'Pretty sure.' He followed Cheryl toward the front counter; before the door shut behind him, he heard Rabbit asking the bartender for a rum and Coke, a double. Didn't hurt to keep her on edge, should he get the chance to continue their little chat.
There really was a phone call waiting.
Cheryl stood by his side, arms crossed, but at least she wasn't tapping her foot as he picked up the handset, an antique thing in ivory and chrome.
'You chasing eine kleine nachtmusik, Reece?'
Marshall. Sounding not quite amused.
'Yeah,' he said. 'It's quite the wonderland here.'
'I got a call from Treasurer Campbell, asking what you're doing darkening his doorstep.'
'His doorstep?'
'The Petite Morts do fall under his aegis.'
'Still—'
'Doesn't matter. I've been ringing you for hours.'
'I haven't listed my new number yet. Petersen took the old phone before the Gold Coast caper and, I'm told, it has been misplaced.'
'Fuckers. Hope you didn't keep your dirty pictures on it. Get your clothes on and get back here, pronto. Danica is dead. Maximilian wants a word. In person.'
FORTY-SIX
Motoring up the Mary River was excruciating, nothing but pale fields and dark mangroves and occasional specks of farmhouse lights until they'd reached the outskirts of Maryborough. Darkened houses loomed on the right bank. The barking of dogs carried across the water. Kevin hunched in the bow as they pushed upstream until a well-lit bridge appeared, like an ancient fortification bathed in orange lights. Skipper slowed the already excruciating putt-putt to a mere burble and nosed past small yachts and motor boats as she headed for a dock on the town side; the other side was a muddy bank lined with mangroves giving way to a low, barren flat of fallow fields.
Skipper tied up at the dock. The only movement was the gentle roll of the moored boats.
'End of the line, boys,' she said, by way of wishing them luck, and walked away with hands in pockets.
Kevin and Yoshi struggled to get Mel up the dock's ladder. The night was still and silent, save for the slurp of water on hull and, somewhere, a wood duck giving voice to a bad dream.
Kevin huddled with Mel behind a hedge. The street might've been a graveyard, edged in stone, two- and three-storey buildings. Businesses, by the look, all sightlessly staring.
Yoshi returned to report that many were vacant. A heritage or tourist precinct, he said, with a nod to the ornate lamps that cast small pools of radiance on the tiled footpaths on both sides of the road. 'There's a good-looking one at the far end.'
They walked Mel down. Their shuffling footsteps sounded incredibly loud.
Yoshi ripped boards off a window at the rear of the building, and shattered the glass with the tip of his scabbard. Kevin winced at the noise, but there was no apparent response. The building stank of damp and grease and oil. An old engineering works, a sign said.
They were in an office, glassed off from the rest of the building. Through the dusty panes, Kevin saw a roller door; a bare floor with bolts sticking up and faint lines in the concrete where machinery had once been anchored. A cobwebbed pulley system hung from thick beams in the ceiling.
'Should be dark enough to wait out the day,' Yoshi said.
'And then what?'
'Then we get cleaned up. We can't go anywhere looking like this.'
'Yeah, we look pretty beat up, huh.'
'I just mean the clothes. They're pretty terrible.'
Kevin chuckled. 'Fair enough. I got sand in me sand.'
'You thought about finding our ride?'
'If VS tracked us to the house, then they might've followed the van. We'll have to start again.'
'What about Blake's red-eyes?'
'Who knows? I've got no way to contact them, even assuming VS hasn't caught them.'
'So, we're on our own. First, we need clothes. Don't suppose anywhere will be open this time of the morning.'
'You'll be lucky to find a petrol station, I reckon.'
'A felony it is, then. And then we have breakfast. I don't know about you, pal, but getting the crap shot out of me does wonders for my appetite.'
FORTY-SEVEN
One of Maximilian's Familiares met Reece in the car park. Her gaze took in his utility belt, his rumpled suit. She straightened his tie and pursed her lips slightly as she took in her handiwork, a clear sign she'd done all that she could, and led him to the lift.
'We're on our way up,' she said, and Reece realised that she was talking to her mic, not simply stating the obvious.
