The Cross

by Scott G. Mariani

  Dec led the way. Nobody spoke as they hurried onwards. Through another door, along another passage, around another bend.

  And suddenly they were facing a fork in the road. The passage divided between two flights of stone steps, one leading up and the other leading down.

  ‘Where does that go?’ Joel asked Knightly, pointing at the downward staircase.

  ‘Cellars,’ Knightly mumbled. His whole body was trembling. ‘I think.’

  ‘No good.’ A cellar was a deathtrap, even if the door held. Down below ground, the vampires could happily besiege them for eternity while all four of them starved.

  That was if Joel didn’t find an alternative food source among his human companions that would enable him to outlast them. He couldn’t let that happen.

  ‘What about that one?’ he asked, pointing at the other stairway. ‘Quickly.’

  ‘That leads up to the old servants’ quarters,’ Knightly blurted. ‘Right at the top of the house.’

  There wasn’t a lot of choice. ‘Okay, that’ll do,’ Joel said. Chloe bounded up the stairs, Dec behind, Knightly following. Running up behind them, Joel could hear the vampires giving chase.

  The staircase curled into a tight spiral as it took them higher. It smelled of rats and mould. Plaster was falling off the walls and the only light came from the occasional dim bulb, crusted with dead moths and old spiders’ webs.

  The humans were getting tired. So was Joel.

  But the vampires racing up behind them weren’t slowing down.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Dec said suddenly. ‘Get back, Joel.’

  ‘What are you doing? Keep moving!’

  ‘I want to give them a dose,’ Dec said. The fierce look Joel had seen in his eyes before was back again. He turned on the stairs and brandished the holy water spray gun.

  ‘Dec, I told you. That thing’s not—’

  But Dec wasn’t listening. As the thundering footsteps of the vampires drew nearer and their shadows appeared on the spiral wall, he squeezed past Joel and trotted down two steps, ready to fire. Elspeth was the first to appear around the corner. She saw Dec standing there and her fangs parted in a grin.

  ‘Ready to bleed?’

  ‘You ready for this, bitch?’ Dec let loose with the spray gun. ‘Yaaaaa! Die, you bastards!’ he yelled triumphantly as the strong jet of water shot down the steps, splashing everywhere.

  Elspeth screamed and started clawing wildly at her wet skin.

  For an instant, even Joel began to think it was working. Until Elspeth threw back her shaven head and began to laugh. ‘Fooled you.’ Moving faster than the human eye could track, she lashed out and tore the spray gun out of Dec’s hands. Crushed it into pieces. Emptied the canister down her throat and tossed it away with a giggle. ‘Refreshing. But that wasn’t what I’m thirsty for.’

  She lunged again to grab Dec, but this time Joel got there first. He chopped the blade of his katana through her arm – and this time her scream was for real. The severed limb flopped to the floor, its fingers clawing against the steps. Elspeth toppled backwards in shock, sending the blond vampire and his swarthy companion tumbling down a dozen steps.

  ‘Go!’ Joel roared, pushing Dec violently upwards. Chloe was screaming, ‘Come on! Come on!’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ Dec yelled at Knightly as he ran. ‘Errol! Fucking dissolves them, you said!’

  Knightly made a helpless gesture. Chloe kicked him. ‘Keep moving, asshole!’

  Then, suddenly, they’d reached the top of the stairs. They found themselves on a narrow dingy landing with ancient creaky floorboards that stretched away into the shadows. A rat scuttled off at their approach. To their left and right were peeling old doors. Joel booted one open and flicked on a light switch, revealing a damp-streaked servant’s bedroom that had obviously been unused for the past several decades.

  ‘Great,’ Chloe said. ‘Where to now?’

  ‘That way,’ Knightly said, pointing to a rusty metal ladder leading to a cobwebbed hatchway in the ceiling. ‘The roof. You three can jump into the moat.’

  Joel pointed at Dec and Chloe. ‘You’re crazy, Knightly. There’s no way a h—’ He’d almost said ‘human can jump that height’. ‘There’s no way a height like that can be jumped.’

  He could hear the footsteps on the stairs. The vampires were approaching. Taking their time. They must have sensed that their victims were cornered.

