Her Vampyrrhic Heart

  ‘Nuclear fusion?’

  ‘Love.’

  Owen blushed. ‘If you’re going to get soppy …’

  ‘No. Think about it. People fall in love during wars. They love their children and do everything they can to make their lives better. If there’s a famine or a natural disaster people strive to help their loved ones to survive. Love is the motor that drives the human race.’

  ‘I agree, Tom.’ June slapped her hands down on to her lap. ‘Love keeps the human race alive.’

  Owen grinned. ‘Now you’re both getting soppy. Uh.’ His phone chirped. ‘’Scuse me folks.’ He read the text. ‘It’s from Jez. He says they’ve given him more painkillers and he’s going to ride the moon later.’

  ‘Ride the moon?’ echoed June puzzled.

  ‘Local slang for being high or drunk,’ Tom explained. He’d already told June about the accident involving a friend of Owen’s called Jez Pollock.

  Owen’s expression became grave. ‘Jez is worried about what the police will say tomorrow. He thinks they’ll charge him with causing the minibus to crash.’

  ‘I’ll make some more coffee.’ June headed for the kitchen.

  June must have guessed that Owen would like to speak to Tom in private, so she’d made an excuse about the coffee.

  ‘Do you think Jez will go to prison?’ asked Owen.

  ‘He says he drove at an animal, not the bus.’

  ‘But who’ll believe that?’

  ‘The woman from the bus backs his story up.’

  ‘Their heads were all screwed up with shock.’ Owen looked worried. ‘I can’t imagine Jez in prison. For God’s sake, he’s still at school. Prison will crap up his life, won’t it? Everyone will condemn him as the kid who killed a bus full of people.’

  ‘They haven’t found the passengers yet,’ Tom reminded him.

  ‘But everyone’s saying that the bus ended up where the road fords a stream, and that the bodies have been carried away.’

  Tom felt for his brother. The misery on his face tugged at Tom’s heart. He wished he could say something that would make him feel better. ‘The accident investigators will find there’s no paint from the bus on the truck. They’ll have ways of knowing that Jez didn’t cause the accident.’

  Owen shook his head. Tom knew that his words didn’t reassure him.

  A chirp signalled that Owen had received another text. ‘This is from Kit.’ Owen frowned. ‘He says he’s got himself a girlfriend. Her name’s Freya.’

  ‘That’s some good news.’ Tom smiled.

  ‘Is it? When guys get girls, does it always end in them losing their best friends?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I had an argument with Kit today over Eden. In fact, it almost became a fight.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll stay friends. After all, you both had a shock over Jez’s accident. Emotions are bound to be running high.’

  Owen nodded. ‘I’ll get the blanket and pillows for the sofa.’

  ‘No, use my bedroom. I’ll take the sofa.’

  ‘No way. Why do you want to give up your bed?’

  ‘You’ve been through a tough time. You need a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Oh, I get it.’ A smile played around his lips. ‘’Nuff said, bro.’

  Tom planned to stay awake in the lounge in case any more visitors arrived via the chimney. Of course now Owen thought that Tom had come up with a sneaky plan. That he would stay downstairs until Owen was asleep before tiptoeing to the spare bedroom occupied by June.

  At that moment, June returned with more coffee. The pair of them were determined to stay awake tonight. There was a chance the vampires would return. Both wanted to be wide awake if they did. Equally, both were determined to keep Owen oblivious of the vampires unless circumstances made it impossible.

  Tom’s phone did the chirping this time; a text from the local police. Tom had been requested to help find the minibus passengers. Specifically, the police wanted him to make an underwater search of part of the river nearest where the road forded the stream, and where the wrecked bus had been found. Tom knew that this meant the rescue services had given up hope of finding live survivors. This would now be an operation to recover the dead. Tom would help in the search, of course, but he didn’t want to add to Owen’s worries about Jez, so he said something about the text being from an old friend who had a diving school in Greece.

  Owen yawned. ‘I’m going to call it a day. Sleep well, you two.’

  ‘Thank you.’ June smiled. ‘Good night.’

