Changeling (11 page)

He looked at Trey, and his eyes were hard to meet. ‘Unbeknown to any of the rest of us, two members of our little gang were vampires. They’d abducted a young lass who had been out on her hen night in the local village. When I walked in, they were in the process of tearing the poor thing apart, draining her of the blood and life that flowed through her body. When I tried to stop them, they set upon me, beating me to within an inch of my life. I believed that they were going to finish feasting on the girl and then start in on me. They beat me mercilessly until I lost consciousness. That’s how I ended up with this pretty little memento.’ He fingered the ugly disfigurement on his right cheek.

‘And that, as they say, would have been the end of me. But just as I was slipping away, a man walked in. When I came to, the two vampires were dead and the man was trying to save the girl’s life. He was too late to save her, but he managed to get me out of there in one piece and patch me up again. Lucien saved my life – in more ways than one, I think – and I have been with him ever since.’

A silence filled the kitchen, punctuated by Tom taking a noisy slurp from his mug.

‘Thanks, Tom,’ Trey said.

‘What for?’

‘For telling me all of that. Thanks.’

Tom nodded his head. He frowned over at Trey and nodded again towards the sandwiches. ‘Are you going to eat these things or let them all go stale? You’re going to need every ounce of energy for this afternoon.’

‘What’s Lucien planning for me?’ Trey asked, biting into a cheese-and-tomato sandwich.

Tom grinned, a wicked light dancing in those flinty eyes of his. ‘You’ll see soon enough,’ he said.

Alexa arrived back at the apartment just after noon, bustling through the doors with assorted carrier bags, the names of famous department stores adorning their multicoloured exteriors. She dropped them in a heap by the side of the settee and threw herself backwards into the soft leather cushions, letting out a big, weary sigh in the process.

Tom, who was sitting in one of the easy chairs reading a paper, looked over the top of his silver-rimmed spectacles at her, small creases radiating from the corners of his eyes as he surveyed the jumble of bags. ‘Just a
small
shopping expedition today, Alexa? What happened? Have you maxed out your card again?’

‘No, Tom,’ Alexa replied wearily. ‘I had to get back, remember? Dad told me that I was to give Trey a quick tour of the place before they get started this afternoon. Where is he?’ she asked.

‘I’m here,’ Trey said, walking in. He looked down at the bags at the end of the settee, whistling through his teeth. ‘Blimey!’ he said. ‘How many people have you been shopping for?’

‘Don’t you start,’ Alexa said, sitting up. ‘I get enough grief from Tom here, I expected a little more support from someone nearer my own age. Anyway, I bought you this,’ she said, sliding over to reach into one of the bags. She held up a pink-and-grey sweater that Trey would not have been seen dead in. ‘What do you think? It’s cashmere and it’s Paul Smith.’

Trey caught sight of Tom pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and burying his head in his paper.

‘Er, well . . . yeah. It’s nice of you and everything, Alexa, but I don’t think it’s really my thing. It’s a bit . . . stripy.’ Trey held contact with her eyes so that he wouldn’t have to look at Tom, who was shifting around in his seat trying to stifle a laugh.

She smiled caustically at the Irishman, standing up to face Trey. ‘Are you ready?’ she asked.

‘What for?’ Trey replied.

‘The grand tour – not that it’s much of a tour or very grand, but Dad wants you to see the place so that you know what’s what.’

‘Oh. Then lead on, Macduff,’ Trey said.

Alexa looked at him quizzically.

‘My grandma always used to say that whenever we went anywhere. I never realized it was a misquote until we read
Macbeth
in English last year. I think I like my gran’s version better though.’

‘Come on then. Let’s get this over with as painlessly as possible.’

She moved to the elevator, the doors opening instantly as she pressed the button to call the lift. They entered, Trey standing beside her and breathing in her perfume as she depressed the button to descend to the first floor. He’d got the impression that he had hurt her feelings with his comment about the jumper, and the silence that filled the lift as they descended seemed to reinforce this notion.

