by Simone Sinna
“People get lost?”
“Aye, that, too. But it’s them tides that’s the danger. Used in the past to get rid of those, let’s say, who wasn’t playing by the rules them smugglers set. Down under us, the tunnels fill up at high tide unless they’re sealed.” The chef pointed to an innocuous handle in the wall. “They all have ’em. Can let in the water, should you want. Course, no one uses them these days.”
They made their way cautiously up the narrow, winding staircase.
“Were they difficult to get rid of?” Misty asked.
The Yorkshire man sighed. “I think they’re pretty smitten. Glad m’self that I’m not young anymore.”
Smitten? Hardly. She just hoped not fixated with a negative intention.
Chapter Three
When Misty left them in the bar, Damon had felt gutted. Kadar, he sensed, felt much the same. His reaction to Misty and the kiss went beyond anything he had ever felt. What was happening thousands of miles away and the uncertainty of the outcome was adding to his disorientation, so he almost missed the man watching them. He caught him on the edge of his vision and almost turned, but in the split second that was crucial stopped himself, all senses alert and thoughts instantly blocked.
Damon and Kadar been working for a year at VECCI, the Viral Epidemic Capture and Control Initiative, a distinctly covert section of WHO, and he’d almost convinced himself he was an undercover agent. Of course, he knew he needed to be for reasons his boss and friend, Lars, had no idea of. But that was partly why he wanted the job and why he was so good at it. Viral espionage. A very real possibility that would make Saddam’s chemical warfare look like a kindergarten class. Lars didn’t really think it would happen.
“Viruset försöker alltid att bemästra oss,” Lars would often say jokingly. The virus always attempts to master us.
Damon, who, unlike Lars, knew it had been happening for centuries, would jokingly reply, “Då måste vi behärska det, nu och för evigt.” Then we must master it, now and forever. The only words of Swedish he ever learnt, just to reply to this running joke.
The question now was, who was the man watching them, and why?
Kadar looked at his brother quizzically.
“Don’t look now,” said Damon, smiling. “But at three o’clock, by the ship picture.”
Kadar smiled back. “Hook nose? Dark hair. Any thoughts as to who he is?”
Damon closed his eyes and concentrated. “Vampire,” he said.
“Shit, that’s fabulous,” said Kadar, beaming as if he’d just won the lottery. “Just what we fucking need. So what do we do now?”
“Close your thoughts,” said Damon, voice low. “And follow my lead. He’s coming over.”
* * * *
“Brothers,” said Hook-nose, his accent strident and slightly Germanic. “This is a surprise.”
Kadar took a closer look at the vampire. He’d been hearing about these distant cousins all his life and searching for them for the last three years. Now he got to meet one on the same day he met his first were-devil. This experience was less positive. The man was perhaps late fifties, with black hair in a ponytail, hooded eyes and thin lips.
“But a pleasant one,” said Damon smoothly. “My grandfather was lucky enough to meet…your father?”
Hook-nose smiled. “Perhaps we can have dinner sometime to ascertain that?”
“Delighted,” said Damon.
“Excellent. Will you be here long?”
“We have business that will take us in and out of Whitby for the rest of the month.”
Hook-nose smiled without warmth. “Then I will be in touch.”
Kadar had to suppress a shudder.
As Hook-nose left, he turned, this time his smile revealing his teeth, brilliantly white and the eyeteeth long and ominous. “Just one question. I confess, I’m fascinated.”
“Really?” Damon looked totally calm but Kadar knew him well enough to sense otherwise. The tendons in the back of his hand were taut.
“Yes,” said Hook-nose. “Just why were you with the one of the vermin?”
Damon smiled, the tendons now standing out so strongly Kadar wondered if his fingers might bend back in spasm. “It is actually part of why I’d be particularly happy to do dinner. We have a problem you might be able to help us with.”
“Really?” Hook-nose was barely able to hide his contempt. “And is there any reason to want to help you?”
