Reality Bites (15 page)

She knelt beside him.  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ she soothed.

He looked up at her.  ‘Help me,’ he said

~ Chapter Nineteen ~

Dark, dark world.  Sick sad world.

All I see are hollow men.  And all around are shadows

I died so quietly, just slipped away one day

My soul went up in ashes.  And my future blew away

Still it doesn’t matter.  I’m taking it with me

Cause no one’s getting out of life alive

Now the love has gone.  And the pain is gone

All the hope has gone.  Still I’m hanging on

Cold cruel world.  Dead drained world

There’s no redemption on this, earth, and all I know are

 
ghosts

Living a lie, it hurts like hell.  Sinking into death

Find I’m liking it as well.

As death fills my soul.  I carry it with me

And no one’s getting out of here alive

It tastes so sweet.  It tastes so vile

Send up a prayer.  To an empty sky

To wash these sins from off my hands

Now the love has gone.  And the pain has gone

All the hope has gone.  Still I’m hanging on

Bleak black world.  Lost lonely world

I cannot break free, and I’m, not sure I want to anyway

Why should I care?  I’m not running away

Cause no-one’s getting out of here alive

Three days later, Denny was still holed up in his room for most of the time, playing this miserable song on his guitar and others like it.  Whenever he did emerge, which was not often, he continued his policy of moody silence. Tamar could not get near him.  Not that she ever could, the Athame had not changed that after all. Still, at least she knew where he was. 

‘Just leave him alone. He’ll be all right,’ she told Stiles, when he complained that it was like living with a moody teenager in a permanent funk.

‘Next thing you know, he’ll be painting his room black and smoking pot,’ he said.

‘You should have more compassion,’ she retorted.  ‘You know he’s been through a lot.’

‘I’m more concerned with what he’s put you through.’

‘It’s not his fault.’

‘Well whose fault is it, then, if it’s not his?  He’s the one who …’

‘It’s
my
fault.’

Stiles stared. What the hell did
that
mean?  He decided not to ask.

‘Well,’ he said tactfully. ‘At least he plays well even if the songs are a bit …’ he bit his tongue.  ‘He’s really good isn’t he? I wish I could play an instrument.’

‘
What
did you say?’

‘I said at least he plays well,’ repeated Stiles uncomprehendingly.

It was Tamar’s turn to stare.

* * *

Peirce was another problem; he was increasingly morose and demanding. His demands included: - better accommodation, (‘how would
you
like to sleep in a bathtub?’) A better CD collection, (‘haven’t you got any Iron Maiden?’) He was nonplussed for a moment when Denny in a moment of rare joviality asked him. ‘Wouldn’t you blunt your teeth on her?’ – Typical Denny. No one was sure whether it was a joke or not.   A change of clothes, Tamar eventually acceded to this one.  The dead apparently smell just as bad as the living if they do not change their socks.  And last, but not least, human blood, as opposed to the variety that the local butcher provided – variously, pigs, cows chicken and once an ox, which he almost approved of.

And Stiles was getting restless.  ‘What are we going to
do
?’ he asked repeatedly.  ‘We have to do something.  Or are we just going to sit here while the darkness spreads and the bodies pile up in the streets?’  He wanted to let Peirce go and find out what he could about the location of Ran-Kur.

‘And we have to get Denny back on board, he’s the expert, isn’t he? I thought he was going to research ways to kill gods.’

‘There aren’t any.’ Denny had appeared at his bedroom door, looking disturbingly corpse like.

‘Christ,’ said Stiles.  ‘You look deader than him.’  He meant Peirce of course. Denny scowled.

‘And what do you mean,’ Stiles continued, ‘there aren’t any’? How do you know? You haven’t even been looking.’

 ‘No, he’s right,’ interjected Tamar.  ‘We need another god.  There’s nothing
we
can do.’

‘So, we’re stuck?  I think it’s time we fetched the witch.’

‘We could kill every single vampire in the world,’ said Denny. ‘That’d do it.’ The idea of this appealed strongly to him. His taste for violence had certainly increased lately.

‘Be realistic,’ said Stiles. And Denny laughed somewhat hysterically.

‘What?’ said Stiles, looking at Tamar, who was also smiling.

