Hell's Teeth (Phoebe Harkness Book 1) (27 page)

He shook his head, the sad look in his eye again. I wondered what it was like to lose your clan master. Did Allesandro feel the same way I did when my father never came home?

“We don’t know when they realised the connection, but some bright spark, maybe one of the scientists who made this mess in the first place, one of them killed him. They cut the head off the hydra.”

“But the Pale didn’t die,” Griff said, frowning. “They’re still out there.”

“The ghouls do not die if their master dies,” Allesandro explained, “but they do lose their focus, their purpose. In a regular ghoul, made by a vampire in the old world, they become pathetic, aimless creatures. They usually starve to death eventually, mindless and inactive with no instruction from their master. But
these
ghouls…

“This new breed were deliberately spliced with the most aggressive instincts, genetically enhanced and engineered to be so much more than either of their parent species. They lost their purpose, their organisation and their direction. But with no higher mind to guide them, they became what they are now: feral, animal, lost things in the darkness. But they are still filled with the anger they were made for, still fuelled by the hunger they cannot sate.”

The lab was silent for a moment. It was like the air around us was heavy with what we were being told.

“That’s when the tide turned, isn’t it? That’s when we started winning the war. Slowly. It was when the vampires, the Tribals, the Bonewalkers, all the others – one by one, you came out into the world to help us and announced your existence to help combat this common enemy who was threatening to wipe out the world.”

The vampire nodded.

“A world without humans would be no good to us.” A tiny smile played across his lips. “We have to have a food source after all. I’m sure most of the other GO races thought along similar lines. We have a symbiotic relationship, your kind and mine. We needed each other to survive. We would starve in a world of ghouls and no humans, and you would all die if we didn’t help you survive.”

“And the rest is history,” Griff said quietly.

He took off his glasses and slowly rubbed his eyes.

“I understand,” I said slowly, still trying to digest this information, “why your vampire clan would want vengeance. Why Gio wants revenge … it was humans that were the scary monsters in the night, not the GOs. It was us who kidnapped and tortured your leader, us who were responsible for creating the ultimate tool Tassoni could use as revenge for our mistreatment and, well you know, accidentally ending the world…”

I cleared my throat as Allesandro smiled grimly at me.

“But this still doesn’t explain what Gio and his mini-cult is doing now. Why
us
? Why the teeth and the Bonewalker mojo? How is this getting revenge on humanity? Tassoni is dead, you just told us as much.”

My vampire looked tired then. I realised that he was old.

Unlike me who had been born into this world and had never known any other, he must have lived back in the old civilisation. The world I was obsessed with. He had witnessed its death, its loss, the end of everything he knew. Unlike the rest of humanity, he knew the awful truth of how and why it had happened.

“Gio and the Black Sacrament have never given up on Tassoni,” Allesandro explained. “They have spent the last thirty years, since the walled cities were built and since our kinds have begun to reform some kind of civilisation from the ashes of the old world, searching for a way to bring him back.”

“From the dead?” Griff asked incredulously. “That’s impossible!”

Allesandro peered at him questioningly.

“Last night, myself and your good Doctor were teleported from a hole deep underground to a distant street on the surface. Bonewalkers deal in magic. They are practically made of it. We don’t know what they are truly capable of.
Nothing
is impossible.”

He noticed our expressions and bristled.

“I know ‘
magic
’ may be a dirty word to you scientists,” he said. “But it is a very
real
force in our shared earth, whether you like it or not. Call it by another name if you wish; unexplained phenomena, existential will. Magic is just science which has not yet been explained by you people.”

“So the Black Sacrament are trying to resurrect Tassoni,” I said in wonder. “They want to bring him back to life … so he can finish what he started.”

Allesandro nodded grimly.

“So he can take control of the Pale again. Right now, they have become nothing but mindless animals, scattered throughout the countryside, aimless. He will mobilise them, focus them into purpose again. They will attack the walled cities of Britannia, and everywhere else; not as thoughtless feral animals but as the unstoppable fighting force they were designed to be.”

Allesandro leaned back in his chair.

“The Black Sacrament wants to finish the apocalypse, to bring things to the bitter end. For all of us.”

The message on the DataStream made more sense now.

Gio’s voice was now such an angry grumbling roar, so thick and distorted, we could barely understand his words. I had misheard what he had been saying all along. He had not said
the
sun
will rise. He had said
Tassoni
will rise.

I stood, feeling too twitchy to stay seated.

How could no one know this? How could our public not be aware that we had committed such crimes against another species, incurring their wrath and bringing destruction down on our heads with our own hubris?

I paced around the floor, all of their eyes watching me. At the end of the day, I was a scientist. I had to make sense of this.

“So, why the teeth?” I said. “What does Gio and the rest of the doomsday group want teeth for? When they had me under Carfax, Gio told me that they’d wanted Marlin Scott’s but that as he didn’t have any, they had settled for Oscar’s. Same bloodline, same family.”

“I don’t know how the Bonewalkers work,” Allesandro shook his head helplessly. “There are many in our clan who disapprove of Gio having any dealings with their kind. But it is said they have many talents, other than twisting space and matter. They speak with the dead, I’m told. They can
control
the dead. Perhaps, with the right ingredients, they can
bring
them
back
.”

“It’s pretty clear to me that this Black Sacrament think you’re one of the ingredients, Doc,” Griff said. “You told us that the torture video that was delivered with Trevelyan’s teeth was aimed at you. They said
your
name.”

