Vampire State of Mind (28 page)

Malfaire breathed heavily. ‘What
is
this? It's like my whole skin is alive … dancing.' Another deep breath. ‘I've never felt anything like it.'

‘You obviously don't go to the right parties.'

I waited until his eyes rolled closed, then moved towards the door. ‘Where are you going?' Malfaire's voice was slurred as though his tongue was numb. ‘Jessica?'

Keep him calm. Don't risk him firing off more spells; someone could get hurt. ‘Yeah, I'm here. Just getting myself another glass of wine.'

I tiptoed over the carpet to the door. I'd been expecting Liam, but it was Sil crouched behind it holding my gun.

‘What are you …?' I began, but he raised a finger to his lips.

‘Hush.' He pushed the tranq gun into my hand. ‘I don't want you to be alone, Jessie.'

‘Do you mean now, or generally?' I whispered.

‘Still not the right time for this conversation,' he hissed back.

‘Jessica? Jessica, where are you?' Malfaire's voice floated from the
chaise
. ‘I feel
fantastic
.'

‘I'm here.' I motioned to Sil to follow me but he stayed where he was, eyes fixed on my braless chest and I had to poke him quite vigorously before he'd shift.

Malfaire's eyes were black. No trace of the gold now; just two huge pupils trying to focus. ‘I'm flying.'

‘Damn straight.' I approached his slumped form and hefted the tranq gun. Felt its familiar weight against my palm and looked down on the demon. He'd begun to laugh, bonelessly sprawled across the velvet, unsuspecting. This wasn't right. I didn't have the power to take a life, not when he was so out of things, so unable to defend himself or even to know what was happening. I lowered the gun again. ‘I can't do this.'

Malfaire was suddenly focusing. On me. On the gun. I heard Sil shout, ‘Jessie, look out!' and then there was a confusion of movement and a sting of energy flipped the gun from my hand to slither underneath the
chaise
; suddenly I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, wrapped in those coils of magic and held rigid.

‘I'm impressed, I really am.' Malfaire's voice was dreamy, the blood that we'd mixed into the wine was still pounding through his system; the lack of coordination it produced was probably the only reason that I wasn't already dead. ‘But you do realise, don't you –' my body rotated until my head pointed downwards and I started to feel sick – ‘that getting you on my side for the war was purely out of the goodness of my heart. I was always going to end you, Jessica, whether you were with me or not.' A vomit-inducing movement wafted me into the air above him and he raised his head to smile an unfocused smile into my face. ‘And the killing part is always so much
fun
. It's a shame you can't ask your mother about it.'

Sil shouted, some wordless sound, and charged, getting halfway across the room before the magic caught him in its coils and flung him through the doorway. I heard the crack as he hit the
door frame
on his way, a rising shriek which ended suddenly in a loud bump, and then the regular thumping and scuffing sound of a body sliding along the tiled hallway, hitting panelling and furniture all the way to the front door.

‘Sil!' I moved and the magic surrounding me turned to jelly then to air and I was down on the floor beside the
chaise
, hand closed around the gun. I felt shakily cold and my fingers were numb but the tranq gun sat easily in my hand, slightly warm.

I brought it up suddenly, slid it over the edge of the
chaise
, along Malfaire's side to rest against the bottom of his rib cage. ‘Sil,' was all I could say. Then I bit my lip, hard, and pulled the trigger.

There was a moment of confusion. Malfaire gave a gasp. I stood up to make sure my shot had hit home and he grabbed me, pressed me against his chest. He was smiling. Then I saw his eyes clear, the effects of my blood falling from him. ‘What's happening?'

‘It's called dying.' I wrenched myself from his grasp and knelt beside him. ‘And I'm sorry. Really I am. But you shouldn't have killed my mother and hurt Sil.'

‘I am
immortal
!' It was a choked shout, one with more hope than expectation behind it. ‘This cannot …'

A sudden backwash of loathing scalded through my veins. ‘Yes, it can.' I held up the gun. ‘You can only be killed by your own flesh and blood. Remember?' Thanks to Liam, thanks to his organisation, his compulsion to keep, to file, we'd kept the rest of my blood sample that I'd taken for the testing unit and Zan had mixed it in with the wine. The tissue sample from Malfaire, the sample I'd stolen in the Hagg Baba for testing, Liam had loaded into an empty tranq cartridge. And I'd fired it. Without the needle, it had scythed through his flesh into his body and passed right through whatever organ he had that stood in place of a heart. ‘Your own flesh and blood, armed with your own flesh and blood. That's what it takes,' I leaned down and hissed into his ear, ‘for future reference.'

