He had walked over to the window before he had realised anything else was in the room with him. For a moment, Cam’s nerve nearly broke. The turret was part of The Tower, and he hated The Tower: both Towers. He hated the alien feel of them – the smells, the humidity, the fanciful creatures, and the Gothic architecture. He hated the fear that seemed to be a permanent part of him now, and the feeling of worthlessness that rode alongside it. He hated being so out of his depth, and so terribly far from the comforting world of humanity.
His city, with its lights and laws and flawed, predictable people was far, far away. In Manchester he was a super-being, able to cast spells of confusion and take what he wished. His power had made him arrogant: a whining parody of his race, obsessed with his own petty desires, drowning his disappointment in vats of alcohol. The Tattooist had been right; he was a pathetic child. Spineless. This was his world, here and now, and he couldn’t bear it.
Alone in a bedroom with something that turned slowly beneath the sheets, Cam felt desperately homesick. Fear choked him. Cold sweat drenched him. Without his companions, the last vestiges of his courage leaked away. A tear collected at the corner of his perfect eye, and he rubbed it away angrily.
Darkness caressed him, and he found that he couldn’t move. He wanted to turn and run back through the door, back to the Tattooist who would tell him what to do. Then he thought of the look the fiery eyes would flash him, the disgust the Ifrit would feel, and he held his ground. It was his own fault that he was here – it was Cam who had recognised the figure in the desert. It was Cam who had insisted on following him. He wished he had kept his stupid mouth shut.
God, he missed Manchester. He missed the cold air and the stinging rain. He missed the beggars and the crowds, he missed the hourly chimes of the town hall’s bell and the hundreds of cosy pubs, with their soft, dingy rooms that smelled of hops. He missed the atmosphere of the night, of hope and fear and violence. He missed the real world.
Slowly, he stiffened his back and thrust out his chest. There was no going home – not back the way he had come, at any rate. The Tattooist had told him what to do, and Cam would do it. The window – perhaps there was a way to the next apartment along the side of the turret. A ledge or something. Whatever was in the bed was still wriggling languidly, but it didn’t seem to have noticed him. Perhaps it was asleep. He placed tentative hands on the windowsill.
‘I can smell your fear,’ whispered a voice from the bed. Cam felt sick as the sibilant words hissed through the gloom. All his painstakingly gathered resolve fled, screaming into the night. ‘I can smell your inadequacies, little creature.’
The sheets suddenly flattened, as if whatever was beneath them had somehow slipped away. Something brushed aside the long hair by his jawline to reveal his ears. ‘An Elf, how wonderful,’ something said from a shadowy corner of the room. It was female, but the voice was warped and vile as if somewhere far away, unknown nails scraped down a chalkboard whenever the thing spoke. ‘I haven’t eaten an Elf in such a long time.’
‘Who’s there?’ Cam stuttered, not caring about the tremor in his voice. He stepped away from the window, turning quickly in the centre of the room, trying to find the owner of the voice. Ghostly laughter answered him, and something sharp ran across his cheek, slicing the skin. Hot blood ran down his face. Cam let out a yelp and raised the shotgun. He swung it around the room wildly, looking for something to shoot at. There was nothing but shadows.
‘What are you going to do with that toy, little Elf?’ A sliver of pale flesh flashed past him. A second line of fire ran down his other cheek, and Cam bit back another cry.
‘Show yourself!’
‘As you wish,’ said the voice from behind him. He spun and faced the door. A woman stood there, her body wrapped in shifting shadow, her face a pale oval with milk-white eyes. Her full lips spread to reveal twin vampire fangs. Cam aimed the gun at her head but didn’t fire. She was insubstantial, ephemeral, and he somehow doubted the gun would do the creature any damage. If he fired, all he’d be doing was letting every blood-hungry monster in the turret know he was there. She smiled as if she were reading his mind.
‘You’re a Svartálfar, aren’t you?’ he asked. ‘A Swart Elf?’
