The Pilgrims of the Damned: A Vampire Thriller, page 12
“Any sort of relationship stuff there that might bring friction?”
“With Jenny?” Amelia asked as if it were the oddest question ever. “God, no. She doesn’t date people, she sort of acquires them. I don’t even know if she’s ever had any kind of romantic entanglement. She doesn’t seem to care about it, and no one seems to be all that bothered about trying.”
“Miles Watson,” a familiar voice said.
Miles looked over at First Authority Thomas Reed as he walked toward them. He wore an outfit similar to everyone else, jeans and grey sweatshirt with the House Idolator badge on it.
“Amelia, can you go see the organiser over there? You’ll be travelling in the Winnebago with Miles and Church,” Thomas said when he reached the pair. “We made sure you three have your own place so that you can write without the constant revelry that can happen. We’ll be taking regular stops so that you can have people come on board and you can interview them about the trip. I believe Jenny is especially excited.”
When Miles and Thomas were alone, Thomas said, “Any trouble?”
“Nae yet,” Miles said. “Everyone seems very happy to be here. Anyone not House Idolator?”
“Oh, they’re getting picked up from Portsmouth and brought here,” Thomas said. “Should be only a few minutes away. There are twelve of us from House Idolator, another six human guards, who are all familiars to either myself or the First Lord, and I believe another eight from outside of the House. It’s going to be quite the few days.”
“Few days?” Miles asked.
“We stop at several places along the way, to refuel and stretch our legs, to help those who might need it,” Thomas said. “The quickest we’ve done it is six hours. Ah, that was quite the whirlwind. Usually it’s closer to thirty. We don’t drive during the day. It’s a bit of a different place since you were last here.”
“So I gather,” Miles said as two black Range Rovers pulled into the lot.
“They going to be okay over rough terrain?” Miles asked, pointing to the Winnebagos.
“Both of them are equipped with four-wheel drive,” Thomas said. “Anything else?”
“What’s in the two army trucks?”
Thomas looked over. “Supplies. Mostly medicines, equipment, and the like. Food comes in the convoys, so we don’t have to worry about anything spoiling. We’ve done this before, Miles.”
“I know,” Miles said, feeling as though he was being chastised for questioning anything. “You ever lost someone?”
Thomas’s stare bored into Miles, but eventually he said, “Yes. We’ve had a few fatalities over the years. Not in a decade, though. We know where we’re going, we know how to get there, we know how to do it safely. All vehicles will have a familiar stationed in them during the day, including the one you will be staying in. Besides, if there’s any trouble this time, we have an Arbiter among our ranks. Aren’t we lucky.”
“You don’t like me much, do you?” Miles asked Thomas.
The First Authority opened his mouth to talk, closed it again, and eventually said, “No. It’s not you personally, but I know your type.”
Miles raised his eyebrows in question. “My type?”
“Don’t believe in anything, don’t believe that we might actually have looked into our faith, and we’re not just barmy idiots praying to the sky,” Thomas said. “Those who mock who we are and what we believe in. Those who think we’re all loons.”
“I don’t think either of those,” Miles said with a shrug. “I don’t believe in what you believe, but I have no issue with your own belief. I don’t mock you for it, but I don’t like being preached to. By anyone. From any religion. Avoid that and we’ll all get along famously. I’m nae here to piss on your bonfire, Thomas. I’m here to make sure Amelia gets her job done and leaves in one piece.”
Thomas was silent for a moment. “I spoke out of turn,” he said eventually. “I apologise.”
“None necessary,” Miles told him. “Like I said, we don’t believe the same things, but that’s fine with me. You all crack on and do whatever you need to do.”
Thomas stared at Miles for several heartbeats before turning and walking away.
Church came over for a stroke as Amelia shouted, “You ready?”
Miles waved over to her, grabbed his stuff from the boot of the car, and took it to his new, albeit temporary, home. He hoped beyond all else that it was going to be a much easier trip than the first few days of being back in America had proved to be.
PART TWO
Chapter Eleven
It wasn’t that long ago that Lauren Gibson had been the human wife of a police Detective. To a mean, cruel man, who had thought little of her in the long term, and who had decided that aligning himself with a group of people—the Magistrate—whose sole aim was to hate someone else, was better than being a good husband. Hell, better than being a good human.
When Lauren had decided that enough was enough, and had set about exposing her husband’s friends, he’d arranged for her to be kidnapped and killed. It hadn’t gone according to plan. A vampire by the name of Oliver had saved her just before she died. He had tried to turn her into a vampire to save her life, but it had gone wrong, and she’d been turned into a Desolate Queen instead. A monster. A creature that even vampires considered a nightmare. And with good reason. Not only could a Desolate Royal control the desolate they created, but they could also control any vampires whose blood they drank. It made them a frightening prospect to many vampires.
