Uprising

by Mariani, Scott G.

  She flipped herself over the edge of the stone balustrade, dropped the twenty feet to the ground and landed without a sound.

  Now it was time to hunt.

  Wallingford

  2.06 a.m.

  Dec was lying sprawled out on the couch at Matt’s place. On the table next to him were the remnants of a microwave meal he’d managed to stagger into the kitchen to prepare earlier that evening, but hadn’t had the stomach to eat. He had no idea how long he’d been staring unfocused at the television. The images on the screen made no sense to him. Some kind of movie with lots of car chases, but he kept drifting in and out and couldn’t follow it. Feverish extremes of hot and cold kept washing over him, leaving him sweltering one minute and racked with shivering the next.

  He had only the vaguest notion of what he was doing here. His memories were all confused and mixed up. It was impossible to get comfortable on the couch; he could hardly move without getting nauseous and every twist of his body brought a sharp pain in his neck. He touched the sore spot with his fingers, then withdrew them with a wince as he felt the raised puncture marks, crusted in dried blood. What had he done to himself?

  He became aware of a strange sensation in his groin, like a pulsing tingling feeling – then realised it was his phone vibrating in his pocket. He took it out groggily and pressed it to his ear.

  His brother’s voice. ‘Where are you? Me ma’s going mad with worry and me da’s about to have a fookin’ heart attack. Why have you not come home?’

  ‘Hi, Cormac,’ Dec slurred into the phone.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, bro?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ Dec lied.

  ‘Speak up. I can hardly hear you.’

  ‘Tell them I’m fine. I just want to be alone for a bit.’

  ‘Where are you?’ Cormac said again.

  ‘Promise not to tell,’ Dec muttered.

  ‘You know I won’t clipe.’

  ‘I’m at Matt’s place,’ Dec said. Then there was sudden silence on the phone. He squinted at the screen and saw that the battery had gone dead. He swore weakly and let the phone tumble out of his hand. He closed his eyes.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been out of it when a sound woke him.

  It was the sound of something scraping against the window. With an effort, he propped himself up on his elbows and peered across the room.

  The curtains were open. On the other side of the glass, standing on the window ledge, was Kate. She ran her nails down the pane and looked at him imploringly.

  ‘Let me in, Dec. Please.’

  Dec fell off the couch and started crawling across the floor towards her. Halfway to the window, he stopped. He put one hand up to the wounds on his neck.

  This isn’t Kate. Kate’s dead.

  ‘It’s so cold out here, Dec,’ she mewled. ‘Don’t you love me any more?’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Let me in,’ she pleaded. ‘I want to be with you. I’ve always wanted to be with you.’

  She looked so sad and pathetic and vulnerable out there. His heart went out to her. He managed to grab the backrest of a chair and haul himself unsteadily to his feet. Staggered the rest of the way to the window. Reached out and grasped the window catch.

  Chapter Sixty

  The Metropole Hotel, Venice

  6.23 a.m. local time

  ‘Where did you go?’ Joel mumbled sleepily from under the covers.

  Alex froze where she stood on the balcony. Behind her, the light of dawn was breaking over the Venetian skyline. For a second she thought Joel had seen her climb over the balustrade from the street below, and her mind raced to find an explanation for the unorthodox entrance.

  ‘I didn’t hear the door,’ he said, rubbing his eyes and sitting up in bed, and she could breathe again.

  ‘I sometimes don’t sleep well at night,’ she explained nonchalantly. ‘A walk helps. Didn’t want to wake you.’

  Joel kicked his legs out from under the rumpled sheets. ‘You should have woken me. I’d have come with you.’

  She smiled. ‘A girl likes to be alone sometimes.’

  ‘What about now?’

  ‘Now I want to be with you.’ She walked over to the bed and rested her hands on his shoulders.

  ‘I can’t believe you were just out in the cold. Your hands are toasty.’

