Of course it was personal. You didn't stick a gun in someone's face without making it personal.
Reece slumped into the dust sheet of another chair, the motes choking him. A shroud, he thought; he was sitting on a shroud in a mausoleum. Everyone who'd lived in this house was dead, except for him.
'You've been with Campbell since, let me see, since we offed Bhagwan?'
'Pretty much,' she said.
Reece rolled a cigarette, once Newman gave a nod of permission. Mention of the condemned man's last smoke wasn't uttered, but it was in the set of the man's lips.
'You know there's been a change of management back at the office,' Reece told her. 'You might've lost your desk.'
'With Matheson and Mira on ice, I figure I've got a good chance of getting it back. Somewhere. What's Sydney like, this time of year?'
'Given they've been arming Taipan's mob and helping Matheson, pretty cold, I'd reckon.'
'They'll want what we're offering,' she insisted.
'What's that? A Strigoi in bedlam in return for a new bludger for the pair of you?'
'Jeez, Reece, you shoulda been a detective,' Newman sneered from where he stood near the window, watching for his men to return.
Reece ignored him, studying Felicity. She didn't look comfy.
'You don't think you might be better off leaving town?' Reece sucked in smoke. Shit, his guts hurt.
'The game's not done,' Felicity said.
'Not for us, anyway,' Newman said.
A burst of gunfire came from outside. And another. And a third, short and sweet, truncated: a dying reflex? Or a coup de grâce?
The two soldiers at the door exchanged looks that said their confidence level had taken a southerly dive.
Reece put away his tobacco pouch, using the action to loosen the knife strapped to his wrist — Matheson didn't know all his secrets, and Newman, as usual, was too damn cocky to care.
Neighbourhood dogs went ballistic, and then a shudder ran through the floor as something hit the rear of the house.
'Where's that?' Newman whispered.
'Not the front,' Felicity said, staring at Reece, and then peering, frowning with concentration.
He could've told them it was the back door to the granny flat. That by now, Matheson would've crossed the one big room that made up the bulk of the space under their feet, and would be at the narrow, jerry-rigged stairs that led up to the hallway linen closet. His old man had installed them, much to his mother's objections, when he'd been making home brew in what he called the basement.
Reece'd put a lock on the downstairs door to keep his sister out of his music collection and his wardrobe, once the kegs were gone and the granny flat installed; to stop her stealing his ciggies and his grass and crashing the party when he had a sheila over.
Kevin would be unlocking that door now. Testing the stairs, one at a time. Third, no the fourth one, it creaked a bit.
The linen cupboard door.
The hallway.
'See anything?' Newman asked, wiping his forehead. A floor lamp bobbed where he bumped it with the butt of his shotgun.
'Nothin',' Grunt One said.
Grunt Two flexed his hand on the pistol grip of his submachine gun.
Felicity followed Reece's glance toward the hallway; hefted her pistol.
Newman crossed to Reece and levelled the shotgun in his face. 'Where is he?'
'Behind you?'
'C'mon Reece.' Sweat beaded Newman's forehead, his upper lip.
Felicity stalked to the hallway, close to the wardrobe and the concealed staircase. Had he tipped her off somehow? A glance in the wrong direction? She'd taken off her boots; her bare feet made little sound on the carpet. She crouched against the wall, biting her lip. It might've been endearing.
The front door shuddered under a heavy impact.
Everyone jumped.
Fooled me again, Reece thought. What the fuck was the grease monkey up to?
SEVENTY-THREE
Kevin hit the ground. The impact was nothing compared to the pain wracking his body. The tracer rounds had torn massive wounds in him. They burned like coals.
But he couldn't lie here. They'd be coming to finish him.
He pushed through the agony. Desperation powered him. He called to the earth and it answered. He sank slowly into that gritty embrace, feeling the soil close around him, a dough made of gravel and broken glass. His ears filled with the familiar didgeridoo heartbeat, the hoarse shriek of cockatoos.
