Sunrise trailer Chapter 9

PARIS:

As a couple of young men from la Griffe were helping to load Rayne's body into the back of a small, black Daihatsu van, Mikka took a moment to call Patrick and deliver an update, which was received with sombre optimism. His lover wanted to come straight to Paris but Mikka talked him out of it. The journey to Napoli had already taken more out of PJ McNamara than he cared to admit and Mikka had no desire to see him get sick because he was overdoing things. He promised to ring again in the evening or as soon as there was a change in Rayne's condition.

He then called Dominic Warren, who had been checking out a couple of the other clubs. Warren was understandably elated at the news that the vampire had been found but like Patrick his mood sobered as Mikka relayed the circumstances in more detail.

"You said they were moving him. Where to?" Dominic sounded anxious.

"We have a studio in an old warehouse about a kilometre from the hotel," Mikka told him. "I was going to take him there. We have the space to hide him."

"Do you know where the Institut Curie is?" Warren asked him.

"I think so. South of the river, isn't it? Near the Sorbonne?" Mikka ran a hand through his hair.

The boys had Rayne in the van now and were looking at him expectantly. He held up a hand, asking them silently for five minutes.

"Take him there, I will meet you," Warren said breathlessly. He sounded as if he was on the move.

"I think that maybe Henning was right," Mikka told him as he waved the van driver towards the front of the vehicle and climbed in beside him, scribbling their location down on a piece of paper from his diary and watching distractedly as the young Frenchman programmed it into his sat-nav. "He could be healing himself."

"What makes you think so?" Warren asked him curiously.

"I was just checking on him before they put him the van. His skin feels warmer. I'm sure I am not imagining it."

For a moment Warren said nothing. Mikka could hear him breathing hard and felt his heart stop. He did not like that portentous silence one little bit.

"What?" he asked ominously.

"I've know Rayne Wylde for a lot of years," Dominic Warren said, tersely. "He is never warm. Oh, Bright Lady, this is bad!"

"Bad?" Mikka made a circling gesture with his free hand telling the driver to get a move on. It earned him a dirty look but the youth did at least start the engine.

"What is it?" Mikka asked, when Dominic did not speak right away, feeling real fear now.

"Mikkal, you need to get him to the institut as soon as possible, do you hear me?" the older man's voice instructed in his left ear.

"Why would we...?" Mikka broke off as Warren continued like he had not spoken.

"We need to bring his body temperature right down. Ideally we need a cryonic chamber but a chest freezer would probably do in the short term. He mustn't get any warmer, Mikkal."

"Are you going to explain why?" the Finn asked him irritably.

Again there was a brief silence. The van pulled out into the busy evening traffic and set off towards the river.

"He is beginning to decompose," the vampire expert replied at last, in a slightly strained voice. "That is what you could feel. The heat is a part of the process, his body is breaking down slowly. We need to... to cool him to a degree that kills the bacteria completely. That will stop the rot and maybe we can get him to take blood then. If his body accepts new blood then it may try to heal itself."

"That is more than one maybe," Mikka ventured, sounding worried. "What if none of that works?"

Again Lord Warren was silent but Mikka could hear him struggling for breath as if he was trying not to shed tears.

"He will die?" Mikka felt the quiver at the edge of his own voice as he asked the question. He and Wylde had not always seen eye to eye but the news of his death would destroy Patrick and he could not bear that.

"He is already dead, Mikkal. If we cannot get his body to heal naturally, in a little more than a couple of days he will be bones and a few scraps of dried flesh, nothing more." Warren took a long, determined breath. "I never believed I would live to see this."

"Where would we get the blood from?" Mikka asked practically. "And how do we get him to drink it if he can't even swallow?"

"That bit is easy enough," Dominic said more decisively. "There is matched blood in an ice box at the Institut Curie. I have a friend who works there," he added pre-empting the next question. "The important thing is to stop the decay first. Then we can try and revive him. If we can get his body to heal naturally it will combat the decomposition without our help."

"And if it can't?" Mikka sounded doubtful.

"Then we will have to be resourceful and think of something else." Dominic's tone of voice now defied arguments. Wisely Mikka kept his mouth shut on the myriad reasons why this was already a lost cause. The van took a corner on two wheels and he grabbed at one of the door handles and glared at the driver but did not say anything at all.


Warren was already at the Institut by the time the van had fought its way down a narrow Parisian back road beyond the Parthenon. He was waiting outside the modern multistory block of the Hospital with a man in a green smock and they waved Mikka's driver through to the back of the building right away.

Within minutes the black bodybag was on a gurney and they were in an elevator on their way into the heart of the facility. Dominic was already conversing in urgent French with the dark, handsome, Arabic-looking fellow in doctor's scrubs. The van driver had departed without a word or a backward look, only happy to get the task over with.

Mikka felt suddenly superfluous as Lord Warren took over, handling the situation as smoothly as a born diplomat. His French was fast and very good. If the doctor was at all bemused by anything Warren was telling him it did not show on his face. In fact nothing showed up in his expression at all until they had the bodybag on the table and he slowly unzipped it. Even Mikka understood without needing a translation.

"Il est mort, totalement," the doctor said, without even a cursory application of the stethoscope.

Dominic said something rapid and soothing and the young doctor looked at him with raised eyebrows. Lord Warren kept talking as his medical companion continued his cursory examination of the corpse. The look of incredulity did not leave the young man's face but nor did he stop what he was doing; carefully lifting Rayne's hands and moving his fingers to assess the state of his body, then investigating the wounds on his torso.

"How long did Szarbo reckon he'd been down?" Dominic asked quietly in English and it took Mikka a couple of seconds to realise that the question was aimed at him.

"Ummm... since the night before last," he said awkwardly.

Dominic translated and the doctor looked at them both again, eyebrows raised. He shook his head a couple of times. At once Dominic was arguing with him; not violently but in a relentless, soothing tone that was designed to be persuasive in any tongue. Mikka let a humourless smile twitch the corners of his mouth as he watched the doctor fall to that beguiling manner.

He still wore an expression of disbelief as he turned away to make some arrangements but Dominic looked satisfied and Mikka asked; "Will he help?"

"I think so. This is a scientific research hospital, how could he resist something like this? A genuine vampire on his operating table? How many scientists would kill for the chance to examine one of the Undead?" Dominic flashed a tight smile.

"And what happens next? Will they ever let him go, even if he does revive?" Mikka asked sceptically.

"We'll cross that bridge once we've saved his Unlife," Warren said tersely. "For now, we let them get on with the serious business. They have the facilities here to freeze him and kill the bacteria that is making him… warm. When he comes out of the cryo-chamber they can thaw him gently and start the transfusions. Then we see if we can start his heart."

"And if we can't?" Mikka asked, still unconvinced.

"We will," Dominic insisted. "If these guys can't do it, no one can."


RAYNE:

It was a different kind of cold that he was experiencing now. Suddenly the darkness was not so intense but the cold was like millions of tiny knives sliding into his veins. It numbed everything, leaving him feeling drowsy and distant. Maybe this was it, the end of everything, at last. All his hopes, all his desperate desires were slowly fading, as if they had been mothballed; wrapped up in bubble wrap and put away one by one. The pain was sliding away, replaced by the peculiar pricking in his blood that seemed to be spreading right through his body.

No more pain. No more worry. No more tears or laughter. He would not be needing them any more. Nothing he could do about it now.

Nothing.

It would be nice to sleep. To stop.