Hell's Teeth (Phoebe Harkness Book 1) (4 page)

8

Driving home in the snow, I wondered how much of the night’s events would actually air on the DataStream. As I later discovered, very little.

Cabal had taken power for a reason in our brave new world. Building order out of the chaotic and tremendous shit-storm of a war we had created for ourselves had not been easy. Despite what most people might individually think about freedom and liberty, people en masse want order. They want to know someone is in charge of things and making the cogs of our world turn. Most people had been glad that someone, anyone, was taking charge, forming some manner of government after the years of confusion and terror. Thirty years later, and we were all now finding out what happened when you gave all your human rights to a group of people who insisted their agenda was to ensure you remained human enough to have rights.

People don’t like upset. Cabal make sure that doesn’t happen, for the most part. Content citizens are easier to manage I guess.

DataStream screens on the sides of dark buildings were already showing the evening’s roundup as I drove the dark streets. All the usual stories concerning rolling brown-outs across New Oxford and the need for all citizens to do their part, pull together, blah blah blah. After the usual power crisis story there was a segment concerning the crop circles again. Seriously, who makes these things? Certainly not humans; we don’t live in the countryside anymore. That’s Pale territory. We stay behind our nice safe, high, thick, heavily-guarded perimeter walls.

New Oxford was cruel in wintertime; there had been ice on the inside of my apartment windows all week. By the time I got home, curled up in bed hugging a fluffy hot water bottle, the DataStream had already finished, the segment on the Blue Lab R&D aired and gone.

My phone rang almost as soon as I turned off the DataStream, slightly disappointed to have missed the segment. I flicked on the bedside lamp, which sputtered at half wattage for a moment, before deciding to come on full beam after all. It was Lucy on the line.

“That didn’t go as bad as I thought!” She sounded monumentally relieved.

“Lucy, how did you get my number?” I asked.

“Oh, sorry, I’m at … I’m with Griff,” she said awkwardly. “We thought you might need checking up on, bit of a team high five that we didn’t get crucified on screen tonight, you know?”

With Griff, eh? My eyebrows crawled up my forehead, and I was glad Lucy couldn’t see the expression. Well, this was news to me. See what happens when you absorb yourself in your work so much? You become the cranky, work-obsessed spinster while everyone around you gets coffee and long walks on the beach. Maybe I was reading too much into things, though. They could be just hanging out. People did that right? Other people I mean. Not me obviously. My closest acquaintances were lab rats.

“I didn’t catch it,” I admitted. “Did the camera add ten pounds? I hear that happens.”

“Oh, there was a fault with the equipment at the lecture theatre apparently,” Lucy revealed. “Something to do with all the brown-outs. They didn’t show any footage from the lecture, just the anchorwoman, that Poppy Merriweather with the red hair, interviewing Veronica Cloves.”

Of
course
, I thought.

“She was very complementary about Blue Lab,” Lucy said. “Talked us up big style. She’s so lovely!”

Orwell had been almost, but not quite right. Total world domination hadn’t been achieved through a fascist boot stamping on the face of mankind forever. It had been achieved through glossy, impenetrable and perfect PR.

“I take it there was no mention of a vampire being there?” I asked.

“No, I dunno … maybe they didn’t have time on the segment.” She seemed to sense my mood. “I would have thought you’d be happy you weren’t on screen?” Lucy asked. “I know you didn’t want to take Trevelyan’s spot anyway.”

“I don’t really care how much screen time ‘Doctor Fiona’ got,” I muttered. “I just wonder at the famous transparency of Cabal.”

“Don’t be silly,” Lucy insisted. “They can’t help the power crisis. If anything it shows it affects them too, not just us lowly citizens. I know the only light that’s been bothering to work at my place all night has been the one in the fridge for some reason.” Good old Lucy. She did insist on seeing the bright side of everything. “I’m just super-happy they made us sound good!”

“They made
themselves
sound good, Lucy,” I sighed with a wan smile. “We’re still going to get it in the neck from Trevelyan tomorrow.”

