Walking Shadows (38 page)

"Yet He rejects you. God will not take you back."

"No," Gary slumped.

"And if He will not have you, who can at least enter His house, He will certainly not have
me."

Gary raised his bleak gaze to meet Abe's. "I can't speak for God. I've never seen any sign
there is one."

Evan was watching them closely, eyes flicking from one to the other. "How did you make
yourself do it?" he asked into the strained space, voice flat and hard.

Gary blinked at him. "I don't know."

"It wasn't the first time," I blurted out. Gary pulled a face, unhappy with my
revelation. Abe and Evan both looked at me in surprise, like they'd forgotten I was there.
"Gary's been coming into my house uninvited for almost a year." I bit my tongue on the
I told you he was different
that hovered between us.

The information seemed to hurt Abe more than ever. Evan was thoughtful. "Working your way up
to churches, huh?"

"Not on purpose," Gary said. "I thought you were going to kill me."

"And the other night, at my house?"

"You were going to kill her."

"No," the denial was harsh, distraught. "Never."

"You'd already hurt her," Gary said, his expression grim.

"Evan did not hurt her," Abe said quietly. "I did. She is the consort of the
devil."

Gary snorted in an incredulous laugh. "You're a crazy bastard. Lissa's about as opposite to
evil as you can get. You're the ones who keep killing people."

Evan's face was awash with anguish and regret.

"You were right," he said, "I apologise. For everything."

I wanted to tell him that his apologies were too late and utterly useless to me, after the hell
he had put me through this week. That I still hated him.

What I said was: "Thanks for helping with Gary, just now."

He grimaced.

Abe turned to Evan. "There is no reward for us, is there?"

"No." The planes of Evan's bruised face were sharp with all kinds of pain. "I
don't think so."

Abe nodded faintly and turned back to Gary. "I wish I knew how you did this thing. Or I wish
I knew why I cannot."

Gary's brows drew together in misery.

"It is time to end this godless mission." Abe lifted his face once more to Evan.
"Please. I want to stop now, Evan."

Evan dropped his hand to Abe's white-blond hair and patted the boy's head awkwardly. "Don't
think about that now, Abe."

"When you started this, and took Miles's place, you said there might be an end to it. You
swore it to me."

"I only meant to save myself, as you said."

"That does not matter. Not if I want to go."

"If it's what you really want."

"It is." Abe's expression softened with hope, then clouded again. "I do not think
I can do it by myself."

"I wouldn't let you," said Evan gently. "You're my responsibility."

"Your burden."

"No, Abe."

"I am." Abe nursed his twisted arm, the hollows of his eternally young face, with its
bullet-wound furrow, dark and pitiful. "Your father will be furious."

"Livid," agreed Evan. "Maybe I won't go home for a while."

"It is his life wasted too."

"Our fathers have a lot to answer for."

"Yes. At least your son will be spared this farce. That will make this easier for you."

By the look on his face, Evan didn't really think so. Not in the ways that counted.

Gary stirred. He dragged the back of his hand across his face, spreading blood. He stared at the
scarlet marks on his skin, then determinedly away from them to Evan. "You can't do it
here."

"We'll find somewhere," said Evan.

"I've got a shed. It's private. I've got… stuff you can use."

"You said…" I tried to speak, and a half-sob obliterated the sentence. I tried
again. "Gary, you said you wouldn't do that anymore."

Gary stared at me, his expression nearly blank. I reached out to touch his cheek, to wipe more of
my blood from his face with the pad of my thumb. Burrowing into my satchel, still with me, I
withdrew a pack of tissues. I spat on the corner of one and wiped blood from under his eyes and the
corner of his mouth. He let me.

"Wouldn't do what?" asked Evan.

"Kill vampires," replied Gary quietly. "Not even if they want me to."

"You don't have to," Evan said. "That's for me."

The shift in mood was peculiar, yet somehow also right. Gary and I had given up being in fear for
our lives and adopted instead a weary acceptance of the unspoken truce. Perhaps we were all too hurt
and exhausted to maintain the required emotional pitch. As I cleaned the last rivulet of dried blood
from Gary's face, I thought I'd never seen him so drawn.

