Ravenfall

by Narrelle M. Harris

Gabriel brushed his fingers over the rent in James’s jeans, through which the swollen, unhealed knife wound was still visible. ‘It’s not nothing.’

  ‘I got stabbed with silver and didnae hae time tae clean it properly. I ran here on it; I can make it up the stairs. Michael doesnae hae time for this blether. Now, hop up or I’ll leave ye here.’

  Gabriel leapt up onto James’s back. James gripped Gabriel’s thighs to keep him hitched up. Gabriel hissed at the pressure on his bruised torso. ‘Let’s go.’

  They went. James’s gait was uneven, but they were fast, whipping past the occasional other stairwell occupant without interruption.

  Near the very top, they encountered a team of BUS agents ascending the stairs at a run. James assumed that’s who they were, given the compact firearms and that one of them had a tail.

  James had to slow down to pass or risk a collision. The team leader blocked their path, and James was forced to stop.

  The team regarded the sturdy vampire giving the lanky man a piggy back with the studiously neutral expressions that could only be maintained by a complete professional in the face of the utterly bizarre.

  James let Gabriel to the ground.

  ‘Mr Dare’s bodyguard is on the scene,’ reported the team leader quietly. ‘She indicates she does not have a clear shot at Frazer.’ The man was staring at Gabriel with consternation.

  ‘What?’ snarled Gabriel. He touched his face, encountering the sticky blood he hadn’t yet had a chance to remove. ‘This isn’t mine,’ he said, raising a flap of his torn T-shirt to scrub at his forehead. ‘It’s Michael’s.’ Gabriel faded to grieving silence.

  ‘Congratulations on surviving Frazer’s attack, Mr Dare,’ the team leader said crisply into the charged pause. ‘I’ve sent the message to Miss Webb.’

  ‘Party hats later,’ snapped James. ‘What about Michael?’

  ‘He’s in control,’ declared the team leader. ‘Or he was. It keeps slipping, and he’s been shot. Webb says any move will definitely lead to his death. She’s delegated to make the call on our next action.’

  From the rooftop, two floors away, came a short, sharp report.

  Gabriel lurched to the next step, stumbled, righted himself and began to run.

  A second shot rang out. In Gabriel’s peripheral vision, a shape hurtled past the window. Behind him, three of the Bureau men began the rapid descent. The one with the tail barked instructions into a two-way.

  James scooped Gabriel around the waist mid-step and resumed the ascent, carrying Gabriel up the final flights of stairs.

  They burst onto the rooftop to see Anthea sitting with Michael’s head in her lap, stroking his hair. She sat in a pool of his blood, soaked in it, uncaring.

  Tavisa Datta was standing grimly next to Anthea. She still held her gun. There was no rush after all. There seemed nothing left to do, now.

  Gabriel stood at his brother’s feet, hands clenching and unclenching, while James kneeled by the dying man. He pulled Michael’s suit and shirt aside to inspect the terrible mess the bullet had made of his neck and collarbone.

  James flinched at the smell of so much blood, then bent over the wound, allowing the saliva triggered by the scent of it to pool in his mouth. He let it flow into the ragged hole. Carefully, he spread the spit with the tip of a finger, and the skin, bone and muscle began to mend. The bleeding slowed and finally stopped.

  But the healing properties of vampire saliva could only achieve so much. Stop the flow and repair damaged tissue, yes. Replace the blood lost? No. That, the body did, but it took the body’s own time. The saliva accelerated the process to a degree, but not with sufficient speed. Not with the amount of blood Michael had lost.

  Michael gazed mutely up at Anthea, labouring for breath as she stroked his hair. His hand clutched hers. James scented the fading remnants of the fox in Michael’s spilled blood, but nothing of the fox was left in his body now. Michael’s mind was at last his own again.

  He got to die human, at least. And he would die soon.

  Gabriel’s expression was twisted with anger and distress. ‘You idiot, Michael.’ His voice broke even as he berated his brother. ‘We had it under control. You were supposed to wait. You’d delegated your suicide to people who knew more than you did. You should have trusted them. Trusted us. Trusted me.’

  Michael, in wonder and an agonised happiness, gazed upon Gabriel. ‘You’re alive.’

  Gabriel dropped to his knees, reaching for Michael’s free hand. ‘Don’t. Don’t die. I forbid it.’

