Sleeping Angel (Ravenwood Series) by Mia James

  Caro came running up. ‘A – we have a situation,’ she said, taking April’s hand and leading her towards the swimming pool.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ling. I saw her going into the tents with a guy and I think she’s bitten off more than she can chew.’

  As they approached the pool, April could immediately see what was happening. Each of the Moroccan tents next to the pool had their canvas doors tied back with gold ropes revealing their cushion-filled interiors – all except one. The last tent had its flaps firmly closed and there was a boy standing outside, as if on guard. Inside, April could hear muffled voices, one of which sounded like Ling, her voice raised in protest.

  April and Caro exchanged glances.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said April, walking up to the guard.

  ‘None of your business,’ smiled the boy. He had a shaved head and one gold stud in his ear. He was also about three stone overweight. ‘Not unless you want to make it my business, sweetness, know what I’m sayin’? There’s plenty of room in one of these tents for you and your friend.’

  He sucked his teeth and raised his eyebrows in what he clearly imagined was an appealing way.

  ‘Yeah, in your dreams,’ said Caro, ‘Now why don’t you get out of our way. Our friend is in there and she doesn’t sound very happy.’

  Gold stud stepped forward. ‘Yeah, but she’s making Cal happy, and when he’s finished, she’s gonna do the same for me.’

  ‘Why don’t I show you what makes me happy, huh?’ said Caro, moving over to the boy.

  ‘I knew you wanted some of this,’ he grinned, but his smile froze then turned to a look of comic surprise as Caro brought her knee up, slamming into his groin. He doubled over and crumpled to the floor groaning.

  April stepped past him and pulled the tent’s curtain back to find Ling sprawled on the floor, her genie costume torn and spotted with blood. There were wounds on her wrist and her neck, her face twisted with misery and terror. Standing over her was Calvin, the boy from the sideshow by the house, the one who had licked the blood from his own wounds. He looked at them and grinned – and April knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was a vampire.

  ‘Evening, ladies,’ he said. ‘Is there a problem?’

  April looked down at a cowering Ling, then back at Calvin. ‘Yes, there’s a problem,’ she said. ‘And it’s you.’

  The boy tilted his head to one side. ‘I know you from school, don’t I?’ he said. ‘You were at the witch’s shop, weren’t you?’

  April’s heart jumped as a million questions ran through her head – how did he know about that? Had he been watching her? Was he something to do with Jessica?

  ‘I think you’ve got me confused with someone else,’ said April as smoothly as she could. ‘Someone who tolerates rapists.’

  ‘“Tolerates”?’ he repeated, mocking her. ‘Now that’s a very big word for a little girl.’

  ‘How about ‘sod off’,’ said Caro, who had come in behind April, ‘Short enough for you?’

  She leant forward to offer a hand to Ling, but Calvin jumped forward, grabbing Caro’s hair and yanking her up. ‘Oh no you don’t, I don’t think I’ve quite finished with her,’ he hissed, twisting her hair even tighter. ‘But when I’ve done everything I want to do to her, I’m going to think of a whole load more things I’m going to do with you.’

  All Caro could do was let out a little squeak.

  ‘Hey Calvin,’ said April coolly.

  As he glanced up, she swung a beer bottle straight at his head, making contact with a satisfying clunk. Falling backwards from the force of the blow, he released Caro and toppled over the low table, his arms pin-wheeling, hands grabbing the sides of the tent, pulling it down on top of him.

  ‘Come on, Ling, let’s move,’ said April urgently, bending to help Ling to her feet. April had a sneaking suspicion that when Calvin untangled himself, he would not be in the best of moods.

  ‘Caro, you okay?’ she checked, as Caro took Ling’s other arm.

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ she said between gritted teeth as they began moving back towards the house. But they didn’t get far: Calvin sprang up in front of them. There was a trickle of blood coming from his temple and a snarl on his lip.

  ‘Get out of my way,’ April yelled, feeling the Fury surge up in her. At the back of her mind, a little voice seemed to be telling her “not here, not now”, but she couldn’t help herself. She was angry, too angry to stop.

