‘Oh, no one eats at things like this,’ stated Ling airily, ‘But help yourself to the cocktails – one of Chessy’s secret recipes.’
They watched Ling dance off to greet another group of newcomers. A passing waiter handed them a cocktail each: a balloon glass filled with ice and some dark red liquid. Caro sniffed hers suspiciously. ‘What do you think it is?’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘If Chessy thought it up, there’s a good chance there’s blood in here somewhere.’
April took a tentative sip. ‘Blood orange, I think. But mainly vodka. I think we’re okay.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Caro, looking around at the crowd. There were a few faces they recognised from Ravenwood, but mostly the partygoers seemed to be older, cooler, like the sort of people you’d find in a VIP enclosure at a festival, only tonight they were wearing sheer dresses and open neck shirts.
‘Do you feel as exposed as I do?’ asked Caro.
‘You feel exposed?’ whispered April. ‘I’m the one with a dress the size of a bikini.’
‘No, I mean being human surrounded by all these Suckers. I feel like a chicken who’s wandered into a pit full of foxes. Drunk foxes.’
Don’t keep mentioning the foxes, thought April, thinking of the tongue again
‘Hey, I’ve got an idea,’ said Caro. ‘Hand me your phone.’
‘Why? Are you going to call a taxi?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Caro, grabbing the phone and turning so her body hid what she was doing.
‘Okay, here we go,’ she said, handing the mobile back. ‘When in doubt, turn to your handy on-the-spot vampire detection device.’
Frowning, April looked down at the screen – Caro had managed a long shot of the whole party. ‘I wish you hadn’t done that – don’t you remember what they did when I was caught taking photos?’ said April.
Caro pouted. ‘No one saw’.
‘Not this time,’ said April, her eyebrows raised. They both huddled over the screen and April felt sick at what she saw. In the picture, almost every other person had come out blurred. Where those figures should have been, there was just a blank space as if someone had furiously rubbed them out with a giant marker.
‘It’s like half the party are vamps,’ whispered April.
‘Yeah, like that’s a big surprise,’ said Caro sipping at her drink casually. ‘What did you expect? Werewolves?’
Logically, April knew that she should’ve expected the new head of the Ravenwood Faces to invite a large number of vamps to her party, but it was still disturbing to actually see them there – more shocking because it was more real. She studied the picture again.
‘Look, Simon’s come out,’ she said, tapping the screen. ‘That’s good news isn’t it?’
Caro just shrugged and looked away. ‘I guess.’
‘What do you mean, you guess? I was worried they had turned him already.’
‘It doesn’t really make much difference does it? He’s as good as one of them already.’
‘But don’t you see? We can still save him.’
Caro turned to her, with eyes narrowed. ‘No, April, we can’t. Not if he doesn’t want to be saved.’ She nodded towards Simon, standing propped up against the bar. He looked drunk, his eyes half-focused, his mouth curled into a sneer. ‘Look at him. He might as well be a full-blown Sucker. He’s bought into the whole life; he’s hooked on it. What are we supposed to do? Throw a bag over his head and kidnap him? What would that achieve if he doesn’t have the slightest intention of leaving them? He’s gone, A.’
April looked across at their old friend and could see that Caro had a point. Simon had always been the life and soul of the party, always ready to see the positive side of things, even if he put his own cynical twist on it. He had loved music and clothes and – yes, April was sure – he had loved Caro too. But now, he looked no more than a shell, burnt out from the inside.
‘Admit it, April,’ said Caro, ‘he’s one of them now.’
‘Yeah? Screw that,’ said April. Striding purposefully, she crossed the deck and pushed her way through the crowd gyrating in front of the DJ’s booth.
‘Simon!’ she called, tugging his sleeve, raising her voice over the pounding music.
Slowly he turned to look at her, his eyes barely focusing. For a moment, it seemed as though he didn’t recognise her, but then he broke into a half smile.
‘Hey, April,’ he said, reaching a hand out to stroke her face. ‘How are you doing? You want a drink? They’re free. Least, I think they are. If they’re not, I’m buggered.’ He began laughing, a wheezy sort of chuckle that quickly trailed off.
