Darkness Dominates - Chapter 20

Katy was also on Leola’s mind. Her current predicament was her one thought as she drove to Sudfield Hall. No-one had contacted Leola to tell her Rosie’s friend had turned up, apparently unharmed. She was still treating this journey as a rescue.

The car she was behind the wheel of belonged to Catherine. She owned eight of them, and was willing to loan them out individually to ‘Guild’ members. Lady Cullmore always parked them in a row in an empty space, nine foot long. Catherine had made an arrangement with this multi-storey car park’s manager. They were permanently stationed there, with a sign on the wall above the cars’ bonnets saying ‘Lady Cullmore’s Private Parking Area’. This made it easier for her associates to pick a vehicle. They didn’t have to search the whole car park to find them. Leola chose one at random. She didn’t have any specific make, model or colour in mind. It only had to be reliable. Leola was a mile away from the bridge over the River Lothyl when the crow Pippa had seen came into view. For a couple of minutes, it flew a short distance away from the bridge’s left-hand side.

When Leola took her eyes off it, the bird swooped down in front of this car. The crow circled around and zeroed in on the centre of the windscreen. It beat its wings against the glass with aggressive intent. Its beak started viciously pecking at it, trying to shatter the windscreen, and then fly into the car to continue its frenzied assault.

“So, you’re Emily and Lynette’s pet” Leola said to herself.

Despite its efforts, the crow wasn’t causing any damage. The glass was proving to be very resilient.

“Sorry, you two, but your pet needs to be put down!” said Leola as she slammed on the brakes. It was catapulted away from the windscreen, twice bouncing heavily on the bonnet, damaging its right wing in the process. When it landed on the ground, she deliberately aimed the front left tyre at it. Because it had no means of flying away, it couldn’t escape. Leola remorselessly ran over the bird. On the stretch of road behind the car, as she drove off again, was all that was left of it – a compacted bundle of black feathers, soaked in its own blood.

The change from day to night had begun when she was less than a mile from Sudfield Hall. Leola saw the moon getting more visible against the sky.

Diane’s desk lay dead ahead when Leola was a quarter of a mile away. The hardness of the road’s surface had left it in jagged wooden fragments. Slightly more than ten feet ahead of that was Ms Farnham’s laptop. Like the desk, it was smashed beyond repair. The turning into the halfway house’s ground was marked by another damaged object – the recreation room’s widescreen TV. It was, however, was in a less sorry state then the other things on the road.

“Follow the signs” remarked Leola.

When on Sudfield’s driveway, she turned off the engine and put on the pair of gloves she’d brought with her. Leola emerged from the car she’d borrowed, holding the carrier bag the daggers were housed in. Just as they’d done with Pippa and Holly, the Eddington sisters jointly fixed their stares on Leola, through the circular window. Emily and Lynette breathed on the glass together. On the now misted up area, they wrote “Mamma is here”.

Keeping a tight hold of the bag, Leola whizzed up to ‘The Fridge’. Looking through the room’s door frame, she saw her daughters were seated next to each other. They’d positioned the chairs they were sat on so that they faced the doorway. Their facial expressions were unnervingly passive. A quick look round the rest of ‘The Fridge’ revealed Katy wasn’t in there with them.

“Where’s Katy?”

“Where’s Cedric?”

“Answer me first, Lynette!”

“Where she belongs” she replied. “Where’s Cedric?”

“He’s road kill. So, you two killed her after you abducted her”

Unseen by her sister or her mother, her lips formed a thunderous-looking pout. She had developed a strong emotional attachment to the crow.

“We want to play Hide and Seek, mamma” Emily said, avoiding the query.

“Is Katy alive or dead?”

Leola’s question was equally dismissive of Emily’s request.

“Play Hide and Seek with us, and we’ll tell you where she is” said Lynette.

Knowing the way their minds worked, Leola figured out they were playing psychological games with her.

“No, I won’t.”

“Then we won’t tell you” replied Emily.

In under a minute, Leola had searched every single room in Sudfield Hall. She said, as she sped back into this room, “If she’s not on the premises, where is she?”

“If you won’t play, we won’t say” said Lynette, almost singing her response.

