Neither Blood Nor Seed

* * *

The door was old-fashioned, made of real wood in a composite age, the knocker in the shape of a grinning sheep. It tapped very loudly when he swung it, the pale sun high over the land once more. The Dark Slope lay forgotten back up the hillside to the north, waiting with its trapped car for... what? Impossible to say, but he'd felt it the entire time he was cycling through: a sense of tension, like there was something there lurking, watching in the shadows.

As there was apparently someone lurking behind the door, a voice coming through in suspicious Welsh.. "Who's there, then?"

"James Norris. The vicar from over at Llantarff!" It came out with creditable speed in Welsh, the phrase a simple one that he'd often repeated. "Someone's had an... an auto accident! On the Llethr Du!" He had to say auto accident in English, but the voice on the other side of the door was Owen Jones', and he'd understand. He was young enough to have been raised with both tongues.

A pregnant pause followed, the tension belying the beauty of the day, before he heard the scrape of a drawn bolt from through the door. It opened a crack to reveal half a face, Owen glaring out. "Look down, reverend," he said quietly, in English. Norris' eyes sank along the dark planks of the weathered door, only to see the twin barrels of an old side-by-side shotgun staring back up at him from waist level. He went very, very still. "Seen anything strange today?"

Norris' mind raced. He'd never seen a gun before outside a museum. He forced his voice into a brutal calm. "Other than a car, crashed over the river? No. But I'd appreciate the use of your telephone, so that I can call the Constabulary. I've got no service."

"Yeah." Owen showed no sign of haste. "I know about the auto, reverend. Can you do me a favor?"

"You're pointing a gun at me." Norris felt an edge of panic in his voice and cursed it. "Obviously, I'll do you a favor."

"Pull your collar down, please. Let's have a look at your neck."

"At... at my neck?"

"Please." The gun barrels did not waver, but Norris almost did. He thought briefly about whirling away, sprinting off into the early fall air, but the gun would be faster. Slowly, unblinking, he unhooked his white collar tab and turned his shirt down. "Lean forward so I can get a look. Both sides, please."

"This is not what I was expecting today," Norris muttered. He found himself completely unable to take his eyes off the muzzles of the shotgun's twin barrels, which looked as big as cricket balls to his slowly panicking gaze.

"Makes two of us, reverend." Owen peered closely at his neck. "You know," he went on conversationally, close enough that Norris could smell his breath, "you lot really should go back to wearing the black."

"To... to what?" Norris was having difficulty keeping his teeth from chattering together at this point.

"The black shirts. I don't know when these blue shirts became a thing in the Church, but it just looks odd." Owen nodded, the shotgun drooping quickly to the floor as he stepped back from the doorway. "Come on in, reverend. Tea?"

"Just the phone, I think." Norris wondered whether he sounded as bitter as he felt. "May I ask why you thought it necessary to point a gun at me, Mr Jones?"

"Course you may." Owen Jones was a blocky man of about forty, and he led the way into the house affably enough. "Mind you bolt the door behind you, though, for there are vampires about." Norris merely stood on the threshold, gaping in at the old parlor, too dumbfounded to speak.

* * *

Y Lloches/The Refuge

* * *

Cassie didn't look like herself. That was the first thing Norris thought. The second was to wonder who the old woman across the kitchen table was. And the third, at the sight of the revolver in her steady hand, was to wonder just how many guns the Joneses had. This one was pointing directly at Cassie Evans.

"Hello, padre." Cassie's voice was a little unsteady. The displacement, seeing her here covered by an elderly woman with an ancient pistol, was profound. She looked odd, pale, nothing like the defiant girl he'd met just twelve hours before but already felt like he knew well. Her clothes were not the ones he'd found her from the charity bin, but of course, he recalled: Anthony Wynn had returned her things, and poor McCormick's car.

Which now smoldered on the Dark Slope.

"Are you hurt?" he cried at the sight of her. She wore a tight leather vest over a black and white striped shirt, her breasts commanding the room, and a short black skirt over fishnet stockings.

Which she'd tucked into a pair of Doc Martens.

"I'm all right." She was looking at the gun every now and again, but she didn't seem all that scared of it. "I crashed Davey's Fiesta."

"I saw." He turned to the old woman, impassive in the chair. She was not familiar, which was unusual here. He'd only been here half a year, but the people came to church reliably and he was a conscientious visitor. "Good afternoon, madam, I am Reverend James Norris. A pleasure." He hoped it came out sounding well; the woman, he instinctively assumed, had no English.

