by Alexis Hall
I was just about to burst in, when someone spoke.
“Fear not child, it will all be over soon.”
I’d heard that low, rasping voice before. What the fuck was Sybil doing here? Also when somebody says everything will be over soon, the last thing you want to do is give them a chance to demonstrate.
I shoved open the door and charged into the room like an idiot just as Sybil sank her teeth into Sofia’s neck. I jumped over the unconscious bodies of Patrick and the half-dozen vampires he’d been fighting, grabbed Sybil by the hair and yanked her head back. The funny thing about pulling hair is that the only people who do it are six-year-old girls and hardened street fighters; in either case, it tends to work.
Sofia collapsed to the floor, bleeding and shaking. Sybil hissed and struggled against me, but while I was pretty sure she was as old as dirt, she wasn’t a fighter. I was kind of low on weapons so I punched her in the head and kept on punching her in the head while I tried to come up with a better plan.
She thought of one first.
Turned out, it was transform into a giant snake.
I was left holding absolutely nothing and wrapped in a python. Eve had always said turning into a giant snake never helped anyone, but Sybil seemed to have it down. She tightened around me. In the last couple of weeks, I’d come to realise just how much I take breathing for granted.
I tried to remember the technique for escaping from a python. It was either smack it on the nose, run up a hill, or wait until it’s nearly eaten you. Since my arms were pinned, waiting wasn’t my style, and I’d forgotten to bring my hill with me, I was going to have to try something else. Sybil might not have been able to throw a punch, but she had the grab-and-squeeze thing down pat.
Here lies Kate Kane. Crushed to death by a vampire prophetess in the shape of a giant snake. Beloved daughter. Sorely missed.
I was just getting those pretty red spots in front of my eyes when I heard a gentle voice saying something I still didn’t understand in a language I still guessed was some kind of ancient Greek.
There was a shiny bright light coming vaguely from above me or around me or something and the terrible crushing pressure on my ribcage got a whole lot less terrible.
Sybil uncoiled herself and turned back into a crazy middle-aged hippie.
I choked for bit and struggled to my feet.
Sofia was standing in the centre of the room, surrounded by a glow like evening sunlight.
“I will return for what is mine, child.” Sybil bared her teeth at Sofia, her eyes a poisonous green.
I was pretty sure we had the advantage, but since the only weapon I had right now was a glowing teenager who didn’t understand her powers any better than I did, I wasn’t going to push my luck.
“Look,” I said, “I know you’ve got a raging hard-on for oracle blood but Percy’s dead, this house is kind of on fire, and I’m having a really bad day, so can you please just fuck off?” She turned and drifted out like really angry smoke.
I was unbelievably glad that had worked. Plan B had been stand around and see which of us was most flammable.
Sofia was gradually dimming. “There’s no need to swear.”
“Sorry, I didn’t realise this was a PG rescue mission. Now, come on, let’s get out of here.”
I picked up Patrick, who was stirring but still out of it, and threw him over my shoulder. And we ran back upstairs, through the less on-fire bits of the house, out the front door, and across the lawn to a safe distance.
Trismegistus Hall was in a bad way. Unnatural flames were dancing behind most of its windows, and there was a weird blue shadow against the night sky like the afterimage of fireworks. We were going to have a hell of a time explaining this to the fire brigade.
I dumped Patrick on the ground and turned to see if Sofia was okay.
To my surprise, she gave a little smile. “Thanks for saving my life. And trying to warn me.”
I scuffed my toe against the turf. “S’okay. And you did kinda save my arse too.”
“I didn’t want any of this.” She twisted a finger anxiously in her hair. “Why won’t everyone just leave us alone?”
“Is that an actual question that you want me to try and answer, because I think I sort of can?”
She nodded hesitantly. “What’s wrong with me?”
Oh fuck. I was nowhere near qualified for this. “First off, there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just the world is bigger and more complicated than you thought it was two years ago, and you happen to have some power, or something, that other people want to use.”
“But I’m just an ordinary girl. Patrick is the only special thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“There’s no such thing as an ordinary girl.”
There was a groan from the ground, and Patrick sat up. “Sofia,” he emoted, “what did she do to you?”
Sofia threw herself into his arms. “She didn’t hurt me. Kate saved me.”
Patrick stared at me with that confused look he gets when he’s trying to fit other people’s behaviour into his messed-up view of the world. “Thank you, Katharine, but this changes nothing between us.”
I sighed. “I can live with that. Just give me a lift home, and we’ll call it square.”
While Sofia and Patrick were having a tender reunion, I heard sirens in the distance and saw the flashing lights of the emergency services coming up the drive.
It looked like we’d missed our stealthy escape window, and speeding away past three fire engines and two police cars would look kind of suss.
“Patrick, you need to take care of this.”
He stopped staring longingly into Sofia’s eyes for half a second. “I do not have the authority. This is the Shaper’s territory.”
