by Simon Clark
David held his breath. Slowly, without fuss, without a flicker of expression, Jack Black put the cigarette between his lips. Then he raised a hand as high as his shaven head.
Three to one, David,’ Electra said softly.
David breathed deeply, closed his eyes. He thought of the thing on the slab downstairs, the attack by that creature on the river bank. Everything that had happened to him in the last forty-eight hours streamed through his head in a split second. And he thought about his own gut feelings that had told him the truth all along.
David opened his eyes and raised his hand, too.
CHAPTER 30
1
Sad Sam raved at his son.
‘You lost the bloody money! How am I going to explain that you…you just threw away the beer kitty? How am I going to explain that to my friends!’
Maximilian Hart sat on the footstool in the corner of the living room while his father raved, red-faced and shirtless, his heavy belly wobbling with rage. His father had been in the middle of feeding the pair of cockatoos he kept caged in the room when Maximilian had broken the news, the Burger King cardboard crown dangling from one hand.
As was his father’s habit the birds flew free when the seed bowls were set out.
‘You stupid blood-sucking bastard! Where did you lose it?’
Maximilian gave a little shrug. It seemed better to pretend the money had been accidentally lost rather than admit that it had been stolen by the gang of youths.
‘Stupid moron. Why your mother inflicted you on me I’ll never know! You’re a great bloody abortion, do you know that? A great bloody abortion!’
The two birds fluttered around the room, agitated by the angry voice; their wings struck the paper lightshade, bringing down feathers like falling snowflakes. One wing clipped a picture of Maximilian’s dead mother, knocking it face down on the sideboard.
‘A bloody abortion,’ his father raged. ‘Now! Give me that!’ He snatched the cardboard crown from Maximilian’s hand.
‘Now, lad! This is something you really treasure, isn’t it? You enjoy wearing this crown, like we enjoy drinking a can of beer. Understand? This…’ he waved the crown in front of Maximilian’s face, ‘…is precious to you. Well…you great fat fucking abortion, watch this.’
He tore the cardboard crown into postage-stamp-sized pieces, then flung them in Maximilian’s face.
And all the time the birds wheeled round and around the room, whistling shrilly. One darted in at Maximilian and pecked the tender skin beneath his right eye.
‘Now,’ his father bellowed, ‘get YOUR money out of YOUR box and go and buy the beer. All right!’
Maximilian gave a small nod, pulled himself to his feet from where he sat on the footstool, and walked towards the living-room door. His face was expressionless, but inside his heart was breaking.
‘And get the beer from the mini-mart, not the off-licence; it’s too bloody expensive there. And I don’t care if it is further to walk; and I don’t care if it is dark; and I don’t care if the bloody devil himself gets you and tears you another arse hole. Just get that beer back here by nine o’clock!’
A bead of blood swelled from the cut beneath Maximilian’s eye. As he opened the door it rolled down his cheek, looking for all the world like a crimson tear.
2
In Electra’s apartment they were restless. David had a sense that something was expected of them — well, of him particularly. But what?
What the hell could he do?
If he was confronted with someone who’d just been pulled unconscious and without a pulse from a river he’d know exactly what to do. Clear water from the stomach and air passages by placing them on their front, holding them by the waist and raising the lower back and tip the water from them, then start cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He was trained and trained well to do that and a host of other things, from using a hypodermic to cutting out a ruptured appendix on a kitchen table if need be.
But this?
The thoughts ran through his head as they made preparations; preparations for what they weren’t exactly sure.
(But don’t you bet some great slug-like vampire is going to come sliding in through that window?)
He closed off the more self-destructive thoughts and set out candles on a green-topped card table in Electra’s living room. The lights had flickered a couple of times that evening. It might have just been the gales blasting around the power cables that ran up the valley but, you never knew, those things might have broken into a sub-station. They liked the dark. A power cut in the town would be just pure honey to them.
He watched as Bernice pushed the base of the candles into a motley collection of candle holders.
Her fingers were slender, gentle, the nails now unvarnished. He couldn’t look at her oval face and her dark eyes now without feeling a kind of purring buzz inside of him. In a way he hoped her prophecy was right. The idea of Bernice Mochardi being his bride-to-be was strangely thrilling.
She looked up at him as she pushed a candle into a glass holder and gave him a small smile. And just for a moment the room seemed brighter; a warmth spread through his chest and arms.
And at that moment came the tap at the window.
3
Bernice shot him a startled look, her mouth frozen open in an ‘O’ shape.
Electra entered the room. ‘What was that?’
David stared at the curtain covering the window. ‘It sounded like someone tapping at the window.’
‘We’re on the first floor,’ Bernice said. ‘Surely they can’t reach us up here?’
‘Want to bet?’That was Black’s gruff voice. He held a large hammer in one meaty hand and tapped it into the palm of the other hand as if assessing its ability to smash skulls.
The tap came again; just a single sharp rap.
David took a deep breath. ‘There’s only one way to see what it is.’
With that he swept back the curtain. He shivered from head to toe…knowing…KNOWING that there would be a white and terrible face grinning in at them; eyes burning…hatred, hunger all locked in those burning eyes…
Beyond the glass pane, in the darkness, there was nothing.