"It's going to be hard, getting to your house," Evan said, "looking like we
do."

"Your hire car?" I began tentatively.

"In the wrecker's yard by now, I imagine."

"Yes," agreed Abe in his flat, tired voice, "I had to tear things off it to get
out, and to get Evan. It is all smashed. Like us."

His moping was unhelpful and therefore irritating. "There are other options."

Evan's enquiring look at my sudden animation made me more irked, since I couldn't actually think
of any.

And then I realised that there
was
another option. Richmond had more than its fair share
of young, child-free, professional couples. And, being summer, those couples liked to take holidays
after the kids returned to school. Which meant there must be a handful of temporarily empty houses
somewhere in this neighbourhood.

Gary helped me to search the nearest streets until we found an old worker's cottage, renovated to
charming perfection and, according to Gary's senses, empty and dog-free. He had recovered enough to
climb onto the roof and pry a skylight open. A short while later he opened a side window. Abe and
Evan were beckoned out of the shadows where they waited and we clambered inside.

I'd have felt bad about it, but we weren't planning to steal anything. Well, anything important.
And ours was the greater need.

We took turns to shower, washing away blood and grime. Evan went first, while I poked in the
wardrobe and found some clothes that would suffice. I found a clean button-up shirt for Abe, a
too-short tracksuit for Evan, and a too-tight T-shirt to replace Gary's bloodstained gear. For
myself, a blue T-shirt would have to do. I hoped it wasn't somebody's favourite.

My upper arm was more mended that it had a right to be. In the kitchen I got Gary to cut my shirt
off that shoulder with the scissors we found, while Evan and Abe got a better view of their week's
handiwork. Bruises. Flesh wounds. Blood-smeared skin and blood soaked clothes. I didn't know why I
wasn't angrier with them, though I did find a little vengeful satisfaction in their shamed
expressions.

Getting dressed again after my shower was painful but not impossible. On rejoining the miserable
crew in the kitchen, Evan stuffed all our tattered and bloody clothes inside a sports bag he had
found. He'd cleaned the surfaces of dirt, blood, fingerprints. He'd even wiped down the pile of
plastic Australian banknotes he'd left in the middle of the kitchen table as compensation. A fine
bunch of desperados we made.

In our ill-fitting plunder, Abe, Evan and I climbed out the side window. We waited in the
garden's leafy shadows while Gary relocked the window and exited via the skylight. Whatever injuries
he'd sustained in the church seemed not to be bothering him, and he jumped lightly down from the
roof.

We made our way to the tram line on Bridge Road, far from the Burnley train station and the
police who were doubtless doing the rounds there. We stepped onto the last eastward tram of the
evening, heading away from the city centre. One of the pluses of looking like a bunch of unemployed
layabouts was that everyone else on the tram gave us a wide berth.

Conversation, unsurprisingly, lagged. We sat on facing seats - me beside Gary, Evan beside Abe -
and tried not to look at each other. When the silence passed beyond strained and grew exquisitely
painful, I broke.

"I don't even know why we're helping you," I addressed Evan darkly.

"Neither do I. You have no reason." The sadness in his face left me nowhere to go.

"It has to stop," said Gary sharply, "And we need to keep Magdalene, Smith and the
police all out of it until it's over, or it'll be a worse mess than it already is."

Evan studied his knuckles, as though chided. Abe, who had been staring vacantly out of the
window, regarded Gary pensively.

"Will it hurt?" he asked.

"Yeah. Sorry." Gary actually sounded it, too. "The older you are, the longer it
takes to die. If you have some of that stuff you've been injecting into people it might make it
faster."

"We haven't any left," said Evan hollowly, "We had to clear out the holiday house
and hide the gear. I never got a chance to make any more."

My hand rested on the flap of my satchel. "I've got a syringe in my bag. Abe dropped it when
he came after us tonight. I picked it up. In case."

"I only wanted to make him talk to me."

Our weird conversation wound down as we ran out of things to say. The tram sped on through the
night in its own dedicated lane, hurtling past the traffic and the offices along the suburban
highway. We alighted at a large, bare intersection near the end of the line and walked up the hill
towards Glen Waverley.

