Thrusting his arms through the hedge, he snapped twigs and tore at leaves, forcing a gap to emerge by pushing through with his super-strong limbs. His nose cracked against a cobblestone wall. He punched it at full power, relieving the recent temptation to deck Malachi. His fist pulverised into shards of bone. Every corpse buried in St. Michael’s heard his howl – he guessed; who was he to say otherwise? After all, he’d never believed in vampires either. Lorenzo winced as his hand healed. Foiled again. This was no ordinary wall, evidently.
He took advantage of the knobbly surface to gain purchase, leaning against the hedge as he clambered up the gap. He felt as if he’d been ascending the wall for an age when he finally looked up, locking his fingers onto stone to save from passing out. Above him, the wall loomed into the sky. He was a witness to infinity.
‘It can’t be,’ he whispered, ‘it can’t be higher than the hedge. It must be an illusion.’ Dizziness threatened to throw him off balance. He braced himself, glancing beneath him, expecting to see a decent amount of wall spanned, but a thin line of grass mocked him from four feet below. He hadn’t gone anywhere.
‘They won’t outsmart me again,’ he promised the night. He focused on his feet, pushing up his weight, and keeping the ground in his sight at all times in order to judge his progress. He didn’t look up until his fingers dug onto a flat ledge. An invisible spiral of barbed wire sliced into him and he hissed, ripping a section of skin away and licking at the blood that trickled down his wrist. He perched on the wall, surveying the foliage that obscured his vision.
There were three options, climb down and get electrocuted again by the wires running across the stone wall, jump onto the woodchip that potentially concealed a stake-pit, or, and this was by far his favourite option, pounce into the nearest silver birch and reconnect with his inner monkey.
Other than an eyeful of twigs and leaves, Lorenzo made the leap. He hopped in a zigzag through the copse until it ended in an immaculate lawn surrounding a tennis court, with a long, ornamental pond in a meadow to his left, and on his far right, the driveway, and the house itself. The hall’s gravelled driveway glowed under UV floodlights, and spots formed in Lorenzo’s sensitive vision. He trained his eyes onto the shadows cast by the marble statues lining the pond, in which he could pick out the bubbling carp breath in the still water.
The field beside snaked uphill to an outbuilding Lorenzo guessed was a stable, and near that, a towering redwood with a thick, reddish trunk. The boy had left gold-dusted breadcrumbs trailing behind him. ‘So, my Hansel, you lead me to you.’
Lorenzo considered the statues he had to pass to reach the redwood, his pulse still thudding from his recent brush with the gargoyles, and he didn’t want a repeat viewing. But his line of sight was clear. If he was quick… yes, he would be quick. With a thrust, he sailed into the air, figuring the more time spent above ground the better, but all too soon, he landed with a thump. Within a blink, he was running again, a blur smeared across the meadow.
The gods awoke. Centaurs and nymphs joined Athena and Hermes, Zeus and Hera, Apollo and Aphrodite, in their shrill, inhuman racket – screeching with blue fire flaring in their marbled eyes. Hackles raised, Lorenzo collapsed on the grassy slope and clutched his head as a million drills bore into his skull. Blood pooled in the corners of his tear ducts, his searing screams a pale reflection of his agony, as the weight of a mountain crushed his lungs and snapped the vertebrae in his spine.
His sanity fled, abandoning him to incoherent ravings. The last sound he could comprehend was a little gate on his right swinging open, the thud of boots approaching. He lifted his head and squinted through the film of blood. A deep green cloak skirted the grass.
‘You aren’t the first vampire I’ve put out of his misery, but it’s been a long time, I’ll grant you.’
Lorenzo gulped, not recognising the voice, but guessing whom it belonged to. As long as the infernal drilling stopped, what did it matter? Death was bliss compared to this torture. Still, his heartbeat quickened as the warlock approached. It was all he could do to groan as he felt a sharp point press into his back. He thought about Jean-Ashley, his mother, how he wished he’d had the chance to say a final goodbye, to make right all the wrongs he’d inflicted upon them. He sobbed into the grass, babbling, begging in nonsense vowels and consonants. This is it, he thought, The End.
