“You want to stop them. You want revenge. I can see it in your face.”
“And along the way we can save the lives of whoever else is stupid enough to still be in this town.”
He looked her dead in the eye. “What do you think we are? We’re not the cavalry. This isn’t our job or our responsibility.”
“We stopped Shanks.”
“Because we had no choice,” Milo said. “Here, we have a choice. We get to the car and leave. Let your parents and their friends kill the vampires. They might actually do some good, for a change. Amber, you need to think about this. Jacob Buxton is a two-day drive away, and who knows how far we’ll have to travel to get to his father after that?”
“Milo, I got an entire family killed last night.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“How can it not be? I led the vampires right to their house. We have to do something. We stopped Dacre Shanks. We can stop these, too.”
“Dacre Shanks was one guy with one trick,” Milo said. “We don’t know how many vampires there are – could be two dozen, could be a hundred, could be most of the town – but even one of them has the potential to kill both of us without thinking twice.”
“So we do what Imelda’s doing,” said Amber. “We hit him now, during the day.”
“Hit who?”
“Johann Varga,” she said. “He’ll be asleep, right? We get to the house I was in last night. If Glen isn’t there, we go to the hotel, find Varga’s coffin or whatever, and we stake him. It works, right? Staking them?”
“According to Althea’s theory,” said Milo.
“We stake Varga and, if Glen is there, we take him with us. If he’s dead, we give him some kind of funeral. We’re not going to just abandon him, Milo. I should have been here with him. I shouldn’t have let him out of my sight. The moment he mentioned hearing voices I should have realised what it was and tied him to a chair or something.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I should have. And now I owe him.”
Milo looked at her, sighed, and walked from the room. A minute later, he was back, holding a hammer in one hand and a broken baseball bat in the other, the bat’s broken end sharpened to a point. “This is what I was doing last night while I was waiting for the coast to clear,” he said. “This is our stake.”
“That’ll work?”
“It should. To be extra sure, we’ll take a detour to the church, douse it in holy water. The hammer, too. We’ll need to travel by foot, and take it slow. Amber, are you positive you want to do this? We’ll be walking right into the vampires’ nest, somewhere your folks are going to end up at, sooner or later. This is hugely, insanely risky.”
“I know.”
“You’re not going to change your mind?”
“I can’t, Milo.”
He nodded. “In that case, bring the crucifix. We’re going to need it.”
By the time they got across town, the sun was dipping dangerously low in the sky. The body of the owner of the house was still in the living room, but Glen was gone. Amber knew he would be. They searched the house quickly, then moved on to the Varga Hotel. The only car Amber recognised in the lot was Imelda’s. They went in through the rear door. There was no one around, not even Ingrid at the front desk.
“Where do we go?” Amber asked, her whisper oddly loud in the absolute quiet.
“Basement,” said Milo.
They found the heavy door leading down. It got much too cold much too fast as they descended the stone steps. Milo went first, the stake and hammer in his hands, even though Amber was in full demon mode behind him. The very air down here made her want to turn round and run screaming, and never look back. There was a sense of something bad, something waiting for them beyond the wine racks. Something lurking.
They got to another door. Milo pulled his hand back from the handle.
“Cold,” he whispered. He wrapped his sleeve round his hand and opened the door. A weak light flickered down another set of stairs.
Fear wrapped its fingers round the corners of Amber’s mind and started to tug. She grew talons and bared her teeth, but that did nothing to bolster her courage.
The room below the basement was small, but even so the single light bulb had difficulty chasing the darkness away. Chained to the floor directly under the light bulb was a dried-out husk of a corpse, arranged in a cross-legged position with its head down. It wore rags and its hair was long. The sight of it was distressing, but it wasn’t the source of Amber’s fear. That came from something else.
The corpse looked up and Amber saw fangs.
The corpse, the vampire, didn’t seem particularly surprised to see them, but his eyebrows rose as Amber stepped into the light.
