The Cross vf-2

by Scott G. Mariani

  What kind of a stupid name was ‘Ash’, anyway?

  ‘Fucking shithead weirdo,’ Denny muttered. ‘Vampire my arse.’ And closed his eyes again.

  After a few minutes, his brooding indignation finally started to give way to sleepiness. His body relaxed into the bunk’s mattress, and his breathing fell into a soft and shallow rhythm. The corners of his mouth twitched as he slept. In his dreams, he was walking into his garage back home, slowly pulling back the tarpaulin to reveal the glittering chrome mag wheels and gleaming candy-red paintwork of the Dodge Viper underneath. His, all his. He was running his hands over the contours of its cool, smooth, waxed body. The key was in his pocket. Just him and this beauty and the open road. He could almost hear the growling note of the tuned V8 …

  Denny’s eyes snapped open and a chill gripped his heart as he turned his head to stare again at the opposite bunk.

  It was empty.

  It was empty, because Ash had risen. In the pale square of moonlight from the window, Denny saw the tall, powerfully-built figure cross the narrow cell towards him and his heart began to flutter. He propped himself up on one elbow. ‘Oy! what you up to?’ he demanded in a hoarse whisper that had more of a quaver to it than he wanted to hear.

  Ash stopped at the side of the bunk and cocked his head curiously, peering up at where Denny lay. He bared his sharpened teeth in a crooked smile.

  The pair of prison guards patrolling the corridor were the first to respond to the unearthly, high-pitched screams emanating from cell 282. Their footsteps reverberated off the hard floors and bare white walls as they sprinted to the door with their extendable batons drawn and ready for action. The terrible screaming continued from inside the cell. One of the guards wrenched the ring of keys from his belt clip. The other turned on the external light switch beside the riveted steel door, flipped open the viewing hatch cover and tried to peer through.

  ‘Oh, my Christ,’ he groaned. The glass was smeared opaque with thick, bright blood. ‘Hurry.’ As his colleague frantically twisted the key in the lock, the screams were rising to a tortured wail of terror and agony that neither of the guards had ever heard before, not with over thirty-five years’ prison service experience between them. Bursting inside the cell, clutching their batons, they recoiled at the scene in front of them.

  ‘Oh, Jesus. No.’

  The cell was rank with the hot stink of death. It looked as though it had been hosed down with blood. The floor swimming in it; the walls running; the crisp white HM Prison Service bed linen soaked and dripping with red.

  In the spreading pool on the floor lay the broken corpses of Tulleth and Doyle. Tulleth’s head was twisted almost 180 degrees on his neck. He had no chin or lower teeth, because his jawbone had been torn out by the roots. Doyle’s brains were exposed, like grey-white cauliflower, through the shattered mess of his skull.

  Denny Morgan was still alive, though only for a few seconds more. He was thrashing like a landed fish and screaming his lungs out, dark blood pumping and spraying everywhere. Most of his face had been pummelled beyond recognition. Both eyes gouged from their sockets.

  From the centre of the cell, the fourth inmate of 282, the prisoner known as Ash, turned to gaze impassively at the guards. He looked as if he’d dived into a lake of blood, as if all he wanted in the world was to bathe and swim in it, smear it all over his body and feel its warm taste trickling down his throat. He regarded them for a moment with an expression of detachment, then quietly turned his attention to the thing he was clutching in his hand.

  For a few moments, the guards could do nothing but gape dumbly at the scene — then one of them let out a yell of repulsion as he realised that the livid object trailing from Ash’s bloody fist, long and red and gleaming and quivering as if still alive, was the tongue that he’d ripped from Denny Morgan’s throat, along with most of his trachea and oesophagus.

  As both men stared, Ash raised the meaty fistful to his mouth and ripped into it with his teeth. He sighed and smiled with pleasure, gobbets and veins dangling from his lips. Blood flowed down his neck, down his chest, splashing down into bright crimson pools on the floor that reflected the white neon striplights.

  One of the guards tore the radio from his belt and found his voice. ‘Situation on Level 2. Get everybody up here now!’

