Читать книгу Ravenfall - Narrelle M Harris - Страница 10

James slid the needle smoothly under the woman’s skin and into the vein. He could smell the blood, and hear its steady whoosh in the circulatory system when he listened closely enough. Those abilities, along with his preternaturally steady hand, made him a favourite at the clinic for taking blood samples.

He filled the two vials and withdrew the needle. He surreptitiously licked his thumb and passed it over the small puncture wound, so that it began to heal up almost at once. The healing properties of vampire saliva were pretty much the only advantage he’d gained from the transition. Mrs Kapur tended to bruise easily, and this was a simple thing he could do for her comfort. She was 72, and a good- hearted soul, and he figured she deserved any consideration that was so easy for him to give.

‘That’s all, Mrs Kapur. We’ll be in touch with your results.’

Mrs Kapur patted his arm. ‘Lovely, thank you, Doctor Sharpe.’

Then she giggled. ‘That’s the wrong name for you. You should be Doctor Gentle. I never feel it when you’re using the needle.’

‘All part of the service,’ he said, smiling at her as she left. Once the door was shut, he labelled one vial then he pulled the stopper out of the second and drank it.

Thyroid function down, and I’ll need to up her heart medication. He scribbled a note to transfer later to Mrs Kapur’s computer records. First, he had to get to the police station to sign his statement from last night’s incident.

He straightened his suit and tie as he left the clinic. Gabriel was there, striding in rapid, agitated steps up the path to the entrance, brow furrowed unhappily. His leather jacket was drawn close around his body, and the dark green scarf he wore was wound firmly around his throat. It was like he had armoured himself in wool and attitude.

‘Everything okay?’

Gabriel shrugged jerkily. ‘I still need to give my statement.’

‘I thought you went in this morning.’

‘Bakare wasn’t in this morning. Datta was. I don’t talk to Datta. She acts like I murder people on Bank Holidays for a hobby.’

James’s hand flexed into a fist, then splayed out as he forced the tension out of his joints. ‘Let’s go find Bakare, then.’

Gabriel jammed his hands in his pockets. ‘Do you think she’s right?’

‘Of course she’s not bloody right. You’re no killer.’

‘How do you know?’

Takes one to know one. James quashed the notion. He had more factual reasons for knowing it to be true. He’d have smelled the blood on Gabriel, for a start. He’d have smelled the burned meat on him, if he’d killed Daryl Mulloway. That kind of stink took a long time to wash clean. He’d been to burned-out villages where the stench of firebombed homes lingered for months.

‘I’ve met killers.’

‘Feel free to be a character witness for me, then. Datta aims to pin something on me if she can.’ He fell into step beside James and they walked together towards the nearest bus stop.

‘Aren’t you going to ask why she doesn’t like me?’ Gabriel prompted.

Dinnae care, do ye, Jamie? Ye like the braw lad plenty for everybody.

‘I assume she’s fickle and deranged.’

The reminder of his words about the failed date washed the tension out of Gabriel. ‘Maybe. I’ve never understood it, otherwise.’

Fortunately, Bakare was in when they reached the station. Less fortunately, he was on his way out, Datta in his wake. ‘We’ve got another body,’ Bakare said through gritted teeth, ‘You’ll have to come back tomorrow if you–’ Then he pulled up short. ‘This Ben Tiller you were looking for. Can you give me a description?’

‘Twenty-two. About James’s height. Dark hair, hazel eyes. He’s got a scar on his…’ Gabriel waved indicatively towards his own chin. ‘He was glassed by a gang of pricks in a park last year.’

‘Think you could ID him?’

Gabriel’s fists clenched. ‘Yes.’

‘Come with us, then.’ Bakare regarded James sourly as he fell into step with them. ‘Don’t recall inviting you, Doctor Sharpe.’

‘You want to take Gabriel to a crime scene to identify a body and you’re telling me you want him alone?’ James’s voice was calm, but his posture was military-rigid, his eyes hard. ‘I can always call his lawyer if you don’t want me along.’

‘Fine. Get in the car. Do what you’re told when we get there and stay out of the way. Datta, take your own car.’

With a glare at both James and Gabriel, Datta obediently went to her own vehicle.

James wondered what the hell he was doing, drawing attention to himself this way, but Gabriel’s small nod of thanks settled the matter. James would be damned if he let Gabriel get dragged off to a murder scene in the company of one, and possibly two, police officers who seemed to think him guilty of a gruesome crime.

