The Cross

Chapter Fifty-Four

The back door was unlocked. Alex slipped quietly inside. The decor was pretty much what you might expect from a midpay-grade admin official at VIA, but Alex winced at the colour of the living room. Ouch. Last time she’d been here, for a hundred-and-fortieth birthday party (some vampires took longer than others to get bored of them), the walls hadn’t been quite this shocking shade of pink.

Jen Minto was perched on the edge of an armchair staring intently at the TV news. Her short blond hair was unbrushed and she was wearing a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms.

‘I shouldn’t imagine there’d be anything on there about us,’ Alex said.

Minto jerked round in astonishment, her eyes opening wide. ‘Alex! I … I wasn’t expecting …’

Alex walked up to her. ‘Door was open. Got to be careful. There are bad people around.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Utz McCarthy told me you made it out. I came to see how you were.’

‘I wasn’t there when it happened,’ Minto said. ‘I was one of the first ones to go in, after … oh, Alex, it’s so awful. And the word is that Supremo Angelopolis …’ She shook her head. ‘I’m so glad that you didn’t get caught up in it.’

‘I would have been, if I hadn’t been called away on urgent business,’ Alex said. ‘Not that any of it matters now.’

‘What are we going to do?’ Minto said. ‘Everything’s in ruins.’

‘Too early to say. All I know is that right now, it’s every vampire for herself.’ Alex smiled, but it was a hard smile. ‘You should know something about that, Jen.’

Minto gave a puzzled frown. ‘What do you mean by that remark?’

Alex perched on the arm of the sofa opposite. ‘Things have been kind of hectic for me lately,’ she said. ‘You might even say I’ve been a bit rushed off my feet, with one thing and another. Which is why certain little niggly details might have slipped my mind. Careless, I know.’

‘That’s normal enough,’ Minto said, still frowning. ‘Working for VIA takes its toll on the best of us.’

‘Little niggly details like, for instance, something you said to me the day I got back from Romania,’ Alex said.

The lines in Minto’s brow had deepened to corrugated furrows. She kept glancing at the door and her breathing had quickened a fraction. ‘I don’t understand, Alex.’

‘I think you do,’ Alex said. ‘I think you understand exactly what I’m saying. Remember what you told me? You said, “And Xavier Garrett? He was one of them?”’

‘But he was.’

‘Yes, he was. The whole time Gabriel Stone was mounting his uprising against the Federation, Xavier was his spy inside VIA, feeding him all the juicy little bits of information he needed. We lost a lot of good agents because of him. That’s why I put a bullet in the bastard at the conference in Belgium. But the funny thing is, Jen, I never said a single word about any of it to you.’

Minto’s face flushed. ‘No … no, I know you didn’t. It was Cornelius who told me about it.’

‘Kelby?’ Alex shook her head. ‘Kelby couldn’t have known about it either, because the one and only place I ever mentioned it was in the confidential field report I sent directly to Brussels HQ, and the one and only person who ever saw it was Olympia Angelopolis herself. Given some of the stuff I wrote about, I know for a fact she wouldn’t have shown it to anyone else. So, any other ideas where you might have heard about Garrett, Jen?’

Minto said nothing.

‘You know, Jen, it’s less than twelve hours since our whole organisation got fucked sideways by something that’s been hidden away for hundreds of years and hardly anyone could have seen coming — and you haven’t even asked me what it was.’ Alex smiled that hard smile again. ‘That’s because you already know all about it, don’t you? Because Xavier Garrett wasn’t Gabriel Stone’s only mole inside VIA. He had an accomplice. Someone who knew all about the attack, exactly when it was coming, and was able to get out of the way just before Ash arrived there with the cross. Oh, and not to mention letting Stone know where I’d gone in Wales, so that he could send his goons to assassinate me. That made me feel so important.’

‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ Minto gasped.

‘Really?’ Alex stood up and whipped the Desert Eagle out of her bag. Minto’s eyes bugged at the sight of the gun. Alex came a step closer. With a snick-snack of the Desert Eagle’s slide she racked the top round from the magazine into the breech, then shoved the muzzle against Minto’s right temple. ‘You didn’t give them a chance, Jen. But guess what. I’m giving you one, because that is what a nice vampire I am. Where’s Stone?’

Minto opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a strangled croak. Her eyes strained sideways to stare at the gun muzzle pressed against her head.

‘The Federation might be finished,’ Alex said, ‘but there’s still some Nosferol left in this world. A nice fat hollowpoint full of it, about eight inches from your brain, to be precise. I’ll ask you one more time: where’s Stone?’

‘They were all at Lonsdale’s place in Surrey,’ Minto blurted out. ‘But Gabriel left there last night.’

‘You’re making progress. Where did he go?’

‘Switzerland!’ Minto said, her voice rising in pitch. ‘Baxter Burnett’s place in Switzerland. That’s all know, I swear!’

‘Good enough for me,’ Alex said. ‘See you in vampire hell, Jen. This will only hurt for a minute.’

Minto yelped in terror. ‘But you said you’d give me a chance!’

‘A chance to redeem yourself, sure. Not a chance to talk your way out of this. We’re way past that.’

‘No! Please!’

‘And by the way, your buddy Gabriel would really disapprove of the decor in this place. Have to say I agree with him on that one.’

Alex didn’t blink as she pulled the trigger. Even before Minto’s throes of agony were over and the mess had spattered across the living room carpet, she was heading through the front door and walking back out into the street towards the parked Jaguar.

‘Well?’ Joel said as she climbed in behind the wheel.

‘We’re going on a trip,’ she said, firing up the engine.