30 Days of Night: Fear of the Dark

4

MARTY FELT NUMB. He ran because Rose ran, her hand grasping his right arm so tightly that he’d lost all sense of feeling in his wrist and hand. If he stopped running she would drag him, and then carry him, and he had no wish to be carried by his sister again. She’d hauled him through the house as if he were little more than a sack of straw, and he had no desire to be a straw man. He was of flesh and bone and blood, all parts in the correct place. He wanted to stay like that.

He attempted to think of his mother.

Rose seemed to know where she was going. There was a sense of urgency about her, though he could not hear her breathing quicken even a little. For the first time he noticed her smell, a hint of human with more complex, richer scents hiding underneath. There was something basic and animal there, the aroma of something that existed with little thought of its relationship with others. It was not a dirty, sickly smell but something more powerful. He thought she smelled of the wild.

But perhaps that was the blood. Once, when he was six, Marty had fallen from his bike when he and his father were out on a ride, gashing his knee on the rough edge of the pothole that had thrown him. His dad had taken a look and said, It doesn’t look so bad, and then the blood had started to flow. What he remembered more about it wasn’t the blood but his father’s panicked, fearful reaction, and it had taken him a few seconds to take control and act. That was the most blood Marty had ever seen before, and it had been his own.

Now he had bathed in blood. He felt it sticking together the fingers on his left hand. It made his shoes and jeans heavy. It filled his nostrils, the stench so rich that he thought he must have been smashed in the nose. He hoped he had; that would mean it was his own blood he was smelling, not…

Not his mother’s.

He realized he was still clasping the sharpened cricket stump in his left hand, and he thought he couldn’t let go even if he wanted to. He almost laughed at the feel of it—as if that thing could have done anything against the vampire. He’d fired the stone into its eye, true, a lucky shot that had seemed to enrage it more than anything else. But perhaps he’d angered it enough for that weird flash of light to take effect, the tall guy with the light—

Another vampire, that’s what he was: just like Rose, different from the thing they’d been fighting.

—bursting in at just the right time.

“Rose,” he said. He wanted to hear her voice, however different it now sounded.

“Quiet, Marty. They could be anywhere.”

He realized then how much danger they were still in. The night sang to him with streetlights and shadows, sirens and silences, and in the few illuminated house windows they passed he caught memories of his mother. TV light flickered, the rooms behind those curtains warm and welcoming, and he could sense the love and safety behind each window. That’s what his mother had been: safety and love. And he had betrayed both by not trying hard enough to persuade her and his father to run. The threat of death still upon him, he could consider her fate and what it meant. And while the numbness kept his tears at bay for now, it also allowed him to remember the particulars. Blood and bone and… meat. The flesh of her he had hugged, the hands he had held on to when he was a child, the comfort he had taken from those eyes… all of them taken apart and spread around their home like an insult.

And his father…

“He’s still out here somewhere,” he said.

“Probably dead,” Rose said, pausing at the junction of two streets. She looked left, then ran right. “They’ve probably—”

“Fed on him? Drunk his blood? That’s not what they did to Mum, is it? She was… all torn up, Rose.”

“Quiet.”

“They ripped her up, and just for blood?”

“It’s not like in the movies,” she said. “They’re animals, not dandies.”

“So you’re an animal too.”

She stopped again, pushing him back across the pavement until he was pressed against a brick wall. It was cold. “Shut up, Marty. I’m trying to save your life. Understand?”

“He told you not to, didn’t he?”

“He’s not my boss.” She moved back a little, looking around the street. It was mostly silent; a fox trotted across the road, and from somewhere out of sight came the distant hiss of music. “But I’ve got to ask you one thing, Marty, and it’s important. Very important.”

He was shaking now, and not from the cold. He tried to blink away the shock but felt it circling, just ready to settle down at any moment and reduce him to a wreck. Each blink showed him another view of his slaughtered mother.

The slap was soft but shocking. It focused his vision back onto his sister, and her altered face. She’s not beautiful anymore, he thought, and it was more to do with her eyes than her subtly altered features.

“Marty, there’s so much behind this, and I don’t have time to even begin. But do you trust me?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Completely?”

He nodded.

“Even knowing what I am?”

“You’re nothing like the thing that killed Mum.”

Her eyelids flickered, and she glanced away before looking back at him. Something there, he thought, but right then he didn’t want to know. All he needed was for Rose to keep him safe.

“I’m taking you to someone we trust. His name’s Lee Woodhams. He’ll keep you safe until we find the rest of them.”

