Brian Helsing: The World's Unlikeliest Vampire Hunter. Mission #2: Surf's Up

by Gareth K Pengelly

  “Brian!” Scylla gasped beside him, above the whine. “Do something!”

  What could he do? If he used one of his torpedoes, he’d blow not only the Nymphs but those he was trying to rescue to pieces as well. Friedrick and his retarded ideas. Should have just made him a giant fishing rod, with pieces of man meat attached to the end. Suddenly, his eyes widened as an idea struck him, the feeling as ever causing some discomfort as the thought rattled around in his brain before finally slotting into place. As the Nymph soared closer through the air, mouth open wide displaying rows of razor fangs, Brian raised his hand and summoned with everything his mind could give.

  The Nymph halted in mid-air, as though arrested from her flight by a sudden grasping hand at the scruff of her neck, before falling to the water, eyes wide in surprise. Her prey escaped her, for now, she turned to Brian with anger writ large across her strangely beautiful face. But Brian paid her no heed, instead his eyes squinting through the salty spray as he searched for the creature’s sisters. There, another one leaping after a doomed competitor; his mind reached out once more with invisible tendrils of summoning and this Nymph, too, fell to the sea, her would-be breakfast escaping unharmed. Another leaping Nymph, another, another, each aiming to seize and rend but Brian’s mind halting their attack, for now, leaving at length the entire shoal of watery-assassins bobbing like confused corks as the surfers took advantage of the brief respite, riding the wave closer to shore.

  “Incredible,” Scylla breathed. “But what now?”

  “Take this,” Brian told her, pressing the board’s remote into her hand. “And get us somewhere out of harm’s way.”

  “What about my sisters?” she asked, gesturing to her shoal-mates who even now turned back hungrily towards the escaping surfers, ready to chase them down once more with their incredible speed.

  “They’re coming with us,” Brian growled, narrowing his eyes.

  Scylla nodded, turning the board about and thumbing the button to power the jets, the board throwing a spray of foamy white behind it as it began to move. Even as they powered away, Brian reached out with his mind once more, one arm raised, fingers outstretched. Could he do this? Was it possible? Did he have enough power? Only one way to find out. His mind roared with pain, drowning out even the whining of the jets, as he called upon the Mind Whip once more, imagining long tendrils of mental power reaching out to bind the Nymphs. Even as the creatures began to swim after the surfers once more, they stopped, frozen in place.

  Before being dragged backwards, limbs flailing, shocked faces bouncing painfully from the surface of the water as they were hauled, inexorably, after the pair on the death board.

  Yes! Brian thought, a grin on his face despite the incredible strain of concentrating on so many mental connections at once. It was working, the entire group now moving at ever greater pace out to sea, like a train of unwitting water-skiers behind a wayward speedboat. A sudden twinge of pain wracked his mind. His nose began to bleed profusely. He couldn’t keep this up for long, he knew. Scylla saw his pain and nodded, angling the board towards a rocky island in the middle of the sea. The jets’ whine dying down, they slowed and stopped at the island with an unceremonious bump.

  “We’re far enough away now,” Scyall told him. “The surfers are on land. They’re safe, for today at least.”

  Brian nodded and released his mental hold, shuddering with a sudden surge of dizzying sickness. He felt as though he was hungover. Well, to be fair, he was, but the mental fatigue that clawed at him now had little to do with the alcohol of the night before. He stumbled from the board and onto the rocky outcrop, wiping the blood from beneath his nose before crumpling to his knees and dry-heaving.

  “That took everything I had,” he croaked, as Scylla stared down at him in concern.

  Sudden shapes in the water, shapes sleek, slim and very, very angry.

  “Don’t let them know that,” Scylla told him hurriedly. “Get up, quickly. And look all Helsingy.”

  Brian tried his best, but he didn’t look very Helsingy at the best of times, let alone when he was wobbling with fatigue and clad in a wetsuit two sizes too small. A flurry of splashes from the water, then the shapes of Water Nymphs began to land all over the island, surrounding the pair in a furious ring, all hungry, all frustrated and all, to Brian’s renewed discomfort, very naked.

