London Under Midnight Part 14

'Let me in,' she snarled. 'I'm hungry!'

Carter pushed by her to lunge at the hand that he knew would be crammed with rich, red blood. He snapped those gold-tipped teeth at his victim. Raj was just that bit faster. Carter's teeth clamped on the door frame and ripped away a foot-long splinter.

April saw her next move. It'd take only a moment. Push open the door, pin Raj against the wall then take her time to chew on that delicious wrist of his. She could open a vein then suck the goodness from his body. With all her heart she yearned to feel how she did just an hour ago when she blazed with euphoria; that was a precious time; she wanted to feel that way again when she fell in love with the whole wide world.

April pushed at the door to open it. Silvery links snapped taut in front of her eyes. A chain? Why a chain? Already the hunger was so intense she couldn't understand that Raj had automatically slipped on the security chain before opening the door. Now it was the only thing that stood between him and his destruction. Carter beat at the door, too. He wanted in. He craved the editor's blood. Their attempts to break down the door were thwarted when Raj managed to slam it shut. Bolts snapped home.

Raj was shouting, 'Try and keep calm, April. Something's happened to you. I'm calling the policea'

'Carter,' she snapped. 'Break a window. We've got to get in there. Carter?'

Her companion had raced from the garden. She saw that he chased after a drunken man - a lovely well-built man - who was tottering along beneath the blaze of street lights. She started running in that direction too, fearful that she might lose her share of nature's riches.

TWENTY.

At five minutes past two that sultry morning Trajan walked beside Ben as they left the taxi that had carried them from where they'd talked to the graffiti artist.

'If the man was mad,' Trajan said, 'why should we make too much about this Vampire Sharkz business?'

'Mr Akinedes isn't mad. He suffers from Obsessive Compulsion Disorder; that means he completely understands his compulsions are irrational, only he has no power over them.'

They turned off the main road into a park that ran beside the Thames. Nearby, the formidable square structures of Tower Bridge rose into the night sky where they gleamed in the floodlights. Beyond them, the thousands of lights of London still burned brightly even at this hour.

In the gloom Trajan's head appeared as a bobbing smudge of blond as he asked, 'Then did he mean there's a dangerous animal in the river; perhaps something that's escaped from a zoo? Did that attack April?'

'Don't have me speculating yet, Trajan. I want to compare Mr Akinedes' story, irrespective of how bizarre it sounds, with what Elmo Kigoma knows.'

'The man in the boat? If he's still here. The last I heard the Mayor had plans to evict him from the park.'

'Oh, he's still here. Elmo's built from tough stuff.'

Elmo Kigoma was, indeed, still in the riverside park but he was no longer alone. Ben groaned at what he saw. 'd.a.m.na' There, in the muted gleam of street lights s.h.i.+ning from the road, were a group of at least ten figures. They'd cl.u.s.tered around the boat that appeared to float above ground, the pole that supported it rendered invisible by the shadows.

'The guy's got trouble this time.' Ben moved faster.

'Wait!' Trajan caught his arm. 'Wouldn't it be better to call the police?'

Ben fished out his phone. 'If it turns nasty - I mean really nasty - call the cops; but only as a last resort. If they come roaring down here we won't get a chance to talk to Elmo alone. And stay here; you've already cracked your skull once this week.'

After pus.h.i.+ng the phone into Trajan's hand he ran toward the aerial boat. By now, the group of men had begun to push at the vessel's pole. They were clearly trying to topple it. The tiny plywood craft swung back and forth as if tossed on a stormy sea. A silhouette of a figure hung on tight to the mast of the boat.

These are stupid odds, Ben told himself as he ran along the path. One against ten? They've been drinking, too, so it's going to be tough reasoning with them.

The men chanted, 'Out the boat! Out the boat!'

'Give someone else a turn, y'old b.a.s.t.a.r.d!'

Their laughter was s.a.d.i.s.tic; they'd worked themselves up an appet.i.te for hurting someone.

'Come down here, y'w.a.n.ker - y'can kiss my a.r.s.e.' One of the men bared his backside at the hermit in his boat.

'Dirty little b.u.g.g.e.r. Where do y'go to the toilet? Bet y'do it over the side.'

'Yeah, right where kids are.'

'Filthy pervert.'

'Get down herea gonna get the hiding of your life!'

Ben stopped a few paces from them. 'Excuse me. Gents?'

A guy with a tattooed line around his throat with the words 'Cut Here' etched in the skin turned on him. 'f.u.c.k off.'

Ben took a deep breath, 'I need to speak to Mr Kigoma. It's important.'

'Y'hear that?' one of the men slurred. 'These two lovebirds want to be alone.' Pure sadism made the thug's laughter harsh.

'It's all right, sir. I'm safe,' Elmo called down. 'Please go home.'

'Yeah, go home,' the men chorused.

