Kronos Read online

  I feel his fingers pulling down my eyelids.

  Wait! I think. I’m not dead yet! My name is …

  Four

  Brothers in Blood – The Memoirs of Professor Herbert Grost: Volume One (Unpublished)

  HAVING DISPATCHED THE voracious Madame Loubrette, Kronos and I made our return to the road. Though perhaps that infers a more equal arrangement for the driving than has ever existed between us. If so, let me be quite clear: the division of labour is a very simple one – he kills things, I do everything else.

  Some have assumed that I would resent the one-sided nature of our arrangement. Not at all. Kronos really is exceptionally good at killing things, much better than I am. (I’m squeamish and have the lousy habit of pulling back at the last minute, which only drags out the messy business and puts me in danger.) Killing things is incredibly tiring work, though, and he needs to conserve his strength for the task. Equally, I am much more practical in the day-to-day minutiae of life on the road. I can cook, I can sew, I’m good at fixing things. If our roles were reversed, gentle reader, you could be sure that not only would I be delivered unto the arms of a despairing God within moments of facing a vampire, but also the horses would not be well-fed and the dinner would be late and very disgusting. We have our individual strengths in life: only an idiot goes against them.

  So I sit up front, encouraging the horses to greater speed along the ill-tended roads of our country while Kronos rests in the back, dreaming butcher’s-shop dreams.

  I have seen a good deal of our country from the seat of that coach, and have the bruises on my rump to prove it. The major drawback of our lifestyle is the way we never seem to stay in one place. All those nights wrapped in a blanket on the earth, with the stars for a ceiling. Ah … but though it sounds romantic, it is not! It is damned uncomfortable and I would gladly never see a star again if it meant that I might be guaranteed a soft mattress every night. Despite the shape of my back I am not – as I frequently tell Kronos – a tortoise. I do not carry my home with me.

  Actually, most people assume that Kronos and I are completely unburdened with such a comfort as a house. They can’t imagine us in such conventional terms, I suppose. This is not true: we share a perfectly nice place just outside Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s an old stables and lovely. In fact, it’s quite the nicest house I have ever made an effort not to spend any time in. Between ‘missions’ – should there ever be such a luxury as ‘between’ – it stands there for our use. Sometimes we have spent as long as three days in it.

  This – hooray for small mercies – is to be one of those occasions when we will visit. Madame Loubrette’s academy was only a few hours’ drive away so it would have been foolish not to aim the coach there. I made for the house’s beds and roof with the sort of enthusiasm normally only felt by a mule for a good lie-down.

  It was evening when I hit the banks of the Avon and urged the horses along that last, familiar stretch. By the time I pulled up the driveway and into the small courtyard the moon was up and the shadows were thick.

  I banged on the side of the carriage after loading my flintlock pistol and yanking the heavy silver cross I wear around my neck from beneath my shirt so that it glinted in the fading light. The problem with a vampire hunter owning a house, of course, is that it means the bastards have somewhere to lie in wait for you should they be lucky enough to get your address. When I bemoan the irregularity of our time there it is this point that Kronos always labours.

  ‘I put myself in danger every day,’ he says in that slightly stilted tone of his. ‘But why put your head in a noose for the hell of it?’ This is usually followed by my having to build a campfire and hunt for a rabbit to cook on it. But not tonight.

  ‘Keep your wits about you!’ I shouted. ‘We’re home.’

  The carriage door creaked open. ‘My wits are always sharp,’ Kronos replied. I caught a whiff of hashish smoke on the breeze and sighed. He insisted that the drug didn’t slow his reaction speed but I knew the untruth of this. He found it helped him to relax but of course it took the edge off his abilities. And occasionally it dulled his reason. Vampire hunters should not giggle at everything, that has always been my feeling on the matter. I cocked my pistol.

  ‘Perhaps I had better go first,’ I suggested.

  Just as I was stepping down there came a noise from the darkness and I was aware of Kronos leaping over me and plunging into the shadows to draw out whatever unwelcome visitor lurked on our porch.

