Her eyes held his. And then they widened in shock, the whites expanding around the irises.
A fist of bones erupted through Alessandra’s chest, savagely fast.
It held something, something it had taken from her. The knuckles squeezed and blood streamed between them, staining the shreds of fabric snagged in their cracks.
The hand opened, revealing its prize. Alessandra’s heart, plucked and crushed like fruit, payback for the one she had stolen.
Winter looked on, horrified, his eyes rising to meet hers again. He thought he caught something in her gaze, just as her pupils turned glassy and lightless. It wasn’t just the realisation of her death. It was the realisation that she actually could die.
The hand withdrew with a gasp of flesh. Alessandra’s body pitched forward. She slammed into the ground.
A moment later her heart joined her, discarded.
The revenant faced Winter, the coastal wind whipping its shroud. It stood unsteadily, the bones tottering, as if animated by a half-memory of life. In the absence of a face Winter imagined he saw everything from fury to triumph in the blank stare of the skull.
There were no plague victims buried on this hill, that much was certain. The village had experienced an altogether different kind of visitation.
The skull tilted on the vertebrae, locking its empty gaze on the black jar. Winter began to edge back, fighting the urge to hurl himself at the thing that had killed Alessandra. She had died entrusting him with the jar. He had to get it away from this place. Where was Cracknell? She must have reached the car by now.
The creature ran with a gallop of bones. In seconds it was on him. They smashed to the ground together, the revenant at his throat, its fingers locking around his windpipe, charged with a preternatural strength.
The skull reared in his vision. The last of the soil drizzled from the sockets, spattering Winter’s face.
Tasting earth, he stared at the arm pressing down on him. It was clothing itself in flesh and muscle. New veins laced their way along the yellowed bones, threading through sinew that had burst from the pits and the grooves. A sheath of skin began to crawl across the limb, wrapping the newly formed tissue. The priest’s body was reassembling itself.
Winter kept the jar tight against his chest and jammed his free hand against the dead thing’s jaw. As he tried to heave it away he could feel the new flesh forming. It was tacky and warm.
The skull was half-skin now. And there were eyes in the sockets, clear and startlingly blue, like a newborn’s.
The mouth parted. Winter saw thin, keen teeth descending. The revenant twisted his head to meet them. The thing was a vampire. And it was thirsting.
A shriek filled his ears, raw and sudden, torn from new lungs. He heard something else, too, below the scream. A thud of something heavy, impacting against the creature’s body and shattering bone.
Winter’s chest was wet. Blood was pouring onto his shirt. There was a sharp object nestling against his skin, close to his sternum. It had pierced the priest and almost cut into his own body.
He rolled aside, fighting for breath, the black jar still in his grasp. The revenant collapsed next to him. It shuddered, then stiffened, finally becoming still. The wind toyed with the grey shreds of its burial shroud.
A slender length of wood had speared the thing. Winter saw the pole rising into the dawn sky, topped by a pointed slat that declared it was 4km to Ètretat.
Libby was standing over him, her eyes cold with resolve.
She kept both hands on the signpost and worked it deeper into the priest’s torso, grinding the makeshift stake. The wood scraped against the smashed ribcage.
‘Bloody hell,’ she breathed, disbelieving. ‘That actually works.’
The vampire was already crumbling, its resurrected flesh sliding from the bones.
Winter picked himself up. Libby looked to him for an acknowledgement but he kept walking, half stumbling, his eyes on Alessandra alone.
She lay there, staring sightlessly up at him. He kept his gaze away from the monstrous wound in her chest, the blood that trailed beneath her, darkening the soil. A random strand of hair was caught in her lips. Winter coiled it over the curve of her ear, the gesture tender, unhurried. He searched her face but there was nothing now, no trace of the spirit that had animated those muscles, danced beneath that skin. It was as if she had been emptied.
‘Let’s go, Mr Winter.’
Libby smacked earth from her palms. She spoke again, colder and brisker this time.
‘Leave her, mate. We need to go.’
The urgency in her voice made him look up. He saw movement on the hill. More of the undead were wresting their way out of the burial mound. They were no more than bones and cloth; thin, threadbare silhouettes, like crude pencil sketches against the light.
