Chapter 30: Stand Alone - The Night Market

Steam hissed up from the car engine, spluttering its final breath before giving up for good. One headlight pulsed faintly like a dying eye.

Inside, Laik gasped, forcing himself upright, blood trickling from his forehead in a hot line. His hand instinctively went to the graze just below his ribs – a bullet had found a mark, though it hadn’t gone in, just took a little meat on its journey. It hurt – of course it hurt – but he could worry about the pain after. Which felt like the right mindset to have, but as every inch of him ached, it was easier said than done. Laik blinked, the blood having reached an eye. The airbag hadn’t deployed. Smoke curled from the dashboard, inciting a splutter.

‘Pepper?’ Laik rasped, snapping his seatbelt free and frantically reaching for her in the dark, feeling the shape of her body to urge a response.

Laik helped as she fumbled for her seatbelt release, ‘Ugh . . . Hnnn . . . Oh God . . . Laik . . .’ she whimpered, unable to finish her sentence.

‘I know. Me too.’ He pulled himself around to look to the back seats. Quinn was already moving, resting her forehead against the back of the driver’s seat, raggedy hair obscuring her face. Her breathing was a toilet having finished a flush.

‘I . . . threw up in your car.’ She gurgled. ‘I’m sorrrrrryyyyyyy . . .’

‘Swan?’ Laik scanned the crumbled mess that was half sprawled across the back seats. ‘Hey! Hey! Swan!’ He reached through and pulled at his jacket, rocking him about. He could just about make out Swan’s lifeless rolls from side to side. The smoke was sharp and acrid, clawing at the back of the throat as it settled.

Laik looked through the cracked windshield. About fifty yards away the headlights of another car were fierce and frightening. It had pulled up onto the pavement and came to a stop.

‘Everyone out!’ Laik managed, wrestling with the driver’s side door, which needed a few weak kicks to be convinced to open. He tried his best to pull Pepper on through over the gearstick and the driver’s seat, the weight and effort taking them down onto the ground in a gasping, groaning heap on top of one another. Amidst the swearing and the tears, Pepper revealed that she may have broken something, or some things, plural, and the rising shock was making her tremor uncontrollably. Wet grass soaked her clothes as she involuntarily lay upon it, fighting to summon the energy to move something, anything.

Laik had staggered to the passenger side and escorted Quinn free, who, it miraculously seemed, was largely unscathed from the impact. She fell too, still heavily drunk, exclaiming that the stars were not in alignment tonight and this was a bad omen: an observation that went ignored. Laik called for the women to get away, as the steam from the engine had evolved to smoke, and licks of flame glittered beneath the concertinaed bonnet. Pulling Swan out was an effort, his mobile phone sporting a fierce crack across the entire screen. Lord knows if he managed to alert the Family, but that barely mattered now. The vehicle gave him up, and the Enforcer slithered lifelessly to the ground. The smoke from the car was worsening now, smothering the tree and illuminating its bark. Laik and the girls staggered as much as they could with Swan in tow, before all collapsing once more.

Ahead, the black vehicle throbbed before the lights went dark and the engine cut.

Then the driver’s door opened.

And a silhouette stepped out, framed against the orange haze of streetlight. Tall. Purposeful.

Laik’s breath caught with effort as he fought to his feet, wiped the blood from his vision. ‘Stay here,’ he said to Pepper, voice flat with resolve. ‘Look after Quinn.’

‘What are you gonna do?’ She made a pained grunt.

He didn’t answer.

Laik’s vision narrowed to him. The rest – the debris, the smashed lamppost, the city sounds, the faint ringing in his ears – faded into meaningless background. Horus hadn’t moved from the amber pool of a streetlamp, as still as a sculpture. Just watched. Waited.

Laik stepped forward, teeth clenched, his fangs in full view. His jacket hung open and shredded, flapping as he advanced. He staggered a step; one hand pressed to his ribs where a bullet had scored him. His other hung at his side, trembling.

‘You’re dead, Horus,’ he growled, voice like gravel. ‘You hear me? A dead man walking! The Families are going to—’

‘Oh, the Families,’ Horus sighed, like he was already bored. ‘Save me, from the wrath of aristocrats and trust fund tyrants. From their games, their pacts, their pride and their silly little egos. Save me from the fucking Families.’

