Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  “It looks like a bear,” I said quietly.

  The vampire’s lip curled. “It’s the lowest kind of beast.”

  The bear growled in response, low and long, a threatening challenge. Sofia, who had kept her silence until now, stepped forward furiously. “He is the only reason you are alive, bloodsucking parasite,” she spat. “We found you almost an hour ago, we could have dug you up straight away. But it was his decision to wait until after sunset before we risked unearthing you. You don’t deserve the consideration! We should have let you burn in the sun.”

  Cloves held up her hand. “Calm down,” she said testily. “The good doctor could have been killed in any such immolation, as we discussed. We knew they were together, we couldn’t risk that.” She turned to me. “The bear tracked you to this container. Clever nose, you see. And a good job too.” She kicked the metal container, making a hollow clank. “Your tomb with a view, Harkness, was never designed to be opened. Whatever put you in there didn’t want you getting out. Ever. You definitely pissed off the wrong people.” She glanced at the bear, still standing on its hind legs a few paces from her. “Lucky we had a tin opener.”

  The bear shook its muzzle, growled again, still staring at the vampire. And then, before our eyes, it began to melt.

  Its features fell in on itself, the bulk collapsing slowly like a deflating balloon. I watched as the face rearranged with gristly clicks and pops of muscle, and the fur all over its body seemed to retract back into itself, leaving bare skin behind. In a matter of seconds, paws became hands and feet, ears descended, and the face and body, in a blink, had become humanoid.

  Kane, leader of the Tribals, stood naked by Cloves’ side, breathing heavily with the effort of the transformation. His head and body were wet and steam drifted off his chest and shoulders, a by-product of the heat caused by such a transformation. He was glaring at the vampire with as much distrust and ill grace as Allesandro gave back. But then his eyes met mine.

  “It is good to see you alive still, Doctor,” he said, his voice a deep and gravelly rasp. “We feared you dead, and that would be a loss indeed at this time. Things in our city are coming to a boil.”

  I stared slightly over his head.

  Cloves sighed. “Oh for fuck’s sake, put some clothes on,” she muttered. “Nobody wants to see a full moon tonight.”

  Sofia walked to Kane’s side dutifully, her boots snapping smartly on the volcanic glass underfoot. She ceremoniously handed the huge man a long black coat which he slipped into, nodding his grim thanks to her.

  I sat down on the floor, the dark wall beneath me. “I don’t understand what’s going on,” I said. “What are you all doing here?”

  “No. My questions first. Then yours,” Cloves snapped. “What do you know? What the hell is going on, Harkness? According to your assistant’s story here…” she flicked a dismissive thumb at Lucy, “…you turn up at her house in the middle of the night with a vampire, both of you covered in blood and shit, then you break into a museum with Oscar fucking Scott of all people, from which you then promptly disappear without a trace.” She rubbed her eyebrow rapidly with a gloved finger, as though she had a migraine. “You didn’t show up for work today, none of us could get hold of you. You had indeed been spirited away, only to turn up buried alive on top of the wall itself, and quite frankly ‘consorting’ with the undead.”

  Her mouth was a thin line. I had seen Veronica Cloves angry many a time, but this might have been her apoplectic. It was the carefully controlled fury of one who would like very much to explode. A flamethrower turned down from a roaring yellow fire to a thin blue hissing point which was much hotter and far more dangerous.

  “I want to know everything that has happened while I’ve been tied up with the press, everything you have done since I let you out of my goddamn sight. Including…” she held up a furious fingertip, wobbling slightly, “…why there has been a fucking double murder massacre and theft at the Radcliffe Camera.”

  31.

  I told Cloves everything. From going to Yellowmoon with Sofia, Allesandro’s missing vampires, the Tribal attack at the Camera and my unlikely rescue by Chase Pargate. I explained what we knew about Knight and the manuscript, and the notebooks we had found at the museum. And the Bonewalker of course, who had caught us and spirited us into the wall to seal us away and silence us.

