Vampire "Unseen" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 2) (19 page)

Paul rested both blades on her breasts, lateral lines across both nipples. He pressed down firmly then sliced outwards with a quick flash movement. There was a split moment where he saw the wounds open across her nipples, the areolas opening like small mouths, the next split moment they were cascading with blood. He reached back and rested the knives on the floor, cautious, ensuring they were away from Nisha’s reach.

Then she cried out. She was looking. She had felt the blades, turned her head to look and saw her breasts sliced open and weeping rivers of blood. The wail was the trigger, the excitement. Fuck her and kill her.

Paul moved his legs between hers. Her hands grabbed her breasts the instant they were free. He forced, pushed hard, spread her legs with his and tried to enter her. He couldn’t find her vagina. She screamed shrilly, holding her breasts trying to stem the flow of blood. He grabbed a hand down, raking his fingers, feeling for the slit. She jolted forward in reflex, her head raising like she was spring loaded. A finger went into a dry hole. Two fingers, spread them, stretch, fuck the bitch, it’s only Nisha. He pushed her back to the mattress and tried to penetrate again. It wasn’t happening. Frustrating. She was screaming and wailing in his ear. Her legs were open but he couldn’t get...

FUCK YOU, NISHA!

Paul swung a punch to the side of her head. A blow to shut her up. A punch to regain control and make her compliant.

When the blow struck he could tell something had gone wrong.

Horribly wrong.

His own hand seemed to fold and collapse and he suspected he’d broken his fingers or knuckles; but it was on Nisha where the damage was done. In one punch her face looked like it had been hit by a train. Her jaw hung slack, her open mouth gaped in a lopsided oval, her cheekbone had inverted, her eye lashes didn’t match up with her eye socket. her whole head had deformed in a single punch. Skull fracture. Jaw fracture. Holy Fuck?

How hard had he hit her?

Nisha’s face was frozen and expressionless, like a deformed mask over her real face, but from the gaping black mouth came a vibrating moan. It sounded like the moo of a cow but it warbled and caught on something to scrape as a ragged sound.

Paul sprung to his feet and grabbed his knives in defence. In defence of what he wasn’t sure, but Nisha looked more monster than human. She inhaled through the maw of her lifeless face and moaned the same grating mooing. Her face was completely frozen, unmoving, unable to make an expression as though the skin had come away from the bone. She pulled herself to a sitting position and her hands lifted to cup her jaw as the blood poured from her breasts. It was as though her entire lower jaw had come off on one side and sat broken within the bag of skin over her head. Her skull looked as though it had been crushed in a vice... and she was still alive.

Blood ran down her body.

She made the moaning mooing sound, inhaled, made it again.

Her form was horrifying.

Paul put his knives on top of his clothes, put his boots on top of those and carried them upstairs to the kitchen. He put the pile on the draining board and pulled on his shorts and trousers quickly. he splashed some water on his chest to wipe away some blood. He could hear Nisha mooing and moaning from the cellar. This was bad. This was really fucking bad. He’d made her hideous. So hideous he was frightened to go back downstairs.

He dressed. His hands trembled as he tried to fasten his shirt buttons. Too much speed, too much haste and all the while he had to listen to the horror of Nisha’s crushed face. He ran his hands under the cold tap to numb the pain in his hand and splashed water onto his face and beard. He locked his knives back into the yoke.

He had to kill her.

For the first time since he’d begun to change he felt genuinely frightened. He was scared to go and see Nisha. Scared to get too close to her. The sound she was making was too unnatural, too otherworldly. Human beings shouldn’t make that noise.

He went back down the stairs and readied his knife. He looked into the basement to see her still sitting in the same position but now cupping her sliced breasts rather than holding her face.

Her face.

HER FACE!

Holy fucking shit... He didn’t dare go near her. Darkness, do it in darkness. He took hold of the peach night-light and pulled it from the wall sending the basement into an endless black. Even with his improved night vision he couldn’t see.

