No Shelter from Darkness (28 page)

“No. It's liberating,” said Beth in a monotone.

“Feels more like a prison cell,” Mary replied.

“You'd know, would you?”

“Yeah, didn't you hear? I did a stint in Holloway for sticking my nose in where it wasn't wanted.” Mary sat on a lower bunk, cementing her intrusion. “So … are you going to tell me what's wrong with you?”

Beth laughed. “Have you got that much time?”

Mary shrugged. “Well, yeah.”

Beth just remained silent. She wanted so much to talk about everything, but the only person with whom she could, was the one person she never wanted to see again. She shook her head, telling herself it would be a bad idea to say anything.

“What? Come on, Beth. It's bloody obvious you need to talk about it.”

It was as if Mary was giving her permission. She wanted to know and before Beth could stop it she'd blurted out something that would require further explanation. “Bill lied.”

“You mean your dad?”

“No. I mean Bill. He's not my father.”

Mary hesitated and then nodded, accepting Beth's feelings. “Okay, so what did he lie about?”

Beth scoffed. “Everything. My adoption; where I'm from; who I am.”

The shelter went silent. Mary was speechless as Beth began to fill in the gaps.

“My parents abandoned me on the steps of a church. In Spain.”

“Bloody hell. How did you end up here?”

Caution suddenly found its way into Beth's consciousness. A survival instinct had been triggered and she knew she couldn't divulge anything that would normally have her institutionalized. She had to get creative. She had to deceive. “The person who found me was friends with Bill. He brought me over here, but Bill didn't want to adopt me. He was forced into it.”

“You're kidding, right?” Mary's eyes darted around the shelter in confusion. “Who forced him? No … hold on—I still don't get why you were brought over here. Why weren't you just adopted by a Spanish family?”

Beth paused for thought. “Well. I wasn't allowed to stay in Spain.”

Mary's eyes lit up. “Why?”

Beth had unwittingly made the story more enticing. The conversation was swaying from her control. One slip of the tongue would lead to another and another. “I probably shouldn't say anything else.”

“What? You can't tell me that you got chucked out of the country you were born in and just leave it at that.”

“It's complicated, Mary.”

“So tell me.”

Beth rubbed her neck, stretching it from side to side.
Just like Bill
, she thought, straightening up but keeping her hand there. She tried to come up with a suitable story that mirrored the truth, but found flaws in every tale she could conjure. Evidently, she wasn't as good at this lying game as Bill was.

Mary couldn't wait and tried prompting her. “Has it got anything to do with those scars on your back?”

Beth tensed up. She fingered that uppermost scar. The motion was automatic; tracing the raised scar tissue up and down and around. She'd done it a thousand times before, but subconsciously. Why hadn't Bill mentioned anything about them? How could she have forgotten they were even there?

It was another concealment of truth—something else he didn't want her to know about.

It was the last straw.

Her hand dropped into her lap and she looked at Mary, who was still waiting for some kind of response. Three people knew what Beth was. What difference would a fourth really make?

“I'm not like you,” she began, so involved in the world that existed inside the shelter that her senses were dead to everything else. The barely audible sound of dried mud crumbling under foot went ignored, and the whiff of clothing that had its own distinctive scent, produced by the skin beneath it, should have alerted Beth to an approaching presence. But it didn't. Instead she'd taken a breath and was about to reveal her sinister side in one swift statement when something slammed against the shelter door. Both girls jumped and gasped as Bill burst through like an irate troll.

Beth felt an imaginary spotlight blinding her as the heat of embarrassment rose. It betrayed the secrets she was about to divulge. Mary was wide-eyed and sat silently. She had no idea what to say or do.

“Would you mind leaving us, Mary?” said Bill with quiet fury, all the while staring at Beth, unnerving her. Genuine fear had set in.

Mary stood nervously, threw a fearful glance Beth's way and quietly walked out.

