The Cross

by Scott G. Mariani

  ‘Sounds more like a dictatorship than a Federation to me,’ Joel said.

  ‘The thought’s occurred to me more than once,’ she replied with a sour smile. ‘But right now, I’m not sorry. Being the pawn of a dictatorial regime can sometimes have its advantages.’ When the search box she’d been waiting for popped up on the little screen, she typed in the name Baxter Burnett. In an instant, his whole profile had come up.

  Joel’s eyes opened wide. ‘The actor?’

  ‘I told you Jeremy Lonsdale wasn’t the only VIP Gabriel Stone hooked up with,’ Alex said.

  ‘You never told me it was Baxter Burnett the movie star.’

  ‘Who?’ Dec asked, his face appearing in the gap between the front seats and peering at the laptop screen glowing in the darkness. ‘Fuck me, that’s Baxter Burnett! He was in that fillum The Rat Pus, so he was.’

  ‘It was The Raptus,’ Alex said. ‘And you shouldn’t really be seeing this.’ Not that it really mattered any more, she thought, not if the Federation was history, and maybe it was this time.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Dec exclaimed, staring at the screen. ‘Are you saying he’s a frigging . . . I mean, he’s one of you?’

  ‘Managed to keep it secret from his adoring fans long enough,’ Alex said. ‘Looks like the cat’s out of the bag now, though.’ She scrolled down Baxter’s list of registered addresses. He spent so much time at the Ritz that the Trafalgar Suite was one of them, along with his homes in LA, Bermuda and Antibes. Right at the bottom of the list was The Eagle’s Nest, the name Baxter had chosen for his mountain retreat near Zermatt. Alex cocked an eyebrow. Maybe Baxter had never heard of Adolf Hitler. Or maybe he had, the little closet Nazi.

  ‘Gotcha,’ she said, flipping the computer screen down and typing the location into the satnav.

  Seconds later, their route flashed up on the little screen.

  ‘If all goes according to plan,’ Alex told her passengers, ‘exactly one hundred and thirty-seven kilometres from here is where we’re going to find Gabriel Stone.’ She replaced the computer in the pouch behind her seat and grabbed her pistol from its hiding place under the centre console. ‘I hope he’s having a hell of a good time right now,’ she said. ‘Because it’s the last chance he’ll ever get.’

  Chapter Sixty

  Gabriel was, in fact, having a very enjoyable time indeed. After another productive evening’s hunting, he and Kali were nicely sated with the blood of five random victims – one middle-aged couple hijacked in their car, one fairly old but healthy male who’d put up an admirably spirited resistance before they’d run him down in the woods and ripped him open, and, as an unexpected bonus, two young females walking along the snowy roadside who’d made the mistake of trying to thumb a lift in the Ferrari. Foolish but tasty.

  It had been such a productive evening that they’d decided to return home early to open some more of their absent host’s vintage champagne and settle down to luxuriate a while in front of a roaring log fire. The night was still young as the vampires rode the cable car back up the steep valley and made their giggling, playful, light-hearted way back upstairs.

  ‘My dear, I believe there is still a bottle left of the ’76,’ Gabriel said absently as he strolled into the dark living room and across the sheepskin rug towards the fireplace, where he struck a match and tossed it on the bed of dry kindling and logs he’d prepared earlier. Vampires had no warmth requirements, but an open fire was a pleasure he’d always relished and would relish again tonight: the spit and crackle of the flames, the dance of their glow against the honey smoothness of Kali’s skin. He was distracted for a moment as he watched the fire leap up and take hold.

  Then, suddenly alerted by his senses, he whirled round. To his amazement, Lillith and Zachary were standing at the far end of the room, the firelight flickering on their faces.

  ‘My friends,’ he began, walking towards them with open arms. ‘What are you . . .’ His voice trailed away and his eyes narrowed as he realised they weren’t alone.

  Alex stepped out from behind Zachary, the pistol aimed carefully at her prisoners but just as carefully out of their reach. She knew how fast they could move, especially Lillith. ‘Look what we found at the bottom of the mountain,’ she said.

