by Hall, Alexis
Last night I’d walked into a house full of corpses, but somehow, this shook me up a lot more.
I guess Nim had been right. This wasn’t just a Council problem.
I strode off up the hill. Annoyingly there was no entrance to the cemetery on the east side so I cut through Waterlow Park. It was pretty quiet, but there were a couple of kids feeding the ducks on the pond. I made it to the cemetery and dropped my suggested three-quid donation into the box. A helpful man in a green puffer jacket came over to let me know that the tomb of Karl Marx was just up the road to my left. I guess I looked like a communist or something.
Apart from the snow and the feathers and the choking oily darkness, the cemetery was exactly like it had been in my dreams. There were four or five large marble tombs right by the entrance, so this was probably going to be a quick visit. One of them was set slightly apart and built of red stone. Yep, a really short visit.
I collared Puffer Jacket and asked who was buried there. I wasn’t expecting him to say Ah, well, that’s the cursed tomb of Countess Marianna von Bloodlust, but I thought it might be useful anyway.
“That’s Davison Dalziel, Lord Dalziel of Wooler. He was an MP, a baron, and he introduced the motorcab to London in 1907.”
Huh. “When did he die?”
“1928.”
That didn’t make a lot of sense. There was no way that whatever was raising vampires all over North London was less than a hundred years old. I thanked the guy and went for a closer look.
This was a serious mausoleum, the kind that said I’m dead and I want you to notice: big, heavy doors with honest-to-God lions sculpted into them and a thick iron chain rusted almost solid, with a padlock to match.
No, wait. A padlock that didn’t match.
I’m not a locksmith or a metallurgist or someone from the Antiques Roadshow, but while the chain looked like it had been there for the best part of a century, the lock didn’t. It was old and rusty but not eighty-four years old and rusty.
I put on some gloves and did what we in the business call poking at it. The rust was worn away at the catch, which suggested it had been opened and closed very recently. I snapped a couple of pictures with my phone and went back to harass the man in the puffer jacket.
“Just out of curiosity,” I asked, “has it ever been opened?”
He gave me a funny look.
“I’m writing a book,” I lied.
“Not as long as I’ve been here.”
Hmmm. So we were dealing with an ancient vampire operating out of a tomb from less than a hundred years ago that had been opened quite recently—from the outside—by somebody who had bothered to replace the lock. None of that made any sense at all. But there was no way I was going to try and break in at half past twelve and ten feet from the guy whose job it is to stop people trying to break into these things.
So, in an effort to get my three quid’s worth, I went and checked out Karl Marx. You kind of have to respect a man who’s buried under a giant statue of his own face.
I was racking up mysteries faster than I was solving them, and none of them were bringing me any closer to finding Hugh. I left the cemetery, headed down the hill, and stopped at a pub for lunch. While I was waiting for my burger and my potato wedges to arrive, I pulled out my phone and checked my messages. Elise had sent me a couple of texts. There was no news about Nim, but she had sent me Warlock’s number. I rang it.
“Hello?” said a wary voice.
“Is that Warlock?”
“Who’s asking?”
Oh right, he was one of those. “Kate Kane of Kane and Archer. You’ve already spoken to my colleague.”
“Greek chick? Dresses like a librarian? Doesn’t call you back?”
“That’s her. We’re still looking for Hugh Shawcross. She tells me you used to have a weekly meeting with him.”
There was a pause. I think I pissed him off.
“It’s not a meeting; it’s a collaborative storytelling game.”
I really wasn’t sure what to say to that. So I ignored it. “It’s a long shot, but I think he might show up. Do you mind if I come by in case he does?”
There was another moment of silence. Then, with poorly suppressed glee: “No, that’d be fine. I’ll text you a link to the quick-start rules.”
Rules? “Um . . . I—”
“So, yeah, we normally start about seven, but if you could come round about five, so we can roll up a character and do the prelude?”
This wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but if it got my foot in the door . . . whatever.
“Sure,” I said. “Cool. Where is it?”
