Paper Children

by James Fahy

  A few people in the crowd had noticed Allesandro free-climbing the theatre, and from the cheers and whistles, it seemed they assumed it was all part of the show. As for Dove, he was oblivious, caught up in his rhetoric address.

  Wait here? I thought. Like hell I will.

  I began to barge my way apologetically through the crowds as quickly as I could, sliding between the festival goers standing shoulder to shoulder, treading on feet and pushing people out of the way. Making my way around the building, away from the screen and around to the entrance.

  “Vampires,” Dove’s voice followed me as I pushed onwards, rolling over the throng like a wave. “Thanks to Cabal, thanks to the emergence, have been brought out of the dark and thrust into the light. We own nightclubs! We appear on your DataStream shows! We have become objects of your entertainment and fascination. We have been…” I heard him pause as I finally cleared the courtyard and found myself out in the street. “De-fanged,” he finished.

  There was good natured laughter from the crowd. None of them heard what I heard. The sneer beneath his smile, the subtext of bitterness and anger hidden within his seemingly light words.

  “Fangfest is about us showing you exactly what you want us to be!” he cried jubilantly, as I passed along the tall fence and avenue of stone heads, closing in on the front of the theatre. The steps and the doors. “Harlequins! Acrobats! Clowns! Jesters performing for you pleasure!”

  I pushed free of the crowds finally, making a clear run towards the doors of the theatre, which stood ajar before me.

  “And for myself,” Dove spoke to the masses. “Fangfest is about me showing you… all of you… what we really are!” His tone had changed, become less joyful, and there were some nervous laughs now from the uncertain crowd. I couldn’t see the giant screen anymore from this side of the building, but I could picture his expression, staring out at the humans looking up at him. The mask of conviviality slipped utterly from his high cheekbones. His bright eyes hard as diamond as they peered out from the dark. I pictured him grinning at them like the demon ghoul he had controlled. His angelic appearance, his winning smile and carefully orchestrated human mannerisms, all fake, all an act. If anything, the burned and corrupted thing which he had used to prowl these streets was closer to the true face of Dove. Some in the crowd seemed to sense this. To begin to see, or hear, something… wrong, in this carnival address.

  “When the world fell to ruin, humans showed me their true colours.” Dove said, his voice now flat, still reverberating over the buildings. “I have never forgotten. And I have waited ever since, patiently… so patiently… for a chance to show to you humans, the same hospitality…the same kindness and mercy that was shown to me.” He laughed a little, the same eerie, high noise I had heard gurgle through his puppet of burned meat many times. “Which is of course… none whatsoever.”

  The first scream came from within the crowd. It was almost lost amongst those who were still celebrating, those not paying attention to the words this vampire was saying to them. But the scream was joined by another, elsewhere in the crowd, and then another, and like a domino effect, panic spreading through a herd of wildebeest, they began to be joined with shouts of confusion and fear. Voices raised in confusion and shock.

  The vampires, embedded everywhere within the crowds, had begun to attack.

  “We are not your friends!” Dove announced happily, his voice contending with the rising shouts of panic rolling through the crowd. “We are not… your equals!” He laughed again. “We are your predators, and you, ignorant, hubristic animals… you are merely our livestock.”

  I paused at the doors, staring back at the crowds. They were moving in every direction. People close to the coordinated areas of attack were realising what was happening. I saw people fall, a confusion of moving limbs and bodies everywhere, half-glimpsed in the bright, colour-shifting Halloween spotlights that lit up the square. I saw one man brought down by a vampire as she leapt onto his back, wrapping her legs and arms around him like pincers as she lowered her masked face viciously to tear at his throat. They fell into the crowd which was trying to back away, but the same thing was happening elsewhere, and the retreating pockets of confused revellers cannoned into one another, pushing each other back towards the scenes of bloodshed.

  “Fangfest,” Dove cried, over the rising tide of screams and panic. “Is where we take back the night! Where we restore the natural order! Tonight… we feast!”

  I threw myself in through the doors of the theatre, into the darkness within, and slammed them behind me.

