Night Realm (35 page)

He threw down a quick coffee that was supplied in a small, white plastic cup and chased it down with several shortbread biscuits.
Marks drank one more coffee, then left the tent just as Chris Saunders was exiting through the gaping hole where the front door had once been.

“What have we got?” Marks asked him, not bothering with the usual pleasantries.

Saunders looked tired, his eyes red and a little glazed. “Five deceased. Two teenagers, one male one female, a young woman, and what looks like a couple, or husband and wife, in the master bedroom.”

“Any similarities to the other cases?”

“Yeah, just about everything. Same throat lesions. One guy has been decapitated. The teenage girl had her stomach ripped open and the contents spewed all over the carpet. Very little blood, though. Seems like the blood was sucked from their bodies before any of the mutilation took place.”

“Can I go in?” Marks asked.

“Sure thing. I’ll show you through.”

With Detective Scott Richards in tow, Marks followed Saunders into the house. The other SOCOs were just finishing up processing the scene and packing up their gear.
Saunders led the way into the first bedroom.

Two bodies lay on the floor and, as Saunders had already pre-warned, the girl had been disemboweled. Intestines lay strewn over the carpet like sausage. The first thing Marks did was check their throats, where there were indeed those all-too-familiar puncture wounds.
They moved into another bedroom where a young woman was dead on her bed. There was light blood spray on the white wall beside the bed and some blood was left in a trickle pattern across the sheets. Marks checked her neck and nodded.

In the master bedroom things looked more macabre. The male victim’s head had been ripped from his body, very similar to the Toby Matthews case. Beside him on the bed, next to the wall, was a woman. Apart from a bruise to the left cheek and the wounds on the throat, she looked basically unharmed in any other way. In this room there was blood
splatter on the ceiling, and Marks looked to Saunders for elaboration.

“It appears to have been sprayed up there,” Saunders said, “as if spat from someone’s mouth.”

Marks screwed up his nose at the morbid visual that statement gave him.

“Any prints?”
he quizzed.

“Plenty. As you would expect with five people in the house. But we’ll check them all and run them through the database, as per usual.” Saunders looked at Marks in earnest. “The body count is mounting rapidly, David.”

“Tell me about it. It’s all on my shoulders and I can feel the weight of it, believe me. We just need a fucking break here.” A gut feeling had been gnawing at him since yesterday. “I think we’re on the verge of a breakthrough, though. I really think we’re getting close to nailing someone for these murders.”

*  *  *

The Brisbane subsidiary of the Research Institute was located on the south side of the city, right next door to the QHSS building. Ryan parked the rental car out of the way in a space around the side of the building. He got out dressed very similar to how he and Jack Jones had been attired when they’d infiltrated the Melbourne unit; grey trousers, black shoes and a white lab coat. Ryan pinned an ID badge to his coat and slung his make believe credentials around his neck.

Angela had been a great help. She’d supplied him with the clothing and ID, and had even managed to locate exactly where the APHV was kept in the building.

By the time everything was organized and Ryan had hooked up the rental car and driven to Brisbane, it was two in the afternoon as he walked across the car park and headed for the entrance doors. He went in the front way this time, not bothering with the cloak and dagger approach used down south with Jack.

There were two security guys in the foyer. One of them glanced briefly at the credentials that hung around Ryan’s neck, then turned away, seemingly satisfied that Ryan was meant to be there.
Ryan skirted right around the curved reception desk and headed for the elevators, following the mental instructions he had burned into his memory. An empty elevator was already waiting for him and he stepped inside, riding it to the third basement level; the lowest level in the building. The ride was uninterrupted, and when it stopped and the heavy steel doors slid open, he walked out into a tiled corridor where everything was white and very sterile. Once again there was that strange potpourri of smells that he couldn’t distinguish.

No one was in the corridor, and the place was more of a storage level rather than a level in which doctors, scientists and professors actively worked on.
Ryan followed the layout in his head and made for a room way down the back of the building. He arrived at a locked door with a small glass window set into it at eye level. Peering into the room he saw refrigerated cabinets and a stainless steel bench in the centre. From a pocket in his lab coat he withdrew a swipe card and ran it through the slot beside the door handle. A green light gave him the go ahead to open the door. He did so and stepped inside, where he was greeted with a cold blast of air.

Angela knew the vaccine samples were kept in this room, but she wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly where in the room they were, so it was a matter of opening each refrigerator and manually going through what was inside.

The first compartment yielded nothing, as did the second. However, when Ryan searched the third fridge he got lucky. It was as he was stuffing vials of APHV into his pockets that he heard heavy footsteps approaching the door.

*  *  *

Marks was still at the Eagle Heights crime scene when he received a phone call from a detective friend in Brisbane. He listened to the conversation on the other end with extreme interest, then got in his car and made a beeline for the motorway.

All the way to Brisbane he weaved in and out of traffic, impatient to get to his destination and see what this guy could tell him about his cases. By the time he skidded to a stop outside the precinct it was after four in the afternoon. The sun was slowly dropping towards the western horizon and twilight would
be settling over the area in just on two hours from now.

*  *  *

Ryan was led into an interview room, where he waited for five minutes before a detective, dressed in clothes that looked like they had been slept in, entered the room and took a seat on the opposite side of the large scarred wooden table. The overhead lights reflected off the man’s bald head.

“I’m Detective David Marks,” the bald man introduced himself. “I’m a Homicide Detective for Gold Coast CIB.” He glanced at some notes he’d spread out in front of him. “And you are Ryan Fox, a local private investigator down on the Coast. Is that right?” Ryan nodded. “Is that why you’re up here breaking into science labs? Are you currently working a case?”

