by Alexis Hall
“Can you open the garage and get Acton? I’ve got someone staked in the boot.”
He drifted inside without further comment. “Father,” I heard him call out, “Katharine has brought a corpse to dinner.”
And then the garage door began to slide silently upwards.
Elise manoeuvred the car inside, and we manhandled Hugh into the house. We weren’t sure where to put him so we laid him out on top of the grand piano. Endymion sat down and began picking out the opening bars of the Funeral March. After a moment or two, Acton came hurrying down the stairs.
“Katharine.” He looked worried. “Whatever is the matter?”
“With me, nothing. With this guy, he broke his leg, got turned into a vampire, was inducted into the Morrígan’s secret army, went crazy with bloodlust, and now he’s staked on your piano.”
Acton leant over Hugh and gently opened his eyes. Then he pulled his lips back and checked his teeth. “I think he’ll be all right.” He paused. “Wait a moment. Whose army?”
“The Morrígan’s.”
His head jerked up. “Do you know what you’re saying, Katharine? The Morrígan is dead.”
“Well, she got over it. I’m hoping Hugh can tell us more if you can stop him trying to kill us all.”
Acton nodded. “Pull the knife out.”
I pulled the knife out.
Hugh snapped upright, all burning eyes and bared fangs. Acton caught his hand and held it. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “Everything’s all right.”
An immense serenity settled over the room like a heavy blanket. I probably shouldn’t have yelled at Eve the other day. I probably shouldn’t have spent the night with Nim either. Maybe I should have trusted Julian and told her about Aeglica. Who I probably shouldn’t have killed in the first place. I definitely shouldn’t have got my partner killed. Or fucked the woman who killed him. God, I hadn’t phoned my parents for ages either. They were probably worried sick.
Hugh slumped forwards on the piano and started weeping uncontrollably.
Well, this was embarrassing.
But I should have been thinking about him, not about me. I should be more open to other people’s feelings.
Wait, wait, no I shouldn’t. Something was just fucking with my head. I looked at Acton, who had put a fatherly arm around Hugh’s shoulders and was whispering soothingly in his ear.
Great. Fucking vampire mind control. I glanced at Elise, but she seemed unaffected.
So I went out front and smoked a cigarette to clear my head. The rush of nicotine washed away the guilt, and I resolved to kick the first puppy I saw. I gave it a couple of minutes for Acton to finish whatever creepy psychic shit he was doing to Hugh and then headed back inside.
Hugh was huddled on the sofa, with a mug of fresh blood, and Acton was sitting in a chair opposite, looking all here if you need me. Endymion appeared to have got bored and fucked off.
“He okay to talk?” I asked Acton.
“Hugh,” said Acton, “are you okay to talk?”
His hands tightened on the mug, and he nodded.
I got down to business. “Okay, first thing’s first. You are Hugh Shawcross, right?” It would be just my fucking luck to have rescued a completely different fledging vampire nerd called Hugh. Besides, Rule Eleven: always double-check the obvious.
He nodded again.
“What do you remember?”
“I broke my leg. There was this woman at the hospital. She was beautiful, and she was there, and then she wasn’t. Then I was ill, and they moved me, and she was still there. There were ravens watching me, perched on the end of my bed. I tried to tell them. Then I got worse. Then my leg was better. And she was calling me, so I left. I had to find something.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Something that was stolen. I don’t know what it was. But I have to find it. She wants me to find it.”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” said Acton, with gentle authority.
Hugh sagged and took a sip of blood. “I think I hurt people. I think I hurt my friend.”
“Oh, Warlock’s fine,” I told him. “I got to you before you could do any real damage.”
He looked at me with wide, bloodshot eyes. “Wait. Who are you?”
“My name’s Kate Kane, I’m a private investigator. Your sister hired me to find you.”
“Tash.” His hands tightened around his mug. “I can’t see Tash like this.”
“No, you really can’t.”
His eyes filled up with tears again and I looked at the floor and waited for him to stop crying.
“It gets easier,” said Acton.
“But what if I kill someone? What if I’ve already killed people?”
Endymion appeared briefly in the doorway in a shimmer of purple. “We’ve all killed people, darling,” he purred. “One gets over it.” And then he fucked off again.
“Not helpful, Dimmy,” Acton called after him.
Hugh shuddered and took another sip of blood.
“What’s past is past,” Acton went on. “But I can teach you to control yourself now. You need never hurt anyone again, if you don’t want to.”
“Why would I want to?”
Acton gazed at him serenely. “Some feel that violence is sometimes justified, in the right cause, or for the right person.”
This was edging outside my comfort zone. Hearing these two have a heart-to-heart about power, violence, and the ethics of being a vampire made me a little bit worried about how cavalier Julian was about all this stuff. I kept telling myself I knew what she was, and what I was getting myself into, but maybe I didn’t. On the other hand, she was amazingly good in bed.
“Look, before you get started on the Twelve Step Programme, can I ask some more questions about the deadly vampire army that’s set to destroy London?”
“What army?” asked Hugh.
“The woman you saw has been turning people all over North London. There must be hundreds of you by now.”