And slowly the pain in his body faded. Cool night pressed down on him in his cocoon of earth. How long? Seconds? Years? Was Brisbane as he'd left it, or had he travelled back through the roots and stones, to when it was swamp and forest? Or had the forest since re-emerged to cloak the streets and houses with branch and tendril, to heal this mighty wound even as his body rejected the damage, expelled the foreign matter? Was nature as hungry as he was, as keen to heal its hurt?
The slightest of tremors penetrated his fugue. Buildings falling? White men felling trees, making way for the future?
Or just the footfalls of a nervous gunman, looking for a body he couldn't — wouldn't — find?
Kevin followed his hunger back to the surface. Through the heavy scent of earth and grass came the stench of cologne and body odour, gunpowder, fear and blood.
He lay on the grass, staring up at a cloud-cloaked sky, the house a hard shape behind him, treetops a silhouetted frame. And there was the gunman, his back to Kevin as he stared out at the yard and the city, and on the other side of the stairs, a second, peering into the night.
Kevin rose soundlessly. Three steps and he was behind the nearest gunman. The man sensed his presence. Began to turn, to shout.
Kevin hit him in the side of the neck. Bones broke. He snatched the man's submachine gun as the body slumped. The second hood fired: too soon. Bullets streaked off into the trees, into the fence, the neighbour's house.
Kevin's reply sparked across the gunman's chest and blew off his bottom jaw. The dead hand fired another burst into the sky, a flare to mark his falling.
Kevin drank from the dead soldier at his feet, more interested in information than feeding. The blood was already still, the lifestream fading. But he was able to extract what he urgently needed to know: just Newman, Reece's ex-partner and two more hoods. Reece, a prisoner; Vee, on ice; and Mira.
They had Mira.
No telling where, now. The hood's memories were out of date.
He hefted the submachine gun.
What next?
How long before they killed their hostages? Before all the gunplay brought the cops?
The door from the verandah was too obvious. A window? Unlikely to be that easy. Front door was no good, not with the hallway to negotiate, a natural killing zone. The internal stairs from the flat that Reece had mentioned? Even if the top door was locked from the house side, it might give him the edge of surprise.
How long before reinforcements got here?
Down below, the oblivious city's lights blazed and a CityCat arced across the river, heading for the Hamilton wharf. It reminded Kevin of his aborted voyage on one of the ferries. He remembered the fig tree. He remembered the bats. And wondered...
You'd rather eat rats?
Taipan's mocking words came to him.
He needed to keep the gunmen guessing. Buy some time.
He kicked open the door to the flat. The whole house seemed to shudder. Mustiness rolled out. Crouched in the opening, he reached out, feeling for them; those furry little bastards, the stench of stale piss that clung to them. The bulbous eyes, the veins etching their membranous wings, the chitter of them in their roosts, the epic lines of them stretching across a sunset sky as they left for the nocturnal food hunt. He reached desperately for contact.
Bush tucker, Taipan said, in another time, another place.
There was resistance; not all answered the call. Some were already spoken for. He could feel the presence, holding the animals back; further west,
toward the city. But he called and some came, a handful at first, then another, his reach expanding, shaking them loose from trees and foraging; drawing them to him.
He stumbled to the front of the house, straining with the bare threads of control as the cloud of flying foxes wheeled above. Damn it, he should've got in position first!
Some slipped from his control as he blasted the front door lock, then kicked it with all the force he could muster.
Two rounds thumped into the door from the other side.
Two more kicks, and it flew open with a crack of splintered wood. He twisted to the side to avoid another burst of gunfire. He sent the foxes in, a long stream of dark, flapping bodies.
Crouching, he followed them inside.
SEVENTY-FOUR
Newman swore as gunfire and heavy knocks came from the front door. Guns swivelled to point down the hallway.
Felicity snapped off two rounds.
The door shivered again. Timber cracked. Splintered. Then the door slammed open and thudded into the wall.
Newman's team opened fire.
Reece grabbed Mira and pulled her, unresisting, to the floor beside the sofa.
A flutter, like the sound of autumn leaves blowing along a street. And then: wham!
