The Cross

Chapter Thirty-Three

Oxford

Hours after the rest of the team, exhausted by a long, fruitless day of chasing up dead-end leads and blind alleys, had packed it in and gone home to their beds, Joel was still in the office. The last one to leave had been Cushley. Joel hadn’t been unaware of the way the female detective kept glancing at him across the office, the lowered eyelashes and the frequent darting of her fingers to touch her hair whenever they were talking alone. Even worse was the way she’d undone the top button of her blouse in the stifling heat of the room, making him blush and look away, stammering and blinking as terrible unwanted visions sprang out of his fevered imagination. It had been a huge relief when she’d finally left him alone and he no longer had to deal with the scent of her hot, fresh blood so close by, or the provocative pulse of her heartbeat pounding in his ears.

It was after 1 a.m. by the time Joel eventually wrenched himself away from his desk and left the building, feeling bitterly frustrated at making so little progress after so many hours’ work and mentally drained by the effort to appear normal in front of his colleagues. Just another normal cop chasing after just another bunch of normal criminals.

In truth, Joel hardly knew where to begin. His head was whirling with confusion as he walked home through the quiet night streets.

He was desperately worried, too. The blood bottle Tommy had given him was emptying fast. The drop in its level seemed to be accelerating as he became more and more accustomed to the taste, no longer taking furtive little sips purely for the sake of survival, but beginning to crave great gulps of the stuff — all that remained in the bottle, and much more besides. The part of his mind that recoiled and protested in disgust at the idea seemed to be weakening by the minute, and it frightened him deeply that the old Joel, the human Joel, might be slipping away from him.

Was it?

Not yet, he reasoned with himself — or else he wouldn’t be frozen with terror and horror at the inevitable prospect of having to refill his precious bottle when the last drop was finally used up. No, the old Joel was still alive somewhere inside him, still clinging resiliently on. But for how much longer?

With no need to sleep, he mooched restlessly about his flat. The more he worked himself up into a frenzy, the stronger the impulse became to grab the bottle from his pocket and feel the wonderful, dizzying, restorative energy of the blood feeding into his system. The constant internal struggle depressed him even more.

But this was no time for weakness or self-pity. If he chose to starve himself of blood and face the horrible fate Tommy had described, then whatever time he had left had to be devoted to his quest. If his resolve weakened, and he damned himself forever by taking some poor innocent as a victim, he could at least commit himself for all eternity to hunting down and ridding the world of this scourge. He’d annihilate all of them.

Joel thought of Tommy and felt a strange pang of guilt. Could he slaughter him so easily, just like that? Tommy, who’d given him sympathy and kindness when he’d been at his most vulnerable; Tommy, who attacked human beings and drank their blood. The moral compass was swinging all over the place. What was right? What was wrong?

And Alex Bishop. What about her? Could he destroy a woman he’d felt so close to? The idea made him shudder.

He balled his fists.

Joel, Alex is dead. She was dead long before you were born. She’s not a woman, she’s not a person. She’s a thing, a terrible thing, a monstrosity. Just like you.

Then she did have to be destroyed, and he had to be strong.

Alex. She was never far from his thoughts. He closed his eyes and saw her face vividly in his mind, her image so clear that it was almost as though he could speak to her and she’d hear him and reply. He suddenly felt oddly separate from himself, drifting, falling into a dreamlike state …

Alex, he called out to her. Why? How could you have done this to me?

But she didn’t reply. He stretched out harder with his feelings, yearning to touch her. Where are you?

Still no reply. And yet, he could almost sense her presence, uncannily close, somehow even tangible. She was close. ‘Alex is in London,’ he heard himself say out loud, in a voice that was almost trancelike. The sound of it startled him out of his half-dreaming state and he opened his eyes. He remembered what Tommy had told him about the strange, psychic, almost telepathic bond that existed between a vampire and its victim.

‘Alex is back in London,’ he repeated, more loudly. Only a wild impulse, but it felt right. He believed it.

Joel grabbed his jacket, burst out of the flat and broke into a fast run that didn’t slacken until he’d raced all the way back through Jericho and the city centre to the bus station at Gloucester Green, from where Oxford Tube coaches ran all through the night to London. Boarding the near-empty 03.10 to Marble Arch, he sat in the back, as far away from people as he could get, and sat with his eyes half-closed, fingering the bottle in his pocket as the bus hummed and vibrated its way down the M40 towards London.

