Eldren: The Book of the Dark by William Meikle Page B

coat and left, with a backward glance to smile at him.
    He’d been expecting her to say no.
     
    ~-o0O0o-~
     
    Tony had been running all morning and it felt like a week—a week running and hiding from his worst nightmare come true. But all the time he could feel those eyes, those blood-red eyes that seemed to see straight inside him.
    He would never be rid of the sight as the fangs tore at Ian’s throat, the sound of the deep chuckle as the creature fed, the smell, hot and coppery, of Ian’s blood as it sprayed in a fine mist in the air of the boiler-room.
    Now, finally, he had stopped running, not because he had got away, but because he didn’t know where else to go. He squeezed his small frame through the railings of the cemetery and headed for the church.
    He was afraid. Not because it had spoken to him…no, it went deeper than that.
    When Ian Brown was killed the pictures had unfolded in his mind like a video film, the images jerky and fast as if shot under a strobe.
    Tony saw his mother, but as he’d never seen her before. She was naked, writhing languidly on the bed in his parent’s bedroom. The vampire was standing over her, its forked tongue sliding wetly between thin lips as it crouched over her body. The fangs slid out from a suddenly red mouth and a long white hand ran over his mother’s thigh, then her belly, and then her breasts. His mother bucked under the hand and groaned in pleasure, bending her head back and offering her throat. The picture stopped, freeze frame, just as the fangs slid into the soft flesh.
    The picture in his head had faded out and Tony found himself looking deep into those blood red eyes. And the creature had smiled; its bloodied fangs dripping a flow of red across its chin as it lowered its head once more to Ian’s neck. It was only after Tony found the energy to scream that the vampire stopped its feeding. Tony only looked away for a second...just long enough to register Ian’s body falling to the floor, but when he looked up the vampire had gone. A faint mist drifting in the corner of the room was the only sign that anything had been there and by the time the first footsteps sounded in the corridor behind him even that had dissipated.
    After that, he had ran, ran until it felt that hot razors were sawing in his chest, until his breath tore pain out of him with every stride, ran until he stood, crying still, at the back door of his parent’s house.  He had opened the door, slowly, praying that the dog wouldn’t bark, and slipped into the house and up the stairs.  His heart had pounded hard as he felt under his mattress, and it gave a sudden lurch when his fingers met only space. But then he pushed his hand in further and met the rough leather of the old book he’s found back in the ruined Hansen House.
    Then he ran again, not stopping until he got to the church.
    Now he felt the book, sitting against his skin under his shirt.
    He pressed his body against the wall and shivered as the first stars twinkled in the sky above him.
     
    ~-o0O0o-~
     
    Sandy patted his pocket, just to make sure that the money was still in place. He smiled as he remembered his conversation with the teacher. Maybe he would see Brian again; he was sure that the story about the house had some mileage left in it yet, and the teacher seemed to be taking it all in. But then again, people always only heard what they wanted, and the teacher was an easy mark.
    Good for a few more whiskies yet anyway, he muttered to himself.
    It was really so easy. Mix a few bits of truth with some wild speculation and Bob’s your uncle. Already he was working on the next phase of the story...the ‘researchers’ in the house during the war finding something unspeakable.
    In reality it had only been an air raid shelter, but old Sandy had never let bald fact get in the way of a good story, and he wasn’t about to start now. Besides, the bit about the building of the house had been true enough, and the story about the