“If she even shows up,” Lucy pointed out.

As it happens, our absent supervisor did show up in the lab. Just not quite the way we’d expected.

9

I should have guessed there was something wrong as soon as I stepped into the atrium at Blue Lab the next day.

It was a crisp sunny morning. Bitterly cold, the kind of cold which gets inside your hat and gloves and lies there like dry ice under your clothing. The sun was bright, dazzling off the snow and making the quad at the college look like something from an old sentimental biscuit tin, the ancient buildings dark spikes against a shocking, cloud-free sky the colour of spearmint toothpaste. I had actually quite enjoyed the walk to work, crunching through the park and across the campus in my boots, but as soon as I was through the heavy vacuum-sealed doors and inside the unrelentingly modern interior, the atmosphere was somehow even chillier.

Miranda, our day receptionist, was sitting at the check in desk, Mattie having clocked off for the night. She was a handsome, heavyset woman with a tumbling mass of dark curls, and always looked like she should be clucking around a bride at a giddy Greek wedding, but this morning, as I made my way into the circular atrium with its elevator lined walls, her demeanour was stiff and her face looked concerned.

The reason for her discomfort was immediately apparent. Three men were standing by the desk, dark suits, close cropped hair, ramrod straight posture. Anonymous faces set in varying degrees of granite. Everything about them screamed secret service, or at least ex-military. The only thing missing were those twiddly little earpieces you always saw them wearing on TV. I didn’t know any of them, but I recognised them for what they were immediately. Here at the lab, we called them ghosts. They were basically Cabal security. Henchmen and bodyguards to the highest of the high, and lo and behold, as I squelched my way toward the desk, acutely aware I was leaving puddles of melting snow on the pristine floor as I advanced, I saw the fourth figure, previously screened by the ghosts. An older man, late fifties, solidly built, with short silvery hair, and a face which looked as though it had given up smiling long before the wars. I knew the face from TV. This was Leon Harrison. Servant Leon Harrison.

“Dr Harkness,” Miranda said, her voice rather strained as she tried to appear breezy as always. “I was just about to try and call you. These … gentlemen are—”

“Here to see you,” Servant Harrison cut in, silencing our secretary effectively. His voice was severe. “We need a moment of your time. I am—”

“I know who you are,” I said, tugging my gloves off as I reached the desk for Miranda to DNA-check me in. She stared at my hand as though she didn’t have a clue what she was supposed to do. These guys had her really spooked. But, I suppose that’s the effect Ghosts have.

“You’re Servant Harrison of the Cabal High Council,” I said, peering at Harrison and his silent goons. “I didn’t realise we warranted level two scrutiny here in the trenches, but still, I don’t think there’s a employee here who doesn’t know
your
face, sir.”

To explain Harrison’s position in the food chain, he was basically a lion to Veronica Cloves’ hyena. The Cabal member who had all but roasted me at the lecture last night was a dangerously powerful woman in her own right, but she wouldn’t dare approach the half-eaten zebra until Harrison had filled his belly, licked his bloody muzzle and wandered off to sleep in the savannah. He looked rather unprepossessing, even in his crisp suit, but he was practically royalty. The fact that he was here at Blue Lab was worrying in the extreme.

“And indeed
I
know
yours
, Dr Harkness,” he replied. “You are correct, I would not usually pay a personal visit to R&D, but this is a somewhat sensitive issue…” This was even more worrying. I had no idea why I would be on the radar of someone like him. I work with rats. It’s not a glittering career. I try to stay off the map as much as possible.

He gestured towards one of the elevators as Miranda removed the tube from my finger and busied herself checking that I was still human as usual.

“I really must insist you come with us at once,” he said.

I turned to Miranda. “Are my team in yet?” I asked. She shook her head mutely. I had never seen her so quiet, but then the three hulking ghosts were practically oozing silent government menace from every pore. “Then will you let them know I’ll be down as soon as I’ve … assisted … Servant Harrison with…” I glanced at him, “… whatever it is I’m needed for?”