  ‘Oi!’ came a young man’s voice. ‘You trying to kill me?’

  Of course he is, I thought. In fact, you can tell he’s not on form by the fact that you’ve had time to ask!

  The young man was pushed out into what was left of the daylight. He slipped in the dusty earth and fell to his knees. ‘Hey,’ he said holding up his gloved hands. (He’s a horseman, I noted as I took in his boots and breeches.) ‘I just fell asleep – didn’t mean nothing by it! I saw there was nobody home and thought I’d rest awhile. No crime, is it?’

  ‘It is if you do it in another man’s home,’ said Kronos, pressing the tip of his sword against the young man’s throat. ‘Do you see an inn sign hanging anywhere?’

  ‘No, no … look, in my job you take your rest where you find it. Your porch was shaded and it beat lying in a ditch for another night.’

  ‘What is this job of yours,’ I asked, ‘which has you so well paid that you spend the night in ditches?’

  ‘I’m a messenger, sir,’ he said, ‘since the war … and, well, you take your night’s sleep where you can find it.’

  You and me both, I thought. ‘You have a message for us?’ I asked.

  ‘If either of you is Kronos.’

  ‘That would be the man about to open you a new air hole.’

  ‘If you are a messenger,’ said Kronos, ‘where is your horse?’

  The young man looked uncomfortable for a moment, then decided that telling the truth could hardly put him in a worse position. ‘In the stables,’ he admitted. Kronos gave a chuckle and, with a whistle of steel cutting through the air, he replaced his sword in its scabbard. ‘Hand over your message,’ he said, ‘and then you had better join your mount. I am not such an unreasonable man as to deprive a man of shelter, even one who has the cheek to help himself to it rather than ask politely.’

  The relief on the young man’s face was palpable, even in the dimming light. He was half giggling with nerves as he pulled a letter from within his jerkin and handed it over. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘You’re too kind.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kronos replied, with a dreamy smile. ‘I am.’

  He unfolded the letter while I unhitched the horses. The messenger – knowing when he was onto a good thing and determined to keep it that way – helped me. We led them into the stables and tethered them along side their new visitor. Even horses deserve to be sociable once in a while, I decided. I wonder if they share stories of the open road and the particularly fat people they have been forced to carry?

  The coach was pulled inside too and I made sure it was locked. I was only too happy to have a guest for the night but I knew better than to be careless of security: if the messenger saw what was inside we’d find it hard to explain. That done, I told the young man he’d be welcome to food once I’d got around to cooking it and then I left him to his own devices.

  Outside, Kronos had lit a couple of lanterns on the porch and was sitting there, smoking and staring up at the brightening stars.

  ‘Tomorrow we ride south,’ he announced, holding the letter out to me.

  I sighed. Yes, of course we would …

  Five

  A Letter from Dr Ambril Marcus

  KRONOS,

  I hope this finds you well. In truth, I hope it finds you at all. If only half of what I have heard over the last few years is true then you are a busy man. And I thought our retirement from the army was to have brought us easier lives! Ah, but soldiers never really retire, do they? We just wait for our next battle.

  I’ve done my waiting here in a small village called Padbury, just north of Letchworth. I took what I learned on the battlefields and became a local doctor. Such a position keeps a roof over my head even if most of my days are filled with complaints of ancient curses and of being placed under the evil eye of local witches. You know what people are like in the country – a touch of the vapours and they look to the devil.

  Perhaps I should not joke, for certainly recent events make me wonder if there are infernal powers at work here. You will remember I prided myself – to the point of obstinacy! – on my rationalist beliefs. Many were those, driven mad by the blood they saw spilled in Ireland, who became delusional. You only have to listen to the stories of battlefield spirits, of the unearthly ring of steel on steel that lingers on those bloodied squares of earth, to realise that you’re listening to a man driven mad by what he has seen. And yet … Kronos, I know you believe in creatures beyond the normal ken of man. I have heard tales of your mission across the countryside. (And beyond? I heard tell that you had spent several months in Wallachia.) I will confess I have been uncertain whether I could believe these reports. Not that I have anything less than the utmost trust in you – I’m sure you won’t think that – but your adventures sound so fantastical.