“A vampire?” Marty asked, but already he knew this was something different. This was her doing something the tall guy would have been angry about.

“Lee’s… He hates vampires. With a vengeance, you could say. That’s why we’re in touch with him, because he knows what’s going on.”

“What’s going on where?”

“In the wider world. And I can’t tell you any more. Just trust me.”

“But if he hates vampires…”

“He doesn’t know. He thinks we’re like him: vampire hunters.” She laughed softly. “That’s what he calls himself, anyway. It’s all about security with him, which is good, because he doesn’t know anything about us. But we use him to keep track of…”

“The wider world.”

“Yeah. So you can’t tell him a thing, Marty. Not a single thing about what’s happened, or me, or anything. Understand? Not if you want to stay safe, and if you want me to be safe. Now come on.”

“But—”

“No more questions. Time’s short. Dawn’s not far, and between now and then anything could happen. Those bastards were here for a purpose.”

“And they came for me,” he said.

“Yeah.” She turned and walked away, letting go of his arm for the first time since they’d fled. As they were running he’d heard sirens closing in, and the sky behind them had started to glow. Home wasn’t even there anymore.

So he went with his sister, because he had to trust her, his guardian angel.

“Sunlight hurts you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Garlic?”

She turned back, and in the reflected light from a streetlamp he saw the sarcastic smile she’d once worn when talking to her little brother.

“Fuck’s sake, Marty.”

It took another half an hour to work their way through streets and squares, across a park, and into a more expensive district. They moved in silence. He noticed that Rose seemed more and more nervous, and at first he thought it was because there were more people on the streets now. Not many, but more than just the usual London nighttime contingent of down-and-outs, junkies, and cops. In one street they hid from a milk truck, the electric hum of the vehicle’s motor causing a dog to bark its early-morning wake-up call. In a park they stopped running when a group of bag-toting workmen strolled through, throwing them curious glances. Marty hoped they didn’t see the blood coating his clothes and drying on his hands. If they did, they obviously didn’t want to get involved. And as they walked down one well-appointed street, a façade of four-story buildings looming to their right, a van dropped off several women who dispersed quickly, cleaning equipment protruding from their rucksacks like strange weapons.

It was only when they dashed across one street faster than usual that Marty realized why Rose was so perturbed: it was almost dawn.

“Here,” she said. “This is his place.” They stood before a narrow town house three stories high and unremarkable compared to its surroundings, but Marty still reckoned it was probably worth a million. “I won’t be able to stay long.”

“I understand.” He felt a tug of loss and almost hugged his sister. But that felt all wrong.

“You’ll be fine. I’ll come back to see you tonight. Stay hidden; don’t be tempted to call the law or your friends. And don’t tell Lee a word about what happened. Understand? He’ll ask, but don’t tell him. Just act… shocked dumb.”

Marty nodded.

By the time they climbed the six steps to the front door, it was already opening.

And once inside, the strength left Marty’s legs and he slumped to the cold tiled floor. The hands that caught him beneath the arms did not belong to his sister. They were warm.

As darkness took him, he was already dreaming of blood.

Fucking stupid fucking idiot, what the fuck have I done?

Rose ran, to any observers just someone late for work and needing to catch the next tube. As she ducked into the station entrance and descended, she could already feel patches across her arms and the back of her neck that would blister later. They would hurt and then heal. But where she had placed Marty…

That was just stupid. Lee Woodhams had stared wide-eyed as she recounted a brief, vague tale: the boy’s family had been taken by vampires, Francesco and the others were hunting them down, Lee had to look after him for a while as they regrouped. Lee had wanted to go hunting himself, of course, but Rose had shaken her head. He’s important. They targeted him, so you have to keep him out of sight, quiet, hidden. Charged with a task he could feel good about, she hoped that he could do just that.

But he’d also talk to Marty about what had happened. One slip, one wrong word from her traumatized brother, would sign Lee’s death sentence. The Humains had agreed years ago that he was useful to them only while he knew nothing of their nature.

Lee was ex-SIS, and he’d first encountered vampires on a mission ten years before in Europe. They had killed his friend and colleague, and, disillusioned by layers of official denial, he had left the service distressed and vengeful. The pursuit of vampires had quickly become a consuming obsession that cost him his marriage and liberty, and he spent most of his time in the home that he’d bought with money from his early career.

Patrick called him their human pet.

