By Blood We Live

by Glen Duncan

  Something moved, very fast, over my head.

  It was a moment before I could lift my kitten skull (on what felt like its broken kitten neck) to see what it was.

  Mia.

  She was—even in my state—a joy to behold. She took the last thirty feet in an airborne leap. The first guard—a trim woman in her twenties with a long dark plait—lost half her throat in my companion’s single right-hand slash and fell to the floor—or rather knelt, slowly, trying to hold the blood in with her hand, mouth opening and closing. She had marvellously long thick eyelashes. The second guard—a fair-haired, tough-headed guy with a frowning face and a stocky, muscular build—made some vague, slow-motion movements with his hands about his person, in abstracted reflex search for the automatic rifle that was in fact propped against the wall ten feet away, before Mia’s high kick—a gullgi chagi, to be precise—rendered him immediately unconscious, and nearly took his head off into the bargain. Within two seconds she had him slung up over her shoulder (his weight no more to her than a sack of potato chips) and was heading back to the cover of the ridge.

  I heard her dump him on the ground and say to Caleb: If he wakes up, knock him out again.

  Then she came back for me.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Good question. I was on my hands and knees, thinking what a distant and futile goal getting to my feet seemed. I had a brief, vivid vision of my old friend, Amlek, the way he’d looked when I found his body one night in Athens, staked through the heart and bound to a wooden post, papyrus scraps driven into his flesh with nails, covered in Greek obscenities. Names in my ears,/Of all the lost adventurers my peers … The vision vanished.

  “Fuck,” I heard myself saying, as if from a long way away. “Fuck. I don’t … I …”

  At which I was unceremoniously hoisted myself, and carried back to the ridge.

  “Caleb,” Mia said, “go and get the car.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Just get the Jeep, will you? Do it. Now!”

  Caleb (no slouch overground himself) was back within ten minutes. He nosed the vehicle in second gear cross-country with the lights off (he had to perch on the edge of the seat to reach the pedals) though there was no one outside the facility to hear. I wondered if Mia’s abrasive visit had been observed, and now the remnant force was indoors, collectively and firmly resolved on cowardice. Or prayer. I had a curious little image of them all kneeling, saying the Rosary in unison.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s passing. I can manage.”

  It’s passing. Whatever “it” was. The kitten-weakness, the nausea, the dip into the vat of pitch. The vortex of memories. Amlek’s corpse. You don’t look well.

  We put the guard in the trunk. I got in the back seat and lay down. Caleb slid over and Mia got behind the wheel. I called Damien. He was at the rendezvous, ready, with the truck. No one likes spending the daylight hours in a freight container, but on the road needs must.

  Halfway there (I was feeling better) my phone rang. It was Olly, from Amner-DeVere.

  “What’ve you got?”

  “Two hours ago,” he said. “LAX. She bought a one-way to New York. Flight leaves in thirty-five minutes. Sorry I couldn’t get this to you sooner.”

  “Keep tracking it,” I said. “Get me the next transaction as soon as you can.”

  “I’m supposed to be going to Napa this weekend,” he said. “It’s my mother’s—”

  “Double rate,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Pause. I could see him doing the imaginary steam-train-whistle-pull celebration. “Roger that,” he said.

  “As soon as, Olly. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  I hung up.

  “How far are we?” I asked Mia. She was a fast, utterly confident driver. Her white hands looked lovely on the wheel and gearstick.

  “Twenty minutes,” she said. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong with you?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Except he lied in every word. And the stream was filled with bodies.

  “Do you two have passports?” I said.

  Caleb looked at Mia.

  “Yes,” she said. “Several. Why?”

  I thought of the fear Justine was up against. Night flights. The real world. Small windows to get undercover. All the way to Bangkok, the hard way.

  “Because we’re going to Thailand,” I said, redialling Damien’s number.

  60

  Talulla

  I WOKE UP in bed in my underwear in a room in the Last Resort. So christened by poor Fergus, who would never have need of it again. I remembered Trish getting childishly excited over the architectural drawings. Sweet Trish who always looked too small for whatever motorbike she was riding. And for whatever helmet she was wearing. I know I look like a science fiction dwarf, she said, but I don’t want my feckin brains all over the central reservation, do I? Zoë, who had a passion for headwear of all kinds, once put one of the visored helmets on. She was sitting on the floor. When she tilted her head back to look up at us the weight of the thing made her keel over. It was, we all agreed, just as well she was wearing a helmet.

  You might not want it for yourself, but you’ll want it for your children.

  I lay there in the first minutes of coming-to with Olek’s words running through my head. Jake was dead. Cloquet was dead. Fergus. Trish. I’d been close to death a dozen times or more in the last three years. My son had been kidnapped, my daughter incarcerated with me. WOCOP was gone, but the Militi Christi had picked up where they’d left off. I thought of Bryce’s Big Brother with werewolves format. There would be other shows. Hunting shows. Game shows. Gambling shows. The world was turning its gaze on us. The world was realising that something would have to be done. The noose, as Olek had suggested, was only going to get tighter.

  “Hey,” Madeline said.