  Michael looked at James. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll nae let anything happen to him,’ James said softly. ‘I promised.’

  Michael’s eyelids fluttered shut for a second. When he opened them again, his old steel was back.

  ‘Can you…?’ he started; he took another sharp, shallow inhalation before he could continue, ‘…turn me?’

  ‘Turn you what?’

  ‘Make me. A vampire. Is it. Too late?’

  ‘Michael, do you know what you’re asking?’ It was one thing to have agreed this ahead of time with Gabriel. This was the request of a dying man, desperate to live.

  Michael glared haughtily. It almost made James laugh – such a typical superior expression. Michael definitely thought he knew what he was asking.

  ‘So much. To do. So much. Still. I’m. Not ready. To die.’ Michael squeezed Anthea’s hand feebly, and she stroked his cheek.

  ‘You have tae die anyway, Michael,’ said James grimly. ‘That’s how this works.’

  ‘Please.’ Michael’s voice was a ghost.

  ‘James. Jamie. Please.’ Gabriel’s imploring, impatient hope was painful to hear.

  ‘He knows the risks, Doctor Sharpe, it’s his job,’ said Anthea fiercely. ‘Save him.’

  ‘Saving’s not the word,’ James said, and he looked to Tavisa Datta, as though hers was the deciding opinion.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ she said. ‘I just shot a naked, homicidal fox spirit in the head and watched it fall off a building. I’m not sure I’m a good judge of rational anymore.’

  ‘That makes you the perfect judge,’ said James. ‘I want to do it. I can. I dinnae know if it’s wise.’

  ‘Is he as important as he thinks he is?’

  ‘To the government? I’m certain he is.’ James’s gaze alternated between Gabriel and Anthea. To these two, definitely.

  Tavisa’s chin jerked up in decision. ‘Well, you’re not so bad for a vampire. Maybe they don’t all have to be arseholes. Turn him, Doctor Sharpe, and if he goes rogue, you and I will know what to do about it.’

  Decided, James pressed fingers to Michael’s cheek. ‘You cannae come back without dying first. Some people dinnae come back at all. And it’ll be hard, after. You’ve nae idea how hard.’

  ‘I have,’ rasped Michael, ‘some idea. Miss Webb. You will. Keep your. Promise. If you. Must.’

  ‘I have your back, sir. If you lose yourself to the thirst, I’ll keep my promise. I will, sir.’ She stroked his hair again. ‘I will never let you down again, Michael.’

  ‘You. Have. Never. Failed. Me. Anthea.’

  Anthea pushed angrily at a tear with the back of her wrist. Instead of replying she glared at James Sharpe. ‘He knows the risks. He’s studied them. Turn him, Doctor Sharpe. Try.’

  James took Michael’s jaw in his hands and held his head so they were eye to eye.

  ‘Tell me again. Is this what you want?’

  ‘Yes,’ breathed Michael. ‘Do it.’

  James sat astride Michael’s body, pinning his legs and arms with his strong hands.

  ‘Stand aside, the lot of you.’

  Nobody moved.

  ‘If I’m doing this,’ he snarled, ‘you do what I say, or it turns to shite, very fast. Stand aside. Do not touch him unless I give you the all-clear. If he wakes from this, he’ll wake thirsty. Stand the fuck back. That includes you, Gabriel. Especially you.’


  As Gabriel began to complain, James snapped, ‘And bloody watch. You may change your mind about our contingency plan once you’ve seen this.’

  Reluctantly, Anthea rose. Tavisa drew her away. Gabriel stood with them, watching.

  ‘Michael.’ Michael didn’t respond to James’s voice. He spoke again, more sharply, commanding attention. ‘Michael Dare!’

  Michael’s eyes opened.

  ‘In a moment, you’ll drink my blood. Then I’ll hold you down,’ said James. ‘When you wake, remember who I am. Remember who you are. Try not tae fight me.’

  Michael smiled wanly. ‘I shall do better than try, Doctor Sharpe.’

  James pressed the nail of his left thumb to his right wrist, opening a shallow wound in the flesh. Dark vampire blood welled.

  ‘Open wide.’

  Michael opened his mouth. Blood beaded in James’s wound; began to drip.

