Changeling (25 page)

Tom made a noise again, and Caliban, not taking his eyes from Trey, strangled the sound with the tiniest movement of his finger.

‘I am too old to fight any more. I am almost three hundred years of age and I no longer wish for conflict. I want an end to this warring between my brother and me, and I believe that you alone might be able to broker this peace. So, please, change back to your human form so that we can talk, and I will let Alexa and your friend go.’

He looked up at Trey imploringly. ‘If I had wanted to hurt your friends, don’t you think that I could have done so already? I just want to talk. Talk to me, Trey. Help me find a way to put an end to all of this.’

Trey fingered the silver amulet around his neck. He looked at Alexa and the emptiness in her eyes and pictured how Caliban had raked his talons across her flesh only moments before. He cast a glance towards Tom, his heart sinking as he saw his friend’s lifeless body consumed by the blackness of the shadow creatures.

Trey was on his own. There was no way he could see of breaking this stalemate without complying with Caliban’s demands.

He morphed back to his human form.

The second he did so, the walls seemed to come alive, and the black, foul creatures started to emerge – sliding and crawling into the room. They slithered and slunk out of the darkness, the babbling, discordant noise increasing as they did so. Trey believed that the hordes of hell were descending upon him, so grotesque were the beasts that began to approach.

‘
No, Trey! It’s a trap, he wants to kill us all. Change back!
’ Alexa’s eyes, that had been fixed on the floor since they had entered, suddenly came alive and looked up at him as her voice filled his head.

‘Shut up, you little
witch
!’ Caliban’s voice cut like a knife across Alexa’s, and Trey watched as the vampire savagely pulled back Alexa’s head, rearing his own away, lips pulled back over those monstrous teeth, ready to rend the tender flesh of the girl’s neck.

Time seemed to stretch outwards as what happened next unravelled. Trey felt as though he was rooted to the spot as he watched Caliban launch his attack. His muscles would not respond to his demands to go to Alexa’s aid, and he watched in horror as Caliban, his mouth open impossibly wide, lowered his head towards Alexa’s exposed throat.

And suddenly Lucien was between them.

He misted between his brother and his daughter, his blood-caked body shielding the girl from the monster’s bite. Caliban’s teeth sank deep into his sibling. But instead of trying to push him away, Lucien reached up, wrapping his arms around his brother’s head and pulling it tight into him, sinking the fangs deeper into his own flesh and making it impossible for the other to break loose.

Alexa sank to the floor, and Trey watched as Caliban struggled against his brother’s harsh embrace, raking his clawed fingers against Lucien’s head and opening up great, ugly wounds that immediately transformed into flowing valleys of blood. The older vampire, unable to wrench himself free, misted to escape the fraternal clinch. Trey watched as Lucien did likewise. But something was terribly wrong. Caliban blinked out and reappeared almost instantly no more than two feet in front of Trey, looking as if he had succeeded in his attempt to be free. But his head was still buckled forward at the awkward angle that Lucien had held it in, and Caliban looked to Trey like a man who had somehow broken his neck, only to discover that he would be forced to hold it in this grotesque, lopsided position forever. Caliban’s eyes were peering upwards, as though looking for the invisible force that seemed to hold him still. Then the air in front of him seemed to swell and burn, shimmering as it coalesced into the thing that was Lucien Charron as he reformed in the exact same position that he had held before he’d disappeared.

Trey remembered what Tom had told him about the flicker that he had witnessed when he had fought Lucien during their training session, and how this had signalled Lucien’s growing weariness. Trey knew that if that flicker had signalled the vampire was tiring, this slow emergence into re-existence must signal that Lucien would not be capable of holding his brother much longer and would certainly be incapable of misting again.

Lucien’s breath was coming in deep ragged gasps, and as Trey watched he opened his eyes against the pain and looked over in his direction. The look that he gave Trey made the boy’s heart sink. It was a look of complete and utter exhaustion and defeat. Trey’s guardian was unable to hold on any longer and would at any moment succumb to death at his brother’s hands.

