Walking Shadows

by Narrelle M. Harris

People around us were moving backwards. Their muttering turned from surprise into protest as someone at the rear of the group pushed their way forward.

  "I don't care whose friend you are, you fat bastard, you've got no bloody right."

  Dad. Great. I didn't turn. More important things were happening.

  "What the hell do you want?" Anthony, his voice a growl, also took a step towards Abe. I could see him making the effort to ignore all the improbable peculiarities about the kid.

  "I want him." Abe's eyes were fixed on Gary, a wild look on his face. He held up a fist half-closed around a filled syringe.

  "We've got to get out of here," Gary muttered urgently in my ear.

  "I know that," I gritted back. "How?"

  No more time. Abe leapt at Gary through the crowd. People stumbled over each other in the attempt to not be in his way.

  Swearing, I tried to both shield Gary and shove him towards the door, and succeeded only in throwing us both off balance into the glass wall. I heard a crack and the glass rattled, but we stayed on our feet.

  Anthony dragged Kate out of the way and Dad snatched at Abe's hair. Dad, hardly a deterrent, was swiped aside effortlessly, and crashed into the people pressed behind him. Abe whirled around, looking for Gary, who was between me and the glass wall behind us.

  A small wrestling match was taking place: me trying to stay between Gary and Abe; and Gabe trying to switch our relative positions without causing me injury. His caution meant I was winning. Then Abe lunged.

  Gary planted his hand in the small of my back and propelled me out of the way towards my father, who had regained his feet. I fell against Dad and sensed rather than saw Gary's brightly dressed shape leap over our heads. Dad swore, Kate screamed, and the next glimpse I caught was of Gary balanced high behind us, poised on the balls of his feet on the narrow iron bar that topped the barrier. Impossibly well balanced, like a circus acrobat on a high bar. Only, of course, not.

  He glanced up to the eaves, down to the street, looking increasingly startled. Abe took a swipe at him and Gary danced sideways, slipped, tumbled, caught the bar, clinging now to the outside of the barrier, his feet dangling 15 floors above the footpath.

  "Gary!" I tried to go to him, grab his hand, but Dad had hold of me and wouldn't let go. "Leave him alone!" I shrieked at Abe.

  Abe tilted his head briefly in my direction. "I wish only to talk." The wicked syringe still clutched in his hand did not bear out his assertions.

  Gary was scrambling to get purchase on the concrete rim of the balcony. If he could get an unflustered moment, he'd be able either to climb back up or pick his way down to the street, rather than fall.

  "I wish to talk," Abe repeated more loudly, redirecting his attention to Gary.

  "I'm busy," growled Gary, wrapping a hand around one of the vertical bars and pulling himself up.

  "How did you do it?" Abe pushed forward.

  "Bloody slipped." Both hands anchored on the bars, Gary swung his feet up onto the concrete. It left him hanging awkwardly and he gracelessly managed to stand upright, still on the wrong side of the barrier. He glanced up at the roof, down again.

  "At the house," Abe clarified. "You entered without invitation."

  The crowd behind us surged forward again, despite the fact that almost everyone was scrambling to get as far away from the door as possible. From inside, an authoritative voice was issuing orders for people to make way, calm down, let him through, but was apparently being ignored. The same person's 'Hey!' of protest heralded the arrival of three figures, who burst onto the narrow space remaining on the balcony.

  "There you are," said Magdalene with great satisfaction, as though she'd been searching for a favoured though badly behaved pet.

  Moving faster than should have been possible, her white, plump hand was at Abe's throat. Abe snatched at her hand, dropping the needle as he did so. It rolled away under a chair. Unable to shift her hold, Abe punched her in the face instead.

  Her head snapped back, but she did nothing more than grunt at the impact. Her grip on his throat didn't change.

  From either side of her, Smith and Giorgio emerged, and the three of them heaved ahead, forcing Abe back onto the railing. My moment of wild confusion was replaced with the click of a solid hypothesis. That bartender I recognised must have called the Gold Bug's number the instant he saw Abe drop from the rooftop. Earlier, perhaps, when Gary had arrived. It would be so like Magdalene and Mundy to keep tabs on him as well.

