by James Fahy
“I can’t,” I said. I had started chewing at my lip. Hard. It hurt a little, but I found it unusually pleasurable, the sharp, metallic tang of pain. My whole body was hot. My clothes were too tight. There was no air in this container. I couldn’t move. “I’m trying…I can’t control it. Fuck, I don’t know what to do.”
He was going to have to kill me. The thought arrived unbidden in my mind, cold and clear. I was going to devolve right here and now, I could already feel myself slipping. The vampire was going to have to fight me off and one of us would die.
He will, I thought angrily. His face was two inches away. I wanted to sink my teeth into it. God, the thought was delicious, to gnaw at his face, bloody my chin and ruin his infuriating calm. My hands gripped his chest, digging my nails into his flesh. If he’d been human he would be screaming by now, but vampire bodies were tougher than ours. His skin wouldn’t break under my nails.
Still, I could bite his face off if I wanted to.
Did I want to? I considered a moment, hearing my own laboured panting. I think I did.
“Oh God,” I said, quavering. “I don’t trust myself.”
“Phoebe…listen.” His hands brushed my wrists. The rage flooded through me. I thrashed on top of him, driving my hip as hard as I could into his groin. I felt him buckle, a hideous surge of glee running through me as he grunted.
Good. Pain is good. “Don’t you fucking touch me!” I heard myself growl, my voice alien.
“I can’t help it,” he replied. “I’m not going to let you change into one of those things.”
The part of me that still felt like the normal me, overwhelmed by animal anger and communicating with my brain via bean tins, glimmered with hope.
Please don’t let me, I thought silently, as my nails dug in deeper. His hands tightened on my wrists.
“Take my blood,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“My blood, Phoebe. You need to drink. It saved you once before, it can do it again. I told you on the bridge…”
“Fuck what you told me on the bridge!” I snarled. Did he think I was stupid? “I know what you want. Even now, here when we’re going to die you’re still playing me, trying to get your own way, to claim your fucking clan-mate?”
I tried to twist my hands out of his and failed. He was very strong. But I was getting stronger. I could get my hands free if I wanted to. I might have to break my own wrists to do so, but I was happy to do that. It might feel wonderful.
“No, this isn’t you talking. The Pale bit me too remember? Back when you were infected in Carfax. I can’t be infected by the virus. It doesn’t hold with vampires. It was my blood that fought the virus in your system then, it can do so again now,” he insisted.
I pushed my face up close to his. My hair felt damp with sweat, feverish. “I want to chew your jaw off,” I whispered through gritted teeth. “…And lick the blood off your face while you scream, how about that?” I could picture myself grinding his flesh between my teeth. My mouth ached with want.
“Listen to me.”
He didn’t speak aloud. His voice was in my head. He was using his vampire bat phone and it cut through the red angry fog of fury that was clouding my senses, like a splash of ice water. “It’s the Pale. The virus has you. It’s in your mind, and in your blood. You need to drink from me, Phoebe, or we both die in here right now.”
I stopped, frozen in the dark, the tiny glimmer of my mind which was still my own had heard him. “God…what am I doing?” I shuddered.
He released my wrists, which shocked me, leaving me floundering in the darkness. I felt something in my head, a gentle, probing pressure, and realised he was feeling around the outside of my thoughts with his will.
“Don’t…” I said, realising what he was preparing to try. “Don’t roll me under. You promised you never would.” I knew already that even if he did try, it wouldn’t work. There was precious little mind left to work with now, it was all I could do to hold the rage at bay. He could no more ensnare me than he could one of the mutant Pale clawing at the outside of our city walls.
“Then drink,” he grated. “Or die.”
I felt him turn his neck to the side, and my hands, jittering and shaking, struggled up in the darkness past our torsos. My fingertips found the exposed skin of his throat, soft and cool, and under my fingers, a deep, slow pulse.
“You have a pulse,” I whispered, forcing myself to remain lucid. “How?”
