'You guys are cutting it fine,' the guard said. 'The gang's all here for the big meet; they're calling for the goon.'
'Well, we'd better get in there,' Hunter said. 'Can't have a party without the red.'
The radio squawked as the gate slid open. The West End soup van was under attack. The Needle's diversion, kicking in.
The guard opened the gates for them, distracted by his own radio.
They drove through. The gates slid closed behind them. No alarm. Or a silent one? The ambush ready to spring, now that they were cut off from the street? There were vehicles, workshops, a stairwell and banks of lifts. Plenty of places for troops to hide. Even here, the sirens reached, sounding as if the city was under attack. This was no shelter, though; this was the heart of the danger.
'Here it comes,' the Needle said.
Two guards split from a small group near the lifts and hurried to meet them at the loading dock. The Monaro was parked nearby, its bonnet up, a mechanic in overalls bent over the engine.
'Who the hell are you lot?' a guard asked as they piled out. 'Where's the goon?'
'Jesus,' said the other. 'What happened to the van?'
Hesitant hands reached for guns, uncertain.
Argent and Silver drew on them. Kevin stepped out to face the barrels of the two troopers, a sudden standoff. In his peripheral vision, he saw the men by the lifts fanning out, weapons drawn.
The mechanic put his head up from the car. 'Matheson?'
Fucking Nigel.
'What the fuck are you doing here?' Nigel said as he wiped his hands on his overalls. 'You catch him, boss? All of them?'
A guard reached for his radio. Someone shot him. The garage reverberated with a crackle of gunfire. Nigel ran. Kevin chased him through the brief, violent exchange.
Fast, the little surfie bastard, but Kevin was faster. Caught him near a lift where a guard slumped, blood smeared on the bullet-pitted wall behind him. Kevin pushed Nigel hard into the wall. The surfie crunched and bounced to the floor.
The others crowded around as Kevin pulled Nigel to his feet. 'Still playing master and servant, eh, Nige?'
'Still a loser?'
'Yeah.' He hit him in the face. Bones broke. Blood spurted. He had to hold himself back from thumping him into paste. He'd let Nigel escape once before, out at Jasmine Turner's; he had a bad habit of letting people off the hook.
Nigel went down on one knee, hand to his nose.
'That's enough,' the Needle said, and helped Nigel to his feet. 'Tell me — there seems to be a gathering of the night people somewhere above. Do you know where?'
'Sure,' Nigel grunted through his bloody fingers.
'Well then,' the Needle said, a hand on the back of the man's neck. 'Lead the way.'
SIXTY-NINE
The gang took the guards' passes and weapons and crowded into the nearest lift, but they'd made sure Reece remained unarmed. He was next to last in, managing to get the Needle's silver-painted gangers between himself and Matheson.
'Boardroom, I'm assuming?' the Needle said.
'Boardroom,' Reece said, and Nigel added, sycophantically, 'Thirteen,' and hit the button. Reece fought the urge to clock him.
Nothing happened.
Nigel swore. 'My pass won't take us that far.'
'Mine's no good either,' Reece said, 'but we can get some of the way.'
'Try this one,' the Needle said, handing over a pass from an inside pocket.
Friends in high places indeed, Reece thought.
'Which floor for us?' Matheson asked as Nigel hit the button again.
'Not that one.' Reece brushed aside the Snipe in the doorway, dodged Matheson's grasping hand as the doors slid shut.
Reece ran for the cover of a firebox; he could always use the axe in a pinch. He expected the kid to follow, but Matheson didn't need to, of course. Nigel would tell him about Mira's room on the hospital floor.
The lift moved off. The race was on!
Reece triggered the fire alarm. An ear-splitting woot-woot echoed around the car park. The lift would stop at the nearest floor. They'd need a high-level pass to get it moving again before the all-clear was given, and he was damn sure no one important had been taken down in the garage.
Weaponless, he ran to the stairs and cast his gaze up the central void. The steps receded above, naked concrete bathed in red emergency glow. Hellish, all ten — no, eleven — flights from here. He could just walk out, of course. Turn his back as the Needle and his cronies did whatever they were going to do and let the whole thing burn down behind him.
