Descendant

cold. Then, without warning, he tore off across the playing field.

“Bullet, slow down, boy! Bullet!”

Jill ran after him and I jogged after Jill, my metal Kit banging painfully against my knees. Terence had gone back to his car and was slowly driving toward us up the avenue of poplars, even though motor vehicles weren’t allowed inside the park. I could see two uniformed park-keepers in the distance, staring at him, although they were too far away to make out the expressions on their faces.

“Bullet!” shouted Jill.

Bullet crossed the playing field to the other side, and ran into a copse of horse-chestnut trees. At this time of the year the trees were dark green and heavy with pink blossom, and the ground beneath them was deeply shadowed. Jill disappeared into the gloom and I followed her. Bullet started barking again and this time he wouldn’t stop.

I had almost caught up with Jill now. Together, we burst into a clearing among the trees, and there was Bullet, barking and snarling and running from side to side.

“Oh God,” said Jill.

Standing in the middle of the clearing were four people. A young man with short, scruffed-up hair and a pale, bruised-looking face, wearing a torn sport coat and badly stained gray-flannel pants. A girl with gingery curls, as pale and bruised as the boy. She was plump, about seventeen years old, and she was wearing a white summer dress with red-and-gray cats printed on it, like the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp, but the front of her dress was flooded with dark maroon blood.

The young man was standing behind a round-faced middle-aged woman with permanent-waved hair. The woman’s flowerpot hat had been knocked askew and she was panting hysterically. Not surprising: the young man had one arm around her neck and he was holding a long wide-bladed kitchen knife right in front of her face.

The gingery-haired girl was holding the wrist of a skinny young boy, aged about eight or nine, who was so frightened that he had wet his khaki shorts and could barely stand up. The girl was holding a kitchen knife, too, and repeatedly prodded the boy in the chest and the shoulders with the point. The boy kept whining “Ow! — Ow! — Ow! — Ow!”

I reached behind my back and lifted my Colt.45 out of its holster. I held it up in both hands, cocked it, and took two steps closer.

“You don’t need me to tell you what to do,” I announced. “I’m going to give you till three and then I’m going to kill you.”

The young man looked at the gingery-haired girl and then he looked back at me. “Bugger off,” he told me.

“Not a hope, pal. You heard what I said. I’m giving you a count of three and then I’m going to kill you. One.”

“I thought I said bugger off,” the young man challenged me.

“You did. But I think you were under the misapprehension that even if I shot you, I couldn’t kill you. You’re a Screecher, after all, a strigoi vii, and as such you think you’re immortal.”

The young man frowned. “What do you know about it, you tosser?”

“I know very much more than you do, pal, if my old friend Duca is running true to form.”

The young man lowered his arm so that the point of his kitchen knife was digging into the woman’s blouse, just above her waistband. A small spot of bright scarlet blood appeared among the pattern of lime-green leaves. The woman whimpered and started to cry, and helplessly opened and closed her hands.

The young man said, “I don’t know who you are, mate, and to be honest with you I don’t give a monkey’s. But if you don’t sling your hook right now I’m going to get the right hump and do this poor old bag right in front of you.”

“Two,” I told him. “And for your information, the bullets in this gun were cast from the melted-down goblets that were used by Christ’s disciples at the Last Supper. Not only that, they’ve been plated with pure silver and rubbed with garlic from the Pope’s summer residence at Castel Gandolfo.”

“You’re having a bubble, mate.”

“You want to try me?”

“Beryl!” said the young man, half-turning toward the girl.

I took another step forward. I had never been Roy Rogers, but at this distance I could have blown at least half of the young man’s face off without too much risk of hitting the middle-aged woman.

“Three,” I warned him.

At that moment, the girl swung her elbow back and stabbed the little boy in the middle of his stomach. The blow was so forceful that I could hear the chop! as the blade went in. Without any hesitation, the girl whipped the knife upward so that he was cut open from his belt to his chest. The little boy let out a horrible high-pitched scream like a run-over cat. Then he fell backward on to last autumn’s leaves.

I fired once and hit the girl in the shoulder. The bang of a.45 is absolutely deafening, and disorienting, too. I fired again and hit her in the side. Lumps of red flesh flew off her hip, and she rolled over backward and sideways, just behind the boy. She tried to get up so I shot her again, blowing off her left kneecap.

“Jim!” screamed Jill.

I swung around, pointing my pistol at the young man. But I was too late. He had already thrust his knife into the middle-aged woman’s stomach, right up to the hilt, and her blood was running down his wrist and staining her skirt. She was staring at me in pain and shock and for some reason I couldn’t help noticing the large brown mole on her upper lip, as if she had suffered that blemish all her life, only to die like this.

I aimed at the young man’s head, but he ducked down behind her. I tried to dodge to the side, but he swung her around, as if he were dancing with her, with the knife still buried in her stomach. No matter which way I tried to get a clear shot at him, he kept her between us.

“Terence!” I yelled. I needed someone to outflank this young Screecher, and hit him from the side. “Terence, where are you for Christ’s sake!”

It was then that I turned to Jill. She was standing under the trees, her eyes wide, holding on to Bullet’s collar.

“Jill! Set Bullet on him! Jill, he’s going to kill her!”

But it was too late. The Screecher yanked his knife upward and the woman’s intestines piled out on to the ground, unravelling themselves like yards and yards of overcooked cannelloni. The Screecher turned and ran away through the woods, and he was running so fast that all I could see was a brief gray shadow and a flurry of leaves. There was no point in wasting a Last Supper bullet on him.

I turned around. The gingery-haired girl had gone as well.

“Did you see which way she went?” I asked Jill.

“We have to call for an ambulance,” she told me. Her voice was jerky and erratic and she was trembling uncontrollably.

I gripped her arms and shook her. “Did you see which way she went? The redhead? Send Bullet after her!”

“They’re going to die,” said Jill. She tried to turn around and stumble away but I wouldn’t let her.

“Listen, Jill, they’re probably dead already. Terence will call an ambulance. You and me, we have to go after the Screechers. That’s what we’re here for.”

She shook her head. “I can’t send Bullet after those people. I can’t. I can’t do this any more. I didn’t realize.”

“Jill, for Christ’s sake pull yourself together. We have to get after them now!”

“No,” she said. “I can’t do this any more. I thought I could but I can’t.”

I let her go. There was nothing else I could do. I couldn’t let Bullet run after the Screechers on his own, and he certainly wouldn’t listen to me.

I walked over to the little boy. His arms and legs were sprawled as if he were jumping into the air, but he would never jump again. He was white-faced and dead. The woman moaned and I crossed over to see how she was. Her intestines were stuck all over with leaves and twigs and she was staring at them in despair.

“Pray for me,” she whispered.

I nodded. “Every morning, from now on, until the day that I die. I promise you.”

“You’re a strange bloke,” she said.