Dark Vision (29 page)

It was probably my fault that he was so distracted. That he didn’t sense that something was wrong. That he didn’t feel that the warding spells were blown, and that violence had come to visit. It’s definitely my fault that I pushed my way past him and went through the door first.

Inside, we were met with what I can only describe as carnage. The furniture was wrecked, smashed, and toppled. The TV screen and the games console were shattered, glass and wiring strewn over the floor. At first glance I saw five bodies – all of them dressed in the trademark
Men In Black
uniform. One more was still alive, twitching and bleeding and crawling along the polished wooden floorboards.

Finn screamed, and drove his sword through the back of the man’s head so hard it impaled itself in the planks beneath. The sound of cold metal slicing through skull and brain is not something I’ll ever forget – that or the look on Finn’s face as he did it. The sheer, wild joy of killing.

Gabriel pushed me out of the way, and I dropped the lion. He ran yelling into the room, battle rage well and truly back, looking for something to destroy.

‘It’s all right,’ said Carmel, standing in front of him and laying one hand on his chest. God knows how she found the guts to do that, I remember thinking – before I truly looked at her. Saw her properly, in the moody lighting of the flat. Most of the lamps seemed to have been smashed, and only one remained, over the bar, casting the whole room in a sinister glow.

‘They’re all dead. She’s safe,’ she said, gesturing around her. Her hand was covered in blood. Hers or someone else’s, I had no idea. There was a gash along the left side of her face that would leave a scar, and her hair was streaked and clumped with deep-red liquid. Her blouse was torn, and her bare feet were leaving bloody prints as she moved. Carmel. Carmel O’Grady – night-news editor and friend – was walking around in a pool of blood as though she was indulging in some new kind of spa treatment.

Despite all of that, it was her eyes that worried me most: wide, amber, sparkling with excitement. Whatever had gone on here – and obviously it wasn’t good – she’d enjoyed it. Revelled in it. Relished every blow she’d taken, and every one she’d dealt out. It was almost as scary as Gabriel. I guessed this wasn’t my night for feeling entirely comfy around my loved ones.

Gabriel nodded, once, a hard dash of chin to chest, as Connor stepped forward to explain what had happened. The attack had come shortly after Gabriel had left, and the working theory was that they snuck in when he snuck out. The warding spells had worked, and all of them – this apparently included Carmel – were immediately alerted to the threat.

Great, I thought, looking at her. She was definitely one of the boys now. How many had she killed, I wondered, gazing around at the disaster zone that was once Gabriel’s neat and tidy bachelor pad.

Connor continued to recount the battle – with unmistakable delight – as Carmel finally caught my eye. She ran over, feet slipping in gunk, and threw her arms around me. I stiffened as she did it – partly just my usual reaction, partly repulsion. I mean, she was covered in blood and the gloop of other people’s body parts. It just wasn’t nice.

‘Don’t be such a tit,’ she said, pulling quickly away. ‘I’m still me. Just … you know, scarier. More Champion-like. How are you? Why didn’t you ring me, you silly cow? I had no choice but to tell him. And I honestly thought he was going to kill me.’

She was staring at me, hard, and I stuttered an apology. After what I’d witnessed tonight, I could better imagine what that particular scene had looked like. Was I the only one who didn’t get off on all this bloodshed? No wonder they needed a fertility chick to lighten the load – left to them, the whole human race would probably be walking round with swords and scabbards and missing limbs.

And eyes, I thought, turning round to look for Kevin. I saw him behind the bar – ever the professional – trying to salvage what he could from the broken glass scattered on the floor. I walked over, wondering what I’d say. ‘Hi, Kevin, sorry about almost getting you blinded. Could you do me a quick rum and Coke, please?’

The eye in question – or, I had to presume now, empty socket – was covered by a bandage, but the other one looked pretty pleased to see me. Generous, in the circumstances.

‘Kevin, I’m so sorry – I don’t know what to say …’ I muttered, reaching out to touch his arm. Yuck. That was a mistake, as it wasn’t the cleanest arm I’d ever come across. Clearly being visually impaired hadn’t prevented him from getting stuck in.

‘What about?’ he asked, looking genuinely confused.

‘Um … your eye?’ I replied, adding a silent ‘duh’ at the end.

