Serafina and the Silent Vampire

CHAPTER Twelve


While Elspeth bolted across to the shop to replace the bottle of vodka currently residing beside Sera’s bed, Jilly glared at Jack until he looked up from whatever it was he was reading.

“She’s been with Blair again,” Jilly said abruptly. “Last night. He’s still upstairs.”

Jack glanced upward as if he could see through the ceiling for proof. “Is that—safe?” he asked,

“Of course, it’s not bloody safe!” Jilly exploded. “The question is, what the hell do we do about it?”

“I don’t really see that there’s anything we can do, except keep an eye on them both. From what she’s said, whatever his reasons, Blair appears to be on our side.” He hesitated, even removed his spectacles for an unnecessary polish. He obviously knew he was on thorny ground and about to step on territory sacrosanct to Sera and Jilly, from which he was normally and quite rightly excluded. “Is she having some kind of relationship with him?”

Jilly nodded curtly. “Think so.”

“Phew.” Jack let out his breath in a rush. “Heavy. Makes any interference counterproductive.”

Jilly widened her eyes at such unexpected common sense. She always thought of Jack as an upper-class oddity, avoiding the reality of his own wealthy, high-achieving world by playing in one he didn’t really understand.

Jack put his glasses back on, and for once, Jilly let him speak. “I think we just have to be there for her. And warn the bastard that she’s not alone and that if he does her any harm whatsoever, somehow we’ll manage to stake him to hell.”

Jilly stared at him, but he didn’t back down. She grinned. “That’s the first time you’ve ever spoken like a sensible man.”

“Stop, Jilly,” Sera said, coming through from the inner office. “Such exaggerated praise is liable to go to his head. What’s happening?”

“Nothing much,” Jilly said. She decided not to care whether or not Sera had overheard her and Jack. In fact it would be good if she had—might wake her up to her own idiocy. “Elspeth’s gone for vodka, I mean milk, and as you asked, we’ve been researching a bit deeper into your Nicholas Smith. His name crops up in the membership of several groups and societies—what would you call them, Jack?”

“Esoteric,” Jack supplied mildly.

“Aye, what he said. Anyway, they’re to do with pretty heavy magic, witchcraft, Satanism, that kind of thing.”

“Yes?” Sera eased her hip onto Jilly’s desk. She looked better than she had in the flat—well, who looked good when they first woke up? “That fits with what I heard, that he’s a ‘real’ sorcerer.”

“Does any of that stuff work?” Jack asked, almost apologetically. “Or is it just a symptom of the way he thinks, the power he’s looking for and found with the vampires?”

“Oh, some of it works. Some of it definitely works. Trust me, a friend of mine is a witch.”

“Mel,” Jilly remembered. Melanie Merrow had flickered erratically in and out of Sera’s life since childhood. Jilly had once wondered if, young as she was, Mel was Sera’s real mother, but Sera had laughed so hard at this speculation that Jilly had been forced reluctantly to drop the dream. Mel would have been a good mother to have. Or at least better than a drug addict who abandoned her baby at a clinic or whatever other wild or pathetic stories Sera produced for the entertainment of others. “Scary woman,” she observed.

“Very knowledgeable woman.” Sera frowned, staring at Jilly without really seeing her. “Why does he smell like me?” she said inexplicably. She stood up, reaching for the phone in her pocket. “I think I need to see Mel about many things.”

****

Although she was still pissed off at Ferdy, she’d be driving so close by his house on her way to visit Melanie that she decided to call in. There were more important things bothering her, personal things, like what she’d done with Blair last night and which way Blair would jump. And how she was going to feel about both of those things when he did.

Before she left, she ran back up to the flat to fetch the Christmas present she’d bought for Mel last year. And although it was only half an hour since she’d seen him last, her heart beat like a teenager’s on a first date with her long-time crush.

Silence rang in her ears. There was no sign of him in the living room. She could almost imagine he’d gone, had somehow found a way to leave in daylight, except the whole flat resonated with his personality. No echo of presence but the real thing. Slowly, she followed her instinct to the bedroom and found him lying stretched out on her bed, still clothed, staring at the ceiling. He looked dead.

