by Glen Duncan
Cloquet lit a cigarette. Something was wrong with him. The muscles of his face had lost some coherence. For a moment I thought it was jealousy – the attraction between Walker and me was a supple little cat in the room with us – but it wasn’t that. Or rather it wasn’t just that.
‘But how do you know the vampires moved?’ he asked. ‘How do you know they left the winery?’
‘Because we just got back from Provence,’ Walker told him. ‘They’re not there. They knew we were coming. The only way they could’ve known we were coming is if they discovered Merryn was a mole. Which is why they killed him.’
‘But they were in Alaska,’ I pointed out.
‘Jacqueline’s got more than three hundred in her posse,’ Walker said. ‘They weren’t all in Alaska. There was no one at the place in Provence. It had been completely abandoned. They found out Merryn was a leak, cleared out and killed him. They could be anywhere by now. Along with Mike’s wife, if she’s still alive. And your son.’
They could be anywhere. A montage of places: airports; fields; city streets. The last six months’ travelling had shrunk the world. They could be anywhere made it vast again.
Cloquet’s discomfort was growing. I was remembering him saying: You think I betray you? Ask your wolves! And the wolves, out of their meaty breath and loose shoulders and the thousands of miles in the pads of their paws said he was telling the truth. What was it then?
‘What did you call Jacqueline’s vampires?’ I asked Walker.
‘The Disciples of Remshi.’ He looked at Cloquet. ‘You know what I’m talking about, right?’
Cloquet didn’t answer. And couldn’t look at me.
Suddenly I understood: the kidnapping was nothing to do with the Helios Project.
It was to do with this. The Disciples of Remshi.
The sound of it made me feel hopeless. The sound of the disciples of anything made me feel hopeless. Cloquet had known, and hadn’t told me. Now he felt sick. So did I.
‘Mike thinks the dead boochie back there was one of their priests. They have a tattoo on the foot.’
Cloquet still wouldn’t meet my eye.
‘Look at me,’ I said to him. ‘What is it you’re not telling me?’
A moment of suspension, his feelings jammed like typewriter keys. Then he mashed the cigarette in the table’s foil ashtray, exhaling his last lungful with a look as if it tasted foul. ‘Remshi is a...’ He stopped. Rolled his head in a rapid tension-easing movement. Started again. ‘According to vampire mythology Remshi is the oldest of their kind. He’s been there from the beginning. There’s no point telling you this, because he doesn’t exist. Jacqueline said that to the vampires themselves he was like le Pére Noël or La Petite Souris, a fairy tale. But she believed in him. She was obsessed. He was supposed to have extraordinary powers. He could change his shape to look like animals or people. He could become invisible. He could make fire out of thin air. It’s why she wanted to become a vampire. Because she believed—’ He stopped, made a vague dismissive gesture. ‘It doesn’t matter. She’s insane. All of this is because her father died. You know he was fucking her from the time she was eight years old?’
Because she believed—
I should be careful. Maybe he couldn’t afford to say what he’d been going to say in front of Walker.
‘He’s right,’ Walker said. ‘To the vast majority of vampires Jacqueline’s just started the boochie equivalent of the Flat Earth Society. There’s always been a handful of vamp astrologers who’ve taken the Remshi myth seriously, but they haven’t been taken seriously for a century or more. Our girl’s started this revival either as a bid to grow a new political power or because she genuinely believes the prophecy.’
‘What prophecy?’
‘Prophecies,’ Walker said. ‘There are a bunch of them. Problem is that The Book of Remshi, which is where they’re collected, is unreliably translated and massively bowdlerized. It’s also tedious beyond belief. But the big prophecy is that Remshi’s due for a return – although it’s never been clear to me where he’s supposed to be returning from, exactly. Suspended animation or whatever. Astrological consensus says it’s now, this year. In fact he’s supposed to already be awake, as yet unrevealed...’ Then to Cloquet: ‘Right?’
My helplessness felt external, as if the space around me was solidifying. Eventually it would hold me like a fly in a lump of amber. I thought how much better it would be if I knew Lorcan was dead. Then I could turn away from all this. Then there’d be just the slag-heap of guilt to clamber over into a new version of myself and a fractured life with my daughter.
