Tim Lebbon - 30 Days of Night - Fear of the Dark

“Lee,” Rose said again.

“Fine,” Lee said. “Reason away.” He caught Francesco’s gaze and held it this time, trying to project confidence and strength. The vampire smiled thinly and stood, pacing the room with one hand clasped to the wound in his hip. Is that healing already? Lee wondered. Is it bleeding, is the flesh growing back, is the bone fixing itself where the bolt chipped at it? All these things and more he wondered, then realized in that instant that the answers were here before him. Everything he’d ever wanted to know about vampires—their physiology, habits, beliefs, religion, outlook, aging and healing processes, thoughts and desires—he could discover from Francesco, Rose, and the others. These two were his main contacts, but he’d met Jane a few times, and the Irishman. Was this an opportunity he could truly pass up?

Perhaps he could swing this deception to his own advantage. He had been their inside man for a long time; now perhaps he could start taking instead of giving. And when the time came to use everything he found out… then his life would find meaning once again.

“You going to keep pacing like that, or talk?” Lee said.

“Just thinking of how best to put this,” Francesco said. “But, honestly, there’s only one way I can say it: we need you.”

“Haven’t you used me enough?”

“Nothing like we need you now. The vampires are here in London looking for something, and we have to find it before they do.”

Lee’s eyes flickered to Marty and back again. Francesco shook his head.

“Not him. They needed to get to us first, that’s all. See if we’d help or hinder them.”

“I think they’ve got the answer on that one,” Rose said.

“The boy was…” Francesco held out his hands.

“A fringe benefit,” Rose said. “Bastards found it amusing to try feeding from him while trying to get us on their team.”

“‘Team’?” Lee asked. “And what is it they’re looking for?”

“Something that might give them the power to expose themselves.”

“That’s what we want!” Lee said, but saw the inaccuracy in that statement. It was what he wanted.

“Not us,” Francesco said. “You and we have similar objectives, but different reasons for pursuing them. You want to expose vampires to make them vulnerable. If people believe in them, they fear them less. They become a fact rather than a fiction, and facts can be dealt with. Analyzed.”

“Killed.”

“We want protection from exposure,” Francesco continued. “To exist alongside humans, unknown and silent. Yes, we’ve used you, but only to keep track of what’s going on in the wider world. You were never used for anything… bad.”

“I helped a gang of vampires survive for—”

“No,” Francesco said. “Don’t get above yourself. You gave us information, that’s all.” They’re isolated, Lee thought. I’m their eyes and ears .

“So you want to live alongside people without harming them. What are you, some kind of hippie vampire?”

Francesco smiled but did not answer.

“What are they looking for?” Lee asked.

“It’s called the Bane.”

Lee blinked in surprise and looked from one vampire to the other, but then he saw how they were staring at him and quickly reined in his reaction. Watching to see if I’ve heard of it . So he frowned and shrugged, a signal for Francesco to go on.

“An old artifact,” Francesco continued. “Some believe the vampire that wields it will gain power, enabling it to lead, take control. Be overt for the first time. Instead of a few vampires here and there, there’ll be thousands. Instead of occasional deaths among the human population, the population will become livestock. And that’ll be the end of everything.”

“And that doesn’t appeal to you Humains? Rising from the shadows?”

“It’s the shadows that keep us alive.”

“You’ve heard of the Bane?” Rose asked.

“No. Why do they think it’s in London?”

“That’s where they have us at a disadvantage,” Francesco said. “And where you can help.”

“You want me to find it for you.”

“Before they do,” Francesco said. “We’re together in this, you and us. Our aim must be the same.”

“You’re appealing to my vanity?” Lee said, almost smiling.

“Not at all,” Francesco said, and the danger beneath his soft smile and gentle voice was suddenly brought into sharp focus. Here was a man whose look could cut diamond. “I’m giving you one chance to stay alive. We don’t kill to feed, but more than once I’ve had to kill to survive.”

Lee shivered. He couldn’t help it. “I’ve got no choice, have I?”

“Well, there’s always a choice,” Francesco said.

The Bane! Lee had heard whispers of it several times, and there were a couple of people in his network who claimed to have found documented evidence of its capabilities. He could contact them… but on his own. Because something this old and obscure attracted stories that varied from mouth to mouth. Some believed that the thing had never existed at all, and was as obscure and mythical as Excalibur. Others thought it might once have existed in some form but, like the Grail, was lost to antiquity. And though one rumor did indeed claim that it would give its vampire bearer great power… there was another.

It was this story that gave Lee hope that, through Marty’s misfortune and this shocking exposure, he might gain the means to do what he’d craved for a decade.

Kill all the vampires.

He smiled and nodded, and when Francesco came to shake his hand, Lee didn’t hesitate for an instant.

MARTY FELT LIKE SHIT. It was like the worst hangover he’d ever had. Everything around him had taken on a piercing tint, the artificial light bright and sharp as glass shards. He squinted, but that only tensed his face and made it ache. It reminded him why he never got drunk anymore.

“Bastard,” he said for the tenth time.

“He’s had a hell of a shock,” Rose said. “You’ve got to allow that.”

“He was ready to kill you!”

“Well, I am a vampire. Killing vampires is his raison d’être .”

“I thought you said you were a Humain.”

“Murderers and pacifists are still both human.”

They were sitting in one of the well-appointed, barely used downstairs rooms. They sat on either side of the huge, cold fireplace, in high-backed chairs that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Sherlock Holmes’s study. The large kitchen was through an open doorway, and the rest of the walls were lined either with bookcases or framed paintings of London landscapes. Most of the pictures were old and dusty, some of the canvases torn and tattered in places. The books were the sort Marty had seen in stately homes when his parents used to take him and Rose on day trips—thick, elaborately bound tomes in Latin or French, their contents long since lost to obscurity. They were decoration, nothing more. The books Lee used for his day-to-day obsession were in his office upstairs, stacked on a couple of old oak desks or piled on the floor beside his computer station. Marty had seen at least three copies of a book called 30 Days of Night, one of them torn up with pages reshuffled, marked, highlighted, and labeled.

They’d left Francesco and Lee up in the study. Rose said it was because they wanted Marty away from there; he’d had a traumatic time, and more talk of vampires could be damaging to him. But he wasn’t stupid, and he’d already seen and sensed the truth. Francesco had no space in his heart for a troubled human, not compared to the other challenges facing them now. They just didn’t want Marty to hear too much.