Under a Ghostly Moon (Jerry Moon Supernatural Thrillers Book 1) (32 page)

"
Inspector, one of Sonia's friends has been kidnapped by the cultists and I think I know where they've taken her."

Whatley woke up very quickly
.  "You're certain of this?"

"
As certain as we can be.  Ellie was picked up by a man wearing one of those cult pendants and they took a taxi towards the Downs, which is where I think Rurik is hiding.  There's a blight affecting the grass and foliage on the part of the Downs that lies over the Severn Beach line tunnel. My 'contacts' have told me that Rurik has that effect on the local vegetation if he stays long enough in one place.  I think he must have found some kind of hidden installation or cave system under there."

"
I'll check that out," replied Whatley.  "I don't suppose there's any chance of me convincing you to wait until my men arrive?"

Moon shook his head
.  "Sorry, Art.  These guys are killers; we can't afford to leave Ellie with them any longer than we have to.  Relax, we're well prepared and probably better equipped than your constables are to face whatever's under there when all's said and done."

"
Okay, Moon, but take care, okay?" Whatley's concern seemed to radiate through the phone.

"
Of course I will, I'm not planning to become ghost fodder any time soon.  See you up there." He disconnected after Whatley's goodbye and turned to the others.  "Right, we've got police back-up on its way, so let's get going and rescue Ellie."

Trembling in Uri's steely embrace, Moon clenched his eyes tightly shut to block out the cityscape that rushed past beneath them.  "Not much further, my friend," Uri shouted consolingly into the wind.  "I can see the ventilation shaft now.  I will just drop straight into it so don't be surprised if it's dark when we land."

Moon felt the change in the air as they entered the concrete shaft and heard the snap and scream of tortured metal as Uri brushed through the vent
's rusting protective grill as if it were as insubstantial as a spider-web.  Then they were, mercifully, back on solid ground.  Moon opened his eyes and could just vaguely see the horizontal portion of the shaft running off into the darkness to his right.  Dead trailers of bramble and old man's beard tangled down chaotically from the upper shaft and he brushed his hand across his face in disgust, trying to ward off the ghostly caress of cobwebs.  "How the hell are we going to see where we're going?" he whispered breathlessly.  "We'll break our necks!"

"
The girls and I have excellent night vision," replied Uri. His retinas flashed blue in the dark as they caught the meagre light from the mouth of the vent.  "You'll be safe if you let us guide you."

"
I guess that's how it'll have to be..."

Moon was interrupted by a joyous whoop from above
.  "Whoo! That was some trip," Avril gasped excitedly as Charli deposited her beside Moon.  "We must do that again sometime."

"
Shush!" hissed Sonia, who had landed a second later with Roanne.  "We're trying to sneak quietly into a stronghold of evil and you insist on yelling your head off.  I knew it was a mistake to let you come along."

"
Don't be such a killjoy, Sonia." Avril was unabashed by her friend's sternness.  "They won't hear us from here."

"
I just hope they haven't posted lookouts, that's all," commented Moon.  "If they have that's our element of surprise gone straight away."

"
Don't worry, my friend." Uri shook back his white-blond mane and sniffed the air.  "If there were other humans within earshot I would smell them.  Here, I only smell rats.  Shall we be off?"

The ventilation pipe was about four feet high.  Uri lead the way, because he had the most acute night vision and superior strength, as they crouched as low as they could and made their cramped and uncomfortable way towards the enemy. Uri suddenly stopped sharply.  "Another set of bars," he whispered.  He sniffed the air.  "And something else..."

"
What is it?" asked Moon, peering around Uri's broad shoulders to where a dim light shone through the grille.

"
If I didn't know it was impossible I'd swear it was another vampire," hissed Uri. He ripped the grille from its fixtures.  "We'll soon find out."

There was a shuffling noise and an unkempt figure with wild hair and a straggly beard appeared through the opening
.  Moon thought it might be a tramp who had sought shelter in the tunnel beyond but then it snarled like an angry puma and leapt on Uri, its clawed hands seeking his throat.  Without effort, Uri punched straight through its chest with one hand, taking out its heart.  The unfamiliar vampire had an instant to gaze stupidly at the gaping hole in his chest before he burst into flames and was quickly reduced to a pile of ash.  "Thank the Gods for Buffy and Blade," said Uri.  "If their storylines didn't make vampires die so neatly in the modern imagination it would be very hard to explain this to the police."

