Vampire State of Mind, page 18
I let myself be whirled into the press of bodies on the dance floor. To my surprise, the werewolf was a pretty good dancer, and we bounced along in harmony for a while. Then he leaned in close. ‘Didn’t you use to go out with Cameron? Thought I recognised your face. Who’d you come with tonight?’
I jerked a thumb at Sil, dancing with his eyes closed now as his new friend gyrated herself against him.
‘Him.’
‘Oh, yeah, right. Are you two, y’know, like an item, then?’
‘No. Absolutely not. In fact, about as far away from an item as you can get. Decidedly single.’
‘Cool.’
The rhythm changed to something slower, silkier; the lights became blue. The smell changed too, the chemical scent from the smoke machine replaced by something heavier, deeper, more like incense, woody and intense. A wailing vocal harmonic started up over the top of the music and the werewolf moved in closer, put his arms around me. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Tobe.’
Pressed together like this, it was a lot easier to talk. ‘And you knew me when I was with Cameron?’
‘Yeah. It was terrible, what they did to him.’
‘The court said it was a misunderstanding. Tragic but not anyone’s fault.’ I trotted out the party line; inside I was clenched.
‘Yeah, I heard you gave evidence. Cameron would never have hurt anyone.’ Tobe leaned into me. He smelled of Aramis and dope, and it was vaguely comforting. ‘Never.’
‘No.’
‘And it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been human.’
I felt a sudden jolt to my stomach. Humans and Otherworlders. Which side did I belong on? Did I have to choose? And what would happen if I did?
We were dancing very, very close now. I could feel the particular werewolf energy against my skin, dancing along with us. This Tobe was well in control of his nature but there were other parts of him he couldn’t control and I could tell that he thought his luck was definitely in tonight. ‘You’re a great dancer, Jessica.’
‘Thanks.’ I was watching Sil but because Tobe was taller than me I had to look sideways around his chest. When we next circled, Sil had his face tight into the neck of his partner. A thin trickle of blood was running down her shoulder into the white lace of her dress, but her head was thrown back, her mouth curved into a slack line of acquiescent bliss. ‘God!’
‘What?’
‘He’s feeding off her!’
Tobe shrugged. ‘That’s why she’s here. Tell you what,’ he dropped his mouth against my ear, ‘they’ve got rooms, why don’t we go on back there? I could, y’know, change for you.’ His tongue flickered out along my neck. ‘Did Cameron ever change while you were doing it? It’ll drive you wild, know what I’m saying?’
Sil was a vampire. Well, I’d hardly thought he was some guy with odd dentistry and an especially effective skin-care regime, had I? Vampire. Yes. Blood-sucker. Hormone-junkie. Otherworlder. Not my problem.
Tobe was running his fingers up and down my spine, lingering a little longer each time around the lower levels. I moved a step back. ‘Look, I’m sorry, you’re very sweet, but –’
‘It’s the vamp, huh? You two’ve been watching each other all night. What is it, you into threesomes? I can do that, yeah.’
‘No, it’s – what do you mean, watching each other?’
‘You can’t take your eyes off him and he’s been looking over here every time that blonde bitch took her hands off his cock long enough for him to focus.’ Tobe looked curiously into my face. ‘You sure you’re not together?’
The music was still playing, a curious throbbing tone like a metal pulse. Hypnotic. ‘Positive.’
‘Then maybe you should be.’ And Tobe released me, walking off into the crowd circling the dance floor. Bodies coupled, parted, writhed. Down on the floor a demon of some kind was indulging itself, feeding on the aura of a young man who squirmed and gasped in the kind of rapture I would normally expect to be on-screen and faked. I seemed to be the only single-unit in the room.
A touch on my shoulder and I whirled, ready to punch. But it was Sil, flushed and panting as though he’d run the circuit, pupils dilated to almost cover the silver of his eyes. ‘Hey.’
‘You didn’t tell me it would be like this.’ I waved a hand at the conjoined bodies, the occasional spray of blood, the sounds of moaning overlaying the regular thump of the beat.
He shrugged and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. ‘It varies. Sometimes it’s crazy, other times it’s more laid back. Like this.’