  The inside voice of authority was sounding seriously aggrieved by now, and the crowd began to thin as its owner slowly created order out of chaos. Ignoring the voice until it became an immediate problem seemed the best option. I had other things absorbing my attention, foremost of which was Gary's precarious position on the side of the building.

  Hands gripping the top railing, Gary swung himself back onto the balcony as far from Abe as he could get.

  "He's very keen on bagging you next, Gazza," said Smith with a conspiratorial grin.

  Gary didn't reply. He looked beyond Magdalene and her two thugs, with their tight grip on the boy, to our family tableau. Anthony had put himself between Kate and Abe. Kate was staring at me in horror. Dad still had his hands tightly around my arm, preparing, I assumed, to hold me back again. Or maybe he just needed something steady to hang on to.

  "Not here," Magdalene was saying. "It's too public."

  "Don't fancy trying to get him into the lift," said Smith darkly.

  Abe writhed, lashed out, caught Giorgio with a smack to the ribs, then kicked, connecting with Giorgio's knee with a horrible crack. Giorgio howled with pain and all hell broke loose again, ending with Abe wrenching free from Magdalene's grip. Before she could refasten her hold, Abe had flung himself over the rim of the balcony.

  The sound of a solid body hitting metal, the high-pitched tinkling fall of shattering glass, and the blare of a car alarm followed.

  Magdalene swore and leapt after him. Despite her solid build she balanced, like Gary had before her, in a semi-crouch on the top of the railing.

  "That's a nasty drop," she frowned, then grinned and jumped lightly back down and strode into the club. Smith and Giorgio, who was limping badly, followed close at her heels. "We'll get him outside," she said as they disappeared.

  Gary was peering over the edge. "Looks like Abe's arm is broken again," he said to the group at large.

  I struggled away from Dad and tried to get high enough to see over the balcony, straight down to the street. Abe had slithered off the heavily-dented roof of the car on which he'd landed and was lying crumpled on the footpath, trying to rise. His left arm was folded beneath him at a disturbing angle.

  People were milling around him, offering help - except for those filming the moment on their mobile phones - when Abe suddenly sat up. He wrenched his strangely bent arm back into alignment. It was gruesome but there was no blood, of course. Then, to the amazement of the rubberneckers, he stood up and ran.

  He disappeared over the hill just as Magdalene, Smith and Giorgio reached the street. They ignored all the panicking night-lifers and after a swift conference, departed rapidly.

  Anthony and Dad were both looking at Gary in amazement.

  "He wanted to kill you?" Anthony said.

  "Yeah," said Gary, grimacing, "Though since he's been cleaning up the streets of Melbourne one vampire at a time I suppose I shouldn't take it personally."

  Oh great. The V word, right out there. I couldn't blame Gary. It had been a trying week, and between his, Abe's and Magdalene's acrobatics, none of them were keeping their secrets too well tonight.

  My father found his voice, and it was filled with horror as he stared at Gary. "What are you?"

  Gary sighed. "Fed up, mainly."

  The crowd inside the bar shifted again, finally parting for aggravated officialdom to arrive in the form of the previously-ignored club manager.

  "Is everything all right?" he asked, working to achieve the hint of solicitude behind
the severity. Then the solicitude slipped. "What the hell is going on out here?"

  "Nothing. It's nothing. We're all fine," said Anthony, his glance shifting between Gary, me and Kate. He looked like he wished he had a lot more eyes, all the better to keep watch on all of us at once. He was obviously in no mind to attempt an explanation.

  The sick certainty gripped me that the night was going to be swallowed up with police and unanswerable questions, and in the meantime Abe was out there being hunted by Magdalene and her cronies. And Evan could be out there too, dying or dead in this stupid gang war.

  "Nothing, huh?" The manager's jaw muscles twitched as he chose not to give voice to the things he obviously wanted to say. After a moment, he said in a tight voice, "Is there anything I can get you, Mr Ferrante? The bill, for instance? Or perhaps a taxi?"

  "The bill. Yeah." Anthony cast another wary glance at our little group and followed the manager inside.

