Falling Apart (23 page)

I couldn't look back. I had to walk out and squeeze myself into Liam's little car, drive away with an insouciant wave from the window, because if I'd caught Sil's eye, or even seen him move towards me, I would never have left. I would have wrapped myself around him and never let go.

Zan was sitting alone at a bare desk. The chrome of the computer gleamed at me and my shoes made little squeaky sounds against the carefully polished wooden floor, it couldn't have been further from the Liaison office if it had unicorns as coat hangers. ‘Jessica?'

‘That's Sil's desk.'

‘I know. I work here.'

The computer wasn't switched on. Zan had just been sitting, apparently staring at the empty screen and the neatly stacked papers that Sil had left. When I went over I saw that there was also a picture of me, newly framed, beside the keyboard – me standing alone at a party. One of the ones the newspapers were so fond of printing alongside made-up tales of my misdemeanours. Somehow it looked better here: I looked heroic and strong.
He keeps a picture of me on his desk.
The little ball of screwed-tight emotion that I was barely restraining made another bid for escape, but, in view of Zan's opinions on crying women, I forced it down. There was another picture too, pushed slightly towards the back of the desk and framed in wood, a posed family group in sepia tones. ‘Is that Christina and the children?'

‘Unless he has taken to placing random photographs within his line of sight, I would assume so.'

The woman was sitting in a chair, her son on one side and her daughter on the other, all immaculately dressed and precisely placed. Their features were mostly washed-out with age, but the rounded cheeks and carefully styled hair spoke of affluence; their steady, serious stares of determination. ‘She looks nice.'

‘Yes. He clearly decided to downgrade.' Zan's eyes were very green. ‘Why are you here, Jessica?'

I looked at him, trying to decide what to do. He looked, as usual, precise and contained. I'd often wondered what would make Zan fall apart, but suspected that, if he did, gearwheels would have my eye out. ‘I think I need your help.'

He went very still. He was always fairly still, but now he seemed to shut down every function except for listening, even his blinking stopped. ‘Sil,' was all he said.

‘Yes.'

And now Zan actually slumped. I'd never seen him do it before, at least not while he was conscious, but his shoulders rounded and his head dropped. ‘He's alive?' A whisper.

‘Yes.'

‘And you know where he is?'

‘Look, let's stop playing twenty questions, shall we?' I must have sounded fierce because Zan's head snapped up and his demon moved, a fleeting presence behind Zan's eyes for a second, making his fangs slide into place.

‘Do not attempt to order me, Jessica.' He laid his hands flat on the desktop and stood up, using the smooth vampire glide that was so alien. ‘You have kept things from me.' Alpha-vamp had come to the party again.

‘Indoor voice, Zan, please. I'm not impressed by you pulling the whole “I am Vampire, hear me gnash” you know, and I'm not scared of you either.' It was a bit of a lie; I wasn't
exactly
scared, but Zan was an unknown quantity when it came to actual aggression, so I was cautious at the very least. I wasn't going to let him know, though: it would only make him even smugger, and Liam had used up York's smugness quotient already. ‘I want some assurances from you before I say anything else.'

‘Assurances.' Zan moved out from behind the desk. ‘From
me
? And what bargaining power do you have, if I may ask?' He ran his hands down the lapels of his Neru-collared jacket, like a nineteenth-century businessman who'd just been asked for a discount. ‘Because I rather think I do not have to assure you of anything, other than that I can, and will, kill you if you do not reveal what you know.'

Bugger. I really should have gone back for the tranq gun. But I kept my voice steady. Not showing fear was the key to making Zan listen to me; if I broke and started to whimper he would have the upper hand over me forever. And that would be like being ruled over by a Praying Mantis, so, no, not going to happen. ‘First. I want you to tell me that you will not send the boys in to do away with Sil. Second, I want your promise that he will be pardoned of all crimes against Humans. Thirdly, oh, sod, there was a third thing … damn!'

‘Presumably it involved assurances of safety for yourself, Jessica? I cannot promise anything. I must hold the city to the Treaty that Sil has so wantonly broken.'

‘I think what happened to Sil has something to do with the human government,' I said quickly, before I could chicken out, back down and pretend that I knew nothing. The words were incendiary, and I knew that once they were said things would never be the same again; the way Zan's face set as soon as I let them out told me I was right. His long fingers curled, dragging splinters from the mahogany desktop and leaving score marks in the wood; his shoulders straightened as though he was prepared for a huge weight to settle on them.

‘I think …'—there was a new gentleness to his voice, but a gentleness that sounded as though it was wrapped around an iron bar—‘that we should go home and discuss this.'

