Talulla Rising

by Glen Duncan

  ‘I don’t have children myself,’ Jacqueline continued. ‘And without intending this personally I must tell you I loathe the idiocy that infects adults the minute they become parents. But of course I understand. It’s an instinct.’

  ‘We are not sadists, Ms Demetriou,’ Remshi said, smiling. His voice was warm, resonant, gentle, with an accent unlike anything I’d ever heard. It was hard, after the first look exposed you, to meet the silver eyes. I had an image of him standing in a desert alone at night. Icy sand. Stars that came all the way down to the ground. The remote past was here, in the room, centuries made negligible, an effect of appalling compression. It was dreadful to be connected to it, as when I was a kid and my dad had given me the kite string to hold and seeing it up there in the sky so far away but attached to me had made me terrified and sick and I’d started crying. ‘The blood of gammou-jhi is the blood of gammou-jhi,’ Remshi continued. ‘Yours, your child’s, it makes no difference. If you would like to take your son’s place, that is acceptable to me.’

  ‘Don’t listen to them,’ Cloquet said. ‘They’re going to give you to Helios to get the Families off their backs.’

  Remshi laughed, with what seemed genuine amusement. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘And we shall frequent graveyards and wear black cloaks and twirl our moustaches and say “Ha-harr” with great relish of our wickedness.’

  Konstantinov, on a rogue current of consciousness, groaned, then fell silent again. Jacqueline looked at him. ‘Irony is inexhaustible,’ she said. ‘We released Natasha last night. She’s out there, free as a bird. She’s probably on a plane home as we speak.’

  I looked at Cloquet. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘She’s probably dead.’

  ‘I promise you she’s very much alive,’ Jacqueline said. ‘Alive and at liberty, although not quite the woman she was when she came to us.’

  The neat, grey-haired vampire from the Alaskan raid handed Jacqueline a syringe. She came around the altar, descended the four steps and walked down the aisle to stand six feet in front of me. She bent, tidily knees together, placed the syringe on the floor, stood. ‘A sedative,’ she said. ‘You understand?’

  Yes, I did.

  NOW! NOW!

  Nothing happened.

  I pointed to Lorcan. Him first.

  ‘Talulla,’ Jacqueline said. ‘Let’s be grown-ups. You can either trust us and do exactly as we tell you, in which case there’s a chance your child will live, or you can die right here and now, in which case your child will certainly follow you. Look around you, please.’

  At least a dozen members of the congregation had weapons trained on me. Silver, my spine said. The ones not holding guns were all carrying copies of a small, red leather-bound book. Naturally. The Book of Remshi.

  NOW!

  Nothing happened.

  ‘It’s now or never, Ms Demetriou,’ Remshi said. ‘We don’t have much time. Forgive me if I seem punctilious, but for better or worse there are protocols, and I’ve been waiting four hundr—’

  ‘Move and this goes through you,’ Mia’s voice said. ‘Don’t talk, just do exactly as I say.’

  She had been one of the crowd around the altar. Now she had her arm around Remshi’s throat.

  ‘Good grief, is that a stake?’ Remshi said. ‘Seriously? You seriously think a stake is going to—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Mia said. ‘Jacqueline, release the kid.’

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ Jacqueline said.

  ‘Don’t speak. Just do it.’

  ‘My lord, for God’s sake,’ Jacqueline said.

  ‘I’ll tell you something,’ Remshi said. ‘The last time someone tried this was in Florence in twelve eighty—’

  I don’t know how he did it. The moves were so fast that when they stopped it was as if a chunk of time had just been cut out. One moment Mia was behind him with her arm around his throat, the next she was on the floor, disarmed, with her head bleeding from where it had cracked the side of the altar. He had one knee across her throat and the stake poised at her breast.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  Mia spat in his face. ‘Pizda,’ she said

  ‘Charming! Nice talk from a lady.’

  A murmur had spread through the congregation. A fair-haired vampire detached himself from the throng and stepped into the aisle. ‘Mia,’ he said – then followed it with Russian that self-evidently translated to something like: What the fuck are you doing? Her brother, I realised. Dimitri. Same glacial eyes and sensual mouth.

  Mia answered him in Russian, not with self-evident meaning. I wondered how strong his faith was. No doubt Jacqueline had preached the new messiah would divide loved ones, set husband against wife, brother against sister...

