“And this change of heart was prompted by...?”
“Events. Circumstances. Force majeure.”
“You don’t reveal much about yourself, do you? The Redlaw cards are played very close to the vest.”
“That way I’m more likely to win the game, aren’t I?” said Redlaw. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back upstairs.” The smell in the crypt wasn’t getting any more bearable. On the contrary, Redlaw was beginning to feel nauseous. Even the shallowest of breaths was drawing more of that noxious miasma into his body than he would have liked.
“Of course, of course,” said Tchaikovsky. “Forgive me. I just felt a visual illustration of the situation would be more effective than any words of mine. We can leave. Children? Make room.”
The crowd of vampires who had followed Tchaikovsky and Redlaw down now parted to let them through.
Near the entrance to the staircase, a hand shot out from one of the alcoves and seized Tchaikovsky’s sleeve.
“Father,” said an imploring voice. “Please. I’m so hungry. I can’t remember when I last ate. I feel empty. I’m begging you, feed us. Feed us again.”
Redlaw’s hand crept under his coat, making for the Cindermaker. He was all too conscious of being a living creature, the only one in a building full of Sunless. Prey among predators. A meal on the hoof. The pumping of blood in his veins beating as loud as a dinner gong.
For all his pretensions to wanting what was best for vampires, Redlaw could never forget that they didn’t necessarily reciprocate the feeling.
“It’s been so long,” the vampire continued. He was of Latino extraction, his ochre skin now a sallow, sickly yellow. “I’m so weak. I hurt inside.”
“I know, Miguel, I know,” said Tchaikovsky soothingly. “There will be food soon, I promise. When have I ever let you down? Please just be patient.”
Miguel sank back into his alcove with a disconsolate sigh. Here and there, other vampires echoed his plea with yelps and soft mewling cries.
“What do you feed them on?” Redlaw enquired as he and Tchaikovsky climbed the spiral stairs.
“The usual. Any vermin that can be scrounged up from the street. What else?”
“Must be difficult. So many mouths.”
“Hard as hell, but we get by. Jesus fed five thousand with next to nothing. I’m not Him, but I do my best.”
“You’re not tempted to...?”
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” Tchaikovsky said over his shoulder, with some asperity. “You know as well as I do how unwise that would be, to say the least. There’ve been vampires in America for longer than you think, Mr Redlaw. Not many, but their presence here predates the recent diaspora out of eastern Europe by several decades. And how have they managed to survive? By staying well below the radar. By refraining from doing the one thing that would be guaranteed to bring swift, brutal retaliation down on their heads.”
“Surely there’s been the odd human victim.”
“I don’t doubt it, vampire nature being what it is. Nevertheless, they’ve been careful. And with numbers on the rise, it’s more vital than ever that that caution continues. We can’t have the sort of public backlash here that there’s been in France and Spain, or even your own fair country. America shouldn’t be like that. This is the land of opportunity, after all. Famously welcoming to all those who fetch up on its shores. A nation forged and bolstered by immigration. I’m certain that, in time, vampires will become as accepted a part of American life as any of its other diverse component factions—but only if we abide by the rules and don’t rock the proverbial boat.”
“You’re an idealist,” said Redlaw.
“Merely someone attempting to put into practice the teachings of our Lord. Even if the world we find ourselves in nowadays is one that Jesus Himself would scarcely recognise...”
TCHAIKOVSKY SHOWED REDLAW to the door of the church much as though he were a minister seeing the last parishioner off the premises after a service.
“I feel it was destined that you and I should meet, Mr Redlaw,” he said at the threshold. “Don’t you? Do you not feel that you were guided here?”
Redlaw looked noncommittal. Destiny, the hand of God, a foreordained universal plan—these were things whose reality he was having trouble acknowledging at present. If the Lord truly was steering him through hardship and humiliation towards some ultimate goal, then that goal was a mysterious one indeed. Right now, divine purpose could easily be confused with vindictive spite, God bullying one of His staunchest supporters simply because He felt like it and He could.
