Paper Children (Phoebe Harkness Book 3)

by James Fahy

  I sailed over the wall of the rooftop tower and out into space, the sky and ground whirling dizzyingly around me. It had thrown me clear over the battlements, flung me into mid-air and to my death. I felt the Pale virus dampen in me, like a receding flame, as my pinwheeling body cleared the ancient stones of the wall, reaching the apex of my flight through the air, and then the sickening lurch in my stomach as gravity hungrily claimed me. In seconds I would hurtle down past the ancient stones to the hard, sunlit flags far below. I shut my eyes tightly.

  Someone grabbed my wrist. Shooting pain tore through my shoulder as my flight was halted, surely dislocated, and my eyes shot wide again as my body, swinging in an arc, slammed with force into the outer wall of St George’s tower, knocking the wind out of me.

  I stared upwards, the red mist clearing slowly from my vision, airless and shaking.

  The hooded figure was leaning over the edge of the tower, lying flat across the stone. Its pale cowl flapping in the wind like some surreal priest from an ancient cult. From within the folds of the robe, a long strong arm extended, white as marble, fingers locked tightly around my wrist. As I watched, dangling dizzyingly high above the courtyard below, the pristine white skin of the bare forearm began to smoke and blister in the sunlight.

  “Doctor!” a man’s voice, sounding strained. “I need you to wrap your hand around my wrist. Hurry!”

  My own wrist was greasy with oil from my struggle with the creature and slick with blood. The pale fingers dug harshly into me, gripping me so tight I could feel the bones of my wrist grinding together, making me cry out. My torn shoulder screamed in agony.

  “You’re slipping!”

  The pale fingers laced around me were blistering too, red sores and welts beginning to appear on the skin. I forced my fingers to close around the arm, feeling the skin hiss and crack beneath them. I stared up at the figure, and recognised the face hidden in shadow beneath the hood, which was starting to smoke.

  “Dove?” I croaked, the effort of speaking bringing new agony to my crushed throat.

  As soon as my fingers closed around his arm, the vampire began to lift me, grunting as he heaved me upwards. I felt the height beneath my dangling feet, the ground far below seeming to suck hungrily at me, wanting me to fall. As the anger of the Pale receded, ebb by ebb, fear clawed its way up my throat.

  Dove threw himself backwards, the cloak flapping around him in the wind, thin curls of pale smoke rising from its insides, as his arm burned in the sunlight. The pain of my shoulder was immense, and I let out an animal-like bellow, half scream, half growl, as he yanked me upwards, enough that he could reach down with his other hand and grab the shoulder of my coat.

  If he overbalances now, we both tumble off, my treacherous brain told me helpfully. And where was the monster?

  But he didn’t topple. The vampire was stronger than any human, and with a grunt, he hoisted me up, until my feet found purchase and gracelessly, painfully and desperately, he heaved me, scrabbling, back over the wall and onto the rooftop. We collapsed in a gasping heap, both panting.

  As soon as we were safe, Dove threw the heavy material of his cloak over his arm as though it were a fire blanket, hissing in pain. I rolled off him, disoriented, shaking uncontrollably with the rush of adrenalin leaving my system. I had beaten the Pale within me. Somehow, I had pushed it back down, like swallowing a hot cannonball. It had saved my life, but I had managed to control it. I stared wildly around the rooftop. The smoking, murdering nightmare had gone. There was no sign.

  “Where is it?!” I croaked, coughing, my hands going to my throat. The skin felt burned and smeared.

  Dove had gotten to his knees, head tilted towards the floor to avoid the sun, hidden in the depths of the hood.

  “Gone. Fled,” he said shakily. I saw him turn his head towards the body of Elise, reaching out an arm towards her. “What did it do… to…” he whispered.

  I realised he was still smoking. Being out in the sun was deadly, even covered as he was. Despite his evident pain, he got to his feet, bent and gently picked up Elise’s corpse, cradling it like a child in his arms. His face was still entirely hidden.

  “Can you stand, Dr Harkness?” he said quietly. “I need to get out… of the light.”

