Shadows & Dreams

by Alexis Hall

  “How would I? You don’t trust me, and I’ve barely seen you.”

  “You killed a Prince of England and didn’t tell me.” She was silent a moment. “I’m doing what I can, Kate, but I have to be careful.”

  “Oh yes, we can’t have this reflecting badly on the Prince of Cups, can we?”

  Suddenly my hands were empty and Julian was sitting on the throne, one booted foot crossed over the other and her chin resting in her palm. “You’re coming perilously close to boring me.”

  “Y’know what,” I said, “fuck you as well.”

  I turned to leave. As I was reaching for the door handle, Julian appeared in front of me. “Going somewhere, sweeting?”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “Not until you tell me what you said to Diego.”

  “What do you think I said to Diego?” I shoved her back against the door and kissed her hard. She tasted of wine and rose leaves and betrayal. Her tongue was velvet soft, and her teeth were cold and sharp.

  “That’s not an answer.” Julian yanked her head away.

  I was fucked if I was going to stand there and beg her to trust me. “Yes, it is.”

  “How very Judas of you.”

  I caught her by the throat and pulled her into another kiss. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t yield either. I thrust my tongue between her lips, and she made a sound of mingled pleasure and anger, then bit me. My mouth filled with the bittersweet tang of blood, and a wild, artificial ecstasy rolled over me. Then we were kissing in earnest, still struggling but falling into each other at the same time.

  For a second, I let myself forget that I’d thrown away my best chance of survival to protect her, and that she wouldn’t believe me and probably wouldn’t care. Right now, like a junkie going back for another fix, she was all I wanted. She was fragile and eternal in my arms, furious and gorgeous, and as messed up as I was.

  “I know what you’re trying to do.” Julian’s hands closed round my forearms, tight enough to bruise.

  “I’m trying to fuck you,” I said.

  “You’re trying to distract me.”

  “So walk away, tell me to stop.”

  “I should.” She leaned into me and ran petal soft kisses down the line of my neck. “I really should. But I can’t.”

  “Then don’t.”

  I picked her up and she wound her legs round my waist. She weighed practically nothing, and I could feel the heat gathering under her clothes. She reached up and plucked off my hat.

  “Be careful with that,” I said. “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

  She flung it into the corner where it landed on top of her phone. I guess she was still a bit annoyed about that.

  I considered my options. Desk. Throne. Floor. Wall. To be honest, it was all good. I crossed the room and dropped her onto the throne. She made a surprised noise and then sprawled out like a cat on a cushion. I leaned over and took another kiss, smearing blood and bright pleasure. Julian’s fingers twisted in my hair, holding me close. My mouth seemed to cling to her skin as I tried to shed more clothes. I felt if I stopped touching her, she’d slip away like cigarette smoke.

  I struggled to push the frock coat off her shoulders, but we wound up in a hopeless tangle. Out of nowhere, Julian giggled, and the sound trickled over me like champagne. I caught her shirt by the frills and tore it open to reveal white skin and a tantalising cobweb of black lace.

  “You’re costing me a fortune in shirts,” sighed Julian.

  “Then get better shirts. Or worse breasts.”

  I licked and nibbled my way down her cleavage and followed the crisscross of lace and skin, the texture shifting from rough to smooth under my tongue. Julian sighed and arched up under me. Her grip on my hair tightened until the sting made me gasp, and she pulled her hands away and clamped them to the arms of the throne. I pinned her wrists and straddled her lap, kissing her again until she was writhing beneath me and moaning into my mouth.

  “Don’t think this means I’ve forgiven you,” she said, when I came up for air. “I take betrayal very personally, sweeting.”

  “I don’t need your forgiveness.”

  I slid onto the floor and let go of her wrists to tug off her boots.

  “You look good on your knees.” Julian glinted a grin at me.

  “Shut up.” I began drawing down her ridiculously tight trousers.

  “If you’re angry, Kate, this is a funny way of showing it.”