  ‘Let her go,’ Dimitri said. His English came with a slight American accent.

  ‘Stand down, Dimi,’ Jacqueline said.

  ‘Let her go now.’

  ‘Dimi, please.’

  He took three paces towards the dais, nostrils tense, hands readying themselves.

  ‘Restrain him!’ Jacqueline ordered. Immediately three male vampires from the front row grabbed Dimitri and wrestled him to the floor.

  ‘My lord,’ the pulpit priest said, ‘we really need to get on. The time is crucial.’

  ‘Is this it?’ Mia shouted, eyes closed. ‘Is this the best you can do? You fucking useless piece of shit.’

  She was talking, I realised, to me. Yes, this was the best I could do. Fail. My son would die and so would she, believing I’d killed her boy. If I’d been able to speak I would have told her: It’s all right. They’ll let him go in a week. But I couldn’t speak. She’d die hating me.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind, Talulla,’ Jacqueline said. ‘The sedative?’

  There was nothing left. I bent, ostensibly to pick up the syringe, in fact to get maximum speed and force from a standing jump. I wondered how many I could kill before one of the bullets hit. Jacqueline first. Rip that precisely-lipsticked smile off her precisely self-delighted face. Lorcan looked at me, snapped an appeal with a small sound between a bark and a yap.

  I’m sorry, kiddo. Really, I’m so sorry.

  ‘This is taking too long,’ Jacqueline said. ‘Inject yourself now or they shoot.’

  ‘My brothers and sisters,’ Remshi said, arms raised. ‘It’s been a long wait, but at last a new day is dawning!’

  ‘Horseshit!’ a male voice called out from the congregation.

  Vampires and familiars, stunned, turned to where the voice had come from.

  ‘Fraud!’ the voice called out, apparently from somewhere altogether different.

  ‘Silence!’ the pulpit priest shouted. ‘Who is that? Who is that speaking?’

  ‘Ask them why they killed Raphael Cavalcanti,’ the voice said, from yet another place. ‘Go on, ask them why they did away with poor old Vincent Merryn.’

  I looked at Mia. Her look back said whatever this was it was nothing to do with her. The part of her look that wasn’t filled with hatred for me.

  ‘Jacqueline?’ Remshi said, very quietly.

  Madame was visibly confused. Her petite fists clenched under her breasts. I knew it was a childhood habit. I had an image of her as a little girl standing just like that in front of her father, being scolded.

  ‘Show yourself,’ she called out. ‘Show yourself!’

  ‘Show myself? What are you, blind?’ the voice said – and there, suddenly, when everyone looked up, was a figure descending feet-first through the air.

  61

  The silence was dense, seemed synaesthetically to pick out visual details: the candle flames; Jacqueline’s pearl earrings; the white-gold edging on the priest’s book. With the possible exception of my son, everyone in the room was staring at the vampire who now stood – smoking a cigarette – at the bottom of the steps leading up to the altar.

  Human age would’ve put him in his early forties, a slim, dark-eyed man of no more than five-eight, with skin the colour of latte and longish dusty black hair. A
full-lipped face of chimpish mobility and mischief. Beautiful dark hands, though the fingernails were filthy. He wore a fractured leather flying jacket over a white t-shirt, with pale green combat pants tucked into battered shitkickers. If you found out he’d just completed a thousand-mile motorcycle ride it wouldn’t surprise you. It would explain his look of exhaustion, exhilaration and grime.

  ‘You people are ludicrous,’ he said. ‘Absolutely ludicrous.’

  I was thinking: He doesn’t smell. Impossible. But he doesn’t. His accent, like Remshi’s, was homeless, but quite different. I could have sworn I’d heard it before.

  ‘Give me that,’ he said, approaching a stocky, goatee’d vampire in the front row of the congregation and snatching the little red book out of his hand.

  ‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ Remshi said.

  ‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ the newcomer mimicked, falsetto. ‘Well, you should know, Bubbles.’

  ‘It’s... He’s one of us,’ Jacqueline said. ‘Marco, what are you doing?’

  The vampire in the flying jacket, ‘Marco’, flicked though the red book, cigarette slotted into the corner of his mouth, eyes narrowed against the sidestream smoke. I looked at Mia. Remshi still had her pinned, but his attention had shifted. She knew. She was getting herself ready.

