The Cold Kiss of Death (20 page)
Okay, now she was really starting to creep me out.
‘That’s great!’ I looked up at the map above the windows. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but my stop’s coming up ...’ I edged to the side to stress my point.
‘No problem.’ She took my hand and pressed the leaflet firmly into it. ‘Please, do call us.’ She smiled again, a knowing look that raised the hairs at the back of my neck. Turning to retrace her steps, she added, ‘Remember, when you need us, we can help.’
Was she trying to give me some sort of personal message, or was this just her normal spiel? If so, she was weirder than most of the Soulers I’d come across. Frowning, I skimmed the leaflet; it looked like the usual
come-and-be-saved
stuff. I dismissed it and handed it to the waiting Samuel.
come-and-be-saved
stuff. I dismissed it and handed it to the waiting Samuel.
‘Ta, miss.’ He took it gently between knobbly forefinger and thumb, then, trainers flashing, he clomped along the carriage to give it back to the poodle-perm Souler.
Recycling at its best.
I watched her from the corner of my eye until the train pulled into the next station. The doors hissed open and as I got out a flash made me turn: she had her phone aimed at me and I blinked as it flashed again. She smiled and I watched her with a sense of mounting frustration as the train accelerated away.
Fuck. She
had
twigged who I was, or maybe Samuel had given her the nod when she’d asked. Question was, who was she going to send the photo to - the police? Her boss? Someone else? And what was all that
we want to help
stuff about? Still, there was nothing I could do about it right now, other than maybe ditching the Glamour spell soon - it wasn’t much of a disguise if everyone knew what I looked like.
had
twigged who I was, or maybe Samuel had given her the nod when she’d asked. Question was, who was she going to send the photo to - the police? Her boss? Someone else? And what was all that
we want to help
stuff about? Still, there was nothing I could do about it right now, other than maybe ditching the Glamour spell soon - it wasn’t much of a disguise if everyone knew what I looked like.
I raced through the streets to HOPE, with the growing feeling I was being followed. I checked behind me a couple of times, expecting to see Cosette again now I’d escaped the dryads. But she didn’t put in an appearance, and neither did anyone else, despite my jitters. Nervous adrenalin fuelled me and it wasn’t long before I reached the welcome lights of the clinic.
The doors swished open and I rushed in. Hari, the night receptionist, stared out from behind his glass screen and gave me the full force of his trademark
you better not give me any trouble
expression. It almost made my nervousness disappear: a yellow- and brown-streaked eight-foot-tall troll with fists the size of boulders doesn’t have to do much more than frown to cow most patients, but underneath, Hari was a big softie.
you better not give me any trouble
expression. It almost made my nervousness disappear: a yellow- and brown-streaked eight-foot-tall troll with fists the size of boulders doesn’t have to do much more than frown to cow most patients, but underneath, Hari was a big softie.
‘Yes, miss?’ he asked in his deep rumble.
Hari wasn’t in on the little plan Grace and I had come up with, so I leaned against the chest-high reception counter, still catching my breath, and aiming for desperate, panted, ‘I’ve got to see Dr Hartwell; I’ve run out of gear.’ At least the gasping would give my venom-junkie play-acting an edge of realism. Trouble was, with all the chasing and running and adrenalin speeding my sidhe metabolism, it wasn’t going to be play-acting for much longer - like I really needed something else to worry about.
‘What’s the name?’ he rumbled.
‘Debby, with a y,’ I said, giving the name Grace had told me to use.
‘Well, Debby-with-a-y, you just go and sit yourself down in the waiting area. Dr Hartwell is a very busy lady’ - he treated me to another deep-fissure frown - ‘but I’ll let her know you’re here.’
I walked past the bank of lifts and the fire-exit stairwell door, trying not to give in to the urge to push through it and run straight up to the fourth floor where the clinic was. Instead I played my part, letting my eyes glaze over while staring at the stippled peach wallpaper, the gold-framed botanical prints and the beige vinyl wipe-clean floor tiles. I wrinkled my nose at the strong smell of pine disinfectant, which didn’t quite cover the underlying scent of liquorice and even fainter trace of blood. Two rows of pumpkin-orange chairs lined either side of the waiting area, along with a slightly battered vending machine and the token magazine table with its collection of out-of-date glossies. As I approached, my steps faltered and my heart thudded in my chest. One of the chairs was occupied. Damn. I’d forgotten about him. I thought about turning back, but I couldn’t think where else to go - and I wanted to see Grace.
How much trouble could one vamp be anyway?
