Talulla Rising

by Glen Duncan

  Reflexes are terrible things. Confronted with the loose werewolf, reflexes pushed Sir back two paces closer to the caged one.

  Two paces were enough.

  If his hand hadn’t been going into his jacket (for a gun) I might have ended up with just the jacket. As it was he couldn’t get the arm back quickly enough, though I was impressed that the manoeuvre occurred to him. Instead I hoiked him by his collar off his feet to join me at the bars, where the back of his head struck with such a crack I was amazed he didn’t pass out. Panic fast-tracked him to the truth: he was going to die. I got a second of his psyche’s race through its heaped contents in the desperate hope there was something, something, something there that could save him. But of course there wasn’t. There never is. I sank all five blade-nailed fingers of my right hand into his throat, closed quickly, made a slippery fistful of his trachea, oesophagus, larynx, pharynx and thyroid veins, squeezed – and ripped them out.

  Walker, meanwhile, had got to Murdoch before Murdoch had got to his piece. Murdoch was on his back, minus the arm that had been going for it. Now the shoulder ended in ragged flesh around the yawning joint, severed veins pumping out blood as if in a hurry to be rid of it, as if they’d been dying to do it for years. The weapon itself lay within my reach. I squeezed the last of the life out of Sir (there was a baroque feast, a life full of casual extremes and indulged deviance, but if I started I’d lose myself in it), let him fall then grabbed it. Not easy to pop a clip out with blood-slick werewolf hands – and the silver buzzed in my nerves – but at the third attempt I managed it.

  WE DON’T HAVE TIME!

  For all you want to do. Please. We have to go.

  Murdoch had already spent what attention his system allowed on the lost arm, though the socket still feebly spat blood, now an image of futile ejaculation. His system had the big picture in view. The big picture was death. His face had changed. The bald-eagle glare was still there, but with an appalling tremor. The mouth had gone infantile. Walker, I knew, wanted two things. He wanted Murdoch to recognise him, and he wanted Murdoch to suffer for a very long time before he died.

  I KNOW, BUT PLEASE, JUST BE RID OF HIM.

  Anti-climax. The moment of revenge always is. It’s only the hunger for revenge that enlivens us. Murdoch not knowing it was him was like a bereavement.

  Suddenly Walker lunged, bit and doggishly shook the remaining arm at the shoulder, pulled with concentrated fury. Murdoch’s mouth downturned, eyelids fluttering like a coquette’s. After a queer, silent, quivering pause – Murdoch trying to disbelieve what he knew was happening – the arm left its socket with an emphatic wet crunch. Murdoch screamed.

  PLEASE, WALKER. MY SON. THEY’LL KILL HIM.

  But it wasn’t enough. Of course it wasn’t enough. Everything Murdoch had done to him (or had had done to him, to show it was minor, delegatable) was back with Walker, in his skin, his blood, his bones, demanding he find an equation of violence to erase it. No such equation existed. Nothing would be enough. He tore down Murdoch’s pants and underwear. Murdoch, armless, wriggled and whined. The last lights of his consciousness sputtered. With what looked bizarrely like tenderness Walker put his hand behind Murdoch’s head and lifted him, just the way you would a sick man to help him sip a glass of water. Walker’s other hand settled around Murdoch’s genitals. Murdoch, shivering, wide-eyed, scattered, suddenly focused.

  ‘You?’ he whispered.

  Walker nodded. Smiled, though human eyes wouldn’t have seen it.

  Then he tore off Murdoch’s cock and balls. Threw back his head. Howled.

  58

  It took us ten minutes, going flat-out, to reach the monastery. It stood in a valley that was approximately the shape of a ladle, halfway up the bowl end on a broad natural shelf, bounded by white stone wall. The front looked down the long narrow end of the valley; the back was built into the hillside’s curve.

