The streets were busier than he’d expected, and for a moment he thought, Someone will see! The four vampires were glistening with blood, their faces smeared with it even though they’d halfheartedly wiped at themselves with bar towels. Even Kat and Stoner were splashed with their friend’s blood. But it was past dusk, and bustling, and no one saw. The small group walked along the pavement, and even if someone did notice something amiss, this was London. Problems generally belonged to someone else.
They soon reached the British Museum. After Marty had told them everything he knew, they must have traveled belowground until they were close by, guided perhaps by their human servants’ knowledge of this area and their experience of London’s underside. There they’d waited for dusk. We’ll be there long before Rose and the others, he thought, and he wondered what the cost of his betrayal would be. Shouting what he knew down in that pitch-black room, he’d not been able to perceive any other way. But now he knew that was wrong. There had been another way but, thrust into a pain-filled panic that forbore logical thought, he’d been unable to even consider accepting death. Instinct had driven him. Like that woman in the pub, he thought, or that man. If he’d refused to speak and died like that, perhaps he could have changed things.
But there was that one small lie he’d managed, yet to be revealed. And it was too late for self-recriminations. He’d had time to think, and as they approached the British Museum and whatever the Bane might be, he knew that given even the slightest chance he would upset the vampires’ plans. Duval had made him a nothing, after all. And what did a nothing have to lose?
Stoner and Kat appeared more subdued. Marty wanted to laugh at them, tell them that they were only being brought along as cattle, but he wasn’t so sure. The vampires had fed now. Murderers, drug addicts, craving something that the vampires might have promised or perhaps only hinted at; maybe Duval and the others had a use for the two humans yet.
Marty could only hope that was true. Because if it wasn’t, then perhaps the same applied to him, and he was being brought along for one thing only.
Fresh meat.
Close to the museum, he saw a girl. She was a teenager, but dressed in clothes that were strangely bland and pedestrian. The trousers were too long and ill fitting, the T-shirt gray, the jacket grubby and old. He knew few teenagers who didn’t take at least a little pride in their appearance, but this girl was a mess. And she stared.
Marty looked away, then back again. The girl was standing beside a concrete pedestal bearing a statue, her hands crossed in front of her, her long hair tied with elastic bands and slung carelessly over one shoulder. She was only twenty steps away, but her features seemed vague, as if obscured by a haze of smoke. She was in the shadow of the statue, away from the glare of artificial lights.
She smiled at Marty, but it was a grim smile.
“Rave,” Duval said, and one of the vampires ran.
Rave! Do they think up their own fucking names? Marty thought, then he saw the girl slip around the side of the pedestal and disappear. Humain! Rave the vampire went after her, and fingers bit into his arm as Bindy dragged him on.
Duval glanced back at Marty and raised a corner of his mouth in a smile. Blood was drying on his upper lip. Someone, please see us! Marty thought, but then the consequences of that hit home. If someone stopped and questioned them, the vampires would kill them. If a group of people—security guards, police—tried to stop them, maybe Stoner and Kat would open up with the weapons and cut them all down. Attracting attention would not concern them too much. It was what they had come to London for, after all.
Once they had the Bane, they would attract all the attention they could.
“What’s the matter? You scumbags still hungry?” Marty asked.
“You know that was no teenager,” Bindy said, and Marty realized it was the first time he’d heard her speak. Her voice was deeply accented, maybe eastern European, like some of the bar staff in the pubs he visited.
“Never seen her before,” he said, and it was true. But he’d heard her name, and he wondered what Connie was doing exposing herself like that.
The museum staff were going about closing up for the night when they entered. A tall man in a blue uniform approached, then stopped at a distance, unsettled, even though his expression showed he wasn’t sure why.
“Sorry, we’re closed,” he said. “Open again in the morning at ten. Hope we’ll see you back then.” He held one arm up, pointing back to the doors and advancing on them with small, hesitant steps.
“Of course,” Duval said, turning his back on the man and descending the steps again, out into the night. The others followed, and Marty looked around confused. Then he noticed that the other vampire was missing. He’d walked in with them, he was sure, but now the man was gone.
I could call out to the guard and tell him, he thought. But he didn’t want to sign the man’s death warrant. Marty was gripped with uselessness more tightly than Bindy holding his arm, and even if he were freed to walk away on his own, he had no idea what he could do.
They walked around the huge building as if admiring its architecture, and ten minutes later Stoner and Kat cut through a heavy fence, letting them into a large yard area. There were two wide doors and a raised loading bay, and Marty guessed this was where most of the museum’s contents came and went. All manner of incredible ancient artifacts would have passed this way, and he sniffed the air and looked around to see what trace had been left. But there was none. It was just a grubby backyard bathed in darkness, the security lights no longer working. He wondered if the vampire in the building was responsible for that, or whether they were simply broken down.
Footsteps approached, and the vampires tensed. They seemed to meld with the night, and for a moment Marty had to blink as if his eyes were blurred. But then he saw how perfectly still they had become, motionless as the shadows of statues. Stoner and Kat had knelt down, but they seemed to be jumping around in comparison.
The vampire Rave rounded a corner, slowing as he approached. “She got away,” he said.
“How?” Duval asked, his movement shifting him from the shadows.
“She knows the area better than me. She had somewhere ready to go.”
Duval seemed angry, but he said nothing to the vampire. For an instant he fumed, but then, as he turned to Marty, he bared his teeth in a grotesque smile. “That’s fine, really,” he said. “It’s good that they know we’re here. It’ll scare them. Make them easier to smell.”
“I thought vampires didn’t feed on each other,” Marty asked.
“Who said anything about feeding?” Duval replied. “We’ll destroy them. Weak shadows of what they could be. Echoes of what we will be.” Moments later, a motor started somewhere, and one of the large rolling shutter doors rolled up to reveal darkness within. The vampire slipped out like a slick of oil.
Duval nodded at the two humans. “You go first. Draw your guns. But don’t use them yet.”
“What—” Kat began, but Duval cut in.
“Don’t… use them… yet.”
Kat and Stoner nodded like berated children, then climbed onto the loading bay and rolled beneath the half-open doors.
The vampires followed. Inside, Bindy let go of Marty’s arm at last, and he rubbed at the flesh. It felt like her fingers were still there.
“You follow me now,” Duval said to Marty. “One move to escape and…” He bared his teeth. Held up one clawed hand. And as the rolling shutter closed again, the blood on his face was black in the fading light.