The Vampyre Quartet Read online

  Praise for Mariah Mundi

  ‘When Harry Potter hangs up his wizard’s cloak, booksellers will be looking to G. P. Taylor’s Mariah Mundi – The Midas Box, to keep the cashtills ringing.’ BBC News

  ‘It really is wonderful, wonderful stuff … Mariah Mundi surpasses Potter on just about every level there is. Highly recommended.’

  The Bookbag

  ‘The book that combines the big story of C. S. Lewis and the plot of an Indiana Jones movie. We could genuinely be looking at the book series that will replace Harry Potter at the top of every child’s wish list.’ BuddyHollywood Review

  by the same author

  SHADOWMANCER

  WORMWOOD

  TERSIAS

  SHADOWMANCER: THE CURSE OF SALAMANDER STREET

  MARIAH MUNDI: THE MIDAS BOX

  MARIAH MUNDI: THE GHOST DIAMONDS

  MARIAH MUNDI: THE SHIP OF FOOLS

  Coming soon

  THE VAMPYRE LABYRINTH: DUST BLOOD

  Praise for Shadowmancer

  ‘The biggest event in children’s fiction since Harry Potter.’

  The Times

  ‘The adventure unfolds at a vivid and breathless pace.’ Observer

  ‘Shadowmancer is flying off the bookshelves as if a wizard had incanted a charm on it.’ Herald

  ‘A magical tale of vicars and witches.’ Daily Telegraph

  ‘A compelling and dark-edged fantasy … highly recommended.’

  Independent

  Praise for Wormwood

  ‘Wormwood is breathtaking in scope … an extraordinary achievement told by a master storyteller. The book is, quite simply, marvellous.’ Guardian

  Praise for Tersias

  ‘It is, in a word, brilliant. Colourful, dramatic, relentless, accessible to children – and more frightening for their parents.’ Scotsman

  ‘The plot hurtles along carrying the reader from one cliff-hanger to the next.’ Daily Telegraph

  In regards to

  The Vampyre Quartet

  THERE WAS ONCE a time in England when no one would ever believe in a creature that stalked the streets at night, taking its pick of anyone who dare stray out after dark. Those who spoke of such a thing would be thought of as foolish, gauche and contemptible.

  Eight hundred and sixty-six years ago all that would change. It was then that the first legends were spoken about a quartet of creatures that could live for ever. It was said that immortal monsters, capable of both love and murder, had chosen to live in the world of man. They were a secretive, deceptive and a powerful enemy of humankind who desired one thing from us – blood.

  In the dark north, even to this day, the belief in four such monsters still persists. Much has been written of the creatures. Sceptics have denounced the legends as poppycock and the ramblings of a flibbertigibbet. Others far wiser have spoken of what they have heard in whispers and have locked their doors and windows, never inviting a stranger to cross their threshold after dark.

  This is especially so in the small coastal town of Whitby – the place where the legend began and where some would say it continues even to this day. You may have heard of the place and the beasts that prowl its streets. Some dare not give them a name, but to those who are willing they are known as The Vampyre Quartet …

  RedEye

  [ 1 ]

  Brick Lane – 7th September

  JAGO HARKER ran through the streets clutching the small leather bag that contained his whole world. His fingers were tightly entwined with those of the woman that he pulled along. She stumbled on the broken glass that littered the pavement as they both weaved in and out of the smashed market stalls of Brick Lane.

  The whole of London seemed to be fleeing, a mass of people frightened from their homes by the exploding iron caskets that fell from the sky. Far to the east they could hear the bombs begin to explode on the Isle of Dogs. Jago looked up. The sky was filled with aircraft. They were like the black shadows of a flock of small birds against the blue sky of that late afternoon. He could not believe what he saw. It was like the swirls of starlings that would winter-roost on the top of his flats in Old Nichol Street, Shoreditch.

