by James Fahy
“When we saw she was spooked, we moved in and took her, right off the street, just like that,” he clicked his long white fingers in front of my face, making me flinch. “Trouble was, we also needed her information. I’m sure you agree that I can be very persuasive when it comes to getting people to tell me what I want to know, so you can imagine my irritation when she told me she had destroyed all her files – destroyed everything we needed access to.”
A tiny frown creased his brow.
“Troublesome bitch,” Jessica growled from the sofa.
“Access to what?” I asked, still trying to lean back out of his reach.
“Not your concern,” Gio said. “We did eventually convince her to share the fact that she had another copy. We even got her to tell us where it was, in your very own workstation, safe down in Blue Lab where none of us wicked, wicked Genetic Others could get our nasty mitts on it.”
“Did you convince her with a pair of pliers?” I asked, forcing myself to meet his stare.
Jessica snorted a harsh laugh.
“Not me, my dear,” Gio replied, his eyes narrowing.
He didn’t like my defiance. Not one bit. For all his friendly airs, he wanted me scared, cowed by him. The friendly smile returned quickly, though.
“That work was done by another. Our dear friend the Bonewalker needs the teeth, you see. We need to supply the goods so it can do what must be done. All that hoodoo-voodoo nonsense is the Bonewalkers’ area you see. They’re good with the dead. I simply haven’t the time.”
He spread his hands plaintively. “I have an entertainment industry to run after all.”
Gio and his crew were working with a Bonewalker? This was unheard of.
“And Jennifer Coleman?” I asked. “Are you behind that too?”
His head was on one side like a curious cat. I hadn’t forgotten the feeling of his teeth tearing into my throat. Looking at him was like staring down a panther, who had decided to be playful but might tire of it at any moment. He was searching for a reaction. I gave him none.
“She just loved vampires,” Gio said. “She thought, as all her activist friends do, that we should all just fall into line and pay taxes and mow our lawns, like the rest of your little world.”
His smile fell instantly.
“We didn’t have to pull her off the street.” He snarled. “We just invited her here. Of course, it wasn’t quite the meeting of inter-species minds she had been expecting, but … the end justifies the means.”
“She put up a bit of a fight that one,” Helena grinned, raising her coffee cup to Gio. “I liked her. While she lasted, I mean.”
“Marlin Scott, however, now that’s a trickier fish to catch,” Gio said, nodding knowingly at me. “How exactly does one get one’s hands on one of the city’s most powerful men? A man who is famously anti-GO, hugely paranoid and lives in a high security, private estate surrounded by security twenty-four hours a day? He’s almost impossible to gain access to, even for us.”
“But thanks to Oscar…” Jessica piped up.
“Ah yes,” Gio smiled benevolently. “Dear, sweet, stupid and delicious Oscar, my little baby bird. I was so happy when we saw him in the district. Imagine our good fortune, a Helsing right within the old man’s camp. All we had to do was invite him to Sanctum, ply him, spoil him, make him feel welcome. Give him what he wanted.” Gio looked nostalgic. “I do truly find myself fond of the child. His blood is sweeter than most.”
My skin was crawling. Gio was deeply unhinged, that much was clear.
“He certainly gave us what we wanted, information on his father’s movements,” the vampire told me. “I don’t know if you know this, Doctor, but Marlin Scott is not a well man. He hardly ever leaves his estate these days, barely ever attends any society functions anymore. He’s like a ghost. When Oscar let it slip that his dear old daddy would be attending his annual fundraiser in person … well, we had to seize the moment, didn’t we? To strike, as they say, while the iron is hot.”
“Harder to get to him than the others, though,” Jessica said. “Big public event, lots of security, hence the ‘terrorists’.”
She actually made quotation marks in the air with her fingers. Gio just nodded.
“The DataStream news is frantic with it already this morning,” he smiled. “You’ve been out cold all day. It’s all over the news. The attempted sabotage of the Mankind Movement by suspected GO rights militants. Let them take the blame. We left enough evidence at the scene to incriminate them.”
