30 Days of Night: Fear of the Dark

9

LEE FOLLOWED ROSE DOWNSTAIRS, glancing at Marty’s closed door, itching to get back to his office. There were more weapons in there. And even though some of what he thought about vampires had proved to be hopelessly wrong, a dumdum bullet to the face would stop anything for a while.

Wouldn’t it?

But he followed Rose instead, because he knew that they were right. For now, he and they were on the same side. Grotesque though it was, these vampires—these Humains—had aims similar to his. To a degree, at least. Once that degree was reached or passed, their aims would polarize rapidly. They’d want to survive, unknown and covertly, and he’d want every one of the fuckers dead.

It was saddening, and he even had to try not to get too cut up about it: he’d thought of Rose as a friend. But now that he knew the truth, so much fell into place. They’d only ever come at night, for a start. They’d rarely come close to him, and even more rarely touched him, other than that time a few years back when he’d made his one and only move on Rose. She’d turned away and knocked him aside with more force than he’d expected, and the one brief contact had been cold. Bloody freezing outside, she’d muttered as she walked away, and, thinking about it now, Lee couldn’t recall whether that had been in the summer or winter.

But five years… and before that, he’d dealt with Francesco, more distant and aloof but still seemingly with an identical agenda.

“Weren’t we friends?” he asked softly. He felt like a prick even bringing it up, and as the words left his mouth he cursed himself. It was weakness, it was foolish, and she’d turn around and grin and show him all those teeth she’d never shown him before.

But instead she answered without turning around, and unless this vampire was a very good actress, he felt a weight of regret in her words.

“Yeah, we were,” she said. “Pity that can’t go on.”

At the foot of the stairs, Rose turned left, then left again, opening the door that led down into Lee’s basement. He hadn’t even been aware that Rose knew about it, and that got him wondering how many times one of the Humains had been in his house without him being aware. He decided not to ask. Rather not know.

Francesco was down there. The lights were on and he was walking slowly around the room, fingering the heavy chains that hung from sockets in the wall, chuckling as he tried to prick his finger on the ends of sharpened stakes held in a wire basket. There was a steel table in one corner with a rack of cutting implements on a magnetic rail above. Cloves of garlic hung from the ceiling and walls, giving the air a hint of their scent, even though none had been peeled. Lee had even fashioned crosses for each wall, taking time over them, enjoying the workmanship that went into joining the hardwood and polishing, certain that one day they’d serve their purpose well. Now he felt Francesco’s silent scorn. The fucker didn’t look at him and still he was mocking.

“Well, you didn’t tell us about this little place,” he said.

“I always had my secrets,” Lee said.

“And why’s that?” Francesco turned to look at him. “Didn’t trust us?”

“I was hoping to catch one and surprise you,” Lee said. “Give us all an opportunity to…”

“Torture it?”

“Research it,” he said. “Find out what makes a vampire tick. Live. Die.”

“Garlic and crosses,” Francesco said. “And yet I’ve also found a UV light and some pretty heavy duty ammunition. Though I haven’t found the guns yet.”

“They’re around.”

“So amongst the superstitious bullshit”—Francesco grabbed a clove of garlic from a rack on the wall and sniffed at it—“you still knew some of what you were doing.”

“Covering all bases.”

“Francesco, we know who might have found the Bane: an archaeologist called Ashleigh Richards,” Rose said. “She’s… well, gone a bit mad. Still lives in London, but…” She nodded at the ceiling, and Lee sensed the silent communication.

“I can go,” Lee said. “Find out where it is while you… do whatever you do during the day.”

“You hate us,” Francesco said.

“What you are, yes. What you stand for, I’m not so sure. But I hate those other fuckers more.”

“So, that should make us trust you?”

Lee sighed in frustration. “Look, you’re out of action for the next twelve hours, Einstein. And so are they. But if they have some scumbags working for them in London, and if they’re trying to find this Bane thing as hard as you think, then maybe they’ll already have made the connection.”

“You think they have someone as smart as you?”

