Whitby Vampyrrhic by Simon Clark Page A

inhuman . . . No living humans possessed eyes like that. When she dashed towards the front door Gustav smoothly sped by her to block the way. He smiled. His teeth were tiny yet perfectly shaped. The other creatures possessed the same kind of teeth, as if God in a moment of reckless abandon had snatched up different animals, then moulded them into something that, at least outwardly, resembled a man.
    Running became her mission. Nothing less. If her feet pounded the cobbled street, then it proved she hadn’t been caught yet. Because that was her intention. She knew they wanted to lay hands on her. To bundle her roughly away. But what then? What would they do with her? Creatures like that? What brought them pleasure?
    Mary raced long Henrietta Street. At this time of night, bathed in moonlight, not a soul graced it. Houses to her left lay in darkness. To her right the hillside flowed down to the vast expanse of harbour waters. And behind her, softly padding feet. Gustav and his monstrous companions were in full-blooded pursuit. Maybe they enjoyed the chase? Did they savour her fear as they closed in?
    Mary sped down towards town. Ancient cottages grew more tightly clustered. The incline added to her speed so she kept running downwards. Instead of joining the level ground of Church Street, she sped down Tate Hill. Only, this led to the beach. The tide had rolled in, flooding the sands. So Mary dashed out along the stone pier. Little more than eight feet wide, it jutted out into the waters of the harbour. A bridge to nowhere.
    Keep running.
That’s all that mattered. Maybe she could elude her pursuers yet. She raced along the tongue of stone. At the end, she kept running. Her heart had become this huge, pounding engine in her chest. Adrenalin filled her veins with fire. In that heightened state, the moon burnt like the torch of the gods in the sky. The ocean became a luminous silver highway all of its own. Nightdress flapping, hair rippling wildly, Mary leapt, then flew outwards, her face turned up to the stars and the moon.
    The sea took her into itself. It embraced her tightly as a lover. Its cold fingers explored every inch of her body in a split second. For a moment, she tried hard to swim in the direction of the bridge. However, the tide had turned. Roughly, the current bore her back to the stone pier; there, she buffeted against its stone blocks.
    Instantly, hands seized her from above. Gustav, the pilot, and the others, swiftly drew her from the water. She lay dripping in their arms, as they carried her into a secret, shadowed place, where they could do whatever they wanted to her.
    But there in the night a strange thing happened. Yes, horror engulfed her. No doubting that. But there was something else, too. A thrill she’d never felt before. Excitement snapped through her veins; an electricity of forbidden desires burst through her English reserve.
    She moaned as they fought to be first to clamp their mouths on to her body. The bites were a sweet pain of release. Memories of her life with her husband roared through her head. The confinement in the cottage to cook and clean. The dull monotony. The loss of hope that things would change for the better one day. The never-ending thud . . . thud . . . thud of darts in the board, which could have been nails being slowly hammered into the coffin of a loveless marriage.
    When those small, razor-sharp teeth released blood from her veins, she roared with a vicious pleasure. Then, as consciousness began to fade, she pictured Harry’s face as he admired his beloved darts . . . and the final words that slipped through her soon-to-be inhuman lips were:
    â€˜
I’m free . . .
’

Five
    Unable to sleep, Eleanor Charnwood descended into the hotel’s basement. A clock in reception chimed four in the morning as she gritted her teeth against the icy flow of air within the underground vault. She passed the huddle of