She glanced at him, one time, a measuring look that ended in a disappointed sigh. "I'm not coming to your church until you put on a proper black shirt," she wheezed, or at least that's what it sounded like to Norris. She spoke very quietly, but her grip on the big revolver seemed rock-solid. It did not waver from Cassie's chest.

"Um." He summoned the words he wanted, and scowled once he realized his Welsh was not up to the task. So he turned to Owen. "I can't imagine why she's got that gun, still less why she's pointing it at a young woman who's just been in an auto accident."

"It's not the auto accident my mum's worried about," Owen replied affably, "it's the man she was talking to after the auto accident. And the wound on her neck."

"What?" Norris bent to peer at the impassive Cassie, who just stared back at him. "That? It's just a scratch!" There was, indeed, a small cut. And some bruising. "The young lady was in a car that crashed! It's a wonder she's not hurt worse!"

Cassie broke in, her voice even. "They think I've done worse than get into a car wreck," she said softly. "They think I've been attacked by... well." Her glance flickered up to Owen. "I don't know who the hell they think I've been attacked by." Old Mrs Jones snapped something in quick, sarcastic Welsh, and Cassie rolled her eyes and answered in the same language. Slowly, so Norris could understand her. "Yeah. You keep going on about a Mr Langham, and I don't know who that is."

Norris' blood chilled at the mention of that name. Langham. Neither blood nor seed... "Langham?" he repeated sharply. "You said Langham?"

The Joneses, mother and son, looked at each other for a long moment. "Is it a name that means something to you, reverend?" The shotgun did not rise back up to Norris' face, but he was acutely conscious of its presence in Owen's hand.

Norris swallowed desperately. "I... well, are you talking about Sir Walter Langham?"

This time the shotgun did move, a very deliberate twitch up across Owen's left arm. Where he could bring it to bear as quickly as he wanted. "Go on, reverend." The two Joneses watched him closely.

"Wait. You know what the fuck they're talking about?" Cassie bleated.

"I might have some idea." He glared once again at Mrs Jones' revolver. "Can you put your guns down so we can discuss this?" He tried it in Welsh, but felt like he got it all wrong.

"If she's been infected," Owen replied, his voice low and calm, "she could turn in an instant. Say, in the instant that mum puts the pistol down."

"Turn?" Cassie had shaken off her torpor now that Norris was here. She sensed an ally. "What the fuck are you on about?"

A long, ragged silence followed, after which Owen shrugged. "Why don't you tell us what you know, reverend."

He cleared his throat. So difficult to think! The stakes seemed so high, suddenly. He saw a strong need to be very clear about what he was saying, so he didn't dare try Welsh. "I received a letter, I suppose you could say. It was an old letter, left for me many years ago by a churchman. It warned of a man named Walter Langham, and it intimated that this man might be... well, that he might have certain supernatural characteristics, I suppose you could say."

"Fampir," spat old Mrs Jones.

"This letter," Owen began, glancing at his mother, "might have been delivered inside a lead box?"

Norris went pale. "How could you know that?"

Owen nodded as though he already knew how all this would go. "Mother?"

When she spoke in English, Mair Jones' aged voice still held an echo of music in the hills, of fog over the valleys. "I was just a girl when it happened," she said slowly, the revolver never wavering. "Trouble at my old church, the little chapel by the stream in Bwgan Vale. A man fell, no one ever knew how; this was on a Tuesday, so he must have been a cleaner or whatnot. Or a glazier, fixing the stained glass." She nodded to herself. "Hit his head."

"On the floor?" Norris breathed.

"Blood was shed there that day, father," she went on quietly. "Blood on the floor, on the old flagstones by the altar. Blood on a tomb we never knew was there. Blood that wakened Langham." She sighed. "And then the trouble started. Horrid murders. Sounds in the night. Young girls taken. My friend Addie Jenkins, taken from her home." She smiled grimly. "My father by the door every night with my granddad's old pistol." She hefted the revolver. "This very one."

Norris glanced over at Owen, whose expression suggested he'd heard this story many times before. Cassie was listening with a troubled wrinkle on her forehead. "And... well, what did you do, Mrs Jones? If I can ask."

Her lip curled, but it was hard to tell whether it was amusement or contempt. "Same thing that's probably happening now. The priest opens the box. The police search for the monster. Then Felix comes and conquers him."

