Bloody Right Page 15
“Not that. Got my bicycle pinched.”
“Rotten luck! Bet you’ll come across another.”
He resented the implication. Or was it admiration? “Right, I will. But meanwhile I’ve got to walk home.”
“That’s one thing I don’t ever have to worry about,” the landlord replied with a bit of a chuckle. “Draw you another pint, can I?”
Why not? But better stop at three. He wanted to get home.
Whorleigh sensed the distant presence as he walked down the lane. He cursed that third pint that dulled his Other senses, but not enough to slow him down if he needed to move fast.
He quickened his pace, opting to take the shortcut by the allotments. Everywhere was pitch black these days, and a stroll past the old rectory was just too much for his nerves right now. Not that he’d admit that aloud, but in these days caution made good sense.
He walked fast, almost running, bumping into fences and gateposts, but the sense of menace followed him every inch of the way. Once home, he locked the door behind him and stood panting, back against the door. He was safe. Whatever was out there had passed him by.
Chapter Twenty
“Tell,” Gloria said as they closed the door behind them. “Spill the beans. Blab. What’s going on between you and our sexy soldier, returned from the wars?”
“You mean Gryffyth?”
Mary wanted to play thick, did she? “Can you name another man you’ve danced with and paraded through the village? And tonight you could barely keep your eyes off him. So don’t try to convince me you’re not interested. How are things?”
“He asked me to marry him.”
Gloria paused, her coat half off her shoulders, but she managed to close her mouth. “Oh my! This needs more than a cup of cocoa. I’m going to get out the Garibaldi biscuits I was saving for Christmas and you’re going to tell me everything.”
“Don’t open them. I’ve got masses of stuff Miss Aubin gave me. Sandwiches, almost a whole cake, and a gauche she made for me and…oh, damn!”
“What?”
“They’re in my bicycle basket.”
Gloria shrugged her coat back on. “I’ll pop out and get them, save you putting your coat back on—and what’s a gauche?”
“The absolutely most delicious fruit bread you can imagine, and I left my bicycle up at the Pendragons’.”
Gloria didn’t even worry about gaping or goggling. Talk about blasé and unconcerned. She was seeing a new side to Mary. “You left it there, outside Gryffyth’s front door?”
“His back door, actually. I rode straight there after seeing that Vampire thing. Then Alice arrived and drove us up to her house. She brought us all back and I clean forgot about it.”
“Holy smoke! Definitely biscuits needed. You do realize,” Gloria said, as she hung up her coat, “that the whole village will know by breakfast that your bicycle sat outside Gryffyth’s back door all night. You’ll have to marry him now.”
“What utter rot! Especially since we’d have had a chaperone all night.”
She sounded more wistful than annoyed.
“So,” Gloria said, pouring milk into a saucepan. “He proposed.”
“Yes.”
She was going to have to dig it out of her. Didn’t altogether make sense. Seeing them together, you could feel the attraction between them, but now Mary was acting as if she got marriage proposals twice a week. “Pass me the matches, please. They’re on the mantelpiece.”
Gas lit, milk warming, Gloria reached for a couple of mugs.
“Let me do it,” Mary said. “You made it last night.”
Might as well let her. Gloria dug into the dresser for the biscuits, opened the package and put them in an empty tin. So, Mary had clammed up. Not for long, if Gloria had any say in the matter. She stoked up the boiler. Might as well keep the place warm if they were going to sit up and talk, and they were going to sit up and talk.
Mary brought over the mugs, handed one to Gloria, took a biscuit. “I used to love these as a child. We called them squashed fly biscuits.”
“You and your brothers?” Being an only child, she envied Mary having a family.
Mary nodded. “Clarence tried to convince me they really were dead flies. I almost believed him before I realized if they were, no one would eat them.” She took a bite, chewed, then took a sip of cocoa and said, “So, you want to know about Gryffyth and me?”
Gloria nodded. Smiled, in a way she hoped was encouraging, sipped her cocoa and sat back.
