30 Days of Night: Fear of the Dark

12

FIVE MINUTES EARLIER, as Rose and Francesco had sensed the sun dipping down below the horizon, Lee had heard the news. Gunfire at Lewisham Police Station. Panic. People dying.

The vampires’ servants were going for Marty, just as she had feared. Time was running out for him… and for them.

“You have lots of boxes of very big ammunition,” Francesco said. “Do you have the guns to match?” He was standing by an open cupboard in the corner of the basement. Rose knew that tonight would bring more chaos than she had encountered or even dreamt of as a vampire. Francesco was preparing.

“They’re in a gun locker hidden behind a false panel in my library,” Lee said.

“Get them,” Francesco said.

“How many?”

“However many you feel comfortable with. We won’t be carrying them.”

Lee folded his laptop, and halfway up the wooden staircase he paused and turned back to the Humains.

“So… what can I use?”

“Forget everything you think you know,” Francesco said. “Leave your crosses and garlic spray, leave your holy-water pistols. Bring the biggest guns and load them with the biggest bullets. You have dumdums?”

“Homemade.”

“Good.”

“Bullets will stop a vampire?” Lee asked doubtfully.

“Big ones, yes, if fired at the right place. Long enough for the head to be destroyed.”

Lee darted upstairs, and Rose heard the door open.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

“Plan?” Francesco looked at her and smiled, almost lovingly. “Rose, sometimes you put too much faith in me. I’m old, but this has never been my way. I kept to myself in the early years, feeding when I needed, traveling, feeding some more. Sometimes I met other vampires, and on occasion I became aware of… greater stories taking place. Alliances and betrayals. Battles, and ambitions that to me always seemed apart from what a vampire was meant to be. But this…” He waved his hand at Lee’s subterranean torture chamber, as if that encompassed everything else he had avoided. “I can feign wisdom for the Humains, and I know I’m seen as the leader of our loose-knit little gang. But as for any kind of a plan, I’m at a loss.”

“We have to do everything to stop them getting the Bane.”

“Yes.”

“We have to get to the British Museum before the vampires do.”

“Yes.”

“And after that?”

“Tell me if you have any great ideas,” Francesco said.

Rose was not disappointed in Francesco. In a way she found it quite touching that he was admitting his lack of knowledge to her. But she did have an idea, and she wasn’t sure how he would take it.

“So, what are you thinking, Rose?” he asked. Perceptive as ever.

“We know that Lee is in touch with the Olemaun woman.”

Francesco raised an eyebrow and sneered, “She wrote that book.”

“You can’t deny she has knowledge.”

“And you want to talk to her?”

“If I can. If I can do it now, before we go. Anything she can tell us could help. A weakness they have, anything about the Bane, any clue she has as to who these vampires might be. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

“And you think she’ll be sitting on the end of a phone, awaiting your call?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Francesco looked as if he were about to forbid the contact—she could see that in his stance, his expression, and how he held up one hand to wave her idea away—but then he set aside his pride. He’d already opened himself up to her, and to backtrack now and try to take control would only make him appear foolish.

It would make him look like one of them.

“You can try,” he said.

Rose nodded her thanks, then heard Lee descending the stairs again. She’d expected him to return with some massive weapons—a Gatling gun, rocket launchers, bazookas. Instead he had a holster slung over each shoulder bearing a heavy-looking handgun, and another weapon was tucked in his belt.

“They’re your big guns?” she asked.

“Trust me,” he said.

“Do whatever you need to do,” Francesco said. “We have five minutes, then we’re leaving. There’s not much time.”

“You keep saying that,” Lee murmured.

“Then get a fucking move on!” Francesco growled. The mortal cringed back against the wall, and Rose touched Francesco’s arm.

“Ease up on him,” she said.

Francesco said nothing, but he glanced at Lee and gently shrugged off Rose’s hand.

“Lee, I need to use your email,” Rose said.

“Checking your lottery numbers?” he asked, opening the laptop and tapping a few keys. His voice was high and uneven. His shoulders shook, he lowered his head, then the laughter came, loud and brash. Rose was surprised to find herself smiling, but most of it was at Lee’s coping technique rather than what he’d said. He was impressive. She’d never been out with a black guy when she’d been mortal, and perhaps that was because of her parents’ old-fashioned upbringing rubbing off on her a little. She surprised herself now by regretting that.

