The Big Smoke Read online

  The farmhouse sat in a bare field, the sparse sticks of sugar cane brown and fallen. A tall mesh fence surrounded the building, as though trying to keep the decrepitude out, but the slack wires and leaning poles suggested a dereliction of duty. True, the outbuildings were peeling, and machinery stood flat-tyred and rusting, trapped by rampant grass, but the house endured with valiant charm, an elderly woman dolled up to receive visitors who'd never come. Except, here they were.

  Kevin's senses shimmered as he looked at the place.

  Taipan's lifestream bubbled through his, connecting to this place. Loathing flowed through him — loathing and despair. It was here that Taipan had first failed his sister. Here that he followed her into the eternal night. Here that he pledged to free her from Jasmine Turner, who had taken them — twice stolen — and made them in her ever-hungry image.

  'Anyone home?' Yoshi asked, and Kevin couldn't tell if he'd been asking about the house or just calling him to attention.

  Kevin shook himself free of Taipan's phantoms. He had enough of his own to contend with. 'I'll have a look.'

  A wide door under the house swung open, big enough to drive a car through. A woman walked to the gate.

  'Li Li,' Kevin told them. 'One of Kala's red-eyes. Found her and her boyfriend in Cairns.'

  'AC/DC, huh?' Yoshi said.

  'Just red.'

  Li Li held up a hand to the headlights and Bella dropped the lights to low beam. Li Li's eyes glowed crimson as she guided the van into the space under the house. They manoeuvred Mel out. She stood limply, draped between Blake and Ambrose.

  'Upstairs.' Li Li was in jeans and long-sleeved checked shirt, a pistol holstered at her hip. She pointed the way with a broad-bladed cane knife. Impacts on the floorboards above their head suggested someone moving to the front door.

  Kala met them at the top of the stairs in jeans and sleeveless top. Kevin still wasn't used to the green vampiric flash of her eyes. She stood, hands on hips, accentuating the thin strip of flat stomach where shirt and pants failed to meet.

  'Is she worth it?' she asked with a nod at Mel.

  'Isn't everyone?' Kevin answered.

  She bit her lip. Introduced herself and Li Li, coming up behind; and Williams, broad-shouldered and sun-blond, at the door with a rifle held at ease.

  Kevin returned the introductions, then asked, 'Where's Dee?'

  'Somewhere safe. I'll take you there tomorrow night, if nothing happens.'

  'Interesting choice of hideout.'

  'Didn't think they'd look here. Besides, it's only for tonight.'

  'May we take Mel inside?' Blake asked.

  'Sure.' She stood back to give them room. 'She should be right at home in this madhouse. But there's a condition. You won't like it.'

  THIRTY-FIVE

  They faced off on the verandah. It had been closed in with louvre windows, but the space was filled with a miasma of stagnation: sugar cane as pungently sweet as death, the graveyard reek of stagnant mud holes and rotting leaves. There wasn't a lot of room to move, the two parties squeezed in among an ancient day bed sagging under the weight of dust, several wicker chairs and a large pot sprouting a long-dead plant.

  'You're pretty game, making demands when you're outnumbered three to one,' Blake said.

  'It's my way or no way, Kevin,' Kala said.

  'So what is your way, Kala?'

  'I taste you. All of you. The nut job, too.'

  'Don't call her that,' Blake said, holding Mel tighter.

  Bella and Ambrose lined up against Li Li and Williams, but neither looked confident.

  'C'mon, Kala,' Kevin said, 'you ain't a bloodhag. You're just as likely to get memories of our first pet as you are about whether we're setting up Dee.'

  'Nonetheless, you will each bleed for me. As a sign of good faith.'

  'This is insulting,' Yoshi said, 'but under the circumstances, I offer you a vein. Sure you can handle it?'

  'I'll take my chances,' Kala said as he held out his forearm.

  She drank, stumbled a half-step, her front teeth darkly rimmed in the uncertain light.

  'See anything you like?' Yoshi asked.

  'Yeah, I love Asian. It's the ginger. Poet — give it up.'

  'This is a disgrace,' Blake said. 'Give me a vessel. I won't have fangs in me.'

  'You got something to hide, mate?' Kala asked.

  'Do I get your blood to compensate me?'

  'You get to stay with your girlfriend. The price is a taste, straight from the vein.'

