Luckily, no bullets were discharged. There was merely a loud thud when the gun hit the floor. I immediately pounced on what I regarded (with good reason) as our only chance of success – though my hands were shaking so badly that I almost dropped the weapon again after picking it up. Then, while Dave wrestled with Barry, and Horace burst into the room, I aimed the gun at Barry’s right ear.
At which point Dermid appeared in the bedroom doorway.
‘Drop it!’ he cried, training his rifle on me.
Everyone froze. It was like one of those stand-offs that you see in the movies; there was such a cinematic air about it all that I could hardly believe what was happening. Since then, I’ve often wondered if people behave the way they do in the movies because it’s what actually occurs, or if they resort to cliché in real life because it’s what they’ve seen in the movies.
A bit of both, perhaps.
‘You can’t kill us,’ Dave said hoarsely. ‘You could unload a hundred bullets into us and it wouldn’t make any difference. Not even if they were made of silver.’
‘Because we’re already dead,’ I wanted to say. But I couldn’t. Though the words formed on my lips, I couldn’t force any air through my larynx. I could hardly breathe, let alone speak.
Then Barry growled, ‘She hasn’t cocked the gun.’
He was lying, of course. He’d cocked it himself, before pointing it at Dave. And it was still cocked, as I discovered soon afterwards. At the time, however, I couldn’t even tell if it was loaded. I was a complete novice when it came to guns.
Barry must have seen this. He must have been relying on it. His comment threw me, and my hesitation could have been fatal. It would have been fatal if Reuben hadn’t come to my rescue. I’ve no doubt whatsoever that Dermid was about to shoot me when Reuben barrelled into him from behind.
Though Reuben’s ankles were bound together, and his wrists were tied behind his back, he had managed to roll across the bedroom floor and launch himself at Dermid’s knees. I found out later that Reuben had been feigning unconsciousness up until then. That’s why the McKinnons hadn’t chained him to any fixtures or fittings. That’s also why, upon hearing Dave’s voice, Dermid had jumped to his feet, grabbed his rifle and run out of the room without a backward glance.
I was lucky that Dermid didn’t fire his gun. We all were. It slammed onto the floor just before he did; in fact he landed on it, and probably would have picked it up pretty quickly if Reuben hadn’t bitten him on the calf. That bite made Dermid scream. And as he kicked out, maddened by pain, Dave darted forward. His fingers closed around the rifle.
Barry couldn’t do anything to help. Not with a pistol pressed against his skull. When he made no attempt to stop Dave, I realised that I’d been lied to – that the firearm in my clammy grip was both cocked and loaded. So I remained in position, my gaze riveted to Barry’s damp red face. The fact that he was sweating reassured me. It meant that he was frightened, or at least very anxious.
I didn’t see Dave grab the rifle. I did, however, hear him ask Horace to free Reuben. Whereupon Barry spluttered, ‘What the hell is going on?’
‘It’s quite simple,’ Horace rejoined, having disappeared somewhere off to my right. (I couldn’t follow his progress; my attention was fixed on Barry.) ‘If you’re interested in preserving your immortal soul, you’ll walk away and you won’t look back. Or we’ll drain every drop of blood from your veins.’
‘Eh?’ Barry looked confused rather than scared. It wasn’t a promising reaction.
‘We’re vampires,’ I intoned. ‘You’re messing with the undead.’
In hindsight, I know that I must have sounded like a complete lunatic. Barry certainly thought so. He scowled angrily. ‘For God’s sake!’ he snarled.
‘They must be friends of that geek,’ Dermid gasped, from somewhere down on the floor. ‘More Dracula weirdos …’
‘We’re not,’ insisted Horace. ‘We’re vampires. Real vampires.’
‘Jesus.’ Barry’s contempt was scathing, his disbelief almost palpable. I was suddenly enraged.
‘You saw us!’ I reminded him. ‘We were dead, remember?’
‘No, you weren’t. Because here you are,’ said Barry. Then Reuben spoke.
‘There’s more wire in the bedroom,’ he panted. ‘I’ll get it, if you like, and we can do the other one as well.’
This sounded so much like a death threat that I couldn’t help glancing around in dismay. But Dermid hadn’t been garrotted. Instead he was lying face-down beneath Horace Whittaker, while Horace bound his hands with the same length of cord that had once restrained Reuben.