  Chapter 38

  The interior of the Sheldonian was deserted. Huge stage lights were set up at every window, facing outwards, projecting garish colours out of the windowpanes into the night as part of the Fangfest set dressing. Their thick cables nested and intertwined everywhere underfoot in the dark open space. I stared upwards at the soaring ceiling high above me, half lost in shadow.

  The centrepiece of the ceiling was a vast painted fresco, making the building feel more of a bastard offspring of the Sistine chapel than a theatre. It was old, seventeenth century in old-world money, depicting a vast and biblical circle of saints and artists in billowing robes, with flowing classical beards. They ringed the roof, encircling a voluminous painted corridor of cloud in their centre, which seemed to stretch away above me like a long tunnel, pierced with sunlight, at whose centre, seated calmly, a holy infant rested in the eye of the storm. Robert Streater. My useless encyclopaedic memory-banks supplied the name of the artist unbidden as I looked up. It was like viewing a tornado from within, staring up at the sky through a cylinder of cloud. No doubt its intention was to appear awe inspiring and holy, but in the reflected red and orange lights pouring into the shadows from outside, it looked to me like a column not of soft cloud, but of fire, a spiralling inferno of churning smoke. Somewhere above it, on the opposite side of the brick, Dove was overseeing his attack like a conductor before an orchestra. I could hear yelling outside, people running. Panic building.

  Had Allesandro reached the roof yet?

  Dodging wires and skipping over thick cables laid across the floor like jungle vines, I bolted for the stairs which I knew led up to roof access.

  My legs pounded as I flew up the tight spiral staircase in the dark. From outside I could hear chaos. Police sirens too. By the time I reached the top of the building, without any clear idea what I was going to do when I got there, my lungs were burning.

  I threw myself against the fire door, slamming down the exit bar, and erupted onto the high flat roof-space of the theatre, emerging from the cupola into the chill night air. The wind howled. From here I could see the funhouse-painted tops of the surrounding buildings, a wash of boardwalk sideshow colours thrown against old and solemn stones. The roof of the Divinity School, the museum and gallery across the street. The bulk of the Bodleian library lay behind me, and beyond that, the streets down below, every one of them tightly thronged with people. Supporters and protesters alike, all trying to flee. They flowed like a river of panic in the Halloween spotlights, blood cells rushing through the veins of the streets in panic, as the heart of the city pounded to Dove’s released rage.

  People were spreading out into side streets, overturning barriers and flooding beneath the arched Bridge of Sighs. Vampires prowled amongst them like hungry wolves. Striking out about people. Bringing them down.

  Dove stood directly ahead of me, close to the balcony balustrade, facing out into the night, surveying the pandemonium he had wrought like an emperor addressing his people. A girl was on her knees by his side, hands together before her, bound in shining duct tape, as he gripped her viciously by the hair.

  It was Celeste. His ghoul had taken her from Oscar’s, right out of our hands, and delivered her here. Dove clearly meant to make her an example. The teenager, a worshipper of vampires in all their glamour and exotic allure, as fascinated and enthralled as any Helsing, brought sobbing before the crowd.

  But she was still a
live. My heart leapt.

  “When this night is done…!” Dove shouted to the panicked crowds below. “You will remember to fear us! We will make this city ours!”

  A fleet shadow was speeding across the rooftop towards him. I caught it out of my peripheral vision. It was Allesandro. He had cleared the balcony directly to the left of the murderous vampire and was now bearing down on him at full speed. Dove had not seen him yet. He was too caught up in his moment of glory and triumph. I saw him wrench Celeste roughly to her feet, pulling her up by her hair, and instinctively, I too began to run towards them, the tiles slippery beneath my feet. The moon had broken through cloud in the sky above us and it shone like silver on the tiles which flew beneath my feet. The rooftop itself, high above the funfair illuminations, was a dark stage, lit from beneath at every edge by the lights below.

