Paper Children

by James Fahy

  One of the women tapped her head several times with a long finger. “It’s written all over your thoughts. Some things leave bigger scars in the mind than others. Murder will do that for a person, even when it’s necessary. They weren’t going to allow themselves to be stopped. But it’s different this time.”

  Chase nodded. “Bonewalkers are not likely to intervene with the current situation, the missing children, because as far as we can figure out, it suits their purposes perfectly.”

  Sofia stepped away from the door. “So are you saying the Bonewalkers are involved with this burning demon or not? I thought the things were a type of genie? They are servants, slaves.”

  “They are neither,” the women said together. “They are altogether something else, my dear.”

  “But no,” Chase told us. “I’ve been to every kidnapping scene, every vampire death scene, as you no doubt saw on your footage, Phoebe, and I’ve seen no evidence that the Bonewalkers are directly involved with these current events. But they are allowing it happen.”

  “Allowing it? You make it sound like those things are in charge.” Sofia scoffed.

  “Cabal may believe they rule the world,” Chase said. “But there’s a reason I tried to bring them down years ago, parts of them anyway. Puppets who can’t even see their own strings. That’s why I was ‘taken out of action’.” He laced his fingers. “I don’t hold a grudge against Cloves, she was following orders. I doubt she knew why she was told to kill me, not the truth of it anyway.”

  “The time to deal with the faceless ones’ endgame is soon, but not yet,” one of the sisters said to me. “There are other things happening in the city right now, dear, that need our attention.”

  “The smouldering demon? The ghost girl who’s appearing and disappearing?” I offered, slightly sarcastically. “The pile of dead vampire torn to pieces? Yes, I’ve noticed.”

  “That thing haunting the city is no demon, Doctor,” Chase told me. “From my own investigations, I believe it to be nothing more than a ghoul. An empty shell, having its strings pulled by someone else entirely.”

  I shook my head. “No. It can’t be a ghoul, it’s far too strong. I’ve fought it myself. And if it’s been killing vampires? Vampires are much stronger than I am, no ghoul could take one down.”

  “Not a human ghoul, no,” Chase allowed with a nod. “But a Genetic Other ghoul.”

  “This has already been considered. We are stronger than humans,” Sofia concurred. “Tribals and vampires, but our minds are stronger too. There is no way anyone could overpower, kill and control the corpse of one of us. No ghoul has ever been made from anything stronger than a weak human body and mind. Even if it was not against every taboo there is, it would take a strength that does not exist.”

  “One that doesn’t exist naturally, my lamb,” one of the sister corrected. “But we believe someone is tampering with natural things. Someone is attempting to improve abilities, to meddle in the natural order.” She looked to me,

  “Systemic evolutionary redesignation,” she nodded.

  “Augmented physical hosts,” her twin added. They both regarded me solemnly.

  I peered back, somewhat at a loss. “Someone is meddling with GO genetics themselves?” I ventured. They were looking at me expectantly. “Is this process supposed to mean something to me?”

  Chase sighed. “Do I need to spell it out for you, Phoebe?”

  He dipped his finger in his teacup and drew it along the thin dust in the table between us, writing the first letter of each word as he repeated the sisters’ words. “Systemic evolutionary redesignation, augmented physical hosts.” He tapped a full stop with his finger. I stared down at the table top.

  “Seraph,” I read in a whisper.

  “Project Seraph,” the sisters nodded. “Defunct experimentation, mothballed a long time ago. Reopened now, like Pandora’s box. In private. In secret. We don’t know where yet. We don’t know who.”

  “But what we do know,” Chase told me, “is that this ‘demon’ of yours is stealing people off the streets for it. Unwilling test subjects, from the poorest part of town,” Chase said. “Nameless kids with no mommy or daddy to cause a fuss. What we can’t figure out is why the sudden change of attack? Why suddenly start snatching high profile children instead. The last two girls to go missing, the Cunningham Bowls girl was high up in the MM radar. The second girl on the bridge, equally prominent family, although it didn’t manage to get her.”