Just as he found a hollow cavern inside himself to crawl into, just as he accepted his fate, he heard the soft thud of someone running over grass. A cry. ‘Father, wait! Don’t hurt him! He’s my friend!’
The statues ceased their hollering. Air molecules loitered like by-standers at a gory scene, but Lorenzo was very much alive. Friend? But he was in no place to argue. He rolled over onto his back, and stared into the fierce grimace of Espen Clemensen. His bones cracked audibly back into place, popping into sockets. He shuddered and convulsed at their feet.
Slowly, painfully, Lorenzo came round. ‘Yes,’ he spluttered, his lungs unsticking again, ‘the best of friends.’ In that moment, he meant it.
14
The Intruder
Screaming land-sprites wrenched me from sleep. I sat bolt upright in bed, sweat prickling my forehead. Raphael – had the wards finally snapped into action due to his presence on the estate? No; he was able to disarm them as a parent foils the booby-traps laid by their children. If Raphael were that powerful, he wouldn’t make an oversight like that.
So if it wasn’t him, who was it awakening the statues? I didn’t want Father to get to the intruder before me and deal with it in his heavy-handed way, deciding to conceal the trespasser’s identity ‘for my own good’. I was old enough to take care of myself and it was time to prove it.
Neat trick: propelling my spirit into the cherry tree meadow from where I gathered the flesh and bone I’d left ensconced in bed, and essence and body were drawn together again as two magnetic poles. Father beat me there but I wasn’t surprised; he’d had years of practice on me. Lorenzo was a surprise, crumpled into a ball of tortured writhing, his blood smearing the grass.
Friend. I’d called him that. I needed a shock tactic to stop Father from snapping Lorenzo’s neck with a click of his fingers, and now at my bare feet was the vampire, behaving like a sycophant and agreeing readily. A part of me was pleased, I guess. I was that low on pals it was depressing. Most of all, I was curious. Why was he here? Did he know about Raphael? How? I risked a glance at the redwood, but it appeared undisturbed. Lorenzo might be a recent addition to the De Laurentis brood, but even newbies didn’t try to cross our borders. But he’d gotten this far and Father was pissed about it.
He bent down and pulled Lorenzo up by his collar. ‘What by Thor’s name are you doing uninvited on my property?’
Raphael’s chiding sprang to mind. Territory is illusion. Sure, maybe for him, but he didn’t have a vampire sprawled next to his carp pond. Lorenzo spluttered, his grey eyes washed ochre as if they had absorbed his bloody tears, his pupils cavernous, sensitive to moon and starlight.
‘Relax, Father. He’s not going anywhere.’ Vampires healed quickly, but the entombed land-sprites injured the mind as much as the body. It would take a few minutes.
The soft thump when Father dropped Lorenzo made me cringe. Lorenzo got up onto his elbows and cleared his throat. His voice, when it finally came, was as husky as normal. ‘I wanted to talk to someone my own age, okay?’ He dabbed his cheeks, streaked with crimson, and licked his full lips.
‘Not okay. But elucidate.’
‘Elucidate? Who are you, my philosophy professor?’
I smirked, bemused by his cockiness despite his brush with death. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be getting less of a brush and more likely the whack of a broom. Father stiffened. ‘Professor? You’re reading Philosophy?’
‘Yeah, and English Lit. Why do you give a damn?’ He pushed to his feet.
‘His name. What is it?’
‘Who cares? What’s—’
‘I’ll tell you what’s god
damn important and what isn’t. Answer the question and put those teeth away before I snap them out!’
My Father the diplomat. They grappled for a moment, Lorenzo snarling and regaining his strength. ‘Menelaus… Menelaus Knight.’
Instead of relaxing his grip, Father screwed Lorenzo’s jacket in his hands, squeezing it like a stress ball. ‘He. Put. You. Up. To. This.’
‘What?’ we asked, unified in disbelief. ‘Why would my fucking philosophy professor tell me to trespass? And if you didn’t have those hell hounds at your front gate, maybe more people would knock. Just saying.’
‘He had nothing to do with this? Swear on your miserable life, swear it!’ Father shoved Lorenzo away from him, his mouth twisted in disgust.
This time Lorenzo held his ground and stayed on his feet. ‘I swear! Christ, what’s the big deal? Next time I’ll ring.’
