[Vampire Babylon 01] - Skarlet (2009)

by Thomas Emson

  “Of course you are, Ed, of course – I’m grateful – ”

  “Are you? How grateful?”

  “Don’t start that again.”

  “Well,” he said, “I didn’t actually get the coffee you promised me.”

  She ignored him. “Do you imagine,” she said, the image of a vampire turning into dust after she drove a stake through its body vivid in her mind, “that these deaths, these massacres, could have anything to do with – vampires?”

  Crane tutted and pulled a face. “Sassie, don’t be ridiculous.”

  Chapter 41

  CHEMICAL REACTION.

  MURRAY said, “You did what?”

  Lawton told her again what had happened at the house in Holland Park the previous night, and again she gawped at him at shook her head.

  They were huddled around a table at the far end of a Cafe Nero in Kensington High Street. The smell of coffee had brought Lawton to life. He was on his second cup of black Americano. Lithgow sipped at a green tea. Murray gulped from a bottle of orange juice.

  Leaning across the table towards Lawton and keeping her voice down, she said, “So these – things – they just burst into dust when you – ” and she made a stabbing motion with her hand.

  Lawton nodded. “I think we’d be right to say that something unusual’s happening.”

  “The authorities are denying everything,” said Murray.

  Lawton took a slug of coffee. He said, “Do you think they know anything?”

  “They always know something,” she said.

  Lawton flicked through a copy of The Daily Express that lay on the table. Every paper ran with the story. They had it either on the front page, or as a spread on the inside. Lawton pointed to a story headlined:

  Sales of crucifixes rocket over “vampire” attacks.

  “Yes,” said Murray, “and church attendances have boomed, too.

  People going to all the denominations asking for holy water. And the churches are saying, ‘You don’t need relics, you need Christ.’

  And then the Catholic Church, say, ‘Here’s some holy water, and come to Confession, come to pray, God will save you.’ Some of the crazier churches are preaching the end of the world. There’s a loopy bunch saying that it’s all aborted babies coming back to avenge their murders.”

  Lawton said nothing. He stared into his coffee, brow creased.

  Murray said, “Are you sure about last night? What happened in that house?”

  He glared at her. “What’re you saying?”

  “Well,” she said, “you admit to not sleeping, and liking the odd drink.

  And him” – she gestured to Lithgow – “he’s a drug dealer and – ”

  “Him,” said Lithgow, “has got a name.”

  “All right,” she said, “Fraser. But you’re talking about murder, here.

  You – you murdered those guys.”

  Lawton stared at her for a moment and then he said, “You can’t murder dead things.”

  “Yeah,” said Lithgow, “those guys weren’t alive – and I know for a fact that they weren’t alive.”

  Lawton said, “Tell her, Fraser.”

  Lithgow said, “Those two guys, they died at Religion. I-I fucking sold them the pills, okay. And I saw them collapse, froth at the mouth, die. One of them was called Tim Jackson, the one with orange hair. The other guy, I think he was called Heiko, that’s what they’d called him at Religion that night – Heiko.”

  Murray bent down and fished in her bag. She brought out a Moleskine notebook and flicked through the pages. She looked at a page and bit the nail of her right forefinger. She said, “Timothy Allen Jackson.”

  “Is - is Jenna on that list?” said Lawton.

  Murray nodded her head. “Jenna McCall, yes.”

  Lawton’s chest tightened. He shrugged the feeling away, and said to Lithgow, “Are you sure about him, Fraser?”

  “’Course I’m sure. I never forget a customer.”

  “So you’re admitting,” said Murray, “that you sold him drugs. You admit that you distributed those pills.”

  “Hang on – ” said Lithgow.

  Lawton said, “Forget that, Christine. You can’t keep chasing the wrong people. You chased me for years – blaming me for something I’d never done.”

  She said, “You shot – ”

  Lawton held up a hand and scowled at her. “No one cares anymore. You didn’t get your story.”

  “I got the footage.”