  Chapter Eleven

  Siberia

  Deep in the icebound heart of the Russian province of Krasnoyarsk Krai, where the continuous winter blast kept temperatures well below minus forty Celsius, the barren wilderness of frozen lakes and tundra and snowy mountains stretched for a million square miles. Soon the polar night would descend, lasting from December through January, and the mining communities of Norilsk, the nearest human settlement and one of the coldest and most polluted cities on the planet, would see no sun at all for six long, dark weeks, temperatures plummeting towards minus sixty.

  Out in the frozen wastes beyond the nickel mines, virtually nothing lived except for the polar bears and the few other wild animals that had evolved to withstand the harsh environment.

  Or nothing, at any rate, that was known to the few humans who ever ventured there. When travellers vanished, as they fairly often did, it was generally assumed that they must have succumbed to the murderous cold, stumbled into a whiteout and frozen to death, or lost their way and slipped into a ravine.

  Sometimes, that assumption was correct. Sometimes not.

  Because other creatures lived here, too, unseen, underground. Creatures that had spent a very long time, and put a great deal of effort into, concealing their existence from the rest of the world.

  For much of history they’d been down there, hidden from human eyes. At a time when Northern Asia had belonged to the Empire of the Huns, the creatures had already long since made it their home. A thousand years later, when Siberia had been conquered and occupied by the Mongol hordes, the hidden networks of tunnels and caverns deep beneath the ice had already been greatly expanded. Their occupants emerged to hunt only under cover of darkness, while it was safe for them to move. When they did, there were no witnesses. Nothing left behind that could have alerted anyone to their presence.

  There had always been enough for them to feed on. Many nomadic tribes had wandered across the region through the ages, staying a while before being displaced by another: the Yakuts, the Uyghurs, and other Turkic peoples whose camps and villages made easy targets during the night when the humans were at their most vulnerable. The blood of countless victims had allowed the creatures to thrive and quietly go on building their lair under the ice, where the feeble Siberian sun never penetrated and night and day were all one. Now and then, they’d allow a human to turn, and gradually amassed a contingent of humanoid vampires: in ferior, bastard beings that the creatures despised and treated with contempt, but allowed to live among them as their servants and occasionally released into the world.

  But reclusion was not the natural state of such an aggressively predatory race. It had never been their intention to remain permanently hidden in their lair: their leaders had long, long pored over their plans to broaden the extent of their realm — to extend it very far indeed.

  They were in no hurry. When the time was right, they would strike. And the planet would change forever.

  In the meantime with the passing of the centuries, the underground domain had grown into the vast subterranean citadel that now stretched nearly twelve square miles from east to west and plunged down further into the earth than the nickel mines of Norilsk.

  It was inside one of those icy chambers, hundreds of yards beneath the surface, that three unusual visitors had come to the end of a long and difficult journey east. Only in these exceptional circumstances had they been allowed to enter the hallowed inner chambers of the citadel.

  Two of the visitors were conscious and on their feet. Their names were Lillith and Zachary. They were vampires. Zachary was a huge figure, towering over Lillith. Many centuries earlier, in his native Abyssinia, he’d been a hunter famed for ki
lling lions armed with only a spear. The lion-skin loincloth was a distant memory. Over a black silk shirt, he wore a tangerine-coloured suit that shimmered in the light of the ice walls.

  Across the other side of the chamber stood Lillith, a raven-haired beauty in a red leather jumpsuit. Hanging from a belt around her slender waist, she still wore the empty steel scabbard of the sabre she’d lost back in Romania, before their trek eastwards. The shoulder of her jumpsuit was ripped from when their helicopter had come down in a blizzard, and her memory was fresh with the four days of hiding from the sun as they’d made their painful way a thousand miles across the deserts of ice. Finally, at the secret entrance to the underground citadel, they’d been met by the vampire servants who’d escorted them down here and told them to wait.

  Lying inert on his back on a smooth, icy slab between Lillith and Zachary was the body of their leader, the vampire that Lillith called brother: Gabriel Stone. He was tall, slender and dark, and even in his state of deep unconsciousness he managed to look elegant and composed.

  ‘Is he going to make it?’ Zachary asked in his deep bass rumble, peering down worriedly at the still body. He’d asked that question so many times on the journey from Romania, carrying Gabriel’s limp form on his shoulder, that Lillith had stopped replying. She stepped to her brother’s side and ran her fingers down his cold cheek.

  ‘Come back to me, Gabriel,’ she murmured. She’d been there with him on the battlements when he’d been exposed to the force of the weapon the human Joel Solomon had carried into the castle. She remembered the way Gabriel had shielded her body with his, absorbing the lethal energy before they’d both hurled themselves over the edge of the battlements and gone tumbling down hundreds of yards to the rocks below.

  Vampires could take a few knocks. Leaping from the top of a cliff had its risks but, as long as they didn’t smash themselves too irreparably, it was nothing they couldn’t survive. One thing they couldn’t take, though, was the devastating effect of the cross of Ardaich. Of all the ancient myths and legends within vampire folklore, that cross was the most dreaded, the darkest, its name the most quietly whispered. And it was also the most mysterious. Its origins, and the source of its power, had remained an enigma since the time the humans called the Dark Ages.

  ‘So badly hurt,’ she murmured, stroking Gabriel’s motionless arm.

  ‘If he doesn’t make it,’ Zachary said, ‘what are we going to do? I mean, we’ve followed him since …’ He frowned as he tried to put a figure on the years their band had been together. ‘Without him, we’re lost.’

  ‘He’ll make it,’ Lillith said. ‘He has to. They’ll help, surely they will.’

  ‘I sure hope you’re right.’ Zachary thought for a moment. ‘Those trips Gabriel made sometimes … all he’d say was that he was going east … days at a time. He was coming here, wasn’t he? They know him?’

  Lillith nodded. ‘He’s been in contact with them a long time, learned many things from them. Once, years ago, he brought me here. That’s why I know some of their language.’

  ‘Just what are they, Lillith?’

  ‘I once asked Gabriel the same question. He told me it was better I didn’t know.’ She paused. ‘Our kind call them the Ubervampyr. Many of us don’t believe they really exist.’

  As the two of them stood there over Gabriel, strange forms became visible through the thick, rippled walls that had been sculpted in the ice. The figures were tall. Hooded and robed. Watching them.

  ‘They’re here,’ Lillith said. ‘Now listen, Zachary. These Ubers aren’t like us. They’re not … humanoid.’

  ‘I ain’t either,’ Zachary said, not understanding.

  Lillith shook her head. ‘You were human once, remember. They never were. Just be ready for what you’re about to see. And be careful. Don’t look them in the eye. It offends them.’

  A portal opened in the icy wall, and several of the tall, strange figures entered the chamber. One drew close. Towering several inches above Zachary’s head, over seven feet in height, it reached up with its clawed, long-fingered hands and drew back the hood of its robe to reveal its face. The skull was tapered and bald, the ears long and pointed. Its skin was the colour of a washed-out winter sky, and so translucently thin that thousands of dark veins could be seen under its wrinkled surface.

  Only a thing this hideous could have made Zachary turn pale and back off a step.

  Lillith found it hard to tell the Ubervampyr apart from their strange, horrible facial features — but she knew from his robes that this was one of the Masters that Gabriel had told her about.

  When he spoke, his voice made Zachary back off another step. The ancient language was rasping and guttural. ‘My name is Master Xenrai-Yazh.’

  ‘That is one ugly mother,’ Zachary muttered.

  Lillith shot him a furious glare, then turned to address the Ubervampyr, bowing her head and avoiding eye contact. ‘It’s an honour, Master. Gabriel has often spoken of you.’

  ‘I have known Gabriel a very long time,’ the Master said. ‘In our language we call him Krajzok: “the young one”.’

  ‘I’m afraid for him. He’s been very badly hurt. The cross—’

  The Master raised his long, thin hand, silencing her. ‘Yes. Our servants have already informed us of what happened. Of course, you fear for Gabriel. But you must leave him now. He is to be taken from here.’

