Solace & Grief (20 page)

Dry twigs creaked and crackled underfoot.

They'd been walking for what felt like twenty-odd minutes, and nobody had spoken. It wasn't a hostile silence, but it still gnawed at Solace, as if some careless remark of hers had killed the conversation.

She wasn't sure where they were – some kind of park or flush of greenery, obviously, but as to where or how it fitted into Sydney as a whole, she didn't know. Once you got away from the main roads, there were places (or so she was learning) where mobs of thin, ribbon-twisting, downwards-sloping, one-way, odd-angled backstreets took you out of time, pockets of quiet that were utterly incongruous with her previous notions of the city. Unless you lived there, it seemed, you'd never know they existed. Perhaps this was because nobody walked anywhere, which in turn was a possible consequence of Sydney lying inconveniently sprawled over hills and hollows like a collapsed drunk, vomiting out suburbs whenever its stomach grew too full.

Suddenly, Harper stopped. Laine and Solace exchanged a quick glance.

‘She's been here,’ he said. The words decorated the air before them like a spider's web.

‘How can you tell?’

‘That tree, there.’ He pointed. Both girls looked, and were, despite everything, jolted into weak laughter: someone had carved a jagged
GO AWAY, HARPER!
into the bark. As Solace watched, the thin genesis of a smile flickered briefly at the corner of his mouth before vanishing again. He was a complex person, she decided, and although she understood some of the bond between Manx and Electra, what existed between Paige and Harper remained a mystery.
Wherever the pixie goes, so go I
, he'd said, but curious as that made her now, she put it aside for later. After a moment's pause, they started walking again, Harper several metres ahead.

‘You've noticed, then,’ said Laine, abruptly. Solace blinked.

‘What?’

‘Paige and me. The hostility.’

‘Yes.’ She glanced at Laine sidelong. ‘Why is that?’

‘I made the mistake of sleeping with Harper.’ The Goth girl sighed, exhaled. ‘A big mistake,’ she added softly.

Solace gulped. ‘Oh.’

Awkwardness reigned, but only for a moment. Laine gave her head a small shake and spoke again. ‘I never did ask how you ended up at the picnic. Rude of me.’

Shrugging past a strand of grevillea, Solace answered wearily, though grateful for the distraction. ‘I don't know. What am I doing, Laine? What are any of us doing? It's all surreal. We go out and get drunk most nights, come back and pass out or fall asleep. Nothing ever gets taken seriously, because there's nothing we do that could be. We don't have any purpose to push us on, anything we have to work at to get. It's all just ours. Everyone gives the impression of having been really down and out before they found one another, but how could they have been? Maybe I just haven't lived in the world for long enough, but I don't understand it at all.’

She fell silent. For a brief span of time, Laine said nothing. As though they were made of carbon, Solace felt her words sink into the green around them, become absorbed into chlorophyll and breathed out again, English transmuted into tree-speech.

When Laine eventually answered, her tone was measured, thoughtful, but her pale eyes remained fixed ahead, blue and unblinking. ‘Listen. Last night was messed up, no question. But you've just admitted you don't know everything about these people, so how does that give you the right to judge them? Most of us
do
want a purpose, even if we can't admit it; and usually, we can't, or don't. Stuff like that affects people. But us, we're Rare, too. We can't live like everyone else, but we're not destitute enough to have any real motive for change, either. If you put us right down there in the dark, half of us would die or go crazy, and the rest would scramble like mad to pretend we were normal people. Far as I can tell, that's what we've always done, and that's why we gather together like we do.’

‘Why?’

Laine sighed, tilting her head and throat to the sky. ‘Because we want a
society
. We want a structure that lets us be what we are, that gives us a purpose, tells us what to do and why. No hiding. And they do exist – maybe before the world got smaller, there were more of them. We had the blank pages of the map to crawl into. But now the humans are everywhere. We have to sink through the cracks in their system because we can't make our own, but even the cracks aren't the right shape we get stuck halfway to the bottom, wedged between the walls.’ She rubbed her temples. ‘All I'm saying is, there's more to why we are the way we are than you think. You just don't know it yet.’ She managed a weak smile. ‘But hey – you're young.’

Solace blinked. ‘So are you!’

‘True,’ Laine pointed out, ‘but
I
can read minds.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Paige?’ Harper called out, stopping so abruptly that both girls walked into the back of him. Sidestepping and rubbing her shoulder, Solace craned her neck upwards. In front of them was a gum tree: thick, tall and with no branches until about four metres up. Hanging upside down by her knees from one of these limbs was Paige, her arms folded over her chest like some giant, awkward bat. Going by her closed eyes and lack of reply, Solace judged that she was asleep.