He stepped forward slowly, conversational even as his boots crunched over broken glass. His eyes shone like dark glass. ‘Do you think I care for any of that? I was already old when their grandfathers were playing with sticks in the mud. Civilisations came and burned to ash, and I watched. Kings murdered by their own sons. Queens tossed to wolves. Blood meant something back then. Power meant something. And now? We’ve traded swords for signatures. We drink our blood from decanters and call it progress. Civilised. But we lost something, Laik. We lost the feral. We lost the wildness that made vampires feared. And the Families? They’re the ones who convinced everyone it was for the better.’

Laik kept moving, body rigid. ‘You sound like a lunatic.’

‘I sound liberated. There’s a difference.’ Horus’s eyes gleamed. ‘Why would I concern myself with what they could punish me with? I am not part of their world, Laik. I’m the one to tear it all down.’

‘And the Odes?’

‘A means to an end, obviously.’ Horus laughed. ‘You never listened. I told you this was coming. You kept ducking me. Ignoring my messages. And I know you got the last one. I basically addressed it to you personally.’

Laik blinked.

His blood ran cold.

He didn’t shout it. He couldn’t. The air had thinned, robbed from his lungs by the weight behind those words. Horus had said it with that calm detachment, that hideous sense of inevitability, like it had already been written. Like the woman’s fate was just an insignificant footnote in some grander plan.

He finally spoke. ‘Viola . . .? You did Viola?’

For a moment, there was nothing. No thoughts. No blood. Just stillness between them.

But something invisible moved. Slithered about his belly. Coiled up his arms, gripping the bones. And right now, Laik wanted nothing but to surrender to it. Out here, in unknown streets, where anybody could see the transformation happen, he wanted it to consume him fully and shred Horus to pieces. All this carnage was the perfect excuse. Why hold back? Did Horus ever show restraint at any point? Mortis demanded there be no escalation, but where did that leave them? Clinging to the edge of oblivion, where one of theirs had already been tossed in. If he was given permission to hunt Horus down after the attack on Leroux Tower, none of this would have happened and Viola would have still been with them. Idiot!

No, Horus was right – they’d become soft. Controlled. Chained to meaningless pacts and venomed words.

‘Believe me when I say it wasn’t personal. But it was necessary. And look: it got us talking. It worked.’

Something cracked. Not a bone, but something older. Something in Laik’s foundation, and all it supported came tumbling, tumbling down.

The Sins he carried erupted from within. They could smell their kind on Horus, taste the depths of his wrongdoing, and they would take them as their own. Or it would have, until Laik breathed in sharply, looking behind to the wreckage. Swan still hadn’t moved. Pepper was groaning, clutching her arm. Quinn sobbed softly, hands pressed to her mouth, still staring at the night.

Amazingly, they hesitated.

The fury was there, boiling, but something else was rising with it. Guilt. Confusion. The sight of Pepper, hurt, shaken. Quinn, fumbling to right herself, terrified. Swan . . . whatever state Swan was in. He reached inward once more: summoned it. Cursed it. Begged it, even. But it shifted, like an animal refusing the leash.

A flicker of gold flashed in Laik’s pupils. The rage was real, the grief too but also a reluctance. Why? Why now of all times?

They squirmed in his chest, not dormant, not gone, but uncertain. Not out of fear. But something else. Something that had been growing and Laik had never even noticed.

And Horus saw it. Watched him falter.

‘There it is . . .’ he whispered. ‘That beautiful little thing you carry inside you. Something that instils real, tangible fear in the Families. And fear, my lad, puts us on top of the food chain. Could give it allllll back. Of all the evil things in our world, Laik, you possess the worst I know, and quite possibly the last. It’s the reason why you’re avoided in every room you walk in. Spoken of like an impending disaster. The Families fear you, demon. Even the one who has you on their leash. They’re terrified of that nasty little thing scurrying about inside you. But I am not. No. I am not.’

He pulled a knife from his coat – black-handled, curved like a talon.