  “You got the footage. Good for you. And I’ve never thanked you for posting it on the internet,” said Lawton. “But look at me here – I’m willing to forget your attempts to destroy me, I’m willing to do the bygones bit.” He leaned in and spoke in a hiss: “There’s something weird going on in London that’s got nothing to do with me, that’s got nothing to do with Fraser –

  ”

  Murray said, “He distributed the pills, he’s just admitted it.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Lawton. “Whoever wanted these pills distributed would’ve got them out there without Fraser’s help. He was the one stupid enough to be taken in by it.”

  “Hey,” said Lithgow, “if you’re going to insult me, I’d appreciate if you did it behind my back. You know I got bitten last night. I’m a fucking martyr, I am.”

  Lawton ignored him and said, “You know what the word is for these things, Christine – you know what’s running around after dark killing people. We’ve got to find a way to kill them.”

  “Why?” she said. “Why us?”

  Lawton sat back in the chair and folded his arms. “Because it’s something worth fighting for. I’m not going down without having tried to do something.”

  “I can’t do that, I can’t fight,” she said. “I can only write about these things. That’s all I can do.”

  “What do you do when there’s no one left to read what you write, Christine?”

  “Yeah,” said Lithgow, “because what we saw last night, they can’t read is my guess. And if they could, they don’t give a shit about your stories.”

  “So,” said Lawton, glancing at Lithgow, “you’re with me then?”

  Lithgow frowned. “Well, no, I mean – my suggestion is that we run away.”

  “That’s great,” said Lawton.

  “But what we saw last night was weird, man. It was too much for me, too much. Those bodies, Tim, Heiko, the others too, they’re wandering around London, man. And they’re biting people and making more people like them. They’re hungry, and they’re feeding on us.”

  Murray furrowed her brow. “Hungry?”

  “They’re vampires, Christine,” said Lithgow, “blood-sucking, undead vampires.”

  * * *

  The red-haired woman said, “We had deaths last night.”

  “Yes,” said Nadia Radu, “we had deaths. We’ll have deaths, now.”

  “Deaths make me nervous, that’s all.”

  Nadia smiled. “We can’t have this without death.”

  “Of course, but seeing as I – well, it doesn’t matter.”

  Nadia frowned at her and said, “No, it doesn’t.”

  The red-haired woman grimaced and brought her handkerchief to her nose. “The smell in here is terrible.” They were in a fourth-floor room: a foxhole, no window, plaster peeling off the walls, the ceiling rotting away.

  “Chemicals,” said Nadia. “Dr. Haddad’s magic.”

  The women looked at the old man. He stood at the table pouring liquid into beakers. He then pinched some dust from a plate between his fingers and thumb and sprinkled it into the liquid.

  “Some of Kea’s remains. We combine it with the other materials needed to produce the tablets,” said Nadia. “Kea’s DNA, being vampiric, requires blood. When ingested, it will devour the blood from the host body, killing it. The DNA will then meld with the host’s DNA and create a vampire.”

  “And then, those vampires will – kill and feed, making more vampires,” said the red-haired woman.

/>   “Until London is ours.”

  “And,” said the red-haired woman, “where does that leave us, Mrs.

  Radu?”

  Nadia looked the woman in the eye. She said, “It will leave us in power. We will be the Nebuchadnezzars, the Dariuses, of the 21st Century. It’ll be like the golden age of Babylon. A king or queen on the throne – you, perhaps – and the trinity watching over us all. We’ll harvest food for them. Slaves will build us a city of gold, a London the world will envy and fear. We’ll flush out her sewers, her slums, feed the dregs to the vampire legions.”

  “Which will then make more vampires,” said the red-haired women.

  “No. Some victims will be slaughtered. A land of vampires would be pointless. They can’t run things. They’ve not got that human capacity for logic, for reason – they only feed. They’ll be an unconquerable army, though. They’ll provide us with all the weaponry we need to defend ourselves, to defeat other cities – other nations. It’ll be like Babylon again.”

  “Tell me about the resurrection,” said the red-haired woman.

