Kardina

by Thomas Emson

  Lawton, wearing Ashton’s jacket over his bloody kurta, had gone looking for food and fuel. He was confident he’d given the authorities the runaround. He knew how to make himself invisible.

  When he got back to the Toyota, it was dark, and Ereshkigal took off her burkha. She was still in her white dress. Her hair looked blacker than ever, her skin paler. But her red eyes burned. Lawton was transfixed for a moment. But then he said, “I need you to scare the shit out of our friend in the boot.”

  She had nodded.

  “I’ll fucking tell you, I’ll fucking tell you,” said Laxman. “Just get this thing off me.”

  Lawton sat in the driver’s seat, smoking a roll-up. Ereshkigal was terrorizing Laxman in the back seat.

  Jake looked around. They were parked in an alleyway. It was quiet and dark.

  “Go ahead, Laxman,” he said.

  Laxman started. He’d been hired by Howard Vince, former Chief of the General Staff and now head of Armed Forces for the Nebuchadnezzars, apparently. “He’s just gone back to the UK,” said Laxman. “Or I’d hand him my resignation. He said nothing about fucking witches.”

  Ereshkigal hissed at him, and he flinched.

  He went on:

  “White Light Ops was employed to handle security at an archaeological dig in Hillah. Run by this guy called Fuad. Arab name, but he’s English through and through. Typical Bulldog Brit.”

  Lawton nodded. Alfred Fuad was in Iraq. He’d guessed that much.

  “Fuck knows what they’re digging for,” Laxman said. “He’s been vague. But there are rumours. Artefacts connected to some god, some Nimrod, a mummy.”

  Ereshkigal made a yearning noise.

  Laxman cringed. “What the fuck?”

  Ereshkigal lunged at the mercenary. “I will kill him.”

  “No, wait,” said Lawton. “We need him.”

  “Yeah, you fucking need me,” said Laxman.

  “For what?” Ereshkigal said.

  “To get to where you want to go,” Lawton told her.

  Ereshkigal sat back down.

  Lawton relaxed a little. His head hurt badly, the false eye now burning in his skull. The material encased in the glass had seeped out and merged itself with his nerves. He could do nothing about it. At least not now. Later perhaps. When all this was done. When he’d achieved his objectives. After everyone was safe, he’d finish this. He’d sort this pain. He’d never let anything alien or undead take over his body. If he was being re-born as something that wasn’t fully Jake Lawton, he’d abort it.

  He touched his side, where Khoury had shot him.

  The wound was healing. It throbbed but didn’t hurt. He should be dead or sick. But he felt more alive than ever. Was the vampire DNA he despised so much keeping him alive?

  He thought about Khoury. He hoped the young police officer was OK. He’d seen him flee while Ereshkigal killed Laxman’s men.

  He looked at her. She had crossed the country to come to him. Forced a young man to drive her to Baghdad and then killed him. She was cruel, and it appalled Lawton. But she was devoted, too. She had brought him the spear. Kept it safe and returned it. He just wasn’t sure about her motives, but for now she was a very useful ally.

  He glanced at Laxman and said, “You’re going to take us to the dig.”

  “You what?”

  “Wasn’t that the plan?”

  “The plan was, Lawton, you fuck, to make sure you didn’t leave Baghdad alive.”

  “You screwed up. I am leaving Baghdad alive, and I’m leaving with you as my hostage.”

  Laxman shrugged. “Gladly, pal. My men are there.”

  “We’ll introduce them to Ereshkigal. She’ll like that.”

  Lawton started the Toyota and drove south.

  CHAPTER 62. HIGHWAY 8.

  “FUAD told me they were looking for buried artefacts, Babylonian gold,” Laxman said.

  They were back on Highway 8. Lawton wanted to make it to Hillah before dawn. Before Ereshkigal had to go into hiding.

  It was about 8.15pm. The road was busy, traffic filtering in and out of Baghdad. He kept glancing in the rear-view mirror for army or police vehicles. But Lawton’s tactics of doubling back, taking a longer route, and generally doing the opposite of what someone running away would do, had given the authorities the slip.