‘And I’m cutting it out of you, tonight.’

Laik lunged.

The clash was violent and raw. No posturing. No elegance. Just fists, teeth, desperation. Laik threw punches like hammers. Horus responded with surgical brutality. Elbow. Knee. A sweep to the leg. Laik hit the pavement but rolled away, scrambling to his feet.

They circled.

Laik spat blood, his vision swimming. He strained to wrench the Sins to the surface, his flesh gasping trails of curling black smoke.

‘Come on!’ Horus roared. ‘What are you holding back for, huh? There’s nowhere to run to, Laik! Bring it out!’

Horus slashed. The knife grazed Laik’s ribs, drew red. Laik screamed and barrelled into him, tackling him into a parked car. The alarm blared. They grunted, tangled. Laik got a knee up. Horus reeled. Laik punched. Again. Again.

Then the blade bit.

A line across Laik’s side. Too shallow to kill, deep enough to steal his voice. He gasped, dropped to one knee, stumbled, trying to rise but finding one leg useless. The blade came down one final time, but a forearm stopped its descent, mere inches from his face. He gripped Horus’s wrist with the other hand, yanked it away, forcing the knife to fly free. Laik’s reward was a flash of knuckles to the temple.

And behind them, the wrecked Subaru detonated.

The thunderclap sent up a ball of fire, lighting up the street in a corona of orange and red. Shards of glass flew. A wing mirror cartwheeled down the tarmac.

Quinn shrieked. Pepper was sprawled forward from the blast wave. Somewhere, a car alarm barked.

Laik panted, eyes blurred, gazing at the new inferno, Pepper pleading through red eyes in horror, in fear, and every gradient between. His ears rang. His side screamed with pain. He reached for the anger again – for the thing in his blood to get its shit together and make itself useful – but it wouldn’t come. It trembled. It feared something.

Horus dusted himself off. Cracked his head side to side.

Laik rose, legs shaking. His fists clenched. He was done. He knew it. But he stood anyway.

‘I always did think you were stubborn,’ Horus said. ‘But stubborn is just another word for foolish.’

The only punch Laik could throw was easily brushed aside. Hands found him. A grip too tight to wrestle from. There was no grace in it. Horus hoisted him like a ragdoll, bent his head back with too much ease, and drove his own fangs into Laik’s neck.

A flash of agony burned and spread and then, strangely, nothing. Laik thrashed, or thought he did. His limbs barely responded. His fingers scratched weakly at Horus’s arm, finding only cloth and flesh that did not yield, before slipping away.

Horus drank thirsty and deep.

And Laik felt himself going.

Not just the blood, but everything. Thought, memory, will. It was all unravelling like loose thread.

This was it.

He was done for.

No grand cause to be sacrificed to. No heroic final stand. Just the will of a madman in the gutter.

What a pathetic end.

But it had been hidden beneath the grunts of effort, the whooshing and roaring of the flames, until it swelled until it could not be ignored anymore. A sound. Thin, at first. A cry, somewhere beyond the noise of the fire.

It grew. Louder. Rawer.

A wail.

A nameless, wounded wail that pierced Horus enough to make him falter. He released Laik. Let him drop to the ground, immobile. Turned toward the sound.

Her dress torn, her cheeks wet. Her arms shaking. Her scream broke on her lips, returning as a howl now. Not just for the wreckage or the blood or the chaos, but for what the woman watched:

The shrivelled, blackened figure of a stuffed iguana being consumed by the fire.

Quinn Cavendish howled distraught, over and over. And the howls ascended into an encompassing, terrible grief that broke at the height of her voice.

Then – it all went quiet.

When Quinn rose, the glow of flame rippled upon her skin, the trace of her dress shifting unnaturally as it moved. Fire danced in her eyes, its partner something far more primeval.

A slow, silent silhouette against a backdrop of the end of the world.

The woman, who had been a drunken mess only minutes ago, was gone. What remained was all teeth and commitment. Quinn’s jaw twitched. Her fangs bared. She drew the back of her hand across her face, leaving a smear of ash and tears, indicating that the sorrow was over.

And Horus had absolutely no idea what he had just unleashed.