Redlaw - 01 Read Online Free PDF Page A

unpredictably. It might cower, but equally it might go on the offensive. Redlaw wished to avoid further violence tonight if possible. He definitely didn’t want to be obliged to dust a Sunless and then have a score or more of them come down on him, alerted by the gunshot, screaming vengeance.
    The corridor dead-ended. Redlaw began to retrace his footsteps, accepting that the man he’d been chasing was lost to him.
    When he reached the lobby, he halted.
    Had to.
    It was full of vampires, blocking his path to the exit.
    They’d been waiting for him.
     
    Redlaw didn’t have time to count heads. Seven, maybe eight, maybe more. He straight away dropped to one knee, Cindermaker levelled. His free hand went to his vest, unclipping an aqua sancta grenade.
    But the Sunless swarmed him, a wave of swift shadows. He felt claws and the rough, clammy touch of dead skin. His Cindermaker was slammed from his grasp. He threw the grenade, but he hadn’t had a chance to pull the pin beforehand. Its explosive not primed, the device was just a ball of near unbreakable Perspex which bounced harmlessly off a vampire’s shoulder and rolled away into a corner, priest-blessed holy water sloshing inside.
    His attackers pinned him up against a wall. One of them yanked off his night vision goggles, leaving him in darkness, benighted. Redlaw squirmed, struggled, but he knew it was useless.
    Foolish old man. Careless. Overconfident .
    “Make it quick,” he told the Sunless. “All of you at once.”
    That was the best he could hope for, under the circumstances. Multiple bites, simultaneous draining, and a relatively speedy escape to his eternal reward. The vampires could stretch the process out, if they were in the mood. Take it in turns, tap off a little at a time from the jugular, keep their victim lingering half faint with blood loss, hovering in a continuum of nausea and pain that could last up to three hours and no doubt feel like forever. If Redlaw was lucky, this lot would go for all his major veins and arteries as a pack, and it would take less than five minutes. If he was lucky.
    “No,” said a voice from the dark. “I don’t think that will be happening.”
    It was a woman’s voice, East European accent—Albanian?—with the usual slight sibilant lisp that came with having sharp fangs instead of teeth, the usual slurring of the dental consonants. It was, too, a surprisingly mellifluous voice, far from the harsh, grating growl that usually issued from a Sunless throat.
    “Redlaw, is it not?”
    “You have me at a disadvantage,” Redlaw said. “You can see me, I can’t see you. Who are you?”
    “Yes, without those goggles of yours you’re blind as a bat in the dark. Whereas we see as clearly as if it were day.”
    “Why not give them back? Let’s level the playing field.”
    “I think not, old bean.”
    Old bean? “Then I’ll ask again: who are you?”
    “I’m...” A soft laugh. “Well, at this precise moment you might call me your saviour.”
    “I have only one Saviour,” Redlaw said, “and He isn’t you.”
    “Ah, faith,” the owner of the voice said, drawing closer. “Is that still an essential requirement for SHADE recruitment? Or have they done away with it, along with the minimum height restriction?”
    “If it isn’t still essential, it ought to be.”
    “For, without faith, those crucifixes and those stars of David and all the other religious tokens you people wear won’t work, will they? They’re just so much tawdry costume jewellery.”
    “If it makes you happy pouring scorn on my beliefs, ’Less, then go ahead. Far greater men than me have suffered far worse persecution in the name of God. It would save everyone a lot of hassle, though, myself included, if you simply got on with the bloodletting.”
    “Eager to sit at the right hand of the Lord, eh, shady? Heaven can’t wait, is that it?”
    “Spare me the cheap jokes.”
    “You are John Redlaw.” The Sunless woman was talking almost