by Helen Harper
Since I left the warehouse, the group of witches has grown. Where there were only around a dozen, now there seem to be about thirty. The night sky is lit up by their flashes of foul magic. Cameras held by quivering journalists are recording the action. I’m not going to get into an ethical debate about whether the press is there merely to record events, but damn those parasitical vultures for not lifting a finger to help.
Ignoring them, I reach into the crowd and grab the nearest two witches by the scruffs of their necks then haul them backwards and smack their heads together. They collapse onto the ground with a heavy thud. The others are so intent on their victim that they don’t even notice. They’re all taller than me and they’re crowded too closely together for me to peek through them, so I can’t see what state the vampire is in. I’m betting it’s not good. I can’t take on this many witches at once and, sooner or later, they’re going to notice I’m here. I need to be smarter.
When you think about it, fear really is the ultimate weapon. The Kakos daemons have had to do very little for generations because everyone’s so bloody scared of them. With their actions against the Families, they’ve just cemented their reputation for the next century. It can be tricky, though; there’s a fine balance between intimidating someone and riling them to the point where they come at you like a rabid dog. Or in this case, a pack of rabid dogs with black magic at their fingertips and blood already on their hands.
I reach down inside myself for the iciness I know lingers there. It’s dangerous but it’s going to be worth it. Then I select my target: the younger and more vulnerable the better.
I quickly find who I need. Towards the far end of the scrum, there’s a scrawny kid with a sickeningly proud smile pasted across his thin face. My mouth flattens into a grim line. He should be at home. No doubt his parents have decided that he can get a better education by beating a bloodguzzler to death at the witching hour than by going to school in the daylight like someone normal. Sucks to be him. I crick my neck from one side to the other as a light from one of the watching cameras swings in my direction. I guess the paps have spotted me, at least.
Wasting no further time, I spring round and curl an arm round the kid’s chest. He yells loudly in surprise as I drag him backwards. It’s enough to draw the attention of the other witches. One by one they elbow each other, spinning round and falling into silence when they see me. I keep the kid close, his thrumming heartbeat singing to mine. This could almost be fun.
One of the mob – who surprises me by his human appearance – steps forward. His features are ugly and twisted, despite the sudden panic in his face, which suggests he feels kinship with the kid. I guess he’s here with the witches because a shared antipathy for vampires proves that the enemy of your enemy is a friend. So much for sympathy for what’s happened to us, then.
‘Let him go.’
I smile disarmingly. ‘Sure. I’ll do that right now.’ I pause. ‘No, wait. Maybe I won’t.’
‘Might have known she’d survive,’ someone spits from the crowd. ‘She’s like a bleedin’ cockroach.’
‘Got that right,’ I coo. ‘There’s no getting rid of me.’ Using my free hand, I trail my index finger down the kid’s cheek. He flinches and tries to jerk away but I hold him fast. ‘Now, what do cockroaches eat, I wonder?’ I cock my head as if trying to think while I deliberately let my fangs grow. ‘They probably like their meat young and succulent.’
‘Get your filthy hands off him!’
I allow my teeth to scrape the skin of the boy’s neck. Right now, he’s nothing more than a plain, normal-looking kid; he doesn’t even have a faint tattoo of either white or black magic across his cheek. If he is a witch, the tattoo won’t reach prominence until he comes of age when, no doubt, he’ll undergo the same procedure as the others in order to become a hybrid. I’m starting to think, however, that he’s human. Even without the human man jumping in to attempt a rescue, the faint scent emanating from the kid’s skin suggests it.
His eyes are throbbing with hatred. I sniff once more and glance down. The boy’s knuckles are bruised and bleeding. He’s not all that innocent. Despite the situation, I feel hunger stirring inside me. It’s not been easy to feed myself the last few days and this boy does smell good.
One of the witches lunges towards me. I pull back just in time. ‘Now, now, now,’ I tut. ‘That’s just not polite.’ I dip my head further and nick the boy’s skin, just above his jugular. As blood trickles down, I use the tip of my tongue to lap it up. ‘Mmm. AB. I don’t get that very often. How yummy.’
