‘I feel like I know who it is but I can’t see his face. He’s all in black and red. It’s all blood and shadow.’
‘What about James?’ Gabriel asked, ‘Is he clear or obscure, like the other bodies?’
‘Clear. He’s always been the one clear thing I could see.’ Tavisa’s hands were trembling. ‘I could always see this dead man kneeling beside the body that Gabriel Dare threw off a building, and then he showed up at Chelsea Bridge and I’ve been waiting for you to murder him ever since.’
‘I’ve told you, I’d never harm Jamie,’ Gabriel asserted automatically. ‘Although you say I killed the other man. The one that was a raven. And you know I did that?’
‘Yes. I didn’t see it but I know it. So much isn’t clear, but those three facts are. You threw someone off a rooftop. It broke James Sharpe’s heart. You killed him.’
‘Hmm.’
Tavisa glared at Michael Dare. ‘Is that all you have to say? I’ve this minute told you I saw your brother murder a man – this man – and all you can say to me is “hmm”?’ She didn’t know if she wanted to scream, hit him or cry.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, all urbane contrition, ‘I forget that you have less experience of these things.’
‘Fuck you. I’ve been dreaming shit like this since I was six years old.’
‘That must have been very difficult for you.’
His unexpected kindness made her want to cry, and that made her angry. ‘Hasn’t been a picnic. So are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on and who the fuck you are, or are you just going to say “hmm” again?’
Michael Dare ignored the pointed “see what I mean?” glare from his brother and addressed Tavisa.
‘It is a singular fact that the world is not as rational as we would like to believe. Or rather, there are levels of reality that conform to different sets of rules, although we can be certain that rules of some kind exist. A world, Sergeant Datta, which is limited and exists in very small pockets beside the more prosaic world of physics and mathematical purity, but is nonetheless very real.’
He smiled in a completely not-reassuring manner. ‘A world in which, for example, people may dream of things that are yet to be; things that may become true or may be averted. My assistant, Miss Webb, has this gift to some measure, although I will be honest, her skills as a personal assistant and bodyguard are far superior to those she has as a soothsayer.’
Tavisa scowled at him, trying to cover for the rapid beating of her heart.
‘Other things exist, of course. Other creatures that, for want of a better term, may be labelled as supernatural, or paranormal.’
‘Such as?’ she demanded through teeth gritted against the fearful chattering that threatened.
‘Ghosts are as prevalent as one would assume,’ he said. ‘Though only a fraction of those reported could be truly said to be harmful to the living. On the whole, they are merely echoes of old spirits. There are spirits of other types, however. Animal spirits, as it turns out.’
‘Werewolves?’ Tavisa asked, attempting to sneer.
‘Certainly, though they are more a northern European phenomenon. I’m speaking more of… personifications of archetypes. Bear and fox spirits, for example. The truth is that I have a limited understanding of this field. Very little empirical research has been conducted. Vampires are less prevalent than popular culture would have us believe, but yes, they exist.’
Tavisa’s lip curled. ‘You’re crazy.’
‘Not at all,’ said Michael Dare mildly. ‘Afflicted, perhaps, but I assure you, I’m as sane as you are.’
Tavisa Datta did not find that reassuring.
‘A demonstration?’ he suggested.
‘Oh please, yes,’ she said. ‘Prove it.’
Michael Dare tugged the glove from his right hand. He held his hand up to show her how perfectly ordinary it was.
And then the nails transformed into dark, hard, pointed claws, and his eyes were black and burning, like embers. His face grew sharper.
‘I cannot perform a full transformation,’ he said. His voice had changed timbre into something wilder and gruffer and altogether stranger. ‘The wound was not severe. But changes enough have been wrought on my DNA. It has been deeply inconvenient, although rest assured I will seek advantage where I may.’
And suddenly his face was his own again, his hand a normal hand, free of claws and that hint of red hair.
‘You understand, I show you this in confidence,’ said Michael, tugging his glove on again, and his voice was his own measured, cultured, human voice again. ‘You are one of a handful of people who are aware of it. As far as we can ascertain, I pose no threat to those who rely on me. My mind is yet my own.’
