The vestry door was bolted from the outside. Lucy Maxwell and the Drinkwaters were desperately trying to force it open, but even as the other choir members joined them, they knew the door wouldn’t give. Little Sam howled as his mother clutched him to her. Brian Drinkwater was looking around him in panic for some other way out.
But there wasn’t one. They were all trapped in here with the madman.
Charlie Fitch parked his van outside the little church. As he walked briskly down the stone path leading to the door, his mind was still full of his hospital visit to his mother earlier that evening. Thank God she was okay and would be home again soon.
Then Charlie heard the sounds that froze the blood inside his veins. It wasn’t the singing of his friends in the choir he could hear from inside the church, nor the playing of the organ. They were screaming.
Screaming in horror and terror. In agony.
He rattled the door handle. The door was locked. He scrambled up the mossy bank behind him so he could peer in through the leaded panes of the stained-glass window.
What he saw inside was a sight that would remain with him until his dying day. The church floor littered with corpses and severed body parts. Blood spattered across the altar, on the pews, on everything.
In the middle of the nightmare stood a man in a long coat. Blood was spattered across his face, his shaven head, and the blade of the sword he was swinging wildly at the fleeing, screeching figure of Lucy Maxwell. It was surreal. Charlie watched as the girl’s head was separated from her shoulders by the gore-streaked blade. Then the madman turned to little Sam Drinkwater, who was kneeling by the bloody bodies of his parents, too frightened to scream.
It wasn’t until he witnessed what the man did to the boy that Charlie was able to break out of his trance of horror and run. He ran until his heart was about to burst, fell to his knees and ripped his phone out of his pocket.
Nineteen minutes later, the police armed response unit broke in the church door and burst onto the scene of the devastation. The first man inside nearly dropped his weapon when he took in the carnage in front of him.
Nothing remained of the Reverend Keith Perry or his choir members. Nothing except the horrific gobbets of diced human flesh that were scattered across the entire inside of the church.
The killer was still there. He stood calmly at the altar with his back to the door, stripped naked, bloodied from head to foot. His sword lay across the altar in front of him, gore still dripping from its blade. In his powerful hands he held a blood-filled chalice over his head.
The squad leader yelled ‘Armed police! Step away from the weapon!’. The man ignored the command and the guns that were aimed at his back. Murmuring softly to himself in a language the officers had never heard before, he slowly turned his face upwards and tipped the bloody contents of the chalice over his head, drinking and slurping greedily.
‘
Not until the man at the altar turned round to face him. And said: ‘I am a vampire.’
About the Author
Scott Mariani grew up in the historic town of St Andrews, Scotland and now lives in the wilds of Wales.
By the same author
BEN HOPE SERIES
VAMPIRE FEDERATION SERIES
