Chapter 5: I smell the blood of a Time Lord man

Playing entry 15/?.

DOCTOR: Honestly! Drax picked up the rovie mouse, ran away from the Cardinal, and did a raspberry on the way out.

MILLENNIA: You're such a liar.

DOCTOR: I'm not! He threw it at me, and it bit me right on the …

MILLENNIA: Bluebird! Tell me another.

DOCTOR: Alright. How about when me and Koschei started a band called the Gallifreyan Academy Hot Five? Wait … were you in that?

She laughed, hugging herself. 'Please … no more about the Deca,' she begged in their home tongue.

'Then what do you wanna hear? I've got loads,' he replied in gallifreyan.

'You,' she said quietly. 'I want to know you.'

'All right … genre?' he joked.

She smiled. 'I don't know. Anything you like. Tell me ... tell me something you think about a lot.'

His gaze shifted to her, sitting there against the wall in the dingy little room they'd been calling their home for sixteen hours. Still, there was no sign of the console turning back to its usual non-fruit constitution, though equally, there were also no more signs of any vampires. He and Millennia had holed up inside the room, but they had no food or water. He would be fine with his gallifreyan metabolism doing its usual routine, but Millennia's synthesised body was barely even a construct. He was well aware that if he didn't find something for her to eat or drink, she would begin to suffer quite severely very quickly.

'Okay,' he said, 'how about … the time I got us trapped on a ship full of vampires with no way out?'

She rolled her eyes. 'You used to be a lot easier to get information out of, Bluebird.'

He smirked. 'Guess I probably was.'

'You've changed so much.'

'Good change or bad change?'

'Good. You're …' she trailed off, frowning.

'What?' he wondered.

'Err … not sure what the word is. But it's a good word.'

'Yeah?'

'Absolutely,' she said, grinning.

They briefly fell into silence, the only sounds being the creaks and groans of the building they were in with a howling wind outside, shaking some fragile windows in their equally fragile frames.

'I never thanked you,' Millennia said suddenly.

He looked back at her. 'What for?'

'For saving me.'

'You don't need to thank me,' he dismissed. 'I've only just started to repay my debt.'

She sighed. 'You just don't listen, do you? I told you, the Celestial Toymaker and me and Rallon wasn't your fault.'

He ignored that, bowing his head. 'Rallon shouldn't have died.'

'You had to make that choice. Rallon would've agreed.'

'You don't know that.'

'I knew him far better than you, Bluebird,' she said sharply. 'We were held by the Celestial Toymaker for centuries, me as a living doll and Rallon trapped as part of the Toymaker's body. He … he would've found dying a relief. When I thought I was dying, I welcomed it.'

He avoided her gaze, so she drew him into a hug. 'I told you before, Bluebird, there were three of us on that ship when we decided to go.'

'Yeah,' he croaked and then suddenly pulled away and stood up as though on a spring. 'Okay, I need to find some supplies.'

'Don't be an idiot,' she moaned.

'We could be here for days. We need to stock up and protect this room,' the Doctor pointed out. 'Besides, I haven't heard any vampires - have you?'

'Well … no,' she confessed. 'But that doesn't mean they're not out there. Maybe we can check the camera system to see if there are any nearby?'

'Won't work. They don't show up on cameras.'

'They don't?' Millennia asked, confused.

'Nope.'

'Why not?'

He shrugged. 'No one knows. They say vampires can't see themselves in mirrors because they have no souls, and cameras seem to work similarly. Or maybe they're on some light level that's imperceivable by a camera. Either way, the first we'll know about them is when they're standing in front of us.'

Millennia blinked as she tensed, feeling more than a little apprehensive. 'Right. We'll just have to be quiet.'

'I'll go on my own,' he said. 'Easier that way.'

'You've got to be joking,' Millennia said disparagingly, standing up. 'And if you say anything but, "um, yes, all right then", I'll punch you in the shoulder and go myself.'

