Hell's Teeth (Phoebe Harkness Book 1) (35 page)

“What now?” Allesandro said quietly.

I looked up at him. His face was battered and bruised. Underneath, it was still lightly tanned, though it was fading already.

“Now?” I said wearily. “Now I want a dose of serum, before I start wanting to do to you what that thing just did to Gio.”

I turned away from the door, staggering slightly on watery legs.

“And then I want a fucking hot chocolate.”

We walked towards the elevator wearily. Allesandro leaned a little on me for support. I put my arm around him, to hold him up. I hadn’t realised how badly Gio had damaged him.

He pushed the button for the elevator.

“I can think of some other things you could do to me,” he suggested lightly.

I looked at him sidelong.

“Don’t push it, clan master,” I muttered darkly after a moment. “It’s been a long week so far.”

Epilogue

It’s been a month now since the events at Blue Lab. The aftermath of Gio’s little massacre and his failed attempt to end the world was messy to say the least. The clean-up was horrible, the administration horrendous, the lies told to the media …
huge
.

Griff healed. It’s taken him a month and he’s still in physiotherapy. There was a lot of muscle and nerve damage from the bite. Personally, I think he now has a phobia of bear hugs but on the plus side, Lucy brought him coffee every day in the hospital.

Those two have been spending an awful lot of time together in the month since the events at Blue Lab. I can’t help but speculate that hearing how he raced to our rescue and took down a vampire cult with a submachine gun has made him seem somewhat more attractive to Lucy.

I’m still taking the serum – the
revised
Epsilon that is, not the version which makes you explode. So far I haven’t degenerated into a bloodthirsty monster consumed with rage.

Well, perhaps occasionally, but we all have our bad days.

Brad the rat, you’ll be pleased to hear, is also still going strong. We have a bond of brotherhood, him and me.

With Servant Harrison dead, Veronica Cloves has been temporarily drafted in as the Servant Administrator of Blue Lab One. She didn’t die in the atrium.

I don’t know why I was surprised by that. I doubt whether a direct hit from a nuclear missile could kill that woman. When the bullets had rained down in Gio’s attack, she had taken a slug to the leg. Missed the artery, luckily for her, but she had cracked her head badly on the desk when she fell. It was lucky we all thought she was dead at the time or Gio would have had her put down there and then.

In my opinion, she played possum. That woman was built to spin the truth. Playing dead to save your own skin, while not being the most noble of acts, is at least smart, and Cloves was always good at self-preservation.

I can’t say she’s best pleased about taking on Harrison’s role and being in charge of the lab. For me, the thought of reporting to her on a regular basis fills me with a cold dread. It almost makes me miss Trevelyan.

But if I’m honest, there was a small part of me that was actually relieved when she made it through. I’d kind of gotten used to her charmless presence and horrific dress sense.

The Minister, previously known as Alistair Rutheridge, was never found. Officially, he is missing, presumed dead. The Cabal are still working on the admin to find a replacement. No one except Cloves, me, Allesandro and my team know he was a ghoul.

I wonder if he’s still out there somewhere in my city, in the warren of the Slade perhaps or wandering the woods, a shadow of his former self.

The Bonewalker disappeared too. My thinking is that with Gio’s death, it was freed from its indentured contract and went wherever Bonewalkers go. It took Tassoni’s body with it as well, it seems. I don’t know why. Something tells me we haven’t seen the last the blank-faced Djinn.

All we found in the chamber down in the Development Levels were Helena’s body and Oscar Scott.

Alive. Just…

Oscar made headline news, of course. The city’s golden boy, freed from the breakaway terrorist group who had captured him to ransom against his father’s wealth. Cloves’ media spin on the whole thing was impressive. She managed to keep both vampires and Blue Lab out of the Oscar Scott rescue story.

Officially, he was the third victim of a lone serial killer, rescued by New Oxford’s brave police force during the showdown at Carfax. Trevelyan and Coleman were the killer’s first victims. They have been buried now. Flower tributes for them both are still being placed outside the church, even a month later.

As for Oscar himself, he’s had extensive dental reconstruction work done now, not to mention the cosmetic surgery on the facial scars. Last I saw, he was back living the high life and doing the media circuit. He likes the attention. The boy keeps calling to ask me out. I’ve changed my number twice but he has resources. I’ll shake him off eventually.