  Joel stepped out from the shadows, still slightly flushed from the little bit of exercise he’d done a few minutes earlier. While Alex and the humans had held the hostages in the chalet, it had been his job to ride the cable car back down to the boarding station below and return on foot, running back along the cable tracks with nothing but his sense of balance between him and a very long drop. In his hand was the katana he’d taken from Bal Mawr. He rested its razor-sharp edge against Zachary’s neck.

  ‘They caught us in the valley, Gabriel,’ Lillith said.

  ‘We were coming to warn you . . .’ Zachary began, but Joel pressed the katana blade harder against his throat and he went quiet.

  ‘I remember you,’ Gabriel said, eyeing Joel. ‘Solomon. The lawman. The intrepid detective. You have undergone a stage of evolution since we last met, it seems. I wish I could offer you a warmer welcome to the vampire race, but you appear to have chosen to stand alongside traitors.’

  ‘I’m not here for the Federation’s sake,’ Joel said, mastering the tremor of anger and fear in his voice. ‘I just want to see you sent to hell, you and all your evil kind.’

  ‘Right,’ Dec said in the bravest tone he could muster as he led Chloe out into the firelight and planted the tip of his sword against the floor, the way he’d seen the heroes do in movies.

  Gabriel looked Dec up and down, and shook his head as he turned to Alex. ‘I was sadly aware of how far you could stoop, Alexandra. But fraternising with humans – let alone these mere striplings with their toys?’

  ‘Whatever gets the job done,’ Alex said.

  ‘If anyone would let us speak—’ Lillith cut in angrily.

  ‘Shut up,’ Alex said, and shoved the gun hard into her side.

  Without warning, the living room door swung open and Kali sauntered in, wearing relatively little and carrying a tray with two glasses and a bottle of champagne on ice. Two steps into the room, she let out a gasp and dropped the tray with a crash. At a nod from Joel, Dec stepped quickly over and pointed his sword at her.

  ‘Over there next to lover boy,’ Alex said.

  Kali snarled at Dec, baring her fangs as he herded her across the rug towards Gabriel. His knees turned to jelly but he stood firm and raised the blade with both hands. ‘Watch it, missus. Sure I can lop your head off quicker than you can say . . .’ Dec wasn’t quite sure what she could say, and left it at that.

  ‘I hope you realise the skill – not to mention the luck – it takes for a human swordsman to conquer a vampire?’ Gabriel said coolly.

  ‘Don’t forget this one,’ Alex said, stepping away from Lillith and pointing the Desert Eagle at him and Kali.

  Gabriel gazed at the pistol. ‘Loaded, I assume, with the vile poison concocted by your Federation thugs?’

  ‘And you’ve seen what it can do, Gabriel,’ Alex said. ‘Anybody moves and Baxter’s going to have a hell of a cleaning job with that rug.’

  ‘Perhaps I have underestimated you. Yet you do appear to be somewhat at a disadvantage. If the weapon contained more than one or two bullets, I believe you would have treacherously gunned us all down by now. Instead your plan is to trick us into remaining your hostages until sunrise, whereupon I am guessing that you and Inspector Solomon here will enjoy the protective benefits of the filthy drug Solazal, allowing you to spectate while the four of us meet a fiery end.’

  ‘Eloquent to the last, Gabriel,’ Alex said. ‘But the only reason I haven’t pulled this trigger yet is that you’re going to tell me where the cross is.’

  ‘That’s what we—’ Lillith started, but Dec cut her off with a threatened strike.

  Gabriel smiled. ‘And if I reveal its whereabouts to you?’

  ‘Nosferol’s quicker and cleaner than frying. It
’s your choice.’

  ‘Far less generous terms than those I offered you in Romania, as I recall,’ Gabriel said.

  ‘I’m all out of generosity.’ Alex gazed at him steadily through the gunsights, while keeping Lillith in her peripheral vision. If things kicked off, it would all happen extremely fast. ‘We know you have the cross, Gabriel. We know about Ash, too.’

  ‘I’m afraid your information is somewhat out of date, Alexandra. The cross is now very far away, safely contained in a place where no human will ever lay their filthy hands on it again.’

  ‘No, Gabriel!’ Lillith cut in, backing out of the reach of Dec’s katana. ‘That’s what Zachary and I have been trying to tell you. For blood’s sake, let me speak! They didn’t put the cross in the ice. Ash is coming, Gabriel. He’s coming back here with it and he’s going to destroy us.’

