by Steve Feasey
‘I hope you don’t mind me coming in, Lucien. It’s just that I find it easier to get things off my chest to you. Alexa and Tom are up to their necks in trying to find Caliban and Gwendolin so that we can get this Mynor’s Globe to make you well again, and every time I try to help I can tell that all I’m really doing is getting in their way.’ He turned his head and smiled as he caught the muffled sound of music coming at him across the apartment from behind Alexa’s bedroom door.
‘Tonight is the first night in months that Alexa has let her hair down,’ he said, turning back to the figure of Lucien. ‘She’s been in the research room every night, and when she isn’t there she’s in here with you. You’re all she’s got.’ He paused, closed his eyes and allowed the silence of the room to wash over him.
‘It isn’t the same without you around, Lucien. We’re like a ship without a captain.’ One of the machines made a beep and Trey glanced up at it. ‘I’m all mixed up. I could really do with you right now.’ He looked back at his guardian. ‘Thank you for my birthday present. It’s a nice picture of them both – they look really happy in it.’
He stood up, looking down at the figure, the head of their little clan, and allowed the sadness to consume him.
‘Keep strong. We’ll find a way to get you back soon.’
The Necrotroph looked around the office, its eyes skimming over the desks, quickly taking in the personnel that were still working at this late hour. The human, Tom, had left the office, announcing that he was having a break, and the demon considered how long it might take to do what it needed to. It waited for five minutes, watching them slowly count off from the clock on its desktop. Then, deciding that the Irishman had gone upstairs, it stood up, picked its cup off the table and walked over to the research room that the man had vacated, glancing back over its shoulder as it slipped inside and closed the door behind it. It stood on the other side, taking in the scene.
The table surface was invisible beneath the mess of papers, maps and used mugs strewn across it. Some of these appeared to be ancient texts, no doubt taken from the vast archive of work that the vampire, Charron, had gathered over the years. Others were computer printouts, and it was towards these that the demon walked, reaching out for the nearest one. It checked over its shoulder again before returning its attention to the paperwork. The table of data showed nothing more interesting than the use, for the last few weeks, of a particular spell, and the demon pushed the paper away, positioning it in exactly the same place that it had been beforehand. It was looking for notes of some kind, anything that might suggest what the Irishman, the vampire’s brat daughter and, recently, even the werewolf boy might be looking for. Some clue as to what they were up to – any information that it could pass on to its master, Caliban.
It moved a map detailing some region of the Netherworld and smiled as the corner of a hardback notebook revealed itself. It reached out and was about to pull it across the table when a voice stopped it in its tracks.
‘What are you doing in here?’ It was unmistakably the Irishman, Tom O’Callahan. ‘I’ve specifically asked that nobody come into this room when I’m using it. Even if I pop out for a break. That’s why the sign on the door says “occupied”.’
Luckily the demon’s back was to the door, blocking off any view of what its hands had been doing, and it withdrew them to its sides, one brushing across the map to return it to its original position, the other hooking up the handle of the cup that it had placed on the table in front of it. It turned towards the door, a smile on its face.
Tom looked at the woman standing before him, taking in the embarrassed flush that filled her cheeks and the way that her fingers fidgeted around the cup in her hands. She’d worked with them for a very long time now and he knew her to be a loyal and honest worker. A bit of a nosy busybody, but a good person for all that.
‘I just popped in to see if you wanted a cup of tea or coffee. You’re working so very hard at the moment that I thought you could do with a nice hot drink.’ She watched as his eyes flicked towards the table. ‘I was just looking on the table for your cup. I didn’t touch anything though, I swear.’
There was a silence as the Irishman studied her face, his eyes never blinking as he took in her every feature.
‘No, thank you, Ruth,’ he said eventually, apparently satisfied with what he had seen. ‘I’ve just had a cuppa upstairs.’ He stood to one side, signalling for her to leave the room, before continuing in a hard voice. ‘And, as I say, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come in here when the room’s in use.’ He held a hand up to stop her protestations.
