Falling Apart (22 page)

My cover story involved going via my parents' neighbours and picking up the old Labrador they'd been minding. All right, as cover stories went it was fairly flimsy. I mean, what was I going to say, that the dog had to pop home to pick up the post? But it was all I had, and Gem was pleased to see me, at least. He leaned against me from the passenger seat all the way up the lane in a lovely familiar way.

‘Sil?' I pushed open the front door and the dog waddled past me towards the kitchen, in an ever-hopeful search for dropped food. ‘Where are you?'

Silence. But he knew I was here. I could
feel
it, somehow, like an expectant pulling near my navel, as though we were being zipped together slowly. And then I saw him, standing on the staircase. Dark. Shadowed.

‘Jess.'

Even his tone was dark and, for a second, I wondered if Liam had talked to him, told him that the job I'd done since I was eighteen, the only job I'd ever had (if you didn't count being a very bad waitress or helping at a Pony Club rally) and the only one I was qualified to do, was being taken away from me because of him. But the deepness of his eyes held words his mouth didn't seem to want to say, and being fired by York Council was more of an ‘Oh well, there's always McDonald's' occasion. ‘What is it? Sil?'

He came down two more stairs but still stood above me. ‘I've … there are things.' Still dark. Still shadowed. His slashed hair left his bone structure bare, made his eyes look bigger and his mouth less friendly. ‘I know it was wrong but I thought … I am sorry.' He was holding something out to me, a blue folder of the kind that Liam insisted we should use to keep call-out records in. I thought Post-its and the odd paperclip were perfectly sufficient. ‘But it is important.'

The tiredness was back, now accompanied by a black Labrador licking my ankle. ‘Can we just pretend it isn't?' I said. ‘Please, just for a few minutes can we imagine that none of this is happening?' My hands came up and covered my face; I could feel the welling heat of tears trying to break out from my chest. ‘I've already had as much as I can handle for one day.'

The folder was withdrawn and Sil descended the final stairs. ‘This is not going away,' he said softly. ‘And this may be no time to weaken.'

‘This isn't weakening.' I squeezed the words out between my teeth, trying not to let any tears go with them. ‘It's lack of sleep; it's losing my job; worry about stopping zombies getting torched; having to contend with your, quite frankly, weird boss stalking around outside my bedroom at all hours; and it's …' I lost my battle and a few uncorralled drops fell from my eyes. ‘It's just
everything.
'

Sil took my hand and pulled it away from its attempts to prevent emotion leaking out. ‘Come,' he said softly. ‘Sit with me. Time is not important at this moment.' One hand guided my shoulders into the living room and over to the couch.

I sat down next to him, feeling my skin prickle at having him close, the firm press of his body against mine and his scent in my nostrils. There was a comfort to it, like coming home after a long journey to a cup of tea and warm slippers, and I snaked my fingers through his as we rested our heads against the sofa, eyes closed.

‘How's the zombie thing coming along?' he asked, eyes still closed, fingers still cupped against mine.

‘It's … well, they've made a start. Actually, I pity anyone who takes on a unionised zombie. They've got the chanting down now, even if it is something like “What do we want? Equality! When do we want it? Whenever is convenient for you!”'

‘That's good.' A pause. ‘Liam sent me a message about Liaison.'

‘Ah.' I didn't have the energy to open my eyes, but I knew he was looking at my face. ‘Okay.'

‘This is my fault. All of it. If I hadn't …' A sigh. ‘If only I had
known
 …'

A chilly, damp pressure on my cheek made me open my eyes, to see the dog had put two front paws onto the sofa arm and was staring into my face with a slightly accusatory look on his saggy old jowls. I hauled myself to my feet, disengaging my hand from Sil's. ‘We need help, Sil. This is beyond me; hell, it's even beyond Liam, and he's practically beyond in his own right. I think we should tell Zan.'

Sil's eyes snapped open. ‘He'll turn me over to Enforcement.'