  I opened my eyes. White ceiling with inset yellowy halogens turned low. I was in a crisply made bed, linen fresh out of the packaging. It smelled of department stores, human civilisation, the old life, mixed with the room’s comforting odour of new plaster and paint. Pale oak floor, no windows. (Most of the Last Resort was underground, for obvious reasons.) Skirting uplights opposite. A green leather recliner next to my bed, with Maddy in it. She was, as usual, accurately made-up. She wore slimline khaki combat pants and a black t-shirt that had belonged to Cloquet. Red flip-flops showing off her pretty feet and scrupulous pedicure, toenails vermillion. She’d caught the sun in Italy. There was a tan line where her watch had been.

  “Zoë’s fine,” she said. “She’s here, she’s safe. She’s playing snakes and ladders with Lorcan and Luce upstairs.”

  I hadn’t known I’d got up on my elbows, my whole body tensed, until I felt it relax now.

  “Know where you are?” Madeline asked.

  “Croatia?”

  She nodded. “Whatever the fuck they shot you with, there was a lot of it. You’ve been out for two days. We had to tell passport control you were zonked on painkillers. Still cost us three hundred quid. How are you feeling?”

  “Thirsty.”

  There was a bottle of Jamnica mineral water on the floor next to her. She handed it to me. I drank the lot.

  “More?”

  “In a minute. What happened back there?”

  Back there. When I was captured. When I risked my children’s lives. Again. Part of the question—oh, part of it—was: Did you fuck Walker? I could feel her screening a little for a moment, then giving up. “No,” she said. “I didn’t.”

  It was the truth, but it was also an admission of how close she’d come.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “It’s …” I let it go. “How is he?”

  “Physically he’s all right. He didn’t get a scratch, apart from apparently he nearly got stabbed in the throat.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Oh Christ, Lu, that’s a long story. We had help. Blimey, I don’
t know where to start.”

  She didn’t have to. The door opened. Walker. Unshaven. In black jeans and a denim shirt. The shit-kicker boots he hadn’t worn since the WOCOP days. He looked like he’d lost weight.

  An awkward exchange of not quite direct looks between the three of us. Then Maddy got up from the recliner. “Well,” she said, “now you’ve decided to rejoin the land of the living, I’m going to pour myself a bloody huge gin and tonic. We’re still waiting for half the furniture, but the booze and fags arrived today, thank God.”

  61

  WHEN SHE’D GONE, Walker came and sat on the edge of the bed and put his hand around my ankle through the comforter.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. The lingering drug had tears ready for me, if I wasn’t going to be ruthless with myself.

  Walker gave my ankle a squeeze, then took his hand away. I thought: That’s the last time he’ll ever do that. He leaned forward, elbows on knees. Looked at the brand-new floor. It was all there between us, the innocent reality, that this was us—us—and yet this was still happening. All love’s details burned bright. Surely they meant something? Surely they were enough? But they came and went and there we still were, with new unfillable space between us. I felt old and tired. Sometimes your coldness thrills you. Sometimes it’s just a wearily disgusting tumour. Not for the first time, nor did I imagine the last, Aunt Theresa’s voice came back: Talulla Demetriou, you are a dirty little girl. A dirty, filthy little girl.

  “Thank you for coming for us,” I said. The power of plain words. Thank you. I swallowed, swallowed, but the tears came anyway. Shocking to feel them hot and intimate on my cheeks. My mother had always grudged her own rare tears. The harder you are the more they undo you. It’s the price you pay for being hard. I was sick of myself, suddenly.

  But not sufficiently. My self always wins. Sits out the sickness, drumming its fingers, until I come back, then says, Right. All done? Can we continue now?

  “We had help,” Walker said. “Vampires, if you can believe that.”

  “What?”

  He told me. Not looking at me. Like a departing employee tiredly running through stuff for his successor.

  “Lorcan pulled Quinn’s book from your bag,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought of Olek, otherwise. Maybe someone’s making this shit up after all.”

  There was a twitch in the ether between us when he went through the vampire character sketches and got to Alyssia.

  “Sounds like she made an impression,” I said.

  He was silent for a moment. Then said: “Don’t.” Quietly. If he’d said it in anger it would have been easier to hear. I resisted the urge to say (pointlessly), “Don’t what?”

  He stood up—and when he looked down at me and smiled all the shame and guilt my efficient little self had kept in check rushed up. Into my face, I knew.

  “Don’t try for a smooth baton change,” he said.

  The smile was his smile, being used now to express its opposite.

  I’m not normally the one who looks away. Even now I almost, out of sheer self-loathing, didn’t. Then, with more warm tears, I did. It was a little Pyrrhic victory for him. I felt “I’m sorry” coming up in me again. And him thinking: Don’t bother.

  We stayed like that, him watching me crying, for as long as we could stand it. Then he took a couple of paces away. The room needed a window for him to go to and look out of. I could feel the grammar of the moment demanding it. But the room was the room. The room was innocent. And designed by us.

  “You don’t need me to tell you this,” he said. “But we got the vamp help because I promised Olek you’d go and see him. That was the deal. That’s the story.”

  We both knew I would go, that I was always going, but nonetheless I said: “You promised?”

