Uprising

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Bullets churned up the water as they floated towards the Millennium Pier. Ten feet, five, and Alex sprang up onto the prow of the dead speedboat.

‘Come on!’

Without hesitation she leapt through the air and clambered up the side of the pier. She reached out an arm to haul Greg up behind her, and then they were running towards the lights and the crowds of people milling about the foot of the gigantic wheel of the London Eye. A party was going on; it looked to Alex like some kind of corporate event — women in expensive dresses, men in dark suits and ties. Inside the slow-moving pods people were sipping champagne, nibbling canapés, laughing, chattering animatedly. She and Greg attracted a few stares as they pressed through the throng. A fat woman stumbled and dropped her glass with an outraged ‘Excuse me!’ as Alex shoved her out of the way.

The other four vampires weren’t far behind. Alex saw their leader heading fast towards them, scanning the crowd. The sword slapped her thigh as she ran.

These idiot humans would think it was fancy dress.

Alex and Greg joined a press of people funnelling inside one of the pods as it passed slowly by on the end of its gigantic steel latticework arm. Alex dabbed the blood from Greg’s face with a handkerchief as they boarded. ‘Whatever happens, stay close to me.’

‘I can take care of myself,’ he muttered.

‘These aren’t Taliban insurgents, Greg. You’re in my world now.’

As they were about to enter the pod, a stocky guy in a plain suit stepped up to them. The earpiece and mike he was wearing told Alex he was a security official. He ran a cold eye over them. ‘Excuse me, folks. You’re aware this is a private party, yeah? Can I see your invitations?’

Alex raised a hand. ‘Back off, pal. Leave us alone, or I’m going to rip your spine out through your mouth.’ She said it with enough sincerity that the guy frowned, paled, then swallowed hard and took a step back. ‘Wise choice,’ she said as he disappeared back into the crowd.

They stepped onboard and soon the pod was rising slowly into the air. A panoramic view across London opened up below. Alex peered down and saw the black-haired woman shoving through the crowd. The same security guy who’d approached them a moment ago walked up to her and Alex could tell he was demanding to see her invite. Just then, the other three vampires appeared at the woman’s side and the security guy began to look nervous all over again. But whatever it was he was trying to stammer out, he didn’t finish. The woman stared at him contemptuously for a second, pulled out a pistol and shot him between the eyes, in the middle of the crowd.

‘Wasn’t his day, was it?’ Alex said. She turned to Greg. ‘We’re going to have company.’

Down below, the party was erupting into mayhem. The crowd dispersed like a shoal of minnows at the approach of a great white shark. The animated buzz of conversation and laughter instantly gave way to screams of panic. The woman stood calmly over the fallen body of the security official. There was blood on her face where his brains had splattered at point-blank range. She wiped a finger through the red on her cheek and sucked it clean. Her cold gaze ran upwards and her eyes locked on Alex’s. She pointed and said something to the big man. He grinned. Then all four of them raised their weapons and opened fire.

The glass panels of the pod blew apart, fragments raining down from the ceiling.

The pod’s other occupants began to scream in terror. A man clutched his arm, blood pumping through his fingers. Another woman was screaming as she clamped her hand over a torn earlobe.

‘We need to go higher,’ Alex said. She shoved past the petrified humans and launched herself up through the shattered roof.

‘I think you’re right,’ Greg said as he quickly followed her. A second volley of shots punched through the pod. The humans huddled on the floor, moaning and shrieking.

Standing on the roof of the pod, Alex and Greg were surrounded by the white steel latticework of tubular struts that held the arms of the enormous wheel on its axis.

The metal was slick with moisture from the drifting mist, slippery to the touch. If Alex had a plan, it was simply to keep putting distance between them and the enemy until the four vampires ran out of ammunition. Just a scratch from a Nosferol bullet, and it was game over.

The wind crackled in their ears as they hauled and swung themselves from one strut to another. Two tiny spiders on a gigantic steel web three hundred feet across.

Alex looked down; they were already a long way above the pod. Greg was making his own way up, ten feet below her and a little way to the right. The river was a black mirror shimmering with coloured lights. The spangled cityscape sprawled all around as far as the eye could see. It was a dizzy drop down, but that was the last thing on Alex’s mind.

She knew she’d made a bad mistake. The four vampires had split up. She couldn’t see the other three, but the black-haired female had boarded a pod. As it steadily rose into the air, the motion of the wheel was bringing her and Greg downwards in relation to it. In minutes they’d be level with one another. Alex climbed on, using all her vampire strength to keep moving faster — but the laws of physics were an opponent nobody could defeat.

The dark female punched out the glass side of her pod. She stepped out onto the arm with a smile and walked nonchalantly towards Alex. Leaning on a vertical strut, she crossed her arms. ‘Going somewhere?’ she purred.