‘But I …' I was desperate to explain but had no time to get any more words out before Zan was in front of me, pushing a hand across my mouth, the fingers that had scratched those parallel lines into the hard wood leaving me with no uncertainty about what they could do to my face if I protested. I restrained the urge to bite him because I could feel his usual cool façade trembling – it was a bit like being silenced by a rockface when you can feel the earthquake coming.

‘We will go home,' he said, into my eyes. ‘Yes?'

He wasn't trying to glamour me; he knew that wouldn't work. He was using his eyes to convey some other message, but Zan was too alien to me, with his OCD and his fussiness. I'd never tried to forge any kind of bond with him, even friendship would have been like trying to befriend a plank, so I had no idea what was going on behind that moss-green stare. However, he'd overcome his hatred of personal contact far enough to risk my spittle, and that told me how serious he was without any eye woo-woo; so I nodded, and felt his fingers relax away from my face.

‘Just one question.'

He gave me a cautious look as he took a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to wipe his palm. ‘Perhaps.'

‘Are you driving the Bugatti?'

Zan sighed and looked at the ceiling. ‘Even
now
? Seriously?'

‘Appearances are important,' I said, sulkily.

‘Yes. We will go in the car.' He opened the door to the office and another vampire, not
quite
as top-rank sexy and classy as Sil and Zan but only one film-star notch down, handed him his keys. I'd never asked, but always assumed that some low-level kind of telepathic thing went on between vamps, and this seemed to prove it, unless Zan just had his staff
really
well trained.

Almost bundling me, but without actually making any physical contact, Zan got us out of the office and down to their (underground, guarded) car park, where the Bugatti sat amid a series of other show-stoppers. It was like a
Top Gear
wet dream down there. Once we were in the car, he turned to me.

‘Do you understand why we must leave the office to talk? I ask only because I do not want you to start thinking that I am abducting you again.'

‘Are you worried that we may be overheard?'

‘I am worried all the time. I have ceased to remember how it felt
not
to be worried.' He started the engine and steered the car expertly through the tight turns of the parking system and out onto the main road, while I sat silent.

Zan
was telling me how he felt? I wouldn't have been more surprised if the car had piped up and asked us to ease off the throttle because it felt a bit peaky.

‘Is it safe here?' Something in this general background level of paranoia must be catching.

‘I think so, yes.' Zan fiddled with something on the dashboard and a little 3D image of the car sprang up with points of light dotted around it. ‘Yes. The car is clear.'

I leaned back, closed my eyes and told Zan about Sil going to London and about the letter my father had received. It took the drive home and most of a pot of tea (me) and a large bottle of O negative (Zan), and when I'd finished we both looked a bit bloated.

‘Why did you not come to me?' Zan tipped some more blood into his glass. He'd loosened up a bit, and had actually put his elbows on the table, but not to the evidently disgusting level of drinking from the bottle.

‘Because you kept telling me that he'd gone rogue and had to die. Several times, if I remember rightly.' This was odd. I always hated it when Zan treated me as an equal, and now here we were, practically doing one another's hair.

‘But, if I had known that he was shut away … starved …' Zan shook his head. ‘I would not have called for his end.'

I poured another cup. What I'd really wanted was a sturdy mug of builder's tea, or one of Liam's ‘proper coffees', so thick that the spoon bent and biscuits bounced off the surface, but I'd thought Earl Grey was a little more Zan-friendly, so I was quietly perfuming myself to death. ‘There's something else, Zan.'

‘Regarding Sil?'

‘It's more about me, actually.' I told him about the letters from Rune. I left out some of the more emotional stuff, but laid it all out about her having come from a government breeding programme, about her mother having been selected for being resistant to vampires.

And then Zan dropped the bottle.

It smashed against the ornamental quarry tiles of the kitchen floor with a noise that made my head sing, and when I looked at him his eyes were glowing the kind of red that really imaginative artists used when they drew hell. He was looking at me, but almost as though my skin had become invisible and he could see my bones moving beneath. ‘No,' he said. ‘No.' Then he stood up and started pacing the floor, and what frightened me more than anything was the fact that he left the broken bottle beneath the table, ignoring the glass fragments and the remains of the blood that spiralled out from the impact and dotted the tiles with darkness. ‘No,' he said again, reaching the doorway and jerking the door open with such force that the handle split and the carefully waxed solid wood panel tore away from the frame.

‘All right, that's got that out of your system,' I said carefully, putting the cup down. ‘Now, can we carry on our conversation? I understand your need to pull City Vamp out from under the bed every now and then, but I need to know what the hell is going on because my lover is sitting up on the moors with nothing but a deaf Labrador between him and any shit that is going to come down on his head because of this.'

