by Simon Clark
What goes through their minds? she’d wonder, wide-eyed, hand on her lips, as the car fell. They know the car will smash into the rocks below; they know the car will immediately erupt into a fireball. (They always do when they crash in films, don’t they?) They know they’re going to die.
So what do they think about during the few seconds of freefall before that deadly impact?
Now she knew. A torrent of fear, shot through with fiery threads of terror, raced through her. She thought of everything and everyone. She thought how she could break out of those hands and run screaming to safety (but those hands are like steel, Bernice, no escape there); she thought about those dead lips touching her neck the second before they snapped their teeth down on her skin; she thought about dying…
Oh…
She writhed against their hands, her suddenly heightened senses registering the pressure of those black patent-leather boots against her shins; the clinging black stockings sheathing her thighs; the silky cool of the satin and silks against the skin of her stomach and her back; the faint prickling sensation of lace gloves encasing her hands, wrists, forearms and elbows.
And then there was the cold air against the bare skin of her face and throat, as if ice-cool panes of glass were being pressed there.
She was keenly aware, too, that she was being carried downwards, through the filthy throat of the tunnel into the belly of the earth. There was nothing she could do to save herself now.
She was like that driver in the action flick, when his car’s gone over the edge of the cliff…
…down it goes turning end over end over end…
Any second now it would hit rock bottom.
Any second now twenty-three-year-old Bernice Mochardi would meet her destiny with all the bone-shaking impact of that car hitting the quarry bottom.
Then she found her voice again; that was when, at last, she really began to scream.
CHAPTER 35
1
This is George Leppington’s workshop at midnight. A torrent of cold air blasts up the valley, shaking the trees and rattling the workshop door as if it’s terrified to be out alone on a night like this, and desperately wants to come inside.
The wind vroomed across the chimney pot, a moaning sound full of pain and despair. The metal hood that formed the inverted cone above the forge’s fireplace shivered in harmony; it produced a sound like a malformed tuning fork, humming discordantly, madly. Cold air blasted down the chimney, stirring the dead ash of the fire until it looked like brown water being sloshed around a bowl.
David neither heard nor saw any of this.
His concentration was welded to the sword blade as he held it to the spinning grinding wheel. Sparks flew; the blade screamed as if in pain.
Every few moments he would run the ball of his thumb over the cutting edge of the sword.
Then he’d return to sharpening the steel. The sparks blazed with a scintillating brilliance. The effect was the same as leaning forward over a firework; he realized he should have worn protective goggles, but there was no time to break off even to do that. All he was aware of was the long steel blade and the endless flow of dazzling sparks that glittered with brilliant yellows, oranges and whites.
He checked the sword again, running the ball of his thumb along the cutting edge. Instantly he felt the tender skin snag as, at last, the blade
parted his skin like a paring knife opening the skin of a tomato. Yet he was only distantly aware of the nettle-like sting on the ball of his thumb.
He stared wonderingly at the bead of blood painting a wet line of crimson along the steel, marvelling as it trickled down towards the sharpened tip of the sword.
The sight of it seemed so right. So incredibly right. As if he’d seen this happen a thousand times before: blood turning a sword blade wet and red.
Now the sword had been blooded.
Motionless, with the grinder still buzzing and the wind outside screaming like a lost soul, he stared at the blood — his blood — staining the metal blade. The bead of blood trickling down the blade stopped. Then a strange thing happened: it soaked into the tempered steel — as simple as that; it didn’t dry there or roll off the tip of the blade. It just soaked right in like a drop of red wine being absorbed by a piece of kitchen roll.
The sword was ready.
2
Midnight. The Station Hotel.
Electra Charnwood and Jack Black sat in the living room of the apartment. The wind droned around the windows — a deep, soulful sound, full of heartache and loneliness. The two people sat in silence, without moving.
Electra spoke in a low, frightened voice. ‘We can’t sit here until we rot.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shivered a shiver that was more than a shiver: it was a great shudder that went deep into her muscles and her bones. ‘I don’t know…I really don’t know.’
3
Deep under the town there was complete silence. Utter darkness.
Bernice Mochardi had screamed until her throat felt as if it had been sandpapered raw. She couldn’t breathe. The arms held her so tightly her body felt as if it was being crushed. Still they carried her down the dark tunnel. She heard a whisper of bare feet on rock. The sound of the creatures’ breathing was a snake-like hiss.
Then above her she saw a light that was cut into oblong segments by a metal grille.
She realized she was looking up at a drain set in the street; briefly she saw the brick-lined walls of the drainage conduit running straight up like the walls of a well. A car rumbled across the grate, momentarily blocking street lights that seemed so far away they could have been stars in the night sky.
They’re going to kill me, she thought, panting. They’re going to tear holes in my skin and suck out the blood until I’m as dry as a sponge.
For one split second she saw with glittering clarity her sisters and mother standing by her coffin in the chapel of rest. They were crying and holding clots of damp tissue to their streaming eyes and noses. And she felt such sorrow, as if she’d let them down by dying young like this.
