Paper Children

by James Fahy

  “I had a rat!” I replied defensively.

  “Your rat exploded.”

  “And the chimes are not late either,” I snapped. “Five mins past nine, by our modern time, corresponds with 9.00 pm by Oxford time.”

  “You’re making this up now. What the hell is ‘Oxford time’?” Lucy groaned, half-tripping over a Helsing couple lying cuddling on the dark grass, who in my opinion were most definitely not paying attention to the movie.

  “Greenwich meantime wasn’t always a thing,” I told her. “It wasn’t accepted nationwide until the mid-nineteenth century. But even when it was, Christchurch remained stubbornly ‘Oxford’.” I smiled. “Always five minutes later than the rest of the country. I quite like that.”

  “There she is!” Lucy yelped, a little desperately I thought. I followed her pointing finger, searching the crowds. Surely enough, the roped VIP area below the great screen, filled with well-heeled attendants most certainly not in parkas and supping schnapps from thermos flasks, contained Veronica Cloves. Even at a glance, I could see she was in full on face-of-Cabal mode. Charming smiles, hair softly curled, a tailored jacket hanging carefree across her shoulders. She was holding court with a small group, some of which were human, a few vampires. I recognised the stern female vampire with the fashionable fringe who had first guided me backstage at Sanctum. Elise, the Helsing supreme was there also, dressed, rather predictably, in crushed velvet, and hanging on the elbow of Dove himself, resplendent in a soft-grey suit.

  To say that I knew only too well Cloves’ dislike and distrust of vampires in general, she was good at her job, thoroughly dedicated to her role as charming mediator between peoples. I wondered if the vampires could smell her hate.

  “Ms Cloves!” Lucy shouted loudly, waving a hand over her head to get her attention as we reached the perimeter. Almost everyone in the VIP area turned with curiosity to stare at us. I swatted Lucy’s hand out of the air.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  “I can’t help it. I need rescuing. You’re making me learn things. Really useless things!”

  Cloves had spotted us. I saw her practised smile flicker for a moment before righting itself. She leaned into the ear of the closest hangers on, no doubt explaining that she was off to powder her nose, and then threaded her way over to us, still smiling and setting down her glass of bubby on a table. Behind her, projected on the huge screen, someone was engulfed in flames, running down a desert road.

  Her smile slid off her face like melted wax as soon as she reached us, replaced with her much more familiar sneer.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Harkness?” She stared at us both. “You’re supposed to be at the lab.” She waved a hand at Lucy dismissively. “With all your Igors. Coldwater called me earlier. She’s there tonight to speak with you. I was going to come myself… God knows I don’t trust you not to somehow incense her… but duty called.”

  Bollinger called, I thought to myself.

  “I have to talk to you,” I said firmly. “It’s important. Whatever ‘work’ you’re doing here with…” I glanced past her, “…the vampires and…”

  Amongst the humans in the VIP area was a tall and well-dressed bearded man in spectacles. A girl of about fifteen was standing politely with him in elegant party clothes. “…Folami Adamola?” I asked.

  “Yes, the Dean of Christchurch and his granddaughter, Celeste,” Cloves told me through gritted teeth. “He’s very progressive, a GO supporter. He’s the one who allowed your GO buddies to pitch this event here as part of their festival. The girl is fascinated by the vampires. She’s been tediously starry-eyed around them all evening. Coldwater wanted me here to ensure that everything goes smoothly, no trouble from any Mankind Movement supporters, and most importantly, to make sure the Dean is kept happy. I’ve been laughing at his terrible jokes all evening. I can’t spare time to-”

  “He can spare you for ten minutes.” I took her by the wrist and practically dragged her out of the VIP lounge, ignoring the looks of polite curiosity from both the Dean and Dove, and the dagger-like stares I was receiving from Elise as well. I had only made brief eye contact with the Helsing as we approached, but her expression had been just as strange as when I’d last seen her. Part scorn, part discomfort. She was such an Allesandro fangirl. Perhaps settling for any other vampire, even one as pretty as Dove, left her sucking lemons. But then she was a limpet, and they will cling to any hull in a storm.