The hall, the room, filled with a chaotic blast of darting shapes.
Newman and his thugs recoiled, crouched, arms up as the bats ricocheted around the room.
Wings brushed Reece's shoulders where he lay across Mira.
Newman screamed at someone called Gaz to kill Reece and the bitch.
Reece dropped the dagger from his forearm sheath and crept to the edge of the sofa. Just in time. The thug approached, crouched like Quasimodo.
Reece stabbed. The blade sliced into the man's knee. The thug stumbled. Reece pulled him down by the gun arm, one arm locked around the wrist. He stabbed again, hit vest. The thug fought for his weapon. Reece could feel his grip giving way. He stabbed again, desperately: into the neck. The man flopped to the side, gripping the gushing wound.
Reece grabbed the thug's revolver. Sensed movement and turned; far too late, he knew. But the second gunman was falling through the bat storm. Tripped over Mira, it seemed.
He sprawled and Reece could almost touch the greaseball's forehead with the barrel of the revolver. Close enough.
The report was deafening.
Newman loomed on the other side of the sofa. The shotgun thundered, ripping bats apart. Reece pointed the pistol, but the hammer clicked empty.
Newman swung the barrel toward him. Actually took the time to smile as he shouldered the gun, the barrel filling Reece's vision.
Through the flitting maelstrom of bats, a figure hunched at the far end of the hall. A hand up to ward off the bats, a handgun. Kevin fired from the hip.
Bullets chewed the wall, the doorway, the gunman. The body sprawled, bare feet pointing to the ceiling.
He ignored the body as he advanced. Bats filled the lounge room. They were tangled in curtains, had hit the hanging chandelier of lights, making the light sway and flicker like some insane disco where the only beats were the myriad flaps of wings.
A man stood near the sofa, banging away with a shotgun. Bats fell and flapped and screeched. Timber tore and flared. Stuffing flew from a couch in great puffs. Furniture shattered.
The gunman took deliberate aim at something on the floor, presenting his profile to Kevin.
Kevin shot him.
Newman jerked like he'd been hit with an electric shock, and fell boneless, out of sight.
The bats cleared, almost as dramatically as they'd arrived, funnelling out the hall.
Reece crawled to Mira.
Blood trickled from her eyes. Not sorrow, he thought: pain. On her wrist, two bracelets of scarred flesh showed where two of her blood links had been recently severed. Either one would have been enough to knock her comatose. Fresh blood glistened on one hand. Curious.
His gut ached in the aftermath of the action, the wound feeling as if it might've reopened.
Windows were shattered; the walls were peppered with holes and splattered with gore. Newman and his thugs lay dead amid the carcasses of bats. Felicity lay on her back, her expression frozen in consternation, as though she were working out some pattern on the ceiling.
Which left Reece with a pain in his guts and an empty pistol in his hand, Matheson with a smoking machinegun and Mira prone on the floor.
Interesting.
SEVENTY-FIVE
Kevin couldn't see the other two gunmen. Couldn't see anyone. He sent the bats out, leaving the reek of shit and piss, blood and gunpowder.
A heavy silence cloaked the room, broken only by the flopping of a few injured bats, someone breathing heavily. Kevin raised his weapon and stepped forward.
'Hunter? Reece?'
'Here.'
Kevin stalked around the sofa, gun levelled.
Reece was on his knees beside Mira, a gun in his hand, the bodies of two GS soldiers nearby.
Vee sat in an armchair. He-she, had been hit hard. Kevin didn't think the vampire would be coming back. Not with that much neck missing. The corpse was already showing signs of decay as the body chewed itself up in an attempt to heal the mortal wound.
But this wasn't about Vee.
He pointed the gun at Mira. Finally.
Reece stood to face him over Mira's body. His shirt was soaked and clinging with blood, his trousers dark with the stuff. The woman stared straight up. Blood had splashed her, but Kevin couldn't tell if it was hers. She wasn't staked, but she lay still, mouth slightly open, a dimple in her forehead suggesting all the noise had left her slightly perplexed as to the cause of the racket.
