Malcolm regarded Lazarus, whose impatience was only minimally tinctured with interest in the narrative. Malcolm spoke faster. “The struggle, it seemed, had pitted a homeless person against one of Mina’s Irish companions.”
“How could you tell that in the dark?”
“It wasn’t completely lightless—the struggling figures had happened to grapple under the meager glow of a sewer grate. I could tell from the slurry sounds of one man’s voice and the wretched state of his clothing that he was an indigent. The other’s thick Irish brogue—much thicker than Mina’s—marked him as part of her group.”
Malcolm’s heartbeat began to accelerate as he recalled the scene. “There was a struggle, but it was brief and over in a few seconds. The Irish boy, for he could have been no older than twenty, had the homeless man pinned against the bottom of the tunnel. Most of the homeless man’s body was plunged beneath the noxious slop that filled the bottom eighteen inches or so of the tunnel, but his face and arms were up and imploring the Irish boy to stop hurting him, to let him go.” Malcolm looked at Lazarus. “The Irish boy did not let him go.”
Malcolm said, “There was a sound like someone twisting apart a head of lettuce; that was the man’s spine. Then there arose the vilest slurping noises one might imagine. That was the Irish boy feasting on the homeless man’s carotid artery. I could see, beyond Mina’s beguiling form, how the eyes of the Irish boy glowed orange as he chewed and guzzled at the man’s neck. Had I run then, who knows what might have happened? They probably would’ve killed me.” He examined his quivering hands. “Perhaps that would have been better.”
Lazarus tapped his wrist. “Time.”
Malcolm nodded. “The homeless man’s convulsions became more sporadic, but the flow of blood remained constant. It wasn’t long before the unthinkable occurred, though now I understand how blind I’d been not to see it coming.”
“Let me guess,” Lazarus said. “Mina drank too.”
“She joined in lustily, her supple tongue lapping at the man’s blood like some child gulping water from a summer hose. I had no idea how long that went on until my knees threatened to give way and I nearly toppled sideways into the muck. I didn’t go down—perhaps my fear was too great to allow a complete loss of consciousness—but my flailing limbs did splash the sewage loudly enough to alert the vampires of my presence.
“They looked up at me.
“I had no frame of reference for the Irish boy’s appearance, but he was a macabre, bestial sight. Eyes lambent and orange, as if lit from within by infernal hellfire. Nose gone batlike, so the nostrils faced me like two narrow caves. The mouth was a snarl of fangs and scraps of the hobo’s flesh. The hair framing that ghoulish face resembled an arch of tangled black wires, though these too dripped with the homeless man’s blood.
“But none of this compared to the horror of beholding Mina as a vampire.”
Malcolm caught himself wringing his hands and made himself stop. He owed it to Lazarus to get through this story and share with him whatever he could about that awful night. He doubted it would help matters, but Lazarus was adept at storing away information and recalling it when it was needed.
“I threw out my hands, pleading with Mina to spare me. For that was what I saw writ on her twisted features—pure, unadulterated murder. I know you will find this difficult to believe, Lazarus, but even as I beheld her in that primal, vampiric state, there remained a part of me that was aroused at the sight of her. At the blood slicking her heaving chest. At the parted teeth, the flicking tongue within.”
Lazarus tilted his head. “You really think I find that hard to believe? You’ll be ogling nurses on your deathbed.”
“I took several involuntary steps away from Mina, but rather than following me, she only uttered three words: ‘Keep our secret.’ Then, without the slightest hesitation, she returned to her blood feast.”
“Let me guess,” Lazarus said. “You didn’t keep it secret.”
Malcolm sat forward. “It was too good a story. Surely you can see that?”
“I see a man who’d sell his own mother if it made him money.”
Malcolm regarded his shoes. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“You deserve that and more,” Lazarus said. “Now finish the damn story before I treat you the way your vampires treated the homeless guy.”
“All the same, that night, as I was getting the tale down for the newspaper, Mina appeared outside my office window.”