I’d barely registered this fact when Dave cried, ‘Freeze!’ Turning my head, I saw that Barry had been about to take advantage of my momentary lapse in concentration. But with Dermid all trussed up, Dave was now free to point his rifle at Barry – who immediately raised his hands.
‘Don’t move,’ Dave warned. ‘If you do, I’ll shoot.’
‘Listen.’ Barry adopted a wheedling tone that I, for one, found wholly unpersuasive. ‘You’re obviously not tree-hugger welfare types,’ he acknowledged, as if bestowing a huge compliment on us. ‘So what are you looking for? A piece of the deal?’
‘No!’ I snapped. ‘We want justice for the persecuted!’
Barry ignored me. Having decided that Dave was in charge, he addressed himself exclusively to Dave. ‘If it’s a cut of the fee you’re looking for, mate, you won’t get it without us. Our source doesn’t know you. He won’t trust you. He won’t pay up unless we’re around.’
‘We don’t want your blood money!’ I shrilled, without eliciting so much as a blink out of Barry. He was still watching Dave, who once again had Dermid in his sights.
Dave swallowed, then said, ‘All we want is for Reuben to walk out of here a free man. Unmolested. If you can promise that, then we’ll be satisfied.’
‘What do you mean?’ Barry’s dawning outrage seemed quite genuine. His colour deepened from red to puce. His eyes narrowed. His voice sharpened. ‘Are you out of your mind? He’s not a bloody man, he’s a werewolf! He’s a danger to society!’
‘You’re the danger to society, you murdering bastard!’ Reuben shouted from the bedroom. Barry, however, pretended not to hear.
‘Do you know how many people that creature’s killed?’ he spluttered. ‘If you let him walk free now, you’ll have a lifetime of murders on your conscience! He’s a bloody animal! Can’t you see that? You can’t trust him! You can’t trust any of them!’ Suddenly he caught his breath; Reuben had appeared in the bedroom doorway, carrying a loaded syringe. ‘Keep him away from me!’ Barry yelped. ‘Don’t – don’t you let him near me!’
‘Oh, shit,’ Dermid quavered – and I could understand why. In all my life, I’ve never seen anyone look as dangerous as Reuben did just then. He was wearing an absolutely fiendish expression; his eyes were like chips of cold green glass, and his clothes were spattered with dried blood. He was breathing heavily.
For the first time, I spotted the wolf’s face lurking behind the human one.
‘Now, hang on …’ Dave began, torn between his desire to stop Reuben and his need to keep Dermid under surveillance. I had a similar problem. Mesmerised by the slow menace of Reuben’s advance, I allowed my gaze to leave Barry’s profile.
Crunch!
Next thing I knew, I was on the ground. Barry had pushed me. He was reaching for the gun that I’d just dropped. But he didn’t have a hope, because Reuben leaped on him, growling – and the impact of it shook the whole room.
‘Stop!’ Dave yelled. I retrieved the pistol, rolling out of Reuben’s way as he jabbed his needle into Barry’s left buttock. Barry roared. He bucked against the weight on his back, successfully dislodging Reuben. And when Horace rushed to join the fracas, Dermid saw his chance.
I don’t believe that Dermid was trying to escape. It’s more likely that he wanted to kick the gun out of my hand. Though his own hands were bound, no one had yet tied his feet
. He was therefore struggling to rise when Dave (whose attention had been diverted to Reuben’s struggle with Barry) suddenly realised what was about to happen.
‘Don’t even think about it!’ Dave remonstrated, aiming his weapon at Dermid’s heart.
That was when somebody thumped on the floor of the flat above us.
We all fell silent. Everyone froze, as six pairs of eyes swivelled towards the ceiling. There was a long pause.
Finally Horace broke the spell.
‘Oh, shit,’ he said. ‘We’re disturbing the neighbours.’
I lowered my gaze just in time to see Dermid spring into action. Taking advantage of the momentarily lull, he jumped up and charged like a bull, trying to headbutt Dave in the stomach. It was a clever move. Once he’d ducked past the end of Dave’s gun barrel, Dermid was simply too close to shoot at; had Dave been a fraction slower, Dermid would probably have knocked him off his feet – and smashed a few of Dave’s ribs into the bargain. But Dave was very fortunate. Acting out of pure instinct, he swung the rifle butt at his assailant’s skull.
