Chapter 21

In which things come to a head.

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The expression on the child's face was so serious and yet so utterly unafraid that Mycroft wasn't sure whether to laugh or groan because there was probably going to be no way out of this situation that would avoid the truth. Not only was Sherlock already far too perceptive to miss a lie, but Mycroft had no wish to lie to, of all people, the boy staring up at him with such shining blue eyes.

"You've already paused far too long to tell me I'm mistaken, you know," Sherlock hopped onto his feet and walked over to the nearest wooden box with ancient electrical wires sticking out. "What's this, please?"

Sinking down into the boy's place, Mycroft rubbed a hand quickly across his face. "It's a Coherer prototype," he said, watching the child's face as the instrument was duly inspected. "Sherlock, we need to talk about your question, will you please come and sit down?"

Reluctantly returning the primitive radio signal detector back to its box, Sherlock walked back and duly sat down on the adjacent square padded seat, hands resting in his lap.

Mycroft inhaled slowly. "What makes you think I'm a vampire?"

"Are you going to suggest you're not, Mycroft? Really?" mildly chiding, Sherlock folded his arms and tilted his head slightly to one side. "There are a lot of books in your library and there's a lot of books down here too, though these books," his eyes swept the arcane collection which Mycroft had made certain would never see the light of day, "are a lot more interesting." He shook his head. "And I'm not stupid, you know."

Sherlock wasn't stupid; Mycroft did indeed know this. But was the boy ready to deal with the truth? "Hypothetically," he began, slowly. "Imagine for a moment that you were correct, and that I am, in fact, a vampire," he said. "How would you feel about the situation?"

Pursing his mouth, the boy nodded thoughtfully. "Are you going to bite me and drink all my blood?"

"Of course I'm not going to bite you or do anything of the sort," Mycroft looked aghast. "Whatever makes you ask such a dreadful question?"

Sherlock shrugged, matter-of-factly. "It's what vampires do, isn't it?" he shrugged again. "Are you going to bite Kit and drink all her blood, then?"

Pressing a hand flat across his eyes, Mycroft groaned softly in his chest. Keeping his eyes closed, he exhaled loudly. "No," he said. "I have absolutely no intention of upsetting Miss Penderic in the smallest part," he said, meeting the child's gaze. "The lady looks after both of us far too well for me to wish her even the slightest inconvenience," he added. "I have no idea what outrageous gothic horrors you've been reading, but I can assure you that drinking anyone's blood would not be an event remotely on my horizon."

"Does Kit know you're a vampire?" Sherlock lifted both eyebrows. Kit seemed to know everything that was going on.

"Are you absolutely convinced that I am, Sherlock?" Mycroft spoke softly now, still hesitant to say what he realised was virtually unavoidable at this point.

Looking up into the dark and very serious eyes of his guardian, Sherlock grinned suddenly. "Being a vampire would make a lot more sense than anything else," he said. "It seems the only logical explanation that explains all the data," he added. "Unless you're an alien from another planet?"

Finding his mouth was curving of its own accord, Mycroft allowed the smile room to grow. "I am definitely not an alien from another planet. I was born in Cornwall, not all that far from Kit's own birthplace."

"Then when did you become a vampire?" the boy kept his eyes on Mycroft's face; there was to be no getting out of this one.

"You understand, Sherlock, that this is information nobody outside the three of us can ever know? Not a single other person can share this secret or it will make things extraordinarily difficult for all of us and myself, especially," Mycroft exhaled slowly.

"I doubt anyone would believe me, in any case," the child sounded far older than his years. "I didn't really believe it myself, but there were so many little things that pointed in only this direction," he paused, wondering. "Are you cross because I found out?"

"I'm sure there will be any number of things that I may be cross about in the future, but this particular instance isn't one of them, my boy," Mycroft gave a genuine smile. "And yes," he nodded. "In answer to your question, I am, in fact, a vampire, though nothing like any of the stories you might have read, and certainly not like any of those horrific Hollywood extravaganzas," he pushed Sherlock's hair carefully away from the boy's eyes. "I'm rather boring, really."

