Uprising

Chapter Sixty-Four

If there were any vampires on the evening flight home from Venice, they had no idea what the quiet passenger in the damp, rumpled clothes sitting alone near the back of the plane was carrying in the small metal case that seemed to be his only luggage.

Gazing numbly out of the window at the dark sky, Joel could see his own pale, bruised, haunted-looking reflection staring back at him. He was oblivious of the other passengers and ignored the small girl who kept pointing at him and asking her mother what had happened to that man’s face. He barely acknowledged the cheerful stewardess who came by offering food and drink. Didn’t even feel the pain from the split in his lip or the purple swelling around his left cheekbone. Anyone watching him would have been unable to detect the smallest flicker of expression on his face as he sat there immobile, almost catatonic. But inside he was screaming in turmoil as he contemplated the task that faced him now. Peaks and troughs of conflicting emotion flooded over him like the temperature extremes of a violent fever — elated and thrilling to the drumbeat of war one instant, crippled by terror the next and wanting to run and run and keep running and never look back.

But he knew it was no longer his decision to make. He was the bearer of the cross, and there was only one road he could travel. Come what may, he was far beyond recall.

The shakes didn’t begin for real until after landing, when he tried to insert the key of his rental Ford Mondeo into the ignition and found his hand trembling so badly it took him three attempts to start the engine. He leaned back against the head restraint.

Closed his eyes and took three deep breaths.

All right, Solomon. Here we go. This is it.

The night was starless and oppressive as he drove. He stopped at a motorway services to buy a plastic torch and a bar of chocolate that he didn’t have the stomach to eat. All through his journey, he tried to force his mind to stay blank. And failed.

Then, on the stroke of eleven p.m., his headlights swept across the tall iron gates of Crowmoor Hall. He put the car in neutral, letting it idle as he reached over to his left and rested his trembling hand on the metal box on the passenger seat next to him. He flipped the catches and opened the lid. The cross gleamed dully under the soft glow of the instrument lights. He lifted it carefully out from the foam padding and held it tight in both fists.

This is the end for you bastards, he thought. And it wouldn’t stop here. He was going to dedicate himself, the way his grandfather had: as long as it took, to take down as many of these monsters as he could. The politician, Jeremy Lonsdale — was he also one of them? Then his time was coming, too.

And then there was Alex.

He sat staring at the cross, visualising her face. Dangerous thoughts drifted through his mind. He shook them away. He needed to be strong, and stay strong.

The wind was rising, coming in gusts that shook the car and plastered falling leaves onto the windscreen. Crowmoor Hall’s gates lay open in the darkness. He swallowed hard. Throwing open the car door, he stepped out into the chilly night with the cross in his right hand and his new torch in his left. He muttered the first prayer he’d said in many years, and set out up the crunching gravel drive. Every step that he took towards that place sapped his courage a little more and made him grip the cross more tightly.

As he approached, he could see that the house was completely in darkness. The front door was swinging in the wind and flurries of dead leaves were blowing across the mosaic floor of the entrance hall. Joel walked into the house and shone the trembling torch beam around him.

‘Stone!’ he yelled, but it came out as a dry croak. He wet his lips and called out again, and his voice echoed.

He stood and listened a long time to the sounds of the house. A branch was tapping against a window somewhere. The wind whistled around his feet, leaves scraped across the floor. Sounds of emptiness.

Across the hall was a door. It was the same one through which Seymour Finch had led him and Dec to show them the ‘ballroom’ that had turned out to be a conference room. Joel turned the handle and the door creaked open. He shone the torch inside. The room was just as he remembered it, except for the bare space on the wall where the portrait of Gabriel Stone had hung previously. At the far end of the room, the tapestry still covered what Dec had claimed was the hidden doorway leading down to the crypt.

Joel walked the length of the room and tentatively switched on a side lamp. With some reluctance he laid down the cross and the torch, then grabbed one corner of the tapestry with both hands and gave it a violent tug. Something ripped. Wooden rings clattered to the floor, and the tapestry crumpled from its mountings and fell in a dusty heap at his feet. He kicked it aside.

Just as he’d done the last time, he examined the wall. Up close in the light of the lamp, he thought he could make out a hairline crack extending all the way from the floor to above his head. He used the Mondeo’s ignition key to pick a hole in the rich, velvety fleur-de-lys wallpaper. After a few minutes of frantic scraping, he’d uncovered the clear outline of a doorway in the plasterwork behind.

He shoved, hard, and then shoved again. Nothing moved. Nearby stood an elegant antique table on brass castors. He yanked it towards him, put his weight behind it and rammed against the wall with all his strength. The crashing thud seemed to echo all through the house. He froze, listening intently, but heard only the soft moan of the wind.

Dec had been right. About this and about everything else. There was something behind this wall and Joel was damned if he wasn’t going to find out what. This could be where the vampires were hiding, for all he knew cowering in fear, sensing the presence of the cross nearby, weak and vulnerable. This could be his moment to strike.

But it was going to take more than a flimsy table to ram through the solid wall. It had barely left a mark. Joel snatched up the cross and ran back the way he’d come, out into the windy night. There had to be a tool shed somewhere in a place like this. Maybe there’d be a sledge or lump hammer, a wrecking bar. He’d dig his way through with a damn screwdriver if he had to.

His heart was fluttering wildly as he ran through the grounds. Every rustling bush signalled a sudden attack; every creaking branch was a clawed hand reaching out to grip hold of him; and in every shadow lurked a waiting vampire.

At the rear of the house he found a range of outbuildings. A well equipped tool shed contained everything he could have wished for — but next to that was something even better. Yellow paintwork glittered in his torch beam. He peered inside the cab of the JCB and saw with a rush of triumph that the key was in the ignition. The first and last time he’d driven one of these things had been years ago, helping Sam Carter prepare the groundwork for the extension on his house. But a mechanical digger had all kinds of other uses too.

Joel leapt into the operator’s seat, fired up the engine and the headlights. With the cross clamped between his thighs, he drove the machine out across the yard. Its caterpillar tracks ground and crunched on the gravel as he rounded the corner of the house. He took a long sweeping turn at the front entrance, so he could approach head on. Ten yards from the doorway, he gunned the throttle and the diesel roared as the machine scuttled up the steps and smashed into the ornate stonework. Bricks and plaster and chunks of rendering rained on the roof of the cab. With a terrible scraping screech of rending metal, Joel forced the JCB into the entrance hall. He didn’t slow down for the conference room door either. The machine lumbered through like a tank, wrecking everything in its path. The engine was on peak revs by the time it reached the far wall. Joel held it steady on a collision course with the hidden doorway. A second before impact, he leapt out of the cab, hit the rug and rolled clear.

The digger rammed into the wall with a crash that shook the house and brought a large section of decorative coving and ceiling down on top of it. Joel sprang to his feet and ran over to the half-buried machine. He shone the torch through the clouds of masonry dust and saw the battered front of the digger embedded in a great jagged hole. Attached to the remnants of the hidden doorway was a smashed hydraulic arm and an electronic control unit that must have been activated by a remote or a switch somewhere in the house. Beyond it, Joel’s torch beam swept into pure darkness.

It was a secret corridor.

His terror as powerfully intensified as his resolve, Joel clambered over the dusty caterpillar tracks and started making his way through the passage, holding the cross out in front of him as he went.

He found himself in a maze of corridors and stairways that seemed to go on for miles. Just when he thought he was lost, the torch picked out something on the floor. A drop of dried blood. Then another. He followed the trail down and down.

All the way down to the crypt.