Kardinal (35 page)

London – 10.28pm (GMT), 20 May, 2011

THE vampires charged.

David screamed.

His mother, Mei, and the others were sitting ducks. They would be overwhelmed. David, dreading the thought of living without them, tossed the red mark aside.

“Take me too, you bastards,” he said.

A vampire, sensing the boy was no longer protected, veered towards him.

The creature bared its fangs, a hateful smile on its face.

David prepared for death – and undeath.

The vampire’s expression changed. A look of confusion crossed its face.

The smell of burning flesh filled the church.

David stared at the vampire.

Fiery threads ran along its body. Its skin turned black. Its eyes bulged, and its mouth gawped. The fangs faded to yellow and crumpled. The creature’s legs gave way as the skin melted and the bones crumbled, and by the time it hit the ground, a yard from David, it looked like dried fruit.

And seconds
later it was ashes.

It happened quickly, barely a second.

But David took in every moment. Every vampire’s death for him took place in slow motion.

Their faces twisted in horror.

Their skin creasing and drying out.

Their limbs flailing.

Their skins burning.

Their bodies wilting.

All around him in the church, they wheeled violently, smoke coming off their boiling bodies. The odour of death in the air. Their decaying corpses decomposing, becoming ashes.

Every single one of them.

Every vampire.

All the dead, gone.

David heard his mother’s voice:

“He did it,” she was shouting, “Jake did it.”

David thought,
He’s killed Nimrod.

He hoped it had been Jake. It meant he was still alive. And David honestly could not think of anyone else capable of killing such a monster.

Mei was surveying the layer of ashes on the floor. She shouted to her followers. They reacted quickly, piling into the shocked Nebuchadnezzar militia men.

Adrenaline coursed through David. The battlefield was now level. The Nebs no longer had the advantage of the undead.

It was human against human.

“Mum,” he said. They ran into each other’s arms. They were crying and laughing.

“We’re going to win,” he said. “You’ve got to take charge, Mum. You’ve got to start getting things in order.”

She gawped at him.

“Come on, mum,” he said.

They ran out of the church. The streets were crammed with people. They knew what had happened and were now turning on the Nebs. Some of the black-shirts had thrown down their weapons and were surrendering. Others tried to fight but were overwhelmed.

David and his mother embraced again. A car drew up. Liz Wilson peered out of the black window.

“Get in, Christine,” she said. “Time to pull up our socks. Your boys did it.” She smiled.
She’s got her sanity back
, David thought.
She’s got her hope back
. David’s mum got in the car, and she threw her son a kiss before the vehicle drove away.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder.

It was Mei, a big smile on her face.

She had blood trickling down her forehead. Her face was sweaty. Ediz was with her.

They all hugged and laughed, and they praised Jake.

But David said, “We don’t know if it was Jake. He might be dead.”

“Who else kill monsters?” said Mei.

David shrugged.

“Come to fight,” she told him.

David entered the fray. He piled in to a group of Nebs. They were disorganized now.

With former professional soldiers fighting alongside them, David, Mei, Ediz and the others had a distinct advantage over the militia men.

David made his way back towards the stadium. He’d disposed of one Nebuchadnezzar overlord; now his thoughts were fixed on another.

Howard Vince.

Cut off the head, and the body will die
, thought David. He wanted to wipe out the Nebuchadnezzars for good. He’d hunt them down, every single one.

At the stadium, he asked a soldier if he’d seen Vince.

“He’s legged it, probably. Who gives a shit about him. We’ve got messages coming in from all over Britain. The vampires just died, and without vampires, those fucking Nebs are nothing. We’ll have them all, soon. Vince as well.”

David ran into the stadium. It was still crammed with people. They were organizing themselves. They were corralling groups of Nebs, forcing them on their knees. It could have easily become a massacre, but people were restrained. They were waiting for whoever was in charge to come along and arrest the Nebs. The people wanted justice. They didn’t want vengeance. They wanted this done properly. They were sick of the savagery, and it filled David with hope.

He made his way along the corridors that led to the executive boxes.

The walkways were empty.

Striding along the red carpet, looking at the old photographs of England matches, you would have thought that nothing had changed in Britain. You would not think that there had been a civil war, a plague, devastation.

Here, it was normal.

Normal, apart from Howard Vince standing at the corridor’s junction up ahead with his hands in the air.

He was looking to the left. Someone had a gun pointed at him.

David made his way slowly down the corridor.

The muffled sounds of triumph came from outside. Car horns blared. Crowds cheered. Gunfire barked.

Vince turned to look at David.

Now, whoever had Vince trapped was wondering who the general was looking at.

“Get down on your knees, Vince,” said David. “You are under arrest.”

Vince’s brow furrowed. He looked back at whoever had him covered and said, “My men are just around this corner.”

A figure suddenly appeared in the junction.

David froze.

The man wore the clothes of a tramp, but he held a flame thrower.

“Bill!” said David.

“David, lad. Ain’t this a hoot,” said Bill.

