Authors: Scott G. Mariani
‘Sick how?’
‘Some kinda fever. But this was no ordinary fever. Guys were getting nightmares, talking about getting visited in the night in their bunks. And getting sicker every night. Had these puncture wounds on their necks. Right here. Ship’s doc said it was mosquito bites. I mean, mosquitoes in fuckin’ fur coats?’
‘Go on,’ Alex said, frowning.
‘From what Paulie and Vinnie could make out, a chopper came and took the cargo away before they even got to port. Now the ship’s still in the docks. Captain wants to head home, but two of the crew are missing and the rest won’t get back on board ‘cause they say the ship’s cursed.’
‘Missing?’ Greg said.
‘Gone. And you know which crew members it was? The ones who were sickest from the bites. One minute they’re lying raving in bed, next they’ve upped and walked. Sounds like you know what.’
Alex said, ‘I think I need to talk to these sailors.’
Rudi smiled. ‘Beat you to it. Paulie told Vinnie to tell ‘em that there’s this woman who deals with this kind of shit, a real expert. They wanna meet you, tonight, at the dock. Said they found something.’
‘Found what?’
Rudi shrugged. ‘Whatever it is, sounds like a heavy deal.’ He plucked a slip of paper out of his shirt and handed it to her. ‘RV’s all set up. Details are on here.’
Alex studied the paper. There was just the ship’s name, the number of the dock, and the time. ‘Midnight tonight,’ she read out loud.
‘I think it’s gonna be worth your while,’ Rudi said. ‘Now let’s go eat. My Brasato al Barolo don’t wait for nobody.’
Lavender Close, Wallingford
Joel’s grandfather had always told him that even though vampires could theoretically come out of their lairs any time after dark, they preferred to wait until later in the evening when the humans were quiet and restful. And when they didn’t kill their victims outright, they always returned for more.
‘You must have totally lost it, Solomon,’ Joel muttered to himself. For an instant it hit him how completely mad this was. Here he was, lurking behind the garden shed in the back of a nice middle-class suburban property at half past ten at night. Spaced out from lack of sleep, pins and needles crippling his legs after almost an hour of crouching there, and his nose beginning to run from the chill, damp air.
Thinking about vampires.
Suddenly, the whole thing seemed so absurd to him that he wanted to leave. What if somebody caught him here? A Detective Inspector, hanging about like a pervert in the dark, peering up at a seventeen-year-old girl’s bedroom window. Not the best PR for the Thames Valley force, and certainly not an ideal career prospect for him.
But still he lingered there, fighting back the doubts, willing himself to endure the cramps and the cold.
He wished his grandfather were here with him. Joel had been thinking about him a lot recently. And here he was, following in his footsteps after all these years. Or trying to. The old man might have known what to do. Joel wasn’t sure he had the first idea.
By quarter to eleven, the downstairs lights in the neighbouring houses were beginning to go off, and the upstairs lights were coming on. Curtains were being drawn, blurred figures were moving about behind the frosted glass of bathroom windows. Showers showering, teeth being brushed, the respectable middle-class inhabitants of Lavender Close pulling on their cosy pyjamas and perfume-scented nighties and getting into their warm beds, blissfully unaware of the night creeper in their midst.
And perhaps unaware of other things too. Things too strange and terrible to contemplate in this nice, safe, cosseted middle-class world.
By five past eleven, Joel was feeling desperately uncomfortable. This was plain ridiculous.
No it’s not,
said the voice in his mind. She has bites on her neck. She can’t stand the sunlight. She’s lying about the party. Something’s happened to her.
She’s theirs.
And they’ll be back for her.
The houses became dark. Joel had to blow into his hands and rub them together to keep them from going numb with cold. He settled into a position that was as close to comfortable as he could make it, sitting in the dirt with his legs wedged up against the shed wall and his back to the fence. More time passed. His mind wandered. His eyelids were heavy. He felt them close, jerked them open. Felt them falling inexorably shut again…and then he was drifting through the void of sleep.
‘You can trust Rudi Bertolino,’ Alex was saying to Rumble on her phone. She was standing on the kerbside a few yards from The Last Bite, watching the St James’s Street traffic roar by. ‘He’s always come through for me, you know that.’
