The Road to Shalka Part 5: Out of the Dark

[Soldeed]

Jenny hated this job.

"Maidservant to his lordship!" her mother had enthused. "No breaking your back in the farmyard for you, my girl. Good money, pretty clothes and nothing to do all day except dust a few nick-nacks. You'd be mad to turn it down."

Jenny dragged up at the handles of the tin bucket she had just filled with clinker scraped from the fireplace, only to set it down with a gasp at the sensation of something in her back stretching in a way it really wasn't designed to do.

"Thanks, mum," she muttered, and shifted in search of a more effective lifting stance.

She was nineteen but her tired eyes and narrow features made her look older. Loose strands of dark hair escaped the knot at the back of her head and hung lifelessly over a face that was beginning to gleam with perspiration as she worked. Finally she started to make some progress with the bucket by stretching up with her legs inelegantly positioned on either side and waddling a few paces at a time before being forced to set it down. The breathy moan of the wind twisting its way down the chimney sent a shiver through her bone marrow and hurried her on her way towards the hall.

This reminded her that she was being ungrateful as usual. She should be glad to be hemmed in by the thick stone walls of the old house, with its cramped rooms, low ceilings and heavy velvet drapes that stored up warmth like a baker's oven. She could hear the gathering storm scraping like claws at the bolted shutters, rattling the old sash windows in their settings, the rain hammering down. This would be no night to be sheltering in her parents' draughty little cottage. They would be there now, in bed since sundown, wrapped in their thin blankets, huddled together for warmth.

Jenny struggled out into the hall and turned her back on the main doors. It would be considered inappropriate to be seen by her employers in the act of performing her domestic duties, so best to risk her back and make the quickest possible dash across to the discreet little door which would take her out of the family area and into the bare, unwelcoming, but safe surroundings of the servants' stairway. She was beginning the fastest stagger she could manage when she clenched her teeth at a booming metallic crash that resounded around the house.

She dropped the bucket on her foot and bit down on the first syllable of a curse which would have been a sacking offence. She turned to stare at the front door.

Visitors? Now? At this time of night and in this weather? She shook her head in exasperation. She would never understand rich people.

She looked down at the bucket, standing ostentatiously in the middle of the floor. It would be bad to leave it there, but it would also be bad to keep visitors waiting, especially at this time of night and in this weather, and nobody else would be coming along to open that door for her. She pondered the dilemma for a moment before realising that in every second she wasted pondering the chance of someone coming along and spotting the bucket increased, and the visitors would only be getting colder and more ill tempered. She straightened her plain black and white uniform and hurried over to the door, adopting the bright but humble look that had won her this job in the first place.

The heavy iron bolts were like something from a prison, or a fortress, but slid aside easily in their greased fittings, and then Jenny was fighting to hold the doors back as the wind rushed in, tearing at her face, whipping at her hair. Half blinded by flying rain, she could make out on the doorstep two grey cloaked and hooded figures, one tall and one short, picked out against the blackness of the night by the dull yellow light of the hall's flickering gas lamps. They were standing with their backs to her, but when they turned her mouth fell loosely open.

The tall one was like a villain from a storybook. His skin coldly pale, his features razorblade sharp, his dark eyebrows arched, his lips pursed contemptuously. And then there was the short one. Its skin was the colour of burnt wood, like nothing she had ever seen, so dark she could barely make out its features, and its eyes alone glared at her whitely from the shadow of its hood. With a shriek of absolute horror, Jenny turned and ran, sprinted the length of the hall and vanished through the first door she blundered into.

The two figures stood and watched her go. The Doctor looked down at Alison.

"Now see what you've done."

[Soldeed]

Lord Carstairs had heard the scream and he was ready for it. His prize shotgun, handmade, lovingly crafted, oiled and polished like fine silverware, and always loaded and within arm's reach, was in his hand in a second and he was charging out of his study into the hall. Clenched in his sweaty palms, the weapon swung around avidly at the moving figures, his finger twitching at the trigger.

Smartly he pulled the muzzle up, pointed it at the ceiling and tried to look casual as if he'd just been carrying the gun around for some innocent purpose. These were no intruders. One, a dark-skinned young woman dressed raffishly in loose shirt and trousers was struggling with her full weight to push the doors shut against the swirling gale outside and slide the bolt home. The other, a tall, pale, cold-eyed man with streaks of white in his black hair, was casting about vaguely for somewhere to discard a pair of hooded grey coveralls, sort of shiny, probably waterproof. He turned his head at Carstairs' approach, and with a flick of an eyebrow his gaze fell on the gun.

"Ah. Thankyou."

He hung the dripping capes over the gun barrel.

Carstairs was a thickset, round shouldered man in his fifties, clad in the heavy tweeds which were the uniform of his status, with a bushily sprouting moustache that contrasted with the scattered fluffy white remnants of the hair on his head. Red-faced, with the marks of broken capillaries clearly visible in the skin of his nose and cheeks, he stood and stared for a moment longer while the young woman got the better of the doors and strolled up to join her companion. Then, thankfully, years of experience in the art of hospitality kicked in and the genial host's patter flowed out of its own accord.

"Oh, good evening to you, sir. I'm Lord Carstairs, I'm the owner of the estate. Sorry to have kept you waiting but we're training up a new maid just now and I'm afraid everything's running a little slowly. It is terribly late to be out and about on a night like this, caught in the storm I suppose? Rotten luck. The weather really is unseasonably poor just now. Where were you headed, might I ask? The roads must be in a terrible state by now, I do hope you're not in any urgent haste, I don't think you'll get much further tonight. Is your carriage out front? Or did you have a breakdown, perhaps? There's a very good, reliable blacksmith in town who I'm sure could help you. Where were you headed, might I ask?"

The stranger listened with a strange curl of a smile at the edge of his mouth and left a pause just a fraction too long for comfort before replying.

"Breathe." With a blink he was chirpily civil. "Yes, quite. How do you do, your lordship, I'm the Doctor." He indicated the young woman with a hand on her shoulder. "This is the princess Alison of Ethiopia. I'm engaged in showing her the wonders of the old country."

"Oh!" Carstairs straightened, on his best behaviour in his new role as a representative of empire. He passed the cloak-draped gun furtively into his left hand and extended his right to the royal visitor. "Welcome to our country," he said, making close eye contact and enunciating loudly and slowly.

"Thanks," said Alison.

"Yes. Ah..." Carstairs' eyes slid over to the gun he was still clutching, replaying guiltily in his mind the faux pas of charging out heavily armed to greet his guests. "One moment. Let me just, er, dispose of these."

Left alone for an instant while Carstairs slipped into a side room, Alison rounded on the Doctor.

"African princess? What the hell's all that about?"

The Doctor was wandering off, inspecting their ornate but cramped surroundings, admiring the craftsmanship of the hand carved mahogany stairpost. He spared her a glance.

"This is the nineteenth century, Alison," he said mildly. "Do you want them to make you eat in the kitchen?"

"No," she admitted.

He gave a nod.

"Then you're an African princess."

An instinctive protest at the injustice of this was forestalled by two doors opening simultaneously, Carstairs reappearing from the side door, gunless but still holding their cloaks draped over his arm, Jenny making an excruciatingly nervous re-entrance from the end of the passage.

"Ah, there you are," Carstairs called out accusingly. "Where have you been? This is Doctor... um... Doctor, and this is the Princess Alison. You've kept them waiting."

"Sorry sir," said Jenny with a distracted curtsey to the visitors, her eyes flitting about the hall. "I... I thought I heard Cook calling me."

She focussed in bewilderment on the bit of floor where she had left the clinker bucket. Bad enough to be caught carrying it, or leaving it while she attended to the door, but to leave it here, forgotten, while she wandered off to the other end of the house, that would be very bad. But it wasn't there. She looked around confusedly, unable to shed the feeling that it must be here somewhere, waiting to reveal itself at the worst possible moment for her. She found herself catching the scary looking stranger's eye.

With a motion of his head he drew her gaze over to the hidden servant's door in the panelling of the wall, and with a draining wash of relief she realised what he'd done. She curtseyed again, this time with feeling, and without a hint of a smile on his chilly features he returned his attention to Carstairs.

"Yes, at any other time we'd be glad to offer you hospitality," his lordship was saying. "But as you've no doubt gathered we're having terrible servant trouble just now. It's just Jenny and the cook, and I'm afraid my little family and I work them far too hard as it is."

He shuffled the cloaks invitingly between his hands, and when this brought no response pressed on:

"What I would suggest is that you head back up the main path, turn right at the church, and that'll take you all the way down to Lower Ellisbrook. Marvellous inn there, excellent roast hog's head, often go down there for lunch myself."

His bonhomie became more forced with every word, withering under the Doctor's cool, appraising eye. When he ran out of words and stood quiet, still trying to look jolly, the Doctor let him swing for a moment before saying:

"But it's raining."

Carstairs stilled awkwardly, and a barely audible croaking sound emerged from his half open mouth as he sought something to say. With an ill-concealed look of defeat, he submitted to the inevitable and smiled wanly, taking a half step back as a gesture of welcome.

"Of course. So it is, how silly of me, naturally you must both stay the night. Jenny, run down and tell Cook there'll be two more for dinner, would you?"

Of course, of course, we're always stocked up with food for an extra two people at five minutes' notice. Jenny kept the scowl off her face until her back was turned, and headed off towards the kitchens.

The Doctor was all cold charm.

"Well, if you insist, your Lordship, that's most kind. Certainly looking forward to paying my respects to the rest of the family."

"Yes." Carstairs scratched his fingers agitatedly through his sparse hair. "Yes, that'll be nice."

[Soldeed]

The Doctor prowled around the gloomy drawing room of the mansion, investigating everything in the politely detached manner of a patient but slightly bored guest. He ran sharp eyes along the row of yellowed photographs on the mantlepiece, rattled the loosened glass of the window in its frame with the tap of a fingertip, bent to poke his head into the great stone fireplace and peer up the chimney. He straightened at the sound of quick footsteps across the floorboards.

"Doctor!" Alison's voice, and none too happy. "Did you know about this? Have you seen what they're making me wear?"

He turned, and if she hadn't been too preoccupied with her own issues she would have seen him wince, and touch his fingers lightly to his brow. She was securely laced into a long, formal white dress, ribbons, buttons and lacy frills tied into its unwieldy cotton bulk at every extremity. She stood in front of him, fists on hips, her beaded locks sprawling incongruously over the flounces at her shoulders.

"Pretty," he said quietly.

"It's a death trap, is what it is," she stormed. "I'm half suffocating, I feel like I'm being attacked by a pack of mad blankets. And that girl, the maid, Jenny. Innocent looking little thing, isn't she? Well, she's a maniac, she tricked me. Told me to breathe out, then knotted the strings up the back and half crushed my ribcage. She must have fingers like steel cables!"

The Doctor listened impassively to her rant, nodding agreement to the principle without much sense of sympathy. When she'd finished he paused for a moment and then shrugged.

"Oh well."

He looked past her at the door to the hallway, and with an exasperated snort she abandoned the point and turned to see what he was looking at. Into the room to join them glided a walking porcelain statue.

The young woman's skin was frighteningly, unhealthily pale, and the pink blush which had been applied to her cheeks heightened the effect rather than concealing it. Even so, she was astonishingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful, the glacial perfection of her features complemented by icy blue eyes and gleaming silver-blonde hair. Her slender fragility garbed in a dazzling, richly embroidered high-collared gown of stiffened silk, her very entrance seemed to transform the dark and cosy drawing room into a fairy tale palace. Alison wouldn't have thought it possible, but she suddenly felt sloppily attired in her own simple dress, and asked herself how these people could have ever taken seriously the story that she was any sort of princess.

The new arrival smiled. Sort of. The breaking of her chilly composure just made her look sad.

"Good evening," she said softly. "You must be the Doctor, and the Princess Alison. It's so nice to have visitors for once."

The Doctor stepped forward, took her limply extended, white gloved hand, and raised it to within an inch of his lips.

"Charmed."

Alison took the proffered hand in a grip she knew was too firm, too clumsy.

"Hi," she said awkwardly.

The Doctor sighed.

"I must apologise for the princess," he said. "She was educated by a certain missionary in her homeland, a man of great energy and principle but little refinement. I'm afraid this also accounts for her rather eccentric dialect of English."