  Nadia said, “We poured some blood over Kea’s remains, starting the process of bringing the great demon to life again, feeding the ashes with the nourishment they need. His body will take a while to rebuild itself, to feed off the blood. We’re creating life from dust. We’re making a god.”

  The red-haired woman nodded.

  Nadia said, “The vampires will feed and kill again tonight, and they’ll be stronger. They can start bringing living victims back, with which we can feed our god. Kea will soon rise. And Kakash will follow, then Kasdeja, and the three will be one again and we’ll have our Babylon.”

  The red-haired woman blew her nose. The reek of chemicals was getting to her. But Nadia thought, She can stay here and watch Dr. Haddad for a while. He’s owed that, this little miracle man.

  The red-haired woman said, “We’ve got a bit of trouble, though. I understand there’s this soldier – ”

  Nadia nodded. The soldier. The scapegoat. He was meant to take the fall for the drugs, but he was more trouble than they’d thought.

  She said, “We’d been led to believe he was a washed-up drunk. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what anyone does; it doesn’t matter who our enemies are. They can’t stop us. The plague will spread, our enemies will die. They all die in the end.”

  Chapter 42

  DEATH BED.

  Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, Babylon – June 11, 323BC

  PTOLEMY leaned over Alexander’s face and said, “Do you want to tell me where the vessels are, My Lord, and the weapon?”

  Alexander, sweat coating his skin and his lips chapped and bloody, grabbed Ptolemy’s arm. Alexander’s mouth opened and closed as he tried to speak. Ptolemy smelled the rot emanating from the king’s body.

  The general grimaced at the stink of decay. He straightened and stood up, looking down at Alexander lying on the bed. The incense burning around the bed filled Ptolemy’s nostrils, and he breathed deeply so the smell could flush his senses clean of the reek of decomposition.

  He looked around the king’s bedchamber. The room was gloomy because light made Alexander sick. He’d been like this for twelve days. They’d attended the banquet organized by Alexander’s friend, Medius of Larissa. They got drunk, and Alexander took a girl he’d met at the banquet to his chambers. Ptolemy, as one of Alexander’s seven somatophylakes – his personal bodyguard – followed.

  And he watched the drunken Alexander strip naked, and the girl strip naked. They slipped into the bath together. The girl licked the king’s face. And then she bit his throat. Alexander stiffened, but she held him fast. She drank from his veins for a while, then stood in the bath. Blood oozed from her lips. Ptolemy, gazing at her nakedness, felt a flush of excitement fill his loins. He had the urge to drag her from the bath and ravage her himself.

  But he’d die.

  Alexander’s whore was a vampire.

  And she’d been sent to avenge the murder of her gods years before.

  Ptolemy shut his eyes and shame reddened his cheeks. Eleven years older than Alexander, he’d been the young king’s friend since childhood.

  They’d been tutored together by Aristotle. They’d fought together in Alexander’s victories. They drank together and they pillaged together.

  And now, Ptolemy had done something he would never have thought possible.

  He had betrayed the man who was closer to him than a brother.

  “Power,” said Ptolemy’s wife, Artakama, the Persian princess he’d married at Susa the previous year, “that’s what you’ll have. More power than you’ll know. You can build an empire far greater than Alexander’s, an empire remembered for eternity – if you help avenge their deaths.”

  Ptolemy had seen Alexander kill the trinity of demons, and he’d joined in the butchery himself. He and the other somatophylakes, and a group of a dozen warriors, laid into the other creatures as the sun’s rays charred them.

  Ptolemy collected the trinity’s ashes into the clay pots that had Nebuchadnezzar’s words scrawled around their edges. He commissioned artists to paint Alexander’s victory on the vessels. The trinity’s human servants were exiled or executed. Babylon, it seemed, had been purged.

  But then, Artakama came into Ptolemy’s life.

  And love’s the strongest poison of all.

  “Help us,” she said, “help the descendents of Nebuchadnezzar avenge the death of their gods.”

  Had the vampire girl, who had watched Ptolemy as she dressed, drained Alexander of blood, he would’ve died and risen again as an immortal.

