Sons of Angels (11 page)

She didn’t have to wait long. Her answering machine was blinking again when she let herself in. Seven messages from the police asking her to contact DI White or DS Peters on a matter of ‘some urgency.’

She dialed the number and was put through to a desk.

“Peters.”

“Hello.” Felicia was hesitant. Did they know that she had been there when her mother died? “I’ve got some messages on my phone asking me to call you.”

“Miss Turling?”

“That’s right. What’s all this about?”

“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, Miss Turling. Could you come down to the station?”

“Now?” Felicia looked at the clock. It was seven-thirty already.

“If you would please.”

* * * *

The police station was cold and impersonal, despite it being revised and upgraded to make it more inviting for members of the public to come forward and help the police with their inquiries. Posters on the wall of the interrogation room looked as though they hadn’t been altered since the seventies. Felicia remembered the
Watch out, there’s a thief about
slogan from her childhood, equating it with a campaign of animated drinking straws used to advertize milk.

“So the house is gone?”

Detective-Sergeant Peters dropped the case file on the table. “Burned to the ground, I’m afraid. We’ve found no evidence to suggest it was deliberate. I’m sorry about your mother, though.”

Felicia shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault. Did she...did she suffer?”

“There’s nothing to indicate she did.” Peters patted her hand. “The fire was very hot indeed. Hot enough to melt the brick.” He hesitated and Felicia looked up.

“But?”

Peters frowned. “It was an unusual fire. You’d think a fire that hot would damage the surrounding property, but nothing else was touched. There was a car in the drive...”

“My dad’s. He died five years ago.

“It wasn’t touched. Not a mark on it. It’s got us baffled.”

“There was a fire like that in the paper. A house burned down with a car in the drive untouched. Is there a connection?”

“Not that we know of.” Peters shook his head. “Leave it to the experts, though. They’ll figure it out.”

* * * *

Felicia kept to the shadows as she followed the leather-clad vampire through dark streets. Gillian set a steady pace over the three miles to Patricia's house but Felicia kept up
 
and they covered the distance in a little under ten minutes.

“Bizarre.” Gillian as they surveyed the site from the relative safety of the garden of the house behind.

Felicia was speechless. Having the police sergeant tell her the facts was nothing when compared to the full horror of the burned house. Not a wall remained, just the black expanse of what used to be a family home, reduced almost to glass as the superheated bricks melted.

A fire engine and two police cars still blocked the drive. Several men were combing through the ruin with the aid of lamps and torches. Gillian shrank back. “There’s nothing we can do here. Are you sure it was a demon? This doesn’t look like demon work.”

“It looked like a demon. It was made of fire.”

“So is fire. That doesn’t make it a demon.”

“How perceptive of you.” The voice was melodic, like a song half-remembered from childhood, and they both swung around. The creature facing them was made of a light so bright they couldn’t look at it.

Felicia closed her eyes, trusting her sense of smell for the first time. Gillian pulled out a pair of sunglasses.

A hiss of steel prompted them both to jump, Felicia to the left and Gillian to the right. Felicia winced as a line of fire grazed her ribs, feeling the scent of the creature as a physical form.

“Change, you stupid dog,” Gillian cried, the smell of blood and leather that was Felicia’s mental image of her darting in to strike at the form.

“I don’t know how.” Felicia struck out, trying to grab the sword before she was cut in half.

“By all the devils.” Gillian swore and leaped on the creature’s back, sinking her teeth into its neck. She screamed and dropped to the ground.

“Gillian!” Felicia struck, her fist meeting an arm as resilient as a bar of iron.

The creature laughed. “You should have died in the fire, wolf-child. Your death will be more painful now. You can’t defeat an angel.”

A shout echoed from the site of the fire and a glance that way told Felicia the policemen were hurrying to investigate the commotion. The angel, if it really was one, looked their way.

“The mortals win you a reprieve, but not for long. The earth will be cleansed of the bastard get, and that includes you.”

Felicia was stunned by the sudden absence of light and form. Purely on instinct, she picked up the vampire and ran, melting into the darkness.

Chapter 12

Felicia stopped in the shadows between a garden shed and a chicken hut. She could hear the birds on the other side of the thin wooden wall and smell the warm scent of their feathers. Her mouth filled with saliva and she swallowed, bottling away the desire to tear into the warm flesh. She looked at the woman in her arms. “Gillian!”

Felicia laid the vampire on the ground and bent to listen for a heartbeat. There wasn’t one, but she wasn’t certain if a vampire would have one anyway. What should she do? Mouth to mouth? Felicia didn’t know if vampires breathed, either.

Felicia looked back. She had carried the vampire, who weighed less than a child, roughly half a mile and could still see the torches of the police searching the area they’d left. How ironic, the flaming brands of villagers would translate into the flashlights of His Majesty’s finest.

A whisper of air from the vampire caught her attention. They did breathe, after all. She bent her ear to the fluttering lips.

“Blood.” Gillian’s voice was barely a whisper. “I need blood.”

Felicia grimaced. What could she do but offer her own to the woman who had just saved her life?

She pulled her sleeve up and placed her wrist against the vampire’s teeth.

