30 Days of Night: Fear of the Dark

5

SOMEONE WAS WATCHING HIM. He’d always been able to tell—his sixth sense, his dad had called it—but Marty knew it was a sense made up of the subtler facets of the other five. The person’s bulk caused a blank and swallowed noise, giving no echo. Their heart beat, blood flowed, breath stirred the air. There was probably a scent too. All of these undetectable traces combined to form a certainty in his mind: someone was watching him.

Someone close.

He opened his eyes a crack, taking in the surroundings. He was lying on a comfortable bed, and the bedroom around him, though large, was stark and cold. A wardrobe, a chair, a fine carpet… nothing to show that someone used this room or ever had. The duvet he lay on smelled clean but slightly musty, as if it had not been turned down or shaken for some time. He could not see the watcher.

It’s daytime, he thought, and that brought the dark memories flooding back. His mother, the house, Rose. He recalled her leaving him here just before dawn and telling him about the man she hoped would look after him. And she had made him swear not to reveal what he knew.

About the vampires.

He closed his eyes again and twisted the duvet cover in one hand, fighting back tears.

“You okay?” a voice said. Low, calm. “Want a drink? Something to eat? Breakfast?” He said the last word quieter, as if to himself. “Breakfast. Er… got some bread. Toast? Don’t have any jam or honey or anything, and I don’t want to go and get some because I promised Rose I’d look after you.”

“Daytime,” Marty said, opening his eyes again. The curtains were thin, and sunlight streamed through and around them.

“Yeah, well. Daytime’s safer, but not totally safe. Sometimes they have their servants.”

Marty blinked, trying to absorb what the man was saying. Servants? From what Rose had told Marty, that’s exactly what this guy was. Except he didn’t know. You work for vampires, Marty thought, and sat up.

There was a black guy sitting in a chair close to the bed. A liter bottle of water was propped in his lap, a book rested open and facedown on his right knee, and leaning against the expensive-looking chair was a crossbow. Marty had never seen one like it before. It looked very modern, not old, and was made entirely of metal, apart from the stock, which seemed to be heavy rubber. Bolts were fixed in several positions around its body. Their tips were bulbous and silvery.

“Vampire killer,” Marty whispered.

The man smiled and touched the weapon almost lovingly. “You’re safe here,” he said.

“You’re Lee Woodhams.”

“Yes. Rose told you about me?”

“A little.” He doesn’t know she’s a vampire… he doesn’t know, don’t forget that. Marty eyed the crossbow some more and thought of Rose pinned against a door by one of those cruel bolts.

“A little’s more than enough for now,” Lee said. “Come on, you can ask all you want while I’m doing the toast.”

Marty nodded and stood up from the bed, swaying a little uncertainly. He was still wearing his clothes from the night before, and he could feel the weight of dried blood on the legs of his jeans. It crackled as he walked. His sneakers also felt heavier.

Lee looked him over. “Oh, yeah. Clothes. Come on. You’re about my size.”

They exited the room onto a wide landing, one side overlooking the hallway below. Two floors above them was a half-globe glass ceiling letting in a flush of sunlight that warmed the air and danced with dust motes. Quite a place. Marty followed Lee blankly, his mind still half-asleep, ideas and memories leaping around and over each other. He was glad, in a way, that he could not pin down one or another. Sometimes there was blood, sometimes darkness. He knew that firmer memories would come soon, and with them the crippling grief.

In another room, Lee opened a wardrobe and indicated that he could help himself to clothes.

“Bathroom’s through there,” he said, pointing to a door in the corner of the room. He glanced around for a moment, hesitant. The crossbow looked very big in his hand. “I’ll be down in the kitchen,” he said. “Bottom of the stairs, right turn. Follow the smell.”

“Thanks.” Marty nodded and tried on a smile. It hurt his face.

“No worries.” As Lee walked past him and left the room, Marty realized for the first time that the man had been looking at him with a sense of awe. He’s a vampire hunter, and I’ve survived a vampire attack. He’ll want to know everything. He’ll want me to tell him about my…

Marty bit his lips, groaned slightly at the pain, and went to take a shower.

Later, descending the staircase and wearing Lee’s clothes, Marty had time to look around. The staircase was at least five feet wide and led down to a largish hallway and two corridors going off in opposite directions. The hall floor was solid oak and the walls were bare. He could make out at least a dozen lighter squares where paintings must have once hung. In the corridors were several sparse display cabinets, and one wall was lined with books. They were dusty and untouched; some had soft cobweb clothing.

