I'm a vampire.
Holding the toothbrush in a crease of her nightgown, Beth went down the stairs and through the hall. Glenn Miller's “Moonlight Serenade” drifted through the new wireless in the living room. She passed her parents and bid them both goodnight, immediately realizing she'd done so with an uncommon smile. Too late to take it back now.
As soon as she got to the shelter she changed her clothes, scrunched up the nightgown and forced it into her already full bag with the brush. Turning the small wheel of the lantern the small flame died altogether, and then with a fumble she opened the shelter door slowly enough to avoid the squeak. Blackout blinds blocked the light inside the house, but Beth could see the telltale sign shining against the inside lip of the window. She stared in its general direction, and she waited.
And waited.
When it finally shone no more she started to slowly count to a hundred.
In between numbers, she ran over her plan again and again.
“Ninety-seven.”
She didn't know the train timetables, but guessed none would be running so late. So the night would be spent walking north, and when morning came she'd sneak aboard the first train. She'd leave this life behind.
“Ninety-eight.”
She'd already checked on a map to be sure of the name, initially remembering it as Lipton, but once she found the small town of Skipton her plan had come together.
“Ninety-nine.”
It would take time, she was sure, but time is all she had. She would walk north into the Dales and search until she found the small, stone hut from Bill's story.
“One hundred.”
The bag was full but surprisingly light. Beth slung the strap over her head and across her chest and silently climbed the steps up to the quiet yard. It was well lit by the almost full moon. Next door's twisted fence had long been removed making it easy to quietly step through their plot and into that of the Connell's … or what used to be the Connell's, anyway.
She found herself freeze as her mind drifted back to that night more than three months ago, when she helped her mother carry a wailing Mary back to their shelter. Just to the left of where she was standing had laid the body of Margaret Connell. It was a truly horrific night. But it was when she was still … Beth. When life was simpler. Who was she now, anyway? The adopted monster of a liar and a killer, envious of everyone else and angry at the world? The violent outburst against Susan Pullen could only be the beginning and if she stayed here the end was unthinkable.
She stepped forward.
The remaining three fences were too easy to hop over, even with the bag on her back, and the backyards got smaller and smaller. The last two houses on both sides of their block almost shared the same yard. But Beth was cut off from Gawber Street not by a flimsy wire fence, but a seven-foot high brick wall.
She took the bag off her shoulder and threw it over; that was the easy part. Stretching up with her hands above her, there was still another half a foot or so between her fingertips and the top of the wall. She bent her legs slightly, grazing her knees against the brickwork, and then jumped upward. Her fingers gripped the top row of bricks and she began to scrape her feet up as if climbing a ladder. The sheer face of the wall offered no definite footholds, but the shallow grooves between rows of bricks gave Beth just enough grip to kick and pull herself up. With both feet up, she crouched on the top of the wall—barely a foot wide—effortlessly balancing, ignoring a whiff of something familiar.
The moonlight didn't reach most of the street below, being blocked by the wall on which Beth was poised. So she used the yard of the house behind her to gauge the height. Jumping down, using her hands for control, she surprised herself with a near perfect landing on the invisible pavement. She turned around and searched the gloom for where she thought her bag had landed, and with the pain in her eyes intensifying, made out what she thought was the bulk of her satchel.
And then it moved.
“You forgot something.”
There was a click in the dark and the torchlight blinded Beth. She immediately raised her hands as a shield, but it was too late; the sudden intensity of the torchlight had ignited a headache and all she could see was a large red circle in the middle of her vision. The holder of the light remained unidentifiable, except for his voice.
“Where were you heading?”
“Just let me go, Bill.”
“I can't do that.”
“Yes, you can,” said Beth.
“Aside from the fact that you're only thirteen, for you it would be especially dangerous. You may not like me, Elizabeth, but I'm the only one who can keep you safe.”
Bill shone the torch down at the ground and Beth's sight slowly came back to her as she lowered her hands cautiously. “Keep me safe? You don't even want me here. I'm surprised you're not helping me run away.”
Bill sighed. It was clear he didn't want to have this conversation here, but Beth wasn't budging.
“Things have changed.” His voice dipped almost to softness. “I've changed. I may not have wanted to adopt you originally, but I don't regret it. I've grown proud to be your father, and one way or another I've always done all I could to protect you.”
Beth shrugged. “I can't trust you, Bill. You've lied to me so much, and so well. You could be lying now for all I know.” Beth could see him nod, accepting her undeniably valid point.
“You're a smart girl, Elizabeth. Have you never wondered how convenient it was that I arrived at your bedside when you needed me the most?”
Beth fell silent. The red spot in her vision had almost gone and the headache subsided. In the torchlight she could see Bill balancing on one crutch, with his long coat over his pajamas.
“How about a bargain?” he said. “Come back to the house with me, promise me that you won't try running away—or anything else equally as stupid—and tomorrow I'll prove what I've done to ensure your safety.”
“Tonight,” said Beth. “Tell me tonight.”
Bill thought momentarily. “And you'll promise to stay here?”
Beth hung her head. “Yes.”
“Okay,” said Bill. “But I'm not climbing over any walls.”
