The Cross vf-2

by Scott G. Mariani

  ‘Anybody notice anything?’ Chloe said loudly next to him, cutting into his thoughts.

  Alex’s eyes flicked her a glance in the rearview mirror. ‘Like?’

  ‘Like it’s, uh, dawn?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Maybe I’m getting it all wrong,’ Chloe said, ‘but it seems to me that if you two were really vampires, we’d be looking at a couple of frazzled little green spots where you’re sitting right now. Must be the twenty-million-factor sunblock you’re wearing, I guess?’

  Alex smiled. ‘Spent the last few decades trying to pretend to humans I wasn’t a vampire, now I have to persuade you that I am?’

  ‘Some proof would be nice,’ Chloe said with a shrug.

  ‘Fact is, Chloe, Joel and I have something called Solazal that allows us to go out in daytime.’

  ‘Sola-what?’

  Alex showed her the tube. Chloe reached forward and snatched it from her fingers. ‘Look like peppermints to me. Hmm. Smell like it too. Come on. These are peppermints.’

  ‘Much as I would love to prove you wrong,’ Alex said, ‘the only way I could do that is to stop taking them. It wouldn’t do much for my complexion, put it that way. Now give them back.’

  Chloe grunted suspiciously.

  ‘You saw the fangs on them friggers that attacked us last night, didn’t you?’ Dec said. ‘How can you not believe in vampires when you’ve seen one?’

  ‘Is my dad’s killer a vampire?’ Chloe retorted. ‘No, he isn’t. He’s as human as you or me. Any wacko can go to work on his own teeth with a file. As for these two here, I haven’t seen any evidence of anything. Do you people really think you’re fooling anyone? It’s pathetic. I actually feel sorry for you.’

  ‘Give back the Solazal, Chloe,’ Joel said. ‘We don’t have a lot left.’

  ‘What if I don’t? What if I just toss them out of the window?’

  ‘Give them back, Chloe,’ Dec implored.

  Alex’s fists tightened on the steering wheel as a junction came speeding up on the left. ‘I’ve had enough of this crap,’ she said suddenly, and swerved the Jaguar hard across two lanes of traffic. She took the exit at ninety, barely slowed for a roundabout and roared through an intersection in a chorus of honking horns. A few hundred yards further on was a little layby partly screened off from the road by trees, behind it a picnic area with tables and benches. Alex screeched to a halt in the layby, threw open her door and jumped out. ‘Get out of the car,’ she commanded Chloe.

  Chloe got out, cheeks flushed, followed by Dec. Joel climbed out of the front passenger seat. Alex was already opening the boot of the Jaguar and taking out one of the katanas from the Bal Mawr armoury.

  ‘Leave it alone, Alex,’ Joel said.

  ‘She’s going to learn,’ Alex replied. She slammed the boot and started marching towards the picnic area. ‘Chloe, follow me.’

  When they were out of sight of the traffic rolling past, Alex unsheathed the katana and handed it hilt-first to Chloe.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘Stick it in me.’

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘Stab me. Hard as you can. Right here in the stomach.’ Alex untucked the hem of her blouse from her jeans and pulled it up to expose her toned midriff.

  Chloe blanched. ‘Are you nuts?’

  ‘Do it,’ Alex said, smiling. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ Chloe said with a nervous laugh. ‘No way.’

  Dec gently took the sword from her hand. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘You’re all insane!’

  ‘I believe her,’ Dec said. He got a good grip on the hilt, swallowed hard, took a deep breath and then rammed the point of the blade into Alex’s stomach. A terrible, heart-stopping doubt seized him just as the tip speared into her flesh — but it was too late to stop the katana driving itself all the way through her body and out the other side.

  Alex let out a gasp. Chloe shrieked and covered her eyes. Dec let go of the sword and backed off, babbling, ‘I’m sorry! Jesus, I’m sorry!’

  Joel just stood and watched. During their short but eventful time together in Venice, he’d seen a paid gunman with a.45 automatic unload a full magazine on Alex and not leave a mark.

  ‘It’s been a while since I’ve been run through like that,’ Alex said, wincing as she yanked out the blade. ‘Forgotten how much it hurts.’ She tossed it back to Dec. ‘Nice stroke. Well done.’