But he thought of Mira, and Matheson, and this was not the way for it to end. Not without him knowing. Trying.
Footsteps sounded in the stairwell. The Needle's raiders, heading upward. And Matheson with them, no doubt.
The mechanic had a head start. And was faster. Much faster.
Reece ran to a second stairwell at the far end of the garage. Just as tall, just as forbidding, but at least without a gang of raiders preceding him. His feet found the stairs and he began to climb, his lungs telling him he was very shortly about to regret a lifetime of smoking.
SEVENTY
Kevin didn't go after Hunter. The man had no chance of reaching Mira first. No chance.
'Where is she?' he asked Nigel, who told him and obediently punched 11. The surfie's face had a satisfactory bruise, though his myxo blood was already doing the business, turning the yellow and black to the traitor's usual half-arsed red-eye tan.
The alarm went off when they'd barely gone a floor. The lift jerked to a halt; the doors opened. Kevin elbowed his way out. A man in a uniform, submachine gun across his chest, looked at him in surprise. Kevin smacked him with the pistol, kept smacking him until he stopped moving. The rest were on their way to the stairs and he ran to get past them, imagining Hunter had already got ahead of him, sprinting toward Mira.
His legs were paining, his breath ragged, by the time he reached the eleventh floor. At least the alarm had ceased, leaving just the pounding of blood and breath in his ears. He was running on empty, body slow to adjust to the effort. Should've eaten. Useless, squeamish bastard: come here to murder, but too weak to take a slurp from some sonofabitch who probably — definitely — deserved it.
He looked over the rail, thinking of Nigel and the satisfying spray of blood across his face. Where was Hunter? Creeping along behind the Needle's gang? Or did he know another set of stairs, or perhaps a lift he could use despite the fire alarm. Was he already helping Mira get away?
Kevin cracked the fire escape door open to reveal a whitewashed foyer, the only colour a rubbery plant in one corner and the scarlet caduceus painted on sliding glass doors facing him.
He crossed the foyer and peeped through the glass. The ward was a shambles, sheets tugged from beds, stands of liquid spilled across the floor. Red lights flashed against the fluorescent wash. Window shutters were raised to reveal office blocks staring back at them. The nurses' station was empty, like a redoubt overlooking a battlefield.
And there was Mira's room, just as Nigel had described: restricted access, according to the sign.
He'd see about that.
Kevin walked slowly, picking through the wreckage. Bodies, still warm, and a fog of blood, saline, antiseptic rising from the floor. Eerie, that no one was here, that no alarm had been raised. Death had come quickly. He counted five all told, one a nurse, a huddle of white in a scarlet pool near the isolation ward's door. Was he too late? Had someone else hit Mira already? Hunter? Impossible. Even with the delay with the lift.
So what had happened?
He crept toward the isolation ward. Pushed the door open. Listened. Nothing. He entered a spartan office with a wide, deep window looking onto a hospital room. The door to the isolation room was open. Blood hung so heavy in the air he could've choked on it. An Asian man in a white coat, stethoscope on the floor nearby, was slumped in one corner. Kevin thought he was dead, crimson splashed over his face and chest, eyes staring, but he blin
ked when Kevin approached. His mouth fell open as though dumbstruck, fangs glistening with bloody drool.
Kevin's vision darkened, his pulse quickened; his body flushed with heat. Vampire blood, so rich and tantalising, teased at his famished need. But the man was in bedlam.
Despair and relief warred inside Kevin. Mira wasn't here.
Mira wasn't here!
His hunger surged; blood everywhere, none to drink, and his body ravaged with wounds, his spirit caught between his desire for revenge, to end this once and for all, and the relief of not having to test his ability to do so.
Panting, footsteps. Hunter.
Kevin turned to greet him. Maybe Hunter could shed some light on this. Maybe they wouldn't have to kill each other yet.
