the Satie relaxing. But as she reclined on the sofa with her eyes shut, trying to let the tension ease from her muscles, she knew she didn’t feel safe here any more. As much as she loved the place, with its spacious rooms and views over the river, there was no way she could stay here. It was the first place Joel would come looking for her.
The phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. Alex flashed out an arm and grabbed it from the coffee table. She immediately recognised the crisp, efficient tones of Miss Queck, one of the admin staff at VIA’s London office. ‘Agent Bishop, your presence is required at base.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’ Queck ended the call.
‘Bitch,’ Alex said. She looked at her watch. If she moved fast, she could be at the office just after midnight. She sighed, then flipped herself up, catlike, from the sofa, scooped another remote and Utz McCarthy’s 9mm pistol from the side table and trotted up the polished aluminium spiral staircase that led to her bedroom. The floor-to-ceiling mirror at the far end of the room slid aside at the touch of a button on the remote. She strode through into the large hidden space beyond the glass.
The concealed weapons store was filled with racks of firearms of various shapes and sizes, mostly high-velocity semi-automatics compatible with the Nosferol-tipped rounds produced by the Federation munitions-manufacture division for its VIA personnel. Alex preferred something a little more potent than the standard issue: across one wall was the crowded work-bench where she prepared her own special handloaded cartridges for the massive .50 calibre Desert Eagle pistols she personally favoured for their unstoppable penetration and sheer knock-down power. Combined with the horrific effects of Nosferol on a vampire’s system, it made the pistols the most formidable weapon in her, or anyone’s, private arsenal.
Discarding Utz’s comparatively feeble 9mm on the bench, she took one of the matching Desert Eagles from their wall rack, snatched up a loaded magazine and rammed it into the grip. She slipped on her well-worn calfskin shoulder holster, clipped the pistol snugly into place against her left side, and headed back into the bedroom, using the remote to close up the weapons store behind her.
She selected a long suede coat from her wardrobe, put it on and looked at herself in the mirror. Fashionable without being too distinctive. In her job, it was important to blend into the human crowd – and the coat hid the gun perfectly. Alex nodded to herself and trotted back down the spiral staircase. She grabbed her handbag and VIA ID from the table in the hallway.
Sixty seconds later she was riding the lift down to the neon-lit underground car park. Her sleek black Jaguar XKR fired up with a throaty blast that echoed through the concrete cavern. She reversed hard out of her parking space, hit the gas and her tyres squealed as she sped up the ramp and out onto the deserted night street.
She cut westwards across the city. The VIA offices were twenty minutes’ drive with a human at the wheel. She’d be there much sooner.
Wallingford
Around midnight
Once the strip of light under his bedroom door had gone dark and he could hear the rhythmic snores of his da through the wall, Dec crept out of bed. He was fully dressed again, though this time he’d had no intention of falling asleep that way.
He paced across the dark bedroom and, as quietly as he could, unzipped the sports bag that contained his prized new acquisition. After his visit to the Wallingford public library earlier that day, he’d driven straight to the computer superstore on the edge of town and picked out a shiny new laptop.
Nigh on four hundred quid, courtesy of Barclaycard. He’d worry about the payments later. If his ma and da found out what he’d done, they’d give him hell. But you couldn’t be a modern-day pro vampire hunter without your own state-of-the-art computer, and he was proud of his new piece of kit: the very first item – and by no means the last – in the inventory of Dec Maddon & Associates, Vampire Hunters Ltd. He didn’t know who the associates were going to be yet, but it had a good ring to it.
The second vital piece of equipment he’d acquired was the fifteen-year-old Audi parked outside in Lavender Close. On his return from the library that day, Dec had – with some difficulty – managed to persuade his da to loan him one of the knackered old runarounds the mechanics used at Maddon Auto Services until his VW Golf was back on the road. The Audi rattled like a tin can full of marbles and smoked like a factory stack, but it was wheels. Couldn’t hunt vampires without wheels.
Dec lifted the laptop out of his bag, laid it softly on his bed and pulled up a stool to sit on. He plugged in a pair of earphones before turning on the machine, angling the screen away from the door so its glow wouldn’t be seen from outside. Where the ancient library computers had struggled to download anything bigger than a few bytes, the fancy new machine zipped online with incredible speed. Dec googled up the URL for Errol Knightly’s website, www.theylurkamongstus. com, and clicked.
The screen momentarily blacked out, plunging the bedroom into darkness; then out of the blackness a pair of sinister red eyes materialised, staring at him. Dec swallowed, uncomfortably reminded of his nightmare.
Beneath the eyes, an animated line of script appeared in crimson font. Dec’s earphones filled with creepy, chilling music and a deep voice narrating the lines as they appeared in turn before dissolving away into a gleaming red pool.
THEY LURK . . .
THEY WAIT . . .
THEY WANT YOUR BLOOD . . .
AND THEY’LL COME FOR YOU . . .
TONIGHT
Dec’s jaw dropped open. He shuddered.
Then a hand landed on his shoulder and he almost fell off his stool. He whirled round, ready to let out a scream of terror.
He’d been so transfixed by the website that he hadn’t noticed his brother creep into the room. He tore off the earphones and flipped on his bedside lamp. ‘Christ, Cormac!’ he hissed furiously.
‘What’s this?’ Cormac demanded, pointing at the screen.
‘Shush. Keep your frigging voice down.’
‘Where did you get this computer? What are you doing?’
‘Fuck off,’ Dec rasped at him, shutting the lid of the laptop. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘Still going on about fuckin’ vampires, Dec? Is that why you’ve started wearing that cross again?’
‘They exist. They’re out there. And I’ve got to do something about them, so I have. Or else . . .’
‘Or else what?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ Dec said darkly, a quaver to his voice.
‘Catch yourself on, bro.’ Cormac jerked his chin at the curtained window, in the direction of the house next door. ‘Listen. I’m just as gutted about that poor wee girl as you are. But friggin’ vampires . . .?’ He shook his head. ‘You keep goin’ on about this stuff and Ma and Da are going to have your scrawny wee arse put away in the loony bin, so they are. Look at the state of you – big dark rings around your eyes like a friggin’ panda.’
Dec pointed a warning finger at him. ‘You’ve got no idea what’s happening, Cormac. None of you have.’ He snatched up the laptop and started bundling it back into his sports bag.
‘Where’d you get the dosh for that thing, anyway?’
‘None of your business,’ Dec muttered, slinging the bag over his shoulder and heading for the door.
Cormac stared after him. ‘Fuck d’you think you’re off to this time of night, wee man?’
‘Keep out of it, all right? I fucking mean it, Cormac.’
‘Right.