Talulla Rising (37 page)

‘Fuck you,’ I said, as a hunger cramp gripped my guts. ‘I
know
nothing changes. But I’m sick of this tragic Russian shit. Stop going on as if you’re the only one who’s got something to lose.’

It was just after ten at night. We were in the large lounge of a two-storey villa three miles from the village of Falasarna on the island of Crete. Travertine tiles, limewashed walls, neutral contemporary furniture, odours of sandalwood and the sea. French doors opened onto a verandah with steps leading down to a pool area and olive grove. Our nearest neighbour was half a kilometre away, down a steep gravel road that hairpinned the hillside with barely room for two cars to pass. Cloquet had found the house by accident, attempting to book rooms for twelve people in a hotel in Chania. The manager had lowered his voice and asked if he wouldn’t rather take a house. His cousin’s. Beach ten-minute walk. Off-season rates.

Konstantinov stared at me. The stare said, without malice: I’ve got more to lose because I won’t survive if mine’s dead. You will if yours is. He was right. I already knew Lorcan’s death wouldn’t kill me. If the price I had to pay for having a future with my daughter was accepting the blame for her brother’s death then so be it. We’d have a damaged love with my shame at its core, but it would still be love. That, of course, was partly
why
I’d thrown the coffee cup. That and the cramps, the sweats, the wolf’s thorned antics under my skin.

‘Tell me about the daylight vampires,’ he said.

Sixty hours ago we’d got the call from Mia. The Disciples were on Crete, in the hills east of Ano Sfinari, in a former monastery now ostensibly being turned into a luxury hotel but in fact purchased and adapted by the believers to welcome Remshi back to the waking world. And Remshi, apparently,
was
back. By the time Mia joined up he’d been ‘among them’ (having appeared on cue with three priests and Jacqueline at midnight on December 12th) for several days, a handsome charismatic vampire who claimed he was ‘older than the first utterance of human speech’, who’d performed numerous extraordinary feats and produced one show-stopper: film of himself walking the grounds with a couple of familiars in broad daylight.
In broad daylight
. As his strength increased, he promised, he’d be able to give this gift to all of them, in return for loyalty to him and his queen-to-be, none other than our own Madame Jacqueline Delon. So is it him? I’d asked Mia. She’d said: Parlour tricks and bad poetry. But something in her voice conceded it wasn’t so clear-cut. I pressed her. There’s something here, it’s true, she said. Very old. I don’t know. This is irrelevant. Don’t waste time. Let me speak to my son.

Finding and joining the faithful hadn’t been easy for her. The climate of paranoia was dense. Six months ago there had been a raid on a Helios Project lab in Beijing, and though the Disciples had denied any involvement the Fifty Families (having decided enough was enough) were using it as a pretext for prosecution. A judgement had been passed. Vampire death-squads had been dispatched, but by then Jacqueline and her posse were off-radar. A few cult members were found and beheaded in Istanbul, but the leadership and its priestly cabal remained hidden. As they would have remained hidden to Mia, had her brother not been a member. They’d been made vampires together (she wouldn’t tell when) by the same immortal. It’s not telepathy, she said. But if I decide to find him sooner or later I will. It goes both ways. That’s all. Don’t ask me any more. If I asked any more I’d be likely to ask if she could be sure her brother believed her motives for joining were genuine; and whatever she said we’d both know it didn’t make any difference, because this was the only plan we had.

And so had followed the phone calls, the regroup, the flight, the scramble to get weapons organised. The weapons, of course, had been delayed. We’d lost another forty-eight hours. Konstantinov was ready to go in, suicidally, unarmed. When the boat had at last arrived earlier this evening I’d had to stop him from attacking the people on it. Now (again of course, of
course
) we had no choice: tomorrow night was the full moon. Full moon, winter solstice, lunar eclipse. We’d run, with delirious, yielding inevitability, out of time.

‘What’s going on?’ Trish said, coming in from the verandah with Lucy just behind her. They were both in sweaters and jeans. In December it was cool here. (I hadn’t expected Lucy to be part of this. She’d let me know as much, over the weeks. And yet when it had come to it, Trish had got off the phone with her, turned to me and said: Luce is in. For months now I’ve been going back to bits of my old life like a bloody dog to its vomit, Lucy had told me, in the departures lounge at Heathrow. Last Wednesday I went to my reading group supper. Bloody Carol Shields who thinks you can make setting the table a religious act. And while they’re all prattling on about it I’m sitting there thinking about... Well. You know. Anyway something went. The last bit of denial, I suppose. There’s no old life for me now.)