  ‘I have good circulation,’ she said. Especially when her veins were filled with someone else’s fresh blood. The recent memory of last night’s two victims replayed in a flash through her mind. The first had been a young guy on his way home from a late-night bar. She’d stalked him in silence for a few hundred yards before jumping him in an alleyway.

  The second had been something of an indulgence. She’d been making her way back to the hotel, crossing a bridge when a solitary gondolier had appeared like a vision through the pre-dawn mist and drifted up the canal beneath her. Too much to resist. By the time he’d realised he had an uninvited passenger, his blood was being sucked from his neck.

  She’d only just had enough Vambloc left for the second one. Running out was a big worry.

  But now, at least, Joel was safe with her. And that mattered a great deal.

  ‘Look what we did to this bed last night,’ he said, smiling as he started unbuttoning her coat. ‘It’s wrecked.’

  ‘Impetuous,’ she murmured. The coat slipped from her shoulders, and then his fingers were running up under her blouse. She pushed him down on the bed and clambered astride him.

  After making love for the second time in a few hours, they called room service. During breakfast in bed, he kept looking at her and wanting to clasp her hand. ‘This feels so weird to me,’ he said. ‘We’ve only just met, but it’s like I’ve known you all my life.’

  ‘Maybe you have,’ she replied.

  It was bright, crisp and cold as they wandered the streets and squares of Venice. Hours of discussion, of studying the notebook and racking their brains still hadn’t led them anywhere, and the day was beginning to pass them by with nothing to show for it.

  By the time noon had come and gone, they were walking almost aimlessly through the old city. On their left, row after row of moored boats and gondolas drifted on the sparkling waters of the Grand Canal as they passed the Doge’s Palace and the Archaeological Museum. During high season the place would have been swarming with thousands of people, but today only a thin smattering of tourists were ambling around the spectacular sights, snapping cameras here and there as their guides pointed out sites of interest and rambled through the history of the different buildings.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Alex smiled, catching Joel’s eye as they walked under the pale sun.

  ‘I was admiring the view,’ he said, not taking his eyes off her.

  ‘You’ve got to keep your mind on what we’re looking for.’ She tried to sound reprimanding, but the grin on his face was infectious, and she couldn’t stop her smile from widening. ‘Be serious.’

  ‘I am serious. I want to find this thing and go home. You know, that looks heavy,’ he added, pointing at the colourful backpack she was wearing. Whatever she was carrying inside, the straps were strained tight over her shoulders. ‘Want me to take it for a while?’

  ‘I can manage, thanks.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘More girl stuff.’

  ‘You said it. Plus I brought along my mallet and stakes, in case we run into any vampires.’

  ‘Now who isn’t being serious?’

  She was about to reply when she sensed something behind them. She glanced over her shoulder at the crowds of people, scanning the faces of the tourists. They all seemed to be either gazing around them at the Venetian scenery, or perusing their guidebooks, or fiddling with the settings on their cameras.

  All except two pairs of eyes. Both hidden behind sunglasses, both angled towards them. The pair of men were hanging back a hundred yards or so as Alex and Joel turned inland and emerged into the huge open space of St Mark’s Square.

 
‘What?’ he said, noticing the sudden look of tension on her face.

  ‘Don’t look now,’ she said, ‘but apparently someone else is less than interested in the architecture too. Back near the wall over there. Five o’clock. There are two of them.’

  Joel pretended to stumble over an uneven paving stone. ‘Got them. You think they’re following us?’

  ‘I don’t think they’ve mistaken us for Brad and Angelina, do you?’

  Up ahead, a slender young female guide was pointing up at St Mark’s Basilica, the huge cathedral that dominated one end of the square and the huddled streets and buildings beyond, for the benefit of the small crowd of Americans who were tagging slowly along in her wake. She looked like she was having to work hard to maintain their attention. As they caught up with the group, Alex and Joel caught snatches of her talking about its five Byzantine domes. A few zoom lenses whirred and shutters clicked. The tourists all gazed dully at the magnificence of the ornate sculptures and dazzling mosaics, the glittering pyramidal spire of the enormous bell tower next to the basilica. Alex also gazed casually up at the buildings, but only so she could throw a discreet glance back towards the two men – and saw that they’d melted into the crowd. But she hadn’t imagined them.