  “God, would you all just put some clothes on?” he groaned. “You’re very distracting.”

  “Indeed,” Pandora replied, with a snarl, striding closer, her webbed feet grasping with slippery rocks with no effort. “The amount of sailors we’ve lured to their deaths upon this very rock, no less, by distracting them with our beauty.” A sudden smile, and the creature changed in an instant, becoming now a slim maid of milky skin and golden hair, just like a mermaid of legend. “This form more to your preferences?”

  “It’s not about preferences,” Brian told her. “It’s about being able to talk to you without there being breasts and such everywhere I look. It’s not normal behaviour.”

  “It is for Nymphs,” she replied with a shrug, changing back to her true form with but a thought.

  “Yes, well. You’ll forgive me if I find it all very distracting. I’m tired and cold and right now all I want is a good breakfast and a sleep.”

  “Same,” Pandora replied, to a chorus of her sisters’ nods. “Which is why we’re somewhat pissed off to find ourselves dragged all the way out here just as we were about to chow down. How would you feel if you were just about to sit down to a full English and someone suddenly whipped it away from you at the last second?”

  “It’s hardly a fair comparison!” Brian retorted. “My full English isn’t made of people!”

  Pandora shrugged.

  “And?”

  “And? What’s ‘and’ supposed to mean? I would have thought it would be self-explanatory!”

  “Your breakfast is bacon, sausages, black pudding; in other words, pigs. A pig had to die, that you might eat.”

  “A pig isn’t a human.”

  “And that gives it less right to live?” The Nymph laughed. “At least Scylla isn’t a hypocrite; she doesn’t want to eat animals, so she doesn’t eat any of them. Whereas you humans draw some arbitrary line and expect everyone else to abide by it. You find pigs so tasty you’ll discount their fear and pain. And that’s how we see you humans.” Scylla coughed at this and Pandora sighed. “Most of us, anyway.”

  Brian rolled his eyes, then opened his mouth to retort, before pausing, realising he’d suddenly been backed into a corner. Her logic was actually quite sound.

  “Well… that’s fair enough,” he finally admitted. “We’ve got a difference of world views going on here. And yes, I am a hypocrite, I’ll not try to deny that. But at the same time, I’ve got a job to do. And part of that job entails not letting people be eaten, be that by vampires, werewolves, or frustratingly naked fish-girls.”

  “Well, it’s not like you can stop us,” Pandora told him, advancing a step closer, all her sisters about the rock doing the same, forming an ever-tightening ring of claws, teeth and other, less-lethal but still uncomfortable to witness, parts. “That was an impressive parlour trick, dragging us through the water like that. But now you’re unarmed. And very, very outnumbered.”

  Brian gulped, glancing at Scylla for some kind of support. She shrugged and he sighed, having hoped for some kind of help from that quarter, but now realising neither of them had thought that far ahead.

  “Come on, let’s talk about this,” Scylla told her sisters, raising her hands to ward them away from Brian. “Surely there’s some kind of compromise?”

  An awkward silence descended, as the strange group all strived to think of a way out of the impasse. One of the other Nymphs spoke up, her voice higher pitched than those of Scylla and Pandora, though still with that strange, babbling cadence.

  “Maybe we could just eat half of every surfer we catch?” she suggested. “And throw the other half back?”

 
Brian blinked, stunned, unsure whether the creature was being serious – and thus incredibly stupid – or whether she was joking.

  “That wouldn’t work,” Scylla sighed. “They’d die.”

  “Oh, I thought they grew their limbs back?”

  “That’s starfish.”

  “Ah. Yes, come to think of it, you’re right.”

  “Well, I think we should just eat Helsing here,” Pandora declared, licking her lips as her eyes roved his shivering form. “All our problems are solved then.”

  “You don’t want to eat me,” Brian told her hurriedly. “I’m stringy. I’ll get stuck in your teeth. Besides, if you kill me, the ring will only find a new owner. And the next Helsing might not be so keen to talk things out. It could be all flaming swords and char-grilled Nymphs. And I know you don’t want that.”

  “Well what do you suggest then?”

