‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Unlike you, Guardians get to choose. It was the life he always wanted. He believed in our cause the same way that I believe in it … but it’s not my private crusade. The Guardians are a huge organisation. They’re in every country on
earth, present at every level of society. And like any organisation, there is a hierarchy. I can’t decide to change the way we do things. There are consequences if I choose to break the rules.’
‘But you have a choice: you can decide to change the way you do things.’
Yes, I can. I also have to decide if I think doing so is worth the consequences.’
‘They’re bad consequences?’
She sighed and nodded.
‘I’m sorry about that, Miss, but this is a matter of life or death. If someone appeared on your doorstep, bleeding to death, would you just shut the door and make a cup of tea?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘What would you do?’
‘I’d do something about it.’
April picked up her bag and plonked it on the table.
‘Well, let’s do something about it then.’
Making the Dragon’s Breath was a long process and April knew she would never have managed it alone. Miss Holden worked through the night, preparing the plants, grinding them down using a pestle and mortar, then boiling them to a paste. The kitchen was full of steam, piles of chopped leaves and pots and pans. It all made April think of her dad. Every birthday, he would insist on making her a cake. Both he and April would end up covered in flour, with butter in their hair, and hundreds and thousands stuck to their clothes. Silvia would hover around, moaning that they should have gone to Fortnum and Mason, but she’d still gobble up the wonky old cake at the end and declare it the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted. Her dad would give her a kiss and say, ‘That’s because it was made with love.’ There were none of those old Dunne family traditions on her last birthday of course, but then the Dunne family was hardly the same any more, was it? And now here April was, in a very different kitchen, making a woman she hardly knew create a magic potion to save
someone she had every reason to hate – and probably ruining her life in the process. It was a different kind of love, but April could see there was love here nonetheless.
‘You okay?’
April looked up, snapped out of her trance and blushed.
‘Sorry, I was just thinking of my dad,’ she stuttered. ‘We, er, we used to make cakes in the kitchen … don’t worry, it’s stupid.’
‘No, it’s not stupid, April. You should remember your dad. As long as you do, there’s always a little piece of him in the world.’
‘You really believe that?’
‘I know that, April. It’s something I’ve lived through.’
‘Sorry,’ said April. ‘Sometimes I forget that I’m not the only person in the world who has lost their dad.’
‘It does that to you,’ said Miss Holden.
She gestured that April should come over to the stove where the potion was simmering in a small copper saucepan.
‘Okay, give me your thumb,’ she said.
‘My … my thumb?’ stuttered April, but before she could object, the teacher had seized her hand and pricked the ball of her thumb with a knife.
‘Ow!’ cried April, trying to pull away, but Miss Holden held tight, squeezing the wound until a couple of drops of blood plopped into the mixture,
‘Sorry, April,’ she said, releasing her and handing her a square of kitchen towel. ‘There are plasters over there in the cabinet.’
‘Why the hell did you put my blood in there? I didn’t see anything about that in the recipe.’
‘No, that’s one of those things passed down father to daughter, a Guardian’s secret. The Dragon’s Breath is a spell of evil, remember? But my father taught me that adding a Fury’s blood purifies the potion, makes it a weapon for good. Now only Gabriel can use it.’
‘I don’t understand, why only Gabriel?’
‘Because Gabriel is different, April. Whatever the other
Guardians think, I know they’re not all the same. He’s infected by the darkness, but his heart is pure. He
wants
to be good, he wants to escape from the fog that surrounds him. Remember that when a vampire turns, he has to want to live, he has to will his body to fight for eternal life. There’s no science to it, or at least no science we understand yet, but it’s to do with the human soul. Your blood in the potion will help him find his way back. That’s the best way I can explain it.’
April watched as she poured a thick brown liquid from the small saucepan and filtered it through some gauze into a small glass bottle.
She stuck a little cork in the top, then carefully sealed it with wax.
‘There you go,’ she said, handing April the bottle. April held it up to the light. ‘Is that it? It looks horrible,’ she said.
‘Probably tastes horrible, too,’ said the teacher. ‘But it will do the trick, I’m pretty sure of that.’
‘How can it, though? How can a load of ferns and muddy roots and boiled up blood cure Gabriel of some deadly virus?’
‘It’s not a deadly virus, and this formula will counteract the effect of whatever it is in your body which stops the vampire disease and is preventing Gabriel from regenerating.’
‘But how?’ April frowned, shaking the bottle.
Miss Holden laughed.
‘If it was in a pill, would you think it would work?’
April blushed. ‘Yes, I suppose I would.’
‘It’s exactly like antibiotics. They work by helping your body fight off bacteria. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by watching how bread mould attacked bacteria, and people had been using the same stuff in natural remedies for years. Spider’s webs have a type of penicillin in them, believe it or not. So is it so strange that that bag of stuff you found in a wood can cure Gabriel?’
‘If you put it like that, it makes sense, but’ – she gestured around the kitchen – ‘it does seem a bit weird to me. I’m used to Lemsip.’
‘Well, if you have a cold, drinking honey and lemon would do you just as much good.’
‘Really? I guess I assume because it comes in a packet it will work better.’
‘Belief is a strong healer too.’
‘Thanks, Miss. I know this was a big thing for you to do.’
‘Sometimes it takes someone to tell you what was right in front of your nose. My every instinct is that I should do nothing to help a vampire, any vampire. But I think there’s something different about your vampire. I hope I’m right. And your little speech was true – all the rules we used to play by have changed. As a history teacher, I should remember the Romans.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Romans built their empire by military force. Their soldiers weren’t any braver or more fearsome than their opponents, but their generals were smarter. The barbarians would always fight in a certain way, but the Romans kept changing their tactics, searching for the enemy’s weakness.’