“Blair?” She rushed over to him, wondering wildly if some ray of daylight had seeped through the curtain and zapped him. Though, of course, his body would have disintegrated, wouldn’t it? She grabbed his arm. “Blair!”

And suddenly he wasn’t on the bed but in the doorway, both hands raised in self-defense. His eyes were steely, murderous, just as she’d seen him in the car park, a timely reminder—or was it too late?—of the nature of the being she’d welcomed to her bed. And yet in the time she took to register this, he was already lowering his arms to his sides. The vicious glare faded from his eyes.

“Serafina.”

“Were you asleep?” she asked in disbelief.

His lips quirked. “I had a busy night.”

Her face, her entire body flushed, and yet beyond her own memory and embarrassment, she recognized that she’d found his vulnerability, that he knew it and didn’t like it. “Normally, I’m aware while I rest.”

“But you didn’t even hear me come in.”

“No, I didn’t,” he acknowledged, his voice very carefully even. “It seems I don’t register you as a threat.”

“Not sure that’s a compliment,” she said ruefully. His eyes lightened, seemed to smile, and her breath caught. She wanted to walk into his arms and hug him. She wanted to fall onto the bed with him and repeat all the things they’d done last night. Instead, she spun the other way, opening the wardrobe door to rummage for the wrapped Christmas gift. It was a small parcel—a ring—so it was difficult to locate. “I’m going to see my witch friend. She lives near Loch Lomond, so I’ll be gone most of the day.”

Finally retrieving the ring box, she shoved the fallen things back in and closed the door. “Nicholas Smith is into magic—real magic, like Phil said, not conjuring. Jilly found stuff on the Internet.”

He hadn’t moved, just continued to watch her. She drew in her breath and walked toward him. “I can trust you, can’t I, not to touch my friends?” She brushed his hand lightly. It might have been casual, almost accidental, but Blair would know better.

His mouth tugged upward on one side. He said nothing. His mind was as silent as his lips.

“Can’t I?” she repeated with a shade of desperation. “Blair, please!”

“What do you take me for? A trained animal?”

Uncomprehending, she frowned.

He leaned closer. She could smell him, earth and spice and sex on legs. “Don’t make that mistake,” he whispered. “I’m not trained at all.”

She snatched her hand away from his as if it burned her, but he moved faster, grasping her wrist and yanking her close into his body. Remembering and yearning, she found her gaze riveted on his lips, so close to hers they were almost touching. Her nipples, pressed into his chest, ached for attention. Between her legs pooled the moist warmth of sexual arousal, made all the more intense by the feel of his erection growing against her stomach.

“I have no interest in drinking your friends.” His words seemed to echo around her mind with contempt. “I am quite capable of finding my own supper.”

Only pride stopped her struggling in his hold. As if he felt it, he smiled and ran one finger down the artery in her neck. She gasped without meaning to. And he released her, walking past her to flop back down on the bed. This time, he closed his eyes.

Sera felt like a disciplined child. And she had never taken well to discipline. It didn’t help that he spoke the truth.

“Sleep well,” she said nastily and marched out of the room without looking back. It was tempting to slam the doors as she left, but she refused to give him the satisfaction.

****

Dropping in on the Bells, she was surprised to be ushered into their sitting room by Ferdy. Under the stark wooden cross on the wall sat Mrs. Bell, a tired, worried smile on her pale lips. Shit, who was she to get angry with people suffering like these two?

“I thought you were running away with us last night,” Ferdy said as she sat down. “How did you get away?”

“I had friends there with—er—a getaway vehicle.”

Mrs. Bell stood abruptly. “Cup of tea, Miss MacBride?”

“No thanks. I can’t stay long.”

“We need to know which vampire you killed last night,” Ferdy said in a rush.

Mrs. Bell sat back down. “Was it Jason?” she blurted.

“No, it wasn’t Jason,” Sera said quietly, and Mrs. Bell dropped her head into her hands.

“It would be so much better if it had been Jason,” she wept. “And yet I’m glad; I’m glad.”

Sera stared at her, frozen by the conflict suddenly tearing her apart. The Bells needed closure, to grieve for the death of their son and begin to move on, to cope with life without him. And yet Jason wasn’t just dead; he was undead. Like Blair.