"But you haven't said anything about when you became a vampire," Sherlock frowned, determined now to have the whole of it, chapter and verse. "And what's that, and why is it in such a big glass case?" he demanded, turning and pointing to the great display on the wall behind them.

Turning his own head to gaze once again at the ancient cow hide, its beginning so distant in time even though it spoke of problems that were very much in the here and now. "That," Mycroft said, "is a very long story; far too long for me to begin now, but I promise to tell you everything you want to know when I come back after I've sorted out a particularly undesirable problem that is tasking me at present. I also would like you to leave this room alone until I return, so that I can show you all the things that are down here in safety; I didn't build this sanctuary with nine-year olds in mind, you see. There are dangerous things down here."

"And are you dangerous, Mycroft?" Sherlock's voice was quiet. "Have you done lots of bad things?"

"Probably, but not the kind of bad things you might imagine," the tall man stood, walking over to a small but heavily-lidded wooden chest. Extracting something long and vaguely shiny, as well as a couple of smaller, less-shiny items, he slipped them into his jacket pocket before turning back and holding out a hand. "Come now; let's leave this place until I have sufficient time to give you a proper tour."

Slipping his fingers into the cool hand of his guardian without the slightest hesitation, Sherlock wondered what kind of a problem might be particularly undesirable to a vampire. "Where are you going?" he asked. "And will you be long?"

"I don't think I'll be too terribly long," Mycroft smiled faintly, intensely relieved at the absence of any sign of mistrust in the child. "I'm going for a ride in a helicopter."

###

Jude Roberts had worked with Mycroft Holmes for a considerable time now, longer, in fact, than most of the others in the department. There was something of a trend for people to move on to greener pastures after a handful of years; usually into higher positions in national government, or specialist teams in national security. He'd known several individuals who'd been tempted away by international and overseas security interests; the US seemed to have no end of an appetite for Holmes-trained surveillance specialists, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Which made it all the more strange, Jude thought, was that he was still here. Not that he hadn't been approached a few times by external interests, but in each case, just when things had started to get really serious, there had always been a sudden vague change of mind and a brisk withdrawal of said interest. The event had always been accompanied by a sharp salary increase, and, on the last two occasions, a significant expansion in both his personal responsibilities as well as his personal security clearance. Jude was not an unintelligent man; he had worked out some while ago that he was being kept there through a deliberate process of intervention on Mycroft's part, and on occasion, he'd wondered why. Not wondered too hard, mind you; he knew that his role was now fairly central to the entire department and that Mycroft had come to depend on him literally as his right-hand man.

Which made it all the more strange therefore, that Holmes still refused to trust such an obviously trustworthy lieutenant with what seemed to be fairly basic details. Just why was Mycroft so suddenly intrigued by this strange man who appeared to have no recent history, no legal identity and who seemed to be living in a bleak stone dwelling on the edge of nowhere? Even more importantly, how did Mycroft Holmes know all about the big bearded man when there was absolutely no other trace of the guy? No birth certificate or National Insurance number; no record of him on any national census dating as far back as record went? Nothing on the electoral role, no medical or dentist records. Not even a history of a car registration number. The man didn't legally exist.

So how did Mycroft know him? Was the stranger a remnant from some Cold War project of the seventies that had lingered into the eighties? Was the big man a foreign agent of some kind? An off-the-records assassin? And why had Mycroft been so fanatical about the specialist armament of the commando unit already enroute to the roundhouse outside St Agnes? When he'd said to have each man armed with an M12, Jude had nearly swallowed his tongue. Not only were flamethrowers exceptionally dangerous weapons, but they'd been blacklisted by any number of sovereign nations since the end of the fifties. The army had them, of course; just about every Western force had them but, like chlorine gas, nobody wanted to discuss the fact of that particular ownership. The entire scenario was full of gaps and Jude had come to dislike anything so incomplete and potentially disastrous.

