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Original art by Rob Pegler.

Chapter 1

Gammon House, Outskirts of Roseburg
8:17 AM

Some houses look like murder sites, whether they actually are or not. Gammon House had always been one of them.

The stately old manor sat on its own (greatly diminished) plot of land about thirty kilometres from the center of Roseburg City. Like so many of Roseburg’s other cultural landmarks, it had fallen into disrepair over the last few decades. No one had lived in – or seriously looked after – the place for at least thirty years, and it looked like it. It personified the word “tumbledown.”

The history of the house was equally disordered. It was rumoured – and actually regarded as fact by many of Roseburg’s citizens – that Miles Gammon, the wealthy landowner who’d built the house, had butchered his entire family with an axe before hanging himself in the sitting room back 1874. This crime of passion was evidently triggered by Miles’ wife Emily taking up with a local chicken farmer. The story was not even remotely true, of course – Miles had in fact died from tuberculosis, whereupon Emily Gammon had sold the house, moved to France and gone on to become a famous novelist and notorious opium addict. People generally liked the murder story better.

Which was why the events of the previous night were, for all their grisly violence, hilariously ironic.

Inspector Jeremy Deagle reflected on this as he stood on the ramshackle front steps of the manor, smoking a limp cigarette and trying to keep the drifting rainfall off his jeans. The forensics team had shooed him outside the moment he’d started looking for his lighter. He didn’t mind – there wasn’t much he could do until Cobb arrived anyway, and outside the house was definitely the place to be right now.

He looked up as the growl of an aging engine caught his ears. A 1973 Chevy Nova came into view, pulling around the winding driveway from the front gates. Deagle tossed his cigarette, hunched his shoulders and trotted out through the light rain towards the car as it pulled up near the overgrown lawn. You didn’t wait for Inspector Cobb, you went to meet him.

Cobb climbed out of the car with a faint grunt, slipping his hat on. The hat was a fedora, which didn’t exactly go with the knee-length brown corduroy coat he wore over his tweeds. Inspector Jacob Cobb was sixty-three, and an embarrassment to the Roseburg police force. Not for his conduct, but for his dress sense.

“So what have we got?” he asked, running a hand over his bristling moustache. “All I’ve heard so far is ‘disturbance’ and ‘bodies.’ Start filling in the blanks, kid.” He kicked the door closed and strode towards the house.

“Uh, yeah . . .” Deagle hurried to keep up. “Guy passing on the road last night called in the disturbance just after midnight. Said he heard gunshots from the house, maybe some screaming. He’s not sure, it was windy, and he–”

“We’ll accept that there was screaming,” Cobb decreed. “Move on.”

“Right. Uh, a unit was dispatched, checked the perimeter and found the place locked up tight. Then they went around back and found two bodies in the garden. Looked like they’d been there a while, though.”

“How so?”

“Um. They were . . . green. Anyway, they eventually got inside, and found nine other bodies.”

Cobb’s stopped short, eyebrows hitching upwards. “Nine?”

“Plus the two outside. So, eleven. Scattered all over the house.” Deagle weighed up this last sentence in his mind, and decided he wasn’t happy with how it had come out. “I mean, they’re not scattered. They’re all in one piece, but . . . well, except that one guy . . .”

Cobb was already walking up the steps. Deagle hurried to follow.

The first two bodies they saw were in the front hall, laying on the carpet about six feet from one another. One was sprawled with limbs outflung, the other was curled up in a huddled ball. They were both dressed in dark street clothes, heavy coats with jeans and workboots, and the spreadeagled one wore a grey woollen hat. Apart from that it was impossible to tell anything about them. Cobb couldn’t accurately determine their age, build or – beyond the sizes and styles of their clothing – even their sex. They were too badly decomposed.

The lab rats poring over the bodies looked equally baffled. One of them, a red-haired woman of about thirty, looked up as the two detectives approached. “Inspector.”

“Corinn,” Cobb returned. “What’s this all about, then?”

“You tell me,” Corinn sighed, fiddling with a tiny pair of forceps. “We’ve got three bodies in here . . .” She nodded towards a darkened corner of the room, where another huddled shape could be seen. “ . . . two out in the garden, one in the kitchen, and five in the ballroom. And most of them,” she added, indicating the rotting corpses at their feet, “look like these beauties.”

Cobb looked down at a sunken husk of a face. The body was near-skeletal, little more than parchment skin stretched over bone, though not as dried-out as one would expect. The forehead was caved in on the left side – it looked almost like an entry wound, except . . .

“How long have they been here?”

Corinn looked sideways at him. “Depends.”

Cobb sighed inwardly. And though he tried to avoid it, outwardly as well.

“If you mean, how long have they been dead,” Corinn explained, “then that’s simple enough. Based on decomposition, local climate being what it is, then this one’s been dead at least eight or nine months. His friend here,” she motioned towards the curled-up corpse nearby, who appeared to have a stab wound through his back, “looks to be even older than that.” She raised a rubber-sheathed index finger.

“But?” asked Cobb dutifully.

“But,” Corinn went on, “if you want to know how long they’ve been lying here, then I’d say less than a day. And the clothes are too fresh to have been on a couple of rotting corpses all that time. Besides, the wounds are post mortem. Recent, in fact.” She turned away from the bodies, peeling her gloves off. “It’s the same for most of the others. Death looks to have occurred anywhere between six months to two years ago, but none of them were in their current locations prior to yesterday. And they all have fresh injuries. Mostly head and chest wounds. So, to sum up–”

“Someone took a dozen old cadavers, dressed them in fresh clothes, shot and stabbed them a lot, and then dumped them in this old house?” Deagle suggested.

Corinn smiled. “You’re the detectives, boys. You figure it out.”

Cobb turned to look back at the man – if it was a man – splayed on the carpet behind him. Taking a step closer, he sank down onto his haunches (a slight grunt the only indication that his knees were feeling their age) and leaned over to peer at the desiccated face. Lifting a hand, he reached out and gently pushed the upper lip back, exposing the teeth. They were in much the same condition as the rest of him.

Deagle cleared his throat. “Uh, Cobb? You can’t–”

“You said most.”

Deagle blinked. “What?”

Cobb was still inspecting the dead man’s teeth. “You said most of the other bodies are in this condition,” he said to Corinn. “Any that aren’t?”

“Uh, yeah. One of the ones in the ballroom. Good old-fashioned recently dead guy. Although . . .” She scratched the back of her neck. “With him, it gets a little more interesting.”

Cobb lifted his hand, letting the rotting lip slide down over the blackened teeth. “After you.”

The ballroom was an ornate but dilapidated chamber, with paint peeling off the once-pristine walls and a carpet of dust and filth all over the hardwood floor. A rusted chandelier had apparently fallen from the roof at some point and been pushed into a corner. Judging by the dozens of smears and footprints in the dust, the room had been the site of some recent and violent activity. Not to mention the five dead bodies scattered about the place. Most of them were, as Corinn had said, similar to those in the front hall – rotted and inexplicably injured bodies dressed in hard-wearing street clothes. But near the center of the floor, laying on his back staring lifelessly at the ceiling, was the man who was a little more interesting.

He was around forty, tall but stocky, with close-cropped dark hair and a goatee. He wore a heavy black wool coat and dark jeans, with steel-tipped boots. A metal cross on a chain, probably a little big for simple jewellery, was laying on his barrel chest. His skin was ashen, and the scar running down his right brow, crossing over the corner of his eyelid, was just one of several old wounds.

He had a lot of new ones, too.

Laid out near the body, in evidence bags, were several weapons. The most prominent of the two were a large, bloodied knife and an old-fashioned revolver. There was a garotte as well, along with several small phials of some unidentified clear liquid. There even appeared to be a couple of sharpened sticks. Cobb ran his eyes perfunctorily over the weapons, before turning his attention back to the body.

“Broken neck,” Corinn pointed out, indicating the odd angle of the head. “That was cause of death, by the looks of it. But there’s these as well.” She balanced on one foot, pointing with the toe of her shoe at a torn patch on the dead man’s leg. The denim had been ripped open, and a jagged wound could be seen underneath. “He’s got about half a dozen. Leg, both arms, shoulder and throat.”

Cobb looked closer. “Animal bites,” he said, without conviction.

“Yeah,” Corinn nodded. “Animal bites. Unidentified.”

“And no trace of any animals,” Deagle added. Corinn ignored him.

Cobb stared down at the body. “Finally slowed down, eh?”

Deagle frowned. “You know this stiff?”

Cobb nodded. “In a manner of speaking. This is Lazarus Pope.”

Deagle and Corinn exchanged looks. “I know the name,” Deagle replied. “Got involved in some kidnapping cases a couple years back. He’s a P.I. or something, right?”

If Cobb ever smiled, he would have done so at this point. “That’s what he put on his driver’s license.” Turning from the body, he crouched again to take a closer look at the bagged-up weaponry. “No ID on the others, I take it?”

“Not yet.”

With a grunt, Cobb slipped his hat off and smoothed back his thinning hair. “There won’t be. Trust me, we ain’t getting to the bottom of this one. Clear up the mess, inform next of kin . . .” He rose to his feet, putting his hat back on. “ . . . and focus on cases we can actually solve.”

And without another word, he turned and walked back towards the front door. Deagle and Corinn exchanged looks as he left.

It was only after he’d driven away that Corinn noticed he’d taken one of the evidence bags.

Chapter 2

Rackham Junction Station, Downtown Roseburg
Three days later
8:03 PM

Dick Haughman was late. He hated being late.

No . . . no, fuck that. He wasn’t late. The fucking train was late. It had left Sundry City more than ten minutes behind schedule, and then there was a delay at some interchange halfway to Roseburg, and now they were pulling into Rackham Junction forty minutes after they should be. He had a meeting with the club owners at eight-thirty, and now he was going to be late and look like an idiot because a bunch of morons couldn’t do something simple like drive a fucking train. What the fuck was the transport company spending all those exorbitant fares on? Those stupid green uniforms, probably. Somebody was going to hear about this.

He pulled out his cellphone and tried calling Missy again. And again, she didn’t answer. Just that stupid message where she sounded like a phone sex chick and told the caller she was having too much fun to talk right now. I mean, professionalism, Missy. Jesus Christ. Clients had that number. And answer your fucking phone, already.

Dick stuffed the phone back into his jacket and tried to calm down. He didn’t make a lot of progress on this, because the train wasn’t making a lot of progress in just pulling up to the platform and stopping, for Christ’s sake. He looked at his fauxlex. It was 8:09. Twenty-one minutes until the most important meeting of his life, at least this week, and the cab drivers in this city were even more incompetent than the train drivers. Come on.

The tall, lanky passenger sitting across from Dick shifted in his seat, snorting and wiping a hand across his face. Dick had spent much of the trip trying to decide if the guy was homeless. He looked homeless – dirty cargo pants, old boots, ragged coat. He had a hood pulled up over his face, a dark face lined with a short but unkempt brown beard. Also, he smelled. Not as bad as someone who lived on the street, but bad enough. And if he was homeless, then what the fuck was a homeless guy doing on an intercity train? Had he just wandered aboard to sleep it off? Didn’t they check tickets?

The train finally ground to a stop on Platform 4, and the driver’s tinny voice came over the PA to inform Dick that they had, at long last, arrived at Rackham Junction Station. The driver was halfway through wishing him a pleasant evening and thanking him for travelling with them before Dick was out of his seat and halfway to the door, briefcase in one hand and coat slung over the other arm. The lights above the platform gleamed on his sweaty forehead as he jostled his way past another passenger and swept out the sliding doors. Behind him, the bearded man with the hoodie climbed wearily out of his seat and pulled a heavy backpack down from the overhead compartment.

Dick made his way through the cavernous expanse of the main station at a fast walk, muttering all the way. There weren’t many people around, just a dozen or so other passengers getting off his train, and a few staff hanging out by the ticket office. He made a beeline for the escalators at the far end, and was thinking about trying his phone again when it started ringing. Without breaking stride, he awkwardly pulled it out of his jacket and answered it.

“Dick? Where are you?”

“Where am I?” he snapped back, jogging up the escalator. “Where the fuck were you?”

“You on your way?” Missy wanted to know.

“Just got off the train. Are they there yet?” Reaching the top of the escalator, Dick power-walked past the rest rooms and started down the long, broad tunnel that led to the station exit.

“Yeah, they’re here. What do you mean, you just got off the train?”

“Long story, never mind. I’ll be there in half an hour, assuming I can get a cab driver who speaks fucking English. Until then, you keep them entertained. I don’t care how. Flash ‘em some cleavage if you have to.”

He almost heard Missy roll her eyes. “They’re women, Dick.”

“Then talk about shopping or something, I don’t care.” Dick rounded a corner and approached the steps leading up to the street. “Point is, don’t let ‘em–”

He came to a halt as his way to the steps was blocked. Looking up at the intruder with an irritable glare, Dick saw a petite young woman with short red hair, and sharp dark eyes set into a porcelain face. She wore a bright red tracksuit jacket zipped up to the neck, little black PVC shorts and knee-high boots. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and was quite possibly the sexiest girl Dick had ever laid eyes on.

He sensed another presence, and glanced back over his shoulder. Two young men had appeared behind him. One was tall and rake-thin, with a shaved head and a black sweater over torn jeans. The other was short and pudgy, clad in a t-shirt featuring some nu metal band Dick had never heard of. Both of them were smiling.

He turned back to face the girl, who regarded him with a passive air. “Wallet,” she said.

Dick frowned. “What?”

The girl sighed delicately and rolled her eyes. There was a blur of movement, and before he knew what was happening the four-inch platform heel of her boot rebounded off Dick’s left cheekbone. The tunnel whirled around him as he fell, his cellphone clattering to the cement floor.

“Give us,” the girl elaborated in a bored tone, “your wallet.”

Dick pushed himself up, shaking the fireworks out of his head. “What the fuck are–”

The boot lashed out again, landing in his ribs this time. He lifted a couple of inches into the air before flopping back to the floor, his ribs screaming and his lungs emptied of breath. He wouldn’t have believed a girl so tiny could kick so hard. She looked like he could pick her up with one hand.

“Never mind,” he heard her mutter. “I’ll get it myself.” A small hand yanked his jacket back from his shoulder, searching through the inner pocket until it found his wallet.

Dick reached for his cellphone, but it was no longer there. The short fat kid had picked it up and was holding it to his ear, a goofy grin on his face. “Who? Oh, sorry honey, Dick can’t come to the phone right now. We’re beating the shit out of him. Yeah. So what are you wearing?”

Dick tried to pull himself up, tried to shout for Missy to call the police. The words died unbidden as the tall skinny one swung a bony but suprisingly powerful fist and punched him back into the floor. A stream of blood sprayed from his mouth and spattered the floor.

“Spilled some,” he heard the girl say. He was grabbed by the shoulder and flipped over like a rug, landing heavily on his back. Before he could move, the girl stepped over and sat on him, straddling his stomach. Dick lay there and fought to focus his eyes as she nonchalantly grabbed his wrist and removed his watch, tossing it to the skinny guy. Nearby, the fat kid was going through his briefcase. The girl looked down at her victim, the ceiling lights framing her beautiful face like a halo. “So what else you got?”

Dick managed to grab a rasping breath. “Nothing,” he coughed. “That’s all I have.” A little more blood trickled down his cheek.

The girl’s lips parted into a smile, a gleaming grin full of perfect white teeth. Dick frowned as he noticed her long and very sharp-looking canines.

“Aw, sweetie,” she cooed, her eyes glimmering a dark shade of crimson. “That’s just short-sighted.”

Still smiling, she started to undo the knot on his tie. Dick felt he ought to stop her, but he was transfixed by her fangs. She had fangs. That was just fucking stupid. Wasn’t it?

He was still pondering this a moment later when there was a surprised shout somewhere on his left, and a faint whirring sound, and something shiny and metallic and very very fast came spinning out of nowhere and hit the girl in the side of the head. Her smile froze even as her eyelids fluttered in a horribly convulsive way, and she gently keeled over sideways and slumped to the floor, one shapely leg still draped over Dick’s chest.

He turned his head and looked over at her. She lay on her side with her head tilted into the floor, smile gone now, a little trickle of blood running over her cheekbone and down beneath her nose. A slim metal spike was sticking out of the right side of her head.

And then her face began to collapse. As Dick looked on her skin wrinkled and sagged, her cheeks fell in on themselves, her eyes shrivelled and fell back into her gaping sockets. Within a few seconds the skin was tearing and crumbling away, exposing the yellowing skull beneath. Dick felt the leg on his chest grow lighter as it withered away to mummified bone.

Pushing himself up, he scrambled backwards on his hands, kicking away from the rotting body. The girl was little more than a skeleton now, bits of crumbling bone falling away into dust.

The sound of running feet caught his ears, and he managed to tear his eyes away from the horrible spectacle before him. The bald skinny guy – who, like the girl, was growing balder and skinnier by the second – lay huddled against the wall nearby. Standing over him was a tall, bearded figure in a hoodie, a metallic baseball bat clutched in his hand. His attention was not on Dick, but on the short fat mugger who was bolting back down the tunnel towards the station. Dick had never seen anyone move so fast.

“Tell Johnny I said hello!” the man in the hoodie shouted after him. He turned and gave the withering body at his feet a gentle nudge, as if making sure it was dead. It was only then that he appeared to notice Dick.

Dick shied back against the wall as the man took a step towards him, holding out a hand. It took a second or two for Dick to realise that his wallet and fauxlex were in it. Hesitantly, he reached up to take them back.

The man in the hoodie glanced back down the tunnel, where the fat kid had vanished. “Um . . . I think that guy took your phone.”

And with that he picked up his fallen backpack, shoved the baseball bat into a sheath on the side, shouldered it and walked away up the steps, stepping over the dead girl who was now little more than a pile of clothing and mouldering bones.

Dick clambered back to his feet, finally finding his tongue. “Hey . . . hey, wait a minute! What the fuck is this? Who are you?”

The man in the hoodie kept walking, without looking back.

“What’s going on here?” Dick shouted. “Are these guys real? What the fuck happened to them?” He stared desperately up the steps as his saviour vanished from sight. “Who the hell is Johnny?!”

Chapter 3

The Renfield Building, Central Roseburg
9:14 PM

And night fell on Roseburg.

Spawned from a tiny copper mining town around the start of the nineteenth century, the city of Roseburg – or “Rottenburg,” as many of its citizens would have it – hadn’t grown so much as spread like a rash. No matter how hard the city fathers worked to improve and modernize the place, it seemed to constantly rot from within. Shiny new buildings stayed shiny and new for about six months before they began the rapid slide into dereliction. Immigrants worked hard to make new homes and set up thriving businesses, only to end up hopelessly in debt, homeless, or worse. It was as if the city was infected with some wasting disease, and all anyone could do was keep topping up the painkillers. In fact, the only residents of Roseburg doing well at all were the vampires.

As evening settled into night proper, in a lavish penthouse on the top floor of the famous Renfield building, one Roseburg vampire who’d always done especially well was hosting a dinner party. It was nothing grand, just a dozen or so of his favourite sycophants, plus invited partners. Formal dress was optional, which meant everyone was wearing it.

Dinner had drawn to a close, and the limp and drained bodies of several young men and women were being cleared off the table by a pair of ghoul manservants. Two others were taking away the vacated chairs, while the remaining guests sat back and dabbed delicately at their bloodied chins with embroidered napkins. Their attention was on their host – prominently seated at the head of the table – as he came to the conclusion of another of his sparkling anecdotes.

“ . . . und so der priest asked me, ‘My son, do you renounce Satan?’ Und I told him, ‘Now, my good man, dis is no time to be making enemies’.”