"Felix?" Norris said sharply.

She nodded placidly. "If you've found his address, father, you should be writing him already."

He absorbed this and thought about the house on Briggs Road. Seaborne, USA. "He's an ocean away."

"He'll come." The old lady nodded once, then fell silent as she contemplated the gun and the girl. Norris cleared his throat.

"When was all this?"

"Why, just before the dam was built." Owen shrugged. "Why do you think they flooded that church, after all?"

Norris felt a prickle at the back of his neck. "You're saying they drowned the entire village just to make sure Langham would stay buried?"

Owen's smile had no mirth. "The authorities had a better understanding of things in those days." He sighed. "And now Langham is back, it seems, if this woman's story is to be believed."

"I'm no liar," Cassie flared.

Norris tried to smile at her. "So what's happened, then, to bring you to this farmhouse?"

She brooded a moment, then shook her head. "I crashed, padre, and then a man came to help me." She hesitated. "A strange man."

"Fampir," Mrs Jones hissed once more.

"When I told him I didn't want his help, he tried to keep me there, so I ran here." She shrugged. "Then these two kidnapped me!"

"We saved you," Owen shrugged, "whether you realize it or not."

"What caused the crash?" Norris' mind was working as fast as it could, but he didn't like where it was going.

She frowned. "I was coming down the hill, headed for the A-road, and looking at my map. No cell service. So I got distracted by something out the corner of my eye, something small and black. Flying."

"Something like a bat, perhaps?" Owen did not smile.

"Something. And I swerved, and Davey's car overturned, and then suddenly the man was there. Offering to help. I was standing on my door, trying to climb up and out, and when I looked up I saw his face against the trees. And with the fire already starting, I let him drag me out of the car." She looked away. "It was a very handsome face."

"Yes," old Mair Jones said after a long pause, "Langham is quite handsome. Always was." She stirred, remembering. "Tall? Dark hair? Sharp nose? Very dark eyes?"

Cassie shuddered. "Exactly so. And he took me by the arm and helped me out of the car and then kept his grip, just there." She pulled up her striped sleeve and showed a bruise near her elbow. "And he asked about my cuts and bruises. He didn't cause them," she insisted, glaring at the revolver.

"So you say." Old Mrs Jones was not impressed, it seemed. "It's how vampires turn people."

"Everyone knows," her son agreed. Norris did not need to turn around to imagine the shotgun raised again. "And you never can say when it might happen."

"So." Norris struggled to make sense of all of this. "Your plan is to keep her at gunpoint forever?"

"No." Owen yawned. "If she's going to turn, she'll do it before sunset."

Norris frowned. "Where'd you hear that?"

"She has to turn on the same day she's infected, or else she'll die," he explained as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world. "Sun goes down at six. If she vamps or dies, we'll know Langham scratched her. If she just carries on as normal? We'll apologize and give her a nice meal."

"Either way," Cassie declared, not really seeming all that afraid of the Joneses, "I'm not going back up that road by the river."

"You surely are not." Norris turned to Owen Jones. "I believe Superintendent Wynn and his constables are just up the road, at Cwm Goch. I'd like to take this young lady there, for safety."

"She sought refuge here," old Mair pointed out swiftly, in soft Welsh. It took Norris a moment to figure out what she'd said. "So here she stays."

"What if..." Norris swallowed, unable to make himself say it for a moment, but he squeezed the odd question out eventually. "What if Langham attacks us here tonight?"

"Langham is certain to attack us here tonight, as long as she's here." Owen smiled grimly. "Fortunately, my mum has been preparing for vampires her whole life. On the whole, reverend, I like our chances." He nodded. "We'll survive. We know what we're doing."

Norris shook his head. "That's madness!"

"Na, mae'n hanfadol," Mrs Jones replied quietly, switching to English when she saw Norris' confusion. "It's what we must do, father. It's a fight against evil. Good people must fight evil, no?" She eyed his clerical collar, her old eyes sharp.

Norris felt a stir in his heart at that, a small prod of shame and grief, the reminder that he was a leader here, and also a servant. He swallowed. "Can you defeat him?" He thought of the tomb in the church, the stout coffin within, and whatever spells they must have muttered over the chapel floor when they'd interred the creature all those years ago. "I'm a learned man, but I don't know how to deal with something like this. Do we call the Constabulary?"