  Perhaps I’d better give you some background.

  Padbury is a tiny place, no more than a collection of dwellings that cling to the skirts of Padbury Forest, an ancient spread of woodland that has provided for the locals for centuries. Most of them earn their living from the land, though we are also home to the Durward family seat. You will remember Hagen, of course?

  The closest family to me are the Sorrells who live just a short walk from my home. I have tended to their health many times – most especially through the harsh w
inter of two years ago when George lost his wife and the children found themselves without a mother. They are good, God-fearing people and their youngest, Ann, is not a girl inclined to over-imagination, a factor which is vitally important in the story I have to relate.

  I was returning from a visit to a nearby patient, an obese old farmer who seems entirely filled with beer, I swear he makes sloshing noise when he walks. Cutting through the woods, I came across Ann standing in the middle of a small clearing. Her face was blank, her eyes unblinking. I thought she was suffering from sleeping sickness: I have seen such things before, people who wander while their brain is not yet engaged. Despite repeated calls I couldn’t break through her dreamlike state. Eventually, following her gaze, I saw she was staring at a young friend of hers, Petra Wilkins from the other side of the forest. A beautiful girl, long blonde hair and the prettiest laugh you ever heard. Often I have seen the two together and wondered about the hearts they would go on to break.

  (Why is Marcus going on about this stupid girl, you are no doubt thinking … Patience, Kronos, the point will soon become clear.)

  As I drew closer, I realised I had been mistaken. Though the dress had been familiar, a pretty thing of cornflower blue, this was not Petra. Could not be. The woman in front of me was ancient, her skin so thin and fragile that it could have been spun by a spider. The hair that I had believed, when it caught the light, to be light blonde, was in fact white and so thin and brittle that it looked like it might have taken off in the wind, like the seeds of a dandelion. Her eyes were the right colour but the light blue – so like her dress – was hidden beneath thick cataracts. She reached for me, as if in need of assistance, long fingers coated with brown spots stretching towards me, the skin of her forearms hanging off the bone, swinging in the air, empty of muscle or strength.

  You know, Kronos, that I have seen much in my life that has made me sick to my very soul. Yet I have always stood my ground. Looking at that woman, so old as to surely be beyond natural death, an animated corpse, not a thing who should be breathing … I felt a real sense of terror. Just for a moment I was horrified that her fingers – those chipped, yellow, nails – should touch me. It shames me to admit this, but I must convey the feeling. Unless I tell you the worst I can ask nothing of you. And you must come here, Kronos, you must. But when you do I shall at least know I have prepared you as well as I can.

  I stood back, damn me for it, moving away from her touch. She spoke, and when the sound came it was with the fragile croak of last words, that rattle in the chest that can bring nothing but death.

  ‘Doctor?’ she asked, and it was as if the word itself was enough to break her. A trickle of blood ran from her mouth as it gaped open, the joint simply cracking and allowing her lower teeth to drop into the translucent cup of her jaw.

  I made some form of exclamation – I cannot remember what it was. It would seem to have been loud enough to have shaken Ann from her dream (for I do not think she could have seen the terrible degeneration of the creature in front of me). She began screaming, a long, seemingly endless note that I could imagine would carry throughout the forest. The aged creature before me lost all cohesion, tumbling forward onto the soft earth with a delicate noise like the settling of cool ashes the morning after a grand fire. It was clear there was nothing I could do for her so I transferred my attention to Ann, gathering her up until she was calm enough to climb up on my horse.

  I rode with her back to her home, leaving her in the care of her elder brother, Barton (an unfortunate fellow, half-lame but a devoted brother to Ann).

