“My immense foresight in not killing you is justly rewarded, ja. Where is it?”
Sloane didn’t know all the details from my dreams, and he didn’t know that I had my own plans for the Sigilum, so I decided to try to get some more information while I held leverage. “You already told me that you were going to use it to take care of the vampires, but how are you going to do that? If I give this to you, then I’ll be handing over an item of potentially enormous power. There’s a responsibility in that, and I need to make sure that I’m comfortable with your intentions. And you have to agree to let me monitor you,” I said, hoping that the request would convince him that I definitely planned on handing over the Sigilum.
Sloane’s Germanically accented voice replied after a short pause: “You really are beginning to learn, Mr. Adler. There is hope yet for you to grow into something more than you are now. I will use the Sigilum in a ritual. This ritual will locate Gerald Cooper and the sleeping vampires and allow me to destroy them for good, in all senses of the phrase. Unlike John Brown, I am not some sentimental weakling.”
I almost choked on that statement, remembering John Brown butchering my colleagues with a knife to open a magical portal, but I pushed past that to get more information. “And the vampires—why do they sleep?”
“The work of Senior Auditor Brown and myself many years ago. With Brown’s death, Cooper has been freed to start searching, and his minions strain at their bonds. Perhaps you’ve noticed?” I certainly had noticed all of the damned vampire dreams in the run up to the last week. “Come now, Mr. Adler. The location, please. There’s good work to be done.”
I wouldn’t let myself be pressured. Mia had warned me off of Sloane, and I wanted the whole story before I handed him the Sigilum. “If you and John put the vampires down, then why don’t you just go where they were buried and finish them?”
“Ah, that is easy to explain. John wanted the vampires around to experiment on. I wanted to kill them. I worked on my own, he had the weight of the Sons. Guess who won? He took the bodies and hid them from me. You are satisfied now, ja?”
Edward Sloane’s story seemed plausible. I looked at Dana’s belly, and I imagined feeling the same jubilation that I had when Olivia had been born: like the entire universe had started playing Ode to Joy while I won the lottery and the Super Bowl at the same time. Across the room, Dana was bouncing from foot to foot and making a “get on with it” hand gesture, so I did. “Nein. I need the Sigilum when you’re done with it. You can use it to finish the vamps, and then you hand it over. Deal?”
“Deal. Now, the location!” He’d swallowed our lie—hook, line, and sinker.
Charming as the monster hunter was, I had no intention of telling him the location over the phone. It wasn’t a matter of whether or not my phone was bugged, just how many different people were listening. “Not over the phone. Meet me tomorrow at nine in the morning, near Hanwell clock tower,” I said.
“Ahh…I understand. Another wise choice, Mr. Adler. I will see you there,” Sloane said, his voice hungry.
“You too,” I replied, and ended the call.
Dana stood next to me; she was trying to hold back her excitement, but the corners of her mouth kept twitching like she was suppressing a wild grin. “We can do this, Julian. Get the Sigilum, like in your dream, and while he’s distracted, we’ll stash it. Then we can see about making a deal to figure out how to use it to help our baby.”
“I think we can do it. This could actually be a win-win situation,” I said, falling back on corporate-speak as a verbal defensive measure as I put my hands on the back of my head and rubbed at my neck, massaging out some of the nervous tension.
“Oh, it really could, couldn’t it, baby?” Dana said, and threw her arms around me, to the extent that she could, relieving my anxiety more fully and more swiftly than I ever could accomplish on my own.
I nuzzled my wife’s neck and whispered in her ear, “Come to the bedroom with me. I have a surprise for you.”
Dana pushed me away and cocked a hip in a motion that conveyed, “Are you serious?” more loudly than spoken words, but she still followed, rolling her eyes and huffing once. Her brows drew together in confusion as I pulled out a small photo album with a sunflower on the cover and handed it to her.
