Her Vampyrrhic Heart (36 page)

As the brittle snapping grew louder, Tom shouted, ‘Get downstairs.'

Tom noticed that gloops of black stuff were dropping from Helsvir – the creature had begun to melt. Its many heads started to lose shape. Faces grew soft – they slid from their skulls as smoothly as an omelette slipping from a pan.

Tom followed Owen downstairs. Even as they entered the room they heard screams from outside.

Eden stared through a window. ‘They're dying,' she breathed. ‘The vampires are dying.'

‘Nicola!' Tom's heart plunged. ‘Nicola!' Unlocking the door, he flung it open. There, an extraordinary sight met his eyes. So extraordinary that he stopped dead in order to witness what happened next.

T
he moon shone down on to the forest that surrounded the cottage: the trees formed a silent, black ocean.

Eden was right. The vampires were dying.

Male and female vampires could barely stand. Their legs gave way, dropping them into a kneeling position. They cried in pain. And at the top of the ruined cottage, in the wreckage of the roof, Helsvir cried out, too – or rather the heads that budded from its body screamed in pain. What struck Tom so forcibly was that exactly the same cry came from different mouths.

The vampires' flesh began to dissolve. Faces slid off in one piece – soft masks of wet flesh. Beneath the faces were naked skulls. Helsvir was dying. The vampires were dying. Breaking the stone carvings had worked.

Two more slabs remained outside. Perhaps enough damage had already been done to the mechanism which fed the occult power to the creatures. Maybe Tom didn't need to smash the last two carvings. Yet he knew it would be foolish to leave them intact. There could still be a chance that the creatures might regenerate in some way. He quickly took the hammer to the engraving embedded in the house above its front door. With two swift blows he shattered it.

Immediately, a man began to shout in a loud voice – angry, bitter words. Tom sensed that – yet he didn't understand the words themselves. A gut instinct told him that what he heard was the dead language of the Vikings. The angry, shouting voice brought Owen, Kit, Jez and Eden from the cottage. They walked along the path, completely unafraid now, as they watched the end of the vampires.

The deep male voice thundered from the mouths of the dying creatures. The same words poured from all those different mouths at the same time – a perfect lip sync.

Eden marvelled at what she saw. ‘They are puppets, aren't they? Nothing more than ventriloquists' dolls? Something's speaking through them. They never did have minds to think for themselves. This is remote control.'

Kit ran forward. ‘Freya … Freya. …'

He caught her as she sank to the ground. For some reason she didn't speak with that guttural voice. Instead, she resembled a young woman who'd been overcome by exhaustion.

‘Kit …' she smiled. ‘Everything's alright now. I'm happy you're safe …'

Seconds later, she trickled away through his fingers as her body instantly liquefied.

‘Freya.' Grief-stricken, he gazed down at the stain on the grass. Moonlight glinted on the thick plait of blond hair, yet even that vanished before his eyes. It was like watching hot water being poured on to sugar. One moment the plait was there, the next it wasn't. ‘Freya …' Silently, he began to weep.

Jez tried to console his friend.

Kit savagely pushed him. ‘Keep away! You don't understand … none of you do … I loved her!' He lowered his head to sob into his hands.

Owen glanced at Tom. ‘There's one last carving.'

Tom nodded. ‘The one in the archway. I'll deal with it.'

The angry voice that boomed from the mouths of the vampires in that harsh language which none of them understood faded to a whisper. Glancing back, Tom saw that Helsvir had all but melted away. What was left of the creature dripped down the outer walls of the cottage like gallon upon gallon of black treacle – thick, sticky, glistening. But dead. Definitely dead.

Tom approached the archway at the entrance of the garden. In the stonework that formed the span was the last surviving engraved image. The weather had eroded it, yet he made out the teardrop shape of the body, the many legs and the line of circles that depicted its host of heads. Tom swung the hammer. The slab shattered into a hundred pieces.

This time a yell of such power erupted from the mouths of the dying vampires that he staggered, dropping the hammer. Everyone in the garden slammed their hands over their ears. Blue lightning flickered from what remained of Helsvir.

The angry voice returned. The vampires moved their mouths as the same words roared from their lips. This time in English:

‘NEXT TIME, TOM WESTONBY … NEXT TIME, WE WIN!'

Tom thundered back: ‘GO TO HELL!'

The voice abruptly fell silent. All the remaining vampires slumped to the ground. Whatever had given them the strength to move, talk and fight had gone. Those creatures melted, leaving nothing but dark smears in the dirt.

Tom checked on everyone there in the garden. ‘Are you all OK?'

Owen had taken Eden by the hand; they nodded. Jez stood with one hand resting on Kit's shoulder – a gesture of compassion and friendship. Kit still knelt there, staring at the ground where Freya had dissolved into the earth.

June and her mother.
Tom ran back into the cottage. June stood in the living room, gazing at the sofa where her mother sat as if asleep.

June turned to him, tears filling her eyes, and yet she was smiling. ‘He came back to us, Tom. After you went into the garden my father walked into this room. He was human again. He sat beside my mother, took her hand and said her name. She recognized him, Tom. She smiled and said, “Hello, Jacob” – said “Hello”, just like he'd only been away for a few minutes, not twenty-nine years. Then they sat smiling at one another. They were so happy … And then …' a tear rolled down June's face ‘… my mother closed her eyes … she'd waited for him for so long, even though her heart was giving out. But he came back, and they were together again. That's when she knew she could go. There wasn't any pain … she just slipped away.'

‘And your father?'