  Playfully, he ruffled Tom’s hair. ‘Thanks for letting me use your bed, Tommo. Don’t get a stiff neck on the sofa.’

  ‘I won’t. Good night, Owen. And don’t worry about Jez. I’m sure everything will turn out alright.’

  ‘Cheers, Tom.’

  Tom waited until he heard the door shut upstairs. He turned to June. ‘You know, he’s certain that we’re going to spend the night together.’

  ‘We are, aren’t we?’

  Her blue eyes twinkled. She was teasing him.

  He smiled. ‘Yes, we are spending the night together down here. We’ll be fully clothed, guzzling black coffee and pacing the floor waiting for inhuman visitors.’

  She glanced at the fireplace. ‘Maybe even the vampire world’s answer to Santa Claus,’ she said drily, referring to how the man, or the vampire rather, had arrived in the house two nights ago.

  Despite the situation they both laughed. Though their laughter had a shrill quality that revealed their anxiety.

  Dangerous times lie ahead, Tom told himself as the laughter surrendered to a cold feeling inside. This is like sitting on a time bomb.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Midnight in the valley. The River Lepping flowed towards the sea, just as it had done for thousands of years. Foxes barked in the forest; often that yelping bark could sound like a human cry – a lost and forlorn sound. In Skanderberg, June Valko and Tom Westonby drank coffee, and talked about how there must be a secret world that adjoins this one. A world where myth and reality, and the living and the dead, coexist as equals. And sometimes the doorways to such a world lie open in certain places. Perhaps one of those invisible doorways had swung open nearby? Would it be only a matter of time before the lords of that realm decided to invade this world?

  Upstairs, Owen Westonby lay in bed. He’d left the bedside light on and gazed up at the black beams that ran across the white ceiling. From a nail in one of the beams hung a necklace made from white cowrie shells, a souvenir from when Tom worked as a diver overseas.

  What a crazy day … what a crazy weekend. On Friday evening he’d watched video footage of what appeared to be a large animal that had been filmed by the automatic camera. He’d met Eden Taylor. He’d even taken her on the Saturday afternoon monster hunt – of course, that was a joke, just something to do. After all, Danby-Mask teenagers were in danger of dying of boredom. So anything to break the monotony, right? He thought about Eden mainly. Her face shone in his mind’s eye … those blue eyes … the blond hair. Yeah, OK, and a sexy body, too. Don’t forget the sexy body. Not that there’d be any danger of forgetting about the shape of her waist, or the marvellous way her breasts enhanced her sweater. The tingles started. He licked his lips. Eden Taylor … I want to dream about you tonight. Even though his thoughts were largely and hotly focused on the girl, they kept returning to Jez. His friend’s face had been like one of those horror masks – all sticky wet cuts, bruises and a grotesquely swollen forehead. Worse than the injuries would be the prospect of getting into big trouble with the police.

  Owen recalled the text from Kit Bolter, too. Kit had announced he’d got a girlfriend. That her name was Freya. Owen couldn’t remember any local girl called Freya. Had his friend invented the girl to get even with Owen somehow? But that didn’t make sense, did it? Why dream up a fake girl to get back at his friend? He shook his head, troubled. Kit had started to act so strangely over the last couple of days.

  Meanwhil
e, five miles from Skanderberg, Kit Bolter sat cross-legged on his bed. He turned his head from side to side as he examined his face in the wall mirror. Wow! Even from here he could see those scratches on his neck. Check out that graze! Kit touched the fiery red mark on his cheek. She did that! Freya’s amazing. She threw me across the yard like I was a doll. Rather than feeling woeful at such rough handling from a girl he’d never met before, he felt absurdly pleased. Heck, even irrationally pleased.

  ‘Freya’s like no other girl I’ve met,’ he murmured to himself. Then he suddenly hissed, ‘Because she’s a monster.’ He glared into the mirror. ‘No, she’s not a monster. She’s unique.’

  Instead of thinking about those white eyes with their fierce pupils, he thought about her lovely hair, and the yellow dress. Freya had promised to come back tomorrow. Kit Bolter couldn’t wait. Because he knew tomorrow night would be the most exciting night of his life.

