Phoebe Harkness Omnibus Read online

  She looked gothically stunning herself, in that effortlessly unselfconscious way achievable only by svelte nineteen year olds without a single inch of body fat. She looked like an upper-class Goth on her way to undead Ascot. Classier than your average Helsing, the affectionate term we use for desperate folk hunting vampire attention.

  I, on the other hand, had rejected roughly six or seven proposed outfits, each of which had, to my mind at least, made me look like either a hooker, a drug addict, or at worst, a schoolteacher trying to be risqué on a hen night. I had settled eventually on a simple pair of black leather trousers, which at least covered my legs, albeit in a significantly snugger manner than I was used to, and a simple and slightly sheer white vest top. Lucy had tried to convince me to wear some costume jewellery, a large ornate crucifix. “The vamp guys go wild for this stuff,” she had assured me giddily, but I had drawn the line at looking like Madonna in her 80s phase.

  I don’t normally bother with much makeup unless it’s a wedding or a funeral, but to avoid looking like a seven year old playing dress-up, I had allowed Lucy to smear my eyelids in a soft reddish sweep, lined with red eyeliner. She assured me it made me look seductively gothic. I thought it looked as though I’d been crying, as if there’s any difference. My hair was loose and fell down my back in a smooth pale curtain, offering at least a small bit of warmth against the freezing night air.

  At least there was one part of me I was happy with. I have good hair. I’m allowed to be vain about that. As a natural golden-head in a world of bottle-bleachers, my hair is frickin’ awesome.

  “I still can’t believe you invited me here!” Lucy was all but squealing, as we made our way up to the doorway of the venerable old pub, her heels clattering on the pavement like Bambi’s hooves. There was already a queue forming outside the entrance, a red velvet rope strung between brass poles barring the dark open vestibule. “I mean, I’ve worked for you for what? Two years nearly, and we’ve never had a girly night. I didn’t think you were even into the GO scene. You sure kept that quiet!”

  I’d pretty much called Lucy out of desperation and lack of options. I didn’t say this, of course – it would have rather ruined her mood. Happily it seemed I had struck oil at my first swing. Ditzy, innocent-looking, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth lab gopher Lucy was apparently a closet fangirl. A Helsing of the highest, most rabid order.

  “Same here,” I admitted. “You actually come to these places a lot then? I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  “Oh, totally!” she nodded enthusiastically, like an excited bunny. “God, who wouldn’t want to be around them, right? There’s nowhere better; trust me, I’ve done the whole circuit. Yellowmoon over under the Bear, The Crimson Parlour, all awesome, but this is like the lottery win! I’ve only ever been to Sanctum once, though, on an open night, it’s practically impossible to get on the guest list, it’s so exclusive! How on earth did you manage it?”

  I shrugged in what I hoped was a mysterious way. This certainly explained why Lucy had been quite so excited when Allesandro had turned up at the lecture hall. She had that slightly crazed look in her eyes you normally only saw in the feverish eyes of a boyband concert-goer. It was practically hypnotic.

  “Okay, fine, don’t tell then,” she teased, grabbing my arm companionably. “You are such a dark horse though, Doc! I was so shocked when you said you had tickets for Sanctum. I never would have put you here in a million years!”

  Me either, I thought, as we approached the front of the line. Frankly, I was just glad I wasn’t here with Veronica Cloves. I tried to imagine an evening of cocktails and dancing with that woman, and failed utterly. I actually shivered. The only social event I could imagine going to with Servant Cloves would be a funeral.

  The doorman at the Eagle and Child was large, a solid slab of extremely white muscle wrapped in a very tight black vest and pants. Easily six-six, with shoulders like an ox. He looked like a bond villain henchman to me. Emphasis on ‘hench’.

  “Name?” he rumbled at me, looking us both over with careless eyes, as though he was choosing lunch. He wasn’t a vampire, just another wannabe. But he was trying damn hard, and Lucy at least seemed to be impressed with the effort.

  I smiled my sweetest smile. “Phoebe Harkness. Allesandro’s expecting me.”

