Talulla Rising
Page 76
It was Mia.
She’d found the Disciples.
PART FOUR
LACUNA
‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’
Matthew 7:15
54
Konstantinov was checking the weapons when I gave him the news: ‘Vampires are walking in daylight.’
‘What?’
‘I just spoke to Mia. First it was only Remshi. Now there are at least a dozen.’
‘It’s a trap. Nothing changes. We go tomorrow as planned.’
‘I don’t think it’s a trap.’
‘Nothing changes.’
I was holding a half-cup of cold coffee. I threw it at the wall behind his head. It smashed, with a surprisingly loud noise. He put the AK-47 down on the couch and looked at me. Not much shook him. This hadn’t either, but it had registered, faintly, on the outside of his obsession.
‘Fuck you,’ I said, as a hunger cramp gripped my guts. ‘I know nothing changes. But I’m sick of this tragic Russian shit. Stop going on as if you’re the only one who’s got something to lose.’
It was just after ten at night. We were in the large lounge of a two-storey villa three miles from the village of Falasarna on the island of Crete. Travertine tiles, limewashed walls, neutral contemporary furniture, odours of sandalwood and the sea. French doors opened onto a verandah with steps leading down to a pool area and olive grove. Our nearest neighbour was half a kilometre away, down a steep gravel road that hairpinned the hillside with barely room for two cars to pass. Cloquet had found the house by accident, attempting to book rooms for twelve people in a hotel in Chania. The manager had lowered his voice and asked if he wouldn’t rather take a house. His cousin’s. Beach ten-minute walk. Off-season rates.
Konstantinov stared at me. The stare said, without malice: I’ve got more to lose because I won’t survive if mine’s dead. You will if yours is. He was right. I already knew Lorcan’s death wouldn’t kill me. If the price I had to pay for having a future with my daughter was accepting the blame for her brother’s death then so be it. We’d have a damaged love with my shame at its core, but it would still be love. That, of course, was partly why I’d thrown the coffee cup. That and the cramps, the sweats, the wolf’s thorned antics under my skin.
‘Tell me about the daylight vampires,’ he said.
Sixty hours ago we’d got the call from Mia. The Disciples were on Crete, in the hills east of Ano Sfinari, in a former monastery now ostensibly being turned into a luxury hotel but in fact purchased and adapted by the believers to welcome Remshi back to the waking world. And Remshi, apparently, was back. By the time Mia joined up he’d been ‘among them’ (having appeared on cue with three priests and Jacqueline at midnight on December 12th) for several days, a handsome charismatic vampire who claimed he was ‘older than the first utterance of human speech’, who’d performed numerous extraordinary feats and produced one show-stopper: film of himself walking the grounds with a couple of familiars in broad daylight. In broad daylight. As his strength increased, he promised, he’d be able to give this gift to all of them, in return for loyalty to him and his queen-to-be, none other than our own Madame Jacqueline Delon. So is it him? I’d asked Mia. She’d said: Parlour tricks and bad poetry. But something in her voice conceded it wasn’t so clear-cut. I pressed her. There’s something here, it’s true, she said. Very old. I don’t know. This is irrelevant. Don’t waste time. Let me speak to my son.
Finding and joining the faithful hadn’t been easy for her. The climate of paranoia was dense. Six months ago there had been a raid on a Helios Project lab in Beijing, and though the Disciples had denied any involvement the Fifty Families (having decided enough was enough) were using it as a pretext for prosecution. A judgement had been passed. Vampire death-squads had been dispatched, but by then Jacqueline and her posse were off-radar. A few cult members were found and beheaded in Istanbul, but the leadership and its priestly cabal remained hidden. As they would have remained hidden to Mia, had her brother not been a member. They’d been made vampires together (she wouldn’t tell when) by the same immortal. It’s not telepathy, she said. But if I decide to find him sooner or later I will. It goes both ways. That’s all. Don’t ask me any more. If I asked any more I’d be likely to ask if she could be sure her brother believed her motives for joining were genuine; and whatever she said we’d both know it didn’t make any difference, because this was the only plan we had.