James slid into the back seat of Bakare’s car beside Gabriel. ‘Should I be calling a lawyer?’

‘Not yet,’ replied Gabriel quietly. ‘There’s nothing they can charge me with. I didn’t do it.’

‘I know.’

Gabriel drooped his lanky frame against the seat, long legs bent and his angular face pensive. He closed his eyes. He looked terribly vulnerable, with his dark hair in customary disarray and mouth pursed. When he opened his green eyes again, his gaze met Bakare’s reflected in the rear vision mirror.

Bakare’s brown eyes crinkled apologetically. ‘Gabe, I don’t think it’s you. But you’re the only link so far.’

‘Me and the fact they’re all living on the streets. I think you’ll find a lot of other links if you bothered to look.’

Bakare scrubbed his hand through his thinning hair. ‘Let’s eliminate you from the suspect list, shall we? Then I can get Datta off my back about you and we can follow the other leads’

James wanted to take the DI to task over it all – the irregularities and lack of proper protocol, Datta’s clear prejudice, the idiotic assumptions. He was sure that Bakare was aiming to observe Gabriel’s reactions, and attempt to catch the artist in a cover-up or lie, and it simply wasn’t going to happen. Gabriel was innocent.

More to the point, if vampires had killed Daryl Mulloway, vampires might also be involved in the deaths of Alicia Jarret and this new corpse. Gabriel Dare was no vampire. He hadn’t even recognised James as being one.

James very much wanted to see, first-hand, if this new corpse had been killed in the same way as Mulloway. Because if it had, some arsehole vampire was on his patch and he was not fucking having it. Not for one hell-damned second longer.

Aye, I’ll feckin’ skelp the bastard.

Fifteen minutes later, the DI’s car, then Datta’s, pulled up in a small square of park next to a boarded-up shop and a derelict garage. Soon after, James was standing next to Gabriel at the tape barrier, staring up into a tree.

A body was draped between its branches, head hanging back. The dark hair fell away from the young man’s face, which was frozen in a rictus of horror. A scar ran from beside his mouth to just underneath his chin from the glassing. The faintest rust red was smeared on his lips and teeth. His throat had been gashed open on the left, but there was no other blood at the scene.

Gabriel stared at the body. ‘That’s Ben,’ he said dully.

Bakare looked at Gabriel, at the body, at James. ‘You’re going to give an alibi to Gabe, aren’t you?’ he said.

‘Of course I fucking am,’ snapped James. ‘We were together at home all evening, except for those few hours under the Chelsea Bridge. Then we went home.’

‘You can vouch for him all night?’

‘Yes.’

‘He could have slipped out while you were sleeping.’

‘I don’t sleep. I’m an insomniac.’ When Bakare didn’t look convinced he added, ‘Ex-army, active front line service in a warzone. I don’t sleep well at the best of times. Last night was not the best of times. I was awake all night. Gabriel didn’t leave the flat after we got home. Happy now?’

‘Yeah. Pretty happy.’ Bakare cast a glance at Gabriel, who had not taken his eyes off the body in the tree. ‘I’m sorry, Gabe. It’s my job to ask.’

‘Fine. Go ask some other people. Find out who’s doing this. We’re done here.’

James regarded the corpse in the tree closely. He tilted his head and inhaled deeply, passing it off as the settling of nerves, but he could smell it, even from here: the vampire blood in Ben Tiller’s mouth. Not enough to turn him, even given there was no guarantee a turning would work. Ben had bitten the vampire who murdered him.

Brave lad. Poor brave, terrified boy. It took courage to bite a vampire. Not much damage caused, but he’d drawn blood, with its distinctive scent for those with the power to detect it.

What made James particularly angry was knowing that murder wasn’t necessary. There were clubs for this sort of thing, with willing volunteers who offered their throat to the beast and off they went, happy as crazy, crazy Larry. Vampires didn’t need that much blood in a sitting. Even for the greedy, a mouthful from each of a dozen volunteers provided sustenance without hard-to-hide deaths. Too many of those and the police investigations would start, and those were, James gathered, irritating and inconvenient.

James hardly thought that London’s vampires would bother acting against this particular killer, though, no matter the inconvenience. It wasn’t as though vampires had any real hierarchy. As far as James had learned, the individuals in London’s small vampire population had their petty domains and were very selective about who they brought in. No. London’s vampires, like London’s constabulary, probably wouldn’t be arsed to act in this matter unless it threatened them directly.

