Whitby Vampyrrhic (21 page)

‘Eleanor. Don't do this. Let me go.'

‘You must have that proof. I need you to help me. I can't do this alone.'

‘Eleanor, please . . .'

‘Look through the passageway.'

Eleanor shone light into the darkness. The electric beams sliced away shadows. Beth cried out at the sight that struck her eyes. In the harsh, silver radiance they were revealed with such brutal clarity. Beth gasped, shivers cascaded down her body, as her eyes focused on those squirming forms. The narrow shaft that Eleanor had once forced her arm through was no more than three feet long. It opened into a cave that adjoined Hag's Lung. Inside: squirming, writhing shapes that were moist and pale. With her face to the hole in the rock, it was almost like looking through a keyhole into a room beyond. At first, the figures seemed to consist of the same kind of flesh as shellfish – white, glistening muscular shapes, with no part of the body readily identifiable.

Beth had the impression of hundreds of bodies in there. They filled the cave, just as shrimp are crammed into a glass jar. Then, as her mind made sense of those restless, turbulent figures, she began to see arms, legs, sides of heads, ears, hands. Then it happened. A face slammed to the opening at the other end of the miniature passageway. A face with human proportions, yet utterly
inhuman.

Eyes. Nose. Mouth. The mouth yawned wide, as the Vampiric face strained forward against the corresponding hole at the other side.
Those teeth? Dear God. They match the wound pattern on Eleanor's wrist.

Beth screamed.

As she did so, she heard a clatter of footsteps. Suddenly, figures poured through the cave entrance behind her. Hands seized her roughly. An arm encircled her neck. Beth screamed again, then a hand covered her eyes.

Seven

Heart crashing against her ribs, air roaring through her mouth, Beth feared her lungs would explode with sheer terror. For a powerful set of arms dragged her from that peephole into Vampiric hell. Shouts filled the cave. Echoes distorted them so wildly that she couldn't identify individual words. If anything, what occupied her mind the most was the fact that a hand was pulling her head against a man's chest. And the fingers of that hand covered her eyes, blinding her. At any moment, she expected teeth to sink into her throat.

More heavy footsteps clattered down the steps into the cave.

‘Easy with her, Sanderson, do you want to pull the lady's head off?'

‘She might be a spy, Sarge. I didn't want her to see our faces.'

‘Do you think she's going to radio a description of your pretty-boy looks to Gestapo HQ?'

‘Sarge. You can't be too careful. The Nazis might parachute in Storm Troopers.'

‘Does she look like a Storm Trooper, lad? Wearing lipstick and a skirt?'

‘Sarge—'

‘Put her down, Sanderson.'

‘Yes, Sarge.'

The hand withdrew from Beth's eyes. Blinking, trying to catch her breath, she realized that half a dozen figures had joined them in Hag's Lung. Still groggy from the narcotic that Eleanor had inveigled into her drink, she stood unsteadily. Men in military uniform milled around the place. Two soldiers held Alec at gunpoint. Clearly, the young conscripts were alarmed by the big Scot wearing a black eyepatch. Another soldier held Eleanor by the arm. He looked barely seventeen and the formidable woman made him nervous. The din rose to new levels. Echoes twisted and tangled the sounds into a nerve-shredding maelstrom.

‘
Quiet!
' A man, with short silver hair beneath his army cap, moved into the centre of the cave. His air of authority marked him out as leader of the platoon. At his command, the cave fell instantly silent. His stern gaze fixed on Alec. ‘What the hell are you playing at, sir? The lights you were shining would have been noticeable from twenty miles away.'

Alec staggered forward. He muttered a sentence that nobody could make out.

‘Had a drink or two, have we, sir?' The sergeant maintained politeness towards what he undoubtedly regarded as irresponsible civilians.

Eleanor tried to smooth things over. ‘Sergeant. I'm sorry. My friends and I went for a late night walk.'

‘A walk? Or was it to indulge in Night Fishing, as the locals term those brief encounters of a certain kind?'

‘No, I just wanted to show my friends—'

‘I'm not interested, madam, in what you planned to reveal. That kind of thing is best left for indoors. Don't you realize that my men took you for spies? They were a hair's breadth from shooting you.'

