The Last Bite Bar and Grill
1.41 a.m.
The party was in full swing, music thumping loudly as Alex walked up to the bar.
‘Is Rudi about?’ she shouted over the noise to one of the barmen.
‘Rudi’s got company right now.’ The barman raised his eyebrows suggestively.
‘They’re upstairs.’ He jerked his thumb at the ceiling. Rudi’s private suite of luxurious rooms occupied the top floor of the building.
‘A woman?’
The barman nodded with a sly chuckle. ‘We get some hot stuff in here, but this one…hoo hoo. And if I know Rudi, there’s a red leather jumpsuit lying on the floor up there as we speak. So I’d leave it a while before disturbing them.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Bout an hour. Hey. I said—’
Alex was through the STAFF ONLY door before the barman could stop her and running up the backstairs. A spiral staircase wound up from the second floor to the opulence of Rudi’s private domain.
Alex emerged onto a landing that was on the gaudy end of opulent — white satin on the walls and an oversized sparkling chandelier. A gilt-framed oil hung near the double doors of the apartment, depicting Rudi dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte; his chin was raised proudly and his hand was slipped inside his jacket as an epic battle raged in the background, complete with cavalry charges and artillery. But Alex wasn’t here to appreciate Rudi’s taste in art. She kicked in the door and stormed inside the huge marble-floored entrance hall. A Tom Jones CD was playing from hidden speakers.
She would never have taken Rudi for a traitor. That made her as furious with herself as she was with him. She drew the Desert Eagle.
Apart from the empty Krug bottle and the two crystal glasses, one with a smear of red lipstick, there was no sign of Rudi and his female companion in the mock Louis XV salon. She booted open one of the doors that radiated off the room, and found herself in a gigantic mirrored bathroom with steps leading down to a sunken Jacuzzi.
She slammed the door shut, tried another and stepped into Rudi’s bedroom.
Rudi was alone on the super-kingsize leopardskin four-poster, dwarfed by the bed’s size. He lay propped up against satin pillows wearing a black bathrobe that had
‘R.B.’ in large gold letters over his heart. He gazed idly at Alex as she strode up to the foot of the bed and pointed the gun at him.
She was almost speechless with hurt. ‘Why?’ she asked simply.
Rudi said nothing.
She clicked off the Desert Eagle’s safety. ‘Answers. Now. I want to know why you betrayed me and who put you up to it.’
Still no reply. No movement.
Alex lowered the gun. ‘Rudi?’
He was staring past her, towards the door, as if in some kind of trance. She walked round the side of the bed. Not a flicker of reaction. Reaching a hand out to him, she shook his shoulder.
‘Rudi?’ she said again.
Only then did she spot the thin red line that ran across his throat and around his neck, oozing a tiny trickle of dark vampire blood.
She nudged him. Rudi’s head toppled slowly off his shoulders, bounced off the satin pillow and landed on the bedside rug with a hollow clunk, like a coconut. It rolled over the rug and came to a halt face-up, his sightless eyes staring up at her.
The decapitation had been executed with a razor-sharp blade, leaving his neck stump as smooth as a mirror. Barely any blood. One clean swing, administered by someone very strong and very expert.
Lillith.
It must have happened just minutes ago. Soon, Rudi’s body would start to decompose at a vastly accelerated rate as death, cheated first time round, finally caught up with him.
The other side of the large bedroom, a cool breeze fluttered the curtains. Alex ran over to the open window and peered out over the ledge at the backstreet below. A long way down, but no problem for a vampire.
The slayer was already far away.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Terzi Pharmaceuticals Fabrication Complex, the Italian Alps 3.12 a.m. local time
A chill wind was blowing down off the distant mountains. The sky was clear and the stars were out in their countless millions over the still landscape. Nestling in the foothills, the large modern steel and glass building was the hub of the two-acre site of the fabrication complex. Terzi was one of Europe’s smaller pharmaceutical companies, its manufacturing output almost entirely focused on one specialised type of diuretic drug for the medical industry. It had plants in three other locations across Europe, each chosen for its cleanliness of environment. But this particular facility was different from the others, for a very special reason that very few people knew about.
Enrico, the night security guard posted at the front gates, was numb with cold, and his mind had been drifting from tiredness until he’d spotted the faraway headlights winding their way towards the plant. Looked like two medium-sized trucks. As they came closer, lighting up the steel mesh fence and the concrete compound beyond, Enrico stepped out of his hut and walked towards the vehicles with a hand raised. The company took security pretty seriously, and the Heckler & Koch 9mm machine pistol slung across his body slapped against his side as he walked. It was loaded and he’d been trained to use it.
Not that there was anything necessarily unusual or sinister about the appearance of two trucks in the middle of the night. Enrico had been working at Terzi long enough to know two things: one, that even though there was usually a smattering of late-shift personnel about the fabrication plant and labs, the upper east wing in particular never went to sleep at night; and that two, you didn’t ask too many questions about went on in that part of the building. He’d often seen the labcoats walking about in the third-floor windows. Some of the girls were pretty hot too. But, just like everyone who worked there, they kept themselves to themselves. Word among the maintenance staff and the drivers was that they were involved in some kind of experimental research programme that Terzi was keeping under wraps pending patent. That seemed to explain the strange hours, and the secretive way that unmarked trucks would often turn up to collect unmarked crates of stuff from the delivery bay in the rear.
But Enrico still had to make sure the paperwork was all in order, secrecy or no secrecy. As the lead van pulled up at the gate and its window whirred down, he put out his hand and asked to be shown the documentation authorising him to open up.
‘Cold night,’ the driver said, and Enrico grunted in reply as he scanned the papers.
Wait, this was wrong.
‘This isn’t—’ he started.
But didn’t finish.
Enrico was a young man, fit and strong and at the peak of his physical shape.
But he was still just a man, and none of his human senses were honed enough to have picked up the silent approach of the figure that had slipped out from behind the van and moved towards him through the shadows. Less than a second later, Enrico’s neck was broken.
The van driver watched impassively as the dead guard was dragged into the hut.
His killer let the body slump to the floor, then turned to the computer console. A few clicks of the keys, and the gate was automatically unlatched and began to open. A few more clicks, and the security cameras throughout the facility were simultaneously deactivated.
The vans growled slowly through the gates and into the dark compound. Their back doors opened, and eight figures in black tactical clothing spilled out. They stole swiftly and silently into the facility, breaking up into pairs and
