The Cross
The Cross
Scott G. Mariani
When an ancient cross is discovered in Eastern Europe it becomes a powerful weapon in the war between the trads and the Vampire Federation – but soon, the world is threatened by its discovery…
The cross of Ardaich, feared by vampires, was believed to have been destroyed during the bloody war between the Vampire Federation and the Trads. But its accidental rediscovery could be catastrophic.
Detective Joel Solomon can’t forgive VF agent Alex Bishop for making him a vampire. Yet when Federation arch-enemy Gabriel Stone enlists a vicious killer to retrieve the cross, the couple and their human allies become the only defence against pure evil.
If the cross is used to gain power by the Übervampyr, the sadistic and primeval race of elite vampires, it isn’t just ordinary vampires like Alex and Joel who will be in danger. Things could be about to turn very nasty for the human race…
A high-octane, action-packed adventure that will thrill fans of Charlaine Harris, Blade and The Passage.
The Cross
SCOTT G. MARIANI
Copyright (#ulink_2231c57c-d0bd-59dd-a9b3-dc319b342e22)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © Scott G. Mariani 2011
Scott G. Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847562135
Ebook edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007342792
Version 2018-06-26
Epigraph (#ulink_fc8c2388-39ea-591e-8538-cba308df96fe)
As ever, thanks to my intrepid and tireless editor at Avon, Keshini Naidoo, who luckily for me enjoys the blood and gore of a vampire story even more than I do . . .
Thanks also to Nathan Shallcross at Armed Combat and Tactics UK for expert coaching in some particularly effective and nasty fighting techniques with the European longsword. Learning how to whip an opponent’s head off their shoulders with a four-foot blade is definitely the most fun I’ve ever had researching a novel.
Contents
Title Page (#u788a28b5-4dac-5817-8a5c-98ddaca6cba7)
Copyright
Epigraph
Nearly thirty years
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
An extract from Vampire Federation series, Uprising
Prologue
Chapter One
Also by Scott G. Mariani
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Nearly thirty years (#ulink_72dc6f80-d525-5f4c-bebc-1ac1cc066311)
Nearly thirty years of domination ensured that the hallowed traditions of the vampire race were all but eradicated under the rule of the Vampire Federation. Gone were the days when vampires were free to claim the blood of human victims at will, leaving their exsanguinated remains for the crows or turning them into vampires like themselves. Strict laws were laid down by Federation rulers and enforced by VIA, the Vampire Intelligence Agency, with agents like Alex Bishop licensed to hunt down and destroy vampires who flouted the rules.
It seemed as if the vampire way of life had changed forever. Until, that is, the uprising led by rebel vampire Gabriel Stone attempted to drive a stake into the very heart of its hated enemy the Federation. Only the chance intervention of a human, Joel Solomon, wielding an ancient and powerful anti-vampire weapon the legends call the Cross of Ardaich, prevented the complete annihilation of the Federation leaders and a resounding victory for the Traditionalist rebellion.
In the wake of the battle on the ramparts of Gabriel Stone’s Romanian castle hideaway, the rebellion has been crushed, the Cross of Ardaich destroyed and the Federation left in tatters. Surviving Federation leaders like Supremo Olympia Angelopolis will declare a victory . . .
But not everyone within the Federation is so sure . . .
Prologue (#ulink_c037959c-21cc-5041-bef2-820169bef5bc)
The village of St Elowen
South-west Cornwall
Where two quiet lanes crossed, just a stone’s throw from the edge of the village, the grey stone church had stood more or less unchanged since not long after Henry V had ascended to the throne of England. The glow from its leaded windows haloed out into the frosty November night. From behind its ancient iron-studded, ivy-framed door, the sound of singing drifted on the wind.
Just another Thursday evening’s choir practice.
Although that night would be remembered quite differently by those villagers who would survive the events soon to become infamous as ‘The St Elowen Massacre’.
Inside the church, Reverend Keith Perry beamed with pride as the harmonies of his fourteen singers soared up to the vaulted ceiling. What many of them lacked in vocal ability, they more than made up for with their enthusiasm. Rick Souter, the village butcher, was the loudest, with a deep baritone voice that was only a little rough and almost in tune. Then there was young Lucy Blakely, just seventeen, giving it all she had. The most naturally talented of them all was little Sam Drinkwater, who in a few weeks’ time was set to audition for a place as boy soprano at King’s College, Cambridge. Sam’s parents, Liz and Brian, were there too, sharing a hymn book as they all belted out ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ to the strains of the electronic organ played by Mrs Hudson, the local music teacher.
The only face missing was that of Charlie Fitch, the plumber. Charlie was normally punctual, but his elderly mother had been quite ill lately; Perry prayed that nothing awful had happened.
That was when the church door banged behind them. A few heads turned to see the man standing at the entrance, watching them all. Mrs Hudson’s fingers faltered on the organ keys. Reverend Perry’s smile froze on his lips.
The drifter had been sighted on the edge of the village a few days before. The first concerned whispers had been exchanged in the shop and post office, and it hadn’t been long before most of St Elowen’s population of three hundred or so had heard the talk. The general consensus was that the drifter’s presence was somewhat worrying, somewhat discomfiting; and everyone’s hope was that it would be temporary. He was unusually tall and broad, perhaps thirty years old. Nobody knew his name, or where he’d come from, or where he was staying. His appearance suggested that he might have been living rough, travelling on foot from place to place like an aimless vagrant. His boots were caked in dirt and the military-style greatcoat he wore was rumpled and torn. But he was no new-age traveller, the villagers agreed. His face was as clean-shaven as a soldier’s, and his scalp gleamed from the razor. There were no visible tattoos. No rings in his nose or ears.
Just that look that anyone who saw him found deeply disconcerting. Cold. Indifferent. Somehow not quite right. Somehow – this was the account that had reached Reverend Perry’s ears – somehow not quite human.
Mrs Hudson stopped playing altogether. The voices of the choir fell away to silence as all eyes turned towards the stranger.
For a drawn-out moment, the man returned their gaze. Then, without taking his eyes off the assembly, he reached behind him and turned the heavy iron key. The door locked with a clunk that echoed around the silent church. The man drew the key out of the lock and dropped it into the pocket of that long greatcoat of his.
Little Sam Drinkwater took his mother’s hand. Lucy Blakely’s eyes were wide with worry as she glanced at the vicar.
Reverend Perry swallowed back his nervousness, forced the smile back onto his lips and walked up the centre aisle towards the man. ‘Good evening,’ he said as brightly as he could. ‘Welcome to St Elowen’s. It’s always a pleasure to see—’
As the stranger slowly reached down and swept back the hem of his long coat, Reverend Perry’s words died in his mouth. Around the man’s waist was a broad leather belt. Dangling from the belt, at his left hip, was an enormous sword. Its basket hilt was lined with scarlet cloth. Its polished scabbard glinted in the church lights.
Reverend Perry was too shocked to utter a word more. The man said nothing either. In no hurry, he reached his right hand across his body. His fingers wrapped themselves around the sword’s hilt and drew out the weapon with a metallic swishing sound. Its blade was long and straight and broad and had been crudely etched with strange symbols.
Reverend Perry gaped dumbly at the sight of the weapon in his church. He was only peripherally aware of the gasps and cries of horror that had started breaking out among the choir members.
The drifter smiled for the first time. But it was no ordinary smile. Reverend Perry almost fainted at the sight.
The man’s teeth were sharp and pointed. Like the fangs of a monster.
And then, in a smooth and rapid motion that was over before anyone could react, the intruder swung the sword.
The chopping impact of the blade was drowned out by Mrs Hudson’s scream. Keith Perry’s severed head bounced up the aisle and came to a rest between the pews. And the choir exploded into screaming panic.
The drifter held the blade up lovingly in front of his face. He licked the running blood off the steel and swallowed. Began walking slowly up the aisle towards the terrified parishioners.
‘The vestry door!’ Lucy Blakely shrieked, pointing. Liz Drinkwater grabbed her son’s arm tightly as she and her husband fled for the exit at the right of the altar. The others quickly followed, tripping over each other and their own feet in their desperation to get away. Rick Souter snatched up a heavy candlestick. With a scowl of rage he ran at the intruder and raised his makeshift weapon to strike.
The drifter swung the sword again. Rick Souter’s amputated arm fell to the floor still clutching the candlestick. The blade whooshed down and back up, slitting the butcher from groin to chin so that his innards spilled across the flagstones even before he’d collapsed on his face.
The drifter crouched over the fallen body to dab his fingers into the pool of blood that was spreading rapidly over the church floor. With a look of passionate joy he smeared the blood over his lips, greedily sucked it from his fingers. Bubbles of it frothed out from the serrated gaps between his teeth and trickled down his chin and neck. Then he stood, raised his face to the vaulted ceiling and his laughter echoed through the whole church.
‘You think you’re safe in here? Think your God will protect you?’
The vestry door was bolted from the outside. Lucy Blakely and the Drinkwaters were desperately trying to force it open, but even as the other choir members joined them, they knew the door wouldn’t give. Little Sam howled as his mother clutched him to her. Brian Drinkwater was looking around him in panic for some other way out.
But there wasn’t one. They were all trapped in here with the monster.
Charlie Fitch parked his van outside the little church. As he walked briskly down the stone path leading to the door, his mind was still full of his hospital visit to his mother earlier that evening. Thank God she was okay and would be home again soon.
Then Charlie heard the sounds that froze the blood inside his veins. It wasn’t the singing of his friends in the choir he could hear from inside the church, nor the playing of the organ. They were screaming.
Screaming in horror and terror. In agony.
He rattled the door handle. The door was locked. He scrambled up the mossy bank behind him so he could peer in through the leaded panes of the stained-glass window.
The sight he saw inside was one that would remain with him until his dying day. The church floor littered with corpses and severed body parts. Blood spattered across the altar, on the pews, on everything.
In the middle of the nightmare stood a man in a long coat. Blood was spattered across his face and his shaven head and the blade of the sword he was swinging wildly at the fleeing, screeching figure of Lucy Blakely. It was surreal. Charlie watched as the girl’s head was separated from her shoulders by the gore-streaked blade. Then the madman turned to little Sam Drinkwater, who was kneeling by the bloody bodies of his parents, too frightened to scream.
It wasn’t until he witnessed what the man did to the boy that Charlie was able to break out of his trance of horror and run. He ran until his heart was about to burst, fell to his knees and ripped his phone out of his pocket.
Nineteen minutes later, the police armed response unit broke in the church door and burst onto the scene of the devastation. The first man inside nearly dropped his weapon when he took in the carnage in front of him.
Nothing remained of the Reverend Keith Perry or his choir members. Nothing except the horrific gobbets of diced human flesh that were scattered across the entire inside of the church.
The killer was still there. He stood calmly at the altar with his back to the door, stripped naked, bloodied from head to foot. His sword lay across the altar in front of him, gore still dripping from its blade. In his powerful hands he held a blood-filled chalice over his head.
The squad leader yelled ‘Armed police! Step away from the weapon!’ The man ignored the command and the guns that were aimed at his back. Murmuring softly to himself, he slowly turned his face upwards and tipped the bloody contents of the chalice over his head, drinking and slurping greedily.
‘Who the fuck is this person?’ The squad leader hardly realised he’d spoken those words out loud.
Not until the man at the altar turned round to face him.
And said: ‘I am a vampire.’
Chapter One (#ulink_28dfdf72-eede-5000-8dc8-2c5adc33148b)
Romania
Five nights later
Sometime in the dead of night, the whistling wind drove away the snow-clouds to unveil the stars. From among the shadows that the moonlight threw across the deep forested valley below, the towers of the ancient castle of Vâlcanul were a craggy silhouette against the distant mountain peaks. All was silent. All was still. A place of desolation and morbidity.
The inert body among the trees, half-covered in snow, was that of a man. His clothes were tattered and bloody. Snowflakes clung to his hair and his eyelashes. His face was deathly pale. He had no pulse. Soon, he might be food for the wolves and other wild things in the forest.
Except that the night creatures knew better than to approach.
Inside the motionless body of the man, something was stirring. Something was awakening, resurfacing from the depths of a sleep so infinitely profound that only a very few could ever return from it. Gradually, his senses began to reanimate. As consciousness returned, he became dimly aware of the softness of the snow under him, of the weight of his body resting on it. A finger twitched. His frosted eyelids fluttered and then opened briefly to a stab of pain from the bright moon and starlight above him. Slowly, he reopened them, and could see again. A long sigh whistled from his lips.
Memories flickered through his mind, weakly at first, gradually gaining strength and clarity. He recalled a name, and realised it was his own.
Joel Solomon.
Joel sat up slowly, snow falling away from his body, and gazed around him at the white-topped forest, at the craggy mountainside and the castle towers perched high above. The road running down through the valley was now invisible under a foot of fresh snow. A few steps from Joel, the wreck of a four-wheel-drive truck lay overturned and half-buried in a snowdrift. He blinked, staring at it. Had he been in a car accident? What had happened to him?
He looked down at the thin sweatshirt he was wearing, and saw it was torn and bloody. Whose blood was this? Some of the holes had been made by bullets, another by a knife slash. He ripped the shirt open; why wasn’t he cold? The wounds in his flesh were livid and raw; why wasn’t he dead?
The memories grew more vivid. He remembered being up on the castle battlements. A blinding blizzard. A man pointing a gun at him. The sound of the shot, the terrible impact of the bullet, the sensation of falling. Unconsciousness coming and going. Then, being carried. A woman’s voice in his ear. Alex speaking softly to him as she cradled him in her arms: ‘Don’t try to speak.’
And his own voice, weak and faint: ‘Alex . . . I’m scared.’
Then nothing.
Joel strained his eyes at the snowy landscape all around him. He could see no trace of her. Had she just gone, left him here like this, all alone?
Alex. He’d loved her. Or thought he had, until he’d realised who she really was. What she really was.
He touched his fingers to his neck. Felt the holes there, and the sticky congealed blood. The realisation was like another gunshot punching through his body.
She’d bitten him. Drunk from him. His life blood flowing into her, while her own filth flowed into his veins.
He’d become . . .
He’d become . . .
No. No.
Joel sprang to his feet. The scream burst out of him. It echoed across the snowy valley. Rolled around the mountains.
NOOOOOO!!!
He fell back into the snow. He arched his back and ground his eyes shut and pounded his fists on the ground and beat them against his head. There was no pain. He shoved his thumbs into his mouth, felt for his upper canine teeth and pressed hard against them. They didn’t feel any different. Absurd. Insane. Maybe it was all a bad dream.
Except that it wasn’t. He’d destroyed enough of these things to know they were real. For centuries, for millennia, they’d been there, these parasites, living off the blood of human beings.
And now he was one of them.
Joel sat there in the snow, hugging himself and rocking slowly back and forth. His mind was numb, choked with indistinct thoughts, paralysed with cloying horror. An infinite expanse of time seemed to drift by before he eventually turned his head slowly to look at the blood-spattered watch on his wrist and then up at the sky. The stars were fading as the first blood-red glimmers of light tinged the eastern horizon.
Dawn wasn’t far away.
Many years before, when Joel had been just a child, his grandfather had told him what would happen to a vampire that was exposed to the rays of the sunrise. The primal instinct now flooding warnings through his mind, so alien to him and yet seeming to come from the very depths of his being, told him that his grandfather had been right.
Joel tried to imagine what it would feel like. First, the rising apprehension giving way to terror as the glow in the east grew more intense. Then the golden rim of the sun’s disc would appear shimmering over the horizon and it would be as if a million hot needles were piercing his skin. Within seconds, the lethal radiation would be cooking him, boiling the blood inside his veins; the flesh blackening and peeling from his bones, falling away in brittle carbonised flakes that drifted off like cinders on the morning breeze as he screamed and screamed and watched himself disintegrate. When the torment was over, there would be nothing left but a crater in the snow to mark his final, irreversible destruction.
And he’d welcome it. His life was already gone, the world he’d known already lost to him. The future that lay ahead of him now was unthinkable, unendurable. Joel’s eyes were fixed on the east as the red glow gradually bled across the sky.
Let it come.
Veins of gold began to spread through the crimson. The first light slowly creeping across the faces of the distant mountains.
Joel was afraid. And he was prepared to be even more afraid, and resolute in the face of terror, before the end. But the overwhelming horror that suddenly gripped him as the dawn approached was like a physical force, far beyond anything he could have imagined. Before he’d even realised what he was doing, he was on his feet and staggering away through the snow.
Behind him, the first glittering rays of sunlight peeped over the mountains. He felt it like a nuclear blast on his back. He screamed and ran harder, bolting through the trees like a wild animal instinctively impelled to survive at all cost, suddenly possessed with a speed and power that he’d never known in his thirty years of human life. All he knew was that he must find shadow. Must seek out darkness. The searing light was quickly gaining ground.
He looked up, shielding his eyes from the pain. The sunrise gleamed on the castle turrets and ramparts high above. The ancient fortress offered all kinds of dark spaces where he could hide away – but he knew that, even endowed with incredible physical strength as he was, he had no hope of scaling the mountainside and reaching it in time.
He was going to burn.
But there was a chance. The foot of the mountain was just thirty yards away; and as Joel ran he saw the dark recess in the rocks. Let it be what it looks like, he prayed. He slipped on an icy rock and went sprawling in the snow. A sunbeam cut between the naked trees and slashed across his outflung hand like a laser. The skin sizzled and he smelled burning. He screamed again. Scrambled to his feet and hurled himself towards the cave entrance.
The cave was deep and low. Bent double, crawling desperately on his knees, he wished like he’d never wished for anything before that the terrible light couldn’t reach him there. The shaft tightened as it deepened, and it took all his strength to force his body through. Then, with a surge of relief that made him cry out, he realised it was opening up again, into a wide crooked fissure that ran diagonally upwards into the bowels of the mountain. A pitch-black sanctuary where the sun hadn’t penetrated for a billion years.
Joel snuggled deep into the darkness. For a few moments, the fierce joy of survival burned intensely through him and he couldn’t stop grinning. He’d done it. He was safe from the hateful sun. He’d survived. He’d won.
No, Joel, said another voice in his mind. You lost.You failed miserably.
He closed his eyes as his ecstasy suddenly gave way to revolted self-loathing. He’d had his chance to end it, right here, right now. But not even the steeliest resolve he could muster up stood the remotest chance against the vampire’s all-conquering urge to survive. Not now, not ever. He was doomed to go on like this for the rest of eternity.
As the sun rose over the snowy forest and mountains and began its arc across the sky, Joel remained in the darkness of the cave, thinking of only one thing. He was going to return home and destroy the woman who had done this to him. Her and all her kind.
Send them all back to hell where they – and now he – belonged.
Chapter Two (#ulink_075db564-8ee8-566e-8d68-ec578008673b)
Prague
Alex Bishop stood alone at the railing of the bridge, the wind in her hair. Beyond the river and all around her, the city lights were fading with the coming of the dawn. The rising sun glittered off cathedral domes and glassy high-rise towers and cast a diffused golden streak across the water. She could feel its warmth on her face. If it hadn’t been for the last remaining Solazal photosensitivity neutraliser pill that she’d managed to retrieve from the castle before her escape from Romania, she’d hardly have been standing here to welcome the sunrise. As for any other vampire, it would have been a straight choice between frazzle and hide. Nobody ever voluntarily opted for the former.
She sighed to herself as she gazed out across the cityscape. So much had happened in the last few days that even her ultra-sharp vampire mind was reeling from it. None of it was good. All through the night she’d been making her way as best she could from the snowy wilds of Romania. A stolen farm truck had got her as far as a desolate country railway station, where she’d hitched a ride on a freight carriage. Now here she was in Prague, not quite halfway to where she wanted to be and hoping that her call to Utz McCarthy was going to pay off.
She didn’t have to wait much longer before a black BMW SUV peeled off from the growing traffic over the bridge and pulled up a few yards from where she was standing. She stepped away from the railing to meet it. The driver was alone. His door opened. He climbed out and walked towards her, grey-haired, tall and lean, not quite smiling, not quite frowning, wearing a long raincoat that billowed in the wind.
At only eighty or so years of age Utz McCarthy was much younger than Alex, but he looked much older: compared to the twenty-nine years she’d spent as a human, he’d survived for over half a century before an unexpected encounter with a vampire had set him on a whole new course. Nowadays, he was a minor sectional official running the small and somewhat dingy Prague offices of the same organisation Alex belonged to: the global Vampire Federation. Part of Utz’s job was facilitating the movements of VIA agents like Alex.
The last time they’d met face to face had been eighteen months earlier, when Harry Rumble, Alex’s boss at the Vampire Intelligence Agency Headquarters in London, had sent her out this way on a mission to check out reports of rogue vampire activity in the Czech city of Brno. As it had turned out, it had been a false alarm. No Federation regs were being contravened, the local vampires were behaving themselves and not turning unauthorised victims; no arrests or Nosferol terminations had been necessary and all had been well.
Alex’s job wasn’t always so easy.
Utz looked distraught. ‘Jesus, Alex, are you okay?’ he blurted out. ‘I can’t believe what I’ve been hearing. An attack on the Federation grand assembly? A fucking helicopter gunship, taking out the whole conference centre? Tell me it’s not true.’
‘I was there,’ Alex said coolly. ‘It’s true.’
‘But how could this happen?’
‘It happened because we broke one of the cardinal rules of warfare,’ Alex said. ‘Never underestimate your enemy. When a rogue vampire like Gabriel Stone decides to mount a rebellion against an enemy he perceives as a threat to everything he believes in, he does it on a major scale. It’s a long story, Utz. The bottom line is that virtually the whole of the Federation top brass has been wiped out. Thanks to Stone’s rebels and the moles he had working for him inside VIA, we just became a leaderless army.’
Utz gaped at her, visibly weakening at the knees. ‘All of them? The Supremos?’
She nodded. ‘Goldmund, Korentayer, Hassan, Borowczyk, Mushkavanhu. Not to mention our illustrious former Federation second-in-command, the late and much-lamented Gaston Lerouge. Stone executed them all. With a guillotine.’ She gave a dry smile. ‘Some style, that Gabriel. You’ve got to hand it to him.’
‘What about the Vampress?’ Utz croaked. He was referring to Supremo Olympia Angelopolis, the grand Matriarch of the whole Federation. ‘Surely not her as well?’
Alex shrugged. ‘She might have got out. Things were kind of chaotic.’ She didn’t pretend to care any more than she did about Olympia’s fate.
‘This is unreal. You’ve got to be kidding me about this.’
She looked at him. ‘You should know by now that I’m a very humourless person and I don’t dick about making jokes. Especially when I’ve been shot at with Nosferol bullets, kidnapped and incarcerated in a damp cell in some middle-of-nowhere castle in Romania and then almost guillotined myself.’
And left behind the only man I’ve given a shit about in a hundred and thirteen years, she wanted to add. Left him to fend for himself in the wilderness, more alone and more terrified than he could ever have imagined. Making that stark, brutal choice had ripped her guts out: either let Joel die in her arms of the terrible wounds he’d suffered in the battle with Stone’s gang, or help him to survive, the only way she knew how.
Turning him had seemed the only option.
And now what? She knew he’d make it out of there. Of all the things vampires could do, survival was what they did best. He’d have sought out a dark place by now, to hole up in for the day. Come sundown, he’d begin his new existence – one he’d never forgive her for having inflicted on him. And then, sooner or later, more likely sooner, he’d come looking for her. The indelible connection between vampire and victim would lead him to her. When that day came, she’d have to account for what she’d done to him.
Alex quickly pressed that thought to the back of her mind. ‘Got any Solazal?’ she asked Utz. If she wanted to move around safely in daylight, she’d need more than just the twelve hours’ worth of protection that one salvaged pill could offer.
Utz was still stunned from the news, leaning heavily on the bonnet of the car for support. He shook his head. ‘Just what I need for myself,’ he said distractedly. ‘There’s a shortage.’
Alex was well aware of that. Gabriel Stone’s doing. In a lightning raid in Italy, his heavily-armed assault team had blown up the pharmaceutical plant where the Federation produced its special drugs. With a blast of high explosive, Stone’s Traditionalist uprising had sent the vampire world halfway back to the sacred old ways of ducking and dodging the sun. It was anyone’s guess how long it would be before Solazal production went back to normal. As for Nosferol, the lethal anti-vampire poison that Federation agents used to destroy rogue members of their kind, the attack on the pharmaceutical plant had reduced stocks almost to zero.
‘Have you reported back to Rumble yet?’ Utz said, gathering himself.
‘Rumble was with me in Romania, Utz. He isn’t coming back. A certain vamp called Lillith was a little too handy with a bloody great sabre.’ Poor Harry, Alex thought. He hadn’t been all bad, even for a suit.
‘How the hell did you get out of it?’ Utz said.
‘It was thanks to a human,’ Alex replied after a beat.
‘A what?’
‘His name’s Joel Solomon. He’s a cop. Or was. If he hadn’t turned up when he had, I’d have ended up as just another severed head in a basket. He got shot to pieces, but not before he’d managed to take out Stone’s guards and most of his crew. As for Stone himself—’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what happened to him.’
‘A human did all this?’
‘He had a little help. From the cross.’
Utz’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Come on. You don’t mean—’
‘That’s right, Utz. The cross, the one nobody at VIA wanted to believe me about. The cross of Ardaich. Yes, it exists, and yes, it does what all the legends say it does.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘You’d better.’
‘Where is this thing now?’
She shrugged. ‘Last time I saw it, it was flying over the battlements of Stone’s castle. Something like a thousand-foot drop. Nothing but rocks below.’
‘So it got smashed, right?’
‘Probably.’
‘What does that mean, “probably”?’
‘It means I didn’t actually see it get smashed, okay? Hard to believe anything could have survived that fall. That’s the best I can tell you.’
‘So it’s gone . . . and we’re safe. We are safe now, aren’t we?’
‘No more questions, all right?’ she told him. ‘I’m tired and I need a feed and I called you because I thought you could help me.’
‘What are we going to do?’
Alex stared at him for a second. Then, quicker than he could react, she’d grabbed the pistol she’d known was in a shoulder holster under his jacket, flipped off the safety and aimed it square between Utz’s eyeballs. It was a 9mm Beretta, not the big-bore stuff she personally favoured, but it would do the job. ‘Utz, when I tell you something like “no more questions”, I do mean it.’
‘Hey. Watch out. That thing’s loaded with Nosferol tips.’ She smiled. ‘Of course it is. Standard field agent issue. All right, Utz, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going back to base, to find out if there are any pieces left to pick up. If there aren’t, it means Stone’s beaten us. End of the line for the Federation, every vampire for herself from now on.’
‘What about me?’ Utz said in a small voice, squinting at the muzzle of the pistol.
Alex smiled sweetly. ‘You’re a VIA station chief, aren’t you? Stealing hick farm trucks and stowing away on freight trains in the middle of the night isn’t my style. While there’s still some operational funds left in the coffers, you’re going to get me on a nice, comfortable Federation jet to London with enough red juice on board to satisfy Count Dracula.’
Chapter Three (#ulink_9f8a445b-d3a6-5b85-9ff6-c67e23621e63)
Dec Maddon swallowed hard and took another trembling, tiptoeing step down the darkened corridor. The big silver crucifix tightly clenched in his right hand glimmered dully in the near total blackness. The rasp of his breathing filled his ears. The frantic drumming of his heart made his throat flutter. He knew he was lost. Nobody would ever find him here.
Nobody except . . . them.
Something brushed his face, making him flinch violently and almost cry out in fear before he realised it was the silky touch of cobwebs hanging from the low ceiling. He clawed them away and moved on. Ahead of him, a solid rectangular patch of darkness stood out against the shadows. A doorway.
He reached out to push it open, his left hand a pale, ghostly thing in the darkness. The door creaked slowly open. Dec gripped the crucifix for all he was worth, took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway into the space beyond.
Immediately, and with a spike of shock, he knew he’d been here before. The stone pillars of the ancient cellar were dimly lit by the flickering orange flame of a wall-mounted torch. He took a trembling step across the uneven flagstones. Then another. He gulped. His mouth was dry. He thought of the terrible scenes he’d witnessed the last time he’d been here – down here in the crypt beneath the vampire lair of Crowmoor Hall. He’d always known there were more of them, lurking down there, waiting for their moment to strike again.
His blood congealed in his veins as a sound echoed softly in the darkness. He froze, afraid to breathe.
Then he heard the sound again. A low cackle from the shadows.
And a dark shape detached itself from the pillar just steps away, and came towards him. As it stepped into the glow of the firelight, he saw it clearly. The hands reaching out for him. The predatory glint in the thing’s eyes. The white fangs in its gaping mouth.
Dec stumbled back, raising the crucifix. ‘Get back, vampire!’ His yell came out as a choked whimper, barely audible.
The thing kept on coming. Dec screamed as he felt its hands clutching his arm.
It was shaking him.
Saying his name.
‘Dec. Dec. Wake up.’
Dec snapped his eyes open with a gasp and jerked bolt upright in the bed, staring wild-eyed at the person standing over him. But it wasn’t a vampire. It was his ma, still gently holding on to his arm. And he wasn’t in the crypt at Crowmoor Hall, but at home in his bedroom in the suburban safety of Lavender Close, Wallingford.
‘You were having a bad dream, son,’ his ma said.
‘Jesus,’ Dec said, rubbing his eyes. He smiled weakly. ‘I’m all right.’
‘Oh, Dec, you didn’t sleep in your clothes,’ his ma groaned. ‘Again? Is this what you are now, a slob?’
Dec glanced down at himself, and saw he had, shoes and all. He shrugged. ‘Sorry, Ma.’
‘I brought you some tea.’ His ma motioned at the steaming drink she’d set down on his bedside table. She’d made it in his favourite mug, the Spiderman one.
Dec reached over and picked it up gratefully. ‘Thanks, Ma.’ He slurped at the steaming hot tea, the vividness of the nightmare still lingering in his mind. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was after eight.
‘I see you’ve taken to wearing your cross again,’ his ma said approvingly, pointing at the little gold crucifix that hung on a chain from his neck. She’d bought it for his confirmation, but it had lain forgotten in a drawer until very recently. Dec touched it and nodded as he slurped more tea.
His ma walked over to the window and jerked open the curtains, letting in the grey morning light. She peered out across Lavender Close, then tutted irritably. ‘Look at that. They’re back again.’
‘Who’s back again? Not the police, is it?’
She shook her head. ‘Them bloody reporters. For next door.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘They should leave folks alone, so they should. As if those poor Hawthornes haven’t suffered enough.’
Dec made no reply. The nightmare of his dreams was gone now. Only the nightmare that was reality remained.
His ma turned away from the window and headed for the door. ‘So are you getting up or are you going to lie there all day?’ she said on her way out of the room. ‘Your da needs you at the garage.’ Dec’s da was the boss of Maddon Auto Services in Wallingford, where Dec did a few hours’ spanner-wielding each week.
‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ Dec groaned, wincing at the idea of having to go into work today. When he heard his mother’s footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs, he fought the covers off him with his fists and feet, clambered out of bed and went to the window. The sight of the TV van and the reporter’s car in the street outside, both parked outside the gate of Number 16 next door, filled him with anger.