“I can choose to make the blood flow,” he replied. His voice was a little shaky in the darkness, at the touch of my hand on his skin. I wished I could see his face. With all vision gone, my other senses were enhanced. I could feel the goosebumps of his skin beneath my fingers. His skin cool under my burning hands. Every whorl and line of my fingerprints seemed to dance across the vein in the side of his neck, and beneath the skin, the rushing vibration of blood.
“You…you can make your heart beat?” I breathed, lowering my face into the hollow of his neck. His hand had come up behind me in the tight space, and steady fingers twined in my hair, guiding my head down slowly.
“You can,” he said.
My teeth brushed his skin, and, fighting against the dark fury in my head demanding to rip, I bit.
Hot blood welled up instantly in my mouth, warm and wet. It flooded over my tongue, coating my teeth. Instinctively I gagged, thick metallic liquid rolling into my throat, but his hand held the back of my head firmly, denying any escape.
“Drink,” he gasped beneath me, his voice shaky. I swallowed, more blood pumping out from his throat to fill my mouth, cloying and dizzying. I moaned against his skin. Sweet, thick, rich, the heady juice of some dark illicit fruit, delicious and nourishing. I drank hungrily, choking it down, starving between mouthfuls, as his strength flooded through me, feeling as though my mouth was parched, that I was in a hot desert and had finally found an oasis. His blood was life, rushing, pulsing in my throat, scouring the anger away, and I wanted to fill myself with it. The rage evaporated, dissipating clouds, as I felt his power, his essence flow through me, down into my stomach, throbbing, spreading through my entire body from the centre outwards and making me shudder with pleasure. My fingertips and toes were tingling, my breathing laboured as I drank, hungry for more. I gasped and worked at his throat with my lips and tongue as he swallowed hard, the tendons of his neck tensing under my lips like steel cables under the silk of his skin. A thirst was in me like never before, a floodgate of desire and need and he was endless, giving himself to me utterly. His fingers clenched in my hair tightly, twisting hard. I heard him panting, his chest rising and falling under mine in shudders. His heart, so silent and still before, slammed against his ribs as he writhed beneath me, a thudding beat, brought to life with my feeding.
The flood swelled within me, achingly tight, crashing down my limbs bringing unbearable perception. Heat spiked down into my abdomen. Warmth and vibration moved through me as the blood inside me destroyed the rage, filling me instead with a flood of light and heat. It moved down through my stomach, a throbbing, unbearable, blissful spasm, across my abdomen, fingers of light and heat inside me, exploring my veins and muscles, and down and between my legs, building to a shuddering heat, making me gasp.
I wrenched my lips from his neck, parting them from his skin with a deep hitching breath as my back arched and fire ran through me. He turned his head in the darkness, his lips brushing against my thumb. I felt his breath on my fingers, hot and fast.
My tongue darted out and licked at the neat wound of his throat, gently lapping at his broken skin. I felt him tense beneath me, holding his breath, and I kissed his neck. The rage was gone, the brutal dark violence of the Pale utterly obliterated. It had been replaced by another need. A different kind of hunger.
In the blackness, my hands trembling, I laid a line of soft kisses along his jaw, guiding his head round, my hair falling across us both in a curtain as I finally found his mouth. He arched his neck up to meet me, his lips brushi
ng mine, and I kissed the vampire deeply.
His hunger matched my own as his tongue found its way into my mouth, rolling over my own as he kissed his own blood from me. I tasted his fangs, those white and deadly teeth, and we explored each other in the blackness. His kiss was urgent, deep and demanding, and I returned it, my whole body trembling, drunk on his blood, wanting more.
He bit my lip gently, his hands sliding from my head to stroke against my neck, his hand was large enough to close around my throat, and his thumb played in the hollow at the base of my neck.
“Oh God,” I breathed into him. My lips were covered in his blood, I knew, and I must be smearing it on his face, but I didn’t care. The rage was gone. I was saved. If we were going to die buried in this box, let it happen this way. If no one was coming to save us, and this was really it. I wanted to taste him, before the end.
I levered myself higher onto him, so that he could nuzzle at my neck as I knew he wanted to. His tongue darting, tasting the fresh salt on my body, raising shivering goosebumps.