  The moon was as yet uncomplicatedly full. The eclipse wouldn’t begin until 23.04 and would be maximal at 00.42 – according to Mia the sacrificial hour. We had time. For all the good it would do us. The plan, before everything had gone wrong, had been simple. Not simple in that it was likely to succeed, but simple in that it had only three components. The first was us taking out the six perimeter guards, two at each of the three gates in the wall. The second was Konstantinov, Lucy, Fergus and three of the mercenaries getting into the east wing (three guards) and freeing Natasha. The third was me, Cloquet, Walker, Trish and the other mercenaries getting into the west wing where Lorcan was housed (four more guards) and snatching him. All of which was supposed to happen in broad daylight, with zero vampires and liberty to make as much noise as we liked. Mia’s news, that a dozen or more vampires could be up and taking the noon air, hadn’t changed that, though it had reduced what was already risible optimism to plain suicide. Bullets wouldn’t kill boochies, obviously, though enough bullets would slow them down a little. The weapons choice had been based on combat with human familiars. Konstantinov had ordered a couple of crossbows just in case, and there were three machetes, but it was nowhere near enough.

  Yet even those odds had been better than the ones we faced now. As far as Walker and I knew we were a force of two against twenty humans and seventy-nine wide-awake vampires.

  A pale dirt track descended the western hillside in a series of switchbacks. We ignored it, cutting instead through the trees’ cover. Plane, cypress, oak, and enough evergreen pine to keep the darkness collusively deep. There air was cool and still, the grass surprisingly lush underfoot. Neither of us had fed. Deliberately. Satiation would have slowed us. We were in and out of mutual intuition that bordered telepathy. I could feel his shock at how ravenously, now, he wanted life. In the end lycanthropy hadn’t erased what had happened to him but it had forced him to outgrow it. The Curse’s brutal gift was that whatever your human horror stories it dwarfed them with the new headline: YOU CHANGE INTO A MONSTER EVERY FULL MOON! He was dizzy from the new perspective, aerial, that showed him the map of himself he’d thought exhaustive was now only a small part of a vast and unknown continent. The bare physical facts were still a tingling sacrilege, in the palms of his hands, the soles of his feet. His body still blared astonishment at its new cellular trick. Wulf stretched and snapped in him, lashed out in joyous ownership, sent dark bulletins of the scope of its strength through the mutant nerves. The human self had run and hidden like a cat, now peered out in awe of the new no-nonsense housemate, who would – it was obvious – be satisfied by nothing less than complete fusion. It only had twelve nights a year. For those twelve nights it would demand everything and deny itself nothing.

  My heart was thudding from the run. The air was cool enough for visible breath, the cartoon plumes to denote an angry bull. Some tiny pale winter blossoms watched us like fairies in the lower gloom. Hunger flared and writhed in my blood. Another hour and it would be making us reckless. The core of wulf was an idiot with a one-word vocabulary: feed... feed... feed – until you do feed, then the idiot is beatified and gives you in return deep animal peace.

  Fifty metres. Forty. Thirty.

  According to Mia’s smartphoned sketches the monastery was built in the shape of a broad-armed cross. Beyond the wall was a semi-circular courtyard with steps at one end leading up to the main entrance. Through the main doors a hallway offered five choices, two corridors on the left, two on the right and one straight ahead. Straight ahead through a set of double doors was the main chamber, the square at the centre of the cross, a big windowless room with an altar on a dais at the far end. We had detailed directions from there to where Lorcan and Natasha were being held below ground, in Lorcan’s case most likely useless now. I’d wondered about Natasha. Specifically, whether she was still alive. Konstantinov had asked Mia for a physical description of his wife. Mia had done better. She’d sent a photograph. It was hard to make out the background, but there was no doubt it was Natasha. Taken with a flash that bleached her, squinting slightly, one hand raised as if to ward th
e photographer off.

  I stopped at the edge of the solid cover. There were only a dozen or so trees between here and the slope leading up to the wall and the gate. Walker stood behind me, put his arms around me. His hands covered my breasts, muzzle nudged. Yes. That was available, in spite of everything. Of course it was. There was urgency in his touch, but sadness too. All the time we’d lost. And now, soon, we’d be dead. I leaned back, pressed myself against him, felt the giant undertow. It would be so sweet to go into it. For a little while there’d be nothing else. The moon wouldn’t object. The moon was ready with its blessing. I was about to turn to him – I know, but I can’t, even though nothing matters, even though God hardened Pharaoh’s heart—

  We froze. The air had stirred, barely enough to move the fairy petals. He’d smelled it too.

