Ravenfall

by Narrelle M. Harris

  His expression was no less disturbing than his thoughts. Blue eyes flat and bleak, mouth a hard line, he looked like a killing machine waiting to lock on to a target.

  They cornered him here. He fought; was injured and bled, but not much. Got a bloodletting strike in too, good man. They drugged him and dragged him off. Within the last four hours.

  He took off after the blood trails at a swift, loping gait that no human could match, no matter how drug-enhanced.

  The trail led him to a row of grubby workshops, used mainly for automotive repairs. The odour of grease and rubber was pungent. He could smell Gabriel, olfactory neon in the stench, and he followed the scent to a locked metal door. James turned the handle; lock and all twisted clear of the door like so much tinfoil. James threw the mechanism aside and stepped into the darkness.

  He stole quietly down corridors, past empty rooms with doors ajar. He stopped to sniff things. When he came to a set of stairs, he followed them down.

  James came to a vacant chair, a crumpled newspaper beside it, and edged further down. He heard running water. Crinkling plastic as a packet of biscuits was opened. The rumble of a boiling kettle.

  The tea-maker stared at James in surprise, opened his mouth to yell and found any sound cut off by the cold grip clamped around his throat.

  ‘Where is he?’ snarled James. His fangs were showing.

  The man, unable to speak, rolled his eyes frantically towards the door. The sour smell of urine rose up as he pissed himself in terror. He tried to speak and couldn’t, so James loosened his grip a fraction. ‘Down the hall,’ the man gasped out, ‘We was just paid to bring him here, keep him harmless. Please. Please, don’t kill me.’

  James pushed his face close to the man’s. ‘If he’s hurt, I’m coming back for you,’ he said, vicious.

  He dropped the man, who clutched at his bruised throat but did not take his eyes off James.

  James crept further down the hall.

  James didn’t need his acute vampire hearing to identify Gabriel’s laugh as it came ringing out of the room two doors down.

  ‘You have a fabulously ugly face,’ Gabriel crowed in delight. ‘You would be a dream to paint. All those crags and shadows. Scars are hard to get right, did you know? They end up looking painted on, which they are, but they shouldn’t look it, they should grow out of the skin, which they sort of do. I have painted a lot of scars. I’m getting much better at it. I’d rather there weren’t scars to paint. My sitters would too, but that’s life. That’s the life I’m trying to show people. I could show people your life. Ugly, scarred, messed up. You’d be a fantastic subject. Only I prefer showing the hope. You’re a mess. You gave up a long time ago.’

  ‘Shut up,’ snarled a voice. ‘Will you shut the fuck up?’

  James splayed his hand on the closed door and listened.

  ‘Your mate there is less interesting, but I suppose having a boring face is a challenge on its own. I could do his posture more than his face. He’s a homunculus with the face of an accountant. That’s weird. That’s weirder that most of the shit I’ve seen. And I’ve seen a lot of weird shit.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  James used all his senses to piece together the layout beyond the door. Besides Gabriel, there were the two men – Ugly Scar and Homunculus. James could smell gun oil and dried blood. Under Gabriel’s run of odd commentary, he could hear a chair scrape, and impatient shuffling. One sitting, one standing. They smelled human.

  ‘Is this a typical reaction to ecstasy? Is it? I don’t generally take drugs and you shouldn’t have shoved it down my throat like that. I’m not a cat. Is it supposed to make everything effervescent? Eff-erv-escent. You’re all bubbly on your outlines. I should paint that, too. I smoked pot a couple of times at university. It was boring. Didn’t do much except make me babble. I babble like a Babylonian. Ha! I’m funny. James would laugh at that.’

  James was ostensibly unarmed, but he had teeth and he had two hands that could rip a human body to pieces. He hadn’t done that to anybody yet, but he’d seen West do it. He knew he had the strength, if he had the motivation, and right now he was feeling pretty fucking motivated.

  ‘Have I told you about James? He’s wonderful. Smart, funny. Hot. He is so hot. Fantastic arse. But we’re just good friends. He let me kiss him. It was lovely. I hope he lets me kiss him again. If he doesn’t want sex that’s okay. I like being with him. I liked kissing him, but we can just watch TV together if he wants. He’s lovely. He’s lonely. Like me. But he’s so so so so so so wonderful. He’s my friend. Way better than all of your friends. You need so many, and none of them are worth a fraction of James. Not even when you add them all up.’

