Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures [028] - Blood Harvest by Paul Cornell & Terrance Dicks

Author:Paul Cornell & Terrance Dicks
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426204176
Publisher: Virgin
Published: 1994-09-14T22:00:00+00:00

17

FLIGHT

Bernice lay stretched out on her bed, snoring lightly, her notebook in her lap, the half-empty wine bottle on the wooden table beside her bed.

She awoke suddenly with the feeling that something had disturbed her.

There was a vague memory of a cry, a thud, something rolling across the floor. Was it real, or had she dreamed it? She realized the room was in semidarkness. She must have dozed for quite some time.

There was a tap on the door.

‘Come in,’ she called.

The door opened and Romana appeared, carrying a smokily burning oil-lamp. She looked around the room, put the lamp on the table and sat on the room’s single wooden chair.

‘Hard at it?’ she said amiably.

Bernice struggled to a sitting position. ‘Sorry, must have dropped off. How’s the conference going?’

‘Very well, thanks to your contribution. Where did you pick up that extraordinary idea about two linked legislative chambers?’

‘From a long lecture by the Doctor about the political history of his favourite planet. I didn’t think I was listening but some of it must have sunk in.’

‘I think it tipped the balance,’ said Romana. ‘You must try to remember some more for tomorrow’s session. Are you coming down? I think there’s supposed to be some social chit-chat before dinner.’

‘Yes, sure, just give me a minute.’

There was a jug of cold water in a basin on the table. Bernice tipped water in, splashed her face and hands, dried them on the rough towel and dragged a comb through her hair. She wondered how Romana always managed to look so aggravatingly immaculate.

Probably licks her paws and washes her face like a cat, she thought.

‘Okay, I’m ready,’ she said out loud.

They went out of the room, Romana leading the way with the lamp, and saw Tarak coming along the corridor from his room.

‘Ah, good, there you are,’ said Romana with her usual bossiness. ‘Come along, we’ll be –’ She broke off, kneeling down and holding the lamp just a little above the floor. They were immediately outside the room between Bernice’s and Tarak’s room.

A trickle of blood was running from underneath the door.

‘That’s Lord Veran’s room,’ said Tarak. ‘We were talking in there not long ago.’ He opened the door and they went inside.

Romana held the lamp up high, illuminating the room.

Veran’s head was in the basin on the table beside the bed. Wide eyes stared sightlessly at them and his mouth was open in a silent scream.

His body lay sprawled across the floor, the stump of the neck towards the door. Blood poured in a stream from the severed arteries in the neck, forming a pool beside the bed and sending tendrils of blood out under the door.

‘Get on the other side of the room,’ ordered Tarak. ‘Don’t step in the blood.’ He ripped the blanket from the bed, soaked one end of it in the water from the jug and swabbed up the trickle of blood in the corridor.

Closing the door again, he rolled the blanket and stuffed it along the bottom of the door like a draught-excluder.

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