THIRTY-ONE
Six weeks earlier.
EVERY TIME BILL PULLED THE TRIGGER of his Lee-Enfield SMLE rifle, the waste of human life weighed heavily upon his mind. The war seemed like madness to him as surely it did for countless others, but for him the madness was a little different. There was no doubt the reason for him being there was justified; that he was taking part in the defense of freedom, that he was working alongside so many others to stop a man who believed his race and his religion should be the only to exist—or at least be dominant. But it was madness that such a delusion should be allowed to go so far, that Bill now fought against his own species. He was used to defending all of humankind in a different war that had lasted millennia.
He was clothed in a dirty, dusty army uniform, holding a gun and following the orders of a decorated officer. The other side did the same, and yet it felt to Bill more like a civil war. Worse still was the particular front he'd been sent to; he wasn't fighting the propagators of the war but a people who had been forced into taking sides. Fighting alongside Australians and the Free French, Bill and a handful of other Britons were helping them take the country of Syria back from the hands of the Vichy French. It was a horrible thing, to see men from the same country fight and kill each other—and all in the name of a different state altogether.
It was the end of June and 1st Cavalry Division was making good headway on its way to Palmyra, in an operation that had been codenamed “Exporter”. Over the last couple of days, they'd not only captured the French fort of Seba’ Biyar, but they'd also taken the city of Sukhna. It couldn't really be said that the city had been captured, for in truth the troops simply strode into the unoccupied settlement under a blistering desert sun. It was a deserved reprieve. The soldiers had smiles on their faces upon the discovery of valuable drinking wat
er and the kind of home luxuries that would tempt a man to settle.
Taking advantage of the first proper shower he'd had for weeks, Bill lay now on a comparatively clean bed and appreciated the stillness. It was disrupted by the small commotion that accompanied the familiar sound of a messenger arriving on his bike; precious orders no doubt, coming and going from authority to authority. Meanwhile, the men hadn't heard from home in over a week.
“Wade?”
Puzzled at the calling of his name, Bill got up and straightened his uniform, before stepping out of someone else's deserted townhouse and into the makeshift area of camp. “Sir!” he called.
The messenger walked up to him. “Corporal William Wade?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Letter for you, Corporal.”
Quizzically, Bill took the envelope from him. “Thank you, Sir.”
They both saluted each other. Bill took his personal message with him back to the small barren house that he and a few fellow officers had decided to very temporarily call their own. He wasn't oblivious to the envious glares regarding his correspondence.
There was no way he was important enough to warrant orders and the envelope looked very civilian. Before he even sat back down on his bed he sensed the Ministry's involvement. Only they could arrange a civilian letter to be delivered with this kind of urgency. A shame, he thought, that they didn't have the power to keep him home where he should've been.
He opened the letter and scanned down it quickly. He didn't recognize the handwriting, but certain words jumped out at him; “fever”, “fatigue”, “family”, “Elizabeth”, “Mary”.
Mary? Then it clicked, remembering that Lynne had written about the demise of Margaret Connell in her last letter, and that she was putting Mary up for a bit. Evidently she was still there, and that wasn't good. He was happy when Beth's friendship with Mary had come to an end—one less person to worry about—but evidently she'd found her way back into the lion's den.
At the bottom of the hand written page was a simple signature that Bill did recognize: Jeff.
It was beyond bad timing. He read the letter again, making sure he understood everything and hadn't missed anything. By the time he'd finished his second reading his mind was already made up. No matter what it took, he was going back home to his family. He leaned back on the bed and started to devise how in the hell he would pull it off. Would he get away with walking in the other direction the next day, when the cavalry continued on to Palmyra? Would he even survive the desert trek?
He had no idea how far he got into his planning before the luxury of his bed stole him from the waking world, but there was nothing like gunfire to snatch a person out of sleep and back to reality. All around him the sand colored walls were glowing, and where a door should have been was a huge rectangle of light. His squinting eyes did their best to adjust to the bright morning as more shots rang out.
Outside men yelled, ordering others to action. The frenzy of soldiers retrieving and loading rifles couldn't be seen from where Bill lay, but they could be heard, and more gunshots accompanied their noise. Sukhna was under attack.
Bill jumped up, grabbed his rifle that leant against the uneven wall and ran outside, finding Sergeant Mack. “What the hell is going on?” he shouted.
“The Vichy,” shouted the Sergeant in reply. “They must've gotten wind of our occupation. Looks like they're gonna try and take the city back.”
Around them, a full-on firefight had erupted and bullets whizzed past.
“Take it back? There was nobody here in the first place!”
“Tell them that, Corporal.”
Bill looked around, taking stock of the situation. “Come on, Sergeant!” he shouted, and the two of them ran across the road and up the side of some buildings, joining a group of soldiers who were defending an entrance to the city. They'd made a low wall using anything and everything they could find. It jutted out from the corner of the building. Periodically they popped up and shot at the bottleneck of the entrance that some of the Vichy had found themselves in. The corner of the wall above Bill was shot out in sharp puffs of sandy stone, and he ducked instinctively.
“You okay, sir?” shouted one of the infantrymen.