‘Paige?’ Harper repeated. Reaching out, he knocked on the trunk of the tree. ‘Wake up!’

‘No,’ said Paige, without so much as twitching an eyelid.

‘Why not?’

‘Don't feel like it.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Laine contradicted her. ‘I can tell.’

Paige heaved a sigh. ‘You're here, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that settles it. Get lost!’

‘Paige,’ sighed Harper, crossing his arms.

‘No!’

Solace tugged on Laine's sleeve.

‘Is she always like this?’ she whispered.

Laine nodded and narrowed her eyes. ‘Always. Don't ask.’

‘Right.’

‘Just get down,’ Harper argued. ‘This is stupid and you know it. Our friends are dead, and all you can do is run off and hide in a tree.’

Paige's eyes snapped open. ‘I'm not hiding!’

‘Sure you're not. You're just very well camouflaged.’

‘
Camouflaged
? I'm entirely the wrong damn colour! I don't blend at all! This isn't
hiding
! It's –’

‘You know what I meant,’ Harper interjected. ‘Come on. Please? This doesn't help, and it certainly does nothing for any of us.’

In one smooth motion, Paige swung herself upright into a sitting position straddling the branch.

‘What will help, then?’ she asked, hugging herself. ‘Go on. Tell me your great big plan will make everything better when you know it can't be.’

‘We're going to go check out the warehouse,’ Solace said, speaking before she could stop herself. ‘Maybe see what started the fire, if we can find any clues.’

‘That's a start,’ Paige conceded. Her tone was wary. ‘What else?’

‘Well, once we know more, we can do what you said last night – find who did this and make them pay.’

A broad smile lazily spread across Paige's face, as if, like a Cheshire grin, it possessed a life of its own. ‘Now
that
– I
like
that plan.’

In a single lithe movement, she dropped down, leaving Solace to wonder how she'd ever managed to get up there in the first place.

‘We're not too sure about that, either,’ said Laine, spookily. ‘It could be a weird kind of Trick, or she might just be really agile. It's not as if we can test for one or the other. So who knows?’ Solace glared at her, but received only an unapologetic shrug in response. ‘Mind reader, remember? Anyway. The point being, she can climb things.’

‘Laine? You're talking again. Don't,’ said Paige, striding past them. ‘And I'm still not happy to see you!’

Harper sighed, draping his arms over Solace's and Laine's shoulders as they watched Paige go on ahead.

‘That girl, he announced, ‘will be the death of me.’

‘Come on,’ said Solace. ‘Let's go back and see the others.’

‘If we must,’ Laine murmured cheekily, disentangling herself and following Paige.

Harper paused, bent down and kissed Solace lightly on the cheek.

‘Thanks,’ he murmured. ‘Sometimes, she can take hours to talk around.’

And without saying anything else, he squeezed her arm gently and then moved on, leaving Solace to watch him walk, and wonder.

They were almost back at the house when Solace heard familiar voices coming from the other side of a stand of tall shrubs. Quickly grabbing Paige by the arm, she held out a hand for Harper and Laine to stop.

‘Listen!’ she hissed.

Automatically, the four of them crouched down. After a moment, Solace carefully brushed some of the shrubs aside, peering through a gap to see who it was. What she saw left her dumbstruck.

Sharpsoft and Evan.

Talking.

Her mouth went dry.

‘Who's that guy in the coat?’ Paige whispered. Solace shot her an imploring look and put a finger to her lips.

‘Look, it's not
my
fault that Glide got away!’ Evan yelled. ‘You didn't tell me that something like this could happen!’

‘It should've been obvious!’ growled Sharpsoft. ‘Why else did I ask you to watch him?’

‘That's not the same as an outright warning and you know it. Apart from which, how else could I have stayed behind? I
had
to leave with the others!’

‘Granted.’ This was conceded grudgingly. ‘But that still doesn't solve our immediate problem. The book is gone, and so is the key – which is now, presumably, in the hands of the one person who shouldn't have it!’

Evan shook his head. ‘No, it's not. Solace took it with her. That's how we got home when, well, when everything was burning.’

‘She
used
it?’ Solace couldn't tell if Sharpsoft was angry, impressed or frightened; there was an equal amount of each quality in his intonation.

Evan shuffled uncomfortably, uncertain of where the conversation was headed. ‘Sort of. Why?’

The question went unanswered. ‘What happened then? Where did you come out?’ His tone was urgent.

