Mark was grinning widely now. The time of his life. I chuckled softly.
Marcus turned to him now. "When you get home there will be a package waiting for you. It will contain a laptop and an iphone. We will text you our contact details. We want to know if anything happens to these two." Mark nodded eagerly.
"One last thing before we go." Marcus stood up and went out for a few seconds, returning with a stainless steel lockable briefcase. He adjusted the combination locks and it sprang open, revealing and astonishing array of sample bottles and tubes.
"I will need a sample of blood from all of you now, and some cells from the inside of your mouth." He smiled avuncularly.
"Like on CSI?" Mark again. "Me too? Why? I'm not an iron metaboliser."
"Indeed. But you could be carrying the recessive gene. I would like to try and isolate it."
"OK," he said and obligingly held his arm out. Marcus took his samples from all of us. Rebecca said nothing throughout, but stared fascinated as her blood flooded the tubes in Marcus' hand. Eventually Marcus' briefcase snapped shut, and he and Fergus loaded up the luxury hire car. Mark groaned when Marcus removed his samples from a shelf in the fridge.
"Oh, man, my bacon was in there with bits of dead vampire!"
Fergus grinned at him. "Welcome to my world," he said dryly.
They were soon ready to go; Marcus was driving because Fergus tended to get distracted. "We will see you again in ten days time," he said as they waved goodbye, and then they were gone.
Mark
What a weird morning. I have to say, I liked Angus' brothers; Fergus with his nervous energy and quirky sense of humour, and Marcus with his out of date formality and burning curiosity. So when they told Angus and Rebecca that they had to get married in eleven days time, I was worried that Angus was going to attack them or something. But he just sat there and smiled, while Rebecca looked kinda shocked, but she didn't say anything either. Nothing. Not even while we loaded up Angus' car, or when we were driving away from the old stone house that Angus and his brothers had grown up in.
That was a bit of a nerve-racking ride for me. I kept thinking about the guns in the boot, and the bullet proof vest with a squished bullet in it that one of the kidnappers had managed to shoot at Angus. Every time I saw a police car I almost had a heart attack. I kept watching the speedometer, and reminding Angus when he went over seventy. You'd have thought that he would have been irritated, but he just laughed, and he even slowed down. Amazing.