“Oh, I think so,” said Damon leaning back in his chair. “You see, we want to help you keep the secret.”
“The secret?” There was an edge to Hook-nose’s voice.
“Yes,” Damon continued. “The one that the vermin is dangerously close to.”
* * * *
Misty barely slept. It was in part that the messages from her family were coming to her, by both text and the silent, intuitive messages that conveyed feelings of relief mixed with sadness and uncertainty. Mixed into her dreams were both Karlssens, kissing her with a good deal more passion than the light kiss on the head. They had only been feeling guilty, she told herself. No need to turn it into an obsession, even if they were both seriously hot. But there was also something more sinister that was disturbing her slumber. It was a feeling that she hadn’t felt from the Karlssens initially but which now whirled through her subconscious, waking her more than once. She sat up, startled, heart racing, and knew she was in danger.
She left a note for Bonnie, who looked unlikely to be awake before noon. They’d had a train booked for two p.m. but Misty decided she couldn’t wait. At seven a.m. she walked up the hill to meet the taxi she’d ordered. It was still dark and the mist hung over the village, street lights faintly glowing. She saw him as soon as she stepped out onto the street, the coldness he radiated curling around her ominously. Though he stepped back into the shadows, she knew he was watching her. A dark man with hooded, piercing eyes, but black eyes, not green, she was certain.
Pulling her coat around her, she hurried up the street and only looked back when the taxi was pulling away. There were three of them. One on the cliff’s edge, another at the top of the hill she had just walked up. The third she felt above, hearing the soft flap of wings that made her cower down involuntarily. She had never felt so terrified and alone.
* * * *
When Damon and Kadar came to have breakfast at the hotel they knew Misty was staying at, they ate alone. They’d arrived early because they hadn’t wanted to miss her, but it seemed walkers, at least at the end of their journey, weren’t in a hurry to get up. The brothers were on their third coffee—ignoring the scowls of the chef who kept coming in, ostensibly to top up the smorgasbord but spending more time trying to make them feel uncomfortable—when Bonnie came in, looking bleary eyed.
“Stop smiling,” she said, squinting at them. “There is so, like, nothing to smile about.”
Kadar poured her a coffee, which she gratefully accepted.
“Misty feeling as hung over as you?” Damon asked.
“Wouldn’t know,” said Bonnie. “But I guess not. Note said she was going on the first train from Scarborough.”
Damon stiffened and forced a smile. “What a pity. We wanted to say good-bye and organize a time to catch up in London.”
“Misty doesn’t date,” said Bonnie. She took a slug of the coffee. “But maybe with you two, I can get her to make an exception. After all, there are two of us and two of you.”
The thought was truly horrible, but Damon smiled pleasantly.
When they left, aware they were being watched by the vampires, Damon hoped Bonnie would be less forthcoming with information for them.
* * * *
The Baekkens found them that night. It was close to midnight and the weather outside their room was wild, the sounds of waves crashing onto the rocks below interspersed with wind gusts rattling the window panes and rain sweeping across the landscape. Damon and Kadar were in the bar downstairs, Damon certain they would be approached. He felt Hook-nose’s presence before see
ing him emerge from the shadows.
“A drink, brother?” Damon asked.
Hook-nose had a glass in hand, but it was empty. From the pocket of his long black coat, he produced a bottle and placed it on the table. Sitting down he took out the cork top and poured himself a glass of viscous brown liquid. Pausing, he looked at them and waved the bottle. “Join me.”
Damon indicated he still had scotch in his glass.
Hook-nose smiled, his white teeth flashing. “I insist.”
Damon had no doubt that the bottle was drugged. Hook-nose was either not going to drink or had the antidote. Probably a narcotic, judging by Charles’s experience. He hoped so, because that was what he had the antidote to in an EpiPen in his pocket. He finished his scotch and put his glass on the table. Kadar did likewise. The vampire poured his poison into each, smiling smugly as he did.
