by Emma Mills
‘Maybe you should talk to him,’ Brittany mused.
‘You spoke to him yesterday,’ I said. ‘That obviously didn’t help.’
‘Yes, but I’m not a vampire, am I?’ she said. ‘Green eyes, remember?’
‘Hello? And what colour are mine?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but the ironic thing is you actually are a vampire and he has noticed that you haven’t aged… so put your vampy contacts in and go chat him up. Prove that you’re okay in the sunshine…’
‘Hmm, I suppose it’s not a bad idea,’ I mused.
I put the contact lenses in that I’d had specially made to mimic a vampire’s almost black, ruby-flecked eyes. They were useful for the occasions when I wanted other vampires, who didn’t know what I was, to think I was one of them.
‘Hi,’ I said to the neighbour, stepping outside and standing on our drive in the bright winter sun. ‘Isn’t it a beautiful day?’
The neighbour stood staring at me, his mouth opening and closing slightly, giving him a fish-like appearance.
‘I was thinking about what Daniel told me… about your suspicions… and I have to say I don’t blame you,’ I paused.
‘You don’t?’ he looked suspicious. ‘My flat-mates all think I’ve lost it.’
That will be the spell, I thought, feeling sorry for him.
I smiled at him, making sure to open my lips, giving him a flash of perfect human-looking teeth.
‘No, I totally get it. I mean we’ve lived next door for years and never really spoken. I don’t even know your name,’ I said with a laugh. ‘I’m Jess.’
I walked onto the pavement and stuck out my hand. He took it tentatively.
‘I’m Rob,’ he said.
‘A med student, right?’
He nodded.
‘I’m guessing it’s not an ideal time to be a med student, what with the recent news?’
‘It’s all gone to shit. No-one knows what to tell us,’ he said.
‘Well, have you studied cosmetic surgery yet?’ I asked.
‘A little… the basics…’
‘So what do you think?’ I asked, tilting my face into the sun, towards him.
‘Oh! But why? I mean, you’re so young,’ he said. His face had suddenly lifted but I could see he was still suspicious.
I shrugged.
‘My face makes me money so it’s worth spending money on keeping it looking great.’ I grinned and flicked my hair, feeling slightly sick inside.
‘You’re a model? Are you all models?’
I nodded, unable to speak the lies any longer. Daniel would kill me if he knew, but it helped explain our perfect appearances and the fact that there was one guy living with three, sometimes four, girls.
‘I have to go. It’s chilly out here,’ I said. ‘I just saw you and thought I’d introduce myself.’
He smiled a wide, trusting smile and I felt even worse.
‘I’m glad you did. You should come round for drinks one night,’ he said.
I gave him a little wave and walked back up the path into the house.
‘Oh god!’ I groaned, sinking back into the sofa and placing the palms of my hands over my eyes.
‘What? It looked like it went great. He didn’t take his eyes off your arse once when you walked back to the house,’ Brittany grinned.
I sighed.
‘I told him we were models… all of us,’ I said.
‘Even Daniel?’ Brittany asked, laughing.
I nodded.
‘It seemed the most likely cover story.’
‘He’s going to kill you,’ she said. ‘I so want to be here when you tell him. Actually, can I tell him?’
‘No!’ I said, feeling glum.
‘Jess, it was necessary. Another nightclub and six privately owned homes in London were burned down last night, because all of them were thought to be connected to vampires. They didn’t even have any proof. The police say they are following leads but it’s obvious they don’t really care.’
‘Who doesn’t really care?’ Eva said, as she and Daniel walked into the room.
‘The police, about catching the people that burnt the houses down.’ I said. ‘Were they vampire properties?’
‘Two of them were, the ones with bodies inside weren’t… that’s the stupid thing,’ Daniel said. ‘They’ll never win this, not against vampires.’
‘He is quite pretty,’ Brittany said, her lips widening into a huge grin.