‘Yes, my pretty boy.’ She closed her blank eyes and lifted her perfect nose towards the ceiling. She sniffed delicately. ‘I can smell your blood, Elf. I want it. It is so lonely here in The Tower. My brother will not let me go to the dominion of men to feed anymore. I must make do with what little the Ifrit bring back; poor offerings of flea-ridden beggars and sacks of pigs’ blood.’
She twisted her face in disgust and took a step towards Cam, eyes still closed. Cam took a step backwards.
‘It is too dangerous for us to leave The Tower, he says. We are vulnerable in the light, and the world of men know us. They remember how to hunt us. So, we must stay here until they forget. We who are the hidden death, the eternal shadow, the night terror. Such a shame,’ she whispered with a melancholy sigh. ‘Such a terrible shame. It is a poor existence.’
‘That’s a real tragedy,’ Cam stammered, trying to buy time. He took another step backwards, in the direction of the window. ‘Who is your brother?’
‘He is Damballah, the Prince of Rattlesnakes, first hand of the Satyr of Fire and Air. He is wise, but he is such a fuddy-duddy.’ Her milk-white eyes opened and fixed on Cam. They glowed like twin moons in the blue and purple rinse of twilight. ‘But he would not begrudge me your warmth.’ She took another step towards him.
Cam desperately tried to remember everything about the Svartálfar. The dark Elves were things of air and shadow, as different to the light Elves as the Ifrit were to the Jötnar. A basis for vampire myths, the Svartálfar were undetectable in shadow and darkness, their insubstantial bodies vanishing into gloomy corners where they waited for their prey to pass, unsuspecting.
Swart Elves were not alive in any conventional sense: They had no flesh of their own; their manifested forms were cold avatars that carried no blood or heat. They could form and disperse a corporeal body at will, but there were two situations where they had no choice but to take a physical shape.
Contact with strong light was one such circumstance. They detested light because it took away their control. Light could not hurt them in and of itself. But once in a tangible form, they were vulnerable to physical harm. Silver could kill them, just as it could kill the other races of the Courts.
The other circumstance in which a Swart Elf was forced to manifest was the drinking of blood. They craved the blood of the other races because it made them feel vivacious. Alive. Real. It was like a drug. It was said that after feeding, they were forced to become solid for a time, for the blood that coursed through them could not be carried any other way.
Get them into strong light, the stories said. Get them into the light and force them to take a physical form. Then cut off their heads. This wasn’t a story, though, and there was no light.
‘What is your name, Lady?’ he asked, trying to keep the conversation going; if he didn’t, the Svartálfar would drain him of his life.
‘I am Leanan, the Baobhan Sith: the Princess of Darkness!’
‘Great, I’m going to get eaten by a coffee liqueur,’ Cam muttered under his breath as he backed another step towards the window.
‘What are you whispering about, my Love?’
‘Nothing. Listen, I’ve obviously taken a wrong turn somewhere. I’ll just leave you to it, shall I? You look a bit pale – you probably want to get back to sleep?’
Leanan’s lips twitched. ‘Yes, it would be nice to take to my bed … but I insist that you join me, my Love. I am beautiful, am I not?’ Something tugged at Cam’s mind. He looked at her again, and indeed she was beautiful.
She looked about twenty – young and innocent. Her skin was flawless, her milk-white eyes, almond-shaped and wide. Her nose was small and pert, and her wide lips were generous and full. Cam realised that the shadow clinging to her body was actually
her hair. It was raven and silky smooth, falling in a black waterfall to her feet.
Beneath it, Cam caught glimpses of alabaster skin and realised that Leanan was naked. She brought her hands up to her chest and the curtain parted to reveal long, slim legs that met in the shadow of her pubis. Her narrow waist flared into breasts that were firm and heavy. She cupped them with delicate fingers, her thumbs teasing large, dark nipples. They were erect.
There was something virginal about her, and yet she oozed a lazy sexuality that stoked a fierce heat in Cam’s loins. Before he knew what he was doing, he had dropped the shotgun to the floor with a clatter and stepped towards her, pulling his thick robe off clumsily as he went. It folded onto the floor in a heap behind him as he wrapped his arms around her slim waist. His hands cupped a pair of wonderfully pert buttocks. Her skin was incredibly cold, and somewhere at the back of his mind, Cam was gibbering with terror.
