by Alexis Hall
“And then what?”
She folded her hands in her lap, and my crappy energy-saving lightbulb suddenly flared bright. “And then we can cut it out.”
“I notice we’re back to we.”
“I gave you that sword for a reason, Kate.”
“I thought you gave it to me so I wouldn’t get killed.”
Nim smiled. “Honestly, have you ever read a book? You don’t give someone an enchanted sword to keep them safe. It’s a double-edged blade.”
I stared at her. “Did you give me a cursed sword?”
“It’s not really ‘cursed.’” There was something in her voice that suggested air quotes. “The sword goes where it’s needed. And those who wield it will find use for it.”
“Couldn’t you have told me that earlier?”
“Would it have made a difference?”
I sighed. No, of course it wouldn’t. “Come on then,” I said, “let’s do this.”
In a desperate attempt to convince myself I wasn’t having an affair, I put on my least sexy pair of pyjamas. They had hippos on them. Nim took off her hoodie, her socks, and her belt, and climbed into bed beside me.
This wasn’t awkward. Not even a little bit.
“So... Come here often?”
“Now and then,” whispered Nim. “But not lately.”
I closed my eyes. We lay there in confused silence for a while. There’s nothing like knowing you’re supposed to be hunting a killer shadow monster in your dreams to stop you nodding off. Also I don’t generally sleep on my back in hippo pyjamas trying not to touch the person I’m sleeping with.
“Did you say Corin was out?” asked Nim.
I made an affirming grunt in the gloom.
She slipped her hand into mine. “Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m not fucking okay.”
There was a long silence.
“We can do this another night.”
I gave her hand a squeeze. “No, facing unknown terror in unspeakable darkness is just what I need to take my mind off it.”
“I can look for her,” she offered, “if you want?”
“She’s probably left London by now.”
“If she’s here, I’ll find her.”
I glared pointlessly at the ceiling. I couldn’t believe I was doing this again. “I can’t believe I’m doing this again.”
I felt Nim shift slightly beside me. “The best stories are told more than once.”
“Yeah, but when they redo things they’re always shit. Look at The Italian Job.”
Nim laughed. “Great. My entire life is a tacky remake.”
I rolled over without thinking about it, and the next thing I knew, I was pressed against Nim’s back, an arm thrown lightly across her waist. She was warm and soft and very human. Her hair smelled like the city after rain.
Chapter Nine
Lockes & Doors
I stood with Nimue in my arms at the foot of a hill in the Dream of a city. Snow and black feathers were falling softly through the darkness. I took Nimue by the hand and led her towards the maze of stairs and towers. Her fingers curled round mine, warm in the cold and the silence.
We came to a set of wrought iron gates crowned in shadows. Beyond them were the ghosts of trees and gravestones. I turned aside to follow the wall, looking for the place where I’d crossed the night before. Nimue’s hand on my shoulder made me stop.
“This is Highgate Cemetery.” Her breath misted silver. “It is a place of the dead and the dead have power here.”
Nimue approached the gates and raised a hand. They swung slowly open, the chains that bound them slipping to the ground. Darkness flooded over us, and I couldn’t breathe. A weight on my chest. Shadows in the corners of my eyes. Everywhere the sound of wings.
Then Nimue cupped my face between her palms and pressed her lips to mine. I tasted her breath, spring mornings and winter nights, the glitter of streetlights on puddles and the city’s pale grey dawn.
“You okay?”
I checked. Still alive. “Guess so.”
“What do you feel?” she asked.
“Cold and unthrilled.”
“No, seriously.”
“I’m feeling pretty seriously unthrilled. I just nearly died. Again.”
“I won’t let you die. I need you to find its heart.”
“And it has to be me because...?”
“Because it’s who you are.”
I sighed and shut my eyes. The darkness pressed sleek and heavy against me. I tasted blood and rust and quiet. A tarnished crown and the weight of many centuries. A soft and terrible anger. And a longing worn stale.
