“Big roundabout coming up,” she said, spying a road sign. “Suggest an exit.”
“Okay. The North Circular.” It was a big road with plenty of turnoffs but no sharp bends or corners. It would give them some breathing space, him some time to formulate a plan.
Illyria gunned the truck up the ramp to the Gyratory, passing through the lights at the top as they turned amber. They were red by the time the patrol car reached them but the sergeant didn’t stop. A night bus, just pulling out in front of them, honked angrily.
Illyria took the first exit onto the North Circular, northbound. Multiple neon-lit lanes stretched ahead, almost devoid of other traffic. It was 3.30am, and tonight even fewer people than normal were out and about in their cars. Illyria used the splitter switch on the gearstick to shift the truck from fourth low into fourth high, and the needle on the speedo edged towards sixty.
The patrol car was right on their tail now, and the sergeant pulled out into the adjacent lane. The officer in the passenger seat had his window open. Illyria glimpsed a Cindermaker in his hand.
“It won’t do any good them shooting at us,” she said. “We’re armoured. Everything’s bulletproof, even the windows.”
“Not the tyres,” said Redlaw. “That’s what he’s going to aim for. I would if I were him.”
Sure enough the man loosed off a round at one of the truck’s rear tyres.
Illyria growled something in Albanian—“Ta qifsha nanen!”—which was unmistakably uncomplimentary.
The bullet had missed, but the patrol car was now parallel with the truck and the officer was lining up his second shot with great care.
“Are you buckled in, Redlaw?”
“No.”
“Then do so. Now.”
Redlaw grabbed his seatbelt and fastened it. The next instant Illyria, bracing herself on the steering wheel, hit the brakes. The truck squealed and juddered and slewed. The patrol car barrelled on, the officer squeezed the trigger and a spark flashed as once again he expended a Fraxinus round on the innocent roadway.
Illyria did some complicated gear-shifting and got the truck going again. Now the truck was chasing the car, although the sergeant performed a nifty deceleration and drew back so that the car was, as before, hovering alongside the truck’s rear wheels. Illyria’s response was to veer out of lane, forcing the sergeant to swerve accordingly.
“Easy,” Redlaw said. “You could kill them.”
“And they’re not trying to kill us? I know what I’m doing. Believe it or not, I used to drive a truck for a living.”
“You did?”
“At the docks in Marseilles.”
“Before or after...?”
“After. Night shifts only, loading and unloading cargo ships. I have done many varied things during my decades as a shtriga. You’d be surprised.”
“I probably would. Shall we just focus on what we’re doing right now, though? Like not steering into the back of a lorry full of flammable liquid.”
Illyria overtook the petrol tanker lumbering along in front of them. The patrol car continued to follow doggedly, although the sergeant was being somewhat more circumspect now. The near-miss Illyria had engineered a few moments earlier had given him a definite case of the willies.
The truck was soon hitting sixty again and got flashed by a speed camera.
“Forty pound fixed penalty for BovPlas,” Redlaw commented. “I think they can afford it.”
“I’d be going even faster if I could,” Illyria said, “but it’s as if the truck doesn’t want to.”
“Fitted with a limiter. It can’t.”
“Then we’re never going to be able to lose those men. Unless...”
“Unless...?”
Illyria floored the accelerator, hoping to squeeze just that last little bit of extra juice out of the engine. At the same time she scanned the dashboard until her eye alighted on a small lever. With a grim smile she depressed it and nudged the truck out in front of the patrol car.
The truck’s rear doors began to open. A warning light winked on the dash, indicating this action was not advisable while the vehicle was in motion.
Illyria then began swerving from side to side, and Redlaw gripped the door armrest to steady himself. Objects began to clunk and thump in the fridge body behind them—the pallets of blood pouches shunting around. Illyria kept twisting the wheel hard left, hard right, until eventually one of the pallets was bumped to the threshold of the doors and tipped out.
