Falling Apart Page 9

  ‘You have no idea how glad I am that I’m not.’ My fingers prickled with the desire to know Sil’s skin again, the touch-memory of his hair, the sensation of his demon firing up with the desire that crackled when we were together, and the smooth understanding that ran like a current between us. I gave myself a mental kicking. He’d gone. Left. And now he was in trouble … But he’d called me. There’s not much trouble that a vampire can get into that a human can get him out of, so there’s something else, a reason he wants me.

  ‘You okay, Jess?’ Liam’s voice held all the concern that Zan’s hadn’t. ‘Have a coffee. Doesn’t sound like you’re going to be sleeping much anyway, so another caffeine-overload isn’t going to hurt.’

  ‘He left me. And now he’s in trouble … presumably thinks I can help, because that was not a phone call to remind me to put the rubbish out.’ I chewed a nail. ‘But why? I mean, two weeks without a word, no e-mails, nothing, and then suddenly he goes mental and I’m supposed to jump when he says so? Why the hell should I?’

  Something squeaked at Liam’s end of the phone. ‘Well, for one thing, you might be the only person he can turn to; you might have some specialist knowledge that could help him—’

  ‘Only if he’s in the kind of trouble that requires sourcing a phenomenal number of paper clips.’

  ‘Which he might be, we don’t know. And, also, because you are crazy mad in love with the guy, and him just buggering off isn’t going to change that any time soon.’

  I rested my forehead in my hands. ‘I just want to see him, Liam.’ My voice sounded broken, even to me. ‘I just want to know …’

  ‘And you should.’ The squeaking carried on – it sounded as though he was squeezing a hamster. ‘I know it looks bad but … well, no, there isn’t really a “but”. Oh no, I’ve just thought of one … you are a kick-ass woman, and you are not going to sit around pining for some bloke without knowing what happened. You are going to get in there, give him a hefty kick in the bollocks and ask for an explanation, because it’s what you’re owed, all right? And if he still wants your help, once he can talk again, then you can decide what to do. Sound reasonable?’

  ‘I don’t know about reasonable. But it sounds like a plan.’ I managed a weak grin down the phone. He knew, and I knew, that my trying to find Sil had never been in question, whatever the reason, however dubious my motivation. How could I not? ‘By the way, what are you doing?’

  ‘Pumping. Look, he’s a vampire – we can’t second-guess his motives. Hell, we can’t even first-guess them. You’re right, you just need to know what’s going on and we can take it from there.’ There was a pause and Liam panted down the phone a couple of times. ‘Sorry. Sarah’s mother is coming to stay and I’m blowing up the spare bed.’

  ‘Which I am very relieved to hear, because you are making some very weird noises.’

  ‘Story of my life. So, what are you going to do?’

  Chapter Sixteen

  I hadn’t been entirely sure until now what I intended to do. Sit and wait for Sil’s inevitable capture, telling myself that it was what he deserved? Ring the papers and tell them he was heading for York? Or head out for the only place that I could think of that might qualify as ‘ours, after Malfaire’. After the demon had tried to kill us, the place we’d hidden, the place where …

  I shook my head and walked on. It was late, somewhere around midnight, the air was cool and smelled of stale beer and the river. The only people on the streets were those out enjoying themselves, or those for whom enjoyment wasn’t much of an option. A ghoul, spinning along in a dark circle of air, ignored me, which was fine: I didn’t want to have to think about work tonight.

  It was even cooler by the river, and there was a vampire about: I could feel it, somewhere. But that was nothing unusual, most of our local vampires were so image-conscious that they only came out after dark, so they got the maximum boost to their ‘mysterious and gorgeous’ auras – even I looked mysterious after dark, although my gorgeousness depended on very low lighting levels and a high intake of alcohol. I walked down to where the river sloshed up a high cobbled slope designed for launching boats and parking ice-cream vans, and then further down, almost to where the murky waters met the concrete. The river was low for the time of year and I could clearly see the storm drain where Sil and I had …well … we’d … My body gave a little disloyal shiver of pleasure as I remembered. I’d been so, so cold, and there he was, heated by the effects of my narcotic blood, offering to warm me, to touch me, to give me what I’d burnt myself up with wanting. And I’d fallen. Lowered all the barriers and let myself drop, hoping he’d catch me. And he had. Or, at least, he’d said he had …

  This had to be the place. But no time had been mentioned, had it? Still. No harm looking. No harm retracing my steps to the place where I’d found that a vampire could feel loss and guilt. Such pain that they chose to keep their emotions locked away, out of reach even of themselves, rather than suffer centuries of feelings, centuries of blame.

