‘Just talked on the phone a couple of times. He sounded ill. I went round there but he wouldn’t let me in.’ Cormac frowned. ‘He may be a wee shit, but he’s me brother. I’m worried about him.’
‘Tell me where this mate’s place is.’
‘I’ll show you the way as we drive.’
Joel glanced at the case on the seat behind them. ‘I think it’s best if you stay here, Cormac.’
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Cormac had been reluctant to stay behind, but his directions were good and it didn’t take Joel long to find the block of concrete flats in Brewer’s Lane on the other side of Wallingford. Joel left the car in the shadows a few yards down the lane and walked the rest of the way, clutching the metal case tightly under one arm and wondering what he was going to find at this Matt’s place. Metal steps wound up and round onto each terraced balcony. He climbed two flights, checking door numbers until he came to the one he was looking for.
The pale blue door to Flat 22 was open an inch. Joel listened to his instincts and didn’t knock. He pressed his hand against the worn wood, praying the hinges weren’t creaky, and slipped silently inside. He found himself in a narrow passage that was dimly lit by a lamp shining through from the open door at the far end. Through the gap he could see garish floral carpet, the corner of a peeling James Bond poster tacked to the wall, and the end of an old couch that had someone’s hand resting on it.
Someone was talking inside the room. Joel tensed, listening hard. The voice was little more than a whisper, but he recognised it as Dec’s. Who was he talking to?
The answer came a second later when Joel heard a low giggle.
A girl’s voice.
Joel’s blood turned ice cold. Scarcely breathing and terrified to make a sound, he slowly unclipped one of the catches of the metal case. Then the other. And opened the lid just a fraction.
That was enough to tell him all he needed to know. The quiet room exploded into uproar. A piercing, wailing shriek of agony and terror. Dec’s voice yelled, ‘What’s wrong, Kate? What’s wrong?’
Joel slammed the lid shut, sealing the cross back inside its lead lining. He burst into the room to see Kate Hawthorne scrabbling desperately across the carpet, frantic to escape. She made a dive for the window, but he quickly stepped across and blocked her exit. Her eyes were fixed on the case. She backed away like a cornered leopard –
frightened but dangerous. She rolled back her red lips and Joel quaked at the sight of the long curved fangs. There was a smear of blood on her chin, and her fingertips were red with it. Her hair was tousled, feral. She was naked underneath the translucent white dress she was wearing.
‘You!’ she hissed at him. ‘Policeman.’
Dec stood frozen next to the couch, watching the scene in horror. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow and colourless. The wounds on his neck looked as if they’d crusted over and been reopened several times. Fresh trickles of blood were running down to his shoulder, soaking into the material of the grimy T-shirt that clung to his emaciated torso. He staggered towards Joel.
‘What are you doing to her? Leave her alone!’
Joel shoved him lightly in the chest, and he fell back on the couch. ‘This isn’t Kate, Dec. Kate’s gone.’
‘He’s lying,’ Kate spat. ‘Don’t listen to him.’
‘How long has this thing been feeding on you?’ Joel demanded, pointing at her.
At that moment, she tried to make another break for it, and he opened the box a crack.
A huge ripple of pain seemed to shudder through her body and she collapsed to the floor, thrashing and writhing. Joel smelled burning, saw the smoke rising from her bare flesh. He shut the lid.
‘That’s just a small dose of what’s in here,’ he told her. ‘You know what it is, don’t you? You know what it can do to you.’
‘Stop it!’ Dec shouted at him from the couch. ‘What are you doing? You’re hurting her.’
‘She’s a vampire, Dec. Forget about her.’
The kid turned to gaze at Kate with tears of longing in his eyes. ‘We love each other. We’re going to be together forever.’
‘She’s been living here with you, hasn’t she?’
Dec nodded. He pointed at a cupboard. ‘She sleeps there during the day. I take care of her. That’s how it’s going to be. Nothing you can do about it, get it?’
‘This has to end,’ Joel said. ‘If she keeps feeding on you like this, you know what you’ll become. One of them.’
Tears flooded down Dec’s cheeks. ‘I don’t fucking care any more. I love her, man.’
Coiled in the corner, Kate was slowly recovering from the blast of the cross’s energy. She raised herself up weakly on her elbows. ‘He loves me, you fuck. Leave us alone.’
Joel shook his head. ‘I’m sorry for what’s about to happen,’ he murmured.
Shaking with anticipation, he moved his hand to open the box and take out the cross.
Now he would see exactly what happened when a vampire was exposed to the full force of its power. Kate saw what he was doing and screamed.
But then a thought came to him and he stopped.
‘How did she know where to find you, Dec? Did you tell her where you were?’
Dec just looked at him. Joel grabbed him by the collar of his bloody T-shirt and hauled him off the couch and shook him violently. It was shocking to feel how little the kid weighed.
‘How did she find you?’ he repeated.
‘She just did,’ Dec muttered. ‘I don’t know how. I was here, and she turned up.
Don’t hurt her, Joel. For fuck’s sake, don’t hurt her.’
Joel let Dec slump down again, thinking hard. The idea that was forming in his mind seemed crazy — but in a reality that had already been turned upside-down, even a crazy idea made perfect sense.
He was thinking about the potentially infinite relationship of vampire to victim.
One created another, then on it went down the line, one new vampire after another being endlessly hatched out of the wreckage of its human host. Stone had created the Kate Hawthorne who lay before him now. She was his progeny, eternally bonded to him; and, left to her own devices, the fledgling vampire girl had been about to turn Dec into the next link in the chain. The same connection must exist between every single vampire and each of their victims.
Stone had turned Kate at Crowmoor Hall — that much was clear — and yet he’d been able to find her home in Wallingford. Just as Kate had, in turn, managed to find Dec here.
What was guiding them? Some kind of extra-sensory homing ability?
Clairvoyance? The same nebulous psychic connection that seemed to enable human twins to sense one another’s emotions, even their whereabouts, over distances that defied rational explanation?
Joel took a step towards her. ‘Where’s Gabriel Stone?’ he demanded.
Kate glowered up at him. ‘Fuck you.’
‘Not the answer I was looking for,’ Joel said. He took another step. ‘You want me to open this case?’
Kate flinched violently, slumped back down to the floor and let out a tortured moan.
‘Where is he, Kate? Tell me.’
‘He’s gone,’ she blurted out. ‘Far away from here.’
Against the wall to Joel’s right was a home assembly bookcase bulging with well-thumbed issues of car books, motoring magazines, repair manuals, a few tatty sci-fi and thriller paperbacks. Stuffed in between a Subaru maintenance manual and Classic Supercars was a big hardback world atlas. It looked immaculate and out of place in Matt’s book collection, like an unwanted gift that was only on the shelf out of obligation. Still clutching the case, Joel grabbed the atlas on an impulse and cracked it open, flipped a few pages and laid it flat on the floor showing a double-page spread of the world map. He thrust the book across the carpet under Kate’s nose. ‘You show me where
