Part 16 (1/2)

'If she was with him at two in the morning when she visited Raj's house, then she might not be alone now.'

'I'm going in there, so get your hands off me.'

'Okay,' Ben said. 'But be warned; you might be in for a shock.'

'Understood.' He jerked his arm away, then shoved open the door.

For a moment Ben imagined he saw shadows on the bed coupling in ecstasy. As he pa.s.sed through the doorway into the room, however, he saw that imagination had played a trick. The bed was empty.

'She was here.' Trajan grimaced at the sickly-sweet odor that hung in the air.

'Or still is,' Ben whispered. 'Try under the bed.'

Trajan hesitated for a second as no doubt nightmarish scenarios buzzed through his mind. Then with a renewed determination he dropped to his knees to check the s.p.a.ce between the bed frame and the floor. Ben squatted too. The heavy-duty blackout blind kept out the sun, so precious little daylight was available to them. Nevertheless, Ben stared at that shadowed void until his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. And there, in near darkness, curled up on her side like a sleeping child, was April Connor. He could just make out the blue mottle around her lips, and the dark rings beneath her eyes. Even her eyelids had darkness in them, as if the skin had absorbed something of the midnight shadows. Her short hair was spiked with a sticky material. The black dress was filthy, while a large rip revealed her grey skin at the waist. Ben guessed that's where they'd find the bite mark.

'She's breathing,' Trajan confirmed. 'I can hear it.'

'Is she alone?'

Trajan awarded Ben a pain-filled glance, then checked. A moment later he sighed with relief. 'Yes, she is.'

'Good. But there's a chance her friend might be around, too.'

'If he is I'll throw him out into the street.'

'Don't do anything rash. Remember what happened to the gang last night.'

Trajan grunted. 'You mean, you don't want me to end up as breakfast?'

'Something like that.'

They searched the rest of the apartment. Five minutes later Trajan called from the hallway. 'Ben? In here.'

Ben found Trajan staring into the cloakroom beside the front door. It was little bigger than an upright coffin, but sitting there with knees raised and his back to the wall was an olive-skinned guy aged around thirty. He'd unhooked the coats from the pegs then piled them over himself. Only his face was uncovered in that windowless cell. His eyes had sunk into his head and his cheeks were hollow. He wore that same kind of shrunken grimace that Egyptian mummies wore when their lips shriveled back. Here, the guy's lips had shrunk enough to reveal large white teeth that were tipped with gold crowns.

'So,' Ben breathed, 'they came here to escape the daylight.' He glanced at Trajan. 'I'm a.s.suming he's alive, too?'

Trajan reached out as if to check the pulse in the man's neck. Only he stopped short, reluctant to make contact with the dead-looking flesh. Ben held the back of his hand under the stranger's nostrils.

'I can feel him exhale.' Ben shrugged. 'So he appears to be alive.'

'Appears to be,' Trajan murmured. 'It's time to call the police.'

'The police? You're kidding.'

'Ben, we need professional help.'

'What the police'll do is take them to some specialized medical unit.'

'That's what we want, isn't it?'

'The only person with knowledge about this is Elmo Kigoma. We'll call him.'

Only it wasn't going to be that simple.

TWENTY-THREE.

For Roma it's webcams. For her brothers Juno and Hadrian it's dirt-bikes. While Roma browsed her favourite webcams they revved the bikes hard on that hot Wyoming evening as the scent of clematis crept in to perfume her room. Roma broke away from the computer and leaned out of the window, squinting as the sun struck her in the eyes. Her brothers cranked their bike motors into a frenzy of skull-piercing screaming.

'Hey!' she shouted. 'I went to the dentist this afternoon! Three fillings! Don't you idiots know the meaning of charity?'

They didn't hear her as they tore away down the track, their bikes flinging up clouds of dust.

