Walking Shadows

by Narrelle M. Harris

  Gary nodded, satisfied. Then he cocked his head, listening to the new song on the jukebox. "Is that the Beatles?"

  "Oasis," Mez told him.

  "They're good."

  Mez grinned. "I'll make you a deal, Gary. You teach me how to play decent pool; I'll introduce you to a whole bunch of new bands."

  Gary frowned over his cue tip like he was considering it seriously. "Deal," he announced at last.

  He was getting better at this matter of making friends.

  In the late afternoon we called it quits. Mez had arranged a phone interview with a bass guitarist for one of the street mags, and Drew and Tina had plans for dinner and a movie at one of Melbourne's summertime outdoor cinemas. I wanted to be home for Kate's return. Proposals were made and accepted to meet next weekend so Gary could give all of us lessons.

  Tina managed to sneak in a kiss on Gary's cheek before we escaped. She looked faintly startled, probably at the strange coolness of his skin, and ended by rubbing a hand affectionately against his arm, like she was trying to rub warmth into him.

  Walking out of the alley, Gary brushed his fingers over the spot where her lips had pressed against him. "What was that about?"

  Time for another round of Pointing Out the Bleeding Obvious. "She was flirting with you, Gary."

  "Flirting." He absorbed that. "With me?"

  "Yep."

  "Why?"

  "She thinks you're cute."

  "What's a bear?"

  "Aaaah. Men with a stocky physique, usually on the hairy side."

  "And Drew likes 'bears'. Men. Built like me."

  "Hairy men like you, yeah."

  He absorbed that too, then asked: "What does adorkable mean?"

  "Ah. It means dorky, in an adorable way." It occurred to me that guys might not be terribly thrilled with the description.

  "And they meant me?"

  "Yep."

  "Why?" He sounded absolutely dumbfounded, like it was an impossible equation in theoretical physics.

  This did not call for a flippant response. "Tina's into smart nerdy guys. A lot of girls are. Geek is the new black."

  "So. She, um, she thinks I'm an adorkable, smart, nerdy guy?"

  "Yes." I snuck a sideways glance at him. By the streetlights I supposed I could see what she meant. Cuddly, with a nice face, when the lights were too dim to see how pale he was, and how lifeless his eyes. Maybe if Tina saw him in sunlight she'd be less enamoured.

  Gary's expression had shifted from puzzled to aggravated. "One of the things I liked about being a vampire was that I didn't have to try to work out dating any more." He sighed.

  "Do you want me to tell her to leave you alone?"

  And then the aggravation turned into something else. I don't know what. "Ah. Maybe. Yeah. I think so. Probably."

  "You don't sound too sure. You want me to encourage her?"

  "No! No. No, no, no." I was not the only one discomfited by that, then. He paused at the intersection with Little Bourke Street. "It's just I don't think anyone's ever flirted with me before."

  "Seriously?"

  "Um, no. Still, it was kind of," he glanced down the alley to the entrance, "weird. You better, um, tell her to back off. I, just, em, I..."

  This was a whole new level of inarticulate; both fascinating and painful to watch. "I'll tell her you're not dating at the moment."

  "Thanks." The frightened look faded from his expression.

  "You don't have to come on Friday."

  "Oh, but I want to do that." A half-smile emerged, "I like the idea of teaching them how to play pool. I think I can do that." He squinted at my skip-step beside him. "What?"

  Flinging my arms wide I cavorted a little. "It's good to be spreading the happy."

  "You mean 'happiness'."

  "Yes, I do. The happy and the happiness. I'm like Tinkerbell, sprinkling the fairy dust of social cohesion."

  "But not of good grammar."

  "You're a maths geek. What know you of good grammar?"

  "Is this about that date you've got, still?"

  "Yep."

  "Hmm."

  It's difficult to tell with Gary sometimes, but it seemed likely he was laughing at me on the inside. I stuck my tongue out at him and he shrugged a 'who me?' gesture, which confirmed my deep suspicions.

  Passing the alley that led to the Gold Bug, Gary paused, cocking his head.

