Chapter 9

Vampire Thalia, usually so stoic, shivered as she stepped closer to the barrow, Godric close behind her. She turned to him, the archaic Timelord sword in her hand a match to his, her free hand reaching out to him.

When the Doctor deposited them on the green hillside, they had both hidden behind the stones, watching and waiting. Crossing the Doctor’s time stream, they had to be careful, they had to wait as that other Doctor, the one with the curly brown hair and the green velvet frock-coat ran from the army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres, propelling human Thalia into his scorched TARDIS.

“Quick,” Godric said to her. “We won’t have long – he brings her back almost immediately – I can see it.”

The sound of a TARDIS dematerialising and the rising wind told them both that he was already returning, that they had to hurry if they were to beat human Thalia on her way into the barrow. There was no time to pause, no time to thank him, no time to explain what he meant to her. All she could do was hold his hand and try to push everything she felt into that one gesture.

Inside, the rift beneath the hill pulsed as the Great Vampire Raxilos pushed his way through. Very convenient, the Time War, thinning out reality, making the distance between the dimensions so little, the journey through the Void relatively painless for one such as himself. He would find food and maybe even revenge, ripping his way from one night to the next, always animated, never dead for the day or vulnerable. In the Void it was always night, always dark, and millions of his kind had swarmed there, snatching victims through one rift or another, turning them and increasing their population till quite an army of vampires lived in the Void. The temporal loop – eternal night – the Timelords may have denied him, but in many ways it was already his.

He sniffed at the air, his fangs dropping.

Well well, that changed things.

Godric raised his sword, standing shoulder to shoulder with Thalia as they both entered the belly of the beast and he wondered if he could do it – could he let her go out in the blaze of glory she so desperately wanted? Something told him no – but he had to respect her wishes, right? It was so very Thalia to sacrifice herself, and if in the end it saved human Thalia from her suffering, then maybe it was for the greater good.

She could feel the pull of her child-maker bond to the beast below, and she dropped her fangs. She wouldn’t last long against him, but she was going to make it count. But the rift – it pulled at her, made her dizzy and the space below distorted. She’d forgotten – how could she have forgotten this? She couldn’t afford to fail – her life depended on it.  With a cry, she launched herself at the emerging vampire, pushing his way out of the rift like a moth emerging from a chrysalis, and he righted himself with a snarl as he felt the sting of a Timelord’s ancient sword cutting through his flesh.

“Little girl, do you think you can conquer me?” He grabbed hold of her sword by its molten blade, burning through his flesh but he did not care, pushing hard back against Thalia, and she cried out as she felt her shoulder dislocate and her sword drop to the floor. Godric ran in behind her, sword raised, about to strike –

Then his sword fell to the ground and he dropped to his knees as he felt the overwhelming push, a heavy weight flattening him and keeping his arms pinned to his side.

“Master.”

Raxilos chuckled.

“I did not think to see you again. You were a battlefield turning, if I recall correctly. Timelord by your stench. What a charming coincidence to have two of my progeny here.”

The Great Vampire was tall, with swarthy skin and dark hair and eyes, a cruel turn to his lips that Thalia remembered all too well.

“Well, and what kind of maker would I be to abandon you again? And Thalia – dear, sweet Thalia,” he chuckled again. “You escaped – and that cannot go unpunished.”

He grabbed them both, hurling them into the void on the other side of the rift, following after them, and Thalia was only grateful that he did not hear the footsteps of her human self travelling down in to the barrow, that he did not hear her heartbeat thundering against her chest in fear or scent her blood – and most of all she was glad he did not sense the paradox, the mirror-twin of his vampire progeny, come to save her human self and whisk her away in a blue box.

The void closed behind them and she gasped with the familiar pain, the pins and needles tearing their way through her as the void stuff attacked her body much like silver. She heard Godric cry out in pain and she heard the Great Vampire seal the wound of the rift behind him.

“You get used to the pain,” Raxilos said. “I almost never feel it now.”

Something black rushed past them, brushing against her skin and Thalia tried to crawl away. It had legs that scampered like a rat’s, but it howled like a hound from hell. She had experienced void-creatures before – hideous monsters, half-formed and made of borrowed flesh scavenged from whatever fell into the void and died.

“There is a nest near here – a swarm,” Raxilos continued.

“What?” said Thalia, clutching her arm.

“Much has changed since you were with us last – there are whole colonies of us now, biding our time, waiting patiently, growing in number and preparing to attack. We will enslave the Timelords, seize that temporal loop for ourselves and be creatures of the Void and its searing, stinging pain no longer. And you – you will be our cannon-fodder, controlled by a simple maker’s command and sent out to destroy your own kind. And you – Godric, is it? You I will keep for Rassilon. To him you are a travesty and it will offend him more if he is killed by a Timelord Great vampire. You are the first of many we will bring to our side from those we turned on the battlefield –  there are thousands of you.”