  A north wind brought flakes of snow. They came in spectral waves of white. It was as if a door had swung open to another world – one much colder than this. A woman had been waiting behind that door for five long years. Now she stepped through into this world. Her skin seemed to blaze with its own light in the darkness. The bark of the trees smouldered in her presence. Foxes fled into their burrows. Even the river seemed to shrink back when she walked along the shore.

  The woman, or what had been a woman once, had known Tom Westonby. She’d loved him. She’d become his bride. Then an evil power had torn them apart.

  ‘I’m here, Tom. We’re going to be together again … even if that means we’ll be together in death.’

  FIFTY-THREE

  The man walked alongside the river. Snow flew out of the darkness to strike his face. The November night was brutally cold. The trees resembled black talons, stretching upwards as if hell-bent on violently clawing at the sky.

  The man used a powerful flashlight to illuminate the river banks. His son had been on the minibus. Even though the rescue teams, the lazy bastards, had given up the search, he wouldn’t stop until he’d found Tony. What if his son had been swept away from the bus after the crash? The current might have carried him miles downstream. He might be huddled under a bush, freezing to death. And the useless, lazy, good-for-nothing rescuers had given up, gone home, and tucked themselves up in their friggin’ beds.

  The Lepping surged around rocks. The breeze tugged at branches, making them groan. A sound that echoed the pain he felt. No, he wouldn’t desert Tony. He’d find him. And find him alive.

  The man moved faster, shining the flashlight in front of him. The river glistened blackly. Trees shivered as the breeze blew harder. The snow rushed out of the darkness. Hard flakes stung his face. His muscles scrunched up tight. He wondered if this was a sixth sense that he’d find Tony around the next bend in the river. But the sensation was so intense it sickened him. This is the kind of physical reaction someone must get when stumbling across a rotting corpse. His heart pounded. Right at that instant, he wanted to cry out. But why did he feel like this? What was happening? It was as if the world around him had become electrified – as if a huge current had been switched on.

  He scrambled round a clump of bushes.

  And found a woman standing there. A beautiful woman with blond hair … and oh, she glowed so brightly. She burned his eyes. Overwhelmed by this blistering vision, he turned away.

  ‘Tony!’

  There was his son. He recognized his face. But wait … other faces formed a line at either side of his son. They seemed to sprout from a bulky object. All the eyes stared at him – the eyes of the dead – the eyes of the damned.

  The man froze. ‘Tony … it’s me.’

  His son was the first to bite. The other faces bit, too, sinking their teeth into the man’s skin, hurting him more than he’d ever been hurt before.

  Then Helsvir set to work. The agony became unbearable. And the man’s screams rang out long and loud – but unheard by human ears.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  June stood beside Tom in the lounge. They watched the sun rise above the treetops. Soon that blood-red disc drove away the gloom that surrounded the house.

  June shook her head. ‘I thought they would have come back.’

  ‘Vampires don’t obey natural laws. It’s not possible to anticipate how they’ll behave.’

  ‘But on Friday night one even climbed down the chimney so he could see me.’ She shivered; gooseflesh on her neck. ‘I’m sure that that was my father. So why hasn’t he tried to contact me?’

  ‘He’s a vampire, June. Perhaps seeing you the once was all he needed.’

  ‘So much for our plan of using me as bait.’

  ‘We guessed that you’d lure your father back here. We guessed wrong.’

  ‘Damn.’ She scrunched her lips together in anger. ‘In my mind’s eye, I could see how it would have worked. This place is built like a castle. We’d be safe in here while I talked to my father through the window.’

  ‘Unless he pulled the chimney trick again.’

  ‘There’d have been no need for him to do that if I stood at one of the windows.’

  ‘Still risky,’ he said.

  ‘There are bars over the windows. He wouldn’t have been able to hurt me … not that I believe my father would harm me.’

  ‘He might not have been able to stop himself. Vampires aren’t rational beings.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  He sighed. ‘Let’s say, from past observations. They don’t think or act like us.’