  ‘No way,’ said Calvin, shaking his head, ‘Calvin’s not going anywhere. He’s thirsty – needs a drink.’

  But even before April could do anything, she saw a blur move in from her left – and suddenly there was a space where the vampire had been.

  ‘Gabriel!’ gasped Caro. April whirled around to see the man she loved grab Calvin by the throat then hoist him into the air.

  ‘Thirsty are you?’ he said, and threw Calvin sideways, his body crashing against the concrete surround of the pool. Calvin twisted on the floor, trying to regain his feet, but he was too slow – Gabriel was on top of him in an instant. He grabbed the boy’s hair and plunged his head into the water.

  The crowd that had gathered raised a nervous cheer as they saw Calvin go under. ‘Dunk him! Dunk him!’ they began to chant. ‘Dunk ...’ the cheers died off as they saw that Gabriel wasn’t dunking him – he was holding the struggling boy’s head under the water. Calvin was twisting desperately, his legs thrashing, his hands fruitlessly trying to reach Gabriel.

  ‘Gabriel! No!’ shouted April, but still he held the boy under. The vampire’s struggles weakened, his legs scissoring, his hands thrashing feebly at the pool’s edge.

  April fell to her knees next to Gabriel, catching at his arm. ‘Please, Gabriel, don’t,’ she begged. ‘Let him go.’

  Gabriel turned to her a stony, emotionless face. It had the fixed concentration of someone involved in no more than a simple DIY task like putting up a shelf or unblocking a sink. The vampire needed killing and he needed to do it.

  ‘Gabriel, for me,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’

  There was a pause, a heartbeat, then Gabriel gave a tiny nod. He hauled Calvin out of the pool in an arc of spray, tossing him onto the grass as if he were discarding an apple core.

  The crowd was silent now, the only thing that could be heard above the still-pumping music being the gasps and retching of the man sprawled on the grass.

  ‘Come on,’ said April, taking Gabriel’s hand. ‘I think we’d better go.’

  Caro followed, helping the now sobbing Ling. Briefly, April turned to look back and was appalled to see Calvin staring after her, fury and spite in his glittering eyes.

  ‘Witch girl!’ he shouted. ‘I know who you are and I know where you live! This isn’t over, not by a long way!’

  Gabriel turned, but April clung to his arm. ‘Please, can you get me home?’ she said. ‘I just want to go home.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  The doors of the train hissed closed and April sighed with relief, finally allowing herself to relax. The carriage was virtually empty: at the far end, a loud group of girls in party dresses were passing a bottle but otherwise, they were alone.

  Looking straight ahead, April could see her face reflected in the train window opposite. Gabriel’s too, strange though that was. He couldn’t be seen in photographs or on video, but mirrors seemed to work just fine. April normally liked the way the bright overhead lighting and slightly concave glass of tube trains had the strange effect of hollowing out the eyes, accentuating the cheekbones; it was slimming, flattering even. But tonight it made them both look like corpses. Perhaps that’s what they were, just dead bodies in waiting.

  ‘Can we talk about it now?’ she said, glancing up at Gabriel. He had been virtually silent since the fight by the pool. They had all hobbled back to Caro’s house where Mrs Jackson immediately went into crisis mode, rallying around with hot sweet tea, carrot cake. She had found a change of clothes for Ling, who did a decent job of not
looking too horrified at the floral prints. Caro’s dad got onto his contacts in the police – April had forgotten that Caro had once said her family were all either villains or coppers – and had waited till they had broken up the “festivities” before taking Ling back and making sure the house was secure. All that time, Gabriel had sat in a corner, silent, lost in his own world. Even when they had been dropped off at the tube, Gabriel refused to talk to April, meeting her questions with a sullen glare.

  Then, finally, ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘I don’t want you to say anything, Gabe. Just tell me what happened back there.’

  ‘What do you think, April? I was protecting you.’

  ‘You can’t wriggle out of it that way,’ she said, turning in her seat to face him. ‘Caro and I were managing without you. That was something else.’

