by Philip Henry
Kaaliz looked down at the torchlight moving around inside the building. “What do you think she’s doing in there?”
Sin shrugged. “Weapons maybe. Or looking up your history to see if there’s a familiar place you would go. Basic procedural shit like that.”
They turned as a motorcycle sped up the road and screeched to a stop beside Nicholl’s car. “Who the hell is that guy?” asked Kaaliz.
Rek got off his bike and saw the Ministry doors were open. He ran up the steps and inside. It was dark but he heard noises coming from the records room. He ran cautiously to the door and saw the torchlight illuminating one filing cabinet. There was a woman going through the files. Rek studied her from toes to head, stopping at the halfway point and again at the three-quarters point, when vampire matters left his mind completely for a few seconds.
“Can I help you with something?” Rek shouted across the room.
Nicholl spun quickly and by the time she had turned she had a gun in her hand and it was aimed at Rek’s head. “Who the hell are you?” she snapped.
“Don’t worry, we’re on the same side.”
“How do you know what side I’m on?” Nicholl asked.
“Two things: 1) you wouldn’t have been able to come in here if you were a vampire, and 2) the front door was unlocked, not kicked in. I’ll bet you’ve been sent by Ministry HQ to recapture Kaaliz.”
“Recapture nothing,” she said putting her gun away. “That fucker’s dead when I catch up with him.” She looked at Rek, unimpressed. Even though he was definitely good-looking according to her taste: a little taller than she was, slim but not weedy, longish, sandy-coloured hair and brown eyes. He wore jeans, a T-shirt and a black leather jacket. If Nicholl had been looking for someone for a dinner date he would have been perfect, but she wasn’t. What she really needed was some battle-hardened vampire hunter that would be able to help her. The man standing before her didn’t look like he had ever missed a meal or a night’s sleep or had gone without shaving for more than a day. “So, who are you?”
“I’m the last Ministry agent left in the area. My name’s Rek.”
“That doesn’t sound like a surname.”
“Oh, right, we’re supposed to only use surnames. Then I’m…”
“Never mind, Rek. I’m Nicholl. Where’s your file on Kaaliz?”
Rek walked slowly towards her. “Why do you need it? Everything we have was copied and sent to HQ.”
“HQ is gone!” Nicholl said, louder than she intended. She couldn’t remember the last time she slept and she was becoming more and more unfocussed and irritable. She exhaled and calmed herself. “Sorry. I guess you haven’t heard. Kaaliz bombed Ministry HQ. There’s nothing left.”
“Holy shit.” Rek suddenly understood just how big a threat Kaaliz was. Some vampires are happy to keep a low profile and kill discreetly only when they had to. Kaaliz wasn’t like that; he would do whatever he pleased on any scale and with no regard for his own safety. He was a superpowered sociopath. Rek looked at the filing cabinet Nicholl had been searching. “It’s not in there. Those are all vampires that have been executed. The open case files are over here.” Rek led Nicholl to the other side of the room and pointed to a red filing cabinet. “Sorry, I don’t have a key.”
Nicholl looked at him suspiciously and took her master key from her pocket and unlocked the cabinet. “Just how long were you a Ministry agent before this place got closed, Rek?”
Rek looked embarrassed. “Four months.”
“Oh God,” Nicholl whispered as she opened the filing cabinet drawer and started flicking through the files. “Ever even seen a vampire?”
“Yes, I saw Kaaliz and a redheaded woman vampire this evening,” Rek said, getting annoyed. “I don’t know who she is, but it was definitely Kaaliz.”
Nicholl pulled Kaaliz’s file from the cabinet and opened it. She started reading as she spoke to Rek. “Well, no offence, Rek, but I think you should go home. You’re not qualified to hunt Kaaliz and I can’t afford to be watching out for you as well as fighting him. Is this all there is on Kaaliz?”
Rek slapped the file from her hand. “Yes, that’s all there is. Not because our office was lazy or incompetent, but because he was alive less than a week when you guys caught him. And I may not be qualified but I’m the only ally you have and I would think you could use all the help you can get. I’ve been tracking him ever since he showed up and I know where he’s gone and what he’s done. I know this area inside out and I’ve trained myself in all the weapons over the years, so don’t worry about protecting me; I can handle myself.”
