Angel Falls (Cassandra Bick Chronicles Book 3) (9 page)

***

There was a moment of awkward Britishness where we all took a sip of our wine, no one quite sure what the polite interval is between accepting a drink off someone and breaking out the threats. But while it may have been a good delaying tactic, turns out the wine wasn’t my best idea.

‘So,’ Josephine said, in an unmistakably ‘let’s get down to brass tacks’ tone.
Definitely
Wolfram and Hart. ‘Since we’re drinking wine that is rather unmistakably from Laclos’ famously excellent cellar, can I assume we have moved past the pretence that your relationship is limited to him occasionally attending your parties?’

I was suddenly less than thrilled that I’d moved to be in Cain’s eyeline, since this meant I could see how pissed off he was at this news – I’d never told him about all the gifts of wine – but I must have looked surprised, because Josephine smiled, coolly.

‘Unless your business is doing so well you can indulge in £400 bottles of La Mouline?’

There was the sound of undignified spluttering – why yes, that would be me – as I realised the amount of wine I’d chugged down in my PJs while watching
EastEnders
could probably have paid off my mortgage. If I survived this, every bottle I had left was going on eBay. I swallowed my cough, and tried not to look too obviously like I’d been rumbled, but the blatant amusement on Josephine’s face told me that ship had sailed.

‘We aren’t here to threaten you,’ she said, though she was looking at Cain when she said it. ‘We simply want to discuss how you can stop him.’

I was just about to explain how we’d done that already, so we could all enjoy our ridiculously expensive wine and go home murder-free, when Cain spoke up.

‘Why would we want to do that?’

I tried not to show my confusion, though I realised quickly what he was doing.

‘He’s killing your clients.’ She turned to me, expecting an easier audience.

‘No, he’s not,’ I said, mimicking Cain’s casual tone. ‘My clients are from smaller families. They’re younger and unaffiliated. Laclos going after the top clans means about as much to me as if someone assassinated Boris Johnson or David Cameron.’ I thought of Katie, the overworked, underpaid and unappreciated NHS nurse. ‘Less, actually. I’d be quite pleased if someone bumped off David Cameron.’

She looked taken aback by this: I think she’d come expecting a bit more cowering, a bit less lip. But then she turned to Cain – addressing the power in the room, the vampire way.

‘Everyone knows you are his lover. Surely you must care what happens to him?’

Um, OK. That little rumour really did have legs. But Cain just shrugged.

‘Doesn’t mean we can stop him. Doesn’t explain why we’d want to. If he is what you think to us’ – Oh, nice that I was included in that – ‘then why wouldn’t we want him to be top dog? Can’t say I’ve ever had much interest in losers, so if he wants to kill off a bunch of old vamps who’ve been coasting along for too long, then lady, I’m not stopping him. I’m gonna be holding his coat.’

‘You must want to save him, though. You can’t think this won’t end badly for him!’ she protested, thoroughly wrong-footed.

‘Because what? He’ll get taken down by a bunch of vamps so scared they come to us for help?’ He laughed. Cain could be spectacularly annoying when he wanted to be, and I could see his plan was working, even though it did carry the risk that Alastair would snap and try and tear his head off, which he looked worrying close to doing. Playing my part, I held up my hand, gesturing for Cain to let me speak, looking as if I was considering what they were saying.

‘Say we do manage to persuade him. What’s in it for us?’

‘You stop a war!’ the Scotsman roared, taking a step forward, anger pulsing off him. Cain hadn’t even bothered to straighten up from where he leaned against the doorframe.

‘A war we don’t care about and aren’t affected by in any way,’ he said. ‘C’mon, Cass. I’m with Laclos on this. About time this town had a shake up.’

‘No, let’s hear them out,’ I protested, quite enjoying myself now. All those sixth form drama classes hadn’t been for nothing, after all. I turned to the vampires. ‘What can we offer him? He’ll want a truce that protects his people – all of his people.’ I gestured around the room, to reinforce we should be included in that. ‘No repercussions. Promise that and I might even be able to talk him into letting the clans he’s already taken over choose their own leaders and go back to self-rule. With some oversight, of course.’ I added, not wanting to concede too much. The vampires exchanged unhappy looks, and I saw Josephine glance at Amalthea, who gave a slight nod.

