The Iron in Blood

"They drove for hours, and then they stopped at this place that looked like an institution of some sort. One of the other men picked me up and carried me to a kind of dungeon under an old stone barn. I peed all over him." She smiled at the memory, completely unrepentant. Mark giggled, and said, "Cool!"

"The two normal looking guys locked me in a cell, then untied me and stood guard over me. They made all these suggestive comments about what Jack was going to do when he got there. I wanted to kill them."

"Then I threw a flask of tea at one of them and Angus was suddenly there. He shot them." She smiled grimly. "Angus found the key, unlocked the door and let me out. Then the man with the gruff voice shot him through the leg. I could see it was broken by the way it bent when he fell. I was mad at the man who shot him, and I knew I would have to get Angus out of there. So I bit him, and drank his blood, and carried Angus back to the car. I even kicked down a wall."

"Awesome!" Mark breathed. "So that's why you were covered in blood."

"Yes," Rebecca smiled gratefully at him, clearly relieved at his reaction.

"Interesting," said Marcus. "Youtube, you say. We wondered how they'd found you." He turned to Mark. "Your turn, please."

Mark looked puzzled. "I didn't do much of anything really. I saw Rebecca being abducted, called the police, and then thought of Angus. I showed him where they'd taken her and then refused to get out of the car, which is why I'm here now." He said it as if he was having the time of his life. I was starting to have my suspicions about Mark; he was fourteen and apparently fearless; he probably was having the time of his life.

Fergus glanced at me before he spoke to Mark. "I think you did a lot more than you will ever realise, young man." I nodded my agreement.

Marcus was impatient. "Now you, Angus."

"Mark told you how he came to get me. Well, when I smelled that vampire, I suspected that we had an old style coven somewhere. He smelled wrong," I explained, "like he drank only blood and his body was slowly crumbling because of it. We started driving north, because vampires like the cold, and it's more isolated up here. I contacted Fergus and gave him a few things to search for, and he eventually found them. He also got me a couple of handguns and an exceptional sniper rifle." I smiled my thanks at Fergus.