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

“Mum! Oh, God, she must be going crazy!” All my happiness dissolved, just like that. I felt immensely guilty for forgetting about my mother in all of the relief of being alive and well and with Angus.

“It’s OK, Sis, I spoke to her earlier. Marcus and Fergus phoned her before that, and gave her a bit of a cover story. I’ll explain on the way down,” he added pointedly, and indicated the antique wardrobe that stood against one wall of the bedroom. “Put some clothes on, please.”

“I’ve got clothes on!” I said again.

“Yeah,” he muttered, unconvinced. “Put more on.” He turned and went to stand outside the door while I reluctantly stood up and went to look through the wardrobe. Angus stayed in bed.

“Can I wear some of these, do you think?” I asked him, surveying the collection of jeans and shirts and wondering how I was ever going to fit into them.

“Yes.”

“Don’t look, then.”

“I may have to.” He was smiling at me again.

“Right, then, I’m changing in the bathroom,” I said, selecting a few items from the crowded rack, and dragged a leather belt from a shelf.

“It’s probably safer,” he agreed. I grinned at him and skipped out of the room, past Mark and into the bathroom. I dressed as best I could in those clothes, cinching the jeans around my waist with the belt, and rolling the cuffs up. I washed my face and brushed my teeth using a disposable toothbrush I found in the mirrored cabinet above the basin. Mark was waiting for me as I stepped out of the bathroom, and he explained what Mum had been told so far, as we walked together down the stairs and into the kitchen. It all sounded very plausible.

Marcus and Fergus were already sitting patiently at the large oak table that took up most of one half of the sizeable kitchen. They were drinking coffee, and discussing samples; of what, I wasn’t sure. They looked up as we entered the kitchen, and smiled.

I was struck by their obvious resemblance to Angus, and then by the even more noticeable differences. They were very good-looking, beautiful, even, but in a different way to Angus. They looked tamer somehow, more refined. More civilised.

I smiled back, slightly nervous and said, “I need to phone my mother.”

“Yes,” said one, and they turned instead to Mark who rolled his eyes, and said, “You were right, she was in his bedroom.” I felt my face blushing furiously as I looked in vain for a phone.

Mark grinned at me. “Through there,” he said smugly, indicating a doorway that led out into a small hallway. I escaped from the room and spent five minutes talking to Mum, and reassuring her that I was unhurt. Just shaken up. And, no, I definitely did not want the police involved any more. Satisfied at last, she told me that she was off to work for a few hours now, and she would see me later that evening when I got home. I hung up, immensely pleased that she was taking this so well. My mother was a strange combination of bewildered nervousness over a titanium core. We’d all underestimated her.

Angus

I’d been dreaming about twisting heads off and then I was suddenly awake and Rebecca was leaning over me. I couldn’t resist, and when she stretched her warm body out next to me, it was rapture and agony for me. Then her brother interrupted us again. Next thing she was standing by my old wardrobe in Fergus’ t-shirt and boxer shorts looking for something to wear, heartbreakingly lovely. I would never see boxer shorts in quite the same way again.

I closed my eyes as my body remembered the feel of her after she left. Hmmm. I wrenched my thoughts away from her, and stood up to get dressed. My leg was completely healed and painless, the skin smooth and unscarred where the bullet had torn through it last night. I dressed quickly, brushed my teeth, and went downstairs to join the others at the kitchen table just as Rebecca was saying goodbye to her mother on the phone.

“Coffee?” Mark grinned at me.

“Please.”

“I’d love some,” Rebecca said as she came back into the kitchen, her expression relieved and happy. “Mum’s OK.”

“Yeah, she’s a tough old bird. Who knew?” Mark interjected as he handed out five cups of steaming coffee. We all sat and sipped our coffee in silence, until Marcus spoke.

“Right. We need to examine the evidence now, so that we can try to understand what happened last night, and why it happened. To do this we will need to correlate all our data. I suggest we begin with Rebecca.”

“He always talks like that,” smirked Fergus. Rebecca nodded, hiding a smile behind a curtain of silvery blonde hair.

“I guess that means I should tell you what happened to me yesterday.”

“Yes,” said Marcus expectantly.

“OK.” She paused for a few seconds, then started again. “Yesterday morning I was abducted by three guys in a white van. They tied me up and put a pillowcase over my head, and then they left me alone for a while.”

I gritted my teeth. Listening to this was going to be harder than I had thought.

“Then the freaky one, whose name was Oscar, started speaking to someone called Jack on a mobile phone, saying he had a present for him. I got the impression that the present was me. He said something about a breeding female, and that he knew I was one of them because he’d seen a video of me wanting to lick blood off my hands that some idiot had posted on Youtube.” She grimaced. “He took the pillowcase off my head and took a photo of me with the mobile, and I think he sent it to this Jack person.”

