Paper Children

by James Fahy

  “You’re frowning at me,” he said. “Is it the head injury, Doctor? Or are you not happy to see me?”

  I felt a little drunk, my head swimming sickeningly. My defences must have been lowered, because I was surprisingly candid.

  “I’ve missed your stupid face,” I said affectionately. “Where am I?”

  “Blue Lab,” the other figure answered. My eyes slid rather woozily across the bright, utilitarian room to him. It was Dove. Dressed in white, as he had been when I’d met him at Sanctum, only far more formally. White dinner jacket, crisp white shirt, with long cuffs which draped over his pale hands. If Interview with the Vampire ever got a Gucci update, he’d fit right in. His long blonde hair was tied back loosely in a ribbon, making his white face look even more open and boyish than it had previously.

  “Cheekbones for days,” I mumbled, aware that I sounded, and felt, more than a little stoned. “Are you guys the little angel-devil combo, ‘cause you look too big to perch on my shoulders.”

  Dove grinned, his smile wide and open in contrast to Allesandro’s sly smirk.

  “Do we look like bookends to you, Doctor Harkness?” he grinned. “And what a novel lies between us.” The inlaid jewel between his eyebrows sparkled.

  To be honest, there are worse things on this earth than waking up to find yourself being watched over by two ridiculously handsome men, but I was too disoriented to figure out why the guy dressed like a TV evangelist and the guy dressed like a stage hypnotist were here at all.

  “I’ll pass on being the baloney in that particular vamp-wich, thanks.” My hand went shakily to my head, feeling not bandages, but a medical pad. “I’m at Blue Lab?”

  Allesandro nodded. “One floor below your own lab,” he confirmed. “Private medical down here. After what you went through, I’m guessing your lords and masters don’t want you checking into the local. You know how you attract media attention these days.”

  “I’m not talking to you,” I replied bluntly, and a little childishly. “You left.”

  I looked to Dove. “I saw the creature that’s been taking children. I think it killed your vampires too. And it’s no angel.”

  “I never left,” Allesandro said quietly. I glanced back at him. His pale grey eyes were looking at me meaningfully. Something about him seemed a little off.

  “You’ve been through a lot,” Dove said. “And the pain meds have lowered your… resistance. It’s why we’re here.”

  “It’s how we’re here,” Allesandro corrected, cutting off the other vampire. “It’s hard to get into your mind, Doctor. You do keep our kind at arm’s length, don’t you?”

  I looked from one vampire to the other. I was slowly coming around a little. Ebony and ivory. I glanced down at their feet on the pale sterile floor, then back up again.

  “You’re not here are you?” I said flatly.

  Allesandro gave me a smile which seemed a little sad. His eyes had narrowed slightly, his arms still crossed as he leaned against the wall, peering at me. “Not how I’d like to be.”

  I let myself sink back onto the bed. Neither of the two figures in my room were casting shadows. I was hallucinating. What stupid medication had I been given I didn’t know.

  “I wish you’d just stay out of my head,” I whispered to the ceiling. Dove chuckled a little, but I could feel Allesandro glowering.

  “You know, it’s interesting,” Dove said. “I can roll any human I’ve ever met under my mind. Everyone except for you. It’s always been a talent of mine, better than any other vampire I’ve ever met. And lately I’ve been working on improving it. But you, Dr Harkness? You have a wall up inside you that is stronger than the one around this city. Do you understand how fascinating that is to me?”

  “I’m only able to get in her head because she’s drank from me,” Allesandro said. He turned his attention from the blonde vampire to me, unfolding his arms and putting his hands in his pockets sulkily. “Of course, once you invite a vampire in, we can come back whenever. I’m in your blood, Doctor. Quite literally.” He scowled a little. “Not that it’s doing me much good at the moment. I can’t seem to get my message through.”

  Dove smirked. “Crossed frequencies can garble a message,” he said. “It’s your own fault for being popular, Dr Harkness. All the best vampires want to tune into Radio Phoebe.”

  I covered my hands with my eyes, blocking out the harsh light which was not helping my stabbing migraine.