As if sensing this, Caliban formed his right hand into a spear, his fingers forced together so that those sharp claws formed a row of forward-facing daggers, and prepared to plunge them into his brother’s exposed neck.

The hand reared back in anticipation of the strike, coming within an inch of accidentally striking Trey in the face. He jerked his head back to avoid the blow, and this instinctive act was enough to shake him free from the paralysing fear that had petrified him from the moment he thought Caliban was about to murder Alexa. He instantly morphed and lunged forward, clamping his wolf jaws around Caliban’s arm and sinking his teeth into the flesh. A muffled scream went up from the vampire, but Trey ignored it, biting down harder through skin and muscle and blood vessels, transferring all the immense power in his jaws through his white, chisel teeth. Caliban flailed out with his legs, kicking out and issuing a screech of unadulterated agony, while Lucien somehow maintained the vice-like grip on his head, making it impossible for him to get away or defend himself. Trey fought the need to gag as the vampire’s foul blood spewed from the wound into his mouth. He instinctively knew that he must not swallow – he closed off the back of his throat to stop any of the poisonous filth from being ingested, allowing it to pour freely through the closing gap between his jaws. Finally, with a loud crack and a splintering of bone, Trey’s teeth met again and the vampire’s hand dropped at his feet with a thud, just as Lucien’s strength and will finally gave out and he let go of his brother, collapsing to the floor as if dead.

The scream was like the howl of a jet engine at take-off, so utterly did it fill the room. It came not just from Caliban, but also from the shadow creatures that had crept from the walls, and it crushed the air that vibrated with its noise. Trey clamped his hands to his ears, watching as the demon creatures slunk back towards the shadows. A strange, uncomfortable
wrenching
sensation seemed to pull at every molecule that was in and of the room and the people within it, as though the elastic of the universe had suddenly been stretched too far and the cosmos was protesting against the force. There was a
snap
that sucked the air out of Trey’s lungs like he’d been hit in the solar plexus, and when he looked up the shadow creatures and their evil leader had disappeared.

Alexa crawled over to her father’s body, lifting his head so that she could cradle it in her lap – tears tracked down her face and fell from her chin on to Lucien’s blood-soaked clothing.

‘Is he dead?’ Trey asked, kneeling down beside her. Human again now, he shivered, and not merely against the cold.

‘No. But he will be if we don’t get him help immediately.’ She looked up at him and nodded. ‘Thank you, Trey, you saved him.’ She placed her hand on his and smiled at him through her tears.

A cough from behind him signalled that Tom was somehow still alive, and Trey jumped up and ran to his friend. He helped him back to his feet and watched as he gingerly reached up to feel the angry red and purple lesions around his neck.

‘Tom, I thought you were done for.’

‘Me? No. It takes more than having the bejaysus strangled out of me by some hell-creature-from-the-pit to do away with Yours Truly. We Irish are made out of tough stuff, you know.’ He coughed, wincing painfully, before he looked up and noticed Lucien on the floor.

The Irishman grabbed for the walkie-talkie in his pocket. After speaking to Jens, he put the device back in his pocket and stood with Trey, looking down at the bloody body in Alexa’s arms.

‘They’re coming, Lucien,’ Trey said in a small voice. ‘Hold on.’

Tom turned to Trey. The anxiety in his eyes was clear to see, but he nodded his head in the boy’s direction and smiled grimly. ‘You did well, Trey. Better than well.’

Trey shook his head and looked down at Lucien. ‘I should have acted sooner. I just stood there frozen. I could have stopped that,’ he said with a gesture of his head towards his guardian.

‘You acted when you had to. If you hadn’t, we’d all be dead now.’

‘But he got away.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Tom said, walking across the room. He bent down and picked something up, holding it out for Trey to examine. ‘But he left this behind.’

