For a moment I’m struck dumb by the sight of Volk, tied up and emptied like a bag of trash, his hollow body turned into a mockery of the bell that rings above him. Who – or what – could have done such a thing?

  I run back to the door and shout for help. This is a business that I shouldn’t conduct on my own.

  ‘What is it, doctor?’ asks Luke, running up from the graveyard where he has no doubt been taking a snooze under the shade of a tree. ‘What’s wrong?’

  What’s wrong? What’s wrong is that you’re going to have to dig a third hole today, after all …

  ‘Father Volk,’ I say. ‘Someone’s—’

  Luke rushes past me and I hear his shout of alarm from behind me as he catches sight of the priest’s swinging corpse. ‘Fuck a cow sidewise,’ he whispers in what will later occur to me as the most inappropriate last rites that Father Volk could have hoped for. ‘How’s he done that, then?’

  ‘It can hardly be self-inflicted,’ I say, ‘Now help me cut him down.’

  It takes Luke a few minutes to find something sharp enough to cut through the bell rope. He settles eventually on a short saw that he uses to keep the yew trees in the graveyard manageable.

  I pull the altar across so that I can use it to climb up and cut the rope.

  ‘That’s blasphemy, isn’t it?’ Luke asks as I trample on the altar cloth.

  ‘Leaving him hanging is worse,’ I assure him. ‘Do you really think God would begrudge me the assistance?’

  Luke shrugs. His God is very much the same as the deceased Father Volk’s, an unreasonable being that would put a lightning bolt through you as soon as blink.

  Cutting the rope is hard work, not helped by Luke’s whining as he tries to pull Volk’s body down to keep the rope taut.

  ‘I’m getting him all over me,’ he bleats. As the rope finally parts and the corpse drops to the ground in a splatter of shed organs, he dashes behind a pew to be sick.

  I can hardly blame him. It’s a vile business and it’s only due to my having a stomach that has long become inured to the horror of gore that I’m not joining him. Once you’ve seen enough of people’s insides you begin to disassociate the flesh from the soul. You have to.

  From my vantage point I can look down on the whole interior of the church and I see something that I was too distracted to notice earlier. There are tiny footprints, running from the shed blood that has pooled below where Volk was hanging. They don’t lead to the vestibule (of course not, I realise, because I was running towards that and would have cut off the attacker’s escape) but rather towards the rear of the church.

  I jump down and squat over the flagstones to try and identify the shape of the footprints. It’s impossible to tell whether they might belong to a man or a woman – when you run you only leave prints from the balls of your feet, and they are no more than small circular dots.

  I may not be able to identify them but I can certainly follow them.

  Behind the altar is a small door leading to the vestry and I follow the footprints through it. There is another door that opens out into the rear of the churchyard.

  There is no more sign of the footprints as I step outside – there was a lot of blood but not enough to track so far – but I run my hands through the bushes that line the rear fence. Some have clearly been forced apart as someone – probably not so big, judging by the limited damage – jumped from the fence, through the bushes and into the field beyond. I follow their example, snapping a few more branches of my own, and emerge, scratched and none the wiser, to look out across an empty field and the road beyond.

  Whoever – whatever – did this is long gone.

  ‘Doctor?’ Luke is shouting. ‘Doctor? Where are you?’

  His voice is taking on a real edge of panic as he starts to think I’ve left him there with the body of his former employer and spiritual adviser.

  ‘Coming!’ I shout and climb back the way I came.

  Twenty

  Carla Has Little Interest in Her Lunch

  AFTER A LONG morning of burying dead toads you fixate on lunch. You might think that such a duty would lower anyone’s appetite but familiarity makes a comedy out of anything and by the time Grost and I had finished marking one side of the forest we were tossing the creatures to each other with no squeamishness whatsoever. Though even Grost was a bit disgusted by the one that exploded across the brim of his stovepipe hat. We decided that it must have gone off in the heat, making it more explosive than the others.

