Whitby Vampyrrhic (28 page)

Tick . . . Tock.

Sally slammed her fist on to the table. A voice in the back of her head told her that this wasn't logical. Sunset is entirely natural. Yet she hated the setting of the sun. She cast enraged glances at that blood-red ball. She rubbed the sore wound on her wrist. And she longed for nothing more than to grab hold of what remained of the daylight. She would keep her grip on the beams of radiance. They wouldn't slip from her fingers. They wouldn't leave her to the darkness.

Just half the sun remained. A ruddy dome sitting on the hilltop.
The light's leaving you, Sally, hang on to it – don't let it run away. You need the light.

‘Come on,' she hissed at the sun. ‘You can stay for longer. Don't leave us. I don't want it to be night.' She repeated the last sentence. This time, not a hiss, but a full-blooded yell.
‘I don't want it to be night!'

Sally Wainwright pelted through the dining room to the office. Alec sat at the desk, phone in one hand, he dialled with the other.

‘
Alec!
' she yelled with such ferocity that he almost dropped the handset. ‘Alec. Come and see it. Hurry! It's starting to go!'

‘Sally? What's wrong?' Startled, he replaced the handset. ‘Sally?'

But she'd raced out of the office into reception. Instinct told her not to venture too near to the counter (because
he's
under there). She shouted in the direction of the open basement door, ‘Come and see it! Eleanor! Beth! Come and see what's happening . . .'

Panicked, struggling to draw air into her lungs, she ran wildly back into the dining room. Light the colour of blood filled it. All that remained of the sun, a bitten sliver of crimson.

Alec, Eleanor and Beth rushed through the doorway.

‘Sally?' Beth called. ‘What's happening?'

‘You can see it for yourselves?' Sally pointed at the tiny nugget of light on the distant hilltop. ‘It's going . . . the sun's leaving us.' A sound erupted from her throat. No one could tell whether it was a peal of fraught laughter, or a yell of terror. ‘I – I tried not to let it go. I wanted to stop it. I – I . . . oh, God help us, I tried with all my heart to stop it setting.'

Alec spoke softly, ‘Sally, my dear, it's sunset. Just the sun going down at the end of the day, like it always does.'

Sally crashed both fists down on a table top. ‘Don't you see? We can't let it get dark tonight. As soon the night comes
they'll
come, too.'

Eleanor said, ‘We can't stop the sun from setting. We have to accept there will be darkness.'

‘But I don't!' Sally howled out in fury. ‘I won't let the sun set! I won't let it get dark. Because I don't want the night to come!' Her wild eyes raked their faces. ‘Don't you see? The curfew means we can't even run away. We're prisoners in the hotel. We're stuck here . . . we might as well be sacrificial offerings.' She pointed a trembling finger at each one. ‘We were lucky to escape those creatures last night. I'm telling you that we won't be so lucky again. They'll have our blood. Then we will be like them. We'll be monsters.' She caught her breath, as a terrible fact reached into her head and seared her mind. Softly, she murmured, ‘It's gone . . . it's gone.' The soft pulse of words bled into still air. ‘It's gone, it's gone . . .'

They all turned their eyes to the faraway hills. The sun had gone, indeed.

And the night had, at last, come down upon them.

PART SIX

{
From
The Monastic Testament
of St Botolph – AD672
}

One

No. They didn't creep out of their lairs. They didn't slither from their crevices in the rock face. There was no shuffling out into the night. They arrived as a storm. They were hurricane of movement. The ravenous creatures plunged down the cemetery steps into Whitby town.

There they raced along the canyon of houses that is Henrietta Street. They smelt the incinerated bones of one of their kind in the shed that had burnt to the ground, just hours ago. With no prey to be found there, the pack of vampires turned, then swept back into Church Street. The wartime blackout meant total darkness in the roads and alleyways and closes. The vampires were lords of this lightless place.

The pack consisted of Vampiric soldiers, the pilot, still wearing goggles, Mary Tinskell in her white nightdress, and creatures that had once been Eleanor Charnwood's childhood companions. The monstrous, pale figures gushed through the narrow passageway into Benson's Yard. A few cottages clustered around an open area barely larger than a pathway. From an open window, a woman looked out, wondering if her soldier lover had come to call.

