Falling Apart (3 page)

Sil opened his eyes, which made no difference at all to his ability to see, and groped forward in the darkness. His fingers brushed against rock on all sides, beneath his feet was a gritty loose surface and above his head … He stretched up, waving his arms until a fingertip touched something … More rock.
What in the seven hells has happened to me? The last thing I remember is
 …
being with Jess, talking, and then
 …
I wake up in what feels like a tomb. Please don't let this be a tomb
 …
that's just so clichéd and embarrassing.
He could see the headlines now: ‘York's Vampire Chief in Accidental Dracula Duplication'.

Deep inside him the demon that had made him vampire nearly a century ago danced and dived, feeding on the adrenaline of Sil's rising panic. It quietened for a moment as it felt the drag deep in his solar plexus that told him Jess was thinking of him. His heart ached for a second.
Jess.
The dragging sensation came again, as though he were attached to a tugboat, pulling him to harbour.
She's worried.
He shuffled a half-step forward and banged his head against the sloping rock ceiling.
And I'm beginning to feel a trifle perturbed myself. Where am I? How did I get here? And why?

A faint tickle of hunger caught his throat.
So I've been here long enough to need some blood.
He lowered his head, as though gravity would assist the memory process, his hair dropping to tickle at his cheeks; the swipe which cleared it from his face caused him to scrape his knuckles against the rock and swear into the darkness. ‘Bugger!'

His voice echoed more than he would have thought it could in such a confined space. The sound of it made him feel, paradoxically, lonely. A quick shake of his head prevented the longing getting out of control.
Come now, Sil, think. You were
 …
where?
A vague not-even-memory of … books? Some kind of paper? Another headshake. Then, nothing. Not even a memory of darkness descending; his body bore no pains that might have indicated battle had been joined. Although that really didn't mean much – if he'd been down here for more than a day any physical hurts would have healed, courtesy of his demon.

But you still have the memories of the time before,
said a little voice in the back of his mind, that little conscience-devil that competed with his demon in fights that made the Troubles look like Rocky Balboa versus a small kitten.
The memories of your wife, your children. The loss of all that you knew, the stealing away of your humanity as you gave life to the demon inside. The things that you did to stay alive; power over humans exercised to the maximum, death dealt, pain apportioned. Is all this something to do with those memories? Has keeping the thoughts of pain and loss so suppressed somehow damaged my short-term memory? Is this some kind of vampiric Alzheimer's?

Sil took a deep breath and deliberately scraped the knuckles of his other hand down the wall. The instant flood of pain and anger pushed the guilt and memory back where it belonged, tucked somewhere in the space between love and rage, and blanketed by the knowledge that this was how it must always be. Letting everything out meant letting out the hate, the fury at what he had become, at what he had lost. It meant that any emotion, even his love for Jessica, must be handled carefully, managed in small parcels to prevent anger detonating from the fuse which burned deep within.

Maybe that is why I am here,
he thought.
Maybe this is some kind of vampire isolation tank, somewhere to think without distraction, to face what is happening to my life. The knowledge that I have fallen in love; that I must let myself feel love without giving power to the other emotions. And it is a very different love to that I knew with my wife, all those years ago – a love that winds through me, is a part of every strand of my being. This exclusion is exactly the sort of thing that Zan would come up with, for my own good. He's probably up there now, watching the clock until he judges that I've come to my senses.

His stomach growled at him.
I do hope he's realised that it is very hard to look into one's soul without sustenance.

I headed out of the office and along by the river and wondered if I was looking for trouble. Right now I needed distraction, anything to stop this awful, evil daisy-petal cycle of ‘he loves me, he wants me dead'. Something that would halt my relentless analysis of every second we'd spent together, dissecting it for any trace of resentment or restlessness.

I could see a knot of people clustering around a bench on the embankment. At first I thought they were just the normal crowd of evening sightseers, hell-bent on eating their own weight in ice cream and waiting for the pubs to get going, but these seemed to be different. They were all men for a start, and I might not know a lot about men but one of the things I
do
know is that when they form a tight group like this, something's going on in the middle. One or two of their faces were familiar, and I was pretty sure they were Britain for Humans' supporters, or some free-agents in the market for a loud fight and beer afterwards.