“Oh…Julian.” Dana beamed, her smile so wide that her face probably hurt as she opened the album and looked at the photos—photos of Olivia. A tear ran down her cheek. “Damned hormones…”
I’d had the same reaction when I’d gotten the images from Jack. When I’d seen Ollie’s pictures, I’d realized just how cloudy my memory of her had gotten. She’d been gone for six months, and my treacherous mind had already started down the path of forgetting her. Eyes blue and flashing like the Caribbean Sea, long, blond hair that flew in the wind as she ran, chubby cheeks, still holding on to baby fat, and a smile that could light up a room. How could any of that have faded in my mind? In her father’s mind? The pictures had been balm, but also had nettled, making me even more aware of my shortcomings. Even more aware that I’d let her down, failed in the first, most important job of a parent: to keep his child safe. I wouldn’t, I couldn’t let that happen again.
I hugged Dana. “I know how much you miss her. I know how looking at this must make you feel, but I saw this album at Camden market, and it reminded me of how you and Ollie planted sunflowers in our back garden. It occurred to me that Redderton’s would probably have some of the surveillance photos that they’d taken of us last year, so I got Jack to send them over. I hope you like it.”
“I love it. I’ve missed her so much. I feel like I abandoned her, like her being gone is punishment for me abandoning her.” Dana turned away from me, her face flushed, and she hovered next to the small, empty bed that had been Ollie’s in the short time that I’d looked after her here. “You know I’ve blamed you. But I really blame myself for not being there. I could have stopped it. You need me to help balance you, but I wasn’t there. And I didn’t even have anything to remember her by. All of the toys that I bought for her burned up with the house, and I couldn’t stop that either. Now, there’s something wrong with the baby, and I’m doing everything I can, but it might not be enough. I feel so powerless. But these pictures. They remind me what I’m fighting for. Thank you.” Dana hugged herself silently for a few moments and then perked up. “And actually, I got something for you.” She waddled to the closet, dug out a book, and tossed it to me. I thought for a moment that it might be some supernatural, extradimensional tome, but then I saw the picture of children’s blocks and read the title: The Big Book of Names for Little People. I looked up at Dana. There was a rivulet of snot running down her nose, and her hands balled up the fabric on the legs of her maternity jeans. She let out a half laugh, half sob. “I wasn’t going to talk about names until I thought that things would be all right.”
Dana and I spent hours looking at our gifts and talking. We chose a name. And we swore that we’d do whatever it took to save our baby.
Eventually, it was time to rest, and we climbed into the same bed, although in her current state, Dana and her pregnancy pillow took up about eighty percent of it. It was still nice. A gangly, redheaded college engineering nerd at heart, I still felt like I’d scored way out of my league with my wife. I considered the possibility that I would find the Sigilum, Sloane would put down the vampires, and we’d get the artifact back with time to use it to help our child. Yeah, it could happen—I had to believe that. My mind still swirling, I turned on the bedside light and opened my big book of extradimensional mathematics. I was out in five minutes.
◆◆◆
First, I helped a young woman who was worried about being eaten by her toilet; I became a plumber. I might have been wearing a red hat and a bushy mustache. Like I said. Nerd. When that was done, the vision came again. I saw the tourists trapped in the graveyard, and Sloane shout at the vampires once more. Next, Sloane and Cooper fought in an alley, leading to Cooper on the ground with a stake
through his back. Sloane had his crossbow aimed at a defiant Cooper as I came around the corner.
“Ah, you have the Sigilum, Mr. Adler. Nicely done,” Sloane said, and the vision started to shift. This was where the last vision had cut off, but I wanted any advantage I could get in the morning, so I concentrated, willing myself to see what happened next, and flung my mind back at the rapidly dissolving image.
The premonition snapped back into focus. I watched the vision, and in it my eyes went wide. “Shit!” I yelled, whirling from Sloane, whose aim slid smoothly in my direction.
