Читать книгу The Big Smoke - Jason Nahrung - Страница 15

It didn't take long to get to Mel's apartment building in New Farm. The suburb was tucked inside one of the river's meander bends, and the dilapidated concrete monolith was set back from the water, surrounded by a mosaic of fenced-off development sites and exhausted homes waiting for the right offer to end their misery.

Crumpled beer cans glimmered among the sparse stalks that passed for lawn. Graffiti made camouflage patterns on the stairs and walls. Timber doors opened on to a foyer, heavy with mustiness and cat piss. Corridors stretched off but Mel led him to an ancient lift. A yellowed sheet of paper said the outer doors had to be shut for the lift to work.

'Where's Greaser taking the Monaro?' he asked.

'There are a couple of empty garages. It'll be safe.'

He kept his silence as the lift wheezed to a halt. A dim bulb showed initials cut into the wood, graf swirls, chewing gum like zits. She hit the top floor: 7.

'Lucky number,' she said, 'if you believe in such things.'

He grunted, not knowing what he believed in any more. A chip packet lay on the floor. Cigarette butts. A sign said No Smoking.

'It takes its time,' she said, 'but it's much nicer than the stairs. Besides, it's not like we're in a rush, is it?'

Vampire time. He hadn't got used to it, found it maddening. Those weeks in Cairns, learning what he could from Danica, trying to be patient, to not think about the years — the decades, the centuries — ahead. Trying not to wonder how a man filled those days without dropping dead from boredom. Assuming he could drop dead, of course. What was the vampire equivalent? They'd not got to that in his month of Undead for Beginners.

And Kala, she'd become so distant so quickly. He'd expected their relationship to grow stronger, him being her maker and all. Maker. Everyone had a different word for it, but he still hadn't found one that suited him. Violator, maybe. Whatever you called it, it hadn't brought them closer. Sure, he'd saved her life by bringing her across. But all she'd done with immortality was shack up with a couple of human leeches, doing to them what Taipan had done to her, trading their blood for hers. The ultimate recycling program; but, as in the mundane world, the number of cycles was limited. Human flesh could take only so much. Reality could only be held at bay for so long. Death would have its way.

'We're here,' Mel said.

Kevin jerked himself out of his thoughts; he'd been deep in the bloodwalk, the moments of his recent past so well defined in his memory it was almost as though they were happening again. He silently cursed his lapse — it was dangerous, to be distracted in the presence of strangers — and followed her out; hearing the lift door shut, the floorboards creak, televisions behind doors, voices, a baby gurgling. Hallway lights, more out than on, made a hopscotch of light and shade on the worn carpet.

'I know you're afraid of bedlam,' she said as they walked, 'but delirium is also a risk. The vacuum of your own life will suck you down as surely as the cacophony of others.'

'Just got distracted,' he said.

'You need fresh input — fresh dreams. Meals, not snacks.'

'Between Greaser and Ambrose, I've had enough to keep me going.'

'This is me.' She took a key from her purse; a deadlock thunked.

In the small entrance, she balanced like a stork as she pulled off her boots and threw them against the wall. He followed her down a hallway. Newspapers covered a small dining table. Crammed in among the furniture was a keyboard — 'easier than bringing a piano up here, as much as I'd love one' — big TV, a stereo and turntable. Books and CDs and DVDs were scattered all over, as though a willy-willy had hit a music store.

'Check out the view.' She opened curtains to reveal a picture window. A strip of red-tiled roofs separated them from the river; the far bank was a cliff lined with mansions lit like a small town. Upstream, the river curved around a well-lit behemoth that Mel told him was a theatre repurposed from a defunct power station.

'There's a handy ferry terminal near the theatre,' she said.

And all the time, his heart jack-hammered as he waited for the other shoe to fall. Greaser had his car, his weapons in the boot.

'Music?' she asked.

He nodded, and regretted it as the stereo pumped hip hop.

'Maybe something softer,' she said, thumbing a remote. A rippling piano tune filled the space.

An iPod, he realised, jealously.

'How do you do all this?' he asked. His life on the run with Taipan had been one of abandoned houses and sheds, of — he shuddered — murdered inhabitants in isolated homesteads: food and shelter.

'There are people who fix such things. One advantage of being plugged into Maximilian von Schiller's network. Someone to pay the power bills, keep the landlord off your back.'

'Does Blake live here, too?'

'Too quaint for him. He's got a nest in Paddo, kind of an artist's commune with some of the Romantics on tap.'

'You and him—'

'He turned me. A while ago, before he came to seek "inspiration in the Antipodes". An act of undying love, he called it. Quite the stalker, he was.'

When he said nothing, she filled the silence. 'Would you like to see?' She held out a pale, slender wrist.

He shook his head, looked again at the view, the flat; anywhere but at those purple veins.

'You've got a lot of music and stuff.'

'I like to stay up to date,' she said. 'Not always easy. Things change so fast. Would you like a drink?'

'Sure,' he said, not thinking, and then wondering if he could change his mind as she grinned, teasingly, triumphantly. She reached down a wine glass from a display cabinet, studied it against the light with a sniff of 'good enough', then pulled a knife from a block.

He opened his mouth to say 'no' but the word drowned in the scent of blood as she opened her wrist and let the blood half fill the glass before the wound closed.

'Bedlam?' he said as she walked to him, glass out. 'Oh, that's right: you've got an aptitude.'

'For giving and receiving.'

He took the glass and she stroked his cheek, his chin.

'You aren't like him.'

Did she mean Taipan or Blake, or both? Just how much had she seen in his blood? He kept his eyes on the glass, the liquid sloshing with the trembling of his hand.

