Walking Shadows (26 page)

What the kitchen didn't have was a decent sharp knife. Bloody holiday rental houses.

Finally, I worked the strip of cloth around my wrists loose and wrenched my hands free. My wrists
were sore but relatively undamaged. I wondered what my face looked like, after all those casually
delivered slaps. My neck was hurting and a bastard of a headache was blossoming in the side of my
skull.

I soaked the cloth in cold water at the kitchen sink and dabbed my face with it. My face hurt,
but at least there wasn't any blood. The chill of it was soothing.

"How is that feeling?"

"Oh fine thanks, Evan," I said, turning. "My massively bruised and swollen face
won't interfere with my supermodel career in the slightest. Do thank your boy Abe for not breaking
any actual bones while he was at it."

"I'll do that," he said blandly, "Considering he might easily have done."

"What do you people want?"

He sighed, as though that was a question too complex for examination.

"You are such a prick." I belatedly remembered the relative power of our positions. I
curbed my impulse to share further character readings.

"You're probably right," said Evan, and it struck me that he sounded like nothing so
much as an old, bored vampire unable to drum up either ire or humour for anything in a world gone
humdrum.

"Why don't you tell me what you want?" I suggested.

"So you can tell me to go to hell?"

"It'll pass the time."

A half-hearted smile made a fleeting appearance. "I want to know where Mundy took
everyone."

"I don't know."

"See?"

"I didn't tell you to go to hell. I said I don't know. I don't. I wasn't in on the planning
for that."

"What were you doing there, then?"

To be honest, I didn't know myself. Was it because I was so good at spectacularly bad ideas? That
I couldn't keep my nose out of other people's business? Yup. That was the one.

"My friend needed to be there and I wanted to keep an eye on him," I said, deciding to
keep it simple. I felt an unreasonable stab of resentment. I both wanted Gary to be safe and to come
crashing through windows like Errol Flynn to rescue me. I couldn't decide which of us was the bigger
idiot.

"What were you doing at your 'friend's' house on Monday?"

"I needed to see him."

"About?"

"A place he could stay where
you
couldn't find him."

"His welfare is important to you?"

"Look, Gary isn't like the others. Why can't you leave him out of it?"

"They're all alike," said Evan.

"What about him?" I nodded at Abe, who had returned wearing fresh clothes.

"Abe's different, like I said."

"So is Gary. You can't murder him for what you think he
might
be like."

"It isn't murder." For the first time, Evan's reply betrayed feeling. Vehemence.
Defiance. Defensiveness.

"What do you call it, then?"

"Justice."

"Who for?"

"Those they've killed."

"Gary's never killed anyone." No-one human, anyway, and only on request. I decided not
to clarify.

"Self-murder," Abe made an unexpected contribution. He wasn't passionate or angry when
he said it. "That is a sin."

Evan closed his eyes wearily and I looked at Abe. "Pardon?"

"Abominations in the eyes of the Lord," said Abe, in the longest speech I'd heard him
deliver, and he might as well have been rattling off a shopping list, "To become unholy, they
agree to die. Self-murder. Sin. We cleanse the world of sin."

"You're undead," I said to him, "That means you committed self-murder
too."

"I have earned absolution," he said, very clearly, looking at Evan.

Evan looked like he would have liked to crawl under the carpet and stay there.

"You're a piece of work." Contempt curdled my voice. Cold bastard. Lying to me. Using
me. Flashes of memory of Evan and Abe trying to kill Gary. There were no words to describe the
feelings roaring inside me.

Evan's eyes bored into mine. All those angles and planes I had found so beautiful in his face had
become stark and harsh.

"You hypocrite, Lissa. Look at you. Consorting with them. Protecting them."

"At least I'm not a
murderer
."

"It's not murder."

"
You tried to kill my friend
." The rage broke out in a sob, and the fact I was
crying only fuelled my fury. "You're just another… another
thing
that rips up
what's important to me. You're no better than that undead bitch who murdered Daniel and turned my
mother."

"Your mother is…?"