And now Mycroft himself was heading down to Cornwall to supervise the operation in person. Jude compressed his jaw until his teeth ached. Mycroft almost never went anywhere there days that required him to be active in the field. It wasn't even as if his presence was going to be of a purely observational nature, no; the man had indicated he intended to set himself right in the middle of the whole damn affair. Bait, he'd said. But how did he know the big man well enough to expect him to go for such bait? And why, with all the other precautions he'd taken to ensure his personal invisibility in all of his labyrinthine operations, did Holmes suddenly pick this situation as the one in which to act like John effing Wayne? It made absolutely no sense at all. None of it did. Jude Roberts was not an unintelligent man and right now his brain was working overtime.

At this time of day, the drive to the heliport at the City Airport was brief; the big Apache helicopter looked mean, powerful and darkly ominous. Though it was not currently loaded with external weaponry, the chopper looked a nasty piece of work; the thing was designed to hunt tanks, for god's sake. Flying a direct line, it would reach St Agnes within the hour. It would be dark by then, of course, but the commandos would be in operational readiness regardless of the light-quality, waiting only for Mycroft to arrive and put himself right in the line of fire. Bait.

"Are you really certain this is something that demands your personal supervision, Mr Holmes?" Jude felt he had to try one last time to dissuade his director from taking this radical and unprecedented step.

"I appreciate your discomfort at my decision, Jude," Mycroft slid a pair of fine black leather gloves onto his hands as he spoke. "However, this man is not only a personal danger to me and my family, but also to others in more insidious ways than you could possibly imagine. If he is not stopped now, we'll lose him and he'll go to ground, warned of our intent and even more dangerous when he eventually resurfaces, because that's precisely what he would do. If that happened, nobody associated with me by even the most tenuous of connections would be safe, and frankly, I'd rather take this particular bull by the horns now, regardless of the potential danger, than permit him to return to wreak further havoc as it pleases him to do so," he frowned, hesitating. "Should anything ... unfortunate occur, I have left instructions with my private legal advisors to provide you with certain documents pertaining to the disposition of my estate; I'm sure I may rely on you to fulfil my final requests; you're one of the most efficient and loyal individuals I know."

As Mycroft boarded the helicopter, Jude watched, speechless, standing firm beneath the tremendous downdraft as the beast lifted up off the ground. Mr Holmes had never been as effusive before and Jude suddenly wondered if his boss was even planning to return. He shivered, though the evening was far from cool. Time alone would tell.

The sky was darkening into true night by the time the army helicopter circled an approach into St Agnes and Mycroft stared out of the nearest thickened glass window at the burgeoning lights of the villages and towns below. The old names as familiar to him now as they had been from the time when Jesus walked Judea. Zelah; Mithian, Trevellas ...

"The noise from the engine will alert our quarry, Mr Holmes," the helicopter pilot's voice, loud over the noise, echoed in Mycroft's earphones. "Are you sure you don't want me to have us put us down far enough away to minimise discovery?"

"By now, he already knows we're coming," Mycroft replied at the same volume. "He will know it's me, but I'll keep him occupied until the entire unit is deployed and can close the trap," he added. "I'll make my escape while he's being kept busy. Are the explosives in place?"

"No time to rig sufficient explosives safely, sir," the Captain of the small, elite unit of commandos shouted, breaking in on the conversation. "But HMS Dauntless is hanging just off the coast and has agreed to lend us a hand with a spot of target practice," the man was grinning, Mycroft could hear it in his voice. "They've already been provided with precise co-ordinates and only need a signal to launch a guided strike missile on a radio-signal command from this," he held up a small black box in the palm of his hand. "Thirty seconds after the signal is sent, I'm afraid the cliff-erosion at St Agnes is going to become a great deal worse."

"How do you plan on covering up such an explosion?" Mycroft shouted back. "The blast alone will alert the locals."

