Angel Falls (Cassandra Bick Chronicles Book 3) (18 page)

‘I know. But it’s still your business.’

I smiled wobbily and raised my mug to her.

‘
Our
business.’

She beamed and raised her mug to me, her eyes moist.

‘Ours,’ she agreed, smiling. ‘But you get to handle Laclos the silent partner, mind.’

‘Deal.’

I looked around the office, as if seeing it anew. There wasn’t much urgent to do now, and it wasn’t long till dark.

‘Sod this. Let’s toast it with a proper drink.’

***

OK, so when you’re in the middle of a supernatural crisis, getting tanked in the afternoon probably isn’t the best idea in the world, but I have to say a hastily-necked bottle of champagne did make both of us feel cheerier (even if, as it was a bottle Laclos had bought me, I couldn’t help worrying I was drinking away my mortgage). Unfortunately, this also meant we were still drinking when daylight faded, and as we hastily locked up, I Sensed movement in the shadows and only barely managed to avoid jumping out of my skin when Leon emerged, though Medea let out an undignified squeak of shock.

‘Laclos has asked for you,’ he said, graciously ignoring how easily he’d crept up on us. Damn you, booze!

‘Sure. Can we walk Medea to the Tube first?’

He nodded, and as the three of us headed towards Farringdon station, I took out my phone and texted Cain. It felt weird to do something as normal as letting him know I’d be late – this was almost a relationship. Except I was off to see the hot vampire I’d only recently shagged, of course.

‘So how is everyone?’ I asked, keen not to follow that particular train of thought.

‘They killed half a dozen of our people. I know you don’t necessarily approve of vampire arrangements, but can you imagine how that feels?’

Both Medea and I bristled slightly at that – neither of us were overly clear on how vampire society structured itself, but nor had we ever offered a disapproving opinion on it. But he was clearly angry and upset, so I saw no mileage in arguing the point. So I just hugged Medea goodbye at the station and followed him to where he’d parked the car.

***

‘So if Laclos wants to see me, I’m guessing you’ve resisted the urge to kill him?’ I asked, trying to lighten the mood as he opened the door for me and I got in the passenger seat (no being in the back seat chauffeuring for me, thanks). Leon’s stony expression cracked slightly as he fought a smile.

‘Night’s young.’

He hesitated, turning to me before he started the engine.

‘I know you think he’s a prick – and, God knows, you’re not wrong – but he does have a point. Get too pally with your bodyguards – especially ones who are actually, technically, an awful lot weaker than you are – and it’s easy to forget who’s supposed to be protecting who. The whole reason he hired us was because we’re not his concubines, we’re not his friends, and I don’t blame him for wanting to keep that professional distance. After all, trying things the other way didn’t work out so well for him, did it?’

I nodded, reluctantly, and he started the car. He had a point, but he was also wrong: part of the problem Laclos had had with previous bodyguards wasn’t (just) that they were too close for him to see what was happening, but that this whole Dowager Duchess of Downton attitude alienated them. But I also wondered why Laclos had this time chosen bodyguards so much younger and weaker than he was. In peacetime, it was a show of arrogance and a flaunting of beauty, since both Mariko and Leon were pretty easy on the eye. But I wondered if that was all: having been burned so badly by older, stronger vampires, maybe Laclos thought the only way to keep his throne was to make sure he was surrounded by those too weak to pose a threat to it.

‘Do we know any more about the attack?’ I asked. ‘Why do you think Josephine steered clear of it?’

He shrugged.

‘You’ve heard of her though, right? Do you know her?’ I pressed.

He cast me a wry glance.

‘You mean because we’re both black? Do you think there’s a club?’

‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ I protested, though in a way, I suppose, it was. I’d heard that vampires in London were more racially diverse than elsewhere, reflecting the make-up of the city itself, but the circles I moved in were still predominantly white. So I couldn’t believe a young, ambitious black vampire like Leon didn’t at least have Josephine on his radar. ‘But you did say part of the reason you worked for Laclos was because plenty of the other clans were racist.’

‘So why am I not working for her, you mean?’

‘Surely you considered her as a… corporate sponsor?’

He paused, and I was pleased he didn’t seem offended by the question.