To aid her plan to eliminate them, Leola relented.

“Very well; if you say, I’ll play.”

She didn’t make her submission melodic, the way Lynette had. Leola just wanted to sound like she meant it.

“We never kidnapped her. All we did was hypnotise her to lie down between the seats in the cinema”

“Thank you, Lynette. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Why are you wearing gloves, mamma?” asked Emily, finally noticing they were on Leola’s hands.

“I’ll show you”

Leola had both daggers out in a split-second. Unfortunately, the sisters reacted with just as much speed. As Leola tried to throw one of the weapons, Emily knocked it away with one of her chair’s legs. The dagger ended up in a corner of ‘The Fridge’. Both Emily and her mother dived at it, but Emily was able to grab it first. Her mother was astonished that she could hold the handle without burning her skin. She tried to stab Leola with it, but her target was able to dodge each forward thrust of the blade. She got closer without risking being cut by the dagger and delivered three right hooks to her daughter’s cheek. None of the blows took the wind out of her sails. Emily fought back with four punches of her own. All of them were delivered to the middle of her mother’s abdomen. She spun Leola round and grabbed her right arm and the back of her neck. Emily then propelled her across the corridor and over the top of the stairs leading to the floor below. She only hit a couple of steps on her way down to the second floor. Leola was up and on her feet immediately. Now holding both daggers, Emily charged at her. Neither weapon met their target. Leola pinned both her daughters’ arms behind her back. The strength she employed disarmed Emily. This manoeuvre was followed by Leola delivering a powerful enough kick to send her daughter to the top of the first floor staircase. Emily had barely stood up, when Leola leapt down and thrust the dagger in her left hand into the centre of Emily’s chest.

Though dying, Emily stayed on her feet. This sturdiness didn’t last long. After a coughing up the silvery white bile, she lost her balance and tumbled, all roly-poly down the stairs. Ending up on the ground floor, she lay on her left side for a moment. Then, she rolled onto her back. Feint lines, the same colour as the bile, were starting to show on her face. Leola descended the staircase and looked down at her dying daughter.

“I’m so sorry, Emily,” said Leola, with genuine sadness in her tone, “but you no longer deserve the immortality I gave. Letting you and your sister die is the choice I should’ve made back then.”

A few short spasms of life later, Emily was gone. Lynette’s show of grief for her now-deceased sibling was immediate. From the top of that flight of stairs, Leola listened to her anguished howl.

Simultaneously, at Mr & Mrs Lonsdale’s house, Katy was jolted into coming to. She suddenly felt a razor sharp pang of grief. It was more internal than external, though. Two tear tracks were already halfway down her cheeks. The reason why this had happened was one she was oblivious to. Katy was in transition and she didn’t know it. The break in her sleep didn’t make any difference to the process. Tomorrow evening, she was going to end up like Rosie. When the inexplicable show of inner grief was over, she soon fell asleep again.

Leola closed the eyes of the one who had turned Katy. She had barely shut her eyelids when Emily’s sister leapt onto her back at over 100mph. Lynette instantly resorted to vicious hair-pulling. The struggle to get her off caused Leola and Lynette to tumble haphazardly to the floor. Leola almost dropped one of the daggers. Her left hand’s grip on it had loosened, but not long enough for Leola to let it slide from her grasp completely. She retained her hold on it. Lynette made a crude attempt to make her mother drop both daggers. She charged at her, doubling the speed she employed last time. The top of her head collided with Leola’s chest, but it didn’t result in her letting go of the weapons. Grabbing hold of her shoulder blades, she hoisted Lynette right over her head and tossed her at high velocity into the kitchen. She landed on the table with sufficient force to break the legs holding it up. It plummeted straight onto the kitchen floor. Lynette’s next attempt to get one of the daggers was somewhat more successful. Using the table top, she knocked the one Leola was holding in her right hand. She snatched it before her mother could; she and Leola were now at the opposite ends of the kitchen. They each rushed close to the floor’s centre. Lynette had misjudged her own advantage. Leola made certain that her daughter’s victory was brief. With a sweeping kick, she knocked the lower half of her right leg away.

