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Angus

I know I should have insisted that Mark get out at the school. I didn’t, though. I’m not

sure exactly why I let him tag along. It could have had something to do with the images that

flashed across my mind as he sat cowering defiantly in that seat. Images of me having to

drive for hours with my rage my only companion, trying not to imagine what they were

doing to Rebecca with every passing minute. I knew I would have to keep a level head, or as

level as was possible for me. Mark could help me do that. He would
have
to help me do

that.

Mark

About half an hour into the journey or trip or pursuit or whatever you wanted to call it,

I started worrying. About my mother and how she would be spinning out about Rebecca’s

kidnapping. And maybe they’d have realised that I’d disappeared too. I would have to

contact Mum, and let her know that I was OK, and that I was with Angus and we were trying

to find my sister, the needle, in a great big British haystack. Maybe not.

I looked across at Angus. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, his face looked

like it had been carved from marble, or some sort of more angular stone.

I had questions, but I also had doubts. Angus looked like he was about to snap

something in half, and I didn’t want that something to be me.

I stared out of the windscreen at the greys and browns of the wintry English

countryside blurring past. We were heading north on the M6 motorway, averaging about

eighty to one hundred miles per hour. Why north? My sister was missing and Angus was

heading north? I didn’t get it.

“Why are we going north?” My voice sounded tentative and nervous in my own ears.

Angus looked across at me and smiled tightly again.

“I was waiting for the questions.”

“You don’t mind?”

“No.”

I waited a few seconds and the asked my question again. “Why north?”

“Two reasons. Firstly it’s a lot less heavily populated. Secondly vampires like the cold.

They function best in a temperature range of between minus five and ten degrees. Celsius.

That’s why my brothers live in Russia.”

“How do you know it’s a vampire that’s got her?”

“I smelled him. And two other guys. Probably military background. They both reeked of

gun oil, and one smokes a lot.”

“How did you get all that from sniffing the air for a few seconds?” I was impressed. And

not quite believing it all.

“I have an excellent sense of smell. If Fergus can get me within five miles of them, I’ll be

able to track them down using smell alone.”

“Cool.”

Angus smiled again. “Yeah.”

“And you know the vampire drinks blood only. What does that mean?”

“He’ll be weaker than one of us. He’s feeding his addiction to iron, and not his body. So

he won’t have much in the way of muscle left, but he’ll still be stronger than you humans.

Especially after a big dose of blood. And I know that he drinks blood only because I can smell it on him. That and the stink of his slowly atrophying tissues.”

“Yuk.”

“Yes. But it’s a very distinctive smell. Easy tracking.”

I waited for a minute or so before asking the question that had been bothering me for a

while.

“Why did they take Rebecca?”

The knuckles whitened even more, but his voice was controlled when he spoke. “I don’t

know. There are a couple of possibilities.”

He paused, and took a few deep breaths.

“Firstly, they might not know that she’s a vampire. Young female abduction; she’d be

raped or murdered or both.”

I felt sick. Angus spoke again, managing to keep his tone level.

“Or they do know that she’s a vampire. That is the most likely scenario, and that means

a whole different set of options. They might want her to join them, as a part of their

community
,” he spat the word. “As a breeding female.”

I shook my head vehemently. “She’d never stand for that.”

“She might not have a choice. She has a major vulnerability that they can exploit. She

needs iron, high doses on a daily basis. If they withhold that from her, she could become

weak, and almost die. She wouldn’t have a choice, Mark. They would force her.” His voice

had become gravelly, as if he was having trouble controlling his emotions. I knew how he

felt.

Rebecca

I forced myself to concentrate on breathing deeply and swaying with the van again. It

took me a while, but I eventually calmed the acute panic down. The van must have moved

onto a motorway, because the swaying all but stopped, and the speed increased. Fast but

not too fast. It made sense that they wouldn’t go faster than the speed limit. They wouldn’t

want to run the risk of being pulled over.

I leaned back against the nearest surface and adjusted my position slightly. My limbs

were starting to ache slightly with the forced inactivity, and unnatural positions that they

had been tied in. I felt a fleeting irritation with these people. I wanted to make them pay.

Eventually.

I started thinking about escaping. I was no expert on kidnapping, but these guys

appeared to be careful. Taking a number plate off for doing the deed and then putting it

back on afterwards. Cunning. They were unlikely to take any unnecessary risks. Crap.

Then it occurred to me. I had a bit of an advantage over these people. I could

metabolise iron, and if Angus was right, a big dose of iron would make me tremendously

and invincibly strong. I smiled under my smelly pillowcase, imagining tearing these idiots

apart, and escaping back to my family. And to Angus.

All that was missing in my plan was a massive dose of iron. As I started wondering how

to get hold of it, I realised that all my fear had evaporated, and I felt slightly triumphant.

Score one for
the girl
.

Angus

Mark was a welcome distraction, except that he asked the wrong questions. Why had

they taken Rebecca? I didn’t even like to think for a split second about what they would do

to her.

But something else had crossed my mind as I was speaking to him. If there was a group

of iron metabolisers out there somewhere who lived on blood, they would look strange. I

had built up a mental picture of the vampire from his smell – thin, maybe even emaciated.

Parchment-like skin. Tired looking face, dark rings around the eyes. Like any junkie with an

all-consuming addiction.

Someone who looked like that would need to hide, and stay hidden. And if there were a

group of them, they would need a cover story to explain their reluctance to be seen in

public. And they would need servants who would have to be fed that cover story, and who

would swallow it. The servants would be in daily contact with them, and would eventually

have to see them as they were. What kind of cover story could render the horror of a

collection of crumbling vampires
normal
? Well, maybe not normal, but believable. And

maybe even pitiable, so it would be frowned upon to talk about them too much. Hmmm.

