Solace & Grief (10 page)

Silence filled the classroom for a good fifteen seconds, stretching out like a flat horizon of awkwardness. Lukin looked from face to face, fingers twitching, eyes wide.

Then Manx spoke. ‘Fifty dollars
each
?’

‘Each,’ said Lukin, firmly. ‘And a copy of the findings when I'm done.’

Slowly, Manx looked around the room. ‘I can't speak for everyone. Either we all decide, or none.’ When no one contradicted this, he nodded, once, as a confirmation.

Lukin leaned calmly back on his desk and waited.

Jess was next to respond. She gave a lopsided shrug and grinned, swinging her dark hair as if to say, ‘Why not?’

Electra glanced from Manx to Lukin, from Lukin to Jess and back again, before nodding assent, chin tilted.

Evan spread his hands and smiled, easygoing as ever.

That only left Solace. She hesitated, sizing up the professor. Something in his manner nagged at her, a contradiction she couldn't place, but for once the Vampire Cynic was silent. She looked at Manx and remembered their conversation in the park. ‘Okay,’ she said.

Lukin clapped his hands. ‘Excellent!’ Moved by enthusiasm, he leapt up so sharply that the nearby terrarium rocked gently on its bench, prompting the serpentine occupants to raise their heads and blink their milky-gold false-eyes in confusion, scenting the glass urgently with their tongues. Slightly embarrassed, Lukin turned and gave the lid a reassuring pat.

‘Excellent,’ he said again, more sedately. ‘Well! Here's what to do. Follow –’ he reached over to his desk, rummaged around blindly in the mound of loose paper, and plucked out a handful of sheets, ‘–
these
instructions on the date listed, show up at the correct location, and we'll take it from there.’ He glanced at the door, and somehow made the gesture into an obvious sign of dismissal. ‘Good luck!’

With the wary reluctance of students leaving an exam they're not quite sure they've passed, the friends slunk out. Solace came last of all, and left with two distinct impressions: firstly, that Lukin had winked at her, and secondly, that his classroom smelled unusually like a meat locker, so that her final thoughts were focused on the scent of flesh gone frozen.
Why didn't I notice before
?

Once through the door, they found themselves back in the Town Hall. Ready this time for the transition, Solace was sure she could feel a slight
whooshing
sensation as she passed over the threshold. Nobody spoke, which was hardly surprising, but just before they wandered back out into the sunlight, Manx took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

‘I know,’ she murmured.

Manx bared his slightly feline teeth. An almost-grin.

The Town Hall steps were as crowded as ever, bustling with people waiting for other people, representatives from various charities attempting to solicit the general public and one or two drunks who hadn't quite made it to the nearby benches before falling over. Glancing around, Solace noticed that while Blue-Hair was still handing out surveys with all the enthusiasm of an undergraduate being paid to stay out of class, a pale and worried-looking Fin was now seated against a nearby column, striving to complete a survey himself. Something about the image nagged at her, but, as with Lukin, she couldn't put her finger on why.

‘Sod it,’ she said, defiantly. ‘I –’

‘Ooh!’ shouted Evan, pointing across the street. ‘That guy is giving away free noodles!’

‘Lord, here he goes,’ Jess murmured.

‘Come on,’ sighed Manx. ‘We might as well.’

And so, as was only to be expected, off they went.

F
or a long while after the group of Rare had left, Professor Erasmus Lukin sat at his desk, hands spraddled flat on the paperwork, lost in thought. Apart from the gentle
tick tick tick
of an antique clock, the room was silent. At one point he rose, walking over to the terrarium and lifting out Columbus, the largest of his snakes, draping him over his neck before sitting again. As if in jealousy, the smaller two, Philo and Rufus, hissed softly, bumping the glass with their blunt, copper-coloured noses before subsiding. Columbus pulsed and shifted, stretching idly whenever Lukin reached up to stroke him. Occasionally, the professor would pick up the five completed surveys and leaf through them, reading without reading. Always his eye was drawn back to a single form, written in the scrawl of someone who had filled it out, to use his late mother's favourite expression, one hand kneeling.

‘Solace,’ he said, out loud. When nothing came of it, he gave a short laugh. The name alone would have been a coincidence, but a vampire?
It has to be her
. Distracted, he flexed his shoulders, the better to accommodate Columbus. The thought scared him as much as thrilled him. One part of his work was done, which was always satisfying – the surveys had worked exceptionally well, with Mikhail's enchantment compelling both humans and Rare to answer truthfully. The data would have been no good to him if idiot college kids decided to play along for a couple of laughs, if the truly powerful kept silent, if anyone over or under exaggerated. Mikhail had been drained, of course, but all for the greater purpose.
The greater good
. From atop his shoulder, Columbus hissed.