The man grinned again, white teeth gleaming in the blacked out chopper. "There've been several old World War Two sea-mines coming ashore in these parts of recent; they make a hell of a din when they go off. We'll simply stick with that as a cover story for both the explosion and the damage to the cliff."

It was, Mycroft had to admit, a fairly ingenious solution at such short notice. There was only one more thing he needed. He held out his hand. "As I'll be going inside, I think I should have the remote signaller since it is my intention to incapacitate our target before we consign his mortal remains to the deep," he said.

"I have two remotes, sir," the Captain had stopped smiling. Taking orders from a high-up government official was one thing; putting his men's lives in the hands of that same official was a completely different matter. "How will we know when you have sent the signal if we're outside and you're inside? I can't risk the lives of everyone involved in the operation."

"I'll go inside first and alone, Captain," Mycroft kept his hand held out. "You will keep your men well back until you hear my signal, which I assure you, you will. At that point the task of your team is to ensure our target does not escape through your cordon if he manages to make it past me. Is that understood? You and your men are to come nowhere near the place when I am inside; you are here strictly to ensure the target does not escape until the situation has been ... resolved."

"But you may still be inside when the missile from the Dauntless hits the co-ordinates! You're placing your own life at risk in order to keep the target pinned down ... why?" the commando officer was clearly baffled at Mycroft's apparent willingness to sacrifice himself for the sake of the operation's success.

"Don't worry, Captain; I am not as unused to combat situations as you might think," Mycroft crooked his fingers. "The spare remote, if you please."

With clear reluctance, the commando unit leader handed over the relatively innocuous-looking box. There was a simple switch on one side, protected by a lightweight plastic cover; strong enough to avoid accidental activation, but easy enough to crush through when the action was intended.

By the level of the external horizon, it was clear the helicopter was descending. It would be a matter of minutes only before they arrived at the site of the ancient granite roundhouse and the night's events would begin to unfold. Mycroft knew that, one way or another, a vampire was going to die tonight. Possibly more than one.

The 'copter landed in an area clear except for some patches of bracken, the group's night-vision optics and lights enabling everything to be seen relatively clearly, though with a ghostly greenish glow. Mycroft had accepted a set of the cumbersome goggles, even though he had little need of them; there was still more than ample light for a vampire's eyes. And though he was still dressed in his City-suit, Mycroft managed to navigate the snarled undergrowth with an almost supernatural grace, slipping between the stunted, gnarled and strangely-leaning trees as the group homed in on the location of what he knew would be Daveth's sanctuary.

Lifting his arm in silent command, the Captain gave out a further series of rapid hand-movements, placing his men in a semi-circle around the looming stone building with approximately fifty-feet in between each man. The compact M12s Mycroft noticed each soldier carrying could easily cover that kind of distance, so nothing larger than a rabbit fleeing from the vicinity would be able to make it clear of the place unscathed.

And that was the critically important thing. If he wasn't able to deal with Daveth alone, then he'd make damn sure the man was as seriously injured as possible, thus making a clean escape impossible. There was no way an injured vampire could jump down to the sea; the cliffs around St Agnes were almost vertical and sheer, with lethally jagged rocks lying just beneath the surface of the frothing ocean hundreds of feet below. If anyone attempted to make an escape in that direction, they'd be broken into pieces. Which left only one other way to run; inland. And the commandos were now carefully arranged in such a manner that even though they were all well back from the building itself, there was no possibility a man could make it through such a cordon unobserved. It was at that point that the flamethrowers would prove their worth.

But in the meantime, it was up to him to initiate the operation. "Have your men stay on constant alert until you receive my signal," Mycroft spoke softly now in the commando captain's ear. "It will be loud and unmistakable; as soon as you hear it, draw back while maintaining formation but get them away from any potential blast-radius, as I shall also have signalled the Dauntless, understood?"

