Vampire State of Mind (4 page)

‘He was just …' I rubbed my hands up and down my arms as though trying to remove any molecules that Malfaire might have touched. ‘Weird.' The envelope contained a classy, gold-printed invitation to attend ‘The Dead Run, Thursday at 8, Hagg Baba restaurant. Jessica Grant plus One.' ‘I wonder why Zan didn't just post the invite. Or mention it when we were talking … oh, no, silly me, it might mean he had to sound like he was inviting me himself and that would be dangerously close to sociability for Zan.'

‘Zan's got social phobia.' Liam brought up the tracker programme on my screen again.

‘It's a good job the Troubles are over. Can you imagine a vampire hunting on the streets who hates actually having to have contact with people? He
would
starve to death.'

‘And who on earth am I going to get to come with me as my Plus One? That sort of thing always has press attending and I don't want to be photographed standing on my own, they might give me some “comical” caption like “Liaison once again without a liaison”.'

‘That really upset you, didn't it?'

‘It was a Charity Ball! I had a lovely dress on and all I got was that stupid subtitle.'

‘I'll go with you.' He lowered his head so that his hair hid his blush and coughed a bit, then said, ‘I mean, like, as a works outing kind of thing. Not as, like, a partner, thing. It would save money – we could call it our works Christmas party. Eight months early. To beat the rush.'

I patted his arm. ‘Nice thought. But Sarah would
kill
you, and quite rightly so – why should she get babysitting duties by default while you go off and have a night out? It's okay, I'll think of someone to ask.'

‘There's always Sil.' Liam kept his face averted.

‘I'd rather take my chances with the humorous tagline.'

‘Yeah, okay.' He stared at the screen for a few moments. ‘Exactly what goes on at this Run thing?'

‘I thought you read the handout?'

‘Yep. I'm just checking that
you
did.'

‘They pick names of volunteers out of a hat, the runners have to make their way down a course and the winner gets the honours. Do I get extra points for mentioning that it's taken place every year since the Pact was signed?' I looked at the back of Liam's head as he read through the list appearing on the screen of all the incomers' names. ‘Liam.'

‘Mmm?' He clicked the mouse over a name, nodding when ‘permitted' flagged up.

‘That guy, that Malfaire, were you getting anything from him?'

Liam swivelled the chair. ‘You, too? Thank God. I didn't want to say anything, thought I must be losing my touch. I've been sitting here worried to death that you'd chuck me out if you found out.'

‘I'd never chuck you out, you're the only person who can get the computers to work. And, you're right, I wasn't getting anything either.'

We shared a round-eyed look. ‘And – tell me if I'm talking out-of-turn here, Jessie, but you're the best I've ever seen at scanning the Otherworlders. You even knew about that Ian, and he'd fooled a whole television crew. You never get it wrong, you never even mistake one form for another. I'm an amateur in comparison.'

‘Are you after a rise or something? 'Cos if you are, a mention of my ravishing beauty never offends.'

He grinned. ‘It's true though, isn't it?'

I shrugged. ‘It's a knack.' I began to pace the floor of the office; it didn't take long, there's barely room for Liam, me, two desks and our computers. ‘So, any thoughts?'

Liam steepled his fingers and rested his chin on his hands. ‘Not vamp, we'd be able to tell. Didn't seem to think much of them, either. A were?'

I shook my head. ‘Nah. Too slick. They at least
feel
half-human, this was way beyond. Could you do a computer search for me?'

‘I can try, but I think this might be a bit outside Google's parameters. Might have to hack in to Zan's system.' Pause. ‘Again. I'll have a poke around, see what I can turn up. You off out?'

I grabbed my coat and hunted round the office for my mobile. ‘Thought I'd go and ask Rach if she fancies coming out on Thursday night. Then I might just take a turn around the streets, see who's out and about – someone might know something about our mystery man.'

‘Like his phone number, perhaps?'