“Huh,” he said. His voice cracked. “And what are you supposed to be? The Devil? Has the Devil come to drive a stake through my heart after all this time?”
Milo approached him warily while Amber hung back.
“Hello, Caleb,” said Milo.
Caleb Tylk managed a half-smile. “You’ve heard of me.”
“We heard what you did to the Masterson family.”
Caleb’s smile soured. His skin was dry like parchment, and it flaked with every new expression. “And who are you?” he asked. “And why are you visiting me?”
“We’re not here for you,” said Amber. “We’re here for your master. Where is Varga?”
“Varga’s no master of mine,” Caleb said. “He’s kept me chained up here for two years. Two years. He won’t let me sleep in a coffin, won’t even let me sleep in the ground. Look around you. Concrete. Is that any way to treat your own kind?”
“What did you do?”
Caleb smiled. “Step closer so I can see you.”
Talking in a normal voice soothed Amber’s nerves, and she walked forward.
“Ohhh,” said Caleb. “You’re wonderful. A little closer, please.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Just a little closer …”
Amber gave him a beautiful smile, and took another few steps. Then she slammed her right foot into his chest and knocked him on to his back. She kept her foot where it was, pinning him to the floor.
“What did you do,” she said, smiling, “for Varga to chain you up like this?”
Caleb tried to push her foot off, but she ignored his feeble efforts.
“I broke his rule,” he said at last. “I broke his sacred rule. I mean, what did he expect? That I’d wake up and be magically able to put my human life behind me without any second thoughts? He knew. He must have known. He’s too old, you see. He forgets what it was like.”
Amber put her weight on to her right foot. She heard one of Caleb’s ribs crack. “What rule did you break?”
He snarled against the pain. “I didn’t go elsewhere. I fed in the town where we lived.” He paused. “Also, I don’t know, something about being gauche, whatever that means …”
“You created more vampires than he could control,” said Milo.
“Exactly,” Caleb said. “It’s all about control for him. He has to control everything and everyone. Well, I am not going to be controlled.”
“You slaughtered an entire family.”
“They had it coming.”
Milo frowned. “How, exactly, did they have it coming?”
“I’d see them walking around town like they were too good for the likes of me. The parents, they never liked me. I called at the house one day and they looked at me like I was something they’d thrown up. And that kid, that annoying little brat—”
Amber twisted her foot in a semi-circle and Caleb grunted. “What about Rosalie?”
“What about her?” he fired back. “She was the worst of them. The biggest hypocrite of a family of hypocrites. She’d give it up for anyone with a bit of money, but the moment she realises I’m not going to be buying her diamond earrings, that’s it. I’m shut out. Not all the way, of course. What fun would that be? No, no, she takes pleasure teasing me, promising me thi
ngs and acting like she’ll eventually give me a treat if I keep following her around like a little puppy …”
“So you killed her,” said Amber.
“I should have,” said Caleb.
“You turned her, didn’t you?” Milo asked.
Caleb’s lip, that dry, thin thing, curled. “She was supposed to be mine. I turned her for me. After all those years of her teasing me, laughing at me behind my back, leading me on … I was going to be her master until the end of time. You want to know why? This is the truly funny part. Because, no matter what she’d done to me, I still loved her. Ain’t that a riot? Even after everything she’d done.”
“After everything she had done?” Amber said, her anger rising.
Caleb didn’t notice. “But no. The moment Varga saw her, that was it. He took her from me. He said it was to punish me further, but he has me down here because he’s afraid that Rosalie will choose me over him. I hear them together sometimes. He has no idea. She’s using him, the same way she used me. It’s pathetic is what it is. Let me out. Let me out of these chains and let me get my strength back and then I’ll take care of Varga for you. I’ll kill him myself, you understand? He fears me. He fears what I can do.”
“Caleb,” said Amber, “you’re a pathetic loser and you’re never getting out of those chains.”
