Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1 (27 page)

‘There was no
reason
,’ she blurted, terribly distressed, ‘no need for her to be seeing that
thing
. There were humans aplenty to play with – it’s simple enough, a good life, follow the rules, don’t draw attention. Even an
ordinary life as a siren is still so much more than the most extraordinary existence of a mortal.’

‘But she wanted something else,’ I stated, wondering what ‘that
thing
’ was. I understood that sometimes ‘enough’ never was.

‘She wouldn’t obey, just like those who refuse to let the old eating habits die – and just like them she has brought catastrophe
upon us. She kept seeing him, and we argued, she and I, so
terribly
, the last time, and we never spoke again.’

‘Serena.’ Had Serena been stubborn, or had she simply fallen in love? And with what?

‘My own daughter did this to us.
Mine!
’

‘Do you know who he is?’

‘His name, when he walks the earth, is Tobit.’ She looked at me and smiled, tight as a pulled bowstring. ‘We don’t socialise
with his kind.’

‘What kind, Eurycleia? You’ve got to help me out here.’

‘The perverts, the watchers, the voyeurs.’ Her bitterness soured the air. ‘The writers, the note-takers, the self-righteous,
the law-givers. The ones left behind.’

I threw my hands up in despair. ‘Still not getting it, Eurycleia.’

‘Angels! He’s an
angel
,’ she yelled at last. ‘God’s shit, they are, yet they think themselves better than everything else in creation!’

I knew very little about angels except this: they don’t like us. For all the Good Book paints them as glorious deliverers
of tidings of comfort and joy and protectors of the innocent; for all the illustrations of handsome, calm-faced men glowing
at you from the pages of Improving Children’s Literature, they thought we were a little lower than insects. The Heavenly Host,
according to legend, at least, were the right hand of the Deity, doing some of the Lord’s creational buffing and polishing,
and even – apparently – some of the actual heavy lifting: the angels spoke, and words became worlds. They had beauty. They
had power. They were not just given dominion over the earth and the sea and the air, they were given wings – and let us not
forget the flaming swords for vengeance and all the smiting.

Mortals, on the other hand, were made last and least perfect: an amalgam of clay and stolen ribs. We were the spoilt-and-not-very-bright
kids as far as the angelic hordes were concerned, the most oblivious and yet the most privileged. We warranted a sort of low-level
contempt; they didn’t like us, but at least we didn’t
offend
them, not so terribly. In the greater scheme of things, we were
tolerable
, the way ants are tolerable.

The thing was, as belief in an Almighty deity declined, so the angels began to diminish too. They no longer covered the globe
as they once had. They needed places where large crowds of the faithful
gathered, sending nourishing waves of worship upwards – although it didn’t matter what
flavour
; faith was faith, after all. So St Peter’s, St Paul’s, Lourdes, Mecca, Jerusalem, the Bible Belt, Tibet – in fact, most capital
cities with decent-sized populations – generally had one or two angels hanging around. They were a bit like sirens: the piety
ecosystem could only support so many of them. Being dependent on
us
might not make them happy, but mostly that was resentment, not an active hatred.

They didn’t like the Weyrd things either, though they tended to ignore them. But at least one celestial being had managed
to put aside natural enmity long enough to get close – in a Biblical sense – to Serena. Was he on his own? How long had he
been in the city? Long enough to make a baby, it looked like, but how long before that? Did he have Calliope now? Maybe that
was what Ligeia meant when she’d said the little girl was safe . . . Had he repented whatever impulse had attracted him to
Serena and turned all murdery, or was there something else entirely? If anything could kill a siren, I guessed it could be
an angel . . . but I came back to
why
? Eurycleia’s hatred of this Tobit hinted at a far deeper loathing . . .

‘Great, just great, because things have not been bizarre enough.’ I clenched my fists. ‘Don’t suppose you know where to find
him?’

Eurycleia shook her head and straightened, clearly closing herself off, regretting having shown her pain and her rage and
her shame. There’d be nothing more from her, not tonight. I turned and walked away.

