When he came through the door, Rooke was beyond his rage, locked in Ardeth’s death dance, so Rozokov took what vengeance he could, tearing the gun from the guard’s hands and swinging it against the blank, terrified face.
For a moment he could only stand there, waiting for the red madness to drain away, for the echoes of Ardeth’s anguish to be replaced by the sounds of Rooke’s dying, Mickey’s murmurs to Sara, the strange, distant moans and queries from the far side of the laboratory. When he found himself again, he turned slowly to look around.
Mickey was crouched beside Ardeth’s sister, helping her to sit up. A man lay in a puddle of blood against the far wall. A weeping woman shook the shoulder of another, older man as he sprawled beside her, face down. A dark-haired man was moaning as he tried unsuccessfully to sit up, clutching his shoulder, blood seeping from beneath his hand. Stretched beside the bulk of the console was another woman, her arms around her head.
Rooke’s body was still, dangling from the shattered computer like a limp, useless cable. The scent of scorched hair and smouldering flesh lay under the sweet, heavy smell of blood. And beside him, Ardeth huddled, her face hidden by the fall of her hair.
He moved towards her, pausing briefly as the prone woman lifted her head to gaze up at him, and he looked down into dark, almond eyes. Then he crossed the slippery floor to crouch at Ardeth’s side. When he said her name, there was no response. For a moment he thought it was only Rooke’s blood on her cheek. When he touched it, she winced a little, but the blankness did not leave her eyes.
She was in shock, he realized, shattered by the ultrasound and the aftermath of her savage violence. He plucked away the first shard of glass, then saw the second glittering in her hair.
Behind him, he heard the insistent buzz of the doorbell, then voices over the intercom. He turned to see the oriental woman pulling herself to her feet. “They called the other guards,” she said slowly and Rozokov recognized the voice that had screamed to them over the sound of Ardeth’s pain.
“Can you keep them out?” She blinked distractedly for a moment, then shifted with painful slowness to stand in front of the console. As he turned back to Ardeth, he heard her talking, telling them that Rooke was busy and to return to their posts. If they believed her at all, it would not be for long.
His oldest, strongest instincts screamed at him to take Ardeth and run, praying that the death of Rooke would be enough to end their pursuit. But he knew that it would not. Everything in this laboratory could betray them and beyond it, somewhere in the rest of the house, was the woman whose will had revived the nightmare left unfinished when he fled this house one hundred years ago.
He glanced over at Sara Alexander and saw that she was on her feet. “Sara, take her out of here. Take out all the glass you can find.”
“Glass . . . ?” she echoed in bewilderment, but she was moving already, stooping beside him to touch Ardeth’s arm. Her face paled when she saw the blood and glitter on her sister’s hair and skin.
“You will do her no harm. Go on.” He helped to raise Ardeth to her feet, then surrendered her into Sara’s hands, refusing to look as they limped from the room. “We have to destroy the laboratory. Mickey, do whatever has to be done to the computers.” He waved his hand at the machines he had never used. Mickey stood still, staring at him. “Go on . . . unless you want Sara to be a hostage to this forever.” Under the lash of that threat, the young man moved.
Rozokov stepped past the dying men and shaking woman without looking at them. He found the blood samples in the test tubes and the refrigerator and poured them down the drain, then followed them with the skin samples. A sudden burst of gunfire shocked him around. Mickey stood in front of the row of computers, the guard’s gun clamped against his side, emptying the magazine into the machinery. Rooke’s body jerked each time the bullets swept across it.
As the echoes of the shots died, Mickey looked around with a strange, sardonic smile. The oriental woman eased herself back up from her crouch behind the console. “Is that everything?” Rozokov asked her.
“They recorded the examination and the conversation in the cell. The tape is in the machine here.” She gestured behind her, a vague, distracted movement. “There are other tapes as well, but Rooke has those.”
“Takara!” the dark-haired man said in sudden reproof.
“What tapes?” He stepped closer.
“The movie they made. The asylum afterwards.” She looked up at him, dark eyes unreadable.
“Why?” She shrugged.
“There are monsters, after all. But you are not the worst of them.”
“I should not let you live,” he found himself compelled to point out.
“No. You probably should not.”
