The Cross. Scott G. Mariani

at the blood ebbing out of the old man’s thumb.

      Instantly, a desperate battle was raging inside him.

      No. It was too repellent. It was loathsome. Sickening.

      And yet it wasn’t. He could smell the blood. Taste it. Feel it flowing down his throat, warm and thick and filled with goodness. The desire, deeper and more feverishly intense than anything he’d ever felt in his life, threatened to blow away all resistance.

      As suddenly as it had appeared, the startling red blood was hidden from Joel’s view as the old man plucked a grimy handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around his thumb. Joel was shaken from his trance. He picked up his fork with a trembling hand. His breath came in gasps.

      The old man hadn’t taken his eyes off him the whole time. There was a sparkle in them that Joel couldn’t figure.

      Cosmina called from the stairway, ‘I find clothes. You come get changed now.’ Joel was grateful to make his escape from the kitchen. He climbed the creaky wooden stairs to where Cosmina was waiting for him on the landing, leaning against a massive hard-carved banister post with depictions of the moon and stars. ‘My son’s room,’ she said, and motioned through an open doorway.

      Joel looked inside the tiny, windowless bedroom. In one corner was a basic sink with a towel on a rail and a shaving mirror. Cosmina showed him the clothes she’d laid out on the narrow bed: a denim work shirt, a thick woollen pullover, fleece-lined jeans and a pair of socks fit for hardcore mountaineering. Joel thanked her again, and tried once more to offer her some money. She shook her head vehemently, then left him alone to change. She shut the door behind her, and he heard her footsteps descending the stairs.

      Joel quickly peeled off his dirty rags. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw that all trace of his wounds had completely disappeared. Was it his imagination, or were the muscles of his torso harder and more defined than he’d ever seen them? He splashed water over his chest, shoulders and arms and watched the filth and blood wash away down the sink.

      Towelling himself dry, he could hear the old man downstairs jabbering agitatedly to his daughter. That crazy old bastard didn’t like strangers in the house. Fine. He’d made his point. Joel wasn’t planning on sticking around. Maybe someone in the village bar would know of a cheap car for sale, maybe an old 4x4 if the roads were bad. Then he’d be out of this place and nothing was ever going to bring him back.

      He pulled on the socks and the jeans. The work shirt was a size too large, but better roomy than too tight. Joel was halfway through buttoning it up when footsteps came thundering up the stairs. The boards creaked outside the door.

      Joel craned his head to listen, and heard whispers and fumbling. The lock clicked, and then the footsteps went thumping back down the stairs in a hurry. The sound of the front door being ripped open. Noises and voices from out in the street.

      Joel rattled the door handle. The door didn’t budge. Now he could hear shouting outside, more voices joining in. The cry of a woman.

      Seconds later, the first clang of the church bell resonated through the still night air. Then again and again, ringing wildly, as if three strong men were hauling on its rope for all they were worth. Nearer to the house, the flat report of a shotgun boomed out once, twice, through the night air. The clamour of voices was getting steadily louder, and steadily closer. It sounded like half the village had suddenly emerged from their homes. They sounded scared, and they sounded angry as hell.

      And now Joel could hear what the villagers were chanting amid the yells and panic.

       Moroi! Moroi! Vârcolac!

      He knew those words. They’d been written in the forgotten and decayed diary of a man who’d sacrificed his whole world, endured the ridicule and rejection of his own family, to fight the thing he’d hated most. Crazy Nick Solomon. Joel’s grandfather.

      The words were from the darkest corners of ancient Romanian folklore. They meant Vampire.

       Chapter Six

      It was way past time to get the hell out of there. Joel yanked on his boots and laced them up feverishly. He hammered at the door. It wouldn’t give. He drew back his fist and punched at it. To his amazement his fist tore right through the solid wood. He felt no pain. Withdrawing his fist, he peered through the shattered hole and saw the stout length of rope that connected the handle on the outside to the carved banister post. He’d let them trap him in here as easily as he’d given himself away to that tricksy old man.

       Bastard humans.

      The thought had materialised consciously in his mind before he was able to catch it and drag it back. He wanted to vomit. But there was no time for self-pity. He lashed out again and felt the door buckle. Dust and splinters flew. Two more hits, and with alarming strength he’d torn the whole thing out of its frame and was trampling over it and racing down the stairs four at a time. He crashed through the front door.

      Scores of villagers had gathered in the snowy street outside the house. More were running down the street from their homes. Young men and boys, old women, everyone who could be mustered was out in force as the alarm spread, many of them clutching whatever improvised weapons they could grab. Among the axes and shovels and scythes Joel saw a chainsaw and a crossbow, and at least a couple of double-barrelled shotguns.

      Heading up the crowd was Cosmina’s old father, dementedly waving his walking stick in one hand and the big Bowie knife in the other, whipping them all up to a frenzy with his screaming chant of ‘Moroi! Vârcolac!’ Cosmina stood behind him, fearfully clutching his wiry arm. Beside her towered a bulky, heavily-bearded man with long black hair and hands like hams clenched around the hilt of some kind of ancient gypsy scimitar that he was swinging above his head as if about to decapitate a bullock with it.

      Few things could spell a quicker end for a vampire than the sweep of a well-honed blade lifting their head from their shoulders. Joel knew that, all too well. He’d once been forced to do the very same thing to his own grandfather.

      He tried to imagine what it would feel like, watching the blade come whooshing towards his throat. The parting of the flesh as the steel sliced cleanly through. Would it hurt? Would unconsciousness come instantly? Or would his senses remain alert as his severed head hit the ground and bounced and rolled out of the path of his falling body? For all that he craved for his torment to be over, the urge to run was like nothing he’d ever experienced before.

      ‘There he is!’ The shout needed no translation. Angry cries and gasps of horror. Fingers pointing. Faces turning to stare at him, eyes filled with fury and teeth bared. The wild old man waving the knife at him.

      ‘Why do you hate me?’ Joel wanted to yell at them. ‘I’ve done you no harm. Just let me go. I won’t come back here.’

      For a few frozen moments, he hovered there on the doorstep of the house as the crowd, more than a hundred strong now, hung back. Then, at the same instant that the old man let out a roar of fury and led the charge towards the house, Joel bolted. With blinding speed he tore across the tiny front yard, vaulting the low wall into the neighbouring property.

      The screaming mob came rushing after him. Joel sprinted harder, unleashing power from his heart and lungs and muscles that he’d never dreamed possible. A crossbow bolt cut whistling through the air towards him; he heard it coming and dipped his head, and it embedded itself with a juddering thwack in the wall of the house inches away.

      Both barrels of a shotgun boomed out in rapid succession and a window smashed. Joel skidded around the side of the building, crashed through bushes, vaulted clear over the derelict body of an old car and leaped a six-foot fence as if it were nothing.

      Suddenly, he was alone. He stopped, assessing his surroundings. He wasn’t even out of breath. A narrow lane ran up between more houses, curving away out of sight between dilapidated wooden fences. He could hear the shouts of the mob approaching. ‘Get him! Get the Moroi! Cut off his