  I amazed myself by nodding. I wasn’t sure how, but I could stand, unsteadily. Every part of me hurt. My throat, my shoulder, my head was pounding, my lungs burning, but the pain was already receding. I clambered to my feet, and clinging to each other for support, we made our way unsteadily to the sanctuary of the dark stairwell.

  Chapter 21

  Minutes had passed. Dove and I sat on the steps in the cool, shadowy spiral staircase of St George’s tower, our backs resting against opposite walls. We hadn’t spoken. I was still getting my breath back, forcing my heart rate back to normal.

  Dove had lowered his hood. His long pale hair seeming to float like spider webs in the soft light. He cradled Elise in his lap, having reached down as soon as we had collapsed into the safety of shadow and gently closed her eyes with still and steady fingers. He hadn’t looked up from her face. His own was a quiet and inscrutable carving. I had watched his burned and blistered arm. It was already healing. The puckered and angry skin, even after such a short time, were now nothing but faint red marks mottling his ash skin.

  Eventually I spoke, breaking the silence between us. “You were out in the sun.” My throat hurt, but not as much as I’d expected. I simply sounded like a croaking frog. “You could have died.”

  Dove gave a tiny smile without looking up from Elise. “Only sunrise and sunset will instantly turn my kind to ash,” he said softly, his voice a soft echo in the stairwell. “Exposed skin in daylight will burn, to death eventually, but it’s not instantaneous. It can take…” He shrugged. “…minutes.”

  “Why were you here, Dove?” I wanted to know.

  “Elise,” he replied simply. He looked up at me now for the first time, and his soft blue eyes seemed full of sorrow. They sparkled like the jewel on his brow. “She has been acting so… oddly. I knew something was wrong, but not what. I have been keeping an eye on her.” He swallowed, his adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Not closely enough,” he added bitterly. “She went out today. All my kind are sleeping.”

  “Not you though,” I coughed.

  “I’m a light sleeper,” he said. “And I was concerned. I followed her here. You know, Doctor, you can cross almost from one side of the city without being exposed to daylight, if you know the ways.”

  I nodded. He was referring to the Labyrinth of course. A vast network of tunnels and abandoned sewers, knocked through basements, access vents, maintenance pipes, which all ran beneath New Oxford. It was said to be almost a second city down there. I had been in the Labyrinth once myself. It wasn’t a happy memory. Stalked by rabid were-creatures and saved by Chase Pargate, of all people.

  “I followed her here, but I was too late it seems.” He looked up at me. “That thing… did this? And then I find you… and it… fighting it out.” His eyes narrowed at me with curiosity. “You’re no normal human.” He shook his head softly. “I saw you. What are you, Dr Harkness?”

  I stared at him in the shadows. “I’m a scientist,” I replied in a croak.

  He smirked, tilting his head to one side. “You have a lot of secrets,” he decided. “And you are entitled to them, I suppose. We all have them. But you’re no regular human. Your neck should be broken, your windpipe crushed, and yet already you are healing. Only bruises? And your shoulder, was it not almost torn from its socket?”

  He was right of course. Ligaments should be torn, but my shoulder had already popped, with a sickening crunch, and completely of its own volition, back into its mooring. I felt like someone had hit me all over with several heavy bags filled with hammers, but by all intents and purposes, I should have been hospitalised at least. Was this really a mutation from the Pale virus? Personally, I would have preferred something cooler as a side effect. Magneto powers
maybe, or the ability to fly or read minds. As superpowers go, ‘not dying very easily’ was less showy and glamourous. I flexed my hand, it was sore, but the bruises around my wrist were already beginning to fade. Not as quickly as Dove had healed, not by a long shot. But much faster that they should be doing.

  Not showy or glamorous. Useful though, I allowed myself.

  “I have a… medical condition,” I told Dove evasively. “I heal pretty fast.” Faster and faster, it seems. Every time the Pale rises within me, I’d noticed, it seemed to change me a little. Make me more… efficient. “In every generation there is born a slayer.” I murmured to myself absently. I glanced up, noticing Dove’s beautiful but confused face regarding me oddly.