  He glanced down at his clipboard, scanning names. “The Doc … right?” He smirked after a moment. It seemed my phone message had been passed along after all. He glanced at Lucy and then back to me, his eyes glinting in the street-lights “And … a plus one?”

  “A friend,” I confirmed. Lucy still had me by the elbow. I could feel the heat of her arm in the cold night. I could practically sense her pouting seductively and being pert beside me without even having to look. I tried a charming smile too.

  The doorman chuckled. “Whatever. Allesandro doesn’t get off until two, but you girls enjoy yourself in there. Plenty of vamps to go around.” He lifted the hook and cord, and stepped aside to let us enter. “Welcome to the Bird and Baby, have fun at Sanctum.”

  I brushed past him, entering the dark interior of the former pub, feeling as though I might as well be stepping through Lewis’ wardrobe into Narnia after all.

  “Maybe I should book myself an appointment with the Doc too?” he called after us, eying our rears. “Think I might be coming down with something myself.”

  “Sorry,” I smiled back. “It’s a very private practice.” I was getting the hang of this.

  Inside, the ground floor was still a pub, old fashioned, wooden beams, slate floors, basically a long corridor. The only vampire cliché addition was the red velvet upholstery on the seats and benches, and the heavy ornate drapes which completely covered the windows. We fought our way through a crowd of spiked dog collars, silk and leather, and made our way to the bar, where I had decided to order something with large amounts of vodka before we headed downstairs into the club proper. Turns out the underground vampire scene was literally underground.

  Most vamp clubs in our city lay beneath existing pubs and bars. It was almost as though they wanted to ease you into their strange world slowly, through a reassuringly familiar airlock. Considering the alternative would be to descend straight from street level into what was basically a dark hole in the ground filled with carnivores higher up the food chain than yourself, this was understandable. But even if it was clever marketing, it still reminded me of those plants which lured insects in with sweet smelling and promising nectar, only to find themselves trapped and unable to leave, consumed in a leisurely fashion. Yes, I’m aware I am a party mood killer.

  Lucy ordered a bloody Mary, rather predictably. The barman was human as well, a tall Asian man with creamy skin and very long bone-straight hair which, for all its silken finery, must have taken him a good hour with the GHDs every evening.

  “So,” I said to Lucy, as we sipped our drinks and made our way through to pub to the back stairs. I could already feel the thrum and pound of the music below through my feet. “Griff doesn’t, you know, mind you coming out to these GO clubs. Hanging out with the vamps?”

  Lucy looked genuinely confused. “Griff?” she said. “Griff-from-work Griff? What’s it got to do with him where I go?”

  “I … sorry, I thought you guys were kind of an item?” I faltered.

  Lucy stared at me over her drink. Her Kohl-smudged eyes comically wide. “Me and Griff?!” She burst into laughter. “Oh my God, no! Seriously? Why on earth would you think that?”

  I cringed and sipped my woo-woo. “It’s just that when you called the other night, you guys were together, I suppose I just assumed…”

  “Nooooooo!” Lucy said, still deeply amused. Her hand fluttered to her chest. “We’re just friends, Doc. We hang out sometimes. Especially with the citywide brown-outs. If my power’s off he lets me move food to his fridge. That’s about the extent of it.” She grinned. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you thought … I mean he’s a sweet guy, but … no way.” She tittered as we reached the back of
the ancient pub. “That’s so funny. He’s way too normal for me. I like my guys with more … bite.” She looked at me in what I imagine she hoped was a dangerous way.

  I inwardly rolled my eyes. Which is not to say I rolled them into my head. That would have been both gross and disturbing. I mean that I mentally rolled my eyes … figuratively. My actual eyes looked back at Lucy in what I hoped was an approving manner.

  “Besides, Griff is married to his work. I think the only thing he truly loves is his crappy little car. Come on, let’s get downstairs.”

  I followed her down into the belly of the beast, downing my drink in one and already wishing I had another.

