Talulla Rising

by Glen Duncan

  ‘Why?’ he answered. ‘Does it bother you that I’ve killed yours?’

  20

  Back at our hotel in Kensington I settled Zoë in her bassinet and sat Cloquet down opposite me. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Tell me the vampire fairy tale.’

  The rooms – one bedroom with en suite and a separate lounge/dining area – were luxury corporate, done in shades of beige with occasional planes of dark brown. London’s tense damp evening was like a listening intelligence pressed up against the window.

  ‘You think I should have told you,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should.’ He looked tired, and a little crazy.

  ‘Just tell me everything you know,’ I said. ‘And no bullshit, please, whether you think it’s in my interest or not.’

  He sank back into the leather armchair, which received him with a sigh. His face was unshaven, bloodshot, pouchy. If I thought of getting rid of him I found I couldn’t imagine him living any other kind of life. It was his default to dissolve himself into the will of a monstrous woman. My human occasionally hefted the idea of getting him help, but she couldn’t hold it up for long, not with wulf sneering and telling her she was wasting her time. He’ll be worse without you, now. That’s the nature of the familiar’s disease: he can’t live with the cure.

  ‘I told you everything already,’ he said. ‘Truly.’

  ‘Then tell me again. I want to know what we’re dealing with.’ I knew what we were dealing with: the desperation for meaning, for answers, for an invisible scheme of things underpinning the absurd concrete here-and-now. We were dealing with vampires terrified of the vast mathematical silence. Every time I saw Muslim masses bowed in prayer or the Catholic faithful gathered all I saw was fear. Moronically nodding Hasidim, paint-throwing Hindus, shimmying and jabbering Evangelicals, they were all scared shitless this was all there was. Even the Buddhists (whose crinkled tee-heeing lamas always made me want to slap them) were terrified of their own flesh and blood, needed some disembodied desire-free fairyland to shoot for. The Disciples were no different. The belief in a messiah was their collective confession that they couldn’t hack it alone. My own darling Jake had spent forty years of his life obsessed with the closest thing werewolves had to a sacred text, Quinn’s Book, the story of The Men Who Became Wolves. According to Cloquet the book (and the stone tablet that belonged with it) actually existed, though thanks to Mme Delon it was now in the hands of the Undead. Cloquet claimed he’d seen it with his own eyes (though never read it) and there was no reason to disbelieve him, but my feeling was the one Jake ended up with: that even if the book was real it didn’t follow that the story it contained was true. And since there was no way of verifying the truth of the story, what difference could it possibly make? Furthermore (since there was no denying the two things had wearily connected, whether I liked it or not), even if the oldest living vampire was old enough to have been alive at the time of the events the story described, there was no reason he’d know anything about them. Certainly no reason he’d know if they were true.

  I emerged from my reverie to find Cloquet repeating what, between them, he and Walker had come out with earlier: that according to legend Remshi was the oldest living vampire, that he’d existed, as the useless phrase had it ‘from the beginning’, that he had extraordinary powers, that periodically he returned to reclaim his kingship.

  ‘Where does he return from?’

  ‘Sleep. He sleeps for long periods, decades, maybe centuries. He comes back when the vampire race needs... needs a kind of renewal. It’s vague.’

  ‘So there must be records. They write their history, don’t they?’

  ‘There was a fire that destroyed the big vampire library at Pasargadae in 2500 BC,’ Cloquet said. ‘That was where almost all the authorised histories were kept. There were copies, but not many. Over the years they were scattered, lost. Some records since then say Remshi appeared again for a short period in China, around 400 BC. But after that, nothing, and even by then there were many vampires who didn’t accept him. Now the world has moved on. Vampires are pragmatique. The idea of a messiah has lost... credibility.’

  ‘But if Remshi existed there must have been living vampires who remembered him.’

  ‘It’s possible. But they don’t live that long.’

  ‘What do you mean? They’re not immortal?’

