Suddenly Honest Tom, a figure who'd struck fear into Darwin as a boy, seemed as small and frail as a mouse.
"I don't know," he said weakly.
"I don't know anything."
"It's alright Tom, we’ll get you out of here."
Darwin looked at Cassidy
"He mentioned tentacles," she said quietly out of the corner of her mouth.
"You don't think..."
"I dunno," Darwin replied.
Cassidy shrugged.
"Hey don't expect me to have any answers.
You're the brains of the outfit."
Darwin afforded her a quick smile before returning to the thoughts of what to do next.
He was now more determined than ever to find out what the notebook said, but if there was some force out there wiping out vampires...
"Tom," he said thinking aloud.
"This thing, the one that attacked you... could it have come through the gateway?"
Tom shook his head.
"It wasn’t like any demon I've ever seen.
This was a creature of flesh and blood, it could never survive in hell."
"But if this was a real..." Cassidy made claws with her hands and made a growling sound, "...creature, where did it come from?"
Darwin shook his head.
His whole world had been turned upside down.
He looked around him, trying to come up with some plan, and there it was, staring him in the face.
A painting on the wall.
"Naya Vestu," he whispered to himself
"Naya what?" Cassidy asked trying to take in the painting which showed a group of elves and dwarves locked in bloody battle, with vampires in the centre seemingly attacking both sides.
"It's one of our most popular stories."
Darwin walked over.
"Back when the vampires lived in Venefasia, in the Naya Valley, there was a war."
Cassidy pointed to the elves and dwarves in the pictures.
"I'm guessing you mean these guys?"
Darwin nodded.
"The war cut off supply routes, and our people started to starve.
So they made a bold, some say suicidal decision to make a run for a gateway to the Realm of Men.
There was a problem though.
The gateway was over two hundred miles away, across mountains and on the other side of the battle lines."
"I'm guessing you couldn't travel during the day."
"Right.
And there were few places to take shelter.
Anyways, the Naya Vestu tells of their flight, of the night they fought through both the front lines of the elves and dwarves, left forty thousand of them dead."
"Forty thousand?"
"The story is a tragedy really.
Over two thousand set off from that shady valley.
Out of over two thousand that originally set off, only two hundred and thirty three made it through the gateway, the rest either killed in the battle or too slow to make it to the caves that acted as sanctuary before the sun came up."
He stood there looking at the painting.
He'd seen it thousands of times but never up close.
Those faces of his people, the ones he always thought looked angry and powerful from afar took on an air of desperation up close.
Flee, or die, he thought.
That was the only choice they had back then, and it was the only choice he had right now.
"We need to do the same," said Darwin.
Both Cassidy and Honest Tom looked at Darwin curiously.
"If these creatures are killing vampires, then we need to get the survivors somewhere they can't find us."
He pointed at the painting.
"The Realm of Magic?" Honest Tom queried.
"That won't be easy.
The wizards now guard the portals."
Darwin nodded.
"Never said it would be easy, but what other choice do we have?
Besides the wizards don't control all the portals."
"Round here they do." Honest Tom replied.
"And where would you go, if you got through?"
Darwin pointed at the shadowed valley in the background painting.
"The Naya Valley."
Honest Tom laughed.
"Back to the place we tried to escape from?"
"Why not, it supported our people for thousands of years before the war.
It's in permanent shade."
Honest Tom thought about this for a moment, stroking his chin as he thought about it.
"Look, I can go out in the day.
We wouldn't be totally defenceless."
"What do you think, sireling?"
Honest Tom asked Cassidy.
"Oh, I don't count," Cassidy said.
"I'm not a vampire."
A look of concern flashed across Honest Tom's face.
He sniffed.
"But you're not totally human either?"
"Angel," Cassidy said, shrugging her shoulders.
"Sorry."
Honest Tom snarled, turned grabbed Darwin and threw him against the wall.
The sword in Darwin's hand clanged to the floor.
"What are you doing bringing someone like her in here," he spat, "desecrating the final resting place of your lord and king."
'Relax," said Darwin trying to struggle out of Honest Tom's grip.
"She's Fallen.
Besides with the protective spell gone, half of Heaven could come walking in here if they wanted."
"How do you know she didn't do this?
This could be a plot by her people?"
Doubt entered Darwin's mind.
He trusted Cassidy implicitly to the point that he forgot their respective races were at war.
What if she was trying to convert him?
What if she was behind these attacks?
No, he flushed the thoughts out of his head.
"If it was," he spat back, "we'd already be dead."
This seemed to shock Honest Tom, who let go of Darwin.
"It's not the end, Tom.
We'll get to the Naya Valley and make a new start."
Tom looked back at him, his eyes glistening with the tears he was holding back.
"Your plan is crazy.
It'll never work.
Better we scatter, disappear into the shadows."
"No!
We have to stick together, gather up all the survivors.
You know London better than me, where's a good place to meet?
Somewhere Metzger wouldn't know about, couldn't tell those creatures about."
Tom stared off into the distance thinking, before snapping his head back to Darwin.
"There's the old disused factory up near Walthamstow"
Darwin shook his head.
"I don't know it."
"It's perfect.
