Revenge is Sweet

by Berni Stevens

  Will guided me away from the reporters. We walked the perimeter of the crime scene, seeing the three bodies that were zipped up in body bags, waiting to be taken to the ambulances. I shuddered.

  ‘I think we should get you home,’ he said. ‘I doubt whether anything else will happen tonight.’

  My phone rang. Please – no more bodies. I answered.

  ‘Ellie? It’s Rox … there’s someone outside the front gates … Ellie … Danny says it’s the vamp who made him.’

  Chapter Eight

  Will immediately took the mobile from me and called Luke. Only a few minutes later we were speeding back towards Highgate. None of us spoke during the journey. I could tell from Jake’s expression that his thoughts were all for Roxy, but I felt more than terrified about Daniel. If this Thomas really was his Maker, then he could exert some kind of influence over him. What would happen if he coerced Daniel to open the gates? Or worse – the front door? Would he take him? Kill him? I found myself thinking, let us be in time, please let us be in time, over and over again.

  The car screeched to a halt outside the front gates of the house. Jake was out of the car before it had even stopped, with Will close behind him, keying in the security code. They ran through, leaving Luke and I to follow.

  ‘Close the gates,’ Will shouted, as he opened the front door. Luke immediately pressed a button in the panel and the gates swung together with a clang.

  I looked around the front garden; it looked peaceful as always, yet something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t say why, but even the air felt wrong.

  Moonlight picked out the edges of the flagstones in the front garden, and the path leading to the front steps of the beautiful Georgian house. The silver beams shone on glossy ivy leaves amassed so prolifically over the high garden walls. The garden looked serene … normal. But still I continued to look around as I followed the others. I couldn’t shake the feeling of wrong. I’ve never before had such a strong sense of dread and foreboding.

  Luke and I ran to the drawing room, where Jake was on his knees in front of Roxy’s chair, his arms wrapped tightly around her, whilst she insisted she was fine. Daniel sat on the sofa, a look of terror etched on his pale face. Thankfully, apart from a purple bruise on his cheek, he appeared unharmed.

  ‘What happened?’ Will’s voice was terse.

  ‘He was outside the gates – I could feel him there. I knew he was there. What’s that all about?’ Daniel looked around at us with wide, frightened eyes.

  ‘He is your Maker. Have you not listened to anything I have been telling you boy?’

  Daniel didn’t answer.

  ‘Did you open the gates?’

  ‘I don’t know how, do I?’ The defensive tone came back to Daniel’s voice.

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Nothing. Honest. He just stood out there … looking.’

  ‘Roxy?’ Will turned to her.

  ‘Well.’ She pushed at Jake to give her some space. ‘Daniel freaked out a bit – said he wanted to let him in. He went a bit crazy and I …’ she shot me an apologetic glance ‘… thumped him to get him to calm down.’

  ‘Bloody hurt too.’ Daniel turned his face to me, so I could see the bruise on his cheek. ‘She don’t hit like a girl, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Thank heavens for that.’ Will continued to look grim.

  ‘It wasn’t personal, Danny,’ I said. ‘Roxy probably saved your life.’

  ‘It don’t feel like it.’ He rubbed his face.

  ‘Ungrateful bastard,’ muttered Jake. I looked at him in surprise. He was usually so mild-mannered.

  ‘Luke, I suggest you and I check outside.’ Will strode to the door, and Luke followed. I ran out after Will, the foreboding still flooding me with unease.

  ‘Will.’

  He stopped short and turned around.

  ‘When we came in the front … it didn’t feel … right. Something’s really wrong.’

  He looked puzzled. ‘It is unlike you to have such feelings. Can you explain?’

  ‘No. It’s just a feeling, but I’m worried.’

  ‘Stay inside.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  He nodded as he and Luke went out of the front door again. I stayed in the hall, listening. I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but I couldn’t explain away the weird feeling. So I sat on the oak settle near the front door, and worried some more.