'Good riddance!' Roma yelled after them. 'Keep going east! Go the long way round through China!' She touched her lip that was still numb after forty-five minutes in the dentist's chair. The scream of the drill as it tore through tooth enamel still resonated in her ears. In this little town of one hundred and eighty people the drive to the city was usually a treat - a treat that climaxed with pizza and ice cream. Today, the city visit for thirteen-year-old Roma Langelli was anything but a treat. Three fillings, jeez. At least she could spend some time gratifying her webcam fascination. In a tiny town that sat on a dusty American prairie there was precious little to do at the best of times. There wasn't a single store here; school was a fifty-minute bus-ride away, so Roma escaped boredom through the webcams that were her eye on the outside world. With her friends she'd devised games: Weirdest Webcam (a school for ventriloquists in Quebec); Most Boring Webcam: this had lots of compet.i.tion. After all, most webcams that come streaming into your computer via the internet are simply static views of streets, beaches, industrial plants, or skylines. Of course, the cameras had no human operators. They were like CCTV; simply fixed to walls or posts and left to film all by themselves. This afternoon Sue had sent a link to a webcam that filmed patients in a dentist's chair in New York - ha, ha, very funny, Sue. Roma experimentally chewed her lip. The anesthetic was wearing off now so she felt a slight tingle. Also, her tongue encountered gritty bits of amalgam in the bottom of her mouth: filling leftovers. Yuk.

After rinsing her mouth from a water bottle she scrolled through a list of webcams that beamed pictures from around the world. Now for her revenge against Sue for her choice of live dental surgery. Last week Roma discovered a webcam that showed views of stomach-churning intensity; this was guaranteed to gross Sue out. Before e-mailing the link Roma decided to check that the camera was still active, so her friend wouldn't simply be confronted with a blank screen or error message (no fun to be had if Sue didn't suffer at least a teeny bit). She moved the on-screen cursor down the webcam list until she found the link marked 'River Fleet Ancillary Branch'. From previous visits to this website she knew that the River Fleet was a river that ran through a tunnel under the streets of London on the other side of the world. And this 'ancillary branch' of the River Fleet was nothing but a great, humongous sewer.

Roma clicked on the camera icon; a second later a box opened up on the computer screen to reveal a view of a genuine London sewer that must be two hundred years old at least. Jeez, the place is a big watery dungeon. Mentally, she composed her e-mail: Hi, Sue, Check this place of unrivaled beauty. Heh-heh. Look at it then tell me what you think those stalact.i.tes are made of that are hanging from the roof.

She grinned as she watched a picture that in real time revealed what was happening in the London sewer thousands of miles away. The camera must be set on a beam that ran across the throat of the circular tunnel. There were also lights to reveal the curving brick walls that were shades of brown and tangerine. The tunnel rose up a series of brick steps. Tumbling down those was water (and, boy-oh-boy, other stuff) at a depth of what appeared to be knee-high. Unlike most webcams that showed static views of churches or the Grand Canyon or whatever, this actually had a lot going on. Water-levels constantly rose and fell, due to bathroom usage in the buildings above, or storm water surges. Sometimes the waterfall created by the steps was a trickle, sometimes a full-blooded torrent that bubbled and foamed. Then here's the gross stuff. Hanging from the roof were what appeared to be stalact.i.tes anything up to two feet long. Only they weren't rigid. Sometimes a breeze blew along the tunnel, then they'd swing pendulum-like. The River Fleet website helpfully explained that these stalact.i.tes were composed of a build-up of toilet paper and faeces.

Roma chuckled as she imagined her friend wrinkling her nose while exclaiming, 'Ugh! Poo alert!'

Then came a sight even more gross than those literally s.h.i.+tty tunnel decorations. Rats. Big, hairy, bristly, juicy, yellow-toothed sewer rats. The slimy wet rats scrambled up and down those steps in the places that were free of water. Rat noses would sniff the air savoring those subterranean odors. Sometimes - uck, uck! - the big London sewer rats with their bristly backs would sit on their haunches, hold a morsel, in their front claws then nibble away with such an expression of bliss on their ratty faces.

Waita it gets better (or worse!) than that. This would make Sue squeal out loud. Sometimes rats would climb on to the structure that supported the webcam. Then, without warning, a rat's snout would suddenly loom in to fill the screen. At that moment you could believe a monster rat the size of a bull haunted London's sewers. As the mouth dominated the lens you could even see its bright yellow teeth that would be magnified to the size of gigantic fangs with icky bits of brown stuff stuck to them. Roma found herself laughing as she imagined Sue's shriek of disgust.

