28

BLOOD AND BULLETS

PARIS, SAINTE CHAPELLE

"Mum was so right about you!" Ashley yelped, ducking behind the antique bookshelf. A silenced bullet thudded into the hardwood too close to her head, not quite making it all the way through the ancient plank. Angry splinters flayed out around the silver tip. She eyed it as a puff of sawdust fell in her hair. "You do have a magnetic allure – for bullets."

His half-formed grin dissolved. Nikola slipped his last cartridge into his handgun, snapping it into place. He risked a glance around the corner of the bookshelf and quickly sank back from a blast of semi-automatic fire ripping at the air. "Can you see Nathaniel?"

"He's out for the count," Ashley replied. She'd seen a 'Nathaniel-shaped' mound of robes on the floor earlier. "Think they clipped him over the head with something when he came down to get your stone."

At least he wasn't dead, thought Nikola. Although if he ever had to return to this place he was sure to cop an earful over the bullet holes in the antique cornices. "Right, there are six hired guns plus our manicured friend from Oxford."

"Your friend. Smoke grenade?" she fished one out of her leather jacket and held it up for his inspection.

Nikola eyed her disapprovingly. "You were carrying that around," he asked dubiously, "just in case?"

"Just in case," she nodded, with eyes that matched her mother's. Ashley tossed the egg-shaped grenade in the air to test its weight. "And on three..."

Ashley snapped its trigger and chucked the heavy canister down through the valley of shelves. It oozed thick, purple gas, killing the range of torchlight to nothing as it bounced off the shelves. The goons were illuminated in a fuzzy, purple aura of confusion. Ashley and Nikola moved. Keeping low, they snuck around the other side of the longest shelf then raced forward, pausing only to take careful shots through gaps in the books.

One. Two. Half down and the others dispersing, clicking their torches off in a futile attempt to hide. This hiss of the grenade disguised everyone's movement but the bad guys were given away by their rasping coughs. In close quarters, Nikola didn't need his gun. He thrust his claws straight through a man's bullet proof vest as though it were soft butter then into the warm human flesh beyond. Blood ran down his wrist as the body fell lifelessly to the floor. He resisted the primal urge to lick his lips.

When the smoke cleared, there was just one body missing from the count.

"Shit! We'd he go?" Ashley strutted through the bodies, eye-balling each one but none of them had the sickening bleached hair of their leader.

"Oh perfect!" Nikola snapped a display case closed too hard, shattering its glass panel. "He's got the stone."

"Urgh..." one of the bodies stirred. It was Nathaniel. He willed open a swollen eye, coughing at the last gasps of smoke. "My library..."

Nikola looked around at the trail of destruction visible in the torchlight. "It was due for a refit."

"B-bastard vampire..." Nathaniel murmured.

The ship's engines whirred to a stop. With a sudden heave of water against the bow, it gradually began to slow. It would be an hour before it brought itself to a stop, adrift in the middle of the water. John Druitt strode out onto its deck, breathing in the fresh, sea air. The sky above was an unblemished blue with a harsh orb of light glowing directly above him.

Amasis stood beside him, claws wrapped around the steel railing leaving scratches. "How do you feel now?" he asked, turning his black eyes upon the murderer.

John shrugged, his leather coat uncomfortably hot on his skin. "Not much yet. Mind you I think I'm still seeing things – and unless the sky has suddenly decided to turn purple on Sundays, my colour range is out."

"Magoi blood is a powerful hallucinogen. There was a substantial black market trade for it several thousand years ago popular with barbarians and priests."

"Are its effects permanent?"

"Not the useful ones," Amasis lamented.

John was a little disturbed. "What about the wolf? Won't it be a waste to try it on -"

Amasis stopped him with a raised claw and low hiss. "I want to see what happens to that worthless pup. You think vampires are bad? You should have been there when the wolves ruled the northern wastelands. It was a frozen hell of strewn with decayed corpses. Human, vampire it didn't matter – they killed everything they touched. The human," Amasis added, when John asked, "is your backup. Soon you'll be ready to kill the immortals and end this foolish balancing act and if you fail, that little protege of hers is next."

John tilted his head back to the sky, blinking at the expanse of purple. It was like living in a stained glass window. He had a bloody headache already. "We should get ready for the next treatment."

"Darn-it!" Nikola picked at the car's leather interior with his claws.

"You're voiding my insurance policy," Ashley snapped, driving the car back to the quaint hotel in the centre of Paris which they'd be sharing. "Look on the bright side, it might be the vamp that's got the stone."

"If it's Helen's buddy Immortal, he will have destroyed it already to stop us getting inside the door."

Another bridge – black water running soundlessly beneath them with pricks of light dotted like stars over its surface. "There must be something dangerous behind those doors," Ashley said quietly.

"The legends say treasure."

