Gabriel took the knife.
Chapter Nine
Dormancy was an odd thing. In lieu of human sleep, vampires went utterly still and their minds withdrew into rest. While in that vulnerable suspension, their altered bodies assimilated ingested blood, repaired damaged cells, and grew stronger.
Their complete stillness made them hard to detect: their only defence while dormant. Vampires were predators, but also prey. Humans had spent thousands of years learning to protect themselves, after all.
James suspected that staking vampires in their dormant state was the only way humans ever manage to kill them. He lacked empirical data for his theory, but he found logic in it. When dormant, he was aware of but didn’t engage with external stimuli. He roused slowly and sluggishly if he heard anything alarming.
Sneaking up on a sleeping vampire was definitely the way to kill them. It’s how he would have done it. It was hard to imagine any but the most extraordinary of human beings winning a fight with an alert vampire, with all that supernatural strength and agility, all those hyper-vigilant senses and instincts for survival and the hunt in their favour.
James would normally have stretched out on his bed to go into his dormant state – with a chair propped against the door to keep it shut for good measure. But he now shared his home with someone he trusted.
It felt so strange to trust someone again; and he trusted Gabriel more than he trusted himself. He hadn’t trusted himself since he’d effectively died in that village in Helmand two years ago. For God’s sake, Gabriel actually teased him about what he was, even after seeing the creature he’d become.
I knew it. You really do hang upside down from a ceiling!
Cheeky beggar. Of all the reactions James had expected when someone finally learned his secret, playfulness hadn’t been among them. Gabriel was either a certifiable lunatic or a certified miracle.
So he wants to see a vampire hanging upside down from the ceiling, does he?
The flat didn’t offer anything useful to hang from, but the armchair had a high back. James knew Gabriel would get the joke, and it wasn’t as though he’d be inconvenienced by anything like a rush of blood to the head.
James arranged himself on the armchair, knees bent over the back of it, his back barely skimming the seat, head hanging over the edge of the cushion nearly to the floor.
In this inverted position, with his arms folded across his chest (good old Hammer Horror Castle of Dracula style) James contemplated the wonder of Gabriel’s warm mouth pressed on his. The wonder of how, instead of flinching at it, Gabriel had deepened the kiss, as though wanting to chase away the cold; to take it into himself and give warmth back. He focused on this cautious miracle and instead of fearing how soon it would end, indulged in the knowledge that, for the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel like an exile from humanity.
Holding to that thought, James ceased his reflex breathing and willed his body and mind to stillness.
James was aware of a voice he trusted speaking his name, but distantly, muffled. The voice wasn’t a threat, so it didn’t rouse him from his detached state.
A door opened, and that didn’t rouse him either. The sound, familiar enough, was followed by… a silence.
He registered the faint snick of something that part of his brain identified, but the context was unclear. This noise was as much about security as danger. It heralded wariness, but didn’t make him stir yet. He remained deep in the sluggish dark.
A second voice, a woman’s, encroached on the periphery of his consciousness in a whisper. ‘You stay right where you are, Dare.’
The one he trusted said, ‘It’s not what you think.’
‘Oh my god,’ said the woman, voice filled with horror. ‘I told you, Victor. I told you, and you didn’t believe me. My god. The poor, stupid bastard. I warned him.’
A third voice joined the conversation that was finally registering in James’s drowsing vampire brain.
‘It may not be what it looks like.’ This voice was older, troubled, but trying for calmness. ‘Maybe he’s unconscious.’
‘His fucking eyes are open and he’s not breathing,’ said the woman, both horrified and ringing with vindication. ‘And I told you to stay put, Dare.’
The origin of that wary sound from before finally coalesced into a thought. Weapon drawn from a leather holster.
James began to emerge from his inertia.
He became aware, distantly, and then more urgently, of two fingers pressed against his wrists; then hard against a carotid artery that had nothing much to report.
‘What the hell are you doing, Sergeant?’
Datta shrieked and backed off so fast she fell over the carpet and landed hard on her arse. Any mortification she felt was tempered by the fact that her DI had yelled and jumped a foot straight back as well, colliding with Gabriel Dare, who swore and dropped a double- bagged tub of something liquid on the floor.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ James grumped. ‘What’s wrong with you lot?’
‘You didn’t have a pulse,’ gasped Datta. ‘You didn’t… you’re cold and you didn’t have a pulse.’
James glared at her – it would’ve had more impact if he hadn’t been upside down with his knees crooked over the back of an armchair.
‘And what the fuck are you doing hanging there?’ Her tone was accusatory.
‘Yoga,’ he sniped. ‘It’s meant to be relaxing.’ He took his weight on his arms and curled his feet down to the floor.
‘You were dead,’ Datta persisted, as James rose and stretched.
‘Can’t get more relaxed than dead, I suppose,’ said Gabriel peevishly. ‘But I think death is meant to be incurable, isn’t it? Just as well you’re not with forensics, Datta. You’d be neck deep in murders that turned out to be bad cases of tantric meditation.’
Bakare was mildly shocked and largely annoyed, as if they’d been playing a horrible practical joke on his staff. Datta glared stormily at James, like not being dead was a personal affront to her theories on the dangerousness of Gabriel Dare.
Gabriel regarded James contritely. ‘Sorry to barge in on the yoga, James. They were bloody insistent and didn’t give me a chance to let you know we had company.’
‘Not your fault. Did you get the–’
‘I did, but….’ Gabriel was gathering up the bags from the floor. The container had split, spilling blood through the plastic bags and all over the kitchen linoleum.
‘Is that blood?’ Bakare asked, aghast. Datta reached for her nightstick again.
‘It’s pig’s blood,’ sighed Gabriel, ‘from the Italian butcher in Spitalfields. I can show you the receipt if you like. I was planning to show James how to make traditional Portuguese blood sausage, but there goes that idea.’ He mopped up the gory mess with tea towels and deposited the lot in the sink with a nasty splotch.
James watched the blood swirl in the sink and felt his fangs descending. He hadn’t eaten in a few days, and hadn’t realised how hungry he was. Too late now. He’d have to manage until the Yard detectives had pushed off. They’d go to the butcher again on their way out to investigate Grimshaw. It’d be all right.
‘Cooking lessons?’ asked Datta scathingly. ‘You?’
‘What? I cook. It’s only chemistry.’
‘He whips up a terrific soufflé,’ James threw in, stepping away from the compelling smell of blood in the sink. ‘He makes a Jaffa Cake bread pudding that ought to be illegal.’
He and Gabriel exchanged half grins, semi-surprised at how well they worked as a double act, as though they’d known each other for years rather than weeks.
‘So, are you here solely to mess up my afternoon, or have there been developments?’ Gabriel asked Bakare.
‘Well, it’s not a goddamned social call,’ sneered Datta.
‘That’s all your social graces wasted then,’ observed James drily. ‘I suppose you’d best state your business.’
‘Do you know this man?�
� Bakare shoved a grainy photograph at them, of a wiry, red-haired man passing through a tube station pedestrian tunnel. He looked like he’d either prematurely aged or, alternatively, was an oddly youthful 40 year old.
‘No,’ said James. Gabriel shook his head.
‘How about this guy?’ A second photo, of a taller, older man with buzzcut hair, passing through the same tunnel.
James stilled. ‘Who is he?’
‘We don’t know yet. CCTV footage picked them up the night Ben Tiller died. These two show up here and on the cameras around the intersection where Alicia Jarret was last seen alive.’
‘So you have actual suspects,’ observed Gabriel.
‘I wouldn’t go that far yet,’ said Bakare. ‘You don’t recognise them?’
‘They’re strangers to me.’
‘The tall one looks military,’ said James.
‘That’s what we thought. Fine. Well, we’ll leave you to your yoga and cooking lessons, gentlemen.’
Gabriel ushered them out, meeting Datta’s glare with one of his own. When he returned to the living room, he folded his arms.
‘Who the hell is that in the picture, James?’
‘I…’
‘I know you. You recognised him. Why didn’t you tell them?’
James rubbed a hand over his chest, over his sluggish heart, distractedly. ‘That’s Major Cael West, and I have no idea what they’d do with the information.’
‘They could hunt him down.’
‘Gabriel, the man’s a cold-blooded murderer, and a vampire. He won’t hesitate to kill anyone who confronts him. I’m not sure I should send the police after him without all the facts, but I haven’t the first idea how to give them the facts.’ He rubbed the side of his neck instead. ‘I need to think about this.’
What James needed to do was to find that son of a bitch and stake him to dust, if he could. But he didn’t want to share that particular thought with either Gabriel or the police.
‘We should check out Grimshaw soon, then,’ said Gabriel quietly. ‘See what he knows about it. Unless you think he was here on West’s business.’
‘West might have put him up to it, but it’s hard to say. Vampires tend to work alone or in small groups. He might have been here under duress. He was inviting me to join his stupid little court, which probably just involves Grimshaw and whatever blood donor he’s drummed up lately. I got the feeling he wanted an ally.’
‘Wouldn’t that be a good thing?’
‘Bollocks, it would,’ said James. ‘The main thing I’ve noticed when vampires want other vampires as allies is that they’re aiming to start turf wars with some other prick of the night.’
‘If that prick of the night is behind these murders…’
James stepped further away from the scent of blood in the sink. ‘You’re right. Christ. Sorry. I try to steer clear of them. I should have thought about it before turfing him out.’
‘Let’s see what he wanted. We can go by the butcher again.’
James checked his watch. ‘He’ll be shut now. I’ll go in the morning. It’s fine.’ He headed for the door. ‘Come on then. Might as well get it over with.’
They went to the address on Grimshaw’s card, one of a set of old terrace houses in need of maintenance. On one side, the houses were bordered by the tail end of Wandsworth Common; the prison was at the end of the street.
The overgrown garden of Grimshaw’s house was barely restrained by a low, cracked, brown brick wall, half smothered under ivy which also climbed up the plane tree that shaded the front window. A briar rose bush hugged the house beneath the front window which was curtained not with drapes but an old striped sheet. Blackbird chicks peeped frenetically from a nest in the plane tree, but the hen was nowhere about. No sign either of insects or mice. Only that desperate cheeping.
The front door was ajar. Walking right in would have been simple, but James stopped as though a force field held him back.
‘Do you need an invitation?’ Gabriel asked, pushing the door open with his hip and stepping over the threshold, ‘Come on, then. I invite you in.’
James’s nostrils flared. Every sense in him was taut and ready for flight, triggered by the smell. The smell that Gabriel hadn’t registered yet. A raw, fresh, intense, overpowering smell that had driven away the mice and the blackbird, and sent her brood peeping in wild distress.
James knew he’d had too many days without blood of any kind – ordinary food did nothing for him, didn’t even stay in his body for more than a few hours. Tea he could drink. Red wine. Black coffee. Water. But his metabolism was fussy. It wanted blood. Human blood. Not much, not every day, but blood. The dark fluid that ran in his veins needed it. Animal blood would do in a pinch, to get what he needed. Erythrocytes and leukocytes and thrombocytes and plasma, the latter with its lipids and proteins and oh god, he could smell it and damned near taste it, and his fangs descended and he didn’t even try to stop it.
‘James?’
James shook his head to free it from the greedy buzz. He made the effort to retract his fangs. Ye shouldae fed earlier, Jamie.
Feck off, Granda.
So he had cravings. That didn’t have to mean he gave up all control to the beast. He wasn’t a new-turned vampire with no idea what was going on, and this was not Afghanistan.
‘Fine. I’m fine. Can you smell it?’
Gabriel lifted his head to sniff. ‘Oh. Hell.’ He looked at James again. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course,’ said James tightly, ‘Come on.’
James and Gabriel stepped into the hallway and made their way to the sitting room leading off to the left. James had a few moments to see what was there, before he was overwhelmed.
