Blood & Dust (26 page)

He followed Cassie. When they were out of earshot, he said, 'Taipan and the boss got a difference
of opinion, eh.'

'I guess.'

'So why is it that the vampires drink her blood only, while you red-eyes get a brew? I'd've
thought the vamps would get your juice to suck on.'

'They do. Ours, cattle, whatever. But vampires, usually, won't drink each other's, not even as
brew. Too many lives in there. Too much confusion.'

'Like me seeing all of Taipan's shit in his blood.'

'If you say so.'

'So by drinking Danica's, they get only her shit.'

'Not even. Mother's got the knack. She can keep the noise down; she can still the cacophony in
others.'

'The cock-what?'

'The ghosts. Bedlam. When you've swallowed too many, when you carry too many, all those
lifestreams can send you loopy. You get crazy, and then you fall into a kind of coma. Kind of like
Alzheimer's, except, instead of remembering nothing, you remember everything. Everything from
everyone you've ever drained. Anyway, Mother can make it go away. There's something in her blood.'

'Who makes it go away for her?'

'No one. Taipan says she's losing touch, that she needs fresh blood, fresh lives. The funny thing
is, of all of them, she's the one who doesn't need to worry. She's kind of immune to bedlam. She can
control the ghosts really well. By drinking from her, the rest of them get a little bit of it, too.
Enough to keep them sane. It's not a licence to slaughter, but. She's got her limits.'

'Well, that's comforting.'

They reached his cabin and she said, 'Home again. You'd better stay put this time. Tai has got
them thinking you're some kind of spy. No one will go against Danica, but still, accidents happen.
Just keep your head down. No creeping around. She's gonna help you, you'll see.'

'Is all this bullshit why you don't want to be like us?'

'Seriously, as much as I love Acacia and want to be with her, I'm more use as a red-eye than a
full blood. Maybe later, when I've got no choice.'

'Is that why Kala never said yes?'

'You'd have to ask her.'

'I wish I could.'

'Look, I'd better get back. But I'll drop in on you before morning, okay?'

Inside the cabin, the silence felt oppressive. He liked Cassie. He envied her relationship with
Acacia. He acknowledged, and it made him feel like a piece of shit but the fact was undeniable, that
after all that blood, all that fear, her simple companionship meant he really wanted to taste her.
Danica's blood had stilled the voices but stoked his hunger. He prowled, restless; decisions were
being made without him - he'd failed, yet again, to take control of his own life. He paused
occasionally to look toward the powwow, unable to see anyone, thinking that this was how a circus
animal must feel, waiting for its chance to perform, aggravated by some sense that this was not
where it belonged.

It was close to sunrise when there was a knock at the door. He slammed the louvre shut and pulled
the heavy curtains, feeling as though he'd been caught looking at something he shouldn't.

Cassie was outside. No lynch mob. That was something.

'They done? What's the plan?' he asked.
Do I live? Do I get to leave?

'Jury's out, but we're definitely moving on. Here, more food.' Cassie hoisted a carafe topped
with pink foam in one hand while retrieving a velvet bag from a pocket with the other. 'And Mother
wants you to have this.'

Kevin thanked her and she said good night. He drained the carafe, then emptied the contents of
the little bag on to the bedspread. The talisman was a round metal disc, much the same as the one
Taipan wore. It was etched with a five-pointed star. Embedded in the centre was an egg-shaped
locket, about the size of a five-cent piece, soldered shut. The metal felt warm. He wasn't used to
wearing jewellery and wasn't comfortable about trying to sleep with it on, but there was something
about Danica's calm assurance. Probably her eyes, he thought. You don't mess with people with weird
eyes. With the pendant looped around his neck on its leather cord, he slid under the sheets,
suddenly aware of just how tired he was. Eventually, he slept. He didn't feel the pendant, and he
did not dream.

The chopper carved through the night like a shark through sea water. Riding with
Mira and a squad of jackals in the light-proofed cabin, Reece could barely merit they were moving.
But moving they were, back to Barlow's Siding, back to where this particular wheel had begun to
turn. He fingered the Monaro's keys in his pocket; tried not to think of Dave and all the bloody
mess since.