The deep red hue flushed through the woman’s cheeks again, and she bustled past him, murmuring her apologies over again as she did so.
Tom watched her settle back into the seat at her desk, returning her attention to the monitor in front of her. He closed the door and stood just inside the room, studying the papers on the table and trying to determine if anything was out of place. After a moment he shook his head and returned to his seat, admonishing himself for being so paranoid. He blamed it on his tiredness. Ruth was one of their most trusted employees. He had known her for so many years – had known her and her husband before she had come to work for Lucien. He would have a chat with her tomorrow and apologize for being so brusque.
The demon eventually felt that it was safe to look up from its desk. It glanced over at the figure of the Irishman, who was now poring over the maps and papers again. It let out a little sigh of relief and inwardly cursed itself for being so sloppy. It would not do to be careless like that again. It would have to wait, bide its time and find some other way to discover what they were up to.
‘Put this one on again – I love this band.’ Steph knelt up on Alexa’s bed and pointed to one of the titles on the LCD screen, the empty beer bottle that she still clutched knocking against the plastic housing. Each room in the apartment was equipped with a multi-function panel from which you could control the room’s lighting and temperature as well as audio, video and telecoms. Stephanie was trawling through the huge list of songs that were stored on a central server, stopping and adding them to a playlist that was already far too long for them to get through in one evening.
Alexa looked over at her friend and smiled. She hadn’t seen her in ages. After Lucien’s injury, the threat to her life was increased, and since Tom had insisted on her being home-tutored, her contact with her school friends had stopped.
‘Play it then, pest.’
Steph grinned back and pressed the touch screen with the pad of a finger hidden beneath a long bright-pink fingernail. Music filled the room from the hidden speakers in the walls and ceiling, and Alexa picked up a remote control to turn down the volume a little.
‘Don’t, Lex!’ Steph said.
‘It’s getting late and it’s not fair on everyone else,’ Alexa said, smiling back at her friend. ‘Besides, I didn’t ask you over tonight to listen to music all evening. I want to know the gossip, what’s going on that I don’t know about.’ She shuffled over on her knees to get closer to Stephanie. ‘Come on, spill the beans. What don’t I know that I should, or, even better, shouldn’t?’
‘Not a lot really,’ Steph said. ‘Most of it you know already.’
‘Oh, come off it. There must be some juicy goss.’
Steph flashed a wicked smile back at her. ‘Well, there might be a couple of little snippets that I’ve picked up here and there. You know Emma Myers? She’s supposed to be going out with Jake Chalmers, but, and here’s the big but, Jake Chalmers is already going out with Tracey King. And when Tracey finds out, I would not like to be in Emma Myers’s shoes. She’ll kill her.’
‘Jake Chalmers? He’s ugly, for heaven’s sake! What on earth does either of them see in him?’
‘He’s got a car. I think that might have something to do with it. Besides, he’s not that ugly.’
‘Stephanie Ellington, book yourself an appointment with an optician because you need glasses in a hurry. Jake Chalmers
is the pits.’
Steph raised an eyebrow and looked over at her friend, shaking her head. ‘I’m assuming that there is still no man in your life? When was the last time you went out with anyone?’
‘It’s been a while.’
‘A while! That has to be the understatement of the year. You need to get out and about a bit more, Lex. You live like a nun.’ She smiled at her friend, and then a look that Alexa knew all too well crossed her face. ‘Has he got a girlfriend?’ she asked with a gesture of her head towards the closed door behind her.
‘Who?’
‘The sexy Irishman,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Who do you think? Trey!’
‘No. He’s been through a lot recently, and I think the last thing he needs right now is a girlfriend. Why?’
‘Because he’s cute, that’s why.’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Alexa said, turning her back on Steph to change song.
