Falling Apart (7 page)

‘No, don't say that.' I moved jerkily, trying to shake off the implications by movement. ‘Don't, Zan. I don't want to think that it was going to be any other way. If I start thinking that there's something we could have done then I …' I stopped before I choked. Zan's morbid fear of emotional displays would have driven him out of the building if I'd continued.

Zan fiddled with the iPad, stroking its casing. ‘Hmm,' he said, without inflection. A sigh. ‘Why is it that everything connected to you seems to become dangerous, Jessica?'

‘I hope that's rhetorical.'

Another sigh. ‘Not really, I was hoping that you may have some profound insight. I really should have known better. We must let things take their course.'

‘In other words, he's dispensable. You're not going to try to save him?'

Zan's attention floated back to the screen. ‘I very much fear that he has put himself beyond our help, Jessica,' he said, and his voice was surprisingly gentle, for Zan. ‘We must do what we can now to keep the Treaty intact until he is caught and justice is done.'

He was doing it again, treating me as though I was almost … no, not an equal. Zan considered all forms of life to be mysteriously gregarious and unnecessarily emotional and therefore beneath him. But he was treating me as though I were
important
, somehow, which was only ever going to be true if there was a worldwide filing-related emergency or some kind of Otherworld uprising that could be beaten off with an electric pencil sharpener and a sheaf of expense claim forms.

‘I'd better get out on those mean streets again, then,' I said, stiffly.

‘Yes. It is essential to keep calm. This kind of thing happens; it is no reason for general panic or lower-class rebellion. And, Jessica?' he interrupted my attempts at a huffy exit. ‘Remember, it is essential that you keep doing what you do. Do not allow uncertainty to creep in to the general populace. York must hold to the Treaty.'

‘Yes, all right, I know. Cool head, even keel, blah blah.' And suddenly the streets filled with real, noisy people who didn't have to wear latex to handle loose change and who didn't regard receiving e-mails as a violation of their personal space was a much better place to be.

But I slammed the door on my way out.

I want my old life back. Even if it does mean wanting Sil but not being able to have him. I want to be human and boring again. I want to have nothing to bitch about but Liam's odd habits and a lack of HobNobs. I want my best friend to moan to on dull evenings when there's nothing on TV, and my sister to worry about Mum and Dad with. I want to be able to visit their little house on the moors, surrounded by sheep and brambles, and eat roast dinners and cheat my way out of the washing up.
All those things that had seemed so normal and … well, normal before had suddenly assumed huge, wish-fulfilment size, as though they were all I needed to be happy and skipping around the place like a five-year-old with a new skill to show off.

Sunken deeply into thought, although nothing too forward-thinking, I didn't dare allow myself to consider what might happen next. I wandered along by the minster, where not a single Otherworlder was to be seen, through the tourist-jams of Petergate, where a human dressed as Dracula was advertising A Real Vampire Experience – which was, as far as I could tell, mostly standing around in overpriced nightclubs in overpriced Armani suits, trying to pick up girls young enough to be their great, great granddaughters – and my phone vibrated in my pocket as I got a text from Liam.

My hand went to it and then, as I remembered, stopped.
What if it's bad news? What if
 …
But my brain couldn't think any further, collapsing in upon itself with the possibilities, and duty cut in and took over.

There's a vamp out of area around the back of the minster. Female, name of Kitty Kelly, urgh, sounds like one of those manga characters, all eyes and tight sweaters.

I texted back.
Okay, watcher-of-way-too-much-TV. On it now.

I dodged through the minster shop, flashing my library card in lieu of the proper identity cards we'd been promised but never got, out of the back door and into the minster yard, pausing only to wonder what they sold in a shop attached to, basically, a giant church. Then I saw her, half-crouched in the shade of one of the big trees that made the minster look, from this side, like a misplaced country residence. She was wearing a floral tea-dress and heels.