‘This Remshi thing,’ I said to Walker, ‘you believe in it?’ I wondered, briefly, what a conversation with the oldest living vampire would reveal. Briefly because almost immediately I knew the answer: nothing conclusive. Maybe not even anything new. Another creature, another set of hungers and fears and delusions and unanswered questions.
‘Who knows?’ Walker said. ‘This job keeps your mind open. My guess is if he exists he’ll be one more character running around wondering where his next meal’s coming from and trying to get laid. Or maybe not trying to get laid, if he’s really a vampire. Although allegedly his sex equipment still works. Anyway, if it’s a religion then what we need to worry about is who does believe in it and what they’re likely to do in its name.’
Konstantinov came back in.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said to him. ‘Stupid of me.’
‘Not your fault,’ he said. ‘Forget it.’
Jet-lag had let time misbehave. There was a fizzing edge to consciousness. I was aware through the blur that Walker had paraphrased my own thoughts. A small satisfaction in the jumble. I had images: the bag closing over the little wolf head; Jake’s dark head moving like a mechanical toy between Jacqueline’s legs; my dad’s look when he’d said, I’m so sad about this, Lulu. Delilah in my hands. Rockabye baby.
‘So according to the prophecy,’ Walker continued, again looking at Cloquet for corroboration, ‘Remshi wakes, establishes himself king of the boochies, inaugurates the era of vampire world domination, and while he’s at it, takes himself a bride, the new vampire queen, with whom he shares all his extraordinary powers. According to believers he can even father children. You’ve got hand it to Jacqui: she doesn’t think small.’
At some point the radiators had come on, and now the room was wadded with copper-flavoured heat. My face was flushed. I knew if I closed my eyes and lay down I’d go straight to sleep. Her son’s kidnapped and tortured and here she is – sleeping!
Zoë woke up and gurgled. A sound of absurd innocence. I was very aware that the thing to do was get us out of there so Cloquet could speak freely. To press him now was a risk.
‘I want you to tell me everything you know about this,’ I said to him. ‘Right now.’
19
The last of his tensile apparatus, visible in the shoulders and knees and the left foot up on its toes, collapsed. As with all defeats it was also a liberation. He closed his eyes for a few moments, then opened them. ‘I only kept this from you to protect you, chérie. You must believe me.’
‘Just tell me.’
He sighed. Poured himself more vodka. When he spoke his voice was ragged.
‘Jacqueline was obsessed with the story of Remshi and the prophecy of his return. She found the vampire scholars who took it seriously and gave them whatever they asked for in exchange for information. It was disgusting, the things... Anyway. Of course she saw herself becoming his queen, his amant royale. The prophecies were very clear on the point of him choosing a bride. You have to understand: her father... It’s just a kind of extension of—’
‘I don’t care about her fucking childhood traumas,’ I said. Walker and Konstantinov were rich with listening. The same quality the pine forest had in the snow. (There were these pointless correspondences. I thought: that’s what art’s for, to chase them down, to reveal them. The nightmare was when you couldn’t switch it off, when you didn�
��t want art.) ‘Just tell me what they want with my son,’ I said. I don’t know why I said that, since I already knew the answer.
Cloquet ran a hand through his exhausted hair. ‘There’s a ritual,’ he said.
Of course there was. I’d known that since Walker had said ‘the Disciples of Remshi’. I imagined Jake shaking his head the way one did at those morons who dressed up to recreate Middle Earth or the American Civil War every weekend. Jake not being with me for this was like cold air coming up against my back from a chasm right behind me. For a moment I hated him. He’d left me too much to do on my own – and no one to go to for comfort when I failed to do it.
‘The prophecy says Remshi doesn’t achieve full power until he’s... until he drinks the blood of gammou-jhi.’ Cloquet said. ‘Gammou-jhi is an ancient vampire word for werewolf.’
And there it was.
I saw a B-movie underground cave, papier-mâché boulders, a long-bearded vampire lifting a ceremonial dagger (a thing like a multicoloured stalactite) over my son’s hyperventilating chest while Jacqueline and her king watched, her lipsticked mouth slightly open, her short red hair slicked down and glistening in the torchlight.
