Falling Apart (24 page)

The two vamps were staring at me as though I was about to detonate. ‘What?' I asked. I hadn't missed the way Sil had pulled away from me either. ‘For God's sake,
what?
'

Zan shook his head. ‘You must do this, Sil,' he said, and he'd got that gentle tone in his voice again – he usually only sounded like that if he was talking to a cat. ‘You must tell her.'

‘I can't.' Sil sounded broken. ‘Zan, please.'

‘If one of you doesn't come up with the goods in the next ten seconds I am going to take those car keys, wrap that bloody Veyron round the nearest tree, and then, never mind explaining things to me, you are going to have to talk to your insurance company and, trust me, I am a
much
better listener!' They were starting to spook me, what with all the staring and the weird quiet voices. I much preferred vamps when they ran around all toothy and bitey, this was just
strange.

‘You need to sit down,' Sil pushed me until I perched on the edge of the nearest chair. ‘It's not good.'

I sighed. ‘Since when has anything ever been good? And can we hurry this up, only I have to go back to York and help my best friend sort out some very wobbly subscription forms.'

‘Listen to me. This is important. So,
so
important.' Sil reached out a hand and touched my wrist. His gesture was cautious, as though he feared my skin was about to peel back and reveal knives. ‘The stories at the time said that the government took the Twelve. There was an incident, back in the eighties, where a whole load of vamps got slaughtered. They'd been part of an invading force down in Sussex, all bound for London to try to take out what remained of the human wartime Cabinet and …' He shook his head. ‘We never found out what happened, but they were all killed, and the word went out that the Twelve had been involved. Our fear hastened the signing of the Treaty.'

I stood up. My spine felt as though it was braced with jelly. ‘And that has what to do with me?'

‘The Twelve were bred. Engineered. And their offspring were more powerful still.' Sil stopped and shook his head, as though the words refused to be spoken.

‘And one of those truly powerful offspring mated with a demon. An almost immortal demon,' Zan said.

‘And nowhere, Jess, nowhere in those letters does Rune mention how she met your father, does she?' Sil's voice was soft. ‘She came to your parents already pregnant.'

‘But they said that she left the programme in 1979! She didn't have me for another two years …' Both vampires were looking at me as though I were on the verge of discovering something they already knew but didn't want to push me into. ‘Hang on, hang on … what are you trying to tell me with your big moody silences and your meaningful glances … you think Rune was
deliberately
given to Malfaire? That she escaped when she was pregnant …'

‘The government lied in that letter to your father,' Zan said. ‘Hoping, perhaps, that he would get in touch and give them Rune's version of events.'

‘I really hate this kitchen,' I said. ‘Every time I come in here someone wants to tell me something that makes me just that
little bit
less human. Next time I'm going to sell tickets.' My head had started to hurt. This was just … too much, too fast. I wiped my hands across my face to let my expression crumble without having to see the look in the vampires' eyes when it did. ‘So my blood being vampire drugs is part of what they did?'

‘It would make sense.' Zan's voice was still calm. ‘Breeding humans with disabling blood would allow them to kill the vampire while he or she was knocked out.'

Shock was pinwheeling about in my chest; whenever I tried to think about what I'd just been told my brain refused to grip the words.
Your whole life, Jess. Blown out of the water once, and now
 …
Tears pushed behind my eyes, burned at my throat, and I fought my body's demand that I lie down on the floor and howl with everything I had. ‘None of this is helping!' I gulped. ‘All very interesting – the family history people are probably baying at the door – but it's not going to get Sil out of here without him being killed, is it? Zan, there must be something you can do.'

‘Must there?' Zan said. ‘If there is, I am afraid it eludes me. We cannot reveal what Sil was doing in London without exposing your history to the world, Jessica. And I am not willing to do that.'

‘Please.' I clearly surprised all three of us with my tone. ‘Please, Zan. Come up with something, I don't care what it is … What's the point of you being about two hundred years old and all Master Vampire and stuff if you can't help him now?'

