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live in Angus’ new house until you have finished school.” He looked at Rebecca, who was by

now staring open-mouthed at him. “I assume you do wish to finish? You are almost done

with your A levels, and you appear to have done quite well so far.”

“Er, yes, I was planning on finishing,” she said uncertainly, and cast a dazed look at me.

“They do this to me all the time,” I said wryly.

“Hush Angus, you know that it needs to be done. This Jack is likely to try and abduct her

again. Vampires are likely to be old-fashioned, and he may think twice if she is married. And

it will also give you the full authority to protect her.” He smiled grimly. “When she is finished school, I would suggest that you relocate to make it more difficult to find her. We believe

that your entire family should be relocated too, to protect them. Where you decide to move

is up to you, of course. Money is not an issue.”

Mark was grinning widely now. The time of his life. I chuckled softly.

Marcus turned to him now. “When you get home there will be a package waiting for

you. It will contain a laptop and an iphone. We will text you our contact details. We want to

know if anything happens to these two.” Mark nodded eagerly.

“One last thing before we go.” Marcus stood up and went out for a few seconds,

returning with a stainless steel lockable briefcase. He adjusted the combination locks and it

sprang open, revealing and astonishing array of sample bottles and tubes.

“I will need a sample of blood from all of you now, and some cells from the inside of

your mouth.” He smiled avuncularly.

“Like on CSI?” Mark again. “Me too? Why? I’m not an iron metaboliser.”

“Indeed. But you could be carrying the recessive gene. I would like to try and isolate it.”

“OK,” he said and obligingly held his arm out. Marcus took his samples from all of us.

Rebecca said nothing throughout, but stared fascinated as her blood flooded the tubes in

Marcus’ hand. Eventually Marcus’ briefcase snapped shut, and he and Fergus loaded up the

luxury hire car. Mark groaned when Marcus removed his samples from a shelf in the fridge.

“Oh, man, my bacon was in there with bits of dead vampire!”

Fergus grinned at him. “Welcome to my world,” he said dryly.

They were soon ready to go; Marcus was driving because Fergus tended to get

distracted. “We will see you again in ten days time,” he said as they waved goodbye, and

then they were gone.

Mark

What a weird morning. I have to say, I liked Angus’ brothers; Fergus with his nervous

energy and quirky sense of humour, and Marcus with his out of date formality and burning

curiosity. So when they told Angus and Rebecca that they had to get married in eleven days

time, I was worried that Angus was going to attack them or something. But he just sat there

and smiled, while Rebecca looked kinda shocked, but she didn’t say anything either.

Nothing. Not even while we loaded up Angus’ car, or when we were driving away from the

old stone house that Angus and his brothers had grown up in.

That was a bit of a nerve-racking ride for me. I kept thinking about the guns in the boot,

and the bullet proof vest with a squished bullet in it that one of the kidnappers had

managed to shoot at Angus. Every time I saw a police car I almost had a heart attack. I kept

watching the speedometer, and reminding Angus when he went over seventy. You’d have

thought that he would have been irritated, but he just laughed, and he even slowed down.

Amazing.

Rebecca sat up front in the passenger seat and stared out of the window. After a while

Angus reached out and put his hand over hers. She turned to him and smiled, but she still

said nothing. I got fed up with all this silence after about an hour, and I asked Angus to put the radio on, which he did. I leaned back, closed my eyes and fell asleep.

Rebecca

When Marcus told us that we had to get married in eleven days time, and Angus made

no objections, I was speechless. I felt an enormous guilt settle on my shoulders, that he

should be forced to get married to save me from Jack’s evil intentions. But I was also

secretly thrilled at the idea, and then I felt even more guilty for being so pleased about it. I was afraid to speak to him in case he told me that he’d changed his mind about it, and that

he’d thought of an alternative plan to foil Jack. How dumb can you be.