Too late now.

“I need your account open,” she said.

“Which one?” He wiped his eyes, quickly growing stern again.

“The one you use to communicate with Stella Olemaun.”

He glanced up at her, looked at Francesco, and shrugged. “Haven’t spoken with her in some time. Starting to think they got to her.”

“No harm in me trying, then,” she said, and Lee turned the laptop to face her. As he went to the ammunition lockers and started loading his weapons, Rose felt a chill of anticipation. They’d been down here for twelve hours, she was hungry, and danger was settling around them with the darkness. And it all started here. Lee could turn around now and blow Francesco’s head off—he was standing close enough, watching the mortal, hands fisted by his sides—and then turn his guns on her. If that happened, she’d have time while he was killing Francesco to go at him, but even then the odds were barely even that she’d get to him in time.

This was a test of trust, and a risky one at that. Francesco must feel he knew Lee very well indeed.

As Lee clicked the safety on the first loaded gun, Rose caught him looking sidelong at Francesco. The two men stared for a moment, then both nodded their heads slightly. Grudging allies. She hoped that lasted.

Opening a blank email window, she started typing.

And she left her number.

She read the email through, then sent it. No harm in trying, and if even half of what the Olemaun woman had written in her book was true, she’d know a thing or two about vampires.

Rose just hoped she didn’t hate them enough to deny any help, whatever the circumstance.

“Ready?” Francesco asked, and when Rose glanced up, she realized she’d been typing longer than she thought. Lee had both shoulder holsters strapped on properly now, a gun in his belt, and full magazines clipped to the bandoliers.

“Um, yeah… ready,” she said.

“I’m not,” Lee said. He was holding a jacket ready to put on to cover the guns, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

“Why?” Francesco asked.

“You seemed keen enough to kill vampires earlier,” Rose said.

“I am, but…”

Rose held out her hands. What?

“I need a shit,” he said.

Rose sighed, Francesco walked toward the basement stairs, and Lee followed.

“Fucking vampires,” he muttered as he passed her by.

She closed the laptop, slipped it into its carry case, and slung it over her shoulder. Standing at the bottom of the basement steps, she looked around, thinking of torture and pain and how much their friend Lee Woodhams seemed prepared to do. And she knew then that whatever the outcome that night, if he was still alive come dawn, he would present a very desperate problem for the Humains.

But before she could let that even begin to worry her, they had a war to fight.

Torture was on Rose’s mortal brother’s mind as well. Not only physical torture, though the fear of that was rich and sour in his mouth like the aftermath of a terrible hangover. But torture of the soul. Because there were vampires here, monsters whom he could see were damned beyond measure. And he didn’t want to be like them.

Stoner, the tall woman, who called herself Kat, and the other guy who’d been stalking Marty in his street had rushed him away from the police station massacre in excitement and fear. He could tell that they were all jacked up on something—pupils dilated, sweat glistening their skin, heads jerking like nervous birds. Stoner carried him under one arm as easily as a bale of hay, and Marty knew without trying that struggling would do him no good.

Besides, there were the guns.

There had been bodies everywhere, bullet holes, blood, people crying, some screaming, and Kat had stopped a couple of times to finish off people who were writhing on the floor. Stoner had giggled as she knelt on their torsos, held their heads back, and hacked at their throats with a vicious-looking knife she took from a sheath in her boot. The gushes of blood had seemed to excite them all.

In the police station’s lobby area, several confused-looking people stood looking at shattered glass and the body splayed in the chair behind the reception desk. Excuse me, one had asked as Kat and the other man shoved through the swinging door, and she’d shot him in the face.

Outside, three mounted police were waiting for them. But Kalashnikovs and horse meat do not mix.

“Didn’t we do well?” Kat asked now, subservient and pathetically pleading, and the vampire standing before Marty sighed in frustration. Without being told, Marty knew that this was Duval. He exuded power, as obvious and rich as the stink of death on him, and the three other vampires stood quietly behind him. They deferred to him when he spoke, terrifying in their own right but nowhere near as brutal looking as Duval.

