Herb’s voice.
Of course.
He felt strong arms lifting him; someone throwing him over a broad shoulder and setting off at pace.
Carrying him toward something terrible.
*
Dan Bellamy must have weighed roughly the same as the average teenage boy. Herb threw him over his shoulder with surprising ease, and caught up with the others as they reached the base of the Shard.
The front entrance of the enormous building was all glass; lit like a diamond commercial. Herb had been there once or twice with Edgar, but mostly the city apartment was viewed by the Rennicks as a place to retreat if the need arose, and as a place to meet and conduct business with representatives of the Order.
He remembered the way well enough.
“Call the elevator,” he grunted, as he pushed through the revolving glass door, following the others into the lobby. Conny’s son obliged, and by the time Herb arrived, the elevator was almost there.
He turned to scan the street outside. Everything still looked dark and quiet.
We might just get away with this.
The elevator was on the tenth floor, descending smoothly. It hadn’t quite reached the ninth when Herb noticed movement in the corner of his eye. A dark shape approaching the front of the building.
Shit, shit, shit.
The vampire out front threw itself into the glass wall of the Shard, and a spiderweb of cracks formed across it.
The glass wouldn’t take another blow.
Bing!
Herb let out a yell of relief when the elevator doors slid open. The others threw themselves inside.
“Thirty-three!” Herb yelled, and heard a cheerful beep as someone pushed the button.
The monster crashed into the lobby.
Herb stepped into the elevator, unable to turn around; knowing that the vampire was charging toward him, praying that the doors would close before the snapping jaws reached him.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
And then, when Herb expected to feel talons puncture his back, tearing at his innards…soft, soothing music began to pipe into the elevator, and the ceiling—a huge display screen—started to cycle through pleasant, relaxing images of lakes and clouds and beautiful summer days.
Conny let out an explosive gasp, and bent double, clutching her knees. Her son’s face was red with fear, and what Herb thought looked like shame. Doubtless, he’d pissed himself. Herb couldn’t blame him.
“Everybody all right?” Conny said. “Nobody looked at it, right?”
Everyone in the elevator shook their heads.
She glanced at Herb, who still had Dan slung over his shoulder.
“This apartment of yours. It’s on thirty-three?”
Herb shook his head. “Thirty-three is where you have to cross over to one of the upper elevators. Once we get there, call them all. Soon as the first one arrives, someone hit sixty-three. We can lose it when we switch elevators. I hope.”
With a grunt, he heaved Dan from his shoulder, setting him down on unsteady legs. “You okay, Dan?”
Dan nodded shakily, but kept his eyes fixed on the floor and said nothing.
“Nearly there, buddy.” Herb turned back to Conny. “It will want to keep coming, but this is a big building. Gotta be a thousand locked doors in here. Even if it does find us, the apartment is secure. It will hold until sunrise.”
He checked the elevator readout. Just approaching level thirty.
The vampires were fast, and verticality didn’t trouble them. The only question in Herb’s mind was how fast? The elevator moved quickly—surely too quickly for any living creature to keep pace—but still, as the readout ticked around to thirty-three, he expected the doors to open and reveal fangs stained crimson and eyes that would melt his soul.
Bing!
Herb’s heart hammered.
The doors slid open.
Empty.
He let out a gasp of relief.
“Go!” he hissed, and hit the button for the twenty-fifth floor, sending the elevator back down. With any luck, he thought, the vampire wouldn’t even realise that there was another set of elevators servicing the top half of the building. Maybe it would assume they got out on twenty-five. Maybe.
The thirty-third floor was home to a lavish Chinese restaurant and a bar area, but also served as a junction between the upper and lower parts of the building. An artist’s depiction of the River Thames was painted on the floor, and it led around a corner to the next set of elevators. By the time Herb got there, Conny’s son was already inside the nearest of them, holding the chrome doors open and waiting impatiently to hit the button marked 63. He waved Herb and Dan inside, and stabbed the button with a relieved sigh.
It took around three seconds for the door to close.
Each one felt like a lifetime.
The elevator lifted away serenely from the thirty-third floor, and Herb allowed himself to breathe easily at last. The apartment wasn’t the stronghold that the mansion was—or was supposed to be—but the windows and door had been fitted with the exact same electronically operated steel shutters as the mansion. Except that this time, there wouldn’t be a vampire inside with its hands on the controls.
I hope.
When the elevator announced its arrival with a cheerful bing once more, Herb stepped outside and hurried the others out. Once it was clear, he reached inside, and sent it back down to thirty-three.
“This way,” he said, and led them to the right, along a wide glass-walled corridor, to a door which nestled alongside the exterior of the building, offering an incredible view across Canary Wharf and, on a clear day, as far as the east coast of England. Herb paid the dark panorama laid out before him no attention, and turned to face the apartment’s front door. He flipped open a panel next to it, revealing a palm scanner, and placed his left hand against it.
The scanner was coded only to accept senior members of the Rennick household.
Like Jeremy Pruitt, who Herb saw standing in the apartment when the door swung open.
Behind a large man with a hard, bloodstained face, who aimed a stubby submachine gun directly at Herb’s forehead.
