Scott Mariani - Uprising

As she passed the bed, her sadness sharpened. At the foot of the bed was an oak chest. She stopped, kneeled. While everything else in her apartment was ultra-modern, the chest was pitted with age, splits in the wood patched here and there with metal plates. She and that old chest went back a long way. It had been a while since she’d last opened it.

She reached for the little key she wore around her neck and unclipped it from its leather thong. It was made of the same pitted black metal as the lock of the chest. It slid smoothly into the lock and sprung the mechanism with a tiny click. She carefully lifted the lid until it rested against the foot of the bed.

Inside were her memories.

The diamond and sapphire engagement ring was still as bright and sparkling as the day William had given it to her. She smiled sadly at it, then closed the scuffed, battered little box and replaced it at the bottom of the chest. There was the bundle of letters, still tied with the same yellow ribbon. The lock of his golden hair. The one photograph she had of him, long ago faded to a dull sepia tone.

She gazed at it. Such a long time ago, but she could still remember every moment they’d had together. She could recall the touch of his skin against hers, the softness of his voice, the infectiousness of his laugh.

I’ll come back to you one day, my love.

Those had been his last words to her. A day she didn’t like to remember, but whose memory she couldn’t chase. Not in a hundred and thirteen years.

I’ll come back.

But she was still waiting.

Or was she? As she caressed the faded image with her thumb, she thought about Joel Solomon. It was uncanny. They could have been brothers, twins.

Alexandra Bishop, born 1869, turned 1897, would never have believed in such a thing as reincarnation, as William had. But then, back in those days, she’d never have believed in vampires, either.

She gazed at the picture a while longer, then laid it back inside the chest and shut the lid.

The far wall of the bedroom was one huge solid expanse of mirror. She walked towards it, snatching a remote control off a table as she went. She didn’t slow her pace and, just as she was about to walk straight into the glass, she pressed the button on the remote and the partition instantly slid aside to reveal the hidden room beyond. She stepped inside, aimed the remote behind her and slid the wall shut again.

She was in her weapons room.

The place was as utilitarian as it could be. On a steel wall rack were a pair of assault rifles, a cut-down shotgun and two ex-MOD submachine guns. Beside those, another rack holding four identical.50-calibre Desert Eagle pistols. The opposite wall was covered in industrial shelving, and in between was the workbench where she handloaded her own ammunition. She’d never trusted the stuff that VIA issued the agents. Bolted to the bench was a reloading press with a rotating platform that housed half-a-dozen empty glittering brass cartridge cases at a time. Mounted on top, a clear plastic hopper was filled with peppery gunpowder. It was Alex’s little personal production line.

She sat at the bench and worked the lever on the press. Ker-chunk. One pull to fill up each case with powder. Another pull to ram home the fat half-inch hollowpoint bullets and seat them firmly in the mouths of the cases. After five minutes, she had a batch of thirty.50 Action Express rounds ready — or they would have been, for use on a normal target. For Alex’s purposes, there was one more stage to perform.

She sat the cartridges upright in a row on the bench. Pulled on thick rubber gloves and a surgical mask, then took a plastic flask from one of the shelves. The label was marked ‘Nosferol’. Beside the name was a little skull and crossbones. If you looked closely, the skull had tiny fangs. Some joker at the Federation pharma plant’s idea of humour.

She carefully unscrewed the top. One whiff of the fumes would be enough to destroy her. She hated working with the stuff, but it was her job sometimes to do things she hated.

The level in her flask was getting low. She made a mental note to put in an order for some more. Then, using a squeezy disposable pipette, she dripped five drops into the hollow tip of each bullet, working her way along the line until all thirty were charged with the poison. Still wearing the gloves and mask, she lit a church candle and delicately sealed over the end of each bullet with molten wax. That was the most critical part of the operation. If the Nosferol wasn’t completely sealed in, even a tiny leakage could be disastrous to her.

She waited a few minutes for the wax to set, then loaded the cartridges into a batch of spare magazines, ready for use. Job done. She closed up the weapons room, taking the mags and the most worn and comfortable of the Desert Eagles with her.

She was finishing getting changed to go out when she heard the doorbell. The security monitor in the hallway showed Greg standing outside, shifting nervously from foot to foot. She smiled to herself, then put on a stern face and answered the door.

‘Right on time,’ Greg said.

‘Amazing. Let’s go.’

‘So where is it we’re going?’ Greg asked as she wove the Jag at top speed through the night traffic. ‘Jesus, do you always drive like this?’

‘To see Rudi Bertolino,’ she said. ‘He called me to say he’s got some information.’

‘The ragu sauce guy. I remember.’

‘Rudi’s a little more than that. He owns the famous Last Bite Bar and Grill on St James’s. Wait till you see it. He’s also one of my prime informers.’

‘He’s…’

‘You’re so coy. Why don’t you just say it? Yes, he’s one of us, he’s a vampire.

You’ll like him, too. Everyone does. A lot of us hang out there. It’s kind of a vampire restaurant.’

‘Right. So vampires can actually eat, like, real food?’ he asked, looking hopeful.

The back of a bus was looming up alarmingly fast. ‘Watch—’

She twisted the wheel smartly and missed the bus by an inch. ‘Sure, we can eat.

It’s a social occasion, and human food tastes pretty good. Especially if it comes out of Rudi Bertolino’s kitchen. Thing is, though, you could pig out on it every day and still starve. There’s no nutrition in it, not for us.’

‘Shit. For a minute there, I was kind of hoping—’

‘We’re vampires, Greg. It’s what we do. Get used to it.’ She sighed reproachfully.

‘Not feeding yet, then?’

‘Don’t bring that up again. Makes me sick even to think of it.’

‘Of course it does. That’s normal enough. But that feeling doesn’t last. Trust me.’

‘Wonderful. Looking forward to it.’

‘Taken your Solazal today?’

‘What are you, my mother?’

‘When I see a helpless little vampire baby, I get these irrepressible maternal urges. Plus I don’t want you frazzling up too close to me.’

‘Thank you so much,’ he muttered. ‘Helpless little baby. So what information does this Rudi guy have for us?’

‘That’s what we’re going to find out.’

The Last Bite Bar and Grill, open dusk till dawn, was one of central London’s most in and super-trendy hangouts for vampires, movie stars, rock musicians, other assorted celebrities and those wannabes that could afford to eat, drink and party there.

Rudi Bertolino, its owner-manager, was a vampire with his ear to the ground. For a yacht-owning, Porsche-driving multi-millionaire restaurateur he moved in some pretty low places — maybe that was just him keeping in touch with his past selling fish in the street markets of old Napoli, back when he’d been human. In return for the information he passed Alex from time to time, she turned a blind eye to the fact that he occasionally violated Federation rules by knocking off a human and putting their blood in the food to appeal to the real vampires among his clientele.