  Cloves’ eyes were wide. “Take your goddamn hands off me!” she hissed quietly. “What in the hell do you think gives you the-”

  “Chase,” I said, stopping her in her tracks.

  “Chase Pargate,” Lucy clarified, rather needlessly. “He’s all over this case.”

  Screaming erupted from the huge screen as the movie reached a pivotal moment, sound effects booming from the speakers. I glanced past it, at Wren’s bell tower silhouetted against the clouds. “We need somewhere quieter to talk.”

  *

  Cloves actually came quietly with no further protest, evidently not wishing to cause a scene in front of the well-heeled Christchurch royalty who filled Cabal’s coffers. We made our way into the tower and up at least three flights of tightly twisting stone stairs until I found us a relatively quiet landing. It was dark in here. Most of the college lights were either out altogether or dimmed so as to not interfere with the outdoor cinema, but once we were out of sight of the general public, even in the gloom I could make out Cloves’ sour expression.

  “You had better have a damn good reason for being here,” she snapped. “Coldwater at Blue Lab and you’re not even there to speak to her? If you’re sloping off to watch movies with your little bat-crazy buddy here when we have vampires being torn apart and two missing brats to find-”

  “It’s not two,” I cut her off.

  She didn’t respond for a moment. It was shadowy in the tower but I could still make out her suspicion. The movie beyond the wall continued, still loud but muffled somewhat by the walls of the tower.

  “It’s true,” Lucy chimed in. “We think it’s a lot more than two kids. This thing has been taking kids off the street for ages. We just haven’t heard about it until now.”

  I told Cloves everything. What Lucy and Dee had discovered in the poorest parts of our illustrious metropolis. I watched her carefully as I spoke. I needed to know how deep down Cabal’s rabbit hole she really was.

  “I don’t care if they’re homeless or nameless or poor little Dickensian waifs,” I said eventually, when I had brought her up to speed on the many stolen children. “There’s still no way that Cabal, with its all-seeing eyes everywhere, genuinely hasn’t heard of this going on. Someone somewhere is hushing up these disappearances. I need to know, Veronica.”

  “Know what?”

  “Did you know about this? The other children?” I glared hard at her.

  Her eyes narrowed at me. “You really think I’d sit on this, Harkness? If I knew about it? For fuck’s sake. I might not be Mary goddamn Poppins, but if you honestly think I’d tow a line strung up on innocent kids, even for Cabal…” She shook her head in amazement.

  “You haven’t answered me,” I pointed out.

  Cloves’ eyes met mine, steady and as full of steel as they always were.

  “I’m not high up enough in the food chain to be in on any such cover up,” she said firmly. She looked from me to Lucy. “And if I was, you can bet your polyester-clad arses I’d blow it wide open.”

  “I want to be able to trust you,” I told her. Her eyes flicked back to me.

  “Oh cut the kindergarten shit, Harkness. What do you want, a pinky swear?”

  “Swear it on the bible!” Lucy suggested excitedly.

  The thought of Cloves touching a bible without it bursting into flames seemed ridiculous. But Lucy had given me an idea. I snatched Cloves’ tiny clutch purse out of her hands. It was completely transparent, hideously designed and no doubt almost priceless. It contained nothing but a pair of
oversized sunglasses I could see through the shining plastic.

  I held up the purse. “Swear it on Balenciaga,” I commanded sternly.

  Cloves’ eyes went wide as saucers. She actually gasped. She stared at her purse, then snatched it back like a viper, her eyes sliding up to mine.

  “I swear it on Balenciaga,” she said solemnly.

  It may have been the first time I’ve ever believed Cloves to be sincere about anything.

  “On Donatella and Lacroix. This is the first I’ve heard about any other missing brats.”

  “Who are they? Are they saints?” Lucy was confused.

  “Almost,” Cloves replied tartly. She peered over my shoulder. “Speaking of lost children. We have company.”

  I turned, frowning. The teenage girl from the VIP section was behind us on the stairs, one hand resting on the wall. She looked like a wandering spirit, hovering in the darkness in her smart partywear. She smiled up at us.

  “Are you really the vampire doctor?” she asked excitedly.

  I blinked down at her. “The what now? You’re the Dean’s granddaughter aren’t you? Celeste Adamola. What are you doing up here?”