SEVENTY-ONE
Matheson's eyes were wide and feral green. The ward was silent, the air heavy with blood and waste, a riot of scarlet and broken furniture. Their gazes locked. The grease monkey hadn't done this. The blood was already still, and besides, Matheson was too clean to have wrought this carnage.
'Where is she?' Reece asked.
'Gone. Just some bloke in bedlam in there. A doctor, I think.'
Reece swore. What now? This didn't make sense.
They both jumped when Reece's phone rang. They stared at it, as though it were some new technology, some mysterious box of noise. Friend or foe?
Reece answered, aware of Matheson's gaze boring into him, aware that the kid could definitely hear whatever he said. Might, possibly, be able to hear the other side of the conversation as well. He had no idea how sensitive the kid's hearing was.
Vee sounded strained. 'Where are you?'
'Thorn. And you?'
'I'm with the Strigoi.'
His grip tightened; he focused on Matheson, alert for movement, for any hint of what the kid would do. 'Where are you?
'A long pause. Your house.'
'Alone?'
Vee hesitated. 'No. I don't know how long we've got.'
'What condition is she in?'
'Not good. I only just got her away; I didn't know who else to call.'
'On my way.'
He hung up. Matheson greeted him with raised eyebrows.
'I need your help, sport.'
Matheson stared at him, waiting.
'I know where Mira is,' Hunter said. 'She's waiting for us.'
'Just us?'
'Just us. She isn't alone.'
'Of course she isn't.'
'Might take a gun this time.'
Matheson nodded and fished car keys from his pocket. 'But I'm driving.'
The kid wasn't stupid. He stayed behind Reece as they headed downstairs, the exertion sufficient excuse for Reece not to try to force conversation.
His guts were a hard knot: Matheson could change his mind, try to extract Mira's location from Reece's blood; even if he and his unlikely ally did succeed in rescuing Mira — now there was a turn-up for the books — there was still the question of stopping Matheson from killing her. And then there was the bedlam. He wished he knew the details of the deal Matheson had made with Rodan.
Things went surprisingly smoothly when they reached the garage — the area had been secured by a collection of Green Shirts and streeters, and once Reece and Matheson had made it clear who they were, they were allowed to leave with a polite refusal to provide back-up and a 'good luck' that sounded awfully like 'goodbye'.
The Monaro gunned across the city as Reece directed Matheson. It sounded magnificent. Reece said as much and shared a smile with the kid. He thought about icing him, or at least ditching him, but the fact was he needed Matheson to get to Mira.
Vee had warned him and whoever was with her had heard the warning. They knew he was coming, but he was superfluous: they were after the kid. Had Vee's captors not known he was with Matheson, he doubted he'd have received so much as a snide text message.
'Very nice wheels,' Reece said.
'A classic,' Matheson said.
SEVENTY-TWO
A cold wind was shaking the trees when they pulled up in the street a few doors down from Reece's house. Lightning stalked the sky and thunder rumbled like a starving gut that had caught its first whiff of fresh meat.
'Looks nasty,' Reece said.
The kid shrugged as he scanned the cars parked in the street, the houses.
It was still early; windows were lit. Cooking smells drifted; televisions murmured. Dogs barked. A plane droned overhead, running ahead of the storm.
'What's the plan?' Kevin asked.
They'd talked about it on the drive. Reece had given the kid a rough layout of the house and settled on two options: to try to sneak in through the granny flat underneath, or go in through the back door, all guns blazing. They didn't know how many they were up against, or whether they had vampires with them. It made it hard to plan. Now they were here, inspiration was still hard to come by.
'Let's find out what's what,' Reece said. 'And then, then we see, I guess.'
'You're sure something's up?'
'You bet. Whoever wants to run this town wants Vee's power. Without Vee, or Mira, there's no one to safely sift the blood tithes. No one to stalk the streeters' dreams. No bogeyman to keep them in line. There's a limit to how many fangers a town can support before it reaches critical mass; Brissie's bloody close. Max was keeping the lid on, imposing order, keeping the number of fangers to a manageable level. If he loses the vote this evening, and it seems he will, well, I wouldn't want to be around here.'