The front door seemed to be lined with metal and had several heavy-duty bolts. It should have made him feel safer but had the opposite effect. It was a beautiful house worth a fortune, but its character had been stripped, laying it bare to the bone.

In the shower, Marty had started to cry. I should tell the police, he’d thought. My mum’s dead, our house probably burnt, Dad’s missing, I should go to the law and tell them everything that happened. His maternal grandmother would be worried sick; his dad’s sister would hear about it, though they rarely spoke; and his mate Gaz would wonder what the fuck was going on. He had people who cared for him and his family, and he’d left himself and his safety in the hands of a vampire.

Switching off the shower and drying, he’d tried to ally that word with his sister. He could not. He’d seen what vampires did. She had called herself a Humain, and that was the only way he could think of her from now on.

He followed the smell of slightly burnt toast, stomach rumbling. Something followed behind him, a heavy weight that promised to drag him down when it caught up. He’d stay ahead of it as long as possible, because it scared him. Even when Rose had vanished, he’d never truly believed that she was gone for good.

“Fit well,” Lee said, glancing him up and down.

“Yeah. Thanks.” He’d chosen a pair of jeans and an old Motörhead T-shirt that he could never imagine having belonged to Lee. He just didn’t seem the sort.

“Like I said, plain toast. But real butter. None of that low-fat shit.” He raised an inquiring eyebrow and Marty nodded. “Good lad. Not into that healthy-eating stuff.” He plated three thick slices of toast and slid it across the table to Marty. The kitchen was filled with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, and two large mugs steamed on the table.

Marty ate silently, his stomach rumbling in contentment as he chewed the toast and washed it down with the orange juice he’d chosen instead of coffee. Lee busied himself tidying the large kitchen. Marty was glad: he hated people watching him eat. He finished the toast and accepted another glass of juice, looking around and noting that this room was as characterless as the rest of the house. Used, obviously, but there were no flourishes here. It was as if Lee had no desire to decorate his life.

The crossbow was in the corner on a wide granite countertop. Marty’s eyes were drawn to it again and again. He wondered what those bolts were tipped with. He wondered who’d made the thing and whether it had ever been used.

“Rose didn’t tell me anything about you,” he said at last.

“What do you want to know?” Lee asked. He turned around at the sink and dried his hands.

“Have you ever…?” Marty asked, nodding at the crossbow.

“Once,” Lee said.

“A vampire,” Marty said.

“Yeah. Rose said…”

“My mother,” Marty whispered, looking into his juice glass.

“I’m sorry. Yeah, three years ago I tracked one to the suburbs, out near Heathrow. It was living underground in a big sewer, part of an abandoned airport construction that was never sealed up. It preyed on tourists coming into the UK. Knew which ones to pick on too. Clever. Some of those missing were never reported, and some that were, the police put down to prostitution rings, that sort of thing. There’s a healthy sex trade into the country, would you believe.”

“‘Healthy’?”

“Oh, well, wrong word.” Lee seemed embarrassed. “Busy, I should have said. So I told Rose that I’d found one, asked her if she’d tell Francesco and the others. She and Francesco met me out there. Chased the fucker right up into the daylight. I lost Rose and Francesco somewhere, but I put a bolt into the thing as it burned. Watched it die on a bit of barren land south of the airport.” His eyes seemed suddenly far away, and there was a look of satisfaction on his face.

“You lost someone you loved,” Marty said.

Lee blinked, then glanced at Marty, and for a second his eyes were different. Harder. Then he smiled softly, as if remembering what had happened to Marty the night before.

“No,” he said. “ Friend. I was in the SIS. Secret Intelligence Service, MI6 to you.”

“You were a spy?”

“Not a word we used much, but I guess so. Anyway, we were in… eastern Europe, maybe ten years ago. One of those fuckers ambushed us, killed Phil, and I emptied my clip into its head. Ran like hell. Told my story, got sectioned out for six months, official denials, blah blah blah.” He waved one hand in the air as if it were an old story that never ended. “So I quit and started investigating them on my own.”

“And you’ve found stuff out?”

“A little,” he said, eyes growing distant. “I’m cautious. Taking my time. I hate those bastards. Really hate them. What they do, what they plan, the way they use people as slaves, livestock. They think they’re so in charge, but they slink through shadows like rats. I’ve got years left yet, and I don’t want to rush in headlong and get myself killed.”

Marty raised an eyebrow.

“At least four people I’ve been in touch with—people like me, seeking information, hunting them, believing in them—have been murdered.”

Marty looked down at his juice again. This should all have been so outrageous, and yet even Lee’s description of the vampire burning and dying in the sunlight felt real to him, gritty and brutal rather than shaded with fantasy.

