Hell's Teeth (Phoebe Harkness Book 1) (28 page)

I leaned my ear away from the headset a little. Her volume was rising.

“Doesn’t he know how to answer a phone? What has he been doing for the last half a sodding day anyway?”

“Sleeping, for most of it,” I said slowly. “That’s what they do. Where are you?”

“Right now?” she bit back her fury long enough to tell me. “I’m at some shithole greasy spoon on the Slade, near the east gate of the wall. I’m in hiding, trying to shake these assholes. I don’t care where you are, Harkness, or what you’re doing. Get
here
.
Now
!”

“Give me the address,” I sighed.

I repeated it to Griff, who jotted it down on his hand. Griff is the kind of man who always has a pen.

“Stay put,” I said. “We’re on our way over.”

“The files,” Cloves said. “I told you, they’re decrypted. I read them while I’ve been holed up in this shithole – you’re going to want to see what’s in them.”

I didn’t need her to convince me of that.

30

The Slade was in the south east sector of walled New Oxford. Well out of Veronica Cloves’ comfort zone, I imagined.

It had probably been a respectable neighbourhood once, long before the wars, but these days it was something of a ghetto. Like all the walled cities of Britannia, we had a housing crisis; too many people trying to live in a space that simply couldn’t expand anymore. The rich moved to the north of the city, to live in the sky in spears of glass and steel where there used to be meadows. The poor and the desperate had ended up here, like sewage running downhill.

If you lived in the city, you knew better than to wander south of the Churchill Hospital after dark. There had been a golf course there once but it was gone now, fenced in. Now it was home to most of New Oxford’s Tribals – those who didn’t own the Botanical Gardens, that is. To the east of the Tribals’ turf, everything from the hospital to the woods were shantytowns. Once there had been leafy streets and choice, middle-class real estate but three decades can bring a lot of changes. The slum spread from the Slade – long ago an innocent enough B-road, now an invisible no-go barrier – to the wall itself beyond the woods.

Don’t let me fool you into thinking ‘the woods’ are anything picturesque. When the wall went up, Marlin Scott’s great gift to mankind and the Bonewalkers’ magical and unfathomable handiwork, it cut through the three woodland areas which had existed in the old world, beyond the circle of the old city’s bypass. Brasenose, Magdalen and Monks Wood, all three forests had been suddenly inside the city.

You might wonder, with the Slade slums brimming over with the poor and disenfranchised, why the woods had survived. Why they hadn’t simply been cut down, the land razed all the way to the wall itself for housing, when tiny lean-to shacks jostled for space in the now narrow streets, practically built on top of one another.

The reason was simple, really. The woods had already been claimed by Gos, and not the kind you want to tangle with either. There are more types of GO that you can shake a stick at, and trust me, if you ever come to New Oxford, stay out of the woods, steer clear of the south east slums at the Slade, and don’t wander south of the Churchill hospital.

Veronica Cloves had, of course, ignored this advice in her efforts to shake Gio’s goons. Probably in the steely certainly that there was nobody – no desperate gun-toting gang member, no drug-crazed head case, rogue blood-lusting vampire or wandering hungry tribal – who was scarier or more pissed off than she was.

And so now, we headed there too, venturing into the south east sector. I clung to the back of Allesandro’s bike as we raced to the corner of Old Road, Windmill and the Slade. We were just on the borders of the poor, overcrowded sector, north of the aptly-named Boundary Brook.

Griff and Lucy had insisted on coming with us at first but I had refused as I needed them back in the lab. Griff was now busy duplicating fresh batches of the revised Epsilon, the retardant which was keeping Brad the rat in the land of the cohesive and reasonable – and now, me too.

I’d decided it was a very good idea to lay a stock of Epsilon aside. A lot of it. I didn’t want to miss a dose and devolve, especially not into what I now knew was a half-human, half-vampire ghoul. If Tassoni the alpha and omega of every Pale did indeed rise, I would rather be fighting
against
him and his crusade to end humanity for good, than fighting
for
him. I planned to stay human.

Lucy had been given the task of cleaning the lab, and by that I don’t mean hoovering up and dusting with Pledge. I meant deep clean. We had to remove all traces of Allesandro’s presence there. More than merely our careers were on the line if it was discovered a GO had breached Blue Lab with such ease.

