actual plan?’ Lucy asked, shifting in her seat uncomfortably. She’d never actually sat in a car with this kind of all-in-one seat, and the lack of seatbelt made her uncomfortable, even as they wound slowly through city centre traffic. People outside stopped and stared at the car, which seemed to please Adam. So much for flying under the radar. Still, the windows were so heavily tinted she doubted they could see her. Thinking about it, the glass was probably as much about keeping the sun’s rays at bay as they were about stopping people leering at the friendly neighbourhood vampire.
They’d mask any violence inside, too.
‘Elle is powerful,’ Adam replied. ‘We must tread carefully.’
‘What’s the deal with her?’
‘Elle is what we call an old one, except we wouldn’t call it to her face. It’s what we call those who were here before us. She is eternal, in her own way, although she has to regenerate.’
‘What, like Doctor Who?’
‘Not exactly, no.’
‘What does she want? Whose side is she on?’
‘Elle is on her own side, and nobody else’s. Her interests might align with others from time to time, but mostly she keeps herself to herself. She usually has a companion, but they stay in the house together. She’ll not be happy about you bringing the police to her door, though, so you need to tread carefully. Let me do the talking.’
‘I suppose you’d rather I stay in the car?’ she grumbled. She was not used to men bossing her around — the fact this one could kill her in an instant didn’t make her like it more.
‘That would be worse. They would see it as disrespectful. I doubt she’ll demand an apology from you, but she’ll want you there before her.’
‘I hope she doesn’t want an apology,’ she sulked, ‘because she’s sure as hell not getting one from me. She kidnapped me, wouldn’t let me leave.’
‘Lucy, remember you are literally at the bottom of the food chain here. She’s an eternal being capable of dark magics. If she wants you to apologise to her, you do it.’
‘Oh, and I suppose if she asked you to apologise, you’d do it, would you?’
‘Absolutely. There are few things in this world more dangerous than my kind, but she is one of them.’
‘Well then, thank you for leaving me alone with her without warning me,’ she sulked.
He said nothing in response.
She stared out of the window. These constant reminders of her low station as a human being grated. There was an arrogance to these so-called supernatural beings, though there was nothing lofty she could see about them beyond their powers and extreme old age.
That even went for Adam. He was terrible at telling her anything — every time she thought she was getting a straight answer from him, she’d look back on it a few minutes later and struggle to find information in it. So Elle was old. It didn’t exactly tell her anything.
She realised she was staring at him with a furrowed brow when he turned and laughed; the smile lighting up his face.
‘What?’ he asked, laughing.
‘Nothing,’ she scowled.
His eyes went back to the road. The smile never completely left his face, though. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’re very pretty when you’re pissed off.’
She turned away and looked back out the window, simultaneously annoyed and glad he couldn’t see the blush on her cheek or the smile trying to take over her mouth.
They pulled up outside Elle’s house a moment later, and Lucy was pleased to see there was no police presence left. A tiny wooden board covered the smashed glass panel on the front door. She suspected the board was a lot bigger round the back of the house.
The house stood silent, its drawn curtains revealing little to show if the house’s inhabitants had returned. Still, Adam pulled up to the curb and let the engine idle for a moment before turning it off, the engine making strange sputtering sounds as it went.
They got out and walked to the front door. She felt silly for bringing herself back here because of Jones, to a house of unimaginably powerful beings, protected only by a vampire who’d told her their power was great than his.
Adam knocked, and the door opened. Missy, holding Jones in her arms. The cat looked a picture of contentment, and Lucy felt a pang of jealousy. Missy broke into a wide smile when she saw Lucy; it fell from her face when she remembered she was supposed to be cross, moving to a scowl instead.
Elle appeared behind Missy, a good two feet taller than her companion and a hundred times more glamourous. She wore the same fake smile she’d worn the last time she’d opened the door to the pair of them. ‘Ah, you’ve returned?’ she said breezily.
‘Came for my cat,’ Lucy said, feeling Adam bristle alongside her.
‘Elle,’ Adam said. ‘The fault is mine. I didn’t give Lucy adequate information when she came here. Please, do not hold her responsible for my ill-judgement.’
‘It would seem to me,’ Elle said, looking down her nose at Lucy, ‘that this girl is your ill judgement, Adam.’
It was Lucy’s turn to bristle, but she held her tongue. She also noted there was no move to hand Jones back to her, and the traitorous little furball didn’t exactly seem in a rush to escape, either.
Adam ignored the atmosphere completely, leaning in to speak to the witch in an even softer, deeper tone. ‘Have you heard anything about Cain, Elle?’
Elle paused, looked out at the road above both their heads, and sighed. ‘Autumn and her people have taken over a building, one of those ugly modern things near the station. She and her followers have set up camp there. Cain will be there, too. They’ll be watching the turn, and they’ll set him loose.’ She handed Adam a scrap of paper, which he looked at briefly before pocketing.
‘What do you mean?’ Lucy asked, but Elle ignored her.
‘Thank you,’ Adam said, and started back toward the car, leaving Lucy stranded for a second. She wanted to reach forward and grab Jones from Missy’s arms, but that hardly seemed wise. Besides, it didn’t look like she was going home. Elle stared at her with haughty disdain, seemingly willing her to make some kind of move. Lucy guessed being allowed to leave at all after calling the cops should be seen as a win, but it didn’t feel that way.