Fuckers, he thought once more. For two days these pieces of shit had been flapping down on Lavender Close like flocks of vultures, picking at the dead.
Or, in this case, picking at what might have happened to the dead.
Dec could hear his ma and da talking downstairs. Like everyone else on the planet, it seemed they couldn’t get their fill of yakking on about Kate Hawthorne. He cupped his ears and tried not to listen as the voices of his parents drifted up the stairs. It was unbearable. Please, stop.
The story had spread like bubonic plague through Wallingford and might have reached the outer galaxies by now, for all Dec knew. The news of the inexplicable, shockingly sudden demise of the teenager Kate Hawthorne from 16 Lavender Close had been awful enough; but the disappearance of her body, without a trace, from the hospital mortuary just hours after her death, had violently shaken the whole community. The speculation of the town gossips was savage and quick to venture where the media didn’t dare: much more appealing than a gross administrative error was the popular theory that some deranged individual might have removed Kate’s body from the morgue and was keeping it at an unknown location for his own indescribable necrophilic purposes. So many people had got carried away with that notion that the strange, somehow associated death of Bill Andrews, the Hawthornes’ family doctor, had been largely glossed over to make room for it. Andrews had been found slumped on the cold tiles of the morgue floor, near to Kate’s empty slab. Something had stopped the doctor’s heart where he’d stood. A chance cardiac arrest? The shock at finding the dead girl gone? Or something else? Nobody knew.
Nobody but Dec.
Dec knew the truth of what had happened to Kate, and he was pretty sure it explained what had caused her doctor to drop dead of fright. It had almost done the same to him, when he’d met her walking in the grounds of the crumbling Oxfordshire mansion to which she’d been drawn from the morgue. It wasn’t every day the dead girl from next door tried to seduce you in a see-through dress.
But his terrible knowledge was something Dec would admit to no one. Not to the reporters who’d come beating on the Maddons’ front door after they’d found out that Dec and Kate had gone out together, albeit briefly, days before her death. Not to his parents, who’d ferociously warded the press hounds away from their son. And certainly not to the baffled cops who’d come to poke around and find out what Dec knew about her disappearance. Last time he’d tried telling the police about the vampires that were running amok in the Oxfordshire countryside, he’d been ridiculed and almost ended up in jail for his trouble.
In fact, Dec could barely even admit the truth to himself. And there was just one living soul in the world he could openly share it with: Detective Inspector Joel Solomon. Joel had been the only one who’d taken Dec seriously when he’d claimed to have witnessed a vampire ritual killing at Crowmoor Hall near Henley that terrible night. The only person who would have gone back there to investigate with him, when anyone else would have thought it was crazy.
And Joel was the only other person in the world who knew just why Kate Hawthorne had died so suddenly, and then apparently vanished. It had been Joel who had ended Kate’s suffering, armed with the strange stone cross he’d refused to tell Dec too much about. A scene Dec wouldn’t forget. It didn’t matter that it had happened only two days ago. It wouldn’t fade. Even if he lived to be a thousand and one it would stay burned into his mind, like a brand.
Joel hadn’t just freed the girl – he’d saved Dec from the same fate after she’d enticed him with some power that had seemed almost hypnotic. Rendered him helpless with those sweet, sweet, terrible kisses. Dec felt the marks on his neck. They were healing well, but still painful to the touch and he’d taken to wearing a roll-neck jumper to hide them. If Joel hadn’t stopped Kate when he had . . . Dec shuddered. He wondered where Joel was now. The last Dec had seen of him, he’d been heading for Romania to track the monsters who’d done this to Kate. There’d been no contact from him since. Dec had no idea where Joel was, or even if he was still alive.
Dec glanced back at his rumpled bed, and for a second all he wanted in the world was to clamber back into it, yank the covers right over him and stay in that little cocoon for the rest of his life.
He bit his lip. He wouldn’t make the world any less insane by vegetating in his bed. But no way was he going into work, either. Feeling like he’d gone several rounds in one of the bare-knuckle boxing matches his da had told him about from his merchant navy days, he shuffled to the bathroom to pee and brush his teeth and beat his hair into some kind of order; then he sneaked down the stairs.
But it wasn’t easy to sneak past old man Maddon.
‘I need you today,’ his da called from the kitchen doorway.
‘I’m sick,’ Dec said. Out of habit, he’d gone to grab the key to his old VW Golf from the stand in the hall when he remembered it was still in the repair shop after he’d crashed the damn thing getting away from Crowmoor Hall that night. He grabbed the key to his ma’s Renault instead, knowing she wasn’t working today. ‘Got to go out,’ he yelled as he ran to the front door.
‘Thought you were sick, you wee skitter,’ his da growled after him. But Dec was already out of the door and running to the yellow Clio. Before the reporters could collar him, he’d skidded down the drive, pulled a screeching K-turn in the street and gone speeding out of Lavender Close.
Roaring past the Hawthornes’ house, Dec saw that the curtains were pulled tightly shut and felt a stab of desperate pity for Kate’s folks – even if her mother hated him and looked down on his family. He’d have liked to have been able to tell the Hawthornes the truth, to offer them the sense of closure of at least knowing that their daughter was safe and in a better place now.
‘Sure, Dec, that’ll work,’ he muttered to himself as he drove. He could just imagine the scene: the distraught parents looking up red-eyed as the grungy teenager from next door strode into their sitting room and announced: ‘It’s okay, Mrs Hawthorne. Kate was in trouble there for a while, because a vampire called Gabriel Stone made her into his wee playmate. But then a pal of mine, Joel, set her free with this strange-looking cross that has the power to destroy vampires on sight. She’ll be all right now, so she will.’
He sighed. Next thing, it would be the men in white coats coming to catch him with a big butterfly net and drag him off to a padded cell.
Dec headed aimlessly towards the centre of Wallingford. All around him were people going to their work, ferrying their kids to school, doing their shopping. Normal folks going about their normal lives, unaware of the things that were out there, lurking in the shadows by day, stalking their victims by night. Who would be next in line? It could be anybody, anywhere. Dec shuddered. It could be his own family – his ma, his da, Cormac. It could be anyone he knew. And these things would never stop.
‘What are you gonna do?’ He slammed the steering wheel with his fist. ‘Gotta do something.’ And then it came to him in a flash. He was going to devote his life to destroying these monsters. He was going to make it his mission.
Dec Maddon, vampire hunter. Mallet in hand, silver stakes and crosses glinting against the lining of his long black leather coat. Walking into a party, seeing the heads turning; being asked ‘What line of work are you in, Dec?’; their faces as he coolly handed out his business card. He’d have an office, too. Like the ones in the old detective movies, with his name painted on the window. A busy phone on the desk. A wall safe filled with the tools of his trade.
‘You big friggin’ eejit. Dream on.’ What was he going to do, turn up at the local college of further education to find out about NVQs in Vampire Hunting?
But he had to do something. Joel had, by going off to Romania armed with the cross to hunt down Gabriel Stone. Now it was Dec’s turn to do what he could.
Five minutes later, Dec was pulling up in the car park outside Wallingford’s public library and hammering up the stairs to the computer room. The rows of PCs looked antiquated and worn-out, but anything was preferable to using the laptop he shared with his elder brother. Cormac was uncomfortably expert at checking up on anything and everything Dec had been looking at online – and Dec could do without his sibling’s considered opinions right now.
A couple of pretty girls looked up as Dec walked in. He brushed self-importantly past them. Dec Maddon, Vampire Hunter. There was a terminal free in the back row, and he was thankful that it was right at the far end of the room where nobody could peer over his shoulder. He perched on the edge of the plastic seat, nudged the mouse on its pad and the screen flashed into life. Dec glanced left and right, then self-consciously keyed in the words ‘proffesional vampire hunter’.
Did you mean:professional vampire hunter? the computer prompted him.
‘All right, all right. Smart arse.’ Dec clicked impatiently. The machine’s outdated innards churned for a second, and then spat up a lot more stuff than Dec had been expecting. Scrolling through, he quickly realised that, unless he was going to check out a bunch of pulp novels or the old Hammer movie Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter as reliable sources of erudite information on the pursuit of his future career, there was little of use to him here.
‘Shite,’ he said, and moved on.
‘A vampire hunter or slayer is a character in folklore and works of fiction, such as books, films and video games, who specialises in finding and destroying vampire and sometimes other supernatural creatures . . .’ Wikipedia informed him.
‘This isn’t a frigging video game. This is real, for fuck’s sake,’ Dec said a little too loudly. The two girls across the room looked up from their computer terminals and he heard a giggle. He flushed and clicked again. Next up came ‘Semi-professional or professional vampire hunters played some part in the vampire beliefs of the Balkans, especially in Bulgarian, Serbian and Romany folk beliefs . . .’
‘Pish,’ Dec said. Ancient folklore was one thing, but didn’t anybody actually believe in this stuff any more?
‘Crap.’ Click, scroll.
‘More crap.’ Click.
Then Dec stopped and stared at the screen. ‘Hmm,’ he said.
THEY LURK AMONGST US.
Dec’s eyes ran quickly across the couple of lines of text below the header: ‘Errol Knightly is a professional paranormal investigator, historical scholar and vampire hunter based in west Wales. His new book, They Lurk Amongst Us, has shot up the bestseller charts and is being hailed as . . .’
Two thumbnail images were displayed alongside the header. One showed the glossy cover of Knightly’s chunky hardback. The other showed the author as a slightly beefy guy with ruddy cheeks and thick sandy hair down past his ears, somewhat younger than Dec’s da – maybe in his late thirties or early forties. He had a look of earnestness. A look that said ‘You can trust me’.
‘Hmm,’ Dec said again. He rolled the mouse over the pad, landed the cursor on the web URL, www.theylurkamongstus. com, and clicked to enter the site.
Chapter Four (#ulink_839a4a2b-0752-5f60-a209-6b61a341ed1d)
Romania
The mid-morning sun was bright over the mountains, gleaming down out of a pure blue sky across the fresh snows of the valleys. The only signs of movement on the landscape were the three skiers winding their way down the vast whiteness of the mountainside, slaloming through the pines, twisting to avoid jutting rocks. To those who were happily unaware of the half-buried local legends, the place seemed an unspoilt wilderness paradise. None of the three could have any idea that just a few miles off lay the deserted ruins of the ancient, accursed settlement that local people only whispered about. Only on very old maps did the name ‘Vâlcanul’ feature at all.
The three skiers glided to a halt at the bottom of the valley. Chloe Dempsey wiped the powder snow from her goggles, brushed her windblown blond curls away from her face and grinned back over her shoulder at her friends Lindsey and Rebecca.
‘Had enough yet?’ Rebecca called out.
‘Not on your life,’ Chloe said. ‘I could go on all day.’
Lindsey’s cheeks were flushed with cold and adrenalin. ‘See?’ she beamed. ‘Didn’t I tell you this place would be the best?’
Chloe smiled. ‘You were right,’ she admitted. It had been Lindsey who’d come up with the idea of a break from their studies at the University of Bedfordshire, flying out to Romania to take advantage of the year’s unexpected early snows for three days of off-piste cross-country skiing. An adventure, she’d said. Lindsey’s schemes usually ended up badly enough that Chloe had initially regretted letting her steer them so deep into the wilds, far away from any hostels and major towns. But there was no denying that Lindsey might actually have been right this time.
‘Look at this place,’ Lindsey said, gazing around her. ‘Just look at it. Pisses all over St Moritz, I can tell you.’
‘I’m sure you can,’ Chloe said. It was all part of Lindsey’s routine to take every possible opportunity to remind everyone around her that she came from a moneyed family and was, as a result, terribly familiar with all the in places. Chloe had stopped minding too much. Besides, having a rich college friend had its perks. Whether he even knew it or not, it was Lindsey’s gazillionaire daddy who footed the rent for the luxury apartment the three of them shared. It beat living in cramped, dingy student digs. Being able to jet off for impromptu skiing vacations wasn’t so terrible either.
‘Hey, look,’ Rebecca said, pointing upwards and shielding her eyes from the sun. Chloe turned to follow the line of her gloved finger through the pines. Funny – she hadn’t noticed it before. Perched high up on a mountain crag above them, silhouetted against the blue sky, were the towers of an old castle. The snow lay thickly on the dark stone of its battlements.
‘How old do you think it must be?’ Rebecca said.
‘Medieval times, I guess,’ Chloe said. ‘Maybe older. Wow.’
‘You Yanks,’ Lindsey snorted at her. ‘Anything that’s dated more than fifty years, you go all gooey about it.’
‘We do have a little more history than that,’ Chloe said.
‘Huh.’
Rebecca made a face as she stared up at the castle. ‘Makes me feel a bit shivery. Think anyone’s up there, watching us?’
Lindsey laughed. ‘Give us a break. It’s just an old ruin.’
‘I don’t get such a good feeling about this place,’ Rebecca said. ‘I think something really bad happened here.’
‘It’s a castle, Beck. They used to have, like, wars and things. I’m sure a lot of pretty nasty shit happened here, a long, long time ago. That’s why they call it history. As in, dead and gone? Come on, guys. I’m freezing my arse off standing here.’
Chloe stabbed her ski sticks in the snow and unzipped her backpack to take out her map. ‘That’s strange,’ she said, studying it. ‘The castle’s not here.’
Lindsey snatched the map out of Chloe’s fingers and gave it a cursory glance. ‘Guess you’re right. It isn’t. Or else we’ve taken a totally wrong turn somewhere.’
Chloe shook her head. ‘I know exactly where we are.’
‘And I know exactly where I want to be,’ Lindsey said. ‘Somewhere else.’
‘I agree,’ Rebecca said. ‘Let’s move on. I don’t like it here.’
They skied on down the valley, leaving sinuous, intertwined trails behind them on the bright virgin snow. Chloe was the best skier and could have left the others far behind, but she hung back to keep a watch on the less experienced Rebecca. The valley skirted the base of the mountain, sloping steeply away from its rocky foot. The trees were thicker here, and the going was trickier. Chloe was slicing through the powder snow when Rebecca, fifteen yards ahead, gave a muffled yell and took a sudden tumble. With a big spray of snow she rolled flailing down the slope, toppled over a bluff, and disappeared from sight.
‘Rebecca!’ Chloe yelled, racing after her. There was no reply. She glanced back over her shoulder. Lindsey was a long way behind, taking it easy over the terrain, and didn’t seem to have noticed anything was wrong. Chloe made it to the edge of the bluff. Her heart was hammering and she was thinking about the long-range walkie-talkie in her backpack that she could use to call out the mountain rescue helicopter in an emergency. Her mind raced. Would they be able to find them? Would they make it out here while it was still daylight?
‘Rebecca! Talk to me!’ Chloe yelled as she tore at the quick-release mechanism of her ski boots, kicked the skis away and scrambled to the edge of the bluff.
She sagged with relief at the sound of Rebecca’s voice calling up to her. Peering down, she saw her friend sprawled ten yards below, near a trickling stream that had melted a stony path through the snow. She’d narrowly avoided hitting a jutting outcrop of rocks at the base of the mountain. Her left ski had become detached and was sticking out of the snow halfway down the slope.
‘I’m fine,’ Rebecca called, struggling to her feet as Chloe scrambled down towards her. ‘Must have snagged a root or something.’ Putting weight on her left leg, she made a face and her knee seemed to give way under her. ‘Ouch. Shit. My knee.’
‘Sit on that rock and let me take a look.’
‘Glad one of us has done all the first-aid courses,’ Rebecca muttered as Chloe checked her over. The knee was grazed, but not swollen.
‘That hurt?’ Chloe asked, supporting Rebecca’s ankle and gently flexing the leg.
‘No . . . ow. Yes, a little.’
‘You’ll have a bruise like a rainbow,’ Chloe told her, ‘but I think you’ll be okay. Could have been a lot worse.’
‘I’m frozen,’ Rebecca muttered, hugging her sides.
‘Want some hot coffee? I think I have a bit left.’
‘You’re a lifesaver.’
Chloe fished the Thermos flask from her backpack, unscrewed the cap and poured out a steaming cupful. As she leant across to hand it to Rebecca, she knelt on something sharp and looked down to see what it was.
‘That’s a funny-looking thing,’ she said, picking up the small, jagged object that had jabbed her leg. It wasn’t anything like the other pebbles and small rocks scattered around the stream bed.
‘What is it?’ asked Rebecca through a mouthful of hot coffee.
Chloe showed her. ‘Looks like a piece of something.’
‘Pottery?’
‘More like a stone carving.’ Chloe turned the fragment over in her hands. It was the size of a walnut, made of some kind of pale, glittering rock. The faded markings on it looked like writing, but the language was one she’d never seen before.
‘Here’s another piece,’ Rebecca said, reaching down between her feet and picking it up. ‘It’s got the same carvings on it. What do you suppose they mean?’
‘No idea. My dad would probably know.’
‘He’s a historian, isn’t he?’
‘Museum curator,’ Chloe said. ‘Lives in Oxford now. You know what, I think I’m going to take these back to show him.’ There were more pieces strewn across the stream bed, and yet more in the snow. She started gathering them up. ‘Whatever this was, it must have got smashed on those big rocks. The bits are scattered all around here.’
Rebecca studied the fragment she’d found. ‘They kind of look like ancient runes to me.’
Chloe found another, larger fragment in the snow. She dusted it off. Her little pile was growing quickly. ‘Runes?’
‘You know, ancient script. Spells. Maybe like some kind of talisman for warding off evil spirits.’
‘Oh, come on. You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?’
Rebecca shrugged. She pointed upwards at the looming mountain above them. ‘You think maybe it fell from up there?’
Chloe looked up. Far above in the distance, she could just about make out the tips of the castle battlements.
‘Something seriously creepy about that place,’ Rebecca said darkly. ‘Maybe that’s what the talisman was put here for.’
‘You don’t know it’s a talisman,’ Chloe said.
‘It’s something, though, isn’t it? And what was it doing here?’
‘So there you are.’ It was Lindsey’s voice from the top of the slope. She stepped out of her skis and scrambled down the slope to join them. ‘You two decide to hide from me for a secret coffee break?’
‘Rebecca took a tumble down the slope,’ Chloe told her. ‘Hey, don’t worry yourself though. She’s fine.’
Lindsey pointed at Chloe’s little heap of stone fragments, and frowned. ‘Uh, Chloe, what are you actually doing with those?’
‘They’re bits of something,’ Chloe said. ‘We found them lying all around here.’
‘How fascinating,’ Lindsey said in a flat tone. ‘Listen, I hate to spoil your fun, but we’re really in the middle of nowhere here, guys. We need to move on.’
‘Rebecca needs to rest a minute,’ Chloe said.
‘Moving on’s okay by me,’ Rebecca said, screwing the empty Thermos cup back onto the flask. ‘I’m fine now.’
‘You’re sure?’ Chloe asked her. Rebecca nodded and smiled. Chloe started stuffing the fragments into her backpack.
‘I can’t believe you’re going to cart those bits of old stone all the way back home,’ Lindsey said. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
For a second, Chloe almost felt like dumping them. Whatever kind of stone the fragments were made from, it was incredibly dense and she was worried about their combined weight on top of the rest of the stuff in her pack. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave them behind. ‘Lindsey, will you help me carry them? I really want Dad to see them.’
Lindsey stared. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Why don’t you go and grab a few bits of that castle while you’re at it? Let’s take the whole place home as a keepsake for Daddy.’
‘Come on, Lindsey.’
‘Why can’t she carry some?’ Lindsey demanded, pointing at Rebecca.
‘I will,’ Rebecca cut in.
‘No,’ Chloe said. ‘Because she’s hurt herself and I don’t want her carrying extra weight.’
‘Right then, Doctor Dempsey. So you want me to be your pack horse instead?’
‘These could be worth something,’ Chloe said. ‘My dad’d be the first to tell you these kinds of relics can sell for a packet. Help me carry it, and I’ll cut you in on whatever I make.’
Lindsey eyed her. ‘Fifty–fifty.’
‘Thirty–seventy.’
‘Stick it.’
‘Okay, fifty–fifty and I’ll divide my share with Rebecca.’
‘Let’s just go, all right?’ Rebecca said, glancing up at the castle.
‘Deal.’ Lindsey unzipped her pack and started stuffing in some of the stone fragments. ‘Better be worth it.’
After a few minutes, the three students climbed back to the top of the slope, fastened their skis and took off down the valley.
The buzzard that had been observing them unseen from a high rocky perch watched the three tiny figures disappear down the hillside, then spread her broad wings and took to the air. She rode the thermals high over the mountain valley, making her unhurried way back to the nest lodged in the face of the cliff below the castle turrets.
Returning to the nest, the mother buzzard found her half-grown chicks still at work on the remains she’d scavenged from the castle battlements the previous day. There had been more than enough fresh meat for the taking up there, after she’d chased away the crows that had started the work of tearing it apart. She’d ripped away some large bloody chunks with her powerful beak, picked them up in her talons and carried them back to feed to the squawking fledglings.
Now a squabble was breaking out between two of the larger buzzard chicks, who were engaged in a tug-of-war over a choice hunk of meat. As they fought over it, a shiny object of very little importance to a buzzard fell with a dull thump to the bottom of the nest. The young raptors ignored it and went on squabbling until what was left of the severed human hand and wrist finally ripped in half and the argument was fairly settled.
The grimy, blood-spattered gold watch had landed on its face so that its engraved back-plate could be seen. And if a bird of prey could have read human language, the buzzards would have known the name of the man whose flesh was going to keep them sated for the next few days. The engraving read:
Jeremy P. Lonsdale
Chapter Five (#ulink_8c9a67cd-b4a2-5afb-beb0-3b6ca05bbebd)
As the sun eventually sank below the forest skyline and the lengthening shadows merged into the rising darkness, Joel emerged tentatively from the safety of his cave. He peered around him. It had been snowing heavily through the day, and the trail of his deep footprints leading to the mouth of the cave had been covered over. He felt the biting wind on his face but the rawness of the cold was something his senses registered only objectively. Like a machine. Like something that was alive but not alive. Something that was neither human nor animal.
The night sounds of the forest filled his ears and seemed to press in on him from all around as he scrambled down the rocky slope from the cave and set off through the trees. The fresh snow crunched bright and sharp under his feet. He could feel every microscopic ice particle through the soles of his boots, every rotted leaf, every fallen twig.
He trudged on, eyes front, jaw tight and fists clenched at his sides. Refusing to surrender to the tumult of thoughts that screamed in his head. Then, after a mile or so, he stopped. Sensing something. He turned slowly. From the darkness of the forest, glowing amber eyes were watching him. Another pair appeared, then another. Dark shapes gathering, alerted at his passage.
The wolf pack circled silently around him, cutting off the way ahead. His nostrils flared at their feral scent. He could hear the rasp of their hot breath and the low, rumbling growls from deep in their throats. Fifteen of them, maybe twenty. Their heads low, hackles raised, ears flat back. All watching, intent. Ready to attack, move in and rip their prey apart.
But something about this prey was different. As Joel stared back at the wolves, a ripple of unease seemed to pass through the pack. Growls turned to whimpers. The wolves backed off, then turned and melted away into the night.
Joel watched the predators retreat, and he was afraid. Not of the savage things that lurked in the dark. He was the dark. The night feared him. And that was more than he could bear.
He closed his mind and pressed grimly on. Leaping over fallen tree trunks, splashing through frozen streams and scrabbling up steep slopes, oblivious of the branches that slashed his face and the sharp rocks that gouged his hands.
An hour passed, then two, before his sharp sense of smell detected a new scent. A human scent. Woodsmoke.
From the top of a snow-covered rise he saw the speckle of lights through the trees in the distance. Even in darkness, he could make out the fine details of the little houses, and the old wooden church steeple that jutted above the forest.
He knew this place. It was the village he’d passed through on his way to Vâlcanul.
Joel hesitated for a long moment, unsure what to do. He could easily skirt around the edge of the village unnoticed – but he couldn’t travel far, not in the state he was in. He badly needed to clean himself up and get hold of some new clothes. Someone would surely help him out. He still had some money left in his pocket – maybe enough for a cheap vehicle of some kind, to help him get back home.
He made his decision. The forest thinned out as he approached the village outskirts and the first of the old wooden houses. Snowflakes spiralled gently down in the soft glow from their windows. Their white roofs glimmered in the moonlight. The sides of the main street were piled with gritty slush where a snow-plough had cleared the way through. Joel’s boots crunched over the icy ruts made by its tracks. He’d walked up this street before, only the day before – for him, a lifetime ago. The same hush of serenity hung over the place. It was just as he remembered it, like a forgotten throwback to a bygone era. Some things never changed.
While other things had changed forever.
Joel began to feel increasingly self-conscious as he made his way up the narrow, winding street. The feeling suddenly struck him that he did not belong here, any more than the wild wolves from the forest. His step faltered. He felt himself gripped by the overwhelming desire to turn and run, disappear back into the safety of the trees before anyone saw him.
It was in that moment of panicky indecision that Joel heard the sound from one of the nearby houses. The scrape of a latch, the creak of hinges. He turned to see a woman leaning out of a downstairs window and peering uncertainly through the darkness at him. She was in her fifties, with shoulder-length black hair showing strands of white, a patchwork shawl wrapped around her.
Joel realised he knew her. She was the teacher he’d met on his outward journey. The woman who’d tried so hard to dissuade him from travelling onwards to Vâlcanul, the place the villagers feared and hated so deeply that they wouldn’t speak its name or even willingly acknowledge its existence. ‘Then you will not come back,’ she’d said when he’d insisted on finding the place. She’d been more right than she knew, he thought.
The frown on the woman’s face melted into an expression of surprise and relief as she realised it was really him. ‘You,’ she called out in English. ‘You have come back.’
Joel forced his face into a weak grin. He crossed the narrow street and stepped into the light from the window. ‘It’s me, all right,’ he said without conviction.
The woman stared at his tattered, filthy clothes. On his outward journey, he’d been carrying a rucksack and a photographer’s equipment case. Now he was empty-handed. The woman said, ‘What happened to you?’
The wheels spun fast in Joel’s brain. ‘I never made it as far as Vâlcanul,’ he lied. ‘I got lost in the woods. Some hunters must have thought I was a deer or something.’ He poked a couple of fingers through the holes in his clothes and shrugged. ‘But I’m okay. They missed me.’
‘You have blood on your clothes.’
‘Oh, that? I know. It’s not mine. I . . . er . . . I slipped and fell on a deer the hunters had killed.’ He winced inwardly at how lame it sounded.
The woman clicked her tongue and shook her head. She shut the window and disappeared inside the house. Seconds later, the door opened and the woman waved at him to come inside. ‘I have clothes to give you,’ she said. ‘And you must be cold. You want eat, no? Come.’
Joel hesitated.
‘Come, come,’ she insisted.
The house was small and warm and cosy, and smelled of freshly-cut firewood and chicory coffee. The wooden walls gleamed with centuries of varnish, the stone floors were covered in heavily-worked rugs. The woman smiled. ‘We were not introduced before. My name is Cosmina.’
‘It’s good to meet you again, Cosmina. I’m Joel. Listen, I don’t want to be any trouble . . .’
‘No trouble,’ she said. ‘My son leave home last year. To study business in Bucharest, yes? He leave behind some of his things. You are the same size. No trouble.’
Joel reached into his pocket and brought out a handful of lei banknotes. Cosmina frowned at the money, then waved it away.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll be on my way.’
‘Later. First you eat. Then we get clothes. Then you stay here and wait for the autobuz in the morning. Yes?’
‘That’s really not . . .’ he began, then decided there was no use in arguing. A wave of heat slapped him in the face as she fussed him into a small kitchen at the top of the hall. Next to an antique cast-iron cooking range, a woodburner crackled, giving off a faint smell of smoke. A cat that had been curled up in a basket near the fire arched its back at the sight of Joel, spat ferociously and then scuttled into hiding under a tall oak dresser.
Cosmina seemed not to notice as she sat Joel down in a wooden chair at the kitchen table. As if nothing could please her more, she battered about for a few moments fetching down an earthenware plate the size of a wagon wheel from the dresser, some cutlery and a huge stone pitcher from a cupboard. Using an oven glove, she slid a large iron pot onto the hotplate of the range to warm up. It smelled like some kind of meat stew.
The kitchen door suddenly burst open and an old man walked in. Joel remembered him, too. Cosmina’s father. He was about eighty, whiplash-thin and bent, with a mane of pure white hair and a face like saddle leather. Snow clung to his boots. In one wiry hand he clutched a walking stick; under the other arm he had a stack of freshly-cut logs that he dumped with a loud clang in a metal bin by the wood-burner. There was a big bone-handled Bowie knife in a sheath on his belt. He looked even more of a hard, mean old bastard than the rangy hunting dog that trotted into the room behind him.
Cosmina stared disapprovingly at the dog and rattled off a stream of Romanian to the old man as she stirred the bubbling stew. The old man pulled up a chair opposite Joel and said nothing. His eyes were deep-set, wrinkled and inscrutable, taking in every detail of Joel’s appearance.
‘I tell my father you become lost in forest,’ Cosmina said, filling Joel’s pitcher from a jug of what looked like home-brewed dark beer.
‘That’s right,’ Joel replied, smiling at the old man. The old man didn’t smile back. Staring fixedly at Joel from beside the table, the hunting dog bared its fangs and let out a long, menacing growl. Joel glanced down at it. Its tail curled between its legs and it retreated behind its master’s chair. The old man’s stare was just as fixed on Joel as his dog’s.
‘Please excuse Tascha,’ Cosmina said, looking perplexed. ‘She does not normally act this way with people.’
‘Animals don’t like me very much,’ Joel said, as Cosmina ladled a mound of stew into Joel’s plate and set it down in front of him. She stepped back and watched him expectantly. ‘You eat now.’
‘This looks lovely,’ Joel muttered. He picked up his fork and spoon. His objective senses told him that the stew smelled delicious. He’d lost count of how long ago solid food had last passed his lips. Normally his mouth would have been watering so badly that wild horses couldn’t have stopped him diving in and stuffing himself.
But some other sense, some internal voice that seemed to override all his lifelong instincts, was telling him that this food was worthless to him. No amount of it would satisfy his real hunger.
Joel’s hand was shaking as his fork hovered over his plate. He swallowed. His mouth was dry. Cosmina was hanging on his every movement and expression. He speared a piece of meat, carried it up to his mouth and chewed it.
Cosmina looked suddenly crestfallen. ‘Not good? You don’t like?’
‘No, no, it’s delicious,’ Joel protested, and tried to eat with enthusiasm. He felt both daughter and father’s gazes on him in stereo as he ate. The dog was still snarling quietly from its hiding place.
The old man let out a loud snort. He leaned back in his chair, slipped the big knife out of its sheath and began nonchalantly picking out the grime from behind his fingernails with the tip of its eight-inch blade. Cosmina scolded him angrily in Romanian. He appeared not to notice.
‘I go to find clothes for you,’ Cosmina said to Joel, and left the room.