  ‘Tell me what, then. You seem to have all the answers.’

  Gabriel might be a hundred years old but he could act like a spoiled teenager. April realised she was going to have to change her approach.

  ‘Listen, Gabe, I’m not accusing you of anything,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I’m on your side, remember? It’s just that, well, you were trying to kill that boy.’

  ‘He isn’t a boy, April. He is a vampire, a stone cold killer. Fifty, a hundred years old, itching for a thrill, any excuse to make a kill. Don’t imagine he would have let you leave that garden unharmed.’

  ‘I know he is bad, I saw what he was doing to Ling. Maybe he’s raped other girls, maybe he’s killed hundreds of people. But ...’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said April. ‘Maybe all vampires – that kind of vampire anyway – maybe they all need to be destroyed, wiped from the face of the earth, perhaps that’s the only way to finally defeat them. But I don’t see it as our job now, Gabriel.. I think our job is to find the King Vampire, find where the snake is sleeping and cut off its head. And maybe then the rest of them will wither and die. I don’t really know. But we’re not executioners – and we can’t kill them all.’

  ‘But you’re the Fury, April!’ said Gabriel. ‘You’re the only one with the ability to take them down.’

  She nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. When you first told me – when you first showed me the birthmark behind my ear, that’s what I imagined. I thought I was going to be fighting vampires hand-to-hand. But not anymore. I think being a Fury is more like being the bloke with the flag at the front of a battle, shouting “Charge!”. It’s not just about special powers, but also about giving everyone else the courage to fight back.’

  ‘The courage to die?’

  ‘Maybe, Gabriel,’ she said, irritated now. ‘Maybe that’s what’s going to happen – let’s face it, the odds aren’t good for me however you look at it. How many times have I been attacked already? But better me than one of those geeky innocents at Ravenwood.’

  ‘So you didn’t want to be rescued?’

  He is maddening! April thought.

  ‘I didn’t want you to drown him, no. Push him over, punch him maybe, but Gabe ...’ she looked into his eyes, ‘I virtually had to beg to get you to let him live.’

  ‘That’s because I’m a killer, April!’ he snapped. ‘It’s what I am.’ Gabriel’s expression combined frustration and sorrow.

  April glanced down the carriage at the partying girls, but they were too wrapped up in their own cackling banter to notice what Gabriel had said.

  ‘You say you love me,. Well, this is what you’ve got to love,’ he said spreading his hands. ‘I wanted to kill that—that creature. I wanted to see him struggle, kick; I wanted him to die. We’re monsters, April. Do you really want to spend your life penned up with an animal like me?’

  There were tears in his eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply, reaching out to touch his face. ‘Yes, Gabriel, that’s exactly what I want. I know who you are, I know what you are, but I also know you’re more than that.’

  ‘Am I?’ he said, pulling away from her. ‘Is that what you think? Or is that what you wish I was like? I’m not this noble savage you can cure with your love. I’m exactly like the rest of them – I want to bathe in human blood.’

  This time, the girls at the end of the carriage had heard him. ‘Oooh, scary Goth bloke!’ shouted one and the rest of the girls cracked up with laughter.

  April grabbed his hand and pulled him further along the train. ‘Gabriel, I know,’ she said. ‘God knows, I understand what you’re feeling.’

  ‘Really?’

  April gave a bleak smile. ‘Gabriel, look at tonight. I hit that boy – that thing – over the head with a bottle! When things happen like tonight, I just feel this rage building up; it’s like it just rushes in on me and I want to strangle someone, crush their throat in my hands. And it’s getting worse and worse.’

  ‘That’s because you’re a Fury, April. That’s to help you fight them. To fight us.’

  She laughed. ‘Or maybe I’m just getting more crabby. Thing is, I do understand a tiny bit of what you’re talking about and, Gabe ’ -- she took his face in her hands and gently kissed him on the cheek-- ‘I love you so much for what you did.’

  ‘What did I do?’

