THUD
.
She looked back at the windows. They were her only chance; she had to get out or he was going to kill her. She quickly undid the locks on the first window and heaved.
Damn
! It was stuck fast. She tried the other and it gave a little, enough to get her fingers under it.
‘Nowhere to run, bitch!’ yelled Marcus through the door. ‘I’m going to have fun with you!’
She heaved with all her might and -
thank God
- it opened a little more. She heaved again and the gap looked just big enough. It had to be.
THUD
.
She forced her bare shoulders through, the decades of layers of paint cutting into her skin.
CRASH
.
She was almost through - until his hand closed around her ankle. He pulled hard, but he was too late. She kicked out, hit something, and then she was pitching forwards, down, down into the black, twisting, turning.
God
,
I’m going to break my neck
. And then
THUD
! Her own thud, this time. April had landed on something soft, yielding, wet and warm. And then she was flailing around, terrified, disorientated.
Am I drowning?
she thought. And then she realised. Her fall had been cushioned by the plastic cover of the hot tub and her lower body had sunk into the water. She scrabbled around and finally gripped the side of the tub, rolling over onto the floor, her wet dress clinging to her.
‘Bitch! You bitch!’ screamed Marcus in frustration. Surely he wasn’t going to follow her.
SLAM-PLASH
.
Wrong. April felt the spray from the hot tub as Marcus landed in it feet first.
My God, he’s crazy
! She scrambled to her feet - only one shoe, kicking it off, tearing up the seam of her dress so she could move.
Mum’II kill me, that cost a fortune,
she thought madly as she looked around.
Which way
? She couldn’t run towards the house because Marcus could easily cut her off in that direction, so she vaulted over the balustrade and ran across the sloping lawn, angling towards the marquee, feeling the snow on her bare feet, burning with cold.
‘Gabriel!’ she screamed. ‘Anyone! HELP ME!’
‘Too late,’ hissed Marcus. He had moved so fast, cutting her off, unimpeded by dress and bare feet. For a moment, his face was caught in the light from the house: his lips were pulled back in a snarl, his eyes narrow and black, his nose upturned; he looked the way Gabriel had, that night by the Thames.
So you can see me
as
others do
, that’s what he had said.
So you can see me as I really am.
April didn’t have time to think, she was running for her life. She swung around and headed the only way she could - towards the graveyard wall. Without stopping to think or break stride she leapt for the wall, her bare toes digging into the bricks, skin tearing painfully, her nails splintering, all the time expecting to feel his hands grab her. And again she was falling, rolling over and over, this time landing in snow-bent bushes, the branches jamming into her thighs, her shoulders, her chest, her torn knee screaming with fresh pain. Desperately, she pulled herself free, not feeling the wounds now, totally focused on getting away. She ran forward blindly, her palms held out in front of her, thumping into gravestones and trees, their angles catching her knees, their roots pulling at her ankles. She ran and ran, until finally she ran straight into the side of a tall white monument, the stone slamming into the side of her head, dazing her and sending her careering sideways into a snow-filled ditch. She was winded, dizzy, gasping for breath, but instinct told her to stop, to play dead. To hold her breath like a mouse hiding in his house, sang her mind crazily. She listened, straining her ears for sounds of her pursuer, but there was nothing. Had she lost him? Had he failed to get over the wall? Had someone seen or heard them fall into the hot tub?
No.
‘I can hear you,’ sang Marcus, terrifyingly close. ‘I can hear your little rabbit heart beating.’
Don’t call
me rabbit, thought April angrily. Only
my
dad
calls
me rabbit.
He was close, just to her left, but she was shielded by two splintered gravestones, fallen, broken fragments of them cutting into her back.
‘I’m going to find you, you do know that, don’t you?’ called Marcus. ‘And when I find you, Marcus is going to have all the time he wants with you, isn’t he? No one will hear you scream out here.’
She could hear his footsteps crunching on leaves. He’s going
away,
she thought, hope rising ...
‘And when I’m finished with you, I’m going to do to you what I did to those bleeders in Covent Garden,’ he said, a note of glee in his voice.
April almost squeaked in surprise.
‘Oh yes, I tore their throats wide open, just where your boyfriend left them. You never knew it was me, did you? I was watching you, tracking you, waiting for my moment. But Gabriel Swift got in the way. He’s always getting in the way.’
April wanted to scurry away, she wanted to run. But instinctively she knew her only chance was to stay as still as she could, hold her breath, hope that he wouldn’t find her, hope he couldn’t hear her shivering bones.
Marcus is a vampire
,
Marcus is a vampire
... she thought. He must be the rogue vampire Gabriel was talking about, the out-of-control killer, mastered by his urges, unable to stop.
A modern-day Jack the Ripper
, added her dangerously overstretched mind.
‘But no one’s going to get in the way any more, are they? No, because after I’ve dealt with you, next on my list is Caro Jackson, then your little friend Fiona, and then that meddling Gabriel Swift will be no problem at all.’
April wanted to scream, to lunge at him, to stop him before he hurt anyone else she loved, but all she could do was lie there, turn herself to stone. She could hear his footsteps, just on the other side of the graves, crunching in the snow.
‘Can’t you forgive me, April?’ he whispered. ‘I was only following orders, after all. Isabelle was getting too close, you see, he didn’t like her asking so many questions. And your dad? Well, that was inevitable, wasn’t it?’
Marcus, Marcus killed my fizther!
She could see him moving to her left now, creeping forwards, his arms outstretched, his silhouette like a horrible twisted tree come to life.