I opened my eyes. I realised I was shaking. “This way.”
We went through the gates into Highgate Cemetery. We stumbled down narrow, overgrown paths, ankle-deep in flurried snow and feathers, between the twisted branches of bare trees, and over two centuries of the city’s dead. We passed half-buried headstones, weathered granite and gleaming marble, crumbling obelisks, and sculpted angels.
The darkness deepened around us as I followed the trail uphill. Whatever I was tracking, I knew it now. I knew its taste and its scent, the shape of its power.
Everything, basically, except what it actually was.
And then the air was thick with wings. Great black birds, swooping from the trees, surrounding us with a flurry of beaks and claws. I fended them off as best I could while trying to shield my eyes but, tragically, I’d left my flamethrower in my other suit.
Beside me, I saw Nim step forwards. I felt a sudden sense of calm. And the birds melted into a silver mist that swirled away into the night.
We came at last to a straight road crusted with snow and lined by ornate Victorian grave markers. Ahead lay a strange octagonal building in red granite, its verdigris doors secured with a rusted chain. The stairs were ice slick as I climbed.
Something made me turn.
A woman was watching. She was tall and pale, raven haired and red lipped, and swathed in a mantle of black feathers. She raised her arms and her cloak unfurled into dark, iridescent wings.
Nim stepped in front of me, and I was falling.
* * *
I woke with a start. My phone said 5:15 a.m.
Well, fuck.
Nim lay beside me, shifting in a troubled sleep. Part of me thought I should wake her up, but the rest of me thought that it would be a spectacularly bad idea.
I rolled over, pulled up the duvet, and failed to go back to sleep.
When I finally gave up and got up at seven, Nim was still unconscious. I could hear Elise moving around in the kitchen, so I went to check in.
“Good morning, Miss Kane. I have never seen your sleeping attire before.”
“I don’t usually wear any, but Nim stayed over.”
“Forgive me, but is ‘stay over’ a euphemism with which I am not familiar?”
I slumped against the fridge. “It can be, but right now it’s a euphemism for ‘she came to protect me from spooky shit that wanted to kill me in my dreams, and now she’s passed out in my bed, and I’m not sure she’s waking up anytime soon.’”
“I take it she will not want coffee, then?”
“I have no idea. She might be up in five minutes; she might be trapped like that for a year and a day.”
“Do you wish me to remain with her, Miss Kane, in case she has need of something?”
“Would you? I’ve got a lot on my plate just now.”
“May I assist you with that?”
I poured myself a coffee and grabbed a banana, and we went into the sitting room. I opened my mouth to try and explain, and then realised I had no idea where to begin. “Basically, Elise, this is one of those cases. It’s like when you bend down to pick a bit of hair out the plughole, and it yanks up more hair a
fter it, and so you keep pulling and pulling, and you start thinking ‘Shit, how much of this stuff is there?’ And eventually your whole drain is clogged, and you’ve spent sixty quid on sink and plughole unblocker, and all you’ve got to show for it is twenty handfuls of goopy crap.”
Elise tilted her head slightly. “I fear that analogy may have run away with you.”
“I just mean everything is connected to everything else. We were hired for a simple missing persons, and now I’m on trial for my life, hunting a vampire army, with my psychotic ex on the loose, and the Witch Queen of London passed out in my bed.”
“For future reference, Miss Kane, I understand that the more common idiom is ‘to open a can of worms.’”
I took a bite of my banana. I still did not like bananas. “Who the fuck keeps worms in cans?”
“Fishermen?”
“Look, we’re getting off topic. Remember those dreams I’ve been having? Well, it turns out there’s something big and nasty in Highgate Cemetery. Nim thinks it’s a vampire, probably an old one. All the vampire attacks have been centred on Highgate, and Hugh disappeared from a hospital two streets away. Either it’s the biggest fucking coincidence in the universe, or Hugh was conscripted into a vampire army masterminded by this scary chick in Highgate Cemetery.”
