CHAPTER 6.
Lloyd ripped her dagger from the wall and ran down to his room. The door was opened and a quick glance told him that his suitcase, and with it his clothes, his passport and the valuables which he had stolen, were gone.
He ran down the next set of stairs and out of the hotel into the street. Looking around him, he saw no one.
She was gone.
At that moment, in England, Molly woke up.
She rolled over in her bed and her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Charlotte lay beside her. Flaxen hair plaited behind her back. Bronze shoulders and neck revealed above the sheets, chest gently heaving beneath them. A serene smile on her sleeping face.
Charlotte: Who had been Molly’s girlfriend for two years and friend for almost two hundred years.
Charlotte: The only vampyre with a tan that Molly had ever met, and the oldest vampyre she had ever known. A vampyre who had not drunk blood in over a life time, and whose soul belonged so utterly to the Heathen Gods that the wrath of God could not harm her. A lady who remembered when Britain was covered in forests filled with wolves and bears and wild boar, a Britain ruled by the Norsemen, a Britain where Odin was God.
Molly remembered the first time she had ever met her. She was dancing in John’s arms back when he was a Captain in Wellington’s army and her husband. John had returned in triumph from Waterloo and held a party in his country manor. Lloyd was drinking himself to death in a corner, John was in her arms and Charlotte was stood amongst a crowd of Officers and ladies, drinking blood from a crystal glass, illuminating the room with her radiant grace. When the dance was over she had been introduced and they had become the best of friends.
She remembered the first time she had met Charlotte in this world. She had been working behind the bar and Charlotte strode into the room. Appearing again in her life from nowhere and heading straight for her.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Charlotte had said.
Then Charlotte had leaned over the bar and they had kissed, and in that moment Molly knew that she had been waiting all her life for that kiss.
Molly ran a hand lovingly through Charlotte’s soft hair. Then, unable to restrain her self, nibbled gently on her neck, and delighted in the soft murmurs of pleasure which that caused.
Charlotte’s steely blue eyes opened and they kissed.
“Good evening darling,” Charlotte said, her voice soft and refined.
“Good evening Charlotte.”
As they enjoyed that joyful moment, Lloyd experienced a far from joyous moment in France.
He felt a terrible pain in his ears for a few seconds, like red hot scalpels stabbing through his ears in his brain.
A hasty look at his pocket watch confirmed his fears.
Somewhere on the edge of his hearing a bell tower had chimed the hour.
He had fallen further from grace with God. His plot of betrayal and murder had pushed him further into darkness. Now, like some demon, he would be harmed by the pure ringing of a bell.
He had heard of it happening before to vampyres who had fallen too far into debauchery. The great vampires of the past who had revelled in orgies of blood and killed thousands, but who could be slain by a little priest with a bell, a book and a candle. It would be Hell. Every city, town and village had bells which would ring every quarter of the hour, churches bells would ring for ages before services, bells in shops, and the last orders in pubs: all would pain him.
Would silver burn him now? Would the sight of the cross blind him?
He had to get out of Paris. He needed get out of France. He wanted to go home. He needed a passport. There was no home to go to, not in a town full of bells. He had to be away from everyone, everything.
Trapped in France- the land of his enemies- and everything hurt- and the girl!
He could not think. He panicked.
He ran blindly down the street.
Far away the bells of Notre Dame rang out for evening service.
John Harvey sat alone in the park, waiting for Molly and Charlotte. They were five minutes late, they were usually late, but he did not mind.
He sat under an oak tree facing a small obelisk surrounded by flower beds. There were firs and elms scattered around the meadow, and dry leaves on the ground. A group of teenagers sat on a bench at the far end of the park, quietly enjoying their drugs.
John remembered when the park had first been opened; how much smaller the trees had been, and how immaculate the flower beds were, and how children would never have come there at night. There had been a bandstand once, and peacocks had roamed freely. And he remembered when the park was all woodland with a rich canopy of trees and wildflowers growing amongst boulders. But he did not remember how the park had looked in the daylight.
His mind drifted.
He thought about Lloyd and Molly and Alice.
He remembered the times over the centuries when he and Lloyd had served their country together, when Lloyd was not such a bad man, and always drunk and jolly. He remembered when they had fought in France for King George, and long before when they had fought for ‘Harry, England and Saint George’. He remembered Lloyd when he was still human, with a wife and a child and a missing eye to prove his valour, and he wondered how his old friend was doing.
He remembered when Molly was his wife and Charlotte was her friend, and how he had always suspected that she loved her, but it was fine because she loved him too. He remembered how beautiful she had been on her wedding night, and how much more beautiful she seemed when he returned to her from Waterloo after being away too long and being so close to death. He was glad that he knew her still.
There were so many whom had not seen again. The men who had served under him in the wars; the girls from the French taverns from before he had met Molly; and Wellington. He missed Wellington, but was proud to have known him once.
