longer having Adam by her side or the effect of Autumn’s blood wearing off, as she found herself alone in the York night — covered in dried blood, without direction or leads — Lucy became lost in the warren of back streets.
People moved away from her in disgust; she even passed two of her old university friends out on a date at their local Indian restaurant without them recognising her, giving her the same looks of absolute horror she got from the other strangers. She ignored them, trudging on down the street on ever-more-tired legs.
Not one person stopped to ask if she was alright. Here she was, a woman on her own in a city centre, walking around like she’d escaped a bloodbath, which she supposed was exactly right. Nobody asked her if she was okay. Everyone crossed the street. Would she do the same, she wondered idly, as she turned off a main street into a residential area? She’d like to think not, but who knew? Fear was a bigger motivator than empathy, she knew. She’d seen it so many times with people at the scene of an accident who didn’t want to intervene, hadn’t wanted to do what they knew would help, for fear of making things worse — for them or the person in front of them. Human nature, she supposed.
There were no signs of Cain anywhere. No sirens blaring, no trail of destruction. Whatever turn she’d taken was away from the action. She was too tired to care. Adam was on his trail. Let him deal with it. Cain was one of them now. Maybe it was best if she stayed out of it.
She should head home, get changed, have a shower. Climb into bed and stay there. She didn’t know how she’d get in; she’d lost her phone and her keys somewhere in the night's course — no doubt on the floor of the call centre where she used to work.
Yet home wasn’t where she found herself, when she bothered to look around her to see where her mindless meandering had taken her. No, she was back on the street where this had begun, standing outside the shabby old broken down building that was Adam’s home.
She knocked on the doorway, knowing full well he wasn’t there. In fact, if someone came to the door, she’d likely bolt, but nobody came. She tried the door, but it was resolutely locked. Wedging herself into the doorway, she pulled her knees up and cuddled up to herself. For the first time, she noticed how cold the night was. The blood covering her clothes and hair was dry, but it still clung uncomfortably to her skin. She tried to keep as still as possible, but that made things worse when she did finally move, as the tacky clothing grabbed at her skin and sent shivers down her spine.
As she drifted toward sleep, Adam appeared from nowhere, a quizzical look in his eye. ‘Hey,’ he said, bending down to her level. ‘You okay?’
When she tried to move, she realised what felt like drifting toward sleep had been more like being knocked out cold. Her mouth felt like the inside of a sock, and her clothes had turned completely rigid, along with every single one of her joints, as she tried to move.
‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘I could do with a shower.’
‘Let’s go to mine,’ he said. ‘I still don’t trust your place isn’t being watched.’
‘I don’t have my keys, anyway,’ she said.
He pulled her keys and phone from the inside pocket of his jacket, handing them over.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Did you find him?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘He must have fed enough for the first night. But it’s not over. He’ll be back out tomorrow night.’
‘I can’t think that far ahead,’ she replied, swaying slightly as she tried to stand still. She turned to face the door, waiting for Adam to unlock it.
‘Uh, what are you doing?’
‘Waiting for you to let me in to your house.’
He laughed. ‘What, you thought I lived in there? Give me some credit. No, I’m round the corner.’ He walked down the steps, back onto the quiet street.
Confused, she traipsed after him. ‘If this isn’t your home, why were you and Cain here?’
‘Investigation,’ he replied, offering nothing further on the matter.
She couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief when he led her up a series of stone steps to a perfectly normal and respectable looking town house on the next street over.
He opened the door, letting her in. He took his shoes off in the hallway so she did the same, amused by the notion of a vampire — creature of the night, beast of Satan — taking off their shoes so as not to mess up the carpet. Once he turned the light on, however, she understood.
If the house’s exterior was vaguely anonymous, the inside was anything but. The hallway — lined with oak panels and finely detailed wallpaper — was home to art that spanned, to Lucy’s limited knowledge, hundreds of years of innovative pieces. It was like walking into the world’s homeliest museum.
‘Come on in,’ he said.
‘Wait,’ she said, motioning to the gore stuck to every conceivable surface of her. ‘I can’t traipse all this through your home.’
He laughed. ‘As appealing as the prospect of you stripping off in my hallway is, I think I can handle any mess you might make on your way upstairs. Come up, you can use the shower.’
He turned away, sparing Lucy from him seeing her blushes. She followed him up the staircase, trying to touch as little as possible. He turned on lights as he went, revealing more of the exquisite home, and the treasures within. Antiques sat alongside more modern pieces, bookshelves dotted the walls, crammed with books.
Further comment was off the table. She felt far too exposed in this place, and off balance from his comment downstairs. She didn’t think she’d ever looked less attractive than she did right now.
This was confirmed when he led her quickly through his bedroom, into a bathroom. Old yet pristine white tile, with a grand mirror at its centre. It reflected the utter carnage inflicted upon her, and that on Adam, who was reflected right back at her. She looked up at him.
‘Not expecting a reflection?’ he asked. ‘That myth has gotten me out of trouble more than once.’
