Sylvia looked down at me, and I knew this had all been arranged for my benefit. A show, staged up on the roofs so I couldn’t interfere. Jeeves had been right, after all; she’d just been waiting for us to separate, so she could catch one of us on our own. And have fun with them.
Her head snapped forward, and Jeeves cried out. A horrid despairing sound as her teeth sank deep into his neck. Blood spouted, steaming thickly on the cold air. More blood ran down his chest, soaking into his coat. Sylvia worried at his throat, like a dog with a fresh piece of meat, her sharp teeth tearing at the flesh. The noises she made as she fed weren’t even animal; they were somehow more basic, more primordial, than that.
There was nothing I could do. No way I could get up there, before it would all be over.
Sylvia supported Jeeves’ entire weight with her undead strength. His legs had gone limp, just dangling. She buried her face in the great wound she’d made in his throat, gulping down his blood. I could hear the awful sounds quite clearly. Jeeves slowly turned his face away, to look down at me. And then he opened his hand and let go of his gun. It clattered down the side of the roof, hit the guttering, and spun out into space, falling down and down through the air. I moved quickly forward and caught it.
Sylvia pulled her face away from Jeeves’ neck. She glared down at me, her eyes unnaturally bright in her rotting face. Her mouth and teeth dripped gore. When she spoke, I could hear her as clearly as though she were standing right in front of me.
‘See what I’m doing, Ishmael? I’m going to do this to all of them! One by one, until you’re the only one left. You get to watch them suffer, and you get to suffer too, for the sin of inconveniencing me. So really this is all your fault, isn’t it? And when I finally come for you … oh, the things I’ll do to you! But for now, just watch …’
Jeeves’ body was entirely limp, no strength left in it. He was only held up by the vampire’s strength. But he was still looking down at me, and I knew why he’d dropped his gun: for me to catch. I raised the gun and took careful aim. Sylvia saw and laughed at me. And I shot Jeeves in the head, twice. I might not like weapons, but I knew how to use them.
It was all I could do for him. To stop his suffering, and to make sure Sylvia couldn’t bring him back as one of her kind.
Sylvia screamed with rage as half of Jeeves’ head was blown apart, right in front of her. She threw his body away from her, as though it was suddenly contaminated. Jeeves fell through the air, turning and tumbling, until he finally slammed into the snow-covered ground before me, with such force I heard his bones break. I knew he had to be dead, but I knelt down beside him and checked anyway. Because I had to be sure. He would have done the same for me.
When I looked up again, Sylvia was gone from the roofs. Nothing up there but the swirling snow. I’d cheated her out of one small revenge, at least.
The cottages were burning nicely. The fires would reach the far end soon enough. There was nowhere left for Sylvia to hide, now. Only one place left she could go. Back to Belcourt Manor.
Back to the bait I’d left there, waiting for her.
Eleven
The wind was gathering its strength, blowing out of the coldest hell there was. The snow battered against my face as I headed back towards Belcourt Manor, stinging my narrowed eyes. I had to destroy the vampire while it was still trapped here. If I didn’t, Sylvia would just kill everyone in the house, wait out the storm, and then walk away. To do it all again, somewhere else. I fought my way through the storm, refusing to let the cold slow me down or hold me back. A normal human probably couldn’t have done it.
When I’d left the manor house with Jeeves, I’d known there was a good chance Sylvia might get away. That we wouldn’t be able to stop her. That was why I insisted we set fire to the outbuildings. To drive Sylvia back to the one place of shelter left. Belcourt Manor. I could have taken the others with us, to hunt the vampire. Kept the group together. Safety in numbers, and all that. But I needed to be sure where Sylvia would go if she got away. I needed bait, for my trap.
Penny, and Leilah, and Alexander.
I needed to destroy the vampire. For what she did to the Colonel. For all those she’d killed, and for all those she would go on to kill if she wasn’t stopped. But I also needed to save the lives of those I’d left in the house. Because that was what a human being would do.
The Manor slowly appeared out of the swirling mists. As I drew nearer, I could see the front door was still firmly closed. That was something. I paused, a cautious distance away, to look the place over. There were no signs to show Sylvia had got there ahead of me. And then the lights went out.
The glimmers of light shining past the heavy wooden shutters over the drawing room windows just snapped off. And since no one in that room had any reason to do such a thing, it meant Sylvia must have already broken into the house and ripped out the fuses. Good tactic. It was what I would have done. She’d had more than enough time over the weekend to find out where everything was and plan ahead. Predators often prefer to hunt in the dark …
I hurried forward, slamming through the piled-up snow, sending it flying to either side of me as I headed for the front door. I grabbed the door handle and rattled it hard, and found the door was still securely locked. How had Sylvia got inside? I stepped back and looked up, craning my head right back, and there it was … a single top floor window open, its shutters pulled away and hanging loose. The same window where I’d thought I’d seen someone watching me when I arrived. Sylvia must have skittered up the outside wall …
And now she was inside the house with the others.
I hammered on the front door with my fist, making the heavy wood shake and shudder in its frame, and only then remembered Jeeves’ special knock. I hit the door three times quickly, two hard and short, and then I stood there breathing hard, planning what I would do when I got inside. After a worryingly long pause, I heard the door being unlocked from the inside. It swung inwards, and there was Penny. She smiled quickly, her face full of relief on seeing me again, and then her smile fell away as she realized Jeeves wasn’t with me.
I hurried forward, into the gloom of the unlit hall, and she fell back. Freezing air and quick bursts of snow followed me in. Penny slammed the door shut in the face of the storm and locked it again. I glared about me into the dark hall. ‘Have you seen Sylvia?’ I said.
‘No,’ said Penny. ‘I thought she was still outside! Oh bloody hell, the lights! That was her, wasn’t it? We all thought it was just the storm.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s inside, somewhere.’
Penny helped me struggle out of my many layers of coats. I dropped them to the floor and kicked them aside. The outer layers were covered with snow, the inner layers soaked with sweat. I was glad to be rid of them. I scraped layers of frost from my face with my numb fingers, and then headed quickly for the drawing room door. It stood slightly open, spilling warm yellow light into the hall.
‘Leilah is lighting candles,’ said Penny, hurrying along beside me. ‘There’s always lots of candles around. Daddy saw to that. Said it was an important part of the Christmas atmosphere. We used to rely on them a lot, back when I was a little girl and we hadn’t quite got the hang of the generator yet … Sorry. I’m babbling. Ishmael … Where’s Jeeves? What happened to Jeeves?’
‘He didn’t make it,’ I said.
‘Sylvia killed him?’