  He got up and poured himself a Jack Daniels from the minibar. Went into his pocket for cigarettes – remembered Zoë, checked. Old habits. ‘They are immortal,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean they can stand living for ever. Most of them give up. They walk out in the daylight or throw themselves on a wooden stake. Not many make it past a thousand years.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Jacqueline.’

  Vampire burn-out. (Literally.) It was feasible. The thought of a mere four hundred years gave me vertigo if I dwelt on it, and that was four hundred years without losing the ability to have sex and eat normal food and move around in daylight. Boochies are depressives, I recalled from one of the journals. Centuries of no sunlight. Seasonal Affective Disorder on a massive scale. What do you expect?

  Cloquet remained by the minibar, leaning against the wall, visibly in pain. It was high time I found someone to check his shoulder wound. ‘The idea of Remshi survived,’ he said, ‘through Greece and Rome, but always with fewer and fewer believers. There was a revival among the Vikings, but it didn’t last. By the time of the Renaissance it was barely a cult. Before Jacqueline came along it was a handful of zealots gathered around two or three priests. The Fifty Families thought of them as a few harmless fools.’

  ‘But not any more.’

  ‘No. Now they are starting to be concerned. The fools are no longer harmless. Or few.’

  ‘What about this Book of Remshi?’ I asked, hating even having to say the words. ‘What about these prophecies?’

  ‘Jacqueline believed they were authentic, but to me it was the weakest part of the story. There are different versions of the book. No one knows where they originated, who wrote them. The earliest copy was from second-century Athens, but claimed to be a translation of something much older. I don’t know.’

  ‘But you’ve seen it?’

  ‘Of course. She had copies.’

  ‘And?’

  He shook his head, slowly. ‘I didn’t understand it. It was all... devinettes... riddles. Also mathematics and astronomy. Supposed to give somehow the dates and places of his returns.’

  ‘And Jacqueline knew the where and the when, now, this time?’

  ‘The date is no secret. A full-moon eclipse au solstice d’hiver hasn’t happened since 1638. But he surfaces before that. Where, only the priests were supposed to know. The priests were supposed to keep it secret until the last moment, in case anyone... in case someone tries something. But she found a way.’ He laughed, sans humour. ‘She finds a way, always.’

  Images again: Lorcan on the altar, Jacqueline naked, mouth open, Jake on his knees, licking her cunt. I realised that right up until this moment I’d felt nothing about her. She’d been an obstacle to be overcome, not a person to be liked or disliked. Now, in the wake of she finds a way, always, I knew I wanted to kill her. I wanted to look into her face, let her know I was savouring the moment, then kill her. It would give me a deep, structural satisfaction. It was a small, distinct pleasure to know this, as if a thorn in my foot I’d been blindly putting up with had suddenly been removed.

  ‘I’m sorry I don’t know more,’ Cloquet said. ‘But at the time the whole thing was ridiculous to me.’

  It was ridiculous to me now, but that didn’t mean my son wouldn’t be slaughtered. Until he drinks the blood of gammou-jhi. The phrase left me furious and exhausted. Furious because it was hokey and arbitrary and dumb, exhausted because it was no more hokey and arbitrary and dumb than turning into a nine-foot monster every full moon and ripping someone to pieces and eating them. Who was I to dismiss it? Two years ago I would’ve dismissed the reality I was living right now.
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br />   In spite of which I dismissed it. I couldn’t help it. When I asked myself if I believed that a several-thousand-years-old vampire had passed-on predictions for his regular reappearance through the coming millennia, and that those predictions had been accurate and successfully preserved, the answer was No, I did not. When I asked myself if Jacqueline and her Disciples believed it, the answer was Yes, they did. And as Walker had pointed out, as far as my son’s life was concerned, that was all that mattered.

  Walker.

  I knew two things. One was that sleeping with him would be a profoundly bad idea. The other was that I was going to sleep with him.

  ‘I’m going to take a bath,’ I said to Cloquet. ‘You should get some rest.’

