The Cross

Chapter Eighteen

Bal Mawr Manor

Errol Knightly listened intently as Dec told him everything he knew. He started from the beginning, with the account of how he and Kate Hawthorne, the girl next door, had argued while out for a drive; how she’d run off and got a lift in a Rolls with some rich guy, and gone with him to this party at a manor house called Crowmoor Hall.

‘You might have heard of the place, like?’

‘Certainly I have. It’s where they found all those bodies recently,’ Knightly said, perched on the edge of his leather armchair, already into his third top-up of sherry and heading for a fourth. ‘It was on the news. Henley-on-Thames, isn’t it?’

‘What they won’t tell you on the news is that it was a nest of frigging vampires,’ Dec said darkly. He went on to describe how, after following Kate and her party hosts down to a strange crypt underneath the house, he’d witnessed the ritual slaughter of another girl. How they’d hung her from chains by her ankles, and then this black-haired vampire bitch with a sword had slashed her throat open, how the bastards had all stood there taking a shower in her blood. ‘You should have seen it. You should have been there.’

Knightly had turned very pale by this point in Dec’s story.

Soon after that, Dec continued, Kate had started going funny. The doctor hadn’t been able to understand the illness that had struck her after her return from the party. Nobody would have wanted to hear Dec’s story. ‘But I was right.’

Knightly made a lunge for that fourth top-up. ‘She bit you. A vampire actually fed on you?’

Dec nodded and showed him the faint marks on his neck. ‘But like I said in my email, it wasn’t enough to turn me. My mate Joel reckons she didn’t have the powers, like Gabriel Stone did.’

Knightly’s eyes were popping. ‘And this Joel fellow … he’s …’

‘The one who destroyed her.’

‘With …’

‘With this weird-looking cross.’

‘I see.’ Knightly paused. ‘Er, weird how, exactly?’

Dec pointed at the shiny crucifix Knightly was wearing around his neck. ‘It wasn’t like that. Or this one.’ He pulled out his own to show him. ‘It had a ring around the top bit.’

‘You mean a Celtic cross?’ Knightly said, fingering his crucifix.

‘That’s right. And it was made of stone. About this size.’ Dec held his hands eighteen inches apart.

‘So they do work,’ Knightly sighed in immense relief.

‘What?’

‘I meant Celtic crosses,’ Knightly said, collecting himself. ‘Why wouldn’t they? Are they not as holy as other crosses, or something?’

‘Well, you see, Declan, some scholars have maintained—’

‘It’s Dec,’ Dec said. ‘Anyway, it worked pretty frigging well as far as I could see.’

‘Tell me about Joel. Where is he now?’

‘He went after them. To Romania, like. I haven’t seen him since.’

Knightly drained the last of his sherry and looked wistfully at the bottle. ‘And what about this Gabriel Stone?’

‘He’s the leader. Of the vampires, I mean.’

‘And you’ve actually seen him? I mean,’ he added carefully, ‘seen him in a way that would make it clear that he really was a vampire?’

Dec nodded without hesitation. ‘I saw his fangs and everything. I told you. He was there in the crypt. Then after that, he was the one who turned Kate.’ He clenched his fists. ‘I hope Joel’s destroyed the bastard. If he hasn’t, I will. And that’s why I’m here, Mr Knightly.’

Knightly looked at his feet and said nothing.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Dec pleaded. ‘You’re the big leagues. The real deal. I’m nothing compared to you. But I can’t do this by myself. I’m just a kid, really. I’m all alone. I can’t talk to me ma and da about this. Me brother thinks I’m a nutcase. The police … forget it. For all I know, Joel’s not coming back. You’re all I’ve got. The only person who understands. You’ve really done these things. Mr Knightly, you’ve got to help me.’

Knightly sat quietly for a long time, deep in thought. ‘Normally, of course, I would have to charge for my services.’

‘I don’t have much money,’ Dec blurted out. ‘But I’ve thought about that. I’m a mechanic, so I am. Well, trainee, like, but I could fix that Bentley of yours. That’s a nasty oil leak. I’ll valet the Porsche, too. I’ll clean your windows. Skim the moat. I’ll do anyth—’

Knightly raised his hand, cutting him off. ‘None of that will be necessary. In fact, under the circumstances, I would be willing to pay you, if you’d agree to let me include this incredible material in my next book. I’m already working on it. But I don’t have anything like the kind of stuff—’ Knightly broke off suddenly. He was sweating. ‘How does a hundred pounds sound?’

