The Vampire Gene (8 page)

"Probably not," I agreed. "Where is your mobile?"

"In my left pocket. Give me a second." He straightened his body out slightly and reached into his pocket, hauling out a new phone, which he passed across his body to me. His right arm rested on his belly.

"Thanks. Did Colborne ever contact you on this phone?"

"Yep. Last two calls were from his mobile." I nodded. "What were you planning to do to me?" There was a hint of excitement mixed with the fear in his voice, as if he had eagerly anticipated this evening for some time.

"I was going to set you on the camping chair on a railway line, and snap your neck just here," I touched the skin of his neck briefly. "You would be able to breathe, but not move. You would be helpless in the face of the death that rushed towards you. So you could undersand how the girl you abducted would have felt as her fate hurtled towards her."

"Wow," he said
after a while. "You really thought this one out."

"I've done it a few times before," I t
old him dryly. His eyes widened, and I smelled the fear saturating his skin.

He said nothing for a few seconds, then he turned to me and said, "I deserve this. At least it will be quick." I looked at him, and reached again into his mind, and felt his remorse and
a form of relief, and made a decision. I would try to reprogram this man tonight. If I failed, he would die. I thought of Rebecca, and her struggle with her vampire side, and realised that, after all these years, I too struggled against it. I had sensed the regret in this man for the foul things he had done, and if I could ensure that he would never be able to do anything to harm another being, I would choose that over simply ending his life.

"I'm ready," he said quietly. I didn't bother to tell him that his readiness had little to do with what was going to happen to him.

I drew up outside a small deserted station, and turned the van off. I sat and gazed out of the windscreen while I probed inside Eric's mind, sensing the fleeting thoughts. My hand snaked out and snapped his right femur, and his pain ripped through those thoughts, stalling them briefly, while I slammed the silvery encoded wedge between them, reprogramming his mind and changing his life forever. He lost consciousness then, as they all do, and I lifted him gently from the seat, and placed him on the tarmac of the parking lot. He would wake a different man, in a hospital with metalwork holding his broken bones together, and no memory of what had happened tonight, but still breathing.

I wasn't so sure I'd be able to s
ay the same for James Colborne, though.

Rebecca

I woke up in a strange bed, and it took a few seconds before I realised where I was. Then the events of the previous day broke over me like a giant wave, and I breathed deeply, trying to cope with my newest reality. Seriously, I didn't mind the physical changes - they were pretty cool really, but the mental adjustments I'd had to make on an almost daily basis were starting to do my head in. First I had to come to grips with being an iron metaboliser. Then I was kidnapped, and I had to drink human blood to escape. Then I was suddenly engaged - who am I kidding, that was the best thing ever. Angus' beautiful face with his brooding eyes flashed across my thoughts, my very own dark prophecy. I was inevitably and momentarily distracted from my train of thought, but it rerailed itself eventually.

Then we met a whole family of vamps, and I was kidnapped again - that was starting to become a bit of a nasty habit, really. And then I had to bite one of my kidnappers
again
, and I somehow electrocuted another. Freaky stuff.

Right, enough fretting. I gave myself a mental shake. I had to get on with it. This was my new life, and there was no point in whining about it.

I threw the covers off and stood up quickly. Even with the central heating there was a bit of a chill in the air, so I pulled on a nearby towelling robe and went to see if Angus was awake. I stood at the doorway to his bedroom and watched the gentle rise and fall of his chest for a few seconds before I could stand it no longer, and launched myself through the air and on top of him. He woke up pretty quickly, I have to say, and grinned up at me. Next thing I knew he had pinned me beneath his body and was kissing me with intent. I realised then, that no matter how much my life changed, I could never regret anything that had happened when this delicious man belonged to me.

Angus

We were late for breakfast that morning. My gorgeous girl made sure of that. Fergus and Marcus had returned from our estate, and had managed to snatch a few hours sleep before setting all their equipment up in one of the spare rooms that littered this enormous house. I snuck away from the breakfast table to join them for a few minutes. Rebecca seemed content to sit chatting with Julia, and Simon and Oliver had gone to collect some weapons that Oliver had stashed away somewhere on the property. They didn't go into much detail, but from the secrecy surrounding the location of the stash, I suspected the weapons were illicit and highly illegal. I was starting to like the Colborne boys more and more.

Marcus had set up all his equipment and was running the last few tests on Simon's DNA. Fergus was still connecting wires to hard drives and various other bits and pieces I didn't recognise, as well as a couple of black leather coats I recognised only too well. I picked one up, noting its heaviness with satisfaction, and tucked it under my arm.

