“Not this time.” I spare another glance for the shades beyond the stage. We have, it seems, an audience consisting only of the dead and drained. I squint: I have a feeling I should recognize some of them.
***No, my dear. This is not your destination; this is merely the vestibule.***
My dance partner pulls me into a slightly tighter embrace. I lean against him and he breaks with the dance, lowering his grip to my waist, lifting me from the floor to whirl around in helpless orbit.
“What are you doing?” I cling to him for dear life. He’s overpowering and gorgeous, and despite the charnel horrors around us I find him exciting and exhilarating. Blood is pounding in my ears, and I flush, wanting him—this is silly—as if he’s a human lover. Which is crazy talk and unimaginably dangerous and anyway I’m married, but faceless strong stranger whirling me away in a romantic whirlwind race to nowhere is an incredibly strong cultural trope to deconstruct when you’re so turned-on you’re desperately trying not to hump his leg and get a grip on yourself Mo, this is not good—
“Get the fuck out of my head,” I snarl, and awaken to find myself lying stone-cold sober in a tangle of sheets saturated with ice-cold sweat, my crotch hot and throbbing, while the cobwebby echoes of Lecter’s dream lover giggle and chitter and bounce around the corners of my skull like so many Hallowe’en bat toys.
***Bitch,*** Lecter mocks. ***You know you want me.***
“Fuck you.”
***Touch me, sex me, feed me.***
“Fuck you.”
I’m on my feet, fumbling with the key to the gun locker. It contains no guns: just a scuffed white violin case that sports a dog-eared sticker reading THIS MACHINE KILLS DEMONS. Other, more subtle wards engraved between the laminated layers of the case bind the contents in an approximation of safety, much like the sarcophagus around the Number Two reactor at Chernobyl; the instrument itself is considerably deadlier than an assault rifle. I lean against the wall as I lift the case out and lay it on the damp bedsheets, then flick the clasps and lift the coffin-like lid.
Lecter gleams within, old bone in the moonlight shining through the cabin’s porthole. I touch his neck and draw my fingers slowly down it, across his body towards the saddle. (Is it my imagination, or does his fingerboard shudder in anticipation?) I reach into the lid with my other hand and pick up the bow. A brief measure from the Diabelli Variations, perhaps? What could be the harm (other than the risk of disturbing my neighbors, who in any case are sleeping in the accommodation deck of a former oil rig, which was presumably designed with soundproofing in mind)?
I wrap my hand around his bridge and lift him gently, then raise his rigid body to my shoulder and rest my cheek against his rest. For an instant I have a disturbing hallucination, that I’m holding something that doesn’t resemble a violin so much as an unearthly bone-scaled lizard, f-hole shaped fistulae in its shell flashing me a glimpse of pulsing coils of blood-engorged viscera within—but it passes, and he is once again my instrument, almost an extension of my fingertips. I purse my lips and focus, lower the bow to touch his strings as delicately as don’t think of that, begin to draw it back, and feel for his pitch—
Then my phone rings.
***Play me!*** Lecter snarls, but the moment has passed.
My phone shrills again as I lower bow and body to the bed and rummage under my discarded dress for the evening clutch. I get to the phone by the fourth ring and answer it. It’s a blocked number, but that doesn’t mean anything. “Mo speaking. Who is it?”
“Duty Officer, Agent Candid. Please confirm your ID?” He gives me a password and I respond. Then: “We have a Code Red, repeat, a Code Red, Code Red at Dansey House. The Major Incident Contingency Plan has been activated. You are on the B-list; a Coast Guard helicopter is on its way out from Stornoway and will transport you directly to London. Your fallback coordinator is Vikram Choudhury, secondary supervisor is Colonel Lockhart. Report to them upon your arrival. Over and out.”
I drop the phone and stare at Lecter. “You knew about this, didn’t you?”
But the violin remains stubbornly silent. And when I re-inter him in his velvet-lined coffin, he seems to throb with sullen, frustrated desire.
* * *
I don’t like helicopters.