“Scary chick, Miss Kane?”
“I saw her in my dream. Tall, dark, and feathery. I think Nim’s still fighting her in there. But, right now, finding Hugh is more important. If things kick off, I have basically zero chance of getting him back alive...well...undead. And then there’s Eve. And then there’s Corin.”
“Is Miss Locke another of the worms?”
“Kinda.” I crammed down the rest of the banana and washed away the taste with a gulp of coffee. “She’s hunting vampires. As a fucking hobby. For all I know, she’s got Hugh staked in a lab somewhere. Hell, for all I know, she could have unleashed the scary ancient vampire lady we really need a better name for.”
Elise thought about it for a moment. “Perhaps we could call her Susan, Miss Kane.”
“We’re not calling her Susan. She did not look like a Susan.”
“Bob?”
“She definitely didn’t look like a Bob.”
“Subject Alpha? Codename Sepulchre?”
“Look—” I gestured emphatically with my coffee cup, spilling some of it on the table. “Let’s just stick with Scary Ancient Vampire Lady.”
“As you wish. I shall continue to call her Susan in private.”
“What I can’t work out,” I continued, “is where to go from here. I’ve got a weird feeling Corin’s tied up in it somewhere as well. Someone must have busted her out for a reason, and right now, Susan is the only game in town.”
“Would you like me to look more deeply into Susan, Miss Kane?”
“No, this is vampire stuff. They’re secretive fuckers. The only way I’ll learn is to ask someone with a really long memory, which means the Multitude or a really old vampire.”
“Do you wish me to speak to Father Carew?”
“No, it’s cool. No offence, but last time I spoke to the voice of the Multitude I wound up with you, and I don’t have another spare room.”
“Then how should we proceed, Miss Kane?”
“You’re on Nim Watch. Ring me straightaway if there’s any change. I don’t know what I can do to help, but I do kind of give a fuck so...y’know.” I finished what was left of my coffee and stood up. “I should probably check in with Eve first. I’m not spending the next two days looking for someone only to find out that my ex had him all along. Then, I’ll probably visit Highgate just in case I can sneak into the tomb in full daylight and give Susan a good staking. After that, we’re back to making it up as we go.”
“Should I watch Miss Katz again tonight?”
“It can’t hurt, but I’m starting to think that’s a bust. If he was going back to her, he’d have gone back by now. Weirdly, that game thing you told me about might be a better bet. Fledgling vampires can sometimes snap back into old routines, so if he was used to being in the same place every week, there’s a good chance he’d go back there.”
“I have Mr. Warlock’s number. He was most determined to give it to me. I shall forward his contact details.”
Day planned, I went for a shower and got dressed. Nim was still sleeping. I smoothed back her tangled hair and kissed her forehead in a totally not-affair-having way.
“Don’t fucking die.”
I grabbed a second banana and set out for Locke Enterprises.
Eve’s dot-com billions had bought her a sparkling dildo of a building just off the Old Street Roundabout. It didn’t really have a reception, just a kind of casual foyer full of nerds sitting on beanbags, MacBooks perched on their laps. Everything from the urban art on the walls to the eclectic, hipster furniture screamed trendy, don’t-give-a-fuck nonchalance, the kind of dynamic, thrown-together look you only get if you pay culture consultants millions to micromanage it.
I got halfway towards the industrial espresso machine and the jellybean dispenser before a foetus with a smartphone bounced up. He was wearing distressed jeans, a blazer, and a scarf, all of which combined to make me want to punch him.
“Hi,” he said, “it’s totally cool to just, like, walk in off the street, but if there’s anything you need, just give me a yell.”
I stopped walking. “Are you the receptionist?”
“Well, what is a ‘receptionist’ really?” asked the foetus, managing to make sarcastic air quotes without dropping his phone.