A tall woman strides out from the back of the crowd. She’s dressed from head to toe in black. It’s almost like we’re matching. ‘What do you want?’
I meet her cold gaze. ‘I should have thought that was obvious.’
‘You’d kill a child for this?’
I smile sympathetically. ‘Children are the future, aren’t they? And this child has been involved in beating a vampire to death.’ I gesture at the dazzled journalists. ‘Look at his hands. Is this boy an innocent? Is thirty against one a fair fight?’ My smile grows. ‘Is a bunch of cameras filming the action ‒ and therefore silently condoning it ‒ something this country should be proud of?’
I’m pleased to note that several of them flinch. Good: it means I’m being scary enough. Bring on the fear, ladies and gentlemen. Bring. It. On.
‘He’s a Medici bloodguzzler. You hate them as much as we do.’
‘You might have missed it,’ I say softly, ‘but Medici are no more. The guzzler is mine.’ I stroke the boy’s cheek. ‘Or this boy is mine. You choose.’
Several of them mutter amongst themselves. Another man extricates himself, walks up to the self-appointed leader and whispers in her ear. I watch his mouth and the anger inside me solidifies. I was pissed off before; now I’m incandescent. I don’t let it show, though. Screw what my grandfather says; I can keep my emotions hidden when I need to.
Indecision crosses the woman’s face. ‘A life for a life,’ I remind her. ‘It’s up to you.’
‘Scarlet,’ the man, who is probably the boy’s father, begins.
‘Scarlet?’ I beam. ‘And I’m the Red Angel. It’s like we could be sisters.’ I look down at the boy and let my pupils dilate. ‘Blood is scarlet too,’ I purr.
Scarlet pushes the man away. ‘Fine,’ she snarls. ‘Release the boy and you can have the vampire.’
‘I think not. Vampire first. Then I will give you the boy.’
She hisses and spits but she does what I ask. She snaps her fingers at two of her henchmen who growl and retrieve the beaten body, dragging him forward through the crowd. They drop him at my feet. His face is a bloody pulp.
I tilt my head and listen. He’s close enough for me to ascertain the truth. Fuck. ‘He’s dying.’ I say it calmly and without inflection.
‘You don’t know that.’
I sigh. ‘I do. And I did say a life for a life.’ Still holding the boy, I reach down and grab the vampire’s limp body, tossing him over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift. Then I start backing up. Between the vampire and the boy, movement is awkward. The kid starts writhing and jerking; he’s going to try almost anything to save his sorry skin. He opens his mouth and bites down hard on my arm. In response I cuff him hard on the side of his head and it lolls to the side. Huh. I’d have thought a teenager would have a harder skull than that.
‘Let him go!’ the father shrieks. ‘Let him go!’
Any second now, the crowd will decide enough is enough and come after me like some amorphous angry monster. I take in a deep breath. This isn’t going to be easy with my two burdens but I’ll do my best.
I spin round and start running. Admittedly it’s more like a lopsided shuffle than a run but I do what I can. There’s a sudden roar from behind. I’ve probably only got a three-second head-start. Damn it, that’s not enough time to get back to the van.
I drop the kid. I’d hoped to use him as collateral to get further but his weight is holdin
g me back. Of course, now that he’s no longer with me, the witches have no reason to hold back. I zigzag, trying to avoid the bursts of magic streaming towards me but there’s a limit to what I can do. I’m struck at least three times and my right arm goes completely limp.
Something tightens around my shin. I glance down as I run and realise it’s a bloody snake. Now it’s my turn to experience fear. The snake opens its jaws, ready to sink its fangs into my skin. I don’t have time to reach down and shake it off. Stabbing pain shoots upwards. I’ll just have to hope that MI7 includes snakebite antidote in its medical room otherwise I’m going to be seriously sick. I limp a few more metres, fling open the van door, toss in the Medici vamp and extricate myself from the snake, throwing it onto the road. Then I put the pedal to the metal.
***
‘He’s dead,’ my grandfather informs me.
I push back my hair and sit up. My leg is still throbbing painfully. Apparently, I’m now strong enough as a vampire to avoid death from even the nastiest of snakes, with or without an antidote. Yippee – but it still bloody hurts. And vampiric strength isn’t enough to keep you alive when there are thirty magically endowed people beating you up at the same time.
