Kardinal (9 page)

Tălmaciu – 12.48am (GMT + 2 hours), 18 May, 2011

LAWTON pushed her face away from his throat, but she was strong. They had been tussling for a while. She had raked his skin and drew blood, then rolled away and licked at her fingers. Spots of blood were peppered around her mouth. She snarled at him, her eyes blazing red.

The wound smarted. His T-shirt was ripped at his shoulder. He touched the scored flesh, and he screwed up his face.

“You taste of lead,” said Ereshkigal.

“That’ll teach you.”

“Let me drink. You won’t die.”

“I know, it’s been done before.”

“A vampire has taken blood from you?”

He said nothing. He checked his wound. He should have killed her. He knew he’d have to do it at some stage – kill or be killed. But he felt he could use her. If he could somehow make an alliance with this creature. It would make finding Nimrod easier. But first he had to survive.

“You know,” she said, “that if a vampire draws blood from you three times, without killing you, you will become a vampire yourself.”

“That won’t happen. I’ll never be like you.”

“But you already are.”

She moved towards him again, head cocked. She was terrifyingly beautiful. She could mesmerize you, make you forget everything – and that’s when she’d pounce.

“Your eye,” she said. “The eye of skin made from Nimrod’s offspring. It is alive in you. It is merging itself with you. It is giving you its traits.”

He felt sick and dizzy again, the wound in his shoulder burning. He was about to faint, but fought back against the nausea. If he were out cold, this creature would take his blood – and maybe just kill him and make him undead.

“You are more than human, voivode,” she said. “More than vampire. The weapons of men will soon barely graze you. Your name. Tell me.”

He told her.

“Jake Lawton,” she said. “You are like my Lord in so many ways. And you are like Haran.”

“Haran?”

There was longing suddenly in those lethal red eyes.

“My betrothed. I was to marry him. I remember, but… but I have no pain. I have no… no desire for him now.”

“You’re lying,” said Lawton. “I can see it in your eyes.”

Her face darkened.

“What happened?” he asked.

“The night of my wedding, before I was to be married, an old woman brought me red flowers. Beautiful red flowers. Red flowers for the bride-to-be, she said. Poisonous red flowers. I fell into a deep sleep. And after dark, soldiers came to take me away. I was stolen from Haran and our future together. Stolen because of a pact between a god and mortals. The Great Hunter also wanted a wife. And what the Great Hunter wanted, he got. Or Babylon would fall. The king sent his men for me after the witch had drugged me with her flowers. I was taken to Irkalla, where I was wedded to my lord. Wedded by the drinking of my blood and the eating of my flesh. I became one of his brides.”

“Why you?”

“I was young, a virgin, a bride-to-be. I was a sacrifice to nourish Babylon. My blood maintained the city. Now let your blood maintain me.”

She shot forward.

Lawton raised the spear.

“No,” he said.

“I could kill you.”

“Kill me, then.”

It was a dare. To see how much she wanted to get out of here. For a moment he thought she would outsmart him, cut him down. He didn’t know how long he could fight her off. He’d gambled that if she was trapped here and was desperate to leave, he’d be more valuable to her alive than dead.

“Give me blood so I can escape these walls,” she said.

“Then lead me safely to your husband so I can kill him.”

Hillah, Iraq – 1.10am (GMT + 3 hours), 18 May, 2011

ALFRED was drunk. He stared down into the pit. It made him feel queasy. He suffered a sudden bout of vertigo and reeled backwards. He looked skywards. Looming overhead was the huge industrial drill. The enormous bit was encased in a circular frame, which sliced at the ground while the awl bored into the earth.

A guard asked Alfred if he was OK, and he nodded that he was.

He went back to the safety fence that encircled the hole.

Alfred stared into the deep.

Strip lights had been attached and wired to the sides of the chasm, and they showed him how far his team had been able to drill.

It just kept going down and down.

He shivered.

The guard said, “Need a hand, sir?”

“I’m going down. The dig supervisor wants to see me.”

The guard nodded. Alfred followed the mercenary towards the gatehouse and thought, You are going to be dead soon, mate, and you don’t know anything about it.

That gave him a thrill. To have the power of life and death over someone he didn’t know was very exciting.

He stepped into the lift at the gatehouse, and it was soon descending, ferrying Alfred down into the abyss.

