Moonlight (21 page)

Thaddeus looked at the thick
,
black smoke rapidly coming towards him, then at the window. He saw Nate staring back at him, his eyes blood
-
red with fury. He would have to wait, Thaddeus thought. Nate could
have him, but first he had to get Winnie to safety. He had done terrible things to get Winnie into this, and she had been right
–
he had put her life in danger. Before he died, before he was sent back to
H
ell where he knew perhaps he deserved to be, he wanted to help Winnie escape. Thaddeus wanted to do that one last thing. Not because he felt he had to, not because he thought he might be looked more favourable upon in the next life
–
he had done enough to know that would never happen
–
but because he did have feelings for her. However unexpected those feelings had been, however sudden they had grown inside him, he did hope that somewhere inside of her, she felt the same. Winnie hadn’t been able to kill him, no more than Frances would have been able to.

He looked back through the window at Nate, and flashing his teeth and snarling, Thaddeus leapt into the smoke in search of Winnie.

Winnie pulled her leg free from the lock and collapsed in a heap in the grass beneath the window. Gasping for air, she knew she didn’t have long to put as much distance between her and the house. With mud and grass seeping beneath her fingernails, Winnie clawed forward, her chest heaving up and down as she tried desperately to catch her breath. With her head and lungs beginning to clear, Winnie got to her feet. Stumbling forward like a drunk, she made her way into the dark and towards the sea. She could hear the waves crashing against the cliffs in the distance, hoping that she might be able to find someplace to hide amongst the rocks.

Winnie glanced back over her shoulder in panic, just to make sure she wasn’t being followed. The huge house looked awash with flames. They twisted and ravaged their way across the roof and up the walls. Thick plumes of smoke twisted up into the night, blocking out the moon like a black cloud
. Then she saw the vampire,
Claude leap from the burning roof. Even without the light of the moon, his razor-sharp teeth glistened in his huge
,
twisted mouth. He landed in the long grass and came towards her. Winnie spun around, and with her lungs screaming for more clean air, she raced away. With arms pumping up and down by her sides, and her heart slamming in her chest, Winnie frantically pushed herself forward. She could hear the sound of racing footsteps behind her.
How had he covered the distance between them so quickly? Her mind screamed. Again she looked back and saw Claude’s grotesque face looming out of the darkness at her. With a scream tearing its way up her throat, Winnie stumbled backwards and onto the ground with a thump. What little good air was in her lungs was forced out of her. Eyes wide with terror, Winnie kicked out at him.

“Get away from me!”
she screamed, but her voice came out sounding like an out of breath gasp.

Claude looked
down at her. W
atching Winnie try and defend herself excited him. He had longed for one of the females to fight back. The feeding would be so sweet.
Her heart
would still be racing fast as he plucked it from her chest. The thought of her hot blood pumping into his mouth made him shudder with expectant pleasure.

Suddenly he lunged at her, and then pulled back again, like he was teasing Winnie. She scrambled backwards, thrashing out with her arms and legs. He lunged again, and then pulled back. He was enjoying watching her panic. Claude loved seeing the terror in her eyes. It was beautiful.

“Don’t hurt me!”
she screamed.

He loved hearing her say that, because it was so dumb. Of course he was going to hurt her. He was going to teach her what pain
was.

Winnie dug the heels of her trainers into the ground and pushed herself away from him. He lunged at her again, his ragged claws just inches from her eyes. Then he was joined by another. Michelle suddenly
appeared beside Claude like a flickering shadow. Her long
,
blue hair flowed out behind her, like a streak of lightning. This close, Winnie could see that Michelle’s mouth looked as if someone had slit her face open. Her lips looked like two slices of raw meat. Her dead
,
black eyes stared down at Winnie
.

“What are you waiting for, Claude?” she whispered. “Take her.”

Claude couldn’t bear the sense of excitement and urgency he felt inside of him any longer. So with his long
,
white claws clacking together like a set of knives, he lowered himself over Winnie.

Seeing this, Winnie scrambled backwards and both vampires laughed. Suddenly, she heard another sound behind their shrieks of joy. It was the sound of howling. A black shadow streaked before her eyes. Then both Claude and Michelle flew backwards off their feet and into the air. The black shadow seemed to pause
–
take form
–
before her. It was Thaddeus. He looked back at her, his eyes bright yellow, messy hair blowing in the wind
,
and claws swinging by his sides.

“Okay?” he asked Winnie.

“Okay,” she whispered.

Before she could say anything else, he was leaping through the air and swiping at Michelle and Claude with his claws. His long
,
curled fingernails shone like silver as they sliced through the air. He howled so loud that the ground shook beneath Winnie. Pulling herself up onto her elbows, she watched in horror as Thaddeus clattered into Claude, sending them both sprawling to the ground. With his muscular arms just a blur in
the moonlight, Thaddeus slashed, tore, and ripped at the vampire screeching in agony beneath him. Within seconds Thaddeus had opened up Claude’s stomach, throwing lengths of oily black entrails into the air. Claude made a gargling noise as if being strangled. Winnie turned away as Thaddeus drove his claws into the vampire
’
s throat. Something heavy thudded into the ground next to Winnie. Peeking through her fingers
,
she looked with revulsion at
a
long pointed-looking slab of meat, which had landed just inches from her. It twitched like a giant
worm,
and Winnie got up and ran as she realised it was Claude’s tongue she could see wriggling about in the grass.