She was right—she was sure she was right—to fight the takeover bid of the banking vampires. But was it right to kill them? Would it be right to kill Blair? “I’m not trained at all… I’m quite capable of finding my own supper.”

Somehow, murmuring soothing inanities, she managed to get out of the house and back into her car to begin the drive across to Loch Lomond. She hoped Melanie had some answers for her, but because right now, she was struggling to know anything at all.

****

Blair was no knight in shining armor.

He’d never wanted to be. Or had he? He had some vague recollection, hundreds of years old, of a boy desperate to save his mother the killing drudgery of work in the factory by obtaining food and clothes for her, some luxury to make her happy again. If the memory was true, he’d failed utterly, because the poor woman had died of exhaustion within two years of coming to Glasgow. Knights in shining armor didn’t pick pockets or suck blood from strangers. They didn’t cheat bartenders and prostitutes or consider betraying the trust of girls they seduced. In fact, he was pretty sure they didn’t go in for seduction at all.

But then, they weren’t real. They’d never existed in that sense and never would. He’d found that out even before his mother died, so exactly why he wanted to be Serafina MacBride’s knight in shining armor, he really had no idea.

It wasn’t as if she trusted him or expected anything of him.

Did she?

He shifted restlessly on the bed. Why the hell did she? She knew what he was.

No, she doesn’t. She didn’t realize vampires existed until three nights ago, and she knows nothing about me except she likes me to f*ck her. No damsel in distress. No knights. Just sort it out, and stop being an arse.

One way or another, it was probably going to come to a fight, in which case, he might well need support. He could summon them all, every vampire in the United Kingdom, including those who’d never crossed his path. It was within his power and, in Ailis’s absence, his right. However, with at least one older vampire still left in the banking camp, he preferred not to risk a general call being picked up. Besides, quality not quantity was what counted here.

To start with, he reached out with his mind to Scotland’s largest city, to the old, silent building which, only a few hours before, would have been vibrating to the blare of human music. As always when he contacted Davie, he could almost smell the stale alcohol, feel the human pleasure and slightly squalid excitement of the nightclub where he’d chosen to hang out lately. He was, officially, the caretaker. He had a tiny flat at the top of the building and even received a pittance of a paycheck, which was quite an achievement for a vampire. It certainly amused Davie no end. He wasn’t there for the money but for the easy nighttime access to human blood.

“Blair?” Davie acknowledged in some surprise. He didn’t trouble hiding his location or his occupation. He rarely did. He lay naked in his own bed between the legs of an equally naked young woman. Her improbably red hair was wildly rumpled and her makeup smudged. A narrow trickle of blood ran down her neck, which wasn’t surprising, since Davie was drinking from her semiconscious body. He saw no reason to stop in order to talk to Blair. “What d’you want?”

“I’m giving you warning. I might need you to come to Edinburgh at short notice.”

“What for?” Davie asked with a spark of interest, though not enough to detach him from the girl’s vein.

Blair said, “To fight.”

Davie stopped sucking. He even sat up while the girl fell back into a deeper sleep. “Now that’s funny, since the last time I saw you, you were beating the crap out of me for—oh aye, fighting.”

“That was different,” Blair said serenely. “You were drawing human attention to yourself and therefore to the rest of us.”

“And your fight won’t?”

“It might,” Blair admitted. “But there may be no other option. This threatens all of us. You have to be ready to drop everything as soon as I give the word.”

“That right?” Davie sneered.

“Yes. That’s right.”

Davie shrugged, mentally and physically. “Better get my energy levels up then,” he said and bent over the sleeping girl once more. She moaned as Davie sank his fangs back into her throat.

Vaguely, as he left Davie to his breakfast, Blair wondered how long she’d been there, but he wasn’t particularly worried. This was what passed as a relationship in Davie’s world. A girl he preyed upon first in the club, now in thrall to him, supplying him with regular blood and sex. She probably never left his room. When he was done, or she was, he would feed her up a bit and send her home with little memory of anything except a few nights of debauchery.

It was a simple life for a vampire. Blair had done similar things on several occasions. And for all the girl slept in his bed, Davie was preserving vampire isolation far more efficiently than Blair was right now.

