All Rotting Meat

by Maleham , Eve

  ‘Of course, it does,’ he said. ‘But not enough for me to act.’

  She huffed and turned away from him, an angry heat radiating of her. A third person was now being dragged out of their tent.

  ‘Why do you care so much?’ Banes asked. ‘You’ve killed for this, and you’re clearly prepared to die yourself. Why?’

  ‘To stop a force from murdering the vulnerable in order to feast off their bodies?’ she said. ‘I thought that was pretty obvious.’

  ‘So you get to be the hero?’

  ‘Because it’s the right thing to do,’ she said. ‘Because someone has to act and there’s no way I can just sit back and witness this knowing what I know. And I know that you think I’m an idiot for that, but I don’t care.’

  Banes smirked as he let go of her arm, ‘you can be an idiot all you want, just don’t drag me down with you.’

  She rolled her eyes and got to her feet, leaving her coffee cup behind her. She gave it a pointed look. ‘I’ll see you around them.’

  Banes watched her walk away, down into the Underground Station, and then sat and waited for five minutes, before picking up the cup. Inside, there were two memory cards, and a folded piece of paper. He pulled out the paper and opened it.

  ‘Insert one memory card into May’s computer and the other in Faizan’s. Wait until the program is finished (this should take ten minutes) then return with the cards.’

  Through gritted teeth, he dug around in his pocket, pulled out a lighter, and held the flame to the edge of the note, watching it catch alight.

  ‘Goddamn bitch.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Method Of Termination

  The memory card seemed to burn hot whenever he touched it, and seemed to loom large in his apartment, even when he had taped it to the underside of the bottom draw in his bedroom.

  He had put off acting on smuggling them in for over a week, instead focusing on keeping his head down at work, while also observing how he could bring them into Rebirth. He began to adjust how long he stayed behind at the end of the night, pushing through files after people began to trail out, leaning back in his seat every time Rosemary punched in the security code for her office door.

  He bought a pair of heavy, black boots, and carefully hollowed out the bottom of the thick heels, leaving just enough room in each to place one card. He gradually adjusted his appearance over the days to match; a smudge of dark eyeshadow, tighter jeans, pin badges, his old jacket from the late Seventies.

  He needed Malik’s door pass, too. He waited around for Malik at lunch and whenever he had to walk a file down to intelligence, only for Malik to cut him off every time Banes tried to approach him.

  ‘Just leave him alone, Banes,’ Kojo muttered, as Banes waved over to Malik across the canteen. ‘He’ll hurt you, otherwise.’

  ‘I just want to apologise,’ Banes said.

  ‘For turning him into a vampire?’ Kojo said. ‘Don’t bother. He works here; he’s obviously on board with vampirism. And you also bit me, and I turned out fine.’

  ‘Yeah, but unlike you, he didn’t ask for this,’ Banes said, ‘and I only stayed with him for the process. I left before he had fully recovered. Malik had to figure most of it out for himself.’

  ‘God,’ Kojo said, ‘you don’t half pick what you feel guilty about, Banes.’

  It took an over a week of loitering to figure out most of the numbers Malik used for his door, though he still didn’t feel nearly confident enough by the time the evening of his smuggling was to happen.

  He had taken to arriving earlier than needed, so that he would arrive with Rosemary, having found the place where she bought her evening coffee, and had taken to running into her there. The security guards were a laxer around her than most of the others who passed through, and if he was with her, then they were slightly more relaxed around him, too.

  ‘Nice shoes,’ Rosemary said, sliding up behind him in the coffee shop, as Banes stood at the end of the queue for his now nightly cup of coffee.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, as she placed her order. His mouth was dry. ‘They’re from Camden.’

  She grinned. ‘They look it; I love them. Did you ever go down King’s Road back in the day?’

  ‘Which day?’ Banes asked with a smile, as he collected his coffee. He wasn’t planning on drinking it; he could already feel his pulse racing.

  ‘The punk days,’ she said, ‘though, King’s Road now makes me want to vomit. It’s so unbearably mainstream.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Banes said, ‘though I spent most of the Seventies in New York City.’