“Phone.”

Mark grabbed it off the dash, and handed it to me. I dialled Fergus again, switched on

the speakerphone function, and handed the phone to Mark. He held it obediently.

Two rings and Fergus answered. “Got your arsenal, brother. It’s on its way as we

speak.”

“Thanks.”

“Estate’s yours too. Housekeepers’ sorting it out now. I think she’s even going to make

you supper. She’ll leave it in the fridge, of course. You’ll have the place to yourself when you get there. We’re diverting to Glasgow airport. Well be arriving at the estate sometime

around midnight.”

“Fergus, we need to consider the possibility that these vampires aren’t living in

complete isolation. They could be blending in under some kind of believable cover story. I

want you to locate private hospices, especially those dealing with rare diseases.”

“Right.”

“And look for unexplained violent or animal related deaths around one hundred plus

years ago. Transport wouldn’t have been as good, so that kind of search will probably reveal

more of their whereabouts than a more recent one.”

“Tricky.”

“Yeah, but you’re good at tricky.”

“Thanks, brother. Later.”

Rebecca

Iron, hmmm. I’d left the iron tablets behind that Angus had given me. Even if I had

them, say, in a pocket, there was no way I could open that tub and take some out and

swallow them with my hands tied behind my back. And even if these guys untied me, they’d

never sit by and let me swallow a bunch of tablets. They would want me alive and conscious

for what they were planning, I bet. Whatever that was. I tried not to think of it, but

concentrated on my plan.

There was no help for it. I would have to bite the neck of one of these guys. And drink

their blood. The decision didn’t repulse me as much as it probably should have.

I would wait for the opportunity. There’s a lot of iron in blood.

And these guys had it coming.

Mark

Something had been bothering me since Angus’ first conversation with his brother

Fergus. Well, something
else
. There were too many things on my mind for me to really

notice this one until I’d had some time to think it through. Once a question occurred to me, I just had to know.

“So how does someone like you know so much about guns and stuff?”

Angus chuckled. “Guns and stuff,” he mused. “It’s a long story.”

I said nothing. I was learning from an expert.

“I’ve been in the armed forces for quite a large proportion of my fifty-nine years,” he

said eventually. Every time I heard how old he really was, my mind started lurching around

like a drunk. He really didn’t look more than twenty. Twenty five if you really pushed it.

“I couldn’t stay in any one place for more than, say, five years. People start noticing

that you’re not getting older. I started off in the British military, the SAS, and worked my

way across Europe. I spent a few years in Africa too. I ended up working for the FBI in the

states until I retired about four years ago.”

“Why did you stop?”

“Because it wasn’t what I had expected when I started. I realised fairly soon after my

father died that I needed an outlet for my, er, violent tendencies. I joined the armed forces, thinking that I’d be able to hurt deserving people in a disciplined, controlled way. It didn’t work like that, though. You didn’t get to hurt anyone. You learned about guns and knives

and unarmed combat, but you couldn’t hurt anyone until you were actually in the

battlefield. Those were quiet years, and I spent five and a half years learning to curb my

frustration. It taught me that much at least, I suppose.”

“But surely you liked the unarmed combat bit?”

Angus laughed humourlessly. “Rolling around on the floor with some idiot, pretending

to fight him off? No.” He paused, and then he turned to look at me, his expression grim. “I

can crush your neck with one hand, Mark, without even lifting the other off the steering

wheel here. I can break that massive bone in your thigh by just
squeezing
it. I could thrust my hand through your ribs and into your thoracic cavity and rip your beating heart out.”

Expressionless, like he was reading the weather.

I shuddered. I wasn’t much liking the direction this conversation had taken.

“So, you see, I spent all that time in unarmed combat training sessions fighting
myself.

Trying
not
to hurt those men. It wasn’t fun.”

“Why the FBI?” Change the subject.

“The idea of the bad guy going after the bad guy appealed to me.” He waited a few

minutes before continuing.

“I killed a man when I was seventeen. He was setting traps out in the countryside

where we grew up, and when I confronted him, he laughed at me. He was a big man, see,

and he thought that he would easily be able to fight a teenager off. That laugh, and the

derision and contempt behind it; that enraged me. I’d killed him before I even realised what

I was doing.”

His face hardened. “Afterwards, when I was standing over his broken body, I waited for

the shame and remorse to wash over me. It never came. The only thing I felt was

satisfaction. I realised then that there was something profoundly wrong with me.”

I said nothing, because there was nothing to say.

“Marcus explained that my reaction had a biological basis, that it would make sense for

those of us who had to survive on blood to
not
feel remorse when we killed. It made no difference to me. Biological basis or not, I was still a monster. Just before my father died, I swore to him that I would tame that monster. I have, to a degree, but I still know what I am,

and what I am capable of.”

“Funny thing is,” he smiled wistfully, “my father always refused to believe me, that I

was capable of such things. When I promised to tame my monster, he told me I already had,

just by acknowledging its existence, and resolving not to succumb to it.”

“It’s not that easy, though. Sometimes that beast rears its ugly head whether I want it

to or not.” He paused again and then he turned his head to look at me, a wry, sad smile on

his face. “I’ve got a feeling we might see it tonight.”

Rebecca

My anger grew with my discomfort. It’s amazing, but once I’d stopped feeling so

helpless, once I’d realised that there was a way that I could escape from this situation, I