  “If you two figments of my imagination don’t have anything useful to say, could you please leave me alone? It’s been a rough enough day without your input.”

  I was annoyed at my own subconscious. I could at least have hallucinated the two of them Turkish wresting shirtless in oil or something. Why did my unconscious mind apparently want to see vampires dressed like they were headed to the Oscars ceremony? My lizard brain was so lame.

  “I can’t say what I want to,” Allesandro explained. “It’s taking everything I have left just for… this, and there isn’t much left anyway. Read between the lines for once. Or do you plan on letting me drain away to nothing?”

  “I think you need to stay away from demon clowns, Dr Harkness.” Dove told me. “There’s a lot of danger on the streets, and it’s only going to get worse. You’ve already been hurt.”

  No shit, I thought. If I was imagining them, then this was like a waking dream. A dream is just a conversation your subconscious has with itself. So why couldn’t I make either of the Tommy Hillfanger brothers shut up?

  “Do you know in order to get to the witch’s cottage, sometimes you have to wander far off the path,” Allesandro said to me, his voice had a soft purr beneath it. “Sometimes you have to follow the big bad wolf, not avoid it.”

  “I’m not little Red Riding Hood,” I murmured. “Or Hansel and Gretel. What the hell are you babbling about fairy tales now for?” I rubbed gingerly at my head, feeling more than a little sorry for myself. “Little miss bloody scalp maybe…”

  “So many things in fairy tales point to the forest,” the vampire ignored me completely. “There are all sorts of things in there. Gingerbread houses, ruined towers full of sleeping princesses, but you have to follow the breadcrumbs.”

  “Didn’t the breadcrumbs get eaten by birds, in that particular old story?” Dove said. Something in his voice sounded petulant, as though he was irritated with Allesandro for talking about this. “You can’t trust old tales. You end up getting eaten by witches or worse if you linger in the woods.”

  “Our good doctor is a match for anything in the darkness,” Allesandro replied, a little smugly. Or was it pride in his voice? Either way, in the politest way possible, the two vampire seemed to be needling one another. Arguing about nonsense things like bickering children.

  “If you want the truth,” Allesandro said to me. “You can’t run away. You have to give chase.”

  I lifted my hands away from my eyes, utterly exasperated with their cryptic babble. “Will you both just shut up and go away?” I snapped.

  I blinked in confusion. There were no vampires in my room. The room itself was the same, but not nearly as bright at it had been a moment ago. The light came from a silvery table lamp next to me, which glowed soothingly next to a humidifier pumping warm steam into the otherwise dry air. There were two people looking over me, but they weren’t vampires. The concerned faces of Griff and Dee peered down. Griff was paused, halfway between pouring a glass of water from a clear plastic jug. Denison was sitting in a chair by the head of my bed. Both of them stared at me.

  “We were talking too loud I guess,” Dee said to Griff, looking at me with concern.

  “If you wanted us to go…” Griff handed me the water, which I took from with shaky hands. I was looking all around the room. No Dove. No Allesandro. They weren’t here. They had never been here.

  “Follow the big bad wolf, not the breadcrumbs,” I muttered mindlessly to myself, taking a sip of the water gratefully. The icy liquid was ridiculously refreshing. My head
was sore, but not nearly as painful as it had been a moment ago in the hallucination.

  “Sips, not gulps,” Griff instructed. “You had a bad concussion, Doc. Nothing life-threatening, no fractures, you must have a skull like a cannonball.” He smiled optimistically at me. “But you’re still going to feel like hell for a few hours, so take it easy. We don’t want you throwing up everywhere.”

  Dee had placed his palm on my forehead and used his thumb to open my eyelid wide. His other hand shone a penlight into my eyes, blinding me momentarily.

  “Other one please,” he said in a business-like tone, repeating the process with my other eye.

  “Who made you my consultant?” I asked, my voice feeling more my own. “And I wasn’t talking to you two,” I explained. “I was…”

  “Dreaming?” Griff asked.

  That hadn’t been what it had felt like. “Something like that,” I murmured. “We’re at Blue Lab aren’t we?”