‘The world is covered in darkness,’ she told him.  ‘The un-dead are roaming the streets, and there’s a god of vampires out there somewhere, who wants to kill you.  Last week we summoned Hecaté into our living room, and we have a vampire sleeping in our bathtub, and you just told him to be realistic.  You have to see the irony.’

Now Stiles also smiled. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ruefully.  ‘Still, we have to do
something
, I can’t just sit on my rear; it’s not in my nature.  If it’s up to us to save the world, then I say we just get on with it.’

‘You’re right,’ said Tamar, jumping up.  ‘I should be out there, saving people, it’s what I do.  You don’t save the world by killing gods or destroying all evil, it can’t be done, and I
know
that, I always have.  You save the world …’

‘One person at a time,’ Denny finished for her.

‘What are you two talking about?’ said Stiles.  ‘What about Ran-Kur?’

‘Irrelevant,’ said Tamar.  ‘At least to us, we can’t kill him, we don’t have that power.  And while we’ve been sitting around here, worrying about him …’

‘Twiddling our thumbs,’ put in Denny.

‘Exactly – while we’ve been doing that, innocent people are dying.  Like you said, we can’t just sit here while the bodies pile up in the streets.’

‘I hate to interrupt,’ said Denny, nevertheless doing so.  ‘But there
are
no bodies piling up in the streets, I should know.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Tamar.

‘I mean, they’re not killing, they’re siring new vampires.’

‘That’s odd.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Why?’ asked Stiles.

‘Vampires are snobs,’ explained Denny. ‘They’re usually extremely fussy about who they sire. And also they don’t want their numbers to grow too large.  Imagine a world with all humans and no animals, or no whisky, just lemonade, and you’ll understand why.’

‘I won’t have to imagine it, if the sun doesn’t come back soon,’ said Stiles.

‘And vampires don’t even have the “cannibalism” option,’ continued Denny.

‘Yuck,’ said Tamar.

‘You know,’ said Denny. ‘For someone who has seen as much death and destruction as you have,
caused
as much death and destruction as you have for that matter, you certainly are squeamish.’

‘I see your point,’ said Stiles.  ‘So, why are they doing it?’

‘Ran-Kur’s orders I assume,’ said Denny. ‘The more vampires he has believing in him, the more powerful he becomes.  Gods feed on belief, like all mythical creatures.’

‘So he’s creating an army?’ said Stiles.

‘You could put it that way.’

‘We have to stop him.’

‘No, we have to get out there and start saving lives – killing vampires,’ said Tamar.

‘She’s right,’ said Denny.  ‘That’s our job, and I suggest that we start with him.’  He pointed at the bathroom door.

Stiles shrugged.  ‘Suits me,’ he said.

‘OK,’ said Tamar.  ‘Bring him out.’

Denny and Stiles manhandled Peirce into the living room.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked them.  ‘Have you decided to let me go?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Tamar.  ‘But we have decided to do
something
with you.’

‘What?’

‘This,’ said Denny, plunging a stake into Peirce chest.

Peirce pulled it out easily.  ‘I thought you might try this sooner or later,’ he said.  ‘You’ll have to do better than that.  Look at that, you’ve ruined my shirt.’  He laughed at their dumbfounded faces.

‘Must have missed,’ muttered Denny, preparing to strike again.

‘Don’t waste your time,’ said Peirce, holding up a hand.  ‘Look.’  He pointed to the wound; it was smack in the centre of his chest, exactly where it should be.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Stiles.  ‘Surely you kill a vampire with a stake through the heart, that’s basic folklore, isn’t it?’

‘It’s certainly always worked before,’ agreed Tamar.

Denny could have told them of at least one other occasion when it had not worked, but he held his peace, for now.

‘Did you really think I’d come here, to the enemy stronghold, without taking some precautions?’ sneered Peirce.  ‘For all I knew, you would have staked me first and asked questions later.’

‘What do you mean – precautions?’ asked Denny.

‘Well, it couldn’t hurt to tell you, I suppose, since there’s nothing you can do about it,’ said Peirce.  ‘If you must know, I’ve had my heart removed; it’s safe in a vault somewhere.’

‘Yuck,’ said Tamar, predictably.

‘Ingenious,’ said Denny. ‘It’s not as if he’s using it,’ he explained to the bewildered looking Stiles.  ‘He’s dead; his heart doesn’t pump blood like ours, that’s why they drink it, to replenish the supply.’