  James braced himself and put his weight back on his heel, ready to kick.

  ‘You should meet him. Or not. Probably not. Definitely not, actually, you’re not nearly good enough for him. But he’s absolutely the best person I’ve ever met. Dead or alive.’ Gabriel burst into uproarious cackles at his own private joke.

  ‘Will. You. Shut. Up!’ The sound of a chair scraping and someone standing up.

  James kicked the door in and made straight for Gabriel, so that when the irate captor took his swing, suddenly a completely different face was in the way of the gun butt.

  A completely different face that took the brunt of the blow with hardly a flinch and then delivered the most bowel-watering snarl of rage that the attacker had ever seen or heard in his life. He stumbled backwards, tripped over the chair and fell on his arse. James snatched up the dropped gun. Almost too swiftly to follow, he detached the magazine, shook out its cartridges and the one in the chamber, separated the slide from the body and dropped the halves on the floor.

  Meanwhile, Captor Number Two, who had been leaning against a wall watching the proceedings while sharpening his hunting knife, lunged at James with the weapon.

  James prised the hunting knife out of the man’s grip as though taking a rattle from a child, wrapped his hand around the man’s wrist and twisted. The snap of bone was audible even through the sudden, awful scream of pain. James shoved the man back over his already fallen comrade.

  ‘Stay down,’ he said, teeth showing. ‘Or I’ll put you down for good.’

  With the captured blade, James cut Gabriel out of the ropes that held him tied to the metal rings in the wall.

  ‘Jaaaaames,’ crooned Gabriel. ‘Helloooooo.’

  ‘Hello,’ James gritted out, sawing at the ropes and catching Gabriel as he slumped. ‘Sorry it took me a while to find you.’

  ‘Have I been here long?’

  ‘A few hours,’ James confessed, holding Gabriel and checking his pulse, his pupil dilation and his breathing. ‘I woke up an hour and a half ago to find you’d vanished.’

  ‘Woke up? But you don’t– Oooooh. Ooooooh,’ Gabriel repeated, suddenly aware that something ought to be concealed from the strangers present. He draped his arms over James’s shoulders. ‘Sleeeep. I bet you’re cute when you’re asleeeeep.’

  James shifted Gabriel in his arms, as though his tall friend weighed no more than a kitten, to inspect the contusion on his cheek, and the ones on his knuckles. He inspected the red swelling in the side of Gabriel’s neck, too, where the hypodermic had gone in.

  ‘Are you hurt anywhere else?’ James demanded.

  ‘My priiiiiiiiide,’ Gabriel drawled, trying to stand upright and failing. His knees sagged and James held him tight. He giggled. ‘I survived on the streets for years, I can fight when I need to. I don’t fight fair either, can’t afford fair out there, nooooo, but they snuck up on me.’

  Gabriel moaned and buried his face in James’s shoulder. ‘I’m so embarrassed,’ he wailed in a harsh whisper. ‘One of them stabbed me in the bum.’

  James arranged Gabriel against his chest and looked down. Gabriel’s black jeans were cut near his right hip and blood stained the tattered edges of the cloth. James pried the cloth apart to reveal the small wound, barely a c
entimetre wide and very shallow. Blood had dried in a smear around the skin.

  ‘Won’t need stitches,’ James reassured him. ‘At least you bled enough to leave a trail.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Gabriel, his voice at last beginning to slur. ‘My bleeding arse left a trail. Like Goldilocks. No, not that one, the other one. Hansel and thingy. Can I be Gretel?’

  ‘You can be whoever you like. Here, look at me. How many fingers am I holding up?’

  ‘Three,’ said Gabriel. ‘I can see six, but that’s the drugs talking.’

  ‘Right. Hospital for you, then.’

  ‘Oh Christ, no. Hate hospitals. Hate ‘em. Sometimes they put electrodes on my head and make me…make me…’ Gabriel began to twitch and clutch at James in fear. ‘Don’t make me go back. Don’t let Daddy make me go.’