“No,” Lee said. “But there’s always luck and chance.”

“Lee, there’s just no way,” Francesco said. “You’ll come back and pour petrol down here, burn us alive.”

“‘Alive’?” Lee asked, snorting. Rose shifted uncomfortably next to him. He was glad to see he could get to them. Not petrol, he thought. Just the Bane. Find that damned thing today and, come dusk, I’ll be ready for any of them.

He glanced back at the steps, judged how quickly he could make them. Rose seemed distracted, and Francesco had made no move to restrain him yet. If he made it up out of the basement, there was a good chance he could get out into the rising sun before they caught him. He knew the house better than they did.

“No, Lee,” Rose said, and without him noticing she had moved close beside him. She clasped his arm in her cold hand, and Lee closed his eyes, disgusted that he’d ever entertained thoughts of touching her like that. He’d daydreamed about her breasts, her pussy, but they were undead things like her, lifeless and empty.

She squeezed tighter and he opened his eyes.

“Don’t make me hurt you.”

Lee hung his head. Not now. Of course not. This was when they most expected him to try and get away.

“You’ll stay down here with us today,” Francesco said. “We’ll call the others and tell them what’s happening, and as soon as the sun sets we’ll all make our way to the woman’s house. Tonight is when we’ll find out where the Bane is, and also when we’ll dispose of it.”

“Have you even considered how ridiculous this is?” Lee asked. “A thing from four thousand years ago? Superstition. Like crosses and garlic.”

“Actually, I have,” Francesco said, smiling a horrid smile. “But there’s no way we can take even the smallest chance.”

“Right,” Lee said. So they don’t really believe. Good. Because he did. Some of the superstitious shit was wrong, granted… but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a kernel of truth in any of it.

And he couldn’t take even the smallest chance, either.

“Rose, you need to get Marty down here,” Francesco said. She thought it might have been the first time he’d used her brother’s name. And she knew that he was right.

So Rose went back up into the house, cringing from the colored light now filtering through the stained-glass window beside the main door. It was still very early, but already she could feel the tingling across her skin where that light had touched her.

“Marty!”

“Yeah?”

“We need to talk.” She heard a door opening and closing again, and then footsteps, and she thought, He wasn’t in the room where I left him. As he rounded the bottom of the staircase, she saw a look in his eyes that she didn’t like at all: he was readying to do something.

“Marty, Dad’s dead,” she said, and that stopped him cold. His expression fell away, leaving his face a blank as the reality bit in. He leaned against the oak paneling beside the staircase, and Rose saw ridiculous details: the wood creaked in, it needed polishing, and some of the molding had been badly replaced. It was a heightening of her senses that always came before hunger started to haunt her, and when she’d talked about it to Francesco he’d said, Evolution, sharpening your senses before the hunt. Evolution—as if they had evolved naturally.

“Dad,” Marty said. His face was still blank. “Really dead?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I mean… really?”

“Yes.” Rose nodded, understanding. “They killed him just like Mum.”

“What, you mean… ripped…”

“Come on,” she said, gesturing him to her. But he backed away instead. “Marty?”

“So now we’re going to hide in the dark and let them get away with all this for another day?”

“I can’t go out in the light,” she said quietly.

“Well, I can! I fucking can! You expect me to sit down there with you while you do your vampire thing? I could be out there finding the Bane and teaching those bastards a lesson. We can’t let them win, Rose.”

“And we won’t let them win,” Francesco said. He’d come up behind Rose, so quietly that even she hadn’t heard him. “But we have to work this right, otherwise everything will play into their hands.”

“So you’re going to sit and think things through while they—”

“They can’t go out in the daylight, either,” he said.

“Which is why we have to take the advantage!” He was backing into the wide hallway now, and behind him the colored windows beside the door were growing brighter. Rose squinted against the light, but her head ached from the glare, and the promise of the pain that glare could bring.

“You’ll get yourself killed like your parents,” Francesco said.

“What do you care?” Marty shouted, and Rose had to ask herself the same question: What does Francesco care?