‘Oh, I come up here all the time,’ Alex said.

‘You’re Alex Bishop, aren’t you? Heard all about you, but you don’t know me. My name’s Lillith. Thought you’d like to know who destroyed you.’ She shrugged, then pulled the gun from her belt and aimed at Alex’s face. Taking her time, drawing it out.

A gust of wind caught her unawares. Her foot slipped on the shiny, wet steel piping and she lost balance. Grabbing for a strut, she knocked the gun from her grip and it went clanging and tumbling down through the lattice to the water far below.

‘Clever,’ Alex said.

Lillith flushed, but quickly regained her composure. ‘Who needs a gun? More fun this way.’ She grabbed the hilt of the sword at her hip, drew out the blade with a ringing of steel and lunged at Alex.

If Alex had stayed where she was, the whooshing sword would have taken her head off. Instead she ducked, moving in towards Lillith’s body, and threw a right hook that connected hard with her face. The punch would have knocked a human out cold.

Vampires were a little tougher than that. Lillith went sprawling on her back on the pipe, but sprang instantly back on her feet and came on again with the sword poised.

Another humming sideways slice, so fast a human wouldn’t even have seen death coming.

It takes a vampire to destroy a vampire properly. Alex recalled the words she’d spoken in Romania just days ago. In a quarter of a second the blade was going to chop through her windpipe, carve through her neck and separate the spinal vertebrae on its way out. Her head would hit the water just before her body.

Quarter of a second was enough. Alex stepped back out of the swing of the blade and let herself drop down twenty feet, landing on a broad strut below. She’d lost sight of Greg in the forest of white steel. Where was he?

Lillith peered down at her for an instant, then launched herself into space and landed ten feet away.

The motion of the wheel had brought another pod level with them — and Alex saw that the massive black vampire was in it, accompanied by his weaselly little friend and the blonde in the white leather jacket. The big guy crashed through the glass as though it was nothing and walked out towards them, a 9mm pistol like a toy in his fist.

‘Leave her to me, Zachary,’ Lillith yelled. But before she could finish, the weaselly one had produced a gun and let off a shot. The bullet sang off a thick pipe inches from Alex’s head. At the same instant, Lillith let out a shriek and dropped the sword, clutching her wrist. She’d been hit by the bullet’s ricochet. For an instant there was wild terror in her eyes as she anticipated the first bite of the Nosferol’s effects; then she peeled back the sleeve of her red jumpsuit, and Alex saw the dented gold bracelet on her wrist that had saved her.

‘Anton, you fucking moron!’ Lillith hissed furiously at the weaselly guy.

He frowned apologetically, letting the gun waver, then tightened his grip and started to bring it back up to aim. His second shot was going to find its mark. But Alex wasn’t hanging around for it.

Instead, she threw herself off the wheel.

The white pipework flashed by as she went hurtling down in freefall, and the ground rushed up to meet her. Vampires could take a lot of damage, but she’d never pushed her luck as far as leaping two hundred feet down onto concrete. She was about to find out whether it was survivable.

The impact knocked the breath out of her. She knew to flex her knees to prevent her thigh bones spearing up through her shoulder blades, and to roll like a parachutist.

Stunned, she lay there for a moment or two while she tried to ascertain whether her body was still intact or whether she was going to spend the rest of eternity as a pile of mincemeat. Someone screamed in horror. Voices around her.

‘Jesus Christ. Did you see that?’

‘She fell.’

‘Fuck no, she jumped.’

‘Ambulance must be on its way.’

‘Is she dead?’

‘I think she is, yeah.’

‘Course she’s bloody dead.’

‘Oh my God…’

Alex stirred, then picked herself up off the concrete and dusted her hands. She seemed to be okay. The crowd that had gathered round her backed off sharply. People were gasping, pointing. Another scream, if anything more shocked than before.

Apparently, the only thing scarier than witnessing a suicide was when the body upped and walked away.

Partygoers were milling around at the foot of the Eye in the wake of the shooting. Most were pale and silent, huddled in corners like disaster survivors as they waited in shock for the emergency services to arrive. Women wept in their men’s arms.

Someone had laid a coat over the dead body of the security guy. The howl of sirens was getting close. It sounded like half the police force and a hundred ambulances were carving through the London traffic towards them.

Alex peered up at the towering wheel. No sign of Greg anywhere. Maybe the fight had given him the chance to escape — but she hadn’t seen him come down. Had he managed to board another pod? She narrowed her eyes.

Greg, where are you?

Lillith was a tiny figure perched high above. Not even she was crazy enough to attempt a leap like that.

Alex knew what she was thinking. We’ll meet again.

And it was something Alex was looking forward to as well.

She let her gaze linger just a moment longer. Then, as the ambulances and police cars came screaming into sight and the place was suddenly swirling with blue lights, she slipped away.