‘It was weird.’ Evan scratched his head. Solace realised her hands were clenched into fists, and made a conscious effort to flex and straighten them. ‘One minute we were in this tower, and the next, the door just opened out onto a street near the warehouse. Not even into a building. Once we stepped through and looked around, there was just a really faint rectangle in the air, shimmering a little. You couldn't see back into where we'd been. And after Solace came through, it vanished altogether.’

‘You noticed nothing else? That's it?’

‘Sorry,’ Evan shot back. ‘I was a bit preoccupied with my friends being burned to death.’

Solace felt the others tense. Her brain was racing madly. What was going on? How did any of this fit together? Without thinking, she pushed too hard on the shrub. Several skinny branches snapped.

Sharpsoft turned and stared in their direction. Even from that distance, Solace was sure she could see his eyes whirling, just as they'd done when he'd first asked her who she was. Too late, she tried to duck down, but he'd already seen her.

‘Solace. Please, come forward. Bring your friends.’

Quietly, she stood. Harper, Laine and Paige looked at her in confusion. Tensely, she shook her head.

‘Come on. I'll handle this.’

The four of them emerged. Evan gulped as they drew closer.

‘Hi, Solace, guys! Uh, this is… I know how this looks, but –’

Without pausing to talk, Solace pulled back her fist and swung her first ever punch: not at Evan (although he cringed magnificently) but at Sharpsoft. Although she suspected it would have been well within his abilities to dodge, he stayed still and took the blow hard on the jaw. There was the slightest of thudding
cracks
.

Everyone froze.

Sharpsoft opened his mouth and winced, touching the point of impact gently with his fingertips. Solace's heart was in her mouth. What had she done? What if he hit her back? For a moment, he simply stared at her. Then he chuckled.

‘My lady. I deserved that.’

Her remorse vanished. ‘Damn right you did! You
know
each other! You're
scheming
! You have schemes afoot! And you'd better be able to explain them
satisfactorily. You're coming with us!’ Shaking only slightly, she took a step back, folding her arms across her chest.

Five pairs of eyes turned and fixed on Sharpsoft. He met each gaze in turn, his weird irises whirling like stars.

Eventually, he shrugged. ‘All right. Lead on.’

B
y the time they were back at the basement, the sunlight was getting too much for Solace. It had been bearable earlier on, when the light was faint and the tree-shadows long, but now the day had started to intensify, she had to be helped along by Evan and Harper.

‘I should come out once a day,’ she murmured, feeling dizzy and breathless. Staring at her uncovered hands, she fancied she could see them bleaching. ‘Get used to this. Again.’

Sharpsoft said nothing.

When Harper knocked on the door, it was Manx who answered. He took one look at Solace, stepped aside and let them in. But despite his eye-catching bone-white leather coat, he somehow failed to notice Sharpsoft until he was inside with everyone else.

‘Who –’ he began, pointing, but Solace shook her head.

‘We're having this out
now
,’ she said. ‘Everyone shut up and listen. Whatever's going on has gotten bigger and uglier than what we thought, and it isn't right that any of us blunder around in the dark. Evan? Start talking.’

‘Ev?’ asked Jess, confused.

Wearily, her brother smiled and shrugged. ‘It's a long story. Here's my part of it. A while ago,
he,
that is, Sharpsoft –’ he pointed, ‘– found me at the Gadfly. Said he knew that I was different; that a lot of people were, and so was he. As if having gold and silver eyes wasn't a dead giveaway.’ He took a breath. ‘Anyway. He asked me to look out for a pale girl with black hair and eyes who'd show up in the club. He didn't know what her name was, only that she was important and that I should pay attention. If possible, I was to keep her close to me. And hey – we all know I'm not the best empath in the world, but I can tell when someone's being sincere, and he was. So I said okay. Found Solace, brought her to you guys, reported back. Simple.’

There was a pause. Sharpsoft was seated on the steps leading down from the door. Hesitantly, when it became apparent that Evan had finished, he spoke, but although his voice addressed the room, his eyes remained fixed on Solace.

‘Solace met Evan at the Gadfly, and that meeting lead directly to this moment. But what my lady doesn't know – or rather, doesn't remember – is that it was I who told her to go there.’

‘You what?’ Taken aback, Solace blinked. ‘But I didn't meet you until the warehouse.’

Sharpsoft sighed. ‘Yes, you did. I simply ensured your forgetfulness. Think back.’ His eyes whirled: soft, persuasive. ‘The day. The park. The dappled sun. You sat beneath a tree.’