‘We would like to arrange a parlay with Laclos on neutral ground to agree this.’

Cain let out a bark of laughter.

‘Nope. We’ll talk to him. I’m pretty sure between us we can persuade him to see things your way, assure him lessons have been learned. But no sit down, no meeting, everyone just goes back to their own corner.’

‘Then how do we know he has agreed?’ she asked, not unreasonably, but Cain just shrugged again.

‘Mainly, none of you die.’

‘That’s…’

‘That’s the deal on the table. Now, we’re done here. We have plans for the evening. You can go.’

Josephine looked furious, plainly not a woman used to being casually dismissed. Obviously, as a vampire she also wanted the last word.

‘Very well. But should you renege, we know where to find you.’

‘Of course you do! You’re standing right here!’ I exclaimed, impatient with this nonsense. ‘The address is on the website. It’s not a bloody secret lair!’ Cain finally straightened up from his slouch and stepped forward, eliciting the merest flinch from the vamps. He draped an arm around my shoulders, casual but proprietorial and, I knew, calibrated so that if he had to, he could twist me out of the way very quickly if things kicked off.

‘That’s how much you worry us,’ he smiled, which was a little rich since he had said many, many things about my website, and not a single one of them was good. ‘Maybe you want to consider the reason behind our confidence.’

Josephine forced a smile.

‘Let us hope, for your sake, that such confidence is not misplaced.’

And then, because she really did want the last word, the three of them turned as one and swept from the office in a magnificent, coordinated huff.

***

‘Um, did we just throw down the gauntlet to a bunch of angry vamps?’ Medea asked, querulously, as the door slammed closed.

‘Sort of,’ I frowned. I paused, my Sense checking that they had gone well out of earshot, relieved when there was no trace of them outside. ‘But hopefully if they think we’re negotiating from a position of strength and Laclos stopping is a hard-won concession, they’ll be less likely to come after us once the dust settles.’

She nodded, seeing the logic, then turned an amused face to Cain.

‘So, should I be congratulating you and Laclos on this newfound love between angel and vampire?’

Cain pulled a face.

‘Figure they think anyone in his radius is also in his bed.’

‘I might want to dig out my lesbian pride badge, then. Do you think that would convince them, or is the lure of Laclos too strong?’

‘No!’ I batted my eyelashes at her dramatically. ‘Come to the dark side! We have… well, apparently we have really frickin’ expensive wine.’

She laughed at that. I could tell she was a little confused by Cain’s willingness to go along with the rumour, and it was an easy misunderstanding. Cain could appear to be gruff and macho, but I was realising that angels had the same attitude to heteronormativity as vampires – they thought it was a weird human quirk that was at best baffling, at worst infuriating. He might not like vampires, or even Laclos personally, but he saw it as no threat to his masculinity that a male vampire wanted to get into his pants, or that other people thought he had succeeded. Besides, I knew what he was thinking: vampire hierarchy extends to Other races, too, and while they wouldn’t understand his angelic nature, they would clearly pick up he wasn’t human, which made him, de facto, more significant than me. So if the vamps thought Cain was Laclos’ lover, they would assume he was more important – and therefore far more of a valuable target – than I was. I tried not to think too hard about what this meant in terms of the actual relationship I had with both men, the repercussions of my humanity.

Medea had collected up the glasses and mugs and dumped the tray on my desk, to be dealt with in the morning. She picked up her bag, and smiled ruefully.

‘I suppose I’d better go back to my fiancée and tell her she should get used to sharing me.’

Cain dropped his arm from my shoulders.

‘We’ll walk you to the Tube.’

She was about to protest, then the realisation of her lost magic hit her again, and her face crumpled, all humour gone.

‘Thanks.’

I picked up my own bag and turned to Cain.

‘You might want to hide the gun.’

