All of Them Vampires!

By Jean Shorney

Vampires walk among us!
At least, according to Anton Krieger they do. Krieger witnessed his first vampire kill when he was 19 in 1969. For 40 years he's tried warning the world of his existence. No one believes, but the vampires who think it's time he was silenced.
The story brings together a conglomeration of sinister creatures, from a 170 year old vampire residing in an abandoned house in Highgate, to an occultist and master of the dark arts.
Cassie, Krieger's beautiful daughter is herself seduced by the handsome John-Byron Sarony. While Sarony appears to be 26 years old, he existed since he became a vampire during World War II.
There are also rumbles of the Old One, an ancient and powerful evil, spoken of in hushed whispers. Can Anton warn London before chaos reigns and the Old One is summoned?

• Language: English
• Publisher: M-Y Books ltd
• Release date: Aug 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781909271746

Book preview

Shorney

Paris, 1793

The two finely dressed gentlemen who stepped out of the Palace of Versailles into the cold winters evening gave not the slightest impression that France was in the grip of a revolution. White particles of snow were already beginning to fall and Doctor Philippe Arnaud struggled into his warm woollen overcoat, pulling the collars to his bearded features. Past his sixtieth year, his body was crippled with rheumatism exacerbated by the making of many house calls occasioned by some of the hardest winters Paris had ever seen. This night his waning health seemed magnified by the uneasiness he entertained over his travelling companion. Although the journey to St. Cloud was not too far, the last person he would have requested to accompany him would have been the Marquis de Santigny. There was something about the man that both fascinated and repulsed the good doctor.

The Marquis certainly had the royal courtiers eating out of his hand at the Palace tonight. He was charm itself. Despite the interminable unrest in the country, the Queen, her ‘Madame Deficit’ title temporarily forgotten in de Santigny’s company, was transfixed. His dark smouldering eyes alone were enough to bring a flush to her young overly rouged cheeks. The King had spoken little at dinner, perhaps because the Queen and de Santigny had dominated most of the conversation. Arnaud considered de Santigny’s attire fashionable, though somewhat ill matched. A canary yellow waistcoat worn with red striped breeches, a white lawn shirt, over which he had thrown a black silken cape. With grudging steps Arnaud reached the waiting carriage before the other man. The driver, muffler pulled to his face, hat pulled low, occupied his box. In these uncertain days someone so irreverently masked could possibly be an anarchist; a revolutionary. The streets were empty, foggy with tiny flurries of snow that afforded the driver such concealment.

Arnaud, ever wary, had hidden a small pistol inside the pocket of his coat merely as a precaution. Dining with the aristocracy was enough to warrant the loss of one’s head. Dining with the King and Queen scarcely bore thinking about. The strutting peacock of a marquis in his ostentatious attire was conducive to sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb.

The discussion that evening had quite naturally turned to the revolution, which the Marquis was wont to view with his habitual derision but later Arnaud had overhead the Marquis warn the Queen that she should consider leaving Paris as soon as possible.

Please my dear doctor... De Santigny held the coach door open. It was obvious that the driver had no intention of alighting from his box. With a further brief glance at the latter Arnaud murmured his thanks and stepped into the carriage. De Santigny, closing the door quietly, sank his rather robust weight onto the adjacent seat.

An inclement night, Monsieur de Santigny observed, his full moon like features rosy from wine. In contrast Arnaud had drunk precious little. To be caught intoxicated by an anarchist would not be the wisest move that he could have made and if he had occasion to reach for his pistol then certainly intoxication would spoil his aim. Naturally he failed to confide in the bellicose marquis that he was thus armed. Anyway, de Santigny would undoubtedly have laughed at him. Nothing seemed to faze the man, except maybe the fear for Queen Marie Antoinette’s safety and that of the King of course.

Yes it is rather Arnaud agreed quietly. He was tired and had no real desire for conversation. Tonight was the second time that he had encountered de Santigny. The first had been a brief introduction at the home of Madame Lascelles in Chaville where her daughter had been taken ill. It seemed that de Santigny had somehow managed to cure her of her malady with some peculiar potion he had invented, rendering Doctor Arnaud’s presence somewhat superfluous. Perhaps it was that incident which caused the doctor to dislike him so much. It was not simply his arrogance, but the fact that he appeared to have a remedy for all ills. Tonight was no exception. The ladies including the Queen pressed de Santigny to tell them how, as he claimed, he could possibly turn simple metals into gold, not that the supercilious man required much persuasion. Arnaud had only half listened, but he was compelled to admit the man certainly fascinated him. Not only that. There was something else surrounding the Marquis de Santigny and his stories. His talk of something he called ‘time travel’ and how he had been at Cana when Jesus turned water into wine; how he had wept disconsolately when Joan of Arc was burned at Rouen. The drink and the talk had obviously gone to all their heads.