The murders were unnecessary, James reflected, which mean that the vampire committing them was possibly doing it for fun.

It was exactly the sort of thing that gobshite, Major Cael West, would have done.

James clenched his jaw. He could hardly suggest that to anyone. No-one would believe him for a start. Well, they might if he fanged up in front of them, but James couldn’t think of a single scenario where that ended well.

‘You said you’d found Alicia Jarret too,’ said James suddenly to the DI. ‘Was she like him?’ He gestured towards the corpse. ‘No blood?’ At Bakare’s look he added, ‘I’m a doctor and I was a combat medic for six years. Give me some credit.’

Bakare blew out his pent-up breath. ‘Yes she was. Stuffed into a drainage outlet. Throat lacerations. No blood.’

Gabriel trembled. James could practically feel him vibrating from where he stood. He took Gabriel by the elbow and steered him away from the horror.

When James noticed that the scent of vampire blood was following them, he realised that they were in fact following it. He peered around and saw the smudges of blood along the footpath, dripped against the kerb as well. He tried to lead Gabriel away from the path he was unwittingly following, but Gabriel wouldn’t change course.

‘He bit his attacker, did you see?’ asked Gabriel.

‘What?’

‘Ben’s mouth had blood on it. All in his teeth. Well, I think it was blood. Odd coloured, dark, but blood I think.’

‘How did you see that?’

‘I’m an artist, James. I notice things, especially colours where they shouldn’t be. Ben’s mouth was all smeared with the wrong kind of red. You did see, didn’t you?’

Well, bugger. This is turning into a right guddle, isn’t it, Granda?

‘Aye.’

‘Good, because there’s more of it all along this street.’ Gabriel nodded at the smudges of blood on the concrete.

James realised with alarm that their path was not coincidental after all. ‘We should leave this to the police.’

‘Right. Yeah. Because they’re so keen to find out who’s actually doing this and stop the killing. Obviously it should all be left in their safe hands.’

‘Gabriel–’

‘Datta has had it in for me from the day we met, and it’s so bad now that Bakare stopped to eliminate me first before doing a proper investigation. Do you know how many people have gone missing from the streets in the last month? Six. Six people, James. I didn’t know all of them, by the way, if you’re asking.’

‘I’m not asking.’

‘But Ben knew some of them. So did Hannah. Now Daryl Mulloway, Ben and Alicia are all dead and Hannah’s missing. Whatever is going on isn’t stopping, and Bakare and his team don’t give a shit. Nobody will give a shit until it’s someone they think matters.’

‘You think that someone has to be you?’

Gabriel snorted his opinion of that comment. ‘I’m nothing to them, James. You can see that. But I’m fucked if I’m going to just sit around and wait for the next murder. We’ve got an opportunity here. A literal trail. I’m going to bloody well follow it and see if I can give Bakare something concrete to chase, at least. You don’t have to come if you’ve got something better to do.’

Gabriel strode off, keeping his eye on the drops of blood as they led him into a side street.

James followed, hoping that Gabriel would lose the trail, but he didn’t. That worried James more than everything else combined, because he was pretty damned sure that nobody could follow a vampire’s trail unless the vampire wanted to be followed. Hell, a human bite would hardly still be bleeding this far away from the scene in normal circumstances.

Normal. Christ. What does that even mean anymore?

James kept at Gabriel’s heels, wondering what the hell to do with that thought. They were being led into a trap. But why was someone baiting Gabriel like this?

And it had to be Gabriel they were after. They were targeting Gabriel’s friends. Even with the whiff of Cael West about the whole hideous thing, West had no connection with Gabriel. Anyway, West was in Afghanistan, if he was around at all. And if he wasn’t, he’d be after James, not James’s new tenant. It didn’t make any bloody sense.

‘James, are you coming or not?’

James didn’t pick up his pace. ‘They’ll be long gone, Gabriel.’ But he wasn’t optimistic.

‘No, no, the blood’s fresh. Oh, through here.’ Gabriel darted into an alley. James followed.

The fact that the sun was setting was neither here nor there, James knew. Vampires were perfectly capable of operating in the daylight, supernatural strength and senses undiminished. Being a vampire didn’t stop you having psychosomatic health problems, either. Being a vampire didn’t make you as all-powerful as it looked in all those stupid films. It didn’t make you smart.