He glared at her. “I’ll kill you,” he said.
She moved her foot up to his throat, and pressed down. “Where is Varga?”
He gurgled, eyes blazing. Finally, he pointed to the wall beside Milo. She left her foot where it was while Milo examined the brickwork.
“Found something,” he said, and a moment later a door in the wall swung open.
Once again, that terrible, freezing dread came over her, prying at her mind, and once again she wanted to run screaming from the cellar.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” said Milo, and that’s all he said.
Amber stepped off Caleb’s throat and followed Milo into the corridor beyond. It got even colder. Even the light was cold. Milo turned the corner and stopped. Amber hesitated, then stepped out after him.
In front of them was a door. A big, thick, metal door, just like the ones they had in banks.
Amber stared. “Seriously?”
Milo examined the box on the wall beside it. “A time lock,” he said. “Set to open when the sun goes down.”
“How are we supposed to stake him when he sleeps in a frikkin’ vault?”
“It does seem really unfair.” Milo looked at her. “What do you want to do?”
“They must have Glen somewhere in this hotel,” she said. “We have to find him. If he’s alive, we take him with us. Any vampire we find along the way, you hammer that stake into their heart.”
He nodded. “That I can do.”
THEY STARTED AT THE room at the very top of the hotel.
Amber put her shoulder to the door. After three tries, she broke it down. The room was dark, the window boarded up from the inside. In place of a bed there was a coffin. Around it, flowers and framed photographs of a beautiful blonde girl. Rosalie Masterson. It had to be.
At Milo’s nod, Amber lifted the coffin lid. Rosalie lay within, her head resting delicately on a satin pillow. Her perfect skin was pale. Her lips, plump and bow-shaped, were red. Her chest did not rise with her breathing. No pulse was noticeable in her throat. She looked dead and yet wonderfully, fantastically alive, like she was going to wake at any moment and break into a smile.
Milo pressed the tip of the stake over her heart. It sizzled against her skin, and Rosalie frowned in her death sleep. He raised the hammer, and hesitated. Amber had the irrational urge to leap forward, to stop him from doing what they’d come here to do, but her feet were stuck to the ground and she could only watch as he brought the hammer down.
The stake pierced Rosalie’s chest with a sudden spurt of blood and her eyes snapped open and she screamed. Her eyes burning with hatred, yet clouded by confusion, she tried to grab the stake, tried to pull it out, but Milo hammered it down again and that was the one that did it. All tension fled from Rosalie’s body and her arms fell by her sides and her legs stopped kicking and her skin puckered and burst and the stench of violent decomposition sent Milo reeling and Amber gagging. When Amber looked back, the beautiful girl had become little more than a skeleton, slick with its own blood.
Milo retrieved the stake, and they left the room and went into the next one. Room by room they went, coffin by coffin. Some vampires turned to skeletons, some to putrefying corpses, and some to dust. They all died with that same wide-eyed horror, though, that same look of disbelief on their faces.
The sun was dipping below the horizon and, just as they were about to abandon their search, Amber noticed a small door, tucked away in the eastern corner of the hotel. The key was still in the lock. Milo turned it, pushed the door open.
Glen lay on the bed inside. He was corpse-pale and his eyes were closed.
“Is he dead?” Amber asked softly.
Milo stepped in, and felt for a pulse. “Not yet,” he said. “He’s weak but alive.”
Relief burst inside her, almost making her gasp, and she walked forward, shook Glen roughly. He muttered in his sleep but didn’t wake.
“We have to leave now,” said Milo. “We’ll carry him out.”
“I’ll do it,” Amber said, and hauled Glen to a sitting position. She ducked down, careful not to skewer him on her horns, and then straightened, Glen draped across her shoulders like a stole.
“You’re smiling,” said Milo.
“You’re not,” said Amber, “but don’t pretend you weren’t worried about him. He grew on you, didn’t he?”