‘He’s dead then,’ I said, trying out the words, wondering what I’d tell Zoë about the brother she never knew. Whom I never knew. Whom I never loved. Whom I let them take.
‘No,’ Cloquet said, leaning forward. ‘The ritual can only be performed au milieu d’hiver, on midwinter’s day – but Lulu, it’s not real. This thing doesn’t exist. There isn’t going to be a sacrifice because there is no one to sacrifice to. Jacqueline, this vision she has, this believing in Remshi, c’est une fantasie.’
‘He’ll die anyway,’ I said. ‘Or spend the rest of his life in a cage. If he’s no use to Jacqueline she’ll sell him to WOCOP or the Helios Project.’ I could see it ahead again like a loveless marriage, all the things I’d have to think of and plan and attempt, the pointlessness of it, failure guaranteed. And no matter how pointless it was I knew I wouldn’t be strong or brave enough to turn my back and walk away. I was a bad mother, but not bad enough to be any good to myself. My limbs ached. Cloquet sat with his head bowed. He was running around inside himself trying to find a door into this not having happened. I understood why he hadn’t told me. I’d still have done everything I’d done so far, but maybe with a desperation that would’ve made me careless. The wolves hadn’t misjudged him. He’d had my interests at heart. My face and hands were full of stalled anger.
‘How long do I have?’ I asked.
‘Till December twenty-first,’ Walker said. ‘Winter solstice. This year coincident with a full-moon lunar eclipse. But listen, we need to discuss—’
‘I only did it to protect you,’ Cloquet said. ‘I didn’t want you to have to carry it around in your head.’
‘It wasn’t your decision.’
‘I just—’
‘It wasn’t your fucking decision. Shut up about it now.’
My heart laboured. All this new information my exhausted strategist could only frantically manhandle, to no purpose. Konstantinov and Walker sat still, Konstantinov with one bony dark-haired hand around the tiny glass of vodka, Walker with his arms folded and his legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed. The exchange between me and Cloquet had ravished them a little, Walker especially, seeing me shift up a gear, the flare of passion. I pictured the B-movie cave again, the multicoloured stalactite dagger. Was that the sort of thing my son was going to die for? Hocus pocus? Mumbo jumbo? Magic? But of course, we were magic ourselves. Zoë. Konstantinov. Cloquet. Walker. My own cursed carcass – what was that if not magic? It didn’t feel like it. It felt heavy with ordinariness. The vodka was an unwanted seduction in my fingertips, yet another indication of what a useless mother I was.
Zoë needed changing. There were two disposable diapers in the pocket of her carrier. I didn’t want to do it in front of everyone, with trembling hands: Look, kids, the Werewolf mommy. Just like a human mommy, except she doesn’t love her babies and she kills people and eats them.
I pulled out one of the diapers. ‘Is there somewhere I could see to this?’
Walker got to his feet and nodded for me to follow him. We’d passed three small bedrooms on the way from the front door to the living room, one of which clearly wasn’t in use. A single bed with a bare mattress, a bedside table, a falling-apart white Ikea wardrobe. I unhitched Zoë’s carrier, took her out and laid her on the bed. Walker stood in the doorway. His consciousness touched me at my hips and collar bone and breasts and thighs. There were these moments when the universe insisted it was purely perverse, had no other aspect or trick: Now she knows they’re going to kill her son, her libido wakes up. It meant nothing. Or it meant what it always means, that we’re strange creatures, that there are internal weather systems we’re not answerable for. Less than three hours after I’d found out about Richard’s affair I’d masturbated, furiously, thinking about the two of them together in our bed, and had a huge climax. It didn’t mean I didn’t despise him. It was just something else that was going on. I remembered the Sontag quote from Jake’s journal: Whatever is happening, something else is always going on.
‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ Walker said.
‘What?’
‘I think you want us to help you get your son back.’
‘I’ll pay you.’
‘I know. Money’ll come in handy for Mike and Natasha.’
‘Not for you?’
‘Sure, for me. I’m not noble.’
‘So you’ll help me?’
‘Well, it’s either that or kill you.’
I said nothing. The room smelled of damp carpet and radiators. I wondered who had lived here before it became the place these guys used. I pictured a tired woman, three children, welfare, the television never off.