The result was a glancing blow that dropped Dermid in his tracks.
Poor Dave looked almost as stunned as his victim. ‘I – I had to!’ he stammered, appealing to the rest of us. ‘I had to do something!’ By this time Horace was sitting on Barry’s head, so I doubt very much that Dermid’s sufferings were visible to his father. It was the injured man’s groans that wrung from Barry a muffled and rather groggy collection of curses.
‘Shut up,’ said Reuben. Then he kicked the base of Barry’s spine, stepped over his spread-eagled body, and crossed to where Dermid lay, curled up in a foetal position on the carpet.
Dermid’s hands were still tied behind his back. His eyes were screwed shut, and he was grunting and gasping – ‘Ahhh! Ahhh! You bastard!’ – so he wasn’t aware of Reuben’s approach. But I certainly was. And when I saw the half-filled syringe in Reuben’s hand, I was moved to speak up.
‘Wait!’ I protested. ‘What is that?’
‘Same stuff they used on me,’ he rejoined, before plunging the needle into Dermid’s thigh.
Dermid screeched. I flinched. Dave snapped out of his trance and said, ‘What are you doing?’ He was reaching for Reuben’s arm when Nefley’s first-floor neighbour started to thump on the ceiling again.
‘They’ll be knocking on the door in a minute,’ Horace observed sourly.
‘No, they won’t.’ Reuben spoke with complete confidence, raising his voice above Dermid’s whimper. ‘They won’t have to. These two will be out cold in a second, and then everything will calm down.’
‘You mean you’ve drugged them?’ I demanded. Reuben turned his head to grin at me. (It was a vulpine sort of grin.)
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Do you have a better idea?’
I didn’t, unfortunately. Neither did Dave, who was starting to show distinct signs of wear. His chalky, sunken-eyed, hapless appearance suggested that he had fallen victim to a touch of nausea. He looked much sicker than Dermid, despite the fact that a large bruise had begun to blossom on Dermid’s brow.
I suppose we were lucky that the wound wasn’t bleeding. At least we didn’t have fresh human blood to contend with, on top of everything else.
‘Hey!’ Horace exclaimed, sounding surprised. He was peering down between his legs at Barry’s motionless figure. ‘He’s asleep! This one’s asleep!’
‘I told you it wouldn’t take long,’ said Reuben, who remained crouched over Dermid, intently watching every twitch of the injured man’s face. ‘Now we can do what we like with ’em.’
‘What do you mean?’ I couldn’t help being alarmed by his tone. Dave also seemed apprehensive.
‘Can’t we just leave them here?’ he murmured.
Horace gave a snort. ‘They’ll be found,’ he scoffed, ‘and then they’ll come after us. We don’t want that.’
‘We can drop ’em down a well,’ Reuben submitted, in a measured and thoughtful manner that was far more frightening – in my opinion – than the most uncontrolled rant. He was still staring at Dermid. ‘Or we can shoot ’em with that rifle. Or maybe we can starve ’em to death, slowly, over a coupla weeks.’
Dave and I exchanged a despairing look. All at once I felt exhausted; my second wind had well and truly worn off. In fact, of the three vampires in that room, only Horace impressed me as having even a trace of energy left in reserve.
‘I don’t care what we do with them,’ Horace remarked, ‘as long as we do it somewhere else. We have to get them out of here now, before the neighbours start complaining in person.’
‘You’re right.’ Reuben nodded at Horace, then glanced up at Dave. ‘He’s right. Didja bring a car?’
Dave was so worn out that he had to think for a moment. It was Horace who replied.
‘Of course we brought a car!’ he said crisply. ‘But we’re not all going to fit into it. Not unless we stick someone in the boot.’
‘I know just the man,’ growled Reuben. By this time, however, the wheels were starting to turn in my brain. I had identified an obvious flaw in Horace’s proposal.
‘Whoa,’ I said. ‘Wait. We can’t just haul a couple of unconscious bodies out of here. Not if the people upstairs are watching. They’ll call the police for certain.’
No one tried to argue with me. It’s impossible to argue with truth, after all. Abruptly, Dave crossed to the couch and collapsed onto it; he was starting to shake, poor thing, as the full impact of his recent heroics suddenly hit him. Reuben frowned. Horace chewed on his bottom lip.
