The Big Smoke Page 13

  Kevin jammed the brakes and swung the wheel, pulled them up just short of the barrier.

  The van careered into the concrete divider with an almighty smack.

  The air filled with the stench of burned rubber and hot oil.

  Cars screeched to a halt as two Romantics in fluoro vests with stop signs waved down traffic. One car zipped through the litter of metal and glass. It pulled up further down the road. The driver's door opened.

  Someone fired a couple of shots.

  The driver got back in, powered away.

  'Quite a ride,' Blake said, fumbling with his seat belt.

  Kevin dropped Rabbit's brooch on the seat, threw open the door and heaved himself out. The sun hit him like a branding iron, scorching through his hoodie, his sleeves, gloves, jeans, sneakers. The ground could've been on fire. Bright lances stabbed into his eyes. He heard shots and cars braking and tyres squealing. Shouts. His group's hatchback pulled up and disgorged gunmen. The VS van rocked under their fusillade as it sat with one ruined wheel up on the barrier. Metal popped. Glass shattered.

  The gunfire subsided.

  Their van pulled up, reversing, and Kevin clung to the cover it offered with his pistol at his side, the weapon too heavy to lift. His vision was awash, like staring at sunshine reflecting off a salt pan.

  The rear doors of the VS van opened, pockmarked with bullet holes like the worst case of acne. One hit the ground with a chunk and the other closed again and did not reopen.

  As Snipes and Romantics crept forward with guns pointed, a gurney slid out. It bumped hard and almost overturned. Then it trundled like a wobble-wheeled shopping trolley toward their van. The Snipes regarded it suspiciously until it thumped into the van's wheel.

  Greaser checked the swaddled figure strapped to the trolley. 'It's her!' A bunch of them hefted the trolley into the van. Someone heaved Kevin after it and closed him into the merciful shade.

  The southbound highway had become a car park behind them, the bridge filling as motorists pulled up. The northbound lanes slowed as rubberneckers gawked at the van mounted on the intervening barricade.

  The chopper kept its distance, though its side door was open and a man sat clipped there with a rifle in his hands.

  The hatchback escorted them south along the empty highway.

  'We got everyone?' Kevin asked, and was told yes, everyone had got away.

  The helicopter swooped down and kept pace as they drove, the only cars on their side of the highway. The helicopter gunman swapped bursts of fire with them and their escort vehicle. The van filled with the thunder of gunfire, the stench of gunpowder, but no one accomplished anything before the vehicles took the first exit.

  The chopper backed off, prevented from getting too close by the presence of passers-by and the clutter of roofs and power lines. Romantics and Snipes, a threshing machine of arms, legs and prattle, freed Mel from her cocoon of blankets. She was in underwear and a hospital gown, her skin paler than the bleached material, her body covered in bites and marked by a couple of fresh bullet wounds. A spike glinted in her chest.

  'How is she?' Kevin asked.

  'She's alive,' Greaser reported. 'Nothing a good meal and a lie down won't fix.'

  She beamed at him and he smiled back, thinking a feed and a nap would be just the ticket. But they weren't out of the woods yet.

  'Get that spike out of her,' he said.

  They'd been expecting her to be on ice. The spike came out in the grip of pliers, and she gave a tiny mew, a flicker of her lashes. The Romantics siphoned blood from bags into her, and colour crept back into her cheeks, her lips, her fingertips. Wounds closed, but very, very slowly. A flattened bullet thunked on the van floor and Greaser pocketed it. A Snipe pulled out a dress and straw hat, ready for the next leg. It'd be dangerous, but VS would never expect it, not in the daytime.

  'Mel? Mel, you're safe,' Greaser said. 'We've got you.'

  The van drove into shadow; the sound of the chopper diminished. The driver shouted, it was still there, hovering above the shopping centre they'd driven under.

  Mel didn't move.

  'Mel?' Greaser's voice edged higher as she cradled Mel's head. 'Mel!'

  'What is it?' Kevin asked. 'I thought you said she was okay?' If their own side had tagged her, a bullet causing irreparable damage to her brain or spine…

  'Shit, man,' Greaser said, voice catching. 'She's in bedlam.'

  THIRTY

  Rescuing Mel was the first part of their problem. The second was getting away.

