Kardina Page 3

  That night, with his prosthesis in place, he surprisingly fell asleep – and he dreamed.

  He dreamed in red.

  He dreamed of red tentacles spewing from a black heart.

  He dreamed of the tentacles coiling around him.

  He dreamed of them penetrating him, sliding into his mouth and down his throat.

  He dreamed of them pushing up his nose, snaking into his ears.

  He dreamed of them looping around his bones.

  He dreamed of them slithering over his brain.

  He dreamed of them poisoning him and changing him.

  And he’d woken up sweating, his head throbbing.

  “Don’t kill us,” said one of the vampires now.

  Lawton ignored the creature’s plea.

  He was quick.

  The vampires shrieked.

  They tried to claw at the door.

  Lawton got the first one through the back, piercing its black heart with the tusk.

  The other creature turned. Horror etched its face. It hissed, its fangs reflecting the fire spraying off its disintegrating companion.

  Lawton drove his sword deep into the second vampire’s chest. Arteries of fire raced along its body. Smoke puffed from its hair. Its face started to melt. Flesh burned away. Bone went to cinders.

  And the vampire became dust.

  Lawton stood in the shadows, and he felt something he’d never felt before when he stood over the remains of the undead – he felt grief.

  CHAPTER 6. BRANDED A TRAITOR.

  LAWTON had sneaked on the freight train in Rotterdam. He didn’t know its destination, but he knew it passed through Romania. And that was all the information he needed.

  Romania.

  Tălmaciu.

  Where the Sadu and the Cibin rivers meet.

  For some reason, he knew he had to go there.

  Someone was waiting for him.

  Someone who would help him in his quest.

  Someone who had spoken to him in his dreams.

  He kicked at the remains of the vampires and retreated to his corner again. He curled up under a blanket and tried to go back to sleep, tried to go back to his dreams.

  Three months ago, when he’d arrived in Rotterdam, there was only one thing on Lawton’s mind.

  Kill Nimrod.

  He’d planned to travel to Hillah, in Iraq, near where the ancient ruins of Babylon lay, find out if the god of vampires was real – and then kill him.

  It would end the war.

  It would wipe out the plague.

  When Nimrod died, so would the undead borne of his unholy children, Kea, Kakash, and Kasdeja.

  Waiting for sleep, Lawton realized that three years ago, he would never have believed in vampires or gods.

  But now he’d believe anything just to bring an end to this hell.

  When it was all finished, he and Aaliyah could be together. They would find somewhere quiet. They would live simply. They might make a family. If so, they would bring them up in a world without fear, a world where monsters didn’t lurk in the shadows, where predators didn’t hunt you for your blood.

  Aaliyah, he thought. His heart wrenched. He missed her desperately. She was so much more than a lover – she was his ally, his comrade. She was fearless in the face of the undead. If he thought prayer would work, he would have said a few words and asked God to keep her safe.

  Aaliyah had left for Iraq with Apostol Goga. They had gone to find and kill Nimrod. But Lawton had argued they should first make sure Britain was safe. He and Aaliyah had fallen out. She wanted to destroy the vampire god.

  “Destroy him, and every vampire will die,” Goga had said.

  “Destroy him, and we can be together,” said Aaliyah.

  But Lawton couldn’t abandon his country.

  He’d chosen to stay and fight monsters.

  Now, he couldn’t sleep, so he rolled himself a cigarette.

  His body ached. Years of fighting had taken their toll. Five bullets were lodged in his body from his days as a soldier. Scars covered his body. Broken bones had healed badly and ached permanently. And now he had lost his eye.

  Every bullet, every scar, had been taken for his country.

  But how had his country repaid him?

  By branding him a traitor.

  So what? he thought. I’ve always been blamed.

  When he was in the army, he’d fought for his mates – not for Queen or country. And that’s what he would do now. Fight for his friends. Fight for Aaliyah.

  He shut his eyes and wished he could dream of them together in a cottage in the middle of nowhere.

  But that dream would not come.

  Another came in its place.