  “The movie both blows and sucks,” she replied, looking over myself, Cloves and Lucy with wide-eyed interest. “Everyone knows about you. You’re the doctor that drunk vampire blood, right? Do you have like, supernatural powers now?”

  “Um, no I don’t.” The only superpower I currently had was managing to bite my tongue at being called the vampire doctor. “Look kid, you shouldn’t be in here, go back to the party.”

  “Your grandfather will be worried, Celeste, darling. You know how he frets,” Cloves cooed indulgently.

  “Grandpa is as into vampires as I am.” The girl stuck her chin out. “He’s campaigned for years for them to have full rights. Same as other people. I think they’re wonderful!”

  “They are, right?” Lucy beamed unhelpfully. I shot her a look.

  “I just wanted to meet you. What’s it like having a vampire for a boyfriend?” Her dark eyes glittered as she peered up the stairs at me.

  “Excuse me?” I stammered.

  “Is he cool? I mean, like his skin. Is he a good kisser? Or do the fangs get in the way?”

  “I do not have a vampire boyfriend,” I growled. “I don’t have any boyfriend!”

  “Does he sleep in a coffin?” Celeste pressed relentlessly, coming up another step of the twirling staircase to us.

  “Celeste, dear,” Cloves intervened. “I’m afraid we’re in the middle of some rather important Cabal business here. You really must go back down the tower.”

  The girl looked cross. “You’re talking to me like I’m five. I’m fourteen you know. But everyone here is so dull. They’re all just getting drunk on champagne and Grandpa won’t let me out of the VIP section to go sit in the crowds. They look like they’re having way more fun.”

  She looked between the three of us, smirking. “You guys are totally having a secret meeting in the dark. Is it about vampires? It is, right?”

  “Lucy, maybe you should…” I tilted my head meaningfully towards the girl. Lucy nodded, hopping down the steps towards her.

  “Hey, you know what? I’ve been to every… single… vampire club in the city.” She linked the girl’s arm in a sisterly way. “Leave the old guys to chat, I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Old… guys?” Cloves sneered quietly as my Helsing assistant led the wayward child back down the staircase and out of sight.

  I turned back to Cloves, once I could no longer hear the two of them squealing over the prettiness of the undead.

  “There’s more I have to tell you,” I said. “It’s about your old partner.”

  I filled Cloves in on the footage Griff had recovered. Chase Pargate being present at both scenes. At least if nothing else, it proved that the missing children and the vampire deaths were somehow connected. We had found actual evidence of a common thread at last. Cloves had known Pargate much longer than me. I wanted to know if she though he was capable of such things.

  “The Chase I knew years ago…” She shook her head. “He was always a little… off-centre, but to suggest he’s tearing vampires apart and spiriting kids away into the night? I could never tell what he was thinking, even when we were partners.”

  “Coming back from the dead could change a person,” I shrugged.

  “Resurrected nutball or not,” Cloves said. “You saw how brutal the vampire deaths have been. No human could do that to a vampire.”

  “We don’t technically know if he is human anymore,” I pointed out. It was a wide and varied world these days, new GOs popping out of every shadow. “I don’t know what else could do that to a vampire, come to think of it. A ghoul maybe?”

  Vampires don’t make new vampires when they drain your blood. If a vampire drains a human to death however, it can use the corpse as a kind of puppet, mentally controlling it, making it walk and talk and run all kinds of Renfield-like errands. I’d encountered ghouls before. Gio, that old doomsday-inducing darling, had made a ghoul out of a high-up Cabal member once, and no one had noticed until it was almost too late. Which speaks volumes about the upper tiers of Cabal when a reanimated rotting corpse can fill their shoes without drawing attention.

  “Ghouls are no stronger than the humans they were when they were alive,” Cloves disagreed. “Sure, they can take a beating better, having no living nerve endings and all, but a ghoul doesn’t suddenly get super strength, not enough to kill a vampire.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Unless it’s a vampire ghoul?”

