by James Fahy
This pretty much exhausted my social circle, so I gave up and wandered through the penthouse until I found the shower, which was glorious, huge, multi-jet and powerful. Cloves, earnest Servant of the good people, lived like a jewel-encrusted king, and as I scrubbed blood, sweat, plaster dust and sprinkler water out of my hair in her magnificent and heavenly shower, I was momentarily quite glad of it.
18
Waking up in a strange place is an unusual experience for me. Padding sleepily through someone else’s home, wearing a black silk nightgown which brushed the floor, looking for coffee, I felt oddly dislocated, like I’d been cast in the wrong movie.
I missed my pjs. The nightgown I had borrowed had a dragon emblazoned on the back of it. Cloves continued to horrify me on many levels.
She was already up and dressed when I entered the lounge, sitting at her workstation in a black and white pinstriped suit. Her hair was its usual immaculate sleek black bob, her war paint ruthlessly applied. I was actually faintly relieved.
I couldn’t imagine the acidic Veronica Cloves lounging bleary-eyed over a morning coffee with messy hair and bunny slippers. To see her like that would have made her somehow more human. She didn’t strike me as a woman who was ever dishevelled. To be honest, I secretly suspected she slept in a suit. She didn’t have shoes on, however, and I couldn’t help but notice a small back swirl of a tattoo on her instep. The Mark of Cabal. Every Servant had them, rumour went. I’d never seen one before. They tended to be discreet. I couldn’t quite make out what it was from across the room.
“It’s about time you were up,” she said as I entered, leaning bleary-eyed in the doorframe.
Not much of a greeting. The window-wall behind her was on fire with morning sunlight.
“What time is it?” I asked, hiding a yawn behind my hand.
“Six,” she replied. “There’s coffee in the kitchen. Drink some, and for God’s sake, get dressed. You can borrow something of mine. We have a lot to do and I only have bad news for you.”
Good morning to you too, I thought, drifting into the kitchen and thanking the whole host of heavenly minions for the heavenly aroma of vanilla coffee wafting from the percolator.
Everything in the kitchen was chrome and glass. It felt like I was back at the lab. I looked around as I leant on the counter, sipping the hot coffee as though it were the water of life.
There were no personal items anywhere in the kitchen either. Sure, there was the occasional Art Deco ornament here and there, but no framed photographs, no books or magazines. There were no notes stuck to the fridge, no magnets. No items of whimsy at all. It looked as though the apartment had come fully furnished and Cloves had not made a single homely addition to it. She was a busy woman evidently. Perhaps she didn’t have time.
Six am, she’d said.
Good God, had I had just three hours sleep? No wonder I felt like death.
There was a DataStream screen built into the kitchen worktop. I passed my hand across it. I had missed the morning news, it seemed. They were re-running part of Cloves’ interview from after the lecture.
The anchorwoman, whose unlikely name scrolling across the bottom of my DataStream appeared to be ‘Poppy Merriweather’, steepled her hands on the spotless desk. Always a sign that we were getting down to serious, beetle-browed journalism. The studio backdrop decorated with the familiar Cabal logo, an Art Deco take on Michelangelo’s Vetruvian man. The new symbol for humanity. Emblazoned across it, the logo of Cabal. From Darkness Into Light.
“… and finally tonight, further dips in the ongoing energy crisis gripping all of Britannia caused disruption when the quarterly Cabal R&D release was plagued with technical problems.” Merriweather told us this solemnly. Sitting beside her in the studio, looking warm and approachable in her plum suit, was Cloves herself, smiling ruefully.
“Of course, it’s frustrating, Poppy, very frustrating,” she said sadly. “The issues we are having with power, not only here, but all over Britannia right now, in every one of the Free Cities, are causing these spikes in energy, affecting even our own equipment, our very link to the public we serve.” She looked into the camera, her eyes earnest and serious. If there was any doubt as to the sincerity of her servitude, it was there in this soulful gaze. “Cabal have always maintained one simple truth. The tenet of transparency. We are the Servants of the People. The people have a right to know the steps we are taking to ensure their safety, the advances our tireless researchers at Blue Lab are striving towards to ensure that together, we can all build a better tomorrow for humankind, and humankind’s supporters, whoever they may be. This is the reason a segment of the public is present at every conference, this is the reason we insist on media coverage.”