‘I–’
‘Miss Webb assures me that I am not the fox from the dream. Is that your impression?’
Tavisa closed her slack jaw. She shook her head. ‘No. You’re not safe, but you’re not–’
‘Wicked?’ suggested James Sharpe, breaking his silence at last.
She glared at him, suspecting mockery, but he was in deep earnest.
‘Not wicked. No.’ She swallowed convulsively. ‘Crafty, though.’
That seemed to disconcert Michael and to amuse Gabriel.
‘There’s another thing.’ Sharpe said in a terribly serious tone, and she stared at him in dread. ‘I won’t hurt you,’ he continued. ‘I want you know that. I’m not a danger like that.’
‘But dangerous,’ she whispered.
‘Aye,’ he concurred.
‘What are you?’
He closed his eyes and she could see his face alter weirdly. He opened his eyes, and his mouth, and she could see his pointed teeth.
‘I’m dead, Tavisa. “Undead”, in the vernacular.’
‘No.’
‘James is a vampire,’ said Gabriel. ‘He’s been a vampire the entire time I’ve known him, although I only learned the truth a few weeks after I moved in. That’s why I say that if you see James dead in your dream, I couldn’t possibly have killed him. Vampires disintegrate to dust on their second death.’
‘I...’ Tavisa looked at Gabriel, trapped between hope and despair. ‘And you?’
‘I see ghosts. I don’t know if that’s actually been medicated out of me by now, but that’s how it was when I was a boy. I only realised when I found out about Jamie that I wasn’t completely off my rocker after all.’
‘Oh.’
‘Quite.’
Tavisa stared at James Sharpe again. ‘Can you… turn into… things?’
The doctor’s long suffering sigh made Gabriel laugh, which was so startling in the circumstances that she was hardly further surprised when Sharpe rolled his eyes and called Gabriel a numpty with obvious affection.
‘No, Sergeant Datta. No clouds of bats or transforming into a wolf for me. I can hold my breath forever.’
‘And… blood?’
‘I don’t kill people for their blood,’ he told her. ‘What I need I take in the form of pig’s blood, which I obtain from the butcher’s, as you may recall.’
He cast a quick glance at Gabriel. ‘Sometimes I obtain small amounts of human blood from volunteers. I’m not going to bite you, Sergeant.’
‘Why are you telling me this? Why are you all telling me this?’
‘Because,’ said Michael Dare, ‘your dream is not yet fact.’
‘Your dream about the Donal family,’ said Sharpe, ‘was very precise about everyone but the daughter, Penny.’
‘Yes,’ said Tavisa, remembering that victory.
‘Your visions of her were unclear and surrounded by allegory. Red and eyes and darkness. That’s where we found her. In a closed trunk, surrounded by dolls, stuffed animals and a scarlet ball gown. Your vision of her circumstances was unclear. Her fate wasn’t sealed.’
‘Well, that’s a great help,’ she snapped.
‘Annoying, I agree,’ said Michael. ‘Apparently the
rules for the supernatural revolve very much around being as frustratingly vague and egregiously metaphysical as possible.’
‘The rules around blood freely given, invitations to enter residences, and all the exceptions to the rule, are positively arcane.’ Sharpe was half way between irritated and amused.
‘We believe,’ said Michael Dare, ‘that the fox in this dream is the same one that infected me, though I use the term infected very broadly.
‘However, if he is involved in this vision that you and Miss Webb share, and if my brother and Doctor Sharpe are also participants in those events, it cannot be good. Given the link I now have with that…wicked creature, I cannot allow your dream to go unchallenged. We must know what it means. If possible, we must prevent it.’
Tavisa Datta’s shocked gaze shifted from one Dare brother to the other, and then onto Doctor Sharpe. Then she looked back at Gabriel.
‘But you’re part of it. I know you are you. If you’re right, that the things in clear detail will definitely happen, then that happens. You’re a killer. You throw someone from a roof.’
