15
Grief is a devourer. It consumes, until you’re hollow. A husk.
Unless you let in the darkness, and let out the demons.
Rebel clutched Evie, as if he was terrified someone would snatch her away from him. He hunched on the dusty concrete floor of the cellar, surrounded by the family who’d killed themselves to save him, stroking Evie’s once ruby lips like he could caress them to life.
Despite the heat that was cooking us, trapped below ground as above the witches’ house burned, I shivered.
‘Bad angels are punished. Bad angels are punished…’ Rebel intoned like a Victorian school kid. His gaze was distant and lost.
Rebel wasn’t at home anymore; the Big Bad Boss on the other side of the cellar door had murdered him along with his family.
I shuddered at the agonising howl of Rebel’s grief that clung to me through our bond.
I snarled, slashing Star through the bottles of wine on the wire rack.
Smash — the glass shattered, spraying red like a fizzing slit artery, across the cellar.
The Blood Familiars shrank back against the wall, away from the puddling burgundy and my terrified frustration.
At last, Rebel’s head snapped up at the crash…and the gush of cold across his cheek.
‘Welcome back to the living.’ I wrenched his head by the hair, forcing his dazed gaze to meet mine. ‘Now how do we escape being purified?’
Rap, rap, rap.
‘One minute,’ Eden called through the cellar door. ‘I shall be having words with you both when—’
‘Oh, stick it, bro,’ I growled, ‘you’re playing at top boy, but you’re only brave when you have soldiers at your back. I’ve no respect for blokes who don’t have the balls to fight their own battles. How about you take me on?’
Rebel was up off the floor, shoving me against the wall, before I’d even seen him move. His heart beat wildly, but his gaze was hard.
Alive.
Who knew it took being pissed at me to bring him back to himself?
‘Not a chance, princess,’ he hissed.
I shook my head, ‘Not your choice.’
‘My my, trouble in…hell.’ There was a pause, as if Eden was considering, and then he sounded almost regretful, ‘It would be fascinating to fight you. But a leader mustn’t indulge themselves. It’s the vainglorious fools, with their outdated weapons and wars, who worship combat. I’m too pure.’
‘You mean a coward,’ I hollered.
Rebel pressed his hand across my mouth.
I struggled, snapping at his palm with my teeth. My breath came in panicked snorts through my nostrils.
Rebel just backed me carefully through the crunching glass of the shattered bottles, however, until we’d edged behind the wine rack. Then he pushed down a corner of stone, and a black hole gaped.
A tunnel.
I glared at Rebel.
We’d roasted in this cellar — his family’s coffin — and all along there’d been a tunnel out of here…?
The Blood Familiars hauled themselves up, trotting to my side.
Eden sang out, ‘Your protection spell is dying, like the house. Maybe I shan’t feast on the witches, instead we’ll burn them in the flames. Would you like to watch?’
Rebel shoved me into the tunnel, sealing us in a narrow dark, which was lit only by the twin points of our weapons. At last, he pulled his hand away from my mouth, flinching at the bruised imprints of my teeth.
I twirled around, wiping my sleeve across my lips. ‘Why?’ I whispered.
I knew he understood.
‘This is why they died,’ Rebel’s gaze was cast down. The light reflected on his tear tracks; they gleamed like violet pearls. ‘This priest hole. The witches have always been after helping the persecuted. They rescued Catholic Priests. Hid them here. But…’ he stumbled, unable to name his family; his grief had swallowed them. ‘They couldn’t run fast enough. Nor fight like us. The vampires would have their scent; they’re hunters, the same as us. Except, they hunt humans.’
‘Your family sacrificed themselves because they knew you’d never leave them behind?’
‘I don’t deserve it,’ he muttered.
‘Bastards don’t get what they deserve.’ I grabbed his arm, hauling him after me down the stone tunnel.
When black mud tumbled from above, I was smothered in the earthy underground stench. I shook my head, frantically patting at my hair to dislodge the mud. Next to me, Rebel trembled.
