Читать книгу The Big Smoke - Jason Nahrung - Страница 6

He missed his mp3 player desperately. It was long gone, lost in the battle at Jasmine Turner's. Destroyed or stolen, it didn't matter. The coupe's passenger seat was empty, and despite the roar of the Monaro's engine, the thrum of wheels on bitumen, the shake and shiver from passing trucks, that emptiness was deafening.

Kala and Danica had refused to join him, had tried to talk him out of leaving. Having escaped Mira's net, they were content to swelter in the tropical isolation of Cairns. They'd recruited red-eyes who were happy to feed and guard them in return for the benefits that came from drinking vampire blood: accelerated healing, faster reflexes, greater strength, slower aging.

At least Kala had given him the Monaro. It's hot,' she warned, they'll be looking for it.' But he didn't care: the V8 coupe was a classic, an Australian icon of the late sixties. This parting gift was all he had.

It took three nights to drive down the coast to Brisbane, almost 2000 km of cane fields, brown paddocks and towns the highway hadn't bypassed yet, all-night roadhouses smelling of diesel and dust, grease left too long in the hot box. Days were spent parked under whatever shade he could find as far off the road as he could nurse the Monaro. Farm tracks, forestry access roads, gravel pits. Lying on the seat under a tarp, too scared of discovery to sleep, but unwilling to leave the car for fear of finding it gone, this last link to his recent past, his one good thing.

And the entire way, he was stuck with radio, having to constantly retune as he passed town and city in the night, condemned to playlists of classics and current flavour, interrupted by inane chatter and irrelevant news. What matter to him the latest war, a new casino, the price of the dollar?

Close to Brisbane, he turned off the radio, the better to concentrate as the lanes grew from one to two to four. As the lights brightened, the stars dimmed. He squinted at road signs, clenched the wheel and peered at the cars closing in on him.

What if he couldn't find his way? What if Maximilian and his stormtroopers knew he was coming? What if one man — he used the term liberally, clung to it, in fact — wasn't enough to stop them?

He followed the barest threads of memory, grasped them like a swimmer to rope in an oil-slick sea, and like a float was pulled along in their wake into the city's reach. Through the sprawl of shopping centres, car yards, neon beacons for motel pay TV and air-conditioned rooms; a confusion of signs pointing to places he didn't know, hadn't even heard of. The cloying petroleum stench invaded the cabin; the stars faded behind the bright wash of the streetlights and the city's sickly amber glow.

It was close to midnight and few vehicles other than buses, taxis and police cars cruised the lanes. Signs told him where he couldn't go, where he didn't want to go, where it would cost him to go. He stop-started through the traffic lights, working his way toward the centre, following the bare clues in his blood, an uncertain second-hand familiarity stale with time and too-little exposure.

And yet he found it, like a bee to a hive: Maximilian's towering base, Thorn.

He drove slowly past the dark monolith, feeling small and obvious, bathed in light in the middle of the night. A gate of iron bars in a surrounding wall revealed a wide fan of stairs leading to glass doors. Guards in green uniforms stood at the top. The building loomed, a black marble tombstone carved from a mountain.

Mira was in there somewhere. She might even be hidden behind the glass, watching him drive past. Kevin clamped down on the vestiges of Mira within him, the elements of her that had hooked into him during the change. Danica had made a putsi for him with blood magic, the amulet warm on his chest even through the leather pouch from which it hung around his neck. He trusted the combination of it and Danica's mystical training would keep him from Mira's sight. If she knew he was here, his mission would be over before it even began.

He pulled into a cross-street and tried to work out if he could park there. Would he be ticketed, clamped, towed? Would he return to find a ring of Maximilian's soldiers circling the Monaro? Would he turn the key to have the car explode while a cheery assassin wiped their hands for a job well done?

From beyond the horizon he felt the pull of the plains, calling him home. But home was gone. He saw again his mother, still and pale on the sofa at Jasmine Turner's property; felt again the earth parting around them as he sank in the graveyard soil, bearing her down to final rest. Heard again Mira's taunt:

She tastes like sunshine

He forced himself to get out; a snail without a shell, feeling the threat of voracious magpies perched in the shadows.

Kala and Danica had told him not to come. To stay. To find a new life. But they couldn't tell him how.

How to forget the murder of his family.

How to forget the fact that his mother had been consumed, probably lingered still, an album of experience kept alive inside her killer's bloodstream.

How to turn his back while this place, these people — these creatures — remained.

Pale-barked trees shaded the pavement. He took comfort in the many darknesses where street lights and glowing shop fronts didn't reach. Hands in pockets, hood up, shoulders slumped, he hunched in a doorway; a metal grille sealed the door but left enough space in the entrance to shield him from the light.

On the other side of the street, towered Thorn — all dark concrete and black glass. A red warning light blinked atop a spire. The tower had been named for a fortress of old. That memory too nestled deep, an aside, but he clung to it as an omen; the Teutonic fortress had fallen. He regarded the tower, hoping for history to repeat. He was struck by the memory of a movie, of people with guns, lots of guns, kicking open doors and battling their way to the upmost floors, of righting wrongs, of saving the world.

Thorn had a wall, a forecourt, armed guards and many, many floors. There would be no kicking down of doors. He would need to be cleverer than that.

Kevin returned to the car and found it untouched, unguarded. So far, so good. He turned the ignition, felt the instant comfort of the motor's rumble, the chassis' vibration; the suppressed power under the bonnet.

Now to find the one they called the Needle.

The city was bigger than he remembered. He had been here once, his own memories less useful than the memories of the others residing within him. Brisbane was quite the haystack. But he had time.

As long as no one knew he was here, he had all the time he needed. All the time his hunger would allow.