'Mr Kigoma. I'm Ben Ashton. We spoke recently.'

The thugs shook the pole, making the boat flip from side-to-side. Ben saw it wouldn't be long before the old man was twitched from his vessel. 'Look, stop that,' Ben said angrily. 'You're going to hurt him.'

The man with the tattooed 'Cut Here' throat calmly punched Ben on the jaw. Ben had no intentions of falling down, but his legs appeared to have no communication with his brain. As they folded under him he slapped down on to the gra.s.s with enough force to knock the air from his lungs.

'Down in one! Down in one!' the guy chanted while his buddies cheered his skill.

What had been a numb feeling in Ben's mouth suddenly made way for a whole head full of pain. Any plans he had for standing were forgotten, although he managed to sit as Trajan appeared.

'Do you want it as well?' snarled Ben's attacker. 'Do you?' He swung his fist at Trajan and Ben remembered the guy's head wound only too clearly. A hard punch would kill him.

Trajan side-stepped neatly, then dealt a couple of rapid jabbing punches to the man's stomach that suggested pretty forcefully that he had martial arts training. The tattooed guy didn't fall but he backed away holding his stomach. Ben forced himself to his feet. The odds were still one-sided. They faced a beating. Nevertheless, Ben knew he must stand by Trajan.

The men's faces were ugly with aggression and drink. They shook their fists, and stuck out their chests to make themselves more intimidating.

Ben groaned. 'It looks like you backed the wrong side.'

Trajan wasn't a man for running. He held out his arm for Ben to stay back. 'Give me room to work,' he said.

'You can't fight them,' Ben countered.

Meanwhile Elmo Kigoma called down in a panicked voice. 'Look out, they're coming back.'

'Tell us something we don't know,' Trajan said as the thugs closed in.

The hermit's voice rose. 'Look, back there. Dead-bone creatures. Children of Edshu. You must get away from here.'

That did strike home. Ben raised himself on his toes to look over the men's heads. Beyond them, figures loped across the gra.s.s from the direction of the river.

'Dear G.o.d,' Ben said. 'Here they comea Vampire Sharkz.'

'What?' Trajan shot him a startled glance.

As he did so, Ben nodded at the advancing men. 'Watch your backs, boys. You've got company.'

The thugs probably thought Ben meant that someone had circled round behind them. Instead, when they looked, they saw figures of both s.e.xes and all ages race at them with the speed of panthers. The thugs turned to fight them. But the bodies that slammed into theirs moved with inhuman speed and power. The guy with the tattooed neck fell back with a girl of around sixteen ripping his throat with her teeth. A balding man in a torn business suit pounced on a thickset yob and held him down to the ground as he tore away his s.h.i.+rt, then started to gnaw at the beer belly. The thugs' shouts of rage stopped to be replaced by an eerie silence. Then came screams of pain.

High in his boat Elmo Kigoma shouted down at Ben. 'Up here. You won't outrun them!' With those words he dropped a rope ladder over the side.

In his kitchen Raj repeatedly went to the window to peer outside into the darkness, before returning to the corner of the room to drink from a gla.s.s of orange juice. He wished he had whisky. That's what he needed right now. A strong liquor. Liquid fire to shock his vocal chords back to life. He'd made two attempts to telephone the police only nothing coherent had left his mouth. Here in the corner where two solid walls met he felt safer. Then his cat burst through the cat-flap. The abruptness of the movement made him jerk the juice from the gla.s.s down his pajamas.

Instead of scolding Nipper he merely sighed with relief that it was his pet and nota he swalloweda not those two things that appeared at his door just minutes ago. He knew April Connor. She had one of those smiling faces that was always full of fun. What had happened to her? Beneath a ma.s.s of sticky-looking hair had been a grey face that possessed the blue lips of a corpse. Beneath her eyes her skin was etched with black rings. And then there were those eyes. Good G.o.d, the way they burned with such an overwhelming greed. They didn't even appear human. If eyes communicate something of their owners' thoughts then what April communicated sickened him. He could imagine only too vividly her leaning toward his ear and whispering, 'I wanta' Only whatever she'd want would be so extreme and so perverse, Raj knew he'd have recoiled in horror. Only that scenario didn't have time to take place. Because she and her strange companion had tried to bite a lump out of his hand. If he'd neglected to lock the security chain in placea He began to shake again. Meanwhile, the cat dropped the mouse it had caught on to the floor and gazed expectantly up at the man, waiting for his approval.

Raj took a deep breath and decided to give the telephone another try.

The two men scrambled into Elmo Kigoma's boat. There they lay panting in the bottom while the sounds of battle took place below.

Elmo grimaced. 'Why didn't those boys listen to me? Instead they shake the pole and fight the pair of you.' He slapped his forehead as he became angry. 'It's because people don't listen to Elmo. They never do.'

