Changeling (11 page)

Trey looked down at the old man, glad that his only living relative could not see the look of hatred on his face. ‘Get it yourself,’ he said and turned, heading for the front
door.

Lucien filtered out the noise of the train driver’s announcement that came through the speaker above his head. His eyes were screwed shut, and he hunched forward in his
seat, willing the train to start moving again towards the next station so that he could get above ground and call Tom to come and fetch him.

It had been two days since the incident in his office, and he hadn’t been back to the apartment in all that time. Instead, he’d spent the days cooped up in another place he had in
Mayfair and the nights walking the London streets, deep in thought about what was happening to him. Yesterday he’d called Alexa and Tom to let them know he was OK, and that he just needed
some time alone. It wasn’t unusual for him to go off like this, but with everything else going on right now, they were keen for him to come back.

The train had been stuck in the tube tunnel now for a little over fifteen minutes and this announcement – like the last two – was another apology for the delay. Opening his eyes, he
glanced at his watch again, trying to calculate how long it had been since he’d left the place in Mayfair. He must have been walking for a very long time – too long. His stomach twisted
again and he hissed through his teeth in pain. He kept his head low and his eyes fixed on the dirty floor at his feet, knowing that if he looked up his eyes would be drawn to the two other night
owls that shared the carriage with him; on their way home from whatever late pursuits they had been involved in. His fellow travellers had thankfully taken seats as far away from him as possible,
but he was aware of their furtive glances in his direction. It was understandable – if he’d stepped on to a train late at night and seen somebody like him in the carriage, he’d
have found a seat well away from them too. He tried to force himself not to think about them – it was too dangerous.

He had no idea what had made him come down into the underground system. He’d been walking, oblivious to everything around him. He’d made up his mind that he needed to talk to
someone, or something, about what was happening to him and had been mentally going through a list of possible candidates. He’d been completely unaware of where he was. And somehow he’d
ended up here on this train. Of all of the places that he could have found himself right now, a train was not one that he would have picked. He looked at his watch again. His blood delivery was due
any moment now. He’d redirected the courier and they would leave it for him, but . . .

He took his handkerchief out of his jacket pocket again, using it to wipe away the perspiration on his top lip. Another cramp jarred through his body and this time he was unable to stifle the
low groan that escaped his lips. He’d asked for his daily delivery of blood to be increased from two to three bags, hoping that more of the stuff might help stave off some of the desires that
he’d been having. He’d left with the intention of being back at the apartment in plenty of time for the delivery. And now here he was, in a sealed tube-train compartment, with a blood
lust building inside him by the minute. He tried to block out any thoughts of the two humans in the carriage, but that was impossible.

When he was younger he would have killed them; torn through the train like the wrath of God and taken blood from anyone on board, leaving their dead and mutilated bodies for the authorities to
find. He screwed his eyes tight shut, trying to dismiss these terrible memories. He could not allow himself to think like this – not here, not now.

He forced himself to concentrate on other matters. He wondered if Alexa had been successful in recruiting the Ashnon, and if he should not have sought the creature out himself. They needed the
demon on their side if his plans for the Necrotroph were to be realized. If she had failed, he would take over from her and force the demon to see sense. And then there was Trey. The boy had not
been in contact again since the first message that had been relayed to them via Galroth. Lucien would have to discuss with the demon the possibility of dropping in on the boy again. He would see to
these matters as soon as he got back to the apartment – put his mind and efforts towards something concrete.

He relaxed a little. Puffing out his cheeks, he unclenched the tight knot of flesh and bone that he had made of his hands.

A breeze blew into the carriage from the window in the door at the far end. His body instantly stiffened again. He could smell them.

The woman’s scent was the strongest – a mixture of sweat and perfume and stale alcohol that excited him. He thought again of the delicious thrill that had rippled through every cell
of him as he’d sucked the blood from the bag the other day; imagining the metallic taste on his tongue again. He breathed in deeply through his nostrils, mixing the smell of the woman’s
scent with the memory of that taste. He had no idea what she or her companion looked like, how old or young they might be, but it was of little consequence. If he did not get off the train soon,
they would look like all of the others that he had killed throughout his earlier years – wilted husks of corpses lying in a pool of their own blood.

The speaker crackled into life above him. The driver apologized again in a voice that sounded anything but apologetic, and informed them that they might be stuck for some time yet due to a
problem in the tunnel up ahead.

A groan escaped Lucien. He couldn’t stay on this train any longer.

He rose to his feet and glanced towards the sliding doors to his right. He stumbled in their direction, trying to keep his eyes glued to them and not let them drift over to the couple sitting in
the seats at the periphery of his vision.

He failed. His eyes tracked to the side and he took in the warm-blooded creatures.

They sat and giggled at each other, speaking in whispers. A loud squeal of delight came from the woman, and she looked up in Lucien’s direction. The laughter died in her throat as she
caught sight of the tall, bald man glaring at them both through baleful eyes that seemed to blaze with a golden light. The woman’s smile was replaced by a look of pure fear, and she cut her
eyes towards her male companion, hoping to find some reassurance there, but seeing only the same doubt and panic that she herself felt beneath the vampire’s terrible stare.

Through his eyes, Lucien no longer saw them as people. Right now they were little more than meat to him. The woman’s earlier excitement had caused the hot blood to flow quickly through her
veins and arteries, and to the vampire, these bloody highways appeared as an intricate map of black roads just beneath her skin. His eyes were instantly drawn to the fat motorway on her neck that
was her carotid artery as it pulsed and bulged with every pump of her heart.

He remembered his youth again and how he had fed upon countless young women like her. His tongue snaked in his mouth, the tip seeking out the area where his fangs had once been before he had had
them removed. In truth, the act of being defanged was more a gesture to himself – a symbol – rather than any real attempt to remove a danger, and he knew that he was more than capable
of tearing these two people apart with his bare hands to sate the desires that boiled within him.