Soon she was being carried back into darkness again, leaving behind the splotch of yellow street light that fell down the well of the drain to the tunnel floor. She smelt the car’s exhaust, then that too was gone, leaving the damp mushroom odours of the vampires that carried her.
There has to be some way out of this. The thought struck her by surprise. It hung there in her mind, turning like a glittering gem, hard and bright. There had to be a way. She knew there must be a way of escaping. No way was she going to surrender to fate like this. She couldn’t let the vampires destroy her without a fight.
She opened her eyes as wide as she could and looked round.
Still nothing but darkness.
All she could sense from the quality of the sounds made by the footfalls was that the tunnel was narrow; probably wide enough for two men to walk abreast and high enough for them to walk without stooping. It was probably hewn from solid rock. No light was admitted now that they were going deeper beneath the town.
And yet every so often she felt a whisper of fresher air against her skin as if they had passed the entrances to other tunnels branching off from this one.
No. She couldn’t just curl up and die down here.
In any case, she told herself, you would become one of them — a blood addict craving your next fix.
She was still being carried horizontally, like a roll of carpet, by perhaps three of the creatures. An arm came down partly over her face but her eyes were exposed (not that she could see anything because of the total dark); and one arm was free.
But what could she do with that?
Hardly beat the monsters into submission with it.
They carried her on, the sound of their bare soles whispering across the stone floor, their breath coming in that same sinister snake hiss.
Soon they would arrive at their destination.
What then?
; CHAPTER 36
1
Deep in the cave the gales roaring up the valley sounded distant.
David Leppington held the gas lamp high. The brilliant light cast by the hissing mantle showed him his uncle had done a thoroughly competent job of dynamiting the steel fence.
Just two days ago David had stood there with his uncle, looking through the metal bars into the deeper darkness that filled the throat of the tunnel as it disappeared into the hillside.
Now steel bars lay mangled at his feet. The tunnel was open to anyone who might choose to go deeper. Or it would freely allow anyone — or anything — to leave the tunnel’s depths.
The old man had told David that the vampire army still waited down there, somewhere in the belly of the Earth.
Probably waiting for me to command them to follow me on the prophesied invasion of Christendom, thought David sourly. Well, they’re going nowhere.
He hung the Calor gas lamp on the hook that had been screwed into the rock ceiling. In his other hand he carried the sword he’d sharpened in the workshop. The weapon felt right in his hand. As if it belonged there. As if he’d handled a sword a thousand times before.
If he saw any of those wretched blood-sucking creatures he’d use it on them. Whether it would be effective or not he didn’t know; at least he’d try.
The cave floor underfoot was strewn with rubble and pieces of the metal fence. He had hoped that the fence hadn’t been too badly damaged and that, somehow, he could have fixed it back in place. That would at least have held the vampire army down there, leaving only the ones on the surface to deal with. From what his uncle had told him, those creatures — Stroud, the film maker, the child he’d seen on the car roof, and the other recent recruits — were acting as procurers for the creatures in the caverns; they were supplying the older vampires with food in the shape of fresh victims still plump with fresh blood.
Sword in hand, he examined the rock walls of the cave; it was veined with another reddish-coloured rock. He prodded it experimentally with the point of the sword. The rock was certainly solid enough.
What he needed to do now was to build a wall here where the tunnel was narrowest and the roof the lowest. That would imprison the vampire army. Then he could attempt to deal with the rest on the surface.
He looked down into the tunnel; the pale walls ran away into deeper and deeper shadow until he was peering into total darkness.
Were they there?
Watching him?
Did they recognize him as their leader?
For a second he imagined them rushing out of the darkness, their hairless heads gleaming in the light of the lamp, their dark lips parting to expose teeth that were white and hard and sharp.
He tightened the grip on the sword and waited.
Nothing stirred.
There was only the impenetrable dark of the tunnel. The longer he stared at it the more he became hypnotized by the darkness that seemed to bloom with deep crimsons and purples as his eyes struggled to make sense of that dark formless void.
His thumb began to throb from the cut he’d made with the sword blade; his heart began to beat faster; any second they might come.
Flooding upwards from the guts of the ground; a torrent of dead flesh kept alive by a warped and twisted evil and fed on the blood of innocents.
Behind him a stone rattled across the floor.
Damn. He’d let them creep up on him from behind as he’d stared into the cave, hypnotized.
With a cry he spun round and swung the sword.
‘David!’
The figure in front of him ducked down; the sword struck the cave wall with a ringing sound; sparks flew where steel smote stone.
‘Christ…Electra? Are you all right?’
‘Fine.’ She breathed deeply while wiping her forehead with a trembling hand. She forced a weak smile. ‘But don’t you prefer me with a head?’
‘Jesus, I’m sorry, Electra. I thought you were one of the monsters.’