He shrugged. “We can’t afford to have the full fury of the Cabal rain down on us before our work is done. We of the Black Sacrament are only five, you see. Even if your people are weak, they outnumber us enough to make a difference so I didn’t use any vampires at the library. All my men at the fundraiser last night were human. You would be amazed what services money can buy, and I am not a poor man.”
“What did you want with Marlin Scott?” I asked. If he was going to kill me, I wanted answers first.
“What the hell are you people trying to achieve? And what does any of this have to do with my father?”
Gio held up a finger. He looked impressed.
“Ah, clever girl. You’re a natural detective it seems.”
He actually sounded pleased.
“What we wanted with him was his teeth,” he hissed, his mood darkening a little.
“But the best laid plans of mice and vampires … you can imagine the irony, when I had gone to so much trouble – causing a scene, frightening all those poor, innocent people who were just out to have a good time and show their support for the abolition of my kind – when we cornered old man Scott in the chaos, only to discover…”
“… The old fuck didn’t have any,” Jessica interjected.
Gio frowned over at her, irritated at having his monologue interrupted. He’s eyes flicked back to mine.
“False teeth,” he muttered, spitting the words disgustedly as though they were rude. “You humans. Honestly. Seventy or eighty years and you all start falling to pieces. Marlin Scott had not had his own teeth in his wrinkled head for many a year.”
His face had darkened. I’m a big enough girl to admit that look scared me.
“Lucky we had a plan B,” Helena said soothingly to Gio.
She seemed to sense his temper was rising and was trying to buck him up. I wondered at their strange relationships. He simply nodded, blinking away the fury.
“Yes, of course. Dear little Oscar. I would have liked to have used the original. The Bonewalker tells me it’s stronger that way, for the sacrament it will perform for us. Otherwise, of course, I would have used the boy weeks ago, but we work with what we have. Oscar the blood junkie is to come in useful after all. The same bloodline, you see? The same DNA, the same family.”
He couldn’t help but see the disgust on my face.
“You still think we are the bad guys here, don’t you, Doctor? That we are the monsters under the bed? You haven’t got a clue. You sit there judging us, when you know nothing.”
He wasn’t remotely smiling now. Helena made a soothing, shushing noise at him but he ignored her.
“What we want is revenge; for what was taken from us to be returned. And what we want is for you humans to be held accountable for destroying this world we all used to enjoy. If you want to know who the villains are, look to your own.”
“The sun will rise,” Jessica said, her drawl making the words sound odd, “and the Pale will become once again what they were always meant to be.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I said. “You all seem to think I should, but I’m fucking clueless here!”
“You don’t have to know anything, my dear,” Gio told me. “All I need from you are the files I should have gotten from Trevelyan and then, once everything is in place, your teeth. The files are no good to me whatsoever encrypted. I want to know if your flunkies at the Cabal have managed to open them for us yet.”
His eyes flashed at
me and I felt his power suddenly rush out and engulf me, as it had back in Sanctum. He was trying to roll me under his mind again.
“Who has the files?” he demanded inside my head.
But I was astonished to find that this time around I could resist.
I hadn’t stood a chance last time we met. In the club he had rolled me over like a puppy and I had wagged my tail, but now, although I could feel his will crushing down on me, I found myself pushing back against it.
“Fuck … you!” I managed through gritted teeth, struggling against his willpower.
I pushed all thoughts of Veronica Cloves and the Cabal deep down in my head. I didn’t know how I was managing to withstand his mental assault so well but I reasoned that if he couldn’t get the information out of me, it could buy me some time before the overenthusiastic dentist arrived.
Gio looked momentarily shocked. I felt him redouble his efforts, glaring at me. His presence hit me again like a wall. Pain shot through my head but my body felt strong and I pushed him away with my own mind.
“Answer me, damn you!”