  "Hang on," he said, and darted out of sight down the narrow roadway. I caught a glimpse of him leaping easily over the tape that demarcated the zone for official investigation.

  Naturally, I followed him.

  CHAPTER 13

  Gary had paused outside the Gold Bug and was looking towards the roof with strained attention.

  "What is it?"

  "I told you to wait."

  "You said 'hang on'. Totally different thing." I peered roofward too, but could make nothing out. The strong smell of burnt things was in the air. Wood. Carpet. Brick. You wouldn't think that bricks would burn, or that they'd have a smell, but they do. I hate it that I know that. There was the faint smell of other things. Organic things. I worked on blanking that out.

  "What is it?" I asked again.

  "Someone's here," said Gary, and hauled on the door. It opened with a squeak of complaint. Soot crumbled away from the frame. Gary stepped cautiously towards the stairs while I allowed my sight to adjust to the gloom. It didn't look so bad from here. Smoke and water damage, sure, but structurally intact thus far.

  The stairs down to the bar felt stable. Nevertheless, I tried to step as precisely in Gary's wake as I could. As we reached the bottom, I detected the sound of indistinct voices that Gary had already heard. One voice was an irritated burr, the second commenting in short, clipped bursts.

  "It's probably just Magdalene and Mundy," I whispered into the darkness at Gary's back, "Counting their losses."

  "I know that now. Shhh. I'm trying to hear what they're saying."

  The main bar was no longer a bar. It was a black hole into which bits of the upper floor were still occasionally falling. The sounds were coming from above as Magdalene and Mundy edged around what was left of the blood club. I strained to see through the shadows and patter of falling soot for sight of them, following the faint traces as they walked. The dull tap of a heel on wood; the clink of broken glass swept aside; the faint swish of cloth against cloth; a murmured voice; a stiff reply.

  The sudden, solid shapes dropping through the hole where the ceiling used to be sent me back against the blackened walls, swallowing a startled squeak. Magdalene landed easily, paused to sweep her hands over her voluminous skirt, settling the folds of cloth impatiently into place. Mundy landed so lightly beside her he was like a cat made out of smoke. His trousers and shirt were grimy and ash-streaked all up one side, where his hand was missing.

  Magdalene and Mundy regarded us with a surly lack of surprise.

  "What are you doing here?" Magdalene wanted to know.

  "We were passing and I heard something crash," said Gary. "I thought I ought to check it out, just in case the hunters were here."

  Bloody hell, Gary. If I'd known what he was thinking I wouldn't have let him come down here without a fight.

  Mundy scowled and Magdalene cast a calculating glance at him. "Some difficulty existed in getting through the window," she said, "The floor was unsound." Meaning, I extrapolated from the state of Mundy's clothes, that he had gone through the floorboards.

  As though perceiving my mental picture of that mishap, Mundy shot me a venomous, 'I'll get you' look that struck me with its covert violence. When had he progressed from merely disliking me to hating me utterly?

  "So," I said, turning to Magdalene to cover my sudden anxiety, "Any further news on your stalkers?"

  Again she gave that acerbic sideways glance at Mundy.

  "They are not your concern," said Mundy coldly.

  "So everyone keeps saying," I said. "What I want to know, though, since no-one else seems to be asking, is who
'they' are, and how they knew where to find any of you?"

  Gary blinked at me, then looked squarely at Mundy. "Yeah. How did they know that?"

  Magdalene smirked knowingly at Mundy. "Go on, Mundy," she said, "confess."

  Mundy's expression was fury stymied by chagrin. Magdalene's nasty grin only widened.

  "There are always two of them," he began grudgingly, shying away from that crucial question. "They have been hunting us for centuries."

  "Nothing melodramatic, then." I felt like I'd stumbled into an old Hammer Horror film. "And the reason they found you?"

  "The letters," explained Magdalene, filling Mundy's ongoing silence. "All those letters he writes, to all of us and to his cronies in the dear old motherland. Always wanting to be in charge of things, directing events, knowing what is going on with everyone, constantly. Only the wrong letter was found at the wrong time - when the hunters brought down Elizabeth, last year in Edinburgh wasn't it? And found your long letters of instruction and request."

