Ben Hope 05 - The Shadow Project (47 page)

?Surprise,? she said. Reached down and drew the Desert Eagle from its holster.

The vampire snarled. ?Federation scum. Your time is over.?

?Not before yours,? she said.

And fired. The explosion was deafening in the room. Even in Alex?s strong grip, the large-calibre pistol recoiled hard.

The vampire screamed. Not because of the bullet that had ripped a fist-sized hole in his chest, but because of the instant devastating effect of the Nosferol on his system -the lethal poison developed by the Fed chemists and issued under strict control to VIA field agents like Alex Bishop.

The vampire collapsed to the cellar floor, writhing in agony, staring at his hands as the blood vessels bulged out of the skin. His face swelled grotesquely, eyes popping out of their sockets. Then blood burst out of his mouth, and his hideously distended veins exploded in a spatter of red that coated the floor and the stone wall behind him. Alex turned away from the spray. The vampire went on twitching for a second, his body peeled apart, turned almost inside out, blood still spurting from everywhere; then he lay still.

Alex holstered the gun and walked over to the young guy in the corner, grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet.

He gaped at her. ?How did you??

She could see that he had wet himself with fear. These amateurs had no idea what they were into.

?It takes a vampire to destroy a vampire properly,? she said as she unzipped the pouch on her belt. Before he could react, she?d taken out the syringe of Vambloc and jabbed it into the vein under his ear. He let out a wheezing gasp and then lost consciousness. By the time he woke up, his short-term memory of what had just happened would be completely erased.

Alex replaced the Vambloc syringe and took out the one that was loaded with Nosferol. Leaving the young guy where he lay, she stepped over to his two dead friends and injected each of them with 10ml of the clear liquid. Standard procedure, to ensure they stayed dead. She carefully capped the needle with a cork and put the syringe back into its pouch.

Two minutes later she was heading back out into the evening with the unconscious body over her shoulder. As she strode out of the house she tossed a miniature incendiary device into the doorway. She was halfway to the trees before the whole place went up in a roar of flame, bathing the murky woods in an orange glow.

Hiding the traces of another day?s work.

?Rest in peace,? she muttered. She took out her phone, keyed in Rumble?s number at the London HQ.

?Harry. You were right. It?s happening.?

Acknowledgements

Once more, the author would like to thank the great team at Avon, Maxine Hitchcock, Keshini Naidoo and Sammia Rafique, for their enthusiasm and dedication.

About the Author

Scott Mariani grew up in St Andrews, Scotland. He studied Modern Languages at Oxford and went on to work as a translator, a professional musician, a pistol shooting instructor and a freelance journalist before becoming a fulltime writer. After spending several years in Italy and France, Scott discovered his secluded writer?s haven in the wilds of west Wales, an 1830s country house complete with rambling woodland and a secret passage. When he isn?t writing, Scott enjoys jazz, movies, classic motorcycles and astronomy. His books have sold worldwide and he is currently working on an exciting new vampire series, to be published by AVON in summer 2010.

To find out more about Scott Mariani go to www.scottmariani.com

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By the same author:

The Alchemist?s Secret
The Mozart Conspiracy
The Doomsday Prophecy
The Heretic?s Treasure

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author?s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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A Paperback Original 2010
FIRST EDITION

Copyright ? Scott Mariani 2010

Scott Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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EPub Edition ? 2010 ISBN: 978-0-00-735802-1

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