Falling Apart (12 page)

Sil roamed the farmhouse like a corporeal ghost. He caught Jess's scent and found her old bedroom, half-tidied into an office space but still retaining the bed, the poster-covered wall dotted with train tickets from forgotten journeys and a cupboard that held a collection of old school books and photographs that kept him busy for several hours.

You were so young.
He traced the outline of her face, plumper with youth and cheekier with innocence, his heart uncomfortably heavy with the knowledge that he and his kind were one of the reasons she'd lost that.
So sweet back then, in that ridiculous school uniform, tie under one ear and your buttons done up wrongly, hanging on your school friend's arm and mugging at the camera as though life was just one big joke.
He flipped the pictures over, seeing images from her life in scattered order, one minute she was a bony-kneed seven-year-old on a small, fat pony, all earnest eyes and screwed-down pigtails; the next she was late teens, flaunting a body she didn't seem to know what to do with. Then back to being a ten-year-old, blowing out candles on a cake; then a toddler squinting up at the camera. Sil felt that weight on his heart again.
All these ages. And while you were growing up, growing
 …
I was this. A twenty-nine-year-old vampire. The person I was then is the person I am now.
He put the pictures back into the cupboard.
I barely remember what it was to be like you, young, life stretching like the world's most exciting unread book, all I had to do was to turn the pages and
 …

He turned. Walked out of the little room and back downstairs to pace around the kitchen, watched by an impassive series of cats, who sat along the worktops like a scrambled set of Russian dolls. ‘This is ludicrous,' he said aloud, the sound of his voice making cat ears twitch. ‘Why am I even here?' Once more around the table, the contrast between the homely domesticity of rag-rugs and pine furniture and the twisting mass of his demon as it pirouetted in his chest tugged at his heart. ‘There must be something … some way I can achieve something useful, to my cause, to hers.' He stroked a matriarchal tabby, which dipped its head as if in agreement. ‘Some way to find what I hoped to acquire in London?' The cat narrowed its eyes beneath his hand and gave a punctuating purr as he performed one last circuit of the room and headed out into the flagged hallway, trying to walk sense into his thoughts.

I left the car on the Embankment.
His vision swam for a moment, a fluid memory rising and falling like a dream of mercury recalled through mist. An emotion, almost like the tug at his soul he got when Jess was thinking of him, a niggle, almost like pain, and an image of a girl sitting at a desk, flirting with him, came floating into his head.
Is this memory? God knows, a hundred years of life means more memories than I can call to mind
 …
Who is she, this girl? And, more importantly,
what
is she to me? Friend, acquaintance
 … An awful possibility crept in and he forced it down.
No. I would never take another woman now I have declared for Jessica. Never.
But the fear still flared under the flickering edges of memory, that dread that something may have turned him, some unknown affliction may have played him until he betrayed both himself and his love.

A shiver, and his demon revelled.
No. I must hold true. I must find a way of doing something about this goddamned mess.
With the heels of his ghastly trainers squealing on the stone, he turned sharply into the low-ceilinged sitting room. A wood-burning stove stood cold sentinel and, on a table, a computer whirred its impotent fan into the dust.

Sil's heart began to rise. All was not lost if he could access the internet. Despite what Zan might think, he was no slouch in this new computerised age; he watched, he learned. Zan might have the edge when it came to technology, but Sil held the blade.

He hunched himself down in front of the keyboard, ignored the audience of cats that had followed him in from the kitchen, and began to search.

I made up my mind to go and patrol, just in case the zombie-hating thugs had decided to groove the streets with their knuckles a bit more, but as soon as I got out of the door I walked smack into Zan.

My mind was still whirling from my conversation with Liam, and there were two ways my sudden encounter could have gone. In one universe I burst into tears and threw myself at virtually the only creature in the world who would wonder what the hell the fuss was all about, since Zan and feelings hadn't had a passing acquaintance since 1875. Thankfully I chose the universe of anger. ‘What the hell are
you
doing here? Don't tell me you've taken a job as a Secret Shopper and you're popping into Next to check out their policy on trouser returns.'

Zan looked down at me. He was wearing a leather coat, which flapped gently in the breeze and made him look like the figurehead of a tea-clipper in full sail. ‘I came to find you,' he said.

‘You could have just come into the office. Or telephoned? Or e-mailed? Good God, can't I even do my job now without you trailing along in hot pursuit? Just get yourself a security blanket, Zan; it will be cheaper in the long run.'

Cold, green eyes, like the depths of the sea, held mine. ‘Get into the car, Jessica.'

I'd never really been afraid of Zan before. He was too … pernickety. Liam and I quietly made fun of his hatred for physical contact and his obsession with all things technological; being scared of him would have been like being frightened of the guy who invented Facebook. But here Zan was no laughing matter; he was tall and rigid and
angry.
And ever so slightly scary.