The doors of the elevator opened up to reveal a bustling office scene. The tickety-tap sound of people typing into computer keyboards and the ringing of telephones punctuated the general hubbub of the room.

Trey and Alexa stepped out of the lift. ‘This is one of my father’s businesses and it takes up the entire first floor,’ Alexa said, as she led Trey through the rows of low booths that separated the office workers from each other.

‘I don’t pretend to know who most of these people are, or what they do, but this place is all about information gathering. The staff is split about seventy–thirty between nether-creatures and humans, the majority being demons of one sort or another. Tom is the overall manager and I’m sure that he’d be more than willing to avail you of all the intricate details, if you’re interested.’ She started to move forward again, but Trey hooked her arm by the elbow to stop her.

‘Hang on a minute. Did you say most of the people here are demons?’ Trey looked at the office scene in front of him, deep creases forming on his forehead as he looked at the workers going about their tasks. It all looked perfectly
normal
to him.

‘That’s right. It makes sense really. Our employees investigate and stop the more nefarious goings-on that involve nether-creatures in the human realm. What’s the saying? It takes a thief to catch a thief?’

‘Stop just a minute, Alexa,’ Trey said pulling her back again. ‘The Netherworld and the earth . . . they coexist, right? Like parallel worlds?’

‘Yes, something like that.’

‘And you are telling me that demons and other . . . nether-creatures can cross from their world into ours?’

‘And vice versa. There are portals between the worlds that have existed since time began. In addition, temporary portals can be summoned by anyone powerful and knowledgeable enough in magic to create one.’

‘And you’re telling me that there are
demons
here now?’ Trey looked around again and shook his head slowly. ‘But everyone looks normal,’ he said in a quiet voice.

Alexa followed the line that his sight took, a frown forming on her forehead. When she looked at Trey again her mouth was hanging open and she had turned a subtle shade of pink. ‘I completely forgot: you can’t see them, can you? Oh, Trey, I am so sorry, that was bloody stupid of me. You see, they use a masking spell to hide their true appearance, a sort of human shell that provides them perfect camouflage in this world. Other nether-creatures can see
through
this shell. It’s hard to explain – it’s like you’re looking at someone through a transparent mannequin, you can see the mannequin moving and talking at the same time as the real creature inside, but you know that it isn’t the real thing.

‘The good news,’ she continued, ‘is that when you morph into a werewolf, you’ll be able to see them, but in your human form you’re unable to see their true demon form.’

‘But you can see them. You told me that you weren’t a nether-creature.’

‘It’s a spell. It’s difficult to learn, but it enables humans to see through the demon disguise. It took Tom almost a year to learn.’ She grinned at him. ‘But then again, he hates magic.’

Trey shook his head and stared about him again.

‘One of the tech-bods who works at one of my father’s other companies invented a headset that allowed anyone to see things as if they were being viewed by a nether-creature, but it was a great unwieldy thing and they decided to scrap the idea.’

‘Hello, Alexa,’ waved a cheery-looking woman from her desk as they passed.

‘Hi, Ruth. Oh, thanks for those manuscripts that you copied for me last week – they were incredibly interesting,’ she said, waving back. ‘Ruth is a darling and can help locate almost anything that you might need to know about poltergeists and telekinesis. It’s her
thing
,’ she confided in Trey.

‘Is
she
a demon?’ asked Trey in a low whisper, looking back at the plump woman in the summer dress who was busily tapping at her keyboard again.

Alexa made a face. ‘No, Ruth’s a human. She gets messages from the dead that turn up on little notes in her handbag though. Neat, huh?’

She walked away from him, stopping in front of one of two wooden doors at the end of the office. She opened the door and walked inside, beckoning him to follow her. ‘This is the research library.’ She closed the door behind them to reveal a large room with a horseshoe of tables in the centre of its dimly lit interior. Arranged around the inside of the tables’ curve were a number of freestanding lamps. The light from a couple of these was being used by two people hunched over a jumble of books and maps laid out in front of them. They briefly glanced up before returning to their studies.

‘My father owns the entire building,’ Alexa went on in a quiet voice. ‘It used to be a grain warehouse, but he had it converted about twenty-five years ago.