  "After your follies last year," Mundy snarled over the top of her, "I made it clear to them that game was to be had in the Colonies."

  "And then they found your diary and your address book, after you so thoughtfully left them behind when they made you run for your life."

  Mundy hissed - actually hissed - at her, his face spasming with anger. Magdalene fell into self-satisfied silence.

  "You had an address book?" I asked. His shamed rage flared dangerously again, and I dropped my gaze to avoid provoking him further. Mundy was, I reminded myself, several hundred years old, and he probably needed all the mnemonic aids he could get. Plus, I don't imagine he ever thought that it would be possible for someone to get hold of the damned thing. To attack him at home, mutilate him, steal his secrets. It would be inconceivable to him.

  Then I thought of those things happening to Gary, in his home, where he should be safe, and all sympathy was crushed.

  "Be grateful," Mundy said, with a slow curl of the lip, "I had not yet recorded your mother's name in it."

  "My?" I halted in confusion. Why on earth did he have my mother's address?

  "Charming woman. She reminds me of you."

  It hardly hurt, coming from him. Mundy was cruel on reflex, and the jibe didn't have the cut-to-bleeding quality it had when my father said it.

  "How do you even know about her?" I demanded.

  "You may thank Magdalene for passing on her details."

  Which Magdalene had no doubt claimed from Angela Priestley at some point before Priestley's death. Mundy wasn't the only control freak in this town.

  "Great. Putting aside the fact you're now my mother's penfriend, can we focus on the present issue? Our hunters have opportunity. Do they have motive and method?"

  They looked at me like I was speaking Martian. Gary, who spoke Detective, considered the issue. "I suppose the why isn't so hard to work out."

  "I suppose not, but between you lot there must be more information about the people behind this."

  "Those in the best position to learn have not survived to share their intelligence." Mundy reminded me of a dog trying to defend his territory. He's lost a lot of authority over this address book affair, along with his hand.

  "I've been doing some research of my own," I offered.

  "Have you, now?" Magdalene turned to me, twitching her skirts out of the way of a blackened beam on the floor. "And what have you learned?"

  "That wherever your guys come from, they or people like them have been operating for a long time. Since at least the early 1700s."

  "This we knew," said Mundy ill-temperedly. His sneer reminded me way too much of my ex-boyfriend Toby, and his whole 'you are a stupid little girl and you don't know anything worth knowing' shtick that I had, incredibly, believed for far too long.

  "Did you know one of the guys who were here on Friday was called Abe?"

  "I do not see that it is relevant or useful," he said dismissively.

  "Or that there are references to a father sacrificing his son Abraham to make an instrument of God's wrath?"

  Mundy and Magdalene were now talking in low, irritated tones. My insolent glare raised no response.

  Gary leant in close to my ear to whisper: "Where'd you find that out?"

  "I'd be a lousy researcher if I hadn't found out something by now, if it was there to be found."

  "I have letters in my collection," Gary continued, his voice tight, "talking about a guy called Abraham." At my questioning expression, he continued. "Someone I knew once gave me her letters before she… died. Stuff from the 1790s and into the early nineteenth century. About these hunters, one called Abraham. A kid, it said."

  I had been spouting random facts from my research in response to my irritation at Mundy and Magdalene. The more this pair wound me up, the more stubborn I got. However, indignation, irritation and sheer cussedness are great galvanisers of the brain. All that data in my head buzzing about, and it would all make sense if I could just put it together. Hunting for centuries, Mundy had said. The same name kept popping up. I only knew one kind of creature with the longevity required. What it meant didn't make sense, but it was also the inevitable conclusion.

  "One of your hunters is a vampire," I said, and it was a shame I sounded more startled than confident in the pronouncement. "Abraham - Abe."

  This explained a lot about the crazy-eyed kid I'd seen at the bottom of the stairs on Friday night. Of course, it also raised a gazillion other questions, all of them unanswerable for the time being.

  Magdalene and Mundy made scoffing noises while Gary's slow cogs turned over the facts. "It fits," he said.

  "It is a nonsense," said Mundy, furiously.

  "No it isn't," Gary insisted. "It's only improbable." He regarded Mundy mildly. "And you know it's true. I mean, he tore your hand off."

  The furtive, fearful look that swept briefly across Mundy's face was as good as a confession.

  "You knew and you didn't tell us? Why?" And the answer was right there, in the way he wouldn't meet anyone's eye. "You were embarrassed," I accused, astonished yet certain.

  Mundy scowled. "The attack was as Thomas described," he said. "He came into my house. He assaulted me."

  "Did he inject you, with a needle, like he did with Thomas?"

  "The tiniest sensation pierced my skin." He gritted his teeth so hard I could see the muscles working in his jaw. "He seized my wrist. I felt my strength ebbing and so I twisted free. I ran." He jerked his chin up angrily, daring me to call him a coward.

  "They must have found you from the letter you sent to Elizabeth, and then searched your place afterwards," I mused. "And found the diary."

  There had to be a 'they'. Two vampires? Or a vampire and a human? The latter, most likely. A human brain was probably necessary for navigating around modern life, especially if the vampire was really several hundred years old.

  Maybe these guys should have worked it out decades ago themselves, but those intuitive leaps were too far beyond them now. They probably hadn't even bothered to research, as long as they could stay out of harm's way. Perhaps that's why so many of them had come to Australia: running away from the bogeymen.

  "How many names do they have from your address book, then?"

  Mundy became more surly, and Gary was the one who answered. "Maybe around 35 or 40 in Melbourne. In Victoria maybe 50 all-up." He considered. "Well 49, now. Alberto," he clarified.

  Ah. "And when they're done here?"

  "There are about 70 in Sydney. It's more scattered after that. A bit over 200 altogether, I suppose."

  "In the whole of Australia?"

  "We're not exactly infesting the place."

  I'd never really twigged before that, as introduced species went, vampires were less plentiful and arguably less harmful in Australia than, say, rabbits and cane toads. Though maybe feral cats were a more appropriate analogy.

  Or, thinking it through, maybe this was the wrong analogy completely. Far from being an overpopulation of hide
ously destructive pests - and given this new threat had already killed at least one of them - vampires in this country were more along the lines of an endangered species. How endangered might depend on how effective Abe and his partner were at killing.

  "Should we - I don't know. Warn them all?" Once more I had that weird internal emotional twist that murder was definitely wrong, even murder of the already-dead.

  Mundy flicked his hand in a terse, dismissive wave. "It will not go so far."

  "And there's the fact you can't remember most of the addresses and they've got your book," said Gary, matter-of-factly, making it hard to tell if he was having a dig at Mundy or not.

  Magdalene evidently thought so. She shot him a speculative look. "I have my own ways of getting in touch," she said. "It's under control."

  "Yeah right," I couldn't help adding, "because, you know," I gestured at the ruination surrounding us, "it looks like that."

  Soot showered over and around us, emphasising my point. Then I heard a footfall on the stairs. I turned to see the tall, raw-boned figure of Mr Smith. He nodded to Magdalene.

  "All sorted," he told her. "We got a couple of safe houses we can use for a bit. The guys are on standby to visit your people soon as we got the locations."

  Magdalene's glare at me was full of 'I told you so'.

  "And I checked on that fire you told me about. You were right. We got rid of the body." Smith smirked cruelly. "What was left of it, any rate."

  Gary frowned unhappily. "What fire?"

  "You haven't heard?" A little hint of mockery slipped through in Magdalene's voice.

  "I've been kind of busy."

  "The old station house above Windsor train station," she supplied, "burnt down overnight. The morning news reported it."

  Gary's perturbation deepened.

  "Who was it?" I asked.

  "Reid. I don't think you met him," Gary said.

  "Weedy blond dude with the scar?" I had seen him in passing at the Club, when Magdalene had thrown him out for getting pushy with a newbie. He hadn't looked like someone I wanted to know better. Looked like I was getting my wish.

  "Yeah."

  Another one down, and only a few days after Thomas. This was not good. I glanced at Gary, who was just one more name on a list to this pair of hit men.