Uprising (11 page)

As she passed the bed, her sadness sharpened. At the foot of the bed was an oak chest. She stopped, kneeled. While everything else in her apartment was ultra-modern, the chest was pitted with age, splits in the wood patched here and there with metal plates. She and that old chest went back a long way. It had been a while since she’d last opened it.

She reached for the little key she wore around her neck and unclipped it from its leather thong. It was made of the same pitted black metal as the lock of the chest. It slid smoothly into the lock and sprung the mechanism with a tiny click. She carefully lifted the lid until it rested against the foot of the bed.

Inside were her memories.

The diamond and sapphire engagement ring was still as bright and sparkling as the day William had given it to her. She smiled sadly at it, then closed the scuffed, battered little box and replaced it at the bottom of the chest. There was the bundle of letters, still tied with the same yellow ribbon. The lock of his golden hair. The one photograph she had of him, long ago faded to a dull sepia tone.

She gazed at it. Such a long time ago, but she could still remember every moment they’d had together. She could recall the touch of his skin against hers, the softness of his voice, the infectiousness of his laugh.

I’ll come back to you one day, my love.

Those had been his last words to her. A day she didn’t like to remember, but whose memory she couldn’t chase. Not in a hundred and thirteen years.

I’ll come back.

But she was still waiting.

Or was she? As she caressed the faded image with her thumb, she thought about Joel Solomon. It was uncanny. They could have been brothers, twins.

Alexandra Bishop, born 1869, turned 1897, would never have believed in such a thing as reincarnation, as William had. But then, back in those days, she’d never have believed in vampires, either.

She gazed at the picture a while longer, then laid it back inside the chest and shut the lid.

The far wall of the bedroom was one huge solid expanse of mirror. She walked towards it, snatching a remote control off a table as she went. She didn’t slow her pace and, just as she was about to walk straight into the glass, she pressed the button on the remote and the partition instantly slid aside to reveal the hidden room beyond. She stepped inside, aimed the remote behind her and slid the wall shut again.

She was in her weapons room.

The place was as utilitarian as it could be. On a steel wall rack were a pair of assault rifles, a cut-down shotgun and two ex-MOD submachine guns. Beside those, another rack holding four identical .50-calibre Desert Eagle pistols. The opposite wall was covered in industrial shelving, and in between was the workbench where she handloaded her own ammunition. She’d never trusted the stuff that VIA issued the agents. Bolted to the bench was a reloading press with a rotating platform that housed half-a-dozen empty glittering brass cartridge cases at a time. Mounted on top, a clear plastic hopper was filled with peppery gunpowder. It was Alex’s little personal production line.

She sat at the bench and worked the lever on the press.
Ker-chunk.
One pull to fill up each case with powder. Another pull to ram home the fat half-inch hollowpoint bullets and seat them firmly in the mouths of the cases. After five minutes, she had a batch of thirty .50 Action Express rounds ready – or they would have been, for use on a normal target. For Alex’s purposes, there was one more stage to perform.

She sat the cartridges upright in a row on the bench. Pulled on thick rubber gloves and a surgical mask, then took a plastic flask from one of the shelves. The label was marked ‘Nosferol’. Beside the name was a little skull and crossbones. If you looked closely, the skull had tiny fangs. Some joker at the Federation pharma plant’s idea of humour.

She carefully unscrewed the top. One whiff of the fumes would be enough to destroy her. She hated working with the stuff, but it was her job sometimes to do things she hated.

The level in her flask was getting low. She made a mental note to put in an order for some more. Then, using a squeezy disposable pipette, she dripped five drops into the hollow tip of each bullet, working her way along the line until all thirty were charged with the poison. Still wearing the gloves and mask, she lit a church candle and delicately sealed over the end of each bullet with molten wax. That was the most critical part of the operation. If the Nosferol wasn’t completely sealed in, even a tiny leakage could be disastrous to her.

She waited a few minutes for the wax to set, then loaded the cartridges into a batch of spare magazines, ready for use. Job done. She closed up the weapons room, taking the mags and the most worn and comfortable of the Desert Eagles with her.

She was finishing getting changed to go out when she heard the doorbell. The security monitor in the hallway showed Greg standing outside, shifting nervously from foot to foot. She smiled to herself, then put on a stern face and answered the door.

‘Right on time,’ Greg said.

‘Amazing. Let’s go.’

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘So where is it we’re going?’ Greg asked as she wove the Jag at top speed through the night traffic. ‘Jesus, do you always drive like this?’

