The Iron in Blood Page 7

CHAPTER 7

  Angus

  It’s hard to believe how long a journey of fifty miles can take in your head, even when you look at the clock on the dash and it’s actually taken less than an hour. I pulled over onto the grass along the side of an isolated country road about two miles from my destination. The area was isolated and protected from view by a clump of gnarled chestnut trees.

  I retrieved the sniper rifle from the boot, loaded it, and put spare magazine in one of my now bulging pockets. I loaded the second Glock too, and stuck it in my waistband at the small of my back. Two spare fully loaded magazines also went onto my pockets. I stood, rifle held loosely in my left hand, and breathed in deeply through my nose. Once, and then again. The sour scent of slowly decaying vampire flesh wrapped itself around my olfactory neurosensory cells. I smiled grimly, and taking the tub of iron tablets out of my pocket, I counted out another ten, and swallowed them. I was going to need all the power and speed I could get tonight.

  I set out in the general direction of the smell, jogging silent footed through the fields and hedgerows between me and my target. It occurred to me that I’d killed quite a few people in my time, but never a vampire. I hoped that Marcus was right about the whole decapitating business. I was prepared to try a number of alternative options, though. It also struck me that if I waited until midnight for my brothers, I might stand a better than even chance of annihilating these creatures quickly and quietly, and getting Rebecca out of there in one piece. But the idea of sitting and waiting for Marcus and Fergus to arrive while the images of what they could be doing to Rebecca blazed like fire through my mind… No.

  As I ran I went over a few possible approaches to the situation in my mind. Chances were these vampires had no idea that I even existed, so surprise would definitely be on my side. There were likely to be at least thirteen of them. Eleven vampires and those two human males that had helped abduct Rebecca. The humans were armed, the vampires? Probably not. When you’re as strong physically as these guys were likely to be the only assault weapon you’d need would be your own body. I was counting on their complacence. And I was hoping to shatter it soon.

  Rebecca

  After a while I got fed up with watching those two idiots. All they did was watch me back. I stretched my aching body out on that wooden bench and closed my eyes. My feet hung off the lower edge, but it was comfortable enough if you had low expectations to start with.

  I let my mind wander. It seemed to gravitate automatically to Angus’ beautiful stark face. I remembered the way he looked at me when we first met, and the way he’d smiled at me yesterday. God, was it only yesterday? And the way he’d held me when I’d felt overwhelmed by the newness of everything he was telling me, and the way he’d kissed me until Mark interrupted us. Poor Mark. My train of thought derailed. Mark must have seen these morons grabbing me and shoving me in that white van with no number plate. He was probably worried sick about me. And my mother. My mother would be frantic now. I imagined her thin fragile face creased with desperate, devastating anxiety. How I hated these men and that freak show called Oscar for putting her through this. They would pay. I would make them pay.

  There was a disturbance by the trapdoor, and it creaked open reluctantly. Oscar walked carefully down the stairs and went and stood next to Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

  “Jack phoned. He’ll be here in about an hour.” He placed a dented metal flask on the floor. “I’ve brought her some tea. She’s going to need all her strength for what Jack’s got planned for her.” He drew back his lips in what he probably thought was a smile, showing his teeth. The two idiots chuckled loudly. Oscar glanced at me once more before heading back up the stone steps. The trapdoor creaked shut behind him.

  “It’s a shame Jack never lets us watch.” The man with the gruff voice spoke, a taunting, spiteful edge to his voice, his eyes running over my body.

  “Yeah, I think this one’s going to fight back.” He opened the flask and made a big performance out of spitting into it. He closed it and nudged it through the bars with his foot.

  I wasn’t going to drink that tea, anyway. I needed every little molecule of iron that my body had. But I was definitely going to kill these men. I hugged the image of their broken, empty bodies, while I tried to fight off the panic that was welling up inside me.

  Jack was coming. Whatever that meant.