Polite laughter rippled around the table. Most of the listeners had heard the story before, more than once. Several of them were well aware that it wasn’t true – he’d stolen the quote from Voltaire – but they laughed anyway. When Johnny Fantôme was of a mind to be witty and urbane, it generally paid to find him so.

No one could accurately state how many vampires there were in Roseburg – they had yet to be recognised as an ethnic group in the local census – though it was generally accepted, by those who accepted their existence at all, that there was at least one vampire for every hundred humans. This put their numbers at approximately twenty-five thousand across the greater metropolitan area, the largest concentration of resident undead in the western world. They were a social people – with a few notable exceptions, most Roseburg vampires belonged to one of the Five Clans – but they were also very competitive. Warfare of varying intensity was commonplace between the Five Clans, as were infighting and power struggles within them. It was a messy business, but there was a definite pecking order amongst the city’s undead, and for the last forty years Johnny Fantôme – as head of the dominant Krasnayaruka Clan – had been at the top of it. He had obtained (and, more to the point, maintained) this lofty position by a combination of diplomacy, brutality, prudence, and stubbornly refusing to die and let someone else have a go. He was a handsome chap, and had been for nearly four hundred years now. This made him little more than a thirtysomething in comparison to the great vampire lords of the Old World, but was certainly enough to guarantee him seniority in Roseburg. And vampires respected nothing more than seniority.

Puffing rogueishly on his second cigar of the evening, Fantôme was preparing to enchant his guests with the tale of how he’d first arrived in Roseburg with “nothing to declare but my genius,” when a silent figure appeared at his left shoulder and leaned to whisper in his ear. The silent figure was tall and pale, with cropped blonde hair, and dressed in the type of sleek black suit normally seen on undertakers or people who work for “another agency.” Johnny listened to the message as it was conveyed, and gave a little sigh.

“I apologize,” he beamed at his guests. “Dere is a matter in the kitchen vich requires my attention. Please, talk amongst yourselves.”

And with that he stood up and strode out of the room, his black-suited henchman falling into step behind him. As they left the room, the assembled guests gave a collective sigh of relief.

Fantôme stepped through a set of double doors and into a tastelessly ornate corridor, where elaborately gilted wood panelling clashed shamelessly with art deco furniture and minimalist modern art. Like Fantôme himself – with his slick forties-style haircut, pastel suit, silk waistcoat and wingtips – the penthouse was a mishmash of various fashions that had come and gone over his long existence. One of the disadvantages of living for centuries was that you had so much more time in which to become tragically unfashionable.

“He arrived downstairs about ten minutes ago,” the black suit was saying. “He’s spent most of that time babbling.”

“Vot did you say his name vos?” Fantôme asked.

“Tarquin,” was the reply.

“Mm-hmm. Vich vun is Tarquin?”

“Local youngster. Been turned less than a year. He’s one of Celeste’s little toadies.”

“Right,” Fantôme nodded. “Vich vun is Celeste?”

The kitchen was an expansive and very modern feature of the house, all shiny steel and clean lines and well-organised utensils. It was easy to maintain a room that was hardly never used. There were presently two vampires occupying the kitchen, although one look would tell you that it was highly unusual for this particular pair to find themselves in the same room. One of them was a statuesque and exquisitely beautiful woman with pale skin and long blonde hair. She wore a little black dress under a sleek velvet jacket, and dangerous-looking black boots. She leaned back against one of the steel counters with a sublime conceit, a tiny smile playing on her perfect lips as she stared down at the room’s other inhabitant sitting by the sink.

The other inhabitant tried not to stare back. He was a short and pudgy creature wearing a grubby rock t-shirt, and gingerly dabbing at a large bruise on his forehead. In his other hand, he was nervously toying with an expensive cellphone.

Both looked up as the Fantôme swept into the room, followed by the vampire in the black suit, who hung back by the door. The woman in the black dress moved to stand beside him, and the resemblence between them – both in looks and attitude – was all too apparent. Both looked on with a kind of supercilious indifference as their master moved towards the visitor.

“Now,” he beamed. “Tarquin, isn’t it? Good to see you again, lad. I vos just saying to Kolya how long it’s been since old Tarquin dropped in. Vosn’t I, Kolya?”

The black suit gave a barely perceptible shrug.

“So,” Fantôme went on, leaning against the counter in a casual and approachable way. “To vot do ve owe der priviledge, old son?”

Tarquin swallowed, hurriedly slipping the stolen cellphone into a pocket. “Uh . . . s-sorry to interrupt you, Mister Fantôme, but–”

“Not at all,” Fantôme assured him. “Alvays happy to keep in touch vith the troops. Now vot’s on your mind?” This last was delivered with a faint “get to the point” edge to it.

Tarquin, not usually the brightest penny in the purse, managed to pick up on this. “We’ve got a problem,” he replied earnestly. “There’s a new guy in town. Ran into him at Rackham Junction. Came out of nowhere, like fucking lightning. He took out Celeste and Remmy . . .” He faltered. “I . . . I think he might be a professional.”

Fantôme took all of this in with a solemn nod. “Mm-hm. Und vat did this ‘professional’ look like?”

“I dunno,” Tarquin murmured. “He had a hood on. And . . . a beard. Carried a baseball bat, I think.”

“Ah,” Fantôme smiled across the room at his two attendants. “Sports fan.” The woman, at least, smiled back.

“Vell,” Fantôme went on. “Thank you for bringink dis to our attention, Terrapin.”

“Tarquin.”

“Of course. Is good to know dat ve haf such vigilance in our little clan.”

Tarquin smiled nervously, rising to his feet. “Well, I thought you should know.”

“Absolutely. Oh, vun thing . . .” Fantôme scratched his chin in a thoughtful way. “Vhere did you say dis happened?”

“At Rackham Junc–” Tarquin began, and stopped himself just too late.

“So,” Fantôme mused, “Am I to understand dat you und your little chums haf been picking people up at der train station again?”

Tarquin had gone slightly pale. His mouth worked silently as he tried to come up with a suitable reply.

“Because I’m sure I told everyone dat newcomers vere off-limits.”

Fantôme’s face was as sunny as ever, but Tarquin noticed that the temperature in the room was rapidly dropping. He also noticed that there was only one door, and Kolya and his sister were standing in front of it. “Well,” He swallowed hard. “I mean, Celeste . . . she said that if they’re new in town, then . . . well, nobody would . . . miss . . . them . . .”

Fantôme sighed, a fatherly and disappointed sigh. “Tristan–”

“Tarquin.”

“Yes. Ve’ve been over dis. You can’t just go grabbink people off train platforms der moment dey arrive in town. A city like dis is like . . . a farm. Ve are der farmers, humans are like der cows. Does der farmer slaughter der cows und make hamburgers der moment dey come off der truck?”

Tarquin had only been a vampire for ten months, and prior to that had grown up in the backstreets of Roseburg where the largest livestock one would encounter was a feral dog. “Er . . . yes?” he hazarded.

“No, Turpin. He puts der cows in der pasture. Lets dem grow fat und multiply. You see? Ve haf to let newcomers establish demselves. Settle down und make babies. Contribute to der economy. Ve haf to let der crop ripen. I keep sayink dese things. Honestly, lad,” he placed a gentle hand on Tarquin’s shoulder. “Are your ears painted on?”

Tarquin was opening his mouth to reply when the room spun around and his head was slammed sideways into the metal bench. Before he knew what was happening there was a flash of steel and an eruption of searing pain along the left side of his head. His mouth opened in a shriek which was, appropriately enough, ear-splitting.

The hand on his neck was released, and he slid off the bench to fall sobbing to the floor. Through the crimson waves of pain in his head, he heard Fantôme say, “Hmmm. No, dat vun was attached in der usual vay.”

Fantôme dropped the bloodied kitchen knife into the sink. “Let’s try dis again, shall ve?” Holding the gory appendage up to his mouth, he spoke directly into it. “Stay avay from Rackham Junction. You heard me dis time, yes?”

Tarquin, hand clutched to the side of his bleeding head, managed a nod.

“Good boy,” Fantôme muttered, dropping the ear into its owner’s lap. “Run along now.”

The two vampires by the door stepped elegantly aside as a whimpering Tarquin passed them at a fast stagger, clutching his ear in a bloody hand.

Fantôme turned to wash his hands under the tap. “Kolya,” he called over his shoulder. “Get in touch vith Moorden und tell him his guest vill soon be arrivink. Sasha, find der lad und keep an eye on him.” He reached for a towel, delicately drying off his hands. “It’s goink to be a busy veekend.”

Down in the lobby, a young couple waiting at the elevator stepped hastily aside as the doors open and a snivelling Tarquin staggered out, his neck and shoulder covered with blood. Halfway across the lobby to the front doors, he heard a tinny little tune playing. A moment’s puzzled investigation proved that it was coming from his pocket.

With a frown, he pulled out the stolen cellphone, slid it open and hesitantly held it up to his remaining ear. “H-hello?”

“Hey!” snarled the harsh voice on the other end. “This is Dick Haughman! I want my phone back, motherfucker!”

With a terrified wail, Tarquin threw the phone away and barged through the doors, stumbling away into the night.

Chapter 4

Roseburg City Morgue
9:08 PM

“What was the name again?”

“Pope. He came in three days ago.”

“Poe?”

“Pope.”

“Uh-huh.” The man in the white coat and the Ramones t-shirt leaned a little closer to the monitor, squinting through his glasses as he tried to read the information displayed on it. “Lazarus Pope?”

“That’s him,” said the bearded man in the hoodie.

“Uh-huh.” The morgue attendant sat back, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “What about him?”

The hooded man blinked. “I want to see him.”

The attendant blinked back. “Why?”

The hooded man gave him a look. “I’m next of kin.”

The attendant glanced at the screen again. “He’s already been identified.”

The hooded man let out a long sigh, leaning his knuckles on the desk. “He’s my father,” he said quietly. “I’d like to see his body.”

The attendant sat and jiggled his leg for a moment. “Yeah. Alright. Whatever.” He tossed a clipboard onto the desk. “You need to sign in. What’s your name?”

The hooded man pulled a pen from his pocket, pulling the clipboard around to scribble down a signature. “Gabriel Pope.”

The attendant led the way down a long corridor, whistling tunelessly. As they approached the doors at the far end, Gabriel Pope spoke up. “This may sound like an odd question, but, um . . . he hasn’t moved, has he?”

He attendant didn’t even break his stride. “Moved?”

“Yeah. Shifted around, moved his limbs. Made noises. Anything like that.”

The attendant kept his eyes trained firmly on the doors as they approached. “No. He hasn’t moved. They don’t move. Dead bodies don’t do that.” He pushed the doors open a little harder than was necessary. “I don’t care what you’ve heard.”

The body was stored in a drawer on the left side of the room, three up and six across. The drawer gave a tortured squeak as the attendant dragged it out of the locker, revealing a bulky shape covered by a grubby white sheet. Without ceremony, he grabbed the top of the sheet and flicked it back, uncovering the face of the body beneath. “Lazarus Pope,” he announced.

Gabriel stood and stared down at the pallid, bearded features. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

“Uh-huh.” The attendant nodded, standing with his hands in his pockets.

A moment later, Gabriel looked up. “Could you excuse me?”

“What?”

“I’d like some time alone.”

The attendant frowned. “Oh. Yeah. Whatever.” He turned and walked back towards the front office, hands still in his pockets. “Lemme know when you’re done.”

As the doors swung closed, Gabriel turned his attention back to the body. He stood and stared for a while, not moving, as if memorizing the face, or perhaps remembering it.

Eventually he turned and sank into a crouch, opening up the flap of his backpack. And he set to work.

He began by washing the body. It had been cleaned up already, he could see, the blood washed off, the wounds and incisions carefully stitched, but that wasn’t the point. Besides, they probably hadn’t used the same water he was using. It was clear and cold and had come from a long way away, wrapped carefully in a metal flask at the bottom of his backpack. He used a sponge and a dry cotton cloth, working his way from the head down.

This done, he laid out the items he’d brought, placing each one with care. He gently lifted the head with one hand, slipping a silver chain over it and bringing it down around the neck. Attached to the chain was a large silver crucifix, expertly carved, which he placed reverently on the dead man’s chest. Lifting the arms, he folded the cold white hands over the stomach, and in them he placed a dowel, about eight inches long, smoothly carved from ash. It was sharpened to a razor point at one end.

Finally, he reached into the pocket of his coat, and produced a silver hip flask. It was stamped with an image of a wolf, and brand new. Unscrewing the cap, Gabriel slowly took a sip from the flask. Then, replacing the cap, he placed the flask in the body’s hands along with the wooden stake.

He was still for a while, looking over the body, as if making sure everything was in order. Then he raised his right hand, gently placing it on the dead man’s cold white forehead.

Lowering his head, he closed his eyes and whispered under his breath.

“Quod eras sum, quod es ero.”

Then he raised his left arm above his head and, in one swift motion, rammed a knife blade into his dead father’s chest.

The Fisher Building
9:57 PM

The old Fisher Building squatted like a fat old man on the corner of Romero Street and Waggner Avenue. Thirty years earlier the expansive ground floor of the building had been the site of Fisher’s Books, and the faded old sign was still there above the boarded-up front windows. But the front door was still in use, and now bore another, smaller sign.

It was more than eighty years now since Malachi Pope and his old comrade Moses Downwright had come back from the Great War and hung up their shingle as private detectives, dedicated to investigating the more unusual cases that frequently cropped up in a town like Roseburg. The premises had changed a number of times but the business went on, kept haphazardly afloat by two succeeding generations of Popes. Moses Downwright had died in the early Sixties and his descendants had little interest in the business, but his long-standing financial support had ensured his name would always be on the company logo.

Gabriel Pope gave the sign a quick polish with his sleeve as he entered.

The ground floor had long ago been stripped bare, although there was a storeroom out back that was still full of old books. Some of them might have been worth something, to anyone who had the time to dig through the mouldering stacks. The main room of the old store was empty but surprisingly clean, although it needed a fresh coat of paint. The elevator – so old it had an antique dial above the doors, although the arrow was missing – was located near the back of the room, behind where the counter had once stood. The elevator still worked at least seventy-five per cent of the time, but Gabe took the stairs anyway.

He emerged on the third floor, into a dingy narrow corridor lined with doors. Once used as office space by a variety of small businesses, most of the rooms in the Fisher Building were now empty. A few squatters lived on the second floor below, and some of the rooms on the fourth were used as storage space by enterprising locals. Downwright & Pope had the third floor all to itself.

The office was located in the northeast corner, last door on the left. The company logo was rendered in chipped black paint on the front window. Gabriel tried his old key and, not greatly to his surprise, found that the locks had changed. With barely a pause he produced a set of lock picks from his backpack, and had the door open in seconds.

He reached for the light switch without missing it in the dark, and the room was illuminated by several hanging fixtures on the ceiling above. It was a fairly large room with a hardwood floor, lined with windows to the north and east. A door in the northwest corner led up a staircase to a small apartment above. Bookshelves lined the south wall beside the door, creaking under the weight of tomes from the instructional to the mildly arcane. A large cabinet, glass-fronted but covered by paneled doors, stood in the northwest corner.

The main fixtures of the room were two desks, one parallel with the north wall, the other with the west. The northern desk was newer but almost certainly cheaper, and was apparently belonged to someone who regarded it as little more than a convenient place to put things down. Books, stacks of paper, coffee cups, pencils, and various odds and ends cluttered the top of the desk, several of them with a fine coating of dust. The chair behind it was old, creaky and covered with something resembling leather. Behind this desk was another cabinet against the north wall, sturdy and firmly locked.

The other desk was much older – an antique, it fact – but clearly the domain of a professional. A large pedestal desk, beautifully crafted from ash, it supported a fairly modern computer, an old rolodex, neat stacks of paper stored in aluminum trays, and four different plants. In fact, the desk was surrounded by plants of one type or another, from a tiny cactus in a miniature pot to a bonsai tree next to the monitor, to a couple of tall Dracaenas in the corner behind it. They gave the desk a rather cluttered appearance, clashing with the fastidious organization of its other contents. The chair behind it was modern and ergonomic.

Gabriel dumped his backpack next to the door and walked into the room, looking around and taking the place in. With the exception of one or two elements, it hadn’t changed at all.

Turning his eyes to the cabinet against the west wall, Gabriel moved towards it. As he turned, a flicker of movement came from the pedestal desk behind him.

The doors on the front of the cabinet weren’t locked, but were usually kept closed for the benefit of sensitive clients. They swung open to reveal a glass panel and, behind it, the hollow eye sockets of a skull. It wasn’t a human skull, which was how it had ended up in the cabinet, though it vaguely resembled one. The pointed teeth, slanted sockets and lack of a nasal cavity were something of a giveaway.

On the shelf beside the skull stood a small statuette, depicting a naked young woman tied to a stone obelisk. It looked like a cheap fantasy art rendition bought from an internet store, until one noticed the moving eyes. Behind this, a large jagged claw mounted on a wooden base. On the shelf above, a tiny humanoid figure with horns and a tail, pickled in a jar. And the inventory went on – a gruesome collection of trophies and oddities, collected over the decades by several generations of Popes during their ventures in the dark corners of the world.

Gabriel leaned closer. There were a couple of new items on the shelves.

Behind him, something was happening to the desk with the plants. The panelling at the front was bulging outwards, as if something behind it were trying to push through. A smaller wooden protrusion extended out from the bulge, extending out of the woodwork and onto the floor. As it extended, it took on the shape of a leg.

Gabriel turned and moved towards the north side of the office, heading for the other desk. He stooped to pick up some papers that had fallen onto the floor, thumbing through them before returning them to one of the disordered stacks.

The leg was followed by a wooden arm, long and sinuous, pulling a shoulder and torso behind it. The rest of the body followed—slender, graceful and unmistakably female in shape. As the figure drew its final limb from the unbroken woodwork of the desk, it became flesh and blood, lithe and pale. Green-brown hair fell around the smooth shoulders as the head was raised, luminous green eyes peering across the room at Gabriel’s back.

Gabriel picked up a ledger from the desk in front of him and turned to the last page, paying close attention to the names.

The woman from the desk slowly rose to her feet. She was clad in a short tunic of sorts, pale green in colour. As she slowly brushed her hair back, rose petals drifted to the floor.

Taking two silent steps back, she reached over the desk and slowly drew out a hatchet made from engraved silver, the handle bound with strips of leather. Hefting it in her right hand, she padded silently across the room on bare feet.

Gabriel closed the ledger with a snap, dropped it onto the desk, sighed a weary sigh, and turned around just in time to see the hatchet being raised.

He managed to duck, one hand shooting upwards to catch the slender wrist of her attacker before the blade could descend. His other hand shot out in a punch, bushing her cheek as she twisted out of the way. Her right leg swung upwards, aiming a knee at his groin, but he twisted to block it with his thigh. He almost had the upper hand until she stepped back and yanked his arm around, one dainty foot catching him in the ankle. Losing his balance, Gabe went head over heels and came down hard on his back. Without missing a beat the woman dropped onto him, one knee on his chest, the keen edge of the hatchet pressed under his chin. The large green eyes stared down at him, narrowing as they studied his face.

“Gabe?” she said.

Gabriel, in spite of everything, managed a tight smile. “Hi, Mel.”

She frowned. “Where’ve you been?”

Gabe sighed, not especially easy with a knee stuck in one’s chest. That was Mel all over. Where’ve you been? she asked, as if he’d just stepped out the door that morning. He’d been gone seven years.

“Europe,” he replied. “Mostly.”

She nodded. “Oh.”

Gabe waited, but that was it.

“Think you can ease up on the axe?” he asked.

Mel’s eyes moved towards the hatchet blade resting against his throat. After a longer pause than he felt was appropriate, she replied, “Okay.” The hatchet and knee were slowly removed, and she rose to her feet. “I think refreshments are in order.”