  “She was intercepted, apparently by a ghost girl who appeared and disappeared,” I reminded him. “Snatching the girl from the demon and taking her god-knows-where.”

  “And the third attempted girl a GO supporter from Christchurch elite,” Chase finished. “Hardly in keeping with the under-the-radar selection process is it? Something has derailed, badly, and we need to find out what.”

  I was distracted by an angry buzz in my pocket. For a moment I thought I had accidentally tazed myself, before realising it was my phone. I was impressed I could get a signal down here at all, but then Cloves was so determined to keep tabs on me, she had probably installed every available signal booster to my official Cabal issue mobile. It was indeed a text from her.

  ‘Harkness, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, get to mine now. Something to show you. Come alone. Don’t reply. Delete this immediately’.

  I re-read it a couple of times, then, confused, deleted the message.

  ‘Wherever you are’, I thought a little giddily to myself. Oh, just out in the woods having tea and scones with two witches, a zombie and a were-cat, you know, everyday Thursday things. Screw the festival tomorrow night. My whole life had become one endless Halloween.

  “I think I have to go,” I said. Cloves had never sent me a message like that before. It unsettled me. She had certainly never willingly invited me to her apartment. Something must be wrong. Very wrong. I glanced around. Even more wrong that here, I amended internally. “It’s Cloves. I think she’s discovered something that she doesn’t want to talk about over even a secure line text, which worries me.”

  “Go,” Chase said. “Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. I’d offer to tag along, but I don’t think she’d be very happy to see me. I’ll check in with you later.”

  “I’ll give you my number,” I said standing. I looked at the odd women, and Chase. At the strange hidden outpost full of people both officially dead and very actually dead. At the strange, large sensory tank standing in the corner, which had birthed Chase Pargate, and which now bubbled and hissed, cooking up something else. “And don’t any of you dream of falling off the map anywhere, I’m serious, any of you. I still have a hell of a lot of questions for you all.”

  “I already have your number, silly bean,” Chase grinned at me. “Who on earth do you think sent you that text telling you to check out the library? I thought you needed a gentle nudge.”

  I resisted the almost overwhelming urge to give his face a gentle nudge, and instead flicked my eyes to Sofia, wondering how quickly she could get us out of the forest and back to the car.

  “I will take you, Doctor,” she said. Her eyes slid over to the two women. “But then I will return here. I have much to discuss of my own with these women, I think.”

  The witches, one woman in two bodies, nodded approvingly at her, their expressions secretive.

  “You do at that, dear,” one of them said. “We have a proposal for you too, lady of the Tribals.”

  Chapter 26

  I’d only been to Veronica Cloves home a couple of times before. It was the polar opposite of my tiny flat above its coffee shop. Cloves lived in Portmeadow, amongst the uber-riche, in a glass and steel penthouse suite on the 70th floor of one of the towering spires the one percent could afford. It still amused me that Cabal referred to themselves as servants. If luxury sky-high living passed for servants quarters these days, things had certainly changed a lot since Downton Abbey.

  I rode the quiet elevator upwards, surrounded by spotless
mirrors, brushed steel and highly polished walnut panelling. The air in here smelled strongly of good quality furniture polish. Sofia had dropped me off, informing me that she was heading straight back to speak further with Chase and his strange companions. She had been silent the whole ride back through the city, lost in her own thoughts and clearly mulling something over. The Tribal wasn’t one for sharing her thoughts, and I didn’t press. I was just grateful she’d brought me back out of the wilderness and drove me across the city. She could have just dropped me at the outskirts and made me walk through the Slade and right across town. I glanced at my watch, it was 9.00 pm. The night before Halloween. Even now Dove and his vampires would be gearing up for the big parade tomorrow night, no doubt worried about the vampire-killer still staking our streets, and still mourning the loss of Elise. She may not have been a vampire, but they can get quite attached to their favourite Helsings. I wondered if the demon-thing, or whoever was controlling it if Chase’s tentative theory was to be believed, was also out there somewhere, preparing for Allhallows Eve. Both my new zombie-best friend, the spooky sisters and Elise herself had warned me now that there would be blood in the streets tomorrow. People kept telling me there was going to be big trouble. And for everything I’d discovered, we didn’t seem any closer to stopping it.