The hallway did not seem safe enough, so Sara took the first door that opened. Inside the darkened room, she settled her sister’s unresisting body down on the couch. “Ardeth?” She wished that her voice didn’t sound so small and frightened, that the bloody face and blank eyes staring up at her weren’t so disconcertingly disconnected from any semblance of the sister she remembered. When she took a limp hand in hers, something sharp stabbed her thumb. She forced herself to close her eyes and pull out the thin sliver of glass.
She found more in Ardeth’s hair and hands and down the length of her torso. Ardeth shivered as each shard was removed but she said nothing. She didn’t even close her eyes.
To Sara’s relief, the wounds only wept thin blood for a moment and then seemed to close. She found a cloth by the room’s small sink, dampened it with water, and wiped away the blood that was painted across Ardeth’s face. As she smoothed the last of it away, her sister stirred, blinking slowly. “Sara.” Her hand lifted a little and Sara caught it, leaning closer.
“It’s OK. Mickey and . . .” She paused, groping for a word to define what that grey-haired man must be to Ardeth. She could not find one but remembered a name coming from Rooke’s mouth. “Rozokov came. Rooke’s dead. You’re safe now.”
Ardeth shook her head with sudden strength. “No. We’re not safe . . . not until Havendale burns. Where is he?”
“Back in the lab. I think he and Mickey are destroying it.” She caught Ardeth’s shoulders as her sister struggled to sit up. “You’re in shock. Just rest for a moment.”
“I can’t rest. He’ll go on without me.”
“No one will leave you. Just lie still. You’re not strong enough to move yet.” She tried to soothe her, brushing back the blood-matted hair, her fingers holding tight to the cold hand.
“She’ll be waiting for us. He’ll die if he goes alone,” The hoarse whisper was frantic, the eyes, no longer blank, were wide and frightened. “I have to go with him. I have to be strong enough to go with him.”
“You’ll be alright.”
“I could be,” Ardeth said, as if she hadn’t heard. “I could be strong enough if I had something to,” her voice trailed off. Sara felt her heart constrict suddenly. She remembered the flippant voice from the prison room: “Got any B positive blood?”
She’ll be all right. She’ll be fine without it. She’s just scared and in shock. She’s not thinking clearly. For a moment she clung to the reassuring chorus of refusal, then felt the certainty shred and fade away.
“How much?” she asked carefully at last.
“Not very much. Not enough to hurt anyone.” Sara glanced guiltily at the door, waiting for Mickey or Rozokov to interrupt them. Wishing that they would. But the door stayed closed and she looked back at her sister’s pale, desperate face. There was no sign in her of the cool, savage woman gloating about the night in the asylum. “Sara, if anything were to happen to him, I’d be alone. Forever. These last three months have been like a terrible dream, a dream that terrifies you and thrills you until you can’t tell if you want to wake up or keep dreaming. And it’ll go on and on . . . for years, for centuries, forever. If I lose him again . . .” she shuddered, her grip on Sara’s hand tightening cruelly, “it would have been better for them to have killed me.”
For a moment, Sara wanted to pull away, to retreat from Ardeth’s terror, from the implications of her words. I should have let you stay lost. The thought stabbed through her then dissolved into pain. I asked you to come home. And even if you can’t, I still owe you whatever I can give. “All right. What do I have to do?”
“Just this.” Ardeth drew her hand up, turned it to bare the wrist. “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.” Sara felt the warm mouth touch her skin and managed to hold down her sudden revulsion. There was a brief, sharp pain then nothing but the sensation of pressure and the heat of Ardeth’s mouth. See, no worse than giving blood, she told herself resolutely, no different at all. Of course, there’s nobody to give you cookies and orange juice afterwards but that’s all right, ’cause it really doesn’t hurt at all. . . .
And then the door opened.
I wish to Christ somebody would tell me what’s going on around here, Mickey thought wearily, watching Rozokov and Takara. The air stank of gunpowder, smouldering wires . . . and something worse. His stomach turned over ominously but he decided it didn’t matter—he didn’t have anything in it to throw up anyway. And now on top of everything else, Rozokov was talking about killing more people, including the one who had helped them. Rooke’s voice echoed in his mind: “Of course he killed them. You don’t have any idea what he is, do you?”