  “For those of you who do not die here today,” Dove was yelling with satisfaction. “Obedience will be rewarded! A farmer does not slaughter a whole herd to tame it! But learn your place! Or, like this child, who arrogantly chose not to fear the darkness, we will cast you down without mercy!” Celeste struggled in his grip, but her efforts were useless against his vampiric strength. I saw Allesandro, sprinting from the left, notice me rushing up behind, just as we both reached Dove and his sacrificial tribute at the same time.

  Celeste screamed, high and piercing, as with one heave of his arm, his coat a billowing shroud in the darkness, Dove threw her into the air, and cast over the balcony into space.

  Allesandro shouted Dove’s name, the pale-haired vampire registering his presence only a second before my vampire cannoned into him. Hitting his adversary at full speed and full force like a freight train. He tackled him to the ground, the impact carrying them both away across the length of the roof in a long skid, rolling over and over one another in a tangle. Roof tiles clattered and shot up into the air around them as they dug a long groove in the Sheldonian, a comet crashing to earth.

  At the same moment I threw myself against the stone balustrade of the balcony, both arms outstretched as Celeste tumbled over its edge and down.

  My stomach hit the low wall at full speed, winding me, and my desperate fingers, grabbing for her, managed to hook around and find purchase. I caught the falling girl, her weight swinging out of space and back against the outer wall of the theatre, hitting the topmost part of the giant projector canvas and sending it billowing and shuddering. She was heavy, and I felt as though both my arms were pulled out of their sockets.

  For a horrifying moment, my feet on my side of the low balcony left the floor and I felt certain that I would topple over too. That I would be dragged down by her weight. We would both go over the edge of the roof together, falling down to the crowd below, a distant red and orange sea of chaos. I threw my own weight backwards with an agonised grunt of effort, dragging her up slightly and finding my footing.

  Celeste screamed again, as I braced myself against the balcony. The girl was staring up at me in sheer terror, her hair whipping about her face in the wind. The red-tinged chaos of the crowd far below looked like a lake of fire, filled with the ebb and flow of souls.

  I saw that I had not caught her by the hands, as I had thought. Instead my fingers were twisted around the thick silver manacle of duct tape which bound her arms together at the wrist. She dangled below me from this loop, and the duct tape was stretching with her weight, digging into the pads of my fingers like knifes.

  “Grab my hands!” I yelled. “It’s going to break.”

  “Don’t drop me!” the young girl screamed up to me “Please! Please don’t drop me! Pull me up!”

  “I… can’t!” I grunted through gritted teeth. The stretching tape, as strong as it was, was digging into my fingers, cutting off all circulation to my hands. It was becoming thinner and thinner, slicing across me like cheese wire. I could already feel my fingertips beginning to numb. I was going to drop her. Her legs flailed below, dancing in empty air, trying to kick and hook on the billowing canvas of the huge screen.

  Behind us, on the rooftop, I could hear sounds of a struggle. Growls and crashes. Allesandro was fighting Dove. I couldn’t expect any help from that quarter.

  I willed the Pale virus to rear inside me, begging it to surface, to make me stronger, strong enough to lift this child up to safety. It was all I could do to hold on, and she was slipping by the second. But it didn’t show. I wasn’t feeling any anger, only panic and sheer desperation. The virus inside me only cared for its own self-preservation. It didn’t care if others died.

  But I did.

  I heard a shattering crash of broken masonry behind, and one of the vampires roar in pain, but couldn’t tell which it was. Far below, beyond the dangling girl, the vampires dotted through the crowds were staggering, looking drunk and disjointed. Clearly if nothing else, Dove’s attention was elsewhere, and his mental hold over Allesandro’s clan was momentarily weakened.

  “Celeste,” I gasped. “I need you to grab my wrists! Hurry. My hands are between yours. I can’t move or I’ll drop you. But this binding is snapping! Do it now!”