He gave no indication that he had any intention of discussing anything here in the lobby. I had half-hoped he might at least give me a sketchy idea as to why I was about to be frogmarched into an elevator by Cabal nobility, knowing that Miranda, who was not the embodiment of discretion, would be sure to tell Griff and Lucy everything as soon as they arrived. I felt like I was trying to leave a message for my own protection, like in an old movie …
if
my
lawyer
doesn’t
hear
from
me
in
half
an
hour
… but he wasn’t biting.

“Of course, Doctor. I’ll let them know you have business upstairs,” Miranda said helpfully.

Upstairs is figurative at Blue Lab, of course. Of the many subterranean levels, those with the tightest security are the lowest. Our high up’s work deep down in the burrow, which we affectionately refer to as ‘the pit’. But we still call it ‘upstairs’ officially. It makes us feel more like we work for the good guys rather than on various levels of Dante’s Inferno.

“Shall we?” Harrison said, somewhat impatiently, and he guided me to one of the many elevators, one of his Ghosts having already summoning it like an MI5 bellboy.

Some people are just naturally guilty by nature. You know the kind, driving along and a police car passes and suddenly they’re all nervous and sweaty-palmed as though they expect to be pulled over for some hideous crime or other. The face of authority is enough to make some people sweat even if they’re innocent. Miranda, practically jittering in the presence of Cabal members and their entourage, was clearly a prime example, but in her defence they were quite intimidating.

I’m not one of those people, however. I don’t like being pushed around, or ‘escorted’, by less than friendly Ghost agents, and I wasn’t particularly cowed by Servant Harrison and his ‘stern-headteacher’ act. I was more irritated. But I’m also not entirely stupid, and sometimes even I know well enough when to keep my mouth shut. At least until I have some clue as to what’s going on. Not all the time … but sometimes.

So I got in the elevator with the old man and his dark-suited muscle like a well-behaved and meek lab drone, and rode down further than I’d ever been before, feeling like Alice being frogmarched down the rabbit hole.

“Can I ask what this is about?” I queried, as the floors whooshed by. We were already ten levels lower than my own lab and still descending. My ears had popped. “My supervisor usually deals with anything outside of the lab, you see. I’m more the mad scientist type.” I tried a smile. It wasn’t returned, and in the withering atmosphere it kind of died on my face.

Servant Harrison did not reply immediately. Indeed, for a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to at all.

“I am aware of this, Doctor Harkness. Indeed, as will soon become clear, I have good reason not to be going through the usual channels of Ms Trevelyan.”

My inner ten year old sniggered at this, but I was too spooked to find it really funny.

The elevator, after what seemed an eternity, finally stopped and ejected us into a long low corridor, which was nicely appointed in expensive, if bland, corporate tastes. Charcoal walls, soft but dull carpet underfoot, recessed soft lighting. We marched to a kind of sub-reception, where a desk jockey, a young Asian man I had never even seen before, barely glanced at Servant Harrison’s clearance before directing us onward. There were lush and healthy pot plants in the little lobby down here and elegant grey seating. I was pretty sure the plants were real. We didn’t even get decent coffee in my lab. How the other half lived. I was impressed.

The corridor beyond the reception hub led to various offices, some glass-walled and all nicely appointed. There were no labs or heavy machinery down here, as far as I could see. I figured this was where the paper gets pushed. The expensive paper I mean, not the filing which even Trevelyan and her svelte assistant have to deal with like the rest of us mere mortals.

Harrison led me into one such anonymous office, through some silent instruction leaving his cheerless buddies outside in the corridor. Standing guard? That was reassuring.

There were two people already waiting for us inside, seated behind an outrageously big desk of some very dark and highly polished wood that I immediately ached to mar with a fingerprint. One of the people I didn’t know, a forty-something man, rather overweight, but the tailoring of his suit was expensive enough that it hid it well. His skin was a pallid greyish colour, his face rather slack and bored looking. I was guessing he didn’t get out much. The other person present, to my mute horror, was Servant Veronica Cloves herself.

