The Colour of Death

by Elizabeth Davies

  I knew what I had to do.

  ‘Get out of my house. Go! I withdraw my invitation!’ I shrieked at him. ‘Fuck right off!’

  For an incredibly long second, nothing happened. It was as though time itself had paused. Then Rochdale let out a hiss, his breath, cold on my terror-damp skin, and he withdrew, forced back towards the door with infinite slowness, fighting my command with every inch of his willpower.

  But in the end, he’d had no choice, I saw. He was compelled to leave. I had a last image of disbelief and rage before the door slammed shut behind him, hard enough to rattle the very foundations of the cottage.

  I slid down the wall, weak and boneless with fear, the horror of what had so nearly happened shaking me to my very heart and soul. I shook and shuddered, sobbing and hiccupping, my face wet and my throat sore from crying, until relief gradually overcame the terror and I slowly brought myself under control.

  I’d done it. Rochdale had gone, forced to leave and never to return.

  Thank God, the priest had got that right, else Father Andrew would have been planting me six foot under come morning – if, that is, a vampire’s drink of choice would be allowed to be buried in hallowed ground. I wasn’t sure how these things worked.

  I was babbling, thoughts skittering through my mind on sharp, rat-like claws, and I guessed I must be going into shock. Sitting on the floor, the quarry tiles cold and hard beneath me, I began to shake, the trembling increasing the longer I sat there, until my whole body vibrated with the force of it, and my teeth chattered so hard I was scared they might shatter.

  I wanted oblivion. I wanted this whole sorry mess to never have happened. I wanted everything to go back to the way it was before Oxford, before Rochdale, before learning of things I’d never wished to learn.

  And when a pounding at my door had my heart missing beat after beat, oblivion is what I got.

  Chapter 41

  Olivia

  Oblivion didn’t last as long as I expected it to, or hoped it would. Consciousness rushed back in a flurry of movement and noise as Crow gathered me up off the floor and placed me on the sofa, while shouting at me to “stay with him”.

  I would have preferred it if he’d left me where I was and had been considerably quieter about it, but his concern was touching and having him in my house was comforting. Although the sense of security he provided was a false one, it was welcome all the same.

  I didn’t think I’d ever truly feel safe again.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ my knight in shining armour yelled at me, once he saw I was compos mentis and not about to die.

  ‘Why are you here?’ I croaked back at him, not really caring, just incredibly relieved that he was.

  He didn’t answer. ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘You and me both. Mine’s a gin, a bloody large one.’ I jerked my head in the direction of the kitchen, then listened to him opening cupboard doors, and the chink of glass on glass.

  He returned with a two-thirds full bottle of clear, silky liquid and a couple of tumblers. I sat up to take one.

  Maybe getting drunk right now wasn’t such a good idea, but it did have a certain appeal. The alcohol, however, didn’t touch the sides. I downed the shot in one long swallow, then had another, before I managed to stop trembling.

  ‘Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’ Crow demanded.

  ‘Were you outside, waiting for him to show up?’ I countered. If Crow had been, it had taken him a bloody long time to get to me. If I’d been depending on this man to save me, I’d be carrion by now.

  His gaze slid away. ‘I was at home.’

  ‘How did you know—?’

  ‘Hidden camera,’ he muttered.

  ‘In my house?’

  He nodded once.

  I couldn’t be bothered to be bothered. There were far bigger fish to fry than Crow being a fuckwit pervert, but he did go down in my estimation and so did any residual feelings I might have been harbouring.

  ‘It’s for your own protection,’ he added, slightly louder; probably regaining a bit of confidence when I didn’t make any attempt to separate his head from his shoulders.

  ‘At least I don’t need to explain what happened,’ was all I said. ‘If you saw it all, it saves me going over it.’ I would have to “go over it” at some point, because something like this couldn’t be brushed under the carpet; but not now. Not when darkness reigned. Not when I was so close to what had just nearly happened. I needed some distance, some perspective. I needed time to talk myself out of the impossible and arrive at a conclusion I could live with.