"Don't overdo it, Doctor," Alison muttered.

The young woman looked a little lost, and attempted another smile. She withdrew with a sense of, if not relief, then simple tiredness, when Carstairs bustled in behind her.

"Ah, excellent," he cried with hardworking jollity. "I see you've already met. Sorry I wasn't here to introduce you properly, this is Charlotte, my daughter in law, an addition to the family any father would be proud of, I'm sure you'll agree."

"Mm-hm." The Doctor eyed him with interest. "And will your son, the lucky man, be joining us?"

"Er, no." Carstairs seemed to speak more quickly with every sentence. "I was hoping perhaps you'd escort Charlotte in to dinner. Princess?" He offered his crooked elbow to Alison. "Will you permit me?"

Alison hesitated, restrained herself from taking a defensive step back, and lifted her hand tentatively, supposing she was meant to thread it through his arm somehow but wanting to get the angle right. Could she get away with waiting until the Doctor paid Charlotte the same courtesy and then copying what she did? It would mean leaving Carstairs hanging for a while, standing there in that strange teapot-like posture...

There was an earsplitting shriek of terror from upstairs and the tableau switched, all four of them staring wide-eyed in the same direction. Alison wiped the relieved grin off her face.

"Bess!" roared Carstairs.

Like a charging bull he shouldered the startled Doctor aside and blundered out into the hall and up the stairs.

"Now we're getting somewhere," the Doctor muttered, and flew after him.

Alison followed. She ran out of the room, across the hall and to the staircase, where she immediately tripped over her skirts and fell flat on her face. Pushing herself up on her palms, she looked to the side and found Charlotte observing her wanly from the drawing room door.

"Oh..." She stifled her curses and dragged the great mass of material out of the way to go clambering up the steps.

* * * * *

She had been left far behind by Carstairs and the Doctor, but was able to track them easily by the sound of a blubbering, hysterical voice, and she found them crouched by a vast four-poster bed in a bedroom the size of her old flat. The woman huddled with the covers drawn up to her chin was middle-aged, her hair in disarray, her lined face made more so by furrows of exhaustion and horror.

"Bess! Bess!" said Carstairs urgently, pushing closer. "Are you all right? What happened? Another nightmare?"

"No!" the woman managed to gabble out. "No, no, no. It wasn't a dream, I saw it, I really did, just like that night... At the window, its face, oh its face!"

She pulled the covers over her nose and squeezed her eyes shut in a fresh bout of sobs. The Doctor leaned forward intently.

"Bess?" he said. "Bess, I need you to tell me more about this thing you saw. Can you describe it?"

She collected herself a little at his words, but Carstairs stiffened and rose quickly to his feet.

"As you can see, Doctor, my wife is unwell. I'm afraid I must ask you not to upset her."

The Doctor drew back, folded his arms and looked down at the shorter man in deadly seriousness.

"You and I both know, Lord Carstairs, that there is nothing wrong with your wife. She is upset already because she has seen something very real and very frightening at her window."

"I... I'm afraid I shan't be able to join you for dinner tonight after all, I must tend to Elizabeth."

His anger and distress lending him the courage, he lifted his chin with a defiant look. The Doctor didn't stir.

"I'm here to help you," he said quietly. "I propose to do so whether you cooperate or not, but it'll save a lot of time and trouble if you just trust me now."

"Nobody can..." Carstairs halted himself in mid-blurt and pressed his lips together. "I must ask you both to leave my wife's bedchamber now."

The Doctor leaned forward, cold-eyed, all the way forward until his forehead rested on that of the recoiling aristocrat.

"Okay."

In a swirl of his coat he wheeled around and shooed Alison along ahead of him, out of the bedroom and onto the landing over the stairwell. He pulled the door shut behind them.

"Well, bang goes dinner," he remarked. "Shall we see if this mysterious Cook will do us a sandwich?"

"You really think she saw some sort of monster out there?" Alison asked.

"Oh, I don't doubt it. Omicron particle emissions, in 1888? There's obviously something strange going on round here." He retrieved a wallet-sized technological gadget from his pocket and peered disappointedly at the flat red line on its screen. "Pity they faded before we could track them down, isn't it?"

"So what now?"

He led the way downstairs.

"It's dark, and it's raining. This is no weather for going out chasing monsters. So I suggest food, then sleep, and we'll sort it out in the morning."

[Soldeed]

The bed to which an increasingly harassed Jenny had eventually found time to show her was a great big squashy thing which gave under Alison's weight till she felt she would end up bent double. Normally she preferred a nice, firm matttress, good for the back, but there was something comforting about the way the great feathery mass folded about her and despite all the alarms and upsets of the evening she was soon drifting off to sleep.

She found herself walking through a forest, a pleasant, sunlit place filled with tweeting birdsong. Her hands were in her pockets, she was whistling some nameless tune, and she was gliding tirelessly along her way, but still she knew something wasn't right. She glanced over her shoulder, back along the path where the light of the forest's end could be clearly seen shining like a beacon, and there was something there. It couldn't be seen but it was there all the same, somewhere in amongst the darkly rustling trees. She turned and moved forward again, deeper into the forest, where it was bright and welcoming and full of life, and the trees didn't curve in over the path with their clawlike skeletal branches, and weren't grey and dusty, and didn't hide a thousand dark shadows amongst their twisting roots and contorted trunks. Still it was there, though, right behind her, and the faster she moved, the deeper she went into what should have been safety, the closer it got, and the more she knew its cold breath was on her neck, and the less she dared ever look back again. She was running now, fearful, desperate, but for some reason no matter how hard she ran she was still standing at the same place, her arms and legs flailing uselessly, exposed and vulnerable. But there was a ditch ahead of her, and somehow she was free to jump down into it, and pull stuff over on top of her for cover; first loose leaves and twigs, then the earth itself. She clawed with blackening fingernails, digging herself down into the ground, burying herself under ton after ton of dirt, and all the time she knew the thing was standing right there, and if she looked up, if she raised her head, if she couldn't lose herself down in the depths of this dark pit, this time it would have her for sure...

She blinked, and opened her eyes. Sitting on the edge of her bed, the Doctor smiled down at her.

"There she is."

"Doctor?"

She peered up at him confusedly. He looked tired. Coatless for once, his hair unkempt, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow, and it came to her that something terrible must have happened while she slept. She sat up sharply, and with a nauseating lurch the room span and yawed about her like a ship in rough seas.

"Don't try and get up yet," he said.

"Cheers for the warning," she muttered and slumped back onto the pillow, eyes shut. "What's going on, Doctor? I felt fine yesterday, what's wrong with me?"

"Well, I don't want you to panic..."

"Panic?" Her eyes snapped open in her alarm. "Panic about what? What's happening?"

"All right, poor choice of words," he confessed with a sigh. "Look, you're going to be fine, nothing to worry about. But I'm going to show you something now, and you should be prepared for the fact that it's not going to be particularly pleasant."

She watched warily while he retrieved a little silver hand mirror from the bedside table. With a light touch of his fingertips on her chin he angled her head away while he held the mirror down to her left. The look in her eyes must have told him when she sighted the thick, bloodstained bandage taped to the side of her neck.

"Nasty, eh? Let's take a quick peek."

She winced at the smarting pull on her flesh as he peeled away the tapes and folded back the gauze and cotton wool pad to reveal a livid purple and yellow bruise on her throat, and a bloody wound still glistening wetly at its centre.

"Oh!"

Her shiver ran sickeningly all the way down to her stomach and she pressed her fingers quickly against her mouth. The Doctor rolled the bandage back into place.

"You're going to be fine," he said again. "But you lost a lot of blood. Lucky Jenny turned out to have your blood type or you'd be laid up for days. That little donation took some persuasion, I can tell you."

Stiffly afraid to move her head, Alison slid her eyes over to the side, and saw the primitive glass bottles, tubes and a kind of gigantic syringe made of what looked like brass. All stained with rust-coloured dried blood like the tools of a slaughterhouse. She shuddered.

"What happened? What did this to me?"

The Doctor sat back on his hard little wooden chair.

"I was hoping you might have some input on that."

"No! I mean, I slept right through it, I didn't feel a thing."

"Pity. The thing is, you were still bleeding a little when we found you, there was a good deal of blood soaking into the pillow, but not nearly as much you turned out to have lost. So I ask myself, what happened to the rest? From the marks around the wound, I'm thinking something drank it."

"Oh, you..." The spinning unreality of the situation did nothing to lessen her sense of revulsion. "You mean like a... like a..."

"Say it," he prompted her.

"Like a vampire?"

His eyes twinkled with energy and his smile curled upwards at the side.

"Exactly like a vampire!" With a sheepish look he backtracked a little. "Well, perhaps not exactly. I don't think we're dealing with an overdressed aristo with a comedy accent. You have one wound, not two, and the flesh has been torn, not punctured. So..." He put his head on one side and scratched his ear. "I'd say what we're looking for is a creature without working teeth or mouth parts, which therefore has to consume protein in liquid form through some sort of sucker. Blood would be ideal. I can't honestly say the description rings a bell."

"Ugh," said Alison with feeling. "And this thing crept in here while I was asleep and just sat there slurping away at my neck till it was full, and then left me here bleeding?"

"Yes, and without waking you up." He held up a glass phial a quarter full of dark red fluid. "I took this to analyse later. I'm betting I'll find traces of some sort of natural anaesthetic."

"I had weird dreams."

She was embarrassed at having come out with this inconsequential point, but the Doctor looked interested.

"Really? Like what?"

"Well, like there was something after me, and I just had to keep hiding, and pulling stuff over me, burying myself deeper and deeper to get away from it."

"Hmm." He stroked his chin contemplatively. "I wonder if it uses a kind of psychic anaesthetic. Keeps its victims asleep by using anxiety to make them suppress their own conscious thought processes."

"Yeah, probably." Alison shifted uncomfortably in bed, feeling a stab of pain from the wound in her neck. "Where is everyone, anyway? Shouldn't they be rallying round, bringing me soup and grapes and stuff?"

The Doctor looked shifty.

"Ah, well, I don't think you'll be getting any other visitors for a while. Not until I've left you alone, anyway." He glanced round at the firmly closed bedroom door and continued with a shrug. "The flow had almost stopped, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have bled to death even if we hadn't found you, but stepping in here, seeing the sheets and the pillow all drenched in blood..." His eyes flickered away in recollection. "I may have overreacted slightly."

"Oh, I see." Alison wasn't sure whether to be sorry she'd missed this scene. "Well, that's no good, is it? Not if we want them to help us catch this vampire or whatever it is. You'll have to use your charm on them."

"Yes..." The Doctor reflected on this with arched eyebrows, chewing his lip. "I think I'm going to do that right now." He gave her a pat on the arm while he jumped to his feet. "Feel better."

With a sense of purpose he headed for the door.

* * * * *

The Doctor shook his sleeves back down to his wrists and shrugged his coat back on. He headed down towards the main hallway where Carstairs awaited him at the bottom of the stairs.

"Doctor." He was nervous, fidgeting warily at his guest's approach. "Is she any better?"

"She's awake," the Doctor said. "She just needs to rest. Something to eat would be a good idea, too."

"Ah, fine." Carstairs looked relieved at being given something to do. "I'll tell Jenny to get Cook to make some soup."

"Good. Before you do that, can I have a brief word?"

With the pressure of just his fingertips on Carstairs' shoulder, the Doctor guided him out of the hall and into the drawing room, where Charlotte sat unmoving in an armchair, looking cold despite the firelight dancing on her pale skin. They halted in the centre of the floor.

"Well, what can I do for you?" Carstairs asked. "Does the princess..."

He was choked to a halt by the Doctor's fist knotting about his tie. Startled, he put up no resistance as he was thrust backwards into a chair, the impact of his bulk almost overbalancing it, and recoiled from the Doctor's tautly furious face inches from his own.

"You chicken-hearted excuse for a man," the Doctor hissed malevolently. "She could have died. She could have lain there alone and bled her life out onto the floor and all because your little family secrets have to be kept in the family. I asked you to tell me what was happening once. I asked you nicely. But now..."

He straightened and strode over to Charlotte, sitting watching the scene with blank, sorrowful eyes. She gasped as he seized the edge of her high collar and ripped it apart, exposing her throat and the livid twisted scar by the vein. He rounded on Carstairs.

