Her Vampyrrhic Heart (15 page)

Now Clarissa Prior stood on the hillside. Even though the sun wouldn't rise for another three hours she could see clearly. Bare winter trees stretched out before her. Threading its way through the black mass of the forest was the River Lepping. Hailstones glinted in the grass – pearls of ice scattered over the hillside. When she exhaled there were no longer any plumes of white vapour, even though a cold wind blew. She slipped off her coat and let it fall. It was no longer of any use to her.

At either side of her, silent figures gazed over the forest. They seemed to be waiting for someone, or something.

‘I'm Clarissa Prior,' she whispered. ‘I'm eighteen. I go to Ravendale School. Next year I begin studying for my degree. I'm eighteen, I'm Clarissa … I'm alive.'

The man who'd attacked Clarissa stood next to her. Those egg-like eyes of his gazed across the valley. His lips were bloody.

Slowly, and with an utter sense of dread, she lifted her fingers to her neck. Her fingertips slipped inside the wound in her throat. She pushed her fingers in as far as the knuckles. The wound gaped open – a yawning mouth with sticky, wet lips.

‘I'm Clarissa …' She paused. ‘What's my second name? I'm sixteen … no, I'm eighteen. I'm alive … I am alive.'

The people standing at either side of her continued to gaze out across the valley. Just like her, they didn't feel the cold. Her companions were young men and women. They resembled one another. Possibly from the same family? Each had white skin which revealed black veins. And each man and woman had identical eyes. There was no colour in them, just the fierce black dot.

She asked herself, ‘Why don't I just walk away from them?' However, she had no inclination to leave. This was where she needed to be. Was this her destiny? To stand here in the dark with these strangers?

‘I'm called …' She'd forgotten her name. ‘I'm not old.' She'd forgotten her age. ‘I'm not dead … please, God … tell me I'm not dead.'

The word VAMPIRE never entered her head. It would soon, though.

She examined the beautiful face of a blond-haired woman standing nearby. The stranger had not shown any sign that she realized that Clarissa was even there. None of them had. So none had reacted to what must be a shocking wound in her throat.

‘I'm not badly hurt,' Clarissa murmured to herself. ‘I'm not like them.'

Slowly, almost as if she were in a trance, she raised her hand level with her eyes. Veins bulged underneath the bone-white skin. The veins were black.

‘I'm not like them.' Although by now she understood these profoundly grim facts:
she was exactly like them. And she wouldn't be going home ever again.

‘Goodbye, Mum. Goodbye, Dad. Goodbye, Robbie. I love you …'

T
ony opened his eyes. People carried him through the forest. Tree trunks drifted by. Nettles brushed his face. For some reason they didn't sting. When he tried to lift his hands to push the nettles back nothing happened.

‘Put me down,' Tony said. ‘I can walk.'

Nobody replied. Yet he heard whispering. A dozen people or more appeared to be having a furtive conversation.

‘Where are you taking me?'

Another voice abruptly asked the same question: ‘Where are you taking me?'

A second voice on the other side of him uttered the same words: ‘Where are you taking me?'

Tony recognized the voices. One was Luke. He was the guy who'd been driving them back home from Scarborough when—

BANG! The bus had been attacked. Something enormous had carved through the water. All that spray and: POW! People had been torn out of the bus. Screaming and blood and violence – he'd felt terrible pain. Powerful hands had grabbed hold of him … they'd torn him apart. That's how that agonizing ripping of muscle had felt. He'd heard his joints come out of their sockets with a loud POP! After that, a crackle as his bones snapped. But that was a nightmare, wasn't it? He'd lost consciousness and had a bad dream, surely? He was OK now. He was being carried, though he knew he was capable of walking.

Tony looked to his right. Luke's head was in profile, and maybe just a foot from his own. It swayed slightly due to the motion of being carried.

‘Where are you taking me?' This was Luke's voice.

Tony asked, ‘Luke? What happened?'