  Dec stared at Knightly. ‘What do you mean, “you three”? What about you?’

  Knightly seemed suddenly, strangely composed. ‘I’m staying here,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll hold them off while you escape.’ Reaching behind his neck, he slipped the chain of the big silver crucifix he wore over his head, gripping the stem of the cross with a determined set to his jaw.

  ‘I’m going to make you suffer soooo badly,’ Elspeth’s voice echoed softly across the landing. The vampires had reached the top of the stairs and stood silhouetted in the dim light. Elspeth was still clutching her cutlass in her remaining hand.

  Joel wearily raised his katana. He’d been lucky a moment ago. He knew he wouldn’t be lucky again. This would be the final standoff.

  ‘They’ll kill you,’ Dec said to Knightly, looking at the crucifix and understanding what the man intended to do.

  ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’ Knightly gripped Dec’s shoulder tightly. ‘Listen to me. I have to tell you something. Jill – you saw her picture, Declan – Jill left me. Because . . .

  because I can’t have children. There. I said it. I’ve never told anyone else before.’

  Chloe wasn’t listening. She quietly unsheathed her katana and held her breath as she watched the three vampires step closer. She closed her eyes. Saw her dad’s face in her mind. Thought one last time about the man who had murdered him.

  ‘I so much wanted a child of my own,’ Knightly went on, blurting it all out while he still had time. His eyes were filling with tears. ‘A son, who could be everything I could have been. A real vampire hunter. Not a pathetic phoney like his father. Yes, yes, I admit it.’

  The vampires were approaching slowly down the hallway. The scrape of a blade being dragged along the damp plaster. A low chuckle. A glimmer of fangs and the glint of a blade.

  Chloe opened her eyes and tightened her grip on the katana’s hilt. She was ready now.

  ‘Take the money in the chest, Declan,’ Knightly hissed. ‘Everything. The house. It’s yours. Use it. Be what I could never be. Now go, while you still can.’

  ‘Don’t talk crazy,’ Dec said. ‘Come on. We can all make it.’

  ‘Take care of Griffin,’ Knightly whispered. With a last wild stare at Dec, before Joel could stop him, he took off down the landing towards the three vampires with his crucifix raised.

  ‘Errol, you stupid eejit!’ Dec yelled. ‘Get away from them!’ But Knightly was beyond recall. His voice echoed down the stairs as he cried out ‘Get back, ye foul creatures of darkness! Back to the shadow whence ye came. Return to your coffins. Begone, I say!’

  ‘Shut your stinking hole, human,’ Elspeth said, and with a stroke of her cutlass Knightly’s head toppled from his shoulders, went bouncing back across the landing and bumped into Chloe’s feet. She screamed. Knightly’s decapitated body staggered backwards a few steps, still clutching the crucifix; then his knees buckled under him and he collapsed twitching to the bare floorboards.

  ‘That’s shut him up,’ the swarthy-looking vampire said. ‘We haven’t seen one like that for a long while,’ said the blond one.

  ‘Got to give him credit for trying,’ Elspeth chuckled. She pointed the bloodied cutlass at Joel. ‘Enough amusement. Now it’s payback time.’

  ‘Come and get us,’ Dec said through gritted teeth. ‘Let them go,’ Joel said, stepping in front of him and Chloe. ‘You can do what you want with me. You’ll be doing me a favour.’

  The three vampires burst out laughing. ‘Not quite what we had in mind,’ the blond one said. ‘First the humans di
e,’ said Elspeth. ‘Then we deal with you. Then we wait for the other one. Gabriel’s orders.’

  Dec stared confusedly at Joel. ‘What does she mean, “the humans, then you”?’

  Joel ignored him. ‘Which other one?’ he asked Elspeth. That was when a familiar voice spoke from the head of the stairs.

  ‘This other one.’

  Chapter Fifty

  The three vampires barely had time to whirl around in surprise before the landing and stairway lit up with a bright muzzle flash and filled with the blast of gunfire. The blond vampire was lifted off his feet and slammed into the wall by the bullet that caught him in the chest. The second shot spun his swarthy companion like a top and he crunched down on his face. Elspeth froze as the big gun in the shooter’s hand swivelled across to take aim at her.