‘He smiled at me. I'm sure he recognized me as his daughter … I don't know what happened next, other than he just melted away. Thank you, Tom.'

‘I didn't do anything,' he said gently.

‘You let me stay here with my mother. We went through a terrible time tonight, but everything turned out good in the end, didn't it? Just for a moment before she died, my mother was the happiest she'd been for years. And I'm happy for her.'

Owen called through the door. ‘Tom. Not all of them are dead.'

Tom went outside. A young girl stood on the lawn. She seemed baffled, as if she'd just woken up from a deep sleep.

‘That's Clarissa,' Eden said in astonishment. ‘She went missing two days ago. Those things must have made her into a vampire. What if the ones that have been transformed recently have come back to life? Real life, I mean. Warm blooded. Breathing.' Eden took hold of Clarissa's hands; gently she began to reassure her.

Tom's heart leapt as he searched for Nicola, but he dreaded what he might find. She'd transformed five years ago. Was that too long ago for the evil spell to be lifted? Or had she melted away, too?

Tom ran through the archway and across the rubble of the last carving of Helsvir. He entered the forest where shafts of moonlight pierced the branches. His breath shot through his lips in dazzling white clouds. His heart thudded. For a while, he seemed to be running at random … that is, until he realized some sixth sense was guiding him towards a clearing.

There, a figure stood in clear moonlight. Blond hair fell around her shoulders. Slowly, he approached her, his breath still bursting from his lips in explosions of white. Nicola watched him. The blue colour had returned to her eyes. But that had happened before; it didn't mean she was human, did it? Perhaps she still had the heart of a vampire? He recalled how she'd whispered to him earlier tonight. The air from her lungs had been ice cold. That inhuman body hadn't warmed her breath. There had been no flash of vapour from her lips. That was evidence of her not being human.

Without warning, the colour might vanish from her eyes. If it did, would she continue to exist as one of those unearthly creatures? A taker of blood? A vampire? Or would she melt to nothing, like the others?

‘Nicola?'

She seemed dazed.

‘Nicola, speak to me.'

She said one word: ‘Tom.' And that was enough to fill him with happiness.

It wasn't so much that she spoke his name. What mattered most … what was so incredibly important … was that he saw white vapour flow from her beautiful lips. Living, human lungs had warmed the air.

‘That's the breath of life,' he told her gently.

‘So this is real,' she whispered – he felt her hot breath on his face. ‘I'm no longer a vampire?'

‘This is real. And you've finally come home to me.'

‘Helsvir?'

‘Dead.'

‘You know something?' She managed a trembling smile. ‘For the first time in years I feel the cold.'

‘You're starting to shiver. Here.' Slipping off his jacket, he eased it around her shoulders.

Tom Westonby knew she'd feel more than the cold now. Time would start to flow again for Nicola, his bride of five years ago. She would age. One day she'd be old, and suffer the aches and illnesses that come with living life.
But that proves she's mortal.
His heart filled with joy.
If she's mortal, then she can be loved and she can give love. We can grow old together.

They walked back through the trees. The silver eye of the moon seemed to close drowsily as a bank of cloud drifted across. And even before they'd reached the old archway, snowflakes began to fall. Tomorrow, the valley would be covered with clean, white snow – it would be like a fresh page, waiting for the story of the rest of their lives to be written upon it.

Ten weeks later.

T
hey are an ordinary young couple staying in the hotel.
Tom Westonby knew that was what the other hotel guests thought when they saw Tom and Nicola strolling through the lobby to the restaurant.
They'd never be able to guess the horrific events we experienced such a short time ago.

Tom sat down at a table facing Nicola. She smiled at him, her blue eyes twinkling happily. They were together again after five long years of a living death (for her: actual; for him, that's what the solitude felt like). They ordered the meal and drinks, and Tom relished the normality of it all: dining out with the woman he loved.

After the drinks arrived, Tom poured Nicola a glass of red wine.

She held up the glass in a toast. ‘To us.' Her smile grew even warmer.

‘To us.' He smiled back as they clinked glasses.

Helsvir's dead. The vampires are destroyed. The Viking gods are defeated. Life is good.

Yet, at that moment, Tom heard a clicking on the window pane.

Nicola laughed. ‘I think he wants feeding, too.'

A large black crow squatted on the window ledge. It pecked at the glass in the restaurant window. Its eyes were bright as black gemstones – they had a glittering, cruel quality. The bird stared in through the window at them, and Tom felt a trickle of absolute cold run down his spine. He knew that according to a number of legends the Viking gods had the power to see through the eyes of the crow species. That in turn made him wonder if the destruction of the vampires and of Helsvir had been too easy … too neat … too final.

What if those vengeful gods had abandoned their old weapons, namely Helsvir and the vampires? What if those ancient deities had adopted new strategies? What if their new weapon against humanity was a beautiful young woman? Specifically, the one who sat with him at this very table? A Trojan horse? A human virus? A covert assassin?

Tom looked into her eyes. Yet he did not see evil there. Then again, how many times does a man or woman look into the eyes of a lover and never guess what secret thoughts and hidden dreams are concealed within their heart? Perhaps Nicola really was mortal again? Maybe her dreams revolved around a life with him and having his children? After all she'd gone through, what would she be like as a mother?

‘Our friend the crow's seen enough,' Nicola said.

Tom watched the bird fly away. The creature soared towards the west and the setting sun – a direction traditionally associated with the land of the dead, the realm of ghosts.

And Tom wondered if this really was the end of the vampires, and of Helsvir, and the cruel and vengeful gods of the Vikings.