She knows though, he thought with mutinous envy, watching Takara’s face as she looked up at Rozokov. But on the heels of that thought came another, darker one: if Takara and the others had to die, what did that mean for Sara and him?
He shifted the gun in his arms uneasily. He had felt a guilty pleasure at his wild destruction of the computers, and even the way it had spooked Rozokov, but what would he feel if the old man said the scientists had to die? And if he didn’t agree, what was he prepared to do about it?
At last, Rozokov smiled sadly and lifted his shoulders in a resigned shrug. “But who would believe you anyway, if you chose to tell the truth?”
Mickey saw Takara’s rigid spine slump in relief. She bowed her head and then stepped past Rozokov to kneel beside the man clutching his injured shoulder. Mickey felt his own shoulders ease down, his death grip on the gun relax.
Rozokov retrieved the videotape, turned it curiously in his hand for a moment before the long fingers broke it in two with chilling ease. He tossed it to the floor by Rooke’s body and looked at Mickey. “Is there more ammunition for your weapon?”
Mickey looked down at the sub-machine gun still clutched in his hands and fought the urge to laugh. He’d emptied the clip into the computers, his finger frozen to the trigger by his terror of losing control of the deadly thing jerking in his hands. Good thing you didn’t have to make any big moral decisions . . . not with only an empty gun to enforce them. He dropped the weapon and retrieved Rooke’s gun from his belt.
He looked back at Rozokov. “There’s just this.”
“Come, then. Let’s find Ardeth and Sara.”
As he left the room, Rozokov behind him, Mickey heard voices rising in argument, Takara urging flight, a man suggesting they just lock the door again and wait for the police. I’m with you, lady, Mickey thought with an inward grin. But nobody ever listens to me either.
Ardeth and Sara weren’t in the hallway, so he tried doors until one opened beneath his hand and he stepped inside. He saw Sara first, face turning towards him as the light from the hallway spread across them. Ardeth was stretched on her side on the couch, holding Sara’s hand against her face. As she lifted her languid gaze, Mickey saw her eyes spark red.
Like a lion looking up from a kill. The thought seared through him, burned away the half-hearted rational explanations struggling to form in his mind. Images flashed by with quick-cut intensity: Ardeth’s eyes in the alley, Rozokov sleeping beneath trees, his strange, sharp-edged smile. On the sound track was Rozokov’s voice . . . and Rooke’s . . . and Takara’s. They called them vampires—they still do. . . . Of course he killed them, that’s what he does. . . . There are monsters, after all.
Ardeth released Sara’s wrist and wiped her mouth.
“Sara . . .” He managed her name then heard a sound behind him. He spun to face the dark figure outlined against the door.
“Now you know.”
“You,” Mickey began, then caught his breath, fumbling for the words and for some way to make his mouth say them. “You’re vampires.”
“Yes. I told you that, as best I could. As best I dared.” His voice was too damned reasonable so Mickey made himself look at Ardeth, sitting slowly beside Sara. The hot, angry loathing that he had felt for her after Rick’s death returned.
“You were drinking her blood.” Deny it, he thought desperately. Please just deny it.
“That is what we do to survive. But she has done her no harm,” replied Rozokov in his quiet, seductively sane voice.
“She drank her fuckin’ blood!” The gun came up before he knew it, pointed futilely at the centre of Rozokov’s chest. This won’t work, this won’t stop him, Mickey thought dizzily, but he couldn’t move his hands, they were frozen holding the deadly, ridiculous toy like a talisman between them.
“She’s my sister,” Sara snapped. As if she were angry at him—as if he were being unreasonable. “I said she could.”
“You said she could?” he found himself echoing in disbelief. “And that makes it just fine that they’re . . .”
“Monsters?” Rozokov’s voice was dark with sadness, edged in old pain. “Rooke’s word. Perhaps he is right. But ask yourself, have I harmed you in any way? Have I lied to you?”
“Because you needed me,” Mickey flung back at him, aware that the muscles in his arm had started to tremble, that the gun barrel was wavering between them.
“And if I were a monster, would I need your help? Would I have asked for it? Mickey, if you shoot me in the chest, you will do me no particular damage. If you mean to destroy me, between my eyes would probably do it.”