Bill pulled the door closed on the darkening day, laid the single crutch he'd come out with on the bunk and lit the lantern. Rarely had he ever raised his voice. He used the overbearing presence he knew he had to great effect and his silence was more deafening than any furious yell. Worse still was that Beth's sanctuary, her private space, had been tarnished. Bill guarded the door and the shelter had become the prison cell Mary had imagined. “How much did you tell her?”

“Nothing,” said Beth.

“You can't lie to me, Elizabeth.”

“I told her about the adoption.”

“What about it?”

“Where I was born. That I was brought over here …”

“And?”

Beth looked down. “And that you were forced to adopt me.”

Sighing, Bill raised his head. His jaw was tense and he took long, deep breaths.

“I don't understand,” said Beth, feeling forced to plead her innocence. “What difference does it make if she knows that? Why can't she know everything? Why can't we tell Mum? Does this really need to be so secret that we can't tell our own family?”

Bill stared at Beth and it was intense. He didn't break the glare and she began to grow genuinely scared of him. She saw the vampire hunter and wanted to cower. Finally, he hopped forward and sat down on a bunk, throwing his head into his hands and groaning as if he were having to explain something for the hundredth time. He leaned back, controlled his breathing and the fire in his eyes began to calm.

“Once you're in the Ministry,” he began, “you don't leave. I shouldn't have married your mother. It was selfish and put numerous people in unnecessary danger. All I can do is try and keep that danger at bay. I lie to her, not because I don't care, but because I
do
care. I didn't want to adopt you; I've already admitted that. There was a good chance you were the very thing I'd spent the previous three years of my life saving my fellow man from.

“But everything happens for a reason. If I hadn't married your mother, God knows where you would've ended up. And without you, I'd still be a Shadow … literally. My son would barely know me, and I can't imagine my life without these people I love.

“It's
that
family I'm protecting and whom you need to protect too. Do you really want to drag them into this world with you? It's a horrid place. I genuinely can't imagine what you're going through, but I know that if you care about them, Mary included, you can't pull them in.”

“What if Mary wanted to be a part of it?”

“I don't doubt she'd try to help, but just knowing about you puts her in danger. ‘Careless talk costs lives',” recited Bill of the propaganda poster. “It doesn't apply to just
this
war.”

“I don't understand,” said Beth.

“There's a delicate balance. It's maintained by the one and only thing we have in common with the revenants: we want them to remain hidden just as much as they do.

“Lets say you tell Mary; even if she doesn't end up putting you in a mental hospital—or end up in one herself—and even if she promises to keep the secret, it only takes one slip-up in the wrong place at the
wrong time for things to go rapidly downhill. Best case scenario? People think she's crazy. Worst case?”

The implication was clear; people might believe her. Beth was once again plunged into the darkness of her own despair. She was stuck in a place that she couldn't be her true self—where she would have no option but live a life of deception.
Isn't there another way?

But there was. Of course there was.

Beth felt a natural injection of enthusiasm. “I need to find them,” she said.

“Who?”

“
My
kind. It solves everything.”

But Beth could already see Bill's negativity. “That wouldn't be a good idea.”

Of course you don't think so
, she thought. “Why?”

“They're savages, Elizabeth. You haven't been brought up like them. You know nothing of their world.”

“But surely I wouldn't feel any more an outcast than I do now.”

Bill looked to the floor, avoiding her eye contact. “Actually, you most likely would. We speculate that had you not been abandoned, you would have been groomed as a slave. Or worse.”

Beth swore her heart stopped beating. All the taunts that she had to put up with … to discover at least one of them had the potential to be true was the greatest insult of all. “How could you possibly know that?” she asked. As soon as she said the words she remembered what Mary had mentioned earlier. Beth hung her head. “My scars.”

“We think it's a mark branded into those who are to become servants. It could explain why you were abandoned in the first place, after you were turned.”

“Unless I wasn't turned,” said Beth. “Couldn't I have been born a vampire?”

“Unlikely,” said Bill.

“Why?”

“It goes against everything the Ministry believes.”

“Have they never been wrong?”