Not terribly happy, but aware now that the civilian standing in front of him wasn't entirely without combat experience and who had far too much authority to be easily overridden, the army officer nodded briefly. If the man had a death-wish, then so be it. As long as his men were safe and, given that each one was currently cradling a very nasty-looking weapon which dealt instant death by fire, he wasn't overly fussed what the man Holmes felt he had to do. One way or another, the operation would be successful.

Satisfied that there was no move now for Daveth that would not lead to his certain demise, Mycroft took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and stepped forward towards the strange round building. There was a faint pathway running through thinning gorse and bracken, and though most people would have thought it nothing more than a fox-trail, judging by the indistinct indents of large shoes faintly outlined in the moonlight, Mycroft knew better. His thoughts settled into a peculiar kind of calm now that there was real evidence and confirmation of recent human traffic. The vaguely-shaped footprints led directly towards the dwelling, and none led away. Daveth had returned here after their meeting in St James's Park and had not left since; the vampire was inside and probably aware even now that both he and a dozen men were in the near vicinity; if Mycroft could make out their combined heartbearts, it was almost a given that so too could the older vampire.

Abandoning his night-sight goggles as soon as he was far enough away from the commandos to avoid raising suspicions, Mycroft walked steadily along the faint track, finding that he was heading towards an almost overgrown, half-hidden door set deep into the wall of the circular building, almost invisible among a number of massively tall stones leaning almost up against the carved wall itself. As Jude Roberts had been at pains to point out earlier, there were no visible windows anywhere on the curved walls, not a one. This meant that unless there was also a means of ingress through the roof, then this door was the only way in and the only way out. He'd need to remember that.

Searching for a handle, Mycroft didn't bother to knock; his presence would already be known in any case. Locating an ancient bar of solid iron embedded within the massive door, he lifted it up hard, grunting as the extreme weight demanded far more than he was expecting; it seemed the door was made of the same stone as the rest of the building. No human could have opened this without the aid of heavy-duty machinery; another way Daveth ensured his existence remained undisturbed by any passing hiker. He left the door fractionally ajar as he stepped inside

The darkness within was complete, though Mycroft could sense a large space around him. There was the smell of recent wood smoke in the air; of candlewax and leather, as well as the lingering fragrance of an expensive cologne. He could also make out the scent of many books, a perfume he recognised only too well from his own great collection. Using every means at his disposal, he searched for the other vampire. There was nothing, and so he waited for the slightest sound, the most nebulous sign that he was not alone. It came far more readily than he'd expected.

The rough scrape of a match and the sudden flare of a candle's flame, the illumination increasing as several other candles, enormous white church candles, were added.

"I knew you would find me at some point, though I did not expect to see you quite so soon, Mycurrought," Daveth spoke softly, the faintest edge of menace in the words. "And you have left all your companions outside in the dark," he added. "Hardly polite."

"I am not without some authority and resources in this modern world," Mycroft kept his eyes fixed on the older vampire. "Finding you was not as difficult as you might think."

"Thus you felt the need to repay my visit to you," Daveth's tone was distinctly mocking. "And you brought friends," he added, pausing. "Or are they dinner?" As Daveth had been speaking, he had continued lighting candles and now the large space was fairly blazing with flickering light. He turned back to Mycroft, a strange smile on his bearded face. "Welcome to my castle."

The interior of the roundhouse was as unique as its exterior and quite breathtaking, with the immense space inside the circular bastion forming a single incredible room. Fifty feet high and almost the same in diameter, the vast stone walls held the history of several thousand years. The floor beneath Mycroft's feet was of solid oak, great hand-carved slabs of the stuff, formidable enough to outlast the wear of centuries; polished to a gleam by the endless passage of a single pair of leather-shod feet. A prodigious central chimney ran all the way from the floor to the roof high above. Suspended by immense blackened iron supports emanating from the curved wall like spokes in a wheel, the chimney vented an enormous circular fireplace, altogether a piece of engineering so brilliant that Mycroft could not recall seeing its like elsewhere on any of his far-reaching travels. As the fire burned, the stone chimney would heat, radiating dry warmth throughout the entire volume of the chamber. And what a chamber.