But being a vampire did make you fast, and deadly.

Gabriel vanished in front of James’s eyes, plucked straight up into the air, feet kicking against the sudden pull, hands scrabbling at his scarf tightening around his throat.

James took three running steps and leapt straight up, wrapping one arm around Gabriel’s waist, the other hooked into the scarf to keep it from choking its owner. James twisted his body as he seized Gabriel, an action that wrenched him from the grip of the man on the roof of the lock-up and they fell together, spiralling six feet to the street.

James landed first and bent his knees into the landing, absorbing the shock and bringing Gabriel down with him. He heard the other vampire land behind them and released Gabriel instantly, whirling to face the threat. There was nothing for it. Gabriel would see whatever he would see, because it was too late and too dangerous to hide anything now.

The vampire leapt at him, and James, instead of ducking, threw himself shoulder-first to meet the attack. The vampire grabbed his arms and used the leverage to flip himself right over James’s head, landing elegantly in front of Gabriel Dare and sending James sprawling.

‘Hello, Mr Dare,’ said the vampire in a silken voice. ‘You finally found the trail. It took five killings for you to notice one I’d laid.’

‘A trail,’ Gabriel repeated, puzzled, before his voice flattened to a darker tone. ‘A trap. For me?’ He scowled. ‘You’ve been killing them to get to me? You utter fuck.’

James scrambled up. You’ll have noticed his teeth by now. You should be terrified. But of course you’re not. You have no idea what you’re looking at. He cast about for a weapon, preferably something pointy, but anything would do.

‘Well, you’re a stop on the way to where we want to get,’ the vampire was saying, ‘and the opportunity for proper kills for the first time in a hundred years was too good to pass up. I love the struggle from the feistier humans. I have so missed the taste of that, and feeling really, properly, full.’

‘Human?’ Gabriel was unable yet to make sense of it.

Any answer was lost when the vampire took an impossible vertical leap as James’s fist, wrapped around a discarded crowbar, whistled through the space he’d occupied a moment ago.

‘James, what–’

‘Down!’

Afterwards, Gabriel was able to reconstruct events from strobe-like memory.

How the stranger landed beside him, grabbed his shoulders and bared long, sharp teeth as he lunged for Gabriel’s throat.

How James thrust his arm between those fangs and Gabriel’s neck, taking the bite in the forearm, and swinging a crowbar with his free hand onto the assailant’s skull.

How the assailant, snarling, tore his teeth free from James’s arm and how James pulled them both backwards, away from Gabriel.

How the assailant drew a short wooden spike from an inside pocket and plunged it into James Sharpe’s chest, right through his crisp, white cotton shirt.

How James grunted, hissed, ‘Missed, ye walloper’, wrenched the spike out of his diaphragm and in turn smashed the primitive weapon, point-first, into the left-hand side of the assailant’s chest.

And how the assailant exploded into a storm of dust that sprinkled gently onto the street.

‘James?’

‘You right, Gabriel?’ James was clutching at the wound in his torso, the hole surrounded by dark blood. ‘He… he didnae bite you… while I was down? Wouldnae… change you, obviously… but it’s… nasty. Filthy wounds, bites.’

‘James, what just happened?’

‘Oh.’ James’s knees wobbled, ‘Stuff. It’s… hard tae… Damn.’

His knees buckled and he folded to the ground. Gabriel was instantly at his side, pushing aside James’s suit jacket and pulling up his shirt to inspect the ghastly wound.

Gabriel made a peculiar noise in the back of his throat and began to tear off his scarf to have something to press against the oozing hole in James’s pale chest.

‘No, no Gabriel, it’s f-f-fine.’ James tried to reassure him, but although the bastard had missed his heart, being staked hurt like a bitch.

‘God, James, you’re not fine, you’re… you’re…’ The panic faded from Gabriel’s voice, replaced with bemusement, ‘You’re hardly bleeding.’

‘Aye. S’all right. Side effect. One of the better ones. Feck.’ A piercing twinge of pain made him gasp at air that, strictly speaking, he didn’t need any more, except to talk. Right now, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

Gabriel rucked up James’s sweater again to stare at the wound.

‘Gabriel.’

‘James, what…?’

‘Gabriel, it hurts. I need tae get up. I need home. I need blood.’

‘And you have… you have blood at home?’