“Wait with me, for Mum and Dad’s sake,” she said. “We’ll talk about them, remember things…”

“They’re not your parents anymore, remember?” Marty said. “You… you won’t turn me, and you won’t let me go. What am I? One of those sad fucking vampire servants Lee talks about?”

“You were listening up there?” Rose snapped.

Marty grinned. He held his hand out and must have felt the subtle heat of the morning sun on his skin. “The day’s my time,” he said, and Francesco leaned into Rose and hissed her name.

She knew what that meant. There was no way they could let Marty go out there on his own for a day: he was a danger to himself and, more so, to them. He knew where they were, and all it would take was a policeman willing to investigate, or the wrong word whispered to the wrong person…

So she went to grab her brother.

But he was ready. Fast though she was, Marty still slipped into the drawing room where they’d sat and talked so recently. She turned after him and the hall rug slid beneath her, almost spilling her to the floor. She regained her balance easily, becoming almost weightless as she leapt through the door and closed on her brother. This was the chase, something she so rarely experienced; dogs were stupid, and the deep-city rats she ate weren’t afraid of her. The last time she remembered actually chasing someone like this…

But she held that memory close. When she caught Marty, she did not wish him to see her hungry eyes.

He feinted right toward the fireplace and darted left, and Rose barely felt a tilt of balance as she followed. But she realized something was wrong as he banged against the wall, as if not seeing where he was going. He’s more canny than that, she thought, and then she crushed into him and held him around the stomach.

Marty had the top of his head pressed to the wall, his hands gathered to his chest, and she looked for his shaking shoulders as the tears came.

“It’s okay, Marty,” she said, even though it was far from okay. How could it ever be okay for him again? She silently cursed her stupid platitudes, and then took a surprised step back as Marty turned on her. He wasn’t quite crying, but he did look sad. He did look sorry.

“I love you, Rose,” he said, and then he pulled the curtain cord.

The eyes are the first to go, Francesco had told her soon after turning her. They’d been sitting on a rooftop somewhere in Soho, listening to the revelry below and being so far apart from it. It was still some time before she worked up the courage to ask why he had chosen her, and he was giving her guidance in basic vampire existence. Really, it was all instinct anyway, as she was quickly learning. Being turned had opened up a whole new part of her, planting new memories and instincts among her human ones like a foreign tree species invading an old, established forest. These trees, though, were larger, and parasitic.

Daylight, he went on, is to us like a nuclear explosion is to a human. You’ve seen those government film from the fifties and sixties? Hide under your desk, build a shelter beneath your staircase with doors, all that crap? And that one where they showed the effects on a human body? The flash blinds… the heat strips… the blast destroys. Imagine that on your face, Rose. He’d reached out and touched her with his cool fingers. Eyes melt; skin reddens, burns, and then peels; flesh blackens, dries, crumbles; then your bones are given to the sun. Back to dust. We’re made of human stuff, essentially, and we’re all the stuff of the stars.

All this came to Rose in a flash, and even as she saw Marty’s knuckles tighten around the cord she was turning away and squeezing her eyes closed. It’s barely even dawn, she thought, but she was filled with a sudden terror the likes of which she had not experienced since becoming a vampire. It was a mortal terror, the fear of death, and that was the first moment in five years that she had truly understood just how much she wanted to persist. She had never considered suicide, because that was anathema to any true vampire. But she had dwelled for long periods on the uneasiness of her existence.

Now all she wanted was to go on.

She fell to the floor and crawled, pulling a table over and crouching behind it as darkness was driven from the room. The silvery light was gentle and subdued, but it fought against the artificial light, casting smears across the floor that she knew would burn if…

She smelled burning hair and looked down in wonder at her right hand. It was splayed on the carpet, propping her up against the table, and the small hairs on the backs of her fingers were shriveling into blackened points. Rose gasped and snapped her hand back.

Marty grunted as he heaved something big; glass smashed, and then she heard him climbing through the ruined window. She heard a promise she wasn’t sure Marty could keep.

