The Cross

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Bal Mawr Manor

When Dec awoke it was to find himself staring upwards at the canopy of the four-poster bed. For a moment he couldn’t remember where he was — but as he struggled out from under the satin bedcover and dragged himself sleepily over to the window to peer at the incoming surf crashing on the rocks, it all came back to him like something out of an incredible dream and he punched a fist in the air.

He was learning how to be a vampire hunter! YES!

But it wasn’t going to be easy. Knightly hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he wanted to know everything. The two of them had sat up until long after midnight, writing up notes on everything Dec could tell him about his first-hand vampire experiences and poring over old books searching for anything that resembled Joel Solomon’s strange cross. By the time Knightly had eventually let him stagger off up to bed, Dec’s mind had been buzzing so intensely that he couldn’t sleep. Leafing through a bedside copy of They Lurk Amongst Us hadn’t helped, either. Dec had never been much of a reader, but Knightly’s accounts of his vampire-destroying exploits made his heart thump. It hadn’t been until sometime after three that Dec had finally dozed off into a fitful sleep that was filled with flickering shadows and sinister looming figures.

He hauled on his jeans, took a pee in the biggest bathroom he’d ever seen, and wandered downstairs. After losing his way three times he eventually made his way to the breakfast room, where he found Knightly looking comparatively bright-eyed and heartily polishing off the remains of a plate of fried eggs and sausages.

‘Ah, there you are. Sit down. Help yourself to coffee. Thought you’d never show up.’

‘I got lost,’ Dec said, pouring coffee into a fine china cup that he was terrified to touch in case it broke.

‘Easily done, in this big old pile,’ Knightly said through a mouthful of sausage. ‘After breakfast I’ll give you the tour.’

Which he duly did, proudly showing Dec through a seemingly endless procession of rooms and passageways. Bal Mawr was a veritable anti-vampire fortress. Everywhere Dec looked were hanging crucifixes, wreaths of garlic, bunches of hawthorn. On the outside of every door, a large iron cross had been securely screwed to the wood, bearing the words ‘Vampyre, You May Not Enter Here’ in bold gothic engraving; and on its inside each door had two tall mirrors flanking it left and right, angled a few degrees inwards. ‘So you can tell immediately whether anyone coming into the room has a reflection,’ Knightly explained to a quizzical Dec. ‘Though it’s highly unlikely that any vampire could penetrate so far through my defences. Still, when dealing with the Undead one can’t be too careful. They’re a tricksy lot, you know, Declan.’

And on and on the manor went, room after room, filled with all manner of paraphernalia. Everywhere they went was the same pungent smell of sandalwood incense. In Knightly’s grand salon Dec paused to admire a display of silver-bladed daggers and carved wooden stakes whose points had been rubbed with essence of garlic. ‘These are really for show,’ Knightly admitted. ‘Most of the real weaponry is in the armoury room.’

‘What does the holy water do?’ Dec asked, pointing at the labelled bottles of the stuff on a sideboard.

‘It dissolves them,’ Knightly said. ‘They just fizz away.’

‘Kind of like those aspirins you put in water?’

‘Exactly like that.’

‘Now, this here’s the bollocks, so it is,’ Dec said, picking up a huge antique pistol from a table and weighing it admiringly in his hand.

‘A Napoleonic infantry trooper’s flintlock sidearm,’ Knightly told him. ‘I like to keep it handy, just in case. Careful, it’s loaded. It fires a.75 calibre ball made of pure silver.’

‘That’ll do the job,’ Dec said, aiming the heavy pistol towards the window at a distant ship tracking across the horizon, imagining that it was full of vampires.

‘Only if you hit them right in the heart,’ Knightly said, ‘which requires a very exact aim. And you only get one shot, Declan. That’s why a true vampire hunter needs to be proficient with the full range of weaponry at his disposal.’

Dec replaced the gun on the table and peered at a small gilt-framed photo that hung over the fireplace. It showed an attractive, pleasantly plump woman with sandy hair and laughter on her face, sitting on a beach. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

Knightly gazed at the picture, smiled sadly and hesitated before replying, ‘Someone I used to know.’

Dec thought it better not to pry. He pointed at a massive wooden sea chest whose lid was fastened by a padlock. ‘And what’s in there?’

‘Oh, that’s money,’ Knightly said, as nonchalantly as he could; but he was unable to hide the glitter that suddenly came into his eye, replacing the wistful look of a moment earlier. ‘Cash. Lots and lots of it. You might call it my fighting fund against the forces of evil.’

They walked on through the house. Beyond the gleaming double doors of the library, a winding passage led to a circular hallway dominated by a full-size armoured knight mounted dramatically astride a rearing war-horse. From the knight’s gauntlet hung a morning star mace — a length of stout iron chain attached to a heavy spiked ball that looked to Dec as if it could crush a car if swung hard enough. He ran his hand down the horse’s glass-fibre foreleg.

‘One of my more illustrious ancestors,’ Knightly said, waving up at the shining warrior. ‘You’re looking at Sir Eustace Knightly, killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. If you look, you can see the hole in the breastplate where the fatal arrow hit him. But aside from his military exploits, he was the very first of our family to wage a private war against the legions of the Undead.’

‘You mean he was a vampire hunter too?’

Knightly nodded. ‘Very much so. Of course, back then they had other names for them. The very first mention of the word “vampire” in our family records wasn’t until my great-grandfather’s day. Each generation of Knightlys has passed its knowledge down to the next.’

‘Like you will to your son one day,’ Dec said brightly.

Knightly looked away, and was momentarily quiet as he continued up the passage.

‘I was reading your book,’ Dec said, sensing that he’d accidentally touched some sensitive spot and should change the subject. ‘It’s awesome.’

‘Very kind of you to say so, Declan.’

‘So, like, how many does it come to altogether? I mean, how many have you kill— destroyed? I know you didn’t want to tell that daft interviewer, but you can tell me, so you can.’

Knightly shrugged modestly. ‘Oh, you know, it’s very hard to say—’

‘Go on, tell me,’ Dec urged him. ‘Fifty?’

‘Hmmm …’

‘A hundred? A thousand?’

‘Let’s have a nice cup of tea,’ Knightly said.