He gave me his on-campus address, and I hung up just as they brought out my burger. I ate it quickly while mulling over the case—or rather the cases. I’d done all I could about Hugh for now, which just left Corin on the loose, and the thing in the graveyard. I wasn’t sure if the two were connected, but where Corin’s concerned, I don’t believe in coincidences. But, at the moment, there was nothing I could do about her either. Which just left whatever was going on in Highgate Cemetery.
The problem was I needed detailed information about probably quite obscure vampire history, and right now, most vampires were too busy trying to execute me. I could have gone to Julian, but things were complicated there as well, and she’d hinted that it was safer for both of us if we kept our distance until the trial was over. That left me with people who knew about vampires, and there weren’t many of those. As I’d said to Elise, I could have gone to the Multitude, but information from a giant rat gestalt tends to be pretty patchy.
I finished off my wedges, left the salad, and thought about calling it a day. Then I realised I should just go to Ashriel. I was so used to him being the guy who stood outside the Velvet in a tight shirt and occasionally got shot by nuns that I’d completely overlooked the fact that he was also about ten thousand years old and had known Julian for pretty much her entire unlife. And the Council had probably forgotten that too. Of course, the last time I’d seen him, I’d been kind of a dick, so I owed him an apology anyway.
I hate apologising.
I sent him a text to let him know I was going to swing by and made for Brewer Street. Just like last time, it was locked up at the front, so I slipped round the back. This time the barman just waved. Friday was Cabaret Baudelaire, and from the music, the glitter, and the air of suppressed panic, it looked like the boylesque troupe were in the middle of rehearsals. There appeared to be some trauma related to a broken hula hoop.
With a clatter of heels, Kauri came dashing from the wings. He was wearing a sparkly gold minidress, platform boots, and an outrageous purple wig. Behind him was a muscular, heavily tattooed man dressed in nothing but eye shadow and a cock tassel.
“Ash, honey,” Kauri shouted. “We’ve got a prop crisis.” And then, seeing me, he froze. “Oh shit, Kate.”
“It’s fine,” I told him. “I understand.”
“That creepy Spanish fuck got right in my head.”
“Really, it’s okay. There was nothing you could have done.”
“I know, it’s just—”
“Look,” interrupted Cock Tassel, “sorry to piss on your pity parade, but can we focus on my hoop please.”
Before Kauri could answer, Ashriel appeared in the stairwell. “What’s wrong now?”
“Luke’s broken a hoop and the spares are still in the lockup.”
Ashriel sighed. “Give it here, ladies.”
Luke handed him the loosely flopping remains of a sparkly hula hoop. “Caught it on a stiletto.”
Ashriel held the broken ends between two fingers, which began to glow with a sickly green fire. Very carefully he melted the plastic and teased the two sides together. When he was done, he raised the hoop to his lips and blew on it. “You do know I once marched on the gates of Heaven under the banner of the Morning Star.”
“Yes, but now,” said Kauri, taking the hula hoop in one fabulously glittering hand, “you’re in show business.”
There was a long silence.
Ashriel groaned. “This is Hell, nor am I out of it.”
“Love you too, honey.” Kauri blew him a kiss. He patted Luke lightly on his exquisitely sculpted buttocks. “Back to work, Miss Thing.”
They disappeared into the wings.
Ashriel cast a cool look in my direction. “She’s not here.”
“Actually, I was looking for you.” I stared at the floor and shuffled my feet. Did I mention, I hate apologising?
“I take it you want something?”
“Uh . . . yes, kinda. But I really was going to say sorry first.”
“Go on, then.” The corners of his mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile.
“Oh, you utter dick. Fine. I’m sorry I was slightly rude to you the last time I was here.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Just a tip: apologies sound better if you don’t preface them with ‘Oh, you utter dick.’”
“Interesting idea. I’ll try it one of these years.”
“Come on, then, take a seat by the bar, tell me what you want, and I’ll fix you a Sloe Comfortable Screw Up Against the Wall.”