The Doctor rolled his eyes. 'Um, yes, all right then,' he echoed. 'But any sign of trouble you find somewhere safe and hide until Jack and Leah can get here, okay?'

'Agreed.'

'Promise?'

'I promise.'

'Right.' The Doctor briefly checked around the room and spotted two fairly sturdy-looking pieces of broken wood. He picked them up and weighed them individually in his hands, nodding approvingly before moving to a nearby box, buzzing it open with the sonic and pulling out a knife from within. Within ten well-placed strokes on each stick, he swiftly created two rudimentary but effective looking stakes. He handed one to her and kept one for himself.

'Remember that old gallifreyan saying from the Book of Rassilon?' he asked her, flipping the stake casually around his fingers as he dispensed with the knife.

'Which one? There were a lot,' she recalled thoughtfully.

'And lo, Rassilon descended to Gallifrey's blessed soil in triumph over the Yssgaroth, where women fell to their knees as children rejoiced and men weeped aplenty. Then Rassillon spake, his words echoing through time itself, "where there is sickness, bring healing. Where there is despair, bring hope. Where there is fear, bring courage. Where there are vampires, bring stakes".'

She laughed. 'I'm sure that's not the quote.'

'Pretty much sums it up,' he said, shrugging. 'Right. Allons-y.'

Playing entry 16/?.

MILLENNIA: This is awful.

DOCTOR: I know.

Standing in a cold, drafty, rancid-smelling large room, together they stared up at hundreds upon possibly thousands of corpses of a wide range of species, all hanging by their wrists from the ceiling in long lines in complete silence. Every one of their necks were covered in dried blood.

'Are any of them still alive?' she asked in a whisper.

'No,' the Doctor replied.

She put her hand over her mouth, unable to stop staring at them. 'Is this some kind of execution room?'

'No … it's a larder.'

'Wait … You mean a food larder?'

'Yes. A food larder for vampires. Captured alive and stored here, while vampires continuously and methodically drain their psychic energy and blood until they die or turn into a vampire themselves - if they survive the mutation process.' The Doctor looked at her, grimacing. 'We need to be quick.'

Her eyes widened. 'Do you think they're around here?'

'Well, there's nearly eight million of them, and this is a local restaurant. What do you think?' the Doctor pointed out. His voice had now dropped to a whisper. 'There'll be some food stocks somewhere nearby. They like to keep their victims alive for as long as possible. You go left. I'll go right. Remember, any sign of trouble, you hide somewhere safe.'

Millennia nodded, and with a slightly hasty stride, she moved past the line of dead bodies into a cold side room filled with old crates. She moved to the nearest crate and, with a bit of gusto, managed to pop it open. Inside she immediately saw a pile of some red squidgy things, which took her all of five seconds to realise were, in fact, various internal organs.

She gasped, pulling back abruptly while simultaneously resisting the urge to throw up. She slammed the lid closed and furiously exhaled to try and get rid of the awful smell.

After a few minutes of trying to recover, she psyched herself up to open the next one. Inside were hundreds upon hundreds of severed tongues.

Rapidly losing confidence, she moved on to the next crate. Bracing herself for something else horrific, she was happily surprised to see what looked like alien branded food tins. She picked one up, jiggling it a bit to determine there were lots of small things inside. Praying under her breath that they weren't collected fingers and toes, she braced herself and then opened the top.

Inside were - thankfully - not digits, but instead small brown cracker-like cubes that reminded her of protean cubes from Gallifrey. Food? Bluebird would know. She was about to shout out for him when she suddenly heard a bone-chilling shriek from the main room.

Nervous, she quickly but quietly shut the crate and edged towards the door. She peeked around the frame and saw, to her horror, a group of extremely thin, pale, and disgusting-looking creatures congregating around a few of the hanging bodies. She'd never seen one for real before, but she already knew that they were vampires and that she should be extremely scared.

