Conroy John Sinclair: Demon Hunter Volume 2 (English Edition)

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7183-5122-6
Verlag: J-Novel Club
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 250 Seiten

Reihe: John Sinclair: Demon Hunter (English Edition)

John Sinclair's life is many things, but boring is not one of them. When an archaeological expedition ends in a series of questionable deaths, Sinclair's old friend Bill Conolly begins to investigate. If one set of deadly digs wasn't enough, an expedition in Yorkshire unearths a vampire graveyard with bloody consequences - including for Sinclair himself. Will he survive his own death and undeath, or wind up as part of a ghoulish banquet alongside the dregs of London?

Autoren/Hrsg.

Conroy, Gabriel

Weitere Mitwirkende

Namcooo

Finnemore, Matthew

Leseproben

Episode 6: The Vampire Graveyard

When I was fourteen years old, I snuck into my grandfather’s study and broke open his gun cabinet. That’s where he kept his .270 Winchester. I took the rifle and put it in my duffel bag. Then I took the number 2 bus to St Andrew’s Hospital, where my grandmother lay dying.

On many occasions, my father had taken me hunting in the Scottish highlands. If there was one lesson that truly stuck with me, it was this: when a creature is dying — when it’s in pain — the compassionate thing to do is to put it out of its misery.

I remember it clearly, the deer my father shot. The bullet had gone through its left hind leg, and it was lying on its side, its chest unsteadily rising and sinking, obviously in agony. A pool of blood was spreading into the soft grass around it, and its brown eyes looked uncomprehendingly into the flint-grey sky above. My father raised his gun.

‘Don’t let it suffer,’ he said to me.

Then he handed me the rifle.

‘Aim true,’ he said. Those were his words, aim true.

I held the rifle, but my hands were shaking. I don’t know if it was the cold — this was in the autumn — or fear. I looked into the deer’s eyes, and suddenly my own eyes grew misty. After a long while, I lowered the rifle.

My father glared at me, and I could see the disappointment in his eyes. I felt his disapproval, and a wave of sick nausea swept through my body. I lowered my head and fought against tears. I was shivering in the cold wind. He took the rifle from me, aimed it, and then, without further ado, squeezed the trigger.

The shot rang out and its echo was lonely under the endless grey sky. A flock of birds rose into the air, their shapes no more than black silhouettes.

The deer was dead. Its skull was cracked open, and its eyes still had that look of terrified wonderment. Even in death, it was looking at me.

‘Don’t let it suffer.’ That’s what he had said. And that’s why I did what I did. I didn’t want Nan to suffer.

The bus arrived in front of the hospital. I got out. I moved slowly and cautiously, as if I were in a dream. I went to the hospital’s front entrance. The nurse on duty, Mrs McConnell, greeted me absentmindedly, her fingers holding the pages of a romance novel she was reading. I attempted a crooked smile, then dashed to the lift. I was already feeling guilty.

I took the lift up to the eighth floor, where my grandmother was. I remember slowly walking down the hospital corridor.

It seemed, at that moment, to never end. One of the nurses was pushing a cart down the corridor, but she ignored me. I reached her door, room number 829. Normally, she would be on an NHS ward, but my father’s job allowed him to pay for her to have private care and some extra comforts.

I knocked, very gently.

There was no response. I slowly pressed the handle down and opened the door.

My grandmother was asleep. I still remember her as a beautiful and vivacious woman, with flowing, auburn hair. Not the skinny, bald creature I saw in front of me. The cancer had taken everything from her: her facial features, her healthy skin tone, her long hair. She was, at the end, like a living skeleton. Not quite dead, but not truly alive either. Not anymore.

I entered the room and closed the door, very slowly, so as to not make a sound.

Then I sat the duffel bag down on the floor and opened the zip.

The metal barrel of the rifle felt cold in my hands. The gun was too big for my hands; I had trouble holding it properly. I pressed the butt against my shoulder. I was breathing heavily now, just as I had done a few months ago, when the deer was dying and grandmother was still living.

I aimed the rifle at her head.

Her eyes were closed. Her chest was rising and falling slowly. There was an IV in the crook of her arm.

From somewhere outside the room, I heard distant laughter. It seemed out of place here.

I can’t remember how long I stood there like this, the rifle aimed at her.

My body was rigid. I couldn’t move my fingers.

My father’s words were still ringing in my ears.

