Written in the Blood (40 page)

‘Can we change the code?’

‘Of course.’

‘Is there any way out, once they’re locked in?’

‘No. And phones don’t work in there. No reception.’

‘So we need to think about who gets that code. Too many of us and it’s a risk, too few . . .’ She didn’t need to say it.

Luca nodded. ‘Let’s set it up.’

She followed him to the top of the house where she’d stayed a year earlier. A Kutya Herceg’s collection of disturbing art works still hung from the walls along the hall. Tonight, the painting that had reminded her of Rubens’s
Massacre of the Innocents
seemed horrifyingly prescient. She stared at it now, cringing at the gleeful expressions of the soldiers as they tore into defenceless civilians.

Luca moved to her side. ‘Not the most uplifting artwork ever conceived,’ he admitted.

His tone was light, reassuring. But his eyes darkened as he studied that picture. He might be trying to hide it but she understood, just then, that he too was frightened by what approached. Bizarrely, it made her feel slightly more at ease. She preferred fear to misplaced confidence.

He led them to a laundry room where they loaded up with blankets and pillows, carrying them to the lift that served every level of the house. They sent it down to the ground floor and took the stairs to meet it.

Back inside the gun room, Leah made up a row of beds. Luca returned with two Coleman gas lamps, along with a stack of children’s books. Jérôme arrived with a trolley packed with bottled water, dry food and crockery.

By the time they were finished ten minutes later, the room boasted a couple of armchairs and a portable toilet, with a screen to offer a measure of privacy.

They had done their best to make it feel comforting, but it still looked like what it was: a rudimentary hideaway, claustrophobic and bleak.

Led by Soraya, the children filed in, faces solemn when they saw it. Behind came A Kutya Herceg, carrying Elias. Leah was surprised at the tenderness he showed the boy.

‘Someone has to stay in here with them,’ she said.

‘I will,’ Soraya replied, and Leah found herself relieved by her friend’s offer. Of all of them, Soraya – stomach swollen with her pregnancy – was the least able to put up a fight. Even so, Leah could not imagine being locked in this vault, unable to see what dangers gathered outside and not knowing if the door would ever swing open.

A Kutya Herceg passed Elias to his daughter, kissed both her cheeks and stepped back.

Luca asked, ‘You have everything you need?’

‘Absolutely.’

In a voice loud enough to carry to everyone in the room, he added, ‘Bit of an adventure, this. They won’t know what hit them. Get a good night’s sleep, everyone. We’ll see you in the morning.’

He went to his sister, embracing her a final time. Nodding towards the gun cabinets, he added, in a far quieter voice, ‘You remember how to use them?’

‘I do.’

‘If it comes to it . . .’

In their eyes lurked a scenario so dark that neither could give it voice. Soraya nodded once, almost imperceptibly, her eyes never leaving her brother’s. ‘We’ll be fine,’ she replied. ‘You’d better go.’

Leah watched their exchange, teeth clenched. Once Luca had disentangled himself from his sister, she stepped forward and hugged her friend. And then, before the horror of those last words overcame her, she pulled away.

She didn’t want to meet the eyes of the children who sheltered there, but she forced herself. Dávid and Lícia; Tünde and Elias; Emánuel and Levi; Carina and Philipp; Pia and Alex. Ten young lives. All of them born thanks to her mother’s work in Calw.

And all their lives in jeopardy thanks to your own work since.

She bit down on that thought, angry that she should distract herself with a reproach like that now, however true it might be.

Rifle slung over her shoulder, one hand gripping her pistol, she stood between Ágoston and Jérôme as Luca swung the door shut. He keyed a code into the security panel and the door locks activated with a clunk.

His fingers continued to move across the keypad, until a single cursor flashed on the screen. ‘Who gets the code?’

‘Not just one of us,’ she replied. ‘Too risky.’

‘Who here,’ Jérôme asked, ‘values their own life more than those ten kids in there? Not me. And I won’t let a
lélek tolvaj
take me, no way. I’ll take the code.’

Luca nodded. ‘Leah, you know those children better than anyone. You should have it, too. Father?’

Ágoston barked a humourless laugh. ‘I’ve lived a long life. I’m with Jérôme.’

‘That’s settled, then? We all take the code?’

A chorus of nods.

Luca keyed the pad. ‘The number is eighteen eighty. Enter it in, press the green button, the door unlocks.’

Eighteen eighty
.