  ‘Yeah, you do,’ Crow insisted.

  ‘You saw what Rochdale did,’ I retorted. ‘What more do you want me to say? I can apologise for letting him in, if you like. I’m sorry. There. Satisfied?’

  He was staring at me as if I’d lost my mind. A strained silence stretched between us.

  ‘What?’ I asked eventually, reaching for the bottle in another attempt to numb my frazzled brain and calm my shredded nerves.

  He stopped my hand. ‘Olivia,’ he said gently. ‘There was no one there.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course someone was there. Rochdale was bloody well there. I saw him. I spoke to him. He almost fucking killed me.’

  ‘Wait a second.’

  He walked out of the living room, his footsteps sounded in the hall, followed by the click of the front door opening as he turned the handle. It was followed by the clunk of a car door shutting, then the front door closing. When Crow returned, he was playing with his phone.

  ‘Watch,’ he instructed, handing it to me.

  I saw myself perched on the arm of the chair. I watched as I leapt up, my face a mask of worry, and crept to the door. I heard myself say, ‘Rochdale’, then ‘He was nothing. He’s no one.’ I said a few more things too, but I wasn’t really listening – I knew the script. I simply watched and waited, willing myself not to open the door, but the film of my life inevitably kept rolling and the door slammed open. I was driven back against the wall with some force.

  My face wasn’t too clear, but the angle of the camera showed enough. I was petrified, my eyes wide and bulging, my mouth open, and I shook from head to toe.

  ‘No,’ I moaned. ‘Please leave me alone.’

  I watched my screen-self as I turned my head to the side. ‘Who are you?’ my screen-self muttered.

  ‘Not what – who,’ I said aloud, earning a swift, sharp glance from Crow.

  He let out a little noise when I said, ‘Please, no, I don’t want to die,’ and we both watched silently as I seemed to shrink into myself, as though the process of decay had already begun.

  I was hard up against the wall, unmoving apart from the visible trembling of my limbs My eyes were closed. Even in the odd light of the night vision camera, I looked pale and corpse-like.

  Then something changed. My eyes had snapped open and I seemed to straighten up. ‘Get out of my house. Go! I withdraw my invitation!’ I’d screamed. ‘Fuck right off!’

  There had been a moment of stillness, then the front door opened for a second, then it slammed shut.

  Another moment of stillness followed in the aftermath of the recording, as I tried to understand what I’d just witnessed.

  There’d been no Rochdale.

  There’d been no one else on the camera. Only me.

  When I reached for the gin bottle again, he didn’t stop me, but I noticed he didn’t refill his own glass.

  ‘I’ve got an explanation. I think.’ I was hesitant. I might have shared my secret with Crow, but that didn’t mean I was comfortable talking about it. Long-held habits were hard to break.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Everyone has an aura. Everyone I’ve ever met. Except for one man.’

  ‘Rochdale.’

  I nodded. ‘There was a woman that night in Oxford. She was having a cardiac arrest, I think. Anyway, she was dying.’

  Crow cocked his head to one side. ‘Go on,’ he repeated.


  ‘I knew this, because her aura was grey and fading, until eventually it would have disappeared altogether.’

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. It was still there when the paramedics arrived.’

  ‘I’m not sure where you’re heading with this.’

  Bless him, he did look confused with his brows lowered and a frown line creasing the space between them. I had a ridiculous urge to rub the line away with my thumb. ‘The dead don’t have auras,’ I said, slowly and succinctly. I didn’t want him to miss that vital bit of information.

  ‘You can tell if a person is dying?’

  ‘Yes.’ Oh, God, I wished I didn’t.

  ‘What do you do about it?’

  I thought back to the doctor who had taken my blood yesterday (or was it the day before? I’d lost track of time). ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe you should?’