Lynette fell onto her right side. Leola lifted up her up by grabbing what she was wearing above her waist. She threw Lynette like a javelin towards the doorway. Her flight through the air ended up with her landing on the driveway. She scrambled to her feet again, ready to launch another attack on Leola. Her mother didn’t give her another chance to carry out that assault. She threw the dagger right at her. It went straight into her chest.

She collapsed onto her knees immediately afterwards, clutching where she’d been fatally wounded. Leola rushed over and propped her up from behind.

“I’ve been a very naughty girl, haven’t I, mamma?” she said to Leola, the white silvery substance streaming down her chin.

Her tone was unrepentant rather than confessional. In spite of this, she did Lynette the courtesy of nodding. A couple of seconds before death claimed her, she smiled malevolently at Leola. With the tip of her left thumb, she individually pushed down Lynette’s eyelids. Certain they were deceased, Leola moved her daughters’ lifeless bodies to ‘The Fridge’, lying them down next to one another. The last act she carried out, before leaving, was to douse the building’s entire interior in petrol. She’d got several cans of it from the garden shed. By the time she’d finished, every room on every floor reeked of the stuff. Leola lit a match and tossed it into the building from outside. The whole corridor became a blanket of fire and smoke in seconds. The stairs were ablaze as Leola drove off, leaving Sudfield Hall at the mercy of the flames.

The answer to what Rosie had asked Pippa came in the form of a journey. Their destination was Henshaw Road, which had its fair share of back alleys. Three of the latter kind, were double the others in length. It was one of those that Pippa took Rose into. Though she badly wanted to ask her mum why they were here, she waited for the explanation to be given voluntarily.

“The reason we’re here is connected with why I intervened in what I thought was Skye’s situation.”

Using Leola’s current alias was Pippa’s way of making this explanation a little less complicated.

“Do her mum and stepdad live here?”

“A few doors down. They come down this alley when they’re heading to their local.”

“How do you know they will, mum?”

“I saw them head this way when I was drove down this road, on my way back home.”

Rosie didn’t need her mum to say any more. She understood why they were waiting for them.

“So this is my first vampire meal, then?”

“Your first vampire snack – two pints of blood and then payback for Jessie”

“What kind of payback?”

“Their suicides”

“You mean we’re going to use the mind control power on them?”

“Yeah”

“Cool!”

Pippa spared giving her daughter the “killing isn’t cool” speech. She wasn’t going to let morality stand in the way of justice, this time. It was vengeance she felt was long overdue.

“Which one do I hypnotise, mum?”

“You pick”

“Jessie’s mum”

“I’ll take the stepdad, then!”

“So, I’m getting a crash-course on feeding off blood and hypnotising people.”

“You’re getting that – I’m getting one on drinking someone’s blood. I’ve already hypnotised Councillor Gilbert, accidentally.”

“Do you mean you’ve never fed on blood?”

“Not until tonight, Rosie! When I found out I’d become a vampire, it was so strange a concept for me to grasp that I missed my first taste of blood.”

“I’m so not going to mess this up, mum”

“This isn’t like a school exam, Rosie. In fact, this isn’t going to be like anything in life you’ve imagined you’ve experienced! You and I are both in brand new territory.”

Footsteps and a loud female voice were picked up by Pippa’s new hyper-hearing. A male voice spoke twice, or rather mumbled. Even with the lack of enunciation, Pippa recognised it. They were less than a foot from turning into the alley, when Rosie heard them just as clearly. What was too far away to hear for human ears was now thirty-odd inches away from hers.

“They’re talking about nothing but lager! Sad or what”

“Shush, Rosie! I need to listen whether they’re actually going to turn into this alley.”

Half a minute of no talking was all Pippa needed to hear if their feet were changing direction.