Yeah right, I thought. As long as it doesn’t cover anything you don’t want it to.
“You, the public, have a right to know. Too much was done, before the wars, behind closed doors. Too much was kept from the people at large, and we know all too well where that led us. It led us to the brink of our own extinction. To lose much of the workable footage from this evening’s illuminating research and development report is an annoyance, yes, but we can at least ensure that the facts are reported.”
There followed an enthusiastic discussion between the anchor and Cloves regarding Blue Lab’s great leaps and bounds. Cloves was very enthusiastic. Her almost giddy eagerness was infectious.
There was no mention of the vampire gatecrasher, of course.
“As it is, you only have my interpretation for now, until the written paper is released next month of course,” Cloves continued. “I can only tell you this. Epsilon has exceeded our expectations. We are still interpreting all the data, but so far, the results have been practically explosive, if you’ll excuse my colloquialisms. I’m no scientist, I’m afraid!” She actually gave a little titter, which made my skin crawl right off my body this time and across the floor.
“Thank you, Servant Cloves. I’m afraid that’s all we have time for. Please do give our regards to Director Trevelyan,” Merriweather said. “I understand she is under the weather at the moment and was unable to give the quarterly in person as usual, although from what footage we have recovered, it seems Doctor…” she glanced almost imperceptibly at her notes, “… Harkness did a fine job standing in at the last moment.”
“Oh yes,” Veronica Cloves smiled again, straight into the camera. “She’s definitely one to keep an eye on.”
Miming a gag, I flicked the DataStream off and finished my coffee.
When I returned to the guest bedroom, I noticed that Cloves had laid out clothing on the bed for me. I couldn’t really redress in Lucy’s borrowed clothes from the night before. They were pretty much ruined.
I had been trying not to think about wearing the Cabal fashionista’s hand-me-downs. I had seen how she dressed, like Cruella De Vil on acid. It wasn’t my look. But through some sense of good grace, or maybe because she thought there was no way I could pull off her vibe, Cloves had left me tailored black pants and a fairly nondescript long-sleeve black silk top. It was mercifully demure for her, barring the thick gold belt, the clasp of which was a crocodile swallowing its own tail.
Ah well. When in Rome, dress like a Las Vegas gangster’s wife, as they say. At least we were roughly the same size. It would do until I could get home and changed into something less … silky.
I scraped my hair back into a loose ponytail, and by the time I had dressed and wandered back into the main room, Cloves was standing by the white marble fireplace waiting for me, looking in her striped suit like an impatient and angular humbug. Above the fireplace there was a large, wall mounted DataStream screen. She looked as though she were going to give a presentation.
“Sit,” she instructed, without the merest titter or twinkle of her on-screen alter-ego. “Are you aware of the GO rights movement?”
I eased into a chair, wishing desperately that I’d grabbed another coffee on the way.
“Of course,” I replied.
<
br /> The GOs worked in our city; vampires and Bonewalkers mainly, but some others too. They held jobs, they ran businesses, they even owned property, but technically they were here as our ‘guests’. They could contribute to our economy but they couldn’t vote and they certainly couldn’t hold office. They may have their own separate society but they couldn’t get any real foothold in ours.
The GO rights movement were a collection of sympathetic human campaigners, fighting for the ability for GOs everywhere to be recognised as equal citizens. They were largely peaceful, staging protests, holding rallies, distributing GO-friendly literature.
They had picketed Blue Lab at one point last year, waving placards and chanting about the evil and unethical work we presumably did. It was what had led the Cabal to step in and engage in the ‘open policy’ approach, with the quarterly R&D lectures showing our good-natured findings to the human public at large, so that we could convince them that our work was solely to eradicate the Pale, not to harm any natural GO.
