Changeling (7 page)

Trey looked about him, making his mind up. ‘I’d like to stay,’ he said. ‘If it’s OK with you. For a while at least. I have things that I need to ask you, things
about myself and what I am.’ He paused. ‘And I’d like a chance to get to know you some more.’

The old man shook his head and took a deep breath of the stale air. ‘I’m not good company,’ he said. ‘Especially in the . . . lead-up. In two days I’ll have the
Change. Full moon.’ He frowned and swivelled his head in Trey’s direction. ‘Does the moon still get to you? I know the amulet gives you control, but does it still get to
you?’

Trey shook his head and then realized that the man could not see this response. ‘It does, but I don’t have to change during the full moon. I can . . . make it not happen. But
it’s bad if I do that – I feel like my insides are being torn out and my brain is on fire. If I fight the moon, I can feel sick for days. I tried to at the start, but it got so bad that
now it’s just easier for me to find somewhere away from everyone and let it happen. I don’t have to stay changed for long – just get it done, and then I can go back to being . . .
normal.’

‘Normal, huh?’ Frank nodded slowly and began to stand up. ‘Back to normal.’ He walked around the chair until he was standing in front of Trey. ‘Follow me. I want
you to see something.’ He turned his back on the youngster and walked across the room, his fingers outstretched before him to guide him to the rear wall. He stopped in front of a door set
into it, reached out and pulled the handle down to open it.

‘Go in, go in,’ he said, nodding his head towards the door.

Trey stepped through the doorway and his uncle followed.

The back room was a cell. It was a stark, cold space of about twenty square feet. In the centre of the room was a large cage. Its steel bars were at least an inch thick, and the entire thing was
bolted down into the concrete floor. Inside the cage a small mattress was laid directly on to the floor, blankets piled up at one end. Beyond that, there was nothing in the room.

Trey looked over at his uncle, who seemed to sense the boy’s stare.

‘Come in and have a proper look,’ he said, motioning with his head and stepping further into the room. He walked up to the cage, his arms stretched out in front of him. ‘Home
sweet home,’ he said when his fingers made contact with the cold metal bars. ‘Well, it will be in a couple of days.’

‘You lock yourself in that?’ Trey said.

‘Yep. The door’s got a timer lock on it. As soon as I step inside and slam it shut, it can’t be opened for another fourteen hours. It’s either that or waking up in the
middle of nowhere, not being able to remember if I’ve torn somebody’s throat out.’

Trey looked at the cage and then at the man next to it. ‘But you can’t see. How could you be a danger to anyone when you can’t see?’

His uncle laughed bitterly and shook his head. ‘That’s the real son of a bitch. That’s the thing that makes this curse even sicker than it already was. Because for one day
every month, I
can
see! And guess when that is, hmm? The only time that I get to crawl out of this darkness that I live in is when I’m a psychopathic werewolf intent on killing
anything and everything in my path.’

Trey looked at the man in horror.

‘Oh, I can’t see great. But one eye can make out enough for me to be able to get around . . . get around and . . . hunt.’ He snorted again, his face set in a sick grimace.
‘So I lock myself up. Like all good little Wolfan boys should during the Change. I lock myself up in this room when I could be looking at the world again. How’d you like that,
huh?’

Trey didn’t say anything for a long time. He stared at the cage and tried to imagine what it must be like to be locked up inside it. ‘I’ll be here this time,’ Trey said.
‘I’d like to be with you.’

‘Like I said, I’m not good company at the best of times.’ Frank ran his fingers through his thin hair, letting out a long sigh. ‘But if you want to stay, you can.
You’ve come a long way to be here, so it’s the least I can do.’ The old man turned as if to leave, but stopped, adding, ‘We might get visitors. I don’t live entirely
alone here on this land.’

Lucien met the courier outside the lift in the underground car park at the bottom of the building. The man was dressed from head to toe in black motorcycle leathers, his face
obscured by the tinted black visor of the helmet he wore. The man handed the package to Lucien, nodding in the vampire’s direction before turning on his heel and walking back to the motorbike
that he had arrived on moments before.

