Redlaw - 01
Page 31
“But then why kill Lambourne? Leary’s death had nothing to do with him.”
“Use your head. I’m messing with Solarville One, his baby. On the very first day this little money-spinner of his goes into action, I come along and deploy the failsafe—or at least I would have, no thanks to you. How do you think the public would have reacted, knowing this isn’t just a place of detention, but has the capacity to be a death camp, a vampire Belsen? Not very favourably, I’d imagine. I doubt he’d have got to build the other fourteen. The PM would have torn up the contract and pretended he never knew and done his best to distance himself from the whole affair.”
“So?”
“So, Nathaniel Lambourne is the last person I’d ever want pissed off at me. Look how you’ve ended up, and you barely cost him a penny with all your shenanigans. Me, I’d be costing him millions. There’s nowhere on earth I’d be safe from him. He had to die. The neck wound was a nice touch, don’t you think?”
“Police might suspect a Sunless did it?”
“Oh, not for long, but they might to begin with, and that would make them very excited. Cops love a bit of vamp action if they can get it. Best-case scenario, it would throw them off the scent long enough for me to make my play here, then abscond, never to be seen again. The biggest irony of all is, the failsafe was my idea. I convinced Lambourne to put it in. I told him at the very least it could be used to singe the ’Lesses’ tailfeathers, if they ever got uppity or out of hand. Just lighten the glass a fraction, for a handful of seconds, to remind them who’s boss. It would be an effective method of sanction, as well as a selling point. He came round to it eventually. All my work.”
She lofted the fire axe again.
“And now I’ve just got to go about letting the sunshine in the old-fashioned, manual way.”
“No,” said Redlaw. “I can’t allow you to.”
“Shoot, then. Just remember, I’m doing this in memory of a woman we both, in our own ways, thought the world of.”
Redlaw took aim. He had no alternative. Like it or not, he was a shtriga now. The vampires in the dome were under his protection. Besides, Leary would surely not have wanted Macarthur to destroy them in her name. The Róisín Leary he remembered was more forgiving than that.
Macarthur brought the axe down, and Redlaw fired.
She’d outsmarted him, though. Instead of chopping into a pane, Macarthur righted the axe at the very last instant and slammed the end of the haft onto the green button on the switch-box just in front of her. The ladder began to roll sideways with a sudden, sharp lurch, throwing Redlaw against the safety rail. His shot went wild, and even if he’d had any more bullets in the magazine, Macarthur wasn’t about to give him a chance to use them, as she came bounding down the ladder, swinging the axe at him.
Redlaw threw himself out of the axe’s path, lost his footing, and began slithering down the ladder. Macarthur ran after him, hacking frenziedly, the axe blade sparking as it bit steel. Redlaw was obliged to keep propelling himself downwards on his belly to avoid the blows. The empty Cindermaker slipped from his grasp, tumbling to join the other Cindermaker somewhere at the base of the dome.
“Just stay still!” Macarthur snarled. “Just die!”
Redlaw’s barely controlled descent was gaining momentum as the steps steepened. The ladder vibrated and juddered beneath him as it moved. Finally, helplessly, he was bounced out over the side. With a flailing hand he grabbed hold of the safety rail, but the ladder continued to sweep slowly round on its axis like the second hand of a giant watch, dragging Redlaw behind it.
Macarthur halted and lined up the axe blade with Redlaw’s hand. He let go just as she swung, the axe landing just where his fingers had been.
He was sliding, falling. He managed to catch himself by hooking his hands onto the lip of one of the dome’s struts. His feet scrabbled for purchase on another strut below.
Macarthur stepped off the ladder and began working her way carefully across the hexagonal framework towards Redlaw, leaning her body into the dome’s curvature for balance.
“Such a pest,” she was saying. “You’re as bad as one of them. A plague on me, on all of us. You need to be got rid of.”
Redlaw had almost nothing left. All his weapons were gone and little strength remained in his limbs. He was some three hundred metres up, clinging to the face of Solarville One for dear life, with an axe-wielding maniac stalking towards him bent on murder.
That was when he felt his crucifix pressing against his chest.
Leary: “See, the thing is, as with everything where God is concerned, it might not be what you want, but it might just be what you need.”
Redlaw yanked the crucifix over his head, then twined the chain around one hand. Macarthur was now within arm’s length of him.
“Going to scare me off with that thing, are you?” she snorted. “You really have lost it, John. I’m not one of them.”
She lashed out at him clumsily, one-handed, clinging to the side of the dome. Redlaw deflected the axe with his chain-wrapped fist. Then, as Macarthur was drawing her arm back to take another shot, he snapped the crucifix out like a whip. The heavy cross smacked Macarthur full in the nose, with a loud cartilaginous crack.
Briefly blinded by pain, Macarthur whirled the axe weakly at him. Redlaw caught the haft and reversed the blow back at her. The haft twisted out of her hand, the axe head dropped, and the blade sank into her thigh.
Macarthur shrieked as blood spurted from the cleaved muscle. The axe pulled itself free and dropped away, spinning end over end. Macarthur slid after it but was able to stop herself. Several panes below Redlaw, her arms braced on two struts, teeth clenched, eyes wild, she hung grimly on.