  He wasn’t resting on his laurels, though. He knew the search for him would intensify. He had to be on alert.

  Taking the decision he did to delay his progress to Hillah in order to avoid the authorities had already put Aaliyah at further risk. It was likely that she was in the area already. But if he had raced down to Hillah, using Highway 8 all the way in broad daylight, he would have been caught. And what use would he be to her then?

  “So what is he digging up over there?” said Laxman.

  “Hell,” said Lawton.

  Ereshkigal growled.

  Her started to think what would happen when they got to Hillah. He and Ereshkigal had some kind of pact. But would that last? He wasn’t stupid enough to think it would. The knots that bound their allegiance were already fraying.

  Their objectives were at odds with each other. He wanted to kill Nimrod. She wanted to be reunited with him. A clash was inevitable.

  Lawton kept an eye on Laxman. The mercenary stared out of the window at passing traffic. His brow was furrowed. He was thinking. Thinking about how Fuad and Vince had misled him, hopefully.

  Lawton decided to stir.

  “He’s lied to you.”

  “And cost me good men.”

  “Fuad wants to release Nimrod on the world.”

  “That’s his call.”

  “You’ve been keeping well away from the vampire plague, Laxman.”

  “I sure have, mate.” He glanced at Ereshkigal. “Bit too close to one, now, I can tell you.”

  “When Nimrod comes, there’ll be nowhere to hide. If Fuad and his brother have their way, the world will be infected.”

  “Then I’ll have to fight.”

  “You think you can fight them? This woman overpowered you. Imagine what an army of them would do.”

  Laxman fell silent for a few seconds.

  After a while he said, “So if this vampire here – ”

  “I have a name,” said Ereshkigal.

  “All right,” he said. “If… this one is Nimrod’s wife, as she says, how come she’s not killing you if you’re planning to kill her husband?”

  “We have an allegiance,” said Ereshkigal.

  “She needs me, and I find her quite useful,” said Lawton.

  “Needs you?”

  “To get back to Hillah,” said Lawton.

  “And what happens when she does get back?” Laxman asked. “One of you will have to kill the other.”

  I know all that, thought Lawton. I don’t need reminding of it. But he said nothing.

  But Ereshkigal spoke. “Maybe we will kill you instead,” she said.

  “Vampires,” said the mercenary. “Who’d have believed in them ten years ago? And here we are: the bloody world’s crawling with them – and I’m sharing a ride with one of the bastard things.”

  They drove in silence for a few minutes before Lawton said, “Did you notice Fuad and Vince and some of the others wearing red rags, scraps of material?”

  “So what?”

  “Alfred’s got a ponytail, and it’s tied with a red rag, isn’t it?” said Lawton.

  “Your point?”

  Lawton stopped the Toyota on the side of the Highway and turned to look at Laxman in the back seat. He showed him his eye.

  “See this? Made of the same stuff.”

  Laxman wrinkled his nose.

  “You know what it is?” said Lawton. “This stuff in my eye?”

  Laxman shook his head.

  Lawton told him what it was.

  Laxman curled his lip.

  Lawton noticed a pair of aviator sunglasses poking out of Laxman’s breast pocket. He leaned over and took them out. He slid
them into the breast pocket of his kurta. Useful to hide the damaged eye, he thought. He said, “Believe it or not, it keeps vampires at bay – it protects people from them.”

  Lawton caught Ereshkigal looking at him. She was going to say, It doesn’t protect you from me. But she stayed quiet. And he silently thanked her for it.

  “You haven’t got one, Laxman. Fuad didn’t worry about keeping you safe, then. You and your men are expendable.”

  Laxman still looked perplexed.

  Lawton started up the Land Cruiser again and accelerated into traffic. He said, “My guess, he was going to let you die if it came to it. Your money’d be no good then, Laxman. Your Swiss bank account.”