"
It was a vampire?" asked Moon, trying to cope with the creature’s tidy incineration.  Uri’s explanation had reminded him again of the vast implications of the impact that the combined human imagination had upon the supernatural.

"
Yes, it was," Uri replied wearily.  "It seems Rurik has regained his power to infect others.  This is bad news for us, my friend.  We don't know how many more of his people Rurik has turned."

They slipped one by one past the broken grille into the tunnel beyond
.  A gas-powered camping lantern hung from one wall, dimly illuminating the track for a few paces on either side but no more of Rurik's minions waited for them.  It would seem the master vampire and his cult weren't expecting any trouble.

"
Shouldn't we take this with us?" whispered Avril, reaching to take the lamp from its hook.

"
No, leave it." Uri shook his head, his pupils huge and owl- like from their trip through the darkness.  "It would only give us away and the three of us can see well enough in the dark to prevent you humans from injuring yourselves.  We're also powerful enough to deal with most of the opposition should they attack us in the dark... Moon, what are your small friends doing?"

Moon jumped a little at Uri
's abrupt question and looked around.  The little ghost balls, which he had grown to ignore as he had become familiar with their presence, had ceased their constant exploration of their surroundings and were hovering very still around his head, leaving only the front clear to allow him see and speak.  "I don't know." He regarded his ghostly halo with puzzlement.  "Perhaps they can sense Rurik nearby and they're afraid."

"
They don't look afraid to me," observed Roanne.  "They look like they're spoiling for a fight."

"
What're they talking about?" Avril asked Sonia, trying to see what the others were looking at.

"
When we first encountered Rurik his power came from sucking the life out of

ghosts,
" Sonia explained.  "They leave behind a kind of left over essence, a tiny blue glowing ball of life force.  For some reason they latch on to Jerry when they find him and follow him around. Now it seems they're acting strangely."

"
Oh, right..."said Avril with a puzzled look.  "This sort of thing happens to him a lot, does it?"

"
From what he's told me this is a bit weirder than usual but not much!"

"
Well, I'm glad you've got him, not me.  Give me Roger any time - there's nothing more dependable than a bass player."

"
Oh, being with Jerry has its compensations." Sonia looked at Moon fondly through the gloom.

"
Yes, I've heard," replied Avril archly.  "I'm surprised there haven't been complaints from halfway down the street."

Sonia hit her friend on the shoulder
.  "You're not supposed to mention that sort of thing."

"
If the ladies have finished gossiping, we need to go this way," murmured Uri quietly.  "Please refrain from talking and if we must speak we should keep our voices as low as possible.  Sound travels far in tunnels and if there are more vampires they will hear the slightest whisper."

They set off with Uri and Charli at the front and Ro
anne protecting their rear, pressing close to the tunnel wall in case one of the overnight freight trains came through.

There
was a glimmer of light ahead and Uri suddenly hugged closer to the wall waving his arm against the grey glow to indicate that the others should do the same.  "What is it?" Moon whispered, urgently.

"
A doorway in the wall with two guards."

"
Are they...?" A snarl, from above Moon's head, answered his question for him.  They were vampires - nothing human could scurry up a wall like that.

Charli reached up calmly from the other s
ide of Moon and ripped the head off the woman that hung above them in mid pounce, leaving Moon brushing ash and embers out of his hair.  "They're only fledglings," she hissed through her fangs.  "Cocky and inexperienced; no great threat unless they catch you by surprise."

"
Allow me," said Avril enthusiastically. Stepping away from the wall, she ran towards the other vampire, who was approaching more cautiously, she performed a perfect side kick through its chest.  She jumped back frantically shaking embers from her foot.  "Whoa!  That was hot!"

"
Yes, and what you did was very stupid," said Uri coldly.  "You're lucky you caught him by surprise.  Please, Miss Avril, don't tackle the monsters on your own.  You don't know what you're up against.  At best you'll end up dead but, more likely, you'll end up one of them."

"
Well, being a vampire might be pretty cool," replied Avril, her eyes still bright with adrenalin.

"
Don't devalue your humanity so," counselled Charli.  "You lose the comfort of family and normal human relationships.  You are unable to have children and your entire life you have to fight to suppress the instincts of the killer beast raging within you.  We may joke about bringing others over but the truth is that we have not made one more vampire in the five centuries since we made our pact to resist the evil that dwells within us.  We would wish this terrible travail on no one else."

