bed, she moved her arms gingerly, sure they would flare in pain, but nothing more than a dull ache spread from them. She checked her clothing. Some of the blood had gotten on her, mostly too dry to stick. Whatever happened here must have been hours ago now. Still, her DNA had to be everywhere. Another thing for her to explain.
Getting off the bed, she peered over at the two bodies stuffed in the space between the wall and the other side. Both smeared in blood. It was hard to make out their faces, but they certainly dressed like Elle and Missy.
Dead.
She wanted nothing more than to run and hide, make this some distant memory. Move to the countryside, live in ignorance and peace. But how many more people would end up like Missy and Elle here, if she couldn’t get through to Cain?
Lucy’d had him for a moment — a glimpse of the man she knew. She could reach him, she was sure of it. She was used to losing patients; here was her chance to lose one yet bring them back. Not from cardiac, but from death itself. Cain was a good man, and he still could be. What had Adam said? He hated vampires, wanted to bring them down. If she could reach that part of him, team up with Adam, they could be a force for good between them.
Under the immediate threat and danger to life, something else tugged at her — scientific curiosity. She’d long ago given up on her dream of becoming a doctor; she liked the thrill of the streets too much and knew she’d likely saved as many lives as any doctor in any hospital. But she was still the same girl who, at nine years old, sat in her room surrounded by anatomy books, wanting to know the secrets of how people were put together. These last few days upended everything she thought she knew about the human body, and everything she’d seen in Cain overturned what she thought she knew once more. It was like standing on the other side of a doorway to a world of knowledge with a whisper of cloud stopping you from getting anything more than a glimpse. She had to follow Cain, talk him down. She’d seen enough of his humanity to know there was a way back for him. Adam made it back, with help.
She wasn’t ready to give up on Cain yet.
Making her way slowly back through the house, she listened for signs of Cain, though she knew there was no way he was still in the house. Her heart hammered at every movement in the shadows, and when Jones appeared at her feet, she nearly leapt high enough in the air to send him running for the hills. He soon came back, weaving through her legs in a bid for attention. She stopped, picking him up. There was blood on his paws and whiskers, which made her gag. She didn’t want to leave him here, but she couldn’t take him where she was going. She couldn't put him out, either. He was an indoor cat, if ever there was one.
‘I will come back for you, okay?’ she told the disinterested ball of fur. ‘You stay here, and when this is over, I will come back for you.’
She put him down and he sauntered off, clearly satisfied by her brief attention. He headed into the kitchen, where she saw an uneaten bowl of cat food. She didn’t want to leave him with those bodies, but what choice did she have?
She ran back upstairs and closed the door to the bedroom with the bodies inside. That would have to do. Heading back downstairs, she found the front door bolted, so Cain must have fled the way she came in. That raised the question of exactly how he’d come into the house in the first place, but she figured there was no way to answer that question now.
Heading through the shattered glass door into the garden, she tried to figure which way Cain headed. Heavy rain clouds blotted out the sky, pouring endless torrents of cold wet into the garden. Shit. Pulling her jacket closed, she headed out into it.
The streets were empty of all but the hardiest traveller, and there were no screams or sirens to point her in a particular direction. It was not yet night, but with the heavy clouds above her, did it even matter? There was no sunlight coming from above. Cain left no clue, so she trudged back into the city. If he was looking to drink, that’d be his best bet. Although he hadn’t exactly screamed bloodthirsty rage back there. Anger, yes. But no bloodlust. Maybe he’d been sated by the two witches.
Could it be she was going about this all wrong? Assuming he had a greater cognitive reasoning than Adam assumed possible from him, why had Cain gone to the home of two witches, above anyone else? He must have wanted answers — answers he didn’t get, judging by the corpses left in his wake.
Where else might he go for answers? Autumn? Dead. Adam? He could seek his old friend, although Lucy thought he knew even less about what the hell was going on than he let on.
No, she was better off retracing Cain’s steps. If she was looking for answers, he was likely doing the same. The best two options were the house where she found him, and the call centre. Unless he went further into his own past. In which case she’d be screwed, and she’d never find him. It’s not like he’d be sitting at his old table at The Fox, nursing a watery pint of John Smiths and staring forlornly out at the sky.
Chances were he wanted the same answers she did. Why turn him? Who benefited? If there were answers, maybe they were at the place he turned. Pulling her collar close, she set off on foot toward her old employer.
By the time she got there, every inch of her was soaked. The unrelenting rain seeped into every crevice and drenched every fibre of clothing on her. She was glad to receive the blessed relief of shelter for at least three seconds — until she remembered where she was, and how she barely got out alive last time.
The destruction wreaked last time was still evident. It felt like months since she’d been here, but it was one night. She thought about how badly injured she’d been, and how none of those injuries had left even a dent on her. Autumn's blood. She’d lost the sense of euphoric power that came straight after it, but she wondered how much long-term effect it might have on her. On the plus side, her teeth seemed the normal length, for now.
She walked through the broken barrier, careful not to tread on broken glass and give herself away. She moved through into the long corridor and decided on the stairwell over the lifts, no matter how cramped and dark they might be.
‘He’s here,’ Adam said, stepping out of a shadow she’d not even noticed.