‘But where are they now?’
‘You’re looking at them. We are the Romans, April. They forgot what made them great. They became bloated and arrogant and failed to move with the times. All those people walking down the high street to get their paper or getting the bus to work, they have no idea how close they are to total destruction.’
‘Well, I can’t imagine they want to, either …’
‘The truth is humans are creatures of habit and have a huge capacity for self-delusion. We deliberately limit ourselves. Shop in the same place, wear the same clothes, have the same job for life, go on holiday to the same place every year. It’s as if people think they have for ever – oh, I’ll go to China when I retire.’
April was shocked at her tone.
‘But that’s just the way people are,’ frowned April. ‘You can’t blame them for that. They’re just getting on with their lives.’
‘But they are lives which are hanging by a thread,’ said Miss
Holden. ‘They have no idea how easily all that cosy ordinariness could just disappear and their lives – if they manage to stay alive – will become a living hell.’
April didn’t like what she was hearing.
‘Do you really think that? Are the vampires really planning to take over the world?’
‘That’s one of the things you need to find out, April. We know they’re on the move. We know they’re starting to surface. Yes, maybe Marcus had gone rogue when he acted, but the rest of them are behaving differently too.
‘It’s as if they’re preparing to come out, to go public.’
‘What? So everyone will know they’re real?’ said April, thinking of Fiona’s discovery about the camera technology developed at Ravenwood:
making things which were invisible visible
, that’s what she had said wasn’t it?
‘I don’t know what they’re planning, April,’ said the teacher. ‘It’s just a feeling. They used to be so careful about staying hidden, but now it’s like they almost want to get caught.’
‘What happens then?’
‘I wish I knew.’
April stood up and walked to the door. ‘Thanks for doing this, Miss. I know it breaks the rules, but it means a lot to me.’
‘Just make sure he understands how important it is.’
‘Oh, I’ll tell him, don’t you worry.’
It was a lovely sunny morning, but it was cold. April and Miss Holden had worked through the night and well into the morning but the temperature didn’t seem to have risen since dawn. Gabriel was wearing his navy peacoat with the collar up and a green scarf wrapped around his neck. The pink spots in his cheeks only highlighted how pale his skin had become – almost translucent. He walked slowly as if it gave him pain and occasionally he would cough. If April hadn’t known better, she would have thought he just had a bad cold. But she did know better. She was killing him. The man she loved had kissed her and given up his life for her. She had infected him with something, something that was eating him from the inside. Normally, that thought would have made her gloomy and depressed, but this morning she felt happy and light. This morning she had a cure, right there in her pocket. She curled her fingers around the bottle. It was a bittersweet victory of course. Right now they could be together but Gabriel was dying. Once he took the elixir he’d live, but they wouldn’t be able to kiss, maybe not even be close to each other again for – well, she didn’t for how long. She glanced up at him, wondering if they would ever be as close as they were right now, walking through Regent’s Park. She hooked her arm through his, gently tugged him to a stop and snuggled closer, giving him a long kiss.
‘What was that for?’ he said with a smile.
‘Just because.’
They walked on, passing the sign with the monkeys, following the arrows towards the zoo. It had been Gabriel’s idea
that they had a last date before he took the potion. She had wanted him to drink it straight away, but he said he wanted to savour the moment and take this final morning to be together. April wondered if he really wanted to savour being human just for one more day. Everything would be different after this. But there would be hope. Yes, he would be a vampire again, but he would have a chance. If – when – they found the Regent, he could be free. They could be together again, without worrying about his health, without any fear that other people would discover his secret. Th
eir
secret.
Paying at the booth, they pushed through the turnstiles and went inside. They were in a large open space, a sort of crossroads with signposts pointing in every direction. In the distance, they could hear the calls of the birds and apes and there were strange scents in the air. It was still early, but April didn’t imagine that the zoo got very busy this time of year. Just a few elderly tourists and a few families with children in buggies.
‘What do you want to see first?’ asked Gabriel.
‘The lions,’ said April decisively. They followed the signs along the path, passing the otters, the rhinos, strange birds with crazy hair-like feathers, at least that was what it said on the cages. Most of the enclosures were empty, or seemed to be. Perhaps the creatures liked their privacy.
‘I hope the lions are there,’ said April, cuddling closer to Gabriel as they walked. ‘I was obsessed with lions when I was little, I had loads of books about them.’
‘Did you have a cuddly lion?’
April nodded.
‘Leo. Not terribly original, I know, but I took him everywhere with me. My mum was always complaining about how filthy he was.’
‘And where’s Leo now?’
April frowned.
‘Come to think of it, I don’t actually know. I assumed he had been put in a suitcase in the loft. But then, we don’t have the same loft any more …’
For some reason, this made April more sad than it should.
‘Poor Leo, I hope he’s okay.’
‘I’m sure he’s having a party with all the other lions,’ said Gabriel. ‘Come on, let’s go and see.’
They walked up to the lion enclosure, but it too seemed empty. Just a wide open space of flat-topped rocks and bare vegetation.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Gabriel, ‘they’re here.’ They walked down a ramp through a concrete archway into a large room. In front of them, behind a thick Plexiglas window, was the lions’ winter shelter. It was much like the outdoor one: just rocks with a few plants, but at least it was covered over. There was one male with a shaggy mane lying on a rock and a female pacing up and down right behind the glass. As they walked in, the male lifted his head, as if to say ‘What are you doing in my room?’, while the female began to pace faster. She seemed agitated, peering at them through the glass.