Vampire State of Mind, page 17
When I got there, Liam was waiting for me with a hold-all slung over his arm.
‘You off somewhere?’ I asked.
‘It’s the gear. There’s a ghoul, gone to ground in a kids’ play area. What on earth are you wearing?’
‘I thought I might go out tonight.’ I took the bag from him. ‘Give me that. You know Head Office doesn’t like you going outside.’
‘You weren’t here.’
‘I am now. You go and … scrub the software or whatever it is you do. I’ll tranq the ghoul and hit the clubs afterwards.’
Liam gave me a dark look. ‘Oh, yes? And why? Something I’m still not allowed to know anything about?’
‘Ask The Incredible Mouth over there. He can’t seem to shut up about my business.’ I nodded towards Sil, who was standing by my desk, looking over a clipboard with a list of names and addresses on it. ‘No, it’s all right, Liam. I just want to – ah, have an evening out. Don’t think I’m really in the mood for an evening of Made in Chelsea with Rach.’ She’d wandered in just before I left, with unfocused eyes, a headache, and no memory of letting Malfaire in to the flat, and started making one of her meat-, fat- and dairy-free meals. Vodka and cheesy chips had increased their appeal at that point. ‘I want to get on the outside of a few drinks, have a bit of a dance.’ Get off my face. Forget any of the stuff that happened today. ‘Nothing big, personal stuff. Anyway, what’s wrong with what I’m wearing?’
Liam gave me a look up and down. ‘It’s a bit sexy. You’re ghoul-bagging, not walking the ring-road touting for business.’
‘Thank you, mother. And what about Sil, he’s wearing less per square inch than I am; how come you’re not telling him off?’
‘He’s a vampire, he’d be sexy in a Tesco bag and slippers. You look like you’re off to see the wizard. What the hell are you going to do with the ghoul – cover yourself in sequins and try to gay him into submission?’
I was wearing a body-hugging, strappy and largely backless dress in dark red with shoes to match. ‘I wasn’t anticipating a tranquing. I only popped in here to make sure you weren’t wasting tax-payers money, or at least the pitiful amount of tax-payers money that we get. Then I thought I’d go straight out.’
‘Yes.’ Liam gave me a look more pointed than a tranq dart. ‘That’s pretty much how it looks. I just thought I’d familiarise myself with your outfit because I have a very strong feeling – I dunno, call me psychic if you like – that you’ll be wearing exactly the same clothes tomorrow morning when you turn up for work.’
‘You think I’m going to seduce some innocent clubber?’ Behind my desk Sil made a sarcastic blowing noise. ‘That’s rubbish! Anyway, I’m an adult woman; I can make my own decisions.’
Sil snorted now. ‘Looking like that, the only decision you’ll have to make is which position doesn’t make you look fat.’
‘Oh right, from a man in leather trousers and a shirt you could use to catch cod!’
‘Yes, what’s with the fishnet and leather look, Sil? You on a promise, tonight?’
Sil didn’t look up from the clipboard. ‘If she’s going clubbing then I’m rather obliged to go along as well, and I’m steering her towards the club down by the river.’
‘I thought you were supposed to be guarding me, not enjoying yourself!’
‘Oh, I can enjoy myself at the same time.’ He looked up at me. ‘You’ll fit right in there. They have pole dancing on Fridays.’
Liam sucked in a breath. ‘For a straight guy, Sil, you can be a real bitch, you know that?’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about the straight.’ I checked the contents of the bag and prepared to move out. ‘Not dressed like that.’ Pulled my big coat down off the rack and used it to cover the offending dress. ‘Mind you, Liam, sometimes I have my doubts about you.’
‘I’m in touch with my feminine side,’ Liam came back. ‘You should be grateful!’
‘Yeah, if this tranquing goes pear-shaped, at least we can sit around afterwards and talk about Hollyoaks. Is all the gear in?’
‘You’re ready to go. Good luck.’
