Scott Mariani - Uprising

Joel knew he couldn’t keep this level of concentration up much longer. He was going to crash.

Village signs flashed by faster than he could read them. At a hundred and sixty miles an hour the narrow little street was an amber-lit tunnel. The McLaren was moving even faster. Suddenly, a van pulled out of a sidestreet and started turning in the narrow road. The sports car braked hard, swerved to avoid it and spun wildly. It smashed through a garden fence, sending up a shower of torn planking and jagged splinters, then went careening across a lawn before it rejoined the road.

Joel saw he’d gained precious seconds on his quarry — but in the same instant he was almost on the van as it kept turning out across his path. There was no time to brake. He aimed the bike at the rapidly narrowing gap between the van’s front wing and the wall of the house opposite. For a terrifying fraction of a second he thought he was going to hit it, go smashing right through the brickwork like a missile and end up as a pile of dead meat in someone’s living room. He tucked in his knees and elbows, ducked in low behind the dials, and then somehow he was safely through the gap and roaring onwards up the street after the frenziedly accelerating McLaren.

They were heading towards the outer limits of the village now. A roadsign whipped by, almost too fast for Joel to register that there was a level crossing coming up ahead. Warning beacons were flashing, a bell was ringing. The barriers were down, blocking the road. Beyond the barriers was the clattering rumble of a train streaking by.

The McLaren’s brake lights blazed red as it screeched to a halt. The vampire was trapped. The only sidestreet was blocked by a sprawl of building works that stretched from the roadside to the edge of the tracks: Portacabins, tall heaped piles of sand and gravel, cement mixers.

Joel suddenly found himself gaining fast on the car. His heart began to flutter.

The chase might be over but the danger was only just beginning. As he shut the throttle and let the bike decelerate, he was imagining the car door opening. The driver getting out. Immortal. Unstoppable.

And no fool. It would know just from the look on his face that he’d been bluffing, he didn’t have some mythical cross on him. Then what? He didn’t want to imagine what would happen next.

But the car door didn’t open. The McLaren seemed to hesitate for just an instant, then its engine rasped and it slewed round in a tight circle and came right for him.

Joel hit the front brake — too hard. The wheel lost traction on the wet road, and with a sickening lurch he felt the front end go out from underneath him. The crash seemed to happen in slow motion. He felt himself sailing through the air. A grunt exploded from his lungs as he hit the ground. The bike slid on its side, sparks showering up from the tarmac. The blinding car headlights sped towards him.

Joel put out his hand just as the car seemed about to run him over.

It didn’t happen. Fifteen yards from where he lay sprawled on the wet road, the McLaren skidded into a handbrake turn. Fire crackled in its exhaust muzzles and smoke poured from the wheel arches as it accelerated frenetically back in the direction of the moving train.

Joel held his breath in anticipation of the devastating impact. But just a few yards short of the level crossing barrier the McLaren veered off course. It aimed at the building works near the tracks and hit the tall sand pile at more than eighty miles an hour. Its engine revs screamed as it took off like an aircraft, and with a huge cloud of sand in its wake it sailed straight over the top of the barriers and cleared the roof of the train by inches. He heard the crump and the squeal and bounce of tyres as it hit the road on the other side. Then it was gone.

Seconds later, the train had passed by and Joel could see the car’s taillights disappearing up the dark country road into the distance.

He struggled to his feet, wiping the grit from his grazed, bloodied hands.

The level crossing barriers were beginning to rise. With all his remaining strength, Joel wrenched the fallen Yamaha upright — then saw the left handlebar hanging uselessly from its shattered yoke, the broken clutch lever, the hydraulic fluid leaking all over the road. He yelled in rage and let the damaged bike topple over with a crash.

It was three minutes to midnight. He started limping back up the road the way he’d come.

Two minutes to midnight, and claws of mist were groping in from the river as Alex and Greg walked along the deserted quays of the London docks. To their left stood rows of storage units in varying states of repair, and the dark water gurgled against the quayside on their right. The hulls of vast ships bobbed slowly on the swell and cast heavy shadows on the concrete. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. Across the water, the lights of new docklands residential developments were haloed in the mist.

‘You’re pissed off with me, aren’t you?’

Alex said nothing.

‘I can tell. Because of what happened earlier.’

‘I’m not pissed off with you. I’m worried about you. You can’t keep holding out like this, living on vampire baby food. Rudi’s right. You’re going to have to cross the bridge. Otherwise—’

‘I’ll die?’

‘No, you won’t die. You can’t die. What’ll happen to you is a lot worse than death. You’ll wither. You’ll become trapped in a twilight world that you’ll never be able to escape from. A wraith is what you’ll be.’

He looked down at his feet as they walked. ‘Is it normal? I mean, do other people, I mean, vampires, do they—’

‘Have trouble adapting to it?’ She nodded. ‘Some. It happens.’

‘What was it like for you? The first time?’

‘It was easy,’ she said.

‘I shouldn’t have asked. Sorry.’

‘It’s okay. I don’t mind talking about it. It was easy for me because I wanted revenge.’

‘Revenge?’

She paused, took a breath. ‘When I was twenty-nine, I was engaged to someone. His name was William. The only man I ever loved. He was an artist.’ She sighed. ‘One night he was walking across Hampstead Heath when three men robbed him and knifed him. He managed to stagger home, but by the time I was called it was too late. He died in my arms. Nothing I could do except hold him until he was gone.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I used to walk out across the Heath at night afterwards. I’d go to the spot where it happened, sit there for hours. I didn’t even care if I got murdered. As it turned out, someone did get me. But it wasn’t a murderer. And I wanted it to happen. Because that was the only way I could get back at the men who’d killed William. It didn’t take me long to find them. And they paid. That was my first time. 1897.’

‘You still miss William?’ Greg asked after a beat.

‘Yeah, I do miss him.’

‘A hundred and thirteen years is a long time to grieve.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, it’s a very long time,’ she said quietly. ‘A lot has changed. I was Alexandra then.’

‘That’s a nice name.’

‘She was a nice person. I miss her too, sometimes.’ Alex was going to say more, then stopped.

They walked on a few yards in silence.

‘So…you aren’t seeing anyone right now?’ Greg asked.

Alex looked at him curiously.

‘I mean, do you live alone, or what?’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Are you by any chance hitting on me, Agent Shriver?’

‘You have a really great smile.’

‘I’m not smiling.’

‘Yes, you are. You were just then. See, there you go again.’

‘Definitely not smiling.’

They’d walked a long way from the car. The angular shape of a cargo ship loomed up over them, hardly moving on the swell, just a slight sway of its towering superstructure as the water lapped and splashed against its long, rusted hull. The white stencilled lettering on the vessel’s bows spelt out Anica.