Dreamlike, he bent his head to kiss her icy lips. She avoided his mouth and instead, licked the cuts on his cheeks, first left, then right. He groaned in pleasure. Leanan pulled him gently forwards, and he fell willingly onto the bed. The two sheaths and the sword on his back dug painfully into his spine, but the sensation came from a long way away, muted and dull, as if happening to another person. She straddled him, her pelvis grinding down onto his erect penis, and he groaned again, thrusting up to meet her through the fabric of his jeans.
‘Slowly, my Love,’ she said, her long white canines glinting beautifully in the half-light.
She’s got fucking fangs, he gibbered to himself. She’s going to fucking eat you – it’s a Glamour! She’s cast a Glamour on you, you moron!
Deep in his fugue state, Cam frowned. Leanan licked the cuts on his face again. He felt her shudder. Surely that wasn’t right. Her lips peeled back and her jaw unhinged itself with a rasping crack. He watched as she reared back and opened her mouth impossibly wide. Then she leant down and clamped her teeth into the flesh above his shoulder.
Light flashed in front of his eyes. It felt like his core was being drawn from his body through his neck. It’s a Glamour, the voice in his head insisted in blind panic.
Cam rolled over and Leanan went with him willingly, her arms and legs wrapping around his torso. Her flesh was suddenly warm and solid beneath his body. Warm. With blood. With his blood.
Realisation struck Cam like a slap in the face. ‘Shit,’ he said. Pain engulfed his neck, and suddenly he could hear the slurping noise of the vampire feeding on him. ‘Arghh!’ he shouted. Leanan, sensing the Glamour had faded but not caring, clung on tighter. Cam tried to get onto his hands and knees, but the Svartálfar came with him. His shotgun – where was his shotgun? He had a vague memory of dropping it on the floor.
Pain erupted along his back from when he had fallen to the bed, and he remembered the sword. Reaching back, he pulled it clumsily from its sheath. It felt heavy in his hand; the blood loss was making him weak. He sat up, and knelt awkwardly, while the vampire clung to him like a leach. Holding the sword out to his side, he aimed the point at her chest, just below the armpit, then he thrust it in with all his remaining strength.
Leanan flung herself back and screamed soundlessly. Cam pulled the sword free. Holding it two-handed, he raised it above the Swart Elf and looked down into her milky eyes. She had fed on his blood, and she was bound in mortal form.
‘Hurts, doesn’t it, you bitch?’ Cam asked conversationally. Leanan blinked. Cam thrust the sword down into her open, distended mouth.
The blade slammed through the back of her throat and down into the thick mattress. Cam got up clumsily and leant over the sword. Resting all his weight on the pommel, he thrust down again, ramming it through the mattress and into the wood beneath. He jumped up and down on it a couple of times for good measure.
The bed creaked rhythmically under his ministrations, until the point of the sword was embedded firmly in the board underneath, leaving the vampire pinned to its bed. She twitched spasmodically as a pool of blood seeped out onto the dark sheets.
Cam felt a sense of satisfaction as he looked at that blood, until he realised it was his own. The wound in his neck was deep – she had missed the jugular somehow, but he had lost a lot of blood. He tore up the sheets and wrapped them around his neck a couple of times until he had a thick bandage rubbing under his chin. Then he scooped up his shotgun and turned towards the window with fresh determination.
He climbed out and looked left. There was no ledge, but the brickwork of the big round turret was full of gaps and cracks. Before he could tell himself he was acting hysterically from blood loss, he swung out and began the slow sideways climb to the apartment next door. He tried not to think of the hard, implacable desert five storeys below him.
Back in the room, the last of his blood soaked into the mattress and the Baobhan Sith’s body slowly scattered into the darkness in motes and specks of fine matter.
After a second, two moon-bright eyes shone from the dark corner near the window. The sword stood forlornly like a grave marker in the centre of the bed.
