Blood & Dust

by Jason Nahrung

  'The ute can barely hit 100 going downhill.'

  'Fair call,' she conceded.

  'Besides, we'll have tunes.' He held up his mp3 player. 'You like Acca Dacca, don'tcha?'

  'Oh dear.'

  He winked, but he was painfully aware that the odds were against him, that they might never even get to use half the stuff he'd just collected. Not if he failed to save his mother. He couldn't wait to get behind the wheel of the Commodore and crank the stereo to high heaven. He had a desperate craving to hear Highway to Hell.

  FORTY-ONE

  Jasmine Turner had kept her last name. Not many did. It usually was the first thing to be shed, a farewell to the past and a hello to the new, incomprehensible future. Most would give up their mortal names - their mortal lives - entirely as they reinvented themselves; some would do it over and over again. Ziggy Stardust had nothing on them. But not Turner and not Maximilian von Schiller, who used the past as an anchor, grasping its stability but sacrificing flexibility and, with it, the capacity for forgiveness. Old vampires bore old grudges and, standing again in the living room of Whitby Downs, Reece found himself eager to get the hell out of there before a whole flock of pigeons came home to roost. Despite Mira's assurances that Turner would not dare upset Maximilian's apple cart, he just couldn't bring himself to trust the old bitch.

  She sat facing him, holding court from a high-backed chair near the empty fireplace. The heat of the day lingered in the room, though it had been cooling off outside when Reece had ducked out for his sundowner cigarette. Through the window behind Turner's shoulder, out past the machinery shed and the chopper pad and the boundary fence, the paddocks were fading into the darkness. He didn't like that hill out there. It provided too much cover for someone approaching the house. Not that anyone had yet. No, since they'd arrived two nights ago, there had been a whole lotta nothing out there, and the tension was starting to tell.

  'How much longer are you people going to be here?' Turner asked as Nigel, looking sour in his black trousers and white shirt, did a circuit with a tray of drinks. Reece and Felicity, nominally guarding the door, waved him away. Heather, Turner's piece of crumpet, sat at the piano looking demure, also not drinking.

  'You mean you don't like the guests I brought you?' Mira asked, taking a glass. She occupied an armchair as far from the windows, and Turner, as she could.

  'That veggo was of no use to me.'

  'Oh, Jasmine, I thought you two would've had notes on farming, and things, to compare. I do hope his offsiders are more to your taste.'

  Turner wasn't a bloodhag but she was wily. It had taken a full night of sampling Bhagwan's red-eyes to decide Mira hadn't planted them to spy on her; Reece was surprised either had enough blood left to donate to this soiree. Turner had had no such qualms about the widow Matheson, the poor woman, and had been spending most of her spare time with her.

  'We're trying to run a business here,' Turner said. 'Hard enough to do in an inbred town like this without your goon squad scaring the cattle and displacing my musterers.'

  Reece could understand where she was coming from. The place was definitely overcrowded. An extra squad of Gespenstenstaffel and two of mundane VS Security goons had arrived by road from Brisbane, forcing Turner to send most of her workers away until the situation was resolved. The tower must've been feeling pretty empty; no wonder Maximilian was pushing Mira to wrap this up quickly.

  'I would be only too happy to leave you to get back to farming cow juice and peddling stolen lifestreams, if only you could've divined the location of the Night Riders' hidey hole from Bhagwan or his red-eyes.' Mira raised her glass. 'Tasty, by the way.'

  'And now you have yet another body on her way here. Yet another one to account for when this situation has been resolved.'

  'But I thought you and the widow were getting along well, Jasmine. A nice long lifestream for your customers - the whole outback experience for them to sink their fangs into. I'm sure young Meg will also have a certain flavour. She did say she was coming, didn't she, Felicity?'

  'Tonight, after work, once she's collected the widow's gear. Which would be any time now, I guess.'

  'It doesn't matter how many you bring out here,' Turner said, making her point by getting to her feet. She stood behind Heather, her hands on the pianist's shoulders as though drawing self-control from her too-tense body. 'The mother, the girlfriend, the pet dog - it doesn't matter. The fact is, the boy isn't coming. Face it. Either your mole didn't deliver, or the boy was too smart to fall for such an obvious trap. He and his black tramp are long gone.'