  ‘This’ll taste disgusting,’ James warned.

  Michael’s eyes crinkled in an actual smile as the first drop hit his tongue. Then he flinched. He scrunched his face up. The next drip landed on his closed lips and he tried not to let the fluid in.

  ‘It’s not nearly enough,’ said James. ‘You need a higher ratio of vampire blood to your own that’s left for this to work. Do I go on?’

  In answer, Michael opened his mouth again, green eyes full of resolve, and only a little fear.

  ‘You dinnae have tae do this.’

  Michael glared and opened his mouth wider.

  James dug his thumbnail into the wound, and his blood flowed more freely. A few more drops fell onto Michael’s tongue. James pressed the gash directly against Michael’s mouth.

  Automatically, Michael – with strength that had, until a moment ago, abandoned him – seized James’s arm and held it firmly as he sucked on the wound. Greedily. Noisily. James grit his teeth on a cry and then, as Michael actually bit at the bleeding cut, James hissed a string of swear words – but he didn’t pull away.

  Michael gagged and went rigid, his back arching in seizure upon seizure. James pulled his arm free and instead grasped Michael’s upper arms, holding him down as he thrashed and cried out.

  It was horrible. This urbane, polished, disciplined man, flailing on the ground like a rabid animal, in a pool of his own blood, his lips and teeth stained dark with the substance inhabiting his body, harrying it towards death. His eyes contained no intelligence. Only fear and pain and desperation, and a burning will to live.

  Gabriel and Anthea both stirred to assist. James, fangs extended, hissed at them. ‘Stay away!’

  Soon, the convulsions ceased. Michael sagged limply against the roof surface.

  Dead.

  James looked little better, his always pale skin ashen, his movements lethargic. His fangs were descended and his eyes glazed.

  ‘Jamie.’

  ‘I didnae know… it was so hard… to be the initiator. Fuck. I feel rubbish.’

  ‘How long?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘Took me… a few minutes, I think.’ James shook his head. ‘Didnae exactly have a timer. I didnae know what West was doing till after.’ His whole body shuddered.

  ‘I didnae know what I was when I woke. Where I was. Who I was. Not for hours.’ He straightened his spine. ‘Don’t come near. If I cannae hold him, run. He may not know you, and he’ll be raging thirsty.’

  James knelt more firmly on the dead man’s legs and pinned his limp arms above Michael’s head, braced against being bucked off in a wild fury.

  And they waited.

  The seconds ticked by in terrible silence. Tick. Tick. Tick. Like a bomb.

  Gabriel breathed short and sharp through his nose. He began to move away, only to be brought up short by James’s ferocious glare.

  ‘Stay,’ growled James, his gaze wild; untamed and bleak. ‘You need tae see this. You need tae understand what it is.’

  ‘He’ll need blood,’ Gabriel said, forcing himself to be calm.

  ‘You. Stay.’

  ‘I’ll…’ began Anthea.

  ‘You’re covered in blood,’ Gabriel pointed out, and the two of them stared at each other. She was covered in Michael’s blood. Michael’s blood was still crusted on Gabriel’s face; in his hair, too. Tavisa looked from one haunted face to another. ‘Stay with him.

  I’ll go.’

  Her departure was stymied at the door to the stairs when she encountered the BUS team leader. The rest of his team was on the street below, clearing bits of dead fox from the footpath.

  ‘Do you have a situation report?’ he asked. ‘Miss Webb signalled I should wait. Do you have further instructions?’ His professional aloofness faltered. ‘Is Mr Dare alive?’

  Tavisa looked over her shoulder, then back at the agent. ‘We need bags of blood from the hospital. I don’t know how many. Three or four, at least. Is that something you can do without having to answer any questions?’

  His gaze flicked over her shoulder, full of questions himself, but he nodded. ‘We have a contact here.’

  That was a huge relief, because Tavisa had no idea how she was supposed to convince the nursing staff to give her bags of blood without explaining why she needed it. And she was absolutely not going to tell them why she needed it.

  ‘Fast as you can, then,’ said Tavisa in as firm a command voice as she could muster. ‘I’ll wait here for you.’

  The agent took off, speaking swiftly and quietly into his two- way, reassured to have new purpose. Tavisa stared after him, then decided that she had seen a tail, and that it wasn’t the most peculiar thing she’d seen today.