Cooper lunged and shouted, “Run, Julian!” There was a twang and—
Shift—sirens wailing, gunshots, people screaming, pale shapes sprinting down a high street, blood flowing in the gutters, and Sloane cackling as he urged a pair of vampires on and tackling a policeman who tried to help—
shift—tombstones in moonlight again. A sign read Kensington and Chelsea Cemetery—
shift—Cooper, grabbing the head of a man with an AK-47 in both hands, effortlessly snapping his neck, and flinging him at another armed man crouched in the shadows—
shift—the Sigilum, shining on an altar of stone underneath the statue of an angel and a young girl. Sloane enters the room, dragging a struggling woman, and says, “Your blood will keep Cooper nicely distracted…”—
shift—a newspaper. The headline read: Bloodsucking Bastards: Outbreak continues, hundreds dead as capital quarantined. The date on it was June 24.—
shift—Sloane and Cooper fighting in a mausoleum. I see the angel-and-girl statue again. Sloane puts the glowing Sigilum onto the altar. Sloane is grinning, and Cooper withers, red mist oozing from his pores. Blood covers the floor. Sloane holds out his hands, and red mist flows toward him. Sloane stops chanting, looms over Cooper, and rants, “You slept for all those years, and it was for nothing. They will hunt the humans, and I will hunt them; I will live forever, and you will perish.”
shift—a familiar scene: rain pelting down as I stagger through a row of tombstones, blood and mud running down my face. “Sloane!” I shout. I realized now that I wasn’t shouting for help. I was issuing a challenge. “Sloane! I have what you want. Come fight me like a man!”
“But I am more than a man, fool.”
Blackness.
◆◆◆
I awoke. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I babbled as I sat up in bed. Dana looked up at me, bleary eyed—she’d crawled into bed with me at some point. The clock read four in the morning.
“Shut up, Shitdor,” she mumbled and flopped back down.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I continued. Dana looked up again, and I saw the light of reason bloom in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Umm…you know that saying ‘We learn from failure, not from success?’ Well, I think I just learned how to tell the good guy from the bad guy,” I said, taking deep breaths.
“By that you mean?”
“The vision came again. Sloane is behind the vampire outbreak.”
Dana cocked her head. “How do you know?”
“I’m pretty sure that only the bad guy runs around cackling and trying to sacrifice young women. Oh, and I saw him try to kill me. How could I have been so stupid? Cooper could have killed me multiple times and didn’t, yet I was so sure that Sloane would help based on my dreams. I was even willing to throw Mia’s help away.”
“Well, to be fair, most people would have guessed that it was the vampire behind the vampire outbreak, sweetheart. Occam’s razor and all that,” Dana said, putting a hand on my arm.
“I need to get the Sigilum now, before Sloane gets here,” I said, and climbed out of bed, throwing my clothes on so quickly that I ended up with mismatched socks, a checked shirt, and plaid shorts.
“If someone else doesn’t try to kill you for wearing that outfit, then charging off without a plan will ensure that Sloane puts a crossbow bolt through your chest,” Dana said while rubbing cocoa butter on her belly.
“Unless you have a better plan, I’m going to rely on speed. My dream showed Sloane stopping me at dusk. It’s morning now. We need to change the vision somehow. Maybe this is how we do it,” I replied.
“Sloane’s had five hours to react to your call. He’ll be watching the house. You head to the clock tower on time; I’ll get the Sigilum,” Dana said, and after a few seconds she added, “Umm…where should I take it?”
If I agreed to her plan, then she’d put herself and our unborn child in danger. However, if I didn’t, then I’d probably be walking into a trap. I’d lost Dana for months because I’d tried to do everything on my own, but was putting her in harm’s way the right thing to do? If she was attacked, then she wouldn’t be able to defend herself.
I’d hesitated too long, and Dana was glaring at me. Crap.
“I can’t let you do it, Dana. I’ve been training for this since I was a kid. Hell, maybe I was literally born for this. I’ll call Badger, and we’ll go get it together. You can stay here and figure out what we’re supposed to do with it once we have it. You already took a risk getting the copy from the museum. It’s my turn,” I said. Dana’s glare intensified, but she didn’t push the point, so I dialed the Badger’s phone. The phone rang a dozen times before the detective picked up.
“Mr. Adler. I would suggest that you may want to buy a membership to the Friends of the British Museum. Or ten,” Badger rasped in a sleep-filled but still precise voice.