I opened the door to let the dog potter out of the front, to cock his leg against a stone bootscraper. ‘Dad's going to be allowed home soon, and what am I supposed to do, shunt you around the country under a dog blanket for the next ten years? And when Zan was talking about you he almost seemed to have some kind of emotion going on, supposing it wasn't a nasty case of haemorrhoids. It might be worth a shot. And …' I hesitated, a momentary uncertainty creeping in. ‘I want you to bite me again.'

Sil hissed, his breath so loud that Gem let out a bark, lips wobbling. When I turned to look at Sil his eyes were alight and his fangs showed on his lower lip just a touch. ‘Dangerous. I like your blood way too much.'

‘We need to know if there's anything else you can remember about the Records Office. They did something to you to wipe your memory for a reason.'

‘Oh, good. So much better than them just deciding to clear my mind of several days on a whim.'

‘Shut up.' The dog pottered between my legs again, claws clacking on the tiles, nose snuffling for any so-far-undiscovered crumbs. ‘And I trust you.'

His eyes moved from the vein in the side of my neck up to meet my gaze. I didn't know whether he knew it but his tongue had come out and run over his lower lip, almost as though he were salivating at the thought of my blood. ‘Knowing what you know about me?'

‘
Because
of what I know about you.'

‘Oh Jess …' He raised a finger and ran it down my throat, around my neck. Traced the tip around, I presume he was following the lines of blood vessels under the skin, his eyes an almost-hypnotic dark, like water of unknown depth. ‘
Jess.
'

‘Do it. Quickly, before I lose my nerve.'

And then there was space between us and his hand had fallen from my skin. ‘There is no need.'

‘What?'

Sil turned his back on me, almost as though he was afraid he wouldn't be able to control himself if he had to look at me. ‘I have other information,' he said, and his voice was deeper, heavier, with a kind of longing. ‘I do not need to bite you.' Then he turned and I was slightly scared by the blackness of his eyes and the fact that his fangs hadn't retracted. He looked ready to take every drop of blood I had in me. ‘But I'm not sure of my control at this minute, so please don't ask me again.'

‘What information do you have?' And then, when he didn't answer straight away, ‘Sil?'

He sighed so deeply that it must have sent his demon scuttling lower within him, for cover. ‘I was searching the house.'

‘
This
house? My parents' place? But what for? What kind of information could you possibly hope to find here?'

Another sigh and he held out the blue folder again. ‘This. Oh gods, Jessie,
this.
'

I couldn't take it from him. My hands were shaking so much that he had to push me back to the sofa and place it on the seat beside me, and, as soon as I saw the familiar writing on the outside, carefully lettered in black felt tip, I felt the cold dread rising again. ‘But this is my mother's writing. Jen, I mean, not Rune.'

‘Open it.'

Not a suggestion, not a command. More of a tired statement of a fact that hadn't yet happened. I turned the folder around so that I could read the deliberate lettering. ‘To my daughter Jessica Amelia. Only to be opened after my death.'

‘But she's not dead! Well, she's drinking hospital coffee, but it doesn't immediately follow, you know.'

Sil sat beside me again and waved a hand at the file. ‘You need to know,' he said. ‘Please. I'll wait.'

I flipped back the cover and pulled out sheets of paper. Gave one a quick look, then another, and then flung them back onto the sofa, leaping to my feet as though the words were scorpions and cobras. ‘These are …'

‘They are letters. To you. From Rune.'

‘You've read them all?' I was staring down at the sheaf of carefully hand-printed stationery, scattered like spent bullets on the mocha fabric of the couch. ‘Sil?'

‘Yes. They hadn't been opened. Your mother … Jen … had instructions to keep them for you “until she felt you were ready”. Most seem to have been written not long after you were born, or maybe even before that, while she waited for your arrival. There are a few later ones.'

I stared again. The loops and curls of the script seemed almost to hang in the air above the papers, and I found I was reaching out a hand as if I could somehow touch Rune if I could touch the space where she'd been. ‘She wrote to me,' I said, wonderingly. ‘My mother … oh, this is confusing, my
other
mother said that they'd stayed in touch with Rune for a long time after they moved up here.'