  Angus

  I saw the lights as I approached the building. There had been a six foot wall a few hundred yards back, but I’d vaulted easily over it, the iron tablets I’d taken earlier starting to kick in. I ran crouched over with the rifle gripped in my left hand. I paused about a hundred yards from the building and veered off to the right, running easily, dodging the occasional tree. I ran a loose perimeter, watching and listening for any guards or other signs of life. Nothing. A few minutes later I had chosen my base in a copse of trees, slightly higher than the surrounding grounds, where I would be able to ambush them. I stood dead still for a moment and built a mental picture of the terrain in my head. The main building, the one that looked like an old fashioned hospital, sat like a fat tick in the middle of a small hollow, four lit windows visible against the night, two upstairs, two downstairs, front door between them. It was flanked by an old stone barn on the right, and a smaller bungalow on the left. The bungalow was empty. The stone barn was not. There was no light showing through the windows of the barn, but I could smell them. Two men and Rebecca. I tried not to think of what was happening in there, although it was probably nothing right now. I could detect no fear or pain in Rebecca’s mind. There was anger, though. Good girl. I concentrated on setting my rifle up on its tripod and centring the sights on the front door of that main building. I was going to massacre these bastards.

  I had noticed a back door in the main building on my reconnaissance run. I would have to do something about that. I left the rifle standing in a small cluster of trees, and jogged around the back of the house. It took me forty seconds, two grenades and a roll of dark nylon fishing line to booby trap the back door. Any vampire trying to open this door would get a pretty explosive surprise. It might not kill them, but it would definitely alert me to their attempt to escape. And then I would kill them.

  I was about to head back to where I had left the rifle, when I smelled the familiar stench of a blood addict vampire. The same one I’d smelled outside Rebecca’s school. I saw him out of the corner of my eye heading away from the barn and towards the main building, and then I was running as fast as I could towards him. I didn’t want him to smell me and alert those animals inside. He turned a fraction of a second before I reached him, but his dry squawk was cut off when I grabbed his throat with my left hand. He tried to fight me off, but I was much stronger than he was. He hadn’t had a blood meal in a few days, and it showed. It was almost too easy. I twisted his head around with my right hand until I heard it snap, and then I twisted it some more. Right up until his head became detached from the rest of his body.

  I waited a few seconds until his blood had drained from his open neck and then I carried both head and corpse up to my clump of trees. I had been wondering what to do to create a diversion, and now I had my answer. I grinned.

  I stood for a few more seconds surveying the terrain, and then I hurled that head over arm through one of the lit windows downstairs, the one on the left, and I sat down to wait.

  I didn’t have to wait long. A head peered around one of the curtains draped across that same window for a fraction of a second too long. I sighted down the scope of the rifle and squeezed the trigger. The face disappeared in a puff of blood and brain matter.

  A silhouette appeared in the doorway. Two shots in quick succession, both in the face. The silhouette collapsed in a lifeless heap.

  I’d spent some time during the trip here pondering about how to kill a vampire. I’d come to the conclusion that if I could shoot them in a critical region, like the head or the heart, then even if they could regenerate those areas, it would take them some time. I re
ckoned I’d be able to incapacitate most of them with gunshot wounds, and then finish them off properly before they had a chance to regenerate. An hour at least, maybe two. I placed a hand on the chest of the decapitated body lying next to me. It was cold, no heartbeat, no signs of life. Result.

  There were no more heads to shoot at so I pulled the pin on my last grenade and lobbed it through one of the upstairs windows. The tinkling of broken glass was followed by a loud explosion. Still no heads to shoot at. I took the magazine out of the Heckler and Koch, and jammed it in one of my pockets. I didn’t want one of those vampires finding the rifle where I had to leave it, and taking pot shots at me. I took the one of the Glocks out of my belt, and chambered the first of seventeen rounds. I had two spare magazines in my left pocket, just in case. I set off towards the main building at a gallop, dodging from left to right occasionally, just in case they decided to fire at me. I needn’t have bothered.

  I dived through the one of lit windows downstairs, ignoring the glass shards that fell in a shower around me and sliced through my skin. I rolled as I fell and came up shooting. A vampire stood frozen in shock in one of the corners of the room. I shot him in the face, and put another shot just above that one. He went down. Another two stood framed in the doorway that led out into the rest of the house. I shot the first in the head, but the second dived sideways. I scrambled after him, and put a bullet through his spine as he scuttled away. His legs crumpled, and I shot him twice in the head as I stepped over him. Six down, five to go.

