“That means I’ll be working with Lise, Jess, Naomi, Daniel, and Kira.” Liv shook her head. “No, I think it would be best if we had an equal number in each group. How about you take Lise as well?” She smiled at Lise. “It’s not because I don’t want you, sweetie, but I think you could give Ben some more information on how hard it’s been for you and Jess recently, information I really do thing he needs if he’s going to be a part of this rather than escaping back to wherever it was he came from this time.”
“Do you really think I’m going to leave you now?”
“I think you need to do what’s best for you and I’m not going to assume that staying here is. The last thing I want is for you to stay here because you feel you have to, in case I get attacked again, because you might well have a life wherever it is you’ve come from, and if you do I want you to be able to go back to that without letting your worries for me get the better of you.”
Finally, after far longer than I expected, Ben nodded. “I accept that, but I’m not leaving. Not know. There’s too much to do here for me to go back and I can tell you now that I didn’t have a life where I came from. That’s why I came back in the first place.”
Liv shook her head. “You can tell me about that later.” She sounded more exasperated than annoyed, because it wasn’t exactly unusual for Ben to keep things from people. “For now let’s get these plans made and then we can go from there. The sooner we’re sorted out the better, because I am going to have to tell the other vampires about this as soon as I physically can, so if we can get this done today I’ll be able to stop worrying.”
None of us had been sleeping, even though we’d been trying, so it was good that we had something to do that wasn’t just lying there worrying about what was going to happen next. That might just have been me, though. I didn’t know what the others had been doing. From the sounds of things none of us had been able to get any sleep at all, which was really no surprise considering what the future could hold for us all. It was coming far sooner than I thought we were ready for and it was something I was more afraid of than I thought was possible. I had been alive for a long time, I’d lived through other riots, I’d lived through everything from ten years before, and yet this was easily one of the hardest things I’d been through.
Teresa
As I walked home I tried not to think about everything we’d talked about, but that was almost impossible to do. My thoughts whirred around like they’d been doing ever since the riots started and I couldn’t help wishing, just for a moment, they never had. Our lives had changed so much in ways I could never have imagined. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I thought it was something we would be able to cope with, as long as we worked together, and yet there was this niggling worry in the back of my mind. Would we all survive what was coming next? Our silence was more of a burden than anything, as we were all stuck with our thoughts, so I was trying to work out how to break it.
“How many vampires are we going to be housing again?” Kira’s voice made me jump. “I know we talked about this before, but I’m surprised I can still walk right about now, so I need to be told things multiple times.”
Jess laughed. “I think we all feel the same, Kira. I don’t know how long it’s been since I stayed awake for over 24 hours and I hope it won’t happen again anytime soon.” She wrapped an arm around me. “I have a feeling it will, though, the riots have brought the changes we hoped they would and that is something I can’t complain about.”
“Change isn’t always a good thing.” Lise sounded pensive. “I’m not saying I don’t appreciate some of what Liv got Freud to agree to, but that doesn’t mean I can stop worrying about him. He’s still someone I don’t trust. He’s someone I’m never going to trust and I wouldn’t put it past him to pretend he didn’t make some of these promises.” She sighed. “I’m sure Liv knows that. It just doesn’t stop me from thinking about it, because I didn’t get a chance to talk to her about it.”
“I did.” Jess sounded much happier than I expected her to. “One of the MPs who was in the room with them videoed the whole thing, so Freud won’t be able to pretend he didn’t make those promises, and there’s a signed piece of paper with all of them on too, which was photocopied multiple times and shared with everyone there. The MP who has vampire sisters was going to take them a copy. Liv has one and she’s going to make more of them. Freud is not going to be able to change his mind.”
“Yeah, you say that…”
“Lisa, lovely, come on. Let’s be happy for a little while, yeah. We’ve managed to change the world. That’s something we should be celebrating. Tomorrow we can worry about what the future might bring.”
I’m not sure any of us agreed that we should leave the worrying until tomorrow, not even Jess, but it would be nice to be happy for a little while. I didn’t want to worry any more. I’d been worrying for months and I’d had enough. “Lise, I know why you’re so focused on what might be coming, because I can’t stop thinking about it either, but if we can let go of it all, just for a little while, I think we should.” I smiled at her. “We’ve been dealing with this mess for so long that I want to believe Freud is going to keep his promises, no matter how unlikely that is.”
After a moment Lise nodded. “I want to believe it to. I want to believe this is all over, Tree, but it’s so hard to do.”
