“That might be overstating the obvious.” Francesco frowned and looked ahead, over the empty passenger seat and along the road they were following toward the museum. The London streets were busiest at this time of night, a crush of people still traveling home from work, meeting those coming out for the evening. Cars jerked forward thirty meters, then stopped again, motorcycles weaved between vehicles, cyclists risked broken bones darting across junctions and wheeling along pavements. Everyone was in a rush to be somewhere else, and for once so were they.
“What?” she asked quietly.
“We’re at a disadvantage to begin with,” Francesco said. “These things know what they’ve come for, and they’ve already assessed our strengths.”
“And we kicked their butts.”
“You think?” he asked.
Lee pulled one of his cannons, flicked off the safety, and nestled it between his thighs. “Every one of my bullets has a vampire’s name on it, or, if not, my own. And I plan on seeing the sunrise.”
I hope you do, Rose thought, remembering the sun, the warmth on her skin, and the promise of what the new day might bring. Now the night only promised more darkness.
She shook her head, because it all suddenly seemed so hopeless.
“They’ll beat us there,” she said. “We’ll get there just in time to—”
“But they don’t know exactly where it is,” Lee said softly. A car horn blared; he glanced sideways at a man gesticulating wildly in the car beside them. Slowly, he gave the guy the finger.
“And you do,” Francesco said.
“I have a fair idea.”
“Where?”
Lee drove on silently, and no one said anything else. Tension in the car grew. The air thickened with potential. And Rose suddenly realized how hungry she was.
13
THEY EMERGED INTO A basement piled with barrels, shoving the wooden door aside and entering silently, quickly. The place smelled of stale spilled beer, and Marty’s stomach rolled. If I puke now, they’ll probably kill me, he thought. He had no idea why they’d brought him along and didn’t care. Five minutes alone in that darkened room with Duval and he’d been screaming, telling everything the vampire wanted to know and more, pissing himself again, wishing only for light or the true darkness of oblivion to take him away.
“I hear nothing,” Kat said. She and the other humans had carried lights, and for that he was glad. At least with them close by there were splashes of light. The brief journey through tunnels and sewers had been nightmarish, with him catching only brief glimpses of Duval and three more vampires. But anything was better than total darkness.
Stoner and the other human stood beside Kat, pressed against the closed door exiting the basement. The other vampires stood back amongst the barrels.
“Lights out,” Duval said, and they were plunged into darkness once again.
The sharp things touching his face, coldness on his throat, clothes plucked, skin pricked, each sensation a promise of more pain, and the promises were worse than the pain itself…
Marty whined, and the short woman vampire holding him squeezed his arm until he stopped.
Kat opened the door and artificial light crept in. She and the other humans left the basement, and Duval followed, moving with an unlikely grace for a creature of his size.
“Come on,” the woman vampire said. Marty thought her name was Bindy, but he no longer knew why that would matter. He was finished. He felt destroyed, hollowed out by Duval and left as a useless, wanting husk. It wasn’t that he had revealed what he knew about the British Museum and the Humains’ knowledge of the Bane: that had been inevitable, and there was no way he could be blamed. It was that the future felt so barren. Duval had brought home to Marty just how little his life meant now, and death was no longer as terrifying to him as it had once been. There were worse things than death.
They walked out from the basement and climbed a spiral of old stone steps, emerging into a small, old-fashioned bar. This was one of London’s genuine old boozers, untouched by the allure of chrome and glass furniture, cocktail hour, walls wood-paneled and hung with mirrors bearing the names of long-dead brewers and breweries. The furniture consisted of bare chairs and uneven tables, and the bar was lined with six beer pumps and decorated with a score of locals’ mugs hanging from hooks above.
An old woman stood behind the bar, a rag in one hand, mouth open in shock.
“We’re not open til…” she said, as if not realizing that these potential customers had risen from her basement.
Stoner and Kat approached the bar, drawing their guns and looking back at Duval like hungry puppies awaiting their master’s voice.
“No,” Duval said. “Not yours.” He approached the bar and reached across, clasping the woman in one hand and pulling her over as if she weighed nothing. She let out one squeal before his hand clasped across her face, nails scoring vicious lines down her left cheek. He looked up then, glancing around at the other vampires, and the grip on Marty’s arm relaxed.
Bindy and the others went to feed.
Oh, no, Marty thought. He backed as far away as he could, pressing himself into a corner and watching the woman’s terrified eyes. When she looked at him, he glanced away, and saw Stoner, Kat, and the other human watching with a sick, gleeful desire.
Duval tilted the woman’s head to one side and bit out her throat. Her scream came as a hiss of escaping air, her feet drummed on the wooden floor, and he buried his face in the geyser of blood. Pulling back—face bloodied, eyes black, teeth smeared, tongue swollen and red—he offered the woman to each of the other vampires. They took turns, Bindy first, then the other two, chomping deeper when the spray of blood began to lessen.
Marty wanted to close his eyes but he couldn’t. All he could think of was his family: his mother and father having the same done to them; and Rose, his vampire sister… had she ever drunk true blood? He tried to see her in Duval’s place but could not. But then Bindy looked more human, her body and features not so misshapen as her master’s.
“No,” he whispered. “Not Rose. Not ever.”
“Me,” Kat said, creeping forward. “Me. I want some.” Stoner stood behind her, shifting from foot to foot, but the other man had backed away. He was pressed against the locked frosted-glass front doors. Marty thought he looked terrified, or maybe he was just coming down from his high.
Duval dropped the woman—one of the other male vampires caught her, chomping into the motionless corpse—and stood up straight. He hissed as he approached Kat, apparently unable to talk as the blood rush invigorated his limbs and fangs. And Marty realized how similar Duval and Kat were: both junkies, depending on something external for their survival.
Kat looked excited and terrified in equal measures, shaking where she stood and yet not backing away. Duval swept her aside. She fell onto a table and it smashed, chairs spilling over backwards.
“No!” she shouted, but Duval was already on the human cowering by the doors, tearing into him with clawed hands, ripping at him with those swollen teeth.
It was then that Marty closed his eyes, and he kept them closed until the chaos had subsided. He still heard, though. For those two long minutes, what his eyes didn’t see was more than compensated for by the things he heard, and smelled.
He kept his eyes closed when one of them grabbed him again, clasping his wrist so hard that he thought the bones would crumble. He walked behind them through the mess of the pub, kicking something soft and wet as they exited into the cool night. And only then did he open his eyes.