A slight noise gave them away. I don’t have super hearing, but I always did hear things other people didn’t. Knowing at least one person was following me had my grip on the knife tightening, so I was ready for whatever happened. I had to let them get in the first hit. I had to show that I’d been hurt first, before I fought back, otherwise I would be arrested for murder, which would have been just as good as having me killed for Freud. I slowed a little. It wasn’t enough for them to notice, hopefully. Breathing deeply I waited for the attack.
One of them grabbed me from behind, thinking that would be enough. Not having super strength meant I’d done everything I could to prepare for any attacks. Learning self-defence made a lot of sense when you were in my position. The other one, because I realised then it was only two of them, came round and hit me in the face. It was enough to daze me for a second, which was how he had a chance to get in his second hit. Fortunately he hadn’t realised that ribs are a major issue when you’re trying to stab someone in the heart with a stake. He would have been better off with a knife, but I was grateful that people still believed the old stories. I kicked the one behind me in the nuts, which made him let go, before attacking the second man. I didn’t want to kill either of them. All I really wanted to do was scare them off. Freud must have offered them both a lot of money to kill me as they stood their ground.
Nodding, I smiled. I wasn’t paying enough attention to the man behind me, however, and he got in another attack, also with a stake. Again he hadn’t taken into consideration my ribs, so it was nowhere near enough force to penetrate my heart. My options were limited. I could kill them, which would make me feel incredibly guilty, or I could run and hope neither of them followed. I lashed out with my knife, slicing the first man. He howled loud enough to wake the dead, giving me the chance I needed to run, because I didn’t want to kill them, not when I knew they’d been paid to kill me. If it was personal it would have been different.
***
“What happened?” I slammed the door and made sure it was locked, before allowing myself to collapse. Breathing was hard, because my lungs were complaining, but I was home and that was all that mattered. Someone crashed into the door. Whoever it was then kicked it. “Liv, you’re bleeding.”
“Thank you… for stating… the blatantly… obvious.” I tried to glare at Ben. “Hunters. Freud… hates me.” I couldn’t help laughing at that, which was hard. “Forced him… into a… corner. Should be… statement… in the… morning.”
“Forcing him into a corner led to this.”
“Freud… hates vampires. Saw reason… to get rid… of one.”
“How well did they do?”
“Couple of… stab wounds. Idiots… had stakes.”
“Let me look.”
“Wasn’t planning on… stopping you. Would like… to be able to… breathe, though. Breathing is… nice.”
Ben laughed. “How far did you run?”
“Marathon.”
“Yeah, course. I know Downing Street isn’t that far away.”
“Bloody felt like it.”
“Well it would. You’re not used to running.” Gently he lifted me into a seated position, before removing my t-shirt. Lifting my arms hurt, but I needed him to check the wounds, especially as I couldn’t help thinking the bastards would try to get into the house. I needed to be able to fight them if they did. “Liv, there are other vampires in the house. You’re not going to have to fight anyone.” He kissed my check. “You can relax, okay?”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to let… other people fight my battles… for me.”
“Yes, you are.” He sighed, staring at the damage. “That looks sore.”
“It is.”
“Daniel!” The new vampire came down the stairs and I couldn’t quite believe it wasn’t that long since I’d shown him around the house. “I need you to get me the first aid kit from the second bathroom.”
Nodding, Daniel turned. He didn’t stop to say anything, which told me how bad it looked, but I knew it looked worse than it actually was. “Running from them was the only thing I could think of doing. I didn’t want to kill them.” It was a surprise when I realised I’d got my breath back. “They attacked me for money. Hopefully they won’t try again and if they do I’ll be prepared to do what needs to be done.”
“They’ll go to the police. We both know that.”
“I’m hoping they do.” I gingerly touched my face. “I’m going to have a lovely bruise to show them.”
Teresa
We were all expecting the phone call. “Tree, get everyone over here as soon as you can.”
“On it.” All I needed to do was nod at my vampires and they were all moving. “We’ll be there in about ten minutes. Is there anything we need to know.”
“There are two hunters out there. They’d attacked Liv, so she ran.”
“Logical.”
“Yes, it is.” He sounded like he was smiling. “Liv said she believes they attacked her for money, so you should be safe, but be careful. You don’t know who else might be out there.”
I nodded. “Freud?”
“That’s what she thinks. He hates vampires apparently.”
“We’ll talk to you about that when we get there.”
“You know something.”
“Lisa knows something, but there is a chance it’s just a rumour, so the last thing we wanted to do was give Liv wrong information. If anyone was going to face Freud it was going to be her. She needed to do that without thinking he might hate her from the very beginning.”
“You’re right about that. Thank you for the help. I need to ring Paul now.”
“See you soon.”
I followed the vampires out, grabbing my coat, and was surprised to see Kira there. “I’m coming with you. You’re going to need me if Olivia has been attacked. She’s going to need blood as soon as possible and she isn’t going to bite someone she thinks of as a friend.”