We walked Medea to the Tube then Cain deposited me in the pub where we’d arranged to meet Leon and Mariko while he went off to fetch Laclos from his mystery safe house. I sat in a booth, facing the door, a drink in my hand and a gun in my handbag, nerves so frayed that when I looked outside, my Sense spiked for a moment, as if there were some imminent threat out there in the darkness. But all I could see through the windows was the usual traffic of the area, businessmen finishing work, the ‘just a quick one’ crowd who promised they’d have an early night and were so often here till closing, and one of the leather-clad motorcycle couriers who could always be found around Smithfield, clearly finishing up for the evening.

I replayed the meeting in my head, wondering if we’d missed anything. Was this our vampire alliance, or would there be others following? I hadn’t even established they were the ones who sent in the newbie vamp, though it seemed a big coincidence if they hadn’t, that they turned up a couple of nights later. It seemed a dramatic escalation, and I wondered what had prompted it. Where had Laclos been before he popped up on my bed?

More than that, I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Cain had warned of dire consequences for sharing his blood, but it had been over a week and we were distinctly angel-fury-free. Not that I was complaining, and a tiny part of me was thinking – hoping – maybe he was wrong, this was some old, outdated rule or a myth to keep angels in line, and the penalty would actually be a fat load of nothing. But I also knew we were never that lucky.

***

‘Can I ask you a question?’

Me and Cain, earlier this morning, before work.

‘Was there ever a person in the history of the world who, when asking that, would stop if the answer were ‘no’?’ he responded, not unreasonably, with his now more than familiar ‘oh-god-now-I-have-to-deal-with-humans’ expression. In part, this was deserved, since I was currently lying in his arms, more on top of him than not, and I had form in using these captive audience moments for tricky interrogations. But frankly when you’re involved with someone as opaque about everything as Cain is, you have to use any advantage you can get.

‘Fair point. But it’s an important question.’

‘OK.’

He shifted, slightly, moving me onto his hip, one arm firmly around me, and I tried not to be distracted by how effortlessly he moved my weight – a positive sign of his recovery, I hoped, but also Freaking Hot. I suspected he might be employing some sly tactics of his own against my questioning.

‘Why aren’t we dead yet?’

‘Um…’ that threw him. ‘Can you be more specific?’

‘Well… I was expecting a host of pissed off angels descending from the heavens.’ He opened his mouth to protest – he refused to confirm or deny where angels spent their time when not smiting – and I corrected, hastily. ‘Or wherever they hang out. So why haven’t we been smited? Smote? Is it smote? It can’t be smitten, right?’

Ignoring my linguistic riddles, he shrugged, a movement that sent pleasant ripples through my body, which was rather enhanced by that fact that, to stop me sliding off him, he felt it necessary to grab hold of my bum.

‘Honestly, I have no idea. Angels think of themselves as God’s creatures, so they think they live by the same inscrutable and ineffable laws as the deity. Mostly this translates into them being pricks. Maybe they’re waiting to see how this shakes down – if I get burned, saves them the trouble. Maybe they’re busy. Maybe I was totally wrong and they have no idea this has happened, or they don’t care that it has. Or maybe they are holding off till we fix all of this so they can swoop down just when we think we’re safe.’ He gave a grim chuckle. ‘That would be just their style.’

‘Nice. Mind, if they’re waiting till trouble blows over, that’s good news for us, we’ll be safe forever. They’ll be glad they’re immortal.’ That at least got a smile. So obviously I had to ruin the mood. ‘But if they know what’s happening – somehow, angel radio or the psychic network or whatever – why won’t they just help us?’

‘Why would they?’

‘Because… they’re angels? I mean, I’ve watched enough
Supernatural
and Paul Bettany movies to get that
Highway to Heaven
lied to me, but surely they’re supposed to be roughly on humanity’s side?’

Another shrug, which again I rather enjoyed.

‘Not so you’d notice. Besides, at the minute
humanity
isn’t in trouble. Not sure if they’d care if it was. Angels are soldiers. They were designed to be soldiers. And then they were expected to be shepherds, and to be honest, most of them don’t like that. Hammers of God, remember?’

