The Cross

ghoul.’

Already the few drops of vampire blood, tapped from an opened vein and forced down the human’s throat, had worked a dramatic physical change on him. Geoffrey Hopley skulked across the cellar like a beaten dog, clutching a large tray on which were three steaming mugs and a folded newspaper. He laid it down reverently on the table.

Gabriel stared. ‘What is this, ghoul?’

‘Your tea, master,’ Geoffrey croaked.

‘Tea?’

‘Mr Lonsdale always took a cup of tea with the morning paper. Perhaps master would care for a biscuit?’

Gabriel peered with revulsion at the tray. ‘Biscuit? Certainly not. And what makes you think we would be interested in consuming this vile liquid of yours? Not to mention,’ he added, swatting away the newspaper, ‘reading the infantile and usually mendacious drivel that the humans call news.’

‘Can’t get the staff these days,’ Lillith murmured, returning to her sword-sharpening.

‘Mr Lonsdale liked to k-k-keep up with what was h-happening in the world,’ stammered the ghoul.

‘As if the human race had the remotest notion of what is really happening in the world,’ Gabriel snorted. ‘You’re wasting our time. Get back to your hole until we find further use for you.’ He grabbed the newspaper and hurled it violently at the cowering ghoul. ‘Do you hear me? Leave us, cur!’

Geoffrey picked up the tray and bowed and scraped his way backwards out of the cellar.

‘I told you those two would be useless, Gabriel,’ Lillith said with a smile when the door had banged shut. ‘We should have just drained them dry and been done with it.’

‘Damn them both. Too late now. Ghoul blood is undrinkable.’ Gabriel stooped to snatch up the fallen newspapers and tossed them on the table. ‘Zachary, are you making any progress?’ he snapped.

‘Give me time,’ Zachary muttered, tapping more keys. ‘I’ll get it.’

Lillith casually reached down for the crumpled newspaper, peeled away the front and back pages and used them to test the edge of her blade. The steel sliced cleanly through the paper like a razor; the two halves fluttered to the floor. ‘Not perfect,’ she said, giving the blade a few more strokes from her hone before peeling off another sheet. She was about to cut it when she stopped and let out a loud shuddering gasp. Her sword fell with a clang to the tiled floor as she twisted away from the newspaper in horror.

‘Lil?’ Zachary said, alarmed. ‘You okay?’

‘What is it, sister?’ Gabriel cried.

Lillith pressed a hand to her chest, catching her breath, and pointed at the newspaper without looking. ‘I can’t bear to see it. I never wanted to see that thing again.’

Gabriel strode over and snatched up the paper. His eyes searched the rumpled page, then narrowed with a blaze of anger and fear as his gaze landed on the small, crisp colour image in the bottom left-hand corner.

An image of a cross. A Celtic cross, one whose appearance was terrifyingly familiar, its shattered fragments pieced together and held in place with wire. Who had done this?

The headline of the small article was: HISTORY PROFESSOR’S DISCOVERY IS OUT OF THIS WORLD.

‘“Oxford University boffins are baffled,”’ Gabriel read aloud, ‘“by the discovery of an ancient artifact in the mountains of Romania. Chloe Dempsey, 19, a pentathlete and student at the University of Bedfordshire, came across the mysterious object while on a skiing trip with friends and brought it to the UK to show to her father, Professor Matt Dempsey, 56, a curator at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum …” I will not read it all. Suffice to say that my fears were correct. The cross of Ardaich has been found.’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Bal Mawr Manor

When Dec awoke it was to find himself staring upwards at the canopy of the four-poster bed. For a moment he couldn’t remember where he was — but as he struggled out from under the satin bedcover and dragged himself sleepily over to the window to peer at the incoming surf crashing on the rocks, it all came back to him like something out of an incredible dream and he punched a fist in the air.

He was learning how to be a vampire hunter! YES!

But it wasn’t going to be easy. Knightly hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he wanted to know everything. The two of them had sat up until long after midnight, writing up notes on everything Dec could tell him about his first-hand vampire experiences and poring over old books searching for anything that resembled Joel Solomon’s strange cross. By the time Knightly had eventually let him stagger off up to bed, Dec’s mind had been buzzing so intensely that he couldn’t sleep. Leafing through a bedside copy of They Lurk Amongst Us hadn’t helped, either. Dec had never been much of a reader, but Knightly’s accounts of his vampire-destroying exploits made his heart thump. It hadn’t been until sometime after three that Dec had finally dozed off into a fitful sleep that was filled with flickering shadows and sinister looming figures.

He hauled on his jeans, took a pee in the biggest bathroom he’d ever seen, and wandered downstairs. After losing his way three times he eventually made his way to the breakfast room, where he found Knightly looking comparatively bright-eyed and heartily polishing off the remains of a plate of fried eggs and sausages.

‘Ah, there you are. Sit down. Help yourself to coffee. Thought you’d never show up.’

‘I got lost,’ Dec said, pouring coffee into a fine china cup that he was terrified to touch in case it broke.

‘Easily done, in this big old pile,’ Knightly said through a mouthful of sausage. ‘After breakfast I’ll give you the tour.’

Which he duly did, proudly showing Dec through a seemingly endless procession of rooms and passageways. Bal Mawr was a veritable anti-vampire fortress. Everywhere Dec looked were hanging crucifixes, wreaths of garlic, bunches of hawthorn. On the outside of every door, a large iron cross had been securely screwed to the wood, bearing the words ‘Vampyre, You May Not Enter Here’ in bold gothic engraving; and on its inside each door had two tall mirrors flanking it left and right, angled a few degrees inwards. ‘So you can tell immediately whether anyone coming into the room has a reflection,’ Knightly explained to a quizzical Dec. ‘Though it’s highly unlikely that any vampire could penetrate so far through my defences. Still, when dealing with the Undead one can’t be too careful. They’re a tricksy lot, you know, Declan.’

And on and on the manor went, room after room, filled with all manner of paraphernalia. Everywhere they went was the same pungent smell of sandalwood incense. In Knightly’s grand salon Dec paused to admire a display of silver-bladed daggers and carved wooden stakes whose points had been rubbed with essence of garlic. ‘These are really for show,’ Knightly admitted. ‘Most of the real weaponry is in the armoury room.’

‘What does the holy water do?’ Dec asked, pointing at the labelled bottles of the stuff on a sideboard.

‘It dissolves them,’ Knightly said. ‘They just fizz away.’

‘Kind of like those aspirins you put in water?’

‘Exactly like that.’

‘Now, this here’s the bollocks, so it is,’ Dec said, picking up a huge antique pistol from a table and weighing it admiringly in his hand.

‘A Napoleonic infantry trooper’s flintlock sidearm,’ Knightly told him. ‘I like to keep it handy, just in case. Careful, it’s loaded. It fires a.75 calibre ball made of pure silver.’

‘That’ll do the job,’ Dec said, aiming the heavy pistol towards the window at a distant ship tracking across the horizon, imagining that it was full of vampires.

‘Only if you hit them right in the heart,’ Knightly said, ‘which requires a very exact aim. And you only get one shot, Declan. That’s why a true vampire hunter needs to be proficient with the full range of weaponry at his disposal.’

Dec replaced the gun on the table and peered at a small gilt-framed photo that hung over the fireplace. It showed an attractive, pleasantly plump woman with sandy hair and laughter on her face, sitting on a beach. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.