He thought of how Charlotte, who worked as an archaeologist and still worshiped Heathen Gods, managed to live in the past, but also live happily in the present. He wondered how it most be for Charlotte; to have lived so many more times, to remember so much more; to have known and loved and lost so many more people…
He was brought back to the present when Charlotte and Molly appeared beside him. He stood and hugged them both, then they sat on the grass together.
“A fine night,” Charlotte said as she opened her bag and took out a bottle of mead and three glasses.
“Indeed, it is,” John said. “How are you ladies doing?”
“Good,” Molly replied.
“Very well, but tired,” Charlotte said as she poured the mead. “How are you?”
“Well. How was your dig?”
“Excellent. Have been down in Norfolk, working on a ruined abbey. Was delightful. There are few finer sights than a ruined abbey.”
“Did you find anything interesting?” he asked.
“Just the usual. Sheep bones, bits of pot, new foundation stones.”
“No Saxon gold?”
“No Saxon gold.”
“Never any Saxon gold,” Molly said wistfully as she lit a cigarette..
“Not for a very long time,” said Charlotte. “Is Lloyd not joining us?”
“No, he is in France,” he said.
“Best place for him,” Molly said.
They finished their glasses, then Molly produced a small glass bottle of red liquid and took a swig, then offered it to John.
“Dave?” John asked.
Molly grinned and nodded.
“No thanks.”
“Given up?” Charlotte asked him.
“No, not really. Just don’t like the taste of Dave.”
“He’s thirsting after his strange-email-girl,” Molly said. “No one else will do.”
“Am not thirsting after her,” he said defensively.
“Who is this?” Charlotte asked.
“A girl who is interested in vampyres. She emails me questions, and some times I answer.”
“He is obsessed,” said Molly
“Am curious,” he replied.
“Do not tell her too much,” Charlotte said. “We cannot ever really trust them.”
They were used to her referring to non vampyres a little bitterly as ‘them’. They knew that she remembered the days of burning torches and stakes and witch hunts far too well, and knew better than to comment.
“You should find yourself a nice vampyre girl,” Charlotte continued, pouring another two glasses of mead. “Until then, drink this.”
They sat and talked for another hour, then went their separate ways. Charlotte and Molly to a lover’s bed, and John to his home.
John walked the long path behind the park which led to his street. High stone walls stood on both sides of a pebbled track, and oaks and holly grew behind them. At the far end of the path he saw two young men, one short and stocky, the other very tall.
As they drew closer he saw that both were wearing tracksuits with baseball caps under hoods. The smaller one was staggering slightly as he walked. They walked purposefully towards him, side by side, blocking the path.
They stopped a yard ahead of him.
“Fuckin’ goth!” the small one shouted.
John stopped a foot in front of them. It was clear that they did not intend to let him pass. He stared at them and they snarled back.
“Give us your wallet, dickhead!” the small one demanded.
“Go home lads,” John replied calmly.
“Give us your fuckin’ wallet or we’ll beat shit out o’ you,” the little one said.
“Go home,” John said again.
“Don’t mess with us goth, my mate’s joining the Marines.”
“Don’t mess with me,” John was loosing his patients. “I’ve got two lifetimes experience of military service.”
“Fuck you,” the little one snarled, reaching into his pocket.
John identified the real threat and punched the tall man in the jaw; in just such a way that sent him sprawling before knocking him out cold.
The little man had drawn his pen knife.
John hit his wrist, sending the knife flying. Then he grabbed the man, with one hand on his shoulder and one on his head, and pulled his head sideways to expose his neck.
He bit into the man’s neck, but then, just before he broke the skin, he restrained himself and cast the man aside in disgust.
Leaving them on the ground, one lying unconscious and the other a shacking, gibbering wreck, he walked home.
A pen knife! He remembered when robbers had flintlocks and sabres.
He needed another drink.
Charlotte lay naked on the bed. A dozen candles burnt around the room. She waited for Molly.
For a moment she remembered another night of naked flesh and fire long ago. She and her sisters danced around a huge fire, they were full of mead and covered in boar’s blood and they danced to invoke Freya. They danced to summon the Goddess of love and war and poetry and death to aid them against the threat of the false God of the south.
That memory was quickly dispelled when Molly came into the room.
Molly, pale as the moon in the candle light, wearing stockings and a corset and nothing else.
“I hope the sun never rises,” Charlotte said.
The room was dark and the radio played. The music was irrelevant.
John sat at home, drinking the last of the wine from the bottle.
Suddenly he remembered another night, from many years ago.
Another night, on a different narrow path, under a different moon
He and Lloyd stood over the corpses of two men who looked a lot like those who he had fought on the path. Or at least they had done, when they still had faces.
A flintlock pistol smoked in Lloyd’s hand.
“We can’t keep doing this forever,” John had said.
“We have forever,” Lloyd had replied. “We can do what we want.”
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