Mira jerked back to awareness in the seat next to him, the purplish glimmer in her eyes fading
fast; there was a flash of typical vampire chartreuse before she looked at him directly, revealing
the deep brown irises a Labrador would be jealous of. Her fingers reflexively traced the fourth
blood bracelet on her left wrist.

'No dice?' he asked.

'What?'

'You were trying to trace Matheson, weren't you?'

'Yes. Yes, of course. But no, nothing.'

'And the girl, Kala?'

She shook her head. 'Not unexpected. She's awake, distrustful. All I got, apart from a bucket of
angst, was a vague impression of a tall man with a saddle, a cowboy perhaps-'

'A jackeroo maybe?'

'And standing stones.'

'Standing stones?'

'You don't have an Australian word for that?'

'We're not big on them here. The Devil's Marbles? But that's miles away, over in the NT.'

'She might have some Celt in her, how would I know? You'd expect cave paintings from someone like
her, wouldn't you? Maybe a dance around a campfire.'

Reece pulled his mobile and hit the map.

'Here,' he said, blowing up a portion of Queensland with swipes of his fingertips. 'Is this what
she might've meant?'

'Stonehenge? Really? What next, an Eiffel Tower?'

'No stone monuments but, you know, if the name fits. Shall we check it out?'

'Ask the pilot where we are.'

Reece hit the mic to talk to the flight deck. They were twenty minutes from Whitby Downs,
slightly farther from Stonehenge, but, the pilot said, there was a no-fly zone in the area due to
the Jindalee radar installation.

'I don't think it's worth the hassle,' Reece told Mira. 'There's a lot of country out there and
we'd be relying on you being able to get a hit from Kala. For all we know, they've taken her out by
now.'

'No, I'd know if she was dead. It is only natural the Night Riders will be suspicious of her.
They will expect me to have tried a bloodlink and they will be satisfied when they find it. All I
need is for her to survive long enough to deliver the message.'

'And if she doesn't?'

'Then, Reece, we are well and truly up, what do you Australians say? Shit creek.'

'With or without the paddle?'

'That's why I like to keep you around. You have so many quaint expressions.'

What slang did Felicity have up her sleeve? He imagined she'd be excited at their return and
another chance to impress. 'We could send in the troops to sweep the area. After the ruckus back in
Rocky, it wouldn't be hard to explain a ground search for Taipan.'

'We hardly have the manpower for that. No, we'll let the plan run its course. They'll come to
us.'

'And you're sure we can trust Turner? That it wasn't her who set Dave and me up?'

'Bhagwan tipped off Taipan early.' She jerked her head toward the rear of the cabin, where a body
bag lay on the floor between Bhagwan's two red-eyes. 'I don't know how he heard that Jasmine was
setting up out here - for a veggo, he had a very good grip on his mind - but the word reached the
Night Riders before we were ready.'

'Home ground advantage, I suppose.'

Her hand fisted. 'We should have sent more men with you. Should've known Taipan wouldn't be out
there by himself, regardless of Jasmine's assurances.'

Which was, he suspected, as much of an apology as he'd get. 'Hindsight, eh.'

'It'll wear you down, especially when you've got as much of it as we have.'

'And Dee?'

'One domino at a time, Reece. Kevin Matheson first, then Taipan, then the bloodbitch.' She
snatched his wrist, so hard it hurt, her face tight with desperation. 'And no more mistakes. We - I
- can't afford to waste any more time. We roll them up, and then we all get to go home to live
happily ever after.'

Reece's headset crackled with the news they were close to Whitby Downs. Mira released him.

'Happily
ever
after,' she repeated.

He clenched the car keys in his pocket. He'd been hoping to claim the Monaro as a spoil of war,
once the dust had settled, but Mira was offering a lot more than that. A lot more. Now all he had to
do was work out how he felt about that.