Evan was limping though clearly in better shape than he'd looked an hour ago. Abe, on the other
hand, looked worse. Physically there was no deterioration, although his arm and foot were still
bizarrely twisted. It was more that he was strangely deflated. He reminded me of Alberto.
That's
what it looks like to give up
, I thought.

We were approaching Gary's house from the opposite direction to that which I usually took from
the train station. It seemed to take longer. Perhaps it was the company. The house had its usual
frozen-in-time air. Gary fished his keys out of his pocket as we approached the door.

"Go around the side," he said firmly to Abe, "or over the top. I'll meet you out
the back."

Evan made no protest at the very clear indication that Abe was not invited into Gary's home. I
thought it would be a near thing if he let Evan in, but after a moment's hesitation, Gary stepped
inside, let me through then waited with a haughty expression. Evan swallowed, then meekly followed
us into the hall.

"Take him to the backyard," Gary instructed me. "Don't let him touch anything. I
have to get the shed keys." Gary tramped to his room and I led Evan down the corridor into the
kitchen.

"We saved lives too, you know," Evan said, a hint of defiance in his tone. "It
hasn't been a complete waste. Over the centuries my family has eliminated real killers. Other people
got to live because of what generations of my family have sacrificed."

"I don't doubt it," I said. "But we're not talking about the past any more."
A sharp rap on the back door indicated Abe's impatience, and I released the deadlock and opened the
door. "Hold your horses…"

The door swung quickly open, shoved from the other side, and there stood not Abe, but Mundy. He
was smiling. It wasn't pleasant.

Evan flinched. I stood at the doorway, immobile, wondering where Abe was. I hadn't heard any
commotion, which meant either that Abe was still making his way across the roof or that Mundy had
already despatched him with disturbing efficiency. Mundy was leaning on the door jamb, on his
remaining hand. The other arm he held close to his side.

A footfall in the kitchen arrested Mundy's piercing eye. "Hooper. I see that you gather
fools around you. They do not render you less foolish."

"What are you doing here?" Gary made no attempt to disguise the fact he was fed up to
the teeth with every damn thing happening this evening. Still, it was probably not the best time to
antagonise Mundy.

"You can't possibly imagine that you're
welcome
here," I said pointedly. I've
never been good at picking my moments either and, like Gary, I was heartily sick of this entire
night.

Mundy's eyes narrowed. "I hear the hunters were tracking your
pet
in order to locate
you, Hooper." Mundy's eye raked over Evan and me. "And I am wondering why they wanted you
so particularly. Especially considering the boy found you. Before he fell."

Did Mundy think that the fall had been the end of Abe?

"How do you know what happened at the Diamond?" I challenged.

"Magdalene is failing to keep me abreast," Mundy scowled, "but I have other
sources."

"One being the barman at the club in question, I take it." The same one who had alerted
Magdalene to our presence, I assumed. Mr Bartender was apparently doing his best to keep in good
with both of Melbourne's vampiric ringleaders. Perhaps he hadn't yet noticed that Magdalene was
deliberately sidelining Mundy.

Mundy gave me a cold look.

"It doesn't matter," said Gary.

"It matters that they sought you out, above the rest of us," said Mundy darkly. He
glared at Evan. "What is it you want from this… infant?" The scorn made my spine
stiffen with indignation on Gary's behalf.

Evan swallowed hard, his eyes wide, and I thought it was taking a huge effort for him to not look
past Mundy into the back yard to see what had happened to Abe. If Abe was still out there, he might
be the only escape option we had.

"They heard I might be able to give them some tips," said Gary, stepping up behind us
so that Evan and I were hemmed between the two of them. "Seeing as how you've trained me to the
work so well."

Evan shot a dubious look at Gary. I remembered we hadn't exactly explained that part.

Mundy's voice dropped, low and silky and utterly dangerous. "Do you plan to join them,
then?"

"Don't be stupid," Gary said, more injudiciously than everything else combined.

"Then what is this hunter doing in your house?"