“I’m in love, Gloria. It’s insane, impossible, and beyond fantastic, but I took one look and fell for him, hook, line and sinker. He says he loves me and wants to marry me, as ludicrous as it seems after knowing him,” she glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, “four days and three hours. You think I’ve a few tiles loose in the top story, don’t you?”
“No. I’d always fancied Andrew, knew him for ages, but he was always so frightfully professional. Then he knocked me off my bicycle and…”
“It was all straightforward after that?”
“Good heavens, no! Once he made it clear he really fancied me, that’s when the soul-searching started. Here he was a nice, ordinary, or rather extraordinary, man, but a normal, mundane human. How the hell was I going to tell him I turn furry at intervals? And what if got my nerve up to tell him and he was repulsed? Or worse, told people. Can you imagine me keeping my job? War or not, they’d probably strip me of my nurse’s certificate. I used to lie awake worrying about it.”
“But it worked out, Andrew loves you the way you are.”
“True, but I think the fact we’d both be mangled corpses pushing up daisies if I hadn’t shifted when we encountered that Vampire, had a lot to do with his accepting my Other nature. And if a human can, what difficulty would Gryffyth have?”
“Oh, it’s not that, although finding an Other is more than I’ve ever dreamed of, at least over here. At home there were men with Sprite blood in their veins and I’d have married one of them.”
“Wouldn’t they be Sprites too?”
Mary laughed. “Oh no. Only females. Men might carry the trait but only girl babies grow up to be Sprites, the boys just become men. What about Were-foxes?”
“There are male ones. My mentors were a married couple. But how it’s passed on, I don’t know, and I’m a bit worried about it. Doesn’t seem to bother Andrew, and I’m not even sure we can have children.”
“I hadn’t even thought that far. What about us?”
“Dragons who like to swim?”
“Only our daughters.”
“So you are going to marry him.” Mary went quiet, staring at her mug with a solemn look on her face. “Here, have another squashed-fly biscuit.” Mary took one and nibbled the end. “What’s bothering you? You love him. He loves you. You’re both Other and accept your differences.”
“Yes, but…”
“But what?”
Mary’s brow creased. “I’m afraid I’ll shock you.”
“Mary, I’m a district nurse. I did my training in London. I’ve seen and heard things you’d scarce credit. I’m unshockable.” At least as far as anything Mary could possibly say.
Another chew of the biscuit appeared to bolster Mary’s courage. “It’s like this. We’ve kissed and been very friendly and we mesh together wonderfully, but, well, I can’t marry, or even promise to marry someone without being sure we’re well-matched. I mean with sex.” Her face was a picture of anxiety. “What if Dragons and Sprites aren’t meant to mate?”
Mary had thought more in that direction than Gloria ever had. Still, it was a good point. “You’re worried things won’t work out between you in bed?”
“In a nutshell. Yes.”
“But you want to, right, you really, really want to sleep with Gryffyth.”
“Lord, yes!”
“That’s easily taken care of. We’ll arrange for me to be out one evening, you ask him in for a nice cup of coffee and you seduce him. Easy as pie.”
“I don’t think you’ll have any problem. You fancy him. He fancies you. Now, when are you next going out?”
“I feel bad about tossing you out of your own house.”
“Don’t. Have you noticed how late I come in some nights? I dream about waking up in the morning beside Andrew, but, dear heaven, would that give the gossips something to wag their tongues over!”
“Instead it will be me slandered over my darn bicycle. I’ll get dubbed a loose woman and I haven’t any of the benefits.”
“Don’t worry, Mary. We’ll make sure you reap every benefit of your sexy soldier.”
“So,” Weiss said, seated across the room on the same rickety chair in Schmidt’s quarters. Why these mortals couldn’t provide better for their servants, he’d never know. “We know where this shopkeeper lives. We will take him and interrogate him and if he is the Vampire killer, he will die. Very, very slowly.”