“Dude, for fuck’s sake, we’re standing outside a burning building full of dead bodies. If you don’t do something, we’re all going to jail for really quite a long time.”
He failed spectacularly to do something. One of the fire engines pulled up in front of the house, and people in uniform swarmed out and got to work.
A slight figure in a dark green waistcoat swung down from the back of the truck and sauntered over. It was Halfdan the Shaper, grinning and holding a fireman’s helmet under his arm.
“You do get around, don’t you, Miss Kane?”
Great. I had no idea what this guy’s deal was, but he’d tried to get me executed, so I didn’t think we were friends. “I get that a lot.”
Patrick stepped protectively in front of Sofia. At any moment I was expecting him to tell Halfdan to kill us and spare the girl.
Halfdan’s bright eyes gleamed in the firelight. “No hard feelings about the trial, I hope?”
“If I took it personally when people tried to kill me, I’d be really insecure by now.”
“Fantastic. Now, what the bollocking fuck is going on here?”
“Kill us if you must,” said Patrick. “But spare the girl. She is innocent.”
“I’ve spent a thousand years trying to avoid doing things I must. Which includes repeating myself. If one of you doesn’t tell me what happened, I’ll kill the girl just to ruin your day.”
I’d forgotten how bad Patrick was at dealing with people whose minds he couldn’t control. I made a nobody needs to die here gesture. “Okay, first of all, Sofia, Halfdan the Shaper, Halfdan the Shaper, Sofia. So can we all stop calling her ‘the girl,’ please.”
Halfdan gave a little bow. “A pleasure to meet you, Sofia. I do hope I won’t be eating you this evening.”
“Here’s the deal,” I rushed on. “Henry Percy woke up the Morrígan to distract you all while he turned himself into a god. He captured Sofia, we came here to rescue her, there was a fight and a fire, he’s probably dead in the library.”
I hadn’t quite had the balls to lie outright to him, but I was hop
ing I’d glossed over the Sofia is magic and special and probably delicious issue.
Halfdan peered at Sofia, grinning his too-big grin. “It’s remarkable, isn’t it, how many magical rituals need perfectly ordinary seventeen-year-old girls.”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “It’s completely weird.”
He laughed. “Oh, you do entertain me, Miss Kane. I’ll handle this from here. If you’re not south of Sheffield by morning, I’ll kill all three of you. Just sort of because.”
He put his helmet on and strolled off to talk to the police.
Taking the hint, we headed back to Patrick’s Volvo, and I crawled gratefully into the back.
They played their mix CD all the way home. When Patrick didn’t need to change gears, they were holding hands.
I stretched out on the back seat, trusting Patrick’s supernatural reflexes to stop us crashing into anything while I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. It was only about seven o’clock in the evening, but I’d been in three fights and taken two five-hour car journeys, so I was kind of knackered.
Sofia looked tired as well. Nearly getting killed takes it out of you. I know from experience. But she seemed to hate me less now, which I shouldn’t have cared about either way, but kind of did. And the truth was, I was a little bit worried about her. Dating Patrick was bad enough, but discovering that you have exciting new supernatural powers and a bunch of people wanting to kill you makes it about eighty times worse. I knew that from experience as well.
I shut my eyes and took stock of the case. Not that it was a case so much as a bunch of stuff that happened. I’d stopped Percy, and I had a pretty good idea what he’d been up to. If I was really lucky, he’d be dead, but I’d be a fool to rely on it. Hopefully, the Council would be so pissed about the Morrígan, they would have him executed, but I suppose technically he was Halfdan’s problem now, and I knew better than to try and second-guess really old vampires, especially when they had a reputation for being unpredictable.
There were a couple of little things that still nagged at me. I really wish I’d worked out what had happened to the golden mask, but it was probably somewhere in the wreckage. And Percy had gone down pretty easily for someone who was halfway towards being a god. But for all I knew that was how the ritual worked. I had a nasty feeling that Sofia being this glowy sun oracle thing was going to come back and bite somebody in the arse as well. Hopefully not her, but that was pretty much out of my hands.
That’s the thing with this business. You go in thinking it’ll be about getting answers, but really, it’s about getting results. Sofia was basically okay and knew a bit more about who she was. Tash was probably getting her brother back. The Morrígan was sleeping again, and her army wasn’t rampaging around slaughtering people anymore. I’d cleared my name with the Council, and I’d paid my debt to the Merchant of Dreams. Corin had got away, but you can’t win ’em all. I reckoned I could live with that.
I got Patrick to drop me off at the Velvet. I should probably have gone home to bed, but I hadn’t really been able to have a girlfriend for the past fortnight and I wanted to see Julian.
The Velvet was back to its usually gaudy, glittering self. Ashriel was working the door in a Santa hat and, inside, Miss Parma Violet was presiding over Cabaret Baudelaire. I climbed the winding stairs to Julian’s balcony and found her sprawled on the chaise longue, in full black tie and a shiny top hat. For once, she wasn’t surrounded by an army of half-naked lesbians.