  Denison nodded. “Cloves got you here all cloak and dagger. She was throwing a shit fit about the media getting wind of you being attacked at the library. I think she has literally buried you underground where you can’t do any harm.”

  “We figured we’d be the ones looking after you, better the devils you know right?”

  “I saw the devil,” I said, Griff’s words bringing the whole incident at the library back to me. They both stared at me with concerned faces. I could tell they were both wondering if I had hit my head harder than they had evaluated.

  “Well, no, obviously not the actual devil,” I clarified. “But I saw what this thing is, up close and personal. I think Cunningham Bowls, though it galls me to say it, is right. This wasn’t a person. It was a GO… of some kind.”

  To my inner satisfaction, neither of them shouted at me for putting myself in danger or told me how foolish I was and that I could have been killed. There’s nothing quite so annoying as being scolded for doing something you’re already regretting. The ‘I told you so’ chorus was blissfully quiet.

  “Where’s Lucy?” I asked, remembering that I must have left her at the library.

  “Cloves sent her to your place,” Griff told me, quite apologetically. “What were you dreaming about?” He was still looking at me curiously, and I wondered if I’d been mumbling in my sleep.

  I shook my head. This was a bad idea. I made a mental note not to shake my head again for the next few days, no matter what happened.

  “Vampires,” I mumbled. “Very… annoying… vampires, babbling nonsense.” I handed Griff the water back, slowly processing what he’d just told me. “Why would Cloves send Lucy to my place?” Suspicion was growing in my mind.

  The door to my private medical room opened and Veronica Cloves herself walked in before Griff or Dee could answer, letting it slam behind her. She looked me over once, with clinical thoroughness and not a shred of empathy. “Because while you’ve been wasting time being dramatic and unconscious, sleeping the whole day away, the rest of the world has been working, Harkness.”

  She stalked over to my bed, sweeping Griff aside like an errant leaf in a gale, and stared down at me, looming over with a deep frown. “No permanent damage then?” she asked.

  “So I’m told,” I replied.

  I almost flinched as she reached out and, with a leather-gloved hand, tilted my head to the side and removed the taped medical cool-pack from my temple. I heard her tut. For a moment I was terribly confused. Was Cloves actually concerned for me?

  “This doesn’t look as bad as it could have done,” she decided. “Good. We can cover most of it with makeup. Thank God for small blessings.” She released my head unceremoniously and straightened up.

  I stared at her. “Cover it with makeup?”

  “Coldwater wants you on GO liaison handwringing-backslapping vamp-schmoozing duty. There’s a media gathering at Sanctum. Vamps, GO friendly humans, your pal Oscar will be there, along with several other important people and plenty of press.” Her lip curled. “It would be just like you to turn up there with a black eye or something and make me look a fool just to spite me.”

  I was aghast. “I’ve just had a run in with an unknown Genetic Other, had my head smashed against a toilet bowl and barely escaped with my life. I’ve been sedated for hours, and you want me to go to a party?”

  Cloves snorted. “Want?” she said. “If the world did what I wanted, Harkness, then I’d sleep a hell of a lot better. Coldwater is the one playing the music, you and I just dance. You just said you were fine.”

  “I was being stoic! I can barely stand.”

  Cloves reached into her purse, “And that’s why I brought you a present.” She unceremoniously dropped a box onto my lap. It looked like tablets. “Better painkillers. Much better. Your two guardian angels here have already told me your head injury isn’t serious, and that you’re already healing at a near-superhuman rate. You must have good genes, so don’t try and wriggle out if it. I’ll give you ten minutes. Your other little lackey should be back from that pit of a hole you call a home by now.” She shuddered visibly. “…With whatever depressing rag passes for eveningwear in your wardrobe. Meet me upstairs. It’s already 8.00 pm, the party’s started, and if we want to arrive fashionably late, I refuse to get there any later than nine.”

  Griff and Dee both gave me sympathetic glances. I knew full well I must look terrible. Pale, dark eyed, blood-matted hair drenched in sweat. I felt like a twisted version of Cinderella, being forced to go to the ball by her wicked stepmother.