‘Yeah. I know of her, of course. She’s powerful enough – been around nearly as long as Laclos, apparently.’ That was an interesting rumour: my Sense had put her a good three or four hundred years younger. ‘In fact, I heard they used to knock around together back in France, before the Revolution.’

Well, even more interesting that Laclos hadn’t chosen to share that bit of gossip.

‘She has quite an extensive power base back in Africa, too, which is where she’s from originally. She’s well-connected in London, and has the same instincts for making powerful friends he does.’

‘So is that what this is? A power grab? She wasn’t the oldest of the vampires who came to see me.’

He paused, and I could feel him weighing up what to tell me. I was realising that not only did I know little about how vampire society operated beyond the reaches of my business, but also that that opacity was, to some degree, deliberate.

‘Age isn’t the only defining factor, though it’s often a key one. You want strength, there’s more ways than age to get it – which we’ve just seen.’ He grimaced, and I wondered if he was angry at me as well as Laclos for not explaining just
how
Cain’s blood had turbocharged his boss. ‘But you also need the will to rule. A lot of old vampires simply can’t be bothered with the hassle, or they find the modern world too complicated or confusing. What I hear, Josephine loves it. I can imagine her moving in on Laclos for herself, can’t really see her as anyone’s mouthpiece.’

‘Unless it suits her purpose.’

‘I’m pretty sure Josephine would do anything that suits her purpose.’

There was something loaded about the way he said that.

‘Is that why you don’t work for her? She’s got a bad rep?’

‘Well, I did hear she offed one of her people – recently, so well after the accords outlawing the casual killing of Others were set up in the city – just because they spilled blood on her new boots. That’s not the kind of employer we want.’

‘Blimey.’ I said, though that ‘we’ hadn’t gone unnoticed.

He shrugged, looking irritated at my shock, even though he had told me it to shock me. I suspected he was more conflicted over Josephine than he was letting on.

‘She’s a black African woman in a culture where the ideal is pale, male and European. She didn’t get where she is by holding bake sales.’

‘Vampires are hardly unique in that bias,’ I pointed out. ‘Doesn’t mean we should all start killing people.’

Now he looked properly annoyed – or more exasperated, really; wanting me to understand.

‘That’s true. But people – human people – change. You know how progress is made, Cassandra? Bigots
die
. Their kids turn out to be gay, or trans, or they marry people from a different race or religion or country and suddenly the horrible old racist has a grandkid they adore who’s three or four shades darker than they are. And with people, biology always wins. At the minute, at least, a few Nazi experiments aside, it doesn’t matter if your fantasy race is tall, blonde and Aryan, you’re stuck with what your genes give you, with what comes out of the DNA soup. But imagine that isn’t true. Imagine being in a society that doesn’t have those limitations. You’re a sexist who doesn’t need women to reproduce, so they’re disposable to you – you think it’s a coincidence there are about ten male vampires to every female? The old beliefs don’t die out, because the people who hold them don’t die out – they get
more
powerful, not less. They decide what the species looks like, because they’re choosing its members when they’re grown up and fully formed. You only want hot white guys, that’s who you turn. So you get a bunch of old European blokes fantasising about the Old Country – even if they never set foot in it – wanting to create some Bram Stoker ideal that probably never existed, and anyone who doesn’t fit in has a hard time of it. Even in breeding your own clan. A guy who looks like Laclos can make ten vamps who look like him without anyone blinking an eye.’ He caught the twitch of my lips and gave me a concessionary smile. ‘OK,’ he admitted. ‘Nobody looks quite like Laclos, but you understand what I mean. He can do that, and it’s just more vampires. Josephine goes out and turns ten people who look like her, that’s a political statement.’

Wow. I hadn’t really thought about this at all.

‘You sound like you admire her.’

‘I admire what she’s achieved, because I know how hard she had to work to achieve it. But it’s hard to warm to someone who just tried to wipe out your family.’

‘But before? You were never tempted?’

He rolled his eyes at me.

‘The woman killed someone over a pair of freaking boots. I don’t need that kind of crazy in my life.’

‘Yeah. Pity we don’t have a choice about it anymore.’