More gritty particles surfaced on her tongue. Ugh, dental work. She reached for the bottle of water again as she watched what sewercam revealed. In a hotel someone flushed and a moment later a condom came bobbing along the stream. Her eyes were drawn into the depths of the tunnel where the arching wall vanished into the distance. That dark maw beyond sewercam's lights was hypnotic. The more she stared into the shadows of underground London the more she fancied she could see shapes moving. She'd watched a dozen times before, and it always turned out to be her imagination, or maybe it was simply steam caused by hot bathwater being discharged into the icy, cold sewer.

Only today it was going to be totally different. Roma watched the screen as figures emerged from the shadows. One appeared to be in the lead; its feet splashed down in the sewer water as it ran along the tunnel; its movements were frantic; it was like it fled in panic. When the figure reached the illuminated area, it staggered and had to support itself with the iron handrail set into the brickwork. The webcam supplied vision only, not sound. So even though the figure of a young man in a leather jacket opened his mouth to yell like fury Roma could hear absolutely nothing. He reached the top of the waterfall then descended the steps where the brown fluid tumbled. The guy was exhausted. Blood trickled from his eye, and there was this look on his face. The expression of terror became a force in its own right that leapt from the computer screen to seize hold of Roma's heart and squeeze it so hard she could hardly breathe. Even so, her eyes locked on those images; she couldn't avert them. No matter what happened next.

Then Roma saw why the guy ran. A group of men and women pursued him. But what a surreal bunch they were. One guy was dressed in a business suit, another wore some kind of uniform; a cop or security guard maybe. Then came a woman in a suit in black with white trim; then came a lithe young woman who moved like a cat. Her hair was tousled; her clothes were in rags. The expressions on their faces showed pure glee. They exulted in the pursuit of their yelling victim. Bizarrely, there was even a guy in a clown costume with white clown make-up on his face. How did the people get into the sewer? Why were they chasing the man? Didn't they know the kind of diseases they could catch wading through that c.r.a.p? Their faces were splashed with matter; their hands slid across the slimy walls as they balanced themselves. Even those s.h.i.+tty stalact.i.tes brushed their heads as they chased their victim.

The young guy bounded down the brick steps. Even as she watched his feet skidded out from him and he fell down on to his rear so he sat there amid the gus.h.i.+ng water. In that position he faced the webcam lens. Roma estimated he was a dozen feet from it. The man's pursuers reached the top of the waterfall. There they simply leapt off the top to drop the ten feet or so on to him, just like a group of surreal birds of prey. He vanished under the ma.s.s of bodies. They shoved each other aside to grab an arm or a leg. She saw the men and women sink their teeth into the man. Briefly he emerged from the scrum of bodies. She clearly saw his expression of agony as the young woman chewed on his throat. There was such an expression of joy on her face.

The foam at the bottom of the waterfall turned crimson. Roma tasted blood in her mouth; for one wild moment she thought she'd somehow magically fallen through the screen into that London sewer and those b.l.o.o.d.y waters had engulfed her mouth. Then she realized she'd bitten her tongue without noticing. The dental anesthetic still numbed it. In shock she grabbed the water bottle and swilled her mouth. At that moment she took her eyes off the computer screen.

When she looked back she let out a yell of shock. A face had filled the screen as one of the killers loomed in toward the lens. It must be the face of the girl that moved like a cat. Her beautiful almond-shaped eyes stared at her through the gla.s.s. Beneath her eyes were deathly blue rings. Her forehead was spattered with her victim's blood. And as the eyes narrowed Roma knew the creature was smiling at her, even though she couldn't see the mouth. The camera wasn't two-way; it was impossible for the woman to know she was being watched. For the rest of her life Roma would insist on that fact. Yet at that moment, as her blood ran cold, she knew that by virtue of some force she would never be able to understand that she-creature gazed through Roma's eyes into her mind. And knew all about her - right down to the last intimate secret of her soul.

TWENTY-FOUR.