Written in the Blood

Copyright © 2014 Stephen Lloyd Jones

The right of Stephen Lloyd Jones to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2014

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 1 4722 0473 8

Cover art © Shutterstock.com

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About Stephen Lloyd Jones

STEPHEN LLOYD JONES grew up in Chandlers Ford, Hampshire, and studied at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He now lives in Surrey with his wife, three young sons and far too many books. His first novel,
The String Diaries
, is available in paperback from Headline.

About the Book

High in the mountains of the Swiss Alps Leah Wilde is about to gamble her life to bring a powerful man an offer. A promise.

Leah has heard the dark stories about him and knows she is walking into the lion’s den. But her options are running out. Her rare lineage, kept secret for years, is under terrible threat. That is, unless Leah and her mother Hannah are prepared to join up with their once deadly enemies.

Should the prey ever trust the predator?

Is hope for future generations ever enough to wash away the sins of the past?

With a new and chilling danger stalking them all, and the survival of their society at stake, they may have little choice . . .

By Stephen Lloyd Jones and available from Headline

The String Diaries

Written in the Blood

Praise

‘
The String Diaries
is a page turner, and will keep you awake late into the night’
SFX

‘Intensely readable’ www.drying-ink.blogspot.co.uk

‘[An] enjoyable read . . . an entertaining thriller which moves at a good pace’ The British Fantasy Society

‘
The String Diaries
is edge-of-the-seat-turn-on-all-the-lights-lock-the-doors-and-cancel-all-appointments brilliant’ www.thebookbag.co.uk

‘It’s a story that will hold you in its grip, not only while you are reading but for some time afterwards as well’ www.jerasjamboree.com

‘Jones hit all the right notes in this clever and exciting novel, which delivers both action and mystery with a dash of the supernatural’ www.afantasticallibrarian.com

‘A brilliant first novel and a truly gripping read’ www.welovethisbook.com

‘Lloyd Jones is a master of the cliff-hanger. Every chapter is consuming and page-turning . . . this book grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go from page one!’ www.wordandpiece.wordpress.com

‘I was completely hooked by
The String Diaries
 . . . The premise is refreshing original. The ending to the book is perfect . . . a terrific read’ www.summerreadingproject.blogspot.co.uk

‘An exciting novel, an original bad guy’ www.thelittlereaderlibrary.blogspot.co.uk

For Mum and Ken

PART I

C
HAPTER
1

Interlaken, Switzerland

T
he face contemplating Leah Wilde from the petrol station’s restroom mirror was her own, but it wouldn’t be for long. With the door locked, and the scent of disinfectant sharp on the air, she pulled a passport from her bag and studied the image of the woman it contained.

Pouched skin hanging beneath tired eyes. Cheekbones robed in fat, framing a fleshy nose. A filigree of lines branching from the lips, like the contours of a landscape glimpsed from space. A mole to the left of the chin. Earlobes like pale tears of candlewax.

Leah closed her eyes, took a breath, and heard Gabriel’s words inside her head.

Create a mould, and pour yourself in. See what you want to be, and be. Don’t fear the pain. Pain is good. Pain is the price.

But pain wasn’t good. And now here it came: an unwelcome prickling at first, like the rash caused by a nettle’s sting. Quickly it intensified, needles sinking deep into her face. She gritted her teeth, felt the skin around her mouth loosen and pucker, felt her heart thump in her chest as the blood surged into her head, her flesh swelling, stretching, slackening.

Reaching out, Leah gripped the washbasin. She held on tight, stomach slopping around inside her, waiting until the pain, finally, began to recede.

When she opened her eyes she saw beads of sweat shining on a forehead mapped with age lines and blemishes. An older face. A stranger’s.

At some point she must have dropped the passport into the sink. She fished it out, shaking off droplets of water, and opened it back to the photograph.

Again she studied the woman’s image. Compared it to the face watching her from the mirror.

Good.

She was ravenous now, stomach cramping with urgency, but her hunger would have to wait. She’d pulled into the petrol station near the town of Jestetten, a few miles from the Swiss–German border; she needed to get out of here, and fast. Removing a baseball cap from her bag, Leah screwed it down onto her head, keeping her eyes on the ground as she returned to her car.

At the crossing she showed the passport to a border guard, submitting herself to a cursory inspection before being waved through. In Zurich, she abandoned the car in a side street and checked into an anonymous chain hotel.