‘Cheers,’ and Sil and I were off, running down the stairs with a hold-all swinging against my thigh – just like the old days, except in the old days Sil wasn’t dressed like a rent boy and I wasn’t wearing heels.
The ghoul had been caught by the dawn and had hidden all day underneath a ramp in a skate-park cum playground right on the edge of our jurisdiction, but out of area for the ghoul and, therefore, fair game for us.
‘It’s under there.’ I pointed with the handle of the tranq gun. ‘You can see it, faintly.’
Sil held the bag open for me to find the tranq darts. ‘I always wondered how you did it, you know. How you managed to be so quick, so good at finding the mark. I guess it was obvious, really.’
I screwed the special darts into the barrel of the gun. ‘It’s my job, I have to see, have to be quick, or I’d be getting even worse headlines in the local press than I do now.’
‘And you never thought there might be more to it than that?’
‘Oh yes, every day I’d wake up and think, “gosh, I wonder if my parents were both human?” It’s not the sort of thing that springs to mind, you know?’
Leaving Sil with the gear, I advanced on the area of darkness behind the skate ramp. Ghouls aren’t actual killers, not intentionally anyway. In their own dimension, apparently, they’re quite solitary and live off wild creatures. In this one they’re a bloody nuisance, but at least they’re not Shadows.
‘Jessica Grant?’ The scratchy voice came from the shadowy angle hard against the ground, where the windblown cigarette butts collected half-a-dozen deep. ‘They send you?’
‘Yeah, James Bond was busy.’ I couldn’t get a shot in if I couldn’t see. ‘Who are you?’
‘Carrerwear. I am ghoul.’
‘Uh-huh. I sort of guessed.’
‘I ask this, that you hear me.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘The demon who wants you. He wishes you to know, he no longer acts alone in his desire for war.’
‘Who? No, don’t tell me, Malfaire.’ Deep inside me, anger fought with reason. ‘Am I really meant to be intimidated by that?’
The ghoul snapped out at me, caught me on the wrist, sent the gun spinning from my hand across the grass. ‘Yes,’ it said, simply, and flowed forward out of its hiding place.
The gun was too far away, over the other side of the concrete skate ramp. If I threw myself across the half-tube then the ghoul would be on me before I touched the ground and I didn’t trust myself to be able to fight it off. Damn! Ghouls usually had all the tactical ability of a pub darts team, but this one was intelligent, careful.
‘So then, what do you get out of this? You lot hunt me down, then what happens? Some kind of reward thing?’
‘We become allied to the demon Malfaire. There will be advantages, in the war to come.’ The ghoul was standing over the gun. Bastard.
‘Everyone’s talking war all of a sudden. I thought the pact was working well.’
‘He will lead us and there will be power. No more hiding.’
Okay, so I couldn’t get the gun, couldn’t run away, couldn’t fight. What could I do? I could think.
Dropped to the ground like a felled bullock. I hurt my shoulder on impact, but that didn’t matter. The ghoul hesitated, then began to come towards me, moving off the gun and into the space between us. It seemed uncertain; flowed almost reluctantly, keeping its edges against the side of the ramp. I jerked myself to my feet, one smooth quick movement, and I was behind the ghoul, picking up the gun before it could react. Levelled the gun, braced my wrist and pulled the trigger, all in one, and hit it square in the mid-section where it solidified as the chemicals took effect.
‘You were a fat lot of good.’
‘What did you want me to do?’ Sil curled a lip at me. ‘Only one gun; what was I supposed to do, bore it to sleep?’
‘You could have distracted it.’
‘You were having a nice, cosy chat.’
The gun was still in my hand. I ran my fingers over the familiarity of the handle, felt the way it balanced against my palm. ‘Your eyes look different.’
Under the new moonlight his eyes were dark. Sil’s eyes never looked that dark.
‘I’m hungry, all right?’
Uh-oh. ‘This club that you want us to go to? Would it happen to be the kind of club where consenting adults get together for a bit of bitey-action?’
