by Tim O'Rourke
But just as before, the figure was motionless. Was this some kind of trick? Some kind of game? Had my fears been proven right and this was some kind of trap? I glanced left, then right along the platform, searching for any sign of vampires hidden within the shadows. But I could see no one. I placed one hand behind my back and let my fingers brush over the gun I’d hidden beneath the waistband of my jogging bottoms. Feeling that it was still there, I let my hand fall away and back to my side once more.
“Are you Veronica Cabal?” I asked one final time.
The figure remained silent.
Perfectly still.
Slowly, I inched my way forward. When I was within touching distance of the figure, I reached out with one hand. The figure’s robes fluttered in the wind, my fingertips brushing against it. Then, holding my breath, and heart racing so fast I thought it might just explode, I dared to pull back the figure’s hood.
At once I stumbled backwards, throwing my hands to my face. Veronica Cabal sat before me, and just like Sidney had said, her hair was long, thick and bright red – the same colour as the blood which gushed from the angry gunshot wound in the centre of her face.
Chapter Seven
“What the hell?” I gasped, staggering backwards so that I was perilously close to falling off the platform edge and down onto the tracks. I rammed one fist into my mouth to stop myself from screaming. Once more, I glanced left and right along the platform, desperately looking for signs of anyone else. Because there had to be someone else – the person who had shot Veronica Cabal in the face before I’d had my meeting with her, must still be close by. Whoever it was could be watching me with every intention of killing me, too. I reached behind me, pulling out the gun. Raising my fist, I waved the gun into the darkness before me. I tried to think of everything that Calix had taught me about firing the weapon. But those lessons seemed to disintegrate in my mind, as I stood frozen to the spot seeking out the person who had murdered Veronica.
“Come out! Show yourself!” I shouted. But the only response I heard was the sound of my own voice echoing back off the barren and remote railway station. “Why did you have to kill her?” I shouted into the dark. “We were going to make a truce between the Beautiful Immortals! Why wouldn’t you want that?”
Again, only the echo of my own voice and the roar of the wind answered me.
Still holding the gun out before me, I suddenly had a terrifying thought. What if the killer was long gone? What if they hadn’t hung about to kill me? What if their plan hadn’t been to murder me like they had Veronica, but keep me alive and let me take the blame for her death? Because if anyone should find me alone at the remote railway station in the possession of a gun, they would believe it was me who shot her in the face and any chance of ever finding a truce – of ever being trusted by anyone ever again – would be over. With a sense of panic rising inside of me and threatening to consume me, I stuffed the gun back into the waistband of my jogging bottoms. I looked once more at Veronica Cabal, as she sat stiff and motionless on the bench, head tilted back, the whites of her eyes showing and blood red lips open in a snarl. I looked once more with horror at the stream of sticky black blood, which continued to ooze from the gunshot wound in her forehead. So panicked was I, that I fought the urge to throw up. I trembled from head to toe as I realised the consequences should I be caught with the vampire leader sitting dead before me and a gun hidden beneath my waistband.
With my legs feeling like lead, I made my way back along the platform edge. The baby inside me began to kick once more as if sensing my growing distress. I placed one hand on the bump that protruded from my front and fled the station. Staggering blindly forward, I made my way back into the dark, following the tracks that now ran to my right and back in the direction of Shade. As I ran, my chest wheezed and I gasped for breath. My mind scrambled as I tried to figure a way out of this mess. Sidney Watson knew that I was meeting Veronica Cabal – it had been him who had set up the meeting at my request. What would he think when his leader failed to return to Maze at first light? Would he go in search of her at the station? And then what? I knew what. He would find the corpse of his leader with the gaping gunshot wound in the centre of her face. It would take him less than a second to figure out what had happened. He would believe that I’d tricked him into arranging a meeting between myself and Veronica. He would suspect that I’d called the meeting not to find a truce but to execute the vampire leader. But he would be wrong. I hadn’t killed Veronica. That had been done by somebody else. But who? Who else had known about the secret meeting other than myself, Veronica Cabal, and Sidney Watson? Perhaps it had been him who had murdered her? But why would he do such a thing? Why execute his leader when he said that he wanted peace? Killing Veronica Cabal wouldn’t bring peace, it would only make matters worse. Her murder would only heighten the tensions between the vampires, the werewolves, and indeed myself. And if Sidney had wanted her dead, wouldn’t there have been a simpler way for him to do it? He couldn’t have known I would have asked for a meeting between Veronica and myself. It had been me who had proposed that, not him. But if it hadn’t have been Sidney who’d killed Veronica, then who had? Had Sidney told somebody else – another vampire about the meeting? I had no way of knowing such a thing. And then I remembered how I’d thought that I’d been followed through the woods the day I’d had my second meeting with Sidney. Had someone been eavesdropping on our conversation? But who? Other than me, there were only two other people in Shade – Calix and Morten. Why would either of them want to frame me for the murder of Veronica Cabal?
Reaching the wall of magic once more, I stared straight ahead and passed through it with ease. On the other side, I ran as fast as I could through the woods and into Shade. My return journey had taken longer than perhaps I first thought, because as I crossed the park and neared my little house on the edge of it, I could see the first rays of dawn light peeking over the treetops in the distance. How long had I been gone? But did it really matter?
