“You don’t owe me. You don’t leave a friend to face tentacle monsters on his own, that’s all.” Julian lifted up one of the covered dishes on the trolley. The scent of a freshly cooked tuna casserole made his stomach rumble.
“Yeah, let’s dig in,” Rob said. “Need to hit the road.”
Julian checked the afternoon sun streaming in through the windows. “We’re not about to be attacked again, are we?”
“Need to get back to London.” Rob had half a croissant in his mouth. “Lost my bracelet and it’s a full moon tonight – the full moon. Need to get to Mrs Prashad’s basement.”
“You held it together last night,” Julian said. “I mean, except for when you were maced, but that’s understandable.”
“I killed and fed last night. The monster got what it wanted. I’m really hoping I don’t have to fight for my life tonight and that means the cage in Mrs Prashad’s basement.”
“How do you get a replacement for the charm?” Julian asked.
“I’ll have a month to work that out, won’t I?” He shoved the other half of the croissant in his mouth.
They ate in silence for a few minutes. Julian found the edge coming off his hunger and a part of him that was wound tight began to relax. He started to think about which dishes he should sample before Rob ate everything.
“Those scars on your side,” Rob said while he heaped potato bake onto a plate. “They look like werewolf claws did them.”
He glanced down at the three long scars that ran diagonally over his ribs. “No, they’re from a vampire.”
Rob held up his hand, fingers splayed. “Bit far apart for a vampire, aren’t they?”
“Well yes – I mean, um –” He remembered a face framed by a metal helm, with fresh blood dribbling over the chin. He tried to separate what he could say from what he mustn’t.
Rob laughed. “I can’t believe you. People like us, people who live in our world, we’ve got to be able to lie to cover it all up. How can you be so bad at it?”
Julian’s mouth twisted. “Lack of practice.”
“We’ll work on it during the drive back to London,” Rob said. “Don’t worry, I’ll have you sailing smooth in no time.”
“How do we get back to London, anyway? The van is trashed.”
“Yeah.” Rob’s smile faded. “Funny thing that. You need to see the van.”
They ate and dressed and gathered up what was left of their work clothes. Rob picked up the van keys from where he’d dropped them on a dresser and they headed for the car park.
To Julian’s surprise, the van was whole.
The windshield was intact. The panels were straightened out. The magnetised lumps of metal were no longer stuck to the sides.
But the paint job on the repaired sections didn’t match the rest of the van. It was a mix of white and yellow and Julian only had to look around the rest of the car park to see why.
The nearest cars were a white four wheel drive and a yellow hatchback. They looked like grenades had gone off inside them.
“Our van is a cannibal,” Rob said.
“Axrillax,” Julian said.
“What? That giant gorilla made out of lightning?”
“Gorilla? Really?”
Rob shrugged. “I saw King Kong a few weeks back. The darts had just finished and I was channel surfing.”
“You watch darts on TV?”
“Can we talk about whether or not our van will to try to kill us?”
Julian frowned at the vehicle. He drew a half-circle around one eye with his finger and subvocalized a few words of a veracity chant. To his vision the light in the car park changed. The sun remained as it was but the sky dimmed. The trees along the road pulsed with green life. The cars roaring past were grey blurs with red fires beneath their bonnets. Rob burned cold like the light of the full moon.
The van shimmered with the life wrought all through its structure. It was not unfamiliar, for he remembered Axrillax, but it wasn’t the same.
He blinked a few times and let his perceptions return to normal. Walking over to the van, he put his hand flat on the front, just below the windscreen. He felt the van’s attention on him, but it wasn’t hostile.
“I think we’re fine,” he said.
“It’s not alive then?”
“Oh, it’s alive,” Julian said. “After a fashion, at least. Axrillax’s life energy imprinted itself on the van’s chassis. Most of him went into whatever it was we brought here, but enough remained to ignite into some level of self-awareness. It’s below that of a human, but there all the same.”
Rob scratched his hair. “So, more like a pet then? A dog or something?”
“That’s not a bad way of thinking about it.”
Rob sidled up to the van. He patted the driver’s side door as though it was a surly animal. When the van didn’t snap at him, he put his hand flat on the door. Wonder lit his face.
“Yeah, I can sort of feel it. Like a hum in the metal. Tell you what, I’ve got no idea what we’re going to say when we take the van back to the depot on Monday.”
“That’s Monday’s problem,” Julian said.
“Truer words,” Rob said. “Let’s get back to London before I freak out and kill someone. A nice quiet night: I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.”
Chapter 25 – Alice, Friday Night
Something was going to happen that night.
Alice watched the sky growing darker in a free house established for her kind in north London. No direct sunlight struck her, not with the heavy layer of grey clouds circling over the city, so the light did not burn. It merely sapped her of strength until she was little more than mortal and stole her supernatural awareness until all that remained was a vague sense of dread.
There was a light footstep at the door behind her. “You’re up early,” Krishnan said. He owned the free house. In theory he was one of those who were not interested in the clan and faction politics that so dominated the vampire world, so the free house was open to all. In reality he played the game as much as any, if only to keep what was already his.