Sil slid over the grass space between us almost without moving and was in front of me in a fraction of a second. ‘What’s your problem, Jessie? I’m vampire, a fucking vampire – blood, sex and high emotional drama are rather the point!’ He was shouting at me now, his eyes shone black as polished coal, while his skin was whiter than white. ‘And after that … thing with Malfaire I need blood, warm blood, gushing into my mouth with the pound of a pulse! Okay, yeah, I can get by on the artificial, but sometimes I just want to be what I am, let all the dark come out. Feed my demon properly.’
Behind me the ghoul gave a muffled whimper. I reached my gun-hand out and fired another tranq straight into the rolled shape, without looking. ‘It’s illegal, Sil.’ I dropped my eyes so I didn’t have to look at him. It was like lemon juice in a mouth ulcer, hearing his careful enunciation of exactly what it was that made him so alien, so unavailable to me.
‘Not if they offer blood. What’s done behind closed doors is no-one’s business but the people’s concerned. And no-one ever complains, Jessie, no-one ever runs to the police. They’re there because they want it; we’re there because we do it. Cause and effect, supply and demand.’
‘You tart.’
‘I’m not the one running out to pull in a tight dress and high heels, because I’ve had some family drama, am I? You be careful throwing stones, Jessie, because some of them might bounce right back.’
He turned and began walking away, leaving the bag of paraphernalia on the ground. ‘You’d better phone in to Enforcement to take this guy.’
‘Are you going?’
‘Like I said, I’m hungry.’
‘But you’re supposed to be protecting me. What if Malfaire turns up?’
Sil glanced over his shoulder and gave my outfit a once up-and-down look. ‘I’m sure you’ll manage to – talk your way out of things.’ His shoulders were set absolutely rigid under the lacy shirt as he turned away again.
The animosity hurt. ‘What’s pissing you off so much, Sil?’
Maybe it was the serious way I asked, not shouting, only raising my voice enough to cross the air to him. He stopped walking. ‘On this occasion, or generally? You, Jessie. Always, you. Judging me for what I am, what I have to do. I didn’t choose to be what I am. I got unlucky one night down a dark alley with a woman who wasn’t what she seemed to be.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Ninety years ago things weren’t like they are now. There were stories … sightings, but Otherworlders were hiding, creeping in the night, not knowing what reaction they might get in this new world. Most people didn’t even know what a vampire could do, or would do. My wife refused to see me and took the children away. I think she told them I was dead.’
‘Sil.’
‘When you’ve lost something, Jessie, something that really mattered, you lose a little part of yourself as well. The part that feels. I know you all think we have no emotions; that we can’t experience anything that doesn’t feed our demon, but it’s not true, Jess. Vampires can feel as much as any human. More, in fact, given the number of years we have to feel in.’ He stopped talking and raised his face to the newly dark sky. ‘You have no idea,’ he added softly. ‘No idea what I feel.’
‘But I thought … everyone says …’ He could feel. So why didn’t he?
‘Yes. Everyone who isn’t vampire says. Us, now, we say nothing. And do you know why we say nothing?’
I shook my head. He was still staring upwards, his eyes searching between the stars.
‘No. You don’t know, how can you?’ A sigh that sounded as though it contained a century of held breath. ‘Now we’re something new, a bit dangerous, the perfect partner for those with the jaded sexual palate, but what it is, you see,’ and again he’d crossed the space between us without me seeing him move, ‘I bite and I drink and I fuck, and I’ve learned not to let any of it touch me. But I was prepared to die for you today.’ He’d lowered his voice so much that I had to get right up close to hear him. ‘To give it all up, all this …’ His hands went wide to indicate the chilly park. ‘The blood, the sex, all of it. I’d give it up for you, Jessica Grant. And that seems to mean nothing to you.’
His eyes were completely black now. Empty holes. There was a frisson shuddering in the air, a tangible wall of things unsaid.
‘Come on then.’
‘What?’
‘Let’s go. To this club.’
Sil shook his head, slowly. His hair swung free from the collar of the fishnet shirt and blew back to drag over his face. ‘Thought you didn’t agree with the bitey-action. Why the change of heart?’