‘You’ll keep me informed,’ she demanded.

I didn’t bother to respond. She wasn’t the boss of me.

*

‘So.’

‘So,’ I repeated. My eyes felt full of grit after yet another sleepless
night. I glanced at Ziggi, who had beads of sweat forming on his forehead in spite of the chill. I knew how he felt. Bela,
though still pale, was his normal immaculate self, poker face firmly in place once more. He didn’t say anything, and he certainly
wasn’t sweating. He just stared at the house, which was impossible to distinguish from a shit-heap. I’d filled them in on
my encounters from the night before, which might have been why we were all a bit nervy. Things were piling up – and not just
bodies but
nasty
things.

The neighbourhood used to be a good one, but it had been devastated by the deluge of a few years back and was taking a long
time to recover. Thanks to hefty insurance payouts, most of the very expensive houses on that bend of the river had been renovated
to within an inch of their lives and had then been sold on by gleeful owners to folk who actually believed all that hype about
‘once-in-a-century’ floods. Buyers had been tempted with colourful paint jobs, sparkly new kitchens and polished floors, and
sometimes it had worked and someone decided the bargain was worth the risk. But a lot of these abodes hadn’t been snapped
up; instead, they’d been left standing empty, their families long-gone to higher ground. The houses looked all bright and
shiny, like kids scrubbed up at the orphanage, desperately hoping someone would take a chance on them and love them.

But
this
place was decidedly unloved, and what’s more, it looked like it didn’t want to be loved, thank you very much. Even out on
the footpath I could smell the damp, earthy stink of rot. The house was high-set, reached by an ornate but sturdy staircase
at the front, though some of the steps were now missing and there were gaps in the verandah rails where palings had disappeared.
Someone had hosed the whole place off at some point and the French doors on the ground level had been boarded up, but the
walls were the faded,
cracked colour of mud, and around the base was a nasty kind of black-brown layer that looked almost like it was trying to
pull the building down.

Upstairs was another wide verandah that ran around the whole structure, with more French doors and wide bay windows, also
boarded over. The front door was shut, and that was noteworthy because last time we were here it had been left hanging open
after Ziggi and Bela had carried me out. My leg ached at the memory. Then again, maybe it wasn’t so noteworthy – a good strong
breeze could have blown it closed, or a concerned neighbour might have tried to be helpful . . . although it was worth remembering
that the last time we’d been here there’d been a definite lack of those in the vicinity.

‘Looks different in the daylight,’ Ziggi commented.

‘Not better, though.’

‘No,’ he agreed.

I thought it was telling that our fearless leader hadn’t put a stop to the procrastination party and charged on ahead. He
spoke now, his first words all morning, surprising me. ‘V, you don’t have to do this, you know. We can take care of it.’

It was such an incredibly tempting offer that I almost salivated. But after a moment, I said, ‘Thanks, Bela, but if I don’t
do this now I will never be able to walk anywhere dark and scary ever again.’ I pushed away from the cab and walked up the
garden path of blue-grey pressed concrete. Determined weeds were already poking through its weakest points. The trees in the
yard looked like they’d been badly buffeted by the flood-waters and never really recovered; they leaned to one side as if
drunk. The ‘lawn’ stood thigh-high. If it had been summer I’d have been tiptoeing for fear of snakes.

Behind me reluctant footfalls sounded as my companions trailed
after me. I stopped at the bottom of the staircase and lifted one boot onto the first step, then bent forward and pretended
to retie the laces, although I was actually checking to make sure the Boatman’s knife was still there, ensconced in its sheath.
My heart was going a mile a minute and adrenalin heated me up as surely as an open fire. Then I moved fast, because if I didn’t,
my nerve would break and I’d be bolting down the street like a howling cartoon character. It also made Ziggi and Bela increase
their own pace, and by the time my hand was reaching for the tarnished doorknob they too had reached the verandah.