  ‘That was freaky,’ Dec said, his heart still hammering like a road drill.

  A very pale-faced Chloe peeked through her fingers at Alex’s stomach, where the gaping wound was healing with unbelievable speed before her eyes.

  ‘Believe me now?’ Alex asked her, and tucked her blouse back into her jeans. ‘Or do you want me to drain a pint or two of your blood as well?’

  ‘I believe you,’ Chloe said in a small voice. ‘You’re a vampire. Oh, my God, you really are a vampire.’

  ‘You want to try it on him, too?’ Alex asked, pointing at Joel.

  ‘No thanks,’ Joel said.

  Chloe shook her head vigorously.

  ‘Good,’ Alex said. ‘Now, please, give me back my fucking Solazal.’

  Nobody said much for a long time as they got back in the car and rejoined the motorway. Chloe sat silent and pale, staring at Joel’s head restraint in front of her, seeing nothing. Dec gently laid his hand on her arm and gave her a weak smile. She didn’t pull her arm away. He closed his eyes, and the next time he opened them the sun was higher in the clear sky and they were in heavy traffic that even Alex couldn’t slice through. The massive city seemed to stretch out for endless miles ahead.

  ‘So this is the Big Smoke,’ Dec said, leaning forward to peer between the front seats.

  ‘You’ve never been to London before?’ Chloe asked him.

  ‘Nearest I’ve been was Heathrow, when I went to Torremolinos with me ma and da in the summer,’ Dec said. ‘Jesus, look at the size of this frigging place!’

  ‘Home sweet home to over a hundred thousand vampires,’ Alex said.

  ‘How is that possible?’ Chloe said. ‘How can all those vampires be out there drinking people’s blood and nobody even seems to know about it?’

  Alex glanced at her in the rearview mirror. ‘We’ve been getting along just fine together, your kind and ours, since before you were born. Call it a symbiotic relationship. Nice and discreet — that’s what the Federation was meant to be all about. You want to see some carnage and horror, just wait until Gabriel Stone’s gang get started on the world now that the good guys aren’t here to protect you any more.’

  Alex was pretty handy in the London traffic, but even so it took a while before the satnav finally announced that they’d reached their destination and they rolled up in the quiet street in Camden Town. ‘This is the place, folks,’ she said, turning off the engine. ‘Best if you wait here and I go in alone, okay?’

  ‘So now are you going to tell me who lives here?’ Joel asked.

  ‘I already did. Someone who can help us.’ Alex flipped open the glove compartment, took out the Desert Eagle and stuffed it in her handbag before opening the door.

  ‘Someone you need a gun for?’ he asked, but she just slammed the door and he watched as she walked around the front of the Jaguar and trotted up to the front door of one of the neat little homes.

  ‘Is she always like this?’ Dec asked.

  Joel nodded. ‘She seems to know what she’s doing, guys,’ was all he could reply as he watched Alex disappear around the corner of the house and head round the back.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The back door was unlocked. Alex slipped quietly inside. The decor was pretty much what you might expect from a midpay-grade admin official at VIA, but Alex winced at the colour of the living room. Ouch. Last time she’d been here, for a hundred-and-fortieth birthday party (some vampires took longer than others to get bored of them), the walls hadn’t been quite this shocking shade of pink.

  Jen Minto
was perched on the edge of an armchair staring intently at the TV news. Her short blond hair was unbrushed and she was wearing a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms.

  ‘I shouldn’t imagine there’d be anything on there about us,’ Alex said.

  Minto jerked round in astonishment, her eyes opening wide. ‘Alex! I … I wasn’t expecting …’

  Alex walked up to her. ‘Door was open. Got to be careful. There are bad people around.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Utz McCarthy told me you made it out. I came to see how you were.’

  ‘I wasn’t there when it happened,’ Minto said. ‘I was one of the first ones to go in, after … oh, Alex, it’s so awful. And the word is that Supremo Angelopolis …’ She shook her head. ‘I’m so glad that you didn’t get caught up in it.’