She watched unblinkingly, horrified, as the vampires each picked a dead hanging body and began to roughly feast on them with revolting noises and their teeth sunk into their necks. Instinctively she held her breath, her eyes frantically scanning the room until she saw Bluebird hiding in an alcove out of their view.

He caught her gaze and immediately pressed his fingers to his lips to urge her to be quiet. He then jerked his head and thumb in a way that was telling her to get out.

Her hearts hammering, she nodded briefly at him and made to move. Suddenly one of the vampires stopped feeding and looked in her direction.

She gasped and hid behind the wall, clamping a hand over her mouth to stop the sound of her own panicked breathing. Silent seconds passed. They hadn't noticed her. Had they?

After what felt like a small lifetime, nothing seemed to have happened. With a tidal wave of adrenaline surging through her veins, slowly, she pushed herself to her feet, every single rustle of her clothes seemingly as loud as a foghorn to her ears. Keeping low, she daren't even look back as she edged towards the other door.

Then she suddenly heard something breathing behind her.

'Bluebird,' she whispered. 'Please be you …'

No answer. Her entire body shaking, she took a deep breath and turned.

The vampire stooping in front of her was utterly bald with pointed ears, its face long and thin and snow white in complexion and partially in decay, looking like a corpse. It was completely naked - an emaciated figure where she could quite literally see its heart beating under its skin in punctuated, rapid pulses that threatened to burst through at any moment.

It gazed at her briefly, its head twisting - intrigued - on its thin neck, with blood dripping from the corners of its small, lipless mouth.

It stared at her with opaque black eyes … and smiled.

'Bluebird!' she screamed.

'Hey!' she heard Bluebird suddenly yell from across the large room, and the vampire in front of her turned as she listened to the other vampires shriek in delight. 'Millennia, run!'

Her dual hearts racing, she took the instruction and dived through the rear door, slamming it shut behind her and locking it. She pressed herself against the cold metal wall, shaking, as ringing in her ears in metallic reverb were the sounds of vampires attacking and Bluebird trying with all of his might to fight them off.

'No, no, no, no!' she hissed under her breath, tears building in her eyes. 'Bluebird …'

The attack continued as she heard him shout again, 'keep running!'

Without even telling her feet to move, she was suddenly going, sprinting down the corridor to get back to their little room. With every thud of her shoes on the floor, she was convinced she could hear one of them two steps behind her, chasing her like she was a fledershrew being hunted by a relentless taipan. She could still hear the sounds of the commotion going on in the main room, where Bluebird was now stuck and surrounded by at least five vampires …

Still running, she briefly glanced back to check for any pursuers, but there was nothing there. She'd imagined it, of course. Still, she kept going, convinced they'd pop around the corner at any moment …

Then, there was a very abrupt silence.

'Bluebird,' she whispered disbelievingly, stopping suddenly and staring in the direction of the main room. 'No …'

The silence continued. With every single atom in her body shaking, she forced herself to step forward to the door they'd used to gain entry and tried desperately to see what was going on.

She couldn't see him through the throng of bodies, but the vampires were definitely feasting on something.

She swore under her breath, her entire body suddenly going cold.

There was absolutely nothing she could do but watch.

Playing entry 17/?.

DOCTOR: Ugh.

DOCTOR. Ah.

DOCTOR: Nurgh.

The Doctor opened his eyes, dragging himself through the murk of his brief flicker with unconsciousness back to the real world. His eyes, still inexplicably working, adjusted rapidly to the low light and he nearly yelped as he found himself immediately staring at a sightless corpse of a humanoid blond-haired man. The man was hanging just a few feet in front of him with decades-old blood covering his neck.

Quickly recovering from the shock, the Doctor realised that he was still in the large room, and he was now hanging in the air by his arms, tied up exactly like the other poor people in the vampire's larder. His shoulders were aching, and his neck was stinging considerably with something warm coating it - it was from that information he knew he'd been bitten, and without his clotting ability working, he knew it wasn't going to stop anytime soon.