And so had followed the phone calls, the regroup, the flight, the scramble to get weapons organised. The weapons, of course, had been delayed. We’d lost another forty-eight hours. Konstantinov was ready to go in, suicidally, unarmed. When the boat had at last arrived earlier this evening I’d had to stop him from attacking the people on it. Now (again of course, of course) we had no choice: tomorrow night was the full moon. Full moon, winter solstice, lunar eclipse. We’d run, with delirious, yielding inevitability, out of time.
‘What’s going on?’ Trish said, coming in from the verandah with Lucy just behind her. They were both in sweaters and jeans. In December it was cool here. (I hadn’t expected Lucy to be part of this. She’d let me know as much, over the weeks. And yet when it had come to it, Trish had got off the phone with her, turned to me and said: Luce is in. For months now I’ve been going back to bits of my old life like a bloody dog to its vomit, Lucy had told me, in the departures lounge at Heathrow. Last Wednesday I went to my reading group supper. Bloody Carol Shields who thinks you can make setting the table a religious act. And while they’re all prattling on about it I’m sitting there thinking about... Well. You know. Anyway something went. The last bit of denial, I suppose. There’s no old life for me now.)
‘There’s been a development,’ I said. ‘Vampires are walking in daylight.’
We’d judged going in with the sun up, as humans, the lesser of two evils. With Budarin’s four guys, Konstantinov, me, Trish, Lucy, Cloquet and Fergus (whom I’d only met for the first time two days ago: a big Irishman with a drink-darkened face and a physique like Baloo the bear) we had an armed force of ten. Walker was here too but had been sick on the flight, in and out of fever ever since. He’d refused to see a doctor. He’d refused to see anyone, except Konstantinov, and for the last twenty-four hours had been in his room in bed. He wasn’t likely to be fit for action. If Mia’s intelligence was sound there were seventy-nine vampires with a standing guard of twenty human familiars. Ten humans (assuming Walker’s absence) against twenty humans was better than ten against seventy-nine vampires, even if four of us were in all our transformed glory. But now, if Mia’s story of daylight vampires was true, the odds had worsened.
She’d found the Disciples.
PART FOUR
LACUNA
‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’
Matthew 7:15
54
Konstantinov was checking the weapons when I gave him the news: ‘Vampires are walking in daylight.’
‘What?’
‘I just spoke to Mia. First it was only Remshi. Now there are at least a dozen.’
‘It’s a trap. Nothing changes. We go tomorrow as planned.’
‘I don’t think it’s a trap.’
‘Nothing changes.’
I was holding a half-cup of cold coffee. I threw it at the wall behind his head. It smashed, with a surprisingly loud noise. He put the AK-47 down on the couch and looked at me. Not much shook him. This hadn’t either, but it had registered, faintly, on the outside of his obsession.
‘Fuck you,’ I said, as a hunger cramp gripped my guts. ‘I know nothing changes. But I’m sick of this tragic Russian shit. Stop going on as if you’re the only one who’s got something to lose.’
It was just after ten at night. We were in the large lounge of a two-storey villa three miles from the village of Falasarna on the island of Crete. Travertine tiles, limewashed walls, neutral contemporary furniture, odours of sandalwood and the sea. French doors opened onto a verandah with steps leading down to a pool area and olive grove. Our nearest neighbour was half a kilometre away, down a steep gravel road that hairpinned the hillside with barely room for two cars to pass. Cloquet had found the house by accident, attempting to book rooms for twelve people in a hotel in Chania. The manager had lowered his voice and asked if he wouldn’t rather take a house. His cousin’s. Beach ten-minute walk. Off-season rates.
Konstantinov stared at me. The stare said, without malice: I’ve got more to lose because I won’t survive if mine’s dead. You will if yours is. He was right. I already knew Lorcan’s death wouldn’t kill me. If the price I had to pay for having a future with my daughter was accepting the blame for her brother’s death then so be it. We’d have a damaged love with my shame at its core, but it would still be love. That, of course, was partly why I’d thrown the coffee cup. That and the cramps, the sweats, the wolf’s thorned antics under my skin.
‘Tell me about the daylight vampires,’ he said.