‘You're out of area, Kitty. You need to head back, or I'll have to …'

She spun round and I recognised her vaguely, a recent incomer to York with a permit that kept her south of the river. Her taste in clothing had obviously been formed during the rationing when the Troubles reached their height in the forties, because she'd slathered her lips in the bright red lipstick that had been so popular back then. It made her mouth look tiny, but not in a good way, more in a ‘one fang at a time' way.

However, I hardly had time to register this before she'd shot across the grass towards me, turning and moving with such speed that I was barely braced before she grabbed me.

Most vampires will try to get their victim on the ground before they bite. Humans are at a huge disadvantage when they're down and the vampires risk less damage to themselves from a prone human, so vamp attacks tend to follow a predictable pattern – and this one was no different. She locked an arm around my waist and tried to use her strength and forward motion to carry me down to the ground, but I was good at what I did, and I'd been attacked by quite a lot of vampires in my time. I put one foot forward, weight on the back foot, and then as she tried to sweep me down I folded in half. Then I straightened suddenly as she hesitated on the follow-through, used my bracing leg to kick underneath her and brought her crashing down to the cobbled surface, where she lay on her back and glared at me as I pinned her down with my body weight.

‘What the hell was
that
all about?' I drew the tranq gun and held it above her.

‘There's talk that there might be a fight coming. I mean, we're superhuman and yet we let you run around as though you were equals, it's not right,' she muttered. ‘York should be run by people like us … people who can take control … You're Jessica, aren't you? Sil's girlfriend? Good grief, what was he doing with a human, when there are much more attractive people of his own type. I mean, look at you!'

‘What, you mean, look at me, sitting on top of you and holding a gun to your head?'

‘You're so …
scrubby.
Those shoes, really?' The highly painted lips curled in disgust, making her mouth look like advanced punctuation. ‘He should have been with someone with style, someone with panache.' She wriggled to pull her dress down over her knickers. They were La Perla, the cow.

‘Great. Sil's fan club is in town'—I fired the tranq into her neck—‘and heading for home.' At least I hadn't ruined any clothing this time, I thought, dialling Enforcement. ‘I've got a downed vamp here on the Minster Green.'

‘Jess?'

It was Harry again. ‘Are there actually any other Enforcement officers? Or is it all just you in different hats and rubber noses?'

‘Minster Green? I can have a unit with you in ten.' There was a rustling pause, as though Harry was moving himself, or the phone, or both; then he spoke again, more quietly. ‘What's this one's game then?'

I looked down at the sleeping vampire at my feet. ‘Dunno. Think it might be the Vera Lynn Attack Force. Mad for Sil though, so obviously deranged.'

‘Takes all sorts, doesn't it? Okay, catch you later.'

Lovely, kind Harry, attractive to the sort of girl who liked the idea of a big, strong man on whom to lean, and also, inexplicably, to Eleanor, who was more butch than the Incredible Hulk and whose only need for a big, strong man would be to have something firm to stand on when she was regrouting her bathroom.

‘Thanks, Har—' But he'd gone, so I had no-one to talk to while I waited for the pick-up unit. I sat on the concrete path, one eye on the softly snoring Vera-alike, and hugged my knees. She was wearing cute shoes with a little strap across them, which would have made my feet look like a pair of hay-bales tied up with string, and her whole forces' sweetheart look was grating on me. Not only because the Troubles had been over for thirty years, so going around dressed like a Human Army supporter was nastily sarcastic in a way only a natty little floral dress could be, but also because she was neatly slim. I had a bosom that made me look like some kind of climbing hazard, so it didn't matter how skinny I might be I was cursed with the ‘boob woman' look and an inability to run without a bra that reached from neck to waist.

