Scott Mariani - The Cross

‘Where were you?’ Chloe asked.

‘Answering the call of nature,’ Alex said, putting something away in the small pouch she wore on her belt. Joel had seen Vambloc before, but Chloe was understandably ignorant of the ways of a modern-day vampire. ‘Vampires use the bathroom?’

‘I wasn’t talking about the bathroom,’ Alex told her. Catching Chloe’s look, she added, ‘Listen, if I’m travelling with humans I’ll understand if they need to stop off to go to a restaurant twice a day. You got a plate of something on the ferry, now it’s my turn. You get my meaning?’

‘You’re sick.’

‘We’re vampires. Get used to it. Or get walking.’ Alex turned to Joel. ‘Are you all right?’

He said nothing. He was too busy staring at the tiny drop of fresh blood that was lodged in the corner of her lip. Realising, she dabbed it with her finger and offered it towards his mouth. When he turned his head away, she sighed and got into the car.

‘Let’s go. We still have a lot of miles to cover.’

*

The journey continued. By late afternoon they’d left the motorway for winding country roads that carried them onto higher ground, where the sleet had given way to snow and the red glint of the setting sun trickled down the white-capped mountains. They saw little other traffic. Dec was glued to the window, filling his eyes with the scenery before it faded into darkness.

The last glow was sinking below the horizon when they passed an unmanned border control and Alex said, ‘Welcome to Switzerland.’

‘Why are we stopping?’ Joel asked her.

‘To get our bearings,’ she said, braking carefully on the slippery road and pulling the Jag over to the white verge. With the motor idling softly and the windscreen wipers batting away the snowflakes, she reached into the pouch behind her seat and pulled out a tiny notebook computer.

‘Senior field agent privilege,’ she said to Joel. ‘This gives me mobile wi-fi access to the whole VIA database. I can pull up anything I like on any Federation subject in the world, from anywhere in the world. Specifically’ — tapping keys — ‘every single registered address for any given member. And they make them register them all, believe me, even if it’s just a holiday home.’

‘Sounds more like a dictatorship than a Federation to me,’ Joel said.

‘The thought’s occurred to me more than once,’ she replied with a sour smile. ‘But right now, I’m not sorry. Being the pawn of a dictatorial regime can sometimes have its advantages.’ When the search box she’d been waiting for popped up on the little screen, she typed in the name Baxter Burnett. In an instant, his whole profile had come up.

Joel’s eyes opened wide. ‘The actor?’

‘I told you Jeremy Lonsdale wasn’t the only VIP Gabriel Stone hooked up with,’ Alex said.

‘You never told me it was Baxter Burnett the movie star.’

‘Who?’ Dec asked, his face appearing in the gap between the front seats and peering at the laptop screen glowing in the darkness. ‘Fuck me, that’s Baxter Burnett! He was in that fillum The Rat Pus , so he was.’

‘It was The Raptus ,’ Alex said. ‘And you shouldn’t really be seeing this.’ Not that it really mattered any more, she thought, not if the Federation was history, and maybe it was this time.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Dec exclaimed, staring at the screen. ‘Are you saying he’s a frigging … I mean, he’s one of you?’

‘Managed to keep it secret from his adoring fans long enough,’ Alex said. ‘Looks like the cat’s out of the bag now, though.’ She scrolled down Baxter’s list of registered addresses. He spent so much time at the Ritz that the Trafalgar Suite was one of them, along with his homes in LA, Bermuda and Antibes. Right at the bottom of the list was The Eagle’s Nest, the name Baxter had chosen for his mountain retreat near Zermatt. Alex cocked an eyebrow. Maybe Baxter had never heard of Adolf Hitler. Or maybe he had, the little closet Nazi.

‘Gotcha,’ she said, flipping the computer screen down and typing the location into the satnav.

Seconds later, their route flashed up on the little screen.

‘If all goes according to plan,’ Alex told her passengers, ‘exactly one hundred and thirty-seven kilometres from here is where we’re going to find Gabriel Stone.’ She replaced the computer in the pouch behind her seat and grabbed her pistol from its hiding place under the centre console. ‘I hope he’s having a hell of a good time right now,’ she said. ‘Because it’s the last chance he’ll ever get.’

Gabriel was, in fact, having a very enjoyable time indeed. After another productive evening’s hunting, he and Kali were nicely sated with the blood of five random victims — one middle-aged couple hijacked in their car, one fairly old but healthy male who’d put up an admirably spirited resistance before they’d run him down in the woods and ripped him open, and, as an unexpected bonus, two young females walking along the snowy roadside who’d made the mistake of trying to thumb a lift in the Ferrari. Foolish but tasty.

It had been such a productive evening that they’d decided to return home early to open some more of their absent host’s vintage champagne and settle down to luxuriate a while in front of a roaring log fire. The night was still young as the vampires rode the cable car back up the steep valley and made their giggling, playful, light-hearted way back upstairs.

‘My dear, I believe there is still a bottle left of the ‘76,’ Gabriel said absently as he strolled into the dark living room and across the sheepskin rug towards the fireplace, where he struck a match and tossed it on the bed of dry kindling and logs he’d prepared earlier. Vampires had no warmth requirements, but an open fire was a pleasure he’d always relished and would relish again tonight: the spit and crackle of the flames, the dance of their glow against the honey smoothness of Kali’s skin. He was distracted for a moment as he watched the fire leap up and take hold.

Then, suddenly alerted by his senses, he whirled round. To his amazement, Lillith and Zachary were standing at the far end of the room, the firelight flickering on their faces.

‘My friends,’ he began, walking towards them with open arms. ‘What are you …’ His voice trailed away and his eyes narrowed as he realised they weren’t alone.

Alex stepped out from behind Zachary, the pistol aimed carefully at her prisoners but just as carefully out of their reach. She knew how fast they could move, especially Lillith. ‘Look what we found at the bottom of the mountain,’ she said.

Joel stepped out from the shadows, still slightly flushed from the little bit of exercise he’d done a few minutes earlier. While Alex and the humans had held the hostages in the chalet, it had been his job to ride the cable car back down to the boarding station below and return on foot, running back along the cable tracks with nothing but his sense of balance between him and a very long drop. In his hand was the katana he’d taken from Bal Mawr. He rested its razor-sharp edge against Zachary’s neck.

‘They caught us in the valley, Gabriel,’ Lillith said.

‘We were coming to warn you …’ Zachary began, but Joel pressed the katana blade harder against his throat and he went quiet.

‘I remember you,’ Gabriel said, eyeing Joel. ‘Solomon. The lawman. The intrepid detective. You have undergone a stage of evolution since we last met, it seems. I wish I could offer you a warmer welcome to the vampire race, but you appear to have chosen to stand alongside traitors.’

‘I’m not here for the Federation’s sake,’ Joel said, mastering the tremor of anger and fear in his voice. ‘I just want to see you sent to hell, you and all your evil kind.’