Walking Shadows (5 page)

"Just do it like you did that time Tug bit me."

In my peripheral vision Gary moved, lowered his head and I shifted my hand at the last minute.
Instead, I clasped Hamish's nearest hand in my own blood-slick ones. His return grip was as tight as
he could make it. Not tight at all.

Hamish's eyes widened. He whimper-gasped and the sound turned briefly to a keening cry at the
back of his throat, and then that passed and his expression flitted from terror to bafflement.

"He's..." Hamish's brow furrowed, "he's licking me."

"Yes," I tried to smile. "He's sealing the bite."

Hamish's look of confusion became more entrenched.

"His saliva has healing properties," I explained as matter-of-factly as I could, trying
to channel all the doctors I had ever despised, suddenly understanding why they sounded so cold.

"Normally, if the bite isn't too deep and hasn't hit an artery, it's enough to stop the
bleeding almost straight away. By morning there isn't even a scar."

"R-really?"

"Yeah. See?" Stretching my neck up to show the flawless skin where my one-time friend
Tug had tried to kill me. "Gary did the same for me once. Now I'm right as rain."

Somehow, I always end up talking like my Nanna when I'm trying to be reassuring. I'm surprised I
didn't pat him on the head, call him 'love' and offer him one of the good biscuits.

The whole time I tried not to look at Gary with his mouth nestled in Hamish's throat. When Gary
finally sat up, however, I couldn't avoid the sight of him, face streaked red, his skin flushed with
the pseudo-life that Hamish's blood had given him. Hamish was staring too.

"There." Gary's hazel eyes looked startlingly on the green side with that almost-life
sparkle behind them. "You'll be right." He glanced at us staring at him and rubbed the
heel of his hand across his chin. He inspected the resulting stain and, with a disturbed frown,
scrubbed his hand clean against his jeans.

"Thanks," said Hamish faintly. "I wish, I wish I'd picked you."

Gary looked startled; his frown deepened. "I don't do that."

"Oh."

"You shouldn't either," I couldn't help saying.

"No," Hamish said, but doubtfully. He lifted a hand to his red-tinged throat, brushing
his fingers over the partially healed gash. "No," he addded, more firmly.

"Can we get out of here now?" Gary asked pointedly, "This place is still on
fire."

Hamish tried to stand up, wobbled and fell halfway through the attempt, so I slung an arm across
his back and supported him. That worked for about two minutes, but the smoke haze was starting to
thicken. Hamish began to cough, an action that threatened to tear the healing wound and set off the
bleeding again. We got briefly entangled in the sodden, smoke-stinking curtains before we staggered
into the main bar.

"What's that awful smell?" Hamish choked out and I was glad I couldn't see Jack's body
at the top of the stairs.

"This way." Gary grabbed my arm and steered us towards the window. He tried to take me
out first but I pulled back.

"Him," I said, pushing Hamish at him. The poor kid was half unconscious with shock.

"Stay down," Gary told me, pushing me towards the floor in case I didn't get the
message. He was all take-charge and energised. I'd only ever seen him like this once before, when
he'd saved my life exactly as he'd just saved Hamish's. Flushed with my blood, his brain finally
sparking the way it never did in his blood-free existence. He'd been getting me and Evie out of a
burning building then too.

"Hold on tight," I heard Gary say. Hamish muttered something back, prompting Gary to
reply, "You can't hurt me, but she'll be really angry with me if I drop you."

There were scrambling noises at the windowsill, and then "I'll be right back!" followed
by the receding sound of a laden vampire climbing down brickwork.

I lay on the floor and sucked in the slightly-less-sooty air, thinking of Evie and how right she
had been to run away to a commune last year, and that if I'd been smarter I'd have joined her.
We
really have to stop doing this, Gary.

The air tasted of smoke. It sometimes tasted like the smell of charred meat, so I was trying not
to vomit. I was also trying not to think about Kate. She would be so angry with me for getting
myself in this god-awful mess to begin with and she would never forgive me for dying on her and
leaving her all alone.

You are not going to die. Really. Gary's coming back for you.

Hands seized my upper arms and I reached up to meet the assistance.