She settled into her seat on the tube train, innocuous among dozens of early commuters, and looked down at her sneakers. She always made sure not to catch anyone’s eyes. There was blood dried on the shoelaces and around the heels, but from a distance it would look like dirt.

Francesco was going to be mad.

As the train rattled from station to station, Rose closed her eyes and tried to rest. But she knew that much of the night’s activities had been but a prelude to what was to come. Francesco had what he wanted—the vampire, still barely alive—and now would come the questioning. There had to be a reason for them being here. And it couldn’t have been a coincidence that they’d targeted Rose’s brother. Which meant that they had some insight into the Humains’ loose society, and some reason to challenge or infiltrate it.

What that was, Rose could not even guess.

Commuters came and went, and eventually she exited the train and waited until the platform was relatively quiet. Then she slipped down into the tunnels, working her way deeper and deeper. She could sense dawn sweeping across the city above her, but it was always night down here.

As she neared the cold place they called home, it was the scream she heard first. Then a shadow grew before her and a hand closed around her throat.

Rose tensed and readied to fight, thinking, They’ve found us! But then she smelled Jane’s particular odor, that curiously stale breath which Rose believed came from the meals she chose to take. The blood of the recently dead, even if they had only passed moments before, seemed to take on a taint.

“Where’ve you been?” Jane asked.

“Making sure I wasn’t followed.”

Jane didn’t respond for a few seconds, and Rose felt her fellow Humain’s attention upon her. Then she grunted, and said, “Francesco’s got him down here. Been waiting for you before he starts interrogating him.”

A chill ran through Rose as she thought of the vampire’s ruined eyes. The glare from the UV lamp was a tingling memory on her skin.

Jane turned and descended to their room, circling down an old metal spiral staircase that had once rung to the sound of human feet. Even before they entered, Rose felt the tension, a stillness emanating from the normally comfortably quiet room. When they walked in, she saw some of the others sitting there—Patrick, Connie, Francesco—and the unknown vampire strapped into a heavy metal chair. Where the chair had come from, she did not know. He seemed to be asleep, as much as any vampire sleeps. His arms were still forced into awkward angles, and she suspected Francesco had been rebreaking them at regular intervals.

“Where’s Jack?” Connie asked.

Rose shrugged. She didn’t want the vampire hearing weakness, and Connie should have known that. Sometimes the girl—her body was that of a thirteen-year-old, although she had turned thirty years before—almost appeared her age, and that annoyed Rose because she knew it was all an act. They all suspected that Connie took humans from time to time. For some reason, Francesco prevented any of them confronting her over it.

“He’s probably still tracking the one that escaped,” Francesco said, directing a warning glare at Connie.

The vampire’s head remained slumped, chin on his chest. But Rose sensed something about him, and saw his shoulders moving so slightly that it could have been an effect of the candlelight.

“He’s laughing,” she said. Then she stepped behind him and twisted his arms. They moved unnaturally, and she felt and heard the grinding of fractured bones. The vampire flung its head back and hissed up at her, teeth bared and slick. She stared down and held on tight. No weakness, she thought. If it senses a moment of doubt in us, it’ll clam up and not say a word. It has to believe that we’ll torture and kill it.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to convince it.

“You go first,” Francesco said. Rose blinked slowly, seeing so much more in his eyes. He wanted to ask her about Marty, where she had been, why she had taken so long, who she had seen, what she had done… but she knew as well as he did what was at stake here. They had to find out what was happening and prevent any more deaths. London was a peaceful home for them, a safe retreat, and none of them wanted that jeopardized.

And there’s Mum and Dad, she thought, a mental experiment that threw up little compassion. Even the look of Marty’s haunted eyes… even that could not make her feel very much.

“The choices we make,” she said, talking to herself and to their victim as well, “ring through the ages with us. We choose to follow one route and shun another, and slipping in between is never an easy option. Last night you called me a weakling, and now you’re tied in a chair and waiting to die.”

“You’ll not kill me,” he said, voice thick and heavily accented, though his English was perfect. “You’re superior. Think you’re special. Soft, weak, pathetic human-fuckers, every one of you. You’re not killers.” He smiled at Connie, and Rose chuckled. If he thought he’d marked an easy target there, he was in for a surprise. Rain, perhaps, if she were still alive. And me, Rose thought. But I’ll not show it.

“True,” Rose said. “We’ll not kill. But you’re undead already. That’s a precarious balance. Far as I’m concerned it’d just be… a nudge over a cliff.”

“You think that scares me?”

“Yes,” Rose said, and she sensed his flicker of contemplation. He snorted.