"I knew it. How many times has this happened?" He advanced on the man, eyes narrowed, while with a sob Charlotte scrabbled to repair her collar and cover the mark. "And just where is this son of yours?"

At this Carstairs looked up with sudden spirit.

"My son is dead," he spat out. "Those things killed him three weeks ago."

"Things?" The Doctor straightened, a chill passing over his face. "You're telling me there's more than one?"

[Soldeed]

Full of soup, Alison sat up cautiously against the great mound of feather pillows that occupied much of the end of the bed. People were being studiously nice to her. Carstairs had been in, all bluff good cheer, claiming she looked strong enough for a day's riding with the hounds. Charlotte had passed by, murmured something she hadn't quite heard and then been gone. Even Lady Carstairs had shambled up to the door, looking tousled and exhausted in her dressing gown, and distractedly rambled on for a few moments about how she'd probably be better soon. Then there had been Jenny, of course, but she didn't really count because she'd been dashing around bringing soup, clearing plates and fluffing pillows almost too fast for the eye to follow and hadn't stopped to exchange pleasantries. She didn't seem to have been slowed down by so much as a half step by having donated a pint of blood that morning.

So now she was bored, and she seemed to be able to move her head without setting the room spinning around her like some demented fairground ride. Still moving carefully, she pushed back the sheets and swung herself out of bed, finding the rug tentatively with her toes as if it were a tricky foothold while climbing down from a tree. Thankfully someone had left her own clothes ready for her on a chair.

* * * * *

Descending the stairs with one hand resting carefully on the banister, it wasn't hard to track the Doctor down. His sharp, authoritative voice was holding forth from the direction of the study:

"And you never thought of trying anything like this in the last three weeks?"

"I haven't been trying to catch the things," came Carstairs' response, unusually forceful. "I've been trying to kill them."

"Sloppy thinking," was the Doctor's comment. "When you don't know anything about them or even how many there are. What have you been doing anyway?"

"They attack livestock sometimes, so we've been leaving poisoned sheep carcasses out in the fields. They haven't been taking them, though."

"'Course they haven't. These things don't want a dead body, they're looking for rich, warm, tasty, thick pumping..."

"Must you?" protested Alison dryly, leaning against the doorpost. Sitting side by side at a chunky black wood desk, the two men looked up.

"Princess!" Carstairs frowned at her in a stern yet fatherly way. "What are you doing up? You should be resting."

Alison looked past him at the Doctor.

"Look, I know all that, but I'm going mad up there. Can't I help with something? I'm feeling a lot better now, honest, and I promise just to sit quietly and not over-exert myself. Don't make me go back upstairs and lie there staring at the ceiling."

The Doctor favoured her with a trace of a smile.

"Actually I was just about to go and see if you felt up to running an errand for me." He ripped a sheet of paper from a notepad and brought it over to her. "I need a few bits and bobs from the Tardis. Get the Master to help you."

Alison grimaced. Suddenly spending the rest of the afternoon in bed didn't seem like such a bad deal after all.

"Do I have to?"

He pressed the paper into her hand.

"Some of it's a bit technical. You'll never find it without him."

"It's just that it means going down into that... that dungeon of his."

"It is not a dungeon," the Doctor said patiently. "It's just a private space to call his own, such as everyone deserves to have. I admit his taste in interior design is a bit, well..."

"Dungeony?"

"Exactly."

* * * * *

Despite the nagging fact that she'd volunteered for this, it didn't take long for Alison to start feeling resentful at the Doctor for having asked it of her, in her condition. The Tardis was fully a mile and a half from the house and she had to stop repeatedly along the way, light headed and weak limbed, before she found her way to its familiar blue rectangular form, hidden away discretely in a grove of trees.

The familiar roundels, the bright lights, the quiet hum of power. It was always with a sense of relief that she came back to this place, knowing that whatever might happen in the outside world here, at least, she was safe. Except that there was just one little corner where that wasn't quite true, and here she was, standing above a circular steel hatchway in the floor which led the way to that very place.

She took a deep breath.

"Come on, pull yourself together. Nothing to worry about. Like the ghost train. Boo, scary, but nothing's going to happen."

She tapped a control set into the wall and the hatch slid aside to unveil the dark pit below. Glinting lights were visible here and there, the grey outlines of the furniture hazing into the gloom like ghosts.

"Hello?" She knelt and poked her head down through the hole. "Hello, are you down there?"

No response. The murk beneath her feet was still and silent as a tomb. With a sigh, Alison conceded to the inevitable and began the climb down the chunky cast iron ladder into the gloomy depths.

"Hello?" she called again. Her feet clanged down resoundingly onto the metal floor in the Master's den. As her eyes adjusted to the half light she could make out an array of tables and workbenches, all neatly lined up in military fashion with tools and parts stored away in plastic racks, a sharp contrast to the cheerful chaos of the Doctor's own workshop. Monitor screens glimmered palely in the dark, obscure data scrolling past by the second, and she found herself giving way to her curiosity. Just what did he get up to down here all day? She leaned closer to the nearest screen and at that instant every light in the place snapped out.

Total blackness. Alison clenched her teeth to steady herself and felt the blood pumping hard through her veins. A low chuckle echoed around the chamber.

"Nosy."

"Very funny," she managed, her voice steady but husky from her suddenly parched throat. A single light clicked on.

The Master was sitting not five feet away, leaning back with his legs casually crossed and his hands still upon the arms of his chair. The glow of the desk lamp at his elbow caught the right side of his face, turning it a bleached white, while the left side remained lost in shadow. He blended so easily into the dark. Surely he hadn't been sitting there all along?

"You must forgive me my small amusements, Miss Cheney," came his rich, polished tone. "My current limited horizons allow for little else."

She straightened defiantly, this reminder of his reduced status lending her some confidence.

"Doctor wants these things," she said, holding up the crumpled sheet of notepaper.

He eyed the paper for a moment, his eyes glinting like needles in the lamplight. Then with an elegant turn of the wrist he lifted only his hand from the arm of his chair, and held it out, palm up, by way of acceptance. Annoyed with herself for playing his game though she knew she had no choice, Alison edged close enough that she could stretch out an arm and slip the sheet between his fingers. He glanced at it with aloof disinterest.

"Mm. I can see things are getting entertaining out there."

"What is all that stuff?" she asked grudgingly. "The Doctor didn't have time to explain."

"Somehow he never does, does he? Well, the chemicals suggest he's proposing to mix up a tranquilising drug of some sort. The gadgetry is mostly scanning and transmission equipment. Ah, how I wish I could be out there with you, facing all those unknown perils in the name of what's right."

"Yeah, it's a real blow for all of us," muttered Alison. The Master's reptilian grin flashed white.

"You do me an injustice, Miss Cheney. I am, as you would say, totally on board for the whole fighting evil thing. It's really not that different from what I used to get up to in the old days, just with a few extra rules to make it a bit more challenging."

In an oily smooth motion he rose to his feet, and Alison found herself taking a step back from his suddenly towering height. A slender remote control in his left hand pointed, and a door in the far wall swung open to admit a dazzling white light from the corridor beyond.

"You've put a door in," said Alison accusingly.

"Yes. That ladder down from the hole in the ceiling wasn't really very practical, was it? What was I thinking?"

[Soldeed]

Alison arrived back at the mansion lugging two shoulder bags packed with technological gadgetry and bottles of multicoloured fluids. Pushing her way through a front door which had been left unlocked and resting against its main bolt, she followed a steady sound of hammering up the stairs and found herself standing under a square hole in the ceiling above the landing. A splinter-ridden, paint-spattered old wooden ladder led up into the dusty confines of the attic.

"Doctor?" she called out. "You up there?"

The hammering came to an abrupt halt, and a few seconds later his face appeared in the hole. He looked a little pinker than usual from the exercise.

"Ah, there you are. Find everything all right?"

"Weighs a ton," she complained, hefting the straps where they dug into her shoulders.

"Oh. I suppose I should have specified we didn't really need that much of any of it. Never mind. Ditch them in the corner there and come up here. I think I've found where your friend from last night got into the house."

With poor grace Alison did as she was told and scrambled up the ladder to join him. The attic was a vast space, covering the entire area of the mansion under its sloping roof, the stacked crates and tea chests barely lit by a single oil lantern, a hundred dark and hidden spaces behind the cobwebs and chimney columns. The Doctor picked up the lantern and led the way over to a point just at the lowest point of the roof, where a row of heavy planks had now been crudely but sturdily nailed to the rafters.

"See? It managed to dislodge these tiles here. Then, as far as I can make out, it made a hole in the ceiling so it could slip down into the wall cavity, then found its way down under the floorboards, all the way to your room where it just pushed its way up through a loose board. Crafty little creature."

"Little?"

"Oh, yes. Judging by the holes, and the gaps it managed to squeeze through, it can't be more than about..." He gestured vaguely with his hands, expressing the concept of something about as big as medium sized dog. "Just as well, too. It filled its little belly with your blood without taking enough to kill you."

"Oh, Doctor." Grey faced with nausea at this image, Alison turned away and he looked apologetic, but she changed the subject before he could say anything. "Did they say how long this has been going on? They seemed to be pretty much taking it for granted."

"They're just closing ranks. Carstairs is fooling himself he's man enough to take whatever comes and the women don't know better than to drift along with him. Seems the first they knew about it was three weeks ago. Charlotte was asleep with her husband, young George Carstairs, and one of those things found its way in and attacked her. George woke up, chased it out of the house and across the moor. Carstairs and a couple of men followed, just in time to see him brought down by a whole pack of them. Ever since they've been catching little glimpses of them here and there, but they're still too stubborn to go looking for help. Too proud to make fools of themselves talking about hideous goblins that drink blood. And this house is no castle. The creatures are out there every night, scrabbling at the woodwork, clattering about on the roof, gnawing at the weak points, no matter how carefully barred and barricaded the place is, it's inevitable they find a way in once in a while."

"Always the same way?" asked Alison with a nod at the hole in the roof.

"No, apparently the first time was just through an open window. The second time one found its way in through the cellar and nearly killed the footman. That's when all the servants left except the cook. They took Jenny on at short notice straight afterward. Since then, there's been a couple breaking in through loosely bolted shutters, one down a chimney, and one up a drain. That last one, that's the one that got Lady Carstairs two nights ago. No wonder the poor old thing doesn't feel like greeting visitors."

"So what are we going to do?"

"Ah!" With a flourish the Doctor lifted his index finger. "I thought you'd never ask."

* * * * *

By nightfall, every possible means of entry into the house was bolted and boarded up tight. All except a single window of a corner bedroom which stood invitingly open, the cool night air wafting gently in. The only light that of the three-quarters moon, Alison pressed back into her corner to the right of the window and clutched tightly in her hand the first of the four little phials of anaesthetic fluid the Doctor had given her. In her left she held a wad of cotton wool treated with smelly chemicals. Throw the phial in the right general direction, he had told her, then press the pad over your nose and mouth, then hope for the best.

The Doctor leaned back casually in his own corner, staring into space as if daydreaming. Carstairs lurked about behind the bed, the top of his head frequently visible as he shifted about in search of a more comfortable position.

"If we're going to see one it'll probably be soon," he said, placing his hands on the edge of the bedspread to peep over at them. "The ladies are asleep, the house is dark and quiet. That's the way they like it."

Alison shook her head in disbelief.

"What I want to know is how anyone in this house can get off to sleep knowing those things are creeping about outside. I don't even like knowing there's a spider in the room."

"Oh, my doctor gave us a supply of an excellent sleeping draught. They'll be out like a light, I can assure you."

"What? With vampires sneaking into their bedrooms? You really think knockout drops are the way to go?"

"I don't want them getting overwrought."

"There's worse things in life than being overwrought, you know!"

"Excuse me." Awaking from his reverie, the Doctor arched his eyebrows at them. "Ambush, remember?" His attention drifted away again, with a muttered: "Amateurs!"

Time passed. Alison had no way to measure it, except by how tired, stiff and crotchety she was becoming. After much thumping about Carstairs had gone very still now and she suspected he had dropped off. Even the Doctor looked like he was starting to fret.

"Maybe they got suspicious," she offered quietly. "Maybe the open window was a bit too obvious."