‘Oh! That! It’s nothing,’ he said, grinning. ‘Except all the others are starting to call me Caemgen Caech now!’

‘Are they?’ I said, wondering why this was such an amusing thing, as to me it sounded like he’d just said ‘klunk klik klak’.

‘Yes, it means half-blind!’ he added, as though this was the best gag the world had ever heard. Maybe it was, but I was obviously having a sense of humour failure that night. Kevin passed me a mug of Peroni – looked like the glasses were all done for – and I took it gratefully. At some point I needed to do myself a favour and eat, but right now I’d take anything I could get.

Around the room, Connor, Finn and Carmel were starting to clear up, shoving the dead bodies into one corner like leftover rubbish at a party. I could hear glass crunching beneath their feet, but if it was hurting them, nobody seemed to notice. Morgan, one of the vampires, managed to find an unsmashed iPod dock, and called up some tunes. I wondered idly if he had a special playlist, titled ‘Music to Kill Men By’. It turned out to be Frank Sinatra doing ‘Moon River’, which was just plain weird.

‘Is everyone all right?’ I asked Kevin, assuming that they wouldn’t be getting all jiggy in a Rat Pack fashion if they weren’t.

‘I think so …’ he replied, looking around with his one functioning eye, as though he was doing a head count. ‘Isabella?’ he shouted. ‘Your guys all good?’

Isabella’s beautiful black head appeared from behind the upturned sofa. Her mouth was still attached to the neck of one of our attackers, and she took the time to finish her meal before she answered. I heard the last glug of blood leaving the body, like the sound a gas nozzle makes when the car tank is full, and she dropped it with a dull thud back to the floor. She stood up, wiped her face so the blood smeared across her cheeks, and smiled. Her pupils were dilated, and she looked like she’d just had the best shag in the world.

Yes. I was definitely the odd one out here.

She glanced around, spotted Morgan crooning away in the corner, and Marcus wielding a sword in one hand and a dust-buster in the other. She frowned, her head swivelling from side to side as she surveyed the wreckage.

‘Luca!’ she bellowed, leaping over the sofa like a superhero. I looked around too. He was nowhere in sight, and I felt panic rise through me. He could be in another room. He could be behind the bar, eating a human being. He could be taking a nap. He could be anywhere at all – but, in the tried and tested tradition of every movie I’d ever seen, I had a Bad Feeling About This. Luca was the only one of the vampires I’d bonded with – which is a polite way of saying I’d gyrated on his genitals – and he was missing. Kevin’s eye was bad enough. Losing Luca would be … worse.

Morgan and Marcus, alerted to their leader’s distress, stopped what they were doing and grouped together with her in the centre of the room. They started to sniff the air, like bloodhounds on the trail of an escaped convict.

As if at some silent signal, they all moved – half running, half leaping, scooting on their arms and their legs like animals – towards the open-plan kitchen area. They disappeared behind the countertops, and as I ran over, all three of them started howling. Like a pack of wolves. It was loud, and eerie, and terrifying, watching their blood-streaked faces lift to the ceiling as they bayed.

Scary as that was to see, it was nothing compared to the sight at their feet. Luca lay collapsed in a bloody heap, the bodies of three attackers dead around him, throats torn and oozing. He’d gone down biting. He was terribly, dreadfully still, and his torso was ripped open, the ragged edges of his blood-soaked T-shirt clinging to the jagged tears of flesh. I could see his insides on the outside, looped and curled and glistening pink. The wound sheared up to his chest, and his rib cavity gleamed red and white and wrong.

It was revolting. And it seemed to mean he was dead. I knew they weren’t immortal, that they could be killed – it was just pretty damned hard to do.

Gabriel loomed over us, face set and grim and rigid.

‘They caught his heart,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’

‘No!’ shrieked Isabella, leaping to her feet. ‘It still beats – I can hear it! He lives, and while he lives, we do not give up on him! He needs human blood!’

Carmel pushed her way forward. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said calmly, as though she was offering to take him out for a latte instead of open up a vein.

‘No … it’s
hers
he needs,’ hissed Isabella, desperate eyes focusing in on me. ‘She can save him. The
Goddess
.’

Gabriel stood between the two of us, sheltering me with his swelling body. ‘No,’ he said, voice made of iron. ‘I forbid it. Her blood is sacred, and it shall not be spilled.’