  You’d be forgiven for thinking that Cloves’ aircraft-hangar of a penthouse would be as gauche as she was, animal-print everything and haute-couture chandeliers of dripping diamante, but in actuality it was understated and calmly sparse, almost Japanese in its neatness and simplicity of design. Small islands of plain but expensive furniture softly lit with well-placed lamps. A tall fireplace which blended into the wall, sleek and modern, and the far wall, raised by two steps of dark wooden flooring, a vast sloping wall of sheet glass, giving panoramic views over the twinkling lights of New Oxford.

  I wondered whether this was because Cloves spent so little time here that she literally didn’t make an impression, or whether she simply didn’t like anything detracting from the spectacle of herself.

  As her doors swooshed open automatically and I entered, spilling out of the elevator and shrugging out of my coat, she was waiting for me in the middle of the room, dressed, for whatever unfathomable Cloves reason, in a tight crimson pantsuit that made her look like an angular human blood clot.

  “You didn’t have to dress up for me,” I said, by way of greeting. “You look like a biker version of Elizabeth Bathory.”

  Cloves waved a hand and the door swished shut behind me and locked.

  “And you smell like pondwater and mulch. Where the hell have you been?” she snapped. “Lucy is at Oscar’s with those civilians. She had no idea where you’d gone. The vampire prince Dove has contacted me, asking whether you will be taking part in the parade tomorrow as Liaison. Nobody knew where you were.”

  “I didn’t even know Dove had your number,” I frowned.

  “Everybody who’s anybody has my number,” Cloves said. “And everybody who’s nobody doesn’t. Listen, Harkness, I know we’ve… suffered losses… but this isn’t the time for you to be disappearing off-map. Even Coldwater has been breathing down my neck today. She came here. To my actual house. Senior directors don’t do that!”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought Cloves was actually rattled. “It’s like the goddamn Queen of England popping around to rummage through your emails. That woman doesn’t know the first thing about delegation. I don’t need her personally breathing down my neck with a bee in her bonnet about the missing girls, when I can’t even control what’s left of the team under me.”

  She flicked a thumb to her coffee table, which was covered in a couple of Styrofoam cups, a sure sign that Coldwater had come bearing coffee, smiley chit chat and casual veiled threats.

  “I’ve been doing exactly what she, and you, both told me to do,” I countered. “Finding Chase Pargate and getting some answers.”

  Cloves stopped mid-rant, looking surprised. “And did you?”

  “Yes, and more besides.”

  “Well, where the hell is he?” Cloves gestured frantically with waving arms at the notably Pargate-free space around me, as though angrily cleaning my aura.

  “He didn’t kill Griff and Dee,” I explained. “He was at the lab, yes. He was also at all the crime scenes, both vampire and human, but because he’s trying to track down this monster too, same as us.”

  Cloves gaped at me, “And you believed him… because?” she prompted. “What, did he give you a bloody wink and a winning smile? Need I remind you, Harkness, that he is officially wanted for the murder of two people… at least… and the assault with intent to kill of a senior Cabal director? Jesus, Harkness. You let him go free? That’s abetting. There’s a fucking blacklist alert out all over the DataStream for him right now.”

  I raised my hand, fending off the rant. “He was convincing!” I argued. “And what on earth would you do with him if you brought him in anyway? You can’t put a dead man on trial! Look, there’s a lot I need to fill you in on, things I found out about Seraph, about the creature and what it might be, but I can’t do that while you’re flapping your gums at me.”

  “One word from me,” Cloves threatened through gritted teeth. “And I can have you arrested for this.” She pointed a finger dramatically at the Starbucks cup. “One word from Empress Coldwater and she can have you fucking blacklisted. She can literally make you cease to exist. Do you not understand your place in the chain of command?”

