Thicker Than Blood (Marchwood Vampire Series #2) (4 page)

‘
We can’t involve the
police,’ Leonora said, stroking Ben’s hair. ‘We’re vampires. It
will raise too much suspicion and things might get very
awkward.’

‘
I don’t care if things
get awkward,’ Ben replied. ‘I just want my sister back.’

‘
Don’t worry, Ben,’
Alexandre said. ‘You’ll get your sister back. I promise you now
you’ll get her back. I would never let anything happen to
her.’

They were in the kitchen, standing around
the scrubbed pine table, the back door to the utility room wide
open, letting in the freezing night air.

‘
I think this is something
to do with Blythe,’ Alexandre said.

‘
The solicitor who tried
to kill you?’ Ben asked.

‘
Why would he take Maddy
after all this time?’ Isobel said.

‘
I thought all that was
over,’ Jacques added.

‘
Why would it be over?’
Alexandre replied. ‘Blythe told us his clients didn’t tolerate
fledgling vampires. That they wanted us dead. That hasn’t
changed.’

‘
But you killed them
all.’

‘
I killed a lot of them, but I
don’t know if they
all
perished. And you’re forgetting about the one that got away
- the Cappadocian vampire who turned me. He’s still out there
somewhere and I’ve a feeling he’s the most powerful of them all.’
Alexandre hadn’t let himself think too much about the Cappadocian
vampire who had changed his life forever all those years
ago.

Back in the nineteenth century, Alexandre
had been a young man with his human life ahead of him, but he and
his friends and family had been attacked by blood-drinking demons,
and the creatures had killed his parents. It had been terrifying, a
nightmare from which he thought he would never wake. And when he
finally did wake, he had become … this.

‘
But if Blythe’s vampire
clients have got Maddy, how are you going to get her away from
them?’ Ben was becoming hysterical.

‘
Shhh,’ Leonora said. ‘We
still don’t know this is even the case. Alexandre is just guessing.
There might be a more simple explanation.’

‘
It will be easier if we
split up,’ Alexandre said. ‘That way we can cover more ground. We
have to find her before daybreak. Ben, you wait here and call us if
she arrives home.’

‘
I’m not waiting around
while you’re all out …’

‘
Ben,’ said Freddie, ‘we
can cover more ground than you. It makes more sense for us to
go.’

‘
But I can go too. I can
take the bike …’

‘
You have to stay here in
case she comes back. We’ll need to know if she shows up
here.’

‘
I’ll stay here with you,
Ben,’ Leonora said.

‘
Fine.’ He looked like he
was going to cry.

‘
It’ll be okay, Ben,’
Alexandre said. ‘Do you doubt me?’

Ben looked at Alex.

‘
Do you?’

‘
No. But you’d better keep
your promise. She’s my sister. She can’t be …’ His voice
cracked.

‘
Sshhh,’ Isobel said.
‘We’ll find her.’

*

If Maddy’s disappearance
was
Winston Blythe’s
doing, he would have arranged for her to be taken to London, maybe
to his offices in Marylebone. So she would probably be heading east
towards the capital. Alexandre stood on an iron motorway bridge
watching the eastbound traffic below, trying to see if he could
sense her in any of the speeding vehicles, their blurred red tail
lights like blood trails. He caught the chatter of children, the
banter of youths heading for a night out, the companionable silence
of couples and the music of a thousand radio stations. But no
Madison. She wasn’t there.

Something was niggling
Alexandre. There was a memory he couldn’t quite grasp, but he knew
it was important. It was something to do with the smell in his
nostrils, but he couldn’t think clearly. He was too angry and
scared. This danger which dogged him – it meant Maddy had never
been safe,
would
never be safe. If only he hadn’t been so complacent. He
should have sought out Blythe and put an end to this a long time
ago. It was his own stupid fault. He gripped the metal rail in
front of him and savoured the icy burn against his fingers. When
he’d been human, such cold would have been painful, stripping the
skin and seizing up his joints. Now it felt like a sharp pleasing
tingle, clearing his mind and giving him a jolt.