“I’ll be back!” he shouted. And as he went he pulled the cord again, and the heavy curtains closed most of the way.

Rose dashed from the room, hand hurting, skin crawling, and Francesco was already pulling the door shut as she emerged into the hallway.

Hands grabbed her and turned her this way and that.

“Open your eyes!” he commanded, and she did so. Francesco was very close, glancing from one eye to the other and back again. His fingers dug into her arms. He was scared for her.

“I’m okay,” she said, nodding, shaking. Francesco relaxed and let go of her arms.

“Your brother did a good job on you.”

“He didn’t mean to hurt me.”

“He didn’t?” Francesco raised an eyebrow and grabbed her hand, running his fingers across the already reddening skin. The tiny nubs of burnt hairs came off beneath his fingers.

“He’s doing what he thinks is best,” Rose said. “And—who knows?—maybe it is. We can trust him more than Lee, I’ll tell you that. By the time the sun sets, he might know exactly where the Bane is.”

“That’s good news,” Francesco said, but Rose’s half smile did not last long. “If he comes back,” he continued. “If the woman isn’t already dead, or one of them. If their murderers don’t catch him beforehand—and they will have murderers out there, Rose, doing their bidding. It’s just as Lee said. There are enough sad, lost people who’ll take a promise of immortality as license to do anything.”

“Marty’s careful,” she said, and already she feared for him.

“His life’s changed, and he’s mourning so much. Maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

Francesco turned away and headed for the basement door. Light was moving into the hallway now, and they didn’t have long left.

“Maybe what?” Rose asked again, not moving.

“I was going to say, maybe you should turn him. But he’s all wrong, Rose. He’s angry. Nothing like you.”

You were a gentle woman, Rose, Francesco had told her when she finally asked why he had chosen her to turn. You treated the night with calmness and humility. You were comfortable with your place in things, and knew that it was insignificant. A Humain has to be such a person.

He was right. Marty was very different from her. But there were many more bridges to cross. For the next few, and until dusk, her brother would be on his own.

Marty ran. Being out in the gathering dawn was a good feeling, although as he sprinted along the street he was plagued by guilt and remorse. The brief violence against his sister—unimaginable days ago, yet now so much more brutal than he could bear—had felt necessary at the time. There was no way she was about to let him go of his own accord, and he couldn’t face staying down there with them for another twelve hours, imagining the pain his parents had gone through and dreaming of how empty the bustling city now was for him. He’d hurt her, when she had spent so long looking out for him. He hoped she understood why he had to do it, and he hoped the pain was not too bad. He’d seen her flee across the room and tip the big table on its side to protect herself from the sunlight… and from that action he’d realized for the first time just how alien she now was. There had been wisps of smoke from her hand, and then he was gone, heaving a heavy chair through the window and slicing his right hand on jagged glass as he’d climbed through. The smell of blood! he’d thought as he ran, but of course he was out in the daylight by then, and safe.

I’m sorry, Rose, he kept thinking. He pulled the sleeve of his jacket down to cover the blood across the back of his hand, because he didn’t want anyone stopping him. What do I look like, anyway? he wondered. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d washed, his hair was a greasy mess, and his eyes felt burnt and hollow from crying. His throat was still stinging from whatever Lee had used to knock him out. His head thumped. His mouth was dry. I probably look like a junkie.

Yet the running felt good, as if he could run so far and fast that he’d outpace the grief and chaos that had fallen around him. In the planted square opposite Lee’s house he dashed past an old tramp who was just waking, gathering his bulging plastic bags around him and muttering about thieving squirrels. The old guy watched him go and Marty threw him a half wave, pleased when the man waved back. Out of the square, along a street lined with lawyers’ offices and big glass-fronted real estate agencies, he passed a score of BMWs, Mercedeses, and Porsches, four tires from any one of them probably worth enough to give the old tramp somewhere to sleep and eat for a month. Injustices like this hit Marty a lot, especially living in London, and his dad had always responded with: We all make our own luck in life.