Nicholl was impressed with his outburst. “I’ll bet there’s a story behind all that rage.”
“There is. If we live long enough I’ll maybe even tell it to you.”
“Is there a soft seat in this place? I think we should compare notes.”
Rek led her upstairs to one of the residential rooms. The room was plush and furnished with dark wood and deep reds. The furniture was antique and had probably been bought for the Ministry when it was new. There was a fireplace with a painting of Oliver Dwyer, the founder of the Ministry of the Shield, hanging above it and dominating the room. In the portrait he had an unforgiving look on his face and was dressed simply in a black suit with a white shirt and a hat clutched under his arm. Rek built a fire with the remaining wood and coal sitting at the fireside. Nicholl took the dustcover off a daybed and stretched out. She was so tired and just wanted to rest her eyes for a few minutes. In no time at all she was sleeping. Rek pulled the dustcover back over her as a blanket. He would let her sleep. He could tell she was exhausted and they both needed to be alert and on top form if they were going to kill Kaaliz and the woman vampire. Rek sat down in a chair by the fire and his eyes began to close, too. He jerked awake once when he thought he saw something at the window. When he got up to look there was nothing there. He checked Nicholl and saw she was sleeping soundly, though not soundlessly; she was snoring in a way that only the prettiest girls can make cute. Rek smiled and went back to his seat. The heat and comfort of the fire soon put him to sleep again.
Sin flew back over to Kaaliz and reported that they were sleeping and not likely to emerge until the morning. They decided to follow the directions given by Brigadier Jones. Kaaliz thought if there was something in this underground base – possibly a vampire – it could be of great use to them. He had noticed that Sin had a mischievous grin on her face when he asked her what she thought was down there. She would always decline to answer; telling him it was a surprise.
When they reached Ballinrees Reservoir, outside Coleraine, time was becoming an issue. The dawn wasn’t far off and they were beginning to suspect that the Brigadier’s directions had not accounted for the growth of trees and bushes. Sin and Kaaliz searched quickly for the door. The instructions told them: The key to gaining entrance is in the heart. Kaaliz threw the page back at Sin after re-reading it. “What the hell does that mean? Does a door fly open if we’re nice to each other?”
Sin was ignoring Kaaliz and scanning the area. She knew she could work out the riddle if she had time but unless they could find the key to the door in a matter of minutes they would be incinerated. She looked again at her surroundings. There was nothing here but the cement structure that housed the water-filtration machinery. The reservoir stretched out before them as far as she could see. Behind her: the gate and the road. To either side a hedge ran around the perimeter of the reservoir. There weren’t even any trees that were old enough to be hollowed out and contain a spiral staircase leading underground. The air was changing. The chill of night was creeping away. The sun would soon rise and there would be two barbequed vampires, flame-grilled in a head-scratching pose. Sin looked at the ground. If there was a base here that meant that personnel had to get in some way. Even if the base hadn’t been used for years the grass should still have the impressions of a well-walked path. Sin levitated into the air and looked down. There were two distinct trails where the grass
was not as green. One stopped just a few feet from the cement water-filtration structure and the other led to a thin birch tree. Sin flew down to it quickly and looked at the bark. A heart had been carved and in its centre were:
AM
+
PT
Sin looked closely at the initials that were carved in the tree and saw tiny little sensors embedded in the wood. There were no sensors in the +. Kaaliz was ripping hedges up by their roots behind her and cursing wildly. It was a code. There was a sequence, there had to be. Was it a word? What word could you make out of those letters? TAMP. Was that a word? Yes, she remembered, it meant to pack down tightly. That didn’t make any sense. She couldn’t see any other words that could be made out of those four letters. She scanned the pages again. The key to gaining entrance is in the heart. That was all. The Brigadier had intended this for Kyle at Ministry HQ and he wouldn’t know the sequence either so the answer had to be something you could logically work out. The sun was going to break the horizon any moment.
Kaaliz flew to her side. “We have to get out of here!”
Sin raised a finger to quiet him and studied the four letters. “One more minute.”
“We don’t have a minute,” Kaaliz shouted, grabbing her arm.