  He remained where he was for a moment, staring down into the whiskey’s flamy gold. Then he lifted the glass, drank what was left, put it on the bar and crossed to the door. Stopped. Didn’t turn.

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t my decision to make.’

  I didn’t reply immediately. My human knew how little it would cost to give him a word of comfort. Wulf remained affronted that its familiar had taken the law into its own hands. For a few moments the Curse’s grammar insisted a dose of suffering here would be salutary. I balanced. Tiredness had given a flicker to my peripheral vision. Then I remembered Jake telling me a story about Harley storming out of a lover’s boudoir once in such a rage he didn’t realise until he was in the street he’d put his shoes on wrongly, left shoe on right foot and vice-versa. Jake had laughed, with genuine warm delight. Then, when he’d subsided, he’d said My God, I wish I’d been kinder to Harley.

  ‘It was wrong of you,’ I said to Cloquet, quietly. ‘But it was wrong for the right reasons. Now for God’s sake go and get some sleep.’

  21

  The next afternoon I phoned Walker with what I thought was bad news: Charlie Proctor, Jake’s (and subsequently my) man at Aegis, was gone. When I’d called the number a woman with a very slight Irish accent told me Mr Proctor was no longer with the company. No, there was no new number. No, she couldn’t pass on a message. No, there was no further information she could give me. She could put me through to Mr Hurst, Mr Proctor’s replacement – but I knew by then these were all the wrong noises. I told her I’d call back. Initially I wasn’t going to say anything about it to Walker. What would be the point? We couldn’t use Aegis now anyway. But something made me call him.

  There was a silence his end, then he said: ‘Don’t say anything else. Hang up. I’ll leave you a message at reception. Don’t use this number and don’t bring your cell. Tell Cloquet not to use his phone either.’ Then he hung up.

  Four hours later he picked me up in the parking lot under the Hammersmith mall. The BMW 4x4 had been replaced with a Ford mini-van that said EMMERSON ENGINEERING on the side. Seeing Zoë strapped to me in her carrier he said: ‘You know it’s going to be tough getting camouflage gear to fit her, right?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked him.

  ‘Did you leave your cellphone behind?’

  ‘Yes. What is it?’

  ‘Guess who Murdoch worked for between leaving Special Forces and joining WOCOP?’

  A moment for it to sink in. Aegis. I felt stupid – and incapable of calculating what damage I might already have done. Leaving aside the warning klaxon of Proctor’s disappearance (was he dead? For refusing to rat me out? Had he been a Person I Could Trust after all?) it was obviously possible Murdoch knew about the aborted mission at Merryn’s. But if he did, why was I still alive? Maybe, like Grainer before him, he was old school, killed werewolves only in their full-moon form? In which case I had twenty-four days before I could expect an attempt on my life. And what if Draper and Khan had stuck around and seen Walker and Konstantinov arrive? Murdoch could be following us right now.

  ‘It’s probably okay,’ Walker said. ‘It’s ten years since Murdoch worked for Aegis, so I doubt many of his buddies are still there, but we don’t want to take unnecessary risks. Sure it’s possible he heard about Merryn’s, but there’s no reason to assume the Aegis grunts knew who you were. Besides, supernatural targets aren’t much on Murdoch’s mind right now. All he cares about is the Purge. You’re probably safe. It’s me who’s about to get shot in the head. Maybe you should drive?’

  It was raining, heavily, and almost dark. We were headed west out of the city, towards the M4.

  ‘I should’ve told you I was thinking of using Aegis,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Forget it. But from now on...?’

  ‘Okay.’

  It was, of course, pressing on us that we were alone together. After last night’s mutual blatancy we enjoyed a rich awkwardness. Whether I liked it or not the Whore of Babylon’s vacation was over. There was no denying what was going on, to employ Aunt Theresa’s euphemism, ‘down there’. In the morning’s snatched sleep I’d had surreal sex dreams: faceless glistening male and female bodies fucking in groggy desperation to a soundtrack like an abattoir. Sometimes I was one of them, in human form. Other times not. One very clear repeated image of dragging my monster snout across a guy’s come-lathered belly, leaving a trail of dark blood. I’d woken face hot, hands unequivocally at it between my legs. I’d hesitated – you see this through, Missy, and the genie’ll be well and truly out of the bottle – then yielded, and come, giantly, with a delicious feeling of comprehensive unravelling. Now you’ve done it. Well, yes, I had. Come what may, dark hilarity said, pun intended.