Chapter Thirteen
V
amps were always trouble, so okay, that was a stupid question. But Bobby, the vamp sitting in HOPE’s waiting area next to the soft drinks machine, was just a youngster; he’d only taken the Gift three years ago. And he was supposed to be on his best behaviour.
amps were always trouble, so okay, that was a stupid question. But Bobby, the vamp sitting in HOPE’s waiting area next to the soft drinks machine, was just a youngster; he’d only taken the Gift three years ago. And he was supposed to be on his best behaviour.
I stood opposite him, leaning against the wall, hands stuck in my pockets.
He lifted his head and looked me over, his lips quirked in a sulky, sexy way, his grey eyes shadowed and moody. The expression was one he’d perfected for the camera as Mr October, one of London’s hot celebrity calendar vamps. The hair in its French plait, the ankle-length leather coat, jeans and silk T-shirt, all of them black, completed the look - a look that had teenage girls and not-so-teenage woman swooning with desire and queuing out the door of the Blue Heart Vampire Club in a desperate effort to Get Fanged by the month’s star attraction. Of course, his recent arrest for the murder of his human girlfriend and the subsequent, very public clearing of all charges had done nothing to hurt his popularity. If I didn’t know better - having been instrumental in the ‘clearing’ bit - the words Publicity Stunt might have entered my mind.
The silver circlet encrusted with yellow citrines that banded his head and the silver handcuffs that shackled his hands together added a touch of the mediaeval to his übermodern Goth look, and enhanced his bad-boy persona. Luckily neither the media nor the vamp PR machine had yet caught onto that fact, otherwise they’d probably have had him posing for the camera with all that magical hardware.
Not that the cynic in me couldn’t see the attraction. Mr October, a.k.a. Bobby, made a very handsome picture. But unlike his devoted fang-fans, he wasn’t a picture I wanted hanging on my wall ... there’s nothing sexy about a frightened sixteen-year-old blood-pet on a frozen January dawn in the middle of Sucker Town, which is what Bobby was the first time I’d met him, on one of my rescue missions for Grianne. Of course, that was four years ago, and he’d accepted the Gift since then, which sort of changed things for him. But hey, maybe his chemistry just wasn’t right for me.
Although by the way he was giving my Glamour the glad-eye, his own chemistry was thinking something different.
His quirk widened into a smile and his nostrils flared as he sniffed. Then he took a longer, more noticeable sniff and consternation replaced the smile. ‘You told Hari your name was Debby,’ he said accusingly. ‘Debby-with-a-y.’
Vampire hearing, gotta love it. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘You’re her, aren’t you?’
‘You going to grass me up to Hari?’
He glanced at the glassed-in reception booth, where the troll’s bald yellow and brown head was bobbing in time to his iTrod, the overlarge iPod made for trolls. ‘No, of course not,’ he said, sounding aggrieved, ‘not after the way you helped me.’
I nodded as if it was the answer I’d expected, but inside the knot in my stomach loosened.
He made a show of studying the handcuffs round his wrists. ‘I’m here to see my dad, y’know,’ he said. ‘Or I will be as soon as the guard comes to take me up,’ he added, resignation dimming his face.
Bobby’s dad was a regular human, and was hospitalised in a regular human ward - albeit a private room - in the main part of the hospital, but Bobby being a vamp meant he had to be processed through HOPE before he could visit. The magical silverware was a precaution to stop him using his vampire tricks on any of the other patients, a compromise Bobby’s lawyer had won after he’d complained not allowing Bobby to visit his sick father was in breach of Bobby’s ‘human’ rights.
‘How is your dad?’ I asked. ‘Has there been any change recently?’
‘There’s been the odd brainwave fluctuation.’ The cuffs chinked as he clasped his hands, his knuckles turning white with tension. ‘But he’s not come out of the coma.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and I was, and not just because I felt sort of responsible for his dad’s condition - part of the whole ‘clearing Bobby of murder’ thing had involved Bobby’s dad ending up in the way when a paranoid clairvoyant had tried to kill me. I’d met his dad, and the guy hadn’t deserved to end up as another victim.
‘Can’t Hari tell who you are?’ Bobby asked, curious.
‘Trolls can’t sense magic.’
‘So they’re not like the goblins then? They can’t tell if a vamp is using
mesma
, or putting a mind-lock on someone?’
mesma
, or putting a mind-lock on someone?’
‘They’re like goblins in that magic doesn’t affect them, but whereas goblins are super-sensitive to any magic, trolls are mostly impervious to it.’ I folded my arms. ‘But trolls have fantastic eyesight. They can see for miles.’
‘But Hari, he can’t see through’ - he waved his joined hands at my body - ‘what is it?’
‘A Glamour, it’s a spell that changes the surface appearance only.’
