Authors: Scott G. Mariani
He’s getting away.
But there was one chance. Thirty yards downriver, an iron footbridge spanned the water. Finch had almost reached it.
Joel threw himself into a fast sprint through the long grass. He reached the footbridge and propelled himself up the clanking metal steps four at a time. Raced across until he was right over the water, and looked down over the rail just in time to see the prow of the rowing boat emerge from under the bridge, and the top of Finch’s bald skull gleaming with exertion. Joel clambered over the rail. It was a ten-foot drop. If he delayed half a second too long, he’d hit the water in the boat’s wake and there would be no hope of catching Finch as he rowed frenetically away.
Joel launched himself into space.
The boat and its occupant rushed up to meet him with frightening speed. Joel had timed it right. He landed squarely on top of Finch with an impact that almost knocked the wind out of him. But the man was too powerful an adversary to give him even a split second’s chance to recover from the shock. Joel pummelled his face and head with blows. Felt his knuckles smashing in the cartilage of his nose. Blood sprayed. Finch lashed out with his fist and caught Joel above the eye. Joel fell back in the boat. Finch roared up onto his feet and came at him with a stamping kick that would have crushed his ribs if it had landed. Joel twisted out of the way just in time, and Finch’s boot almost crashed through the bottom of the boat. The ferocity of his kick rocked the little vessel violently. Finch lost his footing and fell with a splash into the water.
Joel dived straight in after him, gasping at the shock of the cold water. He resurfaced to see Finch just two feet away, white foam boiling around him and turning rapidly pink as he struggled back towards the boat. Joel grabbed the bald man brutally by the ears and headbutted him. And again. Finch’s eyes blazed in a mask of blood.
Joel was too terrified to hesitate even for a moment. He punched him three, four, five times in the face, numb to the blows the bald man was landing on him in return. Pain was something to worry about later. He dug his fingers into Finch’s collar, plunged his head under the water and held him there. Finch’s strong hands thrashed underwater, lashed punches at his stomach, grasped for his wrists. Joel gritted his teeth and used every ounce of his strength to keep him under. The man’s head twisted from side to side and Joel could see his bared teeth as he tried to tear into him like an animal.
Ten seconds. Twenty. Bubbles erupted to the surface as Finch flailed wildly for air. Joel hit him again and kept him down. The water was clouded pink around them.
It was a full minute before Finch’s struggles had diminished to nothing. Joel let him go and watched the inert body bobbing on the swell.
The rowing boat had drifted in towards the bank. Joel kicked out towards it, reached up over the side and felt in the bottom. It was half full of water, and, to his horror, his raking fingers found the notebook almost completely submerged. He splashed away from the boat, holding his grandfather’s work clear of the surface, and hauled himself up the bank by fistfuls of reeds. He collapsed on his knees on dry land, spluttering and coughing and feverishly checking the pages of the notebook. It was soaked and bloody.
He heard voices.
Two young women were approaching down the towpath on the opposite side of the river, accompanied by a little girl who was playing on a portable computer game as she walked. Joel pressed himself flat among the rushes and waited breathlessly for them to pass by. They had only to glance to their right, and they’d see Finch’s corpse drifting face-down, spreadeagled in the water, turning a slow horizontal cartwheel as the current eased him away downstream. It was just pure luck that the women were too deep in conversation, and the child too engrossed with her electronic gizmo, for them to spot him floating past.
When they were at a safe distance, Joel let out a long wheezing sigh of relief and shakily got to his feet. Only then did he begin to realise the kind of shit he was in. It wasn’t enough that he was suspended from duty for harassing and assaulting an innocent man. Now he’d shot that same man in his own home with an illegal handgun, then killed him in broad daylight with his bare hands.
He made it back to his flat without meeting anyone in the street. Safely inside, he carefully laid the soaking wet notebook over the bathroom radiator to dry as he stripped off his dripping, mud-smeared clothes and blasted away the filth and blood under a hot shower.
He knew he couldn’t stay here. Once the sun had gone down and Finch’s vampire master realised his servant wasn’t coming back, Joel would be vulnerable to a far worse visitor than any mortal man. He couldn’t fight them. He was going to have to run and hide, and figure out his next move.