‘To see Rudi Bertolino,’ she said. ‘He called me to say he’s got some information.’

‘The ragu sauce guy. I remember.’

‘Rudi’s a little more than that. He owns the famous Last Bite Bar and Grill on St James’s. Wait till you see it. He’s also one of my prime informers.’

‘He’s…’

‘You’re so coy. Why don’t you just say it? Yes, he’s one of us, he’s a vampire. You’ll like him, too. Everyone does. A lot of us hang out there. It’s kind of a vampire restaurant.’

‘Right. So vampires can actually eat, like,
real
food?’ he asked, looking hopeful. The back of a bus was looming up alarmingly fast. ‘Watch—’

She twisted the wheel smartly and missed the bus by an inch. ‘Sure, we can eat. It’s a social occasion, and human food tastes pretty good. Especially if it comes out of Rudi Bertolino’s kitchen. Thing is, though, you could pig out on it every day and still starve. There’s no nutrition in it, not for us.’

‘Shit. For a minute there, I was kind of hoping—’

‘We’re vampires, Greg. It’s what we do. Get used to it.’ She sighed reproachfully. ‘Not feeding yet, then?’

‘Don’t bring that up again. Makes me sick even to think of it.’

‘Of course it does. That’s normal enough. But that feeling doesn’t last. Trust me.’

‘Wonderful. Looking forward to it.’

‘Taken your Solazal today?’

‘What are you, my mother?’

‘When I see a helpless little vampire baby, I get these irrepressible maternal urges. Plus I don’t want you frazzling up too close to me.’

‘Thank you so much,’ he muttered. ‘Helpless little baby. So what information does this Rudi guy have for us?’

‘That’s what we’re going to find out.’

The Last Bite Bar and Grill, open dusk till dawn, was one of central London’s most in and super-trendy hangouts for vampires, movie stars, rock musicians, other assorted celebrities and those wannabes that could afford to eat, drink and party there. Rudi Bertolino, its owner-manager, was a vampire with his ear to the ground. For a yacht-owning, Porsche-driving multi-millionaire restaurateur he moved in some pretty low places – maybe that was just him keeping in touch with his past selling fish in the street markets of old Napoli, back when he’d been human. In return for the information he passed Alex from time to time, she turned a blind eye to the fact that he occasionally violated Federation rules by knocking off a human and putting their blood in the food to appeal to the real vampires among his clientele.

‘On a strictly assholes-only basis,’ he always insisted in his gravelly bass rumble. ‘Who’s gonna lament the demise of a few pushers, pimps and paedos?’ And that was pretty much good enough for Alex.

Rudi’s establishment sprawled across three floors between a yacht broker’s and a private members’ club on St James’s. His gold 911 Turbo was parked outside, glinting in the lights from the windows. The music was thumping out into the street. Alex and Greg bypassed the chattering throngs of hopefuls gathered on the pavement and steps outside, who were waiting to get tables. Two doormen dressed in cloaks and fake fangs spotted Alex and ushered her and Greg inside, bowing stiffly as they walked in up the red carpet into the lights and noise.

The place was decked out like a gaudy gothic cathedral, lit by huge candelabras and chandeliers that looked like torture implements suspended on chains from the vaulted ceiling. Marble pillars gleamed in the swirling spotlights from the bar. Sumptuous red satin drapes billowed down from archways thirty feet high.

The joint was packed. About a hundred people were crowding the bar, yelling to get their drink orders in. Waitresses in leather basques with pointy teeth and heavy eyeshadow roller-skated round the tables, and the waiters had slicked-back hair and long black capes. Mock-Transylvanian tapestries and giant framed prints from vampire movies adorned the walls: Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski and Bela Lugosi as Dracula through the ages; Wesley Snipes in
Blade;
Tom Cruise as Lestat; a larger-than-life cutout of Peter Cushing coming out at you from behind a curtain, wielding stake and mallet.

‘This place is incredible,’ Greg shouted over the hard rock beat. He pointed up at a black and white print that hung over the bar. ‘Hey, I saw that one. The old
Nosferatu
movie – scary guy with the ears and the fingernails. What was his name?’

‘Max Schreck,’ Alex told him.

‘Right.’ Greg froze. ‘Shit. Over there. At that table. That’s—’

‘Yes, it is. And no, she’s not one of us. She just likes people to think she is. And stop pointing or I’ll break your finger off. You’re embarrassing me.’

‘Alex! Baby! Great ta see ya!’ said a booming voice.