‘You’re going to try’n get your kid back anyway,’ Walker said. ‘Same vamps have Mike’s wife. We don’t help you, there’s a good chance we’ll get in each other’s way.’
So why not kill us now? I didn’t need to say it. We looked at each other. The attraction was a stubborn softness between us. It was also the first sexual honesty I’d felt in months. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill me or I wouldn’t kill him. I thought: all men and women should start from that understanding.
‘What about Konstantinov?’ I asked. ‘He doesn’t want me dead?’ Cynic’s advocate, just in case. Maybe they wanted to trade me for Konstantinov’s wife? But Jacqueline had the wife, and if Jacqueline wanted me she could have taken me in Alaska. Okay, but there were other vampires. Jacqueline might not care about the Helios Project but the eggheads among the Fifty Families did. If they didn’t know I was virus-free they’d want me. Maybe enough to force the Disciples to give up a prisoner. I’d have to tread carefully.
‘Mike doesn’t want to kill anyone he doesn’t have to,’ Walker said. ‘That might sound crazy to you, but it’s all I’ve got.’ Then after a pause: ‘Look at me.’
The command startled me, the sudden masculine shift of tone that registers in a girl’s heart. And cunt, if she’s the wrong type of girl. I looked at him. I had disturbed him, brought him unexpectedly awake. It had been a long time since anything had. But he was disturbing me too. I could imagine all his sweet golden boyhood still there in his shoulders. Nothing compares to killing the thing you love. But that was okay because this wouldn’t be love.
‘I’m not lying to you,’ he said. ‘You know I’m not.’
Implicit was how I knew. Because I was like him. A killer. Killing’s a club. No secret handshakes. Just a look. You’ve done it too. Yes.
I conceded, silently, then looked away, ran my index finger down the side of Zoë’s cheek. She kicked her legs, made wordless shapes with her mouth. As Delilah had. The thought of the Disciples was a mental loop that made me frantic and exhausted, though I kept telling myself Lorcan was better off with them: They wouldn’t need him until midwinter. They’d have to keep him alive till then. Whe
reas the Helios scientists would have started work straight away. I kept telling myself this but I couldn’t shake the nausea, knowing religion was involved, priests, prophecies, rituals. Mumbo fucking jumbo. It meant all bets were off. It meant anything that didn’t make sense was possible. Probable, in fact.
‘How many of you are there?’ I asked.
‘Nowhere near enough for what we need. You forget we weren’t with the rebels, and most of them have gone underground anyway. I doubt we’ll see them again. The ones Murdoch misses will get new faces, new IDs.’
‘So I get what, a force of two?’
‘Hey, it’s two very good guys. But no, you get more than two. There are twenty or so in the same boat as me and Mike, wrongly accused and on the run, plus a few people on the inside who are helping us keep a step ahead. And don’t forget you’ve got Clouseau.’
‘He’s not ridiculous,’ I said. ‘I know you think he is, but I’d be dead by now if not for him.’
‘I’ll take your word for that. But he better understand: no catwalk tantrums.’
‘Don’t worry about it. He’ll be fine.’ I was thinking: Twenty or so. Jacqueline’s got three hundred vampires. Hollywood odds. Like it or not I was going to have to call Charlie at Aegis again. This wasn’t the time to mention it to Walker, however.
‘What’s in it for you?’ I asked. ‘Or rather what was in it for you, before the chance to make some money presented itself?’
The smile reflex fired, started to allude to our sexual potential – but he couldn’t carry it through. He lowered his eyes. ‘I owe Mike,’ he said. ‘You know how it is.’
Not now, whatever the story. Masculine honour, presumably. Fine. It made no difference to me. I was tired. My back ached from the baby carrier. I knew how wonderful it would be to lie down on the bed and curl up with Zoë next to me and let sleep close over me like black water.
‘Tell me something,’ I said, unfastening the diaper. ‘Doesn’t it bother you that I’ve killed your kind?’
The ugly question asked uglily not just out of annoyance with libido’s timing but out of the knowledge that if I slept with him it would be good – and however good it was it wouldn’t be good enough. For what I was there was only one thing that would ever be good enough. Only one thing and no one to share it with.