"So, did you kill them?" Fergus wanted to know.

"Nope. I found Eric, but I reprogrammed him. Then I came home to sleep."

Fergus looked up from his wires. "Getting soft, brother?"
I knew he meant Eric's fate, and not my need to rest. I didn't deny it. "What about the other one?"

"I have his mobile number. Apparently he's been in contact with Jack for several years, and has even delivered another female vampire to him in the past."

Fergus' eyes hardened. "Give me the mobile - I'll try and trace the numbers James called recently, see if any of them could be Jack. If I can get a mobile number for Jack, I can track his movements, and hopefully find his base. If all goes well, I should have a solid location for you later today, and we can consider a strike tonight. Rebecca's family get back from their holiday tomorrow, so we have to move fast. I've ordered another one of those PSG1's. You seemed to like it the last time, and we might need someone on the periphery who can shoot. Plus Glocks for all of us, and those ballistic vests. Simon and Oliver appear to have some weapons cache nearby, so we will all be well-armed." He paused. "You should try and find James Colborne today, see what he knows."

"And kill this one," said Marcus flatly. "He delivered another innocent girl to Jack." Marcus was an academic, but
I was reminded more and more frequently nowadays that he was also a vampire, and he could be as brutal as the rest of us.

"Right," I said. "Be gentle with Rebecca today, Marcus."

"I will," he smiled at me. "She's my little sister now, Angus. I would never hurt her."

I wasn't sure I believed him - I was his brother and I remembered enduring a fair amount of pain at his hands. I hesitated.

"I promise, Angus. She will be fine. Julia will be here to make sure she's fine."

Ah, yes. I had forgotten about Julia. My fears allayed, I left to find James Colborne. He had some explaining to do.

A couple of hours later I had James neatly trussed up in the back of the van, and I was heading towards Aberdeenshire. About twenty years ago Fergus had bought a derelict little farm a few miles from the family estate. It was isolated, and had an elderly tenant who was both very hard of hearing and a persistent recluse. It also had a few outbuildings that were sublet to an imaginary company, and which I used occasionally when I was in the area and wanted to keep certain of my activities undetected. I had no specific plans for James Colborne, apart from extracting information from him and then disposing of him as unobtrusively as possible. It was essential that we found out where Jack was holed up in the next twenty four hours, before Rebecca's family returned from the relative safety of Barbados. They would become potential targets then, and that would make this entire project far riskier. Not to mention the awkward questions the situation could generate from Rebecca's mother and older brother Joe. Mark would take it all in his stride, of course, but those two - probably not so much.

I pulled into the driveway of the farm, and got out to open the rusty gated that hung precariously from an ancient post. I looked around me in satisfaction at the overgrown hedges and rutted driveway. It looked completely abandoned.

I dragged the gate shut behind me, and turned off the driveway onto an even more rutted double track that led toward the outbuildings a few hundred metres away. Colborne must have sensed that our destination was nearby, and he started to kick against the panels of the van. I braked sharply, and the kicking stopped. I started the van forward again, and pulled up outside the double doors of a massive stone barn. I climbed out, and dragged protesting doors open.

Once I had driven into the barn and shut the doors behind me, I flicked a switch on one of the walls, and four strip lights illuminated the cavernous space. It was almost empty apart from a few wooden worktables on the far end from the door. The dirt floor was dry and littered with old leaves. I counted a few steps from the wall
opposite the van, and started sweeping the dirt aside with an old broom that had been propped against the door next to the light. An old ring handle was soon revealed, and I tugged at it, lifting the large wooden trapdoor that lay beneath. The space below was very different to the one above. I turned on the lights to reveal gleaming metal workbenches and a large chair in the centre, complete with leather straps. Various implements, surgical and otherwise, were neatly laid out on the work surfaces. I never had, and probable never would use any of it. Usually just the sight of this room scared the er, faeces, and thus the information, out of whomever I had brought here before. With any luck, James would crumble in a similar fashion, but I was prepared to torture him if necessary.

Yes, it was a sacrifice I was most definitely willing to make.

Rebecca

I stayed at the breakfast table until Marcus came to find me. He smiled reassuringly and led me away to the room he and Fergus had commandeered earlier. I tried not to feel terrified, but I can't have done a very good job, because Fergus took one look at my expression and commanded his brother to wait until he had fetched Julia. Marcus frowned slightly, but nodded. While we waited he explained a few of the experiments and training sessions he had set up, his strikingly good-looking face animated. I smiled at his enthusiasm, but smiled even wider at my reprieve when Julia walked through the door.