  'If those are your conditions, I will demur, but under protest.' He propped Mel on the bed and rolled up his sleeve, reciting, 'Love seeketh not itself to please.'

  To which Yoshi said, 'Love seeketh only Self to please.' Blake scowled at him, and Yoshi smiled.

  Kala bit into Blake's arm and sucked. He shivered, and she gave him such a look of sour pity that he turned away, to roll his sleeve down and check on Mel.

  'Careful,' Kevin cautioned as she went to taste Mel. 'It's a shit storm in there.'

  Kala paused. 'Dee's relying on me, Kevin. If VS has had this girl, there's no telling what they've done. Dee will have to taste her; they know that. Better me than her.'

  Kala bit, hesitantly, and Mel's eyes flickered at the contact. She moaned like someone in her sleep.

  Kala slumped back, rubbed her temples.

  Blake covered the wound protectively, though the flesh was already sealing over the tear. His two red-eyes stood close.

  Kala hefted herself up, using the foot of the bed for support.

  'My turn.' Kevin held out his arm, but she refused.

  'I think we know each well enough. But your myxos can make a donation.' She nodded at Bella and Ambrose.

  'They're mine!' Blake said. 'Vein and soul.'

  'You need to share if you're going to get your girlfriend back. But you've certainly got time to get back to Brissie before sun-up if that's too much to ask.'

  Blake waved her on. Kala tasted Bella, leaving her flushed, then Ambrose, who gave the slightest whimper. Li Li and Williams shifted where they stood watch, hands opening and closing on their weapons.

  Kala wiped her mouth, more from reflex than need. She'd spilled barely a drop. 'One of you can plaster them,' she said, her gaze sweeping the three vampires. 'I'm not giving them my blood, not even a smear.'

  'Only a nip,' Ambrose said, one hand to the leaking wound in his arm. 'It won't take long to heal.'

  Bella licked her bite mark like a cat cleaning a paw.

  'Did we pass?' Yoshi asked.

  'You'll do. This way.' Kala led them into the living room, where the furniture was covered in dust sheets, and told Williams to light a gas lamp. 'I trust you've eaten?' When Kevin assured her they had, she gestured to a table covered in clothes, like something from a flea market of last season's tourist chic. Shorts, T-shirts, towelling hats with the names of popular tourist towns on them, Hawaiian prints.

  'Take whatever fits, for the girl, too.' Kala indicated Mel, who was being settled on a couch, its dust sheet bundled under her head for a pillow.

  'Everything you're wearing, right down to jocks and socks goes in here.' She held up a garbage bag. This, and your car, will be left in a car park in Hervey Bay. You can collect it after.'

  'Is this really necessary, pal?' Yoshi asked.

  'If you want to see Danica, yes.'

  'I have to see her,' Yoshi said. 'That's the deal.'

  'You can't write it down, pal?'

  Mel spoke, her voice cutting through the tension. 'Write it.'

  'Make it all right! My kingdom for a nib, oh poisonous ink, inconstant scribe, to bare my secrets thus on the page, writ large.'

  'What the hell?' Kala said.

  Everyone stared at Mel. Blake kneeled next to her, a hand on her forehead. 'Melpomene, what is it?'

  She stared at him, as though seeing him for the first time. 'O rose thou art sick!'

  'Melpomene!' Blake shook her shoulders, called her name.

 
'What's she on about?' Kala asked.

  'Dunno,' Kevin said. 'First words she's said since we got her back. Blake, lay off her, eh. You'll knock her block off if you shake her any harder.'

  'Leakage,' Yoshi said. 'Sounds like songs or poems, bits of old conversations.'

  'What is it?' Blake said. 'Talk to me, Melpomene. My journal — where is my journal? My pens? I need to write this down!'

  By the time Ambrose had fetched the poet's satchel, Mel had fallen quiet again. Blake crouched next her, wringing his hands in a fine display of artistic agitation. He stroked her arm, as though wanting to feed, but thinking better of it.

  'Let me see those,' Kala said, and to Blake's consternation, pored over the bag, unscrewed his fountain pens and shook ink from each, tore the spine from his journal.

  'You have no soul,' Blake said as he reassembled his kit.

  'Yeah, well, I'm not the one she was calling a sick rose, am I? Maybe you should stay here.'

  'I'm not letting Melpomene go anywhere without me,' Blake said. 'She's my muse. I need her.'