I threw my mobile at his head. ‘I take it all back, you've suddenly become dispensable. Anyway, someone should be out there checking up on all this movement. There's a lot of kudos goes attached to getting chosen and I don't think the organisers care overmuch about whether or not the runner has all his paperwork properly signed and his movement permit in order.' And besides, I wanted to get some fresh air. Our ‘mystery man' had left me feeling as though I'd been in the vicinity of some kind of chemical accident, all clammy-skinned, and even my teeth felt dirty. Plus the little shop around the corner sold HobNobs, and Liam
still
hadn't got the message that real meals should be at least 50% biscuit.

The streets were oddly quiet, given that we'd more than ten times our quota of Otherworlders flittering about. Admittedly most of them wouldn't rear their heads until after dark. The zombies would all be at work, ghouls
couldn't
go out in the light and the vampires would be waiting for twilight. Not because of any aversion to the sun – it turned out that Bram Stoker had met the world's only vampire with a photosensitive skin condition – but because the buggers were so concerned with being cool that they spent the daylight hours getting their look
just right
. I idly speculated on whether Sil had ever got his Gucci back from the cleaners; he had looked
fabulous
in that suit. Particularly when he'd let his hair grow long. The beginnings of a smile tried to part my lips at the memory, but I fought back as I felt my heart squeeze and the familiar sensation that my lungs were full of pins. I was
so
over him. Course I was.

I wandered around the narrow maze of streets in front of the Minster. The usual crowds of tourists were clotting around the sights of interest, and a party on the Vampire Walk were being entertained by a tour guide dressed as Dracula. A casual scan of the area turned up nothing unusual; a pair of werewolves prowling along together in human form greeted me with a smile and an indication towards their bag of butchers' offal – it being easier to shop for your predilections rather than risk going hunting and catching the inevitable silver bullet.

Talking of which – a figure in a long brown coat straightened up from where he'd been leaning against the wall of Betty's Tearooms, lighting a cigarette. ‘Good afternoon.'

Great. A Hunter. Not a local, they all slouched about in designer suits and Converse trainers, this guy was working the full Van Helsing, down to the open-necked shirt and uncombed hair. He even had a monogrammed cigarette lighter, which put him beyond the merely poser and right out into ‘look at me!!!' territory. I'd give him about twenty minutes against one of the real hard boys. Still, nothing to be gained by being rude, so I slowed down.

‘You're Jessica Grant, aren't you? Liaison? Thought I recognised you from the ident list we got handed … I'm just on my way down to Enforcement – should have gone in and introduced myself this morning but things kind of took off on me. Ken Symes. I'm from Dorset, came yesterday accompanying a bunch of monsters up for the Run.'

I didn't know vampire Hunters could be called Ken. I thought they only recruited blokes with butch names like Grant or Jez. And he called the Otherworlders monsters, which earned him minus several million points with me. And, yes, he should have gone and introduced himself at Enforcement HQ. They were almost as cagey about incoming Hunters as we were about Otherworlders: the Hunters ‘pose' level was nearly as high as the vamps' and there's only so much admiration to go round.

‘Yes, that's me.' We shook hands while he smoked at me. Minus another few points.

Ken swirled his coat and let the wind ruffle his naff rock-video hair. ‘Ah well. Nice to have met you, heard you're well in with the city vamp, might score me a few brownie points with the bad guys.' He dropped the stub of cigarette on the cobbles and ground it out with his heel (good job Ken wasn't going for my Man Of the Year award), turned and headed off down one of the narrow alleyways. He wore built-up shoes, the big wuss.

I watched him. He walked enough steps to think the half-light that filtered between the buildings would conceal him then, with a quick glance over a shoulder, headed through the door into the local branch of
Specsavers
.

I tried not to giggle. Hunters had their work cut out maintaining an image; it must be hard never being seen to do those things that ordinary mortals did without thinking. And then I bridled at his words ‘well in with the city vamp'. What
exactly
did he mean by that, considering that I would quite cheerfully have offered to tranq Sil right this second had I heard that he'd so much as mentioned being slightly peckish within four miles of a human?

Then I cast around in another mental sweep of the area. Everyone seemed to be behaving unnaturally well, probably didn't want to risk anything upsetting the status quo and getting the Run cancelled. It was a big thing in the Otherworld calendar, according to … well, I had my sources. Or used to have. Maybe that's what Ken had meant – maybe he hadn't heard about our … falling out.