  The road where we live is one of the most expensive in Highgate, tree-lined and peaceful, with a few Victorian villas and two other Georgian houses. The neighbours are either very famous or just fabulously wealthy – often both. Sting and his family used to live just around the corner for heaven’s sake, and Jamie Oliver had recently moved to the area too. I love the place, and I’ve never felt threatened in any way. Even on the night Khiara abducted Will, I hadn’t felt like this. So … who or what was out there?

  I opened the front door. There was no sign of Will and Luke, so I supposed they must have gone around to the back of the house. A slight movement by the front gates startled me. What the hell was that? Then I heard it – a faint mewling sound – like a wounded cat. I stared through the darkness towards the gates again. I definitely saw something moving this time. What the …?

  I backed away from the doorway, and put my head around the drawing room door.

  ‘Jake? Can I borrow you for a minute?’

  He got to his feet and joined me by the door. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘There’s something by the gates.’

  ‘Something?’

  ‘I can’t see what it is, but it’s moving and making a noise.’

  ‘Probably a cat.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But you don’t think so.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Let’s take a look then.’

  Yes, yes, I know I’d been told to stay inside. But at least I wasn’t going out alone. I followed Jake down the steps, and together, we went quietly toward the gates. Something had either been thrown over the high wall, or over the gates, and whatever it was, it looked too big to be a cat. Keeping as quiet as possible, we moved closer. The mewling sounded louder now.

  ‘Whatever it is, it only arrived in the last ten minutes or so,’ said Jake.

  The sounds were coming from what looked like a bundle of rags and the noises proved it was alive – or something akin to alive. Somehow I didn’t think our Highgate neighbours wrapped cats in blankets and threw them over garden walls.

  Jake and I exchanged glances.

  He squatted down, and taking hold of a tattered corner, went to pull back the moth-eaten blanket. He stopped and looked up at me. ‘Stay back,’ he said. ‘If anything happens to you, I’m dead – again.’

  He pulled at his corner of the blanket, and as he did so, a horrific screech emitted from whatever lay underneath, causing me to shriek too, and jump back. Underneath the blanket, was a sight that rivalled even the creature Cassie had been turned into.

  Lying on the ground was a female child. She could have been no more than four or five years old. Newly turned too, by the look of her. Her crazed eyes were wild and bloodshot, and there were dry bloodstains caked around her tiny mouth. Her little hands waved frantically, as she writhed and wriggled. She must have been in gut-wrenching agony, judging by her facial expressions. She screeched again, and Jake pushed me back further away from her.

  I heard footsteps behind me, and turned to see Will and Luke running towards us.

  Will did not look happy.

  ‘For God’s sake Elinor – if I tell you to stay inside, stay the hell inside.’

  Definitely not happy.

  ‘I heard a noise …’

  ‘All the more reason to stay inside …. pick that thing up Luke, and get it down to the cellar, before any humans come out to see what the noise is.’

  Luke wrapped the child up tightly in the blanket, and tucking it under his arm, ran back into the house. Jake, with a sympathetic glance at me, ran in after him, leavi
ng me with a very pissed-off Will. Not wanting to hear any more lectures, I moved to go into the house after them but Will caught my arm and spun me round.

  ‘Supposing that had been a trap devised by Thomas – for you?’

  ‘Aren’t I too old and dead for his taste?’

  ‘Please do not be flippant Elinor.’ He gripped my arms. ‘The people he dispatched on the Heath were all adult, human and –initially– alive.’

  True.

  ‘Sorry.’

  He sighed, and strode off towards the house. I ran to catch him up, and grabbed his hand to slow him down. He looked down at me, still glowering with anger. He spoke quietly, obviously trying to keep a rein on his temper. ‘If I were human, you would have shortened my life by decades tonight.’

  ‘Again – sorry.’

  He closed the front door behind us, just as my mobile rang.

  Thomas’s voice came on the line. ‘Get the Elder.’