‘Look, I've got Liam in there getting all “I am Manager, hear me roar”,' I said, trying to conceal the fact that he was making me nervous. ‘So if you're going to get all mean and moody on me, be warned that I'm
this
close to trashing someone's entire DVD collection of
The Office
. I think it's giving him ideas.'

‘Your petty quarrels are of no interest to me.' Zan waved a hand towards the car park.

‘Oh, bugger. So you didn't come to rescue me from health and safety lectures and having to laminate procedural directives to stick on the back of the door then?' I fell into step beside the vampire, whose fangs I could see showing just a little behind lips pulled into a tight line. His demon was quiet though, which was strange; he should be getting a whole banquet of stuff from me: my blood felt like battery acid and disappointment. So, he looked and sounded angry, but his demon wasn't reacting to it, or to me? Strange. ‘So, you came to fetch me, why?'

‘Be. Quiet.'

Woah.
Zan knew that vampire glamour didn't work on me, so he hadn't even tried to pull it. He'd just used pure, old-fashioned, alpha-male command, which – coming from a guy who made scarecrows look a bit plump and who seemed to have had all his butchness removed and replaced with slippers – was a bit of a surprise. I shut up and buckled myself into the Veyron, which he had driven into the pedestrian area, almost as though he owned the city. Which, I suppose, he did.

He swung the car out between swiftly dodging pedestrians and we slunk along the main road into town like a metal ferret on steroids.

After half a mile of stop–start traffic, I weakened and turned to look at him.

‘Zan?'

He looked normal, well, as normal as a man who's been a demon-infected killer for over a hundred years can be: pale, intense-eyed and floppy-haired. But he also had a kind of tension about him that made him look leaner and tighter, as though all the sinews in his body had drawn together. ‘Where are we going?'

‘I see no reason to tell you.'

‘Apart from the fact that, if you don't, this is kidnap and, you know, all illegal and stuff.'

Zan made a short laughing sound. I didn't think I'd ever heard him laugh before, and, since Liam and I had concluded his sense of humour came in somewhere around
The Hills Have Eyes
, it was disturbing. ‘Jessica. You know as well as I do that, as a half-demon, you are subject to the laws and controls of the Otherworld. You are under my jurisdiction; therefore, to whom would you make these allegations?'

‘I'll think of someone,' I said darkly. I still wasn't terrified, just afraid enough to be annoyed and defensive. Zan had never seriously harmed anyone.
That I knew about
, muttered my treacherous subconscious, but this behaviour was definitely not normal. For a start, if separated from his various computerised devices, Zan always carried on as though part of his brain was missing; actively removing himself from the office and its various flashing lights and beeping noises came close to voluntary lobotomy.

‘I am simply distancing you from influences.' He twisted the little car down a side-street and over a small bridge, pulling over in a lay-by from which I could see the river.

‘I don't have any influences. Except Liam, and I influence him, so that's more of a negative influence. An affluence. Outfluence. Effluence.'

‘Be. Quiet.' He did it again, that cold command. I hated to admit it, but it made Zan just that tiny bit sexier. But that wasn't hard – he usually had all the sex appeal of a sarcophagus. ‘Jessica.' He turned in his seat and his green eyes were narrow. ‘We have been compromised.'

‘Well, if you will go driving off with me and parking up … oh. You don't mean the old-fashioned way, do you?'

A single shake of his head. Zan had long hair for a man; like Sil, he tended to favour the styles he'd known when he'd been human. But while Sil's was untidy and always looked as though someone had run their fingers through it, Zan's was usually neat and off his face. Today it was showing signs of unruliness. ‘The Otherworld computer system has been hacked.'

My first thought was Liam, and it must have shown on my face, because Zan gave another of those mirthless laughs. ‘Did you think I was unaware that your office regularly creeps around our software?' His eyes were hard. ‘I understand computers, Jessica. They are not like people, changing, given to flights of fancy and unreasonableness, they are singularly reliable and trustworthy; thus I find them perfectly easy to comprehend. Computers do not indulge themselves …' He tailed off for a moment with an expression of pained disgust. ‘They are my domain,' he said. ‘And I regard someone breaking into my files with the same emotion that I believe you would feel on learning that someone had raided your rooms and read your private documents.'

‘I never knew vampires could feel violated,' I said. ‘But then, I shouldn't suppose you get many burglars pissing in your kettles, do you?'

Zan tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. ‘I was last burgled in 1934,' he said, almost dreamily. ‘His fear made him utterly delicious.'

‘Great.
Crimewatch
meets Jamie Oliver. So. The system has been hacked. If it's not Liam, and it most certainly isn't me because I've only just found out how to use the Search function … why are you telling me? Presumably you don't just want sympathy and a cuddle.'

