30 Days of Night: Fear of the Dark

7

EVEN AS A HUMAIN, Rose still felt a twinge of something every time she entered Lee’s affluent street. She couldn’t call it envy anymore, because she was beyond caring where she lived. Maybe it was a sense of unfairness. Not for her but for her family—Marty in particular—though this time the unfairness was prompted by something far more terrible than postal code and property.

The street was quite busy this evening. It was Friday, and people were heading out for the evening, lights burning in the homes they left behind where babysitters sat children in front of TVs and started texting their friends. Most were dressed well, their evenings destined to consist of fine meals, nights at the theater, and the best wines and champagnes.

Rose and Francesco drifted along the street. Francesco held her hand and their ruse was complete: strolling lovers from some other part of town. Rose wore dark jeans and boots, a black silk blouse, a casual jacket. Francesco’s long coat covered the scruffier clothes he wore beneath, but he knew how to carry himself: not so upright and cocky that he attracted unwanted attention, and not so slouched or aggressive that he looked like trouble. Attention fixed on them and then drifted away again, and when they reached Lee’s house they were as anonymous as ever.

“Something’s wrong,” Francesco said. They stood on the pavement looking up at the façade, but Rose could not see anything that rang her alarm bells. But she had learned to trust Francesco’s instincts.

“What?” she asked.

“Too quiet.”

A light illuminated each floor of Lee’s large house, the normal signal that everything was normal. One set of curtains was half-drawn, but that wasn’t unusual.

“He’s not the nosiest inhabitant of the street.”

“No. But all the windows are closed. You see? Lee always plays music when he knows we’re coming.”

Rose noticed then, and berated herself. It was much harder to spot something unusual that wasn’t there than something that was.

“He knew what time we were due,” she said. “I’ll go first.”

“No.”

“Francesco, this is my fault, so—”

Francesco walked up the steps and approached the front door. Rose followed; when she reached him, he was already trying the handle and pushing the big door open, and she could sense his heightened alertness and feel her own jaws throbbing, her tongue swelling. The darkness was opening to her more than ever. She sniffed for danger and tasted the air, and realized that Francesco had been absolutely right: something was wrong. Whatever happened now, Lee would likely see something in them that he had never seen before. Everything would change tonight.

A rush of wretchedness hit her but she fought it down. Fuck self-pity. That had no place here.

She rushed forward to enter the hallway before Francesco, but his was an imposing presence and she could not squeeze by. He flowed through the doorway and the hall lights snapped on, dazzling her for a second. And in that second, she knew that something was coming.

There was a heavy thud and Francesco grunted, halting where he stood and dipping slowly to his knees.

Rose pushed past and scanned the hallway, spotting Lee instantly. He was squatting behind a display unit in the hallway beside the wide staircase. The unit had been pulled out from the wall and pushed close to the bank of light switches. He was struggling with something; metal struck wood and he cursed. In his voice, she heard a quaver of terror.

Beside her, Francesco was staring at the crossbow bolt protruding from his right hip, one hand around its shaft.

“Lee!” she screamed. “You don’t understand!”

“Don’t talk to me, monster!” he shouted. He was still fighting with something behind the unit, and Rose tensed herself, ready to run and crush him down. But then he stood and aimed the crossbow at her, and she held her hands out by her sides instead.

“I’m no monster,” she said softly. But her heightened senses were already making a fighting map of this space. She could smell Francesco’s wound and the hot, sickly-sweet stench that came from whatever had erupted in there. She frowned, trying to identify the smell. Her tongue lolled across her bottom teeth, and Lee’s eyes opened wider.

Marty’s face appeared at the top of the stairs. He pulled himself on his stomach, over the edge of the landing and onto the staircase itself, letting himself slide down. His limbs were loose, and he was obviously struggling to keep his head up.

What have you done to my brother, you bastard?

“Garlic…” Marty said, voice slurring. “Garlic… holy water… Rose…”

Lee had glanced aside in surprise, but now Rose saw him tense behind the crossbow again and aim it at her face.

Francesco laughed.

Lee fired just as Rose brought her hand up before her. She continued swinging her arm in an arc, and the bolt passed straight through her palm, scoring a line across the top of her ear and then thudding into the solid oak doorframe behind her. A rush of garlic stench washed over her, and she grinned as Francesco’s laughter came again. It hurt… but it hurt well.

She ran. It took her half a second to close the distance between her and Lee, and she couldn’t prevent her hunger from rising; she growled, and then hissed as she saw his terrified face. She kicked the display unit aside, snatched the crossbow from his hand—he still had his finger pressed hard around the trigger, and she heard the distinctive crack of bone—then raised it above her head, blood from her punctured palm dripping across its stark metallic surface.