Paul
“Liv’s been attacked.”
I shook my head. “How is she?”
“Bruised mostly. I’m calling in the cavalry in the hope she might start to relax then, although I don’t think she will.”
“How many?”
“Two hunters, but she thinks they were paid by the PM, so there might be more of them out there. At the moment she’s on high alert.”
“Jake and I will be there as soon as we can.”
“I appreciate it.”
As I put the phone down Jake looked at me. “What happened?”
“Liv was attacked by two hunters. Ben wants us there, because he’s hoping that us being there will stop her from being on high alert, although he’s doubtful.”
“Okay.” Jake nibbled his lip. “This was what we all thought was going to happen, so who else is going to be there?”
“Ben said the cavalry, so I don’t doubt Lise, Jess, Nay, and Tree will be there too. Liv trusts them, as much as she trusts anyone, so it will be good to have them there, as well as us. Hopefully then we will be able to convince her we can hold the fort, because she isn’t the sort of person to let anyone do that. Not even the people she trusts, unfortunately. She believes she has to do everything herself.”
We started walking in the direction of Liv’s place. “How do we convince her she doesn’t?”
“Just being there should help Ben argue her in the direction of her bed.”
Teresa
We arrived at the same time as Paul and Jake. It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise Jake was there, but it was. Smiling at each other, I knocked on the door and waited. Ben looked relieved when he saw us all on the doorstep. As he stepped back we all made our way into Liv’s house. Liv stared at us all in shock, looking as though she couldn’t quite believe we were there, but we were. I crossed the room and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “How are you doing?”
“I don’t know.” She was tenser than I’d ever known her to be and that was a real worry. “I still can’t q
uite believe Freud actually sent vampire hunters after me.”
“There are rumours that Freud is the son of hunters and if he is…” I shrugged. “No one really knows that much about his family and that might be the reason for it. Having a Prime Minister who is truly against vampires does make things a lot harder.”
“At least it explains things.” Liv sighed. “The last couple of years have really been a battle and if Freud is the son of hunters… I should have known when he looked at me the way he did, but there are so many humans who hate vampires it didn’t connect.”
“Why would it? You can hardly assume that every human you come across might be related to hunters, because if you started doing that you wouldn’t trust anyone.” I kissed the top of her head. “Knowing the truth will, I hope, help in the future.”
“Should I go back, though?” She shivered. “He tried to kill me and I don’t doubt he’s going to do the same thing again when he realises I’ve survived the attack. Freud wants me gone, because I’m fighting what he’s trying to do, and I know if it wasn’t for that video we wouldn’t have got the concessions we did. Instead he would have started arresting vampires and putting them into prisons where they’d end up becoming a pile of ashes.”
“Hopefully he won’t be able to do that now.”
“Not to the people who are willing to accept what we have, but there are those who will say it’s not enough. They wanted more. Everyone wanted more and they don’t understand the position I’m in. All I can do is my best, which, some days, isn’t even good enough for me. There are so many humans out there who hate us, because of what we are, and they have no interest in learning more. They’re happy assuming we’re nothing more than creatures that deserve to die.”
“Yes, but there are also humans who are on your side.”
“I know there are, Tree, and I appreciate it, but at the moment it feels like too little. The few who are on our side, who do see us as people, will never be enough to combat those who see us as creatures.”
“That all depends on what they do for a living. If we can get a couple more to the reporters on our side they’re going to do everything they can to make certain the story gets out.” I smiled. “That’s what they do. Jake’s sister Alison is going to start making it more obvious how much she knows about vampires and I think she’s hoping the producers will be willing to give her a documentary series to work on. If they do we can all be a part of that and teach people what they need to know about vampires.”
“Maybe.” Liv sounded worried. “I just don’t want more people to be in danger.”
For a moment I didn’t know how to reply, because I could understand why she felt that way and I didn’t want to make her feel like I did. “Liv, sweetheart, how much more danger can we be in? Anyone who’s willing to try to hurt us is going to do it. We’re…” I stared up at the ceiling for a moment, trying to work out what I was going to say, because I wasn’t getting it right. “Humans who hate vampires already view me as a traitor. There is nothing I can do about that and nothing I want to do. I accept they hate me. They’re going to know who I am due to the strange times I’m around. Getting up at 2pm gives me the chance to get what we need and be around most of the time the vampires are, the vampires I care about, and, if they really were watching me, they’d see me leave Jess and Lise’s house. It’s really that simple for them. Vampires, obviously, are only out at night.”
Her silence was slightly worrying. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief. “Sometimes I just think I could do more to protect you all from the people who want to hurt you, but I can’t, can I?”
