Read Online The Vampyre by Tom Holland - Free Book Online

gripped them, until my knuckles were white, and leaned my forehead against the central bar. The metal felt cool against my feverish skin. I stared out into the night. The mist was thick, and it was hard to see far beyond the road. Everything seemed still. Then, suddenly, I thought I saw movement - a man, or at least something resembling a man, running with extraordinary pace, but also with what seemed a lurch, as though one of the legs had been damaged in some way. I blinked, and the creature was lost. I peered desperately into the mists, but everything was still again, stiller perhaps, I thought with a grim half-smile, even than death itself.
    â€˜I reached for the pistols that I always slept with under my pillow, and threw on my travelling cloak. I walked stealthily through the inn. To my relief, I saw that the doors were still barred; I opened them, and crept outside. In the far distance, a dog was howling; all else was silent and motionless. I walked down the road a small way, towards the clump of stakes. The crossroads was swathed in mist but everything there seemed as still as at the inn, and so I turned and made my way, as you can imagine, thoughtfully back. When I reached the inn, I barred the doors, then, as quietly as before, I crept back towards my room.
    â€˜The door, when I reached it, was hanging open. I had left it shut, I was certain. As silently as I could, I approached it, and walked into the room. Hobhouse lay as I had left him, sweating on his filthy sheets, but bending over him, head almost touching his naked chest, was a figure muffled in an ugly black cloak. I aimed my pistol; the cocking of the weapon made the creature flinch, but before it could turn, the barrel of the pistol was buried in its back. “Outside,” I whispered. Slowly, the creature rose. I nudged it with the gun, and prodded it back into the corridor outside.
    â€˜I pulled it round, and tore the cloak back from its face. I stared at it and then I began to laugh. I remembered what had been said to me earlier that evening. I repeated the words. “Who knows what things may be abroad tonight?”
    â€˜Nikos did not smile. I gestured with the pistol that he should sit down. Reluctantly, he sank onto the floor.
    â€˜I stood over him. “If you wanted to rob Hobhouse - and I presume that’s what you were doing in our room - why wait until now?”
    â€˜Nikos frowned in puzzlement.
    â€˜â€œYour father,” I explained, “your brother - they were the klephti who killed our guards yesterday?”
    â€˜Nikos made no answer. I prodded my pistol into his back. “Did you kill my guards?” I asked again.
    Slowly, Nikos nodded his head.
    â€˜â€œWhy?”
    â€˜â€œThey were Turks,” he said simply.
    â€˜â€œWhy not us as well?”
    â€˜Nikos looked at me angrily. “We are soldiers,” he said, “not bandits.”
    â€˜â€œOf course not. You are all honest shepherds - I was forgetting.”
    â€˜â€œYes, we are shepherds,” said Nikos with a sudden explosion of fury, “just peasants, My Lord, animals, the slaves of a Turkish vardoulacha !” The word was spat at me without irony. “I had a brother, My Lord, my father had a son - he was killed by the Turks. Do you think slaves cannot take their revenge? Do you think slaves cannot dream of freedom, and fight for it? Who knows, My Lord, perhaps the time will come when Greeks do not have to be slaves.” Nikos’ face was pale, and he was shaking, but his dark eyes gleamed with defiance. I reached out to calm him, to hold him in my arms, but he leaped to his feet and pressed himself against the wall. Suddenly, he laughed. “Of course, you are right - I am a slave, so why should I care? Have me, My Lord, and then give me the gold.” He reached up to take my cheeks. He kissed me, his lips burning, with anger first, and then, I knew, with something more, a long, long kiss of youth and