Minto jerked round in astonishment, her eyes opening wide. ‘Alex! I … I wasn’t expecting …’
Alex walked up to her. ‘Door was open. Got to be careful. There are bad people around.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Utz McCarthy told me you made it out. I came to see how you were.’
‘I wasn’t there when it happened,’ Minto said. ‘I was one of the first ones to go in, after … oh, Alex, it’s so awful. And the word is that Supremo Angelopolis …’ She shook her head. ‘I’m so glad that you didn’t get caught up in it.’
‘I would have been, if I hadn’t been called away on urgent business,’ Alex said. ‘Not that any of it matters now.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Minto said. ‘Everything’s in ruins.’
‘Too early to say. All I know is that right now, it’s every vampire for herself.’ Alex smiled, but it was a hard smile. ‘You should know something about that, Jen.’
Minto gave a puzzled frown. ‘What do you mean by that remark?’
Alex perched on the arm of the sofa opposite. ‘Things have been kind of hectic for me lately,’ she said. ‘You might even say I’ve been a bit rushed off my feet, with one thing and another. Which is why certain little niggly details might have slipped my mind. Careless, I know.’
‘That’s normal enough,’ Minto said, still frowning. ‘Working for VIA takes its toll on the best of us.’
‘Little niggly details like, for instance, something you said to me the day I got back from Romania,’ Alex said.
The lines in Minto’s brow had deepened to corrugated furrows. She kept glancing at the door and her breathing had quickened a fraction. ‘I don’t understand, Alex.’
‘I think you do,’ Alex said. ‘I think you understand exactly what I’m saying. Remember what you told me? You said, “And Xavier Garrett? He was one of them?”’
‘But he was.’
‘Yes, he was. The whole time Gabriel Stone was mounting his uprising against the Federation, Xavier was his spy inside VIA, feeding him all the juicy little bits of information he needed. We lost a lot of good agents because of him. That’s why I put a bullet in the bastard at the conference in Belgium. But the funny thing is, Jen, I never said a single word about any of it to you.’
Minto’s face flushed. ‘No … no, I know you didn’t. It was Cornelius who told me about it.’
‘Kelby?’ Alex shook her head. ‘Kelby couldn’t have known about it either, because the one and only place I ever mentioned it was in the confidential field report I sent directly to Brussels HQ, and the one and only person who ever saw it was Olympia Angelopolis herself. Given some of the stuff I wrote about, I know for a fact she wouldn’t have shown it to anyone else. So, any other ideas where you might have heard about Garrett, Jen?’
Minto said nothing.
‘You know, Jen, it’s less than twelve hours since our whole organisation got fucked sideways by something that’s been hidden away for hundreds of years and hardly anyone could have seen coming — and you haven’t even asked me what it was.’ Alex smiled that hard smile again. ‘That’s because you already know all about it, don’t you? Because Xavier Garrett wasn’t Gabriel Stone’s only mole inside VIA. He had an accomplice. Someone who knew all about the attack, exactly when it was coming, and was able to get out of the way just before Ash arrived there with the cross. Oh, and not to mention letting Stone know where I’d gone in Wales, so that he could send his goons to assassinate me. That made me feel so important.’
‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ Minto gasped.
‘Really?’ Alex stood up and whipped the Desert Eagle out of her bag. Minto’s eyes bugged at the sight of the gun. Alex came a step closer. With a
Minto opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a strangled croak. Her eyes strained sideways to stare at the gun muzzle pressed against her head.
‘The Federation might be finished,’ Alex said, ‘but there’s still some Nosferol left in this world. A nice fat hollowpoint full of it, about eight inches from your brain, to be precise. I’ll ask you one more time: where’s Stone?’
‘They were all at Lonsdale’s place in Surrey,’ Minto blurted out. ‘But Gabriel left there last night.’
‘You’re making progress. Where did he go?’
‘Switzerland!’ Minto said, her voice rising in pitch. ‘Baxter Burnett’s place in Switzerland. That’s all know, I swear!’
‘Good enough for me,’ Alex said. ‘See you in vampire hell, Jen. This will only hurt for a minute.’
Minto yelped in terror. ‘But you said you’d give me a chance!’
‘A chance to redeem yourself, sure. Not a chance to talk your way out of this. We’re way past that.’
‘No! Please!’
‘And by the way, your buddy Gabriel would
Alex didn’t blink as she pulled the trigger. Even before Minto’s throes of agony were over and the mess had spattered across the living room carpet, she was heading through the front door and walking back out into the street towards the parked Jaguar.
‘Well?’ Joel said as she climbed in behind the wheel.
‘We’re going on a trip,’ she said, firing up the engine.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Baxter Burnett had bought the luxurious, rambling three-floored chalet, perched high over the mountain valley, from an Austrian industrialist billionaire who’d used it as a hunting lodge. Taking pot-shots at curly-horned wild goats in a blizzard had never been Baxter’s idea of fun; whereas entertaining two or three star-struck wannabe actresses at once by a crackling log fire was much more in his line, and with a little imagination and a lot of hard cash he’d transformed the place into a perfect haven of hedonism and debauchery. Gabriel Stone was unimpressed by the movie star’s lamentable taste in art, and even more so by the tubes of Solazal he found in the bedside drawer and promptly tossed in the fire — but the chalet would do very nicely for a few weeks, as a base from which to celebrate the success of his mission.
It was eight thirty and the night was cold. Standing on the balcony overlooking the valley, Gabriel breathed in the crisp mountain air and looked out across the stillness at the twinkling lights of towns and villages in the distance. The heavy snow had come early that year, capping the tops of the pine forest. Stars were shining in their millions; the Milky Way laid a luminous wash across the whole white landscape.
Far below, a vehicle was tracking its way slowly along the winding valley road. Gabriel watched its progress like an eagle surveying its prey. He imagined the humans sitting inside, cradled in the warm blast of their heater, listening to their music, completely oblivious of the predator’s eye on them from high above. Nobody out here in the snowy wilderness would have heard their cries for help. And they would never know how lucky they were to have reached their destination that night.
As Gabriel watched the vehicle disappear behind the trees, a pair of willowy arms encircled him from behind and Kali’s tousled black hair nestled against his shoulder.
‘Hmmmm,’ she sighed happily. ‘It’s so good to be here, just the two of us. Like old times.’ She kissed his ear. ‘Do you remember the old days, Gabriel, sweet?’
‘With as much fond pleasure as I look forward to the glorious times yet to come,’ Gabriel said, stroking her hair. ‘Get dressed, Kali. The hunting hour is here.’
Access to Baxter Burnett’s top-of-the-range cable car was from a custom-designed boarding station on the