‘So you’re not interested in him then?’ Steph asked. ‘Because I was thinking of asking him out on a date. Maybe go to the cinema or something. There’s a horror movie on at the multiplex at the moment, something about a group of school kids that get trapped in a bus in the middle of nowhere, and how they get picked off one by one by a group of homicidal in-breds. There is nothing like a good horror flick in the dark to get a guy in the mood.’
Alexa’s mind was instantly cast back to the moment, five months earlier, when she had witnessed Trey as a huge, seven-foot-tall, black-and-grey werewolf biting down through the arm of a vampire, severing the limb just above the wrist and saving her father’s life. He had attacked with a fury that was difficult to reconcile with the shy, quiet fifteen-year-old that Stephanie was referring to as ‘cute’.
Steph, you have no idea, Alexa thought, smiling back at her friend.
‘Would you be bothered?’ Stephanie asked. She had that mischievous look about her again and Alexa knew that she was fishing.
‘Me? No. Why should I be bothered?’
‘Oh come on, Lex. I’ve seen the way he looks at you sometimes. And you aren’t exactly doing anything to put him off, are you? Batting your eyelashes and playing with your hair every time the two of you talk. I just assumed that you were, you know, keen on him too.’
‘Don’t be so lame, Steph,’ Alexa said with a shake of her head. ‘He’s not my type. He’s too young, for one thing. We’re just good friends. Besides, we live together. I hardly think that my dad would be over the moon at the thought of his daughter going out with the boy that he has taken under his charge.’
Alexa stopped then. The mention of her father had suddenly brought everything back to her and she thought about him lying on the other side of the apartment surrounded by machines and drips and needles while she laughed and joked with her friend following a party. And yet she had enjoyed herself tonight. Perhaps more than she liked to admit. She had felt herself let go a little this evening, and for the first time in months she had laughed out loud and banished some of the sadness and worry that she had harboured inside her for so long.
Steph picked up on the change in her friend’s mood. ‘How is your dad?’ she asked.
‘No better, but thanks for asking.’ She nodded her head at her friend’s empty bottle, quickly changing the subject. ‘Do you fancy another drink?’
Stephanie shook her head. ‘No, thanks, I’m fine.’ The smile crept back over her face and she looked at Alexa from beneath eyebrows that had been shaped recently at some salon or another. ‘So you don’t mind then? Me asking Trey out.’
Alexa looked across at her friend. She and Steph had been friends from the first day that they had started senior school together, and she knew her to be a caring, kind and loving person. But she also knew what a complete shark Steph was when it came to guys. She’d had countless boyfriends in the time that they’d been at the school. Something inside Alexa baulked at the idea of her going out with Trey, and from the way that Stephanie was looking back at her now, she guessed that her face had revealed some of this. What was it she was feeling? Jealousy? Surely not.
This is madness, she thought. I don’t have any feelings for Trey.
She frowned slightly, trying again to pinpoint exactly the emotion that her friend’s question had created within her. It really isn’t any of my business, she told herself. If Steph liked Trey, and he chose to take her up on her offer of a date, what difference was it to her?
‘No, I don’t mind. Go for it,’ she said.
‘Great,’ Steph replied. ‘I get the feeling that young Trey could do with a woman to teach him a thing or two. Hand me those bottles. I’ll take them out to the kitchen and see if he’s hanging around outside.’
Alexa watched her friend start to move towards the door and was suddenly acutely aware that she really did mind if Steph went out with Trey. She felt cross at herself for allowing these unwelcome feelings to spring forward so unexpectedly and wondered where they had come from. She needed some time to think things through, to figure out why it should make any difference to her who Trey might or might not choose to go out with. She watched as Stephanie approached the door.
Alexa closed her eyes, tilting her head backwards slowly, and took a deep breath.
‘N’gart astollamon ashath …’ she intoned in a flat monotone.
‘Alexa, what are you doing?’ Steph asked. She’d stopped with her hand on the door handle, looking back at her friend with a combination of bewilderment and amusement. The voice that had come from Alexa’s mouth was not a sound that she could ever have imagined hearing from her best friend. It was a dry and ancient sound, and as Alexa continued to intone the ominous sounding words she felt something akin to panic rising up within her.