An easy number to remember: the year of the
hosszú életek
cull. Even so, she wished he’d chosen something different. It felt like a bad omen.

‘We’re done here,’ Luca said. ‘Let’s go take a look.’

Flanked by Ágoston and Jérôme, she followed him up the stairs to the first-floor living room.

Ceiling lights and wall lamps blazed inside. The central fireplace was bright with flaming logs. Reflections flickered in the glass eyes of A Kutya Herceg’s animal-skin rugs.

The viewing window, curving the entire length of the room, was a black mirror to the night. To the left, Leah saw the dining table overlooked by the skeleton of
Ursus spelaeus
, and behind that the archway leading to the panoramic sun room.

‘It’s too bright in here,’ she said. ‘We can’t see outside.’

Luca went to a wall panel and dimmed the lights. Instantly the room’s reflection disappeared from the glass, replaced by a dark vista of rock and snow. The mountains were jagged silhouettes stitched into the night. The chalet’s lawn, covered by a mantle of snow, receded into darkness.

To her right, Leah saw the private road bending down the slope, disappearing into the tree line below. To her left, the sheer drop which some parts of the building overlooked. At least, she thought, they could not be attacked from that direction.

A Kutya Herceg removed a bottle and four tulip-shaped glasses from a cabinet. He poured out four shots. ‘I’ve been saving this,’ he said. ‘It’s
békési szilvapálinka,
a plum pálinka from Békés. Bottled in 1848, the year of the Revolution. I don’t know if it’s still any good.’

He handed them out and Leah took one.

‘
Vér és szabadság
,’ the old man said, raising his pálinka.

They clinked glasses and repeated his words.
Blood and freedom
. Leah knocked back her shot. The spirit lit a fire in her throat, bringing tears to her eyes. ‘My God, that’s awful,’ she said.

They laughed, all four of them, and she felt a kinship so powerful that for a moment it eclipsed the nauseous expectation growing in her stomach.

Each of these men, she knew, was custodian to a murderous history. And yet, while to some extent they acted, tonight, to protect the life of a daughter and a sister, they’d been under no obligation to take Leah and her charges into their home. Doing so put all their lives at risk, and even though their laughter still rang in her ears she saw the darkness gathering in their faces, sensed their fear. Over the years she had met all eight members of the
tanács
and many other
hosszú életek
besides. Few of them, she knew, would knowingly cast themselves into danger like this.

She saw Luca staring at her, a pensive smile on his lips. She didn’t need to ask what he was thinking; she thought she felt it too: gratitude for their meeting, sadness for what could not be.

When his eyes moved to the window at her back, he straightened. ‘Look,’ he said.

C
HAPTER
42

Interlaken, Switzerland

B
eyond the windows a balcony served the entire length of the first floor, accessed by rolling glass doors at either end of the room, and by an exterior staircase winding up the side of the building furthest from the mountain edge. That entry point was secured by a locked gate of steel bars, eight feet in height.

Leah looked down at the snow-covered lawn. It receded steeply, terminating at a line of dense conifers. Even though Luca had dimmed the room’s lights, they still blazed from the windows of the ground floor, illuminating an area of snow the size of two tennis courts.

Beyond that patch of light, darkness pressed. And, just on the threshold, where the snow’s phosphorescence faded to night, black shapes flitted and danced.

Despite the heat thrown out by the fire, Leah felt a chill seep into her. ‘What
is
that?’ she whispered.

One of those cantering shapes slowed in its movements. A moment later it passed across that threshold of absolute darkness and coalesced into the form of what looked, to Leah, like some species of mountain goat.

Two sickle-shaped horns, at least a yard in length, swept up and around from its skull, describing an almost perfect circle. At their base they were thicker than her bicep, diminishing in a series of hard, gnarled ridges. Gouts of breath blasted from the animal’s nostrils. Despite the thickness of its coat, it looked like it was shivering.

It took a hesitant half-step to its left. Tossed its head.

‘Ibex,’ Luca muttered. ‘Or was.’ Pulling the hunting rifle from his shoulder, he went to the nearest sliding glass pane.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m going to kill it.’

‘You’re going outside?’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘You’ll roll open that door for me. I’ll take the shot and then you close it. The only way up to the balcony is from those stairs down there. Jérôme, keep watch. If anything gets over the gate, you shout, and Leah rolls the door shut.’

She felt adrenalin flooding her bloodstream now, quickening her heart. ‘You’re sure this is a good idea?’

