CHAPTER 15
“I’ll have that one,” Charlotte said to the girl in the pet shop.
“Cute, isn’t he?” the girl said.
“It will do.”
“Would you like a cage for him?”
“No thank you, just something to take it home in.”
The girl put the white guinea-pig into a plastic box with several air holes.
At sunset, Charlotte stood in a clearing in the woods near Molly’s home. In one hand she held a small, sharp knife; in the other she held the white guinea-pig by the scruff of its neck. A bottle of mead lay at her feet.
The oak, ash and yew trees around her had all but lost their leaves. Red and golden light shone through the trees from the west. The air was cool and still. Somewhere a dog barked.
She slit the guinea-pig’s throat. As the tiny creature thrashed to its death, she let the blood splash her face and body. Then she took a few steps to the north and began to walk in a circle which was marked by drops of blood. When the circle was complete she discarded the creature, returned to its centre and picked up the mead.
“Wights of this land, I offer you this blood and ask you to bear witness,” she said softly and clearly. ”I call upon The Lady, the Goddess Freya, Mistress of Odin, Queen of Battle, Empress of the Noble Dead. I drink to you, Lady, and honour you, and give you this offering.
“I thank you for our victory last night. May there be many more, and may many warriors be sent to you hall! To Freya!” she took a swig from the bottle. “Hail and was’ail!”
Then she poured the rest of the bottle onto the ground.
After taking a small bow, she strode out of the circle and wiped the blood off herself and her knife, then put a greatcoat on over her bloody dress.
She would have preferred to have used a real pig, but it would have been inconvenient.
As darkness fell over Calais, Lloyd left his hotel room.
On the torturous journey through France he had stolen money, clothes, food, blood and a few other things from those people who had been unfortunate enough to have crossed his path. He wore a pair of stout old boots, faded black jeans, a white shirt, a grey trench coat and a broad brimmed black hat. He was painfully aware that his new clothes were of terrible taste, but they at least fitted and his own had been reduced to rags. There was the additional bonus that no one who knew him would recognise him, especially with the ragged beard which he had grown.
A pair of earplugs were jammed in his ears, and there was a flick-knife in the inside pocket of his coat.
He was well rested after his first days sleep in a bed after far too many day of sleeping outside. He smiled as he walked towards the docks. Murder and the theft of a boat lay ahead.
He was practically a pirate.
His mood was only slightly spoiled when he walked past a newsagents and saw a head line which he translated to ‘MANHUNT’, looking closer at the newspaper, he was able to deduce that the police were hunting a serial killed after a string of murders, and that an informer had given them a name to chase. The name was Lloyd.
It was definitely time to leave.
When he reached the shore he avoided the main port and walked north along the coast, past the marina, and then down the estuary to where the small pleasure ships and fishing boats were harboured. He walked past several empty yachts until he found what he was looking for.
A small white boat with a sail, a petrol engine and a small cabin; where a young man was working the ropes, ready to moor for the night.
“Excuse me, fellow, do you have the time?”
The man replied in French, saying ‘hello’, and then something which Lloyd did not understand.
“Napoleon was a syphilitic dwarf!” Lloyd shouted.
Then he took advantage of the man’s confusion and leapt aboard the boat. The Frenchman dropped his rope and prepared to defend himself, but he was too late to prevent Lloyd from kicking him in the shin, then giving him a left hook to the face. The Frenchman hit out, but Lloyd blocked the blow with his left hand and drew his knife with the right. He stabbed the Frenchman in the kidneys, then covered his mouth with the left hand before he could cry out. The man struggled, until Lloyd slit his throat.
Lloyd dropped the body when it stopped moving, licked the blood from his hands and searched his body for keys. The he quickly untied the rope and rushed to the controls in the cabin.
Too many buttons.
He turned the key to start the engine, then pressed a button which seemed to do nothing. He pulled a lever which made the engine roar, but the boat did not move. The engine strained. The anchor was still down. He hammered three more buttons which made some lights flash. Then he tried a lever which started a rattling sound behind him, and the boat began to move.
He managed to steer the boat out of the estuary and past the dock, then pulled more levers and pressed more buttons until it went faster.
Suddenly he found himself in a shipping lane, where dozens of massive craft sailed towards him. Shocked, he turned the boat sharply north, barely avoiding collision, and into the open sea.
When the boat was a mile from shore he left the cabin and returned to the corpse. He sampled some more blood from the neck wound, decided he was tired of the taste of the French, and dragged the body overboard. Soon the sea spray would wash away the blood
He returned to the cabin, checked the boat was on course, and rummaged through the man’s picnic basket.
As he was giving serious thought to a prawn sandwich, the sea became choppy.
At that moment, James George Harry Hunter looked at his pocket watch.
As he suspected, it was time to kill the enemies of mankind.
“What have been doing?” Molly looked, unimpressed, at Charlotte’s blood stained dress.
“Honouring the Gods,” Charlotte said plainly. “Like a good northern lady ought to.”
Molly blushed. She knew how important these things were to her lover, and knew that her failure to attend the autumn equinox had not been forgotten.
“I always consecrate the solstice with you,” Molly said defensively.
“True. But that is not the same. Odin made the world,” and that settled the matter. “I have more mead, would you like some?”
“I have work soon…”
“I fail to see you point.”
Unlike Lloyd, James Hunter could read French was well as any man alive.