"Perhaps," he said with a frown. "But their predatory pattern is animalistic. It doesn't suggest sentient reasoning."

Looking unhappy, he sidled over to the window, just far enough that he could sneak a one-eyed look at the drive and gardens outside.

"Well, I can't see anything. Perhaps it's time we called it a night."

"Shhh!" she hissed urgently. He rounded on her archly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I can hear something!"

"Really?"

Looking unconvinced, he turned his head to one side, cocking an ear towards the open window.

"No!" she whispered. "Not outside. In the corridor!"

As one, in utter silence, they turned to stare at the firmly closed bedroom door. There was a faint but clearly discernible creak of floorboards from outside.

"Oh dear," the Doctor murmured. "I may possibly have slipped up."

Painstakingly pressing their feet down onto the rug, on edge for the slightest sound which might betray their movement, they made a cautious progress across the room. Past Carstairs' snoozing form to the door, while the sound outside creaked to a halt just outside. The Doctor cast his eyes down at the phial in Alison's hand.

"Be ready," he said under his breath

In a swift, smooth movement he seized the handle and yanked the door open, and Alison lifted her hand to hurl the phial... right into the maid's startled face.

"Jenny!" Quickly she dropped her hand, to hold the little glass tube out of sight by her side. "What are you doing here?"

The girl hesitated, her eyes darting nervously between them.

"I... er..."

The Doctor sighed, pushing the door back against the wall so that he might stand at Alison's shoulder.

"Spit it out."

"I've... I think I've done a terrible thing."

Jenny was almost curling up in distress and worry, and Alison's instinct was to step forward and try to comfort her. She was startled to find herself restrained by the Doctor's hand clamped tightly but unobtrusively about her elbow.

"Well?" he said.

Weakly Jenny let her story tumble out.

"I had to go out. Down to the village to fetch something. So... I know you said not to, but I took down the boards you fixed up over the back door. I locked up behind me, I swear, and I know those little things have tried to get in that way before, I've seen the scratch marks, but they've never managed it so I was sure it would be all right this time too. But... but when I got back just now... Well, that lock's very old and it should have been replaced years ago, and it looks like somehow they managed to tear it loose, and... and the door was open when I got back." She dropped her head in shame, swallowing hard. "I'm so sorry."

The Doctor had listened, sharp-faced and unblinking.

"Right," he said. At a quick pace he walked back across the room to close and bolt the window, then picked up the oil lantern left standing ready in the corner. "We have to check the bedrooms."

* * * * *

The three of them made a furtive progress along the silent passageway, their shadows stretched and distorted by the lantern's smoky yellow light. It was impossible to move with complete silence across the warped old floorboards, and the high pitched creak of rusted nails in rotting wood twisted about them as they made their way to Lady Carstairs' door.

Jenny pushed the door open and the Doctor lifted the lantern up high. The richly furnished room was still and silent. Bess' face was visible in sleep, her ashen hair sprawled about her on the pillow, her mouth hanging just open, a wheezing hint of a snore audible on her inward breath.

"One down," the Doctor muttered, and Jenny pulled the door softly shut.

Charlotte's room was behind a heavy white door at the far end of the corridor and they found themselves clustering together as they approached.

"If it's not in here..." Alison whispered.

"Then there's still the cook, remember?" said the Doctor.

"I checked on her already," Jenny said quickly. "She's fine."

"Oh?" The tension hunching her shoulders demonstrated that she could feel the straight look he was giving her, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. "Good."

Alison pushed open the door, and even before the Doctor could lift the lantern her stomach shrank coldly at the soft slurping sound from out of the dark.

The yellow glow picked out the scene. Charlotte lay sprawled and oblivious, her arms spread wide, the covers mangled about her, and at her breast crouched a nightmare made flesh. A greenish-grey homunculus, three feet high, its sunken chest and spindly limbs out of proportion to its distended belly, great flat hands and feet, and heavy, bony head. Its face was clamped to Charlotte's throat, its shoulders heaving in time with that rhythmic gurgling, supping noise, and a trickle of blood was already visible running down her white skin to stain the pristine lace of the pillow. The thing paused, and with an audible "splop" disengaged from its victim's neck. It lifted its head to reveal a pair of black liquid eyes, two flat vertical slits for nostrils, jowly loose flesh hanging from its chin and cheeks, and no mouth but a wizened, puckered hole in its face, stained and dripping with blood.

With a spitting, red-flecked hiss and monkeylike agility it bounded off the bed directly towards them.

[Soldeed]

Instinctively they crouched, the Doctor clutching protectively to him the fragile glass cylinder around the oil lamp's open flame, and the scrawny, leechlike thing hurtled over the heads to smack into the wall.

Alison whirled, expecting to see it fall down to the floor, but it stuck there on the wallpaper, the tips of its toes and fingers spreading into suckers, and the next instant it was scampering away like a lizard, crashing noisily across the doors which lined the passageway, making high speed towards the staircase.

"Don't let it get away!" the Doctor ordered.

The glass phial of liquid was already leaving Alison's hand. A wild throw, but the missile shattered in the stairway and its thick purple miasma billowed out into the space just as the creature tore past and out of sight around the corner.

The Doctor and Alison clamped their treated handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses.

"Hold your breath," he advised Jenny, and the three of them dashed off in pursuit.

Down the stairs, along the hall, through the door into the servants' quarters and to the kitchen. The back door stood firmly shut, its lock broken but a chair pushed up under the handle.

"You did this?" the Doctor asked Jenny.

"Er, yes." She looked nervous. "Was that right?"

"Yes," he said, to her visible relief. "Means it's still in here with us somewhere."

"Great," said Alison with heavy irony, earning herself a frown.

"All right, back the way we came. Split up and search."

"Split up?"

The Doctor looked studiedly patient.

"I doubt it's dangerous as long as we're awake. Apparently unless there's a whole pack of them they only attack sleeping victims."

"I'll take the coal cellar!" Jenny volunteered brightly. "I know my way around down there."

She was already snatching up a candle from a cabinet shelf, and once she had lit it from the Doctor's lantern she disappeared without a backward glance down a narrow curving staircase into the stygian black cellar beyond. The Doctor and Alison exchanged glances.

"She's keen isn't she?" Alison remarked.

She retrieved a candle of her own, and they walked shoulder to shoulder back to the hall, where they separated and she found herself pushing forward into the drawing room alone, her candle illuminating little beyond the hand which grasped it, every nerve taut for the least sound of movement. She went through the whole room inch by inch, checking behind every piece of furniture which might have concealed the vile little creature. Nothing. She was on the point of closing up the room and moving on to the next one when she heard the faintest whisper of sound, a scraping, shifting, sucking noise, and all the muscles in her neck and shoulders contracted rigidly because now she knew exactly where the thing was.

It plummetted down from the ceiling, its skinny little frame carrying more than enough bulk to crush her to the floor, its outsize flat feet slamming into the back of her head. She twisted frantically, in time to see its suppurating, puckered black hole of a mouth lunging towards her, its hands clutching at her face, and she called the Doctor's name, losing the consonants in an incoherent sound which she would never admit had been a scream.

Its mouth, gripping like a muscle with a chitinous edge, dragged at the flesh of her cheek and she shoved it desperately away, gripping it about the throat with her left hand while with her right she smashed into its face the glass phial. It shattered, there was a dizzying purple swirl of smoke, and then blackness.

* * * * *

The next thing Alison knew she was cold and wet and she found herself instinctively spitting out water. She opened her eyes to see Jenny kneeling concernedly over her, an empty china jug in one hand.

"Feel better?" the maid inquired.

"Of course I don't feel better, you just emptied a jug of water over me, you stupid..."

She got a grip on herself and swallowed the rest of that sentence. Lifting her head, she looked instinctively towards the main light source in the room and found the Doctor crouched in the glow of the lantern by the recumbent form of the parasitic little monster that had jumped her, as far as she knew, just seconds ago. He spared her a glance.

"Well done, Alison. You got him."

"Yeah, I'm a huntress," she muttered, levering herself up on her elbows. Then a thunderous hammering of clumsy, hurried footsteps came charging down the stairs.

"Ah." The Doctor stood. "Look who's up."

Carstairs blundered into the room, shotgun clutched in both fists, looked wildly about him, and his eyes widened at the sight of the creature on the floor. The weapon swung around as if of its own volition and one barrel discharged in a deafening explosion.

A chunk was blasted out of the floor a foot and a half from the creature's body. Carstairs stared uncomprehendingly for a second, then lurched back, trying to tear the gun's muzzle free from the Doctor's fist, which had spoiled his aim at the last instant. The two men stood and grappled for control, Carstairs tugging and tugging and falling back a pace each time.

"Come on," the Doctor said coldly, never relaxing his grip. "Don't make me punch in you in the mouth, it hurts my knuckles."

Carstairs struggled on briefly but then sullenly accepted the threat and allowed the shotgun to be taken away from him. He stewed resentfully for a moment before bursting out:

"Those things killed my son!"

"Actually..." The Doctor grasped him by the collar and dragged him like a recalcitrant child across the room towards the creature. "No."

He flung Carstairs down onto his knees and seized his hand, turning it over to display the crest intricately cut into the gold of his signet ring. He took the limp hand of the vampire and turned it over to reveal an identical ring, with an identical crest.

"I think you'll find this is your son."

[Soldeed]

Layer upon layer of twine knotted about its spindly limbs, the captive vampire twisted and spat, its black eyes hardening malevolently, its puckered mouth contracting and suppurating blood-tainted saliva. Kneeling at its side on the study floor, Jenny recoiled and drew back behind Alison.

"How can that be George Carstairs? I remember him, swanning about the district in his carriage in the old days. He was a very handsome man, his Lordship must have paid off half a dozen girls before Miss Charlotte came along."

"Something's warped his genetic make up," the Doctor said. He pinned the struggling creature down with a hand on its throat and, to everyone's horror, deftly pushed a cotton swab up its left nostril. "I propose to find out what, and how."

He retrieved the swab and dropped it into a sealable plastic packet. He handed it to Alison.

"Thanks," she said with a grimace, holding the packet between finger and thumb at arm's length. "What do you expect me to do with this?"

He didn't pause in his work, padlocking a length of thin chain about the creature's throat, a flat grey plastic oval already threaded onto it like a dog collar.

"I need it analysed. I want you to run back to the Tardis for me and tell the Master to find out what's been done to human DNA to turn it into whatever it's been turned into."

Alison's first thought was that this meant going off to contend with the Master on her own again. Her second, close on its heels, was to look up at the shuttered windows, not a glimmer of light visible between the slats.

"Now? But it's night. Those things will still be out there, won't they?"

"Well, they don't generally seem to run in packs and Jenny apparently comes and goes unmolested during the hours of darkness. I imagine the lantern light puts them off. I'm sure you'll be fine."

"Ugh." She scowled grumpily but gave way. "And what are you going to be doing while I'm doing all this?"

The Doctor clicked a switch on the device attached to the parasite's neck.

"I," he said, "Will be tracking the signal our little friend is now emitting..." He drew a narrow, compact black plastic case from his pocket. "On this. He's had a scare. My guess is he'll instinctively head straight back to the nest. That's what I want to get a look at."

"Their nest?" She sighed tiredly. "Wouldn't it be more sensible to wait till morning?"

"Hardly. They're nocturnal. Right now they're scattered around the countryside looking for blood. In the morning they'll all be congregated back at the nest and that's going to make it an unhealthy place to be." He frowned at her, looking put out by her lack of enthusiasm. "Look, why don't you both go? Jenny, you don't mind going along, do you? Strength in numbers."

"Oh. Well..." The maid ducked her head guiltily. "Normally, of course. It's just that I really need to get some rest. It's only a few hours before I have to start cooking breakfast."

"Cooking breakfast?" repeated Alison. "Doesn't the cook handle that?"

"Oh, yes. Serving breakfast, I meant. I have to start serving breakfast."

In her kneeling position, Alison rocked back onto her toes.

"But you said cooking."

Her brow crinkled worriedly at the sight of Jenny's eyes darting from side to side like a trapped criminal.

"She has a point," the Doctor said, not looking up from final adjustments to his tracking device. "Just where is this cook I keep hearing about? Why doesn't anyone ever see her?"

Jenny straightened defiantly.