Then my knees gave way and I collapsed backwards, off the
chaise
and on to the carpet, as Malfaire writhed once more and lay still. The room became silent; an odd, cold silence that crept under my skin and into my veins with the chill.

‘I killed him. I killed him.' The words were sobbed out with my breath. ‘I killed him.'

Sudden arms around my shoulders. I shrugged them off but they came back. ‘Jessica.'

‘I killed him.' I looked up. Zan was standing, staring at the body with an expression of hunger. Liam was beside me, drawing me into his chest. ‘I killed him.'

Liam looked into my face. It clearly took some effort and I wished I'd had time to find my bra. ‘Oh, Jessie. You did it.'

‘Sil. We must go to Sil. Malfaire threw him …' I couldn't even finish the sentence.

‘We saw.' Liam stood up, pulling me from the blood-soaked carpet with him despite the weakness in my legs.

‘Is he all right?' I was shivering now, uncontrollably, leaning against him simply to stop myself going down again. ‘
Is he?
'

‘He'll be fine. He's lying there groaning, but he looks
way
too good to be dying, if you ask me.'

I tore from the room, my feet leaving bloody prints and sticking slightly to the carpet as I went. ‘Sil!' Down the hallway, half-noticing the broken newel-post, the shards of wood, the random splinters of plastic and the shine of electrical components from the smashed telephone. ‘Oh God, Sil.'

He lay against the front door, his body coiled around itself and his eyes a complicated colour. ‘Hey, Jessie.' He managed a grin. ‘You got him then.'

‘Don't you dare die, you bastard.'

‘I don't intend to.' A wince and a grimace. ‘But I've damaged a leg, I think.'

‘I thought he'd killed you. I couldn't have pulled the trigger otherwise.'

Sil smiled. ‘So my plan worked?'

‘That was not a plan! That was the opposite of a plan, the antithesis of planning. That was dashing in and ruining what would have been a perfectly good plan if you hadn't spoiled it all by trying to be a hero!'

‘So, you did have a plan, did you?'

The adrenaline was beginning to slide out of my body, leaving me cold. I watched his demon take the last draught of my elation and panic, moving behind his eyes like an unwanted thought. ‘No. No plan. Just terror.'

Sil stretched out a hand, palm up and I stared at it for a moment. I couldn't tell if he meant it as a gesture of surrender or to ward me off until he spoke. ‘Help me up, will you? I'm healing but I'm not that fast.' I reached out and pulled and he slid easily against me. ‘I promised your mother I'd keep you safe,' he said quietly. ‘Didn't do much of a job, did I?'

I gave a half-sob but muffled it. ‘I'm fine. Well, feeling a bit sordid, but it could have been worse.'

Oh-so-gently he touched my face. ‘You aren't a monster, Jessie. You did what you had to do for all of us.' Those grey-green eyes looked down through mine, into my heart. ‘He would have mustered an army of the Dark against the Treaty, killed everyone who stood against him. Hell, you've probably saved the world.'

‘Well, I suppose that's something.' I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes. ‘So why do I feel like I've lost everything,
Jonathan
?' I whispered.

Sil flicked his eyes along the corridor. Zan and Liam were hanging around trying not to look as if they were listening. ‘Give us a second, guys.'

‘Jessie?' Liam half-called. ‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes.' I couldn't tear my eyes away from Sil. ‘We need to put an insurance claim in to the council, you could write it up. Do a spreadsheet; you know it always calms you down, writing a spreadsheet.'

He laughed. ‘Okay. As long as you're all right with Mister Bitey.'

I felt Sil's demon move, reacting to my proximity. ‘Yeah, I'll be fine.' My voice shook a bit but sounded strong. I was proud of myself. As Sil said, I'd probably saved the world and that was pretty good going for someone who wasn't sure what HTML was.

Sil's demon was still moving. I could sense its presence behind his eyes; they changed as I watched, blue-green to grey and then on to an iron-grey like a night sky. ‘Oh,' he said and touched his chest as though it hurt. ‘Oh. God.'