"No. They do good work, but if we're shooting vampires, they're more likely to arrest us than Langham." Owen paused. "We cannot kill him," he admitted, "but we can fight him off. And Felix can kill him. We just need to reach out to him." Norris remembered that phone number he'd found on the internet, for the trust that owned the house on Briggs Road.

"Is there a place around here that gets cellular reception?"

"No." Owen nodded toward the parlor. "We've got a telephone, though. Long-distance charges are murder, but I suppose it's worth it to summon a vampire."

* * *

Y Nos/The Night

* * *

Cassie fell into an unnerving dream well after nightfall, after the Joneses grudgingly took their guns off her and gave her some potatoes with cheese.

The dream started in darkness, a night that felt peculiarly dank and close, the darkness of a tomb instead of the darkness of a night sky. But it was not a frightening gloom: it embraced her, enfolded her, made her feel as though she was taken care of.

And in the dream, at last, a face loomed out of the dark: pale, sharp-nosed, a handsome face that she associated with flames and fear and the smell of a burnt Ford Fiesta, but also with comfort. With rescue. And with attraction, the face gorgeous beyond belief as it loomed there silently, close enough for her to feel his warm breath: the breath of Walter Langham, drifting across her face just as his arms drifted around her body, the dream passing from cool dank peace to warm buzzing arousal in that seamless way the best dreams have.

She turned her lips parted, and the kiss he gave her stole her breath: it consumed her, his mouth claiming hers with a confidence and control that stirred her deeply, waking her body in his arms. Kindling something deep inside her, the thrilling sense of excitement she'd felt when David McCormick or one of her other friends took her to some unwatched, forbidden place and began to finger her inside her knickers...

She gasped, the thought in her memory turning to passion in the dream as Langham's drifting hand trailed down her chest, along her belly, down between her thighs. "Dear God," she gasped, reaching down to grasp his wrist and pull him harder, tighter against herself.

"You'll be mine, Cassandra," he whispered into her ear, his tongue flickering there. "All mine."

"Yes!" The word tore from her throat in a harsh gust as her hips rose to his fingers, and just like that his firm hand was cupping a slit gone mucky with the gush of her juices, tears already streaming from her eyes when she felt the expert strum of his fingernails trailing along her swollen labia.

Cassie's legs sprang apart, her clawed fingers on Langham's wrist pulling him closer as she ground her mound shamelessly against his questing fingers. When his thumb brushed almost casually over her clit, she purred with joy and plunged her tongue into his mouth. She craved this man, needed him, wanted to give herself to him. "Fuck," she whimpered.

"Yes." His voice held a deep, twanging sibillance, an odd quality that filled her mind with dark and wondrous things. "We will." She became aware, very suddenly, that he was naked with her, and that the heavy, thick heat she felt along her thigh could only be his penis.

Blindly, without waiting for a signal from her eyes or her mind, Cassie's hand shot down his hairless body and snatched greedily at what it found there, a hard eager column rising hot and vital from a sedate bush of coarse hair. She knew in her dream, as her hand closed around his root, that she'd never in her life felt a more perfect cock. She massaged him, pulling, trying to please him as their tongues dueled freely in their mouths, his hand stoking a higher and higher fire between her legs.

And all the while the darkness pressed closer around her. Soothing. Cloying. Tightening.

She struggled to turn toward him, to raise her leg atop the smooth perfection of his hip, to welcome his cock deep into the furnace of her aching quim, but before she could face him he moved on top of her, smoothly, nestling between her thighs as though he was made to be there, and her brain realized of course, he'll be on top, he belongs on top of me, and suddenly his hips were dipping low, muscles moving with swooping, fluid grace.

He speared her perfectly, finding her hole on the first confident try, no fumbling or eagerness. The slide of his steel-velvet penis into the welcoming sheath of her soaked vagina was an act of fulfillment, of completion. She moaned and arched her back, her feet climbing up past his knees, opening herself wide for his thrusts. The darkness was very close around her now, and she welcomed it as she welcomed her dream lover, taking what he chose to give her and giving herself in return, wanting to sacrifice herself to this incomparable man, in soul and body.

Sweat slicked their bodies as he wedged deeply inside her, his rhythm a drumbeat for her pounding heart as his hand ventured up her body, over her quivering breast, to close around her throat like a vise as his grinning mouth descended to meet his grasping fingers, to find her neck with his teeth bared...