  Cloves had been lucky to find us up here at all. Lucy, sitting by my side on the wall, explained that when we hadn’t come out of the museum by sunrise, she hadn’t known what to do. No one had come in or gone out, and she had been watching the doors from the car for almost an hour. She had done as I asked her to and called both Cloves and Kane.

  “Your message,” Kane said. “That you had found my kin, those whom I had sent to investigate these deaths laid at our doors. Thank you for finding them, Doctor. I am sorry that you had to kill them, but I understand they were not…themselves.” He sighed. “Your other words, that we were past blankets. This tells to me all I need to know.”

  “I don’t understand.” I said.

  “When the Europeans first went to America," Kane explained. “They found people already there. Natives who were most inconvenient, as we Tribals are inconvenient to you good humans in this city. Rather than drive them out with open war, the Europeans killed these people in the most cowardly way. Coming in the guise of friendship.” He looked sidelong at Cloves. “Much as your Cabal comes to us with negotiations and offerings of deals,” he snorted.

  “They brought gifts for the native tribes, amongst them blankets and beddings.” His eyes narrowed. “Deliberately rife with disease. Diseases against which the natives had no natural defences. Pox, plague. They wiped out whole colonies this way. Men, women and children. They were gifts.” He spread his hands. “Gifts designed to kill and clear the way.”

  Cloves rolled her eyes. “Cabal have not offered you or yours any blankets,” she said. “This is paranoia talk.”

  “They have offered gifts, solutions,” Kane rumbled. “Which I did not trust, as I told to my Tribals before I sent them to look into these deaths.”

  “What solutions?” Cloves demanded to know.

  “A new home,” Kane replied. “An alternate site for my people, just outside the city walls. Not ideal of course, but larger than the Botanical, and, we were assured, still well fortified against the Pale.” He looked at me, his face stern. “We were offered free reign and ownership of the Harcourt Arboretum. Relocation you see, Doctor. Most convenient. Everybody wins, right? Marlin Scott would have his power plant within the city walls and we would have the old site, where the previous power plant stands. For free. To make our own.”

  The Tribal leader looked carefully at all of us assembled on the wall. “This place…is death,” he said grimly. “Did Cabal truly believe my people would be so naïve? That we did not realise that once outside of the city walls, the doors of New Oxford would close forever to us? We would be outcast, forgotten. Cut off from the city. And what then? When the fences and fortifications of the Harcourt site finally fail? When the pressing of the Pale against those walls is too much?” He looked from Sofia to Cloves. “Would we be allowed back into the city? Offered sanctuary if the Pale breach that place? Would aid come from the human quarter? I wonder.”

  He stalked over to the wall’s edge. Staring out over the smooth rampart out into the dark countryside beyond the city, beyond the civilised world we knew, such as it was, and out into the wilderness beyond. “No. No help would come to save my people from the Pale. We would be left on a reservation to die. Forgotten. Out of sight. Men, women and children. This gift of ‘land’, this compromise, was nothing but a poisoned blanket.”

  Cloves looked confused. “I’ve heard nothing of this offer,” she insisted, shaking her head.

  “It came from higher than the likes of you, press-officer Servant Cloves,” Kane said. “The council themselves.”

  The council? I thought. The five dreary old farts who had interviewed me at the
Liver? Was this why Coldwater had enlisted me as GO liaison then, because this previous offer of theirs had fallen through? Talks, as far as they could take them, that had broken down.

  “I told your little friend on the phone, that if this message was true,” Kane said to me. “Then open war was coming. No more tricks, no more bargaining. Just death. She told me you had not returned from the museum. She was very concerned for you. I bade her call someone she could trust.”

  I looked at Lucy, dumbfounded. “And you called…Cloves?”

  “I’m standing right here, Harkness,” Cloves said with pursed lips. “If I had feelings, you’d be crushing them.” She glared at Lucy. “And no, she didn’t call me. Your limp little lab rat here called that other dogsbody of yours who works at BL1.”

  “His name is Griff,” I said sharply.

  “Luckily, I was there too, stupidly awaiting your return,” Cloves said, flicking her hand at my concerns. “I took the call over from your boy and Lucy here was good enough to tell me everything.”