  A dead branch snapped and something scurried through the undergrowth.

  Then three figures came towards us out of the darkness.

  59

  Lucy, Fergus, Trish.

  With a bag of hastily-fashioned stakes. I recognised chair- and table-legs from the villa, rudely sharpened. Plus the machetes.

  Their story flashed and tumbled, three versions like three sacks of miscellaneous objects emptied down a hill, random distinct details, overall confusion, no time to stop and make order.

  Not order, maybe, but sense: Konstantinov and Cloquet had taken the mercenaries and gone in as planned in daylight. They hadn’t been seen since. A combination of pragmatism (Fergus), fear (Lucy) and instinct (Trish) had made the werewolves wait.

  So the odds had got better and worse. Better because now there were five of us. Worse because the vampires almost certainly knew we were coming.

  •

  There were only two options. The first was to barrel-in en masse and hope they didn’t know we were coming. The second was to assume they didn’t know how many were coming, and try to make that work for us.

  WITH YOU.

  NO. WITH THEM. PROFESSIONAL.

  He knew it made sense. My three couldn’t be counted-on on their own. Lucy was on the edge of abandoning us. Trish and Fergus were in, but without leadership would be off-mission – screwing, chasing down vamp familiars – within minutes.

  YOU’LL KNOW WHEN.

  I KNOW.

  For what it was worth we’d stick to the original post-rescue plan: passports, money, first aid and clothes were hidden in the rubble of a derelict farmhouse a mile outside the town of Mesavlia, and two hired vans were parked in the town itself. If we got separated whoever made it to the vehicles would wait till nine a.m. Whoever didn’t show by then was on his or her own. From there it was a short drive to the airport at Chania.

  SORRY FOR EVERYTHING.

  It’s always all wrong, the timing, the suddenness with which the only thing to say is goodbye, your disbelieving body forcing itself to turn, walk away, run.

  60

  The wall around the monastery had three gates. The middle one stood open. There was no one visible, but when I crossed the threshold the stink of vampire dropped me to my hands and knees. I shuddered out bile and saliva. The world offered vivified details, should I want things to waste consciousness on: a moonlit pebble’s shadow; a cigarette butt; the coolness of the ground. You have to get past this. You have to. The heroic imperative. It meant nothing to my body. My legs, when I wobbled up onto them, were empty. My head hosted a murmuring swarm.

  A shift in the light made me look up to my left. A vampire, male, young, tall, blond, wearing a swipe of the ludicrous olfactory-block paste under his nose, stood above the western gate with a gun trained on me. Two more – a middle-aged black male and a female with a scrubbed beaky face and dark, centre-parted hair, appeared – as if they were simply morphing out of nothingness – alongside him, also with the paste moustaches. It was no surprise, when I turned my head to the east gate, to see another two – a Meg Ryanish female and a male with a mohawk and face-piercings – perched opposite their colleagues. All aiming at me, all silent.

  ‘Silver ammunition,’ Beaky Face said. ‘You’re expected. Go on up.’

  Assume they don’t know about the others, assume they don’t know about the others. Assume they – but if they do we’re fucked.

  GO UP RIDGE. FIVE ON COURTYARD WALL. COME DOWN FAST.

  The building’s stone planes were saturated with moonlight. I went, preceded by my rippling shadow, up the half-dozen stairs to the main doors. They were ajar. I pushed them wide open, and the smell that rolled out like the tongue of a dead animal had me on my knees again. I could hear one of the vampires – Meg, I thought – laughing at my back. I got to my feet again, bent, hands on knees, legs fighting their own private delirium. The corridor was high-ceilinged, floored with dark blue marble, lit by soft ivory inset wall lights. As per Mia’s intel, two more corridors opened on my left and right.

  Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. To conquer a foul odour you drink it in, overdose the receptors, make their report redundant. I straightened, shivering. Thirty paces opposite me double steel doors clunked, popped and hissed six inches open. Colder air. On it, the concentrated stink of the Undead, incense, candle wax, human flesh and blood.

  And the scent of my son.