The idea had been that if we were upfront and open, we couldn’t be accused of anything underhanded. It had kind of worked. The GO rights movement had largely left us alone this past year. They had stopped demonising us as evil mad scientists.
These days they tended to harass the church and they were always at loggerheads with the Mankind Movement, their polar opposites, who basically thought that all GOs needed to be ejected from our walled cities and left to fend for themselves in the wild against the Pale … conveniently overlooking the fact that without GOs, we all would have been dead years ago.
Veronica Cloves clicked a remote control and the DataStream screen lit up, showing a photograph of a young woman. She was twenty-something with long brown hair in dreadlocks, ultra-hip black-rimmed glasses, and a very stern and somewhat earnest expression. I’d never seen her before.
“This is Jennifer Coleman,” she advised. “She’s very active in the GO rights movement. She’s been arrested three times for breach of the peace and twice for common assault. She’s your standard hummus-eating hippie who thinks that vampires are just nice, misunderstood folk with sensitive skin.”
Cloves’ disapproval was evident.
“She’s basically an enormous pain in everyone’s arse. Jennifer Coleman was responsible for staging the three week camp out in the Botanical Gardens last summer, which got all of that news coverage, despite our best efforts. She’s also been accused, though nothing was every proven, of tampering with gate deliveries at the wall, ensuring those few luxury supplies which we are still able to get did not reach their intended buyers within the city.”
“Let me guess, the intended buyers were Mankind Movement fans?”
I had read about this in the papers earlier this year. Sabotage at the wall always made the headlines. Several large corporations had their expensive summer balls ruined by the lack of produce. I bet Cloves had felt the lack of olives. It was a bit of a first world problem as far as I was concerned.
“Fascinating stuff,” I said. “I like the dreadlocks. Very urban guerrilla protester. But why am I looking at a photo of her?”
“Because she’s missing,” Cloves said, tapping the remote control she still held against her chin a couple of times. “Well, most of her is missing. A box of teeth was delivered to Blue Lab at 5am this morning. I’ve been on the phone to Servant Harrison, who is overseeing things there. He advises tests have been run and they match the public dental records of this woman.”
I stared at the photograph.
“Another one?” I said, feeling suddenly sick. “Was there a video? A DataStream note like with Trevelyan?”
Cloves shook her head.
“Not this time, just a packet of teeth. I have no idea why they are being sent to Blue Lab, but this woman has clearly been taken by the same person … or persons … as our missing Trevelyan. This has all happened this morning. We don’t know much else.”
Cloves stared at me expectantly.
“But this doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I mean there’s no connection between them. I doubt very much that Vyvienne Trevelyan had any interaction with the GO movement, let alone this woman herself. She was not a fan of the GOs, trust me.”
Cloves clicked off the screen.
“Well, it seems we don’t know as much about your old boss as we thought we did, do we?” she pointed out. “Why would she wipe her entire work database before she disappeared? Why hide information on a subordinate’s workstation? We have no idea what she was mixed up in. Not until the files are decrypted.”
I wondered if Trevelyan and this woman, the new victim Jennifer Coleman, were both dead. I was pretty sure in my heart of hearts that they were. Nothing left but their teeth, randomly posted to us at Blue Lab as … what? Gruesome trophies? A warning? What did the teeth signify? None of it made sense.
“Is this in the media yet?” I asked.
Cloves, the Cabal Spin Doctor extraordinaire, raised her eyebrow disdainfully.
“I’m keeping a lid on what I can, for as long as I can.” She looked sour at this. “Which is a full time pain in my arse. This sort of news doesn’t stay quiet for long. So far, all that’s public knowledge is that Jennifer Coleman, champion of the cuddly vampires, has gone missing. That was on the DataStream this morning. One of her camp has reported it as very ‘out of character’. They don’t know that the inside of her face is in a box at our lab. And as far as anyone in the general public is concerned, Vyvienne Trevelyan is on a well-earned holiday. The same spiel has been given to all employees at the lab, barring you.”