Although the sergeant remained calm, if annoyed by gallivanting civilians, his men were still fired up on adrenalin. They held rifles at the ready. Their eyes darted from Alec to Sally to Eleanor and to Beth. Clearly, they'd burst into the cave expecting to find a bunch of gun-toting spies.

Sally found her voice at last. ‘We're not drunk, sir. Honest.'

‘Madam, we're fighting a war. You and your bunch of merrymakers have taken us away from our guard posts.'

‘Sorry.'

‘Alright, boys.' The Sergeant let out a sigh. ‘Stop pointing your rifles at the ladies and gentleman.'

‘Thank you, Officer.'

‘Sergeant,' he corrected. ‘Now, I'll have to take you to the police station. You're in a restricted area. What's more, you were showing a light from the cave entrance. That's a criminal offence.'

‘We didn't mean to,' Eleanor told him.

‘That's all well and good, madam, but an enemy pilot could have seen that light from way off. It wouldn't have done us a power of good if Jerry had dropped a bomb on our heads, would it now? The young ladies' hairstyles would have been a heck of a mess.' The joke, albeit a macabre one, suggested that the Sergeant had decided the intrusion into the cave owed itself more to high spirits, and to too much booze, than to covert enemy action.

Sally and Alec were coming to their senses. The narcotic must have been leaving their blood. Sally showed signs of embarrassment. Alec scratched his head, no doubt suspecting he'd misbehaved but unable to remember the nitty-gritty of his misdeeds. He rubbed his cheek, saw lipstick on his fingertips, then his good eye fixed on the smudged lipstick around Sally's lips. The soldiers had begun to relax. They grinned as Alec rubbed lipstick off his face with a handkerchief.

The Sergeant shot Alec a knowing glance. ‘Not to worry, sir, we're all men of the world. We shan't mention what you were doing with the young lady. But we'll have to report that you were showing the light in contravention of wartime regulations. My corporal will drive you all to the police station in Whitby.'

‘Just arrest me, Sergeant, please,' Alec said. ‘It's my fault entirely.'

Beth caught Eleanor's eye, then inclined her head to the hole in the cave wall. She mouthed the words,
I saw them.

Eleanor gave a tiny nod.

Meanwhile, the Sergeant went to the foot of the steps that led up to the cave's exit. ‘Corporal Breen. Bring the truck round. You're to deliver four civilians to Whitby police station.' A pause. No Corporal Breen appeared. Frowning, the sergeant turned back to the others in the cave. ‘Sanderson. Scoot up there and find Corp.'

He'd barely finished the sentence when a shape sped into the cave. It didn't even bother with the steps. It leapt from the entrance directly on to the soldier's back, knocking him down.

Everyone stared in shock, as a woman in a white nightdress straddled the Sergeant, her legs at either side of his waist. As she wrestled to hold him down, her nightdress slid up, revealing long, pale thighs, through which a tracery of black veins ran. Before anyone could react, more figures burst into the cave. The candles magnified their shadows against the walls. Beth flinched at the sight of these demonic figures. She counted six of them. One of them wore a pilot's uniform complete with a leather helmet and goggles over his eyes. Then she saw the eyes of the others. They were bereft of colour – not a trace of an iris. Instead, the eyes contained fierce black pupils in their centres.

The young soldiers recovered from the shock. A pair of them dragged the woman from their sergeant. She rounded on them, trying her best to grip their necks. The soldiers started shouting to one another. Once more the cave reduced their words to a swirling babble of echoes. Beth grabbed hold of Sally and Alec, and pulled them back towards Eleanor. She kept moving, shoving them into a narrow recess of the cave, in order to give them the best cover. Just in time. For one of the soldiers fired into the air to frighten the attackers away. The bullet smacked into a stalactite. It shattered into tiny fragments that scattered over the swarming bodies.

‘That woman's attacking the soldier,' Sally wailed. ‘Eleanor! What's happening!'

‘That woman is Mary Tinskell. Or rather she was. She's one of the creatures now. They must have taken her.'

Alec had to shout over the cacophony. ‘A vampire?'

‘You've got your proof,' Eleanor cried. ‘And you've got it the tough way.'

A man in white appeared at the entrance to the cave. He watched the brawl in horror.

‘And that's Gustav Kirk,' Eleanor shouted. ‘Leader of his pack of blood drinkers.'

Gustav descended halfway down the steps, then he threw out his arms to implore his fellow creatures, ‘Don't do this. Leave the soldiers alone.'