Without a word, she got back into the car. She watched from the side window as Jones leapt down from Missy’s arms and headed back inside the witch’s house without so much as a look behind him. Traitorous little bastard.
‘So,’ she said, as Adam turned the engine over and threw the car into reverse to make a three-point turn out of the street. ‘You going to tell me what she meant by that?’
‘About Cain?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I told you that the turn can be a hard process for us. Don’t think of it in the way you’ve seen in the movies. It’s more like an infection. It kills the host and brings them back; a more symbiotic relationship than a disease. When you come back, at first you can barely find your way. It’s painful, and confusing, and the other part of you, the new part of you, needs blood. You need it too, because everything that was keeping you alive — food, calories, oxygen, water — none of those things matter anymore. You need blood.’
He shifted in his seat, glancing over to judge her reaction before continuing. ‘After you wake, there is little control. The thirst is everything. Almost every tale of vampires you have heard has come from someone becoming. After a while, once you are sated, you come back. And you remember what you have done. We are still the same people, once the change comes. There is no demon. We have to live with the guilt of what we do for centuries. For most of us, it keeps us in the shadows, drinking to survive, and rarely killing. Blood is not hard to find.’
‘What about those who don’t?’ she asked.
He sighed. ‘They become like Autumn.’
‘So, what do they want with Cain?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps they want to bring me into the fight, but I can’t think why. Or it’s a punishment. But Cain doesn’t deserve this. He’s a sweet man. Funny. Kind. If it comes to it and we’re too late, he would hate to become one of us.’
‘Isn’t that strange? I mean, I would have thought most people who hang around vampires would do it because they want to be one?’
‘Some, sure.’ He shifted around in his seat once more — this was clearly a subject he found uncomfortable. ‘There are people drawn to the darkness, what they see as the romantic side of us. Eternal night. They don’t last long.’
‘What about Cain?’
‘He knew what I was, and didn’t want it for himself. He believed in me, more than he believed in our kind.’
‘Believed in you how?’
‘I have a different view from some of my brethren about the future of our people.’
She waited for him to elaborate further, but he pulled the car in at a junction; near three huge modern buildings, each sticking out like monstrous brick sore thumbs amongst the houses of this city suburb. ‘We’re here,’ he said.
‘Holy shit,’ she said, realising where they were. ‘I used to work here.’
‘Where?’
She pointed out the first building. It looked fully deserted, without a single light on inside. ‘That one. I used to do telesales in there.’
‘What’s telesales?’
‘People used to phone us to activate their bank card, and we’d try to flog them insurance. The place shut down a few years back when everyone realised it was a giant scam.’
‘And you worked there?’
‘I didn’t realise until I was already working there. It was a part-time job while I was at University. God, I hated the place. I quit after they gave me an almighty bollocking for refusing to sell identity fraud protection to an old lady so confused she thought I was the post office.’
‘Looks deserted,’ Adam said. ‘Probably where they’ve taken him.’
‘That’s where I knew Cain. Where we met. I heard it closed a few years after I left. They had to wind it up pretty quick. My guess is they couldn’t shift the building before they went under.’
Adam started the car once more, driving it away from the building in question, into the adjacent building’s car park. Lights blazed in that one — a medical company, by the logo outside.
He parked up, and both got out.
As they walked back across the car park past the dozen other cars, a flashlight scanned the ground before them before shining up into Lucy’s eyes. She held her hand out in front of her, and saw the rough outline of a security guard, skinny and tall, crossing toward them.
‘You can’t park there,’ he called out, still a distance away.
‘Sorry,’ Lucy said. ‘Look, we’re going to be ten minutes. Surely it’s no bother?’
‘Sorry, miss,’ he replied. She squinted to get a better look at him, but all she could make out was the grey of his uniform. ‘But I’m afraid it’s company policy to allow…’
Shadows moved within shadows, too fast for Lucy to see. An arm grabbed the guard from nowhere, whisking him off his feet. His torch tumbled to the ground. It took a few seconds for Lucy’s eyes to adjust after the flashlight, but when they did, she wished they hadn’t.
A vampire pounced onto the fallen guard, who did his level best to fight it off. The monster ripped into his neck with a move of such ferocious violence it splattered Lucy in a spray of arterial blood.
‘No!’ she screamed, but as she moved toward the injured man, Adam stepped in front of her. Half a dozen vampires moved in. They seemed to melt out of the surrounding night. The vampire leading the attack straightened up, her face wet with red, her eyes seeming to burn into the dark.
Autumn.
The man on the floor gurgled for a moment, drowning in his own blood, before laying still. Lucy’s stomach turned; her heart pounded in her chest.
‘Adam,’ Autumn said, her extended teeth gleaming in the night. ‘How good of you to join us. And you’ve brought us food. How generous of you. I had the feeling you wouldn’t want to miss the turning.’
Lucy looked up into the face of her protector, but he wasn’t looking at her. He stared at Autumn with an animalistic hunger, his teeth out, his eyes seeming almost to glow.
‘Of course,’ he said, grabbing Lucy by the arm in a move that brought a silent scream of pain bubbling up her throat. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’
The bottom of Lucy’s stomach dissolved into numbness as she realised how badly she’d been played.