Daniel frowned and looked between us as Sadie smirked.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘Jess has sorted the neighbour problem so we don’t have to worry about lynch mobs,’ Sadie said.
‘Oh well done… did he come round again?’
I nodded. ‘He was here this morning as usual. I felt sorry for him actually because he said that all his flat-mates thought he was crazy, obviously because every time he goes back in the house to tell them he doesn’t even believe it himself.’
’So what have you told him, to stop the stalking?’ Eva said.
‘The only thing that would make sense… that this is a models’ house…’
‘Oh cool, yeah, good idea! I always fancied being a supermodel. Tried it a couple of times, but couldn’t be bothered with all that standing around, and I had to turn down too many jobs in hot locations, so my agent got annoyed,’ Eva said.
I looked at Daniel who was quiet, mulling it over.
‘So, am I like some kind of manager?’ he asked, quirking an eyebrow.
‘Umm… yeah, maybe… I didn’t really specify… I need to take Sadie to Sebastian’s so I’ll see you later, right,’ I said quickly, nodding at Sadie.
‘You’re a model too,’ Sadie whispered as we left the room.
Eva’s laughs followed us through the door and into the garage, where I could at least get Sadie into the car without us having to go outside.
‘I don’t know why he’d be so bothered,’ Sadie said, as we climbed into Daniel’s Range Rover.
‘Sadie, Daniel hasn’t been human since World War 1! He’s great and really lovely, but he still thinks men should protect, fight, earn the money, etcetera, etcetera! He will hate the idea that an intelligent man, training to be a doctor, will think that he is a model. He’d probably prefer that he knew the truth.’
‘Weird.’
‘It’s just a different world. It took me well over a year to think about what I was saying when I was speaking to Sebastian. If there’s one thing he detests most its insubordinate girls. Believe me, I heard that phrase a lot!’
‘Well he can lump it. He needs to move on,’ Sadie said, her eyes burning.
‘Sadly that won’t work. Look, I have gotten away with far more than I would have if I was a regular vampire. Apart from anything I am extremely useful to him… you are not!’
‘Thanks, but I don’t give a sh…’
‘No, you need to listen. Five years ago one of his male vampires was given permission to sire a newborn. He chose this cute blonde girl… looked a bit like you, talked like you. After a couple of years she thought she could start speaking to people as she liked. She still thought she was something. She didn’t understand the order of things - that suddenly she was at the very bottom. She refused to accept either her master’s warnings or Sebastian’s…’
‘Good girl! Where is she now? Did she leave them and bugger off somewhere better?’
‘She’s dead. Sebastien executed her for treason.’
‘What? He can’t do that?’
‘He can, and he did. The vampire world doesn’t have to change. We are the ones that have to adapt.’
We drove the rest of the way to the club in silence. I pulled up in the alley behind Exodus and knocked on the back door. A panel in the door slid back and a pair of dark red eyes peered at us.
‘Hi Troy, it’s us. Sadie’s on the list,’ I said.
The panel slid back and the door opened.
‘Hi Jess,’ Troy said, slamming and locking the h
eavy steel door behind him.
‘Hi, how’s Isabel?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘Hungry,’ he said grimly. ‘I can’t believe the Council isn’t sorting this out quicker. I’m almost tempted to go and join Pierre.’
I shook my head. ‘They will.’
‘It better be soon. Some of us are getting fed up of being treated like the perpetrators when we did nothing wrong, and then Pierre and his cronies are living it up in Number Ten. I don’t get why the Council doesn’t just storm it,’ he complained, leading us down the dark corridor to another door.
He unlocked the door and held it open so we could pass through. I smiled at him.
‘I don’t understand either,’ I said.
He closed and locked the door behind us and we descended down the stone steps into the cellars.
The cellars underneath Exodus, Sebastian’s night club, were vast. As they belonged to vampires they were also freezing, but he had decorated a medium-sized room with some rugs and sofas, an antique table and some candles. An electric fire was switched on in one corner and pointed directly at a middle-aged human woman, who smiled when she saw us.
‘Oh good, you’re here. It’s freezing down here and more than a little spooky,’ she tailed off with a high-pitched giggle.
Sadie darted forward eagerly, desperate.
‘Sadie, wait,’ I ordered. ‘What do you ask?’
Sadie sighed and stared at the woman coldly.
‘Do you know what I am and what I want from you?’ she asked the woman in a robotic voice.
‘Of course, deary. It’s not your fault, is it now… and I really don’t mind, it’s actually a rather nice feeling, and the boss round here… what’s he called… oh yes, Sebastian… well he pays us better than my little job in the local off-licence, and now that we have to close at nine there isn’t as much work anyway and… oh!’
The woman finally stopped talking as Sadie sank her fangs into her neck. I started the stop watch, two minutes was all she was allowed, and getting Sadie to stop was still an impossible task without the help of a spell or two. As the ticker counted down the final seconds I readied myself for the feral animal that would immediately possess the girl who was becoming slightly easier to get along with.
‘Time,’ I said, in Sadie’s ear.
The woman was moaning happily, lost in a wave of ecstasy and oblivion.
‘Sadie, enough! You’ve got two seconds to retract your fangs, otherwise I’ll zap you,’ I said.
Sadie began to pull back from the woman’s neck, turning her face to snarl at me.
‘I mean it, Sadie, you know you have to stop. If you don’t Sebastian won’t let you come back. Pull out!’
She ignored me and gave in to the blood lust, sinking her fangs back into the woman’s neck. I reached out my hands and placed them either side of her head, feeling the electric charge rushing down my arms, ready.
‘Last chance,’ I said, making the electric crackle in my fingers, loud enough for her to hear it. I really didn’t want to use it, mainly because turning my energy into electric drained me and left me magically defenceless for several minutes.
She finally pulled back, retracting her fangs and turned on me. Unfortunately, as I was standing mere inches behind her, I had no time to escape. I stumbled back slightly, enough that Sadie’s weight and suddenness of strike knocked me off balance, bearing us both to the ground with a crash. Sadie’s hand wrapped round my throat as my foot jerked up and kicked her in the stomach. She let go in surprise and, jumping to my feet, I readied myself for another attack. Last time it had taken ten minutes for the adrenalin to fade enough for Sadie to see clearly; this time we were interrupted.
An explosion rocketed through the building above us. The foundations shook and dust fell from the ceiling in a shower. The woman woke from her trance and began screaming. I shot up the stairs, Sadie behind me, but the steel door was locked. Shouts and the sound of running feet pounded past, followed by the sound of screams. Another explosion sounded above our heads and for a few seconds everything went quiet. Smoke seeped snake-like under the door amid the ominous crackling of fire. Someone rattled the handle.
‘Sadie, shut her up,’ I said, nodding to the still howling woman. ‘But don’t kill her please.’
‘Sadie rolled her eyes and set off down the stairs.
‘I bet there’s a whole nest of ‘em down there,’ a man’s voice shouted from the other side of the door. ‘Help me with this door. Let’s burn ‘em out. Have you got any more grenades?’
‘We need to go, now!’ I ordered, racing down the stairs. ‘Which way were you brought in?’ I asked the woman, who Sadie had in a vice-like grip.
‘That way,’ she said, nodding her head to the back of the cellars.
‘Good, show us the way. Hurry!’
Sadie let go of the woman and she ran ahead of us, sobbing, turning left and right through the dark tunnels until we came to another flight of stairs. As we reached the top step another explosion ripped through the building, sending a dust cloud billowing through the tunnels behind us, followed by a hot blast of air. I rammed my body against the door, but that was locked as well. I breathed, forcing my thoughts to calm, and concentrated on the lock. I placed my hand on the lock and imagined the key on the other side turning. We heard a click and pushed the door, falling out into an empty corridor.
‘The door is this way,’ the woman said.