“To success,” said Hook-nose. “In whatever endeavors wes… might join in.”
Damon sipped carefully, watching as Hook-nose took a more generous gulp. Damon was confident he could deliver his own antidote into his thigh through his pocket. But he was less sure of being able to get any to Kadar and overall thought it was better he didn’t. Kadar was neither doctor nor actor. Better that he demonstrated real symptoms of narcotic overdose. Damon didn’t think the vampires wanted to kill them, at least not yet.
He started to feel the effects within minutes. A slight wooziness, his thoughts becoming less clear. It was a pleasant feeling, one that addicts used to dull their emotional pain. Kadar was starting to grin like a drunk schoolboy. Hook-nose was smiling. The smile started to blur and Damon realized he was seeing double. He put his hand into his pocket and quickly jabbed the needle into himself, holding it down until he heard the click, hoping the vampires didn’t hear it, too.
* * * *
“I am Silas. Welcome to my Order.”
Kadar struggled to open his eyes and then to work out who was speaking. The last thing he could remember clearly was sitting in the bar of their hotel with Hook-nose. Now Hook-nose was not alone. They were in what appeared to be a large meeting room. Kadar was using the oak table in front of him to prop himself up and saw that Damon, next to him, was doing likewise. Around the remainder of the table, sitting in high-backed, ornately carved chairs were half a dozen vampires, dressed all in black, faces shadowy and cold. Actually, the room was very cold. Kadar noted the stone walls and wondered if he would ever see the light of day again.
“Ah, yes,” said Damon, slurring slightly. “Delighted to have been invited.”
“We are most interested in why you might be here.”
Kadar focused on the man who’d spoken. He sat at the head of the table, older than most of the others, perhaps in his seventies—though being a vampire, he was probably much older. Around his neck was a gold chain with a medallion. None of the others had a chain, but Kadar could see a smaller version of the medallion on the vampire next to him. It had on it a symbol he couldn’t make sense of.
“You met many years ago with our grandfather and great uncle,” said Damon. “You were most helpful.”
“That pact is at an end,” said Silas, folding his hands in front of him, long fingers and nails interlinked.
“Indeed,” Damon said. “The curse almost annihilated the vermin. My cousins last night attempted to finish them.”
Silas nodded. Kadar, through his fuzzy thoughts, wondered how much they knew. Damon had spoken to Angel to get an update earlier in the evening. Or at least he thought it was earlier in the evening. There was a gap in time and he couldn’t be sure whether minutes or hours had passed.
“It seems they were not successful.” Silas smiled and the others around the table nodded. Hook-nose looked positively gleeful. Kadar was feeling too fuzzy headed to make sense of this. The vampires were hardly friends of the were-devils.
“No,” said Damon gravely. “And the were-devils have joined with some of our kind”—his tone made it clear that this was not a positive—“and found the answer to the viral code.”
There was a deathly silence. This was new information for them.
“And what answer is that?” Silas asked.
“As I am here, not there, I am not privy to the details,” said Damon. “But it is clear that our similarities have been important as our differences.”
“You speak in riddles, brother.” This time the speaker was the man to the right of the head. Much the same age, he had a narrow face and small, round spectacles on his beaked nose.
Damon looked supremely confident. As far as Kadar could remember, their grandmother had mentioned very little regarding details. But then, she wasn’t a scientist and Damon was. Maybe Damon could make sense of it. Or, more likely, he was doing an enormous bluff with their lives as forfeits.
“They have been able to use ghost blood and an immune marker to help piece the puzzle together,” said Kadar, and like his brother, he watched closely for responses. The vampires remained stone-faced, but Beaked-spectacles twitched.
Silas snorted. “Really? And you think that scares us?”
“No,” said Damon. “But it seems that it will mean that we will be able to immunize ourselves.”
The underlying threat was clearly delivered. In which case we won’t need you.
