The Last Watchman

by Kevin Partner

  He opened the next door and plunged inside.

  My ears rung as something collided with the side of my head.

  A feral yell rent the air and I gasped as the wind was knocked out of me by the hard wooden floor.

  Rolling over, I could see shapes moving above me, congregating around a larger shape and all I could think of was some huge bear being brought to bay by dogs.

  “Grimes!” I called as I realised who it was beneath that pack of human-shaped hounds.

  I pulled myself to my knees and then upright but was almost immediately thrown backwards and pinned down beneath a terrible weight. I saw a flash of teeth and tried to bring my revolver round, but suddenly the weight was gone. A hand was outstretched to me. “Come!”

  It was Valentina. She pulled my arm towards the door we'd just entered through.

  “But Grimes!” I bellowed.

  “We cannot help him!” And with superhuman strength, she dragged me through the workshop and into the silence beyond.

  As we passed through the final door that led to the passageway into Bryant's cottage, I heard a bellowing call rise, echoing through the brick-built maze and then, quite suddenly, fall quiet.

  The Last Watchman

  “There is no hope for Grimes. You are the last watchman and if you will take my advice, you will get on the first ship to the Antipodes and build a new life for yourself.”

  I had collapsed into my chair in front of a fitfully glowing fire in our apartment living room. Valentina stood before the hearth and a tumbler of whiskey sat in my hand. I could already feel my blood warming. But nothing could thaw my spirit as I sat there, unable to believe what had happened.

  “How can I leave?” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “If Grimes was correct then any day now London will fall, and with it the country. Who knows what is happening elsewhere?”

  Valentina sat in Grimes' chair and smoothed her dress as she turned to me. “You cannot win, John. If Grimes succumbed finally, then what chance do you have?”

  Her words stung me, though I knew she was right.

  “I don't understand,” I said. “He seemed indestructible.”

  “Many strong places, many strong people, have been brought down by betrayal, John.”

  I sat bolt upright. “What? Do you mean to say we were led into a trap?”

  Valentina shook her head sadly. “You are so naive. How do you imagine that someone like Grimes could be overcome so efficiently? Only by preparing the trap and setting the bait so that he could not resist. His enemies know him well, John, they knew how to draw him on, and they knew that he would enter the room first.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was an old fool,” she snapped. “He had power, more than you knew, and he believed he could be our shield, little knowing that he was, in fact, the prey and not the predator.”

  She sat back and, when she spoke again, her voice was softer and full of sadness. “You do not know the full story of Ichabod Grimes. I doubt that anyone does, but I have more pieces of that puzzle than perhaps any others now alive. His loss to the protectors of order is far greater than you can imagine and that is why I tell you that you must flee before you are overwhelmed. You are safe here tonight, I think, as our enemies celebrate their victory, but you must go when light dawns and be far from here by nightfall tomorrow.”

  “And what will you do?”

  She shrugged. “There were few of us, watchers of the pact, and even fewer were, like myself, Nostri. Of those, only two others survive. We are soon to become enemies of our people and so we must also disappear; though a boat to Australia is not an attractive option to us. The battle is lost, John, and we must each do what we can to survive.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments, and then I asked the question that had been burning in my mind. “Do you think it was Bryant? The traitor?”

  “Who else could it be?” she responded. “He is a rich man, and rich men seek more wealth—it would have been simple enough to bribe him, I think.”

  My body tightened as I thought of how I'd been played by him. “No, I don't think it was money, unless he completely deceived me. He struck me as a coward rather than a grasper.”

  “Then perhaps he was threatened. He might have been simply trying to save his own skin.”

  I took the tumbler and threw it into the fire, enjoying the surprise in Valentina's face as she shrunk from the leaping flames. Suddenly, my purpose had become clear. Predator and prey indeed. Like a focusing stage light, I knew what I must do.

  “Then he will fail,” I said, getting up from my chair and reaching for my coat.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To await the first train to Reading. He will pay for his betrayal with his life.”

  I took the milk train out of Paddington as it returned westwards after delivering its cargo. The passenger carriages were tacked onto the end of the train and I was glad when it entered the suburbs and began picking up speed. I was alone in my compartment and pulled the window down to enjoy the fresh air of the country, ignoring the mizzle driven in on the wind from the dark morning air.

  As I sat there running my fingers over my revolver, I found that my anger had cooled down to a fine point and so I travelled with a clear purpose—justice. Bryant's betrayal of me had been an insult I would find hard to forgive, but to deliver Grimes into the hands of our enemies was a crime against his species and for that he must pay.

  I marvelled at the change that had come over me in so short a time. I'd barely noticed the multi-coloured festive lights adorning the station platform as I waited for my train to unload. I had been brought up as a practising member of the national church, but rarely gave much thought to such matters. Yet it seemed the ultimate irony that, as the people of London prepared for the annual festival of peace, death walked among them waiting for its moment the strike.

