Chapter Eighteen
S
ophia climbed the familiar graffiti-stained stairwell of the tower block.
The competing thud of music, of action films, of raucous voices resounded from behind closed or ajar doors as she ascended four flights of the dilapidated building.
She clenched her hidden knife as a group of youths passed her, one knocking her shoulder, the others turning around to mock her clothing. But she kept her mouth shut, her focus on the task in hand, not on a pending assault or dying on the cold, hard steps.
Daniel’s bedsit was the first on the left.
Sophia stepped up to the splintered door. Heart pounding, breaths shallow, she pushed it open all the way before looking inside.
The place was badly smashed up. No sign of Daniel. Fortunately no sign of blood or law enforcement tape either.
She knew it was as pointless as it was risky banging on doors for answers, or even requesting a phone. Just as she knew there was one more place she could look for answers if the operation had gone wrong.
She turned on her heels and hurried back down the stairs, knocking shoulders with a couple she passed, her thoughts too focused elsewhere to acknowledge their verbal retaliation.
She headed back out onto the street, the flutter of palpitations consuming her chest. If her suspicions were right, the longer she stayed on the street, the more at risk she was.
But there was no way she could even attempt to get to the safety of Summerton. There would be all the awkward questions at the security offices, not least because Leila would have undoubtedly registered her as missing. She’d have been detained for sure, and then there was no way she’d be able to help anyone whilst locked in a cell for at least forty-eight hours of investigations.
But if Leila was in Summerton, or Alisha even, then they could get to
her
.
She needed that phone. More than anything, she just needed to hear their voices. She just needed to hear that they were okay – that she’d made a terrible mistake, an overreaction, and they were both home and well.
But her instincts told her it was dangerously wishful thinking.
She marched to the right before taking a sharp left down a side street. Reaching crossroads, she took another left.
There was only one place she
would
be safe.
She’d only ever been there once. They all had only ever been there once. But the location had been engrained in their minds – each with the hope they’d never have to use it.
She passed the rows of residential houses, most of them boarded up, many front doors broken open by whatever species chose to call them home.
As she’d done on the way there, she kept her head up as she moved through the crowds. A lowered head and lowered eyes meant victim stamped on your forehead. It was about averting your eyes, but not avoiding eye contact. It was about
looking
like you had a sire in Blackthorn, even if you didn’t.
Some sires, eager to climb the power chain, sent their own feeders out to look for fresh human blood to add to their brood. If you got stopped, you looked them straight in the eye and told them you were taken. It was about knowing enough names on the street to know who to claim you belonged to. Most would remain cautious if you were convincing enough.
It was how The Alliance had started finding out who Blackthorn’s key players were in the first place. They’d infiltrated the furtive feeder system – finding out who the leading sires were. They’d lost some of their own along the way. Offering yourself up as a feeder was dangerous territory. But they
had
got answers.
They’d gathered the names, used them when they needed to and then picked them off one by one. The operation had been going for fourteen months – slow but steady was the fight. Each one was done a different way – each made to look like a suspicious accident. The Alliance weren’t about accolade – they were about getting the job done.
Sophia crossed the street to avoid the crowd of males lurking around the steps of one of the dilapidated Edwardian terrace town houses. With vampires it was the loners to fear. With humans it was the crowds to watch for.
With the former, the sense of her new power should have been liberating but she was already starting to doubt herself. She struggled to keep her focus on the hustle and bustle as she weaved her way through the crowds. The laughter, the shouts and the jostling were as disorientating as the neon lights flashing and reflecting on the damp pavements. But not as disorientating as her nerve endings firing involuntarily, the hairs on the back of her neck alert to the potential all around her.
She had walked through those crowds countless times but had never felt more alive. More aware. Something in her had changed. Instead of wanting to avoid the vampires she rubbed shoulders with, she wanted to stop, to grab hold of one of them, lead them into one of the dark alleys, make them bite...
She forced herself out of her daze, clutched the knife she held concealed amidst the folds of her tunic.
She guessed control would become easier with practice – the very reason serryns needed some kind of training to turn them into efficient predators rather than responding to their own desires all the time. The latter never lasted long – serryns, renowned for needing the next rush, becoming more and more impulsive to their eventual demise.
She wouldn’t be like that. She’d manage it.
She had to keep walking, she had to keep going. She had to keep her focus on where she needed to be.
But as she glanced over her shoulder, as she saw the crowd on the steps had disappeared, she walked a little faster.
She subtly glanced at the glass windows opposite to try and catch reflections, but there were still too many around to determine whether she was being followed or not. The only way she’d know was when she got somewhere quieter.
She tightened her grip on the knife.
She had the choice to look over her shoulder again and let them know she had noticed, or to walk on pretending to be oblivious.
As the crowds started to thin out, she opted for the former.
At a glance she guessed there were four of them.
Her heart pounded a little harder, a light-headedness trying to suppress the panic.
Four of them and one of her. Four vampires and she might live long enough once the first one took a bite. But four humans – that would come down to brute strength.
Or speed.
She pressed her lips together and quickened her pace slightly – not to get away from them just yet but to build up a steady pace.
She counted it down.
As soon as she turned the next corner, she hit full sprint.
If there was one thing she had always had on her side, it was speed – at least against her own. And when it came to four human males and her, she’d outdo them every time in nimbleness alone. They might have seen easy pickings in her, but she saw a group she was going to outrun whatever it took.
Sophia turned left and then right, slipping through the chain-link fence and navigating her way nimbly around the boxes and rubbish.
It wasn’t long before her pursuers were no longer silent. Instead their whoops and yells, like hounds in pursuit of a fox, echoed down the streets behind her.
