by Andy Maslen
They were carrying it between the tables. It was now or never. I elbowed Ariane in the ribs.
“You have to tell him. Now!” I hissed.
She nodded. Just once. But it was an eloquent movement.
She tapped out a brief message and sent it to Con.
We wriggled back into the storage room and shut the door.
Once inside Ariane spoke to me at a normal volume.
“Over there,” she said, pointing at the far side of the room where folding tables had been stacked like an oversized pack of playing cards. We raced to the tables and squatted behind our makeshift barricade and I offered up a prayer that she was right about the likely trajectory of the flying nails.
“Send it, Ariane!” I said.
She shook her head.
“It’s Con’s bomb. He should do it.”
She sent a second text to Con. It consisted of a single word.
“Now.”
I closed my eyes and held my breath. I think I had it in mind to start counting. If I did, I got as far as mentally forming my lips around the number “one” before the bomb exploded with a bang that rattled the window on the far side of the storage room. I heard a kind of pattering sound like an over-energetic woodpecker. Breaking glass. Rumbles. And screams. Thank God! Lots of truly appalling screams. We’d done it. We’d wiped out the entire New York clan of lamia.
Ariane and I left the sanctuary of our improvised bomb shelter and rushed to the door. She pulled it open and I understood what the woodpecker noise had been. The side of the door facing outwards was studded with nails at random angles. Some point-inwards, some head-first. The air was filled with acrid smoke and the smell was thick and clogged my nostrils – burnt meat and a weird plasticky smell like when you leave a kitchen tool too close to a gas flame.
We leaned over the balcony. The sight that greeted our stinging eyes was like something from a Mediaeval engraving, probably entitled, “the tortures of hell”. The floor was a mess of blood and semi-liquid tissue. A few lamia were staggering around, clutching their torn faces or the stumps of severed limbs. They burst as we watched, spraying their fellows before they themselves exploded into fountains and sheets of blood. Those nails that had not found a home in a lamia had flown out in a hemisphere from the centrepiece and were now embedded in the walls, the pillars and the ceiling. The tables nearest the blast had been obliterated. Fine chips and burning splinters of wood floated in the air around us, crawling with orange sparks along their edges.
The curtains, until the blast such elegant swags of red velvet drapery were burning merrily, releasing swirls of black smoke that eddied upwards towards the spiky plasterwork ceiling.
As we looked over the edge, a shout went up. Frederick Arnold and the rest of his crew came through the double doors and spread out into the room. At once, Ariane shouted down to him.
“Fred! Look out!”
He whirled round in time to see an uninjured lamia staggering towards him, jaw hanging, teeth erect, taloned hands clawing towards his face. Up went his pistol and he shot the vile creature in the head, stepping back as it burst and already turning away, gun arm still level in front of him, ready for new targets.
Ariane told me to draw my knife. I saw that she had already pulled the butcher knife from her apron and was holding it, point uppermost, ready to despatch any lamia foolish enough to attack us.
“Did we get them all?” I asked her, flicking my gaze left and right, behind me and below, searching for Peta.
“I pray we did, but be watchful, Caro. Until we have searched this whole building we cannot relax.”
Together, we ran round the balconied landing and descended the staircase together. Reaching the ground level I skidded in the blood, which was inches deep on the parquet flooring.
Frederick and his crew had spread out and most had disappeared through the emergency exit or the double doors, looking for lamia who had managed to escape the blast.
The gunfire was sporadic. I jumped at the first shots but then took each new volley as a signal that we were closer to our goal of wiping out the vermin.
The smell was appalling. A dense, meaty, coppery stink that seemed to worm its way beyond the nostrils and deep into some primitive part of the brain designed to run at the first signs of predators, or attack at the first sign of prey.
It felt good. To be the predators for once. After our abortive and disastrous confrontation with Peta in Docklands, this time I truly believed we had won.
Then came a sound that will live with me as long as I draw breath. A screech, so loud and so filled with hatred that the hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms stood on end.