  “It’s the only way I know to get your attention.”

  I threw her legs over my shoulders, trapped her hands again, and bit her on the side of her thigh. Whatever witty comeback Julian had ready was lost in a sharp cry. I held her against her own throne as I teased my way up to her cunt. She was as sweet as summer, and hot desire surged through me. I might only have a couple of days left to live, but at least I was making the most of them. It briefly crossed my mind that my priorities were kind of screwed up. But then Julian’s thighs tightened round me in a sort of embrace, and I stopped worrying. Stopped thinking. Stopped anything but fucking her.

  “Kate,” she murmured. “My damned infuriating, irresistible Kate.”

  I could have pushed her off the edge quicker if I’d used my fingers but I made her wait for it. I kept her on the brink until she was gasping and begging and clawing chunks out of the arms of the throne.

  “Please, Kate,” she said at last.

  And I let her come. She threw back her head, made a sound of unadulterated bliss, and flooded me with her pleasure. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back with Julian crouched over me, eyes wild, fangs bared. She shoved a hand down my trousers and a couple of fingers into me. I shuddered under her, and then she bit me, and there was nothing but the darkest, most beautiful, most impossible ecstasy.

  When I opened my eyes, I was cradled in Julian’s arms as we half lay, half sat tangled on the throne.

  “Do you really think I sold you out?” I mumbled into her neck.

  “Right now, sweeting, I don’t care.”

  “Diego said that he wanted you, not me, and if I played ball he’d keep me safe. But I told him to fuck off. Al-Rashid as well.”

  There was a bit of a pause.

  “That, my dear one, was very sweet but very stupid.”

  “You were just freaking out because I talked to the guy, and now you’re calling me an idiot for not working with him.”

  “To use your delightfully modern idiom, then I was freaking out for myself.” She kissed the edge of my brow gently. “Now I’m freaking out for you. I’m a vampire prince. It is necessary to demand loyalty, but it is foolish to expect it.”

  “Couldn’t you have told me that before I screwed myself?”

  She twined her fingers through the white streak that had become a permanent feature of my hairline. “I’d forgotten about your ridiculous fondness for self-sacrifice.” She was looking at me rather strangely. “It’s terribly endearing but not terribly helpful. I’m glad you didn’t try to sell me to Diego. But at least if you had, I would have known what to do about it. I mean, I’d probably have had to kill you, but at least I wouldn’t have had to worry.”

  I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her closer. “You’d have had to get in a queue.”

  “Sadly, sweeting, although I am an Englishwoman born, I have never mastered the fine art of queuing.” She snuggled into me. “Besides, I think you overestimate the Council’s lust for blood. Before, that is, you told two of its most influential members to fuck off. The awful truth is that you simply aren’t that important. Most of the Council don’t care if you live or die. They only care what they can get out of you. You’re lucky not many of them know about faeries or they’d find you far more interesting.”

  We kissed awhile, softly and sweetly. “Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  Julian li
cked the blood from the corners of my lips. “Their case is still sketchy, and if Sebastian can be trusted, then you have at least one powerful advocate. I know it seems like I haven’t been much help, but I have enemies on the Council, and I didn’t want them to think they could hurt me by hurting you. I’ve had to depend on Sebastian.”

  “Couldn’t you find anybody less blatantly evil?”

  “There are times, sweeting, when only blatantly evil will do. Sebastian is untrustworthy and unpredictable but strangely reliable.”

  All the talk of my impending death was really starting to lose its charm. I twisted round and kissed her again. “I don’t want to think about this anymore.”

  “Let me take your mind off it.” Julian tangled her legs up with mine.

  “Tell me a story. It’s been a while since the last instalment of Tales of the Pudding Nun.”

  “That wasn’t quite what I meant.”

  “Some of us aren’t immortal sex monsters and need five minutes to catch our breath.”

  She grinned at me. “Why don’t you tell me a story?”