I nodded and we followed her round a corner, coming head to head with two men dressed in camo gear, gas-masks covering their faces. When they spotted us they yelled and charged, wooden stakes held high, a flame thrower making a high pitched buzz as it charged. I looked at Sadie and nodded. We leapt across the hall and landed on top of the surprised men. With one punch the man’s head snapped back, his neck breaking. Sadie had unsurprisingly fought with her fangs and was now hungrily sucking the blood from the dead attacker. I left her and darted back to the shocked woman who was huddling against the stone wall.
‘Come,’ I said, taking her hand. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’
I led her past Sadie and down the corridor to the fire door. It was thankfully unlocked so I pushed it opened and shoved the woman out, where she stood blinking in the sunshine.
‘Go,’ I implored her. ‘Hurry!’
She nodded and stumbled away across the concrete yard. I turned back to the building. Flames were visible behind several ground floor windows and thick, black smoke poured out of many more. I dug my phone out of my back pocket and dialled Daniel’s number, looking up at the building as I did so. A shadow moved across a room. A window was flung open and a shape leapt out, landing some feet away.
‘Isabel?’ I exclaimed, racing over. ‘Where is Troy? What’s happening? I was locked in the cellars with Sadie…’
‘Hello?’ Daniel answered his phone.
‘Daniel, we need help fast. Exodus is being attacked,’ I said, speaking into the phone. ‘I’ve got to go.’
I looked back at Isabel. Soot stained her face and her eyes were rimmed with red. She shook her head.
‘Troy was on door duty,’ she said, ‘I was upstairs, resting. I’ve been so hungry… I didn’t have the energy… It should have been me, but he took my shift.’
‘Who are they?’
‘I don’t know. They are human and they know who we are.’
‘Where’s Sebastian?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I tried to get downstairs as soon as I heard the explosions, but there was fire everywhere, at every staircase. The last time I saw him he was in his office. Where are you going?’
‘Back inside, to find them,’ I said.
‘I’ll come too,’ she said, following me back to the door.
Chapter Seventeen
‘He’s here,’ Sadie said, as we rushed back through the door into the club.
‘Who’s here?’ I asked, looking around.
‘I can feel him,’ she said, rushing away from me do
wn the unlit corridor, disappearing into a billowing cloud of smoke.
I looked at Isabel and she shrugged her shoulders.
‘Leave her! We need to find Troy and Sebastian,’ she said.
‘But it’s quicker that way,’ I said, nodding after Sadie.
‘Too much fire. That way is blocked, I’m pretty sure.’
I watched Sadie disappear and we set off in the opposite direction towards the side door I had come through earlier. As we turned the corner three more gas-masked men rushed us, raising wooden stakes and firing guns. We leapt high, somersaulting over the first two. I kicked one of them in the head as I passed but didn’t wait to see him fall. We ran on and more shots followed. We outran the men easily, but the bullets matched our speed and I stumbled, a pain sharp and sudden spreading across my shoulder blades with burning tendrils of agony. We sped on and turned a corner, just one corridor away from Sebastian’s office, but we could hear the thundering footsteps of two of the men, refusing to give up the chase. I looked at Isabel and silently we leapt, cat-like, wedging our bodies against the ceiling, scrambling against the door frames.
Seconds later our prey raced around the corner and as they ran beneath us we fell, landing on their frail human bodies, breaking their necks swiftly and sinking our teeth into their flesh. As the blood hit my tongue I groaned with pleasure and sucked hungrily.
‘There’s no time,’ Isabel said, sucking hungrily, her chin covered with blood, eyes feverish.
I nodded curtly, letting his body drop as I jumped to my feet, but before we turned the last corner another explosion blasted round it, followed by shouting and cursing. We turned the corner but couldn’t see through the thick black smoke billowing out of Sebastian’s room. Men with night vision goggles and smoke helmets poured through his door. The sound of fighting erupted around us as we charged into the fray.