Dark Vision (8 page)

Right. To do the whole mating thing. Yay.

‘Why me? Why this whole spirit-into-flesh affair? Why not the priestess, like it’s always been?’

‘Because that cycle has ended and a new one has begun. It was always prophesied that this would happen. I was raised to believe it, to wait for you, to secure the fate of humanity. It is a moment of great weakness in time, and one the Fintna Faidh are looking to exploit. That’s why I need to keep you safe, Lily. That and a few other reasons.’

My mind was a whirl of questions, and there was a whole new sister issue I was having to clamp down on for the time being, but any further conversation was halted by the arrival of a short, stocky, dark-haired man. Not quite a leprechaun, but stick him in a green suit and he could give it a go.

‘Finn,’ said Gabriel, clasping him on thick shoulders with both hands. Finn grinned at me in a manner that can only be described as impish, and gave me a quick bow.

‘My Lady,’ he said, ‘it is an honour to be at your service. My sword arm is yours to command.’

‘That’s … very nice of you,’ I replied, unsure of the whole goddess/leprechaun etiquette. Behind me, Kevin the barman approached, his floppy blond hair falling over one eye as usual.

‘And this is Caemgen,’ said Gabriel, ‘although you might know him as Kev.’

I stared at Kevin, who was grinning while he cleaned a glass with a dirty tea towel. Kevin, apparently pronounced Kwe-veen. The barman who’d always kept an eye out for me.

‘Kevin!’ I said, feeling even more out of control. For a goddess, I didn’t have much of a sense of power. ‘Are you … one of them?’

‘Aye, milady,’ he said. ‘Caemgen ni Niall. Also yours to command. And to supply you with fresh bottles of Peroni whenever your heart desires.’

‘Who else?’ I asked Gabriel. ‘Which of your other secret squirrels have been watching me all this time?’

‘A few. Remember Miss McDonough?’

‘My old head teacher?’

‘Yes. She was with us. And Roisin, your friend at university?’

‘The one who mysteriously moved to Peru as soon as we graduated?’

‘That’s the one. You’re too important to risk, Lily. Coleen … wasn’t enough.’

Damned right she wasn’t. She wasn’t enough for anyone, never mind a six-year-old girl who’d just lost her parents. I swallowed down the bitterness. I had no idea why I’d ended up with her, but I’d always carry the scars. Someone had made a very bad choice somewhere along the line, and when I found out who, there’d be a hefty wet-kipper slapping session.

‘These men are to be trusted,’ said Gabriel. ‘With your life. They would give up their souls for you, Lily.’

I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone giving up their souls for me, whether they were willing to or not. I was starting to yearn for the days when the most responsibility I had was whether to give a band three stars or four.

I could feel all of their gazes upon me, as though they were waiting for something, some command, some request, some sign that I was anything but an ordinary screwed-up Liverpool girl in a battered pair of Doc Martens.

‘I need to pee,’ I said, which may have been slightly less than they were hoping for. Gabriel nodded – as though giving me permission – and I headed towards the ladies, slamming my way through the metal-clad doors and leaning against the graffitied wall.

I didn’t actually need to pee. I needed to breathe. Away from all the testosterone and mumbo jumbo. Away from the noise and the crowd and my new-found soul-sacrificing friends. I considered climbing out of the window and making a run for it, but it was too small, and the ledge was covered in a suspicious-looking brown gunk. Ah, the glamorous life of a goddess.

My hyperventilating was interrupted as the door slammed back again, and a woman walked in. A woman who actually looked like a goddess: tall and slender, with a swanlike neck and lustrous ebony hair.

She smiled at me, and walked over to the mirror, fluffing her already perfect do into a big, black cloud. She pulled out a lipstick, and started to draw a blood-red circle over her lips.

I had the feeling she wasn’t a regular at the Coconut Shy. And I had an even stronger feeling that she was one of
them
. Privacy was clearly a thing of the past. I should have locked myself in a stall, but it probably wouldn’t have done any good.

‘So,’ she said, pouting and checking the lippie, ‘he’s given you the spiel, has he? Cormac Mor?’

‘If you mean Gabriel, then … yes, I suppose he has. Are you with him? Are you one of his people?’

‘Hardly!’ she said, laughing. ‘I’m one of the bad guys. Or at least I suspect that’s how he painted it. He always was a little narrow-minded. Pretty enough, I’ll grant you that, but haughty with it, don’t you think?’