  Brian shrugged.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. We’re too alien to each other. I can’t even understand how humans would taste so nice that you’d go after them even when you can survive perfectly fine on fish.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t be able to understand, would you? You’ve never eaten it.”

  “What, fish?”

  “No. Humans, obviously.” Pandora glanced over at Scylla. “He’s really as bizarre as the Undervine makes out, isn’t he?”

  “I like him,” Scylla admitted, not quite defending him. “He’s… quirky.”

  “I’m standing right here,” Brian told the pair. “And what the hell is the Undervine? Is this the weird monster version of Facebook that I keep hearing about? Where all the latest ghoulish goings on are gossiped and shared amongst the spirits and beasties of the world?”

  “Kind of,” Scylla told him.

  “Anyway, back to the point,” Pandora continued. “We eat man-flesh because it tastes just… fantastic. Salty, juicy, sweet. God, even just talking about it makes me want to take a chunk out of you right now.”

  “I’m thankful for your self-control,” Brian gulped. “But really, if you’ve only tried fish and humans, surely there’s a world of different meats out there you’re missing out on? I mean, even Newquay over there,” he gestured to the town across the sea, “has loads of restaurants and cafes. There’s meats from all around the Earth you could try. As you suggested earlier, there’s pig. There’s beef. There’s chicken. I mean, have you ever tried a Nando’s?”

  “What’s a Nando’s?” Pandora asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

  Chapter Sixteen:

  Sink Or Swim

  It was with great pleasure that Brian told the bristle-faced competition organiser to fuck off. Today’s event might have been cancelled due to the sharks, the man had snorted at him, but it would resume again in the morning and he wouldn’t be allowed to take part, not after revealing his board was powered by jet engines, of all things. Good, Brian had replied. Surfing was a ridiculous sport and he wanted nothing to do with it. And with the man standing open-mouthed in shock at his heretical words, he’d left the beach, dragging his board behind him and resolving that, if he could help it, he would never set foot in the ocean again.

  “You’re a strange one,” Scylla told him as they made their way to the car.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “No, I mean it. Most Helsings would have gone in guns blazing. You didn’t. You talked to my sisters like they’re people, not monsters.”

  Brian opened Bertha’s boot and began the laborious process of stuffing the board into the cavity and lashing it down. He didn’t want to ever have to use it again, but he couldn’t exactly leave it lying around, not with its payload of armed missiles. It had already been nicked once already and he’d only been in Newquay five minutes, even if it already felt like a lifetime.

  “Well, I think it’s possible to be both,” he mused. “I mean, no offence, but you’re a lethal, shape-shifting water spirit. And at the same time, we had a laugh last night, didn’t we?”

  “We did,” she smiled, remembering the events of the night, events which would have no doubt continued to progress in more pleasant ways had they not been interrupted by a psychotic vampire.

  “Exactly. The Masters would have me believe that all supernatural creatures are enemies of mankind. And, yeah, with vampires I kind of get it; they just exist to feed on and manipulate us mortals for their own ends. But your sisters don’t seem all bad. They just need to widen their culinary horizons a little bit. Shift their tastes to something less lethal. It’s like moving from cigarettes, which are harmful, to vapes, which are just gay.”

  She nodded, following his crudely worded point.

  “Is this Nando’s place really so nice that they’ll forget about eating people?”

  “Well, I eat there semi-regularly, and I’m yet to eat a person, so yeah, I hope so.”

  At Brian’s behest, Scylla threw her backpack into the boot, then climbed into the passenger seat of the Camaro, as Brian posted his lanky frame into the driver’s side, his wetsuit squeaking in protest on the leather. Off to the B&B now, then after that, Nando’s, where the Nymphs had promised to meet them for lunch. Brian started the engine, the V8 burbling from its quartet of exhausts, causing the chatting surfers, officials and various passers-by to glance over in curiosity, jealousy or perhaps just thinking that he was a bellend. Scylla opened her eyes wide in thrill at the bassy noise as Brian snicked the car into gear and pulled away from the car park.

  “This thing is incredible,” she murmured. “I can feel the power. And the sound; it’s like Poseidon clearing his throat! Can I have a go some time?”