Without bothering to answer, Milo stepped out of the room and Amber heard Ingrid from the front desk say, “What … what are you doing?”
Milo looked at the hammer and stake in his hands, at his blood-splattered clothes, and before he could answer Amber stepped out to join him.
Ingrid cursed when she saw the horns, and bolted. Even with Glen on her back, Amber caught up to her easily. She kicked at her ankles and Ingrid yelped and went tumbling. She hit the stairs and rolled and spun and went flying again, finally sprawling on to the foyer floor below. Crying in pain, she started crawling. Her left leg appeared to be broken.
Amber and Milo walked down after her. Ingrid crawled by the front desk.
“You’re not even one of them,” Amber said. “You’re still human. How could you do this?”
Ingrid turned on to her back. “The Master will kill you!” she screeched. “The Master will use you as—”
Amber kicked her in the face and Ingrid rolled over and shut the hell up.
Then a cold feeling came over Amber, slithering up her spine to tingle at the base of her skull. She turned, as did Milo, and they watched Varga sweep into the room. In a few quick strides, he had crossed to Milo, knocked the stake from his hand and pitched him over the desk. Next he turned to Amber, his eyes shining.
“You have the blood of my children on you,” he said. Fury danced in his eyes. “You have the blood of my Rosalie on you.”
Glen slipped off Amber’s shoulders, fell in an unconscious heap. A series of nonsense words surged in her throat, jammed and wouldn’t come out. She wanted to apologise, to threaten, to beg and to scream; she wanted to make noise and stay quiet. Instead, all she could do was raise her crucifix. Varga’s lips curled back over his long, sharp teeth.
“Put that down,” he commanded, and Amber recognised the authority in his voice, and she wanted so desperately to obey. Yet she was still thinking clearly enough to keep her trembling arm in place.
“This town is my town,” Varga said. “You come here and you kill my children, my Rosalie, and you desecrate my home by bringing that,” he sneered as he said it, and his eyes locked on to the crucifix in Amber’s hand, “over the threshold. You have offended me in a great many ways, you foolish creature. Do you really expect to leave here alive???
?
“You attacked my friend,” Amber said, forcing the words out.
“I didn’t touch a single hair on his singular head,” said Varga. “In truth, I do not know who did. There are too many of us. We are best when we are few.”
“Then we … we did you a favour. We—”
“You have murdered my children!” Varga boomed, and Amber stumbled back.
“The ones in this hotel were mine,” he said, his voice calm once more. “The ones out there are … insubordinate things, never meant to be. The boy’s doing. But they are no less my children.”
Amber was so fixated on Varga that she didn’t even notice Milo running at him. Varga did, however, and he spun, dodging the stake that was aimed at his back.
“Run!” Milo cried.
She did. She didn’t think she would but she did. She ran, leaving Milo to face Varga alone. The moment she was out of the foyer, however, the fear drained away and she stopped, looked back. What the hell was she doing?
She turned back to see Milo slam into the wall. He dropped in a crumpled heap, the stake and hammer clattering to the ground nearby.
And then a familiar voice. “I hate vampires.”
Fear surged once again, but this was not the supernatural terror that emanated from Varga’s very pores – this was a fear much closer to her own heart. Her father’s voice. Not even her demon form could keep that fear from infecting her. Now she really did want to run. She wanted to run and just keep running.
She made herself move up to the corner and peer round.
Bill and Betty led the demons into the foyer – tall and glorious with their red skin and horns. Alastair was the biggest of them – he had to duck when he came through, his horns scraping the top of the stone archway. Grant was the broadest, though – his jacket stretched tightly across his chest – and Kirsty’s red hair had darkened to match the red of her skin. Imelda came last, eyes narrowed and focused on Varga.
“More mongrels,” Varga said, distaste curling his lip. “You are not welcome here.”
Bill smiled. “Unlike you, we don’t need an invitation to walk in. That was always the problem with your particular breed, you know – you’re just too polite.”