The next morning, under a different passport and with a different face, Leah rented a motorbike from a garage in the city. After following the kinks of Lake Lucerne’s shore to Altdorf, she turned west and rode through the Susten Pass, a route that wound among mountain peaks so extraordinary they drew the breath from her throat.

Perhaps it was the drama and raw beauty of the Bernese Oberland’s landscape, but as Leah guided the bike along she felt the weight of her indecision begin to lift. No one knew she was here; they had forbidden her outright from coming, had forbidden her even from investigating this. But she knew it was the right thing to do, the only thing left she
could
do, however dangerous it might be.

She reached Interlaken a few hours after midday. The town perched between Lake Brienz in the east and Lake Thun in the west, twin cobalt bowls that reflected the blade-like sharpness of the Alpine sky. Looming above the town to the south, the fortress peaks of the Jungfrau, the Mönch and the Eiger, jagged brushstrokes of rock and snow.

Leah found a small hotel along the Aar, the river that connected the two great lakes and formed the town’s northern border. Her first-floor room was basic but clean: table and chairs in one corner, cupboard in another. Opposite the bed, a cabinet on which sat a TV, coffee-maker and kettle. Shuttered French windows opened onto a narrow balcony. Below slid the Aar’s turquoise waters.

Throwing her rucksack down on the bed, Leah returned to the door to check that it was locked. A spyhole gave her a distorted view of the deserted corridor outside.

She filled the coffee-maker with water and set it to brew. Pulling off her boots, she lay back on the mattress and waited for the room’s heat to thaw her limbs. During the four-hour ride through the mountains, the chill October air had stolen through her leathers and frozen her skin.

For the first time in her life, she was truly alone. No one within shouting distance should this plan of hers lead to disaster. Few among the remaining
hosszú életek
– that hidden evolutionary branch of humanity to which she found herself bound by blood – even knew what secret the town clasped in its bosom.

She wondered how long it would take before her mother and Gabriel discovered her disappearance. She wished she could reassure them of her safety. But it was too early for that. Too early to tell whether she
was
safe.

In the corner of the room the coffee-machine began to hiss. Rising from the bed, Leah reached through the net curtains and checked that the French windows, too, were locked. She unzipped her rucksack, rifling through her gear until she found the pistol she had hidden there.

Leah turned it over in her hands. The Ruger was small enough to conceal on her person, but – loaded with hollow-point rounds – lethal enough to stop most threats with a single shot. She took out two spare magazines and stacked them on the bedside table.

Stripping off her motorcycle leathers, she carried the gun into the suite’s tiny bathroom and left it on the basin while she steamed herself in the shower until her skin flushed red with heat.

Afterwards, wrapped in a bath sheet and with the pistol within easy reach, Leah poured herself a mug of coffee. Pulling a hardback book from the rucksack, she found a pen and sat at the table.

The volume, bound in black leather, was her current diary. She had lost count of how many she had filled over the years, but she had written an entry every day since that afternoon, fifteen years earlier, when her mother and Jakab had burned together at Le Moulin Bellerose.

Opening it, she reread her words from the previous day, a simple list of activities: slipping out, unnoticed, from the forest retreat in Calw; driving across the border into Switzerland; signing for the package that waited for her at the hotel reception in Zurich; unpacking the Ruger and its ammunition in her suite before folding herself between the bed sheets and finding sleep.

Leah tapped her pen against an empty page. She wondered how tonight’s entry would read. Wondered whether there would be one.

After writing a summary of her trip through the mountains, she used the phone beside the bed to call down for room service. But when the food arrived twenty minutes later she couldn’t eat it. Trepidation had shrunk her stomach, and the smells wafting from the tray threaded her with a nausea too acute to overcome. Moving to the French windows, she unlocked the shutters and pushed them open.

Frigid air feathered into the room, contracting her bare skin into goosebumps. Across the Aar, the mountain peaks south of the town rose like claws from a bear’s upturned paw. They really were castles of stone; monuments of colossal proportions, as if a race of giants had raised them there in supplication to an angry god. She’d read about the Alps – her backpack was stuffed with guides and maps – but little of her time spent researching this place had focused on its topography. She had not expected the mountains to affect her as deeply as they did.

On her return to the table she noticed something on the room service tray she hadn’t seen before, poking out from beneath the leatherette wallet containing her bill. Frowning, she nudged the wallet aside, revealing a square envelope. Her name was intricately calligraphed across the front.

