Falling Apart (27 page)

‘
Ryan
?' The shock made my knees buckle again and I stumbled against the car.

The zombie gave me a sheepish grin. His chest was peppered with holes from the rifle fire, totally ruining one of Sil's floppy-fronted shirts and his long, leather coat. The dark wig he'd been wearing was askew, giving him the look of a rakish scarecrow. ‘Hi, Jess.'

Slowly, I turned on my heel to see Zan and Liam grinning at me. Well, Liam was grinning, Zan had mitigated his usual condescension to a slightly softer grimace. My mind was fragmented with confusion: I couldn't believe any of what I was seeing. Everything was filtered through the grey mist of shock and disbelief, a shock that had sent me so far down inside myself that I couldn't even muster anger at their amusement. ‘What's happened?'

Liam looped an arm around my shoulders. ‘You had to be believable. No-one cares what I think, and Zan was convincingly … well, Zan-like. We just needed you to completely believe that it was Sil dying out here.'

Ryan finished his cigarette. ‘And we owed you, Jess, so I didn't mind. Quite good fun, really. I haven't climbed so high since I got my finger stuck in that lift door on a service crane.' A few last puffs of smoke billowed out of his chest cavity and floated away on the breeze. The greyness in my head threatened to block everything for a moment. I wished I could pass out, just be away from this situation, whilst my mind grew so cold and still that I half-thought I was dying by degrees. My whole body was a solid pain.

‘So …' My voice broke again, but I collected it up. ‘Where is Sil?' I was surprised at how like me my voice sounded.

And then the tug came again, low in my stomach, that silver chord playing into the night. ‘Here, Jess.' A vamp stepped forward from where he'd been concealed by stonework and the bulk of the car. His hair had been shaved, he'd lost the three-day-stubble that always covered his chin and he was wearing a generic black suit and dark glasses. Surrounded by others in the same clothes, he was almost unrecognisable.

Thump.
My pulse moved in my throat, I felt my skin kick with it.
Thump
. As though my heart had remembered how to beat again. As though he was all I needed to be alive. I stood and stared. And then came the feelings, flooding through me in a tide that rose and rose until it filled my eyes and nose and took the place of the air, blocked out that windy headland with sensation roaring in. Unstoppable.

I flung myself at him, feeling his strength, smelling that scent of spices and rare wood, knowing that he was safe, he was here, he was
mine.
I couldn't speak, there was nothing I could say that he couldn't tell from the way I held on to him, as though someone had taken my ground away and he was all the contact I had left with the earth.

‘My love', he whispered. ‘
My love
. You should know that not even death would make me leave you.'

I couldn't let go. My hands returned to him over and over, as though even my fingers couldn't believe the touch of him. I felt as though all my internal organs had been displaced, everything shuffled around so that my heart was the only part of me that still worked. And it was so busy holding Sil in its depths that it almost forgot to do its job. Relief made my head sing and now the grey mist held a hot scarlet tint as all the emotions that had been on hold while I grieved began to fight their way forward.

‘Whose idea was it?'

The three of them exchanged looks, as though no-one was willing to take the blame. Then Sil cleared his throat. ‘It was mine. At least, the outline was mine; Zan filled in some of the detail and Liam suggested that, since the zombies appeared to owe you a favour, actually
seeing
me die may give our charade that ring of authenticity.'

My fingers were clenched in Sil's, not daring to let go for fear that he may be snatched from me; that this was all a hallucination, that grief and terror were attempting to protect me from the loss. But the feel of him, the taste of him on my tongue, these were real. The almost silken draw of the connection between us, that was real. The touch of his cool skin where his hand stroked the tender skin of my wrist, that was real.
He is real. He is safe.
In this moment only the knowledge that he was standing beside me kept me from hurling myself at Zan and Liam in a ball of howling fury.

‘What happens now?' I became aware that my cheeks were smeared with snot and mud when Sil reached a gentle finger out and brushed at them.

‘I am dead, Jess. You saw me die.'

‘Yes, but …'

Zan interrupted. ‘Sil had to be “disappeared”. This seemed the most effective way for that to happen.'

