30 Days of Night: Fear of the Dark

14

AT FIRST LEE THOUGHT Patrick was late, but then the Irishman emerged from the shadows as if he were one of them. Connie greeted him with a nod, and Lee noticed the small rucksack he was carrying.

“What’s that?” he asked as Patrick opened the bag, handed Connie a torch, took one for himself, and then hid the bag behind a large wheeled garbage bin.

“UV,” Connie said.

“You can use UV lights?” he asked, amazed.

“We close our eyes,” Patrick said. He was smiling at Lee, looking him up and down, and Lee realized this was the first time he’d seen Patrick since the Humains’ existence had been revealed. He seemed to be taking great pleasure in that.

“Got one for me?”

“Looks to me like you’re already tooled up.”

Lee drew one of the guns, weighing it against the lights the two Humains carried.

“These will hurt them,” Connie said. “But we can’t use them for more than a flash, so it’s just a brief hurt. What you’ve got will kill them. Head shot.” She smiled like a sweet teenaged girl, but her teeth detracted from the complete image. “We blind, you kill. We’ll make a good killing team.”

“Killing team,” Lee thought. And as they made for the large rolling shutter doors, it dawned on him that this was what he’d been working toward for ten years. Since watching Phil be killed by a monster he could barely understand or believe in, his life had been a pursuit of vengeance, both for his dead friend and for what the experience had done to him. His wife, his job… he’d lost everything, though the obsession sometimes seemed to make up for all of it. That was the true mark of his state of mind—that this could make amends for everything he once had. And now he was hunting them, and would perhaps kill them. There was that vampire out by Heathrow three years before, but that had felt like a minor victory. In a way, finding one hiding away like that had only been proof that there were many more.

“‘Killing team,’” Lee said. “I like the sound of that.”

Patrick and Connie wedged their fingers beneath a roller shutter and lifted. From the grinding of metal against metal, and the protesting grating noises from the door’s mechanism, Lee understood the strength required for what they were doing. Inside, they moved across the large loading space and Lee quickly lost sight of them. He took a penlight from his pocket and flicked it on, and Patrick glanced back at him.

“I can’t see in the dark,” Lee whispered.

He followed the two of them through into a long corridor, the weight of the big gun in his hand a solid comfort. He’d test fired his homemade ammunition in his soundproofed basement, seen what it could do, and he was keen to try it on a living, breathing… He chuckled softly at his train of thought. No living and breathing things in here. The vampires he hunted were as dead to him as the exhibits they slunk around.

And what of the Humains? he thought. But that was a distraction. They were a problem for afterward, and he was wise enough to know that they thought of him the same way.

“So?” Connie asked.

“Follow me,” Lee said. He hurried along the corridor at a crouch, aware that the subtle light could give them away but unable to move without it. He trusted his companions would let him know when danger was near.

They moved out into a hall, passing the remains of a massive stone horse and other tall larger-than-life statues. Lee ignored the history that sat quietly around him and approached an information point. He plucked a leaflet from the stand and ducked behind the desk, flattening it on the ground and holding the penlight between his teeth.

“What?” Connie asked angrily.

“You think I know the layout of this place?” he asked. He examined the floor plan, but it showed only the display areas, not those vast basements where millions of objects were stored. “Fuck it,” he muttered. He located a staircase on the layout, fixed it in his mind, and folded the map.

“Which way, human?” Patrick asked. Lee cringed, but he supposed that was humor.

“Down,” Lee said. “Into the basements. There’ll be rats, if you’re hungry.”

Something crashed to the floor. It rumbled and rolled, a noise that came in from some distance and grumbled on for several seconds. The whole building seemed to shake.

“That’s our cue,” Connie said. “Which way?” She nudged Lee hard in the back, and as he rushed toward the staircase he wished only that he could wash where she had touched him. He felt sullied.

Duval and the others froze seconds before Marty heard the impact sounds echoing through the huge halls. It was as if they had sensed the noise before it happened. Tube? he thought. Truck outside?