'You said you were plugged into Maximilian's organisation.'

She cocked her head, eyes hardening. 'You aren't dead yet, are you?'

He hesitated.

'You can trust me, Kevin.' Her fingers guided the glass to his lips. 'Let me show you.'

He drank. Swayed, as the sound of the sea rose up, a crimson surf dragging him down.

Felt, distantly, her lips on his throat. Her teeth. The sharp, tearing pain, but her grip was strong. Together, they fell.

A long, bright pier; cards on a velvet-covered table, one a picture of a man done up like a medieval prince, another of a tower collapsing; a woman running on a pebbled beach and dragged down into the swash, her blood running out, dark in the froth. Blake: wielding his cane like a cudgel, and then, terrifying, twisting the knob in response to a shout to cease; twisting it clockwise, a click, the whisper of steel leaving its home a counterpoint to Blake's fevered whisper, 'There is no going back'; and Blake ramming the naked blade into Mel's chest, and the syrup gushing from her mouth as she falls in slow motion, and then her coughing fit as the sword is withdrawn to leave her to recover, and him holding her, telling her how much he needs her; her, his muse.

They had something in common, Melpomene and Danica. Other than being very good at keeping secrets.

From what little they had allowed him to see in their blood, it was obvious they were both bloodhags; like Mira, they were able to use blood in almost magical ways that most vampires could not. He suspected Mel's powers were much narrower than Danica's whose, he gathered, were off the scale. And Mel kept that small aptitude a secret, for fear of being recruited into Maximilian's inner sanctum.

Back in the day, both women had made a name as soothsayers. Danica's fame had drawn Maximilian. Mel's had drawn Blake. And both women had ended up being dragged in the slipstream of the men who'd made them. Danica had already rebelled. And Mel?

You aren't like him

He wasn't so sure. He was using Mel to get to Mira; Mira had used him to get to Danica. And Maximilian, he realised, the knowledge suddenly apparent, had used Mira to get to Danica.

Maximilian had come calling, looking for a Strigoi, and when Danica knocked him back, he'd found a more receptive ear in the daughter. Where daughter went, mother followed, two for the price of one, but Mira turned out to be her new father's daughter and Danica had run.

Perhaps that was where the mess had started: some hovel in a European backwater, a mother desperate to keep a daughter already lost to her — a daughter who eventually tried to kill her mother, to consume her.

That was the reason he was here. Mira had already consumed one life too many. If he couldn't recover his mother, he could at least make sure no one else had to go through this. Whatever it cost.

He turned to Mel, caressed her cheek, murmured sleepily, 'So, tell me again what you know about Maximilian's tower.'

They were in the bedroom, shielded behind the velvet curtains of a four-poster bed, a border of grey light above the rail like a twilight horizon. He felt heavy and hot with blood, exhausted by the heat of the day. He had seen little of Mel's life. A measured dose, she'd fed him. How much had he shown her? He had no way of knowing. She hadn't killed him in his sleep, which was a good sign.

Not so good was what she knew of Thorn. The entrances were few and thoroughly screened, and access to the upper floors was even more strictly controlled. To sneak inside with a stolen ID was possible; to penetrate to where the vampires lurked, highly unlikely. Not without "considerable bother".

He regarded the sleeping woman beside him, her smooth, pale shoulder naked above the sheet. Would Mel help him? Was that what last night had been about? She was already risking her life by having him in her home. Is that why he was awake so early — guilt?

Or was it because bother had come calling, and he'd been too busy plotting revenge to notice the sound of the door opening?

A footstep. Beside the bed!

His heartbeat tripped.

Greaser reefed aside a curtain. She stared at them with a stony expression.

'Shouldn't you be in school?' he asked, clutching for a sheet as he jack-knifed into a sitting position. Mel sat up, hair mussed, face ruddy, chest unselfconsciously naked.

'It's almost sundown, arsehole,' Greaser said. 'Besides, I haven't been in school for years.'

'Greaser does not play well with others,' Mel said, sounding weary.

'Depends on the others,' she said, blushing, and looked away.

'How's the Monaro?' Kevin asked.

'Comfortable,' she said. 'You aren't dead yet, huh.'

'Not yet,' he said, though his neck throbbed; and his chest, where Mel had bitten him. He closed his eyes, then, glad of the pillow behind him as a moment swirled from his bloodstream, of fucking Kala when she was warm, of the sudden cooling afterward. Mel's blood swam through him like an electric eel. His nostrils flared at the smell of blood, as thick as sex. Greaser stepped back as he eyed her, and let the curtain fall. She'd bathed, smelled of soap and deodorant. Her blood pulsed inside her flesh; her heart thudded like a bass drum causing shockwaves in his senses.

Mel finger-combed her fringe, wiped her face, swung her legs from the bed and reached for a gown draped over a nearby chair. Her absence left him alone and vulnerable. She stood, spine rippling, and slid the silky material on and belted it at her waist. 'News, Greaser?'

'Yeah,' she said. 'Blake rang. The meet's on for tonight. Sandgate.'

'Well, then, bring the car around.' She shot Kevin a sly grin. 'Fortunately, we've already eaten.'

Kevin hauled himself out of bed and looked for clothes. He thought he'd dropped his shirt in the lounge room.

Greaser, by the door, looked away as he pulled his jeans on.

'Where's Sandgate?' he asked.

'North-east; by the sea. Maybe an hour with the traffic. It's easy to find, but. You just take Sandgate Road as far as it goes. If you hit the water, you've gone too far.'

Too late for that, Kevin thought. He was already out of his depth.