I gave the door a push, and it surprised me by not squeaking. A pungent rush of decay rose to greet us as we stood shoulder
to shoulder at the entrance and peered in. It was unexpectedly light too, pouring in through the doors at the back. The boards
that had been nailed there last time had been torn off and thrown across the enormous deck. The interior had originally been
a triumph of open-plan design: the left-hand side the lounge, dining room and kitchen, each large space once defined by the
furniture that was no longer there. All that was left in the kitchen was the long chef’s island, and above it a stainless
steel rack where pots and pans used to hang. To the right, three doorless gaps ruptured the wall, leading into huge ex-bedrooms.
Bela flicked on his torch and shone it across the debris to give us that extra bit of clarity. It certainly looked like there
was a lot more garbage on the floorboards than last time.

‘After you,’ I said, gesturing. My gung-ho had been exhausted – and besides, Bela held a hefty Maglite that doubled very nicely
as a cudgel. I moved behind him, and Ziggi brought up the rear. I’d seen him take his Taser out of the glove box, but I wasn’t
sure how much good it would do against whatever was – or hopefully
wasn’t
– there. Stepping inside, I felt the craquelure of dried mud under my Docs.
I was a little surprised to see there were paintings still hanging, crooked on their hooks, brown tidemarks partway up some
of the canvases.

The only out-of-the-ordinary thing was in the back bedroom: a stained mattress that hadn’t been there previously, with a hillock
of rubbish and dirt and twigs, looking like an outsized nest. Bits of it had been compressed, presumably by the weight of
a heavy body.

‘That’s the same kind of thing I found in Donovan Baker’s bed,’ I said. ‘Except bigger.’

Bela’s head swung towards me, his gaze questioning, and I remembered I’d kept that information back. I’d been trying not to
overwhelm him after he’d discovered the Greenills were gone. But he didn’t attempt to extract more from me, not then. I moved
closer and crouched down, then, grabbing a thin branch that looked marginally less grubby than the rest, poked about in the
mound. I was about to give up when I saw a glimmer of gold picked out by the beam of Bela’s flashlight. I dug a bit more and
managed to hook the thing. I held it up.

It was a Rolex, that deep almost greenish gold, a traditional design best suited for a slim wrist – not really something a
young man would buy for himself, but rather a gift imposed by an older man, perhaps a father. I flipped it over, checking
for an inscription. No warm sentiments, no message, just the name: Donovan Baker, and a date two years ago; his sixteenth
birthday present, probably worth more than Ziggi’s cab, and discarded, neither needed nor wanted, and no longer fitting on
a slender wrist in a life newly remade.

The knoll on the mattress heaved and gave a squeak—

It was only by sheer force of will that I kept myself from scaling the walls and clinging to the ceiling. I half-staggered
to my feet and was pulled back by Bela and Ziggi as three of the biggest rats I’d ever
seen burst forth, protesting the disturbance – and probably also the theft of their shiny-shiny-pretty-pretty. They reared
up on hind legs, a nightmare soundtrack of screeching erupting from their toothy mouths. Ziggi hit one with a bolt from the
Taser and the other two scampered away through a hole in the corner, leaving behind the scent of singed rat and the echo of
their fury.

‘We need to check downstairs,’ said Bela.

I groaned. ‘I knew you were going to say that.’

We didn’t get far, just halfway down the internal staircase at the end of the kitchen. The sound of squeaking was overwhelming,
and when Bela angled the Maglite towards what used to be a family room, he lit up a jumping, writhing sea of fur: rat city.

Everyone has their limits and we’d found ours.

Outside in the cold sunshine, the air was decidedly fresher and the sensation of having travelled to an outer suburb of hell
slowly lessened. We all sipped peppermint tea from the Thermos David had handed me as I’d left home: a surprise, and an unexpected
pleasure. I leaned against the hood of the cab, contemplating what I knew lay beneath the rug of rodents: a bright orange
carpet, a monumental failure in taste in every way. I knew this because my face had been pressed into it just a few months
ago as I fought for my life against the ’serker. My blood was probably embedded into the weave still. Identical carpet fibres
had been left at the Greenill house and, now I had some context, in the car park the day David and I went bushwalking. We
silently refilled our mugs; no one wanted to start the conversation.