Redlaw saw it in the wing mirror: a spectacular explosion of dark red liquid as dozens of pouches struck the road at speed, along with the plywood pallet. The sergeant swerved to avoid ploughing headlong into the obstacle; one flank of the patrol car was spattered with cow blood, but that was all.
Illyria continued to snake the truck along the road. Another pallet tumbled out, and another, splashing gallons upon gallons of blood across all three eastbound lanes. The patrol car skidded but carried on, its wipers frantically scrubbing its windscreen.
When, however, a fourth pallet landed almost slap bang on its bonnet, the sergeant concluded that the game wasn’t worth the candle. Personal safety was more important than mission success. He slowed almost to a halt, and the patrol car receded rapidly in the truck’s wing mirrors. Illyria laughed.
“Take that, budol douch,” she said with satisfaction and hit the lever to shut the doors.
“Pull off at the exit ramp coming up,” Redlaw said. “There’s a retail park, load of superstores and malls. We can lose ourselves amongst them.”
Organ chords crashed in his coat pocket. He opened the phone and winced when he saw the display:
GAIL MACARTHUR
calling
Accept Reject
“I’d better take this,” he said, sighing as he selected Accept. “Marm?”
“John.” She sounded calm, and that was not a good sign. It was the lull ahead of the hurricane. “I think I gave you pretty explicit instructions, did I not? I doubt I could have made myself much clearer. You’re inactive. You’re not even supposed to be out of your hospital bed.”
“Marm, I can explain...”
“And now I’m hearing reports that you’re tooling around London on some sort of crime spree. You’ve assaulted BovPlas employees and hijacked one of their vehicles. You’ve also put the lives of four SHADE officers in jeopardy. I keep thinking there must be another John Redlaw out there, a lookalike who’s passing himself off as you. You don’t have an identical twin who’s just escaped from a mental institution by any chance?”
“No.”
“Pity. I felt I should ask, because that would at least make sense. Otherwise I’m left with no alternative but to assume that you’ve gone stark staring mad.” Here it came, the howling Gail. “In the name of all that’s holy, John, what is going on inside your head? What the hell am I meant to make of all this? Never mind that you’ve stolen property and inflicted criminal damage and trampled over about half a dozen different SHADE regulations—what are you hoping to achieve? And who is this woman with you? What’s her story? Does she have some sort of hold over you? Blackmail? Is that it?”
“Nothing so straightforward,” Redlaw said.
“She’s strong, by all accounts. Way more than she should be. Is there something you need to tell me, John?”
Plenty, thought Redlaw. But I doubt you’ll give me a fair hearing. Not now.
“Commodore,” he said, “will you just trust me here? I’m on the cusp of something big, I think. Something relevant to the troubles we’re experiencing. I just need a little more time to get my facts straight and sort out what’s what. If you can see your way to—”
“Trust you?” Macarthur boomed, so loud that Redlaw had to hold the phone away from his ear. “You lost my trust the moment you set foot outside that hospital. You are so far beyond me trusting you now, I might as well have never met you. Forget about suspension, John. Forget about the sabbatical and the time to reflect. I handed you that little fig
leaf so that you could take the hint and do the decent thing. I was expecting you to come back to me in a couple of days and tell me you’d decided to hang up your weapons vest for good. That would have saved us both a great deal of heartbreak and indignity. As it is, we’re going to have to do this hard way. No more beating about the bush.”
Her voice took on an icy formality.
“John Redlaw, I am hereby stripping you of all rank and entitlement pertaining to your role as an officer in the Sunless Housing And Disclosure Executive. Effective immediately, you are no longer permitted to function in any capacity in, for or on behalf of SHADE, and any attempt to do so shall constitute a breach of the law, punishable by incarceration.”
It wasn’t unexpected. It had, in fact, been more or a less a foregone conclusion from the moment Redlaw threw in his lot with Illyria. It came as a shock, nonetheless, to hear Macarthur actually utter the words—to listen to the convoluted phrasing which, boiled down to its essence, amounted to You’re fired.
“I’m not glad I’ve had to do this,” she concluded. “It’s a sad day for us all. But you left me no choice, John.”
