Falling Apart Page 10

  The zombie managed to get upright. Sil gave him a cursory glance, didn’t recognise him, but then zombies had the kind of faces that tended to change quite quickly, a nose off here, the lopsided look of injected silicon sealant there. He knew that zombie-ism had come through the dimensions with the Otherworlders on infected food, and that it had almost died out since the source had been identified, but since the zombies could, theoretically, and given large enough supplies of Araldite and other fixatives, live forever, there were plenty about. He couldn’t, even as City Vamp, be expected to know them all. But Jess did.

  As he gave the zombie’s face another quick scan in case it was someone he ought to know, one of the brawny-brothers swung a punch. There was a sound like an accident in a meat-packing factory and the zombie went down. Jess shouted, ‘Hey!’, and then the two men were on her and he lost sight of her in the melee of fists and feet and general mayhem.

  ‘Shit. Jessie …’ he slithered around. The boot didn’t open from the inside, so all he could do was press his face to the window and watch, occasionally rubbing the smeared glass to improve his view, his demon cantering through his chest with impatience, like a racehorse in a too-small paddock.

  Jess was down on the floor, one of her attackers next to her, bent double and groaning over his gonads. She had the other attacker in the kind of headlock he wasn’t going to get out of with both ears intact. In one movement Jess pulled out the tranq gun, fired a single bolt into the neck of the man she’d got in the complicated wrestling hold, who went limp with what sounded like a grunt of relief, and then was up on her feet, facing down his compatriot, who was still writhing on the ground. ‘Get your friend home,’ she said, and her words were quiet again but distinctly unfeminine this time. ‘And get the fuck out of town.’

  The writhing one gyrated a bit more. ‘’S fuckin’ illegal, that is.’ His reply was a little strangulated. ‘Tranquing humans. ’S not allowed.’

  Jess came in really close now. Sil caught the scent of her hair through the crack in the car window, a combination of jasmine and coconut, and his demon danced at the arousal it sent through him. ‘Only if somebody sees,’ she whispered, and smiled a smile so nasty that even Sil felt his hackles prickle. ‘Okay, off you trot, boys.’

  ‘Bitch,’ Mr Groinally-Challenged spat, from his position on his knees.

  ‘Remember my name. You’ll be screaming it later, followed by the words, “Help me, please.”’ She pocketed the gun. ‘Now, go.’ Amid much rebellious muttering the man picked up his fallen companion and began dragging him along the pavement towards the centre of town. Jess watched them go, and then frowned at the zombie, who was watching rather sheepishly. ‘And, Richard, what have I told you? In pairs, you go out after dark in pairs at the moment.’

  ‘My mate went on earlier; was his turn to open up.’

  ‘Then you go early with him, understand?’

  His nod was combined with a splash of almost-anger. ‘It’s not right! I was minding my own business – why should it be us creeping about!’

  She sighed and patted his arm. It made a hollow noise. ‘Yeah, I know, Richard. Life’s not fair, yada yada, just deal with it, okay?’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Go on, you don’t want to be late.’ She bent to pick up the dropped cigarette lighters and the zombie shuffled off into the night with a rather wobbly shrug and much muttering. Then she turned and wrenched open the car’s rear door, and rounded on Sil as he straightened himself out into the moonlight. ‘I thought I told you to keep your head down!’

  ‘I was concerned. You were fighting.’

  Jess blew her unruly hair from her eyes, eyes which blazed at him with an anger and a fire that sent his demon rocketing again. ‘I’m always fighting! It goes with the job, like paper cuts and Liam’s horrible jokes!’

  I wanted to protect you. I want to keep you safe from hooligans like that. Oh, gods, Jessica, I want your life to be happy and filled with cake and beautiful things. I want you never to have to fight or risk so much as a broken nail. I want you in my bed as you are in my heart, my lovely, feisty, infuriating woman. He thought the words but knew better than to say them. Instead he cleared his throat and gave her a small nod. ‘Yes. I am sorry; I did not intend to demean you by watching.’