‘If I catch you within a mile of these walls I’ll nail you into a coffin and bury you under the seabed.’
‘So much for hospitality.’
I intercepted Father’s fist before it made contact with Lorenzo’s jaw. His stare was venomous as I infused my grip with the magical strength he no longer had. ‘Leave it, Father. He’s got the message.’ I let go of his forearm before adding, ‘And for the record, if I choose to invite him at some point in the future your threat is nullified.’
‘Theodore…’
‘No, Father! I’m an adult now, by warlock and sapien law. This is my home and if I want Lorenzo to come in, he comes in. He hasn’t actually done anything.’ I neglected to inform him of the little fight we had in the alleyway near the Red Hawk that night, but I was attempting to win this battle of independence whilst I had the chance.
He glared at me, as I studied Lorenzo, who showed me a kindness by looking away. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d had similar power plays with his own father over the years. Had he really come here to talk to another Pneuma about his new life, totally innocent of Raphael’s existence? One thing was for sure, he was on the list of people I wanted a long conversation with.
That list was getting rather long. Father was rising back to the top slot; why had the name Menelaus Knight freaked him out? Tonight, I was going to find out, I couldn’t give him the chance to dig a pit and bury yet another secret. The truth would out or I’d start bleeding from my eyes.
‘Go – now! Eviscerating vampires is a great hobby of mine.’
Lorenzo backed away with a quick nod in my direction, a silent thanks for saving his life, I guess, and melted into the darkness. We watched the statues until their irises stopped burning. Father started back towards the house and I followed hot on his heels.
‘Who’s Menelaus?’
‘How should I know?’
The anger seethed in my chest. ‘Don’t stand here after what happened and lie to me!’
‘I’m not standing, I’m walking.’ He halted a few paces after I stopped, my fists clenched into rigid balls. Grumbling to himself, he said, ‘Theodore. Let me deal with it. You have a lot on your plate at the moment.’
Fobbing me off with patronising excuses was lame even for my father. Disguising it as consideration wasn’t going to fly. The name Menelaus Knight meant something. He wasn’t only a professor. ‘He’s Excubiae, isn’t he?’
‘Maybe.’
‘So that’s why you freaked out, because you think a Guardian sent Lorenzo to check up on us?’
‘Is it not reasonable to think so? A professor is in the perfect position to influence his students. If that professor happens to be a Guardian, and the student a vampire, you understand…’ Father let his theory stand for itself. I shook my head.
‘No, that’s not it. You recognised the name.’
‘Of course he did,’ said Uncle Nikolaj, arriving from the direction of the vegetable patch, his hair silken straw in the moonlight. ‘We know the name of every Praetoriani employee working at the headquarters.’
I stared at him. Nikolaj raised a neat eyebrow, his smile downturned. It gave him away. His tales were often half-truths, a property of good stories, at least, that was his argument. But one side of his mouth was usually upturned, a sly grin hidden under the masquerade of earnest yarn-spinning. It was different now. He wasn’t chuckling inside. He wasn’t enjoying this concealment. He was lying by omission, along with my father. A pillar of trust crumbled, and the small space between us became a chasm. They felt the snap and they watched me, faces stricken, aggrieved. I turned away. ‘If you won’t tell me the truth, I’ll find it myself.’
15
A Deal With A Vampire
It would take time to get used to manifesting in a different place. Floating in front of St. Michael’s partially collapsed tower, I commanded the magical essence laced within my spiritual form to call forth my body as if consciousness and flesh were two prongs of a tuning fork. My skin still buzzed as I crept around to the south porch and tested the church’s outer door, which yielded readily. Only a complete and utter fool thinks he can creep into a vampire’s hideout using stealth, but I was far too angry to be logical. Pausing in the cool porch, I reached for the handle on the inner door, grimacing at the resulting creak. I hope to Odin that it’s Lorenzo who’s in here.
The vampire inhabitants could hear my heartbeat, smell tonight’s dinner on my breath. But I wasn’t coming in blind. They were red smudges on my 3D map, or more accurately, it was the Gatekeeper who had them pinned down, hailing to its magical offspring. What an unpleasant thought; I was a surrogate father to even the most despicable varmint. And my father would never hesitate to barge into my room.
