Falling Apart (5 page)

‘Don't talk for me, Jen.' There was a wonderful note of annoyance in Dad's voice. ‘I've had a heart attack, not a lobotomy.'

‘I know, Brian, I'm only saying … He had some kind of fit, you know, Jess.'

My father looked between my mother and me, and I couldn't read his expression. ‘It wasn't a fit. It was a heart attack.'

‘He was thrashing about on the floor when I found him. Looked like a fit to me.'

‘Come back tomorrow, love. The doctors say they'll know more by then, and I might be a bit more capable of holding a conversation without your mother interfering. Fit! Next you'll be telling everyone I had chickenpox as well.'

‘I am
not
interfering! And it was definitely a fit.'

I gave them both a quick kiss and left them to their bickering. My clothes, clammy with sweat after my run, were sticking to my back and a huge boulder of worry was pulling my heart and stomach together as though my internal organs were made of rubber. Halfway back to the office I realised that none of this was going to be fixable with the packet of Baby Wipes I kept in my drawer, and phoned in. ‘Liam, I'm going to pop home for a shower and to change. I'll be back in the office in an hour, okay?'

‘Wow. Werewolf put up a fight? I'm picturing you dripping with entrails.'

‘No. It was just Tobe, I had to … there was something else I had to do. I'll tell you later, okay?'

‘It's nearly six, I was going to switch the Tracker over for HQ to ignore and then go home. It's Sarah's French conversation night and I get to read Charlotte a bedtime story; we're half way through
Unseen Academicals
.'

‘You're reading Terry Pratchett to her? She's six months old!'

‘Yeah? So? She won't understand
Goodnight Little Bear
either; one of us might as well enjoy the story. See you tomorrow.' Liam hung up, leaving me with that lingering loneliness I often felt when the office closed.

Great. Another sleepless night reading the classics and listening to Zan stalking the hallways.

I slept, but my dreams were disturbing. In one, I lay in the huge four-poster that Zan had allocated to me when I'd moved into Vamp Central for safety reasons. Sil was standing near the window, a silhouette, while I reclined naked, my skin tingling with the expectation of his touch.

‘Where have you been?' I stretched out to try to touch him, but then realised I was tied, hand and foot, to the bed frame. ‘I was worried.'

‘Oh, there's no need to worry about me.' Sil's voice was low, sounded a long way off. ‘You never need to worry about me, Jessica. I can look after myself.'

I looked down at my body, spread-eagled over the covers, hands restrained above my head and my feet tied, one to each post. The pleasant tingle of anticipation was turning to a sweat of fear. ‘Are you coming to bed?'

Sil moved from the window, crossed the room at vampire-speed until he stood by the door. He was wearing his gorgeous black Armani suit; his hair was loose and his wonderful cheekbones were lightly highlighted by dark stubble. His eyes were black too, the full dark they went when he was glamouring someone, putting them under. ‘No.'

I wriggled, feeling the pull and tug of the ropes that bound me. ‘So why did you tie me up?' I'd felt relieved at his presence, but now my heart was cantering. ‘Sil?' Trying to reach out, to touch his cool skin, to make contact with him … hold him.

‘Because I'm going to kill you.' As he leaned in, I could see the fangs sliding down, locking into place, his face drawing up into the cold, tight-focused expression of a vampire not biting for fun, not for the high his demon would get, not for the carefully controlled blood feed from a willing donor, but for a death-strike that would tear out my throat.

I screamed, but the sound was muffled, a poor little thing in my throat. I managed to twist my head to one side and closed my eyes, waiting for a sensation like a punch in the veins; then the dream let me go and I sat up, sweating.

‘Sil!' I let his name out into the darkness, an involuntary cry of longing and pain and anger, directed towards the space where he wasn't. I could almost feel him, as though his body was only just out of reach – if I stretched my fingers far enough I'd be able to brush them along those edgy cheekbones, down to his lips.

There was a commotion at the door, possibly the briefest of taps and Zan came in. ‘Jessica? I heard you shout … I thought …' He whipped his head back and forth, taking in the whole room. ‘Is he here?'