  They'd chosen the shopping centre for two reasons: the undercover parking meant VS could not track them once they'd ditched the vehicles. They could be driving out, walking out or even bussing out; their movements perfectly hidden. Or they could change out of their battle-tainted clothing and take the covered walkway to the train station adjacent to the centre. Which was exactly what they were about to do.

  The chopper could wait impotently for the cops and VS to respond, while they were safely, albeit uncomfortably, riding the train back to Roma Street, there to wait out the day in the cafés and backrooms of the huge station. They hoped VS would consider the train the least likely option at this time of the day.

  They were about to find out.

  Kevin rolled his balaclava up and stowed it in a coat pocket. It was easier to function inside the shopping centre, the air conditioning chilling the burns he'd suffered despite the layers of protective clothing. His eyes still played tricks, throwing blind spots and mirages when he least expected. But he could function, and he could concentrate, which he needed to do if he was going to pull this off.

  While Blake and the rest kept watch, Kevin helped Greaser manoeuvre Mel into a parents' room in the shopping centre where they stripped the hospital gown. He turned his back while Greaser, all but sobbing at the task, searched Mel for tracking devices on or in her.

  As Greaser washed her hands and then her face, snuffling, Kevin turned his attention to the problem of a blood trace. They had to assume that Mira's understudy had her knack of hitching a ride in a blood link.

  He took the leather pouch from around his neck and upended it. The putsi fell into his palm. Danica had made it for him, because, she said, a person couldn't be too careful where Mira was involved.

  The Strigoi had a blood link on him, though after all this time, it would be weak. Ordinarily, without replenishment, it would fade to nothing. But Mira hooked him when he was in the change from human to vampire, and something of her stuck, a permanent burr in his new DNA. Only death would sever the connection.

  This piece of mojo was meant to fuzz that signal. The pendant was based on a flat disc of silver with a five-pointed star etched on it. Tradition, Danica said; might as well use it. A small locket was soldered shut in the centre of the star.

  Now, copying a ritual he'd seen Taipan use little more than a month before, Kevin cut Mel's hand and waited for the blood to flow. He needed only a little.

  None came. The wound healed. He cut her again. The flesh parted, a colourless, toothless mouth that soon sealed over.

  'Body's in lockdown,' Greaser said.

  'Damnit, I need her blood! Can you help me cut—'

  'No fucking way. Not after what I just did to her. You do it.'

  'You've got the equipment.' She made a snarly face and put two fingers up to her top teeth.

  'Just a little, and hold on tight. There's no telling what's going on in there.' She turned away, swearing. 'Knew it was too easy. The bastards.'

  Kevin cut Mel's palm, let the knife go in deep, and then brought the wound to his mouth. His fangs extended at the first touch, and he bit into the flesh. He sucked on the wound, feeling resistance, like a fish pulling against a hook. The first drops came, and then a red trickle bubbled up. He pulled back at the first tentacle touch of the lives careening through Mel's bloodstream.

  A mere glimpse, a snow globe filled with a town's worth of experience, bombarded him. Deaths upon deaths, dreams upon dreams, despair u
pon despair. He saw Melpomene in an alley of cobbles and gas lamps, wreathed in fog. He saw her in a darkly timbered room, a man forcing her to drink from his breast. He saw Danica, on a wagon under moonlight, saying, 'I always knew it would come to this. But her, too?' And a hooded Mira, turning, questioning, as if to say, 'to whom are you talking, Mother?'

  When Kevin surfaced, he was on the floor with Greaser leaning over him. There was blood on his lip, his chest. He spat Mel's blood onto the talisman and watched as it sank into the amulet. Warmth washed over him. Blood spotted brightly on the floor. Greaser handed him a wet towelette.

  'Max did this to her,' Kevin said. Ghosts ran screaming through the hallways of his mind. He slammed doors behind them; a machinegun beat shoring up his sanity. And that, just from a touch. What must it be like for Mel?

  He prayed she'd found a quiet eye amid that cyclone. That would be the only chance of ever bringing her back.

  'Maximilian did this to her,' he said again as he hung the putsi around her neck. 'Because he could.'

  Greaser helped him stand, and for a moment they were eye to eye.

  'Are you so sure, Kev, that Mira's the one you should be going after?'