“So…” Lee said softly.

Here’s where I have to be careful, Marty thought. The deception was clear in his mind, and perhaps it was masking the grief stalking him like the bastard creature that had caused it in the first place. Deception and lying gave him something to concentrate on.

“My mum,” he said. “And my dad.”

“Killed them both?”

“No. Only… her. They took him.”

Lee leaned on the table, businesslike again, the façade of pity gone. “Is she definitely dead?”

Marty nodded.

“You’re sure? Because sometimes they leave them alive and—”

“She’s dead,” Marty said, softly but firmly. “If you’d seen her…”

“And they took your dad?”

“Yeah.”

“How old is he? What does he look like? Do you have a photo?”

“What, you want to make a fucking ‘wanted’ poster?”

Lee drew back, stark realization hitting home.

“Hey, I’m so sorry,” he said. “Really. So sorry.” He turned and walked to a cupboard, opening the door, rearranging some canned contents to cover his discomfort. Marty watched and felt bad for lashing out at his host, but not enough to say it.

“What will they do with him?” Marty asked. Lee’s shoulders tensed. He turned around slowly.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“But you have some idea?”

“They could turn him,” Lee said after a long pause. “Make him one of them.”

“Rose and Francesco killed one in my house,” Marty said slowly, listening to himself, making sure he was giving nothing away. Lee only nodded.

“Good for them. But that could give the vampires a reason to replace the one they lost.”

“Or they could use him for food.”

Lee nodded, grabbed Marty’s glass, refilled it. He’s socially inept, Marty thought. It was a phrase his mother used to describe someone who’d rarely meet your eyes when speaking. Maybe it was the result of spending most of his time locked away.

“Going for a piss,” Lee said. “Only be a minute.”

As soon as he left the room, Marty slipped from his stool and walked over to the worktop. He touched the crossbow. It was cold and heavy. The bolts were made from some sort of metal different from the weapon itself, and their heads were wide and flared, tapering to sharp points just at the tips. There was something inside there, he knew, something that would flood the victim’s system as soon as the bolt struck and shattered. He wondered what. After so many years studying them, Lee must surely have a good idea about what killed vampires.

“Garlic paste mixed with holy water,” Lee said from the doorway. Fuck’s sake, Marty, Rose had drawled when he’d mentioned garlic as a deterrent. Maybe Lee didn’t know as much as he pretended.

“And this works?”

“It will. Just need a chance to find out. And I promise you, son, I’m going to do my best with Rose and Francesco to track down the monster that attacked your family, and find your father.”

“Thanks,” Marty said, and as he tried to offer a smile, the tears came. Grief punched him with a slew of memories of his parents, some familiar, some he hadn’t thought about in years. He crumpled to the floor, and it was as if he were reliving their own lives for them before they died.

There was nothing they could do before nightfall but talk. Usually they rested, conserving energy for whatever the hours of darkness would bring for each of them. But tonight, for the first time she could recall, Francesco took some persuading.

Connie had already left, storming from the chamber when Francesco and Patrick ignored her pleas to reveal what they knew. She’d always had a short temper, and in some ways Rose was glad to have her out of the room. She was likely waiting somewhere out of sight, listening, but the risk of violence was much lessened.

For now, at least.

Jane sat silently fuming in one corner. Patrick pretended to rest, and Francesco sat with his back to the dead vampire, frowning into the darkness as if trying to recall a name.

Rose walked in a figure eight around the dead vampire and Francesco. She could see that it was getting to him, so she continued, circling the meat, then the murderer. He hadn’t yet acknowledged her constant movement, not even with a flicker of his eyes. But he would soon.

What’s the Bane? they’d asked him, and he’d shrugged and said, I don’t know.

What’s the Bane? they’d asked Patrick, and he’d turned his back on them and pretended to sleep.

What’s the Bane… what’s the Bane… And Francesco had settled into his chair, refusing to answer any more questions. Connie’s short explosion of profanity had barely registered with him, and Rose knew he needed more subtle persuasion.

Each time she walked before him she tried to catch his eye. She guessed she’d performed her figure eight fifty times before he caught her gaze and followed her as she passed around behind him again. Jane was watching. Rose smiled at her and nodded, and the woman went to where Patrick pretended to sleep.

Twenty minutes later, as Francesco stood and turned to watch Rose perform her circuit around the dead vampire, Jane nudged Patrick and told him to wake up. They all knew he wasn’t really asleep.

“Connie,” Rose called, standing with the corpse between her and Francesco. After maybe a minute, the girl entered their chamber again, walking casually as if on a leisurely stroll.

Francesco sighed. None of them spoke.