I slipped onto a barstool. “I didn’t think you did that sort of thing anymore.”
Ashriel was sloshing alcohol into a highball glass. “Ha-ha, mock the celibate sex demon who’s giving you a free drink.”
“Good point, well made.”
He pushed a pinkish-orange cocktail across the bar towards me, and I took a swig. “That’s pretty comfortable.”
“I could throw in a kiss if you like.”
“I’m good, thanks.” I sipped at the drink and tried to think of way to pump him for information without sounding like a total jerk. “So I actually wanted to pick your brains about vampire history.”
“Not really my speciality, Kate.”
“You’ve been working with Julian for half a millennium.”
He frowned at me. “If you want to know something about Julian, you’ll have to ask her yourself.”
“Shocked as she’d be to hear it, this isn’t about her. Do you know what’s buried in Highgate Cemetery?”
There was a thoughtful pause. “Karl Marx?”
“Better breasts, less beard.”
There was another pause, more confused this time. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s some kind of scary vampire chick loose in Highgate. I think she’s building an army.”
“And you know this, how?”
“Spate of attacks across North London, unexplained outbreak of being-turned-into-a-vampire-itis in a hospital two streets away, and I, um . . .” I took another drink because there was no way this was going to sound good. “. . . sort of saw her in a dream.”
“I was with you right up to ‘dream.’”
“You’re pretty sceptical for a reformed demon who works in a vampire nightclub.”
“It’s not the dream, it’s you.” He leaned his elbows on the bar and gave me a smouldering look. I don’t think the smoulder was intentional, but there are some things you just can’t turn off. “No offence, Kate, but you’re not exactly a visionary.”
He had a point. “I was with Nim, okay? We were in Highgate. Crows, darkness, crazy woman with wings. I know what I saw.”
“Are you sure?”
I glared. “No, when I said ‘I know what I saw,’ I meant ‘I’m not certain what I saw, please question me further.’”
“This is bad,” said Ashriel, finally.
“I’d got that far on my own. Details, pretty-boy.”
“You haven’t given me much to go on—” He leaned closer. “—but crows, dreams, shadows, and scary woman with wings sounds a lot like the Morrígan.”
“Oh shit.” I paused. “Wait. Who’s the Morrígan?”
Ashriel ran his hands through his silky honey-blond hair. “Fuck-ancient vampire queen. Ruled the entire British Isles for thousands of years. The Council took her out sometime in the seventeenth century as part of their whole pan-European No Gods, No Masters thing. They sealed her up in a crypt on Magpie Lane. If it is her, I have no idea how she got to Highgate or why she’s awake.”
“Well, she probably doesn’t want to start a knitting circle. It seems like her current plans are something along the lines of ‘Kill Everything.’”
Ashriel poured himself some Southern Comfort and knocked it back. “I have to find Julian. She needs to know about this.”
“Is there any way we can keep the Council out of this? I’m trying to find this kid who’s tangled up in the whole mess. And if the vampires get their purge on, he’s basically had it.”
“Kate, this is really fucking serious. Towards the end of her reign, the Morrígan was, to use the technical term, completely batshit insane. There was a time in the sixteen sixties when she was killing ten thousand people a month, and that’s just the mortals. She was the queen of plagues and corpses and carrion. Death was her servant and darkness her crown. In case you’re not getting this, she was bad fucking news.”
I was getting it. “So how did they take her out the first time?”
“Sebastian.”
“Oh, I should have fucking guessed. What did he do? Kill her with smugness?”
Ashriel abandoned his glass and took a slug straight from the bottle. “He was one of her progeny, and in the end, the only one she trusted. He betrayed her to the Council, but I don’t know the details.”
My phone bleeped. It was a text from Elise, telling me Nim was awake.
“I’ve got to get home,” I said. “Something’s come up.”
He nodded. “See you, Kate.”
“Thanks for the . . . screw.”
“Anytime.”