  ‘How does anybody know we’re here?’ Joel said tensely.

  ‘Interesting question. I was wondering the same thing myself.’

  ‘At least they can’t be…you know. Not if they’re walking about in daylight.’ Joel thought of Seymour Finch and quickly realised that was small consolation.

  ‘No,’ Alex said after a moment’s pause. ‘No, they can’t.’

  Pressing deeper inside the crowd, they used its cover to scan the square far and wide for any trace of the two men. Alex could see nothing but she was certain they were still being watched from a distance.

  The tour group had drifted closer to St Mark’s Basilica, and the guide pointed out the large bronze horses that overlooked the square from the cathedral’s facade.

  ‘They were said to have been part of the treasure sacked from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade,’ she told the disinterested crowd. ‘Napoleon Bonaparte removed them to Paris in 1797, but they were restored to Venice eighteen years later. Sadly, the horses you see here are only replicas, but I’m pleased to tell you that the real ones are inside, if you’ll follow me—’

  One of the families of tourists had with them a chubby little girl of about seven. Where her face wasn’t smeared with chocolate, it was mottled red with bored dissatisfaction. She twisted grumpily to her mother and complained loudly, ‘Mommy, I wanna see the vampires!’

  Alex snapped her head round to stare at her through the crowd. The child caught her eye and her face turned pale – but then everyone started laughing at her comment, and the tension of the moment was diffused. The guide smiled.

  ‘I believe our learned little friend is referring to the gruesome discovery, made just last year right here in Venice, of skulls that some have claimed once belonged to real-life vampires.’

  A mutter ran through the crowd as they momentarily forgot all about Napoleon and the Fourth Crusade.

  ‘That’s right,’ the guide went on, obviously pleased that she’d got their attention at last. ‘Vampires. They were the skulls of women, and they had had bricks or stone wedges hammered into their mouths to stop them from biting more victims. Then, just like in the story of Dracula, they would have been staked through the heart.’ She paused, and pulled a face. ‘But the terrible truth is that these women, far from being blood-sucking monsters, are likely to have been the hapless victims of a superstition that was still very prevalent during the time that the Black Death struck the city during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, killing 150,000 people, a whole third of Venice’s population.’

  Another fascinated murmur from the crowd. The guide was on a roll now.

  ‘The plague was actually believed by many to be a form of vampiric possession, because of the way the victims’ mouths would ooze blood as they succumbed to the disease. In fact, the succession of plagues that struck Europe during the centuries was responsible for encouraging a mass belief in vampirism. Thankfully, we now know that Count Dracula and his brides are not stalking the streets of Venice.’

  Everybody laughed, except Alex and Joel.

  ‘For those of you who may be interested,’ the guide went on, ‘the terrible ravages of the Black Death in Venice are depicted in artwork by painters such as Tintoretto and Zanchi, whose works are displayed in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.’ She smiled. ‘But now, returning to the famous basilica here in front of us…’

  Alex didn’t hear any more. She glanced at Joel, and could see that he’d had the same idea.

  ‘Did you get that?’ she asked.

  He looked stunned by the realisation. ‘Zanchi.’

  ‘Right. Take away the Z and you’ve got—’

  ‘Anchi. The bit we couldn’t figure out.’

  She nodded. ‘We were reading it wrongly. The guy was a painter. And what do you always see depicted in Italian artwork from that time? The Virgin Mary.’

  ‘Salvation lies at the feet of the Virgin,’ Joel said.

  ‘Which means we need to go to the Grand School of San Rocco.’

  They broke off from the tour group and hurried away across the square, back towards the Grand Canal. Out of the corner of her eye, Alex spotted the two men reappear from a doorway and start following them at a fast trot.