Sera in his bed for days on end, in thrall to him. He couldn’t deny its appeal, and yet he couldn’t quite imagine it. While one part of him wanted it quite fiercely, another part rebelled because he couldn’t bear the idea of Sera in thrall. She was too rare. He wanted her willing, passionate, desperate, as she’d been last night.

“You wouldn’t go now, would you?” she’d whispered. “Stay with me.”

What the hell was he getting into here? Abruptly, he rose from the bed, away from her insidious, intoxicating scent, and paced through to the living room. It was more than time for a dose of sanity.

“Phil.”

“Ah, Blair. I thought you’d burned up with the dawn.”

“No, you didn’t. What’s happening?”

“Nothing. I’m contemplating my navel. Good night?”

“Perfect, thank you,” Blair said impatiently. “Did our friends make any further moves last night?”

“Well, some of them went out hunting. One killed someone, stupid bastard. A couple broke into New Register House in Prince’s Street—”

“They what?”

“Bizarre, isn’t it?”

“Serafina,” Blair said. “They’re looking for some record of Serafina.”

“It’s a bit of a jump, assumption-wise,” Phil pointed out. “Besides, can’t you do all that sort of thing online these days?”

“Not all.” He thought for a moment. He’d begun to think that Sera was right, that the new vampires’ mutations weren’t down to too distant descent from the Founder after all. “Magic, Phil,” he said abruptly. “Who among your acquaintances practices magic?”

“No one,” Phil said in surprise. “That’s one thing the Founder never passed on to us.”

****

Melanie had recently renovated and united two old cottages by the side of a small loch a few miles from Loch Lomond. Being Mel, she’d chosen a place well off the beaten track, on the end of a bumpy, single-track road.

As Sera pulled off the road and got out of her car, she saw that Melanie had also chosen a place of spectacular beauty, even under gray skies. There were woods and hills on two sides, and on the third, across the smooth, glinting water you got a glimpse of the much larger Loch Lomond and more hills beyond.

She heard the door of the cottage open and felt the warmth that was Melanie. She smiled without turning.

“You like my spot?” Melanie asked.

“It’s beautiful.” She turned at last to face her friend. Mel looked good, as she always did, all dark red hair and luminous green eyes. Bone structure to die for. She looked relaxed and content and pleased to see her. “How in the world did you find it?”

Mel wiggled her eyebrows. “Magic.”

“Really?”

“Nah. It was in the Glasgow Solicitors’ Property paper. Come in before the rain starts again.” Mel took her arm, gave it a little hug as they walked together toward the cottage. She wasn’t a demonstrative person, and Sera always valued her outward signs of affection. “How’s the world of psychic research?”

“Crazy,” Sera said ruefully.

Mel cast her a sardonic glance. “Get away.”

Sera laughed. “Seriously. Way beyond cranks and ghosts and poltergeists and people who want to prove I’m scamming them.”

“Do they do much of that?”

“I’ve had a few. I’ve even had a cop accuse me of preying on the grieving and the vulnerable.”

“I have to assume you’re not.”

Sera sighed. “I suppose it depends on your definition of grieving, vulnerable, and preying.”

“Finding it’s not all black and white?”

What Sera liked about Mel was that she never accused.

“It’s more complicated than I wanted it to be,” Sera confessed. “But that’s not my real problem.”

They entered the house, and with obvious pleasure, Melanie showed Sera around. Sera admired the original features and praised her friend’s tasteful and yet very Mel décor. After which, sitting at the dining table by a window overlooking the loch, they ate a rather delicious lunch that Mel claimed to have just thrown together.

“I’m going to leave Edinburgh and move out to the country,” Sera said, raising her glass in a toast. It was only orange juice, much to Melanie’s disappointment, but Sera was wary of the effect of wine on her after her blood loss. She used having to drive home as an excuse. “To your new house.”

“So,” Melanie asked after a little, “what is your real problem?”

It was what she’d come for, and yet now that the moment had arrived, she found herself curiously reluctant to go into it. The threat of the banking vampires, the mystery of Nicholas Smith, all faded into insignificance beside the one huge event of Blair, which she wasn’t yet ready to discuss with anybody. She doubted she ever would be.