Zan gave me a considering look. ‘If I assist Sil to escape death … what price would you consider to be too great, Jessica? Your freedom for his? Your
life
for his? Because I fear this situation will not end without there being some penalty, some trade, and it may be one you are not willing to make.'

Adrenaline had burned out in me. I could almost feel my body trying to squeeze the last drop of reaction out of glands that had long since been exhausted. ‘Anything, Zan. If you get him out of this, I will owe you anything you care to claim from me.' I met the cold, clear green gaze; it was like looking into interstellar space. ‘Only not sex, okay?'

Zan curled a lip in what could have been a smile or extreme distaste. ‘I can promise that will not be a price either of us would be willing to extract.'

Sil put his hand on my arm. ‘Don't, Jessie. He
will
hold you to any promise you make, we both know that.'

‘But
someone
has to do
something
!' I covered my face with my hands and let some tears seep through, tears of sheer powerlessness. ‘Otherwise you're dead and I'm … without you.'

Sil leaned towards me, so close that his cool cheek touched mine. ‘Maybe
that
will be the price,' he whispered. ‘Had you thought of that?'

‘I can't do this. I can't deal with this.' I dropped my hands from my face and watched Zan recoil. Zan regarded tears as nature's way of telling humans that they are prey. ‘I've got a job to do, I've got people to see and stuff I can't …' The words got sucked down into my chest and obscured by my breath. ‘I can't.' I wanted to lie down, I wanted to cry, to melt against Sil and sob until nothing made sense any more. To have him hold me, tell me that nothing made a difference, that the world would continue to turn and I would continue to be a mere speck on its surface. But somewhere deep inside me something was telling me that I had to keep going. Some central core was turning out to be made, not as I had previously suspected, of chocolate and biscuits, but of something cold and hard. Something that braced me, pushed me forwards, away from Sil's comfort. ‘I have to get back to York.'

‘I will take Jessica,' Zan said, moving to the doorway. ‘I must return to the office with this knowledge, to continue research into the human government's possible plans for bringing about the end of the Treaty.'

I turned to look at him. ‘And my mother?'

‘If there is relevant information, we shall share that with you, of course.'

Relevant to whom?
I thought, but I was still too shocked and horrified to make an issue out of it. ‘I must get back to the office. Liam will think I've decamped with the tea money.'

‘Then I shall return you.' Zan gave another of those formal bows that looked as though he had Russian Cavalry officers in his genes, and left the kitchen, jingling the keys to the Bugatti, which left Sil and I staring at each other.

‘I need you, Jess.' He breathed the words, moving closer so that his body touched mine, his hand slipping round to the back of my neck to bring me in still closer. ‘It is not something that lies easily with me, needing another, but you …' His other hand came around, his index finger brushing my lips until I looked up to meet clouded eyes. ‘You are all.'

His mouth touched mine and I was filled with the desire to lose myself in him, to hide from the world in the arms of this strong, gorgeous man. To let him possess me, to take me away from everything.

‘Jess?'

‘I have to go.' I pushed one hand into his chest, forced him back the step I needed to be able to turn and run from the once-so-familiar room, which now held the ghosts of so many terrible secrets.

I'd lied about going back to the office. The thought of walking in to find Liam measuring up my chair and upgrading my computer into something more suitable for his needs – which were mostly browsing eBay and
Doctor Who
forums – was more than I could take. So I went to the only place where I could be completely human, without question.

‘Oh good, you're here. Hold this end, will you? I want to check the spelling.' Rachel handed me a pole and stood back to examine the banner. ‘They lose concentration a bit half way through.'

‘I thought you might be at work,' I said feebly, holding the broom handle above my head to stretch the sheeting out, until I felt like someone making the kind of bed that fought back. ‘I only popped in on the off chance.'

‘I'm going on a march.' Rach gestured at me to let the banner drop. ‘Well, I
say
march … they can't keep in step, poor things, and I have to tie the statements on to some of them.'