  As they approached the edge of the canal, a waterbus was pulling into the side to let off passengers. Alex glanced back as they boarded and saw the two men exchange looks of frustration. She gave them a little wave.

  ‘Bye, bye, assholes.’ She smiled to herself as the waterbus burbled away.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  After the morning’s sunshine, the afternoon was turning quickly chilly as a thick mist rolled in like smoke from the water. Alex’s hair was beginning to drip with moisture as they eventually found the baroque facade of the red and cream building that was the Grand School of San Rocco.

  Inside, the place was virtually deserted. As they walked from room to room and gallery to gallery, gazing around them at the displays of Venetian art, Joel leafed carefully through the guide leaflet he’d grabbed from a tourist information stand in the foyer.

  ‘Hey!’ he said as Alex plucked it from his fingers and started skimming through it at high speed.

  ‘Got it,’ she said. ‘We need to go this way.’ She pointed towards a broad upward flight of white marble steps, and tugged his arm.

  ‘What’s that way?’

  ‘This,’ she said, and pointed at the enormous painting that adorned the wall to the right of the staircase. The gleaming mural depicted in intricate detail a crowd of miserable-looking people in various poses, pointing upwards with looks of reverent astonishment as a heavenly apparition descended on a cloud to meet them.

  ‘I’m not exactly an art expert,’ Joel said, walking up to it.

  ‘You think I am?’ Alex waved the leaflet at him. ‘Check it out. The Virgin Appears to the Plague Victims, by Antonio Zanchi, born 1631.’

  ‘You and your speed reading.’

  ‘And he painted it when he was thirty-five years of age,’ she added meaningfully.

  Joel frowned. ‘And that’s relevant because—’

  ‘Because it means you can forget Damien and the Antichrist. 666 was just a date, with the number one chewed away.’

  ‘1666,’ he muttered. ‘Damn.’

  Alex climbed two more steps so that she could get a closer look at the divine host that the artist had depicted floating down from the sky, surrounded by a retinue of angels.

  ‘Here’s our Virgin Mary,’ she said, pointing. ‘Appearing from heaven to offer solace to the miserable plague victims.’

  Joel peered at the canvas, looking for the salvation that was supposed to lie at the Virgin’s feet. ‘I don’t see anything there. Certainly not a cross.’

  ‘Nor do
I.’ Alex paused a few moments, then let out a sigh. ‘I don’t think it’s here, Joel. I was hoping for more. Shit.’

  Joel looked at her. ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Quite sure. There are just so many gaps in your grandfather’s notes. We obviously missed something important.’

  ‘Wonderful. We’re in the wrong place.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied thoughtfully, gazing down the broad expanse of marble staircase into the middle distance. Then a smile spread over her face.

  ‘You’re taking it awfully well, considering that was our only real clue and we’re now going to have to scour the city with nothing more to go on.’

  She turned to him. ‘San Rocco. A saint. Must have been a fairly important guy, no? Lots of people wanting to celebrate his name?’

  ‘I’d imagine so. What are you trying to say?’

  She zipped through the leaflet again and stopped almost instantly at a page. ‘There. Just as I thought. San Rocco didn’t only give his name to the school,’ she said. ‘Where do you go looking for a Virgin in Venice? A church.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So how about the Church of San Rocco, right next door?’

  They ran back outside. The mist was thickening as dusk approached, and droplets of moisture hovered on the golden light from the doorway of the nearby church. A sign on the entrance told them they had only a few minutes before the place closed for the evening.

  ‘We’d better be quick,’ Joel said as he glanced hurriedly around at the beautiful displays of frescoes on the domed ceiling, the intricate gilding and gleaming marble, the paintings hung around the walls.

  ‘We won’t be long,’ Alex said in a low voice.

  From the instant she’d stepped inside the building, she knew. The sensation in her head, in every cell of her body, was one she’d never experienced before. It wasn’t pain. It was something more profound, and far more terrible.

  ‘The foot of the Virgin,’ Joel said, pointing at a magnificent onyx statue of Mary near the altar.