  I bent down and looked into the drain. There was a tidemark up the walls where the spring floodmelt had briefly caused the river to rise, and a huddled bundle almost out of sight further up.

  Vampire.

  ‘Hello?’ I stayed at the mouth of the tunnel.

  ‘This must be a truly amazing disguise.’

  ‘Sil?’ I took two steps inside before I remembered. He’d left me. Gone, without a word. I stopped, fingers just brushing the grip of the gun.

  ‘You came.’ His voice sounded hoarse, broken over words that should never have been said. ‘That’s good. I wasn’t sure …’

  I strained my eyes through the darkness at the slumped shape. ‘You look …’

  ‘I’m wearing jeans, Jess. Jeans. Can you imagine how distressing that is? They aren’t even designer.’

  ‘Sil, what happened to you?’

  And then the tiniest noise, just a loud swallow followed by a muted indrawn breath. ‘Jess.’ And his voice was strained wide around tears. ‘Jess.’

  I forgot the hunch, forgot the gun. Forgot everything other than that my lover was hurting, and moved forward along the sandy floor of the tunnel. A pair of arms like steel grasped me and pulled; a ribcage heaved against my cheek and retching sobs were muffled into my hair. ‘Jess.’

  And I forgot that he’d left me. I forgot all those people he’d bitten. Forgot Zan’s words about there only being one end to this – I forgot everything but the need to hold him close and feel the cool smoothness of his skin, the rough pebbles of stubble against my forehead as he put his lips to my face. I moved my head and brought my mouth to his, feeling an affirmation of our love in the depth of his kiss. And it was only after we’d breathed in one another and held that breath like two people in a smoke-filled room trying to hold on to the last gasp of oxygen that I moved away until I could look at him properly.

  Even allowing for the nasty neon illumination from the riverside lights he looked terrible. ‘What the hell did you do to your hair? It’s not some trendy London cut, is it?’ I touched the shorn, lopsided locks that littered the sides of his head and down his neck. ‘Believe me, fringes are not going to make a comeback, whatever you were told.’

  He kept a hold on my hand, a slightly desperate grip, as though he was afraid I might run. ‘It’s disguise. And it has worked, so far. I managed to hide in the back of a lorry heading up to Aberdeen; jumped out when he stopped at a service station. Then I stole a phone and called you and got in a horsebox heading for York Races. I walked here from the racecourse when it got dark.’ He paused. ‘It’s a long way, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is if you’re dressed like Val Doonican after a hot wash.’ My fingers traced the line of his skin where the shrunken tank top didn’t meet his waistband. The touch of him, knowing from the writhing of his demon that he was excited, despite himself … It was all I could do to stay
sensible. ‘Sil …’

  A short, ragged breath. ‘Look, Jess. Things are really bad for me.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t say. Well, I would never have known that, what with me living at the bottom of a bucket and everything.’ I pulled my hands away, now was the time to forget what he was to me and get some serious answers. I hadn’t quite ruled out the kick in the bollocks either. ‘What’s going on?’

  Another deep breath; then he folded his head forward into his hands. Uneven hair tumbled, hiding his expression. ‘I really have no idea. Seriously. None. I remember us, being here, being … in bed. The next thing I remember is being … somewhere …’ A headshake. ‘Coming out starving, all I could think was … blood. And then …’ He stilled, even his demon was quiet. ‘Those poor people. I was crazed, starved, so hungry and they were … warm.’

  There was a tiny sinking inside me. I’d hoped, somehow against all the odds, that the film of his attack had been, what? A mistake? Faked? To hear him admit what he’d done made my heart flop in my chest. ‘So you fed from them. Couldn’t you have got some Synth from somewhere?’