I was still caught between sleep and reality, the dregs of the dream falling from me and leaving me with a sense of loss that made my stomach ache. ‘No. Just … dreaming.' I clutched the duvet to my chest and blinked hard. Having any kind of conversation with Zan required full use of the faculties; I needed to be awake and alert, not sliding around in a liminal half-state. ‘Just a dream,' I repeated. But Zan was still there, lurking in the middle of the room and, evidently, trying to stare behind the curtains. ‘It's all right; I'm awake now. Sorry I disturbed you.'

The vampire turned slowly to face me. A small amount of light seeped in through the curtains, not enough for me to see his expression, only the outline of his face, the set of his shoulders and the way his hands were cupped together at groin level. Zan looked like a carved stone angel, if angels wore Versace and had the kind of supercilious attitude that automatically made most people feel inferior. ‘I also apologise.' He gave me a bow that a nineteenth-century Russian would have been proud of. ‘I was … startled by your calling out.'

‘No, it's fine.' I waited for him to leave the room. When he didn't, I hugged the duvet a little closer to me. While I neither flattered myself that Zan had any feelings for me other than the mild contempt he held for all humans, nor feared that he would suddenly attack me, there was something about his behaviour that was making me uneasy.

‘Jessica.' He stopped speaking and shuffled his hands. ‘You and Sil, you have a … connection, yes?'

‘Well, he says so. I can't feel anything.'

‘Nevertheless. You dreamed he was in trouble?'

‘I dreamed he was going to kill me, actually.' Tattered remnants of the dream flickered in my mind, like small flags of memory. ‘He …' I rubbed at my forehead to try to eradicate those last traces. ‘It was scary.'

‘Then this may be very bad. I fear your connection has somehow created a link to his current emotional state.'

‘You seem to think he's gone somewhere to … do vampire things.'

Zan inclined his head. ‘It is a logical assumption. He would not confess such to me; he knows my opinion of such practices.' He managed to get such a degree of disgust into his tone that I almost had sympathy for Sil wanting to indulge himself. ‘He would not want you to know because he would not wish to hurt you. I have no idea why, since you seem to lack emotional sensibilities of any kind, but that is beside the point.'

I almost retorted at this point, but bit down the words. If Zan really wanted to think of me as unemotional, then that was probably for the best.

‘I can only hope that he has not let his desires get too much the better of him,' Zan went on. ‘If, as your dream would suggest, he is killing, then we must hope he has had the sense to keep the expression of his desires to the lower classes. These “clean-up campaigns”, as they are so regrettably called, can be so demanding of one's time and energies.'

‘You really are horrible, aren't you?' I muttered.

Zan turned away from me and moved towards the door. ‘I am vampire, Jessica,' he said. ‘And you …' He sighed. ‘We must work to maintain the fiction of your being purely human.'

Liam and Harry's faces floated around in the back of my mind. Seven people know I'm not completely human. Nine, if you count my parents – the nine people I am closest to in all the world. Well, not Eleanor from Enforcement, obviously. I wouldn't be close to her if you stuffed both of us into a bucket. ‘What do you mean?'

Zan sighed again. ‘Don't be obtuse, Jessica. We have had this conversation before.' He put his hand on the doorknob and turned it.

‘Can we, just for a second and for the sake of argument, pretend that I've forgotten?'

‘Fine.' He let his hand drop and turned around. Now the streetlight positively glistened on his alabaster skin. There were no imperfections, not even a trace of stubble marking his perfect face – he looked a bit like Prince Caspian, if Prince Caspian had hated dirt and had a series of obsessional behaviours. ‘Then let me clarify matters for you,
for the sake of argument.
' He did that slow, stalky stride thing that made him look like he had heron in his ancestry. ‘Jessica. Other factions, by which I mean the weres, wights, ghouls, Shadows and others, may decide to stage an uprising to attempt to overthrow vampire control. If this is achieved, and vampires are no longer able to keep Otherworlders in check, then anarchy may break out as various groups struggle for control. Now, taking this as a posit, and further speculating on the desire of those who know of your ancestry to bargain for the safety of themselves and their families, we may extrapolate a future where
you
, as the surviving offspring of an incredibly powerful and semi-immortal demon, may become a figurehead and rallying point for those who wish to overthrow humans altogether.' He sighed again. ‘
Now
do you understand?'