  ‘I repeat,’ Marco said: ‘Ask them why they killed Raphael Cavalcanti and Vincent Merryn.’

  ‘Merryn was working for WOCOP,’ Jacqueline said. ‘Everyone knows that. What can you possibly think—’

  ‘Merryn was working for WOCOP, yes, but that’s not all he was doing, and that’s not why you killed him, is it, ma bichette? Ah, here we are: Vor klez mych va gargim din gammou-jhi: “When he drinks the blood of the werewolf.” Any scholars in the audience?’

  The room remained utterly still, solid with the congregation’s focused consciousness. Jacqueline was at the edge of herself. Her face’s poise quivered.

  ‘Linguists? Historians? No?’

  ‘The translation is correct,’ the priest said, exasperated. ‘“Vor klez mych” is “when he drinks” and “va gargim” is “the blood”. Everyone here knows what “gammou-jhi” is. Really, Madame, this is ridiculous. He must be ejected immediately.’

  In a move almost as fast as the one that had subdued her Mia jabbed upwards with the heel of her hand and struck Remshi with incredible force under the chin. We all heard the little tuk! of his bottom teeth hitting his top ones. She twisted out from under the stake and before he could react had launched herself through the air away from him – though after only a second she was back on the floor, sucked down, it appeared, by sudden magnetism.

  ‘Stay put, Miss Tourisheva, for God’s sake,’ Marco said. ‘I like your style, but seventy-four to one... or two– ’ a wink at me – ‘are fool’s odds. Now, where was I? Yes, the translation.’ He took a last drag of the cigarette and tossed it. “Vor klez mych”, as the padré has pointed out, is indeed “when he drinks”. The problem is “mych” is an erroneous verb. It’s been there for more than four thousand years, but it’s wrong. The original had a different verb altogether. Isn’t that right, Madame?’

  Jacqueline’s nostrils flared. She backed towards the altar, where Remshi stood holding his jaw.

  ‘The original word was lost because the original word in the text was obliterated,’ Marco said. ‘Physically obliterated by an arrowhead, as it happens, but that’s another story. Apart from the author of the Book only two people knew what the line read, before its lacuna.’

  ‘Kill him,’ Jacqueline said. ‘Kill him now.’

  At least ten boochies from the congregation leaped forward – then stopped, as in profound confusion. Their mouths opened and closed. Their eyelids fluttered.

  ‘And the guns,’ Marco said. The armed vampires all did exactly the same thing: they looked at their weapons, frowned, developed a brief, intense palsy in the hands holding them, made a noise of surprise, then dropped them. One of the pistols went off, and hit a Disciple in the shin. The vampires holding Dimitri barely stirred when he shrugged them off and went to his sister.

  ‘Who are you?’ Jacqueline repeated.

  ‘And another thing,’ Marco said, lowering the book and addressing the faithful. ‘This daylight nonsense. Where are they, these credulous cretins who’ve strolled around in the sunshine?’

  ‘Remshi has given them the gift,’ Jacqueline said. ‘You’ve seen it with your own eyes. You’ve all seen it.’ A definite note of defence, now. ‘Olivia. Olivia? Olivia and Federico, where are you? Step forward. Step forward. There. They walked in sunlight this morning.’

  Two vampires, a thin, freckled woman in her mid-forties and a young olive-skinned male with all his features a little too close together in the middle of his face, came to the front of the crowd.

  ‘There,’ Jacqueline said. ‘You saw the film yourself.’

  ‘I certainly did,’ Marco said. ‘I’ve seen all the films. They walk, they talk, they smile for the camera, they watch CNN, they stick around for a day or two, then they slip away. Any headaches, Olivia? And Federico, how’s that rash on your heel?’

  The formula’s flawed. Lethally. They die sooner or later depending on how many doses.

  Federico and Olivia looked at each other. Then at Jacqueline.

  ‘Headache, rash, fever, coma, death. Anything from forty-eight hours to a week. An improvement on Helios. Their guinea pigs skipped the minor preliminaries and just went straight to death. Usually within twelve hours.’ Then to Federico and Olivia: ‘Sorry, kids.’