‘They murdered him. Sodding witches.’ To survive the bombs, only to be ripped apart by a baying crowd of idiots who are being dangled on a string by someone far, far smarter than them, makes the now-dead Medici vampire’s situation seem even shittier than it already is.
My grandfather sits on the edge of my bed. ‘Most people are on your side, Bo. Yes, there are factions taking advantage of the situation but, by and large, there’s been a lot of sympathy for the vampires since the attacks. We British don’t like to think of ourselves as homicidal maniacs.’
‘Even if we are.’
‘Yes,’ he agrees quietly. ‘Even if we are.’ He waits a beat before continuing. ‘You have to be careful. You looked like you were going to kill that child. That kind of action is not going to endear you to anybody.’
‘I wouldn’t have really hurt him. Not much.’ I might have taken a good long drink from him to make sure he spent the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for the next pair of fangs but I wouldn’t have killed him.
‘I know.’
I look up at his careworn face. ‘Do you? I’ve done some pretty bad things. I have killed.’
He sighs. ‘The vampire part of you has taken root. It’s in your soul. There will be bloodlust, Bo. There will be less … conscience inside you. It doesn’t mean you’re not you, though. It doesn’t mean you can’t still make right and moral decisions.’
‘Moral?’ I scoff. ‘Is there any part of this world where morality still exists?’
He brushes away a lock of hair from my cheek in a familiar gesture that I remember from when I was a child. ‘You know there is.’ He looks away. ‘And if you are going to stay in this country and not get yourself killed, you need to present a better image to the world. You’re the public face of the vampires now, whether there are five of you, or fifty, or five thousand.’
I reach up and turn his head, forcing him to look at me. ‘What if there’s only one?’ He doesn’t answer. I shake my head and swing my legs round. ‘How’s Michael doing?’
‘His pulse is weak and thready. He’s running a temperature. There’s no internal bleeding that I’m aware of but I’ve started him on intravenous antibiotics to beat any internal infection.’
That’s a better answer than ‘okay’. ‘Should I have taken him to a hospital?’
‘I don’t think it would make a difference and it would have been incredibly dangerous. There will be others besides the Kakos daemons who want to see him dead now that he’s so vulnerable. However, we can still try that if you…’
I hold up a hand. ‘No. He’s safer here.’
My grandfather regards me steadily. ‘It’s not going to work, you know.’
‘What?’
‘If he makes it. If Michael pulls through.’
I notice that he’s stopped calling him Lord Montserrat. I ignore the chill. ‘He’s going to make it,’ I say through gritted teeth.
‘Maybe he will. But you and him? A vampire and a human?’ He shakes his head. ‘It’s not going to happen.’
I stand up. ‘Let’s just concentrate on getting him better first.’
Rogu3 appears in the doorway, saving me from further conversation. ‘I’ve got the clip you wanted.’
‘Perfect.’ I don’t smile.
‘What’s this about?’ my grandfather enquires.
I tighten my jaw. ‘Come and see.’
We troop through to the main room. O’Shea is lying on the sofa and covering his face with his hands as Kimchi tries to find a spot he can lick. I have to give it to the dog, he’s certainly determined.
‘Mmmmph!’
Maria, her arms crossed and her posture stiff, eyes both of them warily. She is more relaxed around Kimchi in the sense that she doesn’t loosen her bowels in terror whenever he’s there, but she still doesn’t like him. I have the feeling that Kimchi’s merely biding his time before he begins his all-out doggy cuteness assault.
‘O’Shea!’
‘Mmmmph.’
‘Stop messing around. I need you to see this.’
With some effort he heaves Kimchi off his chest and sits up. ‘Your dog is a beast.’
Maria and my grandfather nod in fervent agreement. I’d like to give them a demonstration of Kimchi’s prowess in the art of slobbery but there are more important matters to deal with. I pass a hand across my forehead. ‘Just get over here. I need you to tell me what you can see.’
O’Shea bounds over, Kimchi trotting at his heels. I nod to Rogu3, he taps a key and the video starts playing.