Winter instinctively knew they were hunting the jar.
Abandoning Alessandra’s body they ran for the Citroën. The doors slammed and the engine stirred into life on Libby’s first, insistent twist of the ignition key. The convertible lurched, its exhaust smoking.
The car leapt for the coastal road with a surge of hydraulic fluid. Winter turned in the passenger seat, stealing a glance over his shoulder. ‘Drive!’
Two revenants were keeping pace, moving on all fours with a loping, bestial gait, skeletal knuckles striking the ground. Their speed was astonishing.
The closest of the creatures sprang for the back of the car. Its fingers clawed the steel bodywork, fighting for a hold. The metal screeched beneath the grasping bone.
Libby dug her boot against the accelerator. The needle on the dashboard swung but the revenant clung on. The second creature scrambled over the spine of the first, clutching at the folded roof that encircled the rear seats. The Citroën tilted beneath their weight.
Winter stashed the jar in the glove compartment. Then he rose to his feet as the car raced, one hand gripping the passenger door to steady himself. Cautiously, he began to turn, moving his hand to the top of the seat behind him. The wind was salt-sharp and urgent, whipping his tie into his eyes.
Swaying as the Citroën veered, he clambered between the front seats. The revenants were crouched on the boot, clinging to the furled roof. There were skeins of skin on their arms now, pale as gauze. Winter could see newly forged muscles pulsing beneath the epidermal layers. Eyes, too, had arrived in the creatures’ skulls. They regarded him with an animalistic defiance.
Libby took a sharp bend and he fell sideways. Reeling, he snatched the seat belt, twisting it tight around his fingers till he reclaimed his balance.
Again the car juddered, stuttering as Libby cut between brakes and accelerator on another corner. This time Winter felt the right-side wheels scraping the brink of the cliffside road. The world shifted beneath the tyres and his gut plummeted.
Libby flung the steering wheel, battling to keep control of the car’s momentum. She pulled the Citroën back into the centre of the road, pushing its high-pressure hydraulics to their limit.
Winter glimpsed a blur of sea and sky at the periphery of his vision. The edge of the road threatened again as the cliff curved. He kept his focus on the revenants. They were grinding their jaws as they faced him, their teeth descending, cobra-like, from wet lips.
He threw a punch at the nearest creature. His fist connected with sticky new skin. The car swerved once more, changing his centre of balance, making it harder to weight a blow. He punched anyway, a clumsy uppercut that clipped the thing in the teeth. Blood flew from its gums.
The second revenant had slunk into the vehicle between the punches, snaking over the rear seats. Now it extended an arm, seizing Winter by the ankle. He kicked at its throat, almost losing his foothold as the Citroën weaved.
The nearer creature clasped his tie, hauling itself toward him by the thin strip of fabric. Its other hand found his face, closing in a vice of nails, determined to break the skin.
The car shot into the cliffside tunnel.
Libby took i
t too close to the wall. The wing mirror buckled as it struck the rock. There was a grinding of bodywork, the steel whining as it tore. Sparks peeled from the wall, illuminating the revenant in bright, fitful flashes.
Winter felt the creature’s hand contract. There was an extra edge to its strength now.
It was the dark, he realised. Somehow the gloom of the tunnel had enhanced it, given it power.
He peered sideways, through the crush of fingers.
The tunnel’s exit was a distant ball of light. But it was there.
‘Faster!’ he yelled, fighting to be heard through the hand. ‘Get to the light!’
Libby stamped the accelerator. The Citroën responded with a fresh leap of speed, enough to make the chassis shake. The growl of its engine echoed as a roar, filling the black hollow of the tunnel. Again the car sliced against the wall, shredding metal.
Winter managed to jam a hand beneath the creature’s jaw. He pushed upwards, forcing its head against the side of the tunnel. He felt the skull stammer against the rock and he held it there, stubbornly, until flesh ripped and spat from the bone. The thing howled, its grip on Winter’s face tightening in retaliation. He felt his nerve endings blaze.
