His Vampyrrhic Bride (3 page)

Chester shrugged. ‘I’m always saying stuff that comes out wrong. Last week I told Grace Harrap that she didn’t look a day over forty.’

‘Chester. She’s twenty-six.’

‘I know.’ He gave a pained sigh. ‘Grace took the ice out of her drink and rammed it down my shirt.’

‘Maybe she’s flirting?’

‘Flirting? I fell over a chair and nearly smashed my head on the pub’s fireplace trying to get that flipping ice out.’

Tom handed the clipboard back. ‘Owen’s only ten. I’m not sure how to talk to him. Sometimes he doesn’t say a word for days.’

‘It’s going to be hard on him losing his mother at ten years old.’ Suddenly, the man that Tom thought of as being the giant toddler sounded so mature and wise. ‘Owen’s going to need a lot of love and patience. He found the body, didn’t he?’

‘The coroner said she’d died of a heart attack out here on the drive.’

After a pause, Chester was the one to change the subject this time. ‘How you doing with your diving school? Any sign of going to live in Greece yet, you lucky sod?’

‘We’re getting there. Chris found some premises next to the beach.’ He didn’t mention the worrying conundrum of how they’d claw together seventeen thousand dollars by the end of the week.

‘Your own diving school? It’ll be a dream come true, won’t it?’

‘Believe it or not, we started planning this three years ago. It’s taken eighteen months to save up enough money to get the ball rolling.’
And we’re still seventeen thou short.

‘You’ll be taking her?’

‘Taking who?’

‘The new girlfriend. The one you were tangling with last night.’

Tom decided he would keep that particular girl a secret. Especially as she was a product of hallucination. So he just shrugged, winked, and said, ‘Who knows?’

‘OK.’ Chester laughed. ‘I’ll keep my schnozz out of your biz. Right. I’ll show you how to use the chainsaw.’

‘I’m sure I can figure it out.’

‘No. I’ll give you a safety lesson. If you cut your legs off with that thing don’t come running to me, complaining that I didn’t teach you how to use it.’

‘If I cut my legs off, I won’t be running anywhere.’

‘Just my little joke, Tom, to put you at ease.’

A low roar came from the direction of the forest.

Chester nodded towards the trees. ‘Don’t worry about the sound. It’s only the local dragon clearing his throat.’

‘The local what?’

‘The dragon. Haven’t you heard of it? A dragon’s supposed to roam those woods.’

‘Sounded like a bus to me.’

‘When we were kids we were told a dragon lurked up here in the valley. A big, ugly monster that loves to suck out your blood.’

The sound of the bus grew closer.

‘I haven’t seen any dragons.’ Tom played along with the joke.

‘Neither did us kids. I reckon they made up the dragon story to keep us away from the river.’ He picked up the chainsaw. ‘See the D-ring? That’s how you start the motor.’

Tom wasn’t listening. He couldn’t take his eyes from the bus passing by.

‘Did you hear me, Tom? This starts the motor.’

Tom didn’t hear. He wasn’t thinking about the chainsaw. Or about the appetites of the neighbourhood dragon. He was watching the bus. Or, rather, a specific individual on the bus.

Because sitting in the middle of the vehicle was a woman dressed in a white blouse. The woman from the hallucination. The same woman he thought he’d chased through the forest last night.

She turned her head. He thought he saw her nod in his direction. Then the bus accelerated away into the distance.

C
heery Chester drove away from Mull-Rigg Hall. He waved a happy goodbye from the van window and left Tom Westonby alone with the rented lawnmower, the chainsaw, and his thoughts.

Tom ate baked beans on toast for lunch. Nothing like beans, the boldly symphonic fruit, to inflate a wetsuit, or so the scuba fraternity insisted. The sense of humour shared by professional divers tended to be pretty unsophisticated at the best of times.

After he’d eaten his meal Tom prowled the grounds of Mull-Rigg Hall. He’d lived here alone for the past two months, ever since he’d agreed to get the place ready for his mother and father, and what amounted to a new brother. His late aunt’s son, Owen, was likeable. Tom was sure he’d get on well with the ten-year-old once he got to know him better. In truth, though, they’d spent very little time together. Before Tom had accepted the role of janitor here, along with the post of general fixer-upper, he’d taken a whole string of jobs in different parts of the country in order to raise money for the new dive school.

