Chapter Four

The streets were oddly quiet, given that we’d more than ten times our quota of Otherworlders flittering about. Admittedly most of them wouldn’t rear their heads until after dark. The zombies would all be at work, ghouls couldn’t go out in the light and the vampires would be waiting for twilight. Not because of any aversion to the sun – it turned out that Bram Stoker had met the world’s only vampire with a photosensitive skin condition – but because the buggers were so concerned with being cool that they spent the daylight hours getting their look just right. I idly speculated on whether Sil had ever got his Gucci back from the cleaners; he had looked fabulous in that suit. Particularly when he’d let his hair grow long. The beginnings of a smile tried to part my lips at the memory, but I fought back as I felt my heart squeeze and the familiar sensation that my lungs were full of pins. I was so over him. Course I was.

I wandered around the narrow maze of streets in front of the Minster. The usual crowds of tourists were clotting around the sights of interest, and a party on the Vampire Walk were being entertained by a tour guide dressed as Dracula. A casual scan of the area turned up nothing unusual; a pair of werewolves prowling along together in human form greeted me with a smile and an indication towards their bag of butchers’ offal – it being easier to shop for your predilections rather than risk going hunting and catching the inevitable silver bullet.

Talking of which – a figure in a long brown coat straightened up from where he’d been leaning against the wall of Betty’s Tearooms, lighting a cigarette. ‘Good afternoon.’

Great. A Hunter. Not a local, they all slouched about in designer suits and Converse trainers, this guy was working the full Van Helsing, down to the open-necked shirt and uncombed hair. He even had a monogrammed cigarette lighter, which put him beyond the merely poser and right out into ‘look at me!!!’ territory. I’d give him about twenty minutes against one of the real hard boys. Still, nothing to be gained by being rude, so I slowed down.

‘You’re Jessica Grant, aren’t you? Liaison? Thought I recognised you from the ident list we got handed … I’m just on my way down to Enforcement – should have gone in and introduced myself this morning but things kind of took off on me. Ken Symes. I’m from Dorset, came yesterday accompanying a bunch of monsters up for the Run.’

I didn’t know vampire Hunters could be called Ken. I thought they only recruited blokes with butch names like Grant or Jez. And he called the Otherworlders monsters, which earned him minus several million points with me. And, yes, he should have gone and introduced himself at Enforcement HQ. They were almost as cagey about incoming Hunters as we were about Otherworlders: the Hunters ‘pose’ level was nearly as high as the vamps’ and there’s only so much admiration to go round.

‘Yes, that’s me.’ We shook hands while he smoked at me. Minus another few points.

Ken swirled his coat and let the wind ruffle his naff rock-video hair. ‘Ah well. Nice to have met you, heard you’re well in with the city vamp, might score me a few brownie points with the bad guys.’ He dropped the stub of cigarette on the cobbles and ground it out with his heel (good job Ken wasn’t going for my Man Of the Year award), turned and headed off down one of the narrow alleyways. He wore built-up shoes, the big wuss.

I watched him. He walked enough steps to think the half-light that filtered between the buildings would conceal him then, with a quick glance over a shoulder, headed through the door into the local branch of Specsavers.

I tried not to giggle. Hunters had their work cut out maintaining an image; it must be hard never being seen to do those things that ordinary mortals did without thinking. And then I bridled at his words ‘well in with the city vamp’. What exactly did he mean by that, considering that I would quite cheerfully have offered to tranq Sil right this second had I heard that he’d so much as mentioned being slightly peckish within four miles of a human?

Then I cast around in another mental sweep of the area. Everyone seemed to be behaving unnaturally well, probably didn’t want to risk anything upsetting the status quo and getting the Run cancelled. It was a big thing in the Otherworld calendar, according to … well, I had my sources. Or used to have. Maybe that’s what Ken had meant – maybe he hadn’t heard about our … falling out.

And this time I couldn’t stop myself from conjuring an image of Sil’s face. Steel-grey eyes, determined unsmiling mouth and hair so dark it made crows look as though they could have tried harder. My insides gave a little shiver of pain. So, here I was, living a miserably chaste life and he was out there screwing harder than a carpenter with a lot of shelves to put up. Sometimes – and I would have punched something if I hadn’t been standing in the middle of York’s main shopping street – life was just plain wrong.

There. Again. Sil raised his head from the pillow and stared blearily at unfamiliar curtains, letting the twisting in his gut subside. His mouth was clagged with the dry residue of bottled blood, powdery instead of the rich aftertaste you got with the real thing, and he wrinkled his nose. Should have gone for it last night, Sil. He turned to meet the blue, but less-than-innocent, eyes of the girl from the club, feeling his fangs sliding down, locking into place before the sensation caught up with him again. That odd jerking awareness deep inside, as though his demon was writhing and flipping through his chest on a hormone-burn. Jessie?

He let his mind run the connection, feeling the white heat of it dragging inside his head like a parachute, slowing his reactions. Could she feel it? No, too human. And there’s the problem, isn’t it? Jessica Grant, with her human outlook, her human preconceptions …

‘Hey, big boy, are you going to bite me, or what?’ The question brought him back, back to this rather sordid little hotel room, back to the blonde girl with the whisky-breath.

‘Are you sure you want it?’ He made his voice light, ran his tongue over his fangs, playing her.

‘Well, it’s what you do, isn’t it? Drink blood?’

And that uncertainty was enough. His fangs retracted. ‘Can we just have sex?’

The relief in her sigh told him all he needed to know. ‘Like last night? Oh yeah …’

And as he turned to her the regret burned a hole in his gut. Wrong woman. But when the right one doesn’t want me, and my demon wants the lust … what am I supposed to do? Head for a carpentry shop and hope to catch a renegade splinter through the heart? No. Make a life, a half-life, as best I can. Just as after the bite, when the demon took hold of my body and mind. Adapt. Cope. Survive.

‘Your mum rang.’ Rachel was at work, stacking boxes of hair-dye on the shelves in the little chemist’s shop. That’s the shop that was little, not the chemist: he was six foot ten and looked like he’d got some werewolf in his ancestry. ‘Said something about popping round this evening. They’re going to the pictures, apparently.’

Great. That would mean more questions, and I’d better remember to wear long sleeves, as I’d acquired some spectacular bruises falling over Daim last night. ‘Lovely. Is that her and Dad?’

‘And your sister, I think.’ Rach slotted the last ‘Shock Pink’ into place and turned to the toothpaste. ‘It’ll be nice. You haven’t seen them for ages.’

Because they always ask after my job, that’s why, and I don’t know what to tell them. Although they’re good, broadminded people they seem to have a bit of a problem over me working with demons and suchlike. I’m not sure if it’s prejudice or fear – are they the same thing? – or the protective parental instinct, but they’re all really sensitive to mentions of the Otherworld. Maybe that’s why they’ve chosen to live so far out in the countryside. They pretend that it’s for the rural quiet, and Dad loves his smallholding so much that maybe it’s true, but it doesn’t stop me suspecting that the very low density of Otherworlders outside the cities has a huge appeal.

They’ve got a barghest living in a lane not far from their house. I haven’t dared to tell them yet.

‘Fancy coming out on Thursday night?’ I leaned casually back against toothbrushes and floss. ‘There’s a bit of a do on.’

‘What sort?’ Rach had assumed an air of uninterest, but had frozen in the fluoride section.

‘Work. It’s at the Hagg Baba, thought you might like to come, but, if you’re not bothered, Liam said – ’

‘I’ll come!’ She stood up so suddenly that a little rain of dental-care products resulted. ‘Will there be, you know, vampires and things?’

Rach lost both her parents and her older brother in 1986, the year when the Troubles reached their height, two years before the Treaty was signed. She was four. Always maintained that she didn’t remember her family, didn’t remember those years of fear, of ordinary citizens armed and never chancing nightfall. But sometimes I wondered … was there something buried deep that accounted for her fascination with the Otherworlders? She persisted in seeing vampires as romantic double-edged creatures, haunters of the margins of life and misunderstood heroes.