  'Oh, Kala delivered it, all right. I felt the connection last night. Faint, but I did feel it. The grease monkey still has two days' play remaining until I "call stumps". I don't mind sharing quarters with my Hunter, here, and I take it you don't mind having your offsider in the coffin with you? It's only for a couple of nights more, I assure you.'

  'It's unseemly,' Turner said. 'An abuse of my arrangement with your master. I am a locutor, not some bailiwick for his lordship's empire.'

  'If you'd delivered the biker on ice instead of insisting my men drive all the way out here, none of this would've happened.'

  'If you'd been more efficient at setting me up as your honey trap, this wouldn't be happening,' Turner snapped.

  Mira's mouth opened to retort, but she froze, distracted as though by something no one else could hear. A bee or a fly, maybe; there was no shortage of flies, though they usually buggered off after sundown.

  Mira sprang to her feet. 'Felicity, Reece - let's take a reconnaissance flight, shall we? Give Locutor Turner her house back for a spell. She has so many guests to entertain, we shouldn't take up all her attention.'

  'You and that infernal machine,' Turner said. 'Spooking the stock, making tongues wag in the town.'

  Mira put her almost empty glass back on Nigel's tray. 'Get the pilot, Reece; I'll join you out there. This red-eye piss goes right through me.'

  FORTY-TWO

  Kevin drove south, AC/DC blaring fit to shake the car's doors. The repetitive beat pounded like a wrecking ball at the hard concrete of his fear. He sang along to Jailbreak and hoped he had better luck than the hapless escapee in that song. Tried to gee himself up with Hell's Bells, but stumbled over the line about dying young.

  He was trying to convince himself that he was indeed TNT when he had to brake hard to avoid overshooting the turnoff to Whitby Downs. Penny; poor Penny. Would he avenge her, or join her?

  Kala turned the music down. 'You okay there, Angus?'

  He overlooked the fact that Angus didn't sing - maybe that was her point. 'More of a Bon man, myself.'

  'Then don't drink too much.'

  He huffed, wondering if there was a more serious message to her gag, and turned into the property.

  Iron letters spelt out the station's name, dangling on chains from a new-looking plain grey-steel mailbox. Farther back from the road, insubstantial in the headlights, loomed a weather-worn timber arch with the almost illegible property name carved into it. A shiver passed through him as he recalled Mira's blood message.

  'No guards,' Kevin said.

  'Not out here.'

  Kevin eyed the box. 'Maybe I could sneak in with whoever collects the mail.'

  'Only if they wait till night time. C'mon, let's take a squiz. There's a good spot, a windmill-'

  'How do you know that?'

  'I've been here before, remember.'

  'Of course you have. I never even thought of that until now. All of you - you came here to rescue Taipan, and then you shot the shit out of the servo. You killed my dad. You killed me. Jesus Christ, Kala, you lot even killed the dogs!' He turned off the engine and twisted in his seat to face her front-on. 'Which one were you, out there on the bikes while we were lying dead on the floor?'

  'I was there. I did my share; I admit it. But we weren't after you and we weren't after your dad.'

  'You threw fire bombs.'

  'We have to cover our tracks; you know that.' />
  'You burnt the servo to the ground. With us in it.'

  'We didn't know! The Hunters had Tai, and then Tai got away, so we gave them jackals something to worry about so they couldn't chase us. Honestly, if I could take it back, I would.'

  He sat, staring, trying to reposition yet again his understanding of how his new world worked. For all he knew, Kala could've shot his father. She could've shot him.

  'Bite me if it helps,' she said, offering her arm. 'Take a walk in my lifestream. See if the answer comes to you. See if we can still be friends.'

  He'd seen it before, he realised, in her blood. Bits of it. Guns. Bikes. The Monaro parked way back, ready to swoop down with its boot open. The Sandman, peppered with bullets, already limping back to the Crawfords' place with a cargo of vampires forced from the hunt by the sun. Red-eyes versus red-eyes, and the Night Riders caught out in the open not knowing if Jasmine was sending help, if VS had their eye in the sky.

