Sleeping Angel (Ravenwood Series) (13 page)

‘There are things going on in that cemetery I can’t explain,’ said Mr Gordon, ‘Either as a rational modern man or as a spiritual man. I can’t say I’ve seen your caretaker, but I’ve seen people or “things”, as you put it, that shouldn’t exist.’ He smiled at her. ‘I suppose it’s kind of funny; after all, things you can’t see are sort of my job, aren’t they? The church is always asking people to have faith, to believe in things beyond the ordinary, to put themselves into the hands of the God they can neither see or even, in most cases, understand. But when I’m actually confronted with something like that, it still freaks me out.’

April laughed despite herself. It was good to hear somebody like the vicar admit to feeling the same way.

‘So what do you think it is? What is going on in the cemetery?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know, but I can say for certain that something is wrong in Highgate. A darkness.’

‘A darkness?’ repeated April, thinking about the graffiti she had seen in the school only that afternoon.

‘It’s only a feeling, April, but I’ve noticed that feeling getting stronger over the last few months.’

‘Since I got here, you mean?’

The vicar took a deep breath. ‘To be frank with you, yes. I think it does have something to do with you and your family. Your dad had a theory that there was some sort of badness, some sort of evil, under the ground – that it was somehow leaking up through the cemetery. I don’t know whether that was right, but too much has happened around you and your family to deny that you’re involved.’

For a moment, April thought about telling him everything, about how she was a Fury, about how she was in love with a vampire, about how she was involved in some kind of holy war between the undead and – who? With a jolt April realised she didn’t even know who she was fighting for. But April was painfully aware of the fact that virtually everybody she had confided in over the past few months had either ended up dead or in danger. Mr Gordon was a good man, and she had no desire to see him hurt.

‘What should I do? How can I stop this darkness?’

‘Fight, April. I’m sure my bishop would throw a fit if he heard me giving you such advice. But I don’t see how you have any choice. Sometimes you have to choose a side.’

‘What about turning the other cheek?’

             
‘What if somebody tears that cheek off? I can’t tell you what to do, but if it was me, I would take the fight to them.’ A smile played on the vicar’s lips. ‘Kick ‘em in the balls, April. It’s what Jesus would have done.’

April burst out laughing and Mr Gordon joined in.

‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Of course the Lamb of God would have chosen a more peaceful route – but Jesus wasn’t above using violence to make a point. Overturning the money-lenders’ tables in the temple, sticking Doubting Thomas’s fingers into his wound, that sort of thing.’

April frowned – perhaps she hadn’t been listening hard enough in RE. The idea of Jesus as some ass-kicking ninja didn’t really fit into her Sunday school picture-book notion of what he looked like. ‘Didn’t he tell off one of his disciples for slicing some Roman guard’s ear off?’

‘Yes, that’s true, but that’s because he wanted to be crucified.’

‘He
wanted
to be crucified?’

‘I know it sounds strange – but it’s actually the whole basis of Christianity. Jesus allowed himself to be captured and crucified to expose the hypocrisy of the Romans and the Jews. He was making a point about dying for our sins, yes, but on a social level, he was also showing his followers how far they had to go to win.’

They stopped in front of a church and Mr Gordon pointed up at the carvings of Christ on the cross. ‘See? Our religion was built on the blood of martyrs – you’ve heard about Christians being fed to the lions in the Roman arena? – but death often has more power than life in the minds of the living. If Jesus hadn’t understood the power of an idea backed up by action, Christianity might well have stayed as some backwater cult.’

‘You’re saying I need to sacrifice myself?’

‘No, I’m saying you need to make a choice. I know I sound like some sort of mad preacher, but making a choice was all Jesus did. Bad things were happening to the people around him, so he stood up and said “enough”. He gave people an alternative, set a personal example they could aspire to, even if they couldn’t follow him up onto the cross.’