‘I’ve got a drink, thanks,’ said April, ‘Listen, can we go somewhere to talk?’
Simon squinted across at her, one eye closed. ‘Why do you want to move?’ he slurred, gesturing vaguely in the air. ‘I got everything I need right here. Booze, tunes and ... nuts.’ He groped towards the bar. ‘There were some nuts here ...’
‘You can come back and find them in a moment. First I’ve got something to say to you.’
April grabbed hold of Simon’s wrist and yanked him away from the bar, ignoring his protests. She pulled him back towards the house and into a passageway that seemed to lead to an outbuilding.
‘Hey!’ cried Simon, holding up his empty glass, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You made me spill my drink!’
‘Really? Well, why don’t you have mine?’ said April. And she threw her cocktail into his face.
Simon’s hands went up to his eyes, and his glass fell with a crash. Off-balance, he reeled backwards, cracking his head hard against a brick wall and sliding down to the floor. ‘What did you do that for?’ he whined, rubbing the back of his head. ‘You’ve soaked my bloody shirt.’
April knelt down next to him, so her face was on a level with his. ‘A wet shirt is going to be the least of your troubles unless you sober up, Simon,’ she said, her voice cold, detached.
‘I’ve only had a few,’ he mumbled defensively.
‘I don’t mean the booze, you idiot!’ she shouted. ‘I mean what you’re doing to yourself. Do you really want to end up like Layla?’
At the mention of the dead girl’s name, Simon recoiled, seeming to withdraw into himself. He crossed his arms and glared at April. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes, you bloody do. You know exactly what I mean. You will end up dead. Dead, Simon.’
Simon’s sneer was back. ‘Is that really so bad?’
April’s hand shot out and she slapped him hard around the face, then seized his shoulder, squeezing hard. ‘Don’t you ever say that,’ she hissed, ‘If you ever say anything like that to me again, I will kill you myself.’
Simon stared at her, his eyes wide, frightened. If she had wanted him to sober up, it looked as if it had worked and all of a sudden, she didn’t feel angry anymore – she just felt sorry for him. April let out a long breath and sat down on the floor, tugging her dress over her thighs.
‘My dad died in my arms,’ she said quietly. ‘I was there when Miss Holden was killed. And Benjamin too. I know a little bit about death, Simon. It’s ugly and brutal and there’s not the slightest hint of romance in any of it. It’s not poetic or noble or cool. It’s just horrible.’ She glanced over at him. ‘You know what else it is? Death is selfish. People say all these heroic things when they’re facing a firing squad, or they’re about to throw themselves on a grenade or something. “Save yourselves, I’ll hold them off” – all that crap. But that’s it for them, game over – and that’s the easy part. Dying’s not the hardest, Simon. Going on afterwards, that’s hard, bloody hard. All those people you leave behind, whose hearts you’ve broken, who spend every day at night wondering whether they could have done something differently – they’re the ones who have to endure the pain.’
‘So? Why should I worry about them?’ said Simon, ‘They never worried about me.’
‘Yeah, right,’ spat April, her anger returning. ‘Do you
want me to slap you again? I worried about you. And Caro cared for you – if you’d ever taken the time to notice. We were your friends, real friends.’
‘I don’t want friends, I want a purpose,’ he said, his eyes glittering. ‘I want to be part of something. You must feel it, April – the start of this movement. We’ve got a chance to be part of an amazing new world.’
‘Jesus!’ cried April. ‘Listen to yourself. You sound like one of those door-to-door religious nuts you used to laugh at.’
She grabbed his wrist and twisted it, seeing the tiny scars on the inside. Feeding scars, the same ones April had seen on Ling that day when she was crying in the school toilets. ‘Is this the amazing new world you want to be part of? Even when you know what these people – these creatures – are like?’
‘They understand me,’ he said sulkily, pulling his arm away. ‘They know what I want. They give me what I want.’
‘And what’s that?’ said April, ‘Booze? Drugs? Sex?’
Simon gave her a nasty smile. ‘For starters.’
‘Christ, Simon, is that really enough for you?’