When the doors of the elevator opened up into the apartment the vampire hesitated, as he always did at this point, checking to see if he was alone. The apartment was in complete darkness, but
Lucien’s eyes took in every detail as he scanned the room. Happy that there was nobody else around at this late hour, he crossed the floor to the door that led through to his office. Once
inside, he leaned back against the door, closing his eyes and steeling himself for what lay ahead. Still carrying the large package, he crossed the room to the desk, using the side of the box to
clear a space on which it could rest. The delivery resembled one of those small cool boxes used for transporting cold food to picnics or the beach, and his fingers trembled a little as he slid the
zip all the way round and opened the semi-rigid top.

Inside were two bags of blood. Both full, their contents distended the thick plastic containers so that they looked like giant rectangular berries – full to the brim with a crimson cargo.
Lucien reached forward and picked one up. He circled the desk and sat down in the large leather chair. Looking down at the blood bag, he hefted it in his hand, enjoying the weight and feel of it
and the flutter of anticipation that it set off inside him.

He opened the drawer at the side of his desk and looked down at the medical equipment that he kept there. He had everything needed to insert a cannula and administer the blood intravenously
– he’d done it countless times since turning his back on his former vampiric existence. He still needed the blood to survive, but he no longer chose to acquire and imbibe it in the way
that his kind had throughout the centuries. One of Lucien’s many businesses was a blood laboratory, and his daily dose of the life-sustaining liquid was delivered to him at the same time
every day.

He reached down and started to pull the equipment from the drawer, his fingers pausing as they brushed against the plastic packaging that housed the needles. He paused, glancing at the blood bag
again, and thought about how long it had been since he’d tasted the sweet sticky liquid it contained.

What did it matter how he took the blood into him? What difference would it make if he chose, just this once, to drink it rather than push it into his body through a tube?

He shook his head as if trying to rattle loose these rogue thoughts, a deep frown lining his forehead. He was being foolish. This was not the first time that he had had to fight the animalistic
urges that defined his type. But recently he had felt desires and old urges that he had thought were gone forever. However hard he tried to dispute the fact, he had the uncomfortable feeling that
something, something long held at bay, had been reawakened in him.

He leaned his head back, a long sigh escaping his lips. Unconsciously, he raised a hand, his fingers tracing the area of his shoulder that had been wounded recently when his brother, Caliban,
had sunk his teeth deep into him. Becoming aware of what he was doing he sat up, lifted his head and looked down at the area beneath his fingers. He wondered if something more than just the scar
tissue might have been left behind as a memento of their last battle – if somehow the infection that had almost killed him might have changed him at a more deep and primitive level.

He looked at the bag in his hand again, and his pulse quickened. It really
didn’t
matter how the blood got into him. As long as nobody was hurt it was of no consequence. And this
blood had been given voluntarily.

He shook his head again, unable to believe what he was about to do.

He opened another drawer, and this time he took out a small knife that he always used as a letter-opener. He held the sharp tip against the thick plastic housing, telling himself that this was
foolish and yet still pushing gently on the handle. He would just take a small mouthful. Just enough to prove to himself that it was of no consequence and that this had everything to do with the
stresses that he was under at the moment, and nothing to do with any physiological change that was happening to him. He would taste the blood, prove to himself that it had no effect on him, and
then administer the rest through a vein.

The crimson liquid burst free of the puncture, and Lucien quickly pulled the bag up to his face, closing his lips around the hole and sucking greedily at the blood. He sank back into the chair,
tilting his head back and closing his eyes as the cold liquid filled his mouth. A small muffled groan escaped him as he swallowed.

It was too cold. But even so he relished the harsh metallic taste in his mouth. It was a taste that brought with it a flood of memories and emotions. Long-forgotten scenes swam into life behind
his eyelids, and he sucked all the harder on the plastic bag.

He would warm the next bag; warm it to the right temperature so that it would feel like it had just come from . . .