The chug of the motorcycle cut out. Rowan stepped from the saddle and peered into the dark space of the garage. It was half-past two in the afternoon. Though the rain had stopped, the sky was sleet-grey and forbidding – a thick blanket that diffused the setting sun’s rays, weakening them even further, turning the world into an eye-racking limbo.
Silence hung over the estate. He had fled from Sam and the slim, rubbery man, abandoning his sister to their mercy. The stripped Harley had carried him free of the grounds in a short minute; a hidden transponder in its bodywork opened the gate ahead of him as if by magic. For the last half an hour or so he had circled the area, trying to push his panic away long enough to form a plan. Tabby was his only concern now.
Certain that the imminent threat had passed, Rowan was back. He had some half-formed intention of loading up with high explosives and demolishing the old station. He figured that was where she had been taken. If he could get Tabby out before the charges blew, then he would be happy … if not … well, at least he would have tried.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the garage. It was as he had left it. Tabby and Mark were both missing. At least she wasn’t lying there dead.
Suddenly galvanised, Rowan moved quickly. First, he found a weapon: another Browning Hi-Power. Slipping it behind the waistband of his combats, he walked over to a locked cabinet in the workshop area beyond the main garage. This was where Mark stored his grenades; when Rowan had kitted himself out initially, he also noticed several blocks of C4.
He kicked the cabinet open and swiftly stacked the C4 into a duffle bag. Then he grabbed a fistful of detonators, put them in a side pocket of the bag, and returned to the garage.
The assault rifle Tabby had been practising with was still on the floor. He picked it up and loaded it. Grabbing as many spare magazines as he could find, he threw them into the bag as well. He slung it over his left shoulder along with the assault rifle, keeping his right hand free. As he began to walk back outside to the Harley, a sound made him spin and pull the Browning in one smooth motion.
Jason stood there with his mouth open in surprise. He threw his hands up in the air. ‘It’s me,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t shoot, for Christ’s sake!’ For a moment, Rowan kept the gun trained between the big man’s eyes. Then he lowered it and thumbed the safety.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked as he tucked the Browning away into the small of his back.
‘Mr. Jones isn’t answering his phone.’
‘Mr. Jones has been taken. So has my sister.’
Jason closed his eyes and rubbed them tiredly. ‘Shit.’
‘What did you find out about their weaknesses?’
‘Not a lot. I’ve spent the last few hours searching every database, every tome, every scrap of parchment in the system. It’s all pretty generic stuff – nothing you haven’t seen in every werewolf movie that’s ever been on telly.’
‘Tell me anyway.’<
br />
Jason shrugged and set one massive buttock on the edge of a workbench. ‘The first reference to someone being a werewolf is an old king – a chap called Lycaon of Arcadia – who Zeus turned into a wolf because he tried to prove Zeus wasn’t a god. He went about it in a rather odd fashion. Apparently Lycaon served Zeus the flesh of his own dead son. Bunch of weird buggers if you ask me.
‘Anyway, in some circles it’s thought that this is where we get the word lycanthrope. Of course, the more established notion is that the word comes from “lycos”, the Greek for wolf, and “anthropos”, which means human being. A lycanthrope is somebody who turns specifically into a wolf. The whole concept of werewolves is thought to have come about as an explanation for serial killers, back when nobody knew about cyclic killings and serious mental illness.
‘When people started turning up dead and mutilated, it was much easier for the peasantry to come up with a fanciful tale of full moons and shape-shifters than come to terms with the fact that the nice chap in the corner hovel was a cannibalistic maniac with far too much testosterone.
‘Interestingly, there is a theory that the whole full-moon myth started because people’s sleep cycles were so thrown off by the brightness of a full moon – obviously, there weren’t any electric lights or anything back then – that people literally went crazy from sleep deprivation. I’m not sure how valid the theory is, but it certainly …’
‘Jason!’ Rowan snapped irately.
‘Oh, right, yes, sorry. Erm, where was I? Oh yes: werewolves. Well, all I could really find was the silver thing, which we already knew about. Mr. Jones uses silver-based weaponry as a matter of course against the fairy folk. All the bullets are silver tipped, so that might …’
Immortals' Requiem Page 28