"Hang on tight, Lissa," Gary's voice was in my ear. I nodded, unwilling to attempt
speech in the acrid atmosphere. I clambered onto his back with my arms wrapped around his neck -
another flash of déjà vu - and with his strange, easy strength he climbed out of the
window. The sudden availability of clean oxygen made me gulp for air, then cough violently. He
paused and reached around to steady me.

"Don't let go." His voice was hoarse, from the frantic grip I had across his Adam's
apple. I remembered he didn't have to breathe except to talk and locked my hold even tighter. I
pressed my face into the bright cloth of his shirt and felt his muscles move as we resumed the
downward climb.

Then we were level, steady, and there was the rustling of desiccated leaves and paper in the
blind alley, and hands gently making my own unlock their death grip. I let go and would have fallen,
but he was quick and caught me, and lowered me until I sat in the debris, leaning my forehead
against my bent and shaking knees and learning how to breathe again.

Crouched in a dead end next to a burning building, surrounded by an unknown number
of vampires and their cronies while feeling responsible for at least one of their victims is not a
good place to be. Especially when you can hardly see for the grit in your eyes and your only backup
is a geekvamp who would be picked last for the team, if the undead played sport.

Attempting to listen closely to your surroundings when you can't see or properly breathe yet is
also high on the 'not fun' list. I could discern faint groaning, some papery susurration, rapid
laboured breathing, the distant sound of clanging metal, and the also distant, separate sounds of
breaking glass and, growing swiftly closer, sirens.

"Are you okay?" Gary had crouched beside me. His voice, close to my ear, was barely
above a whisper.

I nodded weakly in answer and found my breath. "How's Hamish?" I murmured back. It was
probably pointless, vampire hearing being what it is, but the instinct to keep my vulnerable, human
concerns private from all these unfriendly people was strong.

"I think I should get him out of here. Beryl's giving him funny looks." The instinct
was clearly just as strong for Gary.

"Can you get him out?"

"I don't want to leave you here."

"I'll be fine," I said, which was more an expression of hope than of confidence.
"You better make it quick, though."

I rose with him, thinking I looked less like a target if I was on my own two feet. Sight, oxygen
intake and sturdiness of limbs mostly restored, I watched Gary crouch in front of Hamish. Hamish did
not look well - waxy-skinned and on the verge of hyperventilating. His stupid friends had
disappeared, along with Smith, which meant they'd abandoned him to this mess. Half of me couldn't
blame them. The other half cursed them for cowards.

Gary stood and helped Hamish to his feet. Hamish wilted. Gary slipped an arm across his back and
glanced around quickly and searchingly for the most suitable escape route from this menacing
oubliette. Hamish leaned trustingly against Gary's side, and Gary led him across the space to the
opposite wall, their feet swishing in the detritus of decades of newspaper and food wrappers. With
some fussing and stumbling, Hamish nearly slithered to the ground, then he was hanging on to Gary's
back and Gary was climbing up a length of pipe. They reached the roof and disappeared over the
rim.

Leaving me alone with the sharp-toothed collective. I stood as straight as I could and turned to
meet Magdalene's eye. I managed to hold it for a whole thirty seconds before deciding my eye was
better spent looking for the bag I'd dropped. The bright blue nylon was easily found in the debris
and I scooped it up.

Either of those things was better than looking at Thomas, lying in a crumpled heap on the ground.
His left leg and arm were at grotesque angles, smashed by the final fall. His limbs and back were
twitching with his efforts to right himself. I was momentarily grateful that he wasn't making any
noise. He looked like he was in agony. Then I shuddered at the silence, which made him seem like a
possessed puppet lurching around, face distorted in noiseless agony.

He was trying to use his relatively good arm to align the broken limbs. When he was done he
grinned triumphantly through the blistering and soot. Or he tried to. His jaw flopped on one side,
the bone so splintered and skin so torn it was barely attached.

Then he turned his head, and I saw it was worse. The side of his head bore a misshapen dent, not
merely smashed in by the fall but excavated. Exposed skull and a wet hollow seething with dark,
strange blood, and that look of dazed confusion on his face.
He knows something's wrong. He
hasn't worked out what, yet.