The pain, though momentary, was excruciating. After the initial shock wore off, though, Felicia found that she enjoyed the feeling of euphoria. She closed her eyes, her mind drifting back to childhood and sleeping on the grass at her Aunty Glad’s house.

She was brought out of it by a slap from the vampire, now awake and with eyes flashing. “You ate raw steak. I’m so glad you left off the garlic butter.”

Felicia grinned. “You’re all right!”

“Not yet.” Gillian rolled onto one side and vomited. Felicia’s fresh blood soaked into the earth and was soon followed by a ghostly pale phosphorescence, coating the ground and evaporating. Gillian spat and sat up.

“It was a waste of your blood but I had to get enough to regain enough strength to expel the ectoplasm. That stuff is poison.”

“That...thing we fought. Was it really an angel?”

Gillian nodded and swung herself upright. “I’m afraid so. Did you think angels were good?”

“Well, yes, to be frank.” Felicia rose, offering the vampire an arm to steady herself. “That’s what I was always taught.”

“Don’t you believe it.” Gillian stretched, her muscles popping. “The only difference between angels and demons is who pays their wages. Lilith’s children are still slaughtered by angels and some of the most euphoric sex is presided over by a demon.” She shrugged. “I have to get more blood.”

Felicia offered her wrist again but the vampire shook her head. “If I take any more, you’ll become addicted to the high.” She frowned and turned in a full circle. “None of my flock are near enough. I’ll have to hunt.”

“What? Kill someone?” Felicia grimaced.

“Possibly.” Gillian smiled and touched her shoulder, the contact sending jolts of pleasure through Felicia’s body. Gillian frowned at her reaction. “I took too much. You’re already dependent upon me. It will wear off in a day or two, I promise.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You would. That’s the connection between us talking.” Gillian turned away. “Stay here. I’ll be back shortly.”

She would have vanished had Felicia been an ordinary mortal. Only her enhanced eyesight and sense of smell enabled her to track the vampire as she ran into the nearby housing estate.

Felicia looked back at the lights of the crime scene. She found it hard to believe her mother was not only dead but incinerated. There would be no body to bury.

Hot tears splashed, mingling with the blood soaking the grass.

* * * *

Gillian walked alone through the empty streets, examining each house she passed. From some she caught fragments of dreams that made no sense, dreams of school or offices, nightmares of monsters and mundane terrors. Not even a vampire could understand a dream not their own.

From other houses, those with lights on or the tell-tale flicker of a television, she caught snatches of conversation.

“Did you take the cat to the vet’s this morning?”

“I saw Tom today. He said you’d been seen out with the barmaid from the White Art.”

“No love. There’s more sugar in the cupboard...”

Occasionally, if she was lucky, she sensed something deeper, something darker.

“Pills. I need pills.”

“He doesn’t love me. I don’t think he ever did.”

“When she gets home she’ll find me. Then she’ll be sorry...”

At houses such as these Gillian waited. Patient, silent. Young or old, they came to her and she gave them the peace they craved–the peace they didn’t have the courage to find for themselves. They let her take them, their last thoughts of loved ones or memories forgotten in the mire of modern living.

Sometimes these willing victims remembered life was worth living. She sensed their thoughts, their sudden fight, and soothed them, allowing them to return to their beds, their televisions, their modern-day anxieties, each with a new-found lust for life and the peace they experienced for a few short minutes in her embrace.

Such people were left with a connection she could call upon to slake her nightly thirst.

* * * *

Felicia sensed Gillian’s return long before she arrived. She could smell the tang of iron and the traces of perfume from the vampire’s victim, could hear the soft footsteps as she padded across the grass. She’d never believed in monsters until now.

“Better?” Felicia could smell the blood. Gillian reeked of it.

“Much. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Just be assured that I don’t take the innocent.”

“You’re still a killer.”

Gillian refused to pander to the dramatic. “Yes. So will you be if you don’t learn to control yourself. What happened back there? I told you to change.”

“I can’t.” Felicia rose with an easy grace. “If I knew how to change I would have done. Don’t I have to wait until a full moon?”

Gillian laughed. “That really is an old wives’ tale because on a moonlit night it was possible to witness a werewolf change forms. You can do it any time.”

“Well I can’t.” Felicia pouted. “I’m not even sure I want to be a werewolf. Why? Why couldn’t I be a vampire like you, or see the dead like my sister?”

“You are what you are.” Gillian shrugged. “Look at that cut across your ribs. Doesn’t that hurt?”

“A bit.” Felicia touched it and winced. “It will heal, though, in a day or two.”

“If you changed, it would heal instantly.” Gillian stepped closer. “At the moment, you’re just scratching the surface of what you are. You’re a dripping tap, content to let the glass fill drop by maddening drop. If you changed, you’d release the floodgates and gain all the abilities of your species much faster, including the ability to heal.”

“I can wait.” Felicia smiled. “I have to go home soon. I’ve got to be up in the morning.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Quite hungry, yes. It’s been a hell of a day.”

Gillian laughed. “Be careful what you say around here. Invoking Hell can have serious consequences. We’ll get you something to eat. It’s what hunting is for.”