Free Reality Bites by Nicola Rhodes Page A

said.  Then his voice rose, although he still did not shout.  ‘Where in the name of Hell did you get an Athame?’
    ‘It belongs – belonged to the cook,’ said the smaller one. ‘He uses – used it to prepare the vegetables – for the prisoners.’
    ‘And where did he get it from?  Vampires do not carry ceremonial weapons. I should know.’
    ‘Oh, he’s not a vampire, he’s a demon. I think it belonged to his father.’
    ‘I see, well he will no doubt be anxious to retrieve it. Send for him.’
    ‘Yes my Lord.’
    When the master had them, all three in a row – the demon chef was perhaps the most human looking of the three – he waved a hand over them all, and they all combusted into a pillar of flames and disappeared. 
    He minced over to a mirror to check his fangs; he was smiling. ‘They were a predictable lot,’he thought.  It was all working out exactly as he had planned.  He glanced at the pile of ash where the demon had stood.  Well he could not have him going after Denny to get the Athame back, now could he?  He had never bothered to find out why a demon would chose to work for a bunch of vampires.  It was certainly an unusual choice. Demons were an inordinately prideful race as a rule.  Well, he thought ruefully, it was too late to ask him now.
    He sent for one of his lackeys.  ‘Send me a prisoner,’ he ordered. ‘I’m getting peckish. And when you have done that, send out a patrol for the girl, no excuses this time – find Tamar Black.’
    * * *
    ‘The problem is she could be anywhere,’ Denny thought. ‘The other problem is, I could be anywhere.’
    Feeling full and satisfied, he had asked the bored looking woman in a pinny at the cash register where he was. She gave him a blank look, which he interpreted as her thinking he was insane.  So he explained – the edited version, omitting the vampires and,in fact, most of what had actually happened.  Eventually he realized that the blank expression meant that she did not understand the question. Convincing him, once and for all, that the café was not real and neither was she.  Well, thank heaven for small mercies. She reminded him forcibly of Mrs Payne, known as Mrs. Payne in the neck. A school dinner lady who had terrorised several generations of kids at Hall Lane Primary, with an uncanny ability to be in numerous places at once whenever kids tried to sneak back into the classrooms, and who had had a face like a bottle of vinegar.
    Denny sloped out of the café feeling dispirited.  The only thing to do he supposed, was to follow the road, in the hopes of getting a lift somewhere.  Even though part of him had been expecting it, he had to do a double take.  The road was gone.  He spun round; the café was also gone, having served its purpose.
    ‘So now what?’  He glanced at the sun and checked his watch, and then he remembered that he was not a Park Ranger.  He had spent two weeks in the Boy Scouts and had hated every minute of it.  He hated camping and “joining in”, he had not even earned his needlework badge, and as for the life-saving dummy, he had had nightmares about that thing for weeks.
    He patted the Athame to check it was still there. He had been doing this at ever diminishing intervals ever since he had sheathed it.
    ‘I have to get out of here,’ he thought desperately. ‘If only I knew where I was to begin with, even a road would be nice.’   He was not really terribly astonished when the road ( sans café ) reappeared as if – to coin a phrase – by magic. Denny sighed; he was pretty much used to all types of weirdness by now God knew, and he ought to be.  But he preferred to know, if possible, exactly what kind of weirdness he was dealing with. He usually relied on Tamar for this information.
    ‘Okay, I’ll buy it,’ he said to the air.  ‘I just wish I knew how I was doing this.’  And suddenly, he did.
    It was the Athame of course. (Anyone but Denny would have worked this out