Vince took his chance. He bolted. He was a heavy man, so wasn’t making much headway when David and Bill went after him.

“Hey, Vince,” said Bill.

The general turned.

Bill pressed the trigger.

David held his breath.

A tongue of flame shot from the tube of the thrower. The impact threw Bill backwards. David screamed, “No!” He didn’t want Vince dead. He wanted him alive so he could face justice.

But the corridor was suddenly
engulfed in fire. The flames swallowed Vince.

David threw himself to the floor.

He felt the heat and smelled the burning of carpet and plaster and skin.

After the flames died,
he got up and first went to check on Old Bill.

“Hey, they listened to me, David, lad,” said the tramp. “The boys listened to an old soldier like me. I told ’em over the internet, mate. Me on the internet, eh?”

“Well done, Bill.”

“Here, you don’t mind me killing that Vince bastard, do you?”

“No, not really.”

“Go check see what’s left of him.”

David got up and turned, but the sight stopped him in his tracks.

The burned corridor was empty.

Vince had gone.

Hillah – 10.33pm (GMT + 3 hours), 20/21 May, 2011

LAWTON tried to get up, but he couldn’t. Not straight away. He rested against the altar.

A few yards away, Nimrod’s skeletal remains decayed. The horns were jammed into his skull.

The only way to kill him – make him one with himself.

“Good on you, Goga,” said Lawton.

The pain in his body seemed worse. His eye hurt, and it felt grainy. He rubbed his cheek and checked his fingers. They were covered in a black liquid. He poked his eyeball. It was empty. No glass, no skin of old vampires.

Burnt
, he said.
Burnt when Nimrod died
. It gave him renewed hope. Perhaps his actions in Irkalla had had an effect elsewhere. Perhaps he’d made vampires extinct.

After taking a few deep breaths, he got to his feet. He had only one thing on his mind.

Aaliyah.

He called her name.

The echo of it came back to him.

He suddenly had the sense that he was alone. Nothing in Irkalla alive but him.

A shiver ran through him.

Everything here was dea
d. It had always been dead.

He called her name again.

He stumbled past the altar. Before him stretched a tunnel. It was an endless shaft, with no light at all to be seen.

He looked at the floor. A trail of blood ran into the passageway.

He was about to step into the tunnel when he became aware of the voices calling to him.

He wheeled, trying to fix on the whereabouts of the voice. He couldn’t. He faced the tunnel again. Was it coming from down there?

“Jake… Jake… ” it called, echoing from somewhere. And it was a voice he knew. A voice he’d known. He remembered the nightmares he’d had after putting that poisonous skin in his body. They had drawn him to Tălmaciu,
where Ereshkigal waited, and had waited for five hundred years.

Would he now suffer the same nightmares? Would another of Nimrod’s brides call out to him?

Ereshkigal had said the red mark did not scare her and that killing Nimrod would not destroy her. She was the bride of a god. She was a separate being. Not torn from him, but kissed by him.

Kissed.

Like Aaliyah. A deadly kiss. A kiss that tore open her veins. A kiss that drained her of blood.

He called her name again, and only his voice came back, empty and hopeless.

He walked into the darkness, shouting “Aaliyah” as he went. He would keep shouting. He would keep going. And eventually he’d escape from this underworld, like he’d escaped from every underworld.

As he walked, he remembered fleeing from the belly of Religion, the nightclub in London where the plague had started years before.

There, in the pit of the club, he had destroyed the first of the trinity.

Lawton and the monster had fallen into a fiery cavern. Before they’d hit the ground, the vampire had decayed. Lawton had been trapped thousands of feet underground, everything collapsing around him.

But he wasn’t the kind to give up. Not back then. He’d found a way out through natural tunnels eroded by ancient springs under the city of London. They had led him into the sewers and eventually into the Tube system.

There, in a tunnel not dissimilar to the one he was now stumbling in, he had met an old soldier called Bill Goodwin.

Bill knew everything about him.

Bill was like an old prophet.

He wondered if the old man were still alive. He hoped so. Maybe he could see him again. It was something to think about while he searched for Aaliyah.

Lawton no longer had the strength of the half-thing he had become. The vampire in him had died with Nimrod. He was glad of that. Glad to be a weak man again. Glad to be frail. Glad to be killable.

He walked into the darkness to look for Aaliyah. He knew, when he found her, that there was only one thing he could do.

London – 11.02am (GMT), December 20, 2011

SIX months after the civil war ended, Britain was slowly rebuilding.

It was nearly Christmas, and from his room at the Park Lane Hotel, David stared out at Hyde Park. The Christmas market was in full swing. Through his open window, he smelled mulled wine and sausages. It wasn’t as busy as it had been in years past, but at least it was being held this year. Everything was slowly getting back to normal.

He shut the window and went to sit down. He and his mum lived in the hotel, now. It was nice. She was the Prime Minister of Britain. He was so proud of her, and in the past six months, they had healed their relationship.