I looked up, towards the source of the scream. And I saw her.
Leaning over the railing of the balcony, glaring down at me with ruby-red eyes, mouth hinged down and flashing obscenely long, translucent fangs dripping with slime, was Peta Velds, the mother of the London lamia and the murderer of my own dear, sweet David Harker.
The blast had blown her dress clean off her body, though sadly not a single nail into her flesh, which was rippling with muscle and as white as china clay, apart from the streaks, spatters and smears of lamia blood. She stood above us, talons gouging deep cuts into the wooden bannister, hissing at me, an obscenity made flesh.
I didn’t even think. I ran across the ballroom, splashing through the blood, and pausing only to grab the sword from the fist of the suit of armour that had been standing guard at the foot of the stairs. It had been blown backwards by the blast and was studded with nails.
“Caro, wait!” Ariane yelled.
She mustered such command in her tone that I did stop. I turned, intending to tell her not to try to impede my progress. Peta was mine. But she didn’t. She was holding a flask. Frederick or one of his crew must have given it to her. She rushed over to me and slopped the contents all over the blade before running her thumb across it and anointing my forehead with a cross.
I nodded once, then ran for the stairs. Peta was waiting for me. As I gained the upper floor she hissed once then turned and fled. She disappeared through a door, slamming it behind her.
My mind was completely clear. Yes, I was bent on extinguishing the hideous monster who had caused so much pain, so much suffering. But I was riding a wave of calm intensity. I felt my body was responding as a big cat’s might, not as something I had to urge on, but rather as something carrying me with it, allowing me to focus my conscious mind on the prey ahead of me.
I threw the door wide, looking up as I went through it. I hadn’t forgotten my experience with the three lamia in Bloomsbury Square the night Ariane showed me the one they’d captured. But the ceiling was clear: no clawed monstrosity hanging there like a spider waiting to drop onto me and sink its fangs into my flesh.
“Peta!” I screamed into the darkness. “Come out, you bitch! I’m here to kill you!”
She was too canny to reply and signal her location. So I ran on, down the corridor. At the far end I saw another of the fire doors. On the way, I tried each of the bedroom doors in turn, using my left hand so that my right could stay curled round the hilt of the sword. Each was locked. There was no other way out of the corridor apart from the fire door.
I approached the innocuous slab of grey-painted wood with the green-and-white sign of the little man on the stairs. My heart was pounding. I stretched out my left hand to hit the push bar and that’s when the lights went off. No dramatic amplified thump. No flickering or buzzing. One moment the corridor was brightly lit, the next, utterly black. The gap in our planning was revealed in an instant. I had no torch. I felt panic creeping up on me: a cold, shivery feeling that began in my belly and spread its icy tentacles upwards to my chest and then my neck and the back of my head, before sinuously winding their way down the muscles of my arms and into my fingertips.
Then I remembered. My phone, of course! I dug it out of my hip pocket with my left hand and switched on the light. Now I had a cone of pale, bluish-white light th
at at least dispelled a little of the darkness, though my terror was real and still there, clawing at my reason and making me want to turn and run.
Fearing that Peta would be waiting for me on the other side of the fire door, I readied my sword, gripping the hilt so tightly my knuckles cracked. I took a step back, inhaled deeply, then lunged at the push bar and barged through, sword held in front of me so that I might impale her if she were waiting to pounce.
The landing was empty. Or empty as far as my phone’s pathetic torch could show me. I took a moment to slow my breathing. Would she have gone up, or down? I knew Ariane and I had disabled the basement fire exit, but did she? What would I do? I asked myself. I’m extremely agile, strong and determined. The roof!
I inhaled deeply, trying to force oxygen into my bloodstream. The stairwell smelled of damp and mould. She called to me at that point. The sound all but froze me to the spot.
“Oh, Ca-ro-line,” she sang out. “I’m wait-ing for you.”
