Lodge looked at him and rapped his bony old knuckles on the leather writing pad in front of him. “I could have you arrested you know.”
“Under what charge?” Graham said.
Lodge sighed. “I wish you would reconsider.”
“Will you reconsider?”
“I cannot.”
“Then we have no more to say to each other,” Graham said. He turned around and pushed past Hayes who looked as if he was going to grab him. He opened the door and the corridor. It had seemed like a furnace just moments ago but now it felt like an ice box.
He left the door open as he walked away from the office and could already hear them starting to talk about what had happened. But his only regret was that he hadn’t done this sooner, if he had then maybe Agnes would still be alive.
With a drink the furthest thing from his mind Graham stepped out of Scotland Yard for what he fully expected to be the last time. He was, for the first time in his adult life, no longer associated with a police force. He was free to do whatever he wanted to do and right now that was to look for his daughter.
CHAPTER 26
FATHER MICHAEL STOOD AT THE END OF THE pier and watched the still river. Across the water he could see The Tower and the ports. He could hear voices behind him, little children playing games and shouting to each other. He didn’t turn around.
The man next to him was old but he didn’t look it. He carried his extra weight well beneath his red robes. They didn’t speak to one another. It was early morning and cold but they were both used to hardship.
They looked together into the distance for the boat that would bring her to them. Just as they had waited yesterday and the day before, just as he expected they would wait tomorrow and the next day.
They remained in their position until the sky began to darken and the wind whipped up the water. It wasn’t safe for them there after dark.
Two wolves as big as small horses approached. Their fur thick and grey. They growled but Michael wasn’t scared. Before his eyes the two wolves stood up on their back legs and the fur started to fade in colour until it was almost invisible. The wolfish snouts receded and were replaced with human looking mouths and noses.
“You’re late,” Father Michael said, trying hard not to show his disgust for the ungodly things. They had once been human, he reminded himself and might still be saved. They fought on the side of Jehovah and he could be forgiving and generous in his mercy. But even so, the mere existence of such creatures was an insult, a slight against his name.
“We’re here now,” the first wolf said, it’s tongue still not fully transformed, it lolled out of his mouth and hung limply.
Michael tapped the other priest on the arm. “Come on Father, there’s a warm fire and meat waiting for us. Maybe they will come tomorrow.”
The old man nodded but refused to look at the wolf-men. Many in his generation were the same and Michael felt a sneaking pride in that. He might be forced to accept these things for the sake of his career but as long as there were men like Father Ewan in the Church they would never truly be accepted.
Home, for the time being, was by the river so they didn’t have far to travel. Michael led Father Ewan who’s eyes were not so good at seeing in the dark anymore.
They arrived at the grotty waterlogged boarding house and let themselves in. It was owned by the Church but nobody was responsible for the upkeep and it had deteriorated to the point where it would need to be torn down before too much longer. Inside the wallpaper was peeling and the bricks were crumbling. Outside you could pull away whole chunks of wall with your bare hands if you really tried.
There was a fire burning though and as he walked through the door Father Michael let the warmth embrace him. His skin burned where he had been in the cold all day.
He led Father Ewan to a high backed chair by the fire and took the opposite one for himself. He thought he could close his eyes and happily fall asleep there but there were things that needed to be done first.
“Father Michael?”
He turned towards the doorway where a figure stood in the shadows. Father Michael stood. “How did you find us?”
The man who stepped towards him was wire thin and pale. His dark hair lay uncombed and his eyes were red. He smiled and Father Michael saw the teeth, those teeth, the ones they warned you about. “Where is the girl?” he said.
Father Michael was a young man, a rising star in the Church who was promised a glorious career in the new world. But, he realised, that would not be possible if he died in the boarding house at the hands of a vampire. He stepped behind Father Ewan’s chair. “I don’t know who you mean.”
The man at the door took another step towards him. Father Michael could sense great strength in those thin arms and legs. “I think you do know,” he said and smiled again, his needle sharp fangs glistening in the fire light.
Father Michael shook his head. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“Will you cast me out?” said the man. “Try it if you believe it will work.”
Father Michael knew that it wouldn’t. He knew that there were things that people believed about vampires, even vampires themselves, that simply weren’t true. He could try to cast him out but if this one believed that myth then how had he gotten inside in the first place?
“Now tell me,” he said, stopping in front of Father Michael, “where is Bridget Kable?”
It happened so quickly that he would never be completely sure how much of it he had seen and how much he had imagined.
Father Ewan stood and said: “Look here beast, you have no right to be here and I suggest you leave.”
The vampire didn’t even turn his head to look at him. He extended his left arm and hurled Father Ewan across the room.
Father Ewan seemed to hang in the air, a fat sack of flesh and bones. He hit the wall with a sickening crack that might have been his skull or the wall itself. It would turn out to be both. Plaster and brickwork fell down upon him and the house lurched sideways.
