it when he smoked - the smell, the taste, do you squander my gift?
This was risky. The three of them out here like shags on a rock. He'd blown his cover with Diana Matheson, but Mira seemed happy with how things had gone. She'd had her tongue down Felicity's throat since they'd got back to the car; gasps and a metallic scent told him Mira was enjoying a celebratory drink. To hell with them.
He lit a cigarette, his hand trembling, and kept his focus on the forlorn house in the distance, its outline uncertain against the cloud-dark night. They'd done a drive-by when they'd arrived, then parked well down Barlow's Siding Road. And they'd got lucky: Taipan's red-eye had come in from the highway. If she'd noticed Felicity keeping watch, she hadn't given any sign. Any moment now…
Screams.
He straightened, hand on his pistol as he peered into the dark. Who knew how many Night Riders could be stalking them. The red-eye might've been a decoy or a lure.
'Our boy's up and about, then,' Mira said, her voice husky.
'Christ,' Felicity said, and he saw, from the corner of his eye, her brace against the car with one hand as she stumbled, her collar open, her throat smeared darkly. 'Is he killing them?'
Mira lifted a set of night-vision glasses while Reece fought the compulsion to run back to the house and jam his HeartStopper against the boy's ribs and put him down. A boy has to eat, Mira had said. Reece's stomach turned. This was wrong. So very wrong.
'There, across the paddock,' Mira said. 'The boy and a new friend. The Riders have collected their waif.'
The front door opened, a flash of light, and Reece could just discern the figures stumbling down the stairs: Diana and the young woman. What had Kevin called her? Meg. She had a patch of white - a towel, maybe - on her throat, and wasn't walking very well. Diana left her propped against the stairs and went underneath the house. She drove out in an old Falcon and helped the girl in, then sped off, heading Charleville way.
'Let's follow them,' Mira said. 'We'll have to make sure the girl gets treated properly at the hospital. Felicity: get an alert issued for the grease monkey. The Riders will think it strange if we don't throw up a few roadblocks.'
'You don't want to follow the boy?' Reece asked.
'Let them think they've got away.' She held up her hand; the blood bracelets crawled sluggishly around her wrists. 'The bloodlink's working. Once our reinforcements arrive, we can reel them in.'
Reece drove; letting pale, excited Felicity make the calls from the passenger seat while Mira sat, silent and expectant and scheming, in the back. Felicity eyed him cheekily, the cat that had taken the canary, as though being munched made her special.
At the hospital, he made sure Diana saw him, and her look of pure hatred wasn't something he'd forget any time soon. But she and Meg played along and Mira had a word with the attending physician and was satisfied he'd take the money and keep his mouth shut. A nasty bite, she reported; the grease monkey had taken a good slurp before doing a runner with Taipan's red-eye.
On the drive back to Barlow's Siding, a call came in on Felicity's phone. It was a very satisfied Mira who handed the phone back after a short conversation.
'It looks as if our play with the grease monkey was wasted after all,' she said. 'One of Taipan's little playmates just offered a deal. The Night Riders are as good as ours.'
Great. Reece gripped the wheel tighter. All of this fucking around for nothing.
At the hotel, they found Constable Smith waiting for them. Mira and Felicity left Reece to handle it. Smith had gone out to the house and found scenes of a scuffle, some blood, and Reece fed him the official line about the gang having come back and the girl being hurt and Kevin being missing; an all-points had been issued. It was a federal matter, now.
Smith might not have bought it but he let it slide. The constable would bear watching.
Back in the room, Mira and Felicity were already naked and he made his verbal report as they watched him strip.
'Our men will be here by daybreak,' Mira said. 'Which gives us the rest of the night to paint the town red.'
He hesitated, one leg on the bed.
'Metaphorically,' she said as she pulled him down, then breathed out an exasperated, 'Gods, Reece: metaphorically.'
Much later, Reece sat on the rumpled, stained bed, feeling rumpled and stained himself from Mira's game of lick, sip, suck. His body was covered in bruises, gradually fading; the Strigoi did like to bite.
Usually, drinking would invigorate him, but now he was filled with lassitude and a thousand aches. All he wanted was to sleep. He lit a cigarette and wondered what Taipan would do with the newborn Kevin Matheson; if they found Mira's blood in his, it wouldn't be pretty.
Mira came in from the bathroom, her muscled body beaded with water, her short hair lank around the hard lines of her cheeks. There was no sign of the wounds from which he and Felicity had drunk, but the ruddiness in her face was proof enough of the blood she'd taken from them.
'You and your cigarettes.' She turned her back on him to open the veranda door and stand there, uncaring of whoever might see.
His eyes drank her in, the wide shoulders and the deep cleft in her spine still dewed and rosy from the shower, the shapely arse and toned legs. She had the body and features of a woman in her twenties, but he'd been around long enough to recognise the years of bloodlust that had sucked the excess flesh from her bones, that had pinched her face into a mask of cunning and avarice; to recognise the enormous age lurking in her eyes.
Mira was old enough to be bored but not old enough to give up, and that made her the most dangerous of the breed. And now she had a target - Taipan and his Night Riders.
She paced over to him and took the cigarette from his fingers, squashed it out in her hand, looked him deep in the eyes and asked, 'Why can't you overcome your nasty little addictions?'
'Been asking myself that for 40 years.'
'You look tired.' The way she said it, the way she looked at him: she knew. Forty years, and the blood was losing its kick.
Her Favourite was losing his flavour. Age was catching up with him.
The shower turned off.
'Felicity and I will be in the room next door. Get some sleep, Reece. Tomorrow's forecast is for cloud and rain. We'll take the Riders as soon as our men arrive, catch them in their pyjamas. They'll never know what hit them.'
TEN
The room closed in, the moons and stars glowing sickly green, cats eyes in the night. A Dalek glinted on a shelf. Books. A game console. A poster of a football team. A cricket bat, pads and stumps, sticking out of a plastic bin.
Where the bloody hell were the Crawfords?
Kevin sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands, his guts clenching like a fist, his gorge rising. The door stood shut; he felt a pressure building on the other side. A pressure that bore down, bowing the timber, reaching for him, wanting to crush the breath from his lungs, the life from his body. He sprang to his feet, expecting the door to open, to find a grinning, bloody Taipan there with his mother's