  His head fell lower. ‘I had no money. No cards, no phone, nothing, and I was starving. I think my demon just took over to save both of us, feed first and face the consequences later. I am mortally sorry for what I did and I would never have had it this way.’ He looked at me and his eyes flashed grey to white in the strobing lamplight. ‘Never,’ he repeated.

  I took a deep breath. Professional. I was a professional. And there were two ways that this could go: I could shoot him now, call Enforcement, have the whole thing over by morning. Shrug off the memories, start again – try to fall in love with a human this time round. Or, and my fingers fell away from the gun with the inevitability of it, I could try to sort this out.

  ‘The car was towed from the Embankment,’ I said. ‘Any idea why it was there?’

  A silent headshake.

  ‘Or why you’d gone to London? You didn’t tell Zan or me, you just … went.’

  He slowly dragged his head up through his hands. ‘Gods, Jess. All I remember is … a girl, I think. And … books? Just stupid little fragments, like pictures, images that mean nothing. If I was human I would have said they were dreams but …’ But vampires don’t sleep. His voice tailed off and he stared at the wall of the man-made cave, eyes flickering. ‘The last time I had an experience like that was’—he looked at me from eyes narrow with confusion—‘when I fed from you.’

  My blood. The only drug that had any effect on a vampire. ‘What girl?’ I said, focusing on probably the least mysterious element of the whole thing. ‘Why were you with her? Did you leave me for her, Sil, was that it?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ The shout filled the drain with sound, echoes of the glamour, the only magic a vampire had. The magic to make humans powerless, to entice, to do the vampire’s bidding. The magic that had never worked on me. ‘I don’t know. Do you understand how that feels for me? With the exception of the time I drank from you, my actions have been under my control from the moment my demon hatched inside me, and now there is a blank space in my head, actions I cannot recall, intentions that will not be brought to mind.’ A hand snaked out, touched mine. ‘And all I can think of is you.’ Fingers linked, and our joined hands were lifted to his lips. ‘I need your help. I need to know that whatever I have done, you will help me.’

  Choose a side, Jess. Either help your lover, or turn him in. For or against. Human or Other. Now is the time to decide.

  I felt the pressure of his fingers; saw the desperation in his eyes. Those eyes and the touch of him. Things I had longed for since the day I met him. ‘Okay,’ I said, in a voice that sounded stronger than I felt. ‘This is what we’re going to do. Find out what the hell happened to you in London, why you felt you had to go there and what you were doing.’

  ‘Yes.’ A half-laugh. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Although I warn you, if it turns out you left me for some floozy with a short skirt and her boobs on display, I am going to turn you in to Enforcement there and then.’

  ‘I …’ Sil increased the grasp on my hand. ‘I feel … it is you, Jess. You. Underneath, somehow, that it was all … for you?’

  ‘Hoy, bitey-boy, don’t you go loading all your guilt onto me. I’m fairly sure I never even mentioned so much as a dirty weekend in Battersea, so I am not taking the blame for any nasty little secrets you’ve gone and got yourself, all right?’ But I increased the grip on his hand regardless. ‘It can be sorted, Sil.’ I reached up and moved his hair so that I could see his face properly. ‘It can.’

  He raised our joined hands to his lips once more and then touched my face. ‘Please, Jess.’ And now his voice was a clotted whisper. ‘Please.’

  ‘Right.’ Organise, it will stop you thinking … ‘We need to get you out of here and somewhere you won’t be found.’ My mind was buzzing. He couldn’t go home: Zan would turn him in in a heartbeat. Liam had his mother-in-law coming to stay, and the office was far too public a place. Rachel had a spare room but I didn’t feel that turning up late at night with a smelly vampire in tow would be a great move. ‘Okay. You’ll need to wait here while I get some transport.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘And some Synth? It has been some while since I … fed last.’ He drooped his head in shame. ‘Oh gods,’ he whispered as though the horror was coming home to him again. ‘I fed …’

  ‘Yes, all right, shut up about that now. I’ll be back in half an hour, sit tight.’ And reluctantly I unwound our conjoined fingers, gave him a brief flash of a smile I didn’t feel, and headed out into the night streets.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sil lay under the blanket in the boot of the car and allowed a tiny glimmer of hope to illuminate his heart. She can do this. She can make it all right. He felt his demon give a little jerk as it sensed the adrenaline coming from her and wished for a moment that it would lie still, let him pretend that Jess was cool-headedly sorting things, putting things right, rather than betraying her anxiety.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he called across the dog-haired acres and wriggled uncomfortably – a supreme predator should not be shut in the back of a Volvo. ‘Because it isn’t very nice back here.’