"You don't go to this much trouble for treasure," Ashley replied, glancing at the vamp. "That Immortal was willing to kill to keep it safe and he doesn't even know what's really in there. He wouldn't care so much if he actually thought it was gold."

"There's something not right about the whole thing," Tesla agreed. "That place was tens of thousands of years old. Even with unlimited resources, I don't know of a culture on earth that could build the tunnel, let alone the doors."

"Maybe something happened to them – I'm sure I read about pre-civilisation empires more advanced that Egypt at its height."

"Oh, I'm sure you did," he drawled sarcastically, reclining his seat and hoisting his feet onto the dash. "In a B-grade novel, I imagine."

"Dude, my whole life is a B-grade move," she replied – then realised she was talking to a vampire.

"Helen?" Joe knocked briefly then rushed into her office, handing her a tablet. "The London Sanctuary reports a break in at the old Griffin manor. You think it might be Tesla?"

She scrolled through the screens, her frown deepening. "Not just Tesla. He's better at discretion and he wouldn't lay a claw on Griffin's greenhouse. Someone's after him."

"You think he got the stone?"

"Probably – Nikola's pretty go-" She was interrupted by her mobile wailing on the desk beside her. "Magnus speaking." She was met by a tirade loud enough for Joe to hear. "N-Nathaniel... please, this is very important-" Helen tried to get a word in between repeated bouts of swearing, "did these men take anything?"

Helen set the phone down and looked at Joe.

"We're in trouble, aren't we?" Joe said.

"It's one all, I'm afraid. Someone else got the stone. There's only one left in play. Nikola will be coming back here as soon as he can."

"You think Tesla can open the door with just two stones?"

"He's gonna bloody have to."

"I do have a bit of good news – a lead on Zimmerman and Mr Foss," Joe handed her a police file. "I swiped it from the office. There was a vessel reported stolen yesterday morning from its mooring. Could by our old friend."

Their hotel was narrow and old, their double room reflecting this sentiment. They'd requested and were granted two beds but with only the smallest side table known to man between them, they may as well have gone for the king and been done with it. A solitary lamp sat on it, glowing softly.

Nikola walked over her bed to get to his as there wasn't enough room to squeeze around it.

"Gee – thanks," she muttered at the boot prints on her quilt.

Nikola sat cross legged on his, the keystone in front of him. Ashley sat on her bed, facing him. "So Dr Horrible, where's the last stone?"

His eyes were black when he looked up at her. He was hungry and there was no wine. Helen was cheap to a fault. "With any luck, where I left it."

She frowned at him, far too tired for his games.

"Home..." he relented, "But I don't know what good it'll do. I need all three."

"Guess I'm done here for today then," she replied, standing up and shuffling out of some of her clothes. Nikola went an interesting shades of porcelain. "Oh my gawd, you are the most introverted person – ever!" Ashley flopped back onto the hard bed in a very respectable singlet top and shorts. "You're probably going to sleep in your damn bat cloak."

He did.

"Where's it now?"

"About eight-hundred kilometres North-West of Old City, it's hugging the coast, moving toward Prince Rupert."

"Odd..." Helen mused, staring at the screen. "Can we get a helicopter up there?"

The man shook his head. "Not that far. It's a stretch for the light air craft. Your best bet is to take a commercial flight to Prince Rupert and meet them there – charter a 'copter up there and you might have a chance of getting aboard. Mind you – they have to stop for fuel. The company that reported it stolen insist that it only had three quarters of a tank. It'll be out soon."

"Thank you, you've been very helpful."

"Oh, one last thing," the officer said, "the owners are keen to get their property back in one piece."

"Don't sink it?" Helen winked.

"If it's not too much trouble, Dr Magnus. We owe you favours but everyone's cheque books have a limit."

"Just once, can we go somewhere warm like Morocco or Australia..." Joe tugged his Arctic jacket around his shaking bones.

Helen smirked at him, her wild hair whipping about as they crossed the air field. "You said you wanted to do something more interesting with your life."

"How does that translate to 'cold'?" Joe narrowed his eyes at her, then frowned at the rickety four-seater air craft. "Really? All the stories I've heard said you were rich as hell but lately all I've seen are run down pieces of junk held together with duct tape. Even your sanctuary could do with a thick coat of paint."

"Well, Nikola's always saying that I'm cheap – maybe you should listen to him instead."

Joe shook his head in dismay, climbing into the plane. He nudged a broken seal around the window with his finger – horrified to see it cracking further. "At least you're not flying."

Nikola laid on the bed with the stone under his hand. He found it's electro-magnetic field oddly comforting now that he was used to it. It was pulsing very subtlety, like music without a score flailing wildly before dying down into a steady heart beat. Then it repeated.