  There was a sudden explosion as the grenades at the back door went off. I hurried towards the sound, and found three vampires lying on the floor, still very much alive and writhing around. One had lost an arm in the blast. I shot him first, then put two rounds into each of the others’ heads. They stopped moving. Six rounds left, two vampires.

  I froze for a second, listening. There was an almost imperceptible squeak in the room above me as someone trod cautiously on ageing floorboards. I tilted my head, and waited. There it was again. I triangulated the likely origin of the sound and emptied the rest of the magazine in that direction. There was a muffled thud, but I was already racing up the nearest staircase, ramming home a new magazine as I ran. I was up those stairs in two seconds, and in the room within one more. An emaciated vampire lay on the floor, his left leg curled unnaturally under his body as he hissed his defiance at me. Three rounds in the face and he was quiet. Right. One more. I stood still and listened. Nothing. I went downstairs and out the back door. And there it was. The scent of a frightened vampire moving at speed towards the thick woodland that lay to the north of the property. I couldn’t even see him anymore. He was long gone. He must have legged it past those three casualties while I was shooting at a creaking floorboard. I knew I wouldn’t have time to go after him.

  I reached out to Rebecca’s mind again. Still fairly calm, but something was worrying her. Nothing too urgent yet. I decided to deal with the vampires first.

  I went through each of the rooms of the house and methodically twisted the heads off the necks of the vampires. It was a messy job, especially since I’d spent the last few minutes shooting dirty great holes in those heads. I put all ten heads in a couple of carrier bags I found in the kitchen, poured lighter fluid from under the sink over them and set them alight. Resurrect that.

  Rebecca. I left the house via the back entrance, and crept towards the barn. The thoughts of the two men seemed serene enough. They were oblivious of the commotion that I had just caused. That meant that they were probably in a soundproofed room. I glanced through a grimy window. Nothing.

  I skirted around the barn and ducked inside the vast doorway and stood for a second or two, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom. Deep breath. I could still smell Rebecca. I followed the scent until it disappeared suddenly in the middle of the barn. Strange. A few empty bags lay on the floor here, but they certainly didn’t carry that scent. Where had it gone? I took another deep breath through my nose, and smelled vampire, two men, and my Rebecca. This had to be where she was. I could feel her mind.

  I brushed the bags away, and that was when I spotted the thick iron ring set in a large solid wooden trapdoor. This was going to make things even more difficult. One entrance and one exit only. It would be all too easy for those men to shoot upwards at me as I stood framed in that open space. I would have to be supernaturally fast to get down there in one piece. I grinned in the darkness. Imagine that.

  I reached out to Rebecca’s mind fleetingly in a futile attempt to warn her, and then I grabbed the iron ring in one movement and flung the trapdoor open.

  Rebecca

  I was sitting on that wooden bench with my back against the wall, when out of the blue I felt this overwhelming need to do something. I stood up and crossed the floor of my cell, scooped up the flask in my right hand and hurled it at the man who had made such an issue of spitting in it. He lifted his hands in shock to fend off the unexpected missile, and suddenly the trapdoor squealed and crashed and then there was someone else in my dungeon. Shots were fired, two, one, two again, and then it was quiet.

  Angus stood there, like an avenging angel, tall, beautiful, filled with rage and power. And covered in blood. He curled his lips in a smile as he saw me, and then he bent over and searched the nearest body, dragging a large key from a hip pocket. He stepped over the body, which was barely recognisable as that of the spitting man, and inserted the key in the huge iron lock in the door, and turned it. The door screeched open, and then suddenly there was another shot, and Angus’ left leg folded under him, and he fell backwards onto the conveniently situated body of spitting man. Gruff man lay to my right, his arm with the handgun clutched in its fist having fallen back to his side, a smug smile on his face.

