed.