The Night Inside

by The Night Inside (epub)

  Ardeth released Sara’s wrist and wiped her mouth.

  “Sara . . .” He managed her name then heard a sound behind him. He spun to face the dark figure outlined against the door.

  “Now you know.”

  “You,” Mickey began, then caught his breath, fumbling for the words and for some way to make his mouth say them. “You’re vampires.”

  “Yes. I told you that, as best I could. As best I dared.” His voice was too damned reasonable so Mickey made himself look at Ardeth, sitting slowly beside Sara. The hot, angry loathing that he had felt for her after Rick’s death returned.

  “You were drinking her blood.” Deny it, he thought desperately. Please just deny it.

  “That is what we do to survive. But she has done her no harm,” replied Rozokov in his quiet, seductively sane voice.

  “She drank her fuckin’ blood!” The gun came up before he knew it, pointed futilely at the centre of Rozokov’s chest. This won’t work, this won’t stop him, Mickey thought dizzily, but he couldn’t move his hands, they were frozen holding the deadly, ridiculous toy like a talisman between them.

  “She’s my sister,” Sara snapped. As if she were angry at him—as if he were being unreasonable. “I said she could.”

  “You said she could?” he found himself echoing in disbelief. “And that makes it just fine that they’re . . .”

  “Monsters?” Rozokov’s voice was dark with sadness, edged in old pain. “Rooke’s word. Perhaps he is right. But ask yourself, have I harmed you in any way? Have I lied to you?”

  “Because you needed me,” Mickey flung back at him, aware that the muscles in his arm had started to tremble, that the gun barrel was wavering between them.

  “And if I were a monster, would I need your help? Would I have asked for it? Mickey, if you shoot me in the chest, you will do me no particular damage. If you mean to destroy me, between my eyes would probably do it.”

  The gun shifted upwards, almost by itself. Distantly, Mickey heard Ardeth’s angry protest and Sara saying his name. He fought the shaking in his hands and let the gun’s aim settle somewhere in the centre of the narrow face. Kill him, kill it, some primal part of his brain whispered. Kill it before it kills you. Then he remembered the silence in the van, watching Ardeth walk away through the darkness, remembered the moments of the quiet humour, the brief, sidelong smiles, the sad shrug as he gave Takara back her life.

  “We do not have much time. Kill me if you are going to.”

  He felt his finger spasm, cramp against the trigger. His adrenaline-soaked nerves, the ancient, terrible fear in the pit of his stomach urged him to kill the thing, to drive out the darkness in the flash of gunpowder. But . . .

  But he had no proof that Rozokov really was a monster. He had no proof of anything at all. Except that if he surrendered to the violent, terrified thing in his mind that demanded the death of anything different, anything whose face did not reflect back the known, familiar lines of prejudice and certainty, then Mickey would have more proof than he had ever wanted that he was no more than a torch-wielding peasant, a pinstripe reactionary bigot hiding under a leather jacket.

  He let the gun drop and closed his eyes.

  “Come,” Rozokov said softly.

  Ardeth stepped onto the narrow beam, moving her eyes from Sara’s teetering figure to watch her own feet settle easily onto the four-inch board of wood. For a moment, she waited for dizziness to unbalance her . . . but felt nothing. She could do this easily now. Her body, this new thing of blood-driven sinew and will could do it, could do anything.

  She started to walk, the close, dark heat of the attic seeming to clear her head, to thaw the chilly core of dislocation that had held her frozen since Rooke’s death. She had followed Rozokov and the others blindly, accepting his decision to try the upper storey when it became apparent they could not reach the other half of the house from the ground floor. When the upper hallway had ended in another reinforced steel door, Mickey had found the trap door to the unfinished attic.

  Her feet paced out the path of the board between the seas of ancient, decaying insulation. It didn’t matter to her that the dirty, fly-specked window kept out most of the moonlight, but she could see Sara easing her way carefully along the plank, nearly blind, arms outstretched with the unconscious grace of a tightrope walker.

