Authors: Scott G. Mariani
The car was almost out of sight when he spotted a single motorcycle headlight coming the other way. The McLaren bore down on it, forcing the rider to swerve. The bike mounted the kerb, hit a patch of grass and skidded sideways. The rider tumbled into the gutter and the machine slid across the pavement with a grinding of metal. Joel broke into a run. The rider was struggling to his feet by the time he reached him, flipping up his rain-spotted visor.
‘You all right?’
‘The bastard ran me off the road!’
‘I saw. Listen, police emergency. I need your bike.’ Before the rider could stutter a reply, Joel had bent down and grasped the bars of the fallen bike. It was a sports model, a Yamaha R1. Fast. Not nearly as fast as a thoroughbred race car, but he still had a chance.
The Yamaha’s engine was still ticking over. Joel heaved the machine upright with a grunt of effort. Threw his leg over and hammered it into gear, opened the throttle wide and dumped the clutch. The front end lifted off the ground and he hung on tight as the bike accelerated manically away up the street after the disappearing McLaren. With no helmet, the wind roar was deafening. The raindrops were like bullets of ice. It felt as if they could tear his face off. But the pain didn’t matter. All that mattered were the McLaren’s taillights. Joel screamed after them, head down behind the machine’s skimpy Perspex screen, nailing the throttle wide open and his speedometer reading a hundred and forty miles an hour as he blasted out of Wallingford into the dark country roads.
Within a minute, Joel was riding faster than he’d ever done in his life. It was all he could do to keep the Yamaha between the hedges – and still the McLaren was losing him.
Voices resonated in Joel’s head.
This is madness. You’re going to kill yourself.
And if you catch him. Then what? This is no ordinary criminal. This is a…
Vampire. Joel couldn’t bring himself to say it, not even in his thoughts.
The McLaren hurtled onwards, steadily increasing the distance between itself and the speeding motorbike. A series of bends came swooping up, almost faster than Joel could react. He threw his weight across the saddle, dragging the machine down into a crazy leaning angle as he sliced into the first left-hander; then, just as he’d made it through that one, he had to hurl the bike over to the right, the road flashing by just inches from his body. Out of the bends and straight on with the gas. Wheelspin at over a hundred miles an hour into the blinding rain.
Joel knew he couldn’t keep this level of concentration up much longer. He was going to crash.
Village signs flashed by faster than he could read them. At a hundred and sixty miles an hour the narrow little street was an amber-lit tunnel. The McLaren was moving even faster. Suddenly, a van pulled out of a sidestreet and started turning in the narrow road. The sports car braked hard, swerved to avoid it and spun wildly. It smashed through a garden fence, sending up a shower of torn planking and jagged splinters, then went careening across a lawn before it rejoined the road.
Joel saw he’d gained precious seconds on his quarry – but in the same instant he was almost on the van as it kept turning out across his path. There was no time to brake. He aimed the bike at the rapidly narrowing gap between the van’s front wing and the wall of the house opposite. For a terrifying fraction of a second he thought he was going to hit it, go smashing right through the brickwork like a missile and end up as a pile of dead meat in someone’s living room. He tucked in his knees and elbows, ducked in low behind the dials, and then somehow he was safely through the gap and roaring onwards up the street after the frenziedly accelerating McLaren.
They were heading towards the outer limits of the village now. A roadsign whipped by, almost too fast for Joel to register that there was a level crossing coming up ahead. Warning beacons were flashing, a bell was ringing. The barriers were down, blocking the road. Beyond the barriers was the clattering rumble of a train streaking by.
The McLaren’s brake lights blazed red as it screeched to a halt. The vampire was trapped. The only sidestreet was blocked by a sprawl of building works that stretched from the roadside to the edge of the tracks: Portacabins, tall heaped piles of sand and gravel, cement mixers.
Joel suddenly found himself gaining fast on the car. His heart began to flutter. The chase might be over but the danger was only just beginning. As he shut the throttle and let the bike decelerate, he was imagining the car door opening. The driver getting out. Immortal. Unstoppable.
And no fool. It would know just from the look on his face that he’d been bluffing, he didn’t have some mythical cross on him. Then what? He didn’t want to imagine what would happen next.