The pilot didn't even slow down. Effortlessly, he scaled the outer wall of the cottage, with all the agility of a cat. Before the woman even cried out in shock, he'd scooped her from the window, then flung her down to his companions. The sound of their teeth puncturing female flesh sounded like surprisingly loud clicks in the otherwise silent yard. The woman kicked her bare legs as waves of agony engulfed her. A moment later, she lay still. Bloodless. Apparently lifeless. But not a state of affairs that would last for long. Even as the vampires withdrew from the body, still tasting her fresh blood on their lips, the woman's eyelids fluttered open. Colour from the iris faded. By the time she rose to her feet, her body pierced by dozens of teeth-marks, her eyes were white – a blazing, soulless white. The mark of the Vampiric.

Still hungry for blood, the vampires rejoined the main thoroughfare to scour the town for fresh prey. Tonight, hell would be a street in Whitby. The only people to be wholly safe were the ones that were already at peace in their graves.

At the front door of the Leviathan Hotel, the pack of rapacious vampires encountered Gustav Kirk. Yet they advanced on the building: the fierce gleam in their eyes screamed their intent.

‘Not here,' Gustav implored. ‘Leave these people alone.'

Mary Tinskell snarled, ‘The boy's in there. He'll betray us if we don't get rid of him.'

The Vampiric soldiers were inebriated by the draughts of blood they'd downed. ‘There's more in there,' one of them breathed. ‘We've got to drink. We need it.'

‘Not here,' Gustav insisted.

‘Why should we listen to you?' hissed the pilot. ‘We don't recognize your authority over us.'

‘Please,' Gustav begged. ‘My friends are in there. Theo and Eleanor.'

‘They're no friends of yours,' Mary sneered. ‘You're as deluded about that fact as you are about your precious Viking gods.'

The vampire pack moaned with hunger. ‘We've got to have more.'

‘We need it.'

‘Blood. I want to taste it.'

‘Just to open a vein . . . to drink.'

They surged forward, ready to break down the hotel door. Like a pack of hungry wolves, they pushed Gustav back. They wanted to get through. Nothing else mattered. Blood. They could smell it on the air. And, oh, how they yearned for its soft, velvet heat on their tongues.

‘Not here,' Gustav implored. ‘I won't let you hurt them.'

‘Push him out of the way.' Mary tossed her head with contempt. ‘I don't know why we ever let that weakling lord himself over us.'

A voice cut through the cold night air:
‘You. Yes, you lot. Stand there. Raise your hands. No sudden movements.'

A pair of soldiers moved purposefully along the street towards the creatures, their rifles at the ready. The pair of young mortal men couldn't yet properly identify what menace they confronted. The gloom here in Church Street blinded them.

The vampires saw what approached alright. They saw a pair of blood-filled vessels. The creatures could smell the red stuff inside of them. They could even hear the enticing pulse of it as it gushed through their arteries. And the sweetest blood of all is in the heart.

One of the men barked, ‘Your hands! I told you to raise them. Don't you know there's a curfew?'

Forgetting the hotel (at least for now), the pack fell on the two soldiers before they could even fire a shot. Teeth opened arteries. Vampiric men and women sighed with pleasure as fountains of blood struck the backs of their throats. The night was theirs. And so were these living sacs of hot, nourishing liquid – the elixir of life.

Gliding over Whitby, a lone raven defied its nature to fly by night. Beneath it, blacked out houses didn't reveal a glimmer. The dark squares that were the buildings imitated perfectly the squares of stone in the cliff-top graveyard. The raven circled over the hulking shape of the Leviathan Hotel. Sharp avian senses detected that human beings occupied the structure (as, likewise, it could divine the presence of vampires in the street. Moreover, it sensed the ancient vampires that were trapped in the sump cavern – those naked creatures that burnt with hunger so much that they couldn't stop their ceaseless, turbulent movement in the confines of the cave). In ages gone by, the raven's instincts could foretell when a battle was imminent. Then the birds would fly high over the battleground, waiting for the time when they could move in and feed on the fallen warriors. Tonight, that same instinct flared in the brain of the raven. A battle was coming. A huge conflict. Many would fall. The carrion would provide rich feasting grounds.