Luke turned to look at Tony as if he'd been startled by the voice. Tony would have flinched back in shock. Only he couldn't move away more than a couple of inches from that disgusting thing in front of him. That disgusting
thing
was Luke. The skin of his face had been torn away. A pair of bulging eyes stared at Tony. The eyes resembled glass balls that had been embedded in raw beef. Tony knew that blood-red
thing
was comprised of the muscles, tendons, veins and bloody bones that lay beneath a human being's skin. An accident, or deliberate mutilation, had robbed Luke of his face. If it hadn't been for the familiar voice, Tony wouldn't have been able to identify his friend.

But he's still alive?
Tony thought as waves of horror crashed through him.
Why isn't he screaming in pain?
Doesn't he know that his face has been torn off?
Tony turned his head to the left. Anita, one of the girls from the bus, stared at the forest in a daze. All he could see of her was her face in profile, which was perhaps a foot away.

‘Anita, are you OK?'

She turned to him. Her eyes were fixed into the characteristic ‘thousand-yard stare' of someone suffering from shock. The poor girl had been traumatized.

‘Anita?'

‘I was still awake when it happened to me. I saw everything …
I felt
everything
.' Her eyes locked on to his. ‘It got hold of my arms and tore them off. It broke me into pieces. I was still awake and I felt everything … every awful thing …' Her voice trailed off to be replaced by broken-hearted sobbing.

At that moment, Tony noticed the sound of a fast-flowing river. What was more, it now seemed to him that he, Anita and Luke were somehow tied together. And still he couldn't tell who carried them. Then the strangeness of the situation grew much stranger. He glimpsed bare feet beneath him to his left and right. The feet splashed down into water.

‘Don't take us into the river!' Tony shouted. ‘It's deeper than you think. We'll be drowned!'

Tony thought that he, Anita and Luke, poor mutilated Luke, were going to be carried across the Lepping.

Then he knew that wouldn't be the case. Because he now saw his mirror image in the water. In fact, he saw dozens of faces there. The sight was so extreme, so astonishing and so terrifying that he was too shocked to close his eyes.

Tony stared at the monstrous body reflected there.
Picture a whale that
walks on human legs. Lots of bare human legs.
He described the creature to himself in a cold way that lacked emotion. Shock had, for now, separated him from reality, so he could view this vile thing dispassionately.
The whale-creature is over thirty feet long. Protruding from its body are arms. These are in motion, almost like the tentacles of an octopus. Most striking of all: the heads. The heads are connected by human necks to the whale (or whale-like) body.

‘And I'm part of it,' he said aloud. ‘I've become part of the monster.'

The other heads near him began to scream. He glanced from left to right at the heads of the men and women who'd been with him on the minibus. Luke screamed the loudest of all when he saw his reflection in the water. He'd realized, at last, that his head now lacked a face.

Tony wanted to scream. In fact, it would have been utterly appropriate in the circumstances. Yet he simply gazed at his reflection when the creature lowered its massive body into the water. Moments later, it glided downwards into the deepest part of the river. It would rest there, as its harvest of new heads and limbs knitted themselves into its unnatural flesh.

T
om Westonby slept soundly until ten. As he climbed out of bed in his hotel room he couldn't remember when he'd last slept for so long. He realized he'd be too late to catch up with June in the dining room for breakfast. Never mind, he'd phone her if he didn't see her downstairs.

Since he'd never intended to book into the hotel for the night, and had brought nothing other than the clothes he was wearing, the manageress had provided a toiletry pack, containing toothpaste, a toothbrush and comb for only a nominal cost, along with a T-shirt that bore the words STATION HOTEL – A PROUD HISTORY OF COMFORT & ELEGANCE.

Outside, the hail had turned to grey slush in the streets. With it being Sunday, the bells were pealing from one of Leppington's churches. Tom switched on the television and had almost finished getting dressed when the local news bulletin came on-screen. Pictures showed the mangled remains of a minibus in fast-flowing water. If anything, the vehicle had the appearance of being disembowelled. Its seats were on the outside of the wreckage.