‘How often do you do this?’ I asked, thinking – this is laid back?
‘Not often. It’s just …’ And he shrugged again. ‘Do you want to go?’ His eyes were unfocused, sliding from my face to the action and back again, and for all the healthy glow of his skin, he was shivering slightly.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I – yes, I – ’ I saw the blonde he’d bitten, sitting on the floor at the other side of the room with her head on her arms. ‘I think we should go.’
‘She’s not going to change, is she? You haven’t vamped her?’
‘What?’ Sil dragged his eyes back to me, reluctantly. ‘Oh, her. No. I let go before the demon seeded into her.’ Again his eyes went back to the bloodstained floor.
‘You old romantic, you.’
A smile and a flash of fangs. ‘Yeah, well. That would be illegal.’
We walked unnoticed back to the entrance of the club, where I collected my tranq bag from a human cloakroom attendant. I saw Tobe deep in discussion with a pretty dark girl, her braided hair piled on top of her head. As we walked past he looked up and winked.
‘He try to pick you up?’
‘A bit.’
‘Yet you’re leaving with me.’ Sil lurched and put a hand against a bridge parapet to steady himself. ‘Wow. She’d had a skinful, that young lady. Second-hand vodka always gets me this way. Why didn’t you go with him? Bit scruffy but that’s the wolves for you; when the Dimensional attributes were being handed out, the vamps definitely got all the style.’
‘You think? You’re creaking.’
‘That’s the boots. Seriously, Jessie, why didn’t you go? Even as a recreational shag? I mean, it’s not as if you’ve not done werewolves before, meant to be pretty good as a species, so I hear. Lots of howling action.’ He wiggled his hips suggestively, lurched again and hiccupped. ‘Bugger.’
‘You’re pissed.’
‘Mmmmm.’ Light, gymnastic, he leapt up on to the bridge parapet, began walking along with his arms outstretched. ‘At least I’m not singing. So, go on then. Why didn’t you go make jiggy-jiggy with the beasty-boy there?’ He turned a graceful, if wobbly, cartwheel along the handrail, landing back on the pavement next to me.
‘Do you really think I’m the kind of girl to go off with some bloke she’s just met in a club? What about the danger?’
‘Oh come on, you’re not that dangerous.’
‘Ha, ha. Do you really think I’m that much of a tart?’
Sil leaned back against the edge of the bridge. ‘It’s been a long time since Cameron. I wouldn’t blame you for wanting a bit of action. Werewolves are supposed to be addictive, you know. One’s never enough.’
‘I wouldn’t know. I never slept with Cameron.’
The instant the words were out I wanted to shoot myself. I covered my mouth with my hand and bit my lip. Sil’s eyes widened.
‘But … but it looked as if you and he were practically living together! What were you waiting for, a ring?’
‘I didn’t say – look, I’ve been drinking, too. Let’s forget it, okay?’
Sil put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me around. ‘No. What really happened with you and him, Jessie?’
‘I can’t tell you!’ I could smell vodka coming from him, but it wasn’t on his breath, it was more like it came from inside him, making his skin and hair smell of it. ‘I can’t, Sil, it’s not safe!’
‘He’s been dead, what, a year?’
I nodded. ‘Ten months.’
‘So, where’s the harm?’
I took a shaky breath. Ever since that showdown, when Enforcement had turned up mob-handed and Eleanor had ended up ripping Cameron to pieces with silver bullets, I’d sworn that everything Cam had told me would die with him. It had been terrible, tragic, a mistake. ‘He –’
‘Didn’t you love him? Is that it, Jessie?’
‘I did, but not like that. Sil, Cameron was gay. I was his cover.’
Sil let go of my shoulders and leaned his head so far back over the edge of the bridge I was afraid he’d fall. He was laughing. ‘A gay werewolf? I didn’t even know that was possible! Oh, that’s terrific!’
‘You don’t understand! Werewolves are all about dominance, about power. Imagine what it’s like to be so in love with your dominant male that you have trouble staying the same shape when he’s about! How long do you think you can last, if you won’t fight him, won’t mate with the ones he’s chosen for you, can’t think straight when he’s around? So Cameron asked me to pretend. It took some of the pressure off; people stopped asking awkward questions.’
