Angel Falls (Cassandra Bick Chronicles Book 3) (4 page)

You know something is seriously wrong with your life when you find yourself disposing of blood drenched bedding for the second time in less than a fortnight. I was thinking of this – and the many other ways in which my life was messed up – as I trudged once again down the fire escape from my kitchen with a plastic bag full of ruined sheets to dump in the communal bins at the back of my building. My bedroom looked like Carrie on prom night. I was just too exhausted to think about cleaning it all up, but there seemed no other option: I imagined even the most hardened of cleaners might baulk at being asked to come wash the blood off my walls. Though when I voiced this concern to Cain, he shrugged and told me not to worry.

‘I’ll make some calls,’ he said, because of course he would Know a Guy: he probably had some Harvey Keitel type on speed dial to dispose of unwanted evidence. Deciding I didn’t want to be around when Mr Pulp Fiction showed up, and having convinced Cain that I would be safe in daylight (an argument I won, I suspect, mostly because he was too knackered to argue), I left him on the sofa with the cat, a blanket and a packet of biscuits and decided to go and see Medea. I’d wanted to give her and Katie as much space as possible, but like it or not they were involved in this too, and they needed to be told what was happening. If there’s a TV trope I hate, it’s the ‘I’m not telling you this for your own good’ and I would be damned if I was going to commit that sin in my actual life. Plus, I needed her – not as a colleague, but as a friend.

***

I’d promised Cain I’d get a cab straight there, but since, unlike him, I don’t have a stash of gold bars hidden away (I had recently discovered he had caches of wealth all around the world, and I was still more than a little mad he hadn’t told me), and clearly I needed to save my money for refurbishing my flat, I got the Tube into town, distracting myself with the time honoured method of retail therapy. I treated myself to some lacy knickers from Top Shop – since I was finally at a stage in my life that someone other than the cat saw me in my underwear, I figured it was an excuse to buy new things. I allowed myself the brief fantasy, over coffee and cake, of a bullion-fuelled shopping spree in Agent Provocateur, but that evaporated in the realisation that if anyone was going to be willing to pay the equivalent of a month’s bills on sexy scanties, it wouldn’t be Cain, but Laclos (who would, I knew, have done so without quibble), and that opened up a whole load of complicated feelings that I’d gone shopping to avoid. So I popped into Primark to stock up on bedding – no John Lewis for me until I could be sure there would be no more in-house evisceration – picked up a box of cupcakes, and headed to South London.

***

I’d called first, of course: nobody in London likes unexpected visitors, and only a fool calls on a witch without warning. She’d said to come over for a late lunch – which was what I had been hoping when I called, since Medea is a fabulous cook. As I waited on the doorstep for her to come to the door, I idly patted their ginger tom, Timmy, who was taking advantage of the unseasonable weather to bask on the roof of the neighbour’s garden shed. Despite taking a bit of a battering at the hands of an angry werewolf, he seemed to be recovering well, though his skin showed in patches where he’d been shaved by the vet, stitches visible, and he was now short an ear and had a leg that didn’t look to be bending in quite the right direction. But he seemed happy enough, unbothered by the fact that a neighbour’s dog – a great big beast of an Alsatian type thing that for a moment gave me werewolf flashbacks and made my Sense jitter – dozed only inches away from him.

‘Are you moving in?’ Medea asked, smiling down at the bags in my hands as she opened the door and leaned forward to kiss me on each cheek.

‘Long story,’ I said, but as I stepped forward, already salivating at the smell of garlic and warm bread that was emanating from the kitchen, my Sense picked up a tang so sharp and sour that I almost stumbled. Luckily she didn’t notice, having turned her attention to the cat.

‘C’mon! I’m serving up soon!’ she called, which seemed an odd thing to say to the cat, but then the dog sat up with a sleepy shake of its head, cleared the fence in one easy bound and, with a bark of greeting at me, loped past us both and up the stairs. Medea shot me an apologetic look as she led me towards the kitchen.

‘She’s been changing a lot lately,’ she said, voice low. ‘Getting her balance back, I think.’