Through the pain he glimpsed the second creature. It was moving toward the driver’s seat, its limbs coiled in a predator’s pose.
‘Libby!’
The Citroën burst from the tunnel, slamming into light. Libby swung the car from the cliff’s edge. It skidded to the left with a protest of tyre rubber.
Dawn had broken over the coast. The sunrise bloomed on the water and filled the clouds, a vivid red hue shattering the grey. There was warmth in the wind now.
The vampire’s hand fell from Winter’s face, its strength stolen by the sudden arrival of daybreak. The skin curled from the bone, trailing veins and ganglia. And then the bones themselves crumbled, reduced to a dust that streamed into the sky like cinders.
The burial rags followed the revenant’s remains, tugged aloft with a flap of cloth. Soon the coastal wind had taken all trace of both creatures.
The Citroën skidded to a halt. Winter slid into the passenger seat, saying nothing. He stared impassively at the slate-coloured tumble of the English Channel. And then he slammed his hands against the dashboard, and kept slamming them until his skin burned.
Finally he turned to Libby. She looked back at him, concerned and just a little unnerved by the rawness of what he had just shown.
His breathing steadied. ‘You’re going back to London.’
‘Shut up,’ she replied, more incredulous than angry.
‘You’re going back to London. There’s no argument.’
She tried a conciliatory smile. ‘This is a bloody argument.’
‘To hell with that. It’s too dangerous for you. You’re inexperienced.’
‘Don’t be so bloody patronising.’
‘Don’t be so damn young.’
Libby was furious now. ‘You think I’m going to die too, like her? Is that it?’
‘You can go and die in London if you like. It won’t be my problem.’
‘I’m trained. I’m qualified. I’m good. You saw what I just did. Do I have to prove it again?’
He shook his head, fixing his eyes on the sea once more. The waves still held the sunrise. ‘No guardian angels, Cracknell. Go home. I’m doing this alone.’
15
The Moon dominated the Bay of Naples, caught at the midpoint of an eclipse. It looked huge tonight, so close to the city it felt like an occupying force in wartime.
Winter studied the totality from his seafront hotel, hunched over the guard rail that bordered the balcony of his room. He was in a cotton shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, starched white cuffs curling with perspiration in the sultry air. The bright wink of a Woodbine flared between his lips. It was his fourth so far and tasted like the tenth.
The umbra, the innermost part of Earth’s shadow, had obscured the face of the lunar surface. A veil of dust and volcanic ash in the atmosphere gave the satellite a coppery, blood-bruised hue. It burned sullenly above the dark Tyrrhenian Sea.
The Moon governed the waves, Winter knew. Tonight he could believe it commanded imaginations too, especially here, in Naples, where the streets were saturated with superstition. It was all about the signs and omens, his taxi driver had told him, a plastic Madonna dancing on a beaded chain that hung from the rear-view mirror. God knew the man needed faith to take on the carnage of traffic that led from Capodichino airport.
Winter took his eyes from the Moon and followed the curve of the bay, past the marina and the fat, twinkling cruise ships idling on the water. To the south he could see the rugged arc of the Sorrentine Peninsula. The islands of Ischia and Capri looked hazier on the horizon, almost insubstantial, as if not quite committing to being there.
His eyes were drawn, inevitably, to Vesuvius. The great lava-blackened hump brooded over the coastline, an ever-present reminder of death and fire, forces that would never negotiate with faith. Naples sat at the foot of the slumbering volcano, not quite cowering but always wary. That plastic Madonna would blister in its flames but people still clung to these trinkets as if arming themselves against fate itself.
What kind of trinkets did Winter have? Maybe he wore his experiences like objects of faith. All those years in the field, everything he had learned, everything that yes, he clung to, even now, taking the coin of a demon.
He had been sent to this city to kill a man. An undead man, perhaps, but that detail was a wrinkle, as was the fact he was doing this for money and not out of duty. A kill was a kill, he told himself. And he wanted this to be a neat, clean job, just like all those bullets he had placed in the name of the Crown. The majority of them, at least.