He did the math on how long he'd been awake as the floors ticked over. Lost count, confused by the flashing numbers, stifled a yawn and ascribed it to tiredness, not nerves.
The bell rang. Round one, he thought, though it felt like maybe thirteen. Fitting. He'd been to this floor more in the past week than he had in the past year. Fucking-up will do that.
They tromped down the familiar hall to the boardroom, where his escort removed his weaponry and locked it away in a drawer. She straightened his tie again, which he'd managed to knock out of line in some reflexive attempt to avoid choking.
Preceptor Heinrich and Treasurer Tony Campbell stalked out of the room. The door slammed behind them. Both shot him filthy looks: laser vision set to evaporate.
The Familiare swiped her ID card and thumbprinted to unlock the door. She did it all with a certain mechanical prowess that suggested someone who had yet to tire of feeling special by having access to people deemed important. She led him across the boardroom to a doorway flanked by two vampire guards wearing Maximilian's personal sigil.
Shit, he was going into the sanctum sanctorii. Was he to be a midnight snack? The Old Man might be disappointed with the vintage.
The Familiare ushered him inside the office but didn't follow. The door shut softly.
Maximilian stood at the far end of the darkened room, staring out the window. His hands were clasped behind him.
Reece could sense rather than see clouds massing darkly over the mountains to the west. There was a storm coming, of that he had no doubt.
The room was dominated by a desk, the heavy, dark timber like a monument — an altar, perhaps; and lined with bookshelves. A display case held a battered shield, a selection of bladed weapons.
A woman sat on a chaise longue off to one side. Bald. Wearing a smock without sleeves. Pale.
'Drink?' Maximilian asked, indicating the girl.
'No, thank you, my lord.' Reece tried to keep the confusion out of his voice; had the Old Man mistaken him for someone else?
'I've asked Dee to join us.'
'My lord?' No hiding his confusion this time.
Maximilian turned, looked around, as though surprised to find himself in the room. 'Out,' he snapped at the girl, who stood, curtseyed and disappeared through a rear door made to appear like wood panelling. It was half hidden behind a drape, one which Reece eventually recognised as an old, threadbare banner still attached to a pole with a splintered tip.
'Memories,' Maximilian mumbled as he adjusted the hanging material, fondling it like the hem of a mistress's negligee. 'What I wouldn't give for one bloodless dream.'
The silence stretched out.
'Things move so quickly now. Have you noticed? Like a carousel; faster and faster. You know, I once had an enemy, a man — just a man — who thwarted me; a business arrangement, a trifle, really. On his deathbed, I showed him the documents, how I'd destroyed his fortune, bankrupted his family, reduced his line to ash. I waited his entire life, Hunter Reece, to reveal my vengeance.
'I wonder did I move too fast, or too slow, for Danica to want to stay?'
Reece stood at attention, feeling the sweat bead around his collar, on the small of his back. The air conditioning was chill on his flesh.
Any minute now, the Old Man would get to the point.
Maximilian bent, the movement so sudden Reece flinched. He skimmed a folder along the table toward Reece. Papers
spilled out, and photographs, white against the dark timber, the brightest things in the room. Kevin Matheson's mugshot stared up at him.
'Tell me about this cub; this grease monkey.'
'You've read my report, I take it.' Reece gestured toward the dossier. Maximilian preferred paper. Someone had tried to offer a briefing on a tablet, once; it'd taken days to find all the pieces of the device.
'It's a competent report of the Jasmine Turner Debacle, but it doesn't tell me about the boy. Who is he, Hunter Reece, that he can lead us all on this merry chase?' The desperation in Maximilian's voice was unexpected, disconcerting; his flesh so drawn, so grey, his face all angles and hollows.
'I'm not a Hunter anymore, my lord.'
'Don't quibble with me!' Spit flew from his lips. Fangs flashed.
'He's not even two months into the night, my lord.'
'And yet he remains at large. And yet, my best cannot reel him in.'
'Luck of the devil.'
'Perhaps.' He mulled it over some more, rubbed at his face as though to slough off his frustration; that hint of appalling weariness. 'Perhaps of two devils: Taipan and Danica.'