Joel went on eating half-heartedly. The only sounds in the room were the ticking of an old clock on the wall and the low growls of the dog. The old man went on ignoring him. Having finished reaming out his nails, he now set about using the knife to scrape dirt from his fingers. Joel sneaked the occasional glance at him as he continued eating, and for a few blessed moments he felt almost normal in contrast to this strange, mad old bugger. He watched out of the corner of his eye as the old man pressed the edge of the blade against the pad of his thumb. Hard enough to split the flesh. A fat splot of blood dripped down on the table, then another. The old man looked at his cut thumb, then glanced at Joel.
Joel didn’t feel the fork clatter out of his fingers and onto his plate. He was lost in a sudden trance as he stared, mesmerised, open-mouthed, at the blood ebbing out of the old man’s thumb.
Instantly, a desperate battle was raging inside him.
No. It was too repellent. It was loathsome. Sickening.
And yet it wasn’t. He could smell the blood. Taste it. Feel it flowing down his throat, warm and thick and filled with goodness. The desire, deeper and more feverishly intense than anything he’d ever felt in his life, threatened to blow away all resistance.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the startling red blood was hidden from Joel’s view as the old man plucked a grimy handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around his thumb. Joel was shaken from his trance. He picked up his fork with a trembling hand. His breath came in gasps.
The old man hadn’t taken his eyes off him the whole time. There was a sparkle in them that Joel couldn’t figure.
Cosmina called from the stairway, ‘I find clothes. You come get changed now.’ Joel was grateful to make his escape from the kitchen. He climbed the creaky wooden stairs to where Cosmina was waiting for him on the landing, leaning against a massive hard-carved banister post with depictions of the moon and stars. ‘My son’s room,’ she said, and motioned through an open doorway.
Joel looked inside the tiny, windowless bedroom. In one corner was a basic sink with a towel on a rail and a shaving mirror. Cosmina showed him the clothes she’d laid out on the narrow bed: a denim work shirt, a thick woollen pullover, fleece-lined jeans and a pair of socks fit for hardcore mountaineering. Joel thanked her again, and tried once more to offer her some money. She shook her head vehemently, then left him alone to change. She shut the door behind her, and he heard her footsteps descending the stairs.
Joel quickly peeled off his dirty rags. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw that all trace of his wounds had completely disappeared. Was it his imagination, or were the muscles of his torso harder and more defined than he’d ever seen them? He splashed water over his chest, shoulders and arms and watched the filth and blood wash away down the sink.
Towelling himself dry, he could hear the old man downstairs jabbering agitatedly to his daughter. That crazy old bastard didn’t like strangers in the house. Fine. He’d made his point. Joel wasn’t planning on sticking around. Maybe someone in the village bar would know of a cheap car for sale, maybe an old 4x4 if the roads were bad. Then he’d be out of this place and nothing was ever going to bring him back.
He pulled on the socks and the jeans. The work shirt was a size too large, but better roomy than too tight. Joel was halfway through buttoning it up when footsteps came thundering up the stairs. The boards creaked outside the door.
Joel craned his head to listen, and heard whispers and fumbling. The lock clicked, and then the footsteps went thumping back down the stairs in a hurry. The sound of the front door being ripped open. Noises and voices from out in the street.
Joel rattled the door handle. The door didn’t budge. Now he could hear shouting outside, more voices joining in. The cry of a woman.
Seconds later, the first clang of the church bell resonated through the still night air. Then again and again, ringing wildly, as if three strong men were hauling on its rope for all they were worth. Nearer to the house, the flat report of a shotgun boomed out once, twice, through the night air. The clamour of voices was getting steadily louder, and steadily closer. It sounded like half the village had suddenly emerged from their homes. They sounded scared, and they sounded angry as hell.
And now Joel could hear what the villagers were chanting amid the yells and panic.
Moroi! Moroi! Vârcolac!
He knew those words. They’d been written in the forgotten and decayed diary of a man who’d sacrificed his whole world, endured the ridicule and rejection of his own family, to fight the thing he’d hated most. Crazy Nick Solomon. Joel’s grandfather.
The words were from the darkest corners of ancient Romanian folklore. They meant Vampire.
Chapter Six (#ulink_c36056d4-a470-5eae-b031-45025ef9a330)
It was way past time to get the hell out of there. Joel yanked on his boots and laced them up feverishly. He hammered at the door. It wouldn’t give. He drew back his fist and punched at it. To his amazement his fist tore right through the solid wood. He felt no pain. Withdrawing his fist, he peered through the shattered hole and saw the stout length of rope that connected the handle on the outside to the carved banister post. He’d let them trap him in here as easily as he’d given himself away to that tricksy old man.
Bastard humans.
The thought had materialised consciously in his mind before he was able to catch it and drag it back. He wanted to vomit. But there was no time for self-pity. He lashed out again and felt the door buckle. Dust and splinters flew. Two more hits, and with alarming strength he’d torn the whole thing out of its frame and was trampling over it and racing down the stairs four at a time. He crashed through the front door.
Scores of villagers had gathered in the snowy street outside the house. More were running down the street from their homes. Young men and boys, old women, everyone who could be mustered was out in force as the alarm spread, many of them clutching whatever improvised weapons they could grab. Among the axes and shovels and scythes Joel saw a chainsaw and a crossbow, and at least a couple of double-barrelled shotguns.
Heading up the crowd was Cosmina’s old father, dementedly waving his walking stick in one hand and the big Bowie knife in the other, whipping them all up to a frenzy with his screaming chant of ‘Moroi! Vârcolac!’ Cosmina stood behind him, fearfully clutching his wiry arm. Beside her towered a bulky, heavily-bearded man with long black hair and hands like hams clenched around the hilt of some kind of ancient gypsy scimitar that he was swinging above his head as if about to decapitate a bullock with it.
Few things could spell a quicker end for a vampire than the sweep of a well-honed blade lifting their head from their shoulders. Joel knew that, all too well. He’d once been forced to do the very same thing to his own grandfather.
He tried to imagine what it would feel like, watching the blade come whooshing towards his throat. The parting of the flesh as the steel sliced cleanly through. Would it hurt? Would unconsciousness come instantly? Or would his senses remain alert as his severed head hit the ground and bounced and rolled out of the path of his falling body? For all that he craved for his torment to be over, the urge to run was like nothing he’d ever experienced before.
‘There he is!’ The shout needed no translation. Angry cries and gasps of horror. Fingers pointing. Faces turning to stare at him, eyes filled with fury and teeth bared. The wild old man waving the knife at him.
‘Why do you hate me?’ Joel wanted to yell at them. ‘I’ve done you no harm. Just let me go. I won’t come back here.’
For a few frozen moments, he hovered there on the doorstep of the house as the crowd, more than a hundred strong now, hung back. Then, at the same instant that the old man let out a roar of fury and led the charge towards the house, Joel bolted. With blinding speed he tore across the tiny front yard, vaulting the low wall into the neighbouring property.
The screaming mob came rushing after him. Joel sprinted harder, unleashing power from his heart and lungs and muscles that he’d never dreamed possible. A crossbow bolt cut whistling through the air towards him; he heard it coming and dipped his head, and it embedded itself with a juddering thwack in the wall of the house inches away.
Both barrels of a shotgun boomed out in rapid succession and a window smashed. Joel skidded around the side of the building, crashed through bushes, vaulted clear over the derelict body of an old car and leaped a six-foot fence as if it were nothing.
Suddenly, he was alone. He stopped, assessing his surroundings. He wasn’t even out of breath. A narrow lane ran up between more houses, curving away out of sight between dilapidated wooden fences. He could hear the shouts of the mob approaching. ‘Get him! Get the Moroi! Cut off his head!’
Joel took off up the lane, stumbling and slipping in the snow that had drifted up against the fence. Lights were coming on in windows all across the village. Up ahead, the lane opened out onto the main street through the village.
Joel burst out into the road and glanced all around him. More villagers were spilling out of their houses and massing together in a second hunting party just a hundred yards down the street. Nobody saw him as he kept down low in the shadows and ran like crazy over the ice-rutted road towards the edge of the village.
He desperately tried to recall the layout of the place. Where was the rundown old service station from which he’d managed to borrow a motorcycle and sidecar for his outward journey? If he could find it again, maybe he could steal a car or truck before the mob caught up with him again. But then he remembered the Alsatian dog that had been chained up outside the garage. If it was still there, it would raise the alarm. Not wise.
He kept moving, constantly glancing back over his shoulder. Any moment now, he’d hear the yells and they’d be after him again, ready to beat him to the ground and stamp him into the dirt and dismember him, to chop him up into quivering pulp and torch whatever remained. Suddenly the full force of the realisation was hitting home. He truly understood now what it was that Alex Bishop had done to him. This was his destiny now: to be this abhorred, detested creature, spurned and condemned and hunted wherever he went. This was her parting gift to him.
As he dashed towards the village outskirts, he heard the chatter of a diesel engine and yellow headlights appeared around a bend. It was a battered old Nissan pickup truck with jacked suspension and snow chains that clanked and rattled against the road surface as it headed his way down the street. Joel ran straight towards it, waving his arms.
The pickup slowed, then slid to a juddering halt in the middle of the slippery road. Its roof and bonnet were thick with snow. Its wipers blinked away the white dusting on its windscreen.
Joel tore open the driver’s door. The fat-gutted guy in his fifties, wearing a baseball cap and a quilted bodywarmer, was alone in the vehicle. Joel grabbed his chubby arm, hauled him violently out of the cab and spilled him tumbling across the snow.
‘Sorry.’ Joel threw himself behind the wheel, crunched the truck into gear and stamped on the gas. The vehicle slewed violently around in a circle, the snow chains biting deep and throwing up a spray of mud and grit and slush.
The crowd had spotted him. In his rearview mirror he could make out the hobbling figure of Cosmina’s father leading them furiously down the street. At the old man’s side, the big guy with the beard was waving his flashing scimitar as he ran. Joel floored the accelerator and the diesel roared. The snow chains flailed and crunched against the icy ruts in the road. For a frightening instant the crowd seemed to loom large in the mirror and then he was accelerating away and leaving them in his wake. The ka-boom of a shotgun, and his wing mirror disintegrated. Houses flashed by as he sped through the village outskirts.
Then the last house was behind him, and he was alone again. Just him and the snowy road ahead, and the mountains, and the wild forest creatures that knew to stay away from him.
Joel drove on, and wept.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_1878d956-d028-564f-ac39-5c9b7f188f21)
London
Twelve hours’ worth of Solazal protection had only just been enough to get Alex safely home. She’d been watching the clock intently for the last couple of hours of her long journey, teeth on edge. Half a day was about the longest any vampire could expect to get out of one of the photosensitivity neutralisers. When the effects eventually wore off, which they had a habit of doing very suddenly, the spectacular results had once or twice over the last twenty-five years been mistaken by non-vampires as the rare phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion. These days, unsuspecting passersby witnessing the fiery demise of a careless vampire might be convinced that they’d come close to being engulfed by some kind of half-hearted incendiary suicide bombing.
Either way, it didn’t make for a very pleasant end for the vampire concerned. Alex was mightily relieved to see the sun sinking behind the London skyline as she finally made it to the door of her Canary Wharf apartment building and rode the lift to her penthouse.
Once inside, she grabbed a remote control from a table. At the touch of a button, thick blackout shutters whirred down to cover every one of the flat’s many large windows, blocking out the sunset glow that was settling across the river, and plunging the whole apartment into pitch darkness.
Safe. She sighed. This was how vampires had lived once, before the Federation had come along and introduced the whole new modern era that had so incensed the champions of the old ways. Alex, who’d been turned back in 1897, remembered the old ways and the old days very well – and in her more reflective moments, she had to admit privately that she’d never felt fully comfortable with the idea of popping pills to help her walk about in daylight. Someone else had put it more eloquently than she could:
‘To cheat the sun, embrace the night. Living dangerously, living free. To hunt, to feed like a real vampire, honouring our sacred heritage and a culture that had reached its pinnacle when human beings were still dragging their knuckles in the dust and grunting like apes.’
Those had been the words of the rebel vampire Gabriel Stone to her, just a couple of days earlier, when he’d been trying to recruit her to his crusade to bring down the heretical Federation forever. Alex had to confess they’d left a mark on her. She also had to confess she was beginning to run out of illusions when it came to the Federation that had employed her since its foundation in 1984.
Uncomfortable thoughts. ‘Back to work,’ she said to herself, and pressed another button on her remote, activating dim sidelights throughout the apartment. She fetched herself a glass of chilled blood from the kitchen – not quite the freshly-spilled article, but satisfying enough – then settled at her desk and fired up the laptop.
Vampires tended not to have a very active social life, so it wasn’t a surprise when only two emails landed in Alex’s inbox. The first was from Baxter Burnett. That was a surprise. She didn’t normally receive emails from movie stars. Baxter Burnett was currently raking in the millions, and getting slated by the critics in equal measure, for his role in the Hollywood schlock-horror, mega-budget Berserker franchise. Except that Baxter was no ordinary movie star: what his millions of adoring fans didn’t know was that he was also a vampire. His little secret was the reason that he and Alex, in her official capacity as a VIA agent tasked with keeping vampires in line with Federation regs, had had some recent dealings. As she recalled, things hadn’t ended too amicably.
She clicked on the email. The message was short, pithy and to the point:
Fuck you, Bishop!!!
Love, BB
‘Thanks for that, Baxter,’ she said, and then moved on to the other message. If anything, it was even less welcome than the first. Its sender, Ivo Donskoi, had been a Prussian army colonel back in the day, before he’d become responsible for hundreds of tortures and executions as part of the East German secret police; now he was personal assistant to none other than Olympia Angelopolis, the Vampress herself, at the Federation’s main HQ in Brussels.
‘What does he want?’ Alex groaned aloud as she opened the email.
Agent McCarthy reports from our field station in Prague that you are now en route to London. Be advised that Supremo Angelopolis has returned to Federation Headquarters. You are hereby requested and required to provide your full written account of recent events without delay on your return, to be sent directly and solely to this office. Failure to comply will result in the strictest penalties.
There was a lot to say in the report, and eleven o’clock had come and gone before Alex had finished typing it all up. The Vampress might not like everything that was in it, but she’d asked for a full account and that was what she’d get.
Alex emailed it back to Donskoi’s office, then got up from the desk and went over to put on some Satie piano music that had been popular around the turn of the twentieth century. Ever since she’d become a vampire, Alex had tended not to keep up with musical trends too much, and she normally found the Satie relaxing. But as she reclined on the sofa with her eyes shut, trying to let the tension ease from her muscles, she knew she didn’t feel safe here any more. As much as she loved the place, with its spacious rooms and views over the river, there was no way she could stay here. It was the first place Joel would come looking for her.
The phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. Alex flashed out an arm and grabbed it from the coffee table. She immediately recognised the crisp, efficient tones of Miss Queck, one of the admin staff at VIA’s London office. ‘Agent Bishop, your presence is required at base.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’ Queck ended the call.
‘Bitch,’ Alex said. She looked at her watch. If she moved fast, she could be at the office just after midnight. She sighed, then flipped herself up, catlike, from the sofa, scooped another remote and Utz McCarthy’s 9mm pistol from the side table and trotted up the polished aluminium spiral staircase that led to her bedroom. The floor-to-ceiling mirror at the far end of the room slid aside at the touch of a button on the remote. She strode through into the large hidden space beyond the glass.
The concealed weapons store was filled with racks of firearms of various shapes and sizes, mostly high-velocity semi-automatics compatible with the Nosferol-tipped rounds produced by the Federation munitions-manufacture division for its VIA personnel. Alex preferred something a little more potent than the standard issue: across one wall was the crowded work-bench where she prepared her own special handloaded cartridges for the massive .50 calibre Desert Eagle pistols she personally favoured for their unstoppable penetration and sheer knock-down power. Combined with the horrific effects of Nosferol on a vampire’s system, it made the pistols the most formidable weapon in her, or anyone’s, private arsenal.
Discarding Utz’s comparatively feeble 9mm on the bench, she took one of the matching Desert Eagles from their wall rack, snatched up a loaded magazine and rammed it into the grip. She slipped on her well-worn calfskin shoulder holster, clipped the pistol snugly into place against her left side, and headed back into the bedroom, using the remote to close up the weapons store behind her.
She selected a long suede coat from her wardrobe, put it on and looked at herself in the mirror. Fashionable without being too distinctive. In her job, it was important to blend into the human crowd – and the coat hid the gun perfectly. Alex nodded to herself and trotted back down the spiral staircase. She grabbed her handbag and VIA ID from the table in the hallway.
Sixty seconds later she was riding the lift down to the neon-lit underground car park. Her sleek black Jaguar XKR fired up with a throaty blast that echoed through the concrete cavern. She reversed hard out of her parking space, hit the gas and her tyres squealed as she sped up the ramp and out onto the deserted night street.
She cut westwards across the city. The VIA offices were twenty minutes’ drive with a human at the wheel. She’d be there much sooner.
Chapter Eight (#ulink_febae70c-82f0-58ff-86fe-77f4687d2c2b)
Wallingford
Around midnight
Once the strip of light under his bedroom door had gone dark and he could hear the rhythmic snores of his da through the wall, Dec crept out of bed. He was fully dressed again, though this time he’d had no intention of falling asleep that way.
He paced across the dark bedroom and, as quietly as he could, unzipped the sports bag that contained his prized new acquisition. After his visit to the Wallingford public library earlier that day, he’d driven straight to the computer superstore on the edge of town and picked out a shiny new laptop.
Nigh on four hundred quid, courtesy of Barclaycard. He’d worry about the payments later. If his ma and da found out what he’d done, they’d give him hell. But you couldn’t be a modern-day pro vampire hunter without your own state-of-the-art computer, and he was proud of his new piece of kit: the very first item – and by no means the last – in the inventory of Dec Maddon & Associates, Vampire Hunters Ltd. He didn’t know who the associates were going to be yet, but it had a good ring to it.
The second vital piece of equipment he’d acquired was the fifteen-year-old Audi parked outside in Lavender Close. On his return from the library that day, Dec had – with some difficulty – managed to persuade his da to loan him one of the knackered old runarounds the mechanics used at Maddon Auto Services until his VW Golf was back on the road. The Audi rattled like a tin can full of marbles and smoked like a factory stack, but it was wheels. Couldn’t hunt vampires without wheels.
Dec lifted the laptop out of his bag, laid it softly on his bed and pulled up a stool to sit on. He plugged in a pair of earphones before turning on the machine, angling the screen away from the door so its glow wouldn’t be seen from outside. Where the ancient library computers had struggled to download anything bigger than a few bytes, the fancy new machine zipped online with incredible speed. Dec googled up the URL for Errol Knightly’s website, www.theylurkamongstus. com, and clicked.
The screen momentarily blacked out, plunging the bedroom into darkness; then out of the blackness a pair of sinister red eyes materialised, staring at him. Dec swallowed, uncomfortably reminded of his nightmare.
Beneath the eyes, an animated line of script appeared in crimson font. Dec’s earphones filled with creepy, chilling music and a deep voice narrating the lines as they appeared in turn before dissolving away into a gleaming red pool.
THEY LURK . . .
THEY WAIT . . .
THEY WANT YOUR BLOOD . . .
AND THEY’LL COME FOR YOU . . .
TONIGHT
Dec’s jaw dropped open. He shuddered.
Then a hand landed on his shoulder and he almost fell off his stool. He whirled round, ready to let out a scream of terror.
He’d been so transfixed by the website that he hadn’t noticed his brother creep into the room. He tore off the earphones and flipped on his bedside lamp. ‘Christ, Cormac!’ he hissed furiously.
‘What’s this?’ Cormac demanded, pointing at the screen.
‘Shush. Keep your frigging voice down.’
‘Where did you get this computer? What are you doing?’
‘Fuck off,’ Dec rasped at him, shutting the lid of the laptop. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘Still going on about fuckin’ vampires, Dec? Is that why you’ve started wearing that cross again?’
‘They exist. They’re out there. And I’ve got to do something about them, so I have. Or else . . .’
‘Or else what?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ Dec said darkly, a quaver to his voice.
‘Catch yourself on, bro.’ Cormac jerked his chin at the curtained window, in the direction of the house next door. ‘Listen. I’m just as gutted about that poor wee girl as you are. But friggin’ vampires . . .?’ He shook his head. ‘You keep goin’ on about this stuff and Ma and Da are going to have your scrawny wee arse put away in the loony bin, so they are. Look at the state of you – big dark rings around your eyes like a friggin’ panda.’
Dec pointed a warning finger at him. ‘You’ve got no idea what’s happening, Cormac. None of you have.’ He snatched up the laptop and started bundling it back into his sports bag.
‘Where’d you get the dosh for that thing, anyway?’
‘None of your business,’ Dec muttered, slinging the bag over his shoulder and heading for the door.
Cormac stared after him. ‘Fuck d’you think you’re off to this time of night, wee man?’
‘Keep out of it, all right? I fucking mean it, Cormac.’
‘Right. Right. Steady, bro,’ Cormac said, backing off.
Dec tugged open the bedroom door and listened for a moment to the steady snores coming from his parents’ room. Satisfied that they were safely asleep, he padded down the stairs, let himself silently out of the back door and carried the sports bag to the Audi. He was watching his parents’ bedroom window as he started the rattly motor. No lights came on. He drove off.
On the edge of Wallingford was a quiet lane with a layby where truckers sometimes parked up overnight. The layby was empty. Dec pulled into it and killed the Audi’s engine.
He was definitely going to need a proper office. He didn’t think the credit card company would stump up for that though. Better start doing the lottery, and hope he’d more luck with it than his folks did. He slid across into the passenger seat, unzipped the sports bag and laid his laptop across his knees. Thankful that he’d paid that bit extra for mobile internet connection, he went back into Errol Knightly’s vampire hunter website. The inside of the car flickered with the glow from the screen as he clicked from page to page of the site.
‘Have you been feeling unwell?’ one section asked in bold capitals. ‘Lethargic? Not quite yourself? Having strange dreams? IF YOU THINK YOU MAY BE THE VICTIM OF A VAMPIRE, PERHAPS YOU ARE. Click here to find out how WE CAN HELP YOU or to order one of our special vampire protection kits. All major debit and credit cards accepted.’
‘This is so cool,’ Dec said out loud. Clicking open another page, he came across the video segments that he’d been unable to access on the public library computer. When he saw that one of them consisted of a recent satellite news channel interview with the man himself, he went straight to it and maximised the image to full size on the screen.
Errol Knightly was seated in a plush TV studio armchair across a low table from the pretty, rather elfin blonde interviewer. For effect, a lit candlestick stood on the table, next to a glossy hardback copy of Knightly’s bestseller They Lurk Amongst Us.
The star of the show was dressed all in black, with a large silver cross on a chain around his neck. He looked completely at ease and was flashing warm smiles at the interviewer.
‘Your book has been out a month and is quickly becoming one of the year’s literary phenon . . . phenomena,’ the pretty blonde said, glancing at her script, ‘with worldwide sales of over thirty thousand copies a day. How would you explain its appeal to so many people?’
Knightly’s smile grew even broader at the mention of his sales figures. ‘Because it’s all true,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘Vampires exist. They’re out there. And in our hearts, millions of us know it.’
‘Fuck, yes,’ Dec breathed, watching intently.
The pretty blonde looked about to move on to her next question, but Knightly graciously overrode her, producing a piece of paper from his black jacket.
‘This,’ he said, flourishing it, ‘is just one of thousands of letters my office receives, from ordinary people whose lives have been touched by these monsters. This lady – we’ll call her “Mrs Evans” – wrote to me to tell me of the sudden, tragic disappearance of her husband John, after forty years of happy marriage. Mr Evans went out for a walk with the dog one night. The dog came home, alone and in terror. John Evans hasn’t been seen again. Except,’ Knightly added darkly, ‘I’m sure he has been seen, by the innocent victims whose blood he has since feasted on.’
The blonde seemed to balk at his assertion. ‘You believe he—’
‘Became a vampire. Yes. I know he did. My extensive research indicates that, of the thousands of people who disappear mysteriously every year, a significant proportion end up as members of this unspeakable race we call the Undead.’
‘A significant proportion? How many people are we talking about?’
Knightly made an expansive gesture. ‘Of course, it would be foolish, and completely unscientific, to try to put a figure on it. The fact is that nobody knows. Potentially, I would estimate that it could be anything up to fifty per cent.’
‘Fifty per cent!’ Dec echoed, awestruck.
Knightly paused, his expression serious and earnest. ‘The historical records on this date back many centuries, you know. This is nothing new. It’s been happening all along, right in our midst, from ancient times until the present. Look at the Highgate Vampire, for example. From 1967 to 1983, this creature terrorised London, claiming young women and drinking their blood. This is proven fact, not fiction. And many hundreds of other cases like it have never been explained, until now.’ Knightly grabbed the book off the table and held it up for the camera.
Not taking his eyes off the screen, Dec touched the marks on his neck.
The pretty interviewer forced a smile. ‘Absolutely fascinating, Errol. I’m sure, though, that many viewers will still find this . . . well, a little hard to believe. What would you say to people at home who feel these stories of vampires are just a bit far-fetched?’
‘Wankers,’ Dec muttered – and then realised that, until just a couple of days ago, he would been one of the disbelieving wankers himself.
But Knightly retained his composure with polished cool. Replacing the book on the table, he leaned back in his seat and chuckled. ‘Everyone’s entitled to their personal view,’ he said, ‘if it helps to keep them in their comfort zone. I only hope and pray for their sakes – indeed, for their very souls – that they never find out the hard way that they were wrong. The good news is – and it is good news, believe me – that there are ways we can protect ourselves from these abominations, and help rid the world of the scourge of vampirism forever.’
‘In your book, you claim to have personally killed vampires,’ the interviewer said, making little attempt to hide her scepticism. ‘How many would you say you’ve killed?’
Dec scowled at her.
Knightly fingered the crucifix around his neck and looked grimly brave. ‘Destroyed, Kelly. We should remember that these things are already dead.’ He paused. ‘The actual number isn’t something I’d choose to dwell on.’
‘Fucking thousands of the bastards, I’ll bet,’ Dec muttered, blown away with excitement. What a discovery this Knightly was. If only Joel could have been here to watch this with him.
The interviewer shifted a little in her seat. ‘Lastly, Errol, I’m sure viewers would be interested to know what’s next for you?’
‘That’s a very interesting question, Kelly. In fact, I’m already working on my next book, Planet Vampire. But at the moment what I’m really excited about is something one of my contacts in Romania sent me only yesterday.’ Knightly paused a beat, then went on, half-addressing the camera. ‘I now have in my possession conclusive video evidence, not only that the Undead lurk amongst us, but that government departments know about them and, in fact, may have known about them for a long time.’
The interviewer looked stunned.
So did Dec.
‘The Romania video clearly shows recent footage of some kind of special agent or operative,’ Knightly continued, ‘sent on a mission to destroy a vampire. This person, whoever she is, was obviously equipped with some kind of special weapon that I believe has been secretly developed for just this purpose.’ He made a fist. ‘It’s my belief that our rulers are all too aware of this problem, and for that reason have created a secret department called the “Federation”.’
‘The Federation?’
‘That’s correct, Kelly. So much is clear from the footage. But the powers-that-be have been working hard to maintain public ignorance. It’s a conspiracy, and I intend to blow the lid right off. I have technicians working on the video clip as we speak. Within days it will be on my website for the world to see.’ Knightly turned to fully face the camera. ‘They-lurk-amongst-us-dot-com. You heard it here first.’
The video clip ended.
‘I have to talk to this guy.’ Dec clicked on the ‘contact’ tab on the site, and a page flashed up with a form to fill in and email. Typing clumsily by the dim overhead light, his fingers tripping over each other in his haste, he spilled out as much as he could: Kate’s unexplained disappearance from the morgue; her reappearance as a vampire; how she’d tried to turn him, and would have, if it hadn’t been for the cross wielded against her; the way she’d been reduced to cinders by its powers.
Lastly, Dec expressed his desire to become a vampire hunter. ‘If you can help me,’ he finished, ‘PLESE get in touch with me.’
He re-read his message a dozen times. It was messy, full of repetitions, and there was just too much stuff whirling around in his head to be able to get it all down. But the gist was there. If Knightly agreed to meet and talk, Dec would have the opportunity to tell him everything. He took a deep breath, then hit ‘send’ and launched his message into the ether.
It was done.
He was on his way.
Chapter Nine (#ulink_b4e9d4ab-27bf-5dcd-8eb0-b62dcf7d342f)
London
Just after midnight, Alex screeched the Jaguar to a halt in the parking lot of the imposing steel and glass building. Using her special night pass, she let herself in the main entrance, under the granite nameplate that said SCHUESSLER & SCHUESSLER LTD, and crossed the empty foyer to the lift. The bottom three floors were the domain of the large legal firm whose senior partners had no idea of the real nature of the company, Keiller Vyse Investments, that occupied the upper two levels. By definition, the world headquarters of VIA, the Federation’s Vampire Intelligence Agency, needed to keep itself strictly secret.
After passing through the security doors, Alex was greeted by the unsmiling, austere presence of Miss Queck in the reception area. Going through the routine retinal security scan, she felt – as she always did, but even more so tonight – that Queck was secretly dying to squeeze the trigger of the Nosferol-loaded pistol that was concealed beneath her desk in case of emergencies. A mean one, that Queck.
Walking inside the open-plan office space of the VIA nerve centre, Alex could almost taste the fear that hung so thickly in the air. Nervous faces turned from their computer terminals and wall-mounted screens. Utz McCarthy would have been quick to notify his superiors that Harry Rumble hadn’t made it back from Romania. These kinds of things spread pretty fast.
At the far end of the upper floor was a row of doors. The first led through to Alex’s own office; as she went to open it, she noticed the half-open door marked CHIEF OF OPERATIONS and walked inside with a twinge of sadness. Rumble’s cluttered desk hadn’t been cleared. Alex gazed at his empty chair, the leather of its seat worn to a polish by countless hours spent at his desk running VIA’s worldwide activities. Mounted on the wall above the desk was the crystal plaque engraved with the three principal laws of the Vampire Federation:
1. A vampire must never harm a human
2. A vampire must never turn a human
3. A vampire must never love a human
‘Yeah, and I know someone who’s broken all three,’ Alex murmured under her breath. If her superiors ever found out what she’d done, they’d waste no time. The rules were strict, and Alex knew all too well from her own experience how rigorously enforced they were. Somewhere inside the Federation main database, locked down under a mass of access codes, were the official statistics on exactly how many vampires had taken the one-way trip from the Federal detention centre to the infamous execution block. There, transgressors against Federation law were strapped in a titanium chair and given the lethal injection of Nosferol that exploded their blood vessels and ripped their bodies virtually inside out. VIA agents sometimes indulged in a little black humour about the place: Termination Row: where we make Undead things deader.
Alex had known the risk. And taken her chances willingly. If that made her a heretic, then so be it. She wondered where Joel was at that moment. It was hard to keep him out of her thoughts.
As she left Rumble’s office, Alex saw Jen Minto, Harry’s secretary, rushing over to talk to her. Her short blond hair was a mess and her face looked drawn. If she’d been a human, there would have been tears in her eyes. Alex had often suspected that Minto’s affections for Harry ran deeper than she’d admit.