‘So you’re a bunch of tools?’ I grinned, which was a joke I was pretty sure I’d stolen, but he smiled anyway. I shifted on top of him, propping myself on my elbows so I could raise my head and look him in the eye. ‘So… why do you do it, then? You’re fallen…’

‘Earthbound.’

‘Sorry, earthbound. So why’s it your job to be a hunter if angels don’t care about people?’

‘Honestly? I was facing immortality. Alone. I think I just needed something to fight.’

Oh-kay, then.

‘So can’t we protect ourselves? Can’t we…’ I trawled my limited amount of religious knowledge and came up empty, so turned to my entertainment knowledge, of which I had infinite amounts. ‘I dunno, draw anti-angel sigils on the walls or something?’

He pulled a face.

‘Did you pick that up off one of your TV shows?’

‘No, they taught us that in my school’s Defence Against the Dark Arts class, Cain.’

He looked like he approved of this idea, so I sighed, irritated now. But honestly, someone needed to introduce this man to the internet.

‘Of course I got it from TV, Cain! Where the hell else would I get it?’

‘You know they just make that stuff up, right?’

‘A simple “sigils won’t work” would suffice,’ I pouted, but he looked sheepish.

‘Well, they do work…’

‘Then…’

He shot me an exasperated look and it possibly says a lot about how I tend to think of Cain that it took me an embarrassingly long moment to realise why making it impossible for
any
angels to get into my flat or office would be a bad idea. I ducked my head, rubbing my face against his chest in mortification, and though he was very clearly laughing at me, he softened the blow by kissing the top of my head fondly as I allowed myself to laugh as well. Then things got a little less funny, as his hand strayed from my arse and was insinuating itself between my thighs. I gave a sharp gasp at the deftness of his touch, lifting my head in mock outrage even as I opened my legs to welcome him.

‘That’s not very angelic!’ I spluttered, my shocked tone somewhat undermined by the way I was pushing against him, already slick. He smiled that lazy, self-satisfied smile that always ties my stomach in knots and kissed me lightly as his other hand sought one of my breasts.

‘Feels pretty heavenly to me,’ he chuckled, throatily, which was a fairly lame line but by then all rational judgement was gone and I was pretty much past caring.

***

So lost was I in this reverie that I almost jumped out of my now possibly slightly damp seat when Mariko and Leon arrived, and I found myself blushing furiously as I greeted them: nothing like being told repeatedly by vampires they can smell desire on you to make you feel self-conscious about a little sexual daydreaming. Luckily there was barely time for them to get a drink and for me to give them the briefest of outlines as to how the day had gone before Cain and Laclos arrived. Cain leaned down and kissed me in greeting – unusually demonstrative for him, again – pulling back with a smile when the waitress materialised to take our orders. I’d never known this pub to be table service before, but I suppose that’s what happens when men who look like Cain and Laclos arrive. Orders taken, the usual amount of flirting from Laclos ensuring they would be given immediate priority, we all sat down, ready to pretend this was a normal meeting and everything was OK.

Since most of the conversation was recapping for various parties what had happened while the vampires were asleep, it wasn’t particularly enlightening for me, and as I didn’t have to listen closely, I allowed myself to scrutinise the young vampires in front of me. As usual, Leon took the initiative with the talking, while Mariko kept a wary eye on our surroundings. An uninformed observer might have taken that as some macho patriarchy thing, but in fact it was the opposite: while I think the respective roles of mouth and muscles did suit their personalities – Leon was more thoughtful, and more capable of seeing both sides of any argument, whereas Mariko had a temper that flared easily and not always wisely – there was also the fact that she was older and therefore stronger than he was, so her tendency to take the lead on any of the rough stuff made more sense. But that was pretty much all I knew about them. They were undeniably close, and since I never picked up the merest sexual tension there, I suspected they might be siblings from the same Sire. They seemed loyal to Laclos – indeed, to care about him, to a degree that actually baffled me a little since he was generally a dick to his employees – but I couldn’t ever quite get a handle on who they were, or what their endgame was, and I suspected they wanted that to be the case. And while they’d proved themselves in battle more than once – Mariko had only recently saved my life – it made for a slightly uneasy alliance.

