The Bitter Seed of Magic

Chapter Twenty-One

Mad Max, his dear-old-and-bloodily-staked Dad, and even the dogs were gone. The Coffin Club’s foyer was empty except for the sleeping goblin in the ticket booth. For a moment I wondered if I’d imagined it all, but my T-shirt was still damp with Fyodor’s blood, although someone had creepily cleaned my face and hands. Damn vamp tricks. Looked like the bastard had mind-locked me, something he shouldn’t have been able to do. And what the hell game was the mad vamp playing?

Not that I couldn’t hazard a guess: he wanted something from me, and while he was leery enough of Malik’s retribution not to want to hold me hostage, he wasn’t above using my possessions as a negotiating tool, since my backpack with its cargo of blood and my phone were also gone. Not to mention there was Darius, my pet-vamp himself, to worry about.

But before I could flush the mad-dog vamp out of wherever he’d disappeared to, a loud Big Ben-type chime rang, the club’s front doors swung open, and a crowd of people—humans—were laughing, whooping and racing through them.

Suddenly three of them split off and headed for me, their pale grey costumes streaking behind them like delicate wings blown by the wind. I recognised their black-and-white Pierrot faces: they were some of the Moth-girls from the blood-house where Darius used to live. I had a moment to brace myself before all three threw themselves at me, flattening me against the wall, thin arms wrapping around my neck and waist, hands clutching mine, and I was enveloped in a soft mass of rustling silk, satin and lace.

I breathed in the smell of rice-powder mixed with greasepaint as Viola smeared a waxy kiss on my cheek, caught the faint scent of liquorice-scented blood as Rissa’s long white hair trailed across my face, and felt the heat of the 3V infection pouring off Lucy’s arms around my neck. I laughed, squeezing hands and hugging them all, joining in their enthusiastic greeting—

The present disappeared as a memory speared into my heart.

She looked numbly down at her son where he lay cradled in her arms. The midwife had wrapped him in the blue blanket appliquéd with the red and white train. She’d bought it only two days ago, sure then that her superstitions were unfounded and nothing would go wrong. She touched his tiny, perfect hand … but unlike all those excited day-dreams she’d had, his little fingers didn’t curl round her own, but stayed limp and lifeless. That’s when she knew he wasn’t there, that he was gone.

I clutched Grace’s gold pentacle, and looked at the three Moth-girls. They were fanned round me in a semi-circle, almost like they were afraid I’d run away if they let me go. Behind them the crowd of excited, over-eager humans were snaking their way through the white zigzag ropes towards the coffin-shaped ticket booth. A large raven perched on top of the booth watching me. As I looked, it gave a loud caw, then flapped its wings and flew over the oblivious queue and out through the club’s open doors, disappearing into the night sky.

I turned back to the Moths.

I knew the heart-wrenching memory of the stillborn baby belonged to one of them, just as I knew it was the Morrígan’s bitter-tasting magic that had drawn the memory out for me to see. But I didn’t know which of the girls had lost their child, and none of the three appeared to know she’d shared the painful memory with me. I also didn’t know what, if anything, I was supposed to do about it.

‘You’re crying,’ Viola whispered as she slipped her thin arms back round my waist and squeezed. ‘Are you all right?’

I nodded, swiped at the tears and the sorrow from the memory dispelled.

‘Good,’ she said, then pouted prettily. ‘Wow, we haven’t seen you in ages and ages and ages. We’ve missed you so much, Genny.’

‘Yes, we’re so pleased to see you again,’ Lucy said, twining her fingers through mine.

‘’ave you come to see our Darius?’ Rissa swiped a tissue along my cheek. ‘Lipstick.’ She puckered up her own purple-painted mouth, then said, ‘It ’ain’t bin the same since ’e went and got the job ’ere and you not come any more.’

I smiled apologetically, realising I’d missed them too. ‘Sorry, girls. I’ve been coming here, and without Darius, well, you know …’ I trailed off, and we all stood and looked at each other awkwardly. I hadn’t really thought they’d want me visiting—after all, they’d been Darius’ little volunteer harem, as well as his breakfast, lunch and dinner most nights. And while we’d all had fun when I was there, I’d sort-of thought it was more because they’d put up with me as Darius’ blood benefactor than anything more.

‘Yeah, well, it’s not the same without him there, but you still could’ve come, you know.’ Viola squeezed my waist again. ‘We really, really do miss you.’