  ‘Oh, I used to live there with my dad, for a bit,’ she said. ‘He had this massive penthouse in Manhattan.’

  ‘Did you like it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, it was great,’ she said, taking her coffee. ‘I used to put on this daddy’s girl act and wear all of these long pastel coloured clothes and perm my hair up. It made my mum look like a crazy bitch when she went on about how uncontrollable I was.’

  ‘Is that how you ended up inheriting his company?’ Banes asked, as they veered away from the hectic, rush-hour main streets, and into St James.

  ‘Yeah. That, and I killed his new wife and son,’ she said. Banes felt his grip tightening on his coffee cup, the plastic burning his skin as they walked down through to the security bay.

  ‘Evenin’,’ one of the guards said, barely glancing up at them from his newspaper as they entered, handing their belongings over to the lockers. ‘A busy night, tonight, Ms May?’ Rosemary sighed as she passed her rucksack over.

  ‘As usual.’

  The guard nodded as his co-worker turned to hand them both their passes.

  ‘It’ll get wild down ‘ere in a bit.’

  Rosemary collected her pass and stepped through the metal detector. The light flashed to red. The guard sighed and folded his newspaper.

  ‘Bloody useless things,’ he said. ‘Go on through, Ms May.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she grinned, as Banes stepped forward. Again, the light flashed to red. With a resigned sigh, the guard picked up the hand handle detector and walked over to where Banes was stood.

  ‘How many bloody times,’ he mumbled, as he loosely waved it across Banes. Predictably, it buzzed when the guard waved it towards his feet. He raised an eyebrow as he glanced at Banes boots. Banes felt his blood run cold, but he kept his face looking perfectly casual. ‘Nice boots,’ he said, with an air of sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘Thanks,’ Banes said, taking a sip of his coffee as he walked over to the door with Rosemary, and down into Rebirth.

  ‘They must have the most boring job here,’ Rosemary said as they walked towards their block, with a glance up at Banes. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said with a slight smirk, ‘I know your work is boring too. It’ll get better soon though. You’re a good worker.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘just hold on. It’ll be interesting soon.’

  ‘How so?’ he asked. Rosemary winked at him.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Banes took a sip of his coffee and sunk down at his desk. He turned his eyes over to the papers that lay out before him, and got out a packet of jerky, which he chewed on nervously as he worked his pen across the paper. He stopped for lunch, which he ate quickly, before heading back early.

  ‘You’re still working?’ Kojo said, as he entered the office to find Banes still hunched over his desk.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, not taking his eyes of the paper in front of him. ‘Rosemary said I’ll be able to move onto the interesting stuff soon.’

  ‘Impressive,’ Kojo said, raising an eyebrow and perching on the desk next to his. ‘Do you think you’ll be finished soon?’

  Banes shrugged. ‘Probably not,’ he said, with a grin up to Kojo, ‘why?’

  ‘Thought you’d want to go for a drink, or something,’ he said. ‘You have two days off, don’t you? You can catch up them.’

  ‘Sounds lovely,’ Banes said, ‘but I should really finis
h with this.’

  Kojo placed his hand on Banes’s forehead. ‘Are you feeling okay?’

  Banes laughed. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘What’s your game here, then, Intuneric?’ Kojo grinned.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘I just…kind of, get it now, you know?’

  ‘Get what?’ Kojo asked.

  ‘Rebirth,’ Banes said. ‘When you told me about it I was really sceptical, but being here, I can understand it. I get it.’

  Kojo smiled and kissed him. ‘I’m glad,’ he said. ‘I knew that you would like it if you gave it a try.’

  ‘Well, you were right,’ Banes said.

  ‘That’s great,’ Kojo said. ‘Okay, I’ll leave you to it, in that case.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Banes said. ‘Love you.’

  ‘Love you too.’

  It was getting into the morning, and around the base, Banes could hear silence settling in. He stayed sat at the desk for another hour before rising and walking down to the canteen to get a packet of jerky from one of the vending machines, his footsteps echoing slightly as he walked. He only saw one other person as he walked from the other end of the hallway.