'Where would you rather to be?'
'Somewhere else. Let's move.'
He and Kevin stalked down the side of the Queenslander to the backyard. They heard voices, low and indistinct, in the back room. The lights were on, the curtains closed. Stairs came down from the rear landing. On the other side was the door to the granny flat under the house in which Reece had lived while his mother rolled around the cottage upstairs amid cigarette butts and gin bottles.
'Blood,' Kevin said, voice low and hoarse.
Reece could smell it, too; like mock orange on a still summer's night.
They crept up the back stairs to the deck where they had the height to look over the rear fence and the downhill roofs to see the full expanse of Brisbane city rearing from behind the sluggish curves of river, a glowing web of Christmas lights strung across a suburban patchwork of businesses and residences. The storm rose above it all like a tidal wave of violence.
Where would he rather be? He studied the house, his family's house. It was no longer familiar but a strange building, a place of threat and defilement. Anger sharpened his senses. Adrenaline pumped through him.
Reece clutched his pistol, the handle still sticky with its dead owner's blood. He turned his back on Brisbane, content that any threat was contained inside the house in front of him and not lurking behind a neighbour's fence.
Windows stared at them from either side of the back door, its wood a little warped. Bloody thing always stuck. He should see about the swallows nesting in the eaves, too. He was glad his family, such as it was, hadn't survived to see it come to this. They'd had enough of their own demons to fight without worrying about ones made flesh.
He gestured at the back door to indicate they'd approach on either side. Go in hot and hope the grease monkey gave him the edge.
'Let's do it,' he whispered.
Matheson nodded. The kid's body was tight with suppressed energy.
Movement; at the window, open a bare inch. Reece threw himself down, too late — a flash; a punch in his guts. Sparks of phosphorous leaped at them, dragging the thunder of gunfire. Kevin jerked backward, hit the rail, toppled over.
The door flew open, banging in the buzzing of his deafened ears. Boots clomped on the timbers. He lay on the deck, fighting for breath, a knee in his back, a warm muzzle pressed tight into his nape.
'Gone,' a GS trooper in full kit reported. 'I filled him fulla phos, but he's gone.'
'Get after him.' Newman stood, releasing Reece, and Reece cursed, here
with his cheek pressed against the rough wood, the weight of despair holding him down in the absence of Newman's knee. He pushed his pistol across the boards.
'Steady,' Newman said. 'The back-up, too.'
'Kid took it,' Reece said as he pulled himself to his haunches, hands pressed to his aching stomach where he'd copped a round, and his head woozy as his battered body called enough, enough.
'You're a pretty shit Hunter, ain'tcha?' Newman said, motioning him to get to his feet.
'How did you know she'd be here?'
'A little bird told me.'
'Vee? Why the hell would Vee call you?'
Newman left two men to hunt Matheson and ushered Reece into the lounge with those big windows curtained off from the view. Two more grunts stood guard at the door. A sheet lay rumpled on the floor near a sofa. Mira sat there, unrestrained but unmoving; and Vee sat in an armchair facing her, stakes in heart and forehead — a GS double tap.
Mira wore a too-large nurse's uniform, one bare shoulder showing where it had fallen. Someone had tried to clean her up, but her face and hands, arms and neck, her bare feet, were smeared with blood; her hair was clotted with it, her nails outlined in black. She stared at the floor, acknowledging no one.
Felicity sat with her. She had her MP3 player in one hand, turning it over and over as though it were a good luck charm.
'He got to you too, huh?' Reece said.
Felicity looked back stonily as she tucked the player into her pocket and picked up the pistol by her side.
'I ain't the one getting to anyone,' Newman said. 'It was your girlfriend's idea to call me in after you sent her on the wild goose chase. Just as well, too, because when Vee realised it didn't have your new number, who else was it gonna call but Mira's other best friend?'
'It's just business, Reece,' Felicity said. 'With Mira, Vee and the grease monkey, we've got all the aces. It's nothing personal.'
The Big Smoke Page 27