And this time I couldn't stop myself from conjuring an image of Sil's face. Steel-grey eyes, determined unsmiling mouth and hair so dark it made crows look as though they could have tried harder. My insides gave a little shiver of pain. So, here I was, living a miserably chaste life and he was out there screwing harder than a carpenter with a lot of shelves to put up. Sometimes – and I would have punched something if I hadn't been standing in the middle of York's main shopping street – life was just plain
wrong
.

There. Again.
Sil raised his head from the pillow and stared blearily at unfamiliar curtains, letting the twisting in his gut subside. His mouth was clagged with the dry residue of bottled blood, powdery instead of the rich aftertaste you got with the real thing, and he wrinkled his nose.
Should have gone for it last night, Sil.
He turned to meet the blue, but less-than-innocent, eyes of the girl from the club, feeling his fangs sliding down, locking into place before the sensation caught up with him again. That odd jerking awareness deep inside, as though his demon was writhing and flipping through his chest on a hormone-burn.
Jessie?

He let his mind run the connection, feeling the white heat of it dragging inside his head like a parachute, slowing his reactions.
Could she feel it? No, too human. And there's the problem, isn't it? Jessica Grant, with her human outlook, her human preconceptions …

‘Hey, big boy, are you going to bite me, or what?' The question brought him back, back to this rather sordid little hotel room, back to the blonde girl with the whisky-breath.

‘Are you sure you want it?' He made his voice light, ran his tongue over his fangs, playing her.

‘Well, it's what you do, isn't it? Drink blood?'

And that uncertainty was enough. His fangs retracted. ‘Can we just have sex?'

The relief in her sigh told him all he needed to know. ‘Like last night? Oh
yeah …
'

And as he turned to her the regret burned a hole in his gut.
Wrong woman. But when the right one doesn't want me, and my demon wants the lust … what am I supposed to do? Head for a carpentry shop and hope to catch a renegade splinter through the heart? No. Make a life, a half-life, as best I can. Just as after the bite, when the demon took hold of my body and mind. Adapt. Cope. Survive.

‘Your mum rang.' Rachel was at work, stacking boxes of hair-dye on the shelves in the little chemist's shop. That's the shop that was little, not the chemist: he was six foot ten and looked like he'd got some werewolf in his ancestry. ‘Said something about popping round this evening. They're going to the pictures, apparently.'

Great. That would mean more questions, and I'd better remember to wear long sleeves, as I'd acquired some spectacular bruises falling over Daim last night. ‘Lovely. Is that her and Dad?'

‘And your sister, I think.' Rach slotted the last ‘Shock Pink' into place and turned to the toothpaste. ‘It'll be nice. You haven't seen them for ages.'

Because they always ask after my job, that's why, and I don't know what to tell them. Although they're good, broadminded people they seem to have a bit of a problem over me working with demons and suchlike. I'm not sure if it's prejudice or fear – are they the same thing? – or the protective parental instinct, but they're all really sensitive to mentions of the Otherworld. Maybe that's why they've chosen to live so far out in the countryside. They pretend that it's for the rural quiet, and Dad loves his smallholding so much that maybe it's true, but it doesn't stop me suspecting that the very low density of Otherworlders outside the cities has a huge appeal.

They've got a barghest living in a lane not far from their house. I haven't dared to tell them yet.

‘Fancy coming out on Thursday night?' I leaned casually back against toothbrushes and floss. ‘There's a bit of a do on.'

‘What sort?' Rach had assumed an air of uninterest, but had frozen in the fluoride section.

‘Work. It's at the Hagg Baba, thought you might like to come, but, if you're not bothered, Liam said – '

‘I'll come!' She stood up so suddenly that a little rain of dental-care products resulted. ‘Will there be, you know,
vampires
and things?'

Rach lost both her parents and her older brother in 1986, the year when the Troubles reached their height, two years before the Treaty was signed. She was four. Always maintained that she didn't remember her family, didn't remember those years of fear, of ordinary citizens armed and never chancing nightfall. But sometimes I wondered … was there something buried deep that accounted for her fascination with the Otherworlders? She persisted in seeing vampires as romantic double-edged creatures, haunters of the margins of life and misunderstood heroes.

