Redlaw - 01 by James Lovegrove

public complaint lodged against me. Then, after I’d been pounding the beat a few years, the Sunless began appearing. The population explosion in Eastern Europe. The diaspora. The mysterious deaths and then the first confirmed sightings. They came out of the murk of legend, into the light of reality. In no time, SHADE had been set up and I was one of the first to sign on the dotted line, one of the initial pioneers. I joined because I knew this was what I was meant to do. Sunless were self-evidently evil, unholy, an aberration, an abomination in the sight of God. People of faith were needed to combat them, people who also had some professional experience of the grimier side of life. I fit the bill perfectly.”
    “No argument here.”
    “The Lord had shaped me for this, I understood. He’d been nudging me in this direction all along. There wasn’t a moment of blinding-light epiphany, just the cool, calm realisation that my destiny had arrived. I was a machine. I worked tirelessly from dusk ’til dawn. We unearthed ’Less nests all over the city. We captured when we could, dusted when we couldn’t. I never hesitated, never questioned. I was righteous beyond righteousness.”
    Father Dixon knew all of this already, but it didn’t even occur to him to interrupt and say so. Redlaw needed to vent. Let the man vent.
    “I fought the good fight with all my might,” Redlaw said. “I worked with teams, or with partners, but I never gelled with anyone, and that never really mattered to me. I was happiest and best on my own. Then Sergeant Leary came along.”
    “Róisín. Ah, yes. We all loved Róisín, John. She was—to use my choristers’ favourite adjective—awesome.”
    “Love wasn’t it, Father. I don’t think I even know what love means.”
    “Love is what God feels for you, John, constantly. When you’re least certain of it, that’s when it’s at its strongest.”
    “Perhaps. What I had with Leary, it was pure compatibility. We knew what each other was thinking. Out in the field, we barely had to speak. We were the right hand and left hand of the same body. She had my back, I had hers. We could be up against hordes of ’Lesses, just the two of us, isolated, alone, in deadly danger, and I never for one second was worried because Leary was with me. Between us, together, I knew we’d be fine.”
    “And then she died.”
    “And then she died.”
    “And you weren’t there.”
    “I wasn’t there. Laid low with a case of shingles, of all things. Never had a night off sick before then. Leary was by herself, chasing up a lead—a sighting of a rogue ’Less up in Walthamstow. Turned out the intel was bad; and it wasn’t a single vampire but a whole nest of them, occupying the crypt of a deconsecrated church, of all places. She didn’t stand a prayer. Or at least, she would have stood a prayer if I’d been with her, or someone had been with her. But Leary was as headstrong in her way as I am. I was the only other shady, apart from Commodore Macarthur, she really respected. Certainly the only one she’d work with in the field. So she went it alone that night and the ’Lesses got the jump on her and...”
    Redlaw’s throat felt tight. He had to force the words out.
    “According to the scene-of-incident report, Leary used up two full clips of ammo on them, plus all her stakes. There must have been just too many, though. Dr Wing, in her autopsy, counted at least thirty separate bite marks on the body, from different sets of fangs. Child-sized fangs, what’s more. I reckon that’d be why Leary got caught out. They were child vampires. Compassion got the better of her. That was her one weakness: compassion.”
    Father Dixon cocked his head. “Compassion is a weakness?”
    “For a SHADE officer? Oh, yes. The younger vampires, the kids, you see, they really troubled Leary. She always hesitated over dusting them. She’d say they weren’t to blame for their condition. To which I’d say that most Sunless