  The aircraft were soon overhead. He listened as the low hum of their engines echoed in the street. His mother clutched his hand tightly as Brick Lane began to explode behind them. A bomb landed on what was left of the market. It blasted two barrow stalls high into the air, splintering the frightened crowd with shards of wood. All was silent for the briefest moment as Jago gripped his mother close to him and pulled her instinctively into the doorway of a tobacconist’s shop.

  The earth shuddered. Screams rang out as a bomb blew out the front of the pub on the corner of Bethnal Green. The street was filled with thick white dust that blotted out the sun and covered the bodies in the road like a fall of snow. The crowd ran, children screamed, an old woman stood shaking as she looked around helplessly. The air-raid siren wailed a few streets away as the thud, thud, thud moved slowly to the west.

  ‘You have to get away … It’s all arranged,’ Jago’s mother said, her voice in panic as she tied the label on to his leather jacket. ‘A good school – nice town. I spent some time there myself.’

  ‘But I want to stay with you,’ Jago protested as he tried to untie the string and the cardboard tag.

  ‘It’s all decided. You are being evacuated tonight. You’ve got to get away from the bombing. It’s important.’ His mother tried to smile but just looked even more concerned.

  ‘I’m fifteen. I don’t want to go. Only children get evacuated.’

  His mother looked at him and held his face in her hands.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But do this for me.’

  She reached to her bag that was slumped in the corner of the shop doorway. For a while she fumbled inside, looking through scraps of paper until she found what she had been searching for. Without a word, she handed Jago and old sepia photograph.

  He stared at it for a while as the whir of the bombers faded away.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked as he looked at the two young girls not much older than him leaning against the ruins of a stone pillar on a sunny day.

  ‘It’s me, and an old friend,’ she said softly, as if the thought brought back a fond memory.

  ‘When was it taken?’ he replied unable to believe that the woman in the photograph was his mother.

  ‘Sixteen years ago in the town where you are going. It’s a good place – now promise me that whatever happens … you will go there. Keep the picture and find her. She’s called Maria. You must find her.’

  Her voice was insistent. Jago knew it would be pointless to refuse.

  ‘But I will come back. As soon as I hear this is over. I’ll be back – understand?’

  His mother nodded, smoothed back his long black hair and kissed him on the forehead. Jago was tall for his age, his angular features and olive skin a welcome sight to all who knew him.

  ‘We better get going. It’s a long walk to King’s Cross.’ She stopped, thought and then went on as if she had to add something important. ‘Everything will work out for the good – never forget that.’

  The dust in the street settled. His mother looked out from the doorway anxiously. Jago listened for enemy aircraft. They heard a distinct drone, a drawl of anger like a wounded animal. He waited before he moved.

  ‘All clear,’ he said confidently.

  His mother had grown to trust his uncanny knack of seeing the future. Jago was always able to tell if an air attack was coming. He would often wake in his sleep and drag her from the bed to the shelter below their overly tidy flat in Abingdon House, Old Nichol Street. If the unseen, unheard warning came sooner, he would take her to the Underground station at Aldgate and wait for the bombing to
start. He would tell her when the bombers were overhead, and even though they were deep below the city they would feel the tremble of the explosions above them.

  She was always astonished that he would know the bombers were coming an hour before the siren would start to wail. It was as if he had a sixth sense, that he could glimpse the future, but then again, he was so much like his father.

  Jago could not make the comparison. His father had never been mentioned to him. He didn’t know what he looked like or where he was from. His mother kept that a guarded secret. As far as he was aware, there had been just Jago and his mother, Martha, all of his life. No family, few friends and no one who had known them longer than when his mother came to London fifteen years ago. When he had tried to talk about his father, he was met with a wall of silence, a solemn look at the floor and a tightening of the lips. Jago had learnt not to ask. His mother had learnt not to look so closely at her son and see in him the man who was his father.

  Yet that was so hard for her. As he grew in age and learning, Jago looked just like the man who she had met all those years ago. She had been seventeen; it was the day of the photograph that her son now gripped in his hand.