“Jimmy, I’m sorry about that, but we have a problem…” I explained the situation to him while being careful not to mention the location. “So I need your help to get the…item.”
“I’m on my way to the location Sergeant Okoye provided. I’ll meet you with backup, but when this is done, we’ll need to have a serious discussion about why you called Edward Sloane first. You made a promise, Mr. Adler. But that’s for later,” Badger replied.
The DCI was right, so I thanked James, kissed a cold-eyed Dana, and left the house, carrying only my phone and an empty canvas shopping bag. I felt naked going into danger without my trench coat or gladius, but I knew that if anyone was watching the house, my tools would be a dead giveaway that I was headed into trouble. I felt eyes on me as I hustled past the Drayton Court Hotel, where Ho Chi Minh used to work, and down to the Uxbridge Road, but I kept my orbs facing forward, not wanting to give away my anxiety. I was nervous, and not just because of the physical threat of Edward Sloane finding me. I was at least as concerned about whether or not my actions could make a difference. A couple of years ago, I’d only been a Dreamwatcher, helping people face their nightmares but yearning to make an impact on the real world. For everything that I’d lost, for all the people who had suffered because of my desire, at least I’d thought that I was making a difference. But if my visions came true, if they happened the same way regardless of what choices I made, then did any of my decisions, any of my struggles, any of my achievements really matter? Should I just do the easy thing? I wasn’t sure. Hell, entire religions had risen and fallen based on the concept of predestination and its ramifications. Even my ego shouldn’t expect to puzzle this out in a couple of weeks.
I shook my head and focused on the task at hand. Everything went smoothly until I was passing the Pizza Hut on Uxbridge Road. My pocket started vibrating, and I opened my phone to see a text message:
Car crashed. Will be delayed. Suspect enemy action. Sending uniformed officers, will be at least ten minutes—Badger
Shit. I guessed that I’d been right about my phone being bugged, but I’d hoped that my vagueness would have concealed what Badger and I were doing. I was less than five minutes away from Kensington and Chelsea Cemetery. If I turned back, I wouldn’t have time to come back before I was due to meet with Sloane. If I went ahead, I might be heading into a trap, and then I’d still have to get the Sigilum somewhere safe. I called Dana and filled her in on the details as I slowed down my pace.
“Someone must have bugged your phone or
Badger’s. If they had bugged our house and knew the full location, then they’d just have grabbed the artifact themselves. Get it, take it somewhere safe. Let me think,” she said as I strolled past the cemetery gate. “Okay, take it to our trainer,” she said. She meant that I should take it to the building where we’d met with Mia.
Sloane was unlikely to expect us to take it to a building owned by the Sons, but the location was also empty most of the time. It was a good idea, and I nodded in agreement, like a jackass, before saying: “Good thinking. Thanks, sweetheart. I’m going in. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck. Stay safe,” she said, her voice cracking. I shut off my phone and doubled back to the cemetery.
The sun was shining, birds were chirping, and an onlooker probably would have thought that my biggest concern was that I might get a sunburn. To be fair, with my red hair, they’d have a point, but my real concern was that the next pensioner I met would suddenly whip out a crossbow and shoot me in the gut. I was operating in a world of monster hunters, vampires, and secret agents. In the waking world, I was virtually defenseless—but my unborn child and the London public were totally defenseless, so I gritted my teeth and forced my stride to stay casual as I walked the two hundred yards to the small chapel where the Sigilum should be.
Cautiously skirting around a little old lady laying flowers on a grave and sidling past a suspicious-looking squirrel, I made it to the steps of the chapel and had my hand on the doorknob before disaster struck.
“Young man, what do you think you’re doing?”
I leapt away from the door and ducked behind a tombstone, expecting to feel a bolt in my side. Instead, I just felt a stab of pain in my sore shoulder and banged my knee. The white-haired old man who had challenged me wore overalls, looked to be at least seventy, and was only about five feet tall. His face screwed up in surprise at my reaction.
I thought fast. “I left a bag in here after a service yesterday.” The man squinted and shook his head.
“Ain’t been no one in there for six months. Get yourself out of here before I call the police,” he said.
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