‘Oh, God.’ Abruptly, she
did
remember. ‘What gives you the right? I was finally on my own! I was looking for, for –’

‘Direction? Purpose?’ Sharpsoft pinned her with his gaze. ‘I tell you now, as I told you then, that the Gadfly was always your destination. I just showed you a shortcut.’

‘Why?’

His white teeth glittered. ‘Better early than dead on time. You have enemies, Solace Eleuthera. As did your parents. The vampire clans –’

‘Whoa!’ Paige held up a hand. ‘Okay! So, now there's vampires. Right. Only, you all seem to know what's happening, and I have no freakin’ clue. Give me the prequel, people!’

Gulping, Solace shot a hopeless look at Jess, who re-narrated for the benefit of Harper, Laine, Paige – and, she supposed, Sharpsoft – the events of the past few weeks; everything there had been no time to cover at the warehouse. She skipped over what Evan and Sharpsoft had already clarified, touched on Morgause's book, and ended with the tripwalk. Harper absorbed this information calmly enough, but Paige paled with each successive mention of vampires. Laine remained poised and unreadable, sitting perched on the edge of the lounge – hands clasped prettily on the folds of her black, satiny skirt, slender boots not quite touching the floor, corsetry binding her torso into artificial stillness – like a sweet Victorian doll.

Feeling the need to say something in her own defence, Solace repeated her mother's descriptions of vampires and blood addiction, trying to convince Paige, if no one else, that she wasn't a crazy fiend. Then she fell silent.

‘Right,’ said Harper, after a moment. His eyes were hard. ‘
Now
tell us why the warehouse burned.’

Sharpsoft's fingers twitched. ‘Vampires are not born. They are turned. You know this? A transmission of blood, a draining, a mutual bite. Still, we must have been human at some point, like all the Rare – and yet for hundreds of centuries, no vampire has existed save they who were turned. But through the oldest magic, Solace was born. This was no easy matter, because there is a balance to things: an asking, a taking. Two must die for one to live. Solace's parents, the Lord Aaron and Lady Morgause, made this choice. They left this world shortly after their daughter entered it. Because she was needed.

‘Because we needed a weapon.’

He told them, then, about Sanguisidera, the Bloody Star, and how she was beautiful, ruthless, deadly, insane. He told them what Morgause had – through her now-burned book – endeavoured to tell her daughter: that both Sanguisidera and her Bloodkin lived parallel to the human world while simultaneously infesting it, probing for weakness, breeding fear and malaise, feeding where the people were weak or vulnerable, encouraging humankind to steadily devour itself. And all the time seeking Rare for their twisted cause, whether through the smiling guise of Erasmus Lukin, a knife in the dark, or other, more subtle persuasions. And he told them, softly, that an agent of Sanguisidera had burned the warehouse in order to hide a different crime: the theft of Solace's book and key, although the latter item had been fortuitously saved. Their friends who'd stayed behind – Tryst, Claire, Phoebe – had most likely seen the agent, recognised him. Not being able to risk the slightest suspicion, he'd already faked his own violent disappearance, the better to avoid blame.

‘Wait.’ Solace felt as if the world had suddenly lurched beneath her. ‘You're talking about Glide. Before, when you and Evan were arguing. You'd been watching him. Traitor. Glide betrayed us. Glide killed –’ She couldn't finish the sentence. Her body felt numb. Without thinking, she raised a hand to her lips, touched again the spot where he'd kissed her.
Judas. A Judas kiss
. ‘No. I don't believe it. He couldn't have.’

‘Yes,’ said Evan. Heavily. Simply.

Uproar. Jess turned white. Paige and Electra began arguing over the top of one another, while Laine tried without success to calm them down. Harper just stared.

‘Quiet!’ roared Manx.

In the following hush, Solace turned to Evan and Sharpsoft, pleading. Her throat felt tight.

‘You're wrong. Glide would never kill anyone. He was getting better. He liked being at the house. He liked having us around. He liked –’
He liked me
, she wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come.

‘He got away,’ said Sharpsoft. His weird eyes were gentle. ‘We suspected him, but I couldn't risk revealing myself. So we waited and watched, hoping Evan could intervene. It wasn't enough.’ He turned to Evan. ‘I owe you an apology. I shouldn't have blamed you.’

‘Don't worry about it,’ Evan mumbled.

‘But his
room
,’ Electra argued. ‘The blood, the knife – how do you explain that?’

‘He did it himself,’ said Sharpsoft.

Solace opened her mouth, closed it. She didn't want to speak – didn't want to believe – but then she remembered Glide walking in when she'd first found her mother's book. He'd asked if she'd wanted to read about her family, but Solace hadn't yet told him what the book was about.
He'd known anyway. Even then, he was looking for it
.