Chapter 5

The Fisher Building
10:15 PM

“So, how’d you find out?” Mel asked, handing over a steaming cup of something resembling coffee. “I didn’t know where to contact you.” She perched on the edge of her desk, her green nightie now covered by an amber-coloured dressing gown, and sipped her herbal tea. “Didn’t even know which continent you were on.”

Gabe leaned back in the creaking leather chair. "News travels," he shrugged. “The vampires have got their own networking sites. I was at a cafe in Çerkezköy and I started reading posts about how it was safe in Roseburg now because ‘that Pope fuck’ was dead.” He slurped his coffee, his eyes drifting towards the silver hatchet, resting on the desk beside Mel. “So do you take a swing at all your visitors these days, or was that just for me?”

Mel smiled for the first time since he’d walked in. To say she was attractive would have been to demonstrate a rare gift for understatement – she was five foot ten and willowy, with elfin features and hair the colour of light moss. Her flawless skin had a pale golden tint and a tendency to glow, and her almond-shaped eyes were the colour of a forest stream. People meeting her for the first time were often rendered speechless for a moment, but once they found their tongues words like “breathtaking,” “sublime,” and even “ethereal” had been bandied about in her presence. Mel ignored most of this, since the adulation usually came from human males and she was well aware that, by the standards of her own people, she was a 7½ on a good day.

Which didn’t change the fact that when she smiled, it was like watching the sun come up on a spring morning. Gabe would have thought he was accustomed to it, but then he hadn’t seen it in seven years. He tried not to catch his breath too loud.

“Sorry, kid,” she sighed. “Ever since word got out . . . well, it’s been open season around here. We’ve got a lot of valuable stuff in the office, not to mention all the trophy hunters.” She looked down. “Been to the morgue?”

“Yeah.”

Mel nodded, and left it at that.

Gabe slurped his coffee again. “So. Any leads?”

Mel looked up. “Maybe. You sticking around?”

“For the time being.”

She sighed. “He was at Gammon House. That’s where they found him.”

Gabe’s eyes narrowed. “That’s Okhotniki territory. Is Moorden still in charge out there?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Mel replied. “They’ve allied themselves with the Krasnayaruka in the last few years. Moorden doesn’t change his socks these days without Fantôme telling him to.”

“Well, we’ll deal with Johnny if we have to,” Gabe muttered. He took another gulp of coffee and stood up. “But we can start by paying Moorden a visit.”

Mel frowned. “Now?”

“Sure.” Gabe picked up his coat. “Why not?”

The almond eyes flicked towards the darkened windows. “You’ve been back in town five minutes and you want to go storming a clan HQ in the middle of the night?”

“Yeah,” Gabe smiled, pulling the coat on. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

Mel smiled and put her cup down. “Let me reintroduce you to the sofa.”

The apartment above the office was about the same size, but far messier. An open lounge and kitchen was joined by three chipped wooden doors to a dingy bathroom, a tiny study and a cluttered bedroom. All three had their own interesting odours.

The furnishings in the lounge area consisted of a battered leather sofa, two mismatched chairs, a coffee table and a rickety end table. The carpet had long ago forgotten what colour it was, but might have tended towards green if pressed on the matter. Bookshelves lined two walls, filled with the same type of books as those downstairs, while windows on the other wall did their best to let the light in during the day. The wall by the door was almost completely papered with newspaper clippings, maps, sketches and photos. It looked like the sort of room where conspiracy theorists met for support group meetings.

“You remember the sofa, right?” Mel asked, as Gabe put his backpack down. “Gabe, sofa. Sofa, Gabe. I’d offer you the old man’s bed,” she went on, nodding towards the darkened bedroom, “but he only owned one set of sheets and didn’t have much time for laundry.”

“The sofa’s fine,” Gabe sighed. “I slept on the damn thing for six years, I can go one more night.”

Mel nodded. “There’s a spare duvet in the bedroom closet. And I think there’s still some stuff in the fridge if you’re hungry. I’d avoid the stuff at the back, though. He didn’t have much time for cleaning out fridges, either.” She turned and started back towards the stairs. “'Night.”

“Goodnight,” Gabe returned, pulling his jacket off.

A moment later Mel stopped, strode back into the room, and threw her arms around Gabe’s neck. Caught off guard, he could only stand there with his arms still trapped in the sleeves of his jacket as she gave him the stiffest and most awkward hug he’d ever witnessed or experienced.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” she said into his ear.

“Um,” Gabe managed. “Thanks.”

“And it’s really good to have you back.”

Gabe tried to wriggle an arm free in order to reciprocate in some small way. “Same here.”

Disconnecting, Mel patted him on the cheek. “We’ll talk in the morning.” And with that, she left the room at a fast walk.

Finally extricating his arms, Gabe folded the jacket and dropped it on top of his pack. This was followed by several long moments of uncomfortable standing about, which he ended by sitting on the sofa.

Half a minute later he stood up again, and went to have a look at the bookshelves.

It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for – they were in the same place as always, at the far end on the north wall. They occupied two and a half shelves at eye level – a seemingly jumbled collection of journals, of various sizes and coverings, purchased at a number of stores over several years. Despite their mismatched and crammed appearance they were placed on the shelf in meticulous order, denoted by the dates carefully written on the spines.

The last journal – a small but thick volume with a cover of soft red leather – was placed last on the right, on the second shelf. According to the date on the spine, it had been started just over three months before. Slipping it off the shelf, Gabe carefully thumbed through the pages, eyes skimming the small messy handwriting. The last entry was dated three days ago.

Carrying the journal back to the sofa, he sat down and started reading.

Mel left the cups on Lazarus’ desk and moved back across the office to her own. Carefully returning the silver hatchet to its place in the top drawer, she gathered her dressing gown around herself and moved to sit on top of the desk, drawing her knees up to her chest.

Her skin and clothing began to harden almost immediately, the grain spreading over her body until she had the appearance of a wooden statue carved and mounted atop the desk. Then, with a sound like rustling leaves, she gently melted into the woodwork and vanished from sight.

There weren’t many dryads left in Rose County. Some still inhabited isolated groves in the countryside around the city, but they were scattered and, for the most part, slowly withering. There were rumours of a tiny colony hiding in the wooded hills of Sunder National Park, far to the northwest. Only one lived in the city itself, not that she had much choice.

It hadn’t always been that way. Rose County had been blanketed with forest once. It wasn’t called Rose County then, nor had the dryads any mind to give it a name. Their colonies were small but numerous, dwelling in huddled groves and glens for miles around. None but the eldest could remember how they’d come to live there, or where their seeds had first come from. And Meliad was one of the youngest.

She was different then, too. Brighter and swifter. Happier. Her tree grew tall and strong, and she with it. She ran in the glens by day and whispered in the wood by night. It never snowed in the woods, the seasons passed gently. Food and water and sunshine were plentiful. She’d never known pain.

The complete lack of satyrs in the area was another advantage, since being chased through the undergrowth by a drunken midget with hooves and an erection was not her idea of a good time.

When the first humans arrived in the area, Meliad was unconcerned. She’d heard of them, if only in stories told by the eldest, and thought them merely curious visitors. The first ones moved on quickly, and she was sad to see them go. She’d found them fascinating.

More came and went, then more. Eventually some of them began to linger in the area, setting up camps in the clearings near her grove.

And then they started cutting down trees.

There was nothing the dryads could do. They were ill-equipped to fight men with axes and rifles, even if they dared show themselves. They couldn’t leave, bound in essence to their trees. All they could do was hide.

Meliad was hiding when the first axe split the trunk of her tree. She was in the wood, afraid to come out. She felt the tree fall.

That should have been that, of course. The life of a dryad was one with the life of her tree. She should have died as it was felled. How she survived, still bound within the wood, she had no idea.

She had only vague and disoriented memories of being floated downriver to the mill. The chopping and sawing and sanding and shaping was agony, and there was only brief respite from the pain before the stack of lumber her world had become was shipped to the joiners. More cutting and sawing was done, followed by the indignity of slotting, nailing and finishing. And when it was all over, when the tormented dryad was finally able to summon her strength and emerge from the mutilated remains of her tree, what had it been reduced to?

As desks went, it was a very handsome job. Nice finish, sturdy design, smooth and spacious drawers, and lots of little compartments for knick-knacks and so on (the installation of which, she recalled, had been like having teeth drilled). And, as the joiner quickly discovered, having a beautiful naked girl literally pop out of the woodwork while a customer was inspecting the desk certainly made for an easy sale.

And so began Meliad’s new and miserable existence – bound to the life of office furniture, doomed to go wherever the desk was moved, enslaved by a succession of clerks and accountants and civil servants, a strange and eventful journey of nigh on a century. How many times did she suffer the discomfort of dragging and stacking and bumping up stairs? How many scalding cups of tea and coffee were placed so thoughtlessly upon her woodwork without so much as a coaster to dull the pain? How many chips and nicks and scratches and scribbles did she endure?

It was in 1945 that her fortunes changed for the better. After sixteen years gathering dust in a second-hand furniture store, the desk was purchased by an adventurous young fellow by the name of Jericho Pope, recently returned from the war and re-opening his father Malachi’s business. The first thing he did, once the sweating movers had left, was to break out the furniture polish and show the old desk a long-overdue bit of tender loving care. It was without a doubt the most erotic experience of Meliad’s life.

Now, Malachi had taught Jericho that hard work was its own reward. But when a man took the time to polish up his desk to a mirror shine, well sir, having a lithe and beautiful young woman materialize on top of it in her birthday suit wasn’t a bad result either.

Of course, Jericho was courting a nice lady librarian at the time, and couldn’t be having some green-haired lass lying about the office in the altogether. So he found her some clothes and fixed her a meal, and got down to pondering what he should do with the poor girl. For what is there for a woman to do, when her entire existence is bound to a desk?

Six decades later, Mel was still puzzling on that question. In between puzzling, she ran the office.

She’d worked for two Popes in that time, and helped raise and train a couple while she was at it. Jericho had been her hero until the day he died. Lazarus had been more of an ongoing project that had kept her busy a lot. And Gabriel?

She still thought of Gabriel as the sturdy but unbalanced teenager who’d struck out on his own seven years ago. The bearded, hard-eyed man who’d come back . . .

Well, that would take some getting used to.

Chapter 6

The Renfield Building, Central Roseburg
The Stroke of Midnight

Harland Stein had been the night doorman in the Renfield Building since it was first opened back in the late Seventies. Thirty years in the same job – especially a job which dealt with the comings and goings of an entire building full of people – tended to give a man a sense of perspective. He’d seen new tenants move in and old deadbeats move out, men going out bright and cheerful in the morning and coming back drunk and miserable in the evening, cuckolded husbands passing their wives’ lovers at the elevator. He’d held the door for rich and poor, old and young, alive and – since Mr Fantôme had bought the penthouse in 1982 – undead. There was very little that Harland hadn’t seen.

So when the doors opened at the stroke of midnight and a young woman walked into the lobby carrying a spear, he barely batted an eye.

The girl was about seventeen, pale and petite, with red hair tied back in a long ponytail. She wore a tight black tank top over baggy black pants, and fingerless gloves. She wore no shoes, but her feet were partially wrapped in strips of black cloth. The spear was a foot taller than she was, the heavy shaft engraved with swirling designs. The spearhead was over a foot long, broad and double-edged, and looked like it was made from silver. She carried it across her shoulders like a yoke, hands resting lightly over the shaft.

She walked to the center of the lobby and stopped. She made no sound, standing like a statue, the only movement from her dark eyes as she scanned the room.

“Help you, miss?” Harland called from his desk.

The girl didn’t even look at him. Apparently satisfied with the empty lobby she half-turned, slid the spear from her shoulder, and lowered it to her side. The blunt end came to rest on the paved floor with a faint tap.

A second later the doors flew open, and a strange procession swept into the room. There were four men and three other women, all of them tall and pale, dressed in dark and expensive clothes. They walked across the lobby at a fast stroll, deathly silent, heading straight for the elevator. One of them – shorter and rounder than the others, a craggy-faced man with a shaved head and long moustache, wearing a long black coat – was huddled protectively in the middle of the group. As they passed her, the girl with the spear fell into step behind them.

One of them tapped the elevator button and the doors opened instantly, as if it were waiting for them. Harland watched as they filed in, the girl with the spear taking up a central position in front. He caught her eye as the doors rolled closed, and spent the rest of the night wishing he hadn’t.

Johnny Fantôme was waiting for them, in what he ironically referred to as his “living room.” It was a spacious and tasteless chamber, with shag carpets and pop art furniture and stuffed animals, some of them domestic. Fantôme sat amongst the chaotic décor in a white heart-shaped chair, Sasha and Kolya flanking him on either side, a long-dead Labrador at his feet. Johnny himself wore a silk shirt with parachute pants and was holding a brandy glass half-filled with warm blood. His face split into a beaming smile as his guests entered. “Moorden, old boy! How’s life in der pit lane?”

The stocky vampire with the long moustache moved slowly into the middle of the room, lowering himself with some discomfort onto a sofa made from metal and stained glass. His entourage took up positions around the room, affecting expressions of aloof boredom, but clearly on their guard. Only the girl in black, settling into a crouch near the door with her spear leaning on her shoulder, seemed to be relaxed.

Only when Moorden was seated did he make eye contact with Fantôme, let alone make a reply. When he did, his voice proved to be deep, cold and laced with contempt.

“We need to renegotiate our agreement.”

Fantôme’s smile didn’t waver a millimetre. “Again?”

Moorden’s moustache twitched. “I agreed to kill one Pope. Not two.”

Fantome’s mouth kept smiling, but his eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “You make it sound like a burden, old man. Ven it came time for our man Lazarus to die, I let you have the honour of tasting his blood. Killing a Pope does vunders for your street cred. Take it from me.”

“I didn’t taste his blood,” Moorden rumbled. He nodded towards his henchmen gathered around the room. “They did.”

“How was it?”

All eyes turned towards Sasha, standing on Fantôme’s left, one hand resting on the back of his chair. Even her brother’s cold eyes slid sideways, regarding her with something which, on any other being, might have been mistaken for mild amusement. She didn’t falter one iota under all the scrutiny.

“You must forgive our little Sasha,” Fantôme said with a smirk. “She’s alvays had a . . . keen interest in der Pope men.”

Moorden’s face, if it were possible, hardened a little more. “Ridding the world of that upstart was a business arrangement. I did it to pay off my debts to you. It cost me ten of my clan, left six others wounded. Limbs cut with silver don’t grow back, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” said Fantôme. “I often rely on it.”

“My point being,” Moorden snarled, “we’re square. From here on, I run my own clan and I keep my own counsel. You keep your nose out of my business and your people out of Okhotniki territory. Are we clear?”

Fantôme kept smiling. Some of Moorden’s henchmen moved a little further away.

“I don’t believe I’ve had der pleasure,” Fantôme finally said.

Moorden frowned. “What?”

“Your new friend.” Fantôme’s eyes flickered towards the red-haired girl with the spear, still crouching near the door. “I don’t think ve’ve met.”

“Introduce yourself, Salomé.” The order came not from Moorden, but from Kolya, standing on Fantôme’s right.

The girl hesitated, eyes moving towards Moorden. With a deep scowl, he nodded.

She rose to her feet, spear held at her side, facing the lord of the Krasnayaruka without an ounce of fear. “My lord Fantôme,” she said, with a slight incline of her head. “My name is Salomé Argyros. It’s an honour to meet you.”

Fantôme gave an approving nod. “Und vot are you doing hanging about vith dis old crook?” he asked, glancing briefly at Moorden.

Salomé didn’t reply. Moorden did it for her. “She’s Damian Argyros’ daughter.”

“Yes,” Fantôme replied, a slight edge to his voice. “Dat’s kind of my point. Your adopted father runs der Chernysvet clan, und here you are vorking for his rival.”

“Argyros owed me a–”

“I am talking,” Fantôme hissed, “to her.”

The two bosses’ eyes met, but only for a few seconds. Moorden looked down first.

Fantôme looked towards Salomé, his face brightening again. “You vere saying, dear?”

Salomé met his gaze steadily. “One of our . . . ” She glanced sideways at Moorden. “One of the Chernysvet killed Moorden’s right hand in a brawl. To avoid a blood feud, my father put me in Moorden’s service.” Her face darkened. “For the next decade.”

“Hmmm. Your father is a prudent man. He does have a habit of trading out his daughters, though. I think ve had vun of the Argyros girls vorking for us, didn’t ve?” He glanced at Kolya.

Kolya nodded slowly. “Celeste.”

“Ahh,” Fantôme’s face fell a little. “Yes, poor Celeste. I hear she met vith some trouble at Rackham Junction earlier tonight. Your younger sister, vasn’t she?”

“Yes.” Salomé’s expression hadn’t changed, but her voice wavered a little. “By about six minutes.”

“Hmm,” Fantôme nodded sympathetically. “So vot’s your opinion on dis matter? I’m offering your master here a chance to bring down der man who killed your tvin sister. Do you think he should oblige me?”

Salomé’s eye twitched, just a little. “I think,” she hissed, “it’s my master’s decision.”

Moorden smiled.

“Actually,” Fantôme replied, “it’s mine.” He turned his gaze back to Moorden, whose smiled evaporated like mist. “You think your debts are cancelled? You’ve barely made a downpayment.”

Moorden bristled. “Wha–”

“You owe me everything you have, Moorden,” Fantôme sneered. “Because I’ve let you exist. You think I couldn’t ally der other four clans against der Okhotniki? You think I couldn’t turn your own people against you? You run your own clan und keep your own counsel because I’ve allowed it.”

Moorden opened his mouth again, but couldn’t seem to make a sound.

“Und very soon,” Fantôme went on, “I’m going to allow you to capture Gabriel Pope. He’ll come to the territory dat I’ve allowed you to have, hoping to avenge his father. You’ll ambush him, you’ll capture him, and if you vont to keep your staff happy, you’ll let Salomé here turn him into a man-kebab. Then ve’ll talk about vot I allow you to do next.” He leaned forward, staring Moorden down. “Und if you ever come in here barking orders at me again, I’m going to take a silver blade und show you something else dat doesn’t grow back.” He sat back, waving a dismissive hand. “Now get out of my house.”

Moorden left with clenched fists and a face like a boiling storm cloud. His entourage trailed behind him, clearly not relishing the limo ride home. Only Salomé, walking behind them with her spear across her shoulders, was smiling.

Apartment of Lazarus Pope
The Fisher Building
7:32 AM

Mel arrived upstairs with a steaming mug of coffee just after half-past seven, to find that someone had already made some. A fresh pot was cooling on the kitchen counter, and a half-drunk cup sat on the coffee table. Beside it, piled on top of each other in three crooked stacks, were most of Lazarus’ journals from the last three or four years.

The sound of running water came from the bathroom. With a shrug, Mel sank into one of the chairs opposite the sofa, and started drinking the coffee herself.

Gabe emerged a couple of minutes later, drying his face with a green towel. He was wearing the same cargo pants from last night, but was barefoot and stripped to the waist. He was all lean muscle, but that wasn’t the first thing Mel noticed. He’d acquired some tattoos on his travels as well – a black cross adorned his right shoulder, with an Islamic crescent and star below it. On his left arm, a Jewish Star of David was tattooed above a Hindu ohm. People in his line of work had always relied on holy emblems as tools of the trade, but Gabe apparently liked to cover his bases.

But that wasn’t what Mel noticed, either. It was the scars.