“I’ll be in touch,” was all he said by way of reply.
“And I,” said Tchaikovsky, “will keep my ear to the ground and try to discover more about these attacks. If we pool information and resources, there’s a good chance we can do something to prevent any further mass killings, and perhaps even end this campaign before it gathers momentum.”
“That’s the general idea,” said Redlaw, disappearing off into the snow-thickened darkness.
CHAPTER
FIVE
THREE BLOCKS, NO more.
That was how far Redlaw walked before he sensed he was being followed.
Someone was dogging his footsteps through the city. He was 99% sure of it.
One block further, and suspicion hardened to absolute certainty.
He didn’t look back. He didn’t alter his pace. He kept walking, trying not to exhibit any self-consciousness, acting natural even though it felt as if he had picked up an anchor and was dragging it along behind him. That was the trick when being tailed. You mustn’t let the person tailing you know you knew they were there. That way, you gained control. You, not the other, led the dance.
Whoever it was, they were sticking to the shadows, hugging the side of buildings. Redlaw collected glimpses every now and then, casually turning his head a little and at the same time swivelling his eyes as far round in their sockets as they would go. There, at the periphery of his field of vision. A figure on the other side of the street, dim through the fizzing static of snow. Travelling at the exact same speed as him, but moving with studied nonchalance. Artless stealth. Straining with the effort of looking as if they weren’t following.
Who?
A vampire?
Had Tchaikovsky sent one of his flock after Redlaw to keep tabs on him? To make sure he wasn’t going straight to the authorities or some sinister ally to report the whereabouts of several dozen vampires?
Redlaw wouldn’t have put it past him. There was something a little too slick about the shtriga, a little too accommodating. Redlaw didn’t trust him, so why should Tchaikovsky trust him in turn?
He paused in front of a technology store and feigned interest in all the smartphones, e-readers and tablets on display in the window. Several of them were streaming the broadcast from a rolling news channel. The headline was ‘Big Freeze Continues,’ and an anchorwoman attempted to furrow her botulism-stiffened brow while she listened to a live report from beside a freeway where drivers were spending the night trapped in their snowbound vehicles.
Redlaw focused his gaze not on that but on a laptop whose webcam was relaying an image of the street outside. He himself occupied most of the screen, but past his elbow he could see clear across to the pavement opposite.
And there, lurking, was his pursuer. The person was skulking behind a Toyota people carrier, peering out every so often round the edge of the windscreen. Watching what Redlaw was up to. Waiting for him to move on.
The camera resolution wasn’t sharp enough for Redlaw to make out much detail at this distance. He could see that the person was bundled up in winter wear, with a woollen watchcap drawn down tightly over the head, but the features were a fuzzy pale blur. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman.
He carried on.
At the next crosswalk he changed over onto the same side of the road as his pursuer. He stepped smartly round the corner, out of sight. The entrance to a 24-hour grocery store beckone
d, and he darted in. Loitering at a spinner rack, he perused a bewildering range of chewing gum flavours—liquorice-watermelon?—but his attention was really on the view through the window.
Soon enough, the person in the woollen watchcap hurried by outside, looking confused and anxious. Redlaw made a beeline for the door, oblivious to the Sikh cashier who called out from behind the grille of his bulletproof booth, “Sir? You’re not buying? Is there something special you’re looking for? Condoms, maybe? We have plenty. All styles and colours.”
Back out in the cold, Redlaw was now the tailer, not the tailee. He followed the stranger for a couple of hundred yards, making assessments. Height and body shape said female. The posture and gait were not those of a vampire. She looked young, perhaps in her mid-twenties. Black jeans. Big clumpy boots.
He quickened his pace, intending to accost her. She, at the same time, slowed. It was dawning on her that she had been wrongfooted. Her quarry was nowhere to be seen. He’d vanished somehow, somewhere. Belatedly, she realised he must have dived into the grocery store she’d just passed. She turned...