‘Nope.’

She tried to grin, grimaced instead. ‘Me neither.’

‘Can you think of a better one?’

She shook her head.

‘Then let’s do it.’ He pointed at the door handle. ‘Up to unlock, then you slide the panel back. Got it?’

‘Yeah.’ Heart thumping even faster now, mouth tasting rancid, she went to the glass pane and waited while Luca chambered a round.

‘Jérôme?’ he called.

‘Clear.’

‘Leah,
go
.’

She grabbed the door handle, yanked it up and hauled back. Despite its weight, the glass rolled back with startling ease. She staggered. Caught herself. Felt a wall of frozen air push inside the room.

Luca brought up the rifle’s barrel, sighted down the scope. Emptied his lungs. Fired.

Such was the volume of glass around them that the air rang like a bell. Outside, the shot drew peals of thunder from the surrounding mountains.

A smoking hinge of blood-wet skull caromed off the ibex, the round’s velocity punching the animal back on its feet. It rolled, legs kicking once, and landed in a patch of darkness just beyond the range of the chalet’s lights.

‘Door!’ Luca shouted. Ears ringing from the rifle blast, Leah rolled the pane back into place and slammed down the lock.

Silence.

Outside, not a breath of movement. All that remained as evidence of the violence they’d wreaked was a dark stain in the snow; and, a few feet to the right, a piece of skull like a fragment of pottery, its concave surface black with the animal’s blood.

Luca reloaded, ejecting the spent round. It pinged onto the floor and rolled towards Leah. She trapped it with her boot.

‘Good shot!’ Jérôme howled. ‘Fucking thing is
toast
!’

‘No,’ Leah said. ‘They’re just testing us. Look.’

The patch of darkness into which the headshot ibex had been dispatched now spawned five more. The animals lined up on the snow and watched the house, silent and still, breath steaming like vapour from a sulphur lake.

‘Then let’s test them right back,’ Luca replied. ‘I can shoot ibex all night if I have to. Leah? Ready?’

But already the animals had retreated, wrapping themselves into the folds of the night’s cloak.

Again, the land grew still.

And then – not one by one, or in banks of two or three at a time but together, in a single instant – every light in the chalet complex winked out.

C
HAPTER
43

Interlaken, Switzerland

W
here before the glass had been a window into the night, now it reverted to an obsidian mirror, in which Leah saw herself, her companions and the hungry flames of the hearth fire.

Beside her, Jérôme fumbled with his torch. ‘No,’ she said, putting out a hand. ‘It’ll bounce right back at us.’

Luca nodded. ‘The backup generator should kick in any second.’

‘How could they shut off the power?’

‘There’s a substation by the road. Maybe that’s how.’

Leah waited, breath tight in her throat. Without light, their situation was immeasurably more bleak.

Wait for the generator, like Luca said. Just breathe, and wait.

She counted off the seconds in silence.

. . .
five . . . six . . . seven . . .

Luca grabbed a poker by the fire and broke up the logs until their flames sputtered out. While it helped to dampen the mirror effect of the windows, the night remained impenetrable. Clouds had seeped across the sky in a tight mass, drawing a curtain across the moon and stars.

. . . eight . . . nine . . . ten . . .

‘If we open that door,’ Jérôme suggested, ‘shine our torches out there . . .’

Luca shook his head. ‘No point taking the risk. The generator—’

‘Hasn’t kicked in.’

. . . eleven . . . twelve . . . thirteen . . .

‘You’re right,’ Luca muttered. ‘It shouldn’t take this long.’

Somewhere, out on the lawn, Leah thought she glimpsed a streak of movement, but it was so hopelessly dark that she couldn’t be sure.

And then they heard it: a resounding bang from downstairs, reverberating up through the house.

Jérôme swore. ‘What the hell was that?’

The lights came back on.

In an instant, their view of the lawn was restored. But the darkness seemed closer now, the illuminated patch of snow more fragile.

One of the ibex broke from cover and streaked across the snow towards the building. It disappeared from view, and they heard a second loud bang.

‘The windows,’ she said. ‘They’re trying to smash their way in.’

‘It’s toughened glass,’ Luca told her.

‘Yeah, but how tough? Come on. We should take a look.’

Another ibex raced out of the darkness. It disappeared below the balcony and they heard a boom from downstairs as its skull slammed against the window.