  ‘I would have been, if I hadn’t been called away on urgent business,’ Alex said. ‘Not that any of it matters now.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Minto said. ‘Everything’s in ruins.’

  ‘Too early to say. All I know is that right now, it’s every vampire for herself.’ Alex smiled, but it was a hard smile. ‘You should know something about that, Jen.’

  Minto gave a puzzled frown. ‘What do you mean by that remark?’

  Alex perched on the arm of the sofa opposite. ‘Things have been kind of hectic for me lately,’ she said. ‘You might even say I’ve been a bit rushed off my feet, with one thing and another. Which is why certain little niggly details might have slipped my mind. Careless, I know.’

  ‘That’s normal enough,’ Minto said, still frowning. ‘Working for VIA takes its toll on the best of us.’

  ‘Little niggly details like, for instance, something you said to me the day I got back from Romania,’ Alex said.

  The lines in Minto’s brow had deepened to corrugated furrows. She kept glancing at the door and her breathing had quickened a fraction. ‘I don’t understand, Alex.’

  ‘I think you do,’ Alex said. ‘I think you understand exactly what I’m saying. Remember what you told me? You said, “And Xavier Garrett? He was one of them?”’

  ‘But he was.’

  ‘Yes, he was. The whole time Gabriel Stone was mounting his uprising against the Federation, Xavier was his spy inside VIA, feeding him all the juicy little bits of information he needed. We lost a lot of good agents because of him. That’s why I put a bullet in the bastard at the conference in Belgium. But the funny thing is, Jen, I never said a single word about any of it to you.’

  Minto’s face flushed. ‘No … no, I know you didn’t. It was Cornelius who told me about it.’

  ‘Kelby?’ Alex shook her head. ‘Kelby couldn’t have known about it either, because the one and only place I ever mentioned it was in the confidential field report I sent directly to Brussels HQ, and the one and only person who ever saw it was Olympia Angelopolis herself. Given some of the stuff I wrote about, I know for a fact she wouldn’t have shown it to anyone else. So, any other ideas where you might have heard about Garrett, Jen?’

  Minto said nothing.

  ‘You know, Jen, it’s less than twelve hours since our whole organisation got fucked sideways by something that’s been hidden away for hundreds of years and hardly anyone could have seen coming — and you haven’t even asked me what it was.’ Alex smiled that hard smile again. ‘That’s because you already know all about it, don’t you? Because Xavier Garrett wasn’t Gabriel Stone’s only mole inside VIA. He had an accomplice. Someone who knew all about the attack, exactly when it was coming, and was able to get out of the way just before Ash arrived there with the cross. Oh, and not to mention letting Stone know where I’d gone in Wales, so that he could send his goons to assassinate me. That made me feel so important.’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ Minto gasped.

  ‘Really?’ Alex stood up and whipped the Desert Eagle out of her bag. Minto’s eyes bugged at the sight of the gun. Alex came a step closer. With a snick-snack of the Desert Eagle’s slide she racked the top round from the magazine into the breech, then shoved the muzzle against Minto’s right temple. ‘You didn’t give them a chance, Jen. But guess what. I’m giving you one, because that is what a nice vampire I am. Where’s Stone?’

  Minto opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a strangled croak. Her eyes strained sideways to stare at the gun muzzle pressed against her head.

  ‘The Federation might be finished,’ Alex said, ‘but there’s still some Nosferol left in this world. A nice fat hollowpoint full of it, about eight inches from your brain, to be precise. I’ll ask you one more time: where’s Stone?’

  ‘They were all at Lonsdale’s place in Surrey,’ Minto blurted out. ‘But Gabriel left there last night.’

  ‘You’re making progress. Where did he go?’

  ‘Switzerland!’ Minto said, her voice rising in pitch. ‘Baxter Burnett’s place in Switzerland. That’s all know, I swear!’

  ‘Good enough for me,’ Alex said. ‘See you in vampire hell, Jen. This will only hurt for a minute.’

  Minto yelped in terror. ‘But you said you’d give me a chance!’

  ‘A chance to redeem yourself, sure. Not a chance to talk your way out of this. We’re way past that.’

  ‘No! Please!’