"You kill whoever you like, whoever gets in your way," I shouted over the top of his
startled interjection, "Whether they're human, whether they've ever hurt anybody. You're worse.
You're supposed to be human. You're supposed to be
better
than they are."

Bastard.
Bastard
. Judging me when he didn't know a damned thing, about me, about Gary,
about any of it.

His half-stunned, half-contemptuous expression dissolved when my fist connected with his side of
his face. I didn't have the strength or the training to do any real damage, but it was pretty
satisfying anyway. At least until Abe pounced and pinned my arms to my side.

Evan explored the bones around his eye socket as he glowered at me. "You've got a lot of
explaining to do."

"I do not have to explain any part of my life to you, you cold-hearted fucker." I held
on to my rage, though I could feel it ebbing, replaced by that yawning chasm of loss once more. I
wanted to hate Evan. I was so angry with him. For being a killer. For not being the man I thought he
was on Sunday. I missed his laugh and his smile and his skin and
damn him, damn him, damn him to
all hells.

"Are you protecting your mother as well?"

More mental
damning
. I hadn't meant to let that slip out. Unhappily, I had to concede that
I was protecting her too. It was one thing to threaten her in defence of my sister. It was entirely
another to give her up to a professional psychopath.

"My mother is dead," I said darkly, which was sort of true, "And I wish you were
too." That was an outright lie, but I was furious and scared.

Evan drew a deep, unsteady breath. "I don't know what to do with you, Lissa."

"You can let me go."
So I don't have to look at you and keep hurting.

Sorrow passed fleetingly over his stark features. "I can't. Not yet. Not until I know
everything you know about them."

"I hate you." I thought perhaps if I said it, it would be true. I should hate him now.
It would be more convenient if I could.

"I'm sure you do. Abe, help me tie her up." He was all stoic detachment once more.

Abe shoved me into a kitchen chair. I bucked. He held me down while Evan rummaged in the little
suitcase. He emerged with a length of plastic washing line, which he wound around my wrists and then
my ankles. I thought about screaming for help, and then about being gagged again, and remained
silent. My head was throbbing and I felt queasy.

Back into the bag for Evan, and he brought out three things that made me, finally, really
frightened. A sharp knife, a box of syringes and a bottle of opaque liquid. He opened the bottle,
dipped the first empty, uncapped syringe into it and drew out a full measure of liquid.

My heart was hammering while I watched him put the full syringe on the table and fill a second
one.

"Get Lissa a glass of water, Abe. Help her to drink it."

Abe obeyed, and I watched while Evan filled each of the five needles in turn. That left the
bottle empty. The last syringe he held up to the light, checking its level. Then he looked at
me.

"No. Don't. Don't you put. That filthy stuff. In. Me." My voice was hitching with
terror, "That. Killed. Paul. Please. Don't. Don't."

"This isn't for you," said Evan reassuringly, as though it was wrong to think he could
do such an abominable thing.

Abe held the glass of water to my mouth. I turned aside, spilling it down my face and shirt. I
had no idea what he might have put in it. I was thirsty, but didn't dare drink. I wanted to cry, but
didn't want them to see me do it. I wanted to shout, but I didn't want to be gagged again. I wanted
to go home. I wanted it so hard I was shivering.

"Who is it for, then?" I rasped out, "What is it?"

"Home-bake heroin, though I think you've worked that out already. Some other stuff as well.
Mostly heroin. Their physiology reacts badly to it. It doesn't kill them, of course, but it weakens
them." While he spoke, Evan drew another empty syringe from the box, rolled up his sleeve and
carefully slid the tip of the needle into the muscle of his left forearm.

"That's why they don't like drinking from humans who use drugs," he continued. "It
doesn't merely taste bad, or render the experience less effective." Dexterously, he pulled the
plunger back with one hand and the syringe slowly filled with blood. "Even filtered through a
human body, most drugs are debilitating to their metabolism."

When the syringe was full he carefully pulled it out and pressed his thumb briefly over the
pinprick wound. "Heroin's the most effective drug we've found. The purer the better. The trick
is getting close enough to inject it."