Rudi Bertolino stood no more than five feet tall. He was almost perfectly spherical in shape, balding on top with a ponytail that dangled down the back of his Hawaiian shirt, jinking with gold chains and medallions as he came stomping out of the crowd with a huge grin and slipped a chubby arm around her waist. ‘Great! Great! Hungry?’

‘Only for what you’ve got to tell me,’ she said.

Rudi grinned even wider. ‘Shame. You gotta taste the Brasato al Barolo tonight.’ He smacked his lips.

‘Maybe later.’

‘Hey, no problemo. Let’s step into my office.’ As he led them away through the noisy crowd he jerked his chin back at Greg. ‘Who’s the guy?’ he rasped out of the corner of his mouth. ‘New boyfriend?’

‘New partner, Rudi. I mean
professional
partner.’

‘Since when did you ever—’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘He looks like a dork,’ Rudi muttered.

‘Leave him alone, okay?’

Rudi led them along a passage and through a door that said ‘manager’, into an enormous room done out in purple velvet and leopardskin upholstery. ‘Come in, come in. Take a seat.’ He motioned at a couple of armchairs.

‘I see you’ve been doing some filing,’ Alex said. The chairs were covered in heaps of documents. Rudi strutted over and swiped them away, creating a blizzard of paper. ‘Fuckin’ bills. Fuck ‘em anyway.’ He threw himself onto a giant red sofa shaped like a pair of lips and put his silver toe-capped boots up on the coffee table in front of him. ‘Jeez, it’s good ta see you again, Alex. What’ll ya have?’

‘Something with a bit of body to it,’ she said, settling into one of the leopardskin armchairs. Greg did the same.

‘How ‘bout you, soldier boy?’

Greg looked stunned. ‘That obvious?’

‘Like anyone would actually want their hair cut like a fuckin’ shoe brush.’ Rudi laughed as he reached behind him and jabbed an intercom on the wall. ‘Daisy, three Red Juice Specials, right now.’

‘Red Juice Specials?’ Greg asked uneasily.

‘Speciality of the maison,’ Rudi said. He winked at Alex. ‘From the guy’s neck to your sweet lips, darlin’.’

Daisy came wobbling into the office in fishnet stockings and high heels, carrying a tray with three tall glasses of thick frothy red juice, iced, with cocktail umbrellas in. Greg stared at them and turned pale.

‘Fucksamatter with him?’ Rudi said.

‘Greg’s new to our ways,’ Alex said.

Rudi beamed. ‘Knew it. Not juicin’ yet, huh, boy? Whaddaya, squeamish?’

‘Shooting the enemy from a distance, even using a knife in close quarter battle, isn’t quite the same as sinking your teeth in and drinking their blood,’ Greg muttered, still gazing uneasily at the drinks.

‘Relax, you ain’t gonna kill anyone, tough guy,’ Rudi rasped. ‘You get yourself a juicy piece of ass – ‘scuse my French, Alex – you bite her right here in the neck, you use the Vambloc after. Kills the infection, she don’t remember a thing and the holes heal up so fast, by the time she wakes up you can’t even see ‘em.’ He roared with laughter. ‘You’re gonna love it, being a vampire. Man, once you get the taste for it, the buzz, the feel of the juice, still warm, flowin’ down your throat…ain’t a fuckin’ feeling in the world like it.’

Alex sipped her Red Juice Special. The blood was fresh. ‘Anyway, Rudi, we didn’t come here to discuss the ethics of vampire nutrition. You said you had something for me.’

Rudi nodded. ‘Yeah, well, there’s something goin’ on, sure as shit. I been hearing stuff. You remember Paulie Lomax, big guy, looks like a turkey?’

‘Four-finger Paulie.’

‘That’s the guy. Know the rathouse pub down at the docks where he likes to drink?’

Alex nodded. ‘Makes the Slaughtered Lamb look like Maxim’s.’

‘Well, Paulie Lomax told me that he and this buddy of his called Vinnie were down there one night last week when they got talking to these sailors. Guys couldn’t speak hardly a word of English, but Paulie and Vinnie get the feeling they’re seriously fuckin’ freaked out about something. After a while they get it out of them that they were on a ship that came in from Eastern Europe someplace. Hardly any cargo on board, just these crates. You wanna know the weirdest? No paperwork. Customs let ‘em right through. Could have been fuckin’ cocaine, guns, plutonium. But it wasn’t. Whatever it was, it put the shits up ‘em. Half the crew got sick.’