‘Tell me it isn’t true,’ Minto said in a tight voice.
Alex shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Jen. Harry’s not coming back.’
Minto’s shoulders sagged and she put her hand over her face. ‘Was it quick?’ she murmured.
‘He never saw it coming,’ Alex said. It was no lie. For an instant she was reliving the scene again in her mind: the rapid whoosh of the sabre blade coming up behind him faster than Rumble could react, slicing horizontally through flesh and bone. The glint of animal triumph in Lillith’s eyes. The innocent surprise on Harry’s face as his head toppled to the floor and rolled towards Alex’s feet.
‘And Xavier Garrett?’ Minto asked urgently. ‘He was one of them?’
‘He was Stone’s inside guy all along,’ Alex told her.
‘Working right alongside Harry,’ Minto muttered in disgust. ‘The lousy bastard. To think we trusted him, all these years.’
Alex was about to reply when she heard a familiar voice and turned to see the tall, dark-haired figure of Cornelius Kelby, one of the VIA senior managerial officers, striding rapidly over in their direction. His tie was crooked, and like everyone else in the place he looked tired, strained and unfed.
‘So the rumours were right,’ Kelby said. ‘You made it. I’m so glad, Alex.’ He gave her a weary pat on the shoulder. ‘We’ve been waiting for you. We all have so many questions.’
‘It’s all in the report I emailed to Supremo Angelopolis earlier tonight,’ Alex said. ‘Eyes only. Special orders.’
‘Wow. Must be a hell of a report.’
‘Who’s in charge around here now?’ Alex asked.
‘I am,’ Kelby said. ‘I think.’ He took her elbow, guiding her away from the office doors and back down the corridor. ‘Come on. It’s just about to start.’
‘What’s just about to start?’
‘Emergency conference. We’re hooked up live to Brussels. The Vampress wants you to be a part of it.’
‘Me?’
‘You and she are the only survivors. Could be a big promotion in it for you, Alex.’
She gave a grim laugh. ‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’
As they headed towards the conference room, Kelby dug in his pocket and came out with a tube of Solazal pills. ‘In case you were getting low,’ he said, handing them to her. Alex took them gratefully.
Kelby showed her into the conference room. It was only the third or fourth time she’d ever been inside the place – lowly field agents were seldom granted the privilege of attending high-level meetings. There were a lot of empty seats at the long conference table, vacated by the members of the London VIA office who’d perished in Gabriel Stone’s recent helicopter attack.
The same sense of doom Alex had felt among the office staff hung over the remnants of the VIA top brass. She recognised most of the faces: there was Doug Slade, looking scruffier and more dissolute than ever. Despite his appearance, he was one of the most important vampires in the Federation, overseeing the Pharmaceutical Division’s global distribution of Solazal and Vambloc. Ironically, it had been the destruction of the Federation’s pharma plant in Italy that had kept him too busy to attend the ill-fated conference in Brussels. Other officials around the table included Nathaniel Creasy, Jarvis Jackson and the stern-looking, monocled Petronella Scragg, one of the directors of the Federation Treasury.
Another face Alex recognised, to her surprise, was that of Cecil Gibson. The gingery, rodent-like vampire was a field agent like her, somewhat further down the ranks and not too popular among the VIA personnel. Their paths had crossed a few times over the years. What he lacked in imagination and dynamism, he made up for with his plodding, by-the-book methodology and a particularly cloying way of brown-nosing his superiors. He’d just returned from a diplomatic mission to Athens, evidently managing to sit out the whole recent crisis in the safety of a hotel room.
Alex gave him a polite nod and wondered what an agent of his status could possibly be doing at this meeting. As Kelby showed her to a chair and sat down beside her, she hoped this wouldn’t take long. Her relationship with bureaucracy was about as healthy as that of a vampire with a speeding Nosferol bullet.
At the head of the room, overlooking the end of the long table, was a large flatscreen monitor. All eyes were turned expectantly towards it. Moments later, it flashed into life and Alex found herself faced, in pin-sharp high-definition, with the impressive white-robed, iron-haired figure she’d last seen fleeing from Gabriel Stone’s castle in Romania.
Olympia Angelopolis was regally poised on a large red velvet throne, deep in the safety of her Brussels HQ. Flanking her in the background, a pair of machine-gun-wielding vampire goons wore the crisp black uniforms of the Federal Armed National Guard, with the F.A.N.G. emblem on the breast pocket.
Everyone but Alex greeted their Supremo with enthusiastic applause. Olympia’s steely face melted for an instant. As the applause faded, she wiped away an imaginary tear.
‘My friends,’ she began. ‘Once again I must ask you all to offer a few moments’ silence in remembrance of those dear colleagues recently taken from us by the forces of evil.’ She bowed her head and closed her eyes. Everyone around the conference table immediately followed her example. After a beat, Alex impatiently did the same.
Only a few seconds passed before Olympia raised her head and gave a little cough to announce the silence was over. ‘By now I am sure that every Federation vampire is familiar with the terrible details of recent events,’ she said. ‘It was a horrendous moment for us all. I am not ashamed to admit that even I’ – the Supremo clapped a manicured hand to her bosom – ‘was frightened. Only my deep faith in the unshakable strength of the Federation sustained me through those hours.’
Alex smiled at the memory of the panic-stricken Olympia desperately trying to bribe her way out of trouble at any price as she and the helpless Supremos were being led away at swordpoint by their captors.
‘But we cannot afford to dwell on the past,’ Olympia went on firmly. ‘Let us now look to the future, to rebuilding our Federation into the veritable New World Order for our kind that it is destined to become.’ She paused, drawing breath as if the power of her own words had stunned even her into silence. A few awed murmurs rippled up and down the table. Alex’s lips remained tight.
‘We may have sustained some minor damage,’ Olympia continued, ‘but we are more resilient than our enemies suppose. Such contingencies, unthinkable as they may be, were foreseen from the very foundation of our organisation. I assure you, my friends, everything is under control.’
‘That’s the same line she spun us in Brussels,’ Alex whispered to Kelby, leaning close to his ear, ‘a couple of minutes before Stone’s helicopter blew the shit out of the place.’
The whisper might have been a fraction too loud. Petronella Scragg swivelled her long neck in Alex’s direction and gave her an icy stare. Olympia glowered momentarily from the screen, and then went on, waving a magnanimous hand in the direction of Doug Slade. ‘As we all know, our pharmaceutical plant in Italy was also destroyed by these cowardly terrorists. But thanks to the tireless efforts of Mr Slade, whom I am now promoting to the position of Director of Pharmaceuticals, the production of Solazal and Vambloc is expected to reach normal operating levels very shortly.’
‘One of our technicians came up with a new formula that halves the time it takes to complete the Solazal creation process,’ Slade explained laconically. ‘As for the new plant in Andorra, we have construction teams working night and day.’
Olympia smiled benevolently. ‘Excellent.’
‘But stocks are still dangerously low,’ Slade went on. ‘My department’s drafted a memo to all registered Federation members, recommending that everyone needs to ration their consumption and limit activities to after dark whenever possible. Of course, that means some vampires with day jobs may have to take time off work. Not much we can do about that, I’m afraid.’
‘The Federal Treasury is looking into reserving a special fund to compensate loss of income,’ Petronella Scragg said importantly.
‘Synergy,’ Olympia sighed, and linked her hands together. ‘Friends, this is what makes our Federation so special, so indomitable. We truly are a family.’
Everybody applauded again, except Alex, who was leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed.
‘The immediate threat is gone,’ Olympia said, motioning for silence. ‘Gabriel Stone and his followers have been defeated. But we must not be complacent. Moving forward, a major part of our reconstruction is to ensure that this never happens again. I therefore propose the creation of a special new task force, whose purpose will be to compile intelligence records on every single vampire suspected of having been linked, however loosely, to this rebellion. The task force will have unlimited powers of arrest and surveillance – putting cameras in their homes, if necessary – as a means of cleaning up any pockets of terrorist insurgents that may remain. Only by digging up the roots can we ensure that the weed never regrows.’
She turned to Alex. ‘Agent Bishop, apart from myself you are the sole survivor of the tragic recent events in Romania – making you the most senior VIA operative with direct experience of dealing with these Traditionalist rebels. For that reason, I am appointing you in charge of the new task force, with the rank of commander.’
All eyes turned towards Alex. Not everyone was smiling. Kelby nudged her elbow and flashed her a wink, as if to say, ‘See? Told you so.’
Alex said nothing.
‘In the wake of the annihilation of Gabriel Stone and his band of criminals, other misguided vampires may seek to follow in his footsteps. Your job from now on will be to make any renewed attack on the Federation an utter impossibility. To assist you in this role, I propose appointing Agent Gibson as your lieutenant.’
Alex fired a glance at Gibson across the table. Gibson must have seen her expression, as the broad smile at the news of his promotion quickly dropped off his face.
‘Do you accept this enormous responsibility we are entrusting you with?’
Alex maintained steady eye contact with the Vampress. ‘Before we go any further,’ she said, ‘I think it would be a mistake to assume that Gabriel Stone has been “annihilated”.’
Shocked silence reverberated around the table.
Olympia frowned darkly. ‘But in your report you state . . .’
‘My report states simply that I saw Stone and his second-in-command, Lillith, go over the castle battlements,’ Alex said. ‘It’s true, they’d taken a bad hit from the cross, especially Stone himself. But annihilated? I wouldn’t assume that they didn’t survive. Which means they still could be out there – and I don’t think Stone would give up his plans to bring down what’s left of us. I met him. I talked to him, face to face, and I can tell you that no vampire was ever more dedicated to their cause than him.’
She gazed steadily at each vampire around the table in turn. ‘And there’s something more. Supremo Angelopolis knows about it, because I included it in my report. But I wanted to make sure everyone here is aware of it.’ She gave a dry smile. ‘Just in case any information got accidentally overlooked.’
Olympia’s expression had hardened into granite. She raised a warning eyebrow. ‘That will be enough for now, Commander Bishop.’
‘They need to know,’ Alex said.
‘Need to know what, Alex?’ Kelby asked, frowning.
‘We all talk about Gabriel Stone’s rebellion,’ Alex said, ‘as if the whole thing had been his idea. It wasn’t. He was working for someone else. The uprising against the Federation was just the first step in a much greater plan, and that plan wasn’t devised by ordinary vampires.’
Olympia’s face loomed large onscreen as she stepped closer to her webcam with a look of thunder. ‘I am warning you, Commander.’
‘Gabriel Stone’s superiors, and the masterminds behind this whole thing, are the Übervampyr,’ Alex said.
The words seemed to suck all the air out of the room. There was a long, bewildered silence.
Nathaniel Creasy gasped. ‘But they don’t . . . really . . .’
‘. . . exist?’ Jarvis Jackson finished uncertainly.
‘The Über-what?’ Gibson said, looking confused.
Olympia slammed her fist on her desk, making the webcam shake. ‘Hearsay!’ she shouted. ‘You foolish child. Stone was just playing games with you, in order to frighten you. You will not believe these dangerous lies, nor will I allow you to promulgate them among your colleagues. Did you even see any of these alleged superiors of his?’
‘No,’ Alex said. ‘You know I didn’t. You were there in Romania.’
The Supremo’s face was quickly darkening to a shade of deep crimson. ‘Of course you didn’t,’ she screeched, the power of her voice overloading the monitor’s speakers. ‘Because the Übervampyr are a figment of myth and folklore. Hocuspocus and bogeyman tales from an age of superstition that has thankfully long since been abandoned in our modern, enlightened era.’
‘Like the myth of the cross of Ardaich?’ Alex said.
‘The cross that is now destroyed,’ Olympia spat. ‘It has been consigned to history where it belongs. As if it had never existed.’
‘If it had never existed,’ Alex replied, ‘your head would be in a basket about now, alongside the heads of the other Supremos Stone guillotined on the battlements. Or have you forgotten already?’
‘Enough!’ Olympia shrieked. ‘One more word from you, Bishop, and I will have you incarcerated and terminated as a traitor to the Federation.’
‘Ma’am,’ Kelby protested, getting to his feet. ‘With all due respect, Alex Bishop is no traitor. I believe she’s proved that enough times.’
Olympia glowered from the screen. She raised a finger. ‘This discussion is over,’ she seethed. ‘What you have heard today is not to leave this room. On pain of extermination. Is that absolutely clear to every single one of you?’
A rapid round of nods and ‘Yes, Ma’am’s around the table. Several of the vampires rose from their seats, looking disapprovingly at Alex.
‘And as for you, Bishop,’ Olympia said, ‘you are hereby demoted back to your former rank of field agent.’
Kelby rolled his eyes. Here we go again, his expression said.
‘I can’t be demoted,’ Alex said, ‘because I never accepted the position in the first place. I won’t have anything to do with putting spy cameras in the homes of Federation members. It isn’t right.’
‘Silence!’ Olympia shrieked even more loudly. ‘Count yourself lucky that I do not – for now – sanction your immediate termination.’ She turned to Gibson. ‘Commander Gibson, you are henceforth placed in charge of the special task force.’
Gibson’s face lit up.
Olympia clapped her hands sharply. ‘This conference is now officially concluded.’
The screen went dark.
Chapter Ten (#ulink_f4367678-e61f-5f98-a306-cfbbe0efe9dc)
Cell 282, Blackheath High Security Prison North York Moor, 15 miles south of Middlesbrough 1.09 a.m.
The only sounds Denny Morgan could hear as he lay in his bunk that night were the soft, rhythmic snores coming from Pete Tulleth in the bunk beneath him, and the tramp of the guards’ footsteps patrolling the corridors on the other side of the thick steel door. The cell was pitch black, except for the little barred square of dim moonlight from the single window.
Denny was still and his eyes were shut, but he was wide awake and his mind consumed by a state of furious brooding, unable to shut out the thoughts that had occupied him over the last few days.
Denny Morgan was a guy who knew what he liked: and he liked things always the same. Back when he’d been a free man, it had always been the same beer drunk with the same mates in the same pub, with the same tracks playing on the jukebox; the same Tandoori chicken dish from the same Indian take-away every Wednesday night; the same steak and chips on a Friday. That had always been his way, deriving comfort from routine, invariably bristling with resistance to change of any kind. So much so that, when his wife Mandy had come home one day with the long blond hair she’d had since the age of eighteen unexpectedly, shockingly cropped and dyed black, Denny had – quite justifiably, as far as he was concerned – beaten her to death with an empty beer bottle: Newcastle Brown Ale, his favourite.
Denny’s preference for a steady routine had adapted itself well to the prison life he’d now been living for eight years; and for the last two of those years, he’d shared cell 282 with a pair of other inmates he got along well with. Pete Tulleth was given to unbelievably malodorous bouts of flatulence, though he made up for it with his inexhaustible supply of jokes. Kev Doyle was a sombre and pensive man, didn’t say too much, but you could trust him with anything. Both of them steady, dependable blokes. For the last couple of years, Denny had been pretty content with the way things were.
Until the recent arrival of the cell’s fourth occupant had changed everything.
As infuriating and unacceptable as Denny considered it, it wasn’t just the violation of the established regime in cell 282 that he objected to most vehemently – it was the fact that, as both Pete and Kev concurred, this new guy whose presence had been imposed on them was a real fucking weirdo.
Denny opened his eyes and rolled his head to the left across the thin pillow. Eight feet away on the other side of the cell, the new guy was lying completely still on the opposite top bunk, with his HM Prison Service regulation bedclothes draped over him from head to toe, so all that could be seen was his silhouette in the dim moonlight. Denny could make out the shape of his hands crossed diagonally across his chest, palms flat over his shoulders.
The mad bastard had been lying like that all day. Never seemed to move. He didn’t speak, didn’t get up to take a piss, didn’t snore, barely even seemed to be breathing. It was like sharing a cell with a fucking reanimated corpse.
All that the other inmates of Blackheath knew about the new occupant of cell 282 was what they’d gleaned from the papers and the TV in the rec room, which was a fair amount. His murderous sword attack on the little parish church in Cornwall had been so widely reported by a scandalised British media that even the guys banged up in solitary confinement knew about it. Many of the inmates who were committed Christians, especially those who’d turned to religion in prison as a way of dealing with their past sins, were angry about the new guy. This ‘Ash’, this self-proclaimed ‘vampire’, with his fucked-up filed teeth and his strange ways, was neither liked nor trusted.
Denny Morgan was no Christian, but he was no less pissed off with the new arrival, and even more irate with the prison governors for having picked this, of all cells, to dump him in. Why did they have to put him in with us? he thought angrily to himself, glowering hard at the opposite bunk as if he could project his rage by telepathy. The shape under the covers didn’t flicker. Denny whispered it out loud: ‘Why did they have to put you in with us, eh, you fucking fucker?’
Nothing. The body on the opposite bunk remained deathly still.
What kind of a stupid name was ‘Ash’, anyway?
‘Fucking shithead weirdo,’ Denny muttered. ‘Vampire my arse.’ And closed his eyes again.
After a few minutes, his brooding indignation finally started to give way to sleepiness. His body relaxed into the bunk’s mattress, and his breathing fell into a soft and shallow rhythm. The corners of his mouth twitched as he slept. In his dreams, he was walking into his garage back home, slowly pulling back the tarpaulin to reveal the glittering chrome mag wheels and gleaming candy-red paintwork of the Dodge Viper underneath. His, all his. He was running his hands over the contours of its cool, smooth, waxed body. The key was in his pocket. Just him and this beauty and the open road. He could almost hear the growling note of the tuned V8 . . .
Denny’s eyes snapped open and a chill gripped his heart as he turned his head to stare again at the opposite bunk.
It was empty.
It was empty, because Ash had risen. In the pale square of moonlight from the window, Denny saw the tall, powerfully-built figure cross the narrow cell towards him and his heart began to flutter. He propped himself up on one elbow. ‘Oy! what you up to?’ he demanded in a hoarse whisper that had more of a quaver to it than he wanted to hear.
Ash stopped at the side of the bunk and cocked his head curiously, peering up at where Denny lay. He bared his sharpened teeth in a crooked smile.
The pair of prison guards patrolling the corridor were the first to respond to the unearthly, high-pitched screams emanating from cell 282. Their footsteps reverberated off the hard floors and bare white walls as they sprinted to the door with their extendable batons drawn and ready for action. The terrible screaming continued from inside the cell. One of the guards wrenched the ring of keys from his belt clip. The other turned on the external light switch beside the riveted steel door, flipped open the viewing hatch cover and tried to peer through.
‘Oh, my Christ,’ he groaned. The glass was smeared opaque with thick, bright blood. ‘Hurry.’ As his colleague frantically twisted the key in the lock, the screams were rising to a tortured wail of terror and agony that neither of the guards had ever heard before, not with over thirty-five years’ prison service experience between them. Bursting inside the cell, clutching their batons, they recoiled at the scene in front of them.
‘Oh, Jesus. No.’
The cell was rank with the hot stink of death. It looked as though it had been hosed down with blood. The floor swimming in it; the walls running; the crisp white HM Prison Service bed linen soaked and dripping with red.
In the spreading pool on the floor lay the broken corpses of Tulleth and Doyle. Tulleth’s head was twisted almost 180 degrees on his neck. He had no chin or lower teeth, because his jawbone had been torn out by the roots. Doyle’s brains were exposed, like grey-white cauliflower, through the shattered mess of his skull.
Denny Morgan was still alive, though only for a few seconds more. He was thrashing like a landed fish and screaming his lungs out, dark blood pumping and spraying everywhere. Most of his face had been pummelled beyond recognition. Both eyes gouged from their sockets.
From the centre of the cell, the fourth inmate of 282, the prisoner known as Ash, turned to gaze impassively at the guards. He looked as if he’d dived into a lake of blood, as if all he wanted in the world was to bathe and swim in it, smear it all over his body and feel its warm taste trickling down his throat. He regarded them for a moment with an expression of detachment, then quietly turned his attention to the thing he was clutching in his hand.
For a few moments, the guards could do nothing but gape dumbly at the scene – then one of them let out a yell of repulsion as he realised that the livid object trailing from Ash’s bloody fist, long and red and gleaming and quivering as if still alive, was the tongue that he’d ripped from Denny Morgan’s throat, along with most of his trachea and oesophagus.
As both men stared, Ash raised the meaty fistful to his mouth and ripped into it with his teeth. He sighed and smiled with pleasure, gobbets and veins dangling from his lips. Blood flowed down his neck, down his chest, splashing down into bright crimson pools on the floor that reflected the white neon striplights.
One of the guards tore the radio from his belt and found his voice. ‘Situation on Level 2. Get everybody up here now!’
Chapter Eleven (#ulink_82fac6ec-93a9-5452-bf97-669542045b1d)
Siberia
Deep in the icebound heart of the Russian province of Krasnoyarsk Krai, where the continuous winter blast kept temperatures well below minus forty Celsius, the barren wilderness of frozen lakes and tundra and snowy mountains stretched for a million square miles. Soon the polar night would descend, lasting from December through January, and the mining communities of Norilsk, the nearest human settlement and one of the coldest and most polluted cities on the planet, would see no sun at all for six long, dark weeks, temperatures plummeting towards minus sixty.
Out in the frozen wastes beyond the nickel mines, virtually nothing lived except for the polar bears and the few other wild animals that had evolved to withstand the harsh environment.
Or nothing, at any rate, that was known to the few humans who ever ventured there. When travellers vanished, as they fairly often did, it was generally assumed that they must have succumbed to the murderous cold, stumbled into a whiteout and frozen to death, or lost their way and slipped into a ravine.
Sometimes, that assumption was correct. Sometimes not.
Because other creatures lived here, too, unseen, underground. Creatures that had spent a very long time, and put a great deal of effort into, concealing their existence from the rest of the world.
For much of history they’d been down there, hidden from human eyes. At a time when Northern Asia had belonged to the Empire of the Huns, the creatures had already long since made it their home. A thousand years later, when Siberia had been conquered and occupied by the Mongol hordes, the hidden networks of tunnels and caverns deep beneath the ice had already been greatly expanded. Their occupants emerged to hunt only under cover of darkness, while it was safe for them to move. When they did, there were no witnesses. Nothing left behind that could have alerted anyone to their presence.
There had always been enough for them to feed on. Many nomadic tribes had wandered across the region through the ages, staying a while before being displaced by another: the Yakuts, the Uyghurs, and other Turkic peoples whose camps and villages made easy targets during the night when the humans were at their most vulnerable. The blood of countless victims had allowed the creatures to thrive and quietly go on building their lair under the ice, where the feeble Siberian sun never penetrated and night and day were all one. Now and then, they’d allow a human to turn, and gradually amassed a contingent of humanoid vampires: in ferior, bastard beings that the creatures despised and treated with contempt, but allowed to live among them as their servants and occasionally released into the world.
But reclusion was not the natural state of such an aggressively predatory race. It had never been their intention to remain permanently hidden in their lair: their leaders had long, long pored over their plans to broaden the extent of their realm – to extend it very far indeed.
They were in no hurry. When the time was right, they would strike. And the planet would change forever.
In the meantime with the passing of the centuries, the underground domain had grown into the vast subterranean citadel that now stretched nearly twelve square miles from east to west and plunged down further into the earth than the nickel mines of Norilsk.
It was inside one of those icy chambers, hundreds of yards beneath the surface, that three unusual visitors had come to the end of a long and difficult journey east. Only in these exceptional circumstances had they been allowed to enter the hallowed inner chambers of the citadel.
Two of the visitors were conscious and on their feet. Their names were Lillith and Zachary. They were vampires. Zachary was a huge figure, towering over Lillith. Many centuries earlier, in his native Abyssinia, he’d been a hunter famed for killing lions armed with only a spear. The lion-skin loincloth was a distant memory. Over a black silk shirt, he wore a tangerine-coloured suit that shimmered in the light of the ice walls.
Across the other side of the chamber stood Lillith, a raven-haired beauty in a red leather jumpsuit. Hanging from a belt around her slender waist, she still wore the empty steel scabbard of the sabre she’d lost back in Romania, before their trek eastwards. The shoulder of her jumpsuit was ripped from when their helicopter had come down in a blizzard, and her memory was fresh with the four days of hiding from the sun as they’d made their painful way a thousand miles across the deserts of ice. Finally, at the secret entrance to the underground citadel, they’d been met by the vampire servants who’d escorted them down here and told them to wait.
Lying inert on his back on a smooth, icy slab between Lillith and Zachary was the body of their leader, the vampire that Lillith called brother: Gabriel Stone. He was tall, slender and dark, and even in his state of deep unconsciousness he managed to look elegant and composed.
‘Is he going to make it?’ Zachary asked in his deep bass rumble, peering down worriedly at the still body. He’d asked that question so many times on the journey from Romania, carrying Gabriel’s limp form on his shoulder, that Lillith had stopped replying. She stepped to her brother’s side and ran her fingers down his cold cheek.
‘Come back to me, Gabriel,’ she murmured. She’d been there with him on the battlements when he’d been exposed to the force of the weapon the human Joel Solomon had carried into the castle. She remembered the way Gabriel had shielded her body with his, absorbing the lethal energy before they’d both hurled themselves over the edge of the battlements and gone tumbling down hundreds of yards to the rocks below.
Vampires could take a few knocks. Leaping from the top of a cliff had its risks but, as long as they didn’t smash themselves too irreparably, it was nothing they couldn’t survive. One thing they couldn’t take, though, was the devastating effect of the cross of Ardaich. Of all the ancient myths and legends within vampire folklore, that cross was the most dreaded, the darkest, its name the most quietly whispered. And it was also the most mysterious. Its origins, and the source of its power, had remained an enigma since the time the humans called the Dark Ages.
‘So badly hurt,’ she murmured, stroking Gabriel’s motionless arm.
‘If he doesn’t make it,’ Zachary said, ‘what are we going to do? I mean, we’ve followed him since . . .’ He frowned as he tried to put a figure on the years their band had been together. ‘Without him, we’re lost.’
‘He’ll make it,’ Lillith said. ‘He has to. They’ll help, surely they will.’
‘I sure hope you’re right.’ Zachary thought for a moment. ‘Those trips Gabriel made sometimes . . . all he’d say was that he was going east . . . days at a time. He was coming here, wasn’t he? They know him?’
Lillith nodded. ‘He’s been in contact with them a long time, learned many things from them. Once, years ago, he brought me here. That’s why I know some of their language.’
‘Just what are they, Lillith?’
‘I once asked Gabriel the same question. He told me it was better I didn’t know.’ She paused. ‘Our kind call them the Übervampyr. Many of us don’t believe they really exist.’
As the two of them stood there over Gabriel, strange forms became visible through the thick, rippled walls that had been sculpted in the ice. The figures were tall. Hooded and robed. Watching them.
‘They’re here,’ Lillith said. ‘Now listen, Zachary. These Übers aren’t like us. They’re not . . . humanoid.’
‘I ain’t either,’ Zachary said, not understanding.
Lillith shook her head. ‘You were human once, remember. They never were. Just be ready for what you’re about to see. And be careful. Don’t look them in the eye. It offends them.’
A portal opened in the icy wall, and several of the tall, strange figures entered the chamber. One drew close. Towering several inches above Zachary’s head, over seven feet in height, it reached up with its clawed, long-fingered hands and drew back the hood of its robe to reveal its face. The skull was tapered and bald, the ears long and pointed. Its skin was the colour of a washed-out winter sky, and so translucently thin that thousands of dark veins could be seen under its wrinkled surface.
Only a thing this hideous could have made Zachary turn pale and back off a step.
Lillith found it hard to tell the Übervampyr apart from their strange, horrible facial features – but she knew from his robes that this was one of the Masters that Gabriel had told her about.
When he spoke, his voice made Zachary back off another step. The ancient language was rasping and guttural. ‘My name is Master Xenrai-Ÿazh.’
‘That is one ugly mother,’ Zachary muttered.
Lillith shot him a furious glare, then turned to address the Übervampyr, bowing her head and avoiding eye contact. ‘It’s an honour, Master. Gabriel has often spoken of you.’
‘I have known Gabriel a very long time,’ the Master said. ‘In our language we call him Krajzok: “the young one”.’
‘I’m afraid for him. He’s been very badly hurt. The cross—’
The Master raised his long, thin hand, silencing her. ‘Yes. Our servants have already informed us of what happened. Of course, you fear for Gabriel. But you must leave him now. He is to be taken from here.’
‘What’s he say?’ Zachary asked, keeping his eyes low.
Lillith ignored him. ‘Taken where?’ she asked, frowning.
‘To the heart of the citadel,’ the Master said, ‘to a place where none of your kind may normally enter.’
‘Are you going to help him? We brought him here in the hope that you could save him.’
‘We have the means to restore him. The cross’s power was not fully expended on him.’
‘Then you have to make him better.’
The Master was quiet for a moment. ‘It is not so simple. The Grand Council is convening.’
Lillith didn’t want to show her irritation, but it was hard to disguise. ‘Gabriel is slipping away and all you can do is hold a meeting?’
‘It is about Gabriel that we must talk,’ he said. ‘Only once the Council has made its decision can we act.’
‘I don’t understand. What decision?’
‘Gabriel is to be placed on trial. If found innocent, he will be spared. If guilty, then according to our custom, he will be executed. I am sorry.’
Lillith was unable to avoid staring straight into the Master’s dark, inscrutable eyes. ‘Guilty of what?’ she demanded. ‘How can this be? What trial?’
The Übervampyr made no reply. At a wave of his clawed hand, six vampire servants marched into the chamber. Four of them lifted up the ice slab on which Gabriel lay. The other two drew long, curved swords from their belts and pointed them at Lillith and Zachary.
‘Something tells me this ain’t going too well,’ Zachary rumbled.
The Master motioned to the four slab-bearers. ‘To the Hall of Judgement,’ he ordered.
Chapter Twelve (#ulink_e9beb89e-7b16-558b-83eb-2ed052b03e78)
Romania
The sleet had given way to a mist of icy drizzle that blanketed the hills and forests as Joel drove the stolen pickup truck through the night. With every mile that passed, he kept glancing at the sinking fuel gauge. The only thing that terrified him more than being stranded in the middle of nowhere, lost, penniless and alone, was the horror of being caught in the open by the rising sun. He kept thinking he could see the first red glow of dawn on the dark eastern horizon.
‘Relax,’ he muttered out loud over the beat of the windscreen wipers. ‘You’ve got hours yet. Everything’s fine.’
Yeah, he thought bitterly. You’re a vampire now, and everything’s just fucking fine.
After the endless empty roads, a sweeping stretch of lights in the distance told him he was approaching a town. He was suddenly gripped with terror at the thought of entering such a dangerous alien environment. Humans would be everywhere. But he fought the urge to shy away from the town, and gripped the steering wheel tightly as he joined the thickening flow of night-time traffic. He was growing dizzy with hunger. He needed to eat. No, not to eat. To feed. The thought made him feel sick.
Driving by the illuminated windows of an all-night supermarket on the edge of town, Joel swerved into the little car park next to it and pulled up in the shadows. There was only a smattering of other vehicles in the car park, and he figured that some of those must belong to the staff.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/scott-g-mariani-2/the-cross/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Scott G. Mariani
When an ancient cross is discovered in Eastern Europe it becomes a powerful weapon in the war between the trads and the Vampire Federation – but soon, the world is threatened by its discovery…
The cross of Ardaich, feared by vampires, was believed to have been destroyed during the bloody war between the Vampire Federation and the Trads. But its accidental rediscovery could be catastrophic.