  “He took my word. Old school. Obviously there’s nothing making you go. But since you were going anyway …”

  I didn’t contradict him.

  “He didn’t seem surprised,” Walker said. “Maybe he’s in on the plot.”

  It really sickened him, this idea that there was a shape or purpose to all this. Because if there was then he’d gone through everything he’d gone through according to its design. Was still going through it. I thought of how much we’d loved kissing each other. It was almost an embarrassment, how much just kissing turned both of us on. I imagined myself opening my mouth now and saying: I love you. I do love you.

  But I didn’t say it. Instead I lay there and he stood there, enduring the pain and awfulness of this. The moment you think is unbearable forces you to disappoint yourself by bearing it. There’s resigned laughter available, for the hilarity of your own durability.

  “He’s in India,” Walker said. “I’ve got the details. He wants you there in time for the next full moon.”

  As soon as he said “India” it felt like déjà vu. I realised now that when I’d spoken to Olek on the phone I’d imagined him somewhere like that. Somewhere superficially—somewhere cinematically—unlikely for a vampire.

  “Mike and Natasha will meet you there,” he said.

  Mike and Natasha. Not him. So it had really begun, the sequence of severances. Well? It was what I wanted—wasn’t it?

  Walker went to the door and opened it. All our past tenderness rose up in my chest. I was so close to saying, Please don’t go. Please let’s not do this. Please forgive me. Please, please, please. The thought of how good it would feel if he came and put his arms around me and held me wasn’t a thought but a physical sensation, an ache in the space around my body. I imagined myself saying it, heard myself, felt the sweetness that would come to me in his embrace. And immediately it had come so would the knowledge, like a gunshot, that it had been the wrong thing to do.

  “It won’t be safe for the kids,” he said, not looking at me now. “You should leave them here. We’ll take care of them until you get back.”

  “And when I get back?” Sometimes you need every nail hammered in.

  Walker turned and looked at me. He looked so tired and handsome. I wanted to get up from the bed and go to him. He didn’t say anything. It was as if there was a membrane between us, every moment tearing. We stared at each other. You push it to the absolute brink of finality and there’s a pure moment when you know you can pull it back. The huge gift of our past—and the future we could have—was there like an invisible treasure giving off a golden light and warmth.

  Then he turned and walked away, and closed the door behind him.

  62

  Justine

  LOS ANGELES TO New York. New York to Dublin. Dublin to Istanbul. Istanbul to Delhi. Delhi to Bangkok. All First Class. So I could be off the plane fast when we landed.

  The New York to Dublin leg was always going to be tough. Six hours. As soon as we took off I couldn’t believe what I was doing. All that resolve about not being stupid. This was the stupidest thing I’d done so far. All the what-ifs I’d brushed aside came back like a crowd of ugly people around my seat, jabbing me with their fingers. What if there was a problem with the plane? What if we got re-routed? What if we had to circle for ages before we were cleared to land? What if I took too long getting through Immigration? What if there was a bomb scare, or a fire that closed the airport? I don’t think I moved for the first three hours. Just stared at my video screen, not seeing anything. The movie’s end credits went up and I had no clue what had played. I switched to Flight Map. Distance to destination. Time to destination. That was worse. There was nothing to do except sit there and freak out. They kept offering me stuff. Champagne, food, chocolates. They thought something was wrong with me. Everyone else in First took everything they were offered. I was grateful for the spaces between the seats. I wanted to smoke. Smoking would have helped. Instead I kept getting up and going to the bathroom and washing my hands and face, just for something to do.

  Then worse. In the Arrivals lounge at Istanbul one of the TVs was showing CNN with the sound down. Captions in Turkish I couldn’t read. At first I didn’t kno
w why the footage bothered me. It was just another crime scene. Lights, police cars, yellow tape, people milling around, an officer standing with his hands on his hips and his back to the camera. I couldn’t even understand why it had made it to the news.

  Until I realised it was Karl Leath’s house.

  The footage cut away to the news studio. A new blonde anchorwoman I didn’t recognise and three male studio guests, one of whom was a priest. I stood there watching, my hands fat and heavy, waiting for a photo of me to come up. I could imagine the voiceover: “The suspect, picked up on CCTV leaving the scene, is considered extremely dangerous …” Any second now. Any second now. My face on screen. My face.

  But nothing happened.

  They cut back to the studio, and after a couple of minutes of worried-looking conversation, moved on to a story about Justin Timberlake.

  Justin. Justine. The feeling of beguilement. The world snickering and dropping a hint.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  I made it to the airport hotel with less than thirty minutes to spare. If I’d had luggage I’d have been fucked. As it was, checking-in was agony. The sun trying to slow everything down. Two morons from Atlanta ahead of me at the desk complaining about having twin beds instead of a double. The lights in the lobby were Christmassy, reflecting off everything, digging in behind my eyes. I was drenched with sweat, shaking. My hands all over the place when I had to sign. The clerk asked me if I was all right.

  But the bathrooms in big hotels don’t have windows. The sun hates the bathrooms in big hotels.

  I was so fucked-up I almost didn’t go on.