On the Tube heading home, I ticked off one mystery only to realise that I hadn’t so much solved it as replaced it with another, slightly different mystery. I had a name for Susan but I still didn’t know what she was doing in Highgate, how she’d got there, or what she wanted. And I still hadn’t found Hugh.
I got off at East Finchley and was slogging down Murdered Family Street, trying not to look at the police tape or think about the corpses, the brush with death, or my ex, when I heard a roar from behind me and a familiar-looking Fat Boy started kerb-crawling me. I stopped walking, and Michelle, Guardian of the Watchtower of the South, flipped up her visor. It was hard to see under the leather, the tattoos, and the motorcycle helmet, but she was looking better than she had the last time we’d met. Then again, that wasn’t difficult, because the last time we’d met, my girlfriend had tried to suck the life out of her.
“Need a ride?”
“Haven’t got a helmet.” When it comes to jumping onto things with strange women, I try to be safety conscious. Oh, who am I kidding?
“Got a spare.” She jerked a thumb at one of the saddlebags. I rummaged and found a spare helmet pressed against two bottles of vodka, a compact but still highly illegal handgun, and a really scary amount of lighter fluid.
“You just have that to pick up chicks, don’t you?” I said.
“Worked, didn’t it?”
I jammed the helmet on my head and climbed up behind her.
“Hold on tight.”
I put my arms around her, and we thundered off up Fortis Green. It wasn’t a long journey, but it was a happy reminder of my early twenties, after I’d chucked Patrick and discovered the twin joys of hot women and heavy machinery.
We pulled up outside the flat, and I hopped off.
“I take it you’re here for Nim?” I asked, as Michelle dismounted as well.
“Yep.”
“Don’t say a lot, do you?”
“Nope.”
I should have seen that coming.
Inside the flat, Nim was awake and sharing a large pepperoni pizza with a man in a bright orange Transport for London jacket. Michelle grabbed herself a slice and sat down without saying anything.
“Hi, Kate.” Nim waved at me. She looked basically okay for someone who’d been unconscio
us for the best part of a day. “Sorry to turn your flat into a war room. I don’t think you’ve met Jacob.”
“Hey,” he said laconically.
By a process of elimination, Jacob must be the Guardian of the Watchtower of the West. He was a portly South Asian man with salt-and-pepper hair and a greying goatee.
“Hey,” I said back.
Nim grinned. “Wow, with you three here I won’t be able to get a word in edgeways.”
Michelle gave her sovereign the finger.
The Witch Queen of London returned the gesture.
“Anyway.” Nim turned back to me. “Do you want some pizza?”
“I always want pizza. Are you all right?”
“Tired, but fine.”
“Oh, come on, how can you be tired. You’ve been in bed all day.”
She smiled at me. “Yes, Kate, I’ve been slacking off fighting an undead shadow queen.”
“We have taken to calling her Susan,” offered Elise, coming in with a half-full washing-up bowl. “I am afraid this was the only suitable receptacle I could find unless you wish to reconvene in the bathroom.”
“That looks fine,” Nim replied. “Just pop it on the coffee table. Michelle, can you get the TV?”
I put my hand in the air. “Hey, can we just remember whose flat we’re in here?”
“Sorry Kate. Kate, do you mind if Michelle puts the TV on?”
“Sure.”
Michelle stretched out an arm and slapped the on switch. The screen filled up with static and a cacophony of babbling voices burst out of the speakers. Then utter silence. And, finally, a figure appeared on the screen. It was a skinny woman in a pink one-piece, with her white-blonde hair scraped back in a high ponytail.
“Ahwight, babes?” she said, cheerfully. And then, “Oh ’ello, Kate, it’s nice to see you in person.”
This had to be Rachel. “I wouldn’t call this in person. You’re kind of on my TV.”
“Wha’eva.”
Nim dragged the washing bowl over and passed her hand across the surface of the water. “The Witch Queen of London seeks communion with the Guardian of the Watchtower of the North.”
After a moment a small brown face appeared in the surface of the water, and said, “Hello, Auntie Nim.”