  “Have you ever driven a car?” he asked in return.

  “Nope. Never been in one before today, to tell the truth.”

  “Then much as I like you, no. This thing has so much power it’s caught me out once or twice. And I used to sell cars for a living.”

  “Ah, so that much was true then?” Suddenly she paused, sniffing. “Do I smell unicorn piss?”

  Brian rolled his eyes as he drove.

  “Most likely.”

  “And… is that Knacker tears? How do you even get a Knacker to cry? Those things are terrifying.”

  “God knows. I don’t even know what a Knacker is, nor do I want to, to be honest.”

  “Don’t blame you. Nasty, gangly buggers they are. They look a bit like you. No offence.”

  “I’ve been called worse than a Knacker. Anyway, back to the B&B, we’ll get out of these wetsuits, then we’ll take a stroll. You think your sisters will be on best behaviour in town? Not gonna make our way there and find a bloodbath are we?”

  She grimaced.

  “I hope not. We might be creatures of instinct, but usually when we make a promise, we keep to our word.”

  “Good. That makes you better than most humans, in my book.”

  Newquay was a small town, so it only took them a few minutes to reach the B&B. As they pulled onto the driveway, Stu was there, smoking one of his seemingly inexhaustible supply of cigarettes. He gifted Brian a nod of greeting as he pulled up, then his eyes widened as Scylla climbed out of the car, her figure-hugging wetsuit tight in all the right places and emphasising legs as long as the Nile. Stu wafted his cigarette smoke away, before striding forwards.

  “Well, Brian, it didn’t take you long to make friends. Who’s your lovely new companion?”

  “Scylla, Stu. Stu, Scylla,” Brian introduced the pair.

  “What an interesting name. Never met anyone called Scylla before.”

  He stuck his hand out in greeting.

  “And I’ve never met anyone called Stu before,” Scylla replied with a beaming smile, before taking his hand and shaking it.

  Stu’s knuckles popped beneath her iron-grip and his eyes bulged. When they’d finished shaking hands, he waved his hand to shake away the pins and needles.

  “Christ, girl; you’re as strong as your lanky friend here!”

  “You’ve no idea,” Brian chuckled, befor
e turning to Scylla and inclining his head to the door. “Shall we?”

  The pair made their way up to the bedroom, Brian closing the door behind him and turning to find Scylla having already thrown her backpack on the bed and starting to strip out of her wetsuit. Beneath it, she was stark bollock naked.

  “Whoah, erm.”

  She glanced back over her shoulder at him.

  “What?”

  “You Nymphs really don’t have any qualms about showing off your skin, do you?”

  “Why would we?” she shrugged. “We’re naturally naked. Most creatures are. It’s only you silly humans who clothe yourselves in the skins of other animals.”

  “Well, yes. But unlike you we’d catch a chill if we didn’t. We’re not covered in hair or scales or anything else to keep us warm.”

  She dropped her wetsuit to the ground and turned to face him, a curious light in her eyes, as Brian averted his eyes from her now entirely bare form.

  “Do you see any hair or scales on me?” she asked.

  “Nope. And, look, not being funny but if you’re going to just stand there all naked in my bedroom, can you do it not looking so human? It’s... distracting me from the task at hand.”

  An instant’s look of concentration, then suddenly Scylla was standing there in her natural form.

  “Better?”

  He risked a glance at her, regarding her shape so similar, but now her skin a pale, olive green, her eyes larger and darker, her hair now the colour of kelp yet still smooth, silky and training down to just, but not quite, cover her bosom. He gulped.

  “Strangely enough, not really, no.”

  “Hmm.”

  With that monosyllabic statement, of which Brian didn’t know what to make, Scylla shrugged, allowing her human disguise to come to the fore once again, before rifling through her backpack and selecting some clothes, starting to pull them on, much to Brian’s relief. A sudden, loud cat-call whistle, that Scylla couldn’t hear, even with her supernatural senses. Brian glanced to the mirror, to see XII pointing to the Nymph and giving two big thumbs up, a wide shit-eating grin on his wizened face.