All Rotting Meat

by Maleham , Eve

  ‘I am if you are,’ Banes said, fishing out a cigarette from his pocket.

  ‘Yeah, it’ll have to be after our training, though,’ Nox said, lighting his cigarette. ‘So, are you still with Amoako?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Still poly?’

  ‘As always,’ he said.

  ‘I’d always pictured him as the kind of guy who’d want commitment,’ Nox said, leaning over to light Banes’s cigarette for him.

  ‘We’re comfortable,’ Banes said. ‘I mean, c’mon, I’ve been with the guy for nearly three centuries now.’

  ‘So, whereabouts are you living now, then?’ Nox asked.

  ‘Up near Kings Cross,’ he said, as they approached Parliament Square. ‘Look, I’d better try and find a taxi back home.’

  ‘Why?’ Nox said. ‘The night’s still young. C’mon, man, we need to go for a drink. We need to catch up. You seem tense, do you want to skip the drink and head over to mine?’

  ‘Normally I’d be all for it,’ Banes said, ‘and I have missed you. But, just not tonight.’

  Nox raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s a first for you. Give me your phone number, at least.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. Nox stared at him.

  ‘Are you sure that you’re alright? Do you want to go for a hunt, or something? Or I could help you blow off some steam by tying you up to my bed posts again.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the offer though. It’s just a lot to take in.’

  ‘How did you get interested in Rebirth, anyway?’ Nox asked. ‘It doesn’t seem like your sort of thing.’

  ‘Kojo got me into it,’ he said.

  ‘And what about Feigrey?’

  ‘I thought he died in the Blood Coup,’ Banes said, ‘so I was surprised to hear about all of this.’

  ‘Weren’t you guys friends in Dreyrigr?’

  ‘Our families were acquaintances,’ he said, ‘but Tycho and I ran in different circles.’

  ‘Still didn’t think this would be your sort of thing, Intuneric,’ Nox said with a grin. ‘Glad to have you on board, though.’

  ‘You too,’ Banes said, glancing up at Big Ben. ‘They said that they picked us out because we had desired skills, and I know that mine is assists requirements but what’s yours?’

  ‘I’m an anti-hunter,’ Nox said with a grin.

  ‘And are there many left? I thought you killed whatever remained of the Old Hunters.’

  Nox shrugged, ‘it doesn’t matter how many are left, I’ll wipe out the scum soon enough so don’t worry,’ he said, his hand brushing against Banes’s scarred shoulder.

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ he said. ‘Look, I’d better be heading off though. I’ll see you at training.’

  Nox’s hand crept up to the nape of his neck and pulled Banes closer to him, one hand running through his hair as they kissed. They stopped when Nox released him, a daring look in his black eyes.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Intuneric,’ he said softly.

  Banes nodded a goodbye as Nox’s hand crept out of his hair.

  ‘Missed you, too.’

  He set off at a fast pace, heading past the underground station and up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square, where he broke into a run. He ran up through side streets and across roads with no regard to where he was heading, until he was confident that he was far away from the chance of meeting with any more of the recruits.

  The grime of London’s air filled his lungs; it felt like he had been holding his breath in without realising it. A prickly discomfort washed across his skin. Buses rumbled past him, while in Soho, young men stood outside clubs and bars smoking. There was laughter, and women trying to sell flowers. People spilled out into the road, taxis tried to push their way past.

  He could smell so much of the city; car exhaust, old bins, dust, brick, tarmac, then the smaller individual smells under that; alcohol, rubbish, the oil from restaurants, sewer drains, faintly lingering odours from perfumes, leather shoes, fried food, outdoor heaters, rubber, tobacco, cannabis, sweat, piss, vomit.

  He ran faster until he came to an alley, and collapsed against the wall, pressing his head against his arm and breathing heavily. He thought about calling Kojo or the hunter, but pushed the thought aside.

  A dozen vampires in one class, forty-four classes. Those dedicated eyes. Everything about Cecilia Marr was telling him to run. He could feel all of them brushing up against him, burying him. There was an irate anger bubbling up inside him. He steadied himself on the wall, breathing deeply. Even if he ran away right now, they would find him. The hunter would release her blackmail, and they would come after him.

