by Andy Maslen
I have a plan, though. When I was doing my PhD I made friends with a couple of Russians who were big into computational biology, but they discovered there was more money in hacking. I think they work for the Russian Government but I’ve never pushed them about it because sometimes it seems their clients may be a bit closer to the Dark Side.
So, I emailed Boris and Irena and they’re creating a custom virus that will destroy the disk imaging software, memory infrastructure and all the files. Permanento! It’s a shame, really, because I wrote it all, but I guess, you know, human race survives versus a few thousand lines of code.
They should have it ready in a week or two. Until then Caro is treating me like an invalid and feeding me up. Plus that crazy old Jewish guy, Shimon, cooks this mean roast chicken. He said on the drive to London that he already had a Russian working on a virus but I told him “better safe than sorry”. Maybe we’ll run both of them.
38
Caroline Murray’s Journal, 21st/22nd November 2010
I am now leading this insane double-life. I have tried to pick up the reins in chambers again, but to be honest my heart isn’t in it anymore. I’m not sure if it ever will be again. I have a dinner tonight with an old friend. I am supposed to charm my way into his affections again, and to see if I can’t persuade him to keep his cases coming Roxburgh Chambers’ way.
The dinner with Rafe went on late, at least midnight. They were practically stacking the chairs around us. I got back to the flat at about 1.00 a.m. and I just had this sixth sense that something was up. The door was locked properly, and there wasn’t any sign of damage, but I could just tell something bad was happening inside.
I more or less flew into the hall and dropped my bag and just ran upstairs. David had gone to bed and our bedroom door was closed. That was the first sign – because he always likes to leave it wide open. The light from the hall comforts him. I wrenched it open and rushed into the room and she – Lucinda – was in there. Stark naked and climbing onto the bed.
I think I screamed at her or maybe I screamed “David” – but anyway, she turned and she just, Oh, God, she growled at me. Like a dog. Her lips were drawn back and then that thing happened to her jaw. She was one of them after all. David was out of it. He was always a heavy sleeper and recently he’s been taking half a sleeping pill before bed.
She kind of stalked off the bed and I know it’s weird but I still had time to take in her physique. She used to be quite voluptuous but she was totally muscled, like a gym bunny. Her tits had disappeared and she just looked like an animal. Like a panther or something.
Her head was jerking back and I just watched those horrid glassy teeth lower themselves from the roof of her mouth.
“Mother is displeased with you,” she said. Or hissed, rather. “Now I must take you to her.”
I grabbed a pillow from my side of the bed and threw it at her. She swatted it aside but in that moment I ran back down the hall and raced down the stairs. She came scuttling after me, on all fours, screeching and whining. I had only one thought. Get to the kitchen. Ariane had warned me to be prepared to fight at any time so I’d coated the biggest kitchen knife in the block with salcie usturoi.
Lucy caught me just as I reached the kitchen. She clawed at my arm and ripped four great tears in my jacket. It’s leather though and her nails didn’t get anywhere near my skin. I twisted round and sort of tripped her and yanked my arm free at the same time. My Thai boxing teacher wouldn’t have been very impressed but I bought just enough time to get to the knife block.
She reared back up at me from the floor, jack-knifing like a gymnast. Then she saw the butcher knife and stopped. She flared her nostrils as she looked at the knife then back at me.
I was crying by this time, and my nose was running. I’d nearly lost my fiancée and now my best friend was gone, turned into this hideous creature scowling at me with her whole lower jaw hanging down like a snake’s. She shook her head violently, forwards and back and the jaw went back into place with a loud click. She started talking.
“Caro, join us. Let me feed on you and I can give you all this.” Then she ran her hands over her body, “It feels so good. So alive.” The way she was talking made me feel woozy, something about the eyes, maybe or just the sight of that wide-open maw and all that gunk dripping down from the teeth. I swear I was starting to feel it mightn’t be such a bad idea when David appeared right behind her in the doorway.
“Caro? What’s going on?”
Lucinda turned and I knew she’d kill David. As her thigh muscles bunched, ready to spring, I moved first.
I think the scream was to give myself the courage to do what I knew I had to. It was a horrible sound, even as I made it, all clotted with tears and snot, my voice cracking. But I did it anyway.
I drew my arm back behind me, keeping it low like Lily taught me.
Closed the gap between me and Lucinda.
Thrust the knife hard into her, below the ribs, where it would be sure to find enough soft flesh to do its work.
Lucinda whirled round to face me, tearing the blade free, which clattered to the floor as my hand opened reflexively.
Her eyes were blood-red and wide, wide open. Her jaw slipped back into place.
“Caro!” she said. Then she shuddered mightily and turned to blood – a monstrous flood of it which slopped down in a great red tide. Just like the other ones.
I killed my best friend. No. Peta Velds killed my best friend. I must hold onto that. Ariane and the others are right. She was already lost to me when she turned up at the flat to kill David. I destroyed the sad, angry, hungry creature my best friend had become.
David just stood there, almost catatonic. His mouth was open. I think the sleeping pill was still trying hard to do its work, because he seemed almost to be sleep walking.