He was becoming annoyed. Behind him, Jessica watched with detached interest, seemingly impressed, but it was Helena who came forward and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Gio, honey, you bled her remember? You won’t be able to.”
Realisation dawned on Gio’s face.
“I can still crack her,” he insisted. “It’s been long enough for her to build her blood back up.”
“Evidently not,” she said, her tone still calm and relaxing. “Here, let me.”
Gio stood, evidently irritated. He shook her hand off her shoulder and let the blonde vampire take his place in front of me. She smiled down at me encouragingly.
“Look at me, please.”
I stared determinedly at her chin. I had no idea why the fact Gio had drank from me meant I was immune to his persuasion, even if it was only temporary. I had no idea how these things worked. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to look into this woman’s hypnotic, friendly eyes.
“Come on now, don’t be silly about it,” Helena purred softly, as though she were trying to coax a nervous child.
She bobbed in front of me, trying to catch my eye. I stared down in avoidance, focusing on the pink and coral broach which she had daintily pinned to her jacket lapel.
She slapped me suddenly, across the cheek and very hard. The motion was as swift and unexpected as a viper strike. The pain and shock was so sharp that my head whipped to the side and I found myself staring furiously at her. She was still smiling, and in that second she had me in her eyes.
I immediately felt her mind cover mine like a smothering blanket.
Shit. I am comprehensively terrible at vampires. This much I have concluded.
There was no resisting her as I had done with Gio. I could see him stalking around in my peripheral vision irritably. I had wounded his pride by resisting him. The others had said he was moody, after all. Psychotically volatile, I would have said, but hey, tomayto tomarto, right?
Helena’s eyes were like diamond, drilling into my head.
“Now then,” she said softly. “Are the files decrypted yet?”
“Yes,” I answered, against my will.
“Wonderful,” she said encouragingly. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Now … who has the files right now?”
“Veronica Cloves,” I heard myself say. The side of my face stung as though I’d just been lashed by a whip. Helena wanted more. “She’s a Cabal Servant. She’s just finished decrypting them.”
“And where is she now, honey?” Helena asked me lightly, probing gently like a high-school counsellor.
I tried to fight back but my mind was like a dandelion in a hurricane. She blew it apart and pulled the truth out through my lips.
“I don’t know. She was at the fundraiser, but she didn’t have the files with her, at least I don’t think so. They’re probably at the Liver, Cabal HQ.”
“Why don’t we just use the old man?” Jessica said. “Make him bring Cloves in, hand over the files that way.”
Gio shook his head. He was stalking the room, his arms folded.
“He’s too far gone,” he said. “It’s becoming less and less convincing. I don’t want to risk it and have Cabal come down on us, not when we’re so close. Better to get them ourselves.”
“We cannot storm Cabal HQ,” Jessica pointed out.
“She’d back them up at home.” Helena reasoned, glancing at Jessica and Gio for a split second before staring back at me. “Where does she live, Doctor?”
I gave her the address, selling Cloves up the river against my will.
“But you won’t get in. The building’s warded.”
“We can’t, you stupid girl,” Gio said behind her, “but my hired chaps can. They’re as human as you are.”
“Thank you,” Helena said to me, sounding truly grateful, as though I had been playing nice and not just had my brain picked through entirely against my will.
“Go to Hell,” I managed to say.
Her sweet smile didn’t falter. She walked away and I blinked rapidly as she released my mind. Sweat was beading on my forehead, cool against my hot skin.
Damn it. Now they don’t need me anymore. If I was no further use for information, then…
As if on cue, the door behind the trio of vampires opened again and another figure entered, flanked by two male vampires I hadn’t seen before. The other members of the Black Sacrament, I assumed. But I wasn’t interested in them. It was the apparition standing between them that held my eyes.
My blood ran cold. I wouldn’t have believed that I could find anyone other than Gio the scariest thing in a room, but the person who entered was terrifying.