  He'd tasted her doubt, the relief of having Taipan in the car, quickly replaced by the fear of pursuit jostling with the glee at having won. The Molotovs - she'd been driving, not shooting, not lighting the petrol-soaked fuses - had been thrown as much in elation and panic as in anger.

  He knew all this and had been afraid to look any further, to risk losing the one person he felt he could - needed - to trust.

  The bullet that had hit him had come through the wall or the window; it might have been aimed, more likely it was a random burst and he'd copped it unlucky.

  As for his dad, well, someone's finger had been on the trigger - Taipan's or Hunter's. He was starting to wonder if it mattered which. It hadn't been Taipan's decision to go there, it hadn't been Hunter's to be sent to collect Taipan. The blame trail went back decades, at the very least, if anyone cared to pick at it, and Kevin didn't. It was too vast, too irrelevant. That massive depth of history, that cycle of wrongs and revenges that had somehow caught him up in its undertow - it was unfathomable. What mattered, what was keeping him afloat, was the simple fact that someone was threatening to hurt his family to force him to do something. His choice was simple: stop them.

  'Kevin, are you going to ride my lifestream or not? Are we friends?'

  'Friends. Definitely. I don't need a bloody tour to see that.'

  'Good. I'm glad.'

  Her hand came out of her jacket, and she gripped his in both of hers. Only now did he see the bulky outline in her pocket.

  'Were you going to shoot me?'

  'Only if I had to.'

  'I'm glad we're friends, then.'

  'Believe me, Kevvie. I'm on your side.'

  She kissed him, and didn't stop till he kissed her back; he clung to her with all the desperation of a drowning man grasping a life ring.

  'Show you the windmill?' she asked.

  He started the car. 'If you're my Girl Guide, shouldn't I get a cookie?'

  'You've had your cookies for tonight, mister.'

  Kevin nosed the Commodore through the gateway, taking it slow as they wobbled across a grid. He kept his headlights off, relying on moonlight to illuminate the dirt track winding across the paddock. The nervous silence was broken by the rumble of the motor, the crunch of pebbles under the tyres, the occasional ding of a stone against the chassis or the guard. He waited for the trap to spring, for the spotlights to come on and the soldiers to jump out. He remembered all too well the troops attacking the Crawfords' farmhouse, the pain of his bullet wound, the men on both sides who fell and didn't rise.

  They crept along, and finally Kala gestured to a less-worn track branching off to one side. It wound around tree stumps and ant mounds onto a creek flat and finally reached a windmill, the daisy of its vanes unmoving in the still night air. A concrete water tank and trough sat at its base, the area churned bare by hoofs.

  Turning off the engine, getting out of the car - his back itched, waiting for the nasty surprise. There was a rise on the other side of the gully in front of them with a light source glowing below the crest. He could imagine all too easily a line of soldiers up there taking aim. Could imagine a squad hunkered down behind the lip of the gully, like Anzacs in a trench waiting for the whistle to blow. They walked, and his senses roamed with the keenness of a blade, but all he smelled was earth and mud and wattle; all he heard was plover and curlew.

  'I can't see the homestead,' he said to Kala, his voice sounding unnaturally loud.

  'We have to go up,' she said, reaching for the frame of the windmill.

  He climbed after her. The touch of the steel triggered a swarm of memories; he clung like a beetle, trying to maintain not just his grip on the tower but on reality.

  Taipan had come this way, coasting his bike to a stop here before walking it out of sight into the gully and approaching the homestead on foot.

  Kala had followed his trail, and perched up high, right there, watching the Hunters leave and signalling to her fellow Night Riders, vampires braving the encroaching dawn, red-eyes fearful of having to finish the job without them, of having to protect the night crawlers and themselves as well.

  There had been only the one vehicle, the unsuspecting Hunters driving into the ambush, but their four-wheel-drive had proven tough and the men tougher, and they'd pushed through, had reached the highway, but the Night Riders had had it blocked and the Hunters had pulled a hard U-turn and ended up at the roadhouse, leaking water and blood and running out of time. This was where the events that had killed Kevin's father and changed Kevin's life - his very being - had begun. Now here he was, reliving those moments, the anxiety and the fear and the desire, the present and two versions of the past overlying uncomfortably through all his senses. He clutched the steel, fighting to focus his mind as Danica had taught him, to push through to the present.