The chains coiled, Nisha was moving. Her mooing became almost a scream but it rattled and moaned through her larynx like a witch. Paul was too scared, he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t go into the black and feel around to finish her in darkness.

He backed away and closed the door.

He heard her screaming as he padlocked her into a pitch black prison.

He set the mobile phone tripwire.

He backed up the stairs and padlocked the top door.

He pulled on his coat and stepped outside into the rain.

He would never come back here. He wouldn’t kill Nisha. She could bleed to death, or starve to death, or become infected from an open wound; but he wouldn’t actively kill her. Nature would take its course one way or another. He flexed his hand knowing there was something very wrong with it. He suspected he’d fractured a bone against Nisha’s cheek. There wasn’t much pain, but when he massaged it something felt broken inside. Never mind. He would heal. He would get better. He should go home and try to relax; he would try to put all of this out of his mind and forget about it.

It was finished.

----- X -----

Corneliu spent the evening wishing the telephone would ring. A few jigsaw pieces had clipped together and it had woken him up. Normally, piecing together a network took time and patience and diligence. It was normally slow work. It hadn’t been his job to find McGovern but he’d turned up clues that gave a direction, the British had turned up evidence and enacted proactive electronic surveillance. In his experience when an investigation started uncovering information like this, it snowballed.

He poured a drink.

Checked his email.

The server logs from the ISP were there but they didn’t tell him anything other than McGovern’s laptop was being used in the UK. He hadn’t tried to run for America as Noica had thought. He was here in Britain, surfing the net and his internet usage was written down as dates, times and IP addresses. Cornel copied the first IP address from the spreadsheet and pasted it into the browser. It came back as medicallexicon.org. Latis tried the next IP address, another one visited frequently, it came back as diseasedatabase.net. Interesting. Corneliu tried a few more IP addresses and all of them resolved to medical and mental health websites. Noica would like to know this. It was a shame he could only resolve to the host with this method, he wanted to know the actual web pages McGovern was looking at.

He typed an email to Noica and attached the spreadsheet.

‘Lucian. Here is a list of websites accessed with McGovern’s computer. It is likely, but not confirmed that McGovern was the one using the device. Whoever used it was doing so to research diseases and mental illnesses. I think McGovern realises there is something wrong with him.’

He was about to close his email client when a new message appeared. The sender was Sue Lynch, the friend of Nisha who reported her missing.

‘Detective Latis. Thank you for visiting today. We’re still waiting to hear from the police but in the meantime I wanted to send you some photographs of Nisha.’

Corneliu responded instantly saying he had spoken with Scotland Yard and that they would also investigate Nisha’s disappearance as part of the McGovern investigation. He opened the photographs and felt his heart sink. Nisha was beautiful. Most of the images were of her in group pictures, girls hugging close with glasses of wine. One of the pictures was Nisha alone in a Queen of Hearts party dress. She looked fun, lovely. Another picture was her in a pale blue bikini sitting on the back of a powerboat on a tropical sea. Jesus. She was gorgeous.

Corneliu took a drink, a big one.

“I hope you’re nowhere near Paul McGovern,” he said to Nisha’s photograph. “I hope you’re safe and having a nice time somewhere.”

----- X -----

Corneliu sat on one of the picnic tables outside The Talbot pub in King’s Cross. This was the place McGovern connected to the internet from. He’d decided whilst eating breakfast he should visit the pub rather than begin making calls. He was curious about the place. McGovern used it frequently so perhaps the staff there knew him. He’d brought a picture of him to show.

What made him curious was the server logs showed McGovern using the internet around the clock. Lunchtime, evening, three in the morning. He might have been living there, not just using it as a drop-in place to use the internet. The data showed McGovern had used the internet here every day until a few weeks ago.

Check the pub. A logical next step.