But the car door didn’t open. The McLaren seemed to hesitate for just an instant, then its engine rasped and it slewed round in a tight circle and came right for him.
Joel hit the front brake – too hard. The wheel lost traction on the wet road, and with a sickening lurch he felt the front end go out from underneath him. The crash seemed to happen in slow motion. He felt himself sailing through the air. A grunt exploded from his lungs as he hit the ground. The bike slid on its side, sparks showering up from the tarmac. The blinding car headlights sped towards him.
Joel put out his hand just as the car seemed about to run him over.
It didn’t happen. Fifteen yards from where he lay sprawled on the wet road, the McLaren skidded into a handbrake turn. Fire crackled in its exhaust muzzles and smoke poured from the wheel arches as it accelerated frenetically back in the direction of the moving train.
Joel held his breath in anticipation of the devastating impact. But just a few yards short of the level crossing barrier the McLaren veered off course. It aimed at the building works near the tracks and hit the tall sand pile at more than eighty miles an hour. Its engine revs screamed as it took off like an aircraft, and with a huge cloud of sand in its wake it sailed straight over the top of the barriers and cleared the roof of the train by inches. He heard the
crump
and the squeal and bounce of tyres as it hit the road on the other side. Then it was gone.
Seconds later, the train had passed by and Joel could see the car’s taillights disappearing up the dark country road into the distance.
He struggled to his feet, wiping the grit from his grazed, bloodied hands.
The level crossing barriers were beginning to rise. With all his remaining strength, Joel wrenched the fallen Yamaha upright – then saw the left handlebar hanging uselessly from its shattered yoke, the broken clutch lever, the hydraulic fluid leaking all over the road. He yelled in rage and let the damaged bike topple over with a crash.
It was three minutes to midnight. He started limping back up the road the way he’d come.
Two minutes to midnight, and claws of mist were groping in from the river as Alex and Greg walked along the deserted quays of the London docks. To their left stood rows of storage units in varying states of repair, and the dark water gurgled against the quayside on their right. The hulls of vast ships bobbed slowly on the swell and cast heavy shadows on the concrete. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. Across the water, the lights of new docklands residential developments were haloed in the mist.
‘You’re pissed off with me, aren’t you?’
Alex said nothing.
‘I can tell. Because of what happened earlier.’
‘I’m not pissed off with you. I’m worried about you. You can’t keep holding out like this, living on vampire baby food. Rudi’s right. You’re going to have to cross the bridge. Otherwise—’
‘I’ll die?’
‘No, you won’t die. You can’t die. What’ll happen to you is a lot worse than death. You’ll wither. You’ll become trapped in a twilight world that you’ll never be able to escape from. A wraith is what you’ll be.’
He looked down at his feet as they walked. ‘Is it normal? I mean, do other people, I mean, vampires, do they—’
‘Have trouble adapting to it?’ She nodded. ‘Some. It happens.’
‘What was it like for you? The first time?’
‘It was easy,’ she said.
‘I shouldn’t have asked. Sorry.’
‘It’s okay. I don’t mind talking about it. It was easy for me because I wanted revenge.’
‘Revenge?’
She paused, took a breath. ‘When I was twenty-nine, I was engaged to someone. His name was William. The only man I ever loved. He was an artist.’ She sighed. ‘One night he was walking across Hampstead Heath when three men robbed him and knifed him. He managed to stagger home, but by the time I was called it was too late. He died in my arms. Nothing I could do except hold him until he was gone.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I used to walk out across the Heath at night afterwards. I’d go to the spot where it happened, sit there for hours. I didn’t even care if I got murdered. As it turned out, someone did get me. But it wasn’t a murderer. And I wanted it to happen. Because that was the only way I could get back at the men who’d killed William. It didn’t take me long to find them. And they paid.
That
was my first time. 1897.’
‘You still miss William?’ Greg asked after a beat.
‘Yeah, I do miss him.’
‘A hundred and thirteen years is a long time to grieve.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, it’s a very long time,’ she said quietly. ‘A lot has changed. I was Alexandra then.’
‘That’s a nice name.’