He looked back at the others to double-check with them he was seeing nothing. Then he heard the sharp rap against the glass again.
‘It’s a stone,’ Black said. ‘He’s throwing a stone at the window.’
He?
David didn’t need to ask who he was.
Gritting his teeth, he flipped the catch on the sash window and dragged it up on the runners.
Cautiously, he looked down into the courtyard below.
The night wind blew cold around his face, pressing his hair against his forehead then tugging it away again. The roar of the River Lepping in flood sounded loud, almost thunderous, with the window open.
‘At last,’ came a steady voice from below. ‘I thought you would take all night to come to the window.’
David looked down. There in the middle of the courtyard, dressed in white, was Mike Stroud. He smiled up at David; the vampire’s bright eyes locked onto his.
Don’t look into his eyes, David told himself, and with an effort dragged his gaze away, fixing it instead on the roof of an outbuilding.
‘What do you want?’ he shouted.
‘What do I want?’ the thing that had once been Mike Stroud echoed. ‘What do I want? I’d like to speak to you in a civilized way. Man to man over a drink in the bar.’
‘No.’
‘So you wish us to conduct this interview with myself down in this dismal courtyard? While you lean out yonder window like some shy damsel in a Shakespeare play?’
‘Get on with it.’ David felt an oozing loathing at the sound of the thing’s voice.
The creature chuckled — a wet sound, as if its lungs were full of pus. ‘Temper, temper, Mr Leppington. Remember, we’re on the same side. My friends beneath the town were sent to be of service to your ancestors.’
‘Well, tell them from
me they can go to hell.’
‘Doctor Leppington, that’s where they came from. You know that as well as I do.’ Again the wet chuckle. ‘Now to business.’
‘What business?’ David was ready to shut the window and draw the curtains on the obscene thing below.
‘Ouch, ouch. Why the hostility?’
‘Because you are a monster.’
‘I am also your servant.’
‘You’re nothing of the sort.’
‘I am. And I’m here to comply with my instructions.’
David gripped the window frame so tightly his knuckles turned white. ‘What instructions?’
‘Your army is nearly ready, Dr Leppington. Just as the Leppingtons’ legend describes. They are fed. They will soon be ready to march. By night, of course. All they need now is you to assume command of them.’
‘What if I tell them to march into the sea?’
‘That’s not the deal and you know it. Your ancestors were entrusted with a divine quest, remember? From a higher authority?’
David couldn’t keep his eyes on the rooftops any longer; he looked down at the figure in the courtyard and locked his mortal eyes on the two monstrous eyes that looked up at him. David spat, ‘And what if I refuse?’
‘You know the consequences, Doctor Leppington. You were told often enough on your uncle’s knee when you were about so high.’
‘Go away,’ David hissed.
‘I would also ask you to hand over the three people you have with you — the man who calls himself Jack Black, Electra Charnwood and Bernice Mochardi — they don’t mean anything to you. They will be nothing more than impediments to your adventure.’
David shook his head.
The vampire grinned. ‘Oh, David, how brave and noble, standing shoulder to shoulder with a little band of grubby strangers. You know Black would steal your wallet given half the chance, don’t you? Electra Charnwood is diseased — and pretty little Bernice Mochardi has her own dark, dark secret.’
‘Go away.’
‘Don’t take my word for it, David. Ask her, why don’t you?’
David looked down at the eyes. It was like looking down into a pit blazing with fire.
The vampire laughed softly. ‘We would, of course, if you choose to accept leadership of the army, expect you to retain your human status. It would be so helpful to us.’
‘I bet it would.’
‘Take my word, David, soon you’ll be more than eager to hand those three apologies for human beings over to us. As I said, between you and me, they’ll just get in the way. Well, that wraps it up for now,’ he said suavely and broke eye contact with David.
David was suddenly aware of the breeze blowing cold against his face again, and the blocky shapes of the outbuildings lying down there in the darkness.
The creature held out his two arms; in the gloom he resembled some perverse approximation of a white crucifix.
David watched two teenage girls emerge from the darkness to stand at either side of the vampire; they could have been the two glamorous assistants to a stage magician.
They handed the white figure a bundle, wrapped in a sheet, the ends of which fluttered in the breeze.
A thin cry reached David’s ears.
‘My God,’ he breathed, ‘they’ve got a child.’
David watched the vampire smile — a huge crocodile smile, exposing large white teeth that seemed to gleam with their own inner light. With a flourish Mike Stroud pulled back the sheet. A child of about two years old struggled, trying to escape Stroud’s iron grip. The cries grew louder. A pair of bare, plump arms stretched up towards David as if the child was reaching out, imploringly, to its mother.
Stroud’s mouth opened wider, then plunged downward at the child’s face.
David looked away. Just in time. Before the sight of the monstrous became unendurable.
CHAPTER 31
1
David walked to the bathroom. The blood sang in his ears. The world seemed far away. For a moment he wondered if he would pass out before he reached the door.
Then he was in the bathroom, on his knees before the toilet and vomiting powerfully into the bowl.