"Well, that's just normal. She's down in the kitchens all day, working hard, no one expects to see her. As long as dinner's on the table, no one... no one..." She deflated with a fatalistic air and with lowered eyes spoke in the mumble of a cornered child. "She left two weeks ago. I've been taking both pay packets."

She waited edgily while the Doctor paused in his work and looked up for a moment.

"Oh," he said with a nod and went back to what he had been doing. Alison looked at the maid incredulously.

"You've been running this whole place by yourself for two weeks?"

"Yes, it's been very hard work." Jenny said this as if it were a revelation. "But I get double the money at the end of the week. It's the only reason I stay." She looked up with an appeal in her eyes. "It's not really fraud, they get fed just as if Cook was still here. You won't tell his Lordship, will you Princess?"

"'Course not." Alison gave her a comradely clap on the shoulder. "Sounds to me like you deserve every penny." She leaned forward conspiratorially. "And I'm not actually a real princess."

Jenny grinned at this.

"Yeah, I'd sort of gathered that. But his Lordship still thinks you are! It's brilliant."

They were interrupted by a heavy-footed progress down the stairs that heralded Carstairs' reappearance. He entered illuminated in the glow of an oil lamp.

"I think Charlotte will sleep all right now. Bess is sitting with her."

"I'm sure we're all relieved to hear that," the Doctor said, rising to his feet. "Right, we'll be on our way now. We'd like to borrow Jenny for a couple of hours if you don't mind. Might mean she's a little late bringing you your kippers in the morning."

"Jenny?" he frowned. "What do you want with her?"

"It's for me," Alison spoke up. "I want her to help me find the way back to our... er, carriage."

"Oh." Carstairs addressed the Doctor. "No, there's no need for that. I'll show the princess the way myself. Be much safer."

"Mm." The Doctor glanced momentarily over Carstairs' shoulder to see Alison making frantic throat-cutting motions behind his back. "Well, how can I put this delicately? We don't want your help because you're an idiot and you'd probably just get in her way."

Carstairs disbelieving gape didn't have time to turn into outrage before the Doctor spoke again:

"Why didn't you tell us you never found your son's body?"

The question stabbed home. Carstairs hunched his shoulders tensely and stiffened his features.

"That's my business."

"You wasted my time and endangered us all. It's everyone's business."

"I couldn't tell the truth!" Carstairs burst out resentfully. "There was no body, you understand? Nothing to give a decent burial. We thought he'd been devoured by those animals. There's a sarcophagus down in the family crypt with nothing inside but sacks of turf. How could I ever admit to that?"

"Of course." With a pinched look of disdain the Doctor heaved the bound creature onto his shoulder and started for the exit, ushering the two young women along in front of him. "I should have known it would be something petty."

"How dare you?" Carstairs boomed. "You have no right! You understand nothing! Not until you've seen your child murdered before your eyes!"

In the frozen moment of silence which followed Alison clenched her teeth and dug her nails into her palms as if she had just seen someone drive a nail into his own hand. The Doctor's deathly cold, immobile face whipped round at Carstairs, whose redcheeked anger trickled away, leaving his features drooping and weak. Flinty-eyed, the Doctor stared at him for a moment as if contemplating murder, and then with a twist of his lip hissed out:

"Chin up. The first twenty years are the worst."

With that he stalked out, hurling the main door open and vanishing into the night. After scrunching a little way down the gravel drive he was visible slicing open the creature's bonds with a pocket knife, sending it on its way with a kick and then striding off after it, his lantern swinging at his side.

"Oh, God." Alison turned to Jenny. "Look, I'd better go after him. Can you run this errand with the plastic bag yourself? You need to take it to a blue box in the middle of a little grove of trees just where the lane that takes you to this place forks off from the main road."

Jenny nodded quickly.

"I know it. What do I do when I get there?"

"Just bang on the door and keep saying the Doctor sent you." Alison was retrieving her cloak from a chair and backing towards the exit. "It may take a little while but our friend will open up sooner or later."

"All right. Is he a nice man?"

"Er, no." Alison pulled the garment about her shoulders and headed out into the dark. "But he's harmless. You'll be fine."

[Soldeed]

The Doctor was walking quickly, stiff-legged across the open moor, and even at a half run it took Alison a few minutes to catch up with him. She fell into step at his shoulder, glancing sideways at his pale, set countenance.

"Are you OK?"

"Tip top." He didn't look round. "And you?"

They strode on wordlessly for a few more seconds before with a blink of irritation at her continued presence he spoke again.

"Did you want something? Aren't you supposed to be heading to the Tardis?"

"Jenny's going to do it."

"Lucky her. And what are you doing?"

His refusal to acknowledge her with so much as a look stoked up the indignation inside her, and she answered more harshly than she had meant:

"Look, this is no good. Normally when this happens, when something reminds you of she-who-must-not-be-named, you just stomp off to a private room somewhere and we steer clear of you for a couple of hours. But we're in the middle of something here. You can't fight vampires in this mood, you've got to pull yourself together."

"Have I?" was his tight-lipped response.

"What's the matter anyway? I thought you were getting better, you hardly ever go off like this any more."

"Alison, what have I said about trying to make me share my feelings?"

She frowned her annoyance.

"You've never said anything about..."

"Exactly."

He lengthened his stride, pulling away ahead of her and with a scowl she sucked in a deep breath and hurried after him.

"You know, it wouldn't have killed you to be a little nicer to his Lordship. The man's just lost his son, I'd have thought you'd..."

Her throat tightened around the words at the sharp contraction of the Doctor's shoulders, the hardening of his face, and she fell quiet. He shot her a cold look.

"You'd have thought I'd what?"

Sympathise? Know how he feels? In the light of the Doctor's pale, stony eyes, Alison wretchedly felt her nerve fail her, and she mumbled her answer like a sulky child.

"I just think we ought to be more careful with him. Did you see his face when he saw the creature? He's this close to snapping completely."

The Doctor shrugged callously.

"Well as long as he snaps quietly by himself, he's welcome."

Queasily uncomfortable at the hard-heartedness of his reply, Alison hurried along at his shoulder in silence for a few seconds. She grasped for something to say which might do some good, and which she dared say to him.

"Come on Doctor, you don't mean that, you know you don't. Remember the first time we met, and..."

"Quiet."

He held up a hand for silence and in her fury she was on the point of storming off back to the house. But he had halted abruptly and was eyeing the detector in his palm.

"It's stopped."

"Already?" Grudgingly she looked over his elbow at the device's readout. "You think it's reached the nest?"

"Yes." He leaned forward, trying to pierce the darkness ahead with narrowed eyes. "I wouldn't have expected it to be very far. That's why it's the mansion house that's been attacked and not the village or the surrounding farms." He took a step onward, then halted with a disgruntled sigh and looked round at Alison. "Well, come on if you're coming. Don't worry, I may be a little out of sorts but I'm quite capable of taking care of a handful of oversized mosquitos."

* * * * *

He led the way to a jutting outcrop of rocks, their massive shapes black against the night sky. The two of them circled around the great bulk of granite and he lifted his lantern to unveil the gleaming silver form of a bulbous sixty foot disc, half buried where it had driven itelf into the earth, the hatch in its centre still hanging open and the ladder visible leading down into the darkened interior.

"Huh." The Doctor nodded sagely. "And everyone who had their money on crashed alien spacecraft is a winner."

Alison followed cautiously as he led the way towards the hatch.

"But the little creatures are more like animals, you said. So they can't have flown it here themselves, right?"

"Well, it's not as if they've exhibited a great deal of skill," the Doctor replied, indicating the grounded ship with a wave of his hand and giving her a twist of a smile. "But no, you're right. My guess is they're suffering from the same affliction as young Carstairs, and the answer to that, I suspect, lies somewhere down here."

They stood over the hatch and the Doctor lowered the lantern down into its unwelcoming depths. A metallic floor was visible at the bottom of the entrance shaft, dulled by grime, crisscrossed with hundreds of muddy, inhuman footprints. He looked up at Alison's unenthusiastic expression.

"Do you want to stay up here and keep watch for me?"

A flurry of thoughts piled up behind one another. The first, instinctive acceptance of the assigned task, the second, relief that it meant she wouldn't have to go down there, the third, realisation that she was being offered a way out of having to go down there, the fourth, indignation at his patronising assumption that she was scared to go with him.

"Stop trying to get rid of me," she returned with bravado. "Out of my way."

Before she could change her mind she swung herself onto the ladder and clattered down into the unlit confines of the dead spacecraft. The swaying yellow light of the Doctor's lantern followed her down and illuminated a dark tunnel of a corridor. Something hissed in the murk ahead and scuttled noisily away.

"Well, go on then," came his quiet voice at her ear. "You're so keen, why don't you pick a direction?"

With a deep breath she led the way, through a string of cramped passageways, the glow of the lantern always stretching just a few yards ahead of her, pushing back the wall of blackness in their path. The one time she was unwise enough to look back the way they had come, it was to see the dark closing up behind them like a living thing, as if to cut off their escape.

At last she found the way to a sliding door which stood half open, and with a wrench shoved it back into its wall cavity to clear the way into a spreading circular room, a cylindrical sheath of black steel stretching from floor to ceiling at its centre, spreading banks of switches taking up the entire wallspace. A ghostly haze of blue light flickered on the instrument panels.

Alison took a step forward and with a freezing shock hurled herself back into the Doctor's arms, recoiling from the frenzied, spitting creature that leaped at her from the shadows. Its flailing, clawlike hand barely missed raking her face and it rattled away along the corridor, emitting a noise that rose and gained body till it ceased to be a hiss and became a high-pitched, ululating scream, fading into the dark.

The Doctor lifted her shivering form upright and set her on her feet.

"You will insist on going first, won't you?"

With a pat on her shoulder he moved past, carrying the light with him into the circular chamber.

"This is interesting," he said, heedless of her still standing motionless in the doorway. "I thought the ship was dead but the power core's still active. In fact..."

He tapped out an intricate sequence on the switches, and with a deep hum of energy the black sheath at the centre of the room went gliding upwards into the ceilng, unveiling a column of blue glass that spread a dazzling brighter-than-day light to every corner of the room. Alison blinked, feeling herself come out of her daze with a sense of relief at this banishment of the dark, and stepped forward, starting to take notice.

"That thing's still screaming out there," she said. "Never heard one make that noise before."

It was true. It was far away now, but its shrill voice was still audible, making her ears ring, its tone just on the edge of hearing.

"Yes." The Doctor was barely listening, conjuring a fast moving array of twisting orange light and scrolling data on a viewscreen. "Probably a distress call. I don't think it appreciated our disturbing its safe little den."

"A distress..." She looked wildly around at the doorway. "It's calling the others?"

"Yes, so the best thing for you to do now would be to keep interrupting me so that it'll be a good long time before I've finished work here and we can leave." Like a concert pianist he played his fingers across the controls almost too fast for the eye to follow. "Now just try to be patient and... ah. Oh."

Alison was mustering a retort to the insult, but it was put out of her head by the sight of him suddenly still, staring at the screen. His hand rose slowly to his mouth.

"What's the... ack!"

Without warning he had leapt from his seat and grasping her hand dragged her stumbling after him through the door and out into the corridor.

"Time we were going," he announced, striding at speed for the exit and almost pulling her off her feet. She tugged her hand free in annoyance and hurried to keep up.

"What's the problem all of a sudden?" she demanded. "I thought you were being all cool and brave!"

"Well, that was before I realised that the power core is leaking a bizarrely configured form of omicron radiation that was steadily distorting our genetic structure. Now I'm being all flustered and scared."

Alison gasped at the chill of realisation stabbing her insides.

"You're saying it was turning us into those bloodsucking things?"

"Precisely. At least now we know what happened to the crew of this ship. Now I propose we put it at least a quarter of a mile behind us before we plan our next move."

He reached the foot of the ladder up to the hatch and with a firmness that brooked no argument grasped her upper arm and propelled her up ahead of him. She scrambled out into the night air and waited while the light of his lantern rose up to join her.

"Right, let's head for the..."

They stood on the silver hull of the spacecraft, picked out in the misty halo of the lamplight, and from the grass ahead and the rocks all around there arose a hate-filled chorus of vindictive, serpentine hissing. There were dozens of the creatures, surrounding them, squatting on the ground, perching on the boulders, creeping forward onto the metal of the ship's surface. Their black eyes and spitting mouths were soulless and empty, and their thin nostrils twitched at the scent of blood.

