Eat Local Page 3

  “Oh, is he?” he said, feeling a little guilty at how he’d tried to give them both the brush off. He reached into his pocket and plucked out a shiny £1 coin to make it up to them. It would bring more happiness in their hands than his anyway. “Here, have this then,”

  Mick reached for it and have Sebastian a grateful smile.

  “Is he in the army then, your old man?” Sebastian asked.

  “No,” Mick laughed, “the Taliban.”

  Sebastian was at once outraged and embarrassed at being mugged off by a ten-year-old. It usually took someone at least five years older than Mick to get the better of him when he had his wits about him.

  “Oi, give me my quid back!” Sebastian demanded, but Mick just shock his head and passed it to his smiling brother.

  “Sorry mate, no refunds,” he said, informing Sebastian of company policy.

  But Sebastian wasn’t about to leave it there. It wasn’t the money, it was the principle; although it was also the money. But mostly the principle. And the money. He might’ve been small for his age but he was twice the size of Mick and Nick and not averse to mopping the car park with the pair of them for whatever pennies they had on them. He’d had it done to him often enough as a kid and it had done him no harm. Also, what with the Station Master back in his little control booth and distracted by a soggy copy of Mayfair he’d found on the tracks, there was no one around to stop him. But Christ’s Hospital’s finest had timed their scam perfectly. A set of beaming bright headlights swept across the car park just as Sebastian had a hold of Mick’s collar and suddenly he had bigger fish to fry.

  “Here, have that,” Sebastian said, shoving his half-finished can of lager at Mick as a parting gift before grabbing his bag and striding out towards the metallic blue door that had just popped open.

  Sebastian chucked his bag on the back seat and attempted a clumsy embrace with Vanessa. They’d not done it yet. In fact they’d not done anything yet and Sebastian still had that faint tingle of doubt scratching away at the back of his mind that she’d actually asked him away this weekend to take him to a Scientology conference.

  Vanessa returned Sebastian’s embrace with interest, pressing her ruby red lips to his to fill his senses with her sweet essence. She was even more alluring that he remembered, with perfect milky skin and just a few strands of jet-black hair hanging free to mask the twinkle in her piercing blue eyes. She wasn’t quite Sebastian’s fantasy woman, but he was more than willing to rewrite his fantasies for Vanessa. She was everything and more: confident, beautiful and hungry. She was going to gobble him up tonight. And he couldn’t wait.

  “You smell lovely,” he told her as if she was a plate of pork chops.

  “And you smell of booze,” Vanessa replied, taking the compliment and running with it.

  “What? Oh no,” Sebastian said, chiding himself for not remembering to Smint-up before she’d got here. “Just a couple with the lads while I was waiting, like.”

  Sebastian had meant a couple of beers at London Bridge with two workmates while he’d waited to catch his train but Vanessa glanced passed him at Mick and Nick swapping his half-empty can backwards and forwards and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “I see,” she said, leaving it at that.

  “So how far’s this place then?” Sebastian asked.

  “Not far,” Vanessa replied, not wanting to spoil the surprise.

  “Is there going to be any grub when we get there because I’m starving?” he asked.

  “There might well be,” she tantalised.

  Mick and Nick watched as Vanessa’s Jag pulled away, out of the car park and into the night until all it became was a distant hum on the wind.

  “Nice looking motor,” Mick observed.

  “Nice looking bird,” Nick observed further, taking a chug on the all-but-dead can and handing it back to his brother.

  Mick drained the last few dregs and nodded in agreement.

  “I would,” he concurred, giving his considered verdict.

  CHAPTER 5

  Boniface had barely paused for breath for15 minutes. He knew the only way to get some kind of accord was by making as big a pain-in-the-ass of himself as he could. Luckily, this was not only something he was willing to do, it was also something he was born to do. His mother had told him from a very early age that he had a temperament to offend a sunny day. In some ways she’d been right. In others, she’d been very wrong indeed.