Heart knocking against her ribs, Leah snatched up the Ruger from the bed. Seven rounds in the magazine. Nine-millimetre hollow-point. They would open like a flower on impact, punching fist-sized holes into whatever stood in her way.

Head cocked, ears straining, fingers greasy where they curled around the gun, Leah forced herself to be still. She knew that her hearing was sharp, knew that if anyone lurked in the corridor outside she would sense them – unless they, like her, were
hosszú élet
.

After two minutes had passed and she had heard nothing but the muttering of water in the hotel’s pipes, she removed one hand from the gun and reached behind her. Locking the French windows, she pulled the net curtains back into place.

Barefoot, Leah padded across the room to the door. She paused again, listening. When only silence greeted her, she pressed her eye to the tiny spyhole. The lens warped her view, but she could see that the corridor remained deserted.

She returned to the tray and picked up the envelope. The paper was thick, luxurious. Breaking it open, she withdrew a square of cream card. At the top it bore an embossed logo in gold and black: a series of interlinking chains, like a Celtic knot.

A shiver took hold of Leah as she read the last line, born as much from fear as from the frisson of anticipation the words produced. She dropped the card onto the table beside her, spine tingling from a cold lick of distaste.

A Kutya Herceg.
The Dog Prince. A theatrical affectation, but from what she had heard of the man, he enjoyed how his reputation had developed until it had gained an almost mythic status. A Kutya Herceg was, she knew, one of the more forgiving of his titles. It did not allude to his ruthlessness, his monstrousness when provoked.

How could he have learned of her arrival so quickly? She’d entered Switzerland using one fake passport, had rented the motorbike using another. From the Susten Pass she’d ridden directly to the hotel, memorising the route and the names of Interlaken’s streets in advance. Since discarding the disguises she’d adopted for her journey, the only people to have seen her face were the middle-aged woman at reception who handed her the room key, and the youth who brought in her lunch.

Outside, the snow on the mountain peaks had blushed to pink as the sun dipped towards the waters of Lake Brienz. The Alps looked like they were bleeding.

At a quarter to eight, fifteen minutes before the car was due, Leah opened her rucksack and pulled out a tissue-paper parcel. From it she unwrapped a long-sleeved embroidered lace dress in midnight blue. She changed quickly, slipping her feet into nude patent shoes with a heel far higher than she usually wore. Twisting up her hair into a pile on top of her head, she secured it with two steel chopsticks; their points had been filed to a needle sharpness.

She stared at herself in the mirror and turned her head from left to right, wondering what he expected to see. From a travel bag she removed lipstick and eyeliner and quickly applied make-up to her face. She examined herself again.

Better.

Pulling out a glass bottle of perfume, Leah considered it for a moment before replacing it, unused. She picked up the Ruger, checked that the safety was engaged and slid it into a sequinned clutch purse. Tucking her diary back into her rucksack, she packed up the rest of her belongings. If she needed to leave here quickly, she wanted everything to be ready.

Beyond the window, except where the mountain peaks blocked their light, a sprinkling of stars pricked silver holes in the sky. Shrugging on her biker leather over the dress, she left her room and walked down the stairs to the foyer. The hotel’s glass doors slid apart and Leah, holding the clutch purse as nonchalantly as she could, stepped outside.

Now that the sun had set the Alpine air was brittle, teasing a mist from her breath. She tasted something on her tongue, a subtle sourness, and thought she sensed an imminent change in the weather: a premonition, perhaps, of snow. She shook her head at the thought.

Across the street a graphite Rolls-Royce Phantom, like an armoured rhinoceros, idled against the kerb.

Leah stared at the vehicle: at the enormous flat-fronted grille; the headlights like narrowed eyes; the winged Spirit of Ecstasy, poised for flight, perched on the bonnet.

Its windows were black, reflecting the night.

Don’t let them see your fear.

Blowing air from her cheeks, Leah crossed the street, threw open the Phantom’s rear door and slid into a world of mahogany and cream leather. She pulled the door shut behind her, a heavy-sounding clunk. Immediately, as if a switch had been flicked, the noise of the street traffic ceased.

No one occupied the seat beside her. In front, a man sat behind the steering wheel. She could see curls of black hair, a strong and tanned neck.

He turned in his seat, and when he saw her sitting there he flashed white teeth. His irises were feathered with violet, a shade she had never before seen in the eyes of a
hosszú élet
. Leah thought she caught something else lurking in that expression too: something that froze her blood a little. She recalled the line from the note: