Paper Children (Phoebe Harkness Book 3)

by James Fahy

  Dreaming of soapy water as I shuffled towards the lounge, I suddenly paused, hand reaching for the light switch. The light in my bedroom was already on, spilling out of the doorway which stood ajar onto the dark hallway carpet. I was certain I hadn’t left it on when I’d left this morning.

  I don’t own a gun. Not too long ago I shot a man dead. He was a bad man, and it was either him or two thirds of the city, but that didn’t make me feel any better about it. I had taken a human life and that didn’t sit well with me. It probably never would. So guns made me nervous. I knew the spiel. ‘Guns don’t kill. People do!’. But I had to disagree to some point. Say what you will, but the gun definitely helps. Shouting ‘bang!’ at someone isn’t nearly as deadly.

  I’m not completely clueless however. Many things in my city bump in the night, and I live alone, so in concession I own a Taser. It sat in my bag, still slung over my shoulder as I crept towards my bedroom.

  Opting for surprise rather than sneaking, I flung the door open and stepped in quickly, my eyes scanning the room. I’m not really sure what I expected. Human thieves going through my belongings, or a grinning devil creature with a too-wide grin, ready to pounce on me and eat my soul. It was a coin-flip either way.

  What I wasn’t expecting was to see Dove, the steward of Sanctum on my bed. Not only on my bed, but tied to it, his wrists handcuffed above his head as he reclined. Nor was I expecting to see quite so very much of Dove. Much more of him than I’d seen when last we’d met at the club.

  My mind went blank.

  Well, to be honest, it went a few other places first, like a pinball machine, but for the sake of retaining any modesty I’ll skip over that and just agree that it settled fairly swiftly on blank.

  I don’t know what was the most confusing part about finding an uninvited and extremely naked vampire tied to my bed, sparing blushes only by a crumpled corner of artfully draped silk sheets. The naked vampire himself, pale as purest chalk in the moonlight? The fact that he was handcuffed, something I’m almost certain I would have remembered doing had I been responsible, or the silk sheets themselves.

  On my salary, I certainly didn’t own any silk bedding. My life wasn’t a Jackie Collins novel. This could only imply he had brought them with him, which filled me in equal measure with anger at his arrogance and a grudging admiration at his dedication to scene-setting. I entered the room slowly, reaching for the Taser in my bag as casually as I could manage. I forced a smile, as though vampires broke into my apartment and lashed themselves to my bed all the time… no biggie.

  “Hello again, Dove,” I kept my voice light. “Most people go for coffee first you know, traditionally. Before surprise bondage.”

  Dove stared up at me playfully, head tilted on his shoulder, his pale eyes catching the moonlight like chips of mica beneath his cherubic flop of yellow hair.

  “This isn’t what it seems,” he said, looking more amused than concerned. “This… is probably going to take some explaining.”

  “You have about five seconds to get on with it then,” I said in as friendly a voice as I could manage. “You break into my house, help yourself to my bed and truss up like a piñata? I didn’t order any vampire-flavoured candy, but I will get a bat if I have to.”

  “No… I mean to say… you’re not seeing things clearly,” Dove blinked lazily at me.

  “I think it’s you who is unclear on things, mister,” I replied, trying to keep the shaky surprise out of my voice. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing here, or what kind of person you think I am, but I’m certainly not one of your swooning Helsing fangirls. Maybe they would find this erotic or seductive, but from where I’m standing, you broke into my house and now I may have to burn that bed.” Anger was winning through now. “How did you even know where I live? And what… the actual hell… are you doing here?”

  “I’m trapped,” he replied, seemingly oblivious to how angry I was. “Don’t you notice anything? They’re keeping me here.”

  I glanced at his bound hands. “You tied yourself up. And no-one is keeping you here. No one even invited you here! You have about two seconds to start making sense.” I pulled out the Taser. “Or I’m going to introduce my little friend here…” I waggled it in the direction of his spread legs and artfully-covered lap. “…To your little friend there. I don’t care who you are or think you are. I’m not a fang banger.”

  “Not even for your dear Allesandro?” Dove asked, his eyes narrowing with genuine curiosity. My face burned with embarrassment and outrage.

  “I don’t… I don’t have a ‘dear’ anyone,” I spluttered. “And if I did, it would be none of your business. You think you can hook up while he’s out of town? Is that it?”

  “Out of town?” Dove frowned, and a strange thing happened. For a second, his face seemed to blur, just slightly, as though my eyes couldn’t focus properly. I blinked, taken off guard, and took a hesitant step back. His voice had been ever so slightly out of sync with the movement of his mouth. It was disconcerting. The way a movie on the DataStream would occasionally glitch, the images and the audio falling out of synchronicity by half a second.

  Dove stretched, arching his back like a lazy cat in a way that did decidedly interesting things to his bound arms and shoulders. “I get it now, that’s what they’re saying.” He nodded, his blonde hair flopping over one eye. He seemed to be talking to himself. His lips curled up in a half smile that was almost entirely sarcasm. The expression was so familiar to me. “Listen, I can’t keep this up for long-”

  “Allesandro has never said that to me.” I couldn’t resist, no matter how childish.

  His pale eyes flicked up to mine. “I’m serious, this is harder than it looks.”

  I actually snorted before I could stop myself. “Sorry,” I mumbled, my free hand covering my mouth. It hadn’t been that funny but I was nervous and confused and apparently channelling Frankie Howerd in self-defence.

  “What I’m trying to say… it’s difficult… being here, in your head. I don’t have the energy, and they’re…” He shook his head and once again his face seemed to blur, as though I were only glancing at him out of the corner of my eye. “…They’re interfering, with what I’m trying to make you see. God damn it!” He sounded frustrated, “It’s not easy, I can barely see you. You’re so far away.”

  My hand holding the Taser had slowly dropped to my side as I listened to him. My other hand came away from my mouth.

  “Dove?” I questioned. My head had been hurting since I got home and shut the door, but here in this room, it was pounding in my temples. I had assumed it was just shock or anger. Anyone could be forgiven for having something of an angry head rush to find a strange vampire invading their home and making themselves… well… not comfortable exactly.

  But now I focussed on it, there was a deep hum inside my head. I felt sudden wetness on my top lip. Startled, I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, and it came away bloody.

  I stared back at the vampire on the bed, eyes wide.

  “Listen to me,” Dove said, his face still sliding in and out of focus. “It’s in his head. They’re using you. They’re using you like they’re using me. But I can’t fight back anymore, they’ve taken too much. And I’m not as strong now. Can’t… show you.”

  For a moment his hair seemed to fall into shadow and darken, he shook it violently, as though struggling with himself.

  My mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  “There’s more than one taken,” Dove said, grunting as he struggled against the bonds which held him. “We’re encrypted. Find them… and me. Find Seraph.”

  More than one what? I wanted to ask. But even as I stared at the vampire I became aware with dawning horror that there were other figures in the room with us. We were not alone here. Lurking in the shadows in every corner of my bedroom, hovering just at the edge of my peripheral vision, there was movement. Not where I was directly looking, but everywhere else, I sensed… entities. Small and dark.
Child-sized. More than a dozen. Chills ran up my spine. My eyes were locked to the vampire on the bed. I didn’t want to look around. I was seized with a sudden, chilling fear, a certainty, that if I acknowledged the shapes in the room, milling around like small shadows, watching me… if I dared to look directly at them, something terrible would happen. I didn’t know what. It was a primal certainty. A fear deep in the instinctual part of my brain. The same conviction that every small child has, that to look directly into the open closet at night, when you know the bogeyman is staring out at you, will bring him rushing out to take you. Just don’t look. The same childish terror kept my eyes trained on the vampire in the bed. My feet felt rooted to the spot. Goosebumps rising all over my body.

  “Am I… dreaming?” I whispered, my knuckles white against the Taser. Blood roared in my ears, the pressure in my head had not faded.

  “You’re awake,” the vampire said, his voice a little strained. “I’m trying to show you, but I’m out of time, and I can’t make it clear.” Even though his body was only steps in front of me, his voice had changed. It seemed to be coming from further away. “Find Seraph, and look out behind you. It’s watching you.”