At my front door, I fished the keys from my pocket. It was then that I noticed I had some of Veronica’s blood smeared across my hands and along the sleeves of my sweater. It must have got there when I pulled back her hood. Throwing open the front door, I raced inside and up the stairs. I wanted to be free of the bloodstained sweater, so I raced into my room. I pulled back the curtains to let in some light and it was then that I began to scream and scream and scream.
Lying on my bed was Veronica Cabal’s bloodstained corpse.
Chapter Eight
Over the sound of my own screams, I heard the thunderous roar of footsteps charging up the stairs and along the landing. My bedroom door was suddenly thrown open and Trent came rushing in. He looked at me standing by the window, bloodied hands to my face as I continued to scream in terror. He turned his attention to the bed, his eyes growing dark and wide with horror and shock.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded.
Over the roar of his voice, I could hear the sound of more footfalls racing up the staircase. We were joined in my room, by Rea, Rush, Calix, and finally Morten. They forced their way past Trent, who still stood in the doorway, and in turn, each of them looked in dismay down at the vampire’s corpse on my bed.
“What the fuck is going on?” Rea snapped, shooting a disdainful glance at me and then back down at the bed. “Who is this?”
“It’s… it’s…” I struggled to find the right words, let alone form any kind of explanation.
“Pull yourself together, girl, for God’s sake,” Rea snapped at me. “What’s happened here?”
I shook uncontrollably as I looked at Veronica spread-eagled across my bed, the pillowcase and sheets stained black with blood. “This doesn’t make any sense,” I began to ramble. “How did she get here? How did the body end up in my room?”
“Who is she?” Rush said.
And then as if realising for the first time that Trent and the others were back, I looked agog at them and said, “Where did you come f
rom?”
“Got back in the early hours of this morning,” Trent said. “Now tell us what’s going on here and who is this dead woman?”
I looked past Trent and at Calix who stood in the open doorway. If I’d ever needed a friend in my life, it was now. Looking back at Trent, desperately trying to steady my wobbling bottom lip, I said, “Her name is Veronica Cabal and she is – was – the leader of the vampires.”
“Oh great,” Rea muttered, plucking a thick cigar from her breast pocket and lighting it. She blew smoke through her nose and from the corner of her mouth before adding, “So how does the corpse of the vampire leader end up in your bedroom, Julia Miller?”
“You tell me!?” I shot back at her.
“I don’t have to tell you anything!” Rea shouted. “It’s not me who has a dead fucking vampire in my bedroom. What do you think the vampires will say and think when they find out that you’ve gone and killed their leader?”
“Me?” I gasped. “No, you’re mistaken, I never killed her. It wasn’t me who did this.”
“So what you’re trying to tell us is that you woke up this morning to find a dead vampire in your bed,” Rea sneered.
“No, you don’t understand,” I said, searching my friends’ eyes for any sign of understanding. “I’d arranged to meet her at some railway station – we were going to form a truce between the vampires and werewolves – but when I got there she was dead already. I never…”
Trent took a step toward me. “But if you met with this vampire at some railway station, how did she end up dead in your bedroom?”
I shook my head at him in bewilderment. “I don’t know. When I got to the railway station she was already dead. Someone must have placed her body here – in my room.”
All of them looked agog at me as if I was talking utter nonsense and I guessed to them, I was. None of what I said made any sense to me, so how did I expect them to understand it?
“You’ve got to believe me,” I pleaded with them.
“You want us to believe that you went off in the middle of the night to meet with the leader of the vampires, and when you got there she was already dead, so you raced home only to discover that her dead body had beaten you to it and was now here?” Rea scoffed around a throat full of smoke.
“That’s exactly what happened,” I said. I made eye contact with Calix once more but he simply looked away.
“Perhaps you carried the body back here?” Rush chipped in.
“Me?” I gasped. “How could I have carried her back? I’m pregnant.”
There was an audible gasp within the group.
“Pregnant?” Trent frowned.
To prove my point, I yanked up the hem of my sweater and revealed my protruding stomach to them all.
“And who is the father?” Morten was the first to ask.
I turned my stare on Trent. “You’re the father.”
“Me?” Trent made a sputtering sound as if he had been choked. “Have you lost your mind, Julia? I’m not the father.”
His denial was like a stab in my heart. “You had sex with me,” I said, now feeling more angry than hurt. “Don’t you remember trying to have sex with me in the kitchen and then the following night creeping up here into my room and mixing with me on the bed?”
Rea glared at Trent “What is she saying? Is this true? I thought that on our journey home to find the others we had patched things up between us and that we were lovers once more?”
“You’re back with her?” I said, unable to believe what I was hearing. “You told me it was over between you two, you told me that you loved me.”
“Did you tell her that!?” Rea shouted at Trent.
“Of course I didn’t tell her that!” Trent shot back at her. He then turned his attention back to me. “I don’t know what has been going on here while I’ve been away but you’re deluded, Julia. I’ve never had sex with you – I never said I loved you. If you think by saying this you are going to divert attention away from your own crime…”
“My crime?” I cut in. “What are you talking about? I haven’t committed any crime?”