  She obeyed. To my eternal relief, she seemed to shake herself out of the state of shock and I felt her hands close around my wrists. They were clammy and cold. I held my breath, and when I was certain she was holding as tightly to me as she could, I opened my own hands, releasing the loop of tape I had been holding, now distorted out of true. Pain flared through my fingers, as though someone has just drawn a whip across my palms, but I threw myself backwards again, as she brought her legs up in a swing underneath her and scrabbled to find purchase on the balcony wall, to begin to walk-crawl back up to me. I felt a pop in my shoulder, and white pain blurred down my arm, taking my breath away. Still I refused to let go. I heaved her upwards, both of us grunting, until she was high enough to grab the top of the balcony with one hand. The second her fingers released mine and closed over the stonework, my freed hand reached down, grabbing a fistful of her clothing on her back and hoisting her upwards. I had never imagined a teenage girl could feel so heavy. It was like dragging a net heavy with fish out of the deep sea.

  With one final effort, drawing guttural animal-like noises from me and heaving sobs from her, she tumbled over the balcony and we collapsed together on the roof-tiles, gasping for air.

  I rolled onto my stomach, pushing myself to my hands and knees, which sent another agonising jolt of pain flaring up my shoulder. It was the same one I had dislocated on top of the castle when I had been attacked by the vampire demon-ghoul.

  Across the rooftop, over by the cupola, Allesandro and Dove were fighting, casting swipes and blows at one another, dodging around each other with inhuman speed.

  “You should be dead!” Dove screamed. I saw his face was bloody, crimson ribbons coursing down his cheek and dripping from his chin. His pristine white duster jacket was stained and smeared with dirt and soot from where the two of them had rolled on the ground. He lashed out, a swipe of his hand like a viper, which Allesandro deftly jumped back to avoid.

  “How many times do I have to get rid of you?”

  Allesandro lashed out, countering Dove’s attack and landing a hit across his chest, knocking the pale vampire flying. Dove soared through the air and hit the cupola wall, shattering the glass into spider webs.

  “You never had the strength to face me!” Allesandro replied fiercely. I saw that he too was bloodied from the fight. He was favouring his right side, his hand pressed tightly to his hip, where dark blood flowed from between his fingers. “You’re a worm and a coward. You attack only when I was weak? And even then you didn’t have the balls to kill me. You gave me to a torturer! I should have left you to rot in that cage.”

  Dove sprang up from the crouch where he had landed, cannoning into Allesandro, and the two went sprawling on the rooftop again with a clatter, loose tiles flying off to either side of them.

  “You’re too blind to lead!” Dove hissed, straddling his former master. His pale hair whipped about his head,
no longer smooth and neat, but matted with sweat and blood. His eyes were wild behind the carnival mask still fixed to his face. His sharp teeth bared in a growl from lips peeled back. “You would be tame! You’d have us all begging from the humans. Like a dog, licking their hands and eating their scraps! They don’t deserve our mercy.”

  Allesandro kicked Dove off him and scrambled after as he tried to roll away, landing blow after blow on his would-be usurper.

  Above us all, in the cold night sky, fireworks were still erupting. Their shimmering luminescence painting the rooftop below like moonlight hitting the cresting waves of a dark ocean.

  “I will not let you kill them all,” my vampire was growling, as Dove squirmed and bucked beneath him. “I will not let you undo everything we have made here! You’re a relic, Dove. You never escaped that sick cage I found you in. You carried it in your head, all these years.”

  Dove reached up and swiped to tear at Allesandro’s throat, forcing him to lean away, and he threw him off, staggering to his feet, panting hard. “They call us monsters!” he wheezed, his high laugh coming through a spit of blood. “They call us the evil ones! They think we are all the same. They will never accept our kind, Allesandro. Never!”

  Allesandro scrambled to his feet and grappled Dove. They both looked exhausted, and I realised that even as they fought so fiercely, Dove was using all his energy to try and roll Allesandro under his mind, refocussing the will he had controlled the clan in the streets, directing it all at his former master in a mental barrage. Allesandro was fighting him off, teeth bared and grinding together under the wave of psychic assault, even as he drove Dove back, landing hit after hit, again and again. His face looked inhuman. “Those people down there,” he gasped. “Are not the ones who tortured you! You say they see us all as monsters? You see them the same! You’re a fool, and you won’t get in my head. You don’t have your ghoul to help you with an execution tonight, Dove!”