‘Jesus fucking Christ, Adam,’ she hissed. ‘One of these times, you’re going to give me a heart attack.’
‘Sorry,’ he replied. He wasn’t just apologising for surprising her, if his lowered head was anything to go by.
‘I’m not killing him,’ she said, hoping to add a note of finality to her voice that might convince her as much as it might him. ‘He was at Elle’s house. I spoke to him. I can reach him.’
‘You saw Elle?’
‘What’s left of her.’
‘Oh.’ His lips tightened. ‘Come on,’ he said, and held the door open to the stairs.
The smell of rotting meat stung the back of her nostrils. This was not the standard stench of death, but something worse.
‘Vampire death,’ Adam said in a low voice, by way of explanation.
The smell intensified as she stepped closer, and she wondered if her flat would have smelled like this if the witches hadn’t magicked away the problem for her. What would happen to that magic now they were dead?
The double doors onto the first-floor corridor hung from their hinges in an un-door-like fashion. Slowly, they moved in. Once again, Lucy realised she was walking into a fight with a far superior force, armed with nothing more than the lint gathering at the bottom of her pockets. She wished Adrian was there with her, the two of them walking in with their green armour and righteous purpose. She thought about the resignation letter somewhere in the pockets of another pair of jeans and wondered if she couldn’t just resign from this old mess instead.
Looking about for a weapon, she found a long shard of table leg that seemed right for the job. Not that she wanted to use it.
The doors to the call centre floor were every bit as smashed as the last set, revealing the world of utter horror beyond. The rotting corpses of the vampires killed at Cain’s hands lay about the place, with Autumn the closest to them. A stark reminder of the last time Lucy held a weapon in her hands. Her stomach turned at the sight of her — skin tightened, body falling quickly into decay, her already thin face looked ancient, its skin spotted and pulled into a rictus grin, the eyes already turned to jelly spilling from the sockets.
Adam stepped over the corpse with no apparent note of its existence. Lucy opted for as wide a berth as possible, not taking her eyes off the body for a second until she was past it. Once she did so, she saw the rest of the room.
The altar on which Cain had been raised lay overturned, and the pots that had surrounded him lay in shattered pieces on the floor. Each shattered pot lay in a pool of thick red spilled from its inside. The same pots as the one she’d found in her bedroom. Whatever the truth of this was, there were two dead witches at its centre.
Beyond, sitting on an office swivel chair with head in hand, was Cain. The same rasping breath came from him as it had in the house, and Lucy thought what a contrast it was to Adam, who never seemed to need to breathe.
Adam moved in front of Lucy instinctively, holding up a hand to signal her to stop.
‘Cain,’ he said.
The other vampire’s head came up slowly. Caked in blood, with so little bare skin left on display, she could barely make out his eyes. ‘Adam?’ he replied, the name sounding like it crossed a vast ocean of memory to get to his lips.
‘Yeah, it’s me.’ Adam kept moving forward toward his old friend, slowly, cautiously, his hands raised in front of him like an offering.
‘I thought they’d done for you already,’ Cain spluttered, the words followed by a rattling cough that sounded like a ball bearing wreaking an engine block.
‘It’ll take more than Autumn to bring me down,’ Adam said. The warmth in his voice took Lucy by surprise.
‘I don’t know what’s happening with me,’ Cain replied, a note of obvious pain in his voice. ‘It’s not like I thought. I feel… stuck.’
‘They did not observe the ritual,’ Adam said. ‘And there were other…’ he shot a look at Lucy, ‘complications.’
‘I never wanted this, Adam.’
‘I know.’
Cain’s head bowed.
‘Cain,’ Lucy said, appearing from behind Adam.
Cain raised his head again, slowly. ‘Lucy,’ he said, and he gave a wry smile. ‘Hello love. Strange to see you back here. I seem to remember joking with you that neither of us would get out of this place alive.’ A darkness crossed his face. ‘You should go,’ he added.
‘These pots,’ she said, moving toward him as carefully as she could. ‘You spilled them when you came back, correct?’
‘I don’t remember,’ he replied sulkily.
‘Try,’ she said.
‘Lucy,’ Adam said, getting back between them.
Cain looked up once more, the sadness replaced by something colder. ‘What the hell does it matter?’
‘Did you drink from them?’ she asked.
‘Drink? I….’ He shook his head, as though trying to shake some memory loose.
‘Where are you going with this?’ Adam asked.
‘Elle,’ Lucy replied. ‘These urns, they came from her. She sent Missy to my apartment to clean it after what happened, and when I went back, I found one of these in there. It had some kind of residue in it. I think it might have been blood. And there were lots of them in her house. And they’re here, too? Are they always a part of the ritual? What do they do?’
‘Slow down,’ Adam said.
Cain changed in a flash, rage filling him in an instant. He jumped out of his chair, fists balled at his side. ‘Jugs? Pots? What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Calm down, Cain,’ Adam said, pulling Lucy behind him. ‘Think about…’
Before Adam could tell him what to think about, Cain sprung forward, bowling into Adam, grabbing his skull in his blood-soaked hands and smashing it into the ground. Adam’s body twitched, then stopped. Cain crouched on his old friend’s chest and looked up into the horrified face of Lucy, stumbling back.
‘Your turn,’ he said through grinning teeth.