The Seeker

by Martyn Taylor

  Taking one last look at his prisoner and shaking his head, as though to clear clouds he could not see, Rasputin turned away and left the room.

  *****

  In his cell Cyrano’s eyes blinked open and glared at the mirror behind which the wizard had stood, believing he was invisible. His eyes glittered with a burning, consuming hatred.

  A time would come when he would be free of these chains, and then there would be a reckoning. Until then, though, he could wait. He would endure. He would not fail this time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The telephone ringing hauled him up from sleep in the middle of a dank, grey London late afternoon, greasy rain sliding down the dirty window panes. The city had gone from lovely to loathsome as he slept.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” he growled as he held the phone in one hand and knuckled the sleep grit from his eyes with the other.

  “No,” Roxane replied, as though nothing could be more natural. “I haven’t slept for hundreds of years, not properly slept - as you would understand.”

  Which might explain many of the facts he had discovered about the very few ancient vampires there were.

  “What do you want?”

  “I know where they are.”

  He scrabbled on the night stand for a notebook and pen, and then scribbled down the address as she gave it to him, slowly. Then he repeated it. “I’ll see you there,” he said, and cut the phone connection.

  ‘There’ was opposite the police station in Camberwell, by the Green. Call had to google how to get there, and was pained to discover it was by bus. The tube hardly went south of the river, much like the vampires he had known and killed.

  Roxane was waiting for him when he got off the bus, looking very different to how she had appeared before. Her hair was gathered up beneath a scarf, and the scarf covered by a broad brimmed hat that had last been fashionable when ‘Casablanca’ was made. Her coat was a Burberry mackintosh, belted tightly at her waist, and looked to Call as though it was not so much shower resistant as proof against a monsoon. It reached down to her calves and all he could see of her legs were black leather boots with heels that might be disparagingly termed ‘sensible’.

  “You look businesslike,” he observed as he approached, suddenly aware of a raging desire for a cigarette, even though he had given up smoking when he took up seeking. Or had seeking taken him up, to the exclusion of all else? And why was he thinking that now? He shook his head as though that would clear away these sudden, unwanted questions by centrifugal force.

  “I trust you are ready for business, Mr Call.”

  He felt the weight of the two killing blades hung beneath his armpits where they could not be seen. “I’m always ready for business once the sun goes down,” he said, wishing he could have used the line ‘I was born ready’, except they both knew that was not true. “Where is the place?”

  “Just along here.” She slipped her right arm through his left and they made a perfect couple as they set off east along Camberwell New Road, him on the outside to protect her from the footpads – of which there were a fair number in that still depressed part of the city – with his sword arm free.

  Anyone who did try it on with them would live to regret their choice, although perhaps not for long.

  They had not gone far when they came to an anonymous aluminium and frosted glass door between a kebab shop without customers and a mobile phone shop that looked as though it had not been open for some time from the small mountain of post and free newspapers behind the bars on the door.

  Other than the sign above the door announcing ‘The Green Dolphin Club’, only one of the neon lights was broken so the word ‘Club’ was not illuminated, there was no difference between it and the many other doors that stretched away towards Peckham. Call hesitated a few yards away. “You think the nest will be there?” He felt distinctly uncomfortable questioning her like that.

  “They came here this morning from The Russia House, at a time suggesting they were going to their roost.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Just before dawn.” He could not fault the logic of her deduction.

  “What makes you think they will tell you anything about Cyrano, assuming they know anything in the first place?”

  “We both recognised the girl the leader had on a chain as being Cyrano’s latest ‘flame’.” He frowned. She smiled. “I saw the photograph, Robert. As for them not telling us, well I can be persuasive when I wish to be,” she said, and turned to go into the club. The bouncer on the door appeared utterly oblivious of her, although he looked Call up and down. Whether he could actually see anything through the dark glasses that went from ear to ear was another matter.

  As he followed he saw Roxane standing at the bottom of the stairs, taking off her hat and coat, and noticed for the first time she was not dressed in style but in a workaday skirt and polo necked shirt that looked as though a cycle or two through a washing machine would do it no harm. He felt a flicker of unease. What was she prepared for that he was not?

  The staircase down to the basement club was as cramped and gloomy as they always seemed to be, and the Green Dolphin Club was a womb just as squalid and dank and gaudy as the many he had investigated all over London, only more so.

  Why were vamp haunts always so depressingly gauche and grubby and full of shadows where no sane human being would want to go?

  Because they were vamp haunts and, whatever the tales and the publicity and carefully propagated fantasies, vampires were basically grotesque, blood hungry losers that happened to acquire an ersatz glamour when they gave up life for never ending death. That glamour might not be sufficient to fool him any more – if it ever had – but not every human was as strong minded as he was, and there were quite a few humans there tonight.

  “These places were much worse than this in my day,” Roxane spoke into his ear, even though she was three feet behind him and the walls shook with the doom laden heavy metal music being pumped out of overloaded speakers.

  Call dropped some coins into an unattended raffia basket on a rickety green baize covered card table by the entrance.

