“I dropped it.” What was the old man talking about?
“Hang on a tick. Here, hold on to the handlebars.” His father stooped and retrieved his fallen bicycle. “That’ll steady you. Now, let’s see if I can find your stick.” He pulled a torch from his coat pocket and shone the beam over the ground. First thing he found was the broken torch. “This yours, son?” he asked, bending down to pick it up.
“No, Mary lent it to me.”
“Mary Chivers?”
“Lord, no, Dad. Mary LaPrioux. The girl I danced with on Saturday night.”
“Oh.” Amazing how much meaning and speculation the old man could pack into one syllable. “She lent it to you.”
“Yes, Dad, she did!” And right now he was not in the mood to share the circumstances. “I’ll buy her another to replace it.”
“You might have a hard time finding one, son, but never mind that right now.” He’d happily change the subject too. “Hang on, let’s see if I can find your stick.”
Less than a minute later, Gryffyth had his stick secure in his hand. “Right, son, let’s get back home and get you cleaned up.”
In the light of the kitchen, Gryff looked a proper fright: his hair on end, and his jacket and shirt ripped to the elbow.
“Haven’t I always told you to roll up your sleeves before you shift your hands?”
“There wasn’t time. And what the hell was it that came after me? You know, don’t you?”
“Yes, son. I do. I should have told you before, but I wanted you to get settled, and honestly never thought it would happen like this.”
“Like what, Dad? And what the bloody hell was it?”
“Don’t you start swearing at me, son. You get a move on and clean yourself up and put on a new shirt. I need to call Helen Burrows and tell her I’ll be a bit late, and you’re coming up there with me now you’re home.”
“Up where, Dad?” He was in no mood for a social call.
“Up to the Council of War.” He avoided more questions by going out of the kitchen and picking up the phone.
Gryffyth took off his jacket and shirt and went over to the kitchen sink to wash up.
Dad reappeared minutes later carrying a clean shirt and a knitted pullover. “Here you are, son. Put them on. At least you’ll look presentable. We’ll see what we can do about mending your jacket in the morning. For now, let me tell you a few things.”
“Alright, Dad, but first—what do you mean by Council of War?”
“Just that, son. We’ve been under attack. And I don’t just mean the Blitz or the invasion.” He shook his head. “I should have told you the whole business, but things have been quiet since the last one, and I wanted you to relax a bit. My mistake.”
“What last one?”
“There’s been two of them, maybe three.”
“Three what?”
“Vampires, son. Vampires.”
“Spare me, Dad. Vampires don’t exist.” Stress of the war had addled his father’s wits. “They’re a figment of Bram Stoker’s imagination and a scary thrill for filmmakers.”
“Now look here, Gryffyth. They do exist. You just faced one. You can’t deny it. Wish you hadn’t had to meet it unprepared, but that’s done now. And before you start on about Vampires being fiction, remember there’s a lot of people would say Dragons don’t exist.”
“But we’re real, Dad.”
“So’s what you met in the lane a little while back. What did you see? Feel?”
What had he? Gryffyth shuddered, thinking back. “I felt menace, violence, and I saw a twisted face in the dark and…fangs.”
“We’ve got another one to deal with. Make no mistake about it.”
This barely made sense. “Dad.”
He held up his hand. “Hold on, Gryff. Wait until we all get together and we’ll fill you in. Alice is on her way to pick you up. I told them I was bringing you, as you have news. Bad news.”
Minutes later, there was a knock on the kitchen door, and Andrew Barron, the director of the new hush-hush munitions plant, stuck his head around the door. “Evening, everyone. Alice is outside. She stopped and picked Gloria and me up first. Everything alright?”
Apart from wondering what the blazes was really going on. “Smashing.”
“We’re ready,” Howell Pendragon said, reaching for his coat.
Gryffyth put his back on, glad the army had had the foresight to go for stout construction that held up even under a Dragon’s change, and grabbing his stick, went out and down the path. Alice was driving and Gloria Prewitt, the district nurse, was sitting in the back. They all piled in and Alice headed up the hill.
“Feeling totally lost and at sea?” she asked.
“Without map or compass,” Gryffyth replied.
“I understand,” Andrew said, from the back seat. “It’s rather complicated.”
That, Gryffyth was more than ready to believe, but why they seemed to be making a party out of all this was a bit beyond him.
He hoped he was going to find out.
Seated around the kitchen table in The Gallop, Alice’s home, where she lived with her grandmother and new husband, Gryffyth felt even more at sea. Mrs. Burrows, Alice’s gran, bustled around pouring cups of tea and offering apple tarts and Marmite sandwiches as if they were here to plan a village fete. But instead, unless his dad had completely lost his marbles, they were holding a Council of War about Vampires.
He needed something stronger than a mug of tea.
“Well, then,” Mrs. Burrows said, as she sat down. “We’re later starting than we planned but it’s wonderful to know we have Gryffyth with us.”
Gryffyth let the nods, smiles and “Hello, Gryffyth” greetings subside. “I can hardly be with you if I’ve no idea what’s going on.”
“Howell,” Mrs. Burrows said, with a look of surprise. “I thought you’d explained.”
“I told him we were dealing with Vampires, that’s all. And he met one in the lane awhile back. That’s what delayed me.”
Dad’s announcement certainly livened up the meeting. Gryffyth watched shock, horror, and amazement flicker over the faces around the table.
“Damn,” Peter Watson muttered. “Sorry, Gran,” he added, to Mrs. Burrows. “Just slipped out, but is there no end to them?”
“Seemingly not,” Gloria replied. “But don’t you think we should fill Gryffyth in with what’s happened? Must add,” she said, with a smile in his direction, “it’s marvelous to have another Dragon on our side.”
At that, Gryffyth almost doused himself with tea. Dad had revealed what he was to them! After having sworn him to secrecy. What the heck was going on here? And why were they all so matter-of-fact about Vampires and Dragons?
“Just a minute,” Dad said, guessing no doubt the questions his confused son was about to throw at him. “Let me start. Son, we’ve been under attack from a series of Vampires. They appear to come singly, which is a mercy. First one, we didn’t recognize at the time—but