“Get them the fuck out of here,” he growled. Though he spoke English, it was plainly not his own language. Marty could not imagine any coherent language suiting a mouth like that. Stoner, Kat, and the other junkie were ushered from the room, Kat mewling in exasperation.

“You promised!” she whined, and Marty had no wish to know exactly what she’d been promised.

“Yeah, yeah,” Duval growled. He never took his eyes from Marty. The door closed behind the three vampires and their human slaves, and they were alone in the stinking room.

Marty had no idea where they were. He’d been taken underground into tunnels and shafts, carried by Kat and the others through darkness lit only by weak lights, and then deposited alone in this room that smelled of dampness and shit and something older, and more like death. The vampires had come soon after.

“And now we’re alone,” Duval said, and Marty felt his bladder let go a little. This vampire was totally inhuman, nothing like Rose or Francesco. They could at least pass for being normal people, and had been doing so for a long time. But before him now was something from out of nightmares. His eyes were dark, the pupils so dilated that there was no color around them at all, just black, and white. His head was bald but for a narrow Mohawk of black hair, grown long and pulled back across his scalp, secured somehow at the base of his neck. The scalp was pocked with open wounds, though none of them bled. His mouth… that was the main reason this monster could never pretend. His numerous teeth were sharp and pointed, designed for tearing and ripping instead of chewing and grinding. Whoever this man had once been, vampirism had removed all traces of him ever having been omnivorous. Now he was made to consume meat. And blood.

“Fuck you,” Marty managed.

“You’ve pissed yourself,” Duval said. He was standing several feet away from where Marty stood pressed against a damp wall, yet it still felt as if his personal space were being invaded. The monster’s presence was huge.

“Just trying to cover up your stink.”

Duval hissed. He opened his mouth and stretched his head forward, swollen tongue seeming to lick at the air, clawed hands by his sides. The hiss went on for some time, and it sounded like it came from deep within him. His nails were long and curved, dull in the pale artificial light. One bare bulb hung above them, and Marty was terrified the vampire would turn it off. I’m okay if I can see him, he thought. However terrible he looks, I’m okay. But if I’m alone here with him in the dark…

“You think you’re brave?” the vampire asked, pointing one long finger. “Think your taunting and joking can come between me and what I want to know? I’ve fed on pricks like you every week of my life, sometimes every day. And I keep count. Does that surprise you?”

Marty didn’t know how to answer, so he feigned disinterest.

“That a monster like me bothers to keep count? I’m sure it does, a little. But it’s always good to know how many cattle I’ve fed from. How many weak human freaks I’ve destroyed to keep this one undead body going, and growing.” He ran his hands down his front and looked down at himself admiringly. His clothes were old, scruffy and stained. If there was perverted pride here, it had nothing to do with aesthetics.

“If we’re so weak, that makes you weak for feeding on us.”

“The blood is strong, Marty,” Duval said. “And ten minutes from now, if you haven’t told me what I need to know, you will be number…” He touched his chin and looked at the ceiling, an awful human pose of contemplation that looked so out of place. “Nine thousand eight hundred and forty-seven.”

Marty blinked, but held back his gasp of shock. He’d like to think this stinking fuck was lying… but he thought not.

“I don’t know anything,” he said. “I’m just a weak human. I’m just cattle.”

“I’ll say only once that I don’t believe you. Next time you deny knowing anything, I’ll hurt you. I’m not sure how much physical pain you can take.” He tilted his head to one side and licked his lips, tongue catching and tearing on some of his teeth. “I’d say you’ve never had… a fingernail pulled out, for instance.”

Before Marty knew what was happening, Duval had crossed the space between them and held Marty’s right hand, fingers splayed. He had time for one pleading “No!” before Duvall clasped the fingernail on his index finger and pulled.

Marty screamed, hating himself for doing so but unable to hold back. The pain was instant and exquisite, the shock shattering. Blood pulsed down his throbbing finger, and Duval’s tongue snaked out and lapped at it. He flicked the ripped-out fingernail away.

“Hmm,” Duval said, releasing his hand and taking a few steps back. “Forgot how hungry I was.”