  A dream of a derelict church. Fire burned in the fields surrounding it. A forest of stakes was silhouetted against the flame-red skyline. Thousands of figures writhed on the poles. Screams filled the night. But through the baying came another voice. A sound like honey. A velvet voice.

  “Voivode… voivode… voivode… ”

  The voice came from the ruins of the church. Deep in the bowels of the dilapidated building. It called to Lawton. It wanted him to come. And although his head told him that it was only a dream, and meant nothing, his heart said differently. And it was his heart that won the day.

  Lawton got to his feet. He dropped the cigarette and crushed it underfoot. He gathered his things quickly. It was time to get off the train and follow his dream to Tălmaciu.

  CHAPTER 7. BROTHERLY LOVE.

  Hillah, Iraq – 12.01am (GMT + 3 hours), 17 May, 2011

  ALFRED Fuad wore a black-and-white chequered shemagh, which covered his head, his mouth, and his nose. He shivered against the chill. Nights got cold here. And the pre-fabricated units they had used to construct their camp on the outskirts of the town didn’t really protect against plummeting temperatures.

  Alfred was sitting behind the desk in his unit. He yawned and looked at his watch. Just gone 3.00am. In Britain, it was midnight. Vampire time, he thought.

  He fired up his laptop and logged on to Skype.

  He pulled the shemagh away from his mouth so he could speak, but it was his brother who spoke first.

  “Who do you think you are, Lawrence of Arabia?” said George Fuad, his image slightly distorted on the computer’s screen.

  Alfred baulked. He loved his brother but hated him just as much. Sometimes he wished him dead. Sometimes he dreamed of being the only Fuad.

  They were twins, born in 1946 to a half-Arab father and an English mother.

  “Take that thing off,” said George. “You look like a fucking Arab.”

  “I am a fucking Arab.”

  “You’re a quarter Arab, Alfred. You’re not Sheikh Abdul Abulbul, you know. Remember that? Carry On Camel? What a laugh.” His smile faded, and he was suddenly serious. “You found Nimrod yet?”

  Peeling the shemagh from his head, Alfred said, “Not yet. Still digging. It’s deep, George. How’s it going at home?”

  “Election on Thursday. Should romp it. Got a rally in Hyde Park later on. Thousands of idiots bound to turn out to lick my arse. People are so stupid. They hate their own country. They’re so easy to manipulate.”

  “I’d love to hear your speeches, George.”

  “They’re cracking, I’m telling you. Full of Lawton-bashing. Blaming the bastard for everything. I’m saying, ‘Vampires want to live peacefully, side-by-side with us humans.’ Nice, eh? The message is each to his own, that kind of thing.”

  “They fall for it?”

  “Hook, line and sinker, son,” said George. “I say to them, ‘The enemy within is your own government and the people who attack vampires without reason.’ And they say, ‘Good for you, George, we’ll vote vampire,’ or words to that effect.”

  “You think we’ll win the election?”

  “We’ll storm it, mate. Our dream of Babylon is coming true. How far are you from Nimrod?”

  “I don’t know, George.”

  “
You didn’t know last week, neither, Alfred.”

  “And I might not know next week.”

  “Know quickly. We need him.”

  Alfred stared at his brother’s hard, cruel face. Unlike his twin, George was clean shaven and wore his hair much shorter. Alfred now ruffled his own long tresses, which were dusty and greasy.

  He said, “How do we know he won’t just kill us all?”

  “You got the red mark, ain’t you?” said George.

  Alfred studied the scarlet-coloured strip of skin before using it to tie his hair into a ponytail.

  Alfred said, “But Nimrod’s supposed to be the creator of all vampires. He made the Trinity. He made Kea, Kakash, and Kasdeja. Maybe this mark means nothing to him.”

  “Maybe, maybe, maybe, Alfie. Just get going with your dig. You got the government on board?”

  “The Iraqi State Organization for Heritage and Antiquities is now officially sanctioning us.”

  “Good fella, Alfred.”