“They drove for hours, and then they stopped at this place that looked like an institution of some sort. One of the other men picked me up and carried me to a kind of dungeon under an old stone barn. I peed all over him.” She smiled at the memory, completely unrepentant. Mark giggled, and said, “Cool!”

“The two normal looking guys locked me in a cell, then untied me and stood guard over me. They made all these suggestive comments about what Jack was going to do when he got there. I wanted to kill them.”

“Then I threw a flask of tea at one of them and Angus was suddenly there. He shot them.” She smiled grimly. “Angus found the key, unlocked the door and let me out. Then the man with the gruff voice shot him through the leg. I could see it was broken by the way it bent when he fell. I was mad at the man who shot him, and I knew I would have to get Angus out of there. So I bit him, and drank his blood, and carried Angus back to the car. I even kicked down a wall.”

“Awesome!” Mark breathed. “So that’s why you were covered in blood.”

“Yes,” Rebecca smiled gratefully at him, clearly relieved at his reaction.

“Interesting,” said Marcus. “Youtube, you say. We wondered how they’d found you.” He turned to Mark. “Your turn, please.”

Mark looked puzzled. “I didn’t do much of anything really. I saw Rebecca being abducted, called the police, and then thought of Angus. I showed him where they’d taken her and then refused to get out of the car, which is why I’m here now.” He said it as if he was having the time of his life. I was starting to have my suspicions about Mark; he was fourteen and apparently fearless; he probably was having the time of his life.

Fergus glanced at me before he spoke to Mark. “I think you did a lot more than you will ever realise, young man.” I nodded my agreement.

Marcus was impatient. “Now you, Angus.”

“Mark told you how he came to get me. Well, when I smelled that vampire, I suspected that we had an old style coven somewhere. He smelled wrong,” I explained, “like he drank only blood and his body was slowly crumbling because of it. We started driving north, because vampires like the cold, and it’s more isolated up here. I contacted Fergus and gave him a few things to search for, and he eventually found them. He also got me a couple of handguns and an exceptional sniper rifle.” I smiled my thanks at Fergus.

“I found the place, and managed to kill ten of the eleven vampires living there. One got away.” I left out the gory details. “I found where they were keeping Rebecca, and shot those two men. I should have delivered a head shot to each of them, but I was distracted.” I smiled as I said it. Rebecca blushed.

“She splinted my leg, and carried me about two and a half miles, running most of the way.”

“Wow,” said Mark.

“Wow,” I agreed. “She drove me home. My car still works, too.” Mark gave a shout of laughter at that, and Rebecca scowled at me. God, she was beautiful.

“Excellent,” said Marcus. “Well, when we got there, the place looked like a bomb had hit it. I assume one had?” he looked at me.

“I had a few grenades in a drawer at home. I rigged up the back door to explode when opened.”

“Yes, and so it did. Fergus and I tidied up as best we could, wiping away prints and tracks and suchlike, and placing the heads near the bodies in assorted rooms of the house. I took some samples,” he smiled, clearly pleased about that. “Then we burned the place down, barn and bungalow too. And we found the van and abandoned it along some country road, as per our story…”

“We found some papers in the bungalow, innocuous looking receipts and a few handwritten notes. I’m going to have to take them back to Russia to analyse them.” Fergus sounded a bit worried about something.

“And my samples are degrading as we speak, too. We have to leave in about an hour to go back.” Marcus had a mildly fanatical light in his eyes again. “But first we need to sort out a few matters.” He took a deep breath before he continued, and he looked at Angus through narrowed eyes.

“Rebecca turns eighteen in eleven days, correct?” She nodded. “You two,” indicating Rebecca and me, “are going to get married then. Fergus will organise the whole thing, of course.” Fergus nodded his agreement. “Something small and tasteful, I think. Then you will live in Angus’ new house until you have finished school.” He looked at Rebecca, who was by now staring open-mouthed at him. “I assume you do wish to finish? You are almost done with your A levels, and you appear to have done quite well so far.”

“Er, yes, I was planning on finishing,” she said uncertainly, and cast a dazed look at me.

“They do this to me all the time,” I said wryly.

“Hush Angus, you know that it needs to be done. This Jack is likely to try and abduct her again. Vampires are likely to be old-fashioned, and he may think twice if she is married. And it will also give you the full authority to protect her.” He smiled grimly. “When she is finished school, I would suggest that you relocate to make it more difficult to find her. We believe that your entire family should be relocated too, to protect them. Where you decide to move is up to you, of course. Money is not an issue.”

Mark was grinning widely now. The time of his life. I chuckled softly.

Marcus turned to him now. “When you get home there will be a package waiting for you. It will contain a laptop and an iphone. We will text you our contact details. We want to know if anything happens to these two.” Mark nodded eagerly.

“One last thing before we go.” Marcus stood up and went out for a few seconds, returning with a stainless steel lockable briefcase.