  His face and body both blurred this time and, for a fraction of a second, it was someone else.

  I finally made myself say it.

  “Allesandro?” I whispered.

  My voice seemed to break a magic spell. For a split second the image of Dove was gone, replaced with Allesandro, as though the two images had been laid over one another. He was still bound to the bed, but his dark hair was soaked to his head with sweat, and his face was a mask of blood. I jerked backwards, shocked. The many small shapes in the shadows stirring at my movement.

  My blood froze. There was something standing directly behind me. My stumbling backwards had almost sent me colliding into it. Whatever it was, it was large and dark, looming over me. I could feel its breath on my neck and it smelled like old death and burning meat, a brittle, cloying scent, sweet and putrescent, smoky and sharp. I steeled myself to turn and face it, my heart pounding in my ribcage. I already imagined a wide grin from ear-to-ear, a mad rictus reaching too close to cheekbones either side, and bright, wild eyes staring down at me in the gloom of the bedroom.

  “Phoebe,” Allesandro said sharply, making my eyes dart back to the bed, but he, or Dove, or whatever the vision had been, had gone.

  I gasped, letting out a shuddering breath.

  The bed was empty. It was neatly made, the covers unrumpled, the pillows in line. Perfectly ordinary. Blood dripped over my lip and onto my chin as the high buzzing in my head increased. Not out loud this time, but in my mind, I heard my vampire’s voice muffled and far away. I could barely make out what he said, but it sounded like “the door is encrypted. The prison.”

  The shadowy child-things were gone too, as instantly absent from my bedroom as the bound vampire I had seen, but the heavy presence behind me remained. Indeed, it seemed to have grown stronger, larger, becoming a wall of solid malevolence and menace, pressing down on my back like a storm front. It fell as though the devil himself was standing over my shoulder. I stared at the bed, paralysed by fear, I didn’t want to see it. A cold wash of pure fear seeped through the room, chilling my core.

  I felt the thing, the intruder, lean forward, its face very close to the back of my head. And then it made a noise, a high, girlish giggle, a sound of such nerve-jangling coldness and mad glee that bile rose in my throat.

  I forced myself to spin, bringing the Taser up in an arc, fighting the urge to pee myself in fright.

  It met empty air. There was nothing behind me.

  Breathing hard, I stared around, my eyes darting frantically around my bedroom. My heart was in my throat.

  I was alone. Alone in my perfectly normal bedroom. No tied up vampires, no shadowy goblins, no demon. Just me. Hallucinating wildly and bleeding from the nose.

  I stood there for several minutes, until my breathing had calmed down and the pain in my head finally subsided.

  When I felt I could move without my legs giving way, I went to the front door and locked myself in. Deadbolts and chains too. My hands were still shaking and there was cold sweat beading on my forehead. I did a cautious circuit of my flat. It was empty, no intruders, no ghosts, nothing out of place. I turned on every light in every room. Just to be sure.

  I picked up my phone and stared at it for a while until my nerves calmed.

  Eventually I put it down again. Who on earth was I going to call? Griff? Lucy? Dee? And tell them what? Hey guys, sorry if I woke you. I just had a psychotic breakdown in my apartment. Been chatting with a vampire I haven’t seen in months. Oh yes, and he looked like that new vampire I met, and did I mention Satan himself was there too?

  Any one of them would be around here in a heartbeat, probably with meds… or restraints.

  Hesitantly I flicked through my phone until I found Allesandro’s number. He had given me a business card once with it on. I’d never put it in my phone until Coldwater had officially made me GO Liaison, and Cloves had ordered me to. We needed reliable connections in the underworld of the GO scene.

  Reliable. I scoffed inwardly at the word.

  I’d never called him, not once. Not even when he’d disappeared after that business with the Tribals, without bothering to say goodbye or when he’d be back.

  Who else did I have to call though? After a moment’s deliberation, I hit dial and waited. It rang for a while, the dial tone the only noise filling my ear in the silent apartment.