When Angus put his big, warm hand over mine, I wanted to cry, but I smiled at him

instead, grateful for the support. I had such a lot to be grateful to this beautiful man for.

When Mark finally fell asleep, Angus turned the radio down slightly so the snores from

the back could be more clearly heard. Then he spoke without taking his eyes off the road.

“We don’t have to get married if you don’t want to.”

Oh, God, I thought. This is it. This is where he backs out of it. I was terrified and furious

at the same time, mostly at myself for being such a coward. I kept quiet, and felt a tear

stealing its way from the corner of one of my eyes.

He spoke again. “I don’t want you to be forced into doing something you don’t want to

do.” He glanced at me. I tried to stare out of the window so he wouldn’t see me crying, but

somehow he knew anyway, and he reached out and wiped the tear from my cheek.

“I didn’t object when Marcus suggested it,” his voice was husky now, “because there is

nothing I want more than to be your husband, but if you…” His voice trailed off. It took me a

few seconds to comprehend exactly what he was telling me.

“Really?” I looked at him, and he was smiling at me again, but there was a hint of

sadness in his eyes, as if he was expecting
me
to back out.

“No,” I said, tears running down my cheeks in earnest now. So this was what it was like

to cry with relief and happiness. Bizarre.

“What do you mean, no?” A puzzled frown creased his handsome brow.

“No, I don’t want to not marry you! I mean, I do want to marry you!” I was confusing

myself now.

“Really?” he looked surprised and delighted. “So why are you crying?”

“Because I’m so happy!” Now I was really starting to sound like a halfwit. Angus didn’t

seem to mind, though, and he reached out and gently cupped my cheek in one of his hands,

and wiped away my tears with his thumb.

“Watch the road,” I said, smiling like an idiot now. Angus let out a bark of laughter, and

the snoring in the back suddenly stopped.

“What?” said Mark sleepily.

“Nothing,” I told him. “Go back to sleep.”

“Well, I would if you would stop making so much noise,” he grumbled. “I can’t hear the

radio.”

I shook my head disapprovingly, and Angus grinned and turned the radio up.

Angus

We arrived home just before six in the evening. Rebecca’s mother was already home

and eagerly awaiting us. As soon as the car drew up outside her house, she was out of the

front door and pulling the passenger door open. Rebecca climbed out stiffly and was

immediately enveloped in a huge hug. Even Joe looked pleased to see her. He had followed

his mother out of the house and stood waiting in the dim light cast by the open doorway. I

wondered what he was thinking, but I didn’t reach into his mind. I had decided last night

that the minds of this family would remain off limits to me, the same way that my brothers

thoughts were. It was like being able to see people naked; just because you
can
, doesn’t mean you
should
. Unless there was an emergency, of course. I thought about Jack, and

wondered if he was out there right now, planning his revenge.

We were all ushered into the warm sitting room, and plied with coffee and tea. The

white kitten appeared out of nowhere and launched itself onto Mark’s lap, purring like a

Harley Davidson. I pretended to look disapproving.

“Little traitor. I think you’d better keep her, Mark. She’s obviously infatuated with you.”

Mark’s face lit up. “Brilliant! So I can name her what I want to now?”

“No!” interjected Rebecca. “He wanted to call her Quark, Mum.”

“What, like the noise a duck makes?” Joe looked puzzled.

“No!” Mark was impatient. “Subatomic particle, oh daft one.”

“Oh, physics,” Joe said dismissively. “Still sounds like a duck.”

“Yeah, I guess it does. What about Soft White?”

“Like the bread?” Joe was eyeing his younger brother with perplexity. “What’s wrong

with you?”

This was clearly a conversation that was not going to reach any sort of satisfactory

conclusion soon. I looked around the room at Rebecca and her mother cuddled together in

one corner of the sofa, Mark and Joe sitting at the other end, and I smiled to myself. You’d

never say that this family had been brutally ripped apart only yesterday. I knew that they

would want to talk about the whole thing later, but for now they seemed satisfied just to be

together.