‘Right,’ I managed to say past the tightness in my throat. Tears pricked my eyes and I blinked them away. ‘Well, I really miss you all too.’ I smiled. ‘So I’ll come and see you on your next night off, okay?’

‘Yay!’ Lucy waved her arms in the air.

‘Good.’ Rissa sniffed as she smiled. ‘Then you will pay up for your poker debt.’

‘Ah, now I see it.’ I laughed. ‘You just want me back ’cos I’m crap at cards.’

‘Well, that is another reason,’ Lucy teased. ‘Oh, it is wonderful to see you again.’

‘Hey, you too, girls.’ I looked around, suddenly aware that someone was missing. Dread constricted my chest. ‘Where’s Yana? She’s okay, isn’t she?’

‘She’s fine.’ Lucy clapped her hands. ‘She’s got herself a sponsor.’

‘Really?’ I said, surprised.

Lucy nodded. ‘It’s true. Francine. She’s Golden Blade blood. They’ve been sweet on each other for a while, but the old hag Elizabetta didn’t approve. Francine was there when you visited; she used to wait in the rec room at the end of the hallway—long black hair, real sexy-like.’

‘Oh yeah, I remember.’ Francine was a petite black vamp with a liking for red leather. She’d always hung back, watching from the doorway, but she’d never approached me, for obvious reasons; she wanted to keep her head on her shoulders. ‘She okay, this Francine?’ I frowned, still concerned about Yana. The vamps who usually frequented the blood-houses were mostly the ones addicted to necking—the dangerous and highly illegal pastime of biting straight into the carotid artery.

‘She’s a real pussycat,’ Lucy shrieked, ‘and hot,’ she added fanning herself. ‘But Yana’s all right with her, she’s one of the house standbys.’

The house standbys were powerful vamps who were experts at controlling a human’s heart rate. Without the standbys, the Moths would die the first time anyone necked them, as the blood gushes like a soda fountain, and the standbys make sure the Moths never lose more blood than their bodies can cope with. But even with the standbys a lot of Moths only survive a couple of years at most; their bodies just can’t take the abuse.

If Yana had got herself a sponsor, she might still make it to immortality.

‘Yana will come later,’ Rissa piped up. ‘She and Francine are doing, y’know.’ She crooked her fingers, and mimed fangs next to the half-dozen bite marks down the left side of her neck.

‘Ah.’

‘Francine doesn’t do necks though, does she?’ Viola laughed, and crooked her own fingers down Rissa’s cleavage.

‘Genny doesn’t want to know that!’ Lucy squealed, cheeks turning pink with embarrassment.

‘Nah, Genny doesn’t mind, do you?’ Viola smiled with sly invitation.

‘Save it for Darius,’ I said with a laugh. ‘He’ll appreciate you more than I will.’

She pouted just as Lucy shouted, ‘Hey the booth’s opening.’ She grabbed my hand, and pulled us into the zigzag of white ropes, cheerfully shoving past everyone until we ended up near the front of the queue, about five back from the ticket booth. Our place had been saved by two couples who were evidently Coffin Club devotees, since they were dressed in undertakers’ suits, complete with top hats and funeral wreaths of white roses in their grey-gloved hands. The flowers looked oddly luminous under the UV lights.

‘See them?’ Lucy whispered as she nudged me, following my gaze. ‘Plastic flowers. They paint them with this stuff to make them glow; I seen them do it last week in the loos.’

‘Yeah, we’re thinking of getting some of that stuff for our faces so they glow like our hands,’ Viola said, angling her palm under the lights so her member’s diamond glowed white. ‘Then we’d stand out more.’ She fluffed out her handkerchief-hemmed skirt and pushed up her small breasts under her top. Her skimpy patchwork of grey lace, silk and satin shone in the gloomy interior. ‘We look a bit dingy under these lights, don’t you think, Genny?’ She eyed me slyly.

‘Yep.’ I grinned. ‘Definitely dingy.’

Lucy jumped up and down with excited impatience. ‘Hurry up, hurry up,’ she muttered. ‘We’ve been too late to see Darius the last three weeks; someone’s always got in before us and booked him up for a private party. That’s why we wanted to be first tonight.’

We reached the ticket booth. Abraham the mini-Monitor goblin was still there, his highchair drawn up to the window. He looked perkier now his earlier methane hit was wearing off, but Gareth was gone, replaced by a tall, thin vamp. The hollows under his cut-glass cheekbones gave him a cadaverous appearance that went with his tailed undertaker’s suit.

‘Hands,’ he intoned in a bored voice, waving a UV torch at the Monitor goblin.