35
“Inside,” Mancini growled, shooting an anxious glance down the hallway toward a distant door marked stairs. He kept the gun trained squarely on Herbert Rennick’s forehead, and stepped aside, waving the small group at the door into the apartment with his free hand.
Somewhere behind him, he heard a click. Burnley readying her weapon.
Rennick was travelling with a woman wearing a police officer’s uniform, and what Mancini guessed was a police dog, along with a teenage boy and a man who looked like he’d just undergone a savage round of chemotherapy. Dan Bellamy wasn’t what Mancini expected at all; he looked frail and sick, his eyes ringed with blood. He didn’t look up; didn’t even seem to notice Mancini or the gun he held at all. It was like Dan Bellamy’s eyes were somewhere else, staring at some horizon that only he could see.
He kept a watchful eye on the dog as the disparate group filed into the apartment, but the animal didn’t look like it would give him trouble; it seemed focused on the distant stairwell, just as Mancini himself had been.
He closed the door and locked it.
“Hi Jeremy,” Rennick said amiably.
Jeremy Pruitt sighed heavily.
“Hi, Herb.”
“Better put the place on lockdown,” Herb said. “There’s one in the building.”
Mancini felt the blood draining from his face, and glanced at Jeremy. “Do it,” he growled, keeping his eyes on Herb.
“Weapons on the floor,” he said. “All of you.”
Herb slipped a handgun from his belt and tossed it at Mancini’s feet.
Mancini stared down at it, confused.
“That’s it? One gun?”
“Yeah,” Herb said with a smile. “Not even sure it has any bullets, but do feel free to check. Oh, and hey: who the fuck are you?”
“I
called the Americans, Herb,” Jeremy said heavily, and he popped open a panel near the door, punching a code into a keypad. Moments later, steel shutters began to descend, covering the interior of the windows and the apartment’s front door, erasing the view of the burning city.
“Yeah,” Herb snapped bitterly. “Still working for Dad, huh?”
Jeremy shook his head and started to reply, but Mancini had heard enough. He gestured at the couches in the open-plan living room, glaring at Pruitt until he closed his mouth.
“Take a seat, Rennick. The rest of you, too. Burnley, keep your gun on Rennick. If you decide his mouth is too smart, do feel free to shut it for him.”
Burnley nodded, her eyes never leaving Herb.
“You don’t need to do that—” Jeremy said, but Mancini waved a hand to silence him, and stepped back to the front door. He put his ear against the metal which now covered it, listening intently.
Nothing.
The sheet of steel which had fallen over the apartment looked thin, but he didn’t doubt that it would hold. The vampires were strong and resourceful, but punching through tempered steel was a stretch, even for them. For the first time since he had arrived at the Rennick apartment—barely two minutes before Rennick himself did—Mancini allowed himself to relax. The vampires couldn’t get in. The only way harm could come to those inside was if the monsters found some way to take down the entire building. It didn’t seem likely.
Mancini checked his watch.
Still several hours until sunrise.
He lost himself in thought. Craven only wanted Bellamy, and she would have no problem with him killing Rennick if he deemed it necessary. Hell, she’d probably applaud it.
He shot a glance at Rennick. The guy looked like he was just itching to start talking again.
Firing a weapon with a vampire somewhere in the building was asking for trouble—steel shutters or not. If Rennick was determined to cause problems, Mancini would have to find quiet solutions.
Knifework, then.
He glanced toward the distant kitchen.
“Okay,” Herb said brightly, clapping his hands together and rising from the couch. “Who wants cocktails?”
The policewoman grabbed his shirt, and hauled him back down into his seat, keeping her other hand firmly on the mutt’s collar.
“Smart lady,” Mancini said, making his way into the living room. “I’m not here for you, Rennick, but I have no problem killing you, if that’s what you want. When you’re running your mouth, all you’re doing is making me change my mind about how I’m going to kill you. Capiche?”
“I recommend slightly overfeeding me and ultimately inducing a fatal heart attack,” Herb said with a serene smile. “Should only take about forty years, and the police will never catch on. I eat plenty of junk food alrea—”
Mancini darted forward quickly and swung a left hook, connecting firmly with Rennick’s flapping jaw, and the kid finally shut up.
Mancini kept walking, his nerves racing, heading for the apartment’s plush kitchen.
And the knives.
He selected a large carving knife from a rack, and turned back toward the living room, coming face to face with Jeremy.
“You don’t need to do that,” the Brit said. “He’s a good kid.”
Mancini shrugged.
“Sure. They all are. But I have a job to do, and I’ve already lost most of my team getting this far.”
“So, take Bellamy!” Jeremy thundered. “He’s what you’re really here for.”
Mancini strode back into the living room, pointing the knife at Herb.
“He’s a loose end, Pruitt. Come to think of it, there are an awful lot of loose ends in this room. Like you said, I only need Bellamy.”
He lifted the knife, and Jeremy faltered, taking a half-step backwards. For a moment, the room bathed in tension, the air crackling with the threat of impending violence.
“I just wanted to go home.”
Mancini blinked at Dan Bellamy’s small voice. He glanced at him and laughed bitterly.