The gun shifted upwards, almost by itself. Distantly, Mickey heard Ardeth’s angry protest and Sara saying his name. He fought the shaking in his hands and let the gun’s aim settle somewhere in the centre of the narrow face. Kill him, kill it, some primal part of his brain whispered. Kill it before it kills you. Then he remembered the silence in the van, watching Ardeth walk away through the darkness, remembered the moments of the quiet humour, the brief, sidelong smiles, the sad shrug as he gave Takara back her life.
“We do not have much time. Kill me if you are going to.”
He felt his finger spasm, cramp against the trigger. His adrenaline-soaked nerves, the ancient, terrible fear in the pit of his stomach urged him to kill the thing, to drive out the darkness in the flash of gunpowder. But . . .
But he had no proof that Rozokov really was a monster. He had no proof of anything at all. Except that if he surrendered to the violent, terrified thing in his mind that demanded the death of anything different, anything whose face did not reflect back the known, familiar lines of prejudice and certainty, then Mickey would have more proof than he had ever wanted that he was no more than a torch-wielding peasant, a pinstripe reactionary bigot hiding under a leather jacket.
He let the gun drop and closed his eyes.
“Come,” Rozokov said softly.
Ardeth stepped onto the narrow beam, moving her eyes from Sara’s teetering figure to watch her own feet settle easily onto the four-inch board of wood. For a moment, she waited for dizziness to unbalance her . . . but felt nothing. She could do this easily now. Her body, this new thing of blood-driven sinew and will could do it, could do anything.
She started to walk, the close, dark heat of the attic seeming to clear her head, to thaw the chilly core of dislocation that had held her frozen since Rooke’s death. She had followed Rozokov and the others blindly, accepting his decision to try the upper storey when it became apparent they could not reach the other half of the house from the ground floor. When the upper hallway had ended in another reinforced steel door, Mickey had found the trap door to the unfinished attic.
Her feet paced out the path of the board between the seas of ancient, decaying insulation. It didn’t matter to her that the dirty, fly-specked window kept out most of the moonlight, but she could see Sara easing her way carefully along the plank, nearly blind, arms outstretched with the unconscious grace of a tightrope walker.
How long had it been since Rooke had arrived at the door of the cell? Ten minutes? Twenty? She wasn’t sure how long she had been in shock—or if she were truly out of it. She could still feel the echoes of the explosions that had stunned her; one when Rooke’s head had breached the vacuum of the computer screen and the first, the stronger, when she held him in her arms and the wild hunger had blazed through her like a star going supernova. It had left a black craving in its wake, pulsing far away in the darkness inside her.
Ardeth thrust that image aside and forced herself to concentrate on moving forward. There were still things that had to be done . . . and thanks to Sara she had the strength to do them. That was all that mattered. She couldn’t afford to drift into either indifference or madness.
Ahead of her, Rozokov and Mickey were crouched on a small patch of solid floor, peering downward. Sara joined them in two long strides, Ardeth bent beside them a moment later.
“Hear anything?” Mickey asked and Rozokov shook his head. He reached down and lifted the board covering the trap door to the attic slightly. Ardeth saw a faint light edge the wood but there was still no sound. He lifted it higher, drawing it slowly up to rest on the floor beside him. He lay still for a moment, head bent, then slithered forward, and his torso disappeared into the trap. After a moment, the grey head resurfaced.
“All clear.” He sat up, swung his legs into the hold, then vanished. Ardeth heard a faint thump as he reached the floor. Sara went next, dangling with her fingers gripping the edge of the trap until Rozokov caught her legs and brought her down. Ardeth followed Mickey, tugging the board back into position as Rozokov held her up to reach the nine-foot ceiling.
Feet back on the floor, she glanced up and down the corridor. At one end, dark wood gleamed in the soft light, the banisters that lined the stairs down to the ground floor. Two sets of closed doors faced each other across the hallway, the shadows in their frames unbroken by light. Ancient wallpaper garlanded by faded roses covered the walls but the wine-red carpet beneath her feet was lush and barely worn.
At the far end of the hallway was one last door. No light seeped through its dark defences but Ardeth knew. She looked at Rozokov and he nodded.
The carpet swallowed their footsteps and brought them to the door without a whisper. Rozokov’s hand closed over the polished brass knob. Ardeth caught her breath, panic and eagerness closing her throat.
The door shuddered with a sigh and let them in.