to the left turn her life had taken in the last forty-eight hours, the fact Lucy now sat in a restaurant well outside her price range opposite a vampire dressed in a suit, hours after being confronted by cyber goth monsters at her place of work was pretty striking.
The suit made Adam a good deal more dashing than he’d already been, which was quite dashing indeed. She’d tried quite hard not to notice that element to him before, but there was no hiding it now. Where his bulky coat had made him seem huge, broad like a mountain, the suit jacket he wore revealed a toned, well-kept physique.
He sipped from his glass of red wine, barely taking any in, if at all. Lucy shifted in her seat and took a hearty glug from her own glass.
Since the car park, the rest of the day had been a blur. She’d spoken to the police at length, and had stuck to the facts as she could verify them. They didn’t seem like they were overly concerned, and she didn’t get the sense that they’d be mounting a city-wide manhunt.
When Adam suggested they talk somewhere more neutral, more public, somewhere she wouldn’t feel under threat, she agreed. When he suggested Le Cochon Aveugle, one of the priciest and swankiest restaurants in town, and she said yes without thinking about just how weird a suggestion it was. She wasn’t much of a foodie, but she knew about this place. How the hell he got a table was beyond her, but she supposed she knew little about the ways of a creature of the night.
Now here she was, trying not to think about the fact the most expensive dress in her wardrobe cost less than a starter, or the fact it didn’t fit as well as it had when she’d last worn it, nearly five years earlier.
‘Not that I don’t appreciate the free meal,’ she said. ‘But why are we here? Shouldn’t we be out there looking for Cain?’
He frowned. ‘There is nothing more we can do for Cain,’ he said.
She wasn’t sure how true that was, but perhaps this wasn’t the time or the place to press the point. Besides, her curiosity was almost bursting at this point.
‘Okay,’ she said, taking a sip of wine herself. It tasted a lot better than the six-pound supermarket wine she’d had the night before, but perhaps not fifteen times better, as the price would suggest.
‘I like it here,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘And they know me. They bring me a wine, and they leave me alone.’
‘You don’t eat?’
‘Not in the way you mean, no.’
‘Right. Blood?’
‘When I have to.’
‘And how often do you have to?’
‘It’s not a daily requirement.’
She looked into his eyes. They looked normal enough. She wondered if he could control her mind with his thoughts. That would at least explain how she could sit here so calmly with a man she knew to be so dangerous. What the hell was she doing here? All gussied up like this was a first date. ‘I don’t even know where to start,’ she said, taking a mouthful of fattened guinea fowl in.
‘I understand. It’s hard. Like walking in on The Archers for the first time and not understanding who anyone is or what’s going on.’
She swallowed. ‘The Archers? That’s a cultural touchstone for you?’
‘Me and five million others.’
‘There are five million vampires?’
‘Archers fans.’
She took another sip and straightened her napkin. ‘Right. But you are?’
‘A vampire?’ He shrugged. ‘Sure, by the term you know. Yes.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Two hundred and thirty-two.’
‘Wow. You still keep count?’
‘We attach a certain amount of status based on age. Our society is small, but it thrives on the rules it sets for itself.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what allows us to stay hidden.’
She finished her plate. There were eight courses; a tasting menu. Two courses in, she already felt full. She pushed the empty plate forward.
‘You want to continue?’
‘This conversation?’
‘Your meal.’
‘Sure.’
A slight gesture of his head brought a waiter over. ‘Can we have a pause before the next course?’ he said.
‘Of course,’ the waiter said, whisking the empty plate away. Lucy noted the man never made eye contact with her.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t possibly have made that decision for myself.’
He smiled a vaguely smug smile, the first thing he’d done so far to take himself down a notch in her estimations. Well, outside of the whole creature of the night thing. ‘This is where you tell me how women are much different today than before?’ she asked.
‘Not so much,’ he said. ‘You remind me of a friend of mine.’
‘Autumn?’
The smile left. ‘She’s no friend. Not for a long time.’
