Descendant

Terence and I drove back to the South Croydon Observer building. We unlocked the front doors and let ourselves in. We had checked every single office before we left it, making sure that the doors and windows were all closed tight. I hadn’t wanted to come back here to find that Duca had slid in through some inch-wide aperture, and was waiting for us.

Our footsteps echoed along the corridor as we made our way to the darkroom. I was carrying a flashlight but I didn’t switch it on. There was a faint orange glow from the main road outside and that was enough for us to find our way upstairs. The darker the building was, the more difficult it was going to be for Duca to be able to see where we were.

There was a loud bang. Terence had collided with a metal filing cabinet that had been left abandoned in the corridor. “Are you OK?” I asked him.

“Fine. Stubbed my toe, that’s all.”

“You’re sure you’re up to this?”

“Bit apprehensive, if you must know.” He paused, and then he said, “I was in the Eve Club last year, in Mayfair. A lot of security people go there — MI5, MI6, Soviet agents, all sorts. I was spotted by this East German agent and I had to hide in the ladies’ for two hours. He would have shot me, no questions asked, if he could have found me.”

He gave a self-deprecating snort. “I thought I was scared then.”

I opened the darkroom door, and switched on my flashlight. “Try to keep your nerve, Terence, OK? When you’re dealing with Screechers, the last thing you need to do is to show them that you’re frightened. They latch on to fear, the same way a shark will go after your leg if you’re bleeding.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.”

We entered the darkroom and took a quick look around. It still smelled faintly of photographic developer.

“So what exactly are we going to do when Duca gets here?” Terence asked me. “If Duca gets here.”

“Oh — it’ll get here, don’t you worry about that.” I hunkered down and opened up my Kit. “When it does, I want you to open up the Bible, just like you did before, but I want you to do something else, too. I want you to hold up this silver mirror, right in front of Duca’s face, so that it has no choice but to look at it.”

“All right, then. What will that do?”

“It will show Duca what it really looks like. It’s pure silver and it was blessed by Pope Urban VIII, so it can only reflect purity and truth. Did you ever read The Picture of Dorian Gray?”

“No. but I saw the film. George Sanders, wasn’t it?”

“Oscar Wilde based that novel on stories that he was told about the strigoi. Dorian Gray’s portrait grew older while Dorian Gray himself stayed young and handsome, just like a strigoi mort. You wait until Duca sees its true face in the mirror. I promise you, its own image will stop it dead in its tracks. Or undead in its tracks.”

I took out my whip, my hammer and my nails, and my surgical saw, and I laid them out on the darkroom drain-board. “That’s when we slam the door shut and do the rest of the business.”

“But it’ll be totally dark, won’t it?”

“Not entirely.” To give Terence a demonstration, I took out the screwtop lid from a pickle jar. I had cut a thin three-inch slit in the center of it and then painted it matt black. It screwed tight over the top of my flashlight, so that only a faint glimmer managed to escape. Terence and I could only just make out each other’s outlines, and the dark glitter of each other’s eyes. Duca didn’t have its Screecher wheel so it was going to be 99.9 percent blind.

“So. how long do you think we’ll have to wait?” asked Terence, checking his watch.

“Who knows? But I don’t think it’s going to be very long. From my experience, Screechers have better noses than bloodhounds. They can smell what you had for yesterday’s breakfast. In Holland, I’ve known them go through hospitals, drinking the blood of everybody in sight, except for the patients on morphine, because morphine affects their sense of balance.”

Terence said, “How do you do this? This Screecher-hunting. Bloody hell, I couldn’t do it.”

I shrugged. It was too complicated to explain.

We waited for over an hour. Terence took out his cigarettes but I shook my head. “Let’s keep the air clear, shall we?”

“Well,” he said, “I’m trying to give them up, anyway. Too expensive. Two and fourpence for twenty, these days.”

“Maybe you should try gum,” I suggested.

“Does that really work? But you’ll never guess what I saw the other day. A chewing-gum machine. You put in a penny and turn the handle and you get a packet of Beech-Nut chewing gum.”

“Miraculous.”

Terence glanced at me. “You’re twitting me, aren’t you? You’ve got all those automats in America.”

Right then, we heard a door banging, somewhere downstairs. Then a metallic squeak, and another bang. I lifted out my gun and cocked it.

Terence said, “Do you think that’s Duca?”

“I don’t know. It could be. Ssh.”

We strained our ears, but all we could hear for the next few minutes was the swooshing noise of traffic from the main road. Then I thought I heard a faint scrabbling noise, like a caged animal scratching at chicken wire.

“Want me to take a look?” asked Terence.

I heard the noise again. It certainly wasn’t footsteps. Terence eased open the darkroom door and peered out into the corridor — right, and then left.

“I can’t see anybody. Perhaps it was squirrels, or rats.”

Outside, a police car sped past, with its bell urgently ringing. Then silence again.

“No, nobody there,” said Terence.

He was just about to close the door when there was a sharp pattering sound, quite loud, and approaching us very quickly. I looked out into the corridor and for a split second I still couldn’t see anybody there. But then I looked up and saw that Duca was hurrying rapidly toward us on its hands and knees. It was crawling along the ceiling, upside down, so that each of the conical glass lampshades started to sway as it came rushing past them.

I stepped back into the darkroom and pulled Terence after me, by his shoulder.

“It’s on the ceiling!” said Terence.

“Hold up the mirror!” I told him. “As soon as it comes through the door!”

At the same time I holstered my gun and picked up my silver bullwhip. I gripped the handle in my right hand and the clawlike tip in my left.

There was a last flurry of scrabbling and we saw Duca climb headfirst down the wall on the opposite side of the corridor. It unfolded itself like a great gray praying mantis, until it was standing up straight. It fastidiously brushed the ceiling dust from its sleeves — its green eyes staring at us with unblinking fury. Its spine was straight, its handsome head was tilted slightly backward, its lips were scarlet, like a bloody razor cut. It was slightly out of breath, which lent it a false humanity that for some reason made it all the more frightening.

“So here you are,” it announced. “I have come to recover what is rightfully mine.”

“Well, my friend,” I told it. “You can certainly try.”

“You have stolen it from me and I want it back.”

“Oh, really? Haven’t you forgotten what you’ve been stealing? You’ve been stealing the lives of innocent men and women, and children, too, for centuries, fellow, and I’ve come here to stop you stealing any more.”

“You are a pathetic fool. You cannot stand in the way of fate.”

“You don’t think so? I’ve exterminated more strigoi mortii than you can count on the fingers of three hands, my friend, and now it’s your turn.”

He stepped forward, with his left hand held out. “I will give you the chance to return my possession. If you refuse, then I will take it anyway, and I will unravel your viscera all the way along this corridor.”

“How do you know I have it? This possession of yours?”

Duca looked at me with derision. “Because it is mine, and it sings out to me, like all of my possessions, animate or inanimate.”