  The anger drained from her face and she pursed her mouth in an expression he thought meant she was trying not to laugh. ‘Bloody vampires,’ she said. ‘All about the dominance.’ And then she stepped in close; the press of her body was delicious as she hugged him. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘At least they didn’t see you. But then, it’s dark and you look’—a quick grimace—‘horrible. Come on, back under your blanket.’

  ‘Now that is an offer I cannot refuse.’

  ‘Alone, bitey-boy.’

  He tightened his grip around her waist and felt the tremors running up her spine, the delicious rucking of her skin beneath his touch. Her body was betraying her, whatever her mouth may say. ‘I have missed you, Jessica.’

  ‘Well, yes, I’ve missed you—’ He cut off the sentence, moving his mouth against hers, feeling her try to speak against the pressure but giving up and giving in to him. She opened her mouth wider to his and stretched her body the length of his own, it felt like hot wire pressed to his nerves. He caught her more tightly and moved them both back until she was resting against the side of the car, and he could lean in without the risk of knocking her over backwards; grasping her hair to move her head back so he could flick his tongue along the slope of her neck, down to her shoulder. Does she trust me? Truly?

  For one, sweet second she relaxed, her legs buckling against him, her body sagging in his arms and then she was up, rigid, arms no longer wrapped around his neck but pushing against his shoulders until he stepped away. She was panting, her cheeks pink with blood and the little vein in the side of her throat pulsing like a cheap motel’s Welcome sign.

  ‘Hey, steady. This is almost an act of gross indecency.’ A glance down. ‘Enormous indecency, anyway.’

  He nearly laughed, but his eyes were caught by the blue tracery that led through her skin. Caught and held, trapped.

  ‘Sil!’ She pushed his shoulders again and he became fully aware once more. Tore his eyes back up to meet hers, and found them soft amber, filled with an understanding he had no right to. ‘I am not afraid,’ she said. She turned her head slightly to the side, so the flank of her neck fell bare, tilted almost level with his lips. ‘Whatever happened back in London, it wasn’t you, Sil.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No. It might have been your body, your demon, but it wasn’t you.’ She knew what she was doing, tempting him there with her blood, that sweet narcotic that would not only feed him but allow him to rest, to blank things out for a while, to forget. He knew it. For a second the temptation rose with his demon … sleep, memory, peace … but he forced it away and took a small step back.

  Her fingers traced his cheekbones, ran lower, over his lips. ‘Did you ever really doubt me, Sil?’ And her voice became a whisper against his breath. ‘Seriously? Did you worry that I’d be afraid of you now?’ Soft lips upon his. ‘Never doubt me.’ Fierce now. ‘Never.’ And then she was away, sliding back into the driver’s seat. ‘Come on. I want to get you hidden away somewhere safe; then we can start to work out whatever is really going on here.’

  Sil shook his head slowly to give the feel of her fingers time to drop from his skin. I will, quite simply, never understand women, particularly this one. He climbed back into the car, over the rear seats and repositioned himself under the dog-smelling blanket with a sigh.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It hurt to leave him. Physically. I ached as I drove away, leaving him dishevelled and disorientated, watching me go from the doorway of my family’s farmhouse on the moors. I kept his dark form in my mirror as long as I could, until the final bend in the farm track to
ok him from me, and I had to pull the car over on the cattle grid that met the main road and let some of the tears fall from the burning agony in my chest. I didn’t dare stay in case Zan missed me. Not that Zan and I were exactly sharing a toast rack and morning paper over breakfast, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to have some kind of secret ‘clocking in’ arrangement fitted to the front door.

  Sil was safe, for a while at least. The house was empty, since my mother was staying in the hospital with Dad, and she had been pathetically grateful that I’d offered to go and check on the place to save her the trouble.

  I slept properly for the first night in what felt like ages, and, in consequence, was late for work. But judging by the fact that there was no crowd of journalists waiting on the step, this was probably a good thing.

