The Van Helsing Legacy: Dark and Hungry Graves

Chapter 2

We left Mrs Sanderson where she lay. She didn't look as though she had any intention of getting up, again, and anyway, it was easier than hacking her up. If she was found there, cold and dead, it would be a sad thing, but if she was found there, sans head, it would be a homicide, and while Chessie and I had never found ourselves on the wrong end of a murder investigation, we preferred not to take chances.

'What the devil was that?' Chess asked as we ducked back into our flat. She peeled out of her coat and dropped it on the floor, her sabre clattering down on top of it.

I shrugged. 'She died, and he came back to get her.'

'Do they do that, though? Is that something creepy crawlies do?'

'Looks like.'

She frowned and kicked off her shoes beside her coat. 'That's... That's creepy.'

'I thought it was a bit sweet.'

She pulled her head back and widened her eyes at me.

'Just a bit,' I clarified. 'Assuming we don't hear tomorrow that anybody was found with their throat torn open. I think he only came back for his wife. He must... He must have been waiting for her, somehow.'

I slouched into the sitting room and glanced at the crumbs of dirt scattered beneath the chair, then at the sheaf of papers on the table.

'Not only for his wife,' Chessie commented.

I shrugged again and went to the kitchen to get the dust brush and pan and began to sweep up.

'What was he talking to you about, anyway? Taking a sabbatical? He's not wrong. I've been telling you that.'

No, he wasn't wrong. Chessie hadn't been wrong, either. I wasn't doing well in my studies, and the term wasn't providing the distraction I had hoped. But it had to be doing some good. If I took time off, ran away to my father's home in Amsterdam, or to the south of France, or something, there would be nothing at all to capture my attention, and then I would only be able to sit and stew until something broke.

I had seen a friend kill himself. And I had seen him come back and make a go at killing his own children. I'd seen a woman immolated by demonic fire, my uncle tortured until he could no longer speak, and another dear friend nearly damned. December had been awful. I had survived it. Chessie had survived it. But it wouldn't leave me alone.

'What on earth would I do with myself on sabbatical?' I asked lightly.

'Read,' she began, resuming the litany she brought out once a week or so. 'Go for long walks. Take up an instrument, visit your family, see your boyfriend, learn blacksmithing, I don't know.'

I moved back out into the hall and brushed up the dirt there, swept it all into the pan and carried it to the bin.

Why did she have to mention Geordie? She had no reason to know that he was a tremendous part of what was keeping me up at night. I hadn't told her. But it had been nearly nine weeks, and...

'What was that it called you?' I had asked him. 'When it asked why you wouldn't speak its name?'

He'd wet his lips and taken a reflexive step away. 'Ghiţă,' he'd replied. 'Geordie is an English diminutive. A Roumanian would call me Ghiţă.'

'It's a very familiar form of address?'

'Yes.'

'It's...' A little breath had done nothing to quiet the sound of my heart quickening in my ears. 'It's a very familial form of address?'