trancelike. The sound of it startled him out of his half-dreaming state and he opened his eyes. He remembered what Tommy had told him about the strange, psychic, almost telepathic bond that existed between a vampire and its victim.
‘Alex is back in London,’ he repeated, more loudly. Only a wild impulse, but it felt right. He believed it.
Joel grabbed his jacket, burst out of the flat and broke into a fast run that didn’t slacken until he’d raced all the way back through Jericho and the city centre to the bus station at Gloucester Green, from where Oxford Tube coaches ran all through the night to London. Boarding the near-empty 03.10 to Marble Arch, he sat in the back, as far away from people as he could get, and sat with his eyes half-closed, fingering the bottle in his pocket as the bus hummed and vibrated its way down the M40 towards London.
The night had become hard and starry by the time he stepped off at Marble Arch. Walking briskly, avoiding people and trying to stay calm, he flagged down a black cab and gave the driver Alex’s address in Canary Wharf. It seemed like so long ago since he’d turned up at her place, begging for her help, thinking he’d found an ally he could trust.
As the taxi cut across the city, the volume of traffic even at four in the morning made Joel feel acutely aware of the hick Oxfordshire cop he was. Finally, snarled up in a queue at a red light, he couldn’t stand it any more. He flicked a banknote at the driver and flung open the door to make the rest of the journey on foot.
He ran and ran, faster and faster, miles passing under his pounding feet. His energy seemed limitless as he sprinted through the streets, leaping over parked cars, feeling the exhilaration of the night.
To Joel’s amazement, his motorbike was still there, exactly where he’d parked it, apparently unmolested by thieves or vandals. He patted the seat of the Suzuki Hayabusa. The sleek supersports machine, which had once excited and frightened him so much with its speed and power, seemed to belong to a different life. The glass frontage of the apartment building towered up into the night sky, reflecting the stars and the lights on the water. Joel ran his eye up and across, trying to calculate which of its many windows were Alex’s; then he pushed through the revolving door into the reception area and walked up to the desk.
The attendant looked up sleepily. ‘Miss Bishop? Hold on, please.’ Joel waited as he clicked his keyboard a few times. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid it seems that Miss Bishop has moved out.’
‘Did she leave a forwarding address?’ Joel flashed out his police warrant card. The attendant eyed it, then checked on his screen again and shook his head. ‘No, sir, I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’
Joel looked flatly at him for a minute, then thanked him and walked back out through the revolving door. ‘Shit,’ he muttered, back outside. Was this some ruse Alex had set up, anticipating that he’d be bound to come looking for her?
He looked again at the front of the dark building. Yes, he was sure now which had been Alex’s windows. Like most of the others, they were in darkness. No sign of movement behind them, but he still wanted to try. He moved cautiously away from the doorway, out of view of the reception desk. Cameras watched from every angle. He slipped into the shadows at the very foot of the building, and looked straight up at the towering expanse of steel and glass.
The old Joel would have hesitated much longer before making a crazy decision like this. And the old Joel, skilled climber though he’d been, wouldn’t have been remotely capable of scaling the sheer building. The new Joel went up it like a spider, hand over fist, the wind tearing at his hair as he climbed higher and higher. He reached the jutting concrete lip of the first-floor balconies, pulled himself easily over, and moved upwards and onwards. A light came on; he ducked out of sight as a woman in a nightdress padded across her luxury bedroom. He waited until she’d disappeared into a bathroom, then climbed on. In less than a minute, he was peering through the dark window into Alex’s apartment.
Whoever had designed the security for the building hadn’t reckoned on an assault by a semi-suicidal, super- strong burglar coming in the hard way: when Joel cracked the thick reinforced glass with his fist it yielded like an eggshell without setting off any alarms. He reached through the jagged hole, undid the latch and let himself in.
He saw immediately that the receptionist hadn’t been lying. Alex had moved out, and judging by the marks that the furniture had compressed into the thick carpeting, the place hadn’t been vacated for very long. He spent almost thirty minutes combing the empty rooms for even the smallest trace of her, but the place had been stripped bare. She could be anywhere in London — and that was if his feeling was even right.
Joel heaved a sigh. What next? A sudden wave of despondency made him feel like staying here for a while. A long while. He didn’t want to have to go back to work when day came. He didn’t want to have to think, or breathe, or exist. He sank down to the bare carpet, curled up in darkness and prayed for the world to go away and leave him alone forever.
Lying there, he could feel the pressure against his thigh of the near-empty blood bottle in his pocket. And something else. An intense, gnawing, biting, electrifying, jangling, unbearable sensation building up inside him, working its way gradually through every part of his body from the marrow of his spine to the tips of his fingers.
The hunger was getting worse.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The two ghouls were waiting nervously as the chopper touched down on the helipad at The Ridings.
‘Master,’ Geoffrey Hopley croaked, scurrying beneath the spinning rotors to welcome Gabriel, ‘some friends of yours have arrived.’
Gabriel batted him aside. ‘Yes, yes, they were expected. Away with you, now. Lillith, Zachary, bring the human inside and prepare him. I will join you shortly.’
‘Gabriel!’ cried a chorus of familiar voices as he strode inside the hallway of the manor house. He turned, spread his arms in pleasure and greeted each of his trusted old allies in turn. Moustachioed Victor, silver-haired Yuri, the blond and handsome Rolando, the short, swarthy Petroc, fat Albrecht in the fedora hat and the shaven- headed Elspeth had all been part of the Trad assault team that had so effectively destroyed the Federation’s pharmaceutical plant in the Italian Alps. Tiberius, tall and muscular with an air of nobility, had been Gabriel’s comrade during his brief, and in retrospect ill-judged, stint with the Roman Praetorian Guard and they’d remained in contact ever since.
As for Kali, resplendent in the same exotic silks and jewels Gabriel remembered so well, seeing her again evoked many delicious memories from years past.
‘Gabriel, sweet, how long has it been?’ she asked, beaming, her diamond-studded gold bangles jinking as she tenderly stroked his face. ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ she added, and they laughed. It was an old joke among vampires.
‘And you, my dear, are as magnificent as ever,’ Gabriel said, caressing her slender arm with real affection. The dusky, willowy, black-haired Asian she-vampire was, if anything, even more devastatingly beautiful than Lillith. The passionate liaison between her and Gabriel, which had lasted on and off for three centuries, had threatened for a time to cause a jealous rift between him and his sister and was a subject never discussed.
‘You have found a fine new home for yourself, I see,’ Tiberius grinned. ‘We should have expected no less from a vampire of such taste.’
‘Can’t say I think much of your ghouls, though,’ Elspeth said with a sniff. ‘The male one is slow-witted and the female one smells.’
Gabriel dismissed it with a wave. ‘Merely a temporary arrangement. More adequate replacements will be appointed soon.’
‘But tell us,’ said Yuri, looking concerned. ‘You are well? We heard you had been badly injured. Is it true about the cross?’
‘I am afraid it is true,’ Gabriel said. ‘And it grieves me to tell you of the loss of many of our comrades, including Anton and Anastasia. But all is not lost, as you will see. I have devised a plan that will presently turn the