“Dr Harkness, have a seat,” she said, as Servant Harrison closed the door behind us. She was wearing a pale grey business suit, rather more muted than the jungle flower plum ensemble from the previous evening, but the glittering black choker was still present around her throat. What wasn’t present was the sweet-natured and earnest expression she had worn during her DataStream interview. He face today was severe and cool. No media-pleasing masks for a private audience, it seemed.

Fighting the urge to flee the office, I sat down slowly in the large chair on the near side of the desk. The leather creaked alarmingly.

“Would someone mind telling me what I’m doing here?” I asked, as politely as I could. I felt like I was going to be court marshalled, or possibly sacrificed. What worried me most is that, of the three powerful people in the tastefully lit room, under whose scrutiny I now sat in my big hot winter coat, I only knew two of them. The overweight, sickly-looking guy hadn’t even spoken or looked up from the glass monitor he was currently streaming. He acted as though we were not even there, like he was tuned out on standby or something. I’m quite good at vibing a hierarchy, and if Harrison and Cloves were here, I was guessing they lined into this unknown quantity. It was quite possible I was in the presence of a Level One. A minister. They don’t do public PR, and I couldn’t help wondering why one would want to speak with me over exploding rats.

Of course, it was bound to be nothing to do with the rats. It would be to do with the GO from last night, Allesandro. Nothing puts you under the microscope like a run in with the vampire population.

“Dr Harkness,” Harrison said, still at the door. “It is imperative that you understand that you are here under Cabal security clearance, and as such, you will not repeat, reveal or discuss anything said in this office beyond these four walls. Is that clear?”

“What am I not repeating?” I asked, aware that I was being irritating on purpose. I was too hot in my coat and the pristine tabletop was bugging me. I could see the numerous chins of Mr Maybe Minister reflected on its surface.

“When did you last speak with Vyvienne Trevelyan?” Cloves asked me curtly.

I stared at her confused. “Trevelyan? The night before last. Well, technically, yesterday morning, around 3am. Why?”

“You are required to answer questions at this juncture, Doctor, not ask them,” Cloves replied dismissively. “And this was in the lab? BL4, yes? Toxicology.”

I nodded. “She called us all into the lab in the middle of the night,” I explained. “There was something of an incident with the Epsilon strain which … she felt needed our attention.” I was really hoping they were not going to pry on that. I had been very careful to keep the R&D findings vague in the presentation the night before. I didn’t want to have to baldly admit that one of our rats blew up and we had to come and mop it up.

“We’re aware of the exotherm; we’ve read the report you filed with Trevelyan yesterday,” Harrison said impatiently. “This was the last time you saw your supervisor? In the lab? You did not hand her your report later that morning?”

“No,” I said, thoroughly confused. “She wasn’t in her office when I went to drop it off. I left it with her assistant. I think she’d gone home by then.” I looked from Cloves to Harrison. “Is that what this is about? Is she still missing?”

They both bristled at this. I wasn’t sure what I’d said wrong. “Look,” I said. “I haven’t seen her since. I had to do the R&D presentation because she didn’t show up. Even her assistant couldn’t get hold of her.”

If Trevelyan was still missing, that was indeed strange, but it was much stranger that two – no, three (don’t forget fat silent man) – bigwig Cabal Servants would give a damn. She was only a department supervisor, after all. It was like the Pope worrying personally about the ill health of a church organist in Surrey.

“Dr Harkness…” Cloves drummed her fingers on the desk. “What level of interaction have you had with the GOs who call themselves vampires?”

Aha
. So this
was
about the guy in the lecture hall last night. But what connection could he possibly have with Trevelyan?

“What
level
?” I almost laughed, but guessed from their expressions it wouldn’t be wise at all to do so. “No level. Level zero. I hadn’t even
seen
a GO in person before last night. I’ve studied them genetically, of course, along with the others, the Pale, the Tribals, even Bonewalkers, but I don’t even go to their part of the city to be totally honest.”