He put his feet up on the glass coffee table and rolled a cigarette. He was only fourteen, and his mum had begged him to stop. But it was a habit he’d picked up during the vampire wars. It was hard to break, but he would.

After the vampires had died, it had taken a day to defeat all the Neb militia. Neb officials were put under house arrest. A lot of them got rid of their red marks in the hope of not being identified. But there were so many photos and so much footage that it was easy to track them down.

Some got away, but most were rounded up. Trials had started. Again, it was a nightmare of red tape and administration. The courts couldn’t cope. Most of the Nebs had been cleared and released.

After the victory, meetings were held. Everyone got stuck in, rebuilding the country. One of the most important things to get up and running again was the London water supply, which had been infected by the Nebuchadnezzars. It was him mum’s first priority, and it made her even more popular.

She then tackled the transport infrastructure
The Tube in London would become fully operational again in early 2012. But trains ran. And there were bus services in the capital and the rest of Britain.

And more importantly, there was a sense of unity.

Kwan Mei was now leader of a youth movement that carried out voluntary work. She was a star. Everyone looked up to her. She and her friend Ediz Ün were role models.

David had also been invited to spearhead the movement, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to go back to school. He wanted to be the boy he’d never been.

Being fourteen, it was a time when most teenagers thought they were grown-ups.

But David wanted to be a kid again. He wanted the youth he’d missed out on.

So he went to a school in Kensington.

He learned all over again, and more importantly he made friends.

He found himself a gorgeous girlfriend called Tamarat. She was Muslim. She had big brown eyes and wore a silk scarf to cover her black hair.

Perhaps before the war, her family would have scorned their relationship. After all, he was a Western boy.

But Tamarat’s dad and older brother had been killed in the vampire plague.

Her mother and younger brother loved David, and they were happy for the girl to see him.

So everything was great – on the surface.

Hatred still simmered. Crime still blighted areas of Britain. People were desperate. They would steal to eat; they would kill to survive.

But Britain was getting better.

He smiled. That was his mum’s slogan.

Britain is getting better.

She had promised an election a year after the end of the Neb regime, and it was coming up in a few months.

Two other political parties were contesting the vote, but they weren’t putting up much of a fight. Christine Murray was a hero. Everyone wanted her to lead the New Britain. Her old friend Liz Wilson led the Tories, and she was eager for David’s mum to be leader. It was the right thing to do this time round. Perhaps next time, the old politics would return.

Outside, bells rang. He went to the window. Snow was starting to fall. Father Christmas trundled along the street in a horse-drawn cart. The horses were dressed up as reindeer.

It was odd not seeing much traffic on Hyde Park Corner. Years ago, it had been jam-packed with buses and cars and trucks.

But Britain was a nearly a Third World nation. Unemployment and poverty were rife. Most people couldn’t afford cars. Most didn’t have enough to eat. Thousands were still homeless.

But at least now the aid was coming in. After the vampire plague had ended, the UN started sending in supplies. The Red Cross soon entered Britain, as did Save The Children and other major charities.

Everyone came.

Everyone except Jake Lawton.

David buried his face in his arms.

Jake had never reappeared after the war. Nor had Aaliyah or Apostol Goga.

Someone – one of them, for sure – had killed Nimrod.

If that hadn’t happened, the vampires would still be prowling the streets, and the Nebuchadnezzars would still be in charge.

So Nimrod was dead. And David felt certain that, of the three, it was Jake who had killed the monster.

It had to be Jake.

When he’d watched the vampires disintegrate around him at St Augustine’s, he couldn’t imagine that at that moment, all around the world, every undead creature was becoming extinct.

Incidents of vampire deaths were reported as far afield as China and the United States. It showed how far the plague had spread, and it could have turned the earth into a vampire planet, had Nimrod not been killed.

Jake
had
saved the world.

And he had probably died doing it. He and Aaliyah.

The Iraqi government had been furious when news broke of what had happened. They jailed a number of officials who had been involved with Alfred Fuad’s archaeological dig.

The city of Hillah had been devastated by an earthquake, and the whole area had been quarantined. Even UN officials weren’t allowed in. Rumours suggested that whatever the Iraqis had found, they wanted it kept secret.

No news of Jake or Aaliyah or Goga was heard. Again, there were rumours that Jake had been arrested by security forces, but he’d escaped.

I hope he got out
, thought David.

In his heart, he didn’t think he’d ever see Jake Lawton or Aaliyah Sinclair again. And that made him sad. It was the one dark thing in his life now.

His mum’s government had honoured Jake and Aaliyah with statues on Parliament Square. They were bronze and stood like warriors, protecting the new parliament building.

David would often visit and stare up at the statues and speak to them, asking Jake if he were OK.

He never answered.

There was a knock on the door.

It was Tamarat.

“Hello,” she said.

Every time he saw her, more light came into his life, forcing the darkness into hiding.

She smiled her bright, white smile. Her eyes glittered.

“Are we going to the market?” she said.

He embraced her. She smelled of flowers.

“Are you OK?” she said.

“I am now,” he said. “Let’s go and have some chestnuts.”