Burnt or buried alive?
This wasn’t a day for good choices.
The Blood Familiars dashed between my feet, tripping me. One glance at Spark’s anxious green eyes, however, and I forced myself to smile.
Spark’s ears perked, and he barked softly.
I listened, expecting to hear echoed footsteps behind us, but there was nothing but a smothering silence.
Then my nose smashed into solid stone.
Groaning, I stepped back, stretching out my fingers to test the uneven wall.
We’d reached the end of the tunnel.
Hell, there had to be some way out. After everything, please…
I scrabbled against the stone, ripping my fingernails. Then Rebel’s hands were over mine, stilling them, before he shunted his shoulder against the tunnel’s ceiling.
A hidden trapdoor. And it was stuck.
I giggled: high and hysterical. Bastards don’t get what they deserve…
Snap your losing it The Shining style ass out it and help your weeping angel lift the trapdoor.
I need you, J. Please… I’m asking.
Why didn’t you say?
I sighed, as the familiar violet power swirled. I rolled my neck, like I was psyching up to enter a boxing ring. Then I shoved upwards next to Rebel.
The trapdoor burst open in a shower of dirt and twigs.
Rebel pulled himself out first, before offering me his hand.
I stared up, through the square opening, at the sharp stars in the night-time sky and the speared tops of trees.
And Rebel’s hand, held out to pull me to safety. I took it, allowing him to haul me into the glade. It was the same one in which we’d trained to the punk blast of the Sex Pistols: I recognised the oaks charred by our flames.
I took deep breaths of the crisp night air. Smoke stung my nostrils, as if someone was having a bonfire.
Then I remembered.
Rebel leant back into the tunnel, lifting out the squirming Blood Familiars, whilst I turned to look back at the House of Rose, Wolf, and Fox, through the thin winter trees.
At the bonfire of Rebel’s life.
A dull, smouldering light, like the embers of a ciggie, glowed from the blackened, tumbled shell of the mansion.
Only one section, in the middle, didn’t burn. The iron cellar, where the protection spell must still be holding out and creating a barrier around it.
Dark shapes swarmed over the middle section, infesting their fallen enemy.
Suddenly, I sensed Rebel at my shoulder. His gaze was blank, however, as he watched. Yet neither of us looked away.
Until two vampires prowled into the glade.
They wore pinstripe suits and fancy bow ties. They could’ve been bankers. Except for the claws and the fangs.
No one spoke a word.
The dance was brutal and short.
Blaze and Spark launched themselves at grey pinstripe with the pink bow tie, knocking him onto his back, and then savaging his wrists. The vampire tried to scream, but I stabbed Star through his vocal chords.
Bright light exploded from Star, an imploding sun, bursting out into points, until the vampire’s head fried.
A quick kill.
See, bastards don’t get what they deserve.
I lurched over to where Rebel had golfing cufflinks and polka dot bow tie pinned to the hard ground. Rebel stabbed Eclipse in and out of the vampire like he was a voodoo doll.
The vampire’s eyes were closed; he groaned on each thrust.
Rebel shook: in and out, in and out…
I didn’t know if Rebel would hear me, but I said quietly, ‘Kill him.’
Rebel jerked, his gaze focusing. He stumbled back, swallowing convulsively. He gave a shaky nod. Then he slashed Eclipse across the bastard’s throat, before he turned to me, horrified. ‘I’m not the same as them. I’m not…’
‘We’re all monsters. Just call it by different names.’
He was dazed; grief had devoured him.
I hauled him up. ‘It’s time you follow me for a change.’
He nodded, blinking.
I realised then that it was Christmas morning.
On the air was smoke and blood, and like I’d promised, I’d left behind nothing but death.
Yeah, we were all monsters.
I stuck out my tongue to catch the snow lizard-like.
The snowflake melted to nothing. I stole its life.
Soft sun, suffused through the snow cloud, stained the sky.