'They're paying the price now,' Ben murmured as he looked down.

'My G.o.d,' Trajan breathed as he saw what was happening. 'They're eating those poor guys.'

'Not eating,' Elmo corrected. 'Drinking. They're having the blood out of their veins.'

Ben crouched there in the dinghy as it rested on its pole ten feet above the ground. Below him, in the glow of street-lamps, he witnessed the death of the men who'd attacked them. A group of individuals dressed in rags, with unkempt, spiky hair, thrust their faces against the torn bodies of the corpses. Trajan watched, too. They didn't lap the wounds or bite now, the Vampire Sharkz pressed their faces hard to the wounds. Then they drank. It was violent gluttony. These creatures appeared to be starving; now they drank so deeply they grunted as if it physically hurt them to swallow so much blood in one draught. Their entire bodies pulsed with the effort of gorging.

Ben absorbed what he saw: the grey skin of those creatures; their blackened nails; mouths surrounded by blue patches; at least the skin that wasn't smeared with their victim's blood. These things aren't human, he told himself. Okay, they're roughly human in shape but the humanity's vanished from them. These things are something else entirely.

When the creatures finally raised their faces, their expressions were exultant. Feeding had not only satisfied their hunger, it had intoxicated them. Their eyes blazed with alien joy. When one noticed the men looking down at them from the boat it leapt from a crouching position. Ben watched in horror as it appeared to effortlessly glide up toward him. A second later it would catch hold of him and drag him down to that grisly feeding area below with its mangled corpses. Only it was satiated now. Hunger didn't drive it. By its standards the leap was a lazy one. Its fingers almost reached the gunwale before it swiped in Ben's direction. The fingernails raked the hull's flanks before the creature dropped back.

After that, the creatures realized that more prey squatted in the little boat. Fortunately Elmo had raised the rope ladder. Even so, they attempted to climb the telegraph pole that held the boat aloft. Fortunately blood is slippery. And fortunately for the three men the monsters were smeared in the stuff. When they tried to s.h.i.+n up the pole their limbs were too slippy to find a purchase. Soon they wandered back to their victims to suck the remaining blood from their bodies.

Only it wasn't over yet. Trajan muttered, 'Oh my G.o.d,' as they watched the next stage in the procedure. One by one the creatures clamped their mouths back on to the wounds of their dead victims. Then they regurgitated. Ben heard the hiss of fluids gus.h.i.+ng back from stomachs into throats, then he saw the monsters' bodies convulse as they vomited into the wounds.

Trajan rocked back with his hands over his eyes. 'I remember now. That's what happened to April. They did that to Aprila my poor Aprila Oh G.o.d.'

Trajan no longer watched but as the time crept past three and daylight broke on the horizon Ben saw the creaturesa the Vampire Sharkz as Spiro had called thema drag their victims through the park to the river. There they dropped the bodies into the water. Quickly, with a predatory urgency, the things returned to lap every trace of blood from the gra.s.s. Then, as sunlight touched the underside of the clouds, they scurried back to the river to vanish into the darkness of its waters.

TWENTY-ONE.

Carter and April stood on the bridge watching the cars pa.s.s beneath them. Even at this time of night the traffic still surged along the highway as unceasing as the River Thames flowing to the sea.

Carter blinked. 'What happened to us, April?'

'We got distracted, that's all,' she rea.s.sured. 'It's this hunger. We're not used to it.'

'But the guy we called on; the one who was going to give us your friend's addressa' He grimaced. 'I tried to bite him.'

'Never mind, Carter. We're fine now. Don't you feel good? Like you're so strong you could throw those cars like they're just toys?'

'But we knew exactly what we were going to do, April. We'd go to the journalist's home. We'd explain our discovery to him.'

'The miracle!' April hugged herself.

'Yeah.' He smiled, yet his eyes were troubled. 'The miracle. The New-Life. It went wrong, didn't it?'

'We have appet.i.tes that are above and beyond what anyone has ever experienced before.'

'April, it was more than that. We were so hungry we went crazy; we're no better than Berserkers.'

'We'll control it next time.'

'Will we? If I'd got my hands on him I'd have torn that editor feller apart, and sucked every drop of blood out of him. April, that can't be right, can it?'

'We're fine now. That's all that matters.'

That river of light created by the cars held Carter's gaze. 'Remember the islanda' He gave a grim laugh. 'You called it the Isle of the Dead?'

'Sure. What of it?' April was upbeat; nothing fazed her.

'We drank from pools of water on the sh.o.r.e.'

'Ugh, don't remind me.' She rubbed his arm. 'Come on, I'm sure we can find Ben Ashton. We'll use the telephone directories.'

'April, listen to what I've got to say.'

'If it makes you happy.' She beamed at him.

'When we were on the island we got hungry, right?'