  He took a deep breath and ran onwards. Up near Russell Square, where the air was cold against his skin, he found a couple of rough sleepers curled up below an archway. It was easy to clamp down on one of their mouths, the mouth of a man sleeping on the edge of the cluster. Banes dragged him away from the group to behind a skip. The man began to struggle, caught up inside his sleeping bag, still groggy with sleep. Banes bit down on his neck; the warm, metallic tang seeped through his mouth, drenching his body. He bit down harder, hot, coppery blood spilling onto his tongue. He closed his eyes, a feeling of pure connection and bliss radiating up through him. Every atom in his body trembled. The feeling never lessened. He drank more. The flesh of the man was calling to him. There was more, there was always more. He wanted to bite down into the sweet, rich, flesh.

  Banes let go. The man’s face was an ashy pale, his eyes unfocused, his lips tinted with blue.

  ‘Shit,’ he muttered, as the man whimpered and sank down into his arms. He wiped away the blood from the man as best he could with the back of his sleeve, and set him down gently back into his sleeping bag next to his group. He set off and found a twenty-four-hour corner shop, where he bought the man a bottle of cola, a packet of biscuits, and a sandwich, along with a small bottle of vodka. He splashed a bit of the vodka over the wound he had made; the man winced and moaned weakly.

  Once he thought that his bite mark was as sterilised as it was going to get, Banes unscrewed the cap from the cola and brought it to the man’s lips. He propped his head up and forced him to drink. A little colour had returned to his skin by the time half of the bottle was gone. He tucked the food into the man’s sleeping bag, along with the bottle of cola and five ten-pound notes, pocketing the vodka for himself.

  He sighed as he walked away and dug his phone out of his pocket to call Kojo.

  ‘Hey,’ he said as Kojo picked up. ‘Are you busy?’

  ‘Nope,’ Kojo said, ‘why?’

  ‘I just want to talk,’ Banes said.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Just stuff, I guess,’ he said, running a hand through his hair.

  ‘How’d your meeting with your class go?’ Kojo asked. Banes gave a wearily laugh.

  ‘It was a little overwhelming. I’ve not seen that many vampires in a long time.’

  ‘I guess it would take some adjustment,’ Kojo said. ‘And you’ve got a long history behind you.’

  ‘I just kept thinking that I couldn’t trust any of them,’ he said. ‘I knew a few people there, but it seemed like they knew me. I’ve never met Cecilia Marr before but she looked at me like she knew every last dirty secret.’

  ‘You might just be paranoid, Banes,’ Kojo said. ‘Especially since you’re going straight into this after you were nearly killed in America; it’s no wonder you’re seeing enemies everywhere.’

  ‘And Cecilia?’ he said. ‘There was something just so off about her.’

  ‘I trust her,’ Kojo said. ‘She’s passionate and focused.’

  ‘At least you trust her,’ Banes said, ‘and I can trust you.’

  ‘I think you’re automatically seeing her as the enemy because she’s a vampire in a position of power,’ Kojo said. ‘This won’t be Dreyrigr, Banes.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, biting his lip. ‘This is just a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.’

  ‘Look…’ He co
uld hear Kojo hesitant on the other end of the line. ‘Banes, I wasn’t going to tell you this, and I’m not meant to, but just to clear your mind - there’s a hidden intention in your fast-track training program.’

  ‘A what?’ Banes asked, his heart skipping.

  ‘Well, your class was selected since the leadership think that you have a particular skill, or talent, or experience to offer Rebirth. You’re meant to be independent thinkers, but there’s a risk with that. So, they place a spy in every class to keep an eye out.’

  ‘An eye out for what?’

  ‘It’s a broad range of things,’ Kojo said. ‘Stuff from low-level insubordination and recklessness, to rooting out for spies and traitors. A lot of the independent classes have relatively old vampires in them - a lot of born vampires, for example. That’s centuries of data surrounding just one individual, centuries of alliances to sort through. The margin of error for our security clearances is higher than ideal.’