  Gabriel stared at her.

  ‘It’s true,’ Zachary said. ‘The uglies betrayed you, boss. They want you gone. They want all of us gone. And I mean all of us,’ he added, nodding at Alex and Joel. ‘They’re gonna take the whole planet over for themselves. As for you blood-bags,’ he said, motioning towards Dec and Chloe, ‘we saw what they’re doing to humans. Their asses stuffed inside giant icicles getting the blood slowly sucked out of them into a bunch of vats. Ain’t no pretty sight.’

  ‘Who the frig are the uglies?’ Dec said, aghast.

  ‘The Übervampyr,’ Alex explained to him. ‘The ones I told you about. Ever get the feeling you’ve been used, Gabriel?’

  ‘Maybe if you’d been less preoccupied with your little playmate over there, you might have foreseen this,’ Lillith raged. ‘Face it, brother, you’ve been complacent. Your vanity won you over. You thought the Masters had chosen you, and you only, to help bring about their plans. You should never have trusted them. You delivered Ash to them on a plate and now they’ve superseded you just like that, as if you never really mattered to them.’

  It was the first time in a millennium that Gabriel Stone had been completely at a loss for words. He slumped heavily into one of Baxter Burnett’s designer armchairs with his chin on his chest and let out a long sigh. ‘Evidently, I have made a grievous error,’ he admitted after a silence. ‘I always believed that our Masters would make room for us within their grand design.’

  ‘Motherfuckers ain’t no masters of mine,’ Zachary said. ‘Never were, never will be.’

  ‘You are right, sister,’ Gabriel went on. ‘I should have seen this. I have always suspected that, in their hearts, the Übervampyr regarded us as nothing more than a bastard race. After all, they created us. Now it seems they plan to dispose of their inferior offspring, intending to become the exclusive dominant species.’

  ‘Wait. You say they created us?’ Lillith said, staring at him.

  ‘Has none among you ever wondered where our kind originated?’ Gabriel said. ‘Who was the first vampire? How did we come to walk this earth? The result of some vulgar virus? A ridiculous notion.’

  ‘Didn’t the Devil create you, or something?’ Dec asked meekly.

  Gabriel chuckled. ‘A devil, perhaps, but not one to be found within human myth and legend. Lillith, you asked me why the Masters loved to watch the stars. It is because they have always longed to return to the home that was once their Paradise, and which was destroyed. The Elder tales describe the meteoric cataclysm, first seen as a fireball streaking across the sky, that showered their world with a mineral substance so toxic to them that it wiped out virtually their entire population and forced them to embark on a desperate odyssey across millions of light-years of space in the search for a new home. Many of their craft were lost; others may have landed on planets unable to support them. Just one came down, in a state of near-destruction, on this world we call Earth. They remain there still. In Siberia.’

  The room was suspended in an astonished silence; just the crackle of the fire in the background as Gabriel quietly continued:

  ‘Finding themselves castaways on a hostile planet, they sought ways not only to survive but to gain control. It soon became clear to them that to reveal themselves to humankind would only cause mass panic and revolt. And so they created a hybridised form of themselves, incorporating some of their own capabilities into a more human shape that would allow them to take the world by stealth if not by force. The vampire, as we know it, was born.’

  Chapter Sixty-One

  ‘Brother, why have you never spoken of this before?’ Lillith asked, stunned.

  ‘Vampires are frigging aliens?’ Dec burst out.

  Chloe had understood. ‘The cross,’ she muttered, almost to herself. ‘The cross wasn’t from here. It was from somewhere else.’

  Gabriel nodded. ‘One can only surmise that the rock that fell to Earth, aeons ago, was a straggler from the same meteor shower that devastated their home planet. Its radiative properties remain mysterious to us: properties that your human ancestors must have discovered entirely by chance when they witnessed the destructive effect the rock could have on the feared beings they believed to be “supernatural”. In an act of superstitious ignorance, attributing its powers to some divine intervention against evil, some foolish shaman then sculpted the rock into the shape of a Christian icon.’