Suddenly he knew what the lingering scent in
his nostrils was. It was warm milk and cocoa – hot chocolate! That
man who had talked to Madison, he’d had a stain on the arm of his
coat. It was hot chocolate! How could he not have noticed that at
the time? He was such an imbecile. Alexandre leapt off the bridge
and onto the central reservation below. The traffic roared past
him, but he ran across to the hard shoulder without interrupting
its flow. Alexandre was sure now that the man had lied to him about
not seeing her again. Maddy had gone to buy hot chocolate and the
man had hot chocolate on his coat, which meant something must have
happened between them.

Alexandre almost flew back to the cathedral.
It was silent now. No skaters, no music, no lights, only a dull
glow from the ice rink where a sliver of crescent moon shone down.
The arches of the cloisters surrounded him like dark gaping mouths.
He slowly retraced his steps from the rink towards the café. The
alleyway was deserted apart from a small black and white cat which
darted away into the shadows.

A few vehicles remained in the car park.
Alexandre stopped. Something caught his eye. From a couple of
hundred yards away it looked like some random trash on the ground,
but Alexandre knew what it was. He crossed the space in less than a
second and knelt down to pick up the cardboard tray. Ben’s
chocolate flake lay squashed into a frozen puddle of milky
chocolate. So Maddy had made it back this far and then something
had happened. Someone had made her drop the drinks. It was
something to do with that man. Alexandre remembered the car, the
blue Audi. He would find it and he would question the man. He would
rip his arms from their sockets if he needed to.

He searched the area using his vampiric
senses of scent and sound, moving quickly, unseen, almost
spirit-like through the dark city. He found the Audi in the grounds
of a disused warehouse at Gloucester Docks. The car was still
smouldering, a burnt out shell, the number plates removed. But it
was the same make, model and colour. Too much of a coincidence for
it to be anyone else’s vehicle. Alexandre wanted to yell out in
frustration. He wanted to find that man and throttle him until he
could no longer breathe. He was a damn good actor whoever he was.
When he’d questioned him earlier, Alex hadn’t detected any
duplicity in his answers.

What could he do? What use was this immortal
life if he could not protect the one he loved? How could he bear it
if she was gone forever? It would destroy him more thoroughly than
the sun ever could. It would obliterate him. But he couldn’t let
his mind wander down such desolate paths. He must continue to act.
He would locate his love and kill whoever was responsible.

But dawn was only about an hour
away and Alexandre couldn’t believe he would soon be powerless to
act, impeded by daylight, his mortal enemy. He had to find
Madison
now
,
but how? The man was gone, a shadow. The car had been his only
link. Alexandre was out of ideas. The obvious thing would be to go
and confront Blythe but there wasn’t enough time. The sun would
soon be here. And Blythe’s offices in Marylebone were lethal for
vampires with all that UV installed throughout the building. No. He
would have to visit the solicitor at his personal residence. He
would do it tonight.

Chapter Five

Cappadocia 571 AD

*

Aelia awoke to darkness and hunger. She
glanced about the unfamiliar gloom. This was not the room she
shared with her sisters. This was somewhere else. Then she
remembered everything and her empty stomach lurched. Had it all
really happened?

The windows were shuttered making it
impossible to tell whether morning had arrived yet. But it must not
be far away, for the darkness was not absolute. No one sat at the
table and no one lay on either of the other straw pallets. It
appeared she was alone. This realisation made her a little less
terrified and she closed her eyes again, trying not to think about
what the day could bring.

‘
There is a little bread
and cheese if you want it.’

The voice made her jump and her eyes snapped
open. One of the women was sitting on the end of her pallet,
staring at her. Aelia instantly drew her knees up. How had she not
noticed her before?

‘
I would eat if I were
you. You may not get the chance later.’