I didn’t know how to begin to say what was in my head, in my heart. That his death would have killed something deep inside me; that his speech about loss could just as well have applied to me. But I couldn’t. He was vampire. As he said, how could I know what that felt like? ‘You’re set on going there, I’m under your protection, so,’ I shrugged, ‘I guess I have to come. Besides, they do have music, don’t they? And dancing?’
There was a slow nod and the moon came out again to highlight his cheekbones. ‘Yes.’
‘Right then.’ And then I looked up and met the jet-black stare. ‘Are you all right?’
Behind us, the ghoul rolled and fell gloopily into the mud.
‘Nothing wrong with me.’
‘Are you sure? All that about your wife and children – ’
He was standing closer than was comfortable. ‘My business, Jessie, my pain.’
My heart had come loose in my chest. Vampires can feel. They simply choose not to, for alien reasons of their own. He can feel pain. The memories hurt him – I could see that much in those nuclear eyes. ‘Sil.’
‘Right, come on then, let’s get to the club. But you can buy your own drinks.’
‘I’d insist on it.’ My voice held a pretended strength, a pretended carelessness.
‘And no getting uptight if things get a bit rough.’
‘Check.’
‘Okay,’ and he smiled, but because his fangs were down and his eyes were a couple of featureless pits, it wasn’t pleasant, ‘call Enforcement and let’s go.’
Sil strode along. She was following, he could sense her heat and uncertainty bobbing along behind him. What possessed me? Why in the seven hells did I bring up the children? He swallowed and focused on keeping his steps even and slow enough for Jessie to keep up with.
He could see her now, if he looked sideways. Looking good in that dress, however much he might deride her for her choice; it hugged her curves and revealed enough of her long legs to make a lesser man dream of heaven; she walked tall and strangely sure of herself for someone whose life had just been destroyed and rebuilt on new foundations. I would have done it, Jess. I’d have taken the lives of my demon and myself to keep you safe from that bastard Malfaire. And for you I lowered the barriers enough to talk about my children …
Through his open-weave shirt the night air was cool against his skin, soothing his demon into temporary peace, even as it drove through his brain with the need for the blood. And what on earth did he think was going to happen at the club? She’d freak, almost certainly. Freak, then maybe get a little angry, a bit sick perhaps. But she has to know. What I am, what lies at the heart of me. What I have to do to stay sane.
He didn’t need the turned heads to know he looked good. Women, some men, breaking stride as he swept along the pavement. Are you seeing, Jessie? They want me, every one of them. All I have to do is stop, smile, speak and I can have any one I choose: blood and sex. But it won’t stop the hunger. Only you can do that, Jessica Grant. I think you’re the only one who can make the pain go away. But you don’t want to. I offered you my life and you still dismiss me. I am a monster in your eyes, and after tonight it’s going to get worse … He tried to force himself not to care.
The club was incredibly hot, the amount of energy being generated by the bodies inside pressed close together could have powered the National Grid. A blue cloud of smoke hung over the heads of the occupants, the air smelled of perfume, BO, machine-smoke and regurgitated alcohol and amid all this, people were dancing. Groin-to-groin couples swayed in time, more or less, to the beat of a relentless dance track.
Sil was, by now, one of the dancers. Almost as soon as we’d walked in he’d found himself a companion: a small, blonde girl with very long hair and a white lace dress which made me look positively nunnery-bound in my body-hugging red number. She was all over him now, out on the dance floor, wrapping her lean limbs up and down his body as they simulated something multiple-orgasmic to the electric rhythm. He danced well, fluidly. As if he was trying not to think.
‘Hey!’ I looked at the person who’d arrived next to me. He was tall, skinny and dark with hair caught up in a pony-tail at the back. Werewolf. ‘D’you want to dance?’
‘I’m –’ I was going to make an excuse, maybe cite the greasy cocktail I was drinking, but one look at Sil’s ecstatic face as his partner danced in closer, and I changed my mind. ‘Yeah, why not?’