‘I moved Mika and Lucius from Shad Thames to the crypt so our resources aren’t split looking after people in two places,’ Leon said, which caught my attention, less for what he said than for the furtive look he cast my way when he said it.

‘Thank you,’ Laclos nodded, looking equally uncomfortable, whether at the mention of his formerly secret (from me, at least) apartment on the riverside, or the two men Leon was protecting, I wasn’t sure. I frowned at this caginess, annoyed. Mika was one of Laclos’ human lovers – I assumed from the context Lucius was too – and it bugged me that they thought I’d be somehow bothered that he cared about their safety. I’d be more worried if he didn’t. Then we came to discussing the trio of vamps who’d visited my office, and Laclos looked pensive.

‘I’ve heard of both Amalthea and Alastair, though am not personally familiar with either. And I had heard that Alastair operated outside of London, so it is… bothersome if it is true this situation has spread beyond the city. He is apparently both territorial and extremely ruthless, so an unfortunately fierce enemy to have created. Amalthea, I know less of – it is not easy to be a child vampire, and she spends much of her time in the shadows. Josephine, I am more acquainted with. I am not surprised she is at the vanguard of this operation, though it would be unlike her to allow herself to be used as a mouthpiece for another.’

I thought of those bangles – not generally the most threatening of items, but here a clear message of confidence and strength, and I thought that Laclos was right, though I had no idea what that meant for our cause. We batted around ideas for a while, though I felt awkwardly aware that we were keeping two of our key allies in the dark as to the bigger, more celestial, picture – but that was Cain’s decision, and Laclos and I had to respect it. I was sure both bodyguards had picked up that Cain wasn’t human, but younger vamps generally got no sense of what he actually was, and weren’t affected by the lure of his blood or the aura of his power the way older vampires could be. And since most vampires probably thought angels were a myth of the humans, it would hardly be where their minds would go to first. There were many versions of Other, and plenty who blurred the line with humans – some would place me as a Sensitive and Medea as a Wiccan on that boundary – so it was unlikely they would ever guess. I suspected they thought he was some iteration of the Burner, the vampire bogeyman hunter around who many myths had sprung up, from suggestions that the Burners were some Buffy-style, once every generation kind of killer, to followers of a Van Helsing type cult, a Blade-like hybrid or a species of Other that, for one reason or another, hated vampire-kind. Cain had never admitted as much to me – partly because I’d heard some of the things the Burner was supposed to have done, which included setting my city alight in a little thing called the Great Fire of London – but I was starting to realise where most of these rumours originated, and that the Burner was far scarier than even the vampires realised. But while their assumption of his Burner-dom was, therefore, pretty accurate, it gave them no insight into the reality of Cain’s nature. Whether it was a good thing to leave them in the dark or not, I really wasn’t sure.

Still, the night wasn’t devoid of surprises: when Leon asked if Laclos was coming back to St Paul’s with them, he demurred, turning to Cain.

‘The hunter and I still have things to discuss,’ he smiled, which was news to me. ‘Besides, I would not paint more of a target on your backs than I have already. I ask that you maintain calm in my absence, and tell my people that you act with my authority, but for the moment at least I shall remain here. Cassandra’s home has the usual human protections against unwarranted intrusions, as does the… hiding place the hunter has so kindly secured for me.’

‘What’s stopping them just burning the place down?’ Mariko frowned. It wasn’t an unreasonable question, but I could have done without her asking it.

‘Me, mainly,’ Cain shrugged. ‘Plus there’s wards in both places, and the safe house doesn’t have much to burn.’

Laclos gave a slight shudder at that. I suspected wherever Cain had him stashed during the day fell far short of his usual standard of accommodation. Neither Mariko nor Leon looked thrilled at this, partly because it carried the unmistakable assumption that either Cain or Laclos didn’t entirely trust them. I wondered if they were right.

Still, whatever tensions there were under the surface, we parted amicably enough, and after Laclos gave them some housekeeping instructions that I paid little attention to, the young vampires headed back to St Paul’s and, by unspoken agreement, the three of us that remained headed back to mine.