All trace of sleep had fled. ‘You mean they might want me to lead some kind of fight? Against you lot … I mean, against the vampires? But I work for the
council
!' I wailed. ‘You can't be a figurehead if you work for the council! Dickhead, yes; figurehead, no.' I wriggled right up the bed, chastity-duvet still clutched tight. ‘I file, for God's sake! I have a screensaver picture of kittens and I believe chocolate to be a major food group. Those are
not
the marks of a figurehead.'

Zan cocked an eyebrow. ‘I believe the City Vampire in charge of Edinburgh has an elderly spaniel called Batzo. This neither makes him less vampire nor less dangerous if challenged.' He opened the door and stood for a moment, haloed by the dim light from the passageway. ‘Sleep well, Jessica.'

He closed the door just in time to avoid being hit by the shoe I flung in his direction.

I lay back against the pillows, all thoughts of sleep replaced with a weapons-grade sense of horror.

Anger. Pain and anger, both so deep and so intense that I hardly know where they begin and I end. This should not be. This should not
be
.

Sil was aware of little now, other than the black, rising up from behind his eyes and into his brain. He knew that there was a woman, out there, a woman who lived in his soul, a woman whose existence meant everything, who was waiting for him to … to … But he knew this with the part of his brain that didn't think, because that part was only aware of the huge, beating pulse of the world outside this prison. The air pressure in his ears throbbed with it; his demon slavered and twisted for it, like a dog on a chain. His whole body ached with the knowledge of its presence.
Out there. Out where there is sun and wind, there is heat that walks and talks, sweet and juicy and just waiting to be burst like an overripe fruit.
But his mouth didn't water now at the thought of blood, it ached with the need to bite and tear and feed.

His screams were no longer frustration at being kept away from his love. Now they were animal, the hoarse-throated shrieks of a dangerous beast kept penned. His connection to Jess was a dull tension in the very core of him but it was feeble in comparison to the sheer agony of the blood-hunger, an easily disregarded thing that only served to emphasise his isolation.

Feed. Me.

His demon rattled around like a penny in a box; there was little of him left now. Just the shell. The shell and the ache, and the terrible, wicked thoughts that had taken the place of feelings; thoughts of the blood that whispered through so many veins, so easy to liberate, so hard to stop flowing …

Voices.
Sil held what little breath he still had and strained his ears. Before the demon he'd always had trouble hearing anything that hadn't had his name in it somewhere – it was one of the things his wife had complained about all those years ago, his inability to actually
listen
to anything she said. But now.
Listen
 …

Beneath the paddle of madness that was beating his brain, he could make out words. Distant fuzzy words, but sounds that meant he was not alone. The world hadn't ended and left him trapped in rock. His demon stilled, alert now, and he could hear broken conversation filtering through with the air.

‘… puzzle … what to do.'

‘But he … saw nothing.'

‘Nothing to see … all dealt with years ago. However, he cannot be allowed … or questions may be asked …
must not
be raised. But if … kill … even a disappearance … investigated.'

A sigh, strangely portentous through the rock. ‘Then … let them kill him … Simple, clean … no longer our problem.'

The first voice came again, slightly slower, as though the speaker was thinking as he spoke. ‘There's still … what he was doing … How he knew where … what to look for. What is going on in York?'

Another sigh. ‘Are we paid … I don't believe so.
This
 … under our purview … time to deal …'

And now, Sil was sure, there was light. The very faintest, merest tickle of light, like a hallucination but growing. His demon surged, alert to something beyond the light, giving him the strength to move, to stretch his body up against the darkness, feeling the space around him growing. His knuckles didn't graze the rock this time, and as his prison flexed and extended he rose up within it, driven by the hunger and the anger and the sheer madness that came from the impotence of imprisonment. By the time it was light enough to see, he was beyond seeing. Beyond caring, beyond the law. Beyond anything which might touch him. All he knew was the blood he could feel moving only a few feet distant from him.