Lauren hadn’t wanted to be considered frightening, she’d only wanted revenge on her husband, on the Magistrate and its leader Blake Summers. All of them were dead now. Some by her hand, some by the hand of Miles Watson, the only vampire she’d met who had treated her like something other than a monster. He’d even let her escape, to try and find a way to come to terms with what she was. He’d warned her that should she start killing to create an army of desolate, he would come for her. She knew it wasn’t an idle threat, and was pretty sure she did not want Miles and Church hunting her.
She’d moved north, up through Canada, and kept going until she found small villages, but she didn’t stay anywhere long. A Desolate Royal was almost as strong and fast as a vampire, and healed fast, but sunlight killed them just as quickly, as it did any normal desolate, and there was always a need for her to create desolates to command. A need that grew the more humans were around her.
Over the last two-ish years, Lauren slowly moved east, across the north of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, keeping away from human and vampire populations for longer than necessary. The former of which she was starting to see as food, and the latter of which could smell that she was something “other.” She’d skirted around Hudson Bay through Manitoba and into Ontario. She figured that she’d travel the entire length of the country, stop, and go back the other way, taking a different route. She wasn’t really sure why she was walking, other than a need to keep distracted, keep distant from any human populations, avoid the temptation to feed, to see humanity as her prey.
Miles had told her that every Desolate Royal he’d ever heard of had been a monster in every sense of the word, using their desolate to murder and plunder. Lauren was determined not to become that person. Determined to keep who she was when she’d been human, but it was difficult. She wasn’t human anymore. It was something she was still coming to terms with.
She’d reached Quebec when she’d decided to take a detour to visit Maine. She’d heard the tales, seen the documentaries about what had happened, about the people still living there, and had decided that if there was one place she might feel safe, it was somewhere where the majority of the population were desolate.
The plan was to continue on down through to Quebec City, and on into Maine. She couldn’t function during the daylight hours, so had gotten used to spending nights in caves or disused buildings. The days of a comfortable mattress and Egyptian cotton sheets were seemingly at an end for her.
By the time she’d reached Quebec City, she’d needed to feed. She’d decided soon after her change into Desolate Royalty that she would only kill those who weren’t deserving of their lives. Before hunting, she visited a cheap hotel or motel, showered and changed into whatever clothes she’d managed to acquire and kept in her backpack for such needs. She made herself look something close to how she’d looked when she’d been human. She made sure her multitude of tattoos on her arms were covered, as she didn’t want anyone identifying her by them. Her blonde hair, which had stopped growing after her turn from human to Desolate Royalty, was still at shoulder length, and usually bunched up under a hat or baseball cap, but she allowed it to fall free. She applied makeup, grateful that neither vampires nor Desolate Royalty had a problem with mirrors. Once ready, she went out to a bar, making sure to pick places where there had been a lot of stories about women being drugged. She had a few drinks alone, and usually caught the attention of at least one scumbag.
Lauren picked people who saw a young, pretty woman, alone at a bar, and decided she was someone who could be preyed upon. She let them drug her, let them take her wherever it was they needed to take her, and then she showed them what real fear was. Their screams didn’t last. She fed well. It seemed there was no shortage of scumbags, which she figured was a damning indictment of many things, but she only knew that it was one less piece of shit out there.
Each kill rose as a desolate, and each time she took her new minion out somewhere secluded to practise commanding them, before she had them write a confession of their crimes and send it to the police. The desolate would kill themselves then, their ashes making sure that no one ever found the body.
So far, she’d killed fourteen men this way, and it had unfortunately gotten easier with every kill. She sometimes wondered if one day she’d kill and her humanity would be gone forever. She wondered if she’d even know when it happened.
Lauren moved north from Quebec City, crossing over into Maine next to a small town that she didn’t even bother to remember the name of. She’d watched the guard stationed next to the boundary for two nights before finally deciding they weren’t worth the trouble of concern. No one was expecting a Desolate Queen to move through the forest, evading their human senses with ease.
Once in Maine, she continued on at pace, putting a lot of distance between her and the guards. There were patrols who came into Maine looking to hunt desolate, thinking they could bag themselves a trophy. After easily avoiding the first few of them, Lauren had discovered they were often loud and drunk, and had no idea the real danger they would be in should she decide to show them.
It took her a few days to get down toward Augusta. She couldn’t say why there. But then she wasn’t sure why she felt such a need to come to Maine in the first place.
The closer she got to her destination, the more she was able to feel the hum of power that vibrated through the landscape. There were so many desolate that it practically overpowered her senses to be so close to them all at once. She’d expected Augusta to be teeming with them, practically sardines in a can, but as she’d reached the outskirts of the once vibrant city, looking down on part of it from the vantage point of the nearby rocky cliff, and seen the walls that had been erected around part of it, she saw only a few desolates milling around. She needed a closer look.
She took the long way around the cliff, down into what had once been North Augusta, although it was now little more than a burned-out shell. She continued on, keeping to the shadows, moving at pace through what had been residential and business areas alike. There was little sign of life anywhere; not even small animals called the place their home.
Avoiding the desolate was easy enough, seeing how they weren’t interested in her. It gave Lauren the time to take the occasional detour to look through ramshackle buildings, trying to find anything that might tell her why the town was so full of energy yet there were so few desolate.