  ‘And by the way, your buddy Gabriel would really disapprove of the decor in this place. Have to say I agree with him on that one.’

  Alex didn’t blink as she pulled the trigger. Even before Minto’s throes of agony were over and the mess had spattered across the living room carpet, she was heading through the front door and walking back out into the street towards the parked Jaguar.

  ‘Well?’ Joel said as she climbed in behind the wheel.

  ‘We’re going on a trip,’ she said, firing up the engine.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  The Swiss Alps, north-east of Zermatt

  Baxter Burnett had bought the luxurious, rambling three-floored chalet, perched high over the mountain valley, from an Austrian industrialist billionaire who’d used it as a hunting lodge. Taking pot-shots at curly-horned wild goats in a blizzard had never been Baxter’s idea of fun; whereas entertaining two or three star-struck wannabe actresses at once by a crackling log fire was much more in his line, and with a little imagination and a lot of hard cash he’d transformed the place into a perfect haven of hedonism and debauchery. Gabriel Stone was unimpressed by the movie star’s lamentable taste in art, and even more so by the tubes of Solazal he found in the bedside drawer and promptly tossed in the fire — but the chalet would do very nicely for a few weeks, as a base from which to celebrate the success of his mission.

  It was eight thirty and the night was cold. Standing on the balcony overlooking the valley, Gabriel breathed in the crisp mountain air and looked out across the stillness at the twinkling lights of towns and villages in the distance. The heavy snow had come early that year, capping the tops of the pine forest. Stars were shining in their millions; the Milky Way laid a luminous wash across the whole white landscape.

  Far below, a vehicle was tracking its way slowly along the winding valley road. Gabriel watched its progress like an eagle surveying its prey. He imagined the humans sitting inside, cradled in the warm blast of their heater, listening to their music, completely oblivious of the predator’s eye on them from high above. Nobody out here in the snowy wilderness would have heard their cries for help. And they would never know how lucky they were to have reached their destination that night.

  As Gabriel watched the vehicle disappear behind the trees, a pair of willowy arms encircled him from behind and Kali’s tousled black hair nestled against his shoulder.

  ‘Hmmmm,’ she sighed happily. ‘It’s so good to be here, just the two of us. Like old times.’ She kissed his ear. ‘Do you remember the old days, Gabriel, sweet?’

  ‘With as much fond pleasure as I look forward to the glorious times yet to come,’ Gabriel said, stroking her hair. ‘Get dressed, Kali. The hunting hour is here.’
<
br />   Access to Baxter Burnett’s top-of-the-range cable car was from a custom-designed boarding station on the ground floor of the chalet. Through its grand expanse of glass, the cable car offered a 360-degree view of the valley below and the stars above. Its smooth cable system glided it downwards, suspended high over the snow and the trees, to the landing station at the bottom, where a gated private lane led to the winding valley road. Waiting for them there, its black body-work gleaming under the stars, was the brand-new Ferrari Enzo that Gabriel had had delivered earlier that day, the funds wired the night before to the dealership in Geneva from the numbered account in Zurich that his late, much-missed ghoul, Seymour Finch, had opened for him.

  ‘This is a pretty little toy you’ve bought yourself,’ Kali said as he held open the passenger door for her. Grinning boyishly, Gabriel leaped behind the wheel and fired up the engine. The blast of the twin exhausts melted the snow, the tyres spun against the road and the Ferrari took off like a missile.

  ‘Some aspects of the modern world suit you well, Gabriel,’ Kali said, leaning back in her seat and noticing his obvious enjoyment as he threw the car into tight bends at 125 miles an hour.

  ‘I will admit that it offers certain pleasurable distractions that we could once only have dreamed of.’ He glanced at her and saw her broad smile. ‘What amuses you?’

  ‘I was remembering the look on that poor fool Baxter Burnett’s face when you told him how much of his money you were going to take.’

  ‘What of it?’ he asked innocently.

  She laughed. ‘Oh come on. Don’t you think it was just a tiny little bit mean of you, pretending that you were running low on funds? With all the gold and diamonds a vampire could wish for, and all those millions you have stored in the human banks?’