Mockery and spite dripped from those few words. I tried to think of something to shoot back but my mind was blank. She saved me the trouble.
“You made me miss my dinner,” she hissed, a guttural whisper that triggered a primitive response somewhere deep in my brain. The hairs on my forearms and the back of my neck erected and a painful shiver raced over my ribs. “Now I need to get something to go.”
I turned to the stairs and placed my right foot on the first step. It took an effort of will to follow it with my left, but once I’d left the safety of the landing, my legs seemed to take on a life of their own, and soon I was running up the stairs, imagining how I would take Peta Velds with my sword.
I spun round a corner and leapt for the third step on the next flight. My foot connected with the tread but it was coated in something slimy and I slipped immediately. I fell forwards, smashing my right shin into the edge of a higher step and yelling in pain. Worse than the pain, much worse, was the loss of my phone. As my hand smacked down onto the concrete step, the phone skittered out of my grasp, spinning out and down into the stairwell. I heard a distant smash as it hit the ground.
Orange afterimages from the bright, white light of its flash streaked across my retinas, but other than these unwelcome phenomena, I was blind. I pushed myself upright. My left palm slid in whatever substance Peta had slathered over the step. I wiped my hand on my bottom and carried on up, feeling my way with outstretched fingertips brushing the wall as I climbed.
Peta’s voice echoed down towards me.
“That sounded painful, Caroline. Did you fall over?”
I didn’t give her the satisfaction of an answer.
Gradually my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the stairwell. On every landing, an emergency light sent a few pathetic photons into the space around it, and little by little I grew accustomed to picking my way up the stairs using these light sources. I tried to keep my steps soft, straining to catch any sound of her moving towards me.
I reached another landing and had to stop to catch my breath. This one lacked the emergency light for some reason, and I stood in utter blackness. I even tested it by waving my free hand in front of my face. Nothing.
“I love the darkness,” Peta whispered into my ear.
I screamed and jumped back, swinging my sword wildly in the direction of her voice. Her stink was in my nostrils and I retched.
My back slammed into the wall and I pressed myself hard against it, sword arm held out in front, though I could feel it shaking as if it might come loose at the shoulder joint.
“Stay back, beast!” I yelled, slashing left and right.
“Beast?” she whispered, from a few feet away. “That’s very harsh coming from someone who just murdered two hundred people.”
I lunged with my sword towards the sound of her voice but she just laughed at me.
“David’s blood tasted sweet,” she said. “So did his cock.”
I whirled my sword again. It struck something hard and metallic, clanging away with a vibration that sent an electric shock up my arm from wrist to elbow. The handrail.
Peta’s feet scraped on the bare concrete. I tensed.
“Time for the final act, Caroline Harker,” she hissed.
Her footsteps were unbelievably rapid, almost as if she were scuttling on all fours, as she left the landing, heading towards the top storey of the hotel and the roof.
I raced after her, abandoning caution, trusting that my upraised sword and burning desire to avenge David would give me the protection and the strength I needed.
Three more flights and then I arrived at the top of the staircase. I looked up, hoping to see some sort of hatchway leading to the roof, but the dim light revealed nothing but a fly-spotted ceiling. To my left was another fire door. I squared my shoulders, put out my left hand, and pushed it open. The corridor on the other side was dark. I stepped though, feeling my pulse jumping in my throat like a steel ball bearing, painful with each beat of my heart. The corridor stretched away to a door, this one clearly marked with a sign saying: ROOF ONLY.
Got you! I thought.
Then the lights snapped back on.
“Oh, thank God for that,” I said, smiling with relief.
Gripping the hilt of my sword tighter, I ran down the corridor. I hit the push bar without breaking stride and almost dislocated my wrist. It was locked.