He did not come into the room, Alice noticed. “I’ve hardly slept,” she said.
“You must be distraught.”
Her brow crinkled. “Must I?”
Krishnan sighed. “I worry about you, Alice. You’ve forgotten how to care about others. All you have left is your little game.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “Am I alone in that?”
“Far from,” he said. “I’m sure you’re tired. Shall I send someone up?”
Alice said nothing. She stared at the city, at the lights coming on all across the familiar London skyline. Electric lights, not gas or flame. In the sky, as the darkness grew, the threads of dead light spreading out from Trafalgar Square began to appear.
“Please, Alice,” Krishnan said. “What will people think of me as a host if I let you wither?”
She smiled. “Send someone. Just a debtor though. I don’t feel like playing.”
“You never do, these days,” Krishnan said. “I have one chap who may as well be stone for all the reaction he displays. I’ll send him along.” He paused. “You go way back with Vivien. I’m sure his death means more to you than you’re willing to admit.”
She was spared having to answer by a chirp from her phone. Krishnan slipped away as she opened it to find a message from Irene, another London vampire who claimed neutrality.
STILL ALIVE?
She smiled and replied, ALWAYS.
COME TO MINE. YOU WON’T BE SORRY.
A party then, in which Irene would try to cheer her up. She usually knew how.
She tapped in a reply that she’d be there and looked out the window again. The day was falling away and the night was rising. She could feel her limbs quickening and her awareness flowing outwards like cold, dark water. The thirst came with it, that familiar need.
Something was going to happen tonight. She could feel it, like hearing an indrawn breath.
She had had this feeling very few times in her long life and always it had been followed by calamity.
Then she heard footsteps on the carpeted floor of the free house. She heard human breathing and a heartbeat quickened by exertion and fear. The thirst stirred and she felt her hunter’s instincts taking hold of her. She listened to the man approach and caught the scent of his body and the cheap deodorant he tried to cover it with.
He knocked on the door of her room.
Alice turned. He was in his late thirties and east European by the set of his features. He had incurred debts to a vampire somewhere, been given the choice to pay them off in blood and agreed to do so. The man met her gaze emptily.
Perfect.
She stepped away from the window and waved him forward. He didn’t resist when she tilted his head to the side. He drew in only a small, sharp breath as she broke the skin of his neck. She was careful, because she didn’t want to give Krishnan the trouble of a corpse. She began to feed.
In the great cities, there were always enough of her kind to support a vampire version of everything. Alice took a special kind of black cab back to Vivien’s place.
She hadn’t used public transport in a long time. It wasn’t just that she thought she shouldn’t have to, though that was part of it. She didn’t like being jammed into a small space with so many very warm, very fragrant human beings. It was an exercise in self-control she preferred to avoid.
The taxi driver was human, but a servant of one of her kind. She could smell the change in his scent that came from drinking small amounts of vampire blood and could even make a good guess at who he worked for. He had been at his job long enough to realise she wasn’t interested in conversation. He left her to watch in peace as the passing city embraced the early evening.
She was on edge, despite the satisfying meal of the debtor at Krishnan’s. As the blood revitalised her and as she opened more to the night, that sense of impending disaster grew.
Many of the humans who lived with them at Vivien’s were there when she arrived. She felt their grief in the air, but she ignored their attempts to draw her into the wake they held. One of them dared to ask her if she cared at all about Damon’s death. Her glare terrified the woman into hiding behind one of the others.
She went to her room. Clothes, books, music – none of it important. Damon’s scent clung to all of it. She had lived here for four years with him, but she felt no desire to preserve anything from that time. He had never lived up to her expectations.
She opened a drawer, dug around inside it and took out a small box. There was a ring inside, a ring made of black metal, unadorned by any kind of gemstone. When she touched it she felt a familiar surge of power that tasted of old, primordial night.
The box held a silver chain as well. She threaded the ring through the chain, fastened it behind her neck and hid the ring beneath her shirt. It was pleasantly cold against her cool skin. It sharpened her senses and electrified her limbs. She felt like she had fed on the sweetest of fear-drenched blood after a wild hunt through a starlit forest.
But it heightened her awareness of the coming calamity as well. It would be big, she knew, and it would be tonight. She did not think it wise to get involved.
The ring box fitted into a pocket of her jacket. She left everything else and would have left the house immediately but Billy, alerted to her presence by one of the other residents, intercepted her in the hallway.
“You’re leaving?” he said. “Just like that?”
His expression was one of boyish dismay, for all that the emotion behind it was older. Alice discovered she cared a little after all, at least for him.
“It was only ever a game for me, Billy,” she said. “The politics and the assassinations and the money. I’ve played this game before. I thought to try it again, to see if my interest would rekindle, but it never really did.”
“What about Damon?” he asked.
“We were over a while ago.”