As though it had gained a life of its own, the hand that wasn't clutching Sil's shot out at the end of my arm and smacked Zan hard and loudly across the face. ‘You bastard. You utter and complete
turd
! How dare you do this to me?'

Zan gave me a level stare. He didn't even attempt to touch the reddening mark which stood livid on his skin, he just stared me down with a hellish glow smouldering deep in those green eyes. ‘You had a better suggestion?' One hand raised and moved quickly, removing any atoms that I might carelessly have left on his surface. ‘I thought not. Sometimes, Jessica, one must act upon the moment that presents itself, not enter a debate.' His demon slid behind his expression, ecstatic at the emotional response. ‘If we had to save Sil by committee vote, he would still be hiding with his life in peril.'

I couldn't speak. His dismissal of the agony I had been through was, although understandable from Zan, so cold-blooded that it cancelled out the heat of my anger, and all I could do was shake my head.

‘We need to move.' Liam broke in to our staring competition. ‘Get off this cliff before souvenir hunters start raking around for bent bullets and blood.'

‘And you are so not off the hook either,' I said, quietly but with a goodly amount of future ill-will injected into my tone.

‘Hey, you bit me! And I've got scratches that look as though I've had a passionate affair with a Siberian tiger, so I'm up for calling it quits.' Liam's hand rested, briefly, on my shoulder, a passing touch of empathy, if not apology. ‘And, like Zan said, nothing better was coming up, so …'

‘If I may speak, as the corpse in question.' Sil squeezed my fingers. ‘I really think we should take Liam's suggestion and move somewhere a little less public. The office, perhaps? Because, trendy as my new hairstyle may be, it does leave a certain amount to be desired in the heat-retention line.'

I looked at him again and my heart wouldn't stand still, it was leaping like a circus act. The shaven head made his face look entirely different, more regal and ninety per cent eyes. ‘What happens next?' The question was quiet. ‘To you. To us.'

Zan answered, and I noticed he'd retreated beyond arm's length, clearly I still had a murderous look in my eye. ‘Sil will continue to work in our office, but it will be strictly in a backroom capacity, and there will be certain … measures taken to ensure his appearance remains altered.'

Sil smiled. ‘We may still be together. It must be only when nobody is looking, of course, but in the privacy of the house …' His dark look and the touch of his fingers made me shiver. ‘We may be as we were.'

‘Oh, get a room,' Liam said, cheerfully. ‘One without windows, though.'

‘Won't anyone notice?' I managed. My emotions were still sitting there on that knife edge between ecstasy and breaking down in irrevocable tears, as though my heart couldn't make up its mind which way to fall. Going with practicalities was pretty much the middle ground as far as it was concerned.

Zan gave a dark look. ‘It will be a part of your new job, Jessica, to ensure that they don't. And, just to establish some ground rules, that does
not
mean by burying the entire office in biscuit wrappers and pieces of scribbled-upon paper.'

‘Right. Back to Vamp Central?' Liam asked.

Ryan was, uncomplainingly, stretched out in the cheap coffin in the back of the hearse. Another of the advantages of zombies – they could really do ‘waiting'. ‘Not too many bumps, guys,' he said. ‘These things are really flimsy.'

‘Customers don't usually complain,' Sil said, closing the boot. And in a parody of a funeral cortege, we drove back to York with the hearse leading the way.

Sil and I lay in the paddock-sized bed, wound around in sheets and sepia-toned in moonlight. I still couldn't stop myself from touching him, although now passion had burned down to a low-lit gas and a vibration running under my skin.

‘Wow.'

‘I have missed you. Missed this.' He half-sat against the galleon-sail pillows ‘I never thought it could be so, but I missed this life we have made.' A cool, long-fingered hand tangled in my hair. ‘I am to be known as Jonathan now. Sil died at the hands of a Hunter, and so I reclaim my old name, the name that means something.'

‘
Jonathan
,' I tasted his name. In some ways it brought him closer to me, made him more human. But in others it drove a tiny wedge between us – Jonathan had been married to Christina. Had a son and a daughter. Marriage, a lifetime commitment, not something I could offer someone who would live three times as long as me; for all he said he would be with me until the end, could I trust that? He would grow slowly towards the grave with his demon-enhanced beauty intact to the end, whilst I would start to look more and more like Yoda. Would he still love me
then
? And children … Did he want to attempt to fully regain the life he'd lost by having a family? How did I feel about that – after all, with my confused bloodline my offspring may turn out to be anywhere along the continuum from enhanced human to outright demon.

