Thicker Than Blood (Marchwood Vampire Series #2) (7 page)

‘
Aahh, alive!’ The woman
chuckled. ‘My lucky day. Come along, my dear, get up. You'll come
with me. No need to thank me today, you can do that
later.’

Aelia turned her head and forced her eyes to
open. She saw a dark shape looming and gradually a pale wrinkled
face came into focus. The face wore a smile, but the smile was not
kindly. It was … mocking. Aelia closed her eyes again.

‘
Up, up. Get up,’ the
woman said. ‘I saw you open your eyes. It’s no good pretending to
be dead. Come on.’

Aelia felt more sharp stabs of pain on her
back and shoulder. She gasped and opened her eyes again. The woman
was prodding her with a wooden cane.

‘
Please stop,’ Aelia
croaked. ‘You’re hurting me.’

‘
Good, you can talk. Now
get up, my dear, before I lose my patience.’

Aelia didn’t know how she did it, but she
managed to struggle to her knees and then to her feet. Her head
throbbed and her throat felt as though it was being stabbed with
tiny little needles as the thirst hit once again.

‘
Water.
Please.’

‘
Come with me and I’ll see
what I can do.’

The old woman limped ahead, using her wooden
cane to walk. Aelia staggered in her wake, almost wishing she’d
stayed on the ground to let the earth take her.

They walked for a good long while. The old
woman did not offer to help her, nor did she even turn around to
see how she was. But Aelia kept following regardless. Vegetation
appeared around them. They passed by some low scrubby bushes and a
couple of hunched trees. Clumps of plants dotted the ground and a
sudden breeze cooled Aelia’s cheek for a blissful moment, before
melting into the heat again.

In the distance, Aelia saw a dark shimmering
hill and as they drew nearer, it rose up as a steep, grey rock
face. The woman walked right up to the jagged wall and side-stepped
into it before disappearing from view as if by magic. Aelia
followed, too tired to be puzzled. As she came closer, she saw
there was a simple explanation - an outcrop in front of the rock
face concealed a narrow gap. The old woman had entered a hidden
cave. Aelia stopped for a second and then followed her inside, away
from the relentless sun and into the cool gloom.

It was a relief to be out of the sun’s
glare, but Aelia felt so weak and thirsty, she barely registered
her surroundings. All she saw was darkness and all she heard were
their hushed slow footsteps. Suddenly, she felt a claw-like grip on
her arm.

‘
Sit here,’ the woman
squawked at her. She pulled Aelia down onto a chair-like boulder
and then shuffled off into the darkness.

Aelia felt no curiosity; only the need to
close her eyes and block out the knives of thirst in her throat.
She was going to die here in the darkness. This was the end.
Seconds later she felt a cold sting of water trickle down her lips
and chin.

‘
You’re no good to me
dead,’ the woman cackled, pressing an earthenware cup into Aelia’s
hands.

Aelia ignored the woman’s words and
concentrated on the cool liquid. Maybe she wasn’t going to die
after all.

Chapter Eight

Present Day

*

Ben returned to the house at midday. Esther
and Morris were already there, sitting in the kitchen sipping tea.
None of them had seen anyone who might have been the deliverer of
the mysterious note. Esther insisted that Ben eat something and
then go to bed.

‘
You’ll be needed later
and you won’t be any good to anyone if you don’t get some rest.
Don’t worry, I’ll go down and tell the others we’ve had no
luck.’

Ben glared at his empty bowl and dragged
himself up the stairs to bed. He was exhausted, but it felt wrong
sleeping while Maddy was missing. He crawled under the bed covers
in his clothes and closed his eyes. He meant to lie there and think
about what they should do. But sleep came for him straight
away.

The afternoon passed uneventfully and all
Alexandre and the others could do was to wait for night to fall.
Luckily it arrived shortly after 4.30pm and Alexandre was straight
out of the door with the others close behind. Isobel was to stay at
the house with Ben and Esther. Ben wouldn’t like it, but he was
still asleep and they had all decided not to wake him.