  15

  Stepping beneath the Olde-Worlde charm of the Eagle and Child pub into the club below was a startling juxtaposition. The stairs emptied us into the vaulted roof-space of what looked like a large sunken cathedral. It was a riot of carved stonework, high arched ceilings and stained glass windows lit in riotous funhouse colours. The whole thing was fabricated, of course, but it looked authentic, as though we had stumbled into some ancient long-buried church. The windows, being underground, didn’t really look out on anything other than coloured lights making them blaze from behind. The fluted stone columns which littered the massive hall were probably only resin. It was like a film set, but a pretty impressive one, I had to admit.

  The entirety of Sanctum was rigged throughout with industrial scaffolding. Galleys and balconies ran the perimeter of the fake church. There were bars, tables and barstools on each of these levels, and spiral staircases in overwrought ironwork linking the levels and leading down.

  At the lowest floor, a large bar ran the length of the far wall, where the altar would have been were this a real church. The centre of the space was the vast dance-floor, which was currently crammed with gyrating bodies. Flashing and sweeping lights poured down on the whole setup from a suspended rig in the ceiling. From my high vantage point I saw that there was a raised dais where the preacher’s pulpit would be, currently occupied by a very complicated and extravagant DJ booth. Nice touch, I thought. Preach the music.

  Along each of the walls were large, multi-screen displays showing looped footage from classic black and white vampire b-movies and other kitsch horror classics.

  The music, deafening and industrial, thrummed everywhere in the writhing darkness. I could feel it vibrating in my ribcage as we descended to the first level balcony and peered over at the vast sea of dancers below.

  “Nice place!” I bellowed at Lucy, who didn’t hear me. She was already scanning the crowds below excitedly. She tugged at my arm, almost making me drop my empty cocktail over the balcony, where it would almost certainly have ruined some clubber’s evening. I followed where she was pointing. She had found a vampire.

  Bizarrely, in the strobing darkness and confusion of the club, it was easy to pick out the Genetic Others. I spotted at least five straight away, and it wasn’t as though I’d had much practise. The DJ for one who was a heavily muscled Hispanic-looking chap. He was making the most of his well chiselled guns in a sleeveless mesh top. His arms were covered in full sleeve tattoos, his shaved head covered by an enormous pair of earphones and his eyes hidden behind outlandishly large sunglasses. He looked like Calvin Harris on steroids, but even at a casual glance he clearly wasn’t human. It wasn’t just the whiter-than-white skin, there were plenty of pale human people here too. It was more the way he moved. Faster than a normal person, oddly more fluid, and, goofy as it sounds, there was some kind of almost magnetic field about him. It’s hard to explain really, but vampires seem slightly more in focus than regular folk. I don’t know if it’s part of their genetic makeup or just undead charisma, but they stand out like there’s an invisible spotlight on them, parting them from any crowd.

  There was another vampire sitting on a barstool down at the far end of the club. This one was female, twenty-something in appearance, though that didn’t really mean much; she could have been older than my grandmother. Nothing helps a flawless complexion like immortality.

  She was dressed in a rather dominatrix-themed blood-red jumpsuit, her long white-blonde hair in neat dreadlocks down her back, lips red on a white face. She was smoking a cigarette in a long Audrey Hepburn style holder. Even without the strange sense of ‘presence’, it was obvious she was a GO just by noticing the gaggle of adoring humans gathered around her, all vying for her attention like puppies looking to get their ears scratched.

  The others moved through the crowd, working the room, their job seemingly to be seen and to interact with the lowly humans who had come to bask in their reflected charms. I picked them out one by one. Vampires, here and there, amongst the humans. They seemed like basking sharks moving through a shoal of helpless fish to me. All white smiles and languid grace, and like sharks, all just one small blooddrop away from turning into a feeding frenzy.

  What I didn’t see, however, despite my roving eye was the vampire I was actually looking for. Allesandro, he of the wavy hair and sharp suit, was nowhere to be seen.