Whilst visiting France to assist a priest in a series of exorcisms, he had noticed a string of violent assaults in western France. Having carefully studied the articles, he had deduced that a vampire, or possibly a pair of vampires, was marauding through France. Hunter’s wide experience of occult and religious matters had left him with an open mind, and he had long considered the possibility of the existence of vampires.
This was just the opportunity he had been waiting for: an opportunity to test his theories and take action.
He had begun by following the trail of bodies, from Calais to Paris and then west again, gathering as much information as he could about the thing which had robbed so many of their lives and blood.
Every article he had read, every witness he had spoken to, ever crime scene which he passed through, convinced him further that his quarry was a vampire- a man like creature which drank the blood of the liking. At every step he quickened his pace, eager to face the monster.
There was a terrible storm. Lloyd regretted his prawn sandwiches.
“Damn you France! You shall not beat me!” he yelled.
Mist and cloud reduced visibility to about an inch. That was not a problem to a creature who relied mostly on scent and sound. The problem was the wind which tore at the sails and the waves which threw the boat around like a tennis ball.
He abandoned the cabin and cut the sail free with his knife. That steadied the boat a little.
Lloyd was cold and wet and tired. The wind had long ago torn his hat from his head, and it whipped his hair against his face.
He hammered buttons and levers until the boat went even faster, kept it pointed toward England, and hoped for the best.
John and Victoria lay together on his bed. The remains of their breakfast sat on a tray by the floor. The curtains were open, so they could see the moon and glittering stars.
“At times like this, I am glad to be that which I am,” she said, “we have all of the night to ourselves.”
“How did you first knew that you were one of us?” he asked her, suddenly curious to know everything about her.
“I have always remembered that. It was in 1822, and I was fifteen. My childhood had been hard, I did not like to be out in the daytime, and I found it hard to make friends with the other girls. Sometimes my grandfather used to sit up late at night with me and tell me stories about the war, but I do not remember anything else nice from that time… Then, the night after my fifteenth birthday, my older sister and her husband- they were so pale, but everyone was then, and she was so pretty and he was so handsome- came to me and told me that they were taking me out. They took me to the back room of a gentleman’s club and there were some of my sisters friends there, and some of them had blood on their lips… And there was a young man sat on a chair, his skin was tanned so he must have been a working man, and he was sedated, they must have given him opium or laudanum or something. They gestured to him, and I bit him. I don’t know why, really, it just seemed the thing to do. I bit him until he bled and I liked it. It seems monstrous now, but at the time it seemed so natural… Ever since then I have always know, during The War it took a while for me to accept it, but in this life I could not forget, even when I was a child... How was it for you, do you remember?”
“Yes,” he said, unsure if he could tell her things which he had shared with no one in that life time. Then he decided that he trusted her, and more than that. “It happened after Agincourt. I was badly wounded during the battle, I would have died if Sir Lloyd had not protected me….”
“Lloyd? Captain Lloyd? Is that why you let him take The Eagle?”
“Yes, and because he was my friend. Anyway, was very badly wounded, barely conscious all the way back to England. The monks and healers tried to heal me, but all they could do was stop me dying. Just lay in my bed whilst my wife took care of me. Then one night my wife and Lady Marion, Lloyd’s wife, came to me- I think they had always been vampyres- and they gave me a red liquid to drink. After that I healed fast, but could not face the sun again. Think that Lloyd changed too, soon after that.
“Lloyd and I met each other again in The Napoleonic Wars. We remembered each other then, and we hunted together.”
“That is a little sad, you did not have a choice.”
“Do any of us have a choice? I chose to live.”
She smiled and cuddled against his chest.
“Do you meet many people from the past?” he asked her.
“I don’t think so, I may have known Charlotte before, but I am unsure. What was Lloyd like?”
“Before Agincourt he was a great man. A fine swordsman, and the best hunter in England. He lost his eye in battle soon after we landed in France. He drank a lot after we got home, the eye bothered him, you see. He was still a great man, but he was not happy. In the Napoleonic Wars, he was a predator, and he drank far too much, but he was not a bad soldier. He does not drink alcohol anymore.”
“You still know him?”
“Yes, but you would not like to meet him.”
“That bad?”
“Preferred him when he was drunk.”
The storm had died down, but the sea was still choppy.
Lloyd was soaking wet and freezing. Salt stung his eyes.
Across the sea he saw an array of lights moving toward him, and at first he thought it was some huge ship come to crush him.
But it was not, he realised.
It was land.
It was England.
The steered the boat towards the lights, which were a small fishing village. When he was a quarter of a mile away, he turned left and sailed along the coast. The sun would be up before long, and it was too late to book a room for the night or go much further. And he had very little money, was in a dead man’s ship and looked like a drowned tramp.
He begun to form a plan as he sailed, heading closer to the coast and looking for an estuary.
Before long, one came into sight and he steered the boat down it. After a few minutes the village was behind him and there were only fields, trees and sleeping cattle beside the river.
After a few minutes he saw what he was looking for- an outlying farm house a few minutes walk from the river.
He shut down the boats engine and jumped into the freezing water. Gasping for breath and shivering madly, he half swam, half waded until he reached the river bank. Then he stood, caught his breath, shuck the worst of the water off his clothes and watched the boat drift out to sea. He hoped it would be a long time before anyone found it.
Then he walked towards the farm house. He was going to get what he needed, and someone was going to have a very unpleasant morning.
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