‘You see, Joel, of all the things a vampire fears, this one cross is what they dread most. And the person who wields it – well, that person is the most powerful enemy those monsters have in all the world.’
He could only hope that the old man hadn’t just been clinging to some old myth.
But where to start searching for this mythical cross of Ardaich? Such clues as the notebook offered gave him precious little to go on.
He couldn’t do this on his own.
Someone had said they could help him. Now it was time to call her.
‘Remember me?’ he’d said on the phone earlier that afternoon.
‘The belligerent police inspector,’ she’d replied. ‘Funny, I was just thinking about you.’
‘Can we meet? I need to talk to you.’
‘Can you come to London?’
‘I’m kind of at a loose end for a while. I can go anywhere.’
‘I live in Canary Wharf. Take down this address.’
That was how, just after three in the afternoon, Joel came to be standing inside the luxurious glass lift in his motorcycle leathers, heading for the top floor of the expensive apartment building overlooking the river.
What kind of journalist must this Alex Bishop be, he wondered to himself. You’d have to be rolling in money to live in a place like this. His own meagre police salary wouldn’t buy him a broom cupboard here.
The lift doors glided open and he stepped out into an airy landing filled with exotic plants and the scent of flowers. In one hand he was carrying his crash helmet, in the other the holdall that he’d hurriedly packed full of clothes before escaping from his place in Jericho. He had no idea when he’d be able to return there.
The sweeping view across London was breathtaking. He paused for a moment, gazing out through the tall windows. Rays of late autumn sunlight shone brightly through the glass roof.
‘Hello again,’ said her voice behind him. He turned to see her leaning casually in her doorway. She was wearing faded jeans and a chunky roll-neck kimono-style woollen jumper. Her auburn hair caught the sunlight.
A few seconds went by before he realised he was staring at her.
‘What’s the holdall for?’ she asked with a smile, noticing the bag at his feet. ‘Going somewhere?’
‘Right now, I have no idea where I’m going,’ he said. ‘A lot of it depends on you.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’
‘You said you could help me. Here I am.’
‘Then you’d better come in.’
The penthouse apartment was even bigger than he’d imagined. Joel’s place could have fitted inside it four or five times over. He felt self-conscious as he trudged across her plush carpet in his heavy bike boots, worried about setting down the holdall in case it had road dirt on it after being strapped to the back of the bike. But she didn’t seem to mind. While she disappeared into the kitchen to get them drinks, he settled nervously in a creamy leather armchair and looked around him at the pictures on the walls. Taste and style were commodities that Alex Bishop seemed to have in abundance, alongside the money to enjoy them.
She returned with a tray, laid two heavy cups filled with foamy cappuccino on a glass-topped table, and curled up in the armchair facing him.
Joel took a sip of the coffee. It was the best he’d ever tasted.
‘I’m glad to see you again, Inspector,’ she said.
‘It’s Joel. And I wasn’t kidding. I really do need your help.’
‘This has something to do with the boy in the hospital?’
He nodded.
‘I thought so. How is he?’
‘He’s fine. But there’s more. A lot more.’
‘Are we talking about vampires, Joel?’
He hesitated before saying, ‘Yes, we are.’
‘There’s something I have to tell you, Joel. Before we go any further. I haven’t been completely honest with you.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning there are things about me I’ve been hiding from you. I’m not really a journalist.’
‘I didn’t think so, seeing this place.’
‘I’m kind of an investigator,’ she went on.
‘Private detective?’
She laughed. ‘Put it this way. It’s not humans I investigate. My interest is in the paranormal.’
‘Ghosts and spirits?’
‘Vampires, Joel.’
‘You believe in them.’
‘I ought to. Let me tell you a story. Eight years ago, my elder sister fell very ill. The doctors were baffled. Pernicious anaemia, they thought. She had all the tests, but they couldn’t find anything. But I noticed something strange. Something nobody seemed to take seriously.’
‘The bite marks?’
She nodded. ‘I knew what was happening. I hid in my sister’s room one night. I saw him visit her. Drinking her blood. I couldn’t do anything to stop him. The next day, I told my family. They thought I was crazy.’