‘Nae, but I can rest. I can… please. I’ll explain. Later. I just…’

‘You’re a-a-a vampire, then.’ Gabriel said it like he was trying out the idea for size, and finding it an uncomfortable fit.

James closed his eyes and wished the world would go away. ‘Aye.’

A right guddle, aye. What a mess.

‘And the man who attacked us? Also a vampire?’

‘Aye.’

‘Like the man under the bridge.’

‘Aye.’

The silence continued and James, eyes still closed against the unbearable world, began to shudder with the pain.

‘Please. Gabriel. I’ll nae hurt you. I swear I willnae hurt you. Just get me home, please. Then you can pack and leave. I won’t stop you. I understand. But please, believe me. I wouldnae hurt you, ever.’ He was shaking so hard his teeth were chattering.

Against all expectation, James felt fingers brush across his cheek. ‘Of course you wouldn’t hurt me,’ said Gabriel softly. ‘You’ve been promising not to all this time. And you haven’t. You’ve looked out for me.’

James’s eyes were scrunched shut now, and if he were capable of producing tears anymore he might have been crying. ‘I’m sorry,’ was all he managed to say, before another bout of pain reduced him to speechless shaking.

‘No. It’s all right.’ Gabriel cradled James’s body. James couldn’t understand how Gabriel could be so calm, and speak so gently, to the monster he held. ‘Well,’ Gabriel amended, ‘it’s clearly not all right. But you’ve just saved my life, possibly for the second time. I wish I knew the first thing about… about your biology. You need blood to heal, though, is that right?’

This time when James shuddered, a whimper escaped his clamped teeth.

‘Fuck, I’m sorry, banging on instead of helping. Here, bite that.’

James opened his eyes enough to see that Gabriel held his arm out to him in an unmistakable offer.

James flinched. ‘No.’

‘Don’t be an idiot, James. You’re seriously hurt and you’re in pain. I expect the woman who’s watching us from her bathroom window has called the police, and I haven’t a clue what we’re supposed to say to them. And… and ashes-to-ashes there was talking in the plural, “we”. If his mates show up, I won’t stand a chance without you. Your being noble could get us both killed.’

James tried to form another protest, but a wave of pain shuddered through him. ‘Gabriel. I promised… I’ll nae… I won’t hurt…’

‘Just do it,’ said Gabriel tensely.

James let the pain take him, triggering the small but necessary change. He bared his new-descended fangs and, as gently as possible, bit the offered forearm.

Gabriel stifled a gasp, but held still as James’s teeth pierced the skin.

James bit to open the small wounds further, then sucked at the flow. A few mouthfuls. Nothing more. He didn’t need more. He refused to take more.

Then he swirled his tongue over the two holes and felt them close up. Done, he pushed Gabriel’s arm away roughly, as though placing it firmly away from temptation.

‘All right?’ Gabriel’s tone was steadier.

‘In a minute.’ James wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, then licked the smear of blood from his hand. No point wasting any.

‘Do you normally drink human blood?’ Gabriel asked, suddenly uncertain.

‘Not often, and not directly, like that. I drink animal blood from time to time.’ James didn’t think that was as reassuring as he tried to make it. He made his teeth retract safely away. He didn’t like to think about Gabriel watching his teeth while he talked. He didn’t want Gabriel worrying about what they meant. ‘Mostly, I drink tea.’ He tried to laugh, to make it seem normal.

‘Is that what all the tea is about? Crushing the craving?’ The questions came rushing out, anxiety spilling into curiosity. ‘What about tea does that? How effective is animal blood for the… I suppose you get cravings. Do you? Is that what it’s like? Do you spend a lot of time looking at my neck?’

Of course Gabriel would go thinking exactly along the lines where James didn’t want him to go. ‘Actually,’ said James, peeved, ‘I spend a lot of time looking at your hands.’

‘My hands?’

‘You have beautiful hands.’ James could feel his strength returning with the gift of Gabriel’s blood, along with the slight itch of the wound in his chest mending.

‘Oh. Well. That’s a relief.’ Gabriel’s grin at him was something in the order of a miracle.

‘Not weird, then?’ James asked, with a trace of their old humour.

‘Quite weird,’ Gabriel’s mouth twitched in a tentative smile. ‘But more reassuring than you obsessing over my throat.’

‘I do not spend time pining over your carotid artery, you plonker. When I need human blood, I sneak blood samples at the clinic. Things go missing at the NHS all the time. What do you take me for?’

