But the next time I checked up on Darius, after Christmas, was when things got complicated. Whatever magic the sorcerer had used to keep Darius’ Gift alive had worn off, and with only six months on his vampire clock, he was too young to survive on just human blood, so he’d fallen into bloodlust. Luckily—or unluckily, depending on which way you look at it—the Moth-girls in the blood-house where Darius lived had bound him in heavy chains before he’d attacked anyone. As he wasn’t a danger to humans, none of the other vamps could legitimately rescind his Gift, but since he didn’t have a master to rescue him, and the Moths couldn’t find one to take him on, all that meant was he got the chance to die slowly in agony.
One personal blood donation later, and Darius was almost back to his old self. Turns out, my sidhe blood is as good as a master vamp’s, judging by the quick results. So now Darius is my fang-pet, and regular donations of my blood are keeping him alive and well; hence the three bags of blood sloshing around in my backpack, his usual weekly allowance. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’ve spent eleven years making sure I don’t end up a vamp’s blood-slave, my will subjugated by 3V to my master’s. Now, I might not be the slave, but I was still tied to a vamp by my blood. Having a fang-pet isn’t something I want to last for eternity, but so far I haven’t found a solution.
And I wasn’t going to, standing here worrying about going in to see him—although it wasn’t actually Darius I was worried about seeing.
I told myself to stop being a coward, and started walking back down to the Coffin Club entrance.
The club’s the only place where curious Joe Public can see vampires in their ‘dead as the day is long’ state, tackily laid out in all their pseudo-heroic funeral finery, in glass coffins, no less. Whichever vamp came up with the idea had to have a really warped sense of humour, since—despite the myths—vamps have never slept in coffins, glass or otherwise. And back in the eighties they haemorrhaged a hefty fortune on legal expertise and behind-the-scenes manoeuvring in order to regain their ‘human’ rights by proving they sleep the day away in a sort of light-induced hibernation—as opposed to actually being dead.
But thanks to a revival of the classic Hammer Horrors, sleeping in coffins is the new black when it comes to the vamps’ money- and blood-spinning industry. And the vamps love a theme, so the coffin shapes outlined on the double entrance doors, the chrome coffin handles and the neon-red coffin-shaped lights were just the start of the ad nauseam décor that swamped the club. I’d heard even the toilets had coffin-shaped porcelain loos—not that I’d checked. The only things not coffin-shaped were the small white diamond-shaped bell pushes that decorated the doors like name plaques, which is sort of what they were, since the Coffin Club is run by White Diamond blood.
My father’s blood-family.
Predictably, my heart had done the whole ‘dropping into my boots’ thing when Darius had told me where his new job, and new home were; I so didn’t need the memories. It had taken me a good ten minutes to put my hand on one of the diamond bell pushes the first time I’d dropped his blood allowance off, even though I hadn’t found a single familiar face from the past when I’d checked the club’s website. After that, I started making my blood-donation trips at midday. No point tempting fang, is there?
I hitched my backpack higher and with my pulse pounding in my ears, I pressed the bell and looked up into the security camera, waiting until the buzzer sounded and the door clicked open.
Chapter Nineteen
The entrance foyer was done up in twisted funeral-parlour chic: black-panelled wood, thick black carpet, artistically arranged white lilies exuding their overly sweet scent, and plush white velvet seats. A multitude of tiny UV spotlights—the reason why everything I wore, including my underwear, was black—dispelled the gloom slightly and picked out the white velvet ropes that marked a glowing zigzag path to the ticket booth.
A pair of long-haired Irish wolfhounds sat with their ears pricked forwards, pink tongues lolling out the sides of their mouths as they stared at me out of disconcertingly pale blue eyes; the UV spots tinted their grey-white coats silver. I gave the dogs a wide berth. Not that I don’t like dogs, but like everyone else, I’d heard the rumours: they were either vamps, or controlled by the vamps. After all, having a load of comatose suckers lying around in glitzy coffins with only humans to defend them is just asking for trouble from some of the more militant pro-humans groups. Even after several visits I still didn’t know which of the doggy rumours were true.