  We arrive back at Marcus’s house to find Kronos, bare-chested, sitting cross-legged on the roof (meditating, according to Grost – showing off, according to me) with Marcus’s handyman, Clyde Lorrimer watching him as if he were the devil himself.

  ‘No need for it,’ Lorrimer says when he spots us. ‘A man can sit wherever he likes but he’s asking for trouble up there, isn’t he?’

  ‘He likes the sense of perspective,’ Grost explains.

  ‘And looking down on people,’ I add.

  ‘That I can believe,’ says Lorrimer, offering me a smile that makes me think of the exploding toad. Its guts were certainly a similar colour to his teeth.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do for you, milady,’ he says, ‘you will ask, won’t you?’

  It’s obvious that Clyde Lorrimer has designs on me and I decide that now’s as good a time as any to nip matters in the bud.

  ‘Clyde,’ I say, ‘do you know what happened to the last man who lifted my skirts?’

  A look of what can only be described as euphoria crosses his face as he considers this. ‘No, Miss Carla,’ he says, ‘but I’m hoping you’ll tell me.’

  ‘Indeed I will,’ I say. ‘He lost his ear.’

  ‘Lost his ear?’ asks Clyde.

  ‘Lost his ear,’ I repeat. ‘But then, I spat it so far into the undergrowth that he didn’t have a chance of finding it, really.’

  Clyde’s face grows rather pale at this thought. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘There’s no need for that.’

  Grost is chuckling as we go inside and see what we can find to eat.

  We’re cutting up bread, cheese and pickles when Marcus walks in.

  ‘Kronos is on the roof,’ he says.

  ‘We know,’ Grost replies. ‘He’ll come down when he’s ready.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ I say, pointing at the food, ‘but we’ve worked up an appetite.’

  ‘Help yourself,’ says Marcus, ‘though you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t join you. I can’t quite stomach the idea of food at the moment.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask, taking a bite of some cheese.

  He tells us, and I decided that maybe I can’t stomach the idea of food now either.

  A pair of legs suddenly appears on the other side of the window as Kronos climbs down the outside of the house.

  ‘Is it time for lunch?’ he asks as he steps inside.

  ‘Listen to what Marcus has to tell you first,’ I suggest. ‘You might save yourself the effort.’

  Kronos’s stomach is clearly made of stronger stuff than mine. He works his way unconcernedly through the bread and pickles while Marcus repeats his story.

  ‘Fascinating,’ he says, his mouth full of bread.

  ‘Not the word I’d use,’ Marcus replies, irritated at his friend’s conduct.

  Kronos swallows. ‘We are pursuing a vampire that feeds by draining the life force of its victim, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘Then why is the local priest torn open and left to hang? If it was the vampire, why would it waste the opportunity to feed?’

  ‘Vampires never do that,’ says Grost. ‘Like all carnivores, they’re too driven by their sense of self-preservation. If it was going to kill him it should have done so in the same manner as before.’

  ‘Perhaps it really hated him?’ I suggest.

  ‘He was easy to hate,’ says Marcus.

  Grost shakes his head. ‘Kronos is right. It doesn’t make the least bit of sense.’

  ‘Unless?’ asks Kronos, looking at Grost.

  Grost looks back at his friend for a moment and then his face becomes grim. ‘That’s highly unlikely, surely?’

  ‘What?’ asks Marcus.

  Grost sighs, removes his spectacles and begins to polish them. Anything, it seems, rather than speak his thoughts aloud.

  ‘Unless?’ asks Kronos again.

  ‘Unless,’ snaps Grost impatiently, ‘we’re dealing with more than one vampire.’

  Twenty-One

  What the Beer Brought Out of Luke Hopkins

  HANGING THERE HE were, like a pig on a gibbet, with me ankle-deep in guts. And the doctor weren’t no help, he were far too busy climbing over the furniture and buggering off for a walk in the graveyard. Couldn’t take it, see, he were sick to his stomach, he were, chucking up all over the floor.