It was the usual chipped paint and empty hanging basket type of place he’d come to know London for. The moment you stepped a few yards away from the tourist pathways, pubs were either nice places to eat or grotty drinking holes. This one was grotty and closed, making him wish he’d called ahead. It was due to open at half past ten and he figured the staff would arrive a little before that. He’d bought coffee and found himself playing with his telephone, killing time and wondering about what McGovern was doing right now at this moment. Would he realise people were looking for him? Probably. He seemed switched on and had covered his tracks since he’d arrived. The thought of him using the internet to research disease and mental illness was eye opening; he wasn’t the lunatic that Noica suggested. He was travelling, hiding, researching. Doing the exact opposite of what Noica said vampires did. McGovern had a brain.

There was movement inside the pub. A girl in a heavy metal T-shirt and piercings through her lips and nose had turned on the lights. Cornel climbed out of the picnic table and rapped on the glass of the door.

“We’re closed,” the girl called.

“Yes, I know... I need to speak with you. It’s quite important.”

The girl stopped for a moment and stared at him before approaching the glass. “What do you want?” she asked through the glass.

Corneliu took his wallet and opened it to show his Romanian Police warrant card and also held up Blackwell’s Scotland Yard business card. “I’m a policeman from Romania, I’m working on a missing person case. I’m not a policeman in Britain but you can contact Scotland Yard if you wish.” The girl nodded to show she accepted his credentials. Shouting through the glass was undignified and Cornel shrugged and motioned the glass. “Can I speak with you, please?”

The girl walked to the bar and returned with a bunch of keys to unlock the door. She stood in the frame but didn’t invite him inside. “I’m open in about half an hour and I need this time to prepare the bar.”

“That’s OK, I don’t want to take up much of your time... I didn’t see you arrive, do you live here?”

“Yes. You say you’re looking for a missing person?”

“I am. The reason I came is the person I am looking for has used your internet connection. In fact he was using it a lot until a few weeks ago. Tell me, do you rent rooms here?”

“No, we don’t rent rooms. We have a flat upstairs that I used to share with my girlfriend. We had a falling out recently. I’m on my own.”

“Nobody else lives here?” Corneliu scrutinised her. McGovern had used the internet at all hours of the day, even when the pub was closed.

“Nobody else,” she affirmed without betraying any suggestion of a lie.

“And what about your internet connection, do you allow people to use it?”

The girl thumbed a sign on the wall beside the door, ‘Wi-Fi TalbotOnline, Password getonline’. Anyone could use it. The sign was big and permanent meaning they didn’t even change the password.

Latis pulled a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket, it had McGovern’s passport picture blown up large. “This is the man I’m looking for, he is about your age, British.”

The girl looked it over carefully, scrutinising whilst slowly shaking her head. “I don’t recognise him. When did you say he was here?”

“He began using your internet a few months ago and stopped using it in the last two weeks.”

“You know that we have a lot of leechers close by.”

“Leechers?”

“Internet thieves. People who live in the street log on to our wi-fi because it’s an open hub. Your guy might have been accessing it from one of these bedsits.” She nodded towards the neighbouring building. “There are a lot of immigrants live around here. They’re poor and they don’t stay very long. They log on to our internet connection.”

Corneliu nodded in understanding and wrote his mobile number on the bottom of the picture of McGovern. “Thank you. Could you keep this,” he gave her the picture. “If you do remember him, or perhaps if anyone who you work with recognises him, you could give me a call.” As an afterthought he handed over Blackwell’s card. “Better still, call Scotland Yard directly.”

“I don’t have any staff at the minute. The brewery are promising to send someone but for the last week it’s only me. Morning ‘til night. Do you want me to show it to the regulars?”

“Please, if you would.”

The girl locked her door and went back to her preparations.

Cornel took his mobile phone and connected to the Talbot’s internet connection. Full power, plenty of signal strength. He crossed the street and saw the power level drop by two bars. He walked further away and lost the signal at about forty yards distance.

Street canvassing. That was a good next step. Every home within forty yards of the pub. He would need to print more pictures of McGovern. Normally this would be a job for uniformed officers, but with such a short distance to cover he could do it himself in a few hours.

He was still looking at the telephone when it rang. Peter Blackwell calling him.

“Hello, Peter.”

“Corneliu, I just thought you might be interested in something. That girl you told us who was missing...”

“Nisha Khumari.”