I looked around the flat. Every surface was scattered with bits of paper, forms and notes and random newspaper cuttings. It was enough out of character for Rachel to make me nearly forget that the vampires considered me to be a walking time-bomb. ‘What the hell is going on?'

Rachel stopped her perusal of the banner and stood back with her hands on her hips. ‘You were so right about them,' she said. ‘The way that they were being abused when they do work that is so vital …'

‘And by “they” you mean …?'

‘We've decided to stop using the “z” word: it's prejudicial. They're marching as the Ambulatory Deceased. ADs for short. Plus, the whole “zombie” thing … it was just too far down the alphabet to be any use, and nothing rhymes with it, which is just
hopeless
when you need a slogan.'

‘Oh.'

‘Yes. Honestly, Jessie, getting them joined up to the union was the best thing ever. Now we're getting more and more on board, and we can threaten to close down loads of industries if they all come out on strike, you know. ADs do all the clearing out at power stations and running cables across pylons, all the stuff that results in almost certain death for people like us.'

‘Right …'

‘Isn't it great?' Rach gave me a huge grin. ‘I'm actually doing something
useful
. Getting people to realise how much we need the ADs, and if they're being threatened by horrible people they could use their union to go on strike and then we'd have no electricity!'

‘Ah. A sort of blackmail.' I collapsed onto the sofa; there was so much paperwork underneath me it felt like sitting on origami. ‘Rach?'

‘Mmmm?' She turned around, filling a bag with tape and glue.

‘Do you ever think about your parents?'

A small pause. ‘No.' She resumed her busyness, as though a small, busty whirlwind was whipping through the flat. ‘What good would it do?'

‘They died in the Troubles? In a vampire attack?'

She sat, suddenly, causing a banner to crease and its poles to fly together like giant chopsticks. ‘My mum and my dad and my brother were killed. I was upstairs asleep and the vampires didn't know I was there. Or they did and didn't care, they weren't hungry anymore.'

I imagined that little girl tiptoeing downstairs to find the corpses of her family, drained dry. ‘And you don't hate them for doing that? Or hate your parents for dying and leaving you?'

Rachel sighed. ‘What is this really about, Jessie? Only, the Troubles were a long time ago. It's exhausting, hating people for things they did so long ago that it might as well have been a different life, if vampires didn't live for, like, hundreds of years. It's life. You just get on with it.'

I declined a cup of whatever wee-flavour herbal tea was currently in the pot and let her get on with her march preparations. She was right. Of course she was. The past was dead and gone; the Troubles were over so long ago that a whole generation was growing up without ever having feared vampires, without the dread of nightfall that even I only vaguely remembered. Now the Troubles were the stuff of adventure films, of screwball comedies where designer-label-obsessed vampires and camp, ineffectual Shadows hunted in shopping centres and were brought down by teenagers and a talking dog.

Long gone. History. And yet
 …
it could come back. Do we really live on such a knife-edge?
I looked around at the solid reality of the flat that had once been my home. TV, slightly singed mat and a circle of cat-fluff that pointed out, to any interested onlookers, that Jasper had taken to sleeping on a basket of clean laundry.
And because of this, because of me, Sil could be killed on sight by any Hunter, any Enforcement agent.

I thought of the nights we'd spent, his cool arms holding me while I slept, the dark, earthy scent of his skin and the way his demon reacted to my presence, coiling and writhing inside him like an affectionate snake. The way his nearness made me feel that anything was possible, the half-amused grey flicker of his eyes telling a whole story of humanity lost and regained.
And without him? What would I be? I've loved him so long that I can't even remember a time when he wasn't there, first as an irritating, self-absorbed, image-conscious assistant in the Otherworld office and then, increasingly, as the only thing worth fighting for. If he
 …
if anything happens to him then Liam can have the office, can have my job with its humiliations and its anxieties. I won't care. There will be nothing to care about ever again, just an empty hole where my soul used to be, and the ringing knowledge that it was all because of me.