‘Knock, knock.’ I glided in, spine straight, ready to play the benevolent angel in the chance that Lorenzo would see me as his saviour and confide his knowledge of Menelaus, if he had any, to me. At the end of the nave, Lorenzo was hunched in shadow over a table, evidently lighting the candles that shed a mystical gleam upon the stained-glass windows at each transept.
He said nothing but kept on reverently spreading the flame across the wicks. It occurred to me that he might be religious, and the De Laurentis vampires, being Italian in origin, might also be Catholic. ‘Are you going to answer me or shall I stare at your back all night?’
‘It’s not my place to answer the door.’
I cast my focus into the crenelated tower at my back, locating the dusty bell. A flare of electric current lashed from my solar plexus and smashed into the bronze surface. The clang startled Lorenzo, and he knocked a candle to the floor.
‘How about the doorbell?’ I smirked, and the chime filled the soaring space above the pews.
Lorenzo stamped on the flame licking at his boot. ‘For fuck’s sake, look what you made me do! You could’ve set the whole building on fire!’
‘Jeez, a little touchy, aren’t we?’
His growl raised the hairs on my arm. ‘Piss off. After what your padre pulled? I’m entitled to be.’
How had it gone so wrong already? We couldn’t seem to go two minutes without trading profanities. ‘As we’re in a church and all—’
‘A church inhabited by vampires.’
‘Whatever,’ I sighed, ‘let bygones be bygones, how about it? You want to know the lowdown about being Pneuma? Fine. I’m your organic encyclopaedia. I only want a few titbits from you.’
Lorenzo put down the lighter and faced me. ‘Start by telling me who that kid is hiding out in your garden.’
Trust is a fragile bird, it only takes one knock to crack its wings. Vampires were premium lie detectors, able to discern the slightest change in heartbeat. I’d have to find a way to mask it but it was too late now to think about that. Still, I wasn’t about to play all my bargaining chips. Threatening Lorenzo into sharing intel about Menelaus wouldn’t fly either, considering I’d begged Father to spare his life minutes before. Unlike our first meeting at the Red Hawk, I guarded my words. Making a mistake once is naivety. Making it twice is just plain stupid.
‘He’s called Raphael. I don’t know who he is or whe
re he’s from.’ I slid into the pew opposite. A vampire and warlock divided by a narrow aisle.
‘He’s a friend of your father’s?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘he claims to be neither friend nor foe. So he’s a big box with a question mark on it.’ I nodded, anticipating Lorenzo’s next question as he picked up a little Bible from the pew in front of him and fondled its cover. ‘He claims wards have no effect on him.’
‘That’s everything?’ He seemed disappointed.
‘Why do you care?’
‘He was watching me in the Red Hawk, I think. There’s something about him. He ran off before I got the chance to talk.’
Talk or feed? He read my incredulous expression and laughed. ‘Okay, so I wasn’t there to see you. I admit it. But Professor Knight didn’t send me. Scout’s honour.’
‘Were you even in the scouts?’
‘Don’t look so surprised. I pitch a mean tent.’
Hiding a smile, I ambled over to the candles and soaked up their residual heat. It was cold in the church – heck, I’ve never known a church to be warm but I suppose that didn’t matter to Lorenzo – and whoever else lived here. ‘My father thinks Menelaus is a Guardian, is that true?’
‘I could ask you the same question. I haven’t thought twice about him since I was turned.’ Lorenzo stretched out on his seat, propping his feet up on the end of the bench. ‘Does it matter?’
We could’ve played this game for hours, each of us trying to glean facts from the other whilst concealing what we could. It was beginning to feel like a conversation with Father that was going nowhere fast. I sized him up as he lounged in the shadows, wondering if I could level with him. There was only one way to find out and I was running out of options.
‘Listen, Lorenzo. This world you live in now is complicated. Warlocks and vampires don’t have to be enemies. It’s a simple choice. Hell, I realise how lonely it can be…’ Being Pneuma or being varmint? Hopefully he’d take being labelled a good-guy as a compliment. ‘… being Pneuma. Everyone has secrets, but I’ll tell you one thing about me. I need to know everything about your professor. Please.’
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