In her long experience with the Pope family, Mel had learned that they collected scars the way other people collected stamps. Jericho had already had an impressive number when she’d come to work for him, and she’d helped stitch up a few more in their time together. Lazarus – tough but accident-prone – had died with more old injuries than the starting line-up for an All Stars gridiron team. Gabe was still young, barely twenty-two, but had already started working on his collection. More than half a dozen deep cuts and puncture wounds, faded but noticeable, marred his arms and torso, and she was sure he had a couple more on his legs. An ugly set of claw-marks ran diagonally from his right shoulder to his spine, and he had what looked like an old bullet wound in his left side. Apparently Europe hadn’t been good to him.

As he lowered the towel, her attention returned to his face. The beard was gone.

Mel smiled. “I didn’t want to say anything.”

Gabe shrugged. “It itched.” He dropped the towel onto the other chair and sat on the couch, picking up his coffee.

Mel sat back and crossed her legs. She was wearing a green dress with a lilac floral pattern. For the first few years she’d lived and worked among humans, Meliad had been quietly baffled by the very concept of clothing. In the late Forties she’d been known to greet potential clients with her clothes on backwards, inside out or, depending on how frustrated she was, crumpled up on the floor beside her. Jericho, Gabe’s grandfather, had often had words with her on the matter, sometimes with his hand over his eyes. Eventually he’d had to enlist the help of his fiancee – clearing out a den full of slavering werebeasts was all in a day’s work, but explaining the function of a brassiere to a half-naked girl trying to get her head out of a pair of nylons was more than he was prepared to face.

By the Fifties, Mel was capably dressing herself, and even experimenting with accessories. In the Sixties she’d discovered department stores which, despite her earlier aversion to clothing, had awakened something primal within her female soul. She now had an extensive wardrobe tucked away in whatever elemental sub-universe she vanished into when she retired to her desk at night. Her style ran heavily into earth colours – greens, browns and tans, though she liked to wear reds and golds in the Autumn. One item her wardrobe was completely devoid of, however, was shoes. She’d never owned a pair, and no amount of gentle coaxing from Jericho or anyone else would have convinced her to try them on. For a dryad, having anything come between her feet and the ground they were walking on was akin to being gagged and blindfolded.

She sat and looked at Gabe for a moment, studying his freshly-shaved face. It was darker, broader and – it had to be said – less spotty than the one she remembered. The resemblance to his father was there, but not strong. To be honest, he looked more like Jericho.

Dismissing the thought, her eyes moved over the stacks of journals on the table between them. “Bedtime reading?”

“Just catching up,” said Gabe. “Thought there might be some clues in here about . . . what happened.”

Mel looked over the books again. What happened wasn’t really the question. Lazarus had died the same way as Jericho and Malachi before him. The same way various Popes before them had. It wasn’t so much a question of how as where and when.

Gabe was thumbing through the most recent journal. “Here’s the last entry,” he said. “Three days ago. Croglin mentioned a vampire gang squatting at Gammon House. Going to check it out tonight. Probably come to nothing again, but worth a look. Remember to gas up van on the way.”

Mel shrugged. “Sounds about right. What’s your point?”

“It’s not the entry that interests me,” Gabe admitted. “It’s the little red M next to the date.” He turned the book around, pointing to the page. There beside the date, marked carefully in red biro, was a capital M.

Mel pretended not to look at it. “That’s odd.”

“Not really,” Gabe replied. “Looks pretty common. I’ve been through most of these journals, and about a quarter of the entries have the same thing.” He picked up another journal, a thick black-covered one, and opened to a random page. “See? Right there. Little red M.”

Mel avoided his gaze. “I don’t know. Lazarus had a whole weird code, I never understood how it–”

Gabe dropped the book onto the coffee table. “It stands for ‘Mâchoire,’ doesn’t it?”

Silence.

Sitting up in her chair, Mel uncrossed her legs, carefully put her mug down, and rose to her feet. She leaned forward and carefully pushed the journals to one side, then stepped over the coffee table and sat down on it, right in front of Gabe. He shied back a little as she thrust a warning finger in his face.

“Now you listen to me, Gabriel Pope.”

Uh-oh, Gabe thought.

“I put up with this shit from your dad for years,” Mel hissed. “He never shut up about it. By the end it was turning into an obsession. I’ve lived in this town longer than you and him put together, kid. I told him, and now I’m telling you.” She leaned a little closer. “There is no Mâchoire. There’s no Smiling Shadow. No mysterious vampire puppeteer working behind the scenes. He’s an urban legend.” Her voice was hard, her eyes never wavering from his. “There’s just Johnny Fantôme and a bunch of other clan bosses, fighting each other and feeding on everybody else. Alright?”

“If you say so,” Gabe replied, still leaning away from the finger.

Mel kept staring for a few seconds before relenting. “Alright.” Standing up, she gathered the coffee cups and walked towards the kitchen.

“I’m still going to go check out Gammon House, though,” he called after her.

“Of course you are,” Mel sighed, dumping the cups on the counter. She turned and headed for the stairs. “I’ll go warm up the van.”

Chapter 7

The Fisher Building
7:41 AM

The van was parked in the alleyway between the Fisher Building and the larger structure (at various times a textile factory, warehouse, flophouse, sweatshop, methamphetamine plant, dog-fighting arena and brothel) behind it. Gabe stepped out the back door with his hoodie zipped up over a black t-shirt, silver baseball bat carried openly in his hand. His eyebrows elevated slightly as he laid eyes on the vehicle. “That’s new.”

Mel, leaning against the side of the vehicle with a brown suede jacket over her dress, glanced sideways at the rust marks. “Not really.”

She was right. The van was a 1983 G-Series, painted murky grey. There was no slogan on the side, and no markings apart from the rust and dents. As the trusty vehicle of a fearsome monster hunter, it left much to be desired.

“Your dad got it at a police auction three years back,” Mel explained, patting the side. “Pretty sure somebody famous died in it.” Pulling a set of keys from her jacket, she popped the driver’s door and climbed in.

“Why don’t you drive?” Gabe suggested, making his way to the passenger door.

There wasn’t much traffic on the roads. People in Roseburg tended to live close to their jobs, when they had them. Mel stayed away from the main thoroughfares until they reached the western motorway, heading out of town.

“It’s cloudy,” she observed, glancing up through the windscreen.

Gabe looked. “It’s not too bad.”

Mel shook her head, shifting gears as she merged into the light flow of traffic. “They’re always braver when it’s cloudy.”

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the drive.

The van slid to a stop outside Gammon House at 8:06. The looming iron fence around the property was covered with creepers as always, but the gate had recently acquired two long strips of yellow police tape as well. Beyond the fence and the overgrown lawns, the old house brooded silently in the dull morning air. There was nobody in sight.

"I hate this place," Mel muttered, half to herself. She stepped up onto the cracked pavement, staring through the fence. She was standing with her arms wrapped around herself, head drawn down into her jacket. She almost seemed to have shrunk a little, Gabe observed, her usual radiance dimmed. It was as if she'd faded just by coming near the old house.

"Everybody hates this place," he replied. "I can go in alone."

Mel's head shifted to look at him. Her eyes were as bright as ever, but had taken on a harsher tone, like embers. "No," she said firmly. "Nobody's going anywhere alone."

The gates weren't locked with anything more formidable than the police tape, and Gabe was able to pull them ajar enough for the pair to slip through. They walked straight up the gravel driveway, approaching the house like invited guests. Only Gabe's eyes—always moving, checking the angles, watchful for any movement—and Mel's hesitant steps betrayed their wariness. Occasionally Gabe glanced sideway at the dryad, noting the look in her eye. Mel didn't like these old houses—abandoned and rotting, left to the scavengers and squatters. Something about "old wood," he recalled. Old wood remembers.

Gabe made his way slowly up the steps, feeling the boards of the porch creaking under his boots. Another strip of police tape had been stuck over the door, but had already come loose and was drifting in the breeze. Brushing it aside, he reached for the door handle.

"No."

He looked back. Mel was still in the driveway, standing back a few feet from the steps. "What?" he frowned.

She shook her head. "That's not the right way." Her face was pale, and he thought he saw her shudder. "I can feel it from here." Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and moved forward, extending a hand.

Gabe moved towards the steps. "You don't have to-"

"Yeah I do," she told him, a tightness in her voice. "We need to know."

She held her hand out to the peeling wooden porch beam by the stairs—hesitantly at first, as if she were about to pick up a hot coal. Taking another breath, she gently laid her fingers on the wooddraggeddownscreamingtearingatmyneckdiesquealinglikeafuckinganimal . . .

Gabe rushed down the stairs, ready to catch her as she stumbled away from the porch. He managed to get hold of her shoulders as she fell, catching her before her knees hit gravel. "I'm okay," she gasped, dragging her breath back. "I'm okay, I'm okay . . ." She leaned against him, but only for a second. Pushing herself back to her feet, she gently pulled away from him. "It just . . . hit me all at once, that's all. Vampires have been using this place for a while. Lot of nasty happened here."

She moved back towards the porch, raising her hand again. "I'm fine," she insisted as Gabe moved to stop her. "It's like jumping in the pool. Shock's gone the second time." He saw her fingers brush the beam again, and although she visibly flinched the reaction wasn't as severe. Still, she only held on as long as absolutely necessary before stepping back again. "This way," she said curtly, and walked off to her left, moving around the house.

Gabe followed her, eyes on the darkened windows of the house. The sun was up, but as Mel said, they were braver when it was cloudy. And it wasn't just vampires you had to watch for. Mel—apparently oblivious to any threat—walked ahead, one hand raised towards the house the whole way, not quite touching the wooden railing of the porch. They left the driveway and walked through ankle-high grass, pushing through the tangled mess of an old flowerbed as they rounded the corner. Mel's bare feet moved from gravel to grass to dirt without slowing, all her senses focused on the house. Finally—near the rear corner of the looming structure—she came to a stop. "Here."

Here.

Gabe looked up. Mel's slender arm was extended at a horizontal angle beside her, pale hand open and pointing straight at a broken window in a broad frame set into the side of the house. The room beyond was a vague tableaux of dark shapes.

"This is where he went in," said Mel.

This is the way in.

Before Gabe could stop her, Mel had stepped up close to the house and grabbed the window frame, half-jumping up to perch on the sill. She crouched there for a second, peering into the darkness beyond. She glanced behind her, just once, looking past Gabe at the garden behind him.

"Mel," he warned, but she was already gone, jumping forward into the darkness beyond. With a soft curse, Gabe followed her.

It was a kitchen, or what was left of one. The counters had been torn out years ago, rusty old pipe fixtures marking where the sinks had once been. There was a table (an old metal and sawdust monstrosity with a formica veneer) and three mismatched chairs. The table had visible bloodstains on it, mingling with the hideous seventies pattern on the formica. There was blood on the floor, too, along with various other things. Any tiles the kitchen had once boasted were long gone, leaving only half-rotten floorboards. There was a coating of dust, marked by dozens of crisscrossing footprints. Old nails, scraps of newspaper and various other bits of detritus were scattered around the room. There were two doors, both on the far side of the room. In the far right corner, half ajar, was the heavy metal door of a walk-in freezer.

Mel was standing beside it, staring at the floor.

"Mel?" Gabe came alongside her, looking down. There was a shape there, a white outline, recently drawn, marking out the shape of a body. Gabe's heart skipped, but he knew immediately it wasn't... who he'd thought. Too small.

He looked up at Mel. Her eyes were frozen on the outline, her face a dull white, wearing a blank expression. "Mel? Who was-?"

Vampire.

By the freezer. Back to me. Easy mark.

Mel wavered on her feet, and he saw her flinch.

Khukri in the back. Silver blade splitting dead flesh, tearing the heart. Drops like a rock. Not a sound.

Mel lifted her eyes, turned her head to the nearest door. She moved without a word, walking slowly, bare feet brushing lightly over the dusty wooden floor. Gripping his bat, Gabe silently followed.

The door creaked open at her touch, sounding like a shriek in the silence of the old house. Mel stepped out into the darkened hallway beyond, swaying lightly on her feet, like a sapling in the breeze. Her head rolled left, then right.

Right.

She turned and walked on, moving back towards the front of the house. Gabe came behind her, eyes darting around, checking the shadows. The dull grey glow from outside was filtering in through a dozen windows, but there was no direct sunlight here. Too dark. Much too-

Dark. No lights on. They don't need them. Use the goggles.

She stopped, swaying to her left. Her shoulder bumped against the wall, but she didn't seem to notice.

Goggles on. World lights up in green. Keep moving. Watch the corners.

Mel started walking again, shoulder still brushing the wall. She passed under an archway, passing into a much larger room beyond. It was bigger than the office back at the Fisher Building, and the ceiling was over two storeys high. Gabe saw the broad front door up ahead and realised they were in the front hall. There were scraps of carpet on the floor, filthy with dust, like jagged islands on the broken floorboards. A staircase, once grand but now broken and half-collapsed, led up to the first floor on their right. In the center of the room, marked in white tape, were two more body outlines.

Two of them. Screaming out of the shadows under the stairs. Too fast, too eager.

My finger closes on the trigger.

Mel staggered a little.

One down, head torn open and smoking. One's still coming, fangs bared, mouth full of bile and hate. He's young and wild, a bull on a rampage, and I dodge him easy. The khukri flashes in the darkness.

She stood over the two outlines, staring at them with no hint of emotion. Then . . .

One behind me, fast and silent. Didn't see him. Getting too old for this.

Mel gasped and stumbled, falling over her feet. Gabe moved to catch her again, but he was too far away.

Cold hands around my neck, fetid breath and eyes like fiery blazes and he's trying to drag me down . . .

She dropped to her hands and knees, mossy hair falling over her face. A sound came from her throat, a low growl like a wounded animal.

I've got him. Blade in the stomach, tearing upwards. Cold blood and sizzling flesh and a scream like tearing glass. He's back against the wall and the stake's in my other hand. It's over in seconds.

And already, there's another one, scuttling out of the dark. Like fucking roaches.

Mel sank back on her heels, leaning forward on her hands. She lifted her head, looking through her tangled hair, staring at nothing. Her eyes glittered green in the dusty gloom.

Gabe crouched beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, eyes darting.

"That's it," Gabe decided, moving to take her by the shoulders. "I'm getting you out of-"

Running.

Gabe fell back, startled, as Mel leapt to her feet. She broke into a sudden run, stumbling at first but picking up speed, her feet kicking up dust as she bolted back through the room.

"Mel!" Gabe was up a second later, dashing after her.

He's running. Going for the ballroom.

Mel passed under another arch, down a second corridor. Gabe lost sight of her for a second as the gloom swallowed her up, but he quickly found her again, following her sprinting shape down the hallway. It was a short corridor with a gabled roof, opening out into another wide space. He shouted again, but Mel couldn't hear him. She ran the length of the ballroom, hair and dress billowing behind her, and it wasn't until she was near the far end of the long broad room that she slid to a sudden halt. Gabe slowed his pace to a jog, then to a walk, coming up slowly alongside her. "Mel?"

She was standing straight, feet together, eyes staring blankly ahead. Her breath was coming short and fast, and she was trembling all over.

All over now. The khukri leaves my hand and takes him in the back, just above the right hip. He's stumbling and screaming when I catch him and the stake drives into him like butter.

As he drops, the others appear.

Gabe looked down. The dust on the floor was smeared and marked with dozens of footprints, hundreds. And amongst them, laid out in crooked poses on the floorboards, were five more outlines.

They move fast, in through the windows and doors, dropping from the ceiling, all around me. More than a dozen coming at once and they're fast and sharp like razors and there are too many-

Gabe's foot was on one of the outlines, standing on its chest. He stepped back, his eyes picking up the faded bloodstains scattered around him.

-goes down shrieking with the stake in his chest and another one's on me like lightning, but I'm holding the khukri again and his hand comes off his wrist, and it bites into his neck but there's another one, and another, and-

Mel was visibly shaking now, breath coming in short bursts. Gabe could see tears on her face.

-blood on my face and one's ripping at my shoulder and I drive the gun into his face and blow half his skull across the room, but they're pulling me back there's too many-

With a convulsive jerk she toppled backwards, sprawling onto the floor. Gabe moved towards her.

-fangs in my neck and my leg and they've dragged my weapons away and they're laughing now, laughing while they kill me and I can feel the blood pouring out and they're ripping at my skin and-

Mel's back arched, lifting her body off the floor as her arms scrabbled around in the dust, and Gabe grabbed her hand-

And he's there. Above me. In the rafters.

Watching me die.

Mel slumped back to the floor, eyes staring straight upwards, into the rafters.

The shadow sits above me, watching while they gather around like sharks. White hair. Shining crimson eyes, glittering in the dark.

And he smiles.

With a gasp, Mel lay still. Her eyes rolled back in her head for a second, then focused again. She drew in a long, shuddering breath and let it out, her eyes moving up to look at Gabe.

"That," she breathed, "really sucked."

Gabe managed a smile. "Thought I'd lost you there for a second."

Mel lifted her head, eyes moving around to get her bearings. She was lying in one of the body outlines on the floor.

"Oh," was all she could say.

Gabe gently helped her to her feet, steadying her as she shuffled slowly away. She seemed to shrink again, pulling her jacket around her. "I need to be outside," she murmured, moving towards the door.

"You okay?" Gabe asked.

"I'm fine."

"Mel-"

"I'm fine."

He watched her go, then his eyes moved to the outline on the floor, the one Mel had fallen on. The floor around it was dark with dried blood. "And here we are," he sighed.

Lingering for a moment, he turned his attention to the room around him. It was huge and empty and dark, lit by dull shafts seeping in through the cracked windows.

"Now," Gabe murmured, "where is it?"

Mel made her way out of the house as quickly as she could, going back through the kitchen and out the side door. She stopped for a minute near the garden, feeling the long grass around her bare feet, then slowly made her way back to the front of the house, letting the breeze wash over her face. There was a tree there, old but tall and strong, standing on a grassy patch near the driveway. She moved towards it, slipping her jacket from her shoulders, letting it fall on the ground behind her. She approached the tree slowly, hands held tentatively in front of her, as if asking permission. Then, slowly, she laid her hands against the trunk, resting her forehead against the cool bark.

She felt the tree stir, responding to her touch, energies passing between them. The memories of the dark house began to fade, the fangs and blood and darkness and death seeping away, and the tree showed her green fields and whispering leaves and sunlit groves . . .

And the tears came out, like someone had opened a gate. She sagged against the tree, her whole body shaking, and she slid to the ground and curled up amongst the roots and sobbed like a child.

Gabe investigated the fallen chandelier in the corner, not really expecting to find anything there. Too obvious. It wouldn't be hidden under anything. It would be out in the open, in plain sight, but . . .

His eyes moved to the far side of the room. The northwest corner, farthest from the windows. Where the sun never shone.

It took a moment to spot. It was well hidden, uneven boards fitting into the floor like a jigsaw puzzle, but if you looked closely you could see the cracks where the dust hadn't settled. Finding the edges, he moved to the end facing away from the wall, placed his foot carefully, and stomped down onto the boards.

A whole section, two metres across, popped up a few inches above the surrounding floor. With a grim smile, Gabe stooped to get his hands under it and lifted. With a grunt he managed to swing the section upwards, opening it like a trapdoor, until it leaned back against the wall. The opening it left was wide, dark and certainly did not have a welcome mat.

What it did have was stairs. Old stone, chipped and dirty. Leading down into the dark.

Gripping his bat, Gabe began to descend.

Chapter 8

The Gammon House

Mel pulled herself up to a sitting position, resting her back against the trunk of the tree as she wiped her face clean. Enough of this crying shit. She'd never cried when we she was . . . well, when she'd lived in the woods. She'd had no reason to. She hadn't even known how.

She'd learned the night Jericho died.

She sat there for a while, eyes closed, listening as the tree whispered to her. She didn't want to move, but she knew she had to sooner or later. She was beginning to worry about where Gabe was. Wiping her face again, she lifted her head and found herself staring at a pair of brown leather shoes.