Sixty hours ago we’d got the call from Mia. The Disciples were on Crete, in the hills east of Ano Sfinari, in a former monastery now ostensibly being turned into a luxury hotel but in fact purchased and adapted by the believers to welcome Remshi back to the waking world. And Remshi, apparently, was back. By the time Mia joined up he’d been ‘among them’ (having appeared on cue with three priests and Jacqueline at midnight on December 12th) for several days, a handsome charismatic vampire who claimed he was ‘older than the first utterance of human speech’, who’d performed numerous extraordinary feats and produced one show-stopper: film of himself walking the grounds with a couple of familiars in broad daylight. In broad daylight. As his strength increased, he promised, he’d be able to give this gift to all of them, in return for loyalty to him and his queen-to-be, none other than our own Madame Jacqueline Delon. So is it him? I’d asked Mia. She’d said: Parlour tricks and bad poetry. But something in her voice conceded it wasn’t so clear-cut. I pressed her. There’s something here, it’s true, she said. Very old. I don’t know. This is irrelevant. Don’t waste time. Let me speak to my son.
Finding and joining the faithful hadn’t been easy for her. The climate of paranoia was dense. Six months ago there had been a raid on a Helios Project lab in Beijing, and though the Disciples had denied any involvement the Fifty Families (having decided enough was enough) were using it as a pretext for prosecution. A judgement had been passed. Vampire death-squads had been dispatched, but by then Jacqueline and her posse were off-radar. A few cult members were found and beheaded in Istanbul, but the leadership and its priestly cabal remained hidden. As they would have remained hidden to Mia, had her brother not been a member. They’d been made vampires together (she wouldn’t tell when) by the same immortal. It’s not telepathy, she said. But if I decide to find him sooner or later I will. It goes both ways. That’s all. Don’t ask me any more. If I asked any more I’d be likely to ask if she could be sure her brother believed her motives for joining were genuine; and whatever she said we’d both know it didn’t make any difference, because this was the only plan we had.
And so had followed the phone calls, the regroup, the flight, the scramble to get weapons organised. The weapons, of course, had been delayed. We’d lost another forty-eight hours. Konstantinov was ready to go in, suicidally, unarmed. When the boat had at last arrived earlier this evening I’d had to stop him from attacking the people on it. Now (again of course, of course) we had no choice: tomorrow night was the full moon. Full moon, winter solstice, lunar eclipse. We’d run, with delirious, yielding inevitability, out of time.
‘What’s going on?’ Trish said, coming in from the verandah with Lucy just behind her. They were both in sweaters and jeans. In December it was cool here. (I hadn’t expected Lucy to be part of this. She’d let me know as much, over the weeks. And yet when it had come to it, Trish had got off the phone with her, turned to me and said: Luce is in. For months now I’ve been going back to bits of my old life like a bloody dog to its vomit, Lucy had told me, in the departures lounge at Heathrow. Last Wednesday I went to my reading group supper. Bloody Carol Shields who thinks you can make setting the table a religious act. And while they’re all prattling on about it I’m sitting there thinking about... Well. You know. Anyway something went. The last bit of denial, I suppose. There’s no old life for me now.)
‘There’s been a development,’ I said. ‘Vampires are walking in daylight.’
We’d judged going in with the sun up, as humans, the lesser of two evils. With Budarin’s four guys, Konstantinov, me, Trish, Lucy, Cloquet and Fergus (whom I’d only met for the first time two days ago: a big Irishman with a drink-darkened face and a physique like Baloo the bear) we had an armed force of ten. Walker was here too but had been sick on the flight, in and out of fever ever since. He’d refused to see a doctor. He’d refused to see anyone, except Konstantinov, and for the last twenty-four hours had been in his room in bed. He wasn’t likely to be fit for action. If Mia’s intelligence was sound there were seventy-nine vampires with a standing guard of twenty human familiars. Ten humans (assuming Walker’s absence) against twenty humans was better than ten against seventy-nine vampires, even if four of us were in all our transformed glory. But now, if Mia’s story of daylight vampires was true, the odds had worsened.