Lazarus shrugged. “So?”
“My office is on the twenty-first floor.”
“Oh.”
“If I hadn’t been a believer before, seeing her orange eyes, her supple white cleavage, her entire splendid form hovering a hundred feet above the alley below was enough to convince me.
Lazarus’s brow creased. “They can fly?”
“That would be going too far,” Malcolm said. “As I understand it, they can defy gravity in certain situations. When pursuing their prey they can leap great distances. When trying to mesmerize their victims—particularly when attempting to gain egress into an unfamiliar structure—they can hover in the air as I saw Mina hovering.”
“That what she did, Malcolm? Mesmerize you?”
“Almost,” Malcolm murmured. “She certainly cut an enticing and voluptuous figure out there in the tenebrous night air. Floating just beyond the glass panes … beckoning me to come forward … preying on my greatest weakness.”
“What?” Lazarus grinned wryly. “Your weakness for hot women?”
Malcolm shook his head. “She was comely, there’s no denying that. Yet I find it difficult to describe just what she did to me that night. She excited me, yes. Without a doubt, she aroused me. Had you seen what I had … the full, pouty lips … the sensuous throat … the plunging neckline of her white dress …”
Malcolm swallowed thickly, cleared his throat. “Of course I was attracted to her, but there was more to it than that. You see, it was a matter of control. Of domination. She exerted her will on me. She challenged me to resist her and found me wanting. My resolve was as nothing before her wiles. My will …” He sighed, remembering that feeling of frailty, that sense of helpless reduction.
Lazarus made an impatient gesture. “So you let her in. Get on with it.”
Malcolm shook his head. “I didn’t let her in. She shattered the window.”
“I thought they had to be invited.”
“Don’t you see?” Malcolm demanded. He hated the plea in his voice. “I didn’t allow her to enter because I couldn’t speak. Upon seeing her in that window, floating like some sort of mythical sea sprite, I merely slid out of my chair onto the dusty office floor and … and bowed to her.”
Lazarus waited. Malcolm couldn’t meet his stare. Eyes on his hands, which had knotted themselves into fretful balls, Malcolm said, “I’d always considered myself a predator of sorts. Oh, don’t look like that, Lazarus. You know I don’t mean of the violent variety. I’m simply accustomed to being the aggressor. The romancer.” Malcolm smiled, but when he beheld the hard glint in Lazarus’s eyes, his smile evaporated. “I fancied myself all of these things, but when I peered into those haunting black eyes, I knew I was nothing but an imposter. A cheap, aging lothario with little self-control and a very serious alcohol problem.”
“Your time’s up,” Lazarus said. The huge man’s heels tapped on the tattered maroon rug.
Malcolm nodded. “So from that night forward, I was Mina’s. A plaything to do with as she pleased. After she shattered the glass of my office window, she opened my wrist and supped from my veins. I’ve been with her every night this week, from midnight until the early morning hours. She has not yet forced me to drink her blood—which is the only reason I can still function and think as a normal human being—but that is only because her master is unsure of my worthiness.”
Lazarus said slowly, “Where do I find this master?”
“I don’t know.”
Lazarus was on his feet and glaring down at
him faster than Malcolm would have believed possible. Lazarus seized him by the shoulders, with every question jerking his weary body so violently that Malcolm’s neck went numb. “Then what good are you? You set up Jillian for these monsters to abduct. You endanger Neville. You allow innocent lives to be taken by that underworld filth. And now you waste my time telling campfire stories about vampires?”
“Carboni,” Malcolm croaked.
“What?” Lazarus growled and shook him again.
“Lou Carboni,” Malcolm said. “If we go to his place, I’m certain we’ll learn Jillian’s whereabouts.”
Lazarus hoisted him into the air, shouted into his face, “You better start making sense!”
“You can communicate with computers, correct?”
“You know I can. What good is that? The vampires won’t have computers.”