In their eyes, this was mere sport – a sadistic hunt to the finish. Her life, what may have been left of it once they’d finished, nothing more than a game. She may have been one of their own but, for them, there was no loyalty to their own species. To them she was just another piece of entertainment.
She flicked out the blade as she ran, easily clearing obstacles whereas one closing in crushed them, slowing him down for a moment.
With every amount of energy she had, she sprinted until her chest ached.
With the wind in her ears and the adrenaline pumping, she struggled to remember how long it had been since they’d fallen quiet. Since the sickening goads and whistles had stopped.
But it was enough to make her finally slow her pace and turn around.
There wasn’t sight nor sound of any of them.
She leaned forward and rested her palms on her thighs to catch her breath whilst remaining on her guard.
But they didn’t reappear.
She felt a sense of disquiet as she stared into the darkness ahead, like the sudden silence before a volcanic eruption.
But nothing happened.
They’d gone.
Knowing she still couldn’t rest on her laurels, let alone that the route had taken her ten minutes off course, she did an about-turn and picked up pace again.
Keeping to the other side of the street, she passed the cinema on the right. It was used mainly for shows of another kind now – live performances that rumours dictated rarely ended that way.
She kept close on the heels of one group so as to look to be a part of them, veering off again as soon as she passed the dwindling crowds.
She crossed in front of broad stone steps that led to the empty shell that was once a church, before taking a right down the cobbled street that ran alongside it, past the rusted fleur-de-lis-topped railings that enclosed its grounds.
The cemetery still housed a hundred or so graves – graves from decades that had long passed. Even the sanctity of burial was no longer allowed. Now, bodies, especially the third species, were mainly cremated. Human ashes, except for those of the cons, were stored in crems in Lowtown – unless you were a resident of Summerton or Midtown. Both had beautiful churchyards. Summerton and Midtown residents were allowed to be buried. Just as they were allowed the best medical treatment, the best education, the best opportunities, the best of everything.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone to her mother’s grave. Or her grandfather’s. Leila had always gone every week without fail. Every Sunday afternoon when she wasn’t working at the library, she’d head there with her flowers. Sometimes Alisha would go with her too.
Sophia had accompanied them both only once – Leila having insisted on all three sisters going together for their mother’s birthday one year.
Sophia had spent the whole time hovering a few feet from the graves, her arms wrapped tightly around herself as she looked anywhere but at the inscriptions on the headstones. She’d even opted out of her say in that – shrugging and saying she’d go with whatever Leila and Alisha thought.
She’d stood and listened to the wind in the trees, the irony of the peacefulness compared with the death her mother had had.
All because of her.
She’d always felt like a traitor stood there – like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. Only this criminal had a knotted throat and barely held-back tears.
At times she’d wondered if that’s why Leila had encouraged her to go – some sadistic way of making her face up to her guilt.
It was part of the reason she lashed out at Leila so much – because deep down she knew if she hated herself as much as she did, then surely Leila must hate her too. She never admitted to it, but Leila knew the cause of their mother’s death as much as she did. Leila knew her unruly, arrogant, selfish little sister was responsible for putting their mother in the position in the first place. And somewhere deep, Leila
had
to despise her for it.
She took another left and slipped through the loose board in the sealed-up doorway. It was one of a multitude of old factories that had never been claimed – one of the many abandoned buildings that didn’t suit anyone’s purpose.
Only this one suited The Alliance’s purpose perfectly.
The sliding and scraping of the wood echoed around the vast, empty interior, but her footsteps were barely audible as Sophia made her way across the concrete floor to the elevator shaft directly ahead.
They’d made their bolthole, their safe house, in the old offices above.
If anyone was there, they would have seen her coming on the CCTV hidden in the crevices. Whether the elevator descended or not would tell her that – otherwise it would be a heck of a climb up the exterior of the girder-structured shaft.
But as soon as she’d reached the base, the metal cogs kicked into action.
Her heart leapt.
She moved from foot to foot as she waited for its descent.
She saw his trainer-clad feet first, then his loose-fitting jeans. As Daniel appeared fully in view, as he slid back the cage door, she lunged to greet him the same time he did her.
It was something she’d never done before – reach for him in any genuine sign of affection. But to see him alive and well, let alone for her to have got there in one piece, brought reality home hard and fast.
‘Shit, Phia,’ he exclaimed, squeezing her against him. ‘I thought you were dead.’
She pulled back from his hold so she could look in his eyes. ‘Same here. I’ve just come from your place.’
‘I had word I had unwanted guests before I even got up there. Phia, one minute you’re hurtling after Caleb Dehain and then you’re gone. I thought he’d killed you. Where have you been?’
‘Long story. Word is out there about us, right? That’s why you’ve all come here?’
His grave blue eyes held hers, something behind them making her uneasy. He pulled the gate back across and flipped the lever to trigger their ascent. ‘Let’s get upstairs first.’
She watched the girders scrape past and glanced warily across at him. He looked pale and drawn, as if he hadn’t eaten properly for a couple of days, hadn’t seen a glimpse of sunlight. The bags under his eyes told her he certainly hadn’t slept. It was all the confirmation she needed that their secret had been uncovered – let alone the fact he was there in the first place.
Daniel pulled open the gate, Phia stepping out first and heading towards the open door. As he hurriedly locked and secured it behind them, Sophia glanced into the kitchen, at the piles of tinned food and water. But it wasn’t just the reality hitting her that unnerved her – it was the silence emanating from the lounge beyond.
She continued along the hallway before entering the main room. She skimmed over the empty battered sofas ahead, the vacant chairs and table to her left. There was no sound of voices in the makeshift bedrooms beyond, no echo of a shower running. There were no strewn around mugs except for one sat alone on the tarnished coffee table ahead.