‘It’s all I ...’ he began, and then April understood. It’s all I deserve, was what he was going to say. The vampires were clever – horribly clever. Like any predator they knew how to separate the weak ones from the herd. They preyed on their insecurities: loneliness, doubt, greed, and with Simon, they had found an ideal candidate, a super-sharp brain with one flaw: a lack of self-worth. He must have known how much Caro cared for him, yet didn’t feel he deserved such strong unconditional love. April didn’t know Simon quite well enough to guess why and she supposed it didn’t really matter. However they had done it, the Suckers had managed to get their hooks into him and had dragged him down to their level.
‘Simon,’ said April, fixing him with a steady gaze. ‘You are loved. You do have friends. I think, deep down inside, you know that. And I think you also know how you’ll end up if you keep on –’ she gestured towards his scars – ‘like this.’
She clambered to her feet – no easy task in those high heels – and brushed off the back of her dress. ‘But you can always come back. We’ll be here, whatever happens. And I think you know that too.’
She walked away, knowing she couldn’t say any more.
‘What was all that about?’ said Caro, falling into step beside her as April walked through the party and down to the swimming pool. ‘What did you say to him?’
April pulled a face. ‘I got a bit Fury on him, then I told him the facts of life about the Suckers and then told him you were in love with him.’
Caro’s mouth dropped open. ‘You didn’t?’
April smiled. ‘Not quite, but maybe I should’ve done. Sorry Caro, I wanted to shake a bit of sense into him, snap him out of this trance he seems to be walking around in. I’m not exactly sure I managed it.’
Caro touched her arm. ‘But you tried,’ she said. ‘That’s the main thing. Thanks, A. You’re a good friend.’
April turned to look back at the bar – Simon was again propping it up. ‘I’m not sure that’s going to be enough.’
They each took a bottle of beer from a cooler by the pool and sat down on some cushions by the edge, staring into the water. The music was still hammering and the air was thick with shouts and laughter, but the girls sat in silence, both lost in their thoughts.
‘Hey, why so glum?’
April twisted around, a smile on her face. ‘Gabriel!’ she said. ‘When did you get here?’
‘Just arrived,’ he answered, sitting down next to her, kissing her shoulder. ‘But it looks as if I’ve come to the wrong place. I thought this was supposed to be a party, not a wake.’
‘Sorry hon,’ said April, ‘I’ve just had a run-in with Simon. Tried to get him to see sense, but ...’
‘But the idiot is too far gone,’ finished Caro, looking back towards the bar.
‘Ah, I see,’ said Gabriel. ‘All the more reason to keep going, isn’t it? If we find the King and eliminate him, there’s a good chance ...’
‘This isn’t some bloody fairy tale, Gabriel!’ snapped Caro. ‘It’s not like killing the evil witch. It won’t break the spell and make everyone wake up and live happily ever after. We have absolutely zero idea what will happen even if we find the King Vampire and cut off his head. Even if you drink his blood, we don’t know if it’s going to cure you, do we?’
‘Caro, it’s not his fault,’ April intervened.
‘I know!’ Caro cried, then shook her head. ‘I know. Sorry, Gabe. Didn’t mean to bite your head off.’
‘It’s okay, and you’re right. We saw this happen with the Regent, didn’t we? Sheldon died in the fire, but if anything the vampires got stronger. Yes, we could kill the King, but maybe there will always be another vamp waiting to take over. God knows, kids are always going to be drawn to this –’ he gestured towards the bar – ‘because it’s cooler than ping pong at a church youth club.’
‘It’s more than that,’ said April, remembering what Simon had said. ‘All this stuff Dr Tame has been spouting at school about his new world order – though we make fun of it, some people are taking it seriously. The fact that they can be in at the start of something, in on the secret before everybody else, that’s going to be attractive, isn’t it?’
They went quiet, all feeling deflated. ‘So what should we…’ Gabriel was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass and a loud cheer. It was followed by more smashing glass and another cheer.
‘I’m going to see what’s happening,’ said April. She turned to Gabriel. ‘Can you get me a drink? And while you’re at the bar, see if you can talk some sense into Simon?’