Loads of disused buildings.
It's used by a lot of the younger vampires as a place to drag back their prey."
"OK," said Darwin wondering how he'd never known about this place. "So who do we know is still alive?"
"It'll just be those who go off on their own:
Brian and Julie, Monk, the Patel twins, Dieter, probably D'Toeni."
Darwin didn't know all of those names.
How out of touch he felt.
Here he was trying to help rescue a people who had never liked him, and people who he'd never even heard of.
He'd never felt so much an outsider as he did now.
But this also represented an opportunity, a fresh start.
If he could do his bit to help, maybe they'd accept him.
There were other questions, of course.
What did that dead man in the back alley have to do with all this?
The tentacle had killed him, not tried to attack Darwin.
He needed to find out what that notebook said, and he needed to do it without Honest Tom finding out about it.
He couldn't be sure it was connected but neither could he be sure it wasn’t.
"Right," he said, walking to Metzger's desk, rummaging around in the drawers.
He removed a pen and paper and handed it to Honest Tom.
"Draw us a map to this place."
"Why?" asked Tom.
There was fear in his voice, like a child that didn't want to be left alone.
"Where are you going?"
Darwin looked at Cassidy and then back to Tom.
"Urm," he started, thinking on his feet.
"We're going to get the transportation to get us from there to a gateway."
"They'll never let us through," Tom said, but to Darwin's relief he was drawing the map.
"Let me worry about that,” he said.
And half of him wasn't bluffing either.
As someone who could go out in daylight, he was the best person to source and deal with transport.
"How long do you think it'll take for you to try and make contact with the survivors and get them there?"
“I don’t even know how to get in touch with most of them,” Tom exclaimed.
Darwin was losing patience.
“Those that you can get in touch with, Tom.
How long?”
"A couple of days?" Honest Tom replied with a distinct lack of conviction.
Good that gave Darwin some time.
"OK.
Look we'd best both get out of here in case they come back."
Honest Tom scoffed.
"And how am I supposed to do that?
It's daylight out there."
"Take the sewers," he said.
"You should be able to get a couple of miles away at least."
"And you know this how, exactly?"
Darwin winked at the vampire as he bent down and picked up Metzger’s ornamental sword from the floor.
"How do you think I ever escaped this place?"
"Here," Darwin said, handing it to Tom.
"Take this.
It's not much of a sword but if you clobber someone round the head with it, they're not going to wake up in a hurry."
Honest Tom eyed the weapon suspiciously.
"You know people won't trust you, Darwin," he said.
Darwin felt a little taken aback by this.
Couldn't Tom see he was trying to help?
Or maybe he could.
He'd never liked Darwin though, had he?
"Well," he said.
"I'm all they've got, so they better well start."
CHAPTER TWELVE - X Marks The Spot
Maureen dried her eyes and blew her nose.
She sighed and lent against the oak door.
What was she going to do?
She'd never felt so lost or alone.
She shuffled upstairs, her worries heavy on her shoulders, her anger unabated.
You have a decision she told herself.
You can either just let them walk all over you, or do something about it.
What was the worst they could do anyway?
They were already going to take her home away from her; the Inquisitor all but said so.
She'd never been a quitter so why start now?
No, she owed it to Ernest to at least try and uncover what was really going on.
She sighed to herself.
Pipe dreams and fancy.
"I reckon that trip into Venefasia did something odd to your head, Maureen Summerglass," she said.
"Gave you delusions of grandeur."
One of the cats looked up at her.
"Yes," she told it, "your mother has started going a bit loopy.
Must be all that mana in the air."
How bizarre, she thought.
She'd dreamt of visiting Venefasia since she was a little girl, but had to make do with just seeing it nearly every day through a door.
And then the one day she gets chance to step through, it's the worst day of her life.
Any other day, they would have had to drag her back home, physically push her back into her own realm.
But yesterday, she couldn't wait to leave Rofen's office and get back to her house.
For what, she still didn't know.
"Perhaps the Friary is doing me a favour," she told the cat.
"Most people would have been retired twenty years by now."
She entered the living room, deciding she would light a fire before brewing herself a cup-of-soup.
She walked over to the fireplace and the armchair that had been set up in front of it.
It was there, poking out from underneath the side of the chair, that she noticed a folder.
She picked it up and looked through it.
It was Ernest's file, it must have fallen under the chair when the Inquisitor’s briefcase sprung open.
She flicked through the pages, hoping to find some fresh insight into the mystery of Ernest's death, but her instinct had been right.
From the papers alone, it would appear as if the Inquisitor had been telling her what he believed to be the truth.
Rage boiled up again inside her.
Someone must be covering it up, and whoever it was must be pretty high up.
Her suspicions immediately fell on Rofen.
She had no proof of course, but she'd always been pretty sharp, even now at her age.
She flicked through the papers again.
Real birth certificates, a fake one listing his place of birth as Bradford upon Avon.
Then there were all manners of fake utility bills and bank statements, all listing Maureen's house as his place of residence, but under all this, she found a map of a city she did not recognise.
It was only after close consideration that she realised it must be New Salisbury.
Marked on there with a big red X was what Maureen presumed to be Ernest's house.