“I don’t know anything. Sometimes I’ll go somewhere or I’ll do something, and I won’t know why I’ve done it, but I’ll know it’s what she wants.”
Well, that had been less useful than I’d hoped.
A long shudder passed through Hugh’s body. “What’s going to happen to me now?”
“You can stay here for as long as you need,” said Acton.
I leaned over and whispered in Acton’s ear, “Um, about that. Can I have a quick word?”
He nodded, and we nipped into the study, leaving Hugh with Elise.
“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this,” I told him, “but the Court are planning something big. They’re going to try and wipe out the Morrígan’s entire bloodline. All of them in London at least. Can you take Hugh out of the city until it’s over?”
“Of course, Katharine. Thierry will take him to the house in Durham.”
“Thanks.” I stared blankly at the bookcases. “Um, this is a bit of a funny question, but is Patrick in?”
“He’s upstairs. I think he’s having a hard time of it at the moment.”
“Yeah, he’s split up with his girlfriend.”
“I’m sure he’s doing what he thinks is best for her.”
Sure he was. When you were dating Patrick, he only did what he thought was best for you. Although, towards the end of our relationship, I’d begun to suspect he just did what he wanted and then decided it was best for you afterwards.
“Is it all right if I go up and see him?”
Acton patted me paternally on the shoulder. “Our home is your home, Katharine.”
I left Hugh to be looked after by Acton and Thierry and told Elise I’d be right back. Then I climbed up the spiral staircase to Patrick’s emo-loft. Hard-core cello music—I mean, not Metallica
on Four Cellos hard-core, like actual classical music hard-core—was filling the air with sad. He was probably lying on his bed reading Wuthering Heights.
I emerged into his room to find him huddled against a wall with his head in his hands. A copy of Swann’s Way was lying discarded on the floor.
“Wow,” I said. “Is this what you did all those times you dumped me?”
Patrick looked up at me with red-rimmed, tear-stained eyes. “Come to gloat, have you, Katharine?”
“No, Patrick, it’s nothing like that—”
“I’m not taking you back, Katharine. I still love Sofia. It kills me to be apart from her, but I can see now she does not belong in my world, and she never can, and she never will.”
Why was there never a stake around when you needed one? “Sofia seems like she’s a smart girl. I’m sure she knows what she’s getting herself into.”
“No! How can she know?” He leapt to his feet and started storming about the room. “How can someone so beautiful, so innocent, know the kind of darkness I walk in night after night, the danger, the constant, constant temptation?”
I got out of his way. “I think she’s in danger right now.”
“I know!” He put an actual wrist to his actual forehead. “That’s why I had to leave her.”
“Patrick, I realise this might be hard to understand, but I think she’s in danger for reasons that have nothing to do with you.”
That shut him up for all of three seconds. And then he turned to me with a look of cold hatred. “It won’t work, Katharine. You know if I go back to her I can only destroy her, but that’s exactly what you want. I won’t be a pawn in your jealous mind games.”
Sigh. “I swear I’m going to slap you if you don’t snap out of this. The people who tried to kill me fifteen years ago are going to try to kill your girlfriend. I don’t know who they are, or what they’re doing, or why they’re doing it, but unless you want Sofia to wind up eight pints of blood lighter, you need to go back to her right now.”
“Get out,” he roared. “You’ve done enough damage.”
I got out.
Elise was waiting for me downstairs. Hugh was still shaking on the sofa, and Thierry was sitting next to him, holding his hand, and talking to him softly while Acton hovered supportively nearby.
I beckoned to Elise. “Let’s hit the road.”
“Thank you for having me,” said Elise to the Knights. “It has been a very pleasant evening.”
Thierry glanced up “You are always welcome, Elise. I am just sorry we did not have time to extend our full hospitality.”
“You are too kind.”
Realising this could take a while, I dragged Elise out the door, which was harder than it looked, what with her being made of solid marble. We piled back into the car and headed for home.
“Have we achieved case closed, Miss Kane?”
“Pretty much. Now, I just have to work out what to say to Tash. Something slightly more tactful than ‘Your brother’s been recruited into the army of an indestructible vampire queen.’”
“Perhaps you could say he has gone to stay with a very nice family in the north of England.”
“That just sounds like I’m having him put down. I might as well just say he’s gone to live on a big farm somewhere in the country.”
“You could suggest he has contracted a rare blood disorder and has gone away for treatment.”
“And one of the symptoms of this rare blood disorder is death?”
“Giving all credit to Miss Shawcross, I consider it unlikely that she will think to check her brother’s pulse when she next meets him.”
“Yes, but he can’t eat any more. What’s he going to do at Christmas dinner? Claim he’s become a nothing-atarian?”
“I believe you are overthinking this.”
I gave her a look which was sadly wasted because she was being all responsible and paying attention to the oncoming traffic. “You’re the one coming up with the elaborate cover stories. My plan was just to say, ‘Hey, babe, vampires are real and they got your brother.’”
“I’m sure you know best, Miss Kane.”