My own hide was at risk as well if they figured out he had gone there to save me from my very own mutant zombie plague. If that fact got out, I would be lucky to find myself locked in one of the cells on the MA levels and observed for the rest of my days.

Besides, I had reasoned. Four of us wouldn’t all fit on the bike. It would look ridiculous.

Griff has suggested we could take his car. Allesandro had laughed, rather unkindly I thought. At least he had the good grace to look guilty for laughing afterwards.

Getting
out
of Blue Lab without suspicion had been easy enough. We had shut down the ultraviolet corridor of course, at least until Allesandro and I were at the far end of it. Any problems I might have had getting the vampire out through the atrium were solved by the fact that he looked remarkably human.

You just didn’t get vampires with deep golden tans – never. They were whiter than the palest human, all of them. Still wearing his closely-buttoned lab coat and hurrying out by my side, his head down, Allesandro didn’t draw anything but the most cursory of glances from anyone we passed. As far as anyone could tell, he was just a perfectly normal, perfectly human, rather unusually beautiful doctor.

As we passed reception, Miranda, the day shift receptionist had called after me.

“Oh, Doctor Harkness! I had no idea you were in. A lady has called several times for you today, a Ms Cloves?”

I saw her giving Allesandro a none-too-subtle once over, her curiosity clearly piqued as we marched by.

“I would have put her through to the lab, only when I came on shift to relieve Mattie this morning, he told me it was just your team down there. I didn’t know you had checked in today.”

“Thanks Miranda.”

I had not stopped walking, gripping Doctor Sun-Kissed-Vampire by the elbow and pretty much dragging him towards the main doors, and freedom.

“I got her message. I’ve been pulling kind of an all-nighter down there. Haven’t even been out for coffee yet, just drinking the swill down there, need a Starbucks. Bye!”

We had pushed through the whooshing heavy doors into the cold evening air before she could answer.

Allesandro had no idea how the gunfight between the vampires and the Cabal ghosts had gone after we left for Blue Lab, no more than I did. We’d had rather more pressing matters on our minds at the time.

Now, as the bike purred along the edge of the slum sector, making its slow and careful way down the Slade, I realised I would very much like to know how that had panned out.

Had Gio and the rest been captured? Were they in police custody right now? Or had they gotten away? And, if so, how? Was I right about the Bonewalker? Was it working for Gio, had it gone back and poofed them out of there to safely?

The fact that Cloves had been chased from her apartment suggested they were still at large and very active, currently out there combing the city for her and the now unscrambled files she carried, and no doubt also looking for me too.

I wondered if the media had descended on Carfax yet; if in the aftermath of last night’s events the police had found the bodies, Trevelyan’s and Coleman’s. Had they found the Pale? Was Oscar still alive?

I hoped Cloves would have some answers for me. I hadn’t liked the ones Allesandro had given me so far. You don’t really think you can get worse than ‘serial killer’, but I had discovered when you got to ‘apocalypse-inciting vampire cult raising the dead’, you know you were wrong.

Lesson one of dealing with Gos: things can
always
get worse. I was consciously not dwelling on the fact that Allesandro and Cloves had swapped numbers at some point. The vampire hadn’t elaborated and despite an oddly possessive grumble in the back of my mind, it was really none of my business how, why or when the two had become bosom buddies.

“What was the name of this place?” I asked Allesandro, to take my mind off it as we cruised down the street.

The main strand of the Slade was a hubbub of tiny shops, cut price laundrettes, grimy bars and pretty unwholesome-looking shops. It was only just close to 7pm but everywhere there were metal roller shutters, every one of them covered in gang-tag graffiti, the people of the district presenting a closed and armoured face to the world outside.

Metal grills fortified many of the tiny shops. There were few people on the littered streets. Some tough-looking youths lounging listlessly on corners, their faces lost behind hooded sweatshirts. An old derelict woman aimlessly pushing a shopping cart along the broken flagstones of the pavement. It seemed to be piled high with bin bags.

“Sal’s Chicken Kitchen,” the vampire replied, scanning the seedy-looking establishments to the left and right as the bike purred along like a panther.