“And what about the other one?” Schmidt asked. “The female. Aren’t we taking her too? She has power.”
So he claimed, thought Weiss. Schmidt wasn’t going to forget his dunking in a hurry. “Identify her. The cook must know who she is.”
“And we’ll take her too, like the grocer?”
Schmidt was ripe for revenge. An admirable trait. “One at a time. We start with the shopkeeper. Let us peel what he knows from him. Taking two at once might be a mistake, since we don’t know what we’re dealing with. What if they grow stronger together? We can’t take the risk. We take the grocer creature. Take him Saturday after the shop closes, that way he won’t be missed in the village until Monday, and keep the woman in reserve. After you find out who she is and where she lives…” He paused for added effect. “One more thing. Find out who is coming to Wharton Lacey next week. We’re not wasting effort on a couple of replaceable cabinet ministers, or the chairman of one of their committees. We have one target and one only. Take out Churchill and we will have the mortals in the Wehrmacht eating out of our hands and baring their necks for us.”
Schmidt sat thinking after Weiss left. His not-so-revered leader hadn’t faced the power of that female one. Whatever she was, she needed eliminating. No doubt about it and, as far as he was concerned, the sooner the better.
Come morning, he’d weasel the information out of Miss Aubin. If she balked, and threats to her nearest and dearest failed, there was always force.
“Dad, we’ve got to do something about Mary’s bicycle. She’ll need it in the morning.”
“She will,” Howell agreed, trying not to smile. The lad’s pride was a bit touchy at times. Understandable, really. Must rankle a bit to know your father pipped you to the post when it came to getting that all important Yes.
“Could we take it over, do you think, Dad? I’d go on my own but I don’t want her thinking I’m knocking on her door late for other reasons.”
“She might not mind, son. She’s a decent girl, but doesn’t strike me as the shy type.” At least as far as Gryff was concerned. That was the wrong thing to say. Poor old Gryff went the next best thing to purple.
“Dad!”
“Don’t look so shocked, son. The girl fancies you so hard it’s written all over her face. A tender night together might help to convince her you’re the very man for her.”
Gryff couldn’t go any darker in the face but his eyes looked ready to pop. “Really, Dad!”
“Why not? If you want to marry her use all your powers of persuasion, and don’t start on about your damn leg. She knows what you are and what you have and don’t have. Believe me, son, a man’s legs aren’t what matters when you’re getting snug and cozy.” Wasn’t often he’d managed to leave Gryff speechless in the last few years. “Anyroad, son. As far as her bicycle goes, you’re right. Let’s take it back, and afterwards I think we should have a stroll around the village. See what’s going on. As long as your leg holds up.”
“My leg’s fine, Dad.” Gryffyth paused, thinking about Mary, Howell hoped. “You think these Vampire creatures might be about?”
“I’ve no idea, son, but night is when they’re strongest we’ve been told, and it never hurts to have a look-see. And if we do encounter one, I think between us we could take care of it.”
“And if we do, Mary won’t embark on some tomfool project with Alice and Gloria. I’m game, Dad.”
They left a little after midnight. No one was likely to be about with the Pig closed. And if they were, they were up to no good.
Howell walked slowly; no point in tiring the lad if they were facing an encounter. They retrieved Mary’s bicycle and left it propped against her house. Howell was a bit curious about the contents of the basket, but it wasn’t any of his business. He hoped it didn’t rain overnight. They could have put it away in the shed, where he guessed Gloria kept hers, but decided it might be overlooked in the morning. No point in having her walk to school when her cycle was sitting waiting for her.
“Now, son,” Howell said, “let’s do a walkabout.”
Walking pretty much in silence, they made it through the village center down to the church and past the ruined rectory and the ARP post. There wasn’t a sound inside there, no doubt they were enjoying a quiet night.
“Isn’t that where Whorleigh claimed to have seen the Vampire thing?” Gryff asked as they stood looking at the dark outline of what was left of the rectory.