But all that was in a future we hadn't yet contemplated. Had barely even begun to acknowledge as existing for us. We were here. Now. Alive. Undercover, but alive.

‘Are you ready to forgive us for our deception today?' Sil tipped my chin with a finger. ‘We really did think it was for the best to keep you in ignorance.' And now his lips were close. ‘Forgive us.'

‘Of course I do.' I brushed his mouth with mine. ‘You, anyway. The others can await my wrath. Liam lives on his nerves anyway.'

A laugh. ‘Very wise of him.' Fingers moved from my hair to stroke my neck. ‘But can you truly forgive me? For all that I did?'

I laid my head against his chest. ‘You did what you had to, to stay alive.' My mind still hadn't let go of that image from the London camera of Sil standing in that street, blood on his mouth. And his eyes … they had been so
animated
. A glimpse of the vampire within the man I loved, the creature that made him what he was. ‘And I can live with that.' Now I half sat, to look in his face. ‘But if you ever do anything like that again …'

His eyes darkened from the pale sky-grey they'd turned during our love-making to a blue-black. Was that regret? And for what? His actions, or lost opportunities? ‘Our relationship must be one of trust,' he said quietly. ‘Or it is nothing.'

‘Er, lying in bed with you. No noticeable armoured clothing.' And then I dropped the slightly sarcastic tone. ‘I trust you.'

But it cuts both ways,
I thought, losing myself to the feeling of his fingers on my skin.
You have to trust me too. And, given the information that has turned up about me, I'm not entirely sure that
I
trust me.

‘And how do you feel about this new position of yours?' His voice was still quiet, but his body had grown more relaxed, as though a secret fear had evaporated.

‘What, the one where you …'

‘Working for Zan.' A gentle hand moved lower and my back broke out in pleasurable goose-pimples at the cool surety of that touch. ‘The human government will not dare to touch you whilst you are under his protection, but there is still the matter of the rumours surrounding a new uprising.'

‘Mmmm. Uprising. I like the sound of that.
Uprising
.' I writhed closer to him. ‘But you're right. We need to find out where that rumour is coming from. Make sure it gets firmly … ooh, yes,
firmly
handled.' I shivered as his fingers moved from my back and trailed around my shoulder, passed under the cover and drew lace on my skin with their tips. ‘I just wish Mum and Dad were allowed to know that you're still alive.'

‘I am sorry. But for the safety of all, I must remain dead.'

‘Yes. Don't worry: Zan explained it to me. In great detail. I think he would have used pictures if I hadn't threatened to stake him.'

Fangs just beginning to descend, he kissed my arm. ‘Zan is very pleased that you have come to work for us.' Lower … ‘But then, so many things about you are pleasing, Jessica.'

‘I suppose I'm your boss now?'

The fingers continued their descent. ‘Yes. Zan is handling the press release.'

I started to giggle. ‘That's going to put a stop to the
York Herald
doorstepping me – I can threaten to go round there and set the vamps on them. Oh, I wish I could see their faces …' The giggles stopped and I bit my lip. ‘Hey, if I'm your boss, I can tell you what to do, can't I?'

‘Mmmmm.'

So I bent and whispered my instructions into his ear. And Jonathan complied with all of them, until I fell into pieces beneath him.

Jane was born in Devon and now lives in Yorkshire. She has five children, four cats and two dogs. She works in a local school and also teaches creative writing. Jane is a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association and has a first-class honours degree in creative writing.

Jane writes comedies which are often described as ‘quirky'.
Falling Apart
is Jane's fifth Choc Lit novel and the sequel to
Vampire State of Mind
. Her UK debut,
Please don't stop the music
, won the 2012 Romantic Novel of the Year and the Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year Awards from the Romantic Novelists' Association. Her other novels published with Choc Lit are
Star Struck
and
Hubble Bubble
.

For more information on Jane visit
www.janelovering.co.uk
www.twitter.com/janelovering