  ‘Ah, Jess,’ Liam said, with a brightness so artificial it should have been checked for E-numbers. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘What have I done now?’ I hung up my jacket and flicked Liam a quick look, while my heart broke like waves inside my ribcage. Liam wouldn’t have told anyone about my phone call, would he? No. Really, no. His expression was more exasperated than guilty and my heart gradually slowed, until I felt I could turn around and sit on the edge of my desk. ‘Forgotten to submit your expenses claim again? Although I really should mention after five years of working together, Liam, that claiming for “wear and tear on trousers” isn’t making you any friends at Head Office, you know.’

  Without answering, Liam placed a folded newspaper on the desk.

  ‘Oh, not again!’

  ‘Afraid so, Jessie. On the plus side, you made the front page today.’

  I flopped the paper flat across my keyboard. They’d used a picture someone had taken of me leaving the office yesterday. My hair was caught in a panicking breeze and looked as though it was being pulled slowly upwards, and I had the wide-eyed stare of a hit-and-run bum-pinching victim. I scanned the so-called ‘article’. It reported the bare facts of Sil’s attack on the humans in London and then speculated on my allegiances, ‘Oh bugger.’

  Liam ducked his head lower. ‘I rang Head Office, in my role as your Excuser. They’re feeling a bit … sensitive at the moment, with you being associated with a vamp that’s gone loopy down south.’

  Despite actually having had real sleep, I felt tired. ‘I dunno, Liam. It’s all looking a bit hopeless. I know York Council don’t exactly have us on their Calendar of Useful Departments, but, at the moment I’m getting the feeling that I’m completely out of my depth. I mean, usually I have all the handle on things of a Jack Russell, but right now …’ I stopped and just shook my head. ‘Right now, even a Jack Russell has the edge on me.’

  ‘No!’ He looked up quickly. ‘Why do you keep doing yourself down? You’re gorgeous, you’re funny, you are absolutely amazing at your job … oh, hang on, there’s barely room for the two of us in here, we don’t want to have to start knocking down walls just to accommodate your head.’

  ‘Shut up, Liam. And, thanks.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘The compliments.’

  Liam raised an eyebrow. ‘Me? I said nothing. You’re a hideous old battleaxe who runs this office like a brothel – only without the interesting equipment – and who can barely string a sentence together. But haven’t HQ already had words with you about split loyalties?’

  ‘Maybe I should just take a leave of absence. Go and hide under my duvet or something. Tell Zan I’ve got a notifiable disease to stop him busting in every three minutes for one of his “chats”, and just … oh, I don’t know, catch up with my woefully behind reading of Heat magazine.’

  He gave me A Look. ‘Jessie, you attract trouble like this carpet attracts unexplained stains – and those two things, now I come to think of it, are probably not unrelated. So maybe you’re best off where your trouble is at least work-related, did you ever think of that?’

  I stared at him. ‘You’re very bossy all of a sudden. Did you get a pay-rise to cover making decisions and being definite?’

  ‘My inner geek has moved over a bit to let my inner office manager have a turn. It’s like being possessed by a firm of accountants, for the record.’

  I lowered my forehead until it was touching my desk. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said to my feet and then closed my eyes.

  Liam jumped up. ‘You’ve always done your duty, you’ve always bagged and tagged and never let the bastards get away with so much as a toe over a boundary without the paperwork signed in triplicate! Ever! And I should know, because I have to do all the admin for that, and, let me tell you, it would far easier on you and me if you just kept schtum, because some of those buggers are so daft that they’re out of area because they actually forgot they needed a permit. So you go out and send them home, either walking or in the Enforcement van, when it would be far easier to just have a quick word, and that wouldn’t result in five forms and an online checklist every single time. I really hate those checklists.’

  I glared at him. ‘They are your job, Liam. You aren’t paid to like them.’

  ‘I’m not paid to do anything with them. I’m paid just about enough to unlock the door in the mornings, with a possible option on pressing one random button per day. Everything else is out of the goodness of my heart, which is being strained into cardiomyopathy at the moment.’

  I sighed. ‘Don’t. One heart attack per year, I’m on a quota.’

  He slumped back down into his chair. ‘Yeah. Sorry, Jess. It just makes me angry. You put in all that effort and subject yourself to all that danger, and the council behave as though you’re about to sell us out for two Kit Kats and a high-street voucher, and the press treat you as though your life is there for them to poke around in whenever they want.’ A raised eyebrow. ‘And you really do not want that, do you? The press poking around in your life, turning up … well, who knows what?’