Detective Joel Solomon can’t forgive VF agent Alex Bishop for making him a vampire. Yet when Federation arch-enemy Gabriel Stone enlists a vicious killer to retrieve the cross, the couple and their human allies become the only defence against pure evil.
If the cross is used to gain power by the Übervampyr, the sadistic and primeval race of elite vampires, it isn’t just ordinary vampires like Alex and Joel who will be in danger. Things could be about to turn very nasty for the human race…
A high-octane, action-packed adventure that will thrill fans of Charlaine Harris, Blade and The Passage.
The Cross
SCOTT G. MARIANI
Copyright (#ulink_2231c57c-d0bd-59dd-a9b3-dc319b342e22)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © Scott G. Mariani 2011
Scott G. Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847562135
Ebook edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007342792
Version 2018-06-26
Epigraph (#ulink_fc8c2388-39ea-591e-8538-cba308df96fe)
As ever, thanks to my intrepid and tireless editor at Avon, Keshini Naidoo, who luckily for me enjoys the blood and gore of a vampire story even more than I do . . .
Thanks also to Nathan Shallcross at Armed Combat and Tactics UK for expert coaching in some particularly effective and nasty fighting techniques with the European longsword. Learning how to whip an opponent’s head off their shoulders with a four-foot blade is definitely the most fun I’ve ever had researching a novel.
Contents
Title Page (#u788a28b5-4dac-5817-8a5c-98ddaca6cba7)
Copyright
Epigraph
Nearly thirty years
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
An extract from Vampire Federation series, Uprising
Prologue
Chapter One
Also by Scott G. Mariani
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Nearly thirty years (#ulink_72dc6f80-d525-5f4c-bebc-1ac1cc066311)
Nearly thirty years of domination ensured that the hallowed traditions of the vampire race were all but eradicated under the rule of the Vampire Federation. Gone were the days when vampires were free to claim the blood of human victims at will, leaving their exsanguinated remains for the crows or turning them into vampires like themselves. Strict laws were laid down by Federation rulers and enforced by VIA, the Vampire Intelligence Agency, with agents like Alex Bishop licensed to hunt down and destroy vampires who flouted the rules.
It seemed as if the vampire way of life had changed forever. Until, that is, the uprising led by rebel vampire Gabriel Stone attempted to drive a stake into the very heart of its hated enemy the Federation. Only the chance intervention of a human, Joel Solomon, wielding an ancient and powerful anti-vampire weapon the legends call the Cross of Ardaich, prevented the complete annihilation of the Federation leaders and a resounding victory for the Traditionalist rebellion.
In the wake of the battle on the ramparts of Gabriel Stone’s Romanian castle hideaway, the rebellion has been crushed, the Cross of Ardaich destroyed and the Federation left in tatters. Surviving Federation leaders like Supremo Olympia Angelopolis will declare a victory . . .
But not everyone within the Federation is so sure . . .
Prologue (#ulink_c037959c-21cc-5041-bef2-820169bef5bc)
The village of St Elowen
South-west Cornwall
Where two quiet lanes crossed, just a stone’s throw from the edge of the village, the grey stone church had stood more or less unchanged since not long after Henry V had ascended to the throne of England. The glow from its leaded windows haloed out into the frosty November night. From behind its ancient iron-studded, ivy-framed door, the sound of singing drifted on the wind.
Just another Thursday evening’s choir practice.
Although that night would be remembered quite differently by those villagers who would survive the events soon to become infamous as ‘The St Elowen Massacre’.
Inside the church, Reverend Keith Perry beamed with pride as the harmonies of his fourteen singers soared up to the vaulted ceiling. What many of them lacked in vocal ability, they more than made up for with their enthusiasm. Rick Souter, the village butcher, was the loudest, with a deep baritone voice that was only a little rough and almost in tune. Then there was young Lucy Blakely, just seventeen, giving it all she had. The most naturally talented of them all was little Sam Drinkwater, who in a few weeks’ time was set to audition for a place as boy soprano at King’s College, Cambridge. Sam’s parents, Liz and Brian, were there too, sharing a hymn book as they all belted out ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ to the strains of the electronic organ played by Mrs Hudson, the local music teacher.
The only face missing was that of Charlie Fitch, the plumber. Charlie was normally punctual, but his elderly mother had been quite ill lately; Perry prayed that nothing awful had happened.
That was when the church door banged behind them. A few heads turned to see the man standing at the entrance, watching them all. Mrs Hudson’s fingers faltered on the organ keys. Reverend Perry’s smile froze on his lips.
The drifter had been sighted on the edge of the village a few days before. The first concerned whispers had been exchanged in the shop and post office, and it hadn’t been long before most of St Elowen’s population of three hundred or so had heard the talk. The general consensus was that the drifter’s presence was somewhat worrying, somewhat discomfiting; and everyone’s hope was that it would be temporary. He was unusually tall and broad, perhaps thirty years old. Nobody knew his name, or where he’d come from, or where he was staying. His appearance suggested that he might have been living rough, travelling on foot from place to place like an aimless vagrant. His boots were caked in dirt and the military-style greatcoat he wore was rumpled and torn. But he was no new-age traveller, the villagers agreed. His face was as clean-shaven as a soldier’s, and his scalp gleamed from the razor. There were no visible tattoos. No rings in his nose or ears.
Just that look that anyone who saw him found deeply disconcerting. Cold. Indifferent. Somehow not quite right. Somehow – this was the account that had reached Reverend Perry’s ears – somehow not quite human.
Mrs Hudson stopped playing altogether. The voices of the choir fell away to silence as all eyes turned towards the stranger.
For a drawn-out moment, the man returned their gaze. Then, without taking his eyes off the assembly, he reached behind him and turned the heavy iron key. The door locked with a clunk that echoed around the silent church. The man drew the key out of the lock and dropped it into the pocket of that long greatcoat of his.
Little Sam Drinkwater took his mother’s hand. Lucy Blakely’s eyes were wide with worry as she glanced at the vicar.
Reverend Perry swallowed back his nervousness, forced the smile back onto his lips and walked up the centre aisle towards the man. ‘Good evening,’ he said as brightly as he could. ‘Welcome to St Elowen’s. It’s always a pleasure to see—’
As the stranger slowly reached down and swept back the hem of his long coat, Reverend Perry’s words died in his mouth. Around the man’s waist was a broad leather belt. Dangling from the belt, at his left hip, was an enormous sword. Its basket hilt was lined with scarlet cloth. Its polished scabbard glinted in the church lights.
Reverend Perry was too shocked to utter a word more. The man said nothing either. In no hurry, he reached his right hand across his body. His fingers wrapped themselves around the sword’s hilt and drew out the weapon with a metallic swishing sound. Its blade was long and straight and broad and had been crudely etched with strange symbols.
Reverend Perry gaped dumbly at the sight of the weapon in his church. He was only peripherally aware of the gasps and cries of horror that had started breaking out among the choir members.
The drifter smiled for the first time. But it was no ordinary smile. Reverend Perry almost fainted at the sight.
The man’s teeth were sharp and pointed. Like the fangs of a monster.
And then, in a smooth and rapid motion that was over before anyone could react, the intruder swung the sword.
The chopping impact of the blade was drowned out by Mrs Hudson’s scream. Keith Perry’s severed head bounced up the aisle and came to a rest between the pews. And the choir exploded into screaming panic.
The drifter held the blade up lovingly in front of his face. He licked the running blood off the steel and swallowed. Began walking slowly up the aisle towards the terrified parishioners.
‘The vestry door!’ Lucy Blakely shrieked, pointing. Liz Drinkwater grabbed her son’s arm tightly as she and her husband fled for the exit at the right of the altar. The others quickly followed, tripping over each other and their own feet in their desperation to get away. Rick Souter snatched up a heavy candlestick. With a scowl of rage he ran at the intruder and raised his makeshift weapon to strike.
The drifter swung the sword again. Rick Souter’s amputated arm fell to the floor still clutching the candlestick. The blade whooshed down and back up, slitting the butcher from groin to chin so that his innards spilled across the flagstones even before he’d collapsed on his face.
The drifter crouched over the fallen body to dab his fingers into the pool of blood that was spreading rapidly over the church floor. With a look of passionate joy he smeared the blood over his lips, greedily sucked it from his fingers. Bubbles of it frothed out from the serrated gaps between his teeth and trickled down his chin and neck. Then he stood, raised his face to the vaulted ceiling and his laughter echoed through the whole church.
‘You think you’re safe in here? Think your God will protect you?’
The vestry door was bolted from the outside. Lucy Blakely and the Drinkwaters were desperately trying to force it open, but even as the other choir members joined them, they knew the door wouldn’t give. Little Sam howled as his mother clutched him to her. Brian Drinkwater was looking around him in panic for some other way out.
But there wasn’t one. They were all trapped in here with the monster.
Charlie Fitch parked his van outside the little church. As he walked briskly down the stone path leading to the door, his mind was still full of his hospital visit to his mother earlier that evening. Thank God she was okay and would be home again soon.
Then Charlie heard the sounds that froze the blood inside his veins. It wasn’t the singing of his friends in the choir he could hear from inside the church, nor the playing of the organ. They were screaming.
Screaming in horror and terror. In agony.
He rattled the door handle. The door was locked. He scrambled up the mossy bank behind him so he could peer in through the leaded panes of the stained-glass window.
The sight he saw inside was one that would remain with him until his dying day. The church floor littered with corpses and severed body parts. Blood spattered across the altar, on the pews, on everything.
In the middle of the nightmare stood a man in a long coat. Blood was spattered across his face and his shaven head and the blade of the sword he was swinging wildly at the fleeing, screeching figure of Lucy Blakely. It was surreal. Charlie watched as the girl’s head was separated from her shoulders by the gore-streaked blade. Then the madman turned to little Sam Drinkwater, who was kneeling by the bloody bodies of his parents, too frightened to scream.
It wasn’t until he witnessed what the man did to the boy that Charlie was able to break out of his trance of horror and run. He ran until his heart was about to burst, fell to his knees and ripped his phone out of his pocket.
Nineteen minutes later, the police armed response unit broke in the church door and burst onto the scene of the devastation. The first man inside nearly dropped his weapon when he took in the carnage in front of him.
Nothing remained of the Reverend Keith Perry or his choir members. Nothing except the horrific gobbets of diced human flesh that were scattered across the entire inside of the church.
The killer was still there. He stood calmly at the altar with his back to the door, stripped naked, bloodied from head to foot. His sword lay across the altar in front of him, gore still dripping from its blade. In his powerful hands he held a blood-filled chalice over his head.
The squad leader yelled ‘Armed police! Step away from the weapon!’ The man ignored the command and the guns that were aimed at his back. Murmuring softly to himself, he slowly turned his face upwards and tipped the bloody contents of the chalice over his head, drinking and slurping greedily.
‘Who the fuck is this person?’ The squad leader hardly realised he’d spoken those words out loud.
Not until the man at the altar turned round to face him.
And said: ‘I am a vampire.’
Chapter One (#ulink_28dfdf72-eede-5000-8dc8-2c5adc33148b)
Romania
Five nights later
Sometime in the dead of night, the whistling wind drove away the snow-clouds to unveil the stars. From among the shadows that the moonlight threw across the deep forested valley below, the towers of the ancient castle of Vâlcanul were a craggy silhouette against the distant mountain peaks. All was silent. All was still. A place of desolation and morbidity.
The inert body among the trees, half-covered in snow, was that of a man. His clothes were tattered and bloody. Snowflakes clung to his hair and his eyelashes. His face was deathly pale. He had no pulse. Soon, he might be food for the wolves and other wild things in the forest.
Except that the night creatures knew better than to approach.
Inside the motionless body of the man, something was stirring. Something was awakening, resurfacing from the depths of a sleep so infinitely profound that only a very few could ever return from it. Gradually, his senses began to reanimate. As consciousness returned, he became dimly aware of the softness of the snow under him, of the weight of his body resting on it. A finger twitched. His frosted eyelids fluttered and then opened briefly to a stab of pain from the bright moon and starlight above him. Slowly, he reopened them, and could see again. A long sigh whistled from his lips.
Memories flickered through his mind, weakly at first, gradually gaining strength and clarity. He recalled a name, and realised it was his own.
Joel Solomon.
Joel sat up slowly, snow falling away from his body, and gazed around him at the white-topped forest, at the craggy mountainside and the castle towers perched high above. The road running down through the valley was now invisible under a foot of fresh snow. A few steps from Joel, the wreck of a four-wheel-drive truck lay overturned and half-buried in a snowdrift. He blinked, staring at it. Had he been in a car accident? What had happened to him?
He looked down at the thin sweatshirt he was wearing, and saw it was torn and bloody. Whose blood was this? Some of the holes had been made by bullets, another by a knife slash. He ripped the shirt open; why wasn’t he cold? The wounds in his flesh were livid and raw; why wasn’t he dead?
The memories grew more vivid. He remembered being up on the castle battlements. A blinding blizzard. A man pointing a gun at him. The sound of the shot, the terrible impact of the bullet, the sensation of falling. Unconsciousness coming and going. Then, being carried. A woman’s voice in his ear. Alex speaking softly to him as she cradled him in her arms: ‘Don’t try to speak.’
And his own voice, weak and faint: ‘Alex . . . I’m scared.’
Then nothing.
Joel strained his eyes at the snowy landscape all around him. He could see no trace of her. Had she just gone, left him here like this, all alone?
Alex. He’d loved her. Or thought he had, until he’d realised who she really was. What she really was.
He touched his fingers to his neck. Felt the holes there, and the sticky congealed blood. The realisation was like another gunshot punching through his body.
She’d bitten him. Drunk from him. His life blood flowing into her, while her own filth flowed into his veins.
He’d become . . .
He’d become . . .
No. No.
Joel sprang to his feet. The scream burst out of him. It echoed across the snowy valley. Rolled around the mountains.
NOOOOOO!!!
He fell back into the snow. He arched his back and ground his eyes shut and pounded his fists on the ground and beat them against his head. There was no pain. He shoved his thumbs into his mouth, felt for his upper canine teeth and pressed hard against them. They didn’t feel any different. Absurd. Insane. Maybe it was all a bad dream.
Except that it wasn’t. He’d destroyed enough of these things to know they were real. For centuries, for millennia, they’d been there, these parasites, living off the blood of human beings.
And now he was one of them.
Joel sat there in the snow, hugging himself and rocking slowly back and forth. His mind was numb, choked with indistinct thoughts, paralysed with cloying horror. An infinite expanse of time seemed to drift by before he eventually turned his head slowly to look at the blood-spattered watch on his wrist and then up at the sky. The stars were fading as the first blood-red glimmers of light tinged the eastern horizon.
Dawn wasn’t far away.
Many years before, when Joel had been just a child, his grandfather had told him what would happen to a vampire that was exposed to the rays of the sunrise. The primal instinct now flooding warnings through his mind, so alien to him and yet seeming to come from the very depths of his being, told him that his grandfather had been right.
Joel tried to imagine what it would feel like. First, the rising apprehension giving way to terror as the glow in the east grew more intense. Then the golden rim of the sun’s disc would appear shimmering over the horizon and it would be as if a million hot needles were piercing his skin. Within seconds, the lethal radiation would be cooking him, boiling the blood inside his veins; the flesh blackening and peeling from his bones, falling away in brittle carbonised flakes that drifted off like cinders on the morning breeze as he screamed and screamed and watched himself disintegrate. When the torment was over, there would be nothing left but a crater in the snow to mark his final, irreversible destruction.
And he’d welcome it. His life was already gone, the world he’d known already lost to him. The future that lay ahead of him now was unthinkable, unendurable. Joel’s eyes were fixed on the east as the red glow gradually bled across the sky.
Let it come.
Veins of gold began to spread through the crimson. The first light slowly creeping across the faces of the distant mountains.
Joel was afraid. And he was prepared to be even more afraid, and resolute in the face of terror, before the end. But the overwhelming horror that suddenly gripped him as the dawn approached was like a physical force, far beyond anything he could have imagined. Before he’d even realised what he was doing, he was on his feet and staggering away through the snow.
Behind him, the first glittering rays of sunlight peeped over the mountains. He felt it like a nuclear blast on his back. He screamed and ran harder, bolting through the trees like a wild animal instinctively impelled to survive at all cost, suddenly possessed with a speed and power that he’d never known in his thirty years of human life. All he knew was that he must find shadow. Must seek out darkness. The searing light was quickly gaining ground.
He looked up, shielding his eyes from the pain. The sunrise gleamed on the castle turrets and ramparts high above. The ancient fortress offered all kinds of dark spaces where he could hide away – but he knew that, even endowed with incredible physical strength as he was, he had no hope of scaling the mountainside and reaching it in time.
He was going to burn.
But there was a chance. The foot of the mountain was just thirty yards away; and as Joel ran he saw the dark recess in the rocks. Let it be what it looks like, he prayed. He slipped on an icy rock and went sprawling in the snow. A sunbeam cut between the naked trees and slashed across his outflung hand like a laser. The skin sizzled and he smelled burning. He screamed again. Scrambled to his feet and hurled himself towards the cave entrance.
The cave was deep and low. Bent double, crawling desperately on his knees, he wished like he’d never wished for anything before that the terrible light couldn’t reach him there. The shaft tightened as it deepened, and it took all his strength to force his body through. Then, with a surge of relief that made him cry out, he realised it was opening up again, into a wide crooked fissure that ran diagonally upwards into the bowels of the mountain. A pitch-black sanctuary where the sun hadn’t penetrated for a billion years.
Joel snuggled deep into the darkness. For a few moments, the fierce joy of survival burned intensely through him and he couldn’t stop grinning. He’d done it. He was safe from the hateful sun. He’d survived. He’d won.
No, Joel, said another voice in his mind. You lost.You failed miserably.
He closed his eyes as his ecstasy suddenly gave way to revolted self-loathing. He’d had his chance to end it, right here, right now. But not even the steeliest resolve he could muster up stood the remotest chance against the vampire’s all-conquering urge to survive. Not now, not ever. He was doomed to go on like this for the rest of eternity.
As the sun rose over the snowy forest and mountains and began its arc across the sky, Joel remained in the darkness of the cave, thinking of only one thing. He was going to return home and destroy the woman who had done this to him. Her and all her kind.
Send them all back to hell where they – and now he – belonged.
Chapter Two (#ulink_075db564-8ee8-566e-8d68-ec578008673b)
Prague
Alex Bishop stood alone at the railing of the bridge, the wind in her hair. Beyond the river and all around her, the city lights were fading with the coming of the dawn. The rising sun glittered off cathedral domes and glassy high-rise towers and cast a diffused golden streak across the water. She could feel its warmth on her face. If it hadn’t been for the last remaining Solazal photosensitivity neutraliser pill that she’d managed to retrieve from the castle before her escape from Romania, she’d hardly have been standing here to welcome the sunrise. As for any other vampire, it would have been a straight choice between frazzle and hide. Nobody ever voluntarily opted for the former.
She sighed to herself as she gazed out across the cityscape. So much had happened in the last few days that even her ultra-sharp vampire mind was reeling from it. None of it was good. All through the night she’d been making her way as best she could from the snowy wilds of Romania. A stolen farm truck had got her as far as a desolate country railway station, where she’d hitched a ride on a freight carriage. Now here she was in Prague, not quite halfway to where she wanted to be and hoping that her call to Utz McCarthy was going to pay off.
She didn’t have to wait much longer before a black BMW SUV peeled off from the growing traffic over the bridge and pulled up a few yards from where she was standing. She stepped away from the railing to meet it. The driver was alone. His door opened. He climbed out and walked towards her, grey-haired, tall and lean, not quite smiling, not quite frowning, wearing a long raincoat that billowed in the wind.
At only eighty or so years of age Utz McCarthy was much younger than Alex, but he looked much older: compared to the twenty-nine years she’d spent as a human, he’d survived for over half a century before an unexpected encounter with a vampire had set him on a whole new course. Nowadays, he was a minor sectional official running the small and somewhat dingy Prague offices of the same organisation Alex belonged to: the global Vampire Federation. Part of Utz’s job was facilitating the movements of VIA agents like Alex.
The last time they’d met face to face had been eighteen months earlier, when Harry Rumble, Alex’s boss at the Vampire Intelligence Agency Headquarters in London, had sent her out this way on a mission to check out reports of rogue vampire activity in the Czech city of Brno. As it had turned out, it had been a false alarm. No Federation regs were being contravened, the local vampires were behaving themselves and not turning unauthorised victims; no arrests or Nosferol terminations had been necessary and all had been well.
Alex’s job wasn’t always so easy.
Utz looked distraught. ‘Jesus, Alex, are you okay?’ he blurted out. ‘I can’t believe what I’ve been hearing. An attack on the Federation grand assembly? A fucking helicopter gunship, taking out the whole conference centre? Tell me it’s not true.’
‘I was there,’ Alex said coolly. ‘It’s true.’
‘But how could this happen?’
‘It happened because we broke one of the cardinal rules of warfare,’ Alex said. ‘Never underestimate your enemy. When a rogue vampire like Gabriel Stone decides to mount a rebellion against an enemy he perceives as a threat to everything he believes in, he does it on a major scale. It’s a long story, Utz. The bottom line is that virtually the whole of the Federation top brass has been wiped out. Thanks to Stone’s rebels and the moles he had working for him inside VIA, we just became a leaderless army.’
Utz gaped at her, visibly weakening at the knees. ‘All of them? The Supremos?’
She nodded. ‘Goldmund, Korentayer, Hassan, Borowczyk, Mushkavanhu. Not to mention our illustrious former Federation second-in-command, the late and much-lamented Gaston Lerouge. Stone executed them all. With a guillotine.’ She gave a dry smile. ‘Some style, that Gabriel. You’ve got to hand it to him.’
‘What about the Vampress?’ Utz croaked. He was referring to Supremo Olympia Angelopolis, the grand Matriarch of the whole Federation. ‘Surely not her as well?’
Alex shrugged. ‘She might have got out. Things were kind of chaotic.’ She didn’t pretend to care any more than she did about Olympia’s fate.
‘This is unreal. You’ve got to be kidding me about this.’
She looked at him. ‘You should know by now that I’m a very humourless person and I don’t dick about making jokes. Especially when I’ve been shot at with Nosferol bullets, kidnapped and incarcerated in a damp cell in some middle-of-nowhere castle in Romania and then almost guillotined myself.’
And left behind the only man I’ve given a shit about in a hundred and thirteen years, she wanted to add. Left him to fend for himself in the wilderness, more alone and more terrified than he could ever have imagined. Making that stark, brutal choice had ripped her guts out: either let Joel die in her arms of the terrible wounds he’d suffered in the battle with Stone’s gang, or help him to survive, the only way she knew how.
Turning him had seemed the only option.
And now what? She knew he’d make it out of there. Of all the things vampires could do, survival was what they did best. He’d have sought out a dark place by now, to hole up in for the day. Come sundown, he’d begin his new existence – one he’d never forgive her for having inflicted on him. And then, sooner or later, more likely sooner, he’d come looking for her. The indelible connection between vampire and victim would lead him to her. When that day came, she’d have to account for what she’d done to him.
Alex quickly pressed that thought to the back of her mind. ‘Got any Solazal?’ she asked Utz. If she wanted to move around safely in daylight, she’d need more than just the twelve hours’ worth of protection that one salvaged pill could offer.
Utz was still stunned from the news, leaning heavily on the bonnet of the car for support. He shook his head. ‘Just what I need for myself,’ he said distractedly. ‘There’s a shortage.’
Alex was well aware of that. Gabriel Stone’s doing. In a lightning raid in Italy, his heavily-armed assault team had blown up the pharmaceutical plant where the Federation produced its special drugs. With a blast of high explosive, Stone’s Traditionalist uprising had sent the vampire world halfway back to the sacred old ways of ducking and dodging the sun. It was anyone’s guess how long it would be before Solazal production went back to normal. As for Nosferol, the lethal anti-vampire poison that Federation agents used to destroy rogue members of their kind, the attack on the pharmaceutical plant had reduced stocks almost to zero.
‘Have you reported back to Rumble yet?’ Utz said, gathering himself.
‘Rumble was with me in Romania, Utz. He isn’t coming back. A certain vamp called Lillith was a little too handy with a bloody great sabre.’ Poor Harry, Alex thought. He hadn’t been all bad, even for a suit.
‘How the hell did you get out of it?’ Utz said.
‘It was thanks to a human,’ Alex replied after a beat.
‘A what?’
‘His name’s Joel Solomon. He’s a cop. Or was. If he hadn’t turned up when he had, I’d have ended up as just another severed head in a basket. He got shot to pieces, but not before he’d managed to take out Stone’s guards and most of his crew. As for Stone himself—’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what happened to him.’
‘A human did all this?’
‘He had a little help. From the cross.’
Utz’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Come on. You don’t mean—’
‘That’s right, Utz. The cross, the one nobody at VIA wanted to believe me about. The cross of Ardaich. Yes, it exists, and yes, it does what all the legends say it does.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘You’d better.’
‘Where is this thing now?’
She shrugged. ‘Last time I saw it, it was flying over the battlements of Stone’s castle. Something like a thousand-foot drop. Nothing but rocks below.’
‘So it got smashed, right?’
‘Probably.’
‘What does that mean, “probably”?’
‘It means I didn’t actually see it get smashed, okay? Hard to believe anything could have survived that fall. That’s the best I can tell you.’
‘So it’s gone . . . and we’re safe. We are safe now, aren’t we?’
‘No more questions, all right?’ she told him. ‘I’m tired and I need a feed and I called you because I thought you could help me.’
‘What are we going to do?’
Alex stared at him for a second. Then, quicker than he could react, she’d grabbed the pistol she’d known was in a shoulder holster under his jacket, flipped off the safety and aimed it square between Utz’s eyeballs. It was a 9mm Beretta, not the big-bore stuff she personally favoured, but it would do the job. ‘Utz, when I tell you something like “no more questions”, I do mean it.’
‘Hey. Watch out. That thing’s loaded with Nosferol tips.’ She smiled. ‘Of course it is. Standard field agent issue. All right, Utz, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going back to base, to find out if there are any pieces left to pick up. If there aren’t, it means Stone’s beaten us. End of the line for the Federation, every vampire for herself from now on.’
‘What about me?’ Utz said in a small voice, squinting at the muzzle of the pistol.
Alex smiled sweetly. ‘You’re a VIA station chief, aren’t you? Stealing hick farm trucks and stowing away on freight trains in the middle of the night isn’t my style. While there’s still some operational funds left in the coffers, you’re going to get me on a nice, comfortable Federation jet to London with enough red juice on board to satisfy Count Dracula.’
Chapter Three (#ulink_9f8a445b-d3a6-5b85-9ff6-c67e23621e63)
Dec Maddon swallowed hard and took another trembling, tiptoeing step down the darkened corridor. The big silver crucifix tightly clenched in his right hand glimmered dully in the near total blackness. The rasp of his breathing filled his ears. The frantic drumming of his heart made his throat flutter. He knew he was lost. Nobody would ever find him here.
Nobody except . . . them.
Something brushed his face, making him flinch violently and almost cry out in fear before he realised it was the silky touch of cobwebs hanging from the low ceiling. He clawed them away and moved on. Ahead of him, a solid rectangular patch of darkness stood out against the shadows. A doorway.
He reached out to push it open, his left hand a pale, ghostly thing in the darkness. The door creaked slowly open. Dec gripped the crucifix for all he was worth, took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway into the space beyond.
Immediately, and with a spike of shock, he knew he’d been here before. The stone pillars of the ancient cellar were dimly lit by the flickering orange flame of a wall-mounted torch. He took a trembling step across the uneven flagstones. Then another. He gulped. His mouth was dry. He thought of the terrible scenes he’d witnessed the last time he’d been here – down here in the crypt beneath the vampire lair of Crowmoor Hall. He’d always known there were more of them, lurking down there, waiting for their moment to strike again.
His blood congealed in his veins as a sound echoed softly in the darkness. He froze, afraid to breathe.
Then he heard the sound again. A low cackle from the shadows.
And a dark shape detached itself from the pillar just steps away, and came towards him. As it stepped into the glow of the firelight, he saw it clearly. The hands reaching out for him. The predatory glint in the thing’s eyes. The white fangs in its gaping mouth.
Dec stumbled back, raising the crucifix. ‘Get back, vampire!’ His yell came out as a choked whimper, barely audible.
The thing kept on coming. Dec screamed as he felt its hands clutching his arm.
It was shaking him.
Saying his name.
‘Dec. Dec. Wake up.’
Dec snapped his eyes open with a gasp and jerked bolt upright in the bed, staring wild-eyed at the person standing over him. But it wasn’t a vampire. It was his ma, still gently holding on to his arm. And he wasn’t in the crypt at Crowmoor Hall, but at home in his bedroom in the suburban safety of Lavender Close, Wallingford.
‘You were having a bad dream, son,’ his ma said.
‘Jesus,’ Dec said, rubbing his eyes. He smiled weakly. ‘I’m all right.’
‘Oh, Dec, you didn’t sleep in your clothes,’ his ma groaned. ‘Again? Is this what you are now, a slob?’
Dec glanced down at himself, and saw he had, shoes and all. He shrugged. ‘Sorry, Ma.’
‘I brought you some tea.’ His ma motioned at the steaming drink she’d set down on his bedside table. She’d made it in his favourite mug, the Spiderman one.
Dec reached over and picked it up gratefully. ‘Thanks, Ma.’ He slurped at the steaming hot tea, the vividness of the nightmare still lingering in his mind. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was after eight.
‘I see you’ve taken to wearing your cross again,’ his ma said approvingly, pointing at the little gold crucifix that hung on a chain from his neck. She’d bought it for his confirmation, but it had lain forgotten in a drawer until very recently. Dec touched it and nodded as he slurped more tea.
His ma walked over to the window and jerked open the curtains, letting in the grey morning light. She peered out across Lavender Close, then tutted irritably. ‘Look at that. They’re back again.’
‘Who’s back again? Not the police, is it?’
She shook her head. ‘Them bloody reporters. For next door.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘They should leave folks alone, so they should. As if those poor Hawthornes haven’t suffered enough.’
Dec made no reply. The nightmare of his dreams was gone now. Only the nightmare that was reality remained.
His ma turned away from the window and headed for the door. ‘So are you getting up or are you going to lie there all day?’ she said on her way out of the room. ‘Your da needs you at the garage.’ Dec’s da was the boss of Maddon Auto Services in Wallingford, where Dec did a few hours’ spanner-wielding each week.
‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ Dec groaned, wincing at the idea of having to go into work today. When he heard his mother’s footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs, he fought the covers off him with his fists and feet, clambered out of bed and went to the window. The sight of the TV van and the reporter’s car in the street outside, both parked outside the gate of Number 16 next door, filled him with anger.
Fuckers, he thought once more. For two days these pieces of shit had been flapping down on Lavender Close like flocks of vultures, picking at the dead.