“Did you just—?” he said.
“Go back to bed, love,” I said. “I’ll explain tomorrow.”
“But—”
“Go. I’ll be up in a while,” I said.
And bless him, he did. Just stumbled out of the kitchen and went back to bed.
It took me almost three hours to clean up the kitchen. Then I crashed out on the sofa – I didn’t even have the energy to get undressed and go to bed. Besides, I didn’t want to wake David. And I found something.
I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed them before, well, I suppose the sight of poor Lucy looking like she did was a distraction. On the floor of the hall, right outside our bedroom door, was a pile of Lucy’s clothes. The usual blacks and purples. But placed absolutely centrally on the top was a phone. Some sort of bespoke thing – made of brushed silver metal and incredibly beautiful. I pocketed it. There would be time to investigate it later.
The kitchen still smelled like a butcher’s shop but there was no visible sign of what had happened. I made myself a strong coffee and sat at the table. As I sipped the scalding liquid I found that I was feeling no grief for Lucy. Perhaps, deep down, I’d known already that she was lost to me. I’d persuaded myself she was OK, even through Ariane had warned me not to give in to what she called “nostalgia for the friend that was, and is no more”. It sounded like a prayer, now that I come to think of it.
When David appeared, a couple of hours later, I realised I hadn’t moved. Half my coffee was still there, stone-cold and greyish. He looked only slightly less bleary than he had done when he helped me finish off Lucinda. I sat him down with a cup of decaf and began, patiently, I hope, to explain what was going on.
39
[draft post] Ramblings of a free-revving mind – David Harker’s blog, 23rd November 2010
I went to sleep in one world and woke up in another. I don’t know how else to put it. Caro’s been trying to tell me what’s been going on but I think I just blocked it all out. It’s not that hard with my condition. You just tell yourself it’s your hyperactive cerebral cortex and leave it at that. But after what I saw last night, I guess I don’t have a choice but to believe every word.<
br />
But I’m a scientist, for God’s sake. Rational is my middle name. I don’t see how any of this can be true. Caro says Ariane can explain everything much better than she can so we’re going to see her and her vampire-hunting buddies later today.
If it’s true – and I know it will turn out to be: Caro isn’t lying, I know that – then as far as I can see, my career is over. I mean, how can you go back to fiddling around with mass-spectrometers and DNA analysis when there are those, those things creeping about London feeding off people? Jesus! I don’t know how to process this. I mean, why has nobody ever gone to the police? Or the government? You can’t just run a vigilante operation against bloody vampires. It’s insane. And before I let myself answer that point, it is insane. I, on the other hand, am perfectly OK.
Caro says the phone could be important. She hasn’t turned it on. Says Ariane needs to look at it first. She thinks it could be a way for us to get to Peta. Oh, my God! Peta Velds is the literal mother of all vampires. And I was working for her in Norfolk. How could I have been so blind? Was I really that simple to buy? Money and a house and I rolled over and did her bidding. Left my old job without a backward glance? No. It wasn’t the money. Not really. It was the freedom she promised me. The budget. The kit. But that’s all gone now, too. Blown up like a bloody great fireworks display.
It was on the news, too. The reporter said there’d been a lab explosion caused by a faulty electrical circuit. But I thought they had fire investigators. People who go on the news and talk about accelerants and all that. Plus surely C4 leaves some sort of chemical signature. They’d know it wasn’t a regular lab accident. I mean the place was flattened. It looked like an atom bomb had gone off. More questions. No answers. Not yet, anyway. I’m making a list of them for Ariane later. Caroline’s just got back from the shops. There’s something I want to ask her.
40
Caroline Murray’s journal, 23rd November 2010
Well. I must confess I didn’t see that one coming. I’d just got in through the front door and was about to put my shopping down on the kitchen table when David burst in looking all waggy-tailed and bright-eyed. He took the carrier bags off me.
“Cancel the wedding,” he said.
“What?” I said. “What d you mean, ‘cancel the wedding’? We haven’t even planned a wedding you idiot!”
“OK, don’t cancel the wedding. Just, don’t let’s plan one. I want to get married right away. Today if possible. We have to, Caro, you must see that.”
I tried to calm him down. Put my hands on his shoulders and pressed down until he was forced to sit. But he held my hands and pulled me onto his lap so I was straddling his thighs.
He looked deeply into my eyes and I don’t think I have ever seen David more serious. He delivered the following speech. He must have been rehearsing it while I was out or something.
“Caroline Murray. I love you. And I know we were meant to be together. But with all that’s happened, I realise that what matters is spending the rest of our lives with each other. I can’t risk losing you to one of those things knowing that we hadn’t joined ourselves fully. So let’s get married without delay. Please.”
So instead of talking about vampires, we spent an hour or so planning our quickie wedding. I knew my parents would be devastated, especially Mum. But right at that moment, the only person who mattered to me was the man sitting next to me as we pored over the website explaining what we’d need to do and bring, and who we’d need to notify. All fairly standard stuff and I’d collected all the documents within a further 20 minutes. However much David wanted to hop in a plane and fly to Vegas, I explained that it would be risky with Velds on the warpath and that a 35-day wait would be preferable to being carved up in the desert somewhere.
