It was exactly the sort of thing that gobshite, Major Cael West, would have done.
James clenched his jaw. He could hardly suggest that to anyone. No-one would believe him for a start. Well, they might if he fanged up in front of them, but James couldn’t think of a single scenario where that ended well.
‘You said you’d found Alicia Jarret too,’ said James suddenly to the DI. ‘Was she like him?’ He gestured towards the corpse. ‘No blood?’ At Bakare’s look he added, ‘I’m a doctor and I was a combat medic for six years. Give me some credit.’
Bakare blew out his pent-up breath. ‘Yes she was. Stuffed into a drainage outlet. Throat lacerations. No blood.’
Gabriel trembled. James could practically feel him vibrating from where he stood. He took Gabriel by the elbow and steered him away from the horror.
When James noticed that the scent of vampire blood was following them, he realised that they were in fact following it. He peered around and saw the smudges of blood along the footpath, dripped against the kerb as well. He tried to lead Gabriel away from the path he was unwittingly following, but Gabriel wouldn’t change course.
‘He bit his attacker, did you see?’ asked Gabriel.
‘What?’
‘Ben’s mouth had blood on it. All in his teeth. Well, I think it was blood. Odd coloured, dark, but blood I think.’
‘How did you see that?’
‘I’m an artist, James. I notice things, especially colours where they shouldn’t be. Ben’s mouth was all smeared with the wrong kind of red. You did see, didn’t you?’
Well, bugger. This is turning into a right guddle, isn’t it, Granda?
‘Aye.’
‘Good, because there’s more of it all along this street.’ Gabriel nodded at the smudges of blood on the concrete.
James realised with alarm that their path was not coincidental after all. ‘We should leave this to the police.’
‘Right. Yeah. Because they’re so keen to find out who’s actually doing this and stop the killing. Obviously it should all be left in their safe hands.’
‘Gabriel–’
‘Datta has had it in for me from the day we met, and it’s so bad now that Bakare stopped to eliminate me first before doing a proper investigation. Do you know how many people have gone missing from the streets in the last month? Six. Six people, James. I didn’t know all of them, by the way, if you’re asking.’
‘I’m not asking.’
‘But Ben knew some of them. So did Hannah. Now Daryl Mulloway, Ben and Alicia are all dead and Hannah’s missing. Whatever is going on isn’t stopping, and Bakare and his team don’t give a shit. Nobody will give a shit until it’s someone they think matters.’
‘You think that someone has to be you?’
Gabriel snorted his opinion of that comment. ‘I’m nothing to them, James. You can see that. But I’m fucked if I’m going to just sit around and wait for the next murder. We’ve got an opportunity here. A literal trail. I’m going to bloody well follow it and see if I can give Bakare something concrete to chase, at least. You don’t have to come if you’ve got something better to do.’
Gabriel strode off, keeping his eye on the drops of blood as they led him into a side street.
James followed, hoping that Gabriel would lose the trail, but he didn’t. That worried James more than everything else combined, because he was pretty damned sure that nobody could follow a vampire’s trail unless the vampire wanted to be followed. Hell, a human bite would hardly still be bleeding this far away from the scene in normal circumstances.
Normal. Christ. What does that even mean anymore?
James kept at Gabriel’s heels, wondering what the hell to do with that thought. They were being led into a trap. But why was someone baiting Gabriel like this?
And it had to be Gabriel they were after. They were targeting Gabriel’s friends. Even with the whiff of Cael West about the whole hideous thing, West had no connection with Gabriel. Anyway, West was in Afghanistan, if he was around at all. And if he wasn’t, he’d be after James, not James’s new tenant. It didn’t make any bloody sense.
‘James, are you coming or not?’
James didn’t pick up his pace. ‘They’ll be long gone, Gabriel.’ But he wasn’t optimistic.
‘No, no, the blood’s fresh. Oh, through here.’ Gabriel darted into an alley. James followed.
The fact that the sun was setting was neither here nor there, James knew. Vampires were perfectly capable of operating in the daylight, supernatural strength and senses undiminished. Being a vampire didn’t stop you having psychosomatic health problems, either. Being a vampire didn’t make you as all-powerful as it looked in all those stupid films. It didn’t make you smart.
But being a vampire did make you fast, and deadly.
Gabriel vanished in front of James’s eyes, plucked straight up into the air, feet kicking against the sudden pull, hands scrabbling at his scarf tightening around his throat.
James took three running steps and leapt straight up, wrapping one arm around Gabriel’s waist, the other hooked into the scarf to keep it from choking its owner. James twisted his body as he seized Gabriel, an action that wrenched him from the grip of the man on the roof of the lock-up and they fell together, spiralling six feet to the street.
James landed first and bent his knees into the landing, absorbing the shock and bringing Gabriel down with him. He heard the other vampire land behind them and released Gabriel instantly, whirling to face the threat. There was nothing for it. Gabriel would see whatever he would see, because it was too late and too dangerous to hide anything now.
The vampire leapt at him, and James, instead of ducking, threw himself shoulder-first to meet the attack. The vampire grabbed his arms and used the leverage to flip himself right over James’s head, landing elegantly in front of Gabriel Dare and sending James sprawling.
‘Hello, Mr Dare,’ said the vampire in a silken voice. ‘You finally found the trail. It took five killings for you to notice one I’d laid.’
‘A trail,’ Gabriel repeated, puzzled, before his voice flattened to a darker tone. ‘A trap. For me?’ He scowled. ‘You’ve been killing them to get to me? You utter fuck.’
James scrambled up. You’ll have noticed his teeth by now. You should be terrified. But of course you’re not. You have no idea what you’re looking at. He cast about for a weapon, preferably something pointy, but anything would do.
‘Well, you’re a stop on the way to where we want to get,’ the vampire was saying, ‘and the opportunity for proper kills for the first time in a hundred years was too good to pass up. I love the struggle from the feistier humans. I have so missed the taste of that, and feeling really, properly, full.’
‘Human?’ Gabriel was unable yet to make sense of it.
Any answer was lost when the vampire took an impossible vertical leap as James’s fist, wrapped around a discarded crowbar, whistled through the space he’d occupied a moment ago.
‘James, what–’
‘Down!’
Afterwards, Gabriel was able to reconstruct events from strobe-like memory.
How the stranger landed beside him, grabbed his shoulders and bared long, sharp teeth as he lunged for Gabriel’s throat.
How James thrust his arm between those fangs and Gabriel’s neck, taking the bite in the forearm, and swinging a crowbar