  “But he is already immortal,” said Ptolemy as he and Artakama conspired, “so you can’t kill an immortal.”

  “The vampire can drink some of his blood,” said Artakama. “There will be poison in his veins. More powerful than any poison man can find. This will kill him in days.”

  Days, thought Ptolemy now, standing above his king; it’s taken almost two weeks.

  But Alexander, Shahanshah, king of kings, was no ordinary man.

  Ptolemy kneeled next to his friend and asked again: “Tell me where the vessels are, My Lord. The vessels and the spear, and I will take them to safety. The demons can’t be allowed to return. Their henchmen are in the city, already. They are the ones who poisoned you, My Lord. For the sake of your legacy, you must tell me where they are.”

  Ptolemy hadn’t thought for years about the clay pots and the twotusked spear Alexander wielded that day.

  But now he needed them.

  Artakama and her people needed them.

  “We’ll find a way to resurrect our gods,” she’d said, “and they will make us powerful, Ptolemy. They will make you a king.”

  Ptolemy bent his head towards Alexander. The young king’s breath rasped. Blood oozed from the bite mark on his throat and sweat drizzled down his face. His chest rose and fell as his lungs fought for air.

  A noise came from Alexander’s throat, something that sounded like:

  “Stateira.”

  Ptolemy frowned and leaned closer, saying, “Stateira, My Lord? Did you say your wife’s name? Stat – ”

  “Stateira,” said Alexander, more clearly this time.

  “She has them?”

  Alexander nodded, and then said, “Look – look after – her, bbrother – take her – her and my – sons – and the – vessels – into your house – and – ” He coughed, sprayed spit into Ptolemy’s face.

  Ptolemy winced, and then wiped the saliva from his face as Alexander’s fit passed.

  Alexander grabbed his arm and said, “Listen – l-listen, brother – destroy – destroy it – destroy the ashes – destroy them – ” His throat clogged, and he arched his back.

  Ptolemy stood and turned towards the door, saying, “Slave. Slave, Shahanshah is in pain. Find the doctor. Go, slave, or I’ll have you cut open.”

  Ptolemy heard footsteps running off on the other side of the door.

  He looked dow
n at his friend. Alexander’s face had turned yellow. A string of spit slavered from his mouth.

  Ptolemy said, “Forgive me, friend, forgive me.”

  Chapter 43

  TERRIFYING TRUTHS.

  LITHGOW strode alongside Lawton, breathing hard, sweating, trying to keep up. He said, “What do you think she’ll do, now?”

  “I don’t know, mate. Let’s hope she believes me,” said Lawton.

  “Believes you? This is about you, isn’t it?”

  Lawton glanced at him and frowned. “Yes,” he said, “it’s about me.”

  “What about me, man? I’ve been bitten.”

  “You didn’t get bitten, Fraser, that thing’s teeth didn’t break through your fucking jacket.”

  “I could turn into one of them.”

  “Might make you shut up,” said Lawton.

  “And even if I don’t, I could still get poisoned.”

  “You won’t get poisoned. Didn’t you hear what I said? It didn’t break the skin, you crybaby.”

  Lithgow said, “This is about all that bollocks in Iraq. About you shooting that towel head – ”

  “He didn’t have a towel on his head,” said Lawton.

  “But it’s about that business, that’s what this is about. You getting friendly with Christine Murray. You want some sort of fucking redemption.”

  “I don’t want redemption,” said Lawton, picking up his pace.

  They were headed for the tube station to catch a Circle line train that would take them to Embankment. Police carrying guns milled around the station entrance, and Lawton halted. Lithgow bumped into him and said, “You do, you want redemption – you’re looking to – to – to redeem yourself, man. You’re looking for atonement.”

  Lawton turned on him and snarled, saying, “I’m not fucking looking for fucking atonement or redemption or forgiveness or anything. I’m looking for something to fight for, Lithgow. Something I can stand up for and defend.”

  Crowds veered around them, glancing at Lawton as they moved down the street.