  Back at his desk, he sighed, carefully chewing on strips of jerky, staring at the folder in front of him as minutes passed. He rubbed his hands on the back of his jeans as he got to his feet, and put on leather gloves. There was the crackling excitement of an empty room with the lack of any present authority.

  It took him three tries to correctly enter the pin for the door, his hands growing sweaty in the gloves. The silence around him was thunderous. Then, there was a beep; the door unlocked, and he slipped inside.

  The space behind Rosemary’s desk was a mess; there were official reports mixed in with battered fantasy books, and loose bits of paper plastered everywhere. The dim lights were off. Gingerly, he inserted the memory card into the computer. A few seconds after he had inserted the card into the port, the screen flashed on, blindingly bright.

  He sat down on the floor behind the desk, with Cecilia’s face swimming around in his head.

  Silent, agonising minutes stretched out ahead of him, as he looked blankly at the wall in front of him. A distant footstep sounded like the door opening. He should have armed himself with something, and he should have stayed in America. Or, at the very least, not come to Britain.

  The screen went dark. He blinked and stood up. There was no-one around.

  He yanked the memory card out of the computer and shoved it back into his pocket. Should he run? Banes knew that the hunter would release the photos, and that Cecilia would have him hunted down to the end of the world – but that could only be matter of time now, anyway.

  Suppressing himself, he hurried out of Rosemary’s office and picked up a collection of files to give to intelligence. The base was almost entirely empty, and his footsteps echoed slightly as he walked. The dry, chalky air of the corridors coated his mouth. He reached Level Four, the leather of his boots creaking as he walked.

  ‘…removed because he was failing me.’

  Banes froze in place, his breath caught in his throat.

  ‘It’s a difficult situation,’ Cecilia said. Her voice was muffled and distant, but growing louder. ‘These things require patience and subtlety.’

  ‘Which he is very clearly lacking,’ Tycho spat from the other end of the corridor. Banes’s stomach dropped, as he rushed forwards to the door of Malik’s office. Their footsteps were loud, and fast moving. ‘We do not want to make an enemy out of Yin Luan; we cannot afford to. If I had known that Clarence was antagonising them, I would never have assigned him to be our chief diplomat.’

  He hammered in the code. It was wrong. He had no excuse to be outside Malik’s office right now. His nerves went ice cold as a shot of adrenaline went to his brain, willing him to think. He tried it again, still locked. He knew none of the special day’s in Malik’s life, any numbers relevant to him. He suspected that it was the last two numbers of the code which were wrong, they were always the hardest to see as Malik’s body blocked them off as he leant on the door to open it.

  ‘I believe what Luan finds the most offensive is that you refuse to meet him in person on his own terms, and instead just send an envoy.’ Banes could hear a growl of indignation in Cecilia’s voice. He couldn’t turn and run without being seen by them. The code was Malik’s birthday date backwards. Banes punched in a nine then a one and the door clicked open. He hastily stepped inside, leaving the door a fraction open so they wouldn’t hear it shut.

  ‘He invited you into his house, and you refused, Tycho, and now he sees you as a weak leader, and that man does not forget.’

  ‘I don’t work for him,’ Tycho snapped. Banes could hear the rustle of their clothes.

  ‘But we can’t work without him,’ Cecilia said, passing inches away from the door. ‘It’s a matter of weeks, if not days, before the Shield discover the true extent of Rebirth, and we need the Blood Thieves as our leverage.’

  ‘Once you have poison is administered…’ Tycho said.

  ‘I don’t care about your pride, Tycho,’ she said, firmly. ‘Go to Hong Kong, bow to Luan, and accept his support at whatever cost.’

  ‘Neither Yin, nor Loi-Sanglant, will dictate terms to me,’ Tycho said. Banes strained to hear him. ‘Yin is a very dangerous man, Cecilia, and I will not have him more involved.’