His heart thundered, and he was sweating. The booze was having an effect.

It became hotter as he descended.

He grew dizzier the deeper he went.

The lift hummed. He scanned his surroundings. The walls of soil and rock didn’t look solid. He imagined them crumbling in and collapsing, burying him alive. Panic clutched his chest, and he panted, grabbing the metal grid that surrounded him. It rattled. It clanked. Alfred’s legs buckled. His stomach rolled. The elevator was going to break and plummet, and he would be crushed, and then the walls would crumple, and –

The lift reached the bottom. It jerked to a halt. Alfred blew air out of his cheeks and relaxed. He was safe. He hadn’t fallen. The walls still stood.

The lift door slid open, and Malik, the dig supervisor, stood there, a smile on his face. Behind Malik stood Laxman, his face blotchy. They led Alfred into a tunnel in the wall. It was about fifteen feet high and ten feet wide. Strip lights hummed, and they showed Alfred what lay up ahead.

The tunnel forked into two passageways, and people were digging in the soil with trowels. They were students hired cheaply to do the grafting. They were the kids who, like Laxman and his men, would be thrown to the monster that lurked in this abyss.

“What have you found?” said Alfred as they approached the forks.

“Something remarkable,” said Malik.

They entered the right-hand passageway.

Malik spoke in Arabic to the students, and they scuttled away.

Alfred froze. He stared at the skeleton in the tunnel. It was complete and looked liked the remains of a dinosaur. It was the size of an elephant, but Alfred could not identify what kind of creature it had been.

“A three-horned creature that we cannot name,” said Malik excitedly. “A tail like a cedar tree, like is described in The Book of Job. Ribs like armour. Many regarded that as a hippo, and some have said it describes a bull – but it may be this.”

“That’s not a bull,” said Laxman.

“It ain’t no hippo, either,” said Alfred.

What had they found? Was it a dinosaur? How could it be? This strata was not millions of years old. It was merely thousands. Dinosaurs had died out 65 million years ago, Alfred knew that. But then, some people didn’t believe vampires existed.

Alfred looked at Malik. “Does this mean we’re close to finding Nimrod?”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?”

“Please, Mr Fuad. There is something else.”

Malik led Laxman and Alfred into the other passageway. Nailed to the wall was a skeleton.

Alfred said, “Who’s that?”

Malik said they didn’t know. “But look here,” he added.

Painted on the wall was an image showing the two forks in the tunnel. The skeleton of the unidentified beast had been drawn in the right-hand passageway. The left tunnel, the one in which they were now stood, was crammed with figures of women. They were ethereal creatures, like angels, and they were all wearing white.

“A hundred of them,” said Malik. “The hundred brides of Nimrod.”

Alfred felt a surge of excitement run through him.

“And this figure here,” said Laxman, pointing to a bearded man standing at the head of the fork, “who’s that?”

“That,” said Malik, “we believe, is Abraham. Said by legend to have destroyed Nimrod.”

“How do you reckon it’s him?” said Alfred.

“He has signed his painting, Mr Fuad. Here.”

Malik showed him a scribble on the wall.

“He has named himself in the cuneiform language of Akkadia, of Babylon – it says ‘Avram’.”

“What does this mean?” said Alfred, knowing it meant something – and something big.

“These are the brides of Nimrod. They are supposedly legend. And Abraham came this way. He, too, is regarded as only a legend by mainstream historians and theologians. But this appears to be his signature, his work. He saw the brides of Nimrod, here in this tunnel. He saw the beast we excavated in the opposite tunnel and drew it. That means Nimrod is almost certainly real, too, Mr Fuad. We are very close, I am sure. Very close to unearthing the greatest archaeological find in history.”

Şanliurfa, Turkey – 7am (GMT + 2hours), 18 May, 2011

LAWTON had let her drink his blood. Only a little. Only enough so she could leave the ruins. Only enough that she had the strength to step out into the night. Only so he could use her to get to Nimrod.

It had been like watching something being born. She had screamed and writhed after stumbling out of the old church.

Lawton had also been weak. And he felt emotionally drained. Because her lips had touched his flesh. Her teeth had broken his skin. She had been cold and ancient, but also warm and young. She was a witch and an angel.

He glanced in the rear-view mirror and thought about her sleeping in the back of the truck.

He could easily stop, leap out, fling open the back doors, and let the sun scorch her.