I waved his comment away with my hand. I was trying to think.

“They said my
surname
,” I said. “I don’t think they were speaking to me, I think it was aimed at my
father
. Trevelyan knew something about our respective parents, about the link between us all. I don’t know if she’d always known or if it was something secret she had stumbled on, being head of so many highly classified departments. It was something to do with her
own
father, long before the wars. She wouldn’t have been able to resist looking into it more, who could?”

I hugged myself by the elbows, my voice quiet.

“When they came at her face with the pliers, I imagine she told them everything she knew. I know I probably would have.”

I couldn’t help seeing Trevelyan’s corpse in my mind’s eye, dumped at the bottom of the pit under Carfax. She had been all alone in the darkness until Jennifer Coleman came to join her – and who knows, maybe even Oscar by now.

I swallowed hard. I tried to turn my thoughts to more useful and less nightmare-worthy things.

“Trevelyan has my name as one of her passwords. I wonder if she has her father’s name as another, or maybe Marlin Scott’s?” We need to know what was on those encrypted files. Trevelyan had been snooping; she
knew
she’d found something dangerous. She knew the bad guys were coming for her. It’s why she hid them. I need to speak to … to Cloves.”

My speech trailed off. I stopped abruptly, frozen in mid step, my eyes staring wide.

Oh … Mother … Of … Fuck.

“What is it?” Allesandro began to rise, seeing my horrified expression. “Phoebe? Is the serum…”

“Cloves!” I yelled at them, almost making Lucy fall off her stool in shock. “Oh, bollocks! Cloves!”

“What about her?” Griff asked, baffled.

“We have to find her! She’s in danger! When the vampires rolled me under back in Carfax…”

Allesandro looked quizzical.

“Rolled you under what?” he asked

I rolled my hand in the air frantically, searching for the word he had used.

“Persuasion,” I said. “When they forced information out of me, that blonde one Helena, she scrabbled around in my brain. They said they were waiting for the files to be decrypted, letting the Cabal do the work for them, and then they were going to seize them. Jesus, I told her about Cloves.”

I cursed Helena, the softly spoken vampire whose smile had been friendly, so sweet and reassuring, who’d been ever so nice to me. Except for the slap, of course, which hadn’t moved her smile an inch – not to mention the fact that she had stood and watched with faint interest and absolutely no concern for my predicament as Gio had shoved me into the pit with the Pale.

“I told the blonde bitch that Cloves had the files,” I said. “I gave them her bloody address! If they didn’t go down in the standoff at Carfax…”

I stared straight at Allesandro, panicking.

“I get the feeling that when the Bonewalker left us in the alley and disappeared, it went back for them. I think it went to pull them out of there the same way. If I’m right, Allesandro, they could have found her by now. She could be dead, or worse.”

“I thought you couldn’t
stand
her,” Lucy said.

“That’s not the point,” I snapped. “I don’t want her blood on my hands. If she’s attacked by Gio, it will be my fault.”

I stared around wildly, trying to think.

“I don’t even know how to get in touch with her,” I said. “It’s not like she gave me a pager. We didn’t even have each other’s numbers. Crap!”

“Phoebe,” Allesandro was standing in front of me, “please calm down. I think I can help.”

“Unless you have some super-magical vampire skill to whisper into her head from all the way across the city and through four stories of subterranean bedrock, I doubt it.”

I paused, considering this for a moment.

“You
don’t
have that skill by any chance, do you?” I asked.

“Not quite.”

He crossed the lab to the small desktop where those parts of his clothing which had not been scorched or burned had been carefully placed. His boots, a rather twisted and burnt belt, and a few other less flammable peripherals. He brought something back for me, holding it out like a gift.

“But I do have this,” he offered.

He was holding a very scorched and partially-melted mobile phone. The glass surface had cracked in the exciting heat blast as he had strolled down our security corridor. It looked warped, as though it had spent a few minutes in a microwave, but the screen still lit up as he unlocked it.

It must be a Nokia, I reasoned.

I took it from him. The phone displayed twenty three missed calls, all within the last few hours. The name by each: Cloves.

“You have her
number
?” I spluttered, staring up at him. “How?”

Before he could answer, the phone vibrated in my hand. I almost dropped it in surprise. The incoming call read Cloves. She had really,
really
been trying to get hold of him recently. Twenty fourth time is the charm, I thought.

As Griff and Lucy watched me closely, I answered, holding the phone to my ear. I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Hello…?” I said haltingly. “Erm … Allesandro’s phone. Phoebe speaking.”

Through the terrible, half-melted earphone, I heard Veronica Cloves sigh deeply, a rattling exhalation which sounded half relief and half jaw clenching anger.

“Harkness? I have been calling this number all day. That had better fucking be you on the phone!” She snapped down the line. “I don’t know where the hell you are, but—”

“Listen,” I cut her off. “I’ll explain everything but you’re not safe. Your apartment—”

“No
shit
, Sherlock,” Cloves spat angrily at me. “I have had a very entertaining few hours fleeing my own home and evading some pretty fucked up people! I know they want the files. I know
someone
told them I had them.”

She said this very pointedly and I have to admit, I felt guilty.

“Lucky for you, I’m slightly more competent than you are. I have the files on me. I think I’ve lost the motherfuckers who have been trailing me all damn day and I’ve spent the last God knows how long trying to get hold of your bloody vampire, who
swore
to me he would bring you to me when he got you back from those gun-toting arseholes. The lying little bastard…”