The Iron in Blood by Jenny Doe (primary phonics .txt) 📕

“I think he’s right about this one, though. She doesn’t look as frightened as she should. She’s giving me the creeps.”

Damn, my cover was blown. Well at least they’d stay away from me now.

“Man, you stink.”

“She pissed all over me.” Gruff man sounded gruffer than ever. I grinned.

“Wait ‘till Jack gets here, sweetie. He’ll wipe that smile right off your pretty little face.”

I sniffed in his general direction, and grinned wider, letting the anger and hunger seep into my eyes.

They stared warily at me and said nothing.

Mark

It took Angus about ten minutes to get the car loaded up. He put the guns in the boot, except for one of the pistols, which he loaded and shoved in his belt. He strapped the vest on over his shirt, and pulled the leather jacket on over that. He looked over at me as he was sliding into the driver’s seat, and he nodded.

“Thanks, Mark.”

And then he was gone in a swirl of mud and roaring engine. I wondered what he was thanking me for. He was the one rescuing my sister, after all. He was helping me.

I shut the door, and sat down in one of the ancient leather armchairs by the fire to wait. It was going to be a long night.

CHAPTER 7

Angus

It’s hard to believe how long a journey of fifty miles can take in your head, even when you look at the clock on the dash and it’s actually taken less than an hour. I pulled over onto the grass along the side of an isolated country road about two miles from my destination. The area was isolated and protected from view by a clump of gnarled chestnut trees.

I retrieved the sniper rifle from the boot, loaded it, and put spare magazine in one of my now bulging pockets. I loaded the second Glock too, and stuck it in my waistband at the small of my back. Two spare fully loaded magazines also went onto my pockets. I stood, rifle held loosely in my left hand, and breathed in deeply through my nose. Once, and then again. The sour scent of slowly decaying vampire flesh wrapped itself around my olfactory neurosensory cells. I smiled grimly, and taking the tub of iron tablets out of my pocket, I counted out another ten, and swallowed them. I was going to need all the power and speed I could get tonight.

I set out in the general direction of the smell, jogging silent footed through the fields and hedgerows between me and my target. It occurred to me that I’d killed quite a few people in my time, but never a vampire. I hoped that Marcus was right about the whole decapitating business. I was prepared to try a number of alternative options, though. It also struck me that if I waited until midnight for my brothers, I might stand a better than even chance of annihilating these creatures quickly and quietly, and getting Rebecca out of there in one piece. But the idea of sitting and waiting for Marcus and Fergus to arrive while the images of what they could be doing to Rebecca blazed like fire through my mind… No.

As I ran I went over a few possible approaches to the situation in my mind. Chances were these vampires had no idea that I even existed, so surprise would definitely be on my side. There were likely to be at least thirteen of them. Eleven vampires and those two human males that had helped abduct Rebecca. The humans were armed, the vampires? Probably not. When you’re as strong physically as these guys were likely to be the only assault weapon you’d need would be your own body. I was counting on their complacence. And I was hoping to shatter it soon.

Rebecca

After a while I got fed up with watching those two idiots. All they did was watch me back. I stretched my aching body out on that wooden bench and closed my eyes. My feet hung off the lower edge, but it was comfortable enough if you had low expectations to start with.

I let my mind wander. It seemed to gravitate automatically to Angus’ beautiful stark face. I remembered the way he looked at me when we first met, and the way he’d smiled at me yesterday. God, was it only yesterday? And the way he’d held me when I’d felt overwhelmed by the newness of everything he was telling me, and the way he’d kissed me until Mark interrupted us. Poor Mark. My train of thought derailed. Mark must have seen these morons grabbing me and shoving me in that white van with no number plate. He was probably worried sick about me. And my mother. My mother would be frantic now. I imagined her thin fragile face creased with desperate, devastating anxiety. How I hated these men and that freak show called Oscar for putting her through this. They would pay. I would make them pay.

There was a disturbance by the trapdoor, and it creaked open reluctantly. Oscar walked carefully down the stairs and went and stood next to Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

“Jack phoned. He’ll be here in about an hour.” He placed a dented metal flask on the floor. “I’ve brought her some tea. She’s going to need all her strength for what Jack’s got planned for her.” He drew back his lips in what he probably thought was a smile, showing his teeth. The two idiots chuckled loudly. Oscar glanced at me once more before heading back up the stone steps. The trapdoor creaked shut behind him.

