by Emma Mills
‘I am. As I said, I’m your best friend, but I liked you better when you were Eva’s best friend too!’
I scraped the tip of my fang along my bottom lip and scowled, thinking.
‘Eva, you need to listen to Jess more. Maybe if you and Daniel had opened up to Jess when you were in London we might have stopped this before it happened. Just think how quickly we sussed out the northern half of the riddle once we were on board?’ she said.
‘That was a fluke!’ Eva said.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ we’ll never know, but the point is that Jess thought of going back and checking out Paulo’s place, and if she hadn’t you wouldn’t have caught those vampires and you’d have an even bigger mess on your hands.’
‘Yes, but she still went charging in and nearly got herself killed. She never listens to me!’ Eva said.
‘I do listen to you and I didn’t just run in there. I waited until I knew you’d not be far behind. I’m sorry, Eva, but I’m not going to wait outside whilst some human girl is being tortured inside,’ I said.
Eva rolled her eyes.
‘So you’re saying that our centuries-old traditions don’t apply to you, that you should be given special Jess only rules? That it doesn’t matter that we are your elders?’ Eva said coolly.
‘No!’ I exclaimed. ‘Not at all, I respect you and Daniel and Sebastian… I’m just asking for a little respect in return. Unlike other newborn vampires who, for almost fifty years, do need to be controlled, directed and watched, I don’t. I’m not like that, you know it… and sometimes my ideas just might be worth listening to. That’s all I want,’ I finished with a sigh.
Eva looked at me.
‘Ten years is nothing, I mean it’s unheard of,’ she said quietly.
‘I know, but the Council trusts me, Daniel trusts me and even Sebastian trusts me, and they have done for years now. Why won’t you?’ I asked.
‘I do, of course I do,’ she muttered. ‘I’m just not used to listening to newborns for crisis advice.' She looked up and suddenly her face broke into a smile.
I smiled back.
‘I have a feeling I am going to need your help with my latest project,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll need both your help.’
‘Oh, pur-lease!’ Sadie drawled from behind Brittany. ‘What is this? A girlfriend ass-kissing session? I thought you were supposed to be Sebastian’s fearsome vampires! And how the hell am I supposed to control myself when I have to live with a fricking human blood bank?’ she said, staring at Brittany, fangs fully extended, her eyes already glazing over.
‘Shit!’ I sighed. ‘Brit, have you got a masking spell you could use?’ I said, darting in between Sadie and my friend.
‘Can’t we just use a muzzle on her?’ Brittany asked.
‘Hmm, Eva, are we allowed muzzles?’ I asked with a smile.
Eva smiled back, the tension between us seeming to have faded, for now. She shook her head.
‘Not unless things get so bad we have to restrain her, and that means you’ve failed, I’m afraid. If it gets to that the Council will step in and she’ll be destroyed.’
‘Hmm! Right then, Sadie, did you hear that? Control yourself, or you’ll end up like the boy. Brit, can you grab me a bottle of the red stuff from the fridge, please?’ I said.
Sadie frowned as I steered her to the table and waited, hanging over her until Brittany brought a mug of warmed blood and handed it to her. The scent wafted up my nostrils and I closed my eyes. I was going to need to feed soon, but I wanted the fresh stuff. She knocked it back in one and licked her lips.
‘More,’ she demanded. ‘That just made me hungrier,’ she said, eyeing Brittany’s jugular.
‘I’ll get it,’ Eva said. ‘Brittany, you go and coerce Daniel into switching over from Sky Sports to the six o’ clock news and call us when the PM comes on. You watch her,’ she added, looking at me with a grim smile.
‘They did feed you in the cells, right?’ I asked Sadie, after she had downed another two blood bags.
She nodded and lazily rubbed her fang with the tip of her tongue, swishing her hair and looking at Daniel as he came into the room.
‘Do you remember when you first woke up, Jess?’ he said. ‘You had about five in a row.’