I felt very conspicuous. We were the only vehicle on the road. And it was being driven by a bare-chested vampire in a flapping white lab coat.

Undercover – clearly not my forte.

“There,” I took my hand from around his waist and pointed.

A filthy-windowed diner slid by on the right, with the name spelled out in tired stencilling. It looked as worn down as the rest of the neighbourhood. We could see a few shadowy figures inside, the windows obscured with steamy condensation that ran down the glass.

As we pulled up in front, the door opened with a jangle and Veronica Cloves appeared, looking harassed and deeply unhappy. She was wearing a long black trench coat, like a Russian spy, wrapped tightly against the night. Underneath it, I saw, she was still dressed in her sparkling jet gown from the fundraiser the night before.

Fantastic, I thought, very low key. I’m sure she was blending in fine here with the local residents. At least she had lost the fascinator.

She hurried over as I jumped down off the bike, giving Allesandro a startled double take.

“Well, fuck
me
,” she muttered unhappily. “I’ve been chased all over the goddamn city today by assholes in black vans, trying to get hold of you two, and here you seem to have had a spa day. Nice tan.”

“Long story,” I said.

She shook her head dismissively.

“Not interested. Follow me,” she said. “I don’t want to be out on the street. Those goons are still cruising around.”

She led us down the side of the grimy diner, into a cluttered and litter strewn alleyway. We huddled under a fire escape behind a large stinking dumpster, startling a very displeased and feral-looking cat, which leapt away with a hiss.

“You were a pain in my arse before,” Cloves spat. “But telling a psychotic vampire where I lived?”

“I know, I’m sorry,” I replied. I genuinely was. “In my defence, they made me. It’s hard to say no to them when they want you to cooperate. How did they get to you? I thought your building was warded?”

I remembered her telling me as much. The Cabal had dealings with a Bonewalker. The Liver Building was warded strongly also. Blue Lab couldn’t afford warding. We were run by Cabal but only partially funded by them, hence our own defences: the ultraviolet corridor, the morning check-ins.

“It is. However, that’s only good against Gos,” she responded. “Your charmless friends have a squad of hired humans on the books.”

She looked like she had a bad taste in her mouth, shaking her head in disbelief.

“
Humans
working for
vampires
… What next?”

“You managed to get out, though, with the files?”

She nodded. “After the fun and games at the fundraiser, and once your new pal here had found me and strong-armed me into locating you and tipping the police to Carfax, I picked them up and took them home. Those arseholes were waiting for me. I didn’t even get into the parking lot. They must have torn my place apart looking for the files.”

She looked furious. I could tell the thought of grubby-booted guns for hire traipsing all over her ridiculously expensive and immaculate penthouse was causing her almost physical pain.

“You went back to the fundraiser to get Cloves help?” I asked Allesandro. “After we came off the bike, I mean?”

“I knew she would be able to track you,” Allesandro shrugged, his face shadowy in the alleyway. “It’s what her people do. She was my best chance to find where Gio was talking you.”

Cloves glowered at him. “You promised to bring her straight to me.” She looked as though she was about to slap him. Instead she turned to me. “You wonder why I advise you not to trust them?” she said. “My arse is on the line if I lose sight of you. Harrison put you under me in this ridiculous little shenanigan. You’re my responsibility, so when tall, gold and pulse-less here turns up, right in the middle of my post-riot media spin, what choice did I have? I even dispatched a fleet of Cabal Ghost agents to follow him to you. God knows how much shit that’s gotten me in.”

“We couldn’t go anywhere after we escaped,” I said, carefully editing the truth. “We had to lie low for a while. I was injured, and Allesandro, well, the sun was coming up, so we holed up for the day.”

Cloves looked me over sceptically. “You don’t look injured,” she accused menacingly. “In fact you look pretty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for a kidnap victim. Manage to get eight hours beauty sleep, did you?”

I didn’t want to mention drinking Allesandro’s blood. The memory of it was quite intimate, primal almost. I doubted Cloves would approve, I wasn’t really sure I approved myself.

“Never mind me, what happened when you got back to your place?” I changed the subject, deliberately not looking at Allesandro, though I could feel his eyes on me in the dark alleyway.