Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Out of the Shadows

Modern Day

Ysanne Moreau paused in front of the window of a jeweller, her eye caught by a pair of pearl earrings nestled on a display of white satin. Diamonds were her usual gemstone of choice, but there was something undeniably timeless about pearls, and Ysanne had always had a soft spot for the finer things in life. It had been a while since she'd treated herself to anything.

Before she could go into the shop, she heard sudden, noisy sobbing, and she looked down the street to where a small group of teenagers were huddled around a mobile phone.

"You don't know that Jacqui was there," said one of the boys, trying to comfort the crying girl who held the phone.

"But that's the route she always takes when she's coming to visit," the girl sobbed.

The boy looked helplessly around at his friends, but none of them seemed to know what to say.

"She might not even have left home yet. No offence to your sister, but she's always running late," he said.

"We have to go there," the girl said. "People are trapped – Jacqui could be trapped."

"If she is, how are you going to get her out? The news report said the police and fire service were on the way. They'll know what to do," said the boy.

"All those people," murmured another girl.

Ysanne didn't know why she approached the group. Whatever was happening was none of her business, but something about the way they were looking at that phone, as if they were watching some terrible tragedy unfold, caught her attention.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"There's been a major crash on the A34," said the boy who'd tried to comfort the crying girl. "No one's sure how it happened, but at least fifteen cars are involved."

"And people are trapped?" Ysanne said.

The boy handed her the phone, and she refrained from grimacing. While she understood these devices provided modern people with a lot of benefits, the speed with which they'd advanced made her suspicious.

The phone showed a video of a dual carriageway, with crushed, mangled cars strewn around like toys. Debris was everywhere, glass glittering on the surface of the road, and someone lay very still on the grassy verge.

"Who's filming this?" Ysanne asked.

"Police helicopter. Apparently they were following a stolen car on the opposite carriageway when the crash happened. They abandoned the car chase so they could monitor the crash," another boy said.

"And you think your sister might be in one of these cars?" Ysanne said to the crying girl.

"I don't know," she wailed.

It was hard to see some of the cars, either because their licence plates had been smashed off, or because the cars themselves were too badly damaged to identify. But people were clearly still inside. Some of them were crying and banging on their windows, unable to get out because their cars were wedged together. A motionless figure was sprawled beneath a battered motorbike. Several other cars had parked a short distance from the crash and people were running to the scene. But Ysanne doubted they could get the trapped victims out without help from fire fighters, who still hadn't arrived on the scene.

A strange sense of calm settled over her.

For a long time now, she had believed that vampires needed to come out of the shadows and let the human world know they existed, and for decades she'd worked to spread this message. That had finally culminated in a meeting at her home here in Winchester, where she'd gathered as many vampires as she could and shared her vision with them. Some of them had been cautiously optimistic. Some had been openly hostile. But gradually, over the years that had followed, Ysanne had persuaded more and more people that this was the right path. Not everyone was convinced yet, and maybe this wasn't a decision that Ysanne should make without consulting anyone else, but all this time she'd wondered how she would go about revealing vampirekind, and in that moment she knew. There was no time to ask anyone else what they thought.