‘This is a good place to start to find answers to some of the questions that you’ll have tumbling around in that head of yours at the moment.’

She walked across the room towards a strange-looking machine built into the wall on their right. It looked like an enormous fridge without doors, and Trey reckoned that it was at least four metres wide and as tall as he was. Alexa pressed a button, and a sickly blue light blinked on inside the device. Trey saw that it was some kind of automated storage system (of the kind that you see in a pharmacist’s shop), and as Alexa punched a number into the keypad the columns of shelves started to move, shifting down into the bowels of the machinery to be replaced by others from above.

Each shelf held up to about twenty books that were all carefully laid out on their backs, and Trey could see, as row after row came into sight before disappearing again, that some of them were incredibly old – barely books at all, but sheaths of puckered parchment bound together by tattered and beaten materials impossible to define.

‘Here,’ she said, holding out a dog-eared volume that she had retrieved from one of the shelves. ‘A bit more background reading for you.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a book on vampires. Probably the most comprehensive book ever written on them. It tells you about their physiology, their history, how they survive and how to . . .’

‘How to kill them?’ Trey said, staring at her.

‘Yes, that’s included too. I thought you might be interested.’

Trey shook his head angrily. ‘It’s not true, you know.’

‘What isn’t?’

‘The legend. Lucien told me the story of Theiss and his visions. It isn’t true. I’m not looking to fulfil some crazy prophecy that was made by some guy as he was roasting on the stake.’

‘I know. But it can’t harm, knowing what kind of creature you are going to be living with, can it? Neither can it hurt to know what type of creature it is that wants to kill you.’ She nodded at the book in his hand before turning round to switch off the machine.

‘Where does all the money come from?’ Trey asked. He gestured with his chin at the office outside. ‘How does your father make his money?’

‘Like I said, I don’t pretend to understand most of what goes on. But my father provides security for other global corporations. Some years ago, Caliban realized that he could undermine humanity by attacking big business. If he could infiltrate all the big financial institutions, the electronics companies, the energy companies, the arms manufacturers – the list goes on – he could wield great power in this world. My father’s people try to baulk him in these enterprises. In addition, my father uses certain
skills
possessed by various demons to help companies find the things that they want: oil, gas, diamonds, gold. People are willing to pay
very
handsomely for those skills.’

They left, closing the door behind them. ‘The other room is much the same, but it’s stacked out with computer equipment. That’s where I do most of my homework,’ Alexa said.

‘You still go to school?’ Trey asked, following in her wake as they walked back through the busy office. ‘I thought that you might not bother, or that you’d have private tutors.’

She stopped to press the button for the lift, the doors sliding open immediately. ‘No, Trey, I go to school. I like the normality that it provides me,’ she said as he stepped in beside her. ‘Dad will probably insist that you go too.

‘The top floor, as you know, is our apartment and you can explore any areas of that you haven’t seen yet on your own – there are no out-of-bounds, except my bedroom. Oh, and if you value the current location of your testicles, I wouldn’t go snooping around in Tom’s room without permission either.’ She smiled as the elevator bell pinged and the doors slid open to reveal the second floor.

They stepped out into a long narrow corridor with three doors leading off on each side.

‘This is the gym,’ she said, opening the first door on the right to reveal a fully equipped aerobic suite complete with running, rowing and cross-training machines of various types. The far wall was dedicated to free weights. A pressing bench and a squat stand sat between shelves lined with dumbbells and metal discs. ‘There’s a boxing ring with bags and stuff through that door over there.’

She closed the door and opened an identical-looking one on the other side of the corridor. ‘This is a dance studio,’ she said, revealing a wooden-floored expanse with a mirrored wall and ballet bar at one end. ‘If you want a personal trainer, I’m sure that we can set one up for you. Or you can join Tom or my father in their workouts if you’d prefer.’

They continued up the corridor. Alexa pointed to the doors set across from each other at the far end. ‘The two furthest doors are his and hers changing rooms with showers and toilets – they both lead through to another lift that takes you to the pool up on the roof.’