  He were and all, Clyde Lorrimer, I don’t care what you say about him, he ain’t got the guts for that sort of thing and I knows it as a fact as I’ve seen it with me own two eyes. He was worse than a girl. Moaning and spewing, spewing and moaning. It’s only thanks to me that we got poor Father Volk down in the end.

  I used my little saw, see, the one I uses to keep the trees trim. Cut him down I did, and rolled him up in one of those what-do-you-call-’ems … you know, the big cloth they have on the altar. All embroidered with crosses and that. Gold braid. You know … the cloth for a bloomin’ altar. What do they call ‘em? Eh?

  Altar cloth, that’s the feller.

  So we wrapped him up in one of those and that was a job in itself, so many bits were lying all over the place. You can pull a face, Bob, but I’m just telling it like it was. There were kidneys, livers and lights, everywhere you looked. Who would’ve knowed a human body had so much offal in it? I had to work my way up and down the front of the church to make sure we’d caught it all. Can’t have one of the ladies coming in and going for a tumble by slipping on a bit of lung, now, can you?

  Anyway, that’s how I found it! I reckon as Father Volk had snatched at the feller who was killing him and pulled it loose. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? If some bastard was doing you in and you’re wearing your guts for stockings you’d fight back, surely? Stands to reason.

  There you go, take a look at that. Beautiful, ain’t it? Yanked it right off the bastard’s coat I reckon.

  Eh? Whose coat? Don’t be dense, Bill, how many coats have gold buttons on ‘em like this ‘un? It’s a soldier’s coat, ain’t it? And who do we know that’s turned up recently wearing one of those?

  Twenty-Two

  Marcus Admires His Handiwork

  LATER, I SIT down with Kronos. Carla and Grost are still in the forest, burying toads and leaving behind them a trail of tied ribbons to mark where the boxes are buried. I dare say it’s useful work. Yes, probably very useful indeed. Probably.

  ‘You think I should be out there, don’t you?’ says Kronos, rolling one of those foul-smelling smokesticks of his. ‘Running around the countryside and hiding in graveyards?’

  ‘I certainly think you should be doing something,’ I admit, ‘especially if it stops you filling my house with the smell of those awful things.’

  ‘It’s a Chinese herb,’ Kronos says, with a smile.

  ‘Chinese herb indeed,’ I reply, with a heavy note of sarcasm in my voice. ‘You never used to smoke it.’

  ‘I never used to need it,’ he says. ‘It calms me – these days that is a difficult job.’

  I accept that his lifestyle is somewhat more unpleasant than that of most people. We sit in silence for a while.

  ‘The problem,’ he says after a moment, ‘is hunting a creature of intelligence. When you’re tracking an animal you have an advantage in that it doesn’t know you’re on its tail, and even if it does it will only ever act like that particular animal acts: it is constrained by its nature. A vampire has all the ingenuity and cunning of its hunter.’

  ‘Even if you do say so yourself!’

  Kronos smiles. ‘Even if I do. So the only way to capture it is for it to make sufficient mistakes or to be sufficiently unsubtle in its movements.’

  ‘All the while knowing that with every day that passes another victim may die.’

  ‘The more people who die the easier it gets. That’s the really difficult part of the business.’

  I can see the logic of this but am still not altogether satisfied. ‘But still, how can you learn anything if you stay sitting here?’

  Kronos takes another draw on his smokestick. ‘The only time I can be of any use outside is if I am lucky enough to be in the vicinity when the creature actually strikes. To be on the ground when the trail is hot – then you are in active pursuit, both of you running through the night! There is a chance then: it all comes down to speed. Outside of that, though, the only tracking I can do is in my head. I can make deductions based on evidence. To do that I don’t even need to open my eyes, let alone leave the house.’

  ‘Very well. So we can narrow down the vampire’s identity by using logical deduction, I can see that. Well, it feeds on youth, desperate to prolong its existence. So we’re looking for someone old …’

  ‘Quite the reverse. It is a creature rich with the energy of youth, so we are looking for someone with a rosiness to their cheeks!’

  ‘Oh, right …’ Again, I can follow this line of reasoning, though it doesn’t narrow the field much. ‘So what else do we know?’