‘Aim true.’

I took another step towards her bed. I didn’t know it then, but later I realised that I had been crying. Tears were slowly running down my cheeks.

And then she opened her eyes and saw me.

Her eyes suddenly widened with shock and she tried to sit up in her bed, but she was too weak. The doctors said it was pancreatic cancer, the worst kind. As if there was a best kind. Dying had been quick. She was consumed within weeks. Her skin was sallow and yellow, like old parchment.

‘Johnny,’ she whispered, ‘what are you doing?’

I didn’t respond. But I heard the rifle rattling slightly, because my hands were shaking now.

‘Don’t do it,’ she said. There was fear in her voice. ‘Please, Johnny. I love you.’

The tears were coming stronger now; I could feel them stinging my eyes.

I wondered.

I held the rifle. My aim was true. But my hands wouldn’t obey.

‘Please, Johnny,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Not like this. Please.’ And again: ‘I love you, Johnny. You are my sunshine.’

That was a song she used to sing to me: ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...’

I didn’t notice that she had pressed the call button, hidden beneath her blankets. She didn’t speak, and for a few moments, all I heard was breathing, both hers and mine.

I heard footsteps outside, and then the door opened behind me. Dr Halloran came into the room. He gasped when he saw me, when he saw the rifle.

‘Johnny,’ he said, trying to sound calm. ‘Don’t do anything rash now, Johnny.’

More and more people arrived. I was frozen in place. I had no more strength. I was unable to resist. A moment later, I felt his hand on my shoulder, and he whispered into my ear. ‘Don’t, Johnny. Just lower the rifle.’

I ignored him. I simply stood there, like a statue, the .270 aimed at my grandmother’s forehead, and her fearful eyes — not unlike the deer — burning into my soul.

***

It was after nightfall when they opened the first grave. Dr Adam Boscombe was chewing nervously on his fingernail. , he thought.

And it was. Four years of research had led to this... a barren marsh. Dr Boscombe was standing next to a tall work light. The entire area was lit up like a football pitch at night. The sun had gone down about 40 minutes ago, and darkness had taken the land. A group of workers stood huddled behind a garish yellow cordon of rope. The wind blew at the rope and caused the men to shiver, their hands buried deep in their coat pockets, chins down.

A small, rough road had been cleared from The Fox and Hound, a nearby pub on the outskirts of town, towards the marsh. By the side of that road stood cars, a van, and several tents. Volunteers with shovels trudged through the mud. A fine mist clung to everything and everyone, a damp chill seeping into clothes and bones alike — cheeks were rosy, eyes and noses watery — but the mood was splendid. Dr Boscombe was positively giddy. The thumbnail on his left hand was chewed bloody by now, so he moved on to the right. His mother, may God keep her, had always admonished him for chewing on his fingernails, but he never managed to shed the habit. Even when she went to the doctor and got a garlic paste to rub on them, hoping that the taste would deter him. It didn’t. He liked garlic, as it turned out. And so he kept chewing. Especially when he was nervous or excited — and right now, he was both.

‘Stop chewing your fingernails,’ said a voice next to him.

He turned.

Dr Charlotte Manning was a tall woman in her fifties, some ten years older than Boscombe. She wasn’t his mother, but she might as well have been. Boscombe was small, wiry, and eternally distracted, or so it would seem. He had a rather brilliant head on his shoulders, but it was always thinking too much. Consequently, Boscombe was constantly forgetting things, such as car keys or lab results, and Dr Manning had taken on a maternal role. She was a divorcee, the kind who still wore her ring. He (Frank, her no-good, philandering ex-husband) had left her (devoted, loving, dutiful wife, everybody said so), for someone else — someone younger, of course. Isn’t it always the same old song? Dr Manning found refuge in her work and in the presence of Dr Boscombe. The young man’s excitement for his work, his boyish enthusiasm, never failed to charm her. And so she mothered him. Straightened his tie before a presentation at the university, or made sure that the driving instructions to the site were clearly marked on signs in and around Harrogate. He never seemed to notice the small kindnesses she did for him. He never seemed to notice her at all. And why would he? She was a discarded woman, unloved, unwanted. Old, too tall, too heavy for most men, with a strong face that her girlfriends euphemistically called ‘full of character’. She called it a ‘horse face’.

‘Sorry,’ he said sheepishly and lowered his hand.

, Manning thought.

...