I headed into the zigzag ropes, checking out the life-sized coffin-shaped screens for a glimpse of Darius as they flashed pictures of the club’s vamps ‘lying in state’. He wasn’t being featured, which meant he was in his room. I reached the ticket booth—coffin-shaped, of course—to find Gareth, the club’s human manager, sitting slumped inside, idly flicking through a magazine: Bite Monthly. He was dressed as usual in the club’s undertaker uniform, with his black-banded top hat sitting on the shelf behind him. The dour outfit didn’t go with his blond surfer-boy good looks.
‘Thought you’d be busier at this time,’ I said, holding out the entrance fee.
‘Members don’t turn up ’til the vamps start gettin’ lively.’ He frowned at the money, but didn’t take it. ‘It’s after five.’ He gave me a look almost as disconcerting as the dogs’. ‘Only members get in after five, Ms Taylor. Them’s the rules.’
‘C’mon, Gareth. One: I’m not human, so the rules don’t apply; and two: you know why I’m here, and I’ll be in and out in fifteen minutes tops.’
‘Can’t do it.’ He pointed up at the security cameras. ‘Council inspector checks them weekly. We’d lose our tourist licence, and I’d lose my sponsorship.’ He opened wide and touched his tongue to his implanted fangs. ‘Ain’t no chance of gettin’ these for real if your sponsor refuses you the Gift. None of the others’ll take you on then.’ He shut his mouth with a snap. ‘You wanna go in now, then you gotta be a member.’
I gripped my backpack strap, frustration pricking me. Getting a vamp to officially sponsor you for the Gift is the Dream Win: the odds-on lottery chance at joining the ranks of the immortal bloodsuckers. Of course, getting the sponsor is less about the lottery as having the right looks, attitude and earning potential that makes a fang-fan an attractive proposition as a future baby bloodsucker. After all, the vamp sponsor and his newly Gifted neophyte will be spending the next fifty to hundred years in co-dependency before the younger vamp gains his autonomy and cuts his bloody apron strings, so no vamp in their right mind is going to offer the Gift to someone who isn’t a thousand and ten per cent loyal.
Arguing with Gareth was a waste of time. ‘How much for the membership?’ I asked flatly.
‘Won’t cost you nothing but blood.’ He pulled out a form from under his magazine and slid it towards me. ‘Just sign on the dotted line.’
Blood might be the price, but it didn’t mean I had to pay it. ‘Fine, give me two wristbands, then.’
‘I’m only supposed to give them to members after they’ve donated, so the vamps don’t take too much.’
‘Licensing laws say wristbands are to be given to anyone who asks, Gareth; you know that.’
‘Yeah, well. Not many of them ask beforehand.’ He hesitated, then pulled out a couple of white silicone wristbands from a large goldfish bowl behind him and tossed them on the form. They glowed under the UV light.
I slipped them on and pulled the form towards me. The details were already filled in; all it needed was the date and my signature. I looked up in surprise.
‘Yesterday was your day to visit.’ Gareth gave me a pen. ‘When you didn’t turn up at lunchtime today, I guessed you’d be in to see your boy tonight. And I was bored. It’s dead round here just now.’
‘Ha, ha,’ I muttered, then read down the form. A name next to one section snagged my attention—
Malik al-Khan.
‘Owner?’ I jabbed the pen in annoyance. ‘That is so wrong.’
‘It can’
t be.’ Gareth frowned. ‘I got it off the blood-families’ database. It’s where I got all your personal info, and it lists Malik al-Khan as your owner.’
Ri-ight, a database: well, that clarified everything … and nothing. ‘It’s not the database that’s wrong, it’s the concept,’ I explained through gritted teeth, although going by Gareth’s ‘uh-huh’ look, it wasn’t a concept that bothered him. ‘And how the hell did my details get on the database in the first place?’
‘Someone put them there,’ he said, deadpan.
Yeah, obvious or what? But who? Somehow updating a database didn’t seem like Malik’s sort of thing. Then the hairs on the back of my neck rose as I realised the form was filled out in my birth name: Genevieve Nataliya Zakharinova. I gripped the pen, knuckles going white, shocked at seeing it there.
Damn. This visit was a nightmare waiting to happen.
I scratched a signature on the form and shoved it back at Gareth. ‘Right, you’ve got your signature for the camera. Now can I go in?’