‘I couldn’t imagine a reason for doing such a terrible thing.’
‘A big black raven falling off a roof,’ interjected James thoughtfully. ‘Have you seen what you’re like when you’re working? Bird’s nest hair. When your study objects, you peer at them like you’re x-raying them for hairline fractures. You look like a seagull working out how to break into an oyster.’
‘My hair is like a bird’s nest?’
‘A wee bit. It’s adorable. Very painterly of you. It’s how I imagine Turner after a hard day at the easel.’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous,’ Gabriel snorted, hiding his pleasure at the analogy. ‘Why would I throw myself off a roof, anyway?’
‘I haven’t the first idea, love. But I’ve seen terrible things in my time. As a doctor, as a soldier, and as a vampire. If the Sergeant says I look like a man who’s see the worst thing in his life, it must be because of who it is, not the mess. I’ve picked up pieces of people after bomb blasts. You know what I saw in Helmand. What could be worse than that, now? Only if that body is you. If I couldn’t stop you. Aye. I’d look as bad as she describes.’
Gabriel took the vampire’s hand. ‘It won’t happen,’ he said. ‘I willnae let it happen,’ Sharpe assured him grimly.
Tavisa was aghast at an interpretation that had never occurred to her. Michael, too, was troubled at this new notion.
‘So, Sergeant Datta,’ Michael said at last. ‘Here we are. And thus we come to the crux of the matter. We are telling you this so that you may know that other interpretations can be placed on your visions.’
Tavisa closed her eyes, because already she knew that the pictures in her head were different. The nuances of her sleeping mind were telling her, yes, James Sharpe was a vampire and his despair wasn’t because he was dead, but because he couldn’t prevent some other murder. But the identity of the body on the ground beside him was unclear.
‘Will you help us learn what your dream means,’ said Michael, ‘So that we may prevent it? Will you help us hunt that wicked fox?’
Would she seek a way to prevent a murder? Even if it meant helping Gabriel Dare, and a vampire, and a man more unsettling than either of those two put together?
‘Hell, yes,’ she said. ‘What do I do?’
‘The question, Sergeant Datta, is what do we do,’ Miss Webb corrected her. ‘And that is something that we need to determine together.’
Chapter Seventeen
Miss Webb’s first name, Tavisa Datta learned, was Anthea.
Anthea always had a wry smile hovering about that professionally detached mien and those canny, all-observing eyes. ‘I’m the genuine article,’ she joked early on. ‘Though at heart I’m the definitive article.’ She’d used her fingers to space out her name. An. The. A.
Tavisa liked Anthea. She appreciated a woman with a sense of humour.
Tavisa wondered if Anthea was Webb’s real name, but she didn’t mind either way. She wished nobody knew her real name. Working for Michael Dare, dreaming precognitive dreams, and being part of this strange hunt for a wicked paranormal fox made her want to shield herself from all the unknown, unknowable threats.
Tavisa had meetings with Michael and Anthea in the days following that first one in the carpark, occasionally in the company of the vampire doctor and the aggravating artist. Michael spent a lot of time trying to unravel Tavisa’s dream. Between them, they had a few working hypotheses. No way of knowing which was correct, though. Not until things started to become true in the world, rather than loitering as a hint of the subconscious.
They had theories now about the flamingo; and fears, too.
Anthea collected Tavisa for this latest meeting in a surprisingly sombre mood. Tavisa tried to offer a friendly greeting, but Anthea was not in the laughing vein.
‘This meeting is different,’ said Anthea.
‘Okay.’
‘When we get there, stand behind him and don’t speak. Just listen. I’ll explain afterwards.’
‘But what–’
‘Trust me.’ Anthea was utterly severe for a change. No incipient wry wit there, only grim determination.
Each meeting in the preceding days had been at a different location. Today they went to an empty office building, the upper floors of which were being refurbished. Anthea led Tavisa to a corner office on the tenth floor. A glass window separated the office from the main floor.