“They’re here,” Duval said, and Marty knew who he meant. Rose and the others were here as well, and now this would be a chase to the prize. If they know exactly where it is and I can keep the true room number to myself… But he knew that was unlikely. The tortures he had suffered at Duval’s hands before were nothing compared to what they’d do to him soon. His body ached in a hundred places, and his finger throbbed where the nail had been torn off, a white heat that seemed to set his hand on fire. He imagined that same heat applied everywhere across his body, inside and out. Perhaps he would die before telling them, but probably not. They seemed familiar with torture.

“You two, go and kill them.” Duval waved at Stoner and Kat, and the two humans grinned as they stalked away along darkened corridors.

“Duval—” Bindy said, but the tall vampire held up his hand. When the humans were beyond earshot he said, “It’ll provide a distraction. We don’t need much time. You come with me.” Then he nodded at the other two vampires. “You hide down here. Listen to what’s happening, and be ready when they come down. They’ve lost any opportunity to join us, so kill them all.”

“They use UV lights,” Bindy said, and that was the instant Marty realized she was the vampire escapee from his parents’ house. She killed Mum, he thought. The fury rose so quickly that the blood-rush made him dizzy, tingling all along his nerve endings, and he launched into her. Surprise gave him a couple of seconds before she reacted… He punched and kicked, flailing his arms, fists connecting with her eye and cheek and mouth, and it was like punching a tiger—all teeth. She recovered quickly and knocked him from her onto his back. Then she was on him, mouth wide and monstrous, hissing as her hands pressed down on his chest and twisted his head up and back to expose his throat.

“Bindy,” Duval said mildly, and she moved back from Marty with a cat’s grace. She squatted by his feet, mouth and lips and tongue still engorged. Her teeth had slashed her top lip, and a faint track of blood ran down both sides of her mouth. There wasn’t much.

“You want to stay alive, don’t do that again,” Duval said.

“Maybe I don’t,” Marty said, glaring at the monstrous Bindy.

“She squealed when I killed her,” Bindy said, the words strange coming from her alien mouth.

“Bindy. Please.” Duval grabbed Marty by the hair and lifted him, and it was all he could do not to squeal himself. The vampire propped him on his feet then shoved him forward. “Room twenty-seven. Find it.”

Almost time, Marty thought. I’ll be found out soon. He walked along the corridor, checking room numbers by the pale illumination from night-lights as he went. At the end was a set of double doors, and he marched through them without pause. Whatever was on the other side, let it be. He hoped Rose was there, and maybe Lee with some of his guns, but there was no one, just another dark corridor perpendicular to the one they were on.

The doors were numbered even and odd on either side, like house numbers on a long, straight street. They soon reached number twenty-seven, and Marty paused outside.

“The door’s—”

Duval shoved the door. Its frame cracked and the door burst inward, and he walked through with barely a pause. Bindy nudged Marty inside and turned the light on behind him.

The room was twice the size of the floor area of his burnt-down house. There were eight walkways, and on either side of each, storage shelving held boxes and bags, some numbered, others seemingly placed at random. The shelving reached the underside of the service ceiling, above which pipes and wires snaked in all directions. To the left of the door was a large table and several chairs, and on the table was a set of sorting shelves with three dozen pigeonholes. The table’s surface was smeared with dust and grit, and the remnants of a shredded piece of string.

“It’ll take forever,” Marty said.

“Not that long,” Duval whispered. And he turned on Marty.

That’s it, he thinks it’s here, he’ll kill me now and—

But Duval had other plans. “You can join us,” he said. “I’m about to become the most powerful vampire on the planet. We’ve lost some, and we need to replace.”

“Are you bullshitting me?”

“No,” Duval purred, and Marty could see that he wasn’t. He was filled with revulsion, sickness rising into his mouth. He swallowed, wincing at the burning sensation in his throat, and spat.

“Fuck you, freak,” Marty said.

“We’ll see.” Duval surveyed the room for a moment, then started searching for the Bane, pulling boxes from the shelves and upending them on the floor, kicking through the contents, moving on to the next.

For a moment, Marty wanted to blurt out his deception, make the toothed fucker realize he’d been duped. It would be a sweet moment of petty vengeance. But then the time lost in searching here would be made up again… and he could not afford that. He had to give Rose and the others as long as he could.

