The Cross. Scott G. Mariani

need you today,’ his da called from the kitchen doorway.

      ‘I’m sick,’ Dec said. Out of habit, he’d gone to grab the key to his old VW Golf from the stand in the hall when he remembered it was still in the repair shop after he’d crashed the damn thing getting away from Crowmoor Hall that night. He grabbed the key to his ma’s Renault instead, knowing she wasn’t working today. ‘Got to go out,’ he yelled as he ran to the front door.

      ‘Thought you were sick, you wee skitter,’ his da growled after him. But Dec was already out of the door and running to the yellow Clio. Before the reporters could collar him, he’d skidded down the drive, pulled a screeching K-turn in the street and gone speeding out of Lavender Close.

      Roaring past the Hawthornes’ house, Dec saw that the curtains were pulled tightly shut and felt a stab of desperate pity for Kate’s folks – even if her mother hated him and looked down on his family. He’d have liked to have been able to tell the Hawthornes the truth, to offer them the sense of closure of at least knowing that their daughter was safe and in a better place now.

      ‘Sure, Dec, that’ll work,’ he muttered to himself as he drove. He could just imagine the scene: the distraught parents looking up red-eyed as the grungy teenager from next door strode into their sitting room and announced: ‘It’s okay, Mrs Hawthorne. Kate was in trouble there for a while, because a vampire called Gabriel Stone made her into his wee playmate. But then a pal of mine, Joel, set her free with this strange-looking cross that has the power to destroy vampires on sight. She’ll be all right now, so she will.’

      He sighed. Next thing, it would be the men in white coats coming to catch him with a big butterfly net and drag him off to a padded cell.

      Dec headed aimlessly towards the centre of Wallingford. All around him were people going to their work, ferrying their kids to school, doing their shopping. Normal folks going about their normal lives, unaware of the things that were out there, lurking in the shadows by day, stalking their victims by night. Who would be next in line? It could be anybody, anywhere. Dec shuddered. It could be his own family – his ma, his da, Cormac. It could be anyone he knew. And these things would never stop.

      ‘What are you gonna do?’ He slammed the steering wheel with his fist. ‘Gotta do something.’ And then it came to him in a flash. He was going to devote his life to destroying these monsters. He was going to make it his mission.

      Dec Maddon, vampire hunter. Mallet in hand, silver stakes and crosses glinting against the lining of his long black leather coat. Walking into a party, seeing the heads turning; being asked ‘What line of work are you in, Dec?’; their faces as he coolly handed out his business card. He’d have an office, too. Like the ones in the old detective movies, with his name painted on the window. A busy phone on the desk. A wall safe filled with the tools of his trade.

      ‘You big friggin’ eejit. Dream on.’ What was he going to do, turn up at the local college of further education to find out about NVQs in Vampire Hunting?

      But he had to do something. Joel had, by going off to Romania armed with the cross to hunt down Gabriel Stone. Now it was Dec’s turn to do what he could.

      Five minutes later, Dec was pulling up in the car park outside Wallingford’s public library and hammering up the stairs to the computer room. The rows of PCs looked antiquated and worn-out, but anything was preferable to using the laptop he shared with his elder brother. Cormac was uncomfortably expert at checking up on anything and everything Dec had been looking at online – and Dec could do without his sibling’s considered opinions right now.

      A couple of pretty girls looked up as Dec walked in. He brushed self-importantly past them. Dec Maddon, Vampire Hunter. There was a terminal free in the back row, and he was thankful that it was right at the far end of the room where nobody could peer over his shoulder. He perched on the edge of the plastic seat, nudged the mouse on its pad and the screen flashed into life. Dec glanced left and right, then self-consciously keyed in the words ‘proffesional vampire hunter’.

      Did you mean: professional vampire hunter? the computer prompted him.

      ‘All right, all right. Smart arse.’ Dec clicked impatiently. The machine’s outdated innards churned for a second, and then spat up a lot more stuff than Dec had been expecting. Scrolling through, he quickly realised that, unless he was going to check out a bunch of pulp novels or the old Hammer movie Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter as reliable sources of erudite information on the pursuit of his future career, there was little of use to him here.

      ‘Shite,’ he said, and moved on.

      ‘A vampire hunter or slayer is a character in folklore and works of fiction, such as books, films and video games, who specialises in finding and destroying vampire and sometimes other supernatural creatures . . .’ Wikipedia informed him.

      ‘This isn’t a frigging video game. This is real, for fuck’s sake,’ Dec said a little too loudly. The two girls across the room looked up from their computer terminals and he heard a giggle. He flushed and clicked again. Next up came ‘Semi-professional or professional vampire hunters played some part in the vampire beliefs of the Balkans, especially in Bulgarian, Serbian and Romany folk beliefs . . .’

      ‘Pish,’ Dec said. Ancient folklore was one thing, but didn’t anybody actually believe in this stuff any more?

      ‘Crap.’ Click, scroll.

      ‘More crap.’ Click.

      Then Dec stopped and stared at the screen. ‘Hmm,’ he said.

      THEY LURK AMONGST US.

      Dec’s eyes ran quickly across the couple of lines of text below the header: ‘Errol Knightly is a professional paranormal investigator, historical scholar and vampire hunter based in west Wales. His new book, They Lurk Amongst Us, has shot up the bestseller charts and is being hailed as . . .’

      Two thumbnail images were displayed alongside the header. One showed the glossy cover of Knightly’s chunky hardback. The other showed the author as a slightly beefy guy with ruddy cheeks and thick sandy hair down past his ears, somewhat younger than Dec’s da – maybe in his late thirties or early forties. He had a look of earnestness. A look that said ‘You can trust me’.

      ‘Hmm,’ Dec said again. He rolled the mouse over the pad, landed the cursor on the web URL, www.theylurkamongstus. com, and clicked to enter the site.

       Chapter Four

       Romania

      The mid-morning sun was bright over the mountains, gleaming down out of a pure blue sky across the fresh snows of the valleys. The only signs of movement on the landscape were the three skiers winding their way down the vast whiteness of the mountainside, slaloming through the pines, twisting to avoid jutting rocks. To those who were happily unaware of the half-buried local legends, the place seemed an unspoilt wilderness paradise. None of the three could have any idea that just a few miles off lay the deserted ruins of the ancient, accursed settlement that local people only whispered about. Only on very old maps did the name ‘Vâlcanul’ feature at all.

      The three skiers glided to a halt at the bottom of the valley. Chloe Dempsey wiped the powder snow from her goggles, brushed her windblown blond curls away from her face and grinned back over her shoulder at her friends Lindsey and Rebecca.

      ‘Had enough yet?’ Rebecca called out.

      ‘Not on your life,’ Chloe said. ‘I could go on all day.’

      Lindsey’s cheeks were flushed with cold and adrenalin. ‘See?’ she beamed. ‘Didn’t I tell you this place would be the best?’

      Chloe smiled. ‘You were right,’ she admitted. It had been Lindsey who’d come up with the idea of a break from their studies at the University of Bedfordshire, flying out to Romania to take advantage of the year’s unexpected early snows for three days of off-piste