The extensive floor space held substantial pieces of furniture; solid wood and leather couches, some made in the Roman style. A very large desk, opened and covered with papers, jars of quills and tape-tied scrolls. Open bookcases that seemed to spread up and around a good half of the wallspace, and a single stone staircase in a shallow spiral up and around the inner wall, the staggered heights of the various bookcases acting as a crude secondary stair from one case to the next. The narrow stone steps rose up around the outer edge of the room passing great cabinets and lockers which had been built into the walls themselves, leading eventually to the roof and a darkened area that looked like a hatch. Each piece of storage might be reached with ease by anyone standing on the stair, some cupboards more than large enough for a grown adult human to stand inside. Between these, the bare granite expanse was liberally covered with oil paintings of immense dimensions, each one depicting some great national scene; battles, coronations and the old kings. Candlelight from numerous iron sconces now glinted and reflected from the thick gleam of the ornate golden frames. Any stone that wasn't covered by book or painting was graced by thick tapestries of significant age and historical import and interspersed by ancient musical instruments. The roundhouse was a living museum.

In the brief moment it took Mycroft to assimilate and absorb these details, he felt a pang of sadness. In another time, he would have sought Daveth out as a companion and friend; someone with whom to share the wonders of each passing age and to marvel with him at the new sensations in science and medicine and culture. In another time, he would have loved to browse through the wondrous books he could see waiting in their shelves as well as introducing Daveth to his own mighty collection. But it was not to be. The man was clearly unwilling to embrace the new world or to see that sometimes the old ways needed to become flexible in order to survive.

"You know, of course, why I'm here," Mycroft stood more firmly just inside the door, both hands clasped in front of his body. There was little purpose in beating around the bush. "I find I am unable to accept your proposition and will not be facilitating the death and transformation of either my housekeeper or my ward merely to keep your good opinion," he said, quietly. "Nor will I demean myself by taking another's life coldly and unnecessarily, simply to maintain the gratuitous and inhuman conventions that you demand. If you persist in your course of action, there will be unfortunate repercussions; I give you fair warning; give me your word now that you'll desist and leave my family and I alone, and I will return to London tonight and leave you in peace for the rest of your days."

Daveth listened without any change of expression, but when Mycroft ceased speaking and seemed to have nothing more to add, he laughed harshly. "Desist?" he scoffed. "Desist and leave you to weaken the strain of our people that has lasted longer than the pyramids? Longer than the mountains and the rivers themselves? Desist? I am glad now that you have returned to me so that I may unmake such a feeble excuse of a successor and create a new one while there is still time for me to do so," the big man growled, his voice rising in volume to a near-shout. Daveth stamped forward towards the centre of the floor, his eyes wide and brilliant with fury, his grin a manic thing as his unnatural canines unsheathed themselves and glinted ivory-white in the candlelight. "Defend yourself, Mycurrought," he hissed. "For one of us will not leave this place again," he growled. And lunged.

Prepared for this from the instant he'd set foot inside the building, Mycroft leaped away from the door, pulling down the nearest bookshelf, spilling the precious collection down onto the floor where the books broke apart, their pages and illustrated calligraphy still bright and sharp. In the scant seconds that Daveth's attention strayed across his treasured artefacts, Mycroft had reached into his jacket pocket and extracted the hefty silver dagger he'd taken from the chest beneath his library earlier. A strange-looking weapon; the blade was thick and extraordinarily pointed, and the two shoulders were broad, with each curved slightly up and away from the hand that wielded it, running parallel with the blade and forming a shallow U, with the blade located in the centre. The points of each of the blade's shoulders were also sharp and lethal; a three-pointed killer.