He thought of London, then, more fleetingly than he once might have imagined possible. There would be anger at Century House over his refusal to return for a debrief. He savoured that knowledge, pictured every livid vein on Faulkner’s temples, because it made him feel free. No doubt someone would be assigned to bring him home. He wished them luck. Naples, he sensed, knew how to hide you.
Winter turned from the bay and gazed up at the lights piled on the hills behind the Grand Hotel Vesuvio. Where were you tonight, Don Zerbinati? I Senz’Ombr. The Shadowless. Did anyone in this world really leave no shadow? Where the hell would they hide if not the shadows?
A night wind ruffled the groves above the city. The trees swayed in a dark, rhythmic mass.
He glanced down. A small green lizard had crept onto the iron rail, its attention held by the glow of his cigarette. Winter inhaled and the Woodbine glimmered again. He released a mouthful of smoke in a lazy circle. The creature regarded it, unimpressed.
‘Oh, you want proper magic, I take it? I think you’ve got the wrong man.’
The lizard blinked, tilted its head. And then it scampered for a clump of bougainvillea. Winter flicked his cigarette over the edge of the balcony.
‘Arrivederci to you too.’
He stepped back inside the room. His leather holdall lay on the floor, unzipped. Three identical white shirts already hung in the half-open wardrobe, creased from travel. His grey linen jacket was equally rumpled, flung across the solitary chair. A toothbrush and razor stood in a tumbler by the sink. The gun waited on the bed.
Winter sat on the edge of the mattress and examined the weapon once again. It had been there when he arrived, propped against the wall, parcelled up to suggest a delivery of golf clubs. He had identified it as a customised Carcano, a bolt-action sniper rifle, lean and compact. Italian army surplus, he guessed. An older gun, but one with a reputation for precision. A modern telescopic sight was aligned along its length, the metal mount screwed into the wood.
He cradled the rifle, assessing its weight and balance, appraising its possibilities. And then he swung it at the balcony, one eye peering through the tactical scope. A tweak of the focus and the bloodshot moon resolved itself, the Sea of Tranquility framed by cross hairs. Winte
r let his finger meet the trigger. He had a muscle memory of what it was like to kill from a distance.
He placed the gun back on the bed. The bullet rested on the pillow, where a complimentary chocolate might have been. He picked it up. 8x56Rmm calibre. Winter turned the smooth copper casing between his fingers. It felt warm to the touch in that hot room.
The bullet had been delivered by hand, of course. Fabienne had met him in the car park of Capodichino, smiling through the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat, her eyes hidden behind tortoiseshell sunglasses. The exchange had been as brief as her smile. No chat, no pleasantries. No complication.
The Glorious had engaged an expert weaponsmith in Rome to create the bullet, a reclusive figure who went by the name of L’Artigiano, the Craftsman. Winter was told he had considerable history in this line of work. Apparently he had once forged a dagger from the shin bone of a fourteenth-century Pope. An exorcist had used it to despatch the ghost of a fallen saint in Quartiere San Lorenzo, back in ’55. No doubt his latest commission had been even more of a professional honour.
The bullet gleamed in his hand, reflecting the bulb slung from the ceiling. Winter continued to turn it, picturing the holy thorn embedded inside, the one that had been prised from the withered scrap of heart locked in the black jar. Had it really pierced the flesh of Christ two thousand years ago? Or was it just another trinket, another object of faith?
A tinny throb of bossa nova music infiltrated the room, just loud enough to irritate him. Somebody on an adjoining balcony had switched on a transistor radio. Winter got up from the bed. He had left the terrace door open, hoping to cool the room with some night air. As he drew the door shut he saw the red moon shimmer on the rectangle of glass. He paused as he held the handle.
‘Are you there?’
He had addressed the glass. Naturally he felt ridiculous. But he had to try, just this once, when no one else was around.
He spoke again, just as softly. ‘Alessandra…’
He remembered the crystalline dazzle of that basement room in Venice, the magic she had shown him. The power to trap people’s souls inside glass. Ever since Normandy Winter had wondered if she could save herself that way, preserve her spirit as she had imprisoned others. This was the first time he had dared to ask. Was it even possible? Or was he just wishing into the dark, anything to ease the horror of her death?
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