The night had become hard and starry by the time he stepped off at Marble Arch. Walking briskly, avoiding people and trying to stay calm, he flagged down a black cab and gave the driver Alex’s address in Canary Wharf. It seemed like so long ago since he’d turned up at her place, begging for her help, thinking he’d found an ally he could trust.

As the taxi cut across the city, the volume of traffic even at four in the morning made Joel feel acutely aware of the hick Oxfordshire cop he was. Finally, snarled up in a queue at a red light, he couldn’t stand it any more. He flicked a banknote at the driver and flung open the door to make the rest of the journey on foot.

He ran and ran, faster and faster, miles passing under his pounding feet. His energy seemed limitless as he sprinted through the streets, leaping over parked cars, feeling the exhilaration of the night. My time, he thought, and instantly felt ashamed. He covered the last few miles to Canary Wharf at a more sedate pace. Eventually, the twinkling river and Alex’s apartment building came into view.

To Joel’s amazement, his motorbike was still there, exactly where he’d parked it, apparently unmolested by thieves or vandals. He patted the seat of the Suzuki Hayabusa. The sleek supersports machine, which had once excited and frightened him so much with its speed and power, seemed to belong to a different life. The glass frontage of the apartment building towered up into the night sky, reflecting the stars and the lights on the water. Joel ran his eye up and across, trying to calculate which of its many windows were Alex’s; then he pushed through the revolving door into the reception area and walked up to the desk.

The attendant looked up sleepily. ‘Miss Bishop? Hold on, please.’ Joel waited as he clicked his keyboard a few times. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid it seems that Miss Bishop has moved out.’

‘Did she leave a forwarding address?’ Joel flashed out his police warrant card. The attendant eyed it, then checked on his screen again and shook his head. ‘No, sir, I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’

Joel looked flatly at him for a minute, then thanked him and walked back out through the revolving door. ‘Shit,’ he muttered, back outside. Was this some ruse Alex had set up, anticipating that he’d be bound to come looking for her?

He looked again at the front of the dark building. Yes, he was sure now which had been Alex’s windows. Like most of the others, they were in darkness. No sign of movement behind them, but he still wanted to try. He moved cautiously away from the doorway, out of view of the reception desk. Cameras watched from every angle. He slipped into the shadows at the very foot of the building, and looked straight up at the towering expanse of steel and glass.

The old Joel would have hesitated much longer before making a crazy decision like this. And the old Joel, skilled climber though he’d been, wouldn’t have been remotely capable of scaling the sheer building. The new Joel went up it like a spider, hand over fist, the wind tearing at his hair as he climbed higher and higher. He reached the jutting concrete lip of the first-floor balconies, pulled himself easily over, and moved upwards and onwards. A light came on; he ducked out of sight as a woman in a nightdress padded across her luxury bedroom. He waited until she’d disappeared into a bathroom, then climbed on. In less than a minute, he was peering through the dark window into Alex’s apartment.

Whoever had designed the security for the building hadn’t reckoned on an assault by a semi-suicidal, super-strong burglar coming in the hard way: when Joel cracked the thick reinforced glass with his fist it yielded like an eggshell without setting off any alarms. He reached through the jagged hole, undid the latch and let himself in.

He saw immediately that the receptionist hadn’t been lying. Alex had moved out, and judging by the marks that the furniture had compressed into the thick carpeting, the place hadn’t been vacated for very long. He spent almost thirty minutes combing the empty rooms for even the smallest trace of her, but the place had been stripped bare. She could be anywhere in London — and that was if his feeling was even right.

Joel heaved a sigh. What next? A sudden wave of despondency made him feel like staying here for a while. A long while. He didn’t want to have to go back to work when day came. He didn’t want to have to think, or breathe, or exist. He sank down to the bare carpet, curled up in darkness and prayed for the world to go away and leave him alone forever.

Lying there, he could feel the pressure against his thigh of the near-empty blood bottle in his pocket. And something else. An intense, gnawing, biting, electrifying, jangling, unbearable sensation building up inside him, working its way gradually through every part of his body from the marrow of his spine to the tips of his fingers.

The hunger was getting worse.