he went. And I promise I’ll free you.’
‘Show him, Kate,’ Dec groaned faintly from the couch.
‘Never!’ she spat out.
‘You think he cares for you?’ Joel shouted at her. ‘He’s gone. He was just playing with you. You’ve nothing to be loyal to.’
Kate went quiet, defeated. She looked warily at Joel. Her fangs had receded and, apart from her wild hair and the blood on her chin and hands, she seemed just like any other normal girl again. Joel thought of Alex, and his throat tightened so badly he wanted to scream.
‘Can you do it?’ he asked her.
‘You’ll set me free?’
‘I promised.’
Slowly, reluctantly, Kate sat up and closed her eyes. Her chin sank towards her chest. She began to sway gently backwards and forwards, as if falling into some kind of trance.
Dead silence in the room. Joel could hear the beating of his own heart.
Kate reached a hand out across the open map. Extended her bloodstained index finger. It hovered uncertainly over the pages, wavered back and forth, and for a moment Joel was certain his idea really had been crazy. But then something in the girl’s expression seemed to focus, and her finger landed right on the small shape that was England, leaving a red print on the paper.
‘He travels,’ she murmured. Joel could see rapid darting movement behind the pale skin of her closed eyelids. Then, slowly, like the upturned glass moving of its own accord across an Ouija board in a seance, her finger began to move across the map. It traced a jagged red line of blood from west to east. Joel watched in morbid fascination as the line skimmed the southern tip of the Netherlands, moved across into Germany, then the Czech Republic and on into Hungary. It moved a little more, then came to a trembling halt. Kate’s hand went limp and she slumped back down to the carpet, mumbling something indistinct.
Joel snatched the atlas from her and stared at the spot where the line of drying blood ended. She’d traced a path southeast across most of Europe, all the way to the northern reaches of Romania. The line broke off somewhere in the middle of the Carpathian Mountains.
‘You said something just then. A word. What was it? Kate?’ Forgetting himself, he was about to reach across to shake the girl’s shoulder — then drew his hand away quickly and laid it on the lid of the case so he could yank it open if she went for him. He was too close to this vampire to get complacent.
Her eyes fluttered open and she mumbled it again, more clearly this time.
‘Valcanul.’
The accent she used to pronounce the word sent a tingle down Joel’s back. That wasn’t something she’d learned in school. It seemed to come from some other place, as if the word was being channelled through her. He knew he’d been right. Backing away from her, he shut the atlas and tossed it on a chair.
‘You promised you’d free her,’ Dec croaked from the couch.
‘And I meant what I said,’ Joel replied.
He stared down at the girl on the floor, and she gazed up at him with pleading in her eyes. He was suddenly looking at a normal seventeen-year-old, a pretty girl with red hair and intelligent blue eyes and her whole life ahead of her.
Except he wasn’t.
He opened the lid of the case. Her wild cry filled the room as he reached inside and his fist closed on the cold cross. He drew it out with a shaking hand.
‘Nooo!’ Dec screamed, twisting up off the couch and making a desperate lunge at Joel. Joel sidestepped him, and the kid crashed to the floor with a wail.
Before the cross was even out of the case, Kate’s shriek was dying on her lips.
Joel felt a sudden surge of heat in his fist as the cross seemed to pulse with invisible, ferocious power. Faster than he could register, the invisible force of it hit her. Blew her apart. Obliterated every shred of her being. Like something out of a nightmare, she disintegrated before his eyes.
Then it was over. Her final cry seemed to echo in the crashing silence. Joel looked grimly down at the mess on the floor that had once been a beautiful, happy young girl, and for the second time that night he tasted the harsh sting of vomit rising up in his throat.
Dec was struggling to his feet, ashen-faced and trembling. ‘You killed her.’
‘You can’t kill what’s already dead,’ Joel said quietly. ‘I did what I promised. I freed her.’
Dec nodded slowly, swallowed hard and gingerly touched the wound on his neck.
He looked at Joel. ‘I’m going to become one of them, aren’t I?’
Joel glanced at the cross in his hand. He held it out. ‘Touch it,’ he said.
Dec tentatively reached out and brushed its surface with his fingertips.
‘Take it,’ Joel said softly, and Dec grasped it in his palm.
Nothing happened.
‘I think you’re going to be okay,’ Joel said.
Dec stared at the cross in his hand, blinking in confusion. ‘She bit me. She drank from me.’
‘I don’t know exactly how this works, Dec. She’d only just been turned herself.
Maybe her powers weren’t strong enough. Maybe if she’d come back to you a few more times, drank a bit more…’ He shrugged. ‘You’ve been lucky.’ Already Joel thought he could see a change coming over Dec’s face. Almost as though he’d been freed too, from some kind of hypnotic power that had held him like a fly in a web. Joel laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss. You’ve been brave, Dec. I’m proud of you.’
Dec rubbed the tears from his face with his sleeve. His face twisted in sudden disgust.
‘I’ve been weak,’ he sniffed. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to stop you. I should never have let her in here.’ He handed the cross back to Joel. ‘What is that thing?’
‘Just a little something I picked up on my travels,’ Joel said.
‘Where are you going now?’
‘To take you home to your family. They’re worried about you. After that, I’m going to finish this once and for all.’
‘Let me go with you. I want to be there too. I want to see the fucker who did this to my Kate go down.’
Joel shook his head. ‘This is something I’ve been waiting eighteen years for. I need to do it alone.’
Chapter Seventy
It was a dull early afternoon and clouds were scudding low over the airport terminal as Alex stepped out into the damp Brussels air. She popped a Solazal. Three left in the tube.
She’d been expecting to see Harry Rumble waiting for her in the lobby, but no sign. Then she spotted the gleaming black Mercedes SUV with mirrored windows across the tarmac. The back doors opened simultaneously and two figures she knew instantly were VIA agents stepped out across the car park to meet her. One was tall with thin white hair, the other dark and ruddy. Both were wearing long black coats over grey suits, like bad imitations of police detectives. They weren’t smiling.
‘Where’s Rumble?’ she asked them.
They didn’t reply. She shrugged and followed them to the car. The driver had the engine running and didn’t glance back at them in his mirror as they got in. Alex sat sandwiched between the two sullen agents.
‘So I suppose this is meant to intimidate me,’ she said. ‘The whole silent act.
What do I call you guys?’
The two agents stared fixedly ahead and said nothing.
‘Have it your way. I’ll call you Chico and Harpo. How about that?’
‘He’s Agent Bates,’ the tall, white-haired one muttered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘I’m Agent Verspoor.’
