Paper Children

by James Fahy

  “Hard to get into without getting caught,” Oscar said, looking equally unhappy. “Of course we didn’t count on that freak show not giving a flying fuck about being sneaky. It just walked right in… you saw what it did to my guys.”

  “We heard the struggle,” Lucy continued. “Gunshots, and by the time we got up to the oculus, everyone else was dead. That… that thing had the old man by the neck. Feet dangling clear off the floor. The girl was unconscious-”

  “Definitely not dead?” I interjected.

  Oscar shook his head. “We heard her moaning, I think it knocked her out. Why would it steal a dead body anyway?”

  He had a point.

  “It turned to look at us as we came in,” Lucy sounded shaky again. “And it just snapped his neck, tossed him across the room like a rag doll. He hit the piano. Then it scooped up the girl and… and… laughed at us.”

  “Creepy-ass laugh too,” Oscar shivered. “Like a falsetto from the ninth circle of hell. It took her out right past us.”

  “You didn’t try and stop it?”

  He looked angry for the first time. “Of course we tried! What were we gonna stop it with, Phoebe? Harsh language? Neither of us were armed.”

  “Oscar was very brave,” Lucy insisted. “He tried to protect me, pushed me behind him. We thought it was coming to finish us off too.” She swallowed. “But it wasn’t interested. It had got what it came for. It’s like we didn’t even matter. We weren’t worth its time.”

  It’s a good job too, I thought to myself. Brave or not, that thing would have gone through Oscar and Lucy both like a knife through butter, no matter how brave or noble either of them were being. I’d already lost Dee and Griff.

  “Doc,” Lucy looked hollowed. “I said I’d look after her, the girl, Celeste. I promised her I’d keep her safe. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop it at Christchurch in the tower, and I couldn’t stop it here either…”

  I felt terrible, Lucy didn’t deserve my frustration. “We will get her back, Lucy.” I said, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. “I promise. We’re going to catch this thing. We’re going to stop it. Those girls are not dead. I’m sure of it.”

  Lucy nodded. I could see she was trying to keep it together.

  I turned to Oscar. “You said on the phone it spoke to you. It spoke to me too, when I met it at the castle. What did it say?”

  Oscar looked troubled. “All dressed up like it was. Freaky. Like it was wearing those carnival costumes all the vamps at Sanctum have been sporting all week.” He looked at me. “It smelled dead, Pheebs. Like a corpse, but I saw that weird grin as it passed us. You know I’m a number one Helsing. I know my fangs. I’d swear to god that thing was a vampire. A really dead one.”

  Chase Pargate had suggested the same to me. Not a demon, but a vampire ghoul. The controlled corpse of a deceased puppet. But controlled by whom? Sofia had made a good point, out in the woods. GOs are too strong to be controlled, the way vampires control human corpses. Nobody has that power.

  “It made for the elevator,” Oscar said. “Just shoved us aside. I shouted something after it.” He shook his head. “I don’t even remember. I think it was mainly adrenalin. Trying to get it to stop. Just seeing it making off with that poor kid… I think I asked it why the hell it was doing this.”

  Lucy nodded. “That’s right, you did,” she looked at me earnestly. “But it was quite high pitched.”

  Oscar ignored her. “It turned as the door closed, with that vile shit-eating grin on its face, I didn’t even know it could speak until then.”

  “What the hell did it say, Oscar?” I said impatiently. Part of me wanted to shake the boy.

  Oscar swallowed and shrugged, helpless. “‘What goes around comes around’,” he told me.

  The wind whistled around the balcony, howling like a banshee through the metal struts on the exterior of the glass tower. Clouds were scudding overhead and my bones suddenly felt as cold as ice water.

  “What?” I heard myself say. My own voice sounded distant. Oscar repeated himself.

  “It sounded spiteful,” he said, shaking his head. “Like… like it had a score to settle. As though it was taking away these kids as payback or something. Against what? All humanity? I think it might be insane.”

  “It sounded like a threat,” Lucy clarified.