He wondered what his parents had thought about their own luck over the past few years.

Make our own luck, he thought. That’s what he was doing now. He could have stayed back in Lee’s house with them for half a day while the world went on around them, but doing this felt like he was taking action. If he was very lucky and made really good luck for himself today, he might even have the Bane in his possession come nightfall.

Some of this was a distraction from the shattering grief that pressed down on him. Grief was real—his parents’ deaths were real—but pursuing a mythical vampire’s artifact from four thousand years ago, a magical thing that was said to bestow great power on any vampire possessing it… that went to keep some of the reality at bay.

When he reached a main shopping street, he stopped running at last, leaning back against a bank’s wall and checking the cash in his pockets. I’m just someone late for a bus, he thought, but he was no longer concerned about what people thought of him. In Lee’s posh residential neighborhood, he might have turned heads. But anywhere like this in London—with shops and pubs, buses and cabs—he was part of the norm.

He had maybe twenty pounds in his pockets. That was enough. He walked along the street toward the nearest tube station, and just as he caught sight of the familiar Underground sign, he passed a baker’s. The smell was too good to resist. He slipped inside and waited behind a line of people in suits, watching what they bought, deciding what he wanted to eat. Even by the time he reached the counter he hadn’t decided, so he bought a meat pie, an egg and bacon roll, a coffee, and a custard tart for afterward.

“Hungry?” the amused woman behind the counter asked.

“Starving!” As he paid and walked out with the food, he considered the pangs of hunger and the pleasures of eating, and wondered what it would be like to feel a different hunger that it brought no pleasure to satisfy. He bit into the hot pasty and savored the taste; sipped from his hot coffee; smelled the egg and bacon roll.

The street was bustling. The usual London traffic was building already, though it was not even eight o’clock, and the pavements were filled with people filing to and from work and parents taking their children to the upscale school nearby. He thought of his parents, then diverted his attention once more to the Bane. Walking among them, he was still not quite part of the same world as these commuters. Not anymore.

It was when he saw the cover of the early-morning edition of London News that he realized just how far removed he was. There were no photographs, but he just knew who the headline referred to: MAN FOUND MUTILATED IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE. He walked quickly toward the tube entrance. A woman did a double-take at him, and Marty felt the tears already coursing down his cheeks. He took another bite from the pasty and chewed, looking at the ground, thinking of the Bane and Ashleigh Richards and 56 Otter Street in Colliers Wood. And slowly he blinked back the tears yet again.

There’ll come a time, he thought, and he knew that was true. Grief couldn’t be fought like this without consequences. But as long as these horrors could hold back the reality of his loss, he was content to let them.

He threw out the rest of his food, bought a Travel card, and carried his coffee with him into the station. It was good to be an anonymous part of the crowd, and he stood on the right of the two long, deep escalators, watching the people pass him by in such a hurry to reach somewhere else. Marty reckoned he had maybe forty minutes on the tube, including one changeover, before he reached Colliers Wood. He should use that time to think about what he’d say to the archaeologist, and what he’d do if she really was as crazy as Lee had suggested.

It was only as he boarded the first train that he realized what a stupid prick he’d been.

There was no sun down in the tube station.

He gasped, winded by his foolishness. What if they were waiting in one of the nearby houses? What if they’d been watching all the time, or they knew where he was? He couldn’t imagine how that could have worked—he’d walked through the daylight, and no vampire could have followed. But the idea was still planted, and he couldn’t now shake it.

The usual tube play began. Everyone stared everywhere but at someone else, but Marty started scanning the people around him as covertly as possible. A big black guy sat next to him, reading Metro and humming along to something on his iPod. Across from him sat two good-looking young women, heads close together and faces serious as they swapped gossip. Marty’s eyes flickered to their long legs and short skirts, and when he looked up again, one of them was looking right at him. He glanced away with a nervous smile. Beside one of the girls sat an old woman, glasses perched on her head as she read a novel by some writer Marty had never heard of. A few people were standing, their suits and office wear making them all but anonymous. No one was looking at him.