  I was tempted to say only if you say please, but thought Will wouldn’t be amused, so I handed him the phone without a word.

  ‘Did you like my gift William?’

  ‘Is that what it was?’

  ‘I wanted you to find it, not your little fledgling. I wanted to see your face.’

  Thomas must still be outside.

  ‘We all have our disappointments.’

  ‘I can always send another.’

  The line went dead.

  ‘He’s still out there.’

  ‘He cannot get in Elinor.’

  ‘What about when Jake and Roxy leave? And Luke?’

  ‘He cannot get in,’ he repeated calmly.

  Luke came upstairs at that point looking grim. He just gave a nod to Will, and I knew the child had been destroyed.

  I thought it arrogant of Thomas to remain outside the house. If he’d been there when we came back, he would have seen that we had Luke and Jake with us. He wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of taking us all on. A part of me wished he’d tried.

  The grandfather clock in the hall struck three. Not long until dawn – damn the summer hours.

  Will went back to the drawing room with Luke and I following.

  ‘Can you still feel your maker?’ Will asked Daniel.

  He shook his head. ‘No … I haven’t felt him for half an hour or more.’

  ‘If he is not still outside, how the hell did he know that Elinor and Jake found that creature instead of myself?’

  ‘Some kind of surveillance camera,’ I said. ‘He must be watching our every move.’

  Everyone stared at me.

  ‘Elinor, your intelligent logic astounds me once again,’ said Will.

  ‘I watch a lot of TV.’ I shrugged, but felt pleased anyway. Thanks CSI and Spooks.

  ‘Should we search for a device?’ Luke turned to Will.

  Will shook his head. ‘There is only an hour and a half until dawn, and I think you three need to get home.’

  ‘I’m happy to stay if you need me,’ said Luke.

  Personally, I thought the more the merrier at the moment.

  ‘I think Elinor would be grateful for your presence.’ Will smiled at me.

  ‘Then I’ll stay,’ said Luke.

  ‘We’d better go.’ Jake pulled Roxy to her feet.

  ‘Luke and I will see you to your car,’ said Will. I watched them all go out of the front door.

  ‘You OK Danny?’ I sat next to him on the sofa. He nodded, but didn’t say anything. Poor kid, he looked distraught.

  ‘Want to watch some mind-numbing TV?’ I tried again.

  He shook his head. ‘This is all my fault isn’t it?’ He said. ‘Everything … all them kids.’

  I felt horrified. I wondered if his reasoning was typical of teenagers.

  Will heard Daniel’s words as he came back in the room, and I looked to him for help. He sat on the oak chest in front of the sofa and regarded Daniel with some sympathy.

  ‘I can assure you that none of these appalling events have been your fault, Daniel,’ he said. It was rare he used his name. ‘Your only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and for that I am sorry. If anyone is at fault it is myself, as Elder. I should have been aware these renegades were in London, but for some reason I was not.’

  ‘How do you think they slipped under your radar?’ I asked.

  Will pushed a hand though his thick hair and sighed. ‘I have no idea.’

  Luke came into the room and lowered his tall frame into an armchair. ‘I’ve checked all the doors downstairs, all the locks and bolts are secure, so unless the bastard has cameras inside the house, we’re safe until sunset at least.’

  Will’s Journal, 22nd May

  So it continues … the senseless massacre of children, and now the murder of three adults on Parliament Hill. I suspect humans are being lured by Thomas and his companion to the place where they are staying. They would almost certainly be killing – and turning – them there, and then leaving them on the Heath for anyone to find. I am relieved that, so far, the child fledglings have been left deliberately for my people to find. It would be disaster should a human find a child vampire. They would not survive for long. The blood lust of most fledglings is paramount and usually they attempt to tear the throat from the first person they set eyes on. The one and only exception, to my knowledge, has been Elinor.