“That is rather presumptive of you,” said Silas, his thin lips quivering in amusement. “There are many more viruses and secrets to be unlocked than the two that plague you and the were-devils.”
“Exactly,” said Damon. “Which is why we’d like to deal with you again, for another virus.”
Kadar tried to hide his surprise. He wanted another virus as much as he wanted to watch a season of the Kardashians. Had his brother lost the plot?
Silas pressed his fingertips together. Elbows on the table, he leant forward, looking at the Karlssens through narrowed eyes. “A deal implies you are going to give us something we want.”
“We work for VECCI,” said Damon. Now Kadar was certain the poison had affected his brother’s brain cells.
The men around the table looked at each other and there was a quiet murmur. No one was asking what VECCI was. Seeing the light of day was looking like an even more remote possibility.
“Which,” Damon continued, “you have tried unsuccessfully to infiltrate.”
“An amusing notion,” said Silas, looking murderously unamused. “Pray continue.”
“We can be your eyes and ears.”
Beaked-spectacles took off his glasses and wiped them carefully. “What could your VECCI know that would be of any interest to us?”
The silence hung over the table with a weight that Kadar found close to suffocating. Now he was certain Damon was so close to the edge that it would take just a flick of one of Silas’s fingernails to uncover him. They had discussed theories often, but now Damon played it as if it was fact.
“Like the viral epidemic mapping in advance,” said Damon, still on relatively safe ground. This was the bread-and-butter of what Kadar did. Yes, the projections were not foolproof, but Kadar was very good at working out programs that took all the multiple variables into account.
Silas shrugged. “So?”
“So, we can give you greater control of what you start, before you start it and at every step along the way.”
Hook-nose looked agitated. “We can already—”
“Silence!” Silas cut him off. “Go on, brother.”
“We can also keep you abreast of how close the humans are getting to you,” said Damon. “For centuries you have run circles around them. But your time of dominance will end if you do not take action.”
Kadar saw Silas’s eyes gleam. The others around the table sat very still, but their heads turned to watch Silas.
“We will get your virus,” said Silas. “Return to Whitby for Halloween. But you must have the map of the projected viral spread ready—we will provide you details of its capacity next week. Then we will reassess your usefulness.”
Kadar took a deep brea
th, but Silas hadn’t finished with them.
“You have one thing to explain,” he said. “Why were you with the vermin last night?”
The heads of all the vampires now turned to Damon. He looked surprised. “You mean, you don’t know?”
“Humor me.”
“Because she is working on the final secret. The one that will give were-devils supremacy over us all unless we defeat them now.”
Silas sat watching him and then turned to Kadar.
“Do you know this secret?”
Shit. He had no idea. What had she said she was doing? Damon tried to answer but Silas silenced him. Kadar felt the sweat dripping down the back of his neck, the room no longer feeling cold.
“I’m not the scientist,” said Kadar, finally. “So don’t ask me to explain it. But it’s something to do with the genes.”
He saw it and knew Damon had, too. Beaked-spectacles’s left eye started twitching so violently he had to pretend to cough and cover his face with his hands. They’d hit the mother lode.
Chapter Four
When Misty got back to London, she ran a bath and sat in it for an hour. Finally able to stop shaking, she eased herself out, put on a dressing gown and looked on the internet for a cheap fare home. She wasn’t paid much and London was expensive, so she trawled for some time until deciding even if it cost more she needed to get out quickly. She’d have to decide whether she was returning once she was in Tasmania. Quite apart from wanting to be there to help her family through the trauma of the last few weeks, Melody had emailed to ask her to be a bridesmaid. She was getting married in two weeks. Then there was the Yorkshire experience, which had totally unnerved her. Instinct told her she was still in danger, even if the feeling of cold gripping her internally had thawed.
She emailed her boss to say there was a family emergency and rang Mac and her father to tell them which flight she was on. Mac sounded much his usual self.