  ‘Okay,’ said James gently, ‘We’ll go home.’

  ‘Home,’ repeated Gabriel in a dazed, little-boy voice. He hugged James, snuggling in. ‘You’re my best friend,’ Gabriel said, wilting into an exhausted, addled mess onto James’s chest.

  ‘You’re mine too,’ James said, holding him. He looked at the two men tangled together on the floor. Ugly Scar had the broken wrist; Homunculus was stretching for a firearm on the table.

  ‘Don’t,’ said James. ‘It won’t kill me. You’ll just piss me off. More.’

  The man stopped.

  ‘Who did this?’ James asked.

  Homunculus blinked rapidly and said, ‘Don’t know. We got the job through a third party, a bloke we do business with from time to time. He’s a middle man, like. Grab the painter, he said, fill him full of happy-tabs to keep him quiet, wait for pick-up, we was told. Cash on delivery. Said a bloke named West would come for the little queer tonight.’

  James lowered Gabriel gently to the ground, and then faster than the eye could see, he had a hand around Homunculus’s throat. The man’s eyes bugged out as he struggled for breath.

  ‘Be very clear,’ said James, his eyes black and his voice deadly calm, ‘I love this man. If anyone touches him again, they’ll answer to me. Nod if I have made myself clear.’

  The man nodded frantically.

  ‘Spread the word. To your contact. To anyone you know who might try again. Next time, I’ll kill whoever hurts him.’ James let him go and bent to help Gabriel up again.

  From Gabriel came a giggle, muffled against James’s chest. He regarded his former captor with a dopey grin. ‘He loves me. Did you hear that? He loves me. And I love him.’ He subsided back into a sleepy cuddle against James’s shoulders. ‘I want to go home. Let’s go home James, and I can kiss you again.’

  James scooped Gabriel up in his arms and walked out of the warehouse. He began to walk home, despite how conspicuous they were. It was no special effort for him, and he gave not a single fuck about the speculative glances that came his way.

  However, he didn’t want to draw the attention of the police, so after half a block James put Gabriel carefully on a bench and hailed a cab. He helped him into the back seat when the vehicle arrived. ‘He’s not feeling too well,’ he said to the driver. ‘I need to get him home.’

  As the cab took them away, James kissed Gabriel’s cheek – surreptitiously licking the contusion, covering it generously with vampire spit. The injury began to heal immediately. Carefully, he did the same to Gabriel’s scraped knuckles, more concerned with healing the skin than the taste of blood, though the taste of him was comforting.

  James couldn’t provide the same treatment for the shallow knife wound in Gabriel’s backside until later. He giggled at the idea of licking Gabriel’s rump in the back seat of a taxi. He recognised the giddy relief in his reaction, but decided not to care. He was giddily relieved. Gabriel was alive, and relatively unharmed, and loved him.

  Oh.

  But that was definitely what Gabriel had said. Right after James’s own unthinking confession.

  He loves me and I love him.

  James pulled Gabriel against him and pressed his nose against Gabriel’s messy hair, inhaling his scent. Gabriel hummed happily and snuggled. James embraced him more closely.

  It didn’t solve anything, this sudden knowledge that yes, he could feel love, that he did in fact love Gabriel; or that Gabriel loved him back. James was still a vampire, with all the dangers and obstacles that implied. They were still in trouble that they didn’t yet understand. Everything was still dangerous and impossible.

  But I love him and he loves me, thought James, and right then and there, the knowledge made him strong.

  James paid the driver – this life with Gabriel was getting expensive; James would have to save funds elsewhere this month – and carried Gabriel from the street to their building, up the stairs and into Gabriel’s own bed. He fetched a jug of water and made Gabriel drink two full glasses before tending to his other needs.

  James stripped Gabriel of everything including his pants, despite Gabriel’s consistent giggling and claims of being ticklish, to check all the other minor wounds. Gabriel’s body was distractingly beautiful – whippet-lean and strong. James very determinedly put on his Doctor’s Hat and refused to let his gaze linger on anything except the injuries.

  James began by pooling spit in his hand and rubbing it gently over Gabriel’s cheek and knuckles again, to be sure they’d healed. Gabriel watched with an incongruously adoring half-smile. When James went to rub spit-moistened fingers on the hypodermic puncture wound in his neck, Gabriel instead stretched his chin up.