[Soldeed]

"Inside!"

Alison needed no encouragement. With a balletic twist she dropped back down the hatchway out of sight, even while the dark mass of fully two dozen of the vampiric creatures surged forward like an avalanche. The Doctor raised his lantern high and hurled it shattering down onto the ship's hull, sending the hideous things leaping back with screams of rage and frustration at the rush of orange flame from the blazing oil. With liquid fire flowing about his feet he jumped down the hole after her.

The sole illumination was the fast dimming light of the flames above. Alison felt the Doctor's hands on her shoulders and she was propelled at unhesitating speed down the corridor into the impenetrable blackness of the ship's interior.

"Back to the power core," came his sharp voice in her ear.

"What? But the radiation..."

"One problem at a time."

The blue light of the core shone as a beacon when they rounded the corner and they piled into the brightly glowing surroundings of the power core chamber. While the Doctor hunched tensely over a bank of flashing dials Alison snatched up a chair and stood guard at the entrance. The crazed hissing and thunder of fast moving feet swept closer until the first of the creatures hurtled into view in the doorway, crashing down to the floor in a tangle of limbs when the desperately flung chair struck it head on. The door slammed shut, cutting off from view the enraged, contorted faces of its fellows. Their fists drummed uselessly against the metal.

"Phew," the Doctor remarked, a thread of strain running through his clipped calm. "That was a close one." He straightened, his fingers still resting thoughtfully on the controls.

"It still is." Alison stared up at the dazzling blue column of the power core. "How long do we have before that thing turns us into something no different from those creatures we just locked out?"

"Don't know. Can't be long. Apparently when they dragged George Carstairs down here he changed before they had time to bleed him to death."

The Doctor operated a control and the black metal sheath slid back over the core, leaving the room sunk once more into darkness but for the glow of the instrument panels.

"That should slow it down a little."

Alison fretted, darting back over to the door, where at least the creatures outside seemed to have abandoned their noisy attempt to batter their way in.

"We have to get out of here. The thought of even starting to... to change into..."

A wormlike chill of horror curled its way around her innards at the idea and even the Doctor paused, fingertips spread out on the console.

"I know, I know. But maybe I can shut the core down from here, or at least reprogram it so the emissions aren't so dangerous."

He didn't look too confident, and he didn't dive into the task straight away. A bad sign, she knew. But in an experimental manner he began to tap at a set of keys and brought streams of data flowing across a viewscreen. After a few seconds Alison heard his breath being slowly sucked back over his teeth.

"Oh, God. You sound like a plumber about to tell me it's a big job and it's going to cost me."

"It might."

He moved on to a second set of keys and started tapping away again. His brow set into stiff lines, his lips tightened.

"Something's wrong," he said flatly.

"Something's not?"

He didn't respond to her sickly attempt at humour and she thought he was ignoring her. But when he moved on to a third panel he started talking again, either in reply or just continuing his own running commentary.

"A radiation leak from this reactor could be dangerous, but there's no way it could cause the kind of mutations we've seen here."

"But you said it had."

"It has."

Alison sighed wearily.

"Doctor..."

"This is no accident, the output has been deliberately reconfigured to bring about this specific effect on living tissue." He jammed his knuckles against his forehead as if trying to massage his brain. "Why would anyone do something like that? And how? The knowledge, the technology required would be absolutely..." He shook his head agitatedly and moved on to yet another panel. "Just a minute."

Helpless to contribute, Alison made herself keep still and wait while he bent closer and closer to the screen till his brow was almost touching it. Then he closed his eyes as if in despair.

"What's the matter?"

"It's all here," he said softly. "Neatly logged in the computer, not that it did the crew of this ship any good. A clever piece of work. The power core was reprogrammed by a data stream projected down a focussed energy tunnel."

"But projected from where?"

"The energy signature's as individual as a fingerprint. It's my Tardis."

"What? But that's ridiculous. You're not saying you did this?"

His head swung towards her. His eyes were wide and honestly, deeply afraid, and the realisation hit her.

"The Master?"

* * * * *

Jenny had been made welcome aboard the Tardis.

"Shan't keep you waiting long, my dear," the Master said smoothly, holding up to the light the plastic packet she had brought him. "Though I could have wished for a more substantial specimen for analysis. Still, I live to serve."

Jenny sat upright on the hard wooden chair to which he had directed her, knees pressed close together. A natural deference to his lordly manner led her to speak only when spoken to, and since the difference in size between the interior and exterior of this structure hadn't been mentioned she was ignoring it, and assuming all was as it should be.

"Yes, sir. Miss Alison said you were a very expert scientist."

"Well, I'm flattered to hear that. What else did she tell you about me? Nothing to alarm you, I trust?"

"Oh, no, she said you were harmless."

The Master stilled momentarily before the slow smile gathered on his face and his dark, shining eyes turned upon her.

"Ah, how right she was."

* * * * *

The Doctor and Alison looked up sharply at a metallic rattle from above their heads. Some fast-scuttling thing was moving about on top of the flimsy plates which formed the ceiling. They could see them bending and shifting under the creature's slight weight.

"We really need to get out of here," he murmured.

She nodded.

"As if we needed another reason."

"Quite." He turned quickly back to the controls and swept his eyes across the vast expanse of instruments. He tapped his fingers together agitatedly. "But I... I wasn't prepared for... I'm just not sure..."

"Hey." She placed a hand gently on his shoulder. "Come on, Doctor, you'll think us out of this like always. Just try to stay calm."

"What?" He rounded on her cattily. "Don't tell me to..." He stopped, held his breath for a second, and raised his hands. "All right. You're right."

"How could the Master be behind this anyway?" she asked. "I thought you programmed barriers into his mind so he couldn't hurt anyone."

"I did. But whatever's programmed can be reprogrammed."

"But didn't you say it was impossible for him to reprogram his own mind?"

"It is." He frowned. "I'm sure it is." The eyes that met her gaze were pained with worry. "There are very few beings in the universe I'm willing to admit might be able to think of something I didn't. But this is the Master. And he's had years."

He returned to the controls, shoulders tensely hunched, and she tried to come up with some words of encouragement.

"Well, at least if it comes to a showdown you can just use your little remote control thing and turn him off. Easy win."

"That's not the point." He had gone back to tapping slowly at the keys. "I'm the one who preserved his life. I knew what he was, but I still saved him even when he'd resigned himself to death. That makes everything he does for the rest of his existence my responsibility. Anyone who dies here, it's as if I killed them myself."

She knew she should leave him alone, to work on a way out, but the haunted darkness of his tone had her pitching in again.

"Well, who knows? Maybe we're leaping to conclusions. Maybe there's some explanation for all this that we're not seeing."

"Let's hope so."

* * * * *

The Master's soundless footfalls carried him back to the console where Jenny awaited him.

"Ah, thank you for your patience, young woman. My work is reaching a crucial stage and I wonder if I could beg your assistance?"

"Of course, sir." She stood. "What would you like me to do?"

"Well, I'd like you to look over there."

She followed his pointing finger and turned her back on him. The next second a reeking pad of cloth was clamped over her nose and mouth and a bright blade flashed before her wide, horrified eyes.

Jenny's blood spattered the shining steel.

[Soldeed]

The Tardis doors stood wide open, the interior filled with the sound of the wind rushing through the trees in the grove outside. Jenny lay on the floor, tightly bound hand and foot, her frantic cries and protests muffled by the cloth stuffed into her mouth, blood still trickling slowly from the wound in her neck. The console room lights were dimmed, and the darkness outside hung heavy like a curtain, but she knew there was something out there. She could feel it watching her, smelling her.

Slowly, step by step, twitching its great empty eyes furtively from side to side, the vampire emerged from the blackness, it skinny frame almost trembling in its taut readiness to dart away and flee this strange and different place at the least sign of danger, its nostrils twitching at the scent of fresh blood.

Jenny screamed through her gag, wild-eyed, thrashing desperately against the unbreakable synthetic fibres which bound her, and the thing leaped back warily and stood crouched and frozen for a few seconds till it reassured itself that she could do nothing to harm it and it began to creep forward towards her once again. Its outsize hands lifted in front of its sunken chest, curving into claws in readiness.

In her horror, nightmarishly unable to escape as its feet clicked onto the hard surface of the Tardis floor, she raised wide, imploring eyes to the Master, begging him, anything but this. He sat quite still on the hard wooden seat he had offered to her earlier, and watched the unfolding scene with black, pitiless eyes.

* * * * *

Alison flinched at yet another crash against the ceiling plates, watched the one directly above her head crumple and twist in place, her limbs almost cramping with rigid fear. That time, she had been certain it was going to give way. It couldn't be much longer now.

"Doctor!" she urged, forgetting yet again her promise to herself to leave him in peace.

"All right, all right." He waved her to silence with one hand while the fingers of the other continued to fly across the controls. "This might actually work. The core's too messed up to provide a steady flow of power, but if we run really, really fast..."

That, Alison assured herself, wouldn't be a problem. He darted across the room to a new panel, leaving a display of orange polygons pirouetting across the screen on which he had just been working.

"Right." He twisted a switch with an air of decision. "Get ready. And shade your eyes."

The door slid open and a storm of the creatures came tumbling through, even as the ceiling gave way overhead and the first one came plummetting down at her through the hole. At that instant, under the Doctor's touch on the controls, the entire room burst into golden light like the sun.

The creatures screamed, clapping their hands over their tormented eyes, doubling up and rolling themselves into balls in a frantic effort to escape, to hide from this thing from which there was no hiding place. Alison was running well ahead of the Doctor's shout of "Move!". She leaped over their scrambling, writhing bodies and out into the corridor in which every ceiling light was glaring with an intensity beyond all reason.

She ducked away from the sharp crack and splinters of flying glass as a light overloaded and burst not three feet in front of her. Then another went, further along the corridor, and then another, and the passageway was lurching piecemeal back into darkness. The screaming behind them began to fade, to be replaced by a hiss of vengeful fury.

The Doctor half hurled her up through the hatch in speeding her up the ladder, next second he was scrambling out into the open to join her, and the two of them sprinted away across the moor into the night, free.

* * * * *

The Doctor and Alison made a weary, haggard couple when in the rising light of dawn they at last trudged up to the clustered grove of trees which concealed the Tardis.

"Oh boy," muttered Alison. "I am so not ready for this. I just want a hot drink and a lie down. Can't we ask the Master if we can put the big showdown on hold for a couple of hours?"

He glanced down at her.

"You can wait out here if you like."

"You know that's not what I meant."

Her resentful tone sent the ghost of a smile flitting across his face.

"No. Of course."

He gave her shoulder a brief, companionable squeeze and they moved on, into the grove where the trees crowded in close around them and blotted out the sun, shrouding them in gloom as if night lingered on in this place. They halted, frozen, at the sound of stumbling footsteps and a gentle, persistent sobbing.

"Jenny!"

Alison gasped out the name at the sight of the young woman, hair in disarray, collar torn, dress stained with blood from the gash in her throat, blundering white-faced towards them. She fell into the Doctor's arms and held on tight, her sobs bursting out into a choking, gulping flood of tears.

The Doctor pressed her to him, closed his eyes and bowed his head over her shuddering form.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Gently he disengaged and pushed her back far enough that he could inspect the wound in her neck.

"It's a shallow cut at least. You'll be all right."

With a light touch on Jenny's arm Alison tried to draw her attention.

"What happened in there? Can you tell us?"

"Your friend," she stammered brokenly. "He... he seemed like such a nice, polite gentleman. But when I turned my back he just grabbed me and he cut me with a knife and he tied me so tightly and... and then he opened the doors and that thing!" The words caught in her throat and she shoved the Doctor away from her, shaking her head frantically as if to dislodge the memory from her mind. "Then he cut me free. Pushed me out of the doors and closed them behind me. He never said a word. The whole time he never said a word."

The Doctor's face was cold and pale as death, and his gaze turned slowly towards the interior of the grove, where the Tardis stood hidden. He spoke in a voice rasping with suppressed emotion.

"Right. Alison, do what you can for her. Wait for me here."

"But shouldn't we..."