  'We're not wired,' Kevin said.

  'I'm not taking the risk.' She pointed to the pile of clothing. 'Strip. The lot of you. And give me the keys to that rust bucket you arrived in.'

  They did as she said. Blake insisted on undressing Mel, with Bella's help. Kevin and Yoshi turned their backs. Yoshi asked Kala what he should do with his weapons — a shirt was hardly going to hide his katana the way a trench coat did — and she said they'd find a duffel bag big enough for it and Kevin's sword. Or perhaps a fishing rod bag.

  'I should get you a camera, too, eh?' she said. 'Help you blend in.' She held up her hands as though taking a photo.

  Yoshi stared at her and Kevin felt a shiver: she was pushing Yoshi, hard; what would happen if he pushed back?

  Williams gathered their guns.

  'You can keep your blades, in case you get a visit from VS,' Kala said. 'But the guns go with us. I'll be back once I'm sure you haven't been followed, and then I'll take you to Danica. Sleep tight.'

  Kala and her red-eyes left.

  Yoshi said to Kevin, 'Nice girlfriend you got there.'

  'She ain't my girlfriend.'

  'Did she seriously think the Needle would have us bugged? Or that we'd be carrying a wire for VS? She knows that just by being with you, our heads are on a plate, right?'

  'That's what she's worried about.' Kevin looked at where Blake sat by Mel's side. They'd dressed her in light pants and a pullover. The putsi was a dark splash against the cloth. 'There's no chance VS implanted some kind of homing signal on her, is there?'

  'We looked, your pal looked. Besides, our bodies don't take kindly to foreign matter. Takes will to reshape them, even something as simple as an earring. No way could someone in bedlam maintain anything in their body.'

  'I can't allow anything to happen to Danica.'

  'Nothing will. We'll make sure of it. In fact, Rodan's offer might be the safest thing for her.' Yoshi collected his sword and headed for the hall. 'Might as well make ourselves comfortable. Blake, your red-eyes can keep watch, hey, pal. Just in case.'

  THIRTY-SIX

  As good as new? Reece was too old to believe that. His body was starting to agree with him, although outwardly there were few signs of having been almost shot to death the day before. A few scars, some stiffness, pains that went all the way to his spine. Thing was, he'd been sucking down vampire blood for four decades. His body was starting to say, enough. It would take more than a grease and oil change to get him back in peak condition, and he wasn't sure he'd take the option of a complete refit, even if it were offered. Forever was an awful long time to regret.

  He spent the day beating the bushes, rousing every contact he had at all rungs of the criminal and civic ladder. Contacts made carefully as he'd been introduced back into society as his friends and acquaintances, mostly coppers and crims and layabouts from his Special Branch days, had died off or moved on.

  The conversations went more or less the same, with the level of coarse language varying to suit the occasion: 'You seen the Needle, sport? The tattooist, him of the silver fame. You know where he is? What's he look like — think of a badger's face painted on a plate; now drop the plate and glue it back together, messy-like: that's what he looks like, sport. What about his gang? Snipes, little long-nosed birds on their lapels. Their fucking collars, all right? If you see him, tell him I'd like a chat — just a chat. What about a vampire with four arms — you'd know him if you'd seen him. No? You see any of them, here's my card. Don't fucking lose it; I have to pay for them myself.'

  He'd put out a bulletin for the Needle's mobile studio; he'd searched the man's registered address and a rumoured address; he'd rousted two known associates who were so far down the chain they didn't even know the Needle had gone to ground. Then he'd had a late afternoon kip, a feed of steak at a place that was not the canteen, and started over again with the night people. The swearing increased, the success rate stayed firmly at zero.

  It was as hot as buggery, which didn't help his mood. He had to keep his jacket on because wearing handguns in public was a bit of a faux pas. His jocks, his trousers, his shirt, they all dragged him down with what felt like his own bodyweight in sweat.

  It was past nine and the humidity hadn't dropped, the temperature was still tropical. Fucking February.

  He found a seat at the bar at a pub near the show grounds. The room was air-conditioned; water beaded on the sides of the glass. The pokies were locked away in another room, a few suits laughed too loudly in the beer garden. He could smell their hair cream from here, not a bad effort over the stale beer in the carpet and the sickly perfume clouding around the barmaid.

