The Parliament of Blood (41 page)

The shaft was hot and cramped. Even without his jacket on, Eddie's shoulders touched both sides as he eased himself slowly along. He was pushing the wicker basket in front of him.

It was dark and humid and he was tired. But he forced himself to keep going. He couldn't let the others down. They must be every bit as weary and scared as they each crawled along their own shaft.

He just hoped he would find a suitable place before the signal they had agreed. Wherever they were when they heard it, that was the time: when Big Ben struck the hour. Midnight.

Sir William stood his ground as Liz approached. Her lips seemed redder than ever, her features incredibly pale. She leaned forward, mouth open. And winked.

Sir William took a short step backwards, his own mouth open in surprise. Up close, he could see that Liz's face was powdered with pale make-up.

As her lips closed on his throat, Sir William could feel the stickiness at his neck. He reached up, suddenly afraid, but Liz caught his hand.

‘Father's raspberry jam. What do we do?' she whispered in Sir William's ear as she pretended to bite into his neck.

‘Just wait,' Sir William murmured. ‘Eddie has it all in hand. I hope.'

‘He may be too late,' Liz replied.

Beside them, Gladstone's body was held up by one of the vampires while another bit deep. Blood was running down the Prime Minister's neck and dripping on to his jacket. His head lolled sideways.

The Coachman was standing triumphant at the front of the dais. ‘Our time has come!' he thundered over the chanting and the sound of the pumps below. ‘When we have fed, our Lord will be restored.' He picked up the canopic jar and raised it again. ‘He shall have his heart. It will beat once more in his chest. He will be complete and will walk among us. And where he walks, he will leave only death.'

The Coachman turned back towards Orabis on the throne behind him. The chanting faded away to a hush of anticipation.

‘My touch is death and my breath is destruction,' Orabis said. He paused, his ancient withered brow creasing. ‘My …
my …' He coughed, spluttered, then continued: ‘My heart will be restored and my reign of terror will begin.'

Liz had stepped away from Sir William. No one was watching them now. All eyes were on Orabis as he struggled to speak. His whole body suddenly convulsed in another fit of coughing.

‘My heart!' he gasped. ‘Give me my heart!'

‘Now this,' Sir William said quietly, ‘is where it gets interesting.'

Orabis was shaking, his hands clutching the arms of the throne tight as his whole body shuddered. It pulsed and shook in time with the rhythm of the pumps. As Liz and Sir William watched his wasted body seemed to swell, bloating and expanding. Strips of rotting linen fell away as he shook. The trickle of blood from his mouth was becoming a steady stream as he coughed and spluttered and choked.

Not blood now. But water.

The words of Orabis, Lord of the Undead echoed round the Hall of Machines. Kingsley paused to listen, feet either side of George's prone body, hand clamped on George's neck.

As Orabis spluttered and choked to a halt, Kingsley's expression changed from rapt awe to anger. ‘What have you done?' He hauled George to his feet and slammed him back against the massive boiler of one of the larger pumps.

‘Nothing,' George gasped. ‘Well, nothing much. I just rerouted some of the pipes, changed the direction of flow.' He did his best to shrug while being held tight against the hot boiler.

There was a clamour from overhead. A dark shape appeared high above George – someone climbing rapidly down the ropes from the opening in the roof. The coughing and choking was getting more emphatic and desperate, but it was barely audible now over the noise of the steam engine at the end of the hall as it shuddered and hissed frantically.

Kingsley's grip slackened slightly as he too looked up. George braced himself, ready for any opportunity.

‘I swapped over the tubes,' he told Kingsley.

Kingsley looked round confused, checking the state of the various systems. ‘But the pump is working. The flow is open and the pipes are full.'

‘Yes,' George admitted. ‘But it isn't blood that's being pumped round your precious Lord's body any more. It's water from the drains.'

As soon as he said it, as soon as Kingsley registered with horror what had been done, George tore himself from the vampire's grip. He turned to run.

Only to find Sir Harrison Judd was standing at the bottom of the ropes that looped up over the pulleys into the chamber above. Blocking George's escape.