  Lawton allowed Laxman to digest the information.

  In the distance, the lights of Hillah flickered. It was home to nearly 400,000 people. A modern conurbation so close to an ancient metropolis.

  “Anyone else we need to know about at Fuad’s compound?” said Lawton.

  Laxman’s eyes flashed as if he’d remembered something: “We had a couple of prisoners come in, trespassers.”

  Lawton’s stomach lurched. His eye suddenly ached, and he slowed the vehicle down.

  “Who were they?” he asked.

  “Some foreign geezer with a walking stick, and some bird. A real fox. Dark skinned. Black hair. Tall. Fucking Amazon. Looked a bit like that Beyoncé bird.”

  Lawton gripped the steering wheel tight, his knuckles going white.

  CHAPTER 63. THIS IS OUR TOMB.

  Hillah – 5.38pm (GMT + 3 hours), 20 May, 2011

  AALIYAH peered through the keyhole.

  “We got to get out of here,” she said.

  “It is too late for getting out,” said Goga.

  He was slumped in the corner of the cell, his forehead pressed against the handle of his walking stick.

  He looked old and broken.

  When Aaliyah and Jake had met him a few months earlier, Apostol Goga had been tall and strong, a man in his fifties capable of looking after himself. He had been a member of the GSPI, the Romanian counter-terrorist and interior protection organization. He had a reputation for being tough and strong, and Aaliyah had guessed at the time that he had a ruthless streak.

  But all that had seeped out of him now. Leached away in the last couple of days. All his life he had imagined coming to the ancient city of Babylon and destroying Nimrod. But now that he was here, he looked as if he’d struggle to squish a bug.

  Their cell measured about six foot by six foot. A rotting wooden bench was attached to one wall. It was where Goga sat, demoralized.

  The walls of the chamber were damp, and moss and weeds grew freely. The cell seemed to have been dug into the wall of the tunnel. It was just a crevice, really. But someone had attached the hefty wooden door across the opening. The lockup smelled old, and Aaliyah was convinced she could whiff the odour of death.

  “We’ve got to get out,” she said again.

  “We won’t. We’re dead. I am the last of my line. The last Dracul. The last Vlad. After today, we die, and with me dies the hope of destroying this evil. Only evil is immortal. Not goodness. I know that, now. We are… fucked.”

  “Stop being so pathetic and melodramatic. Jake’s still out there.”

  “The Iraqis have arrested him. And if he is released, Laxman has been sent to dispose of him.”

  “You think he can dispose of Jake, do you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Jake won’t leave us here, Goga. He won’t abandon us. If he knows we’re here, he’ll come. He’d never leave anyone behind. Not if he can do something about it. Jake would come back from the dead to rescue his friends. You’re not even dead yet and you’re giving up.”

  A drill started rumbling in the distance.

  “They are getting closer to the end of the world,” said Goga.

  “It’s not the end till Jake – ”

  “Jake will not come.”

  “He will, you watch. This is why I came to this fucking place, why you persuaded me – to kill this monster, end the vampire plague, so me and Jake can be together. So I’m not giving up on that, I’m not.”

  “You should.”

  “You brought me here, you bastard.”

  He shut his eyes tight and groaned.

  “Get up and sort yourself out,” said Aaliyah.

  He leapt to his feet. Colour flooded his cheeks. She thought her words might have done the trick and was surprised at how easy it had been.

  But then he said, “Nothing to do, can’t you see? Nothing to do. We are trapped here in this box-room of rock. Fuad will let us die here. Starve to death. Buried alive here. This is our tomb. This is our end.”

  “He won’t do something as clean and as simple as that. Fuad will want to put on a show. He said something about us being Nimrod’s first sacrifice. Well, that’s an opportunity for us to escape.”

  Goga slumped back on the bench, and it creaked under his weight.

  “Aaliyah,” he said, “I am injured. I have broken ribs. I have other wounds. How can I fight?”

  “The only wound you have is cowardice.”

  “I am not a coward.”