They were standing on the gravel driveway at the edge of the grass, a few feet away from her. Fixed above the shoes were two grey tweed trouser legs, which vanished upwards into the hem of a brown corduroy coat. Above the coat was a rumpled fedora, and sandwiched between them was a lined and weathered face. It looked down at her with concern.

"Alright, Miss?" asked Inspector Cobb.

Mel's mouth pulled off a passable imitation of a smile. "Alright, Inspector."

Cobb's sharp eyes flicked towards the old house. "I take it your friend is inside?"

Mel nodded, her eyes never leaving Cobb's face.

"Good." Walking over to the tree, the policeman turned and—with the stifled grunt of a man denying his age—sat down against the tree trunk beside her. Stretching his legs out in front of him, he pulled his hat off and rested it against his knee. "We need to talk."

The steps stopped in a puddle more than ankle deep. There was a little light filtering from the trapdoor above him, but Gabe was already reaching for the night vision goggles at his belt. They'd come with an elaborate headstrap to affix them to the user's face, but he always felt like an idiot wearing it, and besides, it chafed his ears. Holding the goggles to his eyes by hand, he checked the shallow muck in which he was standing and was mildly relieved to find it was murky water. He'd waded through worse, but one was always thankful for small mercies.

The room beneath the trapdoor was small, dank and made from old stone. The "puddle" covered most of the floor, which looked to be paved with irregular stones underneath the water. The stairs ended in one corner, and there were three low wooden doors off to Gabe's left—two leading north, and a third back behind the stairs going east. All three were closed. There was no sound to be heard.

Stepping back up into the stone staircase, Gabe sat down, leaned his bat against the wall, and had himself a think.

An old house like this, away from the city, where even drunken teenagers knew better than to go, was a prime spot for a vampire nest. Which meant there could be as many as two dozen of the damn things lurking down here in these dark basement rooms. On the other hand, there'd been a lot of cops in and out of here the last couple of days, and Roseburg had two kinds of cops: the ones who were oblivious to the undead population operating under their noses, and the ones who pretended to be. Either way the vamps tended to give the law a wide berth, since having to bleed a nosy copper would just upset the apple cart. Lazarus' recent demise had no doubt left them all feeling ten feet tall and stake-proof, but it was still a little too soon for them to be hanging around the scene of the crime.

Still, better safe than siphoned, as one of his old nightstalking cohorts in Slovakia used to say. He'd have to do this the fiendishly cunning way.

Standing up, he unzipped the front of his hoodie and slipped it off, tossing it back up through the trapdoor into the ballroom. Underneath he wore a white t-shirt, a little ragged and still showing faint traces of dark stains from previous outings. Printed on the front in sharp contrast was the black outline of a celtic cross, a rough circle surrounding the crosspiece. Over the bottom of the t-shirt was what Gabe habitually referred to as his "toolbelt." In truth it was more like a hybrid of utility belt, shoulder holster and parachute harness—fashioned from leather, encircling his waist and both shoulders, it was hung with various pockets, straps and sheaths by which the wearer could carry with him the myriad tools of the monster hunter's trade. In a holster under his left arm hung a .38 Colt revolver. A dozen spare rounds lined the leather strap on his right side—hollowpoints with an iron core, not as effective as silver but a damn sight cheaper. Three ash stakes lined his ribs on the right, and half a dozen small bottles—the type usually found in hotel minibars—were strapped to his left hip, filled with a sparkling clear liquid. On the back of his belt, worn horizontally, was a leather sheath containing a machete with a silver blade. A thick silver chain, like a dog leash, was coiled on the belt as well.

In between the weapons were strapped a variety of other less offensive items. And clipped to the "toolbelt" in various places, wherever there was room, were at least a dozen different religious amulets. Four of them mirrored the tattoos on his arms, the rest came from an array of less widespread—but no less potent—faiths.

Gabe, for his part, wasn't an adherent to any of them. But when one sets out to hunt the undead, one places one's faith in anything that makes the undead think twice about taking one on.

Standing up, he replaced the goggles on his belt and reached for a slim plastic cylinder hanging beneath the wooden stakes. This opened to produce a railroad fusee with a short metal spike at one end. Standing on tiptoe, he wedged the spike into the mortar between two stones on the wall above the steps, made sure it was secure and then ignited it, shielding his eyes against the flare. The room now bathed in a flickering red glow, Gabe stepped down into the water covering most of the floor, moved as quietly as he could to the middle of the floor, and sank into a crouch.

Unclipping a metal cross from his belt, he held it in his right hand, closed his eyes, and began to murmur under his breath.

"Deus, qui ad salutem humani generis maxima quæque sacramenta in aquarum substantia condidisti . . ."

"Got a call from the morgue last night," said Inspector Cobb, lighting up a cigarette. He didn't bother to offer Mel one, knowing she would decline. "Seems a relative of one of the deceased had tampered with the body. Left some presents behind, though."

Mel opened her mouth, but Cobb was way ahead of her. "And I made it quite clear that those items were property of the deceased and were to be relinquished with the body when it was released for burial."

Mel smiled, leaning her head against the old man's shoulder. "Thanks."

Cobb shrugged. "Anyway, I figured young Master Pope would be back with us sooner or later." His eyes moved to the house again. "I was just hoping he'd be a bit more discreet, though."

The smile grew a little wider. "They're not a very discreet family."

"Tell me about it," Cobb grunted. "But I don't need to tell you that some young idiot tearing about the place on a revenge kick would be frowned upon by . . . well, pretty much everyone who matters. Think you can keep him under control?"

Mel was silent for longer than Cobb would have liked. "I don't know. He was all piss and vinegar when he left. He's different now. Calmer, but . . ." She let out a sigh. "There's a fire in there. Under the surface. Like he's storing it up."

They sat under the tree in silence while Cobb absorbed this. Then, flicking the cigarette away onto the driveway, he reached inside his coat. Mel straightened up as the inspector drew a bulky object out of a pocket, an angular black shape wrapped in a plastic evidence bag. He passed it over to her, but held on as she reached to take it from him.

"I'll keep the force off his trail," he told her, "as long as you keep him under their radar. He pulls anything too public, any bystanders start turning up dead, I can't help him."

Mel nodded. "Same deal as always, then."

Cobb's mouth didn't smile, but his eyes did. Releasing the object into Mel's hand, he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Gently holding her chin in his hand, he murmured, "You weren't entirely the worst thing that ever happened to me."

Mel grinned. "You always were a smooth talker, Jake."

Slipping his hat back on, Cobb awkwardly got to his feet, brushing the grass off his trousers. Mel stood up too, patting the policeman on the arm as he turned to go. "One more thing," Cobb said, straightening his fedora and staring at the dryad from under the brim. "Have you told him about-?"

"No," said Mel, cutting him off.

Cobb glanced at the house again. "He'll find out sooner or later."

"Not before he has to."

Cobb nodded, and—with a tip of his hat—turned and walked off down the driveway.

Watching him go, Mel turned her attention to the plastic-wrapped object in her hand. With a sigh, she tore the bag open and pulled it out. It was a revolver—a Webley MkVI, vintage 1917. Despite its age it was still in good condition, due partly to careful maintenance and largely to a number of sharp, angular sigils carefully engraved into the handle. Mel hefted the gun in her hand, and found its weight less than reassuring.

"And here," she said to herself, "we go again."

Standing up, Gabe replaced the cross on his belt and glanced up at the burning fusee on the wall. It had enough fuel to burn for twenty minutes, which was a lot more than he needed. Retrieving his bat from the steps, he looked around and chose the nearest door.

He counted his steps from the steps to the door, and found the distance to be about eight feet. That would do. He drew his revolver, bat held firmly in his other hand.

Stepping back, he took a breath, lifted one dripping boot, and kicked the door in. As it swung inwards with a crash Gabe moved forward, levelled the gun and—closing his eyes so as not to be dazzled by the muzzle flash—fired a single bullet into the darkness beyond. The sound of the gunshot was magnified by the confines of the cellar, a startling blast that muffled the sound of the bullet striking the stone wall at the far end of the room.

Immediately afterwards, it was followed by a flurry of rustling movement in the blackness of the room.

Gabe held his ground until the first gruesome pale face came hissing out of the dark, turned a garish red by the flare, clawed hands stretched out before it. Only then did he sidestep, bringing the silver bat around at a low angle. The weapon struck the charging vampire across the shins as she rushed through the door, causing her to pitch forward and come down face-first, hitting the water with a splash. Almost immediately the water began to hiss and bubble around her, and when she managed to pull her face from the floor it was to let out an agonized shriek.

By then the second inhabitant of the basement had emerged, a lean figure in dirty black denim, hair cropped close to the skull. He'd already rushed out into the shin-deep water before it began to burn him, and his scream of rage turned into a panicked wail as he tried to retreat. Gabe's hand closed around the vampire's collar, yanking him back away from the door, and for a moment he half-fell into the water before Gabe managed to drag him back to his feet and fling him in the direction of the stairs. Howling at his burning limbs, the creature desperately scrambled up onto the stone steps, frantically kicking and clawing at himself as strips of tortured flesh began to peel from his hands and arms.

Gabe was right behind him, bat held up defensively as he retreated. The other vampires in the first room were hanging back at the door, spitting and cursing at him, but the door at the far end had flown open and another group were pouring out, flailing and screaming as they touched the hissing water. The female who'd fallen in was still thrashing, but her face had burned away to a skull-like visage and her screams were trailing off into a ragged whimpering as the rest of her body began to collapse in on itself.

By the time Gabe reached the steps, the injured vampire who lay there was trying to crawl up towards the trapdoor. Sliding the bat into a sheath on his back, Gabe kept one eye on the other vampires—falling over each other as they all tried to retreat back through the door at once—as he unfastened the silver chain from his belt. Shoving the whimpering vampire down onto the steps, he grabbed both the bloodsucker's arms—the hands reduced to black, skeletal claws—looped the chain around both his wrists and pulled tight. The vampire started howling again as one burning was replaced by another, but he could only kick feebly as Gabe dragged him like a sack up the steps and through the trapdoor. Kicking his captive onto the ballroom floor, he turned and dragged the trapdoor shut. It came down with a crash, sending up a cloud of dust and muffling the enraged chorus of screams below.

The vampire was still squealing and trying to loose his tortured hands from the silver chain, but even that agony was trumped by his fear of the sun. There was no direct sunlight on this side of the room, and what light was filtering through the clouds and the filthy windows was dull and murky, but it was still enough to cook the cowering wretch if he were dragged outside. As he tried to huddle back into the corner, Gabe grabbed the chain, hauled him out onto the floor and shoved him face-down into the wooden floorboards. The vampire's cries trailed off into a gasp as a heavy knee landed in his back, and he felt the cold muzzle of a gun pressed into his cheekbone.

"Now," said Gabe, his voice the very essence of nonchalant calm, "I've got some questions."

The vampire found himself fervently hoping he had some answers.

Chapter 9

The Gammon House

"Questions," said Gabriel Pope. "I've got several. And I'm not the patient type, so . . . asking twice?" He pressed the gun a little harder into the vampire's cheek. "Nah."

"Argh! Fuck you!" the vampire spat back, struggling against the silver chain. His mutilated skin hissed and spat where it touched the metal.

"Uh-huh," said Gabe. "There was a man killed here, a few night ago. Yes?"

"Lot of . . . aaarrgghhh . . . lot of people g-get killed here," the vampire hissed.

"You'll remember this one. He died in this room. Right over there." The gun was pushed even harder. "You fed on him."

"No! We . . . gnnargghh . . . We didn't! Not us!"

"No? Who did?"

"Look, just . . . fuuUCK! Just take the chain off! I'll . . . aaarrrghh fuck fuck FUCK!"

Gabe grabbed the chain with his free hand, pulling it tighter. "Who," he asked firmly, "did?"

The vampire wailed and kicked, but couldn't pull himself loose. Gritting his fangs, he replied, "It was Moorden's clan! We . . . ggnnnhhh . . . we j-just use the basement! He lets us squat on his land, and . . . aargh . . . we d-do things for him, run errands! But we... we didn't kill Pope! They did!"

"The Okhotniki?"

"Yes! Damn it! The fucking Okhotniki!" The vampire pressed his face into the floor and sobbed as the chain shifted. "We, we . . . aaarrrggh! We were told to grab a few extra people, make it obvious where we were. We just . . . Moorden wanted to lure him here, lay an ambush. We were . . . ggnnhh . . ."

"Bait?"

"Yes! Bait! We, we were used! We're -"

Gabe leaned on the gun. "I better not hear the word 'victims' come out of your mouth, fella."

"Nonononono," the vampire said hastily. "Look, could you just . . . aaagghh!"

"Does Moorden ever come here himself?"

"N-no. He, he, he always sends someone, one of . . . ghn . . . one of his lieutenants." The vampire wriggled some more, though his heart was no longer in it. "Moorden . . . Moorden never leaves his stronghold . . . except . . ."

"Except . . .?"

"Ex-except when . . . gnargh . . . he goes to see Johnny . . ."

"Yeah." Gabe nodded. "Johnny does love to entertain."

The vampire looked upwards, his ashen face showing a glimmer of hope. "Hey . . . I could help you. I've b-been to Moorden's place. If you let me go, I-I could get you in. He's got escape tunnels into the sewer. I'll show you . . ."

Gabe appeared to mull this over. "No," he finally said. He relaxed his grip on the chain and sat back, holstering his revolver. "No, that won't be necessary. You've been very helpful already."

The vampire smiled sheepishly, his fangs glinting. "S-so . . . can I go?"

Gabe shrugged. "Sure thing."

Mel—reluctant to set foot inside the house again—was making her way around the rear to where she'd left Gabe. She was approaching the tall arched windows of the ballroom when the middle one exploded outwards in a shower of filthy jagged glass. A wailing black shape tumbled out onto the ground, already beginning to smoulder as the sunlight—dulled by the cloudy weather, but still potent—did its work.

Mel sighed heavily.

Gabe appeared a moment later, stepping up on the broken windowsill and hopping out into the garden. With only a perfunctory glance at the vampire—squealing and thrashing nearby as his skin blistered and crumbled in the light—he approached Mel with a nod. "I think we're all done here."

Mel glanced at the writhing shape on the ground. "Not exactly a people person, are you?"

"That ain't 'people'," Gabe replied shortly. "You feeling better?" he added, placing a hand on her arm.

"I'll live."

"Good." Gabe stepped past her, heading for the corner of the house. "Got a petrol can in that van?"

Mel closed her eyes. "Discreet," she whispered to herself. "Yeah."

With a last glance at the vampire—crumbling into a pile of charred bones beneath his scorched clothes—she turned to follow Gabe.

"So did we find anything out?" Mel asked, shifting gears. They were back on the motorway heading into town. In the distance behind them, a plume of dark smoke was drifting peacefully over the trees.

"Yep," said Gabe, using a rag to buff the silver chain in his hand. "Moorden thinks I'm an idiot. He knew we'd be checking out Gammon House. He could have cleared the squatters out and covered his tracks. Instead he tells them to feed me some bullshit about showing me the 'secret entrance' to his lair."

Mel smirked. "Maybe he's an idiot."

Gabe nodded, polishing another link. "Our advantage either way. Still," he sighed, "it doesn't change the fact that he's locked up tight in that pillbox of his, and half the Okhotniki clan's waiting there to ambush us."

Mel was silent for a moment, trying to decide what her response should be. Against her better judgment, she chose: "So what's our next move?"

Gabe leaned forward to wind the chain back onto his belt. "Ever heard of Fester Spitze?"

"No," said Mel earnestly. "I think I'd remember a name like that."

"Guy I met in Prague," Gabe explained. "Hunted ghouls for a living. Completely off his gourd. Anyway, he used to say, 'When you can't go for the throat, you best start biting off fingers'."

Mel looked sideways at him. "I think Fester's been hunting ghouls a little too long."

"No argument here," Gabe replied. He sat back in the seat and gave her a broad smile. "Wanna go clubbing?"

Asphodel nightclub
10:12 PM

When Chelsea saw the club, she wasn't sure she should go in.

Not that she hadn't been to underground clubs before, but this one was way off the beaten track—she wasn't even sure they were still in Roseburg—and something about the place put her off. Still, Amity said it was cool, and Amity was just about the coolest girl Chelsea had ever met. She walked, talked and ate cool. She probably farted cool, that's how cool Amity was.

The two girls approached the club on foot, after parking Amity's wheels in an empty lot two blocks away. Chelsea had expressed concern about leaving it there—they were in a run-down industrial area in the middle of nowhere—but Amity said it was all good, the car was stolen anyway. Chelsea had laughed and then regretted it, because Amity had just given her that you only think I'm joking look. She used that look a lot, but Chelsea was never sure, because some of the things Amity said . . .

The place didn't even look like a nightclub, which was probably the point. It was in the middle of a cold, empty street lined with old warehouses, scrapyards and derelict buildings that had once been factories. Nothing else in the area seemed to be open, or even inhabited. There wasn't a soul in sight except for the three guys in dark suits standing in front of the building. They were all tall, heavyset and, by the look of them, almost as cool as Amity.

"Hello, boys." Amity smiled, approaching the men with Chelsea in tow.

The tallest of the men smiled back. "Amiteeee . . . where you been, girl?"

"I been all over. Where you been?"

The man chuckled. "Who's your friend?"

Chelsea was suddenly aware of four pairs of eyes focusing on her. She tried not to show her discomfort, but she already felt out of place. Amity had let her borrow that red dress she liked, but she knew she didn't look right wearing it. Amity did, with her silky black hair and supermodel looks and perfect body. She could wear a cardboard box and still look like sex on a stick.

"This is Chelsea," Amity replied. "My new project."

All three of the men smiled, as if they knew exactly what she meant. Chelsea suddenly felt cold.

The man stepped aside, motioning them towards the door with a flourish. "In you go, ladies."

Without even a glance in Chelsea's direction, Amity strutted over to the door as one of the men opened it for her. The door was big, heavy and made from dirty steel. The word "Asphodel" had been sprayed down it in red paint.

Chelsea hesitated. She really, really didn't feel right about this place, but they obviously knew Amity here, so it must be safe . . . Ignoring the intense gaze of the head bouncer, Chelsea hurried past him as quickly as her heels would allow.

As she followed her companion into the darkened doorway it occurred to her that, all things considered, she didn't know Amity very well at all . . .

As the door creaked shut, the head bouncer caught a gleam of light off to his right. The three turned to see a pair of headlights approaching up the street. This neighbourhood didn't see a lot of traffic at night, but they thought little of it until the vehicle slowed to a halt, pulling in on the far side of the street directly opposite them. It was an old grey van, unmarked and rather grubby. The bouncers looked on with bemused interest as the driver—a tall, lean fellow in a jacket and baseball cap—alighted from the van and walked nonchalantly towards them. He had a clipboard in his right hand, and—this was what made them look sideways at each other—he was whistling.

"Evening, gents," the man in the cap chirped, stepping up onto the curb.

The head bouncer looked the newcomer over with disdain. "Whadda you want?"

The man held up his clipboard. "Signature would be good."

The bouncer's lip curled, and the streetlights glinted off an elongated tooth. "What for?"

The man in the cap responded with a frown. "Beer," he finally replied, motioning at the van behind him. "Whole vanload. This is . . ." he consulted the docket on the clipboard, " . . . Ass-foe-dell, yeah?" He held out the docket for the bouncer to see.

The bouncer stared at it as if he were being offered a dead hedgehog.

"What?" the man in the cap finally said. "Do I have to go find the bar manager?"

"I think you're in the wrong place, amigo," the head bouncer sneered. "We don't serve alcohol in this club."

The man looked surprised. "You don't?" He looked from one to the other, and a smirk broke out on his face. "What are you, Christians?"