It was another ten minutes before he made it back to the sitting room; his throat burning, his stomach aching and still spasming even though there was nothing more in there to retch out.
Electra held out a glass of brandy. Shaking his head, he picked up a coffee cup and drank half a cup full of the now cold liquid.
He took a deep breath, composed himself, then looked round at the other three. They looked back, their eyes grave. ‘You heard all that?’ His voice rasped through his now sore throat. ‘We’ve just been issued with our ultimatum. And what he did to the baby…that was just to reinforce what he said in case we didn’t take him seriously.’
‘The bastard,’ Bernice said in a low voice. ‘The complete and utter bastard.’
‘The thing is,’ David said, ‘how can he know so much about us?’ Electra looked up at David. ‘For me and you, he can uncover a good deal of information through the local people he’s recruited, for want of a better word, into his vampire band.’
‘Electra. He said you were ill: is that true?’
‘Ill? The word he used was “diseased”,’ she said. ‘Yes, I am diseased. I picked up a rather unpleasant virus a little while ago.’
‘Oh,’ David said in a low voice. He noticed the startled look Bernice shot Electra.
‘Tests show I’m carrying a strain of the hepatitis virus.’
‘Hepatitis A?’
‘No, the nastier one. Hepatitis B.’
‘But that is treatable,’ David said.
‘It is, although there is a danger that the hepatitis will result in my developing cirrhosis, which, of course, is just a raunchier name for the early stages of cancer of the liver. And I shouldn’t drink, but I damn’ well do. So, yes, the monster is completely and utterly right. I am diseased.’
‘But that’s still a low grade risk when it comes to infectivity,’ David said. ‘It’s highly unlikely any of us here will contract it from you.’
‘No,’ she agreed, ‘not through normal social contact, shaking hands or using the same hairbrush. But if you sleep with me or we share the same hypodermic then, I warn you, you do so at your own risk. Now I will have a small brandy; anyone care to join me?’ Again, David saw Electra trying to make light of a truth that was unpalatably grim. Although one look at her face showed she was anything but good-humoured. The muscles under the skin of her face were hard; her eyes had a bleak glassy quality to them. Inside, a little part of her had died tonight.
No one accepted Electra’s offer of brandy. Black looked briefly out of the window without opening it, then closed the curtains with a brutal tug of his tattooed hands.
Bernice cleared her throat as if she’d been building up to saying something that was important to her. ‘Then all the pieces are still falling into place. I told you I thought that, basically, we’re the same four people who were gathered together in Leppingsvalt’s palace over a thousand years ago. For me, what Mike Stroud has told us bears this out. David here occupies the role of the chief and leader of the vampire army. His sister was ill: the legend suggests she had a leprous sore on her right hand. Electra has told us she is infected with the hepatitis virus. Vurtzen was a Goth, his exploits ransacking towns were already legendary. I am not being deliberately offensive here, but Jack Black fits that particular mould.’
Black nodded, still stone-faced. He didn’t dispute Bernice’s theory.
Electra patted Bernice on the knee and said gently, ‘But in the legend Leppingsvalt’s bride-to-be was a reformed harlot. I think even our friendly neighbourhood vampire was wide of the mark there, my poppet. Especially as he was referring to you; butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.’
Bernice gave a little shrug and spoke in a tight voice. ‘When I was fifteen I fell in love; Tony was my first real boy-friend. We’d had sex together a few times. Then he invi
ted me to his bedsit. I got drunk. Before I knew it there were four men there — his friends, so he said. Anyway…cutting a long story short. I got really drunk — blind drunk. The four men all had sex with me. It was only later I found out that they’d each paid Tony twenty pounds for the privilege. That makes him a pimp. Now, what does that make me?’
Again there was a great silence — it seemed deeper than mere absence of sound. David could sense the meshing of gears in that supernatural engine in a world beyond this one. This was all part of some satanic machination.
Electra slid along the sofa and put her arm around Bernice and hugged her warmly. ‘Love, love. You were fifteen years old, a child, that’s all. And they got you drunk. Don’t blame yourself.’
Bernice shook her head. ‘But I enjoyed it. There were all these men…and I was the centre of their attention. That night I knew what it felt like to be a film star.’
‘You were drunk, love. No one can blame you for anything.’ Bernice wasn’t listening. ‘And do you want to hear a real coincidence? My name is Mochardi. I learnt a few years ago that Mochardi is a Romany word. It means unclean woman. Bizarre, eh?’
She gave a rough little laugh. There was something dangerously careless about it. As if right now she couldn’t care less if she opened the door and walked downstairs into the basement, threw open that steel door, bared her throat and said, ‘OK, boys, what you see is what you get — so come right here and get it while it’s warm.’
David sat down beside her on the sofa. ‘Bernice. Electra. Do you see what’s happening? Stroud is being clever. He’s trying to weaken us by demoralizing us. He’s concentrating on our human frailties — your illness, Electra, and what Bernice sees as…as a sinful pleasure.’
Bernice scowled. ‘What are you worrying for, David? You’re safe from them. They told you. So why don’t you hand us over?’
‘No.’ David’s voice hardened. ‘We’ve got to remember we’re in this together; that we’re on the same side.’