Trent shot a look at the corpse lying on my bed then back at me. “I believe that you did arrange to meet with this vampire to form a truce, but when she saw that the idea was madness, just like the rest of us do, you got angry and you killed her. Panicking, you brought the body back here with every intention of concealing it or letting one of us – if not all of us – take the blame for the death of a vampire. Perhaps that’s how you were going to negotiate your truce with the vampires. Perhaps you were going to offer us up to the vampires…”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” I said, shaking my head in utter disbelief. It wasn’t just a matter of Trent denying that he was the father but now accusing me of being a killer – it was outrageous – it was ridiculous. “I didn’t shoot her…”
“She might be telling the truth,” Morten spoke up. At last somebody was speaking in my defence. “After all, we know how much Julia hates guns and besides she doesn’t even know how to…”
“I taught her how to shoot a gun,” Calix cut in. The others turned to look at him. “She asked me to teach her to shoot, so I did.”
Rea turned to look at me. “This just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn’t it now?”
“And one of my guns is missing,” Calix said from the doorway.
I looked across the room at him, but he wouldn’t look back at me.
“Search her,” Trent said.
Rush came forward and began patting me down with his hands. I pulled away but he held me firmly. It only took seconds for him to find the gun concealed within my waistband. He pulled it out, holding it up like some kind of trophy.
Rea tutted with delight. “The evidence against you just keeps growing and growing, doesn’t it?”
Through gritted teeth, I said, “I didn’t kill anyone and I had no intention of setting you up – letting you take the blame for killing the vampire. You’ve got to believe…”
“She let a werewolf take the blame for the death of a vampire before,” Calix put in again. The others turned to look at him. “While you were away, Julia confessed to me that she once murdered a vampire named Theo, and let a werewolf, called Pariac, take the blame for it. The werewolf was hung for a crime she committed.”
And with every word Calix uttered, I knew the case against me grew ever tighter however untrue that it was. “It wasn’t like that…
“Shut your mouth!” Rea barked at me. “What else did she tell you, Calix?”
Our eyes met briefly, before Calix started to talk once more. “It was because of the murder that she committed that the world is at war. Because she let the werewolf take the blame for the murder of the vampire, the werewolves and vampires turned on each other and then on the humans. That is why she is so desperate to find a truce.”
“I can see a pattern forming here,” Trent said. “You killed a vampire before and let the werewolves take the blame and now you’re hoping to do the very same thing…”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“Do you deny telling Calix these things?” Trent said, his eyes narrowing as he stared at me. “So Calix is a liar, is he?”
I looked over Trent’s shoulder at Calix. “No, he’s not a liar,” I whispered. Then turning my attention back to Trent, I looked deep into his eyes, and said, “Calix might not be a liar, but you are. You are the father of my child.”
“And you’re a murderer,” Trent hissed. “How do you expect anyone to believe a word you say? You said yourself that you’ve been sneaking around – meeting with some reporter and arranging meetings – how do we know he’s not the father?”
“How dare you!” I said, raising my hand to slap him across the face.
Before my hand had had a chance to connect with him, he’d taken hold of my wrist. His grip was crushing and I cried out in pain.
“Get out of my sight,” Trent said. “Take her to the crypt beneath the church whi
le we try and figure out what to do next.”
Rea and Rush came forward.
“Get away from me!” I spat at them. “You’re not making me your prisoner.”
Rea drew one of her guns and aimed the barrel squarely at me.
“Shoot me,” I said.
“If you die, so does the baby,” Rush reminded me.
“Perhaps she doesn’t care about the baby?” Rea said, cocking an eyebrow at me.
Without saying a word, I lowered my head and offered no more resistance. With the gun trained on my back, I left the room, and as I did I looked once more at Calix but he refused to look at me.
In silence and at gunpoint, I let Rush and Rea lead me to the church where they imprisoned me in the crypt beneath it.
Chapter Nine
I couldn’t be sure how long I was held prisoner in the crypt beneath the church. There were no windows looking out onto the world, so I had no idea whether it was day or night. Therefore, all the days rolled into one. During my time in the cell, I counted forty-two meals given to me, so I guessed it was three meals a day, which made my prison sentence fourteen days long before my baby was born. I had two candles to light the chamber that I was in and there was a mattress on the floor in one corner for me to sleep on. My meals were brought to me by a gaunt-looking man who I had not seen before. I suspected that he was one of the wolves Trent and the others had brought back with them from their homelands. He must have been some kind of butcher as he always wore a white cloth apron that was smeared with blood, as were his hands and wrists. I was also visited twice a day by a woman who I guessed was a nurse. She was pretty, with long blonde hair to the shoulders. Perhaps she was about thirty years old but it was hard to tell in the dim halo of light from the candles. During her visits to my cell, she would place a stethoscope against my ever enlarging stomach and listen to the baby’s heartbeat. Whenever I tried to ask questions about what she could hear, she would simply pack the stethoscope away, then leave the cell, locking the door behind her. And when the candles burned down, which they often did, I would have to lie in the dark until either the butcher or the nurse replaced them.