‘Alix Graves, well, that was something different. Alix couldn’t make up his mind. He wanted to join us, told us he could persuade all his little teenage fans that eternal life was better than living with Mum and Dad. But then Alix got cold feet. And now he’s cold all over, isn’t he?’
Marcus had stopped. Only his head was moving, slowly turning from side to side.
‘But you know how I’m going to catch you?’ he said.
She held her breath. Waited. Waited. And then she screamed. Because in one terrible rushing noise he was on her, his sharp fingers gripping her neck, his breath on her cheek. His crazy, crazy eyes staring right down into hers.
‘Because I can
smell
you,’ he growled, and his nose turned upwards, his grin stretched wide, his teeth bared. As his long fingers tightened around her throat she flailed with her arms and legs, trying to get a grip on something, tearing his shirt, nails sinking into his bare chest.
‘Don’t struggle, little rabbit,’ he said. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world.’ He squeezed tighter and tighter and April could feel herself getting weaker. She reached out desperately with her fingers, the tips just touching something rough. She scrabbled, trying to get hold of it, of anything, before her breath finally gave out. With one last buck of her chest, she forced out a groan. ‘Grrun ... Arllee ... Haaart.’
‘What’s that? Did you speak?’ He chuckled nastily.
‘GRRuN ... arllHee ... Hubt,’ she tried again, her head swimming.
Marcus loosened his grip just slightly, curious as to what his prey was trying to communicate.
‘What?’ he whispered into her ear, his mouth opening, slowly licking her neck with his cold tongue.
‘Don’t ... call me ... rabbit!’ she snarled and swung the rock in her hand with all her might. It caught him square on the temple, spraying blood and goo up her arm. Howling, he tried to roll off her, but she clung on, using his momentum to swing over on top of him. Straddling him, she raised the jagged rock again and smashed it down into his eye, feeling a twisted joy as he screamed, then brought it down again, smashing his mouth open, teeth pink and broken. ‘Don’t call me rabbit!’ she screamed, crashing the stone into his face again and again. ‘Only my dad can call me that,’ she shouted, the rock rising and falling in a frenzy. ‘And he’s DEAD! Because you killed him, you BASTARD!’
Finally she could lift it no more and she collapsed on top of Marcus, her shoulders heaving with the exertion, her lungs choked with sobs, her throat raw from screaming and from Marcus’s death-grip. She crawled away through the snow, pulling herself up on a gravestone.
Is this it? she thought. Is this what being a Fury is? Beating out someone’s brains in a cemetery at midnight?
‘Is this your prophecy?’ she sobbed out loud. ‘Is this my future?’
‘What prophecy?’ said a rough voice, and then with a great roar, she was flying through the air, her back slamming against the monument with a crunch.
He’s still alive,
she thought with an almost amused detachment.
How can he be alive
?
‘What prophecy?’ Marcus yelled down into her face, spittle and blood flying from his shattered teeth. He lifted her again and threw her into the air as if she was a broken toy, and then there was sudden crunching, piercing pain as she landed on top of a fallen stone cross. Agony lanced through her side as he lifted her again and slammed her back down. Her head lolled around and she saw that he had dropped her on top of a flat coffin-shaped tomb. She couldn’t move her right arm, could see it sticking out at a crazy angle, and she could taste the sharp metallic tang of fresh blood in her mouth.
Again he gripped her throat and she felt more pain, a terrible dark, sapping pain in her chest.
‘Tell me about the prophecy, April Dunne,’ he said softly, stroking her face. ‘Tell me everything you know before I make you beg for death.’ He wrenched her arm and she screamed, the white-hot agony filling her mind. ‘How do you know about us? Was it your dear dead daddy? Who told you?’
This time he didn’t give her chance to speak, instead squeezing his grip tighter. His voice was getting fainter, more distant. The cold from the tomb seemed to be seeping into her body, pulling her down into its embrace.
‘Whoever it was, perhaps you’ll know we can recover from wounds,’ he was saying in an almost conversational tone, sounding as if he was walking away down a tunnel. ‘And you’ll know we gain strength from your blood, so your death won’t be in vain ...’
Then it was as if a tornado had rushed into the cemetery. April heard a gurgling scream, like someone drowning in treacle, then she was bathed in white. She could see a kind face above her - was it Gabriel? - and the cold and the pain faded. She would have been happy to stay here and just sleep on this nice warm rock, let the black duvet wrapping itself around her swallow her for ever. And then it changed again and she was filled up, and up and up, like that man she’d seen at the circus who blew up a hot water bottle until it burst. And suddenly the pain came rushing back into her arm and her side and her head.
‘No,’ she tried to say, tried to stop him. ‘You mustn’t!’
But Gabriel was smiling down at her, bringing his lips to hers, kissing her so tenderly, so softly, so full of love. ‘I’ve been waiting so long for this,’ he whispered. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in this world without you.’
And, tears running down her face, she lifted her chin to join him in the kiss, feeling the warmth of his skin, wanting to pull him closer and closer, at once horrified at what he was doing, and so full of happiness that she might melt. She opened her eyes again and she could see fluffy white snowflakes falling towards them, landing on her cheeks and eyelids as his warm lips brushed against her ear and he whispered, ‘I love you, April Dunne.’ As if in slow motion she gasped, kissed, laughed, suspended in a perfect moment of peace and wonder and joy, then suddenly Gabriel was gone and the rest of the world was sucked in, with noise and movement and lights. Another face was there - it was Mr Osbourne, Davina’s dad, the one who wasn’t a vampire - and he seemed angry and he was shouting orders and pointing and talking into a phone. Then she turned her head and looked down at her arm. And then she was screaming again. The world was snow and blood and broken bone, and everything hurt. And she had killed Gabriel Swift, the boy who said he loved her.