Or, in this case, picking at what might have happened to the dead.
Dec could hear his ma and da talking downstairs. Like everyone else on the planet, it seemed they couldn’t get their fill of yakking on about Kate Hawthorne. He cupped his ears and tried not to listen as the voices of his parents drifted up the stairs. It was unbearable. Please, stop.
The story had spread like bubonic plague through Wallingford and might have reached the outer galaxies by now, for all Dec knew. The news of the inexplicable, shockingly sudden demise of the teenager Kate Hawthorne from 16 Lavender Close had been awful enough; but the disappearance of her body, without a trace, from the hospital mortuary just hours after her death, had violently shaken the whole community. The speculation of the town gossips was savage and quick to venture where the media didn’t dare: much more appealing than a gross administrative error was the popular theory that some deranged individual might have removed Kate’s body from the morgue and was keeping it at an unknown location for his own indescribable necrophilic purposes. So many people had got carried away with that notion that the strange, somehow associated death of Bill Andrews, the Hawthornes’ family doctor, had been largely glossed over to make room for it. Andrews had been found slumped on the cold tiles of the morgue floor, near to Kate’s empty slab. Something had stopped the doctor’s heart where he’d stood. A chance cardiac arrest? The shock at finding the dead girl gone? Or something else? Nobody knew.
Nobody but Dec.
Dec knew the truth of what had happened to Kate, and he was pretty sure it explained what had caused her doctor to drop dead of fright. It had almost done the same to him, when he’d met her walking in the grounds of the crumbling Oxfordshire mansion to which she’d been drawn from the morgue. It wasn’t every day the dead girl from next door tried to seduce you in a see-through dress.
But his terrible knowledge was something Dec would admit to no one. Not to the reporters who’d come beating on the Maddons’ front door after they’d found out that Dec and Kate had gone out together, albeit briefly, days before her death. Not to his parents, who’d ferociously warded the press hounds away from their son. And certainly not to the baffled cops who’d come to poke around and find out what Dec knew about her disappearance. Last time he’d tried telling the police about the vampires that were running amok in the Oxfordshire countryside, he’d been ridiculed and almost ended up in jail for his trouble.
In fact, Dec could barely even admit the truth to himself. And there was just one living soul in the world he could openly share it with: Detective Inspector Joel Solomon. Joel had been the only one who’d taken Dec seriously when he’d claimed to have witnessed a vampire ritual killing at Crowmoor Hall near Henley that terrible night. The only person who would have gone back there to investigate with him, when anyone else would have thought it was crazy.
And Joel was the only other person in the world who knew just why Kate Hawthorne had died so suddenly, and then apparently vanished. It had been Joel who had ended Kate’s suffering, armed with the strange stone cross he’d refused to tell Dec too much about. A scene Dec wouldn’t forget. It didn’t matter that it had happened only two days ago. It wouldn’t fade. Even if he lived to be a thousand and one it would stay burned into his mind, like a brand.
Joel hadn’t just freed the girl – he’d saved Dec from the same fate after she’d enticed him with some power that had seemed almost hypnotic. Rendered him helpless with those sweet, sweet, terrible kisses. Dec felt the marks on his neck. They were healing well, but still painful to the touch and he’d taken to wearing a roll-neck jumper to hide them. If Joel hadn’t stopped Kate when he had . . . Dec shuddered. He wondered where Joel was now. The last Dec had seen of him, he’d been heading for Romania to track the monsters who’d done this to Kate. There’d been no contact from him since. Dec had no idea where Joel was, or even if he was still alive.
Dec glanced back at his rumpled bed, and for a second all he wanted in the world was to clamber back into it, yank the covers right over him and stay in that little cocoon for the rest of his life.
He bit his lip. He wouldn’t make the world any less insane by vegetating in his bed. But no way was he going into work, either. Feeling like he’d gone several rounds in one of the bare-knuckle boxing matches his da had told him about from his merchant navy days, he shuffled to the bathroom to pee and brush his teeth and beat his hair into some kind of order; then he sneaked down the stairs.
But it wasn’t easy to sneak past old man Maddon.
‘I need you today,’ his da called from the kitchen doorway.
‘I’m sick,’ Dec said. Out of habit, he’d gone to grab the key to his old VW Golf from the stand in the hall when he remembered it was still in the repair shop after he’d crashed the damn thing getting away from Crowmoor Hall that night. He grabbed the key to his ma’s Renault instead, knowing she wasn’t working today. ‘Got to go out,’ he yelled as he ran to the front door.
‘Thought you were sick, you wee skitter,’ his da growled after him. But Dec was already out of the door and running to the yellow Clio. Before the reporters could collar him, he’d skidded down the drive, pulled a screeching K-turn in the street and gone speeding out of Lavender Close.
Roaring past the Hawthornes’ house, Dec saw that the curtains were pulled tightly shut and felt a stab of desperate pity for Kate’s folks – even if her mother hated him and looked down on his family. He’d have liked to have been able to tell the Hawthornes the truth, to offer them the sense of closure of at least knowing that their daughter was safe and in a better place now.
‘Sure, Dec, that’ll work,’ he muttered to himself as he drove. He could just imagine the scene: the distraught parents looking up red-eyed as the grungy teenager from next door strode into their sitting room and announced: ‘It’s okay, Mrs Hawthorne. Kate was in trouble there for a while, because a vampire called Gabriel Stone made her into his wee playmate. But then a pal of mine, Joel, set her free with this strange-looking cross that has the power to destroy vampires on sight. She’ll be all right now, so she will.’
He sighed. Next thing, it would be the men in white coats coming to catch him with a big butterfly net and drag him off to a padded cell.
Dec headed aimlessly towards the centre of Wallingford. All around him were people going to their work, ferrying their kids to school, doing their shopping. Normal folks going about their normal lives, unaware of the things that were out there, lurking in the shadows by day, stalking their victims by night. Who would be next in line? It could be anybody, anywhere. Dec shuddered. It could be his own family – his ma, his da, Cormac. It could be anyone he knew. And these things would never stop.
‘What are you gonna do?’ He slammed the steering wheel with his fist. ‘Gotta do something.’ And then it came to him in a flash. He was going to devote his life to destroying these monsters. He was going to make it his mission.
Dec Maddon, vampire hunter. Mallet in hand, silver stakes and crosses glinting against the lining of his long black leather coat. Walking into a party, seeing the heads turning; being asked ‘What line of work are you in, Dec?’; their faces as he coolly handed out his business card. He’d have an office, too. Like the ones in the old detective movies, with his name painted on the window. A busy phone on the desk. A wall safe filled with the tools of his trade.
‘You big friggin’ eejit. Dream on.’ What was he going to do, turn up at the local college of further education to find out about NVQs in Vampire Hunting?
But he had to do something. Joel had, by going off to Romania armed with the cross to hunt down Gabriel Stone. Now it was Dec’s turn to do what he could.
Five minutes later, Dec was pulling up in the car park outside Wallingford’s public library and hammering up the stairs to the computer room. The rows of PCs looked antiquated and worn-out, but anything was preferable to using the laptop he shared with his elder brother. Cormac was uncomfortably expert at checking up on anything and everything Dec had been looking at online – and Dec could do without his sibling’s considered opinions right now.
A couple of pretty girls looked up as Dec walked in. He brushed self-importantly past them. Dec Maddon, Vampire Hunter. There was a terminal free in the back row, and he was thankful that it was right at the far end of the room where nobody could peer over his shoulder. He perched on the edge of the plastic seat, nudged the mouse on its pad and the screen flashed into life. Dec glanced left and right, then self-consciously keyed in the words ‘proffesional vampire hunter’.
Did you mean:professional vampire hunter? the computer prompted him.
‘All right, all right. Smart arse.’ Dec clicked impatiently. The machine’s outdated innards churned for a second, and then spat up a lot more stuff than Dec had been expecting. Scrolling through, he quickly realised that, unless he was going to check out a bunch of pulp novels or the old Hammer movie Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter as reliable sources of erudite information on the pursuit of his future career, there was little of use to him here.
‘Shite,’ he said, and moved on.
‘A vampire hunter or slayer is a character in folklore and works of fiction, such as books, films and video games, who specialises in finding and destroying vampire and sometimes other supernatural creatures . . .’ Wikipedia informed him.
‘This isn’t a frigging video game. This is real, for fuck’s sake,’ Dec said a little too loudly. The two girls across the room looked up from their computer terminals and he heard a giggle. He flushed and clicked again. Next up came ‘Semi-professional or professional vampire hunters played some part in the vampire beliefs of the Balkans, especially in Bulgarian, Serbian and Romany folk beliefs . . .’
‘Pish,’ Dec said. Ancient folklore was one thing, but didn’t anybody actually believe in this stuff any more?
‘Crap.’ Click, scroll.
‘More crap.’ Click.
Then Dec stopped and stared at the screen. ‘Hmm,’ he said.
THEY LURK AMONGST US.
Dec’s eyes ran quickly across the couple of lines of text below the header: ‘Errol Knightly is a professional paranormal investigator, historical scholar and vampire hunter based in west Wales. His new book, They Lurk Amongst Us, has shot up the bestseller charts and is being hailed as . . .’
Two thumbnail images were displayed alongside the header. One showed the glossy cover of Knightly’s chunky hardback. The other showed the author as a slightly beefy guy with ruddy cheeks and thick sandy hair down past his ears, somewhat younger than Dec’s da – maybe in his late thirties or early forties. He had a look of earnestness. A look that said ‘You can trust me’.
‘Hmm,’ Dec said again. He rolled the mouse over the pad, landed the cursor on the web URL, www.theylurkamongstus. com, and clicked to enter the site.
Chapter Four (#ulink_839a4a2b-0752-5f60-a209-6b61a341ed1d)
Romania
The mid-morning sun was bright over the mountains, gleaming down out of a pure blue sky across the fresh snows of the valleys. The only signs of movement on the landscape were the three skiers winding their way down the vast whiteness of the mountainside, slaloming through the pines, twisting to avoid jutting rocks. To those who were happily unaware of the half-buried local legends, the place seemed an unspoilt wilderness paradise. None of the three could have any idea that just a few miles off lay the deserted ruins of the ancient, accursed settlement that local people only whispered about. Only on very old maps did the name ‘Vâlcanul’ feature at all.
The three skiers glided to a halt at the bottom of the valley. Chloe Dempsey wiped the powder snow from her goggles, brushed her windblown blond curls away from her face and grinned back over her shoulder at her friends Lindsey and Rebecca.
‘Had enough yet?’ Rebecca called out.
‘Not on your life,’ Chloe said. ‘I could go on all day.’
Lindsey’s cheeks were flushed with cold and adrenalin. ‘See?’ she beamed. ‘Didn’t I tell you this place would be the best?’
Chloe smiled. ‘You were right,’ she admitted. It had been Lindsey who’d come up with the idea of a break from their studies at the University of Bedfordshire, flying out to Romania to take advantage of the year’s unexpected early snows for three days of off-piste cross-country skiing. An adventure, she’d said. Lindsey’s schemes usually ended up badly enough that Chloe had initially regretted letting her steer them so deep into the wilds, far away from any hostels and major towns. But there was no denying that Lindsey might actually have been right this time.
‘Look at this place,’ Lindsey said, gazing around her. ‘Just look at it. Pisses all over St Moritz, I can tell you.’
‘I’m sure you can,’ Chloe said. It was all part of Lindsey’s routine to take every possible opportunity to remind everyone around her that she came from a moneyed family and was, as a result, terribly familiar with all the in places. Chloe had stopped minding too much. Besides, having a rich college friend had its perks. Whether he even knew it or not, it was Lindsey’s gazillionaire daddy who footed the rent for the luxury apartment the three of them shared. It beat living in cramped, dingy student digs. Being able to jet off for impromptu skiing vacations wasn’t so terrible either.
‘Hey, look,’ Rebecca said, pointing upwards and shielding her eyes from the sun. Chloe turned to follow the line of her gloved finger through the pines. Funny – she hadn’t noticed it before. Perched high up on a mountain crag above them, silhouetted against the blue sky, were the towers of an old castle. The snow lay thickly on the dark stone of its battlements.
‘How old do you think it must be?’ Rebecca said.
‘Medieval times, I guess,’ Chloe said. ‘Maybe older. Wow.’
‘You Yanks,’ Lindsey snorted at her. ‘Anything that’s dated more than fifty years, you go all gooey about it.’
‘We do have a little more history than that,’ Chloe said.
‘Huh.’
Rebecca made a face as she stared up at the castle. ‘Makes me feel a bit shivery. Think anyone’s up there, watching us?’
Lindsey laughed. ‘Give us a break. It’s just an old ruin.’
‘I don’t get such a good feeling about this place,’ Rebecca said. ‘I think something really bad happened here.’
‘It’s a castle, Beck. They used to have, like, wars and things. I’m sure a lot of pretty nasty shit happened here, a long, long time ago. That’s why they call it history. As in, dead and gone? Come on, guys. I’m freezing my arse off standing here.’
Chloe stabbed her ski sticks in the snow and unzipped her backpack to take out her map. ‘That’s strange,’ she said, studying it. ‘The castle’s not here.’
Lindsey snatched the map out of Chloe’s fingers and gave it a cursory glance. ‘Guess you’re right. It isn’t. Or else we’ve taken a totally wrong turn somewhere.’
Chloe shook her head. ‘I know exactly where we are.’
‘And I know exactly where I want to be,’ Lindsey said. ‘Somewhere else.’
‘I agree,’ Rebecca said. ‘Let’s move on. I don’t like it here.’
They skied on down the valley, leaving sinuous, intertwined trails behind them on the bright virgin snow. Chloe was the best skier and could have left the others far behind, but she hung back to keep a watch on the less experienced Rebecca. The valley skirted the base of the mountain, sloping steeply away from its rocky foot. The trees were thicker here, and the going was trickier. Chloe was slicing through the powder snow when Rebecca, fifteen yards ahead, gave a muffled yell and took a sudden tumble. With a big spray of snow she rolled flailing down the slope, toppled over a bluff, and disappeared from sight.
‘Rebecca!’ Chloe yelled, racing after her. There was no reply. She glanced back over her shoulder. Lindsey was a long way behind, taking it easy over the terrain, and didn’t seem to have noticed anything was wrong. Chloe made it to the edge of the bluff. Her heart was hammering and she was thinking about the long-range walkie-talkie in her backpack that she could use to call out the mountain rescue helicopter in an emergency. Her mind raced. Would they be able to find them? Would they make it out here while it was still daylight?
‘Rebecca! Talk to me!’ Chloe yelled as she tore at the quick-release mechanism of her ski boots, kicked the skis away and scrambled to the edge of the bluff.
She sagged with relief at the sound of Rebecca’s voice calling up to her. Peering down, she saw her friend sprawled ten yards below, near a trickling stream that had melted a stony path through the snow. She’d narrowly avoided hitting a jutting outcrop of rocks at the base of the mountain. Her left ski had become detached and was sticking out of the snow halfway down the slope.
‘I’m fine,’ Rebecca called, struggling to her feet as Chloe scrambled down towards her. ‘Must have snagged a root or something.’ Putting weight on her left leg, she made a face and her knee seemed to give way under her. ‘Ouch. Shit. My knee.’
‘Sit on that rock and let me take a look.’
‘Glad one of us has done all the first-aid courses,’ Rebecca muttered as Chloe checked her over. The knee was grazed, but not swollen.
‘That hurt?’ Chloe asked, supporting Rebecca’s ankle and gently flexing the leg.
‘No . . . ow. Yes, a little.’
‘You’ll have a bruise like a rainbow,’ Chloe told her, ‘but I think you’ll be okay. Could have been a lot worse.’
‘I’m frozen,’ Rebecca muttered, hugging her sides.
‘Want some hot coffee? I think I have a bit left.’
‘You’re a lifesaver.’
Chloe fished the Thermos flask from her backpack, unscrewed the cap and poured out a steaming cupful. As she leant across to hand it to Rebecca, she knelt on something sharp and looked down to see what it was.
‘That’s a funny-looking thing,’ she said, picking up the small, jagged object that had jabbed her leg. It wasn’t anything like the other pebbles and small rocks scattered around the stream bed.
‘What is it?’ asked Rebecca through a mouthful of hot coffee.
Chloe showed her. ‘Looks like a piece of something.’
‘Pottery?’
‘More like a stone carving.’ Chloe turned the fragment over in her hands. It was the size of a walnut, made of some kind of pale, glittering rock. The faded markings on it looked like writing, but the language was one she’d never seen before.
‘Here’s another piece,’ Rebecca said, reaching down between her feet and picking it up. ‘It’s got the same carvings on it. What do you suppose they mean?’
‘No idea. My dad would probably know.’
‘He’s a historian, isn’t he?’
‘Museum curator,’ Chloe said. ‘Lives in Oxford now. You know what, I think I’m going to take these back to show him.’ There were more pieces strewn across the stream bed, and yet more in the snow. She started gathering them up. ‘Whatever this was, it must have got smashed on those big rocks. The bits are scattered all around here.’
Rebecca studied the fragment she’d found. ‘They kind of look like ancient runes to me.’
Chloe found another, larger fragment in the snow. She dusted it off. Her little pile was growing quickly. ‘Runes?’
‘You know, ancient script. Spells. Maybe like some kind of talisman for warding off evil spirits.’
‘Oh, come on. You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?’
Rebecca shrugged. She pointed upwards at the looming mountain above them. ‘You think maybe it fell from up there?’
Chloe looked up. Far above in the distance, she could just about make out the tips of the castle battlements.
‘Something seriously creepy about that place,’ Rebecca said darkly. ‘Maybe that’s what the talisman was put here for.’
‘You don’t know it’s a talisman,’ Chloe said.
‘It’s something, though, isn’t it? And what was it doing here?’
‘So there you are.’ It was Lindsey’s voice from the top of the slope. She stepped out of her skis and scrambled down the slope to join them. ‘You two decide to hide from me for a secret coffee break?’
‘Rebecca took a tumble down the slope,’ Chloe told her. ‘Hey, don’t worry yourself though. She’s fine.’
Lindsey pointed at Chloe’s little heap of stone fragments, and frowned. ‘Uh, Chloe, what are you actually doing with those?’
‘They’re bits of something,’ Chloe said. ‘We found them lying all around here.’
‘How fascinating,’ Lindsey said in a flat tone. ‘Listen, I hate to spoil your fun, but we’re really in the middle of nowhere here, guys. We need to move on.’
‘Rebecca needs to rest a minute,’ Chloe said.
‘Moving on’s okay by me,’ Rebecca said, screwing the empty Thermos cup back onto the flask. ‘I’m fine now.’
‘You’re sure?’ Chloe asked her. Rebecca nodded and smiled. Chloe started stuffing the fragments into her backpack.
‘I can’t believe you’re going to cart those bits of old stone all the way back home,’ Lindsey said. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
For a second, Chloe almost felt like dumping them. Whatever kind of stone the fragments were made from, it was incredibly dense and she was worried about their combined weight on top of the rest of the stuff in her pack. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave them behind. ‘Lindsey, will you help me carry them? I really want Dad to see them.’
Lindsey stared. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Why don’t you go and grab a few bits of that castle while you’re at it? Let’s take the whole place home as a keepsake for Daddy.’
‘Come on, Lindsey.’
‘Why can’t she carry some?’ Lindsey demanded, pointing at Rebecca.
‘I will,’ Rebecca cut in.
‘No,’ Chloe said. ‘Because she’s hurt herself and I don’t want her carrying extra weight.’
‘Right then, Doctor Dempsey. So you want me to be your pack horse instead?’
‘These could be worth something,’ Chloe said. ‘My dad’d be the first to tell you these kinds of relics can sell for a packet. Help me carry it, and I’ll cut you in on whatever I make.’
Lindsey eyed her. ‘Fifty–fifty.’
‘Thirty–seventy.’
‘Stick it.’
‘Okay, fifty–fifty and I’ll divide my share with Rebecca.’
‘Let’s just go, all right?’ Rebecca said, glancing up at the castle.
‘Deal.’ Lindsey unzipped her pack and started stuffing in some of the stone fragments. ‘Better be worth it.’
After a few minutes, the three students climbed back to the top of the slope, fastened their skis and took off down the valley.
The buzzard that had been observing them unseen from a high rocky perch watched the three tiny figures disappear down the hillside, then spread her broad wings and took to the air. She rode the thermals high over the mountain valley, making her unhurried way back to the nest lodged in the face of the cliff below the castle turrets.
Returning to the nest, the mother buzzard found her half-grown chicks still at work on the remains she’d scavenged from the castle battlements the previous day. There had been more than enough fresh meat for the taking up there, after she’d chased away the crows that had started the work of tearing it apart. She’d ripped away some large bloody chunks with her powerful beak, picked them up in her talons and carried them back to feed to the squawking fledglings.
Now a squabble was breaking out between two of the larger buzzard chicks, who were engaged in a tug-of-war over a choice hunk of meat. As they fought over it, a shiny object of very little importance to a buzzard fell with a dull thump to the bottom of the nest. The young raptors ignored it and went on squabbling until what was left of the severed human hand and wrist finally ripped in half and the argument was fairly settled.
The grimy, blood-spattered gold watch had landed on its face so that its engraved back-plate could be seen. And if a bird of prey could have read human language, the buzzards would have known the name of the man whose flesh was going to keep them sated for the next few days. The engraving read:
Jeremy P. Lonsdale
Chapter Five (#ulink_8c9a67cd-b4a2-5afb-beb0-3b6ca05bbebd)
As the sun eventually sank below the forest skyline and the lengthening shadows merged into the rising darkness, Joel emerged tentatively from the safety of his cave. He peered around him. It had been snowing heavily through the day, and the trail of his deep footprints leading to the mouth of the cave had been covered over. He felt the biting wind on his face but the rawness of the cold was something his senses registered only objectively. Like a machine. Like something that was alive but not alive. Something that was neither human nor animal.
The night sounds of the forest filled his ears and seemed to press in on him from all around as he scrambled down the rocky slope from the cave and set off through the trees. The fresh snow crunched bright and sharp under his feet. He could feel every microscopic ice particle through the soles of his boots, every rotted leaf, every fallen twig.
He trudged on, eyes front, jaw tight and fists clenched at his sides. Refusing to surrender to the tumult of thoughts that screamed in his head. Then, after a mile or so, he stopped. Sensing something. He turned slowly. From the darkness of the forest, glowing amber eyes were watching him. Another pair appeared, then another. Dark shapes gathering, alerted at his passage.
The wolf pack circled silently around him, cutting off the way ahead. His nostrils flared at their feral scent. He could hear the rasp of their hot breath and the low, rumbling growls from deep in their throats. Fifteen of them, maybe twenty. Their heads low, hackles raised, ears flat back. All watching, intent. Ready to attack, move in and rip their prey apart.
But something about this prey was different. As Joel stared back at the wolves, a ripple of unease seemed to pass through the pack. Growls turned to whimpers. The wolves backed off, then turned and melted away into the night.
Joel watched the predators retreat, and he was afraid. Not of the savage things that lurked in the dark. He was the dark. The night feared him. And that was more than he could bear.
He closed his mind and pressed grimly on. Leaping over fallen tree trunks, splashing through frozen streams and scrabbling up steep slopes, oblivious of the branches that slashed his face and the sharp rocks that gouged his hands.
An hour passed, then two, before his sharp sense of smell detected a new scent. A human scent. Woodsmoke.
From the top of a snow-covered rise he saw the speckle of lights through the trees in the distance. Even in darkness, he could make out the fine details of the little houses, and the old wooden church steeple that jutted above the forest.
He knew this place. It was the village he’d passed through on his way to Vâlcanul.
Joel hesitated for a long moment, unsure what to do. He could easily skirt around the edge of the village unnoticed – but he couldn’t travel far, not in the state he was in. He badly needed to clean himself up and get hold of some new clothes. Someone would surely help him out. He still had some money left in his pocket – maybe enough for a cheap vehicle of some kind, to help him get back home.
He made his decision. The forest thinned out as he approached the village outskirts and the first of the old wooden houses. Snowflakes spiralled gently down in the soft glow from their windows. Their white roofs glimmered in the moonlight. The sides of the main street were piled with gritty slush where a snow-plough had cleared the way through. Joel’s boots crunched over the icy ruts made by its tracks. He’d walked up this street before, only the day before – for him, a lifetime ago. The same hush of serenity hung over the place. It was just as he remembered it, like a forgotten throwback to a bygone era. Some things never changed.
While other things had changed forever.
Joel began to feel increasingly self-conscious as he made his way up the narrow, winding street. The feeling suddenly struck him that he did not belong here, any more than the wild wolves from the forest. His step faltered. He felt himself gripped by the overwhelming desire to turn and run, disappear back into the safety of the trees before anyone saw him.
It was in that moment of panicky indecision that Joel heard the sound from one of the nearby houses. The scrape of a latch, the creak of hinges. He turned to see a woman leaning out of a downstairs window and peering uncertainly through the darkness at him. She was in her fifties, with shoulder-length black hair showing strands of white, a patchwork shawl wrapped around her.
Joel realised he knew her. She was the teacher he’d met on his outward journey. The woman who’d tried so hard to dissuade him from travelling onwards to Vâlcanul, the place the villagers feared and hated so deeply that they wouldn’t speak its name or even willingly acknowledge its existence. ‘Then you will not come back,’ she’d said when he’d insisted on finding the place. She’d been more right than she knew, he thought.
The frown on the woman’s face melted into an expression of surprise and relief as she realised it was really him. ‘You,’ she called out in English. ‘You have come back.’
Joel forced his face into a weak grin. He crossed the narrow street and stepped into the light from the window. ‘It’s me, all right,’ he said without conviction.
The woman stared at his tattered, filthy clothes. On his outward journey, he’d been carrying a rucksack and a photographer’s equipment case. Now he was empty-handed. The woman said, ‘What happened to you?’
The wheels spun fast in Joel’s brain. ‘I never made it as far as Vâlcanul,’ he lied. ‘I got lost in the woods. Some hunters must have thought I was a deer or something.’ He poked a couple of fingers through the holes in his clothes and shrugged. ‘But I’m okay. They missed me.’
‘You have blood on your clothes.’
‘Oh, that? I know. It’s not mine. I . . . er . . . I slipped and fell on a deer the hunters had killed.’ He winced inwardly at how lame it sounded.
The woman clicked her tongue and shook her head. She shut the window and disappeared inside the house. Seconds later, the door opened and the woman waved at him to come inside. ‘I have clothes to give you,’ she said. ‘And you must be cold. You want eat, no? Come.’
Joel hesitated.
‘Come, come,’ she insisted.
The house was small and warm and cosy, and smelled of freshly-cut firewood and chicory coffee. The wooden walls gleamed with centuries of varnish, the stone floors were covered in heavily-worked rugs. The woman smiled. ‘We were not introduced before. My name is Cosmina.’
‘It’s good to meet you again, Cosmina. I’m Joel. Listen, I don’t want to be any trouble . . .’
‘No trouble,’ she said. ‘My son leave home last year. To study business in Bucharest, yes? He leave behind some of his things. You are the same size. No trouble.’
Joel reached into his pocket and brought out a handful of lei banknotes. Cosmina frowned at the money, then waved it away.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll be on my way.’
‘Later. First you eat. Then we get clothes. Then you stay here and wait for the autobuz in the morning. Yes?’
‘That’s really not . . .’ he began, then decided there was no use in arguing. A wave of heat slapped him in the face as she fussed him into a small kitchen at the top of the hall. Next to an antique cast-iron cooking range, a woodburner crackled, giving off a faint smell of smoke. A cat that had been curled up in a basket near the fire arched its back at the sight of Joel, spat ferociously and then scuttled into hiding under a tall oak dresser.
Cosmina seemed not to notice as she sat Joel down in a wooden chair at the kitchen table. As if nothing could please her more, she battered about for a few moments fetching down an earthenware plate the size of a wagon wheel from the dresser, some cutlery and a huge stone pitcher from a cupboard. Using an oven glove, she slid a large iron pot onto the hotplate of the range to warm up. It smelled like some kind of meat stew.
The kitchen door suddenly burst open and an old man walked in. Joel remembered him, too. Cosmina’s father. He was about eighty, whiplash-thin and bent, with a mane of pure white hair and a face like saddle leather. Snow clung to his boots. In one wiry hand he clutched a walking stick; under the other arm he had a stack of freshly-cut logs that he dumped with a loud clang in a metal bin by the wood-burner. There was a big bone-handled Bowie knife in a sheath on his belt. He looked even more of a hard, mean old bastard than the rangy hunting dog that trotted into the room behind him.
Cosmina stared disapprovingly at the dog and rattled off a stream of Romanian to the old man as she stirred the bubbling stew. The old man pulled up a chair opposite Joel and said nothing. His eyes were deep-set, wrinkled and inscrutable, taking in every detail of Joel’s appearance.
‘I tell my father you become lost in forest,’ Cosmina said, filling Joel’s pitcher from a jug of what looked like home-brewed dark beer.
‘That’s right,’ Joel replied, smiling at the old man. The old man didn’t smile back. Staring fixedly at Joel from beside the table, the hunting dog bared its fangs and let out a long, menacing growl. Joel glanced down at it. Its tail curled between its legs and it retreated behind its master’s chair. The old man’s stare was just as fixed on Joel as his dog’s.
‘Please excuse Tascha,’ Cosmina said, looking perplexed. ‘She does not normally act this way with people.’
‘Animals don’t like me very much,’ Joel said, as Cosmina ladled a mound of stew into Joel’s plate and set it down in front of him. She stepped back and watched him expectantly. ‘You eat now.’
‘This looks lovely,’ Joel muttered. He picked up his fork and spoon. His objective senses told him that the stew smelled delicious. He’d lost count of how long ago solid food had last passed his lips. Normally his mouth would have been watering so badly that wild horses couldn’t have stopped him diving in and stuffing himself.
But some other sense, some internal voice that seemed to override all his lifelong instincts, was telling him that this food was worthless to him. No amount of it would satisfy his real hunger.
Joel’s hand was shaking as his fork hovered over his plate. He swallowed. His mouth was dry. Cosmina was hanging on his every movement and expression. He speared a piece of meat, carried it up to his mouth and chewed it.
Cosmina looked suddenly crestfallen. ‘Not good? You don’t like?’
‘No, no, it’s delicious,’ Joel protested, and tried to eat with enthusiasm. He felt both daughter and father’s gazes on him in stereo as he ate. The dog was still snarling quietly from its hiding place.
The old man let out a loud snort. He leaned back in his chair, slipped the big knife out of its sheath and began nonchalantly picking out the grime from behind his fingernails with the tip of its eight-inch blade. Cosmina scolded him angrily in Romanian. He appeared not to notice.
‘I go to find clothes for you,’ Cosmina said to Joel, and left the room.
Joel went on eating half-heartedly. The only sounds in the room were the ticking of an old clock on the wall and the low growls of the dog. The old man went on ignoring him. Having finished reaming out his nails, he now set about using the knife to scrape dirt from his fingers. Joel sneaked the occasional glance at him as he continued eating, and for a few blessed moments he felt almost normal in contrast to this strange, mad old bugger. He watched out of the corner of his eye as the old man pressed the edge of the blade against the pad of his thumb. Hard enough to split the flesh. A fat splot of blood dripped down on the table, then another. The old man looked at his cut thumb, then glanced at Joel.