Father Ewan opened his eyes. They were red and blind. Blood trickled from his mouth as he spoke his last words. “Don’t tell him anything.” And then he was dead.
Father Michael, had no intention of dying that night. He looked at the vampire. The creature stood a clear foot above him.
“How about it?” the vampire said. “You can tell me what I need to know or I can take it from you, piece by piece.”
Father Michael said nothing.
The vampire took another step towards him. “You can still live to see morning if you tell me what I need to know.”
Father Michael glanced at the bloody and broken body of Father Ewan and nodded. “She’s not here.”
“I can see that,” the vampire said. “You will have to do better if you want to keep your head.”
“She’s coming though,” he said quickly. “Any day now. We’re waiting for her to arrive.”
“That’s better. What happens when she gets here?”
He was reluctant to tell. The Church was good, the Church was his home but he knew what they did to traitors. But that was if they found out and in the future. What the vampire could do to him was here and now. “They’ll take her away.”
“Where?”
Father Michael nodded. “There is a ceremony. With her blood they can open a bridge to the next world. Jehovah’s army can defeat Lucifer once and for all. I don’t know where.”
There was a noise outside. The vampire turned suddenly. If he had a weapon now would be the time to use it but Father Michael’s hands were empty. Instead he ran.
He didn’t know if the vampire chased him but he wasn’t really running from him. He pushed open the door into the unlit kitchen and out the back door into the garden. The light of the moon was enough for him to see by and he ran through the overgrown grass to the back gate.
Now he would keep running. There was nothing else he could do. The Church would know what he had done and they would come for him. But he was alive
and that was more than could be said for Father Ewan who, at least, he had never lived to see his protege betray the great work.
CHAPTER 27
GRAHAM STARED AT THE DRINK IN FRONT OF him and willed it to refill itself, but it remained empty. He looked up at the bar man who refused to turn in his direction. He supposed he was lucky that he hadn’t been thrown out.
He lifted the glass to his mouth and tried to suck the moisture that had formed on the sides but it was empty, just like his pockets. He quietly put it back down on the bar and stood up to leave. Three weeks had passed since he had left his job. The money was all gone and he still had no idea what had happened to Bridget.
The door opened before he reached it. A tall black shape seemed to separate itself from the night. Graham stood aside to let the stranger walk in. There was always the chance, after all, that whoever it was might stand him a drink or two.
The stranger walked into the light and Graham felt his chest tighten. Anger flash boiled his blood and without him realising it his hands balled into fists.
“Ah Detective Kable, just the man I was looking for,” Arthur Park said.
Conversations stopped and chairs scraped across the floor as people turned to look. Graham barely noticed. “You,” he said.
He flew at Park, threw his whole weight into the mans stomach and he barely moved. It was like running into a brick wall.
Park held him back as effortlessly as if he were a small child. “Detective Kable,” he said. “Have I done something to insult you?”
“You killed my wife,” Graham spat through gritted teeth.
He stepped back and swung for Park, meaning to hit his jaw. Maybe he was more drunk than he realised though because for a moment it really seemed as if there were two of him. The punch never connected and Graham fell forwards. He would have hit the floor if Park hadn’t been there to catch him.
By now the room was silent except for the plodding steps of the bar man walking across the hard wood floor towards them.
“Alright you two,” he said, his voice loud and deep enough to rattle the glasses behind the bar. “That’s enough of that. You’ll want to take it outside.”
The snow had thawed but outside it was still cold and miserable. The damp air hit Graham and his head started to spin. It was dark, not long after sunset, but in this part of town there was no lighting to speak of. Park let go of him and he stood swaying from side to side trying to keep him in focus.
“You killed my wife,” he said again and his voice was slurred.
“Detective Kable,” Park said, stepping closer to him and speaking in a voice that would not attract attention, “I don’t know what you think has happened here but I did not kill your wife.”
“And where’s my daughter? What have you done with her?” he asked, not bothering to keep his voice down. Maybe his luck would change and there would be a Constable nearby, seeing Park get arrested would probably make his day.
“Ah, well there I think I might be able to help you.”
Graham looked up at him, his eyes finding focus at last. “I knew it,” he said and ran at him but Arthur neatly sidestepped at the last moment and he ran clean across the road, skidding to a stop just before he could collide with the building there. He turned around and faced Park. “What have you done with her?”
Park strolled casually out to the middle of the road. “Not here,” he said and started to walk away.
“Why should I go anywhere with you?” Graham said.
Park stopped and turned back to look at him. “Because I need your help to rescue your daughter.”
Graham thought about it, briefly. He had no reason to trust Park and every reason not to. But he had been looking for clues as to Bridget’s whereabouts for three weeks, he had been to the place where the train attack had happened and everywhere else he could think of. Putting aside his doubts he had even followed Howser’s advice and gone to a number of Church’s but, despite all of that, he was no closer to having a clue about where to even start looking for his daughter. He had nothing to lose, except his life. It seemed like a stretch to imagine that Park was some sort of demented serial killer, intent on taking out his whole family, but, on the whole, it seemed like a distinct possibility.