And the walls dropped.

By seven I was up, showered and heading for the hospital with a copy of
Top Gear
magazine in my bag for Dad and a book of Sudoku puzzles for Mum. They were pleased to see me, of course, but my father was having some tests run and my mother had to go back to their smallholding to make arrangements for the animals, so I only stayed a few minutes. Then I headed off towards the office, where, to my surprise, Liam was already waiting for me.

His expression told me that the Happy Bunny had not been by that morning.

‘I do hope you being in already isn't a sign that you're going to start taking your job seriously.' I hung my jacket up on the back of the door and sat down at my desk.

‘No. It's actually a sign that I'm taking
your
job seriously.' Liam pushed the
York Herald
under my nose. ‘What happened yesterday, Jess?'

After the dream and my heart-to-demon talk with Zan, yesterday seemed so long ago that I had to struggle to remember. ‘I … what do you mean?'

‘
This
.' He shook the paper out to the relevant page. ‘ “We can report that Miss Grant, pictured below”—and they used that horrible picture of you on your own at that party—“was called to a rogue werewolf yesterday afternoon, but chose instead to go visiting family. Perhaps it is time that questions were asked about the necessity of the Liaison office, given that council costs are escalating and two departments are under threat of closure.” The lovely, friendly York press again. So, what happened?'

I took a deep breath, told him and watched his eyes cloud over when I explained how my Dad was hooked up to the machines. ‘I went in again this morning but they're preparing him for some tests or something.' My voice ran down an octave as I struggled to keep it going. ‘And he's the nicest man in the world, Liam. He doesn't deserve this.'

Liam made a face and screwed the newspaper up into a fist-sized ball; then he flung it into the corner of the office with surprising savagery. ‘Why didn't you tell me?'

‘I didn't want to disturb you. You said you were reading to Charlotte and that's more important than having to listen to me whinge.'

He shook his head. ‘No. No, Jess. You've gone through enough this last couple of days and you're my
friend
– of course I would listen to you. Your poor dad. And this poisonous rubbish …' He waved at the paper, which was uncoiling under the shelving unit like a shy snake. ‘You could have Facebooked me, at least.'

‘You know what I'm like, I'm not good at …' I dropped my face into my cupped hands. ‘I wish Sil was here,' I said in a small voice. ‘I want him back, Liam.'

There was a short, quiet moment, which I let go without feeling that I had to make some snappy remark. I just felt the loss of Sil in my heart and my head.

‘Coffee?' Liam eventually asked.

‘There is no other reason on earth for your existence.' My hands fell away from my face and I took a deep breath. ‘Okay. Well, no-one said this job was going to be easy.'

‘No, but they did say it was going to be regular hours and paid at a rate beyond that of a sixteenth-century peasant.' He picked up the mugs. ‘So I don't think we can believe a word they say, quite honestly.'

‘I'd better drop an e-mail to head office, let them know what happened. Just in case they get shirty about our journalist friend.'

‘Blimey, they've never started reading the newspapers over at Town Hall, have they? Doubt they read the
York Herald
anyway, there's never a sniff of a page three girl, and they only have the football in once a week.'

‘Nevertheless.' I logged in and began drafting something succinct and pithy. ‘Even though they'll have to go to Personnel to find out who I am. I swear they think Liaison is a place in Belgium.'

‘That's Liege.'

‘Go tell them.' I typed another line and Liam went out to the kitchen, but then came back in at a run when a strange, high-pitched pinging noise started coming from his computer. ‘What the hell is that?'

‘News alert.' Forgetting coffee, he sat down and started scrolling. ‘It's coming down the feed from Vamp Central.' He clicked on a flashing icon and a recorded image flickered into action on the screen. ‘Oh, shit.'

I stared at the pictures coming down the line and my mind fell into the little black hole that shock had reserved for it. ‘I don't … Liam … please, tell me this isn't real.'