  ‘Is there anyone who is newly arrived in the area?’

  I thought for a while. ‘No, I don’t think so … Oh, wait, there are three visitors at the White Hart. They claim to be ex-soldiers – a rough lot, to be sure.’

  ‘Very well, they may be worth investigating. However, if we exclude them there is something else that is rather suggestive. If the vampire is in fact one of the locals then circumstances have demanded that it escalate its feeding. I would have thought it could easily take a little of someone’s life energy but not so much as we have seen with Ann and Petra. An attack like that is bold, brazen. It works everyone up, makes them frightened. To continue such a feeding habit would very swiftly bring the light of attention to bear on the creature in question. So why the sudden need to feed so deeply?’

  ‘I couldn’t begin to guess.’

  ‘No,’ Kronos agrees. ‘For the moment, neither can I. But it is important, I think.’

  ‘What about the attack in the church? Do you really think that that was the work of someone – or something – else entirely?’

  Kronos nods. ‘A vampire does not waste food. The priest was slaughtered viciously, his life force squandered. Why? And such an act of barbarism … the style is completely different. Your problem has doubled, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Wonderful. So we hope the toads do the trick, then, eh?’

  ‘The toads will confirm what we already know: that you have a vampire in the area.’

  ‘Hardly seems worth the effort.’

  ‘They also do something else, something far more valuable. They show that we are onto the creature, that we know what it is and that we are actively pursuing it. Hopefully that will make the vampire nervous. Nervousness breeds mistakes. Remember?’

  I look at him and smile.

  ‘Of course I remember.’

  It was in the early days of the Ireland campaign and most of us were still green and homesick enough to be on edge over there. We had taken Drogheda and Wexford and were marching north.

  On hearing reports of Royalist supporters massing in a small town near Lisburn, our regiment was detached from the main fighting force in order to investigate.

  Rather than go marching straight into a town that could have been filled with Catholic Irish and the visiting Royalist Scots our commander, a sinewy lump of scar tissue and chewing tobacco by the name of Saunders, led us around the periphery of the town. He had decided that a little covert surveillance would be the best way to proceed.

  All seemed quiet enough until we came upon a sizeable shack hidden away in the woodland to the north of the town. The shack was guarded by a bored-looking fellow who was silenced with such speed that he probably didn’t know his throat had been cut until his pipe got too difficult to smoke.

  ‘What have we got ‘ere?’ Saunders wondered, opening the shack’s doors and finding himself face to face with a gunpowder store the size of a small house. ‘Bugger me’ was his informed military opinion.

  It was soon decided that we would take as much of the gunpowder with us as we could carry and blow up the rest. After all, it made no sense to leave such valuable munitions in the hands of the enemy. We had a barrel each strapped to our backs and a young lad called Piper was charged with running a trail of gunpowder away from the store to act as a fuse so we could buy ourselves time to run for cover before the whole thing went sky-high.

  Piper was not confident in the execution of his duty. Despite constant reassurance that the gunpowder could not simply ignite of its own accord, he was sweating in panic as he slowly walked backwards through the undergrowth with a tipped-up keg in his hands.

  ‘I didn’t sign up for this,’ he kept saying. ‘This stuff just ain’t natural. A sword, that’s a proper weapon – this stuff’s just grains of hell.’

  ‘Oh, stop your moaning,’ said Kronos in the end, tired of watching Piper’s slow work. ‘Let me do it.’

  He moved to take the keg from Piper when a rustling in the trees caused the younger man to flinch. ‘Who’s that?’ he cried, twisting to look. He stared up into the greenery, shaking with fear, only to see a squirrel dart from one branch to another.

  ‘A Royalist tree rat,’ said Kronos. ‘Now get on with it before someone does turn up.’

  Once he’d finished laying the trail of powder, Piper struck a light with some irritation and promptly learned that, while looking around in panic, he had clumsily filled the tops of his boots with gunpowder. He discovered this after a spark from his tinderbox landed there and blew him, and the barrel of gunpowder on his back, heavenwards.