He agreed, reluctantly.
41
Hunt book of Ariane Van Helsing, 1st January 2011
So. Caroline is no longer a Miss but a Mrs. Good for her. She needs a little normality in her life right now. And David is clearly besotted with her. He is a fast learner, too. From all that science, I suppose, He was resistant at first, started calling me a storyteller, but I gave him all the hard science we have done over the years, from the parasitology reports to the DNA analysis, and in the end he was convinced. Weird that lamia attempting to drain your blood not once but twice should not have proved sufficiently compelling, but a sheaf of computer printouts does the job. So. He is aware, which is good. His skills will also come in handy. He can write code, for one thing.
It was so hard losing Tomas. He and I went way back and I always thought that one day he might divine my true feelings for him. But it is too late now. Tomas is gone. For ever. He is with God. I still feel him when I am alone. I know he would want me to continue the war without him. It is my destiny, my patrimony. Great-great-grandfather Abraham would have approved of Tomas.
Now, though, I have a new team. Nobody could replace Tomas, but Jim has other attributes and skills that bring us a new way of working. We had to clean him up, inside and out, and he will always need watching whenever alcohol is about. But Shimon makes sure he goes to meetings and Lily has taken it upon herself to feed him up. Without the dirt he is rather good looking, especially those deep-brown eyes.
I was right in my initial assumptions about Jim. He was in law enforcement. But not as a regular policeman. He was Special Branch. Undercover. But he went too deep. His final mission was infiltrating an anarchist cell in London. They had well developed plans to bomb King’s Cross Station. But Jim became involved with a woman. She fell pregnant and had his child. Somehow she discovered his true identity and aborted the baby. That tipped Jim over the edge and his drinking escalated. The anarchists beat him and left him for dead on the steps of Scotland Yard with a note stapled to his forehead. The note said if the “pigs” sent anyone else they would return them in separate bags.
After that Jim quit the force on medical grounds. He spiralled downwards, stopped paying his mortgage and was on the streets within six months. He hadn’t lost all his survival instincts though and let himself drift into a new persona, voice and all. It is actually quite amusing now to hear this ex-Special Branch officer talking in his beautiful Queen’s English and compare him to the filthy, matted creature we met in the carpark.
So, Jim is our new communications expert. He is also extremely happy with weapons. He passed his first test with flying colours – this is the expression, I think.
When we recruited Jim, we still had the female lamia locked up in the basement. She was weakened because of course we were no longer feeding her. The bowl of blood was just to convince Caroline. I took Jim down to her and gave him a crossbow.
“Kill her,” I said. Not “it” – I didn’t want to depersonalise the lamia. I wanted him to believe he was killing a woman, not a monster, not a species of vermin.
He hesitated, even as he aimed the crossbow. Then it did me – us – a huge favour, and screeched at him for blood. As the feeding funnel pulsed weakly in its mouth, he pulled the trigger.
“Tell me about the others,” was all he said, afterwards
So we are six, where once we were four. I feel this will be our best-ever chance of defeating Peta Velds.
42
Caroline Harker’s journal, 3rd January 2011
It’s 10.30 p.m. we’ve spent most of this evening working on a plan to destroy Peta Velds. It is reassuring having Jim on the team, He’s rather dishy apart from anything else, and my goodness, doesn’t he know his way around fighting tactics! He and Lily have spent some time cracking the security code on the phone I retrieved when I killed Lucy. No, not Lucy. As I keep reminding myself, Peta Velds killed Lucy. I killed the creature that had taken over her poor body.
Anyway, they have unlocked it now and since Peta Velds doesn’t know about Lucy, we have a way in. Because I know her way of speaking the best, I have been assigned the task of keeping lines of communications open with what I must learn to call the target. This is Jim’s advice and I m
ust say, it does help to stay focused. I never liked using her name anyway. So I send texts saying “I” am closing in on “me”, as it were. The target seems not to have noticed anything amiss.
We intend to lure the target to a killing ground. More military terminology, I’m afraid. The kill team is all of us. Jim said he would always have gone in with at least three to one in his favour for a fight and as we don’t know how many lamia the target will bring with her, we six are all going together. It feels fitting, somehow.
As Lucy, I am to advise the target that the other me, Caroline, is pinned down in the killing ground and that it would be best if the target did the job herself – as vengeance for the lab’s being destroyed. The collective feeling is she’ll go for it – being so driven by concepts of honour and revenge.
The killing ground is perfect. It’s down by the river on a deserted stretch out near the Thames Barrier. The story is that I’ve been forced to drive Lucy there in my car so afterwards they can dump the body where the tide will take it. After all, Caroline Murray is high profile enough that her disappearance would spark a murder hunt.
Ariane has been in contact with her counterpart in New York. They were talking about guns. Apparently, he has perfected a way of firing bullets filled with salcie usturoye. Because we have Jim now, Ariane wants to add firepower to our crossbows. She says they’re perfectly effective against individual lamia, but for a showdown with the target and who knows how many others, we need to increase our rate of fire – Jim’s influence again.