  ‘We’ll have to be going,’ she said impatiently, as if she was irritated by the frequency of the bombings. ‘The night train leaves at seven o’clock from Platform 9.’

  She spoke as if she had to give him this vital piece of information. Then without another word, she dug in her pocket and handed him a tattered brown envelope stuffed with crisp five-pound notes. Jago had never seen so much money.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ll need it. There’s fifty pounds – keep it safe,’ she replied as she pushed him from the doorway and picked her way through the debris that filled the junction with Bethnal Green.

  ‘But … but I never knew we had so much money,’ he argued as he followed on.

  ‘I’ve been saving it. Didn’t want to spend until there was a good reason,’ his mother said coldly as she walked ahead clutching her bag.

  ‘But you don’t earn five pounds in a month – how did you get all this?’ he asked as he stuffed the wad deep inside the pocket of his leather coat.

  ‘It was sent … to pay the rent. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘Who by?’ he asked as a building further down the road collapsed, sending a pall of dust high into the afternoon sky.

  ‘Never you mind. Someone kind … very kind.’ She scolded him with a smile.

  The street hung heavy with acrid smoke. There was no wind or ounce of breeze. Jago could see the plumes of flames from the houses on Petticoat Lane. He tugged his mother by the arm of her coat and tried to hold her close so as not to be lost in the crowd of people that pushed them on like flotsam on a human tide. He looked at the worried faces of those who pressed close to him. Some stared with deep, rimmed eyes and already looked dead; others seemed to have life. It was as if those who would not make it had been marked for death and were already, in some strange way, leaving this world. They were half alive, doing all that you would do but waiting to go on, though not knowing their fate. Jago panicked and wanted to close his eyes. A woman several years younger than his mother looked at him. He shuddered as he saw what looked like wisps of her soul pouring from her eyes like a thick white vapour. She scurried ahead with a flock of children around her waist, shouting as she pushed through the crowds of people.

  His mother pulled the collar of her coat even higher. Jago couldn’t see her face for the hat that was pinned to the side of her head. It more like a brown dinner plate with two fake roses sewn on to it.

  The bombing had blown out the fronts of the tall grey houses on City Road. The crowds had gone and they walked alone through the deserted streets towards King’s Cross station. Jago was surprised by how silent the world was, even in war. There were no cars, buses, no rumble of the Underground. All he could hear were faint distant voices and the occasional bell of an ambulance far away. What people there were had gone north towards Hampstead. All they now passed were row on row of empty houses. Some were bombed out, some boarded, and others just left with their doors open as if waiting the imminent return of those who lived there.

  His mother was intent on seeing him off. He knew it was to make sure he caught the train. His leather bag felt heavier than it had before and grew more cumbersome with each mile they walked. The man in the flat downstairs had made it for his last birthday. He had known Jago since he was born. Cresco would often look after him when his mother was at work. He was always avuncular and kind, and would tell him stories about the eastern land of Garbova, somewhere near the Black Sea, and the great castle that overlooked the town.

  Jago didn’t mind being left with ‘Uncle’ Cresco – the stories he told were magical and came to life. Cresco would smile at him as he spoke, his face would wrinkle and his thick brows would rise higher with every word as Jago listened. He would tell him of the great evil that took the land and how one man with a brave heart overcame it all.

  On the mantelpiece above the fire was a golden cup that Cresco had said had once belonged to the King of Garbova. It was the only thing of value that he had in the tiny apartment. The cup was polished and worn. It was edged with faded reliefs of strange animals that were almost rubbed bare.

  In one story he had told Jago that to drink from the cup would give protection from any harm between two full moons. Cresco had taken the chalice, poured in a slosh of red wine and, as he told the story, sipped from the gold cup. Then he handed it to Jago. At first he hesitated, as the sweet smell of the wine seemed to fill the room. Cresco talked more and more, his words were like a magical spell that entranced Jago as he stared at the wine that shimmered in the light of the fire.