Tom held up the severed remains of Caliban’s hand. Ragged strips of flesh hung from what had once been the wrist, and the fingers were clawed, as if, even now, it was intent on committing some act of violence.

‘And would you look at that,’ Tom said. He pulled the ring off of the middle finger, throwing the severed limb back to the floor in disgust. ‘The Ring of Amon. Trey, you’re an honest-to-God bloody marvel, so you are.’

He very carefully placed the ring in one of the zipped pockets of his jacket and fastened it.

Outside, the snare-drum sound of a helicopter’s rotor blades signalled Jens’s arrival.

Trey stood looking down at the broken figure that was Lucien. Tears welled up in his eyes and he blinked them away. Tom moved over to him and placed an arm around his shoulder, pulling him into him in a friendly embrace. ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘Let’s get him home.’

The huge helicopter landed in the scrubland at the back of the factory. Trey watched as the metal leviathan descended out of the heavens, its downdraught kicking up the dust from the dry ground and creating a thick, grey cloud that stung his eyes and throat. He pulled the jacket that Jens had brought from the car around himself, and watched as the rescue operation unfolded.

Jens and his men quickly managed to get Lucien on to a stretcher and into the helicopter, where a medic did his best to staunch the flow of blood and make Lucien as comfortable as possible through the administration of drugs. They ushered Tom, Alexa and Trey into the body of the aircraft next to him, and within minutes the giant craft was airborne again. Alexa never let go of her father’s hand throughout the short journey to the airport. She only looked up once, smiling bravely at Tom and Trey as they were landing, but the deep worry etched on her face told them that she didn’t believe that her father was going to make it.

Jens had called ahead so that when they arrived at the airport a doctor was waiting on the tarmac, and Lucien was given the blood that he so desperately needed. The doctor and Jens exchanged worried glances, and Alexa was warned about not taking him back to London too soon. But Lucien had opened his eyes then and squeezed his daughter’s hand. Alexa bent towards him, and he had simply said, ‘Home,’ before falling back into unconsciousness.

So the arrangements were hastily made and the jet took all four of them back to London, where they were met by a private ambulance and taken to the apartment in Docklands.

It was three weeks before Lucien opened his eyes again. When he did, it was Trey who was in the room with him, sitting in a chair reading, the gap between them filled with the various drips and machines that were wired into the motionless body laid out upon the bed.

He and Alexa were taking it in turns to sit by his bedside, and Alexa was out with Tom looking for a new type of mattress for Lucien.

Trey detected the tiniest movement out of the corner of his eye, and when he looked up Lucien was awake.

He looked very small and his skin seemed papery-thin against the cotton pillowcases. There was very little to reconcile the figure on the bed with the imposing individual that Trey had first met at the care home. It was as if the essence of Lucien had been sucked out of his body and all that was left was this frail husk.

Trey jumped up and moved over to the bed, taking hold of Lucien’s hand. His guardian’s eyes flicked towards him, and a trace of a smile played upon his lips.

‘Trey—’ Lucien whispered.

‘Shh, Lucien. I’ll go and get the nurse.’ Trey went to move away but the grip on his hand strengthened, pulling him back.

‘No. Tell me, is Alexa OK?’

‘Yes, Lucien. You saved her. She was unharmed.’ Trey smiled down at him and watched as the eyes fluttered and closed again. He looked towards the paging device on the bed and thought about pressing the button to summon the medical staff, who were on twenty-four-hour call and who had set up base in one of the offices below.

When he looked back, Lucien’s eyes were fixed on him again.

‘The Ring of Amon?’ he whispered.

‘Tom had it destroyed the very next day. He and two of his people took it to a smelting plant. He said that dropping that thing into the furnace was one of the most satisfying things he’d ever done.’ Trey smiled at the memory of the Irishman retelling the story and how his eyes had lit up as he described watching the ring disappear into the molten metal.