The boy hung upside down from the ceiling (a grotesque mimicry of how he had spent the afternoon, hanging upside down from the armchair, wanting to make Gabriel laugh) and his throat was cut and the blood from that second, gaping mouth painted the boy’s face and the floor and the carpet and the floorboards leading to the kitchen and under the sofa and under the sound system and under and over and oh god oh god oh god so much blood, so much blood, all of it and the smell and all of it and it was wasted wasted, all that blood going tae waste, spreading and cooling and congealing and it was god what a terrible terrible waste and he was so so so so so so fucking thirsty.
He couldn’t hear a thing but the blood rushing in living veins, right next to him, right at his side. James didn’t know why he was kneeling on the floor, hands over his ears, trying not to listen, eyes screwed shut, trying not to see, but his tongue darted out and over and out and over his lower lip, over the tips of his teeth and he was producing saliva, all ready, ready to bite and heal, bite and heal, bite and bite and bite and fucking drink he was so thirsty so thirsty so…
There were noises in what he thought was a language he used to speak. None of it made sense. Noise noise noise.
Fuck. He was so. Thirsty.
‘James. James. James, talk to me. Look at me.’
James bared his teeth and he may have hissed. There was another smell, strong. Chemicals. Paint and canvas. Tea and biscuits. The nest. The nest and home and tea and…
‘Gabriel.’ His voice rasped. James realised suddenly that Gabriel was wrapped around him, that the blood he could hear in living veins belonged to Gabriel. Gabriel. The nest. Home. Not food. Home. James shuddered and pressed into the arms wrapped around his shoulders, pushed his forehead into the chest that blocked his transformed face from view. ‘Help me.’
Gabriel pulled James to his feet and James stumbled up, hiding his face in Gabriel’s jacket, trembling with the effort not to bite, or to fall to the floor and lick lick lick lick what a waste of all that blood. He couldn’t suppress a whimper as Gabriel dragged him out the door and onto the street again. Into the tiny, overgrown garden, between the house and the street with its sounds and scents of passing people/food/not food/people.
Hands pulled him
to the ground, cradled his shuddering body between the shelter of the plane tree and the briar rose.
James clung to Gabriel and pushed his forehead against Gabriel’s chest. ‘Too much. Too much,’ he muttered, ‘I havenae… I havenae eaten. Too much. It’s too much.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Gabriel stroked James’s back, and his hair. ‘I dropped the blood. I shouldn’t have washed it away. We could have…’
‘Mae fault,’ said James, with a curious lisp because his teeth wouldn’t retract; were longer than usual, aching with the wanting to bite. ‘Mae responsibility. Mae…’ He groaned and leaned further into Gabriel’s hold.
‘If you drink now, will you be all right?’
‘I-I-I need…’
‘James, if you feed a little, can you cope? We need to find Grimshaw, but we’ll get a cab home instead, if that’s what you need.’
A dry, hacking laugh escaped James’s watering mouth. ‘Might eat… the cabbie.’
Gabriel bent and wrapped himself further around his friend.
‘Maybe,’ rasped James.
‘Maybe what?’
‘Maybe. If I. Feed. Maybe. I can. I can. Maybe.’
The lack of coherence wasn’t good, but Gabriel didn’t hesitate. He pushed up a sleeve and shoved his forearm in front of James’s mouth.
‘Nae,’ James keened, even as he pulled Gabriel’s arm up to his teeth.
‘Well, I’m not going to let someone else do it,’ Gabriel admonished him, wincing as the fangs slipped into his skin.
James sucked strongly on the wound. He drank for almost a half a minute this time. As Gabriel began to wobble dizzily, James pulled away with a grunt of effort. He licked the blood from around his mouth, and opened his eyes to look at Gabriel like a lost boy.
‘Sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right.’
James furtively licked at the glistening red holes in Gabriel’s arm, then shoved the arm away again, averting his eyes. Full of shame.
Gabriel watched, fascinated, as the wounds healed. In his arms, James rasped like he was labouring after a marathon. Gabriel pulled James into a close embrace again. It wasn’t like he actually needed to breathe, after all.
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