Wamphyri

'And that's a bat!' Georgina had said at once. 'A bat in flight, over the dragon's back.'

Ilya had hurriedly cleaned away more dirt and lichen from the old chiselled grooves, and a third carved symbol had come to light. But the great lintel, which had seemed firmly enough bedded, had suddenly shifted, started to topple as the rotting wall gave way.

Pushing Georgina back, Ilya had thrown himself off balance. Trying to scramble backwards himself, he'd somehow got his leg sticking straight out in front of him, directly under the toppling lintel. Still sprawling there as the slab fell, his cry of agony and the nerve-grating crunch as his leg broke and jagged bone sheared through his flesh came simultaneous with Georgina's scream.

Then, perhaps mercifully, he had lost consciousness. She had leaped to free him from the lintel, only to discover that while it had broken his leg, it had not trapped him. The lower part of his leg flopped uselessly and fell at an odd angle when she touched it, but

miraculously it was not pi

And that, until the moment of her awakening, had been the last that Georgina saw, felt or heard. Or rather, she had seen one other thing, and then forgotten it at once as she slumped to the ground. The thing she saw had remained forgotten, or more properly suppressed: it was the third symbol, carved above the dragon and the bat, which had seemed to leer at her even as the blackness closed in ...

'Georgy? We're there!' A

Georgina, reclining in the back of the car, eyes almost closed in her suddenly pale face, gave a start and sat upright. She had been on the verge of remembering something about the place where Ilya died, something she hadn't wanted to remember. Now she gulped air grate-fully, forced a smile. 'There already?' She managed to get the words out. 'I ... I must have been miles away!'

A

Georgina nodded. 'Yes, I'm fine. Maybe a little tired, that's all. Come on, help me with the carry-cot.'

The church was of old stone, all stained glass and Gothic arches, with a cemetery to one side where the headstones were leaning and crusted with grey-green lichens. Georgina couldn't bear lichens, especially when they covered old legends gouged in leaning slabs. She looked the other way as she hurried by the graveyard and turned left around the buttressed corner of the church towards its entrance. A

'Goodness!' she protested. 'You'd think we were late or something!' And in fact they were, almost.

Waiting on the steps in front of the church, there stood A

George and A

Leaving Georgina's hands free to tidy herself up a little, they now took the carry-cot between them and made to enter the church. The twin doors were of oak under a Gothic arch, one standing half open outwards on to the landing at the head of the steps. A wind came up from nowhere, blew yesterday's confetti up in mad swirls and slammed the door resoundingly in their faces. Earlier there had been the odd ray of sunshine filtering through wispy grey clouds, but now the clouds seemed to mass, the sun was switched off like a light and it grew noticeably darker.

'Not cold enough for snow,' said George, turning his eyes apprehensively up to the sky. 'My guess is it's going to chuck it down!'

'Chuck it or bucket?' A

'Fuck it!' said George, irreverently. 'Let's get in!'

A moment more and the door was shoved open from inside by the vicar. He was lean, getting on a bit in years, close to bald. His one advantage was of great height, so that he could look down on them all. He had little eyes made huge by thick-lensed spectacles, and a veined beak of a nose that seemed to turn his head as if it were a weathercock. His thi

A bird of pray! thought George, and gri

'So glad you could make it,' he smiled, and nodded over Yulian in his carry-cot. The baby was awake, his round eyes moving to and fro. The vicar chucked him under his chubby chin, said, 'Young man, it's always a good idea to be early for one's christening, punctual for one's wedding, and as late as one can get for one's funeral!' Then he peered frowningly at the door.

The freak gust of wind had disappeared, taking its confetti with it. 'What happened here?' the old man lifted his eyebrows. 'That's odd! I had thought the bolt was home. But in any case, it takes a wind of some power to slam shut a door heavy as this one. Perhaps we're in for a storm.' At the foot of the door a bolt dragged squealingly along the groove it had worn in old stone flags, and thudded down into its bolthole as the vicar gave the door a final push. 'There!' He wiped his hands, nodded his satisfaction.

Not such a boring old fart after all, all three thought the identical thought as he led them inside and up to the font.

In his time, the old clergyman had baptised Georgina; he'd married her, too, and was aware that she was now a widow. This was the church her parents had attended for most of their declining years, the church her father had attended as a boy and young man. There was no need for long preliminaries, and so he began at once. As George and A

'No,' Georgina shook her head.

'Dearly beloved,' the vicar began in earnest, 'foreasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin - '

Sin, thought Georgina, the old man's words flowing over her. Yulian wasn't conceived in sin. This had ever been a part of the service that got her back up. Sin, indeed! Conceived in joy and love and sweetest sweet pleasure, yes - unless pleasure were to be construed as sin...

She looked down at Yulian in her arms; he was alert, staring at the vicar as he mumbled over his book. It was a fu