‘It’s a bit ...’ his voice trailed off as he ran his eyes down my body. ‘I mean, you look totally hot, but it’s the type of figure that’s going to get you noticed.’
I sniffed. ‘Yeah, well, the look wasn’t my choice.’ I pointed at his own outfit. ‘It’s not like you’re toning it down yourself, are you?’
‘I’ve got to go to work later. My shift starts at ten and it saves time if I come here dressed. And anyway, it’s the only coat I’ve got.’ He gave the leather coat an almost embarrassed look. ‘I haven’t got the hang of regulating my temperature yet.’
The lift dinged, and I looked up, hoping that it was Grace, or even Bobby’s guard come to take him visiting, but it was just a couple leaving. Doing small-talk with a vampire was making me itch, and itching is never a good sign around vampires, not when you’ve got 3V and it might be the early stages of a venom-flush.
‘I mean, I know I should’ve worked out how to do the temperature thing by now,’ Bobby carried on, getting up and staring morosely into the depths of the vending machine. ‘All the others had it down pat six months after they accepted the Gift.’
I did the mental maths: he’d accepted the Gift at seventeen, probably one of the last before the Parliamentary Bill changed the age of consent to twenty-one. Whatever vamps look like when they accept the Gift, that’s how they stay for the rest of their lives - a prospect that makes all the wannabes head straight to the gym.
Looking too young
had fast become a problem for some of the centuries-old vamps who wanted a slice of the celebrity cake but didn’t look old enough to buy a drink, and the market for toyboys, even ones with fangs, isn’t all that healthy. I briefly wondered if Bobby regretted taking the Gift when he did, or even taking it at all. Still, not my concern.
Looking too young
had fast become a problem for some of the centuries-old vamps who wanted a slice of the celebrity cake but didn’t look old enough to buy a drink, and the market for toyboys, even ones with fangs, isn’t all that healthy. I briefly wondered if Bobby regretted taking the Gift when he did, or even taking it at all. Still, not my concern.
‘I shouldn’t worry,’ I said, and tucked my hands back in my pockets to stop myself scratching and stared at the lifts, willing Grace to put in an appearance.
‘I’m still working at the Blue Heart,’ Bobby said, breaking the silence and I turned to look at him as he carried on, ‘Albie, the new boss, lets me come and see Dad before work, then I come back for a couple of hours before dawn, once the club’s shut. Albie’s not bad; he’s not into all the power crap and fucking stupid memory games like He is.’
He
was Declan, Bobby’s master and head of the Red Shamrock blood family. Declan had a nasty vamp trick of stealing memories, then giving the memories back piecemeal - something he did at random with his vamps for his own sadistic amusement. He’d made Bobby forget his girlfriend was dead at one point, not something that Bobby looked like he was going to be forgiving anytime soon.
was Declan, Bobby’s master and head of the Red Shamrock blood family. Declan had a nasty vamp trick of stealing memories, then giving the memories back piecemeal - something he did at random with his vamps for his own sadistic amusement. He’d made Bobby forget his girlfriend was dead at one point, not something that Bobby looked like he was going to be forgiving anytime soon.
Bobby gave me a defiant look. ‘I’ve moved out of the Bloody Shamrock.’
‘Oh, right.’ I wasn’t entirely sure what I was meant to say. ‘I couldn’t stand being there any more, not after what happened. ’ He started to pace along the visitor’s chairs. ‘Not when that bitch Fiona still thinks it’s okay to crawl all over me when Declan’s not around. It’s her fault Dad’s in here.’
Fiona was the paranoid clairvoyant who’d tried to kill me; she was also Declan’s human ‘business manager’ a.k.a. daytime flunky and girlfriend all rolled into one.
‘I’ve been thinking about asking to move to another blood family.’ He stopped pacing and stood in the middle of the hallway. ‘You know, petition the High Table for a different master. What do you think?’
I frowned, puzzled. Why was he asking me? ‘I don’t know, Bobby. I’ve heard you can do that, but I’m probably not the best person to ask.’
‘I’ve checked around, on the quiet.’ His expression turned anxious. ‘I don’t want Declan finding out; he’d make sure it never happened. I need to get another master to agree to take me before I petition the High Table - that way, if I’m accepted straight away, Declan can’t object - or at least, he can, and then he gets some sort of compensation, but he can’t stop me going.’>
‘Sounds like you need to talk to the other master vamps, then,’ I said, checking the lifts again.
‘Of course, Albie would be my first choice,’ Bobby carried on, ‘but he’s already told everyone that he’s not interested in taking on anyone else’s vamps. He’s not even going to sponsor anyone for the Gift! He says he’s got too much on his plate already with taking over the Blue Heart.’
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