Sin was going to let herself be dragged to safety but then something struck her and she shook free and returned to the tree. The answer was in the heart. A, M, P, T. There was something. Something she knew. She recognised the letters but couldn’t place them. It came to her all at once: they were the valves of the heart. Aortic, Mitral, Pulmonary and Tricuspid. Two sets of initials. So two pairs of two was probably what they were looking for. The seconds passed maddeningly fast, the sun was rising. She searched her memory. The Tricuspid valve regulates blood flow between the right atrium and the right ventricle and the Mitral valve lets oxygen-rich blood from your lungs pass from the left atrium into the left ventricle. Those two could be considered a pair. So that left the Aortic and Pulmonary as the other pair. TM + AP. Or could it be AP + TM. She could try both but what if it locked down or alerted someone if the wrong sequence was entered? Which one did she enter first? Kaaliz looked like he was going to fly off and leave her. Sin looked back at the letters on the tree trunk and noticed they were in alphabetical order. Why the hell not? Sin pressed the letters A, P, then paused. The pairs had to be alphabetical, too. By luck the first pair were anyway. She decided to change T, M to M,T. She pressed the letters quickly. The ground rumbled behind them and a square of grass began to rise where the worn path ended. Beneath the grass was a lift that sat flush with the surface when down. Sin and Kaaliz ran to it and slammed inside as soon as the doors opened and pressed the down arrow on the controls. The doors closed and they both exhaled in relief. Kaaliz looked impressed. Sin smiled. She liked impressing him.
The lift doors opened a few seconds later and they stepped out into the darkness. Kaaliz found the light-switch and the huge space was illuminated by fluorescent light. Sin stepped forward and took it all in. The first room was easily the size of an aircraft hanger, a big aircraft hanger. It must have been built under the reservoir and ran its entire length. Sin and Kaaliz walked slowly forward. Sin marvelled at the facilities they had. The place may have been abandoned but it was still full of every possible resource a scientist would need. Kaaliz nodded to a door marked CONTAINMENT. They walked over and opened the door.
Inside was another huge space but this one was filled with cages. Kaaliz and Sin walked along the row of steel bars and Sin counted twenty individual cages. When they reached the end she saw it was only one row of ten. Two hundred cages, six feet by six feet and ten feet high. “What do you think they did down here?” Kaaliz asked quietly.
Sin shook her head lightly. There was a low grunt from the far end of the room. Kaaliz and Sin both jumped and then smiled at each other for being scared. They walked towards the source of the sound. One of the cages was still occupied. Something lay curled in the corner with its head and limbs tucked into its huge body. It began to grunt rapidly and they watched its chest rise and fall. Sin knew the signs of an excited predator when she saw them. Kaaliz stepped closer to the cage and the beast jumped from its resting place and threw itself at him. Its long, muscular arms shot through the bars and tried to grab him. Kaaliz jumped just in time and fell on his back on the floor. He looked up at the ravenous bloodlust in the creature’s eyes. There was no trace of human sympathy or mercy; this thing just wanted to kill. It didn’t care who or what. Sin extended her hand and helped Kaaliz to his feet again. Kaaliz kept his distance from the cage but was fascinated by the beast. He looked at it, still grasping at him behind the bars, and asked, “What the hell is that?”
Sin put her hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, “That’s a Che’al.”
1986
Nicholl roused from sleep around eleven the next morning. The smell of food woke her. Rek had gone out and got them a takeaway fried breakfast and two large cups of coffee. Nicholl wanted to be angry with him for letting her sleep but she couldn’t deny that she was hungry and she had obviously needed the sleep, too. She let the lecture go unsaid. She was calmer now she had slept and she was thinking clearer. They ate their breakfasts from the Styrofoam trays with plastic knives and forks. Nicholl kept most of her coffee until she was finished and then savoured every drop. Rek lit a cigarette and Nicholl declined the offer of one. She wasn’t going to rekindle that old habit no matter how bad things got. She got up and wandered to the other side of the room to avoid his smoke tainting the taste of her coffee.