Rebel shielded his eyes against the light, moaning at the throbbing between his temples.
Christmas day was born, as we staggered into Hackney Cemetery.
We’d clambered up the locked Egyptian gates, which had been flanked by plinths carved with hieroglyphics, like we’d been seeking refuge in the Underworld.
The Blood Familiars had slunk between the wrought iron bars. Their ears had been pressed to their heads, and they’d nudged each other forlornly, limping. I’d only then realised their paws must’ve been burnt by the heat in the cellar.
I didn’t know why I’d dragged us here.
Yeah, I did.
Abney Park Cemetery, Hackney, was where, clutching nothing but a violet feather, I’d been found as a baby.
Foundling. Orphan. Outcast.
I’d always hoped someone would come to claim me. But now I’d witnessed the somethings that carved their way bloody through the world…?
I was better off on my own.
Rebel groaned, sinking down behind a stone monument of a majestic lion, which roared like Aslan risen from the dead. Rebel rested his head in its shadow, away from the dawn light.
The punk had a migraine: I’d suffered their kiss enough to know. Yet I’d never seen him shudder with one before. He curled up on himself, amongst a bed of green wood spurge, as if he could disappear. His shoulders were shaking, although he didn’t make a sound.
I reckoned he was sobbing.
The soft granite gravestones, eaten away by lichen, tumbled amongst the dense woodland, feasting itself on human death.
Here was Sleeping Beauty’s kingdom.
I dodged around the trunk of a pale grey hornbeam, before the fox brothers settled at its base. Then I ran my fingers over the sparkling white marble of a memorial gravestone. It was carved with a powerful but sorrowful angel; I’d visited it every weekend when I was a kid.
The epitaph read:
Violet Lazarus
1896 — 1918
I don’t die; I sleep
I snorted.
Except, when I’d traced her name — Violet — given to me too because I’d been found at the statue’s feet, I’d spent years hoping she’d wake up and claim me as hers.
Yet she’d been dead for a hundred years.
And I wasn’t even human.
When I smashed my fist against the marble, I gasped with the pain, as my knuckles split.
But I needed it.
To wake up.
This is no dream, Feathery-death, this is a slab of hot reality.
You have to work out why that sky-blue cutie pie of crazy, and his merry band The Pure, want you so bad or—
Get out of my head, J.
You asked, remember?
For the first time in a month, this is my choice.
Since when was I a lodger? I own this mind, hooker, I don’t get my hoochie ass booted out.
Who am I?
Mine.
I shrieked, tugging at my hair. I couldn’t breathe.
Rebel stroking Evie’s corpse lips… The tumble of mud in the tunnel… The rise and fall of Rebel’s sword thrusting into the vampire…
‘Stop that.’ Rebel shoved himself up, his back against the stone. He held his leathered arm across his red-rimmed eyes; this time his eyeliner had run. ‘Don’t go hurting yourself because of—’
‘You?’ When I turned my predator gaze on Rebel, he shrank back. ‘A liar? Kidnapper? Killer? How about we have that quiet chat about respect, trust, and how angels don’t fib to monsters?’
I was breathing too fast but I couldn’t control it.
Rebel scrabbled for Eclipse, at the same time as I drew Star. Twin violet flames lit up the snow shrouded cemetery.
Rebels eyes widened as he realized — at the same time as the twisted awareness coursed through me — that I was no longer his prisoner.
And he was now alone: a grieving angel in the snow.
I shuddered. Star’s power surged and swelled with mine, driving me higher and higher, until I shook to slash and burn the world.
I craved my freedom, rather than a Custodian: to carve out Rebel’s secrets bloody. Now I was no longer a prisoner of the witches, I wouldn’t be Rebel’s.
The powers coiled inside me, whispering that this was the only way to survive, save my sister, and stop the Hackney disappearances.
It was time for a bitch to wake up.
Yet weak and broken as he was, Rebel also knew the stakes of the fight; his lips thinned. Then he slashed his sword in a sizzling arc straight for my head.