  I had no plan beyond confronting and executing Bryant once I had made certain he understood the magnitude of his crimes. Perhaps I would attempt to disappear into the countryside and then make my way to Portsmouth or Southampton in the hope of finding a vessel to take me south across the sea. As I thought this I realised, in a flash of frustration, that I had only a small amount of money on me, certainly not enough to book a long-distance passage. I cursed myself as I realised I would have to return to the metropolis, even if only to pack and withdraw some ready cash. Oh, how I yearned to simply vanish as I breathed the fresh air and felt the drizzle tingle on my face.

  A fitful sunrise was illuminating the cloud-draped horizon as I jumped into a cab outside Reading station. I pulled out the card Bryant had given me outside St Mary's church and read the address to the driver, taking care to conceal my face by raising the collar of my ulster around my cheeks, feigning to keep out the cold.

  It took almost an hour to make our way to Lower Earley, and I spent the time dozing. As the adrenaline had worn off, exhaustion of mind and body had taken control of me and my tongue rattled around a dry mouth desperate for refreshment. Alcoholic refreshment. But if one of my greatest faults had been my inability to stick at anything, then my short time with Grimes and my rage at his betrayal had at least cured that. For now. I would see this through and hang the consequences.

  Finally, the cab pulled to a halt and The Poplars loomed up out of the slowly growing grey light. I paid the cabbie and watched as it pulled away, the clip-clop of the horse seeming like hammer against anvil in the silence of the morning.

  No light could be seen in the house. It was a smart two storey dwelling of the Georgian type with thick grey masonry and a colonnaded entrance, but I headed around the hedge that bordered the garden until I found myself at the back of the building. There was the door to the parlour and beyond it a dark kitchen.

  The door was unlocked and I winced at the creaking noise it made as I opened it. Standing perfectly still, I listened for any sign of movement, but there was none. I felt again the reassuring weight of the revolver in my pocket and cre
pt through the dark kitchen, forced, as I approached the inner door, to feel my way. Again, I turned the doorknob gently and eased it open. It revealed a dark hallway illuminated by a single candle that sat guttering on a sideboard at the bottom of a flight of stairs. These looked to be for the use of servants as they were narrow and uncovered.

  I left my shoes at the foot of the staircase and moved slowly up, placing each foot as close to the edge of the step as possible. I knew that the master bedroom would be at the front of the house above the entrance and, though I might have become disorientated in the darkness, I made my way unerringly until I stood outside where I presumed that Bryant slept.

  The well-oiled hinges made no sound at all as I opened the door and slipped inside. It was totally dark save for a sliver of light that entered through a gap in the curtains and fell upon the large bed in which two figures slept, one large and snoring, the other slimmer and silent.

  I cursed under my breath. I hadn't considered that his wife might be here. He'd said nothing about his domestic arrangements—though that was no surprise since it was hardly a topic for male conversation—and I had assumed he was a bachelor. Still, regrettable though it was, the execution must still take place, even in the presence of a witness. It is one small point to my credit that I never, not for a single second, considered silencing the innocent party.

  I lit the bedside candle, pulled the revolver from my pocket and levelled it at the head of the larger figure before poking where I thought the shoulder must be. With a noise like a foraging pig, Bryant rolled over so that he was nose to nose with my pistol's barrel. I nudged him again and watched as his eyes opened, blinked several times and then swivelled to look from me to the gun.

  He went into a sudden rictus-like spasm as he scrambled up into a sitting position, though he saw my finger against my lips and wisely chose not to call out. The figure next to him gave an annoyed groan and then appeared behind Bryant's large frame, mouth open in shock.

  It was a man. A naked man.

  The man pulled the sheets around himself and raised his knees to his chin. He was younger and slimmer than my target and sat shivering in fear as he watched me point my gun from one to the other. Now I knew why Bryant had his house in the country and why he was a fringe figure in the factory. He was an embarrassment to his Quaker family.

  He fumbled for his spectacles and perched them on his nose before squinting at me. “John? John Makepeace? Is it you?” he spluttered. “I thought you were... at the factory last night.” He gave a sidelong look at his companion as if wanting to say as little as possible in front of him.

  “I was,” I snarled. “And we walked straight into the trap you set. Congratulations, your mission was a success and Grimes was captured. May God have mercy on your soul for what you have done.”

  His body quivered and his outstretched hands shook in denial.

  “Who is this, Teddy?” the man next to him said.

  Bryant ignored his lover's question and simply continued to shake. “Trap? What do you mean?”

  “Do not play the fool with me, Bryant. We are well past the point at which your bluster will count for anything. My friend is dead and now all of London will suffer for your treachery. The streets of the city will run red and it will be because of you.”

  I stabbed the barrel into his fat chest, and it was a wonder I did not simply pull the trigger then and there.

  “Why did you do it? Was it for money? You seem to have no lack. Or were you trying to save your own skin? If so, I will see to it that you fail.”

  Bryant's large bearded face was as white as a sheet. “I do not know what you mean. I betrayed no-one. I was only trying to help you. I beg you to believe me.”

  “Get up,” I said, the quiet assurance in my voice more chilling to him than the red rage it replaced. “It is time for you to pay.”