  He could still see his mother’s face. It was etched into his mind forever. But he didn’t see her as other sons saw their mothers, all smiling and laughing and wrinkly and warm. He saw her as a head on a spike, strewn along the bastions of the enemy’s camp along with the rest of his family. He had been the only one to escape the axe and had taken refuge in the woods like a coward and a thief. He’d run from a lost battle and had exchanged an honourable death for a shameful life but it had been an astute trade. His needless sacrifice would’ve been scant compensation to his already-pruned family so he ran, away from the blades, away from the carnage and away from his kin, into the forest to hide.

  But Boniface hadn’t got away. He’d merely stumbled out of one frying pan and into the fire, for lurking on the fringes of the battle was an even more terrifying foe, one that offered not just death but eternal damnation. Ordinarily Boniface wouldnot have had a prayer against such a beast but the fates took pity on this wretch of a man and had other plans in store for him. For the monster that stalked Boniface was not the normal ferocious and unstoppable fiend of folklore, but a reasonable being who hated death almost as much as he created it.

  The Duke only took what was necessary and never killed for sport. His favourite tactic was to follow troops into battle and pick over the mortally wounded as they lay dying on the fringes. In his mind this served three purposes: it spared the living, it allowed him to feed without detection and it was safer than tackling those still swinging swords.

  He might have claimed more people than the plague but deep down the Duke was still a decent sort of soul, or at least he would’ve been had he not sold it to the devil a thousand years earlier.

  Moreover, he was a pragmatist, so when he snatched Boniface into the shadows and away from human eyes, it wasn’t to squeeze him like an orange, but to tether him like an ox.

  “Transportation. I go north, into the winter. I need an attendant. My previous squire let me down,” the Duke said, which was something of a slur considering his last bloke had been hacked to pieces after wandering too close to the battle looking for horses.

  “I will obey,” Boniface duly gasped ready to agree to anything to stop this ungodly creature from digging its claws into his throat any deeper. “Please!”

  “Call me… Master.”

  And so that was that, a beautiful friendship was born. The Duke tutored, Boniface served and after a thorough apprenticeship he was given the gift himself. That had been more than two thousand years ago. And while Boniface still respected The Duke, he no longer called him “Master”.

  “You have your rightful quotas,” the Duke barked, finally raising his voice in an effort to silence his former familiar.

  Thomas rasped his lips in impudence until Boniface shot him a look. Boniface had been the Duke’s underling, but Thomas was his and the Coven only worked if each man knew his place.

  “It’s not enough,” Boniface continued.

  “Nobody’s starving,” Henry said. Henry had come to the Coven only five hundred years ago so he was still regarded as the new boy. He’d also arrived courtesy of the Duke, so he and Boniface were like brothers to each other – or at least step-brothers who’d taken an instant disliking to each other. Boniface saw himself as his own man but Henry behaved as if he were still in service. He was a kiss-ass and a puppet and despite being immortal, Boniface had no time for him.

  “Sixty million, and we’re living off scraps,” he said, addressing his point to the Duke as if Henry wasn’t even there.

  “I can speak with the European Counc
il again but you know what they’ll say,” the Duke shrugged. This was his tried and tested fallback position. If anyone ever proposed something that he didn’t agree with – and wouldn’t take no for an answer – he would always tell them he’d have to run it past the kings in the high castle but that he wasn’t particularly hopeful. It was a classic tactic and one that had been used by nobles, warriors and blokes down at Kwik Fit since before the dawn of time.

  “Fuck the Council! I say we set our own quotas,” Boniface snapped. He was getting frustrated and it was starting to show.

  “And cut our own throats?” Angel said, now pacing the dusty farmhouse kitchen herself. Angel didn’t like sitting and she didn’t like being confined. This meeting had barely begun and it was already taking too long.

  “The Council would hunt us down and you know it,” Henry reminded Boniface.

  “These are difficult times – for everyone,” the Duke said, touching on a conciliatory note. “The glory days are long gone. We must not dwell on the past, lest we become consigned alongside it.