"
This must be our way in," whispered Moon from beside the reinforced steel door.  "Uri, do you sense anyone else nearby?"

Uri stilled and cocked his head from side to side
.  After several seconds he replied, "Not nearby, no.  But Rurik is definitely in there, I can feel his stinking presence almost as strongly as I did when he was my master all those centuries ago."

"
Can you get through that?" Moon nodded at the door.

"
Not on my own but there are three of us.  My ladies, your strength is needed here!"

T
he three vampires braced themselves against the heavy metal door and pushed hard with their shoulders.  The steel held for a second then burst inwards with a mighty crack and the screeching of twisted metal against the tunnel walls.

"
I suppose our presence here's no longer much of a secret," commented Avril into the following silence.

Like a bull in a china shop
, thought Moon to himself, shaking his head in the darkness.  "Avril's right,” he said out loud, “we will need to be twice as careful from now on.  What do you think, Uri, a triangular formation with you and the girls at the points?"

Uri thought for a moment
.  "Yes, that should work.  I'll take the point and Charli and Roanne the two rear apexes.  Good thinking, Moon, we'll make a tactician of you yet."

They got into formation with Moon behind Uri and Sonia side to side with Avril in the middle
.  The concrete-lined corridor was just wide enough to let them pass.  "This looks like it must have been Ministry of Defence," whispered Sonia, peering into an open doorway through which rusted army bunks lay in disarray, looking like steel skeletons in the dim illumination afforded by the sparse light of the widely placed electric ceiling lamps that ran the length of the gloomy corridor.  "World War II, do you think?"

"
Cold war more likely," replied Moon, kicking aside a yellowed page of newspaper.  The date was almost unintelligible but he could vaguely make it out: "'...th Mar.h.962'… Nineteen sixty-two - Cuban Missile Crisis - that would be about right.  I wonder what they used this place for."

"
Probably a command bunker." Uri pointed out what looked like a control room with a fading world map on the wall and ranks of radio consoles on wooden desks aligned down both sides of a central aisle.

"
Would make a good news story." Moon poked his head into the room and gazed around with interest.

"
Yeah, and it would probably get you locked up," observed Sonia, grimly.  "This is government secrets kind of stuff... makes me feel like I'm committing treason just being down here."

"
We have worse things to worry about than the government," said Roanne.  "I think we're getting close." She nodded at a set of double doors that stood slightly ajar a few paces ahead of them.  "I can definitely feel that there’s something big and nasty waiting through there."

They approached the doorway with caution
.  "Why's there no guard?" Avril whispered, glancing around uneasily.

"
Perhaps Rurik doesn't think we're much of a threat," replied Uri.

"
Well, let's show him different then!" snarled Avril, squaring her shoulders for a fight.

They burst through the double doors into what must have originally been the installation's canteen.  Chairs and tables had been stacked on either side to clear a large, roughly square, area of tiled flooring around which stood about thirty people dressed in normal street clothes.  This somehow insulted Moon's sense of propriety; if you were going to be part of a sinister cult you should at least have the common decency to wear a black hooded robe.

In
the centre of the floor, spread-eagled on what looked like a stainless steel serving counter, Ellie was bound naked struggling.  Her hands and feet were secured at the corners with rope and she looked tiny and vulnerable; dwarfed by the size of the monster which stood at her feet.

"
Ah, Uri." Rurik's voice was a low, gut clenching growl.  "I am so glad that you made it here in time to see this".  The hulking vampire turned his dark red eyes to regard his former vassal.  "You know, this is the first true meal I will have taken since the one you robbed me of so long ago." Rurik was also naked.  He towered over his cronies by more than half the height of a tall man.  A shaggy black mane of hair covered his head, neck and most of his torso.  The bare skin that covered the rest of his hugely muscled body and the great, bat-like wings that spread out at each side, was mottled purple and red.  His face was like the mutant offspring of a mating of man and bat, with giant shell-like ears and a dripping, wrinkled, pushed back nose, which twitched incessantly over a slavering fang-filled mouth.  From between his legs, throbbing and erect, thrust an equally ugly penis.  "First, I will have her and then I will feed off her and this time you can do nothing to prevent it, you tender hearted weakling!"