As for me? Well…

What do you do when your world is turned upside down? When you discover your father had a direct hand in the genocide of much of the world’s human population? Well, what
can
I do? I’ll work through it on my own. Finding out that you’re indirectly related to a breed of monstrous mutant killers is not the sort of thing you can hug out in a therapy circle.

I’ve gone back to work. I took some time off but frankly, after everything that happened, I was bored. We have another R&D presentation coming up next quarter. I have to present the latest findings of Blue Lab to the general public. And instead of having Trevelyan breathing down my neck and making my life hell, I have Cloves breathing down my neck and making my life hell. In awful clothes.

Given my new ‘condition’, let’s just say I’m now a whole lot more invested in finding a permanent cure. I still scan as human when I check in every morning, which I’m taking as a good sign. I’ve decided to be positive.

Cloves has decided, in her infinite wisdom, to keep my unofficial promotion to what she terms as ‘Official Cabal Interspecies Ambassador’ open.

By Interspecies Ambassador, she means snoop. I’m still Cabal’s best if most reluctant link to the GO community, after all. I have a feeling she’ll find some new rock for me to turn over sooner rather than later. I’m not looking forward to find what might come crawling out from under the next one.

And as for my reluctant link himself? Well, he’s king of all he surveys now; clan master and Duke of Sanctum, amongst other holdings. He got what he wanted. Well, not everything, I’m sure.

I’m still pissed at him for seeing me as a meal ticket to his power and glory. But he saved my ass at least four times, one of those even successfully, and so far I’ve only saved his once – and I hate owing people.

I haven’t seen him much. He keeps inviting me to come back to Sanctum. Last I saw, he’d lost his tan and was back to his smouldering pale look, but he looked happier than I’d seen him before. A model vampire citizen, I suppose. I haven’t taken up the invite yet.

My life at the moment is quite complicated enough, thanks, dealing with my secret knowledge of what happened in Cambridge and deciding what to do about that. Besides, I know he’ll just be after something. It pains me to say it, but Cloves is probably right. Vampires don’t think like we do. They always have an angle.

When I got into the lab this morning, however, there was a delivery for me. I still don’t like opening anything delivered to the lab. I’m always worried it’s going to be teeth. It wasn’t though.

It was a box of premium grade Peruvian cocoa. Almost impossible to get these days. It looked pretty damn expensive and for a horrible moment I thought it might be a wooing gift from the ever-determined Oscar. But there was a card inside the package, a little crumpled.

It was a business card from Sanctum, the exact same one he’d slipped in my jacket back when we first met at the lecture, and on the reverse, still in very un-gothic biro, a telephone number and the words
When
you
need
me
–
A
.

Gio may have been right. We may have destroyed the old world, but we’re building something new here. It’s a brave new world, and I intend to live long enough to be part of it.

Setting aside the gift I slid into my chair and fired up my workstation. There was an email from Cloves.

Harkness
,

See
attached
.
Am
putting
you
on
this,
stat
.
Second in a row
and
I
need
to
keep
this
out
of
the
Datastream
.
My
office
asap
.
Everything
else
on
hold
.

Succinct and friendly as always, I thought with a frown. I clicked on the attachment. A classified Cabal file. ‘Second violent murder in Portmeadow – victim unknown/ corpse unidentifiable, cause of death, violent assault/animal mauling.’

My frown deepened. With a rising sense of foreboding I noticed there was a photo attachment. Hesitantly I clicked.

It was messy. This wasn’t a person; this was shredded pork. I swallowed hard. What the hell did this have to do with me?

Cloves handwritten notes scrawled under the crime scene photo explained everything in a single word.

‘Tribals.’

I scooted my chair backwards, closing the gruesome picture file down. It seems Cloves intended to keep my role as paranormal Cabal snoop active. I pictured the screaming headlines if this went public. ‘Maniac Werewolf killer on loose in New Oxford!’ No wonder Cabal was keeping this out of the DataStream. It was one thing people being killed in New Oxford, but people being killed in Portmeadow New Oxford? That was Rich folk territory. Cloves clearly needed a link to the GO world here, and I’m her only choice.

I grabbed my security pass and headed for the doors. If Cloves wants me to peek under every paranormal rock in the city that’s fine, I decided, but we’re going to discuss a pay rise.

Dr Harkness will return in: Crescent Moon: a Phoebe Harkness Novel

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