Holding her pistol tightly, Leah ran into the hall. Luca followed. She hurtled down the stairs to the ground floor, two at a time. ‘Which way?’

‘Left, by the lift.’

She paused beside a closed door. ‘Here?’

He nodded.

Leah threw it open.

The room beyond was half the size of the one they’d left, and bathed in light: four sets of wall lamps; rows of halogen ceiling bulbs. A snooker table stood at its centre, the green baize lit by a canopy containing a pair of fluorescent units. In one corner was a wet bar and a scattering of leather club chairs around an oak table.

Unlike the room directly above, with its uninterrupted glass wall, this space held only two of the floor-to-ceiling window panels. Both could be rolled back on metal runners.

The pane nearest the bar was black and smooth, but the one nearest the door bore clear signs of attack: three enormous white starburst patterns, centres frosty with chips of broken glass. It looked bad, but only the outer layer had been breached. Even so, she wasn’t confident of how much more punishment it could take.

Something trotted past the windows, a blur of brown and grey. It vanished before Leah had a chance to seize upon it, but she thought she glimpsed curved horns, a single amber eye.

She turned back to Luca. ‘Can we turn out the lights?’

He reached past her and flicked off a bank of switches. The room plunged into darkness, but enough light streamed from the windows of the adjacent room to illuminate the scene outside.

Protected by the balcony above, the deck immediately beyond the windows was clear of snow. Crushed glass lay heaped beneath the pane the ibex had attacked.

Beyond the deck, the snow on the lawn was criss-crossed with hoof prints. The closest patch, hidden from the first-floor living space, was thick with them. Clearly the
tolvajok
had been busier than she’d thought.

From upstairs, a second rifle shot fractured the silence. Leah jerked back, so quickly that she sat down hard on her rear. Through the glass she saw an ibex charging across the lawn towards her. Behind it, snow rained down from where the errant rifle round had impacted. The animal jinked left, accelerated towards the window. Put its head down. Leaped.

At floor level, the impact was even more horrifying, a sound like a car hitting a wall. The window bowed in, webbed by another starburst of cracks. Rebounding, the animal fell onto its back. It rolled to its feet, shook its head and cantered back towards the line of darkness.

Another rifle blast from upstairs, the report crashing like an orchestra of cymbals. This time the round struck the escaping ibex in its flank, knocking it off its feet in a red spray. It tumbled, a blur of thrashing hooves. Finally it came to a rest, forelegs twitching, hind legs bicycling, gouts of condensation pluming from its mouth.

The next shot drilled through its torso just behind its left shoulder, destroying heart and lungs. The animal kicked for a handful of seconds. Then it lay still.

Leah crabbed backwards until she felt confident enough to push herself to her feet. ‘How much more can these windows take?’

‘Honestly?’ Luca shook his head. ‘I don’t know. A while yet. Not all night.’

‘We need to seal off the rooms on this side of the house. How many are there?’

‘This one, and the library next door.’

She pointed to a set of doors in the left-hand wall. ‘Library’s through there?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Let’s do it.’

Luca crossed the room and locked the connecting doors. ‘If they get into the library, these won’t hold them for long.’

‘What about that?’ she asked, pointing to the snooker table. ‘Can we move it?’

‘Too heavy. We’d need to take it apart.’ He went to the low table near the bar. ‘Let’s use this.’

Between them they dragged it in front of the doors, stacking the club chairs on top.

‘Is there another entrance?’

He was about to reply when the rifle fired again from upstairs. Leah twisted around in time to see another ibex – a monster, this one – leap at the window, striking it with such force that one of its horns snapped off just above its skull. The animal collapsed, senseless. Arterial blood fountained from the stub of its horn, steaming like a geyser in the frozen air.

Leah struggled to turn her eyes away. ‘Is there another entrance? To the library?’

‘Out in the hall.’

‘You go. I’ll stay here.’

He pointed at the doorway through which they’d entered. ‘Any problems, get out and lock it. It’s solid. Much stronger than those two.’

Leah nodded, watched him leave. Heard her teeth grinding together.

Was this going to be their strategy? Concede the various parts of the building, room by room? Where would that end?

She thought of the children sheltering inside the windowless gun room and wondered how they’d felt as they heard the gunfire, knowing nothing of what occurred outside.

When she turned back to the damaged window, all that remained of the stricken ibex was a curving spear of broken horn, and a dark slick of blood.

Standing in its place, Leah saw, was something far, far worse.