He stared at the edge of his glass in contemplation.
‘Come on,’ she said, finally. ‘You need to clue me in here a little.’
He looked back up at her with those dark eyes. ‘Our people have been around for a long time, living in the shadows. The oldest among us are older than me by about a hundred years, but there were others before them.’
‘Who… turned you?’ she asked.
‘I no longer recall,’ he replied. There was sadness there. ‘Turning a human… it is not pleasant. What comes back is not the same person, but it is not the demon of folklore, either. There is no mystical element to this. What we become… is more animal. At first.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘Hungry. Over time, one claws back the person one used to be. Learns to control the thirst.’
‘And this is about to happen to your friend?’
‘What they have done to him is a thing rarely done. A newly turned vampire is a mess of noise and attention, which risks our ability to stay hidden. When we turn, it is usually after a committee agrees it, and done under circumstances we can control.’
‘But not this time?’
‘No.’
‘Why? And why Cain?’
‘I do not know. But I fear it is no accident. Because there are so few of us, we often have friendships with humans. The nature of these friendships differs from each of us to the other, and depends also on the humans. Some take a slave, willing and subservient. Some take a partner. Some have deep friendships. It is often from these that our numbers swell, but only after agreement. It can be a political game. There are factions, power levels. Being granted the ability to turn someone grants you an eternal ally.’
‘Upsets the balance of power.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But you weren’t trying to change Cain?’
He shook his head. ‘Cain had no desire to become one of us. No. This was done as an act of violence.’
She frowned. ‘I find it hard to think of the Cain I knew being a part of this world. He was, well, an ordinary man.’
‘I take it you knew him after his marriage?’
‘He was my boss.’
‘Ah,’ Adam said. ‘The call centre?’
‘Yes.’
‘That was when I was away. I travelled for several years, and when I came back, I found a man lost. It was a shame.’
‘You knew him before?’
‘Cain’s interests brought him before me when he was a much younger man. He had an obsessive compulsion toward certain folklores; wished to find the truth at the heart of them.’ The memory summoned a slight smile to his lips. ‘When I first met him, he had pretensions of a hunter of our kind.’
Lucy contemplated this as the waiter brought over another plate. Apparently, the time between courses had been deemed sufficient. She had to admit; she could face the food again. Or maybe she wanted something to do with her hands. She wanted to move on from Cain, too. ‘One question. You say your kind have… stuck to the shadows. But you’ve not exactly been successful, have you?’
He smirked. ‘The Stoker book.’
‘And everything after. The world is primed for your existence. So one thing I don’t get. If vampires are real, and they are immortal — why not go public?’
‘A dozen reasons. There are limits to our power. And limits to our numbers. Also, we are not monsters. Mostly. As I said before, we are not demons. We may be different to the people we once were, but we’re also the same, if you follow?’
‘But this Autumn, she has other ideas, right?’
‘The fragile peace between us wears thin.’ He flashed her a weak smile and took a deeper sip of his wine, wincing as he did so. ‘The balance we have struck is worn by age and complacency. There are those of us who feel the time has come to follow our impulses. Reveal ourselves, take control. Take power, by force.’
‘You don’t agree?’ she asked, looking deep into his eyes. She enjoyed his company, but the future of that depended entirely on his next answer.
‘No.’ He stared back, but when that didn’t seem to satisfy her, he continued. ‘We have watched the world of men for centuries, watching as you fall deeper into folly. The earth we share is dying, and there are those amongst our number who think the way to deal with the problem is to… deal with the problem.’
She laughed. ‘Vampires against climate change?’
‘Yes.’
She stopped laughing. ‘Seriously?’
‘If humanity does not stop its current course, Earth will not remain habitable for long. This current generation are… we have little faith in humanity’s ability to salvage the situation.’
‘Right. But you’re not monsters?’
‘I mean, in the literal sense, yes.’
She pushed another empty plate away and took another sip of wine.
‘You have more questions?’ he said, leaning back in his chair and straightening the entirely superfluous napkin on his lap.