‘It’s not that I don’t trust your informant,’ Rumble said. ‘I just don’t like mysteries. And with all the rogue activity that’s been going on I don’t want you going in there alone with a rookie agent.’
‘I’m on the clock here, Harry. Who’ve you got in the area?’
A pause, and she could hear Rumble clicking laptop keys in his quiet office. ‘Okay. I’m sending Mundhra and Becker. They’ll meet you at the RV point.’
‘Copy that. You’re a star, Harry.’ Alex flipped her phone shut. ‘Rumble’s sending the troops in,’ she said to Greg. ‘Let’s get back to the car.’
The Jaguar was parked up a sidestreet, less than two minutes’ walk away. They headed up past Davidoff cigars and the Beretta boutique, a quiet stretch of street between the crowds around Rudi’s place and the hustle of Piccadilly. What seemed to be a pile of rags was lying on a doorstep. As they walked by, Alex saw it was a young homeless woman. The coat draped over her sleeping form was full of holes, and all her possessions were stuffed into a Tesco shopping bag next to her. Her hands and face looked emaciated, already prematurely aged from the life on the streets. Alex halted and gazed down at her.
‘You’re not going to…’ Greg said.
‘Feed from her?’ Alex shook her head. ‘They’re easy, but most of them are too messed up with alcohol and drugs. Bad blood.’ She sighed. ‘No, I was just thinking how I almost feel sad for humans sometimes. Look at her.’
They walked on, and turned into the sidestreet where the Jag was parked. They were within twenty yards of it when three youths stepped out of a shadowy doorway and came right up to them, blocking the pavement.
Alex sized them up. They weren’t asking for directions. The leader was the gangly white kid in the middle. He was grinning at her through a straggly moustache, and the matted dreadlocks plastered over his ears made him look like a spaniel. He reached into the pocket of his hoodie. Alex followed the movement and saw the cheap kitchen knife flash in his hand.
‘Evening, folks. Let’s have your money.’ He ran his eye appreciatively up and down Alex’s figure. His gaze settled on the Tag Heuer watch on her wrist. His grin widened. ‘That’s a grand’s worth of watch the rich bitch is wearing,’ he said to his cronies.
Alex turned to Greg. ‘Now these specimens, on the other hand, I don’t have too much sympathy for.’
‘Shut the fuck up and give me your fucking
money!’
Alex looked at him levelly. ‘I don’t think so, Dog Boy.’
‘What did you call me?’
‘You’re going to look really funny with that knife sticking out of your arse.’
Dog Boy wagged the knife in Alex’s face. ‘I’ll fucking kill you, bitch.’
‘Too late,’ she said, looking impassively at the blade. ‘I’m already dead.’
‘Wha—’
Before he could say any more, Alex had whipped the knife out of his hand and sent him flying over the bonnet of a parked Range Rover. As he scrambled desperately to his feet, his two friends turned and took to their heels.
‘Not so fast, Dog Boy.’ Alex grabbed him by his dreadlocks, picked him clear off the ground with one hand and held him there so that his feet flailed in mid-air. Ignoring his frantic struggles, she turned to Greg. ‘Here’s your opportunity.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you
think
I mean? It’s time.’
Greg looked pained. ‘What, here?’
‘This is how it works, Greg. We’ve been doing it this way for thousands of years. Just watch me, okay?’ She could feel her fangs fully extended, pressing against her lips as she moved in close to the mugger’s neck. He smelled unwashed, but all her senses were tuned into the blood pulsing just under his skin, in the canals of his veins. Throbbing. Luscious. Life-giving.
He squirmed and squealed like a trapped rat as her bite punctured his flesh. A few moments of delicious, gasping, teasing anticipation, more than erotic in its intensity, before the blood began to flow. Then she sucked and the warm juice was running over her tongue, trickling down her throat. She held him tight and sucked harder. It had been a long time since her last proper feed. Already she could feel her strength returning as she drank in the human’s life energy.
She drank until she felt the mugger’s body going limp in her grip, then pulled away with an effort. She wiped the blood off her lips, shoved him into Greg’s hands. ‘Now it’s your turn.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You have to. Do what I did. It’s easy.’