The problem was – well, it wasn't so much a problem as a reluctance. Having found the girl, he'd have to call Sharpsoft, and Sharpsoft wasn't so much unsettling as possessed of some bizarre, lizard-like quality so far
beyond
unsettling that it had just about come out the other side. Sharpsoft made Erasmus Lukin nervous, and as there were precious few things on Earth of which this could be said, the fact of it made him angry. Sharpsoft was unfathomable, mysterious, and therefore profoundly untrustworthy. Still, the professor was forced to concede his usefulness.
Beggars can't be choosers,
he thought,
and academics do not choose their bedfellows. How long have I worked for such a chance? There is more at stake here than petty personal preference, and I would do well to remember it
.

As would Sharpsoft
.

Columbus slithered down his arm and onto the floor with a soft, serpentine
plop
. Lukin wiped the sweat from his brow, and after rummaging around in the jungle of his desk for the telephone, made a call.

It was late noon. As usual, nobody was awake at the warehouse. After their meeting with Lukin the previous day, Evan had led them on a wild goose chase for free food which, predictably enough, had ended at the Gadfly. It hadn't been a big night, but they were tired, and everyone slept deeply as a result. Jess and Evan lay sprawled in the lounge like a discarded mess of limbs, each breathing in time to the other's gentle snores, while upstairs, Manx, Electra and Solace slept on Electra's big bed. All but forgotten by his housemates, Glide, wrapped in his usual stupor, sleep-swore softly and sporadically in a combination of Spanish, Aramaic and Icelandic. Given the obscurity of the mixture, it would have been reasonable to suppose that, even had someone been awake and listening, they would have had difficulty in identifying all three languages – unless, of course, that person not only comprehended all three, but was close enough to make out Glide's muttered words.

Such a person was, in fact, present, although not yet known to the denizens of the warehouse. The stranger was male and of indeterminate age: six feet tall, perhaps a little over, with light, soft skin, and glossy white-blond hair. His eyes were easily his oddest feature: each iris two-toned, half silver, half gold, split cleanly and definitively on the diagonal around a pupil not black, but dark purple. He was covered almost entirely by a bleached, bone-white leather coat, noticeably heavy and falling from a high, folded collar to just above the floor, partially concealing the toes of two massive, green-black boots. Dexterous, solid-looking hands, calloused and with perfectly square nails, rested on opposite forearms, while the stranger's sharp jaw, high cheekbones and expressive mouth gave the distinct impression of strength.

Seemingly bored of Glide, he turned noiselessly from the room and padded unerringly down the hallway to where Solace, Electra and Manx were collapsed in sleep. The door was closed, but unlocked, and slid silently open at his touch.

Upon entering, he scanned the room, despite the fact that the three occupants were in clear view on the only piece of furniture. Eventually, he gave a short nod of satisfaction. Without waking either Manx or Electra, he sat next to Solace on the left-hand side of the bed and snapped his fingers.

Solace woke. To her credit, the sight of such a strange man on her bed resulted in neither panic nor hysteria. Instead, she sat up slowly, took note of her sleeping friends and met his gaze, uncertain but not threatened. Abruptly, her groggy senses detected a change in the room, but without providing any intuitive data as to the source. In the same way that a wound does not hurt until the injured party looks down and sees it, this provoked a singularly unusual fizzing sensation in Solace's bones, as though their marrow had been mysteriously transmuted into Pop Rocks. Tilting her head, she stared hard at her impromptu visitor, studying him in the sure and certain knowledge that he was responsible for whatever-it-was. To this effect, her eyes asked a question. When no answer was forthcoming, she spoke.

‘Who are you?’

The man smiled. His teeth were very white, but only a little pointed, as if he wanted people to notice the difference and perhaps wonder how much sharper they were capable of becoming.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is not a helpful question.’

Distantly, Solace found herself thinking that his voice sounded like mahogany. Realising the absurdity of the analogy, she still clung to it.
A mahogany voice
. Slightly irked by his answer, she crossed her arms and lifted her chin.

‘Humour me.’

The smile widened. ‘My name is Sharpsoft. Who
you
are, however – that is a
much
better question.’

‘I'm Solace,’ she said, more calmly than seemed appropriate. Somewhere, her hindbrain was screaming
dangerdangerdanger
like a tiny neural siren, but her fight/flight reflex had, it seemed, been temporarily disabled by higher curiosity.

Sharpsoft grinned and shook his head. His ghost-hair danced and shivered. ‘That is only your name, little nomad,’ he said. ‘And though important, a name is not
who
.’

‘Then what is?’

‘Heritage. Look at me.’