‘Only three actually,’ I said, frowning as I remembered the confusion, hunger and violent anger that had led me to attack Daniel and rip out a handful of his hair.
‘And another two within the hour,’ Eva added with a grin. ‘Yet even then you had some control. I remember your revulsion when you realised what you were and what it was you were drinking. That’s why I left so soon to talk to Sebastian. We knew something was different with you. But you need to remember Jess, that she…’
‘It’s on!’ Brittany shouted through. ‘It’s coming on, the press conference.’
‘She’s not like you,’ Eva said, nodding towards Sadie. ‘She doesn’t have any control. She doesn’t have any of the humanity you have. She is a pure newborn vampire and her maker is a crazy, ancient vampire on the run. We need to watch her like a hawk,’ Eva said.
I frowned. She didn’t seem that out of control to me.
‘The Council might think you’re the best person to tutor her because you are Sebastian’s newest vampire and can remember what it was like to be turned. They think that because you’re almost the same age as her she’ll listen to you, but she won’t.’
‘I think I know that,’ I said, looking at Sadie’s sullen face.
‘They even think that you have the best powers to control her, but they made a mistake, and it’s not because I don’t think you’re old enough or good enough; it’s because you have never been a monster, Jess. When I was a newborn I murdered a room full of men in the space of about five minutes, but when you were newborn you insisted on feeding from blood bank sachets, even when I found a really cute human boy,’ she said, making me smile.
‘You’re kidding, right? You only drink this stuff?’ Sadie said, sneering at me. ‘Wow, you really are a freak. I mean it’s good and all, but I can tell by the smell of the witch that the real stuff is going to be so-o much better.’
I rolled my eyes at Eva.
‘Are you coming?’ Daniel shouted.
‘Are you finished, Sadie?’ I asked, watching her lick the final drops of her fourth packet and wanting to smack her round the head.
‘For now, unless I can sample some witch blood for dessert?’ she asked, her eyes sparkling.
‘I will get a muzzle if I have to,’ I said as I followed Eva through the hallway. ‘Remember Sadie, I don’t care about you, not one jot, so if you touch my best friend I will happily watch the executioner slice through your pretty little neck. I’ll even give him the oldest, bluntest blade I can find, so the job takes several attempts.’
Eva grinned at me and I smiled back.
‘You sit over there and keep quiet,’ I said, directing Sadie to a chair in the corner of the room. The rest of us piled onto the L-shape sofa that was set up opposite Daniel’s huge flat screen television and waited for the Prime Minister to take his place at the podium. A tall, dark, glamourous woman walked on stage.
‘That’s the aide I told you about,’ Eva said. ‘She’s been helping the council by infiltrating the government departments and smoothing things over.’
‘I know her,’ Sadie said quietly.
We all turned to look at her.
‘What do you mean, you know her?’ Eva asked.
Sadie shrugged.
‘I recognise her. Seen her somewhere…’
I frowned at Eva.
‘Maybe she’s been at the council buildings,’ Daniel said.
‘Was it when you were in the cells, Sadie?’ I asked.
Her eyes flicked to the screen and back to me. She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Maybe!’
Chapter Thirteen
The podium was on a stage in a small, plain room, in front of which was a sea of journalists, their faces all eager to be picked fo
r questions. John Ingleton was in his first term as Prime Minister after being voted in by an angry socialist majority the year before. He already felt too old for the job he had taken on and was regretting ever putting his name forward within his party. This latest mess was just another cover-up in a whole plethora of messes. At least it felt like a cover-up, even though it wasn’t anything more than an elaborate explanation and apology. He stood in the wings, going over his speech, puzzling over his choice of words, and as usual it didn’t feel as if he had thought them up himself, never mind written them.