Bill's silence conveyed the suspicion that Beth might be right, but never had he given up so easily.

“You've already considered it, haven't you?”

“It doesn't matter how you became what you are; it doesn't change the fact that seeking out your kind would be a very bad idea. And trust me, even if you weren't branded you still wouldn't want to be among them.”

It was another dead end for Beth. Another chance of acceptance denied. She crossed her arms and stared at the floor, her self-pity distracting her from the awkward silence that had befallen the shelter.

TWENTY-NINE

September 3rd, 1939.

THE WARMTH OF THE AIR
was such that even though it was the middle of the night, Bill knew the next day would be beautiful. He looked forward to it like he looked forward to all Sundays, for it was truly his day of rest. He could almost taste the eggs and bacon.

He had the taxi drop him off at Rotherhithe Station and walked eastward along the main street that followed the curve of the Thames, before it dipped down and around to create the Isle of Dogs. Past the gas works and Albion Dock, past Stave Dock and onward toward the northern side of Lavender Pond. He walked with care in the newly blacked out city of London, to where a small and familiar warehouse awaited. That morning, or rather yesterday morning now that midnight had passed, Bill had opened Davies & Co. Carpenters to find a hand posted note on the mat. It mentioned nothing of what was so important, only that he come to “the usual address” that night.

Unfortunately, it had turned out to be the night that his six-year-old son decided to be violently sick. Bill and his wife stayed up with him, waiting for whatever had gotten into his system to leave so that he could finally drift off to sleep. His adopted daughter had taken the opportunity to try and stay up late, but Bill had put his foot down with her before she even made it out onto the landing. Only when the family ruckus had died down could he leave for another of his midnight walks, for which he had such fondness.

The small warehouse was on the riverside of Rotherhithe Street, just before the Fire Station. He walked around the darkened side of it to the door on the corner and knocked. The viewing slot opened, and though Bill could only see an unidentifiable eye, the guard had obviously recognized him. The slot slid shut and the bulky door opened.

Bill nodded as he passed Mister Cedar. That wasn't his real name … but Mister Willow wasn't Bill's name, either. It was a further measure of protection to never speak each other's true names while on business.

The door boomed shut behind him. “What's this all about, Mister Cedar?”

Cedar shrugged. “I'm only here because Mister Quince wanted backup.” Cedar was indeed the kind of Shadow Minister you'd want for such a duty. He was young and army trained, like all Shadows. He was also the kind of man who you'd say sorry to after he bumped into you.

“Backup?” asked Bill.

“We've got a live one.”

“I wasn't aware we needed a live one.”

“Like I said, I don't know what's going on. Quince is in Room 1.”

The warehouse had been bought outright by the Ministry, though the name would never appear anywhere in print. The internal structure had been modified for their needs. Bill walked to the end of the short corridor and opened a second door into a darkened, wide-open space. Stepping into the body of the warehouse and closing the door behind him, he looked to the structure in the center. The warehouse was about forty by fifty yards, and though it was empty no echo would ever be heard due to the carpet that lined the expanse of the walls. The structure in the middle was about fifteen by twenty yards, and was a simple brick building with two doors on the near side. Above it, the high roof of the warehouse was constructed of corrugated metal, interrupted here and there by faded plastic to act as skylights. It was due to those patches of roof, so dirty you cold barely see through them, that the warehouse was in darkness. With the new blackout regulations the roof would create the perfect target. They were pushing their luck as it was with the dim light shining over the door to Room 1.

Room 1 had the shackles, chisels, pliers and hammers … and the blowtorch. Room 2 was filled with medical equipment: scalpels and bone saws, drip-trays and organ-weighing scales. Both were torture rooms.

Bill entered Room 1 and stepped into the partitioned observation section, closing the door behind him. The door to the interrogation cell was shut, and the blind over the large observation window was closed. Mister Quince leaned up against the far wall, the cord of the blind in his hand. Compared to Cedar he was tall and wiry, but still a force to be reckoned with.