Lee fell onto his behind and began to kick, propelling himself backward until he was crushed against the shattered remains of the display unit where it had come to rest against the far wall. “R-R-Rose…” he breathed, and in his petrified eyes she saw another man and another place. She threw the crossbow across the hall and darted forward, moving so quickly that she saw his pupils expand and contract as he tried to keep her in focus. Rose grabbed Lee around the throat with her bloodied hand and lifted him. She took her new strength for granted, mostly, but now she thrilled in the power pulsing through her. She rammed him against the wall and heard plaster crack.

Lee’s head lolled and his face grew pale. Rose smelled blood.

“Rose,” Marty said. He’d reached the bottom of the staircase and had hauled himself upright, holding on to the banister. He was incredibly pale, and his chin was streaked with puke.

“Ease back, Rose,” Francesco said, and she dropped the moaning man, turning her back on him so that she did not see his blood or the look of fear in his eyes. She didn’t want that temptation. I like the fear, she thought. Her vampire strength was a thrill, but her real strength lay in Lee’s perception of her.

“You’re okay?” Marty asked as she approached. He was looking at her wounded hand, not at her face, and right then she was glad. She closed her eyes and tried to compose herself. Her tongue remained engorged, but the bloodlust was dwindling. She was confident that she would never choose that path again willingly, but if an idiot like Lee put himself in her way…

When she opened her eyes, she looked at Francesco first. He smiled and sent her a gentle nod. He knows, she realized then. He went through this a long time ago, and perhaps he still goes through it now. But he’s learned to hold things back.

“I’m fine,” she said to her brother. She chuckled. “Garlic and holy water. Bet he’s wearing a cross too.”

“Told me he was an atheist.” Marty smiled, Rose laughed, and she had to catch him as he slumped back down to sit on the bottom stair.

“What did he do to you?” she asked.

“Put me to sleep somehow. Chloroform? Locked me in a room upstairs, but I busted the lock open. Knew what he was going to do.”

“How did he know?” Francesco asked. He had closed the front door and locked it, and now he stood before them with the crossbow bolt still protruding from his hip.

Marty closed his eyes and lay back on the stairs. Rose could see that he was trying to keep the sickness down.

“Marty didn’t tell him,” Rose said, but he shook his head.

“No, I did. I did. He suspected somehow, woke me up, and said he knew, tricked me into confirming it. I’m sorry, Rose.” He looked at Francesco. “I’m sorry…”

Francesco raised a hand and smiled. “You’re not to blame. You’ve been through a lot.” He sounded cold, condescending. Lee was the only human he dealt with routinely, and he was the same then. Humain he might be, but Francesco still considered himself superior.

“So, what now?” Rose asked. Francesco looked past her to Lee.

“Now we talk with him.”

Rose was shocked. The Humains had always agreed that if Lee ever discovered their true nature, he’d have to be killed. Quickly, painlessly, but there would really be no alternative. His use to them came from his hatred of vampires, a conflicted situation that was finely balanced, and potentially deadly. But now that he knew, Francesco’s first reaction was to talk? And it was no front for Marty’s benefit.

“You think he’ll come around?”

Francesco shrugged. “Maybe. But right now is the worst time ever to lose him, don’t you think?”

Rose nodded. “Of course. But…”

“Rose,” he said, a warning tone.

“It’s an alternative. We turn him now and he still has access to all his contacts. He becomes one of us and—”

“He’s too filled with hatred. Too consumed by it. We turn him, and he’ll likely become one of them.”

“No. We can guide him, teach him.”

“Rose, you’re young,” Francesco said, and his age came through in every word. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. A knee-jerk reaction like that might be the end of us. Keeping him alive as he is is risk enough.”

“Fine,” Rose said.

“Rose?”

“Fine, Francesco. I agree.” She had never dared ask why he had chosen her to turn, fearing that it had been random. She wanted to feel special. In a way, what he’d just said went some way to confirming that she was.

“Get him upstairs to his computer room,” Francesco said. “I’ll carry your brother.”

“Be gentle with him.”

Francesco only raised an eyebrow, then picked up Marty under one arm and climbed the stairs. If the crossbow bolt in his right hip was bothering him, he showed no sign.

Rose knew what Francesco was going to do, and how he was going to do it. She’d seen him torturing a vampire for information only the night before, and now she knew that he would display the other side of his personality. Cool, calm, affable. Persuasive.

Lee was regaining consciousness. Rose squatted before him, able now to ignore the smell and heat of the blood leaking from the small wound on the back of his head. He lifted his head and focused on her, catching his breath. She gave him a friendly smile.

“He’ll give you one chance to live,” she said as she picked him up, as easily as lifting a small child. “I suggest you take it.”