‘… Elnieth ralleth n’gor, allemn agrath shallerith.’
‘Lex, pack it in now. It’s not funny …’
Alexa kept her eyes shut for a few seconds more, filling her consciousness with the appropriate thoughts and feelings that were necessary to make the spell work. Something seemed to push gently inside her, a mental nudge that signalled to her that the incantation had been successful.
She opened her eyes and smiled back at her friend.
‘Oh come on, Lex. I’ve seen the way he looks at you sometimes. And you aren’t exactly doing anything to put him off, are you? Batting your eyelashes and playing with your hair every time the two of you talk. I just assumed that you were, you know, keen on him too.’ Stephanie repeated the words that she had said moments before, her expression and intonation identical in every way.
Alexa nodded shyly and glanced down at her lap. ‘I suppose he is pretty cute,’ she said. ‘And maybe I do like him a little bit.’
‘Well, that’s settled then,’ Steph said, frowning at the bottles in her hand and sitting back down on the bed. ‘I was going to ask him out tonight, but I guess I’ll have to find some other poor victim to work my womanly charms on, eh?’ She winked at her friend, a wide, genuine smile on her face.
Alexa watched as the smile faded, the frown deepening on Steph’s features until her face was a mask of consternation. ‘Oh, weird,’ Steph said, wrinkling her nose.
‘What?’
‘I just had one of those déjà vu episodes. You know, where you think that you’ve lived through a moment before. They always freak me out. Do you ever get those?’
‘Yes,’ Alexa replied, kneeling up and pressing the screen to pause the music. ‘They freak me out too. But they’re just a trick of the mind. What music do you want on next?’ she asked, turning her back so that her friend wouldn’t see the broad smile that had crept over her face.
Trey had gone to bed a little before midnight, closing the door on the muffled sounds of the two girls, who were still busy gossiping and giggling in hushed tones. He removed his clothing and climbed into bed, too tired to take a shower or even brush his teeth. He resolved to redeem himself in the morning by grooming himself properly, but right now he just wanted to sleep.
He turned on to his side and reached out to swi
tch off the lamp on his bedside table.
When he turned back, the vampire was there.
Caliban stood by Trey’s bed, leering down at him with a look of pure hatred. Trey strangled the scream that rose out of him and instinctively grabbed at the lamp. He swung it in a tight arc, aiming to smash the heavy metal base into the creature’s head. His aim was true, but the lamp simply passed straight through the vampire’s features, emerging on the other side without slowing. Trey was up on his knees now and he gawped at the thing in his hand; the power cord had snapped free from the base but otherwise the lamp was utterly intact.
Caliban glowered down at the boy. ‘You delude yourself, Mr Laporte,’ he said. ‘Do you think for one second that were I really here you would still be breathing?’ The vampire opened his mouth and revealed those teeth to the boy again, the lips curling back over them to form a hideous smile. ‘No, Trey, if I were able to bypass my brother’s defences this easily I would have welcomed the chance to try out my newly acquired appendage on your tender young throat.’ He held up the mechanical hand that had been grafted into his flesh and flexed the knife-like fingers, turning them in front of his face and staring at them with a morbid fascination. ‘It was such a shame that we didn’t get a chance to speak earlier, down at the gun club. Face to face.’
Trey could now see that the figure in front of him was hardly solid at all and that the room behind was clearly visible through it.
‘But there will soon be time enough for us to become properly acquainted. My brother is losing his battle for survival, and soon the protection that you have been afforded under him will be gone. And then we will meet in the flesh, Mr Laporte. Then I will show you the true meaning of pain and agony and torture – you and the others that have sought to thwart me for so long. There is very little sand left in my brother’s hourglass, and when the final grain has fallen I shall simply walk into his world and wreak havoc on those that sided with him against me.’
The vampire tilted his head to one side, the sunken yellow eyes tracing Trey’s features.