‘Minnie Mouse?’ he spluttered. ‘You can’t put that—’
‘You filled the wrong name out on the form, Gareth, so I can put anything I want—’
A dog growled.
We both turned; one of the dogs from the entrance had moved and now sat not far from the booth. It stared up at us from its disturbing eyes, lips drawn back to display impressive canines, a pair of diamond-encrusted dog-tags swinging on a choke chain round its neck.
‘That is a dog, isn’t it?’ I asked, suspicion flaring as I looked. A round dish on the counter filled with what looked like water glittered with magic, but the dog still looked like a dog, and I still didn’t get any vibes suggesting it might be something—or someone—else.
‘’Course he’s a dog! Those rumours about them being vamps ain’t true, y’know, they’re just put around to keep the crazies away.’ A puzzled expression crossed Gareth’s face as he scanned the entrance behind me. ‘Dunno what he’s growlin’ at though, ain’t nothing there.’ He waved the dog away. ‘Go on, Max, back to the door.’ The dog didn’t move. Gareth shrugged and turned back to me. ‘Anyway, Ms Mouse, your membership still needs to be sealed for the cameras, then you can go in.’ He knocked on the counter top three times. When nothing happened, he sighed and disappeared beneath it, emerging after a few moments holding a tiny Monitor goblin. He wasn’t much more than twelve inches high even with the tuft of silver-white hair. The goblin’s head lolled as Gareth sat him on the counter between us. His navy-blue workman’s boilersuit swamped his tiny frame and made him look like a grey, wrinkled doll dressed in toddler’s play clothes. Tiny diamond earrings sparkled in his rabbit-like ears.
‘Abraham, new member needs checking out,’ Gareth said quietly, then gestured at me. ‘Give him your hand so he can do his stuff.’
Goblins, like trolls, are impervious to magic, but unlike trolls, goblins are the ultimate magic detectors; they can spot a vamp mind-lock at twenty paces, and they can sense if someone’s under the influence of a vamp’s mesma with just a brief touch. They’re also the ultimate ‘letter of the law’ followers: once a goblin’s agreed a job and been paid, nothing can corrupt them, which is the main reason goblins are so popular with humans who do business with the vamps. And it’s why the Monitors act as gatekeepers for the vamp clubs: the law states vamps can’t use mesma or magical persuasions to force humans to enter any premises licensed for vampiric activities. Being checked out by a Monitor goblin makes the punters feel safe. Of course, there are other ways of persuading people that have nothing to do with mesma or magic, which is something the law doesn’t account for.
I ran my finger down my nose in the respectful goblin greeting, then held my hand out, palm up. The goblin adjusted his miniature black wraparounds with the precise movements of someone utterly drunk and trying to hide it, then returned my greeting. ‘St’early?’ he queried to Gareth.
‘Abraham, it’s not too early, and she ain’t human. The vamps can’t mind-lock sidhes, so it’s just for the cameras anyway.’
‘S’okays …’ He belched, his chin falling to his chest, and a sour reek filled the air.
I jerked my hand away, incredulous. ‘Are you mad? Don’t you know how risky it is having a goblin milked up on methane above ground during the day? What if he gets hit by sunlight?’
‘Hey, no worries!’ Gareth beckoned me to put my hand back. ‘Abes ain’t gonna explode or nothing: the windows’re all specially coated for the vamps. What works for them works for the gobs too.’ He gently prodded the goblin, then wrapped the goblin’s knobbly fingers round a small wooden seal stick. ‘C’mon, Abes, do your stuff.’
‘Handmiss,’ Abraham slurred.
Frowning, I offered it again and Abraham dipped a finger in the water-dish, reached out and brushed my palm with a butterfly’s touch, so light and quick that I almost didn’t feel his sharp claw slice my skin. He pressed the seal into my blood, then leaned drunkenly forwards and stamped the form next to my/Minnie’s signature.
I stood looking at the neat diamond design he’d cut into my palm, stunned and amazed at how fast he’d been, and at what he’d actually done. ‘Okay,’ I said slowly, ‘since when did you start using blood along with magic to seal the forms?’
