They’d made sure that his face could be recognized. His head was fixed up there somehow, and the rest of him was spread across a swath of dark stone wall, guts hung like Chinese lanterns, blood and flesh still wet against the stone. It reflected London’s night lights. One of his eyes was closed as if winking, but the other was still wide open in death. Rose wondered what the last thing he’d seen had been, and knew it was nothing good.
“Where is this?” she asked.
“Plinth of Nelson’s Column, beside one of the lions.”
“When did it happen?” Francesco was standing at her shoulder now. He sounded interested rather than disgusted.
Lee reduced the photograph and read the email. “Found him half an hour ago. Can’t have been there much longer than that without being seen.”
“The vampires that did this must have been seen,” Rose said. “Trafalgar Square at night? It’s never empty, no matter what time.”
“They did it quickly,” Francesco said. “It would have taken seconds.”
“Well, they’re really doing their best to remain below the radar,” Lee commented.
“These are the vampires who want exposure, remember. They’re just getting ahead of themselves.”
“And sending us a message,” Rose said.
“What message?” Francesco asked, and Rose thought he was genuinely bemused.
“It’s a threat.”
“That’s a human,” he said, pointing at the screen even though the picture was gone. That was my father, Rose thought. What he must have gone through. Because she knew what these vampires might have done to him before finishing him somewhere public.
“So?” she replied. “To them, we’re Humains. They don’t understand us. They probably think of us as almost the same as humans, except they don’t feed from us.”
“Maybe,” Francesco said. He almost sounded hurt. “I suppose you should tell the boy. And, Lee… we really need the upper hand here. They find the Bane, and we’re finished.”
“No bad thing,” Lee said, and Francesco bent past Rose and grabbed the man’s neck in a flash. He pushed his face down into his keyboard, and the screen flickered with pages opening and closing, buzzing as too many keys were compressed.
“If we’re finished, that means they’ve just begun,” Francesco said. “And compared to them, we’re your best friends. Get it?”
“I got it,” Lee said through distorted lips. And he did. Rose knew that already. He understood as well as they did, and, treated right, would do his best to help. She touched Francesco’s shoulder and pulled lightly, easing him back.
“I’ve got Lee,” she said.
“No. Your brother.”
“I’ll let him sleep until morning.”
Francesco nodded, released Lee, and walked away. As he left the room Rose heard his low chuckle again, and she realized that he was enjoying this. Maybe existence had become too predictable, too routine for Francesco. She couldn’t condemn him for that; after all, he’d been undead for longer than she could imagine.
“So let’s keep searching,” Rose said. She pulled up a chair and sat beside Lee, not close enough to make him uncomfortable but close enough to see the screen.
He rubbed his mouth and the back of his head and worked the keyboard, closing windows he didn’t need and putting the computer back to where it had been before Francesco’s outburst.
“Okay, then,” he said. “While this search is running, tell me again what that vampire said about the Bane. Everything it said, how it said it, the words it used, the dialect…”
Rose cast her mind back to Francesco torturing the thing that had helped kill her mother. And she and Lee started working together.
Marty awoke, amazed that he’d been able to sleep. For a second he simply lay there, rising from the depths and gathering his life around him again. And in moments he realized that there wasn’t that much left of it. Events rolled in like rapid waves, building and building until he sat up on the bed and reentered his sad, shattered world. He groaned and held his head, wishing he could squeeze out some of the truth.
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked around. The room was in darkness, and the light showing at the window was cast from one of the tall streetlamps. It was still night. They’d still be here.
The bedroom had a small bathroom en-suite, and after pissing he ran a glass of water and drank quickly. He was hungry, even though hunger felt wrong now that Mum was gone. And what of his father? Was he hungry now? And if so, Marty wondered what form his hunger would take. Dad had always liked cheese toasties with lashings of Indian chutney—strong cheese, hot chutney—and he’d always claimed to have a preference for intense tastes. Was he hungering for something like that now? Or was he craving blood?
The fact that his father might have been turned did not upset Marty as much as it should. He ran hot water in the sink and watched the large mirror slowly steam up, waiting until the whole surface was obscured before running his hand across it. He saw himself clear as day, but wondered whether a vampire would. Was that just another stupid superstition? He guessed so. Rose seemed as real as death to him, so there was no reason she wouldn’t show in a mirror. These weren’t the fancy vampires from those old Hammer movies. They were flesh and…
Blood?
He supposed so. But he wondered whether Rose had rats’ blood in her veins or her own.
He washed quickly, then left the room. Out on the landing he stood for some time, listening for sounds of movement or activity in the house. The idea flashed across his mind that they’d all gone out hunting the vampires and left him locked in, and a stab of fear hit him. I don’t want to be alone! But then he heard a voice from somewhere nearby—subdued, almost whispered—and he knew that he was safe.
Marty remained standing there for some time, leaning on the banister while he listened. It was coming from Lee’s office, on the other side of the landing. The door was partly closed, but he saw the subtle rise and fall of lighting levels as Lee used his computer, clicking from screen to screen as he hunted across the net.
Marty was surprised they hadn’t killed Lee. After everything Rose had revealed about the Humains, he was still a terrible threat to them now. But there was also that Bane, and he guessed they needed the ex-SIS officer to help them find it.
“Jesus Christ,” someone said from Lee’s office. The voice was low, male, and he was pretty sure it was Lee. Then Rose responded, though Marty couldn’t quite hear what she said.
Intrigued, he started edging around the landing and past the staircase. Francesco might be somewhere near, but the tall vampire didn’t miraculously appear anywhere. Perhaps he was resting. Or feeding. Even big, posh houses like this probably had rats in their basements.
As he approached the office door, Marty could make out better what was being said inside.
“I’ve read about her,” Lee said. “Ashleigh Richards. Maybe a couple of years back, there was an article in one of the Sunday supplements. One of her students wrote it. She was a renowned archaeologist for a long time, then she just lost it. Went mad, became a bit of a hermit, rarely left her house. No one could place why it happened, and there was some talk of a curse. You know, like Tutankhamen?”
“That’s just a load of old superstitious crap.”
“This from a vampire.”
Marty smiled at that. Lee might be a bastard, but it sounded like he’d quickly regained his feet.
“You’re sure this is it, though?” Rose said.
“Look, all these words here—see?—have thrown up several hundred matches, none of which sound anything like what we’re looking for. They’re either a long way off or concern something or someone else. Or sometimes it’s the fault of the search engine, coming up with something like a book or a crossword clue or a movie reference. But when I added what you said that vampire said—‘bleeding Bane’—we get this.”