I sensed Peta, rather than heard her, as she dropped from an air conditioning duct set flush with the ceiling and obscured by a rectangle of moulded white plaster. Her talons raked down my back. I screamed from the agony of those razor-edged claws as I whirled round to face her. She sprang towards me, that hideous, fanged gape filled with puffy pink tissue. I kicked out and hit her mid-thigh, not a clean contact but enough to throw her aim off so her teeth clicked against my chainmail neckpiece. One snapped in half: I heard it go.
She reared back, hand across her wounded mouth. When she brought her hand away, I saw the broken shaft of the tooth, its splintered tip dripping with stringy slime.
She shook her head and flicked it back and forth to reseat her jaw. Then, chest heaving, she spoke in a grating voice.
“I killed your precious David. Now I’m going to kill you!”
I held my sword arm out in front of me but she swatted the blade aside as it if were nothing more than a child’s wooden plaything. The sword clattered against the wall and fell to the floor.
I retreated until my back hit the fire door. She was advancing stealthily. Not hurriedly, but as a predator who is one hundred percent sure of a kill. Her tongue was flicking in and out, dancing lasciviously across those carmine lips. From her mouth a disgusting low-pitched growl was issuing. I could hear my own blood rushing in my ears as she closed the distance between us to three feet, two feet, one...
I slumped a little, letting the door bear my weight.
“Take me, then, Peta,” I said. “I’m too tired to fight any more.”
And I let my head fall to the side, exposing the flesh of my neck above the chainmail collar.
She hissed out a breath and placed her taloned hands on my chest. I felt her warm breath on my skin and was almost retching at the fetid stink coming off her in waves.
Then she jerked backwards, blood-filled eyes popping wide, jaw swinging from its dislocated hinges. She choked out a single word, gurgling its two syllables through a throat rapidly filling with blood.
“Cutter!”
I shoved her away from me with the palm of my left hand. As she reeled backwards, the chef’s knife I had retrieved from my apron slid free of her gut with a sucking noise.
She clutched the rent in her stomach with both hands, but the blood streaming over her belly and through her fingers was a sideshow to the main event, which we both knew was only seconds away.
I slashed her across the face, left then right, as she stumbled back. My cuts severed the skin and tendons holding her jaw in place, and the whole assembly of bone, muscle, sinew and teeth fell to the floor.
The shudd
ering began, then. I pointed the knife at her face.
“This is for David Harker,” I said, my voice grim with triumph. Then I stabbed her through the right eye, which burst with a disgusting pop, and left the blade embedded deep in her skull.
A second later, with a scream that I know will haunt my nightmares, Peta Velds deliquesced into a bursting cloud of blood that covered me from head to foot.
Gasping, I fell back against the fire door and slid to the ground, my back sliding down the blood spattered wood.
65
Hunt Book of Ariane Van Helsing, 6th June 2011
Between us, Frederick’s crew and I finished off the lamia who had avoided the effects of the nail bomb. Only a handful survived the blast and they were so disorientated from the pressure wave and the effects of seeing so many of their kind destroyed in one go that we had no problems killing them. Outside, we could hear sirens, but as we had agreed with Captain Stensgaard, ESU officers had established a cordon sanitaire around the entire block. Any concerned, or merely curious, citizens wondering about the detonation and gunfire would be told that what they had heard was the sounds of a gas main explosion and the subsequent rupturing of bottles of liquid nitrogen stored for the use of the hotel’s avant garde chef.
The people Caroline and I discovered in the basement were given blankets then led away by more ESU officers and taken to one of the local hospitals for assessment and treatment for shock. They hadn’t seen the lamia so believed merely – merely? – that they had been taken from the streets to be the victims of a particularly nasty blood-drinking cult.
Con’s bomb not only destroyed the lamia, but a sizeable part of the hotel’s ground floor. The damage is not structural, so in time, it may open again, although I believe the manager and owners will have some hard questions from the good Captain to answer. I told him, when he arrived in the lobby, that Caroline and I had seen the Mayor among the guests. He grunted noncommittally. Then muttered something about maybe getting more resources now they’d be getting a human in charge.