Today, Tom found himself preoccupied with how he’d find the seventeen thousand dollars for the premises in Greece. It didn’t help matters that he’d seemed to have a weird out-of-body experience last night after accidentally inhaling those fumes in the basement. By this morning he’d convinced himself he’d been in the grip of a bizarre hallucination: that he’d been chasing nothing more than a phantom of his own imagination through the forest.

However, just an hour ago there’d been another twist to that particular story. He’d actually seen the woman riding by on a bus. So who was she? The beautiful stranger with fair hair.

What really troubled Tom was that the woman must have been in the garden at midnight. Therefore, she really
had
been dipping her bare feet into the pond. So that meant he
must
have pursued her. Dear God, he’d been chasing her like he was going to attack her or something!

I don’t stalk women. It’s out of character for me to grab hold of a stranger like that.
He kept telling himself this to avoid the guilty notion that he might have frightened someone who’d been innocently taking a midnight stroll.
Though that’s a dangerous thing for a woman to do, even in the countryside.
He decided the intoxicating effect of the spirit had briefly sent him . . . what? Crazy? Psychotic? Murderous?

Shivers ran down his back. His imagination conjured up big, bright pictures of what he might have done after the woman made him angry by revealing that she’d been spying on him. As he paced about the lawn he found himself, to his horror, picturing how he might have grabbed hold of the stranger before strangling the life out of her. Then what? Frantically returning to the house for a spade so he could dig a grave out in the woods? Or dumping the corpse in the river?

Those gruesome scenarios unsettled him so much that he couldn’t concentrate on any one job. He’d a long list of chores – rooms to be emptied of the army of chairs that his aunt had accumulated, walls to be painted, new curtain tracks to be fitted, fences to be repaired, lawns to be cut, dead wood to be lopped (the orchard was a spectacular jungle). Yet he couldn’t settle on any one task.

He mooched from one of the mansion’s ten bedrooms to the other. Started to remove plastic light-switch covers to replace them with the beautiful antique brass ones bought at auction, then found himself remembering – or was that obsessing? – about the woman in white. Eventually, he returned to the basement.

The fumes still caught at the back of his throat. Even after one lungful of vapour coming off the spirit that had soaked into the brick floor he felt light-headed. His lips started to tingle. Brick walls began to ripple strangely. It was a wonder he hadn’t choked to death last night. Tom quickly opened the hatch that once allowed delivery men to pour coal down into the cellar. With the hatch open, the air should start to circulate and dispel the evaporated spirit. He decided not to return to the basement until the fumes had gone.

In order to get some fresh air himself, he strolled around the garden. It wasn’t long before he found himself by the pond where
she
had walked barefoot.

Ponds tend to be slimy. At the bottom, there’s usually a disgustingly noxious black layer of mud and rotting leaves, which would be vile to actually walk on.

However, this pond, fed by a natural spring, contained beautifully clear water. In bright sunlight, the liquid looked deliciously sweet. A sparkling Perrier effect. There was no foul, black mulch at the bottom. On the contrary, the pond-bed was covered with light grey sand, speckled with tiny blue pebbles. He found himself thinking that on a warm, summer’s night, the pond would be pleasant to bathe hot, tired feet. Even a skinny-dip seemed a temptingly refreshing way to escape the heat.

Outdoors was definitely more attractive than cooping himself up inside and drilling holes in dusty plasterwork so he could install light switches. Now the chainsaw had arrived he could make a start on taming the orchard.

He headed back round the house towards the garage. At first sight, the mansion had seemed intimidating. Its size, its age, the imposing pillars at the front. The edifice had resembled a Victorian courthouse. The kind of place where hungry kids arrested for stealing bread would be sentenced to go to rat-infested jails.

However, he’d grown to like the building. The roof tiles were as red as sun-ripened tomatoes. The stonework had mellowed down to a soft, buttery yellow. A slate tablet over the front door boasted that Mull-Rigg Hall had been
Raised From Ruin In The Year Of Our Lord 1866
. That’s when the pillars and imposingly posh frontage had been added.