As if in answer to that thought, gunfire rattled in the distance, reminding him of the police station slaughter. Duval didn’t even pause in his search. Bindy smiled at Marty before starting to look as well, and he realized that it was she who would turn him in the end.

Joining them had not been an invitation.

Rose ran behind a plinth, ducking low as bullets scarred shards of granite from the other side, UV light banging from her hip. When the shooting paused, she made a dash for a wide arch leading into the next hall, but realized the shooter’s intention as the firing commenced again. They weren’t out of bullets at all.

The bullets caught her across the left hip, shattering the light and driving her against the wall. The impact knocked a fire extinguisher from its mount and she tried running again. Another burst took her across the chest. She slid motionless to the floor, analyzing the pain, curious at the sensation rather than panicked. She had never been shot before.

She could feel each hot bullet folded in the grip of her cool flesh. Two in her side, three in her chest, each of them a distinct star in the cold vacuum of her undead body, and she already sensed her vampire flesh starting to fill in around them. Two of the rounds in her chest had ricocheted from her ribs, one passing through her right lung and lodging against her spine. Cracked ribs fused. Shredded lung tissue closed together. She writhed slightly, uncomfortable now rather than in any kind of agony, and stared across the floor as the figure approached.

It was a woman, tall, clad in black leather and cradling a very big gun. As she walked, she ejected the magazine and inserted another clumsily, having to pause and prop the gun’s stock against the floor to do so. She was breathing hard and fast, and her scent gave off a sexual excitement. It also spoke of her addiction, currently being fed; stale sweat and the rankness of bad, chemical-filled blood.

The woman stood again, and Rose tensed to move. The instant the barrel came around for the head shot, she would be on her. A quick snap of the neck, and then away. No blood. No feeding.

But the woman seemed to appreciate the melodrama of the moment, because she wanted to talk first.

“How’s that feel, bloodsucker?”

Rose chuckled, a noiseless grumble deep in her chest.

“Funny?”

“You? Yeah.”

The woman stopped five steps away and aimed at Rose’s stomach. “I blow your guts out, you won’t be laughing then, eh?”

“I like the leathers. Very Underworld.”

A quick burst into Rose’s stomach, three bullets, and at this range they passed right through. She groaned and rolled in fake pain—that’s what the woman wanted, after all—but in reality the impacts had felt little more than punches. They did not wind her, because she had no breath.

“Oh, yeah,” the woman sighed, shifting her weight back and forth from one leg to the other.

“Getting off on this?” Rose asked.

“Believe it.”

“What did they promise you?”

“Everything. All the things you weaklings are too afraid to be. You’ve got the fucking world at your fingertips, and—” As the woman talked, the gun barrel drifted until it was pointing at Rose’s throat, and that was that.

Rose threw herself from the wall, a shadow through the air, knocking the gun aside and straddling her attacker as she fell onto her back. The weapon clattered across the polished floor. The woman’s wide, startled eyes rolled slightly as her head struck hard, and when she brought a knife up in her left hand, Rose snapped it at the wrist, twisting her hand three times until it came off with a wet, grinding noise. The woman’s mouth opened, the pain so bright that the scream was locked in shock.

Rose grabbed the woman’s ponytail and pulled her up, bending, mouth open, tugging the bound hair down now so that her pale throat was exposed—

The suit’s startled eyes, involuntary sexual excitement, that gush of living blood that had come to mean so much…

Rose held back. The hunger was rich and burning, every fiber of her body craving the warm rush, but something in her altered mind still gave her pause. Something, she supposed, that maintained a portion of her humanity. The Humain part of her.

The woman whined. She was actually smiling. “Holy shit, you poor deluded bitch,” Rose said. She rested the back of the woman’s neck on her free arm and pulled hard on the ponytail, snapping her spine. The woman tensed for a second, then her whole body fell loose.

Rose checked her heart. One final, weak beat and she was dead. Gone. But her blood was still…

She bit out the woman’s throat and started drinking.

Warm.

Down in the basement of the British Museum, the darkness felt so much more threatening. It was deeper, for a start, and the Humains hadn’t allowed Lee to use his light. There was some background light, provided by faint yellow emergency lighting which he guessed was on all the time, though the glow did not reach very far. But there was also something else: a sense that this darkness was occupied, and that down here the rest of the world mattered little.

