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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

reckoned 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.