I sniffed and hugged my knees tighter. What had she looked like as a human? The demon that infected the vampires gave them an enhanced beauty, although I suspected that neither Sil nor Zan had ever been hulking great ugs, so had she always been pretty? Or had she been a plain, overlooked girl who'd thought a demon would up her chances of meeting gorgeous men? Or had she fallen for some guy who'd used her as a free feed and not let her go in time, before his demon seeded into her bloodstream? Either way, she was right, even if she
had
talked about him in the past tense, the bitch. Sil should be with someone who could understand his way of life – the need for blood, excitement, the adrenaline rush that his demon got off on and that had made him …

I shook my head at how wrong this all was. Something must have happened to him in London. Sil was almost painfully law-abiding; for him to be running amok through a crowd of humans something …
please, God, something
 …
must have happened. And then the sensible part of my brain cut in. Vampires were vampires. With the demon came a whole new set of moral standards – well, more a whole abnegation of any morality at all, really – a new body, new abilities and strengths. Who someone had been as a human,
what
they had been, no longer existed, except in their repressed memories.

Sil was not who I thought he was. He professed to love me, to feel human with me, but … in the end, he was vampire.

The circling blue light of the Enforcement van had almost never been so welcome. I clambered to my feet to greet the team, two officers I knew by sight, filled in the paperwork and let the irritation at this vampire's expensive underwear wash away any residual feelings of displacement as she was hoisted into the van and driven off.

Sil lay in the alleyway, covered with sheets of cardboard. Flat to the evil-smelling concrete, with his Ralph Lauren trousers in direct contact with something he really hoped was just rainwater and a pigeon giving him funny looks.

Oh gods. How did it come to this?
Feeling relatively safe, from identification if not from dysentery, he let himself remember what he'd done. What the hunger and desperation had driven him to, the sheer power and high of the hunt and …
Please tell me I didn't kill anyone. I don't
think
I did, or that I let my demon seed into a human
 …
Oh gods. What have I done?

Desperation dropped his cheek against the rough ground for a second, and the pigeon eyed him again, perhaps hoping that he was going to die and provide it with a meal.
Out there, out in the world that once hailed me as the Vampire of York, there are going to be Hunters, Enforcement crew all looking for me. None of them willing to listen, to let me tell my side of things – that I was so hungry all I knew was that I had to feed to stay alive. Would they care? Would they even believe me?

The gnawing at his belly wasn't hunger now. It was Jess, his connection with her making itself felt as a virtual pain.
So. She still cares. There is some hope for me out there in the world.
He called to mind her wide grin, her wild hair and the scent of her skin and he could feel himself smile, despite everything.
She
is
my world.
He remembered her dispassionate calm in the face of killing her demon father, and then the tears and the self-loathing that had come after.
Jess won't kill me.
He realised his inner voice sounded a little uncertain but the gnawing was a gentle ache now, an echo of that ever-present ‘knowing' that ran somewhere between his brain and his groin, that whisper behind the eyes that told him she was out there, and that he was in her thoughts.
Jess. Will you stand not in condemnation but in pursuit of the mystery of what is happening to me?

A pressure and a clicking sound told him that the pigeon had landed on the cardboard and was making exploratory pecks at it.
I need to speak to her.
Another brief exploration of pockets had so far, inexplicably, failed to turn up anything useful.
Someone has taken my phone, all my money, my cards. I need to see her. I need to see the look in her eyes, to know whether I disgust her now or whether she can see past this. I need her.

HQ was located in Town Hall, a Georgian building with more windows than sensible inhabitants and a blue front door that looked as though it had been ripped direct from the TARDIS. I went inside and waited at the reception desk while a young blonde woman with a proper clothing allowance and nice shoes rang through to the office and finally ushered me through the security door and up to the Hallowed Halls.

‘Ah. Miss … Grant.' I'd never met this man before, but then Liam and I were rarely granted audience with those who held the purse strings. Normally all communication was via telephone and e-mail, ‘like cheap spies' as Liam always said. I suspected it was just to stop us shouting and demanding proper money instead of the loose-change salaries we currently got. That or they suspected that we smelled funny. ‘We won't keep you a moment. Just a formality, you understand.'