The head bouncer snorted with laughter and, a moment later, his two sidekicks joined in. They were still laughing when the man in the cap—laughing along with them—dropped his clipboard, reached under his jacket and swept out an eighteen-inch machete. The streetlights glinted on its silver edge as it struck the head bouncer under the jawline and kept going, sending his head tumbling away across the pavement. The other bouncer nearest him barely registered what had happened when the man turned the blade and lunged, thrusting it point-first into his chest. The third let out a hiss, hesitated for a second, then turned and ran for the entrance. He made it there just in time to slump against the door and slide down it, a throwing knife wedged at the base of his skull.

Barely pausing for breath, Gabe turned to walk back to the van. Rolling the side door open, he rummaged around for a rag to wipe off the machete, then replaced it in its sheath. Leaning into the back of the vehicle, he started getting his equipment ready, still whistling as he worked.

Chelsea had to admit, it wasn't what she'd expected. In the fortnight or so that she'd known Amity, they'd been to all kinds of clubs and bars together around the city. But this place was . . . different.

First of all, it was literally underground. The front door had led to a dingy concrete corridor, which in turn led to what looked like a freight elevator. Two basements down, they finally arrived at the club. It was a broad room with a low ceiling, all cement walls and support pillars and old pipes, but the management had set up tinted lamps around the edges of the floor to cast coloured light across the walls—red, blue, green, purple. The bar was constructed from steel crates with a varnished mahogany surface on top, and tables and booths had been arranged around the space wherever they would fit amongst the pillars. In the far corner a stage area had been cleared, where four guys in cream-coloured suits were playing . . . what was it, jazz? In front of the band was a dancefloor where a couple of dozen people—mostly young, a few in their thirties or older—were moving to the music. At least a hundred others lurked around the tables and booths, sitting in huddled groups. They were all well-dressed—black, red and white being the popular colours—and most of them were strikingly attractive. Chelsea couldn't believe a place like this was situated in the middle of the industrial wasteland outside.

She tried to keep up with Amity as the girl swept through the crowd. There wasn't much room to move in between the tables, and Chelsea had to squeeze past a number of people on the way. She avoided eye contact—and other types of contact—as much as she could. She didn't like the way most of the men were looking at her. And most of the women, for that matter.

She finally caught up with Amity on the far side of the room. She'd stopped at a corner booth and was eagerly conversing with the five people seated there—two men and three other women, all of them as effortlessly stylish and painfully gorgeous as she was. She was in mid-sentence when Chelsea caught up.

". . . like fucking purgatory out there, you guys have no idea. And this is Chelsea," she said, without missing a beat, as the girl came alongside her. She slipped her arm through Chelsea's and pulled her closer. "Isn't she delicious? These are my friends."

Chelsea smiled as best she could and said hello. The people in the booth smiled back, eagerly looking her over. For some reason, she felt like she was on display in a store window.

"Scoot," Amity ordered, and one of the men slid around to make room. "Sit down, Chelsea."

Hesitantly, Chelsea slid herself onto the seat beside the man. Amity sat down on the end, sealing off her escape. "So what are you drinking?"

Chelsea looked around at the shot glasses on the table. They were all filled with some dark liquid, hard to make out in the gloom of the club. "Just water for now."

For some reason she didn't like to wonder about, the smiles around the booth got a little bigger.

"Pacing yourself," Amity smirked. "That's my girl. You've got a long night ahead of you." Raising her hand, she whistled for the waitress.

The rear entrance to Asphodel wasn't as easy to find as the front one. It was in a narrow subterranean corridor on the far side, only reachable by a long steel ladder at one end. The ladder led to a courtyard up on street level, accessed through a steel grate. There was one bouncer on the back door, who wasn't expecting to see anyone.

So when he heard the soft shuffle of bare feet on cement and saw a girl in a green cocktail dress emerge out of the shadows down the corridor, it gave him a moment's pause.

"What the... Where did you come from?" he sputtered, as the girl approached.

"Oh man," the girl giggled. "I am sooo lost. This is Asphodel, right? Is it Asphodel?"

The vampire glanced back at the door behind him. "Yeah, it's . . . wait, how did you get down here?"

The girl stepped closer, her moss-green hair bobbing around her face. A brown leather handbag, perhaps a little large, hung on a long strap around her torso. "It is, right? Man, I have heard so much about this place. I've been trying to find you guys all night."

"Yeah?" the bouncer snarled. "Well now you've found us, you can . . . uh . . ." Studying her features, he leaned forward and sniffed at her scent. "Heeyy, you're a-"

Which was as far as he got before the girl's arm swung up between them, burying a nine-inch ash stake in his heart. With a croak, the vampire's knees buckled and he slumped at her feet, already beginning to decompose.

"Yeah," Mel sighed, sweeping her hair back, "that I am." Stepping over the crumbling body, she turned her head to one side to carefully listen at the door. Then—with a brief, if unnecessary, glance up and down the dark corridor—she sank to a crouch, and began to pull a heavy chain from her handbag.

Chelsea wasn't exactly having the time of her life.

It had taken the waitress ten minutes to find a glass of water, and when it arrived it tasted like it had come out of a stagnant pool. Whatever Amity and her friends were drinking kept coming in a steady supply from some room behind the bar—there didn't seem to be any bottles or taps in sight, Chelsea now noticed—but hadn't had much time to wonder about this because of the barrage of questions. Amity's friends—whose names a newcomer to the group couldn't hope to keep track of—seemed to want to know everything about her. Where she lived, where she went to school, her friends, her family, what kind of music she listened to . . . It was flattering, she supposed, but she wasn't used to being the center of attention like this, especially when she was sitting next to Amity.

Finally deciding she needed a minute to get away from everyone, she asked where the ladies' room was. Amity—with a glance across at her friends—replied. "I'll come with you."

They made their way back through the club, finally coming to a low door across the room from the bar. Amity opened it up, ushering Chelsea through into the room beyond. By the time she'd followed and closed the door behind them, Chelsea had already figured out it wasn't a restroom. It was a small square cell built from cement, with a single hanging lightbulb. Several boxes were stacked up against one wall. It looked more like a disused storeroom.

"Um... I think we took a wrong turn," Chelsea smiled. "Where's the ladies' room?"

"There isn't one," Amity told her.

Chelsea frowned. "What do you mean, there-?"

"I just wanted some time alone," Amity said. For the first time since Chelsea had met her, she seemed nervous.

Chelsea was getting a little nervous herself. "Whyyyy . . .?" she asked carefully.

"I think my friends really like you, Chelsea." Amity looked up, and just for a second the light caught a crimson glint in her eye. "I really like you, too . . ."

"Oh," said Chelsea, her face turning pale. "Oh, shit. Um, look . . . I think you're really cool, Amity, but . . . I'm not-"

"I know you're not," Amity sighed, lifting her head. Her perfect lips parted, showing a hint of two pointed canines. "But you could be. If you wanted."

Out in the club, the serving ghouls were having problems. One of them had tried to use the rear exit to dump some garbage, and found the door chained shut from outside. She'd banged on the door and called for the bouncer out in the corridor, but there was no response.

She'd mentioned this to the owner, who went to check the back door himself. Meanwhile, he sent the serving ghoul to the elevator to go and tell the bouncers up on the street. She pushed the button—several times—but found that the elevator wasn't responding. She quickly hurried back to tell the owner, who was still trying to force the back door open. The whole matter was beginning to cause him some concern, since the elevator and the back door were the only two ways to get out of the basement they were in.

It was at that point that the serving ghoul grabbed his arm, and pointed up at the vents . . .

Chelsea's stared at Amity's mouth. "Ooohhh . . . you're one of those . . ." For a moment, she wasn't sure whether or not to be relieved.

"We all are," Amity smiled, proudly displaying her fangs. "All my friends out there, everybody else in the club. I mean, you didn't notice?"

Chelsea didn't answer, transfixed by Amity's teeth. Damn it, even her fangs were sexy.

"I mean, I could have just sucked you dry by now," Amity told her. "I almost did once. When we were in the cab that time? But I thought, y'know . . . You're kinda cool, and you're pretty, and we've had some laughs, and . . . well, I wondered if, y'know . . . you'd like to join us."

Chelsea opened her mouth. After fishing around for a response, the best she could manage was, "Heh?"

"Now, just so you know, it's kinda risky," Amity went on. "I'd have to bite you real good, drink a bunch of your blood, and then leave you to turn. And there's no guarantee it'll take, you might just, y'know, die and stuff. But, I mean, you're young and healthy . . ."

"Uh-huh," Chelsea responded, backing up against the wall.

"And I can do it where it doesn't show. When I got turned the guy bit me on the inner thigh. Femoral artery." She gave a coy smile. "It was kinda hot, actually . . ."

Chelsea raised a finger. "I did mention I'm not gay, right?"

Amity smiled. "Look, I hate to lay it all on you like this, but at this point you've kinda got two choices." She moved closer, leaning her hand on the wall beside Chelsea. "And, well," she said softly, the light gleaming on her fangs, "one of them really blows."

Chelsea was wondering how to respond when the screaming started. One voice at first, then others, a rising chorus of shrieking and cursing. Amity stepped back, her crimson eyes going to the door. She heard running feet, tables being overturned, glasses shattering on the cement floor. Forgetting all about Chelsea, she ran to the door and flung it open.

Outside, the club was in chaos. Thick white smoke was pouring in through the vents, covering the low ceiling in a blanket of haze, slowly filling up the room. Vampires were running back and forth in the smoke, screaming and choking. Crowds were forming around the exits, shoving and clawing at each other in their haste to escape. Many of them had already fallen.

Amity stepped through the door, looking around at the havoc. "What the fuck is going-?" she managed to say, before she stepped into the smoke.

An instant later she let out a blood-curdling shriek, stumbling back to the door. She tripped over her heels and fell onto all fours, trying to scramble back into the storeroom. Chelsea stood in the doorway, staring out at the hellish mess in the club. Her face screwed up as she caught the smoke full in the face, recognizing its powerful fragrance.

Incense . . .?

Amity looked up, howling in agony as she tried to reach the door. Her skin was mottled and burnt, as if a furnace had blown up in her face, and her crimson eyes were bulging out of her head like overripe plums. She extended a hideously-scarred arm, her grotesquely swollen tongue lolling out of her blistered lips. "Gheltheeeeaaaaaa . . ."

Chelsea screamed and slammed the door. Throwing her back against it, she slid to the floor, already fumbling around in her bag for her cellphone. Hastily hitting a speed dial number, she sat and waited—listening to the feeble slapping of a weakened hand on the other side of the door—until it connected.

"Mum?" she gasped, her voice shaking. "Um, look, I know I said I was spending the night at Natalie's place, but . . . I kind of lied. Yeah, sorry. Can you come get me?"

Up on the street, the grey van was slowly pulling away.

Chapter 10

Easterwood

In the fashionable suburb of Easterwood, in the relatively upmarket eastern districts of Roseburg, there stood a small but well-maintained apartment building. Isolated on its own seperate lot, it was five storeys high, white and angular, and ran heavily to steel and glass. There was a barred steel gate at the garage entrance, and access to the building itself was only possible via two doors, both of them sporting bulletproof glass. All the entrances required a key, a thumbprint and a four-digit PIN before they would even consider opening. Anyone observing the building for any length of time would notice the men in dark suits hanging around near the doors, occasionally wandering to and fro around the building but never straying far. It was probably the most security-conscious private residence in the area.

Nobody lived there.

Two storeys below street level, accessible only by an elevator that ran from the building's basement, was Moorden's residence. It was much older than the building above. Once upon a time a stately home—one of the smaller echoes of Gammon House that had sprung up about the district in the colonial days—had stood on the site, home to a well-off cattle merchant and his extensive family. After the cattle merchant's mentally unstable daughter fell in with the wrong crowd, took to vampirism and cheerfully slaughtered the rest of the clan, the subterranean lair had been built as an extension of the cellars. It became the den of an ambitious vampire gang, who were in turn wiped out thirteen years later by an alliance of rival gangs, burning down the house in the process. Building a simpler farmhouse on the site, the victorious gangs had taken the lair below as headquarters and merged into the fearsome Okhotniki clan, one of the legendary Three Clans of Roseburg's dark history.

Times had changed since then and, after catching their breath, had changed even more. There were now Five Clans, and only two of the original remained. The farmhouse had been torn down to build a boarding house, from which guests were unlikely to check out. The boarding house had been renovated, extended, and eventually bulldozed to make way for the modern structure that now stood in its place. The founders of the clan were long dead, and leadership had fallen to Xander Moorden.

As a result, the Okhotniki were no longer fearsome.

Many in the city's vampire population would—and, out of earshot, did—argue that Moorden had no business running a clan at all. It was true that he'd only joined the Okhotniki, only been made a vampire in the first place, because he had a good head for business and had been a useful advisor to the clan's former leaders. As those leaders were killed off one way or another, and loyalties had swung back and forth, Moorden had eventually managed to gather support for a coup. Once he had the numbers a couple of well-placed murders had secured his place as clan boss, and a minor internal struggle had killed or run off any lingering resistance.

In retrospect, some of the clan's best warriors had been among them. He hadn't worried about that at the time, but as the years passed and power in the city's underworld had shifted, the strength—and reputation—of the Okhotniki had gradually dwindled. It was only out of respect for their history and a handful of tenuous alliances that they had survived at all.

It was in the hard times that Moorden was most strongly reminded of this. The times when he needed the strength and resolve of loyal vampires to help the clan pull through, only to look around at the incompetent self-serving mercenaries he'd ended up with, and realise how they'd fallen. Where were the warriors who'd fought for them in the days of old? Where were Vogel and Cuspin? Where was Rebekah, or that mad bastard Bloody Sloane?

Well—they were dead. Vogel had been staked, Cuspin crushed. Rebekah had defected to another clan and was later assassinated, quite gruesomely as Moorden recalled. As for Bloody Sloane, he'd gone down in '56 during the attempted werewolf incursion of that year. Torn to pieces under a pile of enraged wolves, still trying to bite them back when he had no limbs left to hit them with. They just didn't make vampires like him any more.

Gathered in the long, gloomy chamber that served as the clan's conference room were the dozen or so conniving, ambitious reprobates who currently served as Moorden's inner circle. They weren't sitting at the long table that dominated the room—in fact at present, most of them were reluctant to come near it and were hanging back in the shadows whispering amongst themselves. Only two of them—the oldest and bravest—had come forward to speak to their leader, who sat hunched over like a brooding vulture at the head of the table. He'd just received some bad news, and his people knew that was no time to be attracting his attention.

"Burnt down?" Moorden rasped.

One of his lieutenants stepped forward. He was a tall, lanky vampire with long greasy hair, wearing a tuxedo jacket with no shirt. He had a large numeral 8 in a black circle tattooed over his heart. He had only recently been promoted to the position of Moorden's second in command, but was already making a name—or a number—for himself in the vampire underworld. "To the foundations," he replied.

Moorden's fists were clenched on the desk. "And Asphodel?"

Eight-Ball ground his fangs before replying. "Motherfucker sealed the exits and planted incense burners in the ventilation system. Sixty-seven dead, thirty-nine others scarred or blinded. Not counting ghouls, of course."

"At least a third of the dead were affiliated with the other clans," said a blonde female vampire on Moorden's left. "They're asking questions, and-"

Moorden snarled and slammed his fist down on the tabletop, splintering the wood. His lieutenants took a collective step back.

The fearful silence that followed was eventually broken by a feminine voice from across the room. "He's trying to draw you out."

The eyes of the room turned on Salomé Argyros, sitting cross-legged on the table at the far end, spear laid across her lap. "He can't attack you here, so he's going to chip away at your territory." She idly stroked the engraving on the spear shaft, fingers playing around the swirls and spirals. "If he weakens you enough, he won't have to attack. Some other clan boss will take advantage and do the deed for him."

"So what do you suggest?" Eight-Ball sneered.

Salomé looked up. "Well, I thought the plan was to kill him."

"It's not that simple," Moorden growled.

Salome smiled grimly and lifted her spear, light playing across the silver head. "It's the simplest thing in the world."

Moorden looked up at Eight-Ball, who turned to Salomé. "You have to get close enough to do it first," he explained, in a condescending tone. "He and that dryad witch are holing themselves up in the Fisher Building. Pope's father had the ground consecrated years ago. We can't get near it."

"And he won't be drawn into an ambush," said the blonde female. "He's smarter than his old man. Sneakier, too."

With an impatient hiss, Salomé was suddenly on her feet. "Listen to yourselves. Draw him into an ambush?" She advanced on the group, walking down the long surface of the table. "You've all been playing war games with the other clans for too long. We're supposed to be predators. We go out and hunt the sow down in the open. We don't set snares." Stopping in front of Moorden, she slowly sank to one knee, lowering her face to his. "And we don't hide down here in the dark waiting for the prey to come to us."

Moorden's eyes flashed, the light playing across blood-red irides. In the company of humans, even the weakest of vampires knew how to maintain a simple glamour to hide their true features. Here in his inner sanctum, there was no need for it. His fangs—faintly jagged and yellow with age—were bared and clenched as he softly hissed back at her. "Mind your tongue, Chernysvet."

Salomé held his gaze for a short eternity. Then, with a snort, she turned and jumped off the table. Pushing the blonde vampire aside, she strode out the arched doorway. "I'm going out."

"You'll stay right here," Moorden snarled over his shoulder.

There was no answer. Salomé was gone.

"I should just kill that bitch," the blonde spat.

Moorden looked sideways at her. "Go on, then."

After a long and awkward silence, the blonde vampire sat down and started inspecting her nails.

Two hours later, in a dark alley on the edge of Okhotniki territory, an illicit transaction was about to take place. Dark alleys are often the setting for illicit transactions, but in Roseburg the merchandise is often rather specialized.

Parked halfway down the alley was a 1968 Dodge Charger, painted arterial red. Three vampires—the shifty, greasy variety that the Okhotniki clan attracted these days—were waiting beside it. One of them, a stocky type with a goatee and dirty blonde dreadlocks, was sitting on the hood. All three were watching the other end of the alley, and had been doing so for ten minutes.

"He's late," said one.

"Yep," the one with the dreadlocks replied.

Another minute passed.

"What if he doesn't show, Dash?"

"He'll show."

Twenty more seconds slid past.

"Yeah, but what if he doesn't?"

The dreadlocked vampire spat on the ground. "If he doesn't show," he said, matter-of-factly, "we go visit his family."

The others grinned toothily. "Dibs on the daughter."

"Wait your turn."

"Heh."

They looked around as the alley was illuminated by approaching headlights. A large van, white in colour, rolled in from the far end and pulled to a stop.

"About fuckin' time." Dash slid off the car and moved to the front as the van's driver alighted and hurried out to meet him. He was a man of about forty, clean-cut but with a harried look, wearing a blue shirt with a nametag reading "Roy". He was carrying a clipboard folder in one hand, and the logo on his breast pocket read "EAST ROSEBURG BLOOD BANK".

"You're late," Dash snapped, as the man approached him.

"Sorry," Roy said. "Got held up at the-"

The vampire's hand swung out. It wasn't even a proper backhander, barely a flick of the wrist, but it caught the man across the cheek like a right hook. He swung around and dropped to one knee, the folder clattering to the ground beside him.

"I don't give a fuck if you got held up, you little bitch. I got better things to do than wait for you." Placing a boot on Roy's shoulder, Dash kicked him out of the way and stooped to pick up the folder. "Now what have you got?"

Roy slowly got to his feet, wiping blood from his lip. "Eighteen litres. Mostly O positive, A positive, some-"

The vampire's hand shot out, grabbing him by the ear. "Eighteen litres?" he hissed. "You make me sit around waiting all night for eighteen fuckin' litres?"