  “What would your ancestors say?”

  “They are dead.”

  “They died fighting. They didn’t die crying.”

  “Vlad the Impaler died mad, an arrow through his heart from one of his own men, a vampire queen in his arms. He was poisoned by his hatred for the undead, and he was killed for it. I have been poisoned too, and I’ll pay the same price.”

  A key turned in the door and it swung open. A guard stood in the doorway.

  “Out,” he said.

  “Where are you taking us?” said Aaliyah.

  “Fucking spa, where do you think?”

  CHAPTER 64. ISLANDS.

  THE closer they got to Hillah, the more Lawton’s nerves jangled.

  His head was still hurting, and his eye pulsed. He was hearing voices, and they were calling to him.

  “One of us, one of us,” they whispered, barely audible.

  He desperately fought with his demons over the last remnants of what was human in him.

  It was nearly 9.00pm. Laxman dozed in the back seat, dried blood on his face, his eye swelling.

  Ereshkigal sat in the front next to Lawton and stared ahead.

  She’d hardly spoken. He didn’t mind that. But there were questions bugging him.

  “Why did you come back for me?” he said

  “I came for the Great Hunter.”

  “You brought me the spear.”

  “I am returning it to Nimrod.”

  “And so am I.”

  Make him one with himself, thought Lawton. He was starting to think he knew what that meant. He was starting to see how to kill Nimrod.

  “This woman that Laxman spoke of,” said Ereshkigal, “this, how did he say, ‘fox’? Is she your woman?”

  “She was.”

  “You have lost her?”

  “She left to come to Hillah with a man who promised her things.”

  “What did he promise her?”

  “He promised her me,” he said, and told her.

  “My husband’s death would give you to this woman?” said Ereshkigal.

  “Nimrod’s death would mean an end to all vampires – and then Aaliyah and me could be together, safely. That’s why she came here.”

  “She loves you very much.”

  He said nothing.

  “Do you love her?”

  His skin goosefleshed.

  How would he and Aaliyah cope after this conflict was over?

  It was violence and war that had brought them together, and it was violence and war that had kept them together.

  Perhaps they could never be a couple under normal circumstances.

  No threat, no danger, so maybe no passion.

  Nothing but humdrum.

  And humdrum scared him.

  He hadn’t been the best at relationships in the pas
t. He had tried. But he’d never had good role models – his dad had abandoned his mum before he was born, and his mum was a drunk. And sometimes Jake just panicked at the thought of being with someone for a long time. Although part of him craved it. The stability. The security. The sharing.

  He and Aaliyah could make it work – he was sure of it.

  But whatever happened, he would not let her die.

  He would save her.

  He would kill everything that threatened her.

  He would destroy whatever Fuad dug out of that earth, and he would wipe out the vampire race.

  Then Aaliyah could have peace. With him or without him. He was determined that she would have that. She would have that harmony, that tranquillity. It would be his gift to her.

  As a child, he’d seen pictures of Scottish islands. The isolation had appealed to him. The silence sounded wonderful.

  He must have been eleven or twelve when he’d seen them, and he’d probably forgotten about them as he got older.

  Then he’d joined the Army. He’d found a family. He’d found mates. He’d found a purpose.

  But they’d taken all that away from him when they’d kicked him out.

  Recently, he had been thinking about those islands again recently. He remembered again how he felt as a boy, seeing those photographs. He could see the islands, and he could hear them. The rough landscapes of greens and browns and grey. The wild seas, lashing the rocks. The sheep dotted about. A sheepdog barking. The wind whistling. An old cottage, isolated, in need of care and attention. A home for them in the wilderness. A beautiful desolation they could share.

  But for now it was a distant dream

  A dream that might not come true.

  But it was a goal at least. A gift to give Aaliyah. An island. A haven. A home.

  It resurrected a determination in him to get this job done.

  Kill this fucking monster; hand Aaliyah its head on a plate.

  “Yes,” he told Ereshkigal, answering her question. “I do love her.”