Make her dust.

Make her dead.

But Ereshkigal had got into his head. She’d been in his dreams, and that had to mean something. It had to be some kind of sign or message. And when he’d finally found her, there had been a message – she would lead him to Nimrod.

To his objective.

He looked at the clock in the truck. Just after seven in the morning. He was driving along the E99 road, Necmettin Central Avenue, in Şanliurfa. They were nearing the end of their 2500km journey from Romania. Lawton was stunned that the truck was still going. He’d stolen it from a council depot in Tălmaciu. Ereshkigal had come with him on the raid and killed the night security guard, drinking his blood. Lawton had been furious. There was
no need to kill an innocent man. But Ereshkigal didn’t understand the concept of innocent. To her, humans were food – or servants.

“Better get a new category for me,” he’d told her.

Lawton had driven a stake through the security guard’s heart to stop him becoming a vampire.

“Every time you feed, I’ll have to do this to your victim,” he’d said.

“Bring plenty of stakes,” she’d said.

“You can’t kill – ”

“Then you’ll have to feed me,” she snapped. “From your own veins. Again.”

The journey to Turkey had taken more than 24 hours. He’d driven without rest. He didn’t feel he could sleep. He didn’t feel he needed sleep. It was like the old days, before the dreams.

But now the dreams were gone.

Their subject was sleeping in the back of the truck.

They’d led Lawton to her.

It was as if all this was meant to be.

As if fate had him by the throat, controlling his every move. He would have never believed such a thing a few months ago. He thought life was random. That it had no meaning. But his dreams and where they had taken him had made him think twice. Now he started to think that there might be a pattern to life, a meaning, a plan. He wondered if someone, or something, somewhere, knew his destiny.

Who, or what, had that kind of power?

He felt anger that someone, or something, could be pulling his strings and had supremacy over his future.

My fate is in my hands, he thought. No one will take that power away from me.

He drove along a busy road. Apartment blocks lined the avenue. Traffic was heavy. He hoped the local police wouldn’t notice he was driving a truck with Romanian number plates. He’d left the main routes to cross from Bulgaria into Turkey, just in case the authorities decided to stop him and check the back of the lorry.

He wondered what might have happened had they found a 5,000-year-old vampire huddled under piles of tarpaulin.

He still wasn’t sure why he was doing this. You’re Jake Lawton, he told himself, vampire killer. But they had a deal. She would get him to Nimrod. He would get her home.

What would his friends say if they knew he’d made a pact with a vampire?

Maybe Nimrod didn’t exist, and this was a plot against him by the Nebuchadnezzars. He stirred in his seat, feeling wary, feeling nervous again. He didn’t know what to believe anymore. He didn’t know what was genuine or what was a scam.

The unreal was real.

The fake was fact.

Myth was truth.

But one thing was the same. One thing had not changed.

His instinct to survive.

And to him, survival meant fighting.

He recalled what Ereshkigal had told him about his false eye and how the skin of the trinity was a living thing. How it sought to fuse with other organisms – his genes.

Again he tried to pry the eye out of its socket. But it hurt so much when he tried to pluck it out. It felt as if he were pulling out the insides of his own head. The pain flashed and momentarily blinded him in his good eye. The truck veered. Car horns blared. Lawton felt the steering wheel spin out of his hands. He gasped. He grabbed the wheel and gritted his teeth and wrestled the truck back into the middle of the road. His heart pounded. He looked in the side mirror, looking for cops. No cops. Just angry drivers. Waving their fists and cursing. He steadied himself, got the truck under control again. He blew air out of his cheeks. His nerves loosened, and he was calm once more. Calm and in control.

He was on the E90 now, İpekyol Avenue, the road leading
out of Şanliurfa.

A steady anger simmered in his chest.

He thought about his mother dying of booze and drugs.

He thought about tracking down his dad to Birkenhead, only to be told to fuck off.

He thought about finding somewhere to belong, the Armed Forces.

He thought about being rejected by all of them.

Then he thought about Aaliyah. About being with her. That was what made him fight. The hope that one day he and Aaliyah would have peace, that they would live together quietly in a world without death and blood and fear.

That’s why he kept fighting.

It doesn’t matter if they tell lies about me, he thought. It doesn’t matter if they hate me. I know I’m in the right. I know I have a cause.

That’s what gave him power.

He accelerated.