'So it's true? About the bedlam?'
'Maybe your mother was what tipped her over,' Hunter said.
'She was fine at the gorge,' Kevin said. 'That was after she'd killed Mum.'
'Holding on by her fingernails? Slowly being sucked under. And once you'd saved Danica—'
'Stop. Enough. Don't tell me that they somehow, I dunno, somehow cancelled each other out. It doesn't work that way.'
'Isn't that what this is all about, Kevin? An eye for an eye?'
'Enough, Hunter. Fucking enough!'
'Y'know, I've made a career out of telling people what they don't want to hear. It's whether they take any notice that's been the telling point.'
Kevin's finger tightened on the trigger. Hunter tensed. The man's revolver held little danger for Kevin. He was so much faster than the red-eye, his weapon already poised. He could take them both with one burst.
'What's it going to be?' Hunter asked.
Kevin remembered his mother, the image rocking him with its intensity: the hair pasted to her forehead, the skin paler than pale. Throat torn, arm torn, where Mira had drained her with teeth in flesh, lip on skin; had drained her of life and the life lived, left an empty shell of rotting corpse behind.
Mira stared up, sightless, locked inside her own mind.
If he drained her, if he could navigate the bedlam, sift the enormous flood of her life; if. His mother was in there, somewhere. No, not his mother. Her life. Her memories. But she — the woman — was no more inside Mira than inside the long-cold flesh he'd buried back out west. Mira had ended his mother's life. And, quite possibly, his mother had ended Mira's.
Would it be justice to kill Mira? Or mercy?
Mira blinked. Reece sighed and sank to the sofa, a hand to his stomach. Mira sat up, her gaze fixed on Kevin.
'Can you do it, grease monkey?'
'Thought you were in bedlam.'
'Would it make it easier if I was?'
'No.'
'Do you think this is what she wants you to do?'
He frowned. Had she seen inside his head? Did the blood link give away his doubts?
'Would you like me to tell you?'
'Don't.'
'Hunter said, Mira…'
She ignored him.
'Do you remember her?'
; 'Of course.'
'Do you really want to know how she remembers you? What happened on her wedding night? All her secrets?'
'Why did you take her?'
'Because I needed a little snack. Because I wanted to know you, the better to find my mother. Looks like we both came away disappointed.'
'Danica is dead.'
'And so is your mother. My Vater, your father: both dead. You see, we aren't that different.'
'I am nothing like you.'
'And yet there is a little piece of me in you.' She looked at the gun, then back at him. 'Your call, grease monkey.'
Kevin's finger eased off the trigger as tears rolled down his cheeks.
His mother was gone. What remained was a scrapbook, a ghost. It was not outrage he felt at Mira, but simple jealousy, a sense of affront that she had taken what was rightfully his. Or perhaps no one's.
Taking something and keeping it were two different things, Taipan had told him. Not only had taking Kevin's mother helped tip Mira into bedlam, it had revealed something else as well: a mother's love for her child? Or simply a degree of belated understanding about what it's like to bury your own.
Kevin stepped away; numb, uncertain, so very tired he could barely hold the gun. A shape on the floor caught his attention.
A box, earbud wires snaking from it, near the dead suit in the hallway. On the back of the box, a piece of red tape. His initials: KM.
He picked up his lost MP3 player. Smiled grimly. Road music. That was something.
Mira watched.
Sirens approached.
'You'd better skedaddle,' Hunter said. He was stuffing a sheet under his shirt, the fabric soaking through with scarlet.
Kevin nodded, turning the player in his hand.
'You got somewhere to go?' Hunter asked.
'A smile flickered on Kevin's lips, unbidden and sudden. 'There's a girl.'
'There's always a girl. Hey — leave me the keys?'
Kevin considered, listening to the sirens, fingering the music player. Hunter looked so grey in the face, his skin gleaming with sweat, hand pressing the bunched sheet against his guts.
Mira sat unmoving on the floor, as though waiting for him to change his mind.
The Big Smoke Page 28