In any case, I was going to wait until morning. They say giving people bad news never gets any easier, but it gets way harder after midnight. We got in at about two, and I made myself a cup of Bovril to keep me warm in place of a girlfriend who was actually there. I was just climbing into bed with it when my phone rang. Unknown number.
I sighed. What now? I picked up. “Kane.”
“Hello, sweeting. I was just thinking about you.”
I sat up so quickly I nearly spilled my Bovril. In the background, I could hear the raucous sounds of a typical Saturday night at the Velvet.
“That’d mean a lot more if I didn’t know you were covered in half-naked lesbians right now.”
“It’s just you and me, I promise.”
“I like the sound of that.”
There was a longish pause.
“I miss you, Kate,” Julian said, at last.
That was news to me.
“This”—she sounded a little sulky—“is where you say you miss me too.”
“Oh, yeah, right, sorry, long day.”
“You are a terrible girlfriend.”
“So are you.”
“We’re made to be together, sweeting. Nobody else would have us.”
I felt myself smiling. “Speak for yourself. I’m a fucking catch.”
“And I, my dear, am a motherfucking vampire prince.”
I put down my Bovril and snuggled under the covers, holding the phone close to my ear. “So, is this the point where I’m supposed to ask you what you’re wearing?”
“Why don’t you try and see where it takes us?”
I sighed. “It’s one of those fucking awful frilly shirts, isn’t it?”
“You do know the purpose of this conversation is not for you to criticise my sartorial preferences?”
“Sorry, I’ve always been crap at this sort of thing.”
Julian’s voice turned silky. “What sort of thing is that, dear heart?”
“Sorry, I thought we were having phone sex.”
“Technically, Kate, I think we’re currently failing to have phone sex.”
“Oh come on.” I fluffed up my pillows and got comfy. “Do people ever really get off on that sort of thing?”
“I’ve been alive for over eight hundred years and in my experience, the answer to the question ‘Do people ever really get off on that sort of thing?’ is invariably yes.”
It was a nice idea but... “Look, I’m kind of a hands-on girl.”
“Well,” Julian purred down the line at me, “why don’t you put your hands on, girl?”
I gagged. “I cannot believe you just said that.”
“I thought it was about your level.” Julian laughed.
“Fuck you.”
“Would that you could.”
“Is this supposed to be getting me hot?”
The mirth vanished from Julian’s voice, and she wrapped around me like velvet chains. “You don’t like the thought of fucking me, Kate?”
I tasted wine and rose leaves, so rich and sweet that, for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. A shiver of awareness ran through my whole body as though I was waiting to be touched. Distantly, I wondered if I ought to be freaking the fuck out, but right now, it felt pretty damn good.
“I like the thought of you fucking me,” Julian murmured. “I’m thinking about it now. I’m on my hands and knees. Would you like that, Kate? Me, on my hands and knees, and you’re holding me down.”
I felt a brush of silk at the edges of my fingers and my hand closed around empty air. But I could imagine she was there, just as she said, her body a pattern of silver and shadow, trembling against me. I could breathe again but words w
eren’t happening. “Ngh.”
“You pull me back by the hair. It hurts, but I like it, and I know you like it too. You like hurting me, Kate, just a little. You twist my head around and kiss me, and it stings like your hand in my hair.”
I felt the ghost of a touch against my lips. My back arched against a fall of empty air, and I slithered down my pillows. The tips of Julian’s fangs pricked my tongue, and I gasped. I put a hand to my mouth and saw a smear of blood on my fingertips.
“And then you fuck me. Your fingers deep inside me.” She gave a long sigh of pleasure that swirled over my body like a scattering of petals. It felt weird as hell, but I spread my legs and Julian’s voice slipped over me and into me. “You hold me down and make me take it. And I want it.”
“God,” I gasped, “I wish you were here.”
“So I do. I want you to fuck me. I want to taste you. I want to make you come.”
“That, uhh, that’d be nice.”
“Touch yourself, Kate.”
And I did, without even thinking about it.
“Taste yourself, Kate.”
And I did, without even thinking about it.
“Do you want me?”
I was drowning in her. Sex and power and wine and rose leaves.
“Yes, fuck, yes.”
“Touch yourself and think of me touching you. My mouth on your cunt, my fingers inside you, your blood on my lips. How much I want you. How much I want you to come. I want to hear you. I want to hear you gasp. I want to hear my name.”
I gasped.
“I want to hear my name. I want to hear my name while you come. Touch yourself, make yourself come, and say my name.”
I was slick with wanting her. I could taste blood. My fingers moved as she commanded.
“Now, Kate. I want to hear my name.”
By then, it was the only word I could manage.
Chapter Thirteen
Dust & Ashes
The next day I slept late and woke up happy. Then I remembered that I had to tell Tash the Teetotal Lesbian that I’d found her brother but couldn’t bring him back yet because Reasons.
I had a shower and found Elise in the kitchen with a frying pan.
“Miss Kane,” she cried. “I have discovered something remarkable.” She picked up an egg with one hand and cracked it open. “You see, this fluid is entirely colourless but with the application of a little heat...” She tipped it into the pan and pointed excitedly. “It is transformed by alchemical processes into a wholly different substance.”