‘And the day he was killed?’
‘Cameron had formed a focus for gay shifters. They were going to come out en masse, form their own group. Not a pack, because there were wolves and cats and all sorts, but a group. Word got out, someone overheard and misunderstood the nature of his rally. It got round that he was going to stage a challenge for the leadership of his pack, that he didn’t care who got hurt and – ’
‘Enforcement, silver bullets, the end.’
I blotted my cheeks with my fingers. ‘It wasn’t fair. He would never have hurt anybody. It shouldn’t have happened.’
‘I’m sorry.’
This time I shrugged.
‘God, I am sooooo pissed.’ Sil hiccupped again. ‘Jessie – ’
‘What now? More intrusive questions about my love life? You must swear, Sil, not to say anything about what I told you. Because Cameron died the other gay shifters never did come out; there’s a lot of people could get hurt if it became general knowledge.’
‘You are lovely, you know that?’
‘Sil, don’t.’
‘Don’t?’
‘Don’t come on to me when you’ve got a stomach full of some girl’s blood.’
‘My side of the fence now. Remember? When it comes to it, Jessie, when it comes right down to it, you aren’t human any more. You don’t have the luxury of being all censorious and upright about it, not when half your genetics is something worse than vampire. You don’t know yet, you’ve not been put in the position, but one day – you’ll be faced with some situation and something will out. It may be demon.’ He shouldered himself away from the stonework and took a staggering few steps forward. ‘And when that happens, we’ll go back to the club. See what you think of it then, when you’re one of the ones down on the floor with someone’s life hanging there, right in front of you, for the taking.’ His fangs slid into place, locked down, and for a moment I thought he was going to lunge at me, he looked so tense and excited.
‘You certainly know how to sweet-talk a girl. No wonder you’re never short of them.’ The bitter edge to my voice seemed to bring him down a bit.
‘Yeah. And doesn’t that just screw you up.’
‘What are you insinuating?’
‘You know.’
‘You reckon that I’m desperate for you?’
‘Oh, you’re fooling no-one. You’re avoiding it.’
I smacked him in the face, said, ‘Avoid that, you bastard,’ and stalked off.
Sil followed her home without being spotted, and leaned against a convenient garden wall, waiting until her bedroom light went out. He listened to the distant sounds of taps running and tried to ignore the soft sound of crying that came two minutes after the darkness. My side of the line now, Jessica. He rubbed his head. Drawing out his demon had hurt more than he’d expected, and he certainly hadn’t expected to be around for the aftermath – his demon writhed at the memory of its near-death experience. You broke Malfaire’s magic. Are you thinking about that, up in your room, with the chocolate wrappers and the old school photographs? Are you wondering how you did it, what it means? What you might become?
The crying broke into hiccups and he felt something drag inside him. His demon, still reeling from the double effect of fresh blood and second-hand alcohol, was reacting sluggishly to her misery. Or rather, to his reaction to her misery. Never done that before. But maybe I’ve never felt like this before, have I?
A flashback, and suddenly his demon sobered up. Watching from a distance, the doctor arriving. His white face, shaking head, at the door, my wife … God, my wife, breaking down, and I couldn’t touch her, couldn’t reach her to tell her … The funeral, one among many in that vicious influenza-ridden time, two small wreaths and the bunch of hastily picked daisies that I barely had time to lay before the other mourners arrived. The white coffins …
He wiped his hand across his face, amazed to find it wet. Sadness? Where did that come from? His teeth gritted, fangs nicking his lip, as he felt his demon squirm for a second under the sensation. If only Jess knew, just for one second, what it was to be vampire. What it felt like to have to live without emotion, to know it was there and be forced to ride the instinct and the reaction without allowing any of the repercussions to cut through and let you see what you had become.
The hiccups had stopped now; the only sound coming from Jessie’s room was a kind of sleep-sob as she settled into troubled dreaming. Sil stared at her window for a moment longer, his demon whirling smugly, then bunched a fist. I look great. I’m strong. I’ll live another two hundred years at least. I can glamour humans into doing anything I want them to. Fuck you, Jessica. Fuck you, fuck the Protection Act, fuck it all. A stride that broke into a jog and then into a run and he was out into the main street, heading back towards the club by the river.