  “You what?” Thomas snorted.

  “Embrace the future, as I do,” the Duke elaborated. “It’s better to be a part of it than not.”

  This was a matter of opinion. Boniface didn’t care for the future. Or indeed the present. Where once they’d roamed like lions, now they scurried like rats. Their prey had got the drop on them. Their only hope had been to disappear, to drop out of man’s conscience and into folklore. It had been a tactical manoeuvre but Boniface couldn’t help but feel he was running from the fight all over again.

  “Difficult times!” he exclaimed. “But only for us because I know what they’re taking over in Europe and it’s a hell of a lot more than what we are over here.”

  “We are an island race Peter. We have to tread more carefully. This has its pros, and its cons,” the Duke said.

  “Huh, what are the pros again?” Thomas snorted once more.

  “The population’s skyrocketing,” Boniface reminded them all.

  “And so is their technology,” Henry said. “Dental records, computer files, DNA. We’re not dealing with Bow Street Runners any more.”

  Looking around this farmhouse Boniface might’ve been forgiven for thinking he was still in the 18th century. The fixtures and fittings would’ve been considered old hat by Jack the Ripper while the less said about the actual state of the place the better. Dust, cobwebs, mould and rot. It didn’t so much lend the farm a rustic charm as hold it all together. One ill-advised spring clean and a duster could do more harm to this place than a wrecking ball. Not that there was much danger of that. “Hygiene” was something the Thatchers called to their neighbour, Genevieve, when they saw her out and about.

  “Oh come on, all those migrants coming in clinging to the undersides of lorries. No one’s going to miss a few of them, surely.”

  Everyone stopped in surprise and looked around for a moment because for once the author of that sentiment wasn’t Boniface. It was sweet white-haired old Alice. She was still knitting away and listening carefully to the conversation and whilst she didn’t much care for the dreary Mr Boniface or his methods, she did concede he had a point

  “Been reading The Daily Mail again, Alice?” Angel concluded.

  “All part of the look, my dear,” she smiled harmlessly, like a wolf in granny’s nightdress.

  Before Boniface could expand the point Henry was already popping holes in it. “These migrants aren’t as invisible as you might think,” he said. “They’re harvesting the crops, sweeping the streets, emptying the bins and sending money back to their families so that one day they might join them here in the promised land. They are part of the fabric of this society and they will be missed if we start thinking we can go help ourselves.

  “Not by my friends they won’t,” Alice said, meaning the blue-rinse Brexit brigade she followed around like the grim reaper.

  “Wait until your friends are lying on their death beds needing their backsides wiped. See how many of them still want to send Miss Saigon back when she’s the one holding the toilet roll,” the Duke said.

  “I suspect it won’t come to that for most of my dear old friends,” Alice smiled.

  Thomas didn’t agree. “I don’t like ’em over sixty. Too gamey for my tastes,” he said, pulling a face at the thought.

  But Boniface was determined to get back on point. “What are we even talking about here? I’m no racist. I’ll kill anyone, no matter where they’re from, I don’t care.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. He’s so nice,” Henry said.

  “And what of their remains Peter?” the Duke asked. “Have you thought about that?”

  “I’m only talking about a couple more.”

  “And a couple more after that?” the Duke said. “And then a couple more. And before you know it the numbers start piling up, the missing are found –”

  “– and so are we,” Angel said, finishing the Duke’s sentence for him to show where her loyalties lay.

  Boniface threw up his hands in frustration. “It’s not like they’re not all out there at each other’s throats every Saturday night anyway.”

  “So is this what you’ve been doing is it; helping yourself?” the Duke asked.

  “Oh yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t you? Get a sanction off the Council to get rid of me,” Boniface sneered, turning back to his former master and glaring at him through the dirty yellow hue of the room’s only ancient light bulb.

  The Duke shook his head then dropped his eyes away from Boniface. “I wasn’t talking to you Peter.”