I shrank back against the wall, feeling a wave of strength flow from the modelesque creature in front of me. I felt its shadow wrap around me, like tendrils of invisible smoke, clogging my nostrils.

‘Well, sweetie, he hasn’t told you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me, Goddess. I am Eithne, of the Tuatha de Danaan. And I’m here to tell you that we don’t wish to annihilate the mortals – we wish to improve them. Make them better. Bring them … up to standard. To reclaim what was once ours, and to share all that we have learned. Has he told you what the Otherworld is like? The Land of the Young? No illness, no pain, no ageing. Doesn’t that sound better than’ – she gestured around the admittedly less than glamorous surroundings of the Coconut Shy lavatory – ‘this?’

It did sound better, but the picture of well-being she was painting was offset by the fact that I felt like I was choking to death. Nausea was rising from the pit of my stomach, and every breath I took in was tinged with a rich, sickly perfume. Like apples fallen off the tree and left for too long.

She looked at me, at the way I was struggling to exhale, at my clenched fists and whitening skin, and her eyes narrowed.

‘Interesting,’ she said, reaching out to stroke my hair. ‘You can … feel it. You can feel my power. I didn’t expect that. Still, I’m telling the truth. This mortal world is – how might you put it? Fucked up? They’ve covered their sacred groves with shopping malls, their shrines with housing estates. They’ve blocked the magic of their rivers with pollution and waste. They had their chance at bounty. Why should we – why should you, Mabe? – give them another? I mean, it’s not as though they’re worth the effort, is it? Look at that woman he put you with, the dried-out bone that raised you.’

She held up a finger, touching it against my lips, and I felt my mind prised open. I saw the vision clear as day: me, as a child. Six years old. Serious face, and hair in plaits. In a small, dark room, surrounded by strangers. The woman I’d been told was my nan looking at me like I was poison. The two men in black, the men she was scared of. One of them handing her the brown-paper package … Gabriel? His face flashed into view: the cut of his cheekbones, his fine white skin, those unmistakable eyes. He looked exactly the same then as he did now. It was definitely Gabriel. He was the one who’d given me away. Who’d left me to my fate with her, with Coleen, a woman who’d never loved anything in her life. The woman who’d raised me in silence and fear.

Eithne pressed harder on my lips, and I choked in a breath that I knew could be my last.

‘Ah … you didn’t know, did you? Well, now you do. And you have a choice,’ she said, looking at me like I was an insect being divested of its wings. ‘It’s up to you. You don’t have to let him in your mind. You don’t have to feel his touch. You don’t have to play the part he has all laid out for you – the sacrificial spirit, ready to birth a nation. You can choose us. You can choose freedom.’

I couldn’t reply. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even breathe. She could end it right now; win this war I wanted nothing to do with. Snuff me out like I’d never existed. I dragged my thoughts together, tried to come up with some way to fight back, but she was too strong. That last breath choked in my throat, and my eyes started to blur from lack of oxygen. She had a beautiful face, but it was cruel, and not the one you’d choose as your last sight.

The door slammed back yet again, so hard it took a chunk of plaster from the wall. Eithne, distracted, dropped her touch, and I sucked air into my sore lungs, sliding down on to the floor, huddling there with the discarded tissue paper and hardened globs of chewing gum.

It was Isabella. The singer. A fury of hair and hands, she grabbed Eithne around the neck and threw her hard across the room. Eithne slammed into the sinks in a way that would have broken a human back, and I heard the hiss of water as disconnected pipes spewed out.

Isabella roared, and sank her fangs into Eithne’s shoulder, blood seeping. More blood oozed out as she tore into flesh. Eithne rallied, gripped Isabella’s hair to yank the vampire’s face from her body, then grabbed her arm and pulled with such ferocity that I heard the shoulder dislocate. Shoving her away, she ran for the door, leaving a trail of Eau de Rot behind her.

Isabella stood up straight. Rammed herself repeatedly against the wall until the joint was knocked back into place with a sickening pop. Wiped her mouth clear of blood with the back of her hand, and turned to me.

‘Bloody Tuatha,’ she said, making a gagging sound. ‘They always taste of battery acid.’

I’ve been to a few after-show parties in my time, including one with Liam Gallagher, but nothing that could compare with the weirdness in Gabriel’s apartment later that night.