  ‘The Dragon’s Breath, Gabe. When you kissed me at the Winter Ball, you were released from that killer instinct. The Fury virus was killing you, eating you away, but I could see the relief on your face. You were happy to die if it meant you were no longer a prisoner of the hunger.’ She kissed his cheek again. ‘I know how hard it was to give that up, to swallow the Dragon’s Breath and step back into the darkness. To become a monster again. I know what you did for me – I’ll never ever be able to repay that.’

  He turned away. ‘I didn’t do it just for you. I did it for myself, because I wanted to find my master and free myself from this forever, but ...’

  ‘But now it’s taking you over?’

  He looked at her and in the white glare of the strip lights his face was bleak, miserable. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. I think I’m losing my mind.’

  ‘The dreams?’

  He nodded slowly, glancing down at the girls. ‘It’s always women,’ he said. ‘It’s like I’m stalking them, hunting them down.’

  ‘Gabe, it’s only a dream.’

  ‘No,’ he said forcefully. ‘No, it’s not. It’s like I’ve been there; it’s like I am there.’

  ‘Look, come back to my Grampa’s,’ she said, feeling in her clutch bag for her keys. ‘We’ll sit down and talk about it.’

  Then two things happened almost simultaneously. There was another burst of laughter from the drunken girls, and the lights went out. In the darkness, a girl screamed, high-pitched and hysterical. Then the lights flickered on and off rapidly like a disco strobe and April could see Gabriel on his feet, backing away from her.

  ‘Gabe!’ she called, suddenly frightened. His eyes were wide, staring at her, mouth frozen in an “O”. And then they were flooded in light and the girls were laughing again as if nothing had happened. April moved towards Gabriel, but he backed further down the carriage.

  ‘Gabriel, what’s the matter?’

  ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Never forget that.’

  The train had stopped at a station and Gabriel pulled the door open and leapt from the train.

  ‘Gabe!’ April ran down the platform, but Gabriel was too fast. He dashed up the stairs at a speed she could not match and the lift would be too slow. Once at the top, she pushed through the barriers, ran through the ticket hall and out into the dark street. But April found herself alone. He had gone.

  ‘Gabriel!’ she shouted, looking up and down the street. ‘Gabriel, please! Don’t leave me here!’

  But there was nothing except empty road. April swore under her breath in frustration.

  What had just happened? Gabriel had always been flaky and unreliable, disappearing at the most inopportune moments, but this was something different – he had looked frightened, almost sick. Was it the
bad dreams? It couldn’t just be that, could it? Why had he bolted like that?

  ‘Gabriel!’ she shouted again, hopelessly.

  It wasn’t until she was a hundred yards from the tube station that April began to shake. She’d started a fight with a vampire, and now she was alone in the dark. Was she being followed by a mightily pissed-off vampire? Could Calvin have followed them? she wondered, looking over her shoulder. And he’d called her “witch girl”. He’d threatened her hadn’t he? Had he been stalking her, like Marcus Brent had done?

  Witch Girl. April changed direction, turning away down the narrow street towards the little shop with the purple door, but Redfearne’s was closed. Not just closed for the night, but closed closed, as in “everything must go”.

  ‘Oh no,’ said April. Her stomach sank as she peered through the window. Inside, she could see piles and piles of books stacked on the floor or crammed into packing cases. What the hell was going on?

  April saw movement at the back of the shop – Jessica walked into view. April rapped on the window.

  ‘Jessica!’ she called. ‘It’s me! Can you let me in?’

  The woman stood there looking at her for a moment, then shook her head and walked hesitantly towards the door. ‘What do you want, April?’ she said, only opening the door a crack. ‘I’m very busy.’

  ‘I wanted to ... are you leaving?’

  Jessica opened the door further and looked up and down the street. ‘Inside, quickly.’

  The shop was in chaos. Half of the shelves had been dismantled and the display cabinets had already gone. Books were stacked in teetering piles and the walls had been stripped bare of their pictures and trinkets.

  ‘Where are you going?’ said April.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Jessica was standing with her hands on her hips, glaring at April, anger coming off her in waves.

  ‘What? Is this something to do with me?’