She walked back towards the house and saw that a crowd had gathered. Another smash followed by a cheer. April elbowed her way to the front to see two boys, both stripped to the waist. April recognised one – his name was Calvin, wasn’t it? – the boy she’d seen in the toilets in Ravenwood, the one Tame had let off scot-free. Calvin was standing there with a beer bottle balanced on his head, while the other boy was holding what looked like a child’s cricket bat. As she watched, the boy with the bat took a run up and swung it at the bottle, shattering it, showering Calvin with broken glass. A whoop of excitement went up.
‘What the hell are they doing?’ April said to one of the bystanders. The boy’s eyes were wide, clearly in awe of these mad creatures.
‘Calvin bet the other one – Danny, I think his name is – he couldn’t stand still while he smashed the bottle. Now they’re taking it in turns. Crazy!’
‘Yes,’ said April, ‘Yes, it is.’
She could see that Calvin was bleeding from a number of cuts on his shoulders and chest, but he didn’t seem to feel it. In fact, as she watched, he ran a finger through the blood and licked it off, laughing as he did so. She wondered if these were boys who had come out as the dark blurs on her photo, or whether, like Simon, they had just been caught up in the twisted glamour of it all. As she stepped away from the crowd, April was suddenly very aware that the buoyant circus atmosphere of Ling’s party theme had evaporated and been replaced by a darker undertone. An uncomfortable tension now seemed to grip the party. The flare of a match made April turn towards the alleyway where she had talked to Simon. A group of figures stood there in a tight circle doing – what? Smoking something? She didn’t know and wasn’t about to ask. And that couple up against the wall ... Suddenly April just wanted to find her friends and had turned towards the bar, when she walked straight into Chessy.
Her long hair had been pulled back into a plait and she was wearing a one-shoulder Grecian dress in bottle-green. If she hadn’t been radiating spite from every pore, Chessy might have been genuinely beautiful, thought April.
‘Head Girl,’ she mocked ‘We must stop meeting like this. You all on your lonesome, or is Gorgeous Gabe with you?’
‘He’s here,’ said April, attempting to move away. ‘I’d better go, I think he’s got my drink ...’
But Che
ssy blocked her way. ‘And where’s your other little friend? Davina, I think her name was.’
‘I don’t think she’s coming,’ said April, reminding herself that she was supposed to be joining in with the “bash Davina” consensus – at least when she was talking to the Suckers.
‘Not surprised,’ smiled Chessy. ‘I think it will be a while before she wants to be seen out in public.’
April looked towards the bar again, hoping to see Caro or Gabriel, all the time feeling Chessy’s eyes burning into her.
‘Why you, Head Girl?’ she said.
‘Why me what?’
‘Why did Tame choose you as his pet? Does he have some special plans for you? Have you played the same trick on him you played on Sheldon?’
April looked at Chessy, wondering what she knew, what she was trying to imply, but all she saw in that face was malice. She wondered why Chessy had suddenly turned against her. It wasn’t so long ago that they had been out on the town in London, getting their nails done together and sharing in-jokes. She’s a vampire, remember, she thought to herself. She’ll do or say anything to get what she wants.
‘What trick would that be?’ said April as casually as she could.
‘That’s what I want to know, Head Girl. That’s what I’d like to know.’
Chessy moved closer to April, invading her personal space, making her skin prickle. ‘What was it Sheldon thought you had? What did he want from you? And why did poor little Benjamin go off the deep end that night? Why did he try to burn you?’
April forced herself to meet Chessy’s icy gaze. ‘Because he had fallen in love with me,’ she said. ‘And who can blame him?’
Chessy threw her head back and laughed. ‘Oh, you’re good,’ she said, pointing a wagging finger at April. ‘You’re very good. I’m really going to have to watch you.’
As Chessy walked off, April let out a long breath. She supposed it was inevitable that the Suckers would be suspicious of her, especially after the mysterious blaze at Hawk’s house but she was surprised that any of them would bring it up directly. Maybe Gabriel had been right – perhaps their greatest weapon against the vampires was to make them feel uncertain, off balance. They had to be thinking that if vamps like Sheldon and Benjamin could be killed, then perhaps none of them were as invulnerable as they thought.