  June’s eyes were hard. She didn’t want to give up now. Tom knew she had some plan – admittedly a flimsy, unlikely-to-work plan – that involved somehow reuniting her father, Jacob Bekk, with her mother. Then maybe her mother would understand that Jacob hadn’t left her of his own free will, and that would be enough to heal her broken heart. Tom believed the plan to be so unworkable as to be pure fantasy on June’s part.

  But then is my plan to find Nicola just as fantastical? I’d hoped June Valko’s presence here would provoke Nicola into returning to the cottage. Am I just as deluded – and desperate – to believe my plan is any more likely to work than hers?

  Five years ago, Tom Westonby had watched his bride transform into a vampire. The blush of life had fled from her face. Her veins had turned black and worm-like under her skin. Those beautiful eyes of hers had turned monstrous – the blue had faded to leave two pupils that were just so inhuman.

  ‘We could try again,’ June suggested. ‘What if we go out into the forest after dark?’

  ‘That could be the end of us.’ He tried to sound dismissive of the suggestion, yet secretly it excited him. If Nicola was out there he might meet her. Especially if June acted as bait again. However, that means deliberately putting June in danger, he thought. Nicola might get jealous and attack June. Am I prepared to risk sacrificing an innocent woman in order to get what I want?

  His phone chirped. Another text had arrived from the police. He told June that he’d been asked to take his diving gear to where the minibus had been found and search the water for bodies.

  ‘Have you done this kind of work before?’ she asked.

  ‘Recovering bodies?’ He nodded. ‘Although in this case …’ He reached out and ran a fingertip over the carved dragon on the living room wall. ‘I get the feeling this was involved.’

  ‘Helsvir?’

  ‘He might be taking more victims and merging their bones and flesh into his to make him stronger.’

  ‘So you think the creature is intending to launch some kind of attack?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Then we need to warn the police? We can’t just—’

  Tom heard footsteps on the stairs and put a finger to his lips.

  Owen breezed into the lounge. ‘Sorry I can’t stay for breakfast. I’ve got to grab my stuff before I catch the school bus.’

  ‘Nice to meet you anyway, Owen.’ June held out her hand.

  Smiling, Owen shook it. ‘Likewise. Yo
u staying around, June?’

  ‘Maybe another day or two.’

  ‘Good, you’ve brought some daylight into this place.’

  ‘Daylight?’ Tom echoed.

  June smiled. ‘Owen, thank you, that’s flattering as well as being poetic.’

  He grinned back. ‘I guess it was poetic, wasn’t it?’

  Tom said, ‘Try not to worry about Jez. I’m sure everything will be OK.’

  ‘Cheers, Tom. I’m hoping for the same. Ciao, amigos.’ With that, Owen headed out through the door. Within seconds the forest had swallowed him.

  June shivered. ‘I’m glad those vampires don’t come out in the daylight. Even so, it’s still making me anxious to see Owen out there by himself.’

  ‘There’s no guarantee they won’t come out by day. There’s no guarantees about anything concerning the vampires. In fact, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be safe here, if they decide to attack.’

  June eyes became even more troubled. ‘I’ve been thinking, Tom. I’ve got Bekk blood in my veins, haven’t I? And the Bekks triggered the vampire curse if they ever left this place. So what happens if, by coming here, I’ve been infected with the curse, or vampire bug, or whatever it is?’

  ‘I don’t believe that you have.’

  ‘Look. You’ve just said that there are no guarantees. What if I have the curse, too? What if I can never leave, in case I run the risk of turning into one of those things? What if I have to stay here for ever?’

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Owen Westonby skipped a library study period at school in order to visit Jez in hospital. Flurries of snow descended on Whitby harbour with growing ferocity. Fishermen were telling one another that a fierce storm was in its way.

  Owen found Jez alone in the hospital room. The sixteen-year-old had put a bedpan (fortunately unused) on the window sill and was testing his aim by flicking paper clips at the target. His broken arm had been suspended in a sling across his chest. The fingers that emerged from the orange cast wiggled every now and again. Owen noticed that Jez now wore clothes rather than pyjamas.