  The three of them had been around for enough centuries to have all been shot plenty of times before: arrow, matchlock, flintlock, cap and ball, every pathetic missile the human race could fling at them in vain over the years.

  But even as the shots blasted out across the landing and the .50 calibre hollowpoint rounds punched deep into their flesh, their instincts told them this time was going to be different. And the last.

  A terrible howl burst from the blond vampire’s mouth when the Nosferol hit his bloodstream. His veins instantly began to distend and explode, his organs ruptured and his whole body was ravaged into a pulp. Within less than a second, the toxin had worked its effects on his companion and their gory remains lay spread across the landing at Elspeth’s feet.

  ‘Did I poop your party, Elspeth?’ said Alex Bishop as she climbed the last step. ‘It is Elspeth, isn’t it? We ran into each other back in ’87.’

  Elspeth backed away with a snarl. She dropped her cutlass.

  ‘So we’re running around with Gabriel Stone now?’ Alex said. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were his style.’

  Elspeth gave her the finger. ‘Fuck . . . YOU!’

  ‘Bye,’ Alex said. The gun boomed. Alex stepped over her as the spatter hit the wall, and walked up the murky landing towards the figures she’d taken to be humans.

  ‘Is everyone all right?’ she was about to say. What would have happened next was the standard procedure. As witnesses to a vampire incident, the three humans would have had to be injected with a preventative 10cc dose of Vambloc. Alex would have taken the opportunity to snatch a quick feed or two while they were unconscious – what they’d never know couldn’t hurt them – and then she’d have had to start the messy work of disposing of the evidence.

  But as she approached them, holstering the pistol, already reaching for the little pouch on her belt that contained the Vambloc vial and syringe and wondering which of the three was most likely to bolt or put up a fight, she suddenly stopped in her tracks. What she sensed was more than just the instinctive recognition of one vampire by another.

  ‘Joel?’ she gasped.

  He took an uncertain step forward and the dim light from the open bedroom door shone across his face. Alex swallowed hard. For a long moment, the two of them could only stare at one another, neither able to speak.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘Alex . . .’ His voice was faint, barely more than a whisper. He staggered back and leaned against the wall, hidden by shadows. The blackness was rising. He could barely stand up straight any more. Feeling his foot splash down into something liquid, he looked down and saw that he was standing in the spreading dark pool of Knightly’s blood.

  Alex had been about to step closer to him when Chloe, pale-faced and fighting back the sickness that was churning her guts, blocked her way and challenged her. ‘Who the hell are you, lady?’

  Dec was crouched unhappily by the headless body of his former mentor. Straightening up, he looked at Alex with amazement and pointed. ‘I know who she is. She’s the agent from the Federation.’

  Alex was stunned for a second, then remembered the video clip. Great, just great. Olympia Angelopolis would have relished this moment.

  Dec stared at the gun in its holster. ‘What is that thing?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Alex said.

  ‘Bollocks it’s nothing. Silver doesn’t work. Garlic and all that other smelly shite doesn’t work. Holy water doesn’t work. But that does.’ He turned to Joel. ‘Joel, did you see—’

  That was as far as Dec got. Because while a moment before, Joel had been standing there right beside him, now he was down on his knees with his palms splayed out in the pool of Knightly’s blood and his head lowered to the floor.

  Bile shot up in Dec’s throat at the sound of the wet lapping and slurping sounds. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Joel was lapping frantically at the spilled blood before it all leaked away through the cracks between the floorboards.

  ‘Joel! What the frig are you doing!?’ Dec yelled, appalled.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Joel gasped, tearing himself away and gazing up at his young friend. ‘I didn’t want you to find out – not this way,’ he said. His voice was thick with the blood that bubbled from the corners of his mouth and trickled freely down his chin. ‘But I couldn’t wait any longer. I was fading, Dec.’

  Chloe let out a gasp of revulsion. ‘He’s . . .’

  ‘A vampire,’ Dec finished for her. Tears welled in his eyes. ‘No, Joel. Please. Not you. Tell me it’s not true.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Joel muttered.

  Dec turned to Alex. ‘Don’t harm him, miss,’ he pleaded. ‘I know that’s what you do, kill vampires. But he’s my friend. You saw how he tried to save us. Didn’t you see it?’