  Boniface was confused. “What?”

  Angel echoed the sentiment. “What?”

  Eyes flew around the room before finally landing on Thomas. “What? What?” he said.

  “Did you really think we wouldn’t find out? That the Council wouldn’t find out?” the Duke asked.

  “What’s he talking about?” Boniface demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Thomas said, rising to his feet and backing away towards the door.

  “He’s been over-feeding,” Henry told the room.

  “No I haven’t,” Thomas denied.

  “Sixteen over your quota already this year. And the less said about last year the better,” the Duke accused.

  “That’s a lie!” Thomas squawked, but everyone recognised the truth when they heard it.

  The Duke sealed Thomas’s fate with one final twist of the knot. “And not just over-feeding, he’s been taking them young.”

  Boniface finally twigged. “That lad in the papers?”

  “Those lads more like,” Henry said, chucking a newspaper on the table for all to see. A couple of young lads smiled up the Coven from the front cover beneath the headline ‘OUR HEARTS BREAK’.

  “That weren’t me,” Thomas spluttered. “I didn’t do them. Honest, I didn’t. I swear it.”

  But as little as Boniface trusted Henry, he knew he wasn’t one to make unfounded accusations.

  “You didn’t, did you?” he said, turning the full glare of his exasperation away from the Duke and onto Thomas.

  Thomas continued to edge around the room, glancing at the various exits and seeing his colleagues now rising from their seats to cover them. This meeting had not gone nearly as well as he’d hoped. He’d always liked meeting up in the past. It was something of a luxury for his kind to be able to drop the pretence and be themselves once in a while. Now suddenly he realised he should’ve been on his guard all the more.

  The looks on his contemporaries’ faces told him everything he needed to know. The Duke and Henry were obviously deeply disappointed with him, Angel was aghast, Boniface was shocked and Alice? Her expression rarely betrayed her true feelings, which made her the most dangerous of the lot.

  Thomas now felt the confines of the farmhouse. He longed to be on the outside, in the open ground with a healthy head start over those he’d called his friends. All he needed was a few yards. Henry and Angel were quick, but Thomas could be quic
ker still when the grim was at his back.

  “I didn’t. I didn’t. I… I…” he started to lie before realising he was going to have to change his tactics if he wanted to buy himself some time. He turned on Boniface and tried to muddy the waters with a strategic accusation of his own. “You’re always saying we should take who we like.”

  All he needed was plant enough of a seed of a doubt in the minds of the others to buy himself a second chance then that was it, he was out of here and to hell with the Coven and their rules.

  But Boniface wasn’t biting and shook his head in despair.

  “Not like this. Not without consent.”

  “He’ll get us all sanctioned, the imbecile,” Alice finally said, throwing her chips in with the others.

  “But you said…” Thomas whimpered before pointing around the room. “And you. And you. And you.”

  The Coven cocked their collective heads.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll stop. I’ll stick to my quotas from now on. I promise. I won’t let you down again,” Thomas promised, now appealing directly to the Duke.

  “If only it were that simple,” the Duke glared.

  Thomas’s mind was already working on a plan B. The first to come near him would lose their eyes, the next their throats. His claws started to stiffen and his teeth started to swell in anticipation. He’d come into this world kicking and screaming so much that he’d killed his own mother in the process, and he’d make darn sure he didn’t go into the next without taking a few of his colleagues for company.

  But the arrangements had been made. And the trap had been set.

  Chen had returned without Thomas noticing, though this time he didn’t set down the shotgun as he entered. Instead he pointed it directly at Thomas’s guts…

  … and pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 6

  18 heard the shot and instinctively ducked. He could tell from the muffled crack that it had been fired indoors and hadn’t been aimed his way but 18 had a simple philosophy: it was better to duck at shots that hadn’t been aimed at him than neglect to duck at those that had. This tactic had seen him through three wars and one marriage and he wasn’t about to change it anytime soon. Particularly not tonight.