They ignored him. Mary, straddling a young soldier, had her teeth in the lower jaw of the man. When she sucked, her eyes rolled in ecstasy.

‘We are meant for a higher purpose,' yelled Gustav. ‘Don't surrender to your cravings. We aren't monsters!'

Frightened soldiers fired their rifles. One of the bullets struck the pilot. He grimaced, and his mouth drooped to one side, as if the shot had damaged his nervous system. Yet recovery occurred at an astonishing speed. In seconds, he'd regained his strength, and he leapt on a soldier to sink his teeth into the man's wrist – where veins run close to the skin's surface: throbbing conduits of hot blood.

‘Stop this!' Gustav dragged a vampire from the Sergeant. ‘Stop this. We do not need their blood. We can resist temptation!' Heroic words, noble words. But that appeal to virtuous natures was lost on the vampires. They were locked into a feeding frenzy. Now even Gustav eyed those vessels, full of rich, wholesome blood, that were mortal men. Lust flared in his eyes. He evidently longed to sip from a vein. Yet he resisted – just.

Beth saw that, of all the creatures, he retained a ghosting of colour around the pupil. A whisper of pale blue. And, of all the creatures, he retained a ghost of his former self, too. The gentle, book-loving boy who Eleanor had spoken so sorrowfully about. This man in white, with a striped tie knotted about his waist in place of a belt, struggled not only with his own Vampiric nature. He strove to restrain the others, too.

And he was losing. That expression of sorrow, of pure grief, on Gustav's face melted Beth's heart.

Once more, the surviving soldiers fired their rifles. Bullets struck the walls. They bounced back and forth so fast that they created a cat's cradle of fiery lines in the air. If a vampire was struck, they flinched; their legs would weaken; their eyes would lose their fierce intensity; and the sides of their mouths would drag downwards. But the effects of their wounds would be fleeting. In moments, the strength would pour back into their limbs; their backs would straighten; and their mouths would regain their former shape.

The Sergeant shouted commands. He seized hold of vampires that were swarming over his men and flung them aside. They didn't frighten him. The man obviously had no intention of quitting this battle.

Gustav still cried out for his vampire pack to leave the soldiers. They ignored him. Moreover, his voice became distorted. The hunger that blazed in his eyes revealed that whatever remained of his human side had begun to falter.

His eyes locked on Eleanor. ‘I'm sorry. I tried to stop them.'

Another bullet shrieked round the cave, bouncing from rock surfaces, clipping a chunk from a stalactite, then it tore through the Sergeant's shoulder. The bullet's impact flung blood into the air. It atomized in a red mist. Blood settled on everyone, covering the exposed skin of hands and faces in red speckles. Beth tasted its coppery tang.

It sent the vampires berserk. With renewed fury, they attacked the soldiers. Now even Gustav lost all self-restraint. That residual blue in his eye vanished. The black pupils became fierce points of darkness that, in themselves, threatened to draw all that was good and holy from the world. Gustav flung himself from the steps on to the wounded Sergeant. Even as the pair crashed to the floor, Gustav's teeth found the man's shoulder wound. He ripped at already torn flesh. A geyser of blood erupted. Gustav caught the crimson fountain in his mouth, swallowing, gulping . . . sucking it down in his throat. His face became a mask of gratification. His back arched with pleasure.

‘Come on.' Eleanor dragged her companions from the fold in the rock. ‘Get out.'

Alec paused. ‘We've got to help!'

‘There's nothing we can do. Run!'

Somehow, they scrambled, in a clump of flailing arms, to the exit. Sally wept. Alec still shouted that they ought to bring help. Eleanor came last, shoving the last one out into the cold, moonlit night.

Eight

Beth Layne opened her eyes to find herself laying in the graveyard. The moon shone down on to a mass of gravestones that ran off to her right and left in lines of black. In the main, each had a similar shape – a vertical oblong with a rounded top. Decades of rain and frost had erased many of the chiselled words that recorded the names, ages and places of those who'd lived out their lives in Whitby and its rural hinterland. Beth lay flat on one such tomb marker that had been toppled on to the earth. Doused by pale moonlight, she found herself faced with a reminder of human mortality:
In loving memory of Thomas Jackson. Master Mariner. Died May 22nd 1901
 . . .