‘You need to read them.' Sil caught my hand as it floated, trying to touch atoms of Rune. ‘Now.' And he pushed my fingers down until they hit the papers. ‘I am here.'

So I did. I sat in the living room while the air darkened around me and read the letters. Sometimes through tears, sometimes I laughed, but all the time Sil stayed beside me, unmoving, until the implications hit me and I held onto him as though somehow we could unhappen the past.

‘She was bred by the government to bring down vampires.'

‘A succinct appraisal.' Sil's lips moved against my hair. ‘Her mother was one of the Twelve brought in when the Otherworlders first came through.'

‘And her mother was …
mated
with another of the Twelve. My mother was born and then managed to get away after the Troubles.' I stroked the letters softly with a fingertip. ‘It's funny, she goes into a lot of detail about her life up until the end of the Troubles, and then she glosses over things a bit, almost as though she's
ashamed
, but with nowhere to go and no experience of living outside the facility … no wonder she ended up with Malfaire. After what the government had done, he probably looked like a good bet.' I riffled my fingers over the letters. ‘To someone who'd never met a nice person, obviously.'

‘It is unlawful, it is unethical … no wonder the government don't want this to become public. No wonder they tried to prevent me from telling anyone that your mother had no birth certificate. They fear that someone, somewhere, may make connections.'

‘If we'd only said something my mother may have given these to me. She had no way of knowing that Rune and you being starved would be connected.' I breathed carefully. ‘She was going to make me wait until she was
dead
to know any of this.' My father's words came back to me,
Your mother thinks we did something wrong in keeping you
. ‘She didn't want me to know about Rune.'

‘The letters were sealed. Your parents didn't know either. That letter we found under the carpet, the government were fishing for information your parents didn't have. Rune never told them where she came from, what had happened to her, probably to spare them just this sort of thing happening.' Sil stood up. ‘Your bloodline must be very, very important to them. I wonder what they think is going to happen; why they need to bring in all those who may be immune to vampires.'

We looked at one another for a very long moment. ‘And now we fetch Zan,' I said. ‘On so many counts.'

A long, slow nod. ‘But you realise that he may still call for my end?'

‘I hate to say it, but we need him. I
think
I may be able to persuade him to scale back on the hunting you down and killing you thing.' Without looking at him I reached out and touched his face. ‘But we can't do anything without him. If we're going up against the human government … if word gets out about me being Rune's daughter … I hate to say it, but he might be the only thing that can protect any of us.'

‘Of course.' Sil nodded. He had his back to me, and there was something very defeated about the dip of his head and the roundness of his shoulders. Of course, the shrunken sweater and low-rise chain-store jeans were also the epitome of subjugation for a vampire. ‘May I keep the dog? It is lonely here, and I long for …' He turned his head; his hacked hair mostly concealed his face, but what I could see looked haggard and vulnerable. ‘You, Jess.'

‘If an elderly, overweight dog can stand in for me then you had better be prepared to apologise profusely when this is all over.' I didn't dare touch him or kiss him farewell: he looked as though he might break completely. ‘I'll message you when there's more news.'

A quiet moment, then he turned. There was still grace in him; he still had the gorgeous, sculpted face and the poise, but there was also an acid-stain of defeat blurring his features. ‘Thank you for assuming there will be an end,' he said quietly. ‘Because I feel that this is my entire life now. Hiding.' His voice tailed off and he shook the rag-tag ends of his hair. ‘Tell Zan I …' Another shake of the head. ‘Just tell Zan: if he ends me, then so be it. I cannot live like this.'

I searched for something meaningful to say, but couldn't find it. ‘Oh, shut up. If there's any “ending” of you to be done, then it will be me doing it because I don't want any doubts about you getting up again afterwards, all right?'

There was a tiny puckering of his lips that was either a smile or his fangs. ‘I would expect no less.'

‘Right. And you'd better look after the dog, because my anger is nothing compared to my mother's if she finds puddles on the good rug.'

‘Understood.'