O’Shea scratches his head. ‘I don’t get it. We’ve seen this. We were watching the whole time you were there.’
I keep my eyes on the screen, trying not to notice my frozen features and the terror of so many of the witches staring at me. I really do look like a thug. Scarlet steps forward and starts speaking. There’s no sound. We watch as the silent conversation plays out once more and I pretend not to see Rogu3 shudder when I stroke the boy’s cheek. Then the second man pushes forward and whispers in Scarlet’s ear, his thin lips forming the words that almost sent me over the edge.
‘There.’
‘What?’
My grandfather sucks in a breath through his teeth and turns away. The others haven’t caught it yet. I tell Rogu3 to go back and play it again. This time O’Shea’s breath quickens. ‘Oh. The slimy politician strikes again, I see.’
So I didn’t imagine it. Rogu3 stares at the screen, mouthing to himself as he works it out. His lip curls. ‘“Hale won’t like this.”’ He turns his head to me. ‘That’s what he’s saying, right?’
I keep my arms loose at my sides but my fists are tightly curled, anger bunching every sinew. ‘Yeah. I think so.’
‘So he planned with Medici to bring down all the Families. When Medici was destroyed too, he shifted gear and is making sure there are no more vampires left. I wonder what he’s offered the witches for their compliance.’
I snort. ‘They probably jumped at the chance and did it for free. And there are humans there too.’
‘Hale wants to ensure that the Families don’t regroup,’ O’Shea says. ‘He wants to exterminate every last trace of the bloodguzzlers for good.’ He glances at me. ‘And I thought you were the psycho one, Bo.’
Without turning round, my grandfather speaks up. ‘That dead guzzler is Medici. Perhaps Vincent Hale was attempting to get rid of any last witnesses who might know his role in all this.’
‘Whatever his motives,’ I say coldly, ‘we can’t let him get away with it.’
‘Bo, he’s a Member of Parliament, a democratically elected official. It’s one thing going after petty thieves or black witches but a human MP? The consequences could be devastating.’
‘MI7, yes?’ Maria asks.
I jerk. ‘Pardo
n?’
‘MI7.’ She waves a thin, pale hand. ‘This MI7. You tell them. They take care this … man.’
The annoying, insistent voice in my head pipes up in angry reflex. No, I want to do this myself, just like I want to find X and destroy him myself. I know I’m being a stubborn fool but that’s not going to change how I feel. I focus on the ache in the centre of my chest. I try to remind myself that this isn’t about my feelings, there’s much more at stake. I have to look at the bigger picture.
‘As much as I hate to say it,’ my grandfather says, ‘MI7 won’t involve themselves in this. Without incontrovertible proof, they can’t.’
‘We’ve got proof!’ O’Shea gesticulates wildly. ‘There! That bloody video is proof!’
‘It’s nothing more than hearsay.’
‘Bo…’ Rogu3 begins.
I hold up my hand. ‘I know, I know.’ I curse under my breath. I didn’t want it to come to this but Hale has forced my hand. ‘We’ll go to your place and get that damn software you need. That wanker needs to be stopped.’
Chapter Four: Photo Bomb
Rogu3 doesn’t call ahead. It would make life a damned sight easier if his parents knew we were coming but we can’t risk their phones being tapped. Rogu3’s association with me is well-known; anyone could be watching his house. Whether it’s hybrid witches, vulture-like journalists, Kakos daemons or Vincent bloody Hale, there are more than enough groups that we need to avoid if we want to keep everyone safe. That means sneaking in under cover of darkness and in full-blown stealth mode. In this scenario, less is more and Rogu3 and I would have managed it fairly easily. Unfortunately Maria has other ideas.
‘I come,’ she insists. She hooks her arm through Rogu3’s.
I can see the shiver of delight in his eyes at her touch. I don’t care. ‘No.’ My tone is meant to brook no argument. If only.
‘I come,’ she repeats.
‘It’s too risky. It’s bad enough the two of us going. We don’t know who’s waiting out there for us. Someone might have staked out the place.’
O’Shea sniggers. ‘Staked.’