I peeked around him to look at Luca, the physical wreckage of his once fine body. The body he’d sacrificed because of me. The body I’d danced against to The Doors. The body that, according to Isabella, I could save.

I dashed out from behind Gabriel, my feet slipping in the blood, and skidded to a stop on my knees in the stuff. I felt it soak into my jeans, and knew it would dry crisp and coppery. Gabriel stepped towards me, hands outstretched as though to physically drag me away, and I glared at him.

‘Back off!’ I yelled. ‘I am Mabe – Mother of the Mortals! And I will not be treated like a child! Touch me, and I will kill you!’

I had no idea why I said that, or what deluded portion of my brain thought I was capable of killing a warrior High King, but it stopped him in his tracks.

‘Feed him!’ screeched Isabella, grabbing my wrist and slashing at it with a red-painted talon. The attack was so quick, so sharp, that I didn’t even feel the pain – it was only when the blood oozed to the surface and started to flow that I realised what she had done.

Gabriel roared and went for her, grabbing her by the head and tossing her into the sky like a rag doll. She flew up and up, somersaulted through the air, all flapping black hair and flapping black dress. She landed with a sickening thump against the wall on the other side of the room, sliding down it until her body reached the floor. She twitched and roused and stood up, and I could hear bones and joints popping back into place as she growled at him. It was like watching a Halloween puppet reassemble itself, with the soundtrack from hell.

Without a word, Marcus and Morgan attacked, flying at Gabriel with teeth bared and nails flaring, snarling and snapping like starved lions. Finn, Connor, Carmel and Kevin waded in, and I knew – just knew – that they could all end up dead. Me too, the way the blood was pooling from my wrist to my lap. Luca, bless his sweet soul and his lovely leather pants, looked like he was already gone.

I stood up, planning to make some kind of goddessy scene, or at the very least to throw myself into the middle of the ruckus – that would make them pause if nothing else.

I took a deep breath, held up my hand to try and staunch the blood, and took a step towards them. Party time.

Just then, the floor-to-ceiling windows shattered in an almighty explosion, sprinkling us all with shards. I covered my head with my hands, screaming like a baby, and saw a body fly through the broken panes. A body that landed, sure-footed, in a pair of enormous shit-kicking black boots in the centre of the room.

The boots belonged to long, long legs; and the legs belonged to a woman who stood six feet tall, with the body of a blacksmith. A black leather coat flew around her ankles, and her hair – a startlingly vivid red, streaked with white – streamed behind her, a flaming curtain.

‘Enough!’ she yelled, her deep voice ricocheting around the room as she grabbed hold of the nearest body – which happened to be Connor – and wrenched him away. He fell to the floor, glanced up, saw who had attacked him, and stayed there. Kneeling and sniffing the ground like a grovelling dog.

I have to be honest. I almost peed myself just looking at her, so I could totally understand why he reacted like that. But I couldn’t quite believe my eyes when the others followed suit. All of them. The vampires. Gabriel. Even Carmel, who had so gone native.

The ones who were standing fell to their knees in worship, and the ones who were sprawled raised themselves up to the same position, their foreheads scraping the floor as they spread themselves before her. This was one scary dudette.

‘You will fight among yourselves while the Goddess bleeds?’ she said, so loud it made my head vibrate. ‘You will brawl while she sheds her sacred blood upon the floor of this hovel? You are not worthy! Cormac macConaire, stand before me and explain yourself – why you, as her protector, her mate-in-waiting, allow this to happen?’

Gabriel stood, and I swear to God he looked scared. It was the one and only time I have ever seen that look on his face, and in turn it made me breathe that little bit faster. If the scariest man in the room looks worried, it’s time to run and hide.

He kept his head bowed, not making eye contact, not wanting to challenge the top dog, and spoke: ‘One of the vampires received a near-mortal blow, My Lady. His brethren want her to save him. They … they cut her.’

The woman looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. I was the only one still standing – more because I was frozen like a petrified block of stone then because of any intended disrespect. I walked towards her. Without being told, I knew it was what she wanted, and knew that I should obey her.

She took my hand, held it up to the light so she could see the still-flowing blood. My entire sleeve was soaked in it now, and as soon as I saw it I started to feel a bit light-headed. Gabriel’s face fell as he realised how hurt I was. Yep. Another epic fail, protector-boy.