I frowned. I knew the binding spell that had only recently been put on Katie to stop her shifting had hit her hard, but it had also been temporary. I hadn’t realised there would be after-effects, or that shifters felt any actual need to change. It was becoming more and more apparent, the longer I spent in this Other world, the less I realised I actually knew about it. Though it was clear from the strain in Medea’s expression that this wasn’t an expected or welcome development on her part, either.

‘But she’s OK? You’re both OK?’

‘Yeah. Yeah. We’re fine. And, y’know, none of the neighbourhood cats crap in the garden anymore, so there’s that.’ She smiled ruefully, but before I could respond, Katie had joined us. She was slightly flushed from her change and had dressed quickly in yoga pants and a t-shirt that said ‘Save the NHS – kill a Tory’. As a nurse, she took the whole Austerity thing very personally.

‘Dogs have excellent hearing, you know,’ she said mildly, kissing Medea lightly before offering me a more platonic peck on the cheek. Medea coloured slightly at the admonishment, and there it was again, that acrid tang.

‘We’re having Italian, hope that’s OK? So it’s not too early to have a cheeky one, is it?’ Medea plucked a bottle of red from the wine rack, nodding to Katie to fetch glasses. ‘We can pretend we’re continental.’

I frowned. While I was never one to say no to a drink, and neither Medea nor Katie were abstemious, Medea was usually far more sensible than me. I hoped there was nothing more to this than wanting to enjoy their time off. The food, too, was out of character. Medea usually favoured the Indian recipes she had learned from her mother, but this was full-on Mediterranean: a couple of salads had already been laid out, alongside a plate of bruschetta, and she pulled a bubbling lasagne out of the oven. It felt like an awful lot of effort to go to for lunchtime, but Katie grinned.

‘Mm. My favourite!’ She kissed Medea again on the shoulder as we took our seats and I realised, belatedly, that none of this was for my benefit. That should have calmed me down: naïve as I am about relationships, even I realise a big part of them is Doing Nice Things for the other person, but my jangling Sense wouldn’t let me relax. Still, I was more than happy to distract myself by stuffing my gob with delicious food and nice wine as they caught me up on what they had been doing (short answer: sleeping, cooking and alternately marathoning
The Good Wife
or
Veronica Mars
, depending on who had charge of the remote control.) It all sounded so blissful I considered not telling them my news at all, but then Katie nodded to the large Primark bags I’d left in the corner.

‘Redecorating?’

So then I gave them a recap of last night, or at least edited highlights – though possibly too edited, because Katie’s reaction was not what I expected.

‘Bloody hell, Cass. We leave you alone for five minutes and you’re refereeing a naked wrestling match between your two supernatural suitors.’

‘Only one of them was actually naked,’ I pointed out, peeved, and she laughed again.

‘Oh, come on, I’m gay and that sounds pretty hot,’ she chuckled, until Medea quelled her with a stern look, and her face dropped. ‘Apart from the rapey vibe and the stabby bit at the end, obviously. Um, yeah, not hot, I see that now. Sorry.’

‘Well,’ I admitted, feeling bad for her – it had been a fairly edited version. ‘It’s not like I haven’t thought that Cain and Laclos wrestling naked wouldn’t be a fun spectator sport. Just turns out when you add in serious creepiness and near death, not so much.’

‘That would dent a girl’s enthusiasm.’ Her expression more serious, she asked, ‘So why was Laclos being all "break in and brood" anyway? Just to get at Cain?’

Which led me to telling the rest of the story – newly turned messenger, killing spree and all. Now nobody was laughing. Medea, looking as pale as her complexion would allow, topped up our glasses, her hand shaking slightly. She took a moment to formulate her thoughts, watched by Katie, who could always read her mood and clearly didn’t want to speak first and interrupt her thought processes.

‘Do you think the young vampire was telling the truth?’

It was a good question. We’d had no verification; even Leon had only heard rumours.

‘I didn’t Sense he was lying, but of course that could only mean that he
thought
what he was saying was true, not that it was. I imagine if you’re capable of turning someone to use as nothing more than a human email, you’re not above lying to them.’

‘And you Sensed nothing from Laclos?’

‘I… think in his current form, he’d be capable of what they’re saying he’s done, certainly.’

‘Did the vamp say anything else?’ Katie asked.

‘Nothing of any import, really. Nothing that gives us any clue as to how to help Laclos.’