"No, it's all right, I won't be long." He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and stalked onward. "It's time I was rid of this cuckoo in my nest."

[Soldeed]

The console room doors swung inward and the Doctor stood framed against the shadowy grove outside. The Master, collecting a few things from a storage closet, looked up incuriously.

"Ah, Doctor. Good news! I've... oh." He took a closer look at the Doctor's face. "Am I in trouble?"

"How did you do it?" the Doctor asked nervelessly. "How did you alter your programming so you could torment that girl?"

The Master cast a glance past him at the outdoors. He shrugged disinterestedly.

"Oh, that. You underestimate the subtlety of your own programming, Doctor. I can't stab you with a pin out of spite, it's true, but I could give you a hypodermic injection to save your life if the need arose. Likewise, I can do what I like to your new friend as long as it's for the greater good."

"The greater good?" repeated the Doctor, dripping contempt with each word.

"Certainly. The genetic sample you gave me was inadequate. I simply used the girl as bait to capture a complete specimen. And I think when you see the results I've..."

"Stop it!" At the bite in the Doctor's voice the Master fell silent with a condescending roll of his eyes. "How could you ever have thought I'd let you get away with this? What you did to her..."

"Oh, come now, it was just a scratch. And I netted the unpleasant creature before it could fix its sucker onto her. She's fine."

"Fine?" Pace by pace, the Doctor drew nearer to his old friend and enemy, his face riven with fury. "She's terrified! Traumatised!"

"Nonsense." The Master didn't stir a muscle at the steadily diminishing gap between them. "She's human. You know what they're like, they fall over and they bounce straight back up again. They shed a few tears because they enjoy the attention."

Less than a yard separated them now.

"You betrayed me."

The Doctor whipped out a hand to grasp the front of the Master's tunic, but the Master's arm scythed round to strike it away. He gripped the Doctor's wrist.

"No, Doctor, I disappointed you. There's a difference." With a bestial flash of teeth he struck the Doctor in the chest with both palms, sending him stumbling back against the wall. "I am not your assistant. I never will be."

The Master's eyes flicked downwards to the twitch of the Doctor's hand to his coat pocket. His smile hardened.

"Ah, yes, the remote control. You can turn me off, Doctor, and what will you do then? When you turn me back on in a week or a year or a century I'll be the same individual I am now, and you'll have gained nothing. Or you could leave me turned off forever, which means I'll be dead. You'll have murdered me. And I don't think you're ready for that." He took a step nearer, eyes fixed on the Doctor's gaunt, immobile face. "Not yet."

He watched the Doctor's hand flex and draw away from his pocket, and relaxed.

"So." He gave the Doctor a companionable clap on the shoulder. "Now that's all sorted out, why don't you come and see what I've been working on in the lab?"

He turned and walked unhurriedly from the room, and the Doctor sagged back defeatedly against the wall. For a few moments he just stood there, looking around with a stranger's eyes at the familar surroundings of his console room. He seemed lost, puzzled at what had happened to him. Then with an effort he roused himself, and with a sluggish, dragging step, followed the Master.

* * * * *

Alison and Jenny waited an uneasy ten minutes until at last the Doctor's non-reappearance became too much to bear.

"Come on," said Alison. "He may need help. Or he may have forgotten to come back and tell us it's all over. Either way, let's go."

She retrieved her key and held it clutched tensely in her fist while they headed back to the Tardis. The doors were shut and the console room, when they cautiously poked their heads in, empty. They stood for a moment and heard the murmur of voices from along the corridor.

"They're talking?" said Jenny, puzzled. "I thought the Doctor was going to... I don't know, he said he was going to get rid of him."

"Oh, it's probably some wordy Time Lord showdown thing," said Alison dismissively. "I don't suppose he'll like it if we interrupt."

There was a pause while their eyes met, then with a mutual shrug they set off together down the corridor. They followed the sound all the way to the main lab, and stood open-mouthed in the doorway at what they saw.

The vampire lay flat on its back unconscious on the examination table. On either side, the Doctor and the Master adjusted equipment, checked readouts, discussed the results as if they were old colleagues having a normal day at the office.

"Doctor!"

He looked up at Alison's exclamation, saw them standing there and looked instantly furtive, like a shoplifter caught in the act. The Master ceased work, placed his hands behind his back, and watched.

"What are you doing?" she demanded. "You're working with this character now?"

"All right, Alison." The Doctor recovered himself and stood up straight, but the unsteadiness remained in his eyes. "Try and keep some perspective."

"Perspective?" repeated Alison furiously. "What the hell's perspective got to do with it? Have you forgotten what he did to Jenny?"

Jenny ducked her head, her hand lifting unconsciously to the wound in her neck. With a flash of anger the Doctor's voice sharpened.

"No, I haven't! And I've never made any secret of the things he's done in the past but that's never stopped you accepting his help before. In his twisted way he was trying to do the right thing. He used her to catch one of the creatures. More to the point, we're going to need his help again today if we're going to set things right around here."

"Right. Because he caused it. Or does he have an excuse for that as well?"

The Doctor blinked and looked down quickly.

"No," he said, his words indistinct. "We've covered that and I really don't want to go over it again just now. Perhaps we could leave it till we have a little more time to spare?"

"Leave it?" flared Alison. "I don't think so. After what's happened here maybe I don't feel like just assuming you know best. Tell me!"

"Ah." The Master raised a hand with a deferential air. "Perhaps, rather than force the Doctor to rake over old memories, I might field this one."

The Doctor eyed him bitterly, but turned away from the unashamed calm of the Master's gaze.

"Tell her, then." His expression fixed, he wouldn't look Alison in the face as he walked to the door and took Jenny clumsily by the arm. "Come on, Jenny. We'll find you a bandage."

The young maid acquiesced with her silence and the two of them departed down the corridor, leaving Alison, for her efforts, alone with the Master. With a self satisfied expression he settled back on his heels, re-linking his hands behind his back.

"So what are you looking so smug about?" she asked him scornfully. "Are you going to make out this is all his fault instead of yours?"

"Not exactly. But it's easy to see why the Doctor isn't comfortable with the story. It doesn't exactly redound to his credit."

She glared mistrustfully at him, standing there quite at ease with what he had done, assured of the power his secret held.

"Well, go on then, don't keep me in suspense. Tell me."

The Master told her.

[Soldeed]

"I haven't checked the dates exactly," the Master said. "But I believe this all took place about three or four weeks ago. That's in absolute time of course. In relative Tardis time we are going back years, well before your arrival, to a period that was not a happy one in either the Doctor's life or mine..."

* * * * *

The Master prowled the Tardis, eyes fixed on the floor, his steps taking him instinctively along passageways which were now becoming familiar to him. He held his hand up in front of him, palm down, flexed the fingers and watched skin and flesh slide over bone and tendon. A pretty piece of work, but not real. As if he could see right through this synthetic covering, he was aware of the metal and plastic which formed his hand now. His real body, his last body that is, was dead. Poisoned by a cretin not fit to lick his shoes. Hidden away and forgotten in cold storage in some distant corner of the ship.

This had been what he wanted, he reflected. An ageless mechanical body, impervious to disease, free of the need for food, drink or oxygen. Immune to poison too, come to think of it. But that had been before things went awry, and in return for extended life he had been forced to make with the Doctor whatever the opposite was of a deal with the Devil.

And then there was the Doctor. The transfer of the Master's consciousness into the Hergan Anthropos had given him a project to work on, something to keep his mind occupied, and he had worked with a single-mindedness bordering on desperation, always sharp, always businesslike, never pausing for rest or sleep. But now the job was done, and...

He pushed open a door into a living area just along the corridor from the console room and was immediately assailed by a musty staleness like the air of an unsealed tomb. He squinted, trying to penetrate the almost total darkness, musing on the possibility of fitting his mechanical eyeballs with an infra-red facility, and made out the Doctor's crumpled form sitting slumped in a chair at the very centre of the room.

A clink drew the Master's attention to the near empty glass lolling in the Doctor's fingers, and the decanter on the table at his elbow. He sighed lightly.

"Well, I see you've been occupying your afternoon in a productive manner. Would you care to round off the day with a discussion of mesomorphic refraction and its potential applications in kratistic field manipulation, or perhaps a game of six dimensional chess?"

The Doctor stirred, his loose limbs barely shifting against the material of the chair.

"Leave me alone," came his toneless, whispered response. The glass fell over and its contents leaked out onto the table.

"I see." The Master bridled a little, still unused to having to accept such disrespect. "And may I be permitted to know the reason for today's little binge?"

No response, and he took a step nearer, so he could almost make out the Doctor's shadowed features.

"Come along, Doctor. I won't pretend to be concerned for your wellbeing but you're becoming such tedious company."

The Doctor's head lowered and he muttered an answer.

"If you must know it's her birthday today."

"Oh, I see." Without further delay the Master turned his back and headed for the exit. "In that case I hope you won't mind if I leave you to it. Your grouchy days are trial enough, I draw the line at the maudlin ones. I'll let you wallow in peace."

Alone again, the Doctor sank down deeper into his chair, pressed thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes, released a ragged, painful breath, and held on.

The Master wandered into the console room and idly switched on the monitor. To his lack of surprise, the Tardis had somehow wandered back yet again to within a thousand miles of the planet Earth and he wondered if there was some trace remaining in the navigational circuits of the programming by which the Time Lords had trapped the machine there. The Doctor of course, in his more lucid moments, would claim that it simply liked the planet. For a moment he looked out at the undeniably pretty bright blues and greens under the swirling white cloud formations. Then a fresh focus sharpened his features.

There was something there. Not of Earth manufacture. A silver disc gliding in low orbit over the planet's surface. Probably an alien craft conducting a routine survey of outlying planets. The Master watched, and a smile twitched on his lips at the foolish, irresponsible idea which occurred to him.

It was one of those ideas which started as a joke, something to play with in his mind, but then it clung on, and when he worked his way around it, thinking through all the ramifications and possible outcomes it started to make more and more sense.

His dark, gleaming eyes never shifting from the alien craft, the Master leaned back against the console, folded his arms, and showed his teeth in a low chuckle of black intent.

* * * * *

Alison had been listening closely to the story.

"So it was you."

"Indeed. But with the best possible motives. I was trying to cheer him up."

She shook her heard in disbelief.

"Cheer him up?"

"Certainly. You know what he's like, never happier than when there are mysteries to solve, monsters to fight, lives to save. So in the absence of any imminent threat to the lives, property or legal rights of the innocent I simply manufactured one. All for the greater good, you see."

"For his good, maybe. Not for the people on the ground, or whoever was on that ship."

"Granted. But, you see, I'd imagined that the Doctor would resolve the situation in short order without anyone being killed or even having their schedules unduly disrupted. That was my miscalculation."

"He didn't help?"

The Master smiled softly at the hostile scepticism on Alison's face, and went on with the story.

* * * * *

Even from the black hole into which his mind was sinking, the Doctor could sense the change in the Tardis' status. He rolled his head back against the rest, closed his eyes and called out:

"What are you doing out there? What's going on?"

No answer. He waited a moment longer then with a bitter sigh levered himself up out of his chair. His appearance was no longer immaculate as it had been in happier times. His embroidered waistcoats, silky colourful shirts and ornate tiepins were gone and he wore a plain white shirt with a thin black tie knotted loosely about the collar. He stooped to retrieve his old coat from where he had dropped it on the floor, then trailed it along behind him as he plodded wearily to the console room.

The time rotor was still. The ship had landed. In his sluggish state it took the Doctor a moment to realise the doors had been left standing wide open. Of the Master there was no sign.

"Where've you gone? You've left the doors open, what are you playing at?"

He stood there for a second, his voice lost in the silence. Shaking his head in annoyance he walked towards the console where his attention was caught by a flashing red light. He leaned forward to read a display, disinterestedly at first, then with closer attention.

"Omicron particles?" he muttered. He placed his palms on the console top and leaned heavily forward, head hanging down. "Oh, please. Not now."

With an effort he straightened, and at a sullen, dragging pace walked over to the doors. He blinked at the sunlight that struck his face and looked out at the green trees, the blue sky, the rolling hills.

"Earth?" His face cleared a little, then an instant later clouded again. With clumsy movements he started to pull on his coat. "Right, let's get it over with."