Gunfire sounded far off, a rapid crackle. Lee froze and grasped the .454 in his hand harder. Connie nudged him.

“Move on,” she said. “They’re doing their job, we need to do ours.”

Patrick rushed past them and paused twenty steps ahead by an open door. He ducked into the room and emerged again almost immediately. “Dead guard.” As they passed the door Lee was not tempted to look in, but he smelled the devastation done to the man.

They reached another staircase, and he saw that they’d been in a subbasement, a place of offices and storage, but not where the majority of items not on display were kept. That explained the lack of room numbers.

It was one long flight down, and then he could smell the past around them. It was not only the must of old things, packaged away and perhaps not opened for years or decades. It was the smell of gathered time, artifacts from all of human history brought together to bear witness to the passage of time, whatever that was. Sometimes the ten years since he’d left the SIS felt like ten days, and other times he couldn’t remember ever having worked for them at all. Time messed with him. He wondered what it felt like for someone all but immortal.

They stalked down one corridor and entered another, doubling back on themselves and finally reaching room number seventy-two. He paused, nodded at the door, and Patrick tried the handle. It was locked. The vampire twisted harder, shoved, and the door gave with a brief shriek of broken metal.

A sound came from somewhere else in the building, a hollow boom. Lee felt subtle vibrations transmitted through his heels, but he couldn’t tell where it had come from. It might have been a door slamming in the next corridor, or a cannon firing up in one of the great display halls.

“We might not have very long,” Connie whispered, coming close to do so. Her pale face hovered before him, but there was no hint of warm, stale breath. Instead, only a smell that reminded him of the rest of these basements: time, confused.

They entered the large room, and neither Humain objected when Lee snapped on the overhead fluorescents. Patrick pushed the ruptured door closed as much as he could and stood guard, ear pressed to the opening.

“What are we looking for?” Connie asked.

“You don’t know?”

“I thought you were the expert.”

Lee chuckled dryly. “And that from a vampire. Well, I guess we’ll know when we see it. From what I could glean from Richards’s blog, she’d never even opened the package again. So it’ll be wrapped, packed away, addressed to her at her home, Otter Street. She brought it here soon after, hid it away.”

“Like Indiana Jones,” Connie said.

“Eh?”

“Raiders of the Lost Ark. The end. You know?”

“You saw that?”

Connie shrugged. Lee had a brief, disturbing image of Connie sitting in darkened theaters, watching a movie while she selected who she would follow home. Right now, that wasn’t his business.

They started searching. He pulled the first box from the first shelf and lifted off the top. It was an archival box, sturdy and with a proper lid that didn’t need ripping or cutting open, and the contents were varied. A smashed jug, shards packed together in foam; a curved metal moon shape, rusted and rotting away; a handful of innocuous-looking pebbles in a wooden box. And, going through the box, Lee realized that he didn’t really know what he was looking for. He paused for a moment and looked at the other two—Patrick by the door, Connie just visible at the other end of the room, searching through the contents of the first shelf there—and then he started looking again. He’d have to assume that he’d know it when he found it.

He only hoped he’d lay hands on the Bane first. If that happened, he’d use it to kill the vampires that had come to London searching for it. And after that, these Humains.

Lee closed his eyes briefly, trying to shove down the sense of betrayal that idea prompted. Patrick had only ever been a prick to him, and Connie—

Just a little girl!

—pretended to be a young teenager, but she was likely older than him. Travesties of nature. And yet there was Rose, whose body he had once fantasized about, and who maintained some of her human cares and concerns.

“Fuck it,” he said quietly.

“What?” Patrick asked.

“Nothing. Moving on.” He took down another box and started rifling through its contents, but realized that he could never move on, not really. Whatever happened here tonight, whoever emerged from the British Museum after this was all over, there would always be one more vampire for him to hunt down.

Starting with that deceitful Olemaun bitch.

Flushed with blood, senses blazingly sensitive, Rose prowled the halls of the British Museum looking for something else to kill. Her clothes were sprayed with blood, her teeth rich with it. Her hands were smeared, and she licked between her fingers without really thinking about it, tongue snaking down across the back of her hand to lap at the droplets on her delicate arm hairs. She hadn’t fed that well since…

But she was dead, she thought. Her heart had stopped. It’s how Jane survives, taking blood just past the moment of death. There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with it.