“I… I thought you said…”

“Never trust a vampire, Marty. Hasn’t your sister told you that?”

“My sister isn’t—”

“Let’s cut through the fucking bullshit here,” Duval growled. He came forward again, and he seemed to have had changed even more. His eyes were darker, if that were possible, and his teeth seemed longer, more vicious. “I don’t like talking to cattle. You all smell of blood to me, and your petty attempts at valor just make me cringe. So tell me what I need to know and… I’ll let you go.”

“Never trust a vampire,” Marty said, and Duval did not even honor him with a response. The vampire just stood before him, seeming to sway in the poor light, though that could have been Marty’s vision pulsing with the pain in his hand. He hissed softly, and Marty thought, Does he breathe, does he have a heart, does it pump? Everything he thought he’d known about vampires had been from the world of fiction; everything he knew for sure had been gleaned from the last couple of days. And it was minimal.

“Your sister,” Duval said. “The Bane. Everything. Now.”

Marty searched deep. The pain helped, strangely, distracting him from the true terror of the thing standing before him now; a thing that should not be. And he reached deep for the courage that he knew he possessed, the knowledge of the right thing to do, and the wisdom to hold back what he knew he should never tell. The courage was an ambiguous thing, and when he found it he didn’t analyze it too closely, for fear that it was a lie.

“You killed my parents,” Marty said. “And my sister’s a fucking vampire. You think I give a shit what you do to me?”

But with that card played, Duval grinned around his terrible mouth full of teeth, and in that grin was damnation way beyond death. He reached up and smashed the lightbulb with a casual wave of his hand.

Into the sudden darkness, the vampire said, “Yes.”

Rose’s instinct was to go after Marty. But she had come to accept that there was much more at stake here.

As Lee drove them quickly toward the British Museum, she sat beside Francesco in the back of the car and checked the internet news channels for any information from Lewisham Police Station. The news was sketchy: the death toll was still unconfirmed, which meant it was high, and the media was calling it a terrorist attack. Perhaps, if Lee could take time and access his contacts, he might be able to find out more of what had happened, and who was dead, and who had survived. Rose wished she could say she had some psychic link with Marty, but she had no sense of whether he was alive, dead, or undead. All she could assume was that the vampires had taken him away for their own purposes, and that the murders at the police station were collateral damage.

In which case, she’d discover the truth of what had happened to him at the museum.

Connie, Patrick, and Jane were converging on the museum from other directions, apprised of the situation and just as determined as ever to preserve their way of life. Or undeath. Once there, they all hoped that they could make their way inside before the vampires, and then the search for the Bane would begin. The prospect of how long that search would take had not been mentioned at all, and if Rose really thought about it, the whole thing was daunting. But Lee had said something vague about checking the museum’s offline databases, and Francesco had nodded, and that had seemed to be that.

She was so unsure of so many things.

“They’re calling it a terrorist attack,” she said.

“What else can they call it?” Francesco replied. “It was in daylight, vampire slaves carried it out. They’ll never find the real reason.”

“But they’ll figure out that Marty was snatched.”

“Yes.”

“So he’ll be on their most-wanted list. Especially after what happened to his… our parents.”

“Of course.”

Rose caught Lee’s glance in the rearview mirror. Was that pity? She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t even trust her ability to be able to tell anymore. She hadn’t been human for five years.

“After all this is over—” she began, and then her cell phone rang. She flipped it open, thinking, Marty! But the caller ID registered UNKNOWN, and she knew instantly who it would be.

“Hello?”

“Rose Volk.”

“That’s me.”

“This is Stella Olemaun.” The voice seemed to come from a great distance, as if the caller were talking into a phone held far away from her mouth. And there was something else to that voice…

“Ms. Olemaun, thank you for—”

“No Ms., no Mrs. You know as well as I that vampires don’t use such titles.” Rose tensed in shock, and Francesco touched her arm to grab her attention. Then she let out a soft laugh.

“You’re a vampire.”

“For some time, yeah. One like you claim to be. I like your name: Humain. I’m not aware of any others like us who’ve tried to name themselves.”