Surprisingly, Gabriel seemed heartened by the irritated outburst. ‘You’re feeling better.’

James lifted the jumper to inspect the damage. The healing had accelerated and his diaphragm showed only a minor and vanishing scar.

‘Time to go.’ Gabriel held out his hand and helped James to his feet. James didn’t need the help, but took it gratefully. That way, he could pretend for a little longer that everything would be okay with him and Gabriel.

James buttoned the suit jacket over the tear in his shirt and straightened his tie. They jogged away, sticking to shadows, darting from street to street, but they weren’t followed and they weren’t found. At the main road, they flagged a cab. It was an extravagance, given the state of their mutual finances, but neither of them could face either public transport or a walk.

James was pensive on the way home, waiting for further questions that didn’t come. All Gabriel said was, ‘Your accent comes out when you’re stressed or hurt. Did you know?’

‘I know.’

‘It’s gone again.’

‘I’m fine now.’

After that, Gabriel lapsed back into contemplative silence and James waited.

Then, two steps through the downstairs door to Ivy Gardens, the questions and comments started again, so rapidly fired that there was no time to answer a single one.

‘How long have you been a vampire? Is that the right term? How did it happen? Who did it to you? What are the rules? Those movies are stupid and never make sense. Can you turn into a wolf? Of course not, stupid question, sorry. Where do your teeth go? You still breathe – do you need to? Do you have a heartbeat? What’s the deal with your saliva? I felt how it worked on the cuts when you bit me and there’s not even a scar now. I could take samples, and the saliva, skin and hair as well, and do some tests–’

Gabriel stopped, hand on the open door, when he realised James was still standing, grim-faced, at the top of the stairs. ‘What is it?’

James’s jaw worked until he found his voice. ‘Gabriel, this isn’t a Boy’s Own Adventure. I’m not a school project. I’m a vampire. I’m a monster.’

That snapped Gabriel out of his excitable blathering. ‘Of course you’re not a monster.’ He entered the flat and waited for James to follow.

Sensing that the top landing was not the place for this conversation, James stepped across the threshold and shoved the door shut. ‘Gabriel, are you paying attention? I’m a vampire.’

Gabriel exhaled a slow breath. ‘You know, James,’ he said carefully, ‘I lived on the streets on and off for the better part of a decade, and I’ve become a good judge of character. I had to. And here’s something else. I’m now certain I’ve met vampires before. In fact, I think some things I thought I’d imagined over the years, maybe I really did see.’

He’d gone from giddily fascinated to oddly sober. ‘For years, I’ve thought I was crazy. Not in one of those “oh I’m zany, good for a laugh, me” ways. I mean “psychotic, seeing things, shadows in my head” crazy. I tried to tell myself instead that I was imagining things. But I knew that I saw them, the way I used to see things when I was small. But I was damned if I was going to let anybody start dosing me up on neuroleptics again, so I shut up and explained the weird shit I saw as hunger, or the cold, or tricks of the light. But here you are. A vampire. Real.’

‘That doesn’t make me safe.’

‘No. But I’ve just told you, I’m an excellent judge of character. Frankly, there are human beings who’ve been a long way from safe for me. I don’t doubt you, James. I might have only met you a month ago but I know you. You don’t scare me.’

James regarded Gabriel with a mixture of wonder and curiosity. Then he frowned. ‘Who the hell put you on neuroleptics? That’s an anti-psychosis medicine – and you were a kid when that happened?’

Now it was Gabriel who looked like he wished James didn’t make beelines for the one topic he’d hoped to avoid. ‘My dad thought I was bonkers when I was a kid,’ he said. ‘Actually, he still does.’

James’s expression changed to one of concern. ‘What did you see? When you were little.’

Gabriel moistened his lips nervously, then figured that if confessions were to be made this evening, they had to be made in full.

‘Ghosts. I used to think my house was haunted. Nobody ever believed me. My father said I was over-imaginative, and that I made up invisible playmates because I was in that huge house on my own so much. Then I described one of my imaginary playmates as having her entrails spilling out of her stomach, and the boy in the coal cellar had rope around his neck and his tongue was black and stuck out of his mouth like a sausage, and that the creepy baby would cry and cry and cry until the lady in the white dress picked it up and smashed its head into the fireplace.