  Angus was still alive. He’d been shot in the thigh, but the way that that leg had crumpled meant that the bone was shattered. Not only would he be in severe pain, he would also not be able to walk for at least twelve hours. And Jack was coming.

  I would need to help Angus out of here, carry him even, but he was so much bigger than me. I looked at the wounded body of gruff man, wanting to make him pay. And then I smelled the blood leaking from his wounds, and a primitive hunger overcame me. I let it, because it had given me an idea. I stepped towards him, removing the gun from his weakened fingers, just in case. His eyes rolled in panic as I grinned at him, savouring the moment. I kneeled over his damaged body, forced his head to the left with my left hand, exposing his neck. And then I bit him, my teeth slicing through layers of smoky skin and sinewy muscle, and down to that big artery with the name I always forgot. A hot torrent of fluid poured into my mouth and I drank it, slightly reluctantly at first, then thirstily, until the flow ceased. I stood up then, wiping my mouth with my sleeve. Gruff man was dead. Damn shame.

  Angus had lifted himself on his elbows to see what I was doing. His expression was a mixture of awe and pain. I smiled at him, and felt the jolt of power as it slammed through me, almost knocking me off my feet. I fought to control my voice as I said, “Let’s get you out of here.”

  I bent down over him, lifted his arms and somehow hauled him over my right shoulder. It was easier than I thought it would be, but my body still felt the weight of him. I turned slowly and stepped cautiously onto the first stone stair. I stood there, Angus’ solid body draped over my shoulder, and flexed my muscles. Another jolt of power shot through me and I danced up those stairs as if I was carrying nothing. Angus groaned with pain. I lay him down on the floor of the barn, as gently as I could. “What must I do?” I asked through clenched teeth, my muscles jerking and twitching as new and extraordinary forces surged through them.

  “Splint,” suggested Angus, also through clenched teeth. I looked around the barn, noting the dusty implements with their conveniently wooden handles. It took me a few seconds to dismantle those tools, ripping them apart with frightening ease. I selected three potential splints from the mangled wreckage that lay before me, and turned back to Angus.


  “Belts,” he groaned and pointed down the stairs. I nodded, and leapt down, undoing the dead men’s belts with twitching fingers, and jerking them out of their belt loops. I bounded back up those stairs, and fashioned a rude splint with those three wooden handles and two belts. That done, I looked at Angus’ face. He nodded, and smiled slightly.

  “Better,” he sighed.

  I grasped his arms again and pulled him back up and over my shoulder. It was easier this time. I was learning to ride the power, to harness it. It was mind-blowing.

  “Where to?” my voice sounded peculiar, like thousands of insects were all buzzing together in the background.

  Angus pointed, and I started loping across the gardens and into the grounds around it. “Stop,” he barked out. I stopped, thinking I was hurting him beyond even his endurance, but he pointed to what looked like a scrawny metallic beast in a clump of trees to my right. “Get the rifle.”

  “Right.” I trotted over to it, and handed it to Angus, who disassembled it in seconds, folding the tripod into a manageable tube. He clutched the rifle, and pointed again. “Go.”

  I ran, dodging smoothly through the trees and bushes that were scattered haphazardly around the grounds, the grassy surface blurring beneath my feet. A six foot brick wall loomed ahead of us. I considered how to get over it with Angus still on my shoulder. It didn’t seem possible. I gave it an experimental kick, and a jagged crack appeared in the brick work. I kicked it again, feeling the force of the bricks and mortar resisting my assault. Another kick, and a four foot long segment of the wall crumbled outwards. I grinned, skipped through the gap and set out again in the direction of Angus’ finger again.

  We reached the car in what felt like seconds. Angus unlocked it remotely with the keychain, and I opened the passenger door and slid him gently off my shoulder and onto the seat. I lifted his splinted leg and placed it carefully next to the other. It had already stopped bleeding. The rifle went in the boot, and I danced around to the driver’s door and hopped in.

  Angus grinned at me. “Can you drive, love?” That simple endearment sent another, very different shock through me, and I grinned back.

  “Let’s hope so.”

  Angus closed his eyes and groaned loudly. “I like this car!” he protested.

