Day Six - part 2
“Amanda, you know this area, is there anyone who lives alone, anyone that lives with no neighbours, anywhere we could go and stay for a while?” Vanessa knew that they could not establish themselves if they were on the run, and they could not keep ahead of the police hiding in a pill box.
Amanda lay nude in her human form, having just changed back. Eldred was stroking his long finger nails through her hair. Vanessa thought that if she could, Amanda would be purring.
“There is old Long John Silver, he was a rock star and fried his brain on drugs. He lives alone in the big old house at Elmore Lock. That is really all I can think of.”
Vanessa nodded to herself, yes, she had heard he lived around here somewhere. He had dropped so much acid in the seventies that one day, so they say, he went on a trip and never came back. He fit the bill of a recluse perfectly. “Do you know the way?” She asked Amanda.
“We can follow the river trail, it goes past the back of his house.” Amanda stood and pulled her dress over her head and slipped it down. Vanessa could not but help to be aroused by the sight of such a perfect body. Eldred had been right, she would not be limited to just males in the future. Pity Amanda was Felcan, she really was lovely.
They set out along the River Trail, keeping the river to their left, walking barefooted they looked to any that noticed like a small family enjoying the morning on the river banks. The few people they did pass soon forgot that they had seen anyone on the river trail, as Eldred or Vanessa greeted and thralled everyone they met.
“That is it” Amanda said, pointing at an old wall overgrown with undergrowth of ivy and briers. “That is the back wall, the house is a way beyond. I climbed the wall once to look, but there was nothing inside to eat.”
“Shall we?” Eldred asked, and with Vanessa and Eldred each taking one of Amanda’s hands they leapt the wall and stood in the garden.
“I could have changed” Amanda said, almost with a pout in her voice.
“Indeed, you could,” Vanessa said, “But our way was quicker. Let’s save your secret, just in case we need it.”
They walked through the grounds, towards the house, evidence of inattention everywhere. What may once have been manicured lawns and herbaceous borders were now just a tangle of briers, long grass and weeds. Eldred and Vanessa both looked at each other and then forward to the house.
“Just one person,” Vanessa said.
“Human,” Eldred added.
Eldred grabbed Amanda, scooped her into his arms and they ran the last hundred yards to the house, covering the distance in a few seconds, letting Amanda back on to her feet at the house back wall. All the doors and windows were locked and bolted shut, but Vanessa pointed to an open window on the first floor.
“Wait here” she said to Amanda, and with a bound she was at the window and inside, Eldred a moment behind her.
“You let Amanda in, I’ll find our boy,” Vanessa said to Eldred.
“Giving the orders now are you?”
“Oh don’t even begin to start now.” Vanessa squared up to him and then sensing movement elsewhere she turned and ran, actions needing to defuse the moment. Eldred went the other way to the stairs and down to the back where he unbolted a door and let Amanda in.
“It might be a good moment to change my little beauty,” he said, mostly because he knew Amanda didn’t want her in her feline form.
Amanda slipped from her dress, pulling it over her head and the fur began to sprout, the hands became paws and her face changed and the cat sat on her haunches. Eldred picked up her dress and carried it as they went back through the house in search of Vanessa, Amanda’s paws padding silently on the wooden floors.
Mavis was once more in a trance. There were no burning incense sticks, or crystal balls or other frippery, they were props needed only for a paying audience. All Mavis required were a few breathes of the vapours from her secret mixture of herbs burning on a fire, and her soul would slip into the other realm.
“Ellery,” she was saying, facing a man in a high buttoned tweed suit, a polished walking cane in his hand, “yes, I know you vanquished the last of the Ancients a hundred and fifty years ago, but we have one abroad now, and his strength is growing. I can feel him.”
“I was walking the soil myself in those days, now, my mortal soul walks this realm not the one you inhabit.” He twirled the cane as he spoke, his hand feeling the jewel at the end as it twisted in his palm. “There is unlikely to be any enthusiasm here to do the necessary, the spirits that helped me have long passed over, there are few even here that know of the Ancients.”
“If we don’t do this Ellery, within a hundred years there will be no spirit’s left to pass over and the humans will be extinct and, foodless, the Vampryes will go to ground once more, waiting the emergence of a new food source. Your realm will be empty Ellery, completely empty.”
“I am not sure, this really isn’t my responsibility here.”
“Oh you feckless man, what are you a wimp? What happened to the slayer of hellhounds and other abominations?”
“It’s not like that here, it is very much more calm.”
“It’ll be more than calm Ellery Hampton if the Vampyres rule this realm. At this time there is only one, wait until there are hundreds and then thousands and then millions. Grow a set of balls man.”