The realisation rocked her.
And to have faked his disappearance.
‘It's why we didn't hear anything happen.’ The words rasped out of her, hard and traitorous. ‘He just went up, up from the party. He
planned
all this.’ She was trembling.

Blue eyes dark with pity, Jess came over and put an arm around her shoulders. Shamed and helpless, Solace leaned against her friend. It was scant comfort, but there was nothing else left.

‘And Lukin?’ asked Manx, almost desperately. His face was still smeared with ash. ‘He works for Sanguisidera?’

‘Yes.’ Sharpsoft bowed his head. ‘Earlier, when this one –’ he nodded at Jess, ‘– spoke of your foray into his dungeon, she mentioned my lady's ordeal. The men in the darkness.’ His eyes blackened. ‘One of them was, undoubtedly, Mikhail Savarin, Lukin's cousin. A lesser evil, but not by much. They are not vampires, mind, but other Rare who joined the cause out of destructive lust. Lukin's dream is a world without humankind; unlike Sanguisidera, however, he trusts in science to achieve his goal. More than anything, he wants to learn what makes this person Rare, or that, so that he may duplicate the effects. He dreams of godhood, moulding
shabtis
in his own image, but to his mistress, he and Mikhail are only a means to an end, the sharpest tool to hand. Even so, the real Erasmus Lukin is not to be trifled with. His cruelty far exceeds his skill in concealing it, and that itself is considerable.’

‘“O brave new world, that has such people in't”,’ murmured Laine, sadly.

The room fell silent. Solace fought the urge to goad Sharpsoft on, demand yet more answers to yet more questions. Why had Glide turned traitor? Who was the faceless man, and why did he stalk her so? What was his connection to Sanguisidera? What wasn't she being told? Huddled against Jess, betrayed in her heart and shaken by the night's events, she closed her eyes, seeking answers within herself.
Sharpsoft made you forget a meeting. What else might you have lost?
It was the Vampire Cynic, but for once, that internal voice sounded less cynical than sad, and so Solace concentrated, trying to think of something she might have overlooked, any clue as to the identity of the faceless man. And then, as if heard in a dream – and it
was
from a dream, she realised – she recalled a rhyming-song, a silly riddle whose very utterance had scared her awake. Opening her eyes, she tentatively spoke the riddle aloud, half-afraid it might drift away for ever:

‘
First is in rage and the act of sorrow,

Second is many the present keeps,

Third has an eye to a dark tomorrow,

Fourth is locked in dreaming deeps,

And fifth is sixth; but when you wake

How many hearts are yet to break
?’

As she finished, she realised Sharpsoft was watching her, a fearful expression warping his features.

‘Where,’ he asked, quietly, ‘did you hear that, my lady?’

‘A dream.’ Solace frowned. ‘I only just remembered. The faceless man was there. Why? Do you know what it means?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He ran a hand through his milk-white hair, and when he smiled in answer, it was a terrible thing to see. ‘I know the answer. Grief.’

‘Grief?’ asked Jess, but before anyone else could so much as comment, Sharpsoft lurched to his feet.

‘I've stayed too long. Things are happening. I have to go. Now.’

‘Wh –’ Solace began. Then came a flash that startled the breath from her, and by the time she'd managed to blink the after-images out of her eyes, Sharpsoft had vanished.

‘I
hate
it when he does that,’ Evan muttered. Silence filled the room. It was unbearable. Harper coughed, and several people jumped.

‘I'm sorry,’ Solace said softly. ‘If you'd never met me, none of this would've happened.’

‘Yes, it would,’ said Evan. Getting up from where he'd been sitting, he walked over and crouched down beside her, sparing a glance for Jess. ‘Just not to us, and that's hardly the point. You didn't ask to be born for this, any more than we chose to be Rare. You're not the villain here.’

‘I know,’ sighed Solace. ‘At least, part of me does.’

‘What do we do now, then?’ Paige demanded. ‘There's no point going anywhere near the warehouse, and we know what's happened to Glide. I mean, we
could
go hunt him down, but under the circumstances that seems a bit suicidal. Which, you know, sucks, because I for one would love to beat the ever-loving
crap
out of him.’

‘Seconded,’ Harper muttered vehemently.

‘So, what?’ Manx spread his hands, turning his mismatched gaze on Evan. ‘We just sit around here until Sharpsoft shows up again?
If
he shows up again.’

‘No,’ said Solace. Decisive, she knew what had to be done. Gently disentangling herself from Jess, she stood. ‘We do what's proper. We farewell our dead.’