They are incredibly noisy, vibrate like a badly balanced tumble drier, and smell faintly of cat piss. (Actually, that latter is probably a function of my sense of smell being a little off—jet fuel smells odd to me—but even so, knowing what it is doesn’t help when you’re locked in one for the best part of four hours.) The worst thing about them, though, is that they don’t make sense. They hang from the sky by invisible hooks, and as if that’s not bad enough, when you look at a diagram of how they’re supposed to work, it turns out that the food processor up top is connected to the people shaker underneath using a component called the Jesus Nut. It’s called that because, if it breaks, that’s your last word. Bob rabbits on about single points of failure and coffin corners and whatnot, but for me the most undesirable aspect of helicopters can be encapsulated by their dependence on messiah testicles.
This particular chopper is bright yellow, the size of a double-decker bus, and it’s older than I am. (And I’m old enough that if I’d given it the old school try in my late teens, I could be a grandmother by now.) I gather it’s an ancient RAF war horse, long since pensioned off to a life of rescuing lost yachtsmen and annoying trawler captains. It’s held together by layers of paint and about sixty thousand rivets, and it rattles the fillings loose from my teeth as it roars and claws its way southwest towards the coast somewhere north of Newcastle. I get about ten minutes’ respite when we land at a heliport, but there’s barely time to get my sense of balance back before they finish pouring eau de tomcat into the fuel tanks and it’s time to go juddering up and onwards towards the M25 and the skyscrapers beyond.
By the time the Sea King bounces to a wheezing halt on a police helipad near Hendon, I’m vibrating with exhaustion and stress. Violin case in one hand and suitcase in the other, I clamber down from the chopper and duck-walk under its swinging blades to the Police Armed Response car at the edge of the pad. There are a pair of uniforms waiting beside it, big solid constables who loom over me with the curiously condescending deference police display towards those they’ve been assured are On Their Side but who nevertheless suffer the existential handicap of not being sworn officers of the law. “Ms. O’Brien?”
“Dr. O’Brien,” I correct him automatically. “I’ve been out of the loop for two hours. Any developments?”
“We’re to take you to the incident site, Doctor. Um.” He glances at the violin case. “Medical?”
“The other type,” I tell him as I slide into the back seat. “I need to make a call.”
They drive while my phone rings. On about the sixth attempt I get through to the switchboard. “Duty Officer. Identify yourself, please.” We do the challenge/response tap dance. “Where are you?”
“I’m in the back of a police car, on my way through . . .” I look for road signs. “I’ve been out of touch since pickup at zero one twenty hours. I’ll be with you in approximately forty minutes. What do I need to know?”
Already I can feel my guts clenching in anticipation, the awful bowel-watering apprehension that I’m on another of those jobs that will end with a solo virtuoso performance, blood leaking from my fingertips to lubricate Lecter’s fretboard and summon his peculiar power.
“The Code Red has been resolved.” The DO sounds tired and emotional, and I suddenly realize that he’s not the same DO that I spoke to earlier. “We have casualties but the situation has come under control and the alert status is cancelled. You should go—”
“Casualties?” I interrupt. A sense of dread wraps itself around my shoulders. “Is Agent Howard involved?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t—” The DO pauses. “Excuse me, handing you over now.”
<
br /> There’s a crackle as someone else takes the line, and for a second or so the sense of dread becomes a choking certainty, then: “Dr. O’Brien, I presume? Your husband is safe.” It’s the Senior Auditor, and I feel a stab of guilt about having diverted his attention, even momentarily, from whatever he’s dealing with. “I sent him home half an hour ago. He’s physically unharmed but has had a very bad time, I’m afraid, so I’d be grateful if you’d follow him and report back to this line if there are any problems. I’m mopping up and will be handing over to Gerry Lockhart in an hour; you can report to him and join the clean-up crew tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” I say, adding I think under my breath before I hang up. “Change of destination,” I announce to the driver, then give him my home address.
“That’s a—” He pauses. “Is that one of your department’s offices?” he asks.