Joel didn’t feel the fork clatter out of his fingers and onto his plate. He was lost in a sudden trance as he stared, mesmerised, open-mouthed, at the blood ebbing out of the old man’s thumb.
Instantly, a desperate battle was raging inside him.
No. It was too repellent. It was loathsome. Sickening.
And yet it wasn’t. He could smell the blood. Taste it. Feel it flowing down his throat, warm and thick and filled with goodness. The desire, deeper and more feverishly intense than anything he’d ever felt in his life, threatened to blow away all resistance.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the startling red blood was hidden from Joel’s view as the old man plucked a grimy handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around his thumb. Joel was shaken from his trance. He picked up his fork with a trembling hand. His breath came in gasps.
The old man hadn’t taken his eyes off him the whole time. There was a sparkle in them that Joel couldn’t figure.
Cosmina called from the stairway, ‘I find clothes. You come get changed now.’ Joel was grateful to make his escape from the kitchen. He climbed the creaky wooden stairs to where Cosmina was waiting for him on the landing, leaning against a massive hard-carved banister post with depictions of the moon and stars. ‘My son’s room,’ she said, and motioned through an open doorway.
Joel looked inside the tiny, windowless bedroom. In one corner was a basic sink with a towel on a rail and a shaving mirror. Cosmina showed him the clothes she’d laid out on the narrow bed: a denim work shirt, a thick woollen pullover, fleece-lined jeans and a pair of socks fit for hardcore mountaineering. Joel thanked her again, and tried once more to offer her some money. She shook her head vehemently, then left him alone to change. She shut the door behind her, and he heard her footsteps descending the stairs.
Joel quickly peeled off his dirty rags. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw that all trace of his wounds had completely disappeared. Was it his imagination, or were the muscles of his torso harder and more defined than he’d ever seen them? He splashed water over his chest, shoulders and arms and watched the filth and blood wash away down the sink.
Towelling himself dry, he could hear the old man downstairs jabbering agitatedly to his daughter. That crazy old bastard didn’t like strangers in the house. Fine. He’d made his point. Joel wasn’t planning on sticking around. Maybe someone in the village bar would know of a cheap car for sale, maybe an old 4x4 if the roads were bad. Then he’d be out of this place and nothing was ever going to bring him back.
He pulled on the socks and the jeans. The work shirt was a size too large, but better roomy than too tight. Joel was halfway through buttoning it up when footsteps came thundering up the stairs. The boards creaked outside the door.
Joel craned his head to listen, and heard whispers and fumbling. The lock clicked, and then the footsteps went thumping back down the stairs in a hurry. The sound of the front door being ripped open. Noises and voices from out in the street.
Joel rattled the door handle. The door didn’t budge. Now he could hear shouting outside, more voices joining in. The cry of a woman.
Seconds later, the first clang of the church bell resonated through the still night air. Then again and again, ringing wildly, as if three strong men were hauling on its rope for all they were worth. Nearer to the house, the flat report of a shotgun boomed out once, twice, through the night air. The clamour of voices was getting steadily louder, and steadily closer. It sounded like half the village had suddenly emerged from their homes. They sounded scared, and they sounded angry as hell.
And now Joel could hear what the villagers were chanting amid the yells and panic.
Moroi! Moroi! Vârcolac!
He knew those words. They’d been written in the forgotten and decayed diary of a man who’d sacrificed his whole world, endured the ridicule and rejection of his own family, to fight the thing he’d hated most. Crazy Nick Solomon. Joel’s grandfather.
The words were from the darkest corners of ancient Romanian folklore. They meant Vampire.
Chapter Six (#ulink_c36056d4-a470-5eae-b031-45025ef9a330)
It was way past time to get the hell out of there. Joel yanked on his boots and laced them up feverishly. He hammered at the door. It wouldn’t give. He drew back his fist and punched at it. To his amazement his fist tore right through the solid wood. He felt no pain. Withdrawing his fist, he peered through the shattered hole and saw the stout length of rope that connected the handle on the outside to the carved banister post. He’d let them trap him in here as easily as he’d given himself away to that tricksy old man.
Bastard humans.
The thought had materialised consciously in his mind before he was able to catch it and drag it back. He wanted to vomit. But there was no time for self-pity. He lashed out again and felt the door buckle. Dust and splinters flew. Two more hits, and with alarming strength he’d torn the whole thing out of its frame and was trampling over it and racing down the stairs four at a time. He crashed through the front door.
Scores of villagers had gathered in the snowy street outside the house. More were running down the street from their homes. Young men and boys, old women, everyone who could be mustered was out in force as the alarm spread, many of them clutching whatever improvised weapons they could grab. Among the axes and shovels and scythes Joel saw a chainsaw and a crossbow, and at least a couple of double-barrelled shotguns.
Heading up the crowd was Cosmina’s old father, dementedly waving his walking stick in one hand and the big Bowie knife in the other, whipping them all up to a frenzy with his screaming chant of ‘Moroi! Vârcolac!’ Cosmina stood behind him, fearfully clutching his wiry arm. Beside her towered a bulky, heavily-bearded man with long black hair and hands like hams clenched around the hilt of some kind of ancient gypsy scimitar that he was swinging above his head as if about to decapitate a bullock with it.
Few things could spell a quicker end for a vampire than the sweep of a well-honed blade lifting their head from their shoulders. Joel knew that, all too well. He’d once been forced to do the very same thing to his own grandfather.
He tried to imagine what it would feel like, watching the blade come whooshing towards his throat. The parting of the flesh as the steel sliced cleanly through. Would it hurt? Would unconsciousness come instantly? Or would his senses remain alert as his severed head hit the ground and bounced and rolled out of the path of his falling body? For all that he craved for his torment to be over, the urge to run was like nothing he’d ever experienced before.
‘There he is!’ The shout needed no translation. Angry cries and gasps of horror. Fingers pointing. Faces turning to stare at him, eyes filled with fury and teeth bared. The wild old man waving the knife at him.
‘Why do you hate me?’ Joel wanted to yell at them. ‘I’ve done you no harm. Just let me go. I won’t come back here.’
For a few frozen moments, he hovered there on the doorstep of the house as the crowd, more than a hundred strong now, hung back. Then, at the same instant that the old man let out a roar of fury and led the charge towards the house, Joel bolted. With blinding speed he tore across the tiny front yard, vaulting the low wall into the neighbouring property.
The screaming mob came rushing after him. Joel sprinted harder, unleashing power from his heart and lungs and muscles that he’d never dreamed possible. A crossbow bolt cut whistling through the air towards him; he heard it coming and dipped his head, and it embedded itself with a juddering thwack in the wall of the house inches away.
Both barrels of a shotgun boomed out in rapid succession and a window smashed. Joel skidded around the side of the building, crashed through bushes, vaulted clear over the derelict body of an old car and leaped a six-foot fence as if it were nothing.
Suddenly, he was alone. He stopped, assessing his surroundings. He wasn’t even out of breath. A narrow lane ran up between more houses, curving away out of sight between dilapidated wooden fences. He could hear the shouts of the mob approaching. ‘Get him! Get the Moroi! Cut off his head!’
Joel took off up the lane, stumbling and slipping in the snow that had drifted up against the fence. Lights were coming on in windows all across the village. Up ahead, the lane opened out onto the main street through the village.
Joel burst out into the road and glanced all around him. More villagers were spilling out of their houses and massing together in a second hunting party just a hundred yards down the street. Nobody saw him as he kept down low in the shadows and ran like crazy over the ice-rutted road towards the edge of the village.
He desperately tried to recall the layout of the place. Where was the rundown old service station from which he’d managed to borrow a motorcycle and sidecar for his outward journey? If he could find it again, maybe he could steal a car or truck before the mob caught up with him again. But then he remembered the Alsatian dog that had been chained up outside the garage. If it was still there, it would raise the alarm. Not wise.
He kept moving, constantly glancing back over his shoulder. Any moment now, he’d hear the yells and they’d be after him again, ready to beat him to the ground and stamp him into the dirt and dismember him, to chop him up into quivering pulp and torch whatever remained. Suddenly the full force of the realisation was hitting home. He truly understood now what it was that Alex Bishop had done to him. This was his destiny now: to be this abhorred, detested creature, spurned and condemned and hunted wherever he went. This was her parting gift to him.
As he dashed towards the village outskirts, he heard the chatter of a diesel engine and yellow headlights appeared around a bend. It was a battered old Nissan pickup truck with jacked suspension and snow chains that clanked and rattled against the road surface as it headed his way down the street. Joel ran straight towards it, waving his arms.
The pickup slowed, then slid to a juddering halt in the middle of the slippery road. Its roof and bonnet were thick with snow. Its wipers blinked away the white dusting on its windscreen.
Joel tore open the driver’s door. The fat-gutted guy in his fifties, wearing a baseball cap and a quilted bodywarmer, was alone in the vehicle. Joel grabbed his chubby arm, hauled him violently out of the cab and spilled him tumbling across the snow.
‘Sorry.’ Joel threw himself behind the wheel, crunched the truck into gear and stamped on the gas. The vehicle slewed violently around in a circle, the snow chains biting deep and throwing up a spray of mud and grit and slush.
The crowd had spotted him. In his rearview mirror he could make out the hobbling figure of Cosmina’s father leading them furiously down the street. At the old man’s side, the big guy with the beard was waving his flashing scimitar as he ran. Joel floored the accelerator and the diesel roared. The snow chains flailed and crunched against the icy ruts in the road. For a frightening instant the crowd seemed to loom large in the mirror and then he was accelerating away and leaving them in his wake. The ka-boom of a shotgun, and his wing mirror disintegrated. Houses flashed by as he sped through the village outskirts.
Then the last house was behind him, and he was alone again. Just him and the snowy road ahead, and the mountains, and the wild forest creatures that knew to stay away from him.
Joel drove on, and wept.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_1878d956-d028-564f-ac39-5c9b7f188f21)
London
Twelve hours’ worth of Solazal protection had only just been enough to get Alex safely home. She’d been watching the clock intently for the last couple of hours of her long journey, teeth on edge. Half a day was about the longest any vampire could expect to get out of one of the photosensitivity neutralisers. When the effects eventually wore off, which they had a habit of doing very suddenly, the spectacular results had once or twice over the last twenty-five years been mistaken by non-vampires as the rare phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion. These days, unsuspecting passersby witnessing the fiery demise of a careless vampire might be convinced that they’d come close to being engulfed by some kind of half-hearted incendiary suicide bombing.
Either way, it didn’t make for a very pleasant end for the vampire concerned. Alex was mightily relieved to see the sun sinking behind the London skyline as she finally made it to the door of her Canary Wharf apartment building and rode the lift to her penthouse.
Once inside, she grabbed a remote control from a table. At the touch of a button, thick blackout shutters whirred down to cover every one of the flat’s many large windows, blocking out the sunset glow that was settling across the river, and plunging the whole apartment into pitch darkness.
Safe. She sighed. This was how vampires had lived once, before the Federation had come along and introduced the whole new modern era that had so incensed the champions of the old ways. Alex, who’d been turned back in 1897, remembered the old ways and the old days very well – and in her more reflective moments, she had to admit privately that she’d never felt fully comfortable with the idea of popping pills to help her walk about in daylight. Someone else had put it more eloquently than she could:
‘To cheat the sun, embrace the night. Living dangerously, living free. To hunt, to feed like a real vampire, honouring our sacred heritage and a culture that had reached its pinnacle when human beings were still dragging their knuckles in the dust and grunting like apes.’
Those had been the words of the rebel vampire Gabriel Stone to her, just a couple of days earlier, when he’d been trying to recruit her to his crusade to bring down the heretical Federation forever. Alex had to confess they’d left a mark on her. She also had to confess she was beginning to run out of illusions when it came to the Federation that had employed her since its foundation in 1984.
Uncomfortable thoughts. ‘Back to work,’ she said to herself, and pressed another button on her remote, activating dim sidelights throughout the apartment. She fetched herself a glass of chilled blood from the kitchen – not quite the freshly-spilled article, but satisfying enough – then settled at her desk and fired up the laptop.
Vampires tended not to have a very active social life, so it wasn’t a surprise when only two emails landed in Alex’s inbox. The first was from Baxter Burnett. That was a surprise. She didn’t normally receive emails from movie stars. Baxter Burnett was currently raking in the millions, and getting slated by the critics in equal measure, for his role in the Hollywood schlock-horror, mega-budget Berserker franchise. Except that Baxter was no ordinary movie star: what his millions of adoring fans didn’t know was that he was also a vampire. His little secret was the reason that he and Alex, in her official capacity as a VIA agent tasked with keeping vampires in line with Federation regs, had had some recent dealings. As she recalled, things hadn’t ended too amicably.
She clicked on the email. The message was short, pithy and to the point:
Fuck you, Bishop!!!
Love, BB
‘Thanks for that, Baxter,’ she said, and then moved on to the other message. If anything, it was even less welcome than the first. Its sender, Ivo Donskoi, had been a Prussian army colonel back in the day, before he’d become responsible for hundreds of tortures and executions as part of the East German secret police; now he was personal assistant to none other than Olympia Angelopolis, the Vampress herself, at the Federation’s main HQ in Brussels.
‘What does he want?’ Alex groaned aloud as she opened the email.
Agent McCarthy reports from our field station in Prague that you are now en route to London. Be advised that Supremo Angelopolis has returned to Federation Headquarters. You are hereby requested and required to provide your full written account of recent events without delay on your return, to be sent directly and solely to this office. Failure to comply will result in the strictest penalties.
There was a lot to say in the report, and eleven o’clock had come and gone before Alex had finished typing it all up. The Vampress might not like everything that was in it, but she’d asked for a full account and that was what she’d get.
Alex emailed it back to Donskoi’s office, then got up from the desk and went over to put on some Satie piano music that had been popular around the turn of the twentieth century. Ever since she’d become a vampire, Alex had tended not to keep up with musical trends too much, and she normally found the Satie relaxing. But as she reclined on the sofa with her eyes shut, trying to let the tension ease from her muscles, she knew she didn’t feel safe here any more. As much as she loved the place, with its spacious rooms and views over the river, there was no way she could stay here. It was the first place Joel would come looking for her.
The phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. Alex flashed out an arm and grabbed it from the coffee table. She immediately recognised the crisp, efficient tones of Miss Queck, one of the admin staff at VIA’s London office. ‘Agent Bishop, your presence is required at base.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’ Queck ended the call.
‘Bitch,’ Alex said. She looked at her watch. If she moved fast, she could be at the office just after midnight. She sighed, then flipped herself up, catlike, from the sofa, scooped another remote and Utz McCarthy’s 9mm pistol from the side table and trotted up the polished aluminium spiral staircase that led to her bedroom. The floor-to-ceiling mirror at the far end of the room slid aside at the touch of a button on the remote. She strode through into the large hidden space beyond the glass.
The concealed weapons store was filled with racks of firearms of various shapes and sizes, mostly high-velocity semi-automatics compatible with the Nosferol-tipped rounds produced by the Federation munitions-manufacture division for its VIA personnel. Alex preferred something a little more potent than the standard issue: across one wall was the crowded work-bench where she prepared her own special handloaded cartridges for the massive .50 calibre Desert Eagle pistols she personally favoured for their unstoppable penetration and sheer knock-down power. Combined with the horrific effects of Nosferol on a vampire’s system, it made the pistols the most formidable weapon in her, or anyone’s, private arsenal.
Discarding Utz’s comparatively feeble 9mm on the bench, she took one of the matching Desert Eagles from their wall rack, snatched up a loaded magazine and rammed it into the grip. She slipped on her well-worn calfskin shoulder holster, clipped the pistol snugly into place against her left side, and headed back into the bedroom, using the remote to close up the weapons store behind her.
She selected a long suede coat from her wardrobe, put it on and looked at herself in the mirror. Fashionable without being too distinctive. In her job, it was important to blend into the human crowd – and the coat hid the gun perfectly. Alex nodded to herself and trotted back down the spiral staircase. She grabbed her handbag and VIA ID from the table in the hallway.
Sixty seconds later she was riding the lift down to the neon-lit underground car park. Her sleek black Jaguar XKR fired up with a throaty blast that echoed through the concrete cavern. She reversed hard out of her parking space, hit the gas and her tyres squealed as she sped up the ramp and out onto the deserted night street.
She cut westwards across the city. The VIA offices were twenty minutes’ drive with a human at the wheel. She’d be there much sooner.
Chapter Eight (#ulink_febae70c-82f0-58ff-86fe-77f4687d2c2b)
Wallingford
Around midnight
Once the strip of light under his bedroom door had gone dark and he could hear the rhythmic snores of his da through the wall, Dec crept out of bed. He was fully dressed again, though this time he’d had no intention of falling asleep that way.
He paced across the dark bedroom and, as quietly as he could, unzipped the sports bag that contained his prized new acquisition. After his visit to the Wallingford public library earlier that day, he’d driven straight to the computer superstore on the edge of town and picked out a shiny new laptop.
Nigh on four hundred quid, courtesy of Barclaycard. He’d worry about the payments later. If his ma and da found out what he’d done, they’d give him hell. But you couldn’t be a modern-day pro vampire hunter without your own state-of-the-art computer, and he was proud of his new piece of kit: the very first item – and by no means the last – in the inventory of Dec Maddon & Associates, Vampire Hunters Ltd. He didn’t know who the associates were going to be yet, but it had a good ring to it.
The second vital piece of equipment he’d acquired was the fifteen-year-old Audi parked outside in Lavender Close. On his return from the library that day, Dec had – with some difficulty – managed to persuade his da to loan him one of the knackered old runarounds the mechanics used at Maddon Auto Services until his VW Golf was back on the road. The Audi rattled like a tin can full of marbles and smoked like a factory stack, but it was wheels. Couldn’t hunt vampires without wheels.
Dec lifted the laptop out of his bag, laid it softly on his bed and pulled up a stool to sit on. He plugged in a pair of earphones before turning on the machine, angling the screen away from the door so its glow wouldn’t be seen from outside. Where the ancient library computers had struggled to download anything bigger than a few bytes, the fancy new machine zipped online with incredible speed. Dec googled up the URL for Errol Knightly’s website, www.theylurkamongstus. com, and clicked.
The screen momentarily blacked out, plunging the bedroom into darkness; then out of the blackness a pair of sinister red eyes materialised, staring at him. Dec swallowed, uncomfortably reminded of his nightmare.
Beneath the eyes, an animated line of script appeared in crimson font. Dec’s earphones filled with creepy, chilling music and a deep voice narrating the lines as they appeared in turn before dissolving away into a gleaming red pool.
THEY LURK . . .
THEY WAIT . . .
THEY WANT YOUR BLOOD . . .
AND THEY’LL COME FOR YOU . . .
TONIGHT
Dec’s jaw dropped open. He shuddered.
Then a hand landed on his shoulder and he almost fell off his stool. He whirled round, ready to let out a scream of terror.
He’d been so transfixed by the website that he hadn’t noticed his brother creep into the room. He tore off the earphones and flipped on his bedside lamp. ‘Christ, Cormac!’ he hissed furiously.
‘What’s this?’ Cormac demanded, pointing at the screen.
‘Shush. Keep your frigging voice down.’
‘Where did you get this computer? What are you doing?’
‘Fuck off,’ Dec rasped at him, shutting the lid of the laptop. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘Still going on about fuckin’ vampires, Dec? Is that why you’ve started wearing that cross again?’
‘They exist. They’re out there. And I’ve got to do something about them, so I have. Or else . . .’
‘Or else what?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ Dec said darkly, a quaver to his voice.
‘Catch yourself on, bro.’ Cormac jerked his chin at the curtained window, in the direction of the house next door. ‘Listen. I’m just as gutted about that poor wee girl as you are. But friggin’ vampires . . .?’ He shook his head. ‘You keep goin’ on about this stuff and Ma and Da are going to have your scrawny wee arse put away in the loony bin, so they are. Look at the state of you – big dark rings around your eyes like a friggin’ panda.’
Dec pointed a warning finger at him. ‘You’ve got no idea what’s happening, Cormac. None of you have.’ He snatched up the laptop and started bundling it back into his sports bag.
‘Where’d you get the dosh for that thing, anyway?’
‘None of your business,’ Dec muttered, slinging the bag over his shoulder and heading for the door.
Cormac stared after him. ‘Fuck d’you think you’re off to this time of night, wee man?’
‘Keep out of it, all right? I fucking mean it, Cormac.’
‘Right. Right. Steady, bro,’ Cormac said, backing off.
Dec tugged open the bedroom door and listened for a moment to the steady snores coming from his parents’ room. Satisfied that they were safely asleep, he padded down the stairs, let himself silently out of the back door and carried the sports bag to the Audi. He was watching his parents’ bedroom window as he started the rattly motor. No lights came on. He drove off.
On the edge of Wallingford was a quiet lane with a layby where truckers sometimes parked up overnight. The layby was empty. Dec pulled into it and killed the Audi’s engine.
He was definitely going to need a proper office. He didn’t think the credit card company would stump up for that though. Better start doing the lottery, and hope he’d more luck with it than his folks did. He slid across into the passenger seat, unzipped the sports bag and laid his laptop across his knees. Thankful that he’d paid that bit extra for mobile internet connection, he went back into Errol Knightly’s vampire hunter website. The inside of the car flickered with the glow from the screen as he clicked from page to page of the site.
‘Have you been feeling unwell?’ one section asked in bold capitals. ‘Lethargic? Not quite yourself? Having strange dreams? IF YOU THINK YOU MAY BE THE VICTIM OF A VAMPIRE, PERHAPS YOU ARE. Click here to find out how WE CAN HELP YOU or to order one of our special vampire protection kits. All major debit and credit cards accepted.’
‘This is so cool,’ Dec said out loud. Clicking open another page, he came across the video segments that he’d been unable to access on the public library computer. When he saw that one of them consisted of a recent satellite news channel interview with the man himself, he went straight to it and maximised the image to full size on the screen.
Errol Knightly was seated in a plush TV studio armchair across a low table from the pretty, rather elfin blonde interviewer. For effect, a lit candlestick stood on the table, next to a glossy hardback copy of Knightly’s bestseller They Lurk Amongst Us.
The star of the show was dressed all in black, with a large silver cross on a chain around his neck. He looked completely at ease and was flashing warm smiles at the interviewer.
‘Your book has been out a month and is quickly becoming one of the year’s literary phenon . . . phenomena,’ the pretty blonde said, glancing at her script, ‘with worldwide sales of over thirty thousand copies a day. How would you explain its appeal to so many people?’
Knightly’s smile grew even broader at the mention of his sales figures. ‘Because it’s all true,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘Vampires exist. They’re out there. And in our hearts, millions of us know it.’
‘Fuck, yes,’ Dec breathed, watching intently.
The pretty blonde looked about to move on to her next question, but Knightly graciously overrode her, producing a piece of paper from his black jacket.
‘This,’ he said, flourishing it, ‘is just one of thousands of letters my office receives, from ordinary people whose lives have been touched by these monsters. This lady – we’ll call her “Mrs Evans” – wrote to me to tell me of the sudden, tragic disappearance of her husband John, after forty years of happy marriage. Mr Evans went out for a walk with the dog one night. The dog came home, alone and in terror. John Evans hasn’t been seen again. Except,’ Knightly added darkly, ‘I’m sure he has been seen, by the innocent victims whose blood he has since feasted on.’
The blonde seemed to balk at his assertion. ‘You believe he—’
‘Became a vampire. Yes. I know he did. My extensive research indicates that, of the thousands of people who disappear mysteriously every year, a significant proportion end up as members of this unspeakable race we call the Undead.’
‘A significant proportion? How many people are we talking about?’
Knightly made an expansive gesture. ‘Of course, it would be foolish, and completely unscientific, to try to put a figure on it. The fact is that nobody knows. Potentially, I would estimate that it could be anything up to fifty per cent.’
‘Fifty per cent!’ Dec echoed, awestruck.
Knightly paused, his expression serious and earnest. ‘The historical records on this date back many centuries, you know. This is nothing new. It’s been happening all along, right in our midst, from ancient times until the present. Look at the Highgate Vampire, for example. From 1967 to 1983, this creature terrorised London, claiming young women and drinking their blood. This is proven fact, not fiction. And many hundreds of other cases like it have never been explained, until now.’ Knightly grabbed the book off the table and held it up for the camera.
Not taking his eyes off the screen, Dec touched the marks on his neck.
The pretty interviewer forced a smile. ‘Absolutely fascinating, Errol. I’m sure, though, that many viewers will still find this . . . well, a little hard to believe. What would you say to people at home who feel these stories of vampires are just a bit far-fetched?’
‘Wankers,’ Dec muttered – and then realised that, until just a couple of days ago, he would been one of the disbelieving wankers himself.
But Knightly retained his composure with polished cool. Replacing the book on the table, he leaned back in his seat and chuckled. ‘Everyone’s entitled to their personal view,’ he said, ‘if it helps to keep them in their comfort zone. I only hope and pray for their sakes – indeed, for their very souls – that they never find out the hard way that they were wrong. The good news is – and it is good news, believe me – that there are ways we can protect ourselves from these abominations, and help rid the world of the scourge of vampirism forever.’
‘In your book, you claim to have personally killed vampires,’ the interviewer said, making little attempt to hide her scepticism. ‘How many would you say you’ve killed?’
Dec scowled at her.
Knightly fingered the crucifix around his neck and looked grimly brave. ‘Destroyed, Kelly. We should remember that these things are already dead.’ He paused. ‘The actual number isn’t something I’d choose to dwell on.’
‘Fucking thousands of the bastards, I’ll bet,’ Dec muttered, blown away with excitement. What a discovery this Knightly was. If only Joel could have been here to watch this with him.
The interviewer shifted a little in her seat. ‘Lastly, Errol, I’m sure viewers would be interested to know what’s next for you?’
‘That’s a very interesting question, Kelly. In fact, I’m already working on my next book, Planet Vampire. But at the moment what I’m really excited about is something one of my contacts in Romania sent me only yesterday.’ Knightly paused a beat, then went on, half-addressing the camera. ‘I now have in my possession conclusive video evidence, not only that the Undead lurk amongst us, but that government departments know about them and, in fact, may have known about them for a long time.’
The interviewer looked stunned.
So did Dec.
‘The Romania video clearly shows recent footage of some kind of special agent or operative,’ Knightly continued, ‘sent on a mission to destroy a vampire. This person, whoever she is, was obviously equipped with some kind of special weapon that I believe has been secretly developed for just this purpose.’ He made a fist. ‘It’s my belief that our rulers are all too aware of this problem, and for that reason have created a secret department called the “Federation”.’
‘The Federation?’
‘That’s correct, Kelly. So much is clear from the footage. But the powers-that-be have been working hard to maintain public ignorance. It’s a conspiracy, and I intend to blow the lid right off. I have technicians working on the video clip as we speak. Within days it will be on my website for the world to see.’ Knightly turned to fully face the camera. ‘They-lurk-amongst-us-dot-com. You heard it here first.’
The video clip ended.
‘I have to talk to this guy.’ Dec clicked on the ‘contact’ tab on the site, and a page flashed up with a form to fill in and email. Typing clumsily by the dim overhead light, his fingers tripping over each other in his haste, he spilled out as much as he could: Kate’s unexplained disappearance from the morgue; her reappearance as a vampire; how she’d tried to turn him, and would have, if it hadn’t been for the cross wielded against her; the way she’d been reduced to cinders by its powers.
Lastly, Dec expressed his desire to become a vampire hunter. ‘If you can help me,’ he finished, ‘PLESE get in touch with me.’
He re-read his message a dozen times. It was messy, full of repetitions, and there was just too much stuff whirling around in his head to be able to get it all down. But the gist was there. If Knightly agreed to meet and talk, Dec would have the opportunity to tell him everything. He took a deep breath, then hit ‘send’ and launched his message into the ether.
It was done.
He was on his way.
Chapter Nine (#ulink_b4e9d4ab-27bf-5dcd-8eb0-b62dcf7d342f)
London
Just after midnight, Alex screeched the Jaguar to a halt in the parking lot of the imposing steel and glass building. Using her special night pass, she let herself in the main entrance, under the granite nameplate that said SCHUESSLER & SCHUESSLER LTD, and crossed the empty foyer to the lift. The bottom three floors were the domain of the large legal firm whose senior partners had no idea of the real nature of the company, Keiller Vyse Investments, that occupied the upper two levels. By definition, the world headquarters of VIA, the Federation’s Vampire Intelligence Agency, needed to keep itself strictly secret.
After passing through the security doors, Alex was greeted by the unsmiling, austere presence of Miss Queck in the reception area. Going through the routine retinal security scan, she felt – as she always did, but even more so tonight – that Queck was secretly dying to squeeze the trigger of the Nosferol-loaded pistol that was concealed beneath her desk in case of emergencies. A mean one, that Queck.
Walking inside the open-plan office space of the VIA nerve centre, Alex could almost taste the fear that hung so thickly in the air. Nervous faces turned from their computer terminals and wall-mounted screens. Utz McCarthy would have been quick to notify his superiors that Harry Rumble hadn’t made it back from Romania. These kinds of things spread pretty fast.
At the far end of the upper floor was a row of doors. The first led through to Alex’s own office; as she went to open it, she noticed the half-open door marked CHIEF OF OPERATIONS and walked inside with a twinge of sadness. Rumble’s cluttered desk hadn’t been cleared. Alex gazed at his empty chair, the leather of its seat worn to a polish by countless hours spent at his desk running VIA’s worldwide activities. Mounted on the wall above the desk was the crystal plaque engraved with the three principal laws of the Vampire Federation:
1. A vampire must never harm a human
2. A vampire must never turn a human
3. A vampire must never love a human
‘Yeah, and I know someone who’s broken all three,’ Alex murmured under her breath. If her superiors ever found out what she’d done, they’d waste no time. The rules were strict, and Alex knew all too well from her own experience how rigorously enforced they were. Somewhere inside the Federation main database, locked down under a mass of access codes, were the official statistics on exactly how many vampires had taken the one-way trip from the Federal detention centre to the infamous execution block. There, transgressors against Federation law were strapped in a titanium chair and given the lethal injection of Nosferol that exploded their blood vessels and ripped their bodies virtually inside out. VIA agents sometimes indulged in a little black humour about the place: Termination Row: where we make Undead things deader.
Alex had known the risk. And taken her chances willingly. If that made her a heretic, then so be it. She wondered where Joel was at that moment. It was hard to keep him out of her thoughts.
As she left Rumble’s office, Alex saw Jen Minto, Harry’s secretary, rushing over to talk to her. Her short blond hair was a mess and her face looked drawn. If she’d been a human, there would have been tears in her eyes. Alex had often suspected that Minto’s affections for Harry ran deeper than she’d admit.
‘Tell me it isn’t true,’ Minto said in a tight voice.
Alex shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Jen. Harry’s not coming back.’