  Lucy looked mortified. “Sorry, Doc,” she said to me. “But…she is a Cabal Servant after all.” Her lip wobbled. “I was so worried about you. And Allesandro, and that blonde guy who went in the museum with you. None of you came out. I didn’t know what else to do. I told her I’d just spoken to Kane.”

  “After which I arranged to meet the Tribals myself,” Cloves said. “Strictly off the clock you understand. Seeing as you had gone so rudely AWOL and this furry hulk here seems to believe that you are the only one able to locate the missing students from the university.” She shot Kane a sidelong look. “Why he’s so invested in our educated youth, he didn’t say…but I can guess…I’m not entirely stupid.”

  “You met with Kane and managed to find out where we were buried? How?” I asked.

  “I had a transmitter implanted in you as soon as you began working for Cabal,” Cloves explained. “Those little security checks at the Lab. Very handy. Shame you had to find out really.”

  I stared at her aghast. “You put a tracer in me?! Without asking?”

  “Yes, well, you would have said no. And even Cabal can’t breach the sanctity of a person’s privacy if they refuse access. All that basic human rights bullshit. Better just not to ask.” She noticed my expression. “Oh, get off your high horse, Harkness. You’d be deader than disco if we hadn’t.”

  “I could smell this one too.” Kane thrust his chin at the vampire. “You should not associate with such…false creatures, Doctor Harkness. They are monsters of deceit and manipulation.”

  “You call me two-faced?” Allesandro sneered. “At least I don’t change mine. Would you rather trust a monster who cannot decide if it is a person or a beast?”

  Cloves held up her hands in irritation. “Gentlemen. Please. I assure you, absolutely nobody here is interested in your pissing contest. We found you. End of story. What we need to know is who sealed you away in the first place? Who the hell is behind this?”

  “Tribals attacked us in the Camera basement,” Allesandro said. “It doesn’t look good for you, Kane.”

  “My people do not work with Bonewalkers,” Kane snarled. “Those things are worse even that your kind.” He pointed at Cloves. “Her people however, do work with them.”

  I rubbed at my temples. “Yes, yes, yes,” I said irritably. “Or it was the vampires in the dining room with the candlestick, I get it, there’s no love lost between factions here.” It was chilly up here above the city in the constant wind. It made the tails of Kane’s coat flutter alarmingly. “Look,” I said. “We can all sit pointing fingers at each until the cows come home, but it’s not getting us anywhere. Knight’s notebook showed that he and Amanda Bishop were scared. Something was going to happen, and happen soon. Something big and bad. Death reigns on high or something like that. We have to find out what and where, and stop it.”

  “It was a reign of death,” the vampire said.

  I joined Kane at the wall’s edge. I had never seen over it before. Had never even glimpsed the world beyond our city. I was curious. On one side, I could see all of New Oxford, the vast city enclosed in the wall, a bowl filled with buildings, laid out below us and lighting up with streetlights and countless windows in the falling darkness. We were on the south side, I discovered looking north across the city. From the giddy heights of our vantage point, I could see the Isis, weaving through the town, Folly Bridge, tiny and distant, where we had found our corpse, and farthest away the gleaming shards of Portmeadow and Scott Towers. We were much taller than any building here, and around everything, like a tall ribbon of night, wound the titanic wall on which we now stood. It was a unique perspective. It made the city look like food in a bowl.

  “We’re not safe,” I remembered, quoting from the notebook. “We’re being corralled.” I saw the Bonewalker in my mind again. The ones who built these walls, the walls that kept all of humanity safe within.

  “Who knew you were at the Ashmolean last night?” Cloves asked. “Who could have sent a Bonewalker?”

  I turned and looked at her. “Only Oscar,” I said. “But he was with us. He got us in.” I looked from Cloves to Lucy. “Do we know where he is?”

  Cloves clearly didn’t care. “No idea,” she said callously. “Never bothered getting him implanted. Beast-man here couldn’t smell him at all outside the museum. Someone must have known you were there. Are you sure you weren’t followed? What about this maniac claiming to be Chase Pargate? Could he have tailed you from the library?”