“Phoebe,” he breathed against me.
His hands travelled down my back and took my hips, holding me against him as he arched his back, deep kisses exploring my skin as he ground against me hungrily. I could feel him, his want and urgency. He was hot and hard beneath me and I pushed against him, teasing as I kissed his face.
“I thought…” I murmured, gasping as he shifted under me, “that vampires…were supposed…to be…cold.”
I felt him grin against my neck. I slid my hand down between us in our silent, deadly space, lifting his chin up with my other hand to find his lips with my own again.
“You have so much to learn,” he murmured into my mouth.
My hand glided over his stomach, slipping beneath his jeans and I grasped him firmly, making him moan deliciously into my mouth and arch his back as he pulsed between my fingers.
It was my turn to grin. “And are you going to teach me?” I whispered.
He kissed me again in response, drawing my face down onto his. His hands slipped down the back of my jeans, guiding me possessively in our confined space, pushing us against one another in our need.
There was a deep resonating thud. I ignored it. My body was filled with vampire blood. It sang in my veins, thrumming and vibrating. I shone. I was aching with want. Nothing could distract me right now.
Another thud, and our prison wobbled.
Allesandro broke off our kiss. “Phoebe?”
I wanted him to stop talking, I squeezed him hard, making him throw back his head to thud against the bottom of our prison as he grunted in wicked pleasure.
There was a roar, muffled by the walls, but very distinct, and very close. What the hell was that?
Before I could reply, or either of us could speak, there was a great tearing screech of metal, my world shook and rocked in all the wrong ways, and suddenly light and air rushed in on us, blinding and deafening. I screamed.
30.
The lid of our metal coffin had been torn away in a shriek of tortured metal. The light, after such darkness, was blinding. I blinked in confusion, disoriented, as air, sweet, fresh outdoor air rushed in and flowed over us, a chilly wind.
Suddenly able to move, I raised my head and saw, through blurred and watery eyes still half-drunk on vampire blood, a great black bear, its muzzle inches from my face.
I’d seen bears on the DataStream. They were big. Huge and burly creatures. This thing put them to shame. It was larger than any real bear had any natural right to be, and its furrowed muzzle was currently drawn back against its huge yellow teeth inches from my face. It hovered in front of me like a demon, shiny black pebble eyes staring into me from its monstrous head.
Frozen with shock, I could only watch as the great bear stood slowly above us, raising its bulk onto its back legs, a colossal black mountain of fur. It was silhouetted, a great shaggy shape against a twilight sky filled with scudding purple clouds. I was mute with horror as it roared again, the noise almost bursting my eardrums. In its mighty paws it held the lid to our ‘coffin’, a twisted and mangled metal lid. The beast dropped it with a deafening clang onto the floor at its feet.
Beneath me, Allesandro pushed himself up on his elbows, lifting me higher to my horror. The bear took a couple of heavy backwards steps, and stood, panting and grunting. It just stared at us and I frantically tried to remember if you’re supposed to run towards or away from black bears. Given that it had just wrenched the riveted steel lid off our prison, I was leaning heavily towards the running away option.
Now that the überbear had backed up a little and no longer filled my entire horizon, I was able to make out another figure standing at its side, dwarfed by the monster. Standing with arms folded and looking like a fury from Hell was a woman in a black glossy pantsuit and a black and white striped hat. Veronica Cloves.
She looked us over silently for a few seconds, the vampire and I, lying in our metal tomb. The wind toyed with her bob of immaculate black hair. Eventually she unfolded her arms, reached into her purse, and withdrew a cigarette case, seeming utterly unfazed by demon-Yogi.
“Well…I have to say, Harkness…” She lit a cigarette, shielding the flame from the strong wind with a black and white gloved hand. “…Director Coldwater will be most impressed that you are taking your role as inter-species liaison so seriously.”
She blew a plume of smoke, which was whipped away immediately into the twilight sky, and peered down at my straddling the vampire, her face dispassionate. “If you need a few more minutes, we can always re-bury you,” she said dryly. “But if you’re quite done, and ready to rejoin the land of the living, you might want to take your hand out of the vampire’s pants.”