‘They can be drunk,’ Dave muttered at last. He was sitting with his head in his hands.
‘What?’ said Reuben.
‘We can drag them out as if they’re drunk.’ Dave uncovered his face. He described how he and Reuben could lift Barry up between them, pretending that he was legless but not actually out cold. ‘What we have to do is stagger and make jokes,’ was Dave’s suggestion. ‘As if we’ve got nothing to hide. Trying to sneak out would be the worst thing – it would look suspicious.’ He sighed as he once again heaved himself to his feet, moving slowly and awkwardly, like an old man. ‘I’ll leave Barry and Reuben in the car, and then come back to help Horace with …with the other one.’ For some reason, he was reluctant to pronounce Dermid’s name. I don’t know why.
Perhaps, when you hit a man with a rifle butt, the guilt is easier to bear if you depersonalise him afterwards by referring to him as ‘the other one’.
‘Can’t we just follow you?’ Horace asked. He had also risen, having satisfied himself that there was no need to sit on Barry any more. ‘I mean, Nina could help me with Dermid – couldn’t you, Nina?’
‘No.’ Dave shook his head. ‘Nina will bring the rifle.’
‘But—’
‘She can hide it under this cape,’ Dave concluded, before passing the cape and the rifle to me. I suddenly found myself with two loaded firearms – though not for very long. Horace quickly relieved me of the pistol as Dave and Reuben wrestled with Barry’s unwieldy limbs.
Then Dave told Horace to turn on the lights.
‘If anyone comes knocking while I’m not here,’ advised Dave, reeling slightly under the weight he’d just shouldered, ‘you should say that Nefley’s been having a party. And he wouldn’t be having a party with the lights off.’
‘Depends what sort of party it is,’ Horace observed, under his breath. But the rest of us ignored him. We had other things on our minds.
‘What if they actually want to talk to Nefley?’ I asked Dave. ‘What should I tell them?’
‘Tell them … I dunno.’ Dave had run out of answers. It was Reuben who came to his rescue.
‘Tell ’em that Nefley’s too drunk to talk,’ Reuben suggested cheerfully. Despite his somewhat battered appearance, he exuded an aura so vibrant and vigorous that it made every vampire in the vicinity look wan – as if he’d sucked all the vitality right out of us. ‘Who is this Nefley guy, anyhow? Is he a frienda yours?’
‘No,’ Dave replied shortly. Dismissing the subject, he then turned to Horace. ‘Don’t make trouble for Nina,’ he instructed. ‘She’s the one who should be talking to the neighbours. In fact I don’t want anyone laying eyes on you. Understand?’
Horace pulled a face. But he also nodded, and that nod was enough to satisfy Dave – who moved towards the front door, trying to match his pace with Reuben’s. The two of them were just about to make their exit together, on either side of Barry’s limp form, when Horace asked, ‘Where are we going, by the way?’
Dave stopped. ‘Where do you think?’ he said, before yanking the door open. He was referring to my mother’s house, and my heart sank as I contemplated her reaction to yet another bunch of unwelcome guests. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even wish him good luck.
Instead I shut the front door behind his retreating back, flicked on the overhead light, and wordlessly occupied myself with various minor chores: picking up the empty syringe, for example, and donning the satin cape. Horace didn’t make any kind of effort to help me. Instead he stood peering down at Dermid, who was beginning to snore.
‘What are we going to do with this pair when we get them to your house?’ Horace finally asked.
‘I dunno.’
‘Does Dave really believe that Sanford can counsel them into submission?’
‘I don’t know, Horace!’ His sarcastic tone was getting on my nerves. ‘Maybe you should have figured that out yourself, before you decided to come here!’
I might have continued in the same vein, if a sharp rapping sound hadn’t interrupted me. Catching my breath, I stared at Horace. Then we both glanced towards the kitchen.
Someone was knocking on the back door.
‘Oh, no,’ I breathed, because I knew full well that Dave hadn’t returned. For one thing, it was too soon – and for another, he had a key.
‘Quick.’ Horace gave me a push. ‘Quick, go and answer it. Before they call the police.’
‘My cape—’
‘That’s okay. It’s meant to be a party.’ He began to roll Dermid towards the bedroom. ‘Just don’t let them in, whatever happens!’