“I understand, marm.”
“I hope you do. And all I can advise now, as a friend, is turn yourself in. Abandon this path you’re on, this lunatic crusade or whatever it is. It won’t do you any good. Come in to HQ and we’ll see if we can’t smooth things over and make it easy on you. I’m sure I can convince BovPlas not to press charges. Maybe, given your long and exemplary service up to this point, we can even salvage your pension, which, needless to say, as matters stand, is forfeit. Otherwise...”
“Go on.”
“Well, otherwise, John,” Macarthur said, and sorrow vied with severity in her tone, “there’ll be nothing for it but to regard you as an enemy of SHADE, hostile to the Executive and all its aims.”
“No better than a rogue Sunless.”
“If you like.”
“Off-reservation and liable for dusting.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite so melodramatically.”
“But to be arrested on sight, captured by force if necessary.”
“You’d have no one to blame but yourself. One last time, John. Give it up. Come in.”
Redlaw was silent a while.
“John?”
“It’s going to have to be a ‘no,’ marm,” he said finally. “What I’m uncovering here, if it is what I think it is, is major-league. But I need my freedom if I’m to have any hope of excavating all the way to the truth.”
“At the expense of your whole future?”
“My future set against the future of countless humans and Sunless, maybe even the future of this country.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“If I’m wrong, I’m wrong,” said Redlaw. “But if I’m right, then somebody is trying to caused a rift between us and ’Lesses, for some self-serving purpose. Could be Stokers, could be another party we know nothing about yet. But if I don’t nail this soon, there’s going to be curfews, martial law, reprisal attacks, civil strife and Heaven knows what else.”
“John?”
“Yes?”
“You’re a fool,” Macarthur said, and hung up.
Illyria negotiated a series of mini roundabouts, passing between the hulking, temple-like edifices of outlet, DIY and department stores. At last she brought the truck to rest in a car park wedged between a railway embankment and the rear of a supermarket. She killed the engine and looked across at Redlaw.
“That was not a good phone call.”
“Not especially.” He tried to smile, but it just looked forlorn. “On the minus side, I’ve sacrificed almost everything I hold dear and made myself a wanted man. On the plus side... Well, there is no plus side as far as I can see.”
“At least things can’t get much worse.”
“There is that.” Redlaw got out of the truck for a breath of fresh air. “Oh, and my shoulder’s still hurting like hell. I forgot to mention that. Not helped by all your driving shenanigans.”
“There’s gratitude for you.” Illyria also exited the cab, leaping down with a lithe, feline grace. “You wanted me to get us away from those Night Brigaders without causing any injury or loss of life, I managed it, and now you complain because it made the journey a bit rough? Are you always so damn hard to please?”
“Are you always so damn prickly?” Redlaw snapped back.
“Prickly? I’m prickly?”
Their voices rose, echoing across the empty parking spaces and the conga lines of chained-up shopping trolleys.
“Yes, prickly,” said Redlaw. “Sensitive to criticism. Quick to take offence. And snooty, too. What were you, some kind of Albanian aristocrat before you were turned? Or were you a commoner but you think you’re special now because a shtriga isn’t your average vampire, as you never tire of telling me? One way or the other, you’ve got several world-class tickets on yourself, Miss Strakosha.”
“Oh, and you haven’t, Mr Redlaw?” Illyria retorted. “The way you barged into Livingstone Heights that first night, into my home, without so much as a by-your-leave...”
“I was entirely within my rights, as stipulated in the Sunless Settlement Act. I had due cause to enter the building, being in pursuit of a Sunless who was germane to an enquiry that was ongo—”
“Bureaucratic balderdash. My home!”
“Technically, the borough’s, not yours. You have no property rights. You’re not even a tenant. If you’re anything, you’re a squatter. But we’ll overlook that little nicety, shall we?”
“I live there.”
“Live? Again, technically...”
Illyria let out an infuriated growl, baring her fangs. “Are you trying to provoke me to violence? You’ve hit rock bottom and this is some kind of coward’s suicide bid?”
