Serafina and the Silent Vampire (17 page)

Sera in
his
bed for days on end, in thrall to
him
. He couldn’t deny its appeal, and yet he couldn’t quite imagine it. While one part of him wanted it quite fiercely, another part rebelled because he couldn’t bear the idea of Sera in thrall. She was too rare. He wanted her willing, passionate, desperate, as she’d been last night.

“You wouldn’t go now, would you?”
she’d whispered.
“Stay with me.”

What the hell was he getting into here? Abruptly, he rose from the bed, away from her insidious, intoxicating scent, and paced through to the living room. It was more than time for a dose of sanity.

“Phil.”

“Ah, Blair. I thought you’d burned up with the dawn.”

“No, you didn’t. What’s happening?”

“Nothing. I’m contemplating my navel. Good night?”

“Perfect, thank you,” Blair said impatiently. “Did our friends make any further moves last night?”

“Well, some of them went out hunting. One killed someone, stupid bastard. A couple broke into New Register House in Prince’s Street—”

“They what?”

“Bizarre, isn’t it?”

“Serafina,” Blair said. “They’re looking for some record of Serafina.”

“It’s a bit of a jump, assumption-wise,” Phil pointed out. “Besides, can’t you do all that sort of thing online these days?”

“Not all.” He thought for a moment. He’d begun to think that Sera was right, that the new vampires’ mutations weren’t down to too distant descent from the Founder after all. “Magic, Phil,” he said abruptly. “Who among your acquaintances practices magic?”

“No one,” Phil said in surprise. “That’s one thing the Founder never passed on to us.”

****

Melanie had recently renovated and united two old cottages by the side of a small loch a few miles from Loch Lomond. Being Mel, she’d chosen a place well off the beaten track, on the end of a bumpy, single-track road.

As Sera pulled off the road and got out of her car, she saw that Melanie had also chosen a place of spectacular beauty, even under gray skies. There were woods and hills on two sides, and on the third, across the smooth, glinting water you got a glimpse of the much larger Loch Lomond and more hills beyond.

She heard the door of the cottage open and felt the warmth that was Melanie. She smiled without turning.

“You like my spot?” Melanie asked.

“It’s beautiful.” She turned at last to face her friend. Mel looked good, as she always did, all dark red hair and luminous green eyes. Bone structure to die for. She looked relaxed and content and pleased to see her. “How in the world did you find it?”

Mel wiggled her eyebrows. “Magic.”

“Really?”

“Nah. It was in the Glasgow Solicitors’ Property paper. Come in before the rain starts again.” Mel took her arm, gave it a little hug as they walked together toward the cottage. She wasn’t a demonstrative person, and Sera always valued her outward signs of affection. “How’s the world of psychic research?”

“Crazy,” Sera said ruefully.

Mel cast her a sardonic glance. “Get away.”

Sera laughed. “Seriously. Way beyond cranks and ghosts and poltergeists and people who want to prove I’m scamming them.”

“Do they do much of that?”

“I’ve had a few. I’ve even had a cop accuse me of preying on the grieving and the vulnerable.”

“I have to assume you’re not.”

Sera sighed. “I suppose it depends on your definition of grieving, vulnerable, and preying.”

“Finding it’s not all black and white?”

What Sera liked about Mel was that she never accused.

“It’s more complicated than I wanted it to be,” Sera confessed. “But that’s not my real problem.”

They entered the house, and with obvious pleasure, Melanie showed Sera around. Sera admired the original features and praised her friend’s tasteful and yet very Mel décor. After which, sitting at the dining table by a window overlooking the loch, they ate a rather delicious lunch that Mel claimed to have just thrown together.

“I’m going to leave Edinburgh and move out to the country,” Sera said, raising her glass in a toast. It was only orange juice, much to Melanie’s disappointment, but Sera was wary of the effect of wine on her after her blood loss. She used having to drive home as an excuse. “To your new house.”

“So,” Melanie asked after a little, “what
is
your real problem?”

It was what she’d come for, and yet now that the moment had arrived, she found herself curiously reluctant to go into it. The threat of the banking vampires, the mystery of Nicholas Smith, all faded into insignificance beside the one huge event of Blair, which she wasn’t yet ready to discuss with anybody. She doubted she ever would be.