‘I know the feeling,’ Joel said. ‘What happened to your sister?’
‘She died.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘And then she came back. As one of them.’ Alex paused, and sorrow misted her eyes for a moment before she continued. ‘I finished her. Ever since that day, I’ve dedicated myself to researching everything I could find out about these creatures.’
Joel didn’t speak. Couldn’t say a word. Sitting there in this luxurious environment, he was suddenly transported back to that dark place.
She was watching him keenly. ‘You’ve had a similar experience,’ she said. ‘I can tell from the look in your eyes. That’s why you were so quick to believe the boy’s story.’
Joel met her steady gaze. ‘It’s all true,’ he said. ‘Dec Maddon saw vampires. And I know where they are. When I find what I’m looking for, I’m going to go back there and destroy them all. That’s where you come in. I think I need your help to find it.’
Alex sipped her coffee. ‘What is it you’re looking for?’
Joel didn’t reply right away. He stood up, went over to his holdall, unzipped a side pocket and took out his grandfather’s notebook.
‘The thing I’m looking for is described in here. It’s called the cross of Ardaich.’
With a sudden crash, the coffee cup fell from Alex’s fingers and landed on the table in front of her.
The glass top shattered with the impact. Jagged shards and spattering coffee rained down onto the carpet. Alex’s eyes had opened wide and she was suddenly pale; then she quickly regained her composure. ‘Shit, look what I’ve done.’ She dropped down to her knees and started picking up the pieces of glass.
‘Let me help,’ Joel said. He quickly stuffed the notebook in his pocket and crouched down beside her.
‘I have a dustpan and brush in the kitchen,’ Alex said. She hurried away to fetch them while Joel carried on gathering up the bits of glass, fishing out the long, pointed shards first before moving on to the small slivers that glistened everywhere on the carpet.
As Alex returned from the kitchen, he glanced up at her. For a moment he found himself thinking how good she looked – and that moment’s lapse of concentration was enough for him to gash his finger on a razor edge of broken glass. He drew his hand away. The blood was oozing out rapidly. ‘Damn. I’m dripping on your carpet. Where’s the bathroom?’
She didn’t reply for a moment, and he noticed the way she was gazing fixedly at his bleeding finger, a peculiar look in her eyes. Maybe she was squeamish, he thought.
‘Oh…yes, sorry,’ she said, collecting herself. ‘Through there. Are you okay?’
‘It’s just a nick,’ he replied as he walked to the bathroom door, cupping his other hand under the cut finger to avoid leaving a trail of red splashes across the floor.
He cursed himself for his stupidity as he washed away the blood at the washbasin in her plush bathroom. As he wrapped his finger up with his handkerchief, he couldn’t resist glancing round the room. In his experience, women’s bathrooms, however big, always seemed to be cluttered with an extensive and mysterious arsenal of beauty products, soaps and gels, shampoos and hair accessories, and to reek of perfumes and lotions. But Alex Bishop’s bathroom looked as though it had never been used. He shrugged. In a place this size, she probably had her own en suite.
When he rejoined her in the living room, she’d finished gathering up the glass and was mopping up the coffee stains from the carpet.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how I managed to do that. The cup just slipped.’
He wagged his bandaged finger. ‘We’re both clumsy, then.’ His grandfather’s notebook was lying on the armchair he’d been sitting on. He picked it up and slipped it in his pocket.
‘Let’s go outside. I fancy a breath of air, don’t you?’ She led him through the sliding door that led out onto the balcony, where a table and two chairs overlooked the view of the river.
‘Anyway, about the cross…’ he said tentatively.
Alex’s face tensed a little at the mention of it. ‘How did you hear about that?’
‘Is it true? It really exists?’
She nodded solemnly. ‘But it was supposed to have been lost, a long time ago.’
‘That’s what my grandfather said, too.’
‘Your grandfather?’
‘Let me start at the beginning,’ he said.
As they sat there in the pale afternoon sunlight and Alex listened intently with her eyes fixed on his, her hair blowing in the breeze, her chin cupped in her hand, Joel told her everything…