  “They think we’re looking for artefacts.”

  “You are. How’s it looking at the site?”

  “We’re sixty-two miles south of Baghdad. A few miles outside Hillah, in the desert. And we’ve built a town, basically. These ex-Royal Engineers Howard Vince hired are incredible. We’re corralling the dig area. We’ve got security fencing, armed guards. We’ve got our industrial drill going down deeper into the desert every day. If this is the site of Babylon, and if the stories are true, then we will find Nimrod, George, I promise you, mate. But we’re not finding anything at the moment. And it makes me think there is nothing to find.”

  “You were always impatient, son,” said George.

  That was a lie. George was the impatient one. The one who wanted things yesterday. Alfred could wait. He was the cat. Stealthy and patient. George was the dog. I want it now. But Alfred didn’t say anything. No use arguing with George. He was on a high.

  Alfred’s cover in Iraq was that of a British archaeologist. His team were students and researchers, fellow archaeologists – “and a few security personnel, of course.”

  But apart from the security team and the labour, everyone was a Nebuchadnezzar.

  It was exciting for them to be where Babylon had stood. It was where their ancestor Nebuchadnezzar had built a golden empire. He had forged an alliance with the undead. They were his army. He was their provider. They gave him victories over his enemies. He gave them slaves to feed on.

  “We’re getting close,” said George, breaking Alfred’s train of thought. George’s eyes were glazed over. He looked like he was on drugs. He said, “Our grandfather came to Britain in 1900, escaping the Ottomans. He brought our history with him and handed it down to us, Alfie. Our heritage is in that earth under your feet. The bones of our people. The blood of our ancestors. The cardinal of our church. Find him. Find him so he can lead us in worship, Alfie. He can lead us to glory. He can anoint me king and you prince. We can rule the world with this new religion, Alfred. Don’t you want to rule the world?”

  Before he could answer, someone knocked on the door of his unit, and, without waiting for an answer, two men entered.

  Alfred signed off from his brother, pledging to contact him later in the day.

  And then he turned to greet his visitors.

  CHAPTER 8. THE GENERAL AND THE MERCENARY.

  THE two men who entered Alfred’s office uninvited were JJ Laxman and Howard Vince.

  Laxman was in his fifties. He was a bear of a man. His coal-black hair was peppered with sand. He had a thick, black beard. A scar ran across his bronzed forehead, the result of a domestic. His wife had thrown an iron at him.

  He ran White Light Ops, a private security firm. He was an ex-Royal Marine who’d seen action during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s and in the Falklands and Northern Ireland.

  The other man was General Howard Vince, the former Chief of the General Staff in the UK. Vince was fat. To Alfred, he looked a little bit like Tony Soprano but lacked the Mafioso’s menace. For someone who had been a soldier, Vince didn’t look like he could fight his way out of a nursery school, let alone a hostile country – but apparently that’s what he had done in the Lebanon in the 1980s. He was part of a special forces team who’d gone into Beirut to find and rescue British hostages. The mission failed. The troops had to flee. Although it was never made public, the story Alfred heard said Vince and two colleagues had fought off fifty armed men.

  As Laxman gave his daily security report, one thing was certain about Vince – he had grown to hate the mercenary, despite hiring him in the first place. Tensions between them had grown in the few months they had worked together on Alfred’s project.

  White Light Ops, Laxman’s organization, came highly recommended. Vince and the mercenary fought together in the 1991 Gulf War.

  Alfred had told Vince, “I need a man who would kill his own grandmother and not feel bad about it afterwards.”

  Vince had said, “I know just the fellow.”

  Alfred had said, “Whoever you hire, Howard, will be killed when this is done. If we find Nimrod, he’ll demand a sacrifice – and Laxman and his mugs are the perfect meat and potatoes for a hungry god.”

  Laxman, sounding bored, was giving his security update: “No new security threats in Hillah or the surrounding area. All quiet in the region since the car bomb that killed 45 here in May last year. That’s your lot.”

  Alfred grunted. Laxman left.