She saw the memorial plaque and walked over and wiped the dust from it. She scanned the names and saw three she recognized. She wiped the dust from the first and her fingers lingered on the date, 1986. The second was a name that every Ministry agent knew: WARKE. It stood out because he was the only one (on this plaque) with MPM after it. No one was allowed to forget about WARKE, Missing Presumed Made. The last name she recognized was near the bottom. DAVIS. She felt a tinge of sadness though it had happened years ago. She hadn’t thought about him in a long time. If she had, she would probably have guessed he was dead. He wasn’t a young man and his health had been failing for years, ever since he lost his right arm below the elbow. Nicholl felt responsible. She stared at his name and said, “How did Davis die?”
“Natural causes,” Rek shouted. “Died in his sleep about six years ago. Did you know him?”
“Yes.”
Rek got up and walked over to her. “So you’re from around here originally? I thought I heard the remains of an accent but…”
“I was born outside Ballymoney but I’ve been working in England, at HQ for…I don’t know, a long time.”
Rek shuffled uncomfortably before he asked, “Look, just tell me to shut up if you don’t want to answer, but can you tell me what it’s like to kill one of them? I’ve never killed one and I’m sort of worried about freezing up. It’s not like killing a man, though, right? You don’t feel that same…”
“I killed my first vampire when I was ten,” she said flatly.
“Ten?” Rek asked in disbelief. His silence was begging her to elaborate and she did.
Her fingers ran back up the plaque and rested on the name NICHOLL. She moved across to the date and said, “It was 1986. The vampire problem was out of control in this area. My father was an agent. He brought us in to the Ministry – not this building, this was just the records building in those days – no, I’m talking about the big building that Oliver Dwyer himself had commandeered all those years ago. He brought us in because the vampires were attacking agents’ families and he thought it would be more secure. We all camped in the big residential room upstairs. Sometimes it was fun, with the other kids, but not that night. Even before my dad had come to get us, we all knew something bad was coming. My sister Mitzi and me were upstairs with all the other kids when my dad came running in. I’d never seen my dad look scared until then. He said we had to go. He said the Badmen were coming. That was what
he used to call them. I remember telling the teacher at school that my dad hunted the Badmen. Anyway, that night we all knew something was going to happen. When my dad came for us some of the kids started crying, others wet themselves. I guess they hadn’t been as sheltered as Mitzi and I. They knew what was coming and how serious it was.
“There were about a dozen of us and we all ran down the stairs crying and screaming with dad at the front and Davis making sure no one got left behind. Dad opened the doors and there was a big van parked outside with the back doors open. My mum was driving and she jumped out to help us all get in. That’s when they came. The first thing we knew was when a petrol bomb smashed through one of the windows inside and set fire to the floor. Dad and Davis both drew their swords as mum hustled us into the back of the van. Vampires fell on us almost immediately. I don’t know how many. It seemed like dozens. I didn’t know what to do. I remember looking at Jimmy Tyler crying. I noticed the ice-cream stain on his T-shirt – funny, the shit that sticks in your mind – and then he was grabbed from above and disappeared in a second. Everyone was screaming. My dad was hitting vampires left and right. My mum was getting the kids out of the van again and back inside the Ministry. Some of them didn’t make it but most of them did.
“Inside, one of the other agents was trying to get the fire under control. Another petrol bomb came through another window. It hit the floor by Francis Connor and he went up in flames, screaming. Eight years old he was. Davis and my dad had got back inside and bolted the door. Davis ran to Francis and tried to smother the flames but he didn’t make it in time. Mitzi came up behind me, her face was red and her cheeks were covered with tears. She held onto my hand and we waited for daddy, I mean dad, to make the Badmen go away. The agent that had almost extinguished the first fire got hit in the chest with a crossbow bolt and fell into the flames he was trying to put out. We saw them hovering by the high windows. More crossbow bolts came through the windows. Some more of the children were killed. The little girl standing beside Mitzi and I caught one in the eye. The kids, including me, were hysterical by this point. My mum rushed the remaining few of us into the cupboard under the stairs. We huddled in there, the six of us, all crying, all terrified. I heard my mum yelling that the fire would deconsecrate the ground. That had been their plan all along. They would be able to get in if the fire burned on holy ground. We heard a window breaking and we all jumped. Mitzi hugged me and I held onto her as tight as I could. The cupboard started to fill with smoke and then I saw thin lines of orange over our heads. The stairs were on fire. Everyone was coughing. I loosened my grip on Mitzi and opened the door.