  He couldn't answer her. All he could hear was Danica, saying to him before he'd left Cairns:

  Vengeance isn't just a two-edged sword; it's a whirlpool.

  THIRTY-ONE

  With Mel dressed and a wheelchair sourced — Kevin didn't ask, the red-eyes didn't tell — they scarpered, as casually as they could, for the train station. Blake slunk along behind the group, looking like a reject from a cricket team in cream chinos and long-sleeved shirt and vest, a broad-brimmed canvas hat. He'd been dirty that Kevin hadn't let him into the change room; hadn't let him see what they'd done to Mel. Bella lingered with him, looking forlorn. Ambrose reported that, despite the time lost dealing with Mel's bedlam, they were on schedule for the next train.

  The chopper still hovered outside, the air full of sirens. But no one hassled them as, after a short, tense wait, they swiped their cards against the readers and boarded the train, hefting the chair through the door rather than wait for the driver to furnish a ramp.

  'We'll never get her back,' Blake said. 'There's no return from bedlam.' He reached toward Mel, and then pulled back, as though afraid she was contagious.

  'You've still got Bella,' Kevin said, to be rewarded with a scowl from both of them. He said to Bella, 'I can't believe you went back to this loser after what he did to you. Erato.'

  She looked away, but Blake met his eye, smirking at Kevin's apparent naivety.

  'Your vision is limited, grease monkey.'

  Kevin's eyes narrowed. 'You're not the first one to call me that.'

  Blake played with his collar, as though missing his cravat. 'A common appellation, I'm sure.'

  'I saw a movie once, where they called hitmen mechanics. Weird, huh.'

  'Fixing things, I would assume.'

  'I guess. You looking to fix me up, Blake?'

  He stared at Melpomene. 'I just want her back.'

  'So you can dump Bella back on the pile.'

  Bella walked away. Blake concentrated so hard on Kevin, spittle collected pinkly on his lips as he said, 'There is a place for Erato in our existence, grease monkey, but make no mistake — Melpomene is queen.'

  'I get the feeling she's a bit tired of wearing your crown.'

  'She's mine. Make no mistake about that, either. I made her. We are bonded — forever.'

  The train pulled out of the station. The other passengers gave them a wide berth where they clustered around the wheelchair.

  'We should've taken a car,' Blake said. 'Or even a boat down the river. We're too vulnerable on the train.'

  'Only if they know we're on it,' Kevin said. 'With luck, they'll think we're either hiding at the shopping centre or already swapped cars and driven away. That's right, eh, Greaser?'

  The girl might've nodded. She hadn't left Mel's side. Kevin had to hope that the Needle knew what he was doing when he'd suggested this.

  They huddled inside their hoods as sunlight lanced through the windows and suburbs passed by. The heat stole any remaining exuberance; their silence became one of anxiety and weariness and growing discomfort. By the time they got to the city, he and Blake and the red-eyes were patched with wolfbite, their exposed skin flaming, joints aching. It took all of Kevin's will to stay awake, to not curl up on the floor in any shade he could find and close his eyes.

  They made one concession to Blake's fears. Greaser put in a call, and they rode the train one station past Roma Street to Central. Rather than wait for nightfall, they exited by a pedestrian tunnel to Anzac Square. Kevin, Blake, Bella and Greaser escorted Mel in her wheelchair; the rest jumped trains or used the station's many exits to vanish into the city.

  Palm trees in the square threw little shade; the lawn crackled underfoot. Blinding midday heat radiated from concrete. A bronze statue of a mounted soldier looked ready to drip.

  A van was waiting on the street. Silver and Argent heaved Mel in and Kevin crawled in after her. He lay on the floor, gasping, his face and hands feeling baked even though he wore gloves for the dash across the square. Blake flopped on the floor beside him, a blood sheen on his face, his white clothes turning pink, deepening to scarlet, where they stuck to sweaty flesh. Greaser sat with Mel; Bella was near the doors, eyes closed.

  Finally, they arrived at the shopping centre, a heavy darkness closing over them, bringing small relief from the sun. Silver and Argent unpacked them next to a delivery door.

  The car park was busy. Shadowy figures moved in the greyness, weaving through the vehicles, pushing shopping carts and prams, or laden with bags.