I sat on the nasty wooden chair in front of the desk in this office with half-panelled walls, like a nineteenth-century stable, and the rest painted Institutional Green, and stared at him. Thinning grey hair was swept back – probably to make the thinning less obvious, but in reality making it look as though his forehead stretched round to the back of his neck – and was complemented by a grey suit and grey-rimmed glasses outlining grey eyes. If he'd stood still on an overcast day he'd have been invisible: the office walls were probably green just so that people could find him. ‘Well, can it be a quick formality then, only I've got … things to do.'

The office smelled of oranges, as though someone had eaten their lunch in there. It made my stomach rumble. ‘Yes, of course.' This was said far too smoothly for it to be a good thing. ‘We just wanted a quick word about your … position at Liaison.'

‘That stuff in the newspaper was all just made up, you know,' I said quickly. ‘And apart from that you can't have any complaints, our section has the lowest rates of any kind of Otherworld activity – even the ghouls steer clear of central York, our werewolves are all sourcing from the local butchers, we've got people on the inside of the clubs down by the river …'

‘People on the inside. Yes.' The grey man, whose laminated badge proclaimed him to be David Hasterlane, Otherworld Liaison Supervisor, leaned back in his chair. ‘And there is the matter for concern. You are currently … ah …
involved
, as I believe the press would have it, with the City Vamp? Sil? Tell me, Miss Grant, do
you
think your position may be compromised by your relationship with the vampires?'

Well, this had all come out of nowhere. I'd been with Sil for a couple of months now and nobody had raised any kind of concern up until this moment, so there had to be something going on, something underneath this sudden worry about my neutrality. I looked around the office but couldn't see anything unusual, apart from the ranked banks of neatly closed filing cabinets. In our office any closed cupboard was unusual, and probably hiding something
Doctor Who
related. ‘I have no problem keeping my work and my relationships separate, Mr Hasterlane,' I said coldly, watching him carefully now. Apart from being relentlessly grey, he seemed a bit edgy. I know I sometimes make people nervous, but that's usually because they are waiting for me to either shoot them or shout at them; this man seemed to be randomly anxious.

‘Then, can I take it that should the occasion arise you can be called upon to do your duty by the council? As a
human
? You would, ah … “bring him in” is, I think, the phrase used in these circumstances?'

I looked across the desk at him. There were papers, permits and movement orders all stacked up in volcanic heaps, a photograph of an unsmiling woman and a small child, a sheaf of business cards and … the computer screen, displaying thumbnail-sized stills of a video – Sil, somewhere, moving … ‘Do you think I could have a glass of water?'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘It's all been a terrible shock,' I said, carefully holding my hand to my forehead and wobbling slightly as though I might faint. ‘Sil being … terrible …' I half-closed my eyes and watched him through the gap. As I'd hoped, he leaped up and ran for the door, obviously of the
weak woman, water
school of thought, and as soon as he'd gone I flipped his screen towards me and noted down the web address of the film. I even had time to photograph the papers he'd got taped to the top drawer – covered in handwritten letters and numbers – and lunge my way back into the chair. I was sitting with my head between my knees when David Hasterlane came back in, carefully carrying half a plastic cup of warm water, which I was then obliged to sip at. ‘May I go now?' I managed to ask after a few minutes of ‘recovery'. ‘Only, I'm not sure what it says in my contract about sitting around not working …'

Clearly worried that I might be about to ask for new rates of pay, Grey Man ushered me out of the office. ‘You understand that this was not an official conversation?' he said, giving me a moment to wonder how unofficial it might be, given that it was held in our HQ, by the man whose badge said he was my supervisor. ‘I just had to reassure myself of your loyalty to Otherworld Liaison, in the face of these very
challenging
events.'

Challenging? Seriously?
He stood and watched me go down the mahogany staircase as quickly as was compatible with my recent ‘faint'. I was very tempted to stop halfway down and wiggle my fingers goodbye, but I didn't think he'd see the funny side. I wasn't sure that he'd see the funny side of a stand-up comedian's entire set, actually, but then there probably weren't many giggles in trying to run Liaison, given our underpaid status and natural tendency towards unmanageability. Trying to direct us must be like trying to teach chickens to drive.