  “Sanitation and building standards have come a long way since Good Queen Bess was on the throne. This place would have been neck deep in mud and sewage then. Not that she was good, you understand, Queen Bess. Not in the least. Elizabeth was a cold, ruthless, twenty-four-carat bitch who forgot nothing and forgave even less. Well, she was the queen, so what can you expect? I liked her.”

  Call said nothing, trying not to be distracted as he scanned the room. Roxane might be able to stroll through the valley of the shadow of death and know she was the toughest thing there, but he had to be more careful. He needed to know who was there and deserved his attention before they had any thoughts about him.

  His heart stopped when he saw the couple sitting at the small table in the corner next to the bar, beside an unmarked door. He was a long, thin streak of carefully composed artistic misery, with long, lank, dyed black hair falling down over his eyes and framing his gaunt, pale face with a wispy attempt at a moustache and goatee beard. He was dressed all in black – of course he was – and he leaned earnestly forward over the table, holding her right hand in both of his. She was slender, blond with bright blue eyes fixed on his and a bloom to her cheeks that the pancake white makeup could not entirely disguise.

  She was his daughter, Meghan.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Roxane said.

  He turned away, quickly. “She will be if she doesn’t get out of here right now.”

  Roxane chuckled. “She has nothing to fear from him. All he wants is to get between her legs. He’s not one of us.”

  “I’m not worried about him. They, however, are a different matter entirely.” He nodded briefly towards a booth, where two couples stared at them with those hungry, appraising eyes, wondering who they were, whether they might be worth the effort. Roxane turned towards them.

  Call could not see the expre
ssion on her face but all four vampires suddenly found something fascinating on the table before them.

  They sat down at the only table still unoccupied, next to the bar, and he had to work very hard keeping his gaze away from Meghan, who did not appear to have noticed him yet.

  A waitress in a short skirt, low cut corset and extravagantly holed fishnet tights came to the table. Roxane removed her glasses, folded them and put them into a case, which she dropped into her bag and then looked up at her, smiling, sending a tremor through the young woman. “We don’t need anything,” she said. “We are here for the show.”

  “What show?” the waitress stammered. “ There isn’t any show…”

  “Oh yes there is, my dear. There will be one hell of a show here tonight.”

  Even beneath her panda bear white cheek and kohl black eye makeup he could see the blood draining from her face. Roxane could do that to people with a friendly smile. “What time do you finish?” she asked.

  “What? Four, four o’clock…”

  “I should leave early if I were you,” Roxane told her with another smile, one that could freeze blood. “As soon as you can would be a good idea.”

  The waitress glanced towards the bar, where a thick set, crop headed man whose shirt collar and bow tie dug into the flesh of his neck glared at her. He could have had ‘thug’ tattooed over his low browed forehead. It was a wonder his knuckles didn’t drag on the ground when he walked. He was about as low on the vamp totem pole as it was possible to be without actually still being meat. Roxane waved her away. “Now, dear, now.”

  Call put his hand on Roxane’s wrist. “There’s something I have to do…”

  “Of course. It is only what any father would do.”

  “You know?”

  “She is very clearly your daughter. Go. Save her.”

  When they had come to the Green Dolphin, Call had not known exactly what was going to happen, although he was prepared for some vampire killing, as he always was. Roxane had hidden her intentions.

  Now, though, they were not, and an icy hand of dread got hold of his guts and twisted. She had mayhem in mind, and he suspected that her idea of mayhem was on a grand scale. Vamps were going to die, things were going to get broken, and he might be among them if he was not careful.

  As he got up and went to Meghan’s table, Roxane began to make the rounds of those other humans in the club.

  “Fuck off,” said the boy as Call sat down. Call just smiled.

  “You want to be careful who you swear at, sonny. Some might take it the wrong way.” His smile was a condescending sneer. He did not have to impress this misguided brat who had brought his child into a place of danger so he could play the doomed, romantic poet. He wrote bad poetry, that was a certainty. They all did.

  “What are you doing here?” Meghan hissed. If looks could kill she had just left him dead on the floor with two smoking holes in his forehead.

  “I’m working,” he smiled. “You do remember what work I do, don’t you. Nowadays.”

  The confusion on her face was his answer. “She never told you, did she? Marion… you mother never told you what I do.”

  The boy put his hand on Call’s wrist. Call removed it more painfully than was strictly necessary. “What do you do, old man?” he asked, clenching and unclenching his fingers.

  “I’m in vermin control,” Call smiled at him. “I kill vampires.”

  Incomprehension flickered across the boy’s face and Call realised the idiot did not actually believe vampires really existed.

  “He’s one,” he said, nodding towards the barman, who was looking even more worried than he had before. “They are,” gesturing towards the couples in the booth, “and she is.” Roxane sat down at the table and smiled at the young people.

  The boy pushed his chair backwards, the legs screeching on the floor, and got to his feet. He looked at Meghan for a moment, desperation mixed with dread in his eyes, pleading with her to tell him to stay or to get up and go with him. She looked away and he fled.

  “He’s got more sense than he looks to have,” Roxane said, picking up the glass of dark red coloured liquid he had been drinking from. “Tomato juice with a hint of vodka and bitters.” She laughed, briefly. “A Bloody Mary, how appropriate.”