  ‘The Shield would rather destroy us than…’

  Cecilia’s voice trailed away. Banes sighed and sank down against the door, waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal. After several minutes, he got to his feet, took the other memory card out of his pocket, and inserted it into the desktop computer. He turned his attention to the personnel filing cabinet to find it locked. He hurriedly searched through the clutter of Malik’s desk, but could find nothing but messy notes of code and desk toys, before he unravelled two paper clips. The locks were simple to pick, and he was able to slide the top file open in moments.

  The first file that came into his eyeline was a register of everyone who worked there; row upon row of names in front of the start of each vampire’s individual file. Hundreds of names, numbers and addresses. He flicked to the ‘I’s and found his own file, and opened it. It was all typewritten, with a photograph of himself clipped onto it.

  Name: Banes Intuneric

  Year of Birth: 1279

  Place of Birth: Dreyrigr, Norway

  Member Number: 115679

  Status: Vampire born

  Family: Father; Dae Intuneric (deceased), mother; Striga Intuneric (deceased), older brothers; Dae II and Verr Intuneric (deceased), younger brother; Thane Intuneric (unknown).

  Assignment: Assets Requirement

  Security Status: Caution – individual holds inappropriate pro-human affinities, placed under low-level surveillance until proven loyalty.

  His heart sank as he read; his realisations that he was being spied on were confirmed. Absently wondering when Verr had died, he scanned through the rest, which went on to document his history as it was known to Rebirth, until, right at the end, there had been a newly added addition.

  Individual was reluctant to declare that he had an intimate relationship with Commander Tycho Feigrey.

  His palms began to sweat under his gloves. A fluttering sensation filled his stomach as he swiftly flicked to the ‘A’s and found Kojo’s profile.

  Name: Kojo Amoako

  Year of Birth: Approx. 1735

  Place of Birth: Easterhome Plantation, Jamaica

  Member Number: 111742

  Status: Reborn (via Banes Intuneric)

  Family: Human (deceased)

  Assignment: Recruitment

  Security Status: Clear

  He glanced through Kojo’s file; he had been remarkably honest to Rebirth. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it. Biting his lip, he rummaged through in search of Tycho’s folder, though found nothing, expect a blank spot where it should have been – the same for Cecilia’s file. Instead, he pulled out Clarence�
��s.

  Name: Clarence Arthur Marr

  Year of Birth: 1889

  Place of Birth: Newgate Prison, England

  Member Number: 11118

  Status: Vampire Born

  Family: Birth parents; Deafol and Aglaecwif Dreor (deceased, died during the Blood Coup), adoptive parents; humans (deceased), twin sister; Cecilia Alexandra Marr, adoptive brother; Cain John Marr (unknown). Wife; human (deceased). Daughter; Bridget Patience Marr (dhampir, deceased).

  Assignment: Diplomat

  Security Status: Clear

  Banes rolled his eyes; there was nothing interesting here. He carefully shut the filling cabinet, hearing the soft click of it automatically locking again. The computer screen was still on; whatever the memory card was doing, it showed no signs of having finished. He walked over to another row of cabinets, and picked those open. For a moment, it appeared to be another personal file, until he realised that the names weren’t of vampires, and that the photos next to them were of humans. His brow furrowed, and as he read, he recognised some of the names from the assets requirement reports he had read and made, though these files chronicled their security measures, rather than their worth. He took photos of them as he read; he could vaguely recall hearing some of the names, though couldn’t place most of them.

  After he had leafed through enough of those files, he started on the cabinet next to that one. He reached it, picked one out from the middle, and opened it.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

  The hunter’s face stared at him from a photo. There was a proud smile on her face, and she was wearing a bottle green paramedic uniform. There were other photos of her; smiling on a beach, her graduation photo.

  Name: Khalida Joyah Natakarn

  Species: Human

  Crime: Hunter

  Security threat: Medium, individual is aware of vampire existence and has killed several vampires in the past though recent reports indicate that she has since stopped hunting for unknown reasons. Intelligence indicates that she is currently unaware of Rebirth.

  Known associates: Poppy Victoria Stone, Mitchell Llewellyn Stone, Leah Mary Redman (dhampir).

  Date of Termination: N/A