He didn't know for how long he'd been bleeding, but clearly he needed to escape before he lost too much to function. So he looked down - his feet weren't touching the ground, and there was no way they were going to, no matter how much he stretched. He strained to look up, seeing ropes wrapped tightly around his arms to immobilise his hands, suspended by a meat hook just like all the surrounding corpses of people who hadn't escaped. That wasn't a promising thought.

With a bit of core strength, he wiggled and pulled, desperately to get his overpowered exotronic enough space to manoeuvre to try and break free of the ropes, but it was tied far too tightly. Eventually, he gave up and hung helplessly in the binds as he felt his neck becoming just a little warmer and his breathing even more difficult than it already was in his position. Inevitably he was still bleeding, and now he knew the bite had punctured his respiratory system.

Not beaten yet, he decided, thinking of his sonic inside the top pocket of his gallifreyan robes. He looked down again and saw a glint of the silver end poking out through the ripples of the fabric of the coat. He forced his head down as far as possible, with his neck pulsating its protest all the way. With a lurch and a groan, he managed to wrap his lips around the end of the sonic, and he eventually grabbed it between his teeth. He pulled it out, still swinging slightly.

Now he just had to flip it around in his mouth. He focused, trying to somehow manoeuvre his teeth to grip the side of the sonic rather than the top. It quickly became apparent that it wasn't going to work, so he'd have to do something drastic.

He took a breath, steeled himself, and threw the sonic up into the air from his mouth, trying to spin it to catch it again in his teeth. Disappointingly, but unsurprisingly, it completely missed his mouth and hit the floor below, out of reach.

'Ugh,' the Doctor moaned, watching it roll away under a nearby hanging corpse. 'Really!?'

He scanned the room for another option that might be able to help. His eyes quickly fixed on the corpse hanging opposite him, where he could see the hilt of something that looked quite knife-like in a sheathe on the man's leather belt.

He purposely kicked off his gallifreyan boots, leaving him in his socks. He began to propel his legs back and forth in rhythm, building up enough swinging force to get near the dead blond man. Eventually, he came within proximity, and with a wince, he lifted his feet and managed to grip the hilt of the knife between his toes, pulling it out. He barely had time to register that as a success before it slipped out of his feet and joined the sonic on the floor.

He let out a moan of frustration as he swung gently like a t-shirt in the breeze, his neck beginning to feel a little worse. He could now see the dampness of something dark and red seeping out over the left shoulder of his robes from his neck, and he was feeling just a little bit woozy.

He couldn't have bled so much so fast, could he? Or was it just getting worse and worse with every second?

'Bluebird!' Millennia suddenly hissed from nearby, and he looked over to see her standing there in the aisle of the dead that surrounded them, wide-eyed.

'I told you to hide!' he moaned.

'Like I was ever going to leave you here,' Millennia whispered sharply, reaching him and gazing up at his neck. 'Oh, Rassilon's beard … one bit you?'

'Yes,' he confirmed. 'And they'll probably want seconds, so if you're going to rescue me, be quick about it.'

She nodded, grabbing the sonic from the floor and pointing it up to the ropes binding his arms, flicking it on. The loud, piercing sound of the sonic seemed deafening, but thankfully no unwelcome guests came to investigate as the ropes snapped and he hit the floor in a mess of limbs.

'Okay, just take it slowly …' she implored, guiding him to stand.

He staggered to his feet with his hand clamped on his neck, where the blood was now severe enough to be seeping out from between his fingers. 'Right, taking it slow,' he assured her. 'Ugh.'

'We're going back to that room, and I'm calling Jack and Leah again. You need help.'

'I'm okay,' he insisted, briefly closing his eyes and taking a deep, pained breath that rattled a little in his compromised respiratory network.

'Bluebird, this is serious. Follow me and don't complain.'