  “I’m going down to the bar,” I yelled to Lucy, who seemed perfectly happy to ditch me immediately with a thumbs up, melting effortlessly into the crowds, off hunting her own Great White, I suppose.

  Wingmanless, I made my way down and around the edges of the dance-floor. Skirting and weaving through frenzied dancers, half-clothed bodies swaying and bobbing under the thunder of the aggressive music like a mass mating ritual around me.

  Did I mention I hate clubs? It always seems a little, well, desperate to me. All the bumping and grinding, the sweaty bodies, the low lights.

  Maybe I just needed to loosen up. I’m a crap dancer, that’s the issue, really. I’d love to love clubs, but when the music starts, I have all the natural rhythm of a set of castanets being dropped down the stairs.

  This was probably a lot more fun with a few drinks behind you. I really quite liked the idea of just getting drunk and going with it. Problem was, I just wasn’t entirely comfortable cutting loose when I knew there was a psychotic, pliers-wielding maniac on the loose in my town, a GO who apparently knew my name and could very well be somewhere here right now.

  I was almost at the long bar, having fought my way across the dance-floor and was now weaving through the tables and steps where bodies lay causally, like the fallen in battle, sipping bottled water, and gaining their second wind before they attacked the music again, when someone grabbed my wrist from behind.

  I whirled, expecting to have to fend off some drunken clubber who had decided to try and drag me to the dance floor for a dry hump, but whatever expletives were forming died in my mouth. It was Allesandro.

  He looked different from when I had last seen him. Same perfect cheekbones and wavy hair, same direct and personal eyes, only he wasn’t dressed like a Gucci catwalk model anymore. He was in dark trousers and a black biker jacket over a white t-shirt. It made him look younger, although my initial impression was that I was staring at a creature trying to camouflage itself as a human and almost – but not quite – managing it. What was this look anyway? The vampire Fonz? He might be old enough to actually remember who that was. Maybe I had some common ground with the vampires after all. Only they and I seemed to remember the old world.

  The main difference, however, was that my vampire was not looking at me with a knowing seductive mirth in his eyes, as he had back in the lecture hall. In fact, here in the strobing lights of Sanctum he looked shocked and pretty damn close to panic.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he said. His grip tight around my wrist as he looked around urgently.

  “It’s good to see you again too,” I replied, not thrilled with this less than warm welcome. Part of me was even a little hurt. But the rest of me was mostly annoyed. “You invited me here remember? What’s the matter with you?”

  I tried to shake my arm free of his grip, and was faintly alarmed when I found that I couldn’t. He hadn’t even seemed to notice I had struggled. Mental note, Phoebe. Vampires are
strong.

  “No, Doctor Harkness,” he practically hissed. “I told you to call me, not to come here!” He was still looking around, as if expecting a piano to fall on the two of us or something.

  “I did call you!” I snapped. “I left a message. I thought you wanted me to come! Why in the world would you leave a business card with someone for a nightclub if you didn’t want them to come to the bloody place!?”

  “You called me? When?” His eyes flicked back to mine. They were cobalt blue, like Clint Eastwood’s in the old westerns. The whites were very white indeed.

  “A few hours ago, this afternoon,” I said. “I left a message with someone at the club.”

  He closed his eyes and seemed to be mentally counting to three. “You called in the daytime?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “You may not be aware of the fact, Doctor, but I’m a late riser. I didn’t get any message from you. You really shouldn’t be here.” He looked exasperated with me. “Who the hell calls a vampire in the daytime?”

  “Who the hell calls a vampire, period?” I countered.

  Now I was pissed. But before I could speak, his hand slid from my wrist to my hand, lacing his long white fingers in mine he led me into the crowd, making me feel ridiculously like a prom date. “Don’t cause a scene,” he suggested. His voice had become very low, but through some magical vampire acoustics, somehow it was managing to carry clearly to my ear over the throbbing bass of the music. I guessed this was a similar trick to how he had whispered in my ear at the lecture.

  “I’m not angry, please don’t misunderstand,” he said. “ It’s just that it’s … not safe for you here. Just come … dance with me.”