  “Sorry, old TV show,” I explained. “Elise called me. Asked me to meet her here. She had something she wanted to tell me, and she was very, very scared, Dove. Clearly crisp-and-dry didn’t want her talking, and he must have hung around waiting for me to show up too.”

  “My master will be angry when he returns,” Dove looked down lovingly at Elise. He smoothed her hair gently, his face earnest. “She was a favourite of Allesandro’s. As steward, I have failed to protect her.”

  I felt bad for him. With the girl sprawled in his arms, they looked like Michelangelo’s Pieta in reverse.

  I decided to trust him, a little. God knows I needed an ally somewhere. “She said Allesandro needed my help,” I told him. His grey eyes flicked up to mine, concerned. “I’ve already told you, Dove. Both you and he keep showing up in my head talking nonsense. I think… I think he didn’t go on some foreign vampire retreat. I think something happened to him. Something bad.”

  Dove swallowed. “Are you in love with him, Dr Harkness?” he asked, his face, as always, an open mask of innocence.

  The sudden question took me by surprise. I opened and closed my mouth a few times.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I said eventually.

  Dove smiled a little. “I’m sorry if my directness offended. It’s something I would be interested to know, that’s all,” he said. “If you are, and he has claimed you as his clan mate, then I, and all of the clan, would of course respect that. But if not, well…”

  His mouth twitched a little.

  “You are a very interesting woman. I have seen you fight me out of your own head with sheer willpower. I have seen you knocking holes out of a demon. I would dearly like to know you better.”

  Of all the things I currently didn’t have time for, this was number one. “If you mean ‘know me’ in a biblical sense,” I spluttered, ‘then you should know, no vampire has ever known me, and this really is not the time! I just informed you your master might be in danger somewhere, you’re holding a corpse, we both just nearly died ten minutes ago, and you’re… hitting on me?”

  Dove shook his head apologetically. “The Duke is the strongest vampire I have ever known,” he said, “He saved me from the humans, I’ve already told you this. His blood runs in my veins. He brought me into Gio’s clan, found a home for me.” Dove smiled a little. “When that master went… awry, and after he took over the clan, Allesandro placed his trust in me. When he left…” He faltered. “Well, I felt it my duty to protect what he values. This was the reason for the festival. He had begun to build bridges with the human world already you see. Through you, through Cabal. He was driving vampirekind forward. I wished only to continue that work. To make him proud of our advances.”

  His look soured. “But then this dark thing… appears, and tears at the innocent. And I cannot protect what I have promised to.” He looked at me earnestly. “Members of our clan are dying, cut down like animals on rooftops and in alleyways. This Helsing girl, part of our fold, is dead. What could I protect? In the end?”

  I reached over and covered the back of Dove’s hand with mine. He looked oddly fragile. “You just saved me,” I reminded him. “I was about to be a smear on the goddamn pavement down there. How many vampires rush out into sunshine for humans?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if the ground broke rather than your bones, had you fallen, Dr Harkness.” The vampire smiled. “I understand what he sees in you. I would make you a queen of Sanctum. If Allesandro would allow it.”

  I removed my hand from his. “You really have no idea where he is?”

  Dove shook his head. “He has contacted no-one.” He looked down. “Unless of course… Elise.”

  “Whatever Elise had wanted to tell us, it’s pretty clear that evil McNugget had other ideas,” I said, my face grim.

  I waited for the inevitable confusion. No-one ever got my pre-apocalypse references.

  “I’m older than you think, Doctor,” Dove smiled. “I remember the arches of gold too.”

  I couldn’t help but smile, which hurt my face a little.

  “Listen,” I said. “Neither of us know what this damn thing is. You hear talk of an angel, a seraph. I keep chasing a demon all around the city, and meanwhile, children are being snatched and my friends are dying left right and centre…but I have a lead.”

  Dove’s eyes narrowed.

  “There’s someone I need to find. But he’s very… very… good at hiding. He’s like a rabbit run to ground.”

  “Sounds as though you need a hunting dog,” Dove suggested.

  I stared at him for several seconds. Jesus Christ, he was right. I reached into my coat and pulled out my phone. There were several missed calls from Cloves. I ignored them.

  “What are you doing, Doctor?” Dove wondered.

