by Hall, Alexis
After she’d gone, I realised there was an army of crazed vampires running around the streets, and I’d just given away my only golden dagger.
Ah well, what was the worst that could happen?
Oh yes, I could get ripped apart outside my flat by baby vampires.
I was supposed to be at Brunel in about three hours, which had seriously cut into my getting hammered time. I watched half of this Saturday afternoon movie where Sean Connery plays a dragon, but I had to leave before I found out how they were going to take down the evil prince. Elise could have recorded it for me, but I didn’t know how to work the machine.
Warlock lived in this weird trendy block of brightly coloured flats on the Brunel campus. I’d never gone to university but I’d seen a lot of halls of residence when I was in my early twenties and working my way around London’s ample supply of bicurious undergraduates, and this was significantly less skanky than I remembered. But, then again, he was a postgrad.
Warlock himself turned out to be a lanky, straggly-haired nerd-boy dressed in various shades of faded black. He opened the door, raised a hand in a halfhearted greeting, and went back inside without saying a word. I saw a long leather coat and a fedora dumped in a corner. He did, at least, have a separate sitting area—if you counted a single two-seater sofa and a desk with an enormous computer on it as a sitting area.
“Nice hat.” Warlock threw himself down in a leather swivel chair. “Put your stuff anywhere.”
I took off my coat and hat and laid them on the floor in the absence of any free surfaces, and then plonked myself on the sofa.
“So did you get a look at the quick start?” He was straight to business.
“Uh . . . I sort of skimmed it.”
“Don’t worry, it can be quite complicated, but I’ll talk you through it.”
He leaned down beside his desk and pulled up two hardback books from a teetering stack of similar-looking hardback books. “’Kay, so, you can either have a look at the vampire book and decide what Clan you want to be, or you can just decide what you were like as a mortal and I’ll decide who Embraced you.”
“I’ll go with the second one.” I’d done this stuff with Eve back when I’d sat in on her D&D games, and I’d found it easier to let other people make the decisions for me. Besides, Warlock looked like the kind of guy who enjoyed explaining things to women.
“’Kay, so, it’s set in, like, London in the real world, except all the things you think are just stories, like vampires and werewolves and fairies and things, are actually real.”
He was clearly waiting for a reaction. “Wow,” I said, “that sounds . . . awesome.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a metaphor for the very real darkness of, like, the everyday world.”
“Can I be a gnome?”
“Oh, right.” He looked at me with obvious pity. “You played D&D.”
“Just a couple of times with my ex.”
“Well, this’ll probably be quite different to your boyfriend’s game.”
I let that one go. I didn’t want to give this guy any ideas, and he seemed the sort who’d get way more interested if he found out I was a lesbian. “Can I be a demon-hunting nun who likes pudding?”
“I like nun, but you’ve got to remember that most mundanes don’t really know about the supernatural, so it probably wouldn’t be realistic for you to be part of an organisation that hunts demons. Also it’d be quite hard for you to identify with. I mean, it’s really important in this game that you play an ordinary person who is kind of cast into this”—air quotes happened—“‘World of Darkness.’ The pudding thing is like your personal role-playing choice.”
“I’ll just play a nun then.”
From here, it got all technical. I spent the next twenty minutes scribbling little black dots on some kind of glossy four-page document that looked like a passport application. I wound up with a nun called Sister Julia, after Warlock vetoed the name Julian as unrealistic. Then he led me through a short introductory scene in which my feisty young nun was abducted from her cloister by what I think was supposed to be a hot lesbian seductress, but since Warlock really isn’t my type, it didn’t come across very well. Five minutes into his loving description of the combined agony and ecstasy of my transformation into a vampire, we were interrupted by a knock at the door.
Warlock disappeared and came back accompanied by a pretty, floppy-haired goth and a short man with a ginger goatee. He introduced them as Cody and Robb, and they both tried to squeeze themselves onto the sofa, so I moved onto the floor.