“Vampires,” she said abruptly. “Do you know they actually exist?”

Prepared for several responses, including horror, ridicule, and pity, Sera was relieved when Melanie merely raised one intrigued eyebrow and murmured, “I have heard the odd whisper, though I’ve never encountered one myself.”

“What have you heard?” Sera asked curiously, helping herself to another of Melanie’s delicious cheese-and-spinach pies.

Melanie shrugged and reached for the bottle to top up her wine. “Nothing much. Rather mysterious, elusive beings, few in number, appallingly strong and absolutely deadly when riled. For the most part, they seem to prey secretly on the humans they live among, and rarely kill.”

Sera swallowed the last of her pie and, under Mel’s amused gaze, reached for yet another. “Did you ever hear whether or not they could talk? How they communicate among themselves or with humans?”

“I believe they’re telepathic. They don’t talk at all, at least not as we do.”

Sera nodded slowly, absently heaping two kinds of salad onto her plate. “That’s what I heard,” she agreed. “But recently, a new breed of vampire has appeared in Edinburgh—in alarming numbers, actually—and they
can
talk,
just
like we do. How do you suppose that could happen?”

Mel set down her glass, frowning. “I haven’t the foggiest idea, but I don’t like the sound of alarming numbers. Are they dangerous? And are you sure they’re vampires?”

“Yes to both. A couple of murders have been in the news. I think they’ve covered up a couple more. But they seem to be creating new creatures like themselves all the time—all from the financial industry. And they’re going back to work. They want to take over the running of all the country’s finances, siphon off wealth for themselves, and eventually reduce the role of humans to little more than slavery.”

Mel closed her mouth. “Yes, that is a real problem.”

“The other curious thing is—apparently, vamps don’t normally take to discipline. They’re free spirits, if you like. But these guys aren’t. They answer to a human.”

“What human?”

“Bloke called Nicholas Smith. Ever heard of him?”

Melanie closed her eyes tight, perhaps dredging her memory. “Not sure,” she said uncertainly.

“He does stage magic—mixture of conjuring and mind reading—under the name of Nick Black.”

Mel opened her eyes. “Ah. Now I know who you mean. I’ve even met him. He’s a member of WASA.”

“WASA,” Sera repeated, unable to stop herself from grinning.

“WASA,” Mel repeated sternly. “Witches’ and Sorcerers’ Association.”

It wasn’t really funny. Sera sobered and cleared out the salad bowl. “What can he actually do? I know he’s telepathic to some degree, but does he have other gifts? Like you? Can he—er—‘do’ magic?”

“I believe he’s quite strong.”

Sera glanced at her. “Stronger than you?”

“He’s older than me, been practicing for longer.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Sera laid her knife and fork together and sat back.

“Coffee and walnut cake?” Mel offered.

“Ooh yes, please.”

While Mel took the used plates away, Sera tidied the leftovers and watched her surreptitiously. She sensed an unusual tension in her friend, a discomfort that wasn’t usually present between them. And if she had to put her finger on when this discomfort arose, she rather thought it was when she spoke the name Nicholas Smith. He worried Mel.

Over coffee and Mel’s mouth-wateringly gorgeous cake, Sera said, “Is there some kind of spell Smith could have put on these new vampires? To enable them to speak, to dominate them?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. There are spells for most things. It’s just a matter of finding out what they are and gathering the power to use them properly.” Mel cut another two slices of cake and placed one on each of their plates. “Nicholas Smith always had an eye for the main chance. Always looking for ways to make the power work for him. So, I can imagine he might well have expended a lot of energy to track down such a spell. Or simply to see its uses if he came across it by accident.”

Sera, still savoring cake and coffee on some level, set down her cup and asked, “Do you have any idea what such a spell might be?”

“No, and I wouldn’t want to either.”

“Then I don’t suppose there’s a simple counter-spell to break it either? Not even an all-purpose, any-spell breaker?”

“You’re talking complicated magic here, Sera. Nothing will be simple. And even if the spell
could
be broken, you’d still be left with all those indiscreet vampires without even a leader to control them. I really don’t like the sound of any of this. Why don’t you come and live here while we figure out what to do?”