He swallowed loudly, averting his gaze from the blood-map on the girl’s skin, and forcing his attention back to the carriage doors. In the blackened windows his reflection stared back at
him, and he recognized himself as the monster that the girl had seen.

His hands were trembling as he reached forward. He jammed his fingers between the black rubber seals between the two sliding doors, and forced his hands apart, his colossal strength easily
opening the doors to reveal the filth-encrusted black tunnel beyond. Ignoring the loud alarm that filled his ears, he took in a huge lungful of the cold, rank air of the tunnel, and jumped down out
of the carriage into the space at the side of the train. He turned and began to run, the complete darkness no problem to him as he made his way along the underground channel deep beneath the
streets of London. He needed to get back to the station that the train had come from. He needed to call for Tom to come and rescue him.

‘What were you thinking, Lucien?’ Tom said from the front of the car that he was driving back towards home.

He had received the call from the vampire and sped through town, collecting more flashes from speed cameras than he could possibly count.

‘It was a mistake,’ Lucien said from the back seat. He had drunk his fill from the bag of blood that Tom had brought with him, and he was beginning to feel a return to normality.

‘You don’t make mistakes,’ the Irishman said, catching sight of his boss in the rear-view mirror. ‘I have
never
known you to make a mistake.’

Lucien closed his eyes and allowed his head to fall back against the headrest. Tom carried on talking, but the words were nothing but a background noise to Lucien as he tried to get his thoughts
and emotions back in check.

What was happening? Why would he allow himself to lose control and put himself in the position that he just had? To risk everything that he had struggled to achieve?

He thought of his young ward, Trey, and how he’d told the boy of the need to master his own powers. How he should not – could not – be ruled by the creature that lived inside
him. And he remembered how the teenager had described the feeling of being truly
alive
when he had first morphed into his werewolf state; how the strength and the might and the power had
felt so . . .
right.

Lucien had sworn that he would never return to the thing that he had once been – a taker of lives, a harbinger of death that fed upon the blood and misery of others. And yet tonight he had
acted in a way that suggested that a part of him at least still yearned for that
rightness of being
that Trey had described.

He opened his eyes, catching Tom looking at him in the rear-view mirror, and turned his head to stare out of the window, looking out as the darkened London streets slipped by. He realized how
exhausted he felt. His shoulder ached.

‘How are Alexa and our guest?’ he asked.

‘They’re fine. The Ashnon has been in contact again. It said to tell you that it was hungry.’

‘Good. Then we shall see to it that the creature’s appetite is well and truly sated,’ Lucien said, regretting the choice of words as soon as they’d left his mouth.

Ronald Given sank back into his bed and stared up at the ceiling. He had been feeling unwell all day. A black, nagging pain seemed to emanate from his stomach and spread out to
every part of him. He grimaced again, screwing up his eyes and hissing as another hot knife of pain stabbed through his abdomen, his hand automatically clutching at his midriff.

Something moved there. Something shifted beneath his hand, squirming away from his touch. He gasped in horror and sat up in the bed, looking about him in the darkness. He had to warn Lucien. He
had to tell his boss that . . .

The thought dispersed and dissolved despite his attempts to fix it in his mind; it dissipated away into nothingness. He lay back down again, frowning to himself and trying to remember what had
just happened. A pain lanced through him again, but he ignored it this time, as if it were not his pain at all but that of someone else.

Ronald Given stared up at the ceiling through eyes that no longer communicated with his brain, entering a deep catatonic state.

The Necrotroph cursed its sloppiness and closed down all the non-essential systems inside the host body. It took complete control again and erased the thoughts that the man had just
experienced.

The demon could not afford any more errors –
not after what had happened in the Seychelles with the human Colin Tipsbury and his daughter
. The vampire lord, Caliban, had promised
that the price for failing to re-infiltrate Lucien’s organization would be a long and agonizing death at the hands of some hell-beast or another.

It was the girl who was playing on its mind; the girl who was causing it to make stupid mistakes by allowing its concentration to slip. Caliban did not know the Necrotroph had failed to
extinguish Philippa Tipsbury in that boat on the Indian Ocean.

The Necrotroph had not heard back from the demon that it had sent to kill her at the hospital. More worryingly, nobody had seen neither hide nor hair of the Incubus since. It should have gone
itself. It needed that girl dead. It needed to be sure that the worrying feeling that it had been experiencing since the Seychelles – the feeling that it was being watched – was not
something to do with her. Because it did feel that it was being watched – a feeling that was uncomfortable for a creature that thrived on being undetectable to both human and nether-creature
alike.

If anything became capable of detecting its movements, of knowing where, and who, it was . . . The demon shuddered to think what the outcome of that little scenario might be. But it
couldn’t shake the nagging doubt that something was wrong, and that it was something to do with that girl, that damn girl who had refused to die. The demon tried to steer its thoughts to
other matters – it needed to go through the next stage of its plans so that nothing would be left to chance.

The demon knew that it had done well to get this far undetected. It had needed to make some swift transfers to get into this body, and it thought that it was now only two more steps away from
being at the heart of Lucien Charron’s empire again. The older man that it currently inhabited worked for the vampire. He had access to most of the staff’s cars, and as a result was on
friendly terms with the head of security, the Irishman Tom. The demon sniggered at its audacity. It would take some effort to pull it off undetected, but it needed something big like this to show
its master that it was still an essential cog in Caliban’s plans – it never did to have the boss uncertain of your worth. So it had decided to do what it had not dared the last time it
was on the inside of the organization – go straight to the person closest to Lucien Charron, his friend and confidante the human Tom O’Callahan.