‘She was a nice person. I miss her too, sometimes.’ Alex was going to say more, then stopped.
They walked on a few yards in silence.
‘So…you aren’t seeing anyone right now?’ Greg asked.
Alex looked at him curiously.
‘I mean, do you live alone, or what?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Are you by any chance hitting on me, Agent Shriver?’
‘You have a really great smile.’
‘I’m not smiling.’
‘Yes, you are. You were just then. See, there you go again.’
‘Definitely not smiling.’
They’d walked a long way from the car. The angular shape of a cargo ship loomed up over them, hardly moving on the swell, just a slight sway of its towering superstructure as the water lapped and splashed against its long, rusted hull. The white stencilled lettering on the vessel’s bows spelt out
Anica.
‘That’s our ship,’ Alex said. Her watch read after midnight. ‘But no sailors.’
A sound from the shadows of the storage units made her turn suddenly. Her face tightened, then she recognised the VIA agents as they approached. ‘Becker. Mundhra.’
‘It’s been a while,’ Mundhra said.
Alex nodded. ‘This is Agent Shriver,’ she said, motioning at Greg. ‘Looks like we’ve been stood up. They were supposed to meet us here four minutes ago.’
‘Rumble’s gonna be pissed off,’ Becker said.
‘Maybe they went on board,’ Mundhra suggested.
‘They were too scared to,’ Greg replied. ‘That’s what we were told, anyway.’
Becker grinned. ‘Scared of what? Anyone tell them they were RVing with four vampires out here?’
‘Fuck it, I’m not standing here waiting all night,’ Alex said. ‘Let’s check out the vessel. Whatever these guys wanted to show us, we can find ourselves.’
They boarded the
Anica
via a creaky gangway. Most of the ship’s length was empty deck, as long and broad as a football field, littered with stacks of oil drums and debris and coils of thick rope, battered steel shipping containers scattered here and there. The superstructure rose up like a dark tower block. Not a single window was lit up. The vessel was like a ghost ship. Alex led the team up clattering steps to a wire mesh walkway high above the water. Through an open hatch, and they found themselves wandering through dark, narrow passages that twisted left and right through the bowels of the ship.
‘You would think there’d be someone on board,’ Greg said. ‘Everything’s been left open.’ Alex didn’t reply, but she’d been thinking the same thing. After a few more turns and a few more open hatchways, they came to a deserted canteen with plastic chairs and tables.
‘Someone was here,’ Mundhra said, pointing at the half-eaten food on plates on one of the tables. A chair was overturned. ‘And left in a hurry,’ he added.
‘We’ll keep looking,’ Alex said.
On the next level down, they could hear the echoey creaking of the ship’s hull. It seemed almost alive, breathing, like being inside the belly of a giant whale. Pipes and ducts snaked along the grimy metal walls and low ceilings.
‘I can smell something,’ Alex murmured. She followed her nose a little way further. Put her left hand out and gently pushed open a hatch marked ‘STORAGE’ as she silently drew her pistol with her right.
Then Greg could smell it too, and experience told him what it was. If he’d still been a human, he’d have been puking out his guts.
They’d found the ship’s crew. And until someone found another for hire, the
Anica
wasn’t leaving the Port of London in a hurry.
Dim light streamed into the room through a single porthole. The ship’s crew had been using the place as a dump for scrap – a burnt-out winch motor, bits of old chain and cable, piles of rusty bolts, lengths of scaffold pipe.
But it wasn’t the heaped junk that Alex was looking at. The storage room looked as if it had been hosed down in blood. Gallons of blood. The walls were caked with dried purple-brown swirls of it. Pools had collected in the hollows of the floor, some of the larger ones still wet and congealing. The floor was scattered with body parts so torn and mutilated that it was hard to tell what some of them were. Those that were still recognisable as human arms and legs, heads and pieces of torso, were pale and shrivelled, almost mummified.
‘They were drained,’ Alex said. ‘Probably while they were still alive. Then whoever did this tore them apart.’ She stepped over a half-eaten ribcage. ‘There are five, maybe six men here. I’m guessing these are the guys we thought we were here to meet.’
Greg was about to say something when the claustrophobic space around them was filled with blasting noise.