What functions does that part of the brain control, I thought in the midst of overwhelming pity
and horror. What memories will he never know again? The fall had taken this beyond the fact that
Thomas would never be handsome or suave again, forever now a wreckage of destroyed skin and muscle,
even if the bones mended. It meant brain damage. What did that signify for the undead?

The skin on my wrist tingled with the ghost of an imaginary scar that had never formed. My first
bite. Thomas had been under the impression he was being charming when he did it. In hindsight, his
approach, though creepy, was streets ahead of others, who had generally just tried to tear out my
throat with their teeth. By comparison, I realised that Thomas had been darn near chivalrous. I
could hardly believe I felt any kind of compassion for him.

Beryl had surreptitiously scarpered and I craned my neck in search of her. Anything to avoid
looking at Thomas.

"Wha? Wha?" said Thomas, unable to make the 't' with his broken jaw, and maybe unable
to frame a word past 'what'. His voice still whistled strangely with the air that escaped from
somewhere in his neck, the crusty skin at the corner of his mouth shifted. Revulsion overtook pity
and I hoped I wouldn't be sick.

Instead I looked at Magdalene, who was glaring up at the window of her burning club with disgust,
probably calculating how much it was going to cost to set it all right again.

"You insured?" I asked, unwilling to bear the quiet and unable bring myself to ask her
what was going to happen to Thomas.

Her acid gaze shifted to me. "Of course," she said, then looked up at the window again,
her head cocked as though she was listening to something besides me and the burning of her
livelihood.

When vampires hear something you can't, it's best to pay attention. I peered around the space. At
only four or five metres square and surrounded by tall buildings, you wouldn't think someone could
sneak up, but the area was studded with little alcoves and stumpy insets of alleys that had been
built over. Any number of shadows to skulk in there. Then I noticed that Magdalene's head was angled
upward and I raised my eyes to the roofline.

A shape lurched within a line of deepening shadow and I tried to define it. Someone was climbing
down a ladder embedded in the bricks in one of the longer truncated alleys. Another fire escape.
That made better sense than Smith and those girls having shinnied up Gary's drain pipe. None of them
had a vampire's innate shinnying skills. Which meant that Gary could have left an easier way if
Magdalene had bothered to inform him of it.

The ladder rattled. The figure steadied itself then resumed the descent, still moving awkwardly.
After a moment I analysed where the lop-sided gait came from, and my fist closed over the esky bag's
handle. With luck it wasn't too late for the contents to be of use to its owner.

Mundy reached the ground and spent a moment smoothing down his coat and trousers. I'd never
really noticed before how slightly he was built. His crown of curly dark blond hair made him look
vaguely fragile as well, but when he raised his head to glare a challenge at us I recalled that
however much he looked like a pale Byronic poet, he was a bastard of the first water.

I know he saw me. Ignoring me as thoroughly as he did took some effort. Instead, his gaze raked
over Thomas's huddled figure and then he nodded at Magdalene.

"You appear to have been visited by the same vexing trouble that has disrupted me
today," he said impassively.

"And that idiot brought them here," Magdalene said, nodding curtly at Thomas.

"Naahh, aaaahh," protested Thomas, wagging his head. At least, I thought it was a
protest. It wasn't clear that he really understood what was being said.

Magdalene kicked Thomas's broken leg, making it bend horribly. White bone protruded from the
shin, surrounded by bloodless meat. Thomas groaned this time and grabbed at the limb with his one
good arm. The one with the fingers fused together. "Naaaoooohhh," he groaned.

She gathered up her smoke-ruined skirts and kicked his broken arm. The limb flopped and twisted
and he fell sideways trying to catch it. She drew her foot back for another go.

"
Don't!
"

"Feeling sympathetic, are you?" she asked me in her sweet nanna voice.

"Just don't," I said, wishing I could keep the tremor out of my speech, wishing I was
not here, or, at any rate, not alone.

"Do ignore Thomas, my dear." I started violently at the voice in my ear. I hadn't even
heard Mundy move that close to me, "There are better uses for you."