  “Never mind, I’ve had two lessons.” My voice wasn’t buzzing quite so much now, and the electrical current that had seemed to be coursing through my body for the past few minutes was sputtering slightly.

  I started the car, found first gear, and pulled away carefully. I was definitely coming down from my high now. Muscles and bones ached, and I worried now that we would be pulled over by the police or something. I would hate to have to try to explain the arsenal in the boot. I drove cautiously at first, then a bit faster. Angus closed his eyes and lay back against the headrest. I found my gaze drifting constantly to look at his perfect face.

  “Watch the road.” His eyes remained closed, but his voice was amused, and a faint smile curled his lips.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence, and arrived back at where the satnav had started out in just over an hour. As we drew up outside the house, the front door opened and light spilled out onto the pebbled drive. Mark stood silhouetted in the doorway, his face tired and drawn. I turned off the engine, and got out.

  “Rebecca!” He sounded disbelieving, and then ecstatic.

  I burst into tears of relief. He ran down the steps towards me. “Are you alright? Where’s Angus?” He looked suddenly worried.

  “I’m fine, Mark, but Angus has been shot. We need to get him inside.”

  Together we helped Angus hobble through the front door, and into one of the armchairs. His leg had already lost that rubbery look, but it obviously hurt him to put any weight on it. He subsided gratefully into one of the cracked leather armchairs by the fire.

  “Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Mark was looking at me, horrified.

  I glanced down at myself, seeing the blood caked all over my school uniform for the first time. “It’s not my blood,” I said. I didn’t think he needed to know exactly how it got there, so I didn’t elaborate. Angus was leaning back in the chair again, eyes closed, smirking slightly.

  All at once I felt drained, exhausted, and I stumbled to the other chair and almost fell into it. Angus opened his eyes, and looked over at me. The fire blazing in the grate lit his eyes eerily. “Go sleep,” he told me. “This tiredness is normal for what you’ve been through tonight. There are showers and beds upstairs.” That sounded like a hint to me.

  He looked at Mark. “You too, my friend.”

  “What about you, Angus?” Mark wanted to know. I yawned.

  “My brothers will be here shortly. I need to speak to them. They can carry me up to bed afterwards. Go!” It was an order. We went.

  I showered quickly, jerking awake a couple of times under the hot darts of water, not even aware that I had been falling asleep. I stumbled into the closest room and dug an oversized t-shirt and some boxer shorts out of a chest of drawers. I pulled them on and fell into the bed, asleep before my head touched the pillow.

  Angus

  Marcus and Fergus arrived at eleven thirty that night. I heard the purring of the great engine pulling up outside and I smiled. Those two liked to travel in style.

  They strolled casually through the front door, Fergus first as dictated by his fidgety nature. They stood just inside the threshold and sniffed the air cautiously. Fergus spotted me in the armchair and crossed the room to where I sat, taking in the hole in my jeans and the makeshift splint.

  “You’ve been busy tonight.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “One got away. You’ll be pleased to know that decapitation seems to do the trick, Marcus. I set fire to the heads as an added precaution, though.” Marcus shuddered slightly.

  “Rebecca’s OK.” Another statement, this time from Marcus.

  “She had her first taste of human blood tonight.” Two sets of raised eyebrows. “I was shot in the femur, and she knew she would have to carry me out of there. She drank a dying man’s blood to save me.”

  They exchanged a speaking glance and nodded. “Bath first, then bed,” said Fergus. They carried me carefully upstairs, helped undress me, ran a hot bath, and gently lowered me into it. They left me while I sponged the vampire stink from my skin, and soaped away the blood. My thigh was already straight, and felt firm enough, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to put any weight on it for at least eight hours. I had broken bones before.

  My brothers returned within minutes and extricated me from my tub. They propped me upright as I towelled myself dry, and then carried me to one of the spare bedrooms and lay me on the bed, covering me with cool sheets.

  “Goodnight, brother,” Fergus grinned at me, then turned to Marcus. “Let’s go clean up.” Marcus rubbed his hands.

  “Yes, let’s,” he agreed, and then they were gone.