“This could change everything,” he said.

“Fine,” Rose replied. “Then that’s why we need to know.”

He nodded, glanced at Patrick, and then waved them to the far corner.

“I don’t want to discuss it while I can still see and smell that,” he said, indicating the corpse.

“You made it,” Jane said.

“Before it could say anything else,” Connie said. “Almost like you didn’t want us to hear anything.”

“It wasn’t that. God knows the only people—”

“Don’t take His name in vain,” Patrick said. “He watches us. He watches you.”

“And I was about to say, God knows the only people I call friends are you. Rain, too, but she’s dead. And Jack… I fear for Jack also.”

“He’s a loner,” Connie said.

“No. He’d have returned here whether or not he tracked down that last vampire.”

“You think they killed him too?”

“I think if the Bane really is here in London, there’ll be more than three of them.”

Rose and the others waited, and Francesco needed no more prompting.

“The Spanish Bane, to give it the name it’s been known by forever. I first heard whisper of it in Paris in 1886. Nothing more for decades, and then it was mentioned again during the Spanish Civil War. I spent some time fighting there.”

“Which side?” Patrick asked, but Francesco ignored him. Rather not know, Rose thought.

“That was when I heard what it was. And the thing is… I believed it from the start. It’s a weapon, so it’s said, cast from exotic metals by the first vampire four thousand years ago.”

“Another first vampire,” Jane said, shaking her head. “There are many who’d lay claim to that title.”

“True,” Francesco said. “But the fear this thing’s name conjures… I can only believe it’s true. Out in the world, it’s something that’s whispered about from time to time. Patrick?”

The Irishman nodded. “Coventry, 1945. Someone told me they were looking for it.”

“Who?” Connie asked.

“Someone.” Patrick was smoking again, the smoke a haze to hide his eyes. Someone he fed on, Rose thought.

“So what does it do?” Rose asked.

“Gives power,” Francesco said. “To whichever vampire wields it, great power. To expand from legend and into the consciousness of all those around. I don’t know how it works. I heard many rumors, ranging from granting the power to walk in daylight to the ability to kill with a glance.”

“Bullshit,” Jane said.

“Probably. But they’re here for it, and that isn’t bullshit. It must mean it’s been found, or at least located.”

“When did it disappear?” Rose asked.

“Soon after it was made.”

“Four thousand years? This thing’s been missing for that long, and it’s got you shivering as if I’ve just stuffed that UV light up your arse?”

“Remember who you’re talking to Rose,” he said, and she’d never heard him sound so threatening. It showed how scared he really was, and she realized then that he knew more than he was letting on.

“It sounds like a fairy tale to me,” Connie said. “Superstition. Like the one true cross, that sort of thing. Just make-believe.”

“Make-believe is exactly what we strive to be,” Francesco said.

“Yes, but we know we’re real. I just mean…” She trailed off, perhaps not sure what she meant at all.

“Maybe Lee’s heard something,” Rose said, and she looked down at her hands.

“What?” Jane asked.

Rose looked up. Shrugged.

“What about Lee?” Jane persisted. She always had been the most perceptive among them. Rose said nothing and the silence grew heavy.

“Oh, Rose,” Francesco said at last. “At the exact time we need him the most…”

“Marty won’t say anything. I made him promise.” Oh, shit, oh, shit…

“Are you serious? You left that boy with Lee? After everything that happened, everything he saw and knows? Are you fucking insane?” Jane was on her feet, making as if to lash out at Rose. But Patrick touched her arm and pulled her back.

“He won’t say anything,” she said again, realizing how weak she sounded.

“He just saw his mother butchered,” Connie said. “You know how weak humans are more than most.” She giggled. “You’re as good as human—”

“I’m just like you,” Rose said. “No matter that I was only turned five years ago.”

“Stop it,” Francesco said. “All of you. Rose, at dusk you’ll come with me to Lee’s place. You better hope he and the boy are still there. If not, it means he talked, and I promise you we’ll hunt them both until they’re found and dealt with. But you better hope—”

“I’m telling you, Marty won’t say a word. And I apologize, if I’d known how much we’d be needing Lee—”

“You’d have done the same,” Patrick said.

“Maybe,” she said. Definitely, she thought. He’s the only mortal I could have trusted Marty with. There was no way she could have left her brother to his own devices after last night.

“They’ll be sending more, then,” Jane said.

“Yes.”

“And I imagine we’ll be somewhere on their list, before or after the Bane.”

“We will,” Francesco said. “I suspect they made first contact just in case we knew its whereabouts, and that’s a good thing. Means they’re not sure yet. But now it’ll be all about revenge. Once they have the Bane, though…” He held out his hands.