Malcolm shook his head. “But Carboni and the others will have phones. We’ll connect to them via the technology in Lou’s mansion, and that should provide us with their whereabouts, shouldn’t it?”
Lazarus didn’t look convinced, but his face had darkened in concentration. “It’s possible.”
“And even if that doesn’t work, someone there might be able to tell us. Carboni’s wife perhaps.”
Lazarus shook him. “And if she can’t?”
Malcolm touched his throat. “Then we wait for Mina tonight and make her take us to her master.”
Lazarus grinned up at him. “You mean I make her take us.”
Malcolm nodded.
Lazarus stood thinking for a good while. Then he became very still, his eyes widening. Abruptly, he let go of Malcolm, who crashed to the floor and sat staring up at Lazarus.
Lazarus said, “You didn’t know Carboni was in on this?”
Malcolm shook his head.
“So why would Carboni do the kidnapping if Mina was the one who gave the order?”
“Because Mina and the others are vampires,” Malcolm answered. “They probably fear daylight.”
Lazarus frowned thoughtfully. “The one who ran me over. He was swaddled from head to toe in makeup and thick clothing. He was able to drive a truck in an alley where no one else would see him, but made up like that he never would’ve been able to participate in the kidnapping.”
Malcolm nodded. “So the vampires and Carboni created an alliance.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they both want you dead.”
Lazarus shot him a sharp look. Malcolm got swayingly to his feet, said, “Just a minute, Lazarus. Hear me out.”
Lazarus moved toward the door. “No, it makes sense. Carboni’s wanted me dead for a while now, but he hasn’t been able to finish the job. So he went to a group that could.”
“Mina and her friends certainly seem capable.” Malcolm thought of the way she and the Irish boy had fallen on the homeless man, the frenzied tearing and biting. He shivered.
“But there’s something else,” Lazarus said. “Something missing.”
Malcolm opened his mouth to speak, but Lazarus headed him off. “We’ve spent too much time talking. Let’s get over to Carboni’s, see if your theory pays off.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Malcolm asked in a thin voice.
Lazarus’s grin was ghastly. “Then I’ll take you to Mina myself.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
* * *
There was an endless tumble through darkness and space. Several times Jillian was struck with an errant elbow or a flailing shoe. Once she got someone square in the hose with her right knee, and though her thoughts were a chaotic jumble, she had the presence of mind to hope it was Frankie who’d received the blow.
The six of them somersaulted over the hard curve of the steel tube. Then they were sailing through empty space. They shot out of the tube into a pool of syrupy filth.
Jillian landed on her belly and gagged at the fearsome stench that slapped her in the face. Some of the foul, brackish liquid got into her hair, more of it on her cheeks. Desperately, she got her legs under her, and realized the puddle was only a couple inches deep, but the fact that it was likely human blood filming her fingers and tangling her hair made her want to retch. And that smell … dear God, she’d never encountered anything to rival it. She remembered lifting off the metal lid of a playground trashcan once as a child; the swarm of flies that assaulted her and the sight of the dead raccoon within had been horrible, but it was the stultifying odor of the animal’s flyblown corpse that had caused her to vomit.
As the memory came back to her with dizzying clarity, she caught images of the squirming white maggots in the animal’s belly and the way its mouth was stretched wide in a silent shriek. The memory made her look down now, almost by instinct, and though she could scarcely see in the dark—the only illumination was provided by a flashlight Lou Carboni had switched on—she made out vague shapes near her feet. A moment later, she felt something furry brush against her bare ankle.
Rats. Skin crawling, she hopped backward and scanned the floor for more of them. She sensed others around her doing the same, but she gave this little thought. All her attention was focused on ridding herself of the vermin and getting as much of the sticky blood off as possible. Gradually, as Lou’s flashlight slowly swept the room, she became aware of her surroundings. She was standing in what appeared to be a vast open area littered with humped shapes. There were flies buzzing about. Many of them.
She realized what the humped shapes were.