  ‘What goes around… comes around’… I’d heard that before… recently. At Sanctum. I leaned back gripping the railing of the balcony. My mind running through the events of the past few days. The first time I’d visited Sanctum, how intense all the carnival vampires had been in the back rooms, all staring at me in perfect synchronicity, like they had a hive mind. How Dove had tried, and failed, to roll me under his mind. How dreadfully uncomfortable Elise had seemed, even back then. I remembered the night at Christchurch, when the thing had tried to take Celeste and we had stopped it, who had been there too. Elise’s worried and desperate call to me, sounding frightened, sounding like she was in too deep and wanted out, and of finding her dead on the castle tower, and her killer waiting there for me, waiting to kill me too… right up until I’d gone all Pale-power ranger on its arse and it had suddenly found me interesting rather than inconvenient. And that had been the exact point when the vampire had magically appeared out of the shadows to gallantly save my life.

  “Oscar, when we were at the VIP party at Sanctum. Do you remember? He told us his history… of how he had suffered at the hands of humans, long before Allesandro rescued him.” I stared at Oscar, eyes wide. “We even asked him how could he not be angry, how could be hold no grudge, want to bring our species together with this damned carnival, and he shrugged it off, do you remember? He said he wanted the world to see vampires as they really are.”

  Oscar was staring back at me, looking shocked.

  “That’s what he said,” I breathed. “Those were his words. ‘What goes around comes around’.”

  “Who?” Lucy demanded, looking from Oscar to me like the only one not in the loop.

  “Dove,” Oscar said. I nodded, feeling sick.

  “It was Dove.” I looked to Lucy. “It is Dove! He’s the only one controlling this vampire ghoul. He’s the one using it to steal children. Elise found out, she must have. She practically said so when she called me, but she was so scared she didn’t make sense. He followed her and killed her.” My blood felt like ice, remembering how convincing his grief had been as he cradled her corpse in the stairwell afterwards. “He would have killed me too, I think he planned to. Using that burned up son of a bitch, lurking waiting for me. If he hadn’t found out I was… different… to other humans. He changed his tune then. He rescued me from it. He must have been there to watch it kill me, and instead he made a show of saving my life. Said he’d make me a queen of Sanctum if he could.”

  Lucy shook her head in denial. “No-no-no,” she insisted. “It can’t be Dove. That doesn’t even make sense. He’s the one who set up Fangfest in the first place! These kids, this demon or ghoul or whatever the hell it is, all that’s done is stir people up. Why would he sabotage his own grand finale evening? Think about it, Doc,” she spluttered. “What the hell does he stand to gain?”

  Elise’s words came back to me, from her garbled phone call.

  “I didn’t know,” she had sobbed. “I swear I didn’t know. Oh god, all those people. It’s not a demon. It’s not… they’re all going to die. He’s too strong…”

  “He wants chaos in the streets,” I frowned looking out over the city. “He wants the people scared tonight, angry. GO supporters and MM fanatics alike. Elise knew it and she tried to tell me, so he tore out her tongue.”

  Oscar had started pacing the balcony. “Even if… and it’s a big if, Dove is behind this monstrosity, how in the hell is he controlling it?” he questioned. “He’s only Steward for fuck’s sake. Yes, he has a skill for rolling minds, but he’s not as strong as Allesandro. The Duke will always be stronger than him, Dove is only alive because of his blood, a
nd even Allesandro himself can’t roll other vampire’s minds. I mean, it’s rude to even try, but I know he can’t do that. No vampire has ever been able to roll another.”

  “If Dove killed another vampire, to make himself a puppet, he wouldn’t be able to raise it as a ghoul?” Lucy asked.

  Oscar shook his head. “Not without his own head exploding, no.” He mimed a head exploding for extra effect. He even added sound effects, which was childish but illustrative.

  I didn’t doubt Oscar’s know-how. He was a vampire fanatic. He knew all the top trump information about every vampire there was. He probably knew Dove’s inside leg measurement and favourite flavour ice-cream too.

  “Unless… he had help,” came a new voice, making us all jump. I whirled. It had come from behind me, around the curve of the circular tower balcony which wrapped around Oscar’s sky-palace.