A female voice related what had happened last night: ‘
A minibus returning from Scarborough, with seven young people on board, appears to have crashed before coming to rest in a stream. With the exception of one woman, all the passengers are missing. Police say that the search for survivors is continuing. Meanwhile, officers are waiting to question a youth who was driving a truck, which was found in a nearby field. Both the woman and the youth are receiving treatment at Whitby hospital.
'

Tom knew exactly where the crash had taken place. It was where the road forded a stream just a couple of miles from his house. Suspecting this was no accident, he quickly finished getting dressed. He needed to find June Valko. Circumstances were changing. The danger was no longer confined to the pair of them. The threat was spilling out like an epidemic to claim other victims. But what could he do to stop it? For now, that was a question he could not answer.

T
he hospital visit started badly. Kit Bolter and Owen Westonby stood outside the room where Jez had been put by the doctors. Kit had been given a lift by Jez's parents to the new hospital near Whitby's Pannett Park. Owen had turned down the offer of the ride, because he intended taking the bus to Whitby with Eden Taylor.

Owen grimaced. ‘I hate that hospital smell, don't you? Makes you think of viral oozings and puke.'

Kit didn't attempt to conceal his irritation and asked, ‘Where's Eden?'

‘She's taking a walk round town while I see Jez.'

‘What's your priority here, Owen? Coming to see your friend after an accident, which nearly killed him? Or going on a date with that girl?'

‘Are you jealous, Kit?'

‘Are you friggin' insensitive?'

Owen glared as if he'd no right to make comments like that.

The door opened and Jez's father stepped out. ‘You can both see him now. I thought you'd like to have some time alone together, seeing as you're such old friends. I remember when you all got bikes that Christmas, and you'd ride up and down the village street for hours. The Three Musketeers, that's what everyone called you.' Mr Pollock's eyes had tears in them.

‘Thanks, Mr Pollock,' Owen said.

Mr Pollock held a cap in his big, powerful hands, which he anxiously turned round and round. ‘You know what the police are thinking, don't you? They know my lad was driving illegally. They found the truck upside down in a field not far from that smashed-up minibus. They've already made up their minds that he caused that accident. But it's not true. A nurse told me that my lad saved a woman's life. Jez isn't a criminal … he's a hero.' A tear rolled down the big man's cheek. ‘Sorry, lads. You'll be wanting to see Jez. Thanks for coming. You're good boys. Jez couldn't have a better pair of friends.' With that, Mr Pollock walked away.

Jez lay propped up in bed. A bright orange cast encased one arm. Both of them stared at the teenager in shock. Kit even thought they'd entered the wrong room.

‘Hey … you've got to write on my cast. That's the rule.' Jez's voice came from a mass of purple and green bumps. ‘Write what you want. Make it bloody rude.'

‘Jez … Shit.' Owen stared at the bruised face. ‘You look like the Elephant Man.'

‘Or an alien from outer space.' Kit decided to be cheerful and jokey for Jez's sake. ‘Man, your face is puke-tastic.'

Jez seemed half asleep, his movements were sluggish. He raised the arm that was in the cast. ‘The bone snapped. They had to fix it with steel bolts. Doctors are turning me into a cyborg … that means I'm now part man, part machine. I'm going to live for ever.' He grinned. ‘I'm going to be the first immortal guy from Danby-Mask. Half man. Half robot.'

Kit and Owen exchanged glances. Jez's odd manner disturbed them both.

‘Are you in pain?' Kit asked.

‘Nopey nope. They're giving me pills … they make me feel sooooo good.'

‘The painkillers are making him …' Owen made a circular motion with his finger. ‘Cuckoo.'

‘I heard that, guys.'

‘The main thing,' Kit said, ‘is that you're not in any pain.'

‘Broke my arm … bashed my head on the steering wheel … knocked cold. But I still got him.' Jez grinned.

‘Got who?'

‘The monster. The one that your mojo pod filmed. I got the monster. I hit the gas and
wham!
Drove the truck into him.'

Owen smiled. ‘Great, you got him.'

‘You're the number one monster killer,' said Kit.

‘Nobody believes me.' Jez sighed. ‘You don't either, do you?'

‘Of course we do.' Owen's tone clearly revealed that he was humouring his friend. ‘Human race one. Monster kingdom zero.'

‘The monster would have got the girl. But I got him. Rammed him with the truck. He must have run off. Slithered off perhaps … or whatever monsters do. They gave me prunes for breakfast. I hate prunes.'