“I’ve been told to check up on one of our people,” I tell him, then shut my trap.
“Is it an emergency?”
“It could be.” I cross my arms and stare at the back of his neck until he hits a button and I see the blue and red reflections in the windows to either side. It’s probably—almost certainly—a misuse of authority, but they’ve already blown the annual budget by getting the Coast Guard to haul me five hundred miles by helicopter, and if the Senior Auditor thinks that Bob needs checking up on, well . . .
I close my eyes and try to compose myself for whatever I’m going to find at the other end as we screech through the rainy predawn London streetscape, lurching and bouncing across road pillows and swaying through traffic-calming chicanes.
The past twelve hours have rattled me, taking me very far from my stable center: hopefully Bob will be all right and we can use each other for support. He tends to bounce back, bless him, almost as if he’s too dim to see the horrors clearly. (I used to think he’s one of life’s innocents, although there have been times recently, especially since the business in Brookwood Cemetery a year ago, when I’ve been pretty sure he’s hiding nightmares from me. Certainly Gerry and Angleton have begun to take a keen interest in his professional development, and he’s started running high-level errands for External Assets. This latest business with the PHANGs—Photogolic Hemophagic Anagathic Neurotropic Guys, that’s bureaucratese for “vampire” to me or thee—has certainly demonstrated a growing talent for shit-stirring on his part. Almost as if he’s finally showing signs of growing up.) I keep my eyes closed, and systematically dismiss the worries, counting them off my list one by one and consigning them to my mental rubbish bin. It’s a little ritual I use from time to time when things are piling up and threatening to overwhelm me: usually it works brilliantly.
The car slows, turns, slows further, and comes to a halt. I open my eyes to see a familiar street in the predawn gloom. “Miss?” It’s the driver. “Would you mind signing here, here, and here?”
A clipboard is thrust under my nose. The London Met are probably the most expensive taxi firm in the city; they’re definitely the most rule-bound and paperwork-ridden. I sign off on the ride, then find the door handle doesn’t work. “Let me out, please?” I ask.
“Certainly, miss.” There’s a click as the door springs open. “Have a good day!”
“You, too,” I say, then park my violin and suitcase on the front doorstep while I fumble with my keys.
Bob and I live in an inter-war London semi which, frankly, we couldn’t afford to rent or buy—but it’s owned by the Crown Estates, and we qualify as essential personnel and get it for a peppercorn rent in return for providing periodic out-of-hours cover. Because it’s an official safe house, it’s also kitted out with various security systems and occult wards—protective circuits configured to repel most magical manifestations. I’m exhausted from a sleepless night, the alarms and wards are all showing green for safety, the Code Red has been cancelled, and I’m not expecting trouble. That’s the only excuse I can offer for what happens next.
The key turns in the lock, and I pick up my violin case with my left hand as I push the door open with my right. The door swings ajar, opening onto the darkness of our front hall. The living room door opens to my right, which is likewise open and dark. “Hi, honey, I’m home!” I call as I pull the key out of the lock, hold the door open with my left foot, and swing my suitcase over the threshold with my right hand.
I set my right foot forward as Bob calls from upstairs: “Hi? I’m up here.”
Then something pale moves in the living room doorway.
I drop my suitcase and keys and raise my right hand. My left index finger clenches on a protruding button on the inside of the handle of my violin case—a motion I’ve practiced until it’s pure autonomic reflex. I do not normally open Lecter’s case using the quick-release button, because it’s held in place with powerful springs and reassembling it after I push the button is a fiddly nuisance: but if I need it, I need it badly. When I squeeze the button, the front and back of the case eject, leaving me holding a handle at one end of a frame that grips the violin by the c-ribs. The frame is hinged, and the other end holds the bow by a clip. With my right hand, I grasp the scroll and raise the violin to my shoulder, then I let go of the handle, reach around, and take the fiddle. The violin is ready and eager, and I feel a thrill of power rush through my fingertips as I bring the instrument to bear on the doorway to the living room and draw back a quavering, screeching, utterly non-euphonious note of challenge.