There was more gunfire from a couple of rooms away, and Rose went that way, passing ancient Mayan statues that stared down at her with timeless ambivalence. She could imagine that a human would find these great silent halls spooky at night, places so used to the bustle of school groups and foreign visitors unsettling in their silence. But there was no silence now. More machine-gun fire erupted, and behind it came a scream she thought she knew.

Jane!

Rose ran, the feeding giving her speed. She sprinted silently into the great African hall where she thought the shooting had originated. She dashed fast and silent as a shadow, unconcerned at the bullets that might come her way, and she smelled something she had no wish to smell: insides and blood, but not of the living.

Jane was sprawled on the floor in a circular seating area, empty benches bearing witness to her demise. Her long skirt was played around her legs. Her head was a mashed mess, skull and brains scattered across a wide swath of floor. Rose could see the white scars of bullet marks beneath the gore from her shattered head, and imagined the shooter standing above her as he or she fired down at an angle.

Bastard! she thought, and it came as a surprise. Bastard! She and Jane had never really been friends. No Humains ever grew that close, and she suspected no vampires could, but the two of them had acknowledged their differences and let that be that.

She looked around, searching for the killer, and that was when she heard the groaning. She moved quickly, low and fast, and she was standing astride the huge man before he even knew it. His back was broken: he was hauling himself along with his hands, gun discarded, legs trailing behind him like a scarecrow’s. He rolled onto his back and stared up at her, opened his mouth to say something. But there was nothing to say.

Rose brought her foot down onto the man’s face with all her strength. His skull crumpled, and she felt the solid contact of her heel on the stone floor. Warmth flushed into her boot. She looked away, because she didn’t want to feed from the man who’d killed Jane. Then she kicked the mess from her foot and ran.

From the Egyptian room, she could hear the sounds of vampires hissing, and as she approached the entrance archway a brief flash of light brought her up short.

She screamed, hands covering her face. It was dark again, but the UV flash had imprinted itself on her pupils, burning into them an echo of the wall, sculptures, and floor patterns. She leant over and rubbed at her wounded eyes, and from the next room heard the agonized screams of more injured vampires.

I have to move past this, she thought. Got to get through to help. That’ll be Francesco in there, and it sounds like there are two of them. So she moved again, blinking rapidly and willing her sight to return. She saw Francesco first of all, turning the UV light in her direction and squatting down as he prepared to turn it on.

“It’s me!” she shouted, and then a vampire barreled into Francesco, knocking him to the ground and going at him with hands and teeth. Francesco fought back, and even through her blurred vision she saw the staggering violence being wrought on both vampire and Humain.

She leapt forward to help and then sensed movement to her left. She turned her head just in time for the other blinded vampire—eyes still steaming, thick gore singed onto his cheeks—to fill her field of vision. Rose went down, and the first swipe of his hand opened her cheeks and tore off most of her nose.

This one was strong. Stronger by far than the vampire that had attacked Marty and which she’d fought off. She tried to buck him aside, but his weight seemed pinned down, far heavier than he looked. She slashed back at him and felt her long, sharp fingernails parting skin, raking through flesh. But it seemed to have no effect. She could smell the cooked ruins of the vampire’s eyes and she poked her fingers at them, feeling her right thumb sinking into one sticky socket. The vampire hissed and drew back, and that allowed her the opportunity she needed. She sat up and flung her head forward, forehead connecting with his lower jaw and driving it downward, repeating the motion quickly until she heard a satisfying snap.

Francesco and the other vampire were on their feet, circling one another, their faces and chests tattered and torn.

From the distance came a low, persistent howl, grumbling like a large machine’s motor. Both vampires paused, heads tilted to one side as they listened. Rose saw immediately what was about to happen. She reached forward, still sitting up, and clawed into the flesh of the vampire’s thigh.

With one sweep of its arm, it knocked her hand aside, fingers and wrist snapping. She hissed and watched the two vampires run, flowing across the hall and then disappearing into shadows. She heard a door slam somewhere, and then the terrible silence.

