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

“Like Indiana Jones,” Connie said.

“Eh?”

“ Raiders of the Lost Ark . The end. You know?”

“You saw that?”

Connie shrugged. Lee had a brief, disturbing image of Connie sitting in darkened theaters, watching a movie while she selected who she would follow home. Right now, that wasn’t his business.

They started searching. He pulled the first box from the first shelf and lifted off the top. It was an archival box, sturdy and with a proper lid that didn’t need ripping or cutting open, and the contents were varied. A smashed jug, shards packed together in foam; a curved metal moon shape, rusted and rotting away; a handful of innocuous-looking pebbles in a wooden box. And, going through the box, Lee realized that he didn’t really know what he was looking for. He paused for a moment and looked at the other two—Patrick by the door, Connie just visible at the other end of the room, searching through the contents of the first shelf there—and then he started looking again. He’d have to assume that he’d know it when he found it.

He only hoped he’d lay hands on the Bane first. If that happened, he’d use it to kill the vampires that had come to London searching for it. And after that, these Humains.

Lee closed his eyes briefly, trying to shove down the sense of betrayal that idea prompted. Patrick had only ever been a prick to him, and Connie—

Just a little girl!

—pretended to be a young teenager, but she was likely older than him. Travesties of nature. And yet there was Rose, whose body he had once fantasized about, and who maintained some of her human cares and concerns.

“Fuck it,” he said quietly.

“What?” Patrick asked.

“Nothing. Moving on.” He took down another box and started rifling through its contents, but realized that he could never move on, not really. Whatever happened here tonight, whoever emerged from the British Museum after this was all over, there would always be one more vampire for him to hunt down.

Starting with that deceitful Olemaun bitch.

Flushed with blood, senses blazingly sensitive, Rose prowled the halls of the British Museum looking for something else to kill. Her clothes were sprayed with blood, her teeth rich with it. Her hands were smeared, and she licked between her fingers without really thinking about it, tongue snaking down across the back of her hand to lap at the droplets on her delicate arm hairs. She hadn’t fed that well since…

But she was dead, she thought. Her heart had stopped. It’s how Jane survives, taking blood just past the moment of death. There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with it.

There was more gunfire from a couple of rooms away, and Rose went that way, passing ancient Mayan statues that stared down at her with timeless ambivalence. She could imagine that a human would find these great silent halls spooky at night, places so used to the bustle of school groups and foreign visitors unsettling in their silence. But there was no silence now. More machine-gun fire erupted, and behind it came a scream she thought she knew.

Jane!

Rose ran, the feeding giving her speed. She sprinted silently into the great African hall where she thought the shooting had originated. She dashed fast and silent as a shadow, unconcerned at the bullets that might come her way, and she smelled something she had no wish to smell: insides and blood, but not of the living.

Jane was sprawled on the floor in a circular seating area, empty benches bearing witness to her demise. Her long skirt was played around her legs. Her head was a mashed mess, skull and brains scattered across a wide swath of floor. Rose could see the white scars of bullet marks beneath the gore from her shattered head, and imagined the shooter standing above her as he or she fired down at an angle.

Bastard! she thought, and it came as a surprise. Bastard! She and Jane had never really been friends. No Humains ever grew that close, and she suspected no vampires could, but the two of them had acknowledged their differences and let that be that.

She looked around, searching for the killer, and that was when she heard the groaning. She moved quickly, low and fast, and she was standing astride the huge man before he even knew it. His back was broken: he was hauling himself along with his hands, gun discarded, legs trailing behind him like a scarecrow’s. He rolled onto his back and stared up at her, opened his mouth to say something. But there was nothing to say.

Rose brought her foot down onto the man’s face with all her strength. His skull crumpled, and she felt the solid contact of her heel on the stone floor. Warmth flushed into her boot. She looked away, because she didn’t want to feed from the man who’d killed Jane. Then she kicked the mess from her foot and ran.

From the Egyptian room, she could hear the sounds of vampires hissing, and as she approached the entrance archway a brief flash of light brought her up short.

She screamed, hands covering her face. It was dark again, but the UV flash had imprinted itself on her pupils, burning into them an echo of the wall, sculptures, and floor patterns. She leant over and rubbed at her wounded eyes, and from the next room heard the agonized screams of more injured vampires.

I have to move past this, she thought. Got to get through to help. That’ll be Francesco in there, and it sounds like there are two of them . So she moved again, blinking rapidly and willing her sight to return. She saw Francesco first of all, turning the UV light in her direction and squatting down as he prepared to turn it on.

“It’s me!” she shouted, and then a vampire barreled into Francesco, knocking him to the ground and going at him with hands and teeth. Francesco fought back, and even through her blurred vision she saw the staggering violence being wrought on both vampire and Humain.

She leapt forward to help and then sensed movement to her left. She turned her head just in time for the other blinded vampire—eyes still steaming, thick gore singed onto his cheeks—to fill her field of vision. Rose went down, and the first swipe of his hand opened her cheeks and tore off most of her nose.

This one was strong. Stronger by far than the vampire that had attacked Marty and which she’d fought off. She tried to buck him aside, but his weight seemed pinned down, far heavier than he looked. She slashed back at him and felt her long, sharp fingernails parting skin, raking through flesh. But it seemed to have no effect. She could smell the cooked ruins of the vampire’s eyes and she poked her fingers at them, feeling her right thumb sinking into one sticky socket. The vampire hissed and drew back, and that allowed her the opportunity she needed. She sat up and flung her head forward, forehead connecting with his lower jaw and driving it downward, repeating the motion quickly until she heard a satisfying snap.

Francesco and the other vampire were on their feet, circling one another, their faces and chests tattered and torn.

From the distance came a low, persistent howl, grumbling like a large machine’s motor. Both vampires paused, heads tilted to one side as they listened. Rose saw immediately what was about to happen. She reached forward, still sitting up, and clawed into the flesh of the vampire’s thigh.

With one sweep of its arm, it knocked her hand aside, fingers and wrist snapping. She hissed and watched the two vampires run, flowing across the hall and then disappearing into shadows. She heard a door slam somewhere, and then the terrible silence.

“What the hell was that?” she growled, nursing her ruined hand. Everywhere ached as her body began repairing.

“Their master calling them back,” Francesco said. “They might have found it.”