Tom collected the chainsaw from the garage. When you’re twenty-three, chopping down dead trees with a powerful, motor-driven saw is immensely appealing. Even Chester’s jokey warning of ‘if you cut your legs off with that thing, don’t come running to me’ did nothing to lessen his enthusiasm to start blasting tree trunks with the ferocious blade.

Tom Westonby had just returned to the driveway when he heard a familiar roar.

The bus was making its return journey. At that moment, he recalled a vivid image of the bus as it headed to the village a couple of hours ago. The stranger in white had been on board. The one he’d pursued through the forest at midnight.

Without a second’s hesitation, he dashed to the end of the drive. He was just in time to see the bus pass by the gates. There were a dozen passengers: mainly adults with bags of groceries. His heart pounded as he searched the faces.

Where was the woman in white? He scanned face after face. Where was that flow of pale, almost luminous blonde hair?

Twin girls were in the seat that his midnight stranger had occupied earlier. They were about eight years old; simultaneously, both stuck their tongues out at him.

The bus roared away.

His heart went from pounding with excitement to a plunge of disappointment.

Maybe I really did imagine her
, he told himself as he headed back to the garage.
Not that I want to see her again
. He tried to rationalize away his confused swirl of feelings.
After all, why on earth would I want to see her? If she’s prowling around the forest at midnight she must be a nut-job.

‘Hello.’

Catching a lungful of air, he spun round.

There at the end of the drive stood the stranger. His gaze swept over her, taking in the blue eyes, the beautiful face, and the mist of pale, blonde hair.

She took a step towards the gate, her head tilting slightly to the side as she studied his face; it seemed as if she was reading the thoughts inside his head.

‘I got off the bus around the corner.’ Her voice possessed a pleasant, light quality. ‘I wanted to pay you a visit.’

‘Oh?’ He knew his response was staggeringly inarticulate. Because at that moment he felt spectacularly inarticulate. What did you say to someone you’d hunted like a wild animal?

‘You were planning to kill me last night, weren’t you, Tom?’

All he could do at that moment was stare in shock. Once more he had a vision of being hauled away to jail.
Surely, the woman will complain to the police. She’ll tell them that she’s been assaulted by the savage madman of Mull-Rigg Hall.

Her lips formed a ghost of a smile. ‘Well, Tom, here I am. Your helpless victim. The one you attacked last night. So . . .’ Her gaze turned to the chainsaw in his hand. ‘Aren’t you going to finish what you started?’

T
om Westonby stood there on the drive and gawped at the stranger who had just had made that extraordinary suggestion:
aren’t you going to finish what you started?
The way her eyes had fixed on the chainsaw suggested she really believed he would attack her.

Tom’s patience vanished. He realized she was playing games with him, and that annoyed him so much that he put the chainsaw down, then rounded on the woman.

‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’ he snapped.

‘Ridiculous? I’m not the one who goes chasing after people they’ve never met before.’ Her blue eyes registered genuine shock at the abrupt way he’d spoken.

‘I’ve got every right to chase trespassers. You shouldn’t have been on this property. Were you seeing what you could steal from the house? Because I know you weren’t alone, were you? One of your friends clubbed me from behind.’ As he snarled the words, he still couldn’t prevent himself from giving her the kind of visual examination that many young males give females.

The part of his brain reserved for noting details about girls filed the following:

Breasts: Great breasts. Wonderful breasts.

Hair: Blonde.

Build: Slender. Delicate. Hands very delicate, too.

Breasts: Wait . . . breasts already noted. Don’t have to check those again.

Nevertheless: Breasts. Great breasts. The white cotton blouse shows them off nicely. Wonderfully.

Eyes: Pale blue.

Mouth: Small. Lips with character. The way the bottom lip pushes out slightly.

Breasts: You’ve done breasts. They’re already covered.
Can you imagine them uncovered?

He realized his eyes had moved down her calf-length white cotton skirt to make mental notes about her delicate bare toes, which were revealed by a pair of sandals.

‘Listen. Whoever attacked me . . . whichever one of your friends . . . left me for dead by the river . . .’ Several million years of nature’s programming wouldn’t quit. Male instinct demanded he note the way she pushed her hair back from her shoulders. ‘I woke up this morning covered with insect bites. I ache so much I feel like I’ve been hit by a rhino.’