‘There’s been a development,’ I said. ‘Vampires are walking in daylight.’

We’d judged going in with the sun up, as humans, the lesser of two evils. With Budarin’s four guys, Konstantinov, me, Trish, Lucy, Cloquet and Fergus (whom I’d only met for the first time two days ago: a big Irishman with a drink-darkened face and a physique like Baloo the bear) we had an armed force of ten. Walker was here too but had been sick on the flight, in and out of fever ever since. He’d refused to see a doctor. He’d refused to see anyone, except Konstantinov, and for the last twenty-four hours had been in his room in bed. He wasn’t likely to be fit for action. If Mia’s intelligence was sound there were seventy-nine vampires with a standing guard of twenty human familiars. Ten humans (assuming Walker’s absence) against twenty humans was better than ten against seventy-nine vampires, even if four of us were in all our transformed glory. But now, if Mia’s story of daylight vampires was true, the odds had worsened.

‘How is that possible?’ Lucy asked.

‘Christ knows,’ I said. ‘Mia said three times now a group of four vampires have been selected from the congregation to “receive the gift”. Remshi takes them to his room. The following night there’s filmed footage of these four walking around the place in sunlight. After the first round of scepticism they had themselves filmed next to TVs showing live news to verify the date and time. Tough to fake. These are CNN and BBC news anchors. Any way you slice it we have to figure on a dozen wide-awake vamps in the place tomorrow when we go in.’

‘Should be interesting,’ Trish said.

Lucy sat down at the table where the guns were piled up. ‘Don’t we need... You know, wooden stakes or something? Garlic?’

I went out onto the verandah and phoned Madeline.

‘She’s absolutely fine,’ was the greeting. ‘Stop worrying.’

The moon was up, low over the sea. Full tomorrow.
Wulf
was big and angular and impatient under my skin. I thought of those cartoons where someone swallows something and becomes the shape of the thing they’ve swallowed. There was a lovely smell of clean concrete and the pool’s chlorine and something like sage or rosemary in the shrubs nearby. All distinct beguiling counterpoints to the hunger’s bass throb.

‘I want you to know something: I trust you.’

‘Yeah yeah yeah. Here, listen to this.’ She moved the phone. Rustling, then my daughter’s breathing. Steady. Strong. A thousand miles away. ‘She’s fallen asleep watching a DVD with me.’

‘What are you watching?’

‘Don’t laugh.
The Little Mermaid
.’

‘You’re a good person.’

‘What, apart from killing and eating people?’

‘Apart from that, yes.’

‘What’s going on there, anyway?’

I filled her in. I couldn’t ask her what I wanted to ask: Have you sorted out
prey
? Is it safe? Will my daughter be safe? Explicitness died in my throat. The little fey truthful indifferent bit of myself inside said let it go, there’s nothing you can do now and you’ll most likely be dead tomorrow anyway. Dead and gone to join the vast mathematical silence.

‘About the money,’ I said. ‘If I don’t come back—’

‘La la la la—’

‘Listen, seriously. I’ve spoken to my lawyer. He’s got the codicil. You’ll be okay.’

‘You’ve told me all this.’

‘I know, I know. Let me listen to her again.’

‘Hang on, I’m losing you...’

‘Oh wait, I’ll move. There’s a dead signal spot... Is that better? Can you hear me?’

‘Yeah, that’s better. Here you go. Don’t wake her up!’

I listened, without making a sound. Without making a sound on the outside. Inside I couldn’t shut up. I’m sorry, angel. I made a mess of everything. I’m so sorry. This girl I’ve left you with, she’s a little crazy, but her heart’s in the right place. If I don’t see you again, I think she’ll take good care of you. It’s what my instinct tells me. We don’t have much going for us, but we’ve got good instincts. I love you. I love you. I love you.

‘Okay?’ Madeline asked, in a voice that said she’d heard as clearly as if I’d spoken aloud.

‘Yes. Thank you. Thank you for doing this incredible thing.’

‘Look, don’t get maudlin. You’ll be home with your boy tomorrow then we can crack open a bottle of Bolly. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘How’s Fergus the Lergus?’

‘The what?’

‘The Lergus. Like the Lergie. How’s he behaving himself?’