“It’s someone whose job it is to talk to people who just walk in off the street.”
He pulled a face. “You’re not really an out-of-the-box person, are you?”
“I’m here to see Eve.”
“Very cool, but she’s brainstorming with some guys right now.”
I sighed. “Do you mean she’s in a meeting? And if you say, ‘Well, what is a meeting?’ I will smack you.”
“Dude. Uncool.”
“Just tell me where she is.”
“Okay, okay, she’s in the Blue Room on twenty-seventh. I’ll let her know you’re on your way.” He started tapping into his smartphone.
“You don’t even know who I am.”
“I’m putting ‘scary woman in fedora.’ I figure she’ll either want to see you or call security.”
That pretty much summed it up, though it was probably about sixty-forty in favour of security. I went looking for a lift and found a glass capsule that shuttled me up the outside of the building fast enough to make me wish I hadn’t had that second banana. Lurching out on the twenty-seventh floor, I wandered between open-plan work spaces and staff recreation areas until I found the Blue Room.
It’s main distinguishing feature, right, was that it was blue. It had probably been designed to make you feel like you were inside the sky, so the walls and ceiling were painted in this swirling mix of blue and grey. The carpet was cloud white and pet-rabbit fluffy. There was one central table and a lot of bits of furniture that I would only call “chairs” because people seemed to be sitting on them.
Eve was cross-legged in the middle of the table with an iPad in her hand and a couple of shiny, silver laptops open in front of her. She was barefoot, and wearing khaki combats and a tight brown T-shirt with #heyladies written on it. Apart from the vampire hunting and the phallic office block, money hadn’t changed her at all.
“Okay, guys,” she said, when she saw me in the doorway. “I have to take this. Go kick it about a bit and come back in, say, ten, and tell me what you’ve got.”
Everybody packed up their tech and trooped out, several of them shooting a last, adoring look at Eve as they left.
She swivelled round on the table to face directly at me. “Have you come to shout at me some more?”
Now she wasn’t wearing a superh
ero costume, I could see the telltale crescent of an old vampire bite on her neck, and there were parallel lines that looked like claw marks on her arm.
“I’m not going to shout at you.” Calm, Kate, be calm. “But I would like to know how you got those.”
I crossed the room and circled my thumb over the scars on her neck. Eve caught my wrist but didn’t push me away.
“Vampire. Killed a bunch of people in Galway. I tracked it down and took it out, but it gave me something to remember it by. The other was just something random and greebly. We took it apart in the lab, but we didn’t find anything.”
“I thought you said you knew what you were doing.”
“I do. I know it’s dangerous, but somebody’s got to do it. And besides,” she grinned suddenly, “chicks dig scars.”
She had a point. Obviously I was concerned about her safety, but at the same time, they did look pretty hot. They gave her this Xena: Warrior Princess vibe.
I realised I hadn’t stopped stroking her neck.
I stuffed my hand in my pocket. Bad hand. No biscuit.
“Look,” I said quickly, “I’m tracking down this missing person. One of your interns, Hugh Shawcross? I think he’s been turned into a vampire. Do you know what’s happened to him, and have you got him locked up in some freaky white room deep underground?”
“Don’t be silly, that’s a shopping mall.”
“We dated for five years. There’s no way you’d build a place like this and not have a secret base underneath it. You probably have big vats of chemicals and walkways with no handrails and some kind of nuclear reactor controlled by one very small switch.”
“Kate, I have almost none of those things.” She didn’t exactly wink at me, but she said it in a very winky way. “All the walkways are fully health and safety compliant, I don’t have any vats of chemicals, and the nuclear reactor has multiple fail-safes.”
“So you do have a secret underground base.”
Eve smiled wickedly. “You know the rules. I don’t have to tell you anything until I’ve got you tied up in a terribly slow-moving deathtrap.”
I found myself smiling back at her. “I’m game if you are. Menace away.”