‘It’s pretty horrible.’
‘It’s as natural as swimming is to a shark, Greg. You need to learn, or you’re not going to make it.’
‘I know. But some other time, okay?’
Alex sighed. ‘Fine. Prop him up against the wall there.’ She dropped down on her haunches, took the syringe of Vambloc from its case and jabbed it into the human’s neck. He twitched, then slumped sideways and his head hit the pavement.
‘Now we’re good to go,’ she said.
The Jag was just up the street.
‘I’ve let you down, haven’t I?’ Greg muttered as they climbed into the car.
‘Forget it.’ Alex took off, pulled out into St James’s and left snakes of rubber on the road heading up the hill towards Piccadilly.
When Joel opened his eyes again, he realised with a start that he’d been sleeping. His clothes felt clammy and his body was suddenly racked with violent shivering. It was beginning to rain. He groaned at the time on his watch. How could he have been—?
At that moment, he saw something move on Kate’s balcony.
He froze. His heart stopped, then began to pound rapidly.
The figure was barely visible in the darkness. He watched it creep to the edge of the balcony. Heard the tiny snick of the latch as it closed the French window of the girl’s room behind it. It paused for a second at the balcony rail, then in one fluid movement, almost faster than Joel’s eye could follow, it leapt effortlessly over the rail and dropped down into the garden with barely a sound.
Joel was rooted to the spot, terrified to move or even breathe. In that instant, all his childhood fears came flooding back. For seconds that seemed like hours, he was paralysed. It took a supreme effort to force himself to crawl to the edge of the shed so that he could watch the figure make its way across the dark garden.
Through the mist he could see it was a tall man, dressed in black, walking calmly, purposefully, towards the back gate and the little passageway that wound between the rear gardens of the houses.
Joel scrambled to his feet. He staggered out from behind the shed, heart thumping so loudly he was sure the man would hear it from twenty-five yards away. The rain was steadily becoming heavier as he stepped out into the passageway in time to see the shadowy figure disappear round the corner, already fifty yards ahead, walking fast. Joel broke into a jog. Rounding the corner he spotted the man again.
His innards squirmed.
Was this even a man he was following?
He swallowed back his terror and broke into a run. Maybe it was the most insane thing he’d done in his life, but there was no stopping now.
‘Armed police officer!’ The words burst out of his lungs, and there was no masking the shrill note of fear in his voice. ‘Stop where you are. You’re surrounded.’
The figure halted in the shadows, then turned slowly around to look at him.
The rain was pouring now. Joel couldn’t make out the man’s face, but he could feel the gaze on him, penetrating him to the core, making him feel utterly naked and vulnerable.
And somehow he knew what it was thinking.
You’re all alone, human.
It stepped towards him. The face still in shadow, but Joel thought he saw a smile appear on its lips. It took another step.
Joel blinked the rain out of his eyes. Swallowed hard. His mind scrambled desperately. Searching back twenty years. What would his grandfather have done in this moment?
‘The cross,’ he shouted. ‘I have it. The cross…’ Joel felt his blood icing up as he struggled to remember. He almost bit off his own tongue as it came to him.’…of Ardaich!’
The figure stiffened. The head cocked imperceptibly to one side.
‘I have it,’ Joel said again, mustering up all the strength he could put into his voice. ‘It’s here. I have the cross, vampire.’
And the thing suddenly turned and ran, its light footsteps echoing in the passage. Joel stood there for a moment, rooted, then sprinted after it. Now he knew what he was chasing, and it was more than he could bear – but he closed his mind and ran on, harder. The passage twisted left, then right, then opened up into the street. The figure moved like an Olympic champion. It vaulted over a wall, crossing a children’s play area in three bounding strides. Joel could see an exotic sports car parked up ahead under the dim streetlights. The futuristic gull-wing doors opened, and the figure clambered inside. The engine fired up with an aggressive rasp, and the car took off, wheels spinning on the wet road.
Joel recognised it. A McLaren F1. Just about the fastest production car ever built, a machine he’d never seen before in real life. It made a sound like a Formula One racing car as it screamed away, slaloming at high speed through the vehicles parked in the narrow street. Snatching a glimpse of the registration number, Joel committed it to memory.