  It cleared my head. I felt tired and glowing and calm, as after a day’s hard playing when I was a child. In spite of everything the little spirit of honest life was glad to see the last ounces of choice draining away. There were so few things I could do now, it would be easier to do them. I filled my lungs, stretched, stood to my full height and walked towards the doors.

  The room beyond was tall, square, white and windowless, with walls covered in sheet glass, and it looked as if all the Disciples (with the exception of my welcome committee outside) were here. A dozen favoured human familiars attended their owners.

  Lorcan, transformed and radiating misery, lay on his back on the altar, wrists and ankles secured with restraints. He turned his head at my scent and looked at me.

  There he was, looking at me.

  Everything stopped. He recognised me, knew me, wanted me. It was terrible, his instant willingness to start afresh, to let nothing else matter, to forgive me completely if only if only if only I would come and claim him now. Until this moment I hadn’t allowed myself to see getting him back as anything other than a problem I’d set myself to solve. I’d never imagined holding him. I’d never imagined settling him down to sleep next to his sister. I’d never imagined the afterwards. Imagining the afterwards would’ve been provocation to the God who wasn’t there to end things in the before. Now, thirty feet away from him, I knew there was something the size of an ocean tilted behind me, waiting to fall. It had been there all along, like death.

  DON’T BE AFRAID. I WON’T LEAVE YOU.

  How odd to know this was true. I wouldn’t leave him. It was a surprising gift to my heart. I smiled, though only another werewolf would’ve seen it.

  ‘Talulla,’ Jacqueline said, smiling herself, while the vampires nearest to me backed away, holding their noses despite their ridiculous stripes of paste. ‘Welcome. If for no other reason than at least now I know exactly where you are.’ She was dressed in tight black suede pants and a black silk blouse. Red hair Hitler-slicked as before. Peppery green eyes and precise, glamorous make-up. Standing next to her was a tall, slim, prettily handsome vampire male. Turned in his early thirties God knew how long ago. Dark hair, shoulder-length, a finely cut, high-cheekboned face – and eyes that stopped you in your tracks: they were pale silvery-green, filled with forgiving omniscience. He could have played Jesus. He was barefoot, dressed in an ivory silk Indian ensemble, long kurta with Nehru collar and baggy pajama pants ruched at the ankle. I thought of what Mia had said: There’s something here, it’s true. Very old. I don’t know. Very old. I could feel it. Sunlight in a Roman courtyard. The smell of slaves and dust. Big stones going up. A thousand miles of forest. Firelight in the mouth of a cave. Ice, everywhere. Not many live past a thousand years. This one had. Remshi.

&nbs
p; There were other vampires in a loose horseshoe around the royal couple, holding candles or censers. A small pulpit stood next to the altar, occupied by a short, plump boochie with thick white hair in a basin-cut and a white beard like a stiff paintbrush. He was wearing what looked to me like white work overalls. A large book was open on a lectern in front of him. Two more... priests, I supposed, since they were the only ones uniformly dressed in the absurd overalls, stood at either end of the altar. Their outfits made me think of the movie of A Clockwork Orange. Six bare steel columns upheld the roof. Konstantinov, covered in blood, sat cuffed, unconscious (not dead, my nose said) to the base of the one to the left of the altar. Cloquet, as far as I could tell uninjured, stood cuffed to the one on the right.

  I was scanning the ranks for Mia. I’d never seen her, but I told myself I’d know her when I did. The logic had to hold: as far as she knew if I didn’t get out of here alive she’d never find her son. Ergo, she’d have to make sure I got out of here alive.

  ‘They’re all dead,’ Cloquet said.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s true,’ Jacqueline said. ‘But you knew that already. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

  They’re all dead. She’d agreed. She didn’t know about the others.

  ‘C’est vrais, n’est pas?’ Jacqueline asked Cloquet. ‘She wants to trade?’

  NOT YET.

  Cloquet looked at me. There was no sign I could give him that I wasn’t alone. He’d be wondering if he was ever going to see another sunrise.

  ‘You want to offer yourself in exchange for your son,’ Jacqueline said to me.

  Lorcan struggled against the cuffs. I felt it in my own wrists and ankles. The effort to keep still was making me dizzy. All my failures formed a close-fitting heat around me. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.