screech. Cobwebbed crates and bits of esoteric machinery cluttered the bay, but he had room to park the Monaro.
Bugs scuttled in the headlights. The smell of coffee lingered in a musty mix of dust and mildew that made his nose itch. This could be it — sanctuary.
A quick look around revealed a large, empty space backing on to the dock, and an office and reception at the front.
He crept up creaky wooden stairs. His eyes adjusted until he could see the webs and vermin shit.
Dirty water flowed from the tap in the kitchen, gradually running clear. The initial shriek of the pipes made him wince. He hadn't been aware of his ramped-up hearing scanning for any hint of danger, but he felt it retreat from the piercing noise, filtering back to a less painful level. He was ready for the scream and rattle when he tested the taps in the bathroom with its crusty shower-head, brown-stained bath and toilet. He could smell rotten wood; if he concentrated, he could hear the drip-drip-drip of the hidden leak, the scuttling of cockroaches and rats behind the walls, the munching of termites.
There was no hot water, no bulbs for him to test the lights. He imagined the power had long been cut off. But this place would do. Hell, yes, anything to get out of sight and out of the sun.
He returned to the car and nestled into the driver's seat. The night was almost spent. His energy drained away; finally, he could stop running, take stock, rest.
He checked his map once more. He'd made a list of tattoo parlours from a search at an internet café, leaving the coffee untouched but filling several pages of a notebook with addresses. It was a massive task, with more than fifty parlours just in the central city area. He'd marked the locations as accurately as he could on the map. One of them, he hoped, would lead him to the Needle; and the Needle would lead him to Mira. Hungry and impatient, he folded the map and fumbled with the tuner until he locked on to the strongest FM signal he could find. Talking Heads were singing about running away from a psycho killer. He laughed, the sound brittle and humourless. He settled back, closed his eyes, tried not to think of the odds against him succeeding.
He could understand Danica not wanting him to kill Mira: Dee was her biological mother, after all. But Kala?
Her words came back to him, the two of them arguing as he packed his duffel bag. 'Don't pretend this is about me,' she'd said. And he saw her again, fingering her ear lobe, the flesh smooth now, no sign of the hole left by Mira's savage removal of the silver earring.
It wasn't about Kala, or the things that had been done to her.
'Don't go,' Danica had told him, even though she admitted there was nothing more for her to teach him. 'Killing Mira will resolve nothing.'
Fresh is best. Straight from the vein
Taipan, as though he was saying it for the first time.
So much for a dish best served cold.
He was Taipan's child. That was true. And an orphan twice over. Taipan had also died. And maybe he had found the peace that eluded him in preternatural life. But both Mira and her right-hand man, Hunter — Kevin always thought of the man by his rank, not his name — had survived.
While Kala, Danica and he had escaped — skulking at the arse end of the country, living like leeches in the mud and tropical heat — it did not feel like victory. Not while Mira was free.
Kevin turned off the radio and covered himself with a coat as he laid his seat down, lacking even the strength to crawl into the back.
Dawn came, thin lances of sunlight glowing in the dust. The hunt would begin at sundown.
FOUR
Blood.
Ink. Sweat.
Fainter: bourbon. Fainter still: marijuana.
Overriding it all, though, there was blood. Kevin's vision blurred as the smell triggered his hunger. His gut ached to be filled.
'Yeah?'
Kevin blinked, focused. Night three, tattoo parlour number eight on his list.
He was leaning on a glass counter; the cabinet was filled with trinkets covered in silver skulls and marijuana leaf motifs. A book of flashes lay open: pegasi and tigers, rainbows and skulls. From behind a curtained doorway, a tattoo gun buzzed. In plastic chairs along one wall sat two lads no older than him, short hair and thick necks, tattoos dripping down biceps.
And behind the counter, the girl, slightly younger — late teens, perhaps — pierced through eyebrows and nose and lip, dreadlocked hair, her nipples misshapen with rings where they pushed against her tight singlet.
'Hello?' she said, waving her hand in front of his face.
She stared with red-rimmed eyes from under pencilled brows. Pale skin highlighted the montages on her upper arms, the Asian script on her forearms, the purple veins pulsing under skin and ink.
'I'm lookin' for the Needle,' he told her, his voice low and rasping, his throat dust dry with thirst. He'd drunk nothing but water for a week.
'We got lotsa needles.'
'A person. A tattooist. Called the Needle. Does silver tatts. Know him?'
'Silver tatts?' A blink, a flinch. He smelled — felt — her rush of adrenaline. Veins pulsed in her throat. She stood back, crossed her arms. Physically, she reminded him of Kala. Flat, bare belly, framed by hip bones; a dangling chain sparkling with gems at her navel. Jeans so low her pubis bulged above the clip.
The flesh there would be soft. There, and inside her arms, on her throat.
His gums throbbed. His fangs ached in their sheaths to tear into that skin, to free the sustenance his body craved.
She backed up against the wall, her eyes never leaving Kevin, and rapped on the thin sheeting beside the doorway.
'Flash?' she called.
The lads looked up, more curious than threatening. Kevin was in blue jeans and an AC/DC shirt. They wore black and ink. Not that different to the eye. They avoided his gaze, huddled over a piece of paper and continued to talk about colours.
The tattoo gun stopped.
A bearded face emerged from behind the curtain.
'What's up, Jen?'
Kevin didn't give her a chance to answer. 'I'm lookin' for a bloke goin' by the name of Needle.'
'Who's askin'?'
Kevin licked his chafed lips, his tongue like sandpaper. 'A friend recommended him. Silver tattoos. Egyptian.' The man's veins stood out under his throat, in his upper chest. There was a smudge of blood on his white surgical glove.
How long had it been since Kevin had eaten? Really eaten?
'I can ask around,' the tattooist said. 'Where can I reach you if I find this fella?'
'You know him?'
'Silver tatts, that'll stand out. You sure he's in Brissie?'