The moment my arse hit the ground, Cody the Spindly Goth shot up and offered me his seat.
“Really, I’m fine,” I insisted. “I prefer to sit on the floor. It’s better for my back.”
This was a lie, but I thought it was a good idea to keep reminding these people I was about ten years older than they were.
“So this is Kate.” Warlock reclaimed his swivel chair of power. “She’s sitting in on the game until Hugh comes back. She might bring her friend Elise a bit later.”
“Cool,” said Robb.
“She’s playing Sister Julia, a Daeva vampire who’s just been embraced by Miranda Devreaux, who you’ll remember as the Lancea Sanctum inquisitor who hired you guys to steal the Eye of Horus from the British Museum two Stories back.”
Then the game began. It turned out that they were in the middle of a mission to negotiate with someone about something to do with harbouring a fugitive. But they had to be yanked back to the prince’s court so he could tell them they had to work with my character for the rest of the job because politics. In that respect, it was quite realistic.
Around half eight we ordered pizza and sat around chatting about our actual lives. Cody turned out to be an undergrad doing English lit, and Robb, who was older than he looked, had some kind of sysadmin job at the university.
“’Kay,” mumbled Warlock, through a mouthful of Pepperoni Passion, “we’d just got to the bit where you guys are breaking into the Carthian stronghold underneath Canary Wharf. Suddenly three guards with SMGs step out into the corridor in front of you and are, like, FREEZE.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Hang on, guys.” Warlock stood up. “Take the time to work out what you’re going to do.”
Robb and Cody immediately began flipping through enormously thick rule books and discussing the merits of charging versus grappling versus complicated vampire powers.
Warlock’s voice drifted in from the doorway. “Dude, you’re really late, we’ve eaten all the pizza.”
Oh shit. I was on my feet, dice and bits of paper scattering off my lap.
Warlock sauntered into the room. “We’ve just had Nick follow the party around not doing much—”
At that moment, Hugh Shawcross came round the corner, leapt on Warlock’s back, and sank his fangs into his neck.
It’s dangerous to draw on my mother’s power when there’s civilians around in case I eat them or something, but I really didn’t have a choice. My senses sharpened, and everything slowed as the Deepwild flowed through me. I rushed forwards, ripped Hugh away from his victim, and threw him heavily against the wall, cracking the slightly shoddy plasterwork. Warlock crumpled to the ground.
Hugh recovered instantly, twisted round with the same boneless agility I’d seen in the other vampires two nights ago, and sprang at me. This was a bit awkward because I didn’t want to just carve him to pieces, but getting a clear shot at the heart was fifty-fifty at best. As he came in, I caught him by the throat and slammed him down over the sofa, which, thankfully, Robb and Cody had urgently vacated. As he struggled underneath me, I realised I now didn’t have a free hand to draw my knife.
“Okay.” I stretched out my right arm behind me. “I have a dagger strapped to my wrist. Please draw it and hand it to me, so I can stake this guy.”
“Uh . . .” said Robb, “. . . that’s our mate.”
All my instincts were screaming at me to just rip his head of
f, kill everybody else, and eat their hearts.
I flapped my hand in what I hoped was a reassuring manner. “I know this is a lot to process. Vampires are real, Hugh’s one of them, and if I let him go, he’ll kill you all.”
“No fucking way,” gasped Cody.
“We can discuss this later, but right now I really need something long and pointy. It won’t kill him.”
Robb edged over, tentatively slipped the knife from its sheath and handed it to me. I pinned Hugh’s legs under mine, forced his head back, and rammed the steel blade through his heart. He went still.
I got up shakily, pushing my mother’s power back to Faerie. We gathered round Warlock, who was slowly stirring on the floor. His neck was bleeding quite badly, but it didn’t look fatal.
“Someone get a first aid kit.”
Robb hurried off in search of one.
