Read Online His Vampyrrhic Bride by Simon Clark - Free Book Online

house ready yet.’ The bright sunlight made him squint. ‘They’re not even supposed to be here until next week.’
    ‘Tom! You lousy, lazy basket,’ Owen shouted good-naturedly. ‘Open the freaking, wrenching door.’
    ‘Hey, watch that freaking language,’ Tom called down. ‘Or I’ll chuck you in the pond.’
    Owen grinned up at Tom, and Tom found himself grinning down at the ten-year-old. The last time he’d seen his cousin the boy had been so withdrawn and so quiet; understandably, his mother’s death had hit him hard. Now Owen seemed indestructibly cheerful – just as a ten-year-old should be.
    ‘I’ll put some clothes on,’ Tom said.
    ‘Gross.’ Owen pantomimed a look of disgust and called back to Tom’s mother, ‘Hey, Auntie, Tom’s strutting round the house naked.’
    Tom’s parents laughed. After an awkward start to the new living arrangements, when Owen moved in, they’d obviously grown fond of him. In fact, Tom realized the kid was rapidly becoming their new son. He wasn’t resentful. Tom knew that his mother and father didn’t love him any less because Owen had become part of the family. Owen’s mother was dead. The boy had never known his own father – the Gibsons had divorced when he was a baby – and Owen was still a child: he needed Mr and Mrs Westonby to be his new parents.
    An accumulation of T-shirts had formed a mountain on a chair. Somehow the need to put them in the washing machine had repeatedly slipped Tom’s mind. He tipped the clothes on to the floor and kicked them under the bed out of sight. Stuff like that could be taken care of later. Besides, he felt his spirits rising. He wanted to see his parents and Owen. He and the boy could have fun mucking around with the air compressor he’d bought for the dive school. With one of those machines you could blow up a domestic rubber glove to something larger than a fridge. Then the rubber glove would explode with a tremendous bang. Boys loved that kind of thing. Heck, Tom Westonby loved that kind of thing.
    Tom dragged on jeans and his last clean shirt then bounded downstairs. As soon as he opened the door Owen playfully punched his stomach.
    ‘What kept you, lazybones!’ Then Owen dashed upstairs. This was his first trip back to the house since his mother’s sudden death.
    ‘Let me help you with that.’ Tom took the coffee table from his mother. Meanwhile, his father dragged two wheelie cases.
    ‘The gravel’s getting stuck in the wheels. Hello, Tom, great to see you.’
    ‘Kiss for Mother.’ His mother turned her face.
    Tom kissed her cheek. ‘You weren’t coming until next week, were you?’
    ‘So we’re not welcome?’
    ‘No . . . I mean yes, but the house isn’t ready. Did you know there are seventy-seven straight-backed chairs in that place?’
    ‘Have you got a girl in the house?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘If you have, we can get back in the car, drive round for ten minutes, then pretend we’ve just arrived.’ His mother grinned. She was easy-going about him having girlfriends to stay. She didn’t mind in the least.
    ‘There’s no girl.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘When you look out of the corner of your eye like that I know you’re fibbing. You’ve done it since you were five years old and used to hide cake in your socks.’
    Tom laughed as he carried the table indoors. ‘There’s no girl. At least, not in the house.’
    ‘Ah, so who is she?’ Tom’s mother could read her son as easily as text on a page.
    What can I say that won’t sound too strange? She’s the girl I chased at midnight. Or: the mother believes they have a guardian dragon. No . . . best leave those unusual facts for later.
    Instead, he shrugged like the girl didn’t matter (she really did) and said, ‘Oh, just someone I met locally. We’re . . . you know . . .’
    ‘Just friends?’
    To avoid his mother scrutinizing his face to check where his eyes were headed when he answered her precisely targeted question, he asked, ‘Where