He looked at the view, then, and Reece stood at ease, unsure if he'd been dismissed or what. Was Maximilian working out if he could throw Reece through the plate glass; guessing how long it would take for him to hit the ground?
Then Maximilian spoke, his voice as low and dry as drifting sand. 'You might have heard: there has been another debacle, Hunter Reece.'
'I thought Petersen and Newman were on the case.'
'Petersen is dead. So too is my best pilot and all our Fallschirmjaeger. And Danica. All dead.'
'That's not good, my lord.' And the prize for understatement of the century goes to... And he'd never got to give Petersen his comeuppance.
'Enemy losses: three squires. My best troops, Reece — for three squires. And Danica gone. And with her, my best hope to bring Mira back.'
Reece kept his mouth shut. The Old Man was as tight as a tow rope, fraying in the middle. If he snapped, he could bring the whole building down.
Maximilian turned to him and his eyes were blazing green, his jaw tight, his hands fists on the table as he leaned toward Reece. 'The scales are shifting, Reece. I can feel them. It feels like Tannenberg. Like Stalingrad. Who is this pup; this, this harbinger?'
'He's a mechanic, my lord.'
Maximilian shook his head, then slumped, drained, into a seat at the table. 'Sit. Tell me about this mechanic. Tell me how you can kill him, before he kills us.'
It was after oh-two-hundred when Reece was dismissed. In the outer office, he paused, undid his tie. The Familiare appraised him with one raised eyebrow as she handed back his weapons. He helped himself to water from the cooler. Wished her a good day as he threw the crumpled cup in the bin and made his way to the lift. Hit 3 out of habit, stabbed 2. The lift stopped on 7. Heinrich got in. Reece decided out was better, but Heinrich blocked him. The door shut.
Heinrich threw him against the wall. Locked his forearm across Reece's chest. It was a manoeuvre Reece had used many times in asking a suspect some pertinent questions. He did not like being on the receiving end.
'What did the Old Man want?' Heinrich demanded as the lift continued its descent.
'Tea and scones. I was fresh out.'
'Don't play smart with me, Hunter. You don't have the years.'
'I'm. Not. A Hunter.'
Pressure built as Heinrich leaned into him. 'What. Did. He. Want?'
'To share the bad news. From the island.'
'Why you?'
'He likes me.'
It felt as if his chest was about to cave in. Fireworks flashed before his eyes. He struggled for breath.
'Do you really want me to take it from your blood?'
'He wanted to know about Matheson. I had nothing. It's all in the dossier.'
Heinrich pushed Reece's head to one side to bare his throat.
Fetid breath blasted over his face. Fangs glinted, shining with drool.
The lift stopped with a ding.
'Gentlemen.' Marshall, with both her Familiares.
For a long moment, no one moved. Then Heinrich stepped back.
'Get out, Private,' Marshall said, and Reece stumbled from the lift as a glaring Heinrich swiped to descend to the restricted basement level where the board had their private chambers.
'Come.' Marshall headed for her office, the two guards virtually pushing Reece along behind her. 'I'll buy you a drink and you can tell me what that was all about.'
FORTY-EIGHT
They waited till after nine o'clock, when they were certain the shops would be shut. Mel murmured inanities, but she was content to simply sit like a doll. They debated tying her up, staking her, but she showed no sign of wanting to do so much as move, let alone run. As long as the pendant masked her from any blood trace, they figured it was safe to leave her. Danica was dead. Did anyone care what happened to them now?
The streets were empty. The buildings, few more than two storeys, showed an uncomfortable mix of old and new. Glass-fronted shops squeezed into the ground floor while the original stone facades glowered above with dark windows. It reminded Kevin of his home town, although the streets were narrower here. Out west, progress had largely passed them by; here, it felt like an imposition.
Silence reigned above a low electric hum of street lights and transformers, the electric tock-tock-tock of an unused pedestrian crossing. They had to duck for cover once, hiding in a bus shelter as a taxi cruised past.
Kevin kept watch while Yoshi broke into a clothes store.
The American sniffed, muttering about the fashion time warp. They washed in a staff bathroom, grabbed a change of less touristy fare and hit the street. There were no sirens, no obvious alarm.