They sat Lee in his own leather swivel chair, turned away from his computer to face the room. His head was throbbing, and when he flexed his scalp, he felt the wound and the stickiness of drying blood. His throat hurt where Rose had grabbed him. His right index finger was on fire, bent back at a terrible angle. But the shaking had nothing to do with these various pains. That was all fear.

I’m a vampire’s servant, just like Renfield, he thought, and could barely imagine anything worse. Instead of fighting the bastard creatures he hated so much, he had been aiding them all this time. And they had been using him like a naïve marionette, tweaking strings as and when they wanted to, walking him here, guiding him there.

How the fucking hell could he have been so stupid?

He looked at Rose and tried to see the vampire within. She had sat her brother—her human, vulnerable, living brother—on one of the casual chairs he kept in his office. She was caring for him, letting him lean against her hip. Her left hand rested on his shoulder. He’d only ever seen Rose at night, because that was when she and the others could get away from their lives to come to him. Pretend lives, he knew now, though none of them had ever needed to make anything up. He had always assumed. He thought Francesco might have been a lecturer, perhaps even a priest. And Rose he had pegged for a nurse, maybe with a young professional husband who went to the gym some evenings, leaving his wife to live her own life and have her own activities outside work. But no: during the day, these two hid from the sunlight, and he would never forgive himself for not realizing something sooner.

His blind hatred for the vampire had been the very thing that let them get close to him.

Perhaps now, because he knew, he saw things in Rose that he should have noticed before. Her fingernails were as pale as the skin around them. Her eyes, the pupils unnaturally large, didn’t seem to reflect as much light as they should. She was graceful and confident, moving like a shadow. He’d thought perhaps she danced.

He giggled. It was a horrible sound.

“Laugh at this,” Francesco said. The tall vampire stood in the center of the room and grabbed the crossbow bolt embedded in his hip. The head was barbed, the bulb of garlic paste and holy water clasped in metal braces that would have parted and spread on impact. As he pulled it out of himself with one sharp tug, the sound was sickening.

Francesco winced, and Lee felt bile rising in his throat.

“Not laughing?” Francesco asked. He threw the bolt at Lee’s feet. It hit one of the chair’s wheels and rebounded, leaving a stain of bloodied meat shreds on the pale carpet. Lee stared at the bolt and wondered why it hadn’t worked. The bulb had shattered, as he had designed it to, and the shaft was bent from where it had struck one of Francesco’s bones.

“Look at me,” the vampire said.

“No.”

“Lee,” Rose said softly. He’ll give you one chance to live, she had told him. He remembered that much, through the fog of unconsciousness. He looked up.

Francesco pulled up a chair and turned it around, sitting on it backwards to face Lee. He was no monster. Taller than most, handsome in the weathered way only older men can be, there were no fangs dripping blood down his chin, no hissing.

But when Rose came at me, those teeth, that fury—

“She could have bitten your throat out and drank your blood, you know,” Francesco said. “Some of us would have. Some would have broken your arms and legs first, working the shattered bones so that they punctured your flesh and arteries, feeding from you that way. Others… they’re old-fashioned. They prefer the throat, so that they can see the terror in their victim’s eyes. And sometimes the pleasure. For some, having their throat bitten into and crushed by a vampire triggers the same response as asphyxiation by rope. They get an instant erection, and orgasm while the monster’s drinking their true life fluid. Does Rose give you an erection, Lee?”

“No,” he scoffed.

“That’s because she didn’t bite your neck to feed from you. Or crush your limbs. Even when she saw and smelled your blood. And you know why that is?”

“Because I’m black? Not her vintage?”

Francesco blinked twice, quickly, and that simple expression of impatience drove a cool spear of terror into Lee.

“It’s because we don’t kill for blood,” Francesco said. “Most vampires do, as I know you’re aware. But we call ourselves Humains. We live alongside humans. We need blood, true, and we get it, but we never kill for it. In the same way that you’d choose not to kill your own meat, but you procure it nevertheless.”

“I’ve seen the DVD of Barrow that Andy Gray sent me. You sat here and watched it with me.”

“Vampires. Not Humains.”

Lee shook his head and winced at the pain that caused.

“I’ll not plead with you, Lee,” Francesco said. “You tried to kill me, and while I admire your dedication to your cause, that still pisses me off. It’s amusing that you used garlic and holy water, but not enough to make me laugh. The garlic’s burning like fuck, to be honest. Thanks for that. Maybe I should cut you and stick some in you, show you what it feels like. Some chopped chili too? Salt?”

Lee shrugged. He tried to maintain eyes contact with Francesco but couldn’t, so he kept glancing at Rose and Marty instead. Marty was awake now, staring at him. He smiled, but the kid didn’t smile back.

“I’ll not plead, but I’ll reason. Humain to human. Tell me you’ll entertain that, at least.”

Lee closed his eyes, feeling the hatred seething inside him like a nest of wood ants in his gut. There was hatred for himself, too, for being fooled for so long. Phil’s memory seemed blurred by his inability to do anything to avenge his death.