Bill nodded while he looked up at the building he leaned against. It was a couple of stories high and would prove a useful lookout amongst other things. “Sergeant Mack, stay here. Organize this defense and keep them back. I'm going high to check numbers and vantage points.” Bill pointed up with his thumb.
“Yes, Sir.”
Keeping himself crouched while moving back until safely behind the wall of the building, Bill ran back over his footsteps to the open square hole in the wall and ran in. He climbed the steps to the first, then to the second and finally the topmost floor. He crouched again and took a step toward the far window—a man-made hole, essentially—that looked down upon the bottleneck. The room was empty except for a wooden chair and a table, and some cushions that may have served as a bed. In the left wall was another crooked window, while all four walls had cracks running through them. The building was in serious disrepair, falling down, and small gaps in the brickwork let more beams of light through.
It was perfect.
The wall behind him swallowed a couple of stray bullets in puffs of sand that floated on the air through sunbeams. Keeping low, he slowly made his way to the far window and poked his head up and over at the bottleneck. Then he ducked under the bottom of the window and sat on the floor. He'd have to be quick.
Laying his rifle down, he unbuckled the belt around his waist and raised his left knee. Passing one end of the belt under his thigh, he buckled it back up and pulled it tight, as high up on his thigh as he could. The sweat had already begun to poor down his brow—not helped by the early morning sun—and his breathing was getting quick and shallow. Down below, the firefight was getting fierce and stray bullets continued to fly everywhere.
Bill grabbed his rifle and turned it upside down, putting the muzzle on his thigh. He moved it around, pretending to know where his major arteries were, but in the end he settled for making sure he didn't shatter the bone. The angle was awkward enough that his thumb would have to pull the trigger. He still had two concerns, however: the first was that the bullet was likely to embed itself in the stone floor which could later be found; the second was the sound of the shot that would potentially be heard and acted upon.
Bill looked around again. The wooden chair had seen better days. He put the rifle back down and shuffled over, easily snapping off one of the thin rungs that comprised the backrest, before shuffling back to under the window. He repositioned the rifle on his thigh and closed his eyes, concentrating on his breathing. Outside, the yells of men and the repeated bangs of weaponry provided an apt backdrop. Bill breathed in and out. He had to scream before firing the shot, and not during or after. The bullet in the floor was a chance he'd have to take.
He took a deep breath and roared, letting out all his anger and the pain he was about to feel. Quickly, he put the rung of the chair in his mouth and bit down. His thumb gripped the trigger. The muzzle pressed into his thigh, close to the bone. He heard Sergeant Mack shout up to him from the bottom of the stairs. With his eyes clenched tighter than ever before, Bill squeezed the trigger.
* * *
Dawn was still a few hours away, but the air in the shelter wasn't cold. Bill watched his daughter. Her reaction was a lot better than the last time he'd told a story in here. She'd been stunned into silence at how he orchestrated his return to his family. And to her.
“There was so much blood that the bullet in the floor was missed,” he continued. “The paramedic said the wound was too bad to simply patch up, and I was on the fast track home. They had me pumped so full of morphine I can hardly remember Jeff's visit, but he got the blood ready and as soon as I could, I came here. To you.”
Beth still sat silently. Bill went into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a piece of blood-smeared paper. He paused in
recollection before holding it out for his daughter to take. When she opened and read it, her eyes widened further. It was the letter he received from Jeff, the one which had made him do what he did. She folded it back up and looked at him.
“Did you do it for me? Or for Mum and Oliver, out of fear that they were in danger from me?”
“Honestly? I did it for all of you. I only had the bare facts. I knew you were ill, and I had to assume Jorge's theory was correct; that hormones had triggered … it. You needed me, and in turn that meant the rest of the family needed me.”
“So Jeff's a Minister too?”
“Yes. He's retired, like me.”
“You told me he didn't know.”
Bill shook his head. “Not explicitly.”
Beth tutted in disgust.
“I didn't want to lay too much on you,” Bill said. “As it is, he doesn't know everything about you. He was only brought in to keep an eye on things while I was away.”
“Is he an old army buddy? Like Mum said?”
“No.”
Beth shook her head and sighed. “Where does it end? What lie am I going to uncover next?”
“It will never end, Elizabeth. This is what we have to do to protect those we love.”
“How am I supposed to live like that? Like this?”
“You live with the knowledge that the family you love, love you in return. I'm not saying it's easy. It's not. But you have a mother and a brother in that house who love you for who you are, not what you are. They've always been there for you, and that's genuine. You have a friend who cares about you, because you're you. Do you really want to throw all that away? Do you want to put them through the hurt they'd feel if you just left? Hate me all you want, but you can't take it out on them.”
THIRTY-TWO
IT WAS THE LAST WEEK OF AUGUST, and autumn was just around the corner. For now the warm weather persisted, and Mary walked to the first day of the new term talking with Beth and Oliver. The shortened summer holiday meant that she was returning to the place she hated so much far too soon. She'd have much rather continued working at the county hall, helping out with those who'd lost their homes and more. Helping them had given her a sense of fulfillment. School just seemed like a waste of her time now.
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