'Now, for some takeaway,' Yoshi said, and walked toward a splash of lights further up the road. Kevin caught up with him as he reached the corner.
There were only a few cars out the front of the pub. Chalkboards boasted of a beer garden and pool tables, and $10 steaks on Wednesdays and ladies night — first drink free — on Thursdays.
'What's today?' Yoshi asked.
Kevin had to think about that. 'Tuesday. I think.'
'Oh, well. Maybe we can get a different kind of special.'
'Is this a good idea?' Kevin said, but Yoshi was already crossing the street, and Kevin realised just how famished his companion was, and how much worse that seemed to make his own hunger.
A few drinkers, all middle-aged, all men, lined up at the public bar watched them enter, smirked, or simply looked through them, before returning to their conversations or stolid cricket viewing.
The clink of billiard balls drew them through a side door into an open area, with several pool tables on a wide, roofed verandah; the rest of the space taken up with tables and potted trees, a closed serving area on the far side, but a bar still operating. It backed onto the public bar, the one tightly T-shirted barmaid serving both between chews of gum, her lashes like Venus fly traps, her lips painted pink to match her inch-long nails.
Two girls and three lads stood around the tables, smoking, drinking, holding cues. The girls both had long hair dyed three different shades of blonde, tight jeans, open denim jackets. The boys wore old jeans and either tight T-shirts or checked shirts.
'Maybe we should wait outside,' Kevin said quietly, but one of the lads overheard.
'What's ya problem, mate? You and your chink mate too good to drink with us?'
'Just lookin' to have a quiet beer,' Kevin said.
The kid looked them up and down, a terrier of a lad in his Jim Beam T-shirt and shark tooth necklace, a stud in one ear and a respectable mullet warming the back of his neck.
'Ya not faggots, are ya?'
'Why?' Yoshi asked. 'You need a date?'
One of the girls hooted before slurping from the neck of her rum and cola, and her mate said to her, 'Good one, eh, Jessie. You need a date?' And snorted.
'Fu
nny little chink, ain't ya,' the terrier said.
'Ya want a ladyboy, do ya, Woz,' Jessie said, causing a snort from her friend.
'You wanna go outside, do ya?' Woz continued. ''Ave a go?'
One of his mates hollered, 'Wanna give him a blow job, Woz?', and the other mimed fellatio on a pool cue.
'Fuck you, Billy,' Woz said. 'This cunt can suck my dick.' He puffed out his chest and danced up to Yoshi on the balls of his feet, his puffy eyes glinting; close enough together to give him the appearance of a tropical fish. 'How about it? You wanna go?'
Yoshi hit him. The terrier folded up like a camp chair and fell in a heap.
'Hey, enough of that,' the barmaid shouted, and the drinkers and the kids stared, all suspended in a moment of disbelief.
And then the lads put down their drinks and charged.
'You take the Nip, Streak,' Billy shouted. He was short but solid, with pinched dark eyes shaded by a curly mop of black hair. He steamed into Kevin, grabbed him by the collar and pushed him against a pool table.
Kevin's arms came up, breaking the hold, and then he punched Billy square in the nose. Bones broke. Blood gushed. Billy's head snapped back like a Pez dispenser and he bounced along the floor, out cold.
Yoshi took to Streak like the boxing bag he resembled, breaking ribs and rupturing internal organs with a series of blows that left the lad crumpled on the floor, able only to moan.
Jessie shouted as she smashed her glass on the table and drove it at Kevin. He blocked the blow with enough power to crack her forearm. She dropped the glass. His right hand found her throat, lifted and dropped her on to the pool table in a smooth motion. Balls rolled away from the impact. He ripped out the side of her throat. Blood and booze surged through him. It had been days since he'd fed. He'd been boiled in the back of the Rover, shot and blown up. The blood hit him like a flash flood, sweeping him away.
Jessie's life submerged him: experiences, feelings, bobbing like flotsam caught in the current.
An impact roused Kevin. Something across the shoulders.
He stood in time for the baseball bat to explode against the side of his head. He fell to his knees, aware of Jessie's legs parted above him, her pants dark with piss, the smell swirling with booze and blood.
The Big Smoke Page 19