As Daveth lashed out again, Mycroft sidestepped, allowing the bulkier man to shoulder past him, turning as he did to grab Daveth's trailing right arm and pin it high up against one of the embedded oak blocks that framed the single door. Pulling back his hand before driving the dagger mercilessly into the older vampire's wrist, Mycroft ensured the silver knife was embedded so deeply into the block behind, that Daveth was effectively pinned. Even the dagger's twin shoulders were embedded deep into the ancient timber. His Maker could not escape now, at least not until he was able to work himself free which he could not easily do without leaving his hand behind.

"You fool!" Daveth shouted viciously as Mycroft backed away towards the small gap he'd left between the door and its frame when he'd entered. "You surely cannot believe in the old stories that a silver knife can damage one of our kind? As soon as I am free of this, I will rip your head from your shoulders and then destroy the pitiful remnants of your so-called family," he laughed manically. "This blade can neither injure me not keep me from wreaking my rightful vengeance!"

"Perhaps not, but these probably can," Mycroft reached back into his pocket, extracting two World War Two fragmentation grenades. Pulling the pins of each, he dropped one either side of the trapped vampire where they rolled into the dark, before slipping outside and pulling the stone door closed behind him. Pushing two of the large standing stones against the door, Mycroft reached into his other pocket to find the remote signal activation device which he crushed beneath his thumb as he sprinted away from the roundhouse.

There was only a four-second delay on each of the grenade's fuses, insufficient time for Daveth to rip his arm free, find both explosive devices and somehow dispose of them without personal risk. Even as Mycroft tore back through the moonlit-streaked underbrush towards the waiting commandos, the double repercussion of two extremely loud explosions resounded forth from the old building.

"Back!" he shouted. "The missile is coming!"

But the Commando Captain already had his men moving the instant the grenades exploded, by now distancing themselves further and further away from the roundhouse with every second.

Mycroft had barely caught up with a trailing soldier who'd somehow snagged himself up in one of the mangled old trees, when there was a silken swoosh of air, followed by an almighty detonation as the Dauntless missile hit. Even though they might all be beyond the projectile's immediate blast radius, Mycroft flung himself over the man's body to ensure there would be no unplanned deaths this night.

The ground beneath his feet shook and shimmied as the explosion seemed to last forever, even though it was all over in less than three seconds. With a great roar and rumble, one hundred yards of good Cornish clifftop slipped downwards and into the ocean. Huge smoking piles of enormous slabs of granite tumbled endlessly down, ending in a dust-clouded landscape that momentarily darkened even the glow of a bright moon.

Eventually returning closer to the new edge of the cliff, Mycroft was joined by the commando Captain. "Not much left of anything, it would seem," the man observed, staring cautiously at what remained of the clifftop. Not only had the roundhouse completely gone, but the piles of tall stones and a half-acre of storm-blasted woodland had vanished as well. "Job well done, I'd say," he added, lifting his eyebrows. "Is there anything else you want us to do or are you satisfied the mission has been accomplished?"

Looking over the precipice, Mycroft stared down at the great new stack of crushed and tumbled rock, hundreds of thousands of tons of it, all there for one purpose. "Yes," he sighed and straightened his back. "Everything is done here. Please summon our transport and return me to London."

Flying back in the helicopter toward the night-time brilliance of the British capital, Mycroft found his thoughts returning to the new problem of Sherlock's discovery. How could he keep the boy safe and yet avoid any form of alienation? Now that Daveth was gone, there was no longer any pressure to do anything other than raise the child as normally as possible. But given Sherlock's insatiable desire for knowledge and his uncanny ability to ask difficult questions, how was a normal upbringing to be achieved? Mycroft leaned back against the hard steel case of the 'copter's shell and thought about the problems of raising a child. He hoped Kit Penderick was up for what would undoubtedly be a long and gruelling experience.

###

Deep within the heart of the fallen cliff, amid the crushing press of broken stone, a bloodied hand filled a small opening, the merest gap between two jagged blocks of granite. It twitched.

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End of 'I, Vampire' Part I.

Thank you all thus far who've commented and left kudos for the story. I hope you will enjoy the second instalment just as much.

Part II now available!

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