  Forlorn Hope

  Bryant sat in a chair beside the cold fire as a wan morning light struggled to penetrate the mist-covered windows of the little sitting room. We had been disturbed on the way down the stairs by a young servant girl who had been awoken by the sounds of our movement, but Bryant had dismissed her with a venom she no doubt mistook for anger and she had scuttled back to her room.

  Beside my victim sat his lover. How I remember the disgust that surged through my body at the thought of these unnatural sinners against God. Sitting here, compiling and editing these notes almost thirty years since I first wrote them, I am repeatedly struck by the intolerance and hypocrisy of my younger self. I was, after all, no stranger to unnatural love or, at the very least, lust—for what other way was there to describe my attraction to Valentina?

  Perhaps it was this that fuelled my loathing, for is it not the case that he who protesteth loudest has the most to hide? At the time, however, I was preparing to execute the man responsible for my friend's death and the betrayal of his own species, and his “crimes” against God merely helped me resist any warning voice that would seek to moderate my actions.

  The younger man was called Stephan. He had pulled a silk dressing gown around his naked form and followed Bryant down the stairs at the point of my pistol. He now sat on a small couch, too far from the door to have any hope of making a bolt for it. He did not know that I would not shoot him, for I gave every impression of being a raging maniac, and so he sat and trembled, his legs drawn up under his chin.

  Bryant himself was a wreck of a man. He knew that death was coming for him and it was all I could do to stop myself from executing him then and there as he blubbered, protested and begged. But the condemned man must know the crimes for which he must die and, between the sobbing, I slowly unravelled the truth, as far as I knew it to be.

  I told him of the ancient wars between humanity and The Others. I told him of the Nostri—vampires, though not the story-book monsters of legend—and of the role of these conflicts in the disasters that had struck mankind over the centuries. Though never entirely the cause, the Nostri used the cloak of disease and avarice to fan the flames of death. And yet they lost as heavily as we did and, finally, they realised the futility of the endless war and negotiated a series of pacts—one in each major power centre—that had seen an uneasy peace for the first time in recorded history.

  Old adversaries from both sides had been chosen to watch for transgressions by both their own kind and their former enemies. And so, the peace had lasted for three decades until, for reasons I didn't understand at the time, it had been brought to the very edge of ruin by the purge of the watchers and the escape from the asylum.

  It had been the actions of Bryant, in betraying Grimes, that had been the grain of sand that tipped the balance, and now the world was spinning into the abyss. For that, I told him, he must die.

  His puffy face, now red with tears, looked up at me. Any sane man would have had at least a modicum of sympathy for the obvious terror in his eyes but, in that moment, I was not sane. I had become increasingly angry as I retold the story and spelled out the consequences of his actions and I was now, I thought, ready to do the deed.

  Aside from a repeated denial between the sobs, Bryant had said nothing while I spoke. As I raised my pistol, intending to take him into the garden and make him kneel before shooting him like a pig, he wiped his eyes, swallowed and his face cleared.

  “I am sorry,” he said, his chest heaving. “I knew some of what you have said, though not about the nature of these... these... Nostri. I thought I was doing the right thing. I was told I was doing the right thing. He said that Grimes was the cause of the conflict and that, with him removed, all these horrible things going on in the factory would stop and London could be at peace again. So many girls and boys missing. Always the orphans, always the workhouse brats, but soon the enemy would come out of hiding and no-one would be safe. Your friend was a double agent, working for our enemy and the only way to stop the bloodshed was to deliver him back to them. That is what I was told, please believe me. I acted for the best and I prayed that you would not be harmed, b
ut I dared not warn you.”

  “You were told? By whom?”

  Bryant's expression changed in an instant to one of surprise. “Why, Mr McBride, of course. Mr Charles McBride of the Ministry of International Affairs.”

  For a moment I was lost. I knew I remembered the name, but it took several seconds for me to place it. Then into my mind came the image of a tall man with a beak-like nose who had visited Grimes' room on the morning after the incident at the asylum. It had been he who had informed us of the purge.

  “But I do not understand,” Bryant was saying. “He said Grimes knew of his involvement in the conflict. This was why I could not say it was Mr McBride's idea for me to provide access to the factory through my cottage. It would raise Grimes' suspicion if he believed that Mr McBride was involved.”

  My thoughts groped for something they knew was there, just out of reach. McBride was the critical piece of the puzzle, that much was certain, but I couldn't quite see how he fitted in.

  I knew nothing about him, except that he knew of the pact and, it seemed, was tasked with maintaining it. He was, as far as anyone could be, Grimes' superior.

  Then there was Yaxley, the man we found murdered in the alley. Killed, it seemed, by a vampire prostitute. He was from McBride's own department and yet, rather than pursuing those who had killed a government worker, the investigation had been shut down and the liaison between the police and Grimes had been ended. I had no doubt, as the seconds ticked by, that it had been McBride himself who had been in the office of Pitt's superior to deliver the news.

  That much I felt confident about, but I could not fathom how this tied into the theft of the chemicals, the production of anti-coagulant and the likely bloodbath that would soon engulf London. Why would McBride betray his own people by giving up Grimes? What could he hope to gain except extermination?