His body heaved and bucked as the Lord of the Undead coughed and spat. He was dripping with oily water. It seeped from the points where the pipes and tubes attached to his body, glistening like perspiration as his body continued to pulse and swell. With a frantic effort, Orabis pulled at the gold ankh hanging round his neck. The chain broke and he reached out, the ankh dangling from his trembling hand.

‘The heart!' the Coachman roared, having ordered Sir Harrison Judd into the catacombs below to discover what was wrong. ‘He must have his heart.' He waved back the vampires that were pressing forward to help. ‘No – the heart
must be given in accordance with the ceremony.' His skull face turned towards Sir William and Liz. ‘By his bride!'

‘Your cue,' Sir William murmured.

Desperately trying to remain in character as a vampire, Liz stepped solemnly back up on to the dais. The Coachman took the gold ankh on its broken chain from the trembling hand of Orabis and gave it to Liz. ‘They thought they could taunt our Lord by burying him with the key of life. Believing he could never use it.' A shuddering laugh escaped from his bloodless lips. Then he lifted the canopic jar and held it out like an offering.

‘Unlock the jar. Remove the lid. Take the heart. Place it in his chest and it will take root. It will strengthen and heal him. All will be well.'

The ankh was a key, Liz realised. The way the Coachman had handed it to her made that obvious. The empty eyes of his skull-like face were deep and dark, boring into Liz, eating into her as she slotted the end of the ankh into the lock and turned.

The retaining catch sprang open, and Liz lifted the carved scorpion from the top of the jar. She could hear Big Ben starting to chime midnight as she peered into the dark interior of the jar. Deep inside, something was moving, beating … alive.

The Coachman lowered the jar slightly so that Liz could reach inside. As he did so, the light spilled in, illuminating the inside of the jar. Liz gasped in astonishment.

‘I cannot give him his heart,' she said in a trembling voice.

‘Why not?'

‘Because it isn't there.'

The ceramic interior was stained red. Lumps of grey meat spattered the inside. And the bat that Eddie had slipped into the jar beat its leathery wings in time to the chimes of midnight and sucked the last drops of blood from the remains of the heart of Orabis.

Some light filtered into the ventilation shafts from vents and grilles and narrow openings. In five of the many shafts that drew the hot air from the Palace of Westminster to allow cooler fresher air to be sucked in, a child paused as Big Ben struck midnight.

The warm air was drawn past Eddie in a breeze that ruffled his hair. The basket in front of him was trembling and juddering.

Eve fumbled with the catch on her basket. She had to hold the lid down to undo it, feeling it shaking and rattling under her palm.

Finally Mikey got his undone. He took a deep breath of humid air and closed his eyes.

Whoever this Eddie was, Alex thought, he was certainly more than a pickpocket. He let go of the lid of his basket.

The lid whipped open, and Jack clasped his hands over the back of his head as a black cloud enveloped him. The black shapes were drawn along the shaft by the breeze.

Through half-closed eyes, Eddie watched in fascination as the bats thundered through the near-darkness. The
transformation was incredible. In the house on Mortill Street they had been dormant and still, hanging immobile from the rafters. Collecting them and putting them into the wicker baskets had been easy. Now they were swarming aggressively through the shafts – awake, and scenting blood.

Without the constant chanting Kingsley could hear the protesting hiss and clank of the huge engine at the back of the hall and hurried to investigate, leaving Sir Harrison Judd to deal with George.

George backed slowly away, trying to circle round and get past the furious vampire. But other figures were appearing from the tunnel outside now, watching George hungrily from the doorway.

‘You will die for this,' Harrison Judd hissed. ‘We shall drain the blood from you slowly, drop by drop.'

The vampires in the doorway were pressing inwards, advancing on George. Something struck his shoulder as he backed away, and he whirled round, ready to fight for his life.

But it was the swinging end of the rope that Harrison Judd had climbed down. George was directly under the hole in the roof. He could see the throne of the Lord of the Undead. Water was splashing down like rain, and George wanted to laugh. It had worked. His legs knocked into a huge, heavy, hessian bag of earth – the counterweight at the end of another rope that had hoisted Orabis
up into the chamber above. He stumbled and almost fell, grabbing at the rope.