“Unfortunately I don’t think you can, although I know we do all appreciate how hard you try.” I squeezed her. “You have done more for the vampires in the ten years you’ve been one of them than all the vampires did in the past and I have no idea how you did it. If I’d been changed like that I wouldn’t have coped as well as you did.”
Liv laughed. “In the beginning I really didn’t cope well at all. Ben can tell you all about that, if you ask him, because he was one the receiving end of my anger. He was the one who changed me and I hated him so much for that, until I came to understand why he’d made the decision he did. As far as I’m concerned it was still a bad one to make, but I don’t hate him for it any longer - mostly because I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him to be a vampire and totally alone. I’ve never been alone.”
***
We did manage to convince Liv to go upstairs and have a bath. She didn’t want to be alone, so Kira went upstairs with her, just in case she needed to feed. It was obvious Liv was not going to feed from me after I offered. Becoming friends with vampires did make that all much more difficult, but fortunately I’d never had that issue with Jess and Lise. If they were hungry they knew they could call on me, in part because it was one of the reasons they paid me. The other reason, obviously, was so I’d do their shopping for them, or be there to accept packages, or make their lives simpler for them by doing little things that couldn’t be done at night. One of the things you learnt was how useless artificial light could be for doing certain things and those were the ones I did for them.
I sat opposite Ben. “I should have stopped this from happening.”
“There’s no way you could have stopped it.” I reached out and took his hand. “You couldn’t have known what was going to happen. Liv couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”
“If I’d known Freud was the son of hunters…”
“You couldn’t have known Liv would have contact with him tonight. You couldn’t have known how he was going to react to speaking with her. You couldn’t have known he’d send people to attack her.”
“I should have done.”
“Stop it. Beating yourself up over things you couldn’t have stopped isn’t going to do anyone any good, especially not Liv. She’s going to need you to be strong for her. I’m sure you know what it’s like to be attacked by someone.” He nodded. “Right now she seems okay. She might well be able to deal with this better than anyone else I’ve met, but there are no guarantees she will, especially at the moment. She was already stressed and all over the place emotionally. Being attacked is just going to make everything harder for her. To get through this she’s going to need your support.”
“Yeah, I know, especially as we’ve already called the police. Due to the timing they aren’t going to be able to come until tomorrow.”
Nodding, I looked at the windows. As it was Liv’s home there were shutters over all of them and I’d gone around shutting them just before sunrise in order to make certain the house was safe for all of the vampires. We all knew it was possible someone might choose to attack during the day, so we were staying awake in shifts, apart from me and Kira, because we were the only two humans. Had things been different I knew exactly what I would have done - slept for a day. Being the helper for vampires made that pretty much impossible. The more time I spent with the vampires the more I saw how it was changing me and I could understand why they were people who’d given it up. Changing your sleeping patterns wasn’t an easy thing to do and it could affect you mentally. Luckily I’d always been the sort of person who was far more nocturnal than anyone else, so staying up until 3am was relatively easy for me. Now, however, I’d been up since 2pm, to get what Jess and Lise needed from the shops, and it was coming close to 10am. I was beginning to feel like I needed to sleep.
“I take it you took pictures of Liv before she got in the bath.”
Ben nodded. “That was one of the first things she got me to do when she got back, once she’d stopped shaking. I’ve already emailed the first lot to a police officer I know who’s sympathetic to our cause. We had a long conversation about it all and he’s going to talking to his boss about getting more officers out at night, but we both know how well that’s going to go.”
“Maybe it will be different this time. Liv has managed to get the Prime Minister to agree to c
ertain things and that might include increased policing at night.”
“After tonight I hope he did.”
“That could have been why he did it tonight, Ben. If he knows there are going to be more police out he’s going to have to be more careful, so the last thing he was going to do was wait, and so he sent people out tonight, people who weren’t ready to deal with Liv.”
“What would have happened if she froze?”
Answering that question was something I knew I shouldn’t do. “Don’t. Looking back and thinking of the what ifs is almost as stupid as beating yourself up for not being psychic. What happened happened. Now you need to focus on the future, on looking after Liv, on what you’re going to do in order to protect yourselves tonight.”
“I know.” He shook his head. “I keep saying that and it is true, but I’m not acting like I know any of these things.”
“Everything is going to be difficult for a while. You’re going to beat yourself up, and think about the what ifs, so we’re going to make certain you don’t do silly things like that, otherwise you’re not going to be any help to Liv.”
“So I’m going to support her and you’re all going to support me?”
“Pretty much.” I smiled at him. “I think we’re coming into another time of change and we were always going to be doing that, but it’s far more important now, because of what happened to Liv.”
“You’re right about that. Liv and I didn’t get to talk about much when she got back, due to how she was feeling, so hopefully it’s something we’ll be able to talk about in more detail once she’s had her bath.” He looked at me. “Do you really think it’s going to help?”
A Bloody London Tale (Book 1): Unrest Rising Page 10