  ‘Lil and I didn’t drag our asses across Siberia and half of Europe for a history lesson, Gabriel,’ Zachary said. ‘We came to tell you the motherfucking cross is on its way here, right now, while we’re standing around talking.’

  ‘We were delayed getting back on the aeroplane,’ Lillith said. ‘We wandered for hours in a blizzard, and when we finally got back to the airfield, the humans were passed out drunk. For all we know, Ash could have left not long after we did. He could be here any minute.’

  ‘But how can he find this place?’ Kali cut in.

  ‘He knows where we are,’ Gabriel replied. ‘He was present when we discussed our coming here.’

  ‘We need to get the fuck out. Right now,’ Zachary insisted.

  Lillith gave a shudder. ‘He’s right. I don’t ever want to be near that thing again.’

  ‘I’m with you on that one,’ Alex said, exchanging glances with Joel.

  ‘An interesting turn of events for you, Agent Bishop and Inspector Solomon,’ Gabriel said. ‘The two of you come here as my sworn enemy, ready to send me to hell, as you so charmingly put it; only to find that we are strangely allied to one another.’

  ‘So are we leaving this minute or not, Gabriel?’ Kali said anxiously.

  ‘I fear that flight may not be the wisest choice,’ Gabriel said. ‘Ash will find us, wherever we go. He is a truly determined individual, and whatever motivation I was able to inspire in him will have been redoubled by the far greater powers the Masters can promise. He will not stop until he has destroyed us all.’

  ‘Then we stay and fight,’ Alex said. ‘We won’t get this chance again.’

  Lillith shook her head. ‘The chance to do what? There is no way to fight the cross.’

  ‘There might be a way,’ Joel said. Looking out of the window, the sight of the cable tracks stretching away down the valley had given him an idea. He glanced at the pistol in Alex’s hand and said, ‘Ash might have the cross but he’s still human. Unless he’s a champion climber, it’d be hard for him to scale the cliff. He’ll come up the easy way, in the cable car.’

  ‘Then we can prevent him crossing the valley,’ Kali said. ‘Simple. Destroy the cable car, right away.’

  Joel shook his head. ‘No, I think we should let him get on it.’

  ‘That’s madness,’ Lillith exploded.

  ‘Let him speak, sister,’ Gabriel said. ‘It may be worth hearing.’

  ‘Is there any way we can slow it down before it gets here?’ Joel asked. ‘Better still, stop it halfway?’

  ‘Isn’t there a stop button or something?’ said Kali, who never took notice of such things.

  Gabriel shook his head. ‘In all other respects the device works like a lift, able to be summoned from either end of the
cable track. Once activated in either direction, however, there is no means of halting its progress.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be hard to cut the power to the motor,’ Zachary said. ‘Or else maybe jam the gears with something.’

  Alex waggled her pistol. ‘Sounds good to me. If we could stop the cable car over the valley, Ash would be a sitting target. I could take him out.’

  ‘I thought that gun was just for shooting vampires,’ Dec said.

  ‘The Nosferol in the hollowpoints is pretty harmless to humans,’ Alex told him. ‘But I never met one yet who could withstand a 300-grain bullet moving past the speed of sound. Believe me, this’ll kill the guy.’

  ‘You would have to make the shot from a considerable range,’ Gabriel said, ‘if you wish to stay out of the cross’s reach. Are you proficient enough with the weapon?’

  ‘If you can stop the cable car fifty, sixty yards from the landing station, I can get him,’ Alex said.

  Lillith snorted. ‘Don’t kid yourself. Within forty yards of the cross’s power you’ll be in such agony you won’t be able to hold the gun straight, let alone pull off a pistol shot like that in darkness.’

  ‘I still have three rounds left,’ Alex said. ‘Two in the mag, one up the spout.’

  ‘You couldn’t do it with thirty.’

  ‘Do you have any better ideas?’ Alex snapped at her.

  ‘You’re forgetting us,’ Chloe cut in. ‘The cross can’t hurt us, remember?’

  ‘She’s right,’ Dec said. ‘Let us do it. We can get closer to Ash than any of you.’

  ‘Give me the gun,’ Chloe said. ‘I know how to shoot. I’ve shot Ash once before. I can do it again.’

  Six pairs of vampire eyes stared at Chloe, opening wide at the implications of what she was asking them to do.