“I’ve got clients in Edinburgh. And besides, I couldn’t leave the others at Serafina’s.”

“How are Jack and Jill?” Mel asked with a quick grin.

“Fine. They’re excellent researchers, but we need a prod in the right direction.”

“Leave it with me,” Mel said. “I’ll do some research of my own. How did you get involved with all this in the first place?”

So Sera told Melanie all about Ferdy Bell, making her smile over the garlic and crucifixes before she unfolded the tragedy of Jason and the investigation that followed. Although she kept mention of Blair to a minimum, she couldn’t tell the story without him, and Melanie seemed to be intrigued by him and Phil.

“I think they might be your answer,” she said. “Whatever their motives, their aim is the same as yours. Since they’re so much stronger than the new vampires, couldn’t they just kill them for us? Leave Smith with no army?”

“I thought of that, but as long as there’s still one of them, more can always be created. In any case, by now there are so many of them that together they’re actually stronger than Blair and Phil.” She paused, lifting her orange juice and rubbing her thumb over an invisible mark on the glass. “The other things is…I know they’re dead already, but once you meet them, they’re people. I’m not sure I could kill them. I’m not even sure it’d be right to kill them.”

She cast Mel an apologetic smile and put down her glass again. “The
other
other thing is, what’s to stop Smith repeating the same process somewhere else? We need to defeat
him
. Curtail his ability.”

Mel glanced at her sideways. “You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you?”

“Oh yes. I just don’t know to accomplish it.”

“Let me look around my books and call on a few friends. It’ll take me a couple days at best, and there are no guarantees, but we should find something that would at least slow them down. Are you sure you won’t stay? You could help me.”

The anxiety in her voice warmed Sera. There had never been many people who actually cared what happened to her; it was one of the reasons she’d always valued Mel.

“The rain’s off,” Sera observed. “Shall we go for a walk? You can show me round the policies.”

Mel grinned and stood up.

Later, in the isolated peace of a nearby wood, Sera said, “How did you come into my life, Mel?”

Mel changed direction so that they could glimpse the rippling loch between the trees. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can’t actually remember when I first met you, or what the connection is between us. I just remember you showing up at odd moments of my childhood, bearing gifts or fun, sometimes at the home or at foster homes, and once you just appeared in the street. But we’ve never even talked about how we know each other. You’re not a secret social worker are you?”

Mel smiled. “No. No, I’m not.”

Sera brushed against a damp branch that spattered rainwater over them both. “Did you know my real family, Mel?”

“I knew some of them,” Mel said uncomfortably.

Sera paused and looked at her. “Is Nicholas Smith related to me?”

Mel’s eyes dropped, then lifted again. She was the one person Sera trusted without touch. Well, maybe her and Jilly. To check on either seemed like a betrayal.

Mel said, “Not to my knowledge.”

There was relief in that, although she didn’t quite understand why. She pushed it aside.

“Why do you ask that?” Mel wanted to know.

Sera shrugged. “He’s telepathic. Apparently, he smells like me. Perhaps all psychic people smell like that to a vampire. Melanie…did you know my parents?”

Melanie took a few moments to answer. They were walking clear of the woods now, and the view across the loch and the hills was spectacular. “I knew your mother,” she said at last. “I was very fond of her. Owed her, if you like. But I was only fourteen when she died. I couldn’t look after a newborn baby.”

There was no reason for Sera’s throat to close up. None at all, unless it was in appreciation of Mel’s implied wish to adopt her. “She really died when I was born?” she managed.

Without looking at her, Mel reached out and took her hand. “Yes, she did. Massive blood clot, and she wasn’t at the hospital, so no one could save her in time.”

“Were you there?”

Mel shook her head.

My mother died alone with a tiny baby…
And Sera’s birth must have caused the blood clot. She’d been right about that. Convulsively, without meaning to, she squeezed Melanie’s hand, and Mel returned the grip.

She already knew without telling that whoever the rest of her family were, they’d rejected her. There was no other reason for her to have been flung onto the mercy of the social care system. “And my father?”

“Your mother never told me who he was.” Releasing her hand, Mel bent and picked up a stone and hurled it into the loch. It seemed symbolic.