Alexandre took in a lungful of night air and
headed over to his motorbike, a BMW S1000RR. Morris had topped-up
the fuel tank and parked it on the driveway ready to go. The
caretaker was standing next to the bike and it looked like he
wanted to speak to Alex. He really didn’t want to waste a single
second chatting, so he nodded to Morris and made straight for his
bike. But the caretaker started speaking.

‘
I’ll ask around in town
this evening. See if anyone’s seen her. You never know
…’

‘
Thanks, Morris. That
would be great.’

‘
I’ll speak to ‘em down at
The Bell. If anything strange is happening round here, they’ll know
about it.’ Morris was referring to his regular haunt, The Old Bell.
Nowadays it was a luxury hotel, but it had once been a normal pub
where Morris and his friends would sip a pint of bitter and have a
chat. The décor and prices had changed dramatically over the last
thirty years, but Morris and his cronies had carried on frequenting
the place nonetheless.

‘
Let me know how you get
on,’ Alex said, not really listening to the caretaker and itching
to be off. He didn’t want any undue police attention, so he wore
his leathers and crash helmet like a good little human, jumped on
his bike and sped off. The others would follow in Leonora’s silver
Audi RS6 – comfortable but fast.

As he rode, Alexandre tried not to think,
but everything flashed through his mind at once. He ripped up the
miles, avoiding the cop cars and speed cameras, taking the bike as
fast as it would allow, weaving in and out of the traffic in a blur
of shiny noise.

During their last fateful meeting, Blythe
had told him that his ancient vampire clients wanted him and the
other ‘fledgling’ vampires dead. But why? Were they really that
much of a threat? Was this why they were being summoned? To be
killed? He would gladly give his own life for Madison’s, but he
could not give up the lives of his siblings, or Freddie’s or
Leonora’s.

In less than an hour, he hit London and came
to a halt outside the offices of Hamilton Blythe, in the affluent
area of Marylebone. The others would have traffic to contend with.
They could call him when they arrived, but he didn’t plan on
waiting around. He would manage Blythe himself. They knew it was a
risk going into his offices after the last time. But what choice
did they have? They had still found no home address for that wily
lawyer.

Alexandre swung his long legs off the bike
and removed his crash helmet. Then he flexed his fingers and combed
them through his hair as he stared up at the huge building in front
of him. The white mansion block was the epitome of respectability.
No one would have guessed that beneath its traditional façade lay a
state-of-the-art underground facility dedicated to reviving dormant
vampires as well as destroying them. But Alexandre didn’t plan on
going down there. All he needed to do was discover Winston Blythe’s
address and he would find that easily enough, even if it meant
coercing the information from someone.

The offices were closed, but Alex didn’t
have long to wonder what to do as, within a couple of minutes, the
black painted front door swung open and two smartly-dressed women
emerged. Alexandre slipped past them, like a cool breeze. One of
the women shivered and frowned, but at that moment her colleague
said something funny and she laughed, dismissing the shadow she
thought she’d seen out of the corner of her eye.

Once inside the building, Alexandre scanned
each room, until he reached the fourth floor where the partners’
offices were situated. Once he had Blythe’s address he would be
done here. And then he caught a familiar scent - an odour of fake
respectability and greed that he remembered from before. Well, it
was actually the odour of a certain cologne, but the smell conjured
up the man – Blythe.

A door lay ahead of him and beyond the door
sat Winston Blythe. Alexandre had to get himself under control or
he might just tear this man limb from limb before he had a chance
to find out where Madison had been taken. He needed to extract
every last piece of information out of the man and that would
require a more-composed Alexandre than the one currently snarling
in the wood-panelled hallway. He breathed in through his nose and
out through his mouth, sliding his fangs back behind his lips with
great difficulty as he collected himself, preparing to deal with
this traitorous snake.

A few seconds later, he stood in front of a
walnut desk staring at the lawyer.