He sipped more coffee, looking down at people’s feet and examining their shoes. When he looked up again, one of the girls was looking at him while her friend whispered something in her ear. The girl stared right at him without seeming to see anything at all. Marty smiled, then glanced away when there was no reaction.

Can a girl that pretty really be a vampire? He looked at her again. Her makeup was light and subtle, and she seemed to have good color about her. She was carrying a bottle of water in one hand. Disguise? A cross hung on a silver chain around her neck, dangling into her cleavage.

She saw him looking and turned slightly toward her friend, crossing her arms and legs.

Marty sighed and drank more coffee. Fucking paranoid.

But at the next stop, he alighted and waited on the platform, and five minutes later he boarded the next train. This one was more packed, and he didn’t manage to find a seat. He stood pressed against a door instead, scanning faces, trying not to be seen, and every second of his journey he felt watched.

It was a relief to emerge into the sunlight once more in Colliers Wood.

“Spare some change?” The beggar was sitting close to the tube station exit. It was a guy not much older than Marty, a scruffy dog curled up on a blanket by his side. A couple of cans of cider sat on the pavement beside him. He was looking up at Marty, shielding the sun from his eyes so he could see him clearly.

Marty delved into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change. As he was going through it, looking for a pound coin, the beggar chuckled.

“What?” Marty said.

“Eh? Nothin’. Spare some change?”

Marty found a pound coin and dropped it into the man’s outstretched hand. The dog lifted its head lazily and looked at him, then went back to sleep.

The man grinned, and Marty saw his teeth. The two front ones were missing, but those on either side seemed sharper than usual, their points darkened with rot but still capable of inflicting puncture wounds. Longer than usual.

Marty stepped back, heart thudding, and he thought, The sun’s right in his face, he’s no vampire, don’t be such a prick.

“Thanks, mate. Have a good day.” The beggar chuckled again—longer this time, almost like a twitch—and dropped the pound coin into one of the empty cider cans.

Marty had to shake this damn paranoia. He found a newsstand and asked where Otter Street was, and the proprietor jotted the directions down on a scrap of paper. Marty thanked the man and left. He looked behind him as he walked, certain that he was being followed, feeling eyes on him all the time. But it was all in his mind. He slipped into several shops, browsed products he didn’t want to buy, and lingered inside their front windows, watching people walking past. But he never saw the same person twice.

Finally he found the street, and then the house, and walked past three times before summoning up the nerve to ring the bell. He had to press it several times before it was answered, and the woman who opened the door looked as if she had lived a dozen lives. Her hair was graying and falling out, her skin was cratered, her hands were clawed, and her clothes stank of piss. But behind all this, he could see that she was not much past middle age.

“What?” she asked. She held a stained cloth in her right hand and was using it to wipe her left, scrubbing her palm and between her fingers, across the back of her hand and up to her wrist. It looked clean enough to Marty.

“Er…”

“What?” the woman snapped again.

“Ashleigh Richards?”

The woman’s hand froze in its wiping. She stared past Marty, along the street in both directions, behind him, head jerking like a startled bird’s.

“No,” the woman said. “She’s dead. Ashleigh Richards is dead.”

“Oh,” he said, stomach dropping, but he saw the truth straightaway. “Has anyone been?” he asked more gently. He took a step forward, aware that he was invading her personal space but keen to lower his voice, engender a feeling of complicity. If only he could get her trust…

“Been? Been?”

“Has anyone come and asked you… asked for her recently? Anyone… I don’t know. Strange? At night?”

“Night’s when it comes back to me,” she said, staring down at her hand. “The blood. That’s when the blood comes back.”

“I really need to talk to you,” Marty said, and he had a sense that he was getting through to her.

Her face slackened, and at first he thought it was tension leaving her. But it was not that at all. It was everything else falling away—awareness, presence, intelligence. And as she dropped the rag and brought the small, stumpy gun from her pocket, Marty wished he’d listened to his big sister.