His mind wandered as it often did when sleep evaded him. It flitted around his memories until settling on Helen. He'd always thought of his mind as a homing pigeon and unfortunately for him, she was his home; his fantasy and his escape. He could spend ours reliving a brush of her fingers or inventing adventures that they never went on. Sometimes he wondered how much of their relationship was actually real rather than a construct of his lonely mind. Probably more than he'd like to admit... Nikola really didn't understand why he was so different – repulsive? Helen made no secret of her lovers – her conquests and affairs. He'd trade every patent, every secret of the universe for a night with her.

Nikola curled up closer to himself, his hands against his own arms the only embrace he'd known. Every night he wished to stop loving her but like all fatal conditions, it was bleeding him dry.

He was bleeding.

It was morning. Harsh light bit at his skin, warming his flesh beyond a comfortable level.

"Steady there, vampy," Ashley pressed him back down to the bed. Tesla was naked to the waist, laying on his stomach with something tight pulling at the skin on his shoulder. "That was quite a night you had there."

"...the hell are you doing?" he complained into the bedding.

"Don't snip at me," she huffed, letting the silver bullet fall onto the bedspread beside his head. "I thought you were joking when you said vampires were allergic to silver."

"I was – in relation to silver chains," he eyed the blood-stained metal that had been literally burning a hole in his shoulder. "It's when when it gets into our blood that we have problems."

"Yeah well," she hopped off him, nurse duties complete, "maybe you want to put that on a card in your wallet, or something."

Nikola gingerly sat up and took in the deep stains of blood on the bedding and wall. He'd obviously been tossing and turning and … oh, by the looks of it he'd tried to run to the bathroom too, his bloody prints on the wall. "We should really get out of here before someone sees that."

"Agreed, mum has us on an early flight. Breakfast?"

"In Paris?" Nikola perked up, "I thought you'd never ask."

"Yeah, that's going to need some work..." Nikola stepped over the remains of the front door rather than through it.

The Sanctuary was a noisy clash of security and Abnormal keepers brought in from other sanctuaries to deal with the destruction. A worrying volume of low-threat creatures still had free run of the house. Two-tailed cats, Dodo hatchlings and a giant, Beige-Baked-Hawk Turtle all meandered past him without so much as a second look.

"Declan!" Ashley shrieked, with absolute glee when she saw the James Watson's protege lingering by the entrance of the main living room.

He was holding a sleepy Nubbin in a vice-like grip having spent the last hour catching the damn thing. Declan turned at Ashley's voice and nodded back in greeting – his eyebrow lofting slightly at the accompanying vampire. You could never tell when those things would show up.

"Wanna hold?" Declan thrust the Nubbin in Tesla's direction.

Tesla hissed at it. "Want to die?" he replied, eyes going black for a moment.

"Ignore him," Ashley waved the vampire off and hugged Declan anyway – then petted her little Nubbin Damien.

"It's a good thing these were cold and sleepy or we'd never have caught them. Damien's the last one." Declan put the Nubbin into a waiting cage which was swept away by one of the members of staff. "I hope to have this place back in shape by the time your mother comes back."

"I thought uncle James was meant to be here?" she replied.

Declan paused. "He couldn't make it, Ash," he replied.

"Darn, I was in London – I should have stopped by and said hi."

"I'm sure James understands besides, from what I hear you've been keeping an eye on our resident vamp. Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Mostly..." Nikola replied. "Was my lab damaged in the attack?"

Declan shook his head. "Henry's place was levelled but no one's touched your quarters. Most of the equipment in Helen's lab is in pieces so you'll have to scavenge or mend anything you want to borrow."

"Saves me dismantling it," Tesla shrugged. He turned tail and left, hunting up to the first floor to his rooms which, as promised, were unmarred. Nikola changed out of his bloody clothes into a fresh, crisp suit and swept a few rooms down the corridor into Helen's office. It was also exactly as they'd left it except for piles of paperwork leaning perilously toward the edges of desks, side tables and window sills.

Tesla flopped into her leather chair, spinning it round to face the wall behind him. He ran his fingertips over the false board covering the safe he'd left embedded in the wall. If Helen knew about it, she certainly didn't touch it. Nikola caught the tip of his claw in the nearly invisible edge and levered the panel out of the wall.

He observed the contents of the safe reverently. Tesla had never been much of a hoarder but the few items he preserved were of great emotional value to him. A small pocket watch, a lady's mirror, a leather bound book of hand drawn sketches, velvet pouch, a parchment scroll, a silver key, one bottle of wine and an innocuous lump of meteor.

Nikola took the stone and closed the safe. He set it down on the desk and put the other stone from Paris beside it. Separate, they looked identical but laying side by side their faint markings were clearly very different. He doubted they were purely ornamental. Their magnetic fields were opposing and if he set them too close together, the stones were sucked into each other, slamming together with a cold thud. Then the magnetic field grew stronger.

Helen's desk light flickered, the long cord with a metal capped tip leaning toward the stones.

"Curious..." he purred at them, tapping the stones with his claws. A puzzle indeed.