He opened a cupboard door and pulled out two towels, placing them on the rim of the beautiful Victorian bathtub next to her.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘I’ll try to find some clothes for you,’ he said. He gave her another awkward smile, and she wondered if he, too, was embarrassed by the line downstairs. ‘You should find anything you need above the tub.’ He flashed another weak smile, and left her, pulling the door closed behind her.
She marvelled at the state she was in. Her face was streaked with sweat and blood and grime, and her hair hung in straggled black, with chunks of deep unpleasantness caught within. It looked like she’d crawled through hell, which she supposed wasn’t far off. She peeled off the top first. The blood had soaked through to her bra, which looked like a nightmarish tie dye. She ran the shower, peeled off the rest of her clothes and climbed in.
Never in her life had she encountered anything so refreshing as the blast of hot water which followed. She stood there, turning the shower curtain red, turning the bath red, letting the water power over her. Chunks of matted blood fell from her hair, and she stood, eyes closed, letting it wash away.
She stayed in there for what seemed like an age, marvelling that an old Victorian building like this could achieve and sustain such water pressure.
Some dark vampiric magics, no doubt, but she didn’t care. At that moment, she didn’t care about anything that had happened so far. She could allow herself a few quick moments of not caring, because caring was exhausting. She could even allow herself, for the briefest of moments, to consider that line from Adam, and how she felt about it. Revulsion, possibly? He was dead. A walking corpse, an impossible thing, something against God and nature and science. And yet…
And yet.
She picked up a bar of soap and washed everywhere with a thoroughness as much about luxuriating in the moment as getting rid of the filth clinging to her.
He was handsome, for starters. Tall, muscled without looking ripped. Nice eyes. A Slightly hooked nose and a slightly weak chin were the sole flaws. That and the fact he literally had to eat people to survive and was old enough for the prefix to be great-great-great.
Jesus, what was she thinking? There was a psychotic killer on the loose, an undead psychopath who’d already killed several people. She still couldn’t work out where Elle and Missy fit into everything. Their creepy witchy fingers were all over it, but she couldn’t work out how, or why. Whatever Autumn had been planning for Cain, that plan backfired. If they could bring Cain in without further death, that should be the end of it. So why did that feel… wrong?
She was letting it creep back in, she realised, wanting to go back to the moment of quiet bliss. But it was gone, replaced by fear and not a little loathing. Finally, feeling something approaching clean, she turned her attention to her hair, hoping the shampoo in the elegant containers at the side of the bath wasn’t some terrifying vampire shampoo that would kill her hair. It seemed to lather up okay, so she spent a while rinsing, getting more and more gunk out until her hair practically squeaked.
In place of her clothes there was a fluffy white hotel bathrobe and an equally fluffy towel. She dried herself off and wrapped the robe around herself, luxuriating in it for a second. She found fluffy white slippers; it was as though Adam had transported her to a lush day spa. She checked herself in the mirror. Well, she looked a damn sight better than she had twenty minutes earlier, or however long she’d been in there.
She opened the bathroom door and stepped out. She was in his bedroom, alone. Having barely glanced at it before, without him here, she could take a better look around. It was beautiful. Whatever else Adam was, he was a man of refined taste. Intricate gilded patterns detailed the wallpaper, and the furniture complimented everything else in the room. Carved oak panels covered the lower part of the wall. If even a few of the details here had been wrong, it would have been ugly, but it was a room entirely in balance with itself.
At the heart of the room stood a vast bed, its oak frame sitting under what looked like an enormous mattress, and a duvet thick enough to have brought about the deaths of many geese. The whole thing gave off a masculine air, but not overpoweringly so.
‘Were you expecting a coffin?’ Adam asked behind her.
She jumped. Turning to face him, she wrapped her robe tighter. ‘You like sneaking up on people, huh?’
‘Perk of the job,’ he said. ‘Here.’ He held out a bag containing entirely new clothes, straight from the store. What the hell kind of clothes shop opened at this time of night? Certainly none she knew of in York.
‘Thanks.’ She took the bag.
He wore different clothes, but there was still blood on his neck and face. ‘If you get dressed, come down. I could do with a shower myself.’
She nodded, he left. She pulled the clothes out. Nothing particularly exciting, but it impressed her he had both her size and her style down pretty well. Black jeans, and a top both cute and functional. New Converse trainers to round it off. She raised a bit of an eyebrow at the underwear he’d chosen, much frillier than she would have picked. But it was expensive, at least. Not that she could tell the price — there were no labels, let alone price tags.
She dressed, wondering what to do with her discarded robe. Taking it and her towel back into the bathroom, and realised she’d left it in a bit of a state. She tidied it up, giving the bath a quick rinse with the shower.
By the time she came back out, Adam stood in the doorway again, leaning on the wooden frame. ‘Thanks,’ he said, motioning to her efforts in the bathroom. ‘Head downstairs. I rarely have food, but I got you something to eat.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ she replied.
‘There if you want it. I’m going to jump in the shower. Snoop about the place.’
‘Thanks.’
She moved past him, into the hallway. He pulled the doorway closed, and she stood there, uselessly, for a moment, staring at the door.
Shaking her head, she headed downstairs.