Walking Shadows. Narrelle M Harris

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СКАЧАТЬ we staggered into the main bar.

      "What's that awful smell?" Hamish choked out and I was glad I couldn't see Jack's body at the top of the stairs.

      "This way." Gary grabbed my arm and steered us towards the window. He tried to take me out first but I pulled back.

      "Him," I said, pushing Hamish at him. The poor kid was half unconscious with shock.

      "Stay down," Gary told me, pushing me towards the floor in case I didn't get the message. He was all take-charge and energised. I'd only ever seen him like this once before, when he'd saved my life exactly as he'd just saved Hamish's. Flushed with my blood, his brain finally sparking the way it never did in his blood-free existence. He'd been getting me and Evie out of a burning building then too.

      "Hold on tight," I heard Gary say. Hamish muttered something back, prompting Gary to reply, "You can't hurt me, but she'll be really angry with me if I drop you."

      There were scrambling noises at the windowsill, and then "I'll be right back!" followed by the receding sound of a laden vampire climbing down brickwork.

      I lay on the floor and sucked in the slightly-less-sooty air, thinking of Evie and how right she had been to run away to a commune last year, and that if I'd been smarter I'd have joined her. We really have to stop doing this, Gary.

      The air tasted of smoke. It sometimes tasted like the smell of charred meat, so I was trying not to vomit. I was also trying not to think about Kate. She would be so angry with me for getting myself in this god-awful mess to begin with and she would never forgive me for dying on her and leaving her all alone.

       You are not going to die. Really. Gary's coming back for you.

      Hands seized my upper arms and I reached up to meet the assistance.

      "Hang on tight, Lissa," Gary's voice was in my ear. I nodded, unwilling to attempt speech in the acrid atmosphere. I clambered onto his back with my arms wrapped around his neck - another flash of déjà vu - and with his strange, easy strength he climbed out of the window. The sudden availability of clean oxygen made me gulp for air, then cough violently. He paused and reached around to steady me.

      "Don't let go." His voice was hoarse, from the frantic grip I had across his Adam's apple. I remembered he didn't have to breathe except to talk and locked my hold even tighter. I pressed my face into the bright cloth of his shirt and felt his muscles move as we resumed the downward climb.

      Then we were level, steady, and there was the rustling of desiccated leaves and paper in the blind alley, and hands gently making my own unlock their death grip. I let go and would have fallen, but he was quick and caught me, and lowered me until I sat in the debris, leaning my forehead against my bent and shaking knees and learning how to breathe again.

      CHAPTER 4

      Crouched in a dead end next to a burning building, surrounded by an unknown number of vampires and their cronies while feeling responsible for at least one of their victims is not a good place to be. Especially when you can hardly see for the grit in your eyes and your only backup is a geekvamp who would be picked last for the team, if the undead played sport.

      Attempting to listen closely to your surroundings when you can't see or properly breathe yet is also high on the 'not fun' list. I could discern faint groaning, some papery susurration, rapid laboured breathing, the distant sound of clanging metal, and the also distant, separate sounds of breaking glass and, growing swiftly closer, sirens.

      "Are you okay?" Gary had crouched beside me. His voice, close to my ear, was barely above a whisper.

      I nodded weakly in answer and found my breath. "How's Hamish?" I murmured back. It was probably pointless, vampire hearing being what it is, but the instinct to keep my vulnerable, human concerns private from all these unfriendly people was strong.

      "I think I should get him out of here. Beryl's giving him funny looks." The instinct was clearly just as strong for Gary.

      "Can you get him out?"

      "I don't want to leave you here."

      "I'll be fine," I said, which was more an expression of hope than of confidence. "You better make it quick, though."

      I rose with him, thinking I looked less like a target if I was on my own two feet. Sight, oxygen intake and sturdiness of limbs mostly restored, I watched Gary crouch in front of Hamish. Hamish did not look well - waxy-skinned and on the verge of hyperventilating. His stupid friends had disappeared, along with Smith, which meant they'd abandoned him to this mess. Half of me couldn't blame them. The other half cursed them for cowards.

      Gary stood and helped Hamish to his feet. Hamish wilted. Gary slipped an arm across his back and glanced around quickly and searchingly for the most suitable escape route from this menacing oubliette. Hamish leaned trustingly against Gary's side, and Gary led him across the space to the opposite wall, their feet swishing in the detritus of decades of newspaper and food wrappers. With some fussing and stumbling, Hamish nearly slithered to the ground, then he was hanging on to Gary's back and Gary was climbing up a length of pipe. They reached the roof and disappeared over the rim.

      Leaving me alone with the sharp-toothed collective. I stood as straight as I could and turned to meet Magdalene's eye. I managed to hold it for a whole thirty seconds before deciding my eye was better spent looking for the bag I'd dropped. The bright blue nylon was easily found in the debris and I scooped it up.

      Either of those things was better than looking at Thomas, lying in a crumpled heap on the ground. His left leg and arm were at grotesque angles, smashed by the final fall. His limbs and back were twitching with his efforts to right himself. I was momentarily grateful that he wasn't making any noise. He looked like he was in agony. Then I shuddered at the silence, which made him seem like a possessed puppet lurching around, face distorted in noiseless agony.

      He was trying to use his relatively good arm to align the broken limbs. When he was done he grinned triumphantly through the blistering and soot. Or he tried to. His jaw flopped on one side, the bone so splintered and skin so torn it was barely attached.

      Then he turned his head, and I saw it was worse. The side of his head bore a misshapen dent, not merely smashed in by the fall but excavated. Exposed skull and a wet hollow seething with dark, strange blood, and that look of dazed confusion on his face. He knows something's wrong. He hasn't worked out what, yet.

      What functions does that part of the brain control, I thought in the midst of overwhelming pity and horror. What memories will he never know again? The fall had taken this beyond the fact that Thomas would never be handsome or suave again, forever now a wreckage of destroyed skin and muscle, even if the bones mended. It meant brain damage. What did that signify for the undead?

      The skin on my wrist tingled with the ghost of an imaginary scar that had never formed. My first bite. Thomas had been under the impression he was being charming when he did it. In hindsight, his approach, though creepy, was streets ahead of others, who had generally just tried to tear out my throat with their teeth. By comparison, I realised that Thomas had been darn near chivalrous. I could hardly believe I felt any kind of compassion for him.

      Beryl had surreptitiously scarpered and I craned my neck in search of her. Anything to avoid looking at Thomas.

      "Wha? Wha?" said Thomas, unable to make the 't' with his broken jaw, and maybe unable to frame a word past 'what'. His voice still whistled strangely with the air that escaped from somewhere in СКАЧАТЬ