  The loo didn't smell any better. Someone had added a fanged smiley face to graffiti reading Suck My Cock over the urinal. He was still in the Valley; neutral ground, though every gang in the city wanted a slice. A melting pot of musicians and homeless and yuppies, transients and a few ancient residents who could remember when there was a tram line to the city.

  Reece had ridden that tram, remembered the big shopping emporiums that had been the heart of the place; back before the decline of his policing years, when the shops had moved to the burbs and the scum had risen to the surface, the gambling joints and the bordellos doing a roaring trade in brown paper bags to the coppers. The rules had been simple back then; you knew when to keep your mouth shut when rules were being broken.

  A man came in and stood next to him as Reece washed his hands. A look passed between them. Reece's mitt was still dripping when he went for his gun, but the guy was quicker, trapping his hand outside his coat, pinning him awkwardly against the basin so he couldn't use his left hand, either.

  'I thought you just wanted to talk,' the Needle said.

  He was in a hoodie and cargo pants, his eyes mere pin-prick glimmers in the dunny's blue light. A girl in a hooded army jacket stood with her back to the door.

  'Sure,' Reece said, forcing himself to relax. 'Buy you a beer?'

  The Needle let him go. 'Why not?'

  They sat at the bar, the girl keeping her distance. It was the Snipe he'd seen with Matheson at the tattoo shop and at the graveyard.

  'Where's the grease monkey?' Reece asked the Needle.

  'I can't tell you that.'

  'How about who sent that sap to you with the gen about Jasmine Turner's little foray into the livestock trade?'

  'I won't tell you that.'

  'Did you help spring the poet's chick? I almost got killed.'

  'But you didn't. And no, I won't tell you that, either.'

  'So what can you tell me?'

  'How about the location of the four-armed vampire?'

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The girl, Greaser, guided him. She kept her mouth shut except to tell Reece where to turn, but he took a shine to her. His cop nose told him she was one of the good guys, a rare straight-up type in a two-faced world.

  'You haven't taken the blood, have you?' he asked at o
ne point, and she told him the light had changed to green.

  'Scarface look after you Snipes okay?'

  'Take the next left.'

  'You hear from Matheson lately? I like the kid, for all that he's tried to kill me a bunch of times. And vice versa.'

  'It's coming up on the right. There. See it? The dojo.'

  He drove past, slowed to allow himself a decent gander, then pulled up around the corner. They both got out.

  'What can you tell me about it?'

  'There's a basement. You can see it through a broken window down there.'

  'Handy bit of vandalism, there.'

  'City's gone to the dogs.' She leaned against the wall, arms folded. 'He isn't alone.'

  Reece crossed the street, trying to look casual as he kept his hand near his pistol. When he looked back, Greaser was gone, but he figured she would be watching: some window, some rooftop.

  The rumble and squeal of a suburban train blotted out his hearing as he made his way toward the crumbling, two-storey building at the corner. There were a few cars parked in the street, presumably for the dojo or the nearby Chinese restaurant with the dripping ducks in the front window. Other businesses were either shut or vacant; all needed a coat of paint. Reece made a point of eyeing the restaurant's menu, then strolled around the corner. As Greaser had promised, there were windows down low facing the side street. They'd been painted over, but still cast rectangles of dim light on the footpath.

  He looked, listened and then crouched where a fist-sized hole in a pane allowed a brighter beam to escape.

  Half a dozen shirtless freaks were gathered inside. They stood on a white mat spotted with blood, four red-eyes taking turns to belt two vampires with various hammers and bars, smashing their faces before inserting various bits and bobs arrayed on a table. Silver was the metal of choice. Some had pictures to guide them, either from movies or simple sketches of the new dream visage.

  And there was Four Arms, at the front of the room with a table between him and the others. He had only three arms now; the fourth lay on the table, like a fish about to be scaled, the flesh grey and withered. Reece thought, I'd've thrown that one back. There was a massive wound in Four Arms' side, like a shark had taken a chomp in passing. Four Arms bellowed and put down a bloodied knife, and the red-eye next to him, all pierced and weird looking but not so much that he wouldn't get bar work, jogged across the room to where, after some craning and squinting, Reece could just see a body hanging from the ceiling, dribbling blood into a bucket. The red-eye filled a tin cup and ran, more cautiously, back to Four Arms, who skolled it with a grimace. Two more bodies were chained to a wall; both clothed, both alive.