He could barely remember New Year as it was all a blur of too many bottles of champagne and beautiful bite-sized canapés. He vaguely remembered the quiet that had descended upon the room once the television had been switched on for the New Year countdown. He remembered a blonde woman in a tight red dress screaming and others laughing and wondering how it was done. Everyone came to him. Everyone expected him to have the answers, to know who was behind it, but he didn’t remember. Even now, the memories were fuzzy. The following morning his newest aide had taken him aside and reminded him of the elaborate magic trick the cocky magician had invented to astound the world at New Year. Apparently he had been in on it, they’d had to ask his permission… but he just couldn’t place it. He was almost sixty and his wife assured him it was normal… Not to worry, his aide told him, he’d take care of everything.
John rubbed his eyes and listened to the aide talking to the press, telling them the order of the session and what questions they would be allowed to ask. Vampires! It was ridiculous that he was having to waste his time explaining and apologising to the world for an elaborate New Year hoax. Did these people never watch horror movies? Did they not understand how special effects worked? He sighed and the room went silent. He heard the cameras being shuffled around. He was beckoned on stage. The cameras flashed and the overhead lamps burned down on him.
‘Here’, the aide whispered, pushing a separate sheet in front of his eyes. ‘This speech is the right one. That one doesn’t feel right, does it?’ she smiled at him and he stared back into her eyes. They were so dark he could almost imagine seeing ruby red flecks in them. They were mesmerising and oh, so beautiful. He nodded dreamily and handed her the original sheet, made damp with his sweat.
She moved to his side, placing her hand gently on the curve of his aching back, sending a lightning bolt straight to his groin. He stepped up to the podium, imagining how he was going to call his wife with an excuse and spend a leisurely afternoon coercing Jane, or whatever her name was, down onto her knees, watching as she unbuttoned his flies, and making it worthwhile missing his golfing tournament. Golf, champagne, parties… people were already complaining. He was their socialist leader, but what did they expect? He was the Prime Minister, he earned two hundred thousand a year and got a free house. Did they really expect him to carry on drinking in the tobacco-stained local pub in Hackney? He smiled out at the crowd of hungry journalists and looked down at his new speech.
‘Two nights ago the world witnessed what they thought was an elaborate hoax. An impossible feat of magic planned and performed by none other than our very own street magician, David Dynamite…’
The crowd beneath him murmured uneasily and one man near the back shouted out.
‘Actually it was the other way round mate! We thought it was a vicious murder, and you told us it was a trick!’ The crowd laughed.
‘Who wrote your speech, Ingleton?’
‘Have you been to Specsavers?’ another jeered.
John looked down at his speech and frowned. He didn’t know why they were getting upset. These words seemed perfectly logical to him. They were his words. They filled his head and played on his tongue. They were right!
‘The Governments of the world want you all to believe their lies. They will brainwash you and molly-coddle you like the cattle you have become, to hide the truth… that vampires are real and they are among us!’
The room went silent. There was a commotion near the back of the room. Someone was trying to get to him from the wings of the stage, but was being held back. Jane nudged him and smiled at him.
‘So basically you’re saying that what the BBC showed on TV at midnight is all true? That a vampire jumped from Big Ben, and then another vampire rose from the ground in Hyde Park, bent some iron bars in half and drained a poor man to death?’ a journalist at the front shouted out as the room suddenly came to life once more.
John nodded.
‘Yes, that’s it, and that is why as united human beings we must fight this plague of death. We must seek them out and destroy them, before they destroy us all…’
He felt a fingernail trace its way lazily down his side, Jane’s breath on the back of his neck. He really hoped his wife wasn’t paying too much attention but he could see that the entire backstage area was now a kerfuffle of fighting. He looked across to the other side, confused. What had he said? Everything felt strange… He looked back down at his handwritten words and read ‘vampires’… what? His eyes scanned the page as if he was waking from a nightmare. That wasn’t his speech. He looked out across the sea of angry faces, some laughing openly at him. Had he really read these words? He felt a flush of blood spread up his neck and flood his cheeks.
‘Mm-m,’ Jane whispered in his ear, before her teeth ripped into his throat and his blood pumped out, drenching his clothes as she turned him round and began lapping at the river of blood.