Godric was nearly doubled with the pain, clutching at his chest with his hands, and Thalia wondered if his Timelord DNA made it worse. With an effort, he pulled himself upright and attempted to stare his maker down..

“Your army of battle-turned Timelords is lost to you,” he managed to get out. “Quantum locked, all of them. They are statues of stone when gazed upon. What use is an army made of stone? Rassilon has already defeated you!”

A snarl and a growl tore out from their maker’s lips as he swooped to Godric’s side, the lack of gravity aiding him as he gripped him by the throat.

“You lie! They are freed – the fool Doctor – the one who brought your friend here,” he gestured to Thalia,”to be my supper, even knowing as he did that something was awry, has freed them and sent them home. Just think of it – as soon as I reach Gallifrey once more, my numbers will be swelled beyond reckoning.”

A great thundering snap echoed through the empty space between dimensions as the walls of the void were blown inwards by Rassilon’s reality bomb.

“What is it?” Raxilos hissed. “Have you sent others after me – are you seeking to trap me here with your Timelord trickery?”

The walls of the void began to bubble and peel before popping open and streams of reality began to spew into it like the force of an explosion, filling the empty space with rubble. The large side of a concrete building flew over their heads, Godric and Thalia throwing themselves flat, but having to fight the lack of gravity as the concrete hit Raxilos in the chest, pinning him down as more and more debris from many dimensions filled the void, bringing the laws of physics and gravity with them. Grabbing Thalia by her uninjured shoulder, she nodded curtly at Godric as he deftly and as swiftly as he could pushed the joint back into its socket, Thalia grimacing with the pain and rubbing it gingerly.

“Leave him there,” Godric told her. “He cannot escape.”

“I’m not taking any chances.”

“If you end him, you will disappear.”

“If I end him, you are safe from our bastard maker.”

Thalia reached out to Godric’s face, touching his cheek tenderly before kissing him softly. Then faster than he could stop her, she plunged her sword into Raxilos’ chest, exploding him into goo that hung in the air before it was hit by a wave of gravity and got pushed out as a fine, misting spray to multiple dimensions.

“I’m still out there,” she whispered as she felt herself begin to fade. “Find me, Godric – find me and make me yours.”

“No! I will not – Thalia, no!”

A bright burst of light shot out from Godric’s fingers, a kind of fire few Timelords could wield, to blast an enemy with pure time, to pause them, to freeze them in a moment –

“I won’t lose you,” he sobbed. “I can’t!”

The fading stopped and Thalia screamed. “What? Godric, no!”

Together, they were thrown through the air on another shockwave ripping through the Void, Godric grabbing hold of Thalia and pulling her to his side.

“If we cross dimensions – we can escape it,” he said. “The paradox will be nullified. Come with me, Thalia.”

“What of Eric? The Doctor? All the others?”

“We will find a way. Out here, in the Void, little is what it seems. It is a place outside the normal rules, but now – now exploded like this – it could be dangerous but maybe we can hide the paradox in here till we find somewhere safe. If we go to the untempered schism, we may be able to attract the attention of a Pythia.” Godric saw Thalia’s consternation and explained, “An ancient priestess of my people. If we find the schism, and I know it flows here too – the place my mother scryed, it was through a hole in the Void – if we get there, get back to my time – we may be able to find help.”

“How do we get there?” Thalia demanded. “This place, I’ve been here many times – it is a maze, Godric. There is no up or down and now Raxilos has told us it is full of vampires. How, how can we survive here, much less make it out to this schism? And isn’t the schism dangerous?”

“Yes. It sends some people mad.”

“Unfreeze me. Let me go.”

“No.”

Thalia sighed. “Come on then – there are creatures here that if you stand still for too long, they will devour you. Let us go and find this schism.”

A sound of flapping wings filled their ears, light feathery strokes brushing along their arms and legs as a terrible banshee screeching tore through the Void.

“Hunters,” whispered Thalia. “They will pick our bones clean – come on!”

Godric and Thalia ran, heading for the nearest tear in reality, the nearest rift. Godric put out a hand to stop her going through it. “We don’t know where it will lead,” he explained. “But if we stand too close – they will not come near us for fear of being sucked through.”

Through the dim light that filtered through the rift, Godric and Thalia could see the outlines and misshapen forms of Void creatures, monsters that lurked and lived in this place between dimensions, some of them exiled here for their crimes, some of them refugees from lost worlds, all of them filled with terrible hunger. The Hunters were pteradactyl-sized and ready to descend with claws outstretched when the light from the other realm scared them away and they flew back out into the darkness of the Void proper.

“Perhaps if we cling to the edges, we will be safer,” Godric suggested. “See here – along the edges – but we will have to watch both sides for threats and possible attacks, and for other Great Vampires from the swarm Raxilos told us about.”

Thalia hefted her sword, standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

“I am ready.”

Chapter 10