His Vampyrrhic Bride (30 page)

A line of white foam revealed where Helsvir circled round for another attack.

The tall man used the pole to strike at where he hoped the creature would be underwater. The tip of the shaft sent up glittering splashes as he tried to land blows on the attacker. All of a sudden, the man was struggling to tug the pole free. A dozen hands had erupted from the water to grab hold of it. Helsvir was fighting back.

The next second, the tall man toppled off the boat into the water. Bobbing there, he shouted for Chester to come back for him. Suddenly, his shouts became screams. The expression of agony on his face was clear at this distance. Beneath the surface those deadly hands would be breaking the man’s legs. He yelled in agony once more, then vanished – pulled down into the nightmarishly dark waters.

Chester did not stop. His head rose and fell as he pumped those shafts of wood. The boat shot over the submerged cemetery wall.

Meanwhile, a crimson stain briefly appeared on the water’s surface. Tom knew that Helsvir would be breaking its victim apart before performing that secret rite of weaving the dead man’s body parts into its own body. With every victim it grew more powerful.

And there were plenty of potential victims tonight.

Chester made good progress. The loss of one of his passengers had at least given them vital moments to escape. The problem was that he couldn’t see the reef of gravestones just beneath the surface. Almost immediately, the boat became caught on a stone cross.

Nicola clung to Tom. He felt her tears soak through his shirt to his chest.

‘They’re going to be killed, Tom. Help them!’

He saw a series of slab-like tombs that lay level with the surface of the water. ‘Go back into the church,’ he told her.

She shook her head. ‘No.
Never
!’ The place obviously filled her with dread.

‘OK, stay here. But don’t follow me.’ With that, he bounded across the stone slabs as if they were stepping stones.

The people in the boat fought to free it. And just behind them, Helsvir arrived. It could be clearly seen as it hauled itself over the cemetery wall: a massive body of corpse flesh, a whale-sized creature studded with human heads. From each head there were wide eyes that stared with cold hunger in the direction of the boat.
New victims. Fresh meat.

Tom leapt from the slab to slab – each one larger than a desktop. Some were just below the surface, and he gambled they weren’t so slippery that they’d dump him off their backs into the water. Though it wasn’t deep here, he knew that the vicious creature wanted him dead. Being in that new lake wasn’t a safe place to be. Tom felt the beat of danger in the air.

When he was ten feet from the boat he shouted, ‘Mrs Bekk! Throw me the line!’

The woman stared at him.
She’s not going to do as I say.
The reason why was obvious: the moment Helsvir destroyed Tom was the moment that Nicola would be compelled to return to her old way of life: because there’d be no Tom. No fiancé. No prospect of marriage, forever and ever, amen.

‘Mrs Bekk, please!’ Tom held out his hands for the line.

Helsvir entered the flooded cemetery. In fury, it slammed into gravestones, the hated symbols of Christian burial. At least that outburst of violence against the tombs slowed its progress. However, the moment the monster had vented its anger it would attack the boat once more.

‘Mrs Bekk? Are you going to let these people be slaughtered? Are you going to sit there and watch them become part of that bastard?’

Her eyes fixed on Tom; there was such a grave light of despair in them, as if she knew whatever she did would ultimately lead to tragedy. Then, at last, with a deep sigh, she threw the line that was tied to the prow. Straight away, he began to haul at the craft. Chester was helping, too. He used the oar to try to push them clear of the stone cross.

Nicola screamed as she watched Helsvir violently thrashing its way through the water. Ever closer. Ever more threatening. Danger pounded through Tom’s body. Any second now . . . Helsvir would rip people from the boat. A woman clung to a baby. A child wept.

The multi-headed creature that was Helsvir rose above them. A menacing tower of dripping flesh.

‘
Yes!
’

Tom managed to pull the craft free. Using the flat-topped tombs as his return route, he hauled the boat full of people towards the strip of dry land. Meanwhile, Chester did his best to fend the creature off with the oar. He attacked the multitude of heads – the man had become a born-again warrior – clubbing, stabbing, slashing. Then Chester struck one of the faces with such force that blood exploded from the nose. And, as one, all the mouths opened to howl in pain.