“Yes, and don’t doubt he saw one. Sam Whorleigh isn’t the imaginative sort.” The cowardly, self-serving sort more like.
“Plenty of space there for someone to hide,” Gryff said. “Undisturbed too. Although I bet the kids play there in daylight.”
“They’re not supposed to. That side wall might go any time.”
“Think we should take a closer look?”
“Why not?”
They circled the ruin, treading carefully. “It’s empty,” Gryff whispered. “No heartbeats.”
“There won’t be.”
“Crikey, you’re right, Dad. How do you know if they’re there?”
“That one you met, what did you sense?”
“Nastiness, evil, like a great sticky black miasma.”
As good a description as any. “That’s what we’re on the lookout for.”
They crossed the abandoned tennis court and the ankle-deep, yellowed lawn and headed back to the lane, across the vegetable garden. Pity the last cabbages and brussels sprouts hadn’t been harvested. Howell made a mental note to mention it to the vicar. Someone in the village would be glad of them.
Then Gryff stopped, tapping the ground with his good foot. “Dad, over here. What do you think?”
“Ground’s been disturbed.”
“Is it true they sleep underground?”
“Dunno for sure, son, but could be. Also I’ve learned there’s more than one sort of Vampire. Maybe he hid here after you got him, then in the morning scared the willies out of Sam Whorleigh.”
“So he might come back here.”
“He might but we can hardly keep watch just on the off chance.”
They headed back. Verifying Whorleigh’s story was satisfying but hardly helped anything. There weren’t any Vampires about. Tonight at least.
They made it back to the center of the village and were about to turn up Bell Lane toward home, when Gryff stopped and grabbed his father’s arm.
“Dad,” he whispered.
Howell stopped. A sick, cloying sense of unease passed them and was gone.
“That was it,” Gryff said, “but faint, weak, as if it were a distance away. But there’s no mistaking it. It was here in the village but it’s gone.”
“Gone how far, and what was it doing?”
Questions neither of them could answer.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Tomorrow,” Rolf said, “I go to meet the escapees. I want you to come with us, Bela.”
She looked up from shoveling the heavy wet earth into Gela’s grave
. Even with Rolf and Hans’s help it had been an arduous task in the bitter cold. “How far is it?”
“A good day’s travel, but you never have trouble keeping up.”
The strength from that last Vampire’s death was fading slowly, but she still had to slow her pace to keep level with the men.
“Will you come? You’ll be able to talk to them, make them understand.”
“Of course.” Why not? With Gela dead she had no roots or ties left anywhere, except her link to the woods and the earth. “I’ll come.”
They left before dawn, Bela wearing Angela’s boots and skis. Not loaned willingly, but Rachel’s boots were too large.
“You cadge and scrounge everything from us,” Angela griped.
“I’ll bring them back safely, don’t worry.”
“And when will that be?”
“As soon as they can,” Rachel replied for all of them. “The escapees will slow them down. I doubt they’re used to the woods and mountains as we are.”
Rachel stood in the cave opening, waving them on their way. Angela, no doubt, was muttering on about the loss of her boots and skis and the burden of two extra mouths to feed.
The going was fair. Three times they had to carry their skis and clamber over rocks and what looked to have been a small landslide. They seldom spoke, aware that sound carried in the clear air. Just as dark was falling, they were met by two wild-eyed partisans in dire need of a shave. And a wash, Bela noticed as they settled by the fire in their lean-to.
There was no sign of the escapees. Just two Communist partisans.
“What happened?” Bela whispered to Rolf as they settled to sleep on the ground.
“They’ll be here tomorrow,” he replied. “The Frenchman has difficulty walking. Slows them down.”
It was late afternoon the next day before they arrived, footsore and weary, the Frenchman limping. Even a thick-headed mortal could see the man needed to rest before going on.
“Sorry about being late,” the Englishman said, in atrocious German. “Jules had a rough time of it.”