After a few hours, she arrived at the Maine State House. It was a large granite building that Lauren assumed had been white at some point, or at least grey, and was now covered in a layer of dust and grime. The local plant life, which had done a wonderful job of reclaiming a lot of the city and covered the front garden and steps of the State House, stopped short of the building itself.
Lauren stopped at the pillars and pulled up part of the flora from the ground, discovering that it had been partially cut, and recently. “Someone is keeping this place tidy,” she said to herself, before dropping the plant and walking up to the front door of the State House.
She pushed the door open, which moved without a sound. Forty years of decay had besieged Maine, yet the State House was well-maintained and looked after. The floor inside the grand foyer was clear of debris, although it was in desperate need of a polish and tidy. Thick dust covered everything, and part of the ceiling had collapsed, showing the floor in plaster, brick, and wood.
Every footstep echoed around the large open area, and the power thrummed inside her chest. She placed her hand against the nearby wall as a gasp left her body. There were so many desolate somewhere nearby. It was overwhelming.
Lauren hurried out of the State House, her body immediately thanking her for it. She looked down across the steps, into the town itself. Something was wrong. She needed to get away from the State House, needed to find out why it felt as though there were so many desolate. Were they all underground, hibernating? If that was the case, how long had they been down there?
A scream suddenly tore through the stillness of the night. She moved quickly down the steps and out onto the street, where there was a second scream.
Lauren found herself walking up to Memorial Bridge, which was still intact, but was also a large stretch of road with no cover and excellent lines of sight on either side. She wondered if the screaming was a way to bring her to them, to set a trap for her. Although she had to admit she had no idea who might want to trap her, or even who might know she was in Maine.
There were cars on the bridge, long since abandoned. Some rusted away to skeletons, leaving jagged pieces of metal frame in their wake. Lauren moved from cover to cover, never staying in one place for longer than necessary as she crossed the bridge. Once at the other side, the smell of blood hit her first, followed by a low growl in her stomach. The desolate were insatiable feeders, and she had wished that trait wasn’t also true of Desolate Queens. Ignoring her stomach, she quickly ran over to a set of trees, moving through them as a third scream froze her in her tracks.
The scream came from a large red-brick building a hundred feet to her right, just beyond the edge of the trees. The smell of blood was strong in the air. She sniffed, but there were no desolates near her, no vampires, no humans. The building was odd in that the windows on the first two floors were still there, and the door looked secure and well taken care of. She got the impression the building was still in use.
Lauren moved cautiously toward the edge of the trees, keeping low, the smell of blood increasing as she followed it along the tree line until she found the dead man. He had been torn apart and partially eaten. She wondered if he’d been the person she’d heard scream. Lauren pushed down the urge to feed on the fresh kill, forcing herself to look away, over at the red-brick building. Whatever was going on, it was happening inside.
She ran over to the door, reached out to the handle, and paused. She wasn’t some trained soldier; she didn’t have the instincts of someone who had fought in a war zone, she was just someone who was strong, fast, and exceptionally difficult to kill. All of that said, she felt as if opening the front door to the place where someone had been screaming was an invitation to trouble.
Lauren pulled her hand back as though she’d been burned. She glanced up and down the street, judging it empty, before her features changed. Her fingers elongated, ending with talons. Her hands and arms grew longer, and her jaw split open around each side of her mouth, allowing it to unhinge. Her ears grew into something resembling that of a wolf, and her eyes turned to a bronze colour, with black pupils like an owl. Her teeth, now piranha-like, were capable of rending flesh from bone. There was no mistaking a Desolate Royal for anything else.
Her talons were sharp enough to puncture the red brick if needed, but her strength was such that she could launch herself up to the first window with ease. Within moments Lauren sat atop the flat roof of the building. She turned back into her human-looking self and strolled across the roof toward the only door there. She tried the handle, but it was locked. A little pressure and the lock snapped loud enough to make her wince. She paused, using her incredible hearing to listen out for anyone or anything inside who might decide to investigate, before she stepped into the dingy stairwell beyond.
Lauren took the stairs down to the first floor, to an emergency fire door, which she pushed open, revealing a large open floor. The windows had all been smashed, and whatever the floor had contained was long gone, leaving only the remnants of wooden desks and rotting carpet. Parts of the concrete floor had holes in it, showing the wiring inside.
Apart from the door Lauren had just entered through, there were three more, one on either side, and another in between them that, after a quick inspection, showed two elevators and a second set of stairs. She checked both doors inside the room, finding that beyond them was a large office, or meeting room, although they were barren, tattered wastelands now.
She went back to the stairwell and took it down to the floor below. She was about to open the door when a scream sounded out from somewhere below her. Lauren decided to find the source of the screaming first, and returned to the stairs, taking them down to the building entrance.
The foyer was as empty as everything else Lauren had found. What had once been a receptionist’s desk had long since collapsed under its own weight and was now just a bunch of rotting wood on the floor. The whole place smelled of rot, mildew, and, more recently, blood.