Roy winced as his ear twisted. "Th-that's all I could get."

Dash tossed the clipboard away, wrenching the ear even harder. Blood started to trickle down Roy's neck. "Well, that's not all I can get, Roy. What say I go by your house and take the difference out of Mrs Roy? She's a tubby bitch, I reckon I can get at least five more litres out of her. What blood type is she again?"

Behind him, the other two laughed.

"Might not get as much out of your daughter, but she can work it off first. What do you think?"

Dash waited for the laughter, but this time it didn't come. Looking down at Roy, he noticed that the man had stopped struggling and was staring past his shoulder.

He turned around to see his two sidekicks lying on the pavement. One had a crossbow bolt stuck through his chest. The other had one sticking out of his eye socket.

"What the fu-?" he managed to say, before something fast and solid and extremely sharp struck him in the back. He looked down to see the sharpened point of a stake protruding from his ribcage.

"Oh," he said, and died.

Roy dropped to his knees, his torn ear forgotten, as Dash flopped to the ground in front of him and began to decompose. His wide eyes swivelled upwards to see a man standing over them both, wearing a black t-shirt with a white cross on it. Looking over at the van, he asked, "So where's the blood going?"

Roy looked down at Dash's face, the skin rotting and peeling off the bone. He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, and a girl with green hair was helping him to his feet. He stared at her as she dusted off his shirt.

"Um . . . it's . . ." He gestured feebly in the direction of the van. "I don't know . . . They take it to a warehouse, I think. They barter with it, or something."

Gabe smiled. "Nah. You're going to take it to the nearest hospital and sign it in."

"Might want to get that ear seen to while you're there," Mel added.

Roy looked down at the shrivelled bodies. "They'll come after me," he protested. "The Okhotniki. They said they'd kill my kids . . ."

Gabe patted him on the back. "Don't worry about it. They'll be too busy to worry about your kids." He nodded towards the van. "Off you go."

Roy looked at them both, nodded once, and raised a finger. "One second."

Taking a few steps back, he lined himself up, took a running start, and swung a kick at Dash's head. The rotted skull detached from the neck, punted down the alley and bounced over the roof of the Dodge, cracking the windscreen on the way. With a grin Roy turned around, stuck his hands in his pockets, and whistled his way back to the van. Mel watched him go with a smirk.

He was almost there when a figure in black stepped out of a doorway on his right. Roy caught a flash of silver before her spear caught him in the chest, the blade punching out through his back. His eyes bulged.

Mel took a step forward, shouting a curse. Beside her, Gabe drew his bat.

Salomé Argyros snarled, twisted the spear, and yanked it back. There was a flash as it withdrew from the wound, and a wisp of smoke rose from Roy's chest as he collapsed with a gasp. By the time he hit the ground Salomé had already forgotten him, her eyes fixed on Gabe.

Gabe stared back, his silver bat held in front of him like a sword. Beside him, Mel angrily drew two stakes from her belt. Her attention was still on Roy's fallen body.

"And who," Gabe demanded, "are you?"

Salomé didn't answer. Instead she stepped back, poised the spear, and flung it point-first at his heart.

Chapter 11

The Alley

Mel's eyes never left the spearhead, even as she moved in. It was halfway through its arc when she darted sideways, pushing Gabe to one side. For a second she was in the spear's path, then she turned her shoulder and flattened herself, her back against Gabe, letting the shaft sweep past her face. She caught a glimpse of the engraved silver head, an impression of a wild, ruby-eyed face etched into the metal. Lightning and flame played about the blade.

Then she heard the vampire shout a word, and the spear flashed back. In an instant, without seeming to move or change course, it was back where it had originated: in the vampire's hand. Mel stared.

"Uh oh," she heard Gabe say.

A second later they were in motion. Pushing away from Gabe, Mel turned and swept out one arm in a wide sinuous arc, sending one of the wooden stakes spinning through the air in Salomé's direction. It curved as it flew, coming around to strike at the vampire's left, but Salomé whirled the shaft of her spear upwards and struck the stake high into the air. Salomé advanced, running half the length of the alley as Gabe moved to meet her. She came in fast, bringing the spear down to stab at his chest. Gabe's bat swept around to turn the thrust from him, coming back around to swing at her head. Salomé ducked and rolled, and caught a flash of green in her peripheral vision. Twirling the spear to keep both her attackers at bay, she spun away from them and came up in a crouch, spear thrust out ahead of her.

Gabe and Mel moved out in opposite directions, coming around to flank her, weapons up. Mel crouched to catch up her fallen stake as it rolled across the cement towards her. Salomé's eyes darted back and forth, watching them both, yet she kept the spear pointed towards Gabe.

Without warning Mel's arm came around, launching a stake at Salomé's side. The vampire came up into a spin, dodging the throw, and realised just in time that it had been a diversion. Gabe was on her, silver bat swinging up at her face. She parried the blow, already whirling to face Mel as the dryad sprang at her back. Dodging the stake, Salomé caught Mel off-balance with a wild swing and thrusting out a booted heel to kick her in the stomach. As Mel tumbled backwards, Gabe was already pressing his attack. The engraved shaft came up to block his swing, pushing Gabe back into a defensive position.

Salomé came at him like a wild animal, spear lunging and swinging, raining down a series of staff blows that he was hard-pressed to parry or evade. Twice he had to duck the slicing, blazing point of the spear as it slashed at his head. He kept falling back until he felt an obstacle behind him and realised she'd driven him all the back to Roy's van. Hemmed in and caught off-balance, he had nowhere to go as Salomé, sensing the advantage, thrust the spear forward at his stomach. Gabe barely twitched out of the way, leaving the sizzling spearpoint to cleave metal instead of flesh. Before Salomé could recover he brought his bat down on top of the shaft, trapping the spear in place. Salomé growled as he looked up into her face.

"Have we met?" he asked breathlessly.

Salomé's eyes blazed into him, her voice a ragged snarl. "You killed my sister."

Gabe considered this. "Probably."

With a shriek, Salomé tore the spear free and swung it around, aiming the edge at his head. Gabe ducked and rolled away, hearing the crack as the silver blade obliterated the windscreen of the van. Salomé was already compensating, bringing her spear back around for another attack. Gabe ducked the butt end of the spear, parried the sharp end and countered with a backhander, his knuckles connecting solidly with Salomé's cheekbone. She spun fully around from the blow, and he just had time to consider that he hadn't hit her that hard when her spear came around in a downward swing, slicing across the left side of his chest. He fell back with a roar, blood spattering the cement.

With a triumphant shout, Salomé moved to thrust the spear at his unprotected back. Almost too late she caught movement in the corner of her eye and turned to dodge as Mel's stake whirled towards her again. It was quickly followed by the other one, which she knocked away with a contemptuous sweep of her spear. The stake tumbled above her head, but seemed to alter its trajectory and fall back towards Mel. Catching it one-handed, she dropped to one knee and hurled it again. It came in low this time, aimed at the vampire's thigh, but as Salomé tried to block it again the weapon seemed to twist in the air, coming up under her arm to drive point-first into her side.

Mel was already moving before Salomé's scream echoed the length of the alley. Her balled fist lashed out at her opponent's face, but Salomé's pale hand moved to catch her wrist. The spear shaft whipped around at the dryad's head, but she dropped into a crouch to avoid the blow. As it swept over, she lunged upwards again, a slender but very decisive elbow catching the vampire under the chin. Her head snapped back, and in the second she was dazed Mel managed to catch the spear shaft and lock it under one arm . . .

...loosedfrommybondsfreetoflyfreetoslaythethirstneverstops...

Mel rocked back as if struck by a sledgehammer, a tortured scream in her throat. She came down on her hip, scrambling back across the cement. A red haze blurred her eyes, her head filled with...

...tearthroughrankslikelightningtearthroughfleshlikewaterbattleragingbodiessplittingopenlike...

She desperately shook her head, fighting to catch her breath, trying to shake the images loose. Her green eyes darted upwards to see Salomé standing over her, spear angled downwards, the point aimed at her throat. The silver spearhead was glowing as though it had been pulled from a forge.

Drawing a ragged breath, Mel found her voice. "Where . . . where the hell did you get that spear . . .?"

A crooked smile slid across the vampire's face. "You should be more concerned about where I'm going to put it."

She was still smiling when the glow of approaching headlights illuminated her face. Mel heard the engine on her left, but didn't waste time turning her head to look. Driving her heels into the ground, she hurled herself into a backward roll out of the way. Salomé's head jerked around just in time to see the business end of the blood bank van before it hit her. Bones shattered as her feet left the ground, she and the spear parting in midair and tumbling in different directions. Salomé's flight ended with a crushing impact on the hood of Dash's Charger, several more bones fracturing as she hit the windscreen and went straight through in an eruption of buckling, shattering glass. The spear, its bloodthristy glow dimmed, clattered against the wall of the alley nearby.

Mel completed her awkward roll with a graceless plop onto her backside. Brushing her tangled hair out of her face, she stared wide-eyed at the crumpled, bloody mess that the Dodge had become. Salomé, no longer visible, was presumably somewhere inside it.

She turned her head as the passenger door of the van was kicked open. Gabe, hunched over the steering wheel with a haggard expression, gave her an impatient stare. "You coming or what?"

Mel was barely into the van when he wrenched it into reverse and backed down the alley at speed. Her eyes were on the car, looking for movement. It seemed to rock a little—an illusion caused by the motion of the van's headlights, perhaps—but then they were in the street and Gabe was twisting the wheel and slamming the vehicle into drive. The tyres spun for a second before digging in, and they were away.

Mel slumped back, eyes closed, letting the wind through the shattered windscreen wash over her face. She felt the van waver slightly in its course, and looked across to see Gabe leaning over, gripping the wheel in one bloodied hand. "You alright?" she asked him.

"No," he replied earnestly. His grip on the wheel slipped, and the van swerved again.

"Maybe I should drive," Mel suggested.

Gabe's foot found the brake, and Mel managed to brace herself against the dashboard as the van slid to a screeching halt at forty-five degrees to the road. "Maybe you should," Gabe nodded drunkenly, his hand dropping from the wheel. "By the way," he added, as Mel started climbing over him, "I really hope there's some AB negative in the back."

Offices of Downwright & Pope
Early morning

"This is nasty," said Mel.

"Well," Gabe winced, "as bad as it looks, I can assure you it feels a lot worse."

"Oh, harden up," she said, grinning.

Gabe sat back in the chair by his father's desk, eyes on the ceiling, as Mel knelt beside him to treat his wound. She worked gently but efficiently, swabbing and stitching and dressing with all the skill of someone who'd been doing it for better than sixty years. "It's crazy," she murmured. "It didn't just cut you, it burned you at the same time. It's going to leave a mother of a scar."

Gabe sighed. "Well, chicks dig scars."

Mel's eyes moved over the collection of old wounds marring his torso. "You'd know, kid. Good news is, the burning helped slow the bleeding down. I'd take it easy today, though."

"Yes, nurse," Gabe smiled. "So, obvious question—vampire girl with the spear?"

Mel focused on her work, perhaps a little too intently. "Not sure about the girl," she replied. "Seemed familiar. Didn't look like Okhotniki, though, maybe another clan. Whoever she is, she seemed to love you."

"Oh, I felt the love. What about the spear?"

Mel took her time in answering. "I'm . . . not sure. It looked . . ." she faltered and shook her head. "I'm really not sure." Making sure the dressing was secure, she sat back on her heels. "All set."

Gabe tried not to squeak as he dragged himself out of the chair, his wound burning with the movement. Shuffling over to his bag, he rummaged around and pulled out a fresh t-shirt. This one was grey, with the same celtic cross emblem as the others.

"What's with all the t-shirts, anyway?" Mel asked, rising to her feet.

Gabe shrugged as he carefully slipped the shirt on over his head. "Kid in Estonia was selling them on the street. I bought about a dozen. Four different colours." He pulled his head through, dragging the shirt down over his waist. "Why, you don't like them?"

"Oh no," Mel smirked. "Form and function. Very Richard Matheson." She picked up her first aid kit and moved back to her desk, crouching to replace it in the bottom drawer. "So I take it you're planning to continue the whole 'war of attrition' thing?"

"That's the plan."

"But not tonight, right?"

"Why not?" Gabe shrugged, reached down to close up his bag, and gave a sharp hiss as his wound moved under the bandage. "Okay, maybe tomorrow night."

Mel sank into her chair, arranging the papers on her desk. "Okay."

Gabe caught the tone. "You have thoughts?"

Mel kept shuffling papers. "I always have thoughts, young man. You know that."

Gabe nodded, sat down, and gave her an expectant look. Tapping the papers into a neat stack, she swivelled her chair to face him. "We've been lucky so far," she told him. "Caught them with their pants down, did some damage. But the more shit we stir up, the harder it'll get to stay on top of the situation. We've already got girls with spears popping out of the woodwork. No telling how messy this thing could get."

"Noted," said Gabe. "So what do you suggest?"

Mel leaned foward. "Have you considered a more diplomatic approach?"

Moorden's headquarters
Sunset

Another day was drawing to a close over the Okhotniki's apartment building, and the ghouls guarding the entrances were bored out of their minds. Soon the vampires below would be stirring, coming and going on their various errands, but the ghouls would carry on as always, minding the doors, keeping watch for intruders who never came. They were a pale, skulking breed, living slaves of the vampire race, unharmed by sunlight and untroubled by intellect. The ones guarding Moorden's headquarters wore black suits for the look of the thing, but they had the dusty pall of the crypt on them.

As the sun dipped between two nearby buildings, spreading its harsh orange light over the tired city, the high-pitched drone of a small engine caught their attention. The ones nearest the front door looked around to see the approaching vehicle as it rounded a corner, rolling unspectacularly towards the building. It was an old 50cc moped, painted an awful shade of lime green. It putted down the street towards them, wobbling a little bit, and finally turned to come to a halt. Perched astride it, bare feet delicately placed on the footrest, was a lithe and gorgeous young woman in a green sweater and brown pencil skirt. She wore dark glasses and a battered old helmet with a chinstrap, and appeared to be carrying a white flag on a broomstick.

The ghouls stared as she calmly parked the moped and removed her helmet, hanging it on the handlebars. Underneath, her mossy hair was tied back into a neat ponytail. Hoisting her white flag on her shoulder, she turned and walked demurely in the ghouls' direction. Several of them drew their weapons as she came closer.

Unperturbed, the girl stopped and planted the flag on the pavement beside her, as if claiming new territory in the name of Queen Isabella. "Gentlemen," she announced with a smile, pushing her sunglasses up onto her head. "My name is Meliad. I represent Downwright and Pope. I'm sure you've heard of us."

The ghouls looked around at each other for several seconds before one of them found his voice. "What do you want, tree stump?"

"I'm here on behalf of Gabriel Pope," Mel explained. "Acting on my advice, he's decided to seek a peaceful resolution to his dispute with your clan. He'd like to discuss a truce." She smiled a prim little smile. "Is Mr Moorden in?"

Chapter 12

Moorden's Headquarters

"So let me see if I . . . understand the situation," Xander Moorden frowned, crossing his beefy hands in front of him. "Young Pope has been running around town killing my people and destroying my property, and now suddenly decides that he wants to make peace with me?"

Across the table, Meliad gave him a smile. "Correct."

Moorden looked sideways at his lieutenants. They were all assembled in the gloomy subterranean conference room, all of them fascinated by the presence of the infamous Meliad here in their very lair—in one piece, at any rate. Eight-Ball was stalking back and forth around the table, sizing her up like a shark circling its prey.

"And what's brought on this sudden change of heart?" Moorden asked.

Mel shifted in her seat. The two ghouls who'd brought her inside were now standing behind her with drawn blades, keeping a close watch on her hands folded in her lap. They'd searched her for weapons—very carefully—and had even made her leave her flag and broomstick upstairs. But her reputation had preceded her, and they knew she was dangerous enough bare-handed.

"First of all," she announced, "you must forgive our Gabriel for his reckless behaviour. He's young and angry and a bit thick. And to be fair," she added, looking Moorden square in the eye, "his father recently passed away."

Moorden held her gaze. "I heard."

"But he's coming around," Mel went on. "The attempt on his own life last night had a lot to do with it . . ."

Moorden's moustache twitched. Salomé hadn't been seen since the previous night.

"But mostly, he's beginning to see reason. All he wants is to find the vampires who killed his father. If they were to be, shall we say, made available, he'd be willing to call off any further hostilities against your clan."

Moorden's lieutenants exchanged worried glances. The clan boss leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "And what makes you think I can produce the vampires in question?"

"Well, Lazarus was killed in your territory. Some would say it's your responsibility as a custodian to help track down the guilty parties."

Sniggering laughter went around the room.

"Others could argue that it's in your interests to find the killers," Mel continued, voice rising above the laughter, "if only to stop Gabe tearing up your backyard looking for them himself."

Moorden glowered around the room, and the laughter died. "Very trusting of him to send you here alone," he observed.

Mel's eyes swivelled sideways as Eight-Ball leaned in over her shoulder. "One little girl in a dungeon full of big bad vampires," he breathed into her ear.

Mel smiled. "I don't think my blood would agree with you."

"But we could still kill you," Moorden countered. "Or take you hostage, give young Gabriel something to think about. Might even get some information out of you while we're at it."

"Could take a while." Eight-Ball's icy lips brushed against her cheekbone. "We could amuse ourselves in all kinds of ways."

Mel didn't flinch, her eyes still on Moorden. "Oh, by all means," she said brightly. "Kill me dead. Rape and torture me all the live-long day. But I should remind you that there are still at least a dozen targets in your territory worth attacking. You don't know which one Gabe will hit next, and neither do I. From what I've seen in the last couple of days, he'll probably just throw a dart at a map. And you haven't got the manpower to protect them all. Not from him."

Moorden began to fidget.

"The offer's on the table," Mel went on. "Take it or leave it, but if I'm not home by midnight in the same pristine condition I left in, it's open season in Okhotniki country. So please . . ." She turned her head, coming nose-to-nose with Eight-Ball. "Make my fucking day."

Eight-Ball held her gaze just long enough to preserve his dignity before backing off.

"Let's cut to the chase, shall we?" Moorden growled. "What's he proposing?"

"We are proposing," Mel declared, "a meeting. You and Gabriel. Tomorrow night. To discuss terms."

Moorden drummed his fingers on the table. "Here?"

"Yeah," Mel replied dryly, "because we trust you that much. Neutral ground, Xander. Somewhere within your territory, of course, but not in a place where you've got an obvious upper hand. We'll even let you pick the spot, though we'll have to approve it first." She reached into a pocket on her skirt—apparently oblivious to the ghouls tensing up behind her—and produced a small white card, which she flicked across the table. "Call that number at sunset tomorrow night and tell us where. If we don't like your choice the deal's off, so give it some honest thought. Now, if you'll excuse me . . ." The ghouls stepped back, nervously brandishing their weapons, as Mel rose to her feet. "Things to see, people to do. Ciao."

Without another word, she turned and walked out of the room, heading back towards the elevator. None of the assembled vampires thought of getting in her way.

Only when the elevator was on its way back up to street level did Eight-Ball speak. "You're going to call a truce?"

Moorden was studying the card Mel had given him. "No," he replied softly. "I'm going to get the little shit in front of me, and then you're going to tear his innards out."

Eight-Ball grinned like a shark. "Now there's a plan I can get behind."

Gabe slept for most of the following day. He was largely nocturnal anyway, but thought it best to get some extra rest and give his new scar a chance to heal. It was just before six in the evening when he came downstairs to the office. Mel was sitting at her desk, looking through some files on her computer. Every now and then her eyes would stray towards the telephone.