April suddenly thought about Dr Tame and his little pep talk about the Head Girl being someone who sets the example. What if she could set the example in a way Dr Tame hadn’t thought of, use her new platform to subtly change the message Dr Tame was broadcasting? She wasn’t exactly sure how she could do it, but the idea made her feel energised, hopeful. They had reached the concrete ramp to Archway tube now, the library was on their right.

‘I’m going this way,’ said April. ‘Thank you for listening to me. I can see why my dad confided in you.’

‘William Dunne was a very clever man and I think he raised a very clever girl too.’ Mr Gordon reached over and gave April’s hand a squeeze. ‘You’ll do the right thing – I know you will.’

April hoped he was right. She really did.

Caro was clearly enjoying herself. ‘So, this is like a council of war?’ she said eagerly, nibbling on some Twiglets. April suspected her friend would have preferred to be meeting in a bunker somewhere rather than in April’s bedroom.

‘It
is
a council of war,’ said April, looking from Caro to Gabriel, then across to Fiona who was patched in via the laptop. ‘It’s time for us to fight back – that’s why we’re all here. It’s time to take the battle to the Suckers, not wait around for them to jump out at us. We’ve had enough of that already.’

After her discussion with the vicar, April was anxious to get moving, stop talking and do something. So she had called Gabriel, for once getting hold of him straight away, sent a taxi for Caro and got Fee to video call her so she could join them in the room. April kept thinking about what Mr Gordon had said. If Jesus was prepared to get his hands dirty, why shouldn’t they? Not that she was putting herself in the same boat by any stretch of the imagination – she couldn’t even scrape together twelve followers – but she liked what the vicar had said about using an idea as a weapon.

April looked around the room at glum faces. Fiona was the first to speak.

‘We’re with you, April,’ said Fiona, ‘Of course we are. But you can see how depressing it is. They’ve got the best minds of their generation, unlimited funds, probably half the government and the police force in their pockets – and that’s not to mention the massed forces of darkness waiting outside our houses. Whereas what do we have? Three of you down there in your mum’s dingy old bedroom and me stuck up here in Scotland. The odds aren’t good.’

‘Screw the odds!’ shouted April, anger bursting from her, ‘Listen, we don’t have a choice. We have to stop them.
Have
to, otherwise countless people will die. Gabriel – tell them!’

Gabriel closed his eyes, then nodded. ‘You’re right. Of course you are.’

April looked at her friends, making sure it was sinking in.

‘I know it’s scary, but there’s no more time to scrape around picking up clues here and there. We have to find the head of the vamps and kill him right now. It’s that simple.’

‘Simple – ha!’ said Caro sarcastically, but April turned on her.

‘Yes, Caro – simple, really simple. Look around you, look at what’s happening at the school – we’re running out of time. If we don’t move, if we don’t do something, right now, we’re going to lose. Everyone’s going to lose – your family, your friends, everyone is going to be swallowed by this.’

‘All right, so what do we do?’ said Fiona.

April looked over at the computer screen – her best friend’s face was sympathetic, but she could see the scepticism there. Even Fiona, her most practical and reliably “can-do” friend doubted her. ‘We take them on, Fee,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes, you’re right. There’s only the four of us, and thousands of them. But at least we have the element of surprise.’

‘And we’ve got you, too,’ said Gabriel.

He saw Caro pull a face.

‘Hey, I’m not being soppy,’ he said defensively.

‘Yes, you are,’ grinned Caro.

‘Okay, maybe a bit. But the point is – April is a Fury. She is our secret weapon – hopefully secret, anyway. In her we have the power to kill any vampire, born or made. But it’s bigger than that, because a Fury is the only thing on earth that a vampire fears. If we can make the vampires feel vulnerable, we have a slim advantage and slim is better than nothing.’

Gabriel was sitting forward now, his eyes bright, hands animated and April could see he was excited. For the first time that night, she really began to think they might be able to pull it off.