“They’re coming this way”

“I can hear a trickling noise, mum”

“So can I, Rosie – I think it’s the blood coursing through their veins we can hear”

Rosie felt the final stage of her transition nearing its end. Jessie’s mum and stepfather had only just entered the alley, but Pippa and her daughter could hear them as if they were over ten inches away. A moment elapsed before their dental metamorphosis took hold. The change happened to Rosie and her mum simultaneously. The transformation going on in their teeth’s middle top row was over in seconds. It coincided with Jessie’s mum and violent partner talking even louder. They actually weren’t, but Rosie’s and Pippa’s enhanced hearing had turned up the volume of their voices. When still human, Pippa was taught to exercise willpower. She’d taught her daughters, or at least tried to, to adopt that quality. It didn’t do Pippa or Rosie any good this time. The blood-lust came over them in too strong a wave. Their spectacular speed was activated and they were feeding off their prey in a second. When they felt they’d taken enough, the two of them saw that the two adults they’d targeted were dead.

Pippa was keeping an eye on Rosie. She had the slight worry that her daughter would freak out, once it hit her what she’d done. It was a redundant anxiety. She didn’t see a hint of panic on Rosie’s face.

“We so need to learn to control our hunger” she said to her mum, with the confidence of someone who’d been a vampire for centuries.

Her tone was devoid of any regret. Rosie visualised mental images of the kind of abuse Jessie was subjected to. That took away any possible propensity for remorse. This was a vampire characteristic that Rosie was exhibiting for the first time. She shared this sudden change in her personality with her mum. Pippa had a deeper motivation for the remorselessness she felt, however.

“This outcome has to be dealt with” she said to Rosie. “You head back to the car – I can sort this matter out. Here, take the keys.”

She passed them over to Rosie and then got her anxious tone ready. It was for the benefit of the voice she’d hear when dialling 999. When Rosie had left the alley, she proceeded to pretend she’d stumbled on the bodies.

When Pippa returned to her car, hers and Rosie’s ringtones sounded in unison.

“Hello?” they said, almost in harmony.

Two names were mentioned, one after the other: Katy’s mum and Jennifer. The pair of phone conversations weren’t running parallel. Rosie had begun hers first.

“Katy’s back – when did that happen, Mrs Lonsdale?” said Rosie.

“You’ve told her?” said Pippa. “How did she take it? You told her, and then turned her? I see.”

After finishing their phone calls, Rosie and Pippa turned to each other. Their announcements were of different length and clashed.

To make each one more comprehensible, they opted to say them one at a time. Rosie went first.

“Katy’s back! Some bloke dropped her off at her parents’ house!”

“Jennifer’s come clean to Ali, and then turned her!”

The two of them absorbed one another’s news as Pippa drove over to Jennifer’s house. After weighing up whether to be dropped off at Katy’s house, she chose to go with her mum.

Jennifer and Alicia weren’t alone in their house when the new mayor and her daughter called round. Watching DCI Stoneham’s sole daughter start her transition were Jennifer’s other 2 visitors; Lady Cullmore and Darcy. Catherine was holding two envelopes in her left hand. On the front of them were the first letters of Mayor Trennell’s and DCI Stoneham’s Christian names.

“Who are these from?” Rosie asked when she saw her mum and Alicia’s take the envelopes.

“Leola” said Catherine.

“Am I meant to read it here?”

“No, Pippa – she wanted you to read it privately.”

Jennifer instantly got the impression this applied to her as well.

Rosie naturally shifted her focus from the letter given to her mum to her friend on the sofa, out for the count.

Pippa didn’t open her envelope until she was back in her bedroom. Nine minutes before midnight, she read Leola’s letter to her aloud.

“I knew I ought to apologise for robbing you and your family of its normality. Since I can’t reverse that outcome, saying sorry would sound insincere. Though I killed Lynette and Emily, there is still a loose end I hadn’t counted on – Katy. When I handed myself over to my daughters, she wasn’t there. I can only draw one conclusion from that – she was turned by either one of them. This means that Rosie, Katy and Alicia will now be bound by more than friendship. You are going to have to be more of a presence in Katy’s life, from now on. She is on her way to becoming a vampire. It is vital that her parents go to their grave thinking she is normal. There are two more things I have to tell you before I set off for pastures new for the next century or so. Number one – Catherine will take my place as head of ‘The Guild’, and number two – I don’t want any of you searching for me. When I’m ready to return to Alvenshire, I will. Leola.”

Reading the letter, Pippa realised she would have to work hard to balance her new life and the one that was there before. The lives of Charlotte and Rosie had to remain on an even keel.