Stiles recovered.  ‘So, decapitate him,’ he suggested.

‘Won’t work,’ said Denny. ‘The ritual is, you stake it through the heart and then cut its head off and stuff garlic in the mouth.  It’s part of the folklore; traditionally the stake through the heart is to hold the corpse in the grave – figuratively speaking.  The fact is, with his heart safely stored away, he’s invulnerable.’

‘What about sunlight?’

‘What sunlight?’ Denny gestured to the darkness outside.

‘Oh, right, well fire then.’

‘Nope, when you use fire you have to burn the actual heart, and he’s never going to tell us where it is.’

‘Actually,’ said Peirce.  ‘I don’t know where it is, I never asked.’

‘Why don’t all vampires have this done?’ asked Tamar.

‘It’s a very expensive operation,’ said Peirce. ‘Very specialised, to most vampires it’s just not worth it.’

‘Well we can’t just let him go,’ said Stiles.  ‘He might claim to be on our side, but he’s still a killer.’  Denny blanched, but Stiles did not notice.

‘We can’t hold him,’ said Tamar.  ‘Tying him up was just symbolic, he could escape easily.’

‘Look,’ said Peirce.  ‘Why don’t we just put this behind us?  I’m not one to hold a grudge.  I mean I expected this, but there’s a larger purpose here.  I don’t even want to know why you suddenly decided to stake me, but why don’t you just let me go?  You can’t stop me anyway, and I’ll try to track down Ran-Kur, and report back.’

‘And when you’ve found him, then what?’ asked Tamar, following Denny’s gaze as he slid his eyes meaningfully towards the mantelpiece.

‘No,’ she said decisively.  ‘We’re done with all that – lock him up boys.’

Denny nodded to Stiles and winked at Tamar.  They shoved him in a broom cupboard, locked the door and quickly blocked up the space under the door, while Tamar grabbed her old bottle off the mantelpiece and held it up to the keyhole.  Fog started pouring through the keyhole, straight into the bottle.  After a few minutes, Tamar slid a piece of card over the neck of the bottle and hurriedly stoppered it.  ‘Got him,’ she said.  ‘Or at least probably most of him, good thinking,’ she added to Denny.

‘Hey, why mess with a winning formula?’ grinned Denny, referring to the occasion when they had shanghaied a homicidal Djinn in much the same way.

‘Okay,’ she said.  ‘That takes care of him – let’s get out there, and do some damage.’

‘There are swarms of them,’ said Stiles.  ‘We need an army.’

‘Two superheroes and a copper with a grudge,’ she answered.  ‘We
are
an army.’

* * *

The “Master” steepled his fingers in that disturbing way he had when he was displeased, when he heard of this latest development. 
‘Bloody woman,’
he said.

Damn!  Damndamndamndamndamn.

* * *

They went out in three hour shifts, with Stiles taking every other shift and sleeping in between.  He went out with either Tamar or Denny, and they alternately stayed at home with him.  They had not forgotten that the vampires were still after him.

Although Stiles possessed no super-powers, he was holding his own with a surprising repertoire of dirty fight moves, picked up when breaking up bar fights in his early years on the force. When, as he told them, the idea was to walk away with all your extremities intact and to hell with ethics. Any fool who tried to fight fair against a drug pusher with a flick knife is destined to have a short career, due to the fact that the police still have not extended their equal opportunities programme to include employing the dead.  There seemed to be no trick too low that he would not use it to keep an opponent down, even Denny was impressed.

He was glad, he said, to be doing something again.  ‘I’ve been driving a desk for too long.’  He said.  ‘I’d almost forgotten what this feels like, to be out there getting on with it – feels good.  This is what it’s all about.’

Stiles had been loaded up with stakes axes and various incendiary devices to make up for his lack of a magical armoury, but, as he said.  ‘You have to catch the buggers first.’  And this was where Stiles excelled, small and wiry, he could run very, very fast.  But more than that was a sheer love of the chase, a dogged determination. Where others would have given up after they ran out of breath and their legs felt like blancmange, this only seemed to spur him on.  ‘If I feel like this,’ he would gasp.  ‘Imagine how
he
feels.  He’ll give up any minute.’