“’Kay guys,” slurred Warlock, sitting up, “you’ve just got to the bit where you’re breaking into the . . .” He put a hand to his neck and then stared at the blood on his fingers. “What the fuck?” Then he looked at the blood on the carpet. “Holy shit, my security deposit.” Then he looked at the body on the sofa. “Holy shit, is that Hugh?”
“Sooooo . . .” Cody looked pretty spaced out. “Turns out vampires are real.”
“Huh,” said Warlock.
Robb came back with a slightly crappy green first aid box, and I cleaned up Warlock’s wound as best I could.
“What’s going on? When did all this happen? I can’t remember.”
“It’s a vampire bite,” I explained. “Some bloodlines will do that to you.”
Robb sat down heavily on the floor. “This is messed up.”
“I’ve got to admit,” mused Cody, “I always kind of thought something like this might happen one day. Like you get home and find your parents splattered all over their front room and you’re like shit, the Prelude’s over.”
“Give me two ticks.” I rang Elise, told her I’d found Hugh, and asked her to bring the car to Brunel. Then I turned back to the group. “Look. The most sensible thing you can do right now is walk away from this. Weird shit exists, sure, but it’s not going to make any difference to your lives unless you go looking for it, and then it’ll probably murder your face off.”
There was a long silence.
“What about Hugh?” asked Robb.
“I’m going to try to help him, but I don’t think he’ll be back to games night anytime soon.” I dragged my card case out my inside pocket. “Take my card and call me if you get into trouble or if you’re about to get yourself into trouble.”
“You’re not coming back next week, then?” Cody looked disappointed.
“It’s been . . . something, but this really isn’t my scene.”
I glanced at Hugh, who was lying on the sofa doing his best impression of a corpse.
“So . . .” I asked. “Got any bin liners?
Forty minutes later, Elise and I were driving across London with a paralysed vampire stuffed in the boot of my Corsa.
“Congratulations on the successful resolution of the Shawcross case, Miss Kane,” said Elise. “But I fear the young gentleman is in no condition to be returned to his sister.”
She was right. If we gave him back to Tash in this condition, he’d rip her to pieces. Fuck, I was going to have to give her the Vampires Are Real talk as well. “Take a left here, we’re going to Hackney.”
“For what reason?” asked Elise, swinging the car round.
“We’re bringing him to the Knights. Acton and Thierry love to take in stray maniacs.”
“Do you think they will be able to help him?”
“I think so. When they found Patrick, he was a blood-crazed psycho killer, and look at him now.”
Elise said nothing.
“Okay, so maybe he’s not the best example, but he hasn’t murdered anyone recently. That I know of.”
Elise smiled but kept her eyes on the road. “I believe that is what they call damning with faint praise, Miss Kane.”
“Actually, it kind of isn’t. A hell of a lot of young vampires have to be put down like mad dogs, particularly if they’re abandoned or brought up by somebody who’s just balls-out evil.”
“If I may ask, what did happen to Patrick?”
“Fuck, where to begin.” I leaned back in my seat and pulled my hat down. “He was this lord’s son in like the mid-nineteenth century. He was engaged to this chick called Katya, but he kept seeing these ghostly figures everywhere he went. His parents did some seriously nasty shit to him, trying to break him of it. He wound up in Bedlam in the end. Then Katya got him out. Turned out she’d been a vampire the whole time. They spent the next fifty years fucking and slaughtering people. He once told me he still sees the ghosts of everyone he’s ever killed.”
Elise put a hand to her mouth. It looked like she’d been practicing emoting again. “Oh how terrible, that poor boy.”
“Yeah, I’d feel sorry for him if he wasn’t such a complete dick.”
We arrived at the Knights’ some time before midnight. Good job they were vampires, or this would be really antisocial. I left Elise in the car, with instructions to get out of there if anyone tried to look in the boot, and went and rang the doorbell.
Endymion eventually deigned to answer the door. He was wearing a purple silk kimono.
“Oh, Katharine,” he said wearily, “do come in.”
“Can you open the garage and get Acton? I’ve got someone staked in the boot.”