  ‘And how is that meant to clear my mind?!’

  ‘So you know what’s going on,’ Kojo said. ‘So, if you’re feeling paranoid, just remember it’s just some guy from Rebirth doing their job.’

  ‘Do you know who they are in my class?’

  ‘Not a clue, sorry,’ Kojo said. ‘Just don’t say anything stupid about Tycho, okay?’

  ‘C’mon, Kojo, do you really think that I’m going to go around saying that I’ve fucked Tycho Feigrey to his vampire army?’

  Kojo laughed, ‘no, but you do like to embarrass him.’

  Banes sighed and stared out at the streets, watching the flashes of white and red car lights.

  ‘Do you want to come over to mine?’ Kojo asked.

  A smile curled around Banes’s lips. ‘Sure. Love you.’

  ‘Love you too,’ Kojo said.

  ‘Hey, Kojo?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Remember that cottage in the countryside we lived in for a few years? Sweetstone?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I was just thinking about how nice it was to shut out the outside world for a while, how it was just us and that cottage.’

  ‘Then I went off to India and you went off to San Francisco,’ Kojo said.

  ‘Do you think we could go back to that sometime?’ Banes asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Kojo said, ‘there’s no reason why we can’t.’

  ‘And do you think it’ll be the same?’

  Kojo sighed.

  ‘Just come over, Banes.’

  Chapter Eight

  So Much Human Meat On The Table

  A coach picked them up from the house in Belgravia.

  ‘Where do you think we’re going?’ Drey asked, as they climbed onto the coach. Banes shrugged.

  ‘No idea,’ he said, as they shuffled past the already filled seats. He noticed that the Rebirth member who had stood in the room while Cecilia gave her speech was driving the coach. He smiled at Nox but moved past him to very back, next to young red-eyed man, who was wearing headphones and was curled up against the window. He looked up briefly at Banes, who sat down on the opposite row of seats to him. Banes saw that he had heavy, dark shadows under his eyes. Most of the vampires were sitting separately, and most had a fresh glow to them, which indicated that, like him, they had gone on a hunt the night before.

  There was silence on the bus as they drove out of London and the buildings fell away to fields. He glanced around the coach; most appeared to be asleep, or at least staring at nothing. Over an hour outside of London, they turned off onto a winding country road and down to a stretch of tarmac and an airplane hangar. They left all of their personal items behind as instructed and left to board the plane.

  The plane that stood on the runway was old with propeller engines. Banes could still see the outline of the name of the airline company Rebirth had presumably brought the aircraft from on the side. They boarded swiftly. From the stairs leading up the plane’s door, Banes could see that they were in the middle of nowhere; the airstrip was surrounded by fields of rape seeds, and in the very distance he could see a small cluster of rooftops and a church spire.

  He felt a jolt of excitement as the plane took off, and a bitterness rose in his throat. He ran his hand over the bite mark on his neck, which Kojo had given him as a going away present. He found it difficult to sleep on planes at the best of times, with the constant, dull vibration, noise and cramped seats. After a while, when the plane had levelled out in its climb, he pushed the armrest up and awkwardly positioned himself so that his back was resting against the wall of the plane, his legs dangling off over the aisle. He drew his arm over his face to block out the light and sighed into a shallow sleep.

  He woke up to someone tapping on his foot; he blinked and sat up, grimacing at his stiff joints.

  ‘We’re landing,’ the red-eyed man said.

  Banes blinked and rubbed his eyes. He struggled to place for how long he had been asleep. He straightened himself up and fastened his seatbelt as the plane declined, hitting the runway with a bump. He pulled the shutter up on the window and peered out. His insides froze as he stared out to rugged, rolling mountains under a navy star-lit sky.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked, forcing his tone to be casual.

  The man shrugged as he got up to exit the plane.

  If they were in Dreyrigr, he was going to run. But Dreyrigr was in ruins.