‘There will, almost certainly, be vampires and things,’ I said, assuredly. ‘It’s sort of the point.’

‘Wow. No, honestly Jessie, wow. You don’t usually invite me to your work do’s, why now? And what shall I wear?’

‘That’s because the nearest thing we’ve ever had to a works do so far is when Liam and I had to go to the Guildhall to get our wrists slapped over breaking the old tracker programme. We don’t even get a Christmas party. Well, I make mince pies and Liam does his Widow Twankey impressions, but that’s as close as we get.’

I ducked, suddenly, under cover of the shelf. Over Rach’s shoulder I’d seen Harry and Eleanor come in to the shop, uniformed and armed. From the way they were leaning over the pharmacist’s counter and talking urgently I didn’t think they’d come in for Tampax and aspirin. Harry was scanning the place with his detector while Eleanor had slipped behind the counter, showing the pharmacist the readings on her hand-held, trying to do so inconspicuously whilst they pretended to be consulting about a prescription. It wasn’t fooling me, not with the weaponry they were carrying.

‘Jessie?’ Rach bent down beside me. ‘It’s all right, if you don’t want her to see you I can smuggle you out the back way. It goes into the alley, and you can get down to the river from there.’

‘It’s not that.’ I crawled on hands and knees around the end of the shelf and hunkered down behind the toilet rolls heaped near the window.

Rach followed, carrying the large cardboard box she’d taken the hair-dye out of and placing it to conceal me from view. ‘What is it, then?’

‘Look at their eyes!’ I glanced once, quickly, then ducked back down.

Rach obediently stared at Harry. ‘He’s quite cute, isn’t he?’ she whispered. ‘Are you sure they’re not dating?’

‘What?’ I pushed my head over the bog-roll parapet. ‘No, their eyes. They’re … wrong.’

As Harry swept his detector once more around the inside of the shop, I looked again. His eyes, normally a sunny sky blue, were clouded. Almost as though something else was looking out from behind them. Eleanor’s were the same; a kind of hard, unfocused darkness instead of human pupils.

‘This is so not right.’ I fumbled for my mobile. ‘Need to get a message to Liam …’

But it was too late. Eleanor nodded Harry’s way; he pulled out his weapon, standard Enforcement issue – energy ray, silver bullets, the lot – swung round to face a corner and yelled, ‘Enforcement! Get visible, get down on the floor!’

The entire shop went silent, then exploded into action as customers panicked together, packing towards the door. Eleanor and the pharmacist, plus another assistant, shepherded them outside on to the pavement. They stayed outside but Eleanor came back in. Her eyes were stony.

‘Anything?’ She called over to Harry, who was still facing the corner, weapon drawn.

‘Not yet.’

‘She’s here. I know it.’

At that point I stood up. ‘What are you doing?’

Harry swung around to face me, but didn’t lower his weapon. ‘Jessica.’

Behind my back I was making little ‘down’ motions, indicating to Rach to crouch behind the box which, from the anxious bobbing at my shoulder, she was ignoring. ‘Harry, there’s nothing in here.’

Then Eleanor waded in, her gun half-raised at hip level. ‘The readings say there is a Shadow. Our informant says it’s a Shadow. It is our duty to apprehend it.’

‘Ellie.’ I tried to keep my voice level. ‘The only things in this shop right now that aren’t cosmetic or health related, are you and me. There is no Shadow. Your instruments are wrong.’

‘We have information that a Shadow is hiding in this shop.’ Harry’s answer was automatic, like he’d been programmed. ‘Shadows are negative energy. They will sap the life out of living creatures. It’s our duty to remove dangers to the public.’

‘Harry, listen to me. You were looking for someone, I heard you say “she’s here.” Was it me? Did you come in here looking for me? And if you did, then there’s no Shadow. Which was it?’

There was a beat, during which I really thought the logical approach had worked, and then their guns moved. Both came up to shoulders and rested there, trained on me. ‘Are you assisting an Otherworlder to resist arrest?’