  “You’re not remotely interested in hearing my report about the library?” I said to Cloves’ already retreating back. She was swishing out of the room without a backward glance.

  “Tell me in the car,” she snapped. “Jesus, Harkness, learn to multitask.”

  Chapter 14

  As return to work interviews go, Cloves wouldn’t have gone down very well with any competent HR Department. She wanted to know why I was at the library in the first place. I wasn’t about to tell her about anonymous text tip-offs until I knew more myself, so I wouldn’t tell her. She wanted to know what I’d seen there. I hadn’t decided yet what to make of the top-secret meeting of Uber-Cabal directors, and I was never quite sure where Cloves lay on toeing the Cabal line. I had no doubt that, my superior or not, she would gladly, and probably with a happy little wave, throw me to the wolves if she thought for one moment that whistle-blowing me as an illegal eavesdropper would even slightly further her career.

  So I skipped the sinister Umbrella Corporation chinwag too.

  To be fair, it was still a little difficult to keep it all straight in my head, what with the head pain, concussion, and the fact that this entire demanding conversation was being held while I was attempting to change clothes in Cloves’ acid yellow Ferrari, which she herself was hurtling through the narrow streets at high speed, with her usual aggressive abandon and complete lack of regard for the sanctity of human life.

  More than once I head-butted the side window when she cornered sharply through the night. That didn’t really help me to maintain lucidity.

  I did tell her about the ghost-girl I kind-of maybe-thought-I-saw, which was met with sneering derision, despite my suggestion that it might have some parallels with the ‘angel’ our homeless witness had seen fighting on the bridge.

  “Trick of the light,” she snapped. “You’ve got disappearing girls on the brain, Harkness, that’s all it is. You said it was dark in that place, right?”

  “Yes, but I’m almost certain-”

  “Ghosts don’t exist,” she replied with flat certainty. “Vampires, Tribals, Bonewalkers, sure these things all seemed ‘supernatural’ way back in the Dark Ages, but now we know they are real. As in, scientific variations. Genetically different from us but still understandable. Still explainable.” She glared at me in the rear view mirror as I was attempting to zip up my dress. “But ghosts? Angels? Give me a break. Those things are impossible. Just superstitious fairy tales. What next? Are we going to have garden gnom
es and pixies opening up specialist delis in Headington? Is the next head of the Isis rowing team going to be a mermaid?”

  “Your partner came back from the dead,” I reminded her. “Chase Pargate, the man you killed yourself, looking thirty years younger than the day he died, and with no apologies. Explain that. Or are we never going to talk about Chase Pargate?”

  “That’s completely different,” she snapped. She sped over a mini-roundabout doing at least sixty, causing the car to practically leave the road for a second and for me to bang my head against the roof. I’m certain she had done it on purpose.

  “How is it different?” I argued. “Look… that was just an example. My point being, things we think are impossible might just be things we don’t understand yet.”

  “I never bloody understood Pargate when he was alive in the first place,” Cloves said through narrowed lips. “God help us all trying to understand the lunatic now. He had a big enough ego before I executed him for treason. After a resurrection, he’s bound to be even more insufferable. Anyway, he’s disappeared in a puff of smoke ever since that trouble with the Tribals.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, while I tried to slip into the heels Lucy had fetched for me, a difficult enough task in the back seat of a dark car.

  “And that’s even if it was really him in the first place,” she muttered. “Which it probably wasn’t.”

  “Keep your eyes on the road,” I told her, noticing her looking at me thoughtfully in the mirror as we careened into the vampire district at high speed. “The way you drive, you’re going to plough through a flock of Helsings. And you shout at me for bad PR.”

  “Tell me about the toast-ghost,” she instructed, referring to my description of the clownish, deep-fried hell spawn from the library bathroom. I suspected she merely wanted to shift the conversation away from her ex-partner.

  This I didn’t hold back any details on. The thing had scared me, and I’m a grown adult. The thought of how terrified the two missing girls must have been if it had indeed been the kidnapper made me want to spare no detail at all. Not if it meant we could perhaps catch and stop it.