  I felt around under a wrought iron chair where I had seen the syringe tumble after Abe had dropped it. Found it and clutched it close.

  "Are you with the circus or something?" Dad asked Gary, still fishing for logical explanations.

  The syringe went carefully into my bag. "Leave it Dad," I said.

  "No," he rounded on me, "I won't leave it. What the hell is going on? I've got teenage junkies jumping off roofs, for God's sake, circus freaks climbing all over the joint, it's not bloody good enough!"

  "Really, Dad, you're out of your depth here."

  "You're hardly in a position to be lecturing me."

  "Dad, just crawl back into your bottle." Exasperation and anxiety, not to mention disappointment, made me testy. "You know you like it better there."

  "That's not true"

  "I can smell it on you."

  "Really, it's," Dad's denial faltered under the hurt look Kate gave him. He fell silent, his expression a childish combination of shame and surliness at having been caught out.

  Anthony returned to the glass doorway. "All paid up," he said curtly, "We should go."

  There's nothing like standing in a slow moving lift down fifteen floors to accentuate a deeply uncomfortable silence. We didn't even have muzak to fill in the gaps. When the lift opened on the foyer, Anthony, his arm protectively around Kate's shoulders, led the way. Only Gary seemed untouched by the fraught atmosphere, no doubt preoccupied by the fact that he still had a crazy slayer on his trail.

  And Dad was drinking again. Or still. Some things never changed.

  CHAPTER 22

  When we reached the street, there was no sign of Abe or of Magdalene and her cronies.

  "Who was that boy? The one who jumped?" Anthony's gaze scoured the street, the dented car, the murmuring crowd. "Where did he go?"

  The police had arrived and were interviewing people on the street. The uniformed contingent was looking puzzled and annoyed. There was no body, no blood. Nothing but a dented car and some very surprised and barely coherent witnesses.

  A policeman approached us. Anthony came over all lawyer-y, and took it on himself to intercept. The two of them became involved in a quietly spoken conference.

  "I'll take you home, girls," Dad offered solicitously, but the slight softening of his consonants was telling. He was drunker than he looked. He had surely been working on that slur since before dinner, and hidden it well. A high functioning alcoholic, my Dad. At least he was high functioning at something.

  Kate doesn't get angry often. She favours gentle reasoning, persuasion, and meaningful silences in which the arguee can contemplate how ridiculous they are being. That's how she argues with me at any rate. When she gets really angry, though, she's like a small, powerful explosion.

  "You will not take us home," Kate rounded on him, her brown eyes flashing, "I don't want you taking me anywhere. You couldn't even manage three days without breaking your word."

  "Sweetheart."

  "Don't you 'sweetheart' me. You can't come in and out of our lives like this, making all the same promises and breaking them in the next breath. I've had enough. It's not my job to stick your life back together for you, if you can't even make the effort to stay sober for one bloody night. This was important to me, and you had to make a mess of it. Again."

  Dad flinched, but Kate's expression was unforgiving.

  "You should go back home with Anthony tonight," I whispered to her.

  "What about you?"

  I glanced at Gary, who was peering intently up and down the street. "I think Gary and I need to work out some stuff. Do you mind?"

  "You're not going to go haring off into trouble again, are you?"

  My 'who, me?' face was not convincing, for good reason. I put my best lies forward. "Gary and I have to talk about what he's going to do. That kid's trying to kill him and he won't give up. I figure Gary can stay over again tonight, and tomorrow we'll have a new strategy."

  Anthony bid goodnight to the policeman, handed over a business card and returned to the cheerless throng that comprised our family.

  "Right, that's dealt with." I supposed that even if there were charges that could be laid in the absence of complainants or corpses, he had defused the possibilities with a lather of legal niceties and earnest charm.

  Anthony and Kate stuck close together, but Anthony insisted on waiting until a taxi had been flagged down for me. I hugged Kate close and reassured her again that I wasn't planning anything dumb, waved Gary into the back seat and climbed in beside him. I gave the driver the address, and in the next moment the front passenger door opened and Dad slid into the seat.

  "What are you doing?" I demanded.

  "Keeping an eye on him," Dad insisted, throwing a hard look over his shoulder at Gary.