  ‘Really? And how do you suggest I do that? Walk up to them and say, “Hi, your aura is almost gone. I think you’d better get yourself off to the hospital?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You try seeing the bloody things! It’s not easy. It’s not as if I asked for this!’ My voice was getting louder and the prick of tears stung my eyes again. I appeared to have an infinite supply of them tonight.

  ‘I didn’t say it was, or that you did. But you’ve got a gift. You should use it.’

  ‘No. It’s not a gift. It’s a curse. And if I try to use it, I’ll be called a fraud, a charlatan. Or locked up and the key thrown away.’

  ‘Have you ever tried?’

  My sullen silence interspersed with the occasional sniffy sob, gave him my answer.

  ‘Right, let’s look at this logically,’ he said after a moment, shooting me a swift look at my derisive snort.

  There was nothing logical about any of this. Not about my being able to see colours around people (or not, in the case of Rochdale), and certainly not about the undead walking the earth.

  ‘You see auras,’ Crow said. ‘If someone’s aura goes grey and fades, it means they’re dying. When their aura disappears, it means they’re dead. Have I got it, so far?’

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  ‘Okay. Rochdale is the only person you’ve ever met who doesn’t have an aura.’ Crow took a sip of his gin. I eyed it with envy; I’d already drunk all mine and the bottle was nearly empty.

  ‘Correct,’ I said.

  ‘Therefore, you believe Rochdale must be dead,’ he concluded.

  ‘Not necessarily. There may be other people without auras. Just because I haven’t met any doesn’t mean they don’t exist.’ I was playing my own Devil’s advocate.

  ‘True.’

  ‘You think this is all in my head?’ My voice was rising again. It sounded slightly hysterical.

  ‘Do you?’ he countered, his turn to play advocate.

  ‘You’re the one who took me to see Father Andrew. The good priest clearly believes in the undead. He even baptised me.’

  ‘If what you say is true and Rochdale really was here, then being baptised didn’t do you any good.’

  I thought about that. I’d assumed the baptism, the crucifix, the holy water, and so on, would protect me against Rochdale. They hadn’t.

  At least some good had come out of my encounter with Father Andrew. If it hadn’t been for him, I would never have thought to revoke my invitation to Rochdale to enter my house. When I’d told the bastard to go, he’d gone.

  Which had undoubtedly saved my life.

  There was one tiny little problem with that, though. I was safe enough in here; he couldn’t get to me. He was banished from my home.

  But what would happen when I went outside?

  How safe would I be then?

  Chapter 42

  Lord Byron

  She would die for this. The effrontery of the girl irked me beyond measure. She would rue the day she’d set eyes on me. I would take her slow, make her beg for it to end. Each mouthful would have her pleading for me to kill her.

  I was quite looking forward to it.

  Did the strumpet honestly believe she was safe inside that little stone hovel? Ha! Greater minds than hers had tried to thwart me, all of them long drained and crumbled to dust.

  And if she thought she only need come out during the day, she would soon discover otherwise.

  Nowhere was safe, not for her. I wanted her to understand that first. Her terror would add a nice flavour.

  I ran my hand down the fragile wooden door separating me from my victim and smiled.

  Chapter 43

  Crow

  Crow didn’t have any other choice – he’d have to stay with Olivia tonight. She was right, he’d been the one to take her to see Father Andrew. It was the priest who’d argued that there was more to religion than simply believing in God. He’d maintained that if you believe in God then logic dictated that you must believe in Satan, because you can’t have one without the other, and evil was the natural, inevitable reverse of good. Ying and yang. He’d also implied you couldn’t get around the question of evil by laying it all at the feet of mankind. Or that good and evil were merely concepts.

  You either accepted it all, or you didn’t accept any of it. The priest had also maintained that it was irrelevant whether you believed or not, because God and his counterpart existed anyway, regardless of the opinion of any individual person.