“I could be out of this chair in moments, at your throat, eating your meat. I’d destroy you. Same way my friends destroyed your precious companion. You’re lower than cattle to me. At least they have a purpose.”

“Then why come after me?”

The vampire lifted one corner of his mouth in a wry smile. He turned his head as if he could see them all despite his ruined eyes. Perhaps in some strange way he could: Francesco had told Rose some outlandish stories about these true vampires.

“Orders,” he said.

“Orders from whom?” Francesco asked.

“Fuck you.”

Rose twisted his arms some more, straining them against the bonds holding them tightly to the chair. The bones grumbled together, skin tore, flesh split, and he hissed in anger more than pain, his swollen tongue flickering at the air as if tasting it. For a second she considered snatching at that tongue and ripping it from his head.

“We need to hear this,” Patrick said. “Orders. Organization. They’re here for a reason, not just to hunt and feed.”

“Lily-white fucking freaks,” the vampire growled. “Pussies. What’s that I smell? Oh, yes. Rat.” The language was exact, the accent heavy. And Rose could see an expression on Francesco’s face that she had never seen before. Not fear, exactly. No vampire she’d ever met displayed fear at anything, a product of their existence rather than anything so human as arrogance. But he was unsettled. This thing’s stream of obscenities and abuse wouldn’t do that… so perhaps it was the accent.

“You came for my brother,” Rose said, bending closer and lowering her voice.

“He’s cattle.”

She twisted his left arm as hard as she could. The strong bonds gouged into his flesh and then it snapped, the arm flipping up, and with a final harsh wrench she pulled it from his shoulder. It seemed much heavier unattached than it had when it was a part of his body.

The vampire screamed and then descended into laughter. Rose threw the arm into the darkness. They’d have to burn that. Didn’t want rats feeding on it.

“You had orders to come after me,” she said, “and now you have us. Not where you wanted us, perhaps. But you have our undivided attention.”

“Pussies.”

Rose sighed. Glanced around the room. Patrick looked interested, Jane feigned boredom, Connie projected the image of an innocent young girl. She could do that very well, though not even the weakest artificial light could hide the pallor of her skin or her distended mouth. Only darkness could do that.

She did not even look at Francesco. From the corner of her eye, she could see the way his face had changed.

Grabbing the vampire’s other arm, jarring it so that the already-healing bones snapped again, she started to pull.

“Wait!” he shouted. Was that an air of panic in his voice? He seemed to settle in the chair again when she lessened the tension, then he spat.

“Five seconds,” she said.

“Give him three,” Connie said.

“Fine. One… two…”

“Duval told me to make contact with you. You Humains. But you’re worse than the shit on my shoe.”

“We still managed to kill your friend,” Rose said. “Patrick there bent her over backwards until her heart was crushed, then he ripped off her head. Did she whimper, Patrick?”

“No. Just spat.” He’d never had much of a sense of humor, or even an imagination.

“Why make contact with us?” Francesco asked. Connie glanced around. Had she heard the subtle change to his voice as well?

“In case you know where the Bane is… the bleeding Bane.” The vampire uttered an unsettling chuckle and shook its head.

“What’s a Bane?” Rose asked.

“Holy Christ,” Patrick said. He only ever blasphemed when his reaction was unconscious. He believed them all to be children of God, and he and Rose had had many intense discussions about all that should and shouldn’t mean.

Francesco was across the room in a second. Rose blinked at the dust his movement raised, then took a step back as he grasped the vampire’s head between his large hands.

“Who’s Duval?” the old vampire snapped. “Where is he now? What does he know of the Bane?”

“Fuck you and the horse—”

There was a crunch, like a bag of apples crushed under immense pressure. The vampire thrashed for a while as Francesco grimaced, pressing his hands harder together, twisting them in the mess the thing’s head had become and grabbing the remnants of its brain. Tied to the chair, he could not move very far, but for a few seconds the thrashing seemed almost more violent than the act that caused it.

“Gross,” Patrick said. He put a cigarette between his lips and lit it, an affectation that Rose had always found amusing. Now she was jealous that he had something for his hands to do. Her own twisted into each other, and when she met Francesco’s gaze she had to fight with herself not to look away. Eventually he gave her a slight smile and then looked down at the stuff his hands held.

As he started wiping them, they all waited for him to tell them why.

“The Bane,” he said.

“Yeah,” Patrick said. “The fuckin’ Bane.”

Rose knew then that this was only just the beginning.