“What the hell was that?” she growled, nursing her ruined hand. Everywhere ached as her body began repairing.

“Their master calling them back,” Francesco said. “They might have found it.”

The two Humains, torn and in pain, ran as fast as they could after the vampires.

With the room a mess of upturned boxes, spilled contents, and tumbled shelving, Duval came at Marty and snatched him from where he knelt. Marty would have gasped if the hold around his throat was not so tight. The vampire’s face was inches from his own, terrifying, a nightmare given life in these deathly shadows. He lifted the boy, stretching, and pressed Marty into the suspended ceiling.

Tiles fell around him as Marty was pushed higher. He kicked his legs, waved his arms, feet and fists connecting with the vampire but having no effect. He struggled to draw breath, but none would come. Metal struts dug into his back and thighs, and he felt blood flow as his skin was pierced in several places.

He’ll smell that, he thought, and then in the pale light he saw rosettes of his own blood splashing on the vampire’s face.

Duval’s tongue snaked out and licked each splash away with a delicate dexterity. And then he growled, “Where is it?”

Marty shook his head because he could not speak. His vision was blurring, and he thought he might die up here in this dusty, spider-infested crawl space. Then the vampire let go and stepped back, and Marty fell into a pile of smashed porcelain jugs and torn cardboard. He just managed to bring his arms up before his face, slashing his hands and forearms. More pain bit in. His body was a map of pain.

“I… I don’t know…” he managed before the vampire grabbed him again. He was thrown across the room, flung with the ease of a grown man heaving a puppy. He crashed into shelving, smashing his lips against his teeth. He tasted blood. It was sickly, and he spat it out, thinking as he did so that he should have swallowed.

As he sat upright, he saw Bindy watching with wide eyes, coiled like a snake about to strike. She wants to feed from me, he thought, and the idea disgusted him more than anything else. This was what he had to endure. This was giving the others time, and with every new pain inflicted upon him by the bastard vampire, he felt that much braver.

Duval glanced at Bindy, who moved quickly to the door and exited the room. A moment later she came back in, nodding.

Duval then walked to Marty, grinning. “We have your bitch sister,” he said.

Rose! Marty blinked, sweat and blood dribbling into his right eye. He wiped at it, only smearing in more blood from his slashed hand. Duval squatted and stared hard at him.

“I’ll tear her limb from limb myself,” he whispered.

“No.”

“Yes. I’ll let you watch.”

“She’ll fight you. She’ll die before you can—”

Duval leaned in closer. “You have no idea who I am, have you? And neither does your sister, nor her weakling friends. I’ll make you drink her blood.” He snatched up a chunk of ancient pottery. “But first, I’ll fuck her with this. Bring her in!” Bindy left the room again, and Marty closed his eyes in desperation, knowing what he should do but knowing also what he must.

“Room seventy-two,” he said. “It’s in room seventy-two.”

Duval grinned and tipped his head back, letting out a horrific howl that rattled shelves, brought dust from the ceiling, and seemed to seat itself in Marty’s deepest parts. It went on and on, and after he stopped he looked down at Marty one more time.

He stared, as if examining the boy, turning his head this way and that, watching the blood seep from Marty’s wounds. What is he thinking? Marty wondered. Does he think I’m brave? But no, there was nothing of that in the monster’s eyes. There was little there at all. He was a hawk playing with a mouse. When the door opened and the other two vampires entered, Duval stood and turned his back on Marty for the last time.

“Kill him slowly,” he said to one of the new arrivals. “Make it hurt. And when you’ve finished, make sure you take off his head. Meet us in room seventy-two.” He moved quickly to the door, and the other male vampire followed. Bindy glanced back once, and Marty read her expression: she wished it could have been her.

“Wait,” Marty said, but he bit back anything else. They’d fooled him about Rose: they didn’t have her at all. A stupid trick that he’d fallen for. He was fucked, well and truly, and there was nothing he could do about it. The last thing he’d give these bastards was the satisfaction of watching him beg.

Duval and the others left the room, and the vampire knelt before Marty and eyed his various wounds. His tongue slipped from his mouth like a giant slug, wet and heavy, tasting blood on the air. His teeth were many.

“Where to begin… ?” he said.