“Vampires,” she said abruptly. “Do you know they actually exist?”

Prepared for several responses, including horror, ridicule, and pity, Sera was relieved when Melanie merely raised one intrigued eyebrow and murmured, “I have heard the odd whisper, though I’ve never encountered one myself.”

“What have you heard?” Sera asked curiously, helping herself to another of Melanie’s delicious cheese-and-spinach pies.

Melanie shrugged and reached for the bottle to top up her wine. “Nothing much. Rather mysterious, elusive beings, few in number, appallingly strong and absolutely deadly when riled. For the most part, they seem to prey secretly on the humans they live among, and rarely kill.”

Sera swallowed the last of her pie and, under Mel’s amused gaze, reached for yet another. “Did you ever hear whether or not they could talk? How they communicate among themselves or with humans?”

“I believe they’re telepathic. They don’t talk at all, at least not as we do.”

Sera nodded slowly, absently heaping two kinds of salad onto her plate. “That’s what I heard,” she agreed. “But recently, a new breed of vampire has appeared in Edinburgh—in alarming numbers, actually—and they can talk, just like we do. How do you suppose that could happen?”

Mel set down her glass, frowning. “I haven’t the foggiest idea, but I don’t like the sound of alarming numbers. Are they dangerous? And are you sure they’re vampires?”

“Yes to both. A couple of murders have been in the news. I think they’ve covered up a couple more. But they seem to be creating new creatures like themselves all the time—all from the financial industry. And they’re going back to work. They want to take over the running of all the country’s finances, siphon off wealth for themselves, and eventually reduce the role of humans to little more than slavery.”

Mel closed her mouth. “Yes, that is a real problem.”

“The other curious thing is—apparently, vamps don’t normally take to discipline. They’re free spirits, if you like. But these guys aren’t. They answer to a human.”

“What human?”

“Bloke called Nicholas Smith. Ever heard of him?”

Melanie closed her eyes tight, perhaps dredging her memory. “Not sure,” she said uncertainly.

“He does stage magic—mixture of conjuring and mind reading—under the name of Nick Black.”

Mel opened her eyes. “Ah. Now I know who you mean. I’ve even met him. He’s a member of WASA.”

“WASA,” Sera repeated, unable to stop herself from grinning.

“WASA,” Mel repeated sternly. “Witches’ and Sorcerers’ Association.”

It wasn’t really funny. Sera sobered and cleared out the salad bowl. “What can he actually do? I know he’s telepathic to some degree, but does he have other gifts? Like you? Can he—er—‘do’ magic?”

“I believe he’s quite strong.”

Sera glanced at her. “Stronger than you?”

“He’s older than me, been practicing for longer.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Sera laid her knife and fork together and sat back.

“Coffee and walnut cake?” Mel offered.

“Ooh yes, please.”

While Mel took the used plates away, Sera tidied the leftovers and watched her surreptitiously. She sensed an unusual tension in her friend, a discomfort that wasn’t usually present between them. And if she had to put her finger on when this discomfort arose, she rather thought it was when she spoke the name Nicholas Smith. He worried Mel.

Over coffee and Mel’s mouth-wateringly gorgeous cake, Sera said, “Is there some kind of spell Smith could have put on these new vampires? To enable them to speak, to dominate them?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. There are spells for most things. It’s just a matter of finding out what they are and gathering the power to use them properly.” Mel cut another two slices of cake and placed one on each of their plates. “Nicholas Smith always had an eye for the main chance. Always looking for ways to make the power work for him. So, I can imagine he might well have expended a lot of energy to track down such a spell. Or simply to see its uses if he came across it by accident.”

Sera, still savoring cake and coffee on some level, set down her cup and asked, “Do you have any idea what such a spell might be?”

“No, and I wouldn’t want to either.”

“Then I don’t suppose there’s a simple counter-spell to break it either? Not even an all-purpose, any-spell breaker?”

“You’re talking complicated magic here, Sera. Nothing will be simple. And even if the spell could be broken, you’d still be left with all those indiscreet vampires without even a leader to control them. I really don’t like the sound of any of this. Why don’t you come and live here while we figure out what to do?”