  Chase Pargate strolled around the corner into view, hands thrust in his pockets, smiling amiably, his long red leather coat flapping and cracking around him in the wind. We all stared at him in surprise.

  Oscar threw his hands in the air. “Impregnable fucking fortress, goddammit!”

  “Chase?” I blinked in shock. He gave me a little wave.

  “How the hell did you get in here?” Oscar demanded. Pargate tilted his head over the balcony, looking down the dizzying drop.

  “Climbed up the outside,” he said with a sniff.

  “You scaled the outside of a sheer glass skyscraper?” Lucy asked, wide-eyed.

  “With what?” I stared at Pargate. “Spectacular spider powers?”

  He tucked a stray lock of white-blond hair behind his ear and smiled at us all. “No, silly bean. With suction cups. I would have come in through the doors and lift, Bruce Wayne here left the doors open, but there were all these dead guys and, to be honest I didn’t really want to run into Vee if I could avoid it.” He nodded tentatively inside the glass windows, where Cloves was still live on the news.

  “How did you know I was here?” I asked. Chase looked awfully wan in the late afternoon light. I realised this was maybe the first time I’d ever seen him in daylight when he hadn’t been heavily disguised. He looked like he didn’t get outdoors for a dose of vitamin D much.

  “Oh, I put a tracker in your tea, back at the bunker,” he told me, his tone light. He wiggled his fingers at me in a mysterious way. “I can find you anywhere now. Right now there are millions of super-advanced nanobots coursing through your bloodstream.”

  “Oh my god… really?” I breathed.

  “No.” He shook his head immediately, grinning. He flicked a thumb back at the city behind and below us. “I followed you here from the Liver. Saw you guys leave so I hopped in a taxi.”

  I leaned forward and clipped him upside the head.

  “Idiot!”

  He sniggered at me.

  “What were you doing at Cabal HQ?” I wanted to know, slightly alarmed that Cloves and I had been spotted there, even if only by him.

  “Same as you,” he reached into his coat pocket and drew out a small clear plastic bag. “Snooping. Of course I don’t have your technical know-how of how to bypass several floors of security and DNA door-scans. I had to go old school. In through the laundry chute, and then John McClane my way through the air-vents, but hey. Each to their own.”

  I knew for a fact that Cabal HQ didn’t have bloody laundry chutes, but I wasn’t about to waste time trying to get any sensible explanation out of Chase Pargate. Talking to the man was like trying to unravel a slinky while on a rollercoaster.

  “What is that thing?” Oscar asked with interest, as I took the bag from the man. It contained one of the silvery techno-spikes from Coldwater’s office.

  “Magic brain-needle,” Chase said happily.

  “It’s discarded technology developed by PAPER,” I told Oscar and Lucy, feeling they deserved something of a more thorough explanation. “We think, Cloves and I, that it was ‘appropriated’ somehow by Coldwater, off the record and in secret. It’s designed to improve mental abilities. It never rolled off the experimental floor, on account of it turning most of its initial subjects into paranoid, unstable sociopaths with god-complexes and violent tendencies.”

  Chase looked past me to the others. “Cliff notes version, it’s a brain-booster,” he simplified. “Solve a rubix cube in three seconds? Child’s play. Pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time? Piece of cake. Or, if you’re a vampire, who already has low level mind control skills…” He trailed off with a meaningful shrug.

  “The power to control other vampires,” I finished for him. “Boosting natural GO talent, even to the point where not only can you roll other vamps under your mind, you can make a ghoul of one. Someone to do all your dirty work while you stay spotless and smiling and chock full of alibis and witnesses elsewhere.” I looked from the spike to Chase, who nodded and tapped the centre of his forehead.

  “Increased performance, never be embarrassed in front of your fangy friends again with new Brain-Viagra,” he chirped.

  I pictured Dove, dressed as always in messianic white. His smiling, open eyes and gentle expression, and between his eyebrows, the embedded jewel I had taken for some kind of hokey new-age decoration, glittering away, just like the flared end of this needle in my hand.

  “Coldwater steals secret tech in her endless quest to make humans as strong as the Genetic Others, and then Dove steals it from her?” I said in wonder. “Oh the irony. She armed a GO instead of defanging it. Unless of course they’re working together?” I looked up. “Why did you come here, Chase?”