‘What? Are you all right? Have you broken a rib or something? Do vampires
have
ribs? Oh, duh, Jessie, of course they do, otherwise their insides would be their outsides.' I knew I was rambling but I was afraid. There was something terribly intense about Sil's expression.

‘No. Just … a touch too much for even
my
demon to manage.'

‘Too much what?'

His hands laced behind me. ‘Too much emotion. For a second there … I almost felt human again'

‘And that's a bad thing?' The old-chocolate-box smell of him was almost neutralising the smell of blood, the cool stillness of his body steadying my own shaking one.

‘No. Yes. I don't … It makes me feel things, Jessica. The pain, the guilt, the remorse … I don't think I can live with those, not even to feel the … to feel anything else.'

‘You won't love me because it means facing up to what you are?' Anger made me bite my lip and I watched as his flickering eyes beamed in on the sudden bloom of blood. ‘I'm sorry, Sil, you were right before. You
are
a coward.'

‘I lost my family, Jessica.' His voice wavered a touch. ‘I had to hide at my own children's funeral because of what I am. I watched my wife remarry. A man she loved until the day she died – a man who made her forget me …' I felt his ribs move as he buried a sob beneath an attempt at a cool tone. ‘I have a
right
not to want to feel.'

‘I've lost my family too, now.' I felt a brief hotness on my cheek, which turned out to be a tear. ‘And loving you is all I've got left.' I gave in for just one, quick, Germaine-Greer-bothering second and rested my face against his chest, felt his demon squirm. ‘And you
do
feel, you told me so yourself. You just deny it. Feed it to your demon. Like … like Rachel sometimes buys bacon and then feeds it to Jasper. Sometimes she actually makes herself a sandwich and she thinks I don't know, and if you tell her that then I'll stake you myself, but …'

‘So you think you could be my bacon sandwich?' There was another tremble in his voice now, but it sounded different. ‘My one weakness?'

I took half-a-step backwards but kept my arms around him. ‘Everyone should let themselves have one thing that makes all the rest of the denial worthwhile. I loved you for four years, wouldn't even so much as
date
anyone; Cameron was as much my cover as I was his, because I wanted you so much that no-one else was ever going to come close. Believe me, I know about denial.' I lowered my voice, aware that Liam might well be hovering. ‘
But it was worthwhile, for that night in the drain. If there's never any more than that, it was worthwhile.
'

‘And you can love me, knowing what I've done?' There was a note of wonder in his voice. ‘Knowing how I have been?
What
I have been?'

‘Hey, no-one's perfect. I broke the tracker programme. We've all got our nasty little secrets – my parentage is probably going to turn out to be the least of mine – but, yes. I love you whatever. Because that's what love is, Jonathan, it's knowing and
still
caring.'

His demon moved. ‘And it's learning to live with the guilt.' He stroked my hair, long fingers twisting through, pulling my head up so I had to meet his eyes, still shifting colour. ‘There will still be the blood. And the clubs. But I can dance and drink synth, it doesn't have to be, well, what it was. I think I can do this, Jessica. If you feel that you can take that chance.' With the inevitability of winter, he touched my lips with his. ‘You give me peace. And in return you'll get my love. If you want it.' A momentary uncertainty. ‘Do you?'

His demon felt my surge of pure joy and beat ecstatically in time to his pulse. ‘Well, I've got around a hundred years to come to terms with it,' I said, reaching up to pull his mouth down to mine again.

The love for her was unleashed inside him, sending his demon into the kind of frenzied bliss that would have taken several blood-donors and a night of hyperactive sex before.
Jessie. Who would have thought it? All it needed was for me to find what I'd lost, and here it was all the time. Right in front of me. I didn't know it for what it was, even when I was willing to die for her, even when I told her mother I would keep her safe … this slender girl with the quite incredibly untidy hair was all I needed to make me feel human again. Joseph and Constance … it won't go away, the pain of losing you, but the more I remember you, the less it hurts. And now I have Jessica I can think of you as you were; I can remember the times before. Remember throwing you in the air and hearing you laugh as I caught you, and building endless castles in the shrubbery for you to hide in. And Christie … you'd have liked Jessica, Christie. You and she are very alike. I can imagine you both now, sitting around the parlour table, sipping tea and listing my more peculiar habits, laughing together over my failings. And the guilt … the guilt for all those times before the Treaty, all those things I did not to survive, but for pleasure? That can remain, to remind me of how it was. Of what
I
was. Like those photographs of a past life, a warning …