I leaned against one of the flaking golden pillars. “No kittens tonight?”
Julian turned my way and flicked up the brim of her hat. Her eyes gleamed very blue. “They’ll be along later, but I was hoping I’d see you first.”
“I’m probably not going to be very good company. I’ve been in a car with Patrick for ten hours.”
“No wonder you look so miserable. Come and sit down, sweeting, and I’ll see if I can balm your woes.”
“I’ve never heard it called that before.”
Julian lifted her legs gracefully out of the way and then plonked them back on top of me once I sat down. I idly slid a hand beneath the cuff of her trousers and stroked her bare, cold skin.
“So, dear,” she purred, “how was your day?”
I told her about Patrick and Sofia and Percy and Sybil and the ritual and having to listen to Clair de Lune about eighty million times.
“Well,” she said, when I was finally done, “apart from Clair de Lune, that sounds just like the sort of thing you’d enjoy.”
“What, nearly being crushed to death by a giant snake?”
“You like danger, Kate. There’s no point pretending otherwise.” She glinted at me. “If you didn’t, you’d have a different girlfriend.”
I moved between her legs and caught for her wrists, holding them over her head. “You’re not that dangerous.”
She smiled up at me, her hands fragile under mine. “Keep telling yourself that, sweeting.”
She kind of had a point. “Oh come on, you haven’t tried to kill me in at least three months.”
“I haven’t needed to. Everyone else has been doing it for me.”
“And look how well that worked out for them.”
She arched her body against mine, hooking a leg around my waist. “Ah, but they don’t know your weaknesses like I do.”
“You have a weird line in pillow talk.”
“You started it.”
She kind of had a point. Again. But I was too tired to care. I let go of her hands and just kissed her, sinking into wine and rose leaves and the promise of a long, dark night. Julian wrapped herself around me and held me tight like only an ancient immortal sex monster can.
Julian’s lips moved, featherlight and velvet soft, over my jaw. “I’ve got you a present,” she whispered in my ear.
I popped the top few buttons on her starched white shirt. “Can I unwrap it now?”
“No, I mean an actual present. But you can unwrap me anytime, sweeting.”
I jerked up. “Shit, I haven’t got you anything at all.”
“I’m an eight-hundred-year-old vampire prince with near limitless resources. I’m quite difficult to buy for.” She leaned over the back of the chaise longue and fished up an extravagant hat box that looked like it had been wrapped by Rowan Atkinson in that scene in Love Actually.
“Uh, thanks.” I sat there, cradling it in my lap and feeling awkward. “Do you want me to save this for Christmas?”
“You know how I feel about delayed gratification.”
“Right.”
“Besides, I assume you won’t want to take me home to meet your parents.”
There was a slightly too-long silence. “I’ll just open it now.”
To be honest, my parents probably wouldn’t mind, but I couldn’t really see Julian playing Trivial Pursuit or joining in our annual family tradition of ignoring the Queen’s speech.
I pulled out my sanctified steel knife and cut through the ribbons.
Julian laughed. “How Alexander the Great of you.”
“Oh, shut up.” I suddenly remembered I was meant to be sounding grateful and pleased. I’m really bad at the whole present thing. I’m bad at giving them and bad at getting them. I kind of wish everybody would just buy their own stuff. It’d be less hassle all round.
I finally broke into the box.
I stared.
“Holy shit, how the fuck did you manage that?”
She looked just a little bit smug, but I guess she deserved to. “We sent some people to clean up Syon House, and that was lying in a pond in the middle of the courtyard, along with one of Percy’s lackeys.”
“Oh my God.”
I reached into the box and pulled out my hat. It smelled a bit damp and it looked, if possible, even more battered than before, but it was my damn hat, and Julian had got it back for me.
; I put it on.
Julian pounced on me, and we rolled off the edge of the chaise longue onto the floor. She straddled me and tugged off her jacket. Beneath her partially open shirt, I caught a glimpse of purple satin.
Then she leaned down and kissed my neck, her teeth scraping lightly over my skin, following the line of my artery.
I tipped my head back, baring my throat to her.
My hat fell off again. I didn’t care.
* * *
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Acknowledgments
Once again, my gratitude to Stephanie Doig and Carina Press for helping me getting this series back into the hands of readers, and to all the usual people I usually thank for the usual things.
About the Author
Alexis Hall was born in 1764 and sustains his unnatural existence by the usual methods of drinking blood, avoiding sunlight, and brooding. He writes fiction from deep within a crumbling mansion with one wrist pressed to his forehead.
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Keep reading for an excerpt from Fire & Water, the next book in the Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator series by Alexis Hall.
Weddings & Fairytales
I woke to the taste of wine and rose leaves, propped myself up on my elbows and winched my eyes open. Julian was perched on the end of my bed. She wasn’t one for staying the night—midnight to six is kind of peak time for vampires—which meant that she’d broken in again. We really needed to talk about that.