  It was my turn to shake my head. “There’s no such thing.” I said. “Vampires can roll minds, yes, but only lesser-human-ones. Vampires can’t roll each other’s minds, they’re all too strong individually. Even on the brink of death, there’s no way a vampire could have the mental power to control one of its own kind. And besides, preying on your own kind? Unheard of in vampire circles. It’s as taboo as cannibalism.”

  I was frustrated. “I was actually warming, however reluctantly, to the demon thesis,” I admitted. “Before Chase Pargate showed up throwing a spanner in my guesswork.”

  “Well, he’s a lot of things,” Cloves drummed her fingers against the cold stone of the dark tower wall. “Gleefully mentally unhinged? Perhaps. Psychotic? Maybe. Dangerous? Almost certainly, but I doubt that he’s demonic. Talk of demons and ghosts… it still doesn’t sit with me, Harkness. It gives me the creeps.”

  I agreed. Just discussing the smouldering stalker of our city, here in this hushed and dark space, was sending uncomfortable chills down my back. I’ve never been a superstitious person, but with the pall of menace hanging over the city, it almost seemed like inviting trouble to talk openly of it.

  I wish I wasn’t right all the time, because at that moment, from below us in the stairwell, over the sound of the muffled cinema outside, I heard Lucy scream.

  There are lots of different types of scream. There’s the ‘spider in the bath’ scream, the ‘winning the lottery’ scream, the ‘jump-scare in a movie’ scream. I’ve heard a lot of screams in my career. Tangling with the Genetic Others comes with its own, easily recognisable soundtrack unfortunately.

  This was a scream to chill to the bones. Sheer terror echoed up the dark and twisting stairway of the tower, and its effect was so strong, that Cloves and I were barrelling down the shadowy staircase without a word between us before my brain had even had time to register that it had issued from Lucy.

  I was already imagining various scenarios, cycling through options with a cool, almost disconnected calm, while my heart burst against my chest and the rest of my attention focused on not missing a step and slipping in the darkness of the old stone staircase. One hand slid along the wall to steady myself, the dark bricks both rough and slick against my palm.

  We came upon Lucy on the landing below, she was sprawled on the floor on her back, just in the process of pushing herself up onto her elbows. Cloves almost barrelled into my
back, I stopped so suddenly.

  “It’s got her!” Lucy gibbered, her voice one note shy of hysterical. “It just took her. It came out of nowhere!” She stared up at me, eyes brimming with panic. “It got her!”

  Wide-eyed, I stared past Lucy. Halfway down the stairs from the landing at which she had fallen, hidden in the shadows, was a hulking shape, a mass of darkness was retreating. Over its shoulder was the limp body of Celeste.

  “No!” I yelled, my voice much louder and far angrier than I had thought it would be.

  “Drop the fucking kid!” Cloves growled from behind me.

  The large shape stopped in its tracks and turned slowly on the steps. The girl sliding from its broad shoulders to land cradled in its arms, like some old pulp comic cover where the swooning damsel is carried off by Swamp Thing.

  It was the thing from the library. It was larger than I remembered, or perhaps it merely seemed that way, hemmed in on all sides in the tight enclosure of the tower and half-lost in shadow.

  Its black eyes glinted, just visible in the gloom. I had dropped to Lucy’s side to help her to her feet. She didn’t seem to be harmed, just stunned. As we all stared up at it, the child-stealer grinned. Its long mouth splitting open slowly like rotting fruit, charred black cheeks crinkling like volcanic ash, revealing that wide glistening mouth full of teeth.

  In the darkness of the tower stairwell, it regarded all three of us, its face an inscrutable mask, then it giggled.

  High and childlike, the noise echoing off the walls.

  Clearly deeming us unworthy of its attention, it turned away again in the tight space, the girl’s feet brushing the wall. She had lost one of her shoes. The monster was leaving with her. The putrid, charred smell of it filled the stairwell.

  “I said freeze, you crusty fuck!” Cloves snapped as it took a few shambling steps away. Something clattered to the floor next to me and it took me a moment to register that it was Cloves’ purse, and then my head was filled with a flash of light and a sharp, deafening bang.

  If you’ve never had a gun go off right next to your ear, it’s an experience. There’s a reason people wear ear-defenders at shooting ranges. In the close quarters of our tight space, it seemed to shake the walls.