“That’s correct,” Ryan said. He was sizing up Detective Marks. He knew the man was the one in charge of investigations into the recent spate of murders on the Gold Coast. He was trying to decide how much the man knew and whether he could trust him enough to enlist his help. Time was running out. It would be dark soon.

“I’m curious,” Marks said. He sat there stroking his goatee as he spoke. “Why were you trying to steal vials of APHV? You must have had a reason to go after that specifically. Was it a client request?”

“It was,” Ryan admitted, “but I don’t know if I can tell you the story. I doubt whether you would believe me.”

“Don’t be so sure about that, Mr Fox. I d
on’t think anything would surprise me anymore.”

Ryan decided he had no choice but to tell the detective everything he knew. If he didn’t, they would just keep him locked up overnight at the very least. Then there would be no chance of saving his sister. At least if he confided in Marks there was some semblance of hope.

For the next half an hour Ryan filled Marks in on everything he knew, from the start of his association with Selena Thorne, right up to why he was there in Brisbane stealing APHV. He related the story as quickly as he could. When he was done, Marks sat there staring at him with what looked like an expression of immense satisfaction. Ryan hadn’t been expecting that response.

“Okay,” Marks said with a nod. “Now I’d better tell you what I know.”

“We’re running out of time,” Ryan protested as he watched the sun dip behind the mountains in the west. He was being driven back to the Gold Coast in Marks’ Falcon.
Detective Marks had arranged for Ryan’s rental car to be returned to the nearest depot of the rental company.

“If we’re going to save your sister, Ryan, then we’ll need some help. I don’t think we can do it with just the two of us.”

“Your superintendent is never going to give you the resources you want when you tell him why,” Ryan was adamant.

Marks seemed to mull this over.

After hearing everything Marks knew and they put both lots on information together, the detective released Ryan from the custody of Brisbane police and together they’d gone back to the Research Institute to retrieve Becker’s serum samples, as well as some handy little injector guns.

By the time they arrived at Marks’ Southport precinct, twilight was almost succumbing to full dark. Ryan checked his watch and saw that it was just shy of six thirty. Five and a half hours until Selena’s deadline.

“Wait here,” Marks said to Ryan. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Where am I gonna go?” Ryan was incredulous. “I need your help.”

Ryan then sat in the car for an excruciating half an hour before Detective Marks finally returned. The expression on the man’s face didn’t fill Ryan with a warm and fuzzy, positive feeling. Marks climbed back in behind the wheel and let out the longest sigh Ryan had ever heard in his life.

“No go,” the detective said, his eyes looking very tired. “He won’t give us any manpower. Now he just thinks I’ve lost my mind or something, cracked under the pressure of a heavy caseload.
But I’m allowed to make as many arrests as I want. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to be an option.”

He sat there pondering for a bit while Ryan wriggled around in his seat impatiently. Marks eventually pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and dialed a number.
Fifteen minutes later they were pulling up outside a house in suburban Arundel. A tall and lanky blond man came scurrying across the lawn and climbed into the back seat.

“Ryan,” Marks said. “This is Detective Scott Richards. He’s agreed to help us out.” Marks drove off. “You’re not going to believe this, Scott, but I’ll tell you anyway.”

As the car made its way west of the Gold Coast and out towards Guanaba, Marks and Ryan filled Richards in on everything that had happened and was likely about to happen. As expected Richards didn’t look like he believed the part about vampires, but to his credit he was still enthusiastic about lending a hand.

The
y made a pit stop at a local hardware store that was open until late. There they purchased some lengths of wooden doweling, a small saw, some rubber mallets and three very sharp knives. Out in the car park the three set to work cutting the dowel into fifteen inch lengths and whittling the ends into sharp points.

“That’s how you kill a vampire, isn’t it?” Marks said.
“A wooden stake through the heart?”

“Do they have hearts?” Richards wanted to know.

“Good question,” Ryan said.

Marks opened the boot of his car and emptied the contents of a small sports bag. He then filled it with the stakes and mallets. The knives were kept on their person
s. Marks then opened another bag that held the two injector guns and seven vials of APHV.

“Anyone game to inject themselves with this stuff?” he asked the others. Richards immediately shook his head and Ryan was reluctant to say the least. “Yeah, I’m not keen either,” Marks admitted. “For all we know it could be lethal.”

“So, what else kills vampires?” Richards said.

Ryan shrugged. “Garlic maybe?”

“I think that just repels them,” said Marks.

“Mirrors,” Richards put in.”

“I don’t think so,” Ryan said. “In movies I think vampires just have no reflection in mirrors.”

“So how do we know a stake through the heart will kill them?” Richards was curious.

“I guess we don’t until we try it,” Marks answered honestly.

Richards said, “We have guns.”

“I don’t think guns will kill them,” Ryan responded.

“But they might help slow them down,” Richards insisted. “Do you have a gun, Ryan?”

“I do, but not on me.”

“I
also heard somewhere that if you rip off a vampire’s head it will die,” Richards went on.

“Any of us strong enough to do that?” Ryan pointed out.

Marks said, “They’re supposed to have super human strength or something. Is that right, Ryan?”

He shrugged. “The hell if I know? I do know that Selena Thorne can read minds. I’d assume they’re capable of all sorts of things that we aren’t.”

“Fire’s another thing,” Richards piped up after searching his memory. “Intense fire.”

“For what?” Marks demanded.