I thought about all the firearms in the boot of my car, and stood up reluctantly to leave.

I had a few things that needed sorting out tonight, starting with a gun safe. I wasn’t going to disarm myself now. Not when Rebecca and her family were so vulnerable. I would need

Fergus to acquire some top of the range surveillance equipment, and a few dozen

unobtrusive tracking devices. I wasn’t going to risk not being able to find my girl again. I

smiled at her as she and her mother stood up to say goodnight. She was tired but radiant. I

thought about eleven days time and my heart leapt.

“Thank you for rescuing my daughter,” Rebecca’s mother said.

I nodded. “No problem at all, Mrs Harding. Would you mind if I had a word with

Rebecca before I left?”

“Of course.”

Rebecca blushed as I took her warm hand and led her outside. The feel of her hand in

mine was so right, so real, that I was reluctant to let it go.

“I will fetch you tomorrow and take you to school.” I’d been thinking about this

business of her staying to finish her A levels. We might need to rethink that decision at some stage. I would speak to Fergus and Marcus when they arrived for the wedding. I smiled. “I

will also be fetching you and taking you until you finish your schooling. I will have a study set up in the spare bedroom of the house, and you can work there in the afternoons until your

family are all home in the evenings.”

“OK.” She nodded.

“We will need to go shopping tomorrow afternoon.” She looked up at me, her

eyebrows raised in surprise. “You need a ring,” I explained. She blushed a fiery red in the

gloom.

“You will probably also have to invite me over for supper tomorrow night so we can tell

your family about us getting married,” I continued.

“OK,” she said again, and then smiled shyly up at me. God, she was lovely. I wanted to

stay there the whole night, her hand in mine, but I had to go. She needed to get back inside

to her waiting family, and I needed to empty that boot, and go back to my empty house. I

had been so used to being alone that I’d never realised what loneliness is. I would miss her

for those few hours before the morning.

“Goodnight, my Rebecca.” I held her chin and kissed her all too briefly on the lips. Then

I released that little hand, and turned and walked across the road.

Jack

The vampire called Jack surveyed the burnt out ruins of his home. One of his homes, he

corrected himself, smiling grimly. His face was angular, with a cruel set to his features, and his smile did nothing to ameliorate the effect. He had arrived the night before, summoned

by that idiot Oscar. The fact that Oscar was his son did nothing to change his disapproval of

him. Most of the vampires here were his sons, one way or another.

He had found the bodies last night, lying scattered throughout the house, headless and

lifeless. It was as if someone had known that this would be the only reliable way to kill

vampires. And when he’d found Oscar’s headless corpse, and smelled the scent of the male

vampire who had knelt there and ambushed his coven, he had a pretty good idea of what

had happened. He had tracked the sole survivor of the massacre to another of his bases two

hundred miles to the west, and had extracted the story from him. The pathetic creature had

been remarkably reluctant to reveal what had happened, especially his own cowardly

actions, so he’d had to torture him for a while, something which he always enjoyed doing.

He smiled again at the thought, this time revealing sharp, yellowed teeth. Who knows, he

might even survive. Unfortunately, when he’d finally got back, someone had set fire to the

complex, destroying most of the evidence. But he already knew what had happened.

Oscar had brought this catastrophe upon them when he had kidnapped the girl. She

had not been alone and helpless as so many others before her; she had even drank the

blood of that idiot Mercer and carried her vampire rescuer to the car, and to safety. Jack

was impressed. Furious and enraged, but impressed nonetheless. He would have to proceed

cautiously now, but proceed he would. He wanted that girl. She would breed strong minded,

powerful vampires, and he would enjoy taming her. And if he managed to destroy the male

vampire who had so decimated his personal army, then so much the better.

Jack glanced again at the photograph that Oscar had sent to his mobile phone. The girl

was scowling at the camera, her hair dishevelled, but she was still very attractive. He smiled hungrily.