“I’ve got clients in Edinburgh. And besides, I couldn’t leave the others at Serafina’s.”

“How are Jack and Jill?” Mel asked with a quick grin.

“Fine. They’re excellent researchers, but we need a prod in the right direction.”

“Leave it with me,” Mel said. “I’ll do some research of my own. How did you get involved with all this in the first place?”

So Sera told Melanie all about Ferdy Bell, making her smile over the garlic and crucifixes before she unfolded the tragedy of Jason and the investigation that followed. Although she kept mention of Blair to a minimum, she couldn’t tell the story without him, and Melanie seemed to be intrigued by him and Phil.

“I think they might be your answer,” she said. “Whatever their motives, their aim is the same as yours. Since they’re so much stronger than the new vampires, couldn’t they just kill them for us? Leave Smith with no army?”

“I thought of that, but as long as there’s still one of them, more can always be created. In any case, by now there are so many of them that together they’re actually stronger than Blair and Phil.” She paused, lifting her orange juice and rubbing her thumb over an invisible mark on the glass. “The other things is…I know they’re dead already, but once you meet them, they’re people. I’m not sure I could kill them. I’m not even sure it’d be right to kill them.”

She cast Mel an apologetic smile and put down her glass again. “The other other thing is, what’s to stop Smith repeating the same process somewhere else? We need to defeat him. Curtail his ability.”

Mel glanced at her sideways. “You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you?”

“Oh yes. I just don’t know to accomplish it.”

“Let me look around my books and call on a few friends. It’ll take me a couple days at best, and there are no guarantees, but we should find something that would at least slow them down. Are you sure you won’t stay? You could help me.”

The anxiety in her voice warmed Sera. There had never been many people who actually cared what happened to her; it was one of the reasons she’d always valued Mel.

“The rain’s off,” Sera observed. “Shall we go for a walk? You can show me round the policies.”

Mel grinned and stood up.

Later, in the isolated peace of a nearby wood, Sera said, “How did you come into my life, Mel?”

Mel changed direction so that they could glimpse the rippling loch between the trees. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can’t actually remember when I first met you, or what the connection is between us. I just remember you showing up at odd moments of my childhood, bearing gifts or fun, sometimes at the home or at foster homes, and once you just appeared in the street. But we’ve never even talked about how we know each other. You’re not a secret social worker are you?”

Mel smiled. “No. No, I’m not.”

Sera brushed against a damp branch that spattered rainwater over them both. “Did you know my real family, Mel?”

“I knew some of them,” Mel said uncomfortably.

Sera paused and looked at her. “Is Nicholas Smith related to me?”

Mel’s eyes dropped, then lifted again. She was the one person Sera trusted without touch. Well, maybe her and Jilly. To check on either seemed like a betrayal.

Mel said, “Not to my knowledge.”

There was relief in that, although she didn’t quite understand why. She pushed it aside.

“Why do you ask that?” Mel wanted to know.

Sera shrugged. “He’s telepathic. Apparently, he smells like me. Perhaps all psychic people smell like that to a vampire. Melanie…did you know my parents?”

Melanie took a few moments to answer. They were walking clear of the woods now, and the view across the loch and the hills was spectacular. “I knew your mother,” she said at last. “I was very fond of her. Owed her, if you like. But I was only fourteen when she died. I couldn’t look after a newborn baby.”

There was no reason for Sera’s throat to close up. None at all, unless it was in appreciation of Mel’s implied wish to adopt her. “She really died when I was born?” she managed.

Without looking at her, Mel reached out and took her hand. “Yes, she did. Massive blood clot, and she wasn’t at the hospital, so no one could save her in time.”

“Were you there?”

Mel shook her head.

My mother died alone with a tiny baby… And Sera’s birth must have caused the blood clot. She’d been right about that. Convulsively, without meaning to, she squeezed Melanie’s hand, and Mel returned the grip.

She already knew without telling that whoever the rest of her family were, they’d rejected her. There was no other reason for her to have been flung onto the mercy of the social care system. “And my father?”

“Your mother never told me who he was.” Releasing her hand, Mel bent and picked up a stone and hurled it into the loch. It seemed symbolic.