‘One of the vamps thought it’d be a good gimmick, and the members love it,’ Gareth said, picking Abraham up and strapping him into a child’s high chair next to his own seat. He held up his own hand; a similar diamond shape glowed blue-white on his palm. ‘Invisible ink’s made from tonic water, the UV lights make it glow, and a spell tags it in place. It’s like getting your hand stamped with that indelible ink the other clubs use, only some members don’t want nobody knowing they’ve been to a vamp club’—his lip curled with contempt—‘so it suits all round.’
Crap. ‘How long does it last for?’
‘Long enough, Ms Taylor,’ a deep voice said next to me.
I jerked round at the voice, my pulse jumping in my throat, wondering for a mad moment if it was the dog speaking.
A vampire was standing a couple of feet away, an avuncular smile on his handsome fortysomething face—a fang-free smile, of course, a neat trick the older vamps practise: Fyodor Andreevich Zakharin, head honcho of the White Diamond vamps.
Chapter Twenty
I gave Fyodor a narrow-eyed once-over: long silver-white hair, long-skirted coat covered in military-looking braid sewn with diamonds, waistcoat and breeches tucked into high soft leather boots. His clothes were all white other than his boots, which were gleaming black. His white silk cravat was stuck with a diamond tie-pin so enormous that it would make a goblin queen drool with lust. The white outfit sparkled in the UV lights, giving him a glowing nimbus, like I guessed an aura would, if I could see them. Next to him sat the dog-tagged wolfhound, tongue still lolling, silver-white coat looking not unlike the vamp’s silver-white hair.
‘Let me guess,’ I said, pleased my voice came out calm, ‘you’re either going to a naff elf-themed wedding, or you’re shooting an advert for soap powder that can really make your whites sparkle.’
The dog growled low in its throat, and was answered by more rumbling growls. My stomach clenched with apprehension as I flashed a look around me. Gareth was blank-faced, mind-locked—not that he’d be any help, even if he wasn’t—and the goblin was snoring softly in his high chair. And half a dozen more huge wolfhounds ringed the entrance hall, standing between me and the exit. Great, a doggy ambush.
‘Genevieve is our guest, Max,’ Fyodor, the sparkling vamp warned, drawing my attention back to him as he patted the dog’s head.
I dipped my shoulder and caught my backpack by its handle. The three bags of blood inside it weren’t heavy, but the couple of bricks I kept in it were, and they made it a handy weapon. Malik might’ve given me protection, but it still pays to stay alert. You never know when some vamp’s going to develop a superiority complex, or think he’s found a get-out clause that’ll let him keep his head attached to his shoulders.
‘Guests usually get to leave when they want.’ I had a moment’s regret that I’d used the last of my Security Stingers on Sylvia the dryad. ‘Oh, and there’s the other thing: didn’t you swear an oath to your liege lord Malik al-Khan not to approach me?’
‘Please, Genevieve, put away your fear.’ He held his hands out in welcome. ‘You have no need of it here. We acknowledge Malik al-Khan’s protection over you. We also offer you the hospitality and protection of White Diamond blood while you are with us.’
I relaxed. Slightly. Offers of hospitality and protection were all good, even if I’d rather he hadn’t spoken to me in the first place.
‘But even were it not for these assurances, you are safe,’ he carried on, smiling like he was about to tell me I’d won a prize draw, ‘for you are among your true blood-family now.’
I held up my hand. ‘Wait just one minute. My father might be White Diamond blood, but I’m not a vampire, and there’s no way I’m admitting any connection to you through blood.’ Not when I don’t know what sort of trouble it could get me into.
‘Genevieve, please, I assure you I mean you no harm. Our blood connection is not only through our vampire lineage, but we are also kin through our human bloodlines. Allow me to introduce myself.’ He smacked his booted heels together and executed a bow. ‘I am Fyodor Andreevich Zakharin. Your father Andrei Yurievich Zakharin honoured me with the Gift, but more than that, he is my patrilineal ancestor: my great-grandfather, to be precise. So you see, we are cousins, Genevieve Nataliya Zakharinova, cousins twice removed. You are indeed among your true family.’
Just what a girl doesn’t need: long-lost vampire relatives.
His smile widened, and this time I caught a glimpse of fang. ‘I was privileged to be at your christening, although you would not recollect that, but you should recollect meeting me at your betrothal to the Autarch. I asked if you’d be kind enough to call me Cousin Fyodor.’
The Bitter Seed of Magic s-3 Page 14