“Or maybe, like Connie says, it’s just a fairy tale,” Patrick said.

“We can’t assume anything. If it’s truly been located, we need to find it before them somehow, hide it away again. Somewhere deeper.”

“Or destroy it,” Jane said, but no one responded to that.

Rose closed her eyes and tried to imagine London as a slaughterhouse, with vampires as its keepers.

The suit she had killed to feed on came to her again, his pain and agony and terror, and she tried to picture six million more like him.

Vampire she was, but the idea of so much blood made her sick.

They talked around the idea of the Bane, pressing Patrick to tell them whatever else he knew, but he’d revealed everything. Francesco also claimed to have revealed all, but Rose could see him holding something back. She could challenge him there and then and maybe he’d admit it. But she thought she’d have a better chance if they were on their own.

I could lure him out into the tunnels, she thought. Talk to him out there. But it could wait until nightfall. The darkness beyond their hidden chamber suddenly felt dangerous.

They waited all day for Jack to return but he never did. Jane had last seen him pursuing the fleeing vampire into the London darkness, and he had sent her back to the house to help capture the one Francesco wanted to question. The fact that a trap had been sprung on them meant that the whole plan had gone awry, and now Rain was dead and Jack had likely met the same fate. Or, if not, he’d fled deep and would likely not resurface for a long time. There’d been times when Jack remained underground for years on end, haunting the shadows like the ghosts that part of London claimed. No one knew what he fed on and he never offered that information, though he claimed to be a Humain like them.

Dead, undead… Rose had often mused upon how she considered such states, now that she was a vampire. But she always came to the same conclusion: the difference between her and a human was huge, but the gulf between undead and true death was much larger.

Jane surprised them by disappearing from the chamber, uttering not a word as the tunnels swallowed her up. The others fed where they were. Patrick still had several blood packets left, and each of them withdrew to a far corner or behind one of the tumbled lockers to feed. The cold blood was on the verge of turning bad. Stale and bitter, Rose wondered what Jane tasted when feeding from a body that had been dead for just too long. Its blood would be tainted. This blood, donated by the living to help those in need, lasted much longer. It was a mystery that none of them bothered to muse upon it too much.

Rose could never taste blood without recalling the suit she had once killed. She could not feel guilt. She supposed that she had started feeling disgust, if anything. Not at the blood or the death, but the way the man had pleaded and fought, and how ineffectual he had been.

Sometimes the call of the kill came loudly to her, and she knew that Francesco saw that. She’d never spoken to him about it, not even after the suit, because when it came to such matters, he had succeeded in scaring her many times. But she assumed it was because she was still young compared to the others. Francesco himself claimed almost two hundred years.

She wondered if the hunger was a distant memory to him now, or whether it was something a Humain simply learned to control.

The blood gave her strength, thrumming through her altered systems and conferring a thrill she had never experienced while alive. It was moments like these when she felt as close to her brethren vampires as ever, and most likely to submit to the urges that drove them all. Because, really, being Humain was a play, wasn’t it? They convinced themselves that they were the more civilized, welcoming a vampire’s extended life while existing side by side with humanity. But perhaps it was like vegetarianism in humans: a denial of the animal’s true nature.

Rose remembered a joke her father always used to tell in front of their mother’s vegan sister: If God hadn’t meant us to eat animals, why did he make them of meat? Sometimes she thought that if she wasn’t meant to prey on humans, why did they carry the blood she so craved?

She should ask Patrick about that one day. He believed they were all God’s children. Alive or undead, Rose had never believed in anything.

She sighed and licked a few errant smears of blood from her fingers. She tried to rest, but peace was elusive. Patrick paced the chamber, his footsteps an annoying metronome. Francesco alone seemed able to find rest, and he left the three others glancing at each other now and then, but saying nothing.

It’s like holding a fucking wake, Rose thought. And perhaps they were. Marty and Lee might be safe during the day… but maybe not. Vampires employed their mortal servants, and in a way that’s just what Lee was to the Humains. They treated him better and had no intention of ever turning him. But he was still their servant. Their pet, as Patrick called him.

What the hell had she been thinking, leaving Marty with him?

Way above them, the sun passed across the sky and gave the earth life, flooding the surface with radiation that would only bring death to such as them. Rose and the others sensed its passage, and when the time came to move, Francesco stirred awake.

They gathered in the center of the chamber and Jane joined them again, her eyes sparkling and skin glowing. She’d fed somewhere, and as usual none of them inquired where. Perhaps when they started talking about things like that in the open, they’d finally become a family.