He took a step forward, then remembered to check the scanners for signs of danger first. Shambling back to the console, his hands moved slowly but with the assurance of long familiarity across the instruments. All seemed to satisfy him, until he was almost done, and then...

He whipped his hand back from the control as if had been a scorpion. Wild-eyed he span to stare at the pastoral scene outside as if it concealed some nameless horror beyond all imagining. His glance flicked down to the readout, then back to the exit, and then with fumbling, shaking fingers he slammed home the lever to shut the doors and, before they had even fully closed, engaged the main drive. He set the coordinates for the far side of the galaxy.

* * * * *

"And that," the Master concluded, "Is why the situation I created remains in its present unresolved condition."

"He just left?" Lost and bewildered, not thinking to doubt the truth of the tale, Alison cast about for some sense behind it. "Why would he do that?"

The Master smiled, and shrugged.

"I've really no idea. You could ask him, but in all honesty I don't think he remembers."

[Soldeed]

The Doctor packed bandages, bottles and pills untidily away into the first aid box and stood back. Jenny had sat there bravely on the medical bay table and refused to make a murmur while he cleaned her wound with antiseptic and fixed a bandage in place.

"Do you... don't touch it." He pushed her hand away where it had instinctively lifted to pick at the corner of the bandage. "Do you feel any better?"

"I'm all right," she said with a determined smile. "I've done worse to my finger with a carving knife. I still don't understand why he did it, though. I thought he was your friend."

"Yes, well, let's not exaggerate." He picked up the box and carried it away to stow in a cupboard. "I'm afraid he has a rather adventurous concept of the ends justifying the means. It's my fault as usual. I should never have let you go off to meet him alone like that. I think I was actually starting to trust him there for a while."

Alison walked in, her contemplative gaze falling immediately on the Doctor, the Master shadowing her noiselessly. Jenny shifted warily on the table at his approach but stayed calm. He barely glanced at her. The Doctor looked around the silent gathering and made the effort to speak up and take charge.

"Right. Well now that all questions have been answered and things that belong in the past are being allowed to stay there, let's consider the future. We have to deal with those bloodsucking little horrors before they cause any more harm."

The Master spoke placidly.

"Well, I know what I'd do."

"I know what you'd do as well," said the Doctor with a cold look. "And the fact it's what you'd do is reason enough to try and think of something else."

"Do you mind including the rest of us in this?" asked Alison in annoyance while the Master shrugged unconcernedly. The Doctor looked irritated but summoned the patience to reply.

"The damage our beloved companion here did to the saucer's energy core is fixable. Not only that, but now we have precise details of the coding that was used to distort it in the first place we can configure it to emit radiation in a curative pattern that will undo the genetic damage that's been done so far. The victims could all be restored."

Jenny perked up at this.

"Master George? You can cure him? You can bring him back?"

"I think so, yes. And also the alien crew of that ship who were just passing innocently by your planet when they were attacked."

"Unfortunately," the Master interjected, "While the damage was caused remotely the repair is much more complicated and will have to be done manually. Much as I'd love to volunteer, I'm trapped in the Tardis, which leaves the Doctor the only one qualified for the task of re-entering the spacecraft, gaining access to the engine room and doing about two hours of highly complex and delicate work in there, all without being sucked dry like an old winesack by those endearing homunculi."

"Well, that's impossible, isn't it?" said Alison. "You might get back in but there's no way you'd be left in peace to work for more than a few minutes."

"Right," said the Doctor. "That's why we have to get rid of the creatures before I start. And because we're bearing in mind that they're innocent victims in this, we have to do that without harming them in any way."

"Which isn't as implausible as it might sound," the Master came back in. "We have one of them captive. You've already discovered that the others will respond to the distress call of their fellows. So the obvious approach is to lock up our prisoner somewhere defensible, let it recover, and then hold off the attack of the creatures drawn by its cry until the Doctor has had time to do what needs to be done. I would suggest that the mansion house is the only suitable place." He spread his hands like a jeweller displaying his prize wares . "Simple, you see?"

The Doctor shook his head.

"It would be incredibly dangerous, both for the people defending the house and for the aliens. Someone would get killed."

"Come now, Doctor," the Master said easily. "You know as well as I do that your real objection to the idea is that it gives you a nice, safe job while everyone else goes into peril. Your chivalrous instincts rebel against the concept."

"No," the Doctor said stubbornly.

Alison glanced at Jenny, saw the fear but also the assent in her face, and spoke up:

"Doctor, if this is the only way..."

"No," he said again, and now there was a sudden brightness in his voice. He looked the Master in the eye and the corner of his mouth twisted up in a smile. "I've got a better idea."

* * * * *

The early morning dew was still fresh on the grass when Alison and Jenny trudged back up the path and pushed open the main door of the mansion.

"Guess we should be grateful no one bolted the thing," Alison reflected, rubbing dusty eyes while glancing about the empty, silent hallway. "Oh well, since we're surplus to requirements I'm going to go and get about forty-eight hours' sleep. You?"

"Oh, you go on, miss," said Jenny, looking oppressed by these familiar surroundings, her posture becoming stooped. "I've got to... oh no."

She was looking through the open doorway into the study. Alison circled round to see, and found Lord Carstairs sitting slumped in an armchair, fast asleep. He wore a heavy overcoat, mud-stained boots, and cradled his shotgun in his arms like a baby.

"Oh, Lord." Jenny clapped her hand to her forehead. "He must have been tramping around looking for goblins all night. He does that sometimes. He'll be all stiff and in a foul temper when he wakes up."

"Yeah? Those rocks on the hill can't be more than a mile away. He can't have been looking very hard."

"Well, no, I think he just wanders around the grounds. It makes him very angry that he never catches anything." She turned hastily to go. "It won't be so bad if I wake him with breakfast. I'd better get started."

"Wait!" Alison grasped her hands. "You can't be serious. You've been up all night helping us fight monsters and you've been stabbed in the neck. Surely if I explain he'll give you a few hours off?"

"Well, he might," said Jenny with a regretful smile. "But he'll be expecting the cook to produce a hearty meal. That's something you won't be able to explain."

Alison accepted this ruefully and released her hold.

"Okay. Well, I'll give you a hand."

Jenny smiled again in an apologetic way.

"I've seen all the wonderful machines you have. Do you know how to cook on a cast iron wood burning stove?"

Alison winced guiltily.

"You've got me there."

"Don't worry, miss, I'll be fine. Anyway, the Doctor says he can cure Master George and make the goblins go away and then the other servants will come back and I won't have to do everything myself any more." She ducked her head shyly. "He's nice, isn't he?"

"Who?" There was a pause while Alison genuinely couldn't understand who she was talking about. "Oh!" She blinked. "The Doctor? Well, it's not the first word that springs to mind."

Jenny looked confused and grudgingly Alison took pity on her and gave ground.

"He's nice to you. He likes you."

"Really?" Jenny's eyes widened. "Me?"

"Yeah, don't worry about it. It took me a while to cotton on when I first met him."

"Oh." Jenny frowned over this puzzling concept, then discarded it with an air of decision. "I'd better get started on breakfast."

She disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. Left alone Alison plodded wearily upstairs towards her bedroom. The second they were both gone Carstairs' eyes peeled open.

"The rocks." His voice was so compressed and hardened by emotion that it was perfectly flat and toneless. "On the hill."

His grip tightened on his shotgun.

[Soldeed]

The Doctor and the Master stood hunched over the controls on opposite sides of the console as the rotor stilled to a halt and the asthmatic groan of the engines died away. Proudly, and not without a trace of surprise, the Doctor indicated a readout.

"There you go. Perfect! Not twenty feet from the saucer."

"Thanks to my calculations," the Master stated blandly.

"And my piloting! Anyway, never mind that..." He winced and pressed his hands over his ears. As if sensing its proximity to its nest, the captured vampire lifted the pitch and volume of its distress cry to the barely audible but piercing level of a thousand separate dog whistles. "Doesn't that bother you?"

"No," the Master said. He dimmed the console room lights almost to nothing.

"Hm. Wonderful things those mechanical ears of yours."

Shackled securely to a wall down in the depths of the Tardis, the vampire maintained its scream. The Doctor kept his hands over his ears and operated the door control with his elbow.

"Right. All going well I'll see you in a couple of hours. Good luck."

"Likewise, I'm sure," the Master responded while the Doctor dashed out, across the surface of the saucer and went leaping into the cover of the rocks on the far side. Released from the soundproof confines of the Tardis, the creature's call rippled out across the countryside, echoing off the clustered rocks and vibrating the metal of the saucer's hull. It was a matter of seconds before the first movement was visible at the hatch.

Poking its head out into the unfamiliar and threatening environment of daylight, the creature was hesitant at first, pawing vaguely at its great lidless eyes, but the scream drew it like a leash, and with each passing moment it could be seen to be jostled more and more violently by those milling behind it inside the ship. At last with a frantic dash across open ground it galloped on all fours at high speed straight through the Tardis doors and into the welcoming gloom beyond. Emboldened by its lead, the rest of the creatures came surging out of the hatch like a bubbling geyser, pouring into the Tardis in a single living wave.

From his hiding place the Doctor watched with satisfaction the last straggler rush after its fellows, and the doors swing shut at its back. The sound of the creature's distress call and the thundering footsteps of those heading to its rescue were cut off as if they had ceased to exist and silence descended over the landscape.

"There," he said smugly, ignoring the fact that there was no one here to observe his success. "Was that difficult?"

* * * * *

Eventually the creatures had succeeded in freeing the prisoner from its shackles and had come rushing en masse back to the darkened console room where with an air of blank incomprehension they had found the immoveable doors securely closed. Now they prowled around aimlessly, not panicked, not violent, but exploring their new environment with wary curiosity. The Master stood in their midst and disapprovingly watched one clambering about on the rotor.

"Well, this is quite a good plan, I suppose, but I still prefer my idea. Much less untidy. I hope you're all house trained."

He frowned impatiently at the impact of one of them leaping onto his back. It wrapped its spindly arms about him and with the chitinous edges of its wizened mouthpiece started trying to get purchase on the synthetic material of his throat in a fruitless quest for blood.

"Ah," he remarked, shrugging his shoulders in a lethargic attempt to shake it off. "I can see you were one of the stupider members of the crew. You were probably captain."

* * * * *

Alison had just about managed to get her boots off before collapsing exhausted on top of the bed covers. It seemed just seconds later that she was being shaken awake and Jenny's voice was whispering urgently in her ear:

"Please, miss, you have to wake up! Something terrible's happened."

"Stop shaking me," she mumbled. With an effort she managed to stretch her eyes open and focus on Jenny's anxious, furtive face.

"It's his lordship," Jenny hissed. "He heard us! He heard us talking about where the goblins live. He's taken his gun and he says he's going up there to finish them off once and for all."

"What?" Alison slumped her head back against the pillow in weary disgust. "Oh God, he'll mess everything up! We'd better get after him."

She struggled about clumsily on the bed and managed to topple herself off the side onto the floor where she groped for her boots. By the time she had finished lacing them on, her head was starting to clear and in making for the door she managed to brake to a halt without blundering into the two women who stood there.

Lady Carstairs was in her dressing gown as usual but had straightened it about her waist and shoulders and inserted a few pins to bring some order to the disarray of her hair. While Charlotte hovered wanly, a limpid presence at her shoulder, she gave Alison a haughty look.

"And where do you think you're going, young woman? Don't you think his lordship will be better off without you to worry about while he engages on this dangerous expedition?"

Tired, harassed and ill-tempered, Alison folded her arms.

"No, I think the Doctor will be better off without having to worry about his lordship charging around waving his gun about. Can you get out of the way, please?"

Lady Carstairs' nostrils flared.

"Who on earth do you think you're talking about? He is Lord of the Manor, Justice of the Peace, his family has owned this land for three hundred years. You're nothing but a..."

"Don't say it," said Alison with a scowl. "Now shift yourselves."

She brushed between them and they parted for her unresistingly, unprepared to deal with such a contingency. She looked back at Jenny.

"Coming?"

Lady Carstairs turned on the maid, eyebrows arched.

"I think not, Jenny."

Jenny looked straight at Alison, then with widening eyes like a trapped animal switched her glance between the two women in the doorway. She lowered her head shamefacedly.

"No," she murmured.

"Fine."

Alison turned abruptly and marched off down the landing.