  ‘Shut up and lie still,’ came the answer, to the accompaniment of grinding gears. ‘This is the world’s worst car to drive, and having you nagging from the back doesn’t make it any easier.’

  He lay back again, until the overwhelming smell of moist canine got the better of him. ‘Can’t I sit in the front, with you?’

  Graunch. ‘No, you can’t. If I drive through any security cameras the Hunters will be all over me like … like a bunch of tight-shirted muscular men with guns. Okay, I’m sure there’s a downside to that … oh, yes, you’d be dead.’

  Sil closed his eyes and remembered the sheer relief he’d felt earlier, burying his face in her hair and holding her close. That weak, human frame that seemed so frail compared to his demon-enhanced hawser-strength and yet held such power, such unbounded certainty that her path was the right one.

  He laid his head against the bumping floor of the car and closed his eyes. Let himself feel almost safe for a second, let the screw of tension that was sending his demon pirouetting around his chest uncurl just a fraction. I trust her. More than I trust myself, in fact. What was I doing in London? Why do I have a fraction of a memory of a girl, smiling, flirting with me? I would not be disloyal to Jessica, I would NOT, and yet … the memory comes with a feeling of hiding, concealment … gods, Jessica, if I have done anything to hurt what we have, never mind the Hunters, I will shoot myself where I stand.

  And then another memory, this one ringing with clarity. A child. Stopping me in my tracks, attacking the monster who had bitten his mother … A wave of nausea climbed his throat, fuelled by the hasty bottle of chilly Synth he’d chugged down in the tunnel. Monster. I have become again that whi
ch I tried so hard to leave behind, a blood-crazed animal who disgraced my attempts at humanity – so who am I really? A few bottles of Synth away from being a beast or a man struggling for compatibility with a demon that drives me to lengths I should never consider?

  The car bumped once more and he heard Jess swear, then speak to him over her shoulder. ‘Sorry. Got to pull over.’ He was thrown to the side, banging himself against the spare tyre as the car lurched and stopped on an angle. ‘There’s trouble. You stay there.’

  He heard her open the driver’s door and shout something; then voices, male, raised in aggrieved complaint. He sat up and peered like a cautious spaniel through the rear windscreen to see Jess, her hand on the shoulder of a doubled-over zombie, facing down two of the bronzed, muscled brutes who pretended to patrol the streets ‘to keep order’. Sil vaguely recognised their faces from the office, where pictures of those ‘likely to cause nuisance’ were Blu-tacked to the wall in one of Zan’s rare lo-tech forays into the world of detection.

  ‘He’s a dead glue-guy, yeah?’ one of them was saying. ‘Out after curfew? We don’t allow that kinda thing round here.’

  Jess bent to the zombie and spoke quietly; then stood up again. ‘He’s on his way to work, you morons,’ she said, and Sil’s demon grew positively frisky inside him on her rising anger and the overload of testosterone the two thugs were giving off. ‘You know perfectly well that the zombies run the night-shifts because they don’t need sleep.’

  The other shorn-headed youth did a double-footed shift. ‘Oh yeah? Still on our patch, still after dark, so I say we bring down a world of pain on Uhu-boy here.’ Sil watched the fists bunch, and the lighters held within them flare, saw Jess straighten her stance, head up and chin set.

  ‘No, I’ll tell you what happens. You apologise to Richard here and then go on your way.’ Her voice was remarkably gentle, she sounded almost deliberately feminine and unoffensive, he thought, trying to defuse the situation through calm. ‘All that’s going to happen otherwise is trouble. Richard has his permits and all his paperwork in order; you are in the wrong here.’