  “You want me to do what?” It was probably a bit of an overreaction. It wasn’t as if she’d asked me to dress like a chinchilla and flog her with a copy of the Financial Times.

  “It’s your turn.” She gave me the big eyes. “Come on, you’ve led an eventful life. You must have hundreds of stories.”

  I thought for a while.

  “Well, there was this one case,” I said, doubtfully.

  Julian nestled in. “This is fun.”

  “This guy hired me and Archer to check out this house he’d just bought because the family there had gone like mad or something. So we went, and we couldn’t find anything.”

  Julian blinked. “Is that it?”

  “No, wait, it gets better. So we heard these noises upstairs, and we checked the upstairs bedroom, and then Archer got thrown out the window by a bed.”

  “You went up against an evil bed? Verily, it is the stuff of legend.”

  “Wait for it.” I gave her a little squeeze. “So we left the house and looked the place up in the public records office. And it turns out the guy who built the place back in like eighteen somethingy-something had arranged to be buried in the basement.”

  “That’s just weird.”

  “So we went back to the house, chopped down the false wall in the basement, fought a zombie wizard, and case closed.”

  Julian blinked again. “Is that it?”

  “Oh, there was a bit with a floating dagger as well.”

  “I don’t think a floating dagger is going to save this story, sweeting.”

  “I’ve still got it somewhere.”

  “I’m very fond of you, Kate,” said Julian gently, “but that was the worst story I’ve ever heard.”

  I pulled away a bit and gave her a look. “Archer used to tell it all the time. He used to say it was a classic.”

  “Try again, darling. I want to hear about you, not some dead prick in a cellar.”

  “Why don’t I tell you about the time I met this really demanding vampire prince.”

  Julian gave me the big blue eyes again and scrambled back into my lap.

  “Fine,” I sighed. “What if I tell you about my hilarious near-death experiences in high school?”

  “Oh yes,” she said excitedly. “I love stories about high school girls in trouble. Did you have a uniform?”

  “No, I went to a comprehensive and then a sixth form college.”

  She gazed up at me, hope gleaming in her eyes. “Can you pretend you had a uniform? With kneesocks?”

  “No. There were no kneesocks. Ever.”

  Julian pouted.

  I ignored her. “So, anyway, once upon a time, there was a girl called Katharine who had purple eyes and long dark hair and a vampire boyfriend who, for the sake of the story, we will call Schmatrick. They were in wuv. Katharine and Schmatrick were in their final year of sixth form. Katharine was failing all her exams because she was spending all her time with Schmatrick. And Schmatrick was failing all his exams because he was spending all his time dumping Katharine for her own good or trying to kill himself because of the terrible darkness in his soul.”

  “These characters sound strangely familiar.” Julian’s hand moved idly up my arm and across my shoulder. Her touch was surprisingly tender.

  “It was two weeks before their college leavers’ ball. Schmatrick didn’t want to take Katharine because he didn’t want her to expect a life he couldn’t give her. But Katharine had bought a dress anyway just in case. It was white with silver trim and made her feel like a faery princess, which ironically she didn’t know she was. Schmatrick had run away to London and hadn’t explained why, but one day Katharine woke up to find a ball ticket on her pillow, with a spray of red flowers resting on top of it.”

  “How romantic.”

  “Tell me about it. Katharine was thrilled. Over the next two weeks she woke up to find more letters and more flowers. The last note said that Schmatrick would send a car for Katharine on the night of the leavers’ ball, and sure enough, when the night came, the car arrived. And dressed up like an idiot with red flowers in her hair, Katharine got in.”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Julian’s hand gathered the warmth from my skin and passed it back to me.

  “So did Katharine when she realised she was trapped in a car full of vampires dressed like evil Jedi. They took her to this great big scary house in Northumberland with honest-to-God stone dragons outside.”

  Julian twisted around and gave me a puzzled look. “Trismegistus Hall?”