“John,” she said, looking up. Her voice was a trembling croak. “John, I can’t hold on. I’m slipping.”
Blood poured from her leg. The axe had nicked an artery.
“You can reach me, can’t you? Pull me up?”
Redlaw had killed Slocock. Had let Lambourne die.
Three out of three?
“John, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. For everything. It was all for Róisín. You see that, don’t you? All for her.”
Redlaw looked at his crucifix, then back down at his former boss.
“Explain it to her yourself,” he said. “See if she understands.”
The ladder took a full five minutes to circumnavigate the dome. By the time it had completed its circuit, there was only one person left to clamber back on.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Redlaw abandoned Lambourne’s Mercedes by the side of a B-road somewhere outside Hitchin.
He walked away from the car, over a stile, into a field. It was a beautiful spring morning. The English countryside was bursting into life, bright green and vigorous. Swallows swooped and larks soared; sheep bleated and cattle lowed.
Redlaw crossed the meadow grass, limping a little, supporting his right arm with his left. He had no clear notion of where he was headed or what he was going to do, but that was okay. There was sun on his face and nothing around him but open farmland, infinite paths and byways.
Halfway across the field, he wrenched the crucifix off his neck and tossed it behind him.
A dozen paces on, he doubled back and retrieved it.
Bending his head, noosing the crucifix back around his neck, accepting its size and weight, Redlaw strode on.
ALSO BY JAMES LOVEGROVE
Novels
The Hope
Escardy Gap (co-written with Peter Crowther)
Days
The Foreigners
Untied Kingdom
Worldstorm
Provender Gleed
The Pantheon Series
The Age Of Ra • The Age Of Zeus • The Age Of Odin
Novellas
How The Other Half Lives
Gig
Dead Brigade
Collections of Short Fiction
Imagined Slights
Diversifications
&nbs
p; For Younger Readers
The Web: Computopia
Wings
The House of Lazarus
Ant God
Cold Keep
Kill Swap
Free Runner
The 5 Lords Of Pain series
The Lord Of The Mountain • The Lord Of The Void
The Lord Of Tears • The Lord Of The Typhoon
The Lord Of Fire
Writing as Jay Amory
The Clouded World series
The Fledging Of Az Gabrielson
Pirates Of The Relentless Desert
Darkening For A Fall • Empire Of Chaos
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Clint Langley supplied an awesome cover that made the book look much cooler and made me feel much cooler about the book. David Moore did yet another terrific copy-edit that curbed my writerly excesses and trimmed the manuscript’s marbling of fat. Nick Sharps kept me entertained and amused with his comments on my blog. Andy Remic showed by example how far nerve and a screw-you attitude can get you. And all the folks at Solaris – Jonathan Oliver, Ben Smith, Jenni Hill and Michael Molcher, as well as the aforementioned Mr Moore – have been stars.
Also from Solaris Books, The Age of Ra by James Lovegrove...
The Ancient Egyptian gods have defeated all the other pantheons and divided the Earth into warring factions. Lt. David Westwynter, a British soldier, stumbles into Freegypt, the only place to have remained independent of the gods, and encounters the followers of a humanist freedom-fighter known as the Lightbringer. As the world heads towards an apocalyptic battle, there is far more to this leader than it seems...
"The kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write."
The Guardian on The Age of Zeus
Available to buy from the Kindle Store
Kindle Store USA
Kindle Store UK
Kindle-Shop DE
www.solarisbooks.com
Also from Solaris Books, The Age of Zeus by James Lovegrove...
The Olympians appeared a decade ago, living incarnations of the Ancient Greek gods, offering order and stability at the cost of placing humanity under the jackboot of divine oppression. Until former London police officer Sam Akehurst receives an invitation to join the Titans, the small band of battlesuited high-tech guerillas squaring off against the Olympians and their mythological monsters in a war they cannot all survive...
"The kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write."
The Guardian on The Age of Zeus
Available to buy from the Kindle Store
Kindle Store USA
Kindle Store UK
Kindle-Shop DE
www.solarisbooks.com
Also from Solaris Books, The Age of Odin by James Lovegrove...
Gideon Coxall was a good soldier but bad at everything else, until a roadside explosive device leaves him with one deaf ear and a British Army half-pension. So when he hears about the Valhalla Project, it’s like a dream come true. They’re recruiting former service personnel for excellent pay, no questions asked, to take part in unspecified combat operations.
The last thing Gid expects is to find himself fighting alongside ancient Viking gods. The world is in the grip of one of the worst winters it has ever known, and Ragnarök - the fabled final conflict of the Sagas - is looming.
“The kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write.”
The Guardian on The Age of Zeus
Available to buy from the Kindle Store
Kindle Store USA
Kindle Store UK
Kindle-Shop DE
www.solarisbooks.com
Title
Indicia
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Also by this Author
Acknowledgements
'The Age of Ra' by James Lovegrove
'The Age of Zeus' by James Lovegrove
'The Age of Odin' by James Lovegrove