Winston Blythe was hand-writing a letter and
hadn’t yet noticed Alexandre. The room was large and opulent, all
polished wood, leather and glass - a gentleman’s office.

‘
Writing another of your
mysterious notes I see,’ Alexandre said softly.

Blythe looked up, shocked for a second
before hastily composing his features.

‘
Alexandre, my boy. I’ve
been expecting you. Do sit down won’t you.’

‘
I prefer to stand and I
am not ‘your boy’.’

‘
Just a figure of speech.
No offence meant I’m sure.’ Blythe set his pen down on the
desk.

‘
What game are you up to
this time?’ Alexandre asked.

‘
No game. I’m merely
helping to move things along. After our last encounter, you surely
can’t have thought that would be it. No, alas there are people far
more powerful than you or I and they have deemed that things must
be brought to a conclusion.’

‘
Things?’

‘
Yes. Such as the question
mark hanging over you and the other Marchwood Vampires. You are
inconvenient, that’s all. You must go to Cappadocia and be
accounted for.’

‘
Accounted for.
Why?’

‘
It is not for me to know
the reason why. I am but a humble servant in all this. A servant to
carry out orders and document history.’

‘A servant?’ Alexandre gave a short laugh.
‘That is ridiculous! You may try to deny any responsibility, but
you are more than a servant; you are a facilitator of evil. A
parasite.’

‘
That is a little harsh, but I
can see why you might think that. Your view is limited. You look at
the world through a sliver of glass instead of a wide-angled lens.
Alexandre, you are a tiger cub nipping at the heels of kings. They
do not like it. They do not care about your good heart or your lack
of ambition. They will not take the risk. They know you have
eternity to change your character from passive to aggressive. They
want you dealt with
now
.’

‘
But that is nonsense. I
do not nip at anybody’s heels.’

‘
Nonsense to you maybe,
but it is the nature of things.’

‘
Well then ‘things’ have
to change.’

‘
Things already have
changed.’

Alexandre opened his hands in a gesture
asking for explanation.

‘
My clients, my
fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth century clients are tigers;
they are kings. But they have recently discovered an
Emperor.’

‘
Stop talking in riddles.
For a ‘servant’, you have too great a liking for the dramatic.
Speak plainly for once.’

‘
Very well.’ Blythe paused
and Alexandre had to restrain himself from leaping across the desk
and choking the words out of him. Eventually the solicitor
continued. ‘Your Cappadocian vampire is awake. He is over two
thousand years old, the most powerful being ever to walk this
earth, and he demands obedience.’

Alexandre went cold at the old man’s words.
His worst fears had been realised – the Cappadocian was behind
this.

Blythe was still talking:

‘
The kings have bent their
knees to him. Now he is rounding up the princes.’

Alexandre’s mouth hung open. He recalled the
underground city where he had been turned, more than one hundred
years earlier. He pictured the dead, kohl-rimmed eyes of this
so-called emperor who had torn into his flesh and stripped him of
his mortality. And then he remembered the opportunity he had missed
earlier this year when he’d stumbled across the Cappadocian’s
unconscious form, but had not the foresight to destroy him. Now it
was too late. The creature had captured Madison. It held their
happiness in the palm of its hand and was preparing to make a
fist.

Alexandre realised that Winston Blythe had
not been lying when he said he was nothing more than a servant,
that he had no real power or influence. The rage he felt towards
Blythe was dissipating, turning into a creeping despair. The most
Alexandre could hope for was that Blythe might know where Maddy was
being held.

‘
Where is she?’ he
whispered.

‘
You know where she is,
Alexandre.’

And he realised he did know. He had known
all along that she would be under the ground, deep in the belly of
the Cappadocian earth. In the place he had prayed he need never
return to. Coming to London had been a fruitless exercise. Madison
was already out of his reach.

‘
I should kill you for
your part in this,’ Alexandre said without conviction.

‘
But you
won’t.’

‘
No.’

They appraised each other for a moment or
two, a ticking clock the only sound in the room.