‘Actually, that’s something Sheldon said on that night of the fire,’ she nodded. ‘He said the power of the Fury “goes deeper than blood”. That’s why he wanted to cut my throat and collect my blood in the sink – it was like having a nuclear bomb. He didn’t actually need to set it off-- it was enough to have the threat of it.’

April could hardly believe that she was talking about herself in such a way, that her blood, the very stuff inside her veins had become this weapon of war. But she knew she had to use everything at their disposal, however uncomfortable it made her feel.

‘What about the Guardians?’ said Caro. ‘Aren’t they supposed to be protecting the Fury? Shouldn’t they have some ideas about what to do?’

April glanced over at Gabriel; she could tell he wasn’t comfortable with it. The Guardians were sworn to destroy all vampires, they didn’t differentiate between “good” and “bad” vampires, plus April was fairly sure he didn’t trust them. Also, from what Elizabeth Holden had said, they could not be relied upon – perhaps Annabel Holden had been the last Guardian willing to help.

‘All right, I’m in,’ said Fiona decisively. ‘What do you want me to do?’

April felt a wave of relief. For a few minutes, she had been thinking that she was going to have to undertake this alone. But she had made up her mind: even if she were alone, she was going to fight. What she had said was true – she didn’t really have any choice. She could never have lived with herself if, knowing about the threat, she had just sat by watching it happen – not when she had the power to do something about it.

‘Okay, first things first. We need to find the King Vampire – we have to assume he’s behind Ravenwood and orchestrating the bigger conspiracy. Get
him
, we get all of them. Or at the very least, if we remove the leader, there’s a good chance we’ll make the rest of them scuttle away.’

‘Plus we get Gabriel back,’ said Caro.

‘And hopefully we’ll get everyone else back too,’ said April, holding Caro’s gaze. They both knew she meant Simon, although after her encounter with him at the school gates April hoped they hadn’t left it too late. He’d looked sick, but not just from the booze or the drugs or whatever he’d been lured into, he’d looked like he’d given up on life. All the more reason to get moving.

‘Hey, I’ve just had a thought,’ said Fiona. ‘If the King is persuading these greedy fat-cats to come over to his cause, he must be revealing who he is and what his plans are. And that means the King is more vulnerable now than he has been for years, maybe even centuries. Which is another advantage to us.’

April felt a rush of love for her friends. They all knew that the vampires were a real threat; they knew involvement could get them all a quick trip to the morgue, and yet they were still here, offering their support with enthusiasm. And what made her heart ache was that they were doing it for her. Yes, maybe they believed in the cause; yes, they all wanted to help annoying geeks like Amy Philips from English who were ignorant of the terrible danger they were in; but they weren’t doing it for that – they were doing it because April had asked them to. It was amazing and brilliant and tragic and terrifying all at the same time.
I’d better get it right
, she thought. She pulled out her school notepad and flipped it to a clean page.

‘All right, so who
is
the King?’ she said. ‘I mean, anyone got any ideas – or any ideas on who might know?’

‘How about Dr bloody Tame? He’s like a Ravenwood cheerleader,’ said Caro, ‘Surely he must know. And he was working with the police too, remember?’

‘Maybe,’ said Gabriel, thoughtfully. ‘He’s the sort of man who would do anything to be introduced to the leader. That’s why he’s so gung ho about it all – he wants the King to hear about what a good job he’s doing. We mustn’t underestimate him.’

‘I agree,’ said Caro, a smile creeping over her face. ‘I think he’s a good way in. The Head Girl is probably the best person to be questioning him.’

April’s heart sank. She followed the logic of this, but with no desire to spend any more time in Dr Tame’s creepy presence.
It’s a dirty job
... she thought to herself, writing down “Tame” with an arrow pointing to him and “April” beside it.

‘All right, so who else can we try?’ she said. ‘The King has got to be somebody in authority, somebody who has influence, like a politician, somebody who can actually make changes.’