  Every Thursday the Hampstead and Highgate Express is delivered to my mailbox at the front gate, and I shall be looking for reports about tonight’s events with trepidation. I also need to read the national newspapers, which Stevie will get for me. Elinor is quite correct in that we need to install the internet, we would then have access to the latest news at the touch of a button or two, which is infinitely more efficient than waiting for the printed versions.

  Sometimes I miss the seventeenth century for its simplicity. But I have to admit that technology has made our ‘lives’ far more comfortable. Although all I want at the moment, is to make the odious Thomas’s existence untenable, and ultimately non-existent.

  Chapter Nine

  The next evening saw me at a loose end, while Will and Luke scoured the grounds for cameras. I wondered how Thomas had managed to get past Will’s state-of-the-art security system in order to get inside. Unless … supposing the camera was actually outside the gates, but still trained on the house? I thought of going outside to suggest this to Will, but decided it would be wiser to stay inside, after his reaction last night.

  Daniel was ensconced downstairs on his Xbox. There’d be no getting anything intelligible out of him for a while. I could hear explosions and gunfire coming faintly from the cellar. No doubt he was having fun.

  I went upstairs to the first floor. The bedrooms here were rarely used, as only one had wooden shutters, and that had been the room Luke slept in yesterday. I’d not yet had a good look around them for one reason or another. No time like the present.

  Four doors led off the hall on this floor, the first one being Luke’s room. For some reason I decided to go to the end of the hall and look in the last room first. Don’t ask me why. Contrary, that’s me.

  Opening the door, I went cautiously inside. There was no carpet in here but the floorboards appeared recently cleaned. The room had no furniture to speak of, just an old Regency armchair that had seen better days, in one corner. However, fitted cupboards took up most of one wall, and I wandered over to them. I have no idea what prompted me to open the nearest door. I’m not an especially nosy person, but some strange compulsion made me grasp the handle and pull the door open. My gaze fell on a stack of framed canvases leaning against the back of the cupboard. Paintings – quite a lot of them too. I’d often wondered why Will had no paintings or prints on any of the walls downstairs. Somehow I expected a Georgian house of this grandeur to have a few original paintings around. Whenever I’d asked him, he had given a non-committal answer. Perhaps he’d got tired of these particular paintings and was going to buy different ones at some point. Or perhaps these paintings had been deliber
ately stored away, out of sight. Carefully I turned the top canvas around.

  Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. I leant the painting back against the others, and sank to the floor to sit cross-legged in front of my discovery.

  It was a painting of Will. But not the Will I knew, this was the man from the early eighteenth century. The Duke. He sat confidently astride a beautiful bay horse, his elegant hands gentle at the reins. He was simply dressed in a plain white shirt, leather jerkin, breeches and soft leather knee-high boots. His head was bare, his dark hair worn long and tied back. Familiar green eyes stared out at me from the gorgeous face I had come to know so well – yet he looked like a complete stranger. The man in the painting made me feel like an intruder, and more than a little devastated.

  I stared at the face of the man I had grown to love, the man I lay with every day. Yet this man I’d never met. Never kissed. Never made love with. This man was still human. Tears filled my eyes, and I tentatively touched the handsome painted face with trembling fingers. Frantic thoughts flitted around my head. Would this Will have fallen in love with me if we’d met all those centuries ago? Or as a Duke, would he simply never even have noticed me?

  ‘This is the reason I had the paintings removed from downstairs,’ Will’s deep voice spoke quietly from the doorway.

  I started guiltily, and turned to face him. He strode into the room and offered me a hand to help me stand. When I got to my feet, he slipped his arms around me.

  ‘That man is long dead,’ he said. ‘He was born to wealth and privilege, and knew nothing of the world.’

  ‘Would you even have noticed me then?’ I had to ask.

  He smiled as he traced the outline of my lips with a forefinger before bending to kiss them. ‘We were always meant to be together.’

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  ‘I would have found you, in any crowd. In fact I did just that at Glastonbury.’