Seconds later, Helsvir came back with renewed fury. A forest of arms reached out, and dozens of hands tugged the oar from Chester’s grasp – in no time at all they’d torn it to pieces.

Tom dragged the boat up on to the grass. Nobody needed to be told what to do next: they all dashed for the church doorway. Nicola helped the woman with the baby. Tom picked up the child. That done, he raced across the strip of dry earth to the building.

A dark-haired woman of around thirty didn’t make it.

Helsvir caught her up in that bristling mass of arms. They heard her screams. The crack of her breaking bones was shockingly loud. As her yells dropped to a low gurgling sound, Helsvir threw her aside. This time the creature wouldn’t postpone its next attack.

Tom stood in the doorway of the church. He was ready to face the monstrosity down until everyone was inside.

Of course, the creature wouldn’t be faced down; it lunged forward. A mass of faces filled his field of vision. Eyes fixed on him. Mouths yawned open. He saw jagged teeth. Before he felt the force of its impact, a dark hand gripped his arm, dragged him into the church. Then the door crashed shut.

The humans were inside, the monster was on the outside, but Tom Westonby couldn’t guarantee how long that state of affairs would last. Helsvir had tasted blood. It would be hell-bent on tasting more before the night was out.

A
fter the second boat arrived everything descended into chaos. One of its passengers, a white-haired man of around sixty, ran up the centre aisle of the church. He yelled, pointed back at the door, armed himself with a brass candlestick from the lectern; then he tried to hide behind one of the tapestries that hung from a stone pillar. The baby and the child were screaming. The mother tried to calm them without any success.

Another couple of guys were aggressively yelling at their parish priest. They demanded to know what the hell that demon was out there that had pursued them through the flooded village before killing two of their friends. Mrs Bekk sat on a pew bench. She muttered to herself in a low voice, while repeatedly shaking her head.

Nicola stared at the locked doors of the church. She seemed to be in a state of shock.

Chester pounced on Tom, slapping him repeatedly on the back while shouting, ‘You’re safe. Thank God you’re safe. I thought you were a dead man!’

In that whirlwind of yelling people, Tom tried to assess how many had made it into the church. He counted seven men. A baby and a little girl. Four women, including Mrs Bekk and Nicola.

Wait!
He took a closer look at one of the men, who sat on the stone floor with his back to the huge timber doors. He had his arms tightly folded; he rocked, while muttering to himself, and he was dripping wet. What’s more, his face was bloody from a dozen deep scratches.

‘Bolter!’ Tom grabbed the man by the front of his denim jacket and hauled him to his feet. ‘Bolter! Have you any idea what you’ve done?’

Bolter’s head rolled. ‘I killed you. I locked you in the room, Mr Crappy Westonby. You drowned in there.’

Tom shook the guy like he’d shake dirt from a blanket. ‘You torched Nicola’s home. I’ve a good mind to throw you back out there!’

Bolter grinned. His eyes had a strange shining quality – they were so glossy that they looked as if they’d been plucked out and dipped in olive oil, before being rammed into his blistery head again.

Tom slapped Bolter’s face. ‘You’re going to tell me why you attacked Nicola’s house.’ That slap felt so satisfying that Tom raised his hand again.

Chester grabbed his friend’s wrist to stop him hitting the thug. ‘That won’t help. The idiot’s out of it.’

‘I’ll beat him sober.’

‘While we were in the boat, he was cramming pills into his mouth. He’s high as a kite.’

Bolter gave a screeching laugh. ‘I made sure you drowned, Westonby. Why are you standing in front of my face?’ The guy suddenly stood up straight and held his fist in front of his mouth. ‘Stay with us, ladies and gentlemen. We have breaking news. The survivors, gathered here in St George’s Church, Danby-Mask, have been attacked by a monster. Earlier this evening it tried to kill me – I managed to escape by bravely jumping through the roof of a garage . . . Cut me up pretty bad . . . But I made it here to relative safety on this new island created by the flood . . .’

Tom was amazed. The guy was actually pretending to be reporting this live on a news channel. Maybe he really did believe that his fist was a microphone. Even his speech became clearer as the drug-induced delusion that he spoke to viewers took hold.