“You couldn’t take me. Not even on your best day.”
“Don’t tempt me. Gun or no, I could still—”
She broke off and raised her head, sniffing the breeze.
“What?” said Redlaw. “Finish the thought. Gun or no, you could still...?”
“Redlaw,” she said softly. “You know I told you things can’t get much worse?”
“Yes.”
“I may have been mistaken, old bean.”
At the brow of the railway embankment a stooped figure appeared, silhouetted against the orange-brown sky. More figures joined the first, loping into view, heads up, questing.
Illyria glanced at the truck. There were streaks of wet cattle blood on the bodywork. Not much of it, not even a pint in total, but enough. Enough to give off an alluring aroma to those that could detect it.
The vampires atop the embankment gave moans of appreciation, and hunger, then set off down the slope, bounding through the dense growth of brambles and nettles like hounds on the trail of a hare.
There were perhaps a score of them in all, and nothing stood between them and the BovPlas truck.
Nothing except Illyria and Redlaw.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Redlaw’s hand immediately, instinctively, went to his Cindermaker, and a sudden burst of agony left him bent double, almost whimpering. His shoulder felt as though it was tearing itself open.
Trembling with the pain, he groped for the gun with his left hand and fumblingly unholstered it. The Cindermaker felt ungainly and off-balance as he lifted it. What had been a trusty servant on his dominant side was an unruly mutineer on his non-dominant. Then there was the matter of drawing back the slide, which his right arm refused to make easy for him. Even aiming was tricky. Sighting along the barrel with his left eye just seemed wrong.
Never mind, Redlaw. You’ll just have to do your best.
The vampires flowed across the car park, fanning out into a ragged line. Their focus was on the truck, their prize, but they were all too aware of the presence of Redlaw and Illyria.
“Neasden,” Redlaw muttered to Illyria. “That’s where this lot are from, I’ll bet. The Neasden SRA’s not far from here
. They’ve broken out.”
“Or been driven out by humans laying siege.”
“Still, not where they should be.”
“It isn’t wrong to run away from somewhere if you’re not safe there.”
“Dusting them’s the only answer, though.”
“No!” Illyria said, with vehemence. “Not necessarily. Maybe I can resolve this without you resorting to blasting away with that weapon of yours—which, by the by, you look like you can barely hold. I’m a vampire too. I can talk to them.”
Redlaw weighed it up. He wasn’t, he had to accept, anywhere near his fighting peak. He wasn’t, for that matter, a SHADE officer any more, and so was under no professional imperative to destroy these or any other vampires. The only good reason to start shooting at them was self-preservation, and Illyria was holding out the possibility that that might not be an issue here.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s give it a bash. Your way first, and if that fails, then mine.”
Illyria gave him a look of approval that was just discernibly condescending. Then she turned and addressed the approaching Sunless, who were now only a few metres off.
“Listen to me, my friends. It may not look like it but we mean you no harm. You want what’s in this truck? Then have it. Feel free. In return, all I and the human wish is to be allowed to go on our way, unmolested. Do we have a deal?”
The vampires halted, exchanging glances. They were nonplussed, unconvinced. Redlaw himself wouldn’t have made as generous an opening bid as Illyria was making, especially considering that the blood might well be dangerous. But it was her show. For now.
“Who are you?” one of the vampires demanded, a girl who must have been barely in her twenties when she’d been turned. She was dreadlocked and nose-ringed and spoke with a London accent—a local victim from the early days, most likely, before the UK government girded its loins and started implementing measures like the Settlement Act and SHADE.
“I am Illyria Strakosha and I am one of you.”
“No, you’re not,” the girl shot back. “You don’t look right. You don’t smell right. I’m not sure what you are, but I don’t like your face and I really don’t like you being with him.” She jabbed a finger in Redlaw’s direction. Her talons gleamed with black nail varnish. “Fucking shady there. You and him, all cosy together, and him waving his ruddy great cannon at us. You’re ‘one of us,’ why ain’t you ripped the bastard’s lungs out?”
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