Chapter Eighteen
Liam looked me over as I arrived at the office in my pointedly very different outfit of jeans and T-shirt. ‘Sil not with you?’
I looked around exaggeratedly. ‘Ooh, no. I wonder what could have happened to him? Maybe I sleep-kill. Anyway, thought today was your turn for the annual day off?’
‘Yes, Mister Scrooge, it was. But … I decided to come in.’ Liam pushed a still-tepid mug of coffee my way. ‘Sarah’s taken Charlotte to visit her mother. That’s Sarah’s mother, what with her being Charlotte’s mother herself and everything. Didn’t fancy sitting in the house on my own, might be expected to perform some archaic “man task” like hanging a door or something. Besides, yesterday –’
‘Yesterday was mad, I’m sorry.’ I had a sudden, horrible mental jigsaw-image of some of yesterday’s events, a bit like a ‘previously, in my life’ pre-credits sequence. ‘Wow. Yes. Really mad.’
‘Something to do with the bloods?’
I’d forgotten Liam’s ability to put two-and-two together and make … well, yes, in this case four, but sometimes he’d get two-and-two to make bread pudding. ‘It … there are implications, Liam. Things might be difficult.’
‘Tell me.’
And I did. So, shoot me, Liam’s been my friend a long time, and I know how to do edited highlights. It took me two coffees and a large bar of Galaxy to cover everything I was willing to cover, and I was sniffing again by the time I got to the end.
‘Oh, Jessie.’ Liam had tears in his own eyes and I saw his gaze keep turning to the framed photo of his baby daughter which he kept on his desk. ‘Your poor parents.’
‘What about poor me?’ I sniffed again and wiped my nose on my sleeve. ‘I don’t even know what species I am.’
He shrugged. ‘You cry like a woman. You shovel chocolate down your neck like a woman, you’re a miserable cow once a month, you think your bum is fat, you go all gooey over baby pictures and you dribble over Zan and Sil. Tell me how you could be any more human and I’ll go and buy you a bottle of it.’
‘Well, thank you, Mr Supportive. I take back everything I said about you being gay.’
Liam grinned. ‘Thanks. Now. You need to find out all you can about the ghyst-demons, I suppose. And you need to do it before Malfaire recovers from his ass-whupping and comes after you, yes?’
I froze, hand halfway to a Kit Kat. ‘God, I never thought … he’s not going to take it well, is he?’
‘Uh, no, Jessie, probably not. So, what I was thinking – ’ He typed rapidly for a moment and a large flashing icon descended on the middle of his screen. ‘I’ve forwarded it to you, too.’
I groaned. ‘Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.’
‘Copies of all the info-mails the council have sent us for the last five years. All the accumulated wisdom of the ages.’ He bent down and fetched up from under his desk the papers that I stood on to reach the so-called hidden chocolate, split the pile in two and slammed half down on my desk, with an accompanying puff of dust and smell of old budgie cages. ‘And these are the ones from before we all went digital. There’s bound to be something in here somewhere.’
I poked the papers. ‘Is there an index?’
‘No. I started to make one a couple of years ago but,’ a shrug, ‘you know, life intervened and everything. So I guess we just have to truck through all of them.’ He leaned forward. ‘Are you okay? I mean, wouldn’t you be better leaving this to me and taking some time off? You still look pretty shitty.’
‘Pay cut, that man.’ But I was flattered that he’d noticed, when all Sil had done was nag me about not being human. There was a tiny prickle down my spine, like a woodlouse had crawled up my shirt. Not human …
‘What are we doing?’ Sil’s lanky figure slunk into view. ‘Making up filthy headlines again?’
Now he was wearing last night’s clothes, unless his wardrobe held more than one pair of leather trousers and lace-effect shirt. He looked slightly spaced-out and he’d tied his hair back to show off his cheekbones. ‘Second-hand alcohol,’ he said, throwing himself into the spare chair like he belonged there and drinking the now stone-cold coffee that I’d left in my mug down in one. ‘What a night.’