The instant chaos and noise was deafening, frightening, but it lasted mere seconds before John lost consciousness and fell to the floor, landing in a pool of his own blood.
‘Good evening London, the UK, the world,’ Jane addressed the cameras. ‘Allow me to apologise for this interruption into your useless, dull, little lives. You see, this is an intervention. For hundreds, nay thousands of years we have stayed hidden, we have been punished for making mistakes, we have been trampled and oppressed, but no longer. I ask you to show your true colours. Stand with us and help to create a new world…’
She was interrupted later than expected by a member of the Angelic Guard making his way across the stage. His sword swung, missing her chest by mere millimetres. She leapt into the crowd and bulldozed her way through the shell-shocked journalists, snapping the neck of one that got in the way. The door swung open and more angels poured into the room, their swords limited by the sheer amount of journalists scrambling alongside her to get to the exit. She smiled grimly and let herself be swept out, where she disappeared into the screaming crowd.
Chapter Fourteen
‘I thought I recognised her,’ Sadie said, as the video feed finally went black.
‘You!’ I accused. ‘You should have warned us.’
Sadie shrugged and rolled her eyes at me.
‘What do I know? I told you I recognised her. It’s not like we had a girly night in sharing a bottle of wine. I don’t know her!’
‘Where did you see her?’ Eva demanded. ‘I take it that it wasn’t in the cells?’
Sadie shook her head.
‘To be honest, I don’t remember much from… before. Just her face… and the man from New Year… Pierre… what did you call him?’
‘She was with him when he turned you?’ Eva asked.
Sadie nodded thoughtfully.
‘I think so.’
‘They’ve got insiders on the Council then,’ Daniel said quietly, ‘which explains why they are always a little too late to the party.’
‘We should go and help,’ I said. ‘Brittany and I could get down there in an hour…’
‘There’s no point and you need to stay here, with her!’ Eva said, looking over at Sadie who was nonchalantly picking her nails yet obviously listening in.
‘You could always take me with you,’ she said.
‘Ha! You, in a heaving mass of emotional humans? I don’t think so,’ I said.
The television flicked on and the BBC newsroom filled the screen. The newsreaders were listening to the producers in their ear
pieces, their faces both terrified and confused. The female’s eyes were wet with tears and she kept looking at the table as she held her hand over her right ear, listening to the news as it came in.
‘People of the United Kingdom, to those who are just switching on, a new and terrifying world is dawning. It seems that the New Year magic trick was no trick and now we have just received news that both the American President and the French President have been executed, at the exact same time as our own Prime Minister, John Ingleton.’ The woman stopped talking and sobbed. ‘I’m sorry… I have to get home,’ she said quietly, before pushing her chair back and dashing off camera.
The well-loved and recently knighted Alex Simpson watched her leave and turned back to face the camera.
‘Information from the government and armed forces is still coming in, but from seven o’clock tonight both the United Kingdom and the United States will be entering a temporary state of martial law. An order has been issued for a national curfew, whereby any citizen without an exemption will be required to stay indoors after nine pm. However due to reduced daylight hours, we are advising that you stay in after sunset when possible. Exemptions will be handed out by your employer if it is deemed necessary for you to work outside these hours. Public transport will be running at a minimum. There will be no late night buses and all tube and train stations will have a military presence, for your safety. All nightclubs and bars will be temporarily closed for business and local meeting places such as pubs and community halls will have to close at nine pm. There will be no looting and no vigilantism. The police will be supported by our armed forces, and there is a free helpline being set up. The number will scroll along the bottom of your screens at all times. This curfew is to keep all citizens safe until the threat to our nation is quelled. So wherever you are collect your children, find your family and go home. Lock your doors and windows. Close the curtains and stay inside until dawn. Stay tuned to the BBC for further updates throughout the night. We will be here… and won’t be leaving until dawn,’ he added quietly, with a wry smile.