  My mouth had gone dry at the thought. They could be watching me, cameras at the ready …

  ‘I shall do my best to live a suitably boring life then. Listen. What Sil has done deserves investigation. Going off the deep end like that, biting his way through a street full of shoppers in broad daylight? Not very Sil, you have to admit, not the MO you’d expect of a vamp who’s normally so smooth that he looks like a Fair Isle sweater model. And why Oxford Street, of all places?’

  He shook his head. ‘You are way too close to ground zero on all this, Jessie. Way too close.’ He bit his lip and scrunched his face up. ‘But, yes, you do have a point. It’s a little bit odd that Mister Bitey took himself off to London before going mental. Long way to go for a bit of sucky-action – why not stay here and let loose in one of the Blood Clubs?’

  I opened my mouth to tell him that Sil couldn’t even remember going to London, let alone why he was there, but realised that might not be a great course of action. ‘Just go and put the kettle on,’ I said. ‘Just because you’re getting all opinionated doesn’t let you off making coffee. And you can bring out those emergency HobNobs too, I can feel a concerted think coming on.’

  ‘First time for everything, then,’ he muttered, not quite under his breath, and collected the mugs.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sil roamed the farmhouse like a corporeal ghost. He caught Jess’s scent and found her old bedroom, half-tidied into an office space but still retaining the bed, the poster-covered wall dotted with train tickets from forgotten journeys and a cupboard that held a collection of old school books and photographs that kept him busy for several hours.

  You were so young. He traced the outline of her face, plumper with youth and cheekier with innocence, his heart uncomfortably heavy with the knowledge that he and his kind were one of the reasons she’d lost that. So sweet back then, in that ridiculous school uniform, tie under one ear and your buttons done up wrongly, hanging on your school friend’s arm and mugging at the camera as though
life was just one big joke. He flipped the pictures over, seeing images from her life in scattered order, one minute she was a bony-kneed seven-year-old on a small, fat pony, all earnest eyes and screwed-down pigtails; the next she was late teens, flaunting a body she didn’t seem to know what to do with. Then back to being a ten-year-old, blowing out candles on a cake; then a toddler squinting up at the camera. Sil felt that weight on his heart again. All these ages. And while you were growing up, growing … I was this. A twenty-nine-year-old vampire. The person I was then is the person I am now. He put the pictures back into the cupboard. I barely remember what it was to be like you, young, life stretching like the world’s most exciting unread book, all I had to do was to turn the pages and …

  He turned. Walked out of the little room and back downstairs to pace around the kitchen, watched by an impassive series of cats, who sat along the worktops like a scrambled set of Russian dolls. ‘This is ludicrous,’ he said aloud, the sound of his voice making cat ears twitch. ‘Why am I even here?’ Once more around the table, the contrast between the homely domesticity of rag-rugs and pine furniture and the twisting mass of his demon as it pirouetted in his chest tugged at his heart. ‘There must be something … some way I can achieve something useful, to my cause, to hers.’ He stroked a matriarchal tabby, which dipped its head as if in agreement. ‘Some way to find what I hoped to acquire in London?’ The cat narrowed its eyes beneath his hand and gave a punctuating purr as he performed one last circuit of the room and headed out into the flagged hallway, trying to walk sense into his thoughts.

  I left the car on the Embankment. His vision swam for a moment, a fluid memory rising and falling like a dream of mercury recalled through mist. An emotion, almost like the tug at his soul he got when Jess was thinking of him, a niggle, almost like pain, and an image of a girl sitting at a desk, flirting with him, came floating into his head. Is this memory? God knows, a hundred years of life means more memories than I can call to mind … Who is she, this girl? And, more importantly, what is she to me? Friend, acquaintance … An awful possibility crept in and he forced it down. No. I would never take another woman now I have declared for Jessica. Never. But the fear still flared under the flickering edges of memory, that dread that something may have turned him, some unknown affliction may have played him until he betrayed both himself and his love.