  "Don't be daft."

  Dad folded his arms and refused to budge. I didn't have the time or patience to fight about it. "Fine. Don't expect to be invited in." I told the driver to go and decided if Dad hassled us at home after tonight, I'd call the police to haul him away.

  Driving home was more circuitous than walking over the river bridge and through the one way streets, but still faster. Once there, Dad insisted on paying, then waiting with Gary and me in the foyer. He kept giving Gary nasty, suspicious looks.

  He followed us into the lift and all the way to the door where he watched us enter. He scowled at Gary's brief, shuddering pause.

  "You can go now," I told my father. With a deliberate, defiant set to his jaw, he followed us inside.

  Everything came to a halt as Oscar, in a snarling frenzy, had to be intercepted and bundled into the bathroom, along with a muttered apology. When I turned my back on the muffled, angry whines, Dad was casting stroppy looks at Gary, and Gary's expression showed he was discovering what the end of his tether looked like.

  "Dad, I said you can go now."

  "I'm not going anywhere while that creepy bastard's here," said Dad.

  "Maybe I should go…" began Gary.

  "No," I said curtly, "You're welcome in my house. He isn't."

  Dad scowled. "I want a fucking explanation!"

  My father wouldn't believe the truth if I told him, or it would terrify him if he did. For a change I couldn't think up a single convincing lie. I couldn't even think of a way to decorate the truth to make it prettier to look at or easier to swallow.

  Sod it.

  "The short version, Dad, is that Gary is a vampire. The skinny kid is also a vampire; and so is Magdalene, the lady in black who was fighting with him. She and the two thugs are trying to kill the skinny kid, who is killing vampires all over Melbourne. I can't be bothered with the long version, so you can take or leave that, whatever you like."

  Dad's expression became stormy. "This isn't funny."

  "I agree," I said. "I will grant you that it's bizarre and terrifying. It is not in the slightest bit funny."

  Dad shifted his ire onto Gary. "And you're going to let her spout this rubbish?"

  Gary shrugged.

  "So you're, what, a real vampire?"

  "I'd
cross my heart and hope to die," he said, "but, well, you know."

  "You're mad."

  "If you've got a logical explanation for everything you saw tonight, I'd be fascinated to hear it," I said waspishly.

  "Prove it," challenged Dad, with strident contempt.

  "I don't do tricks. I'm not a bloody sideshow act," Gary growled.

  "Sure you are. Go on, show me your teeth."

  "Leave him alone, Dad."

  "No. If you say he's a vampire, I want to see it. Go on, kid, turn into a bat. Probably a big fat bat."

  "Leave him alone!" I stepped towards Dad, hoping to herd him towards the door. I guess Dad didn't like to be crowded, because he placed a hand in the middle of my chest and shoved. I staggered back a few paces, startled but unhurt. I suppose it looked worse than it felt.

  Gary moved so quickly I hardly saw it. Between one moment and the next, he grabbed Dad by the arms and dragged him up close, so they were almost nose to nose. I couldn't see Gary's expression, but the terror in Dad's was impossible to miss. Gary said something very quietly, and Dad, his face whiter than white, nodded frantically.

  "It's okay, Gary," I said softly, then again, when Gary didn't respond, "I'm not hurt."

  Dad whimpered.

  "Let him go now, Gary. Please."

  Dad's knees buckled as Gary turned abruptly away from him and stalked to the far end of the kitchen bench where he leaned, arms crossed, against the wall, his expression still far from friendly.

  Dad was ashen. I could guess what he'd seen. I wasn't angry with Gary for doing it, though I pitied my father. No-one should ever have to know what it feels like to be looked at like that, with implacable hostility from the grave. For once I wouldn't have blamed Dad for wanting a drink. His blue eyes were wide and fearful, his skin sickly-pallid.

  "You, you," Dad had roused himself and his eyes were fixed on Gary in a mixture of terror and loathing. "You stay away from my kids." Before I could formulate a reply, he sprang at Gary and punched him hard in the stomach. I couldn't see that it had the slightest effect. Gary, instead of hitting back, gave me a look of mute disgust.

  Then Dad snatched a knife out of the block on the bench.