‘
Stop
Laclos, you mean,’ Medea corrected.

‘It’s pretty much the same thing.’

‘No. No, it isn’t, Cass,’ she frowned. ‘And if what that young vampire said was true – and given what Laclos was willing to do to Cain – the question surely isn’t how we help him, but if we should.’

OK. So that shocked me.

***

There was a long, awkward pause during which I tried to articulate a reasoned, unemotional argument. Which I didn’t manage.

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ My tone was so sharp that Medea flinched, and Katie gave me a warning look. Medea clocked it, shaking her head, ever the peacemaker.

‘Hear me out on this, Cass,’ she said, her voice gentle. ‘If that vampire is right, then Laclos has been on a murder spree – killing people in the very community we serve. And it’s fuelled by what? Spite over Sebastian’s treachery, and his own desire for power. Whatever you feel for him, whatever you think you owe him…’

‘You mean, what I owe him for risking his life fighting
your
crazy ex-girlfriend and the pack of Weres who came to town to eat your fiancée?’ I snapped, because Laclos had only been brought to this pass because of a pact between the witch Celice, Medea’s insane – and insanely jealous – ex-lover, and Katie’s old wolf-pack, who saw her desertion of their ways as a treasonable offence.

‘And whose fault was that?’ Katie retorted, which wasn’t entirely unfair. But then again if they’d actually told me any of this shit – that they were in hiding from these two enemies and were relying on a concealing spell scribbled in a notebook stashed in a desk drawer in the office to stay hidden, I would have been a lot less likely to open said bloody book and accidentally break their cover, so I wasn’t letting them entirely off the hook. Medea, clearly sensing this argument had the potential to go very bad, very fast, put a hand on her fiancée’s arm to calm her, though that looked only partially successful.

‘I’m not unaware of what he’s done for us,’ she said, carefully. ‘Or what he means to you. And Goddess knows, none of us are without blood on our hands anymore…’ She looked pained at this. As a Wiccan, dedicated to the forces of life, the last few weeks had cost her dearly. ‘But if Laclos has killed innocent people…’

‘Vampires,’ I interjected, and hated myself for making the distinction. But then, it
did
make a difference. I might believe that vampires deserved peace and respect and could be functioning members of modern society, but I wasn’t a fool. It was highly unlikely anyone had come to power in a city like London without a fairly lethal degree of ruthlessness – especially if they had done so before the accords that, for the last century or so, had meant their species, like all Others, was committed to peace. I doubted any vampire over a hundred years old – Laclos included – could ever really be considered ‘innocent’. But I could also see from Medea’s expression how (justifiably) feeble she thought this argument was. So I tried another tack.

‘But it’s not
him
, Mey. You saw what Cain’s blood did to him.’

‘I saw it made him powerful enough to go after something he may have wanted all along. He seemed perfectly lucid to me when he left us. And surely the fact that – whatever he threatened Cain with – he’s now been to see you twice without harming you shows he’s in control of his actions, he’s still rational?’

‘You’re wrong, Mey. I Sensed it,’ I ploughed on, desperate for her to believe me. ‘What would you do in my place? What if, instead of binding her shifting abilities, Celice’s spell had driven Katie mad?’

I turned to Katie, hoping for some support, but instead felt the temperature drop and heard the unmistakable sound of paper-thin ice cracking beneath my feet, as I realised it perhaps was a tad foolish to compare the vampire with whom I’d basically had a one-night shag to their years-long relationship. I backtracked, hastily. ‘Not that it’s the same thing, obviously,’ I added, and both women untensed, slightly. ‘I just think… after everything he’s done for us, he deserves the benefit of the doubt.’

Medea and Katie exchanged glances, and there was a moment of that silent communication that long-term couples are so good at, a conversation without words that stretched the silence almost to discomfort. I shifted awkwardly in my seat, not wanting to interrupt, but Medea, with a sigh, turned to me.

‘I’m really not sure how we can help anyway,’ she said, and it felt like such a concession I sagged in relief. I needed them on my side – and not just for their abilities. I needed my friends.

‘Help me find him. Cain thinks we can get him to… burn through the angel blood, and once it’s out of his system, he should recover. Then we can try and come up with some kind of truce or reparation. But we need him sane for that to work.’