She looked up as Gabe moved around his father's disordered desk, examining the large wooden cabinet dominating the wall behind it. He opened up both the cabinet doors, letting the light fall on its contents. Blades of various shapes and sizes hung on wooden frames, next to a couple of shotguns and a crossbow. Arranged on shelves beneath were a a selection of handguns, mostly revolvers. Small drawers contained ammunition, charms and various other paraphenalia, two large jugs of holy water were stored in the back, and other more unusual weapons took up what space was left. As impressive an armoury as it was, it was only a small selection of the myriad weapons the Pope men had collected over the years. It was from this cabinet that Gabe had taken his silver baseball bat years earlier, just before he'd left.

Looking down, he ran his eyes over the handguns.

"Looking for something?" Mel called from her desk.

"Yeah." Closing the doors, Gabe turned to face her. "Where is it?"

Mel sat for a moment, lightly drumming her fingers on the desk. Then, with a sigh, she opened the bottom drawer, and drew out the revolver. Without a word, she placed it on the edge of the desktop.

Gabe crossed the room, reached out a hand and, almost reverently, picked the gun up. Feeling the weight, he turned it from side to side, examining the runes engraved into the metal. "Old Webley," he said softly.

He glanced up to see Mel giving him a look. "Sorry," he smiled. "Dad never let me pick it up. Had no problem with me using the other guns, but this . . . it's like it was sacred."

"I don't know if 'sacred' is the word," Mel replied, an odd tone to her voice. "Three generations of Popes have died with that gun in their hands."

"Well," said Gabe, "you've got to have your family traditions."

The telephone on Mel's desk rang, breaking the silence that followed. Mel leaned forward to connect the speakerphone. "Downwright and Pope," she chirped brightly. "Taking the 'un' out of 'undead' since 1918. How may I direct your call?"

There was a long pause before a cold voice—which Mel recognised as belonging to Eight-Ball—crackled through the speaker. "Mr Moorden is ready to meet. Apogee on Surcease Road. You know it?"

Mel frowned slightly. "The restaurant?"

"A public place," Eight-Ball explained, "on the edge of our territory. And it's run by humans, so you can trust it. Is this acceptable?"

Mel looked up at Gabe, who nodded. "I think we have a date," she replied.

"Be there in two hours," the voice growled. "Just you and Pope. No weapons." The line went dead.

Mel reached over and tapped the button to hang up. "I was wondering what a girl had to do to get taken out to dinner around here." She looked up at Gabe, still staring at the revolver in his hand. "No weapons, he says."

"Yep." Gabe slowly laid the gun down on the desk. "That's what he says."

Apogee Restaurant
8:13 PM

Apogee wasn't the hottest nightspot in Roseburg, but it had always enjoyed a certain trendy popularity. There was only one entrance and, while technically this was in violation of several safety codes, authorities in Roseburg tended to be lax about such things. Besides, the maitre'd had been heard to quip, if you needed to leave Apogee in a hurry you could always just jump.

The restaurant was an open air establishment, built on the roof of a twelve-storey building at the thinning edge of the urban sprawl. The dining room was accessed via an old cage elevator in the northwest corner. The owner's office and storerooms were downstairs, leaving the roof free for a roomy dining area, a dancefloor, and a bar along the north side of the roof. About two dozen white-clothed tables were arranged in a loose semicircular cluster around the dancefloor. There was no stage, but a baby grand piano stood on a small raised dias at the far end, where an elderly Asian man played the finest musak around six nights a week.

It was a quiet night at Apogee. About twenty people were seated in small groups around the tables, and only a few staff were on duty. The restaurant owner was mingling around the tables, his eyes straying nervously towards the large circular table located at the very edge of the dancefloor. There sat Xander Moorden, wearing a dark grey suit and scarlet tie. Eight-Ball was seated beside him, wearing a dress jacket and waistcoat, but still no shirt. The table in front of them was empty apart from a candle and an untouched bowl of breadsticks. Two empty chairs were placed opposite them.

Finally the elevator rose into view, and the door slid open. Mel stepped into view, hair down, dressed in a sleek olive green pants suit. Gabe emerged a moment later, looking somewhat uncomfortable in a black suit with a dark shirt and no tie. Moorden's cold eyes never left them as a waiter led them across the floor to the table.

"Evening, all," Mel smiled, seating herself without waiting for the waiter to pull her chair out. Gabe sank into the chair beside her, his eyes on Moorden. "I've always wanted to eat here," Mel went on. "Maybe in better company, but . . ."

Eight-Ball sneered across the table at her. "We thought it'd be best to meet somewhere in the open air." He scowled in Gabe's direction. "With no ventilation system." His eyes moved back to Mel. "I take it you remembered the agreement?"

"We're clean," Mel assured him, opening her jacket. "Your ghouls down in the parking lot already searched us." She looked up with a smile as the waiter offered her a wine list. "I hear the Chateau la Planque is excellent here," she said, looking over the selection. "Do you ever drink . . ." she looked up at Eight-Ball, ". . . wine?" He responded with a humourless smile.

Moorden leaned forward. "Enough games," he snapped. "You wanted to talk. Let's talk."

"Alright." Gabe crossed his hands in front of him. "Let's."

"You want to call a truce." Moorden spat the word out. "And you want me to deliver your father's killers."

"That's right."

Moorden grunted. "And what are you offering in return?"

"Nothing," said Gabe.

"Nothing?"

Gabe nodded. "As in, I'll stay out of your territory and I won't bother your people any more. Nothing."

Moorden sat back. "I might be willing to make peace," he conceded. "But certain of my people might hold a grudge or two. You've inflicted a lot of damage over the past few nights."

Gabe shrugged. "It's a dirty job."

Moorden looked back across the table at him, and did something few people had ever seen him do.

He smiled.

"Then how about an act of goodwill? You want me to hand over the vampires who killed your father? Well, by all means."

Beside him, Eight-Ball let out a shrill whistle.

All at once, the twenty other people in the restaurant broke off their conversations and rose to their feet, dropping unused cutlery into cold, untouched meals. Gabe and Mel looked around as the entire crowd of diners moved in to surround their table, crimson eyes and gleaming fangs unveiled as they dispelled the glamour that had made them seem human. Here and there around the circle, hidden blades were being drawn. Scanning the crowd, Mel saw the same faces she'd seen in Moorden's lair, the same faces she'd seen in her vision at Gammon House. "That's them," she breathed.

"I made a few extra reservations," Moorden smiled. "You didn't think I'd ever seriously consider a truce, did you? You didn't think I'd put myself in a room with you without stacking the odds in my favour?"

Gabe and Mel glanced at one another. "Actually," said Gabe, "we were kind of counting on it."

With a smile, Mel swung both hands up to slap the underside of the table. She merely tapped it with her fingertips, yet the entire table lifted off the floor and rolled in midair, tablecloth and breadsticks scattering. The two vampires tumbled off their chairs as the table descended again, falling face-down to the floor.

Eight-Ball scrambled to his feet, staring at the underside of the table. There, held in place by duct tape, were a silver baseball bat and an antique service revolver. Taped beside them were a pair of tonfa, smoothly carved from ash. The circle of vampires took a collective step back as Gabe and Mel kicked their chairs away and rose to their feet, snatching up the weapons.

The silence that followed was broken by a loud metallic scrape as the elevator door was dragged closed. It was only then that Eight-Ball noticed that all the staff were missing, including the piano player. He looked across to see the retaurant owner in the elevator, snapping a heavy padlock onto the gate. "All set?" he called.

"Thanks, Dick," Gabe called, his eyes still on the vampires.

"We're all square now, right?"

"Yeah, we're square."

Dick Haughman reached for the button, then hesitated. "Look, I just bought the place, so go easy on-"

"Goodnight, Dick."

With a nod, Dick tapped the button and descended out of sight.

Moorden finally struggled back to his feet, scurrying back towards the safety of his henchmen. "Well?" he barked.

Eight-Ball turned back to face Gabe, at least a dozen of the other vampires forming up behind him. "We haven't really been introduced, Gabriel," he said. He undid the button on his jacket, pushing it back to reveal two pearl-handled semi-automatics in his belt, and the circle 8 tattooed on his chest. "They call me Eight-Ball."

Gabe glanced briefly at the tattoo. "Do they."

Eight-Ball grinned broadly, showing his fangs. "Wanna know why they call m-?"

There was a flash of movement, and a gunshot rang out. Eight-Ball staggered back two steps, his voice breaking off in a harsh choke. His bulging red eyes turned downward to see the smouldering bullet hole in the left side of his chest, right in the middle of the 8.

"Don't care," said Gabe, pushing the withering body aside as he advanced on the others.

They came at him in a rush, fangs and claws bared, eyes blazing with rage and bloodlust. Gabe broke into a run, bringing up the Webley as he came. Two more bullets ripped through the nearest vampires, dropping them to the floor. The others coming up behind stumbled and fell over themselves, and were still trying to recover when Gabe ploughed into them. A skull collapsed with a satisfying crunch as the silver bat connected with it, and before its owner had hit the floor the vampire behind him was falling back with his jaw smashed up into his head. A third collapsed like a marionette as the bat shattered his fibula, and had his neck crushed by a descending boot a moment later. One rushed at Gabe from the left and met an iron-tipped bullet coming the other way. Another almost managed an impromptu backflip as the bat smashed his face in, but fell short and came down on his head, flopping to the ground like a rag doll as his neck gave way.

A second wave were moving to join the first, but their advance was halted as Mel hurtled in from one side, leg extended in a bare-footed kick that nearly took the foremost vampire's head off. The others scattered as she landed in their midst, tonfa whirling in her hands. One swung a claw at her face and lost his balance as she twisted out of the way, spinning past him to thrust the tonfa at two others. It was only then that they realised the shorter ends of the weapons had been elegantly filed to sharpened points. They had little time to appreciate the workmanship.

Standing back by the piano, Moorden looked on with a mounting sense of unease as his superior numbers gew more inferior by the second. Gabe was like a freight train, ploughing through enemies in a flurry of weapons, fists, knees and elbows. Firing his last two bullets, he shoved the Webley into his belt and snatched up a knife dropped by one of his opponents, thrusting it into the chest of another and kicking the body away. He had the moves of a brawler, a man who'd picked up fighting as he went along, but he was fast and strong and always on the offensive, never letting his opponents rally themselves. By contrast Mel moved like a whirlwind, darting around and between the vampires, her willowy frame twisting and bending like a tree in a storm, dodging every blow they swung at her. The tonfa seemed to have a life of their own, striking and stabbing and twirling around her, as if they were doing most of the fighting and Mel was just coming along for the ride. Both techniques were proving equally effective, and the floor was already littered with dead and dying vampires. Moorden leaped out of the way as a broken body tumbled past him, crashing messily into the piano.

Less than a minute after the fight had begun most of the vampires in the room were scattered around the floor, either dead or well on their way to being so. Mel thrust one of her sharpened tonfa up through the neck of the last vampire to stand his ground against her, and turned to hurl the other after one who was making a run for it. The weapon buried itself in the fleeing vampire's spine, pitching him forward onto the floor. Blowing a loose lock of hair out of her face, the dryad turned to see Gabe heave his final opponent into the air and slam him bodily to the floor, snatching up a fallen knife to finish the job.

As he rose to his feet, Mel looked behind him and pointed. "Uh . . ."

Gabe turned, his bat swinging around to glance off of Moorden's forehead as the clan boss rushed him from behind with a knife. Yelping as the silver scorched its way across his temple, Moorden performed a graceless pirouette and slumped to the floor. With a groan he rolled onto his back, trying to sit up, clutching at his ringing skull. Slowly looking up, he saw Gabe standing over him.

Moorden sighed, his eyes showing a mix of fear and resignation. "Fine," he spat. "You win. You got me." He opened up his coat, as if to allow easier access to his heart. "Come on, then, I don't care. Kill me."

Gabe stood over the vampire, regarding him with a thoughtful expression. His bat was held loose by his side, the fingers of his other hand drumming lightly on the butt of the gun in his belt.

Finally he said, "I don't much care myself."

And with that, he turned and walked away.

Moorden's wide eyes followed him across the bloodied floor. "What?!" he managed to sputter. Gabe kept walking, heading for the elevator.

The vampire looked around to see Mel appear beside him, sinking into a crouch. "Oh, Xander," she sighed. She reached out a hand, gingerly examining the burn on his forehead. "You always did have delusions of grandeur."

Moorden's gaze darted from Mel to Gabe, still on his way to the door, and back again. "But . . . what?"

Mel was searching for something in her hip pocket. "I made another stop last night," she said conversationally. "After I left your place. Paid a little visit to Damian Argyros."

Mooden's eyes narrowed. "You . . .?"

"Just giving him a heads-up, really." Mel finally located the desired object in her pocket, a small plastic sachet of some kind. "I told Damian that the Okhotniki were in a weakened position," she went on, fiddling with the edge, "and that after tonight, your chain of command would be out of the way. I imagine the Chernysvet are in your territory causing a ruckus as we speak."

Moorden's mouth worked silently for a few seconds. "WHAT?"

Mel looked up, her luminous blue-green eyes meeting his stare. "It wasn't about you, Xander. It was about your clan. First domino to fall." She glanced towards Gabe, pulling a key from his pocket to unlock the elevator gate. "He's in it for the long haul, like his father was. Quod eras sum, quod es ero."

Moorden's gaze moved to the little sachet in her hands. She'd finally succeeded in ripping it open, revealing an adhesive bandage.

"As for you," Mel continued, peeling off the plastic backing, "there's not much keeping you here now. No clan, no territory, no use to anyone. I should take a nice long vacation if I were you." Moorden cringed as she leaned forward to carefully place the bandage over the burn on his head, smoothing down the edges with her thumb. Patting him on the cheek, she rose to her feet. "I'd recommend somewhere sunny, but . . . y'know."

Moorden stared at her, his mouth hanging open, as she crossed the room and followed Gabe into the lift. Moments later, he was alone.

He sat there for some time after they'd left, looking at the twisted and bloody remains of his best warriors, scattered about him like dead leaves. Eventually he managed to drag himself to his feet, wobbling a little, and shuffled across the floor. Half-tripping over the shrivelled husk that had once been Eight-Ball, Moorden made it to the concrete parapet at the end of the roof and looked out over the dark suburban expanse that had been his domain. Off to the east, he saw the glow of a large fire, a plume of black smoke drifting into the air. It was, he realised, more or less where his headquarters was. He spotted two other fires dotting the landscape and—somewhere in the distance—he thought he could heard distant gunfire.

A small sound behind him broke his reverie, the fluttering of wings, and a mottled brown bird alighted on the parapet nearby. It was a whipperwill, its head moving side to side, tiny glittering eyes regarding the vampire with interest. Moorden stared back, oddly fascinated by the bird.

The he heard another sound—the rasp of soft boots on cement. "Where is he?" said a voice from behind him. It was female, but harsh and strained.

Moorden looked back over his shoulder. Salomé Argyros stood—or rather slouched—behind him, leaning on her spear for support. Her red hair hung wild around her shoulders and her clothes were torn and caked with blood. She was still heavily bruised, one eye swollen half-closed, and seemed to be having trouble walking, as if all her bones and joints hadn't quite regenerated yet.

"About time you turned up," Moorden snorted, and looked out over the landscape again.

"Where's Pope?" Salomé demanded.

"You just missed him." Moorden's eyes were fixed on the fires. As he watched, one of them flared up in a distant explosion. With a sudden snarl, he rounded on her. "And your fucking father is-"

Salomé lunged forward, thrusting out her spear. The silver head cleaved through Moorden's torso as if it were jelly, running him clean through. He stood there for a second, neatly skewered on the weapon, as smoke billowed from the wound and the air was filled with the stench of scorching flesh. Twisting the shaft, Salomé yanked the spearhead—now burning white hot—out of her master's body. He erupted into flame as the weapon was pulled free, already falling dead. Without a word Salomé turned and limped towards the elevator, leaving Moorden to burn in her wake.

Behind her, the bird moved towards the edge of the parapet, jumped into midair and flew off into the night.

Johnny Fantôme's penthouse occupied the top three floors of the Renfield building, but had only half the floorspace of the other storeys. The rest of the area was taken up by his garden, a triumph of modern landscaping built on two levels, thirty floors above street level. 9 o'clock found Fantôme in the lower part of the garden, on the rock path near the koi pond. He was casually dressed in a red silk shirt with wide lapels, and grey tweed pants with white leather winklepickers. Puffing on a cigar under the starlight, he gazed out over the city towards the east, his keen eyes picking out the glow of distant fires.

He looked up as a fluttering sound caught his attention. Gripping the cigar between his teeth, he extended an arm as a whipperwill descended out of the night and perched on his wrist. Drawing the bird closer, Johnny leaned forward and peered into its eyes. A moment's silence passed.

Then he said, "Good," and lifted his arm to send the bird aloft again. As it vanished into the dark sky, Fantôme turned and strolled back towards the edge of the roof, looking up at the stars. Drawing the cigar from his mouth, he said, "So—you are satisfied?"

The figure standing by the railing half-turned, gazing at Fantôme though shining crimson eyes that glittering in the dark. "I'm never satisfied, Johannes," it replied, its voice a silken whisper. "But for the time being, I am pleased."

Fantôme nodded. "High time I did avay with Moorden anyvay. He vos most tiresome. Und Argyros vill prove very useful now dat his territory has expanded." He puffed throughtfully on the cigar. "Vot about his daughter?"

The figure was still, long white hair hanging about its shoulders. "Salomé is alone now. Her sister dead, her master fallen, estranged from her father. There's only one place for her to go."

Fantôme smiled. "I must remind Sasha to prepare a spare room." He looked out towards the fires again, chewing his cigar. Presently he added, "I vunder if . . ." He trailed off.

"What?"

Fantôme seemed uncharacteristically nervous as he took the cigar from his mouth. "I vunder if it mightn't be best to just dispose of young Pope now. He vos most . . . effective in bringing down der Okhotniki, but perhaps too effective. He is far more resourceful dan his father vos. It might be dangerous to—"

"You may kill him," the white-haired figure said softly, "when he has outlived his usefulness. Not before."

"Of course." Johnny lowered his eyes.

"Trust me, Johannes." The figure turned, giving him its full attention. "Or if you can't trust me, at least don't question me." It turned and stepped up onto the railing with one small hop. "After all," it added, balanced effortlessly on the rail above a thirty-storey drop, "without me, you wouldn't be here."

And with that it turned again, and stepped out into nothingness. Fantôme didn't look up until it had dropped out of sight. Then, with a tiny sigh of relief, he tossed his cigar into the koi pond and made his way back towards the steps.

The Fisher Building
8:22 AM

Morning came quietly to the office of Downright & Pope. Warm golden sunlight was streaming through the windows, picking out dust motes in the air, and the only sound was the gentle gurgling of the coffee maker and the rustle of shuffling paper. Gabe was sitting in his father's chair in jeans and a flannel shirt, a cup of sweet black coffee in front of him, sorting through the small mountain of disordered paperwork on the old man's desk. He'd originally intended to start by sorting two stacks mentally labelled "business" and "personal", but had gradually expanded his system into several sub-stacks including "unpaid bills", "missed correspondence", "miscellaneous" and "might be garbage". Halfway through the task, the mess on the desk seemed to be merely evolving into a more specific mess.

He glanced up briefly as the door opened and Meliad walked in, wearing a light green summer dress and carrying two canvas shopping bags filled with newly-purchased items. Placing them near the door, she walked over to Gabe and dropped a plastic-wrapped package on the desk in front of him. Then, without a word, she crossed to her own desk, sat down and started typing.

Gabe paused in his work to pick up the package and examine it. It contained three new sets of bedsheets, queen size, in a variety of colours.

With a shrug, he put the package to one side and went back to sorting papers.

THE END