  'You look like hell,' Silver said.

  Kevin tried to ignore the pulse in the boy's neck as Argent helped him to stand.

  'The Needle has a little something for you,' Argent told him, as though detecting Kevin's thoughts.

  He tried to walk tall, but bravado got him only so far. He felt the stares of passers-by as they pushed through the shopping centre's bright, crowded corridors; Silver pushing Mel in her sun hat and wheelchair; and he, blistered in jeans and hoodie, an arm around Argent's shoulders; Blake limping behind with Bella; and Greaser hovering like an expectant father on the way to the birthing suite.

  They entered a massage business. Water trickled. Air conditioning chilled him. Fragrant incense spiced the air. The manager left the counter to flip a Back in 10 minutes sign on the door and then ushered them through to the rear. Argent might've introduced him, but the man's garbled name was lost under the roar in Kevin's ears.

  'Keep watch,' Argent told Greaser. She stared daggers at him, but stayed in the reception.

  The Needle and Yoshi awaited in a back room, sitting on a padded bench, blinking like owls.

  'You look like hell,' the Needle said.

  A woman entered the room, middle aged, as tall as Kevin's shoulder.

  'Go with Kim,' the Needle said. 'I'll check Mel over.'

  'Don't take that necklace off her,' Kevin said, each word a hot stone.

  'She's lost,' Blake said. He slid down the wall, leaving a pink smear. Bella reached for his hand but he pulled away.

  The woman walked Kevin to the next room. She sat him on a bench and lifted his feet so he was prone. The manager entered. He'd changed into a black smock, to match the woman's; they both wore cloth masks over mouth and nose.

  Was Kevin to have his nails done?

  But no. The woman unbuttoned her top until the garment hung open to her navel. He smelled massage oil and a sweeter scent from a burner on a nearby bench, heard the ethereal breath and hover of a shakuhachi flute from the speakers in the corners of the room. It was meant to be relaxing but Kevin's senses sharpened with each extra square of flesh, the plane of chest, the swell of breast, the black material of bra, the slight paunch of belly appearing from under the cloth. The stem of her throat, the bobbing veins, loose hairs dangling along her jugular, fine age l
ines across her carotids. The flute gave way to the taiko beat of her heart, the incense to the aroma of flesh and blood.

  She leaned forward, face averted from his.

  'Drink,' the man said. 'But not too much.' A Staker glinted in his fist.

  Kevin drank. He submerged himself in her bloodstream, her life playing out before him, through him, and her heart, thudding, her breath gasping. It reminded him of being underwater, hearing his heart in his ears, the splashes of other swimmers, all cocooned in warm liquid.

  'Enough.' The manager's voice reached Kevin like a distant shout, muffled but urgent.

  The absence, the loneliness, the need… He floated like a jellyfish in the surf, rudderless, her life buoying him.

  Another woman came, younger, smelling of jasmine.

  And then a young man, smooth and muscled, smelling of green tea and the ubiquitous massage oil and, if Kevin wasn't mistaken, Vegemite.

  Taipan loomed, shark-like, his white teeth outlined in crimson:

  Fresh from the vein, fella.

  Kevin lolled, his body heavy, the pains eased, the hunger stilled.

  'Restroom, this way,' the manager said.

  Kevin saw no sign of his three donors as he tottered to the room, pissed a pink stream and washed. There was a bundle of fresh clothing: cargo pants, a white T-shirt, a long-sleeve chambray shirt, a cane hat best seen on a Volvo-driving fisherman.

  He opened the door, refreshed but tired, to find the manager waiting.

  'He will see you.'

  There was a kitchenette at the back of the parlour. Yoshi dozed in a chair; the Needle read the newspaper, a mug of blood on the table beside him. A serving from the same young man who'd bled for Kevin, if his nose told him true. No sign of Blake.

  'Relaxing, isn't it?' The Needle closed the paper and pushed it aside. 'Nothing like a massage to get the kinks out.'

  Yoshi opened his eyes and sat up straight, yawning and stretching, hands above his head.

  'How's Mel?' Kevin asked.

  'Blake and Greaser are watching over her,' the Needle said. 'We got her body back, but her mind is totally immersed. I can't help her. No one can.'