Fergus had in fact just appeared on the verandah, one hand holding his phone to his ear, the other gripping a scotch and cigarette. ‘To make money work for you you’ve got to have contempt for it,’ he’d told me, apropos of nothing, about a minute after we’d been introduced. ‘You’ve got to have contempt for the stupid obedience of money. The problem is, to develop the contempt, you need to acquire quite a lot of money. When you’re ready to discuss your fortune,
how
to treat it with the necessary contempt, you let me know.’

‘Colourful,’ I said to Madeline. ‘Weirdly, there’s something about him that inspires confidence.’

‘Yeah, it’s greed. You know that as long as what you’re asking him to do will max his profit you can count on him to do it. What about Walker?’

‘Still sick. He won’t see me.’

‘You do know he’s in love with you, don’t you?’

Pause. Well? Didn’t I?

‘Are you in love with him?’ Madeline asked.

‘What, we’re going to have this conversation
now
?’

Our connection flickered shadowily over the line. It came to me that she knew what had happened to him while we’d been held prisoner. Something in her tone. Which brought again, whether I wanted it or not, the image, Walker bound and bent double, Tunner jamming the bloody nightstick deep, Murdoch observing glassily while conducting a conversation on his phone.

‘You could do a lot worse,’ Madeline said.

There’s something better than killing the one you love
.

‘I’m just saying,’ Madeline said, ‘there aren’t that many blokes worth having. But he’s one of them. I’m losing you again, babes.’

‘I should get back anyway,’ I said, as the Hunger sent a shuddering wave through my legs and I staggered. ‘I feel like shit.’ Madeline, courtesy of the same arbitrariness that ruled the other monthly curse, suffered nothing until a couple of hours before moonrise on transformation day. It was the other reason she’d been the obvious choice to babysit. The primary reason being that Lucy didn’t want the responsibility again. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ I said, moving into the darkness of the little olive grove beyond the pool’s paving, where for some reason the signal was strong. ‘Assuming I’m still alive, obviously.’ I saw Konstantinov come out of Walker’s room and leave the door open behind him. He was frowning.

‘Walker?’ he called.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Madeline said.

‘Walker?’ Konstantinov called a second time. I couldn’t see him now but I could hear doors opening and closing. Fergus, live to the shift in the air’s character, hung up his call and turned back to the house.

‘You still there?’ Madeline asked.

‘Something’s happened.’

‘What?’

‘I think Walker’s gone.’

‘Gone? What do you mean?’

‘Hang on a second.’

Konstantinov came out onto the verandah.

‘Listen,’ Madeline said. ‘I wasn—’

You always know a split second before. At all the big moments it’s as if, for the tiniest fragment of neural time, you realise your whole life’s been leading up to this.

A figure didn’t spring or leap but seemed to walk very rapidly out of the darkness to my left. I had time. I had mute leisure to notice he was dressed like a cat burglar in close-fitting black, balaclava’d and gloved, leisure to recognise his packed scent, leisure to realise I was no longer visible from the verandah and to wonder where Walker could’ve gone and what Madeline had been about to say – before the man in black smashed his fist into my face.

I felt my jaw break and my knees flood. My arms seemed to spend a long time softly churning nothing. Something jabbed me, hard, in my left thigh. I was aware of trying to hold onto the phone as the ground swung up. I tasted cool dust and heard the blood bang once in my head. Then what felt like a paving stone hit the back of my skull, and all my lights went out.

55

My first feeling, on opening my eyes, was relief: the hunger told me I hadn’t slept through transformation. It told me via wracking spasms and futile nausea, but still, it told me. Lorcan was alive, though there couldn’t (the hunger
also
told me) be more than three or four hours till moonrise.

That was the end of the good news.

I was lying on my back in a bolted-down cage in what I knew within seconds – the ribbed flanks and steel-flavoured cold – was a cargo trailer. My left ankle and left wrist were cuffed to one of the bars, my right mysteriously at liberty. Two brilliant storm lamps hung from hooks outside the cage. I could taste dried sweat on my lips.

‘Happy solstice,’ Murdoch said.

I struggled up, first onto my side, then with the aid of the bars into a sitting position. You give thanks for small things. I gave thanks that I was wearing jeans, not a skirt. People start trying to kill you, you stop wearing skirts. He moved into the storm lamps’ bleaching light and there was the height and the poise and the white crew-cut. He was still in the cat burglar get-up, minus the balaclava and gloves. He’d lost a little weight, but retained the facial expression of a calmly deranged hawk.