  ‘The Cup of Garbova – the cup of crimson wonder,’ Cresco had said, and in that moment he looked fifty years younger. ‘Found by Krakanu, a boy like yourself, Jago. The Apsara – an evil creature had stolen the sun and the moon and the world had no light. Krakanu searched the caves underneath Castle Garbova and killed the demon. When he stabbed the beast through the heart, the cup fell from within it. Three drops of its blood smeared the side. Krakanu drank from the cup and was unbeatable in battle. Here, Jago – drink – for your own good – you never know when the battle will come to your door.’

  Jago had reluctantly drunk from the cup. He felt no different. Cresco looked at him and smiled. Jago would never forget seeing the tears in the man’s eyes.

  The leather bag, like his coat, had taken Cresco many hours to cut out and sew together. Each was finished in fine stitching. His mother had told him that Cresco was once the tailor to the Tsar of Russia and that he had fled to London. Cresco himself was far too humble a man to ever mention such a fine thing.

  As he walked, Jago looked at the bag. In it was everything he owned, everything he was being forced to take by his mother. Even Cresco had left him a parting gift wrapped in newspaper and stuffed in the bottom of the bag. From the smell, Jogo knew it must be wurtzl sausage or smoked fish.

  If he could have had his way, Jago would have gone back to the apartment and taken his chances. He would have run with his mother to the night shelter when the bombers came and shopped for her during the day.

  Cresco had stayed.

  ‘Nothing makes me run any more,’ Cresco had said to him that morning when Jago had told him he was being evacuated. ‘I have spent too much time running. Now I stand and fight. This is my country now. I am an Englishman. I will stand in the park and shake my fists at those bombers – they won’t kill Cresco – I have drunk too many times from the cup.’

  Jago hadn’t believed him. He was an old man who often wandered the landing of the apartment block in just his underpants and shirt, with remnants of his breakfast tucked in his grey beard. Cresco had escaped from a forgotten odd corner of Europe that in his mind was a fearful place of ghosts and phantoms. The war had followed him through Austria and France and only a narrow strip of water stood between him
and the old enemy.

  Now, Jago knew his life was changing. Cresco’s stories were just words and even Krakanu couldn’t save them. As they turned the corner of Cubitt Road, he shuddered.

  ‘They’re coming again,’ he said in a whisper as his feet gathered pace.

  ‘It’s over, Jago. They have sounded the all clear.’

  ‘It’s from the north – they’ve turned back.’

  ‘It can’t be. The siren would have sounded,’ his mother said, knowing she should trust him.

  Jago stopped and looked up. He sniffed the air and listened like an animal awaiting the hunter.

  ‘Run, mother!’ he shouted as he grabbed her hand and pulled her on.

  ‘What is it, Jago?’ she asked as a shudder of fear rippled her spine.

  ‘They’re coming low and fast – near to the ground,’ he said as he ran faster.

  His mother ran with him, holding his hand as she looked to the northern sky. The bombers always came from the east, she thought as she tried to keep pace, jumping over the broken windowpanes that were scattered in the road. Together they ran towards Gray’s Inn Road and Coram’s Fields. Jago knew the way. It was where he had gone to school until it had been bombed.

  ‘There’s a shelter at Russell Square,’ his mother said as she listened to the low hum of the approaching aircraft.

  ‘We’ll never make it – they’re too close,’ he said as he lost grip of her hand.

  ‘It’s not right, Jago. I don’t like this.’ She felt something was wrong, that this was no ordinary attack.

  ‘Run faster!’ he shouted as the planes came closer.

  Like a carriage from a fairground ride, a small bomber circled overhead. Its black wings cast a serpent-like shadow on the ground as it sped closer. Jago looked up. He could see the pilot looking down at him as they ran across the field. There was a burst of machine-gun fire that ripped through the grass. It smashed into an old oak tree and sprayed shrapnel in the air.