“It all meant nothing to you?” he asked. “The power and status we said we wanted? The enemies we planned to humiliate? What happened to you? They talk about you like you were death on legs. How could the treaty – defang you like this?”
“It wasn’t the treaty,” she said. “It was before that. It was …” She looked away.
“What?”
“For a long time, I hunted and fed and killed,” she said. “I made war against the werewolves and slew every one I could lay my hands on. I revelled in it, all of it. I don’t regret a single blood-drenched minute of those times.
“But then I changed,” she said. “Or I was changed. It wasn’t enough for me any more.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We bring more of our humanity with us than we think,” Alice said. “It isn’t the same, but it isn’t gone.”
Billy’s face twisted. “Humans are weak. We were weak. Now we’re unstoppable and forever.”
“We gain many things, but we give up a great deal for them,” Alice said. “If you could change a little like a human can, if you could grow up just a little, wouldn’t you?”
He frowned.
She sighed and brushed his hair back from his brow. “What is it you want, Billy? What do you want for you?”
His eyes were bright and fierce. “I want it all, Alice. I want to be feared and respected. I want to be taken seriously. I’m almost a hundred years old and people treat me like a child.”
“Vivien’s death creates a power vacuum,” Alice said. “You can step into it if you move fast. Assert yourself through Vivien’s subordinates and try to hold on to everything that was his. Others will move quickly to grab what they can. You have to be faster. Use Dean when he recovers, but make sure he knows who’s boss. Use your age, especially with him.”
“I will. He’ll be up and around again in a few days. He’s already been conscious a few times.”
“With Vivien, Zarina and Rooster dead, there is space for three more vampires in London,” she said. “Petition the council straight away to be given permission to sire them yourself. It’s an extraordinary opportunity. Try not to go below two if the council gives you trouble – and there will be trouble. If you arrive with Vivien’s affairs under your control, that will speak well of you and help your case.”
“One of those new vampires could be yours if you stayed,” Billy said.
She smiled. “Thank you, but no. Good luck, Billy. Remember that you have a friend in me.”
“Thanks.” He hugged her tightly. He was still a child in some ways, permanently caught on the cusp of adolescence. She held him for a moment before she pulled free.
“One last piece of advice,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Watch yourself tonight,” she said. “Something big is in the wind. Vivien and the others won’t be the only casualties before the end.”
Alice was so preoccupied she didn’t realise what everyone would be talking about at the party. The rare murder of a vampire by a non-vampire always sent shockwaves through the entire community. When it happened, it was all anyone talked about.
Almost a dozen vampires had gathered at Irene’s. Of the other guests, most were the sort of groupies Alice’s kind always attracted, people to whom the real world was too dull or too difficult, who were fascinated by the vampire lifestyle or who projected their dreams of happiness onto it. Several witches and warlocks were there as well, about as many as the vampires themselves, who were likewise drawn in or who arrogantly assumed their knowledge of magic kept them safe.
Alice fell beneath the scrutiny of many eyes as she entered Irene’s. She ignored them and pretended not to hear their whispers while she looked for her hostess.
The house had been redecorated since Alice’s last visit, but that was hardly unusual. Unlike many who found themselves a time period and did their best to stay in it, Irene was constantly reinventing herself through modern fashions and trends. Her house exhibited warm colours now and her artwork was restric
ted to a few pastoral paintings. Modest arrangements of flowers made the house seem like a place where living things belonged.
Irene parted ways from a pair of their kind and swept over to Alice, bringing a trace of expensive perfume with her. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine,” Alice said.
Irene laughed. “You are, aren’t you? Poor Vivien, he was never more than a diversion. How that must have rankled with him. He was charming, but he thought so much of himself.”
Irene still had a hint of Norway in her accent. Her parents had brought her to London shortly after post-World War Two rationing ended. In her afterlife, Irene had abandoned the frugality of her parents and embraced hedonistic consumerism.
“I find myself in the position of being the centre of conversation and yet excluded from those conversations,” Alice said, glancing around.
“People will gossip,” Irene said, as if she didn’t enjoy doing so. “It was a strange night last night. What happened to your poor companions was only part of it.”
“Yes.” Alice remembered Julian pulling down the moon.
“The vampire lords have been demanding justice, the werewolves have been distancing themselves from it all and the London council has been desperately trying to prevent blood from being spilled,” Irene said. “Do you think it will come to that? It would certainly be a spectacle.”
Alice wondered if that was the danger she sensed rushing towards them all. “I don’t know.”
“The poor Cromwell boy,” Irene said. “They say the Shield Foundation mean to pounce on him once he’s back on British soil. I think he would be much safer right now if he had the backing of the packs, but they refuse to have anything to do with him. They call him a rogue and worse. I wonder what he did to fall so far out of favour.” Irene looked at her from the corner of her eye. “No word from the Blackwoods.”
“Nothing at all?” Alice asked. “Their prodigal son reappears and they’re silent?”
“They’re always silent. Nevertheless, I think it would cause a stir if a scion of such an old magic family was killed by one of us.”
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