Uprising

Chapter Forty-Seven

Alex could almost smell Cheap Eddie’s cigar from the other end of the line when he called her back.

‘You took your time,’ she said. ‘I’ve been waiting hours.’ She checked her watch as she spoke. 9.42 p.m.

‘Yeah, well, I had to ask around, didn’t I?’

He gave her the address. Before he’d even finished saying it, she had turned the car around, pointing north towards Harlesden. The sat-nav gave her a thirty-five-minute ETA — but it didn’t know who was driving. She got to Harlesden a shade before ten, and five minutes after that she was parking the Jag in the dingy road where Paulie Lomax lived. Some street kids were loitering nearby and eyeing up the car, but shrank away disconcerted when she caught their eye and smiled sweetly at them.

The concrete stairway leading up to Paulie’s flat reeked of piss and lager vomit, and the graffiti that covered the block walls was an exercise in nihilism. Fuck you. Fuck this. Fuck everything.

Someone had fucked with the lock on Paulie’s door, too. The whole cylinder had been punched through the wood from the outside and was lying among the splinters on the peeled linoleum of the entrance hall.

‘Surprise, surprise,’ Alex muttered to herself as the stink reached her nostrils over the smell of stale sweat and booze. To a vampire, the scent of live human blood was the most enticing thing in the universe but the stench of dead blood was the most repellent, and they could smell it a long way off. It was coming from behind a door, and she knew what she was going to find even before she kicked it open.

All that remained remotely recognisable of Paulie Lomax’s human form was the four-fingered right hand that lay curled on the floor. It had been roughly severed at the wrist. It looked like a maimed spider that had died trying to drag itself away to safety.

The rest of him was smeared up the wall, across the bed, over the threadbare carpet. Some unidentifiable chunk had found its way up to the ceiling and snagged on the light-shade. Other than the muted thump of rap music coming from an adjoining flat, the only sound in the place was the soft plop…plop…plop as congealing blood dripped down onto the floor.

‘Keeping busy, Stone,’ Alex said out loud as she walked back out to the street.

Crowmoor Hall

9.56 p.m.

The clouds had parted and the full moon was sparkling on the early autumnal frost that covered the lawns of the stately home. Dec tiptoed through the grounds, glancing furtively around him as he went. The brass crucifix from his parents’ bedroom, thrust through his belt like a short sword on his left hip, was all that held back the rising tide of panic as the adrenalin-fuelled lust for revenge that had sustained him on the drive from Wallingford to Henley quickly ebbed away. The tremble in his hands was getting worse. He was beginning to think he’d been too hasty. He was a fool — should have called Joel Solomon before venturing out here alone like this.

The bare, crooked fingers of the trees seemed to claw at him as he made his way through the grounds. Things that had no place in this world would be awake now.

Perhaps watching him at this very moment from the shadows of the trees and the dark windows of the old house.

Too late. You’re here now.

Shivers seized him from head to toe as he heard the rustle of something moving towards him through the foliage. Unable to help himself, he broke into a run through the fallen leaves and crackling twigs. Something snagged his foot and he fell with a grunt and twisted in terror to look back — and saw the badger ambling away through the bushes.

Dec picked himself up, feeling stupid and shaken, and resumed his creeping progress towards the manor house. A breathless dash across the open stretch of lawn and he’d made it to the wall. With his back pressed tight against the pitted stonework and his heart in his mouth, he edged down its length, keeping his mind resolutely closed to the horrors inside.

Then, without warning, a side door burst open just a few yards ahead, and Dec almost collapsed in terror as a gaunt, bald-headed figure stepped out. This was it. He was caught. Out in the open, with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run. They must have been watching his approach from behind the darkened windows. His heart began to race out of control, his chest so tight it felt like his ribs would crack.

But nothing happened. Finch paused, looking out across the gardens, and Dec realised the man was quite unaware of his presence. Finch quietly shut the side door behind him and began to walk away from the house.

Dec swallowed hard, fighting to control the quaking in his knees. He peeled himself away from the wall and followed Finch across the grass, creeping stealthily from bush to bush. His hand moved to his belt and his fingers closed on the cold, reassuringly solid metal of the crucifix. As the moonlight shone off the back of Finch’s bald head, Dec imagined swinging the cross with all his might and splitting it open.

Kill the lackey first. Then move on to the rest of the bastards.

For Kate.

Finch walked on, following a winding path away from the lawns and through the trees, towards a dark, lopsided structure that looked like an old shed or gardener’s hut.

Finch opened the door with a creak, and stepped inside. For a few moments, Dec lost sight of him in the darkness and squinted to see. Then a soft glow of light filled the hut as Finch reappeared in the doorway holding a paraffin lantern.

Dec crouched behind a shrub and watched through the open door as Finch placed the lantern on a table before squatting down on the floor to pick something out of a cardboard box. It was some kind of package, wrapped up in paper like a bag of fish and chips. Dec watched breathlessly as the man carefully unwrapped it, dipped a hand inside and then brought his hand up to his mouth. Sure enough, he’d gone into the hut to eat.

Perfect, Dec thought. While the fucker was distracted, he’d sneak up on him and knock his brains out.

Dec moved closer.

Finch didn’t see him.

He moved a little closer.

Finch continued to eat, making little smacking sounds.

A few more steps. Dec raised the crucifix like an axe. His heart was thumping like crazy, and he had to fight to control his breathing.

Then he stopped.

And stared at the food in Finch’s hand, realising with a shock what it was that the man was munching on.

It wasn’t a piece of fish. It was a baby’s arm. Blue, mottled, severed above its dimpled little elbow. Finch was gnawing on the bone, sucking and slurping and groaning to himself in pleasure.

Dec didn’t even feel the crucifix slip from his fingers. The next thing he knew, he was running like hell away from the hut, sprinting across the grass. Which way was the wall? Which way? Twigs cracked and snapped underfoot and the leafless branches whipped his face as he stumbled along.

The sound of a voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

‘Hello, Declan.’

Very slowly, he turned.

He knew that voice.

She moved sinuously towards him. She was wearing a long white dress; it looked like a shroud in the darkness.

‘I knew you’d come,’ she said softly.

‘Kate?’ he gasped in astonishment. It was her…and it wasn’t.

He’d never seen her look this way before. The thin white material clung to every curve of her body as she stepped out into the patch of moonlight between the trees. He could see she was naked underneath.

‘But you’re dead.’

‘I didn’t die,’ she whispered to him. ‘My mother made it up, to keep us apart.’

She was beautiful. He couldn’t stop staring at her.

‘Kiss me, Declan,’ she said, and her lips parted

.