She stared at me sharply.
“If this gets out, that the hippie Helsing activist Coleman has been kidnapped, mutilated and likely killed by a GO, it would be incendiary. The GO rights movement would be in uproar. Conspiracy theories, rioting in the streets, who knows what else? This woman is like some kind of saint to them.”
Cloves rubbed the bridge of her nose, pacing the floor.
“The Mankind Movement would leap on it as evidence of the GOs’ evil nature. Clashes between the two factions would be inevitable.”
She made the word sound apocalyptic.
“Cabal and, by extension, your precious Blue Lab would be caught right in the middle of the whole steaming pile. How would we explain our involvement, why we have two morgue lockers full of teeth?”
She stopped marching up and down in front of the screen to stare me down, pointing the remote control at me to emphasise her words.
“We need to get on top of this now,” she said. “This isn’t just some random serial killer, I’m sure of it. There’s a bigger agenda at play here.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“We?” she blinked at me, her expression incredulous. “Listen, Harkness, I pulled your fat out of the fire last night at the GO club because right now, you are the only tenuous link I have to the GOs. But let me make sure you have this straight: we are not partners on this. There is no ‘we’. I am going to HQ to see what we’ve got on these bloody encrypted files. You, Doctor, are going to work. Act normal, do your day job, and when the sun goes down and the vamps are up, call your bloody source.”
“Allesandro?” I was taken aback. “You seriously want me to contact him again? You told me last night you didn’t trust him and that I shouldn’t either.”
“That’s true, I don’t and you shouldn’t,” she said. “But we were right to sniff around him. His boss is clearly involved in this somehow. We need his intel, whatever it is. Arrange another meeting.”
She held up her hands to silence me before I could protest.
“Just … be more subtle this time.”
She folded her arms and glared at me.
“You’ll be on your own tonight. I won’t be there to watch your back. I have a fundraiser to go to.”
“I’m sorry, a fundraiser?” I asked incredulously.
This seemed a little out of left field when I had just been told that the evil tooth-fairy had struck again.
&
nbsp; “I have a day job to maintain too,” she grimaced. “As Cabal’s PR. I have an interview with that bloody Channel Seven reporter at noon, and then this evening I’m representing the Cabal at Marlin Scott’s business expo. I can’t shirk my other duties just to chase vampires around the city with you.”
Marlin Scott was a name I knew. He was a powerful figure in our city, a wealthy entrepreneur and high society blue-blood businessman who had made his sizeable fortune designing the gate technology for the wall. He had worked closely with the Bonewalkers on its construction. Nothing makes you rich more than being the only person able to keep the hordes of mutant death at bay.
Marlin Scott now owned roughly half the industry in New Oxford. He was also, if I remembered correctly, a very vocal Mankind Movement campaigner.
“Will you call me when you decrypt the files?” I asked.
The Cabal Servant looked at me as though I were something she had accidentally stepped in.
“I’ll call you if I have any use for you,” Cloves replied.
Honestly, it truly warmed me to the heart how close we two had become of late.
19
I took a taxi and headed back to my place to change before I headed into the lab. I figured it would be safe enough during daylight when all the GOs were ‘sleeping’, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to turn up to work dressed like Joan Collins. I’d had quite enough of wearing other people’s clothes in the last twenty four hours.
My flat was a shambolic mess. For a moment I wondered if Gio and his vampire clan had come round last night and turned the place over, maybe looking for me or the mystery files, but then I remembered it always looked like this. I really had to get around to tidying.
There were no messages on my answer phone, which worried me a little. Not that is was usually full, but Lucy hadn’t called me back. Had she got home alright after the club? I reasoned she had probably gone it alone after we got separated, probably onto another club. She was a seasoned Helsing, I had to remind myself. She could probably look after herself.