  The question was: could I rip Lorcan’s restraints from the altar? Once I made my move I’d have maybe two seconds. I couldn’t see the fastenings clearly from where I was standing. If I’d had one of the machetes I could have cut off his hands and feet. I could have done that. He’d hate me all over again. But they’d grow back, and I’d make it up to him...

  Marco had followed Jacqueline up the steps. Now he stood face to face with Remshi. Visually a ludicrous opposition. Remshi was tall, beautiful, elegantly dressed, had the transcendent eyes and unblemished ivory skin. Marco looked like a road-weary bum.

  ‘The author of The Book of Remshi,’ Marco said, loudly enough for the whole audience, ‘was an erratic and impulsive individual. He disowned his book, which in any case he claimed he’d concocted as a joke at his own expense. Of the two people who knew the original verb, one didn’t care about that sort of thing, but the other made his own copy with the correct verb re-inserted. Further copies followed, but none survived – or so it was thought. But Vincent... ’ He paused... ‘Merryn – ’ On the word ‘Merryn’ he slapped Remshi’s head so hard that the vampire rocked, spent a comical moment on one leg, almost went over, before Jacqueline grabbed his arm to steady him – ‘Vincent Merryn, God bless his Fabergé egg-head, found one. Imagine that! A word-for-word-correct version of the holy book! The living word!’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Jacqueline said, quietly, in what sounded like a man’s voice. ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘Vincent Merryn told Raphael Cavalcanti, and Raphael Cavalcanti, dear spectacular moron that he was, told Her would-be Royal Highness, Madame Jacqueline Delon.’

  With her brother’s help Mia Tourisheva had got to her feet, but with a look of negotiating significant invisible obstruction. A crescent of the pink sweat I’d seen on Caleb showed above her top lip.

  ‘And do you know, my little starvelings,’ Marco continued, ‘do you know what the missing verb was? Can you imagine why it didn’t fit in with Madame’s little scheme? You’ll be amazed when I tell you, you really will.’

  Palpable Disciple suspense. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see walls and ceiling had developed a visible pulse. Jacqueline backed away from Remshi. There was a moist sheen to her mean, pretty face.

  ‘Madame?’ Olivia asked, in a tiny voice. ‘Is it true? Are we going to die?’

  I doubt Jacqueline was going to answer her, but we never got to find out, because at that moment the doors burst open and four blood-
covered werewolves crashed into the chamber.

  62

  THEY DIDN’T SMELL US COMING!

  For a moment no one moved. It was as if the universe demanded everyone involved take a couple of seconds to absorb the incendiary reality of the situation: confined space; seventy-plus vampires in a state of collective shock; five starving werewolves.

  Then Trish flung the Meg Ryanish vamp’s severed head at the altar steps, where it struck with an innocently resonant crack – and the collective paralysis exploded.

  I leaped for my son.

  The altar was white granite, refreshingly cool to my palms and soles. Lorcan’s restraints were bracelets attached by short cables to panels bolted into the stone: all steel. More than enough to hold a werewolf infant. Not enough to stop an adult. Two, three, four seconds of resistance – then the ring holding the left-hand cable snapped. Instant logical joy: if I could break one I could break four. I had a terrible dizzying vision of myself with my son and daughter in human form (Lorcan’s face the human face wulf could see even if the rest of me couldn’t) snuggled together on a couch in a house by the ocean with a fire going and the TV on, Cloquet making dinner in the background. I had to shut it out. Shut everything out except breaking the cables. Everything but that.

  The second cable snapped. I reached for the third. Details from the ambient blur registered whether I wanted them or not. Most of the vampires, rudderless, traumatised by the failed Mass and slapped messiah, were just trying to get out of the chamber, and the few who weren’t were feeling the full force of hunger-furious werewolves. But the hunger worked two ways: thwarted it was fuel for rage; confronted with live prey it forgot everything else. Boochies weren’t food (blared poison, in fact) but the handful of scurrying human familiars were. For now my will and Lorcan’s reek of fear was a frail leash, holding the pack, but there was no guarantee it would last. The air was an orgy of odours, vampire blood and human flesh and our own frank canine stinks. I saw Walker take the head off a Disciple with a single clawed swipe. Fergus jumped to intercept the white-haired priest in mid-flight (a basketball clash), staked him, got his wrist stuck in the ribs, plummeted back to the floor, pulled his arm out gashed by the broken bones.