  Kala waited patiently like a kid hanging on a fence, arms and legs pushed through the structure right near the top where the faded Southern Cross wind vane stuck out from the centre of the iron flower.

  'Slow poke,' she chided as he finally clambered to her side.

  'Just checking out your arse.'

  'Lucky I'm not wearing a skirt then, eh?'

  From their perch, they could see over the gully and the intervening hill to Jasmine's base. Kevin felt, again, that strange overlap of Taipan's and Kala's experiences, the strangeness magnified by the sight of a commonplace farm given a deadly, uncommon air.

  The single-storey timber house looked unremarkable with its tin roof and wrap-around verandah. It faced them from the northern side of the compound, surrounded by haphazard outbuildings. A split-rail fence divided the house from the various sheds and stockyards. The lawn was a drab dark olive; outside, the paddock was dirt and stubble.

  A high fence, similar to the emu fence at Danica's nest, surrounded all the buildings. Spotlights made pools of light around each post - at least they weren't animal skulls. A long, tall machinery shed filled the south-west corner of the compound, big enough to hold the largest of farm tractors, but its doors faced the house across the wide expanse of yard and Kevin could see only the back wall from his vantage point. There was only one gate, a double panel of mesh in the southeast section of fence. Two men with guns slung over their shoulders guarded it, standing close together as though chatting.

  'I'm open to suggestions,' Kevin said. 'Those stockyards give a little cover.' He thought that was where Taipan had gone across, but the fence hadn't been lit that night. They'd ramped up their security since that incursion. Then came the chilling thought: they'd turned the lights on for him.

  'Maybe there's a better angle on the other side. Somewhere dark we can cut through the fence.'

  - Wish I could get my hands on that chopper -

  Four lights illuminated the corners of a concrete square he assumed was the landing pad for Jasmine's fly in-fly out celebrity operation, about midway between the machinery shed and the house.

  'Fly by night,' he mumbled.

  'Say what?'

  'Takes on a whole new meaning, doesn't it? I wonder
where that chopper is.'

  FORTY-THREE

  Reece and Felicity waited by the door of the helicopter as the pilot went through his flight check.

  'So how are you getting on out here in the sticks?' he asked her. They'd been working opposite shifts, she travelling between the homestead and Barlow's Siding to handle the public relations, him acting as punching bag for Mira night and day.

  She shrugged.

  'Bloody hot, isn't it? A real dry heat.'

  'Let's get one thing straight, Hunter Reece.' She leaned toward him, looking up with mock coyness. 'Just because you've seen me naked, doesn't make us mates.'

  'You're not my first ménage a blood, you know, sweetheart.'

  She moved away, looking toward the homestead.

  Reece lit a cigarette and was rewarded with a nose wrinkle, a shuffle. 'Just out of curiosity, how old are you?'

  'What's it to you? Want to brag to your mates in the locker room?'

  'I just like to know whose blood I've been sharing. Professional interest.'

  'Six on twenty,' she said with a smirk.

  He motioned toward the rank pin on her collar, the blade centred through the stylised GS logo. He wore his, too, to help avoid accidents with all the bored, gun-toting grunts hanging around. 'And you've made Dagger already. Impressive.'

  'I'm a quick study. You?'

  'Plus four,' he said.

  'Specifically?'

  'Forty on thirty-six.'

  'Getting past your prime, old man. She offered you the bite?'

  'Age and experience,' he said with a shake of his head. 'I got a few miles left in me yet.'

  Mira appeared on the veranda.

  'How old's the boss do you reckon?' Felicity asked.

  'Twenty, twenty-two, going on about 600.'

  'About what I figured.' There was a touch of awe in her voice; awe and desire.

  He made a point of checking her throat, the same place where his own bore the four dots arranged in a square showing he was claimed by a single vampire. Her skin was unmarked; not even a mild case of wolfbite. 'So you've got your dagger after only six years, but you haven't got your shield?'