...and there he was, a few paces behind, heading towards her with purpose.
Her face registered shock and annoyance.
Redlaw squared his shoulders.
“Right, miss,” he said, reaching out to grab her shoulder, “that’s quite enough of that. Who are you and why are you—?”
He heard a sound like a cricket’s chirrup, felt a stab of pain in his belly, and next thing he knew, he was flat out in the snow, his muscles useless, his limbs twitching spastically.
The woman loomed over him. She had a stun gun in one gloved hand, a can of pepper spray in the other. She pointed the latter in his face.
“Okay, buster,” she said. “No funny business. Try anything stupid and I’ll put another three million volts through you. You even blink wrong, and I’ll Mace you ’til your eyeballs bleed. Get me?”
Redlaw nodded feebly.
“Good. Then answer this. Are you or are you not John fucking Redlaw?”
CHAPTER
SIX
TINA CHECKLEY DIDN’T want much out of life. Just fame, wealth and the adoration of millions. The things everybody lusted after and strove for, and she wanted them as badly as anyone, and what you desired, you deserved, right? That was the American Dream, wasn’t it? To become rich and rewarded. And by wishing hard enough, working hard enough, you could make it real.
She didn’t want to be a celebrity for celebrity’s sake, like a talent contest winner or a reality show star, none of that fake shit. She didn’t want to be lobbed into the public eye by the opinions of a panel of judges or by couch potato zombies voting with their fat backsides. Jeez, give her some credit, why don’t you? Tina wanted to get to the top on her own merits, by the sweat of her brow. That, too, counted in her favour in the overall cosmic scheme of things. Made her worthier of the prize.
She was finding the struggle a lot harder than she’d thought, however. The ladder to success was a hell of a lot taller and slipperier than she’d expected. In fact, Tina was having trouble even getting her foot on the bottom rung.
She had graduated two years ago with deep debts and high hopes. Her waste-of-space parents had claimed they couldn’t pay for college tuition, meaning they hadn’t saved up and couldn’t be bothered to get off their butts and arrange finance. She’d failed to qualify for a scholarship, either, her grades not being high enough and her parents’ income not being low enough. So she had funded her education herself through food stamps, a student loan and a fistful of maxed-out credit cards which she now was busy repaying with a string of soul-sapping McJobs. Majoring in journalism, minoring in media studies, she had prepared herself for the game. Tina Checkley was going to be a TV news icon, nothing less. She was going to kick down doors and ask the awkward questions and take no bullshit from anyone, not from the hardest-bitten crooks, not from the squirrelliest politicians. She was going to crusade on hot-button topics and stand up for the rights of the little people: Diane Sawyer, Wonder Woman and Gandhi rolled into one. The world would know about Tina Checkley and sing her praises, not because of who she was, but because of what she said and did and who she helped.
At college—State University of New York, not what you might call an Ivy League institution—Tina had earned herself the nickname “Tick.” She embraced it, even though it was never really intended as a compliment. She had a habit of latching onto people and using them for whatever she could get from them. Boys with money, professors who might be able to give her extra credit, anyone who appeared to have contacts that would be advantageous to her out in the world. Tina shamelessly threw herself at these people and clung to them until she had sucked them dry. It was the only way to get ahead when you came from nowhere—also known as Randallstown, Maryland—and had nothing. And a tick was tenacious. It was a thriving species. A tick was a coper and a survivor.
So yes, maybe there were a couple of trust-fund guys she’d slept with who hadn’t strictly speaking been single at the time and whose girlfriends had then scrawled venomous comments about her on the walls of the women’s restroom. And maybe her fling with that Eng. Lit. teacher during her sophomore year had been ill-advised—but then the bastard had said he had a friend who worked at CNN, and how could she have known that he was lying? In the final analysis, you did what you had to, and college wasn’t a popularity contest, no matter what some of the snootier co-eds might think. College was a bear pit, a scrimmage, Thunderdome, Darwin in action. Like high school but with fewer handguns and slightly better dope. You got through it not by making friends, but by defeating enemies.
