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By Root 2475 0

old college. The moon passed behind a cloud and blackness descended; I felt an oppressive hand fall across my heart. I opened the car door and rummaged in the glove box. I found what I was looking for: a small zippered leather case with STOKER embossed on the front in faded gold lettering. I grabbed it and ran up the front steps of the old school. The interior was gloomily lit by emergency lighting; I flicked a panel of switches but the power was out. In the meager light I found a signboard and followed the arrows toward lecture room four. As I ran down the corridor I was aware of a strong odor; it matched the sullen smell of death I had detected in the boot of Spike’s car when we had first met. I stopped suddenly, the nape of my neck twitching as a gust of cold wind caught me. I turned around abruptly and froze as I noticed the figure of a man silhouetted against the dim glow of an exit light.

“Spike?” I murmured, my throat dry and my voice cracking.

“I’m afraid not,” said the figure, walking softly toward me and playing a torch on my face. “It’s Frampton; I’m the janitor. What are you doing here?”

“Thursday Next, SpecOps. There’s an officer in need of assistance in lecture room four.”

“Really?” said the janitor. “Probably followed some kids in. Well, you’d better come with me.”

I looked at him carefully; a glint from one of the exit lights caught the metallic gold of a crucifix around his throat. I breathed a sigh of relief.

He walked swiftly down the corridor; I followed closely.

“This place is so old it’s embarrassing,” muttered Frampton, leading me down a second corridor off the first. “Who did you say you were looking for?”

“An officer named Stoker.”

“What does he do?”

“He looks for vampires.”

“Really? Last infestation we had was in ’78. Student by the name of Parkes. Went backpacking in the Forest of Dean and came back a changed man.”

“Backpacking in the Forest of Dean?” I repeated incredulously, “Whatever possessed him to do that?”

The janitor laughed. “Good choice of words. Symonds Yat wasn’t as secure then as it is now; we’ve taken precautions too. The whole college was consecrated as a church.”

He flashed his torch at a large crucifix on the wall.

“We won’t have that sort of problem here again. This is it, lecture room four.”

He pushed open the door and we entered the large room. Frampton’s torch flicked across the oak-paneled walls but a quick search revealed nothing of Spike.

“Are you sure he said number four?”

“Certain,” I replied. “He—”

There was a sound of breaking glass and a muffled curse a small way distant.

“What was that?”

“Probably rats,” said Frampton.

“And the swearing?”

“Uncultured rats. Come, let’s—”

But I had moved off to a doorway beyond the lecture room, taking Frampton’s torch with me. I pushed the door open wide and an appalling stench of formaldehyde greeted me. The room was an anatomy lab, dark except for the moonlight coming in through the window. Against the wall were rack upon rack of pickled specimens: mostly animal parts, but a few human parts too, things for the boys to frighten the girls with during sixth-form biology lessons. There was the sound of a jar smashing, and I flicked the torch across to the other side of the room. My heart froze. Spike, his self-control having apparently abandoned him, had just thrown a specimen jar to the floor and was now scrabbling in the mess. Around his feet were the smashed remnants of many jars; it had obviously been quite a feast.

“What are you doing?” I asked, the revulsion rising in my throat.

Spike turned to me, his eyes gaping, his mouth cut from the glass, a look of horror and fear in his eyes.

“I was hungry!” he howled. “And I couldn’t find any mice!—”

He closed his eyes for a moment, gathered his thoughts with a Herculean effort, then stammered:

“My medication!—”

I forced down a foul gagging sensation and opened the medical kit to reveal a retractable penlike syringe. I unclipped the pen and moved toward Spike, who had collapsed in a heap and was sobbing silently. There was a hand on my shoulder, and I whirled