Minto’s shoulders sagged and she put her hand over her face. ‘Was it quick?’ she murmured.
‘He never saw it coming,’ Alex said. It was no lie. For an instant she was reliving the scene again in her mind: the rapid whoosh of the sabre blade coming up behind him faster than Rumble could react, slicing horizontally through flesh and bone. The glint of animal triumph in Lillith’s eyes. The innocent surprise on Harry’s face as his head toppled to the floor and rolled towards Alex’s feet.
‘And Xavier Garrett?’ Minto asked urgently. ‘He was one of them?’
‘He was Stone’s inside guy all along,’ Alex told her.
‘Working right alongside Harry,’ Minto muttered in disgust. ‘The lousy bastard. To think we trusted him, all these years.’
Alex was about to reply when she heard a familiar voice and turned to see the tall, dark-haired figure of Cornelius Kelby, one of the VIA senior managerial officers, striding rapidly over in their direction. His tie was crooked, and like everyone else in the place he looked tired, strained and unfed.
‘So the rumours were right,’ Kelby said. ‘You made it. I’m so glad, Alex.’ He gave her a weary pat on the shoulder. ‘We’ve been waiting for you. We all have so many questions.’
‘It’s all in the report I emailed to Supremo Angelopolis earlier tonight,’ Alex said. ‘Eyes only. Special orders.’
‘Wow. Must be a hell of a report.’
‘Who’s in charge around here now?’ Alex asked.
‘I am,’ Kelby said. ‘I think.’ He took her elbow, guiding her away from the office doors and back down the corridor. ‘Come on. It’s just about to start.’
‘What’s just about to start?’
‘Emergency conference. We’re hooked up live to Brussels. The Vampress wants you to be a part of it.’
‘Me?’
‘You and she are the only survivors. Could be a big promotion in it for you, Alex.’
She gave a grim laugh. ‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’
As they headed towards the conference room, Kelby dug in his pocket and came out with a tube of Solazal pills. ‘In case you were getting low,’ he said, handing them to her. Alex took them gratefully.
Kelby showed her into the conference room. It was only the third or fourth time she’d ever been inside the place – lowly field agents were seldom granted the privilege of attending high-level meetings. There were a lot of empty seats at the long conference table, vacated by the members of the London VIA office who’d perished in Gabriel Stone’s recent helicopter attack.
The same sense of doom Alex had felt among the office staff hung over the remnants of the VIA top brass. She recognised most of the faces: there was Doug Slade, looking scruffier and more dissolute than ever. Despite his appearance, he was one of the most important vampires in the Federation, overseeing the Pharmaceutical Division’s global distribution of Solazal and Vambloc. Ironically, it had been the destruction of the Federation’s pharma plant in Italy that had kept him too busy to attend the ill-fated conference in Brussels. Other officials around the table included Nathaniel Creasy, Jarvis Jackson and the stern-looking, monocled Petronella Scragg, one of the directors of the Federation Treasury.
Another face Alex recognised, to her surprise, was that of Cecil Gibson. The gingery, rodent-like vampire was a field agent like her, somewhat further down the ranks and not too popular among the VIA personnel. Their paths had crossed a few times over the years. What he lacked in imagination and dynamism, he made up for with his plodding, by-the-book methodology and a particularly cloying way of brown-nosing his superiors. He’d just returned from a diplomatic mission to Athens, evidently managing to sit out the whole recent crisis in the safety of a hotel room.
Alex gave him a polite nod and wondered what an agent of his status could possibly be doing at this meeting. As Kelby showed her to a chair and sat down beside her, she hoped this wouldn’t take long. Her relationship with bureaucracy was about as healthy as that of a vampire with a speeding Nosferol bullet.
At the head of the room, overlooking the end of the long table, was a large flatscreen monitor. All eyes were turned expectantly towards it. Moments later, it flashed into life and Alex found herself faced, in pin-sharp high-definition, with the impressive white-robed, iron-haired figure she’d last seen fleeing from Gabriel Stone’s castle in Romania.
Olympia Angelopolis was regally poised on a large red velvet throne, deep in the safety of her Brussels HQ. Flanking her in the background, a pair of machine-gun-wielding vampire goons wore the crisp black uniforms of the Federal Armed National Guard, with the F.A.N.G. emblem on the breast pocket.
Everyone but Alex greeted their Supremo with enthusiastic applause. Olympia’s steely face melted for an instant. As the applause faded, she wiped away an imaginary tear.
‘My friends,’ she began. ‘Once again I must ask you all to offer a few moments’ silence in remembrance of those dear colleagues recently taken from us by the forces of evil.’ She bowed her head and closed her eyes. Everyone around the conference table immediately followed her example. After a beat, Alex impatiently did the same.
Only a few seconds passed before Olympia raised her head and gave a little cough to announce the silence was over. ‘By now I am sure that every Federation vampire is familiar with the terrible details of recent events,’ she said. ‘It was a horrendous moment for us all. I am not ashamed to admit that even I’ – the Supremo clapped a manicured hand to her bosom – ‘was frightened. Only my deep faith in the unshakable strength of the Federation sustained me through those hours.’
Alex smiled at the memory of the panic-stricken Olympia desperately trying to bribe her way out of trouble at any price as she and the helpless Supremos were being led away at swordpoint by their captors.
‘But we cannot afford to dwell on the past,’ Olympia went on firmly. ‘Let us now look to the future, to rebuilding our Federation into the veritable New World Order for our kind that it is destined to become.’ She paused, drawing breath as if the power of her own words had stunned even her into silence. A few awed murmurs rippled up and down the table. Alex’s lips remained tight.
‘We may have sustained some minor damage,’ Olympia continued, ‘but we are more resilient than our enemies suppose. Such contingencies, unthinkable as they may be, were foreseen from the very foundation of our organisation. I assure you, my friends, everything is under control.’
‘That’s the same line she spun us in Brussels,’ Alex whispered to Kelby, leaning close to his ear, ‘a couple of minutes before Stone’s helicopter blew the shit out of the place.’
The whisper might have been a fraction too loud. Petronella Scragg swivelled her long neck in Alex’s direction and gave her an icy stare. Olympia glowered momentarily from the screen, and then went on, waving a magnanimous hand in the direction of Doug Slade. ‘As we all know, our pharmaceutical plant in Italy was also destroyed by these cowardly terrorists. But thanks to the tireless efforts of Mr Slade, whom I am now promoting to the position of Director of Pharmaceuticals, the production of Solazal and Vambloc is expected to reach normal operating levels very shortly.’
‘One of our technicians came up with a new formula that halves the time it takes to complete the Solazal creation process,’ Slade explained laconically. ‘As for the new plant in Andorra, we have construction teams working night and day.’
Olympia smiled benevolently. ‘Excellent.’
‘But stocks are still dangerously low,’ Slade went on. ‘My department’s drafted a memo to all registered Federation members, recommending that everyone needs to ration their consumption and limit activities to after dark whenever possible. Of course, that means some vampires with day jobs may have to take time off work. Not much we can do about that, I’m afraid.’
‘The Federal Treasury is looking into reserving a special fund to compensate loss of income,’ Petronella Scragg said importantly.
‘Synergy,’ Olympia sighed, and linked her hands together. ‘Friends, this is what makes our Federation so special, so indomitable. We truly are a family.’
Everybody applauded again, except Alex, who was leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed.
‘The immediate threat is gone,’ Olympia said, motioning for silence. ‘Gabriel Stone and his followers have been defeated. But we must not be complacent. Moving forward, a major part of our reconstruction is to ensure that this never happens again. I therefore propose the creation of a special new task force, whose purpose will be to compile intelligence records on every single vampire suspected of having been linked, however loosely, to this rebellion. The task force will have unlimited powers of arrest and surveillance – putting cameras in their homes, if necessary – as a means of cleaning up any pockets of terrorist insurgents that may remain. Only by digging up the roots can we ensure that the weed never regrows.’
She turned to Alex. ‘Agent Bishop, apart from myself you are the sole survivor of the tragic recent events in Romania – making you the most senior VIA operative with direct experience of dealing with these Traditionalist rebels. For that reason, I am appointing you in charge of the new task force, with the rank of commander.’
All eyes turned towards Alex. Not everyone was smiling. Kelby nudged her elbow and flashed her a wink, as if to say, ‘See? Told you so.’
Alex said nothing.
‘In the wake of the annihilation of Gabriel Stone and his band of criminals, other misguided vampires may seek to follow in his footsteps. Your job from now on will be to make any renewed attack on the Federation an utter impossibility. To assist you in this role, I propose appointing Agent Gibson as your lieutenant.’
Alex fired a glance at Gibson across the table. Gibson must have seen her expression, as the broad smile at the news of his promotion quickly dropped off his face.
‘Do you accept this enormous responsibility we are entrusting you with?’
Alex maintained steady eye contact with the Vampress. ‘Before we go any further,’ she said, ‘I think it would be a mistake to assume that Gabriel Stone has been “annihilated”.’
Shocked silence reverberated around the table.
Olympia frowned darkly. ‘But in your report you state . . .’
‘My report states simply that I saw Stone and his second-in-command, Lillith, go over the castle battlements,’ Alex said. ‘It’s true, they’d taken a bad hit from the cross, especially Stone himself. But annihilated? I wouldn’t assume that they didn’t survive. Which means they still could be out there – and I don’t think Stone would give up his plans to bring down what’s left of us. I met him. I talked to him, face to face, and I can tell you that no vampire was ever more dedicated to their cause than him.’
She gazed steadily at each vampire around the table in turn. ‘And there’s something more. Supremo Angelopolis knows about it, because I included it in my report. But I wanted to make sure everyone here is aware of it.’ She gave a dry smile. ‘Just in case any information got accidentally overlooked.’
Olympia’s expression had hardened into granite. She raised a warning eyebrow. ‘That will be enough for now, Commander Bishop.’
‘They need to know,’ Alex said.
‘Need to know what, Alex?’ Kelby asked, frowning.
‘We all talk about Gabriel Stone’s rebellion,’ Alex said, ‘as if the whole thing had been his idea. It wasn’t. He was working for someone else. The uprising against the Federation was just the first step in a much greater plan, and that plan wasn’t devised by ordinary vampires.’
Olympia’s face loomed large onscreen as she stepped closer to her webcam with a look of thunder. ‘I am warning you, Commander.’
‘Gabriel Stone’s superiors, and the masterminds behind this whole thing, are the Übervampyr,’ Alex said.
The words seemed to suck all the air out of the room. There was a long, bewildered silence.
Nathaniel Creasy gasped. ‘But they don’t . . . really . . .’
‘. . . exist?’ Jarvis Jackson finished uncertainly.
‘The Über-what?’ Gibson said, looking confused.
Olympia slammed her fist on her desk, making the webcam shake. ‘Hearsay!’ she shouted. ‘You foolish child. Stone was just playing games with you, in order to frighten you. You will not believe these dangerous lies, nor will I allow you to promulgate them among your colleagues. Did you even see any of these alleged superiors of his?’
‘No,’ Alex said. ‘You know I didn’t. You were there in Romania.’
The Supremo’s face was quickly darkening to a shade of deep crimson. ‘Of course you didn’t,’ she screeched, the power of her voice overloading the monitor’s speakers. ‘Because the Übervampyr are a figment of myth and folklore. Hocuspocus and bogeyman tales from an age of superstition that has thankfully long since been abandoned in our modern, enlightened era.’
‘Like the myth of the cross of Ardaich?’ Alex said.
‘The cross that is now destroyed,’ Olympia spat. ‘It has been consigned to history where it belongs. As if it had never existed.’
‘If it had never existed,’ Alex replied, ‘your head would be in a basket about now, alongside the heads of the other Supremos Stone guillotined on the battlements. Or have you forgotten already?’
‘Enough!’ Olympia shrieked. ‘One more word from you, Bishop, and I will have you incarcerated and terminated as a traitor to the Federation.’
‘Ma’am,’ Kelby protested, getting to his feet. ‘With all due respect, Alex Bishop is no traitor. I believe she’s proved that enough times.’
Olympia glowered from the screen. She raised a finger. ‘This discussion is over,’ she seethed. ‘What you have heard today is not to leave this room. On pain of extermination. Is that absolutely clear to every single one of you?’
A rapid round of nods and ‘Yes, Ma’am’s around the table. Several of the vampires rose from their seats, looking disapprovingly at Alex.
‘And as for you, Bishop,’ Olympia said, ‘you are hereby demoted back to your former rank of field agent.’
Kelby rolled his eyes. Here we go again, his expression said.
‘I can’t be demoted,’ Alex said, ‘because I never accepted the position in the first place. I won’t have anything to do with putting spy cameras in the homes of Federation members. It isn’t right.’
‘Silence!’ Olympia shrieked even more loudly. ‘Count yourself lucky that I do not – for now – sanction your immediate termination.’ She turned to Gibson. ‘Commander Gibson, you are henceforth placed in charge of the special task force.’
Gibson’s face lit up.
Olympia clapped her hands sharply. ‘This conference is now officially concluded.’
The screen went dark.
Chapter Ten (#ulink_f4367678-e61f-5f98-a306-cfbbe0efe9dc)
Cell 282, Blackheath High Security Prison North York Moor, 15 miles south of Middlesbrough 1.09 a.m.
The only sounds Denny Morgan could hear as he lay in his bunk that night were the soft, rhythmic snores coming from Pete Tulleth in the bunk beneath him, and the tramp of the guards’ footsteps patrolling the corridors on the other side of the thick steel door. The cell was pitch black, except for the little barred square of dim moonlight from the single window.
Denny was still and his eyes were shut, but he was wide awake and his mind consumed by a state of furious brooding, unable to shut out the thoughts that had occupied him over the last few days.
Denny Morgan was a guy who knew what he liked: and he liked things always the same. Back when he’d been a free man, it had always been the same beer drunk with the same mates in the same pub, with the same tracks playing on the jukebox; the same Tandoori chicken dish from the same Indian take-away every Wednesday night; the same steak and chips on a Friday. That had always been his way, deriving comfort from routine, invariably bristling with resistance to change of any kind. So much so that, when his wife Mandy had come home one day with the long blond hair she’d had since the age of eighteen unexpectedly, shockingly cropped and dyed black, Denny had – quite justifiably, as far as he was concerned – beaten her to death with an empty beer bottle: Newcastle Brown Ale, his favourite.
Denny’s preference for a steady routine had adapted itself well to the prison life he’d now been living for eight years; and for the last two of those years, he’d shared cell 282 with a pair of other inmates he got along well with. Pete Tulleth was given to unbelievably malodorous bouts of flatulence, though he made up for it with his inexhaustible supply of jokes. Kev Doyle was a sombre and pensive man, didn’t say too much, but you could trust him with anything. Both of them steady, dependable blokes. For the last couple of years, Denny had been pretty content with the way things were.
Until the recent arrival of the cell’s fourth occupant had changed everything.
As infuriating and unacceptable as Denny considered it, it wasn’t just the violation of the established regime in cell 282 that he objected to most vehemently – it was the fact that, as both Pete and Kev concurred, this new guy whose presence had been imposed on them was a real fucking weirdo.
Denny opened his eyes and rolled his head to the left across the thin pillow. Eight feet away on the other side of the cell, the new guy was lying completely still on the opposite top bunk, with his HM Prison Service regulation bedclothes draped over him from head to toe, so all that could be seen was his silhouette in the dim moonlight. Denny could make out the shape of his hands crossed diagonally across his chest, palms flat over his shoulders.
The mad bastard had been lying like that all day. Never seemed to move. He didn’t speak, didn’t get up to take a piss, didn’t snore, barely even seemed to be breathing. It was like sharing a cell with a fucking reanimated corpse.
All that the other inmates of Blackheath knew about the new occupant of cell 282 was what they’d gleaned from the papers and the TV in the rec room, which was a fair amount. His murderous sword attack on the little parish church in Cornwall had been so widely reported by a scandalised British media that even the guys banged up in solitary confinement knew about it. Many of the inmates who were committed Christians, especially those who’d turned to religion in prison as a way of dealing with their past sins, were angry about the new guy. This ‘Ash’, this self-proclaimed ‘vampire’, with his fucked-up filed teeth and his strange ways, was neither liked nor trusted.
Denny Morgan was no Christian, but he was no less pissed off with the new arrival, and even more irate with the prison governors for having picked this, of all cells, to dump him in. Why did they have to put him in with us? he thought angrily to himself, glowering hard at the opposite bunk as if he could project his rage by telepathy. The shape under the covers didn’t flicker. Denny whispered it out loud: ‘Why did they have to put you in with us, eh, you fucking fucker?’
Nothing. The body on the opposite bunk remained deathly still.
What kind of a stupid name was ‘Ash’, anyway?
‘Fucking shithead weirdo,’ Denny muttered. ‘Vampire my arse.’ And closed his eyes again.
After a few minutes, his brooding indignation finally started to give way to sleepiness. His body relaxed into the bunk’s mattress, and his breathing fell into a soft and shallow rhythm. The corners of his mouth twitched as he slept. In his dreams, he was walking into his garage back home, slowly pulling back the tarpaulin to reveal the glittering chrome mag wheels and gleaming candy-red paintwork of the Dodge Viper underneath. His, all his. He was running his hands over the contours of its cool, smooth, waxed body. The key was in his pocket. Just him and this beauty and the open road. He could almost hear the growling note of the tuned V8 . . .
Denny’s eyes snapped open and a chill gripped his heart as he turned his head to stare again at the opposite bunk.
It was empty.
It was empty, because Ash had risen. In the pale square of moonlight from the window, Denny saw the tall, powerfully-built figure cross the narrow cell towards him and his heart began to flutter. He propped himself up on one elbow. ‘Oy! what you up to?’ he demanded in a hoarse whisper that had more of a quaver to it than he wanted to hear.
Ash stopped at the side of the bunk and cocked his head curiously, peering up at where Denny lay. He bared his sharpened teeth in a crooked smile.
The pair of prison guards patrolling the corridor were the first to respond to the unearthly, high-pitched screams emanating from cell 282. Their footsteps reverberated off the hard floors and bare white walls as they sprinted to the door with their extendable batons drawn and ready for action. The terrible screaming continued from inside the cell. One of the guards wrenched the ring of keys from his belt clip. The other turned on the external light switch beside the riveted steel door, flipped open the viewing hatch cover and tried to peer through.
‘Oh, my Christ,’ he groaned. The glass was smeared opaque with thick, bright blood. ‘Hurry.’ As his colleague frantically twisted the key in the lock, the screams were rising to a tortured wail of terror and agony that neither of the guards had ever heard before, not with over thirty-five years’ prison service experience between them. Bursting inside the cell, clutching their batons, they recoiled at the scene in front of them.
‘Oh, Jesus. No.’
The cell was rank with the hot stink of death. It looked as though it had been hosed down with blood. The floor swimming in it; the walls running; the crisp white HM Prison Service bed linen soaked and dripping with red.
In the spreading pool on the floor lay the broken corpses of Tulleth and Doyle. Tulleth’s head was twisted almost 180 degrees on his neck. He had no chin or lower teeth, because his jawbone had been torn out by the roots. Doyle’s brains were exposed, like grey-white cauliflower, through the shattered mess of his skull.
Denny Morgan was still alive, though only for a few seconds more. He was thrashing like a landed fish and screaming his lungs out, dark blood pumping and spraying everywhere. Most of his face had been pummelled beyond recognition. Both eyes gouged from their sockets.
From the centre of the cell, the fourth inmate of 282, the prisoner known as Ash, turned to gaze impassively at the guards. He looked as if he’d dived into a lake of blood, as if all he wanted in the world was to bathe and swim in it, smear it all over his body and feel its warm taste trickling down his throat. He regarded them for a moment with an expression of detachment, then quietly turned his attention to the thing he was clutching in his hand.
For a few moments, the guards could do nothing but gape dumbly at the scene – then one of them let out a yell of repulsion as he realised that the livid object trailing from Ash’s bloody fist, long and red and gleaming and quivering as if still alive, was the tongue that he’d ripped from Denny Morgan’s throat, along with most of his trachea and oesophagus.
As both men stared, Ash raised the meaty fistful to his mouth and ripped into it with his teeth. He sighed and smiled with pleasure, gobbets and veins dangling from his lips. Blood flowed down his neck, down his chest, splashing down into bright crimson pools on the floor that reflected the white neon striplights.
One of the guards tore the radio from his belt and found his voice. ‘Situation on Level 2. Get everybody up here now!’
Chapter Eleven (#ulink_82fac6ec-93a9-5452-bf97-669542045b1d)
Siberia
Deep in the icebound heart of the Russian province of Krasnoyarsk Krai, where the continuous winter blast kept temperatures well below minus forty Celsius, the barren wilderness of frozen lakes and tundra and snowy mountains stretched for a million square miles. Soon the polar night would descend, lasting from December through January, and the mining communities of Norilsk, the nearest human settlement and one of the coldest and most polluted cities on the planet, would see no sun at all for six long, dark weeks, temperatures plummeting towards minus sixty.
Out in the frozen wastes beyond the nickel mines, virtually nothing lived except for the polar bears and the few other wild animals that had evolved to withstand the harsh environment.
Or nothing, at any rate, that was known to the few humans who ever ventured there. When travellers vanished, as they fairly often did, it was generally assumed that they must have succumbed to the murderous cold, stumbled into a whiteout and frozen to death, or lost their way and slipped into a ravine.
Sometimes, that assumption was correct. Sometimes not.
Because other creatures lived here, too, unseen, underground. Creatures that had spent a very long time, and put a great deal of effort into, concealing their existence from the rest of the world.
For much of history they’d been down there, hidden from human eyes. At a time when Northern Asia had belonged to the Empire of the Huns, the creatures had already long since made it their home. A thousand years later, when Siberia had been conquered and occupied by the Mongol hordes, the hidden networks of tunnels and caverns deep beneath the ice had already been greatly expanded. Their occupants emerged to hunt only under cover of darkness, while it was safe for them to move. When they did, there were no witnesses. Nothing left behind that could have alerted anyone to their presence.
There had always been enough for them to feed on. Many nomadic tribes had wandered across the region through the ages, staying a while before being displaced by another: the Yakuts, the Uyghurs, and other Turkic peoples whose camps and villages made easy targets during the night when the humans were at their most vulnerable. The blood of countless victims had allowed the creatures to thrive and quietly go on building their lair under the ice, where the feeble Siberian sun never penetrated and night and day were all one. Now and then, they’d allow a human to turn, and gradually amassed a contingent of humanoid vampires: in ferior, bastard beings that the creatures despised and treated with contempt, but allowed to live among them as their servants and occasionally released into the world.
But reclusion was not the natural state of such an aggressively predatory race. It had never been their intention to remain permanently hidden in their lair: their leaders had long, long pored over their plans to broaden the extent of their realm – to extend it very far indeed.
They were in no hurry. When the time was right, they would strike. And the planet would change forever.
In the meantime with the passing of the centuries, the underground domain had grown into the vast subterranean citadel that now stretched nearly twelve square miles from east to west and plunged down further into the earth than the nickel mines of Norilsk.
It was inside one of those icy chambers, hundreds of yards beneath the surface, that three unusual visitors had come to the end of a long and difficult journey east. Only in these exceptional circumstances had they been allowed to enter the hallowed inner chambers of the citadel.
Two of the visitors were conscious and on their feet. Their names were Lillith and Zachary. They were vampires. Zachary was a huge figure, towering over Lillith. Many centuries earlier, in his native Abyssinia, he’d been a hunter famed for killing lions armed with only a spear. The lion-skin loincloth was a distant memory. Over a black silk shirt, he wore a tangerine-coloured suit that shimmered in the light of the ice walls.
Across the other side of the chamber stood Lillith, a raven-haired beauty in a red leather jumpsuit. Hanging from a belt around her slender waist, she still wore the empty steel scabbard of the sabre she’d lost back in Romania, before their trek eastwards. The shoulder of her jumpsuit was ripped from when their helicopter had come down in a blizzard, and her memory was fresh with the four days of hiding from the sun as they’d made their painful way a thousand miles across the deserts of ice. Finally, at the secret entrance to the underground citadel, they’d been met by the vampire servants who’d escorted them down here and told them to wait.
Lying inert on his back on a smooth, icy slab between Lillith and Zachary was the body of their leader, the vampire that Lillith called brother: Gabriel Stone. He was tall, slender and dark, and even in his state of deep unconsciousness he managed to look elegant and composed.
‘Is he going to make it?’ Zachary asked in his deep bass rumble, peering down worriedly at the still body. He’d asked that question so many times on the journey from Romania, carrying Gabriel’s limp form on his shoulder, that Lillith had stopped replying. She stepped to her brother’s side and ran her fingers down his cold cheek.
‘Come back to me, Gabriel,’ she murmured. She’d been there with him on the battlements when he’d been exposed to the force of the weapon the human Joel Solomon had carried into the castle. She remembered the way Gabriel had shielded her body with his, absorbing the lethal energy before they’d both hurled themselves over the edge of the battlements and gone tumbling down hundreds of yards to the rocks below.
Vampires could take a few knocks. Leaping from the top of a cliff had its risks but, as long as they didn’t smash themselves too irreparably, it was nothing they couldn’t survive. One thing they couldn’t take, though, was the devastating effect of the cross of Ardaich. Of all the ancient myths and legends within vampire folklore, that cross was the most dreaded, the darkest, its name the most quietly whispered. And it was also the most mysterious. Its origins, and the source of its power, had remained an enigma since the time the humans called the Dark Ages.
‘So badly hurt,’ she murmured, stroking Gabriel’s motionless arm.
‘If he doesn’t make it,’ Zachary said, ‘what are we going to do? I mean, we’ve followed him since . . .’ He frowned as he tried to put a figure on the years their band had been together. ‘Without him, we’re lost.’
‘He’ll make it,’ Lillith said. ‘He has to. They’ll help, surely they will.’
‘I sure hope you’re right.’ Zachary thought for a moment. ‘Those trips Gabriel made sometimes . . . all he’d say was that he was going east . . . days at a time. He was coming here, wasn’t he? They know him?’
Lillith nodded. ‘He’s been in contact with them a long time, learned many things from them. Once, years ago, he brought me here. That’s why I know some of their language.’
‘Just what are they, Lillith?’
‘I once asked Gabriel the same question. He told me it was better I didn’t know.’ She paused. ‘Our kind call them the Übervampyr. Many of us don’t believe they really exist.’
As the two of them stood there over Gabriel, strange forms became visible through the thick, rippled walls that had been sculpted in the ice. The figures were tall. Hooded and robed. Watching them.
‘They’re here,’ Lillith said. ‘Now listen, Zachary. These Übers aren’t like us. They’re not . . . humanoid.’
‘I ain’t either,’ Zachary said, not understanding.
Lillith shook her head. ‘You were human once, remember. They never were. Just be ready for what you’re about to see. And be careful. Don’t look them in the eye. It offends them.’
A portal opened in the icy wall, and several of the tall, strange figures entered the chamber. One drew close. Towering several inches above Zachary’s head, over seven feet in height, it reached up with its clawed, long-fingered hands and drew back the hood of its robe to reveal its face. The skull was tapered and bald, the ears long and pointed. Its skin was the colour of a washed-out winter sky, and so translucently thin that thousands of dark veins could be seen under its wrinkled surface.
Only a thing this hideous could have made Zachary turn pale and back off a step.
Lillith found it hard to tell the Übervampyr apart from their strange, horrible facial features – but she knew from his robes that this was one of the Masters that Gabriel had told her about.
When he spoke, his voice made Zachary back off another step. The ancient language was rasping and guttural. ‘My name is Master Xenrai-Ÿazh.’
‘That is one ugly mother,’ Zachary muttered.
Lillith shot him a furious glare, then turned to address the Übervampyr, bowing her head and avoiding eye contact. ‘It’s an honour, Master. Gabriel has often spoken of you.’
‘I have known Gabriel a very long time,’ the Master said. ‘In our language we call him Krajzok: “the young one”.’
‘I’m afraid for him. He’s been very badly hurt. The cross—’
The Master raised his long, thin hand, silencing her. ‘Yes. Our servants have already informed us of what happened. Of course, you fear for Gabriel. But you must leave him now. He is to be taken from here.’
‘What’s he say?’ Zachary asked, keeping his eyes low.
Lillith ignored him. ‘Taken where?’ she asked, frowning.
‘To the heart of the citadel,’ the Master said, ‘to a place where none of your kind may normally enter.’
‘Are you going to help him? We brought him here in the hope that you could save him.’
‘We have the means to restore him. The cross’s power was not fully expended on him.’
‘Then you have to make him better.’
The Master was quiet for a moment. ‘It is not so simple. The Grand Council is convening.’
Lillith didn’t want to show her irritation, but it was hard to disguise. ‘Gabriel is slipping away and all you can do is hold a meeting?’
‘It is about Gabriel that we must talk,’ he said. ‘Only once the Council has made its decision can we act.’
‘I don’t understand. What decision?’
‘Gabriel is to be placed on trial. If found innocent, he will be spared. If guilty, then according to our custom, he will be executed. I am sorry.’
Lillith was unable to avoid staring straight into the Master’s dark, inscrutable eyes. ‘Guilty of what?’ she demanded. ‘How can this be? What trial?’
The Übervampyr made no reply. At a wave of his clawed hand, six vampire servants marched into the chamber. Four of them lifted up the ice slab on which Gabriel lay. The other two drew long, curved swords from their belts and pointed them at Lillith and Zachary.
‘Something tells me this ain’t going too well,’ Zachary rumbled.
The Master motioned to the four slab-bearers. ‘To the Hall of Judgement,’ he ordered.
Chapter Twelve (#ulink_e9beb89e-7b16-558b-83eb-2ed052b03e78)
Romania
The sleet had given way to a mist of icy drizzle that blanketed the hills and forests as Joel drove the stolen pickup truck through the night. With every mile that passed, he kept glancing at the sinking fuel gauge. The only thing that terrified him more than being stranded in the middle of nowhere, lost, penniless and alone, was the horror of being caught in the open by the rising sun. He kept thinking he could see the first red glow of dawn on the dark eastern horizon.
‘Relax,’ he muttered out loud over the beat of the windscreen wipers. ‘You’ve got hours yet. Everything’s fine.’
Yeah, he thought bitterly. You’re a vampire now, and everything’s just fucking fine.
After the endless empty roads, a sweeping stretch of lights in the distance told him he was approaching a town. He was suddenly gripped with terror at the thought of entering such a dangerous alien environment. Humans would be everywhere. But he fought the urge to shy away from the town, and gripped the steering wheel tightly as he joined the thickening flow of night-time traffic. He was growing dizzy with hunger. He needed to eat. No, not to eat. To feed. The thought made him feel sick.
Driving by the illuminated windows of an all-night supermarket on the edge of town, Joel swerved into the little car park next to it and pulled up in the shadows. There was only a smattering of other vehicles in the car park, and he figured that some of those must belong to the staff.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/scott-g-mariani-2/the-cross/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Scott G. Mariani
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Ужасы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: When an ancient cross is discovered in Eastern Europe it becomes a powerful weapon in the war between the trads and the Vampire Federation – but soon, the world is threatened by its discovery…