Bolter dribbled. ‘There are a handful of us trapped in the church. While the monster is out there, we cannot leave. We are under siege. I repeat, we are besieged by the creature. To leave this building invites instant attack. We’ll be back after this short commercial break . . .’ He started to laugh. However, the laughter quickly turned to snotty weeping. He rubbed his sleeve over the sloppy mess at the bottom of his nose.

Tom shoved him back against the door. The man slithered down on to the stone slabs; there he curled himself into a ball as he blubbered softly to himself.

Meanwhile, the din continued. This was bedlam. The mother of the children had joined the two men to harangue the priest. The white-haired man peeped out from behind the tapestry where he began to shout incomprehensible comments.

Joshua did his best to soothe them. ‘Please calm yourselves. We must discuss—’

‘Discuss be damned,’ yelled a big, red-faced man of around fifty. He had scraggles of black hair that hung down at either side of his balding head. ‘What’s out there? What attacked us?’

‘Phil,’ Joshua said, ‘Take a seat, please, we—’

‘I’ll be damned if I sit there jawing while there’s some animal out there. What is it?’

Tom grabbed the hefty man by the elbow. ‘That’s Helsvir.’

‘Helsvir? What the hell is Helsvir?’ The man’s anger made his face even redder. ‘And if you don’t get your hands off me, I’ll rip your bloody head off.’

‘Helsvir is a creature made from human corpses.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘You saw it with your own eyes.’

‘Phil,’ began Joshua. ‘That is a real creature.’

‘No!’ bellowed Phil. ‘Monsters don’t exist.’

Joshua spoke in a calm voice, driving the truth home. ‘You saw what it did to Marjorie and to Mr Green. Whatever brought it here doesn’t matter for the moment. What you need to know is that Helsvir is dangerous . . . very, very dangerous.’

Bolter sat up straight. An idiot grin slashed across his face. ‘Now we’re fortunate enough to have Joshua Squires, priest of this crappy parish, with an explanation of what the creature is, and what harm it can do to the human anatomy.’

Tom would have liked to kick Bolter. He resisted the temptation. Just.

Nicola gripped Tom’s hand. ‘Why is that thing here?’

‘To stop us being together.’ Tom’s face was grim. ‘Helsvir is the ultimate weapon that will prevent us from being a couple. Isn’t that right, Mrs Bekk?’

Before Mrs Bekk could answer, a tremendous crash echoed through the church. Instantly, everyone stopped shouting. And everyone turned to the big, main door. A huge object had just slammed into it from the other side. The impact sounded like thunder.

Bolter’s eyes bulged as he stared at the door. The wood slowly began to curve inwards as a huge force was exerted from the other side. Planks creaked. The huge iron bolts that locked the door shut were starting to bend.

Even Bolter’s voice became hushed. ‘Ladies and gentlemen –
breaking
news. The monster is
breaking
down the door. We might only have moments to live.’

Then the door suddenly jolted again. The creature must have hurled itself at the barrier. Its fury stunned the people there. They now realized that Helsvir was brutally real. What’s more, they knew that if the door gave way they would suffer an agonizing death.

But Tom knew that death wouldn’t be the end . . . Death would be only be the start of their nightmare.

T
he church door had kept out the unwanted for centuries. Now that door shuddered as the creature charged again and again. Everyone in the church watched. Even Joshua, the parish priest, gasped as one of the timbers splintered under the onslaught.

But the fact of the matter was this: even that massive door couldn’t stand up to Helsvir for long. Each blow from outside sounded like thunder inside. The ancient building shook. White dust swirled from the rafters. The light from the candles became hazy.

‘Do something,’ shouted the woman with the baby. ‘Stop it!’

The burly, red-faced man, by the name of Phil, turned on her. ‘What can we do? You saw the size of the thing, you stupid bitch!’

The baby began to cry. The woman hugged the child and gently rocked it back and forth – while all the time she stared in contempt at the man who’d yelled at her.

Bolter pointed at Nicola. ‘She controls it. She tells that monster what to do.’

The woman with the child stared at Nicola. ‘That’s Nicola Bekk, isn’t it? The strange girl that never speaks.’

‘Oh, she speaks alright.’ Bolter had dropped the news reporter act. He advanced on Nicola, jabbing his finger in her direction. ‘She tells that monster to do stuff. The bitch will have ordered it to attack the boat.’

‘I didn’t,’ Nicola protested.