“It’s a shame Jack never lets us watch.” The man with the gruff voice spoke, a taunting, spiteful edge to his voice, his eyes running over my body.

“Yeah, I think this one’s going to fight back.” He opened the flask and made a big performance out of spitting into it. He closed it and nudged it through the bars with his foot.

I wasn’t going to drink that tea, anyway. I needed every little molecule of iron that my body had. But I was definitely going to kill these men. I hugged the image of their broken, empty bodies, while I tried to fight off the panic that was welling up inside me.

Jack was coming. Whatever that meant.

Angus

I saw the lights as I approached the building. There had been a six foot wall a few hundred yards back, but I’d vaulted easily over it, the iron tablets I’d taken earlier starting to kick in. I ran crouched over with the rifle gripped in my left hand. I paused about a hundred yards from the building and veered off to the right, running easily, dodging the occasional tree. I ran a loose perimeter, watching and listening for any guards or other signs of life. Nothing. A few minutes later I had chosen my base in a copse of trees, slightly higher than the surrounding grounds, where I would be able to ambush them. I stood dead still for a moment and built a mental picture of the terrain in my head. The main building, the one that looked like an old fashioned hospital, sat like a fat tick in the middle of a small hollow, four lit windows visible against the night, two upstairs, two downstairs, front door between them. It was flanked by an old stone barn on the right, and a smaller bungalow on the left. The bungalow was empty. The stone barn was not. There was no light showing through the windows of the barn, but I could smell them. Two men and Rebecca. I tried not to think of what was happening in there, although it was probably nothing right now. I could detect no fear or pain in Rebecca’s mind. There was anger, though. Good girl. I concentrated on setting my rifle up on its tripod and centring the sights on the front door of that main building. I was going to massacre these bastards.

I had noticed a back door in the main building on my reconnaissance run. I would have to do something about that. I left the rifle standing in a small cluster of trees, and jogged around the back of the house. It took me forty seconds, two grenades and a roll of dark nylon fishing line to booby trap the back door. Any vampire trying to open this door would get a pretty explosive surprise. It might not kill them, but it would definitely alert me to their attempt to escape. And then I would kill them.

I was about to head back to where I had left the rifle, when I smelled the familiar stench of a blood addict vampire. The same one I’d smelled outside Rebecca’s school. I saw him out of the corner of my eye heading away from the barn and towards the main building, and then I was running as fast as I could towards him. I didn’t want him to smell me and alert those animals inside. He turned a fraction of a second before I reached him, but his dry squawk was cut off when I grabbed his throat with my left hand. He tried to fight me off, but I was much stronger than he was. He hadn’t had a blood meal in a few days, and it showed. It was almost too easy. I twisted his head around with my right hand until I heard it snap, and then I twisted it some more. Right up until his head became detached from the rest of his body.

I waited a few seconds until his blood had drained from his open neck and then I carried both head and corpse up to my clump of trees. I had been wondering what to do to create a diversion, and now I had my answer. I grinned.

I stood for a few more seconds surveying the terrain, and then I hurled that head over arm through one of the lit windows downstairs, the one on the left, and I sat down to wait.

I didn’t have to wait long. A head peered around one of the curtains draped across that same window for a fraction of a second too long. I sighted down the scope of the rifle and squeezed the trigger. The face disappeared in a puff of blood and brain matter.

A silhouette appeared in the doorway. Two shots in quick succession, both in the face. The silhouette collapsed in a lifeless heap.

I’d spent some time during the trip here pondering about how to kill a vampire. I’d come to the conclusion that if I could shoot them in a critical region, like the head or the heart, then even if they could regenerate those areas, it would take them some time. I reckoned I’d be able to incapacitate most of them with gunshot wounds, and then finish them off properly before they had a chance to regenerate. An hour at least, maybe two. I placed a hand on the chest of the decapitated body lying next to me. It was cold, no heartbeat, no signs of life. Result.

There were no more heads to shoot at so I pulled the pin on my last grenade and lobbed it through one of the upstairs windows. The tinkling of broken glass was followed by a loud explosion. Still no heads to shoot at. I took the magazine out of the Heckler and Koch, and jammed it in one of my pockets. I didn’t want one of those vampires finding the rifle where I had to leave it, and taking pot shots at me. I took the one of the Glocks out