  How long had it been since Rooke had arrived at the door of the cell? Ten minutes? Twenty? She wasn’t sure how long she had been in shock—or if she were truly out of it. She could still feel the echoes of the explosions that had stunned her; one when Rooke’s head had breached the vacuum of the computer screen and the first, the stronger, when she held him in her arms and the wild hunger had blazed through her like a star going supernova. It had left a black craving in its wake, pulsing far away in the darkness inside her.

  Ardeth thrust that image aside and forced herself to concentrate on moving forward. There were still things that had to be done . . . and thanks to Sara she had the strength to do them. That was all that mattered. She couldn’t afford to drift into either indifference or madness.

  Ahead of her, Rozokov and Mickey were crouched on a small patch of solid floor, peering downward. Sara joined them in two long strides, Ardeth bent beside them a moment later.

  “Hear anything?” Mickey asked and Rozokov shook his head. He reached down and lifted the board covering the trap door to the attic slightly. Ardeth saw a faint light edge the wood but there was still no sound. He lifted it higher, drawing it slowly up to rest on the floor beside him. He lay still for a moment, head bent, then slithered forward, and his torso disappeared into the trap. After a moment, the grey head resurfaced.

  “All clear.” He sat up, swung his legs into the hold, then vanished. Ardeth heard a faint thump as he reached the floor. Sara went next, dangling with her fingers gripping the edge of the trap until Rozokov caught her legs and brought her down. Ardeth followed Mickey, tugging the board back into position as Rozokov held her up to reach the nine-foot ceiling.

  Feet back on the floor, she glanced up and down the corridor. At one end, dark wood gleamed in the soft light, the banisters that lined the stairs down to the ground floor. Two sets of closed doors faced each other across the hallway, the shadows in their frames unbroken by light. Ancient wallpaper garlanded by faded roses covered the walls but the wine-red carpet beneath her feet was lush and barely worn.

  At the far end of the hallway was one last door. No light seeped through its dark defences but Ardeth knew. She looked at Rozokov and he nodded.

  The carpet swallowed their footsteps and brought them to the door without a whisper. Rozokov’s hand closed over the polished brass knob. Ardeth caught her breath, panic and eagerness closing her throat.

  The door shuddered with a sigh and let them in.

  Chapter 34

  The room was dark, illuminated only by a circle of light from the spidery black lamp on the desk and the fait grey gleam of the monitor screens banked behind it. Ardeth’s eyes flickered around the room, seeking threat and shelter in the same moment.

  Heavy wooden bookcases lined the walls beside her, leatherbound texts mingling with garish paperbacks. The right wall was swathed in heavy velvet curtains, keeping the waning moonlight at bay. In the left wall there was another door, neatly closed.

  Behind the desk, a shadowed figure looked up. Ardeth saw a flash of movement and darted forward instinctively. Her hand closed on a wrist so thin her fingers wrapped it easily, stalling it on its path to the phone. “No,” she said softly and looked down into the white, upturned face.

  It was almost a skull, sharp cheekbones and hook nose slicing through skin as dry as chalk. Her eyes were sunken, the skin around them bruised. Her hair, caught in a thick braid of mahogany, was threaded with grey. But she was younger than the death’s-head face suggested, Ardeth decided, no more than forty. She was wearing a man’s dressing gown, faded from scarlet velvet into patchy rose.


  Then Rozokov was beside them, his hand on the woman’s shoulder as he pulled the chair away from whatever other weapons she might have concealed in the desk. “You are Althea Dale, I assume.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know who I am.”

  “Yes. I thought you might try to come here.”

  “And you let me?” Rozokov’s voice sounded skeptical and amused.

  “The guards are watching the doors downstairs. I thought that would be enough. How did you get in?”

  “Through the attic.” Althea’s eyes closed for a moment.

  “I never should have trusted Rooke with that,” she said after a moment.