  I shook my head. “No, he wasn’t there, only us, Lucy and…” I stopped, blinking.

  “What is it?” Allesandro said.

  “Director Coldwater,” I said. “I’d forgotten, she called to arrange another GO liaison meeting with the Tribals. She said she’d been trying to find me and asked if I was at home.”

  Cloves raised both eyebrows, looking most put out. “Director Coldwater called you, personally?”

  “I told her…I told her I was at the museum,” I stuttered. “She’s the only one, the only person who knew we were there.”

  Kane folded his arms. “This Coldwater woman,” he said. “She is on this council of Cabal?”

  I nodded. I couldn’t bring myself to believe it though. She couldn’t be mixed up in all this. Surely? She seemed to genuinely want a resolution between the species. She had created my job specifically for that reason. I said as much aloud.

  Sofia sneered. “Oh yes, how convenient and what a terrible shock,” she said. “She creates this job for you, yes, in the wake of the beastly murders. There is much song and dance and publicity about your first arranged meeting with our people, and what then happens?” She mimed an explosion.

  “The car bomb?” Cloves said, frowning.

  “An orchestrated tragedy,” Sofia said. “How better to turn up the heat on our people? Organise a martyr. A Cabal-sponsored martyr. This Coldwater was probably furious you survived and has been trying to kill you ever since.” She looked to Kane. “This, my alpha, is why we cannot trust humans. They turn even on themselves.”

  “Coldwater did arrange the transport that day,” I said, still unwilling to believe it. “And…she told me later that she oversaw the clearing of the wreckage afterwards personally. After the bomb.” I looked to Cloves. “Is that normal?”

  Cloves looked concerned. “Not remotely, not for someone of her level. She’s a little more hands-on than the other directors, I’ll admit. But Coldwater has always been most vocal about finding resolutions for the GO problem, for a cure for the Pale virus. She has a personal interest, a son I believe, killed in the Pale wars. It’s not common knowledge, but I doubt she ever really recovered.” Her hand went absently to her jet black choker. “We all have our scars from the wars. And we deal with them in our own ways. Coldwater has always strived to ensure that no one should ever again have to go through what we did in the wars, losing people. She’s been hands-on ever since, much more than the rest of the council, but…”

  “But
,” said Allesandro. “There’s no denying it would put her in the perfect position to deny that my two vampires were also destroyed in the car bomb, would it not?”

  I didn’t want to believe it. I held up my hands. “Just…stop,” I said. Everyone looked at me expectantly. “This is all just speculation, and the truth is, even if Director Coldwater is behind the killings for some reasons, the missing students, and this whole Roger Bacon mumbo jumbo, it doesn’t make a bloody bit of difference. All we know for sure is that something is going to happen, bad, for everyone.” I looked between Allesandro and Kane. “All kinds of everyone,” I said pointedly. “We have to find out what.”

  “‘Crescentmoon’,” I said to Cloves. “Cabal are fond of codenames. Are you sure you’ve never heard it mentioned?”

  Cloves shook her head, looking out into the night. “No, and trust me, I hear most things. Especially things I’m not supposed to. It’s why I’ve survived so long in my role. If Crescentmoon isn’t a Tribal death-cult, which was my guess, no offence…” She glanced at Kane, “…then I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a Cabal programme I’ve ever come across.”

  Lucy shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Don’t you think we should get down off the wall?” she suggested. “It’s freezing up here, and surely someone’s going to find out we’re trespassing.”

  And go where? I thought. Where was this reign of death coming from? Where were the missing students, Kane’s daughter included, being held? Where did our diseased, faceless corpse come from in the first place?

  “I agree,” Allesandro said. “I have to get back to Sanctum, I need rest.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “You’re…leaving?”

  He gave me a small smile, his hand cupping his neck. “I am somewhat…drained, Doctor. You have taken more than your share tonight. In a few hours, I will be back to full strength, but until then, I need to rest. I’ll call to my aide to collect me from the base of the wall.”