All of which takes a lot longer to write—or to read—than to do; I can release and raise my instrument in the time it takes you to draw and aim a pistol. And I’m trained for this. No, seriously. My instrument kills demons. And there’s one in my sights right now, sprawled halfway through the living room doorway, bone-thin arms raised towards me and fangs bared.
***Yesss!!!*** Lecter snarls triumphantly as I draw back the bow and channel my attention into the sigil carved on the osseous scrollwork at the top of his neck. My fingertips burn as if I’ve rubbed chili oil into them, and the strings fluoresce, glowing first green, then shining blue as I strike up a note, and another note, and begin to search for the right chord to draw the soul out through the ears and eyes of the half-dressed blonde bitch baring her oversized canines at me.
She’s young and sharp-featured and hungry for blood, filled with an appetite that suggests a natural chord in the key of Lecter—oh yes, he knows what to do with her—with Mhari, that’s her name, isn’t it? Bob’s bunny-boiler ex from hell, long since banished, latterly returned triumphant to the organization with an MBA and a little coterie of blood-sucking merchant banker IT minions.
I put it all together in a single instant, and it’s enough to make my skull pop with rage even as my heart freezes over. Code Red, Bob damaged, and I get home to find this manipulative bitch in my home, half-dressed—bare feet, black mini-dress, disheveled as if she’s just don’t go there—I adjust my grip, tense my fingers, summoning up the killing rage as I prepare to let Lecter off his leash.
“Stand down!”
It’s Bob. As I stare at Mhari I experience a strange shift in perspective, as if I’m staring at a Rubin vase: the meaning of what I’m seeing inverts. She crouches before me on her knees, looking up at me like a puppy that’s just shit its owner’s bed and doesn’t know what to do. Her face is a snarl—no, a smile—of terror. I’m older than she is, and since becoming a PHANG she looks younger than her years, barely out of her teens: she’s baring her teeth ingratiatingly, the way pretty girls are trained to. As if you can talk your way out of any situation, however bad, with a pretty smile and a simper.
The wards are intact. Bob must have invited her in.
I am so stricken by the implicit betrayal that I stand frozen, pointing Lecter at her like a dummy until Bob throws himself across my line of fire. He’s wearing his threadbare dressing gown and his hair is tousled. He gasps out nonsense phrases that don’t signify anything: “We had an internal threat! I tol
d her she could stay here! The threat situation was resolved about three hours ago at the New Annex! She’s about to leave.”
“It’s true,” she whines, panic driving her words at me: “there was an elder inside the Laundry—he was sending a vampire hunter to murder all the PHANGs—Bob said he must have access to the personnel records—this would be the last place a vampire hunter would look for me—I’ve been sleeping in the living room—I’ll just get my stuff and be going—”
She’s contemptible. But there’s someone else here, isn’t there? I make eye contact with Bob. “Is. This. True?” Did you really bring her back here? Is this really what it looks like?
Bob seems to make his mind up about something. “Yes,” he says crisply.
I stare at him, trying to understand what’s happened. The bitch scrambles backwards, into the living room and out of sight: I ignore her. She’s a vampire and she could be gearing up to re-plumb my jugular for all I know, but I find that I simply don’t give a fuck. The enormity of Bob’s betrayal is a Berlin Wall between us, standing like a vast slab of irrefrangible concrete, impossible to bridge.
“You didn’t email,” I tell him. Why didn’t you email?
“I thought you were on a—” His eyes track towards the living room door. Every momentary saccade is like a coil of barbed wire tightening around my heart. “Out of contact.”
“That’s not the point,” I say. “You invited that—thing—into our house.” I gesture, carelessly swinging Lecter to bear on the living room doorway. The vampire whimpers quietly. Good.
“She’s a member of non-operational staff who has contracted an unfortunate but controllable medical condition, Mo. We have a duty to look after our own.”
His hypocrisy is breathtaking. “Yes well, I can see exactly how important that is to you.” The thing in the living room is moving around, doing something. I lean around the doorway. “You,” I call.
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