*
Mortified, confused, dazed and horrendously embarrassed. Just a few words, none of which came close to what I was feeling right then. I scuttled to my knees, still staring at Cloves and the massive bear looming against the purple evening skies around us, and only now finally noticing two other figures standing nearby, a little way off from Cloves and her pet. One of the two was the red-haired Tribal, Sofia, who was peering at me with arched eyebrows and a look of weary disdain, as though she were not remotely surprised to find a human scientist and a vampire getting hot and heavy in a buried coffin. The other person was Lucy, looking frankly terrified. My lab assistant rushed forward as soon as I saw her and grabbed my arms. I was dizzy, still blinking in the light. Where were we?
“Doc, can you stand?” she asked, her voice was shaky. “God, you’re covered in blood. What did he do to you?!”
She glared past me at the vampire still propped up on his elbows. I never would have believed Lucy could look wrathful in the face of a vampire, the creatures she so adored, but she was trembling with fury. “What did you do to her?!”
I crawled out of the metal container, which I now finally saw was some kind of storage crate, not a coffin. The industrial kind, like those used previously to ferry good across the sea, only person-sized. I rolled myself gracefully out onto the stone floor. “It’s okay, Lucy, it’s okay,” I assured her. “It’s his blood, not mine. I’m not hurt. No one hurt me.”
I stood up. The shakiness was leaving me, and although I couldn’t take my eyes from the bear, after the initial disorientation and light-blindness, I found I actually felt remarkably well, all things considered. Vampire blood will have that effect on you. I’m fairly sure I was glowing, though mainly with embarrassment. Allesandro, who, thank God, had the presence of mind to fasten his jeans and straighten his clothing, was glaring with open and wary hostility at the surreal sight of the huge bear by Veronica Cloves’ side. His neck was a red mess, but it was already healing before my eyes. Shrinking red roses closing in and disappearing in the white skin.
“Where are we?” I asked, looking from Lucy to Cloves. “I don’t know this place. How…how the hell did you find us?”
I looked around, the wind whipping my hair. We were standing on top of a long and wide expanse of
stone, banded with metal. It was black and shiny, and expertly cut, as though it were volcanic glass. It was open to the sky and ran off in both directions seemingly endlessly. To both our left and right, some thirty meters each way on this strange, wide high road, there were low stone walls made of the same obsidian stonework. Beyond that, only the deepening evening sky beyond. No buildings, no skyline.
“We’re on the wall, Doc,” Lucy said, hugging herself against the constant breeze. “Up on top. The actual wall. They…they buried you guys up here, they’d wedged this container right into the stonework, like you were just another brick.”
We were on top of the wall? I stared around, wide eyed. I had never even been close to the wall, let alone on top of it. I hadn’t even known there was a walkway on top. That at least would explain the wind. It cut across us harshly. We were higher here than the top floor of Scott Towers itself.
“Service elevator,” Cloves said, dropping her cigarette and grinding it under her heel into the flawless stonework carelessly. “I have clearance to come up here. High level Cabal clearance. Good bloody job too, or you kinky lovebirds would still be playing jenga in the wall in your little metal love nest.” She pointed at the rest of us. “None of the rest of you idiots do, so as far as I’m concerned, none of you were ever here, is that understood?”
“Cloves,” I said, as Lucy finally let go of my arm, trusting I could stand on my own. I swallowed hard a few times. My throat still tasted Allesandro’s blood. “You saved us. How? And…” I stared helplessly, wondering if I had finally lost my mind altogether. “Why…why in God’s name…is there a bear?”
“That’s not a bear,” said Allesandro. He had stood and stepped out of the container, and if he was embarrassed or concerned he didn’t show it in the least. He was staring at our rescuers with a look of undisguised loathing. The wind blew his hair back, the bruised plum-coloured sky behind him darkening with every passing minute. He would have looked quite magnificent if only he hadn’t still been wearing the ridiculous beach vest.