“Lee,” Rose said again.

“Fine,” Lee said. “Reason away.” He caught Francesco’s gaze and held it this time, trying to project confidence and strength. The vampire smiled thinly and stood, pacing the room with one hand clasped to the wound in his hip. Is that healing already? Lee wondered. Is it bleeding, is the flesh growing back, is the bone fixing itself where the bolt chipped at it? All these things and more he wondered, then realized in that instant that the answers were here before him. Everything he’d ever wanted to know about vampires—their physiology, habits, beliefs, religion, outlook, aging and healing processes, thoughts and desires—he could discover from Francesco, Rose, and the others. These two were his main contacts, but he’d met Jane a few times, and the Irishman. Was this an opportunity he could truly pass up?

Perhaps he could swing this deception to his own advantage. He had been their inside man for a long time; now perhaps he could start taking instead of giving. And when the time came to use everything he found out… then his life would find meaning once again.

“You going to keep pacing like that, or talk?” Lee said.

“Just thinking of how best to put this,” Francesco said. “But, honestly, there’s only one way I can say it: we need you.”

“Haven’t you used me enough?”

“Nothing like we need you now. The vampires are here in London looking for something, and we have to find it before they do.”

Lee’s eyes flickered to Marty and back again. Francesco shook his head.

“Not him. They needed to get to us first, that’s all. See if we’d help or hinder them.”

“I think they’ve got the answer on that one,” Rose said.

“The boy was…” Francesco held out his hands.

“A fringe benefit,” Rose said. “Bastards found it amusing to try feeding from him while trying to get us on their team.”

“‘Team’?” Lee asked. “And what is it they’re looking for?”

“Something that might give them the power to expose themselves.”

“That’s what we want!” Lee said, but saw the inaccuracy in that statement. It was what he wanted.

“Not us,” Francesco said. “You and we have similar objectives, but different reasons for pursuing them. You want to expose vampires to make them vulnerable. If people believe in them, they fear them less. They become a fact rather than a fiction, and facts can be dealt with. Analyzed.”

“Killed.”

“We want protection from exposure,” Francesco continued. “To exist alongside humans, unknown and silent. Yes, we’ve used you, but only to keep track of what’s going on in the wider world. You were never used for anything… bad.”

“I helped a gang of vampires survive for—”

“No,” Francesco said. “Don’t get above yourself. You gave us information, that’s all.” They’re isolated, Lee thought. I’m their eyes and ears.

“So you want to live alongside people without harming them. What are you, some kind of hippie vampire?”

Francesco smiled but did not answer.

“What are they looking for?” Lee asked.

“It’s called the Bane.”

Lee blinked in surprise and looked from one vampire to the other, but then he saw how they were staring at him and quickly reined in his reaction. Watching to see if I’ve heard of it. So he frowned and shrugged, a signal for Francesco to go on.

“An old artifact,” Francesco continued. “Some believe the vampire that wields it will gain power, enabling it to lead, take control. Be overt for the first time. Instead of a few vampires here and there, there’ll be thousands. Instead of occasional deaths among the human population, the population will become livestock. And that’ll be the end of everything.”

“And that doesn’t appeal to you Humains? Rising from the shadows?”

“It’s the shadows that keep us alive.”

“You’ve heard of the Bane?” Rose asked.

“No. Why do they think it’s in London?”

“That’s where they have us at a disadvantage,” Francesco said. “And where you can help.”

“You want me to find it for you.”

“Before they do,” Francesco said. “We’re together in this, you and us. Our aim must be the same.”

“You’re appealing to my vanity?” Lee said, almost smiling.

“Not at all,” Francesco said, and the danger beneath his soft smile and gentle voice was suddenly brought into sharp focus. Here was a man whose look could cut diamond. “I’m giving you one chance to stay alive. We don’t kill to feed, but more than once I’ve had to kill to survive.”

Lee shivered. He couldn’t help it. “I’ve got no choice, have I?”

“Well, there’s always a choice,” Francesco said.

The Bane! Lee had heard whispers of it several times, and there were a couple of people in his network who claimed to have found documented evidence of its capabilities. He could contact them… but on his own. Because something this old and obscure attracted stories that varied from mouth to mouth. Some believed that the thing had never existed at all, and was as obscure and mythical as Excalibur. Others thought it might once have existed in some form but, like the Grail, was lost to antiquity. And though one rumor did indeed claim that it would give its vampire bearer great power… there was another.

It was this story that gave Lee hope that, through Marty’s misfortune and this shocking exposure, he might gain the means to do what he’d craved for a decade.

Kill all the vampires.

He smiled and nodded, and when Francesco came to shake his hand, Lee didn’t hesitate for an instant.