The Cross

She frowned. ‘I love the night too. But the stars? What can be so fascinating about those tiny pricks of light?’

‘There is much you do not know, sister.’ Gabriel moved away from the window and began to pace the length of the chamber, looking pensively at his feet.

‘Something wrong, Gabriel? You seem very serious all of a sudden.’

‘It’s nothing,’ he replied.

‘I know you better than anyone. I can see something is troubling you.’

He seemed unwilling to say; then sighed and came out with it. ‘Since I awoke, I’ve been aware of … I find it hard to explain. Little more than a sensation, but one that fills me with unease.’

‘A sensation of what?’

He stopped pacing and fixed her with a piercing look. ‘It has become part of me now,’ he said. ‘The cross. As if somehow it were burned into my soul.’

‘Gabriel, you know you don’t have a soul. What are you talking about?’

‘I can only tell you what I feel. I feel it with a growing certainty.’

She laughed nervously. ‘Gabriel, you’re scaring me. Come, now. You’ve been very ill. That thing almost destroyed you. It’s like nothing we’ve ever encountered before. But these feelings will pass. The cross is broken, gone. Its powers are lost, and it’ll never harm us again.’

He stared at her for a moment longer, then slowly shook his head. ‘I fear you are wrong, Lillith. It is the cross’s presence I can sense. It was broken, but now it has been remade.’

‘Gabriel—’

‘Please don’t ask me how I know this. But there is no doubt in my mind. We have not seen the end of this cross.’

Chapter Eighteen

Bal Mawr Manor

Errol Knightly listened intently as Dec told him everything he knew. He started from the beginning, with the account of how he and Kate Hawthorne, the girl next door, had argued while out for a drive; how she’d run off and got a lift in a Rolls with some rich guy, and gone with him to this party at a manor house called Crowmoor Hall.

‘You might have heard of the place, like?’

‘Certainly I have. It’s where they found all those bodies recently,’ Knightly said, perched on the edge of his leather armchair, already into his third top-up of sherry and heading for a fourth. ‘It was on the news. Henley-on- Thames, isn’t it?’

‘What they won’t tell you on the news is that it was a nest of frigging vampires,’ Dec said darkly. He went on to describe how, after following Kate and her party hosts down to a strange crypt underneath the house, he’d witnessed the ritual slaughter of another girl. How they’d hung her from chains by her ankles, and then this black- haired vampire bitch with a sword had slashed her throat open, how the bastards had all stood there taking a shower in her blood. ‘You should have seen it. You should have been there.’

Knightly had turned very pale by this point in Dec’s story.

Soon after that, Dec continued, Kate had started going funny. The doctor hadn’t been able to understand the illness that had struck her after her return from the party. Nobody would have wanted to hear Dec’s story. ‘But I was right.’

Knightly made a lunge for that fourth top-up. ‘She bit you. A vampire actually fed on you?’

Dec nodded and showed him the faint marks on his neck. ‘But like I said in my email, it wasn’t enough to turn me. My mate Joel reckons she didn’t have the powers, like Gabriel Stone did.’

Knightly’s eyes were popping. ‘And this Joel fellow … he’s …’

‘The one who destroyed her.’

‘With …’

‘With this weird-looking cross.’

‘I see.’ Knightly paused. ‘Er, weird how, exactly?’

Dec pointed at the shiny crucifix Knightly was wearing around his neck. ‘It wasn’t like that. Or this one.’ He pulled out his own to show him. ‘It had a ring around the top bit.’

‘You mean a Celtic cross?’ Knightly said, fingering his crucifix.

‘That’s right. And it was made of stone. About this size.’ Dec held his hands eighteen inches apart.

‘So they do work,’ Knightly sighed in immense relief.

‘What?’

‘I meant Celtic crosses,’ Knightly said, collecting himself. ‘Why wouldn’t they? Are they not as holy as other crosses, or something?’

‘Well, you see, Declan, some scholars have maintained—’

‘It’s Dec,’ Dec said. ‘Anyway, it worked pretty frigging well as far as I could see.’

‘Tell me about Joel. Where is he now?’

‘He went after them. To Romania, like. I haven’t seen him since.’

Knightly drained the last of his sherry and looked wistfully at the bottle. ‘And what about this Gabriel Stone?’

‘He’s the leader. Of the vampires, I mean.’

‘And you’ve actually seen him? I mean,’ he added carefully, ‘seen him in a way that would make it clear that he really was a vampire?’

Dec nodded without hesitation. ‘I saw his fangs and everything. I told you. He was there in the crypt. Then after that, he was the one who turned Kate.’ He clenched his fists. ‘I hope Joel’s destroyed the bastard. If he hasn’t, I will. And that’s why I’m here, Mr Knightly.’

Knightly looked at his feet and said nothing.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Dec pleaded. ‘You’re the big leagues. The real deal. I’m nothing compared to you. But I can’t do this by myself. I’m just a kid, really. I’m all alone. I can’t talk to me ma and da about this. Me brother thinks I’m a nutcase. The police … forget it. For all I know, Joel’s not coming back. You’re all I’ve got. The only person who understands. You’ve really done these things. Mr Knightly, you’ve got to help me.’

Knightly sat quietly for a long time, deep in thought. ‘Normally, of course, I would have to charge for my services.’

‘I don’t have much money,’ Dec blurted out. ‘But I’ve thought about that. I’m a mechanic, so I am. Well, trainee, like, but I could fix that Bentley of yours. That’s a nasty oil leak. I’ll valet the Porsche, too. I’ll clean your windows. Skim the moat. I’ll do anyth—’

Knightly raised his hand, cutting him off. ‘None of that will be necessary. In fact, under the circumstances, I would be willing to pay you, if you’d agree to let me include this incredible material in my next book. I’m already working on it. But I don’t have anything like the kind of stuff—’ Knightly broke off suddenly. He was sweating. ‘How does a hundred pounds sound?’

Dec frowned. ‘You don’t understand, Mr Knightly. I want you to help me catch them. Like you said, they dwell amongst us.’

‘It’s “lurk”. They lurk amongst us.’

‘Dwell, lurk, whatever. I want to rid the world of them. All of them. I want you to learn me everything you know. I want to become a vampire hunter just like you. I want—’

Knightly’s face flushed. He stood up and walked to one of the library’s tall windows, gazing out to sea and thinking hard.

‘If you aren’t going to help me,’ Dec said in a pained voice, ‘I’ll have to find someone else.’ He thought for a