  The question Crow was busy debating, was whether he believed in the existence of vampires, despite everything he’d seen, everything he’d witnessed. Crow was a man of action, more at home with a gun than a creature from a horror film. His enemies had been men, not supernatural beings. This new reality was hard to accept, and he wasn’t sure he totally believed either the priest or his own eyes. The whole thing was so far removed from everything he’d experienced before, it was surreal. No one in their right mind actually believed vampires existed. But...

  Where the hell was his sister?

  Surely she knew he’d be out of his mind with worry? The least she could do was send him a text to say she was okay. It wouldn’t stop him searching for her until he found her, but at least it would put his mind at ease a little.

  Lost in his thoughts, Crow hadn’t realised the time, and was surprised to see it was so late.

  ‘I think it’s time we went to bed,’ he suggested.

  ‘You can sleep down here,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a spare pillow and a duvet. Oh, and disconnect that camera.’

  He went upstairs to use the bathroom. Passing the open door of Olivia’s bedroom, a vision of her in bed with her hand between her legs flashed across his mind.

  By the time he’d finished his ablutions, such as they were, Olivia had made a bed up for him on the couch. It looked comfortable enough and God knows he’d slept in far worse places.

  ‘If you want anything, you know where the kitchen is,’ Olivia said, in lieu of a “goodnight”, and his gaze followed her as she walked out of the living room and pulled the door shut.

  Christ, he was knackered. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. Rubbing a hand across his chin, stubble bristling under his fingers, he sighed deeply and sat down. Swinging his legs onto the sofa, he shuffled down under the duvet, knowing he’d be asleep in seconds. Years of catching sleep as and when the opportunity arose, in some of the most uncomfortable places imagina—

  It was his last conscious thought until a couple of hours later.

  What was that? Crow moved from sleep to full alert in the space of a heartbeat.

  Was it a noise, or was it something else that woke him?

  He pressed a button on the side of his watch and the display briefly flashed: 2.45 am. He was a light sleeper. He had to be; his life had depended on it once upon a time. But even asleep, he’d always been able to differentiate between safe noises and threatening ones. The shuffling of a comrade getting up to take a piss never woke him; the click of a weapon most surely did.

  Whatever it was that had disturbed him now, his
sleeping brain had clearly determined it to be a threat.

  He sniffed, inhaling sharply. A whiff of smoke hung in the air.

  Olivia had an open fireplace in the living room, but it wasn’t lit and didn’t appear to have been used for some time; the logs in it were more for decoration than anticipated warmth.

  The smell of smoke grew stronger, and a crackle and snap accompanied it.

  Crow eased back the duvet and slid off the sofa, coming to his feet.

  He wasn’t sure which direction the smoke was coming from, but logic told him to start with the most obvious – the kitchen. Perhaps Olivia had left something on, like a gas ring?

  Nope, it couldn’t be that, because one of them would have noticed something as obvious.

  He moved stealthily across the room. The noise grew louder, the snap and crackle of a minute ago replaced by muffled roaring. He stood next to the door leading to the kitchen and listened.

  It didn’t sound good.

  He touched the door handle.

  It was warm.

  Dashing back to the sofa, he scooped his phone up from the floor, and stuffed his feet into his trainers, while dialling 999.

  This fire needed to be dealt with by the experts. Crow’s priority was to get himself and Olivia out.

  ‘Fuck!’ He leapt back, shaking his hand.

  He dashed to the hall door, and as he touched that handle, he realised it was considerably hotter than the one on the kitchen door. It wasn’t quite hot enough to burn his palm, but it was getting there.

  Crow swore, realising he’d no choice, not if he wanted to make sure Olivia got out – he’d have to open the door and face whatever was on the other side.

  With a quick glance at the window and the cool, fresh air beyond, he took a deep breath, pulled his T-shirt up to cover his mouth and nose, opened the door and leapt behind it, using it as a temporary shield. Angry flames billowed into the room, accompanied by thick choking smoke. The additional oxygen in the living room fuelled their fury for a moment, before the flames died down enough for him to consider rushing through them.