  He stepped out of the plane, and cool, fresh air hit his lungs. The base was in a valley, made up of a few square blocks of old institutional buildings, the largest of which were twins, with rows of dark patches of windows and low roofs.

  They were walked towards a long and low-ceilinged building. A Jeep sat outside, and intense relief washed over Banes as he saw it was a right-hand drive with a British licence plate. They were in Scotland.

  Inside, they were shown to a room to have their photograph taken and an ID card given to them, and then to a changing room to be given a new set of clothes; basic but practical black trainers, and a tracksuit with the crimson phoenix of Rebirth on the chest. For two weeks, he would wear Rebirth’s clothes, and sleep in a shared dormitory of bunk-beds during the day, and train during the night. There was a small lounge area for them to use during whatever down time they had, a utilitarian bathroom, a few classrooms, and a gym for them to use.

  After they changed, they were shown through to a dining hall made up of one long table.

  The building they were in was theirs, and they would be kept isolated from the rest of the recruits.

  ‘At least the food’s good,’ Nox said, who unavoidably took a seat besides Banes. He turned his attention to the blood soup served with a hunk of rye bread, a roasted human thigh with the skin now golden crisp crackling hiding the soft, juicy flesh underneath served with black pudding, potatoes, peas and carrots roasted in the fat with a thick gravy, and a large mug of human blood, which had been warmed up for them. The conversation around him became laxer, and slipped into reminiscing about war stories and stints in certain militaries. He let himself become passive to the conversation, only reacting and not contributing.

  Banes looked around the table; a few also sat back from the conversation. There was so much human meat on the table; even with the Benkowski’s butchers shop handing over most of their produce to Rebirth, there had to be more coming in from somewhere. He chewed on the meat, savouring it. The juices seeped through his mouth from the slightest bite. If Rebirth was feeding over half of Britain’s vampires, then somewhere in the world, humans were disappearing in mass.

  Banes felt a sudden stab of homesickness wash over him, though couldn’t place where his home was. He wasn’t overly fond of his flat in London. He had never really felt comfortable with the area of settling. He was over seven-hundred years old, yet had never lived in one place for more than a decade at a time. Humans had such short lives and they lived so fast. The beats of their existence and the constant, sudden, rapid change intoxicated him. A wonderful, terrifying, dizzying, kaleidoscopic existence. Whereas vampires const
antly stagnated, desperate to insert their place in the world and everything moved slowly. For them, death was a chance, not a certainly. He was homesick for humanity.

  * * *

  The training, though basic, was intense. The night started with an hour of cross-country running. The extent of land Rebirth owned became clear as they ran over miles of land. As the valley lead onto mountains, which gave way to moorland, they splashed through rivers and streams, and past patches of sparse woodland.

  After that, they were lead to a gun range. Banes had thought that he was above average when it came to aim, accuracy, and the speed of reloading, but quickly realised that he had always been comparing himself to humans. Against vampires, who had quicker reaction times and more practice, he sank down to the lower half of the class. They moved on from handguns, to rifles, to machine guns, and practised shooting at each other as live, moving targets.

  There were written exams, theory classes and history lessons. He was one of the most advanced in a class that went over lock-picking, and was a firm average in hand-to-hand combat. There was a crash course in computer coding and encrypting. Every day, they returned to the dormitory, their bodies aching and their minds swimming with facts, methods and techniques, only to be suddenly woken up in the afternoon for endurance exercises in the sun, from which they would return with angry, scratching skin, and dry eyes.

  He saw glimpses of the other recruits who were there; odd pockets of a dozen or so recruits, though the base always had a semi-vacant feel to it. Any sounds were faint and distant, aside from every other day, when a plane would land on the strip of runway. Sometimes, Banes would see it being unloaded with cargo, or a class of recruits board it and fly back to London, but mostly the planes came during the day while they slept.

  He longed for something to drink, or something to smoke, or someone to fuck. From what he could tell, most of the others were enjoying the training and the chance to prove themselves. Some seemed to be born with a gun in their hand and instinctual knowledge of how to get around a firewall.