‘
Thank you,’ Aelia
whispered.

The woman pointed to a covered platter on
the table.

‘
Take what you want,’ the
woman said.

Aelia stood and shook the creases from her
clothes. She had slept in her head-cloth and now attempted to
straighten it. Her mouth tasted stale and dry.

‘
Please may I have some
water?’

The woman pointed to an urn and some cups
resting on a ledge on the wall. Aelia walked across the room,
lifted the heavy urn and tipped it towards one of the cups. She
misjudged the angle and splashed water onto the ledge and
floor.

‘
Oh! I’m sorry,’ Aelia
said, feeling like she wanted to cry.

‘
That
is not something you need to be sorry
about,’ the woman replied.

‘
Shall I mop it up? Do you
have a cloth?’

‘
Leave it. Sit.
Eat.’

The door swung open and a sharp flood of
light swept into the dwelling. The other woman entered.

‘
It is time,’ the woman
said.

‘
Better eat quickly,’ the
first woman said to Aelia. ‘We leave now.’

Aelia gulped down her cup of lukewarm water,
tore off a chunk of bread and stuffed it into her mouth. At the
women’s beckoning, she followed them out of the door and into the
hot morning.

Yesterday, she had taken little heed of her
surroundings, but now she saw they were in a little side-alley
which she did not recognise. That was nothing strange, as she was
only familiar with the immediate vicinity of her dwelling and the
well-worn route to the stream. Aelia was never supposed to leave
her house unaccompanied. It was only during these last few weeks
that she had felt a pull from outside, a need to be away from the
claustrophobic confines of her house and village. She wished she
had ignored those rebellious feelings, for look where they had led
her.

The two women resumed their positions from
yesterday and stood either side of her, gripping her upper arms.
They looked straight ahead and began walking while Aelia stumbled
along in between them, their black robes swirling about her. She
chewed her mouthful of dry bread, trying not to choke, wishing they
had offered her a little oil to moisten it. Where were they going?
Were they taking her home? Probably not.

They emerged from the quiet alley into a
wider lane and Aelia couldn’t help but notice everyone staring. She
recognised a few faces, but today they were either hostile or
embarrassed. She saw those she had played with as a young child,
those she had laughed and run and teased and argued with, but they
had no words for her now. No morsels of comfort or smiles of
reassurance.

Then she briefly locked eyes with one of her
father’s friends. He came often to their house to chat or to
purchase pottery from her father’s studio. When she was younger, he
had ruffled her hair with twinkling eyes and pinched her soft
cheeks. But the look he threw her today, almost made her stagger
backwards as if he had struck her, for it was a stare of pure
hatred and loathing. Aelia took a breath and told herself she did
not care that they showed her the other side of their faces today,
for hadn’t Lysus told her not to worry. He would make things right.
He had to.

Her two escorts paid no heed to the stares
or the taunts, but marched relentlessly forward. By now, a small
crowd followed them. She felt a sharp stinging pain at the back of
her head and realised someone had thrown a stone at her. The two
women stopped and turned. They shouted at a group of young boys who
laughed and made no move to leave. As her keepers resumed their
walk, Aelia cringed, expecting more stones to strike her. It was an
awful feeling. Everything was spiralling out of control. Her calm
and peaceful existence was disintegrating into fear and
uncertainty.

They were approaching the village square. A
long trestle table had been erected and behind it sat Praetor
Garidas and three other village elders. A space had been left clear
in front of the trestle, but all around, the whole village was
gathered and people had now begun to notice her. Aelia’s cheeks
flamed and she felt light headed. The women hoisted her up between
them, as her knees gave way.

The mood of the crowd was one
of tension and expectancy. What were they going to witness here
today? Aelia didn’t know either. As soon as she set foot in the
square, the noise level erupted. The sun beat down on her covered
head and she thought she would faint with the terror of it all.
This crowd was here for
her
. She was the cause of this gathering. It was like a
terrible, terrible nightmare.