Zan looked at me, and there was something in those deep green eyes that sent needles of cold into my veins. ‘Whoever has done it has taken care to cover their tracks, using different ISPs to make it hard to trace back to source. I believe it is Sil,' he said.

‘It … he … I mean … he's
alive
?' And now I knew why Zan was keeping his demon quiet. He needed it to read me, to react to any emotion I might give off; somehow he'd managed to suppress it so that he could use it as a kind of lie detector. I fought with everything I had to prevent my heartbeat speeding up, or my breathing from betraying me. ‘But surely … there would have been news of him from somewhere?'

Zan's demon was moving, circling, feeding off my anxiety and confusion. ‘You seem upset, Jessica,' Zan said and his demon swooped and dived. ‘Do you have news of Sil you are keeping from me?'

Grit your teeth and hold your nerve.
‘No! I'm just … well, it's a shock, that's all. I mean, he ran off, attacked people and now he's …' I shook my head. Hopefully my guilt and horror at the fact that Zan knew Sil was alive could be mistaken for fear and general upset. ‘If it is him, of course. I mean, anyone with the ability could hack your system, couldn't they?'

There was a moment of steady regard and then Zan dropped his eyes. ‘But they would need the ability and the inclination. Why should anyone wish to hack into Otherworld systems, unless they required information particular to us?'

‘Why would Sil? What could he want to find out that he couldn't get from, I dunno, reading the papers or something? I mean, he must know that the entire world is out to get him; what are you running that he might need to know about? Anything that might help?'

Zan reached out and grabbed my face. It was so fast that I didn't even have time to turn away, and found myself being held steady as he leaned in, so close that I could see his demon flickering behind his eyes, and the gold flecks in the green, like chips of moonlight floating in poison. ‘I shall ask this question of you once only, Jessica. Do you know where he is?'

Careful
 …
so careful. You know this vampire, Jessica. You know him.
I let my mind move from last night, leaving Sil in his terrible clothes looking vulnerable and shaken, sitting in my parents' kitchen, head in hands. ‘Right now? I have no idea where he is,' I said, letting my body show the absolute truth of that statement.
He could be anywhere. In the garden, in the yard, up with the sheep.
Zan's demon took my certainty and dropped, feeling almost disappointed.
There, you clever sod,
I thought, but kept my expression hovering around the ‘confused and hurt' mark. ‘Why would you think I'd know?'

He let go of my face, letting his hands fall to his lap and dipping his head forward so that his hair swung against his totally smooth jawline. ‘I know that you think I am cruel,' he said, in a quiet and, for Zan, almost emotional voice. ‘To pass judgement on your lover; to call for his end. But bear this in mind, Jessica: he has been my friend for many years. We hunted together in the heady days before the Treaty and worked together in the days since; he had declared for me as I have declared for him, many times. He was the only thing walking this earth that I trusted. Now, knowing how I care for him, knowing what he has been to me, and that, even with this, I would see him die for his crimes – do you not understand?' He closed his eyes, as though he was trying to blank out his words, to disassociate himself from what he had to say. ‘Do you understand how it hurts me?'

There was a huge, physical pain in my throat. I could feel the words rising, the urge to tell him where Sil was, to ease the awful sorrow that I could see etching itself into that ageless face; as my brain forecast a future response to my words, I bit them down and forced them away. His demon reacted, I felt it glide gleefully on my turmoil, giving me away to the vampire, who opened his eyes and turned to face me, mouth open and accusation clearly lined up on his lips. I did the only thing that I could think of, and I impressed myself with my own daring, I reached out a hand and touched his cheek. ‘I never thought, Zan. I'm really sorry, I wish I could help.'

He responded as I'd thought he would, jerking away from the physical contact with an expression that indicated I'd not so much stepped across as hang-glided over some massive boundary. But at least it seemed to make him put my demon-feeding burst of feeling down to sympathy, rather than guilt. ‘Your compassion is not necessary,' he said, stiffly, from the far edge of his seat. Thankfully he didn't pull out his handkerchief and wipe the offending cheek, but I had the feeling it was a close call. ‘I told you merely so that you would understand the severity of the situation.' He straightened. ‘Where may I take you?'

‘Well, you could drive around a bit, maybe slow down past all those snotty girls I was at school with who didn't think I'd ever get anywhere in life,' I said, reckoning that slipping back into my usual persona was my best defence. ‘You can beep the horn as well, if you like.' Zan gave me a pained look. ‘Or, failing that, just drop me back where you picked me up, please. There's stuff kicking off: a bunch of guys with too much time and too many tattoos on their hands causing trouble and I want to take a walk around.'

Zan started up the supercar and I leaned back into its luxurious upholstery to think.
So Zan thinks Sil is guilty too. I really have no idea what to do now.