Once the two women were in the office, Michael Dare entered the main room. He ignored their presence and stood with his back to them. He was wearing his gloves, and wore sunglasses, even inside this dim-lit building. A faint blue light emanated from the table in front of him, where he had placed a tablet or smartphone screen that Tavisa couldn’t see. Anthea hovered by the office door, open a fraction. She didn’t say a word to her boss.
Very strange.
Michael tapped a command on the unseen screen.
‘Were-creatures,’ said Michael Dare as though dictating to a stenographer, ‘Are different from spirit animals in a number of respects. It has taken time to separate the fundamental aspects of the two. The infections manifest in similar ways.’
Tavisa raised an eyebrow at Anthea but remained silent, as instructed.
‘A bite or scratch from a were-creature,’ continued Michael, lecturing the wall, ‘alters the victim’s DNA. Without further input from what is sometimes referred to as the sire, the were-creature’s progeny will undergo change at the cellular level. The curse translates as a disease, if you will, with monthly symptoms that require confinement and management. Outside of those times of physical transformation, however, the victim appears and indeed is human enough; but a carrier, of course, so great care must be taken. Despite the curse – such is the traditional nomenclature, although it is more in the way of a communicable infection – the victim remains essentially independent. Were-creatures are no more beholden to their so-called sire than a person who contracts malaria is beholden to the mosquito; or someone with syphilis owes fealty to the one who passed it on.’
Michael Dare, Tavisa knew, was scratched by a fox spirit, not a were-fox. There are were-foxes. What a peculiar thought. What a peculiar and unpleasant world. Given this speech, she would have thought that a good sign, but for the look on Anthea’s face. She was indescribably sad; like she was watching someone she loved die.
‘Animal spirits, such as the fox that scratched me,’ Michael continued, still ignoring their presence, assuming he was aware of it, ‘operate on different principles, although at first glance they appear to manifest possession in a manner similar to were-infection. But possession is the correct word in this instance. My own wound was but a scratch, superficial to begin with, but where a were-creature may infect against its intention, the spirit animal may only infect as a conscious act. No doubt if it had bitten me, the saliva and greater injury would have hastened the process. That was,
no doubt, its intent, but a scratch was all it managed.’
The man lifted his gloved hand, the one that had been injured at the Halloween party, and turned it this way and that.
‘Possession implies a consciousness rather than a simple viral or bacterial invasion. The blood samples originally examined were misleading, and suggested an alteration to my DNA, but the situation proves more complex, though not without hope. Recent studies indicate that my own DNA is not being altered, but encased. The alien casing is very thin on some days, and on others it is thicker, though the parameters for its variation are so far a mystery. My best team cannot identify the casings’ substance, though the bolder among them posits a theory that it has psychic as well as psychological and physical elements.’
He shoved the hand violently in to his pocket and steadied his agitated breathing.
‘So much work to be done,’ he said.
‘Although it may be summarised that it appears my body is being possessed. It waxes and wanes with something other than the moon. Proximity, perhaps? The level to which my – sire, progenitor, call him what you will – is focused upon me? I have, until recently, felt secure that I was not compromised beyond an irritating, though fascinating, capacity to display certain fox-like characteristics at will. My mind is yet my own, as I have said, and yet I do not know how much longer this will be the case. Two days ago, ten minutes are missing from my schedule, in which I recall not a blessed thing. Yesterday, fifteen minutes are blank in this fashion. This morning, half an hour of my memory is not accounted for.’
Michael Dare bowed his head, then withdrew his hand from his pocket again. ‘I am not sure you can appreciate the terror which accompanies these gaps, let alone the admission that they exist. The gaps, you understand, are accounted for externally. My staff, my bodyguard in particular, know where I was, physically, at those times, and are aware of my actions.
‘It is the blank in my own mind which I find so alarming. Examination of the facts, the footage, the witness statements, indicates I have not compromised my duty. It could be that the fox is simply testing the waters. Who knows whether I am shut down at those times, or whether he is using my eyes, my ears, my senses, to spy, like that evil wizard in the children’s book that was so popular a number of years ago?’
Ravenfall Page 22