A little further down the river, on a bench, I saw a zombie filling his arms with the mixture of Araldite and bath sealant that a lot of them used to keep up and, if not running, then certainly lurching quite quickly. When I looked back at the group of men I realised what was going on.

I strolled down towards the bench, my stomach settling at the prospect of movement, of action. ‘Hello.'

‘Er, hi.' The zombie was young. He must have been good-looking once; his face bore a trace of chiselled bone structure and his eyes were still good, but he had the over-taut skin and general gloss of the PVA wash that they all used, like a cheap Californian facelift. ‘Jess, right?'

I riffled my memory banks. ‘And you're Ryan, yes?'

‘I'm just patching-up, that's okay, isn't it? Only I'm a bit …' Almost apologetically he held out an arm and I saw the bagging skin. ‘You know.'

‘No,
you're
fine. I'm just a bit worried about those guys over there.' I nodded towards the men gathered around the railings, shouting to one another and raising fists. ‘They look like they're spoiling for a fight. Might be a good idea if you get out of here fast.'

‘Er, yeah, sure. I can still do fast.' He stood up, with a creaking sound I pretended not to have heard. ‘I've just got this face looking right – I don't want to have it rearranged any more than nature is going to anyway.'

Ryan began to move away in a kind of rolling lope and I watched him carefully, refusing to turn around even when I heard the catcalls and whistles, then the single set of running footsteps that was some chancer setting out after him. As the runner drew level with me, I turned suddenly and grabbed hold of his shirt; his forward momentum wheeled him around me with his eyes bulging and his top button straining like an undersized gusset during ballet practice.

‘What the fu—'

‘Ah, now I'm glad you asked me that.' I bunched his shirt under my hands, trapping him inside his designer label. He couldn't whip around and punch me without garrotting himself with his hand-stitching. ‘What is it with you and the zombies?'

‘They're just dead guys, yeah?' came the slightly breathless answer. ‘Taking our jobs and our women.'

‘Yeah!' A Greek chorus of approval, albeit at a distance they apparently considered safe, waved their arms. ‘Should have the decency to stay dead, right?'

I sighed and released my hold, giving him a small shove as I did so. ‘Look, you lot. The only jobs the zombies take are the ones where the main qualification is Already Being Dead, and I think most girls would rather go out even with you lot than with people who are largely held together with Araldite.' I eyed the unprepossessing faces in front of me. ‘Probably. So leave the zombies alone, all right?'

A rising tide of muttering made my palms sweat for a moment, but the collective brain obviously decided that discretion was the better part of not getting thumped and arrested by a girl, and the group started a kind of trickling retreat back along the embankment.

I waited for them to disappear behind the bridge, sighed again, and carried on walking. After a couple of minutes I found myself outside the flat I'd shared with Rachel until a couple of months ago. I'd walked that way without considering that this wasn't home any more. No, home was now the house that Sil and Zan shared in central York: three storeys of Georgian brickwork, decor that looked as though a French palace had collided with IKEA and the kind of sterile atmosphere you get when one member of the household sits around waiting for dust with a rolled-up newspaper and a can of Pledge.

But it was also the place where Sil and I could be together. Zan might lurk like a disapproving mother-in-law, but at least he didn't interrupt our quiet moments with trial-runs from the Vegan Cook Book and Holby City plot lines. Plus, Rachel and I were still a bit fragile in the friendship department. I'd had to pretend to kill her to lure the demon Malfaire into trusting me and, for a while, she'd behaved as if I really
had
killed her – only with more ‘sending to Coventry' than your average corpse could manage. We'd resumed a tentative text-based conversation, but it still didn't feel as though I could turn up on the doorstep with my washbag and a year's supply of unhealthy foodstuffs, even if I'd wanted to.

Loneliness jabbed me in the heart and I threw a stone rather viciously into the water. Okay, I wasn't about to shriek and rend my garments – I wasn't paid enough to rend anything, could barely even afford to ladder my tights – but even so, I considered that I was entitled to a small moment of self-pity. For a second I imagined Sil standing beside me, not touching me but close enough that I could feel his soft coat brush the skin on my arms, smell that dark, bottom-of-a-wooden-chocolate-box scent that came from him, see the absolute blackness of his hair blowing in the breeze. I squeezed my eyes shut, felt that emptiness inside as though my soul had been removed with a blunt instrument. Tried to conjure him through imagination.
Sil, what happened? To you, to us
 …
You said I was enough for you, that what you felt for me was enough to keep your demon happy, that feeling for me was worth letting all the bad feelings through – was it all a lie? Were you just biding your time, using me, until one day you just woke up and decided it wasn't enough any more?