‘My father said I was sick in the head. He sent me to a lot of psychiatrists and the occasional institution and he fed me a lot of fucking pills before I learned to keep my mouth shut.’

Gabriel leaned towards James. ‘What you did tonight. That’s the first time in twenty years I’ve thought maybe I’m not deep-down crazy. Maybe my house really was haunted. You don’t understand what this means to me.’

‘Gabriel…’

‘Because if you’re real, then the ghosts were real. And if they’re real, I want to know what they are. Ghosts and vampires, and those other things I thought I saw. I want to know everything that can be known about it, because it’ll keep proving I’m not mad and I never was.’ The relief in his expression, the hope in it, was nearly heart- breaking.

Then Gabriel, fierce and earnest, wrapped his long fingers around James’s blunter ones. ‘You’re not a monster, James. My father is, sometimes, but not you. You’re a good man. You saved my life; in more ways than one. And I want to find out exactly what it means. Being a vampire. You can tell me how it works. There must be rules–’

‘I don’t know how it works,’ James snapped. ‘I didn’t come with an instruction manual. I woke up as this thing, and was left to work it out on my own.’

‘I could help you work it out. I’m a chemist, remember. We’ve got somewhere to start.’

‘I’m not a science project, Gabriel. Don’t make me into one. I couldn’t stand it.’ Not from you.

‘Don’t you want to know?’

To know what West turned me into? The myths are no good. So much of what’s in the movies and books isn’t true. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what this is or what it means.

‘Of course I do.’

‘And of course you won’t be a science project. How could you think you would be? James, you’re my friend.’

James saw no fear in Gabriel’s eyes. He saw burning curiosity, yes, but also warmth. Pleading. He saw something he had not seen since before that day in Helmand. A friend, offering to help.

‘I’ve never seen a ghost,’ James admitted slowly.

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘That’s not what I’m saying.’ James grimaced. ‘There’s so much I don’t know.’

‘Then let’s find out together.’

‘All right.’ James swallowed. ‘Aye. That’d be good.’

‘It would be good,’ Gabriel agreed. ‘We’ll be pioneers in the field. That’s fantastic, that.’ He grinned broadly.

‘It’s mad, is what it is.’

‘Bloody mad,’ Gabriel agreed.

Their eyes met and then they were both giggling in fits.

James felt like something had been unlocked inside. With this secret gone, he’d be able to help Gabriel find out what the hell was going on – because Gabriel was right. The police wouldn’t do much here. They couldn’t. Not if they spent their time seeking a simply human reason for it all.

And, James couldn’t help thinking, with a fluttering sense of hope, he could finally have more of his life back. You were always right, Granda. It’s a lang road that’s nae got a turnin.’

‘So. Do you have a cape?’ Gabriel asked cheekily on the way to the kitchen.

‘Opera cape,’ James replied, deadly serious. ‘And spats. I’m like Bela Lugosi when I frock up.’

‘You’re much better looking than Bela Lugosi,’ Gabriel protested. ‘You’re like a paler, blonder Frank Langella.’

‘I don’t know who that is.’

‘Yeah, you do.’ They reached the kitchen and Gabriel poured and gulped down two glasses of water. James sank onto a chair, everything as superficially normal as usual.

The pensive moment froze.

Gabriel broke the silence. ‘Will you still help me find out what’s going on? Despite what happened tonight? We have to find out who’s doing this. That… vampire said I was a step on the way to something else. What do vampires want with me?’ He looked suddenly young and fearful.

James rose, but he was afraid to reach out – although it was the only thing he wanted to do. Reach out and press a comforting hand to Gabriel’s shoulder; to pull him into an embrace.

‘I swear to you Gabriel, we’ll find out, and we’ll stop them. I won’t let anyone hurt you.’

Gabriel’s gaze dropped to James’s torso, where the stake had torn a hole in his body; where the mouthful of Gabriel’s blood had made that wound heal like a miracle.

‘Don’t let…’ Gabriel cleared his throat. ‘Don’t let any of the bastards s-stake you, either. I don’t want to lose you.’

It seemed too early for a declaration like that. Too early, or much, much too late, James thought. He did succumb to the impulse to reach out, though, and squeezed Gabriel’s shoulder gently.

Impulsively, Gabriel pressed a kiss to James’s cheek, and then vanished into his room.

James pressed his fingers to the spot. He could feel the shape of Gabriel’s lips on his skin; and he felt it there, warm and tingling, all the long and wakeful night.