  “But it is better that we talk, you and I. Without Rooke, without outsiders.” Her gaze moved across them, dismissing Sara and Mickey where they stood against the closed door, lingering for a moment on Ardeth before returning to Rozokov, apparently satisfied.

  He settled back against the desk and Ardeth moved to lean against the bank of monitors. She spared a glance at them as she did so; two showed the empty hallway corridor outside the laboratory and the other two revealed only static and snow.

  “How did you find out about me?” Rozokov asked at last.

  “Great-great-grandfather’s diaries. They were in the attic with all his other books. He gave me everything but your name.” The answer was prompt, edged with confidence and triumph. She wants to tell us, Ardeth realized. She’s proud of it . . . she wants us to know what she has done.

  And I do know. I know she killed Tony and Conrad and me. I know she would kill anyone who stood between her and whatever she wanted. The rage ripped through her again, jagged daggers turning in her heart, and she jerked away from the proud head balanced so precariously on the long, fragile neck. She had to move away, stay where she could control the murderous urge that swept her, so she walked to stand behind the old love-seat on the other side of the room, and looked at the bookcases.

  Her eyes slid over the assembled library, catching titles in faded gold on brittle leather—Malleus Maleficarum, The Vampire Myth and History, Dracula—and garish paperbacks in red and black. All of them were on vampires and the occult. She pulled one out at random and flicked it open; Latin words crawled across the page.

  “And Havendale?” she heard Rozokov prompt gently, inquisitively, giving her the chance to fill his silence with a celebration of her own cleverness.

  “When daddy died,” she said, her voice bitterly amused, as though she were laughing at some secret joke, “it became mine. I do a better job of running it than he ever did.”

  A set of narrow booklets on the bottom shelf caught Ardeth’s eye and she bent to look more closely. They were exercise books, she realized, the pale buff ones given to every public-school student. Curious, she took the first one out carefully and flipped it open.

  The childish scrawl covered the pages, intense and dark, pressed deep into the page in places, legible to her nightsight even in the dim light. She paused to read occasionally, caught by a word or a date.

  September 5, 1962

  Mother took me to tea in the big store today. It was supposed to be a special treat for my eighth birthday but Daddy was mad when he found out and made me take two extra baths.

  October 15, 1963

  Mother caught me in the attic playing with great-great-grandfather Dale’s trunks. She scolded me (as usual) and told me to get downstairs. I suppose I’ll have to stay out of them for now but I don’t know why they care. It will all belong to me someday anyway. And lots of the books are in a funny language—so all I can do is look at the pictures. I like the one of the man with the horns and the sharp teeth best, though it scares me a bit, when it’s dark.

  April 14, 1964

  I can hardly write, my hands shake so much. But I have to. Mother died today. She got hit by a car when she was shopping. Everyone is crying (me too, you can see the tears on the page if you look). Even Daddy. But then he got angry and yelled about how she shouldn’t have gone out and that’s what happens when you go out there. Then Nurse came and made me come up here. . . .

  April 17, 1964

  They buried Mother today. Daddy’s right. I don’t want to go out there any more.

  “So you made Havendale search for me?”

  “Of course.” Her voice held a trace of contempt.

  “How did you know I was still in the city?”

  “I didn’t. But everything I knew about you dated from 1898, so that’s where I had to start.”

  “And when you found me, you had Rooke kill the men who did it and the researchers who had done the work for you.”

  “I told Rooke to eliminate the loose ends. That was his job. What you are was too important to risk.” There was calm certainty in the cool voice and Ardeth clenched her teeth, forced herself to crouch by the bookcase and endure the casual dismissal of her life, her self as a “loose end.” To distract herself, she snatched out another exercise book, staring resolutely at the pages. The writing was adult now, a smooth, practiced script.

  Dec. 24/83

  Daddy spent tonight in his room. I was very angry at him and yelled at him for missing Christmas Eve. He just laughed and said he wasn’t feeling well. He thinks I don’t see. He thinks I don’t know about the cars that come at midnight and the women in them. He thinks I don’t know what dirty things he does with them, the filthy games he plays. There are times I’d like to kill him.