Graham followed him anyway.
The part of town where it was merely seedy gave way to the dirt and grime of real poverty. Slums and filth competed for space and were often difficult to tell apart. The smell of human waste was so strong that Graham was forced to take out a pocket square and hold it over his mouth and nose. If Park planned to kill him this would be the best place to do it. No Constable ever came here, these were lawless island communities, a world of their own that seemed entirely separate to the rest of Lunden.
They walked through increasingly narrow alleyways, some covered with pieces of scrap taken from local dumping grounds. People, adult and child alike, slept in shelters without walls, covered in filthy blankets that were probably riddled with disease. Graham had never seen anything like it. Animals fought for space alongside their owners, flies buzzed in the filthy air and naked flames of fires that could burn the whole place to the ground if forgotten about.
Half-dressed youths sat together sharing cigarettes that they had, no doubt, stolen earlier that day. Little old women covered in sores that weeped down their wrinkled craggy faces stared at them from the shadows of their hovels. It was a mystery how anyone could live to become old in a place like this.
“Do you live here?” he said to Park as they crossed a muddy stretch of path. A child’s shoe was stuck upside down in the quagmire and Graham hoped that it wasn’t still being worn.
“Among other places,” Park said, the smell didn’t seem to concern him so Graham didn’t think he was lying. “Try to keep up.”
The next alleyway forced them to walk single file and the one after that had them edging through it sideways. The further they went the more dense the population, buildings had been built wherever they could find space, even on top of other buildings. They covered the sky and, even on a sunny day, it would have been dark but, at night, with no moon and few stars, it was almost impossible to see where they were going. Graham was convinced that each step he took would be on top of someone, breaking a hand or a foot beneath his heavy boot.
They passed a clearing where a small fire burned and groups of people sat around it trying to get warm but shivering violently. Park reached into his pocket and handed something to the people they passed but Graham couldn’t see what it was. They kept moving, never slowing or stopping. It seemed to Graham they would soon walk out the other side but the slum town was bigger than he ever could have imagined.
Eventually the buildings began to thin but they still moved. They didn’t stop until they reached a octagonal clearing. The buildings here were old but they weren’t homemade. The paint was peeling off the sides and a couple of them looked like they might fall down within the next few years but compared to what they had passed through to get here they were luxurious.
“This way,” Park said and Graham followed him into one of the houses.
It was dark, as he might have expected, the ground the same mud as outside but dry and solidly packed. When Graham’s eyes adjusted he saw that there were few walls in the building and no furniture at all. He turned to look at Park. “Why have you brought me here?” They could have had privacy in any of the hundreds of other buildings they had passed.
“Because you need to see this, you need to understand.”
“It’s just an empty building,” he said. “You need to tell me where my daughter is.”
Park nodded. “Shortly. You met with a man called Howser recently?”
“How do you know that?”
The question was ignored. “He told you some things about me, didn’t he?”
“He said I shouldn’t trust you. He said you worked for something called The Grigori and that you wanted to kill Bridget.”
“Did he tell you what I am?”
Graham shook his head and Park smiled, the gesture revealed sharp fangs at the corners of his mouth. Graham shook his head again. “I don’t believe it.”
“We aren’t all like the stories detective. I am a man capable of doing good and bad just as you are.”
“So you did take Bridget?”
Park shook his head. “They sent me to kill her, certainly, and I had every intention of going through with it. They say your daughter can start a war detective, the likes of which we cannot even imagine.”
“But you didn’t kill her?”
“No. I’ve done a great many things in my life detective, things that haunt me still. I could not bring myself to add killing an innocent child to that list.”
“So why have you brought me here?” Graham said.
“You are not a believer, are you Detective Kable?”
He shook his head. The things that he had seen recently had been enough to shake his scepticism but he still felt sure there was a reasonable explanation for everything that had happened.
“Which is why you need to come with me.”
Park led him down stairs that had been carved into the ground. They were made of the same mud as the rest of the floor until a few feet down when they abruptly turned to stone. The stairwell was narrow and so was the corridor at the bottom. There was no light to see by but, with Park behind him, there was only one direction he could go. Eventually he reached a door and stopped.
“Just wait,” Park said.
A golden light slid around the door like liquid. It seemed to carve a frame around it. Graham watched and tried to convince himself that it was an illusion, a silly trick that might impress a child but not a grown man. Once the light had worked its way around the whole door there was a low click and the door swung open towards him.
He turned to look back at Park who nodded and said, “go on, it’s perfectly safe.”
Graham doubted that but he wasn’t going to try and fight his way past Park. His shoulders were still sore from running into him and he expected further injuries to present themselves by morning. He walked through the door and Park followed him.
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