De Santigny urged the driver to depart. Lulled by the steady rhythmic clip clop of the horse and carriage Arnaud broached the subject of time travel.

The Queen and her courtiers might believe all the nonsense you spouted tonight Monsieur but I am a sober man and heed nothing of your fairy tales.

But they are not fairy tales Monsieur I can assure you of that.

Don’t tell me you have knowledge of this ‘time travel’. I am not a gullible man. You would be hard pressed to convince me. If you can ‘time travel’ as you call it then you must have seen the future.

A smile dancing about his thin lips, de Santigny leaned his be-wigged head against the soft rest of the coach. Arnaud reasoned he would cheer with the revolutionaries if this peacock of an aristocrat should fall foul of Madame Guillotine’s vicious blade.

Oh no Monsieur! The hint of excitement in de Santigny’s voice was not lost on the doctor while he entertained the idea that there was something imperceptibly cold and dangerous surrounding this man.

Actually I do not have knowledge of the future. I only come from the past. I’m afraid I allowed you all to believe I’m a time traveller. It was all part of the act you see. His excitement mounted.

Arnaud gritted his teeth. The night seemed to have taken on a strange and unearthly silence, afforded by the softest flurries of snow and the almost unbelievable slowness of the horses as they travelled through the streets. Arnaud heard a clock in the distance chime the midnight hour and he caught himself shivering suddenly. The half moonlight threw everything inside the coach into relief, and he became aware that the Marquis’ deeply seated brown eyes had grown intrinsically black and now completely filled the eye socket so that precious little of the white of the eye remained visible. Although taken aback, he believed his overwrought imagination and tiredness to be playing tricks. Doctor Arnaud had distrusted this man from the outset and now he trusted him even less, while the reassurance of the small pistol inside his coat was the only thing that prompted him to retort acidly I knew you were all bluster Monsieur le Marquis. You may have fooled the others but not me. I distrusted you the first time I encountered your presence at Madame Lascelles. So what are you, some kind of charlatan?

It depends on how you look at things my dear doctor. I am an alchemist; that much is true. Yes I was at Rouen with Joan of Arc. And I journeyed to London in 1642 to obtain an audience with the King to advise him about inciting civil war with parliament. Of course, he refused to heed my advice.

What are you saying de Santigny? Arnaud locked glances with the almost hypnotic orbs of the other man.

How old do you think I am doctor? De Santigny continued to smile insidiously, as if he were laughing at Arnaud. Maybe he was.

How old? What kind of question is that? demanded Arnaud. He was too tired for stupid guessing games.

Please, guess my age de Santigny insisted.

Very well, if you must play childish games! Forty? Late thirties perhaps?

Then you would be very wrong my dear doctor. I was born before time, before what you know has existed. I am the Old One.

Now I know it’s all stuff and nonsense!

Is it Doctor? Is it?

Marquis de Santigny’s teeth shone so inexorably white in the glow of moonlight that filtered into the coach.

Let me show you how really old I am Monsieur le Doctor...

Doctor Arnaud entertained a momentary contemplation of reaching for the pistol inside his coat but it was over; while his senses could not possibly concede; for his will abandoned him as he was compelled to sink deeper into his seat with the realisation that the coach had come to an abrupt standstill; the utter silence of the snow falling around them. The last thing he would ever see and feel before losing consciousness was the Marquis de Santigny’s sharply pointed white incisors sinking into the soft flesh of his neck beneath his coat collars; the sensation of wetness he realised to be his own blood coursing down his chest.

Highgate Cemetery, London, Autumn 1869

John Everett Millais examined hands lean and white in the pallid glimmer of moonlight. They were not the hands of a man used to much digging but the hands solely of the painter, the artist, a man whose paintings graced the walls of the Royal Academy. Here he was, with his artist’s hands leaning on a shovel desecrating a grave. Above him the tall frame and wild black hair of Danté Gabriel Rossetti was pitched against the moonlight. The meagre wisps of passing cloud were not enough to obscure their crime and Millais’ initial curses began to give way to the panic he entertained in the bare hollow that was the pit of his stomach.