  ‘Kiss it better?’ he asked with a boyishly smirk.

  James placed his mouth over the small wound. He licked at it with the tip of his tongue. Under his mouth, he could feel the fluttering rhythm of Gabriel’s pulse, but he had no urge to bite. He licked the wound again, kissed the spot and sat back.

  ‘You should fix my bum,’ said Gabriel, turning over to bare the small wound in his naked backside, ‘You can kiss that too if you like.’

  ‘Did you just tell me to kiss your arse?’

  Gabriel glanced over his shoulder, alarmed, but he grinned suddenly at the humorous twinkle in James’s eye. ‘Just a bit,’ he urged, waggling his bottom.

  ‘You think because we’ve kissed now, I’ll kiss you everywhere.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said Gabriel, eyes wide. It had somehow stopped being a joke, even though it was still ludicrous.

  James patted Gabriel’s bare hip. ‘Another time,’ he said softly, ‘When you’re not out of your skull, eh?’

  Gabriel sighed. ‘Okay.’

  James spit generously onto his thumb and rubbed it over the shallow cut. Gabriel giggled.

  ‘Your hands are nice.’

  ‘My hands are cold.’

  ‘They’re still nice. Gentle. I like your hands.’

  James patted Gabriel’s hip again. He helped Gabriel, too dozy now to help, into pyjama bottoms, then pulled the sheet and blankets up over him. ‘You rest up. I’ll be right here.’

  ‘Thanks,’ mumbled Gabriel, falling into sleep.

  Gabriel woke later in the evening with a headache and a horrible thirst, but otherwise fine. After downing two more glasses of water and a couple of painkillers, he acquiesced to another swift, clinical examination from James, who declared him fit. ‘But you should get more rest. It’s late anyway. We’ll get back onto this business in the morning, when you’re fighting fit.’

  Gabriel, too groggy and weary to argue, went back to bed. He slept fitfully, waking up periodically from formless dreams in which threatening shadows crowded round him, only to be driven back by the arrival of a shaft of intense white light, hard like a blade and as illuminating as the sun.

  The fourth time he woke, Gabriel lay in the dark, listening. Even though he couldn’t hear a thing, there was a quality to the silence that was familiar.

  ‘James,’ he called out so his voice would carry through his closed door.

  Nothing.

  ‘James, it’s three in t
he morning.’

  More nothing.

  ‘James, it’s not like I don’t know you’re out there.’

  The door opened and James stood sheepishly in the doorway.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Gabriel, spreading his arms to indicate how entirely he was physically fine.

  ‘I see that. Aye.’

  ‘But you keep checking on me,’ he said, suddenly realising why he kept waking from his bad dreams.

  ‘Aye,’ James conceded, ‘Am I keeping you awake?’

  ‘No. At least. I don’t mind. You make the nightmares push off. That’s good.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Do you need to rest?’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You need to though, don’t you? Not resting can be as bad as not eating, for you.’

  ‘Not quite that bad.’

  ‘But not good.’

  ‘Makes me a wee bit slow, I admit.’

  ‘So. Rest up. I’m fine.’

  ‘Right. Yes. Good idea.’

  James didn’t budge.

  ‘Are you going to stand there all night?’

  ‘Ah. No. Sorry. Sorry, I’ll go.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. Come in here.’

  James remained where he was, hand on the door handle. ‘No. Really. I’m being stupid. I’ll go.’

  ‘No, you won’t. You’ll come in here.’

  James sighed and neither came nor went.

  ‘You think I don’t know,’ said Gabriel softly.

  ‘I think you probably do,’ countered James. ‘Doesn’t make it not stupid.’

  ‘What I think is that it’s frankly astonishing that you ever go into your dormant state when there is no one to guard you at your most vulnerable.’

  ‘Gabriel–’

  ‘And then today, you went into your dormant state to rest, and when you woke up, I was missing.’

  James frowned.

  ‘It’s a measure of how remarkable you are,’ said Gabriel, ‘that you’re putting off re-entering your dormant state tonight because you’re worried, not about your safety, but about mine.’