Dec frowned. ‘You don’t understand, Mr Knightly. I want you to help me catch them. Like you said, they dwell amongst us.’

‘It’s “lurk”. They lurk amongst us.’

‘Dwell, lurk, whatever. I want to rid the world of them. All of them. I want you to learn me everything you know. I want to become a vampire hunter just like you. I want—’

Knightly’s face flushed. He stood up and walked to one of the library’s tall windows, gazing out to sea and thinking hard.

‘If you aren’t going to help me,’ Dec said in a pained voice, ‘I’ll have to find someone else.’ He thought for a moment, then added more brightly, ‘Maybe I could join up with that Federation. You know, the one you talked about on TV. Maybe they’d take me on?’

‘Fact is, Dec, I don’t know any more about them than you do. I’ve no idea how you could contact them, or who they are. That video clip isn’t much to go on.’

Dec’s shoulders drooped. He slumped deep in his chair with a look of defeated resignation. ‘Then it looks like I came all this way for nothing, so it does.’

Knightly sighed heavily, and turned away from the window to face him. ‘Where are your family? Who else knows you’re here?’

‘Me ma and da and brother Cormac are home in Wallingford. I didn’t tell them where I was going.’

‘What about work? College? Is anyone expecting you back tomorrow?’

Dec shook his head. ‘I work for me da. I can call him and make an excuse. I do it all the time. He’s used to it.’

Knightly let out another big sigh. ‘Very well. I’ll help you.

You can stay here for a while. I’ll teach you everything I know. I’ll train you in the use of anti-vampire weaponry. I’ll even give you one of my advanced vampire detection kits — worth PS49.99. You can be my apprentice.’

Suddenly glowing with joy, Dec jumped out of his armchair. ‘Cool!’

‘On the strict understanding that every evening, after your training’s over, you’ll sit with me and help me get every detail of this down on paper. I mean everything. The house. The vampires themselves, what they looked like, how they talked, how they dressed, exactly what they did.’

‘No problem. I remember it all.’

‘And all about this cross. This library has books centuries old, filled with illustrations of ancient crosses. We’ll go through them systematically, until we find one that’s similar to yours. We’ll make drawings of it. You’ll tell me precisely what happened when your friend pointed it at Kate. Every last shred of detail.’

Dec’s face fell. ‘I can remember that too. I could never forget it.’

‘It’s a deal, then?’

‘Deal,’ Dec agreed.

Knightly grabbed his wallet and peeled off two fifty-pound notes. ‘Here’s the money.’

Dec hesitated, embarrassed, then thought of the credit card payments for the new laptop and took the cash.

‘Good. Now, I need to make a phone call,’ Knightly said, looking at his watch. ‘Griffin will show you to the guest quarters.’ He walked over to the sash and gave it a yank to summon his manservant.

As the bent old man led Dec away from the library, Knightly waited until they were gone, then ripped a mobile phone from his waistcoat pocket and feverishly dialled his agent’s number in London.

‘Harley, it’s me,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Listen, you won’t believe what’s just happened. You know the thing I told you about …?’

‘Your little, ah, problem?’ the agent’s voice said dryly.

‘My writer’s block.’

‘Or basic lack of material,’ Harley said. ‘Other than that phoney video footage some nutter sent you from Romania. Maybe if you’d ever done any of the things you’ve written about, instead of just putting on this dismal Van Helsing act for your readers. It would help even more if you actually believed in vampires.’

‘I do believe in them,’ Knightly exploded, deeply hurt. ‘Just because I’ve never had actual, you know, first-hand experience of them …’ He flapped his arm impatiently, as if the inconvenient truth was an irritating mosquito he could swat away. ‘Anyway, never mind all that. I’ve just come across enough material for three more bloody books. Five more, if we pad it out a bit.’

‘So you won’t have to refund that hundred grand advance-on-signature payment,’ Harley said. ‘That’s welcome news.’

‘And you’ll get to keep your commission.’

‘Even better. What is this new material?’

‘Pure gold. I’ll tell you all about it over a champagne lunch next week,’ Knightly said. ‘You’re going to love it. The publishers are going to love it even more.’