***

We were silent for the rest of the drive, both of us lost in our own thoughts. Something about Josephine’s involvement – and her absence in the St Paul’s attack – rattled me, but I couldn’t put my finger on what, and knowing that she and Laclos had some sort of history made it all the more suspicious. Then again, plenty of people who knew Laclos now wanted to kill him, so it wasn’t a stretch to assume he’d had the same talent for making enemies back then. But something about a sneak attack on his lair and a tortured child didn’t chime with a woman who wore bangles so she couldn’t creep up on you. I could easily imagine her ripping Laclos’ head off, but not orchestrating such a complicated plan without letting us know she was behind it. Or maybe it wasn’t her that was throwing me, it was the doe eyed girl who’d accompanied her to my office, and who hid 800 years of power behind her shy teenage facade.

The trip was a short one, even in London traffic. Leon drove us over the bridge towards Borough and Elephant and Castle, pulling into an underground car park of one of those ugly as fuck buildings that have sprung up over the last few years, blocks of shiny new flats that none of the locals could dream of affording, and would never get inside except to clean and fix drains; tax relief properties for absent millionaires and money launderers. I shouldn’t be surprised if some of Laclos’ cohorts owned apartments here – at least, I was guessing that was the case and Mariko had brought Laclos here from the safe house, as I couldn’t imagine Cain having property somewhere this ritzy, and this hadn’t been one of the options for either humans or vamps that we’d discussed decamping to last night. I’m scared of underground car parks – too much TV has led me to believe they are places where you will be raped, robbed or murdered – but with Leon at my side we escaped without incident, heading up a flight of concrete stairs to the entrance lobby, where there was a suite of lifts.

I hated places like this – not only for what they represented to the average Londoner, but also how they looked, so sterile and unwelcoming. But I could see they would be an ideal place to hide out: many were investment properties that stood empty for long periods, and others were used as bases for employees in the finance industry doing stints over here from foreign offices, so in the extremely unlikely event you bumped into someone in the corridor, there was no danger of them wondering why they didn’t recognise you. Plus, while the enormous glass windows gave great views, they were terrible for privacy, so it wasn’t unusual for tenants to keep curtains or blinds drawn through the day. In short, a vampire paradise.

We took the lift to the top floor and walked along a corridor that would do
The Shining
proud, before Leon unlocked the door of a corner flat. My Sense bristled as we entered into a spacious, open plan living room-cum-dining room and kitchen, even its generous proportions looking cramped by the dozen or so vampires assembled there, alongside a smattering of humans. I recognised Mariko and a couple of vampires by sight, and Laclos’ young human lover Mika was lounging near him on the sofa, close enough to indicate possessiveness, though with enough distance to suggest a sullenness at his boyfriend being so preoccupied. And Laclos clearly
was
preoccupied. Despite his outward
froideur
, my Sense picked up nervous energy coming off him like a chill. He raised a hand in an indistinct gesture of greeting, indicating in the same movement that some lackey or other – Laclos rarely indicated who he wanted to do his bidding, just that he wanted it done – should bring us both wine. Tipsy still from the champagne, it took me a moment to notice what was different about him – and then another moment to process what it meant.

For a man so openly given to vanity, Laclos rarely looked as if he’d spent any time thinking about his appearance, beyond sacrificing himself to the necessary inconvenience of clothes: plainly, he realised such dramatic beauty needed little in the way of adornment. Tonight, though, he was playing up the indie rocker vibe to the hilt. He was back in the leather trousers and skin-tight, v-neck t-shirt look he favoured, heavy soled biker boots completing the ensemble. On his wrists, he wore the thick leather and steel chain bracelets that I had previously thought of as his torture gauntlets, since they looked like he should be dangling from them in some dominatrix’ dungeon, though that idea had become less amusing now I had actually seen him hung from the ceiling and bleeding. His dark eyes were rimmed with black liner that made them look even more enormous and striking, while at the end of those long, slender fingers, his nails were painted some iridescent shade that made it look like he’d dipped them in petrol, the colour changing as he moved, each gesture made hypnotic. Laclos was always a man who combined the masculine and feminine to dizzying effect, but tonight he looked simply breathtaking. But it was also a little annoying. The world was going to hell in a handbasket – in no small part due to his actions – and he was fannying around with the Max Factor? But then I realised that was the point. A studied carelessness was his trademark. Everyone else might be running around like headless chickens, but he has time to do his nails (or, knowing Laclos, have some naked acolyte paint them with the brush clamped between his teeth). I just wasn’t sure if this gesture was aimed at his enemies, or Laclos himself.