Bodies. This was where the vampires dumped their dead. Or perhaps where they sometimes brought them to feed on. And rather than burying or cremating them afterward, they simply left them here, rotting. A dank, subterranean body field.
Icy fingers of dread clutching her throat, she became aware of another source of light. At the far end of the field, perhaps fifty yards away, there was a vast wall constructed of what looked like sheet metal. In many places the metal was gashed or torn, and it was through these slits that a phantasmal orange light spilled. Light very much like the color of the vampire’s eyes.
Movement to her left drew attention, and she spied the driver moving through the darkness, his wraithlike legs scissoring effortlessly, as if utterly unconcerned with tripping over the corpses.
Of course, she thought. The vampires have night vision. How else could they live down here without lights to guide them?
The driver continued on toward what appeared to be a raised platform. The driver hopped agilely up onto the platform and opened a door. He entered what appeared to be a short corridor, at the end of which was the large room from which the Halloweenish glow emanated. For a second the driver’s gaunt form was limned in the hellish orange light; then the door leading out of the body field closed and they were left in almost total darkness.
“What the hell?” Frankie Canelli called back to them. “I can’t see where I’m goin’.”
“Then stay put,” Lou Carboni growled. Lou shined the light on Frankie’s stricken face.
“But there’s dead bodies all over the place.”
Nobody said anything to that.
At length, Frankie said, his voice querulous, “What’s that driver doing?”
“Who cares?” Lou said.
“But why’s he been gone so long?”
“He’s consulting,” Eddie Maza said. Maza hadn’t spoken for so long, Jillian had nearly forgotten he was there. Now the thought of his silent presence spooked her. She stepped closer to Philip Wheatley, who put a protective arm around her.
“What the hell does that mean, consulting?” Frankie asked.
“It means,” Maza said in a low voice, “he’s going in to speak with the higher-ups in the organization to make sure it’s okay to bring us in.”
There were footsteps from the other side of the door. A moment later it opened, and a new figure appeared beside the driver. This one was short and had a shiny bald head.
“Now you may proceed,” the driver declared.
Frankie Canelli needed no fur
ther invitation. The big man lurched toward the platform, several times stumbling over bodies. Lou Carboni and Eddie Maza exchanged a look, then both men followed Frankie.
Philip’s voice spoke up from the dimness beside her. “I suppose we should go too, huh?”
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
When they’d all reached the open doorway, Lou Carboni said, “Now that you’ve pushed us down that slide from hell, you gonna explain to me why we had to come all the way down here instead of just giving you the girl up above?”
“The Master will explain all,” the bald man said.
“The Master, huh?” Lou said. If he was put off by the little man’s appearance, he was doing a fine job of concealing it. As for Jillian, the sight of the little bald man gave her the willies. He had thick black eyebrows and a fierce expression. The only positive she could find was that the bald man appeared to be a normal, if extremely pale, human being.
Wordlessly, the little man moved down the hallway, followed by Jillian and Philip. The mobsters came next, with the driver closing the door behind them and trailing after. To their right Jillian caught glimpses of orange light filtering through chinks in the wall. More orange light spilled from around the door they were approaching. The stench of corpses, Jillian realized, was dissipating rapidly, in its place something that smelled like kerosene. And something else, she realized. Something that made her nostrils tingle. Something that set off vague alarms in her mind, and as the little bald man reached out and grasped the door handle, Jillian was overcome with a consuming urge to cry out No! Let’s turn back!
But it was too late. The door was flung open, and a brilliant orange glow crashed in on them. Jillian blinked in it, suddenly, unaccountably terrified of what lay on the other side. The other smell she’d detected was very like the vampire driver’s breath, only this time the odor was so powerful it nearly made her gag. The smell was ancient, something fecund and depraved. Before she could ponder this further, the little man stepped through and ushered them in with a grand, sweeping gesture that to Jillian resembled the inverted arc of a murderous axe stroke.
Bloodshot: Kingdom of Shadows (Kindle Worlds) Page 8