He squirted the syringe of blood into a small jar, and then methodically dipped each
heroin-filled syringe into it to draw a little blood into the tube. The liquids combined to a
flushed pink.

"It's quite kind, really," he continued, "You saw how quickly we work. A shot of
this. A stab to the heart. Burning. It's not about making them suffer." He finished capping the
syringes.

"What's that for? The blood?"

Evan showed a gleam of interest - perhaps at the notion that I could still be curious about what
he was up to while simultaneously frightened for my life.

"Their bodies can resist foreign matter generally speaking, but not blood. We haven't been
able to identify the constituent elements of vampire blood yet, although we know it metabolises
human haemoglobin to replicate itself. A little blood in the heroin acts like a kind of Trojan
Horse, and guarantees the drug metabolises quickly. Otherwise it tends to seep out of the puncture
wound before much harm is done."

Evan was obviously appreciating the opportunity to expound - maybe so he wouldn't have to think
about what he was supposed to do with me now.

"As far as we've been able to determine, recent blood intake speeds up the few metabolic
processes they have. Those processes make their skin tougher over time. That's also why they become
stronger and faster, incrementally. It's ironic that they drink blood to make them feel more human.
The act is what takes them further away from their humanity and renders them more alien."

It was the most eloquent I had ever heard him. Seriously, he and Gary might have got on like a
house on fire with regard to matters vampiric, if the son of a bitch wasn't so hell bent on murder.
Evan's knowledge also raised serious questions about its source.

"So how did you work all this out, then?" I knew I wouldn't like the answer.

Evan's expression was surprisingly sheepish. Abe responded. "I subject myself to the genius
and mercy of my companions, for the sake of God's work." His tone was proud and defiant.

"You let them experiment on you?"

"The damned are not so easy to capture and hold for the purpose," Abe explained
scornfully before tilting his head thoughtfully. "Although it has been achieved. My cousin
William learned much about the amount of flesh a vampire can lose before it dies. Did he not,
Evan?"

Evan looked grim and I felt ill as I realised what this implied.

"A lot of awful things were done in the early days while our family learned how to
survive," said Evan with a hint of apology. "It's better now, isn't it Abe? More
humane."

"Yes." Abe agreed, "My father Samuel died killing for the Lord. And my uncle. Many
nephews and their grandsons. Evan's father has lived longer than any of them. Long enough to pass
the mantle to his sons. Perhaps even to his grandson."

"Yes, well, that's enough Abe."

"Aye, sir."

Evan gave Abe a wounded look, then snatched up the empty bottles and took them to the kitchen. He
returned with a bottle of powder, a plastic container of filtered water and a clean jar. The knife
he left on the table. I tried not to think about why by thinking about Abe instead.

A family heirloom, Evan had said. I looked at Abe.

"How long have you been doing this?" I asked.

"My father made me the instrument of his holy work in Salem in the Year of Our Lord
seventeen hundred and three." He recited it as though it was well-worn scripture, unmoved. The
same was not true for me. The implications were horrific. Abe looked like a teenage boy.

"How old were you?"

"In my seventeenth year," said Abe, with that tinge of pride again, as though this made
him special in some unspeakable way.

I wondered if Evan thought it was such a marvellous thing, and found him watching Abe with sad
gravitas. "Half his family had been killed by vampires," he said, "On the trek across
the country to Salem."

"We were hunted," agreed Abe, "And when my grandparents and aunt and uncle and
their children were dead, and then my sister and my mother, my father prayed for guidance. God told
him to use the devil to fight the devil. My brother offered his life in sacrifice, and waited in the
night for the hunter and begged to be made eternal." His eyes were on mine, curious for my
response, "He did not have faith, and he died."

"So your father made you go." What kind of man did that to his son? The thought was
there and gone. The kind of man who has lost everything else, and has to find a way to fight
back.

"I chose God's path," Abe scowled. Of course he did. Even at 17 years old, he had
chosen to fight his own way.