Another stone bounced savagely off a small boat and I felt the longing like a second skin drawn tight around my own. When someone tapped me on the shoulder it was a wonder I didn't turn around and bite them.

‘Hello.' It was Harry; lovely, square-jawed Harry, the most
human
human it was possible to be without having it printed on a T-shirt. He was an Enforcement Officer, and he and his co-worker Eleanor had been part of the horror that night I'd had to kill the demon. ‘If you're trying to sink one, I recommend dynamite.' He nodded towards the boats. ‘Less accuracy required.' He watched as, determined not to be told what to do by someone who worked for the opposition, I flicked another set of pebbles riverwards. ‘How are you, Jess?'

How do you think I am?
‘Still walking, talking and keeping Liam off the streets. How about you?'

He rolled his shoulders. ‘Ellie and I are back at work now, after … well, they made us take some personal leave.' He blew a breath. ‘It was a bit crazy, wasn't it? Did you get counselling, or …'

‘I work for the council: I didn't even get “there there” and a pat. Well, tell a lie, Liam bought me a pound of toffee bonbons and in our office that's pretty much the same as three calls to the Samaritans and six months' therapy.'

There was a bit of an awkward silence. Harry and I were friendly, but work-friendly rather than hanging-out-friendly. In the end Harry, with a remarkable lack of male evasion, said, ‘What happened with you and that demon – we, I mean Ellie and I, we didn't say anything, Jess. That was all pretty bad, and you pulled us out, you saved all of us that night. Pretty much the whole world too, from what I can figure. So. Yeah. Lips sealed and all that.'

‘About what?' I frowned. I hadn't done anything
technically
illegal, apart from killing Malfaire, the demon who'd declared that I was his daughter, which was obviously not strictly a good thing, but he wanted to take over the world so I reckoned I'd be cut some criminal slack on that one.

‘About …' Harry lowered his voice and looked around dramatically. He was in uniform, which gave the effect that we were passing official secrets. ‘About
Malfaire being your father.
Ellie and I talked about it, well, we haven't stopped talking about it really, but we … well, I know you and she don't really get on.'

‘Only because she shot Cameron.' I clenched my teeth and tried not to think about the loss of my friend to a misunderstanding and a hail of silver bullets.

‘The court declared it accidental,' Harry said, slightly heavily. ‘But even so, we know that there could be
implications
and everything so … like I said, lips sealed.'

Okay, Jess, time for a deep breath and to pull your big-girl panties up. So, your vampire boyfriend has buggered off, well, tough boots, sweetie, you've still got a job to do. ‘Thank you, Harry. And pass on my thanks to Eleanor too, although if you can wrap them in explosives I'd appreciate it.'

We stood and looked around. Apart from a hen party being raucous on the opposite bank, there were no conspicuous signs of bad behaviour. The group of men had dispersed as completely as a fart in a breeze and the summer sunshine was doing a good job of making everything look newly scrubbed and innocent.

‘Well.' Harry swiped his hands along the sides of his jacket as though his palms were sweating. ‘I suppose I ought to …'

‘Have you got time for a drink?' I surprised myself with my desire not to go back to an evening in an over-furnished room with no company but terrible television and a vampire who relaxed by reading Greek texts and tutting. I wanted distraction, I wanted company.

‘Sorry, Jess, on duty.' He held out his hands. ‘Was on my way back to HQ when I saw you walking down here.' He raised his head and looked out, over the river, down towards the bridge, two spans of butter-coloured stone. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were all right. How's Sil, by the way? Not seen him out and about lately.'

‘He's … busy. You know. Busy. We're both … busy.'
Just don't ask what he's busy doing. I've been imagining since he went
 …
‘Busy,' I said again, in a conversation-killing way.

‘Great. Well. I'll see you around then.' With a nod he shoved both hands into his pockets and set off up the cobbled wharf back towards the middle of town.

Steeling myself for an evening spent listening to Zan cataloguing Greek pronouns by size and complaining about how much better they'd been ‘in the Old Days', I headed home.