The bird cried out to its companions, gathering in the darkness above the night-clad hills. It called its brethren to the feast.

Two

Beth Layne heard the cry of the raven high above the hotel; she could also hear scuffling from the street. Now the curfew had come into force there should be no one out there, other than the armed patrols. Beth, however, made out the sound of feet lightly, and swiftly, padding along the cobblestones. Not the usual thud of army boots.

Standing there, in the centre of the reception area, Beth gazed at the timber door to the outside world. It was resolutely bolted against intruders of any shape or form, yet that barrier seemed absurdly flimsy. At any moment, she expected it to fly open to reveal those pale creatures she'd encountered last night. The ones with the colourless eyes and widely spaced teeth set in swollen crimson gums. She shuddered.

The dog slipped out from behind the reception counter to stand just in front of her, as if he sensed she needed reassurance. The animal's coal-black face turned towards her, his bright eyes met hers, and the jaws parted slightly to reveal a pink tongue. Sam's senses were heightened to an unusual degree. He sensed the threat beyond the doors. No doubt he knew that whatever moved in Church Street didn't possess a mortal heartbeat. Sam turned his eyes back to the locked door. His ears were pricked upright. They twitched slightly, reading the rich information contained in those light scuffling sounds that Beth could only barely hear now.

‘They're out there, aren't they, Sam?'

He swished his long black tail.

‘Good boy.' She crouched to put her arm round his sleek neck. ‘You aim to protect us, don't you?'

‘Sam's brave, Miss. He's the bravest dog ever.'

Beth glanced back. She tried not to flinch at his appearance. But it was no good. The sight of Tommy standing there did come as a shock.
I know what to expect,
she told herself.
He is one of those Vampiric creatures, but he's not dangerous. He wouldn't harm us.

Just to see the diminutive figure, standing there in front of the desk, still as a figure carved from gleaming white bone, tested her courage. Yes, the voice that came through the dark lips could have come from any boy in Whitby – a child proud as anything of his pet dog. But it was the dreadful reality of that short figure. The pale skin. The white eyes. A pair of fierce black pupils staring into her face. The inhuman posture. The dark tracery of veins in the neck. Once more she told herself that what had entered their lives wasn't human.
This is the ghost of a boy that haunts a monster's body.

She steeled herself with a deep breath. ‘How are you, Tommy?'

‘I'm very well, thank you, Miss,' he responded politely.

‘Can I get you anything to drink, or eat? That is, if you're thirsty or . . .' Her voice failed her in the presence of this Godless scrap of flesh and bone.

‘I'm not hungry. I'm never hungry these days. How's Sam? He looks alright to me, does he look well to you?'

‘Your dog is made of tough stuff, Tommy. He seems to be over that bump.'

‘Sam. Here boy! That's a good boy!'

Sam rushed to Tommy, tail wagging happily. Tommy fussed over the boy, gently checking the wound on the dog's head, then giggling when he realized the animal hadn't suffered lasting harm. Once more, the actions and the voice were that of a human boy. Yet Tommy's face possessed that stone-like expression of a corpse. Beth shivered.

‘I'd like to hear that box again,' Tommy declared. ‘Can I use the wire loss?'

‘The wireless? Of course you can.'

‘Come on, Sam. We're going to the wireless.' Before he ran to the dining room, he sped across to Beth. Quickly, he took her hand, then kissed the back of her bare wrist. His lips were chill as butter from a fridge.

Beth tried to force herself to believe this was just an ordinary boy.
Try,
she told herself.
He saved your life last night. Not once, but twice.

Then Tommy, followed by a skipping Sam, hurried to the dining room.

‘Don't open any curtains, Tommy,' Beth told him. ‘We're not allowed to let any light out. It's the law now.'