Gabriel this is madness. Cease, please! He almost screamed at him. I don’t relish spending the rest of my life in prison. I have too much to live for. He dared to voice his thoughts when he recollected Effie his wife at home with their children. Grave robbing carried a price; a possible prison sentence for anyone caught perpetrating it.

I’ve found them John! Rossetti paused from his work to catch a breath. There was the sound of a metallic sharpness as he plunged the shovel back into the earth for a moment to wipe at his sweating brow. He removed his jacket to expose his lean torso with his shirt thrown open to the waist. The black Italian eyes scrutinised the other man with disdain, if only momentarily, that he should have left him to do the work.

But... Millais cleared his throat; shivered inside his coat. He already hated the place with its mist shrouded gravestones, giant granite monstrosities emblazoned against the moonlight. Another shudder possessed him when an owl hooted somewhere in the distance. The swirling mist, like lethal fingers manipulating his spine began to glide an icy dance macabre against the gravestones while he reflected on the sobriety of it all.

But... but she... she’s been dead this... He swallowed anxiously, startling once again at the owl hooting its raucous cry conducive to sending another shiver coursing through him. She’s been dead this seven years Gabriel! There, he’d said it, while his gaze dropped away immediately, aware that if he stared deeper and profoundly deeper into the gaping chasm now opening up before him, she might rise up from her coffin to... to... the words he refused to utter aloud, or even think because of the stories he’d heard, but had not intended to heed.

Don’t you think I don’t know that John? Rossetti swiped at the beads of dust lining his countenance. Already his normally smoothly shaven features were beginning to display the signs of stubble. Or was it something else that Millais wondered he could read on the demented face of his friend. Rossetti was a tortured soul and had been ever since she had killed herself, causing Millais to entertain the maniacal crazy notion that it was not merely a book of poetry he was after. Who in their right mind would resort to grave robbing, risking his freedom, perhaps his very sanity, for a mere book? Was it because Rossetti missed his wife so much that he had to look upon her face again? Lizzie had been dead for seven years. Everyone knows the grave is merciless. The worms. The rotting earth. Elizabeth Eleanor Siddar Rossetti. And why had she killed herself? Because of her husband and his womanising ways!

You only loved her after she died and now you wish to look upon her face, a face that will no longer be beautiful!

Look John, if you don’t want to help me...

Millais paused to slip the watch from his waistcoat pocket and stare at it in dismay. Two minutes to midnight. Effie would be worried sick by now as she invariably did when he’d informed her that he’d embarked on some wild affair with Gabriel. She’d grown to hate Gabriel over the years, certainly after Lizzie’s death. ‘You’re a famous man now John. You don’t have to align yourself with the likes of him. He’ll either end up in prison or Bedlam, mark my words’ she would say. If caught grave robbing, the former seemed likely, or perhaps with what they were about to look upon there was a distinct possibility of winding up in the latter.

For God’s sake, John! Rossetti reached to grab the fob watch, but Millais, aware of his intention quickly placed it back into his waistcoat. The watch was an expensive one and he had visions of it falling into Lizzie’s grave.

We’re almost there Rossetti said breathlessly, mopping his brow. "When this is over we will go and have a few draughts of ale.

Millais shook his head. His features, scared and white in the moonlight reminded Rossetti of one of the cherub portraits his friend like to paint; the ones they had ridiculed but were to make his name.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s darkly handsome visage was partially eclipsed by a cloud passing across the moon so that it was only his strong white teeth that were exposed into relief.

I’m almost there. The poems...

Are you certain it is simply the poems you are after Gabriel?

Rossetti’s face darkened further. Afforded by this dank holy place Millais entertained an uneasy sensation that Gabriel was about to strike him, but the smile returned as if nothing untoward had fazed him.

Of course, John. What else?

But... seven years Gabriel... Millais protested.

Sometimes John you behave like an old maiden aunt who wants nothing better than to stay out of prison.

Why all this talk of prison? We won’t go to prison.

There will be worse places than prison when you look upon her face. Millais words were punctuated once more by shivers. It... it could drive you mad.