“Everything is hard to do at the moment. I’m too sleepy to do anything sensible. All I really want to do is go to sleep and stop thinking about a future that isn’t here yet. For now we still have time to pretend that everything is going to work out. For now I can go to sleep without thinking that someone is going to try to murder me in the morning.” I shook my head. “After I’ve slept I can think about all of those worrying things, but for now it can all wait.”
“Sleep is not celebrating… but the way I feel right now I don’t think I could celebrate. How did we manage to stay up all day?”
“Luck.” I laughed. “I’m not certain whether it was good luck or bad, but it was definitely luck, as I know there were a couple of times when I felt like I might fall asleep.”
“Until Liv came down to talk to us.”
I nodded. “Yeah, until that. As soon as that happened all my sleepiness faded away.” I nibbled my lip. “Do you think she’s going to be okay?”
“You are.”
“Paul saved me before anything could happen to me. Liv is quite obviously in a lot of pain and she was terrified when we got there.”
“Liv’s strong. If she can call Ben a friend after he changed her without asking if that was what she wanted I think she can get over two humans trying to kill her. I do think we need to start learning self-defence. The last thing I want is for one of us to get hurt.”
“I thought we were going to worry about that tomorrow.” Lise laughed. “It’s for each of us to do, to start thinking about how we can make the future better, even though I think we’ve all been trying not to think of what tomorrow might bring.”
“I am going to stop think about it.” Jess shook her head. “Do you think if I keep telling myself that I might actually stop?” She lent on me as we waited for Nay to unlock the front door. “I hope that will work.”
We all stumbled into the house. Nay, I think, was the one who locked the door behind us, before following us into the lounge, where we all collapsed in a heap. I woke up with my head on Jess’ stomach when my alarm started going off at 2pm, my arms wrapped around Kira, and Nay’s head on my stomach. Carefully I disentangled myself and went to make coffee. It was going to take a lot of coffee for me to get through the day.
Olivia
Fortunately the police arrived after sunset. I opened the door, wearing pyjamas because I was still in too much pain to be able to dress, and smiled at them. “Good evening, officers.”
“Wow.” The first office took a little camera out of his pocket. “I would have done more than slash his arm if he’d done that to me.”
“I’m a vampire. I knew I couldn
’t do much more than that to hurt him, otherwise I would be the one being arrested right now.”
“Any other injuries?”
“Only ones I’m willing to show you in the house.”
Nodding, they stepped into the house when I moved back to let them in, which was a surprise. I was expected one of them to argue. “Okay, Ms. Mead, if you could show us your injuries and tell us in your own words what happened last night.”
Ben stepped in then to help me take my top off. “I was walking back from Downing Street when I heard a noise. Someone had stood on a stick, I think, and because of my newfound celebrity I knew to be careful. I wasn’t prepared for their being two men, however, so one of them managed to grab me from behind, while the other hit me in the face. That dazed me enough for him to have the time to stab me with a stake. I’m just grateful it wasn’t a knife. To get away I kicked the first man in the nuts, knowing that would make him let go of me, before getting my knife out of my pocket. With everything that’s happened I keep one on me now, in case something happens, and I’m glad I did.” A tear trickled down my cheek and I scrubbed it away, before wincing. “If I didn’t have that knife I would have been dead right about now.”
***
“Are you still certain that vampires and humans can live together?”
I nodded, sipping the tea Daniel had made me, as I looked at both him and Ben. “I really do. There are always going to be people who hate us, but I think it is possible for us to live together in peace, if not harmony. I just hope that this doesn’t set us back.” I sighed. “The vampires are not going to be happy that I was attacked. They’re going to blame the government.”
“It was the government.”
“No, it was Freud. There are some good people within it and I think they’ll do everything they can to help the vampires.” I smiled. “I’ll be meeting with some of them later on tonight, although it won’t be at Downing Street. They want to keep me up to date with everything.” I shook my head. “Gregory’s already sent me three emails. One of them was about his most recent visit to his sisters’ place. He’s getting on well with them and their vampires.”
Ben sighed. “I’ll keep fighting, for you, but sometimes I can’t help wondering if it would be better for us to just take over this world. At least then we wouldn’t be dealing with this mess.”
“We’d be dealing with some worse, instead, because we’d be the ones in Freud’s position. Power corrupts even the loveliest of people.” I reached out and took hold of his hand. “I want equality. Vampires aren’t better than humans, humans aren’t better than vampires - we’re different.”
A Bloody London Tale (Book 1): Unrest Rising Page 12