  “I have to make a call,” I said. “One good thing, quite possibly the only good thing, about being official Cabal GO Liaison? You end up with contacts. Really strange ones.”

  Chapter 22

  By the time I got back to my apartment, Cloves had been and gone. Lucy was doggedly curious about why my coat was splattered with blood, but I managed to fend her off, promising to fill her in later and assuring her that I was fine. I didn’t mention Elise. Lucy was one twitch away from losing it altogether anyway. I showered and changed, marvelling as I regarded my body in the steamy bathroom mirror.

  Not that I frequently marvel at my own body, but my injuries from my fight with the child-stealer were almost gone already. Even the bruising on my neck had already faded from angry red to a pale and sickly yellow. My shoulder felt a little tender, but more ‘hard swing at tennis’ than ‘dangling off death-defying rooftop’.

  When all this was over, when my lab, currently cordoned off as a crime scene, was available to me again, I was going to have to run some serious tests on myself.

  I hid the bruises as best I could with a roll-neck sweater, slid into jeans and boots and tied my wet hair up.

  “Where are you going?” Lucy asked, after I’d emerged and was hunting around the flat for my keys. “You’ve only just gotten back. You know it’s Thursday, right? The Fangfest parade is tomorrow night. Halloween is looming. You don’t think Cloves will want you around today to-”

  “Cloves, and Coldwater, want me to find Chase Pargate,” I cut her off. “Which is exactly what I’m going to do. And as for you…” I glanced across at her from my tiny kitchenette, where I was rifling in a draw for the Taser I knew I owned. She was standing hugging herself in the middle of the room, looking about twelve. “I don’t want you staying here, Cabal guard on the door or not. I have work for you to do.”

  Lucy’s eyes actually lit up. I didn’t think she needed wrapping in cotton wool. What she needed was to feel useful and productive. She couldn’t stay here grieving and fretting over Griff and Dee or she’d go insane. I know how to handle my team, and Lucy was always performing best when you were counting on her for something.

  “What do you need?” she asked.

  “The girl who was almost snatched at Christchurch, and her Grandfather, the vampire-lovers,” I said.

  “Celeste?”

  “That’s the one.” I nodded. “Cloves has them at her apartment right now. We both agree that this thing might come after her ag
ain. I don’t think Cloves’ place is secure enough. This thing is tenacious. Plus… a child? In Veronica Cloves’ house?” I shivered theatrically. “She might get pushed into an oven. I want you to get them and take them somewhere actually safe. Keep an eye on them for me. You hit it off with the kid, right? She’s probably more shaken up than any of us. Go play big sister and watch her for me until I get back.”

  “Where do you want me to take them?” She looked puzzled.

  I had already thought of this on my return to the flat and had made the call en route. Which one building had more security and more high-tech specs than Blue Lab? A near-impenetrable fortress?

  “Oscar’s,” I said. “I’ve already cleared it with him. He’s expecting you. Get to Scott Towers and stay there.”

  “Oscar Scott?” Lucy’s eyebrows shot up. “The gazzillionare? You’re sending me to Oscar Scott’s house?”

  “Yes, he’s a decent sort, so play nice. His father basically kept him prisoner there for most of his life, so he knows as well as anyone it’s pretty hard to get in or out.”

  “Jesus, I have to change,” Lucy said urgently, looking down at her clothes. It made me smile. A flash of the normal, admittedly shameless, Lucy. It reassured me that she would be okay, eventually.

  “But where are you going? How do you plan to track down this Pargate guy?”

  My doorbell rang, right on cue. I made my way around the counter and down the short hall to it.

  “Someone suggested a sniffer-dog,” I said, opening the door.

  Standing in the hallway outside my apartment was a tall woman in black pants and a rugged bomber jacket. She had a mass of red hair falling down her back in a curtain, and narrowed, suspicious eyes. She looked pretty pissed off, but I knew this was just her default expression. Arms folded, she looked me over, then peered into the room, glancing around the small space with undisguised interest.

  “Sofia.” I nodded.

  “That’s…” Lucy blinked in confusion. “Isn’t that the Tribal lady? The werewolf?”