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38.2: UNAPPETISING FACTS (part 2)

Fang had always thought Day would be tiresome. He just hadn't expected it to be quite so dull. To the east, the sea glistened in the eternal sunlight. To the west stretched an expanse of scrub, peppered with the occasional dead tree.

"How very boring," Elizabeth commented, tugging the hood of her cloak lower over her face.

Fang had to agree. Night, with its jagged mountains and plunging valleys, deep forests and dark roaring waterfalls, was vastly preferable to this arid waste. How Day had developed such a vaunted reputation was anyone's guess.

"Do you think something happened here?" Elizabeth asked, her eyes scanning the horizon. "Surely it hasn't always been like this."

Fang grunted. "No idea."

"Wait," said Pim. "Look there." She pointed to a cluster of wooden huts huddled on the shoreline. Beside them, a rickety jetty poked out into the water. Moored beside it was a tall, sleek ship, its sails furled.

"Well spotted." Fang had to admit his niece had surprised him. It had taken them four days and four nights to reach Day, following the shoreline as it curved irritatingly round the more direct ocean route that Rupert had taken. Elizabeth had permitted three short stops in that time, but otherwise they had flown non-stop, the air around them getting steadily hotter all the way. And Pim had not complained once. It turned out that, once you got her up and out of her coffin, Pim was rather more capable than he had realised.

They dipped lower in the sky. Ferring, meanwhile, arced out over the ship and the jetty. The hawk flew a circuit above the ship and the huts, and then returned to hover in front of them.

"Well?" said Fang. "Anything?"

"Not much activity on the ship," the hawk told them. "But there are footprints. Heading inland." He fixed a beady eye on Fang. "Two pairs."

Fang cursed. "It's Gustav. We must hurry."

Ferring banked back towards the huts. "Right you are."

As Ferring led the way, his bird's eyesight following the footprints the vampires could not see, Fang had to admit that the hawk, though annoying, was a useful addition to their party. They streamed in his wake, cloaks flapping, until suddenly the hawk pulled up short.

"Crikey."

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. "Ugh."

"Yuck," Edmund agreed.

The object of their collective disgust was a building. It looked as though someone had seen a crude drawing of a barn and then had thrown together an approximation of one using only the odds and ends they had at hand. The walls were slanting, the door was crooked, and the roof looked as though someone had just dumped a pile of thatch on top without working out how thatch was meant to work. The dilapidated building slumped alone in the dirt as though thrown there by a careless giant. There being no giants in Day that Fang knew of, he could only conclude that the edifice had been built this way intentionally.

Then he saw the doors open. Fang squinted though the glare of the sun. At the base of the doors, he spotted two figures—one marching sharply into the building, the other one lagging behind.

"There," he growled. "It's them. They're going inside."

Elizabeth started forward. "Rupert must be in that awful place. Come on."

Fang tensed as they dived towards the building. The doors were still open. If they worked together, surely they could overpower the ghost and Winkton. They could put an end to this right now. As they got closer, he narrowed his eyes and schooled his expression into his best Vampiric Glare. They may be far from home, in a situation that none of them would have expected, but when in doubt, tradition could always be relied upon. In other words, Fang found it comforting.

"Stop!"

The hissed word brought them up short just as they approached the building. Fang looked up. Perched upon the chaotic thatch, a hooded figure beckoned to them. "Over here!"

Fang's heart flopped over in his chest. Or, at least, that was what it felt like. Of course, vampiric hearts, like human hearts, do no such thing. But the emotion Fang experienced at that moment was one familiar to Middlers and creatures of the Night alike. He flew up to the thatch in a daze, not stopping to check if his family were following him, and alighted next to the figure. Beneath the hood, he saw a pale shapely chin, the end of a sharp nose, and the flash of two green eyes. Not that he needed any more proof of who she was. Her voice, her bearing, had been enough.

Fang stepped forward. "Isabella... It's... It's really you."

She looked up. Their eyes locked. Fang's heart did some more metaphoric acrobatics. "Fang..."

"Hello!" Edmund said cheerfully from behind Fang, ruining the moment. "Nice to see you."

Edmund's intervention seemed to bring Isabella to her senses. She put out a gloved hand, palm forward. Fang stopped.

Isabella shook her head. "Fang. I know we have a lot to talk about. And we will. But right now, we need to focus on our family." Her lips firmed. "Rupert is inside," she told him. "And so is my daughter Harriet. We need to get them out of there safely."

Fang's heart ached for the woman before him, but Isabella was right. Night take the boy, but Rupert was in danger of imminent staking. He swallowed the words that hovered on his tongue. Instead, "You're right," he said. "Of course."

"I am sorry to interrupt," Elizabeth put in, somewhat icily. "But that is exactly what we were about to do when you stopped us."

Isabella's eyes moved over Fang's shoulder to Elizabeth, Pim, and Edmund. "You can't just fly in there," she said. "There's an army of fairies."

Pim snorted. "I think we can manage a few fairies."

"Oh?" Isabella beckoned again, and lifted from the thatch to drift over to a spot near the centre of the roof. Following, they saw a large circular hole open in the thatch. "Take a look," Isabella invited them. "But be careful."

Fang exchanged a glance with Elizabeth, who raised her eyebrow. Smoothing down their evening dress, they lay down on their bellies and wiggled themselves over to the hole, peering inside. At first, they could see nothing but the glare of some strange shining crystals caught in a web only a foot beneath the hole.

"Look past it," whispered Isabella.

Fang peered through the holes in the web and finally saw what Isabella meant. The building swarmed with small, flying creatures—ugly and malicious-looking. Fang had never seen a fairy before, but he could not say he was overly surprised. They had always sounded like loathsome little things.

"Oh," said Pim.

"Exactly," said Isabella.

"Are those... vampires?" Elizabeth's voice was tense with shock.

"Where?" Pim asked.

Fang looked again and saw what his sister had spotted. His lip curled. "What are they doing?"

"They're working."

"But why—"

Then came a roar from below. The vampire hunter.

Elizabeth got to her knees. "We have to get in there," she said.

Isabella turned to her. "I have a plan. But first..." She leaned down and tore off a strip of her cloak. They watched, puzzled, as she took the black scrap and tied it around the lower half of her face. "Follow my lead," she said, her voice muffled.

"What's that for?" asked Pim.

"The fairy-dust. Do not get any of it in your nose or mouth, or you'll end up like those other vampires in there."

"So we are going in?" Pim asked, as she tied her own mask around her face.

Isabella nodded. "Here's what we're going to do."