Almost seven feet tall and cloaked from head to toe in a long black hooded robe, it looked like the mad monk Rasputin. Looming into the room larger than life, its face, like with all of its kind, was hidden entirely behind a white porcelain mask with blank, expressionless features.
Whenever I had seen these GOs on the DataStream or in history vids, they had always reminded me of the old Japanese stage demons, like actors clad in Noh masks, their expressions frozen. Through the eyeholes of the terribly blank face, I could see its eyes. They were inky black from lid to lid, like pools of tar. Shark’s eyes.
It glided into the chamber, its feet – if it even had feet – invisible beneath the long robes. Its hands were tucked into its voluminous sleeves like a Gregorian friar. Moving slowly, like a ghost or a deep-sea creature drifting along the current, it was utterly silent.
It was a Bonewalker.
I had never seen one in real life before. We didn’t know a whole lot about them, unlike the other GOs.
A vampire was a vampire at the end of the day, and those who called themselves Tribals fit pretty closely with our werewolf mythology. But the jury was out on what the hell Bonewalkers actually were. Some suggested they were a kind of ghost, a spirit made flesh. Others, including some very vocal Mankind Movement supports, insisted they were demons walking the earth. I was wondering, in the light of recent events, if they were the truth behind the myth of the Tooth Fairy.
They rarely spoke. They came and went as they pleased, and seemingly on their own whims, deciding their own allegiances.
Cabal had dealings with Bonewalkers. They had used their powers to move a lot of Britannia’s furniture around. No one knew what the price had been or what the Bonewalkers had wanted in return. A lot of people, myself included, agreed that Cabal had balls just for engaging with the otherworldly entities. But our government were not the only ones who had made contracts with them.
Marlin Scott himself had managed to commission the services of a Bonewalker somehow, in the course of making his fortune. Their unique talents, bending and reordering space amongst them, had enabled him to develop the technology for the wall in the first place.
Again, no one could say for sure what they had asked in return for their contribution to his wor
k, if anything. Some of the more hysterical tabloids had suggested Marlin has sold his soul for wealth and fortune. It was ironic really that he was now such a staunch opposer of all GOs in his old age, when the bell was quite literally tolling. Maybe the Bonewalker would be paying him a visit again someday soon.
The Bonewalker drifted further into the room, its black eyes silently taking in the three vampires and then me as it towered over us all. I felt very vulnerable in my chair.
It tilted its head slowly and questioningly at Gio, who looked uncharacteristically demure in its presence.
“We have what we need from this one,” the vampire said, gesturing to me. “She is the last offering. What of the boy? Has our dentist upstairs done his work?”
The Bonewalker parted its hands. It had been carrying a small black package in its sleeves. It held this out toward Gio silently. Its hands were long and thin, with elongated fingers.
The vampire smiled down at the package as though it were a Christmas present.
“Good. Excellent. We will deliver those, like the others. And then,” he smiled coldly at me, “we will take the last of our ingredients.”
I stared at the ghoulish apparition of the Bonewalker, dominating the room like a silent grim reaper, and at the small box it carried. I knew instantly what was in the box.
Teeth. Oscar’s teeth.
Did this mean he was dead? I had no idea. But I knew I was next.
Gio crossed the room toward me, dwarfed by the Bonewalker which had turned its empty, masked face toward me and was regarding me with cool, inscrutable indifference.
“Sadly, you will never know how the story ends, my dear Phoebe,” he said, baring his teeth at me.
He dragged me to my feet roughly and turned me around. For the first time, I saw what lay behind me in the centre of this subterranean room, a deep stone well flush with the floor. My chair had been right on the brink of it. A dark abyss. The animal smell I had noticed was wafting up from it.
Just when I was wondering what could make this happy gathering even more fun – vampires, a Bonewalker, a creepy dungeon, a less than gentle dentist waiting to meet me. Ah yes, of course, a big black well of despair. That’s the ticket.