  ‘Anyway,’ Walker continued, ‘in the bag by your feet are two clean phones, one for you, one for the Frenchman. It’s unlikely yours were tagged, but since Proctor’s disappeared we’d be dumb to take chances. Use only these as of now. You’ll have to switch hotels too.’

  The masturbation memory had made me risibly wet. Wulf was properly awake now, curling her lips and licking her teeth. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. As the mother of a missing child my existence was supposed to be unrelieved agony. There wasn’t supposed to be room for anything else, especially not this. Still, here it was. Whatever is happening, something else is always going on. It’s only bad art and gutter journalism that insist otherwise.

  ‘How long before we hear anything?’ I asked him.

  ‘Can’t say,’ he said. ‘Jacqui’ll split her people up. It’s not like you can move three hundred vampires in somewhere without somebody noticing. She’ll disperse the bulk of them but keep her favourites close. She’ll keep your kid with her, for sure, but Natasha? I don’t know. You understand that’s our priority, right? I mean, no offence, but the only thing Mike gives a fuck about is his wife.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘And look – ’ the smile again, the slip back into sparkling defence – ‘if we get her out and I’m still alive, I’m guessing that’ll be about where I quit while I’m ahead. Unless of course you and I have fallen in love by then.’

  ‘We never discussed fees,’ I said.

  ‘No, but you were going to fork out for Aegis, and I know they don’t come cheap.’

  ‘That’s true. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I’m not very good at this.’

  ‘Let’s talk about it later. It’s ruining the atmosphere. That’s one quiet kid you got there. You know, if you need to breastfeed her, I won’t be embarrassed.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind, but I just fed her.’

  ‘Does she never cry?’

  ‘Hardly. I think maybe four times since birth. She’s like the little Lord Jesus. Or maybe she’ll be a mute.’ It was true Zoë was an extraordinarily quiet child. She slept, she woke up, she fed, she peed and threw up and negligibly pooped – but she rarely shed a tear.

  Silently judging you on her brother’s behalf.

  ‘What are you going to do with her?’ Walker asked. ‘If and when we’re good to go?’

  Well, yes, that was the question. Leave her with Cloquet? Stay home with her and trust someone else to rescue her brother? Take her along? The first two options were ha
rd to swallow. The third was farcical. So far I’d dealt with the problem by hoping something would come along to magically solve it. ‘Ask me when we’re good to go,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, what’s the story with – Fuck!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Someone walked over my grave.

  Or rather ran over it, dragging a rake. Zoë’s body against mine registered it, as if we’d shared an electric shock or an explosion of pins and needles. I felt her tighten, then relax. Two seconds and it was over.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some weird... Since I’ve been here I’ve had these little episodes of...’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of something being close. Something passing close to me.’

  ‘Something bad?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you want me to stop the car?’

  ‘No, it’s okay. Actually, wait, can we not go on the freeway? I mean, can we just stay in the city?’ Whatever it was it was here, I was certain. No matter how much I wanted it to be Jake’s ghost hurling itself at the barrier between us, I knew it wasn’t.

  ‘No problem,’ Walker said. ‘You sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. Sorry.’

  It was a reminder to him of what I was, what he was in the car with. I could feel sanity working in him against the attraction. Last night’s adrenaline had said anything was possible. Now he was marvelling at himself. He wanted to say something, make a joke about it, but the moment had left him adrift. The road lights slid over his pretty profile. His pretty profile. See what you’ve done now? See what you’ve let loose?

  ‘I’ll ask you what I was going to ask you,’ I said. ‘What’s the story with Konstantinov?’