Then John... Rossetti slapped his shoulder... I shall not look upon her face.

To Millais’ horror, even after all the hours of solid digging, Rossetti jumped agilely into the now open grave.

The Book! It’s still there, John! he shouted back.

Where else would it be Gabriel unless someone had been there before you.

It was as if Rossetti had not heard him. He retrieved the now somewhat tattered leather bound volume of the poems he had written to his wife with the realisation that, because he could no longer have her in death, how he had neglected her in life. His hands trembled so badly he could hardly keep them still. He moved, as if guided by a hellish impulse to lift the coffin lid to reveal... what? Some terrible horror unleashed from the infernal gates of Hell itself?

The face framed by the glorious titian hair, the hair that had inspired so many of his paintings, now spilled in all its golden tresses across the white lawn nightgown in which she had been buried. Her eyes were closed, but intact. Seven years had changed nothing. She appeared to be merely asleep. Her mouth was still red and moist. When he dared to press his lips to hers in that macabre moonlit tableau he discovered they were as cold as ice. He imagined she whispered his name ‘Gabriel’ so tenderly. It was all he could do not to bring himself to leave there. The impulse was strong enough to raise her bodily from her silken bed and take her into his arms as he had done in life.

Gabriel! But his name did not issue from her lips. The voice was a masculine one and Rossetti realised with a start that Lizzie was in his arms and John Millais appeared on the verge of collapse.

For God’s sake! Millais crossed himself hurriedly. What are you doing? but his words trailed. He could no longer speak.

All these years had rolled by and Rossetti’s wife was in his arms the way she used to be. Seven years in her tomb had changed nothing. She had not even begun to decompose. She appeared little different than the day they had buried her and Rossetti had collapsed at her graveside mumbling incoherently about her ghost returning to haunt him.

John, she has not begun to decompose! Rossetti’s voice was wild with excitement, failing to realise that there was something radically wrong here.

Millais shivered again on recollection of all the tales he’d heard of unspeakable creatures rising from their tombs to... to... Mayhap it was the Laudanum John. It may have preserved her.

Rossetti laughed and cried all at once, further confirming Millais’ fears that his friend had become demented.

Perhaps Gabriel, but sh... shouldn’t you leave her there? Sudden exposure to the night air might... Words failed him and the painter realised he would probably endure nightmares for weeks now.

See her nails, her skin!

Rossetti’s erstwhile excitement at discovering his wife’s body intact thrilled though Millais’ brain like a death sentence.

They are still growing. What devilry is this?

Please put her back Gabriel! John Millais promptly vomited up the meal he had consumed hastily so as to pursue this mad venture with his equally mad companion.

Rossetti clutched the book of poems as if it were a trophy. Sighing heavily he retrieved the shovel from the mound of earth as if it were the Sword in the Stone. Help me, John he urged, swiping a palm across his sweating brow.

Reluctantly Millais retrieved his own spade and saw with something akin to relief that Rossetti had returned Lizzie’s body to its silken resting place and had closed the lid of the coffin. He longed to warn Rossetti that he might have unearthed something he shouldn’t but his friend was too far enwrapped with his excitement to dwell upon the fact that his late wife should have remained so untouched by the normal processes of death and the grave.

But Rossetti was acutely aware of why she should have remained so. It was a secret known only to himself.

Green eyes flashing wide, Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti’s mouth fashioned a smile and the name ‘Gabriel’ was whispered softly from once bloodless lips.

Athenry, County Galway, Southern Ireland, August 1941

Throughout the world there was a war on but ostensibly not in this quiet corner of Kiltullagh, at least not for Mairead Sarony that warm August afternoon. She had just put one year old Daniel in his bassinette, with the hood thrown up of course. Grandma Mary was always on to her about such things. How the devil she knew Mairead always wondered for the old lady was as blind as a bat, or at least she pretended to be. Mairead believed Grandma Sarony to be pretending to be blind when John-B introduced her to his family. His Ma was dead; his Da had joined the Fenians north of the border, so it fell to Grandma to bring up her grandson John-Byron and his sister Marie-Clara. Marie-Clara’s own husband was away doing his bit for the war effort. What Mairead knew of her 26 year old husband was that although he was an Irish Catholic he wasn’t into all that partisan stuff against the British and believed that everyone was equal in the eyes of God. To join the RAF had been his dream, though all Mairead knew of it now was that his job involved