  ‘What’s he say?’ Zachary asked, keeping his eyes low. Lillith ignored him. ‘Taken where?’ she asked, frowning. ‘To the heart of the citadel,’ the Master said, ‘to a place where none of your kind may normally enter.’

  ‘Are you going to help him? We brought him here in the hope that you could save him.’

  ‘We have the means to restore him. The cross’s power was not fully expended on him.’

  ‘Then you have to make him better.’

  The Master was quiet for a moment. ‘It is not so simple. The Grand Council is convening.’

  Lillith didn’t want to show her irritation, but it was hard to disguise. ‘Gabriel is slipping away and all you can do is hold a meeting?’

  ‘It is about Gabriel that we must talk,’ he said. ‘Only once the Council has made its decision can we act.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What decision?’

  ‘Gabriel is to be placed on trial. If found innocent, he will be spared. If guilty, then according to our custom, he will be executed. I am sorry.’

  Lillith was unable to avoid staring straight into the Master’s dark, inscrutable eyes. ‘Guilty of what?’ she demanded. ‘How can this be? What trial?’

  The Ubervampyr made no reply. At a wave of his clawed hand, six vampire servants marched into the chamber. Four of them lifted up the ice slab on which Gabriel lay. The other two drew long, curved swords from their belts and pointed them at Lillith and Zachary.

  ‘Something tells me this ain’t going too well,’ Zachary rumbled.

  The Master motioned to the four slab-bearers. ‘To the Hall of Judgement,’ he ordered.

  Chapter Twelve

  Romania

  The sleet had given way to a mist of icy drizzle that blanketed the hills and forests as Joel drove the stolen pickup truck through the night. With every mile that passed, he kept glancing at the sinking fuel gauge. The only thing that terrified him more than being stranded in the middle of nowhere, lost, penniless and alone, was the horror of being caught in the open by the rising sun. He kept thinking he could see the first red glow of dawn on the dark eastern horizon.

  ‘Relax,’ he muttered out loud over the beat of the windscreen wipers. ‘You’ve got hours yet. Everything’s fine.’

  Yeah, he thought bitterly. You’re a vampire now, and everything’s just fucking fine.

  After the endless empty roads, a sweeping stretch of lights in the distance told him he was approaching a town. He was suddenly gripped with terror at the thought of entering such a dangerous alien environment. Humans would be everywhere. But he fought the urge to shy away fro
m the town, and gripped the steering wheel tightly as he joined the thickening flow of night-time traffic. He was growing dizzy with hunger. He needed to eat. No, not to eat. To feed. The thought made him feel sick.

  Driving by the illuminated windows of an all-night supermarket on the edge of town, Joel swerved into the little car park next to it and pulled up in the shadows. There was only a smattering of other vehicles in the car park, and he figured that some of those must belong to the staff.

  As he watched from the dark interior of the truck, a woman came out of the supermarket carrying a shopping basket and started heading across the car park towards an old Peugeot estate, picking her way between the puddles that reflected the neon light from the windows.

  Joel didn’t need the shop lights to see his target with incredible clarity. She was short and plump, dark-haired, in her late forties or so. Under her raincoat she was wearing a nurse’s uniform; he guessed she must be picking up some provisions on her way home after a late shift at some local hospital.

  Joel could smell her blood. Hot and thick and dark, pulsing through her veins. The intensity of his senses was frightening.

  Though not as frightening as the thing that was happening inside his mouth. His teeth didn’t feel right. He ground them together, pressed his thumb-tips against his canines and gasped in shock at how elongated and sharp they suddenly felt. Something was taking control of him.

  The woman kept walking across the car park. A few more steps and she’d have reached her Peugeot.

  Joel opened his door with a trembling hand and stepped out. In the cold night air the scent of her blood was even thicker and more intoxicating.

  He shuddered.

  Fight it. Fight it.

  He could smell something else, too. The pungent odour of the packet of raw meat in the woman’s shopping basket.

  She turned to stare at him, curiosity turning quickly to alarm as he stumbled up to her in the darkness.