  The chain of command felt more like something around my neck, tighter every day than anything I was supposed to be part of.

  “Cloves, for once… once in your life, actually trust that I did the right thing. Do you honestly… truly believe that if I thought Chase Pargate had killed my team, that he would still be walking free right now? Do you?”

  She regarded me for a moment, visibly reigning in her wide-eyed fury. Eventually she folded her arms. “Okay, Harkness. I’ll admit,” she said begrudgingly. “If you did, and you had found him, he’d probably be in a shallow grave somewhere and you’d be claiming none the wiser. You have to tell me everything then, what about the archangel or whatever.”

  “Seraph,” I corrected her. “And it’s not a reference to an angel, it’s just a project name. From years back. Trying to mix humans with Genetic Others, from what I understand. Bad results. One of the scientists involved died, the project was discontinued. Their partner was William Cunningham Bowls, and he buried the project after his wife’s death and never spoke of it again.” I didn’t think telling Cloves more information about the sisters in the woods or their vague but unsettling hints about the Bonewalkers was a good idea, not yet anyway. “Someone somewhere has decided to dust off Seraph and have another bash. Bringing together the worlds of humans and Genetic Others in a much more literal sense than the bloody street party that Dove’s vampires have planned.”

  “I’ve never heard of any such top-secret experiment,” Cloves replied dismissively, frowning in disbelief.

  I stared at her, giving her a moment to hear her own words.

  She snorted. “That doesn’t explain this arcane burning bratnapper, or the deaths of the vampires, or the attack on Blue Lab. It doesn’t explain a bloody thing. Coldwater says she saw the attacker. She is convinced it was Pargate. Who could fool her so convincingly? And we are running out of time here. The Halloween street parade is tomorrow night. Both families, the Cunningham Bowls and the Winterbournes have warned us that they fully intend to go public tomorrow if their girls are not found. We cannot have that news exploding into the media on the same day that our city’s vampires hit the streets en masse. Even your charming lily-white Dove won’t be able to protect his own people. There will be worse than riots.”

  “Cloves,” I cut her off. “What did you call me here for? You were cloak and dagger on the phone, why all the secrecy?”

  Cloves crossed the dark wooden floor and flicked a switch on the wall, causing blinds to smoothly descend over th
e wall of glass windows. Another switch dimmed every light in the room, until we stood in gloom.

  “Because while you were out busy making best friends with Chase Pargate, I’ve been doing some work too. Come here.”

  She was holding up a small, transparent blueish glass cube.

  “Okay, Loki,” I muttered warily, managing to only bark my shin on one end table as I navigated the room towards her. “What is that? And why the romantic mood lighting?”

  She gave me a look of death.

  “This is the crime scene footage from the break in at Blue Lab,” she said. “You know as well as I do that all scenes of criminal activity are recorded and documented by hover drones, so that they can later be recreated at leisure. The lab itself is still off limits, but I managed to get my hands on the imprint. You have no idea what hoops I had to jump through to get this without anyone knowing about it.”

  My throat felt a little dry. Cabal had the ability to recreate a holographic three-dimensional image from these drone-captures. So that crime scenes could be revisited again and again. Did I really want to step into the scene of Griff’s death? Of Dee’s?

  She must have noticed my expression, because her flint-hard face actually flickered a little. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve altered the code and pixilated the bodies. You won’t see anything too harrowing, except what I found myself, picking over the scene earlier.”

  Placing the cube on the low coffee table in front of her, she depressed the top with her thumb. There was a click and a flurry of mechanical activity, sounding like an old school modem dialling up, and then, as she stepped back, thin beams of greenish light erupted silently from the top of the cube, they hit the ceiling like a torch arc, and then fanned out in every direction, covering the ceiling, before changing angle and crawling down the walls, filling the room with flickering green laser light. It was like being at a rock concert. A very quiet one. Cloves should have invested in some dry ice.