Uprising

Chapter Sixty-Five

‘Where are you?’ said Rumble’s voice on the phone.

‘Still in Italy,’ Alex said. ‘I’m on a train heading for Bologna. Flying back to London from there.’

Her carriage was empty apart from her, a couple of backpackers and a businessman who’d fallen asleep behind his laptop. Quarter to one in the morning, and the train was speeding through the night, chattering softly on its rails. In the distance were the scattered lights of a village.

‘Bologna?’

‘It’s a long story, Harry.’ Since she’d boarded the train in Venice earlier that night, afraid to return to the hotel or fly straight back to London in case she bumped into Joel or found herself on the same plane as him, Alex had been putting a lot of thought into how she was going to explain herself to Rumble. It was hard to think straight with her head full of what had happened between her and Joel. She cursed herself for her weakness.

‘Save it for when I see you,’ Rumble said. ‘Is Solomon with you? Can you talk?’

She bit her lip. ‘I’m alone right now.’

‘You wouldn’t be coming back unless you’d found the cross,’ Rumble said. ‘Am I right?’ He sounded excited. That wasn’t going to last long, Alex thought.

‘Yeah, we found it. It was hidden under an old church. It had been there for centuries.’

‘The legends — they’re true?’

‘You wouldn’t want to get too close, if that’s what you mean.’

‘But the case — the lead lining — it worked? The way you thought it would?’

‘It worked fine.’

‘This is great. Congratulations, Alex. When you land, I want you to bring it straight here to VIA. Then we’ll figure out the next step.’

Alex gritted her teeth. She’d given him the good news. Now for the bit she was dreading.

‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Harry. The truth is, I don’t have it any longer.’

Rumble paused a beat, his excitement fading fast. ‘What the hell do you mean, you don’t have it?’

‘We were attacked.’

‘Stone’s people?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that they were humans. Nothing I could do, Harry. They took it.’

Rumble was silent for a beat as the news sank in. ‘You let a bunch of humans take the cross from you? How can that be?’

‘You had to be there, Harry. It just happened that way.’ Alex knew she was landing herself in a whole storm of trouble saying it, but it was a better option than telling Rumble the truth. If VIA got wind of the fact that Joel Solomon had the cross and meant to use it — not just against the Federation’s enemies but indiscriminately, against any vampire he could find — his death sentence was as good as written. And she knew all too well that she’d be the field agent chosen to hunt him down and kill him.

She’d bought some time with the lie. Now she had to find a way to find Joel and take the cross back from him. How to do that without either hurting him, or getting herself destroyed in the process, was something she’d have to figure out as she went along. All she knew was that the clock was ticking for her. If he started zapping vampires all over the place and the news got back to the Feds, she had a date with the termination chamber.

‘This is serious, Agent Bishop,’ Rumble said.

It was a bad sign when he called her that. ‘Tell me about it,’ she replied.

‘Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re not flying back to London tonight. I want you to get your arse over to Brussels for the FRC conference tomorrow afternoon, two thirty sharp.’ He paused. ‘And…Agent Bishop?’

She knew what was coming from the change in his tone.

‘You’d better start thinking about how you’re going to explain to the Ruling Council how, with all the other shit that’s hitting the fan, you allowed a weapon that’s been safely hidden away for centuries to fall into the hands of the enemy.’