  Despite myself, I desperately wanted him to pick up. Instead, a slightly robotic female voice eventually informed me that ‘the person you are calling cannot be reached.’

  “No shit,” I mumbled aloud to myself, hanging up. I dropped the phone on the sofa. “Not by telephone, anyway.”

  Wiping the crusted blood from the back of my hand, I headed for the shower. I had more to wash away tonight than the stench of the dead.

  Chapter 10

  My mind must have been full of thoughts of biblical monsters because, when I was awoken by the rude and insistent ringing of my phone in the bright morning light and my half-asleep mind registered Cloves barking something about Paradise quaking, I immediately thought of John Milton.

  “Whaaa?” I garbled sleepily, rolling over in the crumpled mess of my bedsheets and shielding my eyes from the October sunshine burning through the gap in the curtains. “Paradise is what? Stop shouting.”

  Had there been another apocalypse? My imagination filled with images of angels and demons fighting in the skies over New Oxford with flaming swords and spears. A William Blake painting come to life, only interspersed with military helicopters and Cabal drones swooping between the feathered wings.

  “Wake up!” Cloves’ metallic voice snapped down the line, making me hold the phone painfully away from my ear. “Paradise and Quaking! Get here now. There’s been another incident. I need you on scene.”

  I sat up in bed sharply, pushing my hair messily out of my eyes. “Another vampire killing?”

  “No,” she hissed, lowering her voice. “Another child has been taken. I’ve sent a car for you. Hurry for fuck’s sake. Coldwater herself is coming down.”

  *

  Paradise Street is in what we call the South Ward here in New Oxford. It runs alongside the Castle Mill Stream, a river right by the remains of Oxford Castle. There has been a castle in the heart of Oxford City since well before the war, dating back to Saxon times in fact. Most of it was destroyed long ago, but one tower still stands, ancient and square. Of course, the city has grown up around it. What ancient stonework remains today is surrounded now by the modern buildings and houses which run cheek to cheek right up to the river’s edge. Behind the tower of the castle itself rises Castle Mound. A tall bare hill in the middle of the city, steep and conical, with a few scattered trees on top. Both the tower and the mound are said to be haunted. Back in the day, prisoners executed in the castle grounds would often be strung up i
n the trees on the mound for others to view. Many were hanged there. It’s only natural for such a place to get a spooky reputation. These days in New Oxford, the hill of Castle Mound has a smattering of homeless people permanently camped on it, a small shanty-town community of the disenfranchised, and the occasional wandering Tribal skirting between the hill, tower and riverbanks. But there was hardly any supernatural trouble in that area of the city.

  Until today.

  My Cabal escort car dropped me off where the wide and quiet sweep of Paradise Street joined Quaking, a bridge which connected it to the other bank of Castle Mill Stream. I could see the hill of the Mound rising behind the riverfront houses, misty in the early morning light. The castle tower itself jutted out behind the rooftops, a fat crumbling thumb of stone spiking high into the air. Cloves was waiting for me on the short Quaking Bridge, with four Cabal Ghost agents flanking her, looking around in all directions in their crisp grey suits and hokey mirrored sunglasses. Cloves herself was dressed in a billowing white pashmina over a pearl suit and spike heels. Her jet black bob of severely angled hair made her head look as if it were floating above a white cloud. She had large winged sunglasses clipped to her face, shielding against the bright autumn sunshine. It might have been bright, but the air was chilly and I pulled my coat tight around me as I made my way over to her from the car.

  “I’ve closed the road, this section, anyway,” Cloves said, skipping pleasantries. “Emergency roadworks to fix a gas leak. That’s the official story we’re running with. But not for long, any major delay will bring undue attention. The last thing we need is more press.”

  “Another child was taken,” I prompted her, stamping my feet in the cold. “From here?” I glanced around, up and down the river in both directions and at the many houses jutting out over the bank. Most of them still had blinds and curtains drawn. It was early still.

  “No, from her house,” Cloves nodded toward the city behind me. “Over in Portmeadow. The family contacted Cabal last night. Frantic.”