‘There will, almost certainly, be vampires and things,' I said, assuredly. ‘It's sort of the point.'

‘Wow. No, honestly Jessie, wow. You don't usually invite me to your work do's, why now? And what shall I
wear
?'

‘That's because the nearest thing we've ever had to a works do so far is when Liam and I had to go to the Guildhall to get our wrists slapped over breaking the old tracker programme. We don't even get a Christmas party. Well, I make mince pies and Liam does his Widow Twankey impressions, but that's as close as we get.'

I ducked, suddenly, under cover of the shelf. Over Rach's shoulder I'd seen Harry and Eleanor come in to the shop, uniformed and armed. From the way they were leaning over the pharmacist's counter and talking urgently I didn't think they'd come in for Tampax and aspirin. Harry was scanning the place with his detector while Eleanor had slipped behind the counter, showing the pharmacist the readings on her hand-held, trying to do so inconspicuously whilst they pretended to be consulting about a prescription. It wasn't fooling me, not with the weaponry they were carrying.

‘Jessie?' Rach bent down beside me. ‘It's all right, if you don't want her to see you I can smuggle you out the back way. It goes into the alley, and you can get down to the river from there.'

‘It's not that.' I crawled on hands and knees around the end of the shelf and hunkered down behind the toilet rolls heaped near the window.

Rach followed, carrying the large cardboard box she'd taken the hair-dye out of and placing it to conceal me from view. ‘What is it, then?'

‘Look at their
eyes
!' I glanced once, quickly, then ducked back down.

Rach obediently stared at Harry. ‘He's quite cute, isn't he?' she whispered. ‘Are you sure they're not dating?'

‘
What?
' I pushed my head over the bog-roll parapet. ‘No, their
eyes
. They're … wrong.'

As Harry swept his detector once more around the inside of the shop, I looked again. His eyes, normally a sunny sky blue, were clouded. Almost as though something else was looking out from behind them. Eleanor's were the same; a kind of hard, unfocused darkness instead of human pupils.

‘This is so not right.' I fumbled for my mobile. ‘Need to get a message to Liam …'

But it was too late. Eleanor nodded Harry's way; he pulled out his weapon, standard Enforcement issue – energy ray, silver bullets, the lot – swung round to face a corner and yelled, ‘Enforcement! Get visible, get down on the floor!'

The entire shop went silent, then exploded into action as customers panicked together, packing towards the door. Eleanor and the pharmacist, plus another assistant, shepherded them outside on to the pavement. They stayed outside but Eleanor came back in. Her eyes were stony.

‘Anything?' She called over to Harry, who was still facing the corner, weapon drawn.

‘Not yet.'

‘She's here. I know it.'

At that point I stood up. ‘What are you doing?'

Harry swung around to face me, but didn't lower his weapon. ‘Jessica.'

Behind my back I was making little ‘down' motions, indicating to Rach to crouch behind the box which, from the anxious bobbing at my shoulder, she was ignoring. ‘Harry, there's nothing in here.'

Then Eleanor waded in, her gun half-raised at hip level. ‘The readings say there is a Shadow. Our informant says it's a Shadow. It is our duty to apprehend it.'

‘Ellie.' I tried to keep my voice level. ‘The only things in this shop right now that aren't cosmetic or health related, are you and me. There is no Shadow. Your instruments are wrong.'

‘We have information that a Shadow is hiding in this shop.' Harry's answer was automatic, like he'd been programmed. ‘Shadows are negative energy. They will sap the life out of living creatures. It's our duty to remove dangers to the public.'

‘Harry, listen to me. You were looking for someone, I heard you say “she's here.” Was it me? Did you come in here looking for me? And if you did, then there's no Shadow. Which was it?'

There was a beat, during which I really thought the logical approach had worked, and then their guns moved. Both came up to shoulders and rested there, trained on me. ‘Are you assisting an Otherworlder to resist arrest?'

Shock made me giggle. ‘It's such a good job you don't lisp.' I couldn't seriously believe that Harry, or even Eleanor, would use a gun against me for doing nothing more than telling them they were wrong. But then I looked in their eyes again and it wasn't Harry or Eleanor looking back. Their pupils were distended and flickering.