  On returning to the clearing I found the aged unfortunate was in a bad way indeed. The body that lay in front of me had all the appearance of a cadaver that had been left in the open for some weeks. It was becoming part of the very ground beneath it, distinction between flesh and soil lost almost as I watched.

  What manner of monster can wreak such damage? I only hope that you know of it, my friend. Moreover, I hope you know how it can be stopped.

  Six

  Barton Sorrell Is Always Falling

  THEY JOKE ABOUT it down the tavern, they say ‘It’s not the falling that did for you, Barton, it was the landing.’ I know what they mean and I suppose they’re right. But at night, when the sleep don’t come and the pain in my hip is like twenty hot coals, it’s the falling I remember. It was when falling that I lost everything. It was when falling that I was out of control. It was when falling that I was weak.

  All it took were a moment, the low sun in my eyes and a damn stupid thought that I could see the whole world from up there. Stupid. Can’t see nothing from up there, nothing but my tiny life. Loose piece of roofing, foot skating like on the iced river in winter. Then the falling, the moment when it don’t matter what you do, flapping your arms against the will of God. God don’t care, I know that well enough now, He’ll break you soon as look at you.

  Now I need these stupid sticks to get me anywhere and if I were a horse then Pa would have shown sense and shot me in the back of the head.

  Falling. And losing everything I had on the way down.

  Dr Marcus was kind but I didn’t want no kindness. I wanted my legs or I wanted nothing. I got nothing.

  It’s proven today, when Marcus brings my precious Ann to me. Crying she is, like she’s heard the worst news in all the world.

  ‘Look after her,’ says Marcus, like I need to be told. I’ve been looking after Ann her whole life. ‘Something happened in the forest, I don’t know what.’

  With that he rides back they way he came, leaving me with my sobbing sister and no idea how to make the tears go away.

  ‘What is it, my love?’ I ask her. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Petra,’ she says, and I have to listen hard to understand the name through the tears. ‘She came and took her.’

  Petra was it? That stuck-up little sow. I’d like to say I was sorry but it would be a lie and a skill for lying was something else I lost when I fell off that roof. I’ve never understood what Ann sees in the girl and if she’d finally shown her true face, then – however sad Ann felt at the time – at least the lesson was learned. Petra was vain, stuck-up, treated people like they were lucky just to be in her company. Still, nobody seemed to see it. Wrapped everyone round her little finger she did. Including Ann.

  ‘Who did she take?’ I ask.

  ‘Petra,’ she says again and I give up on making sense of it. I want to lead her into the house, pick her up in my arms like I used to do when she was smaller. Can’t do it now, not with these damned sticks. As it is, we lead each other. Maybe that’s not so bad. Maybe it helps take her mind off Petra, worrying about me for a while.

  Inside, Ann sits down at the table and I lean against the fireplace, sticks rested up against the grate.

  ‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘Tell me everything that happened and I’ll do my best to make it go away.’

  ‘We were just sitting in the shade,’ Ann says. ‘I was brushing Petra’s hair for her when I thought how beautiful she’d look with a few flowers woven in so I left her to go and fetch some.’

  Beautiful? Aye, Petra was that. On the outside, at least. We all liked looking at her. She knew that much, of course, and played on it for all it was worth. Petra could get any man to do her bidding, any man.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t dote on her so,’ I say, ‘acting like you’re her handmaiden or something. You’re twice the woman she is.’

  Ann just looks at me, confused, and carries on talking.

  ‘I went towards the river, thinking as how I’d seen some beautiful Lady’s Mantle there. I didn’t go far, just enough so as I couldn’t see Petra any more. And I stood there, staring at the flowers, hearing the sound of the water and I knew …’ Ann begins to cry again, the memory of it enough to set her back off.

  ‘It’s all right, my girl,’ I say. ‘You let it out, let it all out.’

  ‘There was something there,’ she says, her voice angry, fighting her own tears, ‘I could feel it! Walking out there, its feet turning the ground to ash as it walked, just like Father Volk said during his sermon last week. The embodiment of evil! The devil himself!’