With the sound of Claude’s agonising shrieks
,
and Thaddeus’
s
booming howls in her ears, Winnie failed to hear Michelle racing up behind her. It wasn’t until the vampire had leapt onto her back that Winnie realised that Michelle had been charging after her. Winnie spun around as Michelle dug her claws into her shoulders. Winnie screamed out in pain. The vampire’s claws felt like ten burning daggers slicing into her flesh.

“Get the fuck off me, bitch!” Winnie screamed, bucking like a donkey, desperate to throw Michelle free.

But the vampire
’
s grip was unbreakable. Winnie threw herself backwards, crushing Michelle beneath her. The vampire shrieked, withdrawing her claws from Winnie as she tried to free herself from beneath. The pain of the claws being withdrawn from her flesh was just as painful as them going in, and a blinding bolt of pain shot through her shoulders and into Winnie’s brain. In agony, she rolled off Michelle onto
her hands and knees, and
tried to get to her feet. T
he vampire had only been momentarily stunned, and pouncing to her feet, she kicked out at Winnie and sent her sprawling into the ground. Winnie’s chin struck a rock jutting out of the grass, and a jet of blood burst from the gash it had made in her face. With the air now full of the sweet smell of blood, Michelle ran her tongue over her raw
-
looking lips and threw herself at Winnie.

She rolled over just in time to see the vampire
’
s fangs come rushing out of the darkness at her. Winnie threw her hands in front of her face, and she felt Michelle’s fangs sink into her forearm. The pain, like before was excruciating, and Winnie thought she might just puke. With bile burning in the back of her throat, Winnie screamed in pain as she pulled her arm free of Michelle’s jaws. Blood sprayed into the air, covering Winnie’s face with her own blood. With her arm spurting a constant stream of thick
,
black blood, she tried to beat off Michelle, who lunged at her over and over again.

Screaming, she tried to fight the vampire off, but Winnie knew it was only a matter of seconds before she became too consumed with pain to fight on. Then, with Michelle’s hideous face swimming before her, Winnie thought she saw a flash of red cloth go racing past. If Michelle hadn’t seen it, she must have felt something, as she momentarily looked in the direction that the red streak had gone. With the vampire’s head turned away, Winnie seized the moment and drove both sets of her fingernails into the creature’s eyes. Michelle’s eyeballs felt soft and wet
ben
eath Winnie’s fingernails. K
nowing that this was her last chance, she drove her fingers as far and as deep as she could into the vampire’s eyes. One of them squirted onto Michelle’s cheek in a thick
,
gloopy white
-
coloured mess. It felt hot as it ran over the back of Winnie’s hand and down the length of her wrist.

Twisting her back like a corkscrew, the vampire screeched in agony as Winnie pulled her fingernails f
rom her eye sockets. “I’m blind!
” she screamed. “I’m fucking blind!”

“And I’m bleeding!” Winnie roared back scrambling to her feet. Holding her arm tightly to her chest, to try and slow the blood gushing from the rips in her flesh, she watched Michelle stagger blindly about.

“I’m blind!”
she screamed again, her long
,
blue hair blowing in the wind.

“No, you’re dead,” somebody howled from the darkness.

Before Winnie truly knew what was happening, Thaddeus had bounded like a giant hound from the dark. With one fleeting swipe of his claw, Michelle’s head was spinning away through the air. Her torso stood where it was, twitched, and then toppled over. Thaddeus glanced at Winnie. His shirt had been torn free, and bloody streaks covered his chest. His arms looked taut, and he flexed his claws open and closed.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he snarled at Winnie.

She looked back at him and nodded.

“Then do it
,
Winnie,” he barked at her. “Run! Run! Run! And never look back!”

Looking at him one last time, dripping with blood in the moonlight, Winnie turned and ran.

With the vampire’s blood hot beneath his long fingernails, Thaddeus stood and looked at his burning house in the distance. It had been consumed by flames and it burnt like a torch on the horizon. Clouds of black smoke billowed up into the night sky. He knew whether it burnt to the ground or not
,
he would never be able to return there. His life in Cornwall was over. His life was over. He waited, drenched by moonlight. He wanted Nate to find him. He wanted it to be over at last.

Then, silhouetted by the red of the flames in the distance, he saw Nate coming across the fields towards him. With his claws hanging low by his sides, he breathed deeply and waited for the inevitable. He couldn’t kill himself. Winnie, just like Frances, hadn’t been able to do so either,
but
for the same reasons, he couldn’t be sure
.
T
hat didn’t matter now. He watched Nate approach him, each step slow and deliberate, as if he were savouring every moment.

The thought of dying now didn’t matter. He could kill Nate as easily as
he had killed the others. W
hat was the point
?
There would only be others. Word would soon get back to Nicodemus that his daughter was dead, killed by the wolf. Enraged with grief, and feeling betrayed, he would only send more, who would hunt him down. Thaddeus knew that it was over. He couldn’t go on moving from one place to another, living a life where he was constantly looking back over his shoulder, reading
mountains of foreign newspapers, trying to work out where his enemies would come from next. That wasn’t a life
–
that was
a
living hell. He had tried to trick them and what had he achieved? For his own selfish gain, he had deceived a y
oung girl, he had brought
a young girl
to his home, placed her in mortal danger and what for? So he could put off the inevitable fo
r another year – another three or four perhaps?
They would have caught up with him soon enough, and even if he had managed to trick Winnie into staying with him all that time, they would have killed her
,
too.

He knew he
had felt something for her
, however small, but to let those feelings grow and mature would have been another selfish act on his part. She would have exchanged one life of con
stant running for another. Winnie
was free now, not of her own ghosts, but of his.