Degree in the bag, BlackBerry stuffed with useful phone numbers and email addresses, Tina had set to work finding herself a job. Every TV station in the state had received a copy of her résumé and a DVD showreel of to-camera pieces she’d taped while at SUNY, with a follow-up call coming less than a day later, and a further follow-up call the day after that. But the news departments at the big networks just weren’t hiring. It was bounce after bounce after bounce. Sorry. It’s the economy. Advertising revenues are in the dumper. We’re not taking on any new staff. In fact, we’re laying off. Try again in a year’s time, maybe. Same from the locals. Even the top-of-the-dial cable channels.
At this point Tina had begun to take it personally. It must be her. Something about her. She was overeager, or not compliant enough, too confrontational, too forceful. Or could it be that her thin dark hair and slightly pinched Italianate looks—thanks for those, Grandma DiBonnaventura—didn’t conform to onscreen bimbo standards?
So she’d lowered her sights and tried radio, but it was a similar story there. She’d offered to intern for free, fetch the coffee, anything. No dice. She’d even approached NPR, for fuck’s sake. That was how desperate she was. Still no dice.
Well, screw that. It was the internet age. The old order changeth. You didn’t have to claw your way up through the ranks any more. You could leapfrog the entire queue just by getting yourself out there in cyberspace and becoming a big noise among the geeks and trolls. The road up the mountain was long and winding, but online there lay a shortcut, like a ski lift to success.
So she’d invested in some new equipment: a hi-def camcorder with a 240-gigabyte drive, some editing suite software for her PC. To pay for this she had come to an arrangement with the landlord of her fourth-floor walkup in Astoria, with its scenic view of the jetliners landing and taking off at LaGuardia. Once a week Mr Constantinopoulos was entitled to visit her in her apartment and watch her undress and take a shower. In return, that week’s rent was forfeit. “Throw in a pair of panties from your laundry hamper, maybe a jogging bra as well,” Mr Constantinopoulos had said, “and you got yourself a deal.”
It wasn’t so bad. All she had to do was ignore him, make like he wasn’t there, while he sat on the end of her bed, staring at her with his fried-egg eyes and wheezing asthmatically as he jerked off inside his baggy sweatpants. She even got a weird kic
k out of it. Her power over him. The look of intense, furious worship on his face that lasted at least until he came. She mightn’t be the best-looking woman on the planet, but she knew she had a decent figure, a good pair of tits (and a genuine vote of thanks was due to bosomy Grandma DiBonnaventura for them). This must be how a stripper or a lap dancer felt, able to command total male submission simply by being in a state of undress. The feminists could go fuck themselves. If you’d got it, girl, work it.
All set up to launch herself online, Tina had only one problem. She needed a subject. If she was going to start making short filmed reports and posting them on YouTube or wherever, they needed to be dazzling, daring, juicy; if possible, controversial. They needed to grab attention. She couldn’t go around doing pieces on lost dogs or flashers in public parks or sacked derivatives traders living on handouts and soup-kitchen meals. To make a name for herself, it had to be something edgy and now. Something people hadn’t seen before and hadn’t known they wanted to see.
The answer was obvious, really.
Vampires.
What else?
Vampires were it. Vampires were offbeat and on-trend. Vampires were the one thing guaranteed to grab an online audience. Footage of vampires always garnered huge hit totals. The stuff coming in from Europe was a ratings winner every time. America wanted to know about vampires, it wanted to learn about them, it was intrigued by them. America didn’t have any of its own, at least none that it would admit to. They were here. Everyone knew that. There just weren’t enough of them here to make most American citizens feel that they had to worry about them. The government had expressed concern, but Joe Public, though uneasy, was still basically undecided.
Well, Tina “Tick” Checkley would make Joe Public worry about vampires. She’d rub people’s noses in vampires. She’d show them the truth. And then everyone would sit up and take notice.
Of the vampires, naturally.
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