‘We could so easily have been. We had a hair-raising ride up here, didn’t we, gang?’
Breathing deeply to steady her jangled nerves, she stood to one side. David saw four figures in the shadows. The identity of one was plain enough: Jack Black. The other three were strangers.
His first thought was: They’ve been taken too; they’re vampires. He tightened the grip on the sword handle and took a step back, his feet grating on the chips of dynamited stone.
Electra looked up into his face and realized what he was thinking. ‘Don’t worry, David. We’re still clean. I guessed you might try and do something up here so we recruited a little help. These three gentlemen are Jack’s friends. They’ve promised to help, haven’t you, gentlemen?’
‘Only if we get the money,’ replied one in a sulky voice. ‘You promised us.’
‘You’ll get your money,’ Black grunted. ‘But you do as you’re told first — OK?’
They nodded sullenly.
‘OK, David.’ Electra sounded businesslike. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘First we’ve got to block off this cave,’ David said. ‘I’d hoped to reuse what was left of the fence but my uncle used enough dynamite to reduce it to the size of lollipop sticks.’
‘Is there any more dynamite?’ Electra asked. ‘Perhaps we could explode more and bring the roof down?’
‘I’ve searched all the outbuildings. I can’t find any. Either he used the lot to blow the fence or he’s hidden it somewhere else. I think our best bet now is to simply brick up the cave. There’s cement out there in the store and a stack of stone blocks out by the garage. We can use what’s left of the steel fence to reinforce the wall. Anyone mixed mortar before?’
One of the strangers nodded. But another didn’t look happy. ‘What is all this? Why do you want us to brick this cave up in the middle of the night? What’s down there?’
‘I told you not to ask questions,’ Jack grunted thickly. ‘You’re going to get paid, isn’t that good enough for you? Or do you want me to do some more persuading?’ He bunched his massive fists.
Electra moved in to smooth things over. ‘If we get the wall finished in the next two hours you’ll get another two hundred each. What do you say?’
David saw the men’s teeth shine in the lamplight as they grinned. One of them said, ‘I say, show us where the cement and the shovels are.’
Within ten minutes David had cleared away enough rubble to form a clean strip where the wall would run from one side of the cave to the other. A few paces away, in the direction of the mouth of the tunnel, one of the men had begun to mix cement and sand; another tipped water onto the mound. Jack Black and the third man began wheelbarrowing the neatly cut cubes of sandstone into the cave.
In the confined space of the cave the scrape of the spade against the stone floor as they mixed the cement sounded frighteningly loud. David noticed that Electra, too, shot anxious glances into the darkness as if expecting to see ghastly figures lumbering towards them, hands outstretched, eyes blazing with hunger.
‘Do you think they’ll come?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘My uncle said they’re not ready yet to face the outside world — but you can bet your life it won’t be long before they are.’
She looked at him, her blue-black hair framing her pale face. ‘That’s exactly what we are gambling with, aren’t we? Our lives?’
He nodded grimly as he shovelled a layer of cement onto the floor where the first course of stone blocks would run. ‘Bernice has already paid with her life; we’re going to have to be vigilant or they’re going to pick us off one by one.’
‘What did your uncle tell you at the hospital?’
David told her as briefly and as clearly as he could. That the vampire army still waited underground; but that the newly created vampires were moving about freely through the town, picking off innocent passers-by either to slake their own thirst for blood or to feed the creatures in the caves.
She nodded, her sharp mind absorb
ing the information quickly, only interrupting to ask a pertinent question here and there. At last she said, ‘What you said earlier was right. Our greatest weapon against them is information. We’ve got to learn all we can about these monsters.’ David stood back as one of Black’s gang began to lay the first row of stones. He did a good job; he knew what he was doing.
David looked up at Electra and wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘But how do we learn more? George has told me what he knows. Where can we get more information? After all, you’re hardly likely to be able to walk into a bookshop and ask for a How-to-Kill-a-Vampire manual, are you?’
‘True, but I have plenty of folklore books at home. I started going through them after you’d left for the hospital.’
‘Any good?’
She tilted her head and raised her shoulders. ‘There might be some useful nuggets of information in there.’
‘But we need hard facts so we can nail these bastards once and for all, right?’
‘Right,’ she agreed, ‘but did you know that in the thirteenth century a certain Sir William of Saxilby encountered what he called “night faeries” just outside Whitby itself. These “night faeries” had an appetite for human blood and had the rather antisocial habit of stealing babies from their cots in the middle of the night.’
David looked at her, interested. ‘You mean this Sir William might have encountered these vampire creatures seven hundred years ago?’
‘David, I think he did just that. And being a fully paid-up knight of old, complete with armour, warhorse and trusty sword, he lay in wait for them one night, using his daughter as bait.’
‘His daughter? Chivalrous type, wasn’t he?’
‘But get this. These night faeries — our very own vampires, one might suppose, that had come from Leppington as far as Whitby — weren’t indestructible.’