  Alex didn’t reply. She watched as the young lad visibly swallowed back his fear and disgust and rage, let out a groan of sorrow and went over to his friend to put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Stone,’ Dec whispered. ‘Stone did this to you.’

  ‘It wasn’t Gabriel Stone who turned him,’ Alex said. ‘I know, because I was there when it happened.’

  Dec stared at her. ‘You were there—’

  ‘It was me who turned Joel into a vampire.’

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Dec took Chloe’s arm and the two of them backed away. ‘I’m going crazy,’ Chloe mumbled to herself. ‘It’s a nightmare, that’s all it is. A nightmare. I’m going to wake up any second now.’

  Smearing blood across his lips with the back of his hand, Joel rose slowly to his feet. Already he could feel the energising glow, that marvellous warmth that he loathed as much as he lusted for it, spreading through his whole being, tingling all the way to his fingertips. The dark mist was gone from his vision.

  ‘How are you, Joel?’ Alex said.

  ‘That’s one hell of a thing for you to ask me.’

  ‘I know you hate me,’ she said, stepping towards him. ‘I know how you must be feeling right now.’

  ‘Do you?’ he laughed bitterly. ‘Then you must know what I promised myself I’d do to you if we ever met again.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do know. I’m sorry you feel that way.’

  ‘Sorry? You think sorry makes it all okay again? That we can both just go back to the way things were?’

  ‘I know we can’t go back to the way it was between us,’ she said. ‘But I was hoping we could be friends again one day.’

  He stared at her. ‘Why did you do it? Why?’

  ‘You’d have done the same for me.’

  ‘No. Never. Not this. Why couldn’t you just let me go?’

  ‘I couldn’t bear to,’ she said. ‘I did the only thing I could do to save you.’

  ‘Save me?’ He raised his bloody hands to show her. ‘Look what you did to me, Alex,’ he shouted. ‘Look what you’ve turned me into. I didn’t want to be saved! I didn’t ask for it that day in Romania, and I didn’t exactly ask for it tonight.’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be here tonight,’ Alex shouted back at him, taking another step closer. She pointed at the vampire corpses on the floor. ‘But if I had known it, and known I could protect you f
rom these, would I have still done it? Yes I would, Joel, yes I would. Because I . . . because I have to. Don’t you understand?’ She paused, looking deep into his eyes, seeing the agony there. What could she tell him? That she loved him? That even if he hated her now, she still could never regret what she’d done?

  ‘Why are you here, Alex?’

  ‘I was sent,’ she said. ‘For business.’

  Dec blinked. Despite his terror he managed to croak out, ‘Business?’

  ‘The video clip,’ she told him, not taking her eyes off Joel. ‘I need to destroy it before it gets out.’

  ‘You’re too late,’ Chloe said.

  ‘I’m only glad I didn’t get here a moment later,’ Alex said.

  There was a long silence.

  ‘You want your revenge on me, Joel?’ Alex unholstered her pistol and tossed it to him. ‘Then take it. Do it now.’

  Joel looked down at the gun in his hand.

  ‘Three rounds left,’ she said. ‘It’s not a lot, but when you’re shooting vampires with Nosferol tips it only takes one hit. Doesn’t matter where. You can’t miss.’

  Joel thumbed back the hammer of the pistol with a sharp click-click. He slowly raised it in one hand and pointed it at Alex, framing her in the sights.

  ‘Shoot her,’ Chloe said. ‘Then shoot yourself.’

  ‘No,’ Dec blurted. ‘He’ll be all right.’

  ‘I’ll never be all right, Dec,’ Joel said. He felt the smooth curve of the trigger against his fingertip. Alex was watching him steadily, waiting, not a flicker of expression on her face.

  Just a tiny flick of a finger was all it would take for the hammer to drop. The firing pin slamming forward to punch the primer in the base of the cartridge lodged inside the breech. The charge igniting, gases welling up to propel the Nosferol-tipped bullet through the barrel and across the short distance between them and deep into Alex’s body, carrying the toxin into her system and destroying her forever.

  Revenge. The thought of it had sustained him all this time, and right now, right here, the moment had finally arrived.