“It wasn’t me, it was…”

Who’s a vampire? Lee was mouthing into his rearview mirror. He could’t have heard Rose’s initial greeting. Oh, Lee, you’ve been strung along for so long, she thought, and the idea of telling him actually made her sad.

“It doesn’t matter,” Olemaun said, voice crackling in her ear. “Your problem sounds like it does, however. D’you know the identity of the vampires in London?”

“I was hoping you might know. They came here two days ago, went after my brother. Human brother. Killed our parents instead.” Rose expected some expression of surprise from Stella Olemaun that she was still aware of what had happened to her human family, but there was none. I wish she and I could talk about other things, she thought, but there was no time. And Olemaun seemed to understand that.

“You mentioned the Bane.”

“It’s what they’ve come for. You know of it?”

There was a pause, the uncomfortable hiss of static, and Rose thought the connection had been broken. In that silence, she heard the same distance that seemed to inform Olemaun’s voice, an infinity of emptiness. She wondered what the woman had been through and seen, and, as if prompted by the thought, Stella started to tell her.

“You sound sheltered. I’m sure you and your Humains are aware of the outside, but do you interact? I don’t think so. There’s so much more to the vampire existence, Rose Volk. I’ve seen a lot of it. There are some like me, vampires who believe that staying in the shadows is the way to survive. Some, like you Humains, take that a step further… a step further away from vampirism, some would say. Existing alongside humans, not feeding from them.”

And how do you feed? Rose almost asked. But she didn’t want to interrupt, and she thought to ask that would be… impolite.

“There are also those who crave dominance. There’ve been conflicts. Ongoing, brutal. Attempts to thrust vampires to the fore, and conflicting efforts to hunt and destroy us once and for all.”

“And you’re in the middle?”

“I’ve been involved. Through it all, I’ve maintained my stance. And I have to tell you, Rose, that from what I’ve heard of the Bane, and if it’s actually for real, you have to find it before those vampires. You have to. The balance is being challenged all the time, and that thing could tip it either way.”

“Give them power to rule,” she said.

“Or destroy everything altogether.”

“Destroy?” Rose frowned, confused. The Bane was allegedly an artifact from the first vampire, that’s what they knew. Something that would bestow great power on its vampire bearer. What that power was seemed vague, as did how it would work, but…

“It’s an old, old thing,” Stella said. Her voice was low and quiet, as if tired by everything she had seen. “Stories get confused. It’s either the greatest power for vampires—or the deadliest weapon against them. Its maker was the first vampire, or the first vampire killer. I’ve heard both versions. Who knows anymore.”

“I haven’t heard anything,” Rose said.

“Well, be careful, girl. Either way, in the wrong hands, the thing might be the end of us all.”

“Might be?”

Olemaun laughed, but it sounded like someone crying. “Who’s to say there’s anything to the stories?”

“So this might all be for nothing?”

“Maybe,” Olemaun said. “But it can’t be worth the risk even considering that.”

“What have you done?” Rose blurted, surprising herself with her frankness. “What have you seen? Where have you been?” She was aware of Francesco watching her curiously, and Lee kept glancing at her in the rearview mirror. She’d have plenty to tell them both, if she chose to do so. Right then, she wasn’t sure of anything.

“Enough for a dozen lifetimes,” the woman said. “Now it seems it’s your turn.”

“Is that… ?” Lee asked at last, and as Rose nodded, the connection broke. Lee was reaching around in his seat, eyes still on the road but arm stretched back for the phone. But Rose shook her head.

“She’s gone. And I’m not sure you’d be her friend anymore.” She almost felt sorry for him, but when he asked what she meant, she couldn’t find it in herself to tell him. “Nothing. She’s gone Lee. Connection broke.”

“So, what did she say?” Francesco asked.

Rose glanced at him, and she saw his understanding instantly. His lips pressed together and the corners of his mouth twitched a little. So he could see the humor in this as well. All of Lee’s friends are vampires. She was glad. Humor was something they found so little of now. Sometimes she thought vampires were equivalent to the basest form of animal with the finest brains, possessed of a desperate need to endure that shoved aside the possibility of anything else.

“She said we can’t let the bastards get the Bane.”

“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.