Duval lifted the thing in his hands and came at him.
Marty stepped quickly to the side, kicking out at Duval’s legs and hearing bones snap. The vampire screeched and swung the Bane again, and Marty held up his right arm to deflect it, feeling flesh part and bone rupture as it passed through with ease. His forearm and hand flopped down useless, but he did not back away. With the Bane still swinging away from him, Marty leapt for it, closing his good hand around Duval’s on the handle and letting his weight do the work.
“No!” Duval screamed, and as they toppled the Bane fell away from both of them.
Marty sprawled on his stomach. The ancient artifact rolled away from them, coming to rest against the tilted shelf tier, and as he got to his knees to go after it Duval fell on him. Pressed against the floor, the vampire’s weight forcing him down, he was powerless to protect himself against the assault.
Duval was a ravening animal, claws slashing, teeth piercing, legs coming up to kick and pummel. Marty felt the impacts but the pain was remote, a vague niggle in his vampiric brain. The damage being wrought on his body registered more, but even that was something distant and obscure, as if he were watching someone else being attacked. He gathered his strength, pulling his senses inward until they concentrated on one point. Even being torn to shreds, Marty could not help but wonder at what he had become.
“Marty, gimme ten!” Rose shouted, and as distant memories of hide-and-seek sang in, Marty squeezed his eyes closed.
Straddling his back, Duval screamed as UV light filled the demolished room.
“Found you!” Rose said, her own voice pained, and Marty opened his eyes again and bucked the vampire from his back. Duval was holding the burnt remnants of his eyes within their sockets with the splayed fingers of one hand while the other thrashed at the air, searching for Marty and ready to deliver the killing blow. And Marty could have taken one step closer and killed him then. He felt the power in his good hand, the astounding strength that would enable him to punch through the older vampire’s head and scatter his brains across the floor. But instead of one step, he took three.
One, to pick up the Bane.
A second to turn and hold the object to one side, hand curled around the handle, and the sudden impact of what he was holding—the object of these last few days’ trials and deaths, including the brutal murders of his parents—struck him hard, adding to the strength gathered at his core.
And the final step back toward Duval, swinging the Bane and meeting the vampire’s neck even as he launched himself at Marty. The dull, blood-smeared edge of the old weapon passed through Duval’s throat and shattered his spine, and as he completed his leap his head tilted back and rested between his shoulder blades, and he fell and writhed on the floor at Marty’s feet.
Marty looked at the others, the three of them watching him with some measure of amazement and, from Rose, both pride and sadness. With one kick, he parted the remaining scraps of flesh and skin and the tied Mohawk, and Duval’s head bounced away beneath the fallen shelving. His body slumped down into a sitting position, seeming to shrink from the darkness.
The Bane was heavy in Marty’s hand. The weight of Duval’s smeared blood made it heavier.
“Rose,” Marty said, and his voice was deeper than ever before.
“Oh, Marty,” she said again. And for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why she was so sad.
16
ROSE WATCHED THE HEAD roll away, its thin rope of tied hair flapping at the floor. Then she looked back at Marty. His right arm hung limp and useless by his side, but she knew the healing would already be starting. His clothing was shredded by Duval’s brief, vicious attack. His throat was raw and torn. The Bane swung from his left hand, heavy and bright in the poorly lit room. Every particle of light in there seemed to be reflecting from the wet blood around the object’s edge.
He looked down at the Bane and seemed hypnotized by its weight.
“Oh, Marty,” she said again, because her little brother was no more.
To her left, Patrick sat down, and she heard his body relaxing in relief. His mending would come, but it would be long and harsh. To her right, Francesco took one faltering step toward Marty. Stella Olemaun’s words echoed back at her once more: The balance is being challenged all the time, and that thing could tip it either way. And she knew what she had to do.
She sensed the Humains’ surprise as she darted to Marty’s side. He looked at her with wanting eyes, and she felt a surge of sadness. She touched his face and felt the strength in him, simmering below the shock. Then she shoved him backwards, snatched the Bane from his hand, and ran.
Rose was out of the door before she heard the first startled shout. It came from Francesco, and it was more a question that anything else: “Rose?”
She didn’t answer, because he’d know what she was doing.
Through the corridors, up the stairs, past the bodies, the thing clasped in her hand weighed heavily but gave her little else. There was no sense of complete power, no idea that this object could project her to the head of a vampire army or give her the power to be the greatest of vampire killers. It was just an old thing, buried and dug up, and now requiring burying again. Because though the thing itself might not hold the powers attributed to it by legend, the pursuit of it could lead some way toward realizing what those legends promised.
Around her in the British Museum, bodies both vampire and human awaited discovery. She knew that Francesco would be compelled to take care of them before coming after her, and that gave her time. It gave her plenty, plenty of time.
She left the museum the same way she had entered, moving swiftly through the shadows. The feeding had enlivened her. The fight had made her senses sing. Her wounds would be extreme for a human, but she could feel the itch of their healing already: her torn-off nose was re-forming, slashed flesh mending, bones knitting. Being out in the night air felt good. The farther she ran from the museum, the more she came to realize just what they had done.
It would be faster if she descended into the tube, but there were no shadows to hide in down there in the trains. Pausing outside a closed shop, she examined herself in the window, checking the wounds, confirming that she was still far too damaged to show herself in public. She smiled at her image. Lee might still have believed that vampires showed no reflection.
She had no idea what his intentions had been past tonight, but she chose to think of him as brave.
The fight in the museum had lasted less than half an hour, though it had felt much longer. Francesco and the others would be clearing up, retrieving every trace of vampire involvement. They’d take the bodies down deep, and burn them in the hidden roots of the city, close them into a subterranean room as the flames took hold and scorched away any trace of fused bone, undead flesh, and fang.
The night was young. Rose had plenty of time to reach her destination.
By dawn, she had healed. She descended into the tube system and sat amongst the human beings, staring down anyone who dared catch her gaze. No one lasted more than a second. Some of them picked at lint on their suits or examined their fingernails, and others looked into the middle distance with a distracted frown twisting their features.
She’d stolen some clothes from a shop, washed in an abandoned flat; her worst injuries were now little more than pale pink patches on her skin. Amongst the strange and stranger of London, she was just another curiosity.
She made her way down into the depths, not rushing, not dallying. Her hands were empty. She carried only the slight concern at what her brother had become, and what had been taken away from him.