She must have felt my relief, because she grinned back at me and waggled a warning finger at Marcus, who rolled his eyes and chuckled. He started connecting wires to my fingers and then he plugged them into to a small box shaped instrument with a needle behind a glass screen. The needle wavered slightly, and then settled back to the resting position opposite a large zero.

"Right," said Marcus, "the voltmeter reading is zero, or very close to it. Normal, then. However, you did assert that you were feeling extremely angry when you grabbed James Colborne's wrist, and that is when the shock occurred." He looked at me for confirmation. I nodded slowly. I was starting to doubt that the events of yesterday had happened the way I remembered them. And it looked like the voltmeter agreed with me.

"So she has to be angry for this to occur?" Julia wanted to know.

"So it appears." Marcus compressed his lips and narrowed his eyes. "Rebecca, close your eyes." I did. "I want you to imagine that you are back in that warehouse, and James is once again standing in front of you. Remember the rage you felt..." his voice trailed off.

My eyes closed, I recalled lying chained to that metal cot, and the fury that had ripped through me. But for some reason, I was unable to
feel
the rage now, as I sat in this room with these people. I opened my eyes and shook my head.

"I don't feel it Marcus. I remember it, but I don't feel it." I tried to explain.

He smiled at me, and it struck me how he resembled Angus. "Never mind, Rebecca. It was always going to be difficult to reproduce a reaction that is triggered by emotion. We may have to try hypnotism eventually, but this may be one situation that cannot be simulated under controlled conditions. By definition the rage you felt was instinctive and effortless. I'm not certain that can ever be replicated here." He paused. "I hate to have to abandon the whole series of experiments I designed, but if we can't even get you to generate anger, I think we may have to."

"So no more experiments?" I asked hopefully.

"For now, no. I don't think it's possible. Sorry, Rebecca."

It was strange - I felt both relief and disappointment at his conclusion. I might never be able to harness that power again, or learn to use it with some level of control. But its absence now made me feel like something less than a freak.

It's amazing how much I appreciated that.

Angus

I carried the trussed up James down those stairs, and pulled the trapdoor closed behind us. I set him down in the chair in the middle of the room and watched his eyes widen as he took in the straps and the gleaming instruments. I reached into his mind and felt the shock and the horror, and I smiled inwardly in satisfaction. My job would be easy today. I removed the gag from his mouth and started untying his bonds.

"What are you going to do with me?" he asked, his voice high pitched and faltering.

I continued untying him, letting the possibilities of the situation fester in his head while I strapped him to the chair. I knew my silence would be much more unnerving than any words right now, and I let it work for me. He shuddered as the last buckle snapped into place.

I stood back, as if admiring my handiwork, and his eyes followed my movements frantically. I looked at him, my face expressionless, my eyes cold.

"Tell me about Jack," I suggested.

Surprise crawled across his face, followed by bewilderment. Then understanding dawned.

"This is about the girl, isn't it? Well, I don't know where she is - she got away. Came damn close to killing me too, the little bitch. I know the address of the place she's holed up in, though. I can give it to you, but you'd better hurry if you want to get to her first. I gave that address to Jack last night, and he seemed keen to extricate her, if you know what I mean. He could be there now." He looked at me expectantly, as if he thought I should thank him. I didn't. Instead I left him tied to that chair and climbed the steps and opened the trapdoor and stepped out into the barn. I took my phone out of my pocket and dialled Fergus.

"S'up brother?"

I spoke rapidly. "Jack knows where Rebecca is, Fergus, and he may be planning to attack any minute. You know what to do. I'll be back as soon as I can. I need to finish my conversation with James here."

"Thanks for the heads up. We'll sort things out from this end. By the way, I managed to pinpoint Jack's mobile number by tracking James' calls over the past few days thanks to Eric's phone and my spectacular skill with all things hackable. I should be able to locate his base in another few hours. See you later." He hung up.

I replaced the phone in my pocket and headed back into the underground room, once again shutting the door behind me. James must have heard at least part of the conversation because he'd reverted to looking puzzled.

"You are going to tell me everything you know about Jack," I said coldly.

"Do you know what Jack is?" he asked me, enunciating slowly, as if he were speaking to a small annoying child.

"Yes. How many vampires does he have with him?"

He paled. "So you do know. I'm glad. Now you'll understand why I can't tell you anything."