The Cross. Scott G. Mariani

Stone’s superiors, and the masterminds behind this whole thing, are the Übervampyr,’ Alex said.

      The words seemed to suck all the air out of the room. There was a long, bewildered silence.

      Nathaniel Creasy gasped. ‘But they don’t . . . really . . .’

      ‘. . . exist?’ Jarvis Jackson finished uncertainly.

      ‘The Über-what?’ Gibson said, looking confused.

      Olympia slammed her fist on her desk, making the webcam shake. ‘Hearsay!’ she shouted. ‘You foolish child. Stone was just playing games with you, in order to frighten you. You will not believe these dangerous lies, nor will I allow you to promulgate them among your colleagues. Did you even see any of these alleged superiors of his?’

      ‘No,’ Alex said. ‘You know I didn’t. You were there in Romania.’

      The Supremo’s face was quickly darkening to a shade of deep crimson. ‘Of course you didn’t,’ she screeched, the power of her voice overloading the monitor’s speakers. ‘Because the Übervampyr are a figment of myth and folklore. Hocuspocus and bogeyman tales from an age of superstition that has thankfully long since been abandoned in our modern, enlightened era.’

      ‘Like the myth of the cross of Ardaich?’ Alex said.

      ‘The cross that is now destroyed,’ Olympia spat. ‘It has been consigned to history where it belongs. As if it had never existed.’

      ‘If it had never existed,’ Alex replied, ‘your head would be in a basket about now, alongside the heads of the other Supremos Stone guillotined on the battlements. Or have you forgotten already?’

      ‘Enough!’ Olympia shrieked. ‘One more word from you, Bishop, and I will have you incarcerated and terminated as a traitor to the Federation.’

      ‘Ma’am,’ Kelby protested, getting to his feet. ‘With all due respect, Alex Bishop is no traitor. I believe she’s proved that enough times.’

      Olympia glowered from the screen. She raised a finger. ‘This discussion is over,’ she seethed. ‘What you have heard today is not to leave this room. On pain of extermination. Is that absolutely clear to every single one of you?’

      A rapid round of nods and ‘Yes, Ma’am’s around the table. Several of the vampires rose from their seats, looking disapprovingly at Alex.

      ‘And as for you, Bishop,’ Olympia said, ‘you are hereby demoted back to your former rank of field agent.’

      Kelby rolled his eyes. Here we go again, his expression said.

      ‘I can’t be demoted,’ Alex said, ‘because I never accepted the position in the first place. I won’t have anything to do with putting spy cameras in the homes of Federation members. It isn’t right.’

      ‘Silence!’ Olympia shrieked even more loudly. ‘Count yourself lucky that I do not – for now – sanction your immediate termination.’ She turned to Gibson. ‘Commander Gibson, you are henceforth placed in charge of the special task force.’

      Gibson’s face lit up.

      Olympia clapped her hands sharply. ‘This conference is now officially concluded.’

      The screen went dark.

       Chapter Ten

       Cell 282, Blackheath High Security Prison North York Moor, 15 miles south of Middlesbrough 1.09 a.m.

      The only sounds Denny Morgan could hear as he lay in his bunk that night were the soft, rhythmic snores coming from Pete Tulleth in the bunk beneath him, and the tramp of the guards’ footsteps patrolling the corridors on the other side of the thick steel door. The cell was pitch black, except for the little barred square of dim moonlight from the single window.

      Denny was still and his eyes were shut, but he was wide awake and his mind consumed by a state of furious brooding, unable to shut out the thoughts that had occupied him over the last few days.

      Denny Morgan was a guy who knew what he liked: and he liked things always the same. Back when he’d been a free man, it had always been the same beer drunk with the same mates in the same pub, with the same tracks playing on the jukebox; the same Tandoori chicken dish from the same Indian take-away every Wednesday night; the same steak and chips on a Friday. That had always been his way, deriving comfort from routine, invariably bristling with resistance to change of any kind. So much so that, when his wife Mandy had come home one day with the long blond hair she’d had since the age of eighteen unexpectedly, shockingly cropped and dyed black, Denny had – quite justifiably, as far as he was concerned – beaten her to death with an empty beer bottle: Newcastle Brown Ale, his favourite.

      Denny’s preference for a steady routine had adapted itself well to the prison life he’d now been living for eight years; and for the last two of those years, he’d shared cell 282 with a pair of other inmates he got along well with. Pete Tulleth was given to unbelievably malodorous bouts of flatulence, though he made up for it with his inexhaustible supply of jokes. Kev Doyle was a sombre and pensive man, didn’t say too much, but you could trust him with anything. Both of them steady, dependable blokes. For the last couple of years, Denny had been pretty content with the way things were.

      Until the recent arrival of the cell’s fourth occupant had changed everything.

      As infuriating and unacceptable as Denny considered it, it wasn’t just the violation of the established regime in cell 282 that he objected to most vehemently – it was the fact that, as both Pete and Kev concurred, this new guy whose presence had been imposed on them was a real fucking weirdo.

      Denny opened his eyes and rolled his head to the left across the thin pillow. Eight feet away on the other side of the cell, the new guy was lying completely still on the opposite top bunk, with his HM Prison Service regulation bedclothes draped over him from head to toe, so all that could be seen was his silhouette in the dim moonlight. Denny could make out the shape of his hands crossed diagonally across his chest, palms flat over his shoulders.

      The mad bastard had been lying like that all day. Never seemed to move. He didn’t speak, didn’t get up to take a piss, didn’t snore, barely even seemed to be breathing. It was like sharing a cell with a fucking reanimated corpse.

      All that the other inmates of Blackheath knew about the new occupant of cell 282 was what they’d gleaned from the papers and the TV in the rec room, which was a fair amount. His murderous sword attack on the little parish church in Cornwall had been so widely reported by a scandalised British media that even the guys banged up in solitary confinement knew about it. Many of the inmates who were committed Christians, especially those who’d turned to religion in prison as a way of dealing with their past sins, were angry about the new guy. This ‘Ash’, this self-proclaimed ‘vampire’, with his fucked-up filed teeth and his strange ways, was neither liked nor trusted.

      Denny Morgan was no Christian, but he was no less pissed off with the new arrival, and even more irate with the prison governors for having picked this, of all cells, to dump him in. Why did they have to put him in with us? he thought angrily to himself, glowering hard at the opposite bunk as if he could project his rage by telepathy. The shape under the covers didn’t flicker. Denny whispered it out loud: ‘Why did they have to put you in with us, eh, you fucking fucker?’

      Nothing. The body on the opposite bunk remained deathly still.

      What kind of a stupid name was ‘Ash’, anyway?

      ‘Fucking shithead weirdo,’ Denny muttered. ‘Vampire my arse.’ And closed his eyes again.

      After a few minutes, his brooding indignation finally started to give way to sleepiness. His body relaxed into the bunk’s mattress, and his breathing fell into a soft and shallow rhythm. The corners of his mouth twitched as he slept. In his dreams, he was walking into his garage back