  Tavisa returned to the rooftop tableau. Those four people. Still as stone. Still as death.

  She closed her eyes, but there were no more visions. She hoped it meant that this was not a crucial moment. Not the fulcrum of the future she’d interrupted when she walked between Anthea and Michael. She hoped the darkness she’d sensed in the future was only the usual kind, the run-of-the-mill human badness of murder, extortion and assault.

  She tried not to think about the blazing angel from her dreams, and how she was that righteous creature. She was not an avenging angel or deva or whatever. She was an ordinary copper, in way over her head. That was all.

  Tavisa opened her eyes again. Gabriel had lifted his gaze from Michael’s slack face to regard James, poised over Michael’s body.

  ‘Jamie?’ Gabriel said soothingly, like you would to a snarling dog. ‘Are you all right.’

  ‘Of course I’m not all right,’ replied James tensely, but not angrily. ‘I know what this is like from his side.’

  The sun moved incrementally across the sky. The traffic hummed below. An ambulance came, another left. There were cars and helicopters and pigeons and ships’ horns in the distance – London being London; although part of her lay dead on this rooftop.

  That dead part of London – its defender, Michael – suddenly moved; a twitch of his pinkie finger.

  Tavisa approached, determined to bear witness; to understand. The finger twitched twice more. A foot jerked.

  James Sharpe crouched over the body, straddling its thighs, holding its hands down, ready.

  Ready for what?

  Then a pair of green eyes snapped open.

  They were blank.

  And then they were filled with terror.

  Michael’s body arched up and he was choking, suffocating, trying to take a breath but unable to remember how.

  Then the terrible dragging gasp of it filled the air: that first lungful of oxygen his body didn’t need, of his body reacting instinctively with horror and panic at the realisation, trying to breathe anyway.

  The exhale was a bellow of agony and rage, devolving into a shriek of abject terror. Michael’s body spasmed in a way that must have been painful, collapsed, arched again, as he gasped for air, wailed, gasped again, and began to flail about, trying to rise.

  He screamed.

  The convulsions as he
died and the vampire blood inhabited his body were nothing compared to this wild, frantic, terror-fueled thrashing.

  From the start, James had him pinioned by legs and arms. Michael Dare – a man of elegance, of poise, of the utmost self-containment and grace and cool charm – sobbed and struggled to escape not from James but from the invisible, unknown monster in his veins.

  James wrestled him down, viciously almost, except that he was saying: ‘Sshh, hush now. You’re not alone. Sshh. I’m here. I’m here. You’re not alone, Michael. It’ll be all right. Come on, now. Hush. Don’t be scared. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.’

  Michael’s face contorted and he bared his fangs in an animal rage.

  Without warning, James responded in kind. He pushed Michael down and roared in his face, fangs bared, blue eyes blazing. Michael thrashed, sobbing.

  ‘What’s your name?’ James yelled, pulling back. ‘Tell me.

  Remember who you are.’

  Michael snapped his teeth, trying to bite. He looked ruined. Lost and alone.

  The other witnesses to this atrocity – Tavisa, Gabriel, Anthea – looked much the same.

  Michael fought to rise. James slammed him back to the ground.

  ‘Stay down. Stay still. Remember your name. You can. Come on. Tell me. Tell me your name. Tell me who you are.’

  Finally, exhaling cries and then gulping desperately for air again, Michael subsided.

  ‘I’m… I’m…’

  ‘That’s it. You can do this. Tell me your name.’

  ‘I can’t.’ The despairing wail rose up again.

  ‘You can. You promised me you could. Tell me.’

  ‘Mmm-m-mei…’

  ‘Come on, now,’ James’s voice was gentler again. ‘You can do this. Come back to us. It’ll nae be so hard if you remember who you are. Please.’

  ‘Maaaah… Mmm… Mii…’

  ‘That’s it. You know who you are. You know.’

  ‘Mi-mi-mi–’ and he shuddered. ‘Michael.’

  ‘Good man. Michael. Good.’ James slumped over him, forehead pressed to forehead. ‘Good man. Michael. Do you know me?’

  ‘J-j-j-James.’

  ‘Aye. I’m James. Good.’

  James eased up. Michael bucked, trying to throw him off again. James was forced to hold him down once more.