Under a swirling purple sky, Taipan bears down on him, all dirt and blood and
maleness. Like being buried under iron flesh. Kevin pushes and punches. Futile. He screams as fangs
tear into him and his life - his essence - is snatched away in great, greedy gulps. When he is
spent, his body drained, there remains the humiliation of hot, slick flesh pushed against him. The
blood flows. He swallows it down, his turn to feast, his need overcoming all else and driving him
into the red bliss. But this is not the unrestrained torrent; this is the measured dose - this much
and no more, regardless of how much more he wants. He could drink a lake, feels as though his legs
are hollow and endless, running all the way to the core of the planet, maybe spilling out the other
side, two long streamers of liquid crimson floating into space. He drinks until the tap is turned
off, the tit withdrawn. He lies, fuming, starving, as the images come; the memories made of tastes
and smells and hidden emotions. They come with the rush of a cyclone, spinning, brutalising,
howling. Lives upon lives, carried like flotsam in the scarlet cascade. He is lashed to the mast in
a heaving sea of lives cut short. Death swamps him, fills his lungs, stings his eyes and flesh,
saturates his very cells.

And then comes peace.

He lies on the shore, warmed by the gaze of velvet eyes like twin suns in a lavender sky. The eye
of the storm. The sea stilled, the banshee howl subsided; the dead returned to their graves, uneasy,
but still. He basks in the soft light.

Danica is a phantom at his side. She urges him to stand. There is something yet
to do. He rises, reluctant to leave his rest, and follows her gentle instructions.

Slowly, surely, he builds a wall across the frozen sea. In the wall he makes
doors, and behind each he locks the voices and the faces and the deathly pallor; the laughter, anger
and tears.

'Leave plenty of space for more,' Danica advises.

The words drift by, seagulls wheeling against a lilac sky. The wall stretches on
forever.

Nicola falls on the ground at his feet. She's in her nightshirt and knickers,
hair mussed, face tear-stricken, lips twisted with panic and glistening with drool. Her heartbeat
fills the world; her body is hotter than the sun. The flow of her blood sounds like a waterfall. She
screams as he tries to pick her up.

Danica points and he pushes the girl in that direction. She stumbles through the
door.

Iraq is…

The door swings shut with an echoing click, and then there's silence.

'And now: Mira.'

The name shakes the world.

Seagulls turn to steel, wings sharp as they dive about him. He crouches under the
onslaught, skin opening with a hundred beaks and claws and razor wingtips. His blood pools. The
birds dive into the puddle, flapping and squawking, melting and melding together. A shape forms,
head then shoulders, chest, hips; her skin bubbling with wings and beaks as the birds mould into
place. She stands, curves dripping blood like strawberry sauce. Great wings, as thin as a bat's,
flap out behind her and then transform into her unmistakable cape.

A vase shatters, the sound of the world ending. Blood traces jagged slow-motion
lightning bolts across the sky. Mira's fingers stretch like roots and wrap around him, penetrating
like thorns into his flesh. Her fangs are those of a sabre tooth, dripping ichor. Her nipples stare
at him, silvered seagulls' eyes. Her cunt is a clam-like beak, clacking open and shut as she reels
him in.

He darts forward, latches his fangs around her left tit and sucks hard. Her other
nipple pours with blood in sympathy; he grips it hard, fingertips sinking into the flesh, as she
tries to dislodge him. She writhes, jaws snapping on air above his head, but the ground is rock,
trapping her feet, and his hold is unshakeable as he guzzles her down. Seagulls covered in
afterbirth push out of her left wrist and fall dead to the ground. She shrinks, tendril grips
shrivelling.

Kevin sucks her blood furiously. Mira gets smaller and smaller till he's draining
the very last of the juice from a desiccated baby doll, arms and legs as spindly as bird legs; skin
cracked like a clay pan; hair like spinifex cropped short above those blazing red eyes. He ignores
her furious stare and carries the weightless husk to the nearest door and throws it inside. The last
thing he sees before swinging the door shut is those eyes, burning in the dark-

Kevin surfaced from the meditation. They'd started the sessions in the late
afternoon, and now it was night. This latest trip had seemed to last years, rather than scant hours.

Danica sat before him, legs crossed, hands clasping his. Breathing three beats in, three beats
out. A curl of incense smoke writhed past her elbow. Her eyes opened, fading from purple to green to
brown. 'How do you feel?'

'Exhausted. But good. Better.'

She studied his eyes, looking into him. Kevin felt a prickle in his forehead, nothing more. She
smiled. 'Good, very good. You have an aptitude.' She unfolded from her sitting position like a
flower opening, only letting go his hands when they stood face to face. 'That's enough for now. Keep
practising; it'll become automatic with time.'