The Cross

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Ridings

One part of the late Jeremy Lonsdale’s mansion that the pale morning sun couldn’t reach was the vaulted, windowless wine cellar that ran almost the entire length of the house. It was filled with the kind of collection of fine vintages that only a multi-millionaire with a taste for the good life could have put together.

Now, though, the cellar had been put to another use. Back in business and on a mission to finish what he’d started, Gabriel Stone had designated the place the nerve-centre of his renewed rebellion against the Federation. The heavy oak wine racks had been shoved aside to make room for the long table they’d brought down from Lonsdale’s plush dining room. Its gleaming surface was crisscrossed with a spaghetti of wires connecting the politician’s desktop computer to a bank of extra monitors.

‘Man, I don’t know why you think I can do this,’ Zachary groaned from where he sat hunched massively over the computer keyboard, tapping the odd key more or less randomly and scratching his head. ‘I mean, this ain’t nothing I’ve done before. Setting up email accounts and shit was always Anton’s job.’

‘Zachary darling, you know Anton’s not with us any more,’ Lillith said nonchalantly, honing the edge of her new heavy cavalry dragoon’s sabre with a whetstone, a cloth and a bottle of gun oil at her elbow. ‘Someone else has to do it.’

‘Yeah, but why me? I ain’t a morning kind of guy, you know?’

‘Because we’re busy,’ she said, closing one eye and peering down the curve of the sword blade. ‘Aren’t we, Gabriel?’

Gabriel had been standing at the far end of the cellar, head bowed in meditation. He turned and looked coldly at Zachary. ‘You know how to operate one of those small communication devices the humans carry around with them, do you not?’

‘A mobile phone,’ Lillith put in. ‘Zach’s a dab hand with one.’

Zachary shrugged his huge shoulders. ‘Sure. But this—’

‘Then you will soon learn to penetrate the mysteries of the technological Tower of Babel that our food source call the interweb, in order to re-establish communications with our network of associates. Surely the principle is similar.’

‘They call it the internet,’ Zachary corrected him.

‘There. Already it becomes evident that you are far ahead of either myself or Lillith in these matters. Now get on with it.’ Gabriel walked over to the table and slid a piece of paper across it towards Zachary. ‘With these electronic mail addresses you will be able to rally round the faithful. Send out the word of my survival, of our renewed mission. Summon them all here. Rolando, Petroc, Elspeth, Yuri and the others. And Kali, of course.’

‘Oh, yes, let’s not forget Kali,’ Lillith muttered under her breath.

Gabriel turned to her with a frown. ‘I believe my disapproving sister had been allocated the task of drafting a letter?’

Lillith looked up from her blade-sharpening. ‘“Dear Prime Minister, regret to inform you that due to personal reasons, blah blah blah, compelled to resign my position forthwith, will be taking a trip around the world and will not be contactable, etc., etc., yours sincerely, Jeremy Lonsdale.” What am I, your secretary now? Get Kali to write it when she gets here, as you seem to value her so much.’

Gabriel was about to reply sharply when the cellar door creaked slowly open and a balding head appeared through the gap, followed by a slouching, stooped form. Lillith snatched up her sabre, then relaxed. ‘Oh, it’s only the ghoul.’

Already the few drops of vampire blood, tapped from an opened vein and forced down the human’s throat, had worked a dramatic physical change on him. Geoffrey Hopley skulked across the cellar like a beaten dog, clutching a large tray on which were three steaming mugs and a folded newspaper. He laid it down reverently on the table.

Gabriel stared. ‘What is this, ghoul?’

‘Your tea, master,’ Geoffrey croaked.

‘Tea?’

‘Mr Lonsdale always took a cup of tea with the morning paper. Perhaps master would care for a biscuit?’

Gabriel peered with revulsion at the tray. ‘Biscuit? Certainly not. And what makes you think we would be interested in consuming this vile liquid of yours? Not to mention,’ he added, swatting away the newspaper, ‘reading the infantile and usually mendacious drivel that the humans call news.’

‘Can’t get the staff these days,’ Lillith murmured, returning to her sword-sharpening.

‘Mr Lonsdale liked to k-k-keep up with what was h-happening in the world,’ stammered the ghoul.

‘As if the human race had the remotest notion of what is really happening in the world,’ Gabriel snorted. ‘You’re wasting our time. Get back to your hole until we find further use for you.’ He grabbed the newspaper and hurled it violently at the cowering ghoul. ‘Do you hear me? Leave us, cur!’

Geoffrey picked up the tray and bowed and scraped his way backwards out of the cellar.

‘I told you those two would be useless, Gabriel,’ Lillith said with a smile when the door had banged shut. ‘We should have just drained them dry and been done with it.’

‘Damn them both. Too late now. Ghoul blood is undrinkable.’ Gabriel stooped to snatch up the fallen newspapers and tossed them on the table. ‘Zachary, are you making any progress?’ he snapped.

‘Give me time,’ Zachary muttered, tapping more keys. ‘I’ll get it.’

Lillith casually reached down for the crumpled newspaper, peeled away the front and back pages and used them to test the edge of her blade. The steel sliced cleanly through the paper like a razor; the two halves fluttered to the floor. ‘Not perfect,’ she said, giving the blade a few more strokes from her hone before peeling off another sheet. She was about to cut it when she stopped and let out a loud shuddering gasp. Her sword fell with a clang to the tiled floor as she twisted away from the newspaper in horror.

‘Lil?’ Zachary said, alarmed. ‘You okay?’

‘What is it, sister?’ Gabriel cried.

Lillith pressed a hand to her chest, catching her breath, and pointed at the newspaper without looking. ‘I can’t bear to see it. I never wanted to see that thing again.’

Gabriel strode over and snatched up the paper. His eyes searched the rumpled page, then narrowed with a blaze of anger and fear as his gaze landed on the small, crisp colour image in the bottom left-hand corner.

An image of a cross. A Celtic cross, one whose appearance was terrifyingly familiar, its shattered fragments pieced together and held in place with wire. Who had done this?

The headline of the small article was: HISTORY PROFESSOR’S DISCOVERY IS OUT OF THIS WORLD.

‘“Oxford University boffins are baffled,”’ Gabriel read aloud, ‘“by the discovery of an ancient artifact in the mountains of Romania. Chloe Dempsey, 19, a pentathlete and student at the University of Bedfordshire, came across the mysterious object while on a skiing trip with friends and brought it to the UK to show to her father, Professor Matt Dempsey, 56, a curator at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum …” I will not read it all. Suffice to say that my fears were correct. The cross of Ardaich has been found.’