I hung back as the Moths all crowded forward and stuck their hands out towards Abraham.

The vamp sighed. ‘One at a time, girls.’

The three giggled and shuffled, cooing at Abraham as they got their palms checked, until the vamp waved them past.

I stepped up to the booth and stuck my own hand out. Abraham touched his nose, then my fingers. ‘S’okay to enter, Miss,’ he said in a soft sing-song.

The vamp waved the torch beam over my palm, lighting up the diamond mark, then stopped and sniffed. He sniffed again, then bent down so he was eye-level with me. ‘Oh,’ he murmured, his mouth dropping open to show his two sharp canines, ‘oh, you’re her,’ he whispered, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed again. ‘Sweet.’ His pupils dilated, spreading blackness over his iris and sclera, his top lip curled back and his two needle-thin venom fangs sprang down below his front teeth. A glistening drop of clear venom seeped from the left fang. His mind-lock brushed weak as mist against my mind, which told me he was probably no more than fifty vamp-years old. And that he was a total idiot if he thought he could catch me in a mind-lock, not to mention the fact that he didn’t appear to have got the memo about my protection. I sniffed myself, exasperated. He might be an idiot, but I didn’t want his true death on my conscience because he got over-excited and stupidly forgot himself.

I shot my fist out, punching the vamp on the chin, shutting his mouth with a snap. ‘Hey, fang-boy, listen up!’ I growled. ‘Either you stop with the sniffing and go off-line, or your body’s going to end up without a head soon.’

Comprehension and fear crossed his face and he scrambled back and grabbed for a plastic sandwich box sitting on the shelf next to the goldfish bowl full of wristbands. He jerked the lid off and buried his face in the box. A faint reek of garlic drifted towards me. Seconds later he came up coughing and spluttering, pink-tinged tears streaking his cheeks.

‘Sorry, Ms Taylor,’ he whispered, still huddled at the back of the booth. ‘You took me by surprise, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Apology accepted. Now, can I go in?’

He nodded vigorously and I strode through the double doors and into the club’s interior. The circular space was empty of Moths—and anyone else, other than the usual human girl sitting stoically at the cloakroom counter next to the door marked ‘Office’. As for where the Moths had got to, well, I had a choice of the restrooms, the private rooms behind two doors marked 1–15 and 16–30; the gift shop—DVDs of the vamps lying in their coffins were on special offer!—or the glass double doors opposite me.

The doors led into the Room of Remembrance. The room was set up like a church nave with about twenty glass coffins on top of ornate marble plinths, arranged either side of a wide aisle instead of pews. And a raised stage at the end where the chancel would be. A few vamps, dressed in a variety of military or heroic outfits, were up and milling about among the first few members, so the coffins were empty, but on the stage was another coffin, the blood that smeared its sides glittering in the spotlights. It had to be where the staked Fyodor was stashed. Nobody appeared to be taking much notice, so maybe he wasn’t going to be the draw Mad Max hoped.

The Moths descended on me again from out of the gift shop.

‘Darius has Room Eleven.’ Rissa waved an electronic keycard. ‘We ’ave booked him for a private party.’

‘We’ve phoned Yana to let her know, so she’s coming over.’ Viola gave me a big grin.

‘So exciting, isn’t it?’ Lucy jumped up and down. ‘I can’t wait to see him.’

‘Great,’ I smiled, ‘but I’m not into the whole, you know—’ I did the crooked fingers thing next to my neck. Nor was I up for the mini-orgy Darius and the girls were likely to have to celebrate their reunion. ‘So why don’t you all go on and I’ll join you in a bit?’

‘Sure thing, Genny.’ Rissa swiped the keycard and the door opened into a long, carpeted corridor indistinguishable from any cookie-cutter hotel. They all ran off, whooping, towards door number eleven.

Now to find Mad Max.

I walked over to the cloakroom. Usually I waited for the security guard to take my bagged blood and give me a receipt, but this time I hopped up on the counter and swung my legs over. I landed with a soft thud behind it and the coat-check girl jumped up in surprise. ‘Hey, you can’t—’

I reached out and touched her face, entering her mind as easily as driving through an open gate. ‘Hi’—I checked her name badge—‘Cheryl. Can I have your keycard, please?’

She reached down, unclipped it from her belt and held it out to me.

‘Thanks,’ I smiled, taking it. ‘That’s great. You just forget about me now, and carry on with whatever you were doing.’ I reversed out of her mind just as easily and let her go.

She sat back down again.