The vampires were glowing with energy, alive with the adrenaline of their gig and the willing post-performance snacks they’d ‘romanced’ just enough to leave their conquests with dreamy memories and mysterious love bites. Luca was prowling round the room, topless and wearing a pair of leather trousers, and Isabella was languid and luscious, draped over the sofa like a Renaissance painting come to life.

Morgan the bass player was on a high, playing
Call of Duty
on the Xbox with Marcus, the guitarist. I’d be surprised if there was anything left of the handsets by morning. They too had dispensed with the need for shirts, which made for entertaining viewing.

Finn, Kevin and Gabriel were huddled in a corner, drinking whisky and drawing up battle plans, and Carmel had finally joined us.

‘There was this man outside my house,’ she said, dumping a bag of her stuff in the corner and sliding down next to me on the couch. ‘And when I say “man”, I mean god. Blond, well fit, like Daniel Craig on steroids. He nodded as I went out, got in his car, and followed me here. Did I just get really lucky, or is it something to do with the World of Warcraft over there?’

‘Probably,’ I said. ‘He’ll be your guard, and he’ll have some stupidly unpronounceable name, and if you ever speak to him, he’ll witter on about duty and laying down his life to protect yours.’

‘Hmm … could be worse, I suppose. So, how are you holding up? And what’s with the semi-naked stud parade? Are they Gabriel’s men?’

‘Oh. No,’ I replied. ‘They’re my new vampire friends. And you see that one over there, with the shiny hair and the eyes? I was in bed with him earlier.’

‘No way!’ she said, voice bubbling with laughter and disbelief. ‘Was there kissing?’

I love Carmel, I realised. Really love her. I’d just broken the news that she was in a room full of the living dead, and the first question out of her mouth was about my sex life. I understood why
I
could deal with all of this – with my visions, I’ve been on the fringes of the supernatural my whole life – but her easy acceptance of it amazed me. That’s what three years on the night desk will get you, I suppose.

‘No. But quite a lot of bare skin. It was … nice.’

‘I bet it was,’ she said, surveying Luca like he was a box of chocolates. ‘So how did that happen? Why did you drop the whole “no touching, dahling” routine? And while we’re sharing, what’s with that anyway? Why don’t you like to be touched? Is there something … off, from when you were a kid?’

Her tone had lowered, and the sparkle had gone from her eyes. She obviously expected some sordid tale of abuse to be heading her way.

‘Nothing like that,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s complicated …’

‘I think,’ she said, gesturing around the room, ‘that if I can handle this, I can handle anything.’

Fair point.

‘Sometimes, when I touch people – skin on skin – I see things. I see visions … of their future. And a lot of times that’s fine – it’s mundane, it’s normal, or even really happy. But other times, it’s … not so happy. It’s how they die, or how they get ill. Which is—’

‘Bloody depressing!’ she butted in. ‘I can see that. So – if I held your hand now, you could see what my future holds?’

‘Not necessarily,’ I replied, feeling uncomfortable at the thought. I couldn’t bear to see a future that held anything bad for Carmel. ‘It doesn’t seem to happen with the vampires at all. And with humans I don’t have any control over it, or know when it will happen. Which is one of the many things that suck about it. Why? You don’t want me to, do you?’

‘No way!’ she answered solidly. ‘I can’t think of anything worse. The present is plenty interesting enough, thank you. And it does explain a lot – all these years I thought you were just being weird. I didn’t mind, it was all part of the package, but I know you freaked a lot of other people out. Like the canteen staff, when you insisted they put your coffee down on the counter so you didn’t have to touch their hands. They thought you were a real stuck-up cow.’

Good to know. Lily McCain, social pariah.

She paused, cast her eye over Morgan and Marcus, squatting bare-chested on the floor in front of us.

‘So, you can touch vampires … again, could be worse, if this lot is anything to go by. And I noticed that you gave the old High King a bit of the cold shoulder earlier. What’s up? Have you two had a falling out? The path of true mating not running smoothly?’

She’d noticed, of course. Being a girl. She was right – I had been off with him. Following the revelations in the Coconut Shy bathrooms, I was finding it hard to fall back into the routine of banter and sarcasm that Gabriel and I had established. After my encounter with Eithne, he’d been so worried I thought he’d explode, insisting that he stuck by my side the whole night. I guess he thought he’d failed in his protection duty – which he had. They’d all been shocked that she’d come in person – the Fintna Faidh usually stuck to their men-in-black foot soldiers on Earth, apparently – and Finn thought it was to do with something called Samhain.