Playing Dead: Book One of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 25

How it irritated me when Harper was right. Even more so when he was right about things I did not really want to hear.

But with this new and awful revelation, the rot had already set in the moment I had seen my husband embracing my best friend in our kitchen, when my body was meant to be barely cold in the ground. Snaky seeds of doubt had already begun to fester in my mind the very second he had put his hands on her, the way he had used to put his hands on me. It had been like dominoes falling, one by one, faster and faster as everything clicked into place and everything I had I once known was destroyed.

"What? No protests that I must be lying?" Harper said, his forehead wrinkling in a sudden uncertainty. "I'm surprised, Megan. Maybe Brandon wasn't quite as secure on that pedestal as I had thought."

"You could probably tell me that he was Judas Iscariot reincarnated right now and I would believe you."

"Maybe not the Judas, but he was certainly your Judas. Only he didn't receive thirty silver coins for his betrayal, just your head on a platter instead of his own."

"He sacrificed me to save himself? Why did he need to sacrifice anything?" I frowned.

"Your husband's company works for and protects a great many powerful clients. Rich clients. Important clients. One such client wanted something; something that they were willing to pay a hefty sum for. Only that thing happened to be in the possession of a vampire called Bartholomew Garrick and it was Brandon's job to persuade Garrick to hand it over."

"But wait, I thought you said that vampires are the Varúlfur's prey? If Brandon wanted this whatever it is, why could he not just hunt Garrick and take it?"

Harper smiled wryly. "Because Varúlfur or not, you do not hunt Garrick. You do not find Garrick. If vampires are an underground race, than Garrick is about as deep underground as you will ever meet. And if you do get to meet him, then the chances are you will not be surfacing again. He is about as close to a leader as we will possibly ever get and we are not known for our structured society and close-knit community values. You cannot even really call him a leader, he is completely out for himself, as most of us are, but whatever you do, you pray that you do not cross paths with him. Garrick is unusual in that over the years he has gathered about him a very interesting network of vampires, mercenaries you might like to call them but they are incredibly loyal to him and trust me when I say that is not our usual habit."

"I don't understand; vampires are not loyal to one another? Why not?"

"Because that is the way that we are. That is the natural order of things. When you live in our world, it is everyone for himself and no other. The most we can do is make it through another day and with everyone scrabbling around just to survive, is it any wonder we do not come to rely on someone else to save our own neck? You must trust only yourself."

I stared at him in utter bewilderment. "But that's crazy. How is it so hard just to survive? You seem to do okay."

"I do what I have to do in order to survive as does every other vampire. We have nothing Megan and the Varúlfur see to it that it remains that way. We live in the shadows. In squats, in run-down shit holes that you would not let your dog reside in, anywhere we cannot be found. We fight for scraps, taking only those who won't be missed, the putrid offal of human society, the ones that have no one. For god forbid we should hunt the prime cuts, it would be too risky and we dare not raise our heads above the parapets for fear it shall be sliced clean from our bodies. We do not form friendships because there are no friendships to be made down here in the gutter. And vampires forming bonds, grouping together, unnerves the Varúlfur and they work tirelessly to keep us in our place. Truly the best we can hope for is that the Varúlfur will not notice us. If we come under their radar, do something they don't like, go somewhere we are not meant to go, then they will hunt us and execute us."