  “Who’s she,” Meghan demanded. “Your girlfriend?”

  Roxane reached out and took hold of Meghan’s hand. Call was suddenly aware of a ring on her third finger with a large, almost translucent blue white stone that could have been a pearl, but wasn’t, and was shot through with threads of dark red, the colour of fresh blood.

  Call had never seen it before and wondered what it might signify. “You have been told what I am, child, although you appear determined to disregard that fact,” whispered Roxane, staring into Meghan’s eyes, who just stared back, transfixed. “As for my relationship with your father, you could say that I am his employer.”

  “What are you doing with him…?”

  Roxane got to her feet, lifting Meghan up with her. “If you leave now you may live long enough for him to tell you. If you leave now.” Meghan hesitated, her rage towards her father fighting with the terror Roxane was putting into her. “Dying to spite him is not a good idea, child.”

  Meghan hesitated a moment longer, her confused gaze flickering from Roxane to Call, then back again. Call saw the thug vamp step around the bar with a baseball bat in his hands. All the other vampires in the club were on their feet and forming a circle about them. He felt a brief, intense draught and the next thing he knew Roxane was at the door, pushing Meghan up the stairs. A moment later and she stood beside him, regarding the vampires with contempt.

  “You want to play, do you?” she smiled. “I’d better warn you, just in case you don’t know who I am, I play rough. So does he.” She nodded at Call.

  “They aren’t here,” he hissed. “The nest we came for, the ones you said were here.” These were not odds he liked.

  She shrugged. “We’ll find them. These will do as practice.”

  “And who are you, bitch?” snarled the barman, jumping forward and swinging his bat in an arc that would have smashed in Call’s head had he not ducked. Without any obvious effort, Roxane caught the bat, tugged it from the vampire’s grasp and then drove it into his chest with a crackling of crushing bone and a spray of bright red blood. He still wore a bewildered expression when her free hand swept around and decapitated him.

  His body turned to dust before it hit the ground. The head stared up at them for a moment from the floor, wearing an expression of dumb incomprehension before it, too, erupted in pale mauve flames, dark dust and a little soot that circled ceilingwards on a waft of warm air from the flames.

  “Well you’ll never know, will you,” she said, tossing away the remains of the bat and turning back to look at the other vampires, who were now all keeping their distance. “Still want to play?” she asked.

  Call heard the locks closing, denying them all the chance of flight. Fight was the only option open to them. He wished she had asked him first, but guessed it was a long, long time since she had asked anyone’s permission to do anything. He reached inside his coat and produced two long knives, made of silver coated steel. The steel kept an edge and the silver worked its deadly magic on vampires. They had never failed him yet.

  “Let’s party,” he grinned, hoping the braggadocio he did not actually feel communicated itself to the vamps.

  “Shall we dance?” asked Roxane, moving forward with that preternatural speed of hers, taking a female vamp by the wrists and literally pulling her apart from neck to groin.

  The vamp disappeared in a brief flare of purple smoke and sparks. Roxane was standing beside Call again before the smoke dissipated. “I had forgotten how good that felt,” she grinned at him. He had never felt more afraid in his entire life.

  The two men from the booth jumped towards them, yelling. Call swung his blades. The left opened one vampire’s chest, the right decapitated him. Roxane caught h
old of the other by throat with her left hand and pushed hard on his chest with her right. The body flew back in the direction it had come, while she kept hold of his head until it began to smoke, then she dropped it.

  Both corpses and heads vanished in plumes of smoke and sparks. Their female counterparts fled for the doorway, but Roxane was there well before them, taking the outside of their heads in her hands and bringing them crashing together with a dull sound of bone crushing within the bags that were the flesh covering their skulls.

  Then there was a plume of blood jetting out from where the skulls ground against each other, which was soon mixed with brain matter. She kept on pushing and very soon the vampires’ heads were gone. Their bodies collapsed to the ground, when there were more mauve flames and flakes of soot rising up to the ceiling, where they vanished into the gloom before sticking to the years of grease and sweat that were up there.

  Which left five vampires looking for a way to escape, three males got up for a night up West and two females who were similarly attired. One of the males snarled and leapt at Call, as though he was a werewolf rather than a vampire, the others turned and ran at Roxane, screaming their desire for revenge and blood. Call did not watch them, concentrating on his own opponent who had adopted a strange, one legged stance with his hands extended towards him as though they were claws.

  “You’ve watched too many martial arts movies, my friend,” Call chuckled as he recognised the stance, and then chuckled again as the vamp’s expression told him he had hit that nail on the head. He flickered out his blades towards the vamp, not trying to touch him, just keeping him at a distance until he could judge the right moment to kill him.

  There was an explosion of screaming and heat and spilled blood that filled the thrice breathed air of the Green Dragon with its coppery tang. Call ignored it. He could not allow himself to be distracted. His vampire lunged towards him, hands outstretched to grasp his throat. Call dropped to the floor, rolled, and drew his blades across the vampire’s calves. The vampire screamed.