  May 15/84

  Daddy has finally agreed to stop bringing the women to the house. We’ve fought about it for weeks but then, when he got sick last week, he finally realized that they’re bad for him, that they bring in all kinds of germs and filth and danger.

  Things are going to be good again.

  For the first time, Ardeth felt sympathy for the woman, trapped in the strange household her diary described.

  June 3/84

  Daddy’s in a foul mood. He’s drinking, yelling for Carl to get him some girls. Carl won’t, because I’ve told him I’ll tell Daddy about his advances to me if he does. Must go calm Daddy down. . . .

  There was a brief break in pages and Ardeth flipped through the blank sheets to find the next entry.

  “And what was I?” she heard Rozokov say behind her.

  “Immortality,” Althea said quietly. There was a long silence.

  “Mickey, Sara, go out and keep watching the hallway.” His voice was quietly implacable and Ardeth glanced over to see her sister and Mickey protest. “There are still two guards out there, as well as whatever servants this household has. Go out and keep watch.”

  She heard the door open and shut, then her attention was dragged back to the words in front of her.

  I just read my last words. Calm Daddy down. And I did. He was angry, banging with his cane on the wall as he rampaged about the library. I told Carl and the others to go back to their quarters.

  The writing grew fainter, as if its author was afraid to press too hard and make her story visible, make it real.

  I didn’t have any choice. He might have gone out! He might have ruined everything. He said he would do it since I had taken his women away and given him nothing in return. So I had to do it. It was just as disgusting as I thought it would be but it seemed to calm him down.

  Maybe he will forget all about it. Maybe I will. I pray I do.

  June 5/84

  Daddy called me into the library tonight. He said that I’m a poor substitute for his whores but if I don’t want to go out I’ll have to do.

  I can’t let him go out. He’ll die like Mother did. The whores have already made him sick. As long as he stays inside, I can make sure that everything is under control. I can make sure everything is right. I can make sure he does what he’s supposed to do.

  He said he’d have to teach me what to do, starting tonight.

  I still hurt and there are bruises I’ll have to hide from the servants. But I won’t let h
im go out. I won’t let him get away. I won’t.

  Ardeth closed her eyes, fought the unexpected invasion of tears. This woman killed you, killed your friends, would have killed Sara. She left Rozokov to be tortured by Roias, she let—she ordered—Rooke and Roias to hurt people in the name of profit. What is on these pages doesn’t make any difference to that.

  “Do you want to live forever?” The question was quiet, doubting.

  “Of course. Everyone does. And they’d pay for it. They’d give their souls for it.” Althea Dale’s voice was fierce and defiant.

  “But it is not the world’s soul you want to ransom, though I can see you’d take every coin the world had to offer and it would not be enough. It is your own, is it not? You are dying.”

  Ardeth turned and saw Althea Dale’s burning eyes widen in pain, saw her pull back helplessly, trying to get away as the truth in his words broke through her composure. “I won’t! I won’t die. Your blood can cure me. With your blood, I won’t die.” The words came out in a harsh rush, a snarled mantra of irrational belief.

  With your blood . . . the words echoed in Ardeth’s mind and then she knew what Althea Dale was dying of, what had killed Arthur Dale. His daughter had been more right than she ever knew, when she blamed the prostitutes her father had brought into the house in the middle years of the 1980s. Against the odds, the unknown virus had passed into him. Against the odds, he had given it like a legacy to his daughter/lover.

  With that realization came an understanding of what the laboratory had been set up to do. If there was something in their blood that could cure her disease, she could make the world pay twice—billions for the answer to the AIDS crisis, billions more for the secret of immortality. Though no doubt, she’d reserve the second secret only for the highest bidders. For something like that, killing a few whores and graduate students would seem like a small price to pay. At least to men like Roias and Rooke.