  “I don’t know. I was busy being kidnapped. I didn’t stop for a guidebook.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve been there. That’s Henry Percy’s estate.”

  Great. Trust Julian to be on first-name terms with the guy who’d tried to murder me when I was seventeen. “Friend of yours, is he?”

  “More of an acquaintance. What did he want with you?”

  “Oh, the usual stuff. Drain my blood, suck out all my power, generally ritually sacrifice me.”

  “Does that happen to you a lot?”

  “Quite a lot, actually. So, anyway, they chained me to the ceiling in this basement and this satanic-looking guy with a beard and a mullet comes in, puts on this white robe and this golden mask and cuts my arms open. Then they stuck this big golden bowl under me and poured this little bottle of shiny magic shit into it. And then he starts chanting in like Greek or Latin or something.”

  Julian leaned in and hugged me. “You poor thing. What happened next?”

  “Patrick rescued me. Like he always did. It was the one advantage of going out with him.”

  “Does this story have a happy ending anytime soon? Or an ending of any kind, for that matter?”

  I shrugged. “Well, it’s my life, so not really. Unless you want to count ‘grew up, became a PI, got executed by vampires.’”

  “You won’t be executed. Probably.”

  “I don’t like staking my life on probablies.”

  “None of us do, sweeting. That’s why we tell our girlfriends when we murder vampire princes.” She stretched, yawned, and then slipped off the throne. Slithering into her trousers, she tucked in the tatters of her shirt and sauntered across the room to retrieve the pieces of her phone. Then she picked up my hat and frisbeed it across to me.

  “That’s marching orders is it?” I said.

  “You’re welcome to come play with the kittens.”

  This was Julian’s pet name for her legion of excitable lesbian groupies. There was some kind of psychic vampire sex mojo going on with them that I didn’t really understand. She drew power from them somehow and, in return, they got well...y’know...off.

  “I’m more of a dog person.”

  “Oh yes, how is Miss Vane-T
empest?”

  Tara Vane-Tempest was the Alpha wolf of the local werewolf pack. We’d met about three months ago while I was looking into the murder of her cousin, and she’d made a pretty serious attempt to get into my pants. This had not made Julian happy.

  She’d kept in touch in a Christian Grey kind of way, sending me expensive gifts, inviting me to swanky parties, and showing up when I wasn’t expecting it with champagne and handcuffs, impatiently prowling the line between sexy and creepy. So far I’d been having so much fun turning her down that I’d barely even been tempted. Now I thought about it, I hadn’t heard from her in a couple of weeks. Maybe I’d protested too much.

  Oh, and I was in a relationship.

  “Fine,” I said warily. I’d never seen Julian’s jealous side and she’d told me I didn’t want to.

  She arched a brow at me. “You know what they say about lying down with dogs.”

  “I’m not lying down with anybody besides you and the occasional cup of Bovril.”

  “See you keep it that way, sweeting.”

  Chapter Eight

  Hippos & Heroes

  I got off the Tube at East Finchley, texted Elise to say I was on my way, and headed down Fortis Green towards home. It was a bit after nine, dark in a suburby well-lit way and bloody cold for the time of year. Fuck the Bovril. This was Drambuie weather. I turned up the collar of my coat and hurried on, past green hedges, wheelie bins, and those cosy bay-windowed Victorian terraces that are worth a bomb.

  I was about halfway home when I started to get a too quiet feeling and I realised the house across the road had its front door hanging off the hinges. The smart thing to do in this kind of situation is to sit tight, call the police, and do your best to be a useful witness.

  I crossed the road and went to investigate.

  The door hadn’t just been pushed open, it was snapped in two. The little semicircle of glass panels had been smashed to smithereens, littering the front step and the hallway. Not a normal forced entry. There were several lights on inside, but I couldn’t hear anything except the murmur of a television or a radio.

  Here lies Kate Kane. Should have minded her own business. Beloved daughter. Sorely missed.