After the two came to a painful thud on the ground, Amanda threw the large torn shred of flooring to one side, rocketed up to her feet and discovered what it was that had caused the floor to appear as if it were uneven: a trapdoor that had been partly jammed open.
“What are you doing?” cried Mary, who had still not managed to get herself off of the floor. “What the hell are you doing?”
With an effort to avoid Mary’s efforts to grab at her ankles and the folds of linoleum strewn about the floor, Amanda jumped over to the other side of the room to open the trapdoor. She had just managed to throw open the panel - something which released a foul stench into the air - when once again, Mary seized Amanda from behind to prevent her from finding out what was hidden in the formally concealed space beneath them. The woman dug her long nails into Amanda’s flesh with such force that a couple cracked. Amanda did her best to free herself by trying to force both herself and Mary to the floor, but all she succeeded in doing was to throw the both of them back against a wall.
Mary let out a gasp of breath as the two thudded against the wall, but she did not release her tight grip on Amanda. Amanda continued to try to wrestle Mary’s arms away from her chest, but the older vampire was just too strong and she had no intention of letting go.
“Release me!” shouted Amanda. “What are you hiding down there?”
“No, no!” responded Mary shrilly. “You can never know!”
Amanda frantically shook her body from side to side, forcing Mary to drag the both of them to the ground once more. This time, however, after they had hit the floor, Mary managed to maintain her hold on Amanda. Indeed, not only did she keep her grip, she squeezed tighter.
“Let go of me?” choked out Amanda.
“I might not be able to kill you,” whispered Mary into Amanda’s ear, “but maybe I can still knock you out. I’m not going to those damned tunnels!”
The sound of creaking wood made the two women freeze. They both looked up to see the hairless, sickly-pale, round head of a man emerge from the opening in the floor.
“No, Peter,” gasped Mary.
After reaching the top of the steps, the man fixed his staring grey eyes on Amanda. With a steady determined step, he came towards her.
***
After hearing the distant, repeated cries of Mary for the school investigator to remove herself from the bathroom, Packard ended the call. All in all, he was very pleased with how things had unfolded. It would have been nice, he considered, to have been able to witness the events that were then taking place over in Balfour Lane, but he would just have to make do with the knowledge that things had been set in motion.
The man sat himself down in one of his green leather armchairs and wondered if it would finally be possible to get rid of the troublesome residents of Balfour Lane. He had long been aware of what Mary had kept in her basement and was willing to tolerate the presence of what she had hidden down there, but only as long as she managed to keep it within the confines of the household: it did not do to have a vampire, who was unknown to the school, wandering around the fields of Radcliff, especially one that was prone to the occasional public attack on the living. He was willing to accept that one attack that drew attention from the locals and the school could be overlooked – anyone could make a mistake – but two such indiscretions were beyond toleration.
He could not understand, either, how Mary had found herself in such a difficult situation as to not be able to provide blood for her man. As he had informed her only a few days before, he could have easily supplied her with what she needed at no monetary cost; she would have been in his debt, of course, but that was only natural. Furthermore, he did not understand why she had not just gone about the usual practice of any reasonable vampire and sourced what she needed from a neighbouring town or region herself, so as to avoid the suspicion of the authorities, both living and dead. As long as someone went about things in an organised way and constructed the adequate facilities – as Mary seemed to have the basics for in the form of her basement – then an individual could not only maintain a source for quite some time, but also avoid the messy business of creating a new member of the vampire community through performing the barbaric act of directly drawing blood from a source.
Packard’s phone buzzed on the table beside him, distracting him from his thoughts.
“He’s out,” read the message.
***
The man laid his hands on Mary’s own.
“Let go, Mary,” he said softly. “I’ve had enough of all of this.”
Mary could not believe that he asked this of her. After all they had been through, she wondered how he could now be so weak and short-sighted. Nevertheless, her grip on Amanda loosened, but for the time being, the school investigator did not try to get away as she had been petrified by the appearance of the man; she was in no state to escape.
“What do you mean, Peter?” she replied. “We can’t give up. There’s still got to be a way out of all this.”
“I don’t care anymore. I’m tired of hiding down there in that hole. I’m tired of being afraid of myself; afraid of what I might do if I get out again.”
Peter’s words swept the spirit to fight out of the already