He drifted inside without further comment. “Father,” I heard him call out, “Katharine has brought a corpse to dinner.”
And then the garage door began to slide silently upwards.
Elise manoeuvred the car inside, and we manhandled Hugh into the house. We weren’t sure where to put him so we laid him out on top of the grand piano. Endymion sat down and began picking out the opening bars of the Funeral March. After a moment or two, Acton came hurrying down the stairs.
“Katharine.” He looked worried. “Whatever is the matter?”
“With me, nothing. With this guy, he broke his leg, got turned into a vampire, was inducted into the Morrígan’s secret army, went crazy with bloodlust, and now he’s staked on your piano.”
Acton leant over Hugh and gently opened his eyes. Then he pulled his lips back and checked his teeth. “I think he’ll be all right.” He paused. “Wait a moment. Whose army?”
“The Morrígan’s.”
His head jerked up. “Do you know what you’re saying, Katharine? The Morrígan is dead.”
“Well, she got over it. I’m hoping Hugh can tell us more if you can stop him trying to kill us all.”
Acton nodded. “Pull the knife out.”
I pulled the knife out.
Hugh snapped upright, all burning eyes and bared fangs. Acton caught his hand and held it. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “Everything’s all right.”
An immense serenity settled over the room like a heavy blanket. I probably shouldn’t have yelled at Eve the other day. I probably shouldn’t have spent the night with Nim either. Maybe I should have trusted Julian and told her about Aeglica. Who I probably shouldn’t have killed in the first place. I definitely shouldn’t have got my partner killed. Or fucked the woman who killed him. God, I hadn’t phoned my parents for ages either. They were probably worried sick.
Hugh slumped forwards on the piano and started weeping uncontrollably.
Well, this was embarrassing.
But I should have been thinking about him, not about me. I should be more open to other people’s feelings.
Wait, wait, no I shouldn’t. Something was just fucking with my head. I looked at Acton, who had put a fatherly arm around Hugh’s shoulders and was whispering soothingly in his ear.
Great. Fucking vampire mind control. I glanced at Elise, but she seemed unaffected.
So I went out front and smoked a cigarette to clear my head. The rush of nicotine washed away the guilt, and I res
olved to kick the first puppy I saw. I gave it a couple of minutes for Acton to finish whatever creepy psychic shit he was doing to Hugh and then headed back inside.
Hugh was huddled on the sofa, with a mug of fresh blood, and Acton was sitting in a chair opposite, looking all here if you need me. Endymion appeared to have got bored and fucked off.
“He okay to talk?” I asked Acton.
“Hugh,” said Acton, “are you okay to talk?”
His hands tightened on the mug, and he nodded.
I got down to business. “Okay, first thing’s first. You are Hugh Shawcross, right?” It would be just my fucking luck to have rescued a completely different fledging vampire nerd called Hugh. Besides, Rule Eleven: always double-check the obvious.
He nodded again.
“What do you remember?”
“I broke my leg. There was this woman at the hospital. She was beautiful, and she was there, and then she wasn’t. Then I was ill, and they moved me, and she was still there. There were ravens watching me, perched on the end of my bed. I tried to tell them. Then I got worse. Then my leg was better. And she was calling me, so I left. I had to find something.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Something that was stolen. I don’t know what it was. But I have to find it. She wants me to find it.”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” said Acton, with gentle authority.
Hugh sagged and took a sip of blood. “I think I hurt people. I think I hurt my friend.”
“Oh, Warlock’s fine,” I told him. “I got to you before you could do any real damage.”
He looked at me with wide, bloodshot eyes. “Wait. Who are you?”
“My name’s Kate Kane, I’m a private investigator. Your sister hired me to find you.”
“Tash.” His hands tightened around his mug. “I can’t see Tash like this.”
“No, you really can’t.”
His eyes filled up with tears again and I looked at the floor and waited for him to stop crying.
“It gets easier,” said Acton.