He opened his eyes. Sitting up quickly, he threw the bag away from him on to the floor, ignoring the terrible scarlet mess that it made on the carpet. He stood up and rushed to the bathroom,
lifting the seat to the toilet just in time as his stomach contracted and ejected a hot spew of bloody vomit into the pan. He straightened up, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand.

What had he been thinking? What on earth was happening to him?

He closed the door behind him, trying hard not to look at the growing pool of blood that was now soaking into the floor in front of his desk. He walked out of the office, and left the apartment.
He needed to walk. Walk and think. He was in trouble and he needed a solution, fast.

The dull, overcast morning had transformed into a hot and sunny afternoon, and the park was filled with office workers looking for somewhere away from their fluorescent-lit
workplaces to eat their sandwiches. Alexa walked among them, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face and the soft give of the grass underfoot. The bench was set back a little from the path, and
she stood in front of it looking down at the prostrate figure that took up the entire expanse of the wooden seat. The bench’s occupant let out a loud snore and shifted around to move its face
back into shadow again. Alexa waited patiently, smiling ruefully down at the figure she had been sent here to find.

‘I know that you’re awake,’ she said eventually, ‘so why don’t you stop pretending and be nice?’

‘Sod off,’ came the gruff reply.

‘You were very difficult to track down. My father would have come to visit you himself, but you know how he hates daylight meetings. He said that if you weren’t agreeable . . . if
you were rude, he’d be happy to pay you a visit in person . . . at night . . . alone.’

The Ashnon slowly sat up, sucking its teeth and squinting up at the girl. It rubbed a hand through its grimy hair. ‘What does he want this time?’

‘A favour.’

‘I don’t do favours. Not even for the likes of Lucien Charron. He knows that. And you might want to remind him that the last time I worked for him, it nearly cost me my life.
“It’s a simple job,” he told me. “You’ll only need to be the Prime Minister for one day, no more.”’ The Ashnon reached down beside the bench and grabbed a
brown paper bag containing a bottle of something. Twisting the lid off, it swigged greedily before setting it back on the ground. ‘He knew damn well that that lunatic was going to take a shot
at the PM that day. The bullet missed me by inches!’

‘It was a human bullet, fired by a human hand. You wouldn’t have died.’

‘That’s easy for you to say, but walking around with a five-inch exit wound in your face for a week or so is no picnic, I can tell you.’

‘My father says that you’ll like this job. He says that the reward at the end of it will make you glad to take it.’

The Ashnon studied her. They were among the rarest demons of the Netherworld, and this was the first time that she had met one.
At least she assumed it was
. The Ashnon were unique amongst
nether-creatures for being able to perfectly replicate any human being. They did this without harming the human, and having assumed the human disguise, became invisible to other nether-creatures.
Because of this unique ability they were able to charge immense fees to double for heads of state, royalty and VIPs who might be in danger of assassination or kidnap. And that was the reason why
Alexa had been sent here today.

‘You said something about a reward?’

‘Where is he?’Alexa asked, making the demon wait.

‘Who?’

‘The homeless person you’re pretending to be. Where is he?’

‘At a place that I’ve set up in the Netherworld. As far as he’s concerned, he’s staying at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York as my guest. All expenses paid.
He’ll look out of the window of the penthouse apartment and see the New York skyline – taxis, skyscrapers, American delis selling hot salt beef – the whole shooting match. All
he’s got to do is stick to his side of the bargain, not leave the building for a week, and he gets the holiday of a lifetime. Every kind of food and drink he could imagine brought to him by
room service; movies on demand; a personal shopper who visits him and then arranges for the clothes to be delivered; a personal trainer to help him out at the gym. Whatever he wants.’

Alexa frowned, considering what the demon had just said. ‘But none of it is real.’

‘Reality’s subjective. When the guy is sitting on this bench drunk out of his brain and seeing pink elephants, believe me, to him they’re real.’

Alexa turned her head to look around at the people lying on the grass enjoying one of the rare sunny days of this summer.