I swiped the card down the lock and pushed open the ‘Office’ door. The room inside was a standard security centre doubling as a staffroom. One wall held a row of grey metal lockers; the other wall was banked to the ceiling with TV monitors showing shots of the club above a long bench full of blinking lights and switches. I quickly scanned them: entrance, coffin room, gift shop, the toilets—yep, the loos really were coffin-shaped!—and what had to be the vamps’ private rooms. Sitting bolt-upright in front of the TV screens was the human security guard with his eyes fixed intently on the monitors. A cup of tea was steaming on the bench in front of him.

He ignored me.

But of course. Mad Max was expecting me.

I walked past him to the door on the opposite wall, opened it and strolled inside.

‘Cousin, how nice to see you again.’ Mad Max stood and came round the desk to pull out one of the guest chairs for me. My backpack sat on the other. He gave me a wide beam of a smile and said, ‘Please, come and have a seat.’

As offices go it was pretty basic: desk, grey chairs, grey carpet, grey filing cabinet, a flat-screen LCD—currently showing the cloakroom girl—instead of a window. There was nothing to say vampire, or even well-heeled executive about it, other than Mad Max himself. His bright red Hussar jacket, worn over white shirt and blue trousers and with highly polished black boots made him look like he was playing dress-up, which of course he was.

‘Thanks,’ I said and sat. Of course, there was one thing that said vampire: the three bags of my blood sitting on the desk, one of which was squashed into a clear pint tankard with coffins decorating the outside. A black curly straw was sticking out the top. Nice—all it needed was a paper umbrella! Next to the bags of blood was my phone.

‘Glamouring a human carries the death penalty, Cousin,’ Max said cheerfully, waving at the cloakroom girl on the screen as he sat opposite me. ‘Or were you not aware of that particular law?’

Ignoring him, his threat, and my blood, for now, I reached for the phone and called Malik, or rather, Sanguine Lifestyles, his 24/7 answering service. A woman’s voice answered with a tentative, ‘Ms Taylor?’

‘Yes, it’s me, and I’m fine,’ I reassured her before she could ask, keeping my gaze fixed on Mad Max who was still beaming his hundred-watt smile my way. ‘Could you repeat the last message you were given, please?’

‘Certainly, Ms Taylor,’ she replied efficiently. ‘Mr Maxim Andrei Zakharin called, and his message was: “Genevieve Zakharinova has honoured us by becoming a VIP member of our club. Sadly, the excitement was too much for Dear Old Dad, and I think it might take him three days to recover. Genevieve kindly consented to having a family portrait taken to celebrate our reunion.”’ The woman paused. ‘We received the photo of the gentleman and yourself, Ms Taylor, plus the one—’

A beep sounded, and I stopped listening to the woman as Max’s beaming smile cut out and was replaced by an almost panicked expression. He produced a remote, pointed it at the flat-screen and the picture of the cloakroom girl switched to one of strange, amorphous red and blue shapes shifting around a dark interior. Two red figures were huddled together in one area, and another red figure was merged with the only blue figure. I frowned, puzzled, until it clicked: I was looking at the new state-of-the-art CCTV monitoring system the vamps were touting on all their websites, supposedly designed to keep the humans safe. It showed a computer overlay of enhanced heat signatures, so basically, the red figures were humans, and the vampires, having a lower core body temperature, showed up as blue.

Max jumped up and rushed out of the office, leaving the door swinging.

‘… give Mr al-Khan your message along with the others when he checks in,’ the woman’s voice was saying in my ear.

Worry tied a knot in my gut. ‘Thought you said he checked in at sunset?’

‘Normally, yes. Not tonight. Is there anything else I can do for you, Ms Taylor?’

‘Thanks, not just now.’ I cut her off, and stared at the screen.

Now I knew what I was looking at, the figures looked more like people and less like blobs. The red figures were two upright humans huddled together. The other human was on the ground, with the vamp on top, and the blue vamp was slowly turning red— It didn’t take a genius to work out something was badly wrong. Then I saw the flashing number in the screen’s corner.

Room Eleven: Darius’ room.

I looked in horror at my blood on the desk.

Surely Mad Max couldn’t be stupid enough to take it all? Hadn’t he heard what had happened at Christmas, when Darius had gone rabid and fallen into bloodlust?

Fuck! I grabbed the two unopened bags of blood, knocking the tankard over in my haste, but it didn’t spill. Oddly, the bag was still unbroken. I grabbed that one too, and stuffed them all back into the padded compartment of my backpack. Then I ran after Mad Max.