‘Lots.’
‘Ask away.’
She looked around at the restaurant. Nobody else seemed to be listening in to them, all wrapped up in their own worlds, their own meals, their own company. ‘You don’t eat. Do you drink blood?’
‘Yes.’
‘Human?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you kill people?’
‘Not for a long time. That was the first time I’ve tried to take a life in decades. I thought I had killed him.’
‘Staking. So the legends are true?’
He paused, evidently trying to weigh up whether he should trust Lucy with knowledge that could be his undoing. Or perhaps he risked breaking some kind of vampire covenant.
‘Partly. The risks to us centre on our heart and head. Pierce the heart or the brain, sever the head, or burn us, and we are as fragile as you are.’
‘What about garlic, crosses?’
He gave a little chuckle. ‘Superstitions ingrained in folklore and passed through literature into spurious fact. The first tales of us came out of Eastern Europe at a time of religious superstition and crusading fervour. Naturally, priests and doctors and writers believed us to be demonic creatures, and built in religious ways to deal with us.’
She nodded, and the two of them sat silently as the small waiter brought over a tiny dessert and refilled Lucy’s glass.
‘Sunlight?’ she asked.
‘We suffer an extreme reaction to it. Our skin cells regenerate at an extreme rate to counter the decay of our bodies, but sunlight interrupts the process. It is extremely fast. We are not fond of bright lights, as a rule.’
An awkward silence fell between them as she took a small forkful of delicious chocolate torte.
‘May I ask you a few questions?’ he asked.
‘I can’t imagine I have anything interesting to tell you,’ she said, her mouth glued together by chocolate divinity.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ Adam said.
She swallowed the mouthful as quick as she could, which seemed a waste. ‘I appreciate the effort, but you don’t need to ask me about my life. This isn’t a date.’
He took another sip and smiled. ‘Isn’t it?’
The question sparked a tiny flutter in her stomach, but before she could ponder the answer, the reality of what she’d seen in the past twenty-four hours crashed around her. She frowned at him. ‘Your friend’s body has been kidnapped, probably killed, and about to be resurrected in what sounds like a pretty unpleasant manner, and you don’t seem to have much of a handle on why. You’re taking this calmly. Or maybe you don’t care about him as much as you claim?’
The smile disappeared. ‘Of course I do. Do not presume to know my feelings. He is gone, and he will be back. There’s nothing I can do to help. Turning can take days. We have lost one already. I fully intend to find him and guide him through the turn. And you are right. I do not know what Autumn is up to. But I plan to find out. And I would like you to help me.’
Lucy finished the mouthful of chocolate pudding and washed it down with the last of her wine. ‘I guess this isn’t a date, then.’
‘Will you help me?’ he asked, and for the first time, she saw something approaching helplessness cross his expression.
‘Why me?’ she asked. She had the sneaking suspicion the genuine answer was that he didn’t know anyone else, but she was curious to hear what reason he’d give. ‘I can’t imagine for one second how I could help you, except to maybe pop down the shops for you when the sun’s out.’
‘You didn’t back down,’ he said. ‘With Autumn. You knew what she was, and you’ve seen what we can do first hand, yet you didn’t back down to save that woman. And you have not run from me.’
‘That’s it?’ she asked, leaning back in her chair and taking another sip of the excellent wine.
‘I like your company. And you’re the last human I know.’
She considered it for a moment. Here it was, another one of those moments where she had the chance to walk away. Signposted and everything. She thought back to the disgusting house where she’d first encountered Adam. That was what he was. A monster in filth. But that didn’t seem to tally with the man before her.
Then there was Cain. She still didn’t believe it was too late to save him, and as Adam had said, this was not a choice he made. Perhaps she could still save him, and wasn’t that what she spent her life doing; saving people?
‘Okay. I’ll help you. On one condition.’
He arched his eyebrow, clearly amused by the prospect of her making demands on him. ‘What’s that?’
‘No meeting at your house.’
He smiled. ‘I can live with that.’