Shock made me giggle. ‘It’s such a good job you don’t lisp.’ I couldn’t seriously believe that Harry, or even Eleanor, would use a gun against me for doing nothing more than telling them they were wrong. But then I looked in their eyes again and it wasn’t Harry or Eleanor looking back. Their pupils were distended and flickering.

‘But Jessica, everything is on our side. There is a Shadow in here, refusing to concede. You are aiding it.’ Ellie shrugged, and it was an alien shrug. ‘I think we can kill you.’

‘Oh, my God,’ I whispered. ‘You’ve been glamoured.’

Another shrug, and behind me, Rach squeaked. ‘They’re under a spell? And they’re going to kill us?’

At the sound of her voice, Harry’s gun jerked away to point at the floor. ‘She must be alone.’ His voice wasn’t right, either. Emotionless. ‘No witness.’

Eleanor wasn’t so easily distracted. ‘Then we kill that one, too.’ She was sighting me down the barrel of the Enforcement rifle. I wondered what ammunition was loaded. Not that it mattered; anything that would kill an Otherworlder would leave me deader than dead.

My knuckles rapped against something cold and hard. I looked down to find my hand resting against a large bottle of hair conditioner, and reflex action cut in. My fingers closed around its reassuring weight and I curved my arm up and over, flinging the bottle in a delivery that a world-class cricketer would have been proud of. Unfortunately, I hadn’t trained with the British team and my shot went wide, but the two Enforcement officers broke their concentration for a second, their misted eyes following the bottle like two cats seeing a fast-moving furry object. There was a fumbling behind me and something plastic was pushed into my hand as Rach armed me for another strike and I followed up with a more successfully aimed family-sized bottle of Nit Control shampoo which hit Harry on the side of the face. He staggered, and, re-armed by Rachel, I flung another bottle, which connected with Ellie’s wrist as she squeezed down on the trigger. Her shot went wide, piercing through the nappies and into the shelving, whilst the lid came off the bottle and splattered her in blue gloop, smelling of chemicals and detergent.

Then Rach and I began flinging everything to hand. A box of old-fashioned curlers caught Harry on the temple and he went down. Eleanor, trying to wipe splattered shampoo from her eyes, was felled by a joint attack of Storm Red and Honey Highlights, her feet slipping from under her in the pool of glutinous liquid. For safety’s sake Rach and I continued the barrage for a few seconds then, when neither Harry nor Eleanor got up again, we cautiously crept towards the door.

The two Enforcement officers lay unconscious. Rachel stared at the Rigid Wave box by Harry’s head. ‘Eat shampoo, bitches!’ she said triumphantly, and then, ‘I didn’t think I hit him that hard.’

‘It’s the glamour. It must have cut out.’

She started to giggle as the shock caught up with her. ‘They wouldn’t really have shot us, would they? Harry’s your friend.’

I stared at the spreadeagled forms. ‘That wasn’t Harry. When you’re glamoured, it’s like being hypnotised, you’ll do anything you’ve been told to.’ I crouched down, trying not to get Head & Shoulders on my shoes; I was still a pair down from last night. ‘They won’t remember anything about it when they wake up.’

‘You’re trying to stop yourself from writing “I’m a cow” on Eleanor in lipstick, aren’t you?’

‘Quietly happy that she’s going to smell of anti-dandruff chemicals for ages, actually.’ I stood up. ‘And “eat shampoo, bitches”? That is not a line from any of the Rambo films I’ve seen. Why didn’t you shout “dye, bitches, dye!”? That would at least have had the comic element.’ I’d started to giggle too, but tears were pricking behind my eyes. In my back pocket my mobile beeped its ring tone and I seized it with out-of-proportion gratitude.

‘Jessie, are you coming back today?’ Liam sounded petulant. ‘Because I’ve got Zan nagging about this Dead Run thing, Head Office want you to chase up some paperwork, and it’s bloody boring stuck in here on my own.’

I had to clear my throat to answer. ‘Yes, sorry, I’ll be back soon.’

‘Anything happening out on the streets?’

I stared down at the gunk-covered Enforcement officers. ‘Actually, things just got a bit weird.’