Solace looked. His eyes were hypnotic in their oddness. Where Manx's colours were merely mismatched, this queer combination of silver and gold and purple was something entirely
else,
unnatural and metallic. The more she stared, the more she felt sure that they were spinning; that the diagonal divide was really a flicker, like the deceptively slow metal line of a whirling helicopter blade. Solace felt herself wax and wane and stumble. In her mind, Sharpsoft's eyes had grown larger and brighter, until they burned and turned like suns in mutual orbit and the rest of the room was forgotten.

‘Who are you?’

‘I –’

‘
Answer
.’

And then, quite simply, she knew. Her blood began to twitch beneath her skin, singing against the sizzle in her bones, pulling like a tide beneath the moon. Something welled up inside her, a memoryknowledge born of dreams and echoes and half-spun threads, sewing itself through the atoms of her flesh. Solace spoke, and her voice came from somewhere distant.

‘I am the daughter of Lord Aaron and Lady Morgause Eleuthera of Starveldt.’

She opened her eyes, unaware of having closed them. Sharpsoft's large hands had enclosed her own, and were radiating heat. He was smiling.

‘Eleuthera,’ she murmured. ‘That's my name. Not Solace Morgan. Solace Eleuthera.’

‘There,’ he told her. ‘You are whole.’

‘How did –’

‘Blood has its own memory; the blood of our kind, more so. The Lord and Lady made you. They died. You lived. And you are theirs. And so they did not die. I am pleased to meet you, Solace Morgan-becomeEleuthera. More than pleased. We will speak again, but at a better time – and that, I think, is a fitting gift. Yes. Until whenever, lady.’

And in one fluid motion, Sharpsoft knelt by the bedside, kissed her fingertips, winked, and then – Solace was not entirely sure how – he was gone, his odd pronouncement left hovering in the air like an indecisive bird. She blinked, and then found that she was lying in bed, as if she'd never sat up, as if Sharpsoft's visit were only a dream. Manx and Electra breathed softly on the mattress beside her, their own placid rhythms inviting sleep. But Solace was no longer tired.

She rose, shutting the door silently as she slipped into the hall. Her fingers ached oddly from Sharpsoft's kiss, an icy burn, as though she'd plunged them into frost. Passing by Glide's room, the skin at the top of her spine began to tingle. She stopped, listened, waited. Carefully, she opened the door and peered in, hugging the frame.

Face down, Glide was passed out on the bed, his head turned slightly to one side. His lips were moving. Remembering what Manx had said about different languages and dreams, she stepped into the room. It wasn't as if she'd be able to understand him, but she was curious as to whether or not it was true. As she struggled to listen, the diverse sounds tickled her ears. Was the cadence familiar? Abruptly, the room seemed to spin sideways, and for a moment Solace was so dizzy that she almost fell. Her hand throbbed, sending a barb of frozen pain shooting up through her arm, shoulder, neck, jaw, skull. Staggering, she was pierced by a moment of utter uncertainty –
who am I
? – and then, just as bizarrely, reality clicked back into place, and her sense of self with it. Shaking a little, she straightened. The disorientation had been so sudden and inexplicable that it almost might not have happened: except that it
had,
she knew it had. Frowning, she leaned closer to Glide, wondering if the strange vertigo had affected him too. As best she could tell, he hadn't even moved; he was still dreaming. Puzzled, she made one more effort at listening – and stepped back, shocked.

The words made sense
.

She blinked, touched her ears, blinked again. The words weren't English: she was
translating
. The content of the dialogue didn't even register: the fact of her comprehension was strange enough. She backed away, infinitely more frightened by this sudden burgeoning of talent than she'd ever been of Sharpsoft, but found she was unable to leave the room. Curiosity pinned her like a tack to a noticeboard, until, breath quickening, she forced herself close again. As she listened, Glide switched languages; once, twice, Hebrew to Latin, Latin to Arabic. His voice was thick with sleep, the pronunciation muddled and scrunched, but intelligible. And yet Glide, despite his use of real languages, was talking random nonsense, disconnected sentences strung one after the other like flotsam on a fisherman's line, dialect changing almost with each new thought.

‘Save the eldest,’ he whispered. ‘But, no – she oughtn't have come. It's dangerous. What price for the one at left? More trouble than it's worth. If Simru finds out, there'll be more than tax to pay. We'll burn an offering. Need a new mizzen-mast after the last storm. Come home safely. Please.’

Fragments,
she thought.
They're all fragments
.

More puzzled still and similarly shaken, Solace finally left the room, making sure to pull the door shut behind her. How much strangeness did this new life hold? Moving automatically, she headed downstairs, focusing on the familiar. Sunlight was valiantly struggling into the lounge through the cluttered skylight, although neither Jess nor Evan was in a fit state to notice, both still sprawled in sleep. For a moment, Solace wondered if she should wake up Manx and tell him what had happened, but decided against it. No. Until she knew what was going on and what (if anything) it meant, there was no need to tell anyone. No need to create a fuss.