  Vince said, “How close are we?”

  Alfred scanned an Excel spreadsheet on his desktop. It was a report from his site supervisor detailing the depth they had reached. After studying the document for a few seconds he said, “Let’s go over to the site, take a look.”

  Outside, the temperature had dropped. It was the middle of the night. It seemed to be the time when they worked best. Nebs liked the night, it was said, because they enjoyed seeing the vampires going about their killing.

  The Euphrates streamed past the camp, and her tumbling waters filled the air with a great whooshing sound. Her roar dominated the pre-dawn silence. She made Alfred think about Eden. The Euphrates ran from the first garden. She had been there at the beginning, her waters quenching the thirst of the earliest civilizations – and now a new civilization would drink from her waters. Alfred felt excited.

  They made their way along a terrace of pre-fab units. Floodlights illuminated the whole site. A pair of Laxman’s mercenaries strolled by.

  They looked mean. Gorilla big. Faces creased with contempt. But they made him feel safe. They were the best comfort blanket he’d ever known.

  They came to a high wire fence gate. A warning written in English, French, and Arabic said trespassers would be shot. An armed guard stood at the gate. Alfred and Vince flashed their IDs. Even though the guards recognized them, Laxman had ordered everyone to carry and show ID at all times.

  Alfred’s excitement grew as he walked through the gate. Up ahead in the earth was a large hole, which had the circumference of a circus ring. The great drill towered above it. The machine was silent now. But in a few hours it would churn into the ground again.

  Alfred and Vince reached the tape that marked the edge of the hole. They stared down. Alfred was tempted to scale the metal ladders attached to the side of the pit, and descend. He would tear through the earth with his hands to find Nimrod.

  It was as if Vince had read his thoughts.

  “Do you think he exists, Alfred?”

  “Did you think vampires existed?”

  “Always. Since my father told me.”

  “And you believed what your father told you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I believe I’m descended from a king? What a dream to have, to be regal. We have royal blood in our veins.”

  “That’s one thing, but to believe in the undead is another.”

  “Which you do – and I think you believe in Nimrod, too. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”

  Alfred gazed into the abyss where a god lurked. He did b
elieve it. And he believed that the god would bend to his will.

  “There are creatures in this world that we know nothing about,” his father had told him and George once. “And those creatures are ours to control. They are vampires, boys. Night creatures. Immortal beings that live on human blood.”

  As a nine year old, the story had filled him with dread. But his dad had told him and his brother they had nothing to fear from vampires. They were the masters of the undead, he’d said, “and one day, lads, you will be kings.”

  “I hope you can control this thing if he’s down there,” said Vince.

  “Of course we can. We need each other.”

  Alfred listened to his own words but suddenly wasn’t convinced by them.

  Why would a god need him?

  He stared into the chasm. His belly heaved. He had the feeling that something was watching him.

  CHAPTER 9. SPIES.

  “WHAT can you see?” said Aaliyah Sinclair.

  Apostol Goga trained the powerful binoculars on the camp in the distance. The former Romanian security officer said nothing. Aaliyah shivered and pulled the cloak tighter around her shoulder. It was getting really cold. The temperature dropped to about nine degrees centigrade at night, sometimes lower. She was tired and wanted to sleep. But Goga insisted on holding a round-the-clock watch on Alfred Fuad’s camp.

  They were crouching on the flat roof of a house on the outskirts of the town called Hillah. They had rented the property. It was built of compressed mud bricks, which had been whitewashed. The landscape around them was mostly green. It was nourished by the Euphrates.

  About three miles away, Fuad had started to dig. His makeshift camp stood out in the darkness. Huge floodlights pointed quite clearly to the site. Fuad wasn’t worried about people knowing where he was. He had the authorities on his side. He had duped them, probably, thought Aaliyah.

  She nudged Goga. “Did you hear me?”

  “I am watching,” he said, eyes still fixed to the binoculars perched on a tripod. Goga had attached a night-vision lens on the equipment, so he could spy on Fuad after dark.