Zan made an obvious effort to pull himself together. ‘Eloquent as always, Jessica.' He laced his fingers together and cupped them in front of his mouth, thinking. ‘We need to go to him,' he said, as though coming to a huge decision.

‘Sil?'

‘No, the Labrador. You do understand what is happening here, don't you?'

‘Not really, but I know you're scared, and that is
terrifying
me, so, yes, whatever, let's go.'

Sil walked back from the barn. The dog had given him a serious staring-at until he'd opened the door, and then the freedom of the air had called to him and he'd decided to stretch his legs as far as the property perimeter. No further, because the sole was becoming detached from one trainer and scraping the ground with every step, making him lift his knees like a trotting pony, although he hardly even noticed it now.
I can go no lower.

The tug came, jerking at his midriff and making him flex uncertainly, a fish hooked but not yet flapping on the bank.
Jess?
Then the dog was barking and running stiffly towards the track and Sil saw the Veyron slithering like a metal ghost into the gravel circle in front of the house. His heart and demon jumped in a ballet of synchronised movement when he saw Jess get out of the passenger seat, and then died to a muted crawl through his chest as Zan climbed out next to her.
Zan. My friend through all these years
 …
now I find out where you stand.

Gathering his courage, he walked down the hill towards the house.
If I am going to die, at least I can tell Jess what she means to me before I go. I can look into those lovely amber eyes and tell her how loving her has been the only thing that has kept my humanity in place.

Zan and Jess, looking surprisingly sociable, were in the kitchen, sitting on opposite sides of the scrubbed table. When he walked through the door they both stood up, and then looked at one another in a slightly awkward way, as though they had formed an orderly queue to throw themselves into his arms and weren't sure which one was at the front. But Jess, as he had known she would, won and crossed the floor in two strides to encircle him with her arms and bury her face against his chest.

He closed his eyes and breathed the lovely scent of her. She smelled of faded light, of coffee on a breeze, of sweet things underlined in metal. Her hair rioted, so when he looked down all he could see was a mass of silken black threads.

‘It's going to be all right,' she said, her words brushing his skin. ‘It has to be.'

Zan was standing, impassive. ‘Jessica has told me everything. I fear she does not understand the implications, but that is Jessica in a nutshell, is it not?'

‘We need to work out what we do next.' Jess pushed lightly at him until he stepped back and enabled her to turn around. He kept a hand on her shoulder, needing the contact. She was excited, he could feel the adrenaline running through her blood like sugar, and under his touch her skin gathered into bumps. ‘How we can save Sil.'

‘It is not Sil who concerns me at this moment.' Zan's words made her still under his touch. ‘It is you, Jessica. You have suddenly become a very dangerous person with whom to be connected.'

‘How the hell can
I
be dangerous? Zan, I practically define safety and moral rectitude. Well, all right, not moral rectitude, but safety, certainly. I'm not allowed anything more dangerous than a gun that puts you to sleep for twenty minutes – it's like having an arsenal entirely made up of Kalms tablets! The worst you're going to get from me is nightmares, or a date with an Enforcement officer who, on present evidence, is going to be Harry Leonard, the world's biggest pushover.'

‘Jessica.' Sil tried to intervene, to calm her. He could tell Zan was walking a tightrope of emotion, although almost none seeped out. Any onlooker would have thought the old vampire was calmly watching and listening, but Sil could sense the cocktail of hormones that Zan's demon was currently feeding from as eagerly as a starving man at the remains of a feast. ‘What makes her suddenly so dangerous, Zan?'

A moment. Sil would remember that moment as the one on which time pivoted, when the world swung from its superficial Treaty-led organised state into one with layers of threat and treachery so deep that none of them knew how far entrenched they were. Then Zan spoke. ‘I believe … that if the government are trying to regroup the Twelve, then they may have plans for ending the Treaty.'

Meaning upon meaning slammed into Sil with such force that it drove him back from Jess, made his eyes ache and his skin burn. ‘No,' he said, finding himself covering his mouth with his hands as though to deny the words. ‘No. Surely, we would know? After all this time?'

A pause. And then Zan looked at Jess. ‘Perhaps they have discovered the ultimate weapon,' he said.

Now Sil looked at Jess too.
The Twelve were never proven to be anything more than tales to terrify, rumours to force us to peace.
But if Zan was right –
If,
he reminded himself – then this woman, who kept him from becoming the animal he despised in himself, was created by an evil that made her demon father look like a kitten in a snowstorm.