“Yeah, good luck with that, buddy. Where I’m taking you, you’re going to be a long way from home.”
“I have a condition.”
Mancini frowned.
“I’m sick. Getting worse all the time. I just needed to go home and take my medication. Not even sure I’m…me anymore.”
Dan kept his eyes pointed at the floor, and spoke in a soft monotone. Mancini couldn’t even be sure that the guy was actually talking to him. He didn’t even look like he knew exactly where he was.
Mancini walked around the couch, trying to attract Bellamy’s attention. The scrawny guy just kept staring at the floor, his face buried beneath a mop of hair.
“What’s wrong with him?” he asked dubiously, looking at Herb.
Rennick just stared back mutinously.
Dan giggled. “That’s the funniest thing,” he said. “I used to wonder the same thing myself. Now, I’m not sure it was ever me. It’s the world. The question is: what’s wrong with everybody else? Why don’t you all hear it? The river?”
Dan lifted his chin and met Mancini’s gaze.
Burning eyes.
A scream caught in Mancini’s throat as invisible thorns punctured his mind, putting down roots. Taking away control.
His world became a tunnel, and all he could see was Dan Bellamy’s searing pupils, ringed by blood, boring into his soul.
He hoisted the MP5, pressing the cold barrel into the side of his own head.
Bellamy rose from the couch, his eyes blazing, and Mancini dropped to his knees in front of him.
Worshipping him like a god.
His finger began to curl around the trigger.
And suddenly, the world was plunged into darkness.
The presence in his mind was gone, releasing him like an unclenching fist. Mancini fell forward, gasping for air, clutching at his throat.
“What happened?” a woman’s voice snarled. Not Burnley; the policewoman.
Mancini heard a low rumble fill the room, and moonlight began to wash into the apartment. The steel shutters were opening.
“Power cut,” Herbert Rennick said, with a rueful chuckle. “Lockdown didn’t last long.”
“They cut the power to the whole damn building?”
“Take a look outside, Conny. They cut the power to the whole damn city.”
Mancini squeezed his eyes shut.
Should have run when I had the chance.
36
Herb strode over to the choking American and scooped up the machine gun which he had dropped on the floor. He checked the magazine, and nodded to himself. It was full.
The American woman—Burnley—still had a pistol trained on Herb, but she looked uncertain. Probably, Herb thought, Burnley was thinking about how close she just came to being the last one standing, and what the hell she was supposed to do next.
Join the fucking club, lady.
“I think we’ve got bigger issues right now, don’t you?” Herb said amiably, gesturing at the American woman’s gun. She nodded slowly, lowering her weapon.
“Conny,” Herb said, “would you mind taking her gun? And any others she might be carrying.”
Conny nodded, and headed for Burnley, who gave her weapon up with a sigh and opened her jacket to show that she wasn’t otherwise armed. Conny turned the gun over in her hands, gazing at it intently as she moved back to the window.
Herb offered a hand to the man gasping on the floor in front of the couch.
“You never did tell me who the fuck you are.”
The American glanced up at him, his eyes wide and angry.
“Mancini,” he growled, staring at the gun in Herb’s left hand. After a moment, he lifted his gaze to Herb’s eyes and nodded, taking the hand that was offered and hauling himself to his feet. “What did he do to me?”
Herb grinned.
“He does what they do, Mr Mancini,” he said, and struck out with a solid right, connecting sharply
with Mancini’s jaw and knocking him straight back onto the floor. “That makes us even. I’d prefer it if we could stay that way for a little while. Capiche?”
Mancini wiped at his lip and grunted.
Herb left him on the floor and strode over to the window, moving to stand alongside Conny and her son.
Far below, the city of London was a dark stain, lit only by fire and headlights.
“I don’t get it,” Conny said. “How could they cut the power to the whole city?”
Herb frowned.
“They cut the lights as a matter of priority,” he said absently. “I should’ve guessed. But at least we know where the rest of them were, now. Power stations. London isn’t served by just one. The city draws energy from several, all over the south of England. You don’t just pull a plug and cut the power to a city of this size. While the whole world is looking at London, the vampires have been busy disabling the whole country. A few here to attract attention, the rest spread around Britain, dismantling our infrastructure. Taking out power stations, and who knows what else. They won’t even have to engage with the military. They can pick us off at their leisure, and let our reliance on electricity do the rest. Without power, they own the night.”
Conny shook her head in despair.
“I thought if I could get Logan out of London, things would be fine…” she trailed off, gazing out across the dark city.
Herb glanced at the terrified boy, and his expression hardened.
“We’re gonna have to get him a little further than that,” he said.
Conny smiled weakly.
“We?” she said. “You’re going to help? I’ve got pretty serious doubts about you getting out of this room alive, let alone out of the city.”
“You and me, both,” Herb said with a wink, and he turned away.
“Hey, Captain America? What was your extraction plan? Please tell me you had an extraction plan.”
Mancini glowered at him.
“We have a Gulfstream waiting at an airfield south of the city.”
“Sounds good. Any firm ideas on how to get there?”
“Yeah, just one: wait here until sunrise,” Mancini spat bitterly.
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