Stephen Leather - Once bitten

Do I trust her, that's the question. Can I trust her? Or do I trust the men in suits? If she's being honest then all I have to do is to tell her friend where she is and wait for them to break her out. But how long would that take? Marion Prison is the ultimate prison. You can't get within ten miles of it without being seen. There are less than four hundred prisoners and several thousand guards, and even inside the double security fence and its coils of razor-sharp barbed wire you can't move more than a few yards without having to go through a steel gate or pass a television camera. No-one has ever escaped from Marion. It's not just a place to hold violent criminals, either. The Government has a special holding unit there – seven cells in which they hold spies with information so secret that they can never be allowed to mix with other inmates. Ever. And Terry had told me that she and three others like her were being held eighteen levels below ground. How in God's name did she expect to escape? By being patient, maybe. By getting one of her own people into the prison system, by having them work their way into Marion Prison. But that would take years, decades probably, putting together a false work history, references, years in other prisons. I could be dead before they even came close to getting her out. Maybe they planned to get to one of the guards, blackmail him or kidnap his family. But I knew that the guards were specially chosen and positively vetted at regular intervals. It would be so difficult as to be virtually impossible. And what was I expected to do while they put together their escape plan? Was I to wait, getting older and older by the day? Greig Turner's turtle-like face flashes into my mind. How long did they expect me to wait? Would they trust me? Wouldn't they be better off killing me, so that they had all the time in the world?

The questions torment me and I take another drink of whisky. The lamp on the desk flickers and a rumble of thunder rattles the windows as I pick up the bottle of capsules and break the seal. It makes a small popping noise. I push the cap in and twist it open.

Was she lying when she said that I'd be with her forever? The men in the suits said that it wasn't possible, that the phenomena was genetic and couldn't be passed on, that the vampire's kiss was a kiss of death and not the start of life everlasting. If she was lying, her friend would certainly kill me. I put the plastic cap on the desktop and pour out the red and green capsules. They sit in an untidy pile next to the bottle of whisky, red and green, red and green.

They'd play back the tapes at some point, the men in suits. They'd sit there and listen to the conversation I had with Terry and they'd play it through again and they'd wonder why I was stuttering and why sometimes I appeared confused and they'd look closely at the video recording from the cameras hidden in the ventilation grilles. I don't suppose they'll see much otherwise they'd have seen it at the time and they'd never have allowed me to leave, but if they thought something was wrong then they might spot the arm movements and maybe, just maybe, they might put two and two together. If they did then they'd come for me to find out what she'd told me. They'd do everything in their power to force me to tell them. And if they thought I was trying to help her, they'd kill me, I was certain of that. They'd kill me and then they'd move Terry and the others like her to another secure place and this time they'd never have any visitors or maybe they'd use me as bait and through me trap her friends. She'd think I betrayed her.

I pick up one of the capsules and swallow it. It has no taste. I wash it down with a mouthful of whisky.

I've had plenty of time to think over the last ten years and I'm pretty sure what happened now.

Terry and her friends had been fishing for someone like me, somebody they could use to find out where the rest of their kind were being held. They'd had thousands of years of practice at covering their tracks and yet it had taken me only a few days to find out who and what they were. That just couldn't have been possible unless they'd wanted me to find out. It was a set-up from the start: the photograph of Greg Turner, the Porsche, the bank accounts. All signposts pointing the same way, leading me to the basement where she was waiting. And all the time, never too far away, the redneck in the pick-up, watching and waiting as she revealed the clues to me.

She allowed herself to be caught with Blumenthal's body, deliberately getting his blood on her face, she showed me her strength, her knowledge, her abilities, and then finally she showed me everything, knowing that she'd be found out and that the men from the Government would come for her. And she knew that I'd fall in love with her, that I'd move heaven and earth to be with her and that eventually I'd get to see her. All they had to do was wait and watch. It was just a matter of time. And time was something they had plenty of.

So what are my options? Terry's friend kills me, the men in suits kill me, or nobody kills me and I spend the rest of my life waiting for her and getting older day by day. The liver spots on the backs of my hands are getting bigger, The skin is more wrinkled, it's not as elastic as it used to be.

My teeth, the ones that aren't capped, are starting to go yellow. Not much, you probably wouldn't notice even if I smiled at you, but I can see the changes. I'm getting older and she's staying the same. I can't bear that.

I take another capsule and another mouthful of whisky.

The study wall opposite the desk flashes a brilliant white and the sky cracks again and from somewhere in the house I hear a noise, the sound of a chair being pushed in the darkness.

I love her so much, I don't want to betray her, and I don't want to get old and not be with her. I don't want to be abandoned. I don't want to be old and alone. I waited ten years to see her and now that I've seen her I know for sure that she was lying to me. I couldn't see it in her eyes. I looked deep into her black eyes and saw nothing but love and the promise that we'd be together for all time. I wanted to believe her eyes, but I knew that what I felt was purely subjective and that the only thing I could truly believe in was the Beaverbrook Program, and that had been unequivocal.

Terry was totally incapable of love, that's what the program had said. The questions I'd sprinkled through the psychological profiling appeared innocuous but taken together with the response times and keyboard pressure they told me what my eyes had failed to see. She was using me, her declaration that we'd be together was a lie. She loved me, in a way, that I'm sure of, but her loyalty to her own kind and her own survival were paramount. There was no way I could be with her forever. I would die and she'd live on, just as Sugar said. The capsules still have no taste, even when I swallow several at the same time. I wonder who will get to me first. The vampires. The men in suits. Or the capsules.