  “Because the sun sets in about forty minutes and Dove and his carnival are going to be spilling into the streets, filling them to the brim with vampires who are all extremely unpopular today. The Mankind Movement don’t trust the vampires, the vampires blame the kidnappings on GO supporters trying to get back at Mankind Movement. Some of the press are suggesting that the Mankind Movement have orchestrated the kidnappings themselves to set up the vampires.” He was counting this off on his fingers. “Oh and breaking news, someone just leaked to the press that the granddaughter of Christchurch’s Dean has also been kidnapped, so now the GO supporters are equally up in arms.”

  “Who could do that?” Lucy asked. “It literally happened an hour ago! The only people who know about it are standing right here.”

  “Details on the news are very sketchy,” Chase admitted. “But someone got the news out that there’s been another snatching, another little lamb lost to the darkness. It was very deliberate.”

  Had Dove leaked this news? If it really was his ghoul, he would be the only person who knew it had happened. Was he deliberately pouring more fuel on the fire of fear and hatred licking at the wall of my city?

  “What are we going to do?” Oscar asked. “If Dove really did drive a spike into his own brain to make himself more powerful, we don’t stand a chance of getting near to him, and we have no idea where the burning ghoul is now, or what it’s actually done to those kids. I mean, he could just roll us all under his mind with ease if we confronted him.”

  “He couldn’t roll me,” I pointed out. “I’m not sure why. I think my genetic code is a little… scrambled these days. Let’s just say radio Phoebe is broadcasting on a channel that’s hard to tune into. Either that, or Allesandro’s blood in my system is overruling his attempts. I could probably get close to him, but he’s still a vampire at the end of the day. Unless I could channel my inner Pale at will, which doesn’t seem to the case, he’s automatically much stronger than me. Than any of us here. It would be like a minnow attacking a blue whale.”

  “What we have to do,” Chase said. “Is find the vampire who is strong enough to stop him. Dove is a steward of Sanctum. We could really use the Duke’s help.”

  “No one knows where Allesandro went,” I said in frustration. “We’re told he just upped and left, but I don’t believe that now. I think something happened to him. And now we have this mess to clean up.”

 
We all stood looking at each other, feeling a little helpless. Chase was right. Allesandro had pretty much sired Dove. He was much stronger. But it wasn’t as if he was about to just drop handily out of the sky because we needed him.

  “The few times I have seen him, it’s been in my own bloody head, talking nonsense,” I said, frustrated.

  “The Dreamspeak you were telling me about at the party at Sanctum,” Oscar remembered. “Yeah you said that, but you said Dove was in these dreams as well, and we already agreed that’s not possible. You can’t double dip two vampires.”

  Lucy snorted involuntarily and covered her mouth. We all glared at her.

  “Although…” Oscar said after a moment’s thought. “It could be the case, I guess, that Allesandro has been genuinely trying to get a message through to you… and that Dove has been deliberately trying to scramble the signal? Trying to stop him communicating with you, interfering with his attempts. I know you say you haven’t taken any of his blood.”

  “I’m not ‘saying’ I haven’t,” I cut in. “I really haven’t.”

  “Not that you know,” Oscar mused. “When you went to Sanctum that first time, did you eat or drink anything? It wouldn’t be much of a difficulty, if he was determined to get inside your head and interfere with Allesandro’s messages, for him to have arranged with the barman to have a few drops of his blood in your cocktail. That’s all it would take.”

  I felt queasy at the thought that my drinks at the club may well have been vampire-spiked. The cocktails I’d